none scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) theism being the baird lecture for by robert flint, d.d., ll.d. professor of divinity in the university of edinburgh author of 'the philosophy of history in europe,' etc. william blackwood and sons edinburgh and london mdccclxxvii prefatory note. the lectures in this volume have been delivered in glasgow, st andrews, and edinburgh, in connection with the lectureship founded by the late mr james baird of auchmedden and cambusdoon. they will be followed by a volume on anti-theistic theories, containing the baird lectures for . the author has to thank the baird trustees for having twice appointed him lecturer, and for much indulgence extended to him during his tenure of office. his special thanks are due to james a. campbell, esq., ll.d., of stracathro, for kindly revising the sheets of this volume, and for suggesting many corrections and improvements. johnstone lodge, craigmillar park, edinburgh, _ d august _. contents. lect. page i. issues involved in the question to be discussed--whence and how we get the idea of god, ii. general idea of religion--comparison of polytheism and pantheism with theism--the three great theistic religions compared--no religious progress beyond theism, iii. the nature, conditions, and limits of theistic proof, iv. nature is but the name for an effect whose cause is god, v. the argument from order, vi. objections to the argument from order examined, vii. moral argument--testimony of conscience and history, viii. consideration of objections to the divine wisdom, benevolence, and justice, ix. _a priori_ theistic proof, x. mere theism insufficient, appendix. note page i. natural and revealed religion, ii. influence of religion on morality, iii. ethics of religious inquiry, iv. traditive theory of religion, v. normal development of society, vi. definition and classification by the highest type, vii. psychological nature of religion, viii. argument _e consensu gentium_, ix. the theistic evidence complex and comprehensive, x. intuition, feeling, belief, and knowledge in religion, xi. the theological inference from the theory of energy, xii. the history of the Ætiological argument, xiii. mathematics and the design argument, xiv. astronomy and the design argument, xv. chemistry and the design argument, xvi. geology, geography, etc., and the design argument, xvii. the organic kingdom and design, xviii. evidences of design in organisms, xix. psychology and design, xx. history and design, xxi. history of the teleological argument, xxii. creation and evolution, xxiii. theological inferences from the doctrine of spontaneous generation, xxiv. darwin and paley, xxv. kant's moral argument, xxvi. dr schenkel's view of conscience as the organ of religion, xxvii. chalmers and erskine on the argument from conscience, xxviii. associationist theory of the origin of conscience, xxix. chalmers and bain on the pleasure of malevolence, xxx. history of the moral proof, xxxi. defects in the physical world, xxxii. no best possible created system, xxxiii. defects in the organic world, xxxiv. epicurean dilemma, xxxv. god and duty, xxxvi. histories of the theistic proofs, xxxvii. _a priori_ proof not proof from a cause, xxxviii. some _a priori_ arguments, theism. lecture i. issues involved in the question to be discussed--whence and how we get the idea of god. i. is belief in god a reasonable belief, or is it not? have we sufficient evidence for thinking that there is a self-existent, eternal being, infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and goodness, the maker of heaven and earth, or have we not? is theism true, or is some antagonistic, some anti-theistic theory true? this is the question which we have to discuss and to answer, and it seems desirable to state briefly at the outset what issues are involved in answering it. obviously, the statement of these issues must not be so framed as to create prejudice for or against any particular answer. its only legitimate purpose is to help us to realise aright our true relation to the question. we can never in any investigation see too early or too clearly the true and full significance, the general and special bearings, of the question we intend to study; but the more important and serious the question is, the more incumbent on us is it not to prejudge what must be the answer. * * * * * it is obvious, then, in the first place, that the inquiry before us is one as to whether or not religion has any reasonable ground, any basis, in truth; and if so, what that ground or basis is. religion, in order to be reasonable, must rest on knowledge of its object. this is not to say that it is exclusively knowledge, or that knowledge is its one essential element. it is not to say that feeling and will are not as important constituents in the religious life as intellectual apprehension. mere knowledge, however clear, profound, and comprehensive it may be, can never be religion. there can be no religion where feeling and affection are not added to knowledge. there can be no religion in any mind devoid of reverence or love, hope or fear, gratitude or desire--in any mind whose thinking is untouched, uncoloured, uninspired by some pious emotion. and religion includes more even than an apprehension of god supplemented by feeling--than the love or fear of god based on knowledge. it is unrealised and incomplete so long as there is no self-surrender of the soul to the object of its knowledge and affection--so long as the will is unmoved, the character and conduct unmodified. the importance of feeling and will in religion is thus in no respect questioned or denied when it is maintained that religion cannot be a reasonable process, a healthy condition of mind, if constituted by either feeling or volition separate from knowledge. some have represented it as consisting essentially in the feeling of dependence, others in that of love, and others in fear; but these are all feelings which must be elicited by knowledge, and which must be proportional to knowledge in every undisordered mind. we can neither love nor fear what we know nothing about. we cannot love what we do not think worthy of love, nor fear unless we think there is reason for fear. we cannot feel our dependence upon what we do not know to exist. we cannot feel trustful and confiding dependence on what we do not suppose to have a character which merits trust and confidence. then, however true it may be that short of the action of the will in the form of the self-surrender of the soul to the object of its worship the religious process is essentially imperfect, this self-surrender cannot be independent of reason and yet reasonable. in order to be a legitimate act it must spring out of good affections,--and these affections must be enlightened; they must rest on the knowledge of an object worthy of them, and worthy of the self-sacrifice to which they prompt. unless there be such an object, and unless it can be known, all the feeling and willing involved in religion must be delusive--must be of a kind which reason and duty command us to resist and suppress. but religion is certainly a very large phenomenon. it is practically coextensive, indeed, with human life and history. it is doubtful if any people, any age, has been without some religion. and religion has not only in some form existed almost wherever man has existed, but its existence has to a great extent influenced his whole existence. the religion of a people colours its entire civilisation; its action may be traced on industry, art, literature, science, and philosophy, in all their stages. and the question whether there is a god or not, whether god can be known or not, is, otherwise put, whether or not religious history, and history so far as influenced by religion, have had any root in reason, any ground in fact. if there be no god, or if it be impossible to know whether there be a god or not, history, to the whole extent of its being religious and influenced by religion, must have been unreasonable. perhaps religion might still be conceived of, although it is difficult to see how it could be so conceived of on consistent grounds, as having done some good: and one religion might be regarded as better than another, in the sense of doing more good or less evil than another; but no religion could be conceived of as true, nor could one religion be conceived of as truer than another. if there be no god to know, or if god cannot be known, religion is merely a delusion or mental disease--its history is merely the history of a delusion or disease, and any science of it possible is merely a part of mental pathology. further, whether christianity be a reasonable creed or not obviously depends on whether or not certain beliefs regarding god are reasonable. if there be no god, if there be more gods than one, if god be not the creator and upholder of the world and the father of our spirits, if god be not infinite in being and perfection, in power, wisdom, and holiness, christianity cannot possibly be a thing to be believed. it professes to be a revelation from god, and consequently assumes that there is a god. it demands our fullest confidence, on the ground of being his word; and consequently assumes that he is "not a man that he should lie," but one whose word may be trusted to the uttermost. it professes to be a law of life, and therefore assumes the holiness of its author; to be a plan of salvation, and therefore presupposes his love; to be certain of final triumph, and so presupposes his power. it presents itself to us as the completion of a progressive process of positive revelation, and therefore presupposes a heavenly father, judge, and king. the books in which we have the record of this process--the books of the old and new testaments--therefore assume, and could not but assume, that god is, and that he is all-powerful, perfectly wise, and perfectly holy. they do not prove it, but refer us to the world and our own hearts for the means and materials of proof. they may draw away from nature, and from before the eyes of men, a veil which covers and conceals the proof; they may be a record of facts which powerfully confirm and largely supplement what proof there is in the universe without and the mind within: but they must necessarily imply, and do everywhere imply, that a real proof exists there. if what they in this respect imply be untrue, all that they profess to tell us of god, and as from god, must be rejected by us, if we are to judge and act as reasonable beings.[ ] [ ] see appendix i. for all men, then, who have religious beliefs, and especially for all men who have christian beliefs, these questions, what evidence is there for god's existence? and, what is known of his nature? are of primary importance. the answers given to them must determine whether religion and christianity ought to be received or rejected. there can be no use in discussing other religious questions so long as these fundamental questions have not been thoughtfully studied and distinctly answered. it is only through their investigation that we can establish a right to entertain any religious belief, to cherish any religious feeling, to perform any religious act. and the result to which the investigation leads us must largely decide what sort of a religious theory we shall hold, and what sort of a religious life we shall lead. almost all religious differences of really serious import may be traced back to differences in men's thoughts about god. the idea of god is the generative and regulative idea in every great religious system and every great religious movement. it is a true feeling which has led to the inclusion of all religious doctrines whatever in a science which bears the name of theology (discourse about god, [greek: logos peri tou theou]), for what is believed about god determines what will be believed about everything else which is included either under natural or revealed religion. * * * * * in the second place, the moral issues depending on the inquiry before us are momentous. an erroneous result must, from the very nature of the case, be of the most serious character. if there be no god, the creeds and rites and precepts which have been imposed on humanity in his name must all be regarded as a cruel and intolerable burden. the indignation which atheists have so often expressed at the contemplation of religious history is quite intelligible--quite natural; for to them it can only appear as a long course of perversion of the conscience and affections of mankind. if religion be in its essence, and in all its forms and phases, false, the evils which have been associated with it have been as much its legitimate effects as any good which can be ascribed to it; and there can be no warrant for speaking of benefits as its proper effects, or uses and mischiefs as merely occasioned by it, or as its abuses. if in itself false, it must be credited with the evil as well as with the good which has followed it; and all the unprofitable sufferings and useless privations--all the undefined terrors and degrading rites--all the corruptions of moral sentiment, factitious antipathies, intolerance, and persecution--all the spiritual despotism of the few, and the spiritual abjectness of the many--all the aversion to improvement and opposition to science, &c., which are usually referred to false religion and to superstition,--must be attributed to religion in itself, if there be no distinction between true and false in religion--between religion and superstition. in that case, belief in god must be regarded as really the root of all these evils. it is only if we can separate between religious truth and religious error--only if we can distinguish religion itself from the perversions of religion--that we can possibly maintain that the evils which have flowed from religious error, from the perversions of religion, are not to be traced to the religious principle itself.[ ] on the other hand, if there be a god, he who denies his existence, and, in consequence, discards all religious motives, represses all religious sentiments, and despises all religious practices, assuredly goes morally far astray. if there be a god--all-mighty, all-wise, and all-holy--the want of belief in him must be in all circumstances a great moral misfortune, and, wherever it arises from a want of desire to know him, a serious moral fault, necessarily involving, as it does, indifference to one who deserves the highest love and deepest reverence, ingratitude to a benefactor whose bounties have been unspeakable, and the neglect of those habits of trust and prayer by which men realise the presence of infinite sympathy and implore the help of infinite strength. if there be a god, the virtue which takes no account of him, even if it were otherwise faultless, must be most defective. the performance of personal and social duty can in that case no more compensate for the want of piety than justice can excuse intemperance or benevolence licentiousness. [ ] see appendix ii. besides, if god exist--if piety, therefore, ought also to exist--it can scarcely be supposed that personal and social morality will not suffer when the claims of religion are unheeded. it has seemed to some that morality rests on religion, and cannot exist apart from it. and almost all who believe that there are religious truths which men, as reasonable beings, are bound to accept, will be found maintaining that, although morality may be independent of religion for its mere existence, a morality unsupported by religion would be insufficient to satisfy the wants of the personal and social life. without religion, they maintain, man would not be able to resist the temptations and support the trials of his lot, and would be cut off from the source of his loftiest thoughts, his richest and purest enjoyments, and his most heroic deeds. without it nations, they further maintain, would be unprogressive, selfish, diseased, corrupt, unworthy of life, incapable of long life. they argue that they find in human nature and in human history the most powerful reasons for thinking thus; and so much depends upon whether they are right or wrong, that they are obviously entitled to expect that these reasons, and also the grounds of religious belief, will be impartially and carefully examined and weighed. it will be denied, indeed, by no one, that religious belief influences moral practice. both reason and history make doubt on this point impossible. the convictions of a man's heart as to the supreme object of his reverence, and as to the ways in which he ought to show his reverence thereof, necessarily affect for good or ill his entire mind and conduct. the whole moral life takes a different colour according to the religious light which falls upon it. as the valley of the rhone presents a different aspect when seen from a summit of the jura and from a peak of the alps, so the course of human existence appears very different when looked at from different spiritual points of view. atheism, polytheism, pantheism, theism, cannot regard life and death in the same way, and cannot solve in the same way the problems which they present to the intellect and the heart. these different theories naturally--yea, necessarily--yield different moral results. now, doubt may be entertained as to whether or not we can legitimately employ the maxim, "by their fruits ye shall know them," in attempting to ascertain the truth or falsity of a theory. the endeavour to support religion by appealing to its utility has been denounced as "moral bribery and subornation of the understanding."[ ] but no man, i think, however scrupulous or exacting, can doubt that when one theory bears different moral and social fruits than another, that fact is a valid and weighty reason for inquiring very carefully which of them is true and which false. he who believes, for example, that there is a god, and he who believes that there is no being in the universe higher than himself--he who believes that material force is the source of all things, and he who believes that nature originated in an intelligent, holy, and loving will,--must look upon the world, upon history, and upon themselves so very differently--must think, feel, and act so very differently--that for every man it must be of supreme importance to know which of these beliefs he is bound in reason to accept and which to reject. [ ] by j. s. mill, in the very essay in which he assailed religion by trying to show that the world had outgrown the need of it. * * * * * then, in the third place, the primary question in religion is immediately and inseparably connected with the ultimate question of science. does the world explain itself, or does it lead the mind above and beyond itself? science cannot but suggest this question; religion is an answer to it. when the phenomena of the world have been classified, the connections between them traced, their laws ascertained, science may, probably enough, have accomplished all that it undertakes--all that it can perform; but is it certain that the mind can ascend no further? must it rest in the recognition of order, for example, and reject the thought of an intelligence in which that order has its source? or, is this not to represent every science as leading us into a darkness far greater than any from which it has delivered us? granting that no religious theory of the world can be accepted which contradicts the results established by the sciences, are we not free to ask, and even bound to ask--do these results not, both separately and collectively, imply a religious theory of the world, and the particular religious theory, it may be, which is called theism? are these results not the expressions of a unity and order in the world which can only be explained on the supposition that material nature, organic existences, the mind and heart of man, society and its history, have originated in a power, wisdom, and goodness not their own, which still upholds them, and works in and through them? the question is one which may be answered in various ways, and to which the answer may be that it cannot be answered; but be the answer that or another--be the answer what it may--obviously the question itself is a great one,--a greater than any science has ever answered--one which all science raises, and in the answering of which all science is deeply interested. no scientific man can be credited with much insight who does not perceive that religious theory has an intimate and influential bearing on science. there are religious theories with which science cannot consistently coexist at all. where fetichism or polytheism prevails, you cannot have science with its pursuit of general laws. a dualistic religion must, with all the strength it possesses, oppose science in the accomplishment of its task--the proof of unity and universal order. even when the conception of one creative being is reached, there are ways of thinking of his character and agency which science must challenge, since they imperil its life and retard its progress. the medieval belief in miracles and the modern belief in law cannot be held by the same mind, and still less by the same society. we have no reason, however, to complain at present that our scientific men are, as a class, wanting in the insight referred to, or that the truth just indicated is imperfectly realised by them. perhaps such complaint was never less applicable. it is not long since it was the fashion among men of science to avoid all reference to religion--to treat religious theory and scientific theory as entirely separate and unconnected. they either cared not or dared not to indicate how their scientific findings were rationally related to current religious beliefs. but within the last few years there has been a remarkable change in this respect. the attitude of indifference formerly assumed by so many of the representatives of science towards religion has been very generally exchanged for one of aggression or defence. the number of them who seem to think themselves bound to publish to the world confessions of their faith, declarations of the religious conclusions to which their scientific researches have led them, is great, perhaps, beyond example in any age. they are manifesting unmistakably the most serious interest in the inquiry into the foundation of religion, and into the relationship of religion to science. the change is certainly one for the better. it is not wholly good only because scientific men in their excursions into the domain of religion are too frequently chargeable with a one-sidedness of view and statement which their scientific education might have been hoped to make impossible--only because they too seldom give to religious truths the patient and impartial consideration to which these are entitled. but most deserving of welcome is every evidence on their part of the conviction that when science goes deep enough it cannot but raise the questions to which religion professes to be an answer; so that the mind, instead of getting free from religious reflection by advancing in scientific inquiry, finds such reflection only the more incumbent on it the farther it advances--a conviction which falls short of, indeed, but is closely allied to, the belief so aptly expressed by lord bacon, "that while a slight taste of philosophy may dispose the mind to indifference to religion, deeper draughts must bring it back to it; that while on the threshold of philosophy, where second causes appear to absorb the attention, some oblivion of the highest cause may ensue, when the mind penetrates deeper, and sees the dependence of causes and the works of providence, it will easily perceive, according to the mythology of the poets, that the upper link of nature's chain is fastened to jupiter's throne." men of science are simply exercising a right to which they are fully entitled when they judge of religion by what they find to be ascertained in science; and no class of men is more likely than they are to open up the way to points of view whence religious truth will be seen with a clearness and comprehensiveness greater than any to which professional theologians could hope of themselves to attain. he can be no wise theologian who does not perceive that to a large extent he is dependent on the researches of men of science for his data, and who, firm in the faith that god will never be disgraced by his works, is not ready to accept all that is truly discovered about these works, in order to understand thereby god's character. * * * * * the greatest issues, then, are involved in the investigation on which we enter. can we think what these are, or reflect on their greatness, without drawing this inference, that we ought, in conducting it, to have no other end before us than that of seeking, accepting, and communicating the truth? this is here so important that everything beside it must be insignificant and unworthy. any polemical triumphs which could be gained either by logical or rhetorical artifices would be unspeakably paltry. nothing can be appropriate in so serious a discussion but to state as accurately as we can the reasons for our own belief in theism, and to examine as carefully and impartially as we can the objections of those who reject that belief, and their reasons for holding an opposite belief. it can only do us harm to overrate the worth of our own convictions and arguments, or to underrate the worth of those of others. we must not dare to carry into the discussion the spirit of men who feel that they have a case to advocate at all hazards. we must not try to conceal a weakness in our argumentation by saying hard things of those who endeavour to point it out. there is no doubt that character has an influence on creed--that the state of a man's feelings determines to a considerable extent the nature of his beliefs--that badness of heart is often the cause of perversity of judgment; but we have no right to begin any argument by assuming that this truth has its bright side--its side of promise--turned towards us, and its dark and threatening side turned towards those who differ from us. if we can begin by assuming our opponents to be wicked, why should we not assume them at once to be wrong, and so spare ourselves the trouble of arguing with them? it will be better to begin by assuming only what no one will question--namely, that it is a duty to do to others as we would have others do to us. when a man errs, it is a kindness to show him his error--and the greater the error, the greater the kindness; but error is so much its own punishment to every ingenuous nature, that to convince a person of it is all that one fallible person ought to do to another. the scoff and the sneer are out of place in all serious discussion; especially are they out of place when our minds are occupied with thoughts of him who, if he exist, is the father and judge of us all, who alone possesses the full truth, and who has made us that we might love one another.[ ] [ ] see appendix iii. ii. theism is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence, and continuance in existence, to the reason and will of a self-existent being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good. it is the doctrine that nature has a creator and preserver, the nations a governor, men a heavenly father and judge. it is a doctrine which has a long history behind it, and it is desirable that we should understand how we are related to that history. theism is very far from coextensive with religion. religion is spread over the whole earth; theism only over a comparatively small portion of it. there are but three theistic religions--the mosaic, the christian, and the mohammedan. they are connected historically in the closest manner--the idea of god having been transmitted to the two latter, and not independently originated by them. all other religions are polytheistic or pantheistic, or both together. among those who have been educated in any of these heathen religions, only a few minds of rare penetration and power have been able to rise by their own exertions to a consistent theistic belief. the god of all those among us who believe in god, even of those who reject christianity, who reject all revelation, is the god of abraham, isaac, and jacob. from these ancient jewish fathers the knowledge of him has historically descended through an unbroken succession of generations to us. we have inherited it from them. if it had not thus come down to us, if we had not been born into a society pervaded by it, there is no reason to suppose that we should have found it out for ourselves, and still less that we should merely have required to open our eyes in order to see it. rousseau only showed how imperfectly he realised the dependence of man on man, and the extent to which tradition enters into all our thinking, when he pretended that a human being born on a desert island, and who had grown up without any acquaintance with other beings, would naturally, and without assistance, rise to the apprehension of this great thought. the koran well expresses a view which has been widely held when it says, "every child is born into the religion of nature; its parents make it a jew, a christian, or a magian." the view is, however, not a true one. a child is born, not into the religion of nature, but into blank ignorance; and, left entirely to itself, it would probably never find out as much religious truth as the most ignorant of parents can teach it. it is doubtless better to be born into the most barbarous pagan society than it would be to be born on a desert island and abandoned to find out a religion for one's self. the individual man left to himself is very weak. he is strong only when he can avail himself of the strength of many others, of the stores of power accumulated by generations of his predecessors, or of the combined forces of a multitude of his contemporaries. the greatest men have achieved what they have done only because they have had the faculty and skill to utilise resources vastly greater than their own. nothing reaches far forward into the future which does not stretch far back into the past. before a tragedy like 'hamlet,' for example, could be written, it was requisite that humanity should have passed through ages of moral discipline, and should be in possession of vast and subtle conceptions such as could only be the growth of centuries, of the appropriate language at the appropriate epoch of its development, and of a noble style of literary workmanship. "we allow ourselves," says mr froude, "to think of shakespeare, or of raphael, or of phidias as having accomplished their work by the power of their individual genius; but greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around it, and forms the environment in which it grows. no such single mind in single contact with the facts of nature could have created a pallas, a madonna, or a lear." what the historian has thus said as to art is equally true of all other forms of thinking and doing. it is certainly true of religious thought, which has never risen without much help to the sublime conception of one god. it is, in fact, an indisputable historical truth that we owe our theism in great part to our christianity,--that natural religion has had no real existence prior to or apart from what has claimed to be revealed religion--and that the independence which it now assumes is that of one who has grown ashamed of his origin. it does not in the least follow that we are to regard theism as merely or even mainly a tradition--as a doctrine received simply on authority, and transmitted from age to age, from generation to generation, without investigation, without reflection. it does not follow that it is not a truth the evidence of which has been seen in some measure by every generation which has accepted it, and into the depth and comprehensiveness and reasonableness of which humanity has obtained a constantly-growing insight. there have, it is true, been a considerable number of theologians who have traced all religious beliefs to revelation, and who have assigned to reason merely the function of passively accepting, retaining, and transmitting them. they have conceived of the first man as receiving the knowledge of god by sensible converse with him, and of the knowledge thus received as transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations. the various notions of god and a future state to be found in heathen countries are, according to them, broken and scattered rays of these revelations; and all the religious rites of prayer, purification, and sacrifice which prevail among savage peoples, are faint and feeble relics of a primitive worship due to divine institution. this view was natural enough in the early ages of the christian church and in medieval times, when the new world was undiscovered and a very small part of either asia or africa was known. it was consonant also to the general estimate of tradition as a means of transmitting truth, entertained by the roman catholic church; but it is not consistent with the protestant rejection of tradition, and it is wholly untenable in the light of modern science, the geography, ethnology, comparative mythology, &c., of the present day. a man who should thus account for the phenomena of the religious history of heathen humanity must be now as far behind the scientific knowledge of his age regarding the subject on which he theorises, as a man who should still ascribe, despite all geological proofs to the contrary, the occurrence of fossils in the silurian beds to the action of the noachian deluge.[ ] [ ] see appendix iv. theism has come to us mainly through christianity. but christianity itself rests on theism; it presupposes theism. it could only manifest, establish, and diffuse itself in so far as theism was apprehended. the belief that there is one god, infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness, has certainly not been wrought out by each one of us for himself, but has been passed on from man to man, from parent to child: tradition, education, common consent, the social medium, have exerted great influence in determining its acceptance and prevalence; but we have no right to conceive of them as excluding the exercise of reason and reflection. we know historically that reason and reflection have not been excluded from the development of theistic belief, but have been constantly present and active therein; that by the use of his reason man has in some countries gradually risen to a belief in one god; and that where this belief existed, he has, by the use of his reason, been continuously altering, and, it may be hoped, extending and improving his views of god's nature and operations. we know that in greece, for example, the history of religion was not a merely passive and traditional process. we know as a historical fact that reason there undermined the polytheism which flourished when homer sang; that it discovered the chief theistic proofs still employed, and attained in many minds nearly the same belief in god which now prevails. the experience of the ancient classical world is insufficient to prove that a purely rational philosophy can establish theism as the creed of a nation; but it is amply sufficient to prove that it can destroy polytheism, and find out all the principal arguments for theism. we know, further, that in no age of the history of the christian church has reason entirely neglected to occupy itself in seeking the grounds on which the belief of god can be rested. we know that reason is certainly not declining that labour in the present day. the theistic belief, although common to the whole christian world, is one which every individual mind may study for itself, which no one is asked to accept without proof, and which multitudes have doubtless accepted only after careful consideration. it comes to us so far traditionally, but not nearly so much so as belief in the law of gravitation. for every one who has examined the evidences for belief in the law of gravitation, thousands on thousands have examined the evidences for the existence of god. tradition, then, does not necessarily exclude private judgment, and private judgment does not necessarily imply the rejection of tradition--that is, of transmitted belief. the one does not even necessarily confine or restrict the activity of the other. they are so far from being essentially antagonistic, that they may co-operate, may support and help each other; nay, they must do, if religious development is to be natural, easy, peaceful, and regular. this is but saying in another form that religious development, when true and normal, must combine and harmonise conservatism and progress. all development must do that, or it will be of an imperfect and injurious kind. in nature the rule of development is neither _revolution_ nor _reaction_, but _evolution_--a process which is at once conservative and progressive, which brings the new out of the old by the continuous growth and elaboration of the germs of life into organic completeness. all that is essential in the old is retained and perfected, while the form is altered to accord with new circumstances and to respond to new wants. it should not be otherwise in the moral and social worlds. the only true progress there, also, is that continuous and consistent development which can only be secured through true conservatism--through retaining, applying, and utilising whatever truth and goodness the past has brought down to the present; and the only true conservatism is that which secures against stagnation and death by continuous progress. therefore it is that, alike in matters of civil polity, of scientific research, and of religious life, wisdom lies in combining the conservative with the progressive spirit, the principle of authority with the principle of liberty, due respect to the collective reason in history with due respect to the rights of the individual reason. the man who has not humility enough to feel that he is but one among the living millions of men, and that his whole generation is but a single link in the great chain of the human race--who is arrogant enough to fancy that wisdom on any great human interest has begun with himself, and that he may consequently begin history for himself,--the man who is not conservative to the extent of possessing this humility, and shrinking from this arrogance, is no truly free man, but the slave of his own vanity, and the inheritance which his fathers have left him will be little increased by him. the man, on the other hand, who always accepts what is as what ought to be; who identifies the actual with the reasonable; who would have to-morrow exactly like to-day; who would hold fast what providence is most clearly showing ought to pass away, or to pass into something better,--the man, in a word, who would lay an arrest on the germs of life and truth, and prevent them from sprouting and ripening--is the very opposite of genuinely conservative--is the most dangerous of destructives. there is nothing so conservative against decay and dissolution as natural growth, orderly progress. the truth just stated is, as i have said, of universal application. but it is nowhere more applicable than in the inquiry on which we are engaged. the great idea of god--the sublimest and most important of all ideas--has come to us in a wondrous manner through the minds and hearts of countless generations which it has exercised and sustained, which it has guided in darkness, strengthened in danger, and consoled in affliction. it has come to us by a long, unbroken tradition; and had it not come to us, we should of a certainty not have found it out for ourselves. we should have had to supply its place, to fill "the aching void" within us caused by its absence, with some far lower idea, perhaps with some wild fiction, some foul idol. probably we cannot estimate too humbly the amount or worth of the religious knowledge which we should have acquired, supposing we acquired any, if we had been left wholly to our own unaided exertions--if we had been cut off from the general reason of our race, and from the divine reason, which has never ceased to speak in and to our race. while, however, the idea of god has been brought to us, and is not independently wrought out by us, no man is asked to accept it blindly or slavishly; no man is asked to forego in the slightest degree, even before this the most venerable and general of the beliefs of humanity, the rights of his own individual reason. he is free to examine the grounds of it, and to choose according to the result of his examination. his acceptance of the idea, his acquiescence in the belief, is of worth only if it be the free acceptance of, the loving acquiescence in, what his reason, heart, and conscience testify to be true and good. therefore, neither in this idea or belief itself, nor in the way in which it has come to us, is there any restriction or repression of our mental liberty. and the mere rejection of it is no sign, as some seem to fancy, of intellectual freedom, of an independent judgment. it is no evidence of a man's being freer from incredulity than the most superstitious of his neighbours. "to disbelieve is to believe," says whately. "if one man believes there is a god, and another that there is no god, whichever holds the less reasonable of these two opinions is chargeable with credulity. for the only way to avoid credulity and incredulity--the two necessarily going together--is to listen to, and yield to the best evidence, and to believe and disbelieve on good grounds." these are wise words of dr whately. whenever reason has been awakened to serious reflection on the subject, the vast majority of men have felt themselves unable to believe that this mighty universe, so wondrous in its adjustments and adaptations, was the product of chance, or dead matter, or blind force--that the physical, mental, and moral order which they everywhere beheld implied no supreme intelligence and will; and the few who can believe it, have assuredly no right, simply on the ground of such ability, to assume that they are less credulous, freer thinkers, than others. the disbelief of the atheist must ever seem to all men but himself to require more faith, more credulity, than the beliefs of all the legends of the talmud.[ ] [ ] see appendix v. lecture ii. general idea of religion--comparison of polytheism and pantheism with theism--the three great theistic religions compared--no religious progress beyond theism. i. there are three great theistic religions. all of them can scarcely be supposed to be perfect. it is most unlikely that they should all be equal in rank and value. but to determine the position and worth of a religion, whether theistic or non-theistic, it is indispensable that we have some notion of what religion is in itself. it is very difficult to give a correct definition or accurate description of religion. and the reason is that religion is so wide and diversified a thing. it has spread over the whole earth, and it has assumed an almost countless variety of forms. some sense of an invisible power or powers ruling his destiny is manifested by man alike in the lowest stages of barbarism and in the highest stages of civilisation, but the rude savage and the cultured thinker conceive very differently of the powers which they adore. the aspects of religion are, in fact, numerous as the phases of human life and the steps of human progress. it extends its sway over all lands, ages, and peoples, and yet it is the same in no two countries, no two generations, no two men even. there is, accordingly, of necessity a great difficulty in finding an expression which will comprehend and suit the vast variety of forms assumed by the religious life. instead of trying to find an expression of the kind, many, i might almost say most, theologians are content silently to substitute for religion the phases of it with which they are most familiar, and instead of a definition of religion, to give us, say, a definition of theism, or even of christianity. it is the rule and not the exception to find the same theologians who define religion as the communion of man with god, or the self-surrender of the soul to god, arguing that religion is common to all races and peoples. of course, this is self-contradictory. their definitions identify religion with monotheism, and their arguments assume it to include pantheism, polytheism, fetichism, &c. belief in the one god and the worship of him are very far from being universal even at the present day. if there be no other religion--if nothing short of that be religion--there are still vast continents and populous nations where religion is unknown. a definition of religion must completely circumscribe religion; it must not be applicable merely to one religion, or at the most to several out of the vast host of religions which are spread over the earth; it must draw a boundary line which includes all religions, the lowest as well as the highest, and which excludes all things else.[ ] a definition thus extensive cannot be, in logical language, very comprehensive; to include all religions, it must not tell us much about what any religion is; in significance it can be neither rich nor definite. perhaps if we say that religion is man's belief in a being or beings, mightier than himself and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his sentiments and actions, with the feelings and practices which flow from such belief, we have a definition of the kind required. i fear at least that any definition less abstract and vague will be found to apply only to particular forms or special developments of religion. religion is man's communion, then, with what he believes to be a god or gods; his sense of relationship to, and dependence on, a higher and mysterious agency, with all the thoughts, emotions, and actions which proceed therefrom. the communion may be dark and gross, and find expression in impure and bloody rites, or it may be in spirit and in truth, and expressed in ways which educate and elevate both mind and heart. the belief may rest on wild delusions, on authority blindly accepted, or on rational grounds. the god may be some personified power of nature, some monstrous phantom of the brain, some imaginary demon of lust or cruelty; or it may be he in whom all truth, wisdom, goodness, and holiness have their source. but whatever be the form or character which religion presents, it always and everywhere involves belief in a god or object of worship, and feelings and actions corresponding to that belief. it is always and everywhere a consciousness of relationship to a worshipped being. [ ] see appendix vi. is there any truth which can be affirmed to belong universally to this consciousness? if there be, it will hold good universally of religion, and the recognition of it will advance us a step in the knowledge of the nature of religion. one such truth at least, it appears to me, there is--viz., that the religious consciousness, or the frame and condition of spiritual life distinctive and essential in religion, is not peculiar to some one province of human nature, but extends into all its provinces. this truth has been often contradicted in appearance, seldom in reality. the seat of religion, as i indicated in last lecture, has been placed by some in the intellect, by others in the affections, and by others still in the will. it has been represented as knowing, or feeling, or doing. when we examine, however, the multitude of, at first glance, apparently very conflicting views which have originated in thus fixing upon some single mental faculty as the religious faculty, the organ and seat of religion, we soon find that they are not so discordant and antagonistic as they seem to be. those who represent religion as essentially knowledge or belief, do not really mean to affirm that anything entitled to be called religion is ever mere knowledge or mere belief; on the contrary, they proceed on the supposition that feeling and volition will correspond to the knowledge or belief. they define religion as knowledge or belief, and not as affection or volition, because, regarding religious knowledge or belief as the ground of religious feeling and willing, they think they may treat the two latter, not as constituents, but as consequences of religion. then, although a few of those who have defined religion as feeling have written as if they supposed that the feeling rested upon no sort of apprehension or conviction, they have been very few, and they have never been able to explain what they meant. in presence of the power which is manifested in the universe, or of the moral order of the world, they have felt an awe or joy, it may be, irresistibly raising them above themselves, above the hampering details of earth, and "giving fulness and tone to their existence;" and being unaccustomed to analyse states of consciousness, although familiar with the mechanics and chemistry of matter, they have overlooked the obvious fact, that but for an intellectual perception of the presence of an all-pervading power, and all-embracing order, the awe and joy could never have been excited. mere feeling cannot tell us anything about what is out of ourselves, and cannot take us out of ourselves. mere feeling is, in fact, mere absurdity. it is but what we should expect, therefore, that all those capable of reflecting in any measure on mental processes who have placed the essence of religion in feeling, have always admitted that the religious feeling could not be wholly separated either from the power of cognition on the one hand, or the exertion of will on the other. men like schleiermacher and opzoomer argue strenuously that religion is feeling and not knowledge or practice; but it is expressly on the ground that, as there can be what is called religious knowledge and practice without piety, the knowledge is a mere antecedent, and the practice a mere consequent. those, again, who make religion consist essentially in an act of will, in the self-surrender of the soul to the object of its worship, do so, they tell us, because pious feeling, even though based on knowledge, is only religiousness, not religion--the capacity of being religious, not actually being so; and religion only exists as a reality, a completed thing, when the will of man submits itself to the divine will. but this is to acknowledge, you observe, that both thought and feeling are present and presupposed wherever religion exists. now, if the facts be as i have just stated, obviously the controversy as to whether religion is essentially knowing, feeling, or willing, is mainly verbal. it turns on an undefined use of the term essential. thought, feeling, and will--knowledge, affection, and self-surrender--are admitted to be indissolubly united, inseparably present, in religion, even by those who will not admit them to be all its equally essential constituents. but in these circumstances, they should carefully explain what they mean by essential and non-essential, and tell us how we are to distinguish among inseparable states those which are essential from those which are non-essential. this they never do; this they cannot do. all facts which always go together, and are always equally found in any state or process, are its equally essential components. when we always find certain elements together, and can neither discover nor imagine them apart, we have no right to represent some of them as essential to the compound into which they enter, and others as non-essential. they are all essential. the conclusion to which we are thus brought is, that religion belongs exclusively to no one part or province, no one disposition or faculty of the soul, but embraces the whole mind, the whole man. its seat is the centre of human nature, and its circumference is the utmost limit of all the energies and capacities of that nature. at the lowest it has something alike of intellect, affection, and practical obedience in it. at its best it should include all the highest exercises of reason, all the purest and deepest emotions and affections, and the noblest kind of conduct. it responds to its own true nature only in the measure that it fills the whole intellect with light, satisfies the reverence and love of the most capacious heart, and provides an ideal and law for practical life in all its breadth. there is, then, a general notion of religion which includes all religions, and that notion both suggests to us that the various religions of the world are of very different values, and points us to a standard by which we may determine their respective rank, and estimate their worth. the definition of religion, in other words, though not to be confounded with the type or ideal of religion, is connected with it, and indicates what it is. the type is the normal and full development of what is expressed in the definition. it is the type, of course, and not the definition, which is the standard--the medium and measure of comparison. and the type or ideal of religion is the complete surrender of the heart, and strength, and soul, and mind of man to deity. only a religion which admits of a full communion of the reason, affection, and will of the worshipper with the object of his worship--only a religion which presents an object of worship capable of eliciting the entire devotion of the worshipper's nature, and at the same time of ennobling, enlarging, refining, and satisfying that nature--fully realises the idea of religion, or, in other words, can claim to be a perfect religion.[ ] [ ] see appendix vii. ii. applying the very general idea of religion which has now been reached, it soon becomes apparent that no religion can possibly claim to conform to it which does not present to man as the true and supreme object of his adoration, love, and obedience, the one infinite personal god--almighty, all-wise, and all-holy; or, in other words, that it is only in a theistic religion that whatever in religion is fitted to satisfy the reason and affections of man, and to strengthen and guide his will, can find its proper development. look at polytheism--the worship of more gods than one. clearly religion can only be very imperfectly realised in any polytheistic form; and still more clearly are most of the forms which polytheism has actually assumed unspeakably degrading. think for a moment of a human being worshipping a stock or a stone, a plant or a tree, a fish or serpent, an ox or tiger--of the negro of guinea beating his gods when he does not get what he wishes, or the new zealander trying to frighten them by threatening to kill and eat them--of the car of juggernaut, the fires of moloch, the sacrifices to the mexican war-god, the abominations ascribed to jupiter, the licentious orgies so widely practised by the heathen in honour of their deities. reflect on such a scene as is brought before us in the forty-fourth chapter of isaiah. the language of the prophet is so graphic that one almost seems to see the man whom he depicts choosing his tree in the forest and hewing it down--to see the smith working at it with his tongs among the coals, and hear the ring of his hammer--to see the carpenter with adze and line and compass shape it into an ugly monstrous shape, bearing faint resemblance to the human--to see the workman with one part of the tree kindling a fire, and baking bread, and roasting roast, and eating it, and then going up to the ugly, wooden, human shape that he has fashioned out of another part of the same tree, prostrating himself before it, feeling awed in its presence, and praying, "deliver me; for thou art my god." the prophet obviously painted from the life, and his picture is still true to the life where polytheism prevails. but what could be more calculated to inspire both horror and pity? how awful is it that man should be able so to delude and degrade himself! as a rule, the gods of polytheists are such that, even under the delusion that they are gods, little improving communion with them is possible. as a rule, the religion of polytheists consists of vague, dark, wild imaginations, instead of true and reasoned convictions--of coarse, selfish desires, fear and suspicion, instead of love, and trust, and joy--and of arbitrary or even immoral rites and practices, instead of spiritual worship, and the conformity of the will to a righteous law. then, at the very best, polytheism must be far from good,--at its highest, it must be low. were it much better than it has ever been--had it all the merits of greek polytheism, without any of its faults, save those which are inherent in the very nature of polytheism--it would still be but a poor religion, for its essential and irremediable defects are such as to render it altogether incapable of truly satisfying the nature of man. it is a belief in more gods than one. this of itself is what reason cannot rest in--what reason is constantly finding out more clearly to be false. the more the universe is examined and understood, the more apparent does it become that it is a single, self-consistent whole--a vast unity in which nothing is isolated or independent. the very notion, therefore, of separate and independent deities, and still more, of course, of discordant or hostile deities, ruling over different departments of nature, is opposed to the strivings and findings of reason. the heart will no less vainly seek satisfaction in the belief of many gods. its spiritual affections need a single divine object. to distribute them among many objects is to dissipate and destroy them. the reverence, love, and trust which religion demands are a whole-hearted, absolute, unlimited reverence, love, and trust, such as can only be felt towards one god, with no other beside him. the will of man in like manner requires to be under not a number of independent wills, but a single, all-comprehensive, perfectly consistent, and perfectly righteous will. it cannot serve many masters; it can only reasonably and rightly serve one. it can only yield itself up unreservedly to be guided by one supreme will. if there be no such will in the universe, but only a multitude of independent and co-ordinate wills, that full surrender of the will of the worshipper to the object of his worship, in which religion should find its consummation, is impossible. further, polytheism is not only the belief in more gods than one, but in gods all of which are finite. there can be no true recognition of the infinity of god where there is no true recognition of his unity. but the mind of man, although finite itself, cannot be satisfied with any object of worship which it perceives to be finite. it craves an infinite object; it desires to offer a boundless devotion; it seeks an absolute blessedness. the aim of the religious life is the communion of the finite with the infinite; and every religion, however otherwise excellent, which suppresses the infinite, and presents to the finite only the finite, is a failure. religion can no more attain to its proper development in pantheism than in polytheism. for pantheism denies that the one infinite being is a person--is a free, holy, and loving intelligence. it denies even that we ourselves are truly persons. it represents our consciousness of freedom and sense of responsibility as illusions. god, according to pantheism, alone is. all individual existences are merely his manifestations,--all our deeds, whether good or bad, are his actions; and yet, while all is god and god is all, there is no god who can hear us or understand us--no god to love us or care for us--no god able or willing to help us. such a view of the universe may have its attractions for the poet and the philosopher in certain moods of mind, but it assuredly affords little foundation for religion, if religion be the communion of the worshipper and the worshipped. what communion of reason can a man have with a being which does not understand him, or of affection with a being which has no love, or of will with a being which has no choice or freedom, and is the necessary cause both of good and evil? pantheism represents absorption in deity, the losing of self in god, as the highest good of humanity; but this is a mere caricature of that idea of communion with god in which religion must find its realisation, as pantheism leaves neither a self to surrender, nor a personal god to whom to surrender it. the absorption of the finite in the infinite which pantheism preaches is as different from that surrender of the self to god, which is the condition of god dwelling in us and we in god, as night is from day, as death is from life. we find ample historical confirmation of what has just been said in the very instructive fact, that widespread as pantheism is, it has never in itself been the religion of any people. it has never been more than the philosophy of certain speculative individuals. india is no exception, for even there, in order to gain and retain the people, pantheism has had to combine with polytheism. it is the personal gods of hindu polytheism and not the impersonal principle of hindu pantheism that the hindu people worship. the sankhya and vedanta systems are no more religions than the systems of spinoza, schelling, or hegel. they are merely philosophies. buddhism has laid hold of the hearts of men to a wonderful extent; not, however, in virtue of the pantheism, scarcely dis-tinguishable from atheism, which underlies it, but because of the attractiveness of the character and teaching of the buddha sakyamuni himself, of the man-god who came to save men. the human heart cries out for a living personal god to worship, and pantheism fails miserably as a religion because it wholly disregards, yea, despises that cry. * * * * * we are compelled to pass onwards, then, to theism. and here, applying the same view of religion as before, it soon becomes obvious that of the three great theistic religions--judaism, christianity, and mohammedanism--the last is far inferior to the other two, and the first is a transition to and preparation for the second. although the latest of the three to arise, mohammedanism is manifestly the least developed, the least matured. instead of evolving and extending the theistic idea which it borrowed, it has marred and mutilated it. instead of representing god as possessed of all spiritual fulness and perfection, it exhibits him as devoid of the divinest spiritual attributes. although the suras of the koran are all, with one exception, prefaced by the formula, "in the name of allah, the god of mercy, the merciful," there is extremely little in them of the spirit of mercy, while they superabound in a fierce intolerance. allah is set before us with clearness, with force, with intense sincerity, as endowed with the natural attributes which we ascribe to god, but only so as to exhibit very imperfectly and erroneously his moral attributes. he is set before us as god alone, beside whom there is none other; as the first and the last, the seen and the hidden; as eternal and unchanging; as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; as the creator, the preserver, and the judge of all;--but he is not set before us as truly righteous or even as truly reasonable, and still less as love. he is set before us as an infinite and absolute arbitrary will, the acts of which are right simply because they cannot be wrong, and which ordains its creatures and instruments to honour or dishonour, heaven or hell, without love or hate, without interest or sympathy, and on no grounds of fitness or justice. his infinite exaltation above his creatures is recognised, but not his relationship to and interest in his creatures. his almighty power is vividly apprehended, but his infinite love is overlooked, or only seen dimly and in stray and fitful glimpses. his character is thus most imperfectly unveiled, and even seriously defaced; and, in consequence, a whole-hearted communion with him is impossible. as an unlimited arbitrary will he leaves man with no true will to surrender to him. inaccessible, without sympathy, jealous, and egoistic, his appropriate worship is servile obedience, blind submission--not the enlightened reverence and loving affection of the true piety in which mind and heart fully accord; unquestioning belief, passionless resignation, outward observances, mere external works--not the free use of reason, not the loving dependence of a child on its father, not an internal life of holiness springing from a divine indwelling source. god and man thus remain in this system, theistic although it be, infinitely separate from each other. man is not made to feel that his whole spiritual being should live and rejoice in god; on the contrary, he is made to feel that he has scarcely any other relation to god than an inert instrument has to the hand which uses it. submission to the will of god, whatever it may be, without recognition of its being the will of a father who seeks in all things the good of his children, is the mussulman's highest conception either of religion or duty, and consequently he ignores the central principle of religious communion and the strongest motive to moral action. the theism of the old testament is incomparably superior to that of the koran. it possesses every truth contained in mohammedanism, while it gives due prominence to those aspects of the divine character which mohammedanism obscures and distorts. the unity and eternity of god, his omniscience, omnipresence, and inscrutable perfections, the wonders of his creative power, his glory in the heavens and on the earth, are described by moses and the author of the book of job, by the psalmists and the prophets, in language so magnificent that all the intervening centuries have been unable to surpass it. and yet far greater stress is justly laid by them on the moral glory of god, which is reflected in so dim and broken and disproportionate a way through the visions of mohammed. it is impossible to take a comprehensive view of the old testament dispensation without perceiving that its main aim, alike in its ceremonial observances, moral precepts, and prophetic teaching, was to open and deepen the sense of sin, to give reality and intensity to the recognition of moral law, to make known especially that aspect of god's character which we call his righteousness, his holiness. at the same time god is set forth as merciful, long-suffering, and gracious; as healing our diseases, redeeming our life, and crowning us with loving-kindnesses; as creating in us clean hearts, and desiring not sacrifice but a broken spirit. before the close of the old testament dispensation, a view of god's character had been attained as complete as could be reached through mere spiritual vision and expressed through mere words. the character of god was so disclosed that his people longed with their whole hearts for the blessedness of true spiritual communion with him, and worthily apprehended what that communion ought to be. but with the widening of their views and the deepening of their longings as to this the supreme good, they realised the more how far they were from the attainment of it. from the beginning judaism looked beyond itself and confessed its own preparatory and transitional character. and this consciousness grew with its growth. in the days of the later prophets men knew far better what spiritual communion with god ought to be than in the days of the patriarchs, but they did not actually enjoy even the same measure of childlike communion with him. the law had done its work; it had made men feel more than ever the need of being in communion with god, but it had made them realise also the distance between god and them, and especially the awful width of the gulf between them caused by sin. that gulf no mere spiritual vision of man could see across, and no mere declarations of love and mercy even from god himself could bridge over. the reason of man could only be enlightened--the heart of man could only be satisfied--as to how god would deal with sin and sinners, by an actual self-manifestation of god in humiliation, suffering, and sacrifice, which would leave men in no doubt that high and holy as god was, he was also in the deepest and truest sense their father, and that they were his ransomed and redeemed children. it was only when this was accomplished that religion and theism were alike perfected. then the character of god was unveiled, the heart of god disclosed, and in such a manner that the most childlike confidence in him could be combined with the profoundest sense of his greatness and righteousness. perfect communion with him in trustful love no longer supposed, as it did in earlier times, an imperfect knowledge, on the part of the worshipper, either of god's character or of his own. it required no overlooking of the evil of sin, for it rested on the certainty that sin had been overcome. only the life hid with god in christ can completely realise the idea of religion, for only in christ can the heart of sinful man be sincerely and unreservedly yielded to a holy god. "i am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the father, but by me," are words of the lord jesus which can only be denied by those who do not understand what they mean--what the truth and the life are, what fatherhood signifies, and what is involved in coming to a father. christian theism alone gives us a perfect representation of god. it precedes and surpasses reason, especially in the disclosure of the depths of fatherly love which are in the heart of the infinite jehovah; but it nowhere contradicts reason--nay, it incorporates all the findings of reason. it presents as one great and brilliant light all the scattered sparks of truth which scintillated amidst the darkness of heathendom; it combines into a living unity all the separate elements of positive truth which are to be found in systems like pantheism, deism, rationalism; it excludes all that is false in views lower than or contrary to its own. whenever it maintains a truth regarding god, reason finds that it is defending a principle of christian theism; whenever it refutes an error regarding him, it finds itself assailing some one of the many enemies of christian theism. iii. theism, i argued in last lecture, can never be reasonably rejected in the name of religious liberty. i may now, i think, maintain that it can never be reasonably thrown off in the name of religious progress. it can never be an onward step in the spiritual life to pass away from the belief which is distinctive and characteristic of theism. the highest possible form of religion must be a theistic religion--a religion in which the one personal and perfect god is the object of worship. fetichism, nature-worship, humanitarian polytheism, and pantheism, are all very much lower forms of religion, and therefore to abandon theism for any of them is not to advance but to retrograde, is not to rise but to fall. we can turn towards any of them only by turning our back on the spiritual goal towards which humanity has been slowly but continuously moving through so many ages. there is no hope or possibility of advance on the side of any of the old forms of heathendom. shall we try, then, to get out of and beyond theism on that other side to which some moderns beckon us? shall we suppose that as men have given up the lower for the higher forms of polytheism, and then abandoned polytheism for theism, so they may now surrender theism itself for systems like the positivism of comte or the new faith of strauss? no. and for two reasons. first, so far as there is any religion in these systems there is no advance on theism in them but the reverse. comte strives to represent humanity, and strauss to represent the universe, as a god, by imaginatively investing them with attributes which do not inherently and properly belong to them; but with all their efforts they can only make of them fetich gods; and europeans, it is to be hoped, will never fall down and worship fetiches, however big these fetiches may be, and whoever may be willing to serve them as prophets or priests. humanity must be blind to its follies and sins, insensible to its weakness and miseries, and given over to the madness of a boundless vanity, before it can raise an altar and burn incense to its own self. "man," says an eloquent author, "is great is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart and the divine aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness let us leave him in his proper place. let us leave to him the struggles which make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him honour, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable testimony to his dignity. let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict, and hope; but let us not deify him; for no sooner shall he have said, 'i am god,' than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall find himself naked and spoiled."[ ] man, i may add, if his eyes be open and capable of vision, can still less worship the universe than he can worship himself. mind can never bow down to matter except under the influence of delusion. man is greater than anything he can see or touch; and those who believe only in what they can see and touch, who have what strauss calls a feeling for the universe, but no true feeling for what is spiritual and divine, must either worship humanity or something even less worthy of their adoration. there is thus no advance on this side either, even if the systems which we are invited to adopt could be properly regarded as religious. but, secondly, we may safely say that so far as they are theories based on science, there is no religion in them; and that, consequently, to give up a religion for them would be to give up not one form of religion for another, a lower for a higher, but would be to give up religion for what is not religion, or, in other words, would be to cast off religion altogether. and to cease to be religious can surely never be to advance in religion. positivism and materialism are not stages beyond theism, for they are not on the same road. they are not phases in the development of religion; they are forms of the denial of religion. the grossest fetichism has more of religion in it than either of them can consistently claim on scientific grounds. there is nothing in science, properly so called, which justifies the exaltation either of matter or man to the rank of gods even of the lowest fetich order. [ ] e. naville, 'the heavenly father,' pp. , . it is only, then, by keeping within the limits of theism that further religious progress is possible. if we would advance in religion, it must be, not by getting rid of our belief in god, but by getting deeper and wider views of his character and operations, and by conforming our hearts and lives more sincerely and faithfully to our knowledge. there is still ample room for religious progress of this kind. i do not say, i do not believe indeed, that we shall find out any absolutely new truth about god. were a man to tell me that he had discovered a divine attribute which had never previously been thought of, i should listen to him with the same incredulous pity as if he were to tell me that he had discovered a human virtue which had escaped the notice of all other men. in a real and important sense, the revelation of god made in scripture, and more particularly and especially the revelation of god in jesus christ, is most justly to be regarded as complete, and incapable of addition. but there may be no limits to the growth of our apprehension and realisation of the idea of god there set before us perfectly as regards general features. to perceive the mere general outline and general aspect of a truth is one thing, and to know it thoroughly, to realise it exhaustively--which is the only way thoroughly to know it--is another and very different thing; and centuries, yea, millenniums without number, may elapse between the former and the latter of these two stages, between the beginning and the end of this process. thousands of years ago there were men who said as plainly as could be done or desired that god was omnipotent; but surely every one who believes in god will acknowledge, that the discoveries of modern astronomy give more overwhelming impressions of divine power than either heathen sage or hebrew psalmist can be imagined as possessing. it is ages since men ascribed perfect wisdom to god; but all the discoveries of science which help us to understand how the earth is related to other worlds--how it has been brought into its present condition--how it has been stocked, adorned, and enriched with its varied tribes of plants and animals--and how these have been developed, distributed, and provided for,--must be accepted by every intelligent theist as enlarging and correcting human views as to god's ways of working, and consequently as to his wisdom. the righteousness of god has been the trust and support of men in all generations; but history is a continuous unveiling of the mysteries of this attribute: through the discipline of providence individuals and nations are ever being more thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of it. i have, indeed, heard men say--i have heard even teachers of theology say--that the knowledge of god is unlike all other knowledge, in being unchanging and unprogressive. to me it seems that of all knowledge the knowledge of god is, or at least ought to be, the most progressive. and that for this simple reason, that every increase of other knowledge,--be it the knowledge of outward nature, or of the human soul, or of history--be it the knowledge of truth, or beauty, or goodness,--ought also to increase our knowledge of him. if it do not, it has not been used aright; and the reason why it has not been so used must be that we have looked upon god as if he were only one among many things, instead of looking upon him as the one being of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and that we have, in consequence, kept our knowledge of him wholly apart from our other knowledge, instead of centring all our knowledge in it, because we feel it to be "the light of all our seeing," as well as "a lamp to our feet." in other words, our knowledge of god is in this case not a living, all-diffusive knowledge. only a dead knowledge of him is an unprogressive knowledge. that, i admit, is unprogressive. it may fade away and be effaced, but it does not grow, does not absorb and assimilate, and thereby transmute and glorify all our other knowledge. growth in the knowledge of god is a kind of progress which can have absolutely no end, for the truth to be realised is infinite truth; truth unlimited by time or space; truth involved in all actual existence, and containing the fulness of inexhaustible possibilities. it is, i shall conclude by adding, a kind of progress which underlies and determines all other progress. whenever our views of truth, of righteousness, of love, of happiness rise above experience; whenever we have ideals of existence and conduct which transcend the actual world and actual life; whenever we have longings for a perfection and blessedness which finite things and finite persons cannot confer upon us,--our minds and hearts are really, although it may be unconsciously, feeling after god, if haply they may find him. it is only in and through god that there is anything to correspond to these ideals and longings. if man be himself the highest and best of beings, how comes it that all the noblest of his race should be haunted and possessed as they are by aspirations after what is higher and better than themselves--by visions of a truth, beauty, and holiness which they have not yet attained--by desires for a blessedness which neither earth nor humanity can bestow? must not, in that case, his ideals be mere dreams--his longings mere delusions? pessimists like schopenhauer and hartmann and their followers, openly avow that they believe them to be so; that the history of the world is but the series of illusions through which these ideals and longings have impelled humanity; that our ideals never have been and never will be realised; that our longings never have been and never will be satisfied, for, "behold, all is vanity." i believe them to be quite logical in thinking so, seeing that they have ceased to believe in god, who is the ideal which alone gives meaning to all true ideals, who can alone satisfy the deeper spiritual longings of the heart, and likeness to whom is the goal of all mental, moral, and religious progress. of course, if the pessimists can persuade mankind that the sources of progress are not the truths and affections by which infinite goodness is drawing men to itself, but mere fictions of their own brains and flatteries of their own hearts, progress must soon cease. when a delusion is seen through, the power of it is gone. but the pessimists will not, we may trust, succeed. they will mislead for a time, as they are now misleading, certain unstable minds; but the main result of their activity must be just the opposite of what they anticipate. it must be that men will prize more the doctrines the most opposite to the dreary view of life and history which they propagate. pessimism must send the philosophical few back with deepened reverence and quickened insight to plato, in order to master more thoroughly, and take to heart more seriously, his great message to the world, that the actual and the ideal meet and harmonise in god, who is at once the first and the final cause, the absolute idea, the highest good; and it must increase the gratitude of the many, whether learned or unlearned, for the gospel which has taught them that to glorify god is an end in which there is no illusion, and to enjoy him a good which never disappoints. god, as the presupposition of all elevating ideals, and the object of all ennobling desires, is the primary source and the ultimate explanation of all progress.[ ] [ ] see appendix viii. lecture iii. the nature, conditions, and limits of theistic proof. i. if we believe that there is one god--the creator, preserver, and ruler of all finite beings--we ought to have reasons or grounds for this belief. we can have no right to believe it simply because we wish or will to believe it. the grounds or reasons which we have for our belief must be to us proofs of god's existence. those who affirm that god exists, and yet deny that his existence can be proved, must either maintain a position obviously erroneous, or use the term proof in some extraordinary sense, fitted only to perplex and mislead. true and weighty, therefore, seem to me these words of one of the most distinguished of living german philosophers: "the proofs for the existence of god, after having long played a great part in philosophy and theology, have in recent times, especially since kant's famous critique, fallen into disrepute. since then, the opinion has been widely spread, both among believers and unbelievers, that the existence of god does not admit of being proved. even theologians readily assent to this opinion, deride the vain attempts, and imagine that in so doing they are serving the faith which they preach. but the proofs for the existence of god coincide with the grounds for the belief in god; they are simply the real grounds of the belief established and expounded in a scientific manner. if there be no such proofs, there are also no such grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be no proper belief, but an arbitrary, self-made, subjective opinion. yes, religious belief must sink to the level of the mere illusion or fixed idea of a mind which is insane, if contradicted by all reality, all facts scientifically established, and the theory of the universe which such facts support and justify."[ ] [ ] ulrici, gott und die natur, i. the proofs of god's existence must be, in fact, simply his own manifestations; the ways in which he makes himself known; the phenomena on which his power and character are imprinted. they can neither be, properly speaking, our reasonings, nor our analyses of the principles involved in our reasonings. our reasonings are worth nothing except in so far as they are expositions of god's modes of manifestation; and even when our reasonings are correct, our analyses of them, supposing we attempt to analyse them, may be erroneous. the facts,--the works and ways of god--which are the real evidences of his existence and the true indications of his character,--may raise countless minds to god which can give no general description of the process by which they are thus elevated, and are still less capable of resolving it into its principles. it is late in the history both of the individual mind and of the collective mind before they can so reflect on their own acts, so distinguish them one from another, and so discern the characteristics of each, as to be able even to give a clear and correct account of them; and it is much later before they can detect their conditions and laws. the minds of multitudes may therefore readily be supposed to rise legitimately from perception of the visible universe to apprehension of the invisible personal creator, although either wholly unconscious or only dimly and inaccurately aware of the nature of the transition, and although, if called on to indicate the conclusion at which they had arrived, they would employ far weaker reasons in words than those by which they were actually convinced in thought. the principles of the theistic inference may be very badly determined, and yet the theistic inference itself may be perfectly valid. if the real proofs of god's existence are all those facts which cannot be reasonably conceived of as other than the manifestations of god--his glory in the heavens, his handiwork on the earth, his operations in the soul, his ways among the nations--and if the task of the theist is to trace out these facts, and to show that they cannot reasonably be denied to be marks or impressions of divine agency, then must a theist, when seeking or expounding the reasons for his belief, feel that his mind is conversant not with mere thoughts of his own, but with the manifested thoughts or acts of god himself. he must carry into his inquiry the consciousness that he is not simply engaged in an intellectual process, but is trying to apprehend and actually apprehending the divine being. to him, therefore, the inquiry as to the ultimate source and reason of things must be an essentially solemn and awe-inspired one. to the atheist it must, of course, be much less so; but even he ought to feel it to be not only a most important inquiry, but one which carries him into the presence of a vast, eternal, and mysterious power--a power in darkness shrouded, yet on which hang all life and death, all joy and woe. according to the view just stated, the evidences or proofs of god's existence are countless. they are to be found in all the forces, laws, and arrangements of nature--in every material object, every organism, every intellect and heart. at the same time, they concur and coalesce into a single all-comprehensive argument, which is just the sum of the indications of god given by the physical universe, the minds of men, and human history. nothing short of that is the full proof. there may be points in space and instants in time where creative and sustaining power appear to our narrow and superficial intellects to have been strangely limited, but surely we ought not so to concentrate our attention on any such points or instants as to be unable to take in a general impression of the immeasurable power displayed throughout the realms of space and the ages of time. it may be possible to show that many things which have been regarded as evidences of intelligence or wisdom are not really so, and yet the universe may teem with the manifestations of these attributes. faith in the righteousness and moral government of god must be able to look over and to look beyond many things calculated to produce doubt and disbelief. no man can judge fairly as to whether or not there is a god, who makes the question turn on what is the significance of a few particular facts, who is incapable of gathering up into one general finding the results of innumerable indications. a true religious view of the world must be a wide, a comprehensive view of it, such as demands an eye for the whole and not merely for a part--the faculties which harmonise and unify, and not merely those which divide and analyse. a part, a point, the eye of an insect, the seed of a fruit, may indeed be looked at religiously, but it must be in the light of the universe as a whole, in the light of eternity and infinity. "flower in the crannied wall, i pluck you out of the crannies; hold you here, root and all, in my hand, little flower--but if i could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, i should know what god and man is." in another respect the theistic proof is exceedingly complex and comprehensive. it takes up into itself, as it were, the entire wealth of human nature. the mind can only rise to the apprehension of god by a process which involves all that is most essential in its own constitution. thus the will is presupposed. theistic inference clearly involves the principle of causality. god can only be thought of in the properly theistic sense as the cause of which the universe is the effect. but to think of god as a cause--to apprehend the universe as an effect,--we must have some immediate and direct experience of causation. and such experience we have only in the consciousness of volition. when the soul wills, it knows itself as an agent, as a cause. this is the first knowledge of causation which the mind requires, and the most perfect knowledge thereof which it ever requires. it is a knowledge which sheds light over all the regions of experience subsequently brought under the principle of causality, which accompanies the reason in its upward search until it rests in the cognition of an ultimate cause, and which enables us to think of that cause as the primary, all-originating will. if we did not know ourselves as causes, we could not know god as a cause; and we know ourselves as causes only in so far as we know ourselves as wills. but the principle of causality alone or by itself is quite insufficient to lead the mind up to the apprehension of deity; and an immediate and direct consciousness of far more within us than will is required to make that apprehension possible. the evidences of intelligence must be combined with the evidences of power before we can be warranted to infer more from the facts of the universe than the existence of an ultimate force; and no mere force, however great or wonderful, is worthy to be called god. god is not only the ultimate cause, but the supreme intelligence; and as it is only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our volitions that we can think of god as a cause, so is it only in virtue of the direct consciousness of our intellectual operations that we can think of him as an intelligence. it is not from the mere occurrence of a change, or the mere existence of a derivative phenomenon, that we infer the change or phenomenon to be due to an intelligent cause, but from the mode of the occurrence or the character of the phenomenon being such that any cause but an intelligent cause must be deemed an insufficient cause. the inference supposes, however, that we already have some knowledge of what an intelligent cause is--that we have enough of knowledge of the nature of intelligence to convince us that it alone can fully account for order, law, and adjustment. whence do we get this knowledge? we have not far to seek it; it is inherent in self-consciousness. we know ourselves as intelligences, as beings that foresee and contrive, that can discover and apply principles, that can originate order and adjustment. it is only through this knowledge of the nature of intelligence that we can infer our fellow-men to be intelligent beings; and not less is it an indispensable condition of our inferring god to be an intelligence. then, causality and design, and the will and intelligence within us through which they are interpreted, cannot, even when combined, enable us to think of the creative reason as righteous; although obviously, until so thought of, that reason is by no means to be identified with god. the greatest conceivable power and intelligence, if united with hatred of righteousness and love of wickedness, can yield us only the idea of a devil; and if separated from all moral principle and character, good or bad, only that of a being far lower than man, which might have reason for worshipping man, but which man cannot worship without degrading himself. the existence, however, of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that god must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness; and the light of this, "the candle of the lord," in the soul, enables us to discover many other reasons for the same conclusion in the constitution of society and the course of history. but if we had no moral perceptions on the contemplation of our own voluntary acts, we certainly would not, and could not, invest the divine being with moral perfections because of his acts. there is still another step to be taken in order to obtain an apprehension of god; and it is one where the outward universe fails us, where we are thrown entirely, or nearly so, on our internal resources. the universe, interpreted by the human mind in the manner which has been indicated, may warrant belief in a being whose power is immense, whose wisdom is inexpressibly wonderful, and whose righteousness is to be held in profoundest admiration and reverence, notwithstanding all the clouds and darkness which may in part conceal it from our view; but not in a being whose existence is absolute, whose power is infinite, whose wisdom and goodness are perfect. we cannot infer that the author of a universe which is finite, imperfect, and relative, and all the phenomena of which are finite, imperfect, and relative, must be, in the true and strict sense of the terms, infinite, perfect, and absolute. we cannot deduce the infinite from the finite, the perfect from the imperfect, the absolute from the relative. and yet it is only in the recognition of an absolute being of infinite power, who works with perfect wisdom towards the accomplishment of perfectly holy ends, that we reach a true knowledge of god, or, which is much the same thing, a knowledge of the true god. is there, then, any warrant in our own nature for thinking of god as infinite, absolute, and perfect, since there seems to be little or none in outward nature? yes, there are within us necessary conditions of thought and feeling and ineradicable aspirations which force on us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will neither permit us to deny these perfections to god nor to ascribe them to any other being. thus the mental process in virtue of which we have the idea of god comprehends and concentrates all that is most essential in human nature. it is through bearing the image of god that we are alone able to apprehend god. take any essential feature of that image out of a human soul, and to apprehend god is made thereby impossible to it. all that is divine in us meets, unites, co-operates, to lay hold of what is divine without us. hence the fuller and clearer the divine image is in any man, the fuller and clearer will be his perception of the divine original. hence what is more or less true everywhere, is especially and emphatically true in religion, that "the eye sees only what it brings with it the power of seeing." where the will, for example, is without energy--where rest is longed for as the highest good, and labour deemed the greatest evil--where extinction is preferred to exertion,--the mind of a nation may be highly cultured, and subtle and profound in speculation, and yet may manifest a marked inability to think of god as a cause or will, with a consequently inveterate tendency to pantheism. the hindu mind, and the systems of religion and philosophy to which it has given birth, may serve as illustration and proof. where the animal nature of man is strong, and his moral and spiritual nature still undeveloped, as is the case among all rude and undisciplined races, he worships not the pure and perfect supreme spirit, whose goodness, truth, and righteousness are as infinite as his power and knowledge, but gods endowed in his imagination chiefly with physical and animal qualities. "recognition of nature," says mr carlyle, "one finds to be the chief element of paganism; recognition of man and his moral duty--though this, too, is not wanting--comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in human beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of mankind. man first puts himself in relation with nature and her powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all power is moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of good and evil, of _thou shalt, and thou shalt not_." the explanation of the historical truth thus stated by mr carlyle is just that man is vividly alive to the wants and claims of his body and merely natural life during long ages in which he is almost dead to the wants and claims of his spirit or true self and the moral life. so the ordinary mind is prone, even at present, in the most civilised countries of the world, to think of god after the likeness of man, or, in other words, as a vastly magnified man. why? because the ordinary mind is always very feebly and dimly conscious of those principles of reason which demand in god the existence of attributes neither to be found in the physical universe nor in itself. some exercise in speculation, some training in philosophy, is needed to make us reflect on them; and until we reflect on them we cannot be expected to do them justice in the formation of our religious convictions. those who have never thought on what infinite and unconditioned mean, and who have never in their lives grappled with a metaphysical problem, will infer quite as readily as if they had spent their days in philosophical speculation that all the power and order in the universe, and all the wisdom and goodness in humanity, are the reflections of a far higher power, wisdom, and goodness in their source--the divine mind; but they must realise much less correctly in what respects god cannot be imaged in his works: they may do equal or even fuller justice to what is true in anthropomorphism, but they cannot perceive as distinctly where anthropomorphism is false. it is only through the activity of the speculative reason that religion is prevented from becoming a degrading anthropomorphism, that the mind is compelled to think of god not merely as a father, king, and judge, but as the absolute and infinite being. this is, perhaps, the chief service which philosophy renders to religion; and it ought not to be undervalued, notwithstanding that philosophy has often, in checking one error, fallen into another as great, or even greater, denying that there is any likeness between god and man. while the mental process which has been described--the theistic inference--is capable of analysis, it is in itself synthetic. the principles on which it depends are so connected that the mind can embrace them all in a single act, and must include and apply them all in the apprehension of god. will, intelligence, conscience, reason, and the ideas which they supply; cause, design, goodness, infinity, with the arguments which rest on these ideas,--all coalesce into this one grand issue. the inferences are as inseparable as the principles from which they spring. a very large number of the objections to theism arise wholly from inattention to this truth. men argue as if each principle involved in the knowledge of god were to be kept strictly by itself, as if each argument brought forward as leading to a theistic conclusion were to be jealously isolated; and then, if the last result of the principle, the conclusion of the argument, be not an adequate knowledge of god, they pronounce the principle altogether inapplicable, and the argument altogether fallacious. it is strange that this procedure should not be universally seen to be sophistical in the extreme--a kind of reasoning which, if generally adopted, would at once arrest all science and all business; but obviously anti-theists think differently, for they habitually have recourse to it. if you argue, for example, that the universe is an event or effect which must have an adequate cause, they will question your right to refer to the order which is in the universe as a proof that it is an event or effect, because order implies another principle, and is the ground of another argument. they overlook that you are not making an abstract use of the principle of causality, and that you are not arguing from the mere terms universe and event, but from the universe itself; and that in order to know whether it be an event or not--an effect or not--you must study it as it is, and take everything into account which bears on the question. they reason as if they supposed that a cause and an intelligence must be two different things, and that a cause cannot be an intelligence, nor an intelligence a cause. similarly, the arguments from the power, order, and goodness displayed in nature have often been objected to altogether, have often been pronounced worthless, because they do not in themselves prove god to be _infinitely_ powerful, wise, and good. they are brought forward to show that the author of the universe must have the power, wisdom, and goodness required to create and govern it; and forthwith many oppose them by declaring that they do not show him to be infinite. now, no man who did not imagine nature to be infinite ever adduced them to prove god infinite. their not proving that, is therefore no reason for denying them to prove what they profess to prove. no argument can stand if we may reject it because it does not prove more than it undertakes to prove. it is clear that the evidences of design, instead of being wholly distinct from the evidences of power, and independent of the principle of causality, are evidences of a kind of power and manifestations of a kind of causality--intelligent power and causality. in like manner the evidences of goodness are also evidences of design, for goodness is a form of design--morally, beneficent design. although causality does not involve design, nor design goodness, design involves causality, and goodness both causality and design. the proofs of intelligence are also proofs of power; the proofs of goodness are proofs both of intelligence and power. the principles of reason which compel us to think of the supreme moral intelligence as a self-existent, eternal, infinite, and unchangeable being, supplement the proofs from other sources, and give self-consistency and completeness to the doctrine of theism. the various theistic arguments are, in a word, but stages in a single rational process, but parts of one comprehensive argument. they are naturally, and, as it were, organically related--they support and strengthen one another. it is therefore an arbitrary and illegitimate procedure to separate them any farther than may be necessary for the purpose of clear and orderly exposition. it is sophistry to attempt to destroy them separately by assailing each as if it had no connection with the other, and as if each isolated fragmentary argument were bound to yield as large a conclusion as all the arguments combined. a man quite unable to break a bundle of rods firmly bound together may be strong enough to break each rod separately. but before proceeding to deal with the bundle in that way, he may be required to establish his right to untie it, and to decline putting forth his strength upon it as it is presented to him.[ ] [ ] see appendix ix. ii. the theistic inference, although a complex process, is not a difficult one. it looks, indeed, long and formidable when analysed in books of evidences, and elaborated with perverse ingenuity into series of syllogisms. but numerous processes, very simple and easy in themselves, are toilsome and troublesome to analyse, or describe, or comprehend. vision and digestion are, in general, not difficult bodily functions, but they have been the subjects of a great many very large treatises; and doubtless physiologists have not even yet found out all that is to be known about them. as a rule, the theistic process is as simple and easy an operation for the mind as vision or digestion for the body. the multitude of books which have been written in explanation and illustration of it, and the subtle and abstruse character of the researches and speculations contained in many of these books, are not the slightest indications of its being other than simple and natural in itself. the inferences which it involves are, in fact, like those which weber, helmholtz, and zöllner have shown to be implied in the perceptions of sense, involuntary and unconscious. if not perfectly instantaneous, they are so rapid and spontaneous as to have seemed to many intuitive. and in a loose sense, perhaps, they may be considered so. not, however, strictly and properly, since the idea of deity is no simple idea, but the most complex of ideas, comprehending all that is great and good in nature and man, along with perfections which belong to neither nature nor man; and since the presence of deity is not seen without the intervention of any media--face to face, eye to eye--but only as "through a glass darkly." the contemplation of nature, and mind, and history is an indispensable stage towards the knowledge of him. physical and mental facts and laws are the materials or data of reason in its quest of religious truth. there is a rational transition from the natural to the supernatural, wherever the latter is reached. our knowledge of god is obtained as simply and naturally as our knowledge of our fellow-men. it is obtained, in fact, mainly in the same way. in both cases we refer certain manifestations of will, intelligence, and goodness--qualities which are known to us by consciousness--to these qualities as their causes. we have no direct or immediate knowledge--no intuitive or _a priori_ knowledge--of the intelligence of our fellow-creatures, any more than we have of the intelligence of our creator; but we have a direct personal consciousness of intelligence in ourselves which enables us confidently to infer that the works both of god and of men can only have originated in intelligences. we grow up into knowledge of the mind of god as we grow in acquaintance with the minds of men through familiarity with their acts. the father in heaven is known just as a father on earth is known. the latter is as unseen as the former. no human being has really ever seen another. no sense has will, or wisdom, or goodness for its object. man must infer the existence of his fellow-men, for he can have no immediate perception of it; he must become acquainted with their characters through the use of his intelligence, because character cannot be heard with the ear, or looked upon with the eye, or touched with the finger. yet a child is not long in learning to know that a spirit is near it. as soon as it knows itself, it easily detects a spirit like its own, yet other than itself, when the signs of a spirit's activity are presented to it. the process of inference by which it ascends from the works of man to the spirit which originates them is not more legitimate, more simple, or more natural, than that by which it rises from nature to nature's god. in saying this, i refer merely to the process of inference in itself. that is identical in the two cases. in other respects there are obvious differences, of which one important consequence is, that while the scepticism which denies the existence of god is not unfrequently to be met with, a scepticism which denies the existence of human beings is unknown. the facts which prove that there are men, are grouped together within limits of space and of time which allow of their being so easily surveyed, and they are in themselves so simple and familiar, that all sane minds draw from them their natural inference. the facts which prove that there is a god need, in order to be rightly interpreted, more attention and reflection, more comprehensiveness, impartiality, and elevation of mind. countless as they are, they can be overlooked, and often have been overlooked. clear and conspicuous as they are, worldliness and prejudice and sin may blind the soul to their significance. true, the existence and possibility of atheism have often been denied, but the testimony of history to the reality of atheism cannot be set aside. although many have been called atheists unjustly and calumniously, and although a few who have professed themselves to be atheists may have really possessed a religious belief which they overlooked or were averse to acknowledge, we cannot reasonably refuse to take at their own word the majority of those who have inculcated a naked and undisguised atheism, and claimed and gloried in the name of atheist. incredible as it may seem that any intelligent being, conscious of human wants and weaknesses, should be able to look upon the wonders of the heavens and of the earth, of the soul within him and of society around him, and yet say that there is no god, men have done so, and we have no alternative but to accept the fact as we find it. it is a fact which involves nothing inconsistent with the truth that the process by which the mind attains to a belief in god is of the same natural and direct, yet inferential, character as the process by which it attains to belief in the existence of finite minds closely akin to itself. our entire spiritual being is constituted for the apprehension of god in and through his works. all the essential principles of mental action, when applied to the meditative consideration of finite things, lead up from them to infinite creative wisdom. the whole of nature external to us is a revelation of god; the whole nature within us has been made for the reception and interpretation of that revelation. what more would we have? strange as it may seem, there are many theists at the present day who represent it as insufficient, or as even worthless, and who join with atheists in denying that god's existence can be proved, and in affirming that all the arguments for his existence are inconclusive and sophistical. i confess i deem this a most erroneous and dangerous procedure. such theists seem to me not only the best allies of atheists, but even more effective labourers in the cause of unbelief than atheists themselves. they shake men's confidence to a far greater extent in the reasonable grounds of faith in god's existence, and substitute for these grounds others as weak and arbitrary as any atheist could possibly wish. they pronounce illegitimate and invalid the arguments from effect to cause, from order and arrangement to intelligence, from history to providence, from conscience to a moral governor,--an assertion which, if true, infallibly implies that the heavens do not declare the glory of god, and that the earth does not show forth his handiworks--that the course of human events discloses no trace of his wisdom, goodness, or justice--and that the moral nature of man is wholly dissociated from a divine law and a divine lawgiver. then, in place of a universe revealing god, and a soul made in his image, and a humanity overruled and guided by him, they present to us as something stronger and surer--an intuition or a feeling or an exercise of mere faith. for it is a noticeable and certainly not a promising circumstance, that there is no general agreement as to what that state of mind is on which the weight of the entire edifice of theism is proposed to be rested even among those who profess to possess it. an intuition, a feeling, and a belief are very different things; and not much dependence is to be put on the psychology which is unable to distinguish between them. man, say some, knows god by immediate intuition; he needs no argument for his existence, because he perceives him directly--face to face--without any medium. it is easy to assert this, but obviously the assertion is the merest dogmatism. not one man in a thousand who understands what he is affirming will dare to claim to have an immediate vision of god, and nothing can be more likely than that the man who makes such a claim is self-deluded. it is not difficult to see how he may be deluded. there is so much that is intuitive involved in the apprehension of god that the apprehension itself may readily be imagined to be intuitive. the intuitive nature of the conditions which it implies may arrest the attention, and the fact that they are simply conditions may be overlooked. the possibility, however, of analysing the apprehension into simpler elements--of showing that it is a complex act, and presupposes conditions that can be indicated--is a conclusive proof that it is no intuition, that our idea of god is no more or otherwise intuitive than our idea of a fellow-man. besides, what seem intuitions are often really inferences, and not unfrequently erroneous inferences; what seem the immediate dictates of pure reason, or the direct and unclouded perceptions of a special spiritual faculty, may be the conceits of fancy or the products of habit and association, or the reflections of strong feeling. a man must prove to himself, and he must prove to others, that what he takes to be an intuition is an intuition. is that proof in this case likely to be easier or more conclusive than the proof of the divine existence? the so-called immediate perception of god must be shown to be a perception and to be immediate; it must be vindicated and verified: and how this is to be done, especially if there be no other reasons for believing in god than itself, it is difficult to conceive. the history of religion, which is what ought to yield the clearest confirmation of the alleged intuition, appears to be from beginning to end a conspicuous contradiction of it. if all men have the spiritual power of directly beholding their creator--have an immediate vision of god--how happens it that whole nations believe in the most absurd and monstrous gods? that millions of men are ignorant whether there be one god or thousands? that even a people like the greeks could suppose the highest of their deities to have been born, to have a body, and to have committed the vilest actions? a true power of intuition is little susceptible of growth, and its testimonies vary within narrow limits; any development of which it admits is only slightly due to external conditions, and mainly the necessary consequence of internal activity, of inherent expansibility. it is thus, for example, with the senses of sight and hearing, in so far as they are intuitive. but it is manifestly very different with the religious nature. its growth is mainly dependent, not on the organic evolution of a particular faculty, but on the general state of the soul, on the one hand; and on the influence of external circumstances--education, example, law, &c.--on the other hand. it is this difference in the character of their development which explains why the deliverances of the senses are so uniform and nearly infallible, while the most cursory survey of the religious world shows us the greatest want of uniformity and truthfulness in religious judgments. the various phases of polytheism and pantheism are inexplicable, if an intuition of god be universally inherent in human nature. theism is perfectly explicable without intuition, as the evidences for it are numerous, obvious, and strong. the opinion that man has an intuition or immediate perception of god is untenable; the opinion that he has an immediate feeling of god is absurd. a man feels only in so far as he perceives and knows. feeling is in consciousness essentially dependent on, and necessarily subsequent to, knowing. mere feeling--feeling without knowing--is an utterly inconceivable and impossible experience. admit, however, not only that there may be a mere feeling, but that there is a mere feeling of god. what worth can it have? by supposition--by definition--no knowledge of god underlies and explains it. but in that case, how can any man pretend to get a knowledge of god out of it? what right can any one have to represent it as a source of knowledge of god? i am not aware that these questions have ever been answered except by the merest verbal jugglery. the very men who tell us that we cannot know god, but that we feel him, tell us also that the feeling of him is an immediate consciousness of him, and that immediate consciousness is its own self-evidence, is absolute certainty, or, in other words, the highest and surest knowledge. we do not know god, but we feel him; however, to feel him is to know him,--such is their answer more or less distinctly expressed, or, i should rather say, more or less skilfully concealed. it is at once a yes and a no, the affirmation of what is denied and the denial of what is affirmed. and it is this because it cannot be anything else--because mere feeling is an impossible experience--and because feeling, so far as it is uncaused and unenlightened by knowledge, testifies only to the folly or insanity of the being which feels. if theism have no other basis than feeling, it is a house which foolish men have built upon the sand. the first storm will cast it down, and no wise man will regret its fall. whatever is founded on mere emotion--on emotion which is not itself explained and justified by reason--stands but by sufferance; has no right to stand; ought to be cast down and swept from the earth. but the storms which have already in the course of the ages spent their force against theism with no other effect than to make its strength more conspicuous, and to carry away what would have weakened or deformed it, are sufficient to show us that it has been built on eternal truth by the finite human reasons which have been enlightened by infinite and divine reason. the strangest of all theories as to the foundation of our belief in god is, that it has no foundation at all--that it is a belief which rests upon itself, an act of faith which is its own warrant. we are told that we can neither know that god is nor what god is, but that we can nevertheless believe in god, and ought to believe in him, and can and ought to act as if we knew his existence and character. but surely belief without a reason must be arbitrary belief, and either to believe or act as if we knew what we do not know, can never be conduct to be justified, much less commended. faith which is not rational is faith which ought to be rejected. we cannot believe what we do not know or think that we know. we have no right to believe more than we know. i know, for example, that the grass grows, and consequently i believe, and am justified in believing, that it grows. i do not know how the grass grows, and i do not believe how it grows; i can justify my believing about its growth nothing beyond what i know to be true. this law of belief is as binding for the highest as for the lowliest objects. if i have no reason for believing that there is a god, i have no right to believe that there is a god. if i do not know that god is infinite, i am bound not to believe that he is infinite. belief is inseparable from knowledge, and ought to be precisely coextensive with knowledge. those who deny this fundamental truth will always be found employing the words knowledge and belief in a capricious and misleading way.[ ] [ ] see appendix x. iii. when man apprehends god as powerful, wise, and good--as possessed of will, reason, and righteousness--obviously he thinks of him as bearing some likeness to himself, as having in an infinite or perfect measure qualities which human creatures have in a finite and imperfect measure. this can be no stumbling-block to any one who believes that god made man in his image, after his likeness. if man be in some respects like god, god must, of course, be in some respects like man. power and freedom, knowledge and wisdom, love, goodness, and justice, are, according to this view, finitely in man, because they are infinitely in god. but it is a view which excites in certain minds deep aversion. there are men who protest, in the name of religion, in the name of god, against this anthropomorphic theism, as they call it. according to them, to attribute to god any human qualities, even the highest and best, is to limit and degrade him--is contrary to reason and contrary to piety--is idolatrous and profane. the psalmist represents the lord as reproaching the wicked for supposing that he was like them in their wickedness--"altogether such an one as themselves;" but the modern philosophers to whom i am referring are horrified at the thought that the most righteous man, even in his righteousness, has any likeness to god. according to them, to think of god as wise is to dishonour him, and to declare him holy is to calumniate him. to think of him as foolish, and to pronounce him wicked, are, in their eyes, only a little more irreverent and no more irrational. "we must not fall down and worship," writes one of these philosophers, "as the source of our life and virtue, the image which our own minds have set up. why is such idolatry any better than that of the old wood and stone? if we worship the creations of our minds, why not also those of our hands? the one is, indeed, a more refined self-adoration than the other; but the radical error remains the same in both. the old idolaters were wrong, not because they worshipped themselves, but because they worshipped their creation as if it were their creator; and how can any anthropomorphic theory 'escape the same condemnation'?"[ ] the writer does not see that god can only be thought of as wise and righteous and free because the mind of man is his creation, so that his being thus thought of can be no proof that he is _its_ creation. the fact that we can think of god as wise and righteous and free is no evidence that he is an image which our own minds have set up. the man who draws such an inference from such a premiss can be no dispassionate reasoner. and certainly the fact that we can think of god as possessed of intellectual and moral perfections is no reason for our not falling down and worshipping him, and no evidence that our doing so is idolatry. to fall down and worship any being whom we do not know to possess these characteristics is what would clearly be idolatry. and this idolatry is what the philosophers to whom i refer are manifestly chargeable with encouraging. when they have rejected the living, personal, righteous, loving god, in whom humanity has so long trusted, they can only suggest as a substitute for him a mysterious power which is wholly unknown, and even unknowable. great is their simplicity if they fancy that they can persuade men to receive any such god as that, or if they fancy that men would be any better for a faith so vague and empty. to believe in we know not what, is directly contrary to reason; to worship it would be "an idolatry no better than that of the old wood and stone." what we know is often not the creation of our minds: the unknowable is in itself nothing at all to us, and, as a thought, is always the mere creation of our minds; it is different for each creature, each mind; it is the mere result and reflection of our finiteness. there can be no unknown or unknowable to an infinite mind. to worship what is unknowable would be, therefore, simply to worship our own ignorance--one of the creations of our minds least worthy, perhaps, of being worshipped. there is, at least, no kind of worship less entitled "to escape condemnation," even as anthropomorphic idolatry, than the worship of the unknowable,--the god proposed to us by some as the alone true god, belief in whom--perhaps i should rather say, belief in which--is to be the final and perfect reconciliation of science and religion. [ ] barrett's physical ethics, p. . all true theism implies a certain likeness between god and man. it holds that god is not merely an all-pervading and all-sustaining power, but an omniscient mind and perfectly holy will. it refuses to think of him merely according to the analogies of the physical world, as if human reason and human love were less worthy expressions of his perfections than mechanical or brute force. it refers to him not only "all the majesty of nature, but all the humanity of man." this truth--that there is a likeness between god and man--must, however, be combined with two other truths, otherwise it will lead to the gravest errors. the first is, that while god and man are both like each other, in that both possess certain excellences, they are utterly unlike, in that god possesses these excellences in all their perfection and in an infinite measure, while man possesses them in a very small degree and violated with many flaws and faults. the highest glory which a man can hope for is, that he should be made wholly into the image of god; but never can god be rightly thought of as mainly, and still less as merely, in the image of man. it was the great error of classic heathendom that it thus conceived of the divine. "men," says heraclitus, "are mortal gods, and the gods immortal men." and the gods of greece, as represented by her poets and adored by her people, were simply magnified and immortal men--a race closely akin to their worshippers in weaknesses and vices no less than in powers and virtues. they were supposed to be born as men are, to have voice and figure, parts and passions, and even at times to cheat and rail and lie. they reflected all the tendencies of the greek mind, both good and evil. worshippers of the one god can scarcely fall into the same extravagance of error in this respect as the greeks and romans did, as all polytheists do; but they can, and often do, fall into the error, and think of god as subject to limits and defects, which are only in themselves. for instance, what is called deism, as distinguished from theism, rests wholly on the conception that the presence and power of god are limited, and that he acts in the manner to which man as a finite creature is restricted. the deist thinks of god as outside of and away from the universe; he thinks of the universe as a mechanism which god has contrived, and which he has endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which it is able to sustain itself in existence, and to perform its work so as to save god, as it were, all further trouble and labour concerning it. it is a great gain for us to have a machine doing what we desire without our needing to pay any attention to it or even to be present where it is, because we cannot give our attention to more than one object at one and the same instant of time, and cannot be present at the same time in more places than one; but those who liken god to man in this respect, divest him of his omnipresence and omnipotence, and represent him as characterised in some measure by their own impotency. there is a truth which pantheism often claims as peculiarly and distinctively its own,--the truth that in god we and all things live, and move, and have our being--that of him, and through him, and to him, are all things,--but which theism must sincerely and fully appropriate as one of its simplest and most certain elements, otherwise the charge against it of being a false and presumptuous likening of god to man will be warranted. we must not think of him as "an absentee god, sitting idle ever since the first sabbath, at the outside of his universe, and 'seeing it go'"--as a god at hand but not afar off, or afar off but not at hand--as here, not there, or there, not here; but we must think of him as everywhere present, everywhere active--as at once the source of all order, the spring of all life, and the ground of all affection and thought. we need to be still more on our guard against limiting his wisdom or righteousness or love, as it is what we are still more prone to do. these attributes of god are often thought of in the meanest and most unworthy ways; and doubtless it has to a large extent been horror at the consequent degradation of the idea of god which has made some men refuse to assign to him any of the properties of humanity, saying, with xenophanes, that if the animals could think, they would imagine the deity to be in their likeness--and with spinoza, that if a circle could think, it would suppose his essence to be circularity. but this is to flee from one extreme to another extreme, from one error to a still more terrible error, through utterly failing to distinguish between perfection and imperfection, between what ought and what ought not to be ascribed to god. circularity, animal forms and dispositions, human limitations--these are imperfections, and we must not refer them to god; but intelligence, righteousness, love--these are so little in their own nature imperfections that an intelligent being, however feeble, would be more excellent than an omnipotent and omnipresent being destitute of intelligence; and righteousness and love are as much superior to mere intelligence as it is to mere power and magnitude. to ascribe these to god, if we only ascribe them to him in infinite perfection, is no presumption, no error; not to ascribe them to him is the greatest presumption, the most lamentable error. the second truth necessary to be borne in mind, whenever we affirm the likeness of god to man, is, that in whatever measure and to whatever extent god may be known, our knowledge of him is, and always must be, very inadequate. in these latter days of science we are proud of our knowledge of the universe; and yet, although we do know a little of far-away stars and systems, what is this, after all, but, as carlyle says, the knowledge which a minnow in its native creek has of the outlying ocean? and our knowledge of god must fall unspeakably farther short of being coextensive with its object. to illustrate the disproportion there, no comparison can be appropriate. "canst thou by searching find out god? canst thou find out the almighty unto perfection? it is high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." our idea of god may contain nothing which is not true of god, and may omit nothing which it is essential for our spiritual welfare that we should know regarding him; but it is impossible that it should be a complete and exhaustive idea of him. we have scarcely a complete and exhaustive idea of anything, and least of all can we have such an idea of the infinite and inexhaustible source of all being. god alone can have a complete and exhaustive idea of himself. there must be infinitely more in god than we have any idea of. there must be many qualities, powers, excellences, in divine nature, which are wholly unknown to men, or even wholly unknowable by them, owing to their want of any faculties for their apprehension. and even as to what we do know of god, our knowledge is but partial and inadequate. we know that god knows, that he feels, that he acts; but as to how he knows, feels, and acts, as to what is distinctive and characteristic of his knowing, feeling, and acting, we have little or no notion. we can _apprehend_ certain attributes of god, but we can _comprehend_, or fully grasp, or definitely image, not one of them. if we could find out god unto perfection in any respect, then, either we must be infinite or god must be finite in that respect. the finite mind can never stretch itself out in any direction until it is coextensive with the infinite mind. man is made in the image of god, but he is not the measure of god. lecture iv. nature is but the name for an effect whose cause is god. i. we have now to consider the principle of causality so far as it is implied in the theistic inference, and the theistic inference so far as it is conditioned by the principle of causality. it is not necessary to discuss the nature of the principle of causality in itself or for its own sake; it is even expedient, i believe, not to attempt to penetrate farther into its metaphysics and psychology than the work on hand imperatively requires. we must of course go as far as those have gone who have maintained on metaphysical or psychological grounds that the principle of causality warrants no theistic inference; we must show that their metaphysics and psychology are irrelevant when true, and false when relevant; but we may be content to stop when we have reached this result. the truth of theism has been very generally represented, both by those who admit and by those who deny the validity of the theistic inference, as much more dependent than it really is on the truth or falsity of some one or other of the many views which have been entertained as to the nature of causation, and the origin of the causal judgment. we are constantly being warned by theists that unless we accept this or that particular notion of causation, and account for it in this or that particular manner, we cannot reasonably believe in the existence of god; we are constantly being assured by anti-theists that belief in god is irrational, because it assumes some erroneous view of causation, or some erroneous explanation of the process by which causation is apprehended. but it will be found that representations of this kind seldom prove more than one-sidedness and immaturity of thought in those who make them. an accurate and comprehensive view of the nature of causation, and of our apprehension of it, will, it is true, have here as elsewhere great advantages over an erroneous and narrow one, but hardly any of the theories which have been held on these points can be consistently argued by those who hold them to invalidate theistic belief. even utterly inadequate statements and explanations of the principle of causality--as, for example, those of hume and j. s. mill--are not more incompatible with the theistic inference than they are with any other inference which is a real extension of knowledge. unless they are understood and applied more rigidly than by those who propound them, they allow us to draw the theistic inference; if understood and applied so as to forbid our drawing it, they logically disallow all scientific inference except such as is purely formal and deductive. in a word, if compatible with science they are compatible with theism, and if incompatible with theism they are incompatible with science. when we assume the principle of causality in the argument for the existence of god, what precisely is it that we assume? only this: that whatever has begun to be, must have had an antecedent, or ground, or cause which accounts for it. we do not assume that every existence must have had a cause. we have no right, indeed, to assume that any existence has had a cause until we have found reason to regard it as not an eternal existence, but one which has had an origin. whatever we believe, however, to have had an origin, we at once believe also to have had a cause. the theistic argument assumes that this belief is true. it assumes that every existence, once new, every event or occurrence or change, must have a cause. this is certainly no very large assumption: on the contrary, if any assumption can claim to be self-evident, it surely may. thought implies the truth of it every moment. sensation only gives rise to thought in virtue of it. unless it were true there could be no such thing as thought. to deny that the principle of causality, understood as has been indicated, is true, would be to deny that reason is reason; it would be equivalent to affirming that to seek for a reason is always and essentially an unreasonable process. and, in fact, so understood, the principle never has been denied. hume even did not venture to deny it, although he ought in consistency to have denied it, and obviously desired to be able to deny it. he did not, however, deny that every object which begins to exist must have a cause,--he did not venture to do more than deny that this is either intuitively or demonstratively certain, and that any bond or tie can be perceived between what is called a cause and what is called an effect. the inquiry which he instituted was not whether we pronounce it necessary that everything whose existence has a beginning should also have a cause or not, but for what reason we pronounce it necessary. he assumed that we pronounce it necessary, and his elaborate investigation into the nature of causation was undertaken expressly and entirely to discover why we do so. the conclusion to which he came--viz., that the causal judgment is an "offspring of experience engendered upon custom"--was not only a very inadequate and erroneous one in itself, but inconsistent with the reality of what it professed to explain: still the admission which has been mentioned was what was professed to be explained. now, if it be true at all that every event, whether it be a new existence or a change in an old existence, presupposes an explanatory antecedent or cause, there can of course be no accepting in all its breadth one of the propositions which hume urges most strenuously--viz., that the mere study of an event can tell us nothing about its cause. we may grant that it can tell us very little,--that hume performed an immense service in showing how extremely little we can know of the particular causes of particular events apart from the study of both in connection, apart from observation, experiment, and induction,--but we cannot grant that the event itself teaches us absolutely nothing. if every event must have a cause, every event must have a sufficient cause. for these two statements, although verbally different, are really identical. the second seems to mean, but does not actually mean, more than the first. the whole cause of the elevation of a weight of ten pounds a foot high cannot be also the whole cause of the elevation of twenty pounds to the same height, for the simple reason that in the latter case the elevation of ten pounds--of half the weight--would be an event which had no cause at all. and this is universally true. if every event have not a sufficient cause, some events have no cause at all. this, then, i say, we necessarily know that the efficient cause of every event is a sufficient cause, however vague may be our knowledge of efficiency and sufficiency. if every event--using this term as convenient to denote either a new existence or a change in some existence--must have a cause, to prove that the universe must have had a cause we require to prove it to have been an event--to have had a commencement. can this be done? that is _the_ question in the theistic argument from causality. compared therewith, all other questions which have been introduced into or associated with the argument are of very subordinate importance. now there is only one way of reasonably answering the question, and that is by examining the universe, in order to determine whether or not it bears the marks of being an event--whether or not it has the character of an effect. we have no right to _assume_ it to be an event, or to have had a beginning. the entire argument for the divine existence, which is at present under consideration, can be no stronger than the strength of the proof which we can adduce in favour of its having had a beginning, and the only valid proof of that which reason can hope to find must be derived from the examination of the universe itself. what, then, is the result of such an examination? an absolute certainty that all the things which are seen are temporal,--that every object in the universe which presents itself to the senses has had a beginning,--that the most powerful, penetrating, and delicate instruments devised to assist our senses reach no cause which is not obviously also an effect. the progress of science has not more convincingly and completely disproved the once prevalent notion that the universe was created about six thousand years ago, than it has convincingly and completely established that everything of which our senses inform us has had a commencement in time, and is of a compound, derivative, and dependent nature. it is not long since men had no means of proving that the rocks, for example, were not as old as the earth itself--no direct means of proving even that they were not eternal; but science is now able to tell us with confidence under what conditions, in what order, and in what epochs of geological time they were formed. we have probably a more satisfactory knowledge of the formation of the coal-measures than of the establishment of the feudal system. we know that the alps, although they look as if they might have stood for ever, are not even old, as geologists count age. the morning and night, the origin and disappearance of the countless species of living things which have peopled the earth from the enormously remote times when the rocks of the laurentian period were deposited down to the births and deaths of contemporaneous animals, have been again brought into the light of day by the power of science. the limits of research are not even there reached, and with bold flight science passes beyond the confines of discovered life--beyond the epochs of formation even of the oldest rocks--to a time when there was no distinction of earth and sea and atmosphere, as all were mingled together in nebulous matter, in some sort of fluid or mist or steam; yea, onwards to a time when our earth had no separate existence, and suns, moons, and stars were not yet divided and arranged into systems. if we seek, then, after what is eternal, science tells us that it is not the earth nor anything which it contains, not the sea nor the living things within it, not the moving air, not the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars. these things when interrogated all tell us to look above and beyond them, for although they may have begun to be in times far remote, yet it was within times to which the thoughts of finite beings can reach back. there is no denying, then, that the universe is to a great extent an effect, an event, something which has begun to be, a process of becoming. science is, day by day, year by year, finding out more and more that it is an effect. the growth of science is in great part merely the extension of the proof that the universe is an effect. but the scientific proof of the non-eternity of matter is as yet far from a complete one. it leaves it possible for the mind to refer the phases through which the universe has passed, and the forms which it has assumed, to an underlying eternal source in nature itself, and, therefore, not to god. and this is by far the most plausible and forcible way of combating the argument we are employing. it meets it with a direct counter-argument, which every person must acknowledge to be relevant, and which, if sufficiently made out, is obviously decisive. that counter-argument we are bound, therefore, to dispose of. it has been thus stated by mr j. s. mill: "there is in nature a permanent element, and also a changeable: the changes are always the effects of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all. it is true we are accustomed to say not only of events, but of objects, that they are produced by causes, as water by the union of hydrogen and oxygen. but by this we only mean that when they begin to exist, their beginning is the effect of a cause. but their beginning to exist is not an object, it is an event. if it be objected that the cause of a thing's beginning to exist may be said with propriety to be the cause of the thing itself, i shall not quarrel with the expression. but that which in an object begins to exist, is that in it which belongs to the changeable element in nature; the outward form and the properties depending on mechanical or chemical combinations of its component parts. there is in every object another and a permanent element--viz., the specific elementary substance or substances of which it consists and their inherent properties. these are not known to us as beginning to exist: within the range of human knowledge they had no beginning, and consequently no cause; though they themselves are causes or non-causes of everything that takes place. experience, therefore, affords no evidences, not even analogies, to justify our extending to the apparently immutable, a generalisation grounded only on our observation of the changeable."[ ] [ ] three essays on religion, pp. , . on this i would remark, first, that mere experience does not take us to anything which we are entitled to call even apparently immutable. it only takes us, even when extended to the utmost by scientific instruments and processes, to elements which we call simple because we have hitherto failed to analyse them into simpler elements. it is a perfectly legitimate scientific hypothesis that all the substances recognised by chemists as elementary and intransmutable, are in reality the modifications or syntheses of a single material element, which have been produced under conditions that render them incapable of being affected by any tests or agencies which the analyst in his laboratory can bring to bear upon them. indeed, unless this hypothesis be true, the theory of development, so generally accepted at present, can hardly be supposed to be of any very wide application, seeing that at its very outset it has to affirm the existence of no fewer than sixty-four true untransformable species. but suppose the so-called elementary substances of chemistry to be simple, no one can reasonably suppose them as known to us to be ultimate. in oxygen there may be no atoms which are not atoms of oxygen, but we know by experience only oxygen, not atoms of oxygen. no man has ever been able to put himself in sensible contact with what alone can be immutable in oxygen, if there be anything immutable in it, its ultimate atoms. no man has seen, heard, touched, or tasted an ultimate atom of any kind of matter. we know nothing of atoms--nothing of what is permanent in nature--from direct experience. we must pass beyond such experience--beyond all testimony of the senses--when we believe in anything permanent in nature, not less than when we believe in something beyond and above nature. the atomic theory in chemistry demands a faith which transcends experience, not less than the theistic theory in religion. then, secondly, although we grant that there is a permanent element in the physical universe, something in matter itself which is self-existent and eternal, we still need, in order to account for the universe which we know, an eternal intelligence. the universe, regarded even only so far as it is admitted by all materialists no less than by theists and pantheists to be an effect, cannot be explained, as materialists think, merely physically. the atoms of matter are, it is said, eternal and immutable. grant them to be so. there are, however, countless millions of them, and manifestly the universe is one, is a single, magnificent, and complicated system, is characterised by a marvellous unity in variety. we must be informed how the universe came to be a universe,--how it came to have the unity which underlies its diversity,--if it resulted from a countless multitude of ultimate causes. did the atoms take counsel together and devise a common plan and work it out? that hypothesis is unspeakably absurd, yet it is rational in comparison with the notion that these atoms combined by mere chance, and by chance produced such a universe as that in which we live. grant all the atoms of matter to be eternal, grant all the properties and forces which with the smallest degree of plausibility can be claimed for them to be eternal and immutable, and it is still beyond all expression improbable that these atoms with these forces, if unarranged, uncombined, ununified, unutilised by a presiding mind, would give rise to anything entitled to be called a universe. it is millions to one that they would never produce the simplest of the regular arrangements which we comprehend under the designation of course of nature, or the lowest of vegetable or animal organisms; millions of millions to one that they would never produce a solar system, the earth, the animal kingdom, or human history. no number of material atoms, although eternal and endowed with mechanical force, can explain the unity and order of the universe, and therefore the supposition of their existence does not free us from the necessity of believing in a single intelligent cause--a supreme mind--to move and mould, combine and adjust, the ultimate atoms of matter into a single orderly system. there at once rises the question, is it really necessary to believe both matter and mind to be eternal? no, must be our answer. the law of parsimony of causes directly forbids the belief, unless we can show that one cause is insufficient to explain the universe. and that we cannot do. we can show that matter is insufficient,--that it cannot account of itself even for the physical universe,--but not that mind is insufficient, not that mind cannot account for anything that is in matter. on what grounds can it be shown that a mind possessed of sufficient power to originate the universe, the ultimate elements of matter being given, could not also have created these elements? that the supreme intelligence, which gave to each sun, and planet, and satellite its size, and shape, and position, and motion, could not have summoned into being their constituent particles? on none whatever. we may not understand how they could be created, but we have no reason for thinking that they could not be created; and it is surely far easier and far more reasonable to believe that they were created, than that a countless number of inconceivably small indivisible particles of matter, lying far beyond the range of any of our senses, but extending through immeasurable fields of space, should all, inconceivably minute although they be, be self-existent and eternal. the man who asks us to accept the latter supposition, asks us, it seems to me, to believe what is not only as mysterious as the self-existence of deity, but millions of millions of times more mysterious. i should require strong reasons for assigning infinitely great attributes to excessively little things, and to an inconceivable number of them; but i can in this instance find no reasons at all. then, in the third place, any plausible conceptions we can form of the ultimate nature of matter lead to the belief that even that is an event or effect, a something derivative and caused. it must be admitted that the most plausible of these conceptions are vague and conjectural. we have a practical and relative knowledge of matter which is both exact and trustworthy,--a knowledge of its properties from which we can mathematically deduce a multitude of remote consequences of an extremely precise character--but we are hardly entitled to characterise as knowledge at all any of the views which have been propounded as to what it is in itself. it is only the unreflecting who fancy that matter in itself is something very clear and obvious, which they may apprehend by merely opening their eyes and stretching out their hands. those who have never reasoned on the subject are apt to imagine that the nature of matter is of all things the easiest to understand, and they unhesitatingly invest it with their own sensations and perceptions. that is the so-called commonsense view of matter; but the slightest inquiry proves it to be delusive and nonsensical. colour, for example, is just what is seen, and sound just what is heard; they are not qualities inherent in objects independent of the eye and ear: the matter which is supposed to cause by its motions on our senses these and other perceptions of the material world, we cannot see, hear, or apprehend by any sense. change our senses and the universe will be thereby changed, everything in it becoming something other than it was before, green perhaps red, the bitter sweet, the loudest noise a gentle whisper, the hardest substance soft. as soon, then, as we thoughtfully ask ourselves, what is matter? we begin to discover that it is in itself something utterly mysterious. the collection of phenomena which we call its properties are quite unlike the phenomena of mind in this most important respect, that whatever they may be they are not what they appear to be. a state of mind is what we feel it to be; a state of matter is certainly not what we seem to ourselves to perceive it to be. no one, of course, knew all this better than mr mill. he, as a philosopher, had asked himself what matter is; he had formed a theory in answer to the question. and what is his theory? just this,--that we cannot find a permanent element in matter; that we have no right to suppose that there is a permanent real existence or actual substance in matter; that all that we are warranted to affirm about the ultimate nature of matter is that it is a permanent possibility,--the permanent possibility of sensations. that was the conclusion which he arrived at when he theorised on matter without any theological aim. but he appears to have forgotten it when he came to criticise the argument for a first cause. he could not otherwise have written as if it were quite certain that there was in matter "a permanent element," not an underlying possibility but an inherent real substance. had he remembered what his own theory as to the nature of matter was, he would have avoided as utterly untrue and misleading every expression which could suggest the notion of there being a permanent element in matter, and would have admitted that very probably the permanent possibilities of sensation, the causes of all material phenomena, lay in the divine will, since he had been unable to find anything else permanent in which they could be supposed to subsist. that is a view which many profound thinkers have adopted. they have been led to hold that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that the whole material world is ultimately resolvable into forces; and that all its forces are but manifestations or outgoings of will-force. if so, the whole material world is not only dependent on, but _is_, the will of god, and has no being of any kind apart from the will of god. if so, god's will is not only the cause and controlling power of nature, but its substance, its self. and this view, that what alone substantially underlies all the phenomena we designate material is an acting mind, an energising will, has not only been reached by mental philosophers and idealistic speculators, but by those physicists who, like boscovitch and faraday, have found themselves forced to conclude that what is constitutive of matter is not indivisible particles, even infinitesimally small, but mere centres of force, since force necessarily implies some sort of substance, and, therefore, spirit where not matter. but suppose the substratum of the universe to consist of a countless number of inconceivably small indivisible particles of matter, and do we not even on this hypothesis reach by a single step the truth on which theism rests, and on which only theism can be based? "none of the processes of nature," says one of the most eminent of our physical philosophers, "since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. we are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. on the other hand, the exact quality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as sir john herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which science must stop. not that science is debarred from studying the external mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from investigating an organism which she cannot put together. but, in tracing back the history of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and on the other that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural."[ ] i believe that no reply to these words of professor clark maxwell is possible from any one who holds the ordinary view of scientific men as to the ultimate constitution of matter. they must suppose every atom, every molecule, to be of such a nature, to be so related to others, and to the universe generally, that things may be such as we see them to be; but this their fitness to be built up into the structure of the universe is a proof that they have been made fit, and since natural forces could not have acted on them while not yet existent, a supernatural power must have created them, and created them with a view to their manifold uses. every atom, every molecule, must even in what is ultimate in it bear the impress of a supernatural power and wisdom; must, from the very nature of the case, reflect the glory of god and proclaim its dependence upon him. [ ] president's address in transactions of the british association for the advancement of science, . in like manner the latest speculation regarding the nature of matter--the vortex-atom theory of sir william thomson--seems, so far from having any tendency to exclude creative action, necessarily to imply it. he supposes that the atoms may be small vortex-rings in the ether, the rotating portions of a perfect fluid which fills all space. but a perfect fluid can neither explain its own existence nor the commencement of rotation in any part of it. rotation once commenced in a perfect or frictionless and incompressible fluid would continue for ever, but it never could naturally commence. there is nothing in a perfect fluid to account either for the origin or cessation of rotation, and consequently nothing, on the vortex-atom hypothesis, to account either for the production or destruction of an atom of matter. the origin and cessation of rotation in fluids are due to their imperfection, their internal friction, their viscosity. the origin or cessation of rotation in a perfect fluid must be the effect of supernatural action; in other words, every vortex-atom must owe the rotation which gives it its individuality to a divine impulse. a theist has certainly no need, then, to be afraid of researches into the ultimate nature of matter. our knowledge thereof is exceedingly small and imperfect, but all that we do know of it, all that we can even rationally conceive of it, leads to the inference that it is not self-existent, but the work of god. the farther research is pushed, the more clearly, we may be assured, will this become apparent, for the more wonderfully adapted will the ultimate constituents of matter be found for assuming countless forms and composing countless objects--the air, the land, the sea, and starry heavens, with all that in or on them is. research has already shown us reason to believe "that even chemical atoms are very complicated structures; that an atom of pure iron is probably a vastly more complicated system than that of the planets and their satellites; that each constituent of a chemical atom must go through an orbit in the millionth part of the twinkling of an eye, in which it successively or simultaneously is under the influence of many other constituents, or possibly comes into collision with them; that each of these particles is, as sir john herschel has beautifully said, for ever solving differential equations which, if written out in full, might perhaps belt the earth."[ ] now, what does this mean, if not that every ultimate atom of matter is full to the very heart of it with evidences of the power and wisdom of god, and that every particle of dust or drop of water is crowded with traces of the action of the divine reason, not less marvellous, it may be, than those which astronomy exhibits in the structure of the heavens and the evolutions of the heavenly bodies? those who hoped that molecular science would help them to get rid of god have obviously made a profound mistake. it has already shown far more clearly than ever was or could have been anticipated, that every atom of matter points back beyond itself to the all-originating will of god, and refuses to receive the idolatrous homage of those who would put it in the place of god. [ ] see w. s. jevons, principles of science, ii. , . to these considerations it has to be added that some of our ablest physicists believe that in the present age a strictly scientific proof has been found of the position that the universe had a beginning in time. "according to sir w. thomson's deductions from fourier's theory of heat, we can trace down the dissipation of heat by conduction and radiation to an infinitely distant time when all things will be uniformly cold. but we cannot similarly trace the heat-history of the universe to an infinite distance in the past. for a certain negative value of the time the formulæ give impossible values, indicating that there was some initial distribution of heat which could not have resulted, according to known laws of nature, from any previous distribution. there are other cases in which a consideration of the dissipation of energy leads to the conception of a limit to the antiquity of the present order of things."[ ] if this theory be true, physical science, instead of giving any countenance to the notion of matter having existed from eternity, distinctly teaches that creation took place, that the present system of nature and its laws originated at an approximately assignable date in the past. the theory is supported by the most eminent physical philosophers of this country, and if there be any oversight or error in the principles or calculations on which it is founded, it would appear not to have been as yet detected. it is a theory on which, however, only specialists are entitled to pronounce judgment; and therefore, although those who assume that matter was not created are bound to refute it, i do not wish myself to lay any stress upon it--the more especially as i believe that apart from it there is amply sufficient evidence for holding that "nature is but the name for an effect whose cause is god."[ ] [ ] jevons, principles of science, ii. . [ ] see appendix xi. ii. it seems to me, then, that the universe when examined must be concluded to be throughout--from centre to circumference--alike in what is most permanent and what is most changeable in it,--an event or effect, and that its only adequate cause is a supreme intelligence. it is only such a cause which is sufficient to explain the universe as we know it, and that universe is what has to be explained. the assertion of kant that the principle of causality cannot take us beyond the limits of the sensible world is only true if causality be confined to strictly material events which display no signs of law and order, and the progress of science is one long uninterrupted proof that no such events are to be discovered; that it is hopeless to look for them; that matter and its changes are ordained, arranged, adjusted phenomena. the assertion of kant is clearly false, if we are not to exclude from the event anything which demands explanation; if we are to reason from the universe itself and not from its name; if we are to infer a particular cause from a knowledge of the nature of a given particular event. this, the so-called concrete use of the principle of causality, is the only use of it which is legitimate, the only use of it which is not extremely childish. the opposite--the absurd--notion that the principle of causality is abstractly applied, has led some to argue that it leads legitimately to nothing else than an infinite regress--an eternal succession of causes and effects. but whatever it may lead to, it certainly does not lead to that conclusion, and has never led any human being, either legitimately or illegitimately, to that conclusion. those even who have maintained that the principle of causality cannot lead to a first cause, to an eternal self-existent cause, but only to an eternal succession of causes and effects, have all, without a single exception, allowed themselves to be led by it to a first cause and not to an eternal succession of causes. they have all believed what they say they ought to have disbelieved; they have all disbelieved what they say they ought to have believed. they have all accepted as true that there is a first and self-existent cause, although some have supposed it to be matter, some mind, some within the world, some without the world. they have differed as to what it is, but not as to that it is. none of them have adopted the conclusion to which they have said the argument founded on causation logically leads. no man has ever adopted that conclusion. the human mind universally and instantaneously rejects it as inconceivable, unthinkable, self-contradictory, absurd. we may believe either in a self-existent god or in a self-existent world, and must believe in one or the other; we cannot believe in an infinite regress of causes. the alternatives of a self-existent cause and an infinite regress of causes are not, as some would represent, equally credible alternatives. the one is an indubitable truth, the other is a manifest absurdity. the one all men believe, the other no man believes. this takes away, it seems to me, all force from the objection that the argument founded on the principle of causality when it infers god as the self-existent cause of the universe infers more than is strictly warranted, a self-existent cause being something which does not in itself fall under the principle of causality. that every event must have a cause will be valid, it is said, for an endless series of causes and effects; but if you stop, if you affirm the existence of what is uncaused, of what is at once, as it were, cause and effect, you may affirm what is true, but you affirm also what is independent of the principle of causation. you claim more than your argument entitles you to; you are not developing a logical conclusion, but concealing under a term which seems to express the same idea what is really the vaulting of the mind to a higher idea which cannot be expressed under the form efficient cause at all. now, of course, a self-existent cause does not in itself come completely under the law of causality. that law cannot inform us what self-existence is. a self-existent cause, however, may be known as well as any other cause by its effects. the mind may rise to it from its effects. the principle of causality may lead up to it, although it does not include within itself the proof of the self-existence of the cause. it may at the last stage be attached to some other principle which compels the affirmation of the self-existence of the cause reached; in other words, the affirmation that the first cause is a self-existent cause, may be a distinct mental act not necessitated by the principle of causality itself. it may either be held that this mental necessity is the reason why we cannot entertain the thought of an infinite regress of causes, or that the incapacity of the mind to regard the thought of an infinite regress of causes as other than self-contradictory, is the explanation of its felt necessitation to affirm a self-existent cause; in which latter case the principle of causality really necessitates a belief in the ungenerated and self-existent. both of these views are plausible, and which of them is true is an interesting subject of metaphysical investigation, but it is one of no practical consequence in the inquiry on which we are engaged. the principle of causality can lead us up from all things which have on them the marks of having begun to be, and if we at length come to something which bears no such marks, be it matter or be it mind, no man can doubt, or does doubt, that something to be self-existent. this difficulty about a self-existent cause not being able to be arrived at by the principle of causality, will be worth attending to by the theist when it is attended to by any one else,--when any atheist or any anti-theist of any kind is prepared to deny that the last cause in the order of knowledge, and the first in the order of existence, must be a self-existent cause--but not until then; and it is mere sophistry to represent it as of practical importance. whenever we come to an existence which we cannot regard as an effect or thing generated in time, we, either in consequence of the very nature of the causal judgment, or of some self-evident condition or conditions of knowledge necessarily attached thereto, attribute to it self-existence and eternity. we may dispute as to whether this is done in the one or the other of these two ways, but that is a merely theoretical question; that every one does, and must, as a reasonable being, do it, is what no man disputes, or can dispute,--and this alone is of practical consequence. another admission must be made by every man who reflects carefully on the nature of causation. to say that the idea of cause can never demand belief in an uncaused cause, sounds as self-evident; to say that the idea of cause can find no satisfaction save in the belief of an uncaused cause, sounds as a paradox; but let a man meditate for a little with real thoughtfulness on the meaning of these two statements, and he cannot fail to perceive that the former is an undeniable falsehood, and the latter an undeniable truth. an uncaused cause, a first cause, alone answers truly to the idea of a cause. a secondary cause, in so far as secondary, in so far as caused, is not a cause. i witness some event--some change. i am compelled as a rational being to seek its cause. i reach it only to find that this cause was due to a prior cause. what has happened? the cause from which i have had to go back has ceased to be a cause; the cause to which i have had to go back has become the cause of two effects, but it will remain so only if i am not reasonably bound to seek a cause for _it_. if i am, its causality must pass over to its explanatory antecedent. we may go back a hundred, a thousand, a million times, but if the last cause reached be not truly a first cause, an uncaused cause, the idea of cause in our mind will be as unsatisfied at the end of our search as at the beginning, and the whole process of investigation will be aimless and meaningless. a true cause is one to which the reason not only moves but in which it rests, and except in a first cause the mind cannot rest. a first cause, however, is certainly not one which has been itself caused. we are warranted, then, in looking upon the universe as an event or effect, and we may be certain that it is not the last link of an infinite chain of causes and effects, or of any series of causes and effects, long or short, suspended upon nothing. no chain or series can be, properly speaking, infinite, or without a first link or term. the universe has a first cause. and its first cause, i must proceed to remark, reason and observation alike lead us to believe must be one--a single cause. when one first cause is sufficient to explain all the facts, it is contrary to reason to suppose another or several. we must prove that no one first cause could account for the universe before we can be entitled to ascribe it to more causes than one. the first cause, we shall further see afterwards, must have attributes which no two or more beings can be supposed to possess, which one being alone can possess. then the character of the effect itself refers us back to a single cause. a belief in more gods than one not only finds no support in the universe, but, as the very word universe indicates, is contradicted by it. for, numerous and diverse as are the objects in nature, they are so constituted and connected--so dependent on and related to one another--as to compose a whole which exhibits a marvellous unity in variety. everything counteracts or balances or assists something else, and thus all things proclaim their common dependence on one original. co-ordinate things must all be derivative and secondary, and all things in nature are co-ordinate parts of a stupendous system. each one of us knows, for example, that a few years ago he was not, and that in a few years hence the place which knows him now will know him no more; and each one of us has been often taught by the failure of his plans, and the disappointment of his hopes, and the vanity of his efforts, that there are stronger forces and more important interests in the world than his own, and that he is in the grasp of a power which he cannot resist--which besets him behind and before, and hems him in on all sides. when we extend our view, we perceive that this is as true of others as of ourselves, and that it is true even, in a measure, of all finite things. no man lives or dies to himself; no object moves and acts absolutely from and for itself alone. this reveals a single all-originating, all-pervading, all-sustaining principle. these manifold mutually dependent existences imply one independent existence. the limitations assigned to all individual persons and things point to a being which limits them all. particular causes and secondary movements lead back to "a cause of causes," "a first mover, itself immovable, yet making all things else to move." the first cause must be far more truly and properly a cause than any secondary cause. in fact, as we have already seen, a secondary cause is not strictly a cause; so far as secondary, it merely transmits to its consequent what it has received from its antecedent. there may be a succession of a thousand such causes in a process, yet the first cause is also the last, and there is, in fact, all through, but one cause; the others merely convey and communicate its force. a machine, however numerous its parts and movements, does not create the least amount of force; on the contrary, the most perfect machine wastes and absorbs some of the force which is imparted to it. the universe, so far as subject to mechanical laws, is merely a machine which transmits a given quantity of force, but which no more creates it than it creates itself. the author of that force is the one true cause of all physical phenomena. life is probably, and mind is certainly, not entirely explicable on mechanical principles; but neither life nor mind can be maintained to do more than to determine the direction or application of the power implanted in them, or rendered accessible to them, through the working of the first cause. all things must, consequently, "live, move, and have their being" therein. it is at their end as well as at their origin; it encompasses them, all round; it penetrates them, all through. the least things are not merely linked on to it through intermediate agencies which go back an enormous distance, but are immediately present to it, and filled to the limit of their faculties with its power. it is in every ray of sunlight, every breath of wind, and blade of grass; it is the source and life of all human minds and hearts. the pantheist errs not so much in what he affirms of it, as in what he denies to it. this cause--the cause of causes--must, it is further obvious, be in possession of a power far beyond the comprehension of our reasons or imaginations. all other power is derived from its power. all the power which is distributed and distinguished in secondary causes must be combined and united in the first cause. now, think what an enormous power there is displayed even in this world. in every half-ounce of coal there is stored up power enough, if properly used, to draw two tons a mile. how vast, then, the power which god has deposited in the coal-beds of the world alone! the inhabitants of this little island, by availing themselves of the natural forces which providence has placed at their disposal, annually accomplish more work than could by any possibility be effected by the inhabitants of the whole earth, if they exerted merely the power which is in their own bodies, the power of human bones and muscles. and yet there can be little doubt that, even in this country, we make no use at all of many natural agents, and only a wasteful use of any of them. "weigh the earth on which we dwell," says an astronomer; "count the millions of its inhabitants that have come and gone for the last six thousand years; unite their strength into one arm; and test its power in an effort to move the earth. it could not stir it a single foot in a thousand years; and yet, under the omnipotent hand of god, not a minute passes that it does not fly far more than a thousand miles." the earth, however, is but a mere atom in the universe. through the vast abysses of space there are scattered countless systems, at enormous distances, yet all related; glorious galaxies of suns, planets, satellites, comets, all sweeping onwards in their appointed courses. how mighty the arm which impels and guides the whole! god can do all that, for he continually does it. how much more he could do than he does, we cannot know. the power of no true cause, of no free cause, is to be measured by what it does. it must be adequate to produce its actual effects, but it may be able to produce countless merely possible effects. it has power over its powers, and is not necessitated to do all that it is capable of doing. it is difficult, perhaps, to show that the universe is not infinite. it is obviously unreasonable and presumptuous to deny that the power of its author may be infinite. and yet we find men who do so. for example, the late mr john stuart mill, for no better reasons than that nature sometimes drowns men, and burns them, and that childbirth is a painful process, maintained that god could not possibly be infinite. i shall not say what i think of the shallowness and self-conceit displayed in such an argument. what it proves is not the finiteness of god, but the littleness of a human intellect. the mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes and limit the greatness of its creator. a first cause, we have already seen, must be a free cause. it cannot have been itself caused. it is absurd to look for it among effects. but we never get out of the sphere of effects until we enter that of free agency; until we emerge from the natural into the spiritual; until we leave matter and reach mind. the first cause must, indeed, be in--all through--the universe; but it must also be out of the universe, anterior to, and above the universe. the idea of cause is a delusion--the search for causes an inexplicable folly--if there be no first cause, and if that first cause be not a free cause, a will, a spirit, a person. those who object to the causation argument, that it does not take us beyond the world--does not lead us up to a personal cause of the world--have failed to apprehend what causation signifies. secondary causes may not be true causes, and yet reason be trustworthy, for there is that behind them on which it can fall back; but if there be no first cause, or if the first cause be not free, reason is throughout a lie. reason, if honest and consistent, cannot in its pursuit of causes stop short of a rational will. that alone answers to and satisfies its idea of a cause. the most rapid glance at the universe powerfully confirms the conclusion that its first cause can only be a mind, a reason. the universe is a universe; that is to say, it is a whole, a unity, a system. the first cause of it, therefore, in creating and sustaining it, must comprehend, act on, and guide it as a systematic whole; must have created all things with reference to each other; and must continually direct them towards a preconceived goal. the complex and harmonious constitution of the universe is the expression of a divine idea, of a creative reason. this thought brings me to my next argument and next lecture.[ ] [ ] see appendix xii. lecture v. the argument from order. i. the prevalence of order in nature has already been referred to as contributing to prove that the universe is an event, a generated existence, a something which once began to be. it will now be brought forward as in itself a manifestation of, and consequently a ground for believing in, a supreme mind. where order meets us, the natural and immediate inference is that there is the work of intelligence. and order meets us everywhere in the universe. it covers and pervades the universe. it is obvious to the ordinary naked eye, and spreads far beyond the range of disciplined vision when assisted by all the instruments and appliances which science and art have been able to invent. it is conspicuous alike in the architecture of the heavens and the structure of a feather or a leaf. it goes back through all the epochs of human history, and all the ages of geological and astronomical time. it is the common work of all the sciences to discover and explain the order in the universe. there is no true science which is not constantly making new and fuller discoveries of the order in nature,--the order within us and without us; not one which is not ever increasingly establishing that in order all things move and have their being. what is maintained by the theist is, that this order, the proof of which is the grand achievement of science, universally implies mind; that all relations of order--all laws and uniformities--are evidences of an intelligent cause. the order which science finds in nature may be described as either general or special, although in strictness the difference between them is only a difference of degree, the former being the more and the latter the less general, or the former being the less and the latter the more special. in what may be called general order, that which strikes us chiefly is regularity; in what may be called special order, that which chiefly strikes us is adaptation or adjustment. in inorganic nature general order is the more conspicuous; in organic nature special order. astronomy discloses to us relations of number and proportion so far-reaching that it almost seems as if nature were "a living arithmetic in its development, a realised geometry in its repose." biology, on the other hand, impresses us by showing the delicacy and subtlety of the adjustment of part to part, of part to whole, and of whole to surroundings, in the organic world. there is, perhaps, sufficient difference between these two kinds of order to warrant their being viewed separately, and as each furnishing the basis of an argument for the existence of god. the argument from regularity has sometimes been kept apart from the argument from adjustment. the former infers the universe to be an effect of mind because it is characterised by proportion or harmony, which is held to be only explicable by the operation of mind. the latter draws the same inference because the universe contains countless complex wholes, of which the parts are so collocated and combined as to co-operate with one another in the attainment of certain results; and this, it is contended, implies an intelligent purpose in the primary cause of these things. while we may readily admit the distinction to be so far valid, it is certainly not absolute. regularity and adjustment are rather different aspects of order than different kinds of order, and, so far from excluding each other, they will be found implying each other. it is obvious that even the most specialised adjustments of organic structure and activity presuppose the most general and simple uniformities of purely physical nature. such cases of adjustment comprehend in fact many cases of regularity. it is less obvious, but not less true, that wherever regularity can be traced adjustment will also be found, if the search be carried far enough. the regularity disclosed by astronomy depends on adjustment as regards magnitude, weight, distance, &c., in the celestial bodies, just as the adjustments brought to light by biology depend on the general regularity of the course of nature. there is no law of nature so simple as not to presuppose in every instance of its action at least two things related to one another in the manner which is meant when we speak of adjustment. it being thus impossible to separate regularity from adjustment as regards the phenomena of the universe, it seems unnecessary to attempt by abstraction to separate them in the theological argumentation, while giving a rapid general glance at the phenomena which display them. the physical universe has, perhaps, no more general characteristic than this,--its laws are mathematical relations. the law of gravitation, which rules all masses of matter, great or small, heavy or light, at all distances, is a definite numerical law. the curves which the heavenly bodies describe under the influence of that law are the ellipse, circle, parabola, and hyperbola--or, in other words, they all belong to the class of curves called conic sections, the properties of which mathematicians had begun to investigate nearly twenty centuries before newton established that whatever was true of them might be directly transferred to the heavens, since the planets revolve in ellipses, the satellites of jupiter in circles, and the comets in elliptical, parabolic, and hyperbolic orbits. the law of chemical combination, through which the whole world of matter has been built up out of a few elements, always admits of precise numerical expression. so does the law of the correlation of heat and gravitation. each colour in the rainbow is due to a certain number of vibrations in a given time; so is each note in the scale of harmony. each crystal is a geometrical construction. the pistils of flowers, and the feathers in the wings and tails of birds, are all numbered. if nature had not thus been ruled by numerical laws, the mathematical sciences might have existed, but they would have had no other use than to exercise the intellect, whereas they have been the great instruments of physical investigation. they are the creations of a mental power which, while occupied in their origination and elaboration, requires to borrow little, if anything, from matter; and yet, it is only with their help that the constitution of the material universe has been displayed, and its laws have been discovered, with that high measure of success of which physicists are so proud. but they could not have been applied to the universe at all unless its order had been of the exact numerical and geometrical kind which has been indicated; unless masses had attracted each other, and elements combined with each other, in invariable proportions; unless "the waters had been measured as if in the hollow of a hand, the heaven meted out as with a span, the dust of the earth comprehended in a measure, and the mountains weighed in scales and the hills in a balance." now it is possible to deny that things have been thus weighed, measured, and numbered by a creative intelligence, but not that they have been weighed, measured, and numbered. if we are to give any credit to science, there can be no doubt about the weights and measures and numbers. this question, then, is alone left,--could anything else than intelligence thus weigh, measure, and number? could mere matter know the abstrusest properties of space and time and number, so as to obey them in the wondrous way it does? could what has taken so much mathematical knowledge and research to apprehend, have originated with what was wholly ignorant of all quantitative relations? or must not the order of the universe be due to a mind whose thoughts as to these relations are high above even those of the profoundest mathematicians, as are the heavens above the earth? if the universe were created by an intelligence conversant with quantitative truth, it is easy to understand why it should be ruled by definitely quantitative laws; but that there should be such laws in a universe which did not originate in intelligence, is not only inexplicable but inconceivably improbable. there is not merely in that case no discoverable reason why there should be any numerically definite law in nature, but the probability of there being no law or numerical regularity of any kind is exceedingly great, and of there being no law-governed universe incalculably great. apart from the supposition of a supreme intelligence, the chances in favour of disorder against order, of chaos against cosmos, of the numerically indefinite and inconstant against the definite and constant, must be pronounced all but infinite. the belief in a divine reason is alone capable of rendering rational the fact that mathematical truths are realised in the material world.[ ] [ ] see appendix xiii. the celestial bodies were among the earliest objects of science, and before there was any science they stimulated religious thought and awakened religious feeling. the sun and moon have given rise to so extraordinary a number of myths that some authors have referred to them the whole of heathen mythology. there can be little doubt that the growth of astronomical knowledge contributed greatly to bring about the transition from polytheism to monotheism, and that so soon as the heavens were clearly understood to be subject to law, and the countless bodies which circle in them not to be independent agents but parts or members of a single mechanical or organic system, the triumph of the latter was for ever secured. no science, indeed, has hitherto had so much influence on man's religious beliefs as astronomy, although there may now appear to be indications that chemistry and biology will rival it in this respect in the future. and it has been thus influential chiefly because through its whole history it has been a continuous, conspicuous, and ever-advancing, ever-expanding demonstration of a reign of law on the most magnificent scale,--a demonstration begun when with unassisted vision men first attempted roughly to distribute the stars into groups or constellations, and far from yet ended when the same laws of gravitation, light, heat, and chemical combination which rule on earth have been proved to rule on orbs so distant that their rays do not reach us in a thousand years. the system of which our earth is a member is vast, varied, and orderly, the planets and satellites of which it is composed being so adjusted as regards magnitude and mass, distance, rate, and plane of direction, &c., that the whole is stable and secure, while part ministers to part as organ to organ in an animal body. our own planet, for example, is so related to the sun and moon that seed-time and harvest never fail, and the ebb and flow of the tides never deceive us. and the solar system is but one of hundreds of millions of systems, some of which are incalculably larger than it, yet the countless millions of suns and stars thus "profusely scattered o'er the void immense" are so arranged and distributed in relation to one another and in accordance with the requirements of the profoundest mathematics as to secure the safety of one and all, and to produce everywhere harmony and beauty. each orb is affecting the orbit of every other--each is doing what, if unchecked, would destroy itself and the entire system--but so wondrously is the whole constructed that these seemingly dangerous disturbances are the very means of preventing destruction and securing the universal welfare, being due to reciprocally compensating forces which in given times exactly balance one another. is it, i ask, to be held as evidence of the power of the human mind that it should have been able after many centuries of combined and continuous exertion to compute with approximate accuracy the paths and perturbations of the planets which circle round our sun and the returns of a few comets, but as no evidence even of the existence of mind in the first cause of things that the paths and perturbations of millions on millions of suns and planets and comets should have been determined with perfect precision for all the ages past and future of their existence, so that, multitudinous as they are, each proceeds safely on its destined way, and all united form a glorious harmony of structure and motion?[ ] [ ] see appendix xiv. a much more recent science than astronomy, the science of chemistry, undertakes to instruct us as to the composition of the universe, and it is marvellous how much it can tell us even of the composition of the stars. what, then, is its most general and certain result? just this, that order of the strictest kind, the most definite proportions, are wrought into the very structure of every world, and of every compound object in the world, air and water, earth and mineral, plant and animal. the vast variety of visible substances are reducible to rather more than sixty constituent elements, each of which has not only its own peculiar properties but its own definite and unvarying combining proportions with other elements, so that amidst the prodigious number of combinations all is strictly ordered, numerically exact. there is no chemical union possible except when the elements bear to each other a numerically constant ratio. different compounds are always the products of the combination of the elements in different yet strictly definite proportions, there being no intermediate combinations, no transitional compounds. if each element did not admit of union with many others, the world would be dead and poor, its contents few and unvaried; if their unions were not always regulated by law, disorder would everywhere prevail. how comes it that they are so made in relation to one another that their manifold unions are ever regulated by law, and generate an endless variety of admirable products? who made them thus? did they make themselves? or, did any blind force make them? reason answers that they must have been made by an intelligence which wanted them for its purposes. when the proportions of the elementary constituents are altered, the same elements produce the most diverse substances with the most dissimilar and even opposite properties, charcoal and diamond, a deadly poison or the breath of life, theine or strychnine. these powers all work together for good; but if they worked even a very little differently--if the circumstances in which they work, not to speak of the laws by which they work, were altered--they would spread destruction and death through the universe. the atmosphere is rather a mixture than a combination of chemical elements, but it is a mixture in which the constituents are proportioned to each other in the only way which fits it to sustain the lives of plants and animals, and to accomplish its many other important services; and wonderful in the extreme is the provision made for the constant restoration of the due proportions amidst perpetual oscillations. one of the chiefs of modern chemistry, baron liebig, points to what takes place when rain falls on the soil of a field adapted for vegetable growth as to something which "effectually strikes all human wisdom dumb." "during the filtration of rain-water," he says, "through the soil, the earth does not surrender one particle of all the nutritive matter which it contains available for vegetable growth (such as potash, silicic acid, ammonia, &c.); the most unintermittent rain is unable to abstract from it (except by the mechanical action of floods) any of the chief requisites for its fertility. the particles of mould not only firmly retain all matter nutritive to vegetable growth, but also immediately absorb such as are contained in the rain-water (ammonia, potash, &c.). but only such substances are _completely_ absorbed from the water as are indispensable requisites for vegetable growth; others remain either entirely or for the most part in a state of solution." the laws and uses of light and heat, electricity and magnetism, and the adjustments which they presuppose, all point not less clearly to the ordinances of a supremely profound and accurate mind. in a word, out of a few elements endowed with definite powers, this world with its air and its seas, its hills and valleys, its vegetable forms and animal frames, and other worlds innumerable, have been built up by long-sustained and endlessly-varied processes of chemical synthesis mostly conducted under conditions so delicately adjusted to the requirements of each case, that the ablest chemists, with all their instruments and artifices, cannot even reproduce them on any scale however small. can these elements be reasonably thought of as having been unfashioned and unprepared, or these processes as having been uninstituted and unpresided over by intelligence?[ ] [ ] see appendix xv. the sciences of geology and palæontology disclose to us the history of our earth and of its vegetable and animal organisms. they prove that for countless ages, that from the inconceivably remote period of the deposition of the laurentian rocks, light and heat, air and moisture, land and sea, and all general physical forces have been so arranged and co-ordinated as to produce and maintain a state of things which secured during all these countless ages life and health and pleasure for the countless millions of individuals contained in the multitude of species of creatures which have contemporaneously or successively peopled the earth. the sea, with its winds and waves, its streams and currents, its salts, its flora and fauna, teems with adaptations no less than the land. probably no one has studied it with more care or to more purpose than lieutenant maury, and his well-known work on its physical geography proceeds throughout on the principle that "he who would understand its phenomena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters, and view it as the expression of one thought, a unity with harmonies which one intelligence, and one intelligence alone, could utter;" while many of its pages might appropriately be read as a commentary on these lines of wordsworth,-- "huge ocean shows, within his yellow strand, a habitation marvellously planned, for life to occupy in love and rest." the sciences referred to certify further, that as regards the various forms of life there has been from the time when it can be first traced to the present day "advance and progress in the main," and that the history of the earth corresponds throughout with the history of life on the earth, while each age prepares for the coming of another better than itself. but advance and progress presuppose intelligence, because they cannot be rationally conceived of apart from an ideal goal foreseen and selected. volumes might be written to show how subtly and accurately external nature is adjusted to the requirements of vegetable and animal life, and how vegetable and animal life are inter-related; nay, even on how well the earth is fitted for the development and happiness of man. think of the innumerable points of contact and connection, for example, between physical geography and political economy, which all indicate so many harmonies between the earth and man's economical condition, capacities, and history.[ ] [ ] see appendix xvi. the vegetable and animal kingdoms viewed generally, are also striking instances of unity of plan, of progressive order, of elaborately adjusted system. there are general principles of structure and general laws of development common to all organisms, constituting a plan of organisation capable of almost infinite variation, which underlies all the genera and orders of living creatures, vegetable and animal. it comprehends a number of subordinate plans which involve very abstract conceptions, and which even the ablest naturalists still very imperfectly comprehend. these higher plans would probably never have been thought of but for the detection of the numerous phenomena which seemed on a superficial view irreconcilable with the idea of purpose in creation. just as it was those so-called "disturbances" in the planetary orbits, which appeared at first to point to some disorder and error in the construction of the sidereal system, that prompted lagrange to the investigations which resulted in establishing that the order of the heavens was of a sublimer and more remarkable character than had been imagined, essentially including these apparent disturbances, so it has been the seeming exceptions to plan which are witnessed in rudimentary and aborted organs (such as the wing-bones in wingless birds, the finger-bones in horses, the legs below the skin in serpents, the teeth which never cut the gums in whales, &c.), that have indicated to modern biologists a unity of organisation far more comprehensive and wonderful than had previously been suspected. the larger and more ideal order thus brought to light as ruling in the organic world is one which could only have originated in a mind of unspeakable power and perfection. and it not only thus testifies directly of itself in favour of a divine intelligence, but the recognition of it, while correcting in some respects earlier conceptions as to the place of utility in nature, far from proving that utility has been disregarded or sacrificed, shows that each organ has been formed, not only with reference to its actual use in a given individual or species, but to the capacity of being applied to use in countless other individuals and species.[ ] [ ] see appendix xvii. when we enter into the examination of organisation in itself, adjustment becomes still more obvious in the processes of growth, reproduction, fructification, &c., in plants and animals, and in the provisions for locomotion, for securing food and shelter, for sight, hearing, &c., in the latter. the great physician, sir charles bell, devoted a whole treatise to point out those which are to be found in the hand alone. the arrangement of bones, muscles, joints, and other parts in the limb of a tiger or the wing of an eagle are not less admirable. the eye and ear are singularly exquisite structures, the former being far the most perfect of optical, and the latter far the most perfect of acoustic instruments. instances of this sort are, indeed, so remarkable, and so irresistibly convincing to most minds, that some theists have consented to rest on them exclusively the inference of a designing intelligence. they would grant that the evidences of purpose are only to be traced in organisation. the limitation is inconsistent and untenable, but not inexplicable. the adjustment of parts to one another, and their co-ordination as means to an end, are not more certainly existent in fitting the eye to see and the ear to hear than in securing the stability of the solar system, but they are more obviously visible because compressed into a compass easily grasped and surveyed; because organ and function are the most specialised kinds of means and ends; because organisms are the most curiously and conspicuously elaborate examples of order. and as the telescope can show us no end of the simple and majestic order of the heavens, so the microscope can show us no end of the exquisite and impressive order which discloses even-- "in nature's most minute design, the signature and stamp of power divine; contrivance intricate, expressed with ease, where unassisted sight no beauty sees. the shapely limb and lubricated joint within the small dimensions of a point; muscle and nerve miraculously spun, his mighty work, who speaks and it is done. the invisible, in things scarce seen revealed, to whom an atom is an ample field."--(cowper.)[ ] [ ] see appendix xviii. the traces of a supreme reason crowd still more upon the vision when we come to the human mind,-- "the varied scene of quick-compounded thought, and where the mixing passions endless shift." --(thomson.) the mere existence of originated minds necessarily implies the existence of an unoriginated mind. "what can be more absurd," asks montesquieu, "than to imagine that a blind fatalistic force has produced intelligent beings?" the complicated and refined adjustments of the body to the mind, and of the mind to the body, are so numerous and interesting that their study has now become the task of a special class of scientific men. a very little disorder in the organisation of the brain--such as even microscopic _post-mortem_ examination may fail to detect--suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses, to shake intellect from its throne, to paralyse the will, and to corrupt the sentiments and affections. how precise and skilful must the adjustment be between the sound brain and sane mind! who sufficiently realises the mystery of wisdom which lies in the familiar fact that the mind, by merely willing to use the members of the body, sets in motion instantaneously and unconsciously, without effort and without failure, cords and pulleys and levers, joints and muscles, of which it only vaguely, if at all, surmises the existence? the laws of our various appetencies, affections, and emotions, and their relations to their special ends or objects, the nature of the several intellectual faculties and their subservience to mental culture, and still more the general constitution of the mind as a system consisting of a multitude of powers under the government of reason and conscience, present to us vast fields filled with the evidences of divine wisdom.[ ] [ ] see appendix xix. there are others no less extensive and inexhaustible in the principles which underlie and maintain human society, and those which preside over the progressive development of humanity. political economy is the department of social science which has been cultivated with most success. what, then, is its most comprehensive and best established theorem? this--that although the great majority of men are moved mainly by self-interest, and few seek with much zeal or persistency the general good, the result of their being left in perfect freedom to pursue their own advantage, so long as they do not outwardly violate the rules of justice, is far better for the whole society than if they conformed their conduct to any plan which human wisdom, aiming directly at the general good, could devise; nature having provided in the principles of the human constitution and the circumstances of human life for the selfish plans and passions of individuals so neutralising one another, so counteracting and counterpoising one another, as to secure the social stability and welfare--as to leave general ideas and interests to rule with comparatively little resistance. it is surely a natural inference from this that a supreme reason grasps all human reasons, and uses them in order to realise a purpose grander and better than any which they themselves contemplate. history viewed as a whole teaches the same truth on a wider scale. an examination of it discloses a plan pervading human affairs from the origin of man until the present day--a progress which has proceeded without break or stoppage, in accordance with laws which are as yet very imperfectly apprehended. of the countless generations which have come and gone like the leaves of the forest, for unknown thousands of years, few have had the slightest glimpse of the order which connected them with their fellows, and embraced their every action; fewer still have sought to conform to it; the immense majority have set before them only mean and narrow schemes for personal good; all passions have raged and all vices prevailed in their turn; there have been confusion and tumult and war; and yet the order, progress, plan i speak of have been slowly and silently but surely built up. in this evolution of order out of the chaos of millions on millions of conflicting human wills seeking merely their own pleasure, there is, perhaps, even a more impressive proof of the operation of divine wisdom than in the origination and preservation of order among the multitudinous stars of heaven. the philosophical historian who has most conclusively shown by the scrutiny of the chief events in the annals of humanity the existence of such a progressive plan, is amply justified in arguing that it cannot have originated with man, or matter, or chance, but must be the work of god. "we have passed in review," he says, "all the theories imagined by philosophers and historians to explain the mysterious fact that there is in the life of man unfolded in history a succession, a plan, a development, which cannot be referred to man himself. some, despairing from the outset to find a solution, make of their ignorance a blind power which they call hazard. evidently that is no solution. hazard is a word, and nothing more. other writers--the majority of writers--say that this mysterious power is nature, under the form of climate, or races, or the whole of the physical influences which act on the moral world. but what is nature? whence has it this power, this foresight, this intelligence, which are so conspicuous in the course of our destinies? if nature is matter, and nothing but matter, that too is no answer. who will believe that matter acts with wisdom--with intelligence? where there is intelligent action there must be an intelligent being; therefore nature leads us to god. finally, there are those who substitute for nature general laws. but do not laws suppose a legislator? and who can this legislator be, if not god?"[ ] [ ] see appendix xx. there is, then, everywhere, both in the physical and moral worlds, order and adaptation, proportion and co-ordination, and there is very widely present progress--order which advances in a certain direction to a certain end, which is until realised only an ideal. this is the state of things which science discloses. the question is, is this state of things intelligible on any other supposition than that of a designing mind? the theist holds that it is not; that it directly and imperatively demands an intelligent cause; that to assign it either to no cause, or to any other than an intelligent cause, is, in the strictest and strongest sense of the term, absurd. if we deny that there is such order as i have indicated, we set aside the entire teaching of all the sciences--we pronounce science to be from beginning to end a delusion and a lie. men in the present day dare not do this. if we deny that such order implies the agency of a supreme intelligence, we contradict no express declaration of any of the sciences; we may accept all that they have to tell us about order, and they can tell us about nothing else. but notwithstanding this, it is far more reasonable, far less absurd, to deny that there is order in the universe, than to admit it and deny that its ultimate cause is an intelligence. further, although we cannot be more certain of the cause than of the effect from which it is inferred, and consequently cannot be more certain that an intelligence has produced the order which is in the universe than that there is order therein, the theistic inference from the whole of that order may well be greatly stronger than the scientific proof of order in any particular instance. men of science have probably never as good reasons for believing in the laws of order brought to light by their own special science, as the theist has for believing in a supreme intelligence because of the order which is the common and concurrent result of all the sciences, and which is obvious to every eye. ii. the argument from order and adaptation is often spoken of as "the argument from design." the phrase is an unfortunate one. the argument is not _from_ but _to_ design. to assume design and then to affirm that "every design must have a designer," is manifestly not serious reasoning, but a play upon words. to assume design at all is to assume precisely what one is most bound to prove; and to assume design in the universe is to assume what cannot be proved, yea, what the theist requires to show against the pantheist cannot be proved. in any other than a very loose and metaphorical sense design has no existence except in mind. there is no design in the sky, or the sea, or the land; there are only law, order, and arrangement therein, and these things are not designs although they imply designs. what we can describe as the designs of the lower animals are given to them with their constitutions, and are only a part of the instrumentality which fits them for their place in the world. men have designs properly so called; but the argument for the existence of god from the evidences of a supreme wisdom in the progressive evolution of human history, instead of resting on these designs, is based on the fact that what has actually been realised has far transcended them. science as a mere exposition of the facts of the universe can never show us divine design, for the good reason that there is no such design in these facts, although, had it not existed elsewhere, they could never have been what they are. while this is true, it must in justice be added that most if not all of the advocates of theism who have presented the argument under consideration in the faulty form,--"design implies a designer; the universe abounds in design; therefore the universe, so far as it abounds in design, implies a designer,"--have erred more in expression than in thought. in reality they have not meant by design what is properly so called, and consequently have not begun their argument by assuming what was denied and in need of proof. in reality they have meant by design those characteristics of things which they hold to be the indications or evidences or correlatives of intelligence, and which they might have designated by such terms as order, adjustment, adaptation, fitness, progress, &c. all attempts to refute their reasoning, therefore, by a strict and literal interpretation of the phrase "design implies a designer," must be pronounced unfair. censure of the phrase is warranted. rejection of the argument on account of the phrase is superficial and unjust. it has been held that the argument from order and adaptation is essentially different from the design argument. the reason given for this has been that the design argument is based on the analogy or supposed analogy between the works of nature and the products of human art. in this argument, we are told, we infer from the likeness which certain natural objects bear to artificial objects that there must be a likeness in their causes. we know, it is said, that only intelligent beings frame such structures as houses, ships, and watches, and seeing that there is in the mechanism of the heavens, the circulation of the blood, and the construction of the eye, arrangements and adjustments of a similar kind, we conclude that they also must have been framed by an intelligent being, who must be as much greater than man as the works of nature are greater than the works of art, for causes are proportional to their effects. now this may be the design argument as some have presented it who had no particular wish to criticise it severely, and it certainly is the way in which hume and kant wished it to be presented; but it has no claim whatever to be considered the only proper form of the argument, and is, in fact, a very bad form of it. it is true that there is an analogy between the works of nature and the works of art, and that on the strength of this analogy the two classes of works, and also their causes, may be compared, but not true that the design argument when correctly stated either rests on such analogy or implies such comparison. the analogy and comparison may be drawn into, and, as it were, incorporated with the design argument, but that is rather as a means of illustration than as a condition of inference. when we infer from an examination of their construction that the eye and the ear have been designed by an intelligent being, we are no more dependent on our knowledge that a watch or a telescope has been designed by an intelligent being than we are dependent on our knowledge of the eye and ear being the products of intelligence when we infer that the watch and the telescope are the products of intelligence. there is an inference in both cases, and an inference of precisely the same nature in both cases. it is as direct and independent when the transition is to god from his works as when to our fellow-men from their works. we are greatly mistaken if we suppose that we have an immediate knowledge of the intelligence of the beings who make watches, houses, and ships; we only know that the beings who make these things are intelligent because such things could not be made without intelligence: in a word, we only know our fellow-creatures to be intelligent beings because they utter and arrange sounds so as to convey a meaning, execute movements which tend to an end, and construct machines. we have no more a direct perception or a personal experience of the intelligence of our fellow-men than we have of the intelligence of god. the mind which has given origin to the order and adjustments of the universe is not more absolutely inaccessible to sense and self-consciousness than the mind which gives origin to the order and adjustments of a watch. it is therefore impossible that our knowledge of the former should be dependent on our knowledge of the latter. in both cases the knowledge is inferential,--in both cases it is dependent on the immediate consciousness of intelligence in ourselves,--but the inference is in the former case neither longer nor less legitimate than in the latter. we deny, then, that there is any truth in the statement that the design argument rests on the analogy between the works of nature and the products of art it rests directly on the character of the works of nature as displaying order and adjustment. it is essentially identical with the argument which we have expounded. it is not less objectionable to speak of the argument from order and adaptation as being an argument from final causes than to speak of it as being an argument from design, unless the different significations of final cause be distinguished, and those which are irrelevant and illegitimate be excluded. for the expression "final cause" has various significations which are indeed intimately related, yet which cannot be employed indifferently without leading to utter confusion. these significations may be distributed into two classes. each class contains three significations, and every signification of the first class has a signification of the second class to correspond to it. in fact, the significations of the first class are simply so many aspects of order or adaptation, and those of the second class so many aspects of design or intention; the former are order and adaptation viewed with reference to the intrinsic, the extrinsic, and the ultimate ends of things, and the latter are design and intention viewed with reference to the same three ends. final cause sometimes means the intrinsic end of what is orderly and adjusted, the realisation of the nature of anything which is considered as a whole, a complex of order and adjustment. the combined stability and movement of the solar system is in this sense the final cause of the arrangements by which that result is secured. sight is in this sense the final cause of the eye, because in sight the true nature of the eye manifests itself. then, final cause sometimes means not the intrinsic but the extrinsic end of what is orderly and adjusted; not merely the realisation of the nature of anything, but its relationship to other things, its adaptations to their requirements, its uses; not merely the end of an arrangement regarded as a self-contained or completed whole, but the end or ends which it serves as a system surrounded by, connected with, and included in other systems. it is impossible to admit final cause in the sense of intrinsic end and to deny it in that of extrinsic end; for the universe is not a mere aggregate of systems placed alongside of one another, but otherwise unconnected--it is itself a system composed of an infinity of systems within systems. nothing in nature stands alone; nothing lives to itself nor dies to itself. what is a whole with reference to something smaller than itself, is a part with reference to something larger than itself. the eye is a whole with reference to its own cords, lenses, fluids, and membranes, but it is a part with reference to the body; sight is therefore not more certainly its end than the uses of sight how can a man admit final cause to be involved in the relationship between his stomach and bodily life, but deny it to be involved in the relationship between his stomach and the vegetable and animal substances with which he satisfies its cravings? clearly the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic ends is a narrow one, and exists not so much in the nature of things as in our way of looking at things. we have but to elevate and extend our own view, and what was before an extrinsic end is thereby changed into an intrinsic end. admit, in fact, final cause anywhere, and you must admit it everywhere; admit anything to have an end, and you must admit all things to have an end; for the world is a grand and wondrous unity in which all objects depend on and serve one another, and all forces contribute to the attainment of a single comprehensive issue. once accept the principle of finality, and there is no consistent stopping short of the conviction of aristotle, that on it hang the whole heavens and earth. it is only when the word final cause is used in one or other of these two senses that we can with any propriety speak of reasoning from final causes to the existence of god. and these are just the senses in which the expression is now least used. final cause is generally employed at present to signify design. it means, not the arrangement of causes and effects into systematic unities, the parts of which have definite relations to one another and a common issue, or the adaptation of these unities to support and serve one another, but purpose or intention in the divine mind with respect to such arrangement or adaptation. this sense of the word is so obviously general enough to refer both to intrinsic and extrinsic ends that it would be unnecessary to direct attention to the fact, were it not that we are much more apt to fall into error regarding extrinsic than intrinsic ends, and consequently, regarding the intention or purpose which refers to them. a thing has just one intrinsic end--namely, the single conspicuous and all-comprehensive function or issue in virtue of which we can regard it as being a whole or unity, and as possessed of a certain relative independence or completeness. there is thus comparatively little possibility of error in determining what the intrinsic end is in a given instance, and comparatively little danger of presumption in affirming it to have been the end contemplated by the divine mind. there is no doubt, for example, that the eye is an instrument constructed in a way calculated to attain the intrinsic end--sight; and there can be no presumption in affirming that god must have had that end in view in the construction of the eye. if there be a god, and if he have had anything to do with the making of the eye, he must have designed that his creatures should see with their eyes. it is different with extrinsic ends. a thing has never merely one extrinsic end; it has always a multitude of extrinsic ends, for it is always related to a multitude of other things. if we would speak of the extrinsic end of a thing we must mean thereby the whole of its adaptations to other things, the entire circle of its external relationships, the sum of its uses. but men have always shown themselves prone in judging of the extrinsic ends of things to single out some particular adaptation or use, or at least a few adaptations or uses, and to ignore or exclude all others. and especially have they shown themselves prone to judge of things merely from their relationship and utility to themselves, as if their happiness was the chief if not sole end of all things. this is, of course, an utterly erroneous method of judging, and necessarily leads to ridiculous thoughts about things, and to irreverent thoughts about god's designs in the creation of things. "it can," as hegel tells us, "truly profit neither religion nor science, if, after considering the vine with reference to the well-known uses which it confers upon man, we proceed to consider the cork-tree with reference to the corks which are cut from its bark to serve as stoppers for wine-bottles." when we affirm, then, that final causes in the sense of intrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are systematic unities, the parts of which are definitely related to one another and co-ordinated to a common issue; and when we affirm that final causes in the sense of extrinsic ends are in things, we affirm merely that things are not isolated and independent systems, but systems definitely related to other systems, and so adjusted as to be parts or components of higher systems, and means to issues more comprehensive than their own. we cannot affirm that final causes in the sense of designs are in things; they can only exist in a mind. what do we mean when we hold that final causes in this sense truly are in the divine mind, and with reference equally to intrinsic and extrinsic ends? merely that such order and adjustment as may actually be seen in things and between things--seen with the naked eye it may be, or only to be seen through the telescope or microscope--or which, if they cannot be seen, yet can by scientific induction be proved to be in and between things,--that that order and adjustment which actually exist, were intended or designed by god to exist. of course every theist who sees evidences of god's existence in the harmonies of nature, must necessarily rise to final causes in this sense from final causes in the other senses which have been indicated; he must pass from material arrangements to the divine intelligence which he believes to be manifested by them. and there can be no shadow of presumption in any theist searching for final causes--divine designs--in this sense and to this extent. what descartes and others have said against doing so, on the ground that it is arrogant for a man to suppose he can investigate the ends contemplated by the deity--can penetrate into the counsels of divine wisdom--has manifestly no force or relevancy, so long as all that is maintained is that the order which actually exists was meant to exist. the doubt or denial of that is irreverent. to admit the existence of god, and yet to refuse to acknowledge that he purposed and planned the adaptations and harmonies in nature, is surely as presumptuous as it is inconsistent. to assume that god is ignorant of the constitution and character of the universe, and has had no share in the contrivance and management of it, is to degrade him to the level of the dream-and-dread-begotten gods of democritus and epicurus. better not to think of god at all, than to think of him in such a way. the final cause of a thing, however, may mean, and with reference both to adjustment and design, neither its intrinsic nor extrinsic, but its ultimate end. it may mean, not merely that a thing is and was intended to be the mechanism or organism which science analyses and explains, and to stand in the relationships and fulfil the uses which science traces, but also that it will have, and was intended to have, a destination in the far future. we may ask, what is the goal towards which creation moves? what will be the fate of the earth? in what directions are vegetable and animal life developing? what is the chief end of man? whither is history tending? what is the ideal of truth which science has before it, and which it hopes to realise? of beauty, which art has before it? of goodness, which virtue has before it? and although to most if not all of these questions probably no very definite and certain answer can be given, to deny that they can in any measure be answered, to pronounce all speculation regarding ultimate ends as wholly vain, would justly be deemed the expression of a rash and thoughtless dogmatism. science claims not only to explain the past but to foretell the future. the power of prevision possessed by a science is the best criterion of its rank among the sciences when rank is determined by certitude. and most significant is the boldness with which some of the sciences have of late begun to forecast the future. thus, with reference to the end of the world, the spirit of prophecy, which until very recently was almost confined to the most noted religious visionaries, is now poured largely out upon our most distinguished physicists. this we regard as a most significant and hopeful circumstance, and trust that ere long the prophets of science will be far less discordant and conflicting in their predictions even of the remotest issues than they must be admitted to be at present. while speculation as to final causes in the sense of ultimate ends is, within certain limits, as legitimate as it is natural, its results are undoubtedly far too meagre and uncertain to allow of our reasoning from them to the existence or wisdom of god. we must prove that there is a divine intelligence from what we actually perceive in things, and not from what we can conjecture as to the final destinies of things. in fact, until we have ascertained that there is a divine intelligence, and in some measure what are the principles on which that intelligence proceeds, our chance of reaching truth through speculation as to the ultimate ends of things is, in all probability, exceedingly small. it is on no hazardous speculations of this kind that we would rest an argument for the divine existence, although questions have been raised as to the divine character and government which will, at a later stage of the discussion, involve us to some extent in the consideration of ultimate ends. when final cause is employed to signify design in any reference, be it to intrinsic, extrinsic, or ultimate ends, i have nothing to object to bacon and descartes's condemnation of it as illegitimate and unprofitable in science. i know of no science, physical or moral, in which, while thus understood, it can be of the slightest use as a principle of scientific discovery. it is as much out of place in the world of organic as of inorganic nature. it is quite incorrect to say that although it does not lead to the discovery of new truths in strictly physical science, it does so in physiology for example, or in psychology, or in ethics. it is only when it means merely the inherent order and adjustment of things--not when it means designs and purposes regarding them--that the search after it can possibly lead to scientific truth, and, when so understood, it leads to truth in all sciences alike. it was the suggestive principle in adams and leverrier's discovery of the planet neptune from certain unexplained perturbations of the planet uranus, quite as much as in harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood from the observation of certain unexplained valves at the outlet of the veins and the rise of the arteries. it is involved in the very nature of the inductive process, and is only confirmed and enlarged by the progress of inductive research. it stands in no opposition to the principle of efficient causes, and is in no degree disproved by the discovery of such causes. assertions to the effect that it has gradually been driven by the advance of knowledge from the simpler sciences into those which are complex and difficult,--that it is being expelled even out of biology and sociology--and that it always draws its confirmation, not from phenomena which have been explained, but from phenomena which await explanation,--are often made, but they rest almost exclusively on the wishes of those who make them. they have no real historical basis.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxi. lecture vi. objections to the argument from order examined. i. the universe is a system which comprehends countless subordinate systems. it is full of combinations of parts which constitute wholes, and of means which conspire to ends. the natural and obvious explanation of the order and adjustments which it thus presents is that they are due to a mind or intelligence. and this is the only rational explanation of them. mind can alone account for order and adjustment, for the co-ordination of parts into a whole, or the adaptation of means to an end. if we refer them to anything else, the reference is essentially contrary to reason, essentially irrational. it may seem at the first superficial glance as if there were a variety of hypotheses as to the origin of the order we everywhere see around us, all equally or nearly equally credible; but adequate reflection cannot fail to convince us that they must be reduced to a single alternative--to two antagonistic theories. our only choice is between reason and unreason, between a sufficient and an insufficient cause, between, we may even say, a cause and no cause. this will be brought out by an examination of the various hypotheses which have been suggested by those who are unwilling to admit that the order of the world originated in mind. they try their best to suggest some other alternative than that which i have said is inevitable; but every suggestion they make only raises the alternative which they would avoid--mind or chance, reason or unreason, a sufficient explanation or an absurd one. before proceeding to establish this, however, it may be necessary to remark on some direct objections which have been taken to the design argument,--objections which might be valid, although no explanation of order could be given or were even attempted. the inference which the theist requires to draw from the existence of order in the universe is merely the existence of an intelligence who produced that order. it follows that it is an unfair objection to his argument to urge, as has often been urged, that it does not directly and of itself prove god to be the creator of the universe, but only the former of it--not the author of matter, but only of the collocations of matter. this objection, which men even like hume and kant and j. s. mill, have thought worth employing, is simply that the argument does not prove more than it professes to prove. it does not pretend to make all other reasoning for the divine existence superfluous. it is no condition of its validity that it should stand alone; that it should contribute nothing to other arguments and receive nothing from them. the objection is thus entirely irrelevant. it may be a wise caution to those who would trust exclusively to it, and neglect or depreciate other arguments. it is no objection to its legitimacy. it is remarkable, too, that those who have urged this objection have never felt that before employing it they were bound to satisfy themselves and to prove to others that order is a mere surface or superficial thing--outside of matter, superimposed on it. if order be something inherently and intrinsically in matter--be of its very essence--belong to what is ultimate in it; if matter and its form be inseparable,--then the author of its order must have been also the author of itself; and all that this objection shows us is, that those who have employed it have had mistaken notions about the nature of matter. now, as i have already had to indicate, modern science seems rapidly perfecting the proof of this. the order in the heavens, and in the most complicated animal organisms, appears to be not more wonderful than the order in the ultimate atoms of which they are composed. the balance of evidence is in favour of the view that order extends as far and penetrates as deep as matter itself does. the human intellect is daily learning that it is foolish to fancy that there is anywhere in matter a sphere in which the divine wisdom does not manifest itself in and through order. there is still another remark to be made on the objection under consideration. the immediate inference from the order of the universe is to an intelligent former of the universe, not to a creator. but this does not preclude the raising of the question, is it reasonable to believe the former of the world merely its former? must not its former be also its creator? on the contrary, the inference that the order of the world must be the result of intelligent agency ought to suggest this question to every serious and reflective mind, and it should even contribute something to its answer. the order of the universe must have originated with intelligence. what is implied in this admission? clearly that the order of the universe cannot have originated with matter,--that matter is unintelligent, and cannot account either for intelligence or the effects of intelligence. but if so, the intelligence which formed the universe must be an eternal intelligence. the supposition that matter is eternal must in this case be supplemented by the admission that mind is eternal. in other words, the affirmation that the former of the world is merely its former--the denial that its former is also its creator--means dualism, the belief in two distinct eternal existences,--an eternal mind and eternal matter. whoever is not prepared to accept this hypothesis must abandon the affirmation and denial from which it necessarily follows. and who can, after due deliberation, accept it? the law of parsimony of causes absolutely forbids our assuming, for the explanation of anything, more causes than are necessary to account for it. it forbids, therefore, our belief in an eternal matter and an eternal mind, unless we can show reason for holding that one of them alone is not a sufficient cause of the universe. now those who grant the inference from order to intelligence, themselves admit that matter is not a sufficient first cause of the universe as it actually exists. do they find any person admitting that mind would be an insufficient first cause? do they themselves see any way of showing its insufficiency? do they not even perceive that it would be foolish and hopeless to try to show that an eternal mind could not create a material universe, and that all they could show would be, the here quite irrelevant truth, that the human mind is ignorant of the manner in which this could be done? if the answers to these questions are what i believe they must be, it must also be acknowledged that the former of the universe can only be rationally thought of as also its creator. i turn to the consideration of another equally futile objection to the argument from order. that argument, it is said, does not prove the divine intelligence to be infinite. the universe, as a system of order, is finite, and we have no right to conclude that its cause is in respect of intelligence, or in any other respect, infinite. we must attribute to the cause the wisdom necessary to produce the effect, but no more. the obvious reply is, that this is precisely what we do. the argument is not employed to prove the infinity of the divine intelligence, but to prove that the order and adaptations which everywhere abound in the universe must have had an intelligence capable of conceiving and producing them. it is an obvious and legitimate argument to that extent, and it is pushed no farther. the inference that the world had an intelligent author is as simple, direct, and valid, as that any statue, painting, or book had an intelligent author. when mr spencer, mr lewes, and professor tyndall argue that the cause of the universe cannot be known to be intelligent, because the reason of man, being finite, cannot comprehend the infinite, they overlook that the reason of man has no need to comprehend the infinite in order to apprehend such manifestations of the infinite as come before it. just as a person reading the works of the able men who urge this weak objection feels certain that these books must have had their origin in minds endowed with certain intellectual powers, and cannot have been produced by chance, or blind forces, or bodies destitute of minds, and this although much in their minds is and always must be inscrutable to him; so, when he studies the books of nature and of history, he feels equally certain, and in the same way certain, that they are the compositions of a most amazing intellect; and his certainty as to this need not be lessened, clouded, or in any degree affected, by the great and indubitable, but here irrelevant, truth--that the mind of god is in itself, in its essence, inscrutable; and in its greatness, its infinity, incomprehensible. the argument from order must further be admitted sufficient to show, if valid at all, that the wisdom of the first cause is of the most wondrous character. the more nature and mind and history are studied by any one who sees in them evidence of design at all, the more wondrous must the wisdom displayed in them be felt to be. whoever realises that that wisdom is at once guiding the countless hosts of heavenly bodies in all their evolutions through the boundless realms of space, and fashioning and providing for the countless hosts of microscopic creatures dwelling on the leaf of a flower or in a drop of water, everywhere accomplishing a multitude of ends by few and simple means, or effecting single and definite purposes by the most elaborate and complex contrivances, must feel that rash beyond all expression is the short-sighted mortal who can venture to affirm that it is not infinite. if "the lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, and by understanding hath established the heavens," his wisdom and his understanding are at least so great that we cannot measure them, and have no right to pronounce them limited. the adjustments and harmonies of the universe, as we know it, indicate a depth and richness of wisdom in its author which far pass our comprehension; and the universe which we know is probably less in comparison with the universe which god has made, than the leaf on which a host of animalcules live and die is in comparison with the vastest of primeval forests, or an ant-hill with the solar system. the universe which we see and know is a noble commentary on such words of scripture as these: "i wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. the lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. i was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. when he prepared the heavens, i was there: when he set a compass on the face of the depth: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then i was by him, as one brought up with him; and i was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." but beyond the universe which we see and know, extend illimitable fields of space and stretches of time which we do not see and do not know, but which may be even more crowded with the works of divine intelligence than any which are within our range of bodily or mental vision. the ingenious authors of the book entitled 'the unseen universe' suppose the entire visible universe to be but a local product and temporary phase of a far older and greater universe, which itself again may be only an island in the ocean of a universe still more stupendous and refined. whatever error may be mingled with this thought in the work mentioned, there is, i doubt not, at least this much of truth also, that the entire course of nature which science reveals is but a ripple, a current, in the ocean of god's universal action. the man whose mind is duly open to the possibility of this will not venture to pronounce the intelligence of god to be finite. the man who fails to recognise its possibility is very blind, very thoughtless. it is scarcely credible that the evidences of god's wisdom should have been argued to be proofs of his weakness. and yet this has happened. "it is not too much to say," wrote mr j. s. mill, "that every indication of design in the kosmos is so much evidence against the omnipotence of the designer. for what is meant by design? contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. but the necessity for contrivance--the need of employing means--is a consequence of the limitation of power. who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? the very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. otherwise they are not means, but an encumbrance. a man does not use machinery to move his arms. if he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition. but if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of contrivances? can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a being for whom no difficulties exist. the evidences, therefore, of natural theology distinctly imply that the author of the kosmos worked under limitations."[ ] [ ] three essays on religion, pp. , . this, it seems to me, is very strange and worthless reasoning. according to it, the ability of god to form and execute a purpose is evidence not of power but of weakness. i wonder if mr mill imagined that the inability of god to form and carry out a purpose would have been evidence not of his weakness but of his power. or did he suppose, perhaps, that both ability and inability were signs of weakness, and that, consequently, for once opposites were identical? or did he not think on the subject at all, and so reasoned very much at random? i confess i cannot see how ability to contrive things is weakness, or inability to contrive them power. i hold to bacon's maxim that "knowledge is power," and refuse to admit that wisdom is weakness. but god, if omnipotent, it is said, did not need to contrive: his mere word must have been sufficient. yes, is the obvious answer; his mere word, his mere will, was sufficient to produce all his contrivances, and has produced them all. there is no shadow of reason for suspecting that anything was difficult to him or for him. no such suspicion is entertained by those who employ the design argument; and those who would rationally object to that argument must find something else to insist on than the power of god's mere will. the will of god is everywhere as efficacious as he in his omnipotence and omniscience chooses that it should be. at the same time, if he desire certain ends, his will cannot remain mere will and dispense with the contrivance of appropriate means. if he wish to bestow happiness on human beings, he must create human beings, and contrive their bodies and minds. to speak of his will as able to "bestow the same efficacy on any means" is no less contrary to reason than it would be to speak of it as able to make the part greater than the whole. it is only in the world imagined by mr mill--one in which two and two might be five--that a sunbeam could serve the same purpose as a granite pillar or a steam-engine; and such a world, most people will assuredly hold, even omnipotence could not create. infinite power and wisdom must necessarily work "under limitations" when they originate and control finite things; but the limitations are not in the infinite power and wisdom themselves--they are in their operations and effects. according to mr mill's argument, infinite power could not create a finite world at all: only a finite power could do so. that surely means that a finite power must be mightier than an infinite power; and that, again, is surely a plain self-contradiction, a manifest absurdity. there is another objection which, although in itself unworthy of answer, has been urged so often and presented in so many forms, some of which are rhetorically impressive, that it cannot be wholly passed over. the design argument has been censured as "assuming that the genesis of the heavens and the earth was effected somewhat after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture"--as "converting the power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting as man is seen to act"--as "transforming the first cause into a magnified mechanist who constructs a work of art, and then sits apart from it and observes how it goes," &c. now the heavens and the earth are to such a wonderful extent exemplifications both of mechanical laws and æsthetic principles, that no man of sense, i think, will deny that they may most justly be compared to machines or works of art, or even pronounced to be machines and works of art. they are that, although they are more than that. an animal is a machine, although an organism too. every organism is a machine, although every machine is not an organism. art and nature are not antagonistic and exclusive. man and all man's arts are included in nature, and nature is the highest art. while, however, it is legitimate and even necessary to illustrate the design argument by references to human inventions, the numerous and immense differences between the works of man's art and the processes of nature must not be overlooked; and there is no excuse for saying that they have been overlooked. it is precisely because the universe is so above anything man has made or can make, and because vegetable and animal organisms are so different from watches and statues, that the argument in question leads us to a divine and not to a merely human intelligence. it implies that both the works of god and the works of man are products of intelligence; but it does not require that they should have anything else in common. it recognises that the most elaborate and exquisite contrivances of man fall immeasurably below "nature's most minute designs." so far from requiring, it forbids our carrying any of the limitations or peculiarities of human contrivance over to that which is divine. besides, the belief in design is held in conjunction with the belief in creation out of nothing. the same persons who recognise that there is a divine wisdom displayed in the constitution and course of nature believe the universe to have been called into being by the mere volition of the almighty. but among all theories of the genesis of the heavens and the earth, that is the only one which does not represent the first cause as working like a man. man never creates--he cannot create. to produce anything he must have something to work on--he must have materials to mould and modify.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxii. ii. those who refuse to refer the order and adaptations in the universe to a designing intelligence are bound to account for them in some other way. has this been done? has any person succeeded in tracing them back to any other principle which can be reasonably regarded as their cause, or as adequate to their production? this is the question which we have now to consider. matter, some would have us believe, is the origin of the order of the universe. grant it, and there is still the question--what is the origin of matter?--to be disposed of. we have seen that this is a question which we are bound to raise; we have seen that there are strong reasons for holding that matter had an origin, had a beginning in time, and none whatever for regarding it as self-existent and eternal. the very existence of order and system, of mechanical adjustments and organic adaptations in the universe, seems to prove that matter must have had a beginning. if certain collocations of matter evince design, and must have had a beginning, the adaptation of the parts to form the collocation evinces design, and implies a beginning. and if matter had a beginning, its cause can only have been mind. to say that it originated with chance or necessity is plainly absurd. chance and necessity are meaningless terms unless mind or matter be presupposed. there can be no accidents where neither mind nor matter exists. there can be no chance where there is no law. chance or accident is what occurs when two or more independent series of phenomena meet, without their meeting having been premeditated and provided for. when one series of causes leads a man to pass a house at a given moment of a given day, and another series of causes, coexistent with but wholly independent of the former series, determines that a heavy body shall fall from the roof of that house at that moment of that day and kill that man, the consequence--his death--is what may be properly called an accident, or matter of chance. one who believes, indeed, in the omniscience and universal foreordination and government of god, will hold that even in such a case the accident or chance is merely apparent; but he will not deny the right of the atheist to speak of chance or accident in this way, or to explain as matters of chance whatever he can. the word chance, or accident, can have no intelligible sense, however, unless there be such independent series of phenomena--unless there be mental and material existences, mental and material laws. chance cannot be conceived of, even by the atheist, as the origin of existence. the same may be said of necessity. matter or mind may act necessarily, but necessity cannot act without matter or mind. if it be requisite, therefore, to seek a cause for matter, mind alone can be assigned as its cause. if we are justified in seeking for the origin of matter at all, our choice of an answer lies between mind and absurdity, between a real and sufficient cause and an imaginary and inconceivable cause. besides, how could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent and eternal? it is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a supreme mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the english alphabet produced the plays of shakespeare, without the slightest assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. these atoms might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long intervals, produce, by a chance contact, some curious collocation or compound; but never could they produce order or organisation, on an extensive scale or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate explanation. to believe that their fortuitous and undirected movements could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. yet no consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance-hypothesis. all the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists, from democritus and epicurus to diderot and lange, have devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our present world--a special collocation among the countless millions of collocations, past and future. throw the letters of the greek alphabet, it has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the iliad and all greek books. the theory of probabilities, i need hardly say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd. throw letters together without thought through all eternity, and you will never make them express thought. all the letters in the iliad might have been tossed and jumbled together from morning to night by the hands of the whole human race, from the beginning of the world until now, and the first line of the iliad would have been still to compose, had not the genius of homer been inspired to sing the wrath of achilles and the war around troy. but what is the iliad to the hymn of creation, and the drama of providence? were these glorious works composed by the mere jumbling together of atoms, which were not even prepared beforehand to form things, as letters are to form words, and which had to shake themselves into order without the help of any hand? they may believe that who can. it seems to me that it ought to be much easier to believe all the arabian nights. to ascribe the origination of order to _law_ is a manifest evasion of the real problem. law is order. law is the very thing to be explained. the question is--has law a reason, or is it without a reason? the unperverted human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason. "the existence of a law connecting and governing any class of phenomena implies a presiding intelligence which has preconceived and established the law. the regulation of events by precise rules of time and space, of number and measure, is evidence of thought and mind." so says dr whewell; and the statement is amply justified by the fact, that all laws and rules in the universe imply that existences are related to one another in a way of which intelligent adjustment alone is the adequate and ultimate explanation. the existence of a law uniformly involves the coexistence of several conditions, and that is a phenomenon which, whenever the conditions and law are physically ultimate, and consequently physically inexplicable, clearly presupposes mind. laws, in a word, are not the causes but the expressions of order. they are themselves the results of delicately accurate adjustments, which indicate the operation of a divine wisdom. there are chemical laws, for example, simply because there are chemical elements endowed with affinities, attractions, or forces the most diverse, yet so balanced and harmonised as to secure the welfare of the world. besides, laws do not act of themselves. no law produces of itself any result. it is the agents which act according to the law that produce results, and the nature of the result produced depends on the number and character of the agents, and how each is situated and circumstanced. if the agents oppose each other, or are inappropriately distributed, they bring about disorder and disaster in conformity to law. there is no calamity, no evil, no scene of confusion, in the known world, which is not the result of the action of agents which operate in strictest accordance to law. the law of gravitation might rule every particle of matter, and yet conflict and confusion and death would prevail throughout the entire solar system were harmony and stability and life not secured by very special arrangements. matter might have all its present inherent and essential laws, and yet remain for ever a chaos. apart from a designing and superintending intelligence, the chances in favour of chaos and against cosmos, even allowing matter to have uncreated properties and laws, were incalculable. the obvious inference is that which professor jevons expresses in these words--"as an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an unlimited number of modes of distribution, there must, even granting matter to have had all its laws from eternity, have been at some moment in time, out of the unlimited choices and distributions possible, that one choice and distribution which yielded the fair and orderly universe that now exists." only out of rational choice can order have come. the most common mode, perhaps, of evading the problem which order presents to reason, is the indication of the process by which the order has been realised. from democritus to the latest darwinian there have been men who supposed that they had completely explained away the evidences for design in nature when they had described the physical antecedents of the arrangements appealed to as evidences. aristotle showed the absurdity of the supposition more than years ago. but those who deny final causes have gone on arguing in the same irrational manner down to the present time. they cannot, in fact, do otherwise. they are committed to a false position, and they dare not abandon the sophism on which it rests. nothing else can explain how any sane mind should infer that because a thing is conditioned it cannot have been designed. the man who argues that the eye was not constructed in order to see because it has been so constructed as to be capable of seeing, is clearly either unable to reason correctly, or allows his reasoning faculty to be terribly perverted by prejudice. that a result is secured by appropriate conditions can seem to no sound and unprejudiced intellect a reason for regarding it to have been undesigned. and yet what other reason is involved in all the attempts to explain away final causes by means of the nebular, darwinian, and other development hypotheses? m. comte imagines that he has shown the inference of design, from the order and stability of the solar system, to be unwarranted, when he has pointed out the physical conditions through which that order and stability are secured, and the process by which they have been obtained. he refers to the comparative smallness of the planetary masses in relation to the central mass, the feeble eccentricity of their orbits, the moderate mutual inclination of their planes, and the superior mean density of their solid over their fluid constituents, as the circumstances which render it stable and habitable, and these characteristic circumstances, as he calls them, he tells us flow naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter. when he has done this, he supposes himself to have proved that the heavens declare no other glory than that of hipparchus, of kepler, and of newton. now, the assertion that the peculiarities which make the solar system stable and the earth habitable have flowed naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter, is one which greatly requires proof, but which has never received it. in saying this, we do not challenge the proof of the nebular theory itself. that theory may or may not be true. we are quite willing to suppose it true; to grant that it has been scientifically established. what we maintain is, that even if we admit unreservedly that the earth, and the whole system to which it belongs, once existed in a nebulous state, from which they have been gradually evolved into their present condition conformably to physical laws, we are in no degree entitled to infer from the admission the conclusion which comte and others have drawn. the man who fancies that the nebular theory implies that the law of gravitation, or any other physical law, has of itself determined the course of cosmical evolution, so that there is no need for believing in the existence and operation of a divine mind, proves merely that he is not exempt from reasoning very illogically. the solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and constitution--if it was neither too rare nor too dense, neither too fluid nor too tenacious; if its atoms were all numbered, its elements all weighed, its constituents all disposed in due relation to each other--that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a system of order, which intelligence alone could account for, as the worlds which have been developed from it. the origin of the nebula thus presents itself to the reason as a problem which demands solution no less than the origin of the planets. all the properties and laws of the nebula require to be accounted for. what origin are we to give them? it must be either reason or unreason. we may go back as far as we please, but at every step and stage of the regress we must find ourselves confronted with the same question--the same alternative. the argument of comte, it is further obvious, proceeds on the arbitrary and erroneous assumption that a process is proved to have been without significance or purpose when the manner in which it has been brought about is exhibited. it is plain that on this assumption even those works of man which have cost most thought might be shown to have cost none. a house is not built without considerable reflection and continuous reference to an end contemplated and desired, but the end is only gradually realised by a process which can be traced from its origin onwards, and through the concurrence or sequence of a multitude of conditions. would a description of the circumstances on which the security and other merits of a house depend,--of the peculiarities in its foundation, walls, and roof, in its configuration and materials, which render it convenient and comfortable, or of the processes by which these peculiarities were attained,--prove the house to have been unbuilt by man, to have been developed without the intervention of an intelligent architect? it would, if comte's argument were good; if it would not, comte's argument must be bad. but can any one fail to see that such an argument in such a case would be ridiculous? the circumstances, peculiarities, and processes referred to are themselves manifest evidences of design and intelligence. they are a part of what has to be explained, and a part of it which can only be explained on the supposition of a contriving and superintending mind. they entitle us to reject all hypotheses which would explain the construction of the house without taking into account the intelligence of its architect. the circumstances, peculiarities, and process described by comte, as rendering the earth an orderly system and the abode of life, are no less among the evidences for the belief that intelligence has presided over the formation of the earth. they require for their rational comprehension to be thought of as the means and conditions by which ends worthy of intelligence have been secured. they require to be accounted for; and they cannot be reasonably accounted for except on the supposition of having been designed. if we reject that view we must accept this, that the present system of things is a special instance of order which has occurred among innumerable instances of disorder, produced by the interaction of the elements or atoms of matter in infinite time. these elements or atoms we must imagine as affecting all possible combinations, and falling at length, after countless failures, into a regular and harmonious arrangement of things. now, we can in a vague, thoughtless way imagine this, but we cannot justify our belief of it either by particular facts or general reasons. it is an act of imagination wholly divorced from intelligence. thus to refer the origin and explanation of universal order to chance, is merely mental caprice. if the evolution of the earth and the heavenly bodies from a nebula destroy neither the relevancy nor the force of the design argument, the development of complex organisms from simple ones, and the descent of all the plants and animals on earth from a very few living cells or forms, will not remove or lessen the necessity for supposing an intelligence to have designed all the organisms, simple and complex alike, and to have foreordained, arranged, and presided over the course of their development. were it even proved that life and organisation had been evolved out of dead and inorganic matter, the necessity of believing in such an intelligence would still remain. nothing of the kind has yet been proved. on the contrary, scientific experimentation has all tended to show that life proceeds only from life. but had it been otherwise--had this break and blank in the development theory been filled up--matter would only have been proved to be more wonderful than it had been supposed to be. the scientific confirmation of the hypothesis of what is called spontaneous generation would not relieve the mind from the necessity of referring the potency of life and all else that is wonderful in matter either to design or chance, reason or unreason--it would not free it from the dilemma which had previously presented itself.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxiii. the development of higher from lower organisms, of course, still less frees us from the obligation to believe that a supreme intelligence presides over the development. development is not itself a cause, but a process,--it is a something which must have a cause; and the only kinds of development which have yet been shown to be exemplified in the organic world demand intelligence as their ultimate cause. i do not know that i can better prove that there is no opposition between development and design than by referring to an illustration which professor huxley made use of with a directly contrary view. to show that the argument from final causes, or what is often called the theological argument, had, as commonly stated, received its death-blow from mr darwin, he wrote as follows: "the theological argument runs thus--an organ or organism (a) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (b); therefore it was specially constructed to perform that purpose. in paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function or purpose of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end, on the ground that the only cause we know of competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time is a contriving intelligence, adapting the means directly to that end. suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and that this, again, had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial, and the hands were rudimentary, and that, going back and back in time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. and imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted first from a tendency in the structure to vary indefinitely, and secondly from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper and checked all those in other directions,--then it is obvious that the force of paley's argument would be gone. for it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent."[ ] [ ] lay sermons, pp. , . our great comparative physiologist would probably not write so at present. he may still not accept the design argument; but he is now well aware that it has not got its death-blow, nor even any serious wound, from the theory of evolution. he has since, on more than one occasion, shown the perfect compatibility of development with design. he might, perhaps, in defence of his earlier and less considerate utterances, maintain that no organ has been made with the precise structure which it at present possesses in order to accomplish the precise function which it at present fulfils; but he admits that the most thoroughgoing evolutionist must at least assume "a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences," and "is thereby at the mercy of the theologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe." granting thus much, he is logically bound to grant more. if the entire evolution of the universe may have been intended, the several stages of its evolution may have been intended; and they may have been intended for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the collective evolution or its final result. if eyes and ears were contrived for a purpose, the eyes and ears of each species of animals may have been made with the precise structure which they exhibit for the precise purposes which they fulfil, although they may have been developed out of a different kind of eyes and ears, and will, in the lapse of ages, be developed into still other kinds. the higher theology, the general designs, which professor huxley admits evolution cannot touch, is in no opposition to the lower theology, the special designs, which he strangely supposes it to have definitively discarded. nothing can be more certain than that dr paley would have held the design argument to have been in no degree weakened by the theory of evolution, and that he would have been very much astonished by professor huxley's remarks on that argument. in referring to the mechanism of a watch as an evidence of intelligence in its maker, dr paley pointed out that our idea of the greatness of that intelligence would be much increased if watches were so constructed as to give rise to other watches like themselves. he must necessarily have admitted that the watch imagined by professor huxley was still more remarkable, and implied a still greater intelligence in its contrivance. the revolving barrel must have had wonderful capabilities, which only intelligence could confer. all the circumstances in which it was to be placed must have been foreseen, and all the influences which were to act upon it must have been taken into account, which could only be done by intelligence. all that helped variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper must have been brought into requisition, and all that hindered it, or favoured variations in other directions, must have been detected and checked; but no unintelligent agents can be conceived of as accomplishing such work, or as more than the means of accomplishing it employed by a providential reason. the greater the distance between the revolving barrel and the most elaborated watch--the greater the number of mechanisms between the first and the last of these two terms, or between the commencing cause and the final result--the greater the necessity for a mind the most comprehensive and accurate, to serve as an explanation of the entire series of mechanisms and the whole process of development. mr darwin, and a large number of those who are called darwinians, profess to prove that all the order of organic nature may have been unintentionally originated by the mechanical operation of natural forces. they think they can explain how, from a few simple living forms, or even from a single primordial cell, the entire vegetable and animal kingdoms, with all their harmonies and beauties, have arisen wholly independent of any ordaining and presiding mind, by means of the operation of the law of heredity that like produces like; of variability from the action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; of over-production, or a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for existence; of natural selection, or the survival and prevalence of the fittest, and the disappearance and extinction of what is unsuited to its circumstances and inferior to its competitors; and of sexual selection. but the remarkable originality, ingenuity, and skill which they display in endeavouring to establish, illustrate, and apply these laws, make all the more striking the absence of freshness and independence, of force or relevancy, in the reasonings by which they would attach to them an irreligious inference. the same men who have adduced so many new facts, and thrown so much new light on facts previously known, in support of the real or alleged laws indicated, have not adduced a single new reason, and scarcely even set in a more plausible light a single old reason, for the denial of design. they assure us, copiously and vehemently, that the laws which they claim to have proved are in themselves a disproof of design; but they somehow forget that it is incumbent on them to bestow the labour requisite to make this manifest. they reason as if it were almost or wholly self-evident, whereas a little more thought would show them that all their laws imply mind and purpose. there is a law of heredity: like produces like. but why is there such a law? why does like produce like? why should not all nature have been sterile? why should there have been any provision for the propagation of life in a universe ruled by a mere blind force? and why should producer and produced be like? why should offspring not always be as unlike their parents as tadpoles are unlike frogs? the offspring of all the higher animals pass through various embryological stages in which they are extremely unlike their parents. why should they ever become like to them? physical science cannot answer these questions; but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered. i can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than that there is a god of wisdom, who designed that the world should be for ages the abode of life; that the life therein should be rich and varied, yet that variation should have its limits; that there should be no disorder or confusion; and who, to secure this result, decreed that plants should yield seeds, and animals bring forth, after their kind. he who would disprove design must certainly not start with the great mystery of generation. then, the so-called law of variability is the expression of a purpose which must have reason at its beginning, middle, and end. there is in no organism an absolutely indefinite tendency to vary. every variation of every organism is in some measure determined by the constitution of the organism. "a whale," as dr huxley says, "does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of producing whalebone." but a tendency to definite variation is an indication of purpose. if a man could make a revolving barrel with a tendency to develop into a watch, he would have to be credited with having designed both the barrel and watch, not less than if he had contrived and constructed the two separately. further, variation has proceeded in a definite direction. darwin admits that there is no law of necessary advancement. there is no more reason in the nature of the case for improvement than for deterioration. apart from the internal constitution of an organism having been so planned, and its external circumstances so arranged, as to favour the one rather than the other, its variations could not have been more towards self-perfection than self-destruction. but variation, according to the darwinians, has taken place in one direction and not in another; it has been forward, not backward; it has been a progression, not a retrogression. why? only because of a continuous adjustment of organisms to circumstances tending to bring this about. had there been no such adjustment, there might have been only unsuitable variations, or the suitable variations might have been so few and slight that no higher organisms would have been evolved. natural selection might have had no materials, or altogether insufficient materials, to work with. or the circumstances might have been such, that the lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle of life. if the earth were covered with water, fish would survive, and higher creatures would perish. natural selection cannot have made the conditions of its own action--the circumstances in the midst of which it must operate. therefore, there is more in progressive variation than it can explain: there is what only an all-regulative intelligence can explain. again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives rise to a struggle for existence. well, is this law not a means to an end worthy of divine wisdom? in it we find the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. what is called over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means of subsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists merely for itself. the ratio of the production of life is probably none too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied with food and enjoyment. and the wants of all creatures are what have to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species--not the wants of man alone. if we adequately realised how vast is the number of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we would, i have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real waste of life in the world. then, the struggle to which the rate of production gives rise is, on the showing of the darwinians themselves, subservient to the noblest ends. although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. all the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. the inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. the suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that god has made even animals for some higher end than happiness--that he cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it was also intended to serve. besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free and full exercise of all their faculties. it thus manifests, not only indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. they are ends which can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a divine intelligence. but what of the law, or so-called law, of natural selection? in itself, and so far as physical science can either prove or disprove it, it is simply an expression of the alleged fact, that in the struggle of life, any variation, however caused, which is profitable to the individuals of a species, will tend to their preservation, will have a chance of being transmitted to their offspring, and will be of use to them likewise, so that they will survive and multiply at the expense of competitors which are not so well endowed. but natural selection thus understood is obviously in no opposition to design; on the contrary, it is a way in which design may be realised. some might even hold that design cannot be conceived of as realised in any other natural way; that if not thus realised, it could only be miraculously realised. but mr darwin, and many of those who call themselves his followers, tell us not only that there is natural selection, but that blind forces and mechanical laws alone bring it about; that intention and intelligence have nothing to do with it. what proof do they give us? alas! the painful thing is that they give us none. they point out the blind forces and the mechanical laws by which the selection is effected and its results secured; they show how they are adapted to accomplish their work: and then they assert that these forces and laws explain the whole matter; that no underlying and all-embracing reason has prepared, arranged, and used them. they see the physical agencies and the physical process by which order and beauty have been attained--they do not see intelligence and design; and because they do not see them, they conclude that they have no existence. they describe the mechanism which their senses apprehend, and affirm it to have made itself, or at least to have been unmade, and to work of itself, because the mind which contrived it and directs it is inaccessible to sense. all their reasoning resolves itself into a denial of what is spiritual because it is unseen. the only instances of natural selection which have been adduced to show that blind forces may bring about results as remarkable, and of the same kind, as those which are accomplished by intelligent agents, are manifestly irrelevant. they are of such a nature that every teleologist must hold them to imply what they are intended to disprove. when professor huxley points to the winds and waves of the bay of biscay as carefully selecting the particles of sea-sand on the coast of brittany, and heaping them, according to their size and weight, in different belts along the shore; to a frosty night selecting the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones; and to a hurricane transporting a sapling to a new seat in the soil,--he completely mistakes what the problem before him is. fire and water can produce wonderful effects in a steam-engine; but the man who should infer, from there being no intelligence in the fire and water themselves, that intelligence must have had nothing to do with their effects when they were brought into contact in a steam-engine, would deserve no great credit for his reasoning. it is precisely professor huxley's reasoning. he looks at the fire and water separately, and completely ignores the engine. because in a world which is a system of order and law a certain collocation and combination of physical conditions and forces will produce an orderly result, he infers that design and intelligence are not needed to produce such a result. i submit that that is illegitimate and irrelevant reasoning. it resolves itself into a denial of divine and intelligent agency, because the senses apprehend merely physical elements and a physical process. it assumes a selected adaptation, which presupposes intelligence in order to get rid of intelligence. it begs the whole question. the so-called law of sexual selection, if it be a law at all, is obviously teleological in its nature. its end is the production of beauty in form and colour. can blind physical forces, if not subservient to intelligence, be conceived of as working towards so essentially ideal a goal as beauty? i think enough has now been said to show that the researches and speculations of the darwinians have left unshaken the design argument. i might have gone farther if time had permitted, and proved that they had greatly enriched the argument. the works of mr darwin are invaluable to the theologian, owing to the multitude of "beautiful contrivances" and "marvellous adjustments" admirably described in them. the treatises on the fertilisation of orchids and on insectivorous plants require only to have their legitimate conclusions deduced and applied in order to be transformed into treatises of natural theology. if paley's famous work be now somewhat out of date, it is not because mr darwin and his followers have refuted it, but because they have brought so much to light which confirms its argument.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxiv. i have challenged the theology of mr darwin, and those who follow his guidance in theology. i have no wish to dispute his science. i pass no judgment on his theories so far as they are scientific theories. it may be safely left to the progress of scientific research to determine how far they are true and how far erroneous. we ought not to assail them needlessly, or to reject the truth which is in them, under the influence of a senseless dread that they can hurt religion. in so far as they are true, they must be merely expressions of the way in which divine intelligence has operated in the universe. instead of excluding, they must imply belief in an all-originating, all-foreseeing, all-foreordaining, all-regulative intelligence, to determine the rise and the course and the goal of life, as of all finite things. that intelligence far transcends the comprehension of our finite minds, yet we apprehend it as true intelligence. it is no blind force, but a reason which knows itself, and knows us, and knows all things, and in the wisdom of which we may fully confide, even when clouds and darkness hide from us the definite reasons of its operations. we can see and know enough of its wisdom to justify faith where sight and knowledge are denied to us. let us trust and follow it, and, without doubt, it will lead us by a path which we knew not, and make darkness light before us, and crooked things straight. lecture vii. moral argument--testimony of conscience and history. i. we have seen how the power manifest in the universe leads up to god as the first cause, the all-originating will. we have seen also how the order manifest in the universe leads up to him as the supreme intelligence. but there is more in the universe than force and order; there is force which works for good, and a just and benevolent order; there are moral laws and moral actions, moral perceptions and moral feelings. can anything be thence inferred as to whether god is, and what he is? i think we shall find that they clearly testify both as to his existence and character. the moral law which reveals itself to conscience has seemed to certain authors so decisive a witness for god, that all other witnesses may be dispensed with. kant, who exerted his great logical ability to prove that the speculative reason in searching after god inevitably loses itself in sophisms and self-contradictions, believed himself to have found in the practical reason or moral faculty an assurance for the divine existence and government capable of defying the utmost efforts of scepticism. sir william hamilton has also affirmed that "the only valid arguments for the existence of god, and for the immortality of the human soul, rest on the ground of man's moral nature." dr john newman has insisted that conscience is the creative principle of religion, and has endeavoured to show how the whole doctrine of natural religion should be worked out from this central principle. a well-known living theologian of germany, dr schenkel, has attempted to build up a complete theology on conscience as a basis, starting from the position that conscience is "the religious organ of the soul"--the faculty through which alone we have an immediate knowledge of god. these thinkers may have erred in relying thus exclusively on the moral argument--i believe that they have--but the error, if error there be, shows only the more clearly how convincing that argument has seemed to certain minds, and these assuredly not feeble minds. there is, besides, valuable truth underlying any exaggerations into which they may have fallen on the subject. there is probably no living practical belief in god which does not begin with the conscience. it is not reasoning on a first cause, nor even admiration of the wisdom displayed in the universe, which makes the thought of god habitually and efficaciously present to the mind. it is not any kind of thinking nor any kind of feeling excited by the physical universe or by the contemplation of society, which gives us an abiding and operative sense of god's presence, and of his relationship to us. it is only in and through an awakened and active conscience that we realise our nearness to god--his interest in us, and our interest in him. without a moral nature of our own, we could not recognise the moral character and moral government manifested by him. we might tremble before his power, or we might admire his skill, but his righteousness would be hidden from us, his moral laws would be meaningless to us, and their sanctions would be merely a series of physical advantages or physical disasters. but a god without righteousness is no true god, and the worship which has no moral element in it is no true worship. as, then, it is only through the glass of conscience that the righteousness of god can be discerned, and as that attribute alone can call forth, in addition to the fear, wonder, and admiration evoked by power and intelligence, the love, the sense of spiritual weakness and want, and the adoring reverence, which are indispensable in true worship--such worship as god ought to receive and man ought to render--the significance of the moral principle in the theistic argumentation is vast indeed. it follows, however, from the entire course of the reasoning in which we have been engaged, that the moral argument is not to be exclusively relied on. it is but a part of a whole from which it ought not to be severed. it cannot be stated in any valid form which does not imply the legitimacy of the arguments from efficiency and order. if other facts do not refer us back to a primary case, neither will moral facts lead us to the primary moral agent. if order is no evidence of intelligent purpose, moral order can be no evidence of moral purpose. the moral argument proves more, but also less, than the arguments which have been already expounded. it shows us that god is endowed with the highest moral excellence, and is the source of moral law and of moral government, but it does not prove him to be the creator of the universe or the author of all order in the universe. it contributes to the idea of god an essential element, without which that idea would be lamentably defective, but it supposes other elements also essential to be given by other arguments. the office of bearing witness to the existence and character of god can be safely devolved on no one principle alone, even although that principle be conscience. it is a work in which all the principles of human nature are privileged to concur. either all bear true testimony, or all have conspired to deceive us. the self-manifestation of god is addressed to the entire man, and can only be rightly apprehended by the concurrent action of all the energies and capacities of the soul.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxv. it is, perhaps, especially important in conducting the moral argument to ask ourselves distinctly, whence ought we to begin? is there any point, any fact or principle, which we are in reason bound to start from? inattention to this preliminary inquiry has caused many to try to look at moral facts _en masse_, as it were, and to endeavour to draw an inference from them in virtue of something common to them all. this can only lead to confusion and error. moral facts are of two radically distinct classes, and cannot be comprehended under any higher generalisation, which can be taken as the foundation of a theistic inference. the facts need to be distributed and interpreted--to have their characters discriminated; and we must begin with the principle by which this is done--that is, with conscience itself. we need no more attempt to judge of moral qualities without reference to our moral perceptions and feelings--to the information given us through conscience--than to pass a judgment on colours before seeing them, or irrespective of how they appeared to us when we saw them. if we look at the moral facts of the universe from any outside point of view--not from that of conscience--how can we escape ascribing the evil as well as the good to god, and trying his character either from both or from the preponderance of the one over the other? but if we do so,--if we seek to rise to god through an induction from all moral facts--we shall form a miserable notion of god, and we shall, besides, ride rough-shod, as it were, over conscience. for what is it that conscience declares most clearly about moral good and evil, right and wrong? is it not that they are radically antagonistic--irreconcilable and contradictory,--that they cannot have the same ultimate author--that if the one be the expression of god's will, the other must be the expression of his aversion? if conscience have any testimony to give about god at all, it is that, as the author of good, he must be the enemy of evil. the contemplation of the moral world may perplex us, but conscience is an assurance that evil, however perplexing, is not to be referred to the same source as good. the testimony of conscience on behalf of god has been presented in various ways, and it need not surprise us to find some of them unsatisfactory. i regard as unwarranted the view that conscience is "the religious organ of the soul," the sole faculty through which the human mind is in contact and communion with god. there is no one specific power or organ of the mind in virtue of which exclusively man is a religious being. it is by the whole make and constitution of his nature, not by a particular faculty, that he is framed for religion. i more than question if we have a right even to ascribe to conscience an immediate intuition of god. it brings us, some have affirmed, in a strict and positive sense into the real presence of god, with nothing intervening between us and him--he as the absolute personality standing sharply and distinctly over against our personality. this doctrine has, however, one obvious and serious difficulty before it. conscience--that is a word which has got in ordinary use a very clear and definite meaning. we all know what conscience is as well as we know what the eye or the ear is, and we all know what an act of conscience is as well as we know what seeing or hearing is. it is not more certain that by the eye we see colours, and that by the ear we hear sounds, than that by conscience we discern good and evil. when, therefore, any man comes and assures us that through conscience we have an immediate apprehension of god, it is natural that we should answer at once, you may as well assure us that through sight we immediately hear sounds or smell odours. what we immediately apprehend through conscience is the right or wrong in actions, and therefore not god. morality is the direct object of conscience; god can therefore only be the presupposition or postulate of conscience,--can only be given in conscience as implied in morality. this, i say, is an obvious objection to the assertion that god is immediately known in conscience. it is an objection which has not been got over, and which, i believe, cannot be got over.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxvi. the argument from conscience, like all the other theistic arguments, is extremely simple. it is the obvious inference from the most obvious facts of our moral consciousness. it demands of us no subtle analysis of conscience. it is not dependent on the truth of some one particular theory as to the origin of conscience. it is based directly on what cannot be denied or disputed,--the existence of conscience, the existence of certain moral judgments and feelings common to the experience of all men. conscience exists. it exists as a consciousness of moral law; as an assertion of a rule of duty; as a sense of responsibility. when it pronounces an action right, it does so because it recognises it to be conformed to law; when it pronounces an action wrong, it does so because it recognises it to fall short of or to transgress law. it acts as the judge of all that we do, and as such it accuses or excuses, condemns or approves, punishes or rewards us, with a voice of authority, which we may so far disregard, but the legitimacy of which we cannot dispute. it claims to rule over body and soul, heart and mind, all our appetites, affections, and faculties; and the claim is implicitly admitted even by those who have most interest in denying it. but it does not rule, nor pretend to rule, as an autocratic authority; it does not give us, nor pretend to give us, a law of its own: on the contrary, it claims to rule in us only in virtue of recognising a law which is over us; its authority is derived wholly from a law which it interprets and applies, but does not create. it thus speaks not of itself but as the deputy of another. it unequivocally declares itself a delegated authority. some may say that the law of conscience is set by man's own will, and that the will is a law unto itself; but this assertion cannot bear examination. the will apart from reason and conscience is a mere force, not a true will. it has a rational law only through its connection with reason, a moral law only through its connection with conscience. whoever affirms that the will is its own law must grossly abuse language, and signify by the term will what others mean by reason and will, conscience and will. he must do worse than this, bad as it is. he must contradict the plain dictates of his own consciousness. the will and its law are distinctly felt to be not one but two. the will is clearly realised in our moral experience as not legislative, as not giving itself a law but as being under a law, the law which conscience apprehends. to identify the will and its law is to confound entirely distinct things. for the will to rule the will, it would need at once to command and to obey, to be bond and free, dependent and independent. to be its own rule were for it to be without rule. conscience claims to rule my will in virtue of a law which cannot be the expression of my will, and which cannot be anything else than the expression of another will; one often in antagonism to mine--one always better than mine--one which demands from me an unvarying and complete obedience. it comes to me and speaks to me in defiance of my will; when my will is set against hearing it, and still more against obeying it; when my will is bent on stifling and drowning its voice. it warns, threatens, condemns, and punishes me, against my will, and with a voice of authority as the delegate or deputy of a perfectly good and holy will which has an absolute right to rule over me, to control and sway all my faculties; which searches me and knows me; which besets me behind and before. whose is this perfect, authoritative, supreme will, to which all consciences, even the most erring, point back? whose, if not god's? those who object that this argument is a mere verbal inference, or that it rests on a double meaning of the word law, do not understand it, simple as it is. they may be honest enough disputants, but their objection is strangely superficial. in the utterly irrelevant criticism of a word they lose sight of a great fact, and so necessarily fail to perceive its momentous significance. from no mere word, whether law or any other, but from that consciousness of moral dependence which no moral creature can shake off, which conscience implies in every exercise, which reveals itself in a thousand ways in the hearts and lives of men, do we conclude that there is one on whom we morally depend, that we have a holy creator and judge to deal with. reason takes no mere name, but it takes the fact that man feels himself under a law of duty, that he is conscious of obligation and responsibility, that he has a conscience which does not counsel but which commands him to do what is right and to resist what is wrong; and it finds this fact inexplicable, this consciousness a delusion, this conscience a false witness--unless there be a holy god, a moral governor. conscience reveals a purpose as well as declares a law. its very existence is a proof of purpose. the eye is not more certainly given us in order that we may see, than conscience is given us in order that we may use all our powers in a righteous and beneficent manner. is it conceivable that any other than a righteous god would have bestowed on us such a gift, such a faculty? would an intelligent but unrighteous god have made us to hate and despise what is characteristic of his own nature? would he have made us better than himself? the purpose which conscience reveals is certainly not our own purpose, just as the law which it declares is not the law of our own will. the purpose which finds its expression in conscience, and our own purpose, are often felt by us to be in direct antagonism. our souls may be tortured by the conflict between them. but in all phases of the conflict we are sensible that it is our purpose which ought to be abandoned; that the purpose which we dislike is that which we are bound to accept and to obey. in this way, also, conscience speaks to us of a righteous god by speaking in his name. if the inference from effect to cause, from manifestation of purpose to intelligence, is good anywhere, it is good here; and it warrants us to believe that the first cause of conscience is a righteous being.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxvii. all the feelings, emotions, and affections which gather around the apprehension of right and wrong, which accompany the sense of duty or conviction of obligation, point to the same conclusion. the consciousness of good or ill desert, remorse and self-approval, moral hopes and fears, concur in referring to a holy god. they imply that man is a person related not merely to things and laws, but to another person who is his rightful and righteous judge. the atheist himself, when he grieves even for secret and private sins, or enjoys the inner peace which only his own heart knoweth, mourns and rejoices as if in the presence of a higher personal being--the god whom he denies. neither his sorrow nor his satisfaction is fully intelligible if his soul have before it only an impersonal law or the abstract nature of things; both presuppose that he has some kind of consciousness of being under the cognisance of a person possessed of moral attributes. if men felt that they were responsible for their evil thoughts and words and deeds to no one higher than themselves or their fellows, is it conceivable that the consciousness of guilt and the fear of retribution would have been what experience and history testify them to have been? would prayers and penances and sacrifices have prevailed so widely, if the law of right and wrong when broken had been merely felt to be broken--if there were no underlying sense of the existence of one behind the law whose righteousness must be satisfied, and whose wrath must be turned away by the breaker of the law? would there have been in that case any moral conflicts in the human heart akin to those which a sophocles or a shakespeare has delineated? were there no god, there ought to be no fear of god awakened even by crime; but atheism itself cannot protect a criminal when alive to his guilt from being haunted and appalled by fears of a judgment and a justice more terrible than those of man. when we are perfectly willing to bear any pain which the mere laws of nature attach to our sins, and when our reason assures us that we have nothing to fear on account of them from the law or even the opinion of society, why, if our moral natures are not seared and deadened, do we yet fear, and fear most when most alone? "inanimate things," says dr newman, "cannot stir our affections; these are correlative with persons. if, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is one to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. if, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same seeming serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight which follows on one receiving praise from a father,--we certainly have within us the image of some person to whom our love and veneration look, in whose smile we find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in whose anger we are troubled and waste away. these feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being; we are not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before a horse or a dog; we have no remorse or compunction in breaking mere human law: yet, so it is, conscience excites all these painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation; and, on the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation, and a hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. 'the wicked flees, when no one pursueth;' then why does he flee? whence his terror? who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart? if the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the object to which his perception is directed must be supernatural and divine; and thus the phenomena of conscience, as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a supreme governor, a judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive."[ ] [ ] grammar of assent, pp. , . it will, i need scarcely say, be objected to the arguments which have now been presented, that conscience is a product of association or a consequence of evolution; that it has been developed either in the experience of individuals or in the course of ages, out of sensations of pleasure and pain, out of benefits and injuries; and that the convictions and feelings implicated in it are due to the circumstances under which it has grown up and the causes which have combined to generate it. but to this it may be answered either that conscience has not been shown to have grown up by association and development out of sensuous experiences, or that even if this were proved the argument would continue good; in other words, either the truth or the relevancy of the objection may be denied. all associationist and evolutionist theories of conscience seem to many of the most competent psychologists to have failed as regards their main object, although they may admit them to contain important elements of truth. this view i share. it does not seem to me that even mr j. s. mill, prof. bain, mr spencer, and mr darwin, have been able to show that conscience contains in it nothing original. but, of course, i am aware that the vindication of my dissent would require an adequate examination of associationism and evolutionism as explanations of the origin of conscience. no such examination is here possible. nor is it required; on the contrary, a discussion of the kind ought, i believe, to be avoided in an inquiry like the present. no psychological investigation of a difficult and delicate nature is, so far as i can judge, essentially involved in the theistic argumentation at any stage. it is certainly unnecessary in conducting the moral argument to engage in any scientific disquisition as to the origin of conscience.[ ] for our second or alternative answer will suffice. it does not matter, so far as our present purpose is concerned, whether conscience be primary or derivative. it exists; it bears a certain testimony; it gives rise necessarily to the thoughts and feelings which i have mentioned. are these thoughts and feelings true? if not, conscience is a delusion; it utters lies; the completest moral scepticism is justified. if they are, the argument stands. the mode in which they have been acquired is in this reference a matter of indifference. [ ] see appendix xxviii. the argument from conscience, i may add, rests on the general and distinctive characteristics of our moral nature; not on the truth of particular moral judgments or the purity of particular moral affections. it cannot, therefore, be affected by the fact that moral perceptions and emotions admit of variation and development, and are sometimes false and depraved. however important in other respects may be the circumstance that men's thoughts and sentiments as to right and wrong are not always identical or even accordant, it is plainly irrelevant as an objection to any of the forms in which the argument for the divine existence from the constitution of our moral nature has just been stated. it cannot be necessary to do more than merely indicate this, although some who maintain the wholly derivative nature of conscience appear to believe that the moral differences to be traced among men disprove all inferences from the moral faculty which they feel disinclined to accept. ii. is the testimony which conscience gives to the existence and character of god confirmed when we look out into the moral world? no one will say that all is clear and unambiguous in that world--that it is nowhere shrouded in unpenetrated, if not impenetrable, darkness--that it contains no perplexing anomalies. there is an enormous mass of sin on earth, and the mere existence of sin is a mystery under the government of an omnipotent god who hates sin. there is a vast amount of apparently prosperous sin, and a vast amount of temporarily suffering virtue, and these are often severe trials of faith in the justice and holiness of god. pessimism may exaggerate the emptiness and the sadness of life, but it has done service by exposing and discrediting the optimism which ignores the dark features and tragic elements of existence. can an unprejudiced mind, however, even with all the sins and sufferings of the world before its view, and although consciously unable to resolve the difficulties which they suggest, refuse to acknowledge that the general testimony rendered by the moral world to the being and righteousness of its author is ample and unmistakable? i think not. the conclusion which we have drawn from the character of the sentiments inevitably excited by the contemplation of virtue and vice, is also that which follows from the natural tendencies and issues of good and evil affections and actions. virtue does not always meet with its due reward, nor vice with its due punishment, in any obvious outward shape; if they did, earth would cease to be a scene of moral discipline; but internal moral laws of an essentially retributive nature are in incessant operation, and show not obscurely or doubtfully what is the judgment of god both on character and conduct. virtue is self-rewarding and vice is self-punishing. virtue tends of its very nature to honour and life, vice to dishonour and death. there are outward bonds between virtue and happiness, vice and misery, which may be severed; but there are also inward bonds which cannot be broken--relations of cause and effect as inflexible as any in the physical world. virtue may be followed by no external advantages, or may even involve the possessor of it in suffering; but infallibly it ennobles and enriches, elevates and purifies the soul itself, and thus gradually and increasingly imparts "a peace above all earthly dignities." vice may outwardly prosper and meet only with honour from men, but it cannot be said to be passing wholly unpunished so long as it weakens, poisons, and corrupts the spiritual constitution. now this it always does, and never more actively than when the individual who is guilty has silenced the voice of his conscience, and when a depraved society encourages him in his wickedness. the law--"he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption"--is never even for an instant suspended, although the growth and ripening of the seed into its fruit may be unobserved. in the very commission of sin the soul violates the conditions of its own welfare, destroys its own best feelings, impoverishes and ruins itself. "he that has light within his own clear breast, may sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day; but he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, benighted walks under the mid-day sun-- himself is his own dungeon."[ ] [ ] see appendix xxix. when we look from individuals to societies, we perceive the same truth confirmed on a more comprehensive and conspicuous scale. it is true that in the social world there are bad triumphs and impious successes--that the victory of good over evil is often reached only after a long series of defeats. but it is equally true that the welfare of society is dependent on a practical recognition of moral principles--that the laws of morality are conditions of the progress, and even of the existence, of society. a cynical moralist of the eighteenth century maintained that private vices were public benefits; but, of course, his sophisms were easily exposed: he failed to convince any one of the correctness of his paradox. no inductive truth can be easier to establish, or better established, than that righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin lowers and destroys it. the vicious affections which torment and debase isolated men, equally disturb and degrade a tribe or nation. the virtuous affections which diffuse peace and happiness in a single heart, equally spread harmony and prosperity through the largest community. thus the general conditions of social life testify that god loves virtue and hates vice. then, if we examine history as a whole, we cannot but recognise that it has been in the main a process of moral progress, of moral growth. the children of the present day may be born with no better dispositions than those of five thousand years ago, and men may be now as guilty, as wilful sinners against what they know to be right, as ever they were; in that sense there may be no moral progress; but of this there can be, i think, no reasonable doubt in the mind of any impartial student of history, that the thoughts of men have been surely, if slowly, widened as to liberty, chastity, justice, benevolence, piety--and that their feelings have been correspondingly modified, their manners refined, and their laws and institutions improved. there may be no such thing as the inheritance or transmission of virtue, and every step of moral advance may have to be gained by the free exertion of each individual, people, and generation in succession; but, as a matter of fact, our race does on the whole advance, and not recede, in the path towards good. just as reason, although it may be feebler than the passions in a short struggle, can always conquer them if it get time to collect its energies--so virtue gains and vice loses advantages with the lapse of years; for, while the prejudices which opposed the former subside and its excellences become ever increasingly apparent, as history flows onward, those who leagued themselves in support of the latter quarrel among themselves, its fascinations decay, and its deformities become more manifest and repulsive. age is linked to age, and in the struggle of good and evil which pervades all the ages, victory is seen slowly but steadily declaring itself for the good. the vices die--the virtues never die. some great evils which once afflicted our race have passed away. what great good has ever been lost? justice carries it over injustice in the end. now, whatever be the means by which moral progress is brought about, the testimony which it involves as to the moral character of god is none the less certain. the successful application of darwinian principles, for example, to the explanation of human progress, would be no disproof of design in social evolution. if a natural selection, based on force, were shown to have prepared the way for a natural selection based on craft, which in its turn gave place to justice, and that again to love, god must none the less be credited with having contemplated the final result, and that result must none the less be held to be an indication of his character. when what is called the struggle for existence has been proved to lead, not to the deterioration but to the improvement of life--to the greatest abundance of the highest kinds of life possible in the circumstances--it will have been vindicated and shown to have been a means to secure such ends as a wise and benevolent being would entertain. when it has been proved to have constrained men gradually to recognise that the virtues are the conditions of the most desirable existence, and that the vices are so many obstacles to the attainment of such an existence, it will have been still further vindicated by having been thus shown to be the mode in which righteousness is realised in the world. it matters little, so far as the religious inference is concerned, after what natural process and by what natural laws moral progress has been brought about; for whatever the process and laws may be discovered to be, they will be those which god has chosen, and will be fitted to show forth the glory of his wisdom, love, and justice.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxx. lecture viii. consideration of objections to the divine wisdom, benevolence, and justice. i. conscience testifies that there is a god who is good and just; and society and history, on the whole, confirm its testimony. but there are a multitude of moral evils in the world, and these may seem to warrant an opposite inference, or at least so to counterbalance what has been adduced as evidence for the goodness and justice of god as to leave us logically unable to draw any inference regarding his moral character. we must consider, therefore, whether these evils really warrant an anti-theistic conclusion; and as they are analogous to, and closely connected with, those facts which have been argued to be defects in the physical constitution of the universe inconsistent with wisdom, or at least with perfect wisdom, in the creator, it seems desirable to ask ourselves distinctly this general question, are there such defects in the constitution and course of nature that it is impossible for us to believe that it is the work of a wise and holy god? epicurus and lucretius imagined that the world was formed by a happy combination of atoms, acting of themselves blindly, and necessarily after innumerable futile conjunctions had taken place. lange, the most recent historian of materialism, has revived the hypothesis, and represented the world as an instance of success which had been preceded by milliards of entire or partial failures. this is the theory of natural selection applied to account for the origin of worlds; and no one, i believe, who combines the hypotheses of natural selection and atheism can consistently entertain any other conception of the origin of worlds. but where are the milliards of mishaps which are said to have occurred? where are the monstrous worlds which preceded those which constitute the cosmos? we must, of course, have good evidence for their existence before we can be entitled to hold nature responsible for them; we must not charge upon her the mere dreams of her accusers. not a trace, however, of such worlds as, according to the hypothesis, were profusely scattered through space, has been pointed out. it would be a waste of time for us to argue with men who invent worlds in order to find fault with them. we turn, therefore, to those who censure not imaginary worlds but the actual world. comte, following laplace, has argued that there is no evidence of intelligence or design in the solar system, because its elements and members are not disposed in the most advantageous manner. the moon, in particular, we are assured, should have been so placed that it would revolve round the earth in the same time that the earth revolved round the sun. in that case she would appear every night, and always at the full. storms, volcanoes, earthquakes, and deserts have been often argued to be defects which mar both the beauty and utility of creation. changes in the polar regions, in the physical character of africa, in the position of the asiatic continent, and in the pacific ocean, have been suggested as improvements on the constitution of the world. the actual climates of various countries have been maintained to be not the most favourable to life which are possible under the existing laws of nature.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxi. a little reflection will enable us to assign its just value to such criticism of creation. remark, then, in the first place, that there may be abundant evidence of intelligence where there is not evidence of perfect intelligence. although very considerable defects were clearly shown to exist in the constitution and arrangements of the physical world, there might yet be ample and unmistakable proof of the vast wisdom of its author. were it even true that science could show that the mechanism of the heavens, and the distribution of land and sea, heat and cold, on earth, were not in every respect the best, that would not prove that there was no intelligence, no design whatever, involved therein. the question, did the earth and the solar system originate with intelligence? is distinct from the question, was the intelligence in which they originated perfect? it is conceivable that the one question might have to be answered in the affirmative and the other in the negative. it is obvious that the former question ought to be considered apart from and before the latter. the theist proposes, of course, to prove in the end that there is a perfect intelligence, but he is content to establish at first that there is an intelligence. aware that whoever admits intelligence to be the first cause of the universe may be forced also to admit that the creative intelligence is perfect, he is under no temptation himself to confound two entirely distinct questions, and he is obviously entitled to protest against so illogical a procedure in others. remark, in the second place, that we are plainly very incompetent critics of a system so vast as the universe. we are only able to survey a small portion of it, and the little that we perceive we imperfectly comprehend. we see but an exceedingly short way before us into the future, and can form only the vaguest and most general conception of the final goal to which creation, as a whole, is tending. this need not, and ought not, to prevent us from recognising the evident indications of intelligence which fall within our range of apprehension; but it may well cause us to hesitate before pronouncing that this or that peculiarity, which appears to us a defect, is an absolute error or evil. there is no one who would not feel it very unwise to pronounce an apparent defect, even in an elaborate human mechanism with which he was only imperfectly acquainted, an unmistakable blunder, and surely far more caution is required in a critic of the constitution of the universe; for, as bishop butler truly observes, "the most slight and superficial view of any human contrivance comes abundantly nearer to a thorough knowledge of it than that part which we know of the government of the world does to the general scheme and system of it." all nature is one great whole, and each thing in it has, as i have previously had to insist, a multitude of uses and relations, with reference to all of which it must be viewed, in order that a complete and definitive judgment regarding it may be formed. has this fact been adequately realised by those who have criticised, in the manner which has been indicated, the wisdom displayed in the system of nature? i think not. in regard to the moon, it would seem that, even if that luminary were intended to serve no other purpose than to give light on earth, it is not the maker of it who has blundered, but comte and laplace. the real consequences of their pretended improvement have been shown to be that the moon would give sixteen times less light than it does, and be in constant danger of extinction. in other words, what they have demonstrated is, that their own mathematical and mechanical knowledge was so inferior to that of the intelligence which placed the moon where it is, that they could not appreciate the correctness of its procedure in the solution of a comparatively simple astronomical problem. but even if the change which they suggested would really have rendered the moon a better lamp to the inhabitants of the earth, they were not entitled to infer that it was an error to have placed it elsewhere, unless they were warranted to assume that the moon was meant merely to be a lamp to the inhabitants of the earth. but that they were clearly not entitled to assume. to give light on earth is a use of the moon, but it is foolish to imagine that this is its sole use. it serves other known ends, such as raising the tides, and may serve many ends wholly unknown to us. so in regard to volcanoes, earthquakes, &c. any single generation of men and beasts might well dispense, perhaps, with their existence, and yet they may be most appropriate instrumentalities for securing order and welfare in the economy of the universe as a whole. it is not by their relations to the present and local only, but by their relations to all the past and future of the entire system of things, that they are to be judged of. if greenland were submerged, and the asiatic and north american continents so altered that no large rivers should flow into the polar ocean, the climate of iceland and canada might be greatly improved. would the world thereby, however, be made better as a whole, and throughout all its future history? he must be either a very wise man or a very foolish one who answers this question by a decided affirmation; and yet he who cannot so answer it has obviously no right to hold that the changes mentioned would really be improvements. could we survey the whole universe, and mark how all its several parts were related to each other and to the whole, we might intelligently determine whether or not an apparent defect in it was real; but we cannot do this with our present powers. we can readily imagine that any one thing in the world, looked at by itself or in relation to only a few other objects, might be much better than it is, but we cannot show that the general system of things would not be deranged and deteriorated thereby. considered merely in reference to man, the relative imperfections of the world may be real advantages. a world so perfect that man could not improve it, would probably be, paradoxical as the statement may sound, one of the most imperfect worlds men could be placed in. an imperfect world, or in other words, a world which can be improved, can alone be a fitting habitation for progressive beings. scripture does not represent nature even before the fall as perfect and incapable of improvement, but only as "very good;" and still less does it require us to believe that the actual course of nature is perfect. the true relation of man to nature can only be realised when the latter is perceived to be imperfect,--a thing to be ruled, not to be obeyed--improved, not imitated--and yet a thing which is essentially good relatively to the wants and powers of its inhabitants. no created system, it must further be remembered, can be _perfect_ in the sense of being _the best possible_. none can be so good but that a better may be imagined. what is created must be finite in its perfections, and whatever is finite can be imagined to be increased and improved. the creator himself--the absolutely perfect god--the highest good--is, as plato and anselm so profoundly taught, the only best possible being. in him alone the actual is coincident and identical with the possible, the real with the ideal. whoever receives this truth as it ought to be received, cannot fail to see that all speculations as to a best possible world, and all judgments of the actual world based on such speculations, are vain and idle imaginations.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxii. i may add, that when a man argues, as comte does, that we can know nothing of final causes, nothing of the purposes which things are meant to accomplish, and yet that they might have realised their final causes, fulfilled their purposes, better than they do, he obviously takes up a very untenable and self-contradictory position. if we can have no notion of the purpose of a thing, we cannot judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose or not, whether it is fulfilling it well or ill. the denial of the possibility of knowing the ends of things is inconsistent with the assertion that things might have been constituted and arranged in a happier and more advantageous manner. organic nature has been still more severely criticised than the inorganic world. there have been pointed out a few fully developed organs, as, for example, the spleen, of which the uses are unknown, and a multitude of organs so imperfectly developed as to be incapable of performing any serviceable functions. even the most elaborate organisms have been maintained to have essential defects; thus the eye has been argued by helmholtz to be not a perfect optical instrument, and on the strength of the proof one writer at least has declared that if a human optician were to blunder as badly as the supposed author of eyes must have done, he would be hissed out of his trade. stress has been laid on the fact that abortions and monsters are not rare. many seemingly intelligent contrivances, we are reminded, serve mainly to inflict pain and destruction. and the inference has been drawn that the first cause of organic existences was not divine wisdom but mere matter and blind force. the considerations which have already been brought forward should enable us to answer all reasonings of this kind. an organ is not to be pronounced useless because its uses have not yet been discovered. to the extent that evolutionism is true, rudimentary and obsolete organs are accounted for, and the wisdom displayed in them amply vindicated; and if evolutionism be not true, they can still be explained on the theory of types. they are stages in the realisation of the divine conception; indications of an order which comprehends and conditions the law of use and contrivance for use; keys to the understanding of the divine plan. theism cannot have much to fear from the fact that all human eyes are limited in their range and finite in their perfections, or even from the fact that a great many persons have very bad eyesight. whatever may be its imperfections, the eye, if viewed with a comprehensive regard to its manifold uses and possibilities, must be admitted by every unprejudiced judge to be incomparably superior to every other optical instrument: indeed it is the only real optical instrument; all so-called optical instruments are merely aids and supplements to it. if the eye had been absolutely perfect, its modification or evolution could only have been deterioration, artificial optical instruments would not have been needed, and all man's relations to creation must have been essentially different from what they are. who can rationally assure us that this was to be desired? abortions and monsters are at least exceptions. if mind were not what is ultimate in the universe--if nature worked blindly--if there were any truth in what lange and huxley have said of her procedure, that it is "like shooting a million or more loaded guns in a field to kill one hare,"--this could not be the case; the bullets which miss would then be incalculably more numerous than those which hit, and the evidence of her failures ought to be strewn far more thickly around us than the remains of her successes; there would be, as it were, no course of nature because of the multitude of deviations, no rule in nature because of the multitude of exceptions. but what are the facts? these: the lowest organisms are as perfectly adapted to their circumstances as the highest, the earliest as the latest; there is a vast amount of death and a vast amount of life in the world, but, whatever some men may thoughtlessly assert, no man can show that there is too much of either, any real waste, if the wants of creation as a whole are to be provided for; abortions and monsters, which are the only things in nature which can be plausibly characterised as "failures," as "bullets which have fallen wide of the mark," are comparatively few and far between; and the monsters, even, are not really exceptions to law and order, are not strictly monsters. the labours of teratologists have scientifically established the grand general result that there are no monsters in nature in the sense which empedocles imagined; none except in the sense in which a man who gets his leg broken is a monster. a monster is simply a being to whom an accident not fatal has happened in the womb. why should an accident not occur there as well as elsewhere? why should god not act by general laws there as well as elsewhere? who is entitled to say that any result of his general laws is a failure; that any so-called accident was not included in his plan; that a world in which a child could not be born deformed nor a grown man have a leg broken, would be, were all things taken into account, as good as the world in which we actually live? huxley, lange, and those whom they represent, have failed to show us any of nature's "bullets which have missed the mark," and have not sufficiently, i think, realised how imperfect might be their own perception of nature's target. the contrivances for the infliction of pain and death displayed in the structure of animals of prey are none the less evidences of intelligence because they are not also, at least immediately or directly, evidences of beneficence. intelligence is one thing, benevolence is another, and what conclusively disproved benevolence might conclusively prove intelligence.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxiii. ii. let us pass on to the contemplation of greater difficulties; to suffering, which seems to conflict with the benevolence of god--and to sin, which seems irreconcilable with his righteousness. i cannot agree with those who think that there is no mystery in mere pain; that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil, and involves no separate problem. the history of suffering began on our planet long before that of sin; ages prior to the appearance of man, earth was a scene of war and mutual destruction; hunger and fear, violence and agony, disease and death, have prevailed throughout the air, the land, and ocean, ever since they were tenanted. and what connection in reason can there be between the sin of men or the sin of angels and the suffering endured or inflicted by primeval saurians? the suffering of the animals is, in fact, more mysterious than the suffering of man, just because so little of the former and so much of the latter can be traced, directly or indirectly, to sin. but every animal is made subject to suffering; every animal appetite springs out of a want; every sense and every faculty of every animal are so constituted as to be in certain circumstances sources of pain; hosts of animals are so constructed that they can only live by rending and devouring other animals; no large animal can move without crushing and killing numbers of minute yet sentient creatures. how can all this be under the government of infinite goodness? the human mind may very probably be unable fully to answer this question. it can only hope truthfully to answer it even in a measure by studying the relevant facts, the actual effects and natural tendencies of suffering; general speculations are not likely to profit it much. now, among the relevant facts, one of the most manifest is that pain serves to warn animals against what would injure or destroy them. it has a preservative use. were animals unsusceptible of pain, they would be in continual peril. bayle has ingeniously devised some hypotheses with a view to show that pain might have safely been dispensed with in the animal constitution, but they are obviously insufficient. it would be rash to affirm that pain is indispensable as a warning against danger, but certainly no one has shown how it could be dispensed with, or even plausibly imagined how it might be dispensed with. for anything we can see or even conceive, animal organisms could only be preserved in a world like ours by being endowed with a susceptibility to pain. for anything we know or can even imagine, the demand that there should be no pain is implicitly a demand that there should be no animal life and no world like the earth;--a most foolish and presumptuous demand. but however this may be, pain has, as a fact, plain reference to the prevention of physical injury. "painful sensations," says professor le conte, "are only watchful vedettes upon the outposts of our organism to warn us of approaching danger. without these, the citadel of our life would be quickly surprised and taken." now, to the whole extent that what has just been said is true, pain is not evil but good, and justifies both itself and its author. it is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and its end is a benevolent one. the character of pain itself is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent being,--one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his creatures' profit. another fact makes this still more evident. pain is a stimulus to exertion, and it is only through exertion that the faculties are disciplined and developed. every appetite originates in the experience of a want, and the experience of a want is a pain; but what would the animals be without their appetites and the activities to which these give rise? would they be the magnificent and beautiful creatures so many of them are? if the hare had no fear, would it be as swift as it is? if the lion had no hunger, would it be as strong as it is? if man had nothing to struggle with, would he be as enterprising, as ingenious, as variously skilled and educated as he is? pain tends to the perfection of the animals. it has, that is to say, a good end; an end which justifies its use; one which would do so even if perfection should not be conducive to happiness. perfection, it seems to me, is a worthy aim in itself, and the pain which naturally tends to it is no real evil, and needs no apology. i fail to see that the nearest approximation to the ideal of animal life is the existence of a well-fed hog, which does not need to exert itself, and is not designed for the slaughter. whatever pain is needed to make the animals so exercise their faculties as to improve and develop their natures, has been wisely and rightly allotted to them. we assign a low aim to providence when we affirm that it looks merely to the happiness even of the animals. it would be no disproof of benevolence in the creator if pain in the creatures tended simply to perfection and not to happiness; while it must be regarded as a proof of his benevolence if the means which lead to perfection lead also to happiness. and this they do. the pain which gives rise to exertion and the pain which is involved in exertion are, as a rule, amply rewarded even with pleasure. perhaps susceptibility to pain is a necessary condition of susceptibility to pleasure; perhaps the bodily organism could not be capable of pleasure and insensible to pain; but whether this be the case or not, it is a plain and certain matter of fact that the activities which pain originates are the chief sources of enjoyment throughout the animal creation. this fact entitles us to hold that pain itself is an evidence of the benevolence of god. the perfecting power of suffering is seen in its highest form not in the brute, but in man; not in its effects on the body, but in its influence on the mind. it is of incalculable use in correcting and disciplining the spirit. it serves to soften the hard of heart, to subdue the proud, to produce fortitude and patience, to expand the sympathies, to exercise the religious affections, to refine, strengthen, and elevate the entire disposition. to come out pure gold, the character must pass through the furnace of affliction. and no one who has borne suffering aright has ever complained that he had been called on to endure too much of it. on the contrary, all the noblest of our race have learned from experience to count suffering not an evil but a privilege, and to rejoice in it as working out in them, through its purifying and perfecting power, an eternal weight of glory. in the measure that the theory of evolution can be established, the wisdom and benevolence displayed in pain would seem to receive confirmation. so far as that theory can be proved, want, the struggle for existence, the sufferings which flow from it, and death itself, must, it would appear, be regarded as means to the formation, improvement, and adornment of species and races. the afflictions which befall individuals will in this case be scientifically demonstrated to have a reference not merely to their own good, but to the welfare of their kind in all future time. the truth that nothing lives or dies to itself would thus receive remarkable verification. but although it should never receive this verification, although a strictly scientific proof of it shall never be forthcoming, there is already sufficient evidence for it of an obvious and unambiguous kind. every being, and the animated certainly not less than the inanimate, is adjusted, as i have previously had occasion to show, to every other. "all are but parts of one stupendous whole." this is a truth which throws a kindly and cheering light on many an otherwise dark and depressing fact. turn it even towards death. can death itself, when seen in the light of it, be denied to be an evidence of benevolence? i think not. the law of animal generation makes necessary the law of animal death, if the largest amount of animal happiness is to be secured. if there had been less death there must have been also less life, and what life there was must have been poorer and meaner. death is a condition of the prolificness of nature, the multiplicity of species, the succession of generations, the coexistence of the young and the old; and these things, it cannot reasonably be doubted, add immensely to the sum of animal happiness. such considerations as have now been indicated are sufficient to show that suffering is a means to ends which only a benevolent being can be conceived of as designing. they show that pain and death are not what they would have been if a malevolent being had contrived them; that they are characterised by peculiarities which only love and mercy can explain. we do not need for any practical spiritual purpose to know more than this. an objector may still ask, could not god have attained all good ends without employing any painful means? he may still confront us with the epicurean dilemma: "the deity is either willing to take away all evil, but is not able to do so, in which case he is not omnipotent; or he is able to remove the evil, but is not willing, in which case he is not benevolent; or he is neither willing nor able, which is a denial of the divine perfections; or he is both able and willing to do away with the evil, and yet it exists." but only superficial and immature minds will attach much weight to questionings and reasonings of this kind. a slight tincture of inductive science will suffice to make any man aware that speculations as to what god can or can not do, as to what the universe might or might not have been, belong to a very different region from investigations into the tendencies of real facts and processes. it would seem as if, with our present faculties, these speculations could lead us to no reliable conclusions. we clearly perceive that pain and death serve many good ends; but we should require a knowledge of god and of the universe far beyond that which we possess, to be able to state, even as an intelligent conjecture, that these evils could be wisely dispensed with, or that there is anything in them in the least inconsistent either with the power or the benevolence of god.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxiv. a large amount of human suffering is accounted for by its connection with human sin. whatever so-called physical evil is needed to prevent moral evil, or to punish it, or to cure it, or to discipline in moral good, is not really evil. any earthly suffering which saves us from sin is to be classed among benefits. there is nothing to perplex either mind or heart in the circumstance that sin causes a profound and widespread unhappiness. it is strange that it should sometimes apparently produce so little misery; only a dull conscience, i think, will be surprised that it produces so much. it is merely in so far as physical evil is dissociated from moral evil that its existence is a problem and a perplexity. but the very existence of moral evil is a most painful mystery. the absence of physical evil while moral evil was present would be inconsistent with a moral government of the world; whereas if moral evil were removed no real difficulty would be left. physical evil may be a relative good, which god can easily be conceived of as causing and approving; moral evil is an unconditional evil, and cannot be the work of any morally perfect being. have we any reason, however, to suppose that sin is willed by god in the sense either of being caused or approved by him? all the sin we know of on earth is willed by man, and all the sin which scripture tells us of as existing elsewhere is said to be willed by evil spirits; neither nature nor scripture informs us that there is any moral evil willed by god. in other words, there are no facts which refer us to god as the author of evil. in the absence of facts, we can, it is true, form conjectures, and give expression to them in such questions as, how could god make beings capable of sinning? why did he not prevent them sinning? wherefore has he permitted sin to endure so long and spread so widely? but thoughtful searchers for truth, at least after a certain age, cannot feel much interested in, or much perplexed by, questions like these. they will be quite willing to leave the discussion of them to debating societies. they will resolutely refuse to assign the same value to conjectures as to facts. sin is not god's work. moral order may exist without moral disorder, but moral disorder can only exist as rebellion against moral order. the very notion of moral evil implies a moral good which it contravenes, and a moral law by which it is condemned. it can never be thought of as other than a something grafted on nature, by which nature is perverted and depraved. it is not natural, but unnatural; not primary and original, but secondary and derivative; not the law, but the violation of the law. "the primal will, innately good, hath never swerved, or from its own perfect self declined." between this will and sin there are ever interposed created wills, which are conscious of their power to choose good or evil, obedience or disobedience to god's law. god bestows on his creatures only good gifts, but one of the best of all these gifts includes in its very nature ability to abuse and pervert itself and all things else. freewill needs no vindication, for it is the primary and indispensable condition of moral agency. without it there might be a certain animal goodness, but there could be no true virtue. a virtuous being is one which chooses of its own accord to do what is right. the notion of a moral creature being governed and guided without the concurrence and approval of its own will is a contradiction. if god desired to have moral creatures in his universe he could only have them by endowing them with freewill, which is the power to accept or reject his own will. the determination to create moral beings was a determination to create beings who should be the causes of their own actions, and who might set aside his own law. it was a determination to limit his own will to that extent and in that manner. hence, when he created moral beings, and these beings, in the free exercise of their power, violated his law, sin entered into the world, but not through his will. it resulted from the exercise of an original good gift which he had bestowed on certain of his creatures, who could abuse that gift, but were not necessitated to abuse it. their abuse of it was their own action, and the action consisted not in conforming to, but in contravening, god's will. thus, god's character is not stained by the sins which his creatures have committed. but, it will be objected, could not god have made moral creatures who would be certain always to choose what is right, always to acquiesce in his own holy will? and if he could do this, why did he not? why did he create a class of moral creatures whom he could not but foresee to be certain to abuse their power of choice between obedience and disobedience to his law? well, far be it from me to deny that god could have originated a sinless moral system. if anything i have already said be understood to imply this, it has been completely misunderstood. i have no doubt that god has actually made many moral beings who are certain never to oppose their own wills to his; or that he might, if it had so pleased him, have created only such angels as were sure to keep their first estate. but if questioned as to why he has not done the latter, i feel no shame in confessing my ignorance. it seems to me that when you have resolved the problem of the origin of moral evil into the question, why has god not originated a moral universe in which the lowest moral being would be as excellent as the archangels are? you have at once shown it to be speculatively incapable of solution and practically without importance. the question is one which would obviously give rise to another, why has god not created only moral beings as much superior to the archangels as they are superior to the lowest australian aborigines? and that to still another of the same kind, and so on _ad infinitum_? but no complete answer can be given to a question which may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end. we have, besides, neither the facts nor the faculties requisite to answer such questions. a merely imaginary universe is one on which we have no data to reason. we who are so incompetent judges of the actual universe, notwithstanding the various opportunities which we possess of studying it, and the special adaptation of our organs and powers to the objects which it presents, can have no right to affirm its inferiority to any universe which we can imagine as possible. the best world, we may be assured, that our fancies can feign, would in reality be far inferior to the world god has made, whatever imperfections we may think we see in it. we ought to be content if we can show that what god has done is wise and right, and not perplex ourselves as to why he has not done an infinity of other things, the propriety of which we cannot possibly estimate aright or as parts of any scheme unlimited in extent and eternal in duration. sin, then, is not god's work, and we are unable to prove that he ought to have prevented it. can we go any farther than this? yes; we can show that the permission of it has been made subservient to the attainment of certain great ends. man has the power to choose evil, but god has also the power to overrule it--to cause it, as it were, to contradict itself, to work out its own defeat and disgrace, to promote what it threatens to hinder; and the facts of experience and history show us that this is what he does. there is thus developed in his human creatures a higher kind of virtue than that of mere innocence; a virtue which can only be reached through suffering, and conflict, and conquest. the struggle with moral evil, still more than that with physical disadvantages and intellectual difficulties, tests and exercises the soul, teaches it its weakness and dependence on divine strength, and elicits and trains its spiritual faculties. successive battles with vice raise honest combatants to successive stages of virtue. the type of character presented to us in the second adam is no bare restoration of that which was lost in the first adam, but one immeasurably superior. the humblest of true christians now aspires after a far grander moral ideal than that of an untested innocence. is there not in this fact a vindication of god's wisdom and holiness worth more than volumes of abstract speculation? due weight ought also to be given to the circumstance that the system of god's moral government of our race is only in course of development. we can see but a small part of it, for the rest is as yet unevolved. history is not a whole, but the initial or preliminary portion of a process which may be of vast duration, and the sequel of which may be far grander than the past has been. that portion of the process which has been already accomplished, small though it be, indicates the direction which is being taken; it is, on the whole, a progressive movement; a movement bearing humanity towards truth, freedom, and justice. is it scientific, or in any wise reasonable, to believe that the process will not advance to its legitimate goal? surely not. the physical history of the earth affords abundant evidence of the realisation of the most comprehensive plans, and no indication of failure. we can have no right to imagine that it will be otherwise in the moral sphere; that the ideals towards which history shows humanity to have been approaching in the past will not be reached even in the most distant future. but if moral progress will, no less than physical progress, be carried on unto completion, the future cannot fail to throw light on the past--cannot fail to some extent to justify the past. the slowness of the progress may perplex us, and yet, perhaps, it is just what we ought to expect, both from god's greatness and our own littleness. he is patient because eternal. his plans stretch from everlasting to everlasting, and a thousand years are in his sight but as yesterday when it is past. we have not the faculties which fit us for rapid movements and vast achievements. we need to be conducted by easy and circuitous courses. "lofty heights must be ascended by winding paths." "we have not wings, we cannot soar, but we have feet to scale and climb by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time." it must be added that whoever acknowledges christianity to be a revelation from god, must see in it reasons which go far to explain the permission of sin. there is, it is true, in the authoritative records of the christian religion, the hebrew and greek scriptures, no explanation of the origin of moral evil as a speculative problem. the account of the first parents of the human race introducing sin into the world by yielding to the seduction of a being who had himself sinned, is wholly of a historical character, and can neither be compared nor contrasted with the theories of philosophers as to the nature, possibility, and cause of sin. to measure the one by the others, or to set the one over against the others, is to do injustice both to scripture and philosophy. but the whole scheme of christianity must seem to those who accept it the strongest possible of practical grounds for the divine permission of man's abuse of freewill. the existence of sin has, according to the christian view, been the occasion and condition of a manifestation of the divine character far more glorious than that which had been given by the creation of the heavens and the earth. it called forth a display of justice, love, and mercy before which all moral beings in the universe may well bow down in wonder and adoration, and man especially with unspeakable gratitude. if god has really manifested himself in christ for the reconciliation of the world to himself, his permission of sin has certainly to all practical intents been amply justified. but i must conclude. let it be in leaving with you the lesson that belief in conscience and belief in god--belief in the moral order of the universe and belief in a moral governor and judge--are most intimately connected and mutually support each other. many of you will remember how robertson of brighton,--when describing the crisis of the conflict between doubt and faith in the awful hour in which, as he says, life has lost its meaning, and the grave appears to be the end of all, and the sky above the universe is a dead expanse, black with the void from which god has disappeared,--tells us that he knows but of one way in which a man may come forth from this agony scatheless--namely, by holding fast to those things which are certain still, the grand, simple landmarks of morality. "in the darkest hour," are his words, "through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain,--if there be no god, and no future state, even then, it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be brave than to be a coward. blessed, beyond all earthly blessedness, is the man who in the tempestuous darkness of the soul has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. thrice blessed is he who, when all is drear and cheerless within and without, when his teachers terrify him and his friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung to moral good. thrice blessed, because his night shall pass into clear bright day." now there is a great truth, a most sacred and solemn truth, in these words. but it is only a half truth, and it should not be mistaken for the whole truth. it is not less true, and it is true, perhaps, of a far greater number of human souls, that there are dark and dreadful hours when they are tempted to believe that virtue is but a name, that generosity is not better than selfishness, truth not better than falsehood, and the courage which defends a post of dangerous duty not better than the cowardice which abandons it; and in these hours i know not how the soul is to regain its trust in human goodness, except by holding fast its faith in divine goodness; or how it can be strengthened to cling to what is right, except by cleaving to god. it is as possible to doubt of the authority of conscience as to doubt of the existence of god. there are few souls which have not their philippi, when they are tempted to cry like brutus, "o virtue, thou art but an empty name!" blessed in such an hour is he who, feeling himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that god who is able to rescue him from the abyss, and clings to that justice in heaven which is the pledge that justice will be done on earth below. thrice blessed, because he will be guided through the darkness of a sea of doubts even thus terrible to a haven of light and safety. faith in duty helps us to faith in god: faith in god helps us to faith in duty. duty and god, god and duty, that is the full truth.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxv. lecture ix. _a priori_ theistic proof. i. the arguments which we have been considering are not merely proofs that god is, but indications of what he is. they testify to the divine existence by exhibiting the divine character. they are expressions of how he manifests himself, and expositions of how we apprehend his self-manifestations. we have seen that against each of them various objections have been urged, but that these objections when examined do not approve themselves to reason; they leave the arguments against which they have been thrown quite unshaken. these arguments, however, although perfectly conclusive so far as they go, do not, even in combination, yield us the full idea of god which is entertained wherever theism prevails. they show him to be the first cause of the world--the source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed therein. they do not prove him to be infinite, eternal, absolute in being and perfection. yet it cannot be questioned that the cultivated human mind thinks of god as the absolute, infinite, eternal, perfect first cause, and that no lower idea of god can satisfy it. the intellect cannot accept, and the heart also revolts against, the thought that god is dependent on any antecedent or higher being; that he is limited to a portion either of time or space; or that he is devoid of any excellence, deficient in any perfection. such a thought is rejected as at once utterly unworthy of its object, and inherently inconsistent. are we, then, rationally warranted to assign to god those attributes which are called absolute or incommunicable? this is the question we have now to answer. what has been proved makes it comparatively easy to establish what is still unproved. we have ascertained that there is a god, the first cause of the universe, the powerful, wise, good, and righteous author of all things. we are conscious, also, that we have ideas of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, perfection, &c. we may be doubtful as to whence we got these ideas--we may feel that there is very much which is vague and perplexing in them; but we cannot question or deny that we have them. having them, no matter how or whence we have got them, and knowing that god is, as also in a measure what he is, the remaining question for us is, must these ideas apply to god or not? must the first cause be thought of as eternal or not--as infinite or finite, as perfect or imperfect? reason, after it has reached a certain stage of culture, has never found this a difficult question. indeed, often even before freeing itself from polytheism, it has been internally constrained to ascribe to some of the objects of adoration those very attributes of eternity, infinity, and perfection which polytheism implicitly denies. once it has come to believe that the universe has its origin in a rational and righteous creative will, it can hardly refuse to admit that that will must be infinite and eternal. where it has rejected polytheism without accepting theism, it has been forced to acknowledge the world itself to be infinite and eternal. when it has risen beyond the world, when it has reached an intelligent cause of the world, it cannot, of course, refuse to that cause the perfections which it would have granted to the effect--to the creator what it would have attributed to the creation. the first and ultimate being, and not any derived and dependent being, must obviously be the infinite, eternal, and perfect being. the proof that god is absolute in being and perfection should, it seems to me, not precede but follow the proofs that there is a cause sufficiently powerful, wise, and good to account for physical nature, the mind of man, and the course of history. the usual mode of conducting the theistic argumentation has been the reverse; it has been to begin by endeavouring to prove, from principles held to be intuitive and ideas held to be innate, the necessary existence, absolute perfection, infinity, and eternity of god; or, in other words, with what is called the _a priori_ or ontological arguments. this mode of procedure seems to me neither judicious nor effective. if we have not established that there is a god by reasoning from facts, we must demonstrate his existence from ideas: but to get from the ideal to the actual may be impossible, and is certain to be difficult; whereas, if we have allowed facts to teach us all that they legitimately can about the existence, power, wisdom, and righteousness of god, it may be easy to show that our ideas of absolute being and perfection must apply to him, and can only apply to him. theism, according to the view now expressed, is not vitally interested in the fate of the so-called _a priori_ or ontological arguments. there may be serious defects in all these arguments, considered as formal demonstrations, and yet the conclusion which it is their aim to establish may be in no way compromised. it may be that the principles on which they rest do not directly involve the existence of god, and yet that they certainly, although indirectly, imply it, so that whoever denies it is rationally bound to set aside the fundamental conditions of thought, and to deem consciousness essentially delusive. it may be that the _a priori_ arguments are faulty as logical evolutions of the truth of the divine existence from ultimate and necessary conceptions, and yet that they concur in manifesting that if god be not, the human mind is of its very nature self-contradictory; that god can only be disbelieved in at the cost of reducing the whole world of thought to a chaos. whether this be the case or not, some of the _a priori_ proofs are so celebrated that i cannot pass them over in entire silence.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxvi. there is a charge which has been very often brought against the _a priori_ proofs, but which may be at once set aside as incorrect. it has been alleged that they proceed on forgetfulness of the truth that the divine existence is the first and highest reality, and therefore cannot be demonstrated from anything prior to or higher than itself. but in no case that i know of have those who adopted what they supposed to be the _a priori_ line of argument been under the delusion that the ground of the existence of god was not in himself, but in something outside of or above himself, from which his existence could be deduced. such a notion is, in fact, so self-contradictory, that no sane mind could deliberately entertain it. it would imply that theism could be founded on atheism. whatever _a priori_ proof of the divine existence may be, it has certainly never been imagined by those who employed it to be demonstration from an antecedent necessary cause.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxvii. _a priori_ proof is proof which proceeds from primary and necessary principles of thought. from its very nature it could only appear at a comparatively late period in the history of intelligence. it is only a profound study of the constitution of thought, only a refined reflective analysis of consciousness into its elements, which can bring to light the principles which necessarily underlie and govern all intellectual activity; and it is only on these principles that _a priori_ proof is based. as these principles never exist in an absolutely pure form, as what is universal and necessary in thought is never found wholly apart from what is particular and contingent, no absolutely pure _a priori_ argumentation need be looked for, and certainly none such can be discovered in the whole history of speculation. plato was, perhaps, the first to attempt to prove the existence of god from the essential principles of knowledge. he could not consistently reason from the impressions of sense or the phenomena of the visible world. he denied that sense is knowledge, and that visible things can be more than images and indications of truth. he maintained, however, that besides the visible world there is an intelligible world, with objects which reason sees and not sense. these objects are either conceptions or ideas, either hypothetical principles or absolute principles, either scientific assumptions and definitions or necessary and eternal truths which have their reality and evidence in themselves. the mathematical sciences deal with conceptions; but their chief value, according to plato, is that they help the mind to rise to that absolute science--dialectics--which is conversant with ideas. the apprehension of ideas is the apprehension of the common element in the manifold, the universal in the individual, the permanent in the mutable. reason contemplates ideas, and participates in ideas, and ideas are at once the essences of things and the regulative principles of cognition. by communion with them the reason reaches objective reality and possesses subjective certainty. they are not isolated and unconnected, but so related that each higher idea comprehends within it several lower ones, and that all combined constitute a graduated series or articulated organism, unified and completed by an idea which has none higher than itself, which is ultimate, which conditions all the others while it is conditioned by none. the supreme idea, which contains in itself all other ideas, is absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute good, absolute intelligence, and absolute being. it is the source of all true existence, knowledge, and excellence. it is god. in this part of its course the dialectic of plato is simply a search for god. it is _a priori_ inasmuch as it rests on necessary ideas, but _a posteriori_ inasmuch as it proceeds from these ideas upwards to god in a manner which is essentially analytic and inductive. only when god--the principle of principles--is reached, can it become synthetic and deductive. the question, is the platonic proof of the divine existence substantially true? is precisely equivalent to the question, is the platonic philosophy substantially true? of course, i cannot here attempt to argue a theme so vast as spiritualism _versus_ empiricism, platonism _versus_ positivism. my belief, however, is, that platonism is substantially true; that the objections which the empiricism and positivism at present prevalent urge against its fundamental positions are superficial and insufficient; that what is essential in its theory of ideas, and in the theism inseparable from that theory, must abide with our race for ever as a priceless possession. the platonic argument--by which is meant not a particular argument incidentally employed by plato, but the reasoning which underlies and pervades his entire philosophy as a speculative search for certainty--has been transmitted from age to age down to the present day by a long series of eminent thinkers. augustine, for example, argues for the existence of god from the very nature of truth. it is impossible to think that there is no truth. if there were none, to affirm that there was none would be itself true; or, in other words, the denial of the existence of truth is a self-contradiction. but what is truth? it is not mere sensuous perception, not a something which belongs to the individual mind and varies with its moods and peculiarities, but a something which is unsensuous, unchangeable, and universal. the human reason changes and errs in its judgments; but ideas, necessary truths, are not the products, but the laws and conditions, of the human reason--they are over it, and it is only through apprehending, realising, and obeying them, that it enlightens and regulates our nature. these ideas--the laws of our intellectual and moral constitution--cannot have their source in us, but must be eternally inherent in an eternal, unchangeable, and perfect being. this being--the absolute truth and ultimate ground of all goodness--is god. anselm reasoned in altogether the same spirit and in nearly the same manner. in one of his works he institutes an inquiry as to whether the goodness in good actions is or is not the same thing present in all; and when he has convinced himself that it is the same thing, he asks, what is it? and where has it a real existence? ascending upwards by these stages, good _is_; good is _perfect_; good is _one_; the one perfect good is god,--he comes to the conclusion that the goodness constitutive of good actions has necessarily its source in god, and that the absolutely and essentially good is identical with god. in another of his works he similarly inquires whether there is any truth except mere actual existence. he holds that there is, and argues, as he had done before in regard to the good, that the absolute and ultimate truth must be god. thomas aquinas was at one with anselm thus far. the very nature of knowledge seemed to him to show that it was in man only through the dependence of the human intelligence on an underived and perfect intelligence. among the many modern philosophers who have adopted and enforced the same doctrine i shall refer only to a few. lord herbert of cherbury, the founder of english deism, is very explicit on the subject. he thought of the human mind as united in the closest and most comprehensive way to the divine mind through the universal notions of what he called the rational instinct. these notions are the laws which every faculty is meant to conform to and obey--the laws of all thought, affection, and action. as to nature and origin, they are, in herbert's view, divine; thoughts of god present in the mind of man; true revelations of the father of spirits to his children. in apprehending one of them we have truly an intuition of a divine attribute, of some feature of the divine character. it is through contact, through communion with the divine intelligence, love, and will, that we know and feel and act. the divine is the root and the law of human thought, emotion, and conduct. not afar off, not to be realised by great stretch of intellect, not separated by innumerable existences which intervene between him and us, but close around us, yea, with nothing between him and our inmost souls, is the being with whom we have to do. "in him," really and without any figure of speech, "we live, and move, and have our being." among the various metaphysical proofs of divine existence employed by cudworth, one is in like manner founded on the very nature of knowledge. knowledge, it is argued, is possible only through ideas which have their source in an eternal reason. sense is not only not the whole of knowledge, but is in itself not at all knowledge; it is wholly relative and individual, and not knowledge until the mind adds to it what is absolute and universal. knowledge does not begin with what is individual, but with what is universal. the individual is known by being brought under a universal, instead of the universal being gathered from a multitude of individuals. and these universals or ideas which underlie all the knowledge of all men, which originate it and do not originate in it, have existed eternally in the only mode in which truths can be said to be eternal, in an eternal mind. they come to us from an eternal mind, which is their proper home, and of which human reason is an emanation. "from whence it cometh to pass, that all minds, in the several places and ages of the world, have ideas or notions of things exactly alike, and truths indivisibly the same. truths are not multiplied by the diversity of minds that apprehend them; because they are all but ectypal participations of one and the same original or archetypal mind and truth. as the same face may be reflected in several glasses; and the image of the same sun may be in a thousand eyes at once beholding it; and one and the same voice may be in a thousand ears listening to it: so when innumerable created minds have the same ideas of things, and understand the same truths, it is but one and the same eternal light that is reflected in them all ('that light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world,') or the same voice of that one everlasting word that is never silent, re-echoed by them." malebranche's celebrated theory of "seeing all things in god" is but an exaggeration of the doctrine that "god is the light of all our seeing." it found a zealous english defender in john norris of bemerton. according to malebranche and norris, all objects are seen or understood through ideas, which derive their existence neither from the senses nor from the operations of the mind itself but are created in us by the deity; and which are not drawn from contemplation of the perfections of the soul, but are inherent in the divine nature. better guarded statements of the platonic argument from necessary ideas will be found in leibnitz, and bossuet, and fenelon. in the hands of cousin more was again attempted to be deduced from it than it could legitimately yield. we may reject, however, his opinion that reason is not individual or personal, without rejecting with it the substance at least of what he has so eloquently said regarding the necessary ideas which govern the reason, or the reasoning by which he seeks to show that truth is incomprehensible without god, and that all thought implies a spontaneous faith in god. the most recent defenders of theism employ in one form or another the same argument. in the works of ulrici, hettinger, and luthardt, of saisset and simon, of thompson and tulloch, it still holds a prominent place. i pass from it to indicate the character of some other arguments, which are of a much more formal nature, but which have by no means commanded so wide an assent. in fact, the arguments to which i now refer have never laid hold of the common reason of men. they are the ingenious constructions of highly-gifted metaphysicians, and have awakened much interest in a certain number of speculative minds, but they have not contributed in any considerable degree either to the maintenance or the diffusion of theistic belief, and have had no lengthened continuous history. they obviously stand, therefore, on a very different footing from the proofs which have already been adduced--proofs which are as catholic as the conclusions which they support, or as any of the doctrines of the christian system. the stoic philosopher cleanthes, author of the famous hymn to zeus, argued that every comparison, in affirming or denying one thing to be better than another, implied and presupposed the existence of a superlative or an absolutely good and perfect being. centuries later, boethius had recourse to nearly identical reasoning. it is only, he maintained, through the idea of perfection that we can judge anything to be imperfect; and the consciousness or perception of imperfection leads reason necessarily to believe that there is a perfect existence--one than whom a better cannot be conceived--god. cleanthes and boethius were thus the precursors of anselm, who was, however, the first to endeavour to show that from the very idea of god as the highest being his necessary reality may be strictly deduced. in consequence, anselm was the founder of that kind of argumentation which, in the opinion of many, is alone entitled to be described as _a priori_ or ontological. he reasoned thus: "the fool may say in his heart, there is no god; but he only proves thereby that he is a fool, for what he says is self-contradictory. since he denies that there is a god, he has in his mind the idea of god, and that idea implies the existence of god, for it is the idea of a being than which a higher cannot be conceived. that than which a higher cannot be conceived cannot exist merely as an idea, because what exists merely as an idea is inferior to what exists in reality as well as in idea. the idea of a highest being which exists merely in thought, is the idea of a highest being which is not the highest even in thought, but inferior to a highest being which exists in fact as well as in thought." this reasoning found unfavourable critics even among the contemporaries of anselm, and has commended itself completely to few. yet it may fairly be doubted whether it has been conclusively refuted, and some of the objections most frequently urged against it are certainly inadmissible. it is no answer to it, for example, to deny that the idea of god is innate or universal. the argument merely assumes that he who denies that there is a god must have an idea of god. there is also no force, as anselm showed, in the objection of gaunilo, that the existence of god can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than the existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such an island. there neither is nor can be an idea of an island which is greater and better than any other that can ever be conceived. anselm could safely promise that he would make gaunilo a present of such an island when he had really imagined it. only one being--an infinite, independent, necessary being--can be perfect in the sense of being greater and better than every other conceivable being. the objection that the ideal can never logically yield the real--that the transition from thought to fact must be in every instance illegitimate--is merely an assertion that the argument is fallacious. it is an assertion which cannot fairly be made until the argument has been exposed and refuted. the argument is that a certain thought of god is found necessarily to imply his existence. the objection that existence is not a predicate, and that the idea of a god who exists is not more complete and perfect than the idea of a god who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable of being satisfactorily repelled. mere existence is not a predicate, but specifications or determinations of existence are predicable. now the argument nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it implies only that reality, necessity, and independence of existence are predicates of existence; and it implies this on the ground that existence _in re_ can be distinguished from existence _in conceptu_, necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived existence. specific distinctions must surely admit of being predicated. that the exclusion of existence--which here means real and necessary existence--from the idea of god does not leave us with an incomplete idea of god, is not a position, i think, which can be maintained. take away existence from among the elements in the idea of a perfect being, and the idea becomes either the idea of a nonentity or the idea of an idea, and not the idea of a perfect being at all. thus, the argument of anselm is unwarrantably represented as an argument of four terms instead of three. those who urge the objection seem to me to prove only that if our thought of god be imperfect, a being who merely realised that thought would be an imperfect being; but there is a vast distance between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an ideally perfect being. the cartesian proofs have been much and keenly discussed. the one which founds on the fact of our existence and its limitations is manifestly _a posteriori_. the other two both proceed from the idea of a perfect being. the first is, that the idea of an all-perfect and unlimited being is involved in the very consciousness of imperfection and limitation. the imperfect can only be seen in the light of the perfect; the finite cannot be conceived of except in relation to the infinite. but can a finite and imperfect cause--like the human mind or the outward world--be reasonably supposed to originate the idea of an infinite and perfect being? descartes holds that it cannot; that the idea of an infinite and perfect being can only be explained by the existence and operation of such a being. was he correct in this judgment? perhaps not; but what has been urged in refutation of it is probably by no means conclusive. it has been said that the ideas of infinity and perfection are mere generalisations from experience. but this is a statement which can only be proved on the principles of sensationalism, and never has been proved. it has been likewise said that these ideas are purely subjective, or, in other words, that there may be nothing whatever to correspond to them. but this is a meaningless collocation of words. no finite mind can conceive the infinite, for example, as within itself at all. the human mind can only think of the infinite as without itself. if the infinite be not objective, the idea of the infinite is false and delusive. the infinite, it has been further objected, means merely what is not finite; and the perfect what is not imperfect. so be it; the argument is as valid if the words be taken in that sense as in any other. only do not add, as some do, that the perfect and the imperfect, the finite and the infinite, are mere verbal correlatives. such a proposition can be spoken, but it cannot be thought; and it is most undesirable to divorce thought from speech. it has also been urged that all men have not the idea of perfection; that different men have different ideas thereof; and that in each man who possesses it the idea is constantly changing. this must be granted; but it does not affect the argument, which is founded on the existence of the idea of a perfect being, and not on the perfection of the idea itself. the second form of the cartesian argument is, that god cannot be thought of as a perfect being unless he be also thought of as a necessarily existent being; and that, therefore, the thought of god implies the existence of god. "just as because," for example, "the equality of its three angles to two right angles is necessarily comprised in the idea of a triangle, the mind is firmly persuaded that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; so, from its perceiving necessary and eternal existence to be comprised in the idea which it has of an all-perfect being, it ought manifestly to conclude that this all-perfect being exists." kant met this argument thus: "it is a contradiction that there should be a triangle the three angles of which are not equal to two right angles, or that there should be a god who is not necessarily existent. i cannot in either case retain the subject and do away with the predicate. if i assume a triangle, i must take it with its three angles. if i assume a god, i must grant him to be necessarily existent. but why should i assume either that there is a triangle or that there is a god? i may annul the subject in both cases, and then there will be no contradiction in annulling the predicate in both cases. there may be no such thing as a triangle, why should there be such a being as god?" this reasoning of kant has generally been accepted as conclusive. it does not appear to me to be so. he ought not merely to have asserted but to have shown that we can annul the subject in either of the cases mentioned. we obviously cannot. i can say "there is no triangle," but instead of annulling that implies the idea of a triangle, and from the idea of a triangle it follows that its three angles are equal to two right angles. in like manner i can say "there is no god," but that is not to annul but to imply the idea of god, and it is from the idea of god that, according to descartes, the existence of god necessarily follows. kant should have seen that the proposition "there is no god" could be no impediment to an argument the very purpose of which is to prove that that proposition is a self-contradiction. it is futile to meet this by saying that existence ought not to be included in any mere conception, for it is not existence but necessary existence which is included in the conception reasoned from, and that god can be thought of otherwise than as necessarily existent requires to be proved, not assumed. to affirm that existence cannot be given or reached through thought, but only through sense and sensuous experience, can prove nothing except the narrowness of the philosophy on which such a thesis is based. cudworth, leibnitz, and mendelssohn modified the cartesian argument last specified in ways which do not greatly differ from one another. it may be doubted whether their modifications were improvements. in the eighteenth century there were elaborated a great many proofs which claimed to be _a priori_ theistic demonstrations based on the notions of existence and causality. assuming that something is, and that nothing cannot be the cause of something, these arguments attempted to establish that there must be an unoriginated being of infinite perfection, and possessed of the attributes which we ascribe to god. the most famous of them was, perhaps, that of dr samuel clarke, contained in the boyle lecture of . but dr richard fiddes, the rev. colin campbell, mr wollaston, moses lowman, the chevalier ramsay, dean hamilton, and many others, devised ingenious demonstrations of a similar nature. it is impossible for me to discuss here their merits and demerits. probably not one of them has completely satisfied more than a few speculative minds. they are certainly not fitted to carry conviction to the ordinary practical understanding. yet it is not easy to detect flaws in some of them; and the more carefully they are studied, the more, i am inclined to think, will it be recognised that they are pervaded by a substantial vein of truth. they attempted logically to evolve what was implied in certain primary intuitions or fundamental conditions of the mind, and although they may not have accomplished all that they aimed at, they have at least succeeded in showing that unless there exists an eternal, infinite, and unconditioned being, the human mind is, in its ultimate principles, self-contradictory and delusive.[ ] [ ] see appendix xxxviii. there must, for example, unless consciousness and reason are utterly untrustworthy, be an eternal being. present existence necessarily implies to the human intellect eternal existence. the man who says that a finite mind cannot rise to the idea of an eternal being talks foolishly, for all the thinking of a finite mind implies belief in what he says is inaccessible to human thought. no man can thoughtfully affirm his own existence, or the existence even of a passing fancy of his mind, or of a grain of sand, without feeling that that affirmation as certainly implies that something existed from all eternity as any mathematical demonstration whatever implies its conclusion. and this truth, that the most transient thing cannot be conceived of as existing unless an eternal being exist, may be syllogistically expressed and exhibited in a variety of ways, because the contradictions involved in denying it are numerous. this is what has been done by the authors above mentioned with much ingenuity, and by some of them in a manner which never has been and never can be refuted. it may be doubted whether they did wisely in throwing their arguments into syllogistic form; but as nobody ventures to undertake the refutation of them, they must be admitted to be substantially valid. the reasonings of men like clarke and fiddes, lowman and ramsay, have sufficiently proved that whoever denies such propositions as these,--something has existed from eternity; the eternal being must be necessarily existent, immutable, and independent; there is but one unoriginated being in the universe; the unoriginated being must be unlimited or perfect in all its attributes, &c.,--inevitably falls into manifest absurdities. this, it may be objected, is not equivalent to a proof of the existence of an infinite and eternal being. it leads merely to the alternative, either an infinite and eternal being exists, or the consciousness and reason of man cannot be trusted. the absolute sceptic will rejoice to have the alternative offered to him; that the human mind is essentially untrustworthy is precisely what he maintains. i answer that i admit that the arguments in question do not amount to a direct positive proof, but that they constitute a _reductio ad absurdum_, which is just as good, and that if they do not exclude absolute scepticism, it is merely because absolute scepticism is willing to accept what is absurd. i am not going to examine absolute scepticism at present. i shall have something to say regarding it when i treat of antitheistic theories. just now it is sufficient simply to point out that if disbelief in an infinite, self-existent, eternal being necessarily implies belief in the untrustworthiness of all our mental processes, the absolute sceptic is the only man who can consistently disbelieve in god. unless we are prepared to believe that no distinction can be established between truth and error--that there is no certainty that our senses and our understandings are not at every moment deceiving us--no real difference between our perceptions when we are awake and our visions when we are asleep--no ground of assurance that we are not as much deluded when following a demonstration of euclid as any have been who busied themselves in attempting to square the circle,--we must accept all arguments which show that disbelief of the existence of an infinite and eternal being logically involves a self-contradiction or an absurdity, as not less valid than a direct positive demonstration of the existence of such a being. if, although i am constrained to conclude that there is an infinite and eternal being, i may reject the conclusion on the supposition that reason is untrustworthy, i am clearly bound, in self-consistency, to set aside the testimony of my senses also by the assumption that they are habitually delusive. when any view or theory is shown to involve absolute scepticism it is sufficiently refuted, for absolute scepticism effaces the distinction between reason and unreason, and practically prefers unreason to reason. ii. the _a priori_ arguments have a value independent of their truth and of their power to produce conviction. true or false, persuasive or merely perplexing, they are admirable means of disciplining the mind distinctly to apprehend certain ideas which experience cannot yield, yet which must be comprehended in any worthy view taken of god. they help us steadily to contemplate and patiently to consider such abstract and difficult thoughts as those of being, absolute being, necessary being, cause, substance, perfection, infinity, eternity, &c.; and this is a service so great, that it may safely be said--as some writer whose name i cannot recall has said--that they will never be despised so long as speculative thinking is held in repute. while believing that several of these arguments on the whole accomplish what they undertake, i am not prepared to maintain that any of them are faultless or even conclusive throughout. they are all, probably, much too formal and elaborate, so far as any directly practical purpose is concerned. it ought to be constantly kept in view that they presuppose an immediate apprehension of the infinite, and that their value consists entirely in establishing that that apprehension implies the reality and presence of god. the simplest mode of doing this must be the best. it may be thought that no reasoning at all is needed; that the intuition does not require to be supplemented by any inference; that if the infinite be apprehended, the living god must be self-evidently present to the human mind. but this is plainly a hasty view. few atheists will deny that something is infinite, or that they immediately apprehend various aspects of infinity. what they refuse to acknowledge is, that the apprehension of the infinite implies more than the boundlessness of space, the eternity of time, and the self-existence of matter. there is certainly some reasoning needed in order to show that this interpretation of the intuition is inadequate. but such reasoning cannot be too direct, for otherwise the function of the intuition is almost certain to be obscured, and argument is almost certain to be credited with accomplishing far more than it really effects. according to the view of the theistic argumentation which has been given in the present course of lectures, all that is now necessary to complete the theistic proof is very simple indeed. the universe has been shown to have an inconceivably powerful and intelligent cause, a supreme creator, who has dealt bountifully with all his creatures, who has given to men a moral law, and who has abundantly manifested in history that he loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. we are further conscious of having ideas or intuitions of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, and perfection. we may dispute as to whence and how we have got them, but we cannot deny that we possess them. were any person, for example, to affirm that he did not believe that there is a self-existent or necessary being--a being which derived its existence from no other and depends upon no other but is what it is in and of itself alone--we should be entitled to tell him either that he did not know the meaning of what he said, or that he did not himself believe what he said. but if we undoubtedly possess these ideas, they must, unless they are wholly delusive--which is what we are unable to conceive--be predicable of some being. the sole question for us is, of what being? and the whole of our previous argumentation has shut us up to one answer. it must be, of him who has been proved to be the first cause of all things--the source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed in the universe. it cannot be the universe itself, for that has been shown to be but an effect--to have before and behind it a mind, a person. it cannot be ourselves or anything to which our senses can reach, seeing that we and they are finite, contingent, and imperfect. the author of the universe alone--the father of our spirits, and the giver of every good and perfect gift--can be uncreated and unconditioned, infinite and perfect. this completes the idea of god so far as it can be reached or formed by natural reason. and it gives consistency to the idea. the conclusions of the _a posteriori_ arguments fail to satisfy either mind or heart until they are connected with, and supplemented by, this intuition of the reason--infinity. the conception of any other than an infinite god--a god unlimited in all perfections--is a self-contradictory conception which the intellect refuses to entertain. the self-contradictions inherent in such a conception have been exposed times without number, and in ways which cannot possibly be refuted. the chief value of most of the _a priori_ arguments lies in such demonstration; and no theologian who has thoughtfully discussed either the immanent or the transitive attributes of god has been able to dispense with as much of _a priori_ reasoning as necessary to establish that a denial of the eternity, or immutability, or omnipotence, or ubiquity, or omniscience, or any other attribute implied in the infinity of the divine being, logically leads to absurdity. if the infinity or independence, for example, of the first cause be questioned, whoever would maintain it must return some such answer as that which mr spencer, although not assenting to it, puts in these words: "if we go a step further, and ask what is the nature of this first cause, we are driven by an inexorable logic to certain further conclusions. is the first cause finite or infinite? if we say finite, we involve ourselves in a dilemma. to think of the first cause as finite is to think of it as limited. to think of it as limited necessarily implies a conception of something beyond its limits: it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as bounded without conceiving a region surrounding its boundaries. what now must we say of this region? if the first cause is limited, and there consequently lies something outside of it, this something must have no first cause--must be uncaused. but if we admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for anything. if beyond that finite region over which the first cause extends there lies a region which we are compelled to regard as infinite, over which it does not extend--if we admit that there is an infinite uncaused surrounding the finite caused--we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of causation altogether. thus it is impossible to consider the first cause as finite. and if it cannot be finite it must be infinite. another inference concerning the first cause is equally unavoidable. it must be independent. if it is dependent, it cannot be the first cause; for that must be the first cause on which it depends. it is not enough to say that it is partially independent; since this implies some necessity which determines its partial dependence, and this necessity, be it what it may, must be a higher cause, or the true first cause, which is a contradiction. but to think of the first cause as totally independent, is to think of it as that which exists in the absence of all other existence; seeing that if the presence of any other existence is necessary, it must be partially dependent on that other existence, and so cannot be the first cause." it is impossible, i think, to show that we are justified in ascribing to god the attributes most essential to his nature without having recourse to a very considerable extent to reasoning of an _a priori_ kind similar to that of which we have a specimen in the passage just quoted. such reasoning may be perfectly legitimate and conclusive. mr spencer, i have said, does not accept as valid the arguments cited. but he admits that from their inferences "there appears to be no escape," characterises their logic as "inexorable," and makes not the slightest attempt directly to refute them. on what grounds, then, does he withhold his assent from them? one reason is, that the very conclusions which such arguments yield, lead, he thinks, by a logic as inexorable, to self-contradictions as great as those found to be involved in the denial of the infinity, independence, &c., of god. reasoning from which there appears to be no escape, and in which no logical fallacy can be detected, yields the conclusion that there is an infinite and absolute first cause; but reasoning as faultless yields also the conclusion that an infinite and absolute first cause is a self-contradiction--that there is no infinite and absolute first cause. in other words, an inexorable logic proves both that there is an infinite and absolute first cause, and that there is none. therefore it proves nothing at all except the worthlessness of logic when applied to such an idea as that of a first cause. most persons will probably be of opinion that a view like this is its own sufficient refutation; that the reasoning which tries to prove that reasoning may be necessarily and essentially self-contradictory is self-condemned. and they will be quite right in their opinion. if for any proposition the proof and counter-proof be equally cogent--if for contradictories there may be perfect demonstrations--it is not god only, but everything, that we shall have to cease to believe in. such a _reductio ad absurdum_ of a proposition would be also a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the reason itself, leaving no inference, no intuition, no perception, to be rationally trusted. a scepticism more absolute and comprehensive than any human being has dared to advocate, would be the only legitimate result. our whole nature would have to be regarded as a lie. but we need have no fear of reason thus terminating its existence by committing suicide. if we are disposed to be afraid that the human mind is in danger of so terrible a calamity, an examination of the reasoning by which it has been attempted to show that the idea of an infinite and absolute first cause involves a variety of contradictions ought speedily to reassure us. few persons of ordinary reasoning powers, if not committed to a foregone conclusion, will regard as "inexorable logic" the argumentation by which mr mansel and mr spencer fancy that they show that one and the same being cannot be a cause, infinite and absolute, or its inferences as those "from which there appears to be no escape." on the contrary, ninety-nine men in a hundred will deem them extremely weak, and possessed of no other plausibility than that which they derive from an inaccurate and ambiguous use of language. there are arguments proving that there is a first cause, and that the first cause must be infinite and absolute, in which no fallacy can be detected. but the only arguments which have yet been invented to show that the first cause cannot without contradiction be thought of as infinite and absolute, are good for little else than to exercise students of logic in the examination of fallacies. the two sets of arguments are by no means of equal worth and weight. they are also notably different in nature. those which attempt to prove the first cause to be infinite and absolute imply no more than that the mind may conclude that such a cause is not finite, dependent, and imperfect. in this there is nothing arrogant. those which attempt to prove that the first cause cannot be infinite and absolute are of a much less humble character. they imply that we have a positive and comprehensive knowledge of the first cause; the infinite, and the absolute; that we can define, compare, and contrast them, and thus find out that they are incompatible and contradictory. but we may be quite unable to do anything of the kind, and yet be fully entitled to hold that the first cause is not finite, dependent, or imperfect. we may reason _to_ the infinite, if we only know what the finite is and is not, without being justified in reasoning _from_ the infinite, as if we knew definitely, not to say exhaustively, its nature. the idea of an infinite first cause--the idea of the infinite god--contains no self-contradiction; on the contrary, it solves certain otherwise inevitable self-contradictions of thought. it is only by the apprehension of a being who passeth knowledge that knowledge can be rendered self-consistent; only by the admission that all existence is not included within the conditions of the finite that thought can escape self-destruction. but, of course, we may easily put contradictions into our idea of an infinite being, by assuming that we know more about unoriginated existence, primary causation, infinity, independence, &c., than we really do, and by defining or describing them in ways for which we have no warrant. the idea of an infinite first cause is, it must not be forgotten, the idea of an incomprehensible being. no sane mind can refuse to acknowledge that something is eternal and immense; but we cannot comprehend eternity and immensity, and when we reason as if we comprehended them, we speedily find ourselves involved in absurdities. we may know and believe that god is eternal and immense, but if he be so, we undoubtedly cannot comprehend him. we cannot think of god otherwise than as self-existent, yet we certainly cannot comprehend the nature of self-existence. we can think of it negatively as unoriginated and independent existence, and consequently as a positive, most perfect, and peculiar manner of existence, unlike that which is characteristic of ourselves and other finite beings; but we are ignorant wherein its peculiarities and perfections positively consist. the incomprehensibleness of the divine perfections is no reasonable objection against their reality. we do not comprehend the manner even of our own existence, although we are quite certain that we do exist. assent, however, has often been refused to _a priori_ theistic argumentation, not on the ground that it is illogical, but on the ground that the conclusions inferred are incomprehensible. thus the author of whom i have just been speaking urges in favour of the procedure which he adopts the following argument, in addition to the one already specified: "self-existence necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. now by no mental effort can we do this. to conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility." "those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe, and who therefore assume a creator as the source of the universe, take for granted that they can conceive a self-existent creator. the mystery which they recognise in this great fact surrounding them on every side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, and then suppose that they have solved the mystery. but they delude themselves. self-existence is rigorously inconceivable; and this holds true whatever be the nature of the object of which it is predicated. whoever agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea." now, that we can by no mental effort conceive existence without a beginning is certain, if by conceive be meant to comprehend, or definitely imagine, or sensibly represent; but that we not only conceive but cannot avoid conceiving such existence is equally certain, if by conceive be simply meant to be conscious of, to know to be true, to be rationally convinced. it is impossible seriously to doubt that existence was without beginning. something is, and something never sprang from nothing. from nothing nothing ever came or can come. something always was. being was without beginning. mr spencer can no more deliver himself from the sublime and awful necessity of acknowledging an eternal something--a self-existent reality--underlying the whole universe, than any one else. his own absolute is such a something, such a reality; and although, in accordance with his peculiar use of the words "know" and "conceive," he denies that that absolute can be known or conceived, he admits that its positive existence is a "necessary datum of consciousness." further, no intelligent theist argues "that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence." on the contrary, the theist, far from objecting to the idea of self-existence as impossible, admits it to be a necessary idea. he recognises that the universe must be allowed to be self-existent until it is shown to be a creation or event. it is only after an examination of its character--only after having convinced himself that it is an effect--that he transfers the attribute of self-existence to its cause or creator. to say that in doing so he flees from one mystery to another as great, is a statement which admits of no possible justification. in a word, mr spencer's account of the reasoning of the theist is an inexplicable caricature. the _a priori_ reasoning employed in the establishment of theism is independent of any particular theory as to the origin of our ideas of infinity. it presupposes merely that these ideas are valid--are not delusive. it is only as predisposing to, or implying, scepticism, as to their truth or objective worth, that a theory as to their origin has a bearing on their application. such scepticism cannot be logically limited to the ideas in question. if we do not accept these ideas as true and trustworthy, absolute scepticism is rationally inevitable. an examination of the nature and principles of scepticism will make this manifest, but i cannot enter on that examination at present. in conclusion, i remark that the conception of any other than an infinite god--a god unlimited in all perfections--is not only a self-contradictory but an unworthy conception; it not only perplexes the intellect but revolts the spiritual affections. the heart can find no secure rest except on an infinite god. if less than omnipotent, he may be unable to help us in the hour of sorest need. if less than omniscient, he may overlook us. if less than perfectly just, we cannot unreservedly trust him. if less than perfectly benevolent, we cannot fully love him. the whole soul can only be devoted to one who is believed to be absolutely good. lecture x. mere theism insufficient. i. i have endeavoured to show, in the course of lectures which i am now bringing to a close, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence prove the existence, and so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of god. this truth ought always to be combined with another--namely, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence "are not sufficient to give that knowledge of god, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation." reason sends forth a true light which is to be trusted and followed so far as it extends, but which is much more limited than the wants of human nature. the deepest discoveries and the highest achievements of the unaided intellect need to be supplemented by truths which can only come to us through special revelation. the natural knowledge of god which man can attain by the exercise of his own faculties is not sufficient to make him feel that the eternal bears to him fatherly love, or to break the power of sin within him and over him, or to sustain and develop his moral and spiritual life. it falls far short of what is required to enable a human soul, a religious and immortal being, to accomplish its true destination. it falls far short, in other words, of being what is "necessary unto salvation," in the broad and comprehensive sense which the term salvation bears throughout scripture. there are those who, instead of regarding theism as simply so much fundamental truth which christianity presupposes and applies, would oppose theism to christianity, and substitute theism for christianity. they would rest in mere theism and would reject christianity. they represent theism, dissociated from christianity, as all-sufficient, and as the religion to which alone the future belongs. in doing so, these men--many of them most earnest and excellent men--seem to me to show great want of reflection, great ignorance of the teachings of history, and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature. atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than mere theism--more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. it is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to cope successfully with these foes. in no land, and in no age, has a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. its adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed--honourable, high-minded, cultivated men--but they have always been few. in india, in persia, in greece, in rome, some specially gifted and religious minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole, the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but away from theism. the israelites, although authoritatively taught monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. mythology is not merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with a deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,--a proof that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the god discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have ever been found to substitute for such a god deities whom they could represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. pantheism has a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason even to the most wildly extravagant polytheism. there is no logical necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical fact, mere theism has always, even in modern christendom, largely given place to atheism. all the powers of the world above, and of the world to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of the world which now is. only a much fuller exhibition of the divine character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in god the ruling principle of human life. mere theism might have sufficed us had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that they know not what men are. in the state into which we have fallen, we need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land; we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of christ. "the world by wisdom knew not god." the whole history of the heathen world testifies to the truth of this affirmation of st paul. it is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of god as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. the wisdom of the heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the conduct. not one religion devised by man rested on a worthy view of the character of god; not one did not substitute for the living and true god false and dead idols, or represent him in a mean and dishonouring light. we are apt to associate with the religion of greece and rome the religious philosophy of a few eminent greek and roman thinkers who rose above the religion of their age and country. the religion itself was mainly the creation of imagination, and in various respects was extremely demoralising in its tendencies. the worshippers of jupiter and juno, of mars and venus, and the gods and goddesses who were supposed to be their companions, must have been very often not the better but the worse for worshipping such beings. certainly, they could find no elevating ideal or correct and consistent rule of moral life among the capricious and unrighteous and impure objects of their adoration. it was less from the religion, the idolatrous polytheism, of greece and rome that the human soul in these lands drew spiritual inspiration, than from philosophy, from reason apprehending those truths of natural religion which the positive religion concealed and disfigured and contradicted. if salvation be deliverance from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of god, no sane man will say that the greek or roman religion was the way to it, or an indication of the way to it. did, then, the philosophers discover the way? there is no need that we should depreciate what they did. men like socrates, plato, and aristotle, among the greeks--like cicero, epictetus, and antoninus, among the romans--obtained wonderful glimpses of divine truth, and gave to the world noble moral instructions, which are of inestimable value even to this day. but they all failed to effect any deep and extensive reform. they did not turn men from the worship of idols to the service of the true god. they were unable to raise any effective barrier either to superstition or to vice. they were insufficiently assured in their own minds, and spoke as without authority to others. they saw too clearly to be able to believe that the popular religion was true, but not clearly enough to know what to put in its place. in the systems and lives of the very greatest of them there were terrible defects, and neither the doctrine nor the conduct of the majority of those who pretended to follow them, the common specimens of philosophers, was fitted to improve society. philosophy found out _many truths_, but not _the truth_. it did not disclose the holiness and love of god--discovered no antidote for the poison of sin--showed the soul no fountain of cleansing, healing, and life. the true character of the philosophical theism of antiquity has been admirably described by one of the ablest theologians of the present day. "theism was discussed as a philosophical, not as a religious question, as one rationale among others of the origin of the material universe, but as no more affecting practice than any great scientific hypothesis does now. theism was not a test which separated the orthodox philosopher from the heterodox, which distinguished belief from disbelief; it established no breach between the two opposing theorists; it was discussed amicably as an open question: and well it might be, for of all questions there was not one which could make less practical difference to the philosopher, or, upon his view, to anybody, than whether there was or was not a god. nothing would have astonished him more than, when he had proved in the lecture-hall the existence of a god, to have been told to worship him. 'worship whom?' he would have exclaimed; 'worship what? worship how?' would you picture him indignant at the polytheistic superstition of the crowd, and manifesting some spark of the fire of st paul 'when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry,' you could not be more mistaken. he would have said that you did not see a plain distinction; that the crowd was right on the religious question, and the philosopher right on the philosophical; that however men might uphold in argument an infinite abstraction, they could not worship it; and that the hero was much better fitted for worship than the universal cause--fitted for it not in spite of, but in consequence of, his want of true divinity. the same question was decided in the same way in the speculations of the brahmans. there the supreme being figures as a characterless, impersonal essence, the mere residuum of intellectual analysis, pure unity, pure simplicity. no temple is raised to him, no knee is bended to him. without action, without will, without affection, without thought, he is the substratum of everything, himself a nothing. the universal soul is the unconscious omnipresent _looker-on_; the complement, as coextensive spectator, of the universal drama of nature; the motionless mirror upon which her boundless play and sport, her versatile postures, her multitudinous evolutions are reflected, as the image of the rich and changing sky is received into the passive bosom of the lake. thus the idea of god, so far from calling forth in the ancient world the idea of worship, ever stood in antagonism with it: the idol was worshipped because he was not god, god was not worshipped because he was. one small nation alone out of all antiquity worshipped god, believed the universal being to be a personal being. that nation was looked upon as a most eccentric and unintelligible specimen of humanity for doing so; but this whimsical fancy, as it appeared in the eyes of the rest, was cherished by it as the most sacred deposit; it was the foundation of its laws and polity; and from this narrow stock this conception was engrafted upon the human race."[ ] [ ] canon mosley, on miracles, lect. iv. it is historically certain, then, that the world by its unaided wisdom failed to know god. of course, it may be said that the experiment was incomplete; that even if christianity had not appeared, the human mind would have found out in process of time all the religious truth needed to satisfy the human heart, guide human life, and sustain human society. but such an assertion is quite arbitrary. history gives it no confirmation. it was only after human wisdom had a lengthened and unembarrassed opportunity of showing what it could accomplish in the most favourable circumstances, and after it had clearly displayed its insufficiency, that christianity appeared. christ did not come till it was manifest that reason was wandering farther and farther away from god--that religion had no inherent principle of self-improvement--that man had done his utmost with the unaided resources of his nature to devise a salvation, and had failed. there was no probability whatever that a new and higher civilisation would rise on the ruins of that which fell when the hordes of northern barbarians subdued and overran the roman empire, had not christianity been present to direct the work of construction. we need not, however, discuss what might or might not have happened, supposing the sun of christianity had not appeared on the horizon when that of classical civilisation was hastening to its setting, since it is obvious that the science and philosophy even of the present day, dissevered from revelation, can produce no religion capable of satisfying, purifying, and elevating man's spiritual nature. they are far advanced beyond the stage which they had reached in the time of st paul. knowledge has since received large accessions from all sides, and reflection has been taught by a lengthened and varied process of correction and discipline valuable lessons. in mathematical and physical science especially there has been enormous progress. the human mind is now enriched not only with the intellectual wealth which it has inherited from greece and rome, but with that of many ages not less fruitful than those in which they flourished. can we accomplish, then, what the greeks and romans so signally failed to achieve? can we, with all our knowledge of nature and man, devise a religion which shall be at once merely rational and thoroughly effective? can we, when we set aside christianity, construct a creed capable of not only commanding the assent of the intellect, but of attracting and changing the heart, quickening and guiding the conscience, and purifying and ennobling the conduct? can we build a system worthy to be called a religion on any other foundation than that which has been laid in the gospel? if science and philosophy cannot do anything of this kind even at the present day, we are surely at length entitled to say that the world needs to know more about god than it can find out for itself. in proof that they cannot, we would appeal both to facts and reason--both to the character of what science and philosophy have actually done in this connection, and to the nature of the task which their injudicious friends would impose on them. what, then, even at the present day, do the ablest of those who reject christianity propose to offer us instead? comte would have us to worship humanity. can we? comte himself did not believe that we can in any but a very partial and insincere way. if we could, would our worship do either our minds or hearts more good than the worship of jupiter and juno did the greeks of old? strauss would have us to revere the universe. is that not to go back to fetichism? might we not just as wisely and profitably adore a stock or stone? herbert spencer would present to us for god the unknowable. but what thoughts, what feelings, can we have about the unknowable? might we not as well worship empty space, the eternal no, or the absolute nothing? schopenhauer, hartmann, mainlander, and others, would have us to go back to buddhism and welcome annihilation. but it is clear as the light that if the advice were acted on, the springs of intellectual life and social progress would soon be dried up. the philosophy and science on which they exclusively rely have enabled none of these men to find out god; nay, they have left them under the delusion that there is no god to find out, except those strange gods to which i have referred. and being without god in the world, these philosophers, with all their knowledge and accomplishments, are also without any hope of a life beyond the grave. no man need go to them with the question, "what shall i do to inherit eternal life?" among all their differences--and they are many and radical--on one point they are agreed, and it is that eternal life is but a dream; that the highest hope even of the best of mankind is to survive for a time as a memory and an influence in the minds and conduct of others, after having ceased to be real and personal beings; that the only form in which the aspiration after immortality can be rationally cherished is that which the greatest of contemporary novelists and among the greatest of contemporary poets has expressed in the words:-- "o may i join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence: live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge man's search to vaster issues.... this is life to come, which martyred men have made more glorious for us who strive to follow." it is as true, then, as ever it was, that the world by wisdom knows not god. the advantages which the eighteen christian centuries have brought us only make more manifest the world's inability by its own wisdom to know god. the longer the trial has lasted, the more manifest has it become that god's revelation of himself is indispensable--is what man can provide no substitute for. the philosophy which sets itself in opposition to revelation--which professes to supply in another and better way the spiritual wants to which revelation responds--which aims at constructing a religion out of the conclusions of science--is a mournful failure. the only religious constructions which it has been able to raise, even with all the scientific resources of the nineteenth century at its command, are simply monuments of human folly. this is just what was to be expected; for apart from special divine teaching, apart from special divine revelation, man cannot truly know god, as a sinful being needs to know him. apart, for example, from the revelation which god has made of himself in christ, the mind cannot possibly attain to a sincere and well-grounded conviction even of that primary truth on which all the perfection of religion and all the happiness and hopes of mankind depend--the truth that god is really a father, with all a father's love, to the children of men. there are manifold signs or evidences of god's goodness and bounty in creation and providence, but, unless seen in the light reflected on them from redemption, they fall far short of a complete proof of god's cherishing fatherly love to sinful men. in the light of the cross it is otherwise; the man who looks at the works of creation in that light will unhesitatingly and with full reason say, "my father made them all," and will easily and clearly trace in all the dealings of providence a father's hand guiding his children. suppose, however, that blessed light not shining or shut out, and that creation and providence are before us in no other light than their own,--what then? what can creation and providence teach us about god? substantially this only: that he has vast power, since he has created and sustains and controls the whole of this mighty universe; wondrous wisdom, since he has arranged everything so well and directs everything so well; and a goodness corresponding to his power and wisdom, since a beneficent purpose may be detected underlying all his works of creation and pervading the course of providence. i cannot suppose that any one will seriously maintain that creation and providence teach us more than that god is thus powerful and wise and good; and fully granting that they teach us all this, if any one mean by god being the father of men no more than that he is as good as he is powerful and wise, and that his power and wisdom have been so employed on behalf of men that good gifts meet them at every step, i readily agree with him that creation and providence are sufficient to show god to be a father in that sense and to that extent. but is there nothing more, nothing higher than this, implied in fatherhood among men? unquestionably there is. love in the form of mere goodness is far from the noblest and most distinctive quality in a human father's heart; nay, there is no true fatherliness of heart at all in a man in whom there is nothing better than that. one can, by an effort of imagination, indeed, conceive a man to have children so absolutely innocent and happy, and so perfectly guarded from all possibility of evil and suffering, that love in the form of goodness or kindness would be the only kind of love he could show them; but would his fatherly love be ever really tested in that case? could he ever show the deeper, the truly distinctive feelings of a father's heart--those we so often see manifested in the toils, the hardships, the dangers, the sacrifices of wealth, comfort, and even life, which parents undertake and endure for their children? certainly not. apply this to god. in what sense is he a father? in what sense has he fatherly love? among the angels this question could have no place, for they were such perfectly innocent and happy children that love in the form of goodness was all they required--all that could be shown to them. and it would have been the same with men also, if they had not fallen. but as soon as sin, suffering, and death invaded earth, and seized on man's body and soul, and help or healing there was none for him in any creature, the most awful of questions for the human race came to be, whether or not god was a father in the full meaning of that term, or, in other words, whether or not he had a love which, in order to save men, would submit to humiliation, suffering, sacrifice? now that is what i say creation and providence cannot prove. point to anything in creation or to anything in ordinary providence which you can show to have _cost_ god anything. you can easily point to thousands and thousands of things and events which you may justly conclude to be signs or gifts of god's goodness; but can you point to one thing in creation, one event in ordinary providence, which you can seriously maintain to come from a self-sacrificing love such as a father displays when he rushes into a house in flames, or throws himself into a raging flood, to save the life of his child at the risk of his own? if you cannot, you fail to prove god a father in the sense i mean. and in that sense, which is the true sense, there seems to me no possibility of proving god a father from creation and providence, apart from redemption. wherein is it that both fail? obviously in this, that they can show no traces of sacrifice on god's part. but it is just here that the revelation of redemption comes in. god, in the unspeakable gift of his son, shows us a power of sacrifice infinitely above anything known among men--an intensity of tenderest fatherly affection of which the strongest fatherly affection on earth is but a pale and feeble reflection; and christ in his incarnation, life, sufferings, and death, reveals to us not merely the power, and wisdom, and goodness of god, but the very depths, if we may so speak, of his heart as a father, enabling us to feel without a doubt that now indeed are we the sons of god. nothing but a special revelation, however, could thus unveil and disclose god. the natural reason could not thus discern him by its unaided power. and yet it is only in the knowledge of god as a father that the soul can either discern or realise its true destiny. there are many other precious truths set before us in the gospel which we might in like manner show to be at once most necessary for human guidance, and inaccessible to unaided human research. we shall not, however, dwell on them or even enumerate them. the entire problem of our present and future salvation is beyond our powers of solution. the light of nature and the works of creation and providence cannot show man a way of reconciliation to god. no man by mere human wisdom, by any searching into the secrets of nature or providence, can find that out. mere human wisdom is utter folly here; and if man may be wise at all in this connection, he must confess his natural folly, the powerlessness of his own reason, and must consent to be guided by the wisdom of god--or, in other words, to accept christ, who is the wisdom of god to us for salvation, who is god's solution of the problem of our salvation. the only real wisdom possible to man must, from the very nature and necessity of the case, be the wisdom of renouncing his own wisdom. if he say, i shall solve this awful problem for myself, without help from any one, then he in his wisdom is a most manifest fool, whose folly will ruin him; but if he have the candour to confess his own folly, to admit his own intellect powerless here, and to acknowledge the wisdom of god and acquiesce in his plan of salvation, then, in the very act of confessing himself foolish he is made wise, for christ is made wisdom unto him. the oracle at delphi pronounced socrates the wisest of men. socrates could not understand it, and yet he was unwilling to disbelieve the oracle, so he went about from one person reputed wise to another, in order to be able to say, "here is a wiser man than i am," or at least to find out what the oracle meant. he went to many, but he found that, while they in reality knew almost nothing that was worth knowing, they thought they knew a great deal, and were angry with one who tried to convince them of their ignorance. so that at last socrates came to recognise that there was a truth in what had been said about him; to use nearly his own words,--"he left them, saying to himself, i am wiser than these men; for neither they nor i, it would seem, know anything valuable: but they, not knowing, fancy that they do know; i, as i really do not know, so i do not think that i know. i seem, therefore, to be in one small matter wiser than they." now it is only the kind of spirit which in its degree and about less important matters was in socrates--it is precisely that kind of spirit about the things which concern eternal life and peace, that can alone make a man wise unto salvation. the most ignorant person, provided he only know that he must renounce his own wisdom as foolishness--which on subjects pertaining to salvation it really is--and accept what is disclosed in christ as to salvation, is infinitely wiser than the most able or learned man who trusts solely to his own wisdom apart from christ's revealed work and will. both of them are foolish and ignorant; but the one knows it, and, in consequence of knowing it, accepts christ's plan of salvation, and is made a partaker of infinite wisdom--the other does not know it, and, thinking that he is wise while he is a fool, remains in his folly, and must bear its punishment. and now i bring this course of lectures to a close. i trust that they may not have been found wholly without profit, through the blessing of him who despises not even the smallest and most imperfect service, if humbly rendered to him. i should rejoice to think that i had helped any one to hold, in such a time as the present, with a firmer and more intelligent grasp, the fundamental truth on which all religious faith must rest. amen. appendix. note i., page . natural and revealed religion. the hindus regard the vedas, the parsees the zend-avesta, and the mohammedans the koran, as having been immediately and specially inspired. this means that they believe the spiritual truth contained in these books to belong to revealed religion, although it in reality is merely a portion of natural religion. the greeks and romans could not distinguish between nature and revelation, reason and faith, because ignorant of what we call revelation and faith. without special revelation or inspiration the oriental and classical mind attained, however, to the possession of a very considerable amount of most precious religious truth. in all ages of the christian church there have been theologians who have traced at least the germinal principles of such truth to written or unwritten revelation; and probably few patristic or scholastic divines would have admitted that there was a knowledge of god and of his attributes and of his relations to the world which might be the object of a science distinct from, and independent of, revelation. this is quite consistent with what is also a fact--namely, that the vast majority of christian writers have always acknowledged that "the light of nature and the works of creation and providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of god," and that this general revelation is implied in the special revelation made at sundry times and divers manners and recorded in the scriptures. the 'theologia naturalis sive liber creaturum' of the spanish physician, raymond de sebonde, who taught theology in the university of toulouse during the earlier part of the fifteenth century, was, so far as i know, the first work which, proceeding on the principle that god has given us two books, the book of nature and the book of scripture, confined itself to the interpretation of the former, merely indicating the mutual relations of natural and revealed religion. faustus socinus was one of the first distinctly to maintain that there was no such thing as natural religion--no knowledge of god attainable except from scripture: see his 'de auctoritate scripturæ sacræ.' a conviction of the importance of natural theology spread very rapidly in the seventeenth century. this contributed to awaken an interest in the various religions of the world, and thus led to the rise of what may be called comparative theology, although more generally designated the philosophy of religion. its origin is to be sought in the attempts made to prove that the principles of natural theology were to be found in all religions. lord herbert of cherbury's 'de religione gentilium,' published in , was one of the earliest and most characteristic attempts of the kind. from that time to the present the study of religions has proceeded at varying rates of progress, but without interruption, and has at length begun to be prosecuted according to the rules of that comparative method which has, in the words of mr freeman, "carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which before were shrouded in darkness and confusion." the eighteenth century was the golden age of natural theology. the deists both of england and france endeavoured to exalt natural theology at the expense of positive theology by representing the former as the truth of which the latter was the perversion. "all religions in the world," said diderot, "are merely sects of natural religion." the prevalent opinion of the freethinkers of his time could not have been more accurately expressed. it was just what his predecessors in england meant by describing christianity as "a republication of natural religion," and by maintaining that it was "as old as the creation." the wisest opponents of the deists, and thoughtful christian writers in general--the adherents of the moderate and rational theology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--strove, on the other hand, to show that natural theology was in reality presupposed by revelation, and that it should carry the mind onwards to the acceptance of revelation. but there were some who undertook to maintain that there was no such thing as natural theology; that reason of itself can teach us absolutely nothing about god or our duties towards him. the hutchinsonians, for example, whose best representatives, besides the founder, were bishop horne of norwich, and william jones, curate of nayland, believed that all knowledge of religion and morals, and even the chief truths of physical science, ought to be drawn from the bible. dr ellis, in his treatise entitled 'the knowledge of divine things from revelation, not from reason or nature' ( ), laboured to prove that neither the being of a god nor any other principle of religion could be legitimately deduced from the study of the phenomena of the universe. he argued on the assumption that the senses are the only natural inlets to knowledge. the late archbishop magee adopted his views on this subject. one of the most widely known expositions and defences of the theory is that contained in the 'theological institutes' ( ) of the eminent wesleyan divine, richard watson. in order to establish that all our religious knowledge is derived from special revelation, he employs all the usual arguments of scepticism against the proofs of theism and the principles of reason on which they rest. in the roman catholic church, scepticism as to reason and the light of nature has often been combined with dogmatism as to the authority of revelation and the church. in the system of what is called the theocratic school may be seen the result to which attempts to establish the certitude of authority by destroying the credit of human reason naturally lead. it is a system of which i have endeavoured to give some account in my 'philosophy of history in france and germany,' pp. - . the fact on which i have insisted in the latter part of the lecture--the fact that theism has come to mankind in and through revelation--has caused some altogether to discard the division of religion into natural and revealed. they pronounce it to be a distinction without a difference, and attribute to it sundry evil consequences. it has led, they think, on the one hand, to depreciation of revelation--and, on the other, to jealousy of reason: some minds looking upon christianity as at best a republication of the religion of nature, in which all that is most essential and valuable is "as old as the creation;" while others see in natural religion a rival of revealed religion, and would exclude reason from the religious sphere as much as possible. the distinction is, however, real, and the errors indicated are not its legitimate consequences. if there be a certain amount of knowledge about god and spiritual things to be derived from nature--from data furnished by perception and consciousness, and accessible to the whole human race,--while there is also a certain knowledge about him which can only have been communicated through a special illumination or manifestation--through prophecy, or miracle, or incarnation,--the distinction must be retained. it is no real objection to it to urge that in a sense even natural religion may be regarded as revealed religion, since in a sense the whole universe is a revelation of god, a manifestation of his name, a declaration of his glory. that is a truth, and, in its proper place, a very important truth, but it is not relevant here: it is perfectly consistent with the belief that god has not manifested himself merely in nature, but also in ways which require to be carefully distinguished from the manifestation in nature. in like manner, the distinction is not really touched by showing that revealed religion has embodied and endorsed the truths of natural religion, or by proving that even what is most special in revelation is in a sense natural. these are both impregnable positions. the bible is to a large extent an inspired republication of the spiritual truths which are contained in the physical creation, and in the reason, conscience, and history of man. but this does not disprove that it is something more. the highest and most special revelation of god--his revelation in jesus christ--was also the fullest realisation of the true nature of man. but this is no reason why we should not distinguish between the general and the special in that revelation. we can only efface the distinction by reducing christ to a mere man, or confounding god with man in a pantheistic manner. it has been further objected to the division of religion into natural and revealed that it is unhistorical, that natural religion is only revealed religion disguised and diluted--christianity without christ. it never existed, we are told, apart from revelation, and never would have existed but for revelation. but this very objection, it will be observed, implies that natural religion is not identical with revealed religion--is not revealed religion pure and simple--is not christianity with christ. why is this? is it not because revealed religion contains more than natural religion--what reason cannot read in the physical universe or human soul? besides, while the principles of natural religion were presented in revelation in a much clearer form than in any merely human systems, and while there can be no reasonable doubt that but for revelation our knowledge of them would be greatly more defective than it is, to maintain that they had no existence or were unknown apart from revelation, is manifestly to set history at defiance. were there no truths of natural religion in the works of plato, cicero, and seneca? is there any heathen religion or heathen philosophy in which there are not truths of natural religion? the belief in a natural religion which is independent alike of special revelation and of positive or historical religions has been argued to have originated in the same condition of mind as the belief in a "state of nature" entertained by a few political theorists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. this can only be done by confounding natural religion with an imaginary patriarchal religion, which is, of course, inexcusable. natural religion is analogous, not to the state of nature, but to the law of nature of the jurists. natural religion is the foundation of all theology, as the law of nature is the foundation of all ethical and political science; and just as belief in the law of nature is perfectly independent of the theory of a state of nature, so the belief in natural religion has no connection whatever with any theory of patriarchal or primitive religion. there is a well-known essay by professor jowett on the subject of this note in the second volume of his 'st paul's epistles,' &c. note ii., page . influence of religion on morality. the assertion of mr bentham and of mr j. s. mill that much has been written on the truth but little on the usefulness of religion, is quite inaccurate. most of the apologists of religion have set forth the proof that it serves to sustain and develop personal and social morality; and, from the time of bayle downwards, not a few of its assailants have undertaken to show that it is practically useless or even hurtful. but bentham may have been the first who proposed to estimate the utility of religion apart from the consideration of its truth. the notion was characteristically benthamite. it was likewise far too irrational to be capable of being consistently carried out or applied. the work compiled by mr grote from the papers of mr bentham, and published under the name of philip beauchamp--'analysis of the influence of natural religion on the temporal happiness of mankind'--and mr mill's 'essay on the utility of religion,' are, in almost every second page, as well as in their general tenor, attacks not merely on the utility but on the truth of religion. the former of these works is an attempt to show that natural religion has done scarcely any good, and produced no end of evils--inflicting, so runs the indictment, unprofitable suffering, imposing useless privations, impressing undefined terrors, taxing pleasure by the infusion of preliminary scruples and subsequent remorse, creating factitious antipathies, perverting the popular opinion, corrupting moral sentiment, producing aversion to improvement, disqualifying the intellectual faculties for purposes useful in this life, suborning unwarranted belief, depraving the temper, and, finally, creating a particular class of persons incurably opposed to the interests of humanity. the author makes out that religion is responsible for this catalogue of mischiefs, by two simple devices. first, he defines religion as "the belief in the existence of an almighty being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during an infinite and future state of existence," or, in other words, he so defines religion as to exclude from the idea of god the thought of moral goodness, righteousness, and holiness. he even insists that the god of natural religion can only be conceived of as "a capricious and insane despot," and bases his argumentation on this assumption. dr caselles, who has translated the treatise into french, and prefaced it by an interesting introduction, informs us that the argumentation is not applicable to the new, but only to the old theism. it is historically certain, however, that the "old" theism of jeremy bentham and his friends never existed outside of their own imaginations. it is likewise certain that a lamb would acquire a very bad character if it were by definition identified with a wolf, and credited with all that creature's doings. the second device is "a declaration of open war against the principle of separating the abuses of a thing from its uses." the only excuse which can be given for this declaration of a most unjust war is, that mr bentham was able completely to misunderstand the obvious meaning of the principle which he assailed. that a book so unfair and worthless should have produced on the mind of mr j. s. mill, even when a boy of sixteen, the impression which he describes in his autobiography would have been inexplicable, had we not known the character of his education. mr mill's own essay is rather strange. it begins with six pages of general observations, which are meant to show that it is a necessary and very laudable undertaking to attempt to prove that the belief in religion, considered as a mere persuasion apart from the question of its truth, may be advantageously dispensed with, any benefits which flow from the belief being local, temporary, and such as may be otherwise obtained, without the very large amount of alloy always contained in religion. yet we are told that "an argument for the utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers to induce them to practise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi-believers to make them avert their eyes from what might possibly shake their unstable belief; or, finally, to persons in general to abstain from expressing any doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind is so insecure at its foundations, that men must hold their breath in its neighbourhood for fear of blowing it down." an argument for the utility of religion is "moral bribery." an argument for its uselessness is highly to be commended. mr mill further tells us that "little has been written, at least in the way of discussion or controversy, concerning the usefulness of religion;" and likewise, that "religious writers have not neglected to celebrate to the utmost the advantage both of religion in general and of their own religious faith in particular." the inference must be, that what religious writers urge for the utility of religion is not to be reckoned as reasoning; that only what writers like mr bentham and mr mill urge against its utility is to be thus regarded. the charity of this view is capped by the assertion that "the whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion;" an assertion which is made amusing by following a sentence in which mr mill speaks of "the intolerant zeal" of intuitionists. after his general considerations, he professes to inquire what religion does for society, but in reality never enters on the investigation. he devotes two pages to insisting on "the enormous influence of authority on the human mind;" three to emphasising "the tremendous power of education;" and ten to enlarging on "the power of public opinion." he might as relevantly have dwelt on the influence of reason, speech, the press, machinery, clothes, marriage, and thousands of other things which undoubtedly affect the intellectual and moral condition of society. it is as unreasonable to infer that religion is useless because authority, education, and public opinion are powerful, as it would be to infer that the fire in a steam-engine might be dispensed with because water is necessary. any person who assumes, as mr mill assumed, that authority, education, or public opinion may be contrasted with religion--who does not see, as mr mill did not see, that all these powers are correlatives, which necessarily intermingle with, imply, and supplement one another--is, _ipso facto_, unable intelligently to discuss the question, what does religion do for society? in the second part of his essay, mr mill ought, in order to have kept his promise, to have considered what influence religion in the sense of belief in and love of god is naturally calculated to exert on the character and conduct of the individual; but instead of this he applies himself to the very different task of attempting to prove that "the idealisation of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers." he forgets to inquire whether there is any opposition between "the idealisation of our earthly life" and "belief respecting the unseen powers," or whether, on the contrary, religious belief is not the chief source of the idealisation of our earthly life. that this logical error is as serious as it is obvious, appears from the fact that ten years later mr mill himself confessed that "it cannot be questioned that the undoubting belief of the real existence of a being who realises our own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to our aspirations after goodness beyond what they can receive from reference to a merely ideal conception" (theism, p. ). his proof that the worship of god is inferior to the religion of humanity rests mainly on these three assertions: ( ) that the former, "what now goes by the name of religion," "operates merely through the feeling of self-interest;" ( ) that "it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as this planet and the life of its inhabitants;" and ( ), that "mankind can perfectly well do without the belief in a heaven." "it seems to me not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea; and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to preserve." on this last point more mature reflection brought him to a different and wiser conclusion (see theism, pp. , ). those who wish to study the important subject of the relations of religion and morality will find the following references useful: the last chapter of m. janet's 'la morale;' the _étude_ on "la morale indépendante" in m. caro's 'problèmes de morale sociale;' many articles and reviews in m. renouvier's 'critique philosophique;' martensen's 'christian ethics,' §§ - ; o. pfleiderer's 'moral und religion;' luthardt's 'apologetic lectures on the moral truths of christianity;' and bradley's 'ethical studies,' pp. - . note iii., page . ethics of religious inquiry. much has been written regarding the spirit and temper in which religious truth should be pursued and defended. in a large number of the general treatises both of apologetic and systematic theology, the subject is considered, and not a few essays, lectures, &c., have been specially devoted to it. the greater portion of this literature may, i believe, be forgotten without loss, but there is a part of it which will well repay perusal. the "oratio de recto theologi zelo" in the first volume of the 'opuscula' of werenfels, is worthy of that tolerant and philosophical divine. archbishop leighton's 'exhortations to students' exhale from every line a heavenly ether and fragrance. it will be long before herder's 'letters on the study of theology' are out of date. dr chalmers attached high value to the distinction between the ethics of theology and the objects of theology, and expatiated with great eloquence on the duty which is laid upon men by the probability or even the imagination of a god (nat. theol., b. i. ch. i. ii.) "man is not to blame, if an atheist, because of the want of proof. but he is to blame, if an atheist, because he has shut his eyes. he is not to blame that the evidence for a god has not been seen by him, if no such evidence there were within the field of his observation. but he is to blame if the evidence have not been seen, because he turned away his attention from it. that the question of a god may be unresolved in his mind, all he has to do is to refuse a hearing to the question. he may abide without the conviction of a god, if he so choose. but this his choice is matter of condemnation. to resist god after that he is known, is criminality towards him; but to be satisfied that he should remain unknown, is like criminality towards him. there is a moral perversity of spirit with him who is willing, in the midst of many objects of gratification, that there should not be one object of gratitude. it is thus that, even in the ignorance of god, there may be a responsibility towards god. the discerner of the heart sees whether, for the blessings innumerable wherewith he has strewed the path of every man, he be treated like the unknown benefactor who was diligently sought, or like the unknown benefactor who was never cared for. in respect at least of desire after god, the same distinction of character may be observed between one man and another--whether god be wrapt in mystery, or stand forth in full development to our world. even though a mantle of deepest obscurity lay over the question of his existence, this would not efface the distinction between the piety on the one hand which laboured and aspired after him, and the impiety upon the other which never missed the evidence that it did not care for, and so grovelled in the midst of its own sensuality and selfishness. the eye of a heavenly witness is upon all these varieties; and thus, whether it be darkness or whether it be dislike which hath caused a people to be ignorant of god, there is with him a clear principle of judgment that he can extend even to the outfields of atheism."--(pp. , .) the rev. alexander leitch, in the first part of his 'ethics of theism' ( ), discusses in a thoughtful and suggestive manner the following subjects: the reality and universality of the antithesis between truth and error, the legitimate dependence in all cases of belief on knowledge, the responsibility of man for his whole system of belief, the distinction between mystery and contradiction, the distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, the distinction between certainty and probability, the standard of morality, and the claims of reason and faith. mr venn's 'hulsean lectures' for "are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into some of their consequences, certain characteristics by which the attainment of religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief upon most other subjects. these characteristics consist in the multiplicity of the sources from which the evidence for religious belief is derived, and the fact that our emotions contribute their share towards producing conviction." what i have said in the text ought not to be understood as implying any doubt that men are largely responsible for their beliefs. this i accept as an indubitable truth, although there is great room for difference of opinion as to the limits of the responsibility; but it is a truth which no one party in a discussion has a right to urge as against another party. it is a law over all disputants, and is abused when severed from tolerance and charity. perhaps it has never been better expounded and enforced than in dr pusey's 'responsibility of the intellect in matters of faith' ( ). that religious belief is in a great measure conditioned and determined by character is implied in the whole argument of my third lecture. in this fact lies the main reason why the highest evidence may not produce belief even where there is no conscious dishonesty in those who reject it. a person desirous of working himself fully into the truth in this matter, will find excellent thoughts and suggestions in dr newman's 'fifteen sermons preached before the university of oxford, between a.d. and ,' and in principal shairp's 'culture and religion.' note iv., page . traditive theory of religion. mr fairbairn makes the following remarks on the theory which traces religion to a primitive revelation: "although often advanced in the supposed interests of religion, the principle it assumes is most irreligious. if man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of god, then he must have what schelling happily termed 'an original atheism of consciousness.' religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the nature of man--must be implanted from without. the theory that would derive man's religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory that would derive it from distempered dreams. revelation may satisfy or rectify, but cannot create, a religious capacity or instinct; and we have the highest authority for thinking that man was created 'to seek the lord, if haply he might feel after and find him'--the finding being by no means dependent on a written or traditional word. if there was a primitive revelation, it must have been--unless the word is used in an unusual and misleading sense--either written or oral. if written, it could hardly be primitive, for writing is an art, a not very early acquired art, and one which does not allow documents of exceptional value to be easily lost. if it was oral, then either the language for it was created or it was no more primitive than the written. then an oral revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its property, or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and additions from the popular imagination--becomes, therefore, a wild commingling of broken and bewildering lights. but neither as documentary nor traditional can any traces of a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is only to burden the question with a thesis which renders a critical and philosophic discussion alike impossible."--studies in the philosophy of religion and history, pp. , . there is an examination of the same theory in the learned and able work of professor cocker of michigan on 'christianity and greek philosophy' ( ). he argues: . "that it is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the wellbeing of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of god, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition." . "that the theory is altogether incompetent to explain the _universality_ of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas." . "that a verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of god to an intelligence purely passive and utterly unfurnished with any _a priori_ ideas or necessary laws of thought."--pp. - . a good history of the traditive theory of the diffusion of religion is a desideratum in theological literature. note v., page . normal development of society. the truth that social development ought to combine and harmonise permanence and progress, liberty and authority, the rights of the individual and of the community, has been often enforced and illustrated. the earnestness with which comte did so in both of his chief works is well known. a philosopher of a very different stamp, f. v. baader, has in various of his writings given expression to profound thoughts on the subject. his essay entitled 'evolutionismus und revolutionismus des gesellschaftlichen lebens' merits to be specially mentioned. alexander vinet has often been charged with a one-sided individualism, and perhaps not altogether without justice; but he always maintained that he was merely the advocate of individuality. "individualism and individuality are two sworn enemies; the first being the obstacle and negation of all society--the second, that to which society owes all it possesses of savour, life, and reality. nowhere does individualism prosper more easily than where there is an absence of individuality; and there is no more atomistic policy than that of despotism." vinet has probably not held the balance exactly poised between the individual and society; but his dissertations, 'sur l'individualité et l'individualisme' and 'du rôle de l'individualité dans une réforme sociale,' would have been far less valuable than they are if he had forgotten that, although it is the individual who thinks, the thought of the individual cannot form itself outside of society nor without its aid. but he did not, as words like the following sufficiently prove:--"it is better to connect ourselves with society than to learn to dispense with it, or rather to persuade ourselves that we are able to dispense with it. it is only given to the brute to suffice to itself. man has been chained to man. we hardly give more credit to spontaneous generation in the intellectual sphere than in the physical world; the most individual work is to a certain point the work of all the world; everywhere _solidarity_ reappears, without, however, any prejudice to liberty: god has willed it so." "it is with the soul engaged in the life of religion, or that of thought, as with the vessel launched upon the waters, and seeking beyond the ocean for the shores of a new world. this ocean is society, religious or civil. it bears us just as the ocean does--fluid mass, on which the vessel can indeed trace furrows, but may nowhere halt. the ocean bears the ship, but the ocean may swallow it up, and sometimes does so; society swallows us up still more often, but yet it is what upbears us; nor can we arrive without being upborne by it, for it is like the sea, which, less fluid than the air, and less dense than the earth, just yields to and resists us enough to sustain without impeding our progress towards the desired goal." there are no finer pages in martensen's 'christian ethics' than those in which he treats of "individualism and socialism," "liberty and authority in the development of society," and "conservatism and progress." the most adequate historical proof and illustration of the truth in question as to the nature of social evolution will be found in the earl of crawford's 'progression by antagonism' and 'scepticism and the church of england.' note vi., page . definition and classification by the highest type. dr whewell maintained that in natural history groups are fixed not by definition, but by type. "the class," he wrote, "is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of definition we have a type for our director. a type is an example of any class--for instance, a species of a genus--which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. all the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any others form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various directions and different degrees."--philosophy of the inductive sciences, vol. i. pp. , . dr whewell, it will be observed, was more cautious in his language than the theologians to whom i have referred. he did not speak of defining by type, but only of classifying, not by definition, but by type. his motive, however, for entertaining the view he laid down, was obviously the same which has led so many theologians to give definitions of religion which are only applicable to its highest forms. probably it was insufficient. prof. huxley (lay sermons, pp. - ) very justly, it seems to me, argues that classification by type is caused by ignorance, and that as soon as the mind gets a scientific knowledge of a class it defines. nothing which is not precisely limited is steadily fixed; nothing which is not circumscribed is exactly given: if the boundary-line is not determined, the central point cannot be accurately ascertained; what is eminently included cannot be known so long as what is strictly excluded is unknown. while assenting to the view of prof. huxley in the passage indicated, i may remark that he falls into one error which rather forcibly illustrates what is said in the page to which this note refers regarding the necessary poverty of the significance of a strictly scientific definition of an extensive class. he instances as a definition which is of a truly scientific kind and "rigorous enough for a geometrician," the following: "mammalia are all animals which have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." but clearly this definition says too much if we are to criticise it rigorously. were it true, there would be no males among mammalia. the definition is in strictness applicable to females only. note vii., page . psychological nature of religion. in this note i shall briefly summarise three class lectures on the psychological nature of religion. . investigations into the psychological nature of religion date only from about the end of last century. for ages previously men sought to know what religion was; but they attempted to find an answer merely by reflection on positive or objective religion. kant opened up to them a new path--that of investigation into the nature of religion as an internal or mental fact. o. pfleiderer's account (die religion, pp. - ) of the researches thus started characterised, and criticised. . the testimony of consciousness is sufficient to establish the existence of religion as a subjective or mental state, but cannot certify whether, as such, it be simple or complex, primary or derivative, coextensive with human consciousness, or wider or narrower, or whether there be anything objectively corresponding to it. . in order to analyse religion, the ultimate genera of consciousness must be ascertained, which has only been slowly done. history of the process: plato, aristotle, their followers, descartes, spinoza, the english philosophers from bacon to dugald stewart, kant and the german psychologists, brown, hamilton, and bain. establishment of the threefold division of mental phenomena into cognitions, emotions, and volitions. difficulties of the division shown by the author in 'mind,' no. v. religion must be a state of intellect, sensibility, or will, or some combination of two or all of these factors. . religion may be held to consist essentially and exclusively of knowledge; but this mistake is too gross to have been frequently committed. the gnostics, the earlier and scholastic theologians, the rationalists, schelling and cousin, have been charged with this error. the grounds of the charge indicated. shown to be in all these cases exaggerated. . schleiermacher refutes the theory by the consideration that the measure of our knowledge is not the measure of our religion. vindication and illustration of his argument. service rendered by schleiermacher to religion and theology in this connection. . hegel came nearest to the identification of religion and thought, maintaining that sentiment was the lowest manifestation of religion, while the comprehension of the absolute, the highest knowledge, was its complete realisation, as also that religion was the self-consciousness of god through the mediation of the finite spirit. exposition and criticism of this theory. examination of vera's defence of it. worship supposes two persons morally and spiritually as well as intellectually related. . while no mere intellectual act constitutes religion, the exercise of reason is an essential part of religion. the denial of this an error prevalent among the modern theologians of germany, owing to their accepting kant's argumentation against the possibility of apprehending god by the speculative or pure reason as conclusive. if religion have no rational foundation, it has no real foundation. reason does not apprehend merely what is finite. true place of reason in religion. . religion has often been resolved into feeling or sentiment, but erroneously, since whatever feeling is fixed on requires some explanation of its existence, and this can only be found in some act or exercise of intellect. . epicurus, lucretius, and hume have traced religion to fear. . fear explains atheism better than it explains religion, and in order even to be feared god must be believed in. men fear a great many things. mere fear founds nothing, but only causes efforts to avoid the presence or thought of its object. fear enters into religion, and is filial in the higher, and servile in the lower, forms of religion. . feuerbach resolves religion into desire--into an ignorant and illusive personification of man's own nature as he would wish it to be. . this view presupposes the truth of atheism, does not explain why man should refer to supramundane ends or objects, and is contradicted by the historical facts, which show that reason and conscience have at least co-operated with desire in the origination and development of religion. . schleiermacher resolves religion into a feeling of absolute dependence--of pure and complete passiveness. statement of his theory. shown to rest on a pantheistic conception of the divine being. his reduction of the divine attributes into _power_. . no such feeling can exist, the mind being incapable of experiencing a feeling of nothingness--a consciousness of unconsciousness. . could it be supposed to exist, it would have no religious character, because wholly blind and irrational. . the theory of schleiermacher makes the moral and religious consciousness subversive of each other, the former affirming and the latter denying our freedom and responsibility. . mansel supposes the religious consciousness to be traceable to the feeling of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation; but the latter feeling implies the perception of moral law, and is not religious unless there be also belief in a moral lawgiver. . schenkel represents conscience as 'the religious organ of the soul,' but this is not consistent with the fact that conscience is the faculty which distinguishes right from wrong. schenkel's view of conscience shown to make its religious testimony contradict its ethical testimony. . strauss combines the views of epicurus, feuerbach, and schleiermacher; but three errors do not make a truth. account of the criticism to which the straussian theory of religion has been subjected by vera, ulrici, and professor h. b. smith. . although there can be no true religion without love, and although to love the true god with the whole heart is the ideal of religion, religion cannot be resolved exclusively into love; since love presupposes knowledge, and is not the predominant feeling, if present at all, in the lower forms of religion. . religion includes will, implying the free and deliberate surrender of the soul to god,--the making self an instrument where it might, although wrongfully, have been made an end,--but it is not merely will, since all volition, properly so called, presupposes reason and feeling. . kant made religion merely a sanction for duty, and duty the expression of a will which is its own law, and which is unaffected by feeling; but this view rested on erroneous conceptions as to ( ) the relation of religion and morality, ( ) the nature of the will, and ( ) the place of feeling in the mental economy. religion and morality inseparable in their normal conditions; but not to be identified, religion being communion with god, while morality is conformity to a law which is god's will but which may not be acknowledged to be his will, so that they may and do exist in abnormal forms apart from each other. the will has not its law in itself. kant's errors on this subject. feeling is the natural and universal antecedent of action. kant's errors on this subject. . dr brinton (religious sentiment, &c., ) analyses religion into emotion and idea--an effective and intellectual element--the latter of which arises necessarily from the law of contradiction and excluded middle. merits and defects of his theory. . the religious process is at once rational, emotional, and volitional. its unity, and the co-operation of knowing, feeling, and willing. . description of ( ) its essential contents, ( ) its chief forms, ( ) its principal moments or stages, and ( ) its manifestations in spiritual worship and work. note viii., page . argument e consensu gentium. pessimism will be treated of along with other anti-theistic theories. the fact that religion is a natural and universal phenomenon, as widespread as humanity and as old as its history, and the fact insisted on in the lecture, that religion can only realise its proper nature in a theistic form, give us, when adequately established, the modern and scientific statement of the old argument--_e consensu gentium_. this argument, which we already meet with in cicero (de nat. deor., i. ; tusc. ques., i. ; de leg., i. ) and seneca (epist. ), in clement of alexandria (strom., v. ) and lactantius (div. inst., i. ), has gradually grown into the science of comparative theology. an instructive essay might be written on its development. mr j. s. mill, who had obviously no suspicion that there had been any development of the kind, criticised the argument in his essay on theism, pp. - . he was entirely mistaken in representing it as an appeal to authority--"to the opinions of mankind generally, and especially of some of its wisest men." it has certainly very rarely--probably never--been advanced in a form which could justify such an account of it. he was also mistaken in supposing that it had any necessary connection with the view which ascribes to men "an intuitive perception, or an instinctive sense, of deity." i agree with his objections to that view; but the argument does not imply it. if it prove that man's mental constitution is such that, in the presence of the facts of nature and life, religion necessarily arises, and that the demands of reason, heart, and conscience, in which it originates, can only be satisfied by the worship and service of one god, with the attributes which theism assigns to him, it has accomplished all that can reasonably be expected from it. mr mill was, however, it seems to me, perfectly correct in holding that the mere prevalence of the belief in deity afforded no ground for inferring that the belief was native to the mind in the sense of independent of evidence. in no form ought the argument from general consent to be regarded as a primary argument. it is an evidence that there are direct evidences--and when kept in this its proper place it has no inconsiderable value--but it cannot be urged as a direct and independent argument. this is a most important consideration, which is in danger of being overlooked in the present day. some authors would actually contrast the argument for theism or christianity derivable from the comparative study of religion with the ordinary or formal proofs, and would substitute it for them, not seeing that, although powerful in connection with, and dependence on, these proofs, it has little relevancy or weight when dissociated from them. the two recent writers who have made most use of the argument are, perhaps, ebrard, who has devoted to it the whole of the second volume of his apologetics, and baumstark, whose 'christian apologetics on an anthropological basis' has for its exclusive aim to prove that man has been made for religion, and that the non-christian religions do not, while christianity does, satisfy his religious cravings and needs. in this country we ought not to forget the service which mr maurice rendered by his 'religions of the world,' and mr hardwicke by his 'christ and other masters.' the position maintained by sir john lubbock, that religion is not a universal phenomenon, and that advocated by comte, that it is a temporary and transitional phenomenon, will be examined in the volume on anti-theism. note ix., page . the theistic evidence complex and comprehensive. cousin has said, "there are different proofs of the existence of god. the consoling result of my studies is, that these different proofs are more or less strict in form, but they have all a depth of truth which needs only to be disengaged and put in a clear light, in order to give incontestable authority. everything leads to god. there is no bad way of arriving at him, but we go to him by different paths." the truth, that all the faculties of man's being must co-operate in the formation of the idea of god, is well enforced and illustrated in an article on "the origin of the concept of god," by the rev. george t. ladd, in the 'bibliotheca sacra,' vol. xxxiv.; also in principal m'cosh's 'method of the divine government,' b. i., c. i., sec. , and 'intuitions of the mind,' pt. iii., b. ii., c. v., sec. . the following quotation from mr ladd's article is a statement of its central idea: "nothing is more necessary, in the endeavour to understand how the concept under consideration originates, than to hold correct views of the entire relation of man to truth. the view which, if not held as a theory, is quite too frequently carried out in the practical search after knowledge, seems to be this one--that truth is a product of mind wrought out by the skilful use of the ratiocinative faculties. it follows, then, that the correct working of these faculties is almost the only important or necessary guarantee of truth. but it is not any lone faculty or set of faculties which is concerned in man's reception of truth. the truth becomes ours only as a gift from without. all truth is of the nature of a revelation, and demands that the organ through which the revelation is made should be properly adjusted. the organ for the reception of truth is symmetrically cultured manhood, rightly correlated action, and balanced capabilities of man's different powers. the attitude of him who would attain to truth is one of docility, of receptiveness, of control exercised upon all the powers of the soul,--so that none of them, by abnormal development or activity, interfere with the action of all the rest.... if the statements just made are true with regard to human knowledge in general, they are pre-eminently true with regard to such knowledge as is presented to the soul in the form of the concept of god. the pure in heart shall see god; they that obey shall know of the doctrine; the things of the spirit are spiritually judged of. these statements are as profound in their philosophic import as they are quickening in their practical tendencies. this concept comes as god's revelation of himself within all the complex activities of the human soul. it is adapted to man as man in the totality of his being and energies. and the whole being of man must be co-operative in the reception of this self-revelation of god, as well as met and filled by the form which the revelation takes, in order that the highest truth concerning god may become known.... in his work on mental physiology, dr carpenter speaks of certain departments of science 'in which our conclusions rest, not on any one set of experiences, but upon our _unconscious co-ordination of the whole aggregate of our experience_; not on the conclusions of any one train of reasoning, but on _the convergence of all our lines of thought toward one centre_.' these words, italicised by that author himself, well represent the form in which the knowledge of god is given to the human soul. it is the convergence of these lines of thought that run together from so many quarters which makes a web of argument far stronger to bind men than any single thread could be. this is a form of proof which, while it is, when understood aright, overwhelmingly convincing, gives also to all the elements of our complex manhood their proper work to do in its reception. in its reception it makes far greater difference, whether the moral and religious sections of the whole channel through which the truth flows are open or not, than whether the faculty of the syllogism is comparatively large or not. nor is there any effort to disparage any intellectual processes involved, in thus insisting upon the complete and co-ordinated activity of the soul, as furnishing the organon for the knowledge of god. all the strings of the harp must be in tune, or there will be discord, not harmony, when the breath of the lord blows upon it." that the power of apprehending god is conditioned by the character of man's nature as a whole, was clearly seen and beautifully expressed by the ancient christian apologist, theophilus. "if thou sayest, show me thy god, i answer, show me first thy man, and i will show thee my god. show me first, whether the eyes of thy soul see, and the ears of thy heart hear. for as the eyes of the body perceive earthly things, light and darkness, white and black, beauty and deformity, &c., so the ears of the heart and the eyes of the soul can perceive divine things. god is seen by those who can see him, when they open the eyes of their soul. all men have eyes, but the eyes of some are blinded that they cannot see the light of the sun. but the sun does not cease to shine because they are blind; they must ascribe it to their blindness that they cannot see. this is thy case, o man! the eyes of thy soul are darkened by sin, even by thy sinful actions. like a bright mirror, man must have a pure soul. if there be any rust on the mirror, man cannot see the reflection of his countenance in it; likewise if there be any sin in man, he cannot see god."--ad autolycum, i. c. . there is an improper use of the fact that the emotional capacities as well as the intellectual faculties are concerned in the apprehension of god. some persons express themselves as if there was an evidence for god in the feelings not only as well as in the intellect, but distinct from, and independent of, the evidence on which the intellect has to decide. they reason as if although the latter were necessarily and in its own nature inconclusive, the former might still warrant belief, or as if at least feelings might so supplement weak arguments as to allow of their conclusions being firmly held. they virtually acknowledge that, although it were incontestably proved that the theistic inference was such as could not reasonably be deemed trustworthy or sufficient by the intellect, they would believe in the existence of god all the same in reliance on their feelings, because the heart is as trustworthy as the head and as well entitled to be heard. this is a very different doctrine from what i regard to be the true one--namely, that neither the head nor the heart is a competent witness in the case under consideration when the one is dissociated from the other. purity of heart and obedience to the will of god enable us to see god and to know his character and doctrine, but they do not dispense with vision and knowledge, nor do they create a vision and knowledge which are distinct from, and independent of, reason. the heart must be appealed to and satisfied as well as the head, but not apart from or otherwise than through the head, or the appeal is sophistical and the satisfaction illegitimate. our feelings largely determine whether we recognise and assent to reasons or not, but they ought not to be substituted for reasons, or even used to supplement reasons. the sentimentalism which pleads feelings in deprecation of the rigid criticism of reasons, or in order to retain a conviction which it cannot logically justify, necessarily tends to scepticism, and, indeed, is a kind of scepticism. note x., page . intuition, feeling, belief, and knowledge in religion. there are few who hold in a consistent manner that god is known by immediate intuition. the great majority of those who profess to believe this, so explain it as to show that they believe nothing of the kind. dr charles hodge (systematic theology, pt. i. ch. i.) may be indicated as an example. professing to hold that the knowledge of god is innate and intuitive, he so explains and restricts these terms as would make our knowledge of our fellow-men as much innate and intuitive as our knowledge of god, or even more so; and even after all these qualifications finds that nothing more can be maintained than "that a sense of dependence and accountability to a being higher than themselves exists in all minds"--which is far from being equivalent to the conclusion that god is intuitively known. cousin is sometimes represented as an advocate of the view in question, but erroneously. discounting a few inaccurate phrases, his theory as to the nature of the theistic process is substantially identical with that expounded in the lecture. its purport is not that reason directly and immediately contemplates the absolute being, but that it is enabled and necessitated by the essential conditions of cognition, the _a priori_ ideas of causality, infinity, &c., to apprehend him in his manifestations. to find intuitionists who in this connection really mean what they say, we must go to hindu yogi, plotinus and the alexandrian mystics, schelling, and a few of his followers--or, in other words, to those who have thought of god as a pantheistic unity or a being without attributes. many german theologians, unduly influenced by the authority of schleiermacher, and destitute of a sound knowledge of psychology, have rested religion on feeling--mere or pure feeling. hegel opposed the attempt to do this, with considerable effect, although on erroneous principles. krause exposed it, however, with far more thoroughness in his 'absolute religionsphilosophie.' it is on feeling that belief is rested by most of the advocates of what is called "the faith philosophy." with thinkers of this class a man like cousin must not be confounded, although he maintained that religion begins with faith and not with reflection; or like hamilton, although he denied that the infinite can be _known_ while affirming that it "is, must, and ought to be, _believed_." cousin meant by faith "nothing else than the consent of reason," and hamilton meant by belief "assent to the original data of reason." the words faith and belief are used in a bewildering variety of senses. a few remarks will make this apparent. (_a_) by belief or faith is sometimes meant _reason_ as distinguished from _understanding_, and sometimes _reason_ as distinguished from _reasoning_. these two senses are so very closely allied that we may allow them to count as but a single signification. it is extraordinary that in either sense belief should be contrasted with reason, as it is by those who tell us that the infinite is an object only of faith, and that reason has to do exclusively with the finite, or that first principles are inaccessible to reason but revealed to faith. to create an appearance of conflict between reason and faith by identifying faith with reason in a special sense, and reason with understanding or reasoning, is unwarranted, if not puerile. what use can there be in telling us that god cannot be known--cannot be apprehended by reason--but is only an object of faith, a being merely to be believed in, when what is meant is that we have the same immediate certainty of his existence as of the truth of an axiom of geometry? (_b_) belief may be limited to apprehension, and knowledge to comprehension. it may be said that "we have but faith, we cannot know" the unseen and infinite, just as it is said that we believe that the grass grows but do not know how it grows. it is obvious, however, that if apprehension be knowledge, as it surely is, we believe only what we know. we know--_i.e._, apprehend--the existence of god and the growth of the grass, and we believe what we thus know. we do not know--_i.e._, comprehend--the nature of god or the nature of growth, and what we do not thus know neither do we believe. (_c_) at other times faith or belief relates to probable, as opposed to certain, knowledge. "we do not know this, but we believe it," often means, "we are not sure of this, but we think it likely." it is not in this sense, of course, that any one except a religious sceptic will allow that the existence of god is a matter of faith. a man may admit that religion and science differ as faith and knowledge, but if he is willing to understand this as signifying that while science is certain, religion is at the most merely probable, he must necessarily be a doubter or an unbeliever. (_d_) faith or belief sometimes refers to the knowledge which rests on personal testimony, divine or human. such faith may be more certain than assent given to the evidence furnished by science. it ought to be precisely proportioned to the evidence that there is such and such testimony, and that the testimony is trustworthy. (_e_) by faith or belief is sometimes meant trust in a person or fidelity to a truth; the yielding up of the heart and life to the object of faith. faith or belief of this kind always involves "preparedness to act upon what we affirm." it does not appear to me that such preparedness is, as professor bain maintains, "the genuine, unmistakable criterion of belief" in general. this kind of faith, like all other faith, ought to rest on the assent of the intellect to evidence, although what is characteristic of it is to be found not in the intellect but in the emotions and will. since it constitutes and produces, however, spiritual experience, it is a condition and source as well as a consequence of knowledge. there can be, in fact, no profound religious knowledge, because there can be no vital religion, without it. in religion, as in every other department of thought and life, man is bound to regulate his belief by the simple but comprehensive principle that evidence is the measure of assent. disbelief ought to be regulated by the same principle, for disbelief is belief; not the opposite of belief, but belief of the opposite. unbelief is the opposite both of belief and disbelief. ignorance is to unbelief what knowledge is to belief or disbelief. the whole duty of man as to belief is to believe and disbelieve according to evidence, and neither to believe nor disbelieve when evidence fails him. note xi., page . the theological inference from the theory of energy. a remarkably clear account of the chief theories as to the nature of matter will be found in professor tait's 'lectures on some recent advances in physical science,' lect. xii. in thomson and tait's 'natural philosophy,' thomson's article on "the age of the sun's heat" ('macmillan's magazine,' march ), tait's 'thermodynamics,' helmholtz's 'correlation and conservation of forces,' balfour stewart's 'treatise on heat,' &c., the facts and theorems which seem to establish that the material universe is a temporary system will be found fully expounded. i am not acquainted with any more effective criticism of the argumentation by which the eminent physicists mentioned support their conclusion than that of the rev. stanley gibson; and, although it seems to me not to come to very much, i feel bound in fairness to give it entire. after an exposition of the theory of energy, and of the reasoning founded on it by which we seem necessitated to infer that the universe tends at last to be a scene of rest, coldness, darkness, and death, he thus writes: "is this reasoning, i ask, open to any objection? and if not, does it bear out the theological conclusion here sought to be rested upon it? in attempting to pass a verdict upon the question here raised, we cannot but feel, not only the grandeur of the subject before us, but also the imminent risk of its being affected by considerations unknown to us. we certainly need to judge with diffidence. perhaps the first question which arises is, are we to take the material universe to be infinite? if it be, and if its stores of energy, potential and kinetic, have no limit, then it is no longer clear that the final stage of accumulation need have been reached, however long its past history may have been; nor yet, i may add, that it would ever be reached in the future. i may be reminded that at present, at all events, only finite accumulations have arisen, and that this is not consistent with an accumulation through a past eternity. but this objection assumes that there never could have been more than some assignable degree of diffusion of matter. why should this be? if at any past period there was a certain degree of diffusion, why may there not have been a greater degree at an earlier period? and if so, why may not this integrating, as i should propose to call it, have been going on for ever? "if, on the other hand, the universe be finite, then, according to the principle of the conservation of energy, reflection of heat must take place from its boundaries, and there may be reconcentration of energy on certain points, according to the form of the bounding surface. "a second inquiry arises thus. if it be impossible to imagine the present history of the universe continued backward indefinitely under its present code of laws, are we therefore obliged to assume some anomalous interference? we speak, of course, of these laws as they are known to us. might there not be others, yet unknown, that would solve the difficulty? "the history of the universe, as immediately known to us, offers as its leading feature the falling together of small discrete bodies in enormous numbers and with great velocities, or the condensation of very rare and diffused gases. hence the formation of bodies, some of vast size, others smaller, but all originally greatly heated. this process seems to point to an earlier state of things, in which such accumulations of matter, though sparse even now, were far less common--a state in which, to use the expression which i have proposed, matter was far less integrated. it is quite true that the great change of which we thus obtain a glimpse is not a recurring process. it is not therefore fitted for eternal repetition and continuance. but it is a bold thing to say that this earlier state of things may not have followed from one still older by a natural process, and this again from one before, and so on through an indefinite regression. we have seen what an important part the ether plays in the present process of the dissipation of energy. the existence of that ether, the separation of matter into two main forms, may have sprung out of some previous condition of things wholly unknown to us. and so also there may be forms and stores of energy as yet unknown. "mr proctor, in his work on the sun, has cautioned us how we speculate on the physical constitution of that body, whilst we must feel uncertain how far the physical laws, which we observe here, will hold under the vastly different conditions obtaining there. he supports his caution by referring to cases in which what had been confidently thought by many to be safe generalisations have been shown to fail in novel circumstances. thus it was thought that the passage of a gas from the gaseous into the liquid form was always an abrupt change. but it has been found that carbonic acid gas can be made to pass into the liquid state by insensible gradations. again, it had been thought that gas, when incandescent, always gave light whose spectrum was broken into thin lines; but it has been shown that hydrogen, under high pressure, may be made to give forth light with a continuous spectrum. now surely this caution, which mr proctor enters in the case of which he speaks, might still more wisely be entered when we come to consider a state of things so novel, so remote from our experience, as that which attended the origin of the universe, or rather of that state of the universe with which we are acquainted. we certainly must not be in haste to conclude that because the laws of nature, as they are known to us, will not explain what must have taken place at some very remote period, therefore those events must have been altogether anomalous."--religion and science, pp. - . it is here virtually--perhaps i may say expressly--conceded that if the matter and energy of the universe be finite and located in infinite space, the reasoning by which the theorists of thermodynamics maintain that perpetual motion is incompatible with the transformation and dissipation of energy, cannot be resisted. unless matter and energy be infinite or space finite, the known laws of nature must eventually abolish all differences of temperature and destroy all life--this is what is admitted. to me it seems to amount to yielding all that is demanded; because whoever seriously considers the difficulties involved in believing either matter infinite or space finite must, i am persuaded, come to regard it as equivalent to an acknowledgment that the world will have an end and must have had a beginning. zoellner, in his ingenious work on the nature of comets, endeavours to avoid this inference by recourse to the hypotheses of riemann and others as to a space of _n_ dimensions. in such a space the shortest line would be a circle, and a body might move for ever, yet describe a limited course. matter, space, and inferentially time, would, in fact, according to this hypothesis, be both finite and infinite. it is to be hoped that few persons in the full possession of their intellects will ever accept a view like this. the imaginary geometry may be thoroughly sound reasoning, but it is reasoning from erroneous premises, and it can only be useful so long as it is remembered that its premises are erroneous. they have only to be assumed to be true to experience and reality, and all science must be set aside in favour of nonsense. logic ought not, however, to be confounded with truth. caspari fancies that by representing the universe as not a mechanism but an organism, he preserves the right to believe it eternal. but surely the laws of heat apply to organisms no less than to mechanisms. in an article concerning the cosmological problem, published in the first number of the 'vierteljahrsschrift f. wissenschaftliche philosophie,' professor wundt rejects the theory in question on extremely weak grounds. "it is easy to see," he says, "that, in the case of the english physicists at least, the desire of harmonising the data of the exact sciences with theological conceptions has not been without influence on this limitation of the universe." the rashness displayed by such a statement, and the utter want of evidence or probability for it, as regards men like thomson or tait, need not be pointed out. besides, clausius and helmholtz are neither english physicists nor likely to be influenced by theological conceptions. will it be believed that, notwithstanding this charge against others, professor wundt's own reasoning is not scientific, but merely anti-theological? such is the case. if the thomsonian theory be admitted, a place is left for creative action, for miracle; and this, he argues, is a contradiction of the principle of causality. therefore the theory must be rejected. it is to be regretted that so eminent a man of science should employ so unscientific an argument. there is obviously a very widespread unwillingness to accept the thomsonian theory; but, so far as i am aware, good reasons have not yet been given for its rejection. the contrast between the reception which it has received and that which has been accorded to the darwinian theory is certainly curious, and probably instructive. note xii., page . the history of the Ætiological argument. the argument for the divine existence which proceeds on the principle of causality is generally called the cosmological argument, but sometimes, and perhaps more accurately, the ætiological argument. the proof from order is not unfrequently termed cosmological. it is impossible to keep the ætiological argument entirely separate either from the ontological or cosmological argument. Ætiological reasoning may be detected as a creative factor in the rudest religious creeds. the search for causes began not with the origin of philosophy but with the origin of religion. passages like ps. xc. , , cii. - ; rom. i. , ; heb. i. - --have been referred to as anticipations of the argument. wherever nature is spoken of in scripture, it is as the work of an uncreated being, of a free and sovereign mind. aristotle gave a formal expression to the ætiological argument by inferring from the motion of the universe the existence of a first unmoved mover--phys., vii. , , viii. , , . cicero repeated his reasoning, and tells us it had been also employed by carneades, de nat. deor., ii. , iii. , . well known is st augustine's "interrogavi terram, et dixit: non sum. interrogavi mare et abyssos--et responderunt: non sumus deus tuus, quære super nos. interrogavi coelum, solem, lunam, stellas: neque nos sumus deus, quem quæris, inquiunt. et dixi omnibus iis--dicite mihi de illo aliquid. et exclamaverunt voce magna: ipse fecit nos. interrogavi mundi molem de deo meo et respondit mihi: non ego sum, sed ipse me fecit."--conf., x. . diodorus of tarsus (phot. bib. cod., , p. bekk.), and john of damascus (de fid. orth., i. ), inferred the necessity of a creative unity from the mutability and corruptibility of worldly things. thomas aquinas argued on the principle of causality in three ways--viz.: . from motion to a first moving principle, which is not moved by any other principle; . from effects to a first efficient cause; and . from the possible and contingent to what is in itself necessary.--summa. p. i., qu. , . most of the theologians of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries who treat of the proofs of the divine existence, employ in some form the argument from causation. thus, in pearson 'on the creed' and charnock's 'discourses on the existence and attributes of god' will be found good examples of how it was presented in this country in the seventeenth century. hume's speculations on causation attracted attention to it. the philosophers of the scottish school and their adherents among the theologians laboured to present it in a favourable light. in germany, leibnitz (théodicée, i. c. ) and wolff (rational thoughts of god, § ) laid stress on the accidental contingent character of the world and its contents, and, relying on the principle of the sufficient reason, concluded that there must be a universal and permanent cause of all that is changing and transitory, an absolute ground of all that is relative and derivative. further, wolff and his followers raised on this reasoning a large amount of metaphysical speculation as to the nature of a necessary cause, the properties of an absolute being, which was of a very questionable sort in itself, and had no proper connection with the so-called cosmological argument. to this argument, as stated by wolff, kant applied his transcendental criticism, and proved, as he thought, that it was "a perfect nest of dialectical assumptions." his argumentation may be allowed to have had force against wolff, but it is weak wherever it is relevant to the ætiological proof rightly understood. in fact, his objections openly proceed on the assumption that the principle of causality is only applicable within the sphere of sense experience. if this be true, no objections, of course, are necessary. as a rule, the ætiological argument is not skilfully or even carefully treated in the works of recent german theologians. it has been expounded, however, with great philosophical ability and with a rare wealth of scientific knowledge, by professor ulrici of halle, in the work entitled 'gott und die natur.' a translation of this treatise would confer a real service both on the theology and philosophy of this country. note xiii., page . mathematics and the design argument. "another science regarded as barren of religious applications, and even as sometimes positively injurious, is mathematics. its principles are, indeed, of so abstruse a nature, that it is not easy to frame out of them a religious argument that is capable of popular illustration. but, in fact, mathematical laws form the basis of nearly all the operations of nature. they constitute, as it were, the very framework of the material world.... it seems, then, that this science forms the very foundation of all arguments for theism, from the arrangements and operations of the material universe. we do, indeed, neglect the foundation, and point only to the superstructure, when we state these arguments. but suppose mathematical laws to be at once struck from existence, and what a hideous case would the universe present! what then would become of the marks of design and unity in nature, and of the theist's argument for the being of a god?... it is said, however, that mathematicians have been unusually prone to scepticism concerning religious truth. if it be so, it probably originates from the absurd attempt to apply mathematical reasoning to moral subjects; or rather, the devotees of this science often become so attached to its demonstrations, that they will not admit any evidence of a less certain character. they do not realise the total difference between moral and mathematical reasonings, and absurdly endeavour to stretch religion on the procrustean bed of mathematics. no wonder they become sceptics. but the fault is in themselves, not in this science, whose natural tendencies, upon a pure and exalted mind, are favourable to religion."--hitchcock's religion of geology, pp. - . "nor can we fail to notice how frequently the law which men have invented proves to have been already known and used in nature. the mathematician devises a geometric locus or an algebraic formula from _a priori_ considerations, and afterward discovers that he has been unwittingly solving a mechanical problem, or explaining the form of a real phenomenon. thus, for example, in peirce's 'integral calculus,' published in , is a problem invented and solved purely in the enthusiasm of following the analytic symbols; but in it proved to be a complete prophetic discussion and solution of the problem of two pendulums suspended from one horizontal cord. thus also galileo's discussion of the cycloid proved, long afterward, to be a key to problems concerning the pendulum, falling bodies, and resistance to transverse pressure. four centuries before christ, plato and his scholars were occupied upon the eclipse as a purely geometric speculation, and socrates seemed inclined to reprove them for their waste of time. but in the seventeenth century after christ, kepler discovers that the architect of the heavens had given us magnificent diagrams of the eclipse in the starry heavens; and, since that time, all the navigation and architecture and engineering of the nineteenth century have been built on these speculations of plato. equally remarkable is the history of the idea of extreme and mean ratio. before the christian era geometers had invented a process for dividing a line in this ratio, that they might use it in an equally abstract and useless problem--the inscribing a regular pentagon in a circle. but it was not until the middle of the present century that it was discovered that this idea is embodied in nature. it is hinted at in some animal forms, it is very thoroughly and accurately expressed in the angles at which the leaves of plants diverge as they grow from the stem, and it is embodied approximately in the revolutions of the planets about the sun.... now, in all these cases of the embodiment in nature of an idea which men have developed, not by a study of the embodiment, but by an _a priori_ speculation, there seems to us demonstrative evidence that man is made in the image of his creator; that the thoughts and knowledge of god contain and embrace all possible _a priori_ speculations of men. it is true that god's knowledge is infinite, and beyond our utmost power of conception. but how can we compare the reasonings of euclid upon extreme and mean ratio with the arrangement of leaves about the stem, and the revolutions of planets around the sun, and not feel that these phenomena of creation express euclid's idea as exactly as diagrams or arabic digits could do; and that this idea was, in some form, present in the creation?"--the natural foundations of theology. by t. hill, d.d., ll.d. there is an ingenious and judicious little work by charles girdlestone, m.a., published in , and entitled 'number: a link between divine intelligence and human. an argument.' note xiv., page . astronomy and the design argument. the design argument has always drawn some of its data from astronomy. the order and beauty of the heavenly bodies, the alternation of day and night, the succession of the seasons, and the dependence of living creatures on these changes, are referred to as indications of god's character and agency in many passages of scripture. thus, to select only from the psalms: "when i consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"--viii. , . "the heavens declare the glory of god; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."--xix. , . "he appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down. thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.... the sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. o lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all."--civ. - . among classical writers, cicero has presented the design argument as founded on the arrangements and movements of the heavenly bodies in a very striking manner, when, referring to the instrument by which posidonius had ingeniously represented them, he asks whether, if that instrument were carried into scythia or britain, any even of the barbarians of these lands would doubt that it was the product of reason, and rebukes those who would regard the wondrous system of which it was a feeble copy as the effect of chance. "quod si in scythiam aut in britanniam, sphæram aliquis tulerit hanc, quam nuper familiaris noster effecit posidonius, cujus singulæ conversiones idem efficiunt in sole, et in lunâ, et in quinque stellis errantibus, quod efficitur in coelo singulis diebus et noctibus: quis in illâ barbarie dubitet, quin ea sphæra sit perfecta ratione? hi autem dubitant de mundo, ex quo et oriuntur et fiunt omnia, casune ipse sit effectus, aut necessitate aliquâ, an ratione ac mente divinâ: et archimedem arbitrantur plus valuisse in imitandis sphæræ conversionibus, quam naturam in efficiendis, præsertim cum multis partibus sint illa perfecta, quam hæc simulata, sollertius."--de nat. deorum, ii. , . the 'astro-theology' of wm. derham, published in , was perhaps the first work entirely devoted to the illustration of the design argument from astronomical facts and theories. among comparatively recent works of a similar kind i may mention vince's 'confutation of atheism from the laws and constitution of the heavenly bodies,' whewell's 'bridgewater treatise,' dick's 'celestial scenery,' mitchell's 'planetary and stellar worlds,' and leitch's 'god's glory in the heavens.' they afford ample evidence of the erroneousness of comte's assertion that "the opposition of science to theology is more obvious in astronomy than anywhere else, and that no other science has given more terrible shocks to the doctrine of final causes." kepler did not think so, for he concludes his work on the 'harmony of worlds' with these devout words: "i thank thee, my creator and lord, that thou hast given me this joy in thy creation, this delight in the works of thy hands. i have shown the excellency of thy work unto men, so far as my finite mind was able to comprehend thine infinity. if i have said aught unworthy of thee, or aught in which i may have sought my own glory, graciously forgive it." nor did newton, for he wrote: "elegantissima hæcce compages solis, planetarum, et cometarum (et stellarum), non nisi consilio et dominio entis cujusdam potentis et intelligentis oriri potuit." and in our own times such men as herschel, brewster, mädler, &c., have protested against the notion that astronomy tends to atheism. the late professor de morgan demonstrated in his 'essay on probability,' when only eleven planets were known, that the odds against chance, to which in such a case intelligence is the only alternative, being the cause of all these bodies moving in one direction round the sun, with an inconsiderable inclination of the planes of their orbits, were twenty thousand millions to one. "what prospect," are his own words, "would there have been of such a concurrence of circumstances, if a state of chance had been the only antecedent? with regard to the sameness of the directions, either of which might have been from west to east, or from east to west, the case is precisely similar to the following: there is a lottery containing black and white balls, from each drawing of which it is as likely a black ball shall arise as a white one: what is the chance of drawing eleven balls all white?--answer to one against it. with regard to the other question, our position is this: there is a lottery containing an infinite number of counters, marked with all possible different angles less than a right angle, in such a manner that any angle is as likely to be drawn as another, so that in ten drawings the sum of the angles drawn may be anything under ten right angles: now, what is the chance of ten drawings giving collectively less than one right angle?--answer , , to one against it. now, what is the chance of both these events coming together?--answer, more than , , , to one against it. it is consequently of the same degree of probability that there has been something at work which is not chance in the formation of the solar system." there are several departments of science as much, or even more, adapted than astronomy, to furnish proofs of the wisdom of god; but there is none which affords us such evidence of his power, or so helps us to realise his omnipresence, our own nothingness before him, and the littleness of our earth in the system of his creation. those who wish to have impressions of this kind deepened may be recommended to read the works of proctor and flammarion. what is said in the paragraph to which this note refers must not be so understood as to be in consistent with the possibility or probability, if not demonstrated certainty, that the universe is not a perfectly conservative system, but one which is tending surely although slowly to the destruction of the present condition of things. this fact, if it be a fact, can no more affect the design argument in its relation to astronomy, than the decay of plants and the death of animals can affect it in relation to vegetable and animal physiology. note xv., page . chemistry and the design argument. the history of chemistry is of itself sufficient to disprove the view of comte that the initial and conjectural stages of a science are those in which it affords most support to theology. it was only after the definitive constitution of chemistry as a science, only after the discovery of positive and precise chemical laws, that the teleological argument for the divine existence began to be rested to a certain extent upon it. the honourable robert boyle, the founder of the boyle lectureship, was one of the most distinguished chemists of his age, a zealous defender of final causes, and the author of several treatises intended to diffuse worthy views and sentiments as to the character and operations of the creator. probably the two best english treatises on the relationship of chemistry to theism are the bridgewater treatise of dr prout, 'chemistry, meteorology, and the function of digestion, considered with reference to natural theology' ( d ed., ), and the actonian prize essay of professor fownes, 'chemistry as exemplifying the wisdom and beneficence of god' ( ). both writers were chemists of high reputation, but they were not very conversant with theology or philosophy, and have, in consequence, by no means fully utilised the excellent scientific materials which they collected. this makes it all the more to be regretted that the late professor george wilson was not permitted to accomplish his design of writing "a book corresponding to the 'religio medici' of sir thomas browne, with the title 'religio chemici.'" among the fragments comprised in the work published under that title after his death, three essays--"chemistry and natural theology," "the chemistry of the stars," and "chemical final causes"--are most interesting and suggestive. the attempts of writers like moleschott and büchner to draw atheistic inferences from the theories or hypotheses of modern chemistry have given rise to a multitude of answers, but it may be sufficient to refer to the 'antimaterialismus' of dr l. weiss. liebig in his 'chemical letters' manifests profound contempt for the materialistic and anti-theistic speculations attempted to be based on the science of which he was so illustrious a master. note xvi., page . geology, geography, etc., and the design argument. the single fact that geology proves that every genus and species of organic forms which exist or have existed on the earth had a definite beginning in time, gives to this science great importance in reference to theism. it decides at once and conclusively what metaphysics might have discussed without result for ages. its religious bearings are exhibited in buckland's 'geology and mineralogy considered in reference to natural theology,' hugh miller's 'footprints of the creator,' hitchcock's 'religion of geology,' and many other works. lyell concludes both his 'elements of geology' and 'principles of geology' by affirming that geological research finds in all directions the clearest indications of creative intelligence; that "as we increase our knowledge of the inexhaustible variety displayed in nature, and admire the infinite wisdom and power which it manifests, our admiration is multiplied by the reflection, that it is only the last of a great series of pre-existing creations, of which we cannot estimate the number or limit in times past." the numerous adaptations which exist between the terrestrial and celestial economies are dwelt on in detail by m'culloch in the second volume of his 'proofs and illustrations of the attributes of god from the facts and laws of the physical universe,' and by buchanan in 'faith in god and modern atheism,' vol. i. pp. - . these two authors have also treated of the adaptations subsisting between the organic and inorganic worlds. the bridgewater treatise of chalmers was on 'the adaptation of external nature to the moral and intellectual constitution of man;' and that of kidd, on 'the adaptation of external nature to the physical constitution of man.' in ritter's 'geographical studies,' guyot's 'earth and man,' kapp's 'allgemeine erdkunde,' lotze's 'mikrokosmus,' b. vi. c. , duval's 'des rapports entre la géographie et l'economie politique,' cocker's 'theistic conception of the world,' ch. vii., &c., will be found a rich store of teleological data as to the fitness of the earth to be the dwelling-place and the schoolhouse of human beings. of course, those who attempt to prove this thesis require carefully to resist the temptation to conceive of the relation of nature to man as not one of cause and effect, of action and reaction, of mutual influence, but as an immediate and inexplicable pre-established harmony like that which leibnitz supposed to exist between the body and the soul. this was the theory which cousin set forth in a celebrated lecture on the part of geography in history. regarding it i may quote the words which i have used elsewhere: "this notion is not only purely conjectural, but inconsistent with the innumerable facts which manifest that nature does influence man, and that man does modify nature. it is impossible to hold, either in regard to the body and soul, or in regard to nature and man, _both_ the theory of mutual influence and of pre-established harmony. all that, in either case, proves the former, disproves the latter. the belief in a pre-established harmony between man and nature is, indeed, considerably more absurd than in a pre-established harmony between the body and soul; for when a body is born, a soul is in it, which remains in it till death, and is never known to leave it in order to take possession of some other body: but every country is not created with a people in it, nor is every people permanently fixed to a particular country. imagination may be deceived for a moment by an obvious process of association into this belief of certain peoples being suited for certain lands, independently of the action of natural causes--the greeks, let us say, for greece, the indian for the prairies and forests of america, the malayan for the islands of the indian archipelago; but a moment's thought on the fact that the turk has settled down where the greeks used to be--that mighty nations of english-speaking men are rising up where the indian roamed, and that dutchmen are thriving in the lands of the malayan, should suffice to disabuse us. besides, just as the dictum, 'marriages are made in heaven,' is seriously discredited by the great number that are badly made, so the kindred opinion that every country gets the people which suits it, and every people the country, as a direct and immediate consequence of their pre-established harmony, is equally discredited by the prevalence of ill-assorted unions, a great many worthless peoples living in magnificent lands, while far better peoples have much worse ones."--philosophy of history in france and germany, pp. , . note xvii., page . the organic kingdom and design. the order and system in the vegetable and animal kingdoms are undeniable general facts, whatever may have been the secondary agencies by which they have been produced; and the inference of design from these facts is valid, whatever may have been the mode of their production. the characters and relationships of organic forms constitute a proof of intelligence, whether their genera and species be the immediate and immutable expressions of the ideas of the divine mind, or the slowly-reached results of evolution. of course, if there has been a process of evolution, it must have been one exactly fitted to attain the result. but the discovery or exhibition of such a process will be sufficient to cause a certain class of minds to believe that there has been no cause but the process--that the process completely explains both itself and the result, and leaves no room for intelligence. the character of the order and system in the organic world is so extremely abstruse, subtle, and comprehensive, that all the attempts at classification in botany prior to de candolle, and in zoology prior to cuvier, were failures. the labours of the great naturalists and biologists of the present century have, doubtless, accomplished much; but the light reached is still but the feeble light of an early dawn. yet that light is most pleasant and satisfying to the eye of the mind. the reason sees in it a profound significance and a wonderful beauty. how, it may well be asked, can a scheme of order which tasks to such an extent the powers of comprehension possessed by the human mind, and yet which is perceived, when discovered, to be admirably rational, be supposed to have originated elsewhere than in a mind? i can only mention a few out of the multitude of books which treat of design in the organic world. among general works on natural theology it may be sufficient to refer to those of paley, buchanan, and tulloch; and among special works to professor balfour's 'phyto-theology; or, botanical sketches, intended to illustrate the works of god in the structure, functions, and general distribution of plants;' m'cosh's 'typical forms and special ends in creation;' agassiz's 'structure of animal life; being six lectures on the power, wisdom, and goodness of god, as manifested in his works;' kirby's 'power, wisdom, and goodness of god, as manifested in the creation of animals;' roget's 'animal and vegetable physiology, considered in reference to natural theology;' and sir charles bell's 'the hand, its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design.' the three last-mentioned works are bridgewater treatises. it is a duty to call particular attention to the recent work of m. janet, 'les causes finales.' although m. janet concedes, perhaps, too much to the opponents of finality, his treatise contains the ablest and most adequate discussion of the various problems suggested by the indications which organic nature gives of design that has yet appeared. it is eminently worthy of a careful study. i am glad to know that a translation of this valuable work is in progress. among the masters of biological science, cuvier, v. baer, agassiz, and r. owen may be named, as among those who have set the highest value on the principle of finality. the essay on classification of agassiz, and the various essays which von baer has published at different times, on what he calls "zielstrebigkeit," are specially important. note xviii., page . evidences of design in organisms. "the _savants_ are generally too much disposed to confound the doctrine of final cause with the hypothesis of an invisible force acting without physical means, as a _deus ex machinâ_. these two hypotheses, far from reducing themselves the one to the other, are in explicit contradiction; for he who says _design_ says at the same time _means_, and, consequently, causes adapted to produce a certain effect. to discover this cause is by no means to destroy the idea of design; it is, on the contrary, to bring to light the condition, _sine quâ non_, of the production of the end. to make clear this distinction we cite a beautiful example, borrowed from m. claude bernard. how does it happen, says this eminent physiologist, that the gastric juice, which dissolves all aliments, does not dissolve the stomach itself, which is of precisely the same nature as the aliments with which it is nourished? for a long time the vital force was supposed to intervene--that is to say, an invisible cause which, in some way, suspended the properties of the natural agents, to prevent their producing their necessary effects. the vital force would, by a sort of moral _veto_, forbid the gastric juice to touch the stomach. we see that this would be a real miracle. everything is explained when we know that the stomach is lined with a coating or varnish which is not attacked by the gastric juice, and which protects the walls which it covers. who does not see that in refuting the omnipotence of the vital force, very far from having weakened the principle of finality, we have given to it a wonderful support? what could the most perfect art have done to protect the walls of the stomach, but invent a precaution similar to that which exists in reality? and how surprising it is that an organ destined to secrete and use an agent most destructive to itself, is found armed with a protective tunic, which must have always coexisted with it, since otherwise it would have been destroyed before having had time to procure for itself this defence--which excludes the hypothesis of long gropings and happy occurrences."--janet, 'final causes and contemporaneous physiology,' presb. quart. rev., april . professor tyndall gives a very graphic description of the combination of remarkable arrangements by which the human ear is fitted to be an organ of hearing. i quote from it the following words, and connect with them some striking observations of max müller. "finally, there is in the labyrinth a wonderful organ, discovered by the marchese corti, which is to all appearance a musical instrument, with its chords so stretched as to accept vibrations of different periods, and transmit them to the nerve-filaments which traverse the organ. within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain. each musical tremor which falls upon this organ selects from its tensioned fibres the one appropriate to its own pitch, and throws that fibre into unisonant vibration. and thus, no matter how complicated the motion of the external air may be, those microscopic strings can analyse it and reveal the constituents of which it is composed."--on sound, p. . "what we hear when listening to a chorus or a symphony is a commotion of elastic air, of which the wildest sea would give a very inadequate image. the lowest tone which the ear perceives is due to about vibrations in one second, the highest to about . consider, then, what happens in a _presto_, when thousands of voices and instruments are simultaneously producing waves of air, each wave crossing the other, not only like the surface waves of the water, but like spherical bodies, and, as it would seem, without any perceptible disturbance; consider that each tone is accompanied by secondary notes, that each instrument has its peculiar _timbre_, due to secondary vibrations; and, lastly, let us remember that all this cross-fire of waves, all this whirlpool of sound, is moderated by laws which determine what we call harmony, and by certain traditions or habits which determine what we call melody--both these elements being absent in the songs of birds--that all this must be reflected like a microscopic photograph on the two small organs of hearing, and there excite not only perception, but perception followed by a new feeling even more mysterious, which we call either pleasure or pain;--and it will be clear that we are surrounded on all sides by miracles transcending all we are accustomed to call miraculous."--science of language, second series, p. . the structure of the eye has often been described as an evidence of design. there is an extremely interesting comparison of it with the photographic camera in le conte's 'religion and science,' pp. - . the whole reading public knows the masterly chapter on "the machinery of flight" in the duke of argyll's 'reign of law.' note xix., page . psychology and design. the following writers treat at considerable length of the evidences of design to be traced in the constitution of the mind: sir matthew hale in his 'primitive origination of mankind;' barrow in the seventh of his 'sermons on the creed;' bentley in the second sermon of his 'boyle lecture;' crombie in the second volume of his 'natural theology;' lord brougham in his 'discourse on natural theology,' sect. iii., pp. - ; turton's 'natural theology considered,' pp. - ; chalmers's 'natural theology,' book iii.; buchanan's 'faith in god,' pp. - ; tulloch's 'theism,' pp. - ; and ulrici's 'gott und mensch.' the phenomena of animal instinct are of themselves an inexhaustible source of instruction as to the divine wisdom and goodness. "the spinning machinery which is provided in the body of a spider is not more accurately adjusted to the viscid secretion which is provided for it, than the instinct of the spider is adjusted both to the construction of its web and also to the selection of likely places for the capture of its prey. those birds and insects whose young are hatched by the heat of fermentation, have an intuitive impulse to select the proper materials, and to gather them for the purpose. all creatures, guided sometimes apparently by senses of which we know nothing, are under like impulses to provide effectually for the nourishing of their young; and it is most curious and instructive to observe that the extent of provision which is involved in the process, and in the securing of the result, seems very often to be greater as we descend in the scale of nature, and in proportion as the parents are dissociated from the actual feeding or personal care of their offspring. the mammalia have nothing to provide except food for themselves, and have at first, and for a long time, no duty to perform beyond the discharge of a purely physical function. birds have more to do--in the building of nests, in the choice of sites for these, and after incubation in the choice of food adapted to the period of growth. insects, much lower in the scale of organisation, and subject to the wonderful processes of metamorphosis, have to provide very often for a distant future, and for successive stages of development not only in the young but in the _nidus_ which surrounds them. bees, if we are to believe the evidence of observers, have an intuitive guidance in the selection of food which has the power of producing organic changes in the bodies of the young, even to the determination and development of sex, so that, by the administration of it, under what may be called artificial conditions, certain selected individuals can be made the mothers and queens of future hives. these are but a few examples of facts of which the whole animal world is full, presenting, as it does, one vast series of adjustments between bodily organs and corresponding instincts. but this adjustment would be useless unless it were part of another adjustment--between the instincts and perceptions of animals and those facts and forces of surrounding nature which are related to them, and to the whole cycle of things of which they form a part. in those instinctive actions of the lower animals which involve the most distant and the most complicated anticipations, it is certain that the prevision involved is a prevision which is not in the animals themselves. they appear to be, and beyond all doubt really are, guided by some simple appetite, by an odour or a taste, and, in all probability, they have generally as little consciousness of the ends to be subserved as the suckling has of the processes of nutrition. the path along which they walk is a path which they did not engineer. it is a path made for them, and they simply follow it. but the propensities and tastes and feelings which make them follow it, and the rightness of its direction towards the ends to be attained, do constitute an adjustment which may correctly be called mechanical, and is part of a unity which binds together the whole world of life, and the whole inorganic world on which living things depend."--duke of argyll on animal instinct (cont. rev., july ). instinctive actions will not be shown to be less evidences of divine purpose by its being proved that intelligence, at least in the higher animals, probably always co-operates in some degree with instinct, or that much which is referred to instinct may be traced either directly to experience or to the hereditary transmission of qualities originally generated by experience. note xx., page . history and design. the quotation is from the eighteenth--the concluding--volume of the 'etudes sur l'histoire de l'humanité,' by professor laurent of ghent. i have given some account of his historical doctrine, and endeavoured to defend the theistic inference which he has drawn from his laborious survey of historical facts against the objections of professor j. b. meyer, in my 'philosophy of history in france and germany,' pp. - . bunsen, in the work entitled 'god in history,' seeks to establish the same great thesis. "history," says niebuhr, "shows, on a hundred occasions, an intelligence distinct from nature, which conducts and determines those things which may seem to us accidental; and it is not true that history weakens our belief in divine providence. history is, of all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly to that belief."--lectures on the history of rome, vol. ii. p. . süssmilch's celebrated treatise, 'göttliche ordnung in der veränderung des menschlichen geschlechtes, &c.;' m'cosh's 'method of the divine government;' and gillett's 'god in human thought,' vol. ii. pp. - , may be consulted as regards the evidences of divine purpose to be found in the constitution of society. note xxi., page . history of the teleological argument. the proof of the divine existence from the order and adaptations of the universe is known as the physico-theological or teleological argument. it has also been sometimes called the cosmological argument; the very word cosmos, like the latin _mundus_ and our own universe, implying order. it is so obvious and direct that it has presented itself to the mind from very ancient times. it is implied in such passages of scripture as job, xxxvii.-xli.; ps. viii., xix., civ.; isa. xl. - ; matt. vi. - ; acts, xiv. - , xvii. - . pythagoras laid great stress on the order of the world; and it was mainly on that order that anaxagoras rested his belief in a supreme intelligence. socrates developed the argument from the adaptation of the parts of the body to one another, and to the external world, with a skill which has never been surpassed. his conversation with aristodemus, as recorded in the 'memorabilia' of xenophon, is of wonderful interest and beauty. few will follow it even now without feeling constrained to join aristodemus in acknowledging that "man must be the masterpiece of some great artificer, carrying along with it infinite marks of the love and favour of him who thus formed it." plato presents the argument specially in the 'timæus,' and his whole philosophy is pervaded by the thought that god is the primary source and perfect ideal of all order and harmony. aristotle expressly maintains that "the appearance of ends and means is a proof of design," and conceives of god as the ultimate final cause. cicero (de nat. deor., ii. c. ) puts into the mouth of balbus an elaborate exposition of the design argument. the 'de usu partium' of galen is a treatise on natural theology, teaching design in the structure of the body. this proof is found more frequently than any other in the writings of the fathers and scholastics. "when we see a vessel," says theophilus, "spreading her canvas, and majestically riding on the billows of the stormy sea, we conclude that she has a pilot on board; thus, from the regular course of the planets, the rich variety of creatures, we infer the existence of the creator."--ad autol., . minucius felix (c. ) compares the universe to a house, and gregory of nazianzum (orat., xxviii. ) compares it to a lyre, in illustrating the same argument. ambrose, athanasius, augustine, basil the greek, chrysostom, &c., employ it. so do albertus magnus, thomas aquinas, &c. the opposition of bacon and descartes to final causes had no influence in preventing theologians from insisting on their existence. from boyle and derham to paley and the bridgewater treatises, an enormous literature appeared in england devoted to this end. germany, also, in the second half of the eighteenth century, was almost as much overflooded with lithotheologies, hydrotheologies, phytotheologies, insectotheologies, &c., as it at present is with works on darwinism. in france, fenelon in his 'démonstration de l'existence de dieu,' and bernardin de saint pierre in his 'etudes' and 'harmonies de la nature,' eloquently, although not perhaps very solidly or cautiously, reasoned from the wonders of nature to the wisdom of god. hume and kant, by their criticisms of the design argument, rendered to it the great service of directing attention to the principles on which it proceeds. theologians had previously gone on merely accumulating illustrative instances and instituting minute investigations into the constitutions of the complex objects which they selected with this view. attention was thus distracted from what really needed argument. hume and kant showed men the real point at issue. although kant rejected the argument, he speaks of it in these terms: "this proof deserves to be mentioned at all times with respect. it is the oldest, the clearest, and the most suited to the ordinary understanding. it animates the study of nature, because it owes its existence to thought, and ever receives from it fresh force. it brings out reality and purpose where our observation would not of itself have discovered them, and extends our knowledge of nature by exhibiting indications of a special unity whose principle is beyond nature. this knowledge, moreover, directs us to its cause--namely, the inducing idea, and increases our faith in a supreme originator to an almost irresistible conviction." i must refer to the notes from xiii. to xx. inclusive, for the titles of recent works on the design argument. "the assertion appears to be quite unfounded that, as science advances from point to point, final causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. the principle of design changes its mode of application, indeed, but it loses none of its force. we no longer consider particular facts as produced by special interpositions; but we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of the laws by which particular facts are produced. we do not look upon each particular cloud as brought near to us that it may drop fatness on our fields; but the general adaptation of the laws of heat and air and moisture to the promotion of vegetation does not become doubtful. we do not consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and animals because we find that, instead of revolving round the earth as an attendant, the earth, along with other planets, revolves round him. we are rather, by the discovery of the general laws of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. final causes, if they appear driven farther from us by such extension of our views, embrace us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit. instead of a few threads connecting some detached objects, they become a stupendous network, which is wound round and round the universal frame of things."--whewell, 'history of scientific ideas,' vol. ii. pp. , . note xxii., page . creation and evolution. creation is the _only_ theory of the _origin_ of the universe. evolution assumes either the creation or the self-existence of the universe. the evolutionist must choose between creation and non-creation. they are opposites. there is no intermediate term. the attempt to introduce one--the unknowable--can lead to no result; for unless the unknowable is capable of creating, it can account for the origin of nothing. all attempts to explain even the formation of the universe, either by the evolution of the unknowable or by evolution out of the unknowable, must be of a thoroughly delusive character. the evolution of what is known can alone have significance either to the ordinary or scientific mind. nothing can be conceived of as subject to evolution which is not of a finite and composite nature. nothing can be evolved out of a finite and composite existence which was not previously involved in it. and what gives to anything its limits and constitution must be more perfect than itself. [greek: to prôton ou sperma estin, alla to teleion.] "as many philosophers as adopt the supposition--such as the pythagoreans and spensippus--that what is best and most fair is not to be found in the principle of things, from the fact that though the first principles both of plants and animals are causes, yet what is fair and perfect resides in created things as results from these,--persons, i say, who entertain these sentiments, do not form their opinions correctly. for seed arises from other natures that are antecedent and perfect, and seed is not the first thing, whereas that which is perfect is."--aristotle, 'metaphysics,' xi. . "it is manifest by the light of nature that there must at least be as much reality in the efficient and entire cause as in its effect; for whence can the effect draw its reality if not from its cause? and how could the cause communicate to it this reality unless it possessed it in itself? and hence it follows, not only that what is cannot be produced by what is not, but likewise that the more perfect--in other words, that which contains in itself more reality--cannot be the effect of the less perfect."--descartes, 'meditations,' iii. "in not a few of the progressionists the weak illusion is unmistakable, that, with time enough, you may get everything out of next-to-nothing. grant us, they seem to say, any tiniest granule of power, so close upon zero that it is not worth begrudging--allow it some trifling tendency to infinitesimal increment--and we will show you how this little stock became the kosmos, without ever taking a step worth thinking of, much less constituting a case for design. the argument is a mere appeal to an incompetency in the human imagination, in virtue of which, magnitudes evading conception are treated as out of existence; and an aggregate of inappreciable increments is simultaneously equated,--in its cause to _nothing_, in its effect to _the whole of things_. you manifestly want the same causality, whether concentrated on a moment or distributed through incalculable ages; only, in drawing upon it, a logical theft is more easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. surely it is a mean device for a philosopher thus to crib causation by hair's-breadths, to put it out at compound interest through all time, and then disown the debt."--martineau, 'essays philosophical and theological,' pp. , . "think of it! an endless evolution, an eternal working, an infinite causation, and yet an effect so finite. nature has been working upward from eternity, and has just passed the long-armed ape who begat prognathus, as prognathus begat the troglodyte homo. what becomes of our doctrine of progress? as sure as mathematics, it should have been all evolved, all that we now have, over and over again--all _out_, or far more _out_ than has come out, incalculable ages ago. an eternal ante-past of progressive working. to what a height should it have arisen! it should have transcended all our ideals. the most exalted finite being should have been reached, the most exalted that our minds can conceive, instead of this creature man, so poor, so low; for you will bear in mind that i am speaking of him as measured by no higher scale of value than that afforded by this physical hypothesis--man evolved from nebular gas--man just coming out of darkness, and so soon to return to darkness again--_e tenebris in tenebras_. this all comes from that hideous [greek: hysteron proteron], that inversion of all necessary thinking. nature first, it says--matter first, an impalpable nebulous nihilism first, the lowest and most imperfect first; life, thought, reason, idea, their junior products, and god, therefore, the last product, if there be a god at all, or anything to which such a name can possibly be given. and we are asked to adopt this, and call it grand, whilst rejecting as narrow and soul-contracting the revelation which makes god first, reason first, idea first, the perfect first,--as has been said before--the imperfect and the finite ever a departure from it, whether in the scale of order or of time, whether as exhibited in processes of lapse and deterioration or the contrary seeming of recovery and restoration in cyclical rounds. the two schemes have two entirely different modes of speech. says the mere physical hypothesis: in the beginning was the nebula, and all things were in the nebula, and all things were self-evolved from the nebula--even life, thought, consciousness, idea, reason itself, having no other source. the other speaks to us in language like this: [greek: en archê ên ho logos], "in the beginning was the word," the [greek: logos], the reason, "and the word was with god, and the word was god. all things came into being by him. in him was life," [greek: zôê], and "from this life"--not from motions, or molecules, or correlated forces, or the vibration of fibres, or the arrangements of nebular atoms, but from this life of the logos, the eternal reason--"came the light of men"--the mind, reason, conscience of humanity--even "the light that lighteth" every rational being "coming into the cosmos."--prof. lewis, 'the kingdom of god' (dickinson's theological quarterly, no. ). note xxiii., page . theological inferences from the doctrine of spontaneous generation. an eloquent preacher exclaims, "great ought to be our compassion for the weak brother whose faith in god would be shaken because a chemist should succeed next year in producing vital cells out of a hermetically-sealed vessel containing only the elements of protoplasm."--rev. e. a. abbott, d.d., 'cambridge sermons,' p. . it must be admitted, however, that many who certainly cannot be fairly described as "weak brethren," entertain very strongly that fear of the doctrine of spontaneous generation which dr abbott deprecates. i quote, from the 'presbyterian quarterly' of january , the words of president barnard of columbia college, new york, expressing an entirely opposite sentiment. i do so without criticism or comment, as i shall have to consider the relation of materialistic theories of the origin of life to theism in next volume. "to the philosopher, the demonstration of the theory of spontaneous generation, should it ever be demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt or cavil, cannot but be a matter of the deepest interest. but to the man who finds himself compelled to receive it, this interest, it seems to me, must be no less painful than it is deep. nor is this the only theory which the investigators of our time are urging upon our attention, of which i feel compelled to make the same remark. there are, at least, two besides which impress me with a similar feeling; and the three together constitute a group which, though to a certain extent independent of each other, are likely in the end to stand or fall together. these are, the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the doctrine of organic evolution, and the doctrine of the correlation of mental and physical forces. if these doctrines are true, the existence of an intelligence separate from organised matter is impossible, and the death of the human body is the death of the human soul. if these doctrines are true, the world becomes an enigma, no less to the theist than it has always been to the atheist. we are told, indeed, that the acceptance of these views need not shake our faith in the existence of an almighty creator. it is beautifully explained to us how they ought to give us more elevated and more worthy conceptions of the modes by which he works his will in the visible creation. we learn that our complex organisms are none the less the work of his hands because they have been evolved by an infinite series of changes from microscopic gemmules, and that these gemmules themselves have taken on their forms under the influence of the physical forces of light and heat and attraction acting on brute mineral matter. rather, it should seem, we are a good deal more so. this kind of teaching is heard in our day even from the theologians. those sentinels on the watch-towers of the faith, whose wont it has been for so many centuries to stand sturdily up in opposition to the science which was not, in any proper sense, at war with them, now, by a sudden and almost miraculous conversion, accept with cheerful countenances, and become in their turn the expounders and champions of the science which is. but while they find the mystery of the original creation thus satisfactorily cleared up in their minds, they seem to have taken very little thought as to what is going to come of the rest of their theology. it is, indeed, a grand conception which regards the deity as conducting the work of his creation by means of those all-pervading influences which we call the forces of nature; but it leaves us profoundly at a loss to explain the wisdom or the benevolence which brings every day into life such myriads of sentient and intelligent beings only that they may perish on the morrow of their birth. but this is not all. if these doctrines are true, all talk of creation or methods of creation becomes absurdity; for just as certainly as they are true, god himself is impossible. if intelligence presupposes a material organism, of which it is a mode of action, then god must be a material organism or there is no god. but it is the law of all living organisms that they grow, mature, and perish; and since god cannot perish, he cannot be an organism." note xxiv., page . darwin and paley. to the two treatises of mr darwin mentioned in the lecture, there must now be added another equally rich in fact suggesting theological inferences--'the different forms of flowers on plants of the same species.' a multitude of books have been written on darwinism and teleology. most of those published between and will be found named in the list of works on darwinism appended to seidlitz's 'darwin'sche theorie.' there are two good popular accounts of the controversy: 'what is darwinism?' by dr charles hodge of princetown, and 'die darwin'schen theorien' of rudolf schmid. as to paley, it gives one pleasure to quote the following passage from sir william thomson's address to the british association in ; because the foolish writing which is so frequently met with in books and journals about "the mechanical god of paley," about paley representing deity as "outside of the universe," or as "a god who makes the world after the manner that a watchman manufactures a watch," &c., can only be explained by utter ignorance of paley's views: "i feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. reaction against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, not rarely, in the notes of the learned commentators on paley's 'natural theology,' has, i believe, had a temporary effect of turning attention from the solid irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. but overpowering proof of intelligence and benevolent design lies all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting creator and ruler." note xxv., page . kant's moral argument. the unsatisfactoriness of the position that conscience can supply the place of reason, and can do without its help, in the search after god, is clearly seen in the case of the thinker who undertook with most deliberation to maintain that position. when kant said,--although all other arguments for the existence of god are delusive, still conscience gives us a feeling of responsibility and a sense of freedom which compel us to believe in one through whom virtue and fortune, duty and inclination, will be reconciled, and in whom the will will be free to do all that it ought,--he saw that he would be met with the retort and reproach that the same process by which he pretended to have demolished the other arguments was just as applicable to this new one; that the ideas of freedom and responsibility might be as delusive when supposed to assure us of reality, as those of causation and design; that if the latter were mere forms of human thought, the former might be held to be so likewise with equal reason, and to be equally incapable of affording a warrant to belief in god himself; and consequently, that the final religious result of his philosophy was, not that there is a god, but that there is an idea of god, which, although we cannot get rid of it, is full of contradictions, and wholly incapable of justification or verification. he saw all this as clearly as man could do, and it is marvellous that so many authors should have written as if he had not seen it; but certainly he might as well not have seen it, for all that he was able to do in the way of repelling the objection. his reply amounted merely to reaffirming that we are under the necessity of associating the idea of a supreme being with the moral law, and then qualifying the statement by the admission that we can know, however, nothing about that being; that as soon as we try to know anything about him we make a speculative, not a practical, use of reason, and fall back into the realm of sophistry and illusion from which the critical philosophy was designed to deliver us. in other words, what he tells us is, that the argument is good, but only on the conditions that it is not to be subjected to rational scrutiny, and that no attempt is to be made to determine what its conclusion signifies. it seems to me that, on these conditions, he might have found any argument good. such conditions are inconsistent with the whole spirit and very existence of a critical philosophy. and it is not really god that kant reaches by his argument: it is a mere moral ideal--a dead, empty, abstract assumption, which is regarded as practically useful, although rationally baseless--a necessary presupposition of moral action, but one which tells us nothing about the nature of its object. fichte was only consistent when he refused to speak of that object as a will or person, and affirmed that god exists only as the moral order of the universe, and that we can neither know nor conceive of any other god. he was also, only following out the principles of his master when he represented that order as the creation of the individual mind, the form of the individual conscience, a mode of mental action. kant has expounded his argument, and discussed its bearings fully and minutely, in his 'kritik der urtheilskraft,' sec. - , and 'kritik der praktischen vernunft, zweites buch, zweites hauptstück,' v.-viii. m. renouvier, in an article entitled "de la contradiction reprochée à la doctrine de kant" (la critique philosophique, ^{ieme.} année, no. ), has exposed some errors on the subject which are common in france, and equally common in england. note xxvi., page . dr schenkel's view of conscience as the organ of religion. dr schenkel has fully set forth his reasons for holding that conscience is the religious organ of the soul, in the ninth chapter of the first volume of his 'christliche dogmatik.' he endeavours to meet the objection urged in the text by representing what is truly the primary and distinctive function of conscience as a secondary and derivative function. its primary activity is, according to him, religious; it unites with god--it is conscious communion with him. its ethical activity is only elicited when this communion is disturbed and broken; its source is the religious want occasioned by the rupture of communion. that is felt to be a something abnormal and unsatisfactory, and awakens a desire after the restoration of the lost communion with god. the conscience is cognisant of a moral law only when, its communion with god being disturbed, it seeks its re-establishment dr schenkel thus, as he thinks, accounts for conscience having an ethical function as well as a religious function. but clearly the result at which he arrives is in direct contradiction to the position from which he starts. the affirmation of conscience as religious is represented as being that man is in direct communion with god; and the affirmation of conscience as ethical is represented as being that man is not in direct communion with god, but desires to be so. these are, however, contrary declarations; and to describe conscience in the way schenkel does, as "a synthesis of the ethical and religious factor," is to represent it as a synthesis of self-contradictory elements--a compound of yes and no. we cannot be conscious both of communion with god and of non-communion with him. and, on dr schenkel's own showing, the evidence for immediate communion with him is but small. the consciousness of moral law he affirms to be consciousness of the want or need of communion with god, not the consciousness of enjoying it. but is conscience ever independent of the consciousness of moral law? if not, it can never, according to the hypothesis, be a consciousness of god. if it be independent thereof, the fact would require to be better proved than by the misinterpretation of a few texts of scripture. solidly proved it never, i believe, can be. a conscience not conscious of a moral law is simply no conscience at all. note xxvii., page . chalmers and erskine on the argument from conscience. the moral argument was, as was to be expected, a very favourite one with dr chalmers, and his way of stating it was as remarkable for its simplicity and directness as for its eloquence. "had god," he asks, "been an unrighteous being himself, would he have given to the obviously superior faculty in man so distinct and authoritative a voice on the side of righteousness? would he have so constructed the creatures of our species as to have planted in every breast a reclaiming witness against himself? would he have thus inscribed on the tablet of every heart the sentence of his own condemnation; and is this not just as likely, as that he should have inscribed it in written characters on the forehead of each individual? would he so have fashioned the workmanship of his own hands; or, if a god of cruelty, injustice, and falsehood, would he have placed in the station of master and judge that faculty which, felt to be the highest in our nature, would prompt a generous and high-minded revolt of all our sentiments against the being who formed us? from a god possessed of such characteristics, we should surely have expected a differently-moulded humanity; or, in other words, from the actual constitution of man, from the testimonies on the side of all righteousness, given by the vicegerent within the heart, do we infer the righteousness of the sovereign who placed it there."--natural theology, vol. i. pp. , . this argument of dr chalmers, like all other arguments from conscience, implies the soundness of the reasoning by which god has been attempted to be shown to be the intelligent cause or author of the universe; and, on that perfectly legitimate presupposition, it seems to me as irresistible as it is simple. an intelligent but unrighteous god would never have made a creature better than himself and endowed with admiration of what is most opposite to himself, the reverse and counterpart of his own character. the argument as stated by the late mr thomas erskine of linlathen, is no less simple and direct: "when i attentively consider what is going on in my conscience, the chief thing forced on my notice is, that i find myself face to face with a purpose--not my own, for i am often conscious of resisting it--but which dominates me and makes itself felt as ever present, as the very root and reason of my being.... this consciousness of a purpose concerning me that i should be a good man--right, true, and unselfish--is the first firm footing i have in the region of religious thought: for i cannot dissociate the idea of a purpose from that of a purposer, and i cannot but identify this purposer with the author of my being and the being of all beings; and further, i cannot but regard his purpose towards me as the unmistakable indication of his own character."--'the spiritual order, and other papers,' pp. , . note xxviii., page . associationist theory of the origin of conscience. i have indicated to some extent my reasons for regarding this theory as unsatisfactory in an article entitled "associationism and the origin of moral ideas," in 'mind,' no. iii. (july ). in the treatise of m. carrau, 'la morale utilitaire,' the various forms of the theory are examined with fairness and penetration. note xxix., page . chalmers and bain on the pleasure of malevolence. dr chalmers devotes a chapter of his 'natural theology' to the illustration of "the inherent pleasure of the virtuous, and misery of the vicious affections." i do not think the psychological doctrine of that chapter unexceptionable; but, at the same time, i cannot understand on what ground prof. bain imagines that it "implies doubts as to the genuineness of the pleasures of malevolence," and virtually denies that "the feeling of gratified vengeance is a real and indisputable pleasure."--see emotions and the will, pp. - . the very passage which prof. bain quotes is quite inconsistent with this view. it is as follows: "the most ordinary observer of his own feelings, however incapable of analysis, must be sensible, even at the moment of wreaking the full indulgence of his resentment on the man who has provoked or injured him, that all is not perfect within; but that in this, and indeed in every other malignant feeling, there is a sore burden of disquietude, an unhappiness tumultuating in the heart, and visibly pictured in the countenance. the ferocious tyrant who has only to issue forth his mandate, and strike dead at pleasure the victim of his wrath, with any circumstance too of barbaric caprice and cruelty which his fancy, in the very waywardness of passion unrestrained and power unbounded, might suggest to him--he may be said through life to have experienced a thousand gratifications, in the solaced rage and revenge which, though ever breaking forth on some new subject, he can appease again every day of his life by some new execution. but we mistake it if we think otherwise than that, in spite of these distinct and very numerous, nay, daily gratifications, if he so choose, it is not a life of fierce internal agony notwithstanding." the sentence which precedes these words leaves no doubt that prof. bain's interpretation of them is incorrect. "true, it is inseparable from the very nature of a desire, that there must be some enjoyment or other at the time of its gratification; but, in the case of these evil affections, it is not unmixed enjoyment." the following passage is, however, still more explicit: "there is a certain species of enjoyment common to all our affections. it were a contradiction in terms to affirm otherwise; for it were tantamount to saying, that an affection may be gratified without the actual experience of a gratification. there must be some sensation or other of happiness at the time when a man attains that which he is seeking for; and if it be not a positive sensation of pleasure, it will at least be the sensation of a relief from pain, as when one meets with the opportunity of wreaking upon its object that indignation which had long kept his heart in a tumult of disquietude. we therefore would mistake the matter if we thought that a state even of thorough and unqualified wickedness was exclusive of all enjoyment, for even the vicious affections must share in that enjoyment which inseparably attaches to every affection at the moment of its indulgence. and thus it is that even in the veriest pandemonium might there be lurid gleams of ecstasy and shouts of fiendish exultation--the merriment of desperadoes in crime, who send forth the outcries of their spiteful and savage delight when some deep-laid villany has triumphed, or when, in some dire perpetration of revenge, they have given full satisfaction and discharge to the malignity of their accursed nature. the assertion, therefore, may be taken too generally, when it is stated that there is no enjoyment whatever in the veriest hell of assembled outcasts; for even there, might there be many separate and specific gratifications. and we must abstract the pleasure essentially involved in every affection at the instant of its indulgence, and which cannot possibly be disjoined from it, ere we see clearly and distinctively wherein it is that, in respect of enjoyment, the virtuous and vicious affections differ from each other. for it is true that there is a common resemblance between them; and that, by the universal law and nature of affection, there must be some sort of agreeable sensation in the act of their obtaining that which they are seeking after. yet it is no less true that, did the former affections bear supreme rule in the heart, they would brighten and tranquillise the whole of human existence; whereas, had the latter the entire and practical ascendancy, they would distemper the whole man, and make him as completely wretched as he was completely worthless." dr chalmers, then, did not call in question the pleasures of malevolence. note xxx., page . history of the moral proof. conscience has from the earliest times and among the rudest peoples exercised great influence in the formation of religious belief. moral reasons weighed with men in their origination and elaboration of religion long before they expressed them in abstract propositions and logical forms. the historical proof of this truth is so ample that it would require a volume to do it justice: all literatures might be made to yield contributions to it. the simplest form of the moral argument, and the one which has been most generally employed, is that of an inference from the moral law to a moral lawgiver. closely associated with it are those forms which rest on the emotions involved in or accompanying virtue and guilt. these are the directest modes of exhibiting what chalmers calls "the theology of conscience, which is not only of wider diffusion but of far more practical influence than the theology of academic demonstration." raymond of sebonde, in a work which i have previously had occasion to mention, was perhaps the first to present it in a more artificial form. he argues thus: man is a responsible being who can neither reward nor punish himself, and who must consequently be under a superior being who will reward and punish him, unless his life is to be regarded as vain and purposeless--unless even the whole of external nature, which is subject to man and exists for his sake, is to be pronounced aimless and useless. external nature, however, is seen to be throughout orderly and harmonious; how can we suppose the moral world to be disorderly and chaotic? as the eye corresponds to things visible, the ear to things audible, the reason to things intelligible, so conscience must correspond to a judgment which implies some one to pronounce it, and to a retribution which implies some one to inflict it. but this some one must be absolutely just; he must be omniscient, as possessing a perfect knowledge of all human actions, and a thorough insight into their moral character; omnipotent, to execute his judgments; and, in a word, must be the most perfect of all beings--_i.e._, god. kant's argument is thus summarised by the archbishop of york: "the highest good of man consists of two parts, the greatest possible morality and happiness. the former is the demand of his spiritual, the latter of his animal nature. the former only, his morality, is within his own power; and while, by persevering virtue, he makes this his personal character, he is often compelled to sacrifice his happiness. but since the desire of happiness is neither irrational nor unnatural, he justly concludes either that there is a supreme being who will so guide the course of things (the natural world, not of itself subject to moral laws) as to render his holiness and happiness equal, or that the dictates of his conscience are unjust and irrational. but the latter supposition is morally impossible; and he is compelled, therefore, to receive the former as true." akin to this argument are those which are based on man's desire of good. proclus, in his 'theology of plato,' argues to the following effect: all beings desire the good; but this good cannot be identical with the beings which desire it, for then these beings would be themselves the good, and would not desire what they already possessed. the good is antecedent, therefore, to all the beings who desire it. since the time of proclus to the present many have argued that there must be a god because the heart demands one to satisfy its desire of love, or holiness, or happiness; few, perhaps, have done so with more ingenuity of logic or fervour of belief than john norris in "contemplation and love, or the methodical ascent of the soul to god by steps of meditation," and in "an idea of happiness" ('collection of miscellanies'). a contemporary theologian, principal pirie of aberdeen, has laid great stress on an argument which we may assign to this class. "no argument," he says, "can be valid which founds on innate ideas, or which embraces considerations so entirely beyond the range of human apprehension that we cannot positively be assured whether they be true or false. yet we have no hesitation in saying that there is an argument _a priori_ for the existence and attributes of a god, which is involved in the very nature of our feelings, and which therefore tells upon the faith of the whole human race, even when they are altogether ignorant of it logically, as existing in the form of a proposition. it makes no appeal, however, to profound metaphysical speculations, and is consequently plain and intelligible to any one capable of exercising reason at all. it rests on the principle which both our feelings and our experience demonstrate to be true, that every primary and essential desire of the human mind has a co-relative--or, in other words, a something to gratify it--existing in the nature of things. the mode in which the development of this principle constitutes an argument _a priori_ for the existence and attributes of a god we now proceed to explain. every human being feels from the moment in which he comes into existence, and through his whole subsequent history, that he is in himself a weak, helpless creature. as we have said, this feeling begins from the very beginning of our conscious existence. the appeals of the infant for aid are made continually.... as we advance to childhood, youth, and manhood, our sense of power gradually increases. we are conscious that under certain circumstances we can do something for ourselves. yet this capability, we are also conscious in its very exercise, does not depend on us for its continuance. we cannot preserve to ourselves fortune, health, or even life, for _a single moment_. yet all these things we desire, and desire with the utmost earnestness, and desire as a primary tendency of our minds. we may not indeed always clothe such desire in words--we may not put it into the form of a proposition; but that it exists in every mind as a feeling, and practically operates upon every individual, is as certain as our existence itself, and is indeed manifest every moment in the efforts which we make to preserve these and all other forms of what we believe to involve happiness. in this desire, consequently, we have the voice of nature speaking, and commanding us to use such efforts. of ourselves we know that they would be insufficient. the results depend upon causes over which we have no control. our own efforts, we are conscious, are only means which nature has appointed us to employ, but their success depends on circumstances altogether beyond our power. it is, as has been said, the voice of nature telling us that each of our desires has a co-relative, through which it may be fully gratified by the use of the proper means. this co-relative, in the case of intense and permanent happiness, can only be found in the existence of a god, omnipotent, omniscient, true, just, benevolent, and eternal, _in whom we repose entire confidence_. no other assumption could by possibility satisfy our desire for the highest and permanent happiness now and for ever. for to realise thoroughly the argument, it is to be observed that our desire is for the highest and permanent happiness. it is not imperfect or temporary happiness merely which we desire, though we may be compelled to be content with this, if we cannot procure more. it is the highest happiness possible for our natures, and that without end. now, if such happiness is to be attained at all, it can only be obtained through a god possessed of the attributes which we have enumerated."--natural theology, pp. - . prof. wace, in the second course of his boyle lectures--christianity and morality ( )--has exhibited, with considerable detail, and in an ingenious and eloquent manner, the testimony which conscience bears to a personal god, a moral creator, and a moral governor. a glimpse of his general idea may be obtained from the following words: "in our endeavour to trace in the conscience, and in the personal experience of individuals, the roots of our faith in a god of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, we have now advanced two considerable steps beyond our first and simplest sense of right and wrong. we have seen that this sense, when allowed to speak with its full imperative and personal force, arouses in us, as it aroused in the psalmist, a sense of our being in contact with a personal and righteous will. this conviction necessarily involves, as it involved in the writer of the th psalm, the further belief that an authority which has this claim upon our obedience in every particular of our conduct, in all our thoughts and acts, must at the same time be the author and source of our whole constitution; that the righteous eyes which now penetrate, whether through darkness or through light, to the very depths of our souls, must also have seen our 'substance, yet being imperfect,' and that in their book must all our members have been written. if it be the imperative and paramount law of our nature to obey our conscience, and to make moral perfection, or spiritual excellence, our ultimate aim, we cannot but conclude that our whole nature, and the whole order of things in which we are placed, is in the hands of a moral power; and that, as we are fearfully and wonderfully made for righteous and reasonable ends, it must be by a righteous and reasonable will that we are made. the conscience of man must never be omitted from our view of the design of man; and it is only when we contemplate the adjustment of his whole nature to the purposes of the loftiest moral development, that the argument from design acquires its full strength.... the apprehension of a power which establishes righteousness as the law of life, involves also the conviction that it is able to enforce that law, and to render it finally and everywhere supreme. the conviction, indeed, is one of faith and not of demonstration; and the scriptures, no less than life, are full of instances in which this faith is tried by the bitterest experience. even prophets, as i have before observed, are at times driven to the cry that 'the law is slacked, and that judgment doth never go forth.' but the deepest instincts and necessities of conscience forbid the toleration of any such instinct of despair. if right were not essentially and ultimately might, i do not say--god forbid--that it would not still claim the supreme allegiance of the soul; but life would be a bitter mockery and an inexplicable cruelty. not merely to be under an imperative law to pursue that which cannot be realised, but to be bound to such a fruitless pursuit by every noble and lovely influence--to be condemned in moral and spiritual realities to the torments of a tantalus--this is a conception of human life against which the whole soul rebels. accordingly, a god of all righteousness must of necessity be regarded as a god of all power.... that 'categorical imperative' of the conscience, on which the german philosopher insisted, is imperative in demanding not only a god, but an almighty god." note xxxi., page . defects in the physical world. lucretius (ii. -v. ) has dwelt on the arrangements which render one zone of the earth torrid and others frigid--on the extent of barren heaths and rocks, of sands and seas--on the prevalence of unseasonable weather, storms, and tempests--and on the abundance of noxious herbs and destructive animals, &c.--as evidences that the earth was faulty and ill made, and could not be the work of a divine intelligence. whether it was well or ill made appears to have been a favourite subject of dispute between the epicureans and stoics. lactantius (de ira dei, c. xiii.) reports, and attempts to answer, the objections which the epicureans and academics were accustomed to urge against the constitution of the physical world. in cudworth's 'intellectual system,' vol. iii., pp. - , bentley's 'folly of atheism,' pt. i., serm. ; derham's 'astro-theology,' book vii., c. , &c., such objections are discussed. in the remarks which i made on the subject in the lecture, i have had chiefly in view the opinions of comte, j. s. mill, and j. j. murphy (scientific bases of faith, c. xvi.) mr mill's charges against nature are very vigorously and graphically expressed. "next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes from it, is their perfect and absolute recklessness. they go straight to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on the road. optimists, in their attempts to prove that 'whatever is, is right,' are obliged to maintain, not that nature ever turns one step from her path to avoid trampling us into destruction, but that it would be very unreasonable in us to expect that she should. pope's 'shall gravitation cease when you go by?' may be a just rebuke to any one who should be so silly as to expect common human morality from nature. but if the question were between two men, instead of between a man and a natural phenomenon, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought a rare piece of impudence. a man who should persist in hurling stones or firing cannon when another man 'goes by,' and, having killed him, should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would very deservedly be found guilty of murder. in sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's everyday performances. killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, nature does once to every being that lives, and in a large proportion of cases after protracted tortures, such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow-creatures. if, by an arbitrary reservation, we refuse to account anything murder but what abridges to a certain term supposed to be allotted to human life, nature also does this to all but a small percentage of lives, and does it in all the modes, violent or insidious, in which the worst human beings take the lives of one another. nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a nabis or a domitian never surpassed. all this nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst--upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consequence of the noblest acts,--and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. she mows down those on whose existence hangs the wellbeing of a whole people, perhaps the prospects of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves, or a blessing to those under their noxious influence. such are nature's dealings with life. even when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the same tortures in apparent wantonness. in the clumsy provision which she has made for that perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the prompt termination she puts to it in every individual case, no human being ever comes into the world but another human being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or days, not unfrequently issuing in death. next to taking life (equal to it, according to a high authority) is taking the means by which we live; and nature does this, too, on the largest scale and with the most callous indifference. a single hurricane destroys the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts, or an inundation, desolates a district; a trifling chemical change in an edible root starves a million of people. the waves of the sea, like banditti, seize and appropriate the wealth of the rich and the little all of the poor with the same accompaniments of stripping, wounding, and killing, as their human antitypes. everything, in short, which the worst men commit either against life or property, is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents. nature has _noyades_ more fatal than those of carrier; her explosions of fire-damp are as destructive as human artillery; her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups of the borgias. even the love of 'order,' which is thought to be a following of the ways of nature, is, in fact, a contradiction of them. all which people are accustomed to deprecate as 'disorder' and its consequences, is precisely a counterpart of nature's ways. anarchy and the reign of terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurricane and a pestilence."--three essays, pp. - . the opinion that the world would be either physically or morally improved were gravitation to cease when men went by, were fire not always to burn and were water occasionally to refuse to drown, were laws few and miracles numerous, may safely be left to refute itself. therefore, let me simply set over against mr mill's censure of nature wordsworth's praise:-- "nature never did betray the heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, through all the years of this our life, to lead from joy to joy; for she can so inform the mind that is within us, so impress with quietness and beauty, and so feed with lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life, shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings. therefore, let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary walk; and let the misty mountain winds be free to blow against thee: and, in after years, when these wild ecstasies shall be matured into a sober pleasure, when thy mind shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, thy memory be as a dwelling-place for all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh then, if solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts of tender joy wilt thou remember me and these my exhortations!" note xxxii., page . no best possible created system. dante has given magnificent expression to the truth that no created system can be absolutely perfect:-- "colui che volse il sesto allo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso distinse tanto occulto e manifesto, non poteo suo valor si fare impresso in tutto l'universo, che il suo verbo non rimanesse in infinito eccesso. e ciò fa certo, che il primo superbo, che fu la somma d'ogni creatura, per non aspettar lume, cadde acerbo: e quinci appar ch' ogni minor natura È corto recettacolo a quel bene che non ha fine, e se in se misura. dunque nostra veduta, che conviene essere alcun de' raggi della mente di che tutte le cose son ripiene, non può di sua natura esser possente tanto, che suo principio non discerna molto di là, da quel ch' egli è, parvente. però nella giustizia sempiterna la vista che riceve il vostro mondo, com' occhio per lo mare, entro s' interna; che, benchè dalla proda veggia il fondo, in pelago nol vede; e nondimeno egli è; ma cela lui l'esser profondo." --_del paradiso_, cant. xix. - . "he his compasses who placed at the world's limit, and within the line drew beauties, dimly or distinctly traced-- could not upon the universe so write the impress of his power, but that his word must still be left in distance infinite: and hence 'tis evident that he in heaven created loftiest his fate incurred because he would not wait till light was given. and hence are all inferior creatures shown scant vessels of that goodness unconfined which nought can measure save itself alone. therefore our intellect--a feeble beam, struck from the light of the eternal mind, with which all things throughout creation teem,-- must by its nature be incapable, save in a low and most remote degree, of viewing its exalted principle. wherefore the heavenly justice can no more by mortal ken be fathomed than the sea: for though the eye of one upon the shore may pierce its shallows, waves unfathomed bound his further sight, yet under them is laid a bottom, viewless through the deep profound." --wright. note xxxiii., page . defects in the organic world. the objections to final causes from alleged defects in the organic world have been answered with wisdom and success by m. janet, in his 'causes finales,' pp. - . the views of professor helmholtz as to the defects of the eye will be found stated at length in his popular lectures on scientific subjects. the chief defects enumerated are: . chromatic aberration, connected with . spherical aberration and defective centring of the cornea and lens, together producing the imperfection known as astigmatism; . irregular radiation round the images of illuminated points; . defective transparency; . floating corpuscles, and . the "blind spot" with other gaps in the field of vision. "the eye has every possible defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some which are peculiar to itself." "it is not too much to say that if an optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, i should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument. of course i shall not do this with my eyes, and shall be only too glad to keep them as long as i can--defects and all. still, the fact that, however bad they may be, i can get no others, does not at all diminish their defects, so long as i maintain the narrow but indisputable position of a critic on purely optical grounds." helmholtz himself, however, points out that the defects of the eye are "all so counteracted, that the inexactness of the image which results from their presence very little exceeds, under ordinary conditions of illumination, the limits which are set to the delicacy of sensation by the dimensions of the retinal cones;" that "the adaptation of the eye to its function is most complete, and is seen in the very limits which are set to its defects." in fact, were the eye more perfect as an instrument of optical precision, it would be less perfect as an eye. its absolute defects are practical merits. to be a useful eye it must be neither a perfect telescope nor a perfect microscope, but a something which can readily serve many purposes, and which can be supplemented by many instruments. the delicate finish of a razor renders it unfit for cutting wood. all man's senses and organs are inferior to those possessed by some of the lower animals, but the inferiority is of a kind which is a real and vast advantage. it is of a kind which allows them to be put to a greater variety of uses than could more perfect senses and organs. it is the very condition of their capacity to be utilised in manifold directions by an inventive and progressive reason. further, no man can see at all merely with a so-called perfect optical instrument. he must have in addition the imperfect instrument, composed of a soft, watery, animal substance, and designated the eye. there is that in the eye which immeasurably transcends all mere physics and chemistry, all human mechanism and contrivance; there is life; there is vision. note xxxiv., page . epicurean dilemma. the epicurean dilemma has been often dealt with. i shall content myself with quoting mr bowen's remarks on the subject: "_omnipotence and benevolence_ are apparently very simple and very comprehensive terms, though few are more vaguely used. the former means a power to do everything; but this does not include the ability to do two contradictory things at the same moment, or to accomplish any metaphysical impossibility. thus, the deity cannot cause two and two to make five, nor place two hills near each other without leaving a valley between them. the impossibility in such cases does not argue a defect of power, but an absurdity in the statement of the case to which the power is to be applied. a statement which involves a contradiction in terms does not express a limitation of ability, because in truth it expresses nothing at all; the affirmation and the denial, uttered in the same breath, cancel each other, and no meaning remains. all metaphysical impossibilities can be reduced to the formula, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same moment, as this would be an absurdity--that is, an absurd or meaningless statement. thus, virtue cannot exist without free agency, because a free choice between good and evil is involved in the idea of _virtue_, so that the proposition means no more than this--that what contains freedom cannot be without freedom. we cannot choose between good and evil, unless good and evil are both placed before us--that is, unless we know what these words mean; and we cannot express our choice in action, unless we are able to act--that is, unless we have the power of doing either good or evil. in the dilemma quoted from epicurus, a contradiction in terms is held to prove a defect of power, or to disprove omnipotence; the dilemma, therefore, is a mere logical puzzle, like the celebrated one of achilles and the tortoise. "the meaning of _benevolence_ appears simple enough; but it is often difficult to tell whether a certain act was or was not prompted by kind intentions. strictly speaking, of course, benevolence is a quality of mind--that is, of will (bene _volo_) or intention, not of outward conduct. an _action_ is said to be benevolent only by metaphor; it is so called, because we infer from it, with great positiveness, that the agent must have had benevolent intentions. we think that the motives are indicated by the act; but we may be mistaken. he who gives food to the hungry poor would be esteemed benevolent; but he may do it with a view to poison them. to strike for the avowed purpose of causing pain usually argues ill-will or a malignant design; but the blow may come from the kindest heart in the world, for the express purpose of benefiting him who receives it. in the present argument, epicurus assumes that the presence of evil--that is, the outward fact--is enough to prove a want of benevolence, or even a malignant design, on the part of him who might have prevented it. but if by evil is here meant mere pain or suffering, whether proceeding from bodily or mental causes, we may boldly deny the inference. if pleasure or mere enjoyment is not the greatest good, if sometimes it is even inconsistent with the possession of a higher blessing, then a denial of it may be a proof of goodness instead of malice."--metaphysical and ethical science, pp. , . note xxxv., page . god and duty. "to such readers as have reflected on man's life; who understand that for man's wellbeing faith is properly the one thing needful; how with it martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross--and without, worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide in the midst of luxury: to such it will be clear that for a pure moral nature the loss of religious belief is the loss of everything. "all wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, the stab of false friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. "well mayest thou exclaim, 'is there no god, then; but at best an absentee god, sitting idle, ever since the first sabbath, at the outside of his universe and _seeing_ it go?' 'has the word duty no meaning? is what we call duty no divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly phantasm made up of desire and fear?' 'is the heroic inspiration we name virtue but some passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by?' i know not; only this i know, if what thou namest happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 'behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is--the devil's.'"--carlyle. note xxxvi., page . histories of the theistic proofs. there are several histories of the proofs for the divine existence. one of the earliest is ziegler's 'beiträge zur geschichte des glaubens an das dasein gottes' ( ). the best known, and perhaps the most interesting, is bouchitté's 'histoire des preuves de l'existence de dieu' (mémoires de l'académie, savants Étrangers, i.), written from the krausean point of view. the 'geschichte der beweise für das dasein gottes bis zum jahrhundert' ( ), by alfred tyszka, and the 'geschichte der beweise für das dasein gottes von cartesius bis kant' ( ), by albert krebs, supplement each other. there are two very able articles--partly historical, but chiefly critical--on these proofs by professor köstlin in the 'theol. studien und kritiken,' h. , , and h. , . the most conscientious, useful, and learned history of speculation regarding deity is, so far as is known to me, the four-volumed work of signor bobba, 'storia della filosofia intorno all' idea di dio.' on the history of the _a priori_ proofs there may be consulted the treatise of fischer, 'der ontologische beweis f. d. dasein gottes u. s. geschichte,' , and an article of seydel, "der gesch. eintritt ontologischer beweisführing," &c. (tr. f. ph. h. i. ). in hase's 'life of anselm' (of which there is an english translation) there is a good account of anselm's argument. there is also a translation of the 'proslogion,' with gaunilo's objections and anselm's reply, in the 'bibliotheca sacra,' . on the cartesian proofs there is a special work by huber, 'die cartes. beweise v. dasein gottes' ( ). hegel's 'vorlesungen über d. beweise f. d. dasein gottes' are of great interest and value in various respects; but his view of the historical succession of the proofs does not appear to me to be tenable. note xxxvii., page . _a priori_ proof not proof from a cause. the philosophers and theologians who have supposed a priori proof to be proof from a cause or antecedent existence, have, of course, denied that there can be any _a priori_ proof of the divine existence. aristotle laid down as a rule that demonstration must proceed from things prior to and the causes of the things to be demonstrated, and those who assented to this rule necessarily denied the possibility of demonstrating the existence of god. the assertion of clemens of alexandria that "god cannot be apprehended by any demonstrative science" is indubitable, if the view of demonstration on which he rests it be correct; "for such science is from things prior and more knowable, whereas nothing can precede that which is uncreated." it is a manifest contradiction to imagine that an eternal being is subsequent to any other being, or a perfect being dependent on any other being. even mathematical demonstration, however, is not from causes; nor is there any reason for supposing that the order of knowledge is necessarily and universally the same as the order of existence. it is by confounding demonstration erroneously understood in the manner indicated with proof in general that not a few persons have arrived at the conclusion that the existence of god cannot be proved at all, and have deemed preposterous assertions like that of jacobi, "a god who can be proved is no god, for the ground of proof is necessarily above the thing proved by it," both profound and pious. note xxxviii., page . some _a priori_ arguments. i have treated of clarke's argument in the 'encyc. brit.' art. "samuel clarke." the demonstration of dr fiddes is contained in his 'theologia speculativa, or a body of divinity,' vols., - . it consists of six propositions: . something does now exist; . something has existed eternally; . something has been eternally self-existent; . what is self-existent must have all the perfections that exist anywhere or in any subject; . what is self-existent must have all possible perfections, and every perfection, in an infinite measure; . what has all possible perfections in an infinite measure is god. he proves his fourth proposition thus: "since nothing can arise out of nothing, and since there can be no perfection but what has some subject of inherence, every perfection must have been eternally somewhere or other, or in one subject or other, into which it must be ultimately resolved, or else it could never have been at all; without admitting, what of all things we are the best able to conceive, an infinite progression of efficient causes--that is, an infinite series of beings derived one from another, without a beginning or any original cause at the head of the series. so that whatever perfections we observe in any being must have been originally and eternally in the self-existent being." on behalf of his fifth proposition he advances two arguments: . "all properties essentially follow the nature and condition of the subject, and must be commensurate to it. for this reason we say that wisdom, power, and goodness being attributes of an infinite subject, or one which is the substratum of one _infinite_ attribute, these and all the other perfections belonging to it must be infinite also. otherwise the same subject, considered as a subject, would be infinite in one respect, and yet finite in another; which, if it be not a contradiction, seems to border so near upon one that we cannot comprehend the possibility of it." . "a self-existent being as the subject of any perfection cannot limit itself; because it must necessarily have existed from all eternity what it is, and have been the same in all properties essentially inherent in it, antecedently to any act or volition of its own. nor can such a being be limited by anything external to it; for, besides that self-existence necessarily implies independence, properties which are essential to any subject can admit of no increase or diminution or the least imaginable change, without destroying the essence itself of the subject. nor yet can it be said that there is any impossibility in the nature of the thing that the perfections inhering in an _infinite_ subject should be in the highest or even in an infinite degree. indeed it is scarce possible for us (for the reasons already assigned) to conceive how they should be otherwise. neither can any such impossibility arise from the nature of the perfections themselves. if, then, the perfections of a self-existent being cannot be limited by itself, nor by anything external to it, nor from any invincible repugnancy in the nature of the perfections themselves, i conclude that the self-existent being must not only have all possible perfections, but every perfection in an _infinite_ degree." the 'demonstration of the existence of god against atheists,' by the rev. colin campbell, minister of the parish of ardchattan, - , has been recently printed for private circulation from a ms. now deposited in the library of edinburgh university. the editor has added to it a learned and admirable appendix. mr campbell's manner of proving that there is one, and but one, infinite being, is as follows: "as everything which hath a beginning forces confession of one who hath none--because to produce is an action, and must presuppose an actor,--by the same force of reason, we must confess that whatever is limited, or made of such and such a limited nature, is limited by something which did limit it to be such a thing, and no other. for limit is an action, and confesseth an actor. so that there must be a being anterior to all limited beings, and, consequently, some being that is not at all limited, to evite the absurd progress of running infinitely upwards unlimited beings, without a single limiter. now, an unlimited being is the same as to say an infinite being. and so, by the force of reason, we have a being which is eternal, which is infinite. there can be but one infinite, because, were there two or more, the one would limit the other; and so the infinite would be finite, the unlimited would be limited. therefore, the unlimited, or infinite, must be one only; and that one purely single and uncompounded, else every part of the compound would limit the other parts, so that all the parts would be limited. and a whole whose parts are limited must be limited in the whole, it being impossible that a compound or conjunction of finites can, by addition, produce an infinite, unless you imagine this complex whole to consist partly of finites, and also of some infinite. but the one infinite part, if infinite, cannot leave place for any other finite to make it up, it being itself unlimited and infinite; and such an addition would speak it limited by the part which was added. and a thousand like absurdities would follow." wollaston's attempted demonstration is contained in the fifth section of his 'religion of nature delineated' ( ). this is a common book, and the mere reference to it must suffice. moses lowman's 'argument to prove the unity and perfection of god _a priori_' was published in , and reprinted, with a preface by dr pye smith, containing an account of the author and his works, in the cabinet library of scarce and celebrated tracts ( ). i reproduce the abstract which dr smith gave of this ingenious argument in his 'first lines of christian theology:' " . positive existence is possible, for it involves no contradiction. . all possible existence is either _necessary_, which must be, and in its own nature cannot but be; or _contingent_, which may be or not be, for in neither case is a contradiction involved. . _some_ existence is _necessary_: for, if all existence were contingent, all existence might not be as well as might be; and that thing which might not be never could be without some other thing as the prior cause of its existence, since every effect must have a cause. if, therefore, all possible existence were contingent, all existence would be impossible; because the idea or conception of it would be that of an effect without a cause, which involves a contradiction. . necessary existence must be _actual_ existence: for necessary existence is that which must be and cannot but be--that is, it is such existence as arises from the nature of the thing in itself; and it is an evident contradiction to affirm that necessary existence might not be. . necessary existence being such as must be and cannot but be, it must be _always_ and cannot but be always; for to suppose that necessary existence could begin to be, or could cease to be--that is, that a time might be in which necessary existence would not be--involves a contradiction. therefore, necessary existence is without beginning and without end--that is, it is eternal. . necessary existence must be _wherever_ any existence is possible: for all existence is either contingent or necessary; all contingent existence is impossible without necessary existence being previously as its cause, and wherever existence is possible it must be either of a necessary or a contingent being. therefore, necessary existence must be wherever existence is possible--that is, it must be _infinite_. . there can be but _one_ necessarily existent being; for two necessarily existent beings could in no respect whatever differ from each other--that is, they would be one and the same being. . the one necessarily existent being must have _all possible perfections_: for all possible perfections must be the perfections of some existence; all existence is either necessary or contingent; all contingent existence is dependent upon necessary existence; consequently, all possible perfections must belong either to necessary existence or to contingent existence--that is, to contingent beings, which are caused by and are dependent upon necessary being. therefore, since there can be but one necessarily existent being, that being must have all possible perfections. . the one necessarily existent being must be a _free agent_; for contingent existence is possible, as the conception of it involves no contradiction; but necessary existence must be the cause or producing agent of contingent existence, otherwise contingent existence would be impossible, as an effect without a cause; and necessary existence as the cause of contingent existence does not act necessarily, for then contingent existence would itself be necessary, which is absurd as involving a contradiction. therefore necessary existence, as the cause of contingent existence, acts _not necessarily_ but _freely_--that is, is a free agent, which is the same thing as being an _intelligent agent_. . therefore, there is one necessarily existent being, the cause of all contingent existence--that is, of all other existences besides himself; and this being is eternal, infinite, possessed of all possible perfections, and is an intelligent free agent--that is, _this being is god_." the demonstration of the divine existence given by the chevalier ramsay is contained in the first book of his 'philosophical principles of natural and revealed religion' ( ). it is as elaborately mathematical in form as the reasoning in spinoza's 'ethics,' and has continuous reference to that reasoning. it is impossible to give any distinct conception of its nature by a brief description. the argument of dr hamilton, dean of armagh, is fully set forth in his 'attempt to prove the existence and absolute perfection of the supreme unoriginated being, in a demonstrative manner' ( ). it assumes the "axiom" that "whatever is contingent, or might possibly have been otherwise than it is, had some cause which determined it to be what it is. or in other words: if two different or contrary things were each of them possible, whichever of them took place, or came to pass, it must have done so in consequence of some cause which determined that _it_, and not _the other_, should take the place." the propositions which he endeavours to demonstrate are these: i. there must be in the universe some one being, at least, whose non-existence is impossible--whose existence had no cause, no beginning, and can have no end. ii. the whole nature of the unoriginated being, or the aggregate of his attribute, is uncaused, and must be necessarily and immutably what it is; so that he cannot have any attribute or modification of his attributes but such as were the eternal and necessary concomitants of his existence. iii. whatever are the attributes of the unoriginated being, he must possess each of them unlimitedly, or in its whole extent, such as it is when considered in the abstract. iv. in whatever _manner_ the unoriginated being exists or is present anywhere, he must in the _like manner_ exist or be present everywhere. v. the unoriginated being is one individual uncompounded substance identically the same everywhere, and to which our ideas of _whole_ and _parts_, _magnitude_ or _quantity_, are not applicable. vi. the unoriginated being must necessarily possess intelligence and power unlimited, and all other natural attributes that are in themselves absolute perfections. vii. there is in the universe but one unoriginated being, who must therefore be the original fountain of all existence, and the first cause of all things. viii. all things owe their existence ultimately to the power of the first cause operating according to his free will. ix. almighty god, the first cause and author of all things, must be a being of infinite goodness, wisdom, mercy, justice, and truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme author and governor of the universe. the end. printed by william blackwood and sons * * * * * transcriber's notes variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical errors. italics are shown thus _italic_. ^{ieme.} indicates that the letters enclosed in curly brackets are superscripted. the repetition of the title on the first two pages has been removed. theodicy essays on the goodness of god the freedom of man and the origin of evil g.w. leibniz edited with an introduction by austin farrer, fellow of trinity college, oxford translated by e.m. huggard from c.j. gerhardt's edition of the collected philosophical works, - open [logo] court la salle, illinois * * * * * [logo] open court and the above logo are registered in the u.s. patent & trademark office. published by open court publishing company, peru, illinois . this edition first published by routledge & kegan paul limited, london. second printing third printing fourth printing fifth printing printed and bound in the united states of america. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data leibniz, gottfried wilhelm, freiherr von, - . theodicy: essays on the goodness of god, the freedom of man, and the origin of evil. translation of: essais de théodicée. includes index. . theodicy--early works to . i. title. b .e '. - isbn o- - - [ ] * * * * * contents * * * * * editor's introduction page preface preliminary dissertation on the conformity of faith with reason essays on the justice of god and the freedom of man in the , , origin of evil, in three parts appendices summary of the controversy, reduced to formal arguments excursus on theodicy, § reflexions on the work that mr. hobbes published in english on 'freedom, necessity and chance' observations on the book concerning 'the origin of evil', published recently in london causa dei asserta index [ ] * * * * * editor's introduction * * * * * i leibniz was above all things a metaphysician. that does not mean that his head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for him. not at all--he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics, he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. but he was incapable of looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. he strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative reason. he embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. nothing could be less like the spirit of ours. to many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. a professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing them up as confused forms of something else. a chair in metaphysical philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is taught from it is not the propagation but the cure. confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods of criticism. the tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and [ ] such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a case for the possibility of their art. it would be an embarrassing task to open an approach to leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical position, if there is a present position. if we want an agreed starting-point, it will have to be historical. the historical importance of leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. if metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is no less fertile in by-products of importance. and if we are to consider leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his _theodicy_, for two reasons. it was the only one of his main philosophical works to be published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct influence; the leibniz his own age knew was the leibniz of the _theodicy_. then in the second place, the _theodicy_ itself is peculiarly rich in historical material. it reflects the world of men and books which leibniz knew; it expresses the theological setting of metaphysical speculation which still predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century. leibniz is remembered for his philosophy; he was not a professional philosopher. he was offered academic chairs, but he declined them. he was a gentleman, a person of means, librarian to a reigning prince, and frequently employed in state affairs of trust and importance. the librarian might at any moment become the political secretary, and offer his own contributions to policy. leibniz was for the greater part of his active life the learned and confidential servant of the house of brunswick; when the duke had nothing better to do with him, he set him to research into ducal history. if leibniz had a profession in literature, it was history rather than philosophy. he was even more closely bound to the interests of his prince than john locke was to those of the prince of orange. the houses of orange and of brunswick were on the same side in the principal contest which divided europe, the battle between louis xiv and his enemies. it was a turning-point of the struggle when the prince of orange supplanted louis's stuart friends on the english throne. it was a continuation of the same movement, when leibniz's master, george i, succeeded to the same throne, and frustrated the restoration of the stuart heir. locke returned to england in the wake of the prince of orange, and became the [ ] representative thinker of the régime. leibniz wished to come to the english court of george i, but was unkindly ordered to attend to the duties of his librarianship. so he remained in hanover. he was then an old man, and before the tide of favour had turned, he died. posterity has reckoned locke and leibniz the heads of rival sects, but politically they were on the same side. as against louis's political absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious toleration and the freedom of the mind. their theological liberalism was political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less personally sincere. they had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with bigotry, or set protestant intolerance against catholic absolutism. but they had too much sympathy with the spirit of europe to react into free thinking or to make a frontal attack on revealed truth. they took their stand on a fundamental christian theism, the common religion of all good men; they repudiated the negative enormities of hobbes and spinoza. the christian was to hold a position covered by three lines of defences. the base line was to be the substance of christian theism and of christian morals, and it was to be held by the forces of sheer reason, without aid from scriptural revelation. the middle line was laid down by the general sense of scripture, and the defence of it was this. 'scriptural doctrine is reconcilable with the findings of sheer reason, but it goes beyond them. we believe the scriptures, because they are authenticated by marks of supernatural intervention in the circumstances of their origin. we believe them, but reason controls our interpretation of them.' there remained the most forward and the most hazardous line: the special positions which a church, a sect, or an individual might found upon the scriptural revelation. a prudent man would not hold his advance positions in the same force or defend them with the same obstinacy as either of the lines behind them. he could argue for them, but he could not require assent to them. one cannot help feeling, indeed, the readiness of these writers to fall back, not only from the front line to the middle line, but from the middle line itself to the base line. leibniz, for example, writes with perfect seriousness and decency about the christian scheme of redemption, but it hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. it is not the intervention of mercy, by which alone he possesses himself of [ ] us: it is one of the ways in which supreme benevolence carries out a cosmic policy; and god's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from christian revelation. in one politically important particular the theological attitude of leibniz differed from that of locke. both stood for toleration and for the minimizing of the differences between the sects. this was a serious enough matter in england, but it was an even more serious matter in germany. for germany was divided between catholics and protestants; effective toleration must embrace them both. english toleration might indulge a harmless catholic minority, while rejecting the catholic régime as the embodiment of intolerance. but this was not practical politics on the continent; you must tolerate catholicism on an equal footing, and come to terms with catholic régimes. leibniz was not going to damn the pope with true protestant fervour. it was his consistent aim to show that his theological principles were as serviceable to catholic thinkers as to the doctors of his own church. on some points, indeed, he found his most solid support from catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint catholic-lutheran front against calvinism. but on the whole leibniz's writings suggest that the important decisions cut across all the churches, and not between them. leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the religious divisions of germany, but (at one stage) by the political weakness of the german protestant states. at the point of louis xiv's highest success, the protestant princes had no hope but in catholic austria, and austria was distracted by turkish pressure in the rear. leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. could not the christian princes sink their differences and unite against the infidel? and could not the christian alliance be cemented by theological agreement? hence leibniz's famous negotiation with bossuet for a basis of catholic-lutheran concord. it was plainly destined to fail; and it was bound to recoil upon its author. how could he be a true protestant who treated the differences with the catholics as non-essentials? how could he have touched pitch and taken no defilement? leibniz was generally admired, but he was not widely trusted. as a mere politician, he may be judged to have over-reached himself. it has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show that leibniz[ ] the politician and leibniz the theologian were one and the same person; not at all to suggest that his rational theology was just political expediency. we may apply to him a parody of his own doctrine, the pre-established harmony between nature and grace. everything happens as though leibniz were a liberal politician, and his theology expressed his politics. yes, but equally, everything happens as though leibniz were a philosophical theologian, and his politics expressed his theology. his appreciation of catholic speculation was natural and sincere; his dogmatic ancestry is to be looked for in thomism and catholic humanism as much as anywhere. above all, he had himself a liberal and generous mind. it gave him pleasure to appreciate good wherever he could see it, and to discover a soul of truth in every opinion. from the moment when leibniz became aware of himself as an independent thinker, he was the man of a doctrine. sometimes he called it 'my principles', sometimes 'the new system', sometimes 'pre-established harmony'. it could be quite briefly expressed; he was always ready to oblige his friends with a summary statement, either in a letter or an enclosed memorandum, and several such have come down to us. the doctrine may have been in leibniz's view simple, but it was applicable to every department of human speculation or enquiry. it provided a new alphabet of philosophical ideas, and everything in heaven and earth could be expressed in it; not only could be, but ought to be, and leibniz showed tireless energy in working out restatements of standing problems. as a man with an idea, with a philosophical nostrum, leibniz may be compared to bishop berkeley. there was never any more doubt that leibniz was a leibnitian than that berkeley was a berkeleian. but there is no comparison between the two men in the width of their range. about many things berkeley never took the trouble to berkeleianize. to take the most surprising instance of his neglect--he assured the world that his whole doctrine pointed to, and hung upon, theology. but what sort of a theology? he scarcely took the first steps in the formulation of it. he preferred to keep on defending and explaining his _esse est percipi_. with leibniz it is wholly different; he carries his new torch into every corner, to illuminate the dark questions. the wide applicability of pre-established harmony might come home to its inventor as a rich surprise. the reflective historian will find it less[ ] surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from the start. what was leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed upon him? what was he _not_ thinking of? he had a many-sided mind. if the origins of the principle were complex, little wonder that its applications were manifold. every expositor of leibniz who does not wish to be endlessly tedious must concentrate attention on one aspect of leibniz's principle, and one source of its origin. we will here give an account of the matter which, we trust, will go most directly to the heart of it, but we will make no claims to sufficient interpretation of leibniz's thought-processes. leibniz, then, like all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, was reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. the science was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and unanswerable in its evidence--it got results. but it was metaphysically intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to except leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and there are moments when we are in danger of believing it. it is a natural mistake for the student of seventeenth-century thought to underestimate the tenacity of scholastic aristotelianism. descartes, we all know, was reared in it, but then descartes overthrew it; and he had done his work and died by the time that leibniz was of an age to philosophize at all. we expect to see leibniz starting on his shoulders and climbing on from there. we are disappointed. leibniz himself tells us that he was raised in the scholastic teaching. his acquaintance with descartes's opinions was second-hand, and they were retailed to him only that they might be derided. he agreed, like an amiable youth, with his preceptors. the next phase of his development gave him a direct knowledge of cartesian writings, and of other modern books beside, such as those of the atomist gassendi. he was delighted with what he read, because of its fertility in the field of physics and mathematics; and for a short time he was an enthusiastic modern. but presently he became dissatisfied. the new systems did not go far enough, they were still scientifically inadequate. at the same time they went too far, and carried metaphysical paradox beyond the limits of human credulity. [ ] there is no mystery about leibniz's scientific objections to the new philosophers. if he condemned them here, it was on the basis of scientific thought and observation. descartes's formulation of the laws of motion could, for example, be refuted by physical experiment; and if his general view of physical nature was bound up with it, then so much the worse for the cartesian philosophy. but whence came leibniz's more strictly metaphysical objections? where had he learned that standard of metaphysical adequacy which showed up the inadequacy of the new metaphysicians? his own disciples might be satisfied to reply, that he learnt it from reason herself; but the answer will not pass with us. leibniz reasoned, indeed, but he did not reason from nowhere, nor would he have got anywhere if he had. his conception of metaphysical reason was what his early scholastic training had made it. there are certain absurd opinions which we are sure we have been taught, although, when put to it, we find it hard to name the teacher. among them is something of this sort. 'leibniz was a scholarly and sympathetic thinker. he had more sense of history than his contemporaries, and he was instinctively eclectic. he believed he could learn something from each of his great predecessors. we see him reaching back to cull a notion from plato or from aristotle; he even found something of use in the scholastics. in particular, he picked out the aristotelian "entelechy" to stop a gap in the philosophy of his own age.' what this form of statement ignores is that leibniz _was_ a scholastic: a scholastic endeavouring, like descartes before him, to revolutionize scholasticism. the word 'entelechy' was, indeed, a piece of antiquity which leibniz revived, but the thing for which it stood was the most familiar of current scholastic conceptions. 'entelechy' means active principle of wholeness or completion in an individual thing. scholasticism was content to talk about it under the name of 'substantial form' or 'formal cause'. but the scholastic interpretation of the idea was hopelessly discredited by the new science, and the scholastic terms shared the discredit of scholastic doctrine. leibniz wanted a term with a more general sound. 'there is an _x_', he wanted to say, 'which scholasticism has defined as substantial form, but i am going to give a new definition of it.' entelechy was a useful name for _x_, the more so as it had the authority of aristotle, the master of scholasticism. under the name of entelechy leibniz was upholding the soul of [ ] scholastic doctrine, while retrenching the limbs and outward flourishes. the doctrine of substantial form which he learnt in his youth had had _something_ in it; he could not settle down in the principles of descartes or of gassendi, because both ignored this vital _something_. since the requirements of a new science would not allow a return to sheer scholasticism, it was necessary to find a fresh philosophy, in which entelechy and mechanism might be accommodated side by side. if one had asked any 'modern' of the seventeenth century to name the 'ancient' doctrine he most abominated, he would most likely have replied, 'substantial form'. let us recall what was rejected under this name, and why. the medieval account of physical nature had been dominated by what we may call common-sense biology. biology, indeed, is the science of the living, and the medievals were no more inclined than we are to endow all physical bodies with life. what they did do was to take living bodies as typical, and to treat other bodies as imperfectly analogous to them. such an approach was _a priori_ reasonable enough. for we may be expected to know best the physical being closest to our own; and we, at any rate, are alive. why not argue from the better known to the less known, from the nearer to the more remote, interpreting other things by the formula of our own being, and allowing whatever discount is necessary for their degree of unlikeness to us? common-sense biology reasons as follows. in a living body there is a certain pattern of organized parts, a certain rhythm of successive motions, and a certain range of characteristic activities. the pattern, the sheer anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and digestion. nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark at cats, and so on. the anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the characteristic acts together express dogginess; they reveal the specific form of the dog. they _reveal_ it; exactly what the specific form _consisted in_ was the subject of much medieval speculation. it need not concern us here. taking the form of the species for granted, common-sense biology proceeds to ask how it comes to be in a given instance, say in the dog toby. [ ] before this dog was born or thought of, his form or species was displayed in each of his parents. and now it looks as though the form of dog had detached itself from them through the generative act, and set up anew on its own account. how does it do that? by getting hold of some materials in which to express itself. at first it takes them from the body of the mother, afterwards it collects them from a wider environment, and what the dog eats becomes the dog. what, then, is the relation of the assimilated materials to the dog-form which assimilates them? before assimilation, they have their own form. before the dog eats the leg of mutton, it has the form given to it by its place in the body of a sheep. what happens to the mutton? is it without remainder transubstantiated from sheep into dog? it loses all its distinctively sheep-like characteristicsm but there may be some more basically material characteristics which it preserves. they underlay the structure of the mutton, and they continue to underlie the structure of the dog's flesh which supplants it. whatever these characteristics may be, let us call them common material characteristics, and let us say that they belong to or compose a common material nature. the common material nature has its own way of existing, and perhaps its own principles of physical action. we may suppose that we know much or that we know little about it. this one thing at least we know, that it is capable of becoming alternatively either mutton or dog's flesh. it is not essential to it to be mutton, or mutton it would always be; nor dog's flesh, or it would always be dog's flesh. it is capable of becoming either, according as it is captured by one or other system of formal organization. so the voters who are to go to the polls are, by their common nature, englishmen; they are essentially neither socialist curs nor conservative sheep, but intrinsically capable of becoming either, if they become captured by either system of party organization. according to this way of thinking, there is a certain _looseness_ about the relation of the common material nature to the higher forms of organization capable of capturing it. considered in itself alone, it is perhaps to be seen as governed by absolutely determined laws of its own. it is heavy, then it will fall unless obstructed; it is solid, then it will resist intrusions. but considered as material for organization by higher forms, it is indeterminate. it acts in one sort of way under the persuasion of the sheep-form, and in another sort of way under the persuasion of the [ ] dog-form, and we cannot tell how it will act until we know which form is going to capture it. no amount of study bestowed on the common material nature will enable us to judge how it will behave under the persuasion of the higher organizing form. the only way to discover that is to examine the higher form itself. every form, then, will really be the object of a distinct science. the form of the sheep and the form of the dog have much in common, but that merely happens to be so; we cannot depend upon it, or risk inferences from sheep to dog: we must examine each in itself; we shall really need a science of probatology about sheep, and cynology about dogs. again, the common material nature has its own principles of being and action, so it will need a science of itself, which we may call hylology. each of these sciences is mistress in her own province; but how many there are, and how puzzlingly they overlap! so long as we remain within the province of a single science, we may be able to think rigorously, everything will be 'tight'. but as soon as we consider border-issues between one province and another, farewell to exactitude: everything will be 'loose'. we can think out hylology till we are blue in the face, but we shall never discover anything about the entry of material elements into higher organizations, or how they behave when they get there. we may form perfect definitions and descriptions of the form of the dog as such, and still derive no rules for telling what elements of matter will enter into the body of a given dog or how they will be placed when they do. all we can be sure of is, that the dog-form will keep itself going in, and by means of, the material it embodies--unless the dog dies. but what happens to the matter in the body of the dog is 'accidental' to the nature of the matter; and the use of this matter, rather than of some other equally suitable, is accidental to the nature of the dog. no account of material events can dispense with accidental relations altogether. we must at least recognize that there are accidental relations between particular things. accident in the sense of brute fact had to be acknowledged even by the tidiest and most dogmatic atomism of the last century. that atomism must allow it to be accidental, in this sense, that the space surrounding any given atom was occupied by other atoms in a given manner. it belonged neither to the nature of space to be occupied by just those atoms in just those places, nor to the nature of the atoms to be [ ] distributed just like that over space; and so in a certain sense the environment of any atom was an accidental environment. that is, the particular arrangement of the environment was accidental. the nature of the environment was not accidental at all. it was proper to the nature of the atom to be in interaction with other atoms over a spatial field, and it never encountered in the fellow-denizens of space any other nature but its own. it was not subject to the accident of meeting strange natures, nor of becoming suddenly subject to strange or unequal laws of interaction. all interactions, being with its own kind, were reciprocal and obedient to a single set of calculable laws. but the medieval philosophy had asserted accidental relations between distinct sorts of _natures_, the form of living dog and the form of dead matter, for example. no one could know _a priori_ what effect an accidental relation would produce, and all accidental relations between different pairs of natures were different: at the most there was analogy between them. every different nature had to be separately observed, and when you had observed them all, you could still simply write an inventory of them, you could not hope to rationalize your body of knowledge. let us narrow the field and consider what this doctrine allows us to know about the wood of a certain kind of tree. we shall begin by observing the impressions it makes on our several senses, and we shall attribute to it a substantial form such as naturally to give rise to these impressions, without, perhaps, being so rash as to claim a knowledge of what this substantial form is. still we do not know what its capacities of physical action and passion may be. we shall find them out by observing it in relation to different 'natures'. it turns out to be combustible by fire, resistant to water, tractable to the carpenter's tools, intractable to his digestive organs, harmless to ostriches, nourishing to wood-beetles. each of these capacities of the wood is distinct; we cannot relate them intelligibly to one another, nor deduce them from the assumed fundamental 'woodiness'. we can now see why 'substantial forms' were the _bêtes noires_ of the seventeenth-century philosophers. it was because they turned nature into an unmanageable jungle, in which trees, bushes, and parasites of a thousand kinds wildly interlaced. there was nothing for it, if science was to proceed, but to clear the ground and replant with spruce in rows: to postulate a single uniform nature, of which there should be a single science. now neither probatology nor cynology could hope to be [ ] universal--the world is not all sheep nor all dog: it would have to be hylology; for the world is, in its spatial aspect, all material. let us say, then, that there is one uniform material nature of things, and that everything else consists in the arrangements of the basic material nature; as the show of towers and mountains in the sunset results simply from an arrangement of vapours. and let us suppose that the interactions of the parts of matter are all like those which we can observe in dead manipulable bodies--in mechanism, in fact. such was the postulate of the new philosophers, and it yielded them results. it yielded them results, and that was highly gratifying. but what, meanwhile, had happened to those palpable facts of common experience from which the whole philosophy of substantial forms had taken its rise? is the wholeness of a living thing the mere resultant of the orderly operations of its parts? is a bee no more essentially one than a swarm is? is the life of a living animal indistinguishable from the rhythm of a going watch, except in degree of complication and subtlety of contrivance? and if an animal's body, say my own, is simply an agglomerate of minute interacting material units, and its wholeness is merely accidental and apparent, how is my conscious mind to be adjusted to it? for my consciousness appears to identify itself with that whole vital pattern which used to be called the substantial form. we are now told that the pattern is nothing real or active, but the mere accidental resultant of distinct interacting forces: it does no work, it exercises no influence or control, it _is_ nothing. how then can it be the vehicle and instrument of my conscious soul? it cannot. then is my soul homeless? or is it to be identified with the activity and fortunes of a single atomic constituent of my body, a single cog in the animal clockwork? if so, how irrational! for the soul does not experience itself as the soul of one minute part, but as the soul of the body. such questions rose thick and fast in the minds of the seventeenth-century philosophers. it will cause us no great surprise that leibniz should have quickly felt that the formal principle of aristotle and of the scholastic philosophy must be by hook or by crook reintroduced--not as the detested _substantial form_, but under a name by which it might hope to smell more sweet, _entelechy_. nothing so tellingly revealed the difficulties of the new philosophy in[ ] dealing with living bodies as the insufficiency of the solutions descartes had proposed. he had boldly declared the unity of animal life to be purely mechanical, and denied that brutes had souls at all, or any sensation. he had to admit soul in man, but he still denied the substantial unity of the human body. it was put together like a watch, it was many things, not one: if descartes had lived in our time, he would have been delighted to compare it with a telephone system, the nerves taking the place of the wires, and being so arranged that all currents of 'animal spirit' flowing in them converged upon a single unit, a gland at the base of the brain. in this unit, or in the convergence of all the motions upon it, the 'unity' of the body virtually consisted; and the soul was incarnate, not in the plurality of members (for how could it, being one, indwell many things?), but in the single gland. even so, the relation between the soul and the gland was absolutely unintelligible, as descartes disarmingly confessed. incarnation was all very well in the old philosophy: those who had allowed the interaction of disparate natures throughout the physical world need find no particular difficulty about the special case of it provided by incarnation. why should not a form of conscious life so interact with what would otherwise be dead matter as to 'indwell' it? but the very principle of the new philosophy disallowed the interaction of disparate natures, because such an interaction did not allow of exact formulation, it was a 'loose' and not a 'tight' relation. from a purely practical point of view the much derided pineal gland theory would serve. if we could be content to view descartes as a man who wanted to make the world safe for physical science, then there would be a good deal to be said for his doctrine. in the old philosophy exact science had been frustrated by the hypothesis of loose relations all over the field of nature. descartes had cleared them from as much of the field as science was then in a position to investigate; he allowed only one such relation to subsist, the one which experience appeared unmistakably to force upon us--that between our own mind and its bodily vehicle. he had exorcized the spirits from the rest of nature; and though there was a spirit here which could not be exorcized, the philosophic conjurer had nevertheless confined it and its unaccountable pranks within a minutely narrow magic circle: all mind could do was to turn the one tiny switch at the centre of its [ ] animal telephone system. it could create no energy--it could merely redirect the currents actually flowing. practically this might do, but speculatively it was most disturbing. for if the 'loose relation' had to be admitted in one instance, it was admitted in principle; and one could not get rid of the suspicion that it would turn up elsewhere, and that the banishment of it from every other field represented a convenient pragmatic postulate rather than a solid metaphysical truth. moreover, the correlation of the unitary soul with the unitary gland might do justice to a mechanistical philosophy, but it did not do justice to the soul's own consciousness of itself. the soul's consciousness is the 'idea' or 'representation' of the life of the whole body, certainly not of the life of the pineal gland nor, as the unreflective nowadays would say, of the brain. i am not conscious in, or of, my brain except when i have a headache; consciousness is in my eyes and finger-tips and so on. it is physically true, no doubt, that consciousness in and of my finger-tips is not possible without the functioning of my brain; but that is a poor reason for locating the consciousness in the brain. the filament of the electric bulb will not be incandescent apart from the functioning of the dynamo; but that is a poor reason for saying that the incandescence is in the dynamo. certainly the area of representation in our mind is not simply equivalent to the area of our body. but in so far as the confines of mental representation part company with the confines of the body, it is not that they may contract and fall back upon the pineal gland, but that they may expand and advance over the surrounding world. the mind does not represent its own body merely, it represents the world in so far as the world affects that body or is physically reproduced in it. the mind has no observable natural relation to the pineal gland. it has only two natural relations: to its body as a whole and to its effective environment. what descartes had really done was to pretend that the soul was related to the pineal gland as it is in fact related to its whole body; and then that it was related to the bodily members as in fact it is related to outer environment. the members became an inner environment, known only in so far as they affected the pineal gland; just as the outer environment in its turn was to be known only in so far as it affected the members. [ ] this doctrine of a double environment was wholly artificial. it was forced on descartes by the requirements of mechanistical science: if the members were simply a plurality of things, they must really be parts of environment; the body which the soul indwelt must be _a_ body; presumably, then, the pineal gland. an untenable compromise, surely, between admitting and denying the reality of the soul's incarnation. what, then, was to be done? descartes's rivals and successors attempted several solutions, which it would be too long to examine here. they dissatisfied leibniz and they have certainly no less dissatisfied posterity. it will be enough for us here to consider what leibniz did. he admitted, to begin with, the psychological fact. the unity of consciousness is the representation of a plurality--the plurality of the members, and through them the plurality of the world. here, surely, was the very principle the new philosophy needed for the reconciliation of substantial unity with mechanical plurality of parts. for it is directly evident to us that consciousness focuses the plurality of environing things in a unity of representation. this is no philosophical theory, it is a simple fact. our body, then, as a physical system is a mechanical plurality; as focused in consciousness it is a unity of 'idea'. very well: but we have not got far yet. for the old difficulty still remains--it is purely arbitrary, after all, that a unitary consciousness should be attached to, and represent, a mechanical collection of things which happen to interact in a sort of pattern. if there is a consciousness attached to human bodies, then why not to systems of clockwork? if the body is _represented_ as unity, it must surely be because it _is_ unity, as the old philosophy had held. but how can we reintroduce unity into the body without reintroducing substantial form, and destroying the mechanistical plurality which the new science demanded? it is at this point that leibniz produces the speculative postulate of his system. why not reverse the relation, and make the members represent the mind as the mind represents the members? for then the unity of person represented in the mind will become something actual in the members also. representation appears to common sense to be a one-way sort of traffic. if my mind represents my bodily members, something happens to my mind, for it becomes a representation of such members in such a state; but nothing happens to the members by their being so represented in the mind. the [ ] mental representation obeys the bodily facts; the bodily facts do not obey the mental representation. it seems nonsense to say that my members obey my mind _because_ they are mirrored in it. and yet my members do obey my mind, or at least common sense supposes so. sometimes my mind, instead of representing the state my members are in, represents a state which it intends that they shall be in, for example, that my hand should go through the motion of writing these words. and my hand obeys; its action becomes the moving diagram of my thought, my thought is represented or expressed in the manual act. here the relation of mind and members appears to be reversed: instead of its representing them, they represent it. with this representation it is the opposite of what it was with the other. by the members' being represented in the mind, something happened to the mind, and nothing to the members; by the mind's being represented in the members something happens to the members and nothing to the mind. why should not we take this seriously? why not allow that there is two-way traffic--by one relation the mind represents the members, by another the members represent the mind? but then again, how can we take it seriously? for representation, in the required sense, is a mental act; brute matter can represent nothing, only mind can represent. and the members are brute matter. but are they? how do we know that? by brute matter we understand extended lumps of stuff, interacting with one another mechanically, as do, for example, two cogs in a piece of clockwork. but this is a large-scale view. the cogs are themselves composed of interrelated parts and those parts of others, and so on _ad infinitum_. who knows what the ultimate constituents really are? the 'modern' philosophers, certainly, have proposed no hypothesis about them which even looks like making sense. they have supposed that the apparently inert lumps, the cogs, are composed of parts themselves equally inert, and that by subdivision we shall still reach nothing but the inert. but this supposition is in flat contradiction with what physical theory demands. we have to allow the reality of _force_ in physics. now the force which large-scale bodies display may easily be the block-effect of activity in their minute real constituents. if not, where does it come from? let it be supposed, then, that these minute real constituents are active because they are alive, because they are minds; for indeed we have no notion of activity other than the perception we have [ ] of our own. we have no notion of it except as something mental. on the hypothesis that the constituents of active body are also mental, this limitation in our conception of activity need cause us neither sorrow nor surprise. the mind-units which make up body will not of course be developed and fully conscious minds like yours or mine, and it is only for want of a better word that we call them minds at all. they will be mere unselfconscious representations of their physical environment, as it might be seen from the physical point to which they belong by a human mind paying no attention at all to its own seeing. how many of these rudimentary 'minds' will there be in my body? as many as you like--as many as it is possible there should be--say an infinite number and have done with it. we may now observe how this hypothesis introduces real formal unity without prejudicing mechanical plurality. each of the mind-units in my body is itself and substantially distinct. but since each, in its own way and according to its own position, represents the superior and more developed mind which i call 'me', they will order themselves according to a common form. the order is real, not accidental: it is like the order of troops on a parade-ground. each man is a distinct active unit, but each is really expressing by his action the mind of the officer in command. he is expressing no less his relation to the other men in the ranks--to obey the officer is to keep in step with them. so the metaphysical units of the body, being all minds, represent one another as well as the dominant mind: one another co-ordinately, the dominant mind subordinately. but if the metaphysically real units of the body are of the nature of mind, then _the_ mind is a mind among minds, a spirit-atom among spirit-atoms. what then constitutes its superiority or dominance, and makes it a mind _par excellence_? well, what constitutes the officer an officer? two things: a more developed mentality and the fact of being obeyed. in military life these two factors are not always perfectly proportioned to one another, but in the order of leibniz's universe they are. a fuller power to represent the universe is necessarily combined with dominance over an organized troop of members; for the mind knows the universe only in so far as the universe is expressed in its body. that is what the [ ] _finitude_ of the mind means. only an infinite mind appreciates the whole plurality of things in themselves; a finite mind perceives them in so far as mirrored in the physical being of an organized body of members. the more adequate the mirror, the more adequate the representation: the more highly organized the body, the more developed the mind. the developed mind has an elaborate body; but the least developed mind has still some body, or it would lack any mirror whatever through which to represent the world. this means, in effect, that leibniz's system is not an unmitigated spiritual atomism. for though the spiritual atoms, or monads, are the ultimate constituents out of which nature is composed, they stand composed together from the beginning in a minimal order which cannot be broken up. each monad, if it is to be anything at all, must be a continuing finite representation of the universe, and to be that it must have a body, that is to say, it must have other monads in a permanent relation of mutual correspondence with it. and if you said to leibniz, 'but surely any physical body can be broken up, and this must mean the dissolution of the organic relation between its monadical constituents,' he would take refuge in the infinitesimal. the wonders revealed by that new miracle, the microscope, suggested what the intrinsic divisibility of space itself suggests--whatever organization is broken up, there will still be a minute organization within each of the fragments which remains unbroken--and so _ad infinitum_. you will never come down to loose monads, monads out of all organization. you will never disembody the monads, and so remove their representative power; you will only reduce their bodies and so impoverish their representative power. in this sense no animal dies and no animal is generated. death is the reduction and generation the enrichment of some existing monad's body; and, by being that, is the enrichment or the reduction of the monad's mental life. 'but,' our common sense protests, 'it is too great a strain on our credulity to make the real nature of things so utterly different from what sense and science make of them. if the real universe is what you say it is, why do our minds represent it to us as they do?' the philosopher's answer is, 'because they _represent_ it. according to the truth of things, each monad is simply its own mental life, its own world-view, its own thoughts and desires. to know things as they are would be simultaneously to live over, as though from within and by a miracle of sympathy, the [ ] biographies of an infinite number of distinct monads. this is absolutely impossible. our senses represent the coexistent families of monads _in the gross_, and therefore conventionally; what is in fact the mutual representation of monads in ordered systems, is represented as the mechanical interaction of spatially extended and material parts.' this does not mean that science is overthrown. the physical world-view is in terms of the convention of representation, but it is not, for all that, illusory. it can, ideally, be made as true as it is capable of being. there is no reason whatever for confusing the 'well-grounded seemings' of the apparent physical world with the fantastic seemings of dream and hallucination. so far the argument seems to draw whatever cogency it has from the simplicity and naturalness of the notion of representation. the nature of idea, it is assumed, is to represent plurality in a unified view. if idea did not represent, it would not be idea. and since there _is_ idea (for our minds at least exist and are made up of idea) there is representation. it belongs to idea to represent, and since the whole world has now been interpreted as a system of mutually representing ideations, or ideators, it might seem that all their mutual relations are perfectly natural, a harmony of agreement which could not be other than it is. but if so, why does leibniz keep saying that the harmony is _pre-established_, by special and infinitely elaborate divine decrees? leibniz himself says that the very nature of representation excludes interaction. by representing environment a mind does not do anything to environment, that is plain. but it is no less plain that environment does nothing to it, either. the act of representing is simply the act of the mind; it represents _in view of_ environment, of course, but not under the causal influence of environment. representation is a business carried on by the mind on its own account, and in virtue of its innate power to represent. very well; but does this consideration really drive us into theology? is not leibniz the victim of a familiar fallacy, that of incompletely stated alternatives? '_either_ finite beings interact _or else_ they do not directly condition one another. monads do not interact, therefore they do not directly condition one another. how then explain the actual conformity of their mutual representation, without recourse to divine fore-ordaining?' it seems sufficient to introduce a further alternative in the first line of the argument, and we are rid of the theology. things may condition the [ ] action of a further thing, without acting upon it. it acts of itself, but it acts in view of what they are. we are tempted to conclude that leibniz has introduced the _deus ex machina_ with the fatal facility of his age. 'where a little further meditation on the characters in the play would furnish a natural _dénouement_, he swings divine intervention on to the scene by wires from the ceiling. it is easy for us to reconstruct for him the end of the piece without recourse to stage-machines.' is it? no, i fear it is not. there is really no avoiding the pre-established harmony. and so we shall discover, if we pursue our train of reflexion a little further. it is natural, we were saying, than an idea should represent an environment; indeed, it _is_ the representation of one. given no environment to represent, it would be empty, a mere capacity for representation. then every idea or ideator, taken merely in itself, _is_ an empty capacity. but of what is the environment of each made up? according to the leibnitian theory, of further ideas or ideators: of empty capacities, therefore. then no idea will either be anything in itself, or find anything in its neighbours to represent. an unhappy predicament, like that of a literary clique in which all the members are adepts at discussing one another's ideas--only that unfortunately none of them are provided with any; or like the shaky economics of the fabled irish village where they all lived by taking in one another's washing. it is useless, then, to conceive representations as simply coming into existence in response to environment, and modelling themselves on environment. they must all mutually reflect environment or they would not be representations; but they must also exist as themselves and in their own right or there would be no environment for them mutually to represent. since the world is infinitely various, each representor must have its own distinct character or nature, as our minds have: that is to say, it must represent in its own individual way; and all these endlessly various representations must be so constituted as to form a mutually reflecting harmony. considered as a representation, each monadical existence simply reflects the universe after its own manner. but considered as something to be represented by the others, it is a self-existent mental life, or world of ideas. now when we are considering the fact of representation, that which is to be represented comes first and the representation follows upon it. thus in considering the leibnitian universe, we must begin with the[ ] monads as self-existent mental lives, or worlds of ideas; their representation of one another comes second. nothing surely, then, but omnipotent creative wisdom could have pre-established between so many distinct given mental worlds that harmony which constitutes their mutual representation. our common-sense pluralistic thinking escapes from the need of the pre-established harmony by distinguishing what we are from what we do. let the world be made up of a plurality of agents in a 'loose' order, with room to manoeuvre and to adjust themselves to one another. then, by good luck or good management, through friction and disaster, by trial and error, by accident or invention, they may work out for themselves a harmony of _action_. there is no need for divine preordaining here. but on leibniz's view what the monads do is to represent, and what they are is representation; there is no ultimate distinction between what they are and what they do: all that they do belongs to what they are. the whole system of action in each monad, which fits with such infinite complexity the system of action in each other monad, is precisely the existence of that monad, and apart from it the monad is not. the monads do not _achieve_ a harmony, they _are_ a harmony, and therefore they are pre-established in harmony. leibniz denied that he invoked god to intervene in nature, or that there was anything arbitrary or artificial about his physical theology. he was simply analysing nature and finding it to be a system of mutual representation; he was analysing mutual representation and finding it to be of its nature intrinsically pre-established, and therefore god-dependent. he was not adding anything to mutual representation, he was just showing what it necessarily contained or implied. at least he was doing nothing worse than recognized scholastic practice. scholastic aristotelianism explained all natural causality as response to stimulus, and then had to postulate a stimulus which stimulated without being stimulated, and this was god. apart from this supreme and first stimulus nothing would in fact be moving. the aristotelians claimed simply to be analysing the nature of physical motion as they perceived it, and to find the necessity of perpetually applied divine stimulation implicit in it. no violence was thereby done to the system of physical motion nor was anything brought in from without to patch it up; it was simply found to be of its own [ ] nature god-dependent. it seems as though the reproachful description _'deus ex machina'_ should be reserved for more arbitrary expedients than aristotle's or leibniz's, say for the occasionalist theory. occasionalism appeared to introduce god that he might make physical matter do what it had no natural tendency to do, viz. to obey the volitions of finite mind. ideas, on the other hand, have a natural tendency to represent one another, for to be an idea is to be a representation; god is not introduced by leibniz to make them correspond, he is introduced to work a system in which they shall correspond. this may not be _deus-ex-machina philosophy_, but it is _physical theology_; that is to say, it treats divine action as one factor among the factors which together constitute the working of the natural system. and this appears to be perhaps unscientific, certainly blasphemous: god's action cannot be a factor among factors; the creator works through and in all creaturely action equally; we can never say 'this is the creature, and that is god' of distinguishable causalities in the natural world. the creature is, in its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but because a creature, insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its creator both in existence and in action. the only acceptable argument for theism is that which corresponds to the religious consciousness, and builds upon the insufficiency of finite existence throughout, because it is finite. all arguments to god's existence from a particular gap in our account of the world of finites are to be rejected. they do not indicate god, they indicate the failure of our power to analyse the world-order. when leibniz discovered that his system of mutual representations needed to be pre-established, he ought to have seen that he had come up a cul-de-sac and backed out; he ought not to have said, 'with the help of god i will leap over the wall.' if we condemn leibniz for writing physical theology, we condemn not him but his age. no contemporary practice was any better, and much of it a good deal worse, as leibniz liked somewhat complacently to point out. and because he comes to theology through physical theology, that does not mean that all his theology was physical theology and as such to be written off. on the contrary, leibniz is led to wrestle with many problems which beset any philosophical theism of the christian type. this is particularly so[ ] in the _theodicy_, as its many citations of theologians suggest. his discussions never lack ingenuity, and the system of creation and providence in which they result has much of that luminous serenity which colours the best works of the age of reason. every theistic philosopher is bound, with whatever cautions, to conceive god by the analogy of the human mind. when leibniz declares the harmony of monads to be pre-established by god, he is invoking the image of intelligent human pre-arrangement. nor is he content simply to leave it at that: he endeavours as well as he may to conceive the sort of act by which god pre-arranges; and this involves the detailed adaptation for theological purposes of leibnitian doctrine about the human mind. the human mind, as we have seen, is the mind predominant in a certain system of 'minds', viz. in those which constitute the members of the human body. if we call it predominant, we mean that its system of ideas is more developed than theirs, so that there are more points in which each of them conforms to it than in which it conforms to any one of them. the conception of a divine pre-establishing mind will be analogous. it will be the conception of a mind _absolutely_ dominant, to whose ideas, that is to say, the whole system simply corresponds, without any reciprocating correspondence on his side. in a certain sense this is to make god the 'mind of the world'; and yet the associations of the phrase are misleading. it suggests that the world is an organism or body in which the divine mind is incarnate, and on which he relies for his representations. but that is nonsense; the world is not _a_ body, nor is it organic to god. absolute dominance involves absolute transcendence: if everything in the world without remainder simply obeys the divine thoughts, that is only another way of saying that the world is the creature of god; the whole system is pre-established by him who is absolute being and perfectly independent of the world. of createdness, or pre-establishedness, there is no more to be said: we can think of it as nothing but the pure or absolute case of subjection to dominant mind. it is no use asking further _how_ god's thoughts are obeyed in the existence and action of things. what we can and must enquire into further, is the nature of the divine thoughts which are thus obeyed. they must be understood to be volitions or decrees. there are indeed two ways in which things obey the divine thought, and correspondingly two sorts of divine thoughts that they obey. in so far as created things conform to [ ] the mere universal principles of reason, they obey a reasonableness which is an inherent characteristic of the divine mind itself. if god wills the existence of any creature, that creature's existence must observe the limits prescribed by eternal reason: it cannot, for example, both have and lack a certain characteristic in the same sense and at the same time; nor can it contain two parts and two parts which are not also countable as one part and three parts. finite things, if they exist at all, must thus conform to the reasonableness of the divine nature, but what the divine reasonableness thus prescribes is highly general: we can deduce from it only certain laws which any finite things must obey, we can never deduce from it which finite things there are to be, nor indeed that there are to be any. finite things are particular and individual: each of them might have been other than it is or, to speak more properly, instead of any one of them there might have existed something else; it was, according to the mere principles of eternal reason, equally possible. but if so, the whole universe, being made up of things each of which might be otherwise, might as a whole be otherwise. therefore the divine thoughts which it obeys by existing have the nature of _choices_ or _decrees_. what material does the finite mind supply for an analogical picture of the infinite mind making choices or decrees? if we use such language of god, we are using language which has its first and natural application to ourselves. we all of us choose, and those of us who are in authority make decrees. what is to choose? it involves a real freedom in the mind. a finite mind, let us remember, is nothing but a self-operating succession of perceptions, ideas, or representations. with regard to some of our ideas we have no freedom, those, for example, which represent to us our body. we think of them as constituting our given substance. they are sheer datum for us, and so are those reflexions of our environment which they mediate to us. they make up a closely packed and confused mass; they persevere in their being with an obstinate innate force, the spiritual counterpart of the force which we have to recognize in things as physically interpreted. being real spiritual force, it is quasi-voluntary, and indeed do we not love our own existence and, in a sense, will it in all its necessary circumstances? but if we can be said to will to be ourselves and to enact with native force what our body and its environment makes us, we are [ ] merely willing to conform to the conditions of our existence; we are making no choice. when, however, we think freely or perform deliberate acts, there is not only force but choice in our activity. choice between what? between alternative possibilities arising out of our situation. and choice in virtue of what? in virtue of the appeal exercised by one alternative as seemingly better. can we adapt our scheme of choice to the description of god's creative decrees? we will take the second point in it first: our choice is in virtue of the appeal of the seeming best. surely the only corrective necessary in applying this to god is the omission of the word 'seeming'. his choice is in virtue of the appeal of the simply best. the other point causes more trouble. we choose between possibilities which arise for us out of our situation in the system of the existing world. but as the world does not exist before god's creative choices, he is in no world-situation, and no alternative possibilities can arise out of it, between which he should have to choose. but if god does not choose between intrinsic possibilities of some kind, his choice becomes something absolutely meaningless to us--it is not a choice at all, it is an arbitrary and unintelligible _fiat_. leibniz's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for us are possibilities of action for god. for a human subject, possibilities of action are limited to what arises out of his actual situation, but possibilities for thought are not so limited. i can conceive a world different in many respects from this world, in which, for example, vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but i can do nothing towards bringing it about. my imaginary world is practically impossible but speculatively possible, in the sense that it contradicts no single principle of necessary and immutable reason. i, indeed, can explore only a very little way into the region of sheer speculative possibility; god does not explore it, he simply possesses it all: the whole region of the possible is but a part of the content of his infinite mind. so among all possible creatures he chooses the best and creates it. but the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas. out of the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can god arrive at a choice? why not? his mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not successively turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds, for then he would never come to the end of it. embracing infinite possibility in [ ] the single act of his mind, he settles his will with intuitive immediacy upon the best. the inferior, the monstrous, the absurd is not a wilderness through which he painfully threads his way, it is that from which he immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of it. but in so applying the scheme of choice to god's act, have we not invalidated its application to our own? for if god has chosen the whole form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including the choices we shall make. and if our choices have already been chosen for us by god, it would seem to follow that they are not real open choices on our part at all, but are pre-determined. and if they are pre-determined, it would seem that they are not really even choices, for a determined choice is not a choice. but if we do not ourselves exercise real choice in any degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would be: and if so, we have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and so the whole argument cuts its own throat. there are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. one is to define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination without ceasing to be choice; and this is leibniz's method, and it can be studied at length in the _theodicy_. he certainly makes the very best he can of it, and it hardly seems that any of those contemporaries whose views he criticizes was in a position to answer him. the alternative method is to make the most of the negative element involved in all theology. after all, we do not positively or adequately understand the nature of infinite creative will. perhaps it is precisely the transcendent glory of divine freedom to be able to work infallibly through free instruments. but so mystical a paradox is not the sort of thing we can expect to appeal to a late-seventeenth-century philosopher. one criticism of leibniz's argument we cannot refrain from making. he allows himself too easy a triumph when he says that the only alternative to a choice determined by a prevailing inclination towards one proposal is a choice of mere caprice. there is a sort of choice leibniz never so much as considers and which appears at least to fall quite outside his categories, and that is the sort of choice exercised in artistic creativity. in such choice we freely feel after the shaping of a scheme, we do not arbitrate simply between shaped and given possible schemes. and perhaps some such element enters into all our choices, since our life is to some extent [ ] freely designed by ourselves. if so, our minds are even more akin to the divine mind than leibniz realized. for the sort of choice we are now referring to seems to be an intuitive turning away from an infinite, or at least indefinite, range of less attractive possibility. and such is the nature of the divine creative choice. the consequence of such a line of speculation would be, that the divine mind designs more through us, and less simply for us, than leibniz allowed: the 'harmony' into which we enter would be no longer simply 'pre-established'. leibniz, in fact, could have nothing to do with such a suggestion, and he would have found it easy to be ironical about it if his contemporaries had proposed it. ii leibniz wrote two books; a considerable number of articles in learned periodicals; and an enormous number of unpublished notes, papers and letters, preserved in the archives of the electors of hanover not because of the philosophical significance of some of them, but because of the political importance of most of them. from among this great mass various excerpts of philosophical interest have been made by successive editors of leibniz's works. it may be that the most profound understanding of his mind is to be derived from some of these pieces, but if we wish to consider the public history of leibniz, we may set them aside. of the two books, one was published, and the other never was. the _new essays_ remained in leibniz's desk, the _theodicy_ saw the light. and so, to his own and the succeeding generation, leibniz was known as the author of the _theodicy_. the articles in journals form the immediate background to the two books. in leibniz heard that a french translation of locke's _essay concerning human understanding_ was being prepared at amsterdam. he wrote some polite comments on locke's great work, and published them. he also sent them to locke, hoping that locke would write a reply, and that leibniz's reflexions and locke's reply might be appended to the projected french translation. but locke set leibniz's comments aside. leibniz, not to be defeated, set to work upon the _new essays_, in which the whole substance of locke's book is systematically discussed in dialogue. the _new essays_ were written in . but meanwhile a painful dispute had broken out between leibniz [ ] and the disciples of locke and newton, in which the english, and perhaps newton himself, were much to blame, and leibniz thought it impolitic to publish his book. it was not issued until long after his death, in the middle of the century. the discussion with locke was a failure: locke would not play, and the book in which the whole controversy was to be systematized never appeared. the discussion with bayle, on the other hand, was a model of what a discussion should be. bayle played up tirelessly, and was never embarrassingly profound; he provided just the sort of objections most useful for drawing forth illuminating expositions; he was as good as a fictitious character in a philosophical dialogue. and the book in which the controversy was systematized duly appeared with great éclat. here is the history of the controversy. in leibniz was forty-nine years old. he had just emerged from a period of close employment under his prince's commands, and he thought fit to try his metaphysical principles upon the polite world and see what would come of it. he therefore published an article in the _journal des savants_ under the title: 'new system of nature and of the communication of substances, as well as of the union between soul and body'. in the same year foucher published an article in the _journal_ controverting leibniz; and in the next year leibniz replied with an 'explanation'. a second explanation in the same year appeared in basnage's _histoire des ouvrages des savants_, in answer to reflexions by the editor. m. pierre bayle had all these articles before him when he inserted a note on leibniz's doctrine in his article on 'rorarius', in the first edition of his _historical and critical dictionary_. the point of connexion between rorarius and leibniz was no more than this, that both held views about the souls of beasts. pierre bayle was the son of a calvinist pastor, early converted to catholicism, but recovered to his old faith after a short time. he held academic employments in switzerland and holland; he promoted and edited the _nouvelles de la république des lettres_, and he produced that extraordinary work the _historical and critical dictionary._ the notices it contains of authors and thinkers are little more than pegs upon which bayle could hang his philosophical reflexions. he could write an intelligent discussion on any opinion; what he could not do was to reconcile the points of view from which he felt impelled to write upon this author and that.[ ] his was not a systematic mind. so far as he had a philosophical opinion, he was a cartesian; in theology he was an orthodox calvinist. he could not reconcile his theology with his cartesianism and he did not try to. he made a merit of the oppositions of faith to reason and reason to itself, so that he could throw himself upon a meritorious and voluntary faith. there is nothing original in this position. it was characteristic of decadent scholasticism, it squared with luther's exaggerations about the impotence of reason in fallen man, and pascal had given his own highly personal twist to it. bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of voltairean scepticism. it would be truer to say that a voltairean sceptic could read bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished. but bayle was not a sceptic. it is hard to say what he was; his whole position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. he was a scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner of so perfectly convenient a kind that if we had not evidence of his historical reality, we might have suspected leibniz of inventing him. in the first edition of his _dictionary_, under the article 'rorarius', bayle gave a very fair account of leibniz's doctrine concerning the souls of animals, as it could be collected from his article in the _journal des savants_, june . he then proceeded to comment upon it in the following terms: 'there are some things in mr. leibniz's hypothesis that are liable to some difficulties, though they show the great extent of his genius. he will have it, for example, that the soul of a dog acts independently of outward bodies; that _it stands upon its own bottom, by a perfect _spontaneity_ with respect to itself, and yet with a perfect _conformity_ to outward things_.... that _its internal perceptions arise from its original constitution, that is to say, the representative constitution (capable of expressing beings outside itself in relation to its organs) which was bestowed upon it from the time of its creation, and makes its individual character_ (_journal des savants_, july ). from whence it results that it would feel hunger and thirst at such and such an hour, though there were not any one body in the universe, and _though nothing should exist but god and that soul_. he has explained (_histoire des ouvrages des savants_, feb. ) his thought by the example of two pendulums that should perfectly agree: that is, he supposes that according to the particular laws which put the soul upon action, it must feel hunger at such an hour; [ ] and that according to the particular laws which direct the motion of matter, the body which is united to that soul must be modified at that same hour as it is modified when the soul is hungry. i will forbear preferring this system to that of occasional causes till the learned author has perfected it. i cannot apprehend the connexion of internal and spontaneous actions which would have this effect, that the soul of a dog would feel pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the universe. i understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck with a cudgel. but i cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any trouble or hindrance. nor do i see how the spontaneity of that soul should be consistent with the sense of pain, and in general with any unpleasing perceptions. 'besides, the reason why this learned man does not like the cartesian system seems to me to be a false supposition; for it cannot be said that the system of occasional causes brings in god acting by a miracle (ibid.), _deum ex machina_, in the mutual dependency of the body and soul: for since god does only intervene according to general laws, he cannot be said to act in an extraordinary manner. does the internal and active virtue communicated to the forms of bodies according to m. leibniz know the train of actions which it is to produce? by no means; for we know by experience that we are ignorant whether we shall have such and such perceptions in an hour's time. it were therefore necessary that the forms should be directed by some internal principle in the production of their acts. but this would be _deus ex machina,_ as much as in the system of occasional causes. in fine, as he supposes with great reason that all souls are simple and indivisible, it cannot be apprehended how they can be compared with a pendulum, that is, how by their original constitution they can diversify their operations by using the spontaneous activity bestowed upon them by their creator. it may clearly be conceived that a simple being will always act in a uniform manner, if no external cause hinders it. if it were composed of several pieces, as a machine, it would act different ways, because the peculiar activity of each piece might change every moment the progress of others; but how will you find in a simple substance the [ ] cause of a change of operation?' leibniz published a reply to bayle in the _histoire des ouvrages des savants_ for july . as in all his references to bayle, he is studiously polite and repays compliment for compliment. the following are perhaps the principal points of his answer. . on the example of the dog: (_a_) how should it of itself change its sentiment, since everything left to itself continues in the state in which it is? because the state may be a state of _change_, as in a moving body which, unless hindered, continues to move. and such is the nature of simple substances--they continue to evolve steadily. (_b_) would it really feel as though beaten if it were not beaten, since leibniz says that the action of every substance takes place as though nothing existed but god and itself? leibniz replies that his remark refers to the causality behind an action, not to the reasons for it. the spontaneous action of the dog, which leads to the feeling of pain, is only decreed to be what it is, for the reason that the dog is part of a world of mutually reflecting substances, a world which also includes the cudgel. (_c_) why should the dog ever be displeased _spontaneously_? leibniz distinguishes the spontaneous from the voluntary: many things occur in the mind, of itself, but not chosen by it. . on cartesianism and miracle: cartesianism in the form of occasionalism _does_ involve miracle, for though god is said by it to act according to laws in conforming body and mind to one another, he thereby causes them to act beyond their natural capacities. . on the problem, how can the simple act otherwise than uniformly? leibniz distinguishes: some uniform action is monotonous, but some is not. a point moves uniformly in describing a parabola, for it constantly fulfils the formula of the curve. but it does not move monotonously, for the curve constantly varies. such is the uniformity of the action of simple substances. bayle read this reply, and was pleased but not satisfied with it. in the second edition of the dictionary, under the same article 'rorarius', he added the following note: 'i declare first of all that i am very glad i have proposed some small difficulties against the system of that great philosopher, since they [ ] have occasioned some answers whereby that subject has been made clearer to me, and which have given me a more distinct notion of what is most to be admired in it. i look now upon that new system as an important conquest, which enlarges the bounds of philosophy. we had only two hypotheses, that of the schools and that of the cartesians: the one was a _way of influence_ of the body upon the soul and of the soul upon the body; the other was a _way of assistance_ or occasional causality. but here is a new acquisition, a new hypothesis, which may be called, as fr. lami styles it, a _way of pre-established harmony_. we are beholden for it to m. leibniz, and it is impossible to conceive anything that gives us a nobler idea of the power and wisdom of the author of all things. this, together with the advantage of setting aside all notions of a miraculous conduct, would engage me to prefer this new system to that of the cartesians, if i could conceive any possibility in the _way of pre-established harmony_. 'i desire the reader to take notice that though i confess that this way removes all notions of a miraculous conduct, yet i do not retract what i have said formerly, that the system of occasional causes does not bring in god acting miraculously. (see m. leibniz's article in _histoire des ouvrages des savants_, july .) i am as much persuaded as ever i was that an action cannot be said to be miraculous, unless god produces it as an exception to the general laws; and that everything of which he is immediately the author according to those laws is distinct from a miracle properly so called. but being willing to cut off from this dispute as many things as i possibly can, i consent it should be said that the surest way of removing all notions that include a miracle is to suppose that all created substances are actively the immediate causes of the effects of nature. i will therefore lay aside what i might reply to that part of m. leibniz's answer. 'i will also omit all objections which are not more contrary to his opinion than to that of some other philosophers. i will not therefore propose the difficulties that may be raised against the supposition that a creature can receive from god the power of moving itself. they are strong and almost unanswerable, but m. leibniz's system does not lie more open to them than that of the aristotelians; nay, i do not know whether the cartesians would presume to say that god cannot communicate to our souls a power of acting. if they say so, how can they own that adam sinned? and if they dare not[ ] say so they weaken the arguments whereby they endeavour to prove that matter is not capable of any activity. nor do i believe that it is more difficult for m. leibniz than for the cartesians or other philosophers, to free himself from the objection of a fatal mechanism which destroys human liberty. wherefore, waiving this, i shall only speak of what is peculiar to the system of the _pre-established harmony_. 'i. my first observation shall be, that it raises the power and wisdom of the divine art above everything that can be conceived. fancy to yourself a ship which, without having any sense or knowledge, and without being directed by any created or uncreated being, has the power of moving itself so seasonably as to have always the wind favourable, to avoid currents and rocks, to cast anchor where it ought to be done, and to retire into a harbour precisely when it is necessary. suppose such a ship sails in that manner for several years successively, being always turned and situated as it ought to be, according to the several changes of the air and the different situations of seas and lands; you will acknowledge that god, notwithstanding his infinite power, cannot communicate such a faculty to a ship; or rather you will say that the nature of a ship is not capable of receiving it from god. and yet what m. leibniz supposes about the machine of a human body is more admirable and more surprising than all this. let us apply his system concerning the union of the soul with the body to the person of julius caesar. 'ii. we must say according to this system that the body of julius caesar did so exercise its moving faculty that from its birth to its death it went through continual changes which did most exactly answer the perpetual changes of a certain soul which it did not know and which made no impression on it. we must say that the rule according to which that faculty of caesar's body performed such actions was such, that he would have gone to the senate upon such a day and at such an hour, that he would have spoken there such and such words, etc., though god had willed to annihilate his soul the next day after it was created. we must say that this moving power did change and modify itself exactly according to the volubility of the thoughts of that ambitious man, and that it was affected precisely in a certain manner rather than in another, because the soul of caesar passed from a certain thought to another. can a blind power modify itself so exactly by virtue of an impression communicated thirty or forty years [ ] before and never renewed since, but left to itself, without ever knowing what it is to do? is not this much more incomprehensible than the navigation i spoke of in the foregoing paragraph? 'iii. the difficulty will be greater still, if it be considered that the human machine contains an almost infinite number of organs, and that it is continually exposed to the shock of the bodies that surround it,[ ] and which by an innumerable variety of shakings produce in it a thousand sorts of modifications. how is it possible to conceive that this _pre-established harmony_ should never be disordered, but go on still during the longest life of a man, notwithstanding the infinite varieties of the reciprocal action of so many organs upon one another, which are surrounded on all sides with infinite corpuscles, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes dry and sometimes moist, and always acting, and pricking the nerves a thousand different ways? suppose that the multiplicity of organs and of external agents be a necessary instrument of the almost infinite variety of changes in a human body: will that variety have the exactness here required? will it never disturb the correspondence of those changes with the changes of the soul? this seems to be altogether impossible. [ ] 'according to m. leibniz what is active in every substance ought to be reduced to a true unity. since therefore the body of every man is composed of several substances, each of them ought to have a principle of action really distinct from the principle of each of the others. he will have the action of every principle to be spontaneous. now this must vary the effects _ad infinitum_, and confound them. for the impression of the neighbouring bodies must needs put some constraint upon the natural spontaneity of every one of them.' 'iv. it is in vain to have recourse to the power of god, in order to maintain that brutes are mere machines; it is in vain to say that god was able to make machines so artfully contrived that the voice of a man, the reflected light of an object, etc., will strike them exactly where it is necessary, that they may move in a given manner. this supposition is rejected by everybody except some cartesians; and no cartesian would admit it if it were to be extended to man; that is, if anyone were to assert that god was able to form such bodies as would mechanically do whatever we see other men do. by denying this we do not pretend to limit the power and knowledge of god: we only mean that the nature of things does not permit that the faculties imparted to a creature should not be necessarily confined within certain bounds. the actions of creatures must be [ ] necessarily proportioned to their essential state, and performed according to the character belonging to each machine; for according to the maxim of the philosophers, whatever is received is proportionate to the capacity of the subject that receives it. we may therefore reject m. leibniz's hypothesis as being impossible, since it is liable to greater difficulties than that of the cartesians, which makes beasts to be mere machines. it puts a perpetual harmony between two beings, which do not act one upon another; whereas if servants were mere machines, and should punctually obey their masters' command, it could not be said that they do it without a real action of their masters upon them; for their masters would speak words and make signs which would really shake and move the organs of the servants. 'v. now let us consider the soul of julius caesar, and we shall find the thing more impossible still. that soul was in the world without being exposed to the influence of any spirit. the power it received from god was the only principle of the actions it produced at every moment: and if those actions were different one from another, it was not because some of them were produced by the united influence of some springs which did not contribute to the production of others, for the soul of man is simple, indivisible and immaterial. m. leibniz owns it; and if he did not acknowledge it, but if, on the contrary, he should suppose with most philosophers and some of the most excellent metaphysicians of our age (mr. locke, for instance) that a compound of several material parts placed and disposed in a certain manner, is capable of thinking, his hypothesis would appear to be on that very ground absolutely impossible, and i could refute it several other ways; which i need not mention since he acknowledges the immateriality of our soul and builds upon it. 'let us return to the soul of julius caesar, and call it an immaterial automaton (m. leibniz's own phrase), and compare it with an atom of epicurus; i mean an atom surrounded with a vacuum on all sides, and which will never meet any other atom. this is a very just comparison: for this atom, on the one hand, has a natural power of moving itself and exerts it without any assistance, and without being retarded or hindered by anything: and, on the other hand, the soul of caesar is a spirit which has received the faculty of producing thoughts, and exerts it without the influence [ ] of any other spirit or of any body. it is neither assisted nor thwarted by anything whatsoever. if you consult the common notions and the ideas of order, you will find that this atom can never stop, and that having been in motion in the foregoing moment, it will continue in it at the present moment and in all the moments that shall follow, and that it will always move in the same manner. this is the consequence of an axiom approved by m. leibniz: _since a thing does always remain in the same state wherein it happens to be, unless it receives some alteration from some other thing ... we conclude_, says he, _not only that a body which is at rest will always be at rest, but that a body in motion will always keep that motion or change, that is, the same swiftness and the same direction, unless something happens to hinder it_. (m. leibniz, ibid.) 'everyone clearly sees that this atom, whether it moves by an innate power, as democritus and epicurus would have it, or by a power received from the creator, will always move in the same line equally and after a uniform manner, without ever turning or going back. epicurus was laughed at, when he invented the motion of declination; it was a needless supposition, which he wanted in order to get out of the labyrinth of a fatal necessity; and he could give no reason for this new part of his system. it was inconsistent with the clearest notions of our minds: for it is evident that an atom which describes a straight line for the space of two days cannot turn away at the beginning of a third, unless it meets with some obstacle, or has a mind all of a sudden to go out of its road, or contains some spring which begins to play at that very moment. the first of these reasons cannot be admitted in a vacuum. the second is impossible, since an atom has not the faculty of thinking. and the third is likewise impossible in a corpuscle that is a perfect unity. i must make some use of all this. 'vi. caesar's soul is a being to which unity belongs in a strict sense. the faculty of producing thoughts is a property of its nature (so m. leibniz), which it has received from god, both as to possession and exercise. if the first thought it produces is a sense of pleasure, there is no reason why the second should not likewise be a sense of pleasure; for when the total cause of an effect remains the same, the effect cannot be altered. now this soul, at the second moment of its existence, does not receive a new faculty of thinking; it only preserves the faculty it had at the first moment, and it is as independent of the concourse of any other cause at the second [ ] moment as it was at the first. it must therefore produce again at the second moment the same thought it had produced just before. if it be objected that it ought to be in a state of change, and that it would not be in such a state, in the case that i have supposed; i answer that its change will be like the change of the atom; for an atom which continually moves in the same line acquires a new situation at every moment, but it is like the preceding situation. a soul may therefore continue in its state of change, if it does but produce a new thought like the preceding. 'but suppose it to be not confined within such narrow bounds; it must be granted at least that its going from one thought to another implies some reason of affinity. if i suppose that in a certain moment the soul of caesar sees a tree with leaves and blossoms, i can conceive that it does immediately desire to see one that has only leaves, and then one that has only blossoms, and that it will thus successively produce several images arising from one another; but one cannot conceive the odd change of thoughts, which have no affinity with, but are even contrary to, one another, and which are so common in men's souls. one cannot apprehend how god could place in the soul of julius caesar the principle of what i am going to say. he was without doubt pricked with a pin more than once, when he was sucking; and therefore according to m. leibniz's hypothesis which i am here considering, his soul must have produced in itself a sense of pain immediately after the pleasant sensations of the sweetness of the milk, which it had enjoyed for the space of two or three minutes. by what springs was it determined to interrupt its pleasures and to give itself all of a sudden a sense of pain, without receiving any intimation of preparing itself to change, and without any new alteration in its substance? if you run over the life of that roman emperor, every page will afford you matter for a stronger objection than this is. 'vii. the thing would be less incomprehensible if it were supposed that the soul of man is not one spirit but rather a multitude of spirits, each of which has its functions, that begin and end precisely as the changes made in a human body require. by virtue of this supposition it should be said that something analogous to a great number of wheels and springs, or of matters that ferment, disposed according to the changes of our machine, awakens or lulls asleep for a certain time the action of each of those spirits. but then the soul of man would be no longer a single substance[ ] but an _ens per aggregationem_, a collection and heap of substances just like all material beings. we are here in quest of a single being, which produces in itself sometimes joy, sometimes pain, etc., and not of many beings, one of which produces hope, another despair, etc. 'in these observations i have merely cleared and unfolded those which m. leibniz has done me the honour to examine: and now i shall make some reflexions upon his answers. 'viii. he says (ibid., p. ) that _the law of the change which happens in the substance of the animal transports him from pleasure to pain at the very moment that a solution of continuity is made in his body; because the law of the indivisible substance of that animal is to represent what is done in his body as we experience it, and even to represent in some manner, and with respect to that body, whatever is done in the world_. these words are a very good explication of the grounds of this system; they are, as it were, the unfolding and key of it; but at the same time they are the very things at which the objections of those who take this system to be impossible are levelled. the law m. leibniz speaks of supposes a decree of god, and shows wherein this system agrees with that of occasional causes. those two systems agree in this point, that there are laws according to which the soul of man is _to represent what is done in the body of man, as we experience it_. but they disagree as to the manner of executing those laws. the cartesians say that god executes them; m. leibniz will have it, that the soul itself does it; which appears to me impossible, because the soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. now however infinite the power and knowledge of god be, he cannot perform with a machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a piece. he must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by him and not by the machine. i shall show that the soul has not the instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it i shall make use of a comparison. 'fancy to yourself an animal created by god and designed to sing continually. it will always sing, that is most certain; but if god designs him a certain tablature, he must necessarily either put it before his eyes or imprint it upon his memory or dispose his muscles in such a manner that according to the laws of mechanism one certain note will always come after another, agreeably to the order of the tablature. without this one cannot apprehend that the animal can always follow the whole set of the notes [ ] appointed him by god. let us apply this to man's soul. m. leibniz will have it that it has received not only the power of producing thoughts continually, but also the faculty of following always a certain set of thoughts, which answers the continual changes that happen in the machine of the body. this set of thoughts is like the tablature prescribed to the singing animal above mentioned. can the soul change its perceptions or modifications at every moment according to such a set of thoughts, without knowing the series of the notes, and actually thinking upon them? but experience teaches us that it knows nothing of it. were it not at least necessary that in default of such a knowledge, there should be in the soul a set of particular instruments, each of which would be a necessary cause of such and such a thought? must they not be so placed and disposed as to operate precisely one after another, according to the correspondence _pre-established_ between the changes of the body and the thoughts of the soul? but it is most certain that an immaterial simple and indivisible substance cannot be made up of such an innumerable multitude of particular instruments placed one before another, according to the order of the tablature in question. it is not therefore possible that a human soul should execute that law. 'm. leibniz supposes that the soul does not distinctly know its future perceptions, _but that it perceives them confusedly_, and that _there are in each substance traces of whatever hath happened, or shall happen to it: but that an infinite multitude of perceptions hinders us from distinguishing them. the present state of each substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state. the soul, though never so simple, has always a sentiment composed of several perceptions at one time: which answers our end as well as though it were composed of pieces, like a machine. for each foregoing perception has an influence on those that follow agreeably to a law of order, which is in perceptions as well as in motions...the perceptions that are together in one and the same soul at the same time, including an infinite multitude of little and indistinguishable sentiments that are to be unfolded, we need not wonder at the infinite variety of what is to result from it in time. this is only a consequence of the representative nature of the soul, which is, to express what happens and what will happen in its body, by the connexion and correspondence of all the parts of the world_. i have but little to say in answer to this: i shall only observe that this supposition when sufficiently cleared is the right way of solving all the difficulties. m. leibniz, through the [ ] penetration of his great genius, has very well conceived the extent and strength of this objection, and what remedy ought to be applied to the main inconveniency. i do not doubt but that he will smooth the rough parts of his system, and teach us some excellent things about the nature of spirits. nobody can travel more usefully or more safely than he in the intellectual world. i hope that his curious explanations will remove all the impossibilities which i have hitherto found in his system, and that he will solidly remove my difficulties, as well as those of father lami. and these hopes made me say before, without designing to pass a compliment upon that learned man, that his system ought to be looked upon as an important conquest. 'he will not be much embarrassed by this, viz. that whereas according to the supposition of the cartesians there is but one general law for the union of spirits and bodies, he will have it that god gives a particular law to each spirit; from whence it seems to result that the primitive constitution of each spirit is specifically different from all others. do not the thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in angelic nature?' leibniz acknowledged bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as though for publication. it was communicated to bayle, but it was not in fact published. it is dated . it may be found in the standard collections of leibniz's philosophical works. it reads almost like a sketch for the _theodicy_. the principal point developed by leibniz is the richness of content which, according to him, is to be found in each 'simple substance'. its simplicity is more like the infinitely rich simplicity of the divine being, than like the simplicity of the atom of epicurus, with which bayle had chosen to compare it. it contains a condensation in confused idea of the whole universe: and its essence is from the first defined by the part it is to play in the total harmony. as to the musical score ('tablature of notes') which the individual soul plays from, in order to perform its ordained part in the universal harmony, this 'score' is to be found in the confused or implicit ideas at any moment present, from which an omniscient observer could always deduce what is to happen next. to the objection 'but the created soul is not an omniscient observer, and if it cannot read the score, the score is useless to it',[ ] leibniz replies by affirming that much spontaneous action arises from subjective and yet unperceived reasons, as we are all perfectly aware, once we attend to the relevant facts. all he claims to be doing is to generalize this observation. all events whatsoever arise from the 'interpretation of the score' by monads, but very little of this 'interpretation' is in the least conscious. leibniz passes from the remarks about his own doctrine under the article 'rorarius' to other articles of bayle's dictionary, and touches the question of the origin of evil, and other matters which receive their fuller treatment in the _theodicy_. in the same year leibniz wrote a very friendly letter to bayle himself, offering further explanations of disputed points. he concluded it with a paragraph of some personal interest, comparing himself the historian-philosopher with bayle the philosophic lexicographer, and revealing by the way his attitude to philosophy, science and history: 'we have good reason to admire, sir, the way in which your striking reflexions on the deepest questions of philosophy remain unhindered by your boundless researches into matters of fact. i too am not always able to excuse myself from discussions of the sort, and have even been obliged to descend to questions of genealogy, which would be still more trifling, were it not that the interests of states frequently depend upon them. i have worked much on the history of germany in so far as it bears upon these countries, a study which has furnished me with some observations belonging to general history. so i have learnt not to neglect the knowledge of sheer facts. but if the choice were open to me, i should prefer natural history to political, and the customs and laws god has established in nature, to what is observed among mankind.' leibniz now conceived the idea of putting together all the passages in bayle's works which interested him, and writing a systematic answer to them. before he had leisure to finish the task, bayle died. the work nevertheless appeared in as the essays in _theodicy_. [ ] * * * * * preface * * * * * it has ever been seen that men in general have resorted to outward forms for the expression of their religion: sound piety, that is to say, light and virtue, has never been the portion of the many. one should not wonder at this, nothing is so much in accord with human weakness. we are impressed by what is outward, while the inner essence of things requires consideration of such a kind as few persons are fitted to give. as true piety consists in principles and practice, the outward forms of religion imitate these, and are of two kinds: the one kind consists in ceremonial practices, and the other in the formularies of belief. ceremonies resemble virtuous actions, and formularies are like shadows of the truth and approach, more or less, the true light. all these outward forms would be commendable if those who invented them had rendered them appropriate to maintain and to express that which they imitate--if religious ceremonies, ecclesiastical discipline, the rules of communities, human laws were always like a hedge round the divine law, to withdraw us from any approach to vice, to inure us to the good and to make us familiar with virtue. that was the aim of moses and of other good lawgivers, of the wise men who founded religious orders, and above all of jesus christ, divine founder of the purest and most enlightened religion. it is just the same with the formularies of belief: they would be valid provided there were nothing [ ] in them inconsistent with truth unto salvation, even though the full truth concerned were not there. but it happens only too often that religion is choked in ceremonial, and that the divine light is obscured by the opinions of men. the pagans, who inhabited the earth before christianity was founded, had only one kind of outward form: they had ceremonies in their worship, but they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up formularies for their dogmatic theology. they knew not whether their gods were real persons or symbols of the forces of nature, as the sun, the planets, the elements. their mysteries consisted not in difficult dogmas but in certain secret observances, whence the profane, namely those who were not initiated, were excluded. these observances were very often ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to guard them against contempt. the pagans had their superstitions: they boasted of miracles, everything with them was full of oracles, auguries, portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. this tended to sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the great future of another life was scarce envisaged; one did not trouble to impart to men true notions of god and of the soul. of all ancient peoples, it appears that the hebrews alone had public dogmas for their religion. abraham and moses established the belief in one god, source of all good, author of all things. the hebrews speak of him in a manner worthy of the supreme substance; and one wonders at seeing the inhabitants of one small region of the earth more enlightened than the rest of the human race. peradventure the wise men of other nations have sometimes said the same, but they have not had the good fortune to find a sufficient following and to convert the dogma into law. nevertheless moses had not inserted in his laws the doctrine of the immortality of souls: it was consistent with his ideas, it was taught by oral tradition; but it was not proclaimed for popular acceptance until jesus christ lifted the veil, and, without having force in his hand, taught with all the force of a lawgiver that immortal souls pass into another life, wherein they shall receive the wages of their deeds. moses had already expressed the beautiful conceptions of the greatness and the goodness of god, whereto many civilized peoples to-day assent; but jesus christ demonstrated fully [ ] the results of these ideas, proclaiming that divine goodness and justice are shown forth to perfection in god's designs for the souls of men. i refrain from considering here the other points of the christian doctrine, and i will show only how jesus christ brought about the conversion of natural religion into law, and gained for it the authority of a public dogma. he alone did that which so many philosophers had endeavoured in vain to do; and christians having at last gained the upper hand in the roman empire, the master of the greater part of the known earth, the religion of the wise men became that of the nations. later also mahomet showed no divergence from the great dogmas of natural theology: his followers spread them abroad even among the most remote races of asia and of africa, whither christianity had not been carried; and they abolished in many countries heathen superstitions which were contrary to the true doctrine of the unity of god and the immortality of souls. it is clear that jesus christ, completing what moses had begun, wished that the divinity should be the object not only of our fear and veneration but also of our love and devotion. thus he made men happy by anticipation, and gave them here on earth a foretaste of future felicity. for there is nothing so agreeable as loving that which is worthy of love. love is that mental state which makes us take pleasure in the perfections of the object of our love, and there is nothing more perfect than god, nor any greater delight than in him. to love him it suffices to contemplate his perfections, a thing easy indeed, because we find the ideas of these within ourselves. the perfections of god are those of our souls, but he possesses them in boundless measure; he is an ocean, whereof to us only drops have been granted; there is in us some power, some knowledge, some goodness, but in god they are all in their entirety. order, proportions, harmony delight us; painting and music are samples of these: god is all order; he always keeps truth of proportions, he makes universal harmony; all beauty is an effusion of his rays. it follows manifestly that true piety and even true felicity consist in the love of god, but a love so enlightened that its fervour is attended by insight. this kind of love begets that pleasure in good actions which gives relief to virtue, and, relating all to god as to the centre, transports the human to the divine. for in doing one's duty, in obeying reason, one [ ] carries out the orders of supreme reason. one directs all one's intentions to the common good, which is no other than the glory of god. thus one finds that there is no greater individual interest than to espouse that of the community, and one gains satisfaction for oneself by taking pleasure in the acquisition of true benefits for men. whether one succeeds therein or not, one is content with what comes to pass, being once resigned to the will of god and knowing that what he wills is best. but before he declares his will by the event one endeavours to find it out by doing that which appears most in accord with his commands. when we are in this state of mind, we are not disheartened by ill success, we regret only our faults; and the ungrateful ways of men cause no relaxation in the exercise of our kindly disposition. our charity is humble and full of moderation, it presumes not to domineer; attentive alike to our own faults and to the talents of others, we are inclined to criticize our own actions and to excuse and vindicate those of others. we must work out our own perfection and do wrong to no man. there is no piety where there is not charity; and without being kindly and beneficent one cannot show sincere religion. good disposition, favourable upbringing, association with pious and virtuous persons may contribute much towards such a propitious condition for our souls; but most securely are they grounded therein by good principles. i have already said that insight must be joined to fervour, that the perfecting of our understanding must accomplish the perfecting of our will. the practices of virtue, as well as those of vice, may be the effect of a mere habit, one may acquire a taste for them; but when virtue is reasonable, when it is related to god, who is the supreme reason of things, it is founded on knowledge. one cannot love god without knowing his perfections, and this knowledge contains the principles of true piety. the purpose of religion should be to imprint these principles upon our souls: but in some strange way it has happened all too often that men, that teachers of religion have strayed far from this purpose. contrary to the intention of our divine master, devotion has been reduced to ceremonies and doctrine has been cumbered with formulae. all too often these ceremonies have not been well fitted to maintain the exercise of virtue, and the formulae sometimes have not been lucid. can one believe it? some christians have imagined that they could be devout without loving their neighbour,[ ] and pious without loving god; or else people have thought that they could love their neighbour without serving him and could love god without knowing him. many centuries have passed without recognition of this defect by the people at large; and there are still great traces of the reign of darkness. there are divers persons who speak much of piety, of devotion, of religion, who are even busied with the teaching of such things, and who yet prove to be by no means versed in the divine perfections. they ill understand the goodness and the justice of the sovereign of the universe; they imagine a god who deserves neither to be imitated nor to be loved. this indeed seemed to me dangerous in its effect, since it is of serious moment that the very source of piety should be preserved from infection. the old errors of those who arraigned the divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been renewed sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible power of god when it was a question rather of presenting his supreme goodness; and they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. i have observed that these opinions, apt to do harm, rested especially on confused notions which had been formed concerning freedom, necessity and destiny; and i have taken up my pen more than once on such an occasion to give explanations on these important matters. but finally i have been compelled to gather up my thoughts on all these connected questions, and to impart them to the public. it is this that i have undertaken in the essays which i offer here, on the goodness of god, the freedom of man, and the origin of evil. there are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray: one concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of evil; the other consists in the discussion of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. the first perplexes almost all the human race, the other exercises philosophers only. i shall have perchance at another time an opportunity to declare myself on the second, and to point out that, for lack of a true conception of the nature of substance and matter, people have taken up false positions leading to insurmountable difficulties, difficulties which should properly be applied to the overthrow of these very positions. but if the [ ] knowledge of continuity is important for speculative enquiry, that of necessity is none the less so for practical application; and it, together with the questions therewith connected, to wit, the freedom of man and the justice of god, forms the object of this treatise. men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the ancients called the 'lazy reason', because it tended towards doing nothing, or at least towards being careful for nothing and only following inclination for the pleasure of the moment. for, they said, if the future is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever i may do. now the future (so they said) is necessary, whether because the divinity foresees everything, and even pre-establishes it by the control of all things in the universe; or because everything happens of necessity, through the concatenation of causes; or finally, through the very nature of truth, which is determinate in the assertions that can be made on future events, as it is in all assertions, since the assertion must always be true or false in itself, even though we know not always which it is. and all these reasons for determination which appear different converge finally like lines upon one and the same centre; for there is a truth in the future event which is predetermined by the causes, and god pre-establishes it in establishing the causes. the false conception of necessity, being applied in practice, has given rise to what i call _fatum mahometanum_, fate after the turkish fashion, because it is said of the turks that they do not shun danger or even abandon places infected with plague, owing to their use of such reasoning as that just recorded. for what is called _fatum stoicum_ was not so black as it is painted: it did not divert men from the care of their affairs, but it tended to give them tranquillity in regard to events, through the consideration of necessity, which renders our anxieties and our vexations needless. in which respect these philosophers were not far removed from the teaching of our lord, who deprecates these anxieties in regard to the morrow, comparing them with the needless trouble a man would give himself in labouring to increase his stature. it is true that the teachings of the stoics (and perhaps also of some famous philosophers of our time), confining themselves to this alleged necessity, can only impart a forced patience; whereas our lord inspires thoughts more sublime, and even instructs us in the means of gaining contentment by assuring us that since god, being altogether good and [ ] wise, has care for everything, even so far as not to neglect one hair of our head, our confidence in him ought to be entire. and thus we should see, if we were capable of understanding him, that it is not even possible to wish for anything better (as much in general as for ourselves) than what he does. it is as if one said to men: do your duty and be content with that which shall come of it, not only because you cannot resist divine providence, or the nature of things (which may suffice for tranquillity, but not for contentment), but also because you have to do with a good master. and that is what may be called _fatum christianum_. nevertheless it happens that most men, and even christians, introduce into their dealings some mixture of fate after the turkish fashion, although they do not sufficiently acknowledge it. it is true that they are not inactive or negligent when obvious perils or great and manifest hopes present themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that is about to fall and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their path; and they will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half uncovered, without waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. but when the good or the evil is remote and uncertain and the remedy painful or little to our taste, the lazy reason seems to us to be valid. for example, when it is a question of preserving one's health and even one's life by good diet, people to whom one gives advice thereupon very often answer that our days are numbered and that it avails nothing to try to struggle against that which god destines for us. but these same persons run to even the most absurd remedies when the evil they had neglected draws near. one reasons in somewhat the same way when the question for consideration is somewhat thorny, as for instance when one asks oneself, _quod vitae sectabor iter_? what profession one must choose; when it is a question of a marriage being arranged, of a war being undertaken, of a battle being fought; for in these cases many will be inclined to evade the difficulty of consideration and abandon themselves to fate or to inclination, as if reason should not be employed except in easy cases. one will then all too often reason in the turkish fashion (although this way is wrongly termed trusting in providence, a thing that in reality occurs only when one has done one's duty) and one will employ the lazy reason, derived from the idea of inevitable fate, to relieve oneself of the need to reason properly. one will thus overlook the fact that if this [ ] argument contrary to the practice of reason were valid, it would always hold good, whether the consideration were easy or not. this laziness is to some extent the source of the superstitious practices of fortune-tellers, which meet with just such credulity as men show towards the philosopher's stone, because they would fain have short cuts to the attainment of happiness without trouble. i do not speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because they have been happy before, as if there were something permanent therein. their argument from the past to the future has just as slight a foundation as the principles of astrology and of other kinds of divination. they overlook the fact that there is usually an ebb and flow in fortune, _una marea_, as italians playing basset are wont to call it. with regard to this they make their own particular observations, which i would, nevertheless, counsel none to trust too much. yet this confidence that people have in their fortune serves often to give courage to men, and above all to soldiers, and causes them to have indeed that good fortune they ascribe to themselves. even so do predictions often cause that to happen which has been foretold, as it is supposed that the opinion the mahometans hold on fate makes them resolute. thus even errors have their use at times, but generally as providing a remedy for other errors: and truth is unquestionably better. but it is taking an unfair advantage of this alleged necessity of fate to employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism. i have often heard it said by smart young persons, who wished to play the freethinker, that it is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of reward and fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of destiny, that what is written is written, and that our behaviour can change nothing therein. thus, they would say, it were best to follow one's inclination, dwelling only upon such things as may content us in the present. they did not reflect upon the strange consequences of this argument, which would prove too much, since it would prove (for instance) that one should take a pleasant beverage even though one knows it is poisoned. for the same reason (if it were valid) i could say: if it is written in the records of the parcae that poison will kill me now or will do me harm, this will happen even though i were not to take this beverage; and if this is not written, it will not happen even though i should take this same beverage; consequently i shall be able to follow with impunity my inclination to [ ] take what is pleasing, however injurious it may be; the result of which reasoning is an obvious absurdity. this objection disconcerted them a little, but they always reverted to their argument, phrased in different ways, until they were brought to understand where the fault of the sophism lies. it is untrue that the event happens whatever one may do: it will happen because one does what leads thereto; and if the event is written beforehand, the cause that will make it happen is written also. thus the connexion of effects and causes, so far from establishing the doctrine of a necessity detrimental to conduct, serves to overthrow it. yet, without having evil intentions inclined towards libertinism, one may envisage differently the strange consequences of an inevitable necessity, considering that it would destroy the freedom of the will, so essential to the morality of action: for justice and injustice, praise and blame, punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and nobody will be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from doing what is absolutely necessary. without any intention of abusing this consideration in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not escape embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging the actions of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some even concerned with the actions of god, whereof i will speak presently. and as an insuperable necessity would open the door to impiety, whether through the impunity one could thence infer or the hopelessness of any attempt to resist a torrent that sweeps everything along with it, it is important to note the different degrees of necessity, and to show that there are some which cannot do harm, as there are others which cannot be admitted without giving rise to evil consequences. some go even further: not content with using the pretext of necessity to prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood to make the divinity accessary to their licentious way of life, and they imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of their crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. the philosophy of christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the dependence of things upon the first author and his co-operation with all the actions of creatures, appears to have increased this difficulty. some able men in our own time have gone so far as to deny all action to [ ] creatures, and m. bayle, who tended a little towards this extraordinary opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles, or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. yet again he acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the principle is incontestably founded on _a priori_ reasons; but he wishes to infer that our reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed dogmas, which teach us the existence of one god altogether good, altogether powerful and altogether wise. but many readers, convinced of the irrefutable nature of his objections and believing them to be at least as strong as the proofs for the truth of religion, would draw dangerous conclusions. even though there were no co-operation by god in evil actions, one could not help finding difficulty in the fact that he foresees them and that, being able to prevent them through his omnipotence, he yet permits them. this is why some philosophers and even some theologians have rather chosen to deny to god any knowledge of the detail of things and, above all, of future events, than to admit what they believed repellent to his goodness. the socinians and conrad vorstius lean towards that side; and thomas bonartes, an english jesuit disguised under a pseudonym but exceedingly learned, who wrote a book _de concordia scientiae cum fide_, of which i will speak later, appears to hint at this also. they are doubtless much mistaken; but others are not less so who, convinced that nothing comes to pass save by the will and the power of god, ascribe to him intentions and actions so unworthy of the greatest and the best of all beings that one would say these authors have indeed renounced the dogma which recognizes god's justice and goodness. they thought that, being supreme master of the universe, he could without any detriment to his holiness cause sins to be committed, simply at his will and pleasure, or in order that he might have the pleasure of punishing; and even that he could take pleasure in eternally afflicting innocent people without doing any injustice, because no one has the right or the power to control his actions. some even have gone so far as to say that god acts thus indeed; and on the plea that we are as nothing in comparison with him, they liken us to earthworms which men crush without heeding as they walk, or in general to animals that are not of our species and which we do not [ ] scruple to ill-treat. i believe that many persons otherwise of good intentions are misled by these ideas, because they have not sufficient knowledge of their consequences. they do not see that, properly speaking, god's justice is thus overthrown. for what idea shall we form of such a justice as has only will for its rule, that is to say, where the will is not guided by the rules of good and even tends directly towards evil? unless it be the idea contained in that tyrannical definition by thrasymachus in plato, which designated as _just_ that which pleases the stronger. such indeed is the position taken up, albeit unwittingly, by those who rest all obligation upon constraint, and in consequence take power as the gauge of right. but one will soon abandon maxims so strange and so unfit to make men good and charitable through the imitation of god. for one will reflect that a god who would take pleasure in the misfortune of others cannot be distinguished from the evil principle of the manichaeans, assuming that this principle had become sole master of the universe; and that in consequence one must attribute to the true god sentiments that render him worthy to be called the good principle. happily these extravagant dogmas scarce obtain any longer among theologians. nevertheless some astute persons, who are pleased to make difficulties, revive them: they seek to increase our perplexity by uniting the controversies aroused by christian theology to the disputes of philosophy. philosophers have considered the questions of necessity, of freedom and of the origin of evil; theologians have added thereto those of original sin, of grace and of predestination. the original corruption of the human race, coming from the first sin, appears to us to have imposed a natural necessity to sin without the succour of divine grace: but necessity being incompatible with punishment, it will be inferred that a sufficient grace ought to have been given to all men; which does not seem to be in conformity with experience. but the difficulty is great, above all, in relation to god's dispositions for the salvation of men. there are few saved or chosen; therefore the choice of many is not god's decreed will. and since it is admitted that those whom he has chosen deserve it no more than the rest, and are not even fundamentally less evil, the goodness which they have coming only from the gift of god, the difficulty is increased. where is, then, his justice [ ] (people will say), or at the least, where is his goodness? partiality, or respect of persons, goes against justice, and he who without cause sets bounds to his goodness cannot have it in sufficient measure. it is true that those who are not chosen are lost by their own fault: they lack good will or living faith; but it rested with god alone to grant it them. we know that besides inward grace there are usually outward circumstances which distinguish men, and that training, conversation, example often correct or corrupt natural disposition. now that god should call forth circumstances favourable to some and abandon others to experiences which contribute to their misfortune, will not that give us cause for astonishment? and it is not enough (so it seems) to say with some that inward grace is universal and equal for all. for these same authors are obliged to resort to the exclamations of st. paul, and to say: 'o the depth!' when they consider how men are distinguished by what we may call outward graces, that is, by graces appearing in the diversity of circumstances which god calls forth, whereof men are not the masters, and which have nevertheless so great an influence upon all that concerns their salvation. nor will it help us to say with st. augustine that, all men being involved in the damnation caused by the sin of adam, god might have left them all in their misery; and that thus his goodness alone induces him to deliver some of them. for not only is it strange that the sin of another should condemn anyone, but there still remains the question why god does not deliver all--why he delivers the lesser number and why some in preference to others. he is in truth their master, but he is a good and just master; his power is absolute, but his wisdom permits not that he exercise that power in an arbitrary and despotic way, which would be tyrannous indeed. moreover, the fall of the first man having happened only with god's permission, and god having resolved to permit it only when once he had considered its consequences, which are the corruption of the mass of the human race and the choice of a small number of elect, with the abandonment of all the rest, it is useless to conceal the difficulty by limiting one's view to the mass already corrupt. one must, in spite of oneself, go back to the knowledge of the consequences of the first sin, preceding the decree whereby god permitted it, and whereby he permitted simultaneously that [ ] the damned should be involved in the mass of perdition and should not be delivered: for god and the sage make no resolve without considering its consequences. i hope to remove all these difficulties. i will point out that absolute necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and sometimes geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this connexion, does not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is exempt not only from constraint but also from real necessity. i will show that god himself, although he always chooses the best, does not act by an absolute necessity, and that the laws of nature laid down by god, founded upon the fitness of things, keep the mean between geometrical truths, absolutely necessary, and arbitrary decrees; which m. bayle and other modern philosophers have not sufficiently understood. further i will show that there is an indifference in freedom, because there is no absolute necessity for one course or the other; but yet that there is never an indifference of perfect equipoise. and i will demonstrate that there is in free actions a perfect spontaneity beyond all that has been conceived hitherto. finally i will make it plain that the hypothetical and the moral necessity which subsist in free actions are open to no objection, and that the 'lazy reason' is a pure sophism. likewise concerning the origin of evil in its relation to god, i offer a vindication of his perfections that shall extol not less his holiness, his justice and his goodness than his greatness, his power and his independence. i show how it is possible for everything to depend upon god, for him to co-operate in all the actions of creatures, even, if you will, to create these creatures continually, and nevertheless not to be the author of sin. here also it is demonstrated how the privative nature of evil should be understood. much more than that, i explain how evil has a source other than the will of god, and that one is right therefore to say of moral evil that god wills it not, but simply permits it. most important of all, however, i show that it has been possible for god to permit sin and misery, and even to co-operate therein and promote it, without detriment to his holiness and his supreme goodness: although, generally speaking, he could have avoided all these evils. concerning grace and predestination, i justify the most debatable assertions, as for instance: that we are converted only through the [ ] prevenient grace of god and that we cannot do good except with his aid; that god wills the salvation of all men and that he condemns only those whose will is evil; that he gives to all a sufficient grace provided they wish to use it; that, jesus christ being the source and the centre of election, god destined the elect for salvation, because he foresaw that they would cling with a lively faith to the doctrine of jesus christ. yet it is true that this reason for election is not the final reason, and that this very pre-vision is still a consequence of god's anterior decree. faith likewise is a gift of god, who has predestinated the faith of the elect, for reasons lying in a superior decree which dispenses grace and circumstance in accordance with god's supreme wisdom. now, as one of the most gifted men of our time, whose eloquence was as great as his acumen and who gave great proofs of his vast erudition, had applied himself with a strange predilection to call attention to all the difficulties on this subject which i have just touched in general, i found a fine field for exercise in considering the question with him in detail. i acknowledge that m. bayle (for it is easy to see that i speak of him) has on his side all the advantages except that of the root of the matter, but i hope that truth (which he acknowledges himself to be on our side) by its very plainness, and provided it be fittingly set forth, will prevail over all the ornaments of eloquence and erudition. my hope for success therein is all the greater because it is the cause of god i plead, and because one of the maxims here upheld states that god's help is never lacking for those that lack not good will. the author of this discourse believes that he has given proof of this good will in the attention he has brought to bear upon this subject. he has meditated upon it since his youth; he has conferred with some of the foremost men of the time; and he has schooled himself by the reading of good authors. and the success which god has given him (according to the opinion of sundry competent judges) in certain other profound meditations, of which some have much influence on this subject, gives him peradventure some right to claim the attention of readers who love truth and are fitted to search after it. the author had, moreover, particular and weighty reasons inducing him to take pen in hand for discussion of this subject. conversations which he had concerning the same with literary and court personages, in germany and in france, and especially with one of the greatest and most accomplished [ ] of princesses, have repeatedly prompted him to this course. he had had the honour of expressing his opinions to this princess upon divers passages of the admirable _dictionary_ of m. bayle, wherein religion and reason appear as adversaries, and where m. bayle wishes to silence reason after having made it speak too loud: which he calls the triumph of faith. the present author declared there and then that he was of a different opinion, but that he was nevertheless well pleased that a man of such great genius had brought about an occasion for going deeply into these subjects, subjects as important as they are difficult. he admitted having examined them also for some long time already, and having sometimes been minded to publish upon this matter some reflexions whose chief aim should be such knowledge of god as is needed to awaken piety and to foster virtue. this princess exhorted and urged him to carry out his long-cherished intention, and some friends added their persuasions. he was all the more tempted to accede to their requests since he had reason to hope that in the sequel to his investigation m. bayle's genius would greatly aid him to give the subject such illumination as it might receive with his support. but divers obstacles intervened, and the death of the incomparable queen was not the least. it happened, however, that m. bayle was attacked by excellent men who set themselves to examine the same subject; he answered them fully and always ingeniously. i followed their dispute, and was even on the point of being involved therein. this is how it came about. i had published a new system, which seemed well adapted to explain the union of the soul and the body: it met with considerable applause even from those who were not in agreement with it, and certain competent persons testified that they had already been of my opinion, without having reached so distinct an explanation, before they saw what i had written on the matter. m. bayle examined it in his _historical and critical dictionary_, article 'rorarius'. he thought that my expositions were worthy of further development; he drew attention to their usefulness in various connexions, and he laid stress upon what might still cause difficulty. i could not but reply in a suitable way to expressions so civil and to reflexions so instructive as his. in order to turn them to greater account, i published some elucidations in the _histoire des ouvrages des savants_, july . m. bayle replied to them in the second edition of his _dictionary_. i sent[ ] him a rejoinder which has not yet been published; i know not whether he ever made a further reply. meanwhile it happened that m. le clerc had inserted in his _select library_ an extract from the _intellectual system_ of the late mr. cudworth, and had explained therein certain 'plastic natures' which this admirable author applied to the formation of animals. m. bayle believed (see the continuation of _divers thoughts on the comet_, ch. , art. ) that, these natures being without cognition, in establishing them one weakened the argument which proves, through the marvellous formation of things, that the universe must have an intelligent cause. m. le clerc replied ( th art. of the th vol. of his _select library_) that these natures required to be directed by divine wisdom. m. bayle insisted ( th article of the _histoire des ouvrages des savants_, august ) that direction alone was not sufficient for a cause devoid of cognition, unless one took the cause to be a mere instrument of god, in which case direction would be needless. my system was touched upon in passing; and that gave me an opportunity to send a short essay to the illustrious author of the _histoire des ouvrages des savants_, which he inserted in the month of may , art. . in this i endeavoured to make clear that in reality mechanism is sufficient to produce the organic bodies of animals, without any need of other plastic natures, provided there be added thereto the _preformation_ already completely organic in the seeds of the bodies that come into existence, contained in those of the bodies whence they spring, right back to the primary seeds. this could only proceed from the author of things, infinitely powerful and infinitely wise, who, creating all in the beginning in due order, had _pre-established_ there all order and artifice that was to be. there is no chaos in the inward nature of things, and there is organism everywhere in a matter whose disposition proceeds from god. more and more of it would come to light if we pressed closer our examination of the anatomy of bodies; and we should continue to observe it even if we could go on to infinity, like nature, and make subdivision as continuous in our knowledge as nature has made it in fact. in order to explain this marvel of the formation of animals, i made use of a pre-established harmony, that is to say, of the same means i had used to explain another marvel, namely the correspondence of soul with body, [ ] wherein i proved the uniformity and the fecundity of the principles i had employed. it seems that this reminded m. bayle of my system of accounting for this correspondence, which he had examined formerly. he declared (in chapter of his _reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, p. ) that he did not believe god could give to matter or to any other cause the faculty of becoming organic without communicating to it the idea and the knowledge of organic nature. also he was not yet disposed to believe that god, with all his power over nature and with all the foreknowledge which he has of the contingencies that may arrive, could have so disposed things that by the laws of mechanics alone a vessel (for instance) should go to its port of destination without being steered during its passage by some intelligent guide. i was surprised to see that limits were placed on the power of god, without the adduction of any proof and without indication that there was any contradiction to be feared on the side of the object or any imperfection on god's side. whereas i had shown before in my rejoinder that even men often produce through automata something like the movements that come from reason, and that even a finite mind (but one far above ours) could accomplish what m. bayle thinks impossible to the divinity. moreover, as god orders all things at once beforehand, the accuracy of the path of this vessel would be no more strange than that of a fuse passing along a cord in fireworks, since the whole disposition of things preserves a perfect harmony between them by means of their influence one upon the other. this declaration of m. bayle pledged me to an answer. i therefore purposed to point out to him, that unless it be said that god forms organic bodies himself by a perpetual miracle, or that he has entrusted this care to intelligences whose power and knowledge are almost divine, we must hold the opinion that god _preformed_ things in such sort that new organisms are only a mechanical consequence of a preceding organic constitution. even so do butterflies come out of silkworms, an instance where m. swammerdam has shown that there is nothing but development. and i would have added that nothing is better qualified than the preformation of plants and of animals to confirm my system of pre-established harmony between the soul and the body. for in this the body is prompted by its original constitution to carry out with the help of external things all that it does in accordance with the will of the soul. so the seeds by their original constitution [ ] carry out naturally the intentions of god, by an artifice greater still than that which causes our body to perform everything in conformity with our will. and since m. bayle himself deems with reason that there is more artifice in the organism of animals than in the most beautiful poem in the world or in the most admirable invention whereof the human mind is capable, it follows that my system of the connexion between the body and the soul is as intelligible as the general opinion on the formation of animals. for this opinion (which appears to me true) states in effect that the wisdom of god has so made nature that it is competent in virtue of its laws to form animals; i explain this opinion and throw more light upon the possibility of it through the system of preformation. whereafter there will be no cause for surprise that god has so made the body that by virtue of its own laws it can carry out the intentions of the reasoning soul: for all that the reasoning soul can demand of the body is less difficult than the organization which god has demanded of the seeds. m. bayle says (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. ) that it is only very recently there have been people who have understood that the formation of living bodies cannot be a natural process. this he could say also (in accordance with his principles) of the communication between the soul and the body, since god effects this whole communication in the system of occasional causes to which this author subscribes. but i admit the supernatural here only in the beginning of things, in respect of the first formation of animals or in respect of the original constitution of pre-established harmony between the soul and the body. once that has come to pass, i hold that the formation of animals and the relation between the soul and the body are something as natural now as the other most ordinary operations of nature. a close parallel is afforded by people's ordinary thinking about the instinct and the marvellous behaviour of brutes. one recognizes reason there not in the brutes but in him who created them. i am, then, of the general opinion in this respect; but i hope that my explanation will have added clearness and lucidity, and even a more ample range, to that opinion. now when preparing to justify my system in face of the new difficulties of m. bayle, i purposed at the same time to communicate to him the ideas which i had had for some time already, on the difficulties put forward by him[ ] in opposition to those who endeavour to reconcile reason with faith in regard to the existence of evil. indeed, there are perhaps few persons who have toiled more than i in this matter. hardly had i gained some tolerable understanding of latin writings when i had an opportunity of turning over books in a library. i flitted from book to book, and since subjects for meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, i was charmed by the work of laurentius valla against boethius and by that of luther against erasmus, although i was well aware that they had need of some mitigation. i did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this nature the records of the montbéliard conversation, which had revived the dispute, appeared to me instructive. nor did i neglect the teachings of our theologians: and the study of their opponents, far from disturbing me, served to strengthen me in the moderate opinions of the churches of the augsburg confession. i had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some excellent men of different parties, for instance with bishop peter von wallenburg, suffragan of mainz, with herr johann ludwig fabricius, premier theologian of heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated m. arnauld. to him i even tendered a latin dialogue of my own composition upon this subject, about the year , wherein already i laid it down that god, having chosen the most perfect of all possible worlds, had been prompted by his wisdom to permit the evil which was bound up with it, but which still did not prevent this world from being, all things considered, the best that could be chosen. i have also since read many and various good authors on these subjects, and i have endeavoured to make progress in the knowledge that seems to me proper for banishing all that could have obscured the idea of supreme perfection which must be acknowledged in god. i have not neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended furthest the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance hobbes and spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not only in his _physical elements_ and elsewhere, but also in a special book against bishop bramhall. and spinoza insists more or less (like an ancient peripatetic philosopher named strato) that all has come from the first cause or from primitive nature by a blind and geometrical necessity, with complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness and for understanding in this first source of things. [ ] i have found the means, so it seems to me, of demonstrating the contrary in a way that gives one a clear insight into the inward essence of the matter. for having made new discoveries on the nature of active force and the laws of motion, i have shown that they have no geometrical necessity, as spinoza appears to have believed they had. neither, as i have made plain, are they purely arbitrary, even though this be the opinion of m. bayle and of some modern philosophers: but they are dependent upon the fitness of things as i have already pointed out above, or upon that which i call the 'principle of the best'. moreover one recognizes therein, as in every other thing, the marks of the first substance, whose productions bear the stamp of a supreme wisdom and make the most perfect of harmonies. i have shown also that this harmony connects both the future with the past and the present with the absent. the first kind of connexion unites times, and the other places. this second connexion is displayed in the union of the soul with the body, and in general in the communication of true substances with one another and with material phenomena. but the first takes place in the preformation of organic bodies, or rather of all bodies, since there is organism everywhere, although all masses do not compose organic bodies. so a pond may very well be full of fish or of other organic bodies, although it is not itself an animal or organic body, but only a mass that contains them. thus i had endeavoured to build upon such foundations, established in a conclusive manner, a complete body of the main articles of knowledge that reason pure and simple can impart to us, a body whereof all the parts were properly connected and capable of meeting the most important difficulties of the ancients and the moderns. i had also in consequence formed for myself a certain system concerning the freedom of man and the cooperation of god. this system appeared to me to be such as would in no wise offend reason and faith; and i desired to submit it to the scrutiny of m. bayle, as well as of those who are in controversy with him. now he has departed from us, and such a loss is no small one, a writer whose learning and acumen few have equalled. but since the subject is under consideration and men of talent are still occupied with it, while the public also follows it attentively, i take this to be a fitting moment for the publication of certain of my ideas. it will perhaps be well to add the observation, before finishing this preface, that in denying the physical influence of the soul upon the [ ] body or of the body upon the soul, that is, an influence causing the one to disturb the laws of the other, i by no means deny the union of the one with the other which forms of them a suppositum; but this union is something metaphysical, which changes nothing in the phenomena. this is what i have already said in reply to the objection raised against me, in the _mémoires de trévoux_, by the reverend father de tournemine, whose wit and learning are of no ordinary mould. and for this reason one may say also in a metaphysical sense that the soul acts upon the body and the body upon the soul. moreover, it is true that the soul is the entelechy or the active principle, whereas the corporeal alone or the mere material contains only the passive. consequently the principle of action is in the soul, as i have explained more than once in the _leipzig journal_. more especially does this appear in my answer to the late herr sturm, philosopher and mathematician of altorf, where i have even demonstrated that, if bodies contained only the passive, their different conditions would be indistinguishable. also i take this opportunity to say that, having heard of some objections made by the gifted author of the book on _self-knowledge_, in that same book, to my system of pre-established harmony, i sent a reply to paris, showing that he has attributed to me opinions i am far from holding. on another matter recently i met with like treatment at the hands of an anonymous doctor of the sorbonne. and these misconceptions would have become plain to the reader at the outset if my own words, which were being taken in evidence, had been quoted. this tendency of men to make mistakes in presenting the opinions of others leads me to observe also, that when i said somewhere that man helps himself in conversion through the succour of grace, i mean only that he derives advantage from it through the cessation of the resistance overcome, but without any cooperation on his part: just as there is no co-operation in ice when it is broken. for conversion is purely the work of god's grace, wherein man co-operates only by resisting it; but human resistance is more or less great according to the persons and the occasions. circumstances also contribute more or less to our attention and to the motions that arise in the soul; and the co-operation of all these things, together with the strength of the impression and the condition of the will, determines the operation of grace, although not rendering it necessary. i have expounded sufficiently elsewhere that in relation to matters of salvation [ ] unregenerate man is to be considered as dead; and i greatly approve the manner wherein the theologians of the augsburg confession declare themselves on this subject. yet this corruption of unregenerate man is, it must be added, no hindrance to his possession of true moral virtues and his performance of good actions in his civic life, actions which spring from a good principle, without any evil intention and without mixture of actual sin. wherein i hope i shall be forgiven, if i have dared to diverge from the opinion of st. augustine: he was doubtless a great man, of admirable intelligence, but inclined sometimes, as it seems, to exaggerate things, above all in the heat of his controversies. i greatly esteem some persons who profess to be disciples of st. augustine, amongst others the reverend father quênel, a worthy successor of the great arnauld in the pursuit of controversies that have embroiled them with the most famous of societies. but i have found that usually in disputes between people of conspicuous merit (of whom there are doubtless some here in both parties) there is right on both sides, although in different points, and it is rather in the matter of defence than attack, although the natural malevolence of the human heart generally renders attack more agreeable to the reader than defence. i hope that the reverend father ptolemei, who does his society credit and is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous bellarmine, will give us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his acumen and his knowledge, and i even dare to add, his moderation. and one must believe that among the theologians of the augsburg confession there will arise some new chemnitz or some new callixtus; even as one is justified in thinking that men like usserius or daillé will again appear among the reformed, and that all will work more and more to remove the misconceptions wherewith this matter is charged. for the rest i shall be well pleased that those who shall wish to examine it closely read the objections with the answers i have given thereto, formulated in the small treatise i have placed at the end of the work by way of summary. i have endeavoured to forestall some new objections. i have explained, for instance, why i have taken the antecedent and consequent will as preliminary and final, after the example of thomas, of scotus and others; how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of all the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, despite [ ] that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been permitted as a _conditio sine qua non_ of good, i mean not according to the principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the fitness of things. furthermore i show that the predetermination i admit is such as always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that god will not refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that which they had. other elucidations besides i have endeavoured to give on some difficulties which have been put before me of late. i have, moreover, followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that i should add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on between mr. hobbes and bishop bramhall touching freedom and necessity, the other of the learned work on _the origin of evil_, published a short time ago in england. finally i have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and if i have conceded something to curiosity, it is because i thought it necessary to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. it is with that in view that i have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and refute it is the same thing. fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that the planets were suns, one might conceive that they were masses melted in the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy the foundation of this hypothetical theology. the ancient error of the two principles, which the orientals distinguished by the names oromasdes and arimanius, caused me to explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. it appears indeed probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the one monarch of a part of upper asia, where there have since been others of this name, the other king of the scythian celts who made incursions into the states of the former, and who was also named amongst the divinities of germania. it seems, indeed, that zoroaster used the names of these princes as symbols of the invisible powers which their exploits made them resemble in the ideas of asiatics. yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of arab authors, who in this might well be better informed than the greeks, it appears from detailed records of ancient oriental history, that this zerdust or zoroaster, whom they make contemporary with the great darius, did not look upon these two principles as completely primitive and [ ] independent, but as dependent upon one supreme and single principle. they relate that he believed, in conformity with the cosmogony of moses, that god, who is without an equal, created all and separated the light from the darkness; that the light conformed with his original design, but that the darkness came as a consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and that this is nothing but privation. such a thesis would clear this ancient author of the errors the greeks imputed to him. his great learning caused the orientals to compare him with the mercury or hermes of the egyptians and greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their wodan or odin to this same mercury. that is why mercredi (wednesday), or the day of mercury, was called wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of zerdust by the asiatics, since it is named zarschamba or dsearschambe by the turks and the persians, zerda by the hungarians from the north-east, and sreda by the slavs from the heart of great russia, as far as the wends of the luneburg region, the slavs having learnt the name also from the orientals. these observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the curious. and i flatter myself that the small dialogue ending the essays written to oppose m. bayle will give some satisfaction to those who are well pleased to see difficult but important truths set forth in an easy and familiar way. i have written in a foreign language at the risk of making many errors in it, because that language has been recently used by others in treating of my subject, and because it is more generally read by those whom one would wish to benefit by this small work. it is to be hoped that the language errors will be pardoned: they are to be attributed not only to the printer and the copyist, but also to the haste of the author, who has been much distracted from his task. if, moreover, any error has crept into the ideas expressed, the author will be the first to correct it, once he has been better informed: he has given elsewhere such indications of his love of truth that he hopes this declaration will not be regarded as merely an empty phrase. [ ] * * * * * preliminary dissertation on the conformity of faith with reason * * * * * . i begin with the preliminary question of the _conformity of faith with reason_, and the use of philosophy in theology, because it has much influence on the main subject of my treatise, and because m. bayle introduces it everywhere. i assume that two truths cannot contradict each other; that the object of faith is the truth god has revealed in an extraordinary way; and that reason is the linking together of truths, but especially (when it is compared with faith) of those whereto the human mind can attain naturally without being aided by the light of faith. this definition of reason (that is to say of strict and true reason) has surprised some persons accustomed to inveigh against reason taken in a vague sense. they gave me the answer that they had never heard of any such explanation of it: the truth is that they have never conferred with people who expressed themselves clearly on these subjects. they have confessed to me, nevertheless, that one could not find fault with reason, understood in the sense which i gave to it. it is in the same sense that sometimes reason is contrasted with experience. reason, since it consists in the linking together of truths, is entitled to connect also those wherewith experience has furnished it, in order thence to draw mixed conclusions; but reason pure and simple, as distinct from experience, only has to do with truths independent of the senses. and one may compare faith with experience, since faith (in respect of the motives that give it justification) depends [ ] upon the experience of those who have seen the miracles whereon revelation is founded, and upon the trustworthy tradition which has handed them down to us, whether through the scriptures or by the account of those who have preserved them. it is rather as we rely upon the experience of those who have seen china and on the credibility of their account when we give credence to the wonders that are told us of that distant country. yet i would also take into account the inward motion of the holy spirit, who takes possession of souls and persuades them and prompts them to good, that is, to faith and to charity, without always having need of motives. . now the truths of reason are of two kinds: the one kind is of those called the 'eternal verities', which are altogether necessary, so that the opposite implies contradiction. such are the truths whose necessity is logical, metaphysical or geometrical, which one cannot deny without being led into absurdities. there are others which may be called _positive_, because they are the laws which it has pleased god to give to nature, or because they depend upon those. we learn them either by experience, that is, _a posteriori_, or by reason and _a priori_, that is, by considerations of the fitness of things which have caused their choice. this fitness of things has also its rules and reasons, but it is the free choice of god, and not a geometrical necessity, which causes preference for what is fitting and brings it into existence. thus one may say that physical necessity is founded on moral necessity, that is, on the wise one's choice which is worthy of his wisdom; and that both of these ought to be distinguished from geometrical necessity. it is this physical necessity that makes order in nature and lies in the rules of motion and in some other general laws which it pleased god to lay down for things when he gave them being. it is therefore true that god gave such laws not without reason, for he chooses nothing from caprice and as though by chance or in pure indifference; but the general reasons of good and of order, which have prompted him to the choice, may be overcome in some cases by stronger reasons of a superior order. . thus it is made clear that god can exempt creatures from the laws he has prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature does not bear by performing a miracle. when they have risen to perfections and faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their nature attain, the schoolmen call this faculty an 'obediential power', that is to say, a [ ] power which the thing acquires by obeying the command of him who can give that which the thing has not. the schoolmen, however, usually give instances of this power which to me appear impossible: they maintain, for example, that god can give the creature the faculty to create. it may be that there are miracles which god performs through the ministry of angels, where the laws of nature are not violated, any more than when men assist nature by art, the skill of angels differing from ours only by degree of perfection. nevertheless it still remains true that the laws of nature are subject to be dispensed from by the law-giver; whereas the eternal verities, as for instance those of geometry, admit no dispensation, and faith cannot contradict them. thus it is that there cannot be any invincible objection to truth. for if it is a question of proof which is founded upon principles or incontestable facts and formed by a linking together of eternal verities, the conclusion is certain and essential, and that which is contrary to it must be false; otherwise two contradictories might be true at the same time. if the objection is not conclusive, it can only form a probable argument, which has no force against faith, since it is agreed that the mysteries of religion are contrary to appearances. now m. bayle declares, in his posthumous reply to m. le clerc, that he does not claim that there are demonstrations contrary to the truths of faith: and as a result all these insuperable difficulties, these so-called wars between reason and faith, vanish away. _hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta,_ _pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt._ . protestant theologians as well as those of the roman confession admit the maxims which i have just laid down, when they handle the matter with attention; and all that is said against reason has no force save against a kind of counterfeit reason, corrupted and deluded by false appearances. it is the same with our notions of the justice and the goodness of god, which are spoken of sometimes as if we had neither any idea nor any definition of their nature. but in that case we should have no ground for ascribing these attributes to him, or lauding him for them. his goodness and his justice as well as his wisdom differ from ours only because they are infinitely more perfect. thus the simple notions, the necessary truths and the conclusive results of philosophy cannot be contrary to revelation. and when some [ ] philosophical maxims are rejected in theology, the reason is that they are considered to have only a physical or moral necessity, which speaks only of that which takes place usually, and is consequently founded on appearances, but which may be withheld if god so pleases. . it seems, according to what i have just said, that there is often some confusion in the expressions of those who set at variance philosophy and theology, or faith and reason: they confuse the terms 'explain', 'comprehend', 'prove', 'uphold'. and i find that m. bayle, shrewd as he is, is not always free from this confusion. mysteries may be _explained_ sufficiently to justify belief in them; but one cannot _comprehend_ them, nor give understanding of how they come to pass. thus even in natural philosophy we explain up to a certain point sundry perceptible qualities, but in an imperfect manner, for we do not comprehend them. nor is it possible for us, either, to prove mysteries by reason; for all that which can be proved _a priori_, or by pure reason, can be comprehended. all that remains for us then, after having believed in the mysteries by reason of the proofs of the truth of religion (which are called 'motives of credibility') is to be able to _uphold_ them against objections. without that our belief in them would have no firm foundation; for all that which can be refuted in a sound and conclusive manner cannot but be false. and such proofs of the truth of religion as can give only a _moral certainty_ would be balanced and even outweighed by such objections as would give an _absolute certainty_, provided they were convincing and altogether conclusive. this little might suffice me to remove the difficulties concerning the use of reason and philosophy in relation to religion if one had not to deal all too often with prejudiced persons. but as the subject is important and it has fallen into a state of confusion, it will be well to take it in greater detail. . the question of the _conformity of faith with reason_ has always been a great problem. in the primitive church the ablest christian authors adapted themselves to the ideas of the platonists, which were the most acceptable to them, and were at that time most generally in favour. little by little aristotle took the place of plato, when the taste for systems began to prevail, and when theology itself became more systematic, owing to the decisions of the general councils, which provided precise and positive formularies. st. augustine, boethius and cassiodorus in the west, and [ ] st. john of damascus in the east contributed most towards reducing theology to scientific form, not to mention bede, alcuin, st. anselm and some other theologians versed in philosophy. finally came the schoolmen. the leisure of the cloisters giving full scope for speculation, which was assisted by aristotle's philosophy translated from the arabic, there was formed at last a compound of theology and philosophy wherein most of the questions arose from the trouble that was taken to reconcile faith with reason. but this had not met with the full success hoped for, because theology had been much corrupted by the unhappiness of the times, by ignorance and obstinacy. moreover, philosophy, in addition to its own faults, which were very great, found itself burdened with those of theology, which in its turn was suffering from association with a philosophy that was very obscure and very imperfect. one must confess, notwithstanding, with the incomparable grotius, that there is sometimes gold hidden under the rubbish of the monks' barbarous latin. i have therefore oft-times wished that a man of talent, whose office had necessitated his learning the language of the schoolmen, had chosen to extract thence whatever is of worth, and that another petau or thomasius had done in respect of the schoolmen what these two learned men have done in respect of the fathers. it would be a very curious work, and very important for ecclesiastical history, and it would continue the history of dogmas up to the time of the revival of letters (owing to which the aspect of things has changed) and even beyond that point. for sundry dogmas, such as those of physical predetermination, of mediate knowledge, philosophical sin, objective precisions, and many other dogmas in speculative theology and even in the practical theology of cases of conscience, came into currency even after the council of trent. . a little before these changes, and before the great schism in the west that still endures, there was in italy a sect of philosophers which disputed this conformity of faith with reason which i maintain. they were dubbed 'averroists' because they were adherents of a famous arab author, who was called the commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be the one of all his race that penetrated furthest into aristotle's meaning. this commentator, extending what greek expositors had already taught, maintained that according to aristotle, and even according to reason (and at that time the two were considered almost identical) there was no case for the [ ] immortality of the soul. here is his reasoning. the human kind is eternal, according to aristotle, therefore if individual souls die not, one must resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that philosopher. or, if there are always new souls, one must admit the infinity of these souls existing from all eternity; but actual infinity is impossible, according to the doctrine of the same aristotle. therefore it is a necessary conclusion that the souls, that is, the forms of organic bodies, must perish with the bodies, or at least this must happen to the passive understanding that belongs to each one individually. thus there will only remain the active understanding common to all men, which according to aristotle comes from outside, and which must work wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the wind produces a kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ pipes. . nothing could have been weaker than this would-be proof. it is not true that aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity is impossible. yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst aristotelians, and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in it. but others who adhered less to aristotle went so far as to advocate a universal soul forming the ocean of all individual souls, and believed this universal soul alone capable of subsisting, whilst individual souls are born and die. according to this opinion the souls of animals are born by being separated like drops from their ocean, when they find a body which they can animate; and they die by being reunited to the ocean of souls when the body is destroyed, as streams are lost in the sea. many even went so far as to believe that god is that universal soul, although others thought that this soul was subordinate and created. this bad doctrine is very ancient and apt to dazzle the common herd. it is expressed in these beautiful lines of vergil (_aen._, vi, v. ): _principio coelum ac terram camposque liquentes,_ _lucentemque globum lunae titaniaque astra,_ _spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus_ _mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._ _inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum._ [ ] and again elsewhere (_georg._, iv, v. ): _deum namque ire per omnes_ _terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:_ _hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,_ _quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas._ _scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri._ . plato's soul of the world has been taken in this sense by some, but there is more indication that the stoics succumbed to that universal soul which swallows all the rest. those who are of this opinion might be called 'monopsychites', since according to them there is in reality only one soul that subsists. m. bernier observes that this is an opinion almost universally accepted amongst scholars in persia and in the states of the grand mogul; it appears even that it has gained a footing with the cabalists and with the mystics. a certain german of swabian birth, converted to judaism some years ago, who taught under the name moses germanus, having adopted the dogmas of spinoza, believed that spinoza revived the ancient cabala of the hebrews. and a learned man who confuted this proselyte jew appears to be of the same opinion. it is known that spinoza recognizes only substance in the world, whereof individual souls are but transient modifications. valentin weigel, pastor of zschopau in saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have it that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion; as was also a man known as johann angelus silesius, author of certain quite pleasing little devotional verses in german, in the form of epigrams, which have just been reprinted. in general, the mystics' doctrine of deification was liable to such a sinister interpretation. gerson already has written opposing ruysbroek, a mystical writer, whose intention was evidently good and whose expressions are excusable. but it would be better to write in a manner that has no need of excuses: although i confess that oft-times expressions which are extravagant, and as it were poetical, have greater force to move and to persuade than correct forms of statement. . the annihilation of all that belongs to us in our own right, carried to great lengths by the quietists, might equally well be veiled irreligion in certain minds, as is related, for example, concerning the quietism of foë, originator of a great chinese sect. after having preached his religion [ ] for forty years, when he felt death was approaching, he declared to his disciples that he had hidden the truth from them under the veil of metaphors, and that all reduced itself to nothingness, which he said was the first source of all things. that was still worse, so it would seem, than the opinion of the averroists. both of these doctrines are indefensible and even extravagant; nevertheless some moderns have made no difficulty about adopting this one and universal soul that engulfs the rest. it has met with only too much applause amongst the so-called freethinkers, and m. de preissac, a soldier and man of wit, who dabbled in philosophy, at one time aired it publicly in his discourses. the system of pre-established harmony is the one best qualified to cure this evil. for it shows that there are of necessity substances which are simple and without extension, scattered throughout all nature; that these substances must subsist independently of every other except god; and that they are never wholly separated from organic body. those who believe that souls capable of feeling but incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but reasoning souls can have feeling, offer a handle to the monopsychites. for it will ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our souls. . i have made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural religion to its very foundations. i return then to the averroists, who were persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively in accordance with reason. as a result they declared that man's soul is, according to philosophy, mortal, while they protested their acquiescence in christian theology, which declares the soul's immortality. but this distinction was held suspect, and this divorce between faith and reason was vehemently rejected by the prelates and the doctors of that time, and condemned in the last lateran council under leo x. on that occasion also, scholars were urged to work for the removal of the difficulties that appeared to set theology and philosophy at variance. the doctrine of their incompatibility continued to hold its ground _incognito_. pomponazzi was suspected of it, although he declared himself otherwise; and that very sect of the averroists survived as a school. it is thought that caesar cremoninus, [ ] a philosopher famous in his time, was one of its mainstays. andreas cisalpinus, a physician (and an author of merit who came nearest after michael servetus to the discovery of the circulation of the blood), was accused by nicolas taurel (in a book entitled _alpes caesae_) of belonging to these anti-religious peripatetics. traces of this doctrine are found also in the _circulus pisanus claudii berigardi_, an author of french nationality who migrated to italy and taught philosophy at pisa: but especially the writings and the letters of gabriel naudé, as well as the _naudaeana_, show that averroism still lived on when this learned physician was in italy. corpuscular philosophy, introduced shortly after, appears to have extinguished this excessively peripatetic sect, or perhaps to have been intermixed with its teaching. it may be indeed that there have been atomists who would be inclined to teach dogmas like those of the averroists, if circumstances so permitted: but this abuse cannot harm such good as there is in corpuscular philosophy, which can very well be combined with all that is sound in plato and in aristotle, and bring them both into harmony with true theology. . the reformers, and especially luther, as i have already observed, spoke sometimes as if they rejected philosophy, and deemed it inimical to faith. but, properly speaking, luther understood by philosophy only that which is in conformity with the ordinary course of nature, or perhaps even philosophy as it was taught in the schools. thus for example he says that it is impossible in philosophy, that is, in the order of nature, that the word be made flesh; and he goes so far as to maintain that what is true in natural philosophy might be false in ethics. aristotle was the object of his anger; and so far back as the year he contemplated the purging of philosophy, when he perhaps had as yet no thoughts of reforming the church. but at last he curbed his vehemence and in the _apology for the augsburg confession_ allowed a favourable mention of aristotle and his _ethics_. melanchthon, a man of sound and moderate ideas, made little systems from the several parts of philosophy, adapted to the truths of revelation and useful in civic life, which deserve to be read even now. after him, pierre de la ramée entered the lists. his philosophy was much in favour: the sect of the ramists was powerful in germany, gaining many adherents among the protestants, and even concerning itself with theology, until the revival of corpuscular philosophy, which caused that of ramée to fall into [ ] oblivion and weakened the authority of the peripatetics. . meanwhile sundry protestant theologians, deviating as far as they could from scholastic philosophy, which prevailed in the opposite party, went so far as to despise philosophy itself, which to them was suspect. the controversy blazed up finally owing to the rancour of daniel hoffmann. he was an able theologian, who had previously gained a reputation at the conference of quedlinburg, when tilemann heshusius and he had supported duke julius of brunswick in his refusal to accept the formula of concord. for some reason or other dr. hoffmann flew into a passion with philosophy, instead of being content to find fault with the wrong uses made thereof by philosophers. he was, however, aiming at the famous caselius, a man esteemed by the princes and scholars of his time; and henry julius, duke of brunswick (son of julius, founder of the university), having taken the trouble himself to investigate the matter, condemned the theologian. there have been some small disputes of the kind since, but it has always been found that they were misunderstandings. paul slevogt, a famous professor at jena in thuringia, whose still extant treatises prove how well versed he was in scholastic philosophy, as also in hebrew literature, had published in his youth under the title of _pervigilium_ a little book 'de dissidio theologi et philosophi in utriusque principiis fundato', bearing on the question whether god is accidentally the cause of sin. but it was easy to see that his aim was to demonstrate that theologians sometimes misuse philosophical terms. . to come now to the events of my own time, i remember that when in louis meyer, a physician of amsterdam, published anonymously the book entitled _philosophia scripturae interpres_ (by many persons wrongly attributed to spinoza, his friend) the theologians of holland bestirred themselves, and their written attacks upon this book gave rise to great disputes among them. divers of them held the opinion that the cartesians, in confuting the anonymous philosopher, had conceded too much to philosophy. jean de labadie (before he had seceded from the reformed church, his pretext being some abuses which he said had crept into public observance and which he considered intolerable) attacked the book by herr von wollzogen, and called it pernicious. on the other hand herr vogelsang, herr van der weye and some other anti-cocceïans also assailed the same [ ] book with much acrimony. but the accused won his case in a synod. afterwards in holland people spoke of 'rational' and 'non-rational' theologians, a party distinction often mentioned by m. bayle, who finally declared himself against the former. but there is no indication that any precise rules have yet been defined which the rival parties accept or reject with regard to the use of reason in the interpretation of holy scripture. . a like dispute has threatened of late to disturb the peace in the churches of the augsburg confession. some masters of arts in the university of leipzig gave private lessons at their homes, to students who sought them out in order to learn what is called 'sacra philologia', according to the practice of this university and of some others where this kind of study is not restricted to the faculty of theology. these masters pressed the study of the holy scriptures and the practice of piety further than their fellows had been wont to do. it is alleged that they had carried certain things to excess, and aroused suspicions of certain doctrinal innovations. this caused them to be dubbed 'pietists', as though they were a new sect; and this name is one which has since caused a great stir in germany. it has been applied somehow or other to those whom one suspected, or pretended to suspect, of fanaticism, or even of hypocrisy, concealed under some semblance of reform. now some of the students attending these masters had become conspicuous for behaviour which gave general offence, and amongst other things for their scorn of philosophy, even, so it was said, burning their notebooks. in consequence the belief arose that their masters rejected philosophy: but they justified themselves very well; nor could they be convicted either of this error or of the heresies that were being imputed to them. . the question of the use of philosophy in theology was debated much amongst christians, and difficulty was experienced over settling the limits of its use when it came to detailed consideration. the mysteries of the trinity, of the incarnation and of the holy communion gave most occasion for dispute. the new photinians, disputing the first two mysteries, made use of certain philosophic maxims which andreas kessler, a theologian of the augsburg confession, summarized in the various treatises that he published on the parts of the socinian philosophy. but as to their metaphysics, one might instruct oneself better therein by reading the [ ] work of christopher stegmann the socinian. it is not yet in print; but i saw it in my youth and it has been recently again in my hands. . calovius and scherzer, authors well versed in scholastic philosophy, and sundry other able theologians answered the socinians at great length, and often with success: for they would not content themselves with the general and somewhat cavalier answers that were commonly used against that sect. the drift of such answers was: that their maxims were good in philosophy and not in theology; that it was the fault of heterogeneousness called [greek: metábasis eis állo génos] to apply those maxims to a matter transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a servant and not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the title of the book by a scot named robert baronius, _philosophia theologiae ancillans_. in fine, philosophy was a hagar beside sara and must be driven from the house with her ishmael when she was refractory. there is something good in these answers: but one might abuse them, and set natural truths and truths of revelation at variance. scholars therefore applied themselves to distinguishing between what is necessary and indispensable in natural or philosophic truths and that which is not so. . the two protestant parties are tolerably in agreement when it is a question of making war on the socinians; and as the philosophy of these sectaries is not of the most exact, in most cases the attack succeeded in reducing it. but the protestants themselves had dissensions on the matter of the eucharistic sacrament. a section of those who are called reformed (namely those who on that point follow rather zwingli than calvin) seemed to reduce the participation in the body of jesus christ in the holy communion to a mere figurative representation, employing the maxim of the philosophers which states that a body can only be in one place at a time. contrariwise the evangelicals (who name themselves thus in a particular sense to distinguish themselves from the reformed), being more attached to the literal sense of scripture, opined with luther that this participation was real, and that here there lay a supernatural mystery. they reject, in truth, the dogma of transubstantiation, which they believe to be without foundation in the text; neither do they approve that of consubstantiation or of impanation, which one could only impute to them if one were ill-informed on their opinion. for they admit no inclusion of the body [ ] of jesus christ in the bread, nor do they even require any union of the one with the other: but they demand at least a concomitance, so that these two substances be received both at the same time. they believe that the ordinary sense of the words of jesus christ on an occasion so important as that which concerned the expression of his last wishes ought to be preserved. thus in order to show that this sense is free from all absurdity which could make it repugnant to us, they maintain that the philosophic maxim restricting the existence of, and partaking in, bodies to one place alone is simply a consequence of the ordinary course of nature. they make that no obstacle to the presence, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the body of our saviour in such form as may be in keeping with the most glorified body. they do not resort to a vague diffusion of ubiquity, which would disperse the body and leave it nowhere in particular; nor do they admit the multiple-reduplication theory of some schoolmen, as if to say one and the same body could be at the same time seated here and standing elsewhere. in fine, they so express themselves that many consider the opinion of calvin, authorized by sundry confessions of faith from the churches that have accepted his teaching, to be not so far removed from the augsburg confession as one might think: for he affirmed a partaking in the substance. the divergence rests perhaps only upon the fact that calvin demands true faith in addition to the oral reception of the symbols, and consequently excludes the unworthy. . thence we see that the dogma of real and substantial participation can be supported (without resorting to the strange opinions of some schoolmen) by a properly understood analogy between _immediate operation_ and _presence_. many philosophers have deemed that, even in the order of nature, a body may operate from a distance immediately on many remote bodies at the same time. so do they believe, all the more, that nothing can prevent divine omnipotence from causing one body to be present in many bodies together, since the transition from immediate operation to presence is but slight, the one perhaps depending upon the other. it is true that modern philosophers for some time now have denied the immediate natural operation of one body upon another remote from it, and i confess that i am of their opinion. meanwhile remote operation has just been revived in england by the admirable mr. newton, who maintains that it is the nature of bodies to be attracted and gravitate one towards another, in proportion[ ] to the mass of each one, and the rays of attraction it receives. accordingly the famous mr. locke, in his answer to bishop stillingfleet, declares that having seen mr. newton's book he retracts what he himself said, following the opinion of the moderns, in his _essay concerning human understanding_, to wit, that a body cannot operate immediately upon another except by touching it upon its surface and driving it by its motion. he acknowledges that god can put properties into matter which cause it to operate from a distance. thus the theologians of the augsburg confession claim that god may ordain not only that a body operate immediately on divers bodies remote from one another, but that it even exist in their neighbourhood and be received by them in a way with which distances of place and dimensions of space have nothing to do. although this effect transcends the forces of nature, they do not think it possible to show that it surpasses the power of the author of nature. for him it is easy to annul the laws that he has given or to dispense with them as seems good to him, in the same way as he was able to make iron float upon water and to stay the operation of fire upon the human body. . i found in comparing the _rationale theologicum_ of nicolaus vedelius with the refutation by johann musaeus that these two authors, of whom one died while a professor at franecker after having taught at geneva and the other finally became the foremost theologian at jena, are more or less in agreement on the principal rules for the use of reason, but that it is in the application of these rules they disagree. for they both agree that revelation cannot be contrary to the truths whose necessity is called by philosophers 'logical' or 'metaphysical', that is to say, whose opposite implies contradiction. they both admit also that revelation will be able to combat maxims whose necessity is called 'physical' and is founded only upon the laws that the will of god has prescribed for nature. thus the question whether the presence of one and the same body in divers places is possible in the supernatural order only touches the application of the rule; and in order to decide this question conclusively by reason, one must needs explain exactly wherein the essence of body consists. even the reformed disagree thereon amongst themselves; the cartesians confine it to extension, but their adversaries oppose that; and i think i have even observed that gisbertus voëtius, a famous theologian of utrecht, [ ] doubted the alleged impossibility of plurality of locations. . furthermore, although the two protestant parties agree that one must distinguish these two necessities which i have just indicated, namely metaphysical necessity and physical necessity, and that the first excludes exceptions even in the case of mysteries, they are not yet sufficiently agreed upon the rules of interpretation, which serve to determine in what cases it is permitted to desert the letter of scripture when one is not certain that it is contrary to strictly universal truths. it is agreed that there are cases where one must reject a literal interpretation that is not absolutely impossible, when it is otherwise unsuitable. for instance, all commentators agree that when our lord said that herod was a fox he meant it metaphorically; and one must accept that, unless one imagine with some fanatics that for the time the words of our lord lasted herod was actually changed into a fox. but it is not the same with the texts on which mysteries are founded, where the theologians of the augsburg confession deem that one must keep to the literal sense. since, moreover, this discussion belongs to the art of interpretation and not to that which is the proper sphere of logic, we will not here enter thereon, especially as it has nothing in common with the disputes that have arisen recently upon the conformity of faith with reason. . theologians of all parties, i believe (fanatics alone excepted), agree at least that no article of faith must imply contradiction or contravene proofs as exact as those of mathematics, where the opposite of the conclusion can be reduced _ad absurdum_, that is, to contradiction. st. athanasius with good reason made sport of the preposterous ideas of some writers of his time, who maintained that god had suffered without any suffering. _'passus est impassibiliter. o ludicram doctrinam aedificantem simul et demolientem!'_ it follows thence that certain writers have been too ready to grant that the holy trinity is contrary to that great principle which states that two things which are the same as a third are also the same as each other: that is to say, if a is the same as b, and if c is the same as b, then a and c must also be the same as each other. for this principle is a direct consequence of that of contradiction, and forms the basis of all logic; and if it ceases, we can no longer reason with certainty. thus when one says that the father is god, that the son is god and that the holy spirit is god, and that nevertheless there is only [ ] one god, although these three persons differ from one another, one must consider that this word _god_ has not the same sense at the beginning as at the end of this statement. indeed it signifies now the divine substance and now a person of the godhead. in general, one must take care never to abandon the necessary and eternal truths for the sake of upholding mysteries, lest the enemies of religion seize upon such an occasion for decrying both religion and mysteries. . the distinction which is generally drawn between that which is _above_ reason and that which is _against_ reason is tolerably in accord with the distinction which has just been made between the two kinds of necessity. for what is contrary to reason is contrary to the absolutely certain and inevitable truths; and what is above reason is in opposition only to what one is wont to experience or to understand. that is why i am surprised that there are people of intelligence who dispute this distinction, and that m. bayle should be of this number. the distinction is assuredly very well founded. a truth is above reason when our mind (or even every created mind) cannot comprehend it. such is, as it seems to me, the holy trinity; such are the miracles reserved for god alone, as for instance creation; such is the choice of the order of the universe, which depends upon universal harmony, and upon the clear knowledge of an infinity of things at once. but a truth can never be contrary to reason, and once a dogma has been disputed and refuted by reason, instead of its being incomprehensible, one may say that nothing is easier to understand, nor more obvious, than its absurdity. for i observed at the beginning that by reason here i do not mean the opinions and discourses of men, nor even the habit they have formed of judging things according to the usual course of nature, but rather the inviolable linking together of truths. . i must come now to the great question which m. bayle brought up recently, to wit, whether a truth, and especially a truth of faith, can prove to be subject to irrefutable objections. this excellent author appears to answer with a bold affirmative: he quotes theologians of repute in his party, and even in the church of rome, who appear to say the same as he affirms; and he cites philosophers who have believed that there are even philosophical truths whose champions cannot answer the objections that are brought up against them. he believes that the theological doctrine of [ ] predestination is of this nature, and in philosophy that of the composition of the _continuum_. these are, indeed, the two labyrinths which have ever exercised theologians and philosophers. libertus fromondus, a theologian of louvain (a great friend of jansenius, whose posthumous book entitled _augustinus_ he in fact published), who also wrote a book entitled explicitly _labyrinthus de compositione continui_, experienced in full measure the difficulties inherent in both doctrines; and the renowned ochino admirably presented what he calls 'the labyrinths of predestination'. . but these writers have not denied the possibility of finding thread in the labyrinth; they have recognized the difficulty, but they have surely not turned difficulty into sheer impossibility. as for me, i confess that i cannot agree with those who maintain that a truth can admit of irrefutable objections: for is an _objection_ anything but an argument whose conclusion contradicts our thesis? and is not an irrefutable argument a _demonstration_? and how can one know the certainty of demonstrations except by examining the argument in detail, the form and the matter, in order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to make do with admitted premisses alone? now if there is such an objection against our thesis we must say that the falsity of this thesis is demonstrated, and that it is impossible for us to have reasons sufficient to prove it; otherwise two contradictories would be true at once. one must always yield to proofs, whether they be proposed in positive form or advanced in the shape of objections. and it is wrong and fruitless to try to weaken opponents' proofs, under the pretext that they are only objections, since the opponent can play the same game and can reverse the denominations, exalting his arguments by naming them 'proofs' and sinking ours under the blighting title of 'objections'. . it is another question whether we are always obliged to examine the objections we may have to face, and to retain some doubt in respect of our own opinion, or what is called _formido oppositi_, until this examination has been made. i would venture to say no, for otherwise one would never attain to certainty and our conclusion would be always provisional. i believe that able geometricians will scarce be troubled by the objections of joseph scaliger against archimedes, or by those of mr. hobbes [ ] against euclid; but that is because they have fully understood and are sure of the proofs. nevertheless it is sometimes well to show oneself ready to examine certain objections. on the one hand it may serve to rescue people from their error, while on the other we ourselves may profit by it; for specious fallacies often contain some useful solution and bring about the removal of considerable difficulties. that is why i have always liked ingenious objections made against my own opinions, and i have never examined them without profit: witness those which m. bayle formerly made against my system of pre-established harmony, not to mention those which m. arnauld, m. l'abbé foucher and father lami, o.s.b., made to me on the same subject. but to return to the principal question, i conclude from reasons i have just set forth that when an objection is put forward against some truth, it is always possible to answer it satisfactorily. . it may be also that m. bayle does not mean 'insoluble objections' in the sense that i have just explained. i observe that he varies, at least in his expressions: for in his posthumous reply to m. le clerc he does not admit that one can bring demonstrations against the truths of faith. it appears therefore that he takes the objections to be insoluble only in respect of our present degree of enlightenment; and in this reply, p. , he even does not despair of the possibility that one day a solution hitherto unknown may be found by someone. concerning that more will be said later. i hold an opinion, however, that will perchance cause surprise, namely that this solution has been discovered entire, and is not even particularly difficult. indeed a mediocre intelligence capable of sufficient care, and using correctly the rules of common logic, is in a position to answer the most embarrassing objection made against truth, when the objection is only taken from reason, and when it is claimed to be a 'demonstration'. whatever scorn the generality of moderns have to-day for the logic of aristotle, one must acknowledge that it teaches infallible ways of resisting error in these conjunctures. for one has only to examine the argument according to the rules and it will always be possible to see whether it is lacking in form or whether there are premisses such as are not yet proved by a good argument. . it is quite another matter when there is only a question of _probabilities_, for the art of judging from probable reasons is not yet well established; so that our logic in this connexion is still very [ ] imperfect, and to this very day we have little beyond the art of judging from demonstrations. but this art is sufficient here: for when it is a question of opposing reason to an article of our faith, one is not disturbed by objections that only attain probability. everyone agrees that appearances are against mysteries, and that they are by no means probable when regarded only from the standpoint of reason; but it suffices that they have in them nothing of absurdity. thus demonstrations are required if they are to be refuted. . and doubtless we are so to understand it when holy scripture warns us that the wisdom of god is foolishness before men, and when st. paul observed that the gospel of jesus christ is foolishness unto the greeks, as well as unto the jews a stumbling-block. for, after all, one truth cannot contradict another, and the light of reason is no less a gift of god than that of revelation. also it is a matter of no difficulty among theologians who are expert in their profession, that the motives of credibility justify, once for all, the authority of holy scripture before the tribunal of reason, so that reason in consequence gives way before it, as before a new light, and sacrifices thereto all its probabilities. it is more or less as if a new president sent by the prince must show his letters patent in the assembly where he is afterwards to preside. that is the tendency of sundry good books that we have on the truth of religion, such as those of augustinus steuchus, of du plessis-mornay or of grotius: for the true religion must needs have marks that the false religions have not, else would zoroaster, brahma, somonacodom and mahomet be as worthy of belief as moses and jesus christ. nevertheless divine faith itself, when it is kindled in the soul, is something more than an opinion, and depends not upon the occasions or the motives that have given it birth; it advances beyond the intellect, and takes possession of the will and of the heart, to make us act with zeal and joyfully as the law of god commands. then we have no further need to think of reasons or to pause over the difficulties of argument which the mind may anticipate. . thus what we have just said of human reason, which is extolled and decried by turns, and often without rule or measure, may show our lack of exactitude and how much we are accessary to our own errors. nothing would be so easy to terminate as these disputes on the rights of faith and of reason if men would make use of the commonest rules of logic and reason[ ] with even a modicum of attention. instead of that, they become involved in oblique and ambiguous phrases, which give them a fine field for declamation, to make the most of their wit and their learning. it would seem, indeed, that they have no wish to see the naked truth, peradventure because they fear that it may be more disagreeable than error: for they know not the beauty of the author of all things, who is the source of truth. . this negligence is a general defect of humanity, and one not to be laid to the charge of any particular person. _abundamus dulcibus vitiis_, as quintilian said of the style of seneca, and we take pleasure in going astray. exactitude incommodes us and rules we regard as puerilities. thus it is that common logic (although it is more or less sufficient for the examination of arguments that tend towards certainty) is relegated to schoolboys; and there is not even a thought for a kind of logic which should determine the balance between probabilities, and would be so necessary in deliberations of importance. so true is it that our mistakes for the most part come from scorn or lack of the art of thinking: for nothing is more imperfect than our logic when we pass beyond necessary arguments. the most excellent philosophers of our time, such as the authors of _the art of thinking_, of _the search for truth_ and of the _essay concerning human understanding_, have been very far from indicating to us the true means fitted to assist the faculty whose business it is to make us weigh the probabilities of the true and the false: not to mention the art of discovery, in which success is still more difficult of attainment, and whereof we have nothing beyond very imperfect samples in mathematics. . one thing which might have contributed most towards m. bayle's belief that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be obviated is that he seems to demand that god be justified in some such manner as that commonly used for pleading the cause of a man accused before his judge. but he has not remembered that in the tribunals of men, which cannot always penetrate to the truth, one is often compelled to be guided by signs and probabilities, and above all by presumptions or prejudices; whereas it is agreed, as we have already observed, that mysteries are not probable. for instance, m. bayle will not have it that one can justify the goodness of god in the permission of sin, because probability would be against a man that should happen to be in circumstances comparable in our eyes to [ ] this permission. god foresees that eve will be deceived by the serpent if he places her in the circumstances wherein she later found herself; and nevertheless he placed her there. now if a father or a guardian did the same in regard to his child or his ward, if a friend did so in regard to a young person whose behaviour was his concern, the judge would not be satisfied by the excuses of an advocate who said that the man only permitted the evil, without doing it or willing it: he would rather take this permission as a sign of ill intention, and would regard it as a sin of omission, which would render the one convicted thereof accessary in another's sin of commission. . but it must be borne in mind that when one has foreseen the evil and has not prevented it although it seems as if one could have done so with ease, and one has even done things that have facilitated it, it does not follow on that account _necessarily_ that one is accessary thereto. it is only a very strong presumption, such as commonly replaces truth in human affairs, but which would be destroyed by an exact consideration of the facts, supposing we were capable of that in relation to god. for amongst lawyers that is called 'presumption' which must provisionally pass for truth in case the contrary is not proved; and it says more than 'conjecture', although the _dictionary_ of the academy has not sifted the difference. now there is every reason to conclude unquestionably that one would find through this consideration, if only it were attainable, that reasons most just, and stronger than those which appear contrary to them, have compelled the all-wise to permit the evil, and even to do things which have facilitated it. of this some instances will be given later. . it is none too easy, i confess, for a father, a guardian, a friend to have such reasons in the case under consideration. yet the thing is not absolutely impossible, and a skilled writer of fiction might perchance find an extraordinary case that would even justify a man in the circumstances i have just indicated. but in reference to god there is no need to suppose or to establish particular reasons such as may have induced him to permit the evil; general reasons suffice. one knows that he takes care of the whole universe, whereof all the parts are connected; and one must thence infer that he has had innumerable considerations whose result made him deem it inadvisable to prevent certain evils. . it should even be concluded that there must have been great or [ ] rather invincible reasons which prompted the divine wisdom to the permission of the evil that surprises us, from the mere fact that this permission has occurred: for nothing can come from god that is not altogether consistent with goodness, justice and holiness. thus we can judge by the event (or _a posteriori_) that the permission was indispensable, although it be not possible for us to show this (_a priori_) by the detailed reasons that god can have had therefor; as it is not necessary either that we show this to justify him. m. bayle himself aptly says concerning that (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ): sin made its way into the world; god therefore was able to permit it without detriment to his perfections; _ab actu ad potentiam valet consequentia._ in god this conclusion holds good: he did this, therefore he did it well. it is not, then, that we have no notion of justice in general fit to be applied also to god's justice; nor is it that god's justice has other rules than the justice known of men, but that the case in question is quite different from those which are common among men. universal right is the same for god and for men; but the question of fact is quite different in their case and his. . we may even assume or pretend (as i have already observed) that there is something similar among men to this circumstance in god's actions. a man might give such great and strong proofs of his virtue and his holiness that all the most apparent reasons one could put forward against him to charge him with an alleged crime, for instance a larceny or murder, would deserve to be rejected as the calumnies of false witnesses or as an extraordinary play of chance which sometimes throws suspicion on the most innocent. thus in a case where every other would run the risk of being condemned or put to the torture (according to the laws of the country), this man would be absolved by his judges unanimously. now in this case, which indeed is rare, but which is not impossible, one might say in a sense (_sano sensu_) that there is a conflict between reason and faith, and that the rules of law are other in respect of this person than they are in respect of the remainder of mankind. but that, when explained, will signify only that appearances of reason here give way before the faith that is due to the word and the integrity of this great and holy man, and that he is privileged above other men; not indeed as if there were one law for others and another for him, nor as if one had no understanding of what justice is in relation to him. it is rather because the rules of universal justice do not find here [ ] the application that they receive elsewhere, or because they favour him instead of accusing him, since there are in this personage qualities so admirable, that by virtue of a good logic of probabilities one should place more faith in his word than in that of many others. . since it is permitted here to imagine possible cases, may one not suppose this incomparable man to be the adept or the possessor of _'that blessed stone_ _able to enrich all earthly kings alone'_ and that he spends every day prodigious sums in order to feed and to rescue from distress countless numbers of poor men? be there never so many witnesses or appearances of every kind tending to prove that this great benefactor of the human race has just committed some larceny, is it not true that the whole earth would make mock of the accusation, however specious it might be? now god is infinitely above the goodness and the power of this man, and consequently there are no reasons at all, however apparent they be, that can hold good against faith, that is, against the assurance or the confidence in god wherewith we can and ought to say that god has done all things well. the objections are therefore not insoluble. they only involve prejudices and probabilities, which are, however, overthrown by reasons incomparably stronger. one must not say either that what we call _justice_ is nothing in relation to god, that he is the absolute master of all things even to the point of being able to condemn the innocent without violating his justice, or finally that justice is something arbitrary where he is concerned. those are rash and dangerous expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the attributes of god. for if such were the case there would be no reason for praising his goodness and his justice: rather would it be as if the most wicked spirit, the prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as i observed before. what means would there be of distinguishing the true god from the false god of zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for anything whatever? . it is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to commit ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say that we [ ] have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and the goodness of god, and which would vanish away if the facts were well known to us. we need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as queen christine used to say: it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary to mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural things we are very often undeceived about appearances either by experience or by superior reasons. all that has been set down here in advance, only with the object of showing more plainly wherein the fault of the objections and the abuse of reason consists in the present case, where the claim is made that reason has greatest force against faith: we shall come afterwards to a more exact discussion of that which concerns the origin of evil and the permission of sin with its consequences. . for now, it will be well to continue our examination of the important question of the use of reason in theology, and to make reflexions upon what m. bayle has said thereon in divers passages of his works. as he paid particular attention in his _historical and critical dictionary_ to expounding the objections of the manichaeans and those of the pyrrhonians, and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this _dictionary_, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action. i am persuaded (as i have said above) that the specious objections one can urge against truth are very useful, and that they serve to confirm and to illumine it, giving opportunity to intelligent persons to find new openings or to turn the old to better account. but m. bayle seeks therein a usefulness quite the reverse of this: it would be that of displaying the power of faith by showing that the truths it teaches cannot sustain the attacks of reason and that it nevertheless holds its own in the heart of the faithful. m. nicole seems to call that 'the triumph of god's authority over human reason', in the words of his quoted by m. bayle in the third volume of his _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (ch. , p. ). but since reason is a gift of god, even as faith is, contention between them would cause god to contend against god; and if the objections of reason against any article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said that this alleged article will be false and not revealed: this will be [ ] a chimera of the human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable of comparison with bonfires lighted after a defeat. such is the doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized children, which m. nicole would have us assume to be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal damnation of adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of salvation. . yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions; and persons whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content with instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and if some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to god a sacrifice of their curiosity: for when one is assured of a truth one has no need to listen to the objections. as there are many people whose faith is rather small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, i think one must not present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one cannot hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added to it; that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection, certainly not withhold it as unobtainable. . the passages from the excellent theologians who speak of this triumph of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the principles i have just affirmed. there appear in some objects of faith two great qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is _incomprehensibility_, the other is _the lack of probability_. but one must beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof m. bayle speaks, and of saying that what one believes is _indefensible_: for that would be to cause reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith. incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths. for instance (as i have already pointed out) we do not comprehend the nature of odours and savours, and yet we are persuaded, by a kind of faith which we owe to the evidence of the senses, that these perceptible qualities are founded upon the nature of things and that they are not illusions. . there are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when they are sufficiently verified. there is a little romance of spanish origin, whose title states that one must not always believe what one sees. what was there more specious than the lie of the false martin guerre, who was acknowledged as the true martin by the true martin's wife and [ ] relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to waver for a long time even after the arrival of the other? nevertheless the truth was known in the end. it is the same with faith. i have already observed that all one can oppose to the goodness and the justice of god is nothing but appearances, which would be strong against a man, but which are nullified when they are applied to god and when they are weighed against the proofs that assure us of the infinite perfection of his attributes. thus faith triumphs over false reasons by means of sound and superior reasons that have made us embrace it; but it would not triumph if the contrary opinion had for it reasons as strong as or even stronger than those which form the foundation of faith, that is, if there were invincible and conclusive objections against faith. . it is well also to observe here that what m. bayle calls a 'triumph of faith' is in part a triumph of demonstrative reason against apparent and deceptive reasons which are improperly set against the demonstrations. for it must be taken into consideration that the objections of the manichaeans are hardly less contrary to natural theology than to revealed theology. and supposing one surrendered to them holy scripture, original sin, the grace of god in jesus christ, the pains of hell and the other articles of our religion, one would not even so be delivered from their objections: for one cannot deny that there is in the world physical evil (that is, suffering) and moral evil (that is, crime) and even that physical evil is not always distributed here on earth according to the proportion of moral evil, as it seems that justice demands. there remains, then, this question of natural theology, how a sole principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy? . now we have no need of revealed faith to know that there is such a sole principle of all things, entirely good and wise. reason teaches us this by infallible proofs; and in consequence all the objections taken from the course of things, in which we observe imperfections, are only based on false appearances. for, if we were capable of understanding the universal harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault with is connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word, we _should see_, and should not _believe_ only, that what god has done is the best. i call 'seeing' here what one knows _a priori_ by the causes; and [ ] 'believing' what one only judges by the effects, even though the one be as certainly known as the other. and one can apply here too the saying of st. paul ( cor. v. ), that we walk by _faith_ and not by _sight_. for the infinite wisdom of god being known to us, we conclude that the evils we experience had to be permitted, and this we conclude from the effect or _a posteriori_, that is to say, because they exist. it is what m. bayle acknowledges; and he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that one must put an end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. it is as if one asked that there should be no more dreams or optical illusions. . and it is not to be doubted that this faith and this confidence in god, who gives us insight into his infinite goodness and prepares us for his love, in spite of the appearances of harshness that may repel us, are an admirable exercise for the virtues of christian theology, when the divine grace in jesus christ arouses these motions within us. that is what luther aptly observed in opposition to erasmus, saying that it is love in the highest degree to love him who to flesh and blood appears so unlovable, so harsh toward the unfortunate and so ready to condemn, and to condemn for evils in which he appears to be the cause or accessary, at least in the eyes of those who allow themselves to be dazzled by false reasons. one may therefore say that the triumph of true reason illumined by divine grace is at the same time the triumph of faith and love. . m. bayle appears to have taken the matter quite otherwise: he declares himself against reason, when he might have been content to censure its abuse. he quotes the words of cotta in cicero, where he goes so far as to say that if reason were a gift of the gods providence would be to blame for having given it, since it tends to our harm. m. bayle also thinks that human reason is a source of destruction and not of edification (_historical and critical dictionary_, p. , col. ), that it is a runner who knows not where to stop, and who, like another penelope, herself destroys her own work. _destruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis._ (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, p. ). but he takes pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other, in order to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason just as he does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as oppose religion only that they may sacrifice them to faith by a mere [ ] repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument that is brought against them. he begins with the new testament. jesus christ was content to say: 'follow me' (luke v. ; ix. ). the apostles said: 'believe, and thou shalt be saved' (acts xvi. ). st. paul acknowledges that his 'doctrine is obscure' ( cor. xiii. ), that 'one can comprehend nothing therein' unless god impart a spiritual discernment, and without that it only passes for foolishness ( cor. ii. ). he exhorts the faithful 'to beware of philosophy' (col. ii. ) and to avoid disputations in that science, which had caused many persons to lose faith. . as for the fathers of the church, m. bayle refers us to the collection of passages from them against the use of philosophy and of reason which m. de launoy made (_de varia aristotelis fortuna,_ cap. ) and especially to the passages from st. augustine collected by m. arnauld (against mallet), which state: that the judgements of god are inscrutable; that they are not any the less just for that they are unknown to us; that it is a deep abyss, which one cannot fathom without running the risk of falling down the precipice; that one cannot without temerity try to elucidate that which god willed to keep hidden; that his will cannot but be just; that many men, having tried to explain this incomprehensible depth, have fallen into vain imaginations and opinions full of error and bewilderment. . the schoolmen have spoken in like manner. m. bayle quotes a beautiful passage from cardinal cajetan (part i, _summ._, qu. , art. ) to this effect: 'our mind', he says, 'rests not upon the evidence of known truth but upon the impenetrable depth of hidden truth. and as st. gregory says: he who believes touching the divinity only that which he can gauge with his mind belittles the idea of god. yet i do not surmise that it is necessary to deny any of the things which we know, or which we see as appertaining to the immutability, the actuality, the certainty, the universality, etc., of god: but i think that there is here some secret, either in regard to the relation which exists between god and the event, or in respect of what connects the event itself with his prevision. thus, reflecting that the understanding of our soul is the eye of the owl, i find the soul's repose only in ignorance. for it is better both for the catholic faith and for philosophic faith to confess our blindness, than to affirm as evident what does not afford our mind the contentment which self-evidence gives. i do not accuse of presumption, on that account, all the learned men who [ ] stammeringly have endeavoured to suggest, as far as in them lay, the immobility and the sovereign and eternal efficacy of the understanding, of the will and of the power of god, through the infallibility of divine election and divine relation to all events. nothing of all that interferes with my surmise that there is some depth which is hidden from us.' this passage of cajetan is all the more notable since he was an author competent to reach the heart of the matter. . luther's book against erasmus is full of vigorous comments hostile to those who desire to submit revealed truths to the tribunal of our reason. calvin often speaks in the same tone, against the inquisitive daring of those who seek to penetrate into the counsels of god. he declares in his treatise on predestination that god had just causes for damning some men, but causes unknown to us. finally m. bayle quotes sundry modern writers who have spoken to the same effect (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. et seq.). . but all these expressions and innumerable others like them do not prove that the objections opposed to faith are so insoluble as m. bayle supposes. it is true that the counsels of god are inscrutable, but there is no invincible objection which tends to the conclusion that they are unjust. what appears injustice on the part of god, and foolishness in our faith, only appears so. the famous passage of tertullian (_de carne christi_), 'mortuus est dei filius, credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus revixit, certum est, quia impossibile', is a sally that can only be meant to concern appearances of absurdity. there are others like them in luther's book on _freewill in bondage_, as when he says (ch. ): 'si placet tibi deus indignos coronans, non debet displicere immeritos damnans.' which being reduced to more temperate phrasing, means: if you approve that god give eternal glory to those who are not better than the rest, you should not disapprove that he abandon those who are not worse than the rest. and to judge that he speaks only of appearances of injustice, one only has to weigh these words of the same author taken from the same book: 'in all the rest', he says, 'we recognize in god a supreme majesty; there is only justice that we dare to question: and we will not believe provisionally [tantisper] that he is just, albeit he has promised us that the time shall come when his glory being revealed all men shall see clearly that he has been and that he is just.' [ ] . it will be found also that when the fathers entered into a discussion they did not simply reject reason. and, in disputations with the pagans, they endeavour usually to show how paganism is contrary to reason, and how the christian religion has the better of it on that side also. origen showed celsus how reasonable christianity is and why, notwithstanding, the majority of christians should believe without examination. celsus had jeered at the behaviour of christians, 'who, willing', he said, 'neither to listen to your reasons nor to give you any for what they believe, are content to say to you: examine not, only believe, or: your faith will save you; and they hold this as a maxim, that the wisdom of the world is an evil.' . origen gives the answer of a wise man, and in conformity with the principles we have established in the matter. for reason, far from being contrary to christianity, serves as a foundation for this religion, and will bring about its acceptance by those who can achieve the examination of it. but, as few people are capable of this, the heavenly gift of plain faith tending towards good suffices for men in general. 'if it were possible', he says, 'for all men, neglecting the affairs of life, to apply themselves to study and meditation, one need seek no other way to make them accept the christian religion. for, to say nothing likely to offend anyone' (he insinuates that the pagan religion is absurd, but he will not say so explicitly), 'there will be found therein no less exactitude than elsewhere, whether in the discussion of its dogmas, or in the elucidation of the enigmatical expressions of its prophets, or in the interpretation of the parables of its gospels and of countless other things happening or ordained symbolically. but since neither the necessities of life nor the infirmities of men permit of this application to study, save for a very small number of persons, what means could one find more qualified to benefit everyone else in the world than those jesus christ wished to be used for the conversion of the nations? and i would fain ask with regard to the great number of those who believe, and who thereby have withdrawn themselves from the quagmire of vices wherein before they were plunged, which would be the better: to have thus changed one's morals and reformed one's life, believing without examination that there are punishments for sin and rewards for good actions; or to have waited for one's conversion until one not only believed but had examined with care the foundations of these dogmas? it is certain that, were this method to be followed, few[ ] indeed would reach that point whither they are led by their plain and simple faith, but the majority would remain in their corruption.' . m. bayle (in his explanation concerning the objections of the manichaeans, placed at the end of the second edition of the _dictionary_) takes those words where origen points out that religion can stand the test of having her dogmas discussed, as if it were not meant in relation to philosophy, but only in relation to the accuracy wherewith the authority and the true meaning of holy scripture is established. but there is nothing to indicate this restriction. origen wrote against a philosopher whom such a restriction would not have suited. and it appears that this father wished to point out that among christians there was no less exactitude than among the stoics and some other philosophers, who established their doctrine as much by reason as by authorities, as, for example, chrysippus did, who found his philosophy even in the symbols of pagan antiquity. . celsus brings up still another objection to the christians, in the same place. 'if they withdraw', he says, 'regularly into their "examine not, only believe", they must tell me at least what are the things they wish me to believe.' therein he is doubtless right, and that tells against those who would say that god is good and just, and who yet would maintain that we have no notion of goodness and of justice when we attribute these perfections to him. but one must not always demand what i call 'adequate notions', involving nothing that is not explained, since even perceptible qualities, like heat, light, sweetness, cannot give us such notions. thus we agreed that mysteries should receive an explanation, but this explanation is imperfect. it suffices for us to have some analogical understanding of a mystery such as the trinity and the incarnation, to the end that in accepting them we pronounce not words altogether devoid of meaning: but it is not necessary that the explanation go as far as we would wish, that is, to the extent of comprehension and to the _how_. . it appears strange therefore that m. bayle rejects the tribunal of _common notions_ (in the third volume of his _reply to the questions of a provincial_, pp. and ) as if one should not consult the idea of goodness in answering the manichaeans; whereas he had declared himself quite differently in his _dictionary_. of necessity there must be agreement upon the meaning of _good_ and _bad_, amongst those who are in dispute[ ] over the question whether there is only one principle, altogether good, or whether there are two, the one good and the other bad. we understand something by union when we are told of the union of one body with another or of a substance with its accident, of a subject with its adjunct, of the place with the moving body, of the act with the potency; we also mean something when we speak of the union of the soul with the body to make thereof one single person. for albeit i do not hold that the soul changes the laws of the body, or that the body changes the laws of the soul, and i have introduced the pre-established harmony to avoid this derangement, i nevertheless admit a true union between the soul and the body, which makes thereof a suppositum. this union belongs to the metaphysical, whereas a union of influence would belong to the physical. but when we speak of the union of the word of god with human nature we should be content with an analogical knowledge, such as the comparison of the union of the soul with the body is capable of giving us. we should, moreover, be content to say that the incarnation is the closest union that can exist between the creator and the creature; and further we should not want to go. . it is the same with the other mysteries, where moderate minds will ever find an explanation sufficient for belief, but never such as would be necessary for understanding. a certain _what it is_ ([greek: ti esti]) is enough for us, but the _how_ ([greek: pôs]) is beyond us, and is not necessary for us. one may say concerning the explanations of mysteries which are given out here and there, what the queen of sweden inscribed upon a medal concerning the crown she had abandoned, 'non mi bisogna, e non mi basta.' nor have we any need either (as i have already observed) to prove the mysteries _a priori_, or to give a reason for them; it suffices us _that the thing is thus_ ([greek: to hoti]) even though we know not the _why_ ([greek: to dioti]), which god has reserved for himself. these lines, written on that theme by joseph scaliger, are beautiful and renowned: _ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,_ _quaecumque libris vis prophetarum indidit_ _afflata caelo, plena veraci deo:_ _nec operta sacri supparo silentii_ _irrumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri._ [page ] _nescire velle, quae magister optimus_ _docere non vult, erudita inscitia est._ m. bayle, who quotes them (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, p. ), holds the likely opinion that scaliger made them upon the disputes between arminius and gomarus. i think m. bayle repeated them from memory, for he put _sacrata_ instead of _afflata_. but it is apparently the printer's fault that _prudenter_ stands in place of _pudenter_ (that is, modestly) which the metre requires. . nothing can be more judicious than the warning these lines contain; and m. bayle is right in saying (p. ) that those who claim that the behaviour of god with respect to sin and the consequences of sin contains nothing but what they can account for, deliver themselves up to the mercy of their adversary. but he is not right in combining here two very different things, 'to account for a thing', and 'to uphold it against objections'; as he does when he presently adds: 'they are obliged to follow him [their adversary] everywhere whither he shall wish to lead them, and it would be to retire ignominiously and ask for quarter, if they were to admit that our intelligence is too weak to remove completely all the objections advanced by a philosopher.' . it seems here that, according to m. bayle, 'accounting for' comes short of 'answering objections', since he threatens one who should undertake the first with the resulting obligation to pass on to the second. but it is quite the opposite: he who maintains a thesis (the _respondens_) is not bound to account for it, but he is bound to meet the objections of an opponent. a defendant in law is not bound (as a general rule) to prove his right or to produce his title to possession; but he is obliged to reply to the arguments of the plaintiff. i have marvelled many times that a writer so precise and so shrewd as m. bayle so often here confuses things where so much difference exists as between these three acts of reason: to comprehend, to prove, and to answer objections; as if when it is a question of the use of reason in theology one term were as good as another. thus he says in his posthumous conversations, p. : 'there is no principle which m. bayle has more often inculcated than this, that the incomprehensibility of a dogma and the insolubility of the objections that oppose it provide no legitimate reason for rejecting it.' this is true as regards the incomprehensibility, but it is not the same with the insolubility. and it is indeed just as if one said that an invincible reason against a [ ] thesis was not a legitimate reason for rejecting it. for what other legitimate reason for rejecting an opinion can one find, if an invincible opposing argument is not such an one? and what means shall one have thereafter of demonstrating the falsity, and even the absurdity, of any opinion? . it is well to observe also that he who proves a thing _a priori_ accounts for it through the efficient cause; and whosoever can thus account for it in a precise and adequate manner is also in a position to comprehend the thing. therefore it was that the scholastic theologians had already censured raymond lully for having undertaken to demonstrate the trinity by philosophy. this so-called demonstration is to be found in his _works_; and bartholomaeus keckermann, a writer renowned in the reformed party, having made an attempt of just the same kind upon the same mystery, has been no less censured for it by some modern theologians. therefore censure will fall upon those who shall wish to account for this mystery and make it comprehensible, but praise will be given to those who shall toil to uphold it against the objections of adversaries. . i have said already that theologians usually distinguish between what is above reason and what is against reason. they place _above_ reason that which one cannot comprehend and which one cannot account for. but _against_ reason will be all opinion that is opposed by invincible reasons, or the contrary of which can be proved in a precise and sound manner. they avow, therefore, that the mysteries are above reason, but they do not admit that they are contrary to it. the english author of a book which is ingenious, but has met with disapproval, entitled _christianity not mysterious_, wished to combat this distinction; but it does not seem to me that he has at all weakened it. m. bayle also is not quite satisfied with this accepted distinction. this is what he says on the matter (vol. iii of the _reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. ). firstly (p. ) he distinguishes, together with m. saurin, between these two theses: the one, _all the dogmas of christianity are in conformity with reason_; the other, _human reason knows that they are in conformity with reason_. he affirms the first and denies the second. i am of the same opinion, if in saying 'that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that it is possible to account for it or to explain its _how_ by reason; for god could doubtless do so, and we cannot. but i think that one must affirm both theses if by [ ] 'knowing that a dogma conforms to reason' one means that we can demonstrate, if need be, that there is no contradiction between this dogma and reason, repudiating the objections of those who maintain that this dogma is an absurdity. . m. bayle explains himself here in a manner not at all convincing. he acknowledges fully that our mysteries are in accordance with the supreme and universal reason that is in the divine understanding, or with reason in general; yet he denies that they are in accordance with that part of reason which man employs to judge things. but this portion of reason which we possess is a gift of god, and consists in the natural light that has remained with us in the midst of corruption; thus it is in accordance with the whole, and it differs from that which is in god only as a drop of water differs from the ocean or rather as the finite from the infinite. therefore mysteries may transcend it, but they cannot be contrary to it. one cannot be contrary to one part without being contrary to the whole. that which contradicts a proposition of euclid is contrary to the _elements_ of euclid. that which in us is contrary to the mysteries is not reason nor is it the natural light or the linking together of truths; it is corruption, or error, or prejudice, or darkness. . m. bayle (p. ) is not satisfied with the opinion of josua stegman and of m. turretin, protestant theologians who teach that the mysteries are contrary only to corrupt reason. he asks, mockingly, whether by right reason is meant perchance that of an orthodox theologian and by corrupt reason that of an heretic; and he urges the objection that the evidence of the mystery of the trinity was no greater in the soul of luther than in the soul of socinius. but as m. descartes has well observed, good sense is distributed to all: thus one must believe that both the orthodox and heretics are endowed therewith. right reason is a linking together of truths, corrupt reason is mixed with prejudices and passions. and in order to discriminate between the two, one need but proceed in good order, admit no thesis without proof, and admit no proof unless it be in proper form, according to the commonest rules of logic. one needs neither any other criterion nor other arbitrator in questions of reason. it is only through lack of this consideration that a handle has been given to the sceptics, and that even in theology françois véron and some others, who [ ] exacerbated the dispute with the protestants, even to the point of dishonesty, plunged headlong into scepticism in order to prove the necessity of accepting an infallible external judge. their course meets with no approval from the most expert, even in their own party: calixtus and daillé derided it as it deserved, and bellarmine argued quite otherwise. . now let us come to what m. bayle says (p. ) on the distinction we are concerned with. 'it seems to me', he says, 'that an ambiguity has crept into the celebrated distinction drawn between things that are above reason and things that are against reason. the mysteries of the gospel are above reason, so it is usually said, but they are not contrary to reason. i think that the same sense is not given to the word reason in the first part of this axiom as in the second: by the first is understood rather the reason of man, or reason _in concreto_ and by the second reason in general, or reason _in abstracto_. for supposing that it is understood always as reason in general or the supreme reason, the universal reason that is in god, it is equally true that the mysteries of the gospels are not above reason and that they are not against reason. but if in both parts of the axiom human reason is meant, i do not clearly see the soundness of the distinction: for the most orthodox confess that we know not how our mysteries can conform to the maxims of philosophy. it seems to us, therefore, that they are not in conformity with our reason. now that which appears to us not to be in conformity with our reason appears contrary to our reason, just as that which appears to us not in conformity with truth appears contrary to truth. thus why should not one say, equally, that the mysteries are against our feeble reason, and that they are above our feeble reason?' i answer, as i have done already, that 'reason' here is the linking together of the truths that we know by the light of nature, and in this sense the axiom is true and without any ambiguity. the mysteries transcend our reason, since they contain truths that are not comprised in this sequence; but they are not contrary to our reason, and they do not contradict any of the truths whereto this sequence can lead us. accordingly there is no question here of the universal reason that is in god, but of our reason. as for the question whether we know the mysteries to conform with our reason, i answer that at least we never know of any non-conformity or any opposition between the mysteries and reason. moreover, we can always abolish such alleged [ ] opposition, and so, if this can be called reconciling or harmonizing faith with reason, or recognizing the conformity between them, it must be said that we can recognize this conformity and this harmony. but if the conformity consists in a reasonable explanation of the _how_, we cannot recognize it. . m. bayle makes one more ingenious objection, which he draws from the example of the sense of sight. 'when a square tower', he says, 'from a distance appears to us round, our eyes testify very clearly not only that they perceive nothing square in this tower, but also that they discover there a round shape, incompatible with the square shape. one may therefore say that the truth which is the square shape is not only above, but even against, the witness of our feeble sight.' it must be admitted that this observation is correct, and although it be true that the appearance of roundness comes simply from the effacement of the angles, which distance causes to disappear, it is true, notwithstanding, that the round and the square are opposites. therefore my answer to this objection is that the representation of the senses, even when they do all that in them lies, is often contrary to the truth; but it is not the same with the faculty of reasoning, when it does its duty, since a strictly reasoned argument is nothing but a linking together of truths. and as for the sense of sight in particular, it is well to consider that there are yet other false appearances which come not from the 'feebleness of our eyes' nor from the loss of visibility brought about by distance, but from the very _nature of vision_, however perfect it be. it is thus, for instance, that the circle seen sideways is changed into that kind of oval which among geometricians is known as an ellipse, and sometimes even into a parabola or a hyperbola, or actually into a straight line, witness the ring of saturn. . the _external_ senses, properly speaking, do not deceive us. it is our inner sense which often makes us go too fast. that occurs also in brute beasts, as when a dog barks at his reflexion in the mirror: for beasts have _consecutions_ of perception which resemble reasoning, and which occur also in the inner sense of men, when their actions have only an empirical quality. but beasts do nothing which compels us to believe that they have what deserves to be properly called a _reasoning_ sense, as i have shown elsewhere. now when the understanding uses and follows the false decision of the inner sense (as when the famous galileo thought that saturn had[ ] two handles) it is deceived by the judgement it makes upon the effect of appearances, and it infers from them more than they imply. for the appearances of the senses do not promise us absolutely the truth of things, any more than dreams do. it is we who deceive ourselves by the use we make of them, that is, by our consecutions. indeed we allow ourselves to be deluded by probable arguments, and we are inclined to think that phenomena such as we have found linked together often are so always. thus, as it happens usually that that which appears without angles has none, we readily believe it to be always thus. such an error is pardonable, and sometimes inevitable, when it is necessary to act promptly and choose that which appearances recommend; but when we have the leisure and the time to collect our thoughts, we are in fault if we take for certain that which is not so. it is therefore true that appearances are often contrary to truth, but our reasoning never is when it proceeds strictly in accordance with the rules of the art of reasoning. if by _reason_ one meant generally the faculty of reasoning whether well or ill, i confess that it might deceive us, and does indeed deceive us, and the appearances of our understanding are often as deceptive as those of the senses: but here it is a question of the linking together of truths and of objections in due form, and in this sense it is impossible for reason to deceive us. . thus it may be seen from all i have just said that m. bayle carries too far _the being above reason_, as if it included the insoluble nature of objections: for according to him (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ) 'once a dogma is above reason, philosophy can neither explain it nor comprehend it, nor meet the difficulties that are urged against it'. i agree with regard to comprehension, but i have already shown that the mysteries receive a necessary verbal explanation, to the end that the terms employed be not _sine mente soni_, words signifying nothing. i have shown also that it is necessary for one to be capable of answering the objections, and that otherwise one must needs reject the thesis. . he adduces the authority of theologians, who appear to recognize the insoluble nature of the objections against the mysteries. luther is one of the chief of these; but i have already replied, in § , to the passage where he seems to say that philosophy contradicts theology. there is another passage (_de servo arbitrio_, ch. ) where he says that the apparent injustice of god is proved by arguments taken from the [ ] adversity of good people and the prosperity of the wicked, an argument irresistible both for all reason and for natural intelligence ('argumentis talibus traducta, quibus nulla ratio aut lumen naturae potest resistere'). but soon afterwards he shows that he means it only of those who know nothing of the life to come, since he adds that an expression in the gospel dissipates this difficulty, teaching us that there is another life, where that which has not been punished and rewarded in this life shall receive its due. the objection is then far from being insuperable, and even without the aid of the gospel one could bethink oneself of this answer. there is also quoted (_reply_, vol. iii, p. ) a passage from martin chemnitz, criticized by vedelius and defended by johann musaeus, where this famous theologian seems to say clearly that there are truths in the word of god which are not only above reason but also against reason. but this passage must be taken as referring only to the principles of reason that are in accordance with the order of nature, as musaeus also interprets it. . it is true nevertheless that m. bayle finds some authorities who are more favourable to him, m. descartes being one of the chief. this great man says positively (part i of his _principles_, art. ) 'that we shall have not the slightest trouble in ridding ourselves of the difficulty' (which one may have in harmonizing the freedom of our will with the order of the eternal providence of god) 'if we observe that our thought is finite, and that the knowledge and the omnipotence of god, whereby he has not only known from all eternity all that which is or which can be, but also has willed it, is infinite. we have therefore quite enough intelligence to recognize clearly and distinctly that this knowledge and this power are in god; but we have not enough so to comprehend their scope that we can know how they leave the actions of men entirely free and undetermined. yet the power and the knowledge of god must not prevent us from believing that we have a free will; for we should be wrong to doubt of that whereof we are inwardly conscious, and which we know by experience to be within us, simply because we do not comprehend some other thing which we know to be incomprehensible in its nature.' . this passage from m. descartes, followed by his adherents (who rarely think of doubting what he asserts), has always appeared strange to me. not content with saying that, as for him, he sees no way of reconciling [ ] the two dogmas, he puts the whole human race, and even all rational creatures, in the same case. yet could he have been unaware that there is no possibility of an insuperable objection against truth? for such an objection could only be a necessary linking together of other truths whose result would be contrary to the truth that one maintains; and consequently there would be contradiction between the truths, which would be an utter absurdity. moreover, albeit our mind is finite and cannot comprehend the infinite, of the infinite nevertheless it has proofs whose strength or weakness it comprehends; why then should it not have the same comprehension in regard to the objections? and since the power and the wisdom of god are infinite and comprehend everything, there is no pretext for doubting their scope. further, m. descartes demands a freedom which is not needed, by his insistence that the actions of the will of man are altogether undetermined, a thing which never happens. finally, m. bayle himself maintains that this experience or this inward sense of our independence, upon which m. descartes founds the proof of our freedom, does not prove it: for from the fact that we are not conscious of the causes whereon we depend, it does not follow, according to m. bayle, that we are independent. but that is something we will speak of in its proper place. . it seems that m. descartes confesses also, in a passage of his _principles_, that it is impossible to find an answer to the difficulties on the division of matter to infinity, which he nevertheless recognizes as actual. arriaga and other schoolmen make well-nigh the same confession: but if they took the trouble to give to the objections the form these ought to have, they would see that there are faults in the reasoning, and sometimes false assumptions which cause confusion. here is an example. a man of parts one day brought up to me an objection in the following form: let the straight line ba be cut in two equal parts at the point c, and the part ca at the point d, and the part da at the point e, and so on to infinity; all the halves, bc, cd, de, etc., together make the whole ba; therefore there must be a last half, since the straight line ba finishes at a. but this last half is absurd: for since it is a line, it will be possible again to cut it in two. therefore division to infinity cannot be admitted. but i pointed out to him that one is not justified in the inference that there must be a last half, although there be a last point a, for this last point belongs to all the halves of its side. and my friend acknowledged it [ ] himself when he endeavoured to prove this deduction by a formal argument; on the contrary, just because the division goes on to infinity, there is no last half. and although the straight line ab be finite, it does not follow that the process of dividing it has any final end. the same confusion arises with the series of numbers going on to infinity. one imagines a final end, a number that is infinite, or infinitely small; but that is all simple fiction. every number is finite and specific; every line is so likewise, and the infinite or infinitely small signify only magnitudes that one may take as great or as small as one wishes, to show that an error is smaller than that which has been specified, that is to say, that there is no error; or else by the infinitely small is meant the state of a magnitude at its vanishing point or its beginning, conceived after the pattern of magnitudes already actualized. . it will, however, be well to consider the argument that m. bayle puts forward to show that one cannot refute the objections which reason opposes to the mysteries. it is in his comment on the manichaeans (p. of the second edition of his _dictionary_). 'it is enough for me', he says, 'that it be unanimously acknowledged that the mysteries of the gospel are above reason. for thence comes the necessary conclusion that it is impossible to settle the difficulties raised by the philosophers, and in consequence that a dispute where only the light of nature is followed will always end unfavourably for the theologians, and that they will see themselves forced to give way and to take refuge in the canon of the supernatural light.' i am surprised that m. bayle speaks in such general terms, since he has acknowledged himself that the light of nature is against the manichaeans, and for the oneness of the principle, and that the goodness of god is proved incontrovertibly by reason. yet this is how he continues: . 'it is evident that reason can never attain to that which is above it. now if it could supply answers to the objections which are opposed to the dogma of the trinity and that of hypostatic union, it would attain to those two mysteries, it would have them in subjection and submit them to the strictest examination by comparison with its first principles, or with the aphorisms that spring from common notions, and proceed until finally it had drawn the conclusion that they are in accordance with natural light. it would therefore do what exceeds its powers, it would soar above its [ ] confines, and that is a formal contradiction. one must therefore say that it cannot provide answers to its own objections, and that thus they remain victorious, so long as one does not have recourse to the authority of god and to the necessity of subjugating one's understanding to the obedience of faith.' i do not find that there is any force in this reasoning. we can attain to that which is above us not by penetrating it but by maintaining it; as we can attain to the sky by sight, and not by touch. nor is it necessary that, in order to answer the objections which are made against the mysteries, one should have them in subjection to oneself, and submit them to examination by comparison with the first principles that spring from common notions. for if he who answers the objections had to go so far, he who proposes the objections needs must do it first. it is the part of the objection to open up the subject, and it is enough for him who answers to say yes or no. he is not obliged to counter with a distinction: it will do, in case of need, if he denies the universality of some proposition in the objection or criticizes its form, and one may do both these things without penetrating beyond the objection. when someone offers me a proof which he maintains is invincible, i can keep silence while i compel him merely to prove in due form all the enunciations that he brings forward, and such as appear to me in the slightest degree doubtful. for the purpose of doubting only, i need not at all probe to the heart of the matter; on the contrary, the more ignorant i am the more shall i be justified in doubting. m. bayle continues thus: . 'let us endeavour to clarify that. if some doctrines are above reason they are beyond its reach, it cannot attain to them; if it cannot attain to them, it cannot comprehend them.' (he could have begun here with the 'comprehend', saying that reason cannot comprehend that which is above it.) 'if it cannot comprehend them, it can find in them no idea' (_non valet consequentia_: for, to 'comprehend' something, it is not enough that one have some ideas thereof; one must have all the ideas of everything that goes to make it up, and all these ideas must be clear, distinct, _adequate_. there are a thousand objects in nature in which we understand something, but which we do not therefore necessarily comprehend. we have some ideas on the rays of light, we demonstrate upon them up to a certain point; but there ever remains something which makes us confess that we do not yet comprehend the whole nature of light.) 'nor any principle such[ ] as may give rise to a solution;' (why should not evident principles be found mingled with obscure and confused knowledge?) 'and consequently the objections that reason has made will remain unanswered;' (by no means; the difficulty is rather on the side of the opposer. it is for him to seek an evident principle such as may give rise to some objection; and the more obscure the subject, the more trouble he will have in finding such a principle. moreover, when he has found it he will have still more trouble in demonstrating an opposition between the principle and the mystery: for, if it happened that the mystery was evidently contrary to an evident principle, it would not be an obscure mystery, it would be a manifest absurdity.) 'or what is the same thing, answer will be made with some distinction as obscure as the very thesis that will have been attacked.' (one can do without distinctions, if need be, by denying either some premiss or some conclusion; and when one is doubtful of the meaning of some term used by the opposer one may demand of him its definition. thus the defender has no need to incommode himself when it is a question of answering an adversary who claims that he is offering us an invincible proof. but even supposing that the defender, perchance being kindly disposed, or for the sake of brevity, or because he feels himself strong enough, should himself vouchsafe to show the ambiguity concealed in the objection, and to remove it by making some distinction, this distinction need not of necessity lead to anything clearer than the first thesis, since the defender is not obliged to elucidate the mystery itself.) . 'now it is certain', so m. bayle continues, 'that an objection which is founded on distinct notions remains equally victorious, whether you give to it no answer, or you make an answer where none can comprehend anything. can the contest be equal between a man who alleges in objection to you that which you and he very clearly conceive, and you, who can only defend yourself by answers wherein neither of you understands anything?' (it is not enough that the objection be founded on quite distinct notions, it is necessary also that one apply it in contradiction of the thesis. and when i answer someone by denying some premiss, in order to compel him to prove it, or some conclusion, to compel him to put it in good form, it cannot be said that i answer nothing or that i answer nothing intelligible. for as it is the doubtful premiss of the adversary that i deny, my denial will be [ ] as intelligible as his affirmation. finally, when i am so obliging as to explain myself by means of some distinction, it suffices that the terms i employ have some meaning, as in the mystery itself. thus something in my answer will be comprehended: but one need not of necessity comprehend all that it involves; otherwise one would comprehend the mystery also.) . m. bayle continues thus: 'every philosophical dispute assumes that the disputant parties agree on certain definitions' (this would be desirable, but usually it is only in the dispute itself that one reaches such a point, if the necessity arises.) 'and that they admit the rules of syllogisms, and the signs for the recognition of bad arguments. after that everything lies in the investigation as to whether a thesis conforms mediately or immediately to the principles one is agreed upon' (which is done by means of the syllogisms of him who makes objections); 'whether the premisses of a proof (advanced by the opposer) 'are true; whether the conclusion is properly drawn; whether a four-term syllogism has been employed; whether some aphorism of the chapter _de oppositis_ or _de sophisticis elenchis_, etc., has not been violated.' (it is enough, putting it briefly, to deny some premiss or some conclusion, or finally to explain or get explained some ambiguous term.) 'one comes off victorious either by showing that the subject of dispute has no connexion with the principles which had been agreed upon' (that is to say, by showing that the objection proves nothing, and then the defender wins the case), 'or by reducing the defender to absurdity' (when all the premisses and all the conclusions are well proved). 'now one can reduce him to that point either by showing him that the conclusions of his thesis are "yes" and "no" at once, or by constraining him to say only intelligible things in answer.' (this last embarrassment he can always avoid, because he has no need to advance new theses.) 'the aim in disputes of this kind is to throw light upon obscurities and to arrive at self-evidence.' (it is the aim of the opposer, for he wishes to demonstrate that the mystery is false; but this cannot here be the aim of the defender, for in admitting mystery he agrees that one cannot demonstrate it.) 'this leads to the opinion that during the course of the proceedings victory sides more or less with the defender or with the opposer, according to whether there is more or less clarity in the propositions of the one than in the propositions of the other.' (that [ ] is speaking as if the defender and the opposer were equally unprotected; but the defender is like a besieged commander, covered by his defence works, and it is for the attacker to destroy them. the defender has no need here of self-evidence, and he seeks it not: but it is for the opposer to find it against him, and to break through with his batteries in order that the defender may be no longer protected.) . 'finally, it is judged that victory goes against him whose answers are such that one comprehends nothing in them,' (it is a very equivocal sign of victory: for then one must needs ask the audience if they comprehend anything in what has been said, and often their opinions would be divided. the order of formal disputes is to proceed by arguments in due form and to answer them by denying or making a distinction.) 'and who confesses that they are incomprehensible.' (it is permitted to him who maintains the truth of a mystery to confess that this mystery is incomprehensible; and if this confession were sufficient for declaring him vanquished there would be no need of objection. it will be possible for a truth to be incomprehensible, but never so far as to justify the statement that one comprehends nothing at all therein. it would be in that case what the ancient schools called _scindapsus_ or _blityri_ (clem. alex., _stromateis_, ), that is, words devoid of meaning.) 'he is condemned thenceforth by the rules for awarding victory; and even when he cannot be pursued in the mist wherewith he has covered himself, and which forms a kind of abyss between him and his antagonists, he is believed to be utterly defeated, and is compared to an army which, having lost the battle, steals away from the pursuit of the victor only under cover of night.' (matching allegory with allegory, i will say that the defender is not vanquished so long as he remains protected by his entrenchments; and if he risks some sortie beyond his need, it is permitted to him to withdraw within his fort, without being open to blame for that.) . i was especially at pains to analyse this long passage where m. bayle has put down his strongest and most skilfully reasoned statements in support of his opinion: and i hope that i have shown clearly how this excellent man has been misled. that happens all too easily to the ablest and shrewdest persons when they give free rein to their wit without exercising the patience necessary for delving down to the very foundations of their systems. the details we have entered into here will serve as [ ] answer to some other arguments upon the subject which are dispersed through the works of m. bayle, as for instance when he says in his _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (vol. iii, ch. , p. ): 'to prove that one has brought reason and religion into harmony one must show not only that one has philosophic maxims favourable to our faith, but also that the particular maxims cast up against us as not being consistent with our catechism are in reality consistent with it in a clearly conceived way.' i do not see that one has need of all that, unless one aspire to press reasoning as far as the _how_ of the mystery. when one is content to uphold its truth, without attempting to render it comprehensible, one has no need to resort to philosophic maxims, general or particular, for the proof; and when another brings up some philosophic maxims against us, it is not for us to prove clearly and distinctly that these maxims are consistent with our dogma, but it is for our opponent to prove that they are contrary thereto. . m. bayle continues thus in the same passage: 'for this result we need an answer as clearly evident as the objection.' i have already shown that it is obtained when one denies the premisses, but that for the rest it is not necessary for him who maintains the truth of the mystery always to advance evident propositions, since the principal thesis concerning the mystery itself is not evident. he adds further: 'if we must make reply and rejoinder, we must never rest in our positions, nor claim that we have accomplished our design, so long as our opponent shall make answer with things as evident as our reasons can be.' but it is not for the defender to adduce reasons; it is enough for him to answer those of his opponent. . finally the author draws the conclusion: 'if it were claimed that, on making an evident objection, a man has to be satisfied with an answer which we can only state as a thing possible though incomprehensible to us, that would be unfair.' he repeats this in the posthumous dialogues, against m. jacquelot, p. . i am not of this opinion. if the objection were completely evident, it would triumph, and the thesis would be overthrown. but when the objection is only founded on appearances or on instances of the most frequent occurrence, and when he who makes it desires to draw from it a universal and certain conclusion, he who upholds the mystery may answer with the instance of a bare possibility. for such an instance [ ] suffices to show that what one wished to infer from the premisses, is neither certain nor general; and it suffices for him who upholds the mystery to maintain that it is possible, without having to maintain that it is probable. for, as i have often said, it is agreed that the mysteries are against appearances. he who upholds the mystery need not even adduce such an instance; and should he adduce it, it were indeed a work of supererogation, or else an instrument of greater confusion to the adversary. . there are passages of m. bayle in the posthumous reply that he made to m. jacquelot which seem to me still worthy of scrutiny. 'm. bayle' (according to pp. , ) 'constantly asserts in his _dictionary_, whenever the subject allows, that our reason is more capable of refuting and destroying than of proving and building; that there is scarcely any philosophical or theological matter in respect of which it does not create great difficulties. thus', he says, 'if one desired to follow it in a disputatious spirit, as far as it can go, one would often be reduced to a state of troublesome perplexity; and in fine, there are doctrines certainly true, which it disputes with insoluble objections.' i think that what is said here in reproach of reason is to its advantage. when it overthrows some thesis, it builds up the opposing thesis. and when it seems to be overthrowing the two opposing theses at the same time, it is then that it promises us something profound, provided that we follow it _as far as it can go_, not in a disputatious spirit but with an ardent desire to search out and discover the truth, which will always be recompensed with a great measure of success. . m. bayle continues: 'that one must then ridicule these objections, recognizing the narrow bounds of the human mind.' and i think, on the other hand, that one must recognize the signs of the force of the human mind, which causes it to penetrate into the heart of things. these are new openings and, as it were, rays of the dawn which promises us a greater light: i mean in philosophical subjects or those of natural theology. but when these objections are made against revealed faith it is enough that one be able to repel them, provided that one do so in a submissive and zealous spirit, with intent to sustain and exalt the glory of god. and when we succeed in respect of his justice, we shall likewise be impressed by his greatness and charmed by his goodness, which will show themselves through the clouds of a seeming reason that is deceived by outward [ ] appearances, in proportion as the mind is elevated by true reason to that which to us is invisible, but none the less sure. . 'thus' (to continue with m. bayle) 'reason will be compelled to lay down its arms, and to subjugate itself to the obedience of the faith, which it can and ought to do, in virtue of some of its most incontestable maxims. thus also in renouncing some of its other maxims it acts nevertheless in accordance with that which it is, that is to say, in reason.' but one must know 'that such maxims of reason as must be renounced in this case are only those which make us judge by appearances or according to the ordinary course of things.' this reason enjoins upon us even in philosophical subjects, when there are invincible proofs to the contrary. it is thus that, being made confident by demonstrations of the goodness and the justice of god, we disregard the appearances of harshness and injustice which we see in this small portion of his kingdom that is exposed to our gaze. hitherto we have been illumined by the _light of nature_ and by that of _grace_, but not yet by that of _glory_. here on earth we see apparent injustice, and we believe and even know the truth of the hidden justice of god; but we shall see that justice when at last the sun of justice shall show himself as he is. . it is certain that m. bayle can only be understood as meaning those ostensible maxims which must give way before the eternal verities; for he acknowledges that reason is not in reality contrary to faith. in these posthumous dialogues he complains (p. , against m. jacquelot) of being accused of the belief that our mysteries are in reality against reason, and (p. , against m. le clerc) of the assertion made that he who acknowledges that a doctrine is exposed to irrefutable objections acknowledges also by a necessary consequence the falsity of this doctrine. nevertheless one would be justified in the assertion if the irrefutability were more than an outward appearance. . it may be, therefore, that having long contended thus against m. bayle on the matter of the use of reason i shall find after all that his opinions were not fundamentally so remote from mine as his expressions, which have provided matter for our considerations, have led one to believe. it is true that frequently he appears to deny absolutely that one can ever answer the objections of reason against faith, and that he asserts the necessity of comprehending, in order to achieve such an end, how the mystery comes [ ] to be or exists. yet there are passages where he becomes milder, and contents himself with saying that the answers to these objections are unknown to him. here is a very precise passage, taken from the excursus on the manichaeans, which is found at the end of the second edition of his _dictionary_: 'for the greater satisfaction of the most punctilious readers, i desire to declare here' (he says, p. ) 'that wherever the statement is to be met with in my _dictionary_ that such and such arguments are irrefutable i do not wish it to be taken that they are so in actuality. i mean naught else than that they appear to me irrefutable. that is of no consequence: each one will be able to imagine, if he pleases, that if i deem thus of a matter it is owing to my lack of acumen.' i do not imagine such a thing; his great acumen is too well known to me: but i think that, after having applied his whole mind to magnifying the objections, he had not enough attention left over for the purpose of answering them. . m. bayle confesses, moreover, in his posthumous work against m. le clerc, that the objections against faith have not the force of proofs. it is therefore _ad hominem_ only, or rather _ad homines_, that is, in relation to the existing state of the human race, that he deems these objections irrefutable and the subject unexplainable. there is even a passage where he implies that he despairs not of the possibility that the answer or the explanation may be found, and even in our time. for here is what he says in his posthumous reply to m. le clerc (p. ): 'm. bayle dared to hope that his toil would put on their mettle some of those great men of genius who create new systems, and that they could discover a solution hitherto unknown.' it seems that by this 'solution' he means such an explanation of mystery as would penetrate to the _how_: but that is not necessary for replying to the objections. . many have undertaken to render this _how_ comprehensible, and to prove the possibility of mysteries. a certain writer named thomas bonartes nordtanus anglus, in his _concordia scientiae cum fide,_ claimed to do so. this work seemed to me ingenious and learned, but crabbed and involved, and it even contains indefensible opinions. i learned from the _apologia cyriacorum_ of the dominican father vincent baron that that book was censured in rome, that the author was a jesuit, and that he suffered for having published it. the reverend father des bosses, who now teaches theology in the jesuit college of hildesheim, and who has combined [ ] rare erudition with great acumen, which he displays in philosophy and theology, has informed me that the real name of bonartes was thomas barton, and that after leaving the society he retired to ireland, where the manner of his death brought about a favourable verdict on his last opinions. i pity the men of talent who bring trouble upon themselves by their toil and their zeal. something of like nature happened in time past to pierre abelard, to gilbert de la porree, to john wyclif, and in our day to the englishman thomas albius, as well as to some others who plunged too far into the explanation of the mysteries. . st. augustine, however (as well as m. bayle), does not despair of the possibility that the desired solution may be found upon earth; but this father believes it to be reserved for some holy man illumined by a peculiar grace: 'est aliqua causa fortassis occultior, quae melioribus sanctioribusque reservatur, illius gratia potius quam meritis illorum' (in _de genesi ad literam_, lib. , c. ). luther reserves the knowledge of the mystery of election for the academy of heaven (lib. _de servo arbitrio_, c. ): 'illic [deus] gratiam et misericordiam spargit in indignos, his iram et severitatem spargit in immeritos; utrobique nimius et iniquus apud homines, sed justus et verax apud se ipsum. nam quomodo hoc justum sit ut indignos coronet, incomprehensibile est modo, videbimus autem, cum illuc venerimus, ubi jam non credetur, sed revelata facie videbitur. ita quomodo hoc justum sit, ut immeritos damnet, incomprehensibile est modo, creditur tamen, donec revelabitur filius hominis.' it is to be hoped that m. bayle now finds himself surrounded by that light which is lacking to us here below, since there is reason to suppose that he was not lacking in good will. virgil _candidus insueti miratur limen olympi,_ _sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera daphnis._ lucan _...illic postquam se lumine vero_ _implevit, stellasque vagas miratur et astra_ _fixa polis, vidit quanta sub nocte jaceret_ _nostra dies._ [ ] * * * * * essays on the justice of god and the freedom of man in the origin of evil * * * * * part one . having so settled the rights of faith and of reason as rather to place reason at the service of faith than in opposition to it, we shall see how they exercise these rights to support and harmonize what the light of nature and the light of revelation teach us of god and of man in relation to evil. the _difficulties_ are distinguishable into two classes. the one kind springs from man's freedom, which appears incompatible with the divine nature; and nevertheless freedom is deemed necessary, in order that man may be deemed guilty and open to punishment. the other kind concerns the conduct of god, and seems to make him participate too much in the existence of evil, even though man be free and participate also therein. and this conduct appears contrary to the goodness, the holiness and the justice of god, since god co-operates in evil as well physical as moral, and co-operates in each of them both morally and physically; and since it seems that these evils are manifested in the order of nature as well as in that of grace, and in the future and eternal life as well as, nay, more than, in this transitory life. . to present these difficulties in brief, it must be observed that freedom is opposed, to all appearance, by determination or certainty of any kind whatever; and nevertheless the common dogma of our philosophers states that the truth of contingent futurities is determined. the foreknowledge of[ ] god renders all the future certain and determined, but his providence and his foreordinance, whereon foreknowledge itself appears founded, do much more: for god is not as a man, able to look upon events with unconcern and to suspend his judgement, since nothing exists save as a result of the decrees of his will and through the action of his power. and even though one leave out of account the co-operation of god, all is perfectly connected in the order of things, since nothing can come to pass unless there be a cause so disposed as to produce the effect, this taking place no less in voluntary than in all other actions. according to which it appears that man is compelled to do the good and evil that he does, and in consequence that he deserves therefor neither recompense nor chastisement: thus is the morality of actions destroyed and all justice, divine and human, shaken. . but even though one should grant to man this freedom wherewith he arrays himself to his own hurt, the conduct of god could not but provide matter for a criticism supported by the presumptuous ignorance of men, who would wish to exculpate themselves wholly or in part at the expense of god. it is objected that all the reality and what is termed the substance of the act in sin itself is a production of god, since all creatures and all their actions derive from him that reality they have. whence one could infer not only that he is the physical cause of sin, but also that he is its moral cause, since he acts with perfect freedom and does nothing without a complete knowledge of the thing and the consequences that it may have. nor is it enough to say that god has made for himself a law to co-operate with the wills or resolutions of man, whether we express ourselves in terms of the common opinion or in terms of the system of occasional causes. not only will it be found strange that he should have made such a law for himself, of whose results he was not ignorant, but the principal difficulty is that it seems the evil will itself cannot exist without co-operation, and even without some predetermination, on his part, which contributes towards begetting this will in man or in some other rational creature. for an action is not, for being evil, the less dependent on god. whence one will come at last to the conclusion that god does all, the good and the evil, indifferently; unless one pretend with the manichaeans that there are two principles, the one good and the other evil. moreover, according to the general opinion of theologians and philosophers, conservation being a [ ] perpetual creation, it will be said that man is perpetually created corrupt and erring. there are, furthermore, modern cartesians who claim that god is the sole agent, of whom created beings are only the purely passive organs; and m. bayle builds not a little upon that idea. . but even granting that god should co-operate in actions only with a general co-operation, or even not at all, at least in those that are bad, it suffices, so it is said, to inculpate him and to render him the moral cause that nothing comes to pass without his permission. to say nothing of the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if, having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he places him there notwithstanding. man is exposed to a temptation to which it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original sin'. thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this means death and diseases being introduced, with a thousand other misfortunes and miseries that in general afflict the good and the bad; wickedness will even hold sway and virtue will be oppressed on earth, so that it will scarce appear that a providence governs affairs. but it is much worse when one considers the life to come, since but a small number of men will be saved and since all the rest will perish eternally. furthermore these men destined for salvation will have been withdrawn from the corrupt mass through an unreasoning election, whether it be said that god in choosing them has had regard to their future actions, to their faith or to their works, or one claim that he has been pleased to give them these good qualities and these actions because he has predestined them to salvation. for though it be said in the most lenient system that god wished to save all men, and though in the other systems commonly accepted it be granted, that he has made his son take human nature upon him to expiate their sins, so that all they who shall believe in him with a lively and final faith shall be saved, it still remains true that this lively faith is a gift of god; that we are dead to all good works; that even our will itself must be aroused by a prevenient grace, and that god gives us the power to will and to do. and whether that be done through a grace efficacious of itself, that is to say, through a divine inward motion which wholly determines our [ ] will to the good that it does; or whether there be only a sufficient grace, but such as does not fail to attain its end, and to become efficacious in the inward and outward circumstances wherein the man is and has been placed by god: one must return to the same conclusion that god is the final reason of salvation, of grace, of faith and of election in jesus christ. and be the election the cause or the result of god's design to give faith, it still remains true that he gives faith or salvation to whom he pleases, without any discernible reason for his choice, which falls upon but few men. . so it is a terrible judgement that god, giving his only son for the whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of men, yet saves so few of them and abandons all others to the devil his enemy, who torments them eternally and makes them curse their creator, though they have all been created to diffuse and show forth his goodness, his justice and his other perfections. and this outcome inspires all the more horror, as the sole cause why all these men are wretched to all eternity is god's having exposed their parents to a temptation that he knew they would not resist; as this sin is inherent and imputed to men before their will has participated in it; as this hereditary vice impels their will to commit actual sins; and as countless men, in childhood or maturity, that have never heard or have not heard enough of jesus christ, saviour of the human race, die before receiving the necessary succour for their withdrawal from this abyss of sin. these men too are condemned to be for ever rebellious against god and plunged in the most horrible miseries, with the wickedest of all creatures, though in essence they have not been more wicked than others, and several among them have perchance been less guilty than some of that little number of elect, who were saved by a grace without reason, and who thereby enjoy an eternal felicity which they had not deserved. such in brief are the difficulties touched upon by sundry persons; but m. bayle was one who insisted on them the most, as will appear subsequently when we examine his passages. i think that now i have recorded the main essence of these difficulties: but i have deemed it fitting to refrain from some expressions and exaggerations which might have caused offence, while not rendering the objections any stronger. . let us now turn the medal and let us also point out what can be said in answer to those objections; and here a course of explanation through [ ] fuller dissertation will be necessary: for many difficulties can be opened up in few words, but for their discussion one must dilate upon them. our end is to banish from men the false ideas that represent god to them as an absolute prince employing a despotic power, unfitted to be loved and unworthy of being loved. these notions are the more evil in relation to god inasmuch as the essence of piety is not only to fear him but also to love him above all things: and that cannot come about unless there be knowledge of his perfections capable of arousing the love which he deserves, and which makes the felicity of those that love him. feeling ourselves animated by a zeal such as cannot fail to please him, we have cause to hope that he will enlighten us, and that he will himself aid us in the execution of a project undertaken for his glory and for the good of men. a cause so good gives confidence: if there are plausible appearances against us there are proofs on our side, and i would dare to say to an adversary: _aspice, quam mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum._ . _god is the first reason of things_: for such things as are bounded, as all that which we see and experience, are contingent and have nothing in them to render their existence necessary, it being plain that time, space and matter, united and uniform in themselves and indifferent to everything, might have received entirely other motions and shapes, and in another order. therefore one must seek the reason for the existence of the world, which is the whole assemblage of _contingent_ things, and seek it in the substance which carries with it the reason for its existence, and which in consequence is _necessary_ and eternal. moreover, this cause must be intelligent: for this existing world being contingent and an infinity of other worlds being equally possible, and holding, so to say, equal claim to existence with it, the cause of the world must needs have had regard or reference to all these possible worlds in order to fix upon one of them. this regard or relation of an existent substance to simple possibilities can be nothing other than the _understanding_ which has the ideas of them, while to fix upon one of them can be nothing other than the act of the _will_ which chooses. it is the _power_ of this substance that renders its will efficacious. power relates to _being_, wisdom or understanding to _truth_, and will to _good_. and this intelligent cause ought to be infinite in all ways, and absolutely perfect in _power_, in _wisdom_ and in _goodness_, since it relates to all that which is possible. [ ] furthermore, since all is connected together, there is no ground for admitting more than _one_. its understanding is the source of _essences_, and its will is the origin of _existences_. there in few words is the proof of one only god with his perfections, and through him of the origin of things. . now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. for as a lesser evil is a kind of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions of god if it were possible to do better. as in mathematics, when there is no maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is done equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it may be said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than mathematics, that if there were not the best (_optimum_) among all possible worlds, god would not have produced any. i call 'world' the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be said that several worlds could have existed in different times and different places. for they must needs be reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one universe. and even though one should fill all times and all places, it still remains true that one might have filled them in innumerable ways, and that there is an infinitude of possible worlds among which god must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in accordance with supreme reason. . some adversary not being able to answer this argument will perchance answer the conclusion by a counter-argument, saying that the world could have been without sin and without sufferings; but i deny that then it would have been _better_. for it must be known that all things are _connected_ in each one of the possible worlds: the universe, whatever it may be, is all of one piece, like an ocean: the least movement extends its effect there to any distance whatsoever, even though this effect become less perceptible in proportion to the distance. therein god has ordered all things beforehand once for all, having foreseen prayers, good and bad actions, and all the rest; and each thing _as an idea_ has contributed, before its existence, to the resolution that has been made upon the existence of all things; so that nothing can be changed in the universe (any more than in a number) save its essence or, if you will, save its _numerical individuality_. thus, if the smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing in it, it [ ] would no longer be this world; which, with nothing omitted and all allowance made, was found the best by the creator who chose it. . it is true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and without unhappiness, and one could make some like utopian or sevarambian romances: but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in goodness. i cannot show you this in detail. for can i know and can i present infinities to you and compare them together? but you must judge with me _ab effectu_, since god has chosen this world as it is. we know, moreover, that often an evil brings forth a good whereto one would not have attained without that evil. often indeed two evils have made one great good: _et si fata volunt, bina venena juvant_. even so two liquids sometimes produce a solid, witness the spirit of wine and spirit of urine mixed by van helmont; or so do two cold and dark bodies produce a great fire, witness an acid solution and an aromatic oil combined by herr hoffmann. a general makes sometimes a fortunate mistake which brings about the winning of a great battle; and do they not sing on the eve of easter, in the churches of the roman rite: _o certe necessarium adae peccatum, quod christi morte deletum est!_ _o felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem!_ . the illustrious prelates of the gallican church who wrote to pope innocent xii against cardinal sfondrati's book on predestination, being of the principles of st. augustine, have said things well fitted to elucidate this great point. the cardinal appears to prefer even to the kingdom of heaven the state of children dying without baptism, because sin is the greatest of evils, and they have died innocent of all actual sin. more will be said of that below. the prelates have observed that this opinion is ill founded. the apostle, they say (rom. iii. ), is right to disapprove of the doing of evil that good may come, but one cannot disapprove that god, through his exceeding power, derive from the permitting of sins greater goods than such as occurred before the sins. it is not that we ought to take pleasure in sin, god forbid! but that we believe the same apostle when he says (rom. v. ) that where sin abounded, grace did much more [ ] abound; and we remember that we have gained jesus christ himself by reason of sin. thus we see that the opinion of these prelates tends to maintain that a sequence of things where sin enters in may have been and has been, in effect, better than another sequence without sin. . use has ever been made of comparisons taken from the pleasures of the senses when these are mingled with that which borders on pain, to prove that there is something of like nature in intellectual pleasures. a little acid, sharpness or bitterness is often more pleasing than sugar; shadows enhance colours; and even a dissonance in the right place gives relief to harmony. we wish to be terrified by rope-dancers on the point of falling and we wish that tragedies shall well-nigh cause us to weep. do men relish health enough, or thank god enough for it, without having ever been sick? and is it not most often necessary that a little evil render the good more discernible, that is to say, greater? . but it will be said that evils are great and many in number in comparison with the good: that is erroneous. it is only want of attention that diminishes our good, and this attention must be given to us through some admixture of evils. if we were usually sick and seldom in good health, we should be wonderfully sensible of that great good and we should be less sensible of our evils. but is it not better, notwithstanding, that health should be usual and sickness the exception? let us then by our reflexion supply what is lacking in our perception, in order to make the good of health more discernible. had we not the knowledge of the life to come, i believe there would be few persons who, being at the point of death, were not content to take up life again, on condition of passing through the same amount of good and evil, provided always that it were not the same kind: one would be content with variety, without requiring a better condition than that wherein one had been. . when one considers also the fragility of the human body, one looks in wonder at the wisdom and the goodness of the author of nature, who has made the body so enduring and its condition so tolerable. that has often made me say that i am not astonished men are sometimes sick, but that i am astonished they are sick so little and not always. this also ought to make us the more esteem the divine contrivance of the mechanism of animals, whose author has made machines so fragile and so subject to corruption[ ] and yet so capable of maintaining themselves: for it is nature which cures us rather than medicine. now this very fragility is a consequence of the nature of things, unless we are to will that this kind of creature, reasoning and clothed in flesh and bones, be not in the world. but that, to all appearance, would be a defect which some philosophers of old would have called _vacuum formarum_, a gap in the order of species. . those whose humour it is to be well satisfied with nature and with fortune and not to complain about them, even though they should not be the best endowed, appear to me preferable to the other sort; for besides that these complaints are ill founded, it is in effect murmuring against the orders of providence. one must not readily be among the malcontents in the state where one is, and one must not be so at all in the city of god, wherein one can only wrongfully be of their number. the books of human misery, such as that of pope innocent iii, to me seem not of the most serviceable: evils are doubled by being given an attention that ought to be averted from them, to be turned towards the good which by far preponderates. even less do i approve books such as that of abbé esprit, _on the falsity of human virtues_, of which we have lately been given a summary: for such a book serves to turn everything wrong side out, and cause men to be such as it represents them. . it must be confessed, however, that there are disorders in this life, which appear especially in the prosperity of sundry evil men and in the misfortune of many good people. there is a german proverb which even grants the advantage to the evil ones, as if they were commonly the most fortunate: _je krümmer holz, je bessre krücke:_ _je ärger schalck, je grösser glücke._ and it were to be desired that this saying of horace should be true in our eyes: _raro antecedentem scelestum_ _deseruit pede poena claudo._ yet it often comes to pass also, though this perchance not the most often, [ ] _that in the world's eyes heaven is justified,_ and that one may say with claudian: _abstulit hunc tandem rufini poena tumultum,_ _absolvitque deos..._ . but even though that should not happen here, the remedy is all prepared in the other life: religion and reason itself teach us that, and we must not murmur against a respite which the supreme wisdom has thought fit to grant to men for repentance. yet there objections multiply on another side, when one considers salvation and damnation: for it appears strange that, even in the great future of eternity, evil should have the advantage over good, under the supreme authority of him who is the sovereign good, since there will be many that are called and few that are chosen or are saved. it is true that one sees from some lines of prudentius (hymn. ante somnum), _idem tamen benignus_ _ultor retundit iram,_ _paucosque non piorum_ _patitur perire in aevum,_ that divers men believed in his time that the number of those wicked enough to be damned would be very small. to some indeed it seems that men believed at that time in a sphere between hell and paradise; that this same prudentius speaks as if he were satisfied with this sphere; that st. gregory of nyssa also inclines in that direction, and that st. jerome leans towards the opinion according whereunto all christians would finally be taken into grace. a saying of st. paul which he himself gives out as mysterious, stating that all israel will be saved, has provided much food for reflexion. sundry pious persons, learned also, but daring, have revived the opinion of origen, who maintains that good will predominate in due time, in all and everywhere, and that all rational creatures, even the bad angels, will become at last holy and blessed. the book of the eternal gospel, published lately in german and supported by a great and learned work entitled [greek: 'apokatástasis pántôn], has caused much stir over this great paradox. m. le clerc also has ingeniously pleaded the cause of the origenists, but without declaring himself for them. [ ] . there is a man of wit who, pushing my principle of harmony even to arbitrary suppositions that i in no wise approve, has created for himself a theology well-nigh astronomical. he believes that the present confusion in this world below began when the presiding angel of the globe of the earth, which was still a sun (that is, a star that was fixed and luminous of itself) committed a sin with some lesser angels of his department, perhaps rising inopportunely against an angel of a greater sun; that simultaneously, by the pre-established harmony of the realms of nature and of grace, and consequently by natural causes occurring at the appointed time, our globe was covered with stains, rendered opaque and driven from its place; which has made it become a wandering star or planet, that is, a satellite of another sun, and even perhaps of that one whose superiority its angel refused to recognize; and that therein consists the fall of lucifer. now the chief of the bad angels, who in holy scripture is named the prince, and even the god of this world, being, with the angels of his train, envious of that rational animal which walks on the surface of this globe, and which god has set up there perhaps to compensate himself for their fall, strives to render it accessary in their crimes and a participator in their misfortunes. whereupon jesus christ came to save men. he is the eternal son of god, even as he is his only son; but (according to some ancient christians, and according to the author of this hypothesis) having taken upon him at first, from the beginning of things, the most excellent nature among created beings, to bring them all to perfection, he set himself amongst them: and this is the second filiation, whereby he is the first-born of all creatures. this is he whom the cabalists called adam kadmon. haply he had planted his tabernacle in that great sun which illumines us; but he came at last into this globe where we are, he was born of the virgin, and took human nature upon him to save mankind from the hands of their enemy and his. and when the time of judgement shall draw near, when the present face of our globe shall be about to perish, he will return to it in visible form, thence to withdraw the good, transplanting them, it may be, into the sun, and to punish here the wicked with the demons that have allured them; then the globe of the earth will begin to burn and will be perhaps a comet. this fire will last for aeons upon aeons. the tail of the comet is intended by the smoke which will rise incessantly, according to the apocalypse, and this fire will be hell, or the second[ ] death whereof holy scripture speaks. but at last hell will render up its dead, death itself will be destroyed; reason and peace will begin to hold sway again in the spirits that had been perverted; they will be sensible of their error, they will adore their creator, and will even begin to love him all the more for seeing the greatness of the abyss whence they emerge. simultaneously (by virtue of the _harmonic parallelism_ of the realms of nature and of grace) this long and great conflagration will have purged the earth's globe of its stains. it will become again a sun; its presiding angel will resume his place with the angels of his train; humans that were damned shall be with them numbered amongst the good angels; this chief of our globe shall render homage to the messiah, chief of created beings. the glory of this angel reconciled shall be greater than it was before his fall. _inque deos iterum factorum lege receptus_ _aureus aeternum noster regnabit apollo._ the vision seemed to me pleasing, and worthy of a follower of origen: but we have no need of such hypothesis or fictions, where wit plays a greater part than revelation, and which even reason cannot turn to account. for it does not appear that there is one principal place in the known universe deserving in preference to the rest to be the seat of the eldest of created beings; and the sun of our system at least is not it. . holding then to the established doctrine that the number of men damned eternally will be incomparably greater than that of the saved, we must say that the evil could not but seem to be almost as nothing in comparison with the good, when one contemplates the true vastness of the city of god. coelius secundus curio wrote a little book, _de amplitudine regni coelestis_, which was reprinted not long since; but he is indeed far from having apprehended the compass of the kingdom of heaven. the ancients had puny ideas on the works of god, and st. augustine, for want of knowing modern discoveries, was at a loss when there was question of explaining the prevalence of evil. it seemed to the ancients that there was only one earth inhabited, and even of that men held the antipodes in dread: the remainder of the world was, according to them, a few shining globes and a few crystalline spheres. to-day, whatever bounds are given or not given to the universe, it must be acknowledged that there is an infinite number of globes, as great as and greater than ours, which have as much right as[ ] it to hold rational inhabitants, though it follows not at all that they are human. it is only one planet, that is to say one of the six principal satellites of our sun; and as all fixed stars are suns also, we see how small a thing our earth is in relation to visible things, since it is only an appendix of one amongst them. it may be that all suns are peopled only by blessed creatures, and nothing constrains us to think that many are damned, for few instances or few samples suffice to show the advantage which good extracts from evil. moreover, since there is no reason for the belief that there are stars everywhere, is it not possible that there may be a great space beyond the region of the stars? whether it be the empyrean heaven, or not, this immense space encircling all this region may in any case be filled with happiness and glory. it can be imagined as like the ocean, whither flow the rivers of all blessed creatures, when they shall have reached their perfection in the system of the stars. what will become of the consideration of our globe and its inhabitants? will it not be something incomparably less than a physical point, since our earth is as a point in comparison with the distance of some fixed stars? thus since the proportion of that part of the universe which we know is almost lost in nothingness compared with that which is unknown, and which we yet have cause to assume, and since all the evils that may be raised in objection before us are in this near nothingness, haply it may be that all evils are almost nothingness in comparison with the good things which are in the universe. . but it is necessary also to meet the more speculative and metaphysical difficulties which have been mentioned, and which concern the cause of evil. the question is asked first of all, whence does evil come? _si deus est, unde malum? si non est, unde bonum?_ the ancients attributed the cause of evil to _matter_, which they believed uncreate and independent of god: but we, who derive all being from god, where shall we find the source of evil? the answer is, that it must be sought in the ideal nature of the creature, in so far as this nature is contained in the eternal verities which are in the understanding of god, independently of his will. for we must consider that there is an _original imperfection in the creature_ before sin, because the creature is limited in its essence; whence ensues that it cannot know all, and that it can deceive itself and commit other errors. plato said in _timaeus_ that the world originated in [ ] understanding united to necessity. others have united god and nature. this can be given a reasonable meaning. god will be the understanding; and the necessity, that is, the essential nature of things, will be the object of the understanding, in so far as this object consists in the eternal verities. but this object is inward and abides in the divine understanding. and therein is found not only the primitive form of good, but also the origin of evil: the region of the eternal verities must be substituted for matter when we are concerned with seeking out the source of things. this region is the ideal cause of evil (as it were) as well as of good: but, properly speaking, the formal character of evil has no _efficient_ cause, for it consists in privation, as we shall see, namely, in that which the efficient cause does not bring about. that is why the schoolmen are wont to call the cause of evil _deficient_. . evil may be taken metaphysically, physically and morally. _metaphysical evil_ consists in mere imperfection, _physical evil_ in suffering, and _moral evil_ in sin. now although physical evil and moral evil be not necessary, it is enough that by virtue of the eternal verities they be possible. and as this vast region of verities contains all possibilities it is necessary that there be an infinitude of possible worlds, that evil enter into divers of them, and that even the best of all contain a measure thereof. thus has god been induced to permit evil. . but someone will say to me: why speak you to us of 'permitting'? is it not god that doeth the evil and that willeth it? here it will be necessary to explain what 'permission' is, so that it may be seen how this term is not employed without reason. but before that one must explain the nature of will, which has its own degrees. taking it in the general sense, one may say that _will_ consists in the inclination to do something in proportion to the good it contains. this will is called _antecedent_ when it is detached, and considers each good separately in the capacity of a good. in this sense it may be said that god tends to all good, as good, _ad perfectionem simpliciter simplicem_, to speak like the schoolmen, and that by an antecedent will. he is earnestly disposed to sanctify and to save all men, to exclude sin, and to prevent damnation. it may even be said that this will is efficacious _of itself (per se)_, that is, in such sort that the effect would ensue if there were not some stronger reason to prevent it: for this will does not pass into final exercise (_ad summum conatum_), else it would never fail to produce its full effect, god being the [ ] master of all things. success entire and infallible belongs only to the _consequent will_, as it is called. this it is which is complete; and in regard to it this rule obtains, that one never fails to do what one wills, when one has the power. now this consequent will, final and decisive, results from the conflict of all the antecedent wills, of those which tend towards good, even as of those which repel evil; and from the concurrence of all these particular wills comes the total will. so in mechanics compound movement results from all the tendencies that concur in one and the same moving body, and satisfies each one equally, in so far as it is possible to do all at one time. it is as if the moving body took equal account of these tendencies, as i once showed in one of the paris journals ( sept. ), when giving the general law of the compositions of movement. in this sense also it may be said that the antecedent will is efficacious in a sense and even effective with success. . thence it follows that god wills _antecedently_ the good and _consequently_ the best. and as for evil, god wills moral evil not at all, and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely. thus it is that there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may say of physical evil, that god wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to obtain greater good. the penalty serves also for amendment and example. evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes too it contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the seed that one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can germinate: this is a beautiful similitude, which jesus christ himself used. . concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that it may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil, it is not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or a legitimate object of a created will. it must only be admitted or _permitted_ in so far as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an indispensable duty: as for instance if a man who was determined not to permit another's sin were to fail of his own duty, or as if an officer on guard at an important post were to leave it, especially in time of danger, in order to prevent a quarrel in the town between two soldiers of the garrison who wanted to kill each other. . the rule which states, _non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant bona_, and which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the end of [ ] obtaining a physical good, far from being violated, is here proved, and its source and its reason are demonstrated. one will not approve the action of a queen who, under the pretext of saving the state, commits or even permits a crime. the crime is certain and the evil for the state is open to question. moreover, this manner of giving sanction to crimes, if it were accepted, would be worse than a disruption of some one country, which is liable enough to happen in any case, and would perchance happen all the more by reason of such means chosen to prevent it. but in relation to god nothing is open to question, nothing can be opposed to _the rule of the best_, which suffers neither exception nor dispensation. it is in this sense that god permits sin: for he would fail in what he owes to himself, in what he owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection, if he followed not the grand result of all his tendencies to good, and if he chose not that which is absolutely the best, notwithstanding the evil of guilt, which is involved therein by the supreme necessity of the eternal verities. hence the conclusion that god wills all good _in himself antecedently_, that he wills the best _consequently_ as an _end_, that he wills what is indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a _means_, but that he will only permit moral evil as the _sine quo non_ or as a hypothetical necessity which connects it with the best. therefore the _consequent will_ of god, which has sin for its object, is only _permissive_. . it is again well to consider that moral evil is an evil so great only because it is a source of physical evils, a source existing in one of the most powerful of creatures, who is also most capable of causing those evils. for an evil will is in its department what the evil principle of the manichaeans would be in the universe; and reason, which is an image of the divinity, provides for evil souls great means of causing much evil. one single caligula, one nero, has caused more evil than an earthquake. an evil man takes pleasure in causing suffering and destruction, and for that there are only too many opportunities. but god being inclined to produce as much good as possible, and having all the knowledge and all the power necessary for that, it is impossible that in him there be fault, or guilt, or sin; and when he permits sin, it is wisdom, it is virtue. . it is indeed beyond question that we must refrain from preventing the sin of others when we cannot prevent their sin without sinning ourselves. but someone will perhaps bring up the objection that it is god himself[ ] who acts and who effects all that is real in the sin of the creature. this objection leads us to consider the _physical co-operation_ of god with the creature, after we have examined the _moral co-operation_, which was the more perplexing. some have believed, with the celebrated durand de saint-pourçain and cardinal aureolus, the famous schoolman, that the co-operation of god with the creature (i mean the physical cooperation) is only general and mediate, and that god creates substances and gives them the force they need; and that thereafter he leaves them to themselves, and does naught but conserve them, without aiding them in their actions. this opinion has been refuted by the greater number of scholastic theologians, and it appears that in the past it met with disapproval in the writings of pelagius. nevertheless a capuchin named louis pereir of dole, about the year , wrote a book expressly to revive it, at least in relation to free actions. some moderns incline thereto, and m. bernier supports it in a little book on freedom and freewill. but one cannot say in relation to god what 'to conserve' is, without reverting to the general opinion. also it must be taken into account that the action of god in conserving should have some reference to that which is conserved, according to what it is and to the state wherein it is; thus his action cannot be general or indeterminate. these generalities are abstractions not to be found in the truth of individual things, and the conservation of a man standing is different from the conservation of a man seated. this would not be so if conservation consisted only in the act of preventing and warding off some foreign cause which could destroy that which one wishes to conserve; as often happens when men conserve something. but apart from the fact that we are obliged ourselves sometimes to maintain that which we conserve, we must bear in mind that conservation by god consists in the perpetual immediate influence which the dependence of creatures demands. this dependence attaches not only to the substance but also to the action, and one can perhaps not explain it better than by saying, with theologians and philosophers in general, that it is a continued creation. . the objection will be made that god therefore now creates man a sinner, he that in the beginning created him innocent. but here it must be said, with regard to the moral aspect, that god being supremely wise cannot fail to observe certain laws, and to act according to the rules, as well [ ] physical as moral, that wisdom has made him choose. and the same reason that has made him create man innocent, but liable to fall, makes him re-create man when he falls; for god's knowledge causes the future to be for him as the present, and prevents him from rescinding the resolutions made. . as for physical co-operation, here one must consider the truth which has made already so much stir in the schools since st. augustine declared it, that evil is a privation of being, whereas the action of god tends to the positive. this answer is accounted a quibble, and even something chimerical in the minds of many people. but here is an instance somewhat similar, which will serve to disabuse them. . the celebrated kepler and m. descartes (in his letters) after him have spoken of the 'natural inertia of bodies'; and it is something which may be regarded as a perfect image and even as a sample of the original limitation of creatures, to show that privation constitutes the formal character of the imperfections and disadvantages that are in substance as well as in its actions. let us suppose that the current of one and the same river carried along with it various boats, which differ among themselves only in the cargo, some being laden with wood, others with stone, and some more, the others less. that being so, it will come about that the boats most heavily laden will go more slowly than the others, provided it be assumed that the wind or the oar, or some other similar means, assist them not at all. it is not, properly speaking, weight which is the cause of this retardation, since the boats are going down and not upwards; but it is the same cause which also increases the weight in bodies that have greater density, which are, that is to say, less porous and more charged with matter that is proper to them: for the matter which passes through the pores, not receiving the same movement, must not be taken into account. it is therefore matter itself which originally is inclined to slowness or privation of speed; not indeed of itself to lessen this speed, having once received it, since that would be action, but to moderate by its receptivity the effect of the impression when it is to receive it. consequently, since more matter is moved by the same force of the current when the boat is more laden, it is necessary that it go more slowly; and experiments on the impact of bodies, as well as reason, show that twice as much force [ ] must be employed to give equal speed to a body of the same matter but of twice the size. but that indeed would not be necessary if the matter were absolutely indifferent to repose and to movement, and if it had not this natural inertia whereof we have just spoken to give it a kind of repugnance to being moved. let us now compare the force which the current exercises on boats, and communicates to them, with the action of god, who produces and conserves whatever is positive in creatures, and gives them perfection, being and force: let us compare, i say, the inertia of matter with the natural imperfection of creatures, and the slowness of the laden boat with the defects to be found in the qualities and the action of the creature; and we shall find that there is nothing so just as this comparison. the current is the cause of the boat's movement, but not of its retardation; god is the cause of perfection in the nature and the actions of the creature, but the limitation of the receptivity of the creature is the cause of the defects there are in its action. thus the platonists, st. augustine and the schoolmen were right to say that god is the cause of the material element of evil which lies in the positive, and not of the formal element, which lies in privation. even so one may say that the current is the cause of the material element of the retardation, but not of the formal: that is, it is the cause of the boat's speed without being the cause of the limits to this speed. and god is no more the cause of sin than the river's current is the cause of the retardation of the boat. force also in relation to matter is as the spirit in relation to the flesh; the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, and spirits act... _quantum non noxia corpora tardant._ . there is, then, a wholly similar relation between such and such an action of god, and such and such a passion or reception of the creature, which in the ordinary course of things is perfected only in proportion to its 'receptivity', such is the term used. and when it is said that the creature depends upon god in so far as it exists and in so far as it acts, and even that conservation is a continual creation, this is true in that god gives ever to the creature and produces continually all that in it is positive, good and perfect, every perfect gift coming from the father of lights. the imperfections, on the other hand, and the defects in operations spring from the original limitation that the creature could not but [ ] receive with the first beginning of its being, through the ideal reasons which restrict it. for god could not give the creature all without making of it a god; therefore there must needs be different degrees in the perfection of things, and limitations also of every kind. . this consideration will serve also to satisfy some modern philosophers who go so far as to say that god is the only agent. it is true that god is the only one whose action is pure and without admixture of what is termed 'to suffer': but that does not preclude the creature's participation in actions, since _the action of the creature_ is a modification of the substance, flowing naturally from it and containing a variation not only in the perfections that god has communicated to the creature, but also in the limitations that the creature, being what it is, brings with it. thus we see that there is an actual distinction between the substance and its modification or accidents, contrary to the opinion of some moderns and in particular of the late duke of buckingham, who spoke of that in a little _discourse on religion_ recently reprinted. evil is therefore like darkness, and not only ignorance but also error and malice consist formally in a certain kind of privation. here is an example of error which we have already employed. i see a tower which from a distance appears round although it is square. the thought that the tower is what it appears to be flows naturally from that which i see; and when i dwell on this thought it is an affirmation, it is a false judgement; but if i pursue the examination, if some reflexion causes me to perceive that appearances deceive me, lo and behold, i abandon my error. to abide in a certain place, or not to go further, not to espy some landmark, these are privations. . it is the same in respect of malice or ill will. the will tends towards good in general, it must strive after the perfection that befits us, and the supreme perfection is in god. all pleasures have within themselves some feeling of perfection. but when one is limited to the pleasures of the senses, or to other pleasures to the detriment of greater good, as of health, of virtue, of union with god, of felicity, it is in this privation of a further aspiration that the defect consists. in general perfection is positive, it is an absolute reality; defect is privative, it comes from limitation and tends towards new privations. this saying is therefore as true as it is ancient: _bonum ex causa integra, malum ex quolibet defectu_; as also that which states: _malum causam habet non efficientem, sed [ ] deficientem_. and i hope that the meaning of these axioms will be better apprehended after what i have just said. . the physical co-operation of god and of creatures with the will contributes also to the difficulties existing in regard to freedom. i am of opinion that our will is exempt not only from constraint but also from necessity. aristotle has already observed that there are two things in freedom, to wit, spontaneity and choice, and therein lies our mastery over our actions. when we act freely we are not being forced, as would happen if we were pushed on to a precipice and thrown from top to bottom; and we are not prevented from having the mind free when we deliberate, as would happen if we were given a draught to deprive us of discernment. there is _contingency_ in a thousand actions of nature; but when there is no judgement in him who acts there is no _freedom_. and if we had judgement not accompanied by any inclination to act, our soul would be an understanding without will. . it is not to be imagined, however, that our freedom consists in an indetermination or an indifference of equipoise, as if one must needs be inclined equally to the side of yes and of no and in the direction of different courses, when there are several of them to take. this equipoise in all directions is impossible: for if we were equally inclined towards the courses a, b and c, we could not be equally inclined towards a and towards not a. this equipoise is also absolutely contrary to experience, and in scrutinizing oneself one will find that there has always been some cause or reason inclining us towards the course taken, although very often we be not aware of that which prompts us: just in the same way one is hardly aware why, on issuing from a door, one has placed the right foot before the left or the left before the right. . but let us pass to the difficulties. philosophers agree to-day that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, that is to say that contingent futurities are future, or that they will be, that they will happen: for it is as sure that the future will be, as it is sure that the past has been. it was true already a hundred years ago that i should write to-day, as it will be true after a hundred years that i have written. thus the contingent is not, because it is future, any the less contingent; and _determination_, which would be called certainty if it were known, is not incompatible with contingency. often the certain and the determinate are taken as one thing, because a determinate truth is capable of being [ ] known: thus it may be said that determination is an objective certainty. . this determination comes from the very nature of truth, and cannot injure freedom: but there are other determinations taken from elsewhere, and in the first place from the foreknowledge of god, which many have held to be contrary to freedom. they say that what is foreseen cannot fail to exist, and they say so truly; but it follows not that what is foreseen is necessary, for _necessary truth_ is that whereof the contrary is impossible or implies contradiction. now this truth which states that i shall write tomorrow is not of that nature, it is not necessary. yet supposing that god foresees it, it is necessary that it come to pass; that is, the consequence is necessary, namely, that it exist, since it has been foreseen; for god is infallible. this is what is termed a _hypothetical necessity_. but our concern is not this necessity: it is an _absolute necessity_ that is required, to be able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not contingent, that it is not the effect of a free choice. besides it is very easily seen that foreknowledge in itself adds nothing to the determination of the truth of contingent futurities, save that this determination is known: and this does not augment the determination or the 'futurition' (as it is termed) of these events, that whereon we agreed at the outset. . this answer is doubtless very correct. it is agreed that foreknowledge in itself does not make truth more determinate; truth is foreseen because it is determinate, because it is true; but it is not true because it is foreseen: and therein the knowledge of the future has nothing that is not also in the knowledge of the past or of the present. but here is what an opponent will be able to say: i grant you that foreknowledge in itself does not make truth more determinate, but it is the cause of the foreknowledge that makes it so. for it needs must be that the foreknowledge of god have its foundation in the nature of things, and this foundation, making the truth _predeterminate_, will prevent it from being contingent and free. . it is this difficulty that has caused two parties to spring up, one of the _predeterminators_, the other of the supporters of _mediate knowledge_. the dominicans and the augustinians are for predetermination, the franciscans and the modern jesuits on the other hand are for mediate knowledge. these two parties appeared towards the middle of the sixteenth century and a little later. molina himself, who is perhaps one of the [ ] first, with fonseca, to have systematized this point, and from whom the others derived their name of molinists, says in the book that he wrote on the reconciliation of freewill with grace, about the year , that the spanish doctors (he means principally the thomists), who had been writing then for twenty years, finding no other way to explain how god could have a certain knowledge of contingent futurities, had introduced predetermination as being necessary to free actions. . as for himself, he thought to have found another way. he considers that there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the actual events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence of a certain condition if it were translated into action. the knowledge of possibilities is what is called the 'knowledge of mere intelligence'; that of events occurring actually in the progress of the universe is called the 'knowledge of intuition'. and as there is a kind of mean between the merely possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit, the conditional event, it can be said also, according to molina, that there is a mediate knowledge between that of intuition and that of intelligence. instance is given of the famous example of david asking the divine oracle whether the inhabitants of the town of keilah, where he designed to shut himself in, would deliver him to saul, supposing that saul should besiege the town. god answered yes; whereupon david took a different course. now some advocates of this mediate knowledge are of opinion that god, foreseeing what men would do of their own accord, supposing they were placed in such and such circumstances, and knowing that they would make ill use of their free will, decrees to refuse them grace and favourable circumstances. and he may justly so decree, since in any case these circumstances and these aids would not have served them aught. but molina contents himself with finding therein generally a reason for the decrees of god, founded on what the free creature would do in such and such circumstances. . i will not enter into all the detail of this controversy; it will suffice for me to give one instance. certain older writers, not acceptable to st. augustine and his first disciples, appear to have had ideas somewhat approaching those of molina. the thomists and those who call themselves disciples of st. augustine (but whom their opponents call jansenists) combat this doctrine on philosophical and theological grounds. some [ ] maintain that mediate knowledge must be included in the knowledge of mere intelligence. but the principal objection is aimed at the foundation of this knowledge. for what foundation can god have for seeing what the people of keilah would do? a simple contingent and free act has nothing in itself to yield a principle of certainty, unless one look upon it as predetermined by the decrees of god, and by the causes that are dependent upon them. consequently the difficulty existing in actual free actions will exist also in conditional free actions, that is to say, god will know them only under the condition of their causes and of his decrees, which are the first causes of things: and it will not be possible to separate such actions from those causes so as to know a contingent event in a way that is independent of the knowledge of its causes. therefore all must of necessity be traced back to the predetermination of god's decrees, and this mediate knowledge (so it will be said) will offer no remedy. the theologians who profess to be adherents of st. augustine claim also that the system of the molinists would discover the source of god's grace in the good qualities of man, and this they deem an infringement of god's honour and contrary to st. paul's teaching. . it would be long and wearisome to enter here into the replies and rejoinders coming from one side and the other, and it will suffice for me to explain how i conceive that there is truth on both sides. for this result i resort to my principle of an infinitude of possible worlds, represented in the region of eternal verities, that is, in the object of the divine intelligence, where all conditional futurities must be comprised. for the case of the siege of keilah forms part of a possible world, _which differs from ours only in all that is connected with this hypothesis_, and the idea of this possible world represents that which would happen in this case. thus we have a principle for the certain knowledge of contingent futurities, whether they happen actually or must happen in a certain case. for in the region of the possibles they are represented as they are, namely, as free contingencies. therefore neither the foreknowledge of contingent futurities nor the foundation for the certainty of this foreknowledge should cause us perplexity or seem to prejudice freedom. and though it were true and possible that contingent futurities consisting in free actions of reasonable creatures were entirely independent of the decrees of god and of external causes, there would [ ] still be means of foreseeing them; for god would see them as they are in the region of the possibles, before he decrees to admit them into existence. . but if the foreknowledge of god has nothing to do with the dependence or independence of our free actions, it is not so with the foreordinance of god, his decrees, and the sequence of causes which, as i believe, always contribute to the determination of the will. and if i am for the molinists in the first point, i am for the predeterminators in the second, provided always that predetermination be taken as not necessitating. in a word, i am of opinion that the will is always more inclined towards the course it adopts, but that it is never bound by the necessity to adopt it. that it will adopt this course is certain, but it is not necessary. the case corresponds to that of the famous saying, _astra inclinant, non necessitant_, although here the similarity is not complete. for the event towards which the stars tend (to speak with the common herd, as if there were some foundation for astrology) does not always come to pass, whereas the course towards which the will is more inclined never fails to be adopted. moreover the stars would form only a part of the inclinations that co-operate in the event, but when one speaks of the greater inclination of the will, one speaks of the result of all the inclinations. it is almost as we have spoken above of the consequent will in god, which results from all the antecedent wills. . nevertheless, objective certainty or determination does not bring about the necessity of the determinate truth. all philosophers acknowledge this, asserting that the truth of contingent futurities is determinate, and that nevertheless they remain contingent. the thing indeed would imply no contradiction in itself if the effect did not follow; and therein lies contingency. the better to understand this point, we must take into account that there are two great principles of our arguments. the one is the principle of _contradiction_, stating that of two contradictory propositions the one is true, the other false; the other principle is that of the _determinant reason_: it states that nothing ever comes to pass without there being a cause or at least a reason determining it, that is, something to give an _a priori_ reason why it is existent rather than non-existent, and in this wise rather than in any other. this great principle holds for all events, and a contrary instance will never be supplied: and although more often than not we are insufficiently [ ] acquainted with these determinant reasons, we perceive nevertheless that there are such. were it not for this great principle we could never prove the existence of god, and we should lose an infinitude of very just and very profitable arguments whereof it is the foundation; moreover, it suffers no exception, for otherwise its force would be weakened. besides, nothing is so weak as those systems where all is unsteady and full of exceptions. that fault cannot be laid to the charge of the system i approve, where everything happens in accordance with general rules that at most are mutually restrictive. . we must therefore not imagine with some schoolmen, whose ideas tend towards the chimerical, that free contingent futurities have the privilege of exemption from this general rule of the nature of things. there is always a prevailing reason which prompts the will to its choice, and for the maintenance of freedom for the will it suffices that this reason should incline without necessitating. that is also the opinion of all the ancients, of plato, of aristotle, of st. augustine. the will is never prompted to action save by the representation of the good, which prevails over the opposite representations. this is admitted even in relation to god, the good angels and the souls in bliss: and it is acknowledged that they are none the less free in consequence of that. god fails not to choose the best, but he is not constrained so to do: nay, more, there is no necessity in the object of god's choice, for another sequence of things is equally possible. for that very reason the choice is free and independent of necessity, because it is made between several possibles, and the will is determined only by the preponderating goodness of the object. this is therefore not a defect where god and the saints are concerned: on the contrary, it would be a great defect, or rather a manifest absurdity, were it otherwise, even in men here on earth, and if they were capable of acting without any inclining reason. of such absurdity no example will ever be found; and even supposing one takes a certain course out of caprice, to demonstrate one's freedom, the pleasure or advantage one thinks to find in this conceit is one of the reasons tending towards it. . there is therefore a freedom of contingency or, in a way, of indifference, provided that by 'indifference' is understood that nothing necessitates us to one course or the other; but there is never any _indifference of equipoise_, that is, where all is completely even on [ ] both sides, without any inclination towards either. innumerable great and small movements, internal and external, co-operate with us, for the most part unperceived by us. and i have already said that when one leaves a room there are such and such reasons determining us to put the one foot first, without pausing to reflect. for there is not everywhere a slave, as in trimalchio's house in petronius, to cry to us: the right foot first. all that we have just said agrees entirely also with the maxims of the philosophers, who teach that a cause cannot act without having a disposition towards action. it is this disposition which contains a predetermination, whether the doer have received it from without, or have had it in consequence of his own antecedent character. . thus we have no need to resort, in company with some new thomists, to a new immediate predetermination by god, such as may cause the free creature to abandon his indifference, and to a decree of god for predetermining the creature, making it possible for god to know what the creature will do: for it suffices that the creature be predetermined by its preceding state, which inclines it to one course more than to the other. moreover, all these connexions of the actions of the creature and of all creatures were represented in the divine understanding, and known to god through the knowledge of mere intelligence, before he had decreed to give them existence. thus we see that, in order to account for the foreknowledge of god, one may dispense with both the mediate knowledge of the molinists and the predetermination which a bañez or an alvarez (writers otherwise of great profundity) have taught. . by this false idea of an indifference of equipoise the molinists were much embarrassed. they were asked not only how it was possible to know in what direction a cause absolutely indeterminate would be determined, but also how it was possible that there should finally result therefrom a determination for which there is no source: to say with molina that it is the privilege of the free cause is to say nothing, but simply to grant that cause the privilege of being chimerical. it is pleasing to see their harassed efforts to emerge from a labyrinth whence there is absolutely no means of egress. some teach that the will, before it is determined formally, must be determined virtually, in order to emerge from its state of equipoise; and father louis of dole, in his book on the _co-operation of god_, quotes molinists who attempt to take refuge in this expedient: [ ] for they are compelled to acknowledge that the cause must needs be disposed to act. but they gain nothing, they only defer the difficulty: for they will still be asked how the free cause comes to be determined virtually. they will therefore never extricate themselves without acknowledging that there is a predetermination in the preceding state of the free creature, which inclines it to be determined. . in consequence of this, the case also of buridan's ass between two meadows, impelled equally towards both of them, is a fiction that cannot occur in the universe, in the order of nature, although m. bayle be of another opinion. it is true that, if the case were possible, one must say that the ass would starve himself to death: but fundamentally the question deals in the impossible, unless it be that god bring the thing about expressly. for the universe cannot be halved by a plane drawn through the middle of the ass, which is cut vertically through its length, so that all is equal and alike on both sides, in the manner wherein an ellipse, and every plane figure of the number of those i term 'ambidexter', can be thus halved, by any straight line passing through its centre. neither the parts of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor are they evenly placed on both sides of this vertical plane. there will therefore always be many things in the ass and outside the ass, although they be not apparent to us, which will determine him to go on one side rather than the other. and although man is free, and the ass is not, nevertheless for the same reason it must be true that in man likewise the case of a perfect equipoise between two courses is impossible. furthermore it is true that an angel, or god certainly, could always account for the course man has adopted, by assigning a cause or a predisposing reason which has actually induced him to adopt it: yet this reason would often be complex and incomprehensible to ourselves, because the concatenation of causes linked together is very long. . hence it is that the reason m. descartes has advanced to prove the independence of our free actions, by what he terms an intense inward sensation, has no force. we cannot properly speaking be sensible of our independence, and we are not aware always of the causes, often imperceptible, whereon our resolution depends. it is as though the magnetic needle took pleasure in turning towards the north: for it would think that it was turning independently of any other cause, not being aware of the imperceptible movements of the magnetic matter. nevertheless we shall [ ] see later in what sense it is quite true that the human soul is altogether its own natural principle in relation to its actions, dependent upon itself and independent of all other creatures. . as for _volition_ itself, to say that it is an object of free will is incorrect. we will to act, strictly speaking, and we do not will to will; else we could still say that we will to have the will to will, and that would go on to infinity. besides, we do not always follow the latest judgement of practical understanding when we resolve to will; but we always follow, in our willing, the result of all the inclinations that come from the direction both of reasons and passions, and this often happens without an express judgement of the understanding. . all is therefore certain and determined beforehand in man, as everywhere else, and the human soul is a kind of _spiritual automaton_, although contingent actions in general and free action in particular are not on that account necessary with an absolute necessity, which would be truly incompatible with contingency. thus neither futurition in itself, certain as it is, nor the infallible prevision of god, nor the predetermination either of causes or of god's decrees destroys this contingency and this freedom. that is acknowledged in respect of futurition and prevision, as has already been set forth. since, moreover, god's decree consists solely in the resolution he forms, after having compared all possible worlds, to choose that one which is the best, and bring it into existence together with all that this world contains, by means of the all-powerful word _fiat_, it is plain to see that this decree changes nothing in the constitution of things: god leaves them just as they were in the state of mere possibility, that is, changing nothing either in their essence or nature, or even in their accidents, which are represented perfectly already in the idea of this possible world. thus that which is contingent and free remains no less so under the decrees of god than under his prevision. . but could god himself (it will be said) then change nothing in the world? assuredly he could not now change it, without derogation to his wisdom, since he has foreseen the existence of this world and of what it contains, and since, likewise, he has formed this resolution to bring it into existence: for he cannot be mistaken nor repent, and it did not behove him to from an imperfect resolution applying to one part and not the [ ] whole. thus, all being ordered from the beginning, it is only because of this hypothetical necessity, recognized by everyone, that after god's prevision or after his resolution nothing can be changed: and yet the events in themselves remain contingent. for (setting aside this supposition of the futurition of the thing and of the prevision or of the resolution of god, a supposition which already lays it down as a fact that the thing will happen, and in accordance with which one must say, 'unumquodque, quando est, oportet esse, aut unumquodque, siquidem erit, oportet futurum esse'), the event has nothing in it to render it necessary and to suggest that no other thing might have happened in its stead. and as for the connexion between causes and effects, it only inclined, without necessitating, the free agency, as i have just explained; thus it does not produce even a hypothetical necessity, save in conjunction with something from outside, to wit, this very maxim, that the prevailing inclination always triumphs. . it will be said also that, if all is ordered, god cannot then perform miracles. but one must bear in mind that the miracles which happen in the world were also enfolded and represented as possible in this same world considered in the state of mere possibility; and god, who has since performed them, when he chose this world had even then decreed to perform them. again the objection will be made that vows and prayers, merits and demerits, good and bad actions avail nothing, since nothing can be changed. this objection causes most perplexity to people in general, and yet it is purely a sophism. these prayers, these vows, these good or bad actions that occur to-day were already before god when he formed the resolution to order things. those things which happen in this existing world were represented, with their effects and their consequences, in the idea of this same world, while it was still possible only; they were represented therein, attracting god's grace whether natural or supernatural, requiring punishments or rewards, just as it has happened actually in this world since god chose it. the prayer or the good action were even then an _ideal cause_ or _condition_, that is, an inclining reason able to contribute to the grace of god, or to the reward, as it now does in reality. since, moreover, all is wisely connected together in the world, it is clear that god, foreseeing that which would happen freely, ordered all other things on that basis beforehand, or (what is the same) he chose that possible world in [ ] which everything was ordered in this fashion. . this consideration demolishes at the same time what the ancients called the 'lazy sophism' ([greek: logos argos]) which ended in a decision to do nothing: for (people would say) if what i ask is to happen it will happen even though i should do nothing; and if it is not to happen it will never happen, no matter what trouble i take to achieve it. this necessity, supposedly existent in events, and detached from their causes, might be termed _fatum mahometanum_, as i have already observed above, because a similar line of reasoning, so it is said, causes the turks not to shun places ravaged by plague. but the answer is quite ready: the effect being certain, the cause that shall produce it is certain also; and if the effect comes about it will be by virtue of a proportionate cause. thus your laziness perchance will bring it about that you will obtain naught of what you desire, and that you will fall into those misfortunes which you would by acting with care have avoided. we see, therefore, that the _connexion of causes with effects_, far from causing an unendurable fatality, provides rather a means of obviating it. there is a german proverb which says that death will ever have a cause; and nothing is so true. you will die on that day (let us presume it is so, and that god foresees it): yes, without doubt; but it will be because you will do what shall lead you thither. it is likewise with the chastisements of god, which also depend upon their causes. and it will be apposite in this connexion to quote this famous passage from st. ambrose (in cap. i _lucae_), 'novit dominus mutare sententiam, si tu noveris mutare delictum', which is not to be understood as of reprobation, but of denunciation, such as that which jonah dealt out for god to the ninevites. this common saying: 'si non es praedestinatus, fac ut praedestineris', must not be taken literally, its true sense being that he who has doubts of his predestination need only do what is required for him to obtain it by the grace of god. the sophism which ends in a decision to trouble oneself over nothing will haply be useful sometimes to induce certain people to face danger fearlessly. it has been applied in particular to turkish soldiers: but it seems that hashish is a more important factor than this sophism, not to mention the fact that this resolute spirit in the turks has greatly belied itself in our days. . a learned physician of holland named johan van beverwyck took the trouble to write _de termino vitae_ and to collect sundry answers, [ ] letters and discourses of some learned men of his time on this subject. this collection has been printed, and it is astonishing to see there how often people are misled, and how they have confused a problem which, properly speaking, is the easiest in the world. after that it is no wonder that there are very many doubts which the human race cannot abandon. the truth is that people love to lose themselves, and this is a kind of ramble of the mind, which is unwilling to subject itself to attention, to order, to rules. it seems as though we are so accustomed to games and jesting that we play the fool even in the most serious occupations, and when we least think to do so. . i fear that in the recent dispute between the theologians of the augsburg confession, _de termino paenitentiae peremptorio_, which has called forth so many treatises in germany, some misunderstanding, though of a different nature, has slipped in. the terms prescribed by the laws are amongst lawyers known as _fatalia_. it may be said, in a sense, that the _peremptory term_, prescribed to man for his repentance and amendment, is certain in the sight of god, with whom all is certain. god knows when a sinner will be so hardened that thereafter nothing can be done for him: not indeed that it would be impossible for him to do penance or that sufficient grace needs must be refused to him after a certain term, a grace that never fails; but because there will be a time whereafter he will no more approach the ways of salvation. but we never have certain marks for recognizing this term, and we are never justified in considering a man utterly abandoned: that would be to pass a rash judgement. it were better always to have room for hope; and this is an occasion, with a thousand others, where our ignorance is beneficial. _prudens futuri temporis exitum_ _caliginosa nocte premit deus_. . the whole future is doubtless determined: but since we know not what it is, nor what is foreseen or resolved, we must do our duty, according to the reason that god has given us and according to the rules that he has prescribed for us; and thereafter we must have a quiet mind, and leave to god himself the care for the outcome. for he will never fail to do that which shall be the best, not only in general but also in particular, for those who have true confidence in him, that is, a confidence composed [ ] of true piety, a lively faith and fervent charity, by virtue of which we will, as far as in us lies, neglect nothing appertaining to our duty and his service. it is true that we cannot 'render service' to him, for he has need of nothing: but it is 'serving him', in our parlance, when we strive to carry out his presumptive will, co-operating in the good as it is known to us, wherever we can contribute thereto. for we must always presume that god is prompted towards the good we know, until the event shows us that he had stronger reasons, although perhaps unknown to us, which have made him subordinate this good that we sought to some other greater good of his own designing, which he has not failed or will not fail to effect. . i have just shown how the action of the will depends upon its causes; that there is nothing so appropriate to human nature as this dependence of our actions; and that otherwise one would slip into a preposterous and unendurable fatality, namely into the _fatum mahometanum_, which is the worst of all because it overthrows foresight and good counsel. it is well to show, notwithstanding, how this dependence of voluntary actions does not fundamentally preclude the existence within us of a wonderful _spontaneity_, which in a certain sense makes the soul in its resolves independent of the physical influence of all other creatures. this spontaneity, hitherto little recognized, which exalts our command over our actions to the highest pitch, is a consequence of the system of pre-established harmony, of which i must give some explanation here. the scholastic philosophers believed that there was a reciprocal physical influence between body and soul: but since it has been recognized that thought and dimensional mass have no mutual connexion, and that they are creatures differing _toto genere_, many moderns have acknowledged that there is no _physical communication_ between soul and body, despite the _metaphysical communication_ always subsisting, which causes soul and body to compose one and the same _suppositum_, or what is called a person. this physical communication, if there were such, would cause the soul to change the degree of speed and the directional line of some motions that are in the body, and _vice versa_ the body to change the sequence of the thoughts that are in the soul. but this effect cannot be inferred from any notion conceived in the body and in the soul; though nothing be better known to us than the soul, since it is inmost to us, that is to say inmost to itself. [ ] . m. descartes wished to compromise and to make a part of the body's action dependent upon the soul. he believed in the existence of a rule of nature to the effect, according to him, that the same quantity of movement is conserved in bodies. he deemed it not possible that the influence of the soul should violate this law of bodies, but he believed that the soul notwithstanding might have power to change the direction of the movements that are made in the body; much as a rider, though giving no force to the horse he mounts, nevertheless controls it by guiding that force in any direction he pleases. but as that is done by means of the bridle, the bit, the spurs and other material aids, it is conceivable how that can be; there are, however, no instruments such as the soul may employ for this result, nothing indeed either in the soul or in the body, that is, either in thought or in the mass, which may serve to explain this change of the one by the other. in a word, that the soul should change the quantity of force and that it should change the line of direction, both these things are equally inexplicable. . moreover, two important truths on this subject have been discovered since m. descartes' day. the first is that the quantity of absolute force which is in fact conserved is different from the quantity of movement, as i have demonstrated elsewhere. the second discovery is that the same direction is still conserved in all bodies together that are assumed as interacting, in whatever way they come into collision. if this rule had been known to m. descartes, he would have taken the direction of bodies to be as independent of the soul as their force; and i believe that that would have led direct to the hypothesis of pre-established harmony, whither these same rules have led me. for apart from the fact that the physical influence of one of these substances on the other is inexplicable, i recognized that without a complete derangement of the laws of nature the soul could not act physically upon the body. and i did not believe that one could here listen to philosophers, competent in other respects, who produce a god, as it were, _ex machina_, to bring about the final solution of the piece, maintaining that god exerts himself deliberately to move bodies as the soul pleases, and to give perceptions to the soul as the body requires. for this system, which is called that of _occasional causes_ (because it teaches that god acts on the body at the instance of the soul, and _vice versa_), besides introducing perpetual miracles to establish communication [ ] between these two substances, does not obviate the derangement of the natural laws obtaining in each of these same substances, which, in the general opinion, their mutual influence would cause. . being on other considerations already convinced of the principle of harmony in general, i was in consequence convinced likewise of the _preformation_ and the pre-established harmony of all things amongst themselves, of that between nature and grace, between the decrees of god and our actions foreseen, between all parts of matter, and even between the future and the past, the whole in conformity with the sovereign wisdom of god, whose works are the most harmonious it is possible to conceive. thus i could not fail to arrive at the system which declares that god created the soul in the beginning in such a fashion that it must produce and represent to itself successively that which takes place within the body, and the body also in such a fashion that it must do of itself that which the soul ordains. consequently the laws that connect the thoughts of the soul in the order of final causes and in accordance with the evolution of perceptions must produce pictures that meet and harmonize with the impressions of bodies on our organs; and likewise the laws of movements in the body, which follow one another in the order of efficient causes, meet and so harmonize with the thoughts of the soul that the body is induced to act at the time when the soul wills it. . far from its being prejudicial, nothing can be more favourable to freedom than that system. and m. jacquelot has demonstrated well in his book on the _conformity of faith with reason_, that it is just as if he who knows all that i shall order a servant to do the whole day long on the morrow made an automaton entirely resembling this servant, to carry out to-morrow at the right moment all that i should order; and yet that would not prevent me from ordering freely all that i should please, although the action of the automaton that would serve me would not be in the least free. . moreover, since all that passes in the soul depends, according to this system, only upon the soul, and its subsequent state is derived only from it and from its present state, how can one give it a greater _independence_? it is true that there still remains some imperfection in the constitution of the soul. all that happens to the soul depends upon it, but depends not always upon its will; that were too much. nor are such[ ] happenings even recognized always by its understanding or perceived with distinctness. for there is in the soul not only an order of distinct perceptions, forming its dominion, but also a series of confused perceptions or passions, forming its bondage: and there is no need for astonishment at that; the soul would be a divinity if it had none but distinct perceptions. it has nevertheless some power over these confused perceptions also, even if in an indirect manner. for although it cannot change its passions forthwith, it can work from afar towards that end with enough success, and endue itself with new passions and even habits. it even has a like power over the more distinct perceptions, being able to endue itself indirectly with opinions and intentions, and to hinder itself from having this one or that, and stay or hasten its judgement. for we can seek means beforehand to arrest ourselves, when occasion arises, on the sliding step of a rash judgement; we can find some incident to justify postponement of our resolution even at the moment when the matter appears ready to be judged. although our opinion and our act of willing be not directly objects of our will (as i have already observed), one sometimes, takes measures nevertheless, to will and even to believe in due time, that which one does not will, or believe, now. so great is the profundity of the spirit of man. . and now, to bring to a conclusion this question of _spontaneity_, it must be said that, on a rigorous definition, the soul has within it the principle of all its actions, and even of all its passions, and that the same is true in all the simple substances scattered throughout nature, although there be freedom only in those that are intelligent. in the popular sense notwithstanding, speaking in accordance with appearances, we must say that the soul depends in some way upon the body and upon the impressions of the senses: much as we speak with ptolemy and tycho in everyday converse, and think with copernicus, when it is a question of the rising and the setting of the sun. . one may however give a true and philosophic sense to this _mutual dependence_ which we suppose between the soul and the body. it is that the one of these two substances depends upon the other ideally, in so far as the reason of that which is done in the one can be furnished by that which is in the other. this had already happened when god ordered beforehand the harmony that there would be between them. even so would that [ ] automaton, that should fulfil the servant's function, depend upon me _ideally_, in virtue of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future orders, would have rendered it capable of serving me at the right moment all through the morrow. the knowledge of my future intentions would have actuated this great craftsman, who would accordingly have fashioned the automaton: my influence would be objective, and his physical. for in so far as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, god has accommodated the body to the soul, and has arranged beforehand that the body is impelled to execute its orders. and in so far as the soul is imperfect and as its perceptions are confused, god has accommodated the soul to the body, in such sort that the soul is swayed by the passions arising out of corporeal representations. this produces the same effect and the same appearance as if the one depended immediately upon the other, and by the agency of a physical influence. properly speaking, it is by its confused thoughts that the soul represents the bodies which encompass it. the same thing must apply to all that we understand by the actions of simple substances one upon another. for each one is assumed to act upon the other in proportion to its perfection, although this be only ideally, and in the reasons of things, as god in the beginning ordered one substance to accord with another in proportion to the perfection or imperfection that there is in each. (withal action and passion are always reciprocal in creatures, because one part of the reasons which serve to explain clearly what is done, and which have served to bring it into existence, is in the one of these substances, and another part of these reasons is in the other, perfections and imperfections being always mingled and shared.) thus it is we attribute _action_ to the one, and _passion_ to the other. . but after all, whatsoever dependence be conceived in voluntary actions, and even though there were an absolute and mathematical necessity (which there is not) it would not follow that there would not be a sufficient degree of freedom to render rewards and punishments just and reasonable. it is true that generally we speak as though the necessity of the action put an end to all merit and all demerit, all justification for praise and blame, for reward and punishment: but it must be admitted that this conclusion is not entirely correct. i am very far from sharing the opinions of bradwardine, wyclif, hobbes and spinoza, who advocate, so it seems,[ ] this entirely mathematical necessity, which i think i have adequately refuted, and perhaps more clearly than is customary. yet one must always bear testimony to the truth and not impute to a dogma anything that does not result from it. moreover, these arguments prove too much, since they would prove just as much against hypothetical necessity, and would justify the lazy sophism. for the absolute necessity of the sequence of causes would in this matter add nothing to the infallible certainty of a hypothetical necessity. . in the first place, therefore, it must be agreed that it is permitted to kill a madman when one cannot by other means defend oneself. it will be granted also that it is permitted, and often even necessary, to destroy venomous or very noxious animals, although they be not so by their own fault. . secondly, one inflicts punishments upon a beast, despite its lack of reason and freedom, when one deems that this may serve to correct it: thus one punishes dogs and horses, and indeed with much success. rewards serve us no less in the managing of animals: when an animal is hungry, the food that is given to him causes him to do what otherwise would never be obtained from him. . thirdly, one would inflict even on beasts capital punishments (where it is no longer a question of correcting the beast that is punished) if this punishment could serve as an example, or inspire terror in others, to make them cease from evil doing. rorarius, in his book on reason in beasts, says that in africa they crucified lions, in order to drive away other lions from the towns and frequented places, and that he had observed in passing through the province of jülich that they hanged wolves there in order to ensure greater safety for the sheepfolds. there are people in the villages also who nail birds of prey to the doors of houses, with the idea that other birds of the same kind will then not so readily appear. these measures would always be justified if they were of any avail. . then, in the fourth place, since experience proves that the fear of chastisements and the hope of rewards serves to make men abstain from evil and strive to do good, one would have good reason to avail oneself of such, even though men were acting under necessity, whatever the necessity might be. the objection will be raised that if good or evil is necessary it is useless to avail oneself of means to obtain it or to hinder it: but the answer has already been given above in the passage combating the lazy [ ] sophism. if good or evil were a necessity without these means, then such means would be unavailing; but it is not so. these goods and evils come only with the aid of these means, and if these results were necessary the means would be a part of the causes rendering them necessary, since experience teaches us that often fear or hope hinders evil or advances good. this objection, then, differs hardly at all from the lazy sophism, which we raise against the certainty as well as the necessity of future events. thus one may say that these objections are directed equally against hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity, and that they prove as much against the one as against the other, that is to say, nothing at all. . there was a great dispute between bishop bramhall and mr. hobbes, which began when they were both in paris, and which was continued after their return to england; all the parts of it are to be found collected in a quarto volume published in london in the year . they are all in english, and have not been translated as far as i know, nor inserted in the collection of works in latin by mr. hobbes. i had already read these writings, and have obtained them again since. and i had observed at the outset that he had not at all proved the absolute necessity of all things, but had shown sufficiently that necessity would not overthrow all the rules of divine or human justice, and would not prevent altogether the exercise of this virtue. . there is, however, a kind of justice and a certain sort of rewards and of punishments which appear not so applicable to those who should act by an absolute necessity, supposing such necessity existed. it is that kind of justice which has for its goal neither improvement nor example, nor even redress of the evil. this justice has its foundation only in the fitness of things, which demands a certain satisfaction for the expiation of an evil action. the socinians, hobbes and some others do not admit this punitive justice, which properly speaking is avenging justice. god reserves it for himself in many cases; but he does not fail to grant it to those who are entitled to govern others, and he exercises it through their agency, provided that they act under the influence of reason and not of passion. the socinians believe it to be without foundation, but it always has some foundation in that fitness of things which gives satisfaction not only to the injured but also to the wise who see it; even as a beautiful piece of music, or again a good piece of architecture, satisfies cultivated [ ] minds. and the wise lawgiver having threatened, and having, so to speak, promised a chastisement, it befits his consistency not to leave the action completely unpunished, even though the punishment would no longer avail to correct anyone. but even though he should have promised nothing, it is enough that there is a fitness of things which could have prompted him to make this promise, since the wise man likewise promises only that which is fitting. and one may even say that there is here a certain compensation of the mind, which would be scandalized by disorder if the chastisement did not contribute towards restoring order. one can also consult what grotius wrote against the socinians, of the satisfaction of jesus christ, and the answer of crellius thereto. . thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them in good. one may say nevertheless that the damned ever bring upon themselves new pains through new sins, and that the blessed ever bring upon themselves new joys by new progress in goodness: for both are founded on the _principle of the fitness of things_, which has seen to it that affairs were so ordered that the evil action must bring upon itself a chastisement. there is good reason to believe, following the parallelism of the two realms, that of final causes and that of efficient causes, that god has established in the universe a connexion between punishment or reward and bad or good action, in accordance wherewith the first should always be attracted by the second, and virtue and vice obtain their reward and their punishment in consequence of the natural sequence of things, which contains still another kind of pre-established harmony than that which appears in the communication between the soul and the body. for, in a word, all that god does, as i have said already, is harmonious to perfection. perhaps then this principle of the fitness of things would no longer apply to beings acting without true freedom or exemption from absolute necessity; and in that case corrective justice alone would be administered, and not punitive justice. that is the opinion of the famous conringius, in a dissertation he published on what is just. and indeed, the reasons pomponazzi employed in his book on fate, to prove the usefulness of chastisements and rewards, even though all should come about in our actions by a fatal necessity,[ ] concern only amendment and not satisfaction, [greek: kolasin ou timôrian]. moreover, it is only for the sake of outward appearances that one destroys animals accessary to certain crimes, as one razes the houses of rebels, that is, to inspire terror. thus it is an act of corrective justice, wherein punitive justice has no part at all. . but we will not amuse ourselves now by discussing a question more curious than necessary, since we have shown sufficiently that there is no such necessity in voluntary actions. nevertheless it was well to show that _imperfect freedom_ alone, that is, freedom which is exempt only from constraint, would suffice as foundation for chastisements and rewards of the kind conducive to the avoidance of evil, and to amendment. one sees also from this that some persons of intelligence, who persuade themselves that everything is necessary, are wrong in saying that none must be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished. apparently they say so only to exercise their wit: the pretext is that all being necessary nothing would be in our power. but this pretext is ill founded: necessary actions would be still in our power, at least in so far as we could perform them or omit them, when the hope or the fear of praise or blame, of pleasure or pain prompted our will thereto, whether they prompted it of necessity, or in prompting it they left spontaneity, contingency and freedom all alike unimpaired. thus praise and blame, rewards and punishments would preserve always a large part of their use, even though there were a true necessity in our actions. we can praise and blame also natural good and bad qualities, where the will has no part--in a horse, in a diamond, in a man; and he who said of cato of utica that he acted virtuously through the goodness of his nature, and that it was impossible for him to behave otherwise, thought to praise him the more. . the difficulties which i have endeavoured up to now to remove have been almost all common to natural and revealed theology. now it will be necessary to come to a question of revealed theology, concerning the election or the reprobation of men, with the dispensation or use of divine grace in connexion with these acts of the mercy or the justice of god. but when i answered the preceding objections, i opened up a way to meet those that remain. this confirms the observation i made thereon (_preliminary dissertation,_ ) that there is rather a conflict between the true [ ] reasons of natural theology and the false reasons of human appearances, than between revealed faith and reason. for on this subject scarcely any difficulty arises that is new, and not deriving its origin from those which can be placed in the way of the truths discerned by reason. . now as theologians of all parties are divided among themselves on this subject of predestination and grace, and often give different answers to the same objections, according to their various principles, one cannot avoid touching on the differences which prevail among them. one may say in general that some look upon god more metaphysically and others more morally: and it has already been stated on other occasions that the counter-remonstrants took the first course and the remonstrants the second. but to act rightly we must affirm alike on one side the independence of god and the dependence of creatures, and on the other side the justice and goodness of god, which makes him dependent upon himself, his will upon his understanding or his wisdom. . some gifted and well-intentioned authors, desiring to show the force of the reasons advocated by the two principal parties, in order to persuade them to a mutual tolerance, deem that the whole controversy is reduced to this essential point, namely: what was god's principal aim in making his decrees with regard to man? did he make them solely in order to show forth his glory by manifesting his attributes, and forming, to that end, the great plan of creation and providence? or has he had regard rather to the voluntary movements of intelligent substances which he designed to create, considering what they would will and do in the different circumstances and situations wherein he might place them, so as to form a fitting resolve thereupon? it appears to me that the two answers to this great question thus given as opposites to one another are easy to reconcile, and that in consequence the two parties would be agreed in principle, without any need of tolerance, if all were reduced to this point. in truth god, in designing to create the world, purposed solely to manifest and communicate his perfections in the way that was most efficacious, and most worthy of his greatness, his wisdom and his goodness. but that very purpose pledged him to consider all the actions of creatures while still in the state of pure possibility, that he might form the most fitting plan. he is like a great architect whose aim in view is the satisfaction or the glory of having[ ] built a beautiful palace, and who considers all that is to enter into this construction: the form and the materials, the place, the situation, the means, the workmen, the expense, before he forms a complete resolve. for a wise person in laying his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he does not contemplate any end without knowing if there are means of attaining thereto. . i know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine that, god being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer that everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers himself alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some happy and others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without reason. but to teach so about god were to deprive him of wisdom and of goodness. we need only observe that he considers himself and neglects nothing of what he owes to himself, to conclude that he considers his creatures also, and that he uses them in the manner most consistent with order. for the more a great and good prince is mindful of his glory, the more he will think of making his subjects happy, even though he were the most absolute of all monarchs, and though his subjects were slaves from birth, bondsmen (in lawyers' parlance), people entirely in subjection to arbitrary power. calvin himself and some others of the greatest defenders of the absolute decree rightly maintained that god had _great and just reasons_ for his election and the dispensation of his grace, although these reasons be unknown to us in detail: and we must judge charitably that the most rigid predestinators have too much reason and too much piety to depart from this opinion. . there will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as i hope) with people who are at all reasonable. but there will always be argument among those who are called universalists and particularists, according to what they teach of the grace and the will of god. yet i am somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the will of god to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one keeps separate the doctrine _de auxiliis_, or of the assistance of grace), rests rather in expressions than in things. for it is sufficient to consider that god, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is inclined towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to the excellence of the good. moreover, this results (if we take the [ ] matter precisely and in itself) from an 'antecedent will', as it is termed, which, however, is not always followed by its complete effect, because this wise mind must have many other inclinations besides. thus it is the result of all the inclinations together that makes his will complete and decretory, as i have already explained. one may therefore very well say with ancient writers that god wills to save all men according to his antecedent will, but not according to his consequent will, which never fails to be followed by its effect. and if those who deny this universal will do not allow that the antecedent inclination be called a will, they are only troubling themselves about a question of name. . but there is a question more serious in regard to predestination to eternal life and to all other destination by god, to wit, whether this destination is absolute or respective. there is destination to good and destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say, that none is destined to sin. as for the greatest physical evil, which is damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination: for predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute destination, which is anterior to the consideration of the good or evil actions of those whom it concerns. thus one may say that the reprobate are _destined_ to be condemned, because they are known to be impenitent. but it cannot so well be said that the reprobate are _predestined_ to damnation: for there is no _absolute_ reprobation, its foundation being final foreseen impenitence. . it is true that there are writers who maintain that god, wishing to manifest his mercy and his justice in accordance with reasons worthy of him, but unknown to us, chose the elect, and in consequence rejected the damned, prior to all thought of sin, even of adam, that after this resolve he thought fit to permit sin in order to be able to exercise these two virtues, and that he has bestowed grace in jesus christ to some in order to save them, while he has refused it to others in order to be able to punish them. hence these writers are named 'supralapsarians', because the decree to punish precedes, according to them, the knowledge of the future existence of sin. but the opinion most common to-day amongst those who are called reformed, and one that is favoured by the synod of dordrecht, is that of the 'infralapsarians', corresponding somewhat to the conception of st. augustine. for he asserts that god having resolved to permit the [ ] sin of adam and the corruption of the human race, for reasons just but hidden, his mercy made him choose some of the corrupt mass to be freely saved by the merit of jesus christ, and his justice made him resolve to punish the others by the damnation that they deserved. that is why, with the schoolmen, only the saved were called _praedestinati_ and the damned were called _praesciti_. it must be admitted that some infralapsarians and others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the example of fulgentius and of st. augustine himself: but that signifies the same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words. that pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who took the name of fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author. . as for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the protestants, as well as those of the roman church, dispute much among themselves as to whether election is absolute or is founded on the prevision of final living faith. those who are called evangelicals, that is, those of the augsburg confession, hold the latter opinion: they believe that one need not go into the hidden causes of election while one may find a manifest cause of it shown in holy scripture, which is faith in jesus christ; and it appears to them that the prevision of the cause is also the cause of the prevision of the effect. those who are called reformed are of a different opinion: they admit that salvation comes from faith in jesus christ, but they observe that often the cause anterior to the effect in execution is posterior in intention, as when the cause is the means and the effect is the end. thus the question is, whether faith or salvation is anterior in the intention of god, that is, whether god's design is rather to save man than to make him a believer. . hence we see that the question between the supralapsarians and the infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the evangelicals, comes back to a right conception of the order that is in god's decrees. perhaps one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that, properly speaking, all the decrees of god that are here concerned are simultaneous, not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also _in signo rationis_, or in the order of nature. and indeed, the formula of concord, building upon some passages of st. augustine, comprised in the same [ ] decree of election salvation and the means that conduce to it. to demonstrate this synchronism of destinations or of decrees with which we are concerned, we must revert to the expedient that i have employed more than once, which states that god, before decreeing anything, considered among other possible sequences of things that one which he afterwards approved. in the idea of this is represented how the first parents sin and corrupt their posterity; how jesus christ redeems the human race; how some, aided by such and such graces, attain to final faith and to salvation; and how others, with or without such or other graces, do not attain thereto, continue in sin, and are damned. god grants his sanction to this sequence only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon everything and compared it with other possible sequences. thus god's pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply decrees its existence. in order to save other men, or in a different way, he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is connected in each sequence. in this conception of the matter, which is that most worthy of the all-wise, all whose actions are connected together to the highest possible degree, there would be only one total decree, which is to create such a world. this total decree comprises equally all the particular decrees, without setting one of them before or after another. yet one may say also that each particular act of antecedent will entering into the total result has its value and order, in proportion to the good whereto this act inclines. but these acts of antecedent will are not called decrees, since they are not yet inevitable, the outcome depending upon the total result. according to this conception of things, all the difficulties that can here be made amount to the same as those i have already stated and removed in my inquiry concerning the origin of evil. . there remains only one important matter of discussion, which has its peculiar difficulties. it is that of the dispensation of the means and circumstances contributing to salvation and to damnation. this comprises amongst others the subject of the aids of grace (_de auxiliis gratiae_), on which rome (since the congregation _de auxiliis_ under clement viii, when a debate took place between the dominicans and the jesuits) does not readily permit books to be published. everyone must agree that god is [ ] altogether good and just, that his goodness makes him contribute the least possible to that which can render men guilty, and the most possible to that which serves to save them (possible, i say, subject to the general order of things); that his justice prevents him from condemning innocent men, and from leaving good actions without reward; and that he even keeps an exact proportion in punishments and rewards. nevertheless, this idea that one should have of the goodness and the justice of god does not appear enough in what we know of his actions with regard to the salvation and the damnation of men: and it is that which makes difficulties concerning sin and its remedies. . the first difficulty is how the soul could be infected with original sin, which is the root of actual sins, without injustice on god's part in exposing the soul thereto. this difficulty has given rise to three opinions on the origin of the soul itself. the first is that of the _pre-existence of human souls_ in another world or in another life, where they had sinned and on that account had been condemned to this prison of the human body, an opinion of the platonists which is attributed to origen and which even to-day finds adherents. henry more, an english scholar, advocated something like this dogma in a book written with that express purpose. some of those who affirm this pre-existence have gone as far as metempsychosis. the younger van helmont held this opinion, and the ingenious author of some metaphysical _meditations_, published in under the name of william wander, appears to have some leaning towards it. the second opinion is that of _traduction_, as if the soul of children were engendered (_per traducem_) from the soul or souls of those from whom the body is engendered. st. augustine inclined to this judgement the better to explain original sin. this doctrine is taught also by most of the theologians of the augsburg confession. nevertheless it is not completely established among them, since the universities of jena and helmstedt, and others besides, have long been opposed to it. the third opinion, and that most widely accepted to-day, is that of _creation_: it is taught in the majority of the christian schools, but it is fraught with the greatest difficulty in respect of original sin. . into this controversy of theologians on the origin of the human soul has entered the philosophic dispute on _the origin of forms._ aristotle and scholastic philosophy after him called _form_ that which is a [ ] principle of action and is found in that which acts. this inward principle is either substantial, being then termed 'soul', when it is in an organic body, or accidental, and customarily termed 'quality'. the same philosopher gave to the soul the generic name of 'entelechy' or _act_. this word 'entelechy' apparently takes its origin from the greek word signifying 'perfect', and hence the celebrated ermolao barbaro expressed it literally in latin by _perfectihabia_: for act is a realization of potency. and he had no need to consult the devil, as men say he did, in order to learn that. now the philosopher of stagira supposes that there are two kinds of act, the permanent act and the successive act. the permanent or lasting act is nothing but the substantial or accidental form: the substantial form (as for example the soul) is altogether permanent, at least according to my judgement, and the accidental is only so for a time. but the altogether momentary act, whose nature is transitory, consists in action itself. i have shown elsewhere that the notion of entelechy is not altogether to be scorned, and that, being permanent, it carries with it not only a mere faculty for action, but also that which is called 'force', 'effort', 'conatus', from which action itself must follow if nothing prevents it. faculty is only an _attribute_, or rather sometimes a mode; but force, when it is not an ingredient of substance itself (that is, force which is not primitive but derivative), is a _quality_, which is distinct and separable from substance. i have shown also how one may suppose that the soul is a primitive force which is modified and varied by derivative forces or qualities, and exercised in actions. . now philosophers have troubled themselves exceedingly on the question of the origin of substantial forms. for to say that the compound of form and matter is produced and that the form is only _comproduced_ means nothing. the common opinion was that forms were derived from the potency of matter, this being called _eduction_. that also meant in fact nothing, but it was explained in a sense by a comparison with shapes: for that of a statue is produced only by removal of the superfluous marble. this comparison might be valid if form consisted in a mere limitation, as in the case of shape. some have thought that forms were sent from heaven, and even created expressly, when bodies were produced. julius scaliger hinted that it was possible that forms were rather derived from the active potency of the efficient cause (that is to say, either from that of god in the [ ] case of creation or from that of other forms in the case of generation), than from the passive potency of matter. and that, in the case of generation, meant a return to traduction. daniel sennert, a famous doctor and physicist at wittenberg, cherished this opinion, particularly in relation to animate bodies which are multiplied through seed. a certain julius caesar della galla, an italian living in the low countries, and a doctor of groningen named johan freitag wrote with much vehemence in opposition to sennert. johann sperling, a professor at wittenberg, made a defence of his master, and finally came into conflict with johann zeisold, a professor at jena, who upheld the belief that the human soul is created. . but traduction and eduction are equally inexplicable when it is a question of finding the origin of the soul. it is not the same with accidental forms, since they are only modifications of the substance, and their origin may be explained by eduction, that is, by variation of limitations, in the same way as the origin of shapes. but it is quite another matter when we are concerned with the origin of a substance, whose beginning and destruction are equally difficult to explain. sennert and sperling did not venture to admit the subsistence and the indestructibility of the souls of beasts or of other primitive forms, although they allowed that they were indivisible and immaterial. but the fact is that they confused indestructibility with immortality, whereby is understood in the case of man that not only the soul but also the personality subsists. in saying that the soul of man is immortal one implies the subsistence of what makes the identity of the person, something which retains its moral qualities, conserving the _consciousness_, or the reflective inward feeling, of what it is: thus it is rendered susceptible to chastisement or reward. but this conservation of personality does not occur in the souls of beasts: that is why i prefer to say that they are imperishable rather than to call them immortal. yet this misapprehension appears to have been the cause of a great inconsistency in the doctrine of the thomists and of other good philosophers: they recognized the immateriality or indivisibility of all souls, without being willing to admit their indestructibility, greatly to the prejudice of the immortality of the human soul. john scot, that is, the scotsman (which formerly signified hibernian or erigena), a famous writer of the time of louis the debonair and of his sons, was for the conservation of all souls: and i see not why there should be less [ ] objection to making the atoms of epicurus or of gassendi endure, than to affirming the subsistence of all truly simple and indivisible substances, which are the sole and true atoms of nature. and pythagoras was right in saying generally, as ovid makes him say: _morte carent animae_. . now as i like maxims which hold good and admit of the fewest exceptions possible, here is what has appeared to me most reasonable in every sense on this important question. i consider that souls and simple substances altogether cannot begin except by creation, or end except by annihilation. moreover, as the formation of organic animate bodies appears explicable in the order of nature only when one assumes a _preformation_ already organic, i have thence inferred that what we call generation of an animal is only a transformation and augmentation. thus, since the same body was already furnished with organs, it is to be supposed that it was already animate, and that it had the same soul: so i assume _vice versa_, from the conservation of the soul when once it is created, that the animal is also conserved, and that apparent death is only an envelopment, there being no likelihood that in the order of nature souls exist entirely separated from all body, or that what does not begin naturally can cease through natural forces. . considering that so admirable an order and rules so general are established in regard to animals, it does not appear reasonable that man should be completely excluded from that order, and that everything in relation to his soul should come about in him by miracle. besides i have pointed out repeatedly that it is of the essence of god's wisdom that all should be harmonious in his works, and that nature should be parallel with grace. it is thus my belief that those souls which one day shall be human souls, like those of other species, have been in the seed, and in the progenitors as far back as adam, and have consequently existed since the beginning of things, always in a kind of organic body. on this point it seems that m. swammerdam, father malebranche, m. bayle, mr. pitcairne, m. hartsoeker and numerous other very able persons share my opinion. this doctrine is also sufficiently confirmed by the microscope observations of m. leeuwenhoek and other good observers. but it also for divers reasons appears likely to me that they existed then as sentient or animal [ ] souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason. further i believe that they remained in this state up to the time of the generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then they received reason, whether there be a natural means of raising a sentient soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing i find it difficult to imagine) or whether god may have given reason to this soul through some special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of _transcreation_. this latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as revelation teaches much about other forms of immediate operation by god upon our souls. this explanation appears to remove the obstacles that beset this matter in philosophy or theology. for the difficulty of the origin of forms thus disappears completely; and besides it is much more appropriate to divine justice to give the soul, already corrupted _physically_ or on the animal side by the sin of adam, a new perfection which is reason, than to put a reasoning soul, by creation or otherwise, in a body wherein it is to be corrupted _morally_. . now the soul being once under the domination of sin, and ready to commit sin in actual fact as soon as the man is fit to exercise reason, a new question arises, to wit: whether this tendency in a man who has not been regenerated by baptism suffices to damn him, even though he should never come to commit sin, as may happen, and happens often, whether he die before reaching years of discretion or he become dull of sense before he has made use of his reason. st. gregory of nazianzos is supposed to have denied this (_orat. de baptismo_); but st. augustine is for the affirmative, and maintains that original sin of itself is sufficient to earn the flames of hell, although this opinion is, to say the least, very harsh. when i speak here of damnation or of hell, i mean pains, and not mere deprivation of supreme felicity; i mean _poenam sensus, non damni_. gregory of rimini, general of the augustinians, with a few others followed st. augustine in opposition to the accepted opinion of the schools of his time, and for that reason he was called the torturer of children, _tortor infantum_. the schoolmen, instead of sending them into the flames of hell, have assigned to them a special limbo, where they do not suffer, and are only punished by privation of the beatific vision. the revelations of st. birgitta (as they are called), much esteemed in rome, also uphold this dogma. salmeron and molina, and before them ambrose catharin and [ ] others, grant them a certain natural bliss; and cardinal sfondrati, a man of learning and piety, who approves this, latterly went so far as to prefer in a sense their state, which is the state of happy innocence, to that of a sinner saved, as we may see in his _nodus praedestinationis solutus_. that, however, seems to go too far. certainly a soul truly enlightened would not wish to sin, even though it could by this means obtain all imaginable pleasures. but the case of choosing between sin and true bliss is simply chimerical, and it is better to obtain bliss (even after repentance) than to be deprived of it for ever. . many prelates and theologians of france who are well pleased to differ from molina, and to join with st. augustine, seem to incline towards the opinion of this great doctor, who condemns to eternal flames children that die in the age of innocence before having received baptism. this is what appears from the letter mentioned above, written by five distinguished prelates of france to pope innocent xii, against that posthumous book by cardinal sfondrati. but therein they did not venture to condemn the doctrine of the purely privative punishment of children dying without baptism, seeing it approved by the venerable thomas aquinas, and by other great men. i do not speak of those who are called on one side jansenists and on the other disciples of st. augustine, for they declare themselves entirely and firmly for the opinion of this father. but it must be confessed that this opinion has not sufficient foundation either in reason or in scripture, and that it is outrageously harsh. m. nicole makes rather a poor apology for it in his book on the _unity of the church_, written to oppose m. jurieu, although m. bayle takes his side in chapter of the _reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii. m. nicole makes use of this pretext, that there are also other dogmas in the christian religion which appear harsh. on the one hand, however, that does not lead to the conclusion that these instances of harshness may be multiplied without proof; and on the other we must take into account that the other dogmas mentioned by m. nicole, namely original sin and eternity of punishment, are only harsh and unjust to outward appearance, while the damnation of children dying without actual sin and without regeneration would in truth be harsh, since it would be in effect the damning of innocents. for that reason i believe that the party which advocates this opinion will never altogether have the upper hand in the roman church itself. evangelical[ ] theologians are accustomed to speak with fair moderation on this question, and to surrender these souls to the judgement and the clemency of their creator. nor do we know all the wonderful ways that god may choose to employ for the illumination of souls. . one may say that those who condemn for original sin alone, and who consequently condemn children dying unbaptized or outside the covenant, fall, in a sense, without being aware of it, into a certain attitude to man's inclination and god's foreknowledge which they disapprove in others. they will not have it that god should refuse his grace to those whose resistance to it he foresees, nor that this expectation and this tendency should cause the damnation of these persons: and yet they claim that the tendency which constitutes original sin, and in which god foresees that the child will sin as soon as he shall reach years of discretion, suffices to damn this child beforehand. those who maintain the one and reject the other do not preserve enough uniformity and connexion in their dogmas. . there is scarcely less difficulty in the matter of those who reach years of discretion and plunge into sin, following the inclination of corrupt nature, if they receive not the succour of the grace necessary for them to stop on the edge of the precipice, or to drag themselves from the abyss wherein they have fallen. for it seems hard to damn them eternally for having done that which they had no power to prevent themselves from doing. those that damn even children, who are without discretion, trouble themselves even less about adults, and one would say that they have become callous through the very expectation of seeing people suffer. but it is not the same with other theologians, and i would be rather on the side of those who grant to all men a grace sufficient to draw them away from evil, provided they have a sufficient tendency to profit by this succour, and not to reject it voluntarily. the objection is made that there has been and still is a countless multitude of men, among civilized peoples and among barbarians, who have never had this knowledge of god and of jesus christ which is necessary for those who would tread the wonted paths to salvation. but without excusing them on the plea of a sin purely philosophical, and without stopping at a mere penalty of privation, things for which there is no opportunity of discussion here, one may doubt the fact: for how do we know whether they do not receive ordinary or extraordinary succour of [ ] kinds unknown to us? this maxim, _quod facienti, quod in se est, non denegatur gratia necessaria_, appears to me to have eternal truth. thomas aquinas, archbishop bradwardine and others have hinted that, in regard to this, something comes to pass of which we are not aware. (thom. quest. xiv, _de veritate_, artic. xi, ad i et alibi. bradwardine, _de causa dei_, non procul ab initio.) and sundry theologians of great authority in the roman church itself have taught that a sincere act of the love of god above all things, when the grace of jesus christ arouses it, suffices for salvation. father francis xavier answered the japanese that if their ancestors had used well their natural light god would have given them the grace necessary for salvation; and the bishop of geneva, francis of sales, gives full approval to this answer (book , _on the love of god,_ ch. ). . this i pointed out some time ago to the excellent m pélisson, to show him that the roman church, going further than the protestants, does not damn utterly those who are outside its communion, and even outside christianity, by using as its only criterion explicit faith. nor did he refute it, properly speaking, in the very kind answer he gave me, and which he published in the fourth part of his _reflexions_, also doing me the honour of adding to it my letter. i offered him then for consideration what a famous portuguese theologian, by name jacques payva andradius, envoy to the council of trent, wrote concerning this, in opposition to chemnitz, during this same council. and now, without citing many other authors of eminence, i will content myself with naming father friedrich spee, the jesuit, one of the most excellent in his society, who also held this common opinion upon the efficacy of the love of god, as is apparent in the preface to the admirable book which he wrote in germany on the christian virtues. he speaks of this observation as of a highly important secret of piety, and expatiates with great clearness upon the power of divine love to blot out sin, even without the intervention of the sacraments of the catholic church, provided one scorn them not, for that would not at all be compatible with this love. and a very great personage, whose character was one of the most lofty to be found in the roman church, was the first to make me acquainted with it. father spee was of a noble family of westphalia (it may be said in passing) and he died in the odour of sanctity, according to the testimony of him who published this book in cologne with the [ ] approval of the superiors. . the memory of this excellent man ought to be still precious to persons of knowledge and good sense, because he is the author of the book entitled: _cautio criminalis circa processus contra sagas_, which has caused much stir, and has been translated into several languages. i learnt from the grand elector of mainz, johann philipp von schonborn, uncle of his highness the present elector, who walks gloriously in the footsteps of that worthy predecessor, the story that follows. that father was in franconia when there was a frenzy there for burning alleged sorcerers. he accompanied even to the pyre many of them, all of whom he recognized as being innocent, from their confessions and the researches that he had made thereon. therefore in spite of the danger incurred at that time by one telling the truth in this matter, he resolved to compile this work, without however naming himself. it bore great fruit and on this matter converted that elector, at that time still a simple canon and afterwards bishop of würzburg, finally also archbishop of mainz, who, as soon as he came to power, put an end to these burnings. therein he was followed by the dukes of brunswick, and finally by the majority of the other princes and states of germany. . this digression appeared to me to be seasonable, because that writer deserves to be more widely known. returning now to the subject i make a further observation. supposing that to-day a knowledge of jesus christ according to the flesh is absolutely necessary to salvation, as indeed it is safest to teach, it will be possible to say that god will give that knowledge to all those who do, humanly speaking, that which in them lies, even though god must needs give it by a miracle. moreover, we cannot know what passes in souls at the point of death; and if sundry learned and serious theologians claim that children receive in baptism a kind of faith, although they do not remember it afterwards when they are questioned about it, why should one maintain that nothing of a like nature, or even more definite, could come about in the dying, whom we cannot interrogate after their death? thus there are countless paths open to god, giving him means of satisfying his justice and his goodness: and the only thing one may allege against this is that we know not what way he employs; which is far from being a valid objection. [ ] . let us pass on to those who lack not power to amend, but good will. they are doubtless not to be excused; but there always remains a great difficulty concerning god, since it rested with him to give them this same good will. he is the master of wills, the hearts of kings and those of all other men are in his hand. holy scripture goes so far as to say that god at times hardened the wicked in order to display his power by punishing them. this hardening is not to be taken as meaning that god inspires men with a kind of anti-grace, that is, a kind of repugnance to good, or even an inclination towards evil, just as the grace that he gives is an inclination towards good. it is rather that god, having considered the sequence of things that he established, found it fitting, for superior reasons, to permit that pharaoh, for example, should be in such _circumstances_ as should increase his wickedness, and divine wisdom willed to derive a good from this evil. . thus it all often comes down to _circumstances_, which form a part of the combination of things. there are countless examples of small circumstances serving to convert or to pervert. nothing is more widely known than the _tolle, lege_ (take and read) cry which st. augustine heard in a neighbouring house, when he was pondering on what side he should take among the christians divided into sects, and saying to himself, _quod vitae sectabor iter?_ this brought him to open at random the book of the holy scriptures which he had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these were words which finally induced him to give up manichaeism. the good steno, a dane, who was titular bishop of titianopolis, vicar apostolic (as they say) of hanover and the region around, when there was a duke regent of his religion, told us that something of that kind had happened to him. he was a great anatomist and deeply versed in natural science; but he unfortunately gave up research therein, and from being a great physicist he became a mediocre theologian. he would almost listen to nothing more about the marvels of nature, and an express order from the pope _in virtute sanctae obedientiae_ was needed to extract from him the observations m. thévenot asked of him. he told us then that what had greatly helped towards inducing him to place himself on the side of the roman church had been the voice of a lady in florence, who had cried out to him from a window: 'go not on[ ] the side where you are about to go, sir, go on the other side.' 'that voice struck me,' he told us, 'because i was just meditating upon religion.' this lady knew that he was seeking a man in the house where she was, and, when she saw him making his way to the other house, wished to point out where his friend's room was. . father john davidius, the jesuit, wrote a book entitled _veridicus christianus_, which is like a kind of _bibliomancy_, where one takes passages at random, after the pattern of the _tolle, lege_ of st. augustine, and it is like a devotional game. but the chances to which, in spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too large a part in what brings salvation to men, or removes it from them. let us imagine twin polish children, the one taken by the tartars, sold to the turks, brought to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair; the other saved by some chance, falling then into good hands to be educated properly, permeated by the soundest truths of religion, exercised in the virtues that it commends to us, dying with all the feelings of a good christian. one will lament the misfortune of the former, prevented perhaps by a slight circumstance from being saved like his brother, and one will marvel that this slight chance should have decided his fate for eternity. . someone will perchance say that god foresaw by mediate knowledge that the former would have been wicked and damned even if he had remained in poland. there are perhaps conjunctures wherein something of the kind takes place. but will it therefore be said that this is a general rule, and that not one of those who were damned amongst the pagans would have been saved if he had been amongst christians? would that not be to contradict our lord, who said that tyre and sidon would have profited better by his preaching, if they had had the good fortune to hear it, than capernaum? . but were one to admit even here this use of mediate knowledge against all appearances, this knowledge still implies that god considers what a man would do in such and such circumstances; and it always remains true that god could have placed him in other circumstances more favourable, and given him inward or outward succour capable of vanquishing the most abysmal wickedness existing in any soul. i shall be told that god is not bound to do so, but that is not enough; it must be added that greater reasons prevent him from making all his goodness felt by all. thus there must [ ] needs be choice; but i do not think one must seek the reason altogether in the good or bad nature of men. for if with some people one assume that god, choosing the plan which produces the most good, but which involves sin and damnation, has been prompted by his wisdom to choose the best natures in order to make them objects of his grace, this grace would not sufficiently appear to be a free gift. accordingly man will be distinguishable by a kind of inborn merit, and this assumption seems remote from the principles of st. paul, and even from those of supreme reason. . it is true that there are reasons for god's choice, and the consideration of the object, that is, the nature of man, must needs enter therein; but it does not seem that this choice can be subjected to a rule such as we are capable of conceiving, and such as may flatter the pride of men. some famous theologians believe that god offers more grace, and in a more favourable way, to those whose resistance he foresees will be less, and that he abandons the rest to their self-will. we may readily suppose that this is often the case, and this expedient, among those which make man distinguishable by anything favourable in his nature, is the farthest removed from pelagianism. but i would not venture, notwithstanding, to make of it a universal rule. moreover, that we may not have cause to vaunt ourselves, it is necessary that we be ignorant of the reasons for god's choice. those reasons are too diverse to become known to us; and it may be that god at times shows the power of his grace by overcoming the most obstinate resistance, to the end that none may have cause either to despair or to be puffed up. st. paul, as it would seem, had this in mind when he offered himself as an example. god, he said, has had mercy upon me, to give a great example of his patience. . it may be that fundamentally all men are equally bad, and consequently incapable of being distinguished the one from the other through their good or less bad natural qualities; but they are not bad all in the same way: for there is an inherent individual difference between souls, as the pre-established harmony proves. some are more or less inclined towards a particular good or a particular evil, or towards their opposites, all in accordance with their natural dispositions. but since the general plan of the universe, chosen by god for superior reasons, causes men to be in different circumstances, those who meet with such as are more [ ] favourable to their nature will become more readily the least wicked, the most virtuous, the most happy; yet it will be always by aid of the influence of that inward grace which god unites with the circumstances. sometimes it even comes to pass, in the progress of human life, that a more excellent nature succeeds less, for lack of cultivation or opportunities. one may say that men are chosen and ranged not so much according to their excellence as according to their conformity with god's plan. even so it may occur that a stone of lesser quality is made use of in a building or in a group because it proves to be the particular one for filling a certain gap. . but, in fine, all these attempts to find reasons, where there is no need to adhere altogether to certain hypotheses, serve only to make clear to us that there are a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of god. all the disadvantages we see, all the obstacles we meet with, all the difficulties one may raise for oneself, are no hindrance to a belief founded on reason, even when it cannot stand on conclusive proof, as has been shown and will later become more apparent, that there is nothing so exalted as the wisdom of god, nothing so just as his judgements, nothing so pure as his holiness, and nothing more vast than his goodness. [ ] * * * * * essays on the justice of god and the freedom of man in the origin of evil * * * * * part two . hitherto i have devoted myself to giving a full and clear exposition of this whole subject: and although i have not yet spoken of m. bayle's objections in particular, i have endeavoured to anticipate them, and to suggest ways of answering them. but as i have taken upon myself the task of meeting them in detail, not only because there will perhaps still be passages calling for elucidation, but also because his arguments are usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw greater light on this controversy, it will be well to give an account of the chief objections that are dispersed through his works, and to add my answers. at the beginning i observed 'that god co-operates in moral evil, and in physical evil, and in each of them both morally and physically; and that man co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free and active way, becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'. i have shown also that each point has its own difficulty; but the greatest of these lies in maintaining that god co-operates morally in moral evil, that is, in sin, without being the originator of the sin, and even without being accessary thereto. . he does this by _permitting_ it justly, and by _directing_ it wisely towards the good, as i have shown in a manner that appears tolerably intelligible. but as it is here principally that m. bayle undertakes [ ] to discomfit those who maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot be harmonized with reason, it is also here especially i must show that my dogmas are fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even of reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. he has ranged them against me in chapter of his _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (vol. iii, p. ), where he includes the theological doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen philosophic maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my rampart. let us begin with the theological propositions. . i. 'god,' he says, 'the being eternal and necessary, infinitely good, holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss that can never either increase or diminish.' this proposition of m. bayle's is no less philosophical than theological. to say that god possesses a 'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term. one may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one finds in being aware of one's own perfections; and in this sense god possesses it always. but when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections, one may say that god acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent creatures; even though it be true that god thereby gains no new good, and it is rather the rational creatures who thence derive advantage, when they apprehend aright the glory of god. . ii. 'he resolved freely upon the production of creatures, and he chose from among an infinite number of possible beings those whom it pleased him to choose, to give them existence, and to compose the universe of them, while he left all the rest in nothingness.' this proposition is also, just like the preceding one, in close conformity with that part of philosophy which is called natural theology. one must dwell a little on what is said here, that he chose the possible beings 'whom it pleased him to choose'. for it must be borne in mind that when i say, 'that pleases me', it is as though i were saying, 'i find it good'. thus it is the ideal goodness of the object which pleases, and which makes me choose it among many others which do not please or which please less, that is to say, which contain less of that goodness which moves me. now it is only the genuinely good that is capable of pleasing god: and consequently that which pleases god most, and which meets his choice, is the best. [ ] . iii. 'human nature having been among the beings that he willed to produce, he created a man and a woman, and granted them amongst other favours free will, so that they had the power to obey him; but he threatened them with death if they should disobey the order that he gave them to abstain from a certain fruit.' this proposition is in part revealed, and should be admitted without difficulty, provided that _free will_ be understood properly, according to the explanation i have given. . iv. 'they ate thereof nevertheless, and thenceforth they were condemned, they and all their posterity, to the miseries of this life, to temporal death and eternal damnation, and made subject to such a tendency to sin that they abandoned themselves thereto endlessly and without ceasing.' there is reason to suppose that the forbidden action by itself entailed these evil results in accordance with a natural effect, and that it was for that very reason, and not by a purely arbitrary decree, that god had forbidden it: much as one forbids knives to children. the famous fludde or de fluctibus, an englishman, once wrote a book _de vita, morte et resurrectione_ under the name of r. otreb, wherein he maintained that the fruit of the forbidden tree was a poison: but we cannot enter into this detail. it suffices that god forbade a harmful thing; one must not therefore suppose that god acted here simply in the character of a legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge who imposes and inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without any connexion between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. and it is not necessary to suppose that god in justifiable annoyance deliberately put a corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an extraordinary action, in order to punish him: much as the athenians gave hemlock-juice to their criminals. m. bayle takes the matter thus: he speaks as if the original corruption had been put in the soul of the first man by an order and operation of god. it is that which calls forth his objection (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ) 'that reason would not commend the monarch who, in order to chastise a rebel, condemned him and his descendants to have a tendency towards rebellion'. but this chastisement happens naturally to the wicked, without any ordinance of a legislator, and they become addicted to evil. if drunkards begot children inclined to the same vice, by a natural consequence of what takes place in bodies, that would be a punishment of their progenitors, but it would [ ] not be a penalty of law. there is something comparable to this in the consequences of the first man's sin. for the contemplation of divine wisdom leads us to believe that the realm of nature serves that of grace; and that god as an architect has done all in a manner befitting god considered as a monarch. we do not sufficiently know the nature of the forbidden fruit, or that of the action, or its effects, to judge of the details of this matter: nevertheless we must do god justice so far as to believe that it comprised something other than what painters depict for us. . v. 'it has pleased him by his infinite mercy to deliver a very few men from this condemnation; and, leaving them exposed during this life to the corruption of sin and misery, he has given them aids which enable them to obtain the never-ending bliss of paradise.' many in the past have doubted, as i have already observed, whether the number of the damned is so great as is generally supposed; and it appears that they believed in the existence of some intermediate state between eternal damnation and perfect bliss. but we have no need of these opinions, and it is enough to keep to the ideas accepted in the church. in this connexion it is well to observe that this proposition of m. bayle's is conceived in accordance with the principles of sufficient grace, given to all men, and sufficing them provided that they have good will. although m. bayle holds the opposite opinion, he wished (as he states in the margin) to avoid the terms that would not agree with a system of decrees subsequent to the prevision of contingent events. . vi. 'he foresaw from eternity all that which should happen, he ordered all things and placed them each one in its own place, and he guides and controls them continually, according to his pleasure. thus nothing is done without his permission or against his will, and he can prevent, as seems good to him, as much and as often as seems good to him, all that does not please him, and in consequence sin, which is the thing in the world that most offends him and that he most detests; and he can produce in each human soul all the thoughts that he approves.' this thesis is also purely philosophic, that is, recognizable by the light of natural reason. it is opportune also, as one has dwelt in thesis ii on _that which pleases_, to dwell here upon _that which seems good_, that is, upon that which god finds good to do. he can avoid or put away as 'seems good to him' all 'that does not please him'. nevertheless it must be borne in mind that some objects of his aversion, such as certain evils, and especially sin, which his [ ] antecedent will repelled, could only have been rejected by his consequent or decretory will, in so far as it was prompted by the rule of the best, which the all-wise must choose after having taken all into account. when one says 'that sin offends god most, and that he detests it most', these are human ways of speaking. god cannot, properly speaking, be _offended_, that is, injured, disturbed, disquieted or angered; and he _detests_ nothing of that which exists, in the sense that to detest something is to look upon it with abomination and in a way that causes us disgust, that greatly pains and distresses us; for god cannot suffer either vexation, or grief or discomfort; he is always altogether content and at ease. yet these expressions in their true sense are justified. the supreme goodness of god causes his antecedent will to repel all evil, but moral evil more than any other: it only admits evil at all for irresistible superior reasons, and with great correctives which repair its ill effects to good advantage. it is true also that god could produce in each human soul all the thoughts that he approves: but this would be to act by miracles, more than his most perfectly conceived plan admits. . vii. 'he offers grace to people that he knows are destined not to accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more criminal than they would be if he had not offered them that grace; he assures them that it is his ardent wish that they accept it, and he does not give them the grace which he knows they would accept.' it is true that these people become more criminal through their refusal than if one had offered them nothing, and that god knows this. yet it is better to permit their crime than to act in a way which would render god himself blameworthy, and provide the criminals with some justification for the complaint that it was not possible for them to do better, even though they had or might have wished it. god desires that they receive such grace from him as they are fit to receive, and that they accept it; and he desires to give them in particular that grace whose acceptance by them he foresees: but it is always by a will antecedent, detached or particular, which cannot always be carried out in the general plan of things. this thesis also is among the number of those which philosophy establishes no less than revelation, like three others of the seven that we have just stated here, the third, fourth and fifth being the only ones where revelation is necessary. [ ] . here now are the nineteen philosophic maxims which m. bayle opposes to the seven theological propositions. i. 'as the infinitely perfect being finds in himself a glory and a bliss that can never either diminish or increase, his goodness alone has determined him to create this universe: neither the ambition to be praised, nor any interested motive of preserving or augmenting his bliss and his glory, has had any part therein.' this maxim is very good: praises of god do him no service, but they are of service to the men who praise him, and he desired their good. nevertheless, when one says that _goodness_ alone determined god to create this universe, it is well to add that his goodness prompted him _antecedently_ to create and to produce all possible good; but that his wisdom made the choice and caused him to select the best _consequently_; and finally that his power gave him the means to carry out _actually_ the great design which he had formed. . ii. 'the goodness of the infinitely perfect being is infinite, and would not be infinite if one could conceive of a goodness greater than this. this characteristic of infinity is proper also to all his other perfections, to love of virtue, hatred of vice, etc., they must be the greatest one can imagine. (see m. jurieu in the first three sections of the _judgement on methods_, where he argues constantly upon this principle, as upon a primary notion. see also in wittich, _de providentia dei_, n. , these words of st. augustine, lib. i, _de doctrina christiana_, c. : "cum cogitatur deus, ita cogitatur, ut aliquid, quo nihil melius sit atque sublimius. et paulo post: nec quisquam inveniri potest, qui hoc deum credat esse, quo melius aliquid est.")' this maxim is altogether to my liking, and i draw from it this conclusion, that god does the very best possible: otherwise the exercise of his goodness would be restricted, and that would be restricting his _goodness_ itself, if it did not prompt him to the best, if he were lacking in good will. or again it would be restricting his _wisdom_ and his _power_, if he lacked the knowledge necessary for discerning the best and for finding the means to obtain it, or if he lacked the strength necessary for employing these means. there is, however, ambiguity in the assertion that love of virtue and hatred of vice are infinite in god: if that were absolutely and unreservedly true, in practice there would be no vice in the world. but although each one of god's perfections is infinite in itself, it is exercised only in proportion to the object and as the nature of things prompts it. thus love of the best in the whole carries the day over [ ] all other individual inclinations or hatreds; it is the only impulse whose very exercise is absolutely infinite, nothing having power to prevent god from declaring himself for the best; and some vice being combined with the best possible plan, god permits it. . iii. 'an infinite goodness having guided the creator in the production of the world, all the characteristics of knowledge, skill, power and greatness that are displayed in his work are destined for the happiness of intelligent creatures. he wished to show forth his perfections only to the end that creatures of this kind should find their felicity in the knowledge, the admiration and the love of the supreme being.' this maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact. i grant that the happiness of intelligent creatures is the principal part of god's design, for they are most like him; but nevertheless i do not see how one can prove that to be his sole aim. it is true that the realm of nature must serve the realm of grace: but, since all is connected in god's great design, we must believe that the realm of grace is also in some way adapted to that of nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and beauty, to render the combination of the two the most perfect that can be. and there is no reason to suppose that god, for the sake of some lessening of moral evil, would reverse the whole order of nature. each perfection or imperfection in the creature has its value, but there is none that has an infinite value. thus the moral or physical good and evil of rational creatures does not infinitely exceed the good and evil which is simply metaphysical, namely that which lies in the perfection of the other creatures; and yet one would be bound to say this if the present maxim were strictly true. when god justified to the prophet jonah the pardon that he had granted to the inhabitants of nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who would have been involved in the ruin of this great city. no substance is absolutely contemptible or absolutely precious before god. and the abuse or the exaggerated extension of the present maxim appears to be in part the source of the difficulties that m. bayle puts forward. it is certain that god sets greater store by a man than a lion; nevertheless it can hardly be said with certainty that god prefers a single man in all respects to the whole of lion-kind. even should that be so, it would by no means follow that the interest of a certain number of men would prevail over the [ ] consideration of a general disorder diffused through an infinite number of creatures. this opinion would be a remnant of the old and somewhat discredited maxim, that all is made solely for man. . iv. 'the benefits he imparts to the creatures that are capable of felicity tend only to their happiness. he therefore does not permit that these should serve to make them unhappy, and, if the wrong use that they made of them were capable of destroying them, he would give them sure means of always using them well. otherwise they would not be true benefits, and his goodness would be smaller than that we can conceive of in another benefactor. (i mean, in a cause that united with its gifts the sure skill to make good use of them.)' there already is the abuse or the ill effect of the preceding maxim. it is not strictly true (though it appear plausible) that the benefits god imparts to the creatures who are capable of felicity tend solely to their happiness. all is connected in nature; and if a skilled artisan, an engineer, an architect, a wise politician often makes one and the same thing serve several ends, if he makes a double hit with a single throw, when that can be done conveniently, one may say that god, whose wisdom and power are perfect, does so always. that is husbanding the ground, the time, the place, the material, which make up as it were his outlay. thus god has more than one purpose in his projects. the felicity of all rational creatures is one of the aims he has in view; but it is not his whole aim, nor even his final aim. therefore it happens that the unhappiness of some of these creatures may come about _by concomitance_, and as a result of other greater goods: this i have already explained, and m. bayle has to some extent acknowledged it. the goods as such, considered in themselves, are the object of the antecedent will of god. god will produce as much reason and knowledge in the universe as his plan can admit. one can conceive of a mean between an antecedent will altogether pure and primitive, and a consequent and final will. the _primitive antecedent will_ has as its object each good and each evil in itself, detached from all combination, and tends to advance the good and prevent the evil. the _mediate will_ relates to combinations, as when one attaches a good to an evil: then the will will have some tendency towards this combination when the good exceeds the evil therein. but the _final and decisive will_ results from consideration of all the goods and all the evils that enter into our deliberation, it results from a total combination. this shows[ ] that a mediate will, although it may in a sense pass as consequent in relation to a pure and primitive antecedent will, must be considered antecedent in relation to the final and decretory will. god gives reason to the human race; misfortunes arise thence by concomitance. his pure antecedent will tends towards giving reason, as a great good, and preventing the evils in question. but when it is a question of the evils that accompany this gift which god has made to us of reason, the compound, made up of the combination of reason and of these evils, will be the object of a mediate will of god, which will tend towards producing or preventing this compound, according as the good or the evil prevails therein. but even though it should prove that reason did more harm than good to men (which, however, i do not admit), whereupon the mediate will of god would discard it with all its concomitants, it might still be the case that it was more in accordance with the perfection of the universe to give reason to men, notwithstanding all the evil consequences which it might have with reference to them. consequently, the final will or the decree of god, resulting from all the considerations he can have, would be to give it to them. and, far from being subject to blame for this, he would be blameworthy if he did not so. thus the evil, or the mixture of goods and evils wherein the evil prevails, happens only _by concomitance_, because it is connected with greater goods that are outside this mixture. this mixture, therefore, or this compound, is not to be conceived as a grace or as a gift from god to us; but the good that is found mingled therein will nevertheless be good. such is god's gift of reason to those who make ill use thereof. it is always a good in itself; but the combination of this good with the evils that proceed from its abuse is not a good with regard to those who in consequence thereof become unhappy. yet it comes to be by concomitance, because it serves a greater good in relation to the universe. and it is doubtless that which prompted god to give reason to those who have made it an instrument of their unhappiness. or, to put it more precisely, in accordance with my system god, having found among the possible beings some rational creatures who misuse their reason, gave existence to those who are included in the best possible plan of the universe. thus nothing prevents us from admitting that god grants goods which turn into evil by the fault of men, this often happening to men in just punishment of the misuse they had made of god's grace. aloysius [ ] novarinus wrote a book _de occultis dei beneficiis_: one could write one _de occultis dei poenis_. this saying of claudian would be in place here with regard to some persons: _tolluntur in altum,_ _ut lapsu graviore ruant_. but to say that god should not give a good which he knows an evil will will abuse, when the general plan of things demands that he give it; or again to say that he should give certain means for preventing it, contrary to this same general order: that is to wish (as i have observed already) that god himself become blameworthy in order to prevent man from being so. to object, as people do here, that the goodness of god would be smaller than that of another benefactor who would give a more useful gift, is to overlook the fact that the goodness of a benefactor is not measured by a single benefit. it may well be that a gift from a private person is greater than one from a prince, but the gifts of this private person all taken together will be much inferior to the prince's gifts all together. thus one can esteem fittingly the good things done by god only when one considers their whole extent by relating them to the entire universe. moreover, one may say that the gifts given in the expectation that they will harm are the gifts of an enemy, [greek: hechthrôn dôra adôra], _hostibus eveniant talia dona meis._ but that applies to when there is malice or guilt in him who gives them, as there was in that eutrapelus of whom horace speaks, who did good to people in order to give them the means of destroying themselves. his design was evil, but god's design cannot be better than it is. must god spoil his system, must there be less beauty, perfection and reason in the universe, because there are people who misuse reason? the common sayings are in place here: _abusus non tollit usum_; there is _scandalum datum et scandalum acceptum_. . v. 'a maleficent being is very capable of heaping magnificent gifts upon his enemies, when he knows that they will make thereof a use that will destroy them. it therefore does not beseem the infinitely good being to give to creatures a free will, whereof, as he knows for certain, they would make a use that would render them unhappy. therefore if he gives them free will he combines with it the art of using it always opportunely, and permits not that they neglect the practice of this art in any [ ] conjuncture; and if there were no sure means of determining the good use of this free will, he would rather take from them this faculty, than allow it to be the cause of their unhappiness. that is the more manifest, as free will is a grace which he has given them of his own choice and without their asking for it; so that he would be more answerable for the unhappiness it would bring upon them than if he had only granted it in response to their importunate prayers.' what was said at the end of the remark on the preceding maxim ought to be repeated here, and is sufficient to counter the present maxim. moreover, the author is still presupposing that false maxim advanced as the third, stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of god. if that were so, perhaps neither sin nor unhappiness would ever occur, even by concomitance. god would have chosen a sequence of possibles where all these evils would be excluded. but god would fail in what is due to the universe, that is, in what he owes to himself. if there were only spirits they would be without the required connexion, without the order of time and place. this order demands matter, movement and its laws; to adjust these to spirits in the best possible way means to return to our world. when one looks at things only in the mass, one imagines to be practicable a thousand things that cannot properly take place. to wish that god should not give free will to rational creatures is to wish that there be none of these creatures; and to wish that god should prevent them from misusing it is to wish that there be none but these creatures alone, together with what was made for them only. if god had none but these creatures in view, he would doubtless prevent them from destroying themselves. one may say in a sense, however, that god has given to these creatures the art of always making good use of their free will, for the natural light of reason is this art. but it would be necessary always to have the will to do good, and often creatures lack the means of giving themselves the will they ought to have; often they even lack the will to use those means which indirectly give a good will. of this i have already spoken more than once. this fault must be admitted, and one must even acknowledge that god would perhaps have been able to exempt creatures from that fault, since there is nothing to prevent, so it seems, the existence of some whose nature it would be always to have good will. but i reply that it is not necessary, and that it was not feasible for all rational creatures to have so great a perfection,[ ] and such as would bring them so close to the divinity. it may even be that that can only be made possible by a special divine grace. but in this case, would it be proper for god to grant it to all, that is, always to act miraculously in respect of all rational creatures? nothing would be less rational than these perpetual miracles. there are degrees among creatures: the general order requires it. and it appears quite consistent with the order of divine government that the great privilege of strengthening in the good should be granted more easily to those who had a good will when they were in a more imperfect state, in the state of struggle and of pilgrimage, _in ecclesia militante, in statu viatorum_. the good angels themselves were not created incapable of sin. nevertheless i would not dare to assert that there are no blessed creatures born, or such as are sinless and holy by their nature. there are perhaps people who give this privilege to the blessed virgin, since, moreover, the roman church to-day places her above the angels. but it suffices us that the universe is very great and very varied: to wish to limit it is to have little knowledge thereof. 'but', m. bayle goes on, 'god has given free will to creatures capable of sinning, without their having asked him for this grace. and he who gave such a gift would be more answerable for the unhappiness that it brought upon those who made use of it, than if he had granted it only in response to their importunate prayers.' but importunity in prayers makes no difference to god; he knows better than we what we need, and he only grants what serves the interest of the whole. it seems that m. bayle here makes free will consist in the faculty for sinning; yet he acknowledges elsewhere that god and the saints are free, without having this faculty. however that may be, i have already shown fully that god, doing what his wisdom and his goodness combined ordain, is not answerable for the evil that he permits. even men, when they do their duty, are not answerable for consequences, whether they foresee them or not. . vi. 'it is as sure a means of taking a man's life to give him a silk cord that one knows certainly he will make use of freely to strangle himself, as to plant a few dagger thrusts in his body. one desires his death not less when one makes use of the first way, than when one employs the second: it even seems as though one desires it with a more malicious intention, since one tends to leave to him the whole trouble and the whole blame of his destruction.' [ ] those who write treatises on duties (de officiis) as, for instance, cicero, st. ambrose, grotius, opalenius, sharrok, rachelius, pufendorf, as well as the casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not obliged to return to its owner a thing deposited: for example, one will not give back a dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab someone. let us pretend that i have in my hands the fatal draught that meleager's mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his procris; the horses of theseus that will tear to pieces hippolytus, his son: these things are demanded back from me, and i am right in refusing them, knowing the use that will be made of them. but how will it be if a competent judge orders me to restore them, when i cannot prove to him what i know of the evil consequences that restitution will have, apollo perchance having given to me, as to cassandra, the gift of prophecy under the condition that i shall not be believed? i should then be compelled to make restitution, having no alternative other than my own destruction: thus i cannot escape from contributing towards the evil. another comparison: jupiter promises semele, the sun phaeton, cupid psyche to grant whatever favour the other shall ask. they swear by the styx, _di cujus jurare timent et fallere numen_. one would gladly stop, but too late, the request half heard, _voluit deus ora loquentis_ _opprimere; exierat jam vox properata sub auras_. one would gladly draw back after the request was made, making vain remonstrances; but they press you, they say to you: 'do you make oaths that you will not keep?' the law of the styx is inviolable, one must needs submit to it; if one has erred in making the oath, one would err more in not keeping it; the promise must be fulfilled, however harmful it may be to him who exacts it. it would be ruinous to you if you did not fulfil it. it seems as though the moral of these fables implies that a supreme necessity may constrain one to comply with evil. god, in truth, knows no other judge that can compel him to give what may turn to evil, he is not like jupiter who fears the styx. but his own wisdom is the greatest judge that he can find, there is no appeal from its judgements: they are the decrees of destiny. the eternal verities, objects of his wisdom, are more [ ] inviolable than the styx. these laws and this judge do not constrain: they are stronger, for they persuade. wisdom only shows god the best possible exercise of his goodness: after that, the evil that occurs is an inevitable result of the best. i will add something stronger: to permit the evil, as god permits it, is the greatest goodness. _si mala sustulerat, non erat ille bonus._ one would need to have a bent towards perversity to say after this that it is more malicious to leave to someone the whole trouble and the whole blame of his destruction. when god does leave it to a man, it has belonged to him since before his existence; it was already in the idea of him as still merely possible, before the decree of god which makes him to exist. can one, then, leave it or give it to another? there is the whole matter. . vii. 'a true benefactor gives promptly, and does not wait to give until those he loves have suffered long miseries from the privation of what he could have imparted to them at first very easily, and without causing any inconvenience to himself. if the limitation of his forces does not permit him to do good without inflicting pain or some other inconvenience, he acquiesces in this, but only regretfully, and he never employs this way of rendering service when he can render it without mingling any kind of evil in his favours. if the profit one could derive from the evils he inflicted could spring as easily from an unalloyed good as from those evils, he would take the straight road of unalloyed good, and not the indirect road that would lead from the evil to the good. if he showers riches and honours, it is not to the end that those who have enjoyed them, when they come to lose them, should be all the more deeply afflicted in proportion to their previous experience of pleasure, and that thus they should become more unhappy than the persons who have always been deprived of these advantages. a malicious being would shower good things at such a price upon the people for whom he had the most hatred.' (compare this passage of aristotle, _rhetor._, . , c. , p. m. : [greek: hoion ei doiê an tis tini hina aphelomenos leipêsêi; hothen kai tout' eirêtai,] [greek: pollois ho daimôn ou kat' eunoian pherôn] [greek: megala didôsin eutychêmat', all' hina] [greek: tas symphoras labôsin epiphanesteras.] [ ] id est: veluti si quis alicui aliquid det, ut (postea) hoc (ipsi) erepto (ipsum) afficiat dolore. unde etiam illud est dictum: _bona magna multis non amicus dat deus,_ _insigniore ut rursus his privet malo._) all these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change and mutilate the fact, they only half record things: god has care for men, he loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. yet he allows men to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend towards their destruction; and when he makes someone happy, it is after many sufferings: where is his affection, where is his goodness or again where is his power? vain objections, which suppress the main point, which ignore the fact that it is of god one speaks. it is as though one were speaking of a mother, a guardian, a tutor, whose well-nigh only care is concerned with the upbringing, the preservation, the happiness of the person in question, and who neglect their duty. god takes care of the universe, he neglects nothing, he chooses what is best on the whole. if in spite of all that someone is wicked and unhappy, it behoved him to be so. god (so they say) could have given happiness to all, he could have given it promptly and easily, and without causing himself any inconvenience, for he can do all. but should he? since he does not so, it is a sign that he had to act altogether differently. if we infer from this either that god only regretfully, and owing to lack of power, fails to make men happy and to give the good first of all and without admixture of evil, or else that he lacks the good will to give it unreservedly and for good and all, then we are comparing our true god with the god of herodotus, full of envy, or with the demon of the poet whose iambics aristotle quotes, and i have just translated into latin, who gives good things in order that he may cause more affliction by taking them away. that would be trifling with god in perpetual anthropomorphisms, representing him as a man who must give himself up completely to one particular business, whose goodness must be chiefly exercised upon those objects alone which are known to us, and who lacks either aptitude or good will. god is not lacking therein, he could do the good that we would desire; he even wishes it, taking it separately, but he must not do it in preference to other greater goods which are opposed to it. moreover, one has no cause to complain of the fact that usually [ ] one attains salvation only through many sufferings, and by bearing the cross of jesus christ. these evils serve to make the elect imitators of their master, and to increase their happiness. . viii. 'the greatest and the most substantial glory that he who is the master of others can gain is to maintain amongst them virtue, order, peace, contentment of mind. the glory that he would derive from their unhappiness can be nothing but a false glory.' if we knew the city of god just as it is, we should see that it is the most perfect state which can be devised; that virtue and happiness reign there, as far as is possible, in accordance with the laws of the best; that sin and unhappiness (whose entire exclusion from the nature of things reasons of the supreme order did not permit), are well-nigh nothing there in comparison with the good, and even are of service for greater good. now since these evils were to exist, there must needs be some appointed to be subject to them, and we are those people. if it were others, would there not be the same appearance of evil? or rather, would not these others be those known as we? when god derives some glory from the evil through having made it serve a greater good, it was proper that he should derive that glory. it is not therefore a false glory, as would be that of a prince who overthrew his state in order to have the honour of setting it up again. . ix. 'the way whereby that master can give proof of greatest love for virtue is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any mixture of vice. if it is easy for him to procure for his subjects this advantage, and nevertheless he permits vice to raise its head, save that he punishes it finally after having long tolerated it, his affection for virtue is not the greatest one can conceive; it is therefore not infinite.' i am not yet half way through the nineteen maxims, and already i am weary of refuting, and making the same answer always. m. bayle multiplies unnecessarily his so-called maxims in opposition to my dogmas. if things connected together may be separated, the parts from their whole, the human kind from the universe, god's attributes the one from the other, power from wisdom, it may be said that god _can cause_ virtue to be in the world without any mixture of vice, and even that he can do so _easily_. but, since he has permitted vice, it must be that that order of the universe which was found preferable to every other plan required it. one must believe that it is not permitted to do otherwise, since it is not [ ] possible to do better. it is a hypothetical necessity, a moral necessity, which, far from being contrary to freedom, is the effect of its choice. _quae rationi contraria sunt, ea nec fieri a sapiente posse credendum est_. the objection is made here, that god's affection for virtue is therefore not the greatest which can be conceived, that it is not _infinite_. to that an answer has already been given on the second maxim, in the assertion that god's affection for any created thing whatsoever is proportionate to the value of the thing. virtue is the noblest quality of created things, but it is not the only good quality of creatures. there are innumerable others which attract the inclination of god: from all these inclinations there results the most possible good, and it turns out that if there were only virtue, if there were only rational creatures, there would be less good. midas proved to be less rich when he had only gold. and besides, wisdom must vary. to multiply one and the same thing only would be superfluity, and poverty too. to have a thousand well-bound vergils in one's library, always to sing the airs from the opera of cadmus and hermione, to break all the china in order only to have cups of gold, to have only diamond buttons, to eat nothing but partridges, to drink only hungarian or shiraz wine--would one call that reason? nature had need of animals, plants, inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason, marvels which serve for exercise of the reason. what would an intelligent creature do if there were no unintelligent things? what would it think of, if there were neither movement, nor matter, nor sense? if it had only distinct thoughts it would be a god, its wisdom would be without bounds: that is one of the results of my meditations. as soon as there is a mixture of confused thoughts, there is sense, there is matter. for these confused thoughts come from the relation of all things one to the other by way of duration and extent. thus it is that in my philosophy there is no rational creature without some organic body, and there is no created spirit entirely detached from matter. but these organic bodies vary no less in perfection than the spirits to which they belong. therefore, since god's wisdom must have a world of bodies, a world of substances capable of perception and incapable of reason; since, in short, it was necessary to choose from all the things possible what produced the best effect together, and since vice entered in by this door, god would not have been altogether good, altogether wise if he had excluded it. [ ] . x. 'the way to evince the greatest hatred for vice is not indeed to allow it to prevail for a long time and then chastise it, but to crush it before its birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. a king, for example, who put his finances in such good order that no malversation was ever committed, would thus display more hatred for the wrong done by factionaries than if, after having suffered them to batten on the blood of the people, he had them hanged.' it is always the same song, it is anthropomorphism pure and simple. a king should generally have nothing so much at heart as to keep his subjects free from oppression. one of his greatest interests is to bring good order into his finances. nevertheless there are times when he is obliged to tolerate vice and disorders. he has a great war on his hands, he is in a state of exhaustion, he has no choice of generals, it is necessary to humour those he has, those possessed of great authority with the soldiers: a braccio, a sforza, a wallenstein. he lacks money for the most pressing needs, it is necessary to turn to great financiers, who have an established credit, and he must at the same time connive at their malversations. it is true that this unfortunate necessity arises most often from previous errors. it is not the same with god: he has need of no man, he commits no error, he always does the best. one cannot even wish that things may go better, when one understands them: and it would be a vice in the author of things if he wished to change anything whatsoever in them, if he wished to exclude the vice that was found there. is this state with perfect government, where good is willed and performed as far as it is possible, where evil even serves the greatest good, comparable with the state of a prince whose affairs are in ruin and who escapes as best he can? or with that of a prince who encourages oppression in order to punish it, and who delights to see the little men with begging bowls and the great on scaffolds? . xi. 'a ruler devoted to the interests of virtue, and to the good of his subjects, takes the utmost care to ensure that they never disobey his laws; and if he must needs chastise them for their disobedience, he sees to it that the penalty cures them of the inclination to evil, and restores in their soul a strong and constant tendency towards good: so far is he from any desire that the penalty for the error should incline them more and more towards evil.' [ ] to make men better, god does all that is due, and even all that can be done on his side without detriment to what is due. the most usual aim of punishment is amendment; but it is not the sole aim, nor that which god always intends. i have said a word on that above. original sin, which disposes men towards evil, is not merely a penalty for the first sin; it is a natural consequence thereof. on that too a word has been said, in the course of an observation on the fourth theological proposition. it is like drunkenness, which is a penalty for excess in drinking and is at the same time a natural consequence that easily leads to new sins. . xii. 'to permit the evil that one could prevent is not to care whether it be committed or not, or is even to wish that it be committed.' by no means. how many times do men permit evils which they could prevent if they turned all their efforts in that direction? but other more important cares prevent them from doing so. one will rarely resolve upon adjusting irregularities in the coinage while one is involved in a great war. and the action of an english parliament in this direction a little before the peace of ryswyck will be rather praised than imitated. can one conclude from this that the state has no anxiety about this irregularity, or even that it desires it? god has a far stronger reason, and one far more worthy of him, for tolerating evils. not only does he derive from them greater goods, but he finds them connected with the greatest goods of all those that are possible: so that it would be a fault not to permit them. . xiii. 'it is a very great fault in those who govern, if they do not care whether there be disorder in their states or not. the fault is still greater if they wish and even desire disorder there. if by hidden and indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their states to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for themselves the glory of showing that they have the courage and the prudence necessary for saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing, they would be most deserving of condemnation. but if they stirred up this sedition because there were no other means than that, of averting the total ruin of their subjects and of strengthening on new foundations, and for several centuries, the happiness of nations, one must needs lament the unfortunate necessity (see above, pp. , , what has been said of the force of[ ] necessity) to which they were reduced, and praise them for the use that they made thereof.' this maxim, with divers others set forth here, is not applicable to the government of god. not to mention the fact that it is only the disorders of a very small part of his kingdom which are brought up in objection, it is untrue that he has no anxiety about evils, that he desires them, that he brings them into being, to have the glory of allaying them. god wills order and good; but it happens sometimes that what is disorder in the part is order in the whole. i have already stated this legal axiom: _incivile est nisi tota lege inspecta judicare_. the permission of evils comes from a kind of moral necessity: god is constrained to this by his wisdom and by his goodness; _this necessity is happy_, whereas that of the prince spoken of in the maxim is _unhappy_. his state is one of the most corrupt; and the government of god is the best state possible. . xiv. 'the permission of a certain evil is only excusable when one cannot remedy it without introducing a greater evil; but it cannot be excusable in those who have in hand a remedy more efficacious against this evil, and against all the other evils that could spring from the suppression of this one.' the maxim is true, but it cannot be brought forward against the government of god. supreme reason constrains him to permit the evil. if god chose what would not be the best absolutely and in all, that would be a greater evil than all the individual evils which he could prevent by this means. this wrong choice would destroy his wisdom and his goodness. . xv. 'the being infinitely powerful, creator of matter and of spirits, makes whatever he wills of this matter and these spirits. there is no situation or shape that he cannot communicate to spirits. if he then permitted a physical or a moral evil, this would not be for the reason that otherwise some other still greater physical or moral evil would be altogether inevitable. none of those reasons for the mixture of good and evil which are founded on the limitation of the forces of benefactors can apply to him.' it is true that god makes of matter and of spirits whatever he wills; but he is like a good sculptor, who will make from his block of marble only that which he judges to be the best, and who judges well. god makes of matter the most excellent of all possible machines; he makes of spirits the most excellent of all governments conceivable; and over and above all that, he establishes for their union the most perfect of all harmonies, [ ] according to the system i have proposed. now since physical evil and moral evil occur in this perfect work, one must conclude (contrary to m. bayle's assurance here) that _otherwise a still greater evil would have been altogether inevitable_. this great evil would be that god would have chosen ill if he had chosen otherwise than he has chosen. it is true that god is infinitely powerful; but his power is indeterminate, goodness and wisdom combined determine him to produce the best. m. bayle makes elsewhere an objection which is peculiar to him, which he derives from the opinions of the modern cartesians. they say that god could have given to souls what thoughts he would, without making them depend upon any relation to the body: by this means souls would be spared a great number of evils which only spring from derangement of the body. more will be said of this later; now it is sufficient to bear in mind that god cannot establish a system ill-connected and full of dissonances. it is to some extent the nature of souls to represent bodies. . xvi. 'one is just as much the cause of an event when one brings it about in moral ways, as when one brings it about in physical ways. a minister of state, who, without going out of his study, and simply by utilizing the passions of the leaders of a faction, overthrew all their plots, would thus be bringing about the ruin of this faction, no less than if he destroyed it by a surprise attack.' i have nothing to say against this maxim. evil is always attributed to moral causes, and not always to physical causes. here i observe simply that if i could not prevent the sin of others except by committing a sin myself, i should be justified in permitting it, and i should not be accessary thereto, or its moral cause. in god, every fault would represent a sin; it would be even more than sin, for it would destroy divinity. and it would be a great fault in him not to choose the best. i have said so many times. he would then prevent sin by something worse than all sins. . xvii. 'it is all the same whether one employ a necessary cause, or employ a free cause while choosing the moments when one knows it to be determined. if i imagine that gunpowder has the power to ignite or not to ignite when fire touches it, and if i know for certain that it will be disposed to ignite at eight o'clock in the morning, i shall be just as much the cause of its effects if i apply the fire to it at that hour, as i should be in assuming, as is the case, that it is a necessary cause. [ ] for where i am concerned it would no longer be a free cause. i should be catching it at the moment when i knew it to be necessitated by its own choice. it is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with regard to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it is determined thereto. all that which exists exists of necessity while it exists. [greek: to einai to on hotan êi, kai to mê einai hotan mê êi, anankê.] "necesse est id quod est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est, quando non est, non esse": arist., _de interpret._, cap. . the nominalists have adopted this maxim of aristotle. scotus and sundry other schoolmen appear to reject it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same thing. see the jesuits of coimbra on this passage from aristotle, p. _et seq._)' this maxim may pass also; i would wish only to change something in the phraseology. i would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the same thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis. one is never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes. i mean here a _necessity_ absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that god, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a _moral_ necessity. it must be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do it. these hypothetical necessities do no harm. i have spoken sufficiently on this point already. . xviii. 'when a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill all the rest, not excepting even babes and sucklings.' it seems to be assumed here that there are a hundred thousand times more damned than saved, and that children dying unbaptized are included among the former. both these points are disputed, and especially the damnation of these children. i have spoken of this above. m. bayle urges the same objection elsewhere (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ): 'we see clearly', he says, 'that the sovereign who wishes to exercise both justice and clemency when a city has revolted must be content with the punishment of a small number of mutineers, and [ ] pardon all the rest. for if the number of those who are chastised is as a thousand to one, in comparison with those whom he freely pardons, he cannot be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. he would assuredly be accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost all the rebels. criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their crimes so completely by the loss of their life, that the public requires nothing more, and is indignant when executioners are clumsy. these would be stoned if they were known deliberately to give repeated strokes of the axe; and the judges who are present at the execution would not be immune from danger if they were thought to take pleasure in this evil sport of the executioners, and to have surreptitiously urged them to practise it.' (note that this is not to be understood as strictly universal. there are cases where the people approve of the slow killing of certain criminals, as when francis i thus put to death some persons accused of heresy after the notorious placards of . no pity was shown to ravaillac, who was tortured in divers horrible ways. see the _french mercury_, vol. i, fol. m., _et seq._ see also pierre matthieu in his _history of the death of henry iv_; and do not forget what he says on page m. concerning the discussion by the judges with regard to the torture of this parricide.) 'finally it is an exceptionally notorious fact that rulers who should be guided by st. paul, i mean who should condemn to the extreme penalty all those whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the human kind and destroyers of their communities. it is incontestable that their laws, far from being fitted, in accordance with the aim of legislators, to uphold society, would be its complete ruin. (apply here these words of pliny the younger, _epist._, , lib. : mandemus memoriae quod vir mitissimus, et ob hoc quoque maximus, thrasea crebro dicere solebat, qui vitia odit, homines odit.)' he adds that it was said of the laws of draco, an athenian lawgiver, that they had not been written with ink, but with blood, because they punished all sins with the extreme penalty, and because damnation is a penalty even worse than death. but it must be borne in mind that damnation is a consequence of sin. thus i [ ] once answered a friend, who raised as an objection the disproportion existing between an eternal punishment and a limited crime, that there is no injustice when the continuation of the punishment is only a result of the continuation of the sin. i will speak further on this point later. as for the number of the damned, even though it should be incomparably greater among men than the number of the saved, that would not preclude the possibility that in the universe the happy creatures infinitely outnumber those who are unhappy. such examples as that of a prince who punishes only the leaders of rebels or of a general who has a regiment decimated, are of no importance here. self-interest compels the prince and the general to pardon the guilty, even though they should remain wicked. god only pardons those who become better: he can distinguish them; and this severity is more consistent with perfect justice. but if anyone asks why god gives not to all the grace of conversion, the question is of a different nature, having no relation to the present maxim. i have already answered it in a sense, not in order to find god's reasons, but to show that he cannot lack such, and that there are no opposing reasons of any validity. moreover, we know that sometimes whole cities are destroyed and the inhabitants put to the sword, to inspire terror in the rest. that may serve to shorten a great war or a rebellion, and would mean a saving of blood through the shedding of it: there is no decimation there. we cannot assert, indeed, that the wicked of our globe are punished so severely in order to intimidate the inhabitants of the other globes and to make them better. yet an abundance of reasons in the universal harmony which are unknown to us, because we know not sufficiently the extent of the city of god, nor the form of the general republic of spirits, nor even the whole architecture of bodies, may produce the same effect. . xix. 'those physicians who chose, among many remedies capable of curing a sick man, whereof divers were such as they well knew he would take with enjoyment, precisely that one which they knew he would refuse to take, would vainly urge and pray him not to refuse it; we should still have just cause for thinking that they had no desire to cure him: for if they wished to do so, they would choose for him among those good medicines one which they knew he would willingly swallow. if, moreover, they knew that rejection of the remedy they offered him would augment his sickness to[ ] the point of making it fatal, one could not help saying that, despite all their exhortations, they must certainly be desirous of the sick man's death.' god wishes to save all men: that means that he would save them if men themselves did not prevent it, and did not refuse to receive his grace; and he is not bound or prompted by reason always to overcome their evil will. he does so sometimes nevertheless, when superior reasons allow of it, and when his consequent and decretory will, which results from all his reasons, makes him resolve upon the election of a certain number of men. he gives aids to all for their conversion and for perseverance, and these aids suffice in those who have good will, but they do not always suffice to give good will. men obtain this good will either through particular aids or through circumstances which cause the success of the general aids. god cannot refrain from offering other remedies which he knows men will reject, bringing upon themselves all the greater guilt: but shall one wish that god be unjust in order that man may be less criminal? moreover, the grace that does not serve the one may serve the other, and indeed always serves the totality of god's plan, which is the best possible in conception. shall god not give the rain, because there are low-lying places which will be thereby incommoded? shall the sun not shine as much as it should for the world in general, because there are places which will be too much dried up in consequence? in short, all these comparisons, spoken of in these maxims that m. bayle has just given, of a physician, a benefactor, a minister of state, a prince, are exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their duties are and what can and ought to be the object of their cares: they have scarce more than the one affair, and they often fail therein through negligence or malice. god's object has in it something infinite, his cares embrace the universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire to gauge his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. what temerity, or rather what absurdity! the objections are on false assumptions; it is senseless to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the matter of fact. to say with st. paul, _o altitudo divitiarum et sapientiae,_ is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the reasons that we know, for they teach us that immensity of god whereof the apostle speaks. but therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that god does all the best [ ] possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his actions. it is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests of this, when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and isolated, so to speak, among the works of god. such a whole, shaped as it were by the hand of god, is a plant, an animal, a man. we cannot wonder enough at the beauty and the contrivance of its structure. but when we see some broken bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a plant, there appears to be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent anatomist observe it: and even he would recognize nothing therein if he had not before seen like pieces attached to their whole. it is the same with the government of god: that which we have been able to see hitherto is not a large enough piece for recognition of the beauty and the order of the whole. thus the very nature of things implies that this order in the divine city, which we see not yet here on earth, should be an object of our faith, of our hope, of our confidence in god. if there are any who think otherwise, so much the worse for them, they are malcontents in the state of the greatest and the best of all monarchs; and they are wrong not to take advantage of the examples he has given them of his wisdom and his infinite goodness, whereby he reveals himself as being not only wonderful, but also worthy of love beyond all things. . i hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the nineteen maxims of m. bayle, which we have just considered, has been left without a necessary answer. it is likely that, having often before meditated on this subject, he will have put there all his strongest convictions touching the moral cause of moral evil. there are, however, still sundry passages here and there in his works which it will be well not to pass over in silence. very often he exaggerates the difficulty which he assumes with regard to freeing god from the imputation of sin. he observes _(reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. ) that molina, if he reconciled free will with foreknowledge, did not reconcile the goodness and the holiness of god with sin. he praises the sincerity of those who bluntly declare (as he claims piscator did) that everything is to be traced back to the will of god, and who maintain that god could not but be just, even though he were the author of sin, even though he condemned innocence. and on the other side, or in other passages, he seems to show more approval of the opinions of those who preserve god's goodness at [ ] the expense of his greatness, as plutarch does in his book against the stoics. 'it was more reasonable', he says, 'to say' (with the epicureans) 'that innumerable parts' (or atoms flying about at haphazard through an infinite space) 'by their force prevailed over the weakness of jupiter and, in spite of him and against his nature and will, did many bad and irrational things, than to agree that there is neither confusion nor wickedness but he is the author thereof.' what may be said for both these parties, stoics and epicureans, appears to have led m. bayle to the [greek: epechein] of the pyrrhonians, the suspension of his judgement in respect of reason, so long as faith is set apart; and to that he professes sincere submission. . pursuing his arguments, however, he has gone as far as attempting almost to revive and reinforce those of the disciples of manes, a persian heretic of the third century after christ, or of a certain paul, chief of the manichaeans in armenia in the seventh century, from whom they were named paulicians. all these heretics renewed what an ancient philosopher of upper asia, known under the name of zoroaster, had taught, so it is said, of two intelligent principles of all things, the one good, the other bad, a dogma that had perhaps come from the indians. among them numbers of people still cling to their error, one that is exceedingly prone to overtake human ignorance and superstition, since very many barbarous peoples, even in america, have been deluded by it, without having had need of philosophy. the slavs (according to helmold) had their zernebog or black god. the greeks and romans, wise as they seem to be, had a vejovis or anti-jupiter, otherwise called pluto, and numerous other maleficent divinities. the goddess nemesis took pleasure in abasing those who were too fortunate; and herodotus in some passages hints at his belief that all divinity is envious; which, however, is not in harmony with the doctrine of the two principles. . plutarch, in his treatise _on isis and osiris_, knows of no writer more ancient than zoroaster the magician, as he calls him, that is likely to have taught the two principles. trogus or justin makes him a king of the bactrians, who was conquered by ninus or semiramis; he attributes to him the knowledge of astronomy and the invention of magic. but this magic was apparently the religion of the fire-worshippers: and it appears that he looked upon light and heat as the good principle, while he added the [ ] evil, that is to say, opacity, darkness, cold. pliny cites the testimony of a certain hermippus, an interpreter of zoroaster's books, according to whom zoroaster was a disciple in the art of magic to one named azonacus; unless indeed this be a corruption of oromases, of whom i shall speak presently, and whom plato in the _alcibiades_ names as the father of zoroaster. modern orientals give the name zerdust to him whom the greeks named zoroaster; he is regarded as corresponding to mercury, because with some nations wednesday _(mercredi)_ takes its name from him. it is difficult to disentangle the story of zoroaster and know exactly when he lived. suidas puts him five hundred years before the taking of troy. some ancients cited by pliny and plutarch took it to be ten times as far back. but xanthus the lydian (in the preface to diogenes laertius) put him only six hundred years before the expedition of xerxes. plato declares in the same passage, as m. bayle observes, that the magic of zoroaster was nothing but the study of religion. mr. hyde in his book on the religion of the ancient persians tries to justify this magic, and to clear it not only of the crime of impiety but also of idolatry. fire-worship prevailed among the persians and the chaldaeans also; it is thought that abraham left it when he departed from ur of the chaldees. mithras was the sun and he was also the god of the persians; and according to ovid's account horses were offered in sacrifice to him, _placat equo persis radiis hyperiona cinctum,_ _ne detur celeri victima tarda deo._ but mr. hyde believes that they only made use of the sun and fire in their worship as symbols of the divinity. it may be necessary to distinguish, as elsewhere, between the wise and the multitude. there are in the splendid ruins of persepolis or of tschelminaar (which means forty columns) sculptured representations of their ceremonies. an ambassador of holland had had them sketched at very great cost by a painter, who had devoted a considerable time to the task: but by some chance or other these sketches fell into the hands of a well-known traveller, m. chardin, according to what he tells us himself. it would be a pity if they were lost. these ruins are one of the most ancient and most beautiful monuments of the earth; and in this respect i wonder at such lack of curiosity in a century so curious as ours. [ ] . the ancient greeks and the modern orientals agree in saying that zoroaster called the good god oromazes, or rather oromasdes, and the evil god arimanius. when i pondered on the fact that great princes of upper asia had the name of hormisdas and that irminius or herminius was the name of a god or ancient hero of the scythian celts, that is, of the germani, it occurred to me that this arimanius or irminius might have been a great conqueror of very ancient time coming from the west, just as genghis khan and tamburlaine were later, coming from the east. arimanius would therefore have come from the north-west, that is, from germania and sarmatia, through the territory of the alani and massagetae, to raid the dominions of one ormisdas, a great king in upper asia, just as other scythians did in the days of cyaxares, king of the medes, according to the account given by herodotus. the monarch governing civilized peoples, and working to defend them against the barbarians, would have gone down to posterity, amongst the same peoples, as the good god; but the chief of these devastators will have become the symbol of the evil principle: that is altogether reasonable. it appears from this same mythology that these two princes contended for long, but that neither of them was victorious. thus they both held their own, just as the two principles shared the empire of the world according to the hypothesis attributed to zoroaster. . it remains to be proved that an ancient god or hero of the germani was called herman, arimanius or irminius. tacitus relates that the three tribes which composed germania, the ingaevones, the istaevones and the herminones or hermiones, were thus named from the three sons of mannus. whether that be true or not, he wished in any case to indicate that there was a hero named herminius, from whom he was told the herminones were named. herminones, hermenner, hermunduri all mean the same, that is, soldiers. even in the dark ages arimanni were _viri militares,_ and there is _feudum arimandiae_ in lombard law. . i have shown elsewhere that apparently the name of one part of germania was given to the whole, and that from these herminones or hermunduri all the teutonic peoples were named _hermanni_ or _germani_. the difference between these two words is only in the force of the aspiration: there is the same difference of initial letter between the _germani_ of the latins and _hermanos_ of the spaniards, or in the _gammarus_ of the latins and the _hummer_ (that is, marine crayfish) of the low germans. [ ] besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the whole: so all the germani were called alemanni by the french, and yet this, according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the suabians and the swiss. although tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given _ob metum_. in fact it signifies a warrior: _heer_, _hari_ is army, whence comes _hariban_, or 'call to haro', that is, a general order to be with the army, since corrupted into _arrièreban_. thus hariman or ariman, german _guerre-man_, is a soldier. for as _hari_, _heer_ means army, so _wehr_ signifies arms, _wehren_ to fight, to make war, the word _guerre_, _guerra_ coming doubtless from the same source. i have already spoken of the _feudum arimandiae_: not only did herminones or germani signify the same, but also that ancient herman, so-called son of mannus, appears to have been given this name as being pre-eminently a warrior. . now it is not the passage in tacitus only which indicates for us this god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these peoples, since charlemagne found and destroyed near the weser the column called _irminsäule_, erected in honour of this god. and that combined with the passage in tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that famous arminius who was an enemy of the romans, but a much greater and more ancient hero, that this cult concerned. arminius bore the same name as those who are called hermann to-day. arminius was not great enough, nor fortunate enough, nor well enough known throughout germania to attain to the honour of a public cult, even at the hands of remote tribes, like the saxons, who came long after him into the country of the cherusci. and our arminius, taken by the asiatics for the evil god, provides ample confirmation of my opinion. for in these matters conjectures confirm one another without any logical circle, when their foundations tend towards one and the same end. . it is not beyond belief that the hermes (that is, mercury) of the greeks is the same herminius or arimanius. he may have been an inventor or promoter of the arts and of a slightly more civilized life among his own people and in the countries where he held supremacy, while amongst his enemies he was looked upon as the author of confusion. who knows but that he may have penetrated even into egypt, like the scythians who in [ ] pursuit of sesostris came nearly so far. theut, menes and hermes were known and revered in egypt. they might have been tuiscon, his son mannus and herman, son of mannus, according to the genealogy of tacitus. menes is held to be the most ancient king of the egyptians; 'theut' was with them a name for mercury. at least theut or tuiscon, from whom tacitus derives the descent of the germani, and from whom the teutons, _tuitsche_ (that is, germani) even to-day have their name, is the same as that _teutates_ who according to lucan was worshipped by the gauls, and whom caesar took _pro dite patre_, for pluto, because of the resemblance between his latin name and that of _teut_ or _thiet_, _titan_, _theodon_; this in ancient times signified men, people, and also an excellent man (like the word 'baron'), in short, a prince. there are authorities for all these significations: but one must not delay over this point. herr otto sperling, who is well known for various learned writings, but has many more in readiness to appear, in a special dissertation has treated the question of this teutates, god of the celts. some observations which i imparted to him on that subject have been published, with his reply, in the _literary news of the baltic sea_. he interprets this passage from lucan somewhat otherwise than i do: _teutates, pollensque feris altaribus hesus,_ _et tamaris scythicae non mitior ara dianae._ hesus was, it appears, the god of war, who was called ares by the greeks and erich by the ancient germani, whence still remains _erichtag_, tuesday. the letters r and s, which are produced by the same organ, are easily interchanged, for instance: _moor_ and _moos_, _geren_ and _gesen_, _er war_ and _er was_, _fer_, _hierro_, _eiron_, _eisen_. likewise _papisius_, _valesius_, _fusius_, instead of _papirius_, _valerius_, _furius_, with the ancient romans. as for taramis or perhaps taranis, one knows that _taran_ was the thunder, or the god of thunder, with the ancient celts, called _thor_ by the germani of the north; whence the english have preserved the name 'thursday', _jeudi_, _diem jovis_. and the passage from lucan means that the altar of taran, god of the celts, was not less cruel than that of diana in tauris: _taranis aram non mitiorem ara dianae scythicae fuisse_. . it is also not impossible that there was a time when the western [ ] or celtic princes made themselves masters of greece, of egypt and a good part of asia, and that their cult remained in those countries. when one considers with what rapidity the huns, the saracens and the tartars gained possession of a great part of our continent one will be the less surprised at this; and it is confirmed by the great number of words in the greek and german tongues which correspond so closely. callimachus, in a hymn in honour of apollo, seems to imply that the celts who attacked the temple at delphi, under their brennus, or chief, were descendants of the ancient titans and giants who made war on jupiter and the other gods, that is to say, on the princes of asia and of greece. it may be that jupiter is himself descended from the titans or theodons, that is, from the earlier celto-scythian princes; and the material collected by the late abbé de la charmoye in his _celtic origins_ conforms to that possibility. yet there are opinions on other matters in this work by this learned writer which to me do not appear probable, especially when he excludes the germani from the number of the celts, not having recalled sufficiently the facts given by ancient writers and not being sufficiently aware of the relation between the ancient gallic and germanic tongues. now the so-called giants, who wished to scale the heavens, were new celts who followed the path of their ancestors; and jupiter, although of their kindred, as it were, was constrained to resist them. just so did the visigoths established in gallic territory resist, together with the romans, other peoples of germania and scythia, who succeeded them under attila their leader, he being at that time in control of the scythian, sarmatic and germanic tribes from the frontiers of persia up to the rhine. but the pleasure one feels when one thinks to find in the mythologies of the gods some trace of the old history of fabulous times has perhaps carried me too far, and i know not whether i shall have been any more successful than goropius becanus, schrieckius, herr rudbeck and the abbe de la charmoye. . let us return to zoroaster, who led us to oromasdes and arimanius, the sources of good and evil, and let us assume that he looked upon them as two eternal principles opposed to each other, although there is reason to doubt this assumption. it is thought that marcion, disciple of cerdon, was of this opinion before manes. m. bayle acknowledges that these men used lamentable arguments; but he thinks that they did not sufficiently [ ] recognize their advantages or know how to apply their principal instrument, which was the difficulty over the origin of evil. he believes that an able man on their side would have thoroughly embarrassed the orthodox, and it seems as though he himself, failing any other, wished to undertake a task so unnecessary in the opinion of many people. 'all the hypotheses' (he says, _dictionary_, v., 'marcion', p. ) 'that christians have established parry but poorly the blows aimed at them: they all triumph when they act on the offensive; but they lose their whole advantage when they have to sustain the attack.' he confesses that the 'dualists' (as with mr. hyde he calls them), that is, the champions of two principles, would soon have been routed by _a priori_ reasons, taken from the nature of god; but he thinks that they triumph in their turn when one comes to the _a posteriori_ reasons, which are taken from the existence of evil. . he treats of the matter with abundant detail in his _dictionary_, article 'manichaeans', p. , which we must examine a little, in order to throw greater light upon this subject: 'the surest and clearest ideas of order teach us', he says, 'that a being who exists through himself, who is necessary, who is eternal, must be single, infinite, all powerful, and endowed with all kinds of perfections.' this argument deserves to have been developed more completely. 'now it is necessary to see', he goes on, 'if the phenomena of nature can be conveniently explained by the hypothesis of one single principle.' i have explained it sufficiently by showing that there are cases where some disorder in the part is necessary for producing the greatest order in the whole. but it appears that m. bayle asks a little too much: he wishes for a detailed exposition of how evil is connected with the best possible scheme for the universe. that would be a complete explanation of the phenomena: but i do not undertake to give it; nor am i bound to do so, for there is no obligation to do that which is impossible for us in our existing state. it is sufficient for me to point out that there is nothing to prevent the connexion of a certain individual evil with what is the best on the whole. this incomplete explanation, leaving something to be discovered in the life to come, is sufficient for answering the objections, though not for a comprehension of the matter. . 'the heavens and all the rest of the universe', adds m. bayle, 'preach the glory, the power, the oneness of god.' thence the conclusion [ ] should have been drawn that this is the case (as i have already observed above) because there is seen in these objects something entire and isolated, so to speak. every time we see such a work of god, we find it so perfect that we must wonder at the contrivance and the beauty thereof: but when we do not see an entire work, when we only look upon scraps and fragments, it is no wonder if the good order is not evident there. our planetary system composes such an isolated work, which is complete also when it is taken by itself; each plant, each animal, each man furnishes one such work, to a certain point of perfection: one recognizes therein the wonderful contrivance of the author. but the human kind, so far as it is known to us, is only a fragment, only a small portion of the city of god or of the republic of spirits, which has an extent too great for us, and whereof we know too little, to be able to observe the wonderful order therein. 'man alone,' says m. bayle, 'that masterpiece of his creator among things visible, man alone, i say, gives rise to great objections with regard to the oneness of god.' claudian made the same observation, unburdening his heart in these well-known lines: _saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem_, etc. but the harmony existing in all the rest allows of a strong presumption that it would exist also in the government of men, and generally in that of spirits, if the whole were known to us. one must judge the works of god as wisely as socrates judged those of heraclitus in these words: what i have understood thereof pleases me; i think that the rest would please me no less if i understood it. . here is another particular reason for the disorder apparent in that which concerns man. it is that god, in giving him intelligence, has presented him with an image of the divinity. he leaves him to himself, in a sense, in his small department, _ut spartam quam nactus est ornet_. he enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being, force, life, reason, without showing himself. it is there that free will plays its game: and god makes game (so to speak) of these little gods that he has thought good to produce, as we make game of children who follow pursuits which we secretly encourage or hinder according as it pleases us. thus man is there like a little god in his own world or _microcosm_, which he governs [ ] after his own fashion: he sometimes performs wonders therein, and his art often imitates nature. _jupiter in parvo cum cerneret aethera vitro,_ _risit et ad superos talia dicta dedit:_ _huccine mortalis progressa potentia, divi?_ _jam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor._ _jura poli rerumque fidem legesque deorum_ _cuncta syracusius transtulit arte senex._ _quid falso insontem tonitru salmonea miror?_ _aemula naturae est parva reperta manus._ but he also commits great errors, because he abandons himself to the passions, and because god abandons him to his own way. god punishes him also for such errors, now like a father or tutor, training or chastising children, now like a just judge, punishing those who forsake him: and evil comes to pass most frequently when these intelligences or their small worlds come into collision. man finds himself the worse for this, in proportion to his fault; but god, by a wonderful art, turns all the errors of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great world. it is as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look like mere confusion until one restores them to the right angle of vision or one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. it is by placing and using them properly that one makes them serve as adornment for a room. thus the apparent deformities of our little worlds combine to become beauties in the great world, and have nothing in them which is opposed to the oneness of an infinitely perfect universal principle: on the contrary, they increase our wonder at the wisdom of him who makes evil serve the greater good. . m. bayle continues: 'that man is wicked and miserable; that there are everywhere prisons and hospitals; that history is simply a collection of the crimes and calamities of the human race.' i think that there is exaggeration in that: there is incomparably more good than evil in the life of men, as there are incomparably more houses than prisons. with regard to virtue and vice, a certain mediocrity prevails. machiavelli has already observed that there are few very wicked and very good men, and that this causes the failure of many great enterprises. i find it a great fault in historians that they keep their mind on the evil more than on the [ ] good. the chief end of history, as also of poetry, should be to teach prudence and virtue by examples, and then to display vice in such a way as to create aversion to it and to prompt men to avoid it, or serve towards that end. . m. bayle avows: 'that one finds everywhere both moral good and physical good, some examples of virtue, some examples of happiness, and that this is what makes the difficulty. for if there were only wicked and unhappy people', he says, 'there would be no need to resort to the hypothesis of the two principles.' i wonder that this admirable man could have evinced so great an inclination towards this opinion of the two principles; and i am surprised at his not having taken into account that this romance of human life, which makes the universal history of the human race, lay fully devised in the divine understanding, with innumerable others, and that the will of god only decreed its existence because this sequence of events was to be most in keeping with the rest of things, to bring forth the best result. and these apparent faults in the whole world, these spots on a sun whereof ours is but a ray, rather enhance its beauty than diminish it, contributing towards that end by obtaining a greater good. there are in truth two principles, but they are both in god, to wit, his understanding and his will. the understanding furnishes the principle of evil, without being sullied by it, without being evil; it represents natures as they exist in the eternal verities; it contains within it the reason wherefore evil is permitted: but the will tends only towards good. let us add a third principle, namely power; it precedes even understanding and will, but it operates as the one displays it and as the other requires it. . some (like campanella) have called these three perfections of god the three primordialities. many have even believed that there was therein a secret connexion with the holy trinity: that power relates to the father, that is, to the source of divinity, wisdom to the eternal word, which is called _logos_ by the most sublime of the evangelists, and will or love to the holy spirit. well-nigh all the expressions or comparisons derived from the nature of the intelligent substance tend that way. . it seems to me that if m. bayle had taken into account what i have just said of the principles of things, he would have answered his own questions, or at the least he would not have continued to ask, as he does in these which follow: 'if man is the work of a single principle [ ] supremely good, supremely holy, supremely powerful, can he be subject to diseases, to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, pain, grief? can he have so many evil tendencies? can he commit so many crimes? can supreme goodness produce an unhappy creature? shall not supreme power, united to an infinite goodness, shower blessings upon its work, and shall it not banish all that might offend or grieve?' prudentius in his _hamartigenia_ presented the same difficulty: _si non vult deus esse malum, cur non vetat? inquit._ _non refert auctor fuerit, factorve malorum._ _anne opera in vitium sceleris pulcherrima verti,_ _cum possit prohibere, sinat; quod si velit omnes_ _innocuos agere omnipotens, ne sancta voluntas_ _degeneret, facto nec se manus inquinet ullo?_ _condidit ergo malum dominus, quod spectat ab alto,_ _et patitur fierique probat, tanquam ipse crearit._ _ipse creavit enim, quod si discludere possit,_ _non abolet, longoque sinit grassarier usu._ but i have already answered that sufficiently. man is himself the source of his evils: just as he is, he was in the divine idea. god, prompted by essential reasons of wisdom, decreed that he should pass into existence just as he is. m. bayle would perchance have perceived this origin of evil in the form in which i demonstrate it here, if he had herein combined the wisdom of god with his power, his goodness and his holiness. i will add, in passing, that his _holiness_ is nothing other than the highest degree of goodness, just as the crime which is its opposite is the worst of all evil. . m. bayle places the greek philosopher melissus, champion of the oneness of the first principle (and perhaps even of the oneness of substance) in conflict with zoroaster, as with the first originator of duality. zoroaster admits that the hypothesis of melissus is more consistent with order and _a priori_ reasons, but he denies its conformity with experience and _a posteriori_ reasons. 'i surpass you', he said, 'in the explanation of phenomena, which is the principal mark of a good system.' but, in my opinion, it is not a very good explanation of a phenomenon to assign to it an _ad hoc_ principle: to evil, a _principium maleficum_, to cold, a _primum frigidum_; there is nothing so easy and nothing so dull. it is well-nigh as if someone were to say that the [ ] peripatetics surpass the new mathematicians in the explanation of the phenomena of the stars, by giving them _ad hoc_ intelligences to guide them. according to that, it is quite easy to conceive why the planets make their way with such precision; whereas there is need of much geometry and reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. a man incapable of relishing deep speculations will at first applaud the peripatetics and will treat our mathematicians as dreamers. some old galenist will do the same with regard to the faculties of the schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and a sanguific, and he will assign one of these _ad hoc_ to each operation; he will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure what passes in the body of an animal. . the explanation of the cause of evil by a particular principle, _per principium maleficum_, is of the same nature. evil needs no such explanation, any more than do cold and darkness: there is neither _primum frigidum_ nor principle of darkness. evil itself comes only from privation; the positive enters therein only by concomitance, as the active enters by concomitance into cold. we see that water in freezing is capable of breaking a gun-barrel wherein it is confined; and yet cold is a certain privation of force, it only comes from the diminution of a movement which separates the particles of fluids. when this separating motion becomes weakened in the water by the cold, the particles of compressed air concealed in the water collect; and, becoming larger, they become more capable of acting outwards through their buoyancy. the resistance which the surfaces of the proportions of air meet in the water, and which opposes the force exerted by these portions towards dilation, is far less, and consequently the effect of the air greater, in large air-bubbles than in small, even though these small bubbles combined should form as great a mass as the large. for the resistances, that is, the surfaces, increase by the _square_, and the forces, that is, the contents or the volumes of the spheres of compressed air, increase by the _cube_, of their diameters. thus it is _by accident_ that privation involves action and force. i have already shown how privation is enough to cause error and malice, and [ ] how god is prompted to permit them, despite that there be no malignity in him. evil comes from privation; the positive and action spring from it by accident, as force springs from cold. . the statement that m. bayle attributes to the paulicians, p. , is not conclusive, to wit, that free will must come from two principles, to the end that it may have power to turn towards good and towards evil: for, being simple in itself, it should rather have come from a neutral principle if this argument held good. but free will tends towards good, and if it meets with evil it is by accident, for the reason that this evil is concealed beneath the good, and masked, as it were. these words which ovid ascribes to medea, _video meliora proboque,_ _deteriora sequor_, imply that the morally good is mastered by the agreeably good, which makes more impression on souls when they are disturbed by the passions. . furthermore, m. bayle himself supplies melissus with a good answer; but a little later he disputes it. here are his words, p. : 'if melissus consults the notions of order, he will answer that man was not wicked when god made him; he will say that man received from god a happy state, but that not having followed the light of conscience, which in accordance with the intention of its author should have guided him along the path of virtue, he has become wicked, and has deserved that god the supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger. it is therefore not god who is the cause of moral evil: but he is the cause of physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil. and this punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle, of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, i mean its justice, which is not less essential to it than its goodness. this answer, the most reasonable that melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling. for indeed zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards evil; that god, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.' that is quite easy to say, but it is not practicable if one follows the principles [ ] of order: it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles. ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as we are: should this species, then, have been missing in the universe? i have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its weaknesses, for god to have consented to its abolition. . m. bayle, in the article entitled 'paulicians' inserted by him in his _dictionary_, follows up the pronouncements he made in the article on the manichaeans. according to him (p. , lit. h) the orthodox seem to admit two first principles, in making the devil the originator of sin. m. becker, a former minister of amsterdam, author of the book entitled _the world bewitched_, has made use of this idea in order to demonstrate that one should not assign such power and authority to the devil as would allow of his comparison with god. therein he is right: but he pushes the conclusions too far. and the author of the book entitled [greek: apokatastasis pantôn] believes that if the devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he had always kept his prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him, that would have done injury to the glory of god. but it is a poor advantage to keep those whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment for ever. and as for the cause of evil, it is true that the devil is the author of sin. but the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is in the original imperfection of creatures: that renders them capable of sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause this power to evince itself in action. . the devils were angels like the rest before their fall, and it is thought that their leader was one of the chief among angels; but scripture is not explicit enough on that point. the passage of the apocalypse that speaks of the struggle with the dragon, as of a vision, leaves much in doubt, and does not sufficiently develop a subject which by the other sacred writers is hardly mentioned. it is not in place here to enter into this discussion, and one must still admit that the common opinion agrees best with the sacred text. m. bayle examines some replies of st. basil, of lactantius and others on the origin of evil. as, however, they are concerned with physical evil, i postpone discussion thereof, and i will proceed with the examination of the difficulties over the moral cause of moral evil, which arise in several passages of the works of our gifted author. [ ] . he disputes the _permission_ of this evil, he would wish one to admit that god _wills_ it. he quotes these words of calvin (on genesis, ch. ): 'the ears of some are offended when one says that god willed it. but i ask you, what else is the permission of him who is entitled to forbid, or rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an act of will?' m. bayle explains these words of calvin, and those which precede them, as if he admitted that god willed the fall of adam, not in so far as it was a crime, but under some other conception that is unknown to us. he quotes casuists who are somewhat lax, who say that a son can desire the death of his father, not in so far as it is an evil for himself but in so far as it is a good for his heirs _(reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. ). it seems to me that calvin only says that god willed man's fall for some reason unknown to us. in the main, when it is a question of a decisive will, that is, of a decree, these distinctions are useless: one wills the action with all its qualities, if it is true that one wills it. but when it is a crime, god can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an end nor a means, it is only a _conditio sine qua non_; thus it is not the object of a direct will, as i have already demonstrated above. god cannot prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating the rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as i have already observed. god is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is in himself, to permit moral evil in creatures. there is precisely the case wherein the will of a wise mind is only permissive. i have already said this: he is bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot prevent it without himself failing in that which he owes to himself. . 'but among all these infinite combinations', says m. bayle (p. ), 'it pleased god to choose one wherein adam was to sin, and by his decree he made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to pass.' very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it to the combinations which compose the whole universe. 'you will therefore never make us understand', he adds, 'how god did not will that eve and adam should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not have sinned.' but the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all that i have just said. this combination that makes the whole universe is the best; god therefore could not refrain from choosing it without [ ] incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is involved in this combination. . m. jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me, when for example he says, p. of his treatise on the _conformity of faith with reason_: 'those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all god's designs to their own interests. when god formed the universe, his whole prospect was himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to the infinite wisdom of the almighty.' he says elsewhere (p. ): 'supposing the impossible, that god could not prevent the wrong use of free will without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.' i have endeavoured to develop this still further through _the reason of the best and the moral necessity_ which led god to make this choice, despite the sin of some creatures which is involved therein. i think that i have cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless i am well pleased, for the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of solution to the peculiar difficulties of m. bayle. . here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. , p. ): 'would it in a prince be a mark of his kindness: . to give to a hundred messengers as much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? . to promise a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their money should not have sufficed? . to make choice of a hundred persons, of whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make them incur expenses, and which he would himself have been at pains to dispose in certain places along their path? . to imprison actually ninety-eight of these messengers on the moment of their return? is it not abundantly evident that he would have no kindness for them, and that on the contrary he would intend for them, not the proposed recompense, but prison? [ ] they would deserve it, certainly; but he who had wished them to deserve it and placed them in the sure way towards deserving it, should he be worthy of being called kind, on the pretext that he had recompensed the two others?' it would doubtless not be on that account that he earned the title of 'kind'. yet other circumstances may contribute, which would avail to render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to know those people, and to make trial of them; just as gideon made use of some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least squeamish among his soldiers. and even if the prince were to know already the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test in order to make them known also to the others? even though these reasons be not applicable to god, they make it clear, nevertheless, that an action like that of this prince may appear preposterous when it is detached from the circumstances indicating its cause. all the more must one deem that god has acted well, and that we should see this if we fully knew of all that he has done. . m. descartes, in a letter to the princess elizabeth (vol. , letter ) has made use of another comparison to reconcile human freedom with the omnipotence of god. 'he imagines a monarch who has forbidden duels, and who, knowing for certain that two noblemen, if they meet, will fight, takes sure steps to bring about their meeting. they meet indeed, they fight: their disobedience of the law is an effect of their free will, they are punishable. what a king can do in such a case (he adds) concerning some free actions of his subjects, god, who has infinite foreknowledge and power, certainly does concerning all those of men. before he sent us into this world he knew exactly what all the tendencies of our will would be: he has endued us therewith, he also has disposed all other things that are outside us, to cause such and such objects to present themselves to our senses at such and such a time. he knew that as a result of this our free will would determine us toward some particular thing, and he has willed it thus; but he has not for that willed to constrain our free will thereto. in this king one may distinguish two different degrees of will, the one whereby he willed that these noblemen should fight, since he brought about their meeting, and the other whereby he did not will it, since he forbade duels. even so theologians distinguish in god an absolute and independent will, whereby he wills that all things be done just as they are done, [ ] and another which is relative, and which concerns the merit or demerit of men, whereby he wills that his laws be obeyed' (descartes, letter of vol. , pp. , . compare with that the quotation made by m. arnauld, vol. , p. _et seqq_. of his _reflexions on the system of malebranche_, from thomas aquinas, on the antecedent and consequent will of god). . here is m. bayle's reply to that (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. ): 'this great philosopher is much mistaken, it seems to me. there would not be in this monarch any degree of will, either small or great, that these two noblemen should obey the law, and not fight. he would will entirely and solely that they should fight. that would not exculpate them, they would only follow their passion, they would be unaware that they conformed to the will of their sovereign: but he would be in truth the moral cause of their encounter, and he would not more entirely wish it supposing he were to inspire them with the desire or to give them the order for it. imagine to yourself two princes each of whom wishes his eldest son to poison himself. one employs constraint, the other contents himself with secretly causing a grief that he knows will be sufficient to induce his son to poison himself. will you be doubtful whether the will of the latter is less complete than the will of the former? m. descartes is therefore assuming an unreal fact and does not at all solve the difficulty.' . one must confess that m. descartes speaks somewhat crudely of the will of god in regard to evil in saying not only that god knew that our free will would determine us toward some particular thing, but also _that he also wished it_, albeit he did not will to constrain the will thereto. he speaks no less harshly in the eighth letter of the same volume, saying that not the slightest thought enters into the mind of a man which god does not _will_, and has not willed from all eternity, to enter there. calvin never said anything harsher; and all that can only be excused if it is to be understood of a permissive will. m. descartes' solution amounts to the distinction between the will expressed in the sign and the will expressive of the good pleasure (_inter voluntatem signi et beneplaciti_) which the moderns have taken from the schoolmen as regards the terms, but to which they have given a meaning not usual among the ancients. it is true that god may command something and yet not will that it be done, as when he commanded abraham to sacrifice his son: he willed the obedience, and he did not will the action. but when god commands the virtuous action and [ ] forbids the sin, he wills indeed that which he ordains, but it is only by an antecedent will, as i have explained more than once. . m. descartes' comparison is therefore not satisfactory; but it may be made so. one must make some change in the facts, inventing some reason to oblige the prince to cause or permit the two enemies to meet. they must, for instance, be together in the army or in other obligatory functions, a circumstance the prince himself cannot hinder without endangering his state. for example, the absence of either of them might be responsible for the disappearance of innumerable persons of his party from the army or cause grumbling among the soldiers and give rise to some great disturbance. in this case, therefore, one may say that the prince does not will the duel: he knows of it, but he permits it notwithstanding, for he prefers permitting the sin of others to committing one himself. thus this corrected comparison may serve, provided that one observe the difference between god and the prince. the prince is forced into this permission by his powerlessness; a more powerful monarch would have no need of all these considerations; but god, who has power to do all that is possible, only permits sin because it is absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do better. the prince's action is peradventure not free from sorrow and regret. this regret is due to his imperfection, of which he is sensible; therein lies displeasure. god is incapable of such a feeling and finds, moreover, no cause therefor; he is infinitely conscious of his own perfection, and it may even be said that the imperfection in creatures taken individually changes for him into perfection in relation to the whole, and that it is an added glory for the creator. what more can one wish, when one possesses a boundless wisdom and when one is as powerful as one is wise; when one can do all and when one has the best? . having once understood these things, we are hardened sufficiently, so it seems to me, against the strongest and most spirited objections. i have not concealed them: but there are some we shall merely touch upon, because they are too odious. the remonstrants and m. bayle (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , end page ) quote st. augustine, saying, '_crudelem esse misericordiam velle aliquem miserum esse ut eius miserearis_': in the same sense is cited seneca _de benef._, l. , c. , . i confess that one would have some reason to urge that against those who believed that god has no other cause for permitting sin than the [ ] design to have something wherewith to exercise punitive justice against the majority of men, and his mercy towards a small number of elect. but it must be considered that god had reasons for his permission of sin, more worthy of him and more profound in relation to us. someone has dared to compare god's course of action with that of a caligula, who has his edicts written in so small a hand and has them placarded in so high a place that it is not possible to read them; with that of a mother who neglects her daughter's honour in order to attain her own selfish ends; with that of queen catherine de medicis, who is said to have abetted the love-affairs of her ladies in order to learn of the intrigues of the great; and even with that of tiberius, who arranged, through the extraordinary services of the executioner, that the law forbidding the subjection of a virgin to capital punishment should no longer apply to the case of sejanus's daughter. this last comparison was proposed by peter bertius, then an armenian, but finally a member of the roman communion. and a scandalous comparison has been made between god and tiberius, which is related at length by andreas caroli in his _memorabilia ecclesiastica_ of the last century, as m. bayle observes. bertius used it against the gomarists. i think that arguments of this kind are only valid against those who maintain that justice is an arbitrary thing in relation to god; or that he has a despotic power which can go so far as being able to condemn innocents; or, in short, that good is not the motive of his actions. . at that same time an ingenious satire was composed against the gomarists, entitled _fur praedestinatus, de gepredestineerdedief_, wherein there is introduced a thief condemned to be hanged, who attributes to god all the evil he has done; who believes himself predestined to salvation notwithstanding his wicked actions; who imagines that this belief is sufficient for him, and who defeats by arguments _ad hominem_ a counter-remonstrant minister called to prepare him for death: but this thief is finally converted by an old pastor who had been dismissed for his arminianism, whom the gaoler, in pity for the criminal and for the weakness of the minister, had brought to him secretly. replies were made to this lampoon, but replies to satires never please as much as the satires themselves. m. bayle (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ) says that this book was printed in england in the [ ] time of cromwell, and he appears not to have been informed that it was only a translation of the much older original flemish. he adds that dr. george kendal wrote a confutation of it at oxford in the year , under the title of _fur pro tribunali_, and that the dialogue is there inserted. this dialogue presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the counter-remonstrants make god the cause of evil, and teach a kind of predestination in the mahometan manner according to which it does not matter whether one does good or evil, and the assumption that one is predestined assures the fact. they by no means go so far. nevertheless it is true that there are among them some supralapsarians and others who find it hard to declare themselves in clear terms upon the justice of god and the principles of piety and morals in man. for they imagine despotism in god, and demand that man be convinced, without reason, of the absolute certainty of his election, a course that is liable to have dangerous consequences. but all those who acknowledge that god produces the best plan, having chosen it from among all possible ideas of the universe; that he there finds man inclined by the original imperfection of creatures to misuse his free will and to plunge into misery; that god prevents the sin and the misery in so far as the perfection of the universe, which is an emanation from his, may permit it: those, i say, show forth more clearly that god's intention is the one most right and holy in the world; that the creature alone is guilty, that his original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness, that his evil will is the sole cause of his misery; that one cannot be destined to salvation without also being destined to the holiness of the children of god, and that all hope of election one can have can only be founded upon the good will infused into one's heart by the grace of god. . _metaphysical considerations_ also are brought up against my explanation of the moral cause of moral evil; but they will trouble me less since i have dismissed the objections derived from moral reasons, which were more impressive. these metaphysical considerations concern the nature of the _possible_ and of the _necessary_; they go against my fundamental assumption that god has chosen the best of all possible worlds. there are philosophers who have maintained that there is nothing possible except that which actually happens. these are those same people who thought or could have thought that all is necessary unconditionally. some were of this [ ] opinion because they admitted a brute and blind necessity in the cause of the existence of things: and it is these i have most reason for opposing. but there are others who are mistaken only because they misuse terms. they confuse moral necessity with metaphysical necessity: they imagine that since god cannot help acting for the best he is thus deprived of freedom, and things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and theologians endeavour to avoid. with these writers my dispute is only one of words, provided they admit in very deed that god chooses and does the best. but there are others who go further, they think that god could have done better. this is an opinion which must be rejected: for although it does not altogether deprive god of wisdom and goodness, as do the advocates of blind necessity, it sets bounds thereto, thus derogating from god's supreme perfection. . the question of the _possibility of things that do not happen_ has already been examined by the ancients. it appears that epicurus, to preserve freedom and to avoid an absolute necessity, maintained, after aristotle, that contingent futurities were not susceptible of determinate truth. for if it was true yesterday that i should write to-day, it could therefore not fail to happen, it was already necessary; and, for the same reason, it was from all eternity. thus all that which happens is necessary, and it is impossible for anything different to come to pass. but since that is not so it would follow, according to him, that contingent futurities have no determinate truth. to uphold this opinion, epicurus went so far as to deny the first and the greatest principle of the truths of reason, he denied that every assertion was either true or false. here is the way they confounded him: 'you deny that it was true yesterday that i should write to-day; it was therefore false.' the good man, not being able to admit this conclusion, was obliged to say that it was neither true nor false. after that, he needs no refutation, and chrysippus might have spared himself the trouble he took to prove the great principle of contradictories, following the account by cicero in his book _de fato_: 'contendit omnes nervos chrysippus ut persuadeat omne [greek: axiôma] aut verum esse aut falsum. ut enim epicurus veretur ne si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri quaecunque fiant; si enim alterum ex aeternitate verum sit, esse id etiam certum; si certum, etiam necessarium; ita et necessitatem et fatum confirmari putat; sic chrysippus metuit ne non, si non obtinuerit omne[ ] quod enuncietur aut verum esse aut falsum, omnia fato fieri possint ex causis aeternis rerum futurarum.' m. bayle observes (_dictionary_, article 'epicurus', let. t, p. ) 'that neither of these two great philosophers [epicurus and chrysippus] understood that the truth of this maxim, every proposition is true or false, is independent of what is called _fatum_: it could not therefore serve as proof of the existence of the _fatum_, as chrysippus maintained and as epicurus feared. chrysippus could not have conceded, without damaging his own position, that there are propositions which are neither true nor false. but he gained nothing by asserting the contrary: for, whether there be free causes or not, it is equally true that this proposition, the grand mogul will go hunting to-morrow, is true or false. men rightly regarded as ridiculous this speech of tiresias: all that i shall say will happen or not, for great apollo confers on me the faculty of prophesying. if, assuming the impossible, there were no god, it would yet be certain that everything the greatest fool in the world should predict would happen or would not happen. that is what neither chrysippus nor epicurus has taken into consideration.' cicero, lib. i, _de nat. deorum_, with regard to the evasions of the epicureans expressed the sound opinion (as m. bayle observes towards the end of the same page) that it would be much less shameful to admit that one cannot answer one's opponent, than to have recourse to such answers. yet we shall see that m. bayle himself confused the certain with the necessary, when he maintained that the choice of the best rendered things necessary. . let us come now to the possibility of things that do not happen, and i will give the very words of m. bayle, albeit they are somewhat discursive. this is what he says on the matter in his _dictionary_ (article 'chrysippus', let. s, p. ): 'the celebrated dispute on things possible and things impossible owed its origin to the doctrine of the stoics concerning fate. the question was to know whether, among the things which have never been and never will be, there are some possible; or whether all that is not, all that has never been, all that will never be, was impossible. a famous dialectician of the megaric sect, named diodorus, gave a negative answer to the first of these two questions and an affirmative to the second; but chrysippus vehemently opposed him. here are two passages of cicero (epist. , lib. , _ad familiar._): "[greek: peri dynatôn] me scito [greek: kata diodôron krinein]. quapropter si venturus es, scito [ ] necesse esse te venire. sin autem non es, [greek: tôn adynatôn] est te venire. nunc vide utra te [greek: krisis] magis delectet, [greek: chrysippeia] ne, an haec; quam noster diodorus [a stoic who for a long time had lived in cicero's house] non concoquebat." this is quoted from a letter that cicero wrote to varro. he sets forth more comprehensively the whole state of the question, in the little book _de fato_. i am going to quote a few pieces (cic., _de fato_, p. m. ): "vigila, chrysippe, ne tuam causam, in qua tibi cum diodoro valente dialectico magna luctatio est, deseras ... omne ergo quod falsum dicitur in futuro, id fieri non potest. at hoc, chrysippe, minime vis, maximeque tibi de hoc ipso cum diodoro certamen est. ille enim id solum fieri posse dicit, quod aut sit verum, aut futurum sit verum; et quicquid futurum sit, id dicit fieri necesse esse; et quicquid non sit futurum, id negat fieri posse. tu etiam quae non sint futura, posse fieri dicis, ut frangi hanc gemmam, etiamsi id nunquam futurum sit: neque necesse fuisse cypselum regnare corinthi, quamquam id millesimo ante anno apollinis oraculo editum esset.... placet diodoro, id solum fieri posse, quod aut verum sit, aut verum futurum sit: qui locus attingit hanc quaestionem, nihil fieri, quod non necesse fuerit; et quicquid fieri possit, id aut esse jam, aut futurum esse: nec magis commutari ex veris in falsa ea posse quae futura sunt, quam ea quae facta sunt: sed in factis immutabilitatem apparere; in futuris quibusdam, quia non apparent, ne inesse quidem videri: ut in eo qui mortifero morbo urgeatur, verum sit, hic morietur hoc morbo: at hoc idem si vere dicatur in eo, in quo tanta vis morbi non appareat, nihilominus futurum sit. ita fit ut commutatio ex vero in falsum, ne in futuro quidem ulla fieri possit." cicero makes it clear enough that chrysippus often found himself in difficulties in this dispute, and that is no matter for astonishment: for the course he had chosen was not bound up with his dogma of fate, and, if he had known how, or had dared, to reason consistently, he would readily have adopted the whole hypothesis of diodorus. we have seen already that the freedom he assigned to the soul, and his comparison of the cylinder, did not preclude the possibility that in reality all the acts of the human will were unavoidable consequences of fate. hence it follows that everything which does not happen is impossible, and that there is nothing possible but that which actually comes to pass. plutarch (_de stoicor. repugn._, pp. , ) discomfits him completely, on that point as well as on the dispute [ ] with diodorus, and maintains that his opinion on possibility is altogether contrary to the doctrine of _fatum_. observe that the most eminent stoics had written on this matter without following the same path. arrian (in _epict._, lib. , c. , p. m. ) named four of them, who are chrysippus, cleanthes, archidemus and antipater. he evinces great scorn for this dispute; and m. menage need not have cited him as a writer who had spoken in commendation of the work of chrysippus [greek: peri dynatôn] ("citatur honorifice apud arrianum", menag. in _laert._, i, , ) for assuredly these words, "[greek: gegraphe de kai chrysippos thaumastôs], etc., de his rebus mira scripsit chrysippus", etc., are not in that connexion a eulogy. that is shown by the passages immediately before and after it. dionysius of halicarnassus (_de collocat. verbor._, c. , p. m. ) mentions two treatises by chrysippus, wherein, under a title that promised something different, much of the logicians' territory had been explored. the work was entitled "[greek: peri tês syntaxeôs tôn tou logou merôn], de partium orationis collocatione", and treated only of propositions true and false, possible and impossible, contingent and equivocal, etc., matter that our schoolmen have pounded down and reduced to its essence. take note that chrysippus recognized that past things were necessarily true, which cleanthes had not been willing to admit. (arrian, _ubi supra_, p. m. .) "[greek: ou pan de parelêlythos alêthes anankaion esti, kathaper hoi peri kleanthên pheresthai dokousi]. non omne praeteritum ex necessitate verum est, ut illi qui cleanthem sequuntur sentiunt." we have already seen (p. , col. ) that abélard is alleged to have taught a doctrine which resembles that of diodorus. i think that the stoics pledged themselves to give a wider range to possible things than to future things, for the purpose of mitigating the odious and frightful conclusions which were drawn from their dogma of fatality.' it is sufficiently evident that cicero when writing to varro the words that have just been quoted (lib. , ep. , _ad familiar._) had not enough comprehension of the effect of diodorus's opinion, since he found it preferable. he presents tolerably well in his book _de fato_ the opinions of those writers, but it is a pity that he has not always added the reasons which they employed. plutarch in his treatise on the contradictions of the stoics and m. bayle are both surprised that chrysippus was not of the same opinion as diodorus, since he favours fatality. but chrysippus and even his master cleanthes were on that point more reasonable than is supposed. [ ] that will be seen as we proceed. it is open to question whether the past is more necessary than the future. cleanthes held the opinion that it is. the objection is raised that it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the future to happen, as it is necessary _ex hypothesi_ for the past to have happened. but there is this difference, that it is not possible to act on the past state, that would be a contradiction; but it is possible to produce some effect on the future. yet the hypothetical necessity of both is the same: the one cannot be changed, the other will not be; and once that is past, it will not be possible for it to be changed either. . the famous pierre abélard expressed an opinion resembling that of diodorus in the statement that god can do only that which he does. it was the third of the fourteen propositions taken from his works which were censured at the council of sens. it had been taken from the third book of his _introduction to theology_, where he treats especially of the power of god. the reason he gave for his statement was that god can do only that which he wills. now god cannot will to do anything other than that which he does, because, of necessity, he must will whatever is fitting. hence it follows that all that which he does not, is not fitting, that he cannot will to do it, and consequently that he cannot do it. abélard admits himself that this opinion is peculiar to him, that hardly anyone shares in it, that it seems contrary to the doctrine of the saints and to reason and derogatory to the greatness of god. it appears that this author was a little too much inclined to speak and to think differently from others: for in reality this was only a dispute about words: he was changing the use of terms. power and will are different faculties, whose objects also are different; it is confusing them to say that god can do only that which he wills. on the contrary, among various possibles, he wills only that which he finds the best. for all possibles are regarded as objects of power, but actual and existing things are regarded as the objects of his decretory will. abélard himself acknowledged it. he raises this objection for himself: a reprobate can be saved; but he can only be saved if god saves him. god can therefore save him, and consequently do something that he does not. abélard answers that it may indeed be said that this man can be saved in respect of the possibility of human nature, which is capable of salvation: but that it may not be said that god can save him in respect of god himself, because it is impossible that god should do that which he[ ] must not do. but abélard admits that it may very well be said in a sense, speaking absolutely and setting aside the assumption of reprobation, that such an one who is reprobate can be saved, and that thus often that which god does not can be done. he could therefore have spoken like the rest, who mean nothing different when they say that god can save this man, and that he can do that which he does not. . the so-called necessity of wyclif, which was condemned by the council of constance, seems to arise simply from this same misunderstanding. i think that men of talent do wrong to truth and to themselves when, without reason, they bring into use new and displeasing expressions. in our own time the celebrated mr. hobbes supported this same opinion, that what does not happen is impossible. he proves it by the statement that all the conditions requisite for a thing that shall not exist (_omnia rei non futurae requisita_) are never found together, and that the thing cannot exist otherwise. but who does not see that that only proves a hypothetical impossibility? it is true that a thing cannot exist when a requisite condition for it is lacking. but as we claim to be able to say that the thing can exist although it does not exist, we claim in the same way to be able to say that the requisite conditions can exist although they do not exist. thus mr. hobbes's argument leaves the matter where it is. the opinion which was held concerning mr. hobbes, that he taught an absolute necessity of all things, brought upon him much discredit, and would have done him harm even had it been his only error. . spinoza went further: he appears to have explicitly taught a blind necessity, having denied to the author of things understanding and will, and assuming that good and perfection relate to us only, and not to him. it is true that spinoza's opinion on this subject is somewhat obscure: for he grants god thought, after having divested him of understanding, _cogitationem, non intellectum concedit deo_. there are even passages where he relents on the question of necessity. nevertheless, as far as one can understand him, he acknowledges no goodness in god, properly speaking, and he teaches that all things exist through the necessity of the divine nature, without any act of choice by god. we will not waste time here in refuting an opinion so bad, and indeed so inexplicable. my own opinion is founded on the nature of the possibles, that is, of things that imply [ ] no contradiction. i do not think that a spinozist will say that all the romances one can imagine exist actually now, or have existed, or will still exist in some place in the universe. yet one cannot deny that romances such as those of mademoiselle de scudéry, or as _octavia_, are possible. let us therefore bring up against him these words of m. bayle, which please me well, on page , 'it is to-day', he says, 'a great embarrassment for the spinozists to see that, according to their hypothesis, it was as impossible from all eternity that spinoza, for instance, should not die at the hague, as it is impossible for two and two to make six. they are well aware that it is a necessary conclusion from their doctrine, and a conclusion which disheartens, affrights, and stirs the mind to revolt, because of the absurdity it involves, diametrically opposed to common sense. they are not well pleased that one should know they are subverting a maxim so universal and so evident as this one: all that which implies contradiction is impossible, and all that which implies no contradiction is possible.' . one may say of m. bayle, 'ubi bene, nemo melius', although one cannot say of him what was said of origen, 'ubi male, nemo pejus'. i will only add that what has just been indicated as a maxim is in fact the definition of the _possible_ and the _impossible_. m. bayle, however, adds here towards the end a remark which somewhat spoils his eminently reasonable statement. 'now what contradiction would there be if spinoza had died in leyden? would nature then have been less perfect, less wise, less powerful?' he confuses here what is impossible because it implies contradiction with what cannot happen because it is not meet to be chosen. it is true that there would have been no contradiction in the supposition that spinoza died in leyden and not at the hague; there would have been nothing so possible: the matter was therefore indifferent in respect of the power of god. but one must not suppose that any event, however small it be, can be regarded as indifferent in respect of his wisdom and his goodness. jesus christ has said divinely well that everything is numbered, even to the hairs of our head. thus the wisdom of god did not permit that this event whereof m. bayle speaks should happen otherwise than it happened, not as if by itself it would have been more deserving of choice, but on account of its connexion with that entire sequence of the universe which deserved to be given preference. to say that what has already happened was of no interest to the wisdom of god, and[ ] thence to infer that it is therefore not necessary, is to make a false assumption and argue incorrectly to a true conclusion. it is confusing what is necessary by moral necessity, that is, according to the principle of wisdom and goodness, with what is so by metaphysical and brute necessity, which occurs when the contrary implies contradiction. spinoza, moreover, sought a metaphysical necessity in events. he did not think that god was determined by his goodness and by his perfection (which this author treated as chimeras in relation to the universe), but by the necessity of his nature; just as the semicircle is bound to enclose only right angles, without either knowing or willing this. for euclid demonstrated that all angles enclosed between two straight lines drawn from the extremities of the diameter towards a point on the circumference of the circle are of necessity right angles, and that the contrary implies contradiction. . there are people who have gone to the other extreme: under the pretext of freeing the divine nature from the yoke of necessity they wished to regard it as altogether indifferent, with an indifference of equipoise. they did not take into account that just as metaphysical necessity is preposterous in relation to god's actions _ad extra_, so moral necessity is worthy of him. it is a happy necessity which obliges wisdom to do good, whereas indifference with regard to good and evil would indicate a lack of goodness or of wisdom. and besides, the indifference which would keep the will in a perfect equipoise would itself be a chimera, as has been already shown: it would offend against the great principle of the determinant reason. . those who believe that god established good and evil by an arbitrary decree are adopting that strange idea of mere indifference, and other absurdities still stranger. they deprive god of the designation _good_: for what cause could one have to praise him for what he does, if in doing something quite different he would have done equally well? and i have very often been surprised that divers supralapsarian theologians, as for instance samuel rutherford, a professor of theology in scotland, who wrote when the controversies with the remonstrants were at their height, could have been deluded by so strange an idea. rutherford (in his _exercitationes apologeticae pro gratia_) says positively that nothing is unjust or morally bad in god's eyes before he has forbidden it: thus without this prohibition it would be a matter of indifference whether one murdered or saved a [ ] man, loved god or hated him, praised or blasphemed him. nothing is so unreasonable as that. one may teach that god established good and evil by a positive law, or one may assert that there was something good and just before his decree, but that he is not required to conform to it, and that nothing prevents him from acting unjustly and from perhaps condemning innocence: but it all comes to the same thing, offering almost equal dishonour to god. for if justice was established arbitrarily and without any cause, if god came upon it by a kind of hazard, as when one draws lots, his goodness and his wisdom are not manifested in it, and there is nothing at all to attach him to it. if it is by a purely arbitrary decree, without any reason, that he has established or created what we call justice and goodness, then he can annul them or change their nature. thus one would have no reason to assume that he will observe them always, as it would be possible to say he will observe them on the assumption that they are founded on reasons. the same would hold good more or less if his justice were different from ours, if (for example) it were written in his code that it is just to make the innocent eternally unhappy. according to these principles also, nothing would compel god to keep his word or would assure us of its fulfilment. for why should the law of justice, which states that reasonable promises must be kept, be more inviolable for him than any other laws? . all these three dogmas, albeit a little different from one another, namely, ( ) that the nature of justice is arbitrary, ( ) that it is fixed, but it is not certain that god will observe it, and finally ( ) that the justice we know is not that which he observes, destroy the confidence in god that gives us tranquillity, and the love of god that makes our happiness. there is nothing to prevent such a god from behaving as a tyrant and an enemy of honest folk, and from taking pleasure in that which we call evil. why should he not, then, just as well be the evil principle of the manichaeans as the single good principle of the orthodox? at least he would be neutral and, as it were, suspended between the two, or even sometimes the one and sometimes the other. that would be as if someone were to say that oromasdes and arimanius reign in turns, according to which of the two is the stronger or the more adroit. it is like the saying of a certain moghul woman. she, so it seems, having heard it said that formerly under genghis khan and his successors her nation had had dominion over most [ ] of the north and east, told the muscovites recently, when m. isbrand went to china on behalf of the czar, through the country of those tartars, that the god of the moghuls had been driven from heaven, but that one day he would take his own place again. the true god is always the same: natural religion itself demands that he be essentially as good and wise as he is powerful. it is scarcely more contrary to reason and piety to say that god acts without cognition, than to maintain that he has cognition which does not find the eternal rules of goodness and of justice among its objects, or again to say that he has a will such as heeds not these rules. . some theologians who have written of god's right over creatures appear to have conceded to him an unrestricted right, an arbitrary and despotic power. they thought that would be placing divinity on the most exalted level that may be imagined for it, and that it would abase the creature before the creator to such an extent that the creator is bound by no laws of any kind with respect to the creature. there are passages from twiss, rutherford and some other supralapsarians which imply that god cannot sin whatever he may do, because he is subject to no law. m. bayle himself considers that this doctrine is monstrous and contrary to the holiness of god (_dictionary_, v. 'paulicians', p. _in initio_); but i suppose that the intention of some of these writers was less bad than it seems to be. apparently they meant by the term right, [greek: anypeuthynian], a state wherein one is responsible to none for one's actions. but they will not have denied that god owes to himself what goodness and justice demand of him. on that matter one may see m. amyraut's _apology for calvin_: it is true that calvin appears orthodox on this subject, and that he is by no means one of the extreme supralapsarians. . thus, when m. bayle says somewhere that st. paul extricates himself from predestination only through the consideration of god's absolute right, and the incomprehensibility of his ways, it is implied that, if one understood them, one would find them consistent with justice, god not being able to use his power otherwise. st. paul himself says that it is a _depth_, but a depth of wisdom (_altitudo sapientiae_), and _justice_ is included in _the goodness of the all-wise_. i find that m. bayle speaks very well elsewhere on the application of our notions of goodness to the actions of god (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. ): 'one must not assert here', he says, 'that the goodness of the [ ] infinite being is not subject to the same rules as the goodness of the creature. for if there is in god an attribute that can be called goodness, the marks of goodness in general must apply to him. now when we reduce goodness to the most general abstraction, we find therein the will to do good. divide and subdivide into as many kinds as you shall please this general goodness, into infinite goodness, finite goodness, kingly goodness, goodness of a father, goodness of a husband, goodness of a master, you will find in each, as an inseparable attribute, the will to do good.' . i find also that m. bayle combats admirably the opinion of those who assert that goodness and justice depend solely upon the arbitrary choice of god; who suppose, moreover, that if god had been determined by the goodness of things themselves to act, he would be entirely subjected to necessity in his actions, a state incompatible with freedom. that is confusing metaphysical necessity with moral necessity. here is what m. bayle says in objection to this error (_reply_, ch. , p. ): 'the consequence of this doctrine will be, that before god resolved upon creating the world he saw nothing better in virtue than in vice, and that his ideas did not show him that virtue was more worthy of his love than vice. that leaves no distinction between natural right and positive right; there will no longer be anything unalterable or inevitable in morals; it will have been just as possible for god to command people to be vicious as to command them to be virtuous; and one will have no certainty that the moral laws will not one day be abrogated, as the ceremonial laws of the jews were. this, in a word, leads us straight to the belief that god was the free author, not only of goodness and of virtue, but also of truth and of the essence of things. that is what certain of the cartesians assert, and i confess that their opinion (see the continuation of _divers thoughts on the comet_, p. ) might be of some avail in certain circumstances. yet it is open to dispute for so many reasons, and subject to consequences so troublesome (see chapter of the same continuation) that there are scarcely any extremes it were not better to suffer rather than plunge into that one. it opens the door to the most exaggerated pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that this proposition, three and three make six, is only true where and during the time when it pleases god; that it is perhaps false in some parts of the universe; and that perhaps it will be so among men in the coming year.[ ] all that depends on the free will of god could have been limited to certain places and certain times, like the judaic ceremonies. this conclusion will be extended to all the laws of the decalogue, if the actions they command are in their nature divested of all goodness to the same degree as the actions they forbid.' . to say that god, having resolved to create man just as he is, could not but have required of him piety, sobriety, justice and chastity, because it is impossible that the disorders capable of overthrowing or disturbing his work can please him, that is to revert in effect to the common opinion. virtues are virtues only because they serve perfection or prevent the imperfection of those who are virtuous, or even of those who have to do with them. and they have that power by their nature and by the nature of rational creatures, before god decrees to create them. to hold a different opinion would be as if someone were to say that the rules of proportion and harmony are arbitrary with regard to musicians because they occur in music only when one has resolved to sing or to play some instrument. but that is exactly what is meant by being essential to good music: for those rules belong to it already in the ideal state, even when none yet thinks of singing, since it is known that they must of necessity belong to it as soon as one shall sing. in the same way virtues belong to the ideal state of the rational creature before god decrees to create it; and it is for that very reason we maintain that virtues are good by their nature. . m. bayle has inserted a special chapter in his continuation of _divers thoughts on the comet_ (it is chapter ) where he shows 'that the christian doctors teach that there are things which are just antecedently to god's decrees'. some theologians of the augsburg confession censured some of the reformed who appeared to be of a different opinion; and this error was regarded as if it were a consequence of the absolute decree, which doctrine seems to exempt the will of god from any kind of reason, _ubi stat pro ratione voluntas_. but, as i have observed already on various occasions, calvin himself acknowledged that the decrees of god are in conformity with justice and wisdom, although the reasons that might prove this conformity in detail are unknown to us. thus, according to him, the rules of goodness and of justice are anterior to the decrees of god. m. bayle, in the same place, quotes a passage from the celebrated m. turretin which draws a distinction between natural divine laws and positive [ ] divine laws. moral laws are of the first kind and ceremonial of the second. samuel desmarests, a celebrated theologian formerly at groningen, and herr strinesius, who is still at frankfort on the oder, advocated this same distinction; and i think that it is the opinion most widely accepted even among the reformed. thomas aquinas and all the thomists were of the same opinion, with the bulk of the schoolmen and the theologians of the roman church. the casuists also held to that idea: i count grotius among the most eminent of them, and he was followed in this point by his commentators. herr pufendorf appeared to be of a different opinion, which he insisted on maintaining in the face of censure from some theologians; but he need not be taken into account, not having advanced far enough in subjects of this kind. he makes a vigorous protest against the absolute decree, in his _fecialis divinus_, and yet he approves what is worst in the opinions of the champions of this decree, and without which this decree (as others of the reformed explain) becomes endurable. aristotle was very orthodox on this matter of justice, and the schoolmen followed him: they distinguish, just as cicero and the jurists do, between perpetual right, which is binding on all and everywhere, and positive right, which is only for certain times and certain peoples. i once read with enjoyment the _euthyphro_ of plato, who makes socrates uphold the truth on that point, and m. bayle has called attention to the same passage. . m. bayle himself upholds this truth with considerable force in a certain passage, which it will be well to quote here in its entirety, long as it is (vol. ii of the continuation of _divers thoughts on the comet_, ch. , p. _seqq._): 'according to the teaching of countless writers of importance', he says, 'there is in nature and in the essence of certain things a moral good or evil that precedes the divine decree. they prove this doctrine principally through the frightful consequences that attend the opposite dogma. thus from the proposition that to do wrong to no man would be a good action, not in itself but by an arbitrary dispensation of god's will, it would follow that god could have given to man a law directly opposed at all points to the commandments of the decalogue. that is horrifying. but here is a more direct proof, one derived from metaphysics. one thing is certain, that the existence of god is not an effect of his will. he exists not because he wills his existence, but through the [ ] necessity of his infinite nature. his power and his knowledge exist through the same necessity. he is all-powerful, he knows all things, not because he wills it thus, but because these are attributes necessarily identified with him. the dominion of his will relates only to the exercise of his power, he gives effect outside himself only to that which he wills, and he leaves all the rest in the state of mere possibility. thence it comes that this dominion extends only over the existence of creatures, and not over their essential being. god was able to create matter, a man, a circle, or leave them in nothingness, but he was not able to produce them without giving them their essential properties. he had of necessity to make man a rational animal and to give the round shape to a circle, since, according to his eternal ideas, independent of the free decrees of his will, the essence of man lay in the properties of being animal and rational, and since the essence of the circle lay in having a circumference equally distant from the centre as to all its parts. this is what has caused the christian philosophers to acknowledge that the essences of things are eternal, and that there are propositions of eternal truth; consequently that the essences of things and the truth of the first principles are immutable. that is to be understood not only of theoretical but also of practical first principles, and of all the propositions that contain the true definition of creatures. these essences and these truths emanate from the same necessity of nature as the knowledge of god. since therefore it is by the nature of things that god exists, that he is all-powerful, and that he has perfect knowledge of all things, it is also by the nature of things that matter, the triangle, man and certain actions of man, etc., have such and such properties essentially. god saw from all eternity and in all necessity the essential relations of numbers, and the identity of the subject and predicate in the propositions that contain the essence of each thing. he saw likewise that the term just is included in these propositions: to esteem what is estimable, be grateful to one's benefactor, fulfil the conditions of a contract, and so on, with many others relating to morals. one is therefore justified in saying that the precepts of natural law assume the reasonableness and justice of that which is enjoined, and that it would be man's duty to practise what they contain even though god should have been so indulgent as to ordain nothing in that respect. pray observe that in going back with our visionary thoughts to that ideal moment when god has yet decreed nothing, we find in the [ ] ideas of god the principles of morals under terms that imply an obligation. we understand these maxims as certain, and derived from the eternal and immutable order: it beseems the rational creature to conform to reason; a rational creature conforming to reason is to be commended, but not conforming thereto is blameworthy. you would not dare to deny that these truths impose upon man a duty in relation to all acts which are in conformity with strict reason, such as these: one must esteem all that is estimable; render good for good; do wrong to no man; honour one's father; render to every man that which is his due, etc. now since by the very nature of things, and before the divine laws, the truths of morality impose upon man certain duties, thomas aquinas and grotius were justified in saying that if there were no god we should nevertheless be obliged to conform to natural law. others have said that even supposing all rational beings in existence were to perish, true propositions would remain true. cajetan maintained that if he remained alone in the universe, all other things without any exception having been destroyed, the knowledge that he had of the nature of a rose would nevertheless subsist.' . the late jacob thomasius, a celebrated professor at leipzig, made the apt observation in his elucidations of the philosophic rules of daniel stahl, a jena professor, that it is not advisable to go altogether beyond god, and that one must not say, with some scotists, that the eternal verities would exist even though there were no understanding, not even that of god. for it is, in my judgement, the divine understanding which gives reality to the eternal verities, albeit god's will have no part therein. all reality must be founded on something existent. it is true that an atheist may be a geometrician: but if there were no god, geometry would have no object. and without god, not only would there be nothing existent, but there would be nothing possible. that, however, does not hinder those who do not see the connexion of all things one with another and with god from being able to understand certain sciences, without knowing their first source, which is in god. aristotle, although he also scarcely knew that source, nevertheless said something of the same kind which was very apposite. he acknowledged that the principles of individual forms of knowledge depend on a superior knowledge which gives the reason for them; and this superior knowledge must have being, and consequently god, the[ ] source of being, for its object. herr dreier of königsberg has aptly observed that the true metaphysics which aristotle sought, and which he called [greek: tên zêtoumenên], his _desideratum_, was theology. . yet the same m. bayle, who says so much that is admirable in order to prove that the rules of goodness and justice, and the eternal verities in general, exist by their nature, and not by an arbitrary choice of god, has spoken very hesitatingly about them in another passage (continuation of _divers thoughts on the comet_, vol. ii, ch. , towards the end). after having given an account of the opinion of m. descartes and a section of his followers, who maintain that god is the free cause of truths and of essences, he adds (p. ): 'i have done all that i could to gain true understanding of this dogma and to find the solution of the difficulties surrounding it. i confess to you quite simply that i still cannot properly fathom it. that does not discourage me; i suppose, as other philosophers in other cases have supposed, that time will unfold the meaning of this noble paradox. i wish that father malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but he took other measures.' is it possible that the enjoyment of doubt can have such influence upon a gifted man as to make him wish and hope for the power to believe that two contradictories never exist together for the sole reason that god forbade them to, and, moreover, that god could have issued them an order to ensure that they always walked together? there is indeed a noble paradox! father malebranche showed great wisdom in taking other measures. . i cannot even imagine that m. descartes can have been quite seriously of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe, and would in all simplicity follow him where he only made pretence to go. it was apparently one of his tricks, one of his philosophic feints: he prepared for himself some loophole, as when for instance he discovered a trick for denying the movement of the earth, while he was a copernican in the strictest sense. i suspect that he had in mind here another extraordinary manner of speaking, of his own invention, which was to say that affirmations and negations, and acts of inner judgement in general, are operations of the will. through this artifice the eternal verities, which until the time of descartes had been named an object of the divine understanding, suddenly became an object of god's will. now the acts of his will are free, therefore god is the free cause of the verities. that [ ] is the outcome of the matter. _spectatum admissi._ a slight change in the meaning of terms has caused all this commotion. but if the affirmations of necessary truths were actions of the will of the most perfect mind, these actions would be anything but free, for there is nothing to choose. it seems that m. descartes did not declare himself sufficiently on the nature of freedom, and that his conception of it was somewhat unusual: for he extended it so far that he even held the affirmations of necessary truths to be free in god. that was preserving only the name of freedom. . m. bayle, who with others conceives this to be a freedom of indifference, that god had had to establish (for instance) the truths of numbers, and to ordain that three times three made nine, whereas he could have commanded them to make ten, imagines in this strange opinion, supposing it were possible to defend it, some kind of advantage gained against the stratonists. strato was one of the leaders of the school of aristotle, and the successor of theophrastus; he maintained (according to cicero's account) that this world had been formed such as it is by nature or by a necessary cause devoid of cognition. i admit that that might be so, if god had so preformed matter as to cause such an effect by the laws of motion alone. but without god there would not even have been any reason for existence, and still less for any particular existence of things: thus strato's system is not to be feared. . nevertheless m. bayle is in difficulties over this: he will not admit plastic natures devoid of cognition, which mr. cudworth and others had introduced, for fear that the modern stratonists, that is, the spinozists, take advantage of it. this has involved him in disputes with m. le clerc. under the influence of this error, that a non-intelligent cause can produce nothing where contrivance appears, he is far from conceding to me that _preformation_ which produces naturally the organs of animals, and _the system of a harmony pre-established by god_ in bodies, to make them respond in accordance with their own laws to the thoughts and the wills of souls. but it ought to have been taken into account that this non-intelligent cause, which produces such beautiful things in the grains and seeds of plants and animals, and effects the actions of bodies as the will ordains them, was formed by the hand of god: and god is infinitely more skilful than a watchmaker, who himself makes machines and automata that are [ ] capable of producing as wonderful effects as if they possessed intelligence. . now to come to m. bayle's apprehensions concerning the stratonists, in case one should admit truths that are not dependent upon the will of god: he seems to fear lest they may take advantage against us of the perfect regularity of the eternal verities. since this regularity springs only from the nature and necessity of things, without being directed by any cognition, m. bayle fears that one might with strato thence infer that the world also could have become regular through a blind necessity. but it is easy to answer that. in the region of the eternal verities are found all the possibles, and consequently the regular as well as the irregular: there must be a reason accounting for the preference for order and regularity, and this reason can only be found in understanding. moreover these very truths can have no existence without an understanding to take cognizance of them; for they would not exist if there were no divine understanding wherein they are realized, so to speak. hence strato does not attain his end, which is to exclude cognition from that which enters into the origin of things. . the difficulty that m. bayle has imagined in connexion with strato seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. that is termed: _timere, ubi non est timor_. he makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a foundation, namely, that god would be subjected to a kind of _fatum_. here are his words (p. ): 'if they are propositions of eternal truth, which are such by their nature and not by god's institution, if they are not true by a free decree of his will, but if on the contrary he has recognized them as true of necessity, because such was their nature, there is a kind of _fatum_ to which he is subjected; there is an absolutely insurmountable natural necessity. thence comes also the result that the divine understanding in the infinity of its ideas has always and at the outset hit upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition; for it would be a contradiction to say that any exemplary cause had served as a plan for the acts of god's understanding. one would never that way find eternal ideas or any first intelligence. one must say, then, that a nature which exists of necessity always finds its way, without any need for it to be shown. how then shall we overcome the obstinacy of a stratonist?' . but again it is easy to answer. this so-called _fatum_, which [ ] binds even the divinity, is nothing but god's own nature, his own understanding, which furnishes the rules for his wisdom and his goodness; it is a happy necessity, without which he would be neither good nor wise. is it to be desired that god should not be bound to be perfect and happy? is our condition, which renders us liable to fail, worth envying? and should we not be well pleased to exchange it for sinlessness, if that depended upon us? one must be indeed weary of life to desire the freedom to destroy oneself and to pity the divinity for not having that freedom. m. bayle himself reasons thus elsewhere against those who laud to the skies an extravagant freedom which they assume in the will, when they would make the will independent of reason. . moreover, m. bayle wonders 'that the divine understanding in the infinity of its ideas always and at the outset hits upon their perfect conformity with their objects, without the guidance of any cognition'. this objection is null and void. every distinct idea is, through its distinctness, in conformity with its object, and in god there are distinct ideas only. at first, moreover, the object exists nowhere; but when it comes into existence, it will be formed according to this idea. besides, m. bayle knows very well that the divine understanding has no need of time for seeing the connexion of things. all trains of reasoning are in god in a transcendent form, and they preserve an order amongst them in his understanding, as well as in ours: but with him it is only an order and a _priority of nature_, whereas with us there is a _priority of time_. it is therefore not to be wondered at that he who penetrates all things at one stroke should always strike true at the outset; and it must not be said that he succeeds without the guidance of any cognition. on the contrary, it is because his knowledge is perfect that his voluntary actions are also perfect. . up to now i have shown that the will of god is not independent of the rules of wisdom, although indeed it is a matter for surprise that one should have been constrained to argue about it, and to do battle for a truth so great and so well established. but it is hardly less surprising that there should be people who believe that god only half observes these rules, and does not choose the best, although his wisdom causes him to recognize it; and, in a word, that there should be writers who hold that god could have done better. that is more or less the error of the famous alfonso, king of castile, who was elected king of the romans by [ ] certain electors, and originated the astronomical tables that bear his name. this prince is reported to have said that if god in making the world had consulted him he would have given god good advice. apparently the ptolemaic system, which prevailed at that time, was displeasing to him. he believed therefore that something better planned could have been made, and he was right. but if he had known the system of copernicus, with the discoveries of kepler, now extended by knowledge of the gravity of the planets, he would indeed have confessed that the contrivance of the true system is marvellous. we see, therefore, that here the question concerned the more or less only; alfonso maintained that better could have been done, and his opinion was censured by everyone. . yet philosophers and theologians dare to support dogmatically such a belief; and i have many times wondered that gifted and pious persons should have been capable of setting bounds to the goodness and the perfection of god. for to assert that he knows what is best, that he can do it and that he does it not, is to avow that it rested with his will only to make the world better than it is; but that is what one calls lacking goodness. it is acting against that axiom already quoted: _minus bonum habet rationem mali_. if some adduce experience to prove that god could have done better, they set themselves up as ridiculous critics of his works. to such will be given the answer given to all those who criticize god's course of action, and who from this same assumption, that is, the alleged defects of the world, would infer that there is an evil god, or at least a god neutral between good and evil. and if we hold the same opinion as king alfonso, we shall, i say, receive this answer: you have known the world only since the day before yesterday, you see scarce farther than your nose, and you carp at the world. wait until you know more of the world and consider therein especially the parts which present a complete whole (as do organic bodies); and you will find there a contrivance and a beauty transcending all imagination. let us thence draw conclusions as to the wisdom and the goodness of the author of things, even in things that we know not. we find in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be aware that it is not made for us alone. it is nevertheless made for us if we are wise: it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be happy in it if we wish to be. [ ] . someone will say that it is impossible to produce the best, because there is no perfect creature, and that it is always possible to produce one which would be more perfect. i answer that what can be said of a creature or of a particular substance, which can always be surpassed by another, is not to be applied to the universe, which, since it must extend through all future eternity, is an infinity. moreover, there is an infinite number of creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because of the actual division of the _continuum_ to infinity. and infinity, that is to say, the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven. that is just what serves to confute those who make of the world a god, or who think of god as the soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as a substance. . it is therefore not a question of a creature, but of the universe; and the adversary will be obliged to maintain that one possible universe may be better than the other, to infinity; but there he would be mistaken, and it is that which he cannot prove. if this opinion were true, it would follow that god had not produced any universe at all: for he is incapable of acting without reason, and that would be even acting against reason. it is as if one were to suppose that god had decreed to make a material sphere, with no reason for making it of any particular size. this decree would be useless, it would carry with it that which would prevent its effect. it would be quite another matter if god decreed to draw from a given point one straight line to another given straight line, without any determination of the angle, either in the decree or in its circumstances. for in this case the determination would spring from the nature of the thing, the line would be perpendicular, and the angle would be right, since that is all that is determined and distinguishable. it is thus one must think of the creation of the best of all possible universes, all the more since god not only decrees to create a universe, but decrees also to create the best of all. for god decrees nothing without knowledge, and he makes no separate decrees, which would be nothing but antecedent acts of will: and these we have sufficiently explained, distinguishing them from genuine decrees. . m. diroys, whom i knew in rome, theologian to cardinal d'estrées, wrote a book entitled _proofs and assumptions in favour of_ _the [ ] christian religion_, published in paris in the year . m. bayle (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ) recounts this objection brought up by m. diroys: 'there is one more difficulty', he says, 'which it is no less important to meet than those given earlier, since it causes more trouble to those who judge goods and evils by considerations founded on the purest and most lofty maxims. this is that god being the supreme wisdom and goodness, it seems to them that he ought to do all things as wise and virtuous persons would wish them to be done, following the rules of wisdom and of goodness which god has imprinted in them, and as they would be obliged themselves to do these things if they depended upon them. thus, seeing that the affairs of the world do not go so well as, in their opinion, they might go, and as they would go if they interfered themselves, they conclude that god, who is infinitely better and wiser than they, or rather wisdom and goodness itself, does not concern himself with these affairs.' . m. diroys makes some apt remarks concerning this, which i will not repeat, since i have sufficiently answered the objection in more than one passage, and that has been the chief end of all my discourse. but he makes one assertion with which i cannot agree. he claims that the objection proves too much. one must again quote his own words with m. bayle, p. : 'if it does not behove the supreme wisdom and goodness to fail to do what is best and most perfect, it follows that all beings are eternally, immutably and essentially as perfect and as good as they can be, since nothing can change except by passing either from a state less good to a better, or from a better to a less good. now that cannot happen if it does not behove god to fail to do that which is best and most perfect, when he can do it. it will therefore be necessary that all beings be eternally and essentially filled with a knowledge and a virtue as perfect as god can give them. now all that which is eternally and essentially as perfect as god can make it proceeds essentially from him; in a word, is eternally and essentially good as he is, and consequently it is god, as he is. that is the bearing of this maxim, that it is repugnant to supreme justice and goodness not to make things as good and perfect as they can be. for it is essential to essential wisdom and goodness to banish all that is repugnant to it altogether. one must therefore assert as a primary truth concerning the conduct of god in relation to creatures that there is nothing repugnant to this goodness and this wisdom in making things less perfect than [ ] they could be, or in permitting the goods that it has produced either completely to cease to be or to change and deteriorate. for it causes no offence to god that there should be other beings than he, that is beings who can be not what they are, and do not what they do or do what they do not.' . m. bayle calls this answer paltry, but i find his counter-objection involved. m. bayle will have those who are for the two principles to take their stand chiefly on the assumption of the supreme freedom of god: for if he were compelled to produce all that which he can, he would produce also sins and sorrows. thus the dualists could from the existence of evil conclude nothing contrary to the oneness of the principle, if this principle were as much inclined to evil as to good. there m. bayle carries the notion of freedom too far: for even though god be supremely free, it does not follow that he maintains an indifference of equipoise: and even though he be inclined to act, it does not follow that he is compelled by this inclination to produce all that which he can. he will produce only that which he wills, for his inclination prompts him to good. i admit the supreme freedom of god, but i do not confuse it with indifference of equipoise, as if he could act without reason. m. diroys therefore imagines that the dualists, in their insistence that the single good principle produce no evil, ask too much; for by the same reason, according to m. diroys, they ought also to ask that he should produce the greatest good, the less good being a kind of evil. i hold that the dualists are wrong in respect of the first point, and that they would be right in respect of the second, where m. diroys blames them without cause; or rather that one can reconcile the evil, or the less good, in some parts with the best in the whole. if the dualists demanded that god should do the best, they would not be demanding too much. they are mistaken rather in claiming that the best in the whole should be free from evil in the parts, and that therefore what god has made is not the best. . but m. diroys maintains that if god always produces the best he will produce other gods; otherwise each substance that he produced would not be the best nor the most perfect. but he is mistaken, through not taking into account the order and connexion of things. if each substance taken separately were perfect, all would be alike; which is neither fitting nor possible. if they were gods, it would not have been possible to [ ] produce them. the best system of things will therefore not contain gods; it will always be a system of bodies (that is, things arranged according to time and place) and of souls which represent and are aware of bodies, and in accordance with which bodies are in great measure directed. so, as the design of a building may be the best of all in respect of its purpose, of expense and of circumstances; and as an arrangement of some figured representations of bodies which is given to you may be the best that one can find, it is easy to imagine likewise that a structure of the universe may be the best of all, without becoming a god. the connexion and order of things brings it about that the body of every animal and of every plant is composed of other animals and of other plants, or of other living and organic beings; consequently there is subordination, and one body, one substance serves the other: thus their perfection cannot be equal. . m. bayle thinks (p. ) that m. diroys has confused two different propositions. according to the one, god must do all things as wise and virtuous persons would wish that they should be done, by the rules of wisdom and of goodness that god has imprinted in them, and as they would be obliged themselves to do them if those things depended upon them. the other is that it is not consistent with supreme wisdom and goodness to fail to do what is best and most perfect. m. diroys (in m. bayle's opinion) sets up the first proposition as an objection for himself, and replies to the second. but therein he is justified, as it seems to me. for these two propositions are connected, the second is a result of the first: to do less good than one could is to be lacking in wisdom or in goodness. to be the best, and to be desired by those who are most virtuous and wise, comes to the same thing. and it may be said that, if we could understand the structure and the economy of the universe, we should find that it is made and directed as the wisest and most virtuous could wish it, since god cannot fail to do thus. this necessity nevertheless is only of a moral nature: and i admit that if god were forced by a metaphysical necessity to produce that which he makes, he would produce all the possibles, or nothing; and in this sense m. bayle's conclusion would be fully correct. but as all the possibles are not compatible together in one and the same world-sequence, for that very reason all the possibles cannot be produced, and it must be said that god is not forced, metaphysically speaking, [ ] into the creation of this world. one may say that as soon as god has decreed to create something there is a struggle between all the possibles, all of them laying claim to existence, and that those which, being united, produce most reality, most perfection, most significance carry the day. it is true that all this struggle can only be ideal, that is to say, it can only be a conflict of reasons in the most perfect understanding, which cannot fail to act in the most perfect way, and consequently to choose the best. yet god is bound by a moral necessity, to make things in such a manner that there can be nothing better: otherwise not only would others have cause to criticize what he makes, but, more than that, he would not himself be satisfied with his work, he would blame himself for its imperfection; and that conflicts with the supreme felicity of the divine nature. this perpetual sense of his own fault or imperfection would be to him an inevitable source of grief, as m. bayle says on another occasion (p. ). . m. diroys' argument contains a false assumption, in his statement that nothing can change except by passing from a state less good to a better or from a better to a less good; and that thus, if god makes the best, what he has produced cannot be changed: it would be an eternal substance, a god. but i do not see why a thing cannot change its kind in relation to good or evil, without changing its degree. in the transition from enjoyment of music to enjoyment of painting, or _vice versa_ from the pleasure of the eyes to that of the ears, the degree of enjoyment may remain the same, the latter gaining no advantage over the former save that of novelty. if the quadrature of the circle should come to pass or (what is the same thing) the circulature of the square, that is, if the circle were changed into a square of the same size, or the square into a circle, it would be difficult to say, on the whole, without having regard to some special use, whether one would have gained or lost. thus the best may be changed into another which neither yields to it nor surpasses it: but there will always be an order among them, and that the best order possible. taking the whole sequence of things, the best has no equal; but one part of the sequence may be equalled by another part of the same sequence. besides it might be said that the whole sequence of things to infinity may be the best possible, although what exists all through the universe in each portion of time be not the best. it might be therefore that the universe became even [ ] better and better, if the nature of things were such that it was not permitted to attain to the best all at once. but these are problems of which it is hard for us to judge. . m. bayle says (p. ) that the question whether god could have made things more perfect than he made them is also very difficult, and that the reasons for and against are very strong. but it is, so it seems to me, as if one were to question whether god's actions are consistent with the most perfect wisdom and the greatest goodness. it is a very strange thing, that by changing the terms a little one throws doubt upon what is, if properly understood, as clear as anything can be. the reasons to the contrary have no force, being founded only on the semblance of defects; and m. bayle's objection, which tends to prove that the law of the best would impose upon god a true metaphysical necessity, is only an illusion that springs from the misuse of terms. m. bayle formerly held a different opinion, when he commended that of father malebranche, which was akin to mine on this subject. but m. arnauld having written in opposition to father malebranche, m. bayle altered his opinion; and i suppose that his tendency towards doubt, which increased in him with the years, was conducive to that result. m. arnauld was doubtless a great man, and his authority has great weight: he made sundry good observations in his writings against father malebranche, but he was not justified in contesting those of his statements that were akin to mine on the rule of the best. . the excellent author of _the search for truth_, having passed from philosophy to theology, published finally an admirable treatise on nature and grace. here he showed in his way (as m. bayle explained in his _divers thoughts on the comet_, ch. ) that the events which spring from the enforcement of general laws are not the object of a particular will of god. it is true that when one wills a thing one wills also in a sense everything that is necessarily attached to it, and in consequence god cannot will general laws without also willing in a sense all the particular effects that must of necessity be derived from them. but it is always true that these particular events are not willed for their own sake, and that is what is meant by the expression that they are not willed by a _particular_ and direct _will_. there is no doubt that when god resolved to act outside himself, he made choice of a manner of action which should be worthy [ ] of the supremely perfect being, that is, which should be infinitely simple and uniform, but yet of an infinite productivity. one may even suppose that this manner of action by _general acts of will_ appeared to him preferable--although there must thence result some superfluous events (and even bad if they are taken separately, that is my own addition)--to another manner more composed and more regular; such is father malebranche's opinion. nothing is more appropriate than this assumption (according to the opinion of m. bayle, when he wrote his _divers thoughts on the comet_) to solve a thousand difficulties which are brought up against divine providence: 'to ask god', he says, 'why he has made things which serve to render men more wicked, that would be to ask why god has carried out his plan (which can only be of infinite beauty) by the simplest and most uniform methods, and why, by a complexity of decrees that would unceasingly cut across one another, he has not prevented the wrong use of man's free will.' he adds 'that miracles being particular acts of will must have an end worthy of god'. . on these foundations he makes some good reflexions (ch. ) concerning the injustice of those who complain of the prosperity of the wicked. 'i shall have no scruples', he says, 'about saying that all those who are surprised at the prosperity of the wicked have pondered very little upon the nature of god, and that they have reduced the obligations of a cause which directs all things, to the scope of a providence altogether subordinate; and that is small-minded. what then! should god, after having made free causes and necessary causes, in a mixture infinitely well fitted to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom, have established laws consistent with the nature of free causes, but so lacking in firmness that the slightest trouble that came upon a man would overthrow them entirely, to the ruin of human freedom? a mere city governor will become an object of ridicule if he changes his regulations and orders as often as someone is pleased to murmur against him. and shall god, whose laws concern a good so universal that all of the world that is visible to us perchance enters into it as no more than a trifling accessary, be bound to depart from his laws, because they to-day displease the one and to-morrow the other? or again because a superstitious person, deeming wrongly that a monstrosity presages something deadly, proceeds from his error to a criminal sacrifice? or because a good soul, who yet does not value virtue highly enough to [ ] believe that to have none is punishment enough in itself, is shocked that a wicked man should become rich and enjoy vigorous health? can one form any falser notions of a universal providence? everyone agrees that this law of nature, the strong prevails over the weak, has been very wisely laid down, and that it would be absurd to maintain that when a stone falls on a fragile vase which is the delight of its owner, god should depart from this law in order to spare that owner vexation. should one then not confess that it is just as absurd to maintain that god must depart from the same law to prevent a wicked man from growing rich at the expense of a good man? the more the wicked man sets himself above the promptings of conscience and of honour, the more does he exceed the good man in strength, so that if he comes to grips with the good man he must, according to the course of nature, ruin him. if, moreover, they are both engaged in the business of finance, the wicked man must, according to the same course of nature, grow richer than the good man, just as a fierce fire consumes more wood than a fire of straw. those who would wish sickness for a wicked man are sometimes as unfair as those who would wish that a stone falling on a glass should not break it: for his organs being arranged as they are, neither the food that he takes nor the air that he breathes can, according to natural laws, be detrimental to his health. therefore those who complain about his health complain of god's failure to violate the laws which he has established. and in this they are all the more unfair because, through combinations and concatenations which were in the power of god alone, it happens often enough that the course of nature brings about the punishment of sin.' . it is a thousand pities that m. bayle so soon quitted the way he had so auspiciously begun, of reasoning on behalf of providence: for his work would have been fruitful, and in saying fine things he would have said good things as well. i agree with father malebranche that god does things in the way most worthy of him. but i go a little further than he, with regard to 'general and particular acts of will'. as god can do nothing without reasons, even when he acts miraculously, it follows that he has no will about individual events but what results from some general truth or will. thus i would say that god never has a _particular will_ such as this father implies, that is to say, _a particular primitive will_. [ ] . i think even that miracles have nothing to distinguish them from other events in this regard: for reasons of an order superior to that of nature prompt god to perform them. thus i would not say, with this father, that god departs from general laws whenever order requires it: he departs from one law only for another law more applicable, and what order requires cannot fail to be in conformity with the rule of order, which is one of the general laws. the distinguishing mark of miracles (taken in the strictest sense) is that they cannot be accounted for by the natures of created things. that is why, should god make a general law causing bodies to be attracted the one to the other, he could only achieve its operation by perpetual miracles. and likewise, if god willed that the organs of human bodies should conform to the will of the soul, according to the _system of occasional causes_, this law also would come into operation only through perpetual miracles. . thus one must suppose that, among the general rules which are not absolutely necessary, god chooses those which are the most natural, which it is easiest to explain, and which also are of greatest service for the explanation of other things. that is doubtless the conclusion most excellent and most pleasing; and even though the system of pre-established harmony were not necessary otherwise, because it banishes superfluous miracles, god would have chosen it as being the most harmonious. the ways of god are those most simple and uniform: for he chooses rules that least restrict one another. they are also the most _productive_ in proportion to the _simplicity of ways and means_. it is as if one said that a certain house was the best that could have been constructed at a certain cost. one may, indeed, reduce these two conditions, simplicity and productivity, to a single advantage, which is to produce as much perfection as is possible: thus father malebranche's system in this point amounts to the same as mine. even if the effect were assumed to be greater, but the process less simple, i think one might say that, when all is said and done, the effect itself would be less great, taking into account not only the final effect but also the mediate effect. for the wisest mind so acts, as far as it is possible, that the _means_ are also in a sense _ends_, that is, they are desirable not only on account of what they do, but on account of what they are. the more intricate processes take up too much ground, too much space, too much place, too much time that might have been better employed. [ ] . now since everything resolves itself into this greatest perfection, we return to my law of the best. for perfection includes not only the _moral good_ and the _physical good_ of intelligent creatures, but also the good which is purely _metaphysical_, and concerns also creatures devoid of reason. it follows that the evil that is in rational creatures happens only by concomitance, not by antecedent will but by a consequent will, as being involved in the best possible plan; and the metaphysical good which includes everything makes it necessary sometimes to admit physical evil and moral evil, as i have already explained more than once. it so happens that the ancient stoics were not far removed from this system. m. bayle remarked upon this himself in his _dictionary_ in the article on 'chrysippus', rem. t. it is of importance to give his own words, in order sometimes to face him with his own objections and to bring him back to the fine sentiments that he had formerly pronounced: 'chrysippus', he says (p. ), 'in his work on providence examined amongst other questions this one: did the nature of things, or the providence that made the world and the human kind, make also the diseases to which men are subject? he answers that the chief design of nature was not to make them sickly, that would not be in keeping with the cause of all good; but nature, in preparing and producing many great things excellently ordered and of great usefulness, found that some drawbacks came as a result, and thus these were not in conformity with the original design and purpose; they came about as a sequel to the work, they existed only as consequences. for the formation of the human body, chrysippus said, the finest idea as well as the very utility of the work demanded that the head should be composed of a tissue of thin, fine bones; but because of that it was bound to have the disadvantage of not being able to resist blows. nature made health, and at the same time it was necessary by a kind of concomitance that the source of diseases should be opened up. the same thing applies with regard to virtue; the direct action of nature, which brought it forth, produced by a counter stroke the brood of vices. i have not translated literally, for which reason i give here the actual latin of aulus gellius, for the benefit of those who understand that language (aul. gellius, lib. , cap. ): "idem chrysippus in eod. lib. (quarto, [greek: peri pronoias]) tractat consideratque, dignumque esse id quaeri putat, [greek: ei hai tôn anthrôpôn nosoi kata physin gignontai]. id est, naturane ipsa rerum, vel providentia quae compagem hanc mundi et [ ] genus hominum fecit, morbos quoque et debilitates et aegritudines corporum, quas patiuntur homines, fecerit. existimat autem non fuisse hoc principale naturae consilium, ut faceret homines morbis obnoxios. nunquam enim hoc convenisse naturae auctori parentique rerum omnium bonarum. sed quum multa, inquit, atque magna gigneret, pareretque aptissima et utilissima, alia quoque simul agnata sunt incommoda iis ipsis, quae faciebat, cohaerentia: eaque non per naturam, sed per sequelas quasdam necessarias facta dicit, quod ipse appellat [greek: kata parakolouthêsin]. sicut, inquit, quum corpora hominum natura fingeret, ratio subtilior et utilitas ipsa operis postulavit ut tenuissimis minutisque ossiculis caput compingeret. sed hanc utilitatem rei majoris alia quaedam incommoditas extrinsecus consecuta est, ut fieret caput tenuiter munitum et ictibus offensionibusque parvis fragile. proinde morbi quoque et aegritudines partae sunt, dum salus paritur. sic hercle, inquit, dum virtus hominibus per consilium naturae gignitur, vitia ibidem per affinitatem contrariam nata sunt." i do not think that a pagan could have said anything more reasonable, considering his ignorance of the first man's fall, the knowledge of which has only reached us through revelation, and which indeed is the true cause of our miseries. if we had sundry like extracts from the works of chrysippus, or rather if we had his works, we should have a more favourable idea than we have of the beauty of his genius.' . let us now see the reverse of the medal in the altered m. bayle. after having quoted in his _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (vol. iii, ch. , p. ) these words of m. jacquelot, which are much to my liking: 'to change the order of the universe is something of infinitely greater consequence than the prosperity of a good man,' he adds: 'this thought has something dazzling about it: father malebranche has placed it in the best possible light; and he has persuaded some of his readers that a system which is simple and very productive is more consistent with god's wisdom than a system more composite and less productive in proportion, but more capable of averting irregularities. m. bayle was one of those who believed that father malebranche in that way gave a wonderful solution.' (it is m. bayle himself speaking.) 'but it is almost impossible to be satisfied with it after having read m. arnauld's books against this system, and after having contemplated the vast and boundless idea of the supremely [ ] perfect being. this idea shows us that nothing is easier for god than to follow a plan which is simple, productive, regular and opportune for all creatures simultaneously.' . while i was in france i showed to m. arnauld a dialogue i had composed in latin on the cause of evil and the justice of god; it was not only before his disputes with father malebranche, but even before the book on _the search for truth_ appeared. that principle which i uphold here, namely that sin had been permitted because it had been involved in the best plan for the universe, was already applied there; and m. arnauld did not seem to be startled by it. but the slight contentions which he has since had with father malebranche have given him cause to examine this subject with closer attention, and to be more severe in his judgement thereof. yet i am not altogether pleased with m. bayle's manner of expression here on this subject, and i am not of the opinion 'that a more composite and less productive plan might be more capable of averting irregularities'. rules are the expression of general will: the more one observes rules, the more regularity there is; simplicity and productivity are the aim of rules. i shall be met with the objection that a uniform system will be free from irregularities. i answer that it would be an irregularity to be too uniform, that would offend against the rules of harmony. _et citharoedus ridetur chorda qui semper oberrat eadem_. i believe therefore that god can follow a simple, productive, regular plan; but i do not believe that the best and the most regular is always opportune for all creatures simultaneously; and i judge _a posteriori_, for the plan chosen by god is not so. i have, however, also shown this _a priori_ in examples taken from mathematics, and i will presently give another here. an origenist who maintains that all rational creatures become happy in the end will be still easier to satisfy. he will say, in imitation of st. paul's saying about the sufferings of this life, that those which are finite are not worthy to be compared with eternal bliss. . what is deceptive in this subject, as i have already observed, is that one feels an inclination to believe that what is the best in the whole is also the best possible in each part. one reasons thus in geometry, when it is a question _de maximis et minimis_. if the road from a to b that one proposes to take is the shortest possible, and if this road passes by c, then the road from a to c, part of the first, must also be the shortest possible. but the inference from _quantity_ to _quality_ is not always[ ] right, any more than that which is drawn from equals to similars. for _equals_ are those whose quantity is the same, and _similars_ are those not differing according to qualities. the late herr sturm, a famous mathematician in altorf, while in holland in his youth published there a small book under the title of _euclides catholicus_. here he endeavoured to give exact and general rules in subjects not mathematical, being encouraged in the task by the late herr erhard weigel, who had been his tutor. in this book he transfers to similars what euclid had said of equals, and he formulates this axiom: _si similibus addas similia, tota sunt similia_. but so many limitations were necessary to justify this new rule, that it would have been better, in my opinion, to enounce it at the outset with a reservation, by saying, _si similibus similia addas similiter, tota sunt similia_. moreover, geometricians often require _non tantum similia, sed et similiter posita_. . this difference between quantity and quality appears also in our case. the part of the shortest way between two extreme points is also the shortest way between the extreme points of this part; but the part of the best whole is not of necessity the best that one could have made of this part. for the part of a beautiful thing is not always beautiful, since it can be extracted from the whole, or marked out within the whole, in an irregular manner. if goodness and beauty always lay in something absolute and uniform, such as extension, matter, gold, water, and other bodies assumed to be homogeneous or similar, one must say that the part of the good and the beautiful would be beautiful and good like the whole, since it would always have resemblance to the whole: but this is not the case in things that have mutual relations. an example taken from geometry will be appropriate to explain my idea. . there is a kind of geometry which herr jung of hamburg, one of the most admirable men of his time, called 'empiric'. it makes use of conclusive experiments and proves various propositions of euclid, but especially those which concern the equality of two figures, by cutting the one in pieces, and putting the pieces together again to make the other. in this manner, by cutting carefully in parts the squares on the two sides of the right-angled triangle, and arranging these parts carefully, one makes from them the square on the hypotenuse; that is demonstrating empirically the th proposition of the first book of euclid. now supposing that some of these pieces taken from the two smaller squares are lost, something[ ] will be lacking in the large square that is to be formed from them; and this defective combination, far from pleasing, will be disagreeably ugly. if then the pieces that remained, composing the faulty combination, were taken separately without any regard to the large square to whose formation they ought to contribute, one would group them together quite differently to make a tolerably good combination. but as soon as the lost pieces are retrieved and the gap in the faulty combination is filled, there will ensue a beautiful and regular thing, the complete large square: this perfect combination will be far more beautiful than the tolerably good combination which had been made from the pieces one had not mislaid alone. the perfect combination corresponds to the universe in its entirety, and the faulty combination that is a part of the perfect one corresponds to some part of the universe, where we find defects which the author of things has allowed, because otherwise, if he had wished to re-shape this faulty part and make thereof a tolerably good combination, the whole would not then have been so beautiful. for the parts of the faulty combination, grouped better to make a tolerably good combination, could not have been used properly to form the whole and perfect combination. thomas aquinas had an inkling of these things when he said: _ad prudentem gubernatorem pertinet, negligere aliquem defectum bonitatis in parte, ut faciat augmentum bonitatis in toto_ (thom., _contra gentiles_, lib. , c. ). thomas gatacre, in his notes on the book of marcus aurelius (lib. , cap. , with m. bayle), cites also passages from authors who say that the evil of the parts is often the good of the whole. . let us return to m. bayle's illustrations. he imagines a prince (p. ) who is having a city built, and who, in bad taste, aims rather at airs of magnificence therein, and a bold and unusual style of architecture, than at the provision of conveniences of all kinds for the inhabitants. but if this prince has true magnanimity he will prefer the convenient to the magnificent architecture. that is m. bayle's judgement. i consider, however, that there are cases where one will justifiably prefer beauty of construction in a palace to the convenience of a few domestics. but i admit that the construction would be bad, however beautiful it might be, if it were a cause of diseases to the inhabitants; provided it was possible to make one that would be better, taking into account beauty, convenience and health all together. it may be, indeed, that one cannot have all these[ ] advantages at once. thus, supposing one wished to build on the northern and more bracing side of the mountain, if the castle were then bound to be of an unendurable construction, one would prefer to make it face southward. . m. bayle raises the further objection, that it is true that our legislators can never invent regulations such as are convenient for all individuals, 'nulla lex satis commoda omnibus est; id modo quaeritur, si majori parti et in summam prodest. (cato apud livium, l. , circa init.)' but the reason is that the limited condition of their knowledge compels them to cling to laws which, when all is taken into account, are more advantageous than harmful. nothing of all that can apply to god, who is as infinite in power and understanding as in goodness and true greatness. i answer that since god chooses the best possible, one cannot tax him with any limitation of his perfections; and in the universe not only does the good exceed the evil, but also the evil serves to augment the good. . he observes also that the stoics derived a blasphemy from this principle, saying that evils must be endured with patience, or that they were necessary, not only to the well-being and completeness of the universe, but also to the felicity, perfection and conservation of god, who directs it. the emperor marcus aurelius gave expression to that in the eighth chapter of the fifth book of his _meditations_. 'duplici ratione', he says, 'diligas oportet, quidquid evenerit tibi; altera quod tibi natum et tibi coordinatum et ad te quodammodo affectum est; altera quod universi gubernatori prosperitatis et consummationis atque adeo permansionis ipsius procurandae ([greek: tês euodias kai tês synteleias kai tês symmonês autês]) ex parte causa est.' this precept is not the most reasonable of those stated by that great emperor. a _diligas oportet_ ([greek: stergein chrê]) is of no avail; a thing does not become pleasing just because it is necessary, and because it is destined for or attached to someone: and what for me would be an evil would not cease to be such because it would be my master's good, unless this good reflected back on me. one good thing among others in the universe is that the general good becomes in reality the individual good of those who love the author of all good. but the principal error of this emperor and of the stoics was their assumption that the good of the universe must please god himself, because they imagined god as the soul of the world. this error has nothing in common with my dogma, [ ] according to which god is _intelligentia extramundana_, as martianus capella calls him, or rather _supramundana_. further, he acts to do good, and not to receive it. _melius est dare quam accipere_; his bliss is ever perfect and can receive no increase, either from within or from without. . i come now to the principal objection m. bayle, after m. arnauld, brings up against me. it is complicated: they maintain that god would be under compulsion, that he would act of necessity, if he were bound to create the best; or at least that he would have been lacking in power if he could not have found a better expedient for excluding sins and other evils. that is in effect denying that this universe is the best, and that god is bound to insist upon the best. i have met this objection adequately in more than one passage: i have proved that god cannot fail to produce the best; and from that assumption it follows that the evils we experience could not have been reasonably excluded from the universe, since they are there. let us see, however, what these two excellent men bring up, or rather let us see what m. bayle's objection is, for he professes to have profited by the arguments of m. arnauld. . 'would it be possible', he says, _reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. , 'that a nature whose goodness, holiness, wisdom, knowledge and power are infinite, who loves virtue supremely, and hates vice supremely, as our clear and distinct idea of him shows us, and as well-nigh every page of scripture assures us, could have found in virtue no means fitting and suited for his ends? would it be possible that vice alone had offered him this means? one would have thought on the contrary that nothing beseemed this nature more than to establish virtue in his work to the exclusion of all vice.' m. bayle here exaggerates things. i agree that some vice was connected with the best plan of the universe, but i do not agree with him that god could not find in virtue any means suited for his ends. this objection would have been valid if there were no virtue, if vice took its place everywhere. he will say it suffices that vice prevails and that virtue is trifling in comparison. but i am far from agreeing with him there, and i think that in reality, properly speaking, there is incomparably more moral good than moral evil in rational creatures; and of these we have knowledge of but few. . this evil is not even so great in men as it is declared to be. it[ ] is only people of a malicious disposition or those who have become somewhat misanthropic through misfortunes, like lucian's timon, who find wickedness everywhere, and who poison the best actions by the interpretations they give to them. i speak of those who do it in all seriousness, to draw thence evil conclusions, by which their conduct is tainted; for there are some who only do it to show off their own acumen. people have found that fault in tacitus, and that again is the criticism m. descartes (in one of his letters) makes of mr. hobbes's book _de cive_, of which only a few copies had at that time been printed for distribution among friends, but to which some notes by the author were added in the second edition which we have. for although m. descartes acknowledges that this book is by a man of talent, he observes therein some very dangerous principles and maxims, in the assumption there made that all men are wicked, or the provision of them with motives for being so. the late herr jacob thomasius said in his admirable _tables of practical philosophy_ that the [greek: prôton pseudos], the primary cause of errors in this book by mr. hobbes, was that he took _statum legalem pro naturali_, that is to say that the corrupt state served him as a gauge and rule, whereas it is the state most befitting human nature which aristotle had had in view. for according to aristotle, that is termed _natural_ which conforms most closely to the perfection of the nature of the thing; but mr. hobbes applies the term _natural state_ to that which has least art, perhaps not taking into account that human nature in its perfection carries art with it. but the question of name, that is to say, of what may be called natural, would not be of great importance were it not that aristotle and hobbes fastened upon it the notion of natural right, each one following his own signification. i have said here already that i found in the book on the falsity of human virtues the same defect as m. descartes found in mr. hobbes's _de cive_. . but even if we assume that vice exceeds virtue in the human kind, as it is assumed the number of the damned exceeds that of the elect, it by no means follows that vice and misery exceed virtue and happiness in the universe: one should rather believe the opposite, because the city of god must be the most perfect of all possible states, since it was formed and is perpetually governed by the greatest and best of all monarchs. this answer confirms the observation i made earlier, when speaking of the conformity of faith with reason, namely, that one of the greatest sources of fallacy[ ] in the objections is the confusion of the apparent with the real. and here by the apparent i mean not simply such as would result from an exact discussion of facts, but that which has been derived from the small extent of our experiences. it would be senseless to try to bring up appearances so imperfect, and having such slight foundation, in opposition to the proofs of reason and the revelations of faith. . finally, i have already observed that love of virtue and hatred of vice, which tend in an undefined way to bring virtue into existence and to prevent the existence of vice, are only antecedent acts of will, such as is the will to bring about the happiness of all men and to save them from misery. these acts of antecedent will make up only a portion of all the antecedent will of god taken together, whose result forms the consequent will, or the decree to create the best. through this decree it is that love for virtue and for the happiness of rational creatures, which is undefined in itself and goes as far as is possible, receives some slight limitations, on account of the heed that must be paid to good in general. thus one must understand that god loves virtue supremely and hates vice supremely, and that nevertheless some vice is to be permitted. . m. arnauld and m. bayle appear to maintain that this method of explaining things and of establishing a best among all the plans for the universe, one such as may not be surpassed by any other, sets a limit to god's power. 'have you considered', says m. arnauld to father malebranche (in his _reflexions on the new system of nature and grace_, vol. ii, p. ), 'that in making such assumptions you take it upon yourself to subvert the first article of the creed, whereby we make profession of believing in god the father almighty?' he had said already (p. ): 'can one maintain, without trying to blind oneself, that a course of action which could not fail to have this grievous result, namely, that the majority of men perish, bears the stamp of god's goodness more than a different course of action, which would have caused, if god had followed it, the salvation of all men?' and, as m. jacquelot does not differ from the principles i have just laid down, m. bayle raises like objections in his case (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ): 'if one adopts such explanations', he says, 'one sees oneself constrained to renounce the most obvious notions on the nature of the supremely perfect being. these teach us that all things not implying contradiction are possible for him, [ ] that consequently it is possible for him to save people whom he does not save: for what contradiction would result supposing the number of the elect were greater than it is? they teach us besides that, since he is supremely happy, he has no will which he cannot carry out. how, then, shall we understand that he wills to save all men and that he cannot do so? we sought some light to help us out of the perplexities we feel in comparing the idea of god with the state of the human kind, and lo! we are given elucidations that cast us into darkness more dense.' . all these obstacles vanish before the exposition i have just given. i agree with m. bayle's principle, and it is also mine, that everything implying no contradiction is possible. but as for me, holding as i do that god did the best that was possible, or that he could not have done better than he has done, deeming also that to pass any other judgement upon his work in its entirety would be to wrong his goodness or his wisdom, i must say that to make something which surpasses in goodness the best itself, that indeed would imply contradiction. that would be as if someone maintained that god could draw from one point to another a line shorter than the straight line, and accused those who deny this of subverting the article of faith whereby we believe in god the father almighty. . the infinity of possibles, however great it may be, is no greater than that of the wisdom of god, who knows all possibles. one may even say that if this wisdom does not exceed the possibles extensively, since the objects of the understanding cannot go beyond the possible, which in a sense is alone intelligible, it exceeds them intensively, by reason of the infinitely infinite combinations it makes thereof, and its many deliberations concerning them. the wisdom of god, not content with embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them one against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection or imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. it goes even beyond the finite combinations, it makes of them an infinity of infinites, that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the universe, each of which contains an infinity of creatures. by this means the divine wisdom distributes all the possibles it had already contemplated separately, into so many universal systems which it further compares the one with the other. the result of all these comparisons and deliberations is the choice of the best from among all these possible systems, which wisdom makes in [ ] order to satisfy goodness completely; and such is precisely the plan of the universe as it is. moreover, all these operations of the divine understanding, although they have among them an order and a priority of nature, always take place together, no priority of time existing among them. . the careful consideration of these things will, i hope, induce a different idea of the greatness of the divine perfections, and especially of the wisdom and goodness of god, from any that can exist in the minds of those who make god act at random, without cause or reason. and i do not see how they could avoid falling into an opinion so strange, unless they acknowledged that there are reasons for god's choice, and that these reasons are derived from his goodness: whence it follows of necessity that what was chosen had the advantage of goodness over what was not chosen, and consequently that it is the best of all the possibles. the best cannot be surpassed in goodness, and it is no restriction of the power of god to say that he cannot do the impossible. is it possible, said m. bayle, that there is no better plan than that one which god carried out? one answers that it is very possible and indeed necessary, namely that there is none: otherwise god would have preferred it. . it seems to me that i have proved sufficiently that among all the possible plans of the universe there is one better than all the rest, and that god has not failed to choose it. but m. bayle claims to infer thence that god is therefore not free. this is how he speaks on that question (_ubi supra_, ch. , p. ): 'i thought to argue with a man who assumed as i do that the goodness and the power of god are infinite, as well as his wisdom; and now i see that in reality this man assumes that god's goodness and power are enclosed within rather narrow bounds.' as to that, the objection has already been met: i set no bounds to god's power, since i recognize that it extends _ad maximum, ad omnia_, to all that implies no contradiction; and i set none to his goodness, since it attains to the best, _ad optimum_. but m. bayle goes on: 'there is therefore no freedom in god; he is compelled by his wisdom to create, and then to create precisely such a work, and finally to create it precisely in such ways. these are three servitudes which form a more than stoic _fatum_, and which render impossible all that is not within their sphere. it seems that, according to this system, god could have said, even before shaping his decrees: i [ ] cannot save such and such a man, nor condemn such and such another, _quippe vetor fatis_, my wisdom permits it not.' . i answer that it is goodness which prompts god to create with the purpose of communicating himself; and this same goodness combined with wisdom prompts him to create the best: a best that includes the whole sequence, the effect and the process. it prompts him thereto without compelling him, for it does not render impossible that which it does not cause him to choose. to call that _fatum_ is taking it in a good sense, which is not contrary to freedom: _fatum_ comes from _fari_, to speak, to pronounce; it signifies a judgement, a decree of god, the award of his wisdom. to say that one cannot do a thing, simply because one does not will it, is to misuse terms. the wise mind wills only the good: is it then a servitude when the will acts in accordance with wisdom? and can one be less a slave than to act by one's own choice in accordance with the most perfect reason? aristotle used to say that that man is in a natural servitude (_natura servus_) who lacks guidance, who has need of being directed. slavery comes from without, it leads to that which offends, and especially to that which offends with reason: the force of others and our own passions enslave us. god is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he subject to inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him offence. it appears, therefore, that m. bayle gives odious names to the best things in the world, and turns our ideas upside-down, applying the term slavery to the state of the greatest and most perfect freedom. . he had also said not long before (ch. , p. ): 'if virtue, or any other good at all, had been as appropriate as vice for the creator's ends, vice would not have been given preference; it must therefore have been the only means that the creator could have used; it was therefore employed purely of necessity. as therefore he loves his glory, not with a freedom of indifference, but by necessity, he must by necessity love all the means without which he could not manifest his glory. now if vice, as vice, was the only means of attaining to this end, it will follow that god of necessity loves vice as vice, a thought which can only inspire us with horror; and he has revealed quite the contrary to us.' he observes at the same time that certain doctors among the supralapsarians (like rutherford, for example) denied that god wills sin as sin, whilst they admitted [ ] that he wills sin permissively in so far as it is punishable and pardonable. but he urges in objection, that an action is only punishable and pardonable in so far as it is vicious. . m. bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have just read, and draws from them false conclusions. it is not true that god loves his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led by necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures. for if that were so, he would acquire his glory always and everywhere. the decree to create is free: god is prompted to all good; the good, and even the best, inclines him to act; but it does not compel him, for his choice creates no impossibility in that which is distinct from the best; it causes no implication of contradiction in that which god refrains from doing. there is therefore in god a freedom that is exempt not only from constraint but also from necessity. i mean this in respect of metaphysical necessity; for it is a moral necessity that the wisest should be bound to choose the best. it is the same with the means which god chooses to attain his glory. and as for vice, it has been shown in preceding pages that it is not an object of god's decree as _means_, but as _conditio sine qua non_, and that for that reason alone it is permitted. one is even less justified in saying that vice is _the only means_; it would be at most one of the means, but one of the least among innumerable others. . 'another frightful consequence,' m. bayle goes on, 'the fatality of all things, ensues: god will not have been free to arrange events in a different way, since the means he chose to show forth his glory was the only means befitting his wisdom.' this so-called fatality or necessity is only moral, as i have just shown: it does not affect freedom; on the contrary, it assumes the best use thereof; it does not render impossible the objects set aside by god's choice. 'what, then, will become', he adds, 'of man's free will? will there not have been necessity and fatality for adam to sin? for if he had not sinned, he would have overthrown the sole plan that god had of necessity created.' that is again a misuse of terms. adam sinning freely was seen of god among the ideas of the possibles, and god decreed to admit him into existence as he saw him. this decree does not change the nature of the objects: it does not render necessary that which was contingent in itself, or impossible that which was possible. [ ] . m. bayle goes on (p. ): 'the subtle scotus asserts with much discernment that if god had no freedom of indifference no creature could have this kind of freedom.' i agree provided it is not meant as an indifference of equipoise, where there is no reason inclining more to one side than the other. m. bayle acknowledges (farther on in chapter , p. ) that what is termed indifference does not exclude prevenient inclinations and pleasures. it suffices therefore that there be no metaphysical necessity in the action which is termed free, that is to say, it suffices that a choice be made between several courses possible. . he goes on again in the said chapter , p. : 'if god is not determined to create the world by a free motion of his goodness, but by the interests of his glory, which he loves by necessity, and which is the only thing he loves, for it is not different from his substance; and if the love that he has for himself has compelled him to show forth his glory through the most fitting means, and if the fall of man was this same means, it is evident that this fall happened entirely by necessity and that the obedience of eve and adam to god's commands was impossible.' still the same error. the love that god bears to himself is essential to him, but the love for his glory, or the will to acquire his glory, is not so by any means: the love he has for himself did not impel him by necessity to actions without; they were free; and since there were possible plans whereby the first parents should not sin, their sin was therefore not necessary. finally, i say in effect what m. bayle acknowledges here, 'that god resolved to create the world by a free motion of his goodness'; and i add that this same motion prompted him to the best. . the same answer holds good against this statement of m. bayle's (ch. , p. ): 'the means most appropriate for attaining an end is of necessity one alone' (that is very well said, at least for the cases where god has chosen). 'therefore if god was prompted irresistibly to employ this means, he employed it by necessity.' (he was certainly prompted thereto, he was determined, or rather he determined himself thereto: but that which is certain is not always necessary, or altogether irresistible; the thing might have gone otherwise, but that did not happen, and with good reason. god chose between different courses all possible: thus, metaphysically speaking, he could have chosen or done what was not the best; but he could not morally speaking have done so. let us make use of a comparison [ ] from geometry. the best way from one point to another (leaving out of account obstacles and other considerations accidental to the medium) is one alone: it is that one which passes by the shortest line, which is the straight line. yet there are innumerable ways from one point to another. there is therefore no necessity which binds me to go by the straight line; but as soon as i choose the best, i am determined to go that way, although this is only a moral necessity in the wise. that is why the following conclusions fail.) 'therefore he could only do that which he did. therefore that which has not happened or will never happen is absolutely impossible.' (these conclusions fail, i say: for since there are many things which have never happened and never will happen, and which nevertheless are clearly conceivable, and imply no contradiction, how can one say they are altogether impossible? m. bayle has refuted that himself in a passage opposing the spinozists, which i have already quoted here, and he has frequently acknowledged that there is nothing impossible except that which implies contradiction: now he changes style and terminology.) 'therefore adam's perseverance in innocence was always impossible; therefore his fall was altogether inevitable, and even antecedently to god's decree, for it implied contradiction that god should be able to will a thing opposed to his wisdom: it is, after all, the same thing to say, that it is impossible for god, as to say, god could do it, if he so willed, but he cannot will it.' (it is misusing terms in a sense to say here: one can will, one will will; 'can' here concerns the actions that one does will. nevertheless it implies no contradiction that god should will--directly or permissively--a thing not implying contradiction, and in this sense it is permitted to say that god can will it.) . in a word, when one speaks of the _possibility_ of a thing it is not a question of the causes that can bring about or prevent its actual existence: otherwise one would change the nature of the terms, and render useless the distinction between the possible and the actual. this abelard did, and wyclif appears to have done after him, in consequence of which they fell needlessly into unsuitable and disagreeable expressions. that is why, when one asks if a thing is possible or necessary, and brings in the consideration of what god wills or chooses, one alters the issue. for god chooses among the possibles, and for that very reason he chooses [ ] freely, and is not compelled; there would be neither choice nor freedom if there were but one course possible. . one must also answer m. bayle's syllogisms, so as to neglect none of the objections of a man so gifted: they occur in chapter of his _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (vol. iii, pp. , ). first syllogism 'god can will nothing that is opposed to the necessary love which he has for his wisdom. 'now the salvation of all men is opposed to the necessary love which god has for his wisdom. 'therefore god cannot will the salvation of all men.' the major is self-evident, for one can do nothing whereof the opposite is necessary. but the minor cannot be accepted, for, albeit god loves his wisdom of necessity, the actions whereto his wisdom prompts him cannot but be free, and the objects whereto his wisdom does not prompt him do not cease to be possible. moreover, his wisdom has prompted him to will the salvation of all men, but not by a consequent and decretory will. yet this consequent will, being only a result of free antecedent acts of will, cannot fail to be free also. second syllogism 'the work most worthy of god's wisdom involves amongst other things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men. 'now god wills of necessity the work most worthy of his wisdom. 'he wills therefore of necessity the work that involves amongst other things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.' the major holds good, but the minor i deny. the decrees of god are always free, even though god be always prompted thereto by reasons which lie in the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom, to be bound by the consideration of good, is to be free; it is not compulsion in the metaphysical sense. and metaphysical necessity alone, as i have observed so many times, is opposed to freedom. . i shall not examine the syllogisms that m. bayle urges in objection in the following chapter (ch. ), against the system of the supralapsarians, and particularly against the oration made by theodore de bèze at the [ ] conference of montbéliard in the year . this conference also only served to increase the acrimony of the parties. 'god created the world to his glory: his glory is not known (according to bèze), if his mercy and his justice are not declared; for this cause simply by his grace he decreed for some men life eternal, and for others by a just judgement eternal damnation. mercy presupposes misery, justice presupposes guilt.' (he might have added that misery also supposes guilt.) 'nevertheless god being good, indeed goodness itself, he created man good and righteous, but unstable, and capable of sinning of his own free will. man did not fall at random or rashly, or through causes ordained by some other god, as the manichaeans hold, but by the providence of god; in such a way notwithstanding, that god was not involved in the fault, inasmuch as man was not constrained to sin.' . this system is not of the best conceived: it is not well fitted to show forth the wisdom, the goodness and the justice of god; and happily it is almost abandoned to-day. if there were not other more profound reasons capable of inducing god to permit guilt, the source of misery, there would be neither guilt nor misery in the world, for the reasons alleged here do not suffice. he would declare his mercy better in preventing misery, and he would declare his justice better in preventing guilt, in advancing virtue, in recompensing it. besides, one does not see how he who not only causes a man to be capable of falling, but who so disposes circumstances that they contribute towards causing his fall, is not culpable, if there are no other reasons compelling him thereto. but when one considers that god, altogether good and wise, must have produced all the virtue, goodness, happiness whereof the best plan of the universe is capable, and that often an evil in some parts may serve the greater good of the whole, one readily concludes that god may have given room for unhappiness, and even permitted guilt, as he has done, without deserving to be blamed. it is the only remedy that supplies what all systems lack, however they arrange the decrees. these thoughts have already been favoured by st. augustine, and one may say of eve what the poet said of the hand of mucius scaevola: _si non errasset, fecerat illa minus_. . i find that the famous english prelate who wrote an ingenious book on the origin of evil, some passages of which were disputed by m. bayle [ ] in the second volume of his _reply to the questions of a provincial_, while disagreeing with some of the opinions that i have upheld here and appearing to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if the will of god did not follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or evil, but decreed arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be considered good or evil; and as if even the will of the creature, in so far as it is free, did not choose because the object appears good to him, but by a purely arbitrary determination, independent of the representation of the object; this bishop, i say, in other passages nevertheless says things which seem more in favour of my doctrine than of what appears contrary thereto in his own. he says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better than what it has not chosen. is not that recognizing that goodness is the object and the reason of his choice? in this sense one will here aptly say: _sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas_. [ ] * * * * * essays on the justice of god and the freedom of man in the origin of evil * * * * * part three . now at last i have disposed of the cause of moral evil; _physical evil_, that is, sorrows, sufferings, miseries, will be less troublesome to explain, since these are results of moral evil. _poena est malum passionis, quod infligitur ob malum actionis_, according to grotius. one suffers because one has acted; one suffers evil because one does evil. _nostrorum causa malorum_ _nos sumus_. it is true that one often suffers through the evil actions of others; but when one has no part in the offence one must look upon it as a certainty that these sufferings prepare for us a greater happiness. the question of _physical evil_, that is, of the origin of sufferings, has difficulties in common with that of the origin of _metaphysical evil_, examples whereof are furnished by the monstrosities and other apparent irregularities of the universe. but one must believe that even sufferings and monstrosities are part of order; and it is well to bear in mind not only that it was better to admit these defects and these monstrosities than to violate general laws, as father malebranche sometimes argues, but also that these very monstrosities are in the rules, and are in conformity with general acts of will, though we be not capable of discerning this conformity. it is [ ] just as sometimes there are appearances of irregularity in mathematics which issue finally in a great order when one has finally got to the bottom of them: that is why i have already in this work observed that according to my principles all individual events, without exception, are consequences of general acts of will. . it should be no cause for astonishment that i endeavour to elucidate these things by comparisons taken from pure mathematics, where everything proceeds in order, and where it is possible to fathom them by a close contemplation which grants us an enjoyment, so to speak, of the vision of the ideas of god. one may propose a succession or series of numbers perfectly irregular to all appearance, where the numbers increase and diminish variably without the emergence of any order; and yet he who knows the key to the formula, and who understands the origin and the structure of this succession of numbers, will be able to give a rule which, being properly understood, will show that the series is perfectly regular, and that it even has excellent properties. one may make this still more evident in lines. a line may have twists and turns, ups and downs, points of reflexion and points of inflexion, interruptions and other variations, so that one sees neither rhyme nor reason therein, especially when taking into account only a portion of the line; and yet it may be that one can give its equation and construction, wherein a geometrician would find the reason and the fittingness of all these so-called irregularities. that is how we must look upon the irregularities constituted by monstrosities and other so-called defects in the universe. . in this sense one may apply that fine adage of st. bernard (ep. , ad eugen., iii): 'ordinatissimum est, minus interdum ordinate fieri aliquid.' it belongs to the great order that there should be some small disorder. one may even say that this small disorder is apparent only in the whole, and it is not even apparent when one considers the happiness of those who walk in the ways of order. . when i mention monstrosities i include numerous other apparent defects besides. we are acquainted with hardly anything but the surface of our globe; we scarce penetrate into its interior beyond a few hundred fathoms. that which we find in this crust of the globe appears to be the effect of some great upheavals. it seems that this globe was once on fire, and that the rocks forming the base of this crust of the earth are scoria remaining from a great fusion. in their entrails are found metal and mineral [ ] products, which closely resemble those emanating from our furnaces: and the entire sea may be a kind of _oleum per deliquium_, just as tartaric oil forms in a damp place. for when the earth's surface cooled after the great conflagration the moisture that the fire had driven into the air fell back upon the earth, washed its surface and dissolved and absorbed the solid salt that was left in the cinders, finally filling up this great cavity in the surface of our globe, to form the ocean filled with salt water. . but, after the fire, one must conclude that earth and water made ravages no less. it may be that the crust formed by the cooling, having below it great cavities, fell in, so that we live only on ruins, as among others thomas burnet, chaplain to the late king of great britain, aptly observed. sundry deluges and inundations have left deposits, whereof traces and remains are found which show that the sea was in places that to-day are most remote from it. but these upheavals ceased at last, and the globe assumed the shape that we see. moses hints at these changes in few words: the separation of light from darkness indicates the melting caused by the fire; and the separation of the moist from the dry marks the effects of inundations. but who does not see that these disorders have served to bring things to the point where they now are, that we owe to them our riches and our comforts, and that through their agency this globe became fit for cultivation by us. these disorders passed into order. the disorders, real or apparent, that we see from afar are sunspots and comets; but we do not know what uses they supply, nor the rules prevailing therein. time was when the planets were held to be wandering stars: now their motion is found to be regular. peradventure it is the same with the comets: posterity will know. . one does not include among the disorders inequality of conditions, and m. jacquelot is justified in asking those who would have everything equally perfect, why rocks are not crowned with leaves and flowers? why ants are not peacocks? and if there must needs be equality everywhere, the poor man would serve notice of appeal against the rich, the servant against the master. the pipes of an organ must not be of equal size. m. bayle will say that there is a difference between a privation of good and a disorder; between a disorder in inanimate things, which is purely metaphysical, and a disorder in rational creatures, which is composed of crime and [ ] sufferings. he is right in making a distinction between them, and i am right in combining them. god does not neglect inanimate things: they do not feel, but god feels for them. he does not neglect animals: they have not intelligence, but god has it for them. he would reproach himself for the slightest actual defect there were in the universe, even though it were perceived of none. . it seems m. bayle does not approve any comparison between the disorders which may exist in inanimate things and those which trouble the peace and happiness of rational creatures; nor would he agree to our justifying the permission of vice on the pretext of the care that must be taken to avoid disturbing the laws of motion. one might thence conclude, according to him (posthumous reply to m. jacquelot, p. ), 'that god created the world only to display his infinite skill in architecture and mechanics, whilst his property of goodness and love of virtue took no part in the construction of this great work. this god would pride himself only on skill; he would prefer to let the whole human kind perish rather than suffer some atoms to go faster or more slowly than general laws require.' m. bayle would not have made this antithesis if he had been informed on the system of general harmony which i assume, which states that the realm of efficient causes and that of final causes are parallel to each other; that god has no less the quality of the best monarch than that of the greatest architect; that matter is so disposed that the laws of motion serve as the best guidance for spirits; and that consequently it will prove that he has attained the utmost good possible, provided one reckon the metaphysical, physical and moral goods together. . but (m. bayle will say) god having power to avert innumerable evils by one small miracle, why did he not employ it? he gives so much extraordinary help to fallen men; but slight help of such a kind given to eve would have prevented her fall and rendered the temptation of the serpent ineffective. i have sufficiently met objections of this sort with this general answer, that god ought not to make choice of another universe since he has chosen the best, and has only made use of the miracles necessary thereto. i had answered m. bayle that miracles change the natural order of the universe. he replies, that that is an illusion, and that the miracle of the wedding at cana (for instance) made no change in the air of the room, except that instead of receiving into its pores some corpuscles of water, it [ ] received corpuscles of wine. but one must bear in mind that once the best plan of things has been chosen nothing can be changed therein. . as for miracles (concerning which i have already said something in this work), they are perhaps not all of one and the same kind: there are many, to all appearances, which god brings about through the ministry of invisible substances, such as the angels, as father malebranche also believes. these angels or these substances act according to the ordinary laws of their nature, being combined with bodies more rarefied and more vigorous than those we have at our command. and such miracles are only so by comparison, and in relation to us; just as our works would be considered miraculous amongst animals if they were capable of remarking upon them. the changing of water into wine might be a miracle of this kind. but the creation, the incarnation and some other actions of god exceed all the power of creatures and are truly miracles, or indeed mysteries. if, nevertheless, the changing of water into wine at cana was a miracle of the highest kind, god would have thereby changed the whole course of the universe, because of the connexion of bodies; or else he would have been bound to prevent this connexion miraculously also, and cause the bodies not concerned in the miracle to act as if no miracle had happened. after the miracle was over, it would have been necessary to restore all things in those very bodies concerned to the state they would have reached without the miracle: whereafter all would have returned to its original course. thus this miracle demanded more than at first appears. . as for physical evil in creatures, to wit their sufferings, m. bayle contends vigorously against those who endeavour to justify by means of particular reasons the course of action pursued by god in regard to this. here i set aside the sufferings of animals, and i see that m. bayle insists chiefly on those of men, perhaps because he thinks that brute beasts have no feeling. it is on account of the injustice there would be in the sufferings of beasts that divers cartesians wished to prove that they are only machines, _quoniam sub deo justo nemo innocens miser est_: it is impossible that an innocent creature should be unhappy under such a master as god. the principle is good, but i do not think it warrants the inference that beasts have no feeling, because i think that, properly speaking, perception is not sufficient to cause misery if it is not accompanied [ ] by reflexion. it is the same with happiness: without reflexion there is none. _o fortunatos nimium, sua qui bona norint!_ one cannot reasonably doubt the existence of pain among animals; but it seems as if their pleasures and their pains are not so keen as they are in man: for animals, since they do not reflect, are susceptible neither to the grief that accompanies pain, nor to the joy that accompanies pleasure. men are sometimes in a state approaching that of the beasts, when they act almost on instinct alone and simply on the impressions made by the experience of the senses: and, in this state, their pleasures and their pains are very slight. . but let us pass from the beasts and return to rational creatures. it is with regard to them that m. bayle discusses this question: whether there is more physical evil than physical good in the world? (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. ii, ch. .) to settle it aright, one must explain wherein these goods and evils lie. we are agreed that physical evil is simply displeasure and under that heading i include pain, grief, and every other kind of discomfort. but does physical good lie solely in pleasure? m. bayle appears to be of this opinion; but i consider that it lies also in a middle state, such as that of health. one is well enough when one has no ill; it is a degree of wisdom to have no folly: _sapientia prima est,_ _stultitia caruisse_. in the same way one is worthy of praise when one cannot with justice be blamed: _si non culpabor, sat mihi laudis erit_. that being the case, all the sensations not unpleasing to us, all the exercises of our powers that do not incommode us, and whose prevention would incommode us, are physical goods, even when they cause us no pleasure; for privation of them is a physical evil. besides we only perceive the good of health, and other like goods, when we are deprived of them. on those terms i would dare to maintain that even in this life goods exceed evils, that our comforts exceed our discomforts, and that m. descartes was justified in writing (vol. i, letter ) 'that natural reason teaches us that we have more goods than evils in this life'. [ ] . it must be added that pleasures enjoyed too often and to excess would be a very great evil. there are some which hippocrates compared to the falling sickness, and scioppius doubtless only made pretence of envying the sparrows in order to be agreeably playful in a learned and far from playful work. highly seasoned foods are injurious to health and impair the niceness of a delicate sense; and in general bodily pleasures are a kind of expenditure of the spirit, though they be made good in some better than in others. . as proof, however, that the evil exceeds the good is quoted the instance of m. de la motte le vayer (letter ), who would not have been willing to return to the world, supposing he had had to play the same part as providence had already assigned to him. but i have already said that i think one would accept the proposal of him who could re-knot the thread of fate if a new part were promised to us, even though it should not be better than the first. thus from m. de la motte le vayer's saying it does not follow that he would not have wished for the part he had already played, provided it had been new, as m. bayle seems to take it. . the pleasures of the mind are the purest, and of greatest service in making joy endure. cardan, when already an old man, was so content with his state that he protested solemnly that he would not exchange it for the state of the richest of young men who at the same time was ignorant. m. de la motte le vayer quotes the saying himself without criticizing it. knowledge has doubtless charms which cannot be conceived by those who have not tasted them. i do not mean a mere knowledge of facts without that of reasons, but knowledge like that of cardan, who with all his faults was a great man, and would have been incomparable without those faults. _felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!_ _ille metus omnes et inexorabile fatum_ _subjecit pedibus._ it is no small thing to be content with god and with the universe, not to fear what destiny has in store for us, nor to complain of what befalls us. acquaintance with true principles gives us this advantage, quite other than that the stoics and the epicureans derived from their philosophy. there is as much difference between true morality and theirs as there is [ ] between joy and patience: for their tranquillity was founded only on necessity, while ours must rest upon the perfection and beauty of things, upon our own happiness. . what, then, shall we say of bodily sufferings? may they not be sufficiently acute to disturb the sage's tranquillity? aristotle assents; the stoics were of a different opinion, and even the epicureans likewise. m. descartes revived the doctrine of these philosophers; he says in the letter just quoted: 'that even amid the worst misfortunes and the most overwhelming sufferings one may always be content, if only one knows how to exercise reason'. m. bayle says concerning this (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ) 'that it is saying nothing, that it is prescribing for us a remedy whose preparation hardly anyone understands'. i hold that the thing is not impossible, and that men could attain it by dint of meditation and practice. for apart from the true martyrs and those who have been aided in wonderful wise from on high, there have been counterfeits who imitated them. that spanish slave who killed the carthaginian governor in order to avenge his master and who evinced great joy in his deed, even in the greatest tortures, may shame the philosophers. why should not one go as far as he? one may say of an advantage, as of a disadvantage: _cuivis potest accidere, quod cuiquam potest_. . but even to-day entire tribes, such as the hurons, the iroquois, the galibis and other peoples of america teach us a great lesson on this matter: one cannot read without astonishment of the intrepidity and well-nigh insensibility wherewith they brave their enemies, who roast them over a slow fire and eat them by slices. if such people could retain their physical superiority and their courage, and combine them with our acquirements, they would surpass us in every way, _extat ut in mediis turris aprica casis_. they would be, in comparison with us, as a giant to a dwarf, a mountain to a hill: _quantus eryx, et quantus athos, gaudetque nivali_ _vertice se attollens pater apenninus ad auras._ [ ] . all that which is effected by a wonderful vigour of body and mind in these savages, who persist obstinately in the strangest point of honour, might be acquired in our case by training, by well-seasoned mortifications, by an overmastering joy founded on reason, by great practice in preserving a certain presence of mind in the midst of the distractions and impressions most liable to disturb it. something of this kind is related of the ancient assassins, subjects and pupils of the old man or rather the seigneur (_senior_) of the mountain. such a school (for a better purpose) would be good for missionaries who would wish to return to japan. the gymnosophists of the ancient indians had perhaps something resembling this, and that calanus, who provided for alexander the great the spectacle of his burning alive, had doubtless been encouraged by the great examples of his masters and trained by great sufferings not to fear pain. the wives of these same indians, who even to-day ask to be burned with the bodies of their husbands, seem still to keep something of the courage of those ancient philosophers of their country. i do not expect that there should straightway be founded a religious order whose purpose would be to exalt man to that high pitch of perfection: such people would be too much above the rest, and too formidable for the authorities. as it rarely happens that people are exposed to extremes where such great strength of mind would be needed, one will scarce think of providing for it at the expense of our usual comforts, albeit incomparably more would be gained than lost thereby. . nevertheless the very fact that one has no need of that great remedy is a proof that the good already exceeds the evil. euripides also said: [greek: pleiô ta chrêsta tôn kakôn einai brotois]. _mala nostra longe judico vinci a bonis._ homer and divers other poets were of another mind, and men in general agree with them. the reason for this is that the evil arouses our attention rather than the good: but this same reason proves that the evil is more rare. one must therefore not credit the petulant expressions of pliny, who would have it that nature is a stepmother, and who maintains that man is the most unhappy and most vain of all creatures. these two epithets do not agree: one is not so very unhappy, when one is full of oneself. it is [ ] true that men hold human nature only too much in contempt, apparently because they see no other creatures capable of arousing their emulation; but they have all too much self-esteem, and individually are but too easily satisfied. i therefore agree with meric casaubon, who in his notes on the xenophanes of diogenes laertius praises exceedingly the admirable sentiments of euripides, going so far as to credit him with having said things _quae spirant_ [greek: theopneuston] _pectus_. seneca (lib. , c. , _de benefic._) speaks eloquently of the blessings nature has heaped upon us. m. bayle in his _dictionary_, article 'xenophanes', brings up sundry authorities against this, and among others that of the poet diphilus in the collections of stobaeus, whose greek might be thus expressed in latin: _fortuna cyathis bibere nos datis jubens,_ _infundit uno terna pro bono mala._ . m. bayle believes that if it were a question only of the evil of guilt, or of moral evil among men, the case would soon be terminated to the advantage of pliny, and euripides would lose his action. to that i am not opposed; our vices doubtless exceed our virtues, and this is the effect of original sin. it is nevertheless true that also on that point men in general exaggerate things, and that even some theologians disparage man so much that they wrong the providence of the author of mankind. that is why i am not in favour of those who thought to do great honour to our religion by saying that the virtues of the pagans were only _splendida peccata_, splendid vices. it is a sally of st. augustine's which has no foundation in holy scripture, and which offends reason. but here we are only discussing a physical good and evil, and one must compare in detail the prosperities and the adversities of this life. m. bayle would wish almost to set aside the consideration of health; he likens it to the rarefied bodies, which are scarcely felt, like air, for example; but he likens pain to the bodies that have much density and much weight in slight volume. but pain itself makes us aware of the importance of health when we are bereft of it. i have already observed that excess of physical pleasures would be a real evil, and the matter ought not to be otherwise; it is too important for the spirit to be free. lactantius (_divin. instit._, lib. , cap. ) had said that men are so squeamish that they complain of the slightest ill, as if it swallowed up all the goods they have enjoyed. m. bayle says, concerning this, that the very fact that men have this feeling warrants the [ ] judgement that they are in evil case, since it is feeling which measures the extent of good or evil. but i answer that present feeling is anything rather than the true measure of good and evil past and future. i grant that one is in evil case while one makes these peevish reflexions; but that does not exclude a previous state of well-being, nor imply that, everything reckoned in and all allowance made, the good does not exceed the evil. . i do not wonder that the pagans, dissatisfied with their gods, made complaints against prometheus and epimetheus for having forged so weak an animal as man. nor do i wonder that they acclaimed the fable of old silenus, foster-father of bacchus, who was seized by king midas, and as the price of his deliverance taught him that ostensibly fine maxim that the first and the greatest of goods was not to be born, and the second, to depart from this life with dispatch (cic., _tuscul._, lib. ). plato believed that souls had been in a happier state, and many of the ancients, amongst others cicero in his consolation (according to the account of lactantius), believed that for their sins they were confined in bodies as in a prison. they rendered thus a reason for our ills, and asserted their prejudices against human life: for there is no such thing as a beautiful prison. but quite apart from the consideration that, even according to these same pagans, the evils of this life would be counterbalanced and exceeded by the goods of past and future lives, i make bold to say that we shall find, upon unbiassed scrutiny of the facts, that taking all in all human life is in general tolerable. and adding thereto the motives of religion, we shall be content with the order god has set therein. moreover, for a better judgement of our goods and our evils, it will be well to read cardan, _de utilitate ex adversis capienda_, and novarini, _de occultis dei beneficiis_. . m. bayle dilates upon the misfortunes of the great, who are thought to be the most fortunate: the constant experience of the fair aspect of their condition renders them unaware of good, but greatly aware of evil. someone will say: so much the worse for them; if they know not how to enjoy the advantages of nature and fortune, is that the fault of either? there are nevertheless great men possessed of more wisdom, who know how to profit by the favours god has shown them, who are easily consoled for their misfortunes, and who even turn their own faults to account. m. bayle [ ] pays no heed to that: he prefers to listen to pliny, who thinks that augustus, one of the princes most favoured by fortune, experienced at least as much evil as good. i admit that he found great causes of trouble in his family and that remorse for having crushed the republic may have tormented him; but i think that he was too wise to grieve over the former, and that maecenas apparently made him understand that rome had need of a master. had not augustus been converted on this point, vergil would never have said of a lost soul: _vendidit hic auro patriam dominumque potentem_ _imposuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit._ augustus would have thought that he and caesar were alluded to in these lines, which speak of a master given to a free state. but there is every indication that he applied it just as little to his dominion, which he regarded as compatible with liberty and as a necessary remedy for public evils, as the princes of to-day apply to themselves the words used of the kings censured in m. de cambray's _telemachus_. each one considers himself within his rights. tacitus, an unbiassed writer, justifies augustus in two words, at the beginning of his _annals_. but augustus was better able than anyone to judge of his good fortune. he appears to have died content, as may be inferred from a proof he gave of contentedness with his life: for in dying he repeated to his friends a line in greek, which has the signification of that _plaudite_ that was wont to be spoken at the conclusion of a well-acted play. suetonius quotes it: [greek: dote kroton kai pantes hymeis meta charas ktypêsate.] . but even though there should have fallen to the lot of the human kind more evil than good, it is enough where god is concerned that there is incomparably more good than evil in the universe. rabbi maimonides (whose merit is not sufficiently recognized in the statement that he is the first of the rabbis to have ceased talking nonsense) also gave wise judgement on this question of the predominance of good over evil in the world. here is what he says in his _doctor perplexorum_ (cap. , p. ): 'there arise often in the hearts of ill-instructed persons thoughts which persuade them there is more evil than good in the world: and one often finds in the poems and songs of the pagans that it is as it were a miracle when something good comes to pass, whereas evils are usual and constant. this error has [ ] taken hold not of the common herd only, those very persons who wish to be considered wise have been beguiled thereby. a celebrated writer named alrasi, in his _sepher elohuth_, or theosophy, amongst other absurdities has stated that there are more evils than goods, and that upon comparison of the recreations and the pleasures man enjoys in times of tranquillity with the pains, the torments, the troubles, faults, cares, griefs and afflictions whereby he is overwhelmed our life would prove to be a great evil, and an actual penalty inflicted upon us to punish us.' maimonides adds that the cause of their extravagant error is their supposition that nature was made for them only, and that they hold of no account what is separate from their person; whence they infer that when something unpleasing to them occurs all goes ill in the universe. . m. bayle says that this observation of maimonides is not to the point, because the question is whether among men evil exceeds good. but, upon consideration of the rabbi's words, i find that the question he formulates is general, and that he wished to refute those who decide it on one particular motive derived from the evils of the human race, as if all had been made for man; and it seems as though the author whom he refutes spoke also of good and evil in general. maimonides is right in saying that if one took into account the littleness of man in relation to the universe one would comprehend clearly that the predominance of evil, even though it prevailed among men, need not on that account occur among the angels, nor among the heavenly bodies, nor among the elements and inanimate compounds, nor among many kinds of animals. i have shown elsewhere that in supposing that the number of the damned exceeds that of the saved (a supposition which is nevertheless not altogether certain) one might admit that there is more evil than good in respect of the human kind known to us. but i pointed out that that neither precludes the existence of incomparably more good than evil, both moral and physical, in rational creatures in general, nor prevents the city of god, which contains all creatures, from being the most perfect state. so also on consideration of the metaphysical good and evil which is in all substances, whether endowed with or devoid of intelligence, and which taken in such scope would include physical good and moral good, one must say that the universe, such as it actually is, must be the best of all systems. [ ] . moreover, m. bayle will not have it that our transgression should have anything to do with the consideration of our sufferings. he is right when it is simply a matter of appraising these sufferings; but the case is not the same when one asks whether they should be ascribed to god, this indeed being the principal cause of m. bayle's difficulties when he places reason or experience in opposition to religion. i know that he is wont to say that it is of no avail to resort to our free will, since his objections tend also to prove that the misuse of free will must no less be laid to the account of god, who has permitted it and who has co-operated therein. he states it as a maxim that for one difficulty more or less one must not abandon a system. this he advances especially in favour of the methods of the strict and the dogma of the supralapsarians. for he supposes that one can subscribe to their opinion, although he leaves all the difficulties in their entirety, because the other systems, albeit they put an end to some of the difficulties, cannot meet them all. i hold that the true system i have expounded satisfies all. nevertheless, even were that not so, i confess that i cannot relish this maxim of m. bayle's, and i should prefer a system which would remove a great portion of the difficulties, to one which would meet none of them. and the consideration of the wickedness of men, which brings upon them well-nigh all their misfortunes, shows at least that they have no right to complain. no justice need trouble itself over the origin of a scoundrel's wickedness when it is only a question of punishing him: it is quite another matter when it is a question of prevention. one knows well that disposition, upbringing, conversation, and often chance itself, have much share in that origin: is the man any the less deserving of punishment? . i confess that there still remains another difficulty. if god is not bound to account to the wicked for their wickedness, it seems as if he owes to himself, and to those who honour him and love him, justification for his course of action with regard to the permission of vice and crime. but god has already given that satisfaction, as far as it is needed here on earth: by granting us the light of reason he has bestowed upon us the means whereby we may meet all difficulties. i hope that i have made it plain in this discourse, and have elucidated the matter in the preceding portion of these essays, almost as far as it can be done through general arguments. thereafter, the permission of sin being justified, the other evils [ ] that are a consequence thereof present no further difficulty. thus also i am justified in restricting myself here to the evil of guilt to account for the evil of punishment, as holy scripture does, and likewise well-nigh all the fathers of the church and the preachers. and, to the end that none may say that is only good _per la predica_, it is enough to consider that, after the solutions i have given, nothing must seem more right or more exact than this method. for god, having found already among things possible, before his actual decrees, man misusing his freedom and bringing upon himself his misfortune, yet could not avoid admitting him into existence, because the general plan required this. wherefore it will no longer be necessary to say with m. jurieu that one must dogmatize like st. augustine and preach like pelagius. . this method, deriving the evil of punishment from the evil of guilt, cannot be open to censure, and serves especially to account for the greatest physical evil, which is damnation. ernst sonner, sometime professor of philosophy at altorf (a university established in the territory of the free city of nuremberg), who was considered an excellent aristotelian, but was finally recognized as being secretly a socinian, had composed a little discourse entitled: _demonstration against the eternity of punishment_. it was founded on this somewhat trite principle, that there is no proportion between an infinite punishment and a finite guilt. it was conveyed to me, printed (so it seemed) in holland; and i replied that there was one thing to be considered which had escaped the late herr sonner: namely that it was enough to say that the duration of the guilt caused the duration of the penalty. since the damned remained wicked they could not be withdrawn from their misery; and thus one need not, in order to justify the continuation of their sufferings, assume that sin has become of infinite weight through the infinite nature of the object offended, who is god. this thesis i had not explored enough to pass judgement thereon. i know that the general opinion of the schoolmen, according to the master of the sentences, is that in the other life there is neither merit nor demerit; but i do not think that, taken literally, it can pass for an article of faith. herr fecht, a famous theologian at rostock, well refuted that in his book on _the state of the damned_. it is quite wrong, he says (§ ); god cannot change his nature; justice is essential to him; death has closed the door of grace, but not that of justice. [ ] . i have observed that sundry able theologians have accounted for the duration of the pains of the damned as i have just done. johann gerhard, a famous theologian of the augsburg confession (in _locis theol._, loco de inferno, § ), brings forward amongst other arguments that the damned have still an evil will and lack the grace that could render it good. zacharias ursinus, a theologian of heidelberg, who follows calvin, having formulated this question (in his treatise _de fide_) why sin merits an eternal punishment, advances first the common reason, that the person offended is infinite, and then also this second reason, _quod non cessante peccato non potest cessare poena_. and the jesuit father drexler says in his book entitled _nicetas, or incontinence overcome_ (book , ch. , § ): 'nec mirum damnatos semper torqueri, continue blasphemant, et sic quasi semper peccant, semper ergo plectuntur.' he declares and approves the same reason in his work on _eternity_ (book , ch. ) saying: 'sunt qui dicant, nec displicet responsum: scelerati in locis infernis semper peccant, ideo semper puniuntur.' and he indicates thereby that this opinion is very common among learned men in the roman church. he alleges, it is true, another more subtle reason, derived from pope gregory the great (lib. , dial. c. ), that the damned are punished eternally because god foresaw by a kind of _mediate knowledge_ that they would always have sinned if they had always lived upon earth. but it is a hypothesis very much open to question. herr fecht quotes also various eminent protestant theologians for herr gerhard's opinion, although he mentions also some who think differently. . m. bayle himself in various places has supplied me with passages from two able theologians of his party, which have some reference to these statements of mine. m. jurieu in his book on the _unity of the church_, in opposition to that written by m. nicole on the same subject, gives the opinion (p. ) 'that reason tells us that a creature which cannot cease to be criminal can also not cease to be miserable'. m. jacquelot in his book on _the conformity of faith with reason_ (p. ) is of opinion 'that the damned must remain eternally deprived of the glory of the blessed, and that this deprivation might well be the origin and the cause of all their pains, through the reflexions these unhappy creatures make upon their crimes which have deprived them of an eternal bliss. one knows what burning regrets, what pain envy causes to those who see themselves deprived of a good, of a notable honour which had been offered to them, and which [ ] they rejected, especially when they see others invested with it.' this position is a little different from that of m. jurieu, but both agree in this sentiment, that the damned are themselves the cause of the continuation of their torments. m. le clerc's origenist does not entirely differ from this opinion when he says in the _select library_ (vol. , p. ): 'god, who foresaw that man would fall, does not condemn him on that account, but only because, although he has the power to recover himself, he yet does not do so, that is, he freely retains his evil ways to the end of his life.' if he carries this reasoning on beyond this life, he will ascribe the continuation of the pains of the wicked to the continuation of their guilt. . m. bayle says (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. ) 'that this dogma of the origenist is heretical, in that it teaches that damnation is not founded simply on sin, but on voluntary impenitence': but is not this voluntary impenitence a continuation of sin? i would not simply say, however, that it is because man, having the power to recover himself, does not; and would wish to add that it is because man does not take advantage of the succour of grace to aid him to recover himself. but after this life, though one assume that the succour ceases, there is always in the man who sins, even when he is damned, a freedom which renders him culpable, and a power, albeit remote, of recovering himself, even though it should never pass into action. and there is no reason why one may not say that this degree of freedom, exempt from necessity, but not exempt from certainty, remains in the damned as well as in the blessed. moreover, the damned have no need of a succour that is needed in this life, for they know only too well what one must believe here. . the illustrious prelate of the anglican church who published recently a book on the origin of evil, concerning which m. bayle made some observations in the second volume of his _reply_, speaks with much subtlety about the pains of the damned. this prelate's opinion is presented (according to the author of the _nouvelles de la république des lettres_, june ) as if he made 'of the damned just so many madmen who will feel their miseries acutely, but who will nevertheless congratulate themselves on their own behaviour, and who will rather choose to be, and to be that which they are, than not to be at all. they will love their state, unhappy as it will be, even as angry people, lovers, the ambitious, the [ ] envious take pleasure in the very things that only augment their misery. furthermore the ungodly will have so accustomed their mind to wrong judgements that they will henceforth never make any other kind, and will perpetually pass from one error into another. they will not be able to refrain from desiring perpetually things whose enjoyment will be denied them, and, being deprived of which, they will fall into inconceivable despair, while experience can never make them wiser for the future. for by their own fault they will have altogether corrupted their understanding, and will have rendered it incapable of passing a sound judgement on any matter.' . the ancients already imagined that the devil dwells remote from god voluntarily, in the midst of his torments, and that he is unwilling to redeem himself by an act of submission. they invented a tale that an anchorite in a vision received a promise from god that he would receive into grace the prince of the bad angels if he would acknowledge his fault; but that the devil rebuffed this mediator in a strange manner. at the least, the theologians usually agree that the devils and the damned hate god and blaspheme him; and such a state cannot but be followed by continuation of misery. concerning that, one may read the learned treatise of herr fecht on the _state of the damned_. . there were times when the belief was held that it was not impossible for a lost soul to be delivered. the story told of pope gregory the great is well known, how by his prayers he had withdrawn from hell the soul of the emperor trajan, whose goodness was so renowned that to new emperors the wish was offered that they should surpass augustus in good fortune and trajan in goodness. it was this that won for the latter the pity of the holy father. god acceded to his prayers (it is said), but he forbade him to make the like prayers in future. according to this fable, the prayers of st. gregory had the force of the remedies of aesculapius, who recalled hippolytus from hades; and, if he had continued to make such prayers, god would have waxed wroth, like jupiter in vergil: _at pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris_ _mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,_ _ipse repertorem medicinae talis et artis_ _fulmine phoebigenam stygias detrusit ad undas._ [ ] godescalc, a monk of the ninth century, who set at variance the theologians of his day, and even those of our day, maintained that the reprobate should pray god to render their pains more bearable; but one is never justified in believing oneself reprobate so long as one is alive. the passage in the mass for the dead is more reasonable: it asks for the abatement of the torments of the damned, and, according to the hypothesis that i have just stated, one must wish for them _meliorem mentem_. origen having applied the passage from psalm lxxvii, verse : god will not forget to be gracious, neither will he shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure, st. augustine replies _(enchirid._, c. ) that it is possible that the pains of the damned last eternally, and that they may nevertheless be mitigated. if the text implied that, the abatement would, as regards its duration, go on to infinity; and yet that abatement would, as regards its extent, have a _non plus ultra_. even so there are asymptote figures in geometry where an infinite length makes only a finite progress in breadth. if the parable of the wicked rich man represented the state of a definitely lost soul, the hypothesis which makes these souls so mad and so wicked would be groundless. but the charity towards his brothers attributed to him in the parable does not seem to be consistent with that degree of wickedness which is ascribed to the damned. st. gregory the great (ix _mor._, ) thinks that the rich man was afraid lest their damnation should increase his: but it seems as though this fear is not sufficiently consistent with the disposition of a perfectly wicked will. bonaventura, on the master of the sentences, says that the wicked rich man would have desired to see everyone damned; but since that was not to be, he desired the salvation of his brothers rather than that of the rest. this reply is by no means sound. on the contrary, the mission of lazarus that he desired would have served to save many people; and he who takes so much pleasure in the damnation of others that he desires it for everyone will perhaps desire that damnation for some more than others; but, generally speaking, he will have no inclination to gain salvation for anyone. however that may be, one must admit that all this detail is problematical, god having revealed to us all that is needed to put us in fear of the greatest of misfortunes, and not what is needed for our understanding thereof. . now since it is henceforth permitted to have recourse to the misuse of free will, and to evil will, in order to account for other evils, [ ] since the divine permission of this misuse is plainly enough justified, the ordinary system of the theologians meets with justification at the same time. now we can seek with confidence _the origin of evil in the freedom of creatures_. the first wickedness is well known to us, it is that of the devil and his angels: the devil sinneth from the beginning, and for this purpose the son of god was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil ( john iii. ). the devil is the father of wickedness, he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth (john viii. ). and therefore god spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgement ( pet. ii. ). and the angels which kept not their own habitation, he hath reserved in _eternal_ (that is to say everlasting) chains under darkness unto the judgement of the great day (jude i. ). whence it is easy to observe that one of these two letters must have been seen by the author of the other. . it seems as if the author of the apocalypse wished to throw light upon what the other canonical writers had left obscure: he gives us an account of a battle that took place in heaven. michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels. 'but they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and satan, which deceiveth the whole world: and he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him' (rev. xii. , , ). for although this account is placed after the flight of the woman into the wilderness, and it may have been intended to indicate thereby some revulsion favourable to the church, it appears as though the author's design was to show simultaneously the old fall of the first enemy and a new fall of a new enemy. . lying or wickedness springs from the devil's own nature, [greek: ek tôn idiôn] from his will, because it was written in the book of the eternal verities, which contains the things possible before any decree of god, that this creature would freely turn toward evil if it were created. it is the same with eve and adam; they sinned freely, albeit the devil tempted them. god gives the wicked over to a reprobate mind (rom. i. ), abandoning them to themselves and denying them a grace which he owes them not, and indeed ought to deny to them. . it is said in the scriptures that god hardeneth (exod. iv. and[ ] vii. ; isa. lxiii. ); that god sendeth a lying spirit ( kings xxii. ); strong delusion that they should believe a lie ( thess. ii. ); that he deceived the prophet (ezek. xiv. ); that he commanded shimei to curse ( sam xvi. ); that the children of eli hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the lord would slay them ( sam. ii. ); that the lord took away job's substance, even although that was done through the malice of brigands (job i. ); that he raised up pharaoh, to show his power in him (exod. ix. ; rom. ix. ) that he is like a potter who maketh a vessel unto dishonour (rom. ix. ); that he hideth the truth from the wise and prudent (matt. xi. ); that he speaketh in parables unto them that are without, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they might be converted, and their sins might be forgiven them (mark iv. ; luke viii. ); that jesus was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of god (acts ii. ); that pontius pilate and herod with the gentiles and the people of israel did that which the hand and the counsel of god had determined before to be done (acts iv. , ); that it was of the lord to harden the hearts of the enemy, that they should come against israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour (joshua xi. ); that the lord mingled a perverse spirit in the midst of egypt, and caused it to err in all its works, like a drunken man (isa. xix. ); that rehoboam hearkened not unto the word of the people, for the cause was from the lord ( kings xii. ); that he turned the hearts of the egyptians to hate his people (ps. cv. ). but all these and other like expressions suggest only that the things god has done are used as occasion for ignorance, error, malice and evil deeds, and contribute thereto, god indeed foreseeing this, and intending to use it for his ends, since superior reasons of perfect wisdom have determined him to permit these evils, and even to co-operate therein. 'sed non sineret bonus fieri male, nisi omnipotens etiam de malo posset facere bene', in st. augustine's words. but this has been expounded more fully in the preceding part. . god made man in his image (gen. i. ); he made him upright (eccles. vii. ). but also he made him free. man has behaved badly, he has fallen; but there remains still a certain freedom after the fall. moses said as from god: 'i call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that i have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore [ ] choose life' (deut. xxx. ). 'thus saith the lord: behold, i set before you the way of life, and the way of death' (jer. xxi. ). he has left man in the power of his counsel, giving him his ordinances and his commandments. 'if thou wilt, thou shalt keep the commandments' (or they shall keep thee). 'he hath set before thee fire and water, to stretch forth thine hand to whichever thou wilt' (sirach xv. , , ). fallen and unregenerate man is under the domination of sin and of satan, because it pleases him so to be; he is a voluntary slave through his evil lust. thus it is that free will and will in bondage are one and the same thing. . 'let no man say, i am tempted of god'; 'but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed' (jas. i. , ). and satan contributes thereto. he 'blindeth the minds of them which believe not' ( cor. iv. ). but man is delivered up to the devil by his covetous desire: the pleasure he finds in evil is the bait that hooks him. plato has said so already, and cicero repeats it: 'plato voluptatem dicebat escam malorum.' grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as st. augustine observed. all _pleasure_ is a feeling of some perfection; one _loves_ an object in proportion as one feels its perfections; nothing surpasses the divine perfections. whence it follows that charity and love of god give the greatest pleasure that can be conceived, in that proportion in which one is penetrated by these feelings, which are not common among men, busied and taken up as men are with the objects that are concerned with their passions. . now as our corruption is not altogether invincible and as we do not necessarily sin even when we are under the bondage of sin, it must likewise be said that we are not aided invincibly; and, however efficacious divine grace may be, there is justification for saying that one can resist it. but when it indeed proves victorious, it is certain and infallible beforehand that one will yield to its allurements, whether it have its strength of itself or whether it find a way to triumph through the congruity of circumstances. thus one must always distinguish between the infallible and the necessary. . the system of those who call themselves disciples of st. augustine is not far removed from this, provided one exclude certain obnoxious things, whether in the expressions or in the dogmas themselves. in the _expressions_ i find that it is principally the use of terms like [ ] 'necessary' or 'contingent', 'possible' or 'impossible', which sometimes gives a handle and causes much ado. that is why, as herr löscher the younger aptly observed in a learned dissertation on the _paroxysms of the absolute decree_, luther desired, in his book _on the will in bondage_, to find a word more fitting for that which he wished to express than the word necessity. speaking generally, it appears more reasonable and more fitting to say that obedience to god's precepts is always _possible_, even for the unregenerate; that the grace of god is always _resistible_, even in those most holy, and that _freedom_ is exempt not only from _constraint_ but also from _necessity_, although it be never without infallible _certainty_ or without inclining _determination_. . nevertheless there is on the other hand a sense wherein it would be permitted to say, in certain conjunctures, that the _power_ to do good is often lacking, even in the just; that sins are often _necessary_, even in the regenerate; that it is _impossible_ sometimes for one not to sin; that grace is _irresistible_; that freedom is not exempt from _necessity_. but these expressions are less exact and less pleasing in the circumstances that prevail about us to-day. they are also in general more open to misuse; and moreover they savour somewhat of the speech of the people, where terms are employed with great latitude. there are, however, circumstances which render them acceptable and even serviceable. it is the case that sacred and orthodox writers, and even the holy scriptures, have made use of expressions on both sides, and no real contradiction has arisen, any more than between st. paul and st. james, or any error on either side that might be attributable to the ambiguity of the terms. one is so well accustomed to these various ways of speaking that often one is put to it to say precisely which sense is the more ordinary and the more natural, and even that more intended by the author (_quis sensus magis naturalis, obvius, intentus_). for the same writer has different aims in different passages, and the same ways of speaking are more or less accepted or acceptable before or after the decision of some great man or of some authority that one respects and follows. as a result of this one may well authorize or ban, as opportunity arises and at certain times, certain expressions; but it makes no difference to the sense, or to the content of faith, if sufficient explanations of the terms are not added. . it is therefore only necessary to understand fully some distinctions, such as that i have very often urged between the necessary and the [ ] certain, and between metaphysical necessity and moral necessity. it is the same with possibility and impossibility, since the event whose opposite is possible is contingent, even as that whose opposite is impossible is necessary. a distinction is rightly drawn also between a proximate potency and a remote potency; and, according to these different senses, one says now that a thing may be and now that it may not be. it may be said in a certain sense that it is necessary that the blessed should not sin; that the devils and the damned should sin; that god himself should choose the best; that man should follow the course which after all attracts him most. but this necessity is not opposed to contingency; it is not of the kind called logical, geometrical or metaphysical, whose opposite implies contradiction. m. nicole has made use somewhere of a comparison which is not amiss. it is considered impossible that a wise and serious magistrate, who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly commit some outrageous action, as it would be, for instance, to run about the streets naked in order to make people laugh. it is the same, in a sense, with the blessed; they are still less capable of sinning, and the necessity that forbids them to sin is of the same kind. finally i also hold that 'will' is a term as equivocal as potency and necessity. for i have already observed that those who employ this axiom, that one does not fail to do what one wills when one can, and who thence infer that god therefore does not will the salvation of all, imply a _decretory will_. only in that sense can one support this proposition, that wisdom never wills what it knows to be among the things that shall not happen. on the other hand, one may say, taking will in a sense more general and more in conformity with customary use, that the wise will is _inclined_ antecedently to all good, although it _decrees_ finally to do that which is most fitting. thus one would be very wrong to deny to god the serious and strong inclination to save all men, which holy scripture attributes to him; or even to attribute to him an original distaste which diverts him from the salvation of a number of persons, _odium antecedaneum_. one should rather maintain that the wise mind tends towards all good, as good, in proportion to his knowledge and his power, but that he only produces the best that can be achieved. those who admit that, and yet deny to god the antecedent will to save all men, are wrong only in their misuse of the term, provided that they acknowledge, besides, that god gives to all help sufficient to enable them to win [ ] salvation if only they have the will to avail themselves thereof. . in the _dogmas_ themselves held by the disciples of st. augustine i cannot approve the damnation of unregenerate children, nor in general damnation resulting from original sin alone. nor can i believe that god condemns those who are without the necessary light. one may believe, with many theologians, that men receive more aid than we are aware of, were it only when they are at the point of death. it does not appear necessary either that all those who are saved should always be saved through a grace efficacious of itself, independently of circumstances. also i consider it unnecessary to say that all the virtues of the pagans were false or that all their actions were sins; though it be true that what does not spring from faith, or from the uprightness of the soul before god, is infected with sin, at least virtually. finally i hold that god cannot act as if at random by an absolutely absolute decree, or by a will independent of reasonable motives. and i am persuaded that he is always actuated, in the dispensation of his grace, by reasons wherein the nature of the objects participates. otherwise he would not act in accordance with wisdom. i grant nevertheless that these reasons are not of necessity bound up with the good or the less evil natural qualities of men, as if god gave his grace only according to these good qualities. yet i hold, as i have explained already here, that these qualities are taken into consideration like all the other circumstances, since nothing can be neglected in the designs of supreme wisdom. . save for these points, and some few others, where st. augustine appears obscure or even repellent, it seems as though one can conform to his system. he states that from the substance of god only a god can proceed, and that thus the creature is derived from nothingness (augustine _de lib. arb._, lib. , c. ). that is what makes the creature imperfect, faulty and corruptible (_de genesi ad lit._, c. , _contra epistolam manichaei_, c. ). evil comes not from nature, but from evil will (augustine, in the whole book _on the nature of good_). god can command nothing that would be impossible. 'firmissime creditur deum justum et bonum impossibilia non potuisse praecipere' (_lib. de nat. et grat._, c. , p. ). nemo peccat in eo, quod caveri non potest (lib. , _de lib. arb._, c. , , _lib._ _retract._ c. , , ). under a just god, none can be unhappy who deserves not so to be, 'neque sub deo justo miser esse [ ] quisquam, nisi mereatur, potest' (lib. , c. ). free will cannot carry out god's commands without the aid of grace (_ep. ad hilar. caesaraugustan._). we know that grace is not given according to deserts (ep. , , ). man in the state of innocence had the aid necessary to enable him to do good if he wished; but the wish depended on free will, 'habebat adjutorium, per quod posset, et sine quo non vellet, sed non adjutorium quo vellet' (_lib. de corrept._, c. et c. , ). god let angels and men try what they could do by their free will, and after that what his grace and his justice could achieve (ibid., c. , , ). sin turned man away from god, to turn him towards creatures (lib. , qu. , _ad simplicium_). to take pleasure in sinning is the freedom of a slave (_enchirid._, c. ). 'liberum arbitrium usque adeo in peccatore non periit, ut per illud peccent maxime omnes, qui cum delectatione peccant' (lib. , _ad bonifac._, c. , ). . god said to moses: 'i will be gracious to whom i will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom i will shew mercy' (exod. xxxiii. ). 'so then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of god that sheweth mercy' (rom. ix. , ). that does not prevent all those who have good will, and who persevere therein, from being saved. but god gives them the willing and the doing. 'therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth' (rom. ix. ). and yet the same apostle says that god willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth; which i would not interpret in accordance with some passages of st. augustine, as if it signified that no men are saved except those whose salvation he wills, or as if he would save _non singulos generum, sed genera singulorum_. but i would rather say that there is none whose salvation he willeth not, in so far as this is permitted by greater reasons. for these bring it about that god only saves those who accept the faith he has offered to them and who surrender themselves thereto by the grace he has given them, in accordance with what was consistent with the plan of his works in its entirety, than which none can be better conceived. . as for predestination to salvation, it includes also, according to st. augustine, the ordinance of the means that shall lead to salvation. 'praedestinatio sanctorum nihil aliud est, quam praescientia et praeparatio beneficiorum dei, quibus certissime liberantur quicunque liberantur' (_lib. de persev._, c. ). he does not then understand it there as an [ ] absolute decree; he maintains that there is a grace which is not rejected by any hardened heart, because it is given in order to remove especially the hardness of hearts (_lib. de praedest._, c. ; _lib. de grat._, c. , ). i do not find, however, that st. augustine conveys sufficiently that this grace, which subdues the heart, is always efficacious of itself. and one might perhaps have asserted without offence to him that the same degree of inward grace is victorious in the one, where it is aided by outward circumstances, but not in the other. . will is proportionate to the sense we have of the good, and follows the sense which prevails. 'si utrumque tantundem diligimus, nihil horum dabimus. item: quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse est' (in c. , _ad gal._). i have explained already how, despite all that, we have indeed a great power over our will. st. augustine takes it somewhat differently, and in a way that does not go far, when he says that nothing is so much within our power as the action of our will. and he gives a reason which is almost tautological: for (he says) this action is ready at the moment when we will. 'nihil tam in nostra potestate est, quam ipsa voluntas, ea enim mox ut volumus praesto est' (lib. , _de lib. arb._, c. ; lib. , _de civ. dei_, c. ). but that only means that we will when we will, and not that we will that which we wish to will. there is more reason for saying with him: '_aut voluntas non est, aut libera dicenda est_' (d. , , c. ); and that what inclines the will towards good infallibly, or certainly, does not prevent it from being free. 'perquam absurdum est, ut ideo dicamus non pertinere ad voluntatem [libertatem] nostram, quod beati esse volumus, quia id omnino nolle non possumus, nescio qua bona constrictione naturae. nec dicere audemus ideo deum non voluntatem [libertatem], sed necessitatem habere justitiae, quia non potest velle peccare. certe deus ipse numquid quia peccare non potest, ideo liberum arbitrium habere negandus est?' (_de nat. et grat._, c. , , , ). he also says aptly, that god gives the first good impulse, but that afterwards man acts also. 'aguntur ut agant, non ut ipsi nihil agant' (_de corrept._, c. ). . i have proved that free will is the proximate cause of the evil of guilt, and consequently of the evil of punishment; although it is true that the original imperfection of creatures, which is already presented in the eternal ideas, is the first and most remote cause. m. bayle [ ] nevertheless always disputes this use of the notion of free will; he will not have the cause of evil ascribed to it. one must listen to his objections, but first it will be well to throw further light on the nature of freedom. i have shown that freedom, according to the definition required in the schools of theology, consists in intelligence, which involves a clear knowledge of the object of deliberation, in spontaneity, whereby we determine, and in contingency, that is, in the exclusion of logical or metaphysical necessity. intelligence is, as it were, the soul of freedom, and the rest is as its body and foundation. the free substance is self-determining and that according to the motive of good perceived by the understanding, which inclines it without compelling it: and all the conditions of freedom are comprised in these few words. it is nevertheless well to point out that the imperfection present in our knowledge and our spontaneity, and the infallible determination that is involved in our contingency, destroy neither freedom nor contingency. . our knowledge is of two kinds, distinct or confused. distinct knowledge, or _intelligence_, occurs in the actual use of reason; but the senses supply us with confused thoughts. and we may say that we are immune from bondage in so far as we act with a distinct knowledge, but that we are the slaves of passion in so far as our perceptions are confused. in this sense we have not all the freedom of spirit that were to be desired, and we may say with st. augustine that being subject to sin we have the freedom of a slave. yet a slave, slave as he is, nevertheless has freedom to choose according to the state wherein he is, although more often than not he is under the stern necessity of choosing between two evils, because a superior force prevents him from attaining the goods whereto he aspires. that which in a slave is effected by bonds and constraint in us is effected by passions, whose violence is sweet, but none the less pernicious. in truth we will only that which pleases us: but unhappily what pleases us now is often a real evil, which would displease us if we had the eyes of the understanding open. nevertheless that evil state of the slave, which is also our own, does not prevent us, any more than him, from making a free choice of that which pleases us most, in the state to which we are reduced, in proportion to our present strength and knowledge. . as for spontaneity, it belongs to us in so far as we have within us the source of our actions, as aristotle rightly conceived. the [ ] impressions of external things often, indeed, divert us from our path, and it was commonly believed that, at least in this respect, some of the sources of our actions were outside ourselves. i admit that one is bound to speak thus, adapting oneself to the popular mode of expression, as one may, in a certain sense, without doing violence to truth. but when it is a question of expressing oneself accurately i maintain that our spontaneity suffers no exception and that external things have no physical influence upon us, i mean in the strictly philosophical sense. . for better understanding of this point, one must know that true spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances, and that in the intelligent or free substance this becomes a mastery over its actions. that cannot be better explained than by the system of pre-established harmony, which i indeed propounded some years ago. there i pointed out that by nature every simple substance has perception, and that its individuality consists in the perpetual law which brings about the sequence of perceptions that are assigned to it, springing naturally from one another, to represent the body that is allotted to it, and through its instrumentality the entire universe, in accordance with the point of view proper to this simple substance and without its needing to receive any physical influence from the body. even so the body also for its part adapts itself to the wishes of the soul by its own laws, and consequently only obeys it according to the promptings of these laws. whence it follows that the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity, so that it depends only upon god and upon itself in its actions. . as this system was not known formerly, other ways were sought for emerging from this labyrinth, and the cartesians themselves were in difficulties over the subject of free will. they were no longer satisfied by the 'faculties' of the schoolmen, and they considered that all the actions of the soul appear to be determined by what comes from without, according to the impressions of the senses, and that, ultimately, all is controlled in the universe by the providence of god. thence arose naturally the objection that there is therefore no freedom. to that m. descartes replied that we are assured of god's providence by reason; but that we are likewise assured of our freedom by experience thereof within ourselves; and that we must believe in both, even though we see not how it is possible to reconcile them. [ ] . that was cutting the gordian knot, and answering the conclusion of an argument not by refuting it but by opposing thereto a contrary argument. which procedure does not conform to the laws for philosophical disputes. notwithstanding, most of the cartesians contented themselves with this, albeit the inward experience they adduce does not prove their assertion, as m. bayle has clearly shown. m. regis (_philos._, vol. , metaph., book , part , c. ) thus paraphrases m. descartes' doctrine: 'most philosophers', he says, 'have fallen into error. some, not being able to understand the relation existing between free actions and the providence of god, have denied that god was the first efficient cause of free will: but that is sacrilegious. the others, not being able to apprehend the relation between god's efficacy and free actions, have denied that man was endowed with freedom: and that is a blasphemy. the mean to be found between these two extremes is to say' (id. ibid., p. ) 'that, even though we were not able to understand all the relations existing between freedom and god's providence, we should nevertheless be bound to acknowledge that we are free and dependent upon god. for both these truths are equally known, the one through experience, and the other through reason; and prudence forbids one to abandon truths whereof one is assured, under the pretext that one cannot apprehend all the relations existing between them and other truths well known.' . m. bayle here remarks pertinently in the margin, 'that these expressions of m. regis fail to point out that we are aware of relations between man's actions and god's providence, such as appear to us to be incompatible with our freedom.' he adds that these expressions are over-circumspect, weakening the statement of the problem. 'authors assume', he says, 'that the difficulty arises solely from our lack of enlightenment; whereas they ought to say that it arises in the main from the enlightenment which we have, and cannot reconcile' (in m. bayle's opinion) 'with our mysteries.' that is exactly what i said at the beginning of this work, that if the mysteries were irreconcilable with reason, and if there were unanswerable objections, far from finding the mystery incomprehensible, we should comprehend that it was false. it is true that here there is no question of a mystery, but only of natural religion. . this is how m. bayle combats those inward experiences, whereon [ ] the cartesians make freedom rest: but he begins by reflexions with which i cannot agree. 'those who do not make profound examination', he says (_dictionary_, art. 'helen.', lit. [greek: td]), 'of that which passes within them easily persuade themselves that they are free, and that, if their will prompts them to evil, it is their fault, it is through a choice whereof they are the masters. those who judge otherwise are persons who have studied with care the springs and the circumstances of their actions, and who have thought over the progress of their soul's impulses. those persons usually have doubts about their free will, and even come to persuade themselves that their reason and mind are slaves, without power to resist the force that carries them along where they would not go. it was principally persons of this kind who ascribed to the gods the cause of their evil deeds.' . these words remind me of those of chancellor bacon, who says that a little philosophy inclineth us away from god, but that depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to him. it is the same with those who reflect upon their actions: it appears to them at first that all we do is only impulsion from others, and that all we apprehend comes from without through the senses, and is traced upon the void of our mind _tanquam in tabula rasa_. but more profound meditation shows us that all (even perceptions and passions) comes to us from our own inner being, with complete spontaneity. . yet m. bayle cites poets who pretend to exonerate men by laying the blame upon the gods. medea in ovid speaks thus: _frustra, medea, repugnas,_ _nescio quid deus obstat, ait._ and a little later ovid makes her add: _sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido,_ _mens aliud suadet; video meliora proboque,_ _deteriora sequor_. but one could set against that a passage from vergil, who makes nisus say with far more reason: _di ne hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,_ _euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?_ . herr wittich seems to have thought that in reality our independence is only apparent. for in his _diss. de providentia dei actuali_ (n. ) [ ] he makes free will consist in our being inclined towards the objects that present themselves to our soul for affirmation or denial, love or hate, in such a way that we _do not feel_ we are being determined by any outward force. he adds that it is when god himself causes our volitions that we act with most freedom; and that the more efficacious and powerful god's action is upon us, the more we are masters of our actions. 'quia enim deus operatur ipsum velle, quo efficacius operatur, eo magis volumus; quod autem, cum volumus, facimus, id maxime habemus in nostra potestate.' it is true that when god causes a volition in us he causes a free action. but it seems to me that the question here is not of the universal cause or of that production of our will which is proper to it in so far as it is a created effect, whose positive elements are actually created continually through god's co-operation, like all other absolute reality of things. we are concerned here with the reasons for willing, and the means god uses when he gives us a good will or permits us to have an evil will. it is always we who produce it, good or evil, for it is our action: but there are always reasons that make us act, without impairing either our spontaneity or our freedom. grace does no more than give impressions which are conducive to making will operate through fitting motives, such as would be an attention, _a dic cur hic_, a prevenient pleasure. and it is quite evident that that does not interfere with freedom, any more than could a friend who gives counsel and furnishes motives. thus herr wittich has not supplied an answer to the question, any more than m. bayle, and recourse to god is of no avail here. . but let me give another much more reasonable passage from the same m. bayle, where he disputes with greater force the so-called lively sense of freedom, which according to the cartesians is a proof of freedom. his words are indeed full of wit, and worthy of consideration, and occur in the _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (vol. iii, ch. , p. _seqq._). here they are: 'by the clear and distinct sense we have of our existence we do not discern whether we exist through ourselves or derive our being from another. we discern that only by reflexion, that is, through meditation upon our powerlessness in the matter of conserving ourselves as much as we would, and of freeing ourselves from dependence upon the beings that surround us, etc. it is indeed certain that the pagans (the same must be said of the socinians, since they deny the creation) never attained[ ] to the knowledge of that true dogma that we were created from nothing, and that we are derived from nothingness at every moment of our continuance. they therefore thought erroneously that all substances in the universe exist of themselves and can never be reduced to nothing, and that thus they depend upon no other thing save in respect of their modifications, which are liable to be destroyed by the action of an external cause. does not this error spring from the fact that we are unconscious of the creative action which conserves us, and that we are only conscious of our existence? that we are conscious of it, i say, in such a way that we should for ever remain ignorant of the cause of our being if other knowledge did not aid us? let us say also, that the clear and distinct sense we have of the acts of our will cannot make us discern whether we give them ourselves to ourselves or receive them from that same cause which gives us existence. we must have recourse to reflexion or to meditation in order to effect this discrimination. now i assert that one can never by purely philosophical meditations arrive at an established certainty that we are the efficient cause of our volitions: for every person who makes due investigation will recognize clearly, that if we were only passive subjects with regard to will we should have the same sensations of experience as we have when we think that we are free. assume, for the sake of argument, that god so ordered the laws of the union between soul and body that all the modalities of the soul, without a single exception, are of necessity linked together with the interposition of the modalities of the brain. you will then understand that nothing will happen to us except that of which we are conscious: there will be in our soul the same sequence of thoughts from the perception of objects of the senses, which is its first step, up to the most definite volitions, which are its final step. there will be in this sequence the consciousness of ideas, that of affirmations, that of irresolutions, that of velleities and that of volitions. for whether the act of willing be impressed upon us by an external cause or we bring it about ourselves, it will be equally true that we will, and that we feel that we will. moreover, as this external cause can blend as much pleasure as it will with the volition which it impresses upon us, we shall be able to feel at times that the acts of our will please us infinitely, and that they lead us according to the bent of our strongest inclinations. we shall feel no constraint; you know the maxim: _voluntas non potest cogi_. do[ ] you not clearly understand that a weather-vane, always having communicated to it simultaneously (in such a way, however, that priority of nature or, if one will, a real momentary priority, should attach to the desire for motion) movement towards a certain point on the horizon, and the wish to turn in that direction, would be persuaded that it moved of itself to fulfil the desires which it conceived? i assume that it would not know that there were winds, or that an external cause changed everything simultaneously, both its situation and its desires. that is the state we are in by our nature: we know not whether an invisible cause makes us pass sufficiently from one thought to another. it is therefore natural that men are persuaded that they determine their own acts. but it remains to be discovered whether they are mistaken in that, as in countless other things they affirm by a kind of instinct and without having made use of philosophic meditation. since therefore there are two hypotheses as to what takes place in man: the one that he is only a passive subject, the other that he has active virtues, one cannot in reason prefer the second to the first, so long as one can only adduce proofs of feeling. for we should feel with an equal force that we wish this or that, whether all our volitions were imprinted upon our soul by an exterior and invisible cause, or we formed them ourselves.' . there are here excellent arguments, which are valid against the usual systems; but they fail in respect of the system of pre-established harmony, which takes us further than we were able to go formerly. m. bayle asserts, for instance, 'that by purely philosophical meditations one can never attain to an established certainty that we are the efficient cause of our volitions'. but this is a point which i do not concede to him: for the establishment of this system demonstrates beyond a doubt that in the course of nature each substance is the sole cause of all its actions, and that it is free of all physical influence from every other substance, save the customary co-operation of god. and this system shows that our spontaneity is real, and not only apparent, as herr wittich believed it to be. m. bayle asserts also on the same reasons (ch. , p. ) that if there were a _fatum astrologicum_ this would not destroy freedom; and i would concede that to him, if freedom consisted only in an apparent spontaneity. . the spontaneity of our actions can therefore no longer be questioned; and aristotle has defined it well, saying that an action is [ ] _spontaneous_ when its source is in him who acts. 'spontaneum est, cujus principium est in agente.' thus it is that our actions and our wills depend entirely upon us. it is true that we are not directly the masters of our will, although we be its cause; for we do not choose volitions, as we choose our actions by our volitions. yet we have a certain power also over our will, because we can contribute indirectly towards willing another time that which we would fain will now, as i have here already shown: that, however, is no _velleity_, properly speaking. there also we have a mastery, individual and even perceptible, over our actions and our wills, resulting from a combination of spontaneity with intelligence. . up to this point i have expounded the two conditions of freedom mentioned by aristotle, that is, _spontaneity_ and _intelligence_, which are found united in us in deliberation, whereas beasts lack the second condition. but the schoolmen demand yet a third, which they call _indifference_. and indeed one must admit it, if indifference signifies as much as 'contingency'; for i have already said here that freedom must exclude an absolute and metaphysical or logical necessity. but, as i have declared more than once, this indifference, this contingency, this non-necessity, if i may venture so to speak, which is a characteristic attribute of freedom, does not prevent one from having stronger inclinations towards the course one chooses; nor does it by any means require that one be absolutely and equally indifferent towards the two opposing courses. . i therefore admit indifference only in the one sense, implying the same as contingency, or non-necessity. but, as i have declared more than once, i do not admit an indifference of equipoise, and i do not think that one ever chooses when one is absolutely indifferent. such a choice would be, as it were, mere chance, without determining reason, whether apparent or hidden. but such a chance, such an absolute and actual fortuity, is a chimera which never occurs in nature. all wise men are agreed that chance is only an apparent thing, like fortune: only ignorance of causes gives rise to it. but if there were such a vague indifference, or rather if we were to choose without having anything to prompt us to the choice, chance would then be something actual, resembling what, according to epicurus, took place in that little deviation of the atoms, occurring without cause or reason. epicurus had introduced it in order to evade necessity, and[ ] cicero with good reason ridiculed it. . this deviation had a final cause in the mind of epicurus, his aim being to free us from fate; but it can have no efficient cause in the nature of things, it is one of the most impossible of chimeras. m. bayle himself refutes it admirably, as we shall see presently. and yet it is surprising that he appears to admit elsewhere himself something of like nature with this supposed deviation: here is what he says, when speaking of buridan's ass (_dictionary_, art. 'buridan', lit. ): 'those who advocate free will properly so called admit in man a power of determining, either to the right hand or the left, even when the motives are perfectly uniform on the side of each of the two opposing objects. for they maintain that our soul can say, without having any reason other than that of using its freedom: "i prefer this to that, although i see nothing more worthy of my choice in the one than the other".' . all those who admit a free will properly so called will not for that reason concede to m. bayle this determination springing from an indeterminate cause. st. augustine and the thomists believe that all is determined. and one sees that their opponents resort also to the circumstances which contribute to our choice. experience by no means approves the chimera of an indifference of equipoise; and one can employ here the argument that m. bayle himself employed against the cartesians' manner of proving freedom by the lively sense of our independence. for although i do not always see the reason for an inclination which makes me choose between two apparently uniform courses, there will always be some impression, however imperceptible, that determines us. the mere desire to make use of one's freedom has no effect of specifying, or determining us to the choice of one course or the other. . m. bayle goes on: 'there are at the very least two ways whereby man can extricate himself from the snares of equipoise. one, which i have already mentioned, is for a man to flatter himself with the pleasing fancy that he is master in his own house, and that he does not depend upon objects.' this way is blocked: for all that one might wish to play master in one's own house, that has no determining effect, nor does it favour one course more than the other. m. bayle goes on: 'he would make this act: i will prefer this to that, because it pleases me to behave thus.' but [ ] these words, 'because it pleases me', 'because such is my pleasure', imply already a leaning towards 'the object that pleases'. . there is therefore no justification for continuing thus: 'and so that which determined him would not be taken from the object; the motive would be derived only from the ideas men have of their own perfections, or of their natural faculties. the other way is that of the lot or chance: the short straw would decide.' this way has an outlet, but it does not reach the goal: it would alter the issue, for in such a case it is not man who decides. or again if one maintains that it is still the man who decides by lot, man himself is no longer in equipoise, because the lot is not, and the man has attached himself to it. there are always reasons in nature which cause that which happens by chance or through the lot. i am somewhat surprised that a mind so shrewd as m. bayle's could have allowed itself to be so misled on this point. i have set out elsewhere the true rejoinder to the buridan sophism: it is that the case of perfect equipoise is impossible, since the universe can never be halved, so as to make all impressions equivalent on both sides. . let us see what m. bayle himself says elsewhere against the chimerical or absolutely undefined indifference. cicero had said (in his book _de fato_) that carneades had found something more subtle than the deviation of atoms, attributing the cause of a so-called absolutely undefined indifference to the voluntary motions of souls, because these motions have no need of an external cause, coming as they do from our nature. but m. bayle (_dictionary_, art. 'epicurus', p. ) aptly replies that all that which springs from the nature of a thing is determined: thus determination always remains, and carneades' evasion is of no avail. . he shows elsewhere (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , l. , p. ) 'that a freedom far removed from this so-called equipoise is incomparably more beneficial. i mean', he says, 'a freedom such as may always follow the judgements of the mind, and such as cannot resist objects clearly recognized as good. i know of no people who do not agree that truth clearly recognized necessitates' (determines rather, unless one speak of a moral necessity) 'the assent of the soul; experience teaches us that. in the schools they teach constantly that as the true is the object of [ ] the understanding, so the good is the object of the will. so likewise they teach that as the understanding can never affirm anything save that which is shown to it under the semblance of truth, the will can never love anything which to it does not appear to be good. one never believes the false as such, and one never loves evil as evil. there is in the understanding a natural determination towards the true in general, and towards each individual truth clearly recognized. there is in the will a natural determination towards good in general; whence many philosophers conclude that from the moment when individual goods are clearly recognized by us we are of necessity compelled to love them. the understanding suspends its actions only when its objects show themselves obscurely, so that there is cause for doubt as to whether they are false or true. that leads many persons to the conclusion that the will remains in equipoise only when the soul is uncertain whether the object presented to it is a good with regard to it; but that also, the moment the soul decides in the affirmative, it of necessity clings to that object until other judgements of the mind determine it otherwise. those who expound freedom in this fashion think to find therein plentiful enough material for merit or demerit. for they assume that these judgements of the mind proceed from a free attention of the soul in examining the objects, comparing them together, and discriminating between them. i must not forget that there are very learned men' (such as bellarmine, lib. , _de gratia et libero arbitrio_, c. , et , and cameron, in _responsione ad epistolam viri docti, id est episcopii_) 'who maintain with very cogent reasons that the will always of necessity follows the last practical act of the understanding.' . one must make some observations on this discourse. a very clear recognition of the best _determines_ the will; but it does not necessitate it, properly speaking. one must always distinguish between the necessary and the certain or infallible, as i have already observed more than once, and distinguish metaphysical necessity from moral necessity. i think also that it is only god's will which always follows the judgements of the understanding: all intelligent creatures are subject to some passions, or to perceptions at least, that are not composed entirely of what i call _adequate ideas_. and although in the blessed these passions always tend towards the true good, by virtue of the laws of nature and the system of things pre-established in relation to them, yet this does not always [ ] happen in such a way that they have a perfect knowledge of that good. it is the same with them as with us, who do not always understand the reason for our instincts. the angels and the blessed are created beings, even as we are, in whom there is always some confused perception mingled with distinct knowledge. suarez said something similar concerning them. he thinks (_treatise on prayer_, book i, ch. ) that god has so ordered things beforehand that their prayers, when they are made with a full will, always succeed: that is an example of a pre-established harmony. as for us, in addition to the judgement of the understanding, of which we have an express knowledge, there are mingled therewith confused perceptions of the senses, and these beget passions and even imperceptible inclinations, of which we are not always aware. these movements often thwart the judgement of the practical understanding. . as for the parallel between the relation of the understanding to the true and that of the will to the good, one must know that a clear and distinct perception of a truth contains within it actually the affirmation of this truth: thus the understanding is necessitated in that direction. but whatever perception one may have of the good, the effort to act in accordance with the judgement, which in my opinion forms the essence of the will, is distinct from it. thus, since there is need of time to raise this effort to its climax, it may be suspended, and even changed, by a new perception or inclination which passes athwart it, which diverts the mind from it, and which even causes it sometimes to make a contrary judgement. hence it comes that our soul has so many means of resisting the truth which it knows, and that the passage from mind to heart is so long. especially is this so when the understanding to a great extent proceeds only by faint _thoughts_, which have only slight power to affect, as i have explained elsewhere. thus the connexion between judgement and will is not so necessary as one might think. . m. bayle goes on to say, with truth (p. ): 'indeed, it cannot be a fault in man's soul that it has no freedom of indifference as regards good in general. it would be rather a disorder, an inordinate imperfection, if one could say truthfully: it is all one to me whether i am happy or unhappy; i have no more determination to love the good than to hate it; i can do both equally. now if it is a praiseworthy and advantageous quality to be determinate as regards good in general, it cannot be a fault if [ ] one is necessitated as regards each individual good recognized plainly as for our good. it seems even as though it were a necessary conclusion, that if the soul has no freedom of indifference as regards good in general, it also has none in respect of particular goods which after due examination it judges to be goods in relation to it. what should we think of a soul which, having formed that judgement, had, and prided itself on having, the power not to love these goods, and even to hate them, and which said: i recognize clearly that these are goods for me, i have all the enlightenment necessary on that point; nevertheless i will not love them, i will hate them; my decision is made, i act upon it; it is not that any reason' (that is, any other reason than that which is founded upon 'such is my good pleasure') 'urges me thereto, but it pleases me so to behave: what should we think, i say, of such a soul? should we not find it more imperfect and more unhappy than if it had not this freedom of indifference? . 'not only does the doctrine that subjects the will to the final acts of the understanding give a more favourable idea of the state of the soul, but it shows also that it is easier to lead man to happiness along that road than along the road of indifference. it will suffice to enlighten his mind upon his true interests, and straightway his will will comply with the judgements that reason shall have pronounced. but if he has a freedom independent of reason and of the quality of objects clearly recognized, he will be the most intractable of all animals, and it will never be possible to rely upon making him choose the right course. all the counsels, all the arguments in the world may prove unavailing; you will give him explanations, you will convince his mind, and yet his will will play the haughty madam and remain motionless as a rock. vergil, _aen_., lib. , v. : _non magis incepto vultum sermone movetur,_ _quam si dura silex, aut stet marpesia cautes_. a caprice, an empty whim will make her stiffen against reasons of all kinds; it will not please her to love her clearly recognized good, it will please her to hate it. do you consider such a faculty, sir, to be the richest present god can have made to man, and the sole instrument of our happiness? is it not rather an obstacle to our felicity? is there cause for boasting in being able to say: "i have scorned all the judgements of [ ] my reason, and i have followed an altogether different path, simply from considerations of my own good pleasure?" with what regrets would one not be torn, in that case, if the determination made had an ill result? such a freedom would therefore be more harmful than profitable to men, because the understanding would not present all the goodness of the objects clearly enough to deprive the will of the power of rejection. it would be therefore infinitely better for man to be always of necessity determined by the judgement of the understanding, than to permit the will to suspend its action. for by this means it would achieve its aim with greater ease and certainty.' . upon this discourse i make the further observation, that it is very true that a freedom of indifference, undefined and without any determining reason, would be as harmful, and even objectionable, as it is impracticable and chimerical. the man who wished to behave thus, or at the least appear to be acting without due cause, would most certainly be looked upon as irrational. but it is very true also that the thing is impossible, when it is taken strictly in accordance with the assumption. as soon as one tries to give an example of it one misses one's aim and stumbles upon the case of a man who, while he does not come to a decision without cause, does so rather under the influence of inclination or passion than of judgement. as soon as one says: 'i scorn the judgements of my reason simply from considerations of my own good pleasure, it pleases me to behave thus', it is as if one were to say: i prefer my inclination to my interest, my pleasure to my profit. . even so some capricious man, fancying that it is ignominious for him to follow the advice of his friends or his servants, might prefer the satisfaction of contradicting them to the profit he could derive from their counsel. it may happen, however, that in a matter of small moment a wise man acts irregularly and against his own interest in order to thwart another who tries to restrain him or direct him, or that he may disconcert those who watch his steps. it is even well at times to imitate brutus by concealing one's wit, and even to feign madness, as david did before the king of the philistines. . m. bayle admirably supplements his remarks with the object of showing that to act against the judgement of the understanding would be a great imperfection. he observes (p. ) that, even according to the [ ] molinists, 'the understanding which does its duty well indicates that which is the best'. he introduces god (ch. , p. ) saying to our first parents in the garden of eden: 'i have given you my knowledge, the faculty of judging things, and full power to dispose your wills. i shall give you instructions and orders; but the free will that i have bestowed upon you is of such a nature that you have equal power (according to circumstances) to obey me and to disobey me. you will be tempted: if you make a good use of your freedom you will be happy; and if you use it ill you will be unhappy. it is for you to see if you wish to ask of me, as a new grace, either that i permit you to abuse your freedom when you shall make resolve to do so, or that i prevent you from doing so. consider carefully, i give you four and twenty hours. do you not clearly understand' (adds m. bayle) 'that their reason, which had not yet been obscured by sin, would have made them conclude that they must ask god, as the crowning point of the favours wherewith he had honoured them, not to permit them to destroy themselves by an ill use of their powers? and must one not admit that if adam, through wrongly making it a point of honour to order his own goings, had refused a divine direction that would have safeguarded his happiness, he would have been the prototype of all such as phaeton and icarus? he would have been well-nigh as ungodly as the ajax of sophocles, who wished to conquer without the aid of the gods, and who said that the most craven would put their enemies to flight with such aid.' . m. bayle also shows (ch. ) that one congratulates oneself no less, or even takes more credit to oneself, for having been aided from above, than for owing one's happiness to one's own choice. and if one does well through having preferred a tumultuous instinct, which arose suddenly, to reasons maturely considered, one feels an extraordinary joy in this; for one assumes that either god, or our guardian angel, or something or other which one pictures to oneself under the vague name of _good luck_ has impelled us thereto. indeed, sulla and caesar boasted more of their good luck than of their prudence. the pagans, and particularly the poets (homer especially), determined their heroes' acts by divine promptings. the hero of the _aeneid_ proceeds only under the direction of a god. it was very great praise offered to the emperors if one said that they were victorious both through their troops and through their gods whom they lent to [ ] their generals: 'te copias, te consilium et tuos praebente divos,' said horace. the generals fought under the auspices of the emperors, as if trusting to the emperor's good luck, for subordinate officers had no rights regarding the auspices. one takes credit to oneself for being a favourite of heaven, one rates oneself more highly for the possession of good fortune than of talent. there are no people that think themselves more fortunate than the mystics, who imagine that they keep still while god acts within them. . 'on the other hand', m. bayle adds (ch. ), 'a stoic philosopher, who attaches to everything an inevitable necessity, is as susceptible as another man to the pleasure of having chosen well. and every man of sense will find that, far from taking pleasure in the thought of having deliberated long and finally chosen the most honourable course, one feels incredible satisfaction in persuading oneself that one is so firmly rooted in the love of virtue that without the slightest resistance one would repel a temptation. a man to whom is suggested the doing of a deed contrary to his duty, his honour and his conscience, who answers forthwith that he is incapable of such a crime, and who is certainly not capable of it, is far more contented with himself than if he asked for time to consider it, and were for some hours in a state of indecision as to which course to take. one is on many occasions regretful over not being able to make up one's mind between two courses, and one would be well pleased that the counsel of a good friend, or some succour from above, should impel us to make a good choice.' all that demonstrates for us the advantage a determinate judgement has over that vague indifference which leaves us in uncertainty. but indeed i have proved sufficiently that only ignorance or passion has power to keep us in doubt, and have thus given the reason why god is never in doubt. the nearer one comes to him, the more perfect is freedom, and the more it is determined by the good and by reason. the character of cato, of whom velleius said that it was impossible for him to perform a dishonourable action, will always be preferred to that of a man who is capable of wavering. . i have been well pleased to present and to support these arguments of m. bayle against vague indifference, as much for the elucidation of the subject as to confront him with himself, and to demonstrate that he ought therefore not to complain of the alleged necessity imposed upon god, [ ] of choosing the best way that is possible. for either god will act through a vague indifference and at random, or again he will act on caprice or through some other passion, or finally he must act through a prevailing inclination of reason which prompts him to the best. but passions, which come from the confused perception of an apparent good, cannot occur in god; and vague indifference is something chimerical. it is therefore only the strongest reason that can regulate god's choice. it is an imperfection in our freedom that makes us capable of choosing evil instead of good, a greater evil instead of the lesser evil, the lesser good instead of the greater good. that arises from the appearances of good and evil, which deceive us; whereas god is always prompted to the true and the greatest good, that is, to the absolutely true good, which he cannot fail to know. . this false idea of freedom, conceived by those who, not content with exempting it, i do not say from constraint, but from necessity itself, would also exempt it from certainty and determination, that is, from reason and perfection, nevertheless pleased some schoolmen, people who often become entangled in their own subtleties, and take the straw of terms for the grain of things. they assume some chimerical notion, whence they think to derive some use, and which they endeavour to maintain by quibblings. complete indifference is of this nature: to concede it to the will is to grant it a privilege of the kind that some cartesians and some mystics find in the divine nature, of being able to do the impossible, to produce absurdities, to cause two contradictory propositions to be true simultaneously. to claim that a determination comes from a complete indifference absolutely indeterminate is to claim that it comes naturally from nothing. let it be assumed that god does not give this determination: it has accordingly no fountainhead in the soul, nor in the body, nor in circumstances, since all is assumed to be indeterminate; and yet there it is, appearing and existing without preparation, nothing making ready for it, no angel, not even god himself, being able to see or to show how it exists. that would be not only the emergence of something from nothing, but its emergence thence _of itself_. this doctrine introduces something as preposterous as the theory already mentioned, of the deviation of atoms, whereby epicurus asserted that one of these small bodies, going in a straight line, would turn aside all at once from its path, without any[ ] reason, simply because the will so commands. take note moreover that he resorted to that only to justify this alleged freedom of complete indifference, a chimerical notion which appears to be of very ancient origin; and one may with good reason say: _chimaera chimaeram parit_. . this is the way signor marchetti has expressed it in his admirable translation of lucretius into italian verse, which has not yet been published (book ): _mà ch'i principii poi non corran punto_ _della lor dritta via, chi veder puote?_ _sì finalmente ogni lor moto sempre_ _insieme s'aggruppa, e dall' antico_ _sempre con ordin certo il nuovo nasce;_ _ne tracciando i primi semi, fanno_ _di moto un tal principio, il qual poi rompa_ _i decreti del fato, acciò non segua_ _l'una causa dell' altra in infinito;_ _onde han questa, dich' io_, del fato sciolta libera voluntà, _per cui ciascuno_ _va dove più l'agrada? i moti ancora_ _si declinan sovente, e non in tempo_ _certo, ne certa region, mà solo_ _quando e dove commanda il nostro arbitrio;_ _poiche senz' alcun dubbio à queste cose_ _dà sol principio il voler proprio, e quindi_ _van poi scorrendo per le membra i moti._ it is comical that a man like epicurus, after having discarded the gods and all incorporeal substances, could have supposed that the will, which he himself takes as composed of atoms, could have had control over the atoms, and diverted them from their path, without its being possible for one to say how. . carneades, not going so far back as to the atoms, claimed to find at once in the soul of man the reason for the so-called vague indifference, assuming as reason for the thing just that for which epicurus sought a reason. carneades gained nothing thereby, except that he more easily deceived careless people, in transferring the absurdity from one subject, where it is somewhat too evident, to another subject where it is easier to confuse matters, that is to say, from the body to the soul. for most philosophers had not very distinct notions of the nature of the soul. [ ] epicurus, who composed it of atoms, was at least right in seeking the origin of its determination in that which he believed to be the origin of the soul itself. that is why cicero and m. bayle were wrong to find so much fault with him, and to be indulgent towards, and even praise, carneades, who is no less irrational. i do not understand how m. bayle, who was so clear-sighted, was thus satisfied by a disguised absurdity, even to the extent of calling it the greatest effort the human mind can make on this matter. it is as if the soul, which is the seat of reason, were more capable than the body of acting without being determined by some reason or cause, internal or external; or as if the great principle which states that nothing comes to pass without cause only related to the body. . it is true that the form or the soul has this advantage over matter, that it is the source of action, having within itself the principle of motion or of change, in a word, [greek: to autokinêton], as plato calls it; whereas matter is simply passive, and has need of being impelled to act, _agitur, ut agat_. but if the soul is active of itself (as it indeed is), for that very reason it is not of itself absolutely indifferent to the action, like matter, and it must find in itself a ground of determination. according to the system of pre-established harmony the soul finds in itself, and in its ideal nature anterior to existence, the reasons for its determinations, adjusted to all that shall surround it. that way it was determined from all eternity in its state of mere possibility to act freely, as it does, when it attains to existence. . m. bayle himself remarks aptly that freedom of indifference (such as must be admitted) does not exclude inclinations and does not demand equipoise. he demonstrates amply enough (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, ch. , p. _seqq_.) that the soul may be compared to a balance, where reasons and inclinations take the place of weights. according to him, one can explain what passes in our resolutions by the hypothesis that the will of man is like a balance which is at rest when the weights of its two pans are equal, and which always inclines either to one side or the other according to which of the pans is the more heavily laden. a new reason makes a heavier weight, a new idea shines more brightly than the old; the fear of a heavy penalty prevails over some pleasure; when two passions dispute the ground, it is always the stronger which gains the mastery, unless the other be assisted by reason or by some other [ ] contributing passion. when one flings away merchandise in order to save oneself, the action, which the schoolmen call mixed, is voluntary and free; and yet love of life indubitably prevails over love of possessions. grief arises from remembrance of lost possessions, and one has all the greater difficulty in making one's resolve, the nearer the approach to even weight in the opposing reasons, as also we see that the balance is determined more promptly when there is a great difference between the weights. . nevertheless, as very often there are divers courses to choose from, one might, instead of the balance, compare the soul with a force which puts forth effort on various sides simultaneously, but which acts only at the spot where action is easiest or there is least resistance. for instance, air if it is compressed too firmly in a glass vessel will break it in order to escape. it puts forth effort at every part, but finally flings itself upon the weakest. thus do the inclinations of the soul extend over all the goods that present themselves: they are antecedent acts of will; but the consequent will, which is their result, is determined in the direction of that which touches most closely. . this ascendancy of inclinations, however, does not prevent man from being master in his own domain, provided that he knows how to make use of his power. his dominion is that of reason: he has only to prepare himself in good time to resist the passions, and he will be capable of checking the vehemence of the most furious. let us assume that augustus, about to give orders for putting to death fabius maximus, acts, as is his wont, upon the advice a philosopher had given him, to recite the greek alphabet before doing anything in the first heat of his anger: this reflexion will be capable of saving the life of fabius and the glory of augustus. but without some fortunate reflexion, which one owes sometimes to a special divine mercy, or without some skill acquired beforehand, like that of augustus, calculated to make us reflect fittingly as to time and place, passion will prevail over reason. the driver is master over the horses if he controls them as he should, and as he can; but there are occasions when he becomes negligent, and then for a time he will have to let go the reins: _fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas_. . one must admit that there is always within us enough power over [ ] our will, but we do not always bethink ourselves of employing it. that shows, as i have observed more than once, that the power of the soul over its inclinations is a control which can only be exercised in an _indirect_ manner, almost as bellarmine would have had the popes exercise rights over the temporal power of kings. in truth, the external actions that do not exceed our powers depend absolutely upon our will; but our volitions depend upon our will only through certain artful twists which give us means of suspending our resolutions, or of changing them. we are masters in our own house, not as god is in the world, he having but to speak, but as a wise prince is in his dominions or as a good father of a family is in his home. m. bayle sometimes takes the matter differently, as though we must have, in order to boast of a free will, an absolute power over ourselves, independent of reasons and of means. but even god has not such a power, and must not have in this sense, in relation to his will: he cannot change his nature, nor act otherwise than according to method; and how could man transform himself all of a sudden? i have already said god's dominion, the dominion of wisdom, is that of reason. it is only god, however, who always wills what is most to be desired, and consequently he has no need of the power to change his will. . if the soul is mistress in its own house (says m. bayle, p. ) it has only to will, and straightway that vexation and pain which is attendant upon victory over the passions will vanish away. for this effect it would suffice, in his opinion, to give oneself indifference to the objects of the passions (p. ). why, then, do men not give themselves this indifference (he says), if they are masters in their own house? but this objection is exactly as if i were to ask why a father of a family does not give himself gold when he has need thereof? he can acquire some, but through skill, and not, as in the age of the fairies, or of king midas, through a mere command of the will or by his touch. it would not suffice to be master in one's own house; one must be master of all things in order to give oneself all that one wishes; for one does not find everything in one's own house. working thus upon oneself, one must do as in working upon something else; one must have knowledge of the constitution and the qualities of one's object, and adapt one's operations thereto. it is therefore not in a moment and by a mere act of the will that one corrects oneself, and that one acquires a better will. [ ] . nevertheless it is well to observe that the vexations and pains attendant upon victory over the passions in some people turn into pleasure, through the great satisfaction they find in the lively sense of the force of their mind, and of the divine grace. ascetics and true mystics can speak of this from experience; and even a true philosopher can say something thereof. one can attain to that happy state, and it is one of the principal means the soul can use to strengthen its dominion. . if the scotists and the molinists appear to favour vague indifference (appear, i say, for i doubt whether they do so in reality, once they have learnt to know it), the thomists and the disciples of augustine are for predetermination. for one must have either the one or the other. thomas aquinas is a writer who is accustomed to reason on sound principles, and the subtle scotus, seeking to contradict him, often obscures matters instead of throwing light upon them. the thomists as a general rule follow their master, and do not admit that the soul makes its resolve without the existence of some predetermination which contributes thereto. but the predetermination of the new thomists is not perhaps exactly that which one needs. durand de saint-pourçain, who often enough formed a party of his own, and who opposed the idea of the special co-operation of god, was nevertheless in favour of a certain predetermination. he believed that god saw in the state of the soul, and of its surroundings, the reason for his determinations. . the ancient stoics were in that almost of the same opinion as the thomists. they were at the same time in favour of determination and against necessity, although they have been accused of attaching necessity to everything. cicero says in his book _de fato_ that democritus, heraclitus, empedocles and aristotle believed that fate implied necessity; that others were opposed to that (he means perhaps epicurus and the academicians); and that chrysippus sought a middle course. i think that cicero is mistaken as regards aristotle, who fully recognized contingency and freedom, and went even too far, saying (inadvertently, as i think) that propositions on contingent futurities had no determinate truth; on which point he was justifiably abandoned by most of the schoolmen. even cleanthes, the teacher of chrysippus, although he upheld the determinate truth of future events, denied their necessity. had the schoolmen, so fully convinced of this [ ] determination of contingent futurities (as were for instance the fathers of coimbra, authors of a famous course of philosophy), seen the connexion between things in the form wherein the system of general harmony proclaims it, they would have judged that one cannot admit preliminary certainty, or determination of futurition, without admitting a predetermination of the thing in its causes and in its reasons. . cicero has endeavoured to expound for us the middle course taken by chrysippus; but justus lipsius observed, in his _stoic philosophy_, that the passage from cicero was mutilated, and that aulus gellius has preserved for us the whole argument of the stoic philosopher (_noct. att._, lib. , c. ). here it is in epitome. fate is the inevitable and eternal connexion of all events. against this is urged in objection, that it follows that the acts of the will would be necessary, and that criminals, being coerced into evil, should not be punished. chrysippus answers that evil springs from the original constitution of souls, which forms part of the destined sequence; that souls which are of a good natural disposition offer stronger resistance to the impressions of external causes; but that those whose natural defects had not been corrected by discipline allowed themselves to be perverted. next he distinguishes (according to cicero) between principal causes and accessary causes, and uses the comparison of a cylinder, whose rotatory force and speed or ease in motion comes chiefly from its shape, whereas it would be retarded by any roughness in formation. nevertheless it has need of impulsion, even as the soul needs to be acted upon by the objects of the senses, and receives this impression according to its own constitution. . cicero considers that chrysippus becomes so confused that, whether he will or no, he confirms the necessity of fate. m. bayle is almost of the same opinion (_dictionary_, art. 'chrysippus', lit. h). he says that this philosopher does not get out of the bog, since the cylinder is regular or uneven according to what the craftsman has made it; and thus god, providence, fate will be the causes of evil in such a way as to render it necessary. justus lipsius answers that, according to the stoics, evil came from matter. that is (to my mind) as if he had said that the stone on which the craftsman worked was sometimes too rough and too irregular to produce a good cylinder. m. bayle cites against chrysippus the fragments of onomaus and diogenianus that eusebius has preserved for us in the _praeparatio[ ] evangelica_ (lib. , c. , ); and above all he relies upon plutarch's refutation in his book against the stoics, quoted art. 'paulicians', lit. g. but this refutation does not amount to very much. plutarch maintains that it would be better to deny power to god than to impute to him the permission of evils; and he will not admit that evil may serve a greater good. i have already shown, on the contrary, that god cannot but be all-powerful, even though he can do no better than produce the best, which includes the permission of evil. moreover, i have pointed out repeatedly that what is to the disadvantage of a part taken separately may serve the perfection of the whole. . chrysippus had already made an observation to this effect, not only in his fourth book on providence, as given by aulus gellius (lib. , c. ) where he asserts that evil serves to bring the good to notice (a reason which is not sufficient here), but still better when he applies the comparison of a stage play, in his second book on nature (as plutarch quotes it himself). there he says that there are sometimes portions in a comedy which are of no worth in themselves and which nevertheless lend grace to the whole poem. he calls these portions epigrams or inscriptions. we have not enough acquaintance with the nature of the ancient comedy for full understanding of this passage from chrysippus; but since plutarch assents to the fact, there is reason to believe that this comparison was not a poor one. plutarch replies in the first place that the world is not like a play to provide entertainment. but that is a poor answer: the comparison lies in this point alone, that one bad part may make the whole better. he replies secondly that this bad passage is only a small part of the comedy, whereas human life swarms with evils. this reply is of no value either: for he ought to have taken into account that what we know is also a very small part of the universe. . but let us return to the cylinder of chrysippus. he is right in saying that vice springs from the original constitution of some minds. he was met with the objection that god formed them, and he could only reply by pointing to the imperfection of matter, which did not permit god to do better. this reply is of no value, for matter in itself is indifferent to all forms, and god made it. evil springs rather from the _forms_ themselves in their detached state, that is, from the ideas that god has not produced by an act of his will, any more than he thus produced numbers and [ ] figures, and all possible essences which one must regard as eternal and necessary; for they are in the ideal region of the possibles, that is, in the divine understanding. god is therefore not the author of essences in so far as they are only possibilities. but there is nothing actual to which he has not decreed and given existence; and he has permitted evil because it is involved in the best plan existing in the region of possibles, a plan which supreme wisdom could not fail to choose. this notion satisfies at once the wisdom, the power and the goodness of god, and yet leaves a way open for the entrance of evil. god gives perfection to creatures in so far as it is possible in the universe. one gives a turn to the cylinder, but any roughness in its shape restricts the swiftness of its motion. this comparison made by chrysippus does not greatly differ from mine, which was taken from a laden boat that is carried along by the river current, its pace becoming slower as the load grows heavier. these comparisons tend towards the same end; and that shows that if we were sufficiently informed concerning the opinions of ancient philosophers, we should find therein more reason than is supposed. . m. bayle himself commends the passage from chrysippus (art. 'chrysippus', lit. t) that aulus gellius quotes in the same place, where this philosopher maintains that evil has come _by concomitance._ that also is made clear by my system. for i have demonstrated that the evil which god permitted was not an object of his will, as an end or a means, but simply as a condition, since it had to be involved in the best. yet one must confess that the cylinder of chrysippus does not answer the objection of necessity. he ought to have added, in the first place, that it is by the free choice of god that some of the possibles exist; secondly, that rational creatures act freely also, in accordance with their original nature, which existed already in the eternal ideas; and lastly, that the motive power of good inclines the will without compelling it. . the advantage of freedom which is in the creature without doubt exists to an eminent degree in god. that must be understood in so far as it is genuinely an advantage and in so far as it presupposes no imperfection. for to be able to make a mistake and go astray is a disadvantage, and to have control over the passions is in truth an advantage, but one that presupposes an imperfection, namely passion itself, of which god is [ ] incapable. scotus was justified in saying that if god were not free and exempt from necessity, no creature would be so. but god is incapable of being indeterminate in anything whatsoever: he cannot be ignorant, he cannot doubt, he cannot suspend his judgement; his will is always decided, and it can only be decided by the best. god can never have a primitive particular will, that is, independent of laws or general acts of will; such a thing would be unreasonable. he cannot determine upon adam, peter, judas or any individual without the existence of a reason for this determination; and this reason leads of necessity to some general enunciation. the wise mind always acts _according to principles_; always _according to rules_, and never _according to exceptions_, save when the rules come into collision through opposing tendencies, where the strongest carries the day: or else, either they will stop one another or some third course will emerge as a result. in all these cases one rule serves as an exception to the other, and there are never any _original exceptions_ with one who always acts in a regular way. . if there are people who believe that election and reprobation are accomplished on god's part by a despotic absolute power, not only without any apparent reason but actually without any reason, even a concealed one, they maintain an opinion that destroys alike the nature of things and the divine perfections. such an _absolutely absolute decree_ (so to speak) would be without doubt insupportable. but luther and calvin were far from such a belief: the former hopes that the life to come will make us comprehend the just reasons of god's choice; and the latter protests explicitly that these reasons are just and holy, although they be unknown to us. i have already in that connexion quoted calvin's treatise on predestination, and here are the actual words: 'god before the fall of adam had reflected upon what he had to do, and that for causes concealed from us.... it is evident therefore that he had just causes for the reprobation of some of mankind, but causes to us unknown.' . this truth, that all god does is reasonable and cannot be better done, strikes at the outset every man of good sense, and extorts, so to speak, his approbation. and yet the most subtle of philosophers have a fatal propensity for offending sometimes without observing it, during the course and in the heat of disputes, against the first principles of good sense, when these are shrouded in terms that disguise them. we have here [ ] already seen how the excellent m. bayle, with all his shrewdness, has nevertheless combated this principle which i have just indicated, and which is a sure consequence of the supreme perfection of god. he thought to defend in that way the cause of god and to exempt him from an imaginary necessity, by leaving him the freedom to choose from among various goods the least. i have already spoken of m. diroys and others who have also been deluded by this strange opinion, one that is far too commonly accepted. those who uphold it do not observe that it implies a wish to preserve for, or rather bestow upon, god a false freedom, which is the freedom to act unreasonably. that is rendering his works subject to correction, and making it impossible for us to say or even to hope that anything reasonable can be said upon the permission of evil. . this error has much impaired m. bayle's arguments, and has barred his way of escape from many perplexities. that appears again in relation to the laws of the realm of nature: he believes them to be arbitrary and indifferent, and he objects that god could better have attained his end in the realm of grace if he had not clung to these laws, if he had more often dispensed with their observance, or even if he had made others. he believed this especially with regard to the law of the union between the soul and the body. for he is persuaded, with the modern cartesians, that the ideas of the perceptible qualities that god gives (according to them) to the soul, occasioned by movements of the body, have nothing representing these movements or resembling them. accordingly it was a purely arbitrary act on god's part to give us the ideas of heat, cold, light and other qualities which we experience, rather than to give us quite different ideas occasioned in the same way. i have often wondered that people so talented should have been capable of relishing notions so unphilosophic and so contrary to the fundamental maxims of reason. for nothing gives clearer indication of the imperfection of a philosophy than the necessity experienced by the philosopher to confess that something comes to pass, in accordance with his system, for which there is no reason. that applies to the idea of epicurus on the deviation of atoms. whether it be god or nature that operates, the operation will always have its reasons. in the operations of nature, these reasons will depend either upon necessary truths or upon the laws that god has found the most reasonable; and in the operations of god, they will depend upon the choice of the supreme [ ] reason which causes them to act. . m. regis, a famous cartesian, had asserted in his 'metaphysics' (part , book , c. ) that the faculties god has given to men are the most excellent that they were capable of in conformity with the general order of nature. 'considering only', he says, 'the power of god and the nature of man by themselves, it is very easy to conceive that god could have made man more perfect: but if one will consider man, not in himself and separately from all other creatures, but as a member of the universe and a portion which is subject to the general laws of motions, one will be bound to acknowledge that man is as perfect as he could have been.' he adds 'that we cannot conceive that god could have employed any other means more appropriate than pain for the conservation of our bodies'. m. regis is right in a general way in saying that god cannot do better than he has done in relation to all. and although there be apparently in some places in the universe rational animals more perfect than man, one may say that god was right to create every kind of species, some more perfect than others. it is perhaps not impossible that there be somewhere a species of animals much resembling man and more perfect than we are. it may be even that the human race will attain in time to a greater perfection than that which we can now envisage. thus the laws of motions do not prevent man from being more perfect: but the place god has assigned to man in space and in time limits the perfections he was able to receive. . i also doubt, with m. bayle, whether pain be necessary in order to warn men of peril. but this writer goes too far (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. ii, ch. , p. ): he seems to think that a feeling of pleasure could have the same effect, and that, in order to prevent a child from going too near the fire, god could give him ideas of pleasure in proportion to the distance he kept from it. this expedient does not appear very practicable with regard to all evils, unless a miracle were involved. it is more natural that what if it were too near would cause an evil should cause some foreboding of evil when it is a little less near. yet i admit that it is possible such a foreboding will be something less than pain, and usually this is the case. thus it indeed appears that pain is not necessary for causing one to shun present peril; it is wont rather to serve as a penalty for having actually plunged into evil, and a warning against [ ] further lapse. there are also many painful evils the avoidance whereof rests not with us. as a dissolution of the continuity of our body is a consequence of many accidents that may happen to us, it was natural that this imperfection of the body should be represented by some sense of imperfection in the soul. nevertheless i would not guarantee that there were no animals in the universe whose structure was cunning enough to cause a sense of indifference as accompaniment to this dissolution of continuity, as for instance when a gangrenous limb is cut off; or even a sense of pleasure, as if one were only scratching oneself. for the imperfection that attends the dissolution of the body might lead to the sense of a greater perfection, which was suspended or checked by the continuity which is now broken: and in this respect the body would be as it were a prison. . there is also nothing to preclude the existence in the universe of animals resembling that one which cyrano de bergerac encountered in the sun. the body of this animal being a sort of fluid composed of innumerable small animals, that were capable of ranging themselves in accordance with the desires of the great animal, by this means it transformed itself in a moment, just as it pleased; and the dissolution of continuity caused it no more hurt than the stroke of an oar can cause to the sea. but, after all, these animals are not men, they are not in our globe or in our present century; and god's plan ensured that there should not be lacking here on earth a rational animal clothed in flesh and bones, whose structure involves susceptibility to pain. . but m. bayle further opposes this on another principle, one which i have already mentioned. it seems that he thinks the ideas which the soul conceives in relation to the feelings of the body are arbitrary. thus god might have caused the dissolution of continuity to give us pleasure. he even maintains that the laws of motion are entirely arbitrary. 'i would wish to know', he says (vol. iii, ch. , p. ), 'whether god established by an act of his freedom of indifference general laws on the communication of movements, and the particular laws on the union of the human soul with an organic body? in this case, he could have established quite different laws, and adopted a system whose results involved neither moral evil nor physical evil. but if the answer is given that god was constrained by supreme wisdom to establish the laws that he has established, there we have neither more nor less than the _fatum_ of [ ] the stoics. wisdom will have marked out a way for god, the abandonment whereof will have been as impossible to him as his own self-destruction.' this objection has been sufficiently overthrown: it is only a moral necessity; and it is always a happy necessity to be bound to act in accordance with the rules of perfect wisdom. . moreover, it appears to me that the reason for the belief held by many that the laws of motion are arbitrary comes from the fact that few people have properly examined them. it is known now that m. descartes was much mistaken in his statement of them. i have proved conclusively that conservation of the same quantity of motion cannot occur, but i consider that the same quantity of force is conserved, whether absolute or directive and respective, whether total or partial. my principles, which carry this subject as far as it can go, have not yet been published in full; but i have communicated them to friends competent to judge of them, who have approved them, and have converted some other persons of acknowledged erudition and ability. i discovered at the same time that the laws of motion actually existing in nature, and confirmed by experiments, are not in reality absolutely demonstrable, as a geometrical proposition would be; but neither is it necessary that they be so. they do not spring entirely from the principle of necessity, but rather from the principle of perfection and order; they are an effect of the choice and the wisdom of god. i can demonstrate these laws in divers ways, but must always assume something that is not of an absolutely geometrical necessity. thus these admirable laws are wonderful evidence of an intelligent and free being, as opposed to the system of absolute and brute necessity, advocated by strato or spinoza. . i have found that one may account for these laws by assuming that the effect is always equal in force to its cause, or, which amounts to the same thing, that the same force is conserved always: but this axiom of higher philosophy cannot be demonstrated geometrically. one may again apply other principles of like nature, for instance the principle that action is always equal to reaction, one which assumes in things a distaste for external change, and cannot be derived either from extension or impenetrability; and that other principle, that a simple movement has the same properties as those which might belong to a compound movement such as would produce [ ] the same phenomena of locomotion. these assumptions are very plausible, and are successful as an explanation of the laws of motion: nothing is so appropriate, all the more since they are in accord with each other. but there is to be found in them no absolute necessity, such as may compel us to admit them, in the way one is compelled to admit the rules of logic, of arithmetic and geometry. . it seems, when one considers the indifference of matter to motion and to rest, that the largest body at rest could be carried along without any resistance by the smallest body in motion, in which case there would be action without reaction and an effect greater than its cause. there is also no necessity to say of the motion of a ball which runs freely on an even, horizontal plane, with a certain degree of speed, termed a, that this motion must have the properties of that motion which it would have if it were going with lesser speed in a boat, itself moving in the same direction with the residue of the speed, to ensure that the ball, seen from the bank, advance with the same degree a. for, although the same appearance of speed and of direction results through this medium of the boat, it is not because it is the same thing. nevertheless it happens that the effects of the collision of the balls in the boat, the motion in each one separately combined with that of the boat giving the appearance of that which goes on outside the boat, also give the appearance of the effects that these same balls colliding would have outside the boat. all that is admirable, but one does not see its absolute necessity. a movement on the two sides of the right-angled triangle composes a movement on the hypotenuse; but it does not follow that a ball moving on the hypotenuse must produce the effect of two balls of its own size moving on the two sides: yet that is true. nothing is so appropriate as this result, and god has chosen the laws that produce it: but one sees no geometrical necessity therein. yet it is this very lack of necessity which enhances the beauty of the laws that god has chosen, wherein divers admirable axioms exist in conjunction, and it is impossible for one to say which of them is the primary. . i have also shown that therein is observed that excellent law of continuity, which i have perhaps been the first to state, and which is a kind of touchstone whose test the rules of m. descartes, of father fabry, father pardies, father de malebranche and others cannot pass. in virtue of this law, one must be able to regard rest as a movement vanishing [ ] after having continually diminished, and likewise equality as an inequality that vanishes also, as would happen through the continual diminution of the greater of two unequal bodies, while the smaller retains its size. as a consequence of this consideration, the general rule for unequal bodies, or bodies in motion, must apply also to equal bodies or to bodies one of which is at rest, as to a particular case of the rule. this does result in the true laws of motion, and does not result in certain laws invented by m. descartes and by some other men of talent, which already on that score alone prove to be ill-concerted, so that one may predict that experiment will not favour them. . these considerations make it plain that the laws of nature regulating movements are neither entirely necessary nor entirely arbitrary. the middle course to be taken is that they are a choice of the most perfect wisdom. and this great example of the laws of motion shows with the utmost clarity how much difference there is between these three cases, to wit, firstly _an absolute necessity_, metaphysical or geometrical, which may be called blind, and which does not depend upon any but efficient causes; in the second place, _a moral necessity_, which comes from the free choice of wisdom in relation to final causes; and finally in the third place, _something absolutely arbitrary_, depending upon an indifference of equipoise, which is imagined, but which cannot exist, where there is no sufficient reason either in the efficient or in the final cause. consequently one must conclude how mistaken it is to confuse either that which is absolutely necessary with that which is determined by the reason of the best, or the freedom that is determined by reason with a vague indifference. . this also settles m. bayle's difficulty, for he fears that, if god is always determinate, nature could dispense with him and bring about that same effect which is attributed to him, through the necessity of the order of things. that would be true if the laws of motion for instance, and all the rest, had their source in a geometrical necessity of efficient causes; but in the last analysis one is obliged to resort to something depending upon final causes and upon what is fitting. this also utterly destroys the most plausible reasoning of the naturalists. dr. johann joachim becher, a german physician, well known for his books on chemistry, had composed a prayer which looked like getting him into trouble. it began: 'o sancta[ ] mater natura, aeterne rerum ordo'. and it ended by saying that this nature must forgive him his errors, since she herself was their cause. but the nature of things, if taken as without intelligence and without choice, has in it nothing sufficiently determinant. herr becher did not sufficiently take into account that the author of things (_natura naturans_) must be good and wise, and that we can be evil without complicity on his part in our acts of wickedness. when a wicked man exists, god must have found in the region of possibles the idea of such a man forming part of that sequence of things, the choice of which was demanded by the greatest perfection of the universe, and in which errors and sins are not only punished but even repaired to greater advantage, so that they contribute to the greatest good. . m. bayle, however, has extended the free choice of god a little too far. speaking of the peripatetic strato (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ), who asserted that everything had been brought forth by the necessity of a nature devoid of intelligence, he maintains that this philosopher, on being asked why a tree has not the power to form bones and veins, might have asked in his turn: why has matter precisely three dimensions? why should not two have sufficed for it? why has it not four? 'if one had answered that there can be neither more nor less than three dimensions he would have demanded the cause of this impossibility.' these words lead one to believe that m. bayle suspected that the number of the dimensions of matter depended upon god's choice, even as it depended upon him to cause or not to cause trees to produce animals. indeed, how do we know whether there are not planetary globes or earths situated in some more remote place in the universe where the fable of the barnacle-geese of scotland (birds that were said to be born of trees) proves true, and even whether there are not countries where one could say: _... populos umbrosa creavit_ _fraxinus, et foeta viridis puer excidit alno?_ but with the dimensions of matter it is not thus: the ternary number is determined for it not by the reason of the best, but by a geometrical necessity, because the geometricians have been able to prove that there are only three straight lines perpendicular to one another which can intersect at one and the same point. nothing more appropriate could have been [ ] chosen to show the difference there is between the moral necessity that accounts for the choice of wisdom and the brute necessity of strato and the adherents of spinoza, who deny to god understanding and will, than a consideration of the difference existing between the reason for the laws of motion and the reason for the ternary number of the dimensions: for the first lies in the choice of the best and the second in a geometrical and blind necessity. . having spoken of the laws of bodies, that is, of the rules of motion, let us come to the laws of the union between body and soul, where m. bayle believes that he finds again some vague indifference, something absolutely arbitrary. here is the way he speaks of it in his _reply_ (vol. ii, ch. , p. ): 'it is a puzzling question whether bodies have some natural property of doing harm or good to man's soul. if one answers yes, one plunges into an insane labyrinth: for, as man's soul is an immaterial substance, one will be bound to say that the local movement of certain bodies is an efficient cause of the thoughts in a mind, a statement contrary to the most obvious notions that philosophy imparts to us. if one answers no, one will be constrained to admit that the influence of our organs upon our thoughts depends neither upon the internal qualities of matter, nor upon the laws of motion, but upon an _arbitrary institution_ of the creator. one must then admit that it depended altogether upon god's freedom to combine particular thoughts of our soul with particular modifications of our body, even when he had once established all the laws for the action of bodies one upon another. whence it results that there is in the universe no portion of matter which by its proximity can harm us, save when god wills it; and consequently, that the earth is as capable as any other place of being the abode of the happy man.... in short it is evident that there is no need, in order to prevent the wrong choices of freedom, to transport man outside the earth. god could do on earth with regard to all the acts of the will what he does in respect of the good works of the predestined when he settles their outcome, whether by efficacious or by sufficient grace: and that grace, without in any way impairing freedom, is always followed by the assent of the soul. it would be as easy for him on earth as in heaven to bring about the determination of our souls to a good choice.' . i agree with m. bayle that god could have so ordered bodies and [ ] souls on this globe of earth, whether by ways of nature or by extraordinary graces, that it would have been a perpetual paradise and a foretaste of the celestial state of the blessed. there is no reason why there should not be worlds happier than ours; but god had good reasons for willing that ours should be such as it is. nevertheless, in order to prove that a better state would have been possible here, m. bayle had no need to resort to the system of occasional causes: it abounds in miracles and in hypotheses for which their very originators confess there is no justification; and these are two defects such as will most of all estrange a system from true philosophy. it is a cause for surprise, in the first place, that m. bayle did not bethink himself of the system of pre-established harmony which he had examined before, and which for this matter was so opportune. but as in this system all is connected and harmonious, all following from reasons and nothing being left incomplete or exposed to the rash discretion of perfect indifference, it seems that it was not pleasing to m. bayle: for he was here somewhat biassed in favour of such indifference, which, notwithstanding, he contested so strongly on other occasions. he was much given to passing from one extreme to the other, not with an ill intention or against his own conviction, but because there was as yet nothing settled in his mind on the question concerned. he contented himself with whatever suited him for frustrating the opponent he had in mind, his aim being only to perplex philosophers, and show the weakness of our reason; and never, in my opinion, did either arcesilaus or carneades argue for and against with more eloquence and more wit. but, after all, one must not doubt for the sake of doubting: doubts must serve us as a gangway to the truth. that is what i often said to the late abbé foucher, a few specimens of whose work prove that he designed to do with regard to the academicians what lipsius and scioppius had done for the stoics, and m. gassendi for epicurus, and what m. dacier has so well begun for plato. it must not be possible for us to offer true philosophers such a reproach as that implied in the celebrated casaubon's answer to those who, in showing him the hall of the sorbonne, told him that debate had been carried on there for some centuries. what conclusions have been reached? he said to them. . m. bayle goes on (p. ): 'it is true that since the laws of motion were instituted in such forms as we see now in the world, it is an inevitable necessity that a hammer striking a nut should break it, and[ ] that a stone falling on a man's foot should cause some bruise or some derangement of its parts. but that is all that can follow the action of this stone upon the human body. if you want it in addition to cause a feeling of pain, then one must assume the institution of a code other than that one which regulates the action and reaction of bodies one upon another; one must, i say, have recourse to the particular system of the laws of union between the soul and certain bodies. now as this system is not of necessity connected with the other, the indifference of god does not cease in relation to the one immediately upon his choice of the other. he therefore combined these two systems with a complete freedom, like two things which did not follow naturally the one from the other. thus it is by an arbitrary institution he has ordained that wounds in the body should cause pain in the soul which is united to this body. it therefore only rested with him to have chosen another system of union between soul and body: he was therefore able to choose one in accordance wherewith wounds only evoke the idea of the remedy and an intense but agreeable desire to apply it. he was able to arrange that all bodies which were on the point of breaking a man's head or piercing his heart should evoke a lively sense of danger, and that this sense should cause the body to remove itself promptly out of reach of the blow. all that would have come to pass without miracles, since there would have been general laws on this subject. the system which we know by experience teaches us that the determination of the movement of certain bodies changes in pursuance of our desires. it was therefore possible for a combination to be effected between our desires and the movement of certain bodies, whereby the nutritive juices were so modified that the good arrangement of our organs was never affected.' . it is evident that m. bayle believes that everything accomplished through general laws is accomplished without miracles. but i have shown sufficiently that if the law is not founded on reasons and does not serve to explain the event through the nature of things, it can only be put into execution by a miracle. if, for example, god had ordained that bodies must have a circular motion, he would have needed perpetual miracles, or the ministry of angels, to put this order into execution: for that is contrary to the nature of motion, whereby the body naturally abandons the circular line to continue in the tangent straight line if nothing holds it [ ] back. therefore it is not enough for god to ordain simply that a wound should excite an agreeable sensation: natural means must be found for that purpose. the real means whereby god causes the soul to be conscious of what happens in the body have their origin in the nature of the soul, which represents the bodies, and is so made beforehand that the representations which are to spring up one from another within it, by a natural sequence of thoughts, correspond to the changes in the body. . the representation has a natural relation to that which is to be represented. if god should have the round shape of a body represented by the idea of a square, that would be an unsuitable representation: for there would be angles or projections in the representation, while all would be even and smooth in the original. the representation often suppresses something in the objects when it is imperfect; but it can add nothing: that would render it, not more than perfect, but false. moreover, the suppression is never complete in our perceptions, and there is in the representation, confused as it is, more than we see there. thus there is reason for supposing that the ideas of heat, cold, colours, etc., also only represent the small movements carried out in the organs, when one is conscious of these qualities, although the multiplicity and the diminutive character of these movements prevents their clear representation. almost in the same way it happens that we do not distinguish the blue and the yellow which play their part in the representation as well as in the composition of the green, when the microscope shows that what appears to be green is composed of yellow and blue parts. . it is true that the same thing may be represented in different ways; but there must always be an exact relation between the representation and the thing, and consequently between the different representations of one and the same thing. the projections in perspective of the conic sections of the circle show that one and the same circle may be represented by an ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola, and even by another circle, a straight line and a point. nothing appears so different nor so dissimilar as these figures; and yet there is an exact relation between each point and every other point. thus one must allow that each soul represents the universe to itself according to its point of view, and through a relation which is peculiar to it; but a perfect harmony always subsists therein. god, if he wished to effect representation of the dissolution of continuity of [ ] the body by an agreeable sensation in the soul, would not have neglected to ensure that this very dissolution should serve some perfection in the body, by giving it some new relief, as when one is freed of some burden or loosed from some bond. but organic bodies of such kinds, although possible, do not exist upon our globe, which doubtless lacks innumerable inventions that god may have put to use elsewhere. nevertheless it is enough that, due allowance being made for the place our world holds in the universe, nothing can be done for it better than what god does. he makes the best possible use of the laws of nature which he has established and (as m. regis also acknowledged in the same passage) 'the laws that god has established in nature are the most excellent it is possible to conceive'. . i will add to that the remark from the _journal des savants_ of the th march , which m. bayle has inserted in chapter of the _reply to the questions of a provincial_ (vol. iii, p. ). the matter in question is the extract from a very ingenious modern book on the origin of evil, to which i have already referred here. it is stated: 'that the general solution in respect of physical evil which this book gives is that the universe must be regarded as a work composed of various pieces which form a whole; that, according to the laws established in nature, some parts cannot be better unless others become worse, whence would result a system less perfect as a whole. this principle', the writer goes on, 'is good; but if nothing is added to it, it does not appear sufficient. why has god established laws that give rise to so many difficulties? philosophers who are somewhat precise will say. could he not have established others of a kind not subject to any defects? and to cut the matter short, how comes it that he has prescribed laws for himself? why does he not act without general laws, in accordance with all his power and all his goodness? the writer has not carried the difficulty as far as that. by disentangling his ideas one might indeed possibly find means of solving the difficulty, but there is no development of the subject in his work.' . i suppose that the gifted author of this extract, when he thought the difficulty could be solved, had in mind something akin to my principles on this matter. if he had vouchsafed to declare himself in this passage, he would to all appearance have replied, like m. regis, that the laws god established were the most excellent that could be established. he would have acknowledged, at the same time, that god could not have refrained[ ] from establishing laws and following rules, because laws and rules are what makes order and beauty; that to act without rules would be to act without reason; and that because god _called into action all his goodness_ the exercise of his omnipotence was consistent with the laws of wisdom, to secure as much good as was possible of attainment. finally, he would have said, the existence of certain particular disadvantages which strike us is a sure indication that the best plan did not permit of their avoidance, and that they assist in the achievement of the total good, an argument wherewith m. bayle in more than one place expresses agreement. . now that i have proved sufficiently that everything comes to pass according to determinate reasons, there cannot be any more difficulty over these principles of god's foreknowledge. although these determinations do not compel, they cannot but be certain, and they foreshadow what shall happen. it is true that god sees all at once the whole sequence of this universe, when he chooses it, and that thus he has no need of the connexion of effects and causes in order to foresee these effects. but since his wisdom causes him to choose a sequence in perfect connexion, he cannot but see one part of the sequence in the other. it is one of the rules of my system of general harmony, _that the present is big with the future_, and that he who sees all sees in that which is that which shall be. what is more, i have proved conclusively that god sees in each portion of the universe the whole universe, owing to the perfect connexion of things. he is infinitely more discerning than pythagoras, who judged the height of hercules by the size of his footprint. there must therefore be no doubt that effects follow their causes determinately, in spite of contingency and even of freedom, which nevertheless exist together with certainty or determination. . durand de saint-pourçain, among others, has indicated this clearly in saying that contingent futurities are seen determinately in their causes, and that god, who knows all, seeing all that shall have power to tempt or repel the will, will see therein the course it shall take. i could cite many other authors who have said the same thing, and reason does not allow the possibility of thinking otherwise. m. jacquelot implies also (_conformity of faith with reason_, p. _et seqq._), as m. bayle observes (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ), that the dispositions of the human heart and those of circumstances acquaint god unerringly with the choice that man shall make. m. bayle [ ] adds that some molinists say the same, and refers us to those who are quoted in the _suavis concordia_ of pierre de s. joseph, the feuillant (pp. , ). . those who have confused this determination with necessity have fabricated monsters in order to fight them. to avoid a reasonable thing which they had disguised under a hideous shape, they have fallen into great absurdities. for fear of being obliged to admit an imaginary necessity, or at least one different from that in question, they have admitted something which happens without the existence of any cause or reason for it. this amounts to the same as the absurd deviation of atoms, which according to epicurus happened without any cause. cicero, in his book on divination, saw clearly that if the cause could produce an effect towards which it was entirely indifferent there would be a true chance, a genuine luck, an actual fortuitous case, that is, one which would be so not merely in relation to us and our ignorance, according to which one may say: _sed te_ _nos facimus, fortuna, deam, caeloque locamus,_ but even in relation to god and to the nature of things. consequently it would be impossible to foresee events by judging of the future by the past. he adds fittingly in the same passage: 'qui potest provideri, quicquam futurum esse, quod neque causam habet ullam, neque notam cur futurum sit?' and soon after: 'nihil est tam contrarium rationi et constantiae, quam fortuna; ut mihi ne in deum quidem cadere videatur, ut sciat quid casu et fortuito futurum sit. si enim scit, certe illud eveniet: sin certe eveniet, nulla fortuna est.' if the future is certain, there is no such thing as luck. but he wrongly adds: 'est autum fortuna; rerum igitur fortuitarum nulla praesensio est.' there is luck, therefore future events cannot be foreseen. he ought rather to have concluded that, events being predetermined and foreseen, there is no luck. but he was then speaking against the stoics, in the character of an academician. . the stoics already derived from the decrees of god the prevision of events. for, as cicero says in the same book: 'sequitur porro nihil deos ignorare, quod omnia ab iis sint constituta.' and, according to my system, god, having seen the possible world that he desired to create, foresaw[ ] everything therein. thus one may say that the _divine knowledge of vision differs from the knowledge of simple intelligence_ only in that it adds to the latter the acquaintance with the actual decree to choose this sequence of things which simple intelligence had already presented, but only as possible; and this decree now makes the present universe. . thus the socinians cannot be excused for denying to god the certain knowledge of future events, and above all of the future resolves of a free creature. for even though they had supposed that there is a freedom of complete indifference, so that the will can choose without cause, and that thus this effect could not be seen in its cause (which is a great absurdity), they ought always to take into account that god was able to foresee this event in the idea of the possible world that he resolved to create. but the idea which they have of god is unworthy of the author of things, and is not commensurate with the skill and wit which the writers of this party often display in certain particular discussions. the author of the _reflexion on the picture of socinianism_ was not altogether mistaken in saying that the god of the socinians would be ignorant and powerless, like the god of epicurus, every day confounded by events and living from one day to the next, if he only knows by conjecture what the will of men is to be. . the whole difficulty here has therefore only come from a wrong idea of contingency and of freedom, which was thought to have need of a complete indifference or equipoise, an imaginary thing, of which neither a notion nor an example exists, nor ever can exist. apparently m. descartes had been imbued with the idea in his youth, at the college of la flèche. that caused him to say (part i of his _principles_, art. ): 'our thought is finite, and the knowledge and omnipotence of god, whereby he has not only known from all eternity everything that is, or that can be, but also has willed it, is infinite. thus we have enough intelligence to recognize clearly and distinctly that this power and this knowledge are in god; but we have not enough so to comprehend their extent that we can know how they leave the actions of men entirely free and indeterminate.' the continuation has already been quoted above. 'entirely free', that is right; but one spoils everything by adding 'entirely indeterminate'. one has no need of infinite knowledge in order to see that the foreknowledge and the providence of god allow freedom to our actions, since god has foreseen those actions in [ ] his ideas, just as they are, that is, free. laurentius valla indeed, in his _dialogue against boethius_ (which i will presently quote in epitome) ably undertakes to reconcile freedom with foreknowledge, but does not venture to hope that he can reconcile it with providence. yet there is no more difficulty in the one than the other, because the decree to give existence to this action no more changes its nature than does one's mere consciousness thereof. but there is no knowledge, however infinite it be, which can reconcile the knowledge and providence of god with actions of an indeterminate cause, that is to say, with a chimerical and impossible being. the actions of the will are determined in two ways, by the foreknowledge or providence of god, and also by the dispositions of the particular immediate cause, which lie in the inclinations of the soul. m. descartes followed the thomists on this point; but he wrote with his usual circumspection, so as not to come into conflict with some other theologians. . m. bayle relates (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ) that father gibieuf of the oratory published a latin treatise on the freedom of god and of the creature, in the year ; that he was met with protests, and was shown a collection of seventy contradictions taken from the first book of his work; and that, twenty years after, father annat, confessor to the king of france, reproached him in his book _de incoacta libertate_ (ed. rome, , in to.), for the silence he still maintained. who would not think (adds m. bayle), after the uproar of the _de auxiliis_ congregations, that the thomists taught things touching the nature of free will which were entirely opposed to the opinion of the jesuits? when, however, one considers the passages that father annat quoted from the works of the thomists (in a pamphlet entitled: _jansenius a thomistis, gratiae per se ipsam efficacis defensoribus, condemnatus_, printed in paris in the year in to.) one can in reality only see verbal controversies between the two sects. the grace efficacious of itself, according to the one side, leaves to free will quite as much power of resistance as the congruent grace of the others. m. bayle thinks one can say almost as much of jansenius himself. he was (so he says) an able man, of a methodical mind and of great assiduity. he worked for twenty-two years at his _augustinus_. one of his aims was to refute the jesuits on the dogma of free will; yet no decision has yet been reached as to whether he rejects or adopts freedom of indifference. from his work innumerable passages [ ] are quoted for and against this opinion, as father annat has himself shown in the work that has just been mentioned, _de incoacta libertate_. so easy is it to render this subject obscure, as m. bayle says at the conclusion of this discourse. as for father gibieuf, it must be admitted that he often alters the meaning of his terms, and that consequently he does not answer the question in the main, albeit he often writes with good sense. . indeed, confusion springs, more often than not, from ambiguity in terms, and from one's failure to take trouble over gaining clear ideas about them. that gives rise to these eternal, and usually mistaken, contentions on necessity and contingency, on the possible and the impossible. but provided that it is understood that necessity and possibility, taken metaphysically and strictly, depend solely upon this question, whether the object in itself or that which is opposed to it implies contradiction or not; and that one takes into account that contingency is consistent with the inclinations, or reasons which contribute towards causing determination by the will; provided also that one knows how to distinguish clearly between necessity and determination or certainty, between metaphysical necessity, which admits of no choice, presenting only one single object as possible, and moral necessity, which constrains the wisest to choose the best; finally, provided that one is rid of the chimera of complete indifference, which can only be found in the books of philosophers, and on paper (for they cannot even conceive the notion in their heads, or prove its reality by an example in things) one will easily escape from a labyrinth whose unhappy daedalus was the human mind. that labyrinth has caused infinite confusion, as much with the ancients as with those of later times, even so far as to lead men into the absurd error of the lazy sophism, which closely resembles fate after the turkish fashion. i do not wonder if in reality the thomists and the jesuits, and even the molinists and the jansenists, agree together on this matter more than is supposed. a thomist and even a wise jansenist will content himself with certain determination, without going on to necessity: and if someone goes so far, the error mayhap will lie only in the word. a wise molinist will be content with an indifference opposed to necessity, but such as shall not exclude prevalent inclinations. . these difficulties, however, have greatly impressed m. bayle, who[ ] was more inclined to dwell on them than to solve them, although he might perhaps have had better success than anyone if he had thought fit to turn his mind in that direction. here is what he says of them in his _dictionary_, art. 'jansenius', lit. g, p. : 'someone has said that the subject of grace is an ocean which has neither shore nor bottom. perhaps he would have spoken more correctly if he had compared it to the strait of messina, where one is always in danger of striking one reef while endeavouring to avoid another. _dextrum scylla latus, laevum implacata charybdis_ _obsidet._ everything comes back in the end to this: did adam sin freely? if you answer yes, then you will be told, his fall was not foreseen. if you answer no, then you will be told, he is not guilty. you may write a hundred volumes against the one or the other of these conclusions, and yet you will confess, either that the infallible prevision of a contingent event is a mystery impossible to conceive, or that the way in which a creature which acts without freedom sins nevertheless is altogether incomprehensible.' . either i am greatly mistaken or these two alleged incomprehensibilities are ended altogether by my solutions. would to god it were as easy to answer the question how to cure fevers, and how to avoid the perils of two chronic sicknesses that may originate, the one from not curing the fever, the other from curing it wrongly. when one asserts that a free event cannot be foreseen, one is confusing freedom with indetermination, or with indifference that is complete and in equipoise; and when one maintains that the lack of freedom would prevent man from being guilty, one means a freedom exempt, not from determination or from certainty, but from necessity and from constraint. this shows that the dilemma is not well expressed, and that there is a wide passage between the two perilous reefs. one will reply, therefore, that adam sinned freely, and that god saw him sinning in the possible state of adam, which became actual in accordance with the decree of the divine permission. it is true that adam was determined to sin in consequence of certain prevailing inclinations: but this determination destroys neither contingency nor freedom. moreover, the certain determination to sin which exists in man does not deprive him of the power to avoid sinning (speaking generally) or, since he does sin, prevent him from being guilty and deserving [ ] punishment. this is more especially so since the punishment may be of service to him or others, to contribute towards determining them another time not to sin. there is besides punitive justice, which goes beyond compensation and amendment, and wherein also there is nothing liable to be shaken by the certain determination of the contingent resolutions of the will. it may be said, on the contrary, that the penalties and rewards would be to some extent unavailing, and would fail in one of their aims, that of amendment, if they could not contribute towards determining the will to do better another time. . m. bayle continues: 'where freedom is concerned there are only two courses to take: one is to say that all the causes distinct from the soul, and co-operating with it, leave it the power to act or not to act; the other is to say that they so determine it to act that it cannot forbear to do so. the first course is that taken by the molinists, the other is that of the thomists and jansenists and the protestants of the geneva confession. yet the thomists have clamorously maintained that they were not jansenists; and the latter have maintained with equal warmth that where freedom was concerned they were not calvinists. on the other hand, the molinists have maintained that st. augustine did not teach jansenism. thus the one side not wishing to admit that they were in conformity with people who were considered heretics, and the other side not wishing to admit that they were in opposition to a learned saint whose opinions were always considered orthodox, have both performed a hundred feats of contortion, etc.' . the two courses which m. bayle distinguishes here do not exclude a third course, according to which the determination of the soul does not come solely from the co-operation of all the causes distinct from the soul, but also from the state of the soul itself and its inclinations which mingle with the impressions of the senses, strengthening or weakening them. now all the internal and external causes taken together bring it about that the soul is determined certainly, but not of necessity: for no contradiction would be implied if the soul were to be determined differently, it being possible for the will to be inclined, but not possible for it to be compelled by necessity. i will not venture upon a discussion of the difference existing between the jansenists and the reformed on this matter. they are not perhaps always fully in accord [ ] with themselves as regards things, or as regards expressions, on a matter where one often loses one's way in bewildering subtleties. father theophile raynaud, in his book entitled _calvinismus religio bestiarum_, wished to strike at the dominicans, without naming them. on the other hand, those who professed to be followers of st. augustine reproached the molinists with pelagianism or at the least semi-pelagianism. things were carried to excess at times by both sides, whether in their defence of a vague indifference and the granting of too much to man, or in their teaching _determinationem ad unum secundum qualitatem actus licet non quoad ejus substantiam_, that is to say, a determination to evil in the non-regenerate, as if they did nothing but sin. after all, i think one must not reproach any but the adherents of hobbes and spinoza with destroying freedom and contingency; for they think that that which happens is alone possible, and must happen by a brute geometrical necessity. hobbes made everything material and subjected it to mathematical laws alone; spinoza also divested god of intelligence and choice, leaving him a blind power, whence all emanates of necessity. the theologians of the two protestant parties are equally zealous in refuting an unendurable necessity. although those who follow the synod of dordrecht teach sometimes that it suffices for freedom to be exempt from constraint, it seems that the necessity they leave in it is only hypothetical, or rather that which is more appropriately termed certainty and infallibility. thus it results that very often the difficulties only lie in the terms. i say as much with regard to the jansenists, although i do not wish to make excuse for those people in everything. . with the hebrew cabalists, _malcuth_ or the kingdom, the last of the sephiroth, signified that god controls everything irresistibly, but gently and without violence, so that man thinks he is following his own will while he carries out god's. they said that adam's sin had been _truncatio malcuth a caeteris plantis_, that is to say, that adam had cut back the last of the sephiroth, by making a dominion for himself within god's dominion, and by assuming for himself a freedom independent of god, but that his fall had taught him that he could not subsist of himself, and that men must needs be redeemed by the messiah. this doctrine may receive a good interpretation. but spinoza, who was versed in the cabala of the writers of his race, and who says (_tractatus politicus_, c. , n. ) that men, conceiving of freedom as they do, establish a dominion within god's dominion, has [ ] gone too far. the dominion of god is with spinoza nothing but the dominion of necessity, and of a blind necessity (as with strato), whereby everything emanates from the divine nature, while no choice is left to god, and man's choice does not exempt him from necessity. he adds that men, in order to establish what is termed _imperium in imperio_, supposed that their soul was a direct creation of god, something which could not be produced by natural causes, furthermore that it had an absolute power of determination, a state of things contrary to experience. spinoza is right in opposing an absolute power of determination, that is, one without any grounds; it does not belong even to god. but he is wrong in thinking that a soul, that a simple substance, can be produced naturally. it seems, indeed, that the soul to him was only a transient modification; and when he pretends to make it lasting, and even perpetual, he substitutes for it the idea of the body, which is purely a notion and not a real and actual thing. . the story m. bayle relates of johan bredenburg, a citizen of rotterdam (_dictionary_, art. 'spinoza', lit. h, p. ) is curious. he published a book against spinoza, entitled: _enervatio tractatus theologico-politici, una cum demonstratione geometrico ordine disposita, naturam non esse deum, cujus effati contrario praedictus tractatus unice innititur_. one was surprised to see that a man who did not follow the profession of letters, and who had but slight education (having written his book in flemish, and had it translated into latin), had been able to penetrate with such subtlety all the principles of spinoza, and succeed in overthrowing them, after having reduced them by a candid analysis to a state wherein they could appear in their full force. i have been told (adds m. bayle) that this writer after copious reflexion upon his answer, and upon the principle of his opponent, finally found that this principle could be reduced to the form of a demonstration. he undertook therefore to prove that there is no cause of all things other than a nature which exists necessarily, and which acts according to an immutable, inevitable and irrevocable necessity. he examined the whole system of the geometricians, and after having constructed his demonstration he scrutinized it from every imaginable angle, he endeavoured to find its weak spot and was never able to discover any means of destroying it, or even of weakening it. that caused him real distress: he groaned over it and begged the most talented of his [ ] friends to help him in searching out the defects of this demonstration. for all that, he was not well pleased that copies of the book were made. franz cuper, a socinian (who had written _arcana atheismi revelata_ against spinoza, rotterdam, , in to.), having obtained a copy, published it just as it was, that is, in flemish, with some reflexions, and accused the author of being an atheist. the accused made his defence in the same tongue. orobio, a very able jewish physician (that one who was refuted by m. limbourg, and who replied, so i have heard say, in a work posthumously circulated, but unpublished), brought out a book opposing bredenburg's demonstration, entitled: _certamen philosophicum propugnatae veritatis divinae ac naturalis, adversus j.b. principia, amsterdam_, . m. aubert de versé also wrote in opposition to him the same year under the name of latinus serbattus sartensis. bredenburg protested that he was convinced of free will and of religion, and that he wished he might be shown a possibility of refuting his own demonstration. . i would desire to see this alleged demonstration, and to know whether it tended to prove that primitive nature, which produces all, acts without choice and without knowledge. in this case, i admit that his proof was spinozistic and dangerous. but if he meant perhaps that the divine nature is determined toward that which it produces, by its choice and through the motive of the best, there was no need for him to grieve about this so-called immutable, inevitable, irrevocable necessity. it is only moral, it is a happy necessity; and instead of destroying religion it shows divine perfection to the best advantage. . i take this opportunity to add that m. bayle quotes (p. ) the opinion of those who believe that the book entitled _lucii antistii constantis de jure ecclesiasticorum liber singularis_, published in , is by spinoza. but i have reason for doubting this, despite that m. colerus, who has passed on to me an account he wrote of the life of that famous jew, is also of that opinion. the initial letters l.a.c. lead me to believe that the author of this book was m. de la cour or van den hoof, famous for works on the _interest of holland, political equipoise_, and numerous other books that he published (some of them under the signature v.d.h.) attacking the power of the governor of holland, which was at that time considered a danger to the republic; for the memory of prince william the second's attempt upon the city of amsterdam was still quite fresh.[ ] most of the ecclesiastics of holland were on the side of this prince's son, who was then a minor, and they suspected m. de witt and what was called the lowenstein faction of favouring the arminians, the cartesians, and other sects that were feared still more, endeavouring to rouse the populace against them, and not without success, as the event proved. it was thus very natural that m. de la cour should publish this book. it is true that people seldom keep to the happy mean in works published to further party interests. i will say in passing that a french version of the _interest of holland_ by m. de la cour has just been published, under the deceptive title of _mémoires de m. le grand-pensionnaire de witt_; as if the thoughts of a private individual, who was, to be sure, of de witt's party, and a man of talent, but who had not enough acquaintance with public affairs or enough ability to write as that great minister of state might have written, could pass for the production of one of the first men of his time. . i saw m. de la cour as well as spinoza on my return from france by way of england and holland, and i learnt from them a few good anecdotes on the affairs of that time. m. bayle says, p. , that spinoza studied latin under a physician named franz van den ende. he tells at the same time, on the authority of sebastian kortholt (who refers to it in the preface to the second edition of the book by his late father, _de tribus impostoribus, herberto l. b. de cherbury, hobbio et spinoza_) that a girl instructed spinoza in latin, and that she afterwards married m. kerkering, who was her pupil at the same time as spinoza. in connexion with that i note that this young lady was a daughter of m. van den ende, and that she assisted her father in the work of teaching. van den ende, who was also called a. finibus, later went to paris, and there kept a boarding-school in the faubourg st. antoine. he was considered excellent as an instructor, and he told me, when i called upon him there, that he would wager that his audiences would always pay attention to his words. he had with him as well at that time a young girl who also spoke latin, and worked upon geometrical demonstrations. he had insinuated himself into m. arnauld's good graces, and the jesuits began to be jealous of his reputation. but he disappeared shortly afterwards, having been mixed up in the chevalier de rohan's conspiracy. . i think i have sufficiently proved that neither the foreknowledge nor the providence of god can impair either his justice or his goodness, [ ] or our freedom. there remains only the difficulty arising from god's co-operation with the actions of the creature, which seems to concern more closely both his goodness, in relation to our evil actions, and our freedom, in relation to good actions as well as to others. m. bayle has brought out this also with his usual acuteness. i will endeavour to throw light upon the difficulties he puts forward, and then i shall be in a position to conclude this work. i have already proved that the co-operation of god consists in giving us continually all that is real in us and in our actions, in so far as it involves perfection; but that all that is limited and imperfect therein is a consequence of the previous limitations which are originally in the creature. since, moreover, every action of the creature is a change of its modifications, it is obvious that action arises in the creature in relation to the limitations or negations which it has within itself, and which are diversified by this change. . i have already pointed out more than once in this work that evil is a consequence of privation, and i think that i have explained that intelligibly enough. st. augustine has already put forward this idea, and st. basil said something of the same kind in his _hexaëmeron_, homil. , 'that vice is not a living and animate substance, but an affection of the soul contrary to virtue, which arises from one's abandoning the good; and there is therefore no need to look for an original evil'. m. bayle, quoting this passage in his _dictionary_ (art. 'paulicians', lit. d, p. ) commends a remark by herr pfanner (whom he calls a german theologian, but he is a jurist by profession, counsellor to the dukes of saxony), who censures st. basil for not being willing to admit that god is the author of physical evil. doubtless god is its author, when the moral evil is assumed to be already in existence; but speaking generally, one might assert that god permitted physical evil by implication, in permitting moral evil which is its source. it appears that the stoics knew also how slender is the entity of evil. these words of epictetus are an indication: 'sicut aberrandi causa meta non ponitur, sic nec natura mali in mundo existit.' . there was therefore no need to have recourse to a principle of evil, as st. basil aptly observes. nor is it necessary either to seek the origin of evil in matter. those who believed that there was a chaos before god laid his hand upon it sought therein the source of disorder. it was an opinion which plato introduced into his _timaeus_. aristotle found fault with him for that (in his third book on heaven, ch. ) because, [ ] according to this doctrine, disorder would be original and natural, and order would have been introduced against nature. this anaxagoras avoided by making matter remain at rest until it was stirred by god; and aristotle in the same passage commends him for it. according to plutarch (_de iside et osiride_, and _tr. de animae procreatione ex timaeo_) plato recognized in matter a certain maleficent soul or force, rebellious against god: it was an actual blemish, an obstacle to god's plans. the stoics also believed that matter was the source of defects, as justus lipsius showed in the first book of the physiology of the stoics. . aristotle was right in rejecting chaos: but it is not always easy to disentangle the conceptions of plato, and such a task would be still less easy in respect of some ancient authors whose works are lost. kepler, one of the most excellent of modern mathematicians, recognized a species of imperfection in matter, even when there is no irregular motion: he calls it its 'natural inertia', which gives it a resistance to motion, whereby a greater mass receives less speed from one and the same force. there is soundness in this observation, and i have used it to advantage in this work, in order to have a comparison such as should illustrate how the original imperfection of the creatures sets bounds to the action of the creator, which tends towards good. but as matter is itself of god's creation, it only furnishes a comparison and an example, and cannot be the very source of evil and of imperfection. i have already shown that this source lies in the forms or ideas of the possibles, for it must be eternal, and matter is not so. now since god made all positive reality that is not eternal, he would have made the source of evil, if that did not rather lie in the possibility of things or forms, that which alone god did not make, since he is not the author of his own understanding. . yet even though the source of evil lies in the possible forms, anterior to the acts of god's will, it is nevertheless true that god co-operates in evil in the actual performance of introducing these forms into matter: and this is what causes the difficulty in question here. durand de saint-pourçain, cardinal aureolus, nicolas taurel, father louis de dole, m. bernier and some others, speaking of this co-operation, would have it only general, for fear of impairing the freedom of man and the holiness of god. they seem to maintain that god, having given to creatures the power to act, contents himself with conserving this power. on the [ ] other hand, m. bayle, according to some modern writers, carries the cooperation of god too far: he seems to fear lest the creature be not sufficiently dependent upon god. he goes so far as to deny action to creatures; he does not even acknowledge any real distinction between accident and substance. . he places great reliance especially on that doctrine accepted of the schoolmen, that conservation is a continued creation. the conclusion to be drawn from this doctrine would seem to be that the creature never exists, that it is ever newborn and ever dying, like time, movement and other transient beings. plato believed this of material and tangible things, saying that they are in a perpetual flux, _semper fluunt, nunquam sunt_. but of immaterial substances he judged quite differently, regarding them alone as real: nor was he in that altogether mistaken. yet continued creation applies to all creatures without distinction. sundry good philosophers have been opposed to this dogma, and m. bayle tells that david de rodon, a philosopher renowned among those of the french who have adhered to geneva, deliberately refuted it. the arminians also do not approve of it; they are not much in favour of these metaphysical subtleties. i will say nothing of the socinians, who relish them even less. . for a proper enquiry as to _whether conservation is a continued creation,_ it would be necessary to consider the reasons whereon this dogma is founded. the cartesians, after the example of their master, employ in order to prove it a principle which is not conclusive enough. they say that 'the moments of time having no necessary connexion with one another, it does not follow that because i am at this moment i shall exist at the moment which shall follow, if the same cause which gives me being for this moment does not also give it to me for the instant following.' the author of the _reflexion on the picture of socinianism_ has made use of this argument, and m. bayle (perhaps the author of this same _reflexion_) quotes it (_reply to the questions of a provincial_, vol. iii, ch. , p. ). one may answer that in fact it does not follow _of necessity_ that, because i am, i shall be; but this follows _naturally_, nevertheless, that is, of itself, _per se_, if nothing prevents it. it is the distinction that can be drawn between the essential and the natural. for the same movement endures naturally unless some new cause prevents it or changes it, because the reason which makes it cease at this instant, if it is no new reason, [ ] would have already made it cease sooner. . the late herr erhard weigel, a celebrated mathematician and philosopher at jena, well known for his _analysis euclidea_, his mathematical philosophy, some neat mechanical inventions, and finally the trouble he took to induce the protestant princes of the empire to undertake the last reform of the almanac, whose success, notwithstanding, he did not witness; herr weigel, i say, communicated to his friends a certain demonstration of the existence of god, which indeed amounted to this idea of continued creation. as he was wont to draw parallels between reckoning and reasoning--witness his arithmetical ethics (_rechenschaftliche sittenlehre_)--he said that the foundation of the demonstration was this beginning of the pythagorean table, _once one is one_. these repeated unities were the moments of the existence of things, each one of them depending upon god, who resuscitates, as it were, all things outside himself at each moment: falling away as they do at each moment, they must ever have one who shall resuscitate them, and that cannot be any other than god. but there would be need of a more exact proof if that is to be called a demonstration. it would be necessary to prove that the creature always emerges from nothingness and relapses thither forthwith. in particular it must be shown that the privilege of enduring more than a moment by its nature belongs to the necessary being alone. the difficulties on the composition of the _continuum_ enter also into this matter. this dogma appears to resolve time into moments, whereas others regard moments and points as mere modalities of the _continuum_, that is, as extremities of the parts that can be assigned to it, and not as constituent parts. but this is not the place for entering into that labyrinth. . what can be said for certain on the present subject is that the creature depends continually upon divine operation, and that it depends upon that no less after the time of its beginning than when it first begins. this dependence implies that it would not continue to exist if god did not continue to act; in short, that this action of god is free. for if it were a necessary emanation, like that of the properties of the circle, which issue from its essence, it must then be said that god in the beginning produced the creature by necessity; or else it must be shown how, in creating it once, he imposed upon himself the necessity of conserving it. now there is no reason why this conserving action should not be [ ] called production, and even creation, if one will: for the dependence being as great afterwards as at the beginning, the extrinsic designation of being new or not does not change the nature of that action. . let us then admit in such a sense that conservation is a continued creation, and let us see what m. bayle seems to infer thence (p. ) after the author of the _reflexion on the picture of socinianism_, in opposition to m. jurieu. 'it seems to me', this writer says, 'that one must conclude that god does all, and that in all creation there are no first or second or even occasional causes, as can be easily proved. at this moment when i speak, i am such as i am, with all my circumstances, with such thought, such action, whether i sit or stand, that if god creates me in this moment such as i am, as one must of necessity say in this system, he creates me with such thought, such action, such movement and such determination. one cannot say that god creates me in the first place, and that once i am created he produces with me my movements and my determinations. that is indefensible for two reasons. the first is, that when god creates me or conserves me at this instant, he does not conserve me as a being without form, like a species, or another of the universals of logic. i am an individual; he creates me and conserves me as such, and as being all that i am in this instant, with all my attendant circumstances. the second reason is that if god creates me in this instant, and one says that afterwards he produces with me my actions, it will be necessary to imagine another instant for action: for before acting one must exist. now that would be two instants where we only assume one. it is therefore certain in this hypothesis that creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation with their actions than they had with their production at the first moment of the first creation.' the author of this _reflexion_ draws thence very harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at the end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach those who approve this system how to extricate themselves from these frightful absurdities. . m. bayle carries this still further. 'you know', he says (p. ), 'that it is demonstrated in the scholastic writings' (he cites arriaga, _disp_. , phys., sect. et praesertim, sub-sect. ) 'that the creature cannot be either the total cause or the partial cause of its conservation: for if it were, it would exist before existing, which is [ ] contradictory. you know that the argument proceeds like this: that which conserves itself acts; now that which acts exists, and nothing can act before it has attained complete existence; therefore, if a creature conserved itself, it would act before being. this argument is not founded upon probabilities, but upon the first principles of metaphysics, _non entis nulla sunt accidentia, operari sequitur esse_, axioms as clear as daylight. let us go further. if creatures co-operated with god (here is meant an active cooperation, and not co-operation by a passive instrument) to conserve themselves they would act before being: that has been demonstrated. now if they co-operated with god for the production of any other thing, they would also act before being; it is therefore as impossible for them to co-operate with god for the production of any other thing (such as local movement, an affirmation, volition, entities actually distinct from their substance, so it is asserted) as for their own conservation. since their conservation is a continued creation, and since all human creatures in the world must confess that they cannot co-operate with god at the first moment of their existence, either to produce themselves or to give themselves any modality, since that would be to act before being (observe that thomas aquinas and sundry other schoolmen teach that if the angels had sinned at the first moment of their creation god would be the author of the sin: see the feuillant pierre de st. joseph, p. , _et seqq_., of the _suavis concordia humanae libertatis_; it is a sign that they acknowledge that at the first instant the creature cannot act in anything whatsoever), it follows manifestly that they cannot co-operate with god in any one of the subsequent moments, either to produce themselves or to produce any other thing. if they could co-operate therein at the second moment of their existence, nothing would prevent their being able to cooperate at the first moment.' . this is the way it will be necessary to answer these arguments. let us assume that the creature is produced anew at each instant; let us grant also that the instant excludes all priority of time, being indivisible; but let us point out that it does not exclude priority of nature, or what is called anteriority _in signo rationis,_ and that this is sufficient. the production, or action whereby god produces, is anterior by nature to the existence of the creature that is produced; the creature taken in itself, with its nature and its necessary properties, is anterior to its accidental affections and to its actions; and yet all these things are in being [ ] in the same moment. god produces the creature in conformity with the exigency of the preceding instants, according to the laws of his wisdom; and the creature operates in conformity with that nature which god conveys to it in creating it always. the limitations and imperfections arise therein through the nature of the subject, which sets bounds to god's production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of creatures. vice and crime, on the other hand, arise there through the free inward operation of the creature, in so far as this can occur within the instant, repetition afterwards rendering it discernible. . this anteriority of nature is a commonplace in philosophy: thus one says that the decrees of god have an order among themselves. when one ascribes to god (and rightly so) understanding of the arguments and conclusions of creatures, in such sort that all their demonstrations and syllogisms are known to him, and are found in him in a transcendent way, one sees that there is in the propositions or truths a natural order; but there is no order of time or interval, to cause him to advance in knowledge and pass from the premisses to the conclusion. . i find in the arguments that have just been quoted nothing which these reflexions fail to satisfy. when god produces the thing he produces it as an individual and not as a universal of logic (i admit); but he produces its essence before its accidents, its nature before its operations, following the priority of their nature, and _in signo anteriore rationis_. thus one sees how the creature can be the true cause of the sin, while conservation by god does not prevent the sin; god disposes in accordance with the preceding state of the same creature, in order to follow the laws of his wisdom notwithstanding the sin, which in the first place will be produced by the creature. but it is true that god would not in the beginning have created the soul in a state wherein it would have sinned from the first moment, as the schoolmen have justly observed: for there is nothing in the laws of his wisdom that could have induced him so to do. . this law of wisdom brings it about also that god reproduces the same substance, the same soul. such was the answer that could have been given by the abbé whom m. bayle introduces in his _dictionary_ (art. 'pyrrhon.' lit. b, p. ). this wisdom effects the connexion of things. i concede therefore that the creature does not co-operate with god to conserve [ ] himself (in the sense in which i have just explained conservation). but i see nothing to prevent the creature's co-operation with god for the production of any other thing: and especially might this concern its inward operation, as in the case of a thought or a volition, things really distinct from the substance. . but there i am once more at grips with m. bayle. he maintains that there are no such accidents distinct from the substance. 'the reasons', he says, 'which our modern philosophers have employed to demonstrate that the accidents are not beings in reality distinct from the substance are not mere difficulties; they are arguments which overwhelm one, and which cannot be refuted. take the trouble', he adds, 'to look for them in the writings of father maignan, or father malebranche or m. calli' (professor of philosophy at caen) 'or in the _accidentia profligata_ of father saguens, disciple of father maignan, the extract from which is to be found in the _nouvelles de la république des lettres_, june . or if you wish one author only to suffice you, choose dom françois lami, a benedictine monk, and one of the strongest cartesians to be found in france. you will find among his _philosophical letters_, printed at trévoux in , that one wherein by the geometricians' method he demonstrates "that god is the sole true cause of all that which is real." i would wish to see all these books; and as for this last proposition, it may be true in a very good sense: god is the one principal cause of pure and absolute realities, or of perfections. _causae secundae agunt in virtute primae._ but when one comprises limitations and privations under the term realities one may say that the second causes co-operate in the production of that which is limited; otherwise god would be the cause of sin, and even the sole cause. . it is well to beware, moreover, lest in confusing substances with accidents, in depriving created substances of action, one fall into spinozism, which is an exaggerated cartesianism. that which does not act does not merit the name of substance. if the accidents are not distinct from the substances; if the created substance is a successive being, like movement; if it does not endure beyond a moment, and does not remain the same (during some stated portion of time) any more than its accidents; if it does not operate any more than a mathematical figure or a number: why shall one not say, with spinoza, that god is the only substance, and [ ] that creatures are only accidents or modifications? hitherto it has been supposed that the substance remains, and that the accidents change; and i think one ought still to abide by this ancient doctrine, for the arguments i remember having read do not prove the contrary, and prove more than is needed. . 'one of the absurdities', says m. bayle (p. ), 'that arise from the so-called distinction which is alleged to exist between substances and their accidents is that creatures, if they produce the accidents, would possess a power of creation and annihilation. accordingly one could not perform the slightest action without creating an innumerable number of real beings, and without reducing to nothingness an endless multitude of them. merely by moving the tongue to cry out or to eat, one creates as many accidents as there are movements of the parts of the tongue, and one destroys as many accidents as there are parts of that which one eats, which lose their form, which become chyle, blood, etc.' this argument is only a kind of bugbear. what harm would be done, supposing that an infinity of movements, an infinity of figures spring up and disappear at every moment in the universe, and even in each part of the universe? it can be demonstrated, moreover, that that must be so. . as for the so-called creation of the accidents, who does not see that one needs no creative power in order to change place or shape, to form a square or a column, or some other parade-ground figure, by the movement of the soldiers who are drilling; or again to fashion a statue by removing a few pieces from a block of marble; or to make some figure in relief, by changing, decreasing or increasing a piece of wax? the production of modifications has never been called _creation_, and it is an abuse of terms to scare the world thus. god produces substances from nothing, and the substances produce accidents by the changes of their limits. . as for the souls or substantial forms, m. bayle is right in adding: 'that there is nothing more inconvenient for those who admit substantial forms than the objection which is made that they could not be produced save by an actual creation, and that the schoolmen are pitiable in their endeavours to answer this.' but there is nothing more convenient for me and for my system than this same objection. for i maintain that all the souls, entelechies or primitive forces, substantial forms, simple substances, or monads, whatever name one may apply to them, can neither spring up [ ] naturally nor perish. and the qualities or derivative forces, or what are called accidental forms, i take to be modifications of the primitive entelechy, even as shapes are modifications of matter. that is why these modifications are perpetually changing, while the simple substance remains. . i have shown already (part i, _seqq._) that souls cannot spring up naturally, or be derived from one another, and that it is necessary that ours either be created or be pre-existent. i have even pointed out a certain middle way between a creation and an entire pre-existence. i find it appropriate to say that the soul preexisting in the seeds from the beginning of things was only sentient, but that it was elevated to the superior degree, which is that of reason, when the man to whom this soul should belong was conceived, and when the organic body, always accompanying this soul from the beginning, but under many changes, was determined for forming the human body. i considered also that one might attribute this elevation of the sentient soul (which makes it reach a more sublime degree of being, namely reason) to the extraordinary operation of god. nevertheless it will be well to add that i would dispense with miracles in the generating of man, as in that of the other animals. it will be possible to explain that, if one imagines that in this great number of souls and of animals, or at least of living organic bodies which are in the seeds, those souls alone which are destined to attain one day to human nature contain the reason that shall appear therein one day, and the organic bodies of these souls alone are preformed and predisposed to assume one day the human shape, while the other small animals or seminal living beings, in which no such thing is pre-established, are essentially different from them and possessed only of an inferior nature. this production is a kind of _traduction_, but more manageable than that kind which is commonly taught: it does not derive the soul from a soul, but only the animate from an animate, and it avoids the repeated miracles of a new creation, which would cause a new and pure soul to enter a body that must corrupt it. . i am, however, of the same opinion as father malebranche, that, in general, creation properly understood is not so difficult to admit as might be supposed, and that it is in a sense involved in the notion of the dependence of creatures. 'how stupid and ridiculous are the philosophers!' (he exclaims, in his _christian meditations_, , no. ). 'they assume that creation is impossible, because they cannot conceive how god's power [ ] is great enough to make something from nothing. but can they any better conceive how the power of god is capable of stirring a straw?' he adds, again with great truth (no. ), 'if matter were uncreate, god could not move it or form anything from it. for god cannot move matter, or arrange it wisely, if he does not know it. now god cannot know it, if he does not give it being: he can derive his knowledge only from himself. nothing can act on him or enlighten him.' . m. bayle, not content with saying that we are created continually, insists also on this other doctrine which he would fain derive thence: that our soul cannot act. this is the way he speaks on that matter (ch. , p. ): 'he has too much acquaintance with cartesianism' (it is of an able opponent he is speaking) 'not to know with what force it has been maintained in our day that there is no creature capable of producing motion, and that our soul is a purely passive subject in relation to sensations and ideas, and feelings of pain and of pleasure, etc. if this has not been carried as far as the volitions, that is on account of the existence of revealed truths; otherwise the acts of the will would have been found as passive as those of the understanding. the same reasons which prove that our soul does not form our ideas, and does not stir our organs, would prove also that it cannot form our acts of love and our volitions, etc' he might add: our vicious actions, our crimes. . the force of these proofs, which he praises, must not be so great as he thinks, for if it were they would prove too much. they would make god the author of sin. i admit that the soul cannot stir the organs by a physical influence; for i think that the body must have been so formed beforehand that it would do in time and place that which responds to the volitions of the soul, although it be true nevertheless that the soul is the principle of the operation. but if it be said that the soul does not produce its thoughts, its sensations, its feelings of pain and of pleasure, that is something for which i see no reason. in my system every simple substance (that is, every true substance) must be the true immediate cause of all its actions and inward passions; and, speaking strictly in a metaphysical sense, it has none other than those which it produces. those who hold a different opinion, and who make god the sole agent, are needlessly becoming involved in expressions whence they will only with difficulty extricate themselves without offence against religion; [ ] moreover, they unquestionably offend against reason. . here is, however, the foundation of m. bayle's argument. he says that we do not do that of which we know not the way it is done. but it is a principle which i do not concede to him. let us listen to his dissertation (p. seqq.): 'it is an astonishing thing that almost all philosophers (with the exception of those who expounded aristotle, and who admitted a universal intelligence distinct from our soul, and cause of our perceptions: see in the _historical and critical dictionary_, note e of the article "averroes") have shared the popular belief that we form our ideas actively. yet where is the man who knows not on the one hand that he is in absolute ignorance as to how ideas are made, and on the other hand, that he could not sew two stitches if he were ignorant of how to sew? is the sewing of two stitches in itself a work more difficult than the painting in one's mind of a rose, the very first time one's eyes rest upon it, and although one has never learnt this kind of painting? does it not appear on the contrary that this mental portrait is in itself a work more difficult than tracing on canvas the shape of a flower, a thing we cannot do without having learnt it? we are all convinced that a key would be of no use to us for opening a chest if we were ignorant as to how to use the key, and yet we imagine that our soul is the efficient cause of the movement of our arms, despite that it knows neither where the nerves are which must be used for this movement, nor whence to obtain the animal spirits that are to flow into these nerves. we have the experience every day that the ideas we would fain recall do not come, and that they appear of themselves when we are no longer thinking of them. if that does not prevent us from thinking that we are their efficient cause, what reliance shall one place on the proof of feeling, which to m. jacquelot appears so conclusive? does our authority over our ideas more often fall short than our authority over our volitions? if we were to count up carefully, we should find in the course of our life more velleities than volitions, that is, more evidences of the servitude of our will than of its dominion. how many times does one and the same man not experience an inability to do a certain act of will (for example, an act of love for a man who had just injured him; an act of scorn for a fine sonnet that he had composed; an act of hatred for a mistress; an act of approval of an absurd epigram. take note that i speak only of inward acts, [ ] expressed by an "i will", such as "i will scorn", "approve", etc.) even if there were a hundred pistoles to be gained forthwith, and he ardently desired to gain these hundred pistoles, and he were fired with the ambition to convince himself by an experimental proof that he is master in his own domain? . 'to put together in few words the whole force of what i have just said to you, i will observe that it is evident to all those who go deeply into things, that the true efficient cause of an effect must know the effect, and be aware also of the way in which it must be produced. that is not necessary when one is only the instrument of the cause, or only the passive subject of its action; but one cannot conceive of it as not necessary to a true agent. now if we examine ourselves well we shall be strongly convinced, ( ) that, independently of experience, our soul is just as little aware of what a volition is as of what an idea is; ( ) that after a long experience it is no more fully aware of how volitions are formed than it was before having willed anything. what is one to conclude from that, save that the soul cannot be the efficient cause of its volitions, any more than of its ideas, and of the motion of the spirits which cause our arms to move? (take note that no pretence is made of deciding the point here absolutely, it is only being considered in relation to the principles of the objection.)' . that is indeed a strange way of reasoning! what necessity is there for one always to be aware how that which is done is done? are salts, metals, plants, animals and a thousand other animate or inanimate bodies aware how that which they do is done, and need they be aware? must a drop of oil or of fat understand geometry in order to become round on the surface of water? sewing stitches is another matter: one acts for an end, one must be aware of the means. but we do not form our ideas because we will to do so, they form themselves within us, they form themselves through us, not in consequence of our will, but in accordance with our nature and that of things. the foetus forms itself in the animal, and a thousand other wonders of nature are produced by a certain _instinct_ that god has placed there, that is by virtue of _divine preformation_, which has made these admirable automata, adapted to produce mechanically such beautiful effects. even so it is easy to believe that the soul is a spiritual automaton still more admirable, and that it is through divine preformation that it produces these beautiful ideas, wherein our will has no part and to which our [ ] art cannot attain. the operation of spiritual automata, that is of souls, is not mechanical, but it contains in the highest degree all that is beautiful in mechanism. the movements which are developed in bodies are concentrated in the soul by representation as in an ideal world, which expresses the laws of the actual world and their consequences, but with this difference from the perfect ideal world which is in god, that most of the perceptions in the other substances are only confused. for it is plain that every simple substance embraces the whole universe in its confused perceptions or sensations, and that the succession of these perceptions is regulated by the particular nature of this substance, but in a manner which always expresses all the nature in the universe; and every present perception leads to a new perception, just as every movement that it represents leads to another movement. but it is impossible that the soul can know clearly its whole nature, and perceive how this innumerable number of small perceptions, piled up or rather concentrated together, shapes itself there: to that end it must needs know completely the whole universe which is embraced by them, that is, it must needs be a god. . as regards _velleities_, they are only a very imperfect kind of conditional will. i would, if i could: _liberet si liceret_; and in the case of a velleity, we do not will, properly speaking, to will, but to be able. that explains why there are none in god; and they must not be confused with antecedent will. i have explained sufficiently elsewhere that our control over volitions can be exercised only indirectly, and that one would be unhappy if one were sufficiently master in one's own domain to be able to will without cause, without rhyme or reason. to complain of not having such a control would be to argue like pliny, who carps at the power of god because god cannot destroy himself. . i intended to finish here after having met (as it seems to me) all the objections of m. bayle on this matter that i could find in his works. but remembering laurentius valla's _dialogue on free will,_ in opposition to boethius, which i have already mentioned, i thought it would be opportune to quote it in abstract, retaining the dialogue form, and then to continue from where it ends, keeping up the fiction it initiated; and that less with the purpose of enlivening the subject, than in order to explain myself towards the end of my dissertation as clearly as i can, and in a way [ ] most likely to be generally understood. this dialogue of valla and his books on pleasure and the true good make it plain that he was no less a philosopher than a humanist. these four books were opposed to the four books on the _consolation of philosophy_ by boethius, and the dialogue to the fifth book. a certain spaniard named antonio glarea requests of him elucidation on the difficulty of free will, whereof little is known as it is worthy to be known, for upon it depend justice and injustice, punishment and reward in this life and in the life to come. laurentius valla answers him that we must console ourselves for an ignorance which we share with the whole world, just as one consoles oneself for not having the wings of birds. . antonio--i know that you can give me those wings, like another daedalus, so that i may emerge from the prison of ignorance, and rise to the very region of truth, which is the homeland of souls. the books that i have seen have not satisfied me, not even the famous boethius, who meets with general approval. i know not whether he fully understood himself what he says of god's understanding, and of eternity superior to time; and i ask for your opinion on his way of reconciling foreknowledge with freedom. laurent--i am fearful of giving offence to many people, if i confute this great man; yet i will give preference over this fear to the consideration i have for the entreaties of a friend, provided that you make me a promise. ant.--what? laur.--it is, that when you have dined with me you do not ask me to give you supper, that is to say, i desire that you be content with the answer to the question you have put to me, and do not put a further question. . ant.--i promise you. here is the heart of the difficulty. if god foresaw the treason of judas, it was necessary that he should betray, it was impossible for him not to betray. there is no obligation to do the impossible. he therefore did not sin, he did not deserve to be punished. that destroys justice and religion, and the fear of god. laur.--god foresaw sin; but he did not compel man to commit it; sin is voluntary. ant.--that will was necessary, since it was foreseen. laur.--if my knowledge does not cause things past or present to exist, neither will my foreknowledge cause future things to exist. . ant.--that comparison is deceptive: neither the present nor the past can be changed, they are already necessary; but the future, movable in itself, becomes fixed and necessary through foreknowledge. let us [ ] pretend that a god of the heathen boasts of knowing the future: i will ask him if he knows which foot i shall put foremost, then i will do the opposite of that which he shall have foretold. laur.--this god knows what you are about to do. ant.--how does he know it, since i will do the opposite of what he shall have said, and i suppose that he will say what he thinks? laur.--your supposition is false: god will not answer you; or again, if he were to answer you, the veneration you would have for him would make you hasten to do what he had said; his prediction would be to you an order. but we have changed the question. we are not concerned with what god will foretell but with what he foresees. let us therefore return to foreknowledge, and distinguish between the necessary and the certain. it is not impossible for what is foreseen not to happen; but it is infallibly sure that it will happen. i can become a soldier or priest, but i shall not become one. . ant.--here i have you firmly held. the philosophers' rule maintains that all that which is possible can be considered as existing. but if that which you affirm to be possible, namely an event different from what has been foreseen, actually happened, god would have been mistaken. laur.--the rules of the philosophers are not oracles for me. this one in particular is not correct. two contradictories are often both possible. can they also both exist? but, for your further enlightenment, let us pretend that sextus tarquinius, coming to delphi to consult the oracle of apollo, receives the answer: _exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ab urbe._ a beggared outcast of the city's rage, beside a foreign shore cut short thy age. the young man will complain: i have brought you a royal gift, o apollo, and you proclaim for me a lot so unhappy? apollo will say to him: your gift is pleasing to me, and i will do that which you ask of me, i will tell you what will happen. i know the future, but i do not bring it about. go make your complaint to jupiter and the parcae. sextus would be ridiculous if he continued thereafter to complain about apollo. is not that true? ant.--he will say: i thank you, o holy apollo, for not having repaid me with silence, for having revealed to me the truth. but whence comes it that jupiter is so cruel towards me, that he prepares so hard a fate for an[ ] innocent man, for a devout worshipper of the gods? laur.--you innocent? apollo will say. know that you will be proud, that you will commit adulteries, that you will be a traitor to your country. could sextus reply: it is you who are the cause, o apollo; you compel me to do it, by foreseeing it? ant.--i admit that he would have taken leave of his senses if he were to make this reply. laur.--therefore neither can the traitor judas complain of god's foreknowledge. and there is the answer to your question. . ant.--you have satisfied me beyond my hopes, you have done what boethius was not able to do: i shall be beholden to you all my life long. laur.--yet let us carry our tale a little further. sextus will say: no, apollo, i will not do what you say. ant.--what! the god will say, do you mean then that i am a liar? i repeat to you once more, you will do all that i have just said. laur.--sextus, mayhap, would pray the gods to alter fate, to give him a better heart. ant.--he would receive the answer: _desine fata deum flecti sperare precando_. he cannot cause divine foreknowledge to lie. but what then will sextus say? will he not break forth into complaints against the gods? will he not say? what? i am then not free? it is not in my power to follow virtue? laur.--apollo will say to him perhaps: know, my poor sextus, that the gods make each one as he is. jupiter made the wolf ravening, the hare timid, the ass stupid, and the lion courageous. he gave you a soul that is wicked and irreclaimable; you will act in conformity with your natural disposition, and jupiter will treat you as your actions shall deserve; he has sworn it by the styx. . ant.--i confess to you, it seems to me that apollo in excusing himself accuses jupiter more than he accuses sextus, and sextus would answer him: jupiter therefore condemns in me his own crime; it is he who is the only guilty one. he could have made me altogether different: but, made as i am, i must act as he has willed. why then does he punish me? could i have resisted his will? laur.--i confess that i am brought to a pause here as you are. i have made the gods appear on the scene, apollo and jupiter, to make you distinguish between divine foreknowledge and providence. i have shown that apollo and foreknowledge do not impair freedom; but i cannot satisfy you on the decrees of jupiter's will, that is to say, on the orders of providence. ant.--you have dragged me out of one abyss, and you [ ] plunge me back into another and greater abyss. laur.--remember our contract: i have given you dinner, and you ask me to give you supper also. . ant.--now i discover your cunning: you have caught me, this is not an honest contract. laur.--what would you have me do? i have given you wine and meats from my home produce, such as my small estate can provide; as for nectar and ambrosia, you will ask the gods for them: that divine nurture is not found among men. let us hearken to st. paul, that chosen vessel who was carried even to the third heaven, who heard there unutterable words: he will answer you with the comparison of the potter, with the incomprehensibility of the ways of god, and wonder at the depth of his wisdom. nevertheless it is well to observe that one does not ask why god foresees the thing, for that is understood, it is because it will be: but one asks why he ordains thus, why he hardens such an one, why he has compassion on another. we do not know the reasons which he may have for this; but _since he is very good and very wise that is enough to make us deem that his reasons are good_. as he is just also, it follows that his decrees and his operation do not destroy our freedom. some men have sought some reason therein. they have said that we are made from a corrupt and impure mass, indeed of mud. but adam and the angels were made of silver and gold, and they sinned notwithstanding. one sometimes becomes hardened again after regeneration. we must therefore seek another cause for evil, and i doubt whether even the angels are aware of it; yet they cease not to be happy and to praise god. boethius hearkened more to the answer of philosophy than to that of st. paul; that was the cause of his failure. let us believe in jesus christ, he is the virtue and the wisdom of god: he teaches us that god willeth the salvation of all, that he willeth not the death of the sinner. let us therefore put our trust in the divine mercy, and let us not by our vanity and our malice disqualify ourselves to receive it. . this dialogue of valla's is excellent, even though one must take exception to some points in it: but its chief defect is that it cuts the knot and that it seems to condemn providence under the name of jupiter, making him almost the author of sin. let us therefore carry the little fable still further. sextus, quitting apollo and delphi, seeks out jupiter at dodona. he makes sacrifices and then he exhibits his complaints. why have you condemned me, o great god, to be wicked and unhappy? change [ ] my lot and my heart, or acknowledge your error. jupiter answers him: if you will renounce rome, the parcae shall spin for you different fates, you shall become wise, you shall be happy. sextus--why must i renounce the hope of a crown? can i not come to be a good king? jupiter--no, sextus; i know better what is needful for you. if you go to rome, you are lost. sextus, not being able to resolve upon so great a sacrifice, went forth from the temple, and abandoned himself to his fate. theodorus, the high priest, who had been present at the dialogue between god and sextus, addressed these words to jupiter: your wisdom is to be revered, o great ruler of the gods. you have convinced this man of his error; he must henceforth impute his unhappiness to his evil will; he has not a word to say. but your faithful worshippers are astonished; they would fain wonder at your goodness as well as at your greatness: it rested with you to give him a different will. jupiter--go to my daughter pallas, she will inform you what i was bound to do. . theodorus journeyed to athens: he was bidden to lie down to sleep in the temple of the goddess. dreaming, he found himself transported into an unknown country. there stood a palace of unimaginable splendour and prodigious size. the goddess pallas appeared at the gate, surrounded by rays of dazzling majesty. _qualisque videri_ _coelicolis et quanta solet._ she touched the face of theodorus with an olive-branch, which she was holding in her hand. and lo! he had become able to confront the divine radiancy of the daughter of jupiter, and of all that she should show him. jupiter who loves you (she said to him) has commended you to me to be instructed. you see here the palace of the fates, where i keep watch and ward. here are representations not only of that which happens but also of all that which is possible. jupiter, having surveyed them before the beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into worlds, and chose the best of all. he comes sometimes to visit these places, to enjoy the pleasure of recapitulating things and of renewing his own choice, which cannot fail to please him. i have only to speak, and we shall see a whole world that my father might have produced, wherein will be represented anything that can be asked of him; and in this way one may know also what would happen if any particular possibility should attain unto [ ] existence. and whenever the conditions are not determinate enough, there will be as many such worlds differing from one another as one shall wish, which will answer differently the same question, in as many ways as possible. you learnt geometry in your youth, like all well-instructed greeks. you know therefore that when the conditions of a required point do not sufficiently determine it, and there is an infinite number of them, they all fall into what the geometricians call a locus, and this locus at least (which is often a line) will be determinate. thus you can picture to yourself an ordered succession of worlds, which shall contain each and every one the case that is in question, and shall vary its circumstances and its consequences. but if you put a case that differs from the actual world only in one single definite thing and in its results, a certain one of those determinate worlds will answer you. these worlds are all here, that is, in ideas. i will show you some, wherein shall be found, not absolutely the same sextus as you have seen (that is not possible, he carries with him always that which he shall be) but several sextuses resembling him, possessing all that you know already of the true sextus, but not all that is already in him imperceptibly, nor in consequence all that shall yet happen to him. you will find in one world a very happy and noble sextus, in another a sextus content with a mediocre state, a sextus, indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms. . thereupon the goddess led theodorus into one of the halls of the palace: when he was within, it was no longer a hall, it was a world, _solemque suum, sua sidera norat_. at the command of pallas there came within view dodona with the temple of jupiter, and sextus issuing thence; he could be heard saying that he would obey the god. and lo! he goes to a city lying between two seas, resembling corinth. he buys there a small garden; cultivating it, he finds a treasure; he becomes a rich man, enjoying affection and esteem; he dies at a great age, beloved of the whole city. theodorus saw the whole life of sextus as at one glance, and as in a stage presentation. there was a great volume of writings in this hall: theodorus could not refrain from asking what that meant. it is the history of this world which we are now visiting, the goddess told him; it is the book of its fates. you have seen a number [ ] on the forehead of sextus. look in this book for the place which it indicates. theodorus looked for it, and found there the history of sextus in a form more ample than the outline he had seen. put your finger on any line you please, pallas said to him, and you will see represented actually in all its detail that which the line broadly indicates. he obeyed, and he saw coming into view all the characteristics of a portion of the life of that sextus. they passed into another hall, and lo! another world, another sextus. who, issuing from the temple, and having resolved to obey jupiter, goes to thrace. there he marries the daughter of the king, who had no other children; he succeeds him, and he is adored by his subjects. they went into other rooms, and always they saw new scenes. . the halls rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful worlds. finally they reached the highest one which completed the pyramid, and which was the most beautiful of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could not see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to infinity. that is (as the goddess explained) because amongst an endless number of possible worlds there is the best of all, else would god not have determined to create any; but there is not any one which has not also less perfect worlds below it: that is why the pyramid goes on descending to infinity. theodorus, entering this highest hall, became entranced in ecstasy; he had to receive succour from the goddess, a drop of a divine liquid placed on his tongue restored him; he was beside himself for joy. we are in the real true world (said the goddess) and you are at the source of happiness. behold what jupiter makes ready for you, if you continue to serve him faithfully. here is sextus as he is, and as he will be in reality. he issues from the temple in a rage, he scorns the counsel of the gods. you see him going to rome, bringing confusion everywhere, violating the wife of his friend. there he is driven out with his father, beaten, unhappy. if jupiter had placed here a sextus happy at corinth or king in thrace, it would be no longer this world. and nevertheless he could not have failed to choose this world, which surpasses in perfection all the others, and which forms the apex of the pyramid. else would jupiter have renounced his wisdom, he would have banished me, me his daughter. you see that my father did not make sextus wicked; he was so from all [ ] eternity, he was so always and freely. my father only granted him the existence which his wisdom could not refuse to the world where he is included: he made him pass from the region of the possible to that of the actual beings. the crime of sextus serves for great things: it renders rome free; thence will arise a great empire, which will show noble examples to mankind. but that is nothing in comparison with the worth of this whole world, at whose beauty you will marvel, when, after a happy passage from this mortal state to another and better one, the gods shall have fitted you to know it. . at this moment theodorus wakes up, he gives thanks to the goddess, he owns the justice of jupiter. his spirit pervaded by what he has seen and heard, he carries on the office of high priest, with all the zeal of a true servant of his god, and with all the joy whereof a mortal is capable. it seems to me that this continuation of the tale may elucidate the difficulty which valla did not wish to treat. if apollo has represented aright god's knowledge of vision (that which concerns beings in existence), i hope that pallas will have not discreditably filled the role of what is called knowledge of simple intelligence (that which embraces all that is possible), wherein at last the source of things must be sought. [ ] * * * * * appendices summary of the controversy reduced to formal arguments * * * * * some persons of discernment have wished me to make this addition. i have the more readily deferred to their opinion, because of the opportunity thereby gained for meeting certain difficulties, and for making observations on certain matters which were not treated in sufficient detail in the work itself. objection i whoever does not choose the best course is lacking either in power, or knowledge, or goodness. god did not choose the best course in creating this world. therefore god was lacking in power, or knowledge, or goodness. answer i deny the minor, that is to say, the second premiss of this syllogism, and the opponent proves it by this prosyllogism whoever makes things in which there is evil, and which could have been made without any evil, or need not have been made at all, does not choose the best course. god made a world wherein there is evil; a world, i say, which could have been made without any evil or which need not have been made at all. [ ] therefore god did not choose the best course. answer i admit the minor of this prosyllogism: for one must confess that there is evil in this world which god has made, and that it would have been possible to make a world without evil or even not to create any world, since its creation depended upon the free will of god. but i deny the major, that is, the first of the two premisses of the prosyllogism, and i might content myself with asking for its proof. in order, however, to give a clearer exposition of the matter, i would justify this denial by pointing out that the best course is not always that one which tends towards avoiding evil, since it is possible that the evil may be accompanied by a greater good. for example, the general of an army will prefer a great victory with a slight wound to a state of affairs without wound and without victory. i have proved this in further detail in this work by pointing out, through instances taken from mathematics and elsewhere, that an imperfection in the part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole. i have followed therein the opinion of st. augustine, who said a hundred times that god permitted evil in order to derive from it a good, that is to say, a greater good; and thomas aquinas says (in libr. , _sent. dist._ , qu. , art. ) that the permission of evil tends towards the good of the universe. i have shown that among older writers the fall of adam was termed _felix culpa_, a fortunate sin, because it had been expiated with immense benefit by the incarnation of the son of god: for he gave to the universe something more noble than anything there would otherwise have been amongst created beings. for the better understanding of the matter i added, following the example of many good authors, that it was consistent with order and the general good for god to grant to certain of his creatures the opportunity to exercise their freedom, even when he foresaw that they would turn to evil: for god could easily correct the evil, and it was not fitting that in order to prevent sin he should always act in an extraordinary way. it will therefore sufficiently refute the objection to show that a world with evil may be better than a world without evil. but i have gone still further in the work, and have even shown that this universe must be indeed better than every other possible universe. [ ] objection ii if there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures, there is more evil than good in all god's work. now there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures. therefore there is more evil than good in all god's work. answer i deny the major and the minor of this conditional syllogism. as for the major, i do not admit it because this supposed inference from the part to the whole, from intelligent creatures to all creatures, assumes tacitly and without proof that creatures devoid of reason cannot be compared or taken into account with those that have reason. but why might not the surplus of good in the non-intelligent creatures that fill the world compensate for and even exceed incomparably the surplus of evil in rational creatures? it is true that the value of the latter is greater; but by way of compensation the others are incomparably greater in number; and it may be that the proportion of number and quantity surpasses that of value and quality. the minor also i cannot admit, namely, that there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures. one need not even agree that there is more evil than good in the human kind. for it is possible, and even a very reasonable thing, that the glory and the perfection of the blessed may be incomparably greater than the misery and imperfection of the damned, and that here the excellence of the total good in the smaller number may exceed the total evil which is in the greater number. the blessed draw near to divinity through a divine mediator, so far as can belong to these created beings, and make such progress in good as is impossible for the damned to make in evil, even though they should approach as nearly as may be the nature of demons. god is infinite, and the devil is finite; good can and does go on _ad infinitum_, whereas evil has its bounds. it may be therefore, and it is probable, that there happens in the comparison between the blessed and the damned the opposite of what i said could happen in the comparison between the happy and the unhappy, namely that in the latter the proportion of degrees surpasses that of numbers, while in the comparison between intelligent and non-intelligent the proportion of numbers is greater than that of values. one is justified in assuming that a thing may be so as long as one does not prove that it is impossible, and indeed what is here [ ] put forward goes beyond assumption. but secondly, even should one admit that there is more evil than good in the human kind, one still has every reason for not admitting that there is more evil than good in all intelligent creatures. for there is an inconceivable number of spirits, and perhaps of other rational creatures besides: and an opponent cannot prove that in the whole city of god, composed as much of spirits as of rational animals without number and of endless different kinds, the evil exceeds the good. although one need not, in order to answer an objection, prove that a thing is, when its mere possibility suffices, i have nevertheless shown in this present work that it is a result of the supreme perfection of the sovereign of the universe that the kingdom of god should be the most perfect of all states or governments possible, and that in consequence what little evil there is should be required to provide the full measure of the vast good existing there. objection iii if it is always impossible not to sin, it is always unjust to punish. now it is always impossible not to sin, or rather all sin is necessary. therefore it is always unjust to punish. the minor of this is proved as follows. first prosyllogism everything predetermined is necessary. every event is predetermined. therefore every event (and consequently sin also) is necessary. again this second minor is proved thus. second prosyllogism that which is future, that which is foreseen, that which is involved in causes is predetermined. every event is of this kind. therefore every event is predetermined. answer i admit in a certain sense the conclusion of the second prosyllogism, which is the minor of the first; but i shall deny the major of the first [ ] prosyllogism, namely that everything predetermined is necessary; taking 'necessity', say the necessity to sin, or the impossibility of not sinning, or of not doing some action, in the sense relevant to the argument, that is, as a necessity essential and absolute, which destroys the morality of action and the justice of punishment. if anyone meant a different necessity or impossibility (that is, a necessity only moral or hypothetical, which will be explained presently) it is plain that we would deny him the major stated in the objection. we might content ourselves with this answer, and demand the proof of the proposition denied: but i am well pleased to justify my manner of procedure in the present work, in order to make the matter clear and to throw more light on this whole subject, by explaining the necessity that must be rejected and the determination that must be allowed. the truth is that the necessity contrary to morality, which must be avoided and which would render punishment unjust, is an insuperable necessity, which would render all opposition unavailing, even though one should wish with all one's heart to avoid the necessary action, and though one should make all possible efforts to that end. now it is plain that this is not applicable to voluntary actions, since one would not do them if one did not so desire. thus their prevision and predetermination is not absolute, but it presupposes will: if it is certain that one will do them, it is no less certain that one will will to do them. these voluntary actions and their results will not happen whatever one may do and whether one will them or not; but they will happen because one will do, and because one will will to do, that which leads to them. that is involved in prevision and predetermination, and forms the reason thereof. the necessity of such events is called conditional or hypothetical, or again necessity of consequence, because it presupposes the will and the other requisites. but the necessity which destroys morality, and renders punishment unjust and reward unavailing, is found in the things that will be whatever one may do and whatever one may will to do: in a word, it exists in that which is essential. this it is which is called an absolute necessity. thus it avails nothing with regard to what is necessary absolutely to ordain interdicts or commandments, to propose penalties or prizes, to blame or to praise; it will come to pass no more and no less. in voluntary actions, on the contrary, and in what depends upon them, precepts, armed with power to[ ] punish and to reward, very often serve, and are included in the order of causes that make action exist. thus it comes about that not only pains and effort but also prayers are effective, god having had even these prayers in mind before he ordered things, and having made due allowance for them. that is why the precept _ora et labora_ (pray and work) remains intact. thus not only those who (under the empty pretext of the necessity of events) maintain that one can spare oneself the pains demanded by affairs, but also those who argue against prayers, fall into that which the ancients even in their time called 'the lazy sophism'. so the predetermination of events by their causes is precisely what contributes to morality instead of destroying it, and the causes incline the will without necessitating it. for this reason the determination we are concerned with is not a necessitation. it is certain (to him who knows all) that the effect will follow this inclination; but this effect does not follow thence by a consequence which is necessary, that is, whose contrary implies contradiction; and it is also by such an inward inclination that the will is determined, without the presence of necessity. suppose that one has the greatest possible passion (for example, a great thirst), you will admit that the soul can find some reason for resisting it, even if it were only that of displaying its power. thus though one may never have complete indifference of equipoise, and there is always a predominance of inclination for the course adopted, that predominance does not render absolutely necessary the resolution taken. objection iv whoever can prevent the sin of others and does not so, but rather contributes to it, although he be fully apprised of it, is accessary thereto. god can prevent the sin of intelligent creatures; but he does not so, and he rather contributes to it by his co-operation and by the opportunities he causes, although he is fully cognizant of it. therefore, etc. answer i deny the major of this syllogism. it may be that one can prevent the sin, but that one ought not to do so, because one could not do so without committing a sin oneself, or (when god is concerned) without acting unreasonably. i have given instances of that, and have applied them to[ ] god himself. it may be also that one contributes to the evil, and that one even opens the way to it sometimes, in doing things one is bound to do. and when one does one's duty, or (speaking of god) when, after full consideration, one does that which reason demands, one is not responsible for events, even when one foresees them. one does not will these evils; but one is willing to permit them for a greater good, which one cannot in reason help preferring to other considerations. this is a _consequent_ will, resulting from acts of _antecedent_ will, in which one wills the good. i know that some persons, in speaking of the antecedent and consequent will of god, have meant by the antecedent that which wills that all men be saved, and by the consequent that which wills, in consequence of persistent sin, that there be some damned, damnation being a result of sin. but these are only examples of a more general notion, and one may say with the same reason, that god wills by his antecedent will that men sin not, and that by his consequent or final and decretory will (which is always followed by its effect) he wills to permit that they sin, this permission being a result of superior reasons. one has indeed justification for saying, in general, that the antecedent will of god tends towards the production of good and the prevention of evil, each taken in itself, and as it were detached (_particulariter et secundum quid_: thom., i, qu. , art. ) according to the measure of the degree of each good or of each evil. likewise one may say that the consequent, or final and total, divine will tends towards the production of as many goods as can be put together, whose combination thereby becomes determined, and involves also the permission of some evils and the exclusion of some goods, as the best possible plan of the universe demands. arminius, in his _antiperkinsus,_ explained very well that the will of god can be called consequent not only in relation to the action of the creature considered beforehand in the divine understanding, but also in relation to other anterior acts of divine will. but it is enough to consider the passage cited from thomas aquinas, and that from scotus (i, dist. , qu. ), to see that they make this distinction as i have made it here. nevertheless if anyone will not suffer this use of the terms, let him put 'previous' in place of 'antecedent' will, and 'final' or 'decretory' in place of 'consequent' will. for i do not wish to wrangle about words. [ ] objection v whoever produces all that is real in a thing is its cause. god produces all that is real in sin. therefore god is the cause of sin. answer i might content myself with denying the major or the minor, because the term 'real' admits of interpretations capable of rendering these propositions false. but in order to give a better explanation i will make a distinction. 'real' either signifies that which is positive only, or else it includes also privative beings: in the first case, i deny the major and i admit the minor; in the second case, i do the opposite. i might have confined myself to that; but i was willing to go further, in order to account for this distinction. i have therefore been well pleased to point out that every purely positive or absolute reality is a perfection, and that every imperfection comes from limitation, that is, from the privative: for to limit is to withhold extension, or the more beyond. now god is the cause of all perfections, and consequently of all realities, when they are regarded as purely positive. but limitations or privations result from the original imperfection of creatures which restricts their receptivity. it is as with a laden boat, which the river carries along more slowly or less slowly in proportion to the weight that it bears: thus the speed comes from the river, but the retardation which restricts this speed comes from the load. also i have shown in the present work how the creature, in causing sin, is a deficient cause; how errors and evil inclinations spring from privation; and how privation is efficacious accidentally. and i have justified the opinion of st. augustine (lib. i, _ad. simpl._, qu. ) who explains (for example) how god hardens the soul, not in giving it something evil, but because the effect of the good he imprints is restricted by the resistance of the soul, and by the circumstances contributing to this resistance, so that he does not give it all the good that would overcome its evil. 'nec _(inquit)_ ab illo erogatur aliquid quo homo fit deterior, sed tantum quo fit melior non erogatur.' but if god had willed to do more here he must needs have produced either fresh natures in his creatures or fresh miracles to change their natures, and this the best plan did not allow. it is just as if the current of the river must needs be more rapid than its slope permits or the boats themselves be less laden, if they [ ] had to be impelled at a greater speed. so the limitation or original imperfection of creatures brings it about that even the best plan of the universe cannot admit more good, and cannot be exempted from certain evils, these, however, being only of such a kind as may tend towards a greater good. there are some disorders in the parts which wonderfully enhance the beauty of the whole, just as certain dissonances, appropriately used, render harmony more beautiful. but that depends upon the answer which i have already given to the first objection. objection vi whoever punishes those who have done as well as it was in their power to do is unjust. god does so. therefore, etc. answer i deny the minor of this argument. and i believe that god always gives sufficient aid and grace to those who have good will, that is to say, who do not reject this grace by a fresh sin. thus i do not admit the damnation of children dying unbaptized or outside the church, or the damnation of adult persons who have acted according to the light that god has given them. and i believe that, _if anyone has followed the light he had_, he will undoubtedly receive thereof in greater measure as he has need, even as the late herr hulsemann, who was celebrated as a profound theologian at leipzig, has somewhere observed; and if such a man had failed to receive light during his life, he would receive it at least in the hour of death. objection vii whoever gives only to some, and not to all, the means of producing effectively in them good will and final saving faith has not enough goodness. god does so. therefore, etc. answer i deny the major. it is true that god could overcome the greatest resistance of the human heart, and indeed he sometimes does so, [ ] whether by an inward grace or by the outward circumstances that can greatly influence souls; but he does not always do so. whence comes this distinction, someone will say, and wherefore does his goodness appear to be restricted? the truth is that it would not have been in order always to act in an extraordinary way and to derange the connexion of things, as i have observed already in answering the first objection. the reasons for this connexion, whereby the one is placed in more favourable circumstances than the other, are hidden in the depths of god's wisdom: they depend upon the universal harmony. the best plan of the universe, which god could not fail to choose, required this. one concludes thus from the event itself; since god made the universe, it was not possible to do better. such management, far from being contrary to goodness, has rather been prompted by supreme goodness itself. this objection with its solution might have been inferred from what was said with regard to the first objection; but it seemed advisable to touch upon it separately. objection viii whoever cannot fail to choose the best is not free. god cannot fail to choose the best. therefore god is not free. answer i deny the major of this argument. rather is it true freedom, and the most perfect, to be able to make the best use of one's free will, and always to exercise this power, without being turned aside either by outward force or by inward passions, whereof the one enslaves our bodies and the other our souls. there is nothing less servile and more befitting the highest degree of freedom than to be always led towards the good, and always by one's own inclination, without any constraint and without any displeasure. and to object that god therefore had need of external things is only a sophism. he creates them freely: but when he had set before him an end, that of exercising his goodness, his wisdom determined him to choose the means most appropriate for obtaining this end. to call that a _need_ is to take the term in a sense not usual, which clears it of all imperfection, somewhat as one does when speaking of the wrath of god. seneca says somewhere, that god commanded only once, but that he obeys[ ] always, because he obeys the laws that he willed to ordain for himself: _semel jussit, semper paret_. but he had better have said, that god always commands and that he is always obeyed: for in willing he always follows the tendency of his own nature, and all other things always follow his will. and as this will is always the same one cannot say that he obeys that will only which he formerly had. nevertheless, although his will is always indefectible and always tends towards the best, the evil or the lesser good which he rejects will still be possible in itself. otherwise the necessity of good would be geometrical (so to speak) or metaphysical, and altogether absolute; the contingency of things would be destroyed, and there would be no choice. but necessity of this kind, which does not destroy the possibility of the contrary, has the name by analogy only: it becomes effective not through the mere essence of things, but through that which is outside them and above them, that is, through the will of god. this necessity is called moral, because for the wise what is necessary and what is owing are equivalent things; and when it is always followed by its effect, as it indeed is in the perfectly wise, that is, in god, one can say that it is a happy necessity. the more nearly creatures approach this, the closer do they come to perfect felicity. moreover, necessity of this kind is not the necessity one endeavours to avoid, and which destroys morality, reward and commendation. for that which it brings to pass does not happen whatever one may do and whatever one may will, but because one desires it. a will to which it is natural to choose well deserves most to be commended; and it carries with it its own reward, which is supreme happiness. and as this constitution of the divine nature gives an entire satisfaction to him who possesses it, it is also the best and the most desirable from the point of view of the creatures who are all dependent upon god. if the will of god had not as its rule the principle of the best, it would tend towards evil, which would be worst of all; or else it would be indifferent somehow to good and to evil, and guided by chance. but a will that would always drift along at random would scarcely be any better for the government of the universe than the fortuitous concourse of corpuscles, without the existence of divinity. and even though god should abandon himself to chance only in some cases, and in a certain way (as he would if he did not always tend entirely towards the best, and if he were capable of preferring a lesser good to a greater good, that is, an evil to a good, since that which [ ] prevents a greater good is an evil) he would be no less imperfect than the object of his choice. then he would not deserve absolute trust; he would act without reason in such a case, and the government of the universe would be like certain games equally divided between reason and luck. this all proves that this objection which is made against the choice of the best perverts the notions of free and necessary, and represents the best to us actually as evil: but that is either malicious or absurd. [ ] * * * * * excursus on theodicy published by the author in mémoires de trévoux july * * * * * _february_ i said in my essays, , that i wished to see the demonstrations mentioned by m. bayle and contained in the sixth letter printed at trévoux in . father des bosses has shown me this letter, in which the writer essays to demonstrate by the geometrical method that god is the sole true cause of all that is real. my perusal of it has confirmed me in the opinion which i indicated in the same passage, namely, that this proposition can be true in a very good sense, god being the only cause of pure and absolute realities, or perfections; but when one includes limitations or privations under the name of realities one can say that second causes co-operate in the production of what is limited, and that otherwise god would be the cause of sin, and even its sole cause. and i am somewhat inclined to think that the gifted author of the letter does not greatly differ in opinion from me, although he seems to include all modalities among the realities of which he declares god to be the sole cause. for in actual fact i think he will not admit that god is the cause and the author of sin. indeed, he explains himself in a manner which seems to overthrow his thesis and to grant real action to creatures. for in the proof of the eighth corollary of his second proposition these words occur: 'the natural motion of the soul, although determinate in itself, is indeterminate in respect of its objects. for it is love of good in general. it is through the ideas of good appearing [ ] in individual objects that this motion becomes individual and determinate in relation to those objects. and thus as the mind has the power of varying its own ideas it can also change the determinations of its love. and for that purpose it is not necessary that it overcome the power of god or oppose his action. these determinations of motion towards individual objects are not invincible. it is this noninvincibility which causes the mind to be free and capable of changing them; but after all the mind makes these changes only through the motion which god gives to it and conserves for it.' in my own style i would have said that the perfection which is in the action of the creature comes from god, but that the limitations to be found there are a consequence of the original limitation and the preceding limitations that occurred in the creature. further, this is so not only in minds but also in all other substances, which thereby are causes co-operating in the change which comes to pass in themselves; for this determination of which the author speaks is nothing but a limitation. now if after that one reviews all the demonstrations or corollaries of the letter, one will be able to admit or reject the majority of its assertions, in accordance with the interpretation one may make of them. if by 'reality' one means only perfections or positive realities, god is the only true cause; but if that which involves limitations is included under the realities, one will deny a considerable portion of the theses, and the author himself will have shown us the example. it is in order to render the matter more comprehensible that i used in the essays the example of a laden boat, which, the more laden it is, is the more slowly carried along by the stream. there one sees clearly that the stream is the cause of what is positive in this motion, of the perfection, the force, the speed of the boat, but that the load is the cause of the restriction of this force, and that it brings about the retardation. it is praiseworthy in anyone to attempt to apply the geometrical method to metaphysical matters. but it must be admitted that hitherto success has seldom been attained: and m. descartes himself, with all that very great skill which one cannot deny in him, never perhaps had less success than when he essayed to do this in one of his answers to objections. for in mathematics it is easier to succeed, because numbers, figures and calculations make good the defects concealed in words; but in metaphysics, where one is deprived of this aid (at least in ordinary [ ] argumentation), the strictness employed in the form of the argument and in the exact definitions of the terms must needs supply this lack. but in neither argument nor definition is that strictness here to be seen. the author of the letter, who undoubtedly displays much ardour and penetration, sometimes goes a little too far, as when he claims to prove that there is as much reality and force in rest as in motion, according to the fifth corollary of the second proposition. he asserts that the will of god is no less positive in rest than in motion, and that it is not less invincible. be it so, but does it follow that there is as much reality and force in each of the two? i do not see this conclusion, and with the same argument one would prove that there is as much force in a strong motion as in a weak motion. god in willing rest wills that the body be at the place a, where it was immediately before, and for that it suffices that there be no reason to prompt god to the change. but when god wills that afterwards the body be at the place b, there must needs be a new reason, of such a kind as to determine god to will that it be in b and not in c or in any other place, and that it be there more or less promptly. it is upon these reasons, the volitions of god, that we must assess the force and the reality existent in things. the author speaks much of the will of god, but he does not speak much in this letter of the reasons which prompt god to will, and upon which all depends. and these reasons are taken from the objects. i observe first, indeed, with regard to the second corollary of the first proposition, that it is very true, but that it is not very well proven. the writer affirms that if god only ceased to will the existence of a being, that being would no longer exist; and here is the proof given word for word: 'demonstration. that which exists only by the will of god no longer exists once that will has ceased.' (but that is what must be proved. the writer endeavours to prove it by adding:) 'remove the cause, you remove the effect.' (this maxim ought to have been placed among the axioms which are stated at the beginning. but unhappily this axiom may be reckoned among those rules of philosophy which are subject to many exceptions.) 'now by the preceding proposition and by its first corollary no being exists save by the will of god. therefore, etc.' there is ambiguity in this expression, that nothing exists save by the will of god. if one means that things [ ] begin to exist only through this will, one is justified in referring to the preceding propositions; but if one means that the existence of things is at all times a consequence of the will of god, one assumes more or less what is in question. therefore it was necessary to prove first that the existence of things depends upon the will of god, and that it is not only a mere effect of that will, but a dependence, in proportion to the perfection which things contain; and once that is assumed, they will depend upon god's will no less afterwards than at the beginning. that is the way i have taken the matter in my essays. nevertheless i recognize that the letter upon which i have just made observations is admirable and well deserving of perusal, and that it contains noble and true sentiments, provided it be taken in the sense i have just indicated. and arguments in this form may serve as an introduction to meditations somewhat more advanced. [ ] * * * * * reflexions on the work that mr. hobbes published in english on 'freedom, necessity and chance' * * * * * . as the question of necessity and freedom, with other questions depending thereon, was at one time debated between the famous mr. hobbes and dr. john bramhall, bishop of derry, in books published by each of them, i have deemed it appropriate to give a clear account of them (although i have already mentioned them more than once); and this all the more since these writings of mr. hobbes have hitherto only appeared in english, and since the works of this author usually contain something good and ingenious. the bishop of derry and mr. hobbes, having met in paris at the house of the marquis, afterwards duke, of newcastle in the year , entered into a discussion on this subject. the dispute was conducted with extreme restraint; but the bishop shortly afterwards sent a note to my lord newcastle, desiring him to induce mr. hobbes to answer it. he answered; but at the same time he expressed a wish that his answer should not be published, because he believed it possible for ill-instructed persons to abuse dogmas such as his, however true they might be. it so happened, however, that mr. hobbes himself passed it to a french friend, and allowed a young englishman to translate it into french for the benefit of this friend. this young man kept a copy of the english original, and published it later in england without the author's knowledge. thus the bishop was obliged to reply to it, and mr. hobbes to make a rejoinder, and to [ ] publish all the pieces together in a book of pages printed in london in the year , in to., entitled, _questions concerning freedom, necessity and chance, elucidated and discussed between doctor bramhall, bishop of derry, and thomas hobbes of malmesbury_. there is a later edition, of the year , in a work entitled _hobbes's tripos_, where are to be found his book on human nature, his treatise on the body politic and his treatise on freedom and necessity; but the latter does not contain the bishop's reply, nor the author's rejoinder. mr. hobbes argues on this subject with his usual wit and subtlety; but it is a pity that in both the one and the other we stumble upon petty tricks, such as arise in excitement over the game. the bishop speaks with much vehemence and behaves somewhat arrogantly. mr. hobbes for his part is not disposed to spare the other, and manifests rather too much scorn for theology, and for the terminology of the schoolmen, which is apparently favoured by the bishop. . one must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the opinions of mr. hobbes. he maintains that doctrines touching the divinity depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that god is no more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. he maintains that all that which god does is just, because there is none above him with power to punish and constrain him. yet he speaks sometimes as if what is said about god were only compliments, that is to say expressions proper for paying him honour, but not for knowing him. he testifies also that it seems to him that the pains of the wicked must end in their destruction: this opinion closely approaches that of the socinians, but it seems that mr. hobbes goes much further. his philosophy, which asserts that bodies alone are substances, hardly appears favourable to the providence of god and the immortality of the soul. on other subjects nevertheless he says very reasonable things. he shows clearly that nothing comes about by chance, or rather that chance only signifies the ignorance of causes that produce the effect, and that for each effect there must be a concurrence of all the sufficient conditions anterior to the event, not one of which, manifestly, can be lacking when the event is to follow, because they are conditions: the event, moreover, does not fail to follow when these conditions exist all together, because they are sufficient conditions. all which amounts to the same as i have said so many times, that everything comes to pass as a result of determining reasons, the knowledge [ ] whereof, if we had it, would make us know at the same time why the thing has happened and why it did not go otherwise. . but this author's humour, which prompts him to paradoxes and makes him seek to contradict others, has made him draw out exaggerated and odious conclusions and expressions, as if everything happened through an absolute necessity. the bishop of derry, on the other hand, has aptly observed in the answer to article , page , that there results only a hypothetical necessity, such as we all grant to events in relation to the foreknowledge of god, while mr. hobbes maintains that even divine foreknowledge alone would be sufficient to establish an absolute necessity of events. this was also the opinion of wyclif, and even of luther, when he wrote _de servo arbitrio_; or at least they spoke so. but it is sufficiently acknowledged to-day that this kind of necessity which is termed hypothetical, and springs from foreknowledge or from other anterior reasons, has nothing in it to arouse one's alarm: whereas it would be quite otherwise if the thing were necessary of itself, in such a way that the contrary implied contradiction. mr. hobbes refuses to listen to anything about a moral necessity either, on the ground that everything really happens through physical causes. but one is nevertheless justified in making a great difference between the necessity which constrains the wise to do good, and which is termed moral, existing even in relation to god, and that blind necessity whereby according to epicurus, strato, spinoza, and perhaps mr. hobbes, things exist without intelligence and without choice, and consequently without god. indeed, there would according to them be no need of god, since in consequence of this necessity all would have existence through its own essence, just as necessarily as two and three make five. and this necessity is absolute, because everything it carries with it must happen, whatever one may do; whereas what happens by a hypothetical necessity happens as a result of the supposition that this or that has been foreseen or resolved, or done beforehand; and moral necessity contains an obligation imposed by reason, which is always followed by its effect in the wise. this kind of necessity is happy and desirable, when one is prompted by good reasons to act as one does; but necessity blind and absolute would subvert piety and morality. . there is more reason in mr. hobbes's discourse when he admits that [ ] our actions are in our power, so that we do that which we will when we have the power to do it, and when there is no hindrance. he asserts notwithstanding that our volitions themselves are not so within our power that we can give ourselves, without difficulty and according to our good pleasure, inclinations and wills which we might desire. the bishop does not appear to have taken notice of this reflexion, which mr. hobbes also does not develop enough. the truth is that we have some power also over our volitions, but obliquely, and not absolutely and indifferently. this has been explained in some passages of this work. finally mr. hobbes shows, like others before him, that the certainty of events, and necessity itself, if there were any in the way our actions depend upon causes, would not prevent us from employing deliberations, exhortations, blame and praise, punishments and rewards: for these are of service and prompt men to produce actions or to refrain from them. thus, if human actions were necessary, they would be so through these means. but the truth is, that since these actions are not necessary absolutely whatever one may do, these means contribute only to render the actions determinate and certain, as they are indeed; for their nature shows that they are not subject to an absolute necessity. he gives also a good enough notion of _freedom_, in so far as it is taken in a general sense, common to intelligent and non-intelligent substances: he states that a thing is deemed free when the power which it has is not impeded by an external thing. thus the water that is dammed by a dyke has the power to spread, but not the freedom. on the other hand, it has not the power to rise above the dyke, although nothing would prevent it then from spreading, and although nothing from outside prevents it from rising so high. to that end it would be necessary that the water itself should come from a higher point or that the water-level should be raised by an increased flow. thus a prisoner lacks the freedom, while a sick man lacks the power, to go his way. . there is in mr. hobbes's preface an abstract of the disputed points, which i will give here, adding some expression of opinion. _on one side_ (he says) the assertion is made, ( ) 'that it is not in the present power of man to choose for himself the will that he should have'. that is _well_ said, especially in relation to present will: men choose the objects through will, but they do not choose their present wills, which spring from reasons and dispositions. it is true, however, that one can seek new [ ] reasons for oneself, and with time give oneself new dispositions; and by this means one can also obtain for oneself a will which one had not and could not have given oneself forthwith. it is (to use the comparison mr. hobbes himself uses) as with hunger or with thirst. at the present it does not rest with my will to be hungry or not; but it rests with my will to eat or not to eat; yet, for the time to come, it rests with me to be hungry, or to prevent myself from being so at such and such an hour of day, by eating beforehand. in this way it is possible often to avoid an evil will. even though mr. hobbes states in his reply (no. , p. ) that it is the manner of laws to say, you must do or you must not do this, but that there is no law saying, you must will, or you must not will it, yet it is clear that he is mistaken in regard to the law of god, which says _non concupisces_, thou shalt not covet; it is true that this prohibition does not concern the first motions, which are involuntary. it is asserted ( ) 'that hazard' (_chance_ in english, _casus_ in latin) 'produces nothing', that is, that nothing is produced without cause or reason. very _right_, i admit it, if one thereby intends a real hazard. for fortune and hazard are only appearances, which spring from ignorance of causes or from disregard of them. ( ) 'that all events have their necessary causes.' _wrong_: they have their determining causes, whereby one can account for them; but these are not necessary causes. the contrary might have happened, without implying contradiction. ( ) 'that the will of god makes the necessity of all things.' _wrong_: the will of god produces only contingent things, which could have gone differently, since time, space and matter are indifferent with regard to all kinds of shape and movement. . _on the other side_ (according to mr. hobbes) it is asserted, ( ) 'that man is free' (absolutely) not only 'to choose what he wills to do, but also to choose what he wills to will.' that is _ill_ said: one is not absolute master of one's will, to change it forthwith, without making use of some means or skill for that purpose. ( ) 'when man wills a good action, the will of god co-operates with his, otherwise not.' that is _well_ said, provided one means that god does not will evil actions, although he wills to permit them, to prevent the occurrence of something which would be worse than these sins. ( ) 'that the will can choose whether it wills to will or not.' _wrong_, with regard to present volition. ( ) 'that things happen without necessity by chance.' _wrong_: what happens without necessity [ ] does not because of that happen by chance, that is to say, without causes and reasons. ( ) 'notwithstanding that god may foresee that an event will happen, it is not necessary that it happen, since god foresees things, not as futurities and as in their causes, but as present.' that begins _well_, and finishes _ill_. one is justified in admitting the necessity of the consequence, but one has no reason to resort to the question how the future is present to god: for the necessity of the consequence does not prevent the event or consequent from being contingent in itself. . our author thinks that since the doctrine revived by arminius had been favoured in england by archbishop laud and by the court, and important ecclesiastical promotions had been only for those of that party, this contributed to the revolt which caused the bishop and him to meet in their exile in paris at the house of lord newcastle, and to enter into a discussion. i would not approve all the measures of archbishop laud, who had merit and perhaps also good will, but who appears to have goaded the presbyterians excessively. nevertheless one may say that the revolutions, as much in the low countries as in great britain, in part arose from the extreme intolerance of the strict party. one may say also that the defenders of the absolute decree were at least as strict as the others, having oppressed their opponents in holland with the authority of prince maurice and having fomented the revolts in england against king charles i. but these are the faults of men, and not of dogmas. their opponents do not spare them either, witness the severity used in saxony against nicolas krell and the proceedings of the jesuits against the bishop of ypres's party. . mr. hobbes observes, after aristotle, that there are two sources for proofs: reason and authority. as for reason, he says that he admits the reasons derived from the attributes of god, which he calls argumentative, and the notions whereof are conceivable; but he maintains that there are others wherein one conceives nothing, and which are only expressions by which we aspire to honour god. but i do not see how one can honour god by expressions that have no meaning. it may be that with mr. hobbes, as with spinoza, wisdom, goodness, justice are only fictions in relation to god and the universe, since the prime cause, according to them, acts through the necessity of its power, and not by the choice of its wisdom. that is [ ] an opinion whose falsity i have sufficiently proved. it appears that mr. hobbes did not wish to declare himself enough, for fear of causing offence to people; on which point he is to be commended. it was also on that account, as he says himself, that he had desired that what had passed between the bishop and him in paris should not be published. he adds that it is not good to say that an action which god does not will happens, since that is to say in effect that god is lacking in power. but he adds also at the same time that it is not good either to say the opposite, and to attribute to god that he wills the evil; because that is not seemly, and would appear to accuse god of lack of goodness. he believes, therefore, that in these matters telling the truth is not advisable. he would be right if the truth were in the paradoxical opinions that he maintains. for indeed it appears that according to the opinion of this writer god has no goodness, or rather that that which he calls god is nothing but the blind nature of the mass of material things, which acts according to mathematical laws, following an absolute necessity, as the atoms do in the system of epicurus. if god were as the great are sometimes here on earth, it would not be fitting to utter all the truths concerning him. but god is not as a man, whose designs and actions often must be concealed; rather it is always permissible and reasonable to publish the counsels and the actions of god, because they are always glorious and worthy of praise. thus it is always right to utter truths concerning the divinity; one need not anyhow refrain from fear of giving offence. and i have explained, so it seems to me, in a way which satisfies reason, and does not wound piety, how it is to be understood that god's will takes effect, and concurs with sin, without compromising his wisdom and his goodness. . as to the authorities derived from holy scripture, mr. hobbes divides them into three kinds; some, he says, are for me, the second kind are neutral, and the third seem to be for my opponent. the passages which he thinks favourable to his opinion are those which ascribe to god the cause of our will. thus gen. xlv. , where joseph says to his brethren, 'be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me hither: for god did send me before you to preserve life'; and verse , 'it was not you that sent me hither, but god.' and god said (exod. vii. ), 'i will harden pharaoh's heart.' and moses said (deut. ii. ), 'but sihon king of [ ] heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the lord thy god hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand.' and david said of shimei ( sam. xvi. ), 'let him curse, because the lord hath said unto him: curse david. who shall then say, wherefore hast thou done so?' and ( kings xii. ), 'the king [rehoboam] hearkened not unto the people; for the cause was from the lord.' job xii. : 'the deceived and the deceiver are his.' v. : 'he maketh the judges fools'; v. : 'he taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness'; v. : 'he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.' god said of the king of assyria (isa. x. ), 'against the people will i give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.' and jeremiah said (jer. x. ), 'o lord, i know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' and god said (ezek. iii. ), 'when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and i lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die.' and the saviour said (john vi. ), 'no man can come to me, except the father which hath sent me draw him.' and st. peter (acts ii. ), 'jesus having been delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of god, ye have taken.' and acts iv. , , 'both herod and pontius pilate, with the gentiles and the people of israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.' and st. paul (rom. ix. ), 'it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of god that showeth mercy.' and v. : 'therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth'; v. : 'thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will?'; v. : 'nay but, o man, who art thou that repliest against god? shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?' and cor. iv. : 'for who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?' and cor. xii. : 'there are diversities of operations, but it is the same god which worketh all in all.' and eph. ii. : 'we are his workmanship, created in christ jesus unto good works, which god hath before ordained that we should walk in them.' and phil. ii. : 'it is god which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.' one may add to these passages all those which make god the author of all grace and of all good [ ] inclinations, and all those which say that we are as dead in sin. . here now are the neutral passages, according to mr. hobbes. these are those where holy scripture says that man has the choice to act if he wills, or not to act if he wills not. for example deut. xxx. : 'i call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that i have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.' and joshua xxiv. : 'choose you this day whom ye will serve.' and god said to gad the prophet ( sam. xxiv. ), 'go and say unto david: thus saith the lord, i offer thee three things; choose thee one of them, that i may do it unto thee.' and isa. vii. : 'until the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good.' finally the passages which mr. hobbes acknowledges to be apparently contrary to his opinion are all those where it is indicated that the will of man is not in conformity with that of god. thus isa. v. : 'what could have been done more to my vineyard, that i have not done in it? wherefore, when i looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?' and jer. xix. : 'they have built also the high places of baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto baal; which i commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.' and hos. xiii. : 'o israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.' and i tim. ii. : 'god will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.' he avows that he could quote very many other passages, such as those which indicate that god willeth not iniquity, that he willeth the salvation of the sinner, and generally all those which declare that god commands good and forbids evil. . mr. hobbes makes answer to these passages that god does not always will that which he commands, as for example when he commanded abraham to sacrifice his son, and that god's revealed will is not always his full will or his decree, as when he revealed to jonah that nineveh would perish in forty days. he adds also, that when it is said that god wills the salvation of all, that means simply that god commands that all do that which is necessary for salvation; when, moreover, the scripture says that god wills not sin, that means that he wills to punish it. and as for the rest, mr. hobbes ascribes it to the forms of expression used among men. but one will answer him that it would be to god's discredit that his revealed will [ ] should be opposed to his real will: that what he bade jonah say to the ninevites was rather a threat than a prediction, and that thus the condition of impenitence was implied therein; moreover the ninevites took it in this sense. one will say also, that it is quite true that god in commanding abraham to sacrifice his son willed obedience, but did not will action, which he prevented after having obtained obedience; for that was not an action deserving in itself to be willed. and it is not the same in the case of actions where he exerts his will positively, and which are in fact worthy to be the object of his will. of such are piety, charity and every virtuous action that god commands; of such is omission of sin, a thing more alien to divine perfection than any other. it is therefore incomparably better to explain the will of god as i have explained it in this work. thus i shall say that god, by virtue of his supreme goodness, has in the beginning a serious inclination to produce, or to see and cause to be produced, all good and every laudable action, and to prevent, or to see and cause to fail, all evil and every bad action. but he is determined by this same goodness, united to an infinite wisdom, and by the very concourse of all the previous and particular inclinations towards each good, and towards the preventing of each evil, to produce the best possible design of things. this is his final and decretory will. and this design of the best being of such a nature that the good must be enhanced therein, as light is enhanced by shade, by some evil which is incomparably less than this good, god could not have excluded this evil, nor introduced certain goods that were excluded from this plan, without wronging his supreme perfection. so for that reason one must say that he permitted the sins of others, because otherwise he would have himself performed an action worse than all the sin of creatures. . i find that the bishop of derry is at least justified in saying, article xv, in his reply, p. , that the opinion of his opponents is contrary to piety, when they ascribe all to god's power only, and that mr. hobbes ought not to have said that honour or worship is only a sign of the power of him whom one honours: for one may also, and one must, acknowledge and honour wisdom, goodness, justice and other perfections. _magnos facile laudamus, bonos libenter._ this opinion, which despoils god of all goodness and of all true justice, which represents him as a tyrant, wielding an absolute power, independent of all right and of all equity, and [ ] creating millions of creatures to be eternally unhappy, and this without any other aim than that of displaying his power, this opinion, i say, is capable of rendering men very evil; and if it were accepted no other devil would be needed in the world to set men at variance among themselves and with god; as the serpent did in making eve believe that god, when he forbade her the fruit of the tree, did not will her good. mr. hobbes endeavours to parry this thrust in his rejoinder (p. ) by saying that goodness is a part of the power of god, that is to say, the power of making himself worthy of love. but that is an abuse of terms by an evasion, and confounds things that must be kept distinct. after all, if god does not intend the good of intelligent creatures, if he has no other principles of justice than his power alone, which makes him produce either arbitrarily that which chance presents to him, or by necessity all that which is possible, without the intervention of choice founded on good, how can he make himself worthy of love? it is therefore the doctrine either of blind power or of arbitrary power, which destroys piety: for the one destroys the intelligent principle or the providence of god, the other attributes to him actions which are appropriate to the evil principle. justice in god, says mr. hobbes (p. ), is nothing but the power he has, which he exercises in distributing blessings and afflictions. this definition surprises me: it is not the power to distribute them, but the will to distribute them reasonably, that is, goodness guided by wisdom, which makes the justice of god. but, says he, justice is not in god as in a man, who is only just through the observance of laws made by his superior. mr. hobbes is mistaken also in that, as well as herr pufendorf, who followed him. justice does not depend upon arbitrary laws of superiors, but on the eternal rules of wisdom and of goodness, in men as well as in god. mr. hobbes asserts in the same passage that the wisdom which is attributed to god does not lie in a logical consideration of the relation of means to ends, but in an incomprehensible attribute, attributed to an incomprehensible nature to honour it. it seems as if he means that it is an indescribable something attributed to an indescribable something, and even a chimerical quality given to a chimerical substance, to intimidate and to deceive the nations through the worship which they render to it. after all, it is difficult for mr. hobbes to have a different opinion of god and of wisdom, since he admits only material substances. if mr. hobbes were still alive, i would beware of ascribing to him opinions which might do him injury; but it [ ] is difficult to exempt him from this. he may have changed his mind subsequently, for he attained to a great age; thus i hope that his errors may not have been deleterious to him. but as they might be so to others, it is expedient to give warnings to those who shall read the writings of one who otherwise is of great merit, and from whom one may profit in many ways. it is true that god does not reason, properly speaking, using time as we do, to pass from one truth to the other: but as he understands at one and the same time all the truths and all their connexions, he knows all the conclusions, and he contains in the highest degree within himself all the reasonings that we can develop. and just because of that his wisdom is perfect. [ ] * * * * * observations on the book concerning 'the origin of evil' published recently in london * * * * * . it is a pity that m. bayle should have seen only the reviews of this admirable work, which are to be found in the journals. if he had read it himself and examined it properly, he would have provided us with a good opportunity of throwing light on many difficulties, which spring again and again like the head of the hydra, in a matter where it is easy to become confused when one has not seen the whole system or does not take the trouble to reason according to a strict plan. for strictness of reasoning performs in subjects that transcend imagination the same function as figures do in geometry: there must always be something capable of fixing our attention and forming a connexion between our thoughts. that is why when this latin book, so learned and so elegant of style, printed originally in london and then reprinted in bremen, fell into my hands, i judged that the seriousness of the matter and the author's merit required an attention which readers might fairly expect of me, since we are agreed only in regard to half of the subject. indeed, as the work contains five chapters, and the fifth with the appendix equals the rest in size, i have observed that the first four, where it is a question of evil in general and of physical evil in particular, are in harmony with my principles (save for a few individual passages), and that they sometimes even develop with force and eloquence some points i had treated but slightly because m. bayle [ ] had not placed emphasis upon them. but the fifth chapter, with its sections (of which some are equal to entire chapters) speaking of freedom and of the moral evil dependent upon it, is constructed upon principles opposed to mine, and often, indeed, to those of m. bayle; that is, if it were possible to credit him with any fixed principles. for this fifth chapter tends to show (if that were possible) that true freedom depends upon an indifference of equipoise, vague, complete and absolute; so that, until the will has determined itself, there would be no reason for its determination, either in him who chooses or in the object; and one would not choose what pleases, but in choosing without reason one would cause what one chooses to be pleasing. . this principle of choice without cause or reason, of a choice, i say, divested of the aim of wisdom and goodness, is regarded by many as the great privilege of god and of intelligent substances, and as the source of their freedom, their satisfaction, their morality and their good or evil. the fantasy of a power to declare one's independence, not only of inclination, but of reason itself within and of good and evil without, is sometimes painted in such fine colours that one might take it to be the most excellent thing in the world. nevertheless it is only a hollow fantasy, a suppression of the reasons for the caprice of which one boasts. what is asserted is impossible, but if it came to pass it would be harmful. this fantastic character might be attributed to some don juan in a st. peter's feast, and a man of romantic disposition might even affect the outward appearances of it and persuade himself that he has it in reality. but in nature there will never be any choice to which one is not prompted by the previous representation of good or evil, by inclinations or by reasons: and i have always challenged the supporters of this absolute indifference to show an example thereof. nevertheless if i call fantastic this choice whereto one is determined by nothing, i am far from calling visionaries the supporters of that hypothesis, especially our gifted author. the peripatetics teach some beliefs of this nature; but it would be the greatest injustice in the world to be ready to despise on that account an occam, a suisset, a cesalpino, a conringius, men who still advocated certain scholastic opinions which have been improved upon to-day. . one of these opinions, revived, however, and introduced by [ ] degenerate scholasticism, and in the age of chimeras, is vague indifference of choice, or real chance, assumed in our souls; as if nothing gave us any inclination unless we perceived it distinctly, and as if an effect could be without causes, when these causes are imperceptible. it is much as some have denied the existence of insensible corpuscles because they do not see them. modern philosophers have improved upon the opinions of the schoolmen by showing that, according to the laws of corporeal nature, a body can only be set in motion by the movement of another body propelling it. even so we must believe that our souls (by virtue of the laws of spiritual nature) can only be moved by some reason of good or evil: and this even when no distinct knowledge can be extracted from our mental state, on account of a concourse of innumerable little perceptions which make us now joyful and now sad, or again of some other humour, and cause us to like one thing more than another without its being possible to say why. plato, aristotle and even thomas aquinas, durand and other schoolmen of the sounder sort reason on that question like the generality of men, and as unprejudiced people always have reasoned. they assume that freedom lies in the use of reason and the inclinations, which cause the choice or rejection of objects. but finally some rather too subtle philosophers have extracted from their alembic an inexplicable notion of choice independent of anything whatsoever, which is said to do wonders in solving all difficulties. but the notion is caught up at the outset in one of the greatest difficulties, by offending against the grand principle of reasoning which makes us always assume that nothing is done without some sufficient cause or reason. as the schoolmen often forgot to apply this great principle, admitting certain prime occult qualities, one need not wonder if this fiction of vague indifference met with applause amongst them, and if even most worthy men have been imbued therewith. our author, who is otherwise rid of many of the errors of the ordinary schoolmen, is still deluded by this fiction: but he is without doubt one of the most skilful of those who have supported it. _si pergama dextra_ _defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent._ he gives it the best possible turn, and only shows it on its good side. he knows how to strip spontaneity and reason of their advantages, [ ] transferring all these to vague indifference: only through this indifference is one active, resisting the passions, taking pleasure in one's choice, or being happy; it appears indeed that one would be miserable if some happy necessity should oblige us to choose aright. our author had said admirable things on the origin and reasons of natural evils: he only had to apply the same principles to moral evil; indeed, he believes himself that moral evil becomes an evil through the physical evils that it causes or tends to cause. but somehow or other he thinks that it would be a degradation of god and men if they were to be made subject to reason; that thus they would all be rendered passive to it and would no longer be satisfied with themselves; in short that men would have nothing wherewith to oppose the misfortunes that come to them from without, if they had not within them this admirable privilege of rendering things good or tolerable by choosing them, and of changing all into gold by the touch of this wondrous faculty. . we will examine it in closer detail presently; but it will be well to profit beforehand by the excellent ideas of our author on the nature of things and on natural evils, particularly since there are some points in which we shall be able to go a little further: by this means also we shall gain a better understanding of the whole arrangement of his system. the first chapter contains the principles. the writer calls substance a being the idea of which does not involve the existence of another. i do not know if there are any such among created beings, by reason of the connexion existing between all things; and the example of a wax torch is not the example of a substance, any more than that of a swarm of bees would be. but one may take the terms in an extended sense. he observes aptly that after all the changes of matter and after all the qualities of which it may be divested, there remain extension, mobility, divisibility and resistance. he explains also the nature of notions, and leaves it to be understood that _universals_ indicate only the resemblances which exist between _individuals_; that we understand by _ideas_ only that which is known through an immediate sensation, and that the rest is known to us only through relations with these ideas. but when he admits that we have no idea of god, of spirit, of substance, he does not appear to have observed sufficiently that we have immediate apperception of substance and of spirit in our apperception of ourselves, and that the idea of god is found in[ ] the idea of ourselves through a suppression of the limits of our perfections, as extension taken in an absolute sense is comprised in the idea of a globe. he is right also in asserting that our simple ideas at least are innate, and in rejecting the _tabula rasa_ of aristotle and of mr. locke. but i cannot agree with him that our ideas have scarce any more relation to things than words uttered into the air or writings traced upon paper have to our ideas, and that the bearing of our sensations is arbitrary and _ex instituto_, like the signification of words. i have already indicated elsewhere why i am not in agreement with our cartesians on that point. . for the purpose of advancing to the first cause, the author seeks a criterion, a distinguishing mark of truth; and he finds it in the force whereby our inward assertions, when they are evident, compel the understanding to give them its consent. it is by such a process, he says, that we credit the senses. he points out that the distinguishing mark in the cartesian scheme, to wit, a clear and distinct perception, has need of a new mark to indicate what is clear and distinct, and that the congruity or non-congruity of ideas (or rather of terms, as one spoke formerly) may still be deceptive, because there are congruities real and apparent. he appears to recognize even that the inward force which constrains us to give our assent is still a matter for caution, and may come from deep-rooted prejudices. that is why he confesses that he who should furnish another criterion would have found something very advantageous to the human race. i have endeavoured to explain this criterion in a little _discourse on truth and ideas_, published in ; and although i do not boast of having given therein a new discovery i hope that i have expounded things which were only confusedly recognized. i distinguish between truths of fact and truths of reason. truths of fact can only be verified by confronting them with truths of reason, and by tracing them back to immediate perceptions within us, such as st. augustine and m. descartes very promptly acknowledged to be indubitable; that is to say, we cannot doubt that we think, nor indeed that we think this thing or that. but in order to judge whether our inward notions have any reality in things, and to pass from thoughts to objects, my opinion is that it is necessary to consider whether our perceptions are firmly connected among themselves and with others that we have had, in such fashion as to manifest the rules of mathematics and other truths of [ ] reason. in this case one must regard them as real; and i think that it is the only means of distinguishing them from imaginations, dreams and visions. thus the truth of things outside us can be recognized only through the connexion of phenomena. the criterion of the truths of reason, or those which spring from conceptions, is found in an exact use of the rules of logic. as for ideas or notions, i call _real_ all those the possibility of which is certain; and the _definitions_ which do not mark this possibility are only _nominal_. geometricians well versed in analysis are aware what difference there is in this respect between several properties by which some line or figure might be defined. our gifted author has not gone so far, perhaps; one may see, however, from the account i have given of him already, and from what follows, that he is by no means lacking in profundity or reflexion. . thereafter he proceeds to examine whether motion, matter and space spring from themselves; and to that end he considers whether it is possible to conceive that they do not exist. he remarks upon this privilege of god, that as soon as it is assumed that he exists it must be admitted that he exists of necessity. this is a corollary to a remark which i made in the little discourse mentioned above, namely that as soon as one admits that god is possible, one must admit that he exists of necessity. now, as soon as one admits that god exists, one admits that he is possible. therefore as soon as one admits that god exists, one must admit that he exists of necessity. now this privilege does not belong to the three things of which we have just spoken. the author believes also especially concerning motion, that it is not sufficient to say, with mr. hobbes, that the present movement comes from an anterior movement, and this one again from another, and so on to infinity. for, however far back you may go, you will not be one whit nearer to finding the reason which causes the presence of motion in matter. therefore this reason must be outside the sequence; and even if there were an eternal motion, it would require an eternal motive power. so the rays of the sun, even though they were eternal with the sun, would nevertheless have their eternal cause in the sun. i am well pleased to recount these arguments of our gifted author, that it may be seen how important, according to him, is the principle of sufficient reason. for, if it is permitted to admit something for which it is acknowledged there is no reason, it will be easy for an atheist to overthrow this argument, by [ ] saying that it is not necessary that there be a sufficient reason for the existence of motion. i will not enter into the discussion of the reality and the eternity of space, for fear of straying too far from our subject. it is enough to state that the author believes that space can be annihilated by the divine power, but in entirety and not in portions, and that we could exist alone with god even if there were neither space nor matter, since we do not contain within ourselves the notion of the existence of external things. he also puts forward the consideration that in the sensations of sounds, of odours and of savours the idea of space is not included. but whatever the opinion formed as to space, it suffices that there is a god, the cause of matter and of motion, and in short of all things. the author believes that we can reason about god, as one born blind would reason about light. but i hold that there is something more in us, for our light is a ray from god's light. after having spoken of some attributes of god, the author acknowledges that god acts for an end, which is the communication of his goodness, and that his works are ordered aright. finally he concludes this chapter very properly, by saying that god in creating the world was at pains to give it the greatest harmony amongst things, the greatest comfort of beings endowed with reason, and the greatest compatibility in desires that an infinite power, wisdom and goodness combined could produce. he adds that, if some evil has remained notwithstanding, one must believe that these infinite divine perfections could not have (i would rather say ought not to have) taken it away. . chapter ii anatomizes evil, dividing it as we do into metaphysical, physical and moral. metaphysical evil consists in imperfections, physical evil in suffering and other like troubles, and moral evil in sin. all these evils exist in god's work; lucretius thence inferred that there is no providence, and he denied that the world can be an effect of divinity: _naturam rerum divinitus esse creatam;_ because there are so many faults in the nature of things, _quoniam tanta stat praedita culpa._ others have admitted two principles, the one good, the other evil. there have also been people who thought the difficulty insurmountable, and among these our author appears to have had m. bayle in mind. he hopes to [ ] show in his work that it is not a gordian knot, which needs to be cut; and he says rightly that the power, the wisdom and the goodness of god would not be infinite and perfect in their exercise if these evils had been banished. he begins with the evil of imperfection in chapter iii and observes, as st. augustine does, that creatures are imperfect, since they are derived from nothingness, whereas god producing a perfect substance from his own essence would have made thereof a god. this gives him occasion for making a little digression against the socinians. but someone will say, why did not god refrain from producing things, rather than make imperfect things? the author answers appositely that the abundance of the goodness of god is the cause. he wished to communicate himself at the expense of a certain fastidiousness which we assume in god, imagining that imperfections offend him. thus he preferred that there should be the imperfect rather than nothing. but one might have added that god has produced indeed the most perfect whole that was possible, one wherewith he had full cause for satisfaction, the imperfections of the parts serving a greater perfection in the whole. also the observation is made soon afterwards, that certain things might have been made better, but not without other new and _perhaps_ greater disadvantages. this _perhaps_ could have been omitted: for the author also states as a certainty, and rightly so, at the end of the chapter, _that it appertains to infinite goodness to choose the best_; and thus he was able to draw this conclusion a little earlier, that imperfect things will be added to those more perfect, so long as they do not preclude the existence of the more perfect in as great a number as possible. thus bodies were created as well as spirits, since the one does not offer any obstacle to the other; and the creation of matter was not unworthy of the great god, as some heretics of old believed, attributing this work to a certain demogorgon. . let us now proceed to physical evil, which is treated of in chapter iv. our famous author, having observed that metaphysical evil, or imperfection, springs from nothingness, concludes that physical evil, or discomfort, springs from matter, or rather from its movement; for without movement matter would be useless. moreover there must be contrariety in these movements; otherwise, if all went together in the same direction, there would be neither variety nor generation. but the movements that cause [ ] generations cause also corruptions, since from the variety of movements comes concussion between bodies, by which they are often dissipated and destroyed. the author of nature however, in order to render bodies more enduring, distributed them into _systems_, those which we know being composed of luminous and opaque balls, in a manner so excellent and so fitting for the display of that which they contain, and for arousing wonder thereat, that we can conceive of nothing more beautiful. but the crowning point of the work was the construction of animals, to the end that everywhere there should be creatures capable of cognition, _ne regio foret ulla suis animalibus orba._ our sagacious author believes that the air and even the purest aether have their denizens as well as the water and the earth. but supposing that there were places without animals, these places might have uses necessary for other places which are inhabited. so for example the mountains, which render the surface of our globe unequal and sometimes desert and barren, are of use for the production of rivers and of winds; and we have no cause to complain of sands and marshes, since there are so many places still remaining to be cultivated. moreover, it must not be supposed that all is made for man alone: and the author is persuaded that there are not only pure spirits but also immortal animals of a nature akin to these spirits, that is, animals whose souls are united to an ethereal and incorruptible matter. but it is not the same with animals whose body is terrestrial, composed of tubes and fluids which circulate therein, and whose motion is terminated by the breaking of the vessels. thence the author is led to believe that the immortality granted to adam, if he had been obedient, would not have been an effect of his nature, but of the grace of god. . now it was necessary for the conservation of corruptible animals that they should have indications causing them to recognize a present danger, and giving them the inclination to avoid it. that is why what is about to cause a great injury must beforehand cause pain such as may force the animal to efforts capable of repulsing or shunning the cause of this discomfort, and of forestalling a greater evil. the dread of death helps also to cause its avoidance: for it if were not so ugly and if the dissolution of continuity were not so painful, very often animals would take no precautions against perishing, or allowing the parts of their [ ] body to perish, and the strongest would have difficulty in subsisting for a whole day. god has also given hunger and thirst to animals, to compel them to feed and maintain themselves by replacing that which is used up and which disappears imperceptibly. these appetites are of use also to prompt them to work, in order to procure a nourishment meet for their constitution, and which may avail to invigorate them. it was even found necessary by the author of things that one animal very often should serve as food for another. this hardly renders the victim more unhappy, since death caused by diseases is generally just as painful as a violent death, if not more so; and animals subject to being preyed upon by others, having neither foresight nor anxiety for the future, have a life no less tranquil when they are not in danger. it is the same with inundations, earthquakes, thunderbolts and other disorders, which brute beasts do not fear, and which men have ordinarily no cause to fear, since there are few that suffer thereby. . the author of nature has compensated for these evils and others, which happen only seldom, with a thousand advantages that are ordinary and constant. hunger and thirst augment the pleasure experienced in the taking of nourishment. moderate work is an agreeable exercise of the animal's powers; and sleep is also agreeable in an altogether opposite way, restoring the forces through repose. but one of the pleasures most intense is that which prompts animals to propagation. god, having taken care to ensure that the species should be immortal, since the individual cannot be so here on earth, also willed that animals should have a great tenderness for their little ones, even to the point of endangering themselves for their preservation. from pain and from sensual pleasure spring fear, cupidity and the other passions that are ordinarily serviceable, although it may accidentally happen that they sometimes turn towards ill: one must say as much of poisons, epidemic diseases and other hurtful things, namely that these are indispensable consequences of a well-conceived system. as for ignorance and errors, it must be taken into account that the most perfect creatures are doubtless ignorant of much, and that knowledge is wont to be proportionate to needs. nevertheless it is necessary that one be exposed to hazards which cannot be foreseen, and accidents of such kinds are inevitable. one must often be mistaken in one's judgement, because it is not always permitted to suspend it long enough for exact [ ] consideration. these disadvantages are inseparable from the system of things: for things must very often resemble one another in a certain situation, the one being taken for the other. but the inevitable errors are not the most usual, nor the most pernicious. those which cause us the most harm are wont to arise through our fault; and consequently one would be wrong to make natural evils a pretext for taking one's own life, since one finds that those who have done so have generally been prompted to such action by voluntary evils. . after all, one finds that all these evils of which we have spoken come accidentally from good causes; and there is reason to infer concerning all we do not know, from all we do know, that one could not have done away with them without falling into greater troubles. for the better understanding of this the author counsels us to picture the world as a great building. there must be not only apartments, halls, galleries, gardens, grottoes, but also the kitchen, the cellar, the poultry-yard, stables, drainage. thus it would not have been proper to make only suns in the world, or to make an earth all of gold and of diamonds, but not habitable. if man had been all eye or all ear, he would not have been fitted for feeding himself. if god had made him without passions, he would have made him stupid; and if he had wished to make man free from error he would have had to deprive him of senses, or give him powers of sensation through some other means than organs, that is to say, there would not have been any man. our learned author remarks here upon an idea which histories both sacred and profane appear to inculcate, namely that wild beasts, poisonous plants and other natures that are injurious to us have been armed against us by sin. but as he argues here only in accordance with the principles of reason he sets aside what revelation can teach. he believes, however, that adam would have been exempted from natural evils (if he had been obedient) only by virtue of divine grace and of a covenant made with god, and that moses expressly indicates only about seven effects of the first sin. these effects are: . the revocation of the gracious gift of immortality. . the sterility of the earth, which was no longer to be fertile of itself, save in evil or useless herbs. . the rude toil one must exercise in order to gain sustenance. . the subjection of the woman to the will of the husband. [ ] . the pains of childbirth. . the enmity between man and the serpent. . the banishment of man from the place of delight wherein god had placed him. but our author thinks that many of our evils spring from the necessity of matter, especially since the withdrawal of grace. moreover, it seems to him that after our banishment immortality would be only a burden to us, and that it is perhaps more for our good than to punish us that the tree of life has become inaccessible to us. on one point or another one might have something to say in objection, but the body of the discourse by our author on the origin of evils is full of good and sound reflexions, which i have judged it advisable to turn to advantage. now i must pass on to the subject of our controversy, that is, the explanation of the nature of freedom. . the learned author of this work on the origin of evil, proposing to explain the origin of moral evil in the fifth chapter, which makes up half of the whole book, considers that it is altogether different from that of physical evil, which lies in the inevitable imperfection of creatures. for, as we shall see presently, it appears to him that moral evil comes rather from that which he calls a perfection, which the creature has in common, according to him, with the creator, that is to say, in the power of choosing without any motive and without any final or impelling cause. it is a very great paradox to assert that the greatest imperfection, namely sin, springs from perfection itself. but it is no less a paradox to present as a perfection the thing which is the least reasonable in the world, the advantage whereof would consist in being privileged against reason. and that, after all, rather than pointing out the source of the evil, would be to contend that it has none. for if the will makes its resolve without the existence of anything, either in the person who chooses or in the object which is chosen, to prompt it to the choice, there will be neither cause nor reason for this election; and as moral evil consists in the wrong choice, that is admitting that moral evil has no source at all. thus in the rules of good metaphysics there would have to be no moral evil in nature; and also for the same reason there would be no moral good either, and all morality would be destroyed. but we must listen to our gifted author, from whom the subtlety of an opinion maintained by famous philosophers among the schoolmen, and the adornments that he has added thereto himself by his[ ] wit and his eloquence, have hidden the great disadvantages contained therein. in setting forth the position reached in the controversy, he divides the writers into two parties. the one sort, he says, are content to say that the freedom of the will is exempt from outward constraint; and the other sort maintain that it is also exempt from inward necessity. but this exposition does not suffice, unless one distinguish the necessity that is absolute and contrary to morality from hypothetical necessity and moral necessity, as i have already explained in many places. . the first section of this chapter is to indicate the nature of choice. the author sets forth in the first place the opinion of those who believe that the will is prompted by the judgement of the understanding, or by anterior inclinations of the desires, to resolve upon the course that it adopts. but he confuses these authors with those who assert that the will is prompted to its resolution by an absolute necessity, and who maintain that the person who wills has no power over his volitions: that is, he confuses a thomist with a spinozist. he makes use of the admissions and the odious declarations of mr. hobbes and his like, to lay them to the charge of those who are infinitely far removed from them, and who take great care to refute them. he lays these things to their charge because they believe, as mr. hobbes believes, like everyone else (save for some doctors who are enveloped in their own subtleties), that the will is moved by the representation of good and evil. thence he imputes to them the opinion that there is therefore no such thing as contingency, and that all is connected by an absolute necessity. that is a very speedy manner of reasoning; yet he adds also, that properly speaking there will be no evil will, since if there were, all one could object to therein would be the evil which it can cause. that, he says, is different from the common notion, since the world censures the wicked not because they do harm, but because they do harm without necessity. he holds also that the wicked would be only unfortunate and by no means culpable; that there would be no difference between physical evil and moral evil, since man himself would not be the true cause of an action which he could not avoid; that evil-doers would not be either blamed or maltreated because they deserve it, but because that action may serve to turn people away from evil; again, for this reason only one would find fault with a rogue, but not with a sick man, that reproaches and [ ] threats can correct the one, and cannot cure the other. and further, according to this doctrine, chastisements would have no object save the prevention of future evil, without which the mere consideration of the evil already done would not be sufficient for punishment. likewise gratitude would have as its sole aim that of procuring a fresh benefit, without which the mere consideration of the past benefit would not furnish a sufficient reason. finally the author thinks that if this doctrine, which derives the resolution of the will from the representation of good and evil, were true, one must despair of human felicity, since it would not be in our power, and would depend upon things which are outside us. now as there is no ground for hoping that things from outside will order themselves and agree together in accordance with our wishes, there will always lack something to us, and there will always be something too much. all these conclusions hold, according to him, against those also who think that the will makes its resolve in accordance with the final judgement of the understanding, an opinion which, as he considers, strips the will of its right and renders the soul quite passive. this accusation is also directed against countless serious writers, of accepted authority, who are here placed in the same class with mr. hobbes and spinoza, and with some other discredited authors, whose doctrine is considered odious and insupportable. as for me, i do not require the will always to follow the judgement of the understanding, because i distinguish this judgement from the motives that spring from insensible perceptions and inclinations. but i hold that the will always follows the most advantageous representation, whether distinct or confused, of the good or the evil resulting from reasons, passions and inclinations, although it may also find motives for suspending its judgement. but it is always upon motives that it acts. . it will be necessary to answer these objections to my opinion before proceeding to establish that of our author. the misapprehension of my opponents originates in their confusing a consequence which is necessary absolutely, whose contrary implies contradiction, with a consequence which is founded only upon truths of fitness, and nevertheless has its effect. to put it otherwise, there is a confusion between what depends upon the principle of contradiction, which makes necessary and indispensable truths, and what depends upon the principle of the sufficient reason, which [ ] applies also to contingent truths. i have already elsewhere stated this proposition, which is one of the most important in philosophy, pointing out that there are two great principles, namely, _that of identicals or of contradiction_, which states that of two contradictory enunciations the one is true and the other false, and _that of the sufficient reason_, which states that there is no true enunciation whose reason could not be seen by one possessing all the knowledge necessary for its complete understanding. both principles must hold not only in necessary but also in contingent truths; and it is even necessary that that which has no sufficient reason should not exist. for one may say in a sense that these two principles are contained in the definition of the true and the false. nevertheless, when in making the analysis of the truth submitted one sees it depending upon truths whose contrary implies contradiction, one may say that it is absolutely necessary. but when, while pressing the analysis to the furthest extent, one can never attain to such elements of the given truth, one must say that it is contingent, and that it originates from a prevailing reason which inclines without necessitating. once that is granted, it is seen how we can say with sundry famous philosophers and theologians, that the thinking substance is prompted to its resolution by the prevailing representation of good or of evil, and this certainly and infallibly, but not necessarily, that is, by reasons which incline it without necessitating it. that is why contingent futurities, foreseen both in themselves and through their reasons, remain contingent. god was led infallibly by his wisdom and by his goodness to create the world through his power, and to give it the best possible form; but he was not led thereto of necessity, and the whole took place without any diminution of his perfect and supreme wisdom. and i do not know if it would be easy, apart from the reflexions we have just entertained, to untie the gordian knot of contingency and freedom. . this explanation dismisses all the objections of our gifted opponent. in the first place, it is seen that contingency exists together with freedom. secondly, evil wills are evil not only because they do harm, but also because they are a source of harmful things, or of physical evils, a wicked spirit being, in the sphere of its activity, what the evil principle of the manichaeans would be in the universe. moreover, the author has observed (ch. , sect. , § ) that divine wisdom has usually forbidden actions which would cause discomforts, that is to say, physical evils.[ ] it is agreed that he who causes evil by necessity is not culpable. but there is neither legislator nor lawyer who by this necessity means the force of the considerations of good or evil, real or apparent, that have prompted man to do ill: else anyone stealing a great sum of money or killing a powerful man in order to attain to high office would be less deserving of punishment than one who should steal a few halfpence for a mug of beer or wantonly kill his neighbour's dog, since these latter were tempted less. but it is quite the opposite in the administration of justice which is authorized in the world: for the greater is the temptation to sin, the more does it need to be repressed by the fear of a great chastisement. besides, the greater the calculation evident in the design of an evil-doer, the more will it be found that the wickedness has been deliberate, and the more readily will one decide that it is great and deserving of punishment. thus a too artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called _stellionate_, and a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very foundations of our security in written documents. but one will have greater indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness. the romans punished with the utmost severity the priests of the god apis, when these had prostituted the chastity of a noble lady to a knight who loved her to distraction, making him pass as their god; while it was found enough to send the lover into exile. but if someone had done evil deeds without apparent reason and without appearance of passion the judge would be tempted to take him for a madman, especially if it proved that he was given to committing such extravagances often: this might tend towards reduction of the penalty, rather than supplying the true grounds of wickedness and punishment. so far removed are the principles of our opponents from the practice of the tribunals and from the general opinion of men. . thirdly, the distinction between physical evil and moral evil will still remain, although there be this in common between them, that they have their reasons and causes. and why manufacture new difficulties for oneself concerning the origin of moral evil, since the principle followed in the solution of those which natural evils have raised suffices also to account for voluntary evils? that is to say, it suffices to show that one could not have prevented men from being prone to errors, without changing the [ ] constitution of the best of systems or without employing miracles at every turn. it is true that sin makes up a large portion of human wretchedness, and even the largest; but that does not prevent one from being able to say that men are wicked and deserving of punishment: else one must needs say that the actual sins of the non-regenerate are excusable, because they spring from the first cause of our wretchedness, which is original sin. fourthly, to say that the soul becomes passive and that man is not the true cause of sin, if he is prompted to his voluntary actions by their objects, as our author asserts in many passages, and particularly ch. , sect. , sub-sect. , § , is to create for oneself new senses for terms. when the ancients spoke of that which is [greek: eph' hêmin], or when we speak of that which depends upon us, of spontaneity, of the inward principle of our actions, we do not exclude the representation of external things; for these representations are in our souls, they are a portion of the modifications of this active principle which is within us. no agent is capable of acting without being _predisposed_ to what the action demands; and the reasons or inclinations derived from good or evil are the dispositions that enable the soul to decide between various courses. one will have it that the will is alone active and supreme, and one is wont to imagine it to be like a queen seated on her throne, whose minister of state is the understanding, while the passions are her courtiers or favourite ladies, who by their influence often prevail over the counsel of her ministers. one will have it that the understanding speaks only at this queen's order; that she can vacillate between the arguments of the minister and the suggestions of the favourites, even rejecting both, making them keep silence or speak, and giving them audience or not as seems good to her. but it is a personification or mythology somewhat ill-conceived. if the will is to judge, or take cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the understanding or the senses offer it, it will need another understanding in itself, to understand what it is offered. the truth is that the soul, or the thinking substance, understands the reasons and feels the inclinations, and decides according to the predominance of the representations modifying its active force, in order to shape the action. i have no need here to apply my system of pre-established harmony, which shows our independence to the best advantage and frees us from the physical influence of objects. for what i have just said is sufficient to answer the objection. our [ ] author, even though he admits with people in general this physical influence of objects upon us, observes nevertheless with much perspicacity that the body or the objects of the senses do not even give us our ideas, much less the active force of our soul, and that they serve only to draw out that which is within us. this is much in the spirit of m. descartes' belief that the soul, not being able to give force to the body, gives it at least some direction. it is a mean between one side and the other, between physical influence and pre-established harmony. . fifthly, the objection is made that, according to my opinion, sin would neither be censured nor punished because of its deserts, but because the censure and the chastisement serve to prevent it another time; whereas men demand something more, namely, satisfaction for the crime, even though it should serve neither for amendment nor for example. so do men with reason demand that true gratitude should come from a true recognition of the past benefit, and not from the interested aim of extorting a fresh benefit. this objection contains noble and sound considerations, but it does not strike at me. i require a man to be virtuous, grateful, just, not only from the motive of interest, of hope or of fear, but also of the pleasure that he should find in good actions: else one has not yet reached the degree of virtue that one must endeavour to attain. that is what one means by saying that justice and virtue must be loved for their own sake; and it is also what i explained in justifying 'disinterested love', shortly before the opening of the controversy which caused so much stir. likewise i consider that wickedness is all the greater when its practice becomes a pleasure, as when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or because he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure in killing them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. such a degree of wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected with it finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his homicides than he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope or of fear. i have also observed in answering the difficulties of m. bayle that, according to the celebrated conringius, justice which punishes by means of _medicinal_ penalties, so to speak, that is, in order to correct the criminal or at least to provide an example for others, might exist in the opinion of those who do away with the freedom that is exempt from necessity. true [ ] retributive justice, on the other hand, going beyond the medicinal, assumes something more, namely, intelligence and freedom in him who sins, because the harmony of things demands a satisfaction, or evil in the form of suffering, to make the mind feel its error after the voluntary active evil whereto it has consented. mr. hobbes also, who does away with freedom, has rejected retributive justice, as do the socinians, drawing on themselves the condemnation of our theologians; although the writers of the socinian party are wont to exaggerate the idea of freedom. . sixthly, the objection is finally made that men cannot hope for felicity if the will can only be actuated by the representation of good and evil. but this objection seems to me completely null and void, and i think it would be hard to guess how any tolerable interpretation was ever put upon it. moreover, the line of reasoning adopted to prove it is of a most astounding nature: it is that our felicity depends upon external things, if it is true that it depends upon the representation of good or evil. it is therefore not in our own power, so it is said, for we have no ground for hoping that outward things will arrange themselves for our pleasure. this argument is halting from every aspect. _there is no force in the inference: one might grant the conclusion: the argument may be retorted upon the author_. let us begin with the retort, which is easy. for are men any happier or more independent of the accidents of fortune upon this argument, or because they are credited with the advantage of choosing without reason? have they less bodily suffering? have they less tendency toward true or apparent goods, less fear of true or imaginary evils? are they any less enslaved by sensual pleasure, by ambition, by avarice? less apprehensive? less envious? yes, our gifted author will say; i will prove it by a method of counting or assessment. i would rather he had proved it by experience; but let us see this proof by counting. suppose that by my choice, which enables me to give goodness-for-me to that which i choose, i give to the object chosen six degrees of goodness, when previously there were two degrees of evil in my condition; i shall become happy all at once, and with perfect ease, for i should have four degrees surplus, or net good. doubtless that is all very well; but unfortunately it is impossible. for what possibility is there of giving these six degrees of goodness to the object? to that end we must needs have the power to change our taste, or the things, as we please. that would be almost as if i could say to [ ] lead, thou shalt be gold, and make it so; to the pebble, thou shalt be diamond; or at the least, thou shalt look like it. or it would be like the common explanation of the mosaical passage which seems to say that the desert manna assumed any taste the israelites desired to give to it. they only had to say to their homerful, thou shalt be a capon, thou shalt be a partridge. but if i am free to give these six degrees of goodness to the object, am i not permitted to give it more goodness? i think that i am. but if that is so, why shall we not give to the object all the goodness conceivable? why shall we not even go as far as twenty-four carats of goodness? by this means behold us completely happy, despite the accidents of fortune; it may blow, hail or snow, and we shall not mind: by means of this splendid secret we shall be always shielded against fortuitous events. the author agrees (in this first section of the fifth chapter, sub-sect. , § ) that this power overcomes all the natural appetites and cannot be overcome by any of them; and he regards it (§§ , , ) as the soundest foundation for happiness. indeed, since there is nothing capable of limiting a power so indeterminate as that of choosing without any reason, and of giving goodness to the object through the choice, either this goodness must exceed infinitely that which the natural appetites seek in objects, these appetites and objects being limited while this power is independent or at the least this goodness, given by the will to the chosen object, must be arbitrary and of such a kind as the will desires. for whence would one derive the reason for limits if the object is possible, if it is within reach of him who wills, and if the will can give it the goodness it desires to give, independently of reality and of appearances? it seems to me that may suffice to overthrow a hypothesis so precarious, which contains something of a fairy-tale kind, _optantis ista sunt, non invenientis_. it therefore remains only too true that this handsome fiction cannot render us more immune from evils. and we shall see presently that when men place themselves above certain desires or certain aversions they do so through other desires, which always have their foundation in the representation of good and evil. i said also 'that one might grant the conclusion of the argument', which states that our happiness does not depend absolutely upon ourselves, at least in the present state of human life: for who would question the fact that we are liable to meet a thousand accidents which human prudence cannot evade? how, for example, can i [ ] avoid being swallowed up, together with a town where i take up my abode, by an earthquake, if such is the order of things? but finally i can also deny the inference in the argument, which states that if the will is only actuated by the representation of good and evil our happiness does not depend upon ourselves. the inference would be valid if there were no god, if everything were ruled by brute causes; but god's ordinance is that for the attainment of happiness it suffices that one be virtuous. thus, if the soul follows reason and the orders that god has given it, it is assured of its happiness, even though one may not find a sufficiency thereof in this life. . having thus endeavoured to point out the disadvantages of my hypothesis, our gifted author sets forth the advantages of his own. he believes that it alone is capable of saving our freedom, that all our felicity rests therein, that it increases our goods and lessens our evils, and that an agent possessing this power is so much the more complete. these advantages have almost all been already disproved. we have shown that for the securing of our freedom it is enough that the representations of goods and of evils, and other inward or outward dispositions, should incline us without constraining us. moreover one does not see how pure indifference can contribute to felicity; on the contrary, the more indifferent one is, the more insensitive and the less capable of enjoying what is good will one prove to be. besides the hypothesis proves too much. for if an indifferent power could give itself the consciousness of good it could also give itself the most perfect happiness, as has been already shown. and it is manifest that there is nothing which would set limits to that power, since limits would withdraw it from its pure indifference, whence, so our author alleges, it only emerges of itself, or rather wherein it has never been. finally one does not see wherein the perfection of pure indifference lies: on the contrary, there is nothing more imperfect; it would render knowledge and goodness futile, and would reduce everything to chance, with no rules, and no measures that could be taken. there are, however, still some advantages adduced by our author which have not been discussed. he considers then that by this power alone are we the true cause to which our actions can be imputed, since otherwise we should be under the compulsion of external objects; likewise that by this power alone can one ascribe to oneself the merit of one's own felicity, and feel pleased with [ ] oneself. but the exact opposite is the case: for when one happens upon the action through an absolutely indifferent movement, and not as a result of one's good or bad qualities, is it not just as though one were to happen upon it blindly by chance or hazard? why then should one boast of a good action, or why should one be censured for an evil one, if the thanks or blame redounds to fortune or hazard? i think that one is more worthy of praise when one owes the action to one's good qualities, and the more culpable in proportion as one has been impelled to it by one's evil qualities. to attempt to assess actions without weighing the qualities whence they spring is to talk at random and to put an imaginary indefinable something in the place of causes. thus, if this chance or this indefinable something were the cause of our actions, to the exclusion of our natural or acquired qualities, of our inclinations, of our habits, it would not be possible to set one's hopes upon anything depending upon the resolve of others, since it would not be possible to fix something indefinite, or to conjecture into what roadstead the uncertain weather of an extravagant indifference will drive the vessel of the will. . but setting aside advantages and disadvantages, let us see how our learned author will justify the hypothesis from which he promises us so much good. he imagines that it is only god and the free creatures who are active in the true sense, and that in order to be active one must be determined by oneself only. now that which is determined by itself must not be determined by objects, and consequently the free substance, in so far as it is free, must be indifferent with regard to objects, and emerge from this indifference only by its own choice, which shall render the object pleasing to it. but almost all the stages of this argument have their stumbling-blocks. not only the free creatures, but also all the other substances and natures composed of substances, are active. beasts are not free, and yet all the same they have active souls, unless one assume, with the cartesians, that they are mere machines. moreover, it is not necessary that in order to be active one should be determined only by oneself, since a thing may receive direction without receiving force. so it is that the horse is controlled by the rider and the vessel is steered by the helm; and m. descartes' belief was that our body, having force in itself, receives only some direction from the soul. thus an active thing may receive from outside some determination or direction, capable of changing that [ ] direction which it would take of itself. finally, even though an active substance is determined only by itself, it does not follow that it is not moved by objects: for it is the representation of the object within it which contributes towards the determination. now the representation does not come from without, and consequently there is complete spontaneity. objects do not act upon intelligent substances as efficient and physical causes, but as final and moral causes. when god acts in accordance with his wisdom, he is guided by the ideas of the possibles which are his objects, but which have no reality outside him before their actual creation. thus this kind of spiritual and moral motion is not contrary to the activity of the substance, nor to the spontaneity of its action. finally, even though free power were not determined by the objects, it can never be indifferent to the action when it is on the point of acting, since the action must have its origin in a disposition to act: otherwise one will do anything from anything, _quidvis ex quovis_, and there will be nothing too absurd for us to imagine. but this disposition will have already broken the charm of mere indifference, and if the soul gives itself this disposition there must needs be another predisposition for this act of giving it. consequently, however far back one may go, one will never meet with a mere indifference in the soul towards the actions which it is to perform. it is true that these dispositions incline it without constraining it. they relate usually to the objects; but there are some, notwithstanding, which arise variously _a subjecto_ or from the soul itself, and which bring it about that one object is more acceptable than the other, or that the same is more acceptable at one time than at another. . our author continually assures us that his hypothesis is true, and he undertakes to show that this indifferent power is indeed found in god, and even that it must be attributed to him of necessity. for (he says) nothing is to god either good or bad in creatures. he has no natural appetite, to be satisfied by the enjoyment of anything outside him. he is therefore absolutely indifferent to all external things, since by them he can neither be helped nor hindered; and he must determine himself and create as it were an appetite in making his choice. and having once chosen, he will wish to abide by his choice, just as if he had been prompted thereto by a natural inclination. thus will the divine will be the cause of goodness in beings. that is to say, there will be goodness in the objects, not by their [ ] nature, but by the will of god: whereas if that will be excluded neither good nor evil can exist in things. it is difficult to imagine how writers of merit could have been misled by so strange an opinion, for the reason which appears to be advanced here has not the slightest force. it seems to me as though an attempt is being made to justify this opinion by the consideration that all creatures have their whole being from god, so that they cannot act upon him or determine him. but this is clearly an instance of self-deception. when we say that an intelligent substance is actuated by the goodness of its object, we do not assert that this object is necessarily a being existing outside the substance, and it is enough for us that it be conceivable: for its representation acts in the substance, or rather the substance acts upon itself, in so far as it is disposed and influenced by this representation. with god, it is plain that his understanding contains the ideas of all possible things, and that is how everything is in him in a transcendent manner. these ideas represent to him the good and evil, the perfection and imperfection, the order and disorder, the congruity and incongruity of possibles; and his superabundant goodness makes him choose the most advantageous. god therefore determines himself by himself; his will acts by virtue of his goodness, but it is particularized and directed in action by understanding filled with wisdom. and since his understanding is perfect, since his thoughts are always clear, his inclinations always good, he never fails to do the best; whereas we may be deceived by the mere semblances of truth and goodness. but how is it possible for it to be said that there is no good or evil in the ideas before the operation of god's will? does the will of god form the ideas which are in his understanding? i dare not ascribe to our learned author so strange a sentiment, which would confuse understanding and will, and would subvert the current use of our notions. now if ideas are independent of will, the perfection or imperfection which is represented in them will be independent also. indeed, is it by the will of god, for example, or is it not rather by the nature of numbers, that certain numbers allow more than others of various exact divisions? that some are more fitted than others for forming battalions, composing polygons and other regular figures? that the number six has the advantage of being the least of all the numbers that are called perfect? that in a plane six equal circles may touch a seventh? that of all equal bodies, the sphere has the least surface? that [ ] certain lines are incommensurable, and consequently ill-adapted for harmony? do we not see that all these advantages or disadvantages spring from the idea of the thing, and that the contrary would imply contradiction? can it be thought that the pain and discomfort of sentient creatures, and above all the happiness and unhappiness of intelligent substances, are a matter of indifference to god? and what shall be said of his justice? is it also something arbitrary, and would he have acted wisely and justly if he had resolved to condemn the innocent? i know that there have been writers so ill-advised as to maintain an opinion so dangerous and so liable to overthrow religion. but i am assured that our illustrious author is far from holding it. nevertheless, it seems as though this hypothesis tends in that direction, if there is nothing in objects save what is indifferent to the divine will before its choice. it is true that god has need of nothing; but the author has himself shown clearly that god's goodness, and not his need, prompted him to produce creatures. there was therefore in him a reason anterior to the resolution; and, as i have said so many times, it was neither by chance nor without cause, nor even by necessity, that god created this world, but rather as a result of his inclination, which always prompts him to the best. thus it is surprising that our author should assert here (ch. , sect. , sub-sect. , § ) that there is no reason which could have induced god, absolutely perfect and happy in himself, to create anything outside him, although, according to the author's previous declarations (ch. , sect. , §§ , ), god acts for an end, and his aim is to communicate his goodness. it was therefore not altogether a matter of indifference to him whether he should create or not create, and creation is notwithstanding a free act. nor was it a matter of indifference to him either, whether he should create one world rather than another; a perpetual chaos, or a completely ordered system. thus the qualities of objects, included in their ideas, formed the reason for god's choice. . our author, having already spoken so admirably about the beauty and fittingness of the works of god, has tried to search out phrases that would reconcile them with his hypothesis, which appears to deprive god of all consideration for the good or the advantage of creatures. the indifference of god prevails (he says) only in his first elections, but as soon as god has chosen something he has virtually chosen, at the same time, all [ ] that which is of necessity connected therewith. there were innumerable possible men equally perfect: the election of some from among them is purely arbitrary (in the judgement of our author). but god, once having chosen them, could not have willed in them anything contrary to human nature. up to this point the author's words are consistent with his hypothesis; but those that follow go further. he advances the proposition that when god resolved to produce certain creatures he resolved at the same time, by virtue of his infinite goodness, to give them every possible advantage. nothing, indeed, could be so reasonable, but also nothing could be so contrary to the hypothesis he has put forward, and he does right to overthrow it, rather than prolong the existence of anything so charged with incongruities incompatible with the goodness and wisdom of god. here is the way to see plainly that this hypothesis cannot harmonize with what has just been said. the first question will be: will god create something or not, and wherefore? the author has answered that he will create something in order to communicate his goodness. it is therefore no matter of indifference to him whether he shall create or not. next the question is asked: will god create such and such a thing, and wherefore? one must needs answer (to speak consistently) that the same goodness makes him choose the best, and indeed the author falls back on that subsequently. but, following his own hypothesis, he answers that god will create such a thing, but that there is no _wherefore_, because god is absolutely indifferent towards creatures, who have their goodness only from his choice. it is true that our author varies somewhat on this point, for he says here (ch. , sect. , sub-sect. , § ) that god is indifferent to the choice between men of equal perfection, or between equally perfect kinds of rational creatures. thus, according to this form of expression, he would choose rather the more perfect kind: and as kinds that are of equal perfection harmonize more or less with others, god will choose those that agree best together; there will therefore be no pure and absolute indifference, and the author thus comes back to my principles. but let us speak, as he speaks, in accordance with his hypothesis, and let us assume with him that god chooses certain creatures even though he be absolutely indifferent towards them. he will then just as soon choose creatures that are irregular, ill-shapen, mischievous, unhappy, chaos everlasting, monsters everywhere, [ ] scoundrels as sole inhabitants of the earth, devils filling the whole universe, all this rather than excellent systems, shapely forms, upright persons, good angels! no, the author will say, god, when once he had resolved to create men, resolved at the same time to give them all the advantages possible in the world, and it is the same with regard to creatures of other kinds. i answer, that if this advantage were connected of necessity with their nature, the author would be speaking in accordance with his hypothesis. that not being so, however, he must admit that god's resolve to give every possible advantage to men arises from a new election independent of that one which prompted god to make men. but whence comes this new election? does it also come from mere indifference? if such is the case, nothing prompts god to seek the good of men, and if he sometimes comes to do it, it will be merely by accident. but the author maintains that god was prompted to the choice by his goodness; therefore the good and ill of creatures is no matter of indifference to him, and there are in him primary choices to which the goodness of the object prompts him. he chooses not only to create men, but also to create men as happy as it is possible to be in this system. after that not the least vestige of mere indifference will be left, for we can reason concerning the entire world just as we have reasoned concerning the human race. god resolved to create a world, but he was bound by his goodness at the same time to make choice of such a world as should contain the greatest possible amount of order, regularity, virtue, happiness. for i can see no excuse for saying that whereas god was prompted by his goodness to make the men he has resolved to create as perfect as is possible within this system, he had not the same good intention towards the whole universe. there we have come back again to the goodness of the objects; and pure indifference, where god would act without cause, is altogether destroyed by the very procedure of our gifted author, with whom the force of truth, once the heart of the matter was reached, prevailed over a speculative hypothesis, which cannot admit of any application to the reality of things. . since, therefore, nothing is altogether indifferent to god, who knows all degrees, all effects, all relations of things, and who penetrates at one and the same time all their possible connexions, let us see whether at least the ignorance and insensibility of man can make him absolutely indifferent in his choice. the author regales us with this pure [ ] indifference as with a handsome present. here are the proofs of it which he gives: ( ) we feel it within us. ( ) we have experience within ourselves of its marks and its properties. ( ) we can show that other causes which might determine our will are insufficient. as for the first point, he asserts that in feeling freedom within us we feel within us at the same time pure indifference. but i do not agree that we feel such indifference, or that this alleged feeling follows upon that of freedom. we feel usually within us something which inclines us to our choice. at times it happens, however, that we cannot account for all our dispositions. if we give our mind to the question, we shall recognize that the constitution of our body and of bodies in our environment, the present or previous temper of our soul, together with countless small things included under these comprehensive headings, may contribute towards our greater or lesser predilection for certain objects, and the variation of our opinions from one time to another. at the same time we shall recognize that none would attribute this to mere indifference, or to some indefinable force of the soul which has the same effect upon objects as colours are said to have upon the chameleon. thus the author has no cause here to appeal to the judgement of the people: he does so, saying that in many things the people reason better than the philosophers. it is true that certain philosophers have been misled by chimeras, and it would seem that mere indifference is numbered among chimerical notions. but when someone maintains that a thing does not exist because the common herd does not perceive it, here the populace cannot be regarded as a good judge, being, as it is, only guided by the senses. many people think that air is nothing when it is not stirred by the wind. the majority do not know of imperceptible bodies, the fluid which causes weight or elasticity, magnetic matter, to say nothing of atoms and other indivisible substances. do we say then that these things are not because the common herd does not know of them? if so, we shall be able to say also that the soul acts sometimes without any disposition or inclination contributing towards the production of its act, because there are many dispositions and inclinations which are not sufficiently perceived by the common herd, for lack of attention and thought. secondly, as to the marks of the power in question, i have already refuted the claim advanced for it, that it possesses the advantage of making one active, the real cause of one's action, and subject to responsibility and morality: [ ] these are not genuine marks of its existence. here is one the author adduces, which is not genuine either, namely, that we have within us a power of resisting natural appetites, that is to say of resisting not only the senses, but also the reason. but i have already stated this fact: one resists natural appetites through other natural appetites. one sometimes endures inconveniences, and is happy to do so; but that is on account of some hope or of some satisfaction which is combined with the ill and exceeds it: either one anticipates good from it, or one finds good in it. the author asserts that it is through that power to transform appearances which he has introduced on the scene, that we render agreeable what at first displeased us. but who cannot see that the true reason is, that application and attention to the object and custom change our disposition and consequently our natural appetites? once we become used to a rather high degree of cold or heat, it no longer incommodes us as it formerly did, and yet no one would ascribe this effect to our power of choice. time is needed, for instance, to bring about that hardening, or rather that callosity, which enables the hands of certain workmen to resist a degree of heat that would burn our hands. the populace, whom the author invokes, guess correctly the cause of this effect, although they sometimes apply it in a laughable manner. two serving-maids being close to the fire in the kitchen, one who has burnt herself says to the other: oh, my dear, who will be able to endure the fire of purgatory? the other answers: don't be absurd, my good woman, one grows used to everything. . but (the author will say) this wonderful power which causes us to be indifferent to everything, or inclined towards everything, simply at our own free will, prevails over reason itself. and this is his third proof, namely, that one cannot sufficiently explain our actions without having recourse to this power. one sees numbers of people despising the entreaties of their friends, the counsels of their neighbours, the reproaches of their conscience, discomforts, tortures, death, the wrath of god, hell itself, for the sake of running after follies which have no claim to be good or tolerable, save as being freely chosen by such people. all is well in this argument, with the exception of the last words only. for when one takes an actual instance one will find that there were reasons or causes which led the man to his choice, and that there are very strong bonds to fasten [ ] him thereto. a love-affair, for example, will never have arisen from mere indifference: inclination or passion will have played its part; but habit and stubbornness will cause certain natures to face ruin rather than separation from the beloved. here is another example cited by the author: an atheist, a man like lucilio vanini (that is what many people call him, whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of giulio cesare vanini in his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather than renounce his impiety. the author does not name vanini; and the truth is that this man repudiated his wrong opinions, until he was convicted of having published atheistical dogmas and acted as an apostle of atheism. when he was asked whether there was a god, he plucked some grass, saying: _et levis est cespes qui probet esse deum._ but since the attorney general to the parliament of toulouse desired to cause annoyance to the first president (so it is said), to whom vanini was granted considerable access, teaching his children philosophy, if indeed he was not altogether in the service of that magistrate, the inquisition was carried through rigorously. vanini, seeing that there was no chance of pardon, declared himself, when at the point of death, for what he was, an atheist; and there was nothing very extraordinary in that. but supposing there were an atheist who gave himself up for torture, vanity might be in his case a strong enough motive, as in that of the gymnosophist, calanus, and of the sophist who, according to lucian's account, was burnt to death of his own will. but the author thinks that that very vanity, that stubbornness, those other wild intentions of persons who otherwise seem to have quite good sense, cannot be explained by the appetites that arise from the representation of good and evil, and that they compel us to have recourse to that transcendent power which transforms good into evil, and evil into good, and the indifferent into good or into evil. but we do not need to go so far, and the causes of our errors are only too visible. indeed, we can make these transformations, but it is not as with the fairies, by a mere act of this magic power, but by obscuring and suppressing in one's mind the representations of good or bad qualities which are naturally attached to certain objects, and by contemplating only such representations as conform to our taste or our prejudices; or [ ] again, because one attaches to the objects, by dint of thinking of them, certain qualities which are connected with them only accidentally or through our habitual contemplation of them. for example, all my life long i detest a certain kind of good food, because in my childhood i found in it something distasteful, which made a strong impression upon me. on the other hand, a certain natural defect will be pleasing to me, because it will revive within me to some extent the thought of a person i used to esteem or love. a young man will have been delighted by the applause which has been showered upon him after some successful public action; the impression of this great pleasure will have made him remarkably sensitive to reputation; he will think day and night of nothing save what nourishes this passion, and that will cause him to scorn death itself in order to attain his end. for although he may know very well that he will not feel what is said of him after his death, the representation he makes of it for himself beforehand creates a strong impression on his mind. and there are always motives of the same kind in actions which appear most useless and absurd to those who do not enter into these motives. in a word, a strong or oft-repeated impression may alter considerably our organs, our imagination, our memory, and even our reasoning. it happens that a man, by dint of having often related something untrue, which he has perhaps invented, finally comes to believe in it himself. and as one often represents to oneself something pleasing, one makes it easy to imagine, and one thinks it also easy to put into effect, whence it comes that one persuades oneself easily of what one wishes. _et qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt._ . errors are therefore, absolutely speaking, never voluntary, although the will very often contributes towards them indirectly, owing to the pleasure one takes in giving oneself up to certain thoughts, or owing to the aversion one feels for others. beautiful print in a book will help towards making it persuasive to the reader. the air and manner of a speaker will win the audience for him. one will be inclined to despise doctrines coming from a man one despises or hates, or from another who resembles him in some point that strikes us. i have already said why one is readily disposed to believe what is advantageous or agreeable, and i have known people who at first had changed their religion for worldly [ ] considerations, but who have been persuaded (and well persuaded) afterwards that they had taken the right course. one sees also that stubbornness is not simply wrong choice persevering, but also a disposition to persevere therein, which is due to some good supposed to be inherent in the choice, or some evil imagined as arising from a change. the first choice has perchance been made in mere levity, but the intention to abide by it springs from certain stronger reasons or impressions. there are even some writers on ethics who lay it down that one ought to abide by one's choice so as not to be inconstant or appear so. yet perseverance is wrong when one despises the warnings of reason, especially when the subject is important enough to be examined carefully; but when the thought of change is unpleasant, one readily averts one's attention from it, and that is the way which most frequently leads one to stubbornness. the author wished to connect stubbornness with his so-called pure indifference. he might then have taken into account that to make us cling to a choice there would be need of more than the mere choice itself or a pure indifference, especially if this choice has been made lightly, and all the more lightly in proportion to the indifference shown. in such a case we shall be readily inclined to reverse the choice, unless vanity, habit, interest or some other motive makes us persevere therein. it must not be supposed either that vengeance pleases without cause. persons of intense feeling ponder upon it day and night, and it is hard for them to efface the impression of the wrong or the affront they have sustained. they picture for themselves a very great pleasure in being freed from the thought of scorn which comes upon them every moment, and which causes some to find vengeance sweeter than life itself. _quis vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa._ the author would wish to persuade us that usually, when our desire or our aversion is for some object which does not sufficiently deserve it, we have given to it the surplus of good or evil which has affected us, through the alleged power of choice which makes things appear good or evil as we wish. one has had two degrees of natural evil, one gives oneself six degrees of artificial good through the power that can choose without cause. thus one will have four degrees of net good (ch. , sect. , § ). if that could be carried out it would take us far, as i have already said here. the [ ] author even thinks that ambition, avarice, the gambling mania and other frivolous passions derive all their force from this power (ch. , sect. , sub-sect. ). but there are besides so many false appearances in things, so many imaginations capable of enlarging or diminishing objects, so many unjustified connexions in our arguments, that there is no need of this little fairy, that is, of this inward power operating as it were by enchantment, to whom the author attributes all these disorders. indeed, i have already said repeatedly that when we resolve upon some course contrary to acknowledged reason, we are prompted to it by another reason stronger to outward appearance, such as, for instance, is the pleasure of appearing independent and of performing an extraordinary action. there was in days past at the court of osnabrück a tutor to the pages, who, like a second mucius scaevola, held out his arm into the flame and looked like getting a gangrene, in order to show that the strength of his mind was greater than a very acute pain. few people will follow his example; and i do not even know if a writer could easily be found who, having once affirmed the existence of a power capable of choosing without cause, or even contrary to reason, would be willing to prove his case by his own example, in renouncing some good benefice or some high office, simply in order to display this superiority of will over reason. but i am sure at the least that an intelligent man would not do so. he would be presently aware that someone would nullify his sacrifice by pointing out to him that he had simply imitated heliodorus, bishop of larissa. that man (so it is said) held his book on theagenes and chariclea dearer than his bishopric; and such a thing may easily happen when a man has resources enabling him to dispense with his office and when he is sensitive to reputation. thus every day people are found ready to sacrifice their advantages to their caprices, that is to say, actual goods to the mere semblance of them. . if i wished to follow step by step the arguments of our gifted author, which often come back to matters previously considered in our inquiry, usually however with some elegant and well-phrased addition, i should be obliged to proceed too far; but i hope that i shall be able to avoid doing so, having, as i think, sufficiently met all his reasons. the best thing is that with him practice usually corrects and amends theory. after having advanced the hypothesis, in the second section of this fifth chapter, [ ] that we approach god through the capacity to choose without reason, and that this power being of the noblest kind its exercise is the most capable of making one happy, things in the highest degree paradoxical, since it is reason which leads us to imitate god and our happiness lies in following reason: after that, i say, the author provides an excellent corrective, for he says rightly (§ ) that in order to be happy we must adapt our choice to things, since things are scarcely prone to adapt themselves to us, and that this is in effect adapting oneself to the divine will. doubtless that is well said, but it implies besides that our will must be guided as far as possible by the reality of the objects, and by true representations of good and evil. consequently also the motives of good and evil are not opposed to freedom, and the power of choosing without cause, far from ministering to our happiness, will be useless and even highly prejudicial. thus it is happily the case that this power nowhere exists, and that it is 'a being of reasoning reason', as some schoolmen call the fictions that are not even possible. as for me, i should have preferred to call them 'beings of non-reasoning reason'. also i think that the third section (on wrong elections) may pass, since it says that one must not choose things that are impossible, inconsistent, harmful, contrary to the divine will, or already taken by others. moreover, the author remarks appositely that by prejudicing the happiness of others needlessly one offends the divine will, which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. i will say as much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source of wrong elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us inopportunely towards external things. the fifth section is designed to reconcile evil elections or sins with the power and goodness of god; and this section, as it is diffuse, is divided into sub-sections. the author has cumbered himself needlessly with a great objection: for he asserts that without a power to choose that is altogether indifferent in the choice there would be no sin. now it was very easy for god to refuse to creatures a power so irrational. it was sufficient for them to be actuated by the representations of goods and evils; it was therefore easy, according to the author's hypothesis, for god to prevent sin. to extricate himself from this difficulty, he has no other resource than to state that if this power [ ] were removed from things the world would be nothing but a purely passive machine. but that is the very thing which i have disproved. if this power were missing in the world (as in fact it is), one would hardly complain of the fact. souls will be well content with the representations of goods and evils for the making of their choice, and the world will remain as beautiful as it is. the author comes back to what he had already put forward here, that without this power there would be no happiness. but i have given a sufficient answer to that, and there is not the slightest probability in this assertion and in certain other paradoxes he puts forward here to support his principal paradox. . he makes a small digression on prayer (sub-sect. ), saying that those who pray to god hope for some change in the order of nature; but it seems as though, according to his opinion, they are mistaken. in reality, men will be content if their prayers are heard, without troubling themselves as to whether the course of nature is changed in their favour, or not. indeed, if they receive succour from good angels there will be no change in the general order of things. also this opinion of our author is a very reasonable one, that there is a system of spiritual substances, just as there is of corporeal substances, and that the spiritual have communication with one another, even as bodies do. god employs the ministry of angels in his rule of mankind, without any detriment to the order of nature. nevertheless, it is easier to put forward theories on these matters than to explain them, unless one have recourse to my system of harmony. but the author goes somewhat further. he believes that the mission of the holy spirit was a great miracle in the beginning, but that now his operations within us are natural. i leave it to him to explain his opinion, and to settle the matter with other theologians. yet i observe that he finds the natural efficacy of prayer in the power it has of making the soul better, of overcoming the passions, and of winning for oneself a certain degree of new grace. i can say almost the same things on my hypothesis, which represents the will as acting only in accordance with motives; and i am immune from the difficulties in which the author has become involved over his power of choosing without cause. he is in great embarrassment also with regard to the foreknowledge of god. for if the soul is perfectly indifferent in its choice how is it possible to foresee this choice? and what sufficient reason will one be able to find for the knowledge of a[ ] thing, if there is no reason for its existence? the author puts off to some other occasion the solution of this difficulty, which would require (according to him) an entire work. for the rest, he sometimes speaks pertinently, and in conformity with my principles, on the subject of moral evil. he says, for example (sub-sect. ), that vices and crimes do not detract from the beauty of the universe, but rather add to it, just as certain dissonances would offend the ear by their harshness if they were heard quite alone, and yet in combination they render the harmony more pleasing. he also points out divers goods involved in evils, for instance, the usefulness of prodigality in the rich and avarice in the poor; indeed it serves to make the arts flourish. we must also bear in mind that we are not to judge the universe by the small size of our globe and of all that is known to us. for the stains and defects in it may be found as useful for enhancing the beauty of the rest as patches, which have nothing beautiful in themselves, are by the fair sex found adapted to embellish the whole face, although they disfigure the part they cover. cotta, in cicero's book, had compared providence, in its granting of reason to men, to a physician who allows wine to a patient, notwithstanding that he foresees the misuse which will be made thereof by the patient, at the expense of his life. the author replies that providence does what wisdom and goodness require, and that the good which accrues is greater than the evil. if god had not given reason to man there would have been no man at all, and god would be like a physician who killed someone in order to prevent his falling ill. one may add that it is not reason which is harmful in itself, but the absence of reason; and when reason is ill employed we reason well about means, but not adequately about an end, or about that bad end we have proposed to ourselves. thus it is always for lack of reason that one does an evil deed. the author also puts forward the objection made by epicurus in the book by lactantius on the wrath of god. the terms of the objection are more or less as follows. either god wishes to banish evils and cannot contrive to do so, in which case he would be weak; or he can abolish them, and will not, which would be a sign of malignity in him; or again he lacks power and also will, which would make him appear both weak and jealous; or finally he can and will, but in this case it will be asked why he then does not banish evil, if he exists? the author replies that god cannot banish evil, that he does not wish to either, and that notwithstanding he is neither malicious [ ] nor weak. i should have preferred to say that he can banish evil, but that he does not wish to do so absolutely, and rightly so, because he would then banish good at the same time, and he would banish more good than evil. finally our author, having finished his learned work, adds an appendix, in which he speaks of the divine laws. he fittingly divides these laws into natural and positive. he observes that the particular laws of the nature of animals must give way to the general laws of bodies, that god is not in reality angered when his laws are violated, but that order demanded that he who sins should bring an evil upon himself, and that he who does violence to others should suffer violence in his turn. but he believes that the positive laws of god rather indicate and forecast the evil than cause its infliction. and that gives him occasion to speak of the eternal damnation of the wicked, which no longer serves either for correction or example, and which nevertheless satisfies the retributive justice of god, although the wicked bring their unhappiness upon themselves. he suspects, however, that these punishments of the wicked bring some advantage to virtuous people. he is doubtful also whether it is not better to be damned than to be nothing: for it might be that the damned are fools, capable of clinging to their state of misery owing to a certain perversity of mind which, he maintains, makes them congratulate themselves on their false judgements in the midst of their misery, and take pleasure in finding fault with the will of god. for every day one sees peevish, malicious, envious people who enjoy the thought of their ills, and seek to bring affliction upon themselves. these ideas are not worthy of contempt, and i have sometimes had the like myself, but i am far from passing final judgement on them. i related, in of the essays written to oppose m. bayle, the fable of the devil's refusal of the pardon a hermit offers him on god's behalf. baron andré taifel, an austrian nobleman, knight of the court of ferdinand archduke of austria who became the second emperor of that name, alluding to his name (which appears to mean devil in german) assumed as his emblem a devil or satyr, with this spanish motto, _mas perdido, y menos arrepentido_, the more lost, the less repentant, which indicates a hopeless passion from which one cannot free oneself. this motto was afterwards repeated by the spanish count of villamediana when he was said to be in love with the queen. coming to the question why evil often happens to the good and good to the wicked, [ ] our illustrious author thinks that it has been sufficiently answered, and that hardly any doubt remains on that point. he observes nevertheless that one may often doubt whether good people who endure affliction have not been made good by their very misfortune, and whether the fortunate wicked have not perhaps been spoilt by prosperity. he adds that we are often bad judges, when it is a question of recognizing not only a virtuous man, but also a happy man. one often honours a hypocrite, and one despises another whose solid virtue is without pretence. we are poor judges of happiness also, and often felicity is hidden from sight under the rags of a contented poor man, while it is sought in vain in the palaces of certain of the great. finally the author observes, that the greatest felicity here on earth lies in the hope of future happiness, and thus it may be said that to the wicked nothing happens save what is of service for correction or chastisement, and to the good nothing save what ministers to their greater good. these conclusions entirely correspond to my opinion, and one can say nothing more appropriate for the conclusion of this work. [ ] * * * * * causa dei asserta per justitiam ejus _cum caeteris ejus perfectionibus cunctisque actionibus conciliatam._ the original edition of the theodicy contained a fourth appendix under this title. it presented in scholastic latin a formal summary of the positive doctrine expressed by the french treatise. it satisfied the academic requirements of its day, but would not, presumably, be of interest to many modern readers, and is consequently omitted here. [ ] * * * * * index abélard, , - , abraham, adam, , - , - adam kadmon, albius, thomas, alcuin, alfonso, king of castile, - aloysius novarinus, alrasi, alvarez, ambrose, st., , amyraut, anaxagoras, andradius, jacques payva, andreas cisalpinus, angelus silesius, johann, annat, - anselm, st., antipater, aquinas, thomas, _see_ thomas arcesilaus, archidemus, aristotelians, - aristotle, , - , , , , , , , , - , , , , , - , , , , arminius, _see_ irminius arminius (jacob harmensen), , arnauld, , , , , , - , arriaga, , arrian, assassins, athanasius, st., augustine (of hippo), st., , , , , , , , , , , , , - , - , , - , , , , ----, his disciples, , , , , , augustus (emperor), aulus gellius, - , , aureolus, cardinal, , averroes, averroists, ff. bacon, francis, bañez, barbaro, ermolao, baron, vincent, baronius, robert, barton, thomas, basil, st., , bayle, p., ff. _et passim_ becher, johann joachim, - becker, bede, bellarmine, st. robert, , , berigardus, claudius, berkeley, bp., bernard, st., bernier, , bertius, de bèze, theodore, _birgitta, revelations of st._, boethius, , - bonartes, thomas, , - bonaventura, st., des bosses, fr., , bossuet, bradwardine, abp., , bramhall, bp. john, , bredenburg, johan, - brunswick, duke of, , buckingham, duke of, buridan's ass, , , burnet, thomas, cabalists, , , caesar cremoninus, cajetan, cardinal, , calanus, , caligula, calixtus, calli, callimachus, calovius, calvin, - , , , , , , cameron, campanella, capella, martianus, cardan, jerome, , carneades, , - , caroli, andreas, casaubon, meric, caselius, cassiodorus, [page ] casuists, , , catharin, ambrose, catherine de medicis, cato, , celsus, - chardin, de la charmoye, abbé, chemnitz, martin, , christine, queen of sweden, , chrysippus, - , - , - cicero, , , - , , , , , , - , claudian, , , cleanthes, , coelius secundus curio, coimbra, fathers of, colerus, conringius, , constance, council of, de la cour, - crellius, cudworth, ralph, , cuper, franz, cyrano de bergerac, dacier, daillé, , davidius, john, _de auxiliis_, democritus, descartes, - , - , , - , , , , ff., , , , , , , , , , , , desmarests, samuel, diodorus, - diogenianus, dionysius of halicarnassus, diphilus, diroys, - , dominicans, dreier, drexler, dualists, du plessis-mornay, durand de saint-pourçain, , , , empedocles, epictetus, epicureans, - epicurus, - , - , , , , esprit, abbé, euclid, euripides, , eusebius, eutrapelus, fabricius, johann ludwig, fabry, fecht, , , fénelon, fludde, fonseca, foucher, , , francis i of france, francis of sales, st., francis xavier, st., freitag, johann, fromondus, libertus, fulgentius, _fur praedestinatus_, della galla, julius caesar, gassendi, , gatacre, thomas, gerhard, johann, gerson, gibieuf, - glarea, antonio, godescalc, , gomarists, gregory, st., the great, , , , gregory, st., of nazianzus, gregory, st., of nyssa, gregory of rimini, grotius, , , , , , , guerre, martin, - gymnosophists, hartsoeker, heliodorus of larissa, heraclitus, herminius, _see_ irminius hermippus, herodotus, , , heshusius, tilemann, hobbes, thomas, , , , , , , , ff., hoffmann, daniel, horace, , homer, hyde, innocent iii, pope, irminius, isbrand, jansenists, , - jansenius, jacquelot, , , , , , jerome, st., john of damascus, st., [page ] john scot, jung, jupiter, jurieu, , , - , justin, keckermann, bartholomaeus, keilah, siege of, - kendal, george, kepler, , kerkering, kessler, andreas, kortholt, sebastian, krell, nicolas, de labadie, jean, lactantius, , , , lami, françois, , lateran council, laud, abp., de launoy, lazarus, le clerc, , , , , leeuwenhoek, limbourg, lipsius, justus, , , livy, locke, john, , , - , , löscher, louis of dole, , lucan, , lucian, , lucretius, lully, raymond, luther, , , , , - , , , , machiavelli, maignan, maimonides, - malebranche, , , ff., , , , , manichaeans, , , , , , , marchetti, marcion, marcus aurelius, mary, blessed virgin, matthieu, pierre, maurice, prince, melanchthon, melissus, , ménage, meyer, louis, mithras, molina, , , molinists, , , , more, henry, moses germanus, de la motte le vayer, musaeus, johann, , naudé, gabriel, newcastle, duke of, ff. newton, isaac, , - nicole, - , , , nominalists, novarini, ochino, bernardino, onomaus, opalenius, origen, - , , , origenists, , orobio, ovid, , , pardies, pascal, paul, st., - , , paulicians, _see_ manichaeans pelagius, pélisson, pereir, louis, peter lombard, pfanner, pierre de saint-joseph, , pietists, leipzig, piscator, pitcairne, plato, , , , , , , , , , - pliny the younger, , , , , plutarch, , , , pomponazzi, , de la porrée, gilbert, de preissac, prudentius, , ptolomei, fr., pufendorf, , , pythagoras, quênel, fr., quietists, rachelius, de la ramée, pierre, ravaillac, regis, , , remonstrants, reynaud, theophile, [page ] rodon, david de, rorarius, rutherford, samuel, , , ruysbroek, saguens, salmeron, saurin, scaliger, joseph, , - scaliger, julius, scherzer, schoolmen, , , , , , , , scioppius, scotists, , scotus, duns, , , , seneca, , sennert, daniel, sentences, master of the, _see_ peter lombard servetus, michael, sfondrati, cardinal, , sharrok, silenus, slevogt, paul, socinians, , - , - , , , , , sonner, ernst, spee, friedrich, - sperling, johann, sperling, otto, spinoza, , , , , , - , , - , , stahl, daniel, stegman, josua, stegmann, christopher, steno, steuchus, augustinus, stoics, , , , - , ff., strato, , - , , , , , strinesius, sturm, , suarez, suetonius, supralapsarians, , , , , , - , swammerdam, tacitus, , , , taifel, baron andré, taurel, nicolas, , tertullian, thomas aquinas, st., , , , , , , , , thomasius, jacob, , thomists, , , , , , , tiberius, timon, tiresias, toland, john, de tournemine, fr., trajan, trogus, turretin, twiss, ursinus, zacharias, usserius, valla, laurentius, , , ff. van beverwyck, johan, - van den ende, franz, van den hoof, van der weye, van helmont, vanini, lucilio, vedelius, nicolaus, , velleius paterculus, vergil, - , , , , , véron, françois, versé, aubert de, voëtius, gisbertus, vorstius, conrad, vogelsang, von wallenberg, bp. peter, wander, william, weigel, erhard, , weigel, valentine, de witt, wittich, , - , von wollzogen, wyclif, john, , , , , xanthus, zeisold, johann, zoroaster, , - , public domain works from the university of michigan digital libraries.) a candid examination of theism. by physicus. boston: houghton, osgood, & company. . [_all rights reserved_] * * * * * _canst thou by searching find out god?_ * * * * * preface. * * * * * the following essay was written several years ago; but i have hitherto refrained from publishing it, lest, after having done so, i should find that more mature thought had modified the conclusions which the essay sets forth. judging, however, that it is now more than ever improbable that i shall myself be able to detect any errors in my reasoning, i feel that it is time to present the latter to the contemplation of other minds; and in doing so, i make this explanation only because i feel it desirable to state at the outset that the present treatise was written before the publication of mr. mill's treatise on the same subject. it is desirable to make this statement, first, because in several instances the trains of reasoning in the two essays are parallel, and next, because in other instances i have quoted passages from mr. mill's essay in connections which would be scarcely intelligible were it not understood that these passages are insertions made after the present essay had been completed. i have also added several supplementary essays which have been written since the main essay was finished. it is desirable further to observe, that the only reason why i publish this edition anonymously is because i feel very strongly that, in matters of the kind with which the present essay deals, opinions and arguments should be allowed to produce the exact degree of influence to which as opinions and arguments they are entitled: they should be permitted to stand upon their own intrinsic merits alone, and quite beyond the shadow of that unfair prejudication which cannot but arise so soon as their author's authority, or absence of authority, becomes known. notwithstanding this avowal, however, i fear that many who glance over the following pages will read in the "physicus" of the first one a very different motive. there is at the present time a wonderfully wide-spread sentiment pervading all classes of society--a sentiment which it would not be easy to define, but the practical outcome of which is, that to discuss the question of which this essay treats is, in some way or other, morally wrong. many, therefore, who share this sentiment will doubtless attribute my reticence to a puerile fear on my part to meet it. i can only say that such is not the case. although i allude to this sentiment with all respect--believing as i do that it is an offshoot from the stock which contains all that is best and greatest in human nature--nevertheless it seems to me impossible to deny that the sentiment in question is as unreasonable as the frame of mind which harbours it must be unreasoning. if there is no god, where can be the harm in our examining the spurious evidence of his existence? if there is a god, surely our first duty towards him must be to exert to our utmost, in our attempts to find him, the most noble faculty with which he has endowed us--as carefully to investigate the evidence which he has seen fit to furnish of his own existence as we investigate the evidence of inferior things in his dependent creation. to say that there is one rule or method for ascertaining truth in the latter case, which it is not legitimate to apply in the former case, is merely a covert way of saying that the deity, if he exists, has not supplied us with rational evidence of his existence. for my own part, i feel that such an assertion cannot but embody far more unworthy conceptions of a personal god than are represented by any amount of earnest inquiry into whatever evidence of his existence there may be present; but, neglecting this reflection, if there is a god, it is certain that reason is the faculty by which he has enabled man to discover truth, and it is no less certain that the scientific methods have proved themselves by far the most trustworthy for reason to adopt. to my mind, therefore, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, looking to this undoubted pre-eminence of the scientific methods as ways to truth, whether or not there is a god, the question as to his existence is both more morally and more reverently contemplated if we regard it purely as a problem for methodical analysis to solve, than if we regard it in any other light. or, stating the case in other words, i believe that in whatever degree we intentionally abstain from using in this case what we _know_ to be the most trustworthy methods of inquiry in other cases, in that degree are we either unworthily closing our eyes to a dreaded truth, or we are guilty of the worst among human sins--"depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." if it is said that, supposing man to be in a state of probation, faith, and not reason, must be the instrument of his trial, i am ready to admit the validity of the remark; but i must also ask it to be remembered, that unless faith has _some_ basis of reason whereon to rest, it differs in nothing from superstition; and hence that it is still our duty to investigate the _rational_ standing of the question before us by the _scientific_ methods alone. and i may here observe parenthetically, that the same reasoning applies to all investigations concerning the reality of a supposed revelation. with such investigations, however, the present essay has nothing to do, although, i may remark that if there is any evidence of a divine mind discernible in the structure of a professing revelation, such evidence, in whatever degree present, would be of the best possible kind for substantiating the hypothesis of theism. such being, then, what i conceive the only reasonable, as well as the most truly moral, way of regarding the question to be discussed in the following pages, even if the conclusions yielded by this discussion were more negative than they are, i should deem it culpable cowardice in me _for this reason_ to publish anonymously. for even if an inquiry of the present kind could ever result in a final demonstration of atheism, there might be much for its author to regret, but nothing for him to be ashamed of; and, by parity of reasoning, in whatever degree the result of such an inquiry is seen to have a tendency to negative the theistic theory, the author should not be ashamed candidly to acknowledge his conviction as to the degree of such tendency, provided only that his conviction is an _honest_ one, and that he is conscious of its having been reached by using his faculties with the utmost care of which he is capable. if it is retorted that the question to be dealt with is of so ultimate a character that even the scientific methods are here untrustworthy, i reply that they are nevertheless the _best_ methods available, and hence that the retort is without pertinence: the question is still to be regarded as a scientific one, although we may perceive that neither an affirmative nor a negative answer can be given to it with any approach to a full demonstration. but if the question is thus conceded to be one falling within the legitimate scope of rational inquiry, it follows that the mere fact of demonstrative certainty being here antecedently impossible should not deter us from instituting the inquiry. it is a well-recognised principle of scientific research, that however difficult or impossible it may be to _prove_ a given theory true or false, the theory should nevertheless be tested, so far as it admits of being tested, by the full rigour of the scientific methods. where demonstration cannot be hoped for, it still remains desirable to reduce the question at issue to the last analysis of which it is capable. adopting these principles, therefore, i have endeavoured in the following analysis to fix the precise standing of the evidence in favour of the theory of theism, when the latter is viewed in all the flood of light which the progress of modern science--physical and speculative--has shed upon it. and forasmuch as it is impossible that demonstrated truth can ever be shown untrue, and forasmuch as the demonstrated truths on which the present examination rests are the most fundamental which it is possible for the human mind to reach, i do not think it presumptuous to assert what appears to me a necessary deduction from these facts--namely, that, possible errors in reasoning apart, the rational position of theism as here defined must remain without material modification as long as our intelligence remains human. london, . * * * * * analysis. chapter i. examination of illogical arguments in favour of theism. sect. . introductory. . object of the chapter. . the argument from the inconceivability of self-existence. . the argument from the desirability of there being a god. . the argument from the presence of human aspirations. . the argument from consciousness. . the argument for a first cause. chapter ii. the argument from the existence of the human mind. . introductory. . examination of the argument, and the independent coincidence of my views regarding it with those of mr. mill. . locke's exposition of the argument, and a re-enunciation of it in the form of a syllogism. . the syllogism defective in that it cannot explain mind in the abstract. mill quoted and answered. this defect in the syllogism clearly defined. . the syllogism further defective, in that it assumes intelligence to be the only possible cause of intelligence. this assumption amounts to begging the whole question as to the being of a god. inconceivability of matter thinking no proof that it may not think. locke himself strangely concedes this. his fallacies and self-contradictions pointed out in an appendix. . objector to the syllogism need not be a materialist, but assuming that he is one, he is as much entitled to the hypothesis that matter thinks as a theist is to his hypothesis that it does not. . the two hypotheses are thus of exactly equivalent value, save that while theism is arbitrary, materialism has a certain basis of fact to rest upon. this basis defined in a footnote, where also professor clifford's essay on "body and mind" is briefly examined. difficulty of estimating the worth of the argument as to the _most_ conceivable being _most_ likely true. . locke's comparison between certainty of the inconceivability argument as applied to theism and to mathematics shown to contain a _virtual_ though not a _formal_ fallacy. . summary of considerations as to the value of this argument from inconceivability. . introductory to the other arguments in favour of the conclusion that only intelligence can have caused intelligence. . locke's presentation of the view that the cause must contain all that is contained in the effects. his statements contradicted. mill quoted to show that the analogy of nature is against the doctrine of higher perfections never growing out of lower ones. . enunciation of the last of the arguments in favour of the proposition that only intelligence can cause intelligence. hamilton quoted to show that in his philosophy the entire question as to the being of a god hinges upon that as to whether or not human volitions are caused. . absurdity of the old theory of free-will. hamilton erroneously identified this theory with the fact that we possess a moral sense. his resulting dilemma. . although hamilton was wrong in thus identifying genuine fact with spurious theory, yet his argument from the fact of our having a moral sense remains to be considered. . the question here is merely as to whether or not the presence of the moral sense can be explained by natural causes. _a priori_ probability of the moral sense having been evolved. _a posteriori_ confirmation supplied by utilitarianism, &c. . mill's presentation of the argument a resuscitation of paley's. his criticism on paley shown to be unfair. . the real fallacy of paley's presentation pointed out. . the same fallacy pointed out in another way. . paley's typical case quoted and examined, in order to illustrate the root fallacy of his argument from design. mill's observations upon this argument criticised. . result yielded by the present analysis of the argument from design. the argument shown to be a _petitio principii_. chapter iv. the argument from general laws. . my belief that no competent writer in favour of the argument from design could have written upon it at all, had it not been for his instinctive appreciation of the much more important argument from general laws. the nature of this argument stated, and its cogency insisted upon. . the rational standing of the argument from general laws prior to the enunciation of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. the rev. baden powell quoted. . the nature of general laws when these are interpreted in terms of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. the word "law" defined in terms of this doctrine. . the rational standing of the argument from general laws subsequent to the enunciation of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. . the self-evolution of general laws, or the objective aspect of the question as to whether we may infer the presence of mind in nature because nature admits of being intelligently interrogated. . the subjective aspect of this question, according to the data afforded by evolutionary psychology. . correspondence between products due to human intelligence and products supposed due to divine intelligence, a correspondence which is only generic. illustrations drawn from prodigality in nature. further illustrations. illogical manner in which natural theologians deal with such difficulties. the generic resemblance contemplated is just what we should expect to find, if the doctrine of evolutionary psychology be true. . the last three sections parenthetical. necessary nature of the conclusion which follows from the last five sections. chapter v. the logical standing of the question as to the being of a god. . emphatic re-statement of the conclusion reached in the previous chapter. this conclusion shown to be of merely scientific, and not of logical conclusiveness. preparation for considering the question in its purely logical form. . the logic of probability in general explained, and canon of interpretation enunciated. . application of this canon to the particular case of theism. . exposition of the logical state of the question. . exposition continued. . result of the exposition; "suspended judgment" the only logical attitude of mind with regard to the question of theism. chapter vi. the argument from metaphysical teleology. . statement of the position to which the question of theism has been reduced by the foregoing analysis. . distinction between a scientific and a metaphysical teleology. statement of the latter in legitimate terms. criticism of this statement legitimately made on the side of atheism as being gratuitous. impartial judgment on this criticism. . examination of the question as to whether the metaphysical system of teleology is really destitute of all rational support. pleading of a supposed theist in support of the system. the principle of correlation of general laws. the complexity of nature. . summary of the theist's pleading, and judgment that it fairly removes from the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology the charge of the latter being gratuitous. . examination of the degree of probability that is presented by the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology, comprising an examination of the theistic objection to the scientific train of reasoning on account of its symbolism, and showing that a no less cogent objection lies against the metaphysical train of reasoning on account of its embodying the supposition of unknowable causes. distinction between "inconceivability" in a formal or symbolical, and in a material or realisable sense. reply of a supposed atheist to the previous pleading of the supposed theist. herbert spencer quoted on inconceivability of cosmic evolution as due to mind. . final judgment on the rational value of a metaphysical system of teleology. distinction between "inconceivability" in an absolute and in a relative sense. final judgment on the attitude of mind which it is rational to adopt towards the question of theism. the desirability and the rationality of tolerance in this particular case. chapter vii. general summary and conclusions. . general summary of the whole essay. . concluding remarks. appendix and supplementary essays. appendix. a critical exposition of a fallacy in locke's use of the argument against the possibility of matter thinking on grounds of its being inconceivable that it should. supplementary essay i. examination of mr. herbert spencer's theistical argument, and criticism to show that it is inadequate to sustain the doctrine of "cosmic theism" which mr. fiske endeavours to rear upon it. supplementary essay ii. a critical examination of the rev. professor flint's work on "theism". supplementary essay iii. on the speculative standing of materialism. supplementary essay iv. on the final mystery of things. * * * * * theism. * * * * * chapter i. examination of illogical arguments in favour of theism. § . few subjects have occupied so much attention among speculative thinkers as that which relates to the being of god. notwithstanding, however, the great amount that has been written on this subject, i am not aware that any one has successfully endeavoured to approach it, on all its various sides, from the ground of pure reason alone, and thus to fix, as nearly as possible, the exact position which, in pure reason, this subject ought to occupy. perhaps it will be thought that an exception to this statement ought to be made in favour of john stuart mill's posthumous essay on theism; but from my great respect for this author, i should rather be inclined to regard that essay as a criticism on illogical arguments, than as a _careful_ or _matured_ attempt to formulate the strictly rational _status_ of the question in all its bearings. nevertheless, as this essay is in some respects the most scientific, just, and cogent, which has yet appeared on the subject of which it treats, and as anything which came from the pen of that great and accurate thinker is deserving of the most serious attention, i shall carefully consider his views throughout the course of the following pages. seeing then that, with this partial exception, no competent writer has hitherto endeavoured once for all to settle the long-standing question as to the rational probability of theism, i cannot but feel that any attempt, however imperfect, to do this, will be welcome to thinkers of every school--the more so in view of the fact that the prodigious rapidity which of late years has marked the advance both of physical and of speculative science, has afforded highly valuable data for assisting us towards a reasonable and, i think, a final decision as to the strictly logical standing of this important matter. however, be my attempt welcome or no, i feel that it is my obvious duty to publish the results which have been yielded by an honest and careful analysis. § . i may most fitly begin this analysis by briefly disposing of such arguments in favour of theism as are manifestly erroneous. and i do this the more willingly because, as these arguments are at the present time most in vogue, an exposure of their fallacies may perhaps deter our popular apologists of the future from drawing upon themselves the silent contempt of every reader whose intellect is not either prejudiced or imbecile. § . a favourite piece of apologetic juggling is that of first demolishing atheism, pantheism, materialism, &c., by successively calling upon them to explain the mystery of self-existence, and then tacitly assuming that the need of such an explanation is absent in the case of theism--as though the attribute in question were more conceivable when posited in a deity than when posited elsewhere. it is, i hope, unnecessary to observe that, so far as the ultimate mystery of existence is concerned, any and every theory of things is equally entitled to the inexplicable fact that something is; and that any endeavour on the part of the votaries of one theory to shift from themselves to the votaries of another theory the _onus_ of explaining the necessarily inexplicable, is an instance of irrationality which borders on the ludicrous. § . another argument, or semblance of an argument, is the very prevalent one, "our heart requires a god; therefore it is probable that there is a god:" as though such a subjective necessity, even if made out, could ever prove an objective existence.[ ] § . if it is said that the theistic aspirations of the human heart, by the mere fact of their presence, point to the existence of a god as to their explanatory cause, i answer that the argument would only be valid after the possibility of any more proximate causes having been in action has been excluded--else the theistic explanation violates the fundamental rule of science, the law of parcimony, or the law which forbids us to assume the action of more remote causes where more proximate ones are found sufficient to explain the effects. consequently, the validity of the argument now under consideration is inversely proportional to the number of possibilities there are of the aspirations in question being due to the agency of physical causes; and forasmuch as our ignorance of psychological causation is well-nigh total, the law of parcimony forbids us to allow any determinate degree of logical value to the present argument. in other words, we must not use the absence of knowledge as equivalent to its presence--must not argue from our ignorance of psychological possibilities, as though this ignorance were knowledge of corresponding impossibilities. the burden of proof thus lies on the side of theism, and from the nature of the case this burden cannot be discharged until the science of psychology shall have been fully perfected. i may add that, for my own part, i cannot help feeling that, even in the present embryonic condition of this science, we are not without some indications of the manner in which the aspirations in question arose; but even were this not so, the above considerations prove that the argument before us is invalid. if it is retorted that the fact of these aspirations having had _proximate_ causes to account for their origin, even if made out, would not negative the inference of these being due to a deity as to their _ultimate_ cause; i answer that this is not to use the argument from the presence of these aspirations; it is merely to beg the question as to the being of a god. § . next, we may consider the argument from consciousness. many persons ground their belief in the existence of a deity upon a real or supposed necessity of their own subjective thought. i say "real or supposed," because, in its bearing upon rational argument, it is of no consequence of which character the alleged necessity actually is. even if the necessity of thought be real, all that the fact entitles the thinker to affirm is, that it is impossible for _him_, by any effort of thinking, to rid himself of the persuasion that god exists; he is not entitled to affirm that this persuasion is necessarily bound up with the constitution of the human mind. or, as mill puts it, "one man cannot by proclaiming with ever so much confidence that _he_ perceives an object, convince other people that they see it too.... when no claim is set up to any peculiar gift, but we are told that all of us are as capable of seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels, nay, that we actually do so, and when the utmost effort of which we are capable fails to make us aware of what we are told, we perceive this supposed universal faculty of intuition is but 'the dark lantern of the spirit which none see by but those who bear it.'" it is thus, i think, abundantly certain that the present argument must, from its very nature, be powerless as an argument to anyone save its assertor; as a matter of fact, the alleged necessity of thought is not universal; it is peculiar to those who employ the argument. and now, it is but just to go one step further and to question whether the alleged necessity of thought is, in any case and properly speaking, a _real_ necessity. unless those who advance the present argument are the victims of some mental aberration, it is overwhelmingly improbable that their minds should differ in a fundamental and important attribute from the minds of the vast majority of their species. or, to continue the above quotation, "they may fairly be asked to consider, whether it is not more likely that they are mistaken as to the origin of an impression in their minds, than that others are ignorant of the very existence of an impression in theirs." no doubt it is true that education and habits of thought may so stereotype the intellectual faculties, that at last what is conceivable to one man or generation may not be so to another;[ ] but to adduce this consideration in this place would clearly be but to destroy the argument from the _intuitive_ necessity of believing in a god. lastly, although superfluous, it may be well to point out that even if the impossibility of conceiving the negation of god were an universal law of human mind--which it certainly is not--the fact of his existence could not be thus proved. doubtless it would be felt to be much more probable than it now is--as probable, for instance, if not more probable, than is the existence of an external world;--but still it would not be necessarily true. § . the argument from the general consent of mankind is so clearly fallacious, both as to facts and principles, that i shall pass it over and proceed at once to the last of the untenable arguments--that, namely, from the existence of a first cause. and here i should like to express myself indebted to mr. mill for the following ideas:--"the cause of every change is a prior change; and such it cannot but be; for if there were no new antecedent, there would be no new consequent. if the state of facts which brings the phenomenon into existence, had existed always or for an indefinite duration, the effect also would have existed always or been produced an indefinite time ago. it is thus a necessary part of the fact of causation, within the sphere of experience, that the causes as well as the effects had a beginning in time, and were themselves caused. it would seem, therefore, that our experience, instead of furnishing an argument for a first cause, is repugnant to it; and that the very essence of causation, as it exists within the limits of our knowledge, is incompatible with a first cause." the rest of mr. mill's remarks upon the first cause argument are tolerably obvious, and had occurred to me before the publication of his essay. i shall, however, adhere to his order of presenting them. "but it is necessary to look more particularly into this matter, and analyse more closely the nature of the causes of which mankind have experience. for if it should turn out that though all causes have a beginning, there is in all of them a permanent element which had no beginning, this permanent element may with some justice be termed a first or universal cause, inasmuch as though not sufficient of itself to cause anything, it enters as a con-cause into all causation." he then shows that the doctrine of the conservation of energy supplies us with such a datum, and thus the conclusion easily follows--"it would seem, then, that the only sense in which experience supports, in any shape, the doctrine of a first cause, viz., as the primæval and universal element of all causes, the first cause can be no other than force." still, however, it may be maintained that "all force is will-force." but "if there be any truth in the doctrine of conservation of force, ... this doctrine does not change from true to false when it reaches the field of voluntary agency. the will does not, any more than other agencies, create force: granting that it originates motion, it has no means of doing so but by converting into that particular manifestation, a portion of force which already existed in other forms. it is known that the source from which this portion of force is derived, is chiefly, or entirely, the force evolved in the processes of chemical composition and decomposition which constitute the body of nutrition: the force so liberated becomes a fund upon which every muscular and every nervous action, as of a train of thought, is a draft. it is in this sense only that, according to the best lights of science, volition is an originating cause. volition, therefore, does not answer to the idea of a first cause; since force must, in every instance, be assumed as prior to it; and there is not the slightest colour, derived from experience, for supposing force itself to have been created by a volition. as far as anything can be concluded from human experience, force has all the attributes of a thing eternal and uncreated.... "all that can be affirmed (even) by the strongest assertion of the freedom of the will, is that volitions are themselves uncaused and are, therefore, alone fit to be the first or universal cause. but, even assuming volitions to be uncaused, the properties of matter, so far as experience discloses, are uncaused also, and have the advantage over any particular volition, in being, so far as experience can show, eternal. theism, therefore, in so far as it rests on the necessity of a first cause, has no support from experience." such may be taken as a sufficient refutation of the argument that, as human volition is apparently a cause in nature, and moreover constitutes the basis of our conception of all causation, therefore all causation is probably volitional in character. but as this is a favourite argument with some theists, i shall introduce another quotation from mr. mill, which is taken from a different work. "volitions are not known to produce anything directly except nervous action, for the will influences even the muscles only through the nerves. though it were granted, then, that every phenomenon has an efficient and not merely a phenomenal cause, and that volition, in the case of the particular phenomena which are known to be produced by it, is that cause; are we therefore to say with these writers that since we know of no other efficient cause, and ought not to assume one without evidence, there _is_ no other, and volition is the direct cause of all phenomena? a more outrageous stretch of inference could hardly be made. because among the infinite variety of the phenomena of nature there is one, namely, a particular mode of action of certain nerves which has for its cause and, as we are now supposing, for its efficient cause, a state of our mind; and because this is the only efficient cause of "which we are conscious, being the only one of which, in the nature of the case, we _can_ be conscious, since it is the only one which exists within ourselves; does this justify us in concluding that all other phenomena must have the same kind of efficient cause with that one eminently special, narrow, and peculiarly human or animal phenomenon?" it is then shown that a logical parallel to this mode of inference is that of generalising from the one known instance of the earth being inhabited, to the conclusion that "every heavenly body without exception, sun, planet, satellite, comet, fixed star, or nebula, is inhabited, and must be so from the inherent constitution of things." after which the passage continues, "it is true there are cases in which, with acknowledged propriety, we generalise from a single instance to a multitude of instances. but they must be instances which resemble the one known instance, and not such as have no circumstance in common with it except that of being instances.... but the supporters of the volition theory ask us to infer that volition causes everything, for no other reason except that it causes one particular thing; although that one phenomenon, far from being a type of all natural phenomena, is eminently peculiar; its laws bearing scarcely any resemblance to those of any other phenomenon, whether of inorganic or of organic nature."[ ] * * * * * chapter ii. the argument from the existence of the human mind. § . leaving now the obviously untenable arguments, we next come to those which, in my opinion, may properly be termed scientific. it will be convenient to classify those as three in number; and under one or other of these heads nearly all the more intelligent advocates of theism will be found to range themselves. § . we have first the argument drawn from the existence of the human mind. this is an argument which, for at least the last three centuries, and especially during the present one, has been more relied upon than any other by philosophical thinkers. it consists in the reflection that the being of our own subjective intelligence is the most certain fact which our experience supplies, that this fact demands an adequate cause for its explanation, and that the only adequate cause of our intelligence must be some other intelligence. granting the existence of a conditioned intelligence (and no one could reasonably suppose his own intelligence to be otherwise), and the existence of an unconditioned intelligence becomes a logical necessity, unless we deny either the validity of the principle that every effect must have an adequate cause, or else that the only adequate cause of mind is mind. it has been a great satisfaction to me to find that my examination of this argument--an examination which was undertaken and completed several months before mr. mill's essay appeared--has been minutely corroborated by that of our great logician. i mention this circumstance here, as on previous occasions, not for the petty motive of vindicating my own originality, but because in matters of this kind the accuracy of the reasoning employed, and therefore the logical validity of the conclusions attained, are guaranteed in the best possible manner, if the trains of thought have been independently pursued by different minds. § . seeing that, among the advocates of this argument, locke went so far as to maintain that by it alone he could render the existence of a deity as certain as any mathematical demonstration, it is only fair, preparatory to our examining this argument, to present it in the words of this great thinker. he says:--"there was a time when there was no knowing (_i.e._, conscious) being, and when knowledge began to be; or else there has been also a knowing being from all eternity. if it be said, there was a time when no being had any knowledge, when that eternal being was void of all understanding, i reply, that then it was impossible there should ever have been any knowledge: it being as impossible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones. for it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself, sense, perception, and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones."[ ] now, although this argument has been more fully elaborated by other writers, the above presentation contains its whole essence. it will be seen that it has the great advantage of resting _immediately_ upon the foundation from which all argument concerning this or any other matter, must necessarily arise, viz.,--upon the very existence of our argumentative faculty itself. for the sake of a critical examination, it is desirable to throw the argument before us into the syllogistic form. it will then stand thus:-- all known minds are caused by an unknown mind. our mind is a known mind; therefore, our mind is caused by an unknown mind. § . now the major premiss of this syllogism is inadmissible for two reasons: in the first place, it is assumed that known mind can only be caused by unknown mind; and, in the second place, even if this assumption were granted, it would not explain the existence of mind as mind. to take the last of these objections first, in the words of mr. mill, "if the mere existence of mind is supposed to require, as a necessary antecedent, another mind greater and more powerful, the difficulty is not removed by going one step back: the creating mind stands as much in need of another mind to be the source of its existence as the created mind. be it remembered that we have no direct knowledge (at least apart from revelation) of a mind which is even apparently eternal, as force and matter are: an eternal mind is, as far as the present argument is concerned, a simple hypothesis to account for the minds which we know to exist. now it is essential to an hypothesis that, if admitted, it should at least remove the difficulty and account for the facts. but it does not account for mind to refer our mind to a prior mind for its origin. the problem remains unsolved, nay, rather increased." nevertheless, i think that it is open to a theist to answer, "my object is not to explain the existence of mind in the abstract, any more than it is my object to explain existence itself in the abstract--to either of which absurd attempts mr. mill's reasoning would be equally applicable;--but i seek for an explanation of _my own individual finite mind_, which i know to have had a beginning in time, and which, therefore, in accordance with the widest and most complete analogy that experience supplies, i believe to have been _caused_. and if there is no other objection to my believing in intelligence as the cause of my intelligence, than that i cannot prove my own intelligence caused, then i am satisfied to let the matter rest here; for as every argument must have _some_ basis of assumption to stand upon, i am well pleased to find that the basis in this case is the most solid which experience can supply, viz.,--the law of causation. fully admitting that it does not account for mind (in the abstract) to refer one mind to a prior mind for its origin; yet my hypothesis, if admitted, _does_ account for the fact that _my mind_ exists; and this is all that my hypothesis is intended to cover. for to endeavour to _explain_ the existence of an _eternal_ mind, could only be done by those who do not understand the meaning of these words." now, i think that this reply to mr. mill, on the part of a theist, would so far be legitimate; the theistic hypothesis _does_ supply a provisional explanation of the existence of known minds, and it is, therefore, an explanation which, in lieu of a better, a theist may be allowed to retain. but a theist may not be allowed to confuse this provisional explanation of his own mind's existence with that of the existence of mind in the abstract; he must not be allowed to suppose that, by thus hypothetically explaining the existence of known minds, he is thereby establishing a probability in favour of that hypothetical cause, an unknown mind. only if he has some independent reason to infer that such an unknown mind exists, could such a probability be made out, and his hypothetical explanation of known mind become of more value than a guess. in other words, although the theistic hypothesis supplies _a possible_ explanation of known mind, we have no reason to conclude that it is _the true_ explanation, unless other reasons can be shown to justify, on independent grounds, the validity of the theistic hypothesis. hence it is manifestly absurd to adduce this explanation as evidence of the hypothesis on which it rests--to argue that theism must therefore be true; because we assume it to be so, in order to explain _known_ mind, as distinguished from _mind_. if it be answered, we are justified in assuming theism true, because we are justified in assuming that known mind can _only_ have been caused by an unknown mind, and hence that mind must somewhere be self-existing, then this is to lead us to the second objection to the above syllogism. § . and this second objection is of a most serious nature. "mind can only be caused by mind," and, therefore, mind must either be uncaused, or caused by a mind. what is our warrant for ranking this assertion? where is the proof that nothing can have caused a mind except another mind? answer to this question there is none. for aught that we can ever know to the contrary, anything within the whole range of the possible may be competent to produce a self-conscious intelligence--and to assume that mind is so far an entity _sui generis_, that it must either be self-existing, or derived from another mind which is self-existing, is merely to beg the whole question as to the being of a god. in other words, if we can prove that the order of existence to which mind belongs, is so essentially different from that order, or those orders, to which all else belongs, as to render it _abstractedly impossible_ that the latter can produce the former--if we can prove this, we have likewise proved the existence of a deity. but this is just the point in dispute, and to set out with a bare affirmation of it is merely to beg the question and to abandon the discussion. doubtless, by the mere act of consulting their own consciousness, the fact now in dispute appears to some persons self-evident. but in matters of such high abstraction as this, even the evidence of self-evidence must not be relied upon too implicitly. to the country boor it appears self-evident that wood is annihilated by combustion; and even to the mind of the greatest philosophers of antiquity it seemed impossible to doubt that the sun moved over a stationary earth. much more, therefore, may our broad distinction between "cogitative and incogitative being"[ ] not be a distinction which is "legitimated by the conditions of external reality." doubtless many will fall back upon the position already indicated, "it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones." but, granting this, and also that conscious matter is the sole alternative, and what follows? not surely that matter cannot perceive, and feel, and know, merely because it is repugnant to our idea of it that it should. granting that there is no other alternative in the whole possibility of things, than that matter must be conscious, or that self-conscious mind must somewhere be self-existing; and granting that it is quite "impossible for us to conceive" of consciousness as an attribute of matter; still surely it would be a prodigious leap to conclude that for this reason matter cannot possess this attribute. indeed, locke himself elsewhere strangely enough insists that thought may be a property of matter, if only the deity chose to unite that attribute with that substance. why it should be deemed abstractedly impossible for matter to think if there is no god, and yet abstractedly possible that it should think if there is a god, i confess myself quite unable to determine; but i conceive that it is very important clearly to point out this peculiarity in locke's views, for he is a favourite authority with theists, and this peculiarity amounts to nothing less than a suicide of his entire argument. the mere circumstance that he assumed the deity capable of endowing matter with the faculty of thinking, could not have enabled him to _conceive_ of matter as thinking, any more than he could _conceive_ of this in the absence of his assumption. yet in the one case he recognises the possibility of matter thinking, and in the other case denies such possibility, _and this on the sole ground of its being inconceivable_! however, i am not here concerned with locke's eccentricities:[ ] i am merely engaged with the general principle, that a subjective inability to establish certain relations in thought is no sufficient warrant for concluding that corresponding objective relations may not obtain. § . hence, an objector to the above syllogism need not be a materialist; it is not even necessary that he should hold any theory of things at all. nevertheless, for the sake of definition, i shall assume that he is a materialist. as a materialist, then, he would appear to be as much entitled to his hypothesis as a theist is to his--in respect, i mean, of this particular argument. for although i think, as before shown, that in strict reasoning a theist might have taken exception to the last-quoted passage from mill in its connection with the law of causation, that passage, if considered in the present connection, is certainly unanswerable. what is the state of the present argument as between a materialist and a theist? the mystery of existence and the inconceivability of matter thinking are their common data. upon these data the materialist, justly arguing that he has no right to make his own conceptive faculty the unconditional test of objective possibility, is content to merge the mystery of his own mind's existence into that of existence in general; while the theist, compelled to accept without explanation the mystery of existence in general, nevertheless has recourse to inventing a wholly gratuitous hypothesis to explain one mode of existence in particular. if it is said that the latter hypothesis has the merit of causing the mystery of material existence and the mystery of mental existence to be united in a thinkable manner--viz., in a self-existing mind,--i reply, it is not so; for in whatever degree it is unthinkable that matter should be the cause of mind, in that precise degree must it be unthinkable that mind was ever the cause of matter, the correlatives being in each case the same, and experience affording no evidence of causality in either. § . the two hypotheses, therefore, are of exactly equivalent value, save that while the one has a certain basis of fact to rest upon,[ ] the other is wholly arbitrary. but it may still be retorted, 'is not that which is _most_ conceivable _most likely_ to be true? and if it is more conceivable that my intelligence is caused by another intelligence than that it is caused by non-intelligence, may i not regard the more conceivable hypothesis as also the more probable one? it is somewhat difficult to say how far this argument is, in this case, valid; only i think it is quite evident that its validity is open to grave dispute. for nothing can be more evident to a philosophical thinker than that the substance of mind must--so far at least as we can at present see--_necessarily_ be unknowable; so that if matter (and force) be this substance, we should antecedently expect to find that the actual causal connection should, in this particular case, be more inconceivable than some imaginary one: it would be more natural for the mind to infer that something conceivably more akin to itself should be its cause, than that this cause should be the entity which really gives rise to the unthinkable connection. but even waiving this reflection, and granting that the above argument is _valid_, it is still to an indefinite degree _valueless_, seeing that we are unable to tell _how much it is more likely_ that the more conceivable should here be true than that the less conceivable should be so. § . returning then to locke's comparison between the certainty of this argument and that which proves the sum of the angles of a triangle to be equal to two right-angles, i should say that there is a _virtual_, though not a _formal_, fallacy in his presentation. for mathematical science being confessedly but of relative significance, any comparison between the degree of certainty attained by reasoning upon so transcendental a subject as the present, and that of mathematical demonstrations regarding relative truth, must be misleading. in the present instance, the whole strain of the argument comes upon the adequacy of the proposed test of truth, viz., our being able to conceive it if true. now, will any one undertake to say that this test of truth is of equivalent value when it is applied to a triangle and when it is applied to the deity. in the one case we are dealing with a geometrical figure of an exceedingly simple type, with which our experience is well acquainted, and presenting a very limited number of relations for us to contemplate. in the other case we are endeavouring to deal with the _summum genus_ of all mystery, with reference to which experience is quite impossible, and which in its mention contains all the relations that are to us unknown and unknowable. here, then, is the oversight. because men find conceivability a valid test of truth in the affairs of everyday life--as it is easy to show _à priori_ that it must be, if our experience has been formed under a given code of constant and general laws--therefore they conclude that it must be equally valid _wherever_ it is applied; forgetting that its validity must perforce decrease in proportion to the distance at which the test is applied from the sphere of experience.[ ] § . upon the whole, then, i think it is transparently obvious that the mere fact of our being unable to conceive, say, how any disposition of matter and motion could possibly give rise to a self-conscious intelligence, in no wise warrants us in concluding that for this reason no such disposition is possible. the only question would appear to be, whether the test which is here proposed as an unconditional criterion of truth should be allowed any the smallest degree of credit. seeing, on the one hand, how very fallible the test in question is known to have proved itself in many cases of much less speculative difficulty--seeing, too, that even now "the philosophy of the condition proves that things there are which may, nay must, be true, of which nevertheless the mind is unable to construe to itself the possibility;"[ ] and seeing, on the other hand, that the substance of mind, whatever it is, must necessarily be unknowable;--seeing these things, if any question remains as to whether the test of inconceivability should in this case be regarded as having any degree of validity at all, there can, i think, be no reasonable doubt that such degree should be regarded as of the smallest. § . let us then turn to the other considerations which have been supposed to justify the assertion that nothing can have caused our mind save another mind. neglecting the crushing fact that "it does not account for mind to refer it to another mind for its origin," let as see what positive reasons there are for concluding that no other influence than intelligence can possibly have produced our intelligence. § . first we may notice the argument which is well and tersely presented by locke, thus:--"whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the perfections that can ever after exist; nor can it ever give to another any perfection that it hath not actually in itself, or at least in a higher degree; it necessarily follows that the first eternal being cannot be matter." now, as this presentation is strictly formal, i shall first meet it with a formal reply, and this reply consists in a direct contradiction. it is simply untrue that "whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the perfections that can after exist;" or that it can never "give to another any perfection that it hath not actually in itself." in a sense, no doubt, a cause contains all that is contained in its effects; the latter content being _potentially_ present in the former. but to say that a cause already contains _actually_ all that its effects may afterwards so contain, is a statement which logic and common sense alike condemn as absurd. nevertheless, although the argument now before us thus admits of a childishly easy refutation on strictly formal grounds, i suspect that in substance the argument in a general way is often relied upon as one of very considerable weight. even though it is clearly illogical to say that causes cannot give to their effects any perfection which they themselves do not actually present, yet it seems in a general way incredible that gross matter could contain, even potentially, the faculty of thinking. nevertheless, this is but to appeal to the argument from inconceivability; to do which, even were it here legitimate, would, as we have seen, be unavailing. but to appeal to the argument from inconceivability in this case would _not_ be legitimate; for we are in possession of an abundant analogy to render the supposition in question, not only conceivable, but credible. in the words of mr. mill, "apart from experience, and arguing on what is called reason, that is, on supposed self-evidence, the notion seems to be that no causes can give rise to products of a more precious or elevated kind than themselves. but this is at variance with the known analogies of nature. how vastly nobler and more precious, for instance, are the vegetables and animals than the soil and manure out of which, and by the properties of which, they are raised up! the tendency of all recent speculation is towards the opinion that the development of inferior orders of existence into superior, the substitution of greater elaboration, and higher organisation for lower, is the general rule of nature. whether this is so or not, there are at least in nature a multitude of facts bearing that character, and this is sufficient for the argument." § . we now come to the last of the arguments which, so far as i know, have ever been adduced in support of the assertion that there can be no other cause of our intelligence than another and superior intelligence. the argument is chiefly remarkable for the very great prominence which was given to it by sir w. hamilton. this learned and able author says:--"the deity is not an object of immediate contemplation; as existing and in himself, he is beyond our reach; we can know him only mediately through his works, and are only warranted in assuming his existence as a certain kind of cause necessary to account for a certain state of things, of whose reality our faculties are supposed to inform us. the affirmation of a god being thus a regressive inference from the existence of a special class of effects to the existence of a special character of cause, it is evident that the whole argument hinges on the fact,--does a state of things really exist such as is only possible through the agency of a divine cause? for if it can be shown that such a state of things does not really exist, then our inference to the kind of cause requisite to account for it is necessarily null. "this being understood, i now proceed to show you that the class of phænomena which requires that kind of cause we denominate a deity is exclusively given in the phænomena of mind,--that the phænomena of matter taken by themselves, (you will observe the qualification taken by themselves) so far from warranting any inference to the existence of a god, would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his negation. "if, in man, intelligence be a free power,--in so far as its liberty extends, intelligence must be independent of necessity and matter; and a power independent of matter necessarily implies the existence of an immaterial subject,--that is, a spirit. if, then, the original independence of intelligence on matter in the human constitution, in other words, if the spirituality of mind in man be supposed a datum of observation, in this datum is also given both the condition and the proof of a god. for we have only to infer, what analogy entitles us to do, that intelligence holds the same relative supremacy in the universe which it holds in us, and the first positive condition of a deity is established in the establishment of the absolute priority of a free creative intelligence."[ ] § . thus, according to sir w. hamilton, the whole question as to the being of a god depends upon that as to whether our "intelligence be a free power,"--or, as he elsewhere states it himself, "theology is wholly dependent upon psychology, for with the proof of the moral nature of man stands or falls the proof of the existence of a deity." it will be observed that i am not at present engaged with the legitimacy of this author's decision upon the comparative merits of the different arguments in favour of theism: i am merely showing the high opinion he entertained of the particular argument before us. he positively affirms that, unless the freedom of the human will be a matter of experience, atheism is the sole alternative. doubtless most well-informed readers will feel that the solitary basis thus provided for theism is a very insecure one, while many such readers will at once conclude that if this is the only basis which reason can provide for theism to stand upon, theism is without any rational basis to stand upon at all. i have no hesitation in saying that the last-mentioned opinion is the one to which i myself subscribe, for i am quite unable to understand how any one at the present day, and with the most moderate powers of abstract thinking, can possibly bring himself to embrace the theory of free-will. i may add that i cannot but believe that those who do embrace this theory with an honest conviction, must have failed to understand the issue to which modern thought has reduced the question. here, however, is not the place to discuss this question. it will be sufficient for my purpose to show that even sir w. hamilton himself considered it a very difficult one; and although he thought upon the whole that the will must be free, he nevertheless allowed--nay, insisted--that he was unable to conceive how it could be so. such inability in itself does not of course show the free-will theory to be untrue; and i merely point out the circumstance that hamilton allowed the supposed fact unthinkable, in order to show how very precarious, even in his eyes, the argument which we are considering must have appeared. let us then, for this purpose, contemplate his attitude with regard to it a little more closely. he says, "it would have been better to show articulately that liberty and necessity are both incomprehensible, as beyond the limits of legitimate thought; but that though the free-agency of man cannot be speculatively proved, so neither can it be speculatively disproved; while we may claim for it as a fact of real actuality, though of inconceivable possibility, the testimony of consciousness, that we are morally free, as we are morally accountable for our actions. in this manner the whole question of free- and bond-will is in theory abolished, leaving, however, practically our liberty, and all the moral instincts of man entire."[ ] from this passage it is clear that sir w. hamilton regarded these two counter-theories as of precisely equivalent value in everything save "the testimony of consciousness;" or, as he elsewhere states it, "as equally unthinkable, the two counter, the two one-sided, schemes are thus theoretically balanced. but, practically, our consciousness of the moral law ... gives a decisive preponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine of fate." but the whole question concerning the freedom of the will has now come to be as to whether or not consciousness _does_ give its verdict on the side of freedom. supposing we grant that "we are warranted to rely on a deliverance of consciousness, when that deliverance is _that_ a thing is, although we may be unable to think _how_ it can be,"[ ] in this case the question still remains, whether our opponents have rightly interpreted the deliverance of their consciousness. i, for one, am quite persuaded that i never perform any action without some appropriate motive, or set of motives, having induced me to perform it. however, i am not discussing this question, and i have merely made the above quotations for the purpose of showing that sir w. hamilton appears to identify the _theory_ of free-will with the _fact_ that we possess a moral sense. he argues throughout as though the theory he advocates were the only one that can explain a given "fact of real actuality." but no one with whom we have to deal questions the fact of our having a moral sense; and to identify this "deliverance of consciousness" with belief in the theory that volitions are uncaused, is, or would now be, merely to abandon the only questions in dispute. it is very instructive, from this point of view, to observe the dilemma into which hamilton found himself driven by this identification of genuine fact with spurious theory. he believed that the fact of man possessing an ethical faculty could only be explained by the theory that man's will was not determined by motives; for otherwise man could not be the author of his own actions. but when he considered the matter in its other aspect, he found that his theory of free-will was as little compatible with moral responsibility as was the opposing theory of "bond-will;" for not only did he candidly confess that he could not conceive of will as acting without motives, but he further allowed the unquestionable truth "that, though inconceivable, a motiveless volition would, if conceived, be conceived as morally worthless."[ ] i say this is very instructive, because it shows that in hamilton's view each theory was alike irreconcilable with "the deliverance of consciousness," and that he only chose the one in preference to the other, because, although not any more conceivable a solution, it seemed to him a more possible one.[ ] § . such, then, is the speculative basis on which, according to sir w. hamilton, our belief in a deity can alone be grounded. those who at the present day are still confused enough in their notions regarding the free-will question to suppose that any further rational question remains, may here be left to ruminate over this _bolus_, and to draw from it such nourishment as they can in support of their belief in a god; but to those who can see as plainly as daylight that the doctrine of determinism not only harmonises with all the facts of observation, but alone affords a possible condition for, and a satisfactory explanation of, the existence of our ethical faculty,--to such persons the question will naturally arise:--"although hamilton was wrong in identifying a known fact with a false theory, yet may he not have been right in the deductions which he drew from the fact?" in other words, granting that his theory of free-will was wrong, does not his argument from the existence of a moral sense in man to the existence of a moral governor of the universe remain as intact as ever? now, it is quite true that whatever degree of cogency the argument from the presence of the moral sense may at any time have had, this degree remains unaffected by the explosion of erroneous theories to account for such presence. we have, therefore, still to face the fact that the moral sense of man undoubtedly exists. § . the question we have to determine is, what evidence have we to show that the moral part of man was created in the image of god; and if there is any such evidence, what counter-existence is there to show that the moral existence of man may be due to natural causes? in deciding this question, just as in deciding any other question of a purely scientific character, we must be guided in our examination by the law of parcimony; we must not assume the agency of supernatural causes if we can discover the agency of natural causes; neither must we merge the supposed mystery directly into the highest mystery, until we are quite sure that it does not admit of being proximately explained by the action of proximate influences. now, whether or not mr. darwin's theory as to the origin and development of the moral sense be considered satisfactory, there can, i think, be very little doubt in any impartial mind which duly considers the subject, that in _some way or other_ the moral sense has been evolved. the body of scientific evidence which has now been collected in favour of the general theory of evolution is simply overwhelming; and in the presence of so large an analogy, it would require a vast amount of contradictory evidence to remove the presumption that human conscience, like everything else, has been evolved. now, for my own part, i am quite unable to distinguish any such evidence, while, on the other hand, in support of the _à priori_ presumption that conscience has been evolved, i cannot conceal from myself that there is a large amount of _à posteriori_ confirmation. i am quite unable to distinguish anything in my sense of right and wrong which i cannot easily conceive to have been brought about during the evolution of my intelligence from lower forms of psychical life. on the contrary, everything that i can find in my sense of right and wrong is precisely what i should expect to find on the supposition of this sense having been moulded by the progressive requirements of social development. read in the light of evolution, conscience, in its every detail, is deductively explained. and, as though there were not sufficient evidence of this kind to justify the conclusion drawn from the theory of evolution, the doctrine of utilitarianism--separately conceived and separately worked out on altogether independent grounds--the doctrine of utilitarianism comes in with irresistible force to confirm that _à priori_ conclusion by the widest and most unexceptionable of inductions.[ ] in the supernatural interpretation of the facts, the whole stress of the argument comes upon the character of conscience as a _spontaneously admonishing influence which acts independently of our own volition_. for it is from this character alone that the inference can arise that conscience is the delegate of the will of another. thus, to render the whole argument in the singularly beautiful words of dr. newman:--"if, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is one to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. if, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same seeming serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight, which follows on one receiving praise from a father,--we certainly have within us the image of some person to whom our love and veneration look, in whose smile we find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in whose anger we waste away. these feelings in us are such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being; we are not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before a horse or a dog; we have no remorse or compunction in breaking mere human law. yet so it is; conscience emits all these painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation; and, on the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation, and a hope which there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. 'the wicked flees when no one pursueth;' then why does he flee? whence his terror? who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart? if the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the object to which his perception is directed must be supernatural and divine; and thus the phenomena of conscience as a dictate avail to impress the imagination with the picture of a supreme governor, a judge, holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive."[ ] now i have quoted this passage because it seems to me to convey in a concise form the whole of the argument from conscience. but how tremendous are the inferences which are drawn from the facts! as the first step in our criticism, it is necessary to point out that two very different orders of feelings are here treated by dr. newman. there is first the pure or uncompounded ethical feelings, which spring directly from the moral sense alone, and which all men experience in varying degrees. and next there are what we may term the _ethico-theological_ feelings, which can only spring from a blending of the moral sense with a belief in a personal god, or other supernatural agents. the former class of feelings, or the uncompounded ethical class, have exclusive reference to the moral obligations that subsist between ourselves and other human beings, or sentient organisms. the latter class of feelings, or the ethico-theological class, have reference to the moral obligations that are believed to subsist between ourselves and the deity, or other supernatural beings. now, in order not to lose sight of this all-important distinction, i shall criticise dr. newman's rendering of the ordinary argument from conscience in each of these two points of views separately. to begin, then, with the uncompounded ethical feelings. such emotions as attend the operation of conscience in those who follow its light alone without any theories as to its supernatural origin, are all of the character of _reasonable_ or _explicable_ emotions. granting that fellow-feeling has been for the benefit of the race, and therefore that it has been developed by natural causes, certainly there is nothing _mysterious_ in the emotions that attend the violating or the following of the dictates of conscience. for conscience is, by this naturalistic supposition, nothing more than an organised body of certain psychological elements, which, by long inheritance, have come to inform us, by way of intuitive feeling, how we should act for the interests of society; so that, if this hypothesis is correct, there cannot be anything more mysterious or supernatural in the working of conscience than there is in the working of any of our other faculties. that the disagreeable feeling of _self-reproach_, as distinguished from _religious_ feeling, should follow upon a violation of such an organized body of psychological elements, cannot be thought surprising, if it is remembered that one of these elements is natural fellow-feeling, and the others the elements which lead us to know directly that we have violated the interests of other persons. and as regards the mere fact that the working of conscience is independent of the will, surely this is not more than we find, in varying degrees, to be true of all our emotions; and conscience, according to the evolution theory, has its root in the emotions. hence, it is no more an argument to say that the irrepressible character of conscience refers us to a god of morality, than it would be to say that the sometimes resistless force of the ludicrous refers us to a god of laughter. love, again, is an emotion which cannot be subdued by volition, and in its tendency to persist bears just such a striking resemblance to the feelings of morality as we should expect to find on the supposition of the former having played an important part in the genesis of the latter. the _dictating_ character of conscience, therefore, is clearly in itself of no avail as pointing to a superhuman dictator. thus, for example, to take dr. newman's own illustration, why should we feel such tearful, broken-hearted sorrow on intentionally or carelessly hurting a mother? we see no shadow of a reason for resorting to any supernatural hypothesis to explain the fact--love between mother and offspring being an essential condition to the existence of higher animals. yet this is a simple case of truly conscientious feeling, where the thought of any _personal_ cause of conscience _need_ not be entertained, and is certainly not necessary to explain the effects. and similarly with _all_ cases of conscientious feeling, _except in cases where it refers directly to its supposed author_. but these latter cases, or the ethico-theological class of feelings, are in no way surprising. if the moral sense has had a natural genesis in the actual relations between man and man, as soon as an ideal "image" of "a holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive" god is firmly believed to have an objective existence, as a matter of course moral feelings must become transferred to the relations which are believed to obtain between ourselves and this most holy god. indeed, it is these very feelings which, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, must be concluded, in accordance with the law of parcimony, to have _generated_ this idea of god as "holy, just," and good. and the mere fact that, when the complex system of religious belief has once been built up, conscience is strongly wrought upon by that belief and its accompanying emotions, is surely a fact the very reverse of mysterious. suppose, for the sake of argument, that the moral sense has been evolved from the social feelings, and should we not certainly expect that, when the belief in a moral and all-seeing god is superadded, conscience should be distracted at the thought of offending him, and experience a "soothing, satisfactory delight" in the belief that we are pleasing him? and as to the argument, "why does the wicked flee when none pursueth? whence his terror?" the question admits of only too easy an answer. indeed, the form into which the question is thrown would almost seem--were it not written by dr. newman--to imply a sarcastic reference to the power of superstition. "who is it that," not only dr. newman, but the haunted savage, the mediæval sorcerer, or the frightened child, "sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart?" who but the "image" of his own thought? "if the cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the object to which his perception is directed must be supernatural and divine." assuredly; but what an inference from what an assumption! whether or not the moral sense has been developed by natural causes, "these emotions" of terror at the thought of offending beings "supernatural and divine" are not of such unique occurrence "in the visible world" as to give dr. newman the monopoly of his particular "object." with a deeper meaning, therefore, than he intends may we repeat, "the phenomena of conscience as a dictate _avail_ to impress the _imagination_ with the _picture_ of a supreme governor." but criticism here is positively painful. let it be enough to say that those of us who do not already believe in any such particular "object"--be it ghost, shape, demon, or deity--are strangers, utter and complete, to any such supernatural pursuers. the fact, therefore, of these various religious emotions being associated with conscience in the minds of theists, can in itself be no proof of theism, seeing that it is the theory of theism which itself _engenders_ these emotions; those who do not believe in this theory experiencing none of these feelings of personal dread, responsibility to an unknown god, and the feelings of doing injury to, or of receiving praise from, a parent. to such of us the violation of conscience is its own punishment, as the pursuit of virtue is its own reward. for we know that not more certainly than fire will burn, any violation of the deeply-rooted feelings of our humanity will leave a gaping wound which even time may not always heal. and when it is shown us that our natural dread of fire is due to a supernatural cause, we may be prepared to entertain the argument that our natural dread of sin, as distinguished from our dread of god, is likewise due to such a cause. but until this can be done we must, as reasonable men, _whose minds have been trained in the school of nature_, forbear to allow that the one fact is of any greater cogency than the other, so far as the question of a supernatural cause of either is concerned. for, as we have already seen, the law of parcimony forbids us to ascribe "the phenomena of conscience as a dictate" to a supernatural cause, until the science of psychology shall have proved that they cannot have been due to natural causes. but, as we have also seen, the science of psychology is now beginning, as quick and thoroughly as can be expected, to prove the very converse; so that the probability is now overwhelming that our moral sense, like all our other faculties, has been evolved. therefore, while the burden of proof really lies on the side of theism--or with those who account for the natural phenomena of conscience by the hypothesis of a supernatural origin--this burden is now being rapidly discharged by the opposite side. that is to say, while the proofs which are now beginning to substantiate the naturalistic hypothesis are all in full accord with the ordinary lines of scientific explanations, the vague and feeble reflections of those who still maintain that conscience is evidence of deity, are all such as run counter to the very truisms of scientific method. in the face of all the facts, therefore, i find it impossible to recognise as valid any inference which is drawn from the existence of our moral sense to the existence of a god; although, of course, all inferences drawn from the existence of our moral sense to the _character_ of a god already believed to exist remain unaffected by the foregoing considerations.[ ] * * * * * chapter iii. the argument from design. § . the argument from design, as presented by mill, is merely a resuscitation of it as presented by paley. true it is that the logical penetration of the former enabled him to perceive that the latter had "put the case much too strongly;" although, even here, he has failed to see wherein paley's error consisted. he says:--"if i found a watch on an apparently desolate island, i should indeed infer that it had been left there by a human being; but the inference would not be from the marks of design, but because i already know by direct experience that watches are made by men." now i submit that this misses the whole point of paley's meaning; for it is evident that there would be no argument at all unless this author be understood to say what he clearly enough expresses, viz., that the evidence of design supposed to be afforded by the watch is supposed to be afforded by examination of its mechanism only, and not by any previous knowledge as to how that particular mechanism called a watch is made. paley, i take it, only chose a watch for his example because he knew that no reader would dispute the fact that watches are constructed by design: except for the purpose of pointing out that mechanism is in some cases admitted to be due to intelligence, for all the other purposes of his argument he might as well have chosen for his illustration any case of mechanism occurring in nature. what the real fallacy in paley's argument is, is another question, and this i shall now endeavour to answer; for, as mill's argument is clearly the same in kind as that of paley and his numberless followers, in examining the one i am also examining the other. § . in nature, then, we see innumerable examples of apparent design: are these of equal value in testifying to the presence of a designing intelligence as are similar examples of human contrivance, and if not, why not? the answer to the first of these questions is patent. if such examples were of the same value in the one case as they are in the other, the existence of a deity would be, as paley appears to have thought it was, demonstrated by the fact. a brief and yet satisfactory answer to the second question is not so easy, and we may best approach it by assuming the existence of a deity. if, then, there is a god, it by no means follows that every apparent contrivance in nature is an actual contrivance, in the same sense as is any human contrivance. the eye of a vertebrated animal, for instance, exhibits as much apparent design as does a watch; but no one--at the present day, at least--will undertake to affirm that the evidence of divine thought furnished by one example is as conclusive as is the evidence of human thought furnished by the other--and this even assuming a deity to exist. why is this? the reason, i think, is, that we know by our personal experience what are our own relations to the material world, and to the laws which preside over the action of physical forces; while we can have no corresponding knowledge of the relations subsisting between the deity and these same objects of our own experience. hence, to suppose that the deity constructed the eye by any such process of thought as we know that men construct watches, is to make an assumption not only incapable of proof, but destitute of any assignable degree of likelihood. take an example. the relation in which a bee stands to the external world is to a large extent a matter of observation, and, therefore, no one imagines that the formation of its scientifically-constructed cells is due to any profound study on the bee's part. whatever the origin of the cell-making instinct may have been, its nature is certainly not the same as it would have been in man, supposing him to have had occasion to construct honeycombs. it may be said that the requisite calculations have been made for the bees by the deity; but, even if this assumption were true, it would be nothing to the point, which is merely that even within the limits of the animal kingdom the relations of intelligence to the external world are so diverse, that the same results may be accomplished by totally different intellectual processes. and as this example is parallel to the case on which we are engaged in everything save the _observability_ of the relations involved, it supplies us with the exact measure of the probability we are trying to estimate. hence it is evident that so long as we remain ignorant of the element essential to the argument from design in its paleyerian form--viz., knowledge or presumption of the relations subsisting between an hypothetical deity and his creation--so long must that argument remain, not only unassignably weak, but incapable of being strengthened by any number of examples similar in kind. § . to put the case in another way. the root fallacy in paley's argument consisted in reasoning from a particular to an universal. because he knew that design was the cause of adaptation in some cases, and because the phenomena of life exhibited more instances of adaptation than any other class of phenomena in nature, he pointed to these phenomena as affording an exceptional kind of proof of the presence in nature of intelligent agency. yet, if it is admitted--and of this, even in paley's days, there was a strong analogical presumption--that the phenomena of life are throughout their history as much subject to law as are any other phenomena whatsoever,--that the method of the divine government, supposing such to exist, is the same here as elsewhere; then nothing can be clearer than that any amount of observable adaptation of means to ends within this class of phenomena cannot afford any different kind of evidence of _design_ than is afforded by any other class of phenomena whatsoever. either we know the relations of the deity to his creation, or we do not. if we do, then we must know whether or not _every_ physical change which occurs in accordance with law--_i.e._, every change occurring within experience, and so, until contrary evidence is produced, presumably every change occurring beyond experience--was separately planned by the deity. if we do not, then we have no more reason to suppose that any one set of physical changes rather than another has been separately planned by him, unless we could point (as paley virtually pointed) to one particular set of changes and assert, these are not subject to the same method of divine government which we observe elsewhere, or, in other words, to law. if it is retorted that _in some way or other_ all these wonderful adaptations must ultimately have been due to intelligence, this is merely to shift the argument to a ground which we shall presently have to consider: all we are now engaged upon is to show that we have no right to found arguments on the assumed _mode_, _manner_, or _process_ by which the supposed intelligence is thought to have operated. we can here see, then, more clearly where paley stumbled. he virtually assumed that the relations subsisting between the deity and the universe were such, that the exceptional adaptations met with in the organised part of the latter cannot have been due to the same intellectual _processes_ as was the rest of the universe--or that, if they were, still they yielded better evidence of having been due to these processes than does the rest of the universe. and it is easy to perceive that his error arose from his pre-formed belief in special creation. so long as a man regards every living organism which he sees as the lineal descendant of a precisely similar organism originally struck out by the immediate fiat of deity, so long is he justified in holding his axiom, "contrivance must have had a contriver." for "adaptation" then becomes to our minds the synonym of "contrivance"--it being utterly inconceivable that the numberless adaptations found in any living organism could have resulted in any other way than by intelligent contrivance, at the time when this organism was in the first instance _suddenly_ introduced into its complex conditions of life. still, as an argument, this is of course merely reasoning in a circle: we adopt a hypothesis which presupposes the existence of a deity as the first step in the proof of his existence. i do not say that paley committed this error expressly, but merely that if it had not been for his pre-formed conviction as to the truth of the special-creation theory, he would probably not have written his "natural theology." § . thus let us take a case of his own choosing, and the one which is adduced by him as typical of "the application of the argument." "i know of no better method of introducing so large a subject than that of comparing a single thing with a single thing; an eye, for example, with a telescope. as far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it. they are both made upon the same principles, both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated. i speak not of the origin of the laws themselves; but these laws being fixed, the construction in both cases is adapted to them. for instance: these laws require, in order to produce the same effect, that the rays of light, in passing through water into the eye, should be refracted by a more convex surface than when it passes out of air into the eye. accordingly we find that the eye of a fish, in that part of it called the crystalline lens, is much rounder than the eye of terrestrial animals. what plainer manifestation of design can there be than this difference?" but what, let us ask, is the proximate cause of this difference? 'the immediate volition of the deity, manifested in special creation,' virtually answers paley; while we of to-day are able to reply, 'the agency of natural laws, to wit, inheritance, variation, survival of the fittest, and probably of other laws as yet not discovered.' now, of course, according to the former of these two premises, there can be no more legitimate conclusion than that the difference in question is due to intelligent and special design; but, according to the other premise, it is equally clear that no conclusion can be more unwarranted; for, under the latter view, the greater rotundity of the crystalline lens in a fish's eye no more exhibits the presence of any special design than does the adaptation of a river to the bed which it has itself been the means of excavating. when, therefore, paley goes on to ask:--"how is it possible, under circumstances of such close affinity, and under the operation of equal evidence, to exclude contrivance from the case of the eye, yet to acknowledge the proof of contrivance having been employed, as the plainest and clearest of all propositions, in the case of the telescope?" the answer is sufficiently obvious, namely, that the "evidence" in the two cases is _not_ "equal;"--any more than is the existence, say, of the nile of equal value in point of evidence that it was designed for traffic, as is the existence of the suez canal that it was so designed. and the mere fact that the problem of achromatism was solved by "the mind of a sagacious optician inquiring how this matter was managed in the eye," no more proves that "this could not be in the eye without purpose, which suggested to the optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose," than would the fact, say, of the winnowing of corn having suggested the fanning-machine prove that air currents were designed for the purpose of eliminating chaff from grain. in short, the real substance of the argument from design must eventually merge into that which paley, in the above-quoted passage, expressly passes over--viz., "the origin of the laws themselves;" for so long as there is any reason to suppose that any apparent "adaptation" to a certain set of "fixed laws" is itself due to the influence of other "fixed laws," so long have we as little right to say that the latter set of fixed laws exhibit any better indications of intelligent adaptation to the former set, than the former do to that of the latter--the eye to light, than light to the eye. hence i conceive that mill is entirely wrong when he says of paley's argument, "it surpasses analogy exactly as induction surpasses it," because "the instances chosen are particular instances of a circumstance which experience shows to have a real connection with an intelligent origin--the fact of conspiring to an end." experience shows as this, but it shows us more besides; it shows us that there is no _necessary_ or _uniform_ connection between an "intelligent origin" and the fact of apparent "means conspiring to an [apparent] end." if the reader will take the trouble to compare this quotation just made from mill, and the long train of reasoning that follows, with an admirable illustration in mr. wallace's "natural selection," he will be well rewarded by finding all the steps in mr. mill's reasoning so closely paralleled by the caricature, that but for the respective dates of publication, one might have thought the latter had an express reference to the former.[ ] true, mr. mill closes his argument with a brief allusion to the "principle of the survival of the fittest," observing that "creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected with the fact of sight." i am surprised, however, that a man of mr. mill's penetration did not see that whatever view we may take as to "the adequacy of this principle (_i.e._, natural selection) to account for such truly admirable combinations as some of those in nature," the argument from _design_ is not materially affected. so far as this argument is concerned, the issue is not design _versus_ natural selection, but it is design _versus_ natural law. by all means, "leaving this remarkable speculation (_i.e._, mr. darwin's) to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it," and it by no means follows that "in the present state of knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence." for whatever we may think of this special theory as to the _mode_, there can be no longer any reasonable doubt, "in the present state of our knowledge," as to the truth of the general theory of _evolution_; and the latter, if accepted, is as destructive to the argument from _design_ as would the former be if proved. in a word, it is the _fact_ and not the _method_ of evolution which is subversive of teleology in its paleyerian form. § . we have come then to this:--apparent intellectual adaptations are perfectly valid indications of design, so long as their authorship is known to be confined to human intelligence; for then we know from experience what are our relations to these laws, and so in any given case can argue _à posteriori_ that such an adaptation to such a set of laws by such an intelligence can only have been due to such a process. but when we overstep the limits of experience, we are not entitled to argue anything _à priori_ of any other intelligence in this respect, even supposing any such intelligence to exist. the analogy by which the unknown relations are inferred from the known is "infinitely precarious;" seeing that two of the analogous terms--to wit, the divine intelligence and the human--may differ to an immeasurable extent in their properties--nay, are supposed thus to differ, the one being supposed omniscient, omnipotent, &c., and the other not. and, as a final step, we may now see that the argument from design, in its last resort, resolves itself into a _petitio principii_. for, ultimately, the only point which the analogical argument in question is adduced to prove is, that the relations subsisting between an unknown cause and certain physical forces are so far identical with the relations known to subsist between human intelligence and these same forces, that similar intellectual processes are required in the two cases to account for the production of similar effects--and hence that the unknown cause is intelligent. but it is evident that the analogy itself can have no existence, except upon the presupposition that these two sets of relations _are_ thus identical. the point which the analogy is adduced to prove is therefore postulated by the fact of its being adduced at all, and the whole argument resolves itself into a case of _petitio principii_. * * * * * chapter iv. the argument from general laws. § . turning now to an important error of mr. mill's in respect of omission, i firmly believe that all competent writers who have ever undertaken to support the argument from design, have been moved to do so by their instinctive appreciation of the much more important argument, which mill does not mention at all and which we now proceed to consider--the argument from general laws. that is to say, i cannot think that any one competent writer ever seriously believed, had he taken time to analyse his beliefs, that the cogency of his argument lay in assuming any knowledge concerning the _process_ of divine thought; he must have really believed that it lay entirely in his observation of the _product_ of divine thought--or rather, let us say, of divine intelligence. now this is the whole difference between the argument from design and the argument from general laws. the argument from design says, there must be a god, because such and such an organic structure must have been due to such and such an intellectual _process_. the argument from general laws says, there must be a god, because such and such an organic structure must _in some way or other have been ultimately due to_ intelligence. nor does this argument end here. not only must such and such an organic structure have been ultimately due to intelligence, but every such structure--nay, every phenomenon in the universe--must have been the same; for all phenomena are alike subject to the same method of sequence. the argument is thus a cumulative one; for as there is no single known exception to this universal mode of existence, the united effect of so vast a body of evidence is all but irresistible, and its tendency is clearly to point us to some _one_ explanatory cause. the scope of this argument is therefore co-extensive with the universe; it draws alike upon all phenomena with which experience is acquainted. for instance, it contains all the phenomena covered by the design argument, just as a genus contains any one of its species; it being manifest, from what was said in the last section, that if the general doctrine of evolution is accepted, the argument from design must of necessity merge into that from general laws. and this wide basis, we may be sure, must be the most legitimate one whereon to rest an argument in favour of theism. if there is any such thing as such an argument at all, the most unassailable field for its display must be the universe as a whole, seeing that if we separate any one section of the universe from the rest, and suppose that we here discover a different kind of testimony to intelligence from that which we can discover elsewhere, we may from analogy be abundantly sure that on the confines of our division there must be second causes and general laws at work (whether discoverable or not), which are the immediate agents in the production of the observed results. of course i do not deny that some classes of phenomena afford us more and better proofs of intellectual agency than do others, in the sense of the laws in operation being more numerous, subtle, and complex; but it will be seen that this is a different interpretation of the evidence from that against which i am contending. thus, if there are tokens of divine intention (as distinguished from design) to be met with in the eye,--if it is inconceivable that so "nice and intricate a structure" should exist without intelligence as its _ultimate_ cause; then the discovery of natural selection, or of any other law, as the _manner_ in which this intelligence wrought in no wise attenuates the proof as to the fact of an intelligent cause. on the contrary, it tends rather to confirm it; for, besides the evidence before existing, there is added that which arises from the conformity of the method to that which is observable in the rest of the universe. thus, notwithstanding what hamilton, chalmers, and others have said, i cannot but feel that the ubiquitous action of general laws is, of all facts supplied by experience, the most cogent in its bearing upon teleology. if perpetual and uninterrupted uniformity of method does not indicate the existence of a presiding intelligence, it becomes a question whether any other kind of method--short of the intelligently miraculous--could possibly do so; seeing that the further the divine _modus operandi_ (supposing such to exist) were removed from absolute uniformity, the greater would be the room for our interpreting it as mere fortuity. but forasmuch as the progress of science has shown that within experience the method of the supreme causality is absolutely uniform, the hypothesis of fortuity is rendered irrational; and let us think of this supreme causality as we may, the fact remains that from it there emanates a directive influence of uninterrupted consistency, on a scale of stupendous magnitude and exact precision, worthy of our highest possible conceptions of deity. § . had it been my lot to have lived in the last generation, i doubt not that i should have regarded the foregoing considerations as final: i should have concluded that there was an overwhelming balance of rational probability in favour of theism; and i think i should also have insisted that this balance of rational probability would require to continue as it was till the end of time. i should have maintained, in some such words as the following, in which the rev. baden powell conveys this argument:--"the very essence of the whole argument is the invariable preservation of the principle of _order_: not necessarily such as we can directly recognise, but the universal conviction of the unfailing subordination of everything to _some_ grand principles of _law_, however imperfectly apprehended in our partial conceptions, and the successive subordination of such laws to others of still higher generality, to an extent transcending our conceptions, and constituting the true chain of universal causation which culminates in the sublime conception of the cosmos. "it is in immediate connection with this enlarged view of universal immutable natural order that i have regarded the narrow notions of those who obscure the sublime prospect by imagining so unworthy an idea as that of occasional interruptions in the physical economy of the world. "the only instance considered was that of the alleged sudden supernatural origination of new species of organised beings in remote geological epochs. it is in relation to the broad principle of law, if once rightly apprehended, that such inferences are seen to be wholly unwarranted by science, and such fancies utterly derogatory and inadmissible in philosophy; while, even in those instances properly understood, the real scientific conclusions of the invariable and indissoluble chain of causation stand vindicated in the sublime contemplations with which they are thus associated. "to a correct apprehension of the whole argument, the one essential requisite is to have obtained a complete and satisfactory grasp of this _one grand principle of law pervading nature, or rather constituting the very idea of nature_;--which forms the vital essence of the whole of inductive science, and the sole assurance of those higher inferences from the inductive study of natural causes which are the vindications of a supreme intelligence and a moral cause. "_the whole of the ensuing discussion must stand or fall with the admission of this grand principle_. those who are not prepared to embrace it in its full extent may probably not accept the conclusions; but they must be sent back to the school of inductive science, where alone it must be independently imbibed and thoroughly assimilated with the mind of the student in the first instance. "on the slightest consideration of the nature, the foundations, and general results of inductive science,... we recognise the powers of intellect fitly employed in the study of nature,... pre-eminently leading us to perceive _in nature_, and in the invariable and universal constancy of its laws, the indications of universal, unchangeable, and recondite arrangement, dependence, and connection in reason.... "we thus see the importance of taking a more enlarged view of the great argument of natural theology; and the necessity for so doing becomes the more apparent when we reflect on the injury to which these sublime inferences are exposed from the narrow and unworthy form in which the reasoning has been too often conducted.... "the satisfactory view of the whole case can only be found in those more enlarged conceptions which are furnished by the grand contemplation of cosmical order and unity, and which do not refer to inferences from the _past_, but to proofs of the _ever-present_ mind and reason in nature. "if we read a book which it requires much thought and exercise of reason to understand, but which we find discloses more and more truth and reason as we proceed in the study, and contains clearly more than we can at present comprehend, then undeniably we properly say that thought and reason _exist in that book_ irrespectively of our minds, and equally so of any question as to its author or origin. such a book confessedly exists, and is ever open to us in the natural world. or, to put the case under a slightly different form:--when the astronomer, the physicist, the geologist, or the naturalist notes down a series of observed facts or measured dates, he is not an _author_ expressing his own ideas,--he is a mere _amanuensis_ taking down the dictations of nature: his observation book is the record of the thoughts of _another mind_: he has but set down literally what he himself does not understand, or only very imperfectly. on further examination, and after deep and anxious study, he perhaps begins to decipher the meaning, by perceiving some law which gives a signification to the facts; and the further he pursues the investigation up to any more comprehensive theory, the more fully he perceives that there is a higher reason, of which his own is but the humbler interpreter, and into whose depths he may penetrate continually further, to discover yet more profound and invariable order and system, always indicating still deeper and more hidden abysses yet unfathomed, but throughout which he is assured the same recondite and immutable arrangement ever prevails. "that which requires thought and reason to understand must be itself thought and reason. that which mind alone can investigate or express must be itself mind. and if the highest conception attained is but partial, then the mind and reason studied is greater than the mind and reason of the student. if the more it be studied the more vast and complex is the necessary connection in reason disclosed, then the more evident is the vast extent and compass of the intelligence thus partially manifested, and its reality, as _existing in the immutably connected order of objects examined_, independently of the mind of the investigator. "but considerations of this kind, just and transcendently important as they are in themselves, give us no aid in any inquiry into the _origin_ of the order of things thus investigated, or the _nature_ or other attributes of the mind evinced in them. "the real argument for universal _intelligence_, manifested in the universality of order and law in the material world, is very different from any attempt to give a form to our conceptions, even by the language of analogy, as to the _nature_ or _mode of existence_ or operation of that intelligence [_i.e._, as i have stated the case, the argument can only rest on a study of the _products_, as distinguished from the _processes_ of such intelligence]: and still more different from any extension of our inference from what _is_ to what _may have been_, from _present_ order to a supposed _origination_, first adjustment, or planning of that order. "by keeping these distinctions steadily in view, we appreciate properly both the limits and the extent and compass of what we may appropriately call cosmotheology."[ ] i have quoted these passages at length, because they convey in a more forcible, guarded, and accurate manner than any others with which i am acquainted, the strictly rational standing of this great subject prior to the date at which the above-quoted passage was written. therefore, as i have said, if it had been my lot to have lived in the last generation, i should certainly have rested in these "sublime conceptions" as in an argument supreme and irrefutable. i should have felt that the progress of physical knowledge could never exert any other influence on theism than that of ever tending more and more to confirm that magnificent belief, by continuously expanding our human thoughts into progressively advancing conceptions, ever grander and yet more grand, of that tremendous origin of things--the mind of god. such would have been my hope--such would have been my prayer. but now, how changed! never in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation. science, whom erstwhile we thought a very angel of god, pointing to that great barrier of law, and proclaiming to the restless sea of changing doubt, "hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,"--even science has now herself thrown down this trusted barrier; the flood-gates of infidelity are open, and atheism overwhelming is upon us. § . all and every law follows as a necessary consequence from the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter.[ ] that this must be so is evident if we consider that, were it not so, force could not be permanent nor matter constant. for instance, if action and reaction were not invariably equal and opposite, force would not be invariably persistent, seeing that in no case can the formula fail, unless some one or other of the forces concerned, or parts of them, disappear. and as with a simple law of this kind, so with every other natural law and inter-operation of laws, howsoever complex such inter-operation may be; for it is manifest that if in any case similar antecedents did not determine similar consequents, on one or other of these occasions some quantum of force, or of matter, or of both, must have disappeared--or, which is the same thing, the law of causation cannot have been constant. every natural law, therefore, may be defined as the formula of a sequence, which must either ensue upon certain forces of a given intensity impinging upon certain given quantities, kinds, and forms of matter, or else, by not ensuing, prove that the force or the matter concerned were not of a permanent nature. § . the argument, then, which was elaborated in § , and which has so long and so generally received the popular sanction in the common-sense epitome, that in the last record there must be mind in external nature, since "that which it requires thought and reason to understand must itself be thought and reason,"--this argument, i say, must now for ever be abandoned by reasonable men. no doubt it would be easy to point to several speculative thinkers who have previously combated this argument,[ ] and from this fact some readers will perhaps be inclined to judge, from a false analogy, that as the argument in question has withstood previous assaults, it need not necessarily succumb to the present one. be it observed, however, that the present assault differs from all previous assaults, just as demonstration differs from speculation. what has hitherto been but mere guess and unwarrantable assertion has now become a matter of the greatest certainty. that the argument from general laws is a futile argument, is no longer a matter of unverifiable opinion: it is as sure as is the most fundamental axiom of science. that the argument will long remain in illogical minds, i doubt not; but that it is from henceforth quite inadmissible in accurate thinking, there can be no question. for the sake, however, of impressing this fact still more strongly upon such readers as have been accustomed to rely upon this argument, and so find it difficult thus abruptly to reverse the whole current of their thoughts,--for the sake of such, i shall here add a few remarks with the view of facilitating the conception of an universal order existing independently of mind. § . interpreting the mazy nexus of phenomena only by the facts which science has revealed, and what conclusion are we driven to accept? clearly, looking to what has been said in the last two sections, that from the time when the process of evolution first began,--from the time before the condensation of the nebula had showed any signs of commencing,--every subsequent change or event of evolution was _necessarily bound_ to ensue; else force and matter have not been persistent. how then, it will be asked, did the vast nexus of natural laws which is now observable ever begin or continue to be? in this way. when the first womb of things was pregnant with all the future, there would probably have been existent at any rate not more than one of the formulæ which we now call natural laws. this one law, of course, would have been the law of gravitation. here we may take our stand. it does not signify whether there ever was a time when gravitation was not,--_i.e._, if ever there was a time when matter, _as we now know it_, was not in existence;--for if there ever was such a time, there is no reason to doubt, but every reason to conclude, that the evolution of matter, as we now know it, was accomplished in accordance with law. similarly, we are not concerned with the question as to how the law of gravitation came to be associated with matter; for it is overwhelmingly probable, from the extent of the analogy, that if our knowledge concerning molecular physics were sufficiently great, the existence of the law in question would be found to follow as a necessary deduction from the primary qualities of matter and force, just as we can now see that, when present, its peculiar quantitative action necessarily follows from the primary qualities of space. starting, then, with these data,--matter, force, and the law of gravitation,--what must happen? we have the strongest scientific reason to believe that the matter of the solar system primordially existed in a highly diffused or nebulous form. by mutual gravitation, therefore, all the substance of the nebula must have begun to concentrate upon itself, or to condense. now, from this point onwards, i wish it to be clearly understood that the mere consideration of the supposed facts not admitting of scientific proof, or of scientific explanation if true, in no wise affects the certainty of the doctrine which these facts are here adduced to establish. fully granting that the alleged facts are not beyond dispute, and that, even if true, innumerable other unknown and unknowable facts must have been associated with them--fully admitting, in short, that our ideas concerning the genesis of the solar system are of the crudest and least trustworthy character; still, if it be admitted, what at the present day only ignorance or prejudice can deny, viz., that, as a whole, evolution has been the method of the universe; then it follows that the doctrine here contended for is as certainly true as it would be were we fully acquainted with every cause and every change which has acted and ensued throughout the whole process of the genesis of things. now, bearing this caveat in mind, we have next to observe that when once the nebula began to condense, new relations among its constituent parts would, _for this reason_, begin to be established. "given a rare and widely diffused mass of nebulous matter,... what are the successive changes that will take place? mutual gravitation will approximate its atoms, but their approximation will be opposed by atomic repulsion, the overcoming of which implies the evolution of heat." that is to say, the condensation of the nebula as a whole of necessity implies at least the origination of these new material and dynamical relations among its constituent parts. "as fast as this heat partially escapes by radiation, further approximation will take place, attended by further evolution of heat, and so on continuously: the processes not occurring separately, as here described, but simultaneously, uninterruptedly, and with increasing activity." hence the newly established relations continuously acquire new increments of intensity. but now observe a more important point. the previous essential conditions remaining unaltered--viz., the persistence of matter and force, as well as, or rather let us say and consequently, the law of gravitation--these conditions, i say, remaining constant, and the newly established relations would necessarily _of themselves_ give origin to _new_ laws. for whenever two given quantities of force and matter met in one of the novel relations, they would of necessity give rise to novel effects; and whenever, on any future occasion, similar quantities of force and matter again so met, precisely similar effects would of necessity require to occur: but the occurrence of similar effects under similar conditions is all that we mean by a natural law. continuing, then, our quotation from mr. herbert spencer's terse and lucid exposition of the nebular theory, we find this doctrine virtually embodied in the next sentences:--"eventually this slow movement of the atoms towards their common centre of gravity will bring about phenomena of another order. "arguing from the known laws of atomic combination, it will happen that, when the nebulous mass has reached a particular stage of condensation--when its internally situated atoms have approached to within certain distances, have generated a certain amount of heat, and are subject to a certain mutual pressure (the heat and pressure increasing as the aggregation progresses), some of them will suddenly enter into chemical union. whether the binary atoms so produced be of kinds such as we know, which is possible, or whether they be of kinds simpler than any we know, which is more probable, matters not to the argument. it suffices that molecular combinations of some species will finally take place." we have, then, here a new and important change of relations. matter, primordially uniform, has itself become heterogeneous; and in as many places as it has thus changed its state, it must, in virtue of the fact, give rise to other hitherto novel relations, and so, in many cases, to new laws.[ ] it would be tedious and unnecessary to trace this genesis of natural law any further: indeed, it would be quite impossible so to trace it for any considerable distance without feeling that the ever-multiplying mazes of relations renders all speculation as to the actual processes quite useless. this fact, however, as before insisted, in no wise affects the only doctrine which i here enunciate--viz., that the self-generation of natural law is a necessary corollary from the persistence of matter and force. and that this must be so is now, i hope, sufficiently evident. just as in the first dawn of things, when the proto-binary compounds of matter gave rise to new relations together with their appropriate laws, so throughout the whole process of evolution, as often as matter acquired a hitherto novel state, or in one of its old states entered into hitherto novel relations, so often would non-existent or even impossible laws become at once possible and necessary. and in this way i cannot see that there is any reason to stop until we arrive at all the marvellous complexity of things as they are. for aught that speculative reason can ever from henceforth show to the contrary, the evolution of all the diverse phenomena of inorganic nature, of life, and of mind, appears to be as necessary and as self-determined as is the being of that mysterious something which is everything,--the entity we must all believe in, which without condition and beyond relation holds its existence in itself. § . does it still seem incredible that, notwithstanding it requires mental processes to interpret external nature, external nature may nevertheless be destitute of mind? then let us look at the subject on its obverse aspect. according to the theory of evolution--which, be it always remembered, is no mere gratuitous supposition, but a genuine scientific theory--human intelligence, like everything else, has been evolved. now in what does the evolution of intelligence consist? any one acquainted with the writings of our great philosopher can have no hesitation in answering: clearly and only in the establishment of more and more numerous and complex internal or psychological relations. in other words, the law of intelligence being "that the strengths of the inner cohesions between psychical states must be proportionate to the persistences of the outer relations symbolised," it follows that the development of intelligence is "secured by the one simple principle that experience of the outer relations _produces_ inner cohesions, and makes the inner cohesions strong in proportion as the outer relations are persistent." now the question before us at present is merely this:--must we not infer that these outer relations are regulated by mind, seeing that order is undoubtedly apparent among them, and that it requires mental processes on our part to interpret this order? the only legitimate answer to this question is, that these outer relations _may_ be regulated by mind, but that, in view of the evolution theory, we are certainly not entitled to infer that they _are_ so regulated, _merely_ because it requires mental processes on our part to interpret their orderly character. for if it is true that the human mind was itself evolved by these outer relations--ever continuously moulded into conformity with them as the prime condition of its existence--then its process of interpreting them is but reflecting (as it were) in consciousness these outer relations by which the inner ones were originally produced. granting that, as a matter of fact, an objective macrocosm exists, and if we can prove or render probable that this objective macrocosm is _of itself_ sufficient to evolve a subjective microcosm, i do not see any the faintest reason for the latter to conclude that a self-conscious intelligence is inherent in the former, merely because it is able to trace in the macrocosm some of those orderly objective relations by which its own corresponding subjective relations were originally produced. if it is said that it is impossible to conceive how, apart from mind, the orderly objective relations themselves can ever have originated, i reply that this is merely to shift the ground of discussion to that which occupied us in the last section: all we are now engaged upon is,--granting that the existence of such orderly relations is actual, whether with or without mind to account for them; and granting also that these relations are _of themselves_ sufficient to produce corresponding subjective relations; then the mere fact of our conscious intelligence being able to discover numerous and complex outer relations answering to those which they themselves have caused in our intelligence, does not warrant the latter in concluding that the causal connection between intelligence and non-intelligence has ever been reversed--that these outer relations in turn are caused by a similar conscious intelligence. how such a thing as a conscious intelligence is possible is another and wholly unanswerable question (though not more so than that as to the existence of force and matter, and would not be rendered less so by merging the fact in a hypothetical deity); but granting, as we must, that such an entity does exist, and supposing it to have been evolved by natural causes, then it would appear incontestably to follow, that whether or not objective existence is presided over by objective mind, our subjective mind would _alike_ and _equally_ require to read in the facts of the external world an indication, whether true or false, of some such presiding agency. the subjective mind being, by the supposition, but the obverse aspect of the sum total of such among objective relations as have had a share in its production, when, as in observation and reflection, this obverse aspect is again inverted upon its die, it naturally fits more or less exactly into all the prints. § . this last illustration, however, serves to introduce us to another point. the supposed evidence from which the existence of mind in nature is inferred does not always depend upon such minute correspondences between subjective method and objective method as the illustration suggests. every natural theologian has experienced more or less difficulty in explaining the fact, that while there is a tolerably general similarity between the contrivances due to human thought and the apparent contrivances in nature which he regards as due to divine thought, the similarity is nevertheless _only_ general. for instance, if a man has occasion to devise any artificial appliance, he does so with the least possible cost of labour to himself, and with the least possible expenditure of material. yet it is obvious that in nature as a whole no such economic considerations obtain. doubtless by superficial minds this assertion will be met at first with an indignant denial: they have been accustomed to accumulate instances of this very principle of economy in nature; perhaps written about it in books, and illustrated it in lectures,--totally ignoring the fact that the instances of economy in nature bear no proportion at all to the instances of prodigality. conceive of the force which is being quite uselessly expended by all the wind-currents which are at this moment blowing over the face of europe. imagine the energy that must have been dissipated during the secular cooling of this single planet. feebly try to think of what the sun is radiating into space. if it is retorted that we are incompetent to judge of the purposes of the almighty, i reply that this is but to abandon the argument from economy whenever it is found untenable: we presume to be competent judges of almighty purposes so long as they appear to imitate our own; but so soon as there is any divergence observable, we change front. by thus selecting all the instances of economy in nature, and disregarding all the vastly greater instances of reckless waste, we are merely laying ourselves open to the charge of an unfair eclecticism. and this formal refutation of the argument from economy admits of being further justified in a strikingly substantial manner; for if all the examples of economy in nature that were ever observed, or admit being observed, were collected into one view, i undertake to affirm that, without exception, they would be found to marshal themselves in one great company--the subjects whose law is _survival of the fittest_. one question only will i here ask. is it possible at the present day for any degree of prejudice, after due consideration, to withstand the fact that the solitary exceptions to the universal prodigality so painfully conspicuous in nature are to be found where there is also to be found a full and adequate physical explanation of their occurrence? but, again, prodigality is only one of several particulars wherein the modes and the means of the supposed divine intelligence differ from those of its human counterpart. comparative anatomists can point to organic structures which are far from being theoretically perfect: even the mind of man in these cases, notwithstanding its confessed deficiencies in respect both of cognitive and cogitative powers, is competent to suggest improvements to an intelligence supposed to be omniscient and all-wise! and what shall we say of the numerous cases in which the supposed purposes of this intelligence could have been attained by other and less roundabout means? in short, not needlessly to prolong discussion, it is admitted, even by natural theologians themselves, that the difficulties of reconciling, even approximately, the supposed processes of divine thought with the known processes of human thought are quite insuperable. the fact is expressed by such writers in various ways,--_e.g._, that it would be presumptuous in man to expect complete conformity in all cases; that the counsels of god are past finding out; that his ways are not as our ways, and so on. observing only, as before, that in thus ignoring adverse cases natural theologians are guilty of an unfair eclecticism, it is evident that all such expressions concede the fact, that even in those provinces of nature where the evidence of superhuman intelligence appears most plain, the resemblance of its apparent products to those of human intelligence consists in a general approximation of method rather than in any precise similarity of particulars: the likeness is generic rather than specific. now this is exactly what we should expect to be the case, if the similarity in question be due to the cause which the present section endeavours to set forth. if all natural laws are self-evolved, and if human intelligence is but a subjective photograph of certain among their interrelations, it seems but natural that when this photograph compares itself with the whole external world from parts of which it was taken, its subjective lights and shadows should be found to correspond with some of the objective lights and shadows much more perfectly than with others. still there would doubtless be sufficient general conformity to lead the thinking photograph to conclude that the great world of objective reality, instead of being the _cause_ of such conformity as exists, was itself the _effect_ of some common cause,--that it too was of the nature of a picture. dropping the figure, if it is true that human intelligence has been evolved by natural law, then in view of all that has been said it must now, i think, be tolerably apparent, _that as by the hypothesis human intelligence has always been required to think and to act in conformity with law, human intelligence must at last be in danger of confusing or identifying the fact of action in conformity with law with the existence and the action of a self-conscious intelligence. reading then in external nature innumerable examples of action in conformity with law, human intelligence falls back upon the unwarrantable identification, and out of the bare fact that law exists in nature concludes that beyond nature there is an intelligent lawgiver._ § . from what has been said in the last five sections, it manifestly follows that all the varied phenomena of the universe not only may, but must, depend upon the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter.[ ] be it remembered that the object of the last three sections was merely to "_facilitate conception_" of the fact that it does not at all follow, because the phenomena of external nature admit of being intelligently inquired into, therefore they are due to an intelligent cause. the last three sections are hence in a manner parenthetical, and it is of comparatively little importance whether or not they have been successful in their object; for, from what went before, it is abundantly manifest that, whether or not the subjective side of the question admits of satisfactory elucidation, there can be no doubt that the objective side of it is as certain as are the fundamental axioms of science. it does not admit of one moment's questioning that it is as certainly true that all the exquisite beauty and melodious harmony of nature follow as necessarily and as inevitably from the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter, as it is certainly true that force is persistent, or that matter is extended and impenetrable. no doubt this generalisation is too vast to be adequately conceived, but there can be equally little doubt that it is necessarily true. if matter and force have been eternal, so far as human mind can soar it can discover no need of a superior mind to explain the varied phenomena of existence. man has truly become in a new sense the measure of the universe, and in this the latest and most appalling of his soundings, indications are returned from the infinite voids of space and time by which he is surrounded, that his intelligence, with all its noble capacities for love and adoration, is yet alone--destitute of kith or kin in all this universe of being. * * * * * chapter v. the logical standing of the question as to the being of a god. § . but the discussion must not end here. inexorable logic has forced us to conclude that, viewing the question as to the existence of a god only by the light which modern science has shed upon it, there no longer appears to be any semblance of an argument in its favour. let us then turn upon science herself, and question her right to be our sole guide in this matter. undoubtedly we have no alternative but to conclude that the hypothesis of mind in nature is now logically proved to be as certainly superfluous is the very basis of all science is certainly true. there can no longer be any more doubt that the existence of a god is wholly unnecessary to explain any of the phenomena of the universe, than there is doubt that if i leave go of my pen it will fall upon the table. nay, the doubt is even less than this, because while the knowledge that my pen will fall if i allow it to do so is founded chiefly upon empirical knowledge (i could not predict with _à priori_ certainty that it would so fall, for the pen might be in an electrical state, or subject to some set of unknown natural laws antagonistic to gravity), the knowledge that a deity is superfluous as an explanation of anything, being grounded on the doctrine of the persistence of force, is grounded on an _à priori_ necessity of reason--_i.e._, if this fact were not so, our science, our thought, our very existence itself, would be scientifically impossible. but now, having thus stated the case as strongly as i am able, it remains to question how far the authority of science extends. even our knowledge of the persistence of force and of the primary qualities of matter is but of relative significance. deeper than the foundations of our experience, "deeper than demonstration--deeper even than definite cognition,--deep as the very nature of mind,"[ ] are these the most ultimate of known truths; but where from this is our warrant for concluding with certainty that these known truths are everywhere and eternally true? it will be said that there is a strong analogical probability. perhaps so, but of this next: i am not now speaking of probability; i am speaking of certainty; and unless we deny the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, we cannot but conclude that there is no absolute certainty in this case. as i deem this consideration one of great importance, i shall proceed to develop it at some length. it will be observed, then, that the consideration really amounts to this:--although it must on all hands be admitted that the fact of the theistic hypothesis not being required to explain any of the phenomena of nature is a fact which has been demonstrated _scientifically_, nevertheless it must likewise on all hands be admitted that this fact has not, and cannot be, demonstrated _logically_. or thus, although it is unquestionably true that so far as science can penetrate she cannot discern any speculative necessity for a god, it may nevertheless be true that if science could penetrate further she might discern some such necessity. now the present discussion would clearly be incomplete if it neglected to define as carefully this the logical standing of our subject, as it has hitherto endeavoured to define its scientific standing. as a final step in our analysis, therefore, we must altogether quit the region of experience, and, ignoring even the very foundations of science and so all the most certain of relative truths, pass into the transcendental region of purely formal considerations. in this region theist and atheist must alike consent to forego all their individual predilections, and, after regarding the subject as it were in the abstract and by the light of pure logic alone, finally come to an agreement as to the transcendental probability of the question before them. disregarding the actual probability which they severally feel to exist in relation to their own individual intelligences, they must apply themselves to ascertain the probability which exists in relation to those fundamental laws of thought which preside over the intelligence of our race. in fine, it will now, i hope, be understood that, as we have hitherto been endeavouring to determine, by deductions drawn from the very foundations of all possible science, the _relative_ probability as to the existence of a god, so we shall next apply ourselves to the task of ascertaining the _absolute_ probability of such existence--or, more correctly, what is the strictly _formal_ probability of such existence when its possibility is contemplated in an absolute sense. § . to begin then. in the last resort, the value of every probability is fixed by "ratiocination." in endeavouring, therefore, to fix the degree of strictly formal probability that is present in any given case, our method of procedure should be, first to ascertain the ultimate ratios on which the probability depends, and then to estimate the comparative value of these ratios. now i think there can be no doubt that the value of any probability in this its last analysis is determined by the number, the importance, and the definiteness of the relations known, as compared with those of the relations unknown; and, consequently, that in all cases where the sum of the unknown relations is larger, or more important, or more indefinite than is the sum of the known relations, it is an essential principle that the value of the probability decreases in exact proportion to the decrease in the similarity between the two sets of relations, whether this decrease consists in the number, in the importance, or in the definiteness of the relations involved. this rule or canon is self-evident as soon as pointed out, and has been formulated by professor bain in his "logic" when treating of analogy, but not with sufficient precision; for, while recognising the elements of number and importance, he has overlooked that of definiteness. this element, however, is a very essential one--indeed the most essential of the three; for there are many analogical inferences in which either the character or the extent of the unknown relations is quite indefinite; and it is obvious that, whenever this is the case, the value of the analogy is proportionably diminished, and diminished in a much more material particular than it is when the diminution of value arises from a mere excess of the unknown relations over the known ones in respect of their number or of their importance. for it is evident that, in the latter case, however little value the analogy may possess, the exact degree of such value admits of being _determined_; while it is no less evident that, in the former case, we are precluded from estimating the value of the analogy at all, and this just in proportion to the indefiniteness of the unknown relations. § . now the particular instance with which we are concerned is somewhat peculiar. notwithstanding we have the entire sphere of human experience from which to argue, we are still unable to gauge the strictly logical probability of any argument whatsoever; for the unknown relations in this case are so wholly indefinite, both as to their character and extent, that any attempt to institute a definite comparison between them and the known relations is felt at once to be absurd. the question discussed, being the most ultimate of all possible questions, must eventually contain in itself all that is to man unknown and unknowable; the whole orbit of human knowledge is here insufficient to obtain a parallax whereby to institute the required measurements. § . i think it is desirable to insist upon this truth at somewhat greater length, and, for the sake of impressing it still more deeply, i shall present it in another form. no one can for a single moment deny that, beyond and around the sphere of the knowable, there exists the unfathomable abyss of the unknowable. i do not here use this latter word as embodying any theory: i merely wish it to state the undoubted fact, which all must admit, viz., that beneath all our possible explanations there lies a great inexplicable. now let us see what is the effect of making this necessary admission. in the first place, it clearly follows that, while our conceptions as to what the unknowable contains may or may not represent the truth, it is certain that we can never discover whether or not they do. further, it is impossible for us to determine even a definite _probability_ as to the existence (much less the nature) of anything which we may suppose the unknowable to contain. we may, of course, perceive that such and such a supposition is more _conceivable_ than such and such; but, as already indicated, the fact does not show that the one is in itself more definitely _probable_ than the other, unless it has been previously shown, either that the capacity of our conceptions is a _fully adequate measure_ of the possible, or that the proportion between such capacity and the extent of the possible is a proportion that can be _determined_. in either of these cases, the conceivable would be a fair measure of the possible: in the former case, an exact equivalent (_e.g._, in any instance of contradictory propositions, the most conceivable would _certainly_ be true); in the latter case, a measure any degree less than an exact equivalent--the degree depending upon the _then_ ascertainable disparity between the extent of the possible and the extent of the conceivable. now the unknowable (including of course the inconceivable existent) is a species of the possible, and in its name carries the declaration that the disparity between its extent and the extent of the conceivable (_i.e._, the other species of the possible) is a disparity that cannot be determined. we are hence driven to the conclusion that the most apparently probable of all propositions, if predicated of anything within the unknowable, may not in reality be a whit more so than is the most apparently improbable proposition which it is possible to make; for if it is admitted (as of course it must be) that we are necessarily precluded from comparing the extent of the conceivable with that of the unknowable, then it necessarily follows that in no case whatever are we competent to judge how far an _apparent_ probability relating to the latter province is an _actual_ probability. in other words, did we know the proportion subsisting between the conceivable and the unknowable in respect of relative extent and character, and so of inherent probabilities, we should then be able to estimate the actual value of any apparent probability relating to the latter province; but, as it is, our ability to make this estimate varies inversely as our inability to estimate our ignorance in this particular. and as our ignorance in this particular is total--_i.e._, since we cannot even approximately determine the proportion that subsists between the conceivable and the unknowable,--the result is that our ability to make the required estimate in any given case is absolutely _nil_. § . i have purposely rendered this presentation in terms of the highest abstraction, partly to avoid the possibility of any one, whatever his theory of things may be, finding anything at which to object, and partly in order that my meaning may be understood to include all things which are beyond the range of possible knowledge. most of all, therefore, must this presentation (if it contains anything of truth) apply to the question regarding the existence of deity; for the _ens realissimum_ must of all things be furthest removed from the range of possible knowledge. hence, if this presentation contains anything of truth--and of its rigidly accurate truth i think there can be no question--the assertion that the self-existing substance is a personal and intelligent being, and the assertion that this substance is an impersonal and non-intelligent being, are alike assertions wholly destitute of any assignable degree of logical probability, i say _assignable_ degree of logical probability, because that _some_ degree of such probability may exist i do not undertake to deny. all i assert is, that if we are here able to institute any such probability at all, we are unable logically to assign to it any determinate degree of value. or, in other words, although we may establish some probability in a sense relative to ourselves, we are unable to know how far this probability is a probability in an absolute sense. or again, the case is not as though we were altogether unacquainted with the possible. experience undoubtedly affords us some information regarding this, although, comparatively speaking, we are unable to know how much. consequently, we must suppose that, in any given case, it is more likely that the conceivable should be possible than that the inconceivable should be so, and that the conceivably probable should exist than that the conceivably improbable should do so: in neither case, however, can we know _what degree_ of such likelihood is present. § . from the foregoing considerations, then, it would appear that the only attitude which in strict logic it is admissible to adopt towards the question concerning the being of a god is that of "suspended judgment." formally speaking, it is alike illegitimate to affirm or to deny intelligence as an attribute of the ultimate. and here i would desire it to be observed, that this is the attitude which the majority of scientifically-trained philosophers actually have adopted with regard to this matter. i am not aware, however, that any one has yet endeavoured to formulate the justification of this attitude; and as i think there can be no doubt that the above presentation contains in a logical shape the whole of such justification, i cannot but think that some important ends will have been secured by it. for we are here in possession, not merely of a vague and general impression that the ultimate is super-scientific, and so beyond the range of legitimate prediction; but we are also in possession of a logical formula whereby at once to vindicate the rationality of our opinion, and to measure the precise degree of its technical value. * * * * * chapter vi. the argument from metaphysical teleology. § . let us now proceed to examine the effect of the formal considerations which have been adduced in the last chapter on the scientific considerations which were dealt with in the previous chapters. in these previous chapters the proposition was clearly established that, just as certainly as the fundamental data of science are true, so certainly is it true that the theory of theism in any shape is, scientifically considered, superfluous; for these chapters have clearly shown that, if there is a god, his existence, considered as a cause of things, is as certainly unnecessary as it is certainly true that force is persistent and that matter is indestructible. but after this proposition had been carefully justified, it remained to show that the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge compelled us to carry our discussion into a region of yet higher abstraction. for although we observed that the essential qualities of matter and of force are the most ultimate data of human knowledge, and although, by showing how far the question of theism depended on these data, we carried the discussion of that question to the utmost possible limits of scientific thought, it still devolved on us to contemplate the fact that even these the most ultimate data of science are only known to be of relative significance. and the bearing of this fact to the question of theism was seen to be most important. for, without waiting to recapitulate the substance of a chapter so recently concluded, it will be remembered that its effect was to establish this position beyond all controversy--viz., that when ideas which have been formed by our experience within the region of phenomenal actuality are projected into the region of ontological possibility, they become utterly worthless; seeing that we can never have any means whereby to test the actual value of whatever transcendental probabilities they may appear to establish. therefore it is that even the most ultimate of relative truths with which, as we have seen, the question of theism is so vitally associated, is almost without meaning when contemplated in an absolute sense. what, then, is the effect of these metaphysical considerations on the position of theism as we have seen it to be left by the highest generalisations of physical science? let us contemplate this question with the care which it deserves. in the first place, it is evident that the effect of these purely formal considerations is to render all reasonings on the subject of theism equally illegitimate, unless it is constantly borne in mind that such reasonings can only be of relative signification. thus, as a matter of pure logic, these considerations are destructive of all assignable validity of any such reasoning whatsoever. still, even a strictly relative probability is, in some undefinable degree, of more value than no probability at all, as we have seen these same formal considerations to show (see § ); and, moreover, even were this not so, the human mind will never rest until it attains to the furthest probability which to its powers is accessible. therefore, if we do not forget the merely relative nature of the considerations which are about to be adduced, by adducing them we may at the same time satisfy our own minds and abstain from violating the conditions of sound logic. the shape, then, to which the subject has now been reduced is simply this:--seeing that the theory of evolution in its largest sense has shown the theory of theism to be superfluous in a scientific sense, does it not follow that the theory of theism is thus shown to be superfluous in any sense? for it would seem from the discussion, so far as it has hitherto gone, that the only rational basis on which the theory of theism can rest is a basis of teleology; and if, as has been clearly shown, the theory of evolution, by deducing the genesis of natural law from the primary data of science, irrevocably destroys this basis, does it not follow that the theory of evolution has likewise destroyed the theory which rested on that basis? now i conclude, as stated at the close of chapter iv., that the question here put must certainly be answered in the affirmative, so far as its scientific aspect is concerned. but when we consider the question in its purely logical aspect, as we have done in chapter v., the case is otherwise. for although, so far as the utmost reach of scientific vision enables us to see, we can discern no evidence of deity, it does not therefore follow that beyond the range of such vision deity does not exist. science indeed has proved that if there is a divine mind in nature, and if by the hypothesis such a mind exerts any causative influence on the phenomena of nature, such influence is exerted beyond the sphere of experience. and this achievement of science, be it never forgotten, is an achievement of prodigious importance, effectually destroying, as it does, all vestiges of a scientific teleology. but be it now carefully observed, although all vestiges of a _scientific_ teleology are thus completely and permanently ruined, the formal considerations adduced in the last chapter supply the conditions for constructing what may be termed a _metaphysical_ teleology. i use these terms advisedly, because i think they will serve to bring out with great clearness the condition to which our analysis of the teleological argument has now been reduced. § . in the first place, let it be understood that i employ the terms "scientific" and "metaphysical" in the convenient sense in which they are employed by mr. lewes, viz., as respectively designating a theory that is verifiable and a theory that is not. consequently, by the term "scientific teleology" i mean to denote a form of teleology which admits either of being proved or disproved, while by the term "metaphysical teleology" i mean to denote a form of teleology which does not admit either of being proved or of being disproved. now, with these significations clearly understood, it will be seen that the forms of teleology which we have hitherto considered belong entirely to the scientific class. that the paleyerian form of the argument did so is manifest, first because this argument itself treats the problem of theism as a problem that is susceptible of scientific demonstration, and next because we have seen that the advance of science has proved this argument susceptible of scientific refutation. in other words, from the supposed axiom, "there cannot be apparent design without a designer," adaptations in nature become logically available as purely scientific evidence of an intelligent cause; and that paley himself regarded them exclusively in this light is manifest, both from his own "statement of the argument," and from the character of the evidence by which he seeks to establish the argument when stated--witness the typical passage before quoted (§ ). on the other hand, we have clearly seen that this paleyerian system of natural theology has been effectually demolished by the scientific theory of natural selection--the fundamental axiom of the former having been shown by the latter to be scientifically untrue. hence the term "scientific teleology" is without question applicable to the paleyerian system. nor is the case essentially different with the more refined form of the teleological argument which we have had to consider--the argument, namely, from general laws. for here, likewise, we have clearly seen that the inference from the ubiquitous operation of general laws to the existence of an omniscient law-maker is quite as illegitimate as is the inference from apparent design to the existence of a supreme designer. in other words, science, by establishing the doctrine of the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter, has effectually disproved the hypothesis that the presence of law in nature is of itself sufficient to prove the existence of an intelligent law-giver. thus it is that scientific teleology in any form is now and for ever obsolete. but not so with what i have termed metaphysical teleology. for as we have seen that the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge precludes us from asserting, or even from inferring, that beyond the region of the knowable mind does not exist, it remains logically possible to institute a metaphysical hypothesis that beyond this region of the knowable mind does exist. there being a necessary absence of any positive information whereby to refute this metaphysical hypothesis, any one who chooses to adopt it is fully justified in doing so, provided only he remembers that the purely metaphysical quality whereby the hypothesis is ensured against disproof, likewise, and in the same degree, precludes it from the possibility of proof. he must remember that it is no longer open to him to point to any particular set of general laws and to assert, these proclaim intelligence as their cause; for we have repeatedly seen that the known states of matter and force themselves afford sufficient explanation of the facts to which he points. and he must remember that the only reason why his hypothesis does not conflict with any of the truths known to science, is because he has been careful to rest that hypothesis upon a basis of purely formal considerations, which lie beyond even the most fundamental truths of which science is cognisant. thus, for example, he may present his metaphysical theory of theism in some such terms as these:--'fully conceding what reason shows must be conceded, and there still remains this possible supposition--viz., that there is a presiding mind in nature, which exerts its causative influence beyond the sphere of experience, thus rendering it impossible for us to obtain scientific evidence of its action. for such a mind, exerting such an influence beyond experience, may direct affairs within experience by methods conceivable or inconceivable to us--producing, possibly, innumerable and highly varied results, which in turn may produce their effects within experience, their introduction being then, of course, in the ordinary way of natural law. for instance, there can be no question that by the intelligent creation or dissipation of energy, all the phenomena of cosmic evolution might have been directed, and, for aught that science can show to the contrary, thus only rendered possible. hence there is at least one nameable way in which, even in accordance with observed facts, a supreme mind could be competent to direct the phenomena of observable nature. but we are not necessarily restricted to the limits of the nameable in this matter, so that it is of no argumentative importance whether or not this suggested method is the method which the supposed mind actually adopts, seeing that there may still be other possible methods, which, nevertheless, we are unable to suggest.' doubtless the hypothesis of theism, as thus presented, will be deemed by many persons but of very slender probability. i am not, however, concerned with whatever character of probability it may be supposed to exhibit. i am merely engaged in carefully presenting the only hypothesis which can be presented, if the theory as to an intelligent author of nature is any longer to be maintained on grounds of a rational teleology. no doubt, scientifically considered, the hypothesis in question is purely gratuitous; for, so far as the light of science can penetrate, there is no need of any such hypothesis at all. thus it may well seem, at first sight, that no hypothesis could well have less to recommend it; and, so far as the presentation has yet gone, it is therefore fully legitimate for an atheist to reply:--'all that this so-called metaphysical theory amounts to is a wholly gratuitous assumption. no doubt it is always difficult, and usually impossible, logically or unequivocally to prove a negative. if my adversary chose to imagine that nature is presided over by a demon with horns and hoofs, or by a dragon with claws and tail, i should be as unable to disprove this his supposed theory as i am now unable to disprove his actual theory. but in all cases reasonable men ought to be guided in their beliefs by such positive evidence as is available; and if, as in the present case, the alternative belief is wholly gratuitous--adopted not only without any evidence, but against all that great body of evidence which the sum-total of science supplies--surely we ought not to hesitate for one moment in the choice of our creed?' now all this is quite sound in principle, provided only that the metaphysical theory of theism _is_ wholly gratuitous, in the sense of being utterly destitute of evidential support. that it is destitute of all _scientific_ support, we have already and repeatedly seen; but the question remains as to whether it is similarly destitute of _metaphysical_ support. § . to this question, then, let us next address ourselves. from the theistic pleading which we have just heard, it is abundantly manifest that the formal conditions of a metaphysical teleology are present: the question now before us is as to whether or not any actual evidence exists in favour of such a theory. in order to discuss this question, let us begin by allowing the theist to continue his pleading. 'you have shown me,' he may say, 'that a scientific or demonstrable system of teleology is no longer possible, and, therefore, as i have already conceded, i must take my stand on a metaphysical or non-demonstrable system. but i reflect that the latter term is a loose one, seeing that it embraces all possible degrees of evidence short of actual proof. the question, therefore, i conceive to be, what amount of evidence is there in favour of this metaphysical system of teleology? and this question i answer by the following considerations:--as general laws separately have all been shown to be the necessary outcome of the primary data of science, it certainly follows that general laws collectively must be the same--_i.e._, that the whole system of general laws must be, so far as the lights of our science can penetrate, the necessary outcome of the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter. but you have also dearly shown me that these lights are of the feeblest conceivable character when they are brought to illuminate the final mystery of things. i therefore feel at liberty to assert, that if there is any one principle to be observed in the collective operation of general laws which cannot conceivably be explained by any cause other than that of intelligent guidance, i am still free to fall back on such a principle and to maintain--although the collective operation of general laws follows as a necessary consequence from the primary data of science, this one principle which pervades their united action, and which cannot be conceivably explained by any hypothesis other than that of intelligent guidance, is a principle which still remains to be accounted for; and as it cannot conceivably be accounted for on grounds of physical science, i may legitimately account for it on grounds of metaphysical teleology. now i cannot open my eyes without perceiving such a principle everywhere characterising the collective operation of general laws. universally i behold in nature, order, beauty, harmony,--that is, a perfect _correlation_ among general laws. but this ubiquitous correlation among general laws, considered as the cause of cosmic harmony, itself requires some explanatory cause such as the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter cannot conceivably be made to supply. for unless we postulate some one integrating cause, the greater the number of general laws in nature, the less likelihood is there of such laws being so correlated as to produce harmony by their combined action. and forasmuch as the only cause that i am able to imagine as competent to produce such effects is that of intelligent guidance, i accept the metaphysical hypothesis that beyond the sphere of the knowable there exists an unknown god.[ ] 'if it is retorted that the above argument involves an absurd contradiction, in that while it sets out with an explicit avowal of the fact that the collective operation of general laws follows as a necessary consequence from the primary data of physical science, it nevertheless afterwards proceeds to explain an effect of such collective operation by a metaphysical hypothesis; i answer that it was expressly for the purpose of eliciting this retort that i threw my argument into the above form. for the position which i wish to establish is this, that fully accepting the logical cogency of the reasoning whereby the action of every law is deduced from the primary data of science, i wish to show that when this train of reasoning is followed to its ultimate term, it leads us into the presence of a fact for which it is inadequate to account. if, then, my contention be granted--viz., that to human faculties it is not conceivable how, in the absence of a directing intelligence, general laws could be so correlated as to produce universal harmony--then i have brought the matter to this issue:--notwithstanding the scientific train of argument being complete in itself, it still leaves us in the presence of a fact which it cannot conceivably explain; and it is this unexplained residuum--this total product of the operation of general laws--that i appeal to as the logical justification for a system of metaphysical teleology--a system which offers the only conceivable explanation of this stupendous fact. 'and here i may further observe, that the scientific train of reasoning is of the kind which embodies what mr. herbert spencer calls "symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate order."[ ] that is to say, we can see how such simple laws as that action and reaction are equal and opposite may have been self-evolved, and from this fact we go on generalising and generalising, until we land ourselves in wholly symbolic and--a paradox is here legitimate--inconceivable conceptions. now the farther we travel into this region of unrealisable ideas, the less trustworthy is the report that we are able to bring back. the method is in a sense scientific; but when even scientific method is projected into a region of really super-scientific possibility, it ceases to have that character of undoubted certainty which it enjoys when dealing with verifiable subjects of inquiry. the demonstrations are formal, but they are not real. 'therefore, looking to this necessarily suspicious character of the scientific train of reasoning, and then observing that, even if accepted, it leaves the fact of cosmic harmony unexplained, i maintain, that whatever probability the phenomena of nature may in former times have been thought to establish in favour of the theory as to an intelligent author of nature, that probability has been in no wise annihilated--nor apparently can it ever be annihilated--by the advance of science. and not only so, but i question whether this probability has been even seriously impaired by such advance, seeing that although this advance has revealed a speculative _raison d'être_ of the mechanical precision of nature, it has at the same time shown the baffling complexity of nature; and therefore, in view of what has just been said, leaves the balance of probability concerning the existence of a god very much where it always was. for stay awhile to contemplate this astounding complexity of harmonious nature! think of how much we already know of its innumerable laws and processes, and then think that this knowledge only serves to reveal, in a glimmering way, the huge immensity of the unknown. try to picture the meshwork of contending rhythms which must have been before organic nature was built up, and then let us ask, is it conceivable, is it credible, that all this can have been the work of blind fate? must we not feel that had there not been intelligent agency at work somewhere, other and less terrifically intricate results would have ensued? and if we further try to symbolise in thought the unimaginable complexity of the material and dynamical changes in virtue of which that thought itself exists,--if we then extend our symbols to represent all the history of all the orderly changes which must have taken place to evolve human intelligence into what it is,--and if we still further extend our symbols to try if it be possible, even in the language of symbols, to express the number and the subtlety of those natural laws which now preside over the human will;--in the face of so vast an assumption as that all this has been self-evolved, i am content still to rest in the faith of my forefathers.' § . now i think it must be admitted that we have here a valid argument. that is to say, the considerations which we have just adduced must, i think, in fairness be allowed to have established this position:--that the system of metaphysical teleology for which we have supposed a candid theist to plead, is something more than a purely gratuitous system--that it does not belong to the same category of baseless imaginings as that to which the atheist at first sight, and in view of the scientific deductions alone, might be inclined to assign it. for we have seen that our supposed theist, while fully admitting the formal cogency of the scientific train of reasoning, is nevertheless able to point to a fact which, in his opinion, lies without that train of reasoning. for he declares that it is beyond his powers of conception to regard the complex harmony of nature otherwise than as a product of some one integrating cause; and that the only cause of which he is able to conceive as adequate to produce such an effect is that of a conscious intelligence. pointing, therefore, to this complex harmony of nature as to a fact which cannot to his mind be conceivably explained by any deductions from physical science, he feels that he is justified in explaining this fact by the aid of a metaphysical hypothesis. and in so doing he is in my opinion perfectly justified, at any rate to this extent--that his antagonist cannot fairly dispose of this metaphysical hypothesis as a purely gratuitous hypothesis. how far it is a probable hypothesis is another question, and to this question we shall now address ourselves. § . if it is true that the deductions from physical science cannot be conceived to explain some among the observed facts of nature, and if it is true that these particular facts admit of being conceivably explained by the metaphysical hypothesis in question, then, beyond all controversy, this metaphysical hypothesis must be provisionally accepted. let us then carefully examine the premises which are thus adduced to justify acceptance of this hypothesis as their conclusion. in the first place, it is not--cannot--be denied, even by a theist, that the deductions from physical science _do_ embrace the fact of cosmic harmony in their explanation, seeing that, as they explain the operation of general laws collectively, they must be regarded as also explaining every effect of such operation. and this, as we have seen, is a consideration to which our imaginary theist was not blind. how then did he meet it? he met it by the considerations-- st. that the scientific train of reasoning evolved this conclusion only by employing, in a wholly unrestricted manner, "symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate order;" and, d. that when the conclusion thus illegitimately evolved was directly confronted with the fact of cosmic harmony which it professes to explain, he found it to be beyond the powers of human thought to conceive of such an effect as due to such a cause. now, as already observed, i consider these strictures on the scientific train of reasoning to be thoroughly valid. there can be no question that the highly symbolic character of the conceptions which that train of reasoning is compelled to adopt, is a source of serious weakness to the conclusions which it ultimately evolves; while there can, i think, be equally little doubt that there does not live a human being who would venture honestly to affirm, that he can really conceive the fact of cosmic harmony as exclusively due to the causes which the scientific train of reasoning assigns. but freely conceding this much, and an atheist may reply, that although the objections of his antagonist against this symbolic method of reasoning are undoubtedly valid, yet, from the nature of the case, this is the only method of scientific reasoning which is available. if, therefore, he expresses his obligations to his antagonist for pointing out a source of weakness in this method of reasoning--a source of weakness, be it observed, which renders it impossible for him to estimate the actual, as distinguished from the apparent, probability of the conclusion attained--this is all that he can be expected to do: he cannot be expected to abandon the only scientific method of reasoning available, in favour of a metaphysical method which only escapes the charge of symbolism by leaping with a single bound from a known cause (human intelligence) to the inference of an unknowable cause (divine intelligence). for the atheist may well point out that, however objectionable his scientific method of reasoning may be on account of the symbolism which it involves, it must at any rate be preferable to the metaphysical method, in that its symbols throughout refer to known causes.[ ] with regard, then, to this stricture on the scientific method of reasoning, i conclude that although the caveat which it contains should never be lost sight of by atheists, it is not of sufficient cogency to justify theists in abandoning a scientific in favour of a metaphysical mode of reasoning. how then does it fare with the other stricture, or the consideration that, "when the conclusion thus illegitimately[ ] evolved is confronted with the fact of cosmic harmony which it professes to explain, we find it to be beyond the powers of human thought to conceive of such an effect as due to such a cause"? the atheist may answer, in the first place, that a great deal here turns on the precise meaning which we assign to the word "conceive." for we have just seen that, by employing "symbolic conceptions," we _are_ able to frame what we may term a _formal_ conception of universal harmony as due to the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter. that is to say, we have seen that such universal harmony as nature presents must be regarded as an effect of the collective operation of general laws; and we have previously arrived at a formal conception of general laws as singly and collectively the product of self-evolution. consequently, the word "conceive," as used in the theistic argument, must be taken to mean our ability to frame what we may term a _material_ conception, or a representation in thought of the whole history of cosmic evolution, which representation shall be in some satisfactory degree intellectually realisable. observing, then, this important difference between an inconceivability which arises from an impossibility of establishing relations in thought between certain _abstract_ or _symbolic_ conceptions, and an inconceivability which arises from a mere failure to realise in imagination the results which must follow among external relations if the symbolically conceivable combinations among them ever took place, an atheist may here argue as follows; and it does not appear that there is any legitimate escape from his reasonings. 'i first consider the undoubted fact that the existence of a supreme mind in nature is, scientifically considered, unnecessary; and, therefore, that the only reason we require to entertain the supposition of any such existence at all is, that the complexity of nature being so great, we are unable adequately to conceive of its self-evolution--notwithstanding our reason tells us plainly that, given a self-existing universe of force and matter, and such self-evolution becomes abstractedly possible. i then reflect that this is a negative and not a positive ground of belief. if the hypothesis of self-evolution is true, we should _à priori_ expect that by the time evolution had advanced sufficiently far to admit of the production of a reasoning intelligence, the complexity of nature must be so great that the nascent reasoning powers would be completely baffled in their attempts to comprehend the various processes going on around them. this seems to be about the state of things which we now experience. still, as reason advances more and more, we may expect, both from general _à priori_ principles and from particular historical analogies, that more and more of the processes of nature will admit of being interpreted by reason, and that in proportion as our ability to _understand_ the frame and the constitution of things progresses, so our ability to _conceive_ of them as all naturally and necessarily evolved will likewise and concurrently progress. thus, for example, how vast a number of the most intricate and delicate correlations in nature have been rendered at once intelligible and conceivably due to non-intelligent causes, by the discovery of a single principle in nature--the principle of natural selection. 'in the adverse argument, conceivability is again made the unconditional test of truth, just as it was in the argument against the possibility of matter thinking. we reject the hypothesis of self-evolution, not because it is the more remote one, but simply because we experience a subjective incapacity adequately to frame the requisite generalisations in thought, or to frame them with as much clearness as we could wish. yet our reason tells us as plainly as it tells us any general truth which is too large to be presented in detail, that there is nothing in the nature of things themselves, as far as we can see, antagonistic to the supposition of their having been self-evolved. only on the ground, therefore, of our own intellectual deficiencies; only because as yet, by the self-evolutionary hypothesis, the inner order does not completely answer to the outer order; only because the number and complexity of subjective relations have not yet been able to rival those of the objective relations producing them; only on this ground do we refuse to assent to the obvious deductions of our reason.[ ] 'and here i may observe, further, that the presumption in favour of atheism which these deductions establish is considerably fortified by certain _à posteriori_ considerations which we cannot afford to overlook. in particular, i reflect that, as a matter of fact, the theistic theory is born of highly suspicious parentage,--that fetichism, or the crudest form of the theory of personal agency in external nature, admits of being easily traced to the laws of a primitive psychology; that the step from this to polytheism is easy; and that the step from this to monotheism is necessary. if it is objected to this view that it does not follow that because some theories of personal agency have proved themselves false, therefore all such theories must be so--i answer, unquestionably not; but the above considerations are not adduced in order to _negative_ the theistic theory: they are merely adduced to show that the human mind has hitherto undoubtedly exhibited an undue and a vicious tendency to interpret the objective processes of nature in terms of its own subjective processes; and as we can see quite well that the current theory of personal agency in nature, whether or not true, is a necessary outcome of intellectual evolution, i think that the fact of so abundant an historical analogy ought to be allowed to lend a certain degree of antecedent suspicion to this theory--although, of course, the suspicion is of a kind which would admit of immediate destruction before any satisfactory positive evidence in favour of the theory.[ ] 'but what is 'the satisfactory positive evidence' that is offered me? nothing, save an alleged subjective incapacity on the part of my opponent adequately to conceive of the fact of cosmic harmony as due to physical causation alone. now i have already commented on the weakness of his position; but as my opponent will doubtless resort to the consideration that inconceivability of an opposite is, after all, the best criterion of truth which at any given stage of intellectual evolution is available, i will now conclude my overthrow by pointing out that, even if we take the argument from teleology in its widest possible sense--the argument, i mean, from the general order and beauty of nature, as well as the gross constituent part of it from design--even taking this argument in its widest sense and upon its own ground (which ground, i presume, it is now sufficiently obvious _can_ only be that of the inconceivability of its negation), i will conclude my examination of this argument by showing that it is quite as inconceivable to predicate cosmic harmony an effect of intelligence, as it is to predicate it an effect of non-intelligence; and therefore that the argument from inconceivability admits of being turned with quite as terrible a force upon theism as it can be made to exert upon atheism. '"in metaphysical controversy, many of the propositions propounded and accepted as quite believable are absolutely inconceivable. there is a perpetual confusing of actual ideas with what are nothing but pseud-ideas. no distinction is made between propositions that contain real thoughts and propositions that are only the forms of thoughts. a thinkable proposition is one of which the _two terms can be brought together in consciousness under the relation said to exist between them_. but very often, when the subject of a proposition has been thought of as something known, and when the predicate of a proposition has been thought of as something known, and when the relation alleged between them has been thought of as a known relation, it is supposed that the proposition itself has been thought. the thinking separately of the elements of a proposition is mistaken for the thinking of them in the combination which the proposition affirms. and hence it continually happens that propositions which cannot be rendered into thought at all are supposed to be not only thought but believed. the proposition that evolution is caused by mind is one of this nature. the two terms are separately intelligible; but they can be regarded in the relation of effect and cause only so long as no attempt is made to put them together in this relation. '"the only thing which any one knows as mind is the series of his own states of consciousness; and if he thinks of any mind other than his own, he can think of it only in terms derived from his own. if i am asked to frame a notion of mind divested of all those structural traits under which alone i am conscious of mind in myself, i cannot do it. i know nothing of thought save as carried on in ideas originally traceable to the effects wrought by objects on me. a mental act is an unintelligible phrase if i am not to regard it as an act in which states of consciousness are severally known as like other states in the series that has gone by, and in which the relations between them are severally known as like past relations in the series. if, then, i have to conceive evolution as caused by an 'originating mind,' i must conceive this mind as having attributes akin to those of the only mind i know, and without which i cannot conceive mind at all. '"i will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting, by asking how the 'originating mind' is to be thought of as having states produced by things objective to it, as discriminating among these states, and classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to another. i will simply ask, what happens if we ascribe to the 'originating mind' the character absolutely essential to the conception of mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? put a series of states of consciousness as cause and the evolving universe as effect, and then endeavour to see the last as flowing from the first. i find it possible to imagine in some dim way a series of states of consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements i see going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the antecedents to such movements. but how if i attempt to think of such a series as antecedent to _all_ actions throughout the universe--to the motions of the multitudinous stars throughout space, to the revolutions of all their planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on their axes, to the infinitely multiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? i cannot think of a single series of states of consciousness as causing even the relatively small groups of actions going on over the earth's surface. i cannot think of it even as antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the grinding actions of all the glaciers; still less can i think of it as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of quadrupeds that roam among them, and the millions of millions of insects that buzz about them. even a single small set of these multitudinous terrestrial changes i cannot conceive as antecedent a single series of states of consciousness--cannot, for instance, think of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant curling over on the shores of england. how, then, is it possible for me to conceive an 'originating mind,' which i must represent to myself as a _single_ series of states of consciousness, working the infinitely multiplied sets of changes _simultaneously_ going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles imagination? '"if, to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going on, 'mind must be conceived as there' 'under the guise of simple dynamics,' then the reply is, that, to be so conceived, mind must be divested of all attributes by which it is distinguished; and that, when thus divested of its distinguishing attributes, the conception disappears--the word mind stands for a blank.... '"clearly, therefore, the proposition that an 'originating mind' is the cause of evolution is a proposition that can be entertained so long only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the alleged relation. that it should be accepted as a matter of _faith_ may be a defensible position, provided good cause is shown why it should be so accepted; but that it should be accepted as a matter of _understanding_--as a statement making the order of the universe comprehensible--is a quite indefensible position."'[ ] § . we have now heard the pleading on both sides of the ultimate issue to which it is possible that the argument from teleology can ever be reduced. it therefore devolves on us very briefly to adjudicate upon the contending opinions. and this it is not difficult to do; for throughout the pleading on both sides i have been careful to exclude all arguments and considerations which are not logically valid. it is therefore impossible for me now to pass any criticisms on the pleading of either side which have not already been passed by the pleading of the other. but nevertheless, in my capacity of an impartial judge, i feel it desirable to conclude this chapter with a few general considerations. in the first place, i think that the theist's antecedent objection to a scientific mode of reasoning on the score of its symbolism, may be regarded as fairly balanced by the atheist's antecedent objection to a metaphysical mode of reasoning on the score of its postulating an unknowable cause. and it must be allowed that the force of this antecedent objection is considerably increased by the reflection that the _kind_ of unknowable cause which is thus postulated is that which the human mind has always shown an overweening tendency to postulate as a cause of natural phenomena. i think, therefore, that neither disputant has the right to regard the _à priori_ standing of his opponent's theory as much more suspicious than that of his own; for it is obvious that neither disputant has the means whereby to estimate the actual value of these antecedent objections. with regard, then, to the _à posteriori_ evidence in favour of the rival theories, i think that the final test of their validity--_i.e._, the inconceivability of their respective negations--fails equally in the case of both theories; for in the case of each theory any proposition which embodies it must itself contain an infinite, _i.e._, an inconceivable--term. thus, whether we speak of an infinite mind as the cause of evolution, or of evolution as due to an infinite duration of physical processes, we are alike open to the charge of employing unthinkable propositions. hence, two unthinkables are presented to our choice; one of which is an eternity of matter and of force,[ ] and the other an infinite mind, so that in this respect again the two theories are tolerably parallel; and therefore, all that can be concluded with rigorous certainty upon the subject is, that neither theory has anything to gain us against the other from an appeal to the test of inconceivability. yet we have seen that this is a test than which none can be more ultimate. what then shall we say is the final outcome of this discussion concerning the rational standing of the teleological argument? the answer, i think, to this question is, that in strict reasoning the teleological argument, in its every shape, is inadequate to form a basis of theism; or, in other words, that the logical cogency of this argument is insufficient to justify a wholly impartial mind in accepting the theory of theism on so insecure a foundation. nevertheless, if the further question were directly put to me, 'after having heard the pleading both for and against the most refined expression of the argument from teleology, with what degree of strictly rational probability do you accredit it?'--i should reply as follows:--'the question which you put i take to be a question which it is wholly impossible to answer, and this for the simple reason that the degree of even rational probability may here legitimately vary with the character of the mind which contemplates it.' this statement, no doubt, sounds paradoxical; but i think it is justified by the following considerations. when we say that one proposition is more conceivable than another, we may mean either of two very different things, and this quite apart from the distinction previously drawn between symbolic conceptions and realisable conceptions. for we may mean that one of the two propositions presents terms which cannot possibly be rendered into thought at all in the relation which the proposition alleges to subsist between them; or we may mean that one of the two propositions presents terms in a relation which is more congruous with the habitual tenor of our thoughts than does the other proposition. thus, as an example of the former usage, we may say, it is more conceivable that two and two should make four than that two and two should make five; and, as an example of the latter usage, we may say, it is more conceivable that a man should be able to walk than that he should be able to fly. now, for the sake of distinction, i shall call the first of these usages the test of _absolute_ inconceivability, and the second the test of _relative_ inconceivability. doubtless, when the word "inconceivability" is used in the sense of relative inconceivability, it is incorrectly used, unless it is qualified in some way; because, if used without qualification, there is danger of its being confused with inconceivability in its absolute sense. nevertheless, if used with some qualifying epithet, it becomes quite unexceptionable. for the process of conception being in all cases the process of establishing relations in thought, we may properly say, it is relatively more conceivable that a man should walk than that a man should fly, since it is _more easy_ to establish, the necessary relations in thought in the case of the former than in the case of the latter proposition. the only difference, then, between what i have called absolute inconceivability and what i have called relative inconceivability consists in this--that while the latter admits of _degrees_, the former does not.[ ] with this distinction clearly understood, i may now proceed to observe that in everyday life we constantly apply the test of relative inconceivability as a test of truth. and in the vast majority of cases this test of relative inconceivability is, for all practical purposes, as valid a test of truth as is the test of absolute conceivability. for as every man is more or less in harmony with his environment, his habits of thought with regard to his environment are for the most part stereotyped correctly; so that the most ready and the most trustworthy gauge of probability that he has is an immediate appeal to consciousness as to whether he _feels_ the probability. thus every man learns for himself to endow his own sense of probability with a certain undefined but massive weight of authority. now it is this test of relative conceivability which all men apply in varying degrees to the question of theism. for if, from education and organised habits of thought, the probability in this matter appears to a man to incline in a certain direction, when this probability is called in question, the whole body of this organised system of thought rises in opposition to the questioning, and being individually conscious of this strong feeling of subjective opposition, the man declares the sceptical propositions to be more inconceivable to him than are the counter-propositions. and in so saying he is, of course, perfectly right. hence i conceive that the acceptance or the rejection of metaphysical teleology as probable will depend entirely upon individual habits of thought. the test of absolute inconceivability making equally for and against the doctrine of theism, disputants are compelled to fall back on the test of relative inconceivability; and as the direction in which the more inconceivable proposition will here seem to lie will be determined by previous habits of thought, it follows that while to a theist metaphysical teleology will appear a probable argument, to an atheist it will appear an improbable one. thus to a theist it will no doubt appear more conceivable that the supreme mind should be such that in some of its attributes it resembles the human mind, while in other of its attributes--among which he will place omnipresence, omnipotence, and directive agency--it transcends the human mind as greatly as the latter "transcends mechanical motion;" and therefore that although it is true, as a matter of logical terminology, that we ought to designate such an entity "not mind" or "blank," still, as a matter of psychology, we may come nearer to the truth by assimilating in thought this entity with the nearest analogies which experience supplies, than by assimilating it in thought with any other entity--such as force or matter--which are felt to be in all likelihood still more remote from it in nature. on the other hand, to an atheist it will no doubt appear more conceivable, because more simple, to accept the dogma of an eternal self-existence of something which we call force and matter, and with this dogma to accept the implication of a necessary self-evolution of cosmic harmony, than to resort to the additional and no less inconceivable supposition of a self-existing agent which must be regarded both as mind and as not-mind at the same time. but in both cases, in whatever degree this test of relative inconceivability of a negative is held by the disputants to be valid in solving the problem of theism, in that degree is each man entitled to his respective estimate of the probability in question. and thus we arrive at the judgment that the rational probability of theism legitimately varies with the character of the mind which contemplates it. for, as the test of absolute inconceivability is equally annihilative in whichever direction it is applied, the test of relative inconceivability is the only one that remains; and as the formal conditions of a metaphysical teleology are undoubtedly present on the one hand, and the formal conditions of a physical explanation of cosmic harmony are no less undoubtedly present on the other hand, it follows that a theist and an atheist have an equal right to employ this test of relative inconceivability. and as there is no more ultimate court of appeal whereby to decide the question than the universe as a whole, each man has here an equal argumentative right to abide by the decision which that court awards _to him individually_--to accept whatever probability the sum-total of phenomena appears to present to his particular understanding. and it is needless to say that experience shows, even among well-informed and accurate reasoners, how large an allowance must thus be made for personal equations. to some men the facts of external nature seem to proclaim a god with clarion voice, while to other men the same facts bring no whisper of such a message. all, therefore, that a logician can here do is to remark, that the individuals in each class--provided they bear in mind the strictly _relative_ character of their belief--have a similar right to be regarded as holding a rational creed: the grounds of belief in this case logically vary with the natural disposition and the subsequent training of different minds.[ ] it only remains to show that disputants on either side are apt to endow this test of relative inconceivability with far more than its real logical worth. being accustomed to apply this test of truth in daily life, and there finding it a trustworthy test, most men are apt to forget that its value as a test must clearly diminish in proportion to the distance from experience at which it is applied. this, indeed, we saw to be the case even with the test of absolute inconceivability (see chapter v.), but much more must it be the case with this test of relative inconceivability. for, without comment, it is manifest that our acquired sense of probability, as distinguished from our innate sense of possibility, with regard to any particular question of a transcendental nature, cannot be at all comparable with its value in the case of ordinary questions, with respect to which our sense of probability is being always rectified by external facts. although, therefore, it is true that both those who reject and those who retain a belief in theism on grounds of relative conceivability are equally entitled to be regarded as displaying a rational attitude of mind, in whatever degree either party considers their belief as of a higher validity than the grounds of psychology from which it takes its rise, in that degree must the members of that party be deemed irrational. in other words, not only must a man be careful not to confuse the test of relative inconceivability with that of absolute conceivability--not to suppose that his sense of probability in this matter is determined by an innate psychological inability to conceive a proposition, when in reality it is only determined by the difficulty of dissociating ideas which have long been habitually associated;--but he must also be careful to remember that the test of relative inconceivability in this matter is only valid as justifying a belief of the most diffident possible kind. and from this the practical deduction is--tolerance. let no man think that he has any argumentative right to expect that the mere subjective habit or tone of his own mind should exert any influence on that of his fellow; but rather let him always remember that the only legitimate weapons of his intellectual warfare are those the _material_ of which is derived from the external world, and only the _form_ of which is due to the forging process of his own mind. and if in battle such weapons seem to be unduly blunted on the hardened armoury of traditional beliefs, or on the no less hardened armoury of confirmed scepticism, let him remember further that he must not too confidently infer that the fault does not lie in the character of his own weapons. to drop the figure, let none of us forget in how much need we all stand of this caution:--knowing how greatly the value of arguments is affected, even to the most impartial among us, by the frame of mind in which we regard them, let all of us be jealously careful not to over-estimate the certainty that our frame or habit of mind is actually superior to that of our neighbour. and, in conclusion, it is surely needless to insist on the yet greater need there is for most of us to bear in mind this further caution:--knowing with what great subjective opposition arguments are met when they conflict with our established modes of thought, let us all be jealously careful to guard the sanctuary of our judgment from the polluting tyranny of habit. * * * * * chapter vii. general summary and conclusions. § . our analysis is now at an end, and a very few words will here suffice to convey an epitomised recollection of the numerous facts and conclusions which we have found it necessary to contemplate. we first disposed of the conspicuously absurd supposition that the origin of things, or the mystery of existence, admits of being explained by the theory of theism in any further degree than by the theory of atheism. next it was shown that the argument "our heart requires a god" is invalid, seeing that such a subjective necessity, even if made out, could not be sufficient to prove--or even to render probable--an objective existence. and with regard to the further argument that the fact of our theistic aspirations point to god as to their explanatory cause, it became necessary to observe that the argument could only be admissible after the possibility of the operation of natural causes had been excluded. similarly the argument from the supposed intuitive necessity of individual thought was found to be untenable, first, because, even if the supposed necessity were a real one, it would only possess an individual applicability; and second, that, as a matter of fact, it is extremely improbable that the supposed necessity is a real necessity even for the individual who asserts it, while it is absolutely certain that it is not such to the vast majority of the race. the argument from the general consent of mankind, being so obviously fallacious both as to facts and principles, was passed over without comment; while the argument from a first cause was found to involve a logical suicide. lastly, the argument that, as human volition is a cause in nature, therefore all causation is probably volitional in character, was shown to consist in a stretch of inference so outrageous that the argument had to be pronounced worthless. proceeding next to examine the less superficial arguments in favour of theism, it was first shown that the syllogism, all known minds are caused by an unknown mind; our mind is a known mind; therefore our mind is caused by an unknown mind,--is a syllogism that is inadmissible for two reasons. in the first place, "it does not account for mind (in the abstract) to refer it to a prior mind for its origin;" and therefore, although the hypothesis, if admitted, would be _an_ explanation of _known_ mind, it is useless as an argument for the existence of the unknown mind, the assumption of which forms the basis of that explanation. again, in the next place, if it be said that mind is so far an entity _sui generis_ that it must be either self-existing or caused by another mind, there is no assignable warrant for the assertion. and this is the second objection to the above syllogism; for anything within the whole range of the possible may, for aught that we can tell, be competent to produce a self-conscious intelligence. thus an objector to the above syllogism need not hold any theory of things at all; but even as opposed to the definite theory of materialism, the above syllogism has not so valid an argumentative basis to stand upon. we know that what we call matter and force are to all appearance eternal, while we have no corresponding evidence of a "mind that is even apparently eternal." further, within experience mind is invariably associated with highly differentiated collocations of matter and distributions of force, and many facts go to prove, and none to negative, the conclusion that the grade of intelligence invariably depends upon, or at least is associated with, a corresponding grade of cerebral development. there is thus both a qualitative and a quantitative relation between intelligence and cerebral organisation. and if it is said that matter and motion cannot produce consciousness because it is inconceivable that they should, we have seen at some length that this is no conclusive consideration as applied to a subject of a confessedly transcendental nature, and that in the present case it is particularly inconclusive, because, as it is speculatively certain that the substance of mind must be unknowable, it seems _à priori_ probable that, whatever is the cause of the unknowable reality, this cause should be more difficult to render into thought in that relation than would some other hypothetical substance which is imagined as more akin to mind. and if it is said that the _more_ conceivable cause is the _more_ probable cause, we have seen that it is in this case impossible to estimate the validity of the remark. lastly, the statement that the cause must contain actually all that its effects can contain, was seen to be inadmissible in logic and contradicted by everyday experience; while the argument from the supposed freedom of the will and the existence of the moral sense was negatived both deductively by the theory of evolution, and inductively by the doctrine of utilitarianism. on the whole, then, with regard to the argument from the existence of the human mind, we were compelled to decide that it is destitute of any assignable weight, there being nothing more to lead to the conclusion that our mind has been caused by another mind, than to the conclusion that it has been caused by anything else whatsoever. with regard to the argument from design, it was observed that mill's presentation of it is merely a resuscitation of the argument as presented by paley, bell, and chalmers. and indeed we saw that the first-named writer treated this whole subject with a feebleness and inaccuracy very surprising in him; for while he has failed to assign anything like due weight to the inductive evidence of organic evolution, he did not hesitate to rush into a supernatural explanation of biological phenomena. moreover, he has failed signally in his _analysis_ of the design argument, seeing that, in common with all previous writers, he failed to observe that it is utterly impossible for us to know the relations in which the supposed designer stands to the designed,--much less to argue from the fact that the supreme mind, even supposing it to exist, caused the observable products by any particular intellectual _process_. in other words, all advocates of the design argument have failed to perceive that, even if we grant nature to be due to a creating mind, still we have no shadow of a right to conclude that this mind can only have exerted its creative power by means of such and such cogitative operations. how absurd, therefore, must it be to raise the supposed evidence of such cogitative operations into evidences of the existence of a creating mind! if a theist retorts that it is, after all, of very little importance whether or not we are able to divine the _methods_ of creation, so long as the _facts_ are there to attest that, _in some way or other_, the observable phenomena of nature must be due to intelligence of some kind as their ultimate cause, then i am the first to endorse this remark. it has always appeared to me one of the most unaccountable things in the history of speculation that so many competent writers can have insisted upon _design_ as an argument for theism, when they must all have known perfectly well that they have no means of ascertaining the subjective psychology of that supreme mind whose existence the argument is adduced to demonstrate. the truth is, that the argument from teleology must, and can only, rest upon the observable _facts_ of nature, without reference to the intellectual _processes_ by which these facts may be supposed to have been accomplished. but, looking to the "present state of our knowledge," this is merely to change the teleological argument from its gross paleyerian form, into the argument from the ubiquitous operation of general laws. and we saw that this transformation is now a rational necessity. how far the great principle of natural selection may have been instrumental in the evolution of organic forms, is not here, as mill erroneously imagined, the question; the question is simply as to whether we are to accept the theory of special creation or the theory of organic evolution. and forasmuch as no competent judge at the present time can hesitate for one moment in answering this question, the argument from a proximate teleology must be regarded as no longer having any rational existence. how then does it fare with the last of the arguments--the argument from an ultimate teleology? doubtless at first sight this argument seems a very powerful one, inasmuch as it is a generic argument, which embraces not only biological phenomena, but all the phenomena of the universe. but nevertheless we are constrained to acknowledge that its apparent power dwindles to nothing in view of the indisputable fact that, if force and matter have been eternal, all and every natural law must have resulted by way of necessary consequence. it will be remembered that i dwelt at considerable length and with much earnestness upon this truth, not only because of its enormous importance in its bearing upon our subject, but also because no one has hitherto considered it in that relation. the next step, however, was to mitigate the severity of the conclusion that was liable to be formed upon the utter and hopeless collapse of all the possible arguments in favour of theism. having fully demonstrated that there is no shadow of a positive argument in support of the theistic theory, there arose the danger that some persons might erroneously conclude that for this reason the theistic theory must be untrue. it therefore became necessary to point out, that although, as far as we can see, nature does not require an intelligent cause to account for any of her phenomena, yet it is possible that, if we could see farther, we should see that nature could not be what she is unless she had owed her existence to an intelligent cause. or, in other words, the probability there is that an intelligent cause is unnecessary to explain any of the phenomena of nature, is only equal to the probability there is that the doctrine of the persistence of force is everywhere and eternally true. as a final step in our analysis, therefore, we altogether quitted the region of experience, and ignoring even the very foundations of science, and so all the most certain of relative truths, we carried the discussion into the transcendental region of purely formal considerations. and here we laid down the canon, "that the value of any probability, in its last analysis, is determined by the number, the importance, and the definiteness of the relations known, as compared with those of the relations unknown;" and, consequently, that in cases where the unknown relations are more numerous, more important, or more indefinite than are the known relations, the value of our inference varies inversely as the difference in these respects between the relations compared. from which canon it followed, that as the problem of theism is the most ultimate of all problems, and so contains in its unknown relations all that is to man unknown and unknowable, these relations must be pronounced the most indefinite of all relations that it is possible for man to contemplate; and, consequently, that although we have here the entire range of experience from which to argue, we are unable to estimate the real value of any argument whatsoever. the unknown relations in our attempted induction being wholly indefinite, both in respect of their number and importance, as compared with the known relations, it is impossible for us to determine any definite probability either for or against the being of a god. therefore, although it is true that, so far as human science can penetrate or human thought infer, we can perceive no evidence of god, yet we have no right on this account to conclude that there is no god. the probability, therefore, that nature is devoid of deity, while it is of the strongest kind if regarded scientifically--amounting, in fact, to a scientific demonstration,--is nevertheless wholly worthless if regarded logically. notwithstanding it is as true as is the fundamental basis of all science and of all experience that, if there is a god, his existence, considered as a cause of the universe, is superfluous, it may nevertheless be true that, if there had never been a god, the universe could never have existed. hence these formal considerations proved conclusively that, no matter how great the probability of atheism might appear to be in a relative sense, we have no means of estimating such probability in an absolute sense. from which position there emerged the possibility of another argument in favour of theism--or rather let us say, of a reappearance of the teleological argument in another form. for it may be said, seeing that these formal considerations exclude legitimate reasoning either for or against deity in an absolute sense, while they do not exclude such reasoning in a relative sense, if there yet remain any theistic deductions which may properly be drawn from experience, these may now be adduced to balance the atheistic deductions from the persistence of force. for although the latter deductions have clearly shown the existence of deity to be superfluous in a scientific sense, the formal considerations in question have no less clearly opened up beyond the sphere of science a possible _locus_ for the existence of deity; so that if there are any facts supplied by experience for which the atheistic deductions appear insufficient to account, we are still free to account for them in a relative sense by the hypothesis of theism. and, it may be urged, we do find such an unexplained residuum in the correlation of general laws in the production of cosmic harmony. it signifies nothing, the argument may run, that we are unable to conceive the methods whereby the supposed mind operates in producing cosmic harmony; nor does it signify that its operation must now be relegated to a super-scientific province. what does signify is that, taking a general view of nature, we find it impossible to conceive of the extent and variety of her harmonious processes as other than products of intelligent causation. now this sublimated form of the teleological argument, it will be remembered, i denoted a metaphysical teleology, in order sharply to distinguish it from all previous forms of that argument, which, in contradistinction i denoted scientific teleologies. and the distinction, it will be remembered, consisted in this--that while all previous forms of teleology, by resting on a basis which was not beyond the possible reach of science, laid themselves open to the possibility of scientific refutation, the metaphysical system of teleology, by resting on a basis which is clearly beyond the possible reach of science, can never be susceptible of scientific refutation. and that this metaphysical system of teleology does rest on such a basis is indisputable; for while it accepts the most ultimate truths of which science can ever be cognisant--viz., the persistence of force and the consequently necessary genesis of natural law,--it nevertheless maintains that the necessity of regarding mind as the ultimate cause of things is not on this account removed; and, therefore, that if science now requires the operation of a supreme mind to be posited in a super-scientific sphere, then in a super-scientific sphere it ought to be posited. no doubt this hypothesis at first sight seems gratuitous, seeing that, so far as science can penetrate, there is no need of any such hypothesis at all--cosmic harmony resulting as a physically necessary consequence from the combined action of natural laws, which in turn result as a physically necessary consequence of the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter. but although it is thus indisputably true that metaphysical teleology is wholly gratuitous if considered scientifically, it may not be true that it is wholly gratuitous if considered psychologically. in other words, if it is more conceivable that mind should be the ultimate cause of cosmic harmony than that the persistence of force should be so, then it is not irrational to accept the more conceivable hypothesis in preference to the less conceivable one, provided that the choice is made with the diffidence which is required by the considerations adduced in chapter v. i conclude, therefore, that the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology, although in a physical sense gratuitous, may be in a psychological sense legitimate. but as against the fundamental position on which alone this argument can rest--viz., the position that the fundamental postulate of atheism is more _inconceivable_ than is the fundamental postulate of theism--we have seen two important objections to lie. for, in the first place, the sense in which the word "inconceivable" is here used is that of the impossibility of framing _realisable_ relations in the thought; not that of the impossibility of framing _abstract_ relations in thought. in the same sense, though in a lower degree, it is true that the complexity of the human organisation and its functions is inconceivable; but in this sense the word "inconceivable" has much less weight in an argument than it has in its true sense. and, without waiting again to dispute (as we did in the case of the speculative standing of materialism) how far even the genuine test of inconceivability ought to be allowed to make against an inference which there is a body of scientific evidence to substantiate, we went on to the second objection against this fundamental position of metaphysical teleology. this objection, it will be remembered, was, that it is as impossible to conceive of cosmic harmony as an effect of mind, as it is to conceive of it as an effect of mindless evolution. the argument from inconceivability, therefore, admits of being turned with quite as terrible an effect on theism, as it can possibly be made to exert on atheism. hence this more refined form of teleology which we are considering, and which we saw to be the last of the possible arguments in favour of theism, is met on its own ground by a very crushing opposition: by its metaphysical character it has escaped the opposition of physical science, only to encounter a new opposition in the region of pure psychology to which it fled. as a conclusion to our whole inquiry, therefore, it devolved on us to determine the relative magnitudes of these opposing forces. and in doing this we first observed that, if the supporters of metaphysical teleology objected _à priori_ to the method whereby the genesis of natural law was deduced from the datum of the persistence of force, in that this method involved an unrestricted use of illegitimate symbolic conceptions; then it is no less open to an atheist to object _à priori_ to the method whereby a directing mind was inferred from the datum of cosmic harmony, in that this method involved the population of an unknowable cause,--and this of a character which the whole history of human thought has proved the human mind to exhibit an overweening tendency to postulate as the cause of natural phenomena. on these grounds, therefore, i concluded that, so far as their respective standing _à priori_ is concerned, both theories may be regarded as about equally suspicious. and similar with regard to their standing _à posteriori_; for as both theories require to embody at least one infinite term, they must each alike be pronounced absolutely inconceivable. but, finally, if the question were put to me which of the two theories i regarded as the more rational, i observed that this is a question which no one man can answer for another. for as the test of absolute inconceivability is equally destructive of both theories, if a man wishes to choose between them, his choice can only be determined by what i have designated relative inconceivability--_i.e._, in accordance with the verdict given by his individual sense of probability as determined by his previous habits of thought. and forasmuch as the test of relative inconceivability may be held in this matter legitimately to vary with the character of the mind which applies it, the strictly rational probability of the question to which it is applied varies in like manner. or, otherwise presented, the only alternative for any man in this matter is either to discipline himself into an attitude of pure scepticism, and thus to refuse in thought to entertain either a probability or an improbability concerning the existence of a god; or else to incline in thought towards an affirmation or a negation of god, according as his previous habits of thought have rendered such an inclination more facile in the one direction than in the other. and although, under such circumstances, i should consider that man the more rational who carefully suspended his judgment, i conclude that if this course is departed from, neither the metaphysical teleologist nor the scientific atheist has any perceptible advantage over the other in respect of rationality. for as the formal conditions of a metaphysical teleology are undoubtedly present on the one hand, and the formal conditions of a speculative atheism are as undoubtedly present on the other, there is thus in both cases a logical vacuum supplied wherein the pendulum of thought is free to swing in whichever direction it may be made to swing by the momentum of preconceived ideas. such is the outcome of our investigation, and considering the abstract nature of the subject, the immense divergence of opinion which at the present time is manifested with regard to it, as well as the confusing amount of good, bad, and indifferent literature on both sides of the controversy which is extant;--considering these things, i do not think that the result of our inquiry can be justly complained of on the score of its lacking precision. at a time like the present, when traditional beliefs respecting theism are so generally accepted and so commonly concluded, as a matter of course, to have a large and valid basis of induction whereon to rest, i cannot but feel that a perusal of this short essay, by showing how very concise the scientific _status_ of the subject really is, will do more to settle the minds of most readers as to the exact standing at the present time of all the probabilities of the question, than could a perusal of all the rest of the literature upon this subject. and, looking to the present condition of speculative philosophy, i regard it as of the utmost importance to have clearly shown that the advance of science has now entitled us to assert, without the least hesitation, that the hypothesis of mind in nature is as certainly superfluous to account for any of the phenomena of nature, as the scientific doctrine of the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter is certainly true. on the other hand, if any one is inclined to complain that the logical aspect of the question has not proved itself so unequivocally definite as has the scientific, i must ask him to consider that, in any matter which does not admit of actual demonstration, some margin must of necessity be left for variations of individual opinion. and, if he bears this consideration in mind, i feel sure that he cannot properly complain of my not having done my utmost in this case to define as sharply as possible the character and the limits of this margin. § . and now, in conclusion, i feel it is desirable to state that any antecedent bias with regard to theism which i individually possess is unquestionably on the side of traditional beliefs. it is therefore with the utmost sorrow that i find myself compelled to accept the conclusions here worked out; and nothing would have induced me to publish them, save the strength of my conviction that it is the duty of every member of society to give his fellows the benefit of his labours for whatever they may he worth. just as i am confident that truth must in the end be the most profitable for the race, so i am persuaded that every individual endeavour to attain it, provided only that such endeavour is unbiassed and sincere, ought without hesitation to be made the common property of all men, no matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. and so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work. so far as i am individually concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether i regard the problem of theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal considerations, it equally becomes my obvious duty to stifle all belief of the kind which i conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the purest scepticism. and forasmuch as i am far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the "new faith" is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of "the old," i am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of god the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that "the night cometh when no man can work," yet when at times i think, as think at times i must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now i find it,--at such times i shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. for whether it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those sacred associations which to me at least were the sweetest that life has given, i cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as i do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of hamilton,--philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept _know thyself_ has become transformed into the terrific oracle to oedipus-- "mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art." * * * * * appendix and supplementary essays. * * * * * appendix. * * * * * a critical exposition of a fallacy in locke's use of the argument against the possibility of matter thinking on grounds of its being inconceivable that it should. lest it should be thought that i am doing injustice to the views of this illustrious theist, i here quote his own words:--"we have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no, it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance; it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that god can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substance the almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the creator. for i see no contradiction in it that the first eternal thinking being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought: though, as i think, i have proved, lib. iv., ch. and , &c., it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that eternal first-thinking being. what certainty of knowledge can any one have that some perceptions, such as, _e.g._, pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves, after a certain manner modified and moved, as well as that they should be in an immaterial substance upon the motion of the parts of body? body, as far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and affect body; and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being able to produce nothing but motion: so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our maker. for since we must allow he has annexed effects to motion which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that he could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon? i say not this, that i would any way lessen the belief of the soul's immateriality, &c.... it is a point which seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge; and he who will give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly for or against the soul's materiality. since on which side soever he views it, either as an unextended substance or as a thinking extended matter, the difficulty to conceive either will, whilst either alone is in his thoughts, still drive him to the contrary side. an unfair way which some men take with themselves, who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding." this passage, i do not hesitate to say, is one of the most remarkable in the whole range of philosophical literature, in respect of showing how even the strongest and most candid intellect may have its reasoning faculty impaired by the force of a preformed conviction. here we have a mind of unsurpassed penetration and candour, which has left us side by side two parallel trains of reasoning. in the one, the object is to show that the author's preformed conviction as to the being of a god is justifiable on grounds of reason; in the other, the object is to show that, granting the existence of a god, and it is not impossible that he may have endowed matter with the faculty of thinking. now, in the former train of reasoning, the whole proof rests entirely upon the fact that "it is impossible to conceive that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being." clearly, if this proposition is true, it must destroy one or other of the trains of reasoning; for it is common to them both, and in one of them it is made the sole ground for concluding that matter cannot think, while in the other it is made compatible with the supposition that matter may think. this extraordinary inconsistency no doubt arose from the fact that the author was antecedently persuaded of the existence of an _omnipotent_ mind, and having been long accustomed in his intellectual symbols to regard it presumptuous in him to impose any limitations on this almighty power, when he asked himself whether it would be possible for this almighty power, if it so willed, to endow matter with the faculty of thinking, he argued that it might be possible, notwithstanding his being unable to conceive the possibility. but when he banished from his mind the idea of this personal and almighty power, and with that idea banished all its associations, he then felt that he had a right to argue more freely, and forthwith made his conceptive faculty a test of abstract possibility. yet _the sum total of abstract possibility, in relation to him, must have been the same in the two cases_; so that in whichever of the two trains of reasoning his argument was sound, in the other it must certainly have been null. we may well feel amazed that so able a thinker can have fallen into so obvious an error, and afterwards have persisted in it through pages and pages of his work. it will be instructive, however, to those who rely upon locke's exposition of the argument from inconceivability to see how effectually he has himself destroyed it. for this purpose, therefore, i shall make some further quotations from the same train of reasoning. the statement of locke's opinion that the almighty could endow matter with the faculty of thinking if he so willed, called down some remonstrances and rebukes from the then bishop of worcester. locke's reply was a very lengthy one, and from it the following extracts are taken. i merely request the reader throughout to substitute for the words god, creator, almighty, omipotency, &c., the words _summum genus_ of possibility. "but it is further urged that we cannot conceive how matter can think. i grant it, but to argue from thence that god therefore cannot give to matter a faculty of thinking is to say god's omnipotency is limited to a narrow compass because man's understanding is so, and brings down god's infinite power to the size of our capacities.... "if god can give no power to any parts of matter but what men can account for from the essence of matter in general; if all such qualities and properties must destroy the essence, or change the essential properties of matter, which are to our conceptions above it, and we cannot conceive to be the natural consequence of that essence; it is plain that the essence of matter is destroyed, and its essential properties changed, in most of the sensible parts of this our system. for it is visible that all the planets have revolutions about certain remote centres, which i would have any one explain or make conceivable by the bare essence, or natural powers depending on the essence of matter in general, without something added to that essence which we cannot conceive; for the moving of matter in a crooked line, or the attraction of matter by matter, is all that can be said in the case; either of which it is above our reach to derive from the essence of matter or body in general, though one of these two must unavoidably be allowed to be superadded, in this instance, to the essence of matter in general. the omnipotent creator advised not with us in the making of the world, and his ways are not the less excellent because they are past finding out.... "in all such cases, the superinducement of greater perfections and nobler qualities destroys nothing of the essence or perfections that were there before, unless there can be showed a manifest repugnancy between them; but all the proof offered for that is only that we cannot conceive how matter, without such superadded perfections, can produce such effects; which is, in truth, no more than to say matter in general, or every part of matter, as matter, has them not, but is no reason to prove that god, if he pleases, cannot superadd them to some parts of matter, unless it can be proved to be a contradiction that god should give to some parts of matter qualities and perfections which matter in general has not, though we cannot conceive how matter is invested with them, or how it operates by virtue of those new endowments; nor is it to be wondered that we cannot, whilst we limit all its operations to those qualities it had before, and would explain them by the known properties of matter in general, without any such induced perfections. for if this be a right rule of reasoning, to deny a thing to be because we cannot conceive the manner how it comes to be, i shall desire them who use it to stick to this rule, and see what work it will make both in divinity as well as philosophy, and whether they can advance anything more in favour of scepticism. "for to keep within the present subject of the power of thinking and self-motion bestowed by omnipotent power in some parts of matter: the objection to this is, i cannot conceive how matter should think. what is the consequence? ergo, god cannot give it a power to think. let this stand for a good reason, and then proceed in other cases by the same. "you cannot conceive how matter can attract matter at any distance, much less at the distance of , , miles; ergo, god cannot give it such a power: you cannot conceive how matter should feel or move itself, or affect any material being, or be moved by it; ergo, god cannot give it such powers: which is in effect to deny gravity, and the revolution of the planets about the sun; to make brutes mere machines, without sense or spontaneous motion; and to allow man neither sense nor voluntary motion. "let us apply this rule one degree farther. you cannot conceive how an extended solid substance should think, therefore god cannot make it think: can you conceive how your own soul or any substance thinks? you find, indeed, that you do think, and so do i; but i want to be told how the action of thinking is performed: this, i confess, is beyond my conception; and i would be glad any one who conceives it would explain it to me. "god, i find, has given me this faculty; and since i cannot but be convinced of his power in this instance, which, though i every moment experience in myself, yet i cannot conceive the manner of, what would it be less than an insolent absurdity to deny his power in other like cases, only for this reason, because i cannot conceive the manner how?... "that omnipotency cannot make a substance to be solid and not solid at the same time, i think with due reverence [diffidence?[ ]] we may say; but that a solid substance may not have qualities, perfections, and powers, which have no natural or visibly necessary connection with solidity and extension, is too much for us (who are but of yesterday, and know nothing) to be positive in. "if god cannot join things together by connections inconceivable to us, we must deny even the consistency and being of matter itself; since every particle of it having some bulk, has its parts connected by ways inconceivable to us. so that all the difficulties that are raised against the thinking of matter, from our ignorance or narrow conceptions, stand not at all in the way of the power of god, if he pleases to ordain it so; nor prove anything against his having actually endowed some parcels of matter, so disposed as he thinks fit, with a faculty of thinking, till it can he shown that it contains a contradiction to suppose it. "though to me sensation be comprehended under thinking in general, in the foregoing discourse i have spoke of sense in brutes as distinct from thinking; because your lordship, as i remember, speaks of sense in brutes. but here i take liberty to observe, that if your lordship allows brutes to have sensation, it will follow, either that god can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of perception and thinking, or that all animals have immaterial, and consequently, according to your lordship, immortal souls, as well as men; and to say that fleas and mites, &c., have immortal souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as going a great way to serve an hypothesis.... "it is true, i say, 'that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else,' and so i thought when i writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operation. but i am since convinced, by the judicious mr. newton's incomparable book, that it is too bold a presumption to limit god's power in this point by my narrow conceptions. the gravitation of matter towards matter, by way unconceivable to me, is not only a demonstration that god can, if he pleases, put into bodies powers and ways of operation above what can be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained by what we know of matter, but also an unquestionable and everywhere visible instance that he has done so. and therefore, in the next edition of my book, i will take care to have that passage rectified.... "as to self-consciousness, your lordship asks, 'what is there like self-consciousness in matter?' nothing at all in matter as matter. but that god cannot bestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with it self-consciousness, will never be proved by asking how is it possible to apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive? the weakness of our apprehension i grant in the case: i confess as much as you please, that we cannot conceive how an unsolid created substance thinks; but this weakness of our apprehension reaches not the power of god, whose weakness is stronger than anything in man." lastly, locke turns upon his opponent the power of the _odium theologicum_. "let it be as hard a matter as it will to give an account what it is that should keep the parts of a material soul together after it is separated from the body, yet it will be always as easy to give an account of it as to give an account what it is that shall keep together a material and immaterial substance. and yet the difficulty that there is to give an account of that, i hope, does not, with your lordship, weaken the credibility of the inseparable union of soul and body to eternity; and i persuade myself that the men of sense, to whom your lordship appeals in this case, do not find their belief of this fundamental point much weakened by that difficulty.... but you will say, you speak only of the soul; and your words are, that it is no easy matter to give an account how the soul should be capable of immortality unless it be a material substance. i grant it, but crave leave to say, that there is not any one of these difficulties that are or can be raised about the manner how a material soul can be immortal, which do not as well reach the immortality of the body.... "but your lordship, as i guess from your following words, would argue that a material substance cannot be a free agent; whereby i suppose you only mean that you cannot see or conceive how a solid substance should begin, stop, or change its own motion. to which give me leave to answer, that when you can make it conceivable how any created, finite, dependent substance can move itself, i suppose you will find it no harder for god to bestow this power on a solid than an unsolid created substance.... but though you cannot see how any created substance, solid or not solid, can be a free agent (pardon me, my lord, if i put in both, till your lordship please to explain it of either, and show the manner how either of them can of itself move itself or anything else), yet i do not think you will so far deny men to be free agents, from the difficulty there is to see how they are free agents, as to doubt whether there be foundation enough for the day of judgment." let us now, for the sake of contrast, turn to some passages which occur in the other train of reasoning. "if we suppose only matter and motion first or eternal, thought can never begin to be. for it is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have originally in and from itself sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and knowledge must be a property eternally inseparable from matter and every particle of it." there is a double fallacy here. in the first place, conceivability is made the unconditional test of possibility; and, in the next place, it is asserted that unless every particle of matter can think, no collocation of such particles can possibly do so. this latter fallacy is further insisted upon thus:--"if they will not allow matter as matter, that is, every particle of matter, to be as well cogitative as extended, they will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative being out of incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended parts, if i may so speak.... every particle of matter, as matter, is capable of all the same figures and motions of any other, and i challenge any one in his thoughts to add anything else to one above another." now, as we have seen, locke himself has shown in his other trains of argument that this challenge is thoroughly futile as a refutation of possibilities; but the point to which i now wish to draw attention is this--it does not follow because certain and highly complex collocations of material particles may be supposed capable of thinking, that therefore every particle of matter must be regarded as having this attribute. we have innumerable analogies in nature of a certain collocation of matter and force producing certain results which another somewhat similar collocation could not produce: in such cases we do not assume that all the resulting attributes of the one collocation must be presented also by the other--still less that these resulting attributes must belong to the primary qualities of matter and force. hence, it is not fair to assume that thought must either be inherent in every particle of matter, or else not producible by any possible collocation of such particles, unless it has previously been shown that so to produce it by any possible collocation is in the nature of things impossible. but no one could refute this fallacy better than locke himself has done in some of the passages already quoted from his other train of reasoning. but to continue the quotation:--"if, therefore, it be evident that something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evident that that something must necessarily be a cogitative being; for it is as impossible [_inconceivable_] that incogitative matter should produce a cogitative being, as that nothing, or the negation of all being, should produce a positive being or matter." again,--"for unthinking particles of matter, however put together, can have [_can be taught to have_] nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of position, which it is impossible [_inconceivable_] should give thought and knowledge to them." it is unnecessary to multiply these quotations, for, in effect, they would all be merely repetitions of one another. it is enough to have seen that this able author undertakes to demonstrate the existence of a god, and that his whole demonstration resolves itself into the unwarrantable inference, that as we are unable to conceive how thought can be a property of matter, therefore a property of matter thought cannot be. that such an erroneous inference should occur in any writings of so old a date as those of locke is not in itself surprising. what is surprising is the fact, that in the same writings, and in the course of the same discussion, the fallacy of this very inference is repeatedly pointed out and insisted upon in a great variety of ways; and it has been chiefly for the sake of showing the pernicious influence which preformed opinion may exert--viz., even to blinding the eyes of one of the most clear-sighted and thoughtful men that ever lived to a glaring contradiction repeated over and over again in the course of a few pages,--it has been chiefly for this reason that i have extended this appendix to so great a length. i shall now conclude it by quoting some sentences which occur on the very next page after that from which the last quoted sentences were taken. our author here again returns to his defence of the omnipotency of god; and as he now again thus personifies the sum total of possibility, his mind abruptly reverts to all its other class of associations. in this case the transition is particularly interesting, not only on account of its suddenness, but also because the correlations contemplated happen to be exactly the same in the two cases--viz., matter as the cause of mind, and mind as the cause of matter. remember that on the last page this great philosopher supposed he had demonstrated the abstract impossibility of matter being the cause of mind on the ground of a causal connection being inconceivable, let us now observe what he says upon this page regarding the abstract possibility of mind being the cause of matter. "nay, possibly, if we would emancipate ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts as far as they would reach to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming conception how matter might at first be made and begin to exist by the power of that eternal first being.... but you will say, is it not impossible to admit of the making anything out of nothing, since we cannot possibly conceive it? i answer--no; because it is not reasonable to deny the power of an infinite being [this phrase, in the absence of hypothesis, _i.e._, in locke's other train of reasoning, is of course equivalent to the sum-total of possibility] because we cannot comprehend its operations. we do not deny other effects upon this ground, because we cannot possibly conceive the manner of their production. we cannot conceive how anything but impulse of body can move body; and yet that is not a reason sufficient to make us deny it possible, against the constant experience we have of it in ourselves, in all our voluntary motions, which are produced in us only by the free action or thought of our minds, and are not, nor can be, the effects of the impulse or determination of the blind matter in or upon our own bodies; for then it could not be in our power or choice to alter it. for example, my right hand writes, whilst my left hand is still: what causes rest in one and motion in the other? nothing but my will, a thought in my mind; my thought only changing, the right hand rests, and the left hands moves. this is matter of fact, which cannot be denied: explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand creation."[ ] * * * * * supplementary essays. * * * * * i. cosmic theism.[ ] mr. herbert spencer's doctrine of the unknowable is a doctrine of so much speculative importance, that it behoves all students of philosophy to have clear views respecting its character and implications. mr. spencer has himself so fully explained the character of this doctrine, that no attentive reader can fail to understand it; but concerning those of its implications which may be termed theological--as distinguished from religious--mr. spencer is silent. within the last two or three years, however, there has appeared a valuable work by an able exponent of the new philosophy; and in this work the writer, adopting his master's teaching of the unknowable, proceeds to develop it into a definite system of what may be termed scientific theology. and not only so, but he assures the world that this system of scientific theology is the highest, the purest, and the most ennobling form of religion that mankind has ever been privileged to know in the past, or, from the nature of the case, can ever be destined to know in the future. it is a system, we are told, wherein the most fundamental truths of theism are taught as necessary deductions from the highest truths of science; it is a system wherein no single doctrine appeals for its acceptance to any principle of blind or credulous faith, but wherein every doctrine can be fully justified by the searching light of reason; it is a system wherein the noblest of our aspirations and the most sublime of our emotions are able to find an object far more worthy and much more glorious than has ever been supplied to them by any of the older forms of theism; and it is a system, therefore, in which, with a greatly enlarged and intensified meaning, we may worship god, and all that is within us bless his holy name. assuredly a proclamation such as this, emanating from the most authoritative expounders of modern thought, as the highest and the greatest result to which a rigorous philosophic synthesis has led, is a proclamation which cannot fail to arrest our most serious attention. nay, may it not do more than this? may it not appeal to hearts which long have ceased to worship? may it not once more revive a hope--long banished, perhaps, but still the dearest which our poor natures have experienced--that somewhere, sometime, or in some way, it may yet be possible to feel that god is not far from any one of us? for to those who have known the anguish of a shattered faith, it will not seem so childish that our hearts should beat the quicker when we once more hear a voice announcing to a world of superstitious idolaters--"whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare i unto you." but if, when we have listened to the glad tidings of the new gospel, we find that the preacher, though apparently in earnest, is not worthy to be heard again on this matter; and if, as we turn away, our eyes grow dim with the memory of a vanished dream, surely we may feel that the preacher is deserving of our blame for obtruding thus upon the most sacred of our sorrows. mr. john fiske is, as is well known, an author who unites in himself the qualities of a well-read student of philosophy, a clear and accurate thinker, a thorough master of the principles which in his recent work he undertakes to explain and to extend, and a writer gifted in a remarkable degree with the power of lucid exposition. such being the intellectual calibre of the man who elaborates this new system of scientific theology, i confess that, on first seeing his work, i experienced a faint hope that, in the higher departments of the philosophy of evolution as conceived by mr. spencer and elaborated by his disciple, there might be found some rational justification for an attenuated form of theism. but on examination i find that the bread which these fathers have offered us turns out to be a stone; and thinking that it is desirable to warn other of the children--whether of the family philosophical or theological--against swallowing on trust a morsel so injurious, i shall endeavour to point out what i conceive to be the true nature of "cosmic theism." starting from the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, mr. fiske, following mr. spencer, proceeds to show how the doctrine implies that there must be a mode of being to which human knowledge is non-relative. or, in other words, he shows that the postulation of phenomena necessitates the further postulation of noumena of which phenomena are the manifestations. now what may we affirm of noumena without departing from a scientific or objective mode of philosophising? we may affirm at least this much of noumena, that they constitute a mode of existence which need not necessarily vanish were our consciousness to perish; and, therefore, that they now stand out of necessary relation to our consciousness. or, in other words, so far as human consciousness is concerned, noumena must be regarded as absolute. "but now, what do we mean by this affirmation of absolute reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum matter? our conclusion cannot be stated in any such form.... our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of phenomena, external or internal, can be framed without postulating an absolute existence of which phenomena are the manifestations. and now let us carefully note what follows. we cannot identify this absolute existence with mind, since what we know as mind is a series of phenomenal manifestations.... nor can we identify this absolute existence with matter, since what we know as matter is a series of phenomenal manifestations.... absolute existence, therefore,--the reality which persists independently of us, and of which mind and matter are the phenomenal manifestations,--cannot be identified either with mind or with matter. thus is materialism included in the same condemnation with idealism.... see then how far we have travelled from the scholastic theory of occult substrata underlying each group of phenomena. these substrata were but the ghosts of the phenomena themselves; behind the tree or the mountain a sort of phantom tree or mountain, which persists after the body of perception has gone away with the departure of the percipient mind. clearly this is no scientific interpretation of the facts, but is rather a specimen of naïve barbaric thought surviving in metaphysics. the tree or mountain being groups of phenomena, what we assert as persisting independently of the percipient mind is a something which we are unable to condition either as tree or as mountain. "and now we come down to the very bottom of the problem. since we do postulate absolute existence, and do not postulate a particular occult substance underlying each group of phenomena, are we to be understood as implying that there is a single being of which all phenomena, internal and external to consciousness, are manifestations? such must seem to be the inevitable conclusion, since we are able to carry on thinking at all only under the relations of difference and no-difference.... it may seem that, since we cannot attribute to the absolute reality any relations of difference, we must positively ascribe to it no-difference. or, what is the same thing, in refusing to predicate multiplicity of it, do we not virtually predicate of it unity? we do, simply because we cannot think without so doing."[ ] a single absolute reality being thus posited, our author proceeds, towards the close of his work, to argue that as this reality cannot be conceived as limited either in space or time, it constitutes a being which corresponds with our essential conception of deity. true it is devoid of certain accessory attributes, such as personality, intelligence, and volition; but for this very reason, it is insisted, the theistic ideal as thus presented is a purer, and therefore a better, ideal than has ever been presented before. nay, it is the highest possible form of this ideal, as the following considerations will show. in what has consisted that continuous purification of theism which the history of thought shows to have been effected, from the grossest form of belief in supernatural agency as exhibited in fetichism, through its more refined form as exhibited in polytheism, to its still more refined form as exhibited in monotheism? in nothing but in a continuous process of what mr. fiske calls "deanthropomorphisation." consequently, must we not conclude that when we carry this process yet one step further, and divest our conception of deity of all the yet lingering remnants of anthropomorphism which occur in the current conceptions of deity, we are but still further purifying that conception? assuredly, the attributes of personality, intelligence, and so forth, are only known as attributes of humanity, and therefore to ascribe them to deity is but to foster, in a more refined form, the anthropomorphic teachings of previous religions. but if we carefully refuse to limit deity by the ascription of any human attributes whatever, and if the only attributes which we do ascribe are such as on grounds of pure reason alone we are compelled to ascribe, must we not conclude that the form of theism which results is the purest and the most refined form in which it is possible for theism to exist? "from the anthropomorphic point of view it will quite naturally be urged in objection, that this apparently desirable result is reached through the degradation of deity from an 'intelligent personality' to a 'blind force,' and is therefore in reality an undesirable and perhaps quasi-atheistic result."[ ] but the question which really presents itself is, "theologically phrased, whether the creature is to be taken as a measure of the creator. scientifically phrased, the question is whether the highest form of being as yet suggested to one petty race of creatures by its ephemeral experience of what is going on in one tiny corner of the universe, is necessarily to be taken as the equivalent of that absolutely highest form of being in which all the possibilities of existence are alike comprehended."[ ] therefore, in conclusion, "whether or not it is true that, within the bounds of the phenomenal universe the highest type of existence is that which we know as humanity, the conclusion is in every way forced upon us that, quite independently of limiting conditions in space or time, there is a form of being which can neither be assimilated to humanity nor to any lower type of existence. we have no alternative, therefore, but to regard it as higher than humanity, even 'as the heavens are higher than the earth,' and except for the intellectual arrogance which the arguments of theologians show lurking beneath their expressions of humility, there is no reason why this admission should not be made unreservedly, without the anthropomorphic qualifications by which its effect is commonly nullified. the time is surely coming when the slowness of men in accepting such a conclusion will be marvelled at, and when the very inadequacy of human language to express divinity will be regarded as a reason for a deeper faith and more solemn adoration."[ ] i have now sufficiently detailed the leading principles of cosmic theism to render a clear and just conception of those fundamental parts of the system which i am about to criticise; but it is needless to say that, for all minor details of this system, i must refer those who may not already have perused them to mr. fiske's somewhat elaborate essays. in now beginning my criticisms, it may be well to state at the outset, that they are to be restricted to the philosophical aspect of the subject. with matters of sentiment i do not intend to deal,--partly because to do so would be unduly to extend this essay, and partly also because i believe that, so far as the acceptance or the rejection of cosmic theism is to be determined by sentiment, much, if not all, will depend on individual habits of thought. for whether or not cosmic theism is to be regarded as a religion adapted to the needs of any individual man, will depend on what these needs are felt to be by that man himself: we cannot assert magisterially that this religion must be adapted to his needs because we have found it to be adapted to our own. and if it is retorted that, human nature being everywhere the same, a form of religion that is adapted to one man must on this account be adapted to another, i reply that it is not so. for if a man who is what mr. fiske calls an "anthropomorphic theist" finds from experience that his system of religion--say christianity--creates and sustains a class of emotions and general habits of thought which he feels to be the highest and the best of which he is capable, it is useless for a "cosmic theist" to offer such a man another system of religion, in which the conditions essential to the existence of these particular emotions and habits of thought are manifestly absent. for such a man cannot but feel that the proffered substitution would be tantamount, if accepted, to an utter destruction of all that he regards as essentially religious. he will tell us that he finds it perfectly easy to understand and to appreciate those feelings of vague awe and "worship of the silent kind" which the cosmic theist declares to be fostered by cosmic theism; but he will also tell us that those feelings, which he has experienced with equal vividness under his own system of anthropomorphic theism, are to him but as non-religious dross compared with the unspeakable felicity of holding definite commune with the almighty and most merciful, or of rendering worship that is a glad hosanna--a fearless shout of joy. on the other hand, i believe that it is possible for philosophic habits of thought so to discipline the mind that the feelings of vague awe and silent worship in the presence of an appalling mystery become more deep and steady than a theist proper can well believe. it is therefore impossible that either party can fully appreciate those sentiments of the other which they have never fully experienced themselves; for even in those cases where an anthropomorphic theist has been compelled to abandon his creed, as the change must take place in mature life, his tone of mind has been determined before it does take place; and therefore in sentiment, though not in faith, he is more or less of a theist for the rest of his life: the only effect of the change is to create a troubled interference between his desires and his beliefs. however, i do not intend to develop this branch of the subject further than thus to point out, in a general way, that religion-mongers as a class are apt to show too little regard for the sentiments, as distinguished from the beliefs, of those to whom they offer their wares. but although i do not intend to constitute myself a champion of theology by pointing out the defects of cosmic theism in the aspect which it presents to current modes of thought, there is one such defect which i must here dwell upon, because we shall afterwards have occasion to refer to it. a theologian may very naturally make this objection to cosmic theism as presented by mr. fiske--viz., that the argument on which this philosopher throughout relies as a self-evident demonstration that the new system of theism is a further and a final improvement on all the previous systems of theism, is a fallacious argument. as we have already seen, this argument is, that as the progress in the purification of theism has throughout consisted in a process of "deanthropomorphisation," therefore the terminal phase in this process, which cosmic theism introduces, must be still in the direction of that progress. but to this argument a theologian may not unreasonably object, that this terminal phase differs from all the previous phases in one all-important feature--viz., in effecting a _total abolition_ of the anthropomorphic element. before, therefore, it can be shown that this terminal phase is a further development of _theism_, it must he shown that theism still remains theism after this hitherto characteristic element has been removed. if it is true, as mr. fiske very properly insists, that all the various forms of belief in god have thus far had this as a common factor, that they ascribed to god the attributes of man; it becomes a question whether we may properly abstract this hitherto invariable factor of a belief, and still call that belief by the same name. or, to put the matter in another light, as cosmists maintain that theism, in all the phases of its development, has been the product of a probably erroneous theory of personal agency in nature, when this theory is expressly discarded--as it is by the doctrine of the unknowable--is it philosophically legitimate for cosmists to render their theory of things in terms which belong to the totally different theory which they discard? no doubt it is true that the progressive refinement of theism has throughout consisted in a progressive discarding of anthropomorphic qualities; but this fact does not touch the consideration that, when we proceed to strip off the last remnants of these qualities, we are committing an act which differs _toto coelo_ from all the previous acts which are cited as precedents; for by this terminal act we are not, as heretofore, _refining_ the theory of theism--we are completely _transforming_ it by removing an element which, both genetically and historically, would seem to constitute the very essence of theism. or the case may be presented in yet another light. the only use of terms, whether in daily talk or in philosophical disquisition, is that of designating certain things or attributes to which by general custom we agree to affix them; so that if anyone applies a term to some thing or attribute which general custom does not warrant him in so applying, he is merely laying himself open to the charge of abusing that term. now apply these elementary principles to the case before us. we have but to think of the disgust with which the vast majority of living persons would regard the sense in which mr. fiske uses the term "theism," to perceive how intimate is the association of that term with the idea of a personal god. such persons will feel strongly that, by this final act of purification, mr. fiske has simply purified the deity altogether out of existence. and i scarcely think it is here competent to reply that all previous acts of purification were at first similarly regarded as destructive, because it is evident that none of these previous acts affected, as this one does, the central core of theism. and, lastly, if it should be still further objected, that by declaring the theory of personal agency the central core of theism, i am begging the question as to the appropriateness of mr. fiske's use of the word "theism,"--seeing he appears to regard the essential meaning of this word to be that of a postulation of merely causal agency,--i answer, more of this anon; but meanwhile let it be observed that any charge of question-begging lies rather at the door of mr. fiske, in that he assumes, without any expressed justification, that the essence of theism _does_ consist in such a postulation and in nothing more. and as he unquestionably has against him the present world of theists no less than the history of theism in the past, i do not see how he is to meet this charge except by confessing to an abuse of the term in question. i will now proceed to examine the structure of cosmic theism. we are all, i suppose, at one in allowing that there are only three "verbally intelligible" theories of the universe,--viz., that it is self-existent, or that it is self-created, or that it has been created by some other and external being. it is usual to call the first of these theories atheism, the second pantheism, and the third theism. now as there are here three distinct nameable theories, it is necessary, if the term "cosmic theism" is to be justified as an appropriate term, that the particular theory which it designates should be shown to be in its essence theistic--_i.e._, that the theory should present those distinguishing features in virtue of which theism differs from atheism on the one hand, and from pantheism on the other. now what are these features? the postulate of an eternal self-existing something is common to theism and to atheism. here atheism ends. theism, however, is generally said to assume personality, intelligence, and creative power as attributes of the single self-existing substance. lastly, pantheism assumes the something now existing to have been self-created. to which, then, of these distinct theories is cosmic theism most nearly allied? for the purpose of answering this question, i shall render that theory in terms of a formula which mr. fiske presents as a full and complete statement of the theory:--"_there exists a_ power, _to which no limit in space or time is conceivable, of which all phenomena, as presented in consciousness, are manifestations, but which we can only know through these manifestations._" but although the word "power" is here so strongly emphasised, we are elsewhere told that it is not to be regarded as having more than a strictly relative or symbolic meaning; so that, in point of fact, some more neutral word, such as "something," "being," or "substance," ought in strictness to be here substituted for the word "power." well, if this is done, we have the postulation of a being which is self-existing, infinite, and eternal--relatively, at all events, to our powers of conception. thus far, therefore, it would seem that we are still on the common standing-ground of atheism, pantheism, and theism; for as it is not, so far as i can see, incumbent on pantheism to affirm that "thought is a measure of things," the _apparent_ or _relative_ eternity which the primal something must be supposed to present may not be _actual_ or _absolute_ eternity. nevertheless, as mr. fiske, by predicating divinity of the primal something, implicitly attributes to it the quality of an _eternal_ self-existence, i infer that cosmic theism may be concluded at this point to part company with pantheism. there remain, then, theism and atheism. now undoubtedly, at first sight, cosmic theism appears to differ from atheism in one all-important particular. for we have seen that, by means of a subtle though perfectly logical argument, cosmic philosophy has evolved this conclusion--that all phenomena as presented in consciousness are manifestations of a not improbable single self-existing power, of whose existence these manifestations alone can make us cognisant. from which it apparently follows, that this hypothetical power must be regarded as existing out of necessary relation to the phenomenal universe; that it is, therefore, beyond question "absolute being;" and that, as such, we are entitled to call it deity. but in the train of reasoning of which this is a very condensed epitome, it is evident that the legitimacy of denominating this absolute being deity, must depend on the exact meaning which we attach to the word "absolute"--and this, be it observed, quite apart from the question, before touched upon, as to whether personality and intelligence are not to be considered as attributes essential to deity. in what sense, then, is the word "absolute" used? it is used in this sense. as from the relativity of knowledge we cannot know things in themselves, but only symbolical representations of such things, therefore things in themselves are absolute to consciousness: but analysis shows that we cannot conceivably predicate difference among things in themselves, so that we are at liberty, with due diffidence, to predicate of them no-difference: hence the noumena of the schoolmen admit of being collected into a _summum genus_ of noumenal existence; and since, before their colligation noumena were severally absolute, after their colligation they become collectively absolute: therefore it is legitimate to designate this sum-total of noumenal existence, "absolute being." now there is clearly no exception to be taken to the formal accuracy of this reasoning; the only question is as to whether the "absolute being" which it evolves is absolute in the sense required by theism. i confess that to me this being appears to be absolute in a widely different sense from that in which deity must be regarded as absolute. for this being is thus seen to be absolute in no other sense than as holding--to quote from mr. fiske--"existence independent of the conditions of the process of knowing." in other words, it is absolute only as standing out of necessary relation to _human consciousness_. but theism requires, as an essential feature, that deity should be absolute as standing out of necessary relation to _all else_. before, therefore, the absolute being of cosmism can be shown, by the reasoning adopted, to deserve, even in part, the appellation of deity, it must be shown that there is no other mode of being in existence save our own subjective consciousness and the absolute reality which becomes objective to it through the world of phenomena. but any attempt to establish this position would involve a disregard of the doctrine that knowledge is relative; and to do this, it is needless to say, would be to destroy the basis of the argument whereby the absolute being of cosmism was posited. or, to state this part of the criticism in other words, as the first step in justifying the predication of deity, it must be shown that the being of which the predication is made is absolute, and this not merely as independent of human consciousness, but as independent of the whole noumenal universe--deity itself alone excepted. that is, the being of which deity is predicated must be unconditioned. hence it is incumbent on cosmic theism to prove, either that the causal agent which it denominates deity is itself the whole noumenal universe, or that it created the rest of a noumenal universe; else there is nothing to show that this causal agent was not itself created--seeing that, even if we assume the existence of a god, there is nothing to indicate that the causal agent of cosmism is that god. it would appear therefore from this, that whatever else the cosmist's theory of things may be, it certainly is not theism; and i think that closer inspection will tend to confirm this judgment. to this then let us proceed. mr. fiske is very hard on the atheists, and so will probably repudiate with scorn any insinuations to the effect that his theory of things is "quasi-atheistic." nevertheless, it seems to me that he is very unjust to the atheists, in that while he spares no pains to "purify" and "refine" the theory of the theists, so as at last to leave nothing but what he regards as the distilled essence of theism behind; he habitually leaves the theory of the atheists as he finds it, without making any attempt either to "purify" it by removing its weak and unnecessary ingredients, or to "refine" it by adding such sublimated ingredients as modern speculation has supplied. thus, while he despises the atheists of the eighteenth century for their irrationality in believing in the self-existence of a _phenomenal_ universe, and reviles them for their irreligion in denying that "the religious sentiment needed satisfaction;" he does not wait to inquire whether, in its essential substance, the theory of these men is not the one that has proved itself best able to withstand the grinding action of more recent thought. but let us in fairness ask, what was the essential substance of that theory? apparently it was the bare statement of the unthinkable fact that something is. it therefore seems to me useless in mr. fiske to lay so much stress on the fact that this something was originally identified by atheists with the phenomenal universe. it seems useless to do this, because such identification is clearly no part of the _essence_ of atheism, which, as just stated, i take to consist in the single dogma of self-existence as itself sufficient to constitute a theory of things. and, if so, it is a matter of scarcely any moment, as regards that theory, whether we are _immediately_ cognisant of that which is self-existent, or only become so through the world of phenomena--the vital point of the theory being, that self-existence, _wherever posited_, is itself the only admissible explanation of phenomena. or, in other words, it does not seem that there is anything in the atheistic theory, as such, which is incompatible with the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge; so that whatever cogency there may be in the train of reasoning whereby a single causal agent is deduced from that doctrine, it would seem that an atheist has as much right to the benefit of this reasoning as a theist; and there is thus no more apparent reason why this single causal agent should be appropriated as the god of theism, than that it should be appropriated as the self-existing x of atheism. indeed, there seems to be less reason. for an atheist of to-day may very properly argue:--'so far from beholding anything divine in this single being absolute to human consciousness, it is just precisely the form of being which my theory postulates as the self-existing all. in order to constitute such a being god, it must be shown, as we have already seen, to be something more than a merely causal agent which is absolute in the grotesquely restricted sense of being independent of 'one petty race of creatures with an ephemeral experience of what is going on in one tiny corner of the universe;' it must be shown to be something more than absolute even in the wholly unrestricted sense of being unconditioned; it must be shown to possess such other attributes as are distinctive of deity. for i maintain that even unconditioned being, _merely as such_, would only then have a right to the name of god when it has been shown that the theory of theism has a right to monopolise the doctrine of relativity.' in thus endeavouring to "purify" the theory of atheism, by divesting it of all superfluous accessories, and laying bare what i conceive to be its essential substance; it may be well to state that, even apart from their irreligious character, i have no sympathy with the atheists of the past century. i mean, that these men do not seem to me to deserve any credit for advanced powers of speculation merely because they adopted a theory of things which in its essential features now promises to be the most enduring. for it is evident that the strength of this theory now lies in its _simplicity_,--in its undertaking to explain, so far as explanation is possible, the sum-total of phenomena by the single postulate of self-existence. but it seems to me that in the last century there were no sufficient data for rendering such a theory of things a rational theory; for so long as the quality of self-existence was supposed to reside in phenomena themselves, the very simplicity of the theory, as expressed in words, must have seemed to render it inapplicable as a reasonable theory of things. the astounding variety, complexity, and harmony which are everywhere so conspicuous in the world of phenomena must have seemed to necessitate as an explanation some one integrating cause; and it is impossible that in the eighteenth century any such integrating cause can have been conceivable other than intelligence. therefore i think, with mr. fiske, that the atheists of the eighteenth century were irrational in applying their single postulate of self-existence as alone a sufficient explanation of things. but of course the aspect of the case is now completely changed, when we regard it in all the flood of light which has been shed on it by recent science, physical and speculative. for the demonstration of the fact that energy is indestructible, coupled with the corollary that every so-called natural law is a physically necessary consequence of that fact, clearly supply us with a completely novel datum as the ultimate source of experience--and a datum, moreover, which is as different as can well be imagined from the ever-changing, ever-fleeting, world of phenomena. we have, therefore, but to apply the postulate of self-existence to this single ultimate datum, and we have a theory of things as rational as the atheism of the last century was irrational. nevertheless, that this theory is more akin to the atheism of the last century than to any other theory of that time, is, i think, unquestionable; for while we retain the central doctrine of self-existence as alone a scientifically admissible, or non-gratuitous, explanation of things, we only change the original theory by transferring the application of this doctrine from the world of manifestations to that which causes the manifestations: we do not resort to any of the _additional_ doctrines whereby the other theories of the universe were distinguished from the theory of atheism in its original form. however, as by our recognition of the relativity of knowledge we are precluded from dogmatically denying any theory of the universe that may be proposed, it would clearly be erroneous to identify the doctrine of the unknowable with the theory of atheism: all we can say is, that, so far as speculative thought can soar, the permanent self-existence of an inconceivable something, which manifests itself to consciousness as force and matter, constitutes the only datum that can be shown to be required for the purposes of a rational ontology. to sum up. in the theory which mr. fiske calls cosmic theism, while i am able to discern the elements which i think may properly be regarded as common to theism and to atheism, i am not able to discern any single element that is specifically distinctive of theism. still i am far from concluding that the theory in question is the theory of atheism. all i wish to insist upon is this--that as the absolute being of cosmism presents no other qualities than such as are required by the renovated theory of atheism, its postulation supplies a basis, not for theism, but for non-theism: a man with such a postulate ought in strictness to abstain from either affirming or denying the existence of god. and this, i may observe, appears to be the position which mr. spencer himself has adopted as the only logical outcome of his doctrine of the unknowable--a position which, in my opinion, it is most undesirable to obscure by endeavouring to give it a quasi-theistic interpretation. i may further observe, that we here seem to have a philosophical justification of the theological sentiment previously alluded to--the sentiment, namely, that by his attempt at a final purification of theism, mr. fiske has destroyed those essential features of the theory in virtue of which alone it exists as theism. for seeing it is impossible, from the relativity of knowledge, that the absolute being of cosmism can ever be shown absolute in the sense required by theism, and, even if it could, that it would still be but the unconditioned being of atheism; it follows that if this absolute being is to be shown even in part to deserve the appellation of deity, it must be shown to possess the only remaining attributes which are distinctive of deity--to wit, personality and intelligence. but forasmuch as the final act of purifying the conception of deity consists, according to mr. fiske, in expressly removing these particular attributes from the object of that conception, does it not follow that the conception which remains is, as i have said, not theistic, but non-theistic? here my criticism might properly have ended, were it not that mr. fiske, after having divested the deity of all his psychical attributes, forthwith proceeds to show how it may be dimly possible to reinvest him with attributes that are "quasi-psychical." mr. fiske is, of course, far too subtle a thinker not to see that his previous argument from relativity precludes him from assigning much weight to the ontological speculations in which he here indulges, seeing that in whatever degree the relativity of knowledge renders legitimate the non-ascription to deity of known psychical attributes, in some such degree at least must it render illegitimate the ascription to deity of unknown psychical attributes. but in the part of his work in which he treats of the quasi-psychical attributes, mr. fiske is merely engaged in showing that the speculative standing of the "materialists" is inferior to that of the "spiritualists;" so that, as this is a subject distinct from theism, he is not open to the charge of inconsistency. well, feeble as these speculations undoubtedly are in the support which they render to theism, it nevertheless seems desirable to consider them before closing this review. the speculations in question are quoted from mr. spencer, and are as follows:-- "mind, as known to the possessor of it, is a circumscribed aggregate of activities; and the cohesion of these activities, one with another, throughout the aggregate, compels the postulation of a something of which they are the activities. but the same experiences which make him aware of this coherent aggregate of mental activities, simultaneously make him aware of activities that are not included in it--outlying activities which become known by their effects on this aggregate, but which are experimentally proved to be not coherent with it, and to be coherent with one another (_first principles_, §§ , ). as, by the definition of them, these external activities cannot be brought within the aggregate of activities distinguished as those of mind, they must for ever remain to him nothing more than the unknown correlatives of their effects on this aggregate; and can be thought of only in terms furnished by this aggregate. hence, if he regards his conceptions of these activities lying beyond mind as constituting knowledge of them, he is deluding himself: he is but representing these activities in terms of mind, and can never do otherwise. eventually he is obliged to admit that his ideas of matter and motion, merely symbolic of unknowable realities, are complex states of consciousness built out of units of feeling. but if, after admitting this, he persists in asking whether units of feeling are of the same nature as the units of force distinguished as external, or whether the units of force distinguished as external are of the same nature as units of feeling; then the reply, still substantially the same, is that we may go further towards conceiving units of external force to be identical with units of feeling, than we can towards conceiving units of feeling to be identical with units of external force. clearly, if units of external force are regarded as absolutely unknown and unknowable, then to translate units of feeling into them is to translate the known into the unknown, which is absurd. and if they are what they are supposed to be by those who identify them with their symbols, then the difficulty of translating units of feeling into them is insurmountable: if force as it objectively exists is absolutely alien in nature from that which exists subjectively as feeling, then the transformation of force into feeling is unthinkable. either way, therefore, it is impossible to interpret inner existence in terms of outer existence. but if, on the other hand, units of force as they exist objectively are essentially the same in nature with those manifested subjectively as units of feeling, then a conceivable hypothesis remains open. every element of that aggregate of activities constituting a consciousness is known as belonging to consciousness only by its cohesion with the rest. beyond the limits of this coherent aggregate of activities exist activities quite independent of it, and which cannot be brought into it. we may imagine, then, that by their exclusion from the circumscribed activities constituting consciousness, these outer activities, though of the same intrinsic nature, become antithetically opposed in aspect. being disconnected from consciousness, or cut off by its limits, they are thereby rendered foreign to it. not being incorporated with its activities, or linked with these as they are with one another, consciousness cannot, as it were, run through them; and so they come to be figured as unconscious--are symbolised as having the nature called material, as opposed to that called spiritual. while, however, it thus seems an imaginable possibility that units of external force may be identical in nature with units of the force known as feeling, yet we cannot by so representing them get any nearer to a comprehension of external force. for, as already shown, supposing all forms of mind to be composed of homogeneous units of feeling variously aggregated, the resolution of them into such units leaves us as unable as before to think of the substance of mind as it exists in such units; and thus, even could we really figure to ourselves all units of external force as being essentially like units of the force known as feeling, and as so constituting a universal sentiency, we should be as far as ever from forming a conception of that which is universally sentient."[ ] now while i agree with mr. fiske that we have here "the most subtle conclusion now within the ken of the scientific speculator, reached without any disregard of the canons prescribed by the doctrine of relativity," i would like to point out to minds less clear-sighted than his, that this same "doctrine of relativity" effectually debars us from using this "conclusion" as an argument of any assignable value in favour of theism. for the value of conceivability as a test of truth, on which this conclusion is founded, is here vitiated by the consideration that, _whatever_ the nature of force-units may be, we can clearly perceive it to be a subjective necessity of the case that they should admit of being more easily conceived by us to be of the nature of feeling-units than to be of any other nature. for as units of feeling are the only entities of which we are, or can be, conscious, they are the entities into which units of force must be, so to speak, subjectively translated before we can cognise their existence at all. therefore, _whatever_ the real nature of force-units may be, ultimate analysis must show that it is more conceivable to identify them in thought with the only units of which we are cognisant, than it is to think of them as units of which we are not cognisant, and concerning which, therefore, conception is necessarily impossible. or thus, the only alternative with respect to the classifying of force-units lies between refusing to classify them at all, or classifying them with the only ultimate units with which we are acquainted. but this restriction, for aught that can ever be shown to the contrary, arises only from the subjective conditions of our own consciousness; there is nothing to indicate that, in objective reality, units of force are in any wise akin to units of feeling. conceivability, therefore, as a test of truth, is in this particular case of no assignable degree of value; for as the entities to which it is applied are respectively the highest known abstractions of subjective and objective existence, the test of conceivability is neutralised by directly encountering the inconceivable relation that subsists between subject and object. i think, therefore, it is evident that these ontological speculations present no sufficient warrant for an inference, even of the slenderest kind, that the absolute being of cosmism possesses attributes of a nature quasi-psychical; and, if so, it follows that these speculations are incompetent to form the basis of a theory which, even by the greatest stretch of courtesy, can in any legitimate sense be termed quasi-theistic.[ ] on the whole, then, i conclude that the term "cosmic theism" is not an appropriate term whereby to denote the theory of things set forth in "cosmic philosophy;" and that it would therefore be more judicious to leave the doctrine of the unknowable as mr. spencer has left it--that is, without theological implications of any kind. but in now taking leave of this subject, i should like it to be understood that the only reason why i have ventured thus to take exception to a part of mr. fiske's work is because i regret that a treatise which displays so much of literary excellence and philosophic power should lend itself to promoting what i regard as mistaken views concerning the ontological tendencies of recent thought, and this with no other apparent motive than that of unworthily retaining in the new philosophy a religious term the distinctive connotations of which are considered by that philosophy to have become obsolete. * * * * * ii. supplementary essay in reply to a recent work on theism.[ ] on perusing my main essay several years after its completion, it occurred to me that another very effectual way of demonstrating the immense difference between the nature of all previous attacks upon the teleological argument and the nature of the present attack, would be briefly to review the reasonable objections to which all the previous attacks were open. very opportunely a work on theism has just been published which states these objections with great lucidity, and answers them with much ability. the work to which i allude is by the rev. professor flint, and as it is characterised by temperate candour in tone and logical care in exposition, i felt on reading it that the work was particularly well suited for displaying the enormous change in the speculative standing of theism which the foregoing considerations must be rationally deemed to have effected. i therefore determined on throwing my supplementary essay, which i had previously intended to write, into the form of a criticism on professor flint's treatise, and i adopted this course the more willingly because there are several other points dwelt upon in that treatise which it seems desirable for me to consider in the present one, although, for the sake of conciseness, i abstained from discussing them in my previous essay. with these two objects in view, therefore, i undertook the following criticism.[ ] in the first place, it is needful to protest against an argument which our author adopts on the authority of professor clark maxwell. the argument is now a well-known one, and is thus stated by professor maxwell in his presidential address before the british association for the advancement of science, :--"none of the processes of nature, since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. we are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. on the other hand, the exact quality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as sir john herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. thus we have been led along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which science must stop. not that science is debarred from studying the external mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from investigating an organism which she cannot put together. but in tracing back the history of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and, on the other, that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural." now it is obvious that we have here no real argument, since it is obvious that science can never be in a position to assert that atoms, the very existence of which is hypothetical, were never "made by any of the processes we call natural." the mere fact that in the universe, as we now know it, the evolution of material atoms is not observed to be taking place "by any of the processes we call natural," cannot possibly be taken as proof, or even as presumption, that there ever was a time when the material atoms now in existence were created by a supernatural cause. the fact cannot be taken to justify any such inference for the following reasons. in the first place, assuming the atomic theory to be true, and there is nothing in the argument to show that the now-existing atoms are not self-existing atoms, endowed with their peculiar and severally distinctive properties from all eternity. doubtless the argument is, that as there appear to be some sixty or more elementary atoms constituting the raw material of the observable universe, it is incredible that they can all have owed their correlated properties to any cause other than that of a designing and manufacturing intelligence. but, in the next place--and here comes the demolishing force of the criticism--science is not in a position to assert that these sixty or more elementary atoms are in any real sense of the term elementary. the mere fact that chemistry is as yet in too undeveloped a condition to pronounce whether or not all the forms of matter known to her are modifications of some smaller number of elements, or even of a single element, cannot possibly be taken as a warrant for so huge an inference as that there are really more than sixty elements all endowed with absolutely distinctive properties by a supernatural cause. now this consideration, which arises immediately from the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, is alone amply sufficient to destroy the present argument. but we must not on this account lose sight of the fact that, even to our strictly relative science in its present embryonic condition, we are not without decided indications, not only that the so-called elements are probably for the most part compounds, but even that matter as a whole is one substance, which is itself probably but some modification of energy. indeed, the whole tendency of recent scientific speculation is towards the view that the universe consists of some one substance, which, whether self-existing or created, is diverse only in its relation to ignorance. and if this view is correct, how obvious is the inference which i have elaborated in § , that all the diverse forms of matter, as we know them, were probably evolved by natural causes. so obvious, indeed, is this inference, that to resort to any supernatural hypothesis to explain the diverse properties of the various chemical elements appears to me a most glaring violation of the law of parcimony--as much more glaring, for instance, than the violation of this law by paley, as the number and variety of organic species are greater than the number and variety of chemical species. and if it was illegitimate in paley to use a mere absence of knowledge as to how the transmutation of apparently fixed species of animals was effected as equivalent to the possession of knowledge that such transmutation had not been effected, how much more illegitimate must it be to commit a similar sin against logic in the case of the chemical elements, where our classification is confessedly beset with numberless difficulties, and when we begin to discern that in all probability it is a classification essentially artificial. lastly, the mere fact that the transmutation of chemical species and the evolution of chemical "atoms" are processes which we do not now observe as occurring in nature, is surely a consideration of a far more feeble kind than it is even in the case of biological species and biological evolution; seeing that nature's laboratory must be now so inconceivably different from what it was during the condensation of the nebula. what an atrocious piece of arrogance, therefore, it is to assert that "none of the processes of nature, _since the time when nature began_, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule!" no one can entertain a higher respect for professor clark maxwell than i do; but a single sentence of such a kind as this cannot leave two opinions in any impartial mind concerning his competency to deal with such subjects. i am therefore sorry to see this absurd argument approvingly incorporated in professor flint's work. he says, "i believe that no reply to these words of professor clark maxwell is possible from any one who holds the ordinary view of scientific men as to the ultimate constitution of matter. they must suppose every atom, every molecule, to be of such a nature, to be so related to others and to the universe generally, that things may be such as we see them to be; but this their fitness to be built up into the structure of the universe is a proof that they have been made fit, and since natural forces could not have acted on them while not yet existent, a supernatural power must have created them, and created them with a view to their manifold uses." here the inference so confidently drawn would have been a weak one even were we not able to see that the doctrine of natural evolution probably applies to inorganic nature no less than to organic. for the inference is drawn from considerations of a character so transcendental and so remote from science, that unless we wish to be deceived by a merely verbal argument, we must feel that the possibilities of error in the inference are so numerous and indefinite, that the inference itself is well-nigh worthless as a basis of belief. but when we add that in chapter iv. of the foregoing essay it has been shown to be within the legitimate scope of scientific reasoning to conclude that material atoms have been progressively evolved _pari passu_ with the natural laws of chemical combination, it is evident that any force which the present argument could ever have had must now be pronounced as neutralised. natural causes have been shown, so far as scientific inference can extend, as not improbably sufficient to produce the observed effects; and therefore we are no longer free to invoke the hypothetical action of any supernatural cause. the same observations apply to professor flint's theistic argument drawn from recent scientific speculations as to the vortex-ring construction of matter. if these speculations are sound, their only influence on theism would be that of supplying a scientific demonstration of the substantial identity of force and matter, and so of supplying a still more valid basis for the theory as to the natural genesis of matter from a single primordial substance, in the manner sketched out in chapter iv. for the argument adduced by professor flint, that as the manner in which the vorticial motion of a ring is originated has not as yet been suggested, therefore its origination must have been due to a "divine impulse," is an argument which again uses the absence of knowledge as equivalent to its possession. we are in the presence of a very novel and highly abstruse theory, or rather hypothesis, in physics, which was originally suggested by, and has hitherto been mainly indebted to, empirical experiments as distinguished from mathematical calculations; and from the mere fact that, in the case of such a hypothesis, mathematicians have not as yet been able to determine the physical conditions required to originate vorticial motion, we are expected to infer that no such conditions can ever have existed, and therefore that every such vortex system, if it exists, is a miracle! and substantially the same criticism applies to the argument which professor flint adduces--the argument also on which professors balfour and tait lay so much stress in their work on the _unseen universe_--the argument, namely, as to the non-eternal character of heat. the calculations on which this argument depends would only be valid as sustaining this argument if they were based upon a knowledge of the universe _as a whole_; and therefore, as before, the absence of requisite knowledge must not be used as equivalent to its possession. these, however, are the weakest parts of professor flint's work. i therefore gladly turn to those parts which are exceedingly cogent as written from his standpoint, but which, in view of the strictures on the teleological argument that i have adduced in chapters iv. and vi., i submit to be now wholly valueless. "how could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent and eternal? it is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a supreme mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the english alphabet produced the plays of shakespeare, without the slightest assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. these atoms might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long intervals, produce by a chance contact some curious collocation or compound; but never could they produce order or organisation on an extensive scale, or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate explanation. to believe that these fortuitous and indirected movements could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. yet no consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance hypothesis. all the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists, from democritus and epicurus to diderot and lange, have devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our present world--a special collocation among the countless millions of collocations, past and future. throw the letters of the greek alphabet, it has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the 'iliad' and all the greek books. the theory of probabilities, i need hardly say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd.... but what is the 'iliad' to the hymn of creation and the drama of providence?" &c. now this i conceive to have been a fully valid argument at the time it was published, and indeed the most convincing of all the arguments in favour of theism. but, as already so frequently pointed out, the considerations adduced in chapter iv. of the present work are utterly destructive of this argument. for this argument assumes, rightly enough, that the only alternative we have in choosing our hypothesis concerning the final explanation of things is either to regard that explanation as intelligence or as fortuity. this, i say, was a legitimate argument a few months ago, because up to that time no one had shown that strictly natural causes, as distinguished from chances, could conceivably be able to produce a cosmos; and although the several previous writers to whom professor flint alludes--and he might have alluded to others in this connection--entertained a dim anticipation of the fact that natural causes might alone be sufficient to produce the observed universe, still these dim anticipations were worthless as _arguments_ so long as it remained impossible to suggest any natural _principle_ whereby such a result could have been conceivably effected by such causes. but it is evident that professor flint's time-honoured argument is now completely overthrown, unless it can be proved that there is some radical error in the reasoning whereby i have endeavoured to show that natural causes not only _may_, but _must_, have produced existing order. the overthrow is complete, because the very groundwork of the argument in question is knocked away; a third possibility, of the nature of a necessity, is introduced, and therefore the alternative is no longer between intelligence and fortuity, but between intelligence and natural causation. whereas the overwhelming strength of the argument from order has hitherto consisted in the supposition of intelligence as the one and only conceivable cause of the integration of things, my exposition in chapter iv. has shown that such integration must have been due, at all events in a relative or proximate sense, to a strictly physical cause--the persistence of force and the consequent self-evolution of natural law. and the question as to whether or not intelligence may not have been the absolute or ultimate cause is manifestly a question altogether alien to the argument from order; for if existing order admits of being accounted for, in a relative or proximate sense, by merely physical causes, the argument from a relative or proximate order is not at liberty to infer or to assume the existence of any higher or more ultimate cause. although, therefore, in chapter v., i have been careful to point out that the fact of existing order having been due to proximate or natural causes does not actually _disprove_ the possible existence of an ultimate and supernatural cause, still it must be carefully observed that this _negative_ fact cannot possibly justify any _positive_ inference to the existence of such a cause. thus, upon the whole, it may be said, without danger of reasonable dispute, that as the argument from order has hitherto derived its immense weight entirely from the fact that intelligence appeared to be the one and only cause sufficient to produce the observed integration of the cosmos, this immense weight has now been completely counterpoised by the demonstration that other causes of a strictly physical kind must have been instrumental, if not themselves alone sufficient, to produce this integration, so that, just as in the case of astronomy the demonstration of the one natural principle of gravity was sufficient to classify under one physical explanation several observed facts which many persons had previously attributed to supernatural causes; and just as in the more complex science of geology the demonstration of the one principle of uniformitarianism was sufficient to explain, without the aid of supernaturalism, a still greater number of facts; and, lastly, just as in the case of the still more complex science of biology the demonstration of the one principle of natural selection was sufficient to marshal under one scientific, or natural, hypothesis an almost incalculable number of facts which were previously explained by the metaphysical hypothesis of supernatural design; so in the science which includes all other sciences, and which we may term the science of cosmology, i assert with confidence that in the one principle of the persistence of force we have a demonstrably harmonising principle, whereby all the facts within our experience admit of being collocated under one natural explanation, without there being the smallest reason to attribute these facts to any supernatural cause. but perhaps the immense change which these considerations must logically be regarded as having produced in the speculative standing of the argument from teleology will be better appreciated if i continue to quote from professor flint's very forcible and thoroughly logical exposition of the previous standing of this argument. he says:-- "to ascribe the origination of order to _law_ is a manifest evasion of the real problem. law is order. law is the very thing to be explained. the question is--has law a reason, or is it without a reason? the unperverted human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason." i do not know where a more terse and accurate statement of the case could be found; and to my mind the question so lucidly put admits of the direct answer--law clearly has a reason of a purely physical kind. and therefore i submit that the following quotation which professor flint makes from professor jevons, logical as it was when written, must now be regarded as embodying an argument which is obsolete. "as an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimited space in an unlimited number of modes of distribution, there must, even granting matter to have had all its laws from eternity, have been at some moment in time, out of the unlimited choices and distributions possible, that one choice and distribution which yielded the fair and orderly universe that now exists. only out of rational choice can order have come." but clearly the alternative is now no longer one between chance and choice. if natural laws arise by way of necessary consequence from the persistence of a single self-existing substance, it becomes a matter of scientific (though not of logical) demonstration that "the fair and orderly universe that now exists" is the one and only universe that, in the nature of things, _can_ exist. but to continue this interesting passage from dr. flint's work--interesting not only because it sets forth the previous standing of this subject with so much clearness, but also because the work is of such very recent publication. "the most common mode, perhaps, of evading the problem which order presents to reason is the indication of the process by which the order has been realised. from democritus to the latest darwinian there have been men who supposed they had completely explained away the evidences of design in nature when they had described the physical antecedents of the arrangements appealed to as evidences. aristotle showed the absurdity of this supposition more than years ago." now this is a perfectly valid criticism on all such previous non-theistical arguments as were drawn from an "indication of the process by which the order has been realised;" for in all these previous arguments there was an absence of any physical explanation of the _ultimate_ cause of the process contemplated, and so long as this ultimate cause remained obscure, although the evidence of design might by these arguments have been excluded from particular processes, the evidence of design could not be similarly excluded from the ultimate cause of these processes. thus, for instance, it is doubtless illogical, as professor flint points out, in any darwinian to argue that because his theory of natural selection supplies him with a natural explanation of the process whereby organisms have been adapted to their surroundings, therefore this process need not itself have been designed. that is to say, in general terms, as insisted upon in the foregoing essay, the discovery of a natural law or orderly process cannot of itself justify the inference that this law or method of orderly procedure is not itself a product of supernatural intelligence; but, on the contrary, the very existence of such orderly processes, considered only in relation to their products, must properly be regarded as evidence of the best possible kind in favour of supernatural intelligence, _provided that no natural cause can be suggested as adequate to explain the origin of these processes_. but this is precisely what the persistence of force, considered as a natural cause, must be pronounced as necessarily competent to achieve; for we can clearly see that all these processes obviously must and actually do derive their origin from this one causative principle. and whether or not behind this one causative principle of natural law there exists a still more ultimate cause in the form of a supernatural intelligence, this is a question altogether foreign to any argument from teleology, seeing that teleology, in so far as it is _teleology_, can only rest upon the observed facts of the cosmos; and if these facts admit of being explained by the action of a single causative principle inherent in the cosmos itself, teleology is not free to assume the action of any causative principle of a more ultimate character. still, as i have repeatedly insisted, these considerations do not entitle us dogmatically to deny the existence of some such more ultimate principle; all that these considerations do is to remove any rational argument from teleological sources that any such more ultimate principle exists. therefore i am, of course, quite at one with professor flint when he says professor huxley "admits that the most thoroughgoing evolutionist must at least assume 'a primordial molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences,' and 'is thereby at the mercy of the theologist, who can defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to involve the phenomena of the universe.' granting this much, he is logically bound to grant more. if the entire evolution of the universe may have been intended, the several stages of its evolution may have been intended, and they may have been intended for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the collective evolution or its final result." now that such _may have been_ the case, i have been careful to insist in chapter v.; all i am now concerned with is to show that, in view of the considerations adduced in chapter iv., there is no longer any evidence to prove, or even to indicate, that such _has been_ the case. and with reference to this opportune quotation from professor huxley i may remark, that the "thoroughgoing evolutionist" is now no longer "at the mercy of the theologian" to any further extent than that of not being able to disprove a purely metaphysical hypothesis, which is as certainly superfluous, in any scientific sense, as the fundamental data of science are certainly true. it may seem almost unnecessary to extend this postscript by pursuing further the criticism on professor flint's exposition in the light of "a single new reason ... for the denial of design" which he challenges; but there are nevertheless one or two other points which it seems desirable to consider. professor flint writes:-- "m. comte imagines that he has shown the inference from design, from the order and stability of the solar system, to be unwarranted, when he has pointed out the physical conditions through which that order and stability are secured, and the process by which they have been obtained.... now the assertion that the peculiarities which make the solar system stable and the earth habitable have flowed naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter is one which greatly requires proof, but which has never received it. in saying this, we do not challenge the proof of the nebular theory itself. that theory may or may not be true. we are quite willing to suppose it true--to grant that it has been scientifically established. what we maintain is, that even if we admit unreservedly that the earth and the whole system to which it belongs once existed in a nebulous state, from which they were gradually evolved into their present condition conformably to physical laws, we are in no degree entitled to infer from the admission the conclusion which comte and others have drawn. the man who fancies that the nebular theory implies that the law of gravitation, or any other physical law, has of itself determined the course of cosmical evolution, so that there is no need for believing in the existence and operation of a divine mind, proves merely that he is not exempt from reasoning very illogically. the solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and constitution, if it was neither too fluid nor too tenacious--if its atoms were all numbered, its elements all weighed, its constituents all disposed in due relation to one another; that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a system of order, which intelligence alone could account for, as the worlds which have been developed from it. the origin of the nebula thus presents itself to reason as a problem which demands solution no less than the origin of the planets. all the properties and laws of the nebula require to be accounted for. what origin are we to give them? it must be either reason or unreason. we may go back as far as we please, but, at every step and stage of the regress we must find ourselves confronted with the same question, the same alternative--intelligent purpose or colossal chance." now, so far as comte is here guilty of the fallacy i have already dwelt upon of building a destructive argument upon a demonstration of mere orderly processes in nature, as distinguished from a demonstration of the natural cause of these processes, it is not for me to defend him. all we can say with regard to him in this connection is, that, having a sort of scientific presentiment that if the knowledge of his day were sufficiently advanced it would prove destructive of supernaturalism in the higher and more abstruse provinces of physical speculation, as it had previously proved in the lower and less abstruse of these provinces, comte allowed his inferences to outrun their legitimate basis. being necessarily ignorant of the one generating cause of orderly processes in nature, he improperly allowed himself to found conclusions on the basis of these processes alone, which could only be properly founded on the basis of their cause. but freely granting this much to professor flint, and the rest of his remarks in this connection will be found, in view of the altered standing of this subject, to be open to amendment. for, in the first place, no one need now resort to the illogical supposition that "the law of gravitation or any other physical law has of itself determined the course of cosmical evolution." what we may argue, and what must be conceded to us, is, that the common substratum of all physical laws was at one time sufficient to produce the simplest physical laws, and that throughout the whole course of evolution this common substratum has always been sufficient to produce the more complex laws in the ascending series of their ever-increasing number and variety. and hence it becomes obvious that the "origin of the nebula" presents a difficulty neither greater nor less than "the origin of the planets," since, "if we may go back as far as we please," we can entertain no _scientific_ doubt that we should come to a time, prior even to the nebula, when the substance of the solar system existed merely as such--_i.e._, in an almost or in a wholly undifferentiated form, the product, no doubt, of endless cycles of previous evolutions and dissolutions of formal differentiations. therefore, although it is undoubtedly true that "the solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed" those particular attributes which were necessity to the evolution of such a product, this consideration is clearly deprived of all its force from our present point of view. for unless it can be shown that there is some independent reason for believing these particular attributes--which must have been of a more and more simple a character the further we recede in time--to have been miraculously imposed, the analogy is overwhelming that they all progressively arose _by way of natural law_. and if so, the universe which has been thus produced is the only universe in this particular point of space and time which could have been thus produced. that it is an _orderly_ universe we have seen _ad nauseam_ to be no argument in favour of its having been a _designed_ universe, so long as the cause of its order--general laws--can be seen to admit of a natural explanation. thus there is clearly nothing to be gained on the side of teleology by going back to the dim and dismal birth of the nebula; for no "thoroughgoing evolutionist" would for one moment entertain the supposition that natural law in the simplest phases of its development partook any more of a miraculous character than it does in its more recent and vastly more complex phases. the absence of knowledge must not be used as equivalent to its presence; and if analogy can be held to justify any inference whatsoever, surely we may conclude with confidence that if existing general laws admit of being conceivably attributed to a natural genesis, the primordial laws of a condensing nebula must have been the same. there is another passage in professor flint's work to which it seems desirable to refer. it begins thus: "there is the law of heredity: like produces like. but why is there such a law? why does like produce like?... physical science cannot answer these questions; but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered. i can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than that there is a god of wisdom, who designed that the world should be for all ages the abode of life," &c. now here we have in another form that same vicious tendency to take refuge in the more obscure cases of physical causation as proofs of supernatural design--the obscurity in this case arising from the _complexity_ of the causes and work, as in the former case it arose from their _remoteness_ in time. but in both cases the same answer is patent, viz., that although "physical science cannot answer these questions" by pointing out the precise sequence of causes and effects, physical science is nevertheless quite as certain that this precise sequence arises in its last resort from the persistence of force, as she would be were she able to trace the whole process. and therefore, in view of the considerations set forth in chapter iv. of this work, it is no longer open to professor flint or to any other writer logically to assert--"i can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to" such questions "than that there is a god of wisdom." the same answer awaits this author's further disquisition on other biological laws, so it is needless to make any further quotations in this connection. but there is one other principle embodied in some of these passages which it seems undesirable to overlook. it is said, for instance, "natural selection might have had no materials, or altogether insufficient materials, to work with, or the circumstances might have been such that the lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle for life. if the earth were covered with water, fish would survive and higher creatures would perish." now the principle here embodied--viz., that had the conditions of evolution been other than they were, the results would have been different--is, of course, true; but clearly, on the view that _all_ natural laws spring from the persistence of force, no other conditions than those which actually occurred, or are now occurring, could ever have occurred,--the whole course of evolution must have been, in all its phases and in all its processes, an unconditional necessity. but if it is said, how fortunate that the outcome, being unconditionally necessary, has happened to be so good as it is; i answer that the remark is legitimate enough if it is not intended to convey an implication that the general quality of the outcome points to beneficent design as to its cause. such an implication would not be legitimate, because, in the first place, we have no means of knowing in how many cases, whether in planets, stars, or systems, the course of evolution has failed to produce life and mind--the one known case of this earth, whether or not it is the one success out of millions of abortions, being of necessity the only known case. in how vastly greater a number of cases the course of evolution may have been, so to speak, deflected by some even slight, though strictly necessary, cause from producing self-conscious intelligence, it is impossible to conjecture. but this consideration, be it observed, is not here adduced in order to _disprove_ the assertion that telluric evolution has been effected by intelligence; it is merely adduced to prove that such an assertion cannot rest on the single known result of telluric evolution, so long as an infinite number of the results of evolution elsewhere remain unknown. and now, lastly, it must be observed that even in the one case with which we are acquainted, the net product of evolution is not such as can of itself point us to _beneficent_ design. professor flint, indeed, in common with theologians generally, argues that it does. i will therefore briefly criticise his remarks on this subject, believing, as i do, that they form a very admirable illustration of what i conceive to be a general principle--viz., that minds which already believe in the existence of a deity are, as a rule, not in a position to view this question of beneficence in nature in a perfectly impartial manner. for if the existence of a deity is presupposed, a mind with any particle of that most noble quality--reverence--will naturally hesitate to draw conclusions that partake of the nature of blasphemy; and therefore, unconsciously perhaps to themselves, they endeavour in various ways to evade the evidence which, if honestly and impartially considered, can scarcely fail to negative the argument from beneficence in the universe. professor flint argues that the "law of over-production," and the consequent struggle for existence, being "the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life," is "a means to an end worthy of divine wisdom." "although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. all the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, and the dog its sagacity. the inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. the suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that god has made even animals for some higher end than happiness--that he cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves it was intended to serve." now, whatever may be thought of such an argument as an attempted justification of beneficent design already on independent ground believed to exist, it is manifestly no argument at all as establishing any presumption in favour of such design, unless it could be shown that the deity is so far limited in his power of adapting means to ends that the particular method adopted in this case was the best, all things considered, that he was able to adopt. for supposing the deity to be, what professor flint maintains that he is--viz., omnipotent--and there can be no inference more transparent than that such wholesale suffering, for whatever ends designed, exhibits an incalculably greater deficiency of beneficence in the divine character than that which we know in any, the very worst, of human characters. for let us pause for one moment to think of what suffering in nature means. some hundreds of millions of years ago some millions of millions of animals must be supposed to have been sentient. since that time till the present, there must have been millions and millions of generations of millions of millions of individuals. and throughout all this period of incalculable duration, this inconceivable host of sentient organisms have been in a state of unceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain. looking to the outcome, we find that more than half of the species which have survived the ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient forms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find teeth and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for torment--everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, and sickness, with oozing blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence that dimly close in deaths of brutal torture! is it said that there are compensating enjoyments? i care not to strike the balance; the enjoyments i plainly perceive to be as physically necessary as the pains, and this whether or not evolution is due to design. therefore all i am concerned with is to show, that if such a state of things is due to "omnipotent design," the omnipotent designer must be concluded, so far as reason can infer, to be non-beneficent. and this it is not difficult to show. when i see a rabbit panting in the iron jaws of a spring-trap, i abhor the devilish nature of the being who, with full powers of realising what pain means, can deliberately employ his noble faculties of invention in contriving a thing so hideously cruel. but if i could believe that there is a being who, with yet higher faculties of thought and knowledge, and with an unlimited choice of means to secure his ends, has contrived untold thousands of mechanisms no less diabolical than a spring-trap; i should call that being a fiend, were all the world besides to call him god. am i told that this is arrogance? it is nothing of the kind; it is plain morality, and to say otherwise would be to hide our eyes from murder because we dread the murderer. am i told that i am not competent to judge the purposes of the almighty? i answer that if these are _purposes_, i _am_ able to judge of them so far as i can see; and if i am expected to judge of his purposes when they appear to be beneficent, i am in consistency obliged also to judge of them when they appear to be malevolent. and it can be no possible extenuation of the latter to point to the "final result" as "order and beauty," so long as the means adopted by the "_omnipotent_ designer" are known to have been so revolting. all that we could legitimately assert in this case would be, that so far as observation can extend, "he cares for animal perfection" _to the exclusion of_ "animal enjoyment," and even to the _total disregard_ of animal suffering. but to assert this would merely be to deny beneficence as an attribute of god. the dilemma, therefore, which epicurus has stated with great lucidity, and which professor flint quotes, appears to me so obvious as scarcely to require statement. the dilemma is, that, looking to the facts of organic nature, theists must abandon their belief, either in the divine omnipotence, or in the divine beneficence. and yet, such is the warping effect of preformed beliefs on the mind, that even so candid a writer as professor flint can thus write of this most obvious truth:-- "the late mr. john stuart mill, for no better reason than that nature sometimes drowns men and burns them, and that childbirth is a painful process, maintained that god could not possibly be infinite. i shall not say what i think of the shallowness and self-conceit displayed by such an argument. what it proves is not the finiteness of god, but the littleness of man. the mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes and limit the greatness of its creator." but the argument--or rather the truism--in question is an attempt to do neither the one nor the other; it simply asserts the patent fact that, if god is omnipotent, and so had an unlimited choice of means whereby to accomplish the ends of "animal perfection," "animal enjoyment," and the rest; then the fact of his having chosen to adopt the means which he has adopted is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his beneficence. and on the other hand, if he is beneficent, the fact of his having adopted these means in order that the sum of ultimate enjoyment might exceed the sum of concomitant pain, is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his omnipotence. to a man who already believes, on independent grounds, in an omnipotent and beneficent deity, it is no doubt possible to avoid facing this dilemma, and to rest content with the assumption that, in a sense beyond the reach of human reason, or even of human conception, the two horns of this dilemma must be united in some transcendental reconciliation; but if a man undertakes to reason on the subject at all, as he must and ought when the question is as to the _existence_ of such a deity, then clearly he has no alternative but to allow that the dilemma is a hopeless one. with inverted meaning, therefore, may we quote professor flint's words against himself:--"the mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes ... of its creator;" for certainly, if professor flint's usually candid mind has had a creator, it nowhere displays the "littleness" of prejudice in so marked a degree as it does when "measuring his attributes." thus in a subsequent chapter he deals at greater length with this difficulty of the apparent failure of beneficence in nature, arguing, in effect, that as pain and suffering "serve many good ends" in the way of warning animals of danger to life, &c., therefore we ought to conclude that, if we could see farther, we should see pain and suffering to be unmitigated good, or nearly so. now this argument, as i have previously said, may possibly be admissible as between christians or others who _already_ believe in the existence and in the beneficence of god; but it is only the blindest prejudice which can fail to perceive that the argument is quite without relevancy when the question is as to the _evidences_ of such existence and the _evidences_ of such character. for where the _fact_ of such an existence and character is the question in dispute, it clearly can be no argument to state its bare assumption by saying that if we knew more of nature we should find the relative preponderance of good over evil to be immeasurably greater than that which we now perceive. the platform of argument on which the question of "theism" must be discussed is that of the observable cosmos; and if, as dr. flint is constrained to admit, there is a fearful spectacle of misery presented by this cosmos, it becomes mere question-begging to gloss over this aspect of the subject by any vague assumption that the misery must have some unobservable ends of so transcendentally beneficent a nature, that were they known they would justify the means. indeed, this kind of discussion seems to me worse than useless for the purposes which the professor has in view; for it only serves by contrast to throw out into stronger relief the natural and the unstrained character of the adverse interpretation of the facts. according to this adverse interpretation, sentiency has been evolved by natural selection to secure the benefits which are pointed out by professor flint; and therefore the fact of this, its cause, having been a _mindless_ cause, clearly implies that the _restriction_ of pain and suffering cannot be an active principle, or a _vera causa_, as between species and species, though it must be such within the limits of the same organism, and to a lesser extent within the limits of the same species. and this is just what we find to be the case. therefore, without the need of resorting to wholly arbitrary assumptions concerning transcendental reconciliations between apparently needless suffering and a supposed almighty beneficence, the non-theistic hypothesis is saved by merely opening our eyes to the observable facts around us, and there seeing that pain and misery, alike in the benefits which they bring and in the frightful excesses which they manifest, play just that part in nature which this hypothesis would lead us to expect. therefore, to sum up these considerations on physical suffering, the case between a theist and a sceptic as to the question of divine beneficence is seen to be a case of extreme simplicity. the theist believes in such beneficence by purposely concealing from his mind all adverse evidence--feeling, on the one side, that to entertain the doubt to which this evidence points would be to hold dalliance with blasphemy, and, on the other side, that the subject is of so transcendental a nature that, in view of so great a risk, it is better to avoid impartial reasoning upon it. a sceptic, on the other hand, is under no such obligation to preconceived ideas, and is therefore free to draw unbiassed inferences as to the character of god, if he exists, to the extent which such character is indicated by the sphere of observable nature. and, as i have said, when the subject is so viewed, the inference is unavoidable that, so far as human reason can penetrate, god, if he exists, must either be non-infinite in his resources, or non-beneficent in his designs. therefore it is evident that when the _being_ of god, as distinguished from his _character_, is the subject in dispute, theism can gain nothing by an appeal to evidences of _beneficent_ designs. if such evidences were unequivocal, then indeed the argument which they would establish to an intelligent cause of nature would be almost irresistible; for the fact of the external world being in harmony with the moral nature of man would be unaccountable except on the supposition of both having derived their origin from a common _moral_ source; and morality implies intelligence. but as it is, all the so-called evidence of divine beneficence in nature is, without any exception of a kind that is worthless as proving _design_; for all the facts admit of being explained equally well on the supposition of their having been due to purely physical processes, acting through the various biological laws which we are now only beginning to understand. and further than this, so far are these facts from proving the existence of a moral cause, that, in view of the alternative just stated, they even ground a positive argument to its negation. for, as we have seen, all these facts are just of such a kind as we should expect to be the facts, on the supposition of their having been due to natural causes--_i.e._, causes which could have had no moral solicitude for animal happiness as such. let us now, in conclusion, dwell on this antithesis at somewhat greater length. if natural selection has played any large share in the process of organic evolution, it is evident that animal enjoyment, being an important factor in this natural cause, must always have been furthered _to the extent in which it was necessary for the adaptation of organisms to their environment_ that it should. and such we invariably find to be the limits within which animal enjoyments _are_ confined. on the other hand, so long as the adaptations in question are not complete, so long must more or less of suffering be entailed--the capacity for suffering, as for enjoyment, being no doubt itself a product of natural selection. but as all specific types are perpetually struggling together, it is manifest that the competition must prevent any considerable number of types from becoming so far adapted to their environment of other types as to become exempt from suffering as a result of this competition. there being no one integrating cause of an intelligent or moral nature to supply the conditions of happiness to each organic type without the misery of this competition, such happiness as animals have is derived from the heavy expenditure of pain suffered by themselves and by their ancestry. thus, whether we look to animal pleasures or to animal pains, the result is alike just what we should expect to find on the supposition of these pleasures and pains having been due to necessary and physical, as distinguished from intelligent and moral, antecedents; for how different is that which is from that which might have been! not only might beneficent selection have eliminated the countless species of parasites which now destroy the health and happiness of all the higher organisms; not only might survival of the fittest, in a moral sense, have determined that rapacious and carnivorous animals should yield their places in the world to harmless and gentle ones; not only might life have been without sickness and death without pain;--but how might the exigences and the welfare of species have been consulted by the structures and the habits of one another! but no! amid all the millions of mechanisms and habits in organic nature, all of which are so beautifully adapted to the needs of the species presenting them, there is _no single instance_ of any mechanism or habit occurring in one species for the exclusive benefit of another species--although, as we should expect on the non-theistic theory, there are some comparatively few cases of a mechanism or a habit which is of benefit to its possessor being also utilised by other species. yet, on the beneficent-design theory, it is impossible to understand why, when all mechanisms and habits in the same species are invariably correlated for the benefit of that species, there should never be any such correlation between mechanisms and habits of different species. for how magnificent, how sublime a display of supreme beneficence would nature have afforded if all her sentient animals had been so inter-related as to minister to each other's happiness! organic species might then have been likened to a countless multitude of voices, all singing to their creator in one harmonious psalm of praise. but, as it is, we see no vestige of such correlation; every species is for itself, and for itself alone--an outcome of the always and everywhere fiercely raging struggle for life. so much, then, for the case of _physical_ evil; but dr. flint also treats of the case of _moral_ evil. let us see what this well-equipped writer can make of this old problem in the present year of grace. he says--"but it will be objected, could not god have made moral creatures who would be certain always to choose what is right, always to acquiesce in his holy will?... well, far be it from me to deny that god could have originated a sinless moral system.... but if questioned as to why he has not done better, i feel no shame in confessing my ignorance. it seems to me that when you have resolved the problem of the origin of moral evil into the question, why has god not originated a moral universe in which the lowest moral being would be as excellent as the archangels are? you have at once shown it to be _speculatively incapable of solution_ [italics mine], and practically without importance[!]. the question is one which would obviously give rise to another, why has god not created only moral beings as much superior to the archangels as they are superior to the lowest australian aborigines? but no complete answer can be given to a question which may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end. we have, besides, neither the facts nor the faculties to answer such questions."[ ] now i confess that this argument presents to my mind more of subtlety than sense. i had previously imagined that the archangels were supposed to enjoy a condition of moral existence which might fairly be thought to remove them from any association with that of the australian aborigines. but as this question is one that belongs to divinity, i am here quite prepared to bow to professor flint's authority--hoping, however, that he is prepared to take the responsibility should the archangels ever care to accuse me of calumny. but, as a logician, i must be permitted to observe, that if i ask, why am i not better than i am? it is no answer to tell me, because the archangels are not better than they are. for aught that i know to the contrary, the archangels may be morally _perfect_--as an authority in such matters has told us that even "just men" may become,--and therefore, for aught that i know to the contrary, professor flint's regress of moral degrees _ad infinitum_, may be an ontological absurdity. but granting, for the sake of argument, that archangels fall infinitely short of moral perfection, and i should only be able to see in the fact a hopeless aggravation of my previous difficulty. if it is hard to reconcile the supreme goodness of god with the moral turpitude of man, much more would it be hard to do so if his very angels are depraved. therefore, if the reasonable question which i originally put "may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end," the goodness of god must simply be pronounced a delusion. for the question which i originally put was no mere flimsy question of a stupidly unreal description. my own moral depravity is a matter of painful certainty to me, and i want to know why, if there is a god of infinite power and goodness, he should have made me thus. and in answer i am told that my question is "practically without importance," because there may be an endless series of beings who, in their several degrees, are in a similar predicament to myself. perhaps they are; but if so, the moral evil with which i am directly acquainted is made all the blacker by the fact that it is thus but a drop in an infinite ocean of moral imperfection. when, therefore, professor flint goes on to say, "we ought to be content if we can show that what god has done is wise and right, and not perplex ourselves as to why he has not done an infinity of other things," i answer, most certainly; but _can_ we show that what god has done is wise and right? unquestionably not. that what he has done _may_ be wise and right, could we see his whole scheme of things, no careful thinker will deny; but to suppose it can be _shown_ that he has done this, is an instance of purblind fanaticism which is most startling in a work on _theism_. "the best world, _we may be assured_, that our fancies can feign, would in reality be far inferior to the world god has made, whatever imperfections we may think we see in it." are we leading a sermon on the datum "god is love"? no; but a work on the questions, is there a god? and, if so, is he a god of love? and yet the work is written by a man who evidently tries to argue fairly. what shall we say of the despotism of preformed beliefs? may we not say at least this much--that those who endeavour to reconcile their theories of divine goodness with the facts of human evil might well appropriate to themselves the words above quoted, "we have neither the facts nor the faculties to answer such questions"? for the "facts" indeed are absent, and the "faculties" of impartial thought must be absent also, if this obvious truth cannot be seen--that "these questions" only derive their "speculatively unanswerable" character from the rational falsity of the manner by which it is sought to answer them. the "facts" of our moral nature, so far as honest reason can perceive, belie the hypothesis of theism; and although the "faculties" of man may be forced by prejudice into an acceptance of contradictory propositions, the truth is obvious that only by the hypothesis of evolution can that old-tied knot be cut--the origin of evil. the form of theism for which dr. flint is arguing is the current form, viz., that there is a god who combines in himself the attributes of _infinite_ power and _perfect_ goodness--a god at once _omnipotent_ and _wholly_ moral. but, in view of the fact that moral evil exists in man, the proposition that god is omnipotent and the proposition that he is wholly moral become contradictory; and therefore the fact of moral evil can only be met, either by abandoning one or other of these propositions, or by altogether rejecting the hypothesis of theism. * * * * * iii. the speculative standing of materialism. as a continuation of my criticism on mr. fiske's views, i think it is desirable to add a few words concerning the speculative annihilation with which he supposes mr. spencer's doctrines to have visited materialism. of course it is a self-evident truism that the doctrine of relativity is destructive of materialism, if by materialism we mean a theory which ignores that doctrine. in other words, the doctrine of relativity, if accepted, clearly excludes the doctrine that matter, _as known phenomenally_, is at all likely to be a true representative of whatever _thing-in-itself_ it may be that constitutes mind. but this position is fully established by the doctrine of relativity alone, and is therefore not in the least affected, either by way of confirmation or otherwise, by mr. spencer's extended doctrine of the unknowable--it being only because the latter doctrine presupposes the doctrine of relativity that it is exclusive of materialism in the sense which has just been stated. so far, therefore, mr. spencer's writings cannot be held to have any special bearing on the doctrine of materialism. such a special bearing is only exerted by these writings when they proceed to show that "it seems an imaginable possibility that units of external force may be identical in nature with the units of the force known as feeling." let us then ascertain how far it is true that the argument already quoted, and which leads to this conclusion, is utterly destructive of materialism. in the first place, i may observe that this argument differs in several instructive particulars from the anti-materialistic argument of locke, which we have already had occasion to consider. for while locke erroneously imagined that the test of inconceivability is of equivalent value _wherever_ it is applied, save only where it conflicts with preconceived ideas on the subject of theism (see appendix a.), spencer, of course, is much too careful a thinker to fall into so obvious a fallacy. but again, it is curious to observe that in the anti-materialistic argument of spencer the test of inconceivability is used in a manner the precise opposite of that in which it is used in the anti-materialistic argument of locke. for while the ground of locke's argument is that materialism must be untrue because it is inconceivable that matter (and force) should be of a psychical nature; the ground of spencer's argument is that what we know as force (and matter) may _not_ inconceivably be of a psychical nature. for my own part, i think that spencer's argument is, psychologically speaking, the more valid of the two; but nevertheless i think that, logically speaking, it is likewise invalid to a perceptibly great, and to a further indefinite, degree. for the argument sets out with the reflection that we can only know matter and force as symbols of consciousness, while we know consciousness directly, and therefore that we can go further in conceivably translating matter and force into terms of mind than _vice versa_. and this is true, but it does not therefore follow that the truth is more likely to lie in the direction that thought can most easily travel. for although i am at one with mr. spencer, whom mr. fiske follows, in regarding his test of truth--viz., inconceivability of a negation--as the most _ultimate_ test within our reach, i cannot agree with him that in this particular case it is the most _trustworthy_ test within our reach. i cannot do so because the reflection is forced upon me that, "as the terms which are contemplated in this particular case are respectively the highest abstractions of objective and of subjective existence, the test of truth in question is neutralised by directly encountering the inconceivable relation that exists between subject and object." or, in other words, as before stated, "_whatever_ the cause of mind may be, we can clearly perceive it to be a subjective necessity of the case that, in ultimate analysis, we should find it more easy to conceive of this cause as resembling mind--the only entity of which we are directly conscious--than to conceive of it as any other entity of which we are only indirectly conscious." when, therefore, mr. spencer argues that "it is impossible to interpret inner existence in terms of outer existence," while it is not so impossible to interpret outer existence in terms of inner existence, the fact is merely what we should in any case expect _à priori_ to be the fact, and therefore as a fact it is not a very surprising discovery _à posteriori_. so that when mr. fiske proceeds to make this fact the basis of his argument, that because we can more conceivably regard objective existence as like in kind to subjective existence than conversely, therefore we should conclude that there is a corresponding probability in favour of the more conceivable proposition, i demur to his argument. for, fully accepting the fact on which the argument rests, and it seems to me, in view of what i have said, that the latter assigns an altogether disproportionate value to the test of inconceivability in this case. far from endowing this test with so great an authority in this case, i should regard it not only as perceptibly of very small validity, but, as i have said, invalid to a degree which we have no means of ascertaining. if it be asked, what other gauge of probability can we have in this matter other than such a direct appeal to consciousness? i answer, that this appeal being here _à priori_ invalid, we are left to fall back upon the formal probability which is established by an application of scientific canons to objective phenomena. (see footnote in § .) for, be it carefully observed, mr. spencer, and his disciple mr. fiske, are not idealists. were this the case, of course the test of an immediate appeal to consciousness would be to them the only test available. but, on the contrary, as all the world knows, mr. spencer asserts the existence of an unknown reality, of which all phenomena are the manifestations. consequently, what we call force and matter are, according to this doctrine, phenomenal manifestations of this objective reality. that is to say, for aught that we can know, force and matter may be anything within the whole range of the possible; and the only limitation that can be assigned to them is, that they are modes of existence which are independent of, or objective to, our individual consciousness, but which are uniformly translated into consciousness as force and matter. now it does not signify one iota for the purposes of materialism whether these our symbolical representations of force and matter are accurate or inaccurate representations of their corresponding realities,--unless, of course, some _independent_ reason could be shown for supposing that in their reality they resemble mind. call force _x_ and matter _y_, and so long as we are agreed that _x_ and _y_ are _objective realities which are uniformly translated into consciousness as force and matter_, the materialistic deductions remain unaffected by this mere change in our terminology; these essential facts are allowed to remain substantially as before, namely, that there is an external something or external somethings--matter and force, or _x_ and _y_--which themselves display no observable tokens of consciousness, but which are invariably associated with consciousness in a highly distinctive manner. i dwell at length upon this subject, because although mr. spencer himself does not appear to attach much weight to his argument, mr. fiske, as we have seen, elevates it into a basis for "cosmic theism." yet so far is this argument from "ruling out," as mr. fiske asserts, the essential doctrine of materialism--_i.e._, the doctrine that what we know as mind is an effect of certain collocations and distributions of _what we know_ as matter and force--that the argument might be employed with almost the same degree of effect, or absence of effect, to disprove any instance of recognised causation. thus, for example, the doctrine of materialism is no more "ruled out" by the reflection that what we cognise as cerebral matter is only cognised relatively, than would the doctrine of chemical equivalents be "ruled out" by the parallel reflection that what we cognise as chemical elements are only cognised relatively. i say advisedly, "with _almost_ the same degree of effect," because, to be strictly accurate, we ought not altogether to ignore the indefinitely slender presumption which mr. spencer's subjective test of inconceivability establishes on the side of spiritualism, as against the objective evidence of causation on the side of materialism. as this is an important subject, i will be a little more explicit. we are agreed that force and matter are entities external to consciousness, of which we can possess only symbolical knowledge. therefore, as we have said, force and matter may be anything within the whole range of the possible. but we know that mind is a possible entity, while we have no certain knowledge of any other possible entity. hence we are justified in saying, it is possible that force and matter may be identical with the only entity which we know as certainly possible; but forasmuch as we do not know the sum of possible entities, we have no means of calculating the chances there are that what we know as force and matter are identical in nature with mind. still, that there is _a_ chance we cannot dispute; all we can assert is, that we are unable to determine its value, and that it would be a mistake to suppose we can do so, even in the lowest degree, by mr. spencer's test of inconceivability. nevertheless, the fact that there is such a chance renders it in some indeterminate degree more probable that what we know as force and matter are identical with what we know as mind, than that what we know as oxygen and hydrogen are identical with what we know as water. so that to this extent the essential doctrine of materialism is "ruled out" in a further degree by the philosophy of the unknowable than is the chemical doctrine of equivalents. but, of course, this indefinite possibility of what we know as force and matter being identical with what we know as mind does not neutralise, in any determinable degree, the considerations whereby materialism in its present shape infers that what we know as force and matter are probably distinct from what we know as mind. but i see no reason why materialism should be restricted to this "its present shape." even if we admit to the fullest extent the validity of mr. spencer's argument, and conclude with professor clifford as a matter of probability that "the universe consists entirely of mind-stuff," i do not see that the admission would affect materialism in any essential respect. for here again the admission would amount to little else, so far as materialism is directly concerned, than a change of terminology: instead of calling objective existence "matter," we call it "mind-stuff." i say "to _little_ else," because no doubt in one particular there is here some change introduced in the speculative standing of the subject. so long as matter and mind, _x_ and _y_, are held to be antithetically opposed in substance, so long must materialism suppose that a connection of _causality_ subsists between the two, such that the former substance is _produced_ in some unaccountable way by the latter. but when matter and mind, _x_ and _y_, are supposed to be identical in substance, the need for any additional supposition as to a causal connection is excluded. but unless we hold, what seems to me an uncalled-for opinion, that the essential feature of materialism consists in a postulation of a causal connection between _x_ and _y_, it would appear that the only effect of supposing _x_ and _y_ to be really but one substance _z_, must be that of _strengthening_ the essential doctrine of materialism--the doctrine, namely, that conscious intellectual existence is _necessarily_ associated with that form of existence which we know phenomenally as matter and motion. if it is true that a "a moving molecule of inorganic matter does not possess mind or consciousness, but it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff," then assuredly the central position of materialism is shown to be impregnable. for while it remains as true as ever that mind and consciousness can only emerge when what we know phenomenally as "matter takes the complex form of a living brain," we have abolished the necessity for assuming even a causal connection between the substance of what we know phenomenally as matter and the substance of what we know phenomenally as mind: we have found that, in the last resort, the phenomenal connection between what we know as matter and what we know as mind is actually even more intimate than a connection of causality; we have found that it is a substantial identity. to sum up this discussion. we have considered the bearing of modern speculation on the doctrine of materialism in three successive stages of argument. first, we had to consider the bearing on materialism of the simple doctrine of relativity. here we saw that materialism was only affected to the extent of being compelled to allow that what we know as matter and motion are not known as they are in themselves. but we also saw that, as the inscrutable realities are uniformly translated into consciousness as matter and motion, it still remains as true as ever that _what we know_ as matter and motion may be the causes of what we know as mind. even, therefore, if the supposition of causality is taken to be an essential feature of materialism, materialism would be in no wise affected by substituting for the words matter and motion the symbols _x_ and _y_. the second of the three stages consisted in showing that mr. spencer's argument as to the possible identity of force and feeling is not in itself sufficient to overthrow the doctrine that what we know as matter and motion may be the cause of what we know as mind. for the mere fact of its being more _conceivable_ that units of force should resemble units of feeling than conversely, is no warrant for concluding that in reality any corresponding probability obtains. the test of conceivability, although the most ultimate test that is available, is here rendered vague and valueless by the _à priori_ consideration that _whatever_ the cause of mind may be (if it has a cause), we must find it more easy to conceive of this cause as resembling mind than to conceive of it as resembling any other entity of which we are only conscious indirectly. lastly, in the third place, we saw that even if mr. spencer's argument were fully subscribed to, and mind in its substantial essence were conceded to be causeless, the central position of materialism would still remain unaffected. for mr. spencer does not suppose that his "units of force" are themselves endowed with consciousness, any more than professor clifford supposes his "moving molecules of inorganic matter" to be thus endowed. so that the only change which these possibilities, even if conceded to be actualities, produce in the speculative standing of materialism, is to show that the raw material of consciousness, instead of requiring to be _caused_ by other substances--matter and force, _x_ and _y_,--occurs ready made as those substances. but the essential feature of materialism remains untouched--namely, that what we know as mind is dependent (whether by way of causality or not is immaterial) on highly complex forms of _what we know_ as matter, in association with highly peculiar distributions of _what we know_ as force. * * * * * iv. the final mystery of things. some physicists are inclined to dispute the fundamental proposition in which the whole of mr. spencer's system of philosophy may be said to rest--the proposition, namely, that the fact of the "persistence of force" constitutes the ultimate basis of science. for my own part, i cannot but believe that any disagreement on this matter only arises from some want of mutual understanding; and, therefore, in order to anticipate any criticisms to which the present work may be open on this score, i append this explanatory note. i readily grant that the term "persistence of force" is not a happy one, seeing that the word "force," as used by physicists, does not at the present time convey the full meaning which mr. spencer desires it to convey. but i think that any impartial physicist will be prepared to admit that, in the present state of his science, we are entitled to conclude that energy of position is merely the result of energy of motion; or, in other words, that potential energy is merely an expression of the fact that the universe, as a whole, is replete with actual energy, whose essential characteristic is that it is indestructible. and this may be concluded without committing ourselves to any particular theory as to the physical explanation of gravity; all we need assert is, that in some way or other gravity is the result of ubiquitous energy. and this, it seems to me, we must assert, or else conclude that gravity can never admit of a physical explanation. for all that we mean by a physical explanation is the proved establishment of an equation between two quantities of energy; so that if energy of position does not admit of being interpreted in terms of energy of motion, we must conclude that it does not admit of being interpreted at all--at least not in any physical sense. throughout the foregoing essays, therefore, i have assumed that all forms of energy are but relatively varying expressions of the same fact--the fact, namely, which mr. spencer means to express when he says that force is persistent. and it seems to me almost needless to show that this fact is really the basis of all science. for unless this fact is assumed as a postulate, not only would scientific inquiry become impossible, but all experience would become chaotic. the physicist could not prosecute his researches unless he presupposed that the forces which he measures are of a permanent nature, any more than could the chemist prosecute his researches unless he presupposed that the materials which he estimates by energy-units are likewise of a permanent nature. and similarly with all the other sciences, as well as with every judgment in our daily experience. if, therefore, any one should be hypercritical enough to dispute the position that the doctrine of the conservation of energy constitutes the "ultimate datum" of science, i think it will be enough to observe that if this is _not_ the "ultimate datum" of science, science can have no "ultimate datum" at all. for any datum more ultimate than permanent existence is manifestly impossible, while any such datum as non-permanent existence would clearly render science impossible. even, therefore, if such hypercriticism had a valid basis of apparently adverse fact whereon to stand, i should feel myself justified in neglecting it on _à priori_ grounds; but the only basis on which such hypercriticism can rest is, not the knowledge of any adverse facts, but the ignorance of certain facts which we must either conclude to be facts or else conclude that science can have no ultimate datum whereon to rest. in the foregoing essays, therefore, i have not scrupled to maintain that the ultimate datum of science is destructive of teleology as a scientific argument for theism; because, unless we deny the possibility of any such ultimate datum, and so land ourselves in hopeless scepticism, we must conclude that there can be no datum more ultimate than this--permanent existence; and this is just the datum which we have seen to be destructive of teleology as a scientific argument for theism. it may be well to point out that from this ultimate datum of science--or rather, let us say, of experience--there follows a deductive explanation of the law of causation. for this law, when stripped of all the metaphysical corruptions with which it has been so cumbersomely clothed, simply means that a given collocation of antecedents unconditionally produces a certain consequent. but this fact, otherwise stated, amounts to nothing more than a re-statement of the ultimate datum of experience--the fact that energy is indestructible. for if this latter fact be granted, it is obvious that the so-called law of causation follows as a deductive necessity--or rather, as i have said, that this law becomes but another way of expressing the same fact. this is obvious if we reflect that the only means we have of ascertaining that energy is _not_ destructible, is by observing that similar antecedents _do_ invariably determine similar consequents. it is as a vast induction from all those particular cases of sequence-changes which collectively we call causation that we conclude energy to be indestructible. and, obversely, having concluded energy to be indestructible, we can plainly see that in any particular cases of its manifestation in sequence-phenomena, the unconditional resemblance between effects due to similar causes which is formulated by the law of causation is merely the direct expression of the fact which we had previously concluded. it seems to me, therefore, that the old-standing question concerning the nature of causation ought now properly to be considered as obsolete. doubtless there will long remain a sort of hereditary tendency in metaphysical minds to look upon cause-connection as "a mysterious tie" between antecedent and consequent; but henceforth there is no need for scientific minds to regard this "tie" as "mysterious" in any other sense than the existence of energy is "mysterious." to state the law of causation is merely to state the fact that energy is indestructible. and from this there also arises at once the explanation and the justification of our belief in the uniformity of nature. if energy is, in its relation to us, ubiquitous and persistent, it clearly follows that in all its manifestations which collectively we call nature, similar preceding manifestations must always determine similar succeeding manifestations; for otherwise the energy concerned would require on one or on both of the occasions, either to have become augmented by creation, or dissipated by annihilation. thus our belief in the uniformity of nature, as in the validity of the law of causation, is merely an expression of our belief in the ubiquitous and indestructible character of energy. such being the case, we may fairly conclude that all these old-standing "mysteries" are now merged in the one mystery of existence. and deeper than this it is manifestly impossible that they can be merged; for it is manifestly impossible that existence in the abstract can ever admit of what we call explanation. hence we can clearly see that, in a scientific sense, there must always remain a final mystery of things. but although we can thus see that, from the very meaning of what we call explanation, it follows that at the base of all our explanations there must lie a great inexplicable, i think that the mystery of existence in the abstract may be rendered less appalling if we reflect that, as opposed to existence, there is only one logical alternative--non-existence. supposing, then, our physical explanations to have reached their highest limits by resolving all modes of existence into one mode--force, matter, life, and mind, being shown but different manifestations of the same infinite existence--the final mystery of things would then become resolved into the simple question, why is there existence?--why is there not nothing? let us then first ask, what is "nothing"? is it a mere word, which presents no meaning as corresponding to any objective reality, or has the word a meaning notwithstanding its being an inconceivable one? or, otherwise phrased, is nothing possible or impossible? now, although in ordinary conversation it is generally taken for granted that nothing is possible, there is certainly no more ground for this supposition than there is for its converse--viz., that nothing is merely a word which signifies the negation of possibility. for analysis will show that the choice between these two counter-suppositions can only be made in the presence of knowledge which is necessarily absent--the knowledge whether the universe of existence is finite or infinite. if the universe as a whole is finite, the word nothing would stand as a symbol to denote an unthinkable blank of which a finite universe is the content. and forasmuch as something and nothing would then become actual, as distinguished from nominal correlatives, we could have no guarantee that, in an absolute or transcendental sense, it may not be possible, although it is inconceivable, for something to become nothing or nothing something. hence, if existence is finite, no-existence becomes possible; and the doctrine of the indestructibility of existence becomes, for aught that we can tell, of a merely relative signification. but, on the other hand, if existence is infinite, no-existence becomes impossible; and the doctrine of the indestructibility of existence becomes, in a logical sense, of an absolute signification. for it is manifest that if the universe of existence is without end in space and time, the possibility of no-existence is of necessity excluded, and the word "nothing" thus becomes a mere negation of possibility.[ ] thus, if it be conceded that the universe as a whole is infinite both in space and time, the concession amounts to an abolition of the final mystery of things. for all that we mean by a mystery is something that requires an explanation, and the whole of the final mystery of things is therefore embodied in the question, "why is there existence?--why is there not nothing?" but if the universe of existence be conceded infinite, this question is sufficiently met by the answer, "because existence is, and nothing is not." if it is retorted, but this is no real answer; i reply, it is as real as the question. for to ask, why is there existence? is, upon the supposition which has been conceded, equivalent to asking, why is the possible possible? and if such questions cannot be answered, it is scarcely right to say that on this account they embody a mystery; because the questions are really not rational questions, and therefore the fact of their not admitting of any rational answer cannot be held to show that the questions embody any rational mystery. that there _is_ a rational mystery, in the sense of there being something which can never be _explained_, i do not dispute; all i assert is, that this mystery is inexplicable, only _because there is nothing to explain_; the mystery being ultimate, to ask for an explanation of that which, being ultimate, requires no explanation, is irrational. or, to state the case in another way, if it is asked, why is there not nothing? it is a sufficient answer, on supposition of the universe being infinite, to say, because nothing is nothing; it is merely a word which presents no meaning, and which, so far as anything can be conceived to the contrary, never can present any meaning. the above discussion has proceeded on the supposition of existence being infinite; but practically the same result would follow on the counter-supposition of existence being finite. for although in this case, as we have seen, non-entity would still be included within the range of possibility, it would still be no more conceivable as such than is entity; and hence the question, why is there not nothing? would still be irrational, seeing that, even if the possibility which the question supposes were realised, it would in no wise tend to explain the mystery of something. and even if it could, the final mystery would not be thus excluded; it would merely be transferred from the mystery of existence to the mystery of non-existence. thus under every conceivable supposition we arrive at the same termination--viz., that in the last resort there must be a final mystery, which, as forming the basis of all possible explanations, cannot itself receive any explanation, and which therefore is really not, in any proper sense of the term, a mystery at all. it is merely a fact which itself requires no explanation, because it is a fact than which none can be more ultimate. so that even if we suppose this ultimate fact to be an intelligent being, it is clearly impossible that he should be able to _explain_ his own existence, since the possibility of any such explanation would imply that his existence could not be ultimate. in the sense, therefore, of not admitting of any explanation, his existence would require to be a mystery to himself, rendering it impossible for him to state anything further with regard to it than this--"i am that i am." i do not doubt that this way of looking at the subject will be deemed unsatisfactory at first sight, because it seems to be, as it were, a merely logical way of cheating our intelligence out of an intuitively felt justification for its own curiosity in this matter. but the fault really lies in this intuitive feeling of justification not being itself justifiable. for this particular question, it will be observed, differs from all other possible questions with which the mind has to deal. all other questions being questions concerning manifestations of existence presupposed as existing, it is perfectly legitimate to seek for an explanation of one series of manifestations in another--_i.e._, to refer a less known group to a group better known. but the case is manifestly quite otherwise when, having merged one group of manifestations into another group, and this into another for an indefinite number of stages, we suddenly make a leap to the last possible stage and ask, "into what group are we to merge the basis of all our previous groups, and of all groups which can possibly be formed in the future? how are we to classify that which contains all possible classes? where are we to look for an explanation of existence?" when thus clearly stated, the question, is, as i have said, manifestly irrational; but the point with which i am now concerned is this--when in plain reason the question is _seen_ to be irrational, why in intuitive sentiment should it not be _felt_ to be so? the answer, i think, is, that the interrogative faculty being usually occupied with questions which admit of rational answers, we acquire a sort of intellectual habit of presupposing every wherefore to have a therefore, and thus, when eventually we arrive at the last of all possible wherefores, which itself supplies the basis of all possible therefores, we fail at first to recognise the exceptional character of our position. we fail at first to perceive that, from the very nature of this particular case, our wherefore is deprived of the rational meaning which it had in all the previous cases, where the possibility of a corresponding therefore was presupposed. and failing fully to perceive this truth, our organised habit of expecting an answer to our question asserts itself, and we experience the same sense of intellectual unrest in the presence of this wholly meaningless and absurd question, as we experience in the presence of questions significant and rational. the end. * * * * * notes [ ] the above was written before mr. mill's essay on theism was published. lest, therefore, my refutation may be deemed too curt, i supplement it with mr. mill's remarks upon the same subject. "it may still be maintained that the feelings of morality make the existence of god eminently desirable. no doubt they do, and that is the great reason why we find that good men and women cling to the belief, and are pained by its being questioned. but, surely, it is not legitimate to assume that, in the order of the universe, whatever is desirable is true. optimism, even when a god is already believed in, is a thorny doctrine to maintain, and had to be taken by leibnitz in the limited sense, that the universe being made by a good being, is the best universe possible, not the best absolutely: that the divine power, in short, was not equal to making it more free from imperfections than it is. but optimism, prior to belief in a god, and as the ground of that belief, seems one of the oddest of all speculative delusions. nothing, however, i believe, contributes more to keep up the belief in the general mind of humanity than the feeling of its desirableness, which, when clothed, as it very often is, in the form of an argument, is a _naive_ expression of the tendency of the human mind to believe whatever is agreeable to it. positive value the argument of course has none." for mill's remarks on the version of the argument dealt with in § , see his "three essays," p. . [ ] the words "or not conceivable," are here used in the sense of "not relatively conceivable," as explained in chap. vi. [ ] for the full discussion from which the above is an extract, see _system of logic_, vol. i. pp. - ( th ed.). but, substituting "psychical" for "volitional," see also, for some mitigation of the severity of the above statement, the closing paragraphs of my supplementary essay on "cosmic theism." [ ] essay on understanding--existence of god. [ ] locke, _loc. cit._ [ ] see appendix a. [ ] viz., the constant association within experience of mind with certain highly peculiar material forms; the constant proportion which is found to subsist between the quantity of cerebral matter and the degree of intellectual capacity--a proportion which may be clearly traced throughout the ascending series of vertebrated animals, and which is very generally manifested in individuals of the human species; the effects of cerebral anæmia, anæsthetics, stimulants, narcotic poisons, and lesions of cerebral substance. there can, in short, be no question that the whole series of observable facts bearing upon the subject are precisely such as they ought to be upon supposition of the materialistic theory being true; while, contrariwise, there is a total absence of any known facts tending to negative that theory. at the same time it must be carefully noted, that the observed facts (and any additional number of the like kind) do not logically warrant us in concluding that mental states are necessarily _dependent_ upon material changes. nevertheless, it must also be noted, that, in the absence of positive proof of causation, it is certainly in accordance with scientific procedure, to yield our provisional assent to an hypothesis which undoubtedly connects a large order of constant _accompaniments_, rather than to an hypothesis which is confessedly framed to meet but a single one of the facts. professor clifford, in a lecture on "body and mind" which he delivered at st. george's hall, and afterwards published in the _fortnightly review_, argues against the existence of god on the ground that, as mind is always associated with matter within experience, there arises a presumption against mind existing anywhere without being thus associated, so that unless we can trace in the disposition of the heavenly bodies some resemblance to the conformation of cerebral structure, we are to conclude that there is a considerable balance of probability in favour of atheism. now, as this argument--if we rid it of the grotesque allusion to the heavenly bodies--is one that is frequently met with, it seems desirable in this place briefly to analyse it. first of all, then, the validity of the argument depends upon the probability there is that the constant associated of mind with matter within experience is due to a _causal_ connection; for if the association in question is merely an _association_ and nothing more, the origin of known mind is as far from being explained as it would be were mind never known as associated with matter. but, in the next place, supposing the constant association in question to be due to a causal connection, it by no means follows that because mind is due to matter within experience, therefore mind cannot exist in any other mode beyond experience. doubtless, from analogy, there is a presumption against the hypothesis that the same entity should exist in more than one mode at the same time; but clearly in this case we are quite unable to estimate the value of this presumption. consequently, even assuming a causal connection between matter and human mind, if there is any, the slightest, indications supplied by any other facts of experience pointing to the existence of a divine mind, such indications should be allowed as much argumentative weight as they would have had in the absence of the presumption we are considering. hence professor clifford's conclusion cannot be regarded as valid until all the other arguments in favour of theism have been separately refuted. doubtless professor clifford will be the first to recognise the cogency of this criticism--if indeed it has not already occurred to him; for as i know that he is much too clear a thinker not to perceive the validity of these considerations, i am willing to believe that the substance of them was omitted from his essay merely for the sake of brevity; but, for the sake of less thoughtful persons, i have deemed it desirable to state thus clearly that the problem of theism cannot be solved on grounds of materialism alone. [this note was written before i had the advantage of professor clifford's acquaintance, but now i leave it, as i leave all other parts of this essay--viz., as it was originally written.-- .] [ ] to avoid burdening the text, i have omitted another criticism which may be made on locke's argument. "triangle" is a word by which we designate a certain figure, one of the properties of which is that the sum of its angles is equal to two right angles. in other words, any figure which does not exhibit this property is not that figure which we designate a triangle. hence, when locke says he cannot conceive of a triangle which does not present this property, it may be answered that his inability arises merely from the fact that any figure which fails to present this property is not a figure to which the term "triangle" can apply. thus viewed, however, the illustration would obviously be absurd, for the same reason that the question of the clown is absurd, "can you think of a horse that is just like a cow?" what locke evidently means is, that we cannot conceive of any geometrical figure which presents all the other properties of a triangle without also presenting the property in question. now, even admitting, with locke, that it is as inconceivable that the entity known to us as matter should possess the property of causing thought as it is that the figure which we term a triangle should posses the property of containing more than two right angles, still it remains, for the purposes of locke's supposed theistic demonstration, to prove that it is an inconceivable for the entity which we call mind _not_ to be due to another mind, as it is for a triangle _not_ to contain, other than two right angles. but, further, even if it were possible to prove this, the demonstration would make as much against theism as in favour of it; for if, as the illustration of the triangle implies, we restrict the meaning of the word "mind" to an entity one of whose essential qualities is that it should be caused by another mind, the words "supreme and uncaused mind" involve a contradiction in terms, just as much as would the words "a square triangle having four right angles." it would, therefore, seem that if we adhere to locke's argument, and pursue it to its conclusion, the only logical outcome would be this:--seeing that by the word "mind," i expressly connote the quality of derivation from a prior mind, as a quality belonging no less essentially to mind than the quality of presenting two right angles belongs to a triangle; therefore, whatever other attributes i ascribe to the first cause, i must clearly exclude the attribute mind; and hence, whatever else such a cause may be, it follows from my argument that it certainly is--not mind. [ ] hamilton. [ ] lectures on metaphysics, vol. i. pp. - . [ ] lectures on metaphysics, vol. ii. p. . [ ] _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] appendix to discussions, pp. , . [ ] mill, in the lengthy chapter which he devotes to the freedom of the will in his examination, does not notice this point. [ ] if more evidence can be wanted, it is supplied in some suggestive facts of psychology. for example, "from our earliest childhood, the idea of doing wrong (that is, of doing what is forbidden, or what is injurious to others) and the idea of punishment are presented to the mind together, and the intense character of the impressions causes the association between them to attain the highest degree of closeness and intimacy. is it strange, or unlike the usual processes of the human mind, that in these circumstances we should retain the feeling and forget the reason on which it is grounded? but why do i speak of forgetting? in most cases the reason has never, in our early education, been presented to the mind. the only ideas presented have been those of wrong and punishment, and an inseparable association has been created between these directly, without the help of any intervening idea. this is quite enough to make the spontaneous feelings of mankind regard punishment and a wrong-doer as naturally fitted to each other--as a conjunction appropriate in itself, independently of any consequences," &c.--mill, examination of hamilton, p. . [ ] grammar of assent, pp. , . [ ] throughout these considerations i have confined myself to the _positive_ side of the subject. my argument being of the nature of a criticism on the erroneous inferences which are drawn from the _good_ qualities of our moral nature, i thought it desirable, for the sake of clearness, not to burden that argument by the additional one as to the source of the _evil_ qualities of that nature. this additional argument, however, will be found briefly stated at the close of my supplementary essay on professor flint's "theism." on reading that additional argument, i think that any candid and unbiassed mind must conclude that, alike in what it is _not_ as well as in what it _is_, our moral nature points to a natural genesis, as distinguished from a supernatural cause. [ ] the illustration to which i refer is that of the watershed of a country being precisely adapted to draining purposes. the rivers just fit their own particular beds: the latter occupy the lowest grounds, and get broader and deeper as they advance; pebbles, gravel, and sand all occupy the best teleological situations, &c., &c. [ ] "order of nature," by the rev. baden powell, m.a., f.r.s., &c., , pp. - . [ ] i think it desirable to state that i perceived this great truth before i was aware that it had been perceived also by mr. spencer. his statement of it now occurs in the short chapter of _first principles_ entitled "relations between forces." so far as i an able to ascertain, no one has hitherto considered this important doctrine in its immediate relation to the question of theism. in using the term "persistence of force," i am aware that i am using a term which is not unopen to criticism. but as mr. spencer's writings have brought this term into such general use among speculative thinkers, it seemed to me undesirable to modify it. questions of mere terminology are without any importance in a discussion of this kind, provided that the terms are universally understood to mean what they are intended to mean; and i think that the signification which mr. spencer attaches to his term, "persistence of force," is sufficiently precise. therefore, adopting his usage, whenever throughout the following pages i speak of force as persisting, what i intend to be understood is, that there is a something--call it force, or energy, or _x_--which, so far as experience or imagination can extend, is, in its relation to us, ubiquitous and illimitable; or, in other words, that it universally presents the property of permanence. (see, for a more detailed explanation, supplementary essay, "on the final mystery of things.") [ ] hamilton may here be especially noticed, because he went so far as to maintain that the phenomena of the external world, taken by themselves, would ground a valid argument to the negation of god. although i cannot but think that this position was a conspicuously irrational one for any competent thinker to occupy before the scientific doctrine of the correlation of the forces had been enunciated, nevertheless i cannot lose the opportunity of alluding to this remarkable feature in sir william hamilton's philosophy, showing as it does that same prophetic forestalling of the results which have since followed from the discovery of the conservation of energy, as was shown by his no less remarkable theory of causation. (see supplementary essay "on the final mystery of things.") [ ] mr. n. lockyer's work is now supplying important evidence on these points.-- . [ ] it will of course be observed that if matter and force are identical, the unification is complete. [ ] herbert spencer. [ ] it may here be observed that the above discussion would not be affected by the view of professor clifford and others, that natural law is to be regarded as having a subjective rather than an objective signification--that what we call a natural law is merely an arbitrary selection made by ourselves of certain among natural processes. the discussion would not be affected by this view, because the argument is really based upon the existence of a cosmos as distinguished from a chaos; and therefore it would be rather an intensification of the argument than otherwise to point out that, for the maintenance of a cosmos, natural laws, as conceived by us, would be inadequate. and this seems a fitting place to make the almost superfluous remark, that throughout this present essay i have used the words "natural law," "supreme law-giver," &c., in an apparently unguarded sense, merely in order to avoid needless obscurity. fully sensible as i am of the misleading nature of the analogy which these words embody, i have yet adopted them for the sake of perspicuity--being careful, however, never to allow the false analogy which they express to enter into an argument on either side of the question. thus, even where it is said that the existence of natural law points to the existence of a supreme law-maker, the argument might equally well be phrased: the existence of an orderly cosmos points to the existence of a disposing mind. [ ] first principles, pp. - . [ ] it may be here observed that this quality of indefiniteness on the part of such reasoning is merely a practical outcome of the theoretical considerations adduced in chapter v. for as we there saw that the ratio between the known and the unknown is in this case wholly indefinite, it follows that any symbols derived from the region of the known--even though such symbols be the highest generalities which the latter region affords--must be wholly indefinite when projected into the region of the unknown. or rather let us say, that as the region of the unknown is but a progressive continuation of the region of the known, the determinate value of symbols of thought varies inversely as the distance--or, not improbably, as the square of the distance--from the sphere of the known at which they are applied. [ ] _i.e._, illegitimate in a _relative_ sense. the conclusion is legitimate enough in a _formal_ sense, and as establishing a probability of some _unassignable_ degree of value. but it would be illegitimate if this quality of indefiniteness were disregarded, and the conclusion supposed to possess the same character of actual probability as it has of formal definition. [ ] in order not to burden the text with details, i have presented these reflections in their most general terms. thus, if it be granted that cosmic harmony results from the combined action of general laws, and that these laws are the necessary result of the primary qualities of force and matter, this the most general statement of the atheistic position includes all more special considerations as a genus includes its species; and therefore it would not signify, for the purposes of the atheistic argument, whether or not any such more special considerations are possible. nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, i may here observe that we are not wholly without indications in nature of the physical causation whereby the effect of cosmic harmony is produced. the universal tendency of motion to become rhythmical--itself, as mr. spencer was the first to show, a necessary consequence of the persistence of force--is, so to speak, a conservative tendency: it sets a premium against natural cataclysms. but a more important consideration is this,--that during the evolution of natural law in the way suggested in chapter iv., as every newly evolved law came into existence it must have been, as it were, grafted on the stock of all pre-existing natural laws, and so would not enter the cosmic system as an element of confusion, but rather as an element of further progress. for instance, when, with the origin of organic nature, the law of natural selection entered upon the cosmos, it was grafted upon the pre-existing stock of other natural laws, and so combined within them in unity. and a little thought will show that it was impossible that it should do otherwise; for it was impossible that natural selection could ever produce organisms which would ever be able by their existence to conflict with the pre-existing system of astronomic or geologic laws; seeing that organisms, being a product of later evolution than these laws, would either have to be adapted to them or perish. and hence the new law of natural selection, which consists in so adapting organisms to the pre-existing laws that they must either conform to them or die. now, i have chosen the case of natural selection because, as alluded to in the text, it is the law of all others which is the most conspicuously effective in producing the harmonious complexity of nature. but the same kind of considerations may be seen to apply to most of the other general laws with which we are acquainted, particularly if we bear in mind that the general outcome of their united action as we observe it--the cosmic harmony on which so much stress is laid--is not _perfectly_ harmonious. cataclysms--whether it be the capture of an insect, or the ruin of a star--although events of comparatively rare occurrence if at any given time we take into account the total number of insects or the total number of stars, are events which nevertheless do occasionally happen. and the fact that even cataclysms take place in accordance with so-called natural law, serves but to emphasise the consideration on which we are engaged--viz., that the total result of the combined action of general laws is not such as to produce perfect order. lastly, if the answer is made that human ideas of perfect order may not correspond with the highest ideal of such order, i observe that to make such a answer is merely to abandon the subject of discussion; for if a theist rests his argument on the basis of our human conception of order, he is not free to maintain his argument and at the same time to abandon its basis at whatever point the latter may be shown untenable. [ ] since the above was written, the first volume of mr. spencer's "sociology" has been published; and those who may not as yet have read the first half of that work are here strongly recommended to do so; for mr. spencer has there shown, in a more connected and conclusive manner than has ever been shown before, how strictly natural is the growth of all superstitions and religions--_i.e._, of all the theories of personal agency in nature.-- . [ ] herbert spencer's essays, vol. iii. pp. - ( ). [ ] this is the truly inconceivable element in the physical theory. as i have shown in the pleading on the side of atheism, the supposed inconceivability of cosmic harmony being due to mindless forces, is not of such a kind as wholly refuses to be surmounted by symbolic conceptions of a sufficiently abstract character. but it is impossible, by the aid of any symbols, to gain a conception of an eternal existence. and i may here point out, that if mind is said to be the cause of evolution, not only does the statement involve the inconceivable proposition that such a mind must be infinite in respect to its powers of supervision, direction, &c.; but the statement also involves a necessary alternative between two additional inconceivable propositions--viz., either that such a mind must have been eternal, or that it must have come into existence without a cause. in this respect, therefore, it would seem that the theory of atheism has the advantage over that of theism; for while the former theory is under the necessity of embodying only a single inconceivable term, the latter theory is under the necessity of embodying two such terms. [ ] mr. herbert spencer has treated of this subject in his memorable controversy with mill on the "universal postulate" (see _psychology_, § ), and refuses to entertain the term "inconceivable" as applicable to any propositions other than those wherein "the terms cannot, by any effort, be brought before consciousness in that relation which the proposition asserts between them." that is to say, he limits the term "inconceivable" to that which is _absolutely_ inconceivable; and he then proceeds to affirm that all propositions "which admit of being framed in thought, but which are so much at variance with experience, in which its terms have habitually been otherwise united, that its terms cannot be put in the alleged relation without effort," ought properly to be termed "_incredible_" propositions. now i cannot see that the class "incredible propositions" is, as this definition asserts, identical with the class which i have termed "relatively inconceivable" propositions. for example, it is a familiar observation that, on looking at the setting sun, we experience an almost, if not quite, insuperable difficulty in _conceiving_ the sun's apparent motion as due to our own actual motion, and yet we experience no difficulty in _believing_ it. conversely, i entertain but little difficulty in _conceiving_--_i.e._, imagining--a shark with a mammalian heart, and yet it would require extremely strong evidence to make me _believe_ that such an animal exists. the truth appears to be that our language is deficient in terms whereby to distinguish between that which is wholly inconceivable from that which is with difficulty conceivable. this, it seems to me, was the principle reason of the dispute between spencer and mill above alluded to,--the former writer having always used the word "inconceivable" in the sense of "absolutely inconceivable," and the latter having apparently used it--in his _logic_ and elsewhere--in both senses. i have endeavoured to remedy this defect in the language by introducing the qualifying words, "absolutely" and "relatively," which, although not appropriate words, are the best that i am able to supply. the conceptive faculty of the individual having been determined by the experience of the race, that which is inconceivable by the intelligence of the race may be said to be inconceivable to the intelligence of the individual in an _absolute_ sense; no effort on his part can enable him to surmount the organically imposed conditions of his conceptive faculty. but that which is inconceivable merely to one individual or generation, while it is not inconceivable to the intelligence of the race, may properly be said to be inconceivable to the intelligence of that individual or generation only in a _relative_ sense; apart from the special condition to which the individual intelligence has been subjected, there is nothing in the conditions of human intelligence as such to prevent the thing from being conceived. [while this work has been passing through the press, i have found that mr. g. h. lewes has already employed the above terms in precisely the same sense as that which is above explained.-- .] [ ] i should here like to have added some considerations on sir w. hamilton's remarks concerning the effect of training upon the mind in this connection; but, to avoid being tedious, i shall condense what i have to say into a few sentences. what hamilton maintains is very true, viz., that the study of classics, moral and mental philosophy, &c., renders the mind more capable of believing in a god than does the study of physical science. the question, however, is, which class of studies ought to be considered the more authoritative in this matter? i certainly cannot see what title classics, history, political economy, &c., have to be regarded at all; and although the mental and moral sciences have doubtless a better claim, still i think they must be largely subordinate to those sciences which deal with the whole domain of nature besides. further, i should say that there is no very strong _affirmative_ influence created on the mind in this respect by any class of studies; and that the only reason why we so generally find theism and classics, &c., united, is because we so seldom find classics, &c., and physical science united; the _negative_ influence of the latter, in the case of classical minds, being therefore generally absent. [ ] the qualities named are only known in a relative sense, and therefore the apparent contradiction may be destitute of meaning in an absolute sense. [ ] all the quotations in this appendix have been taken from the chapter on "our knowledge of the existence of a god," and from the early part of that on "the extent of human knowledge," together with the appended letter to the bishop of worcester. [ ] a criticism of mr. john fiske's proposed system of theology as expounded in his work on "cosmic philosophy" (macmillan & co., ). [ ] cosmic philosophy, vol. i. pp. - . [ ] cosmic philosophy, vol. ii. pp. , . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] ibid., pp. , . [ ] principles of psychology, vol. i. pp. - . [ ] we thus see that the question whether there may not be "something quasi-psychical in the constitution of things" is a question which does not affect the position of theism as it has been left by a negation of the self-conscious personality of god. but as the speculations on which this question has been reared are in themselves of much philosophical interest, i may here observe that, in one form or another, they have been dimly floating in men's minds for a long time past. thus, excepting the degree of certainty with which it is taught, we have in mr. spencer's words above quoted a reversion to the doctrine of buddha; for, as "force is persistent," all that would happen on death, supposing the doctrine true, would be an escape of the "circumscribed aggregate" of units forming the individual consciousness into the unlimited abyss of similar units constituting the "absolute being" of the cosmists, or the "divine essence" of the buddhists. again, the doctrine in a vague form pervades the philosophy of spinoza, and is next clearly enunciated by wundt. lastly, in a recently published very remarkable essay "on the nature of things in themselves," professor clifford arrives at a similar doctrine by a different route. the following is the conclusion to which he arrives:--"that element of which, as we have seen, even the simplest feeling is a complex, i shall call _mind-stuff_. a moving molecule of inorganic matter does not possess mind or consciousness, but it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff. when molecules are so combined together as to form the film on the under side of a jellyfish, the elements of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings of sentience. when the molecules are so combined as to form the brain and nervous system of a vertebrate, the corresponding elements of mind-stuff are so combined as to form some kind of consciousness; that is to say, changes in the complex which take place at the same time get so linked together that the repetition of one implies the repetition of the other. when matters take the complex form of a living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a human consciousness, having intelligence and volition." (mind, january, .) [ ] theism, by robert flint, d.d., ll.d., professor of divinity in the university of edinburgh, &c. [ ] such being the objects in view, i have not thought it necessary to extend this criticism into anything resembling a review of professor flint's work as a whole; but, on the contrary, i have aimed rather at confining my observations to those parts of his treatise which embody the current arguments from teleology alone. i may here observe, however, in general terms, that i consider all his arguments to have been answered by anticipation in the foregoing examination of theism. i may also here observe, that throughout the following essay i have used the word "design" in the sense in which it is used by professor flint himself. this sense is distinctly a different one from that which the word bears in the writings of the paley, bell, and chalmers school. for while in the latter writings, as pointed out in chapter iii., the word bears its natural meaning of a certain _process of thought_, in professor flint's work it is used rather as expressive of a _product of intelligence_. in other words, "design," as used by professor flint, is synonymous with _intention_, irrespective of the particular psychological process by which the intention may have been put into effect. [ ] op. cit., pp. - . [ ] let it be observed that there is a distinction between what i may call substantial and formal existence. thus there is no doubt that flowers as flowers perish, or become non-existent; but the substances of which they were composed persist. and, in this connection, i may here point out that if the universe is infinite in space and time, the universe as a whole would present substantial existence as standing out of relation to space and time, whereas innumerable portions of the universe present only formal existences, because standing in relation both to space and time. thus, for instance, the solar system, as a solar system, must have an end in time as it has a boundary in space; but as the substance of which it consists will not become extinguished by the extinction of the system, it may not now stand in any real relation to what we call space and time. i am inclined to think that it is upon the idea of non-existence in this formal sense that we construct a pseud-idea of non-existence in a substantial sense; but it is evident that if the universe as a whole is absolute, this pseud-idea must represent as impossibility. and from this it follows, that if existence is infinite in space and time, every _quantum_ of it with which our experience comes into relation must represent, as its essential quality, that quality which we find to be presented by the substance of things--the quality, that is, of persistence. images generously made available by the digital & multimedia center, michigan state university libraries.) know the truth; a critique on the hamiltonian theory of limitation, including some strictures upon the theories of rev. henry l. mansel and mr. herbert spencer by jesse h. jones "give me to see, that i may know where to strike." new york: published for the author by hurd and houghton. boston: nichols and noyes . entered according to act of congress, in the year , by jesse h. jones, in the clerk's office of the district court for the southern district of new york. riverside, cambridge: stereotyped and printed by h. o. houghton and company. dedication. to my fellow-students and friends of andover theological seminary who have read mansel and rejected his teachings, this little treatise is respectfully dedicated by _the author_. preface. this book has been written simply in the interest of truth. it was because the doctrines of the hamiltonian school were believed to be dangerous errors, which this process of thought exposes, that it was undertaken. logically, and in the final analysis, there can be but two systems of philosophical theology in the world. the one will be pantheism, or atheism,--both of which contain the same essential principle, but viewed from different standpoints,--the other will be a pure theism. in the schools of brahma and buddh, or in the schools of christ, the truth is to be found. and this is so because every teacher is to be held responsible for all which can be logically deduced from his system; and every erroneous result which can be so deduced is decisive of the presence of an error in principle in the foundation; and all schemes of philosophy, by such a trial, are seen to be based on one of these two classes of schools. just here a quotation from dr. laurens hickok's "rational psychology" will be in point: "except as we determine the absolute to be personality wholly out of and beyond all the conditions and modes of space and time, we can by no possibility leave nature for the supernatural. the clear-sighted and honest intellect, resting in this conclusion that the conditions of space and time cannot be transcended, will be atheistic; while the deluded intellect, which has put the false play of the discursive understanding in its abstract speculations for the decisions of an all-embracing reason, and deems itself so fortunate as to have found a deity within the modes of space and time, will be pantheistic. the pantheism will be ideal and transcendent, when it reaches its conclusions by a logical process in the abstract law of thought; and it will be material and empiric, when it concludes from the fixed connections of cause and effect in the generalized law of nature; but in neither case is the pantheism any other than atheism, for the deity, circumscribed in the conditions of space and time with nature, is but nature still, and, whether in abstract thought or generalized reality, is no god." the hamiltonian system is logically atheism. perceiving that the deity cannot be found in nature, it denies that he can be known at all. what the mind cannot know at all, _it is irrational to believe_. if man cannot _know that_ god is, and have a clear sight of his attributes as a rational ground of confidence in what he says, it is the height of blind credulity to believe in him. and more; if man cannot have such knowledge, he has _no standard_ by which to measure teachings, and be _sure_ he has the truth. under such circumstances, faith is _impossible_. faith can only be based on _reason_. if there is no reason, there can be no faith. hence he who talks about faith, and denies reason, does not know what faith is. the logician rightfully held that god could not be found in nature; but he was just as wrong in asserting that man is wholly in nature and cannot know god, as he was right in the former instance. the acceptance of his one truth, and one error, compels man to be an atheist; because then he has no faculty by which to know aught of god; and few thorough men will accept blind credulity as the basis of religion. the author's sense of obligation to president hickok cannot be too strongly stated. but for his works, it is believed that this little treatise could never have been written. indeed, the author looks for but scanty credit on the score of originality, since most of what he has written he has learned, directly or indirectly, from that profound thinker. he has deemed it his chief work, to apply the principles developed by others to the exposure of a great error. and if he shall be judged to have accomplished this, his ambition will have been satisfied. after the substance of this treatise had been thought out, and while the author was committing it to paper, the essays on "space and time," and on "the philosophy of the unconditioned," in the numbers of the "north american review" for july and october, , happened to fall under his notice. some persons will appreciate the delight and avidity with which he read them; and how grateful it was to an obscure student, almost wholly isolated in the world, to find the views which he had wrought out in his secluded chamber, so ably advocated in the leading review of his country. not that he had gone as far, or examined the subjects in hand as thoroughly as has been there done. by no means. rather what results he had attained accord with some of those therein laid down. of those essays it is not too much to say, that, if they have not exhausted the topics of which they treat, they have settled forever the conclusions to be reached, and leave for other writers only illustration and comment. if the author shall seem to differ from them on a minor question,--that of quantitative infinity,--the difference will, it is believed, be found to be one of the form of expression only. and the difference is maintained from the conviction that no term in science should have more than one signification. it is better to adopt illimitable and indivisible, as the technical epithets of space, in place of the commonly used terms infinite and absolute. a metaphysical distinction has been incidentally touched upon in the following discussion, which deserves a more extensive consideration than the scope and plan of this work would permit to it here; and which, so far as the author's limited reading goes, has received very little attention from modern writers on metaphysics. he refers to the distinction between the animal nature and spiritual person, so repeatedly enounced by that profound metaphysical theologian, the apostle paul, and by that pure spiritual pastor, the apostle john, in the terms "flesh" and "spirit." the thinkers of the world, even the best christian philosophers, seem to have esteemed this a moral and religious distinction, and no more, when in fact it cleaves down through the whole human being, and forms the first great radical division in any proper analysis of man's soul, and classification of his constituent elements. _this is a purely natural division._ it is organic in man. it belonged as much to adam in his purity, as it does to the most degraded wretch on the globe now. it is of such a character that, had it been properly understood and developed, the hamiltonian system of philosophy could never have been constructed. an adequate statement of the truth would be conducted as follows. first, the animal nature should be carefully analyzed, its province accurately defined, and both the laws and forms of its activity exactly stated. second, a like examination of the spiritual person should follow; and third, the relations, interactions, and influences of the two parts upon each other should be, as extensively as possible, presented. but it is to be remarked, that, while the analysis, by the human intellect, of these two great departments of man's soul, may be exhaustive, it is doubtful if any but the all-seeing eye can read all their relations and inter-communications. the development of the third point, by any one mind, must needs, therefore, be partial. whether any portion of the above designated labor shall be hereafter entered upon, will depend upon circumstances beyond control of the writer. as will appear, it is believed, in the development of the subject, the great, the _vital_ point upon which the whole controversy with the hamiltonian school must turn, is a question of _fact_; viz., whether man has a reason, as the faculty giving _a priori_ principles, or not. if he has such a reason, then by it the questions now at issue can be settled, and that finally. if he has no reason, then he can have no knowledge, except of appearances and events, as perceived by the sense and judged by the understanding. until, then, the question of fact is decided, it would be a gain if public attention was confined wholly to it. establish first a well ascertained and sure foundation before erecting a superstructure. the method adopted in constructing this treatise does not admit the presentation of the matter in a symmetrical form. on the contrary, it involves some, perhaps many, repetitions. what has been said at one point respecting one author must be said again in reply to another. yet the main object for which the work was undertaken could, it seemed, be thoroughly accomplished in no other way. the author has in each case used american editions of the works named. know the truth. part i. the seeking and the finding. in april, , there was republished in boston, from an english print, a volume entitled "the limits of religious thought examined," &c., "by henry longueville mansel, b. d." the high position occupied by the publishers,--a firm of christian gentlemen, who, through a long career in the publication of books either devoutly religious, or, at least, having a high moral tone, and being marked by deep, earnest thought, have obtained the confidence of the religious community; the recommendations with which its advent was heralded, but most of all the intrinsic importance of the theme announced, and its consonance with many of the currents of mental activity in our midst,--gave the book an immediate and extensive circulation. its subject lay at the foundation of all religious, and especially of all theological thinking. the author, basing his teaching on certain metaphysical tenets, claimed to have circumscribed the boundary to all positive, and so valid effort of the human intellect in its upward surging towards the deity, and to have been able to say, "thus far canst thou come, and no farther, and here must thy proud waves be stayed." and this effort was declaredly made in the interest of religion. it was asserted that from such a ground only, as was therein sought to be established, could infidelity be successfully assailed and destroyed. moreover, the writer was a learned and able divine in the anglican church, orthodox in his views; and his volume was composed of lectures delivered upon what is known as "the bampton foundation;"--a bequest of a clergyman, the income of which, under certain rules, he directed should be employed forever, in furthering the cause of christ, by divinity lecture sermons in oxford. such a book, on such a theme, by such a man, and composed under such auspices, would necessarily receive the almost universal attention of religious thinkers, and would mark an era in human thought. such was the fact in this country. new england, the birthplace and home of american theology, gave it her most careful and studious examination. and the west alike with the east pored over its pages, and wrought upon its knotty questions. clergymen especially, and theological students, perused it with the earnestness of those who search for hid treasures. and what was the result? we do not hesitate to say that it was unqualified rejection. the book now takes its place among religious productions, not as a contribution to our positive knowledge, not as a practicable new road, surveyed out through the unknown regions of thought, but rather as possessing only a negative value, as a monument of warning, erected at that point on the roadside where the writer branched off in his explorations, and on which is inscribed, "in this direction the truth cannot be found." the stir which this book produced, naturally brought prominently to public attention a writer heretofore not extensively read in this country, sir william hamilton, upon whose metaphysical teachings the lecturer avowedly based his whole scheme. the doctrines of the metaphysician were subjected to the same scrutinizing analysis, which dissolved the enunciations of the divine; and they, like these, were pronounced "wanting." this decision was not reached or expressed in any extensive and exhaustive criticism of these writers; in which the errors of their principles and the revolting nature of the results they attained, were presented; but it rather was a shoot from the spontaneous and deep-seated conviction, that the whole scheme, of both teacher and pupil, was utterly insufficient to satisfy the craving of man's highest nature. it was rejected because it _could_ not be received. something more than a year ago, and while the american theological mind, resting in the above-stated conviction, was absorbed in the tremendous interests connected with the great rebellion, a new aspirant for honors appeared upon the stage. a book was published entitled "the philosophy of herbert spencer: first principles." this was announced as the foundation of a new system of philosophy, which would command the confidence of the present, and extort the wonder of all succeeding ages. avowing the same general principles with mansel and hamilton, this writer professed to have found a radical defect in their system, which being corrected, rendered that system complete and final; so that, from it as a base, he sets out to construct a new scheme of universal science. this man, too, has been read, not so extensively as his predecessors; because when one has seen a geometrical absurdity demonstrated, he does not care, unless from professional motives, to examine and disprove further attempts to bolster up the folly; but still so widely read, as to be generally associated with the other writers above mentioned, and, like them, rejected. upon being examined, he is found to be a man of less scope and mental muscle than either of his teachers; yet going over the same ground and expressing the same ideas, scarcely in new language even; and it further appears that his discovery is made at the expense of his logic and consistency, and involves an unpardonable contradiction. previous to the publication of the books just mentioned, an american writer had submitted to the world a system of thought upon the questions of which they treat, which certainly seems worthy of some notice from their authors. yet it has received none. to introduce him we must retrace our steps for a little. in , laurens p. hickok, then a professor in auburn theological seminary, published a work entitled "rational psychology," in which he professed to establish, by _a priori_ processes, positions which, if true, afford a ground for the answer, at once and forever, of all the difficulties raised by sir william hamilton and his school. being comparatively a new writer, his work attracted only a moiety of the attention it should have done. it was too much like analytical geometry and calculus for the popular mind, or even for any but a few patient thinkers. for them it was marrow and fatness. since the followers of sir william hamilton, whom we will hereafter term limitists, have neglected to take the great truths enunciated by the american metaphysician, and apply them to their own system, and so be convinced by their own study of the worthlessness of that system, it becomes their opponents, in the interest of truth, to perform this work in their stead; viz., upon the basis of immutable truth, to unravel each of their well-knit sophistries, to show to the world that it may "_know the truth_;" and thus to destroy a system which, if allowed undisputed sway, would sap the very foundations of christian faith. the philosophical system of the limitists is built upon a single fundamental proposition, which carries all their deductions with it. he who would strike these effectually, must aim his blow, and give it with all his might, straight at that one object; sure that if he destroys that, the destruction of the whole fabric is involved therein. but, as the limitists are determined not to confess the dissolution of their scheme, by the simple establishment of principles, which they cannot prove false, and which, if true, involve the absurdity of their own tenets, it is further necessary to go through their writings, and examine them passage by passage, and show the fallacy of each. in the former direction we can but re-utter some of the principles of the great american teacher. in the latter there is room for new effort; and this shall be our especial province. the proposition upon which the whole scheme of the limitists is founded, was originally enunciated by sir william hamilton, in the following terms. "the unconditioned is incognizable and inconceivable; its notion being only negative of the conditioned, which last can alone be positively known or conceived." "in our opinion, the mind can conceive, and consequently can know, only the _limited and the conditionally limited_. the unconditionally unlimited, or the infinite, the unconditionally limited, or the absolute, cannot positively be construed to the mind; they can be conceived only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those very conditions under which thought itself is realized; consequently, the notion of the unconditioned is only negative--negative of the conceivable itself. for example, on the one hand we can positively conceive, neither an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative part of a still greater whole; nor an absolute part, that is, a part so small, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative whole, divisible into smaller parts. on the other hand, we cannot positively represent, or realize, or construe to the mind, (as here understanding and imagination coincide,) an infinite whole, for this could only be done by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite wholes, which would itself require an infinite time for its accomplishment; nor, for the same reason, can we follow out in thought an infinite divisibility of parts.... as the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge, and of positive thought--thought necessarily supposes conditions. _to think_ is _to condition_; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought." ... "the conditioned is the mean between two extremes--two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which _can be conceived as possible_, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one _must be admitted as necessary_." this theory may be epitomized as follows:--"the unconditioned denotes the genus of which the infinite and absolute are the species." this genus is inconceivable, is "negative of the conceivable itself." hence both the species must be so also. although they are thus incognizable, they may be defined; the one, the infinite, as "that which is beyond all limits;" the other, the absolute, as "a whole beyond all conditions:" or, concisely, the one is illimitable immensity, the other, unconditional totality. as defined, these are seen to be "mutually repugnant:" that is, if there is illimitable immensity, there cannot be absolute totality; and the reverse. within these two all possible being is included; and, because either excludes the other, it can be in only one. since both are inconceivable we can never know in which the conditioned or conceivable being is. either would give us a being--god--capable of accounting for the universe. this fact is assumed to be a sufficient ground for faith; and man may therefore rationally satisfy himself with the study of those matters which are cognizable--the conditioned. it is not our purpose at this point to enter upon a criticism of the philosophical theory thus enounced. this will fall, in the natural course, upon a subsequent page. we have stated it here, for the purpose of placing in that strong light which it deserves, another topic, which has received altogether too little attention from the opponents of the limitists. underlying and involved in the above theory, there is a question of _fact_, of the utmost importance. sir william hamilton's metaphysic rests upon his psychology; and if his psychology is true, his system is impregnable. it is his diagnosis of the human mind, then, which demands our attention. he has presented this in the following passage:-- "while we regard as conclusive kant's analysis of time and space into conditions of thought, we cannot help viewing his deduction of the 'categories of understanding' and the 'ideas of speculative reason' as the work of a great but perverse ingenuity. the categories of understanding are merely subordinate forms of the conditioned. why not, therefore, generalize the _conditioned--existence conditioned_, as the supreme category, or categories, of thought?--and if it were necessary to analyze this form into its subaltern applications, why not develop these immediately out of the generic principle, instead of preposterously, and by a forced and partial analogy, deducing the laws of the understanding from a questionable division of logical proposition? why distinguish reason (vernunft) from understanding (verstand), simply on the ground that the former is conversant about, or rather tends toward, the unconditioned; when it is sufficiently apparent, that the unconditioned is conceived as the negation of the conditioned, and also that the conception of contradictories is one? in the kantian philosophy, both faculties perform the same function, both seek the one in the many;--the idea (idee) is only the concept (begriff) sublimated into the inconceivable; reason only the understanding which has 'overleaped itself.'" not stopping now to correct the entirely erroneous statement that "both faculties," _i. e._, understanding and reason, "perform the same function," we are to notice the two leading points which are made, viz.:-- . that there is no distinction between the understanding and the reason; or, in other words, there is no such faculty as the reason is claimed to be, there is none but the understanding; and, . a generalization is the highest form of human knowledge; both of which may be comprised in one affirmation; the understanding is the highest faculty of knowledge belonging to the human soul. upon this, a class of thinkers, following plato and kant, take issue with the logician, and assert that the distinction between the two faculties named above, has a substantial basis; that, in fact, they are different in _kind_, and that the mode of activity in the one is wholly unlike the mode of activity in the other. thus, then, is the great issue between the hamiltonian and platonic schools made upon a question of _fact_. he who would attack the former school successfully, must aim his blow straight at their fundamental assumption; and he who shall establish the fact of the pure reason as an unquestionable faculty in the human soul, will, in such establishment, accomplish the destruction of the hamiltonian system of philosophy. believing this system to be thoroughly vicious in its tendencies; being such indeed, as would, if carried out, undermine the whole christian religion; and what is of equal importance, being false to the facts in man's soul as god's creature, the writer will attempt to achieve the just named and so desirable result; and by the mode heretofore indicated. it is required, then, to _prove_ that there is a faculty belonging to the human soul, essentially diverse from the sense or the understanding; a faculty peculiar and unique, which possesses such qualities as have commonly been ascribed by its advocates to the pure reason; and thereby to establish such faculty as a fact, and under that name. previous to bringing forward any proofs, it is important to make an exact statement of what is to be proved. to this end, let the following points be noted:-- _a._ its modes of activity are essentially diverse from those of the sense or understanding. the sense is only capacity. according to the laws of its construction, it receives impressions from objects, either material, and so in a different place from that which it occupies, or imaginary, and so proceeding from the imaging faculty in itself. but it is only capacity to receive and transmit impressions. the understanding, though more than this, even faculty, is faculty shut within the limits of the sense. according to its laws, it takes up the presentations of the sense, analyzes and classifies them, and deduces conclusions: but it can attain to nothing more than was already in the objects presented. it can construct a system; it cannot develop a science. it can observe a relation it cannot intuit a law. what we seek is capacity, but of another and higher kind from that of the sense. sense can have no object except such, at least, as is constructed out of impressions received from without. what we seek does not observe outside phenomena; and can have no object except as inherent within itself. it is faculty moreover, but not faculty walled in by the sense. it is faculty and capacity in one, which, possessing inherent within itself, as objects, the _a priori_ conditional laws of the universe, and the _a priori_ conditional ideal forms which these laws, standing together according to their necessary relations, compose, transcends, in its activity and acquisitions, all limitations of a _nature_; and attends to objects which belong to the supernatural, and hence which absoluteness qualifies. we observe, therefore, _b._ the objects of its activity are also essentially diverse in kind from those of the sense and the understanding. all the objects of the sense must come primarily or secondarily, from a material universe; and the discussions and conclusions of the understanding must refer to such a universe. the faculty which we seek must have for its objects, _laws_, or, if the term suit better, first principles, which are reasons why conduct must be one way, and not another; which, in their combinations, compose the forms conditional for all activity; and which, therefore, constitute within us an _a priori_ standard by which to determine the validity of all judgments. to illustrate. linnæus constructed a system of botanical classification, upon the basis of the number of stamens in a flower. this was satisfactory to the sense and the understanding. later students have, however, discovered that certain _organic laws_ extend as a framework through the whole vegetable kingdom; which, once seen, throw back the linnæan system into company with the ptolemaic astronomy; and upon which laws a _science_ of botany becomes possible. that faculty which intuits these laws, is called the pure reason. to recapitulate. what we seek is, in its modes and objects of activity, diverse from the sense and understanding. it is at once capacity and faculty, having as object first principles, possessing these as an _inherent heritage_, and able to compare with them as standard all objects of the sense and judgments of the understanding; and to decide thereby their validity. these principles, and combinations of principles, are known as _ideas_, and, being innate, are denominated _innate ideas_. it is their reality which sir william hamilton denies, declaring them to be only higher generalizations of the understanding, and it is the faculty called the pure reason, in which they are supposed to inhere, whose actuality is now to be proved. the effort to do this will be successful if it can be shown that the logician's statement of the facts is partial, and essentially defective; what are the phenomena which cannot be comprehended in his scheme; and, finally, that they can be accounted for on no other ground than that stated. . the statement of facts by the limitists is partial and essentially defective. they start with the assumption that a generalization is the highest form of human knowledge. to appreciate this fully, let us examine the process they thus exalt. a generalization is a process of thought through which one advances from a discursus among facts, to a conclusion, embodying a seemingly general truth, common to all the facts of the class. for instance. the inhabitants of the north temperate zone have long observed it to be a fact, that north winds are cold; and so have arrived at the general conclusion that such winds will lower the temperature. a more extensive experience teaches them, however, that in the south temperate zone, north winds are warm, and their judgment has to be modified accordingly. a yet larger investigation shows that, at one period in geologic history, north winds, even in northern climes, were warm, and that tropical animals flourished in arctic regions; and the judgment is again modified. now observe this most important fact here brought out. _every judgment may be modified by a larger experience._ apply this to another class of facts. an apple is seen to fall when detached from the parent stem. an arrow, projected into the air, returns again. an invisible force keeps the moon in its orbit. other like phenomena are observed; and, after patient investigation, it is found to be a fact, that there is a force in the system to which our planet belongs, which acts in a ratio inverse to the square of the distance, and which thus binds it together. but if a generalization is the highest form of knowledge, we can never be sure we are right, for a subsequent experience may teach us the reverse. we know we have not _all the facts_. we may again find that the north wind is elsewhere, or was once here, warm. should a being come flying to us from another sphere so distant, that the largest telescope could catch no faintest ray, even, of its shining, and testify to us that there, the force we called gravitation, was inversely as the _cube_ of the distance, we could only accept the testimony, and modify our judgment accordingly. conclusions of to-day may be errors to-morrow; and we can never know we are right. the limitists permit us only interminable examinations of interminable changes in phenomena; which afford no higher result than a new basis for new studies. from this wearisome, io-like wandering, the soul returns to itself, crying its wailing cry, "is this true? is this all?" when suddenly, as if frenzied by the presence of a god, it shouts exultingly "the truth! the truth! i see the eternal truth." the assumption of the limitists is not all the truth. their diagnosis is both defective and false. it is defective, in that they have failed to perceive those qualities of _universality_ and _necessity_, which most men instinctively accord to certain perceptions of the mind; and false, in that they deny the reality of those qualities, and of the certain perceptions as modified by them, and the actuality of that mental faculty which gives the perceptions, and thus qualified. they state a part of the truth, and deny a part. the whole truth is, the mind both generalizes and intuits. it is the _essential_ tenet of their whole scheme, that the human mind nowhere, and under no circumstance, makes an affirmation which it unreservedly qualifies as necessary and universal. their doctrine is, that these affirmations _seem_ to be such, but that a searching examination shows this seeming to be only a bank of fog. for instance. the mind seems to affirm that two and two _must_ make four. "not so," says the limitist. "as a fact, we see that two and two do make four, but it may make five, or any other sum. for don't you see? if two and two must make four, then the infinite must see it so; and if he must see it so, he is thereby conditioned; and what is worse, we know just as much about it as he does." in reply to all such quibbles, it is to be said,--there is no seeming about it! if the mind is not utterly mendacious, it affirms, positively and unreservedly, "two and two are four, _must_ be four; and to see it so, _is conditional for_ all _intellect_." take another illustration. the mind instinctively, often unconsciously, always compulsorily, affirms that the sentiment, in society the rights of the individual can never trench upon the rights of the body politic,--is a necessary, and universally applicable principle; which, however much it may be violated, can never be changed. the whole fabric of society is based upon this. could a mind think this away, it could not construct a practical system of society upon what would be left,--its negation. but the limitists step in here, and say, "all this seems so, perhaps, but then the mind is so weak, that it can never be sure. you must modify (correct?) this seeming, by the consideration that, if it is so, then the infinite must know it so, and the finite and infinite must know it alike, and the infinite will be limited and conditioned thereby, which would be impious." again, the intellect unreservedly asserts, "there is no seeming in the matter. the utterance is true, absolutely and universally true, and every intellect _must_ see it so." illustrations like the above might be drawn from every science of which the human mind is cognizant. but more are not needed. enough has been adduced to establish the _fact_ of those qualities, universality and necessity, as inherent in certain mental affirmations. having thus pointed out the essential defect of the logician's scheme, it is required to state: . what the phenomena are which cannot be comprehended therein. in general, it may be said that all those perceptions and assertions of the mind, which are instinctive, and which it involuntarily qualifies as universal and necessary, are not, and cannot be comprehended in sir william hamilton's scheme. to give an exhaustive presentation of all the _a priori_ laws of the mind, would be beyond the scope of the present undertaking, and would be unnecessary to its success. this will be secured by presenting a classification of them, and sufficient examples under each class. moreover, to avoid a labor which would not be in place here, we shall attempt no new classification; but shall accept without question, as ample for our purpose, that set forth by one of our purest and every way best thinkers,--rev. mark hopkins, d. d., president of williams college, mass. "the ideas and beliefs which come to us thus, may be divided into, first, mathematical ideas and axioms. these are at the foundation of the abstract sciences, having for their subject, quantity. in the second division are those which pertain to mere being and its relations. upon these rest all sciences pertaining to actual being and its relations. the third division comprises those which pertain to beauty. these are at the foundation of æsthetical science. in the fourth division are those which pertain to morals and religion. of these the pervading element is the sense of obligation or duty. of this the idea necessarily arises in connection with the choice by a rational being of a supreme end, and with the performance of actions supposed to bear upon that."--_moral science_, p. . first.--mathematical ideas and axioms. take, for instance, the multiplication table. can any one, except a limitist, be induced to believe that it was originally _constructed_; that a will put it together, and might take it apart? seven times seven now make forty-nine. will any one say that it might have been made to make forty-seven; or that at some future time such may be the case? or again, take the axiom "things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another." will some one say, that the intellectual beings in the universe might, with equal propriety, have been so constructed as to affirm that, in some instances, things which are equal to the same thing are _unequal_ to one another? or consider the properties of a triangle. will our limitist teachers instruct us that these properties are a matter of indifference; that for aught we know, the triangle might have been made to have three right angles? yet again. examine the syllogism. was its law constructed? all m is x; all z is m; all z is x. will any one say that _perhaps_, we don't know but it might have been so made, as to appear to us that the conclusion was some z is not x? or will the limitists run into that miserable petty subterfuge of an assertion, "all this _seems_ to us as it is, and we cannot see how it could be different; but then, our minds are so feeble, they are confined in such narrow limits, that it would be the height of presumption to assert positively with regard to stronger minds, and those of wider scope? perhaps they see things differently." _perhaps_ they do; but if they do, their minds or ours falsify! the question is one of _veracity_, nothing more. throughout all the range of mathematics, the positive and _unqualified_ affirmation of the mind is that its intuitions are absolute and universal; that they are _a priori_ laws conditional of _all_ intellect; that of the deity just as much as that of man. feebleness and want of scope have nothing to do with mind in its affirmation, "seven times seven _must_ make forty-nine; _and cannot by any possibility of effort make any other product_;" and every intellect, _if it sees at all, must see it so_. and so on through the catalogue. from this, it follows in this instance, that human knowledge is _exhaustive_, and so is exactly similar, and equal to the deity's knowledge. second. those ideas and beliefs which pertain to mere being and its relations. take, for instance, the axiom, a material body cannot exist in the universe without standing in some relation to all the other material bodies in that universe. either this is absolutely true, or it is not. if it is so true, then every intellectual being to whom it presents itself as object at all, must see it as every other does. one may see more relations than another; but the axiom in its intrinsic nature must be seen alike by all. if it is not absolutely true, then the converse, or any partially contradictory proposition, may be true. for example. a material body may exist in the universe, and stand in no relation to some of the other material bodies in that universe. but, few men will hesitate to say, that this is not only utterly unthinkable, but that it could only become thinkable by a denial and destruction of the laws of thought; or, in other words, by the stultification of the mind. take another instance, arising from the fact of parentage and offspring, in the sentient beings of the world. a pair, no matter to what class they belong, by the fact of becoming parents, establish a new relation for themselves; and, "after their kind," they are under bonds to their young. and, to a greater or less extent, their young have a claim upon them. as we ascend in the scale of being, the duty imposed is greater, and the claim of the offspring stronger. whether it be the fierce eagle, or the timid dove, or the chirping sparrow; whether it be the prowling lion, or the distrustful deer, or the cowering hare; or whether it be the races of man who are examined, the relations established by parentage are everywhere recognized. now, will one say that all this might be changed for aught we know; that, what we call law, is only a judgment of mankind; and so that this relation did not exist at first, but was the product of growth? and will one further say that there is no necessity or universality in this relation; but that the races might, for aught we know, have just as well been established with a parentage which involved no relation at all; that the fabled indifference of the ostrich, intensified a hundredfold, might have been the law of sentient being? yet such results logically flow from the principles of the limitists. precisely the same line of argument might be pursued respecting the laws of human society. but it is not needed here. it is evident now, that what gives validity to judgments _is the fact that they accord with an a priori principle in the mind_. third. the ideas and beliefs which pertain to beauty. a science of beauty has not yet been sufficiently developed to permit of so extensive an illustration of this class as the others. yet enough is established for our purpose. let us consider beauty as in proportioned form. it is said that certain greek mathematicians, subsequently to the christian era, studied out a mathematical formula for the human body, and constructed a statue according to it; and that both were pronounced at the time _perfect_. both statue and formula are now lost. be the story true, or a legend, there is valid ground for the assertion, that the mind instinctively assumes, in all its criticisms, the axiom, there is a perfect ideal by which as standard, all art must be judged. the very fact that the mind, though acknowledging the imperfection of its own ideal, unconsciously asserts, that somewhere, in some mind, there is an ideal, in which a perfect hand joins a perfect arm, and a perfect foot a perfect leg, and these a perfect trunk; and a perfect neck supports a perfect head, adorned by perfect features, and thus there is a perfect ideal, is _decisive_ that such an ideal exists. and this conclusion is true, because god who made us, and constructed the ground from whence this instinctive affirmation springs, is true. take another instance. few men, who have studied gothic spires, have failed to observe that the height of some, in proportion to their base, is too great, and that of others, too small. the mind irresistibly affirms, that between these opposite imperfections, there is a golden mean, at which the proportion shall be _perfect_. when the formula of this proportion shall be studied out, any workman, who is skilled with tools, can construct a perfect spire. the law once discovered and promulgated, becomes common knowledge. mechanical skill will be all that can differentiate one workman from another. the fact that the law has not been discovered yet, throws no discredit upon the positive affirmation of the mind, that there must be such a law; any more than the fact of newton's ignorance of the law of gravitation, when he saw the apple fall, discredited his instinctive affirmation, upon seeing that phenomenon, there is a law in accordance with which it fell. now how comes the mind instinctively and positively to make these assertions. if they were judgments, the mind would only speak of probabilities; but here, it qualifies the assertion with necessity. men, however positive in their temperament, do not say, "i know it will rain to-morrow," but only, "in all probability it will." not so here. here the mind refuses to express itself doubtfully. its utterance is the extreme of positiveness. it says _must_. and if its affirmation is not true, then there is no _reason_ why those works of art which are held in highest esteem, should be adjudged better than the efforts of the tyro, except the whim of the individual, or the arbitrary determination of their admirers. fourth. the ideas and beliefs which pertain to morals and religion. we now enter a sphere of which no understanding could by any possibility ever guess, much less investigate. here no sense could ever penetrate; there is no object for it to perceive. here all judgments are impertinent; for in this sphere are only laws, and duties, and obligations. an understanding cannot "conceive" of a moral law, because such a law is inconceivable; and it cannot perceive one, because it has no eye. if it were competent to explain every phenomenon in the other classes, it would be utterly impotent to explain a single phenomenon in this. what is moral obligation? whence does it arise, or how is it imposed? and who will enforce it, and how will it be enforced? all these, and numerous such other questions, cannot be raised even by the understanding, much less answered by it. the moral law of the universe is one which can be learned from no judgment, or combination of judgments. it can be learned only by being _seen_. the moral law is no conclusion, which may be modified by a subsequent experience. it is an affirmation which is _imperative_. to illustrate. it is an axiom, that the fact of free moral agency involves the fact of obligation. man is a free moral agent; and so, under the obligation imposed. at the first, it was optional with the deity whether he would create man or not. but will any one assert that, having determined to create man such as he is, it was optional with him, whether man should be under the obligation, or not? can man be a free moral agent, and be free from the duties inherent therein? does not the mind instinctively and necessarily affirm, that the fact of free moral agency assures the fact of such a relation to god's moral government, that obligation _must_ follow? one cannot hesitate to say, that the formula, a free agent may be released from his obligation to moral law, is absolutely unthinkable. again, no judgment can attain to the moral law of the universe; and yet man knows it. jesus christ, when he proclaimed that law in the words "thou shalt love the lord thy god with all thy mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself," only uttered what no man can, in thought, deny. a man can no more think selfishness as the moral law of the universe, than he can think two and two to be five. man not only sees the law, but he feels and acknowledges the obligation, even in his rebellion. in fact there would be no rebellion, no sense of sin, if there were no obligation. whence comes the authority of the law? no power can give it authority, or enforce obedience. power can crush a universe, it cannot change a heart. the law has, and can have authority; it imposes, and can impose obligation; only because _it is an a priori law of the universe_, alike binding upon _all_ moral beings, upon god as well as man; and is so seen immediately, and necessarily, by a direct intuition. man finds this law fundamental to his self; and as well, a necessarily fundamental law of _all_ moral beings. _therefore_ he acknowledges it. and the very efforts he makes to set up a throne for passion, over against the throne of benevolence, is an involuntary acknowledgment of the authority of that law he seeks to rival. it was said above, that neither sense nor understanding can take any cognizance of the objects of investigation which fall in this class. this is because the sense can gather no material over which the understanding can run. is the moral law matter? no. how then can the sense observe it? one answer may possibly be made, viz.: it is deduced from the conduct of men; and sense observes that. to this it is replied _a._ the allegation is not true. most men violate the moral law of the universe. their conduct accords with the law of selfishness. such conclusions as that of hobbes, that war is the natural condition of society, are those which would follow from a consideration of man, as he appears to the sense. _b._ if it were true, the question obtrudes itself,--how came it there? _how came this fundamental law to be?_ and to this the sense and understanding return no shadow of answer. but from the stand-point of a pure reason, all is clear. all the ideas and beliefs, every process of thought which belongs to this sphere, are absolute and universal. they must be what they are; and so are conditional of all moral beings. here what the human mind sees, is just what the deity sees; and it sees just as the divine mind sees, so that the truth, as far as so seen, is _common_ to both. although the facts which have been adduced above, are inexplicable by the limitists, and are decisive of the actuality of the reason, as it has been heretofore described, yet another line of argument of great wight must not be omitted. there are in language certain _positive_ terms, which the limitists, and the advocates of the reason agree in asserting cannot convey any meaning to, or be explained by the sense and understanding. such are the words infinite and absolute. the mere presence of such words in language, as positive terms, is a decisive evidence of the fact, that there is also a faculty which entertains positive ideas corresponding to them. sir william hamilton's position in this matter, is not only erroneous, but astonishing. he asserts that these words express only "negative notions." "they," the infinite and absolute, "can be conceived only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those very conditions under which thought itself is realized; consequently, the notion of the unconditioned is only negative--negative of the conceivable itself." but, if this is true, how came these words in the language at all? negative ideas produce negative expressions. indeed, the limitists are confidently challenged to designate another case in language, in which a positive term can be alleged to have a _purely_ negative signification. take an illustration to which we shall recur further on. the question has been raised, whether a sixth sense can be. can the limitists find in language, or can they construct, a positive term which will represent the negation of a sixth sense? we find in language the positive terms, ear and hearing; but can such positive terms be found, which will correspond to the phrase, no sixth sense? in this instance, in physics, the absurdity is seen at once. why is not as readily seen the equal absurdity of affirming that, in metaphysics, positive terms have grown up in the language which are simple negations? here, for the present, the presentation of facts may rest. let us recapitulate those which have been adduced. the axioms in mathematics, the principles of the relations of being, the laws of æsthetics, and most of all the whole system of principles pertaining to morals and religion, standing, as they do, a series of mental affirmations, which all mankind, except the limitists, qualify as necessary and universal, compel assent to the proposition, that there must be a faculty different in kind from the sense and understanding,--for these have already been found impotent--which can be ground to account of all these facts satisfactorily. and the presence in language of such positive terms as absolute and infinite, is a most valuable auxiliary argument. the faculty which is required,--the faculty which qualifies all the products of its activity with the characteristics above named, is the pure reason. and its actuality may therefore be deemed established. the pure reason having thus been proved to be, it is next required to show the mode of its activity. this can best be done, by first noticing the _kind_ of results which it produces. the reason gives us, not thoughts, but ideas. these are simple, pure, primary, necessary. it is evident that any such object of mental examination can be known only in, and by, itself. it cannot be analyzed, for it is simple. it cannot be compared, for it is pure; and so possesses no element which can be ground for a comparison. it cannot be deduced, for it is primary and necessary. _it can only be seen._ such an object must be known under the following circumstances. it must be inherent in the seeing faculty, and must be _immediately and directly seen_ by that faculty; all this in such a manner, that the abstraction of the object seen, would annihilate the faculty itself. now, how is it with the reason? above we found it to be both capacity and faculty: capacity in that it possessed as integral elements, _a priori_ first principles, as objects of sight; faculty in that it saw, brought forward, and made available, those principles. the mode of activity of the pure reason is then a _seeing_, direct, immediate, _sure_; which holds pure truth _fast_, right in the very centre of the field of vision. this act of the reason in thus seeing pure truth is best denominated an intuition of the reason. and here it may be said,--if perception and perceive could be strictly confined to the sense; concept and conceive to the understanding; and intuition and intuit to the reason, a great gain would be made in accuracy of expression regarding these departments of the mind. having thus, as it is believed, established the fact of the existence of a pure reason, and shown the mode of its activity, it devolves to declare the function of that faculty. the function of the pure reason is, first:--to intuit, by an immediate perception, the _a priori_ elemental principles which condition all being; second,--to intuit, by a like immediate perception, those principles, combined in _a priori_ systematic processes, which are the conditional ideal forms for all being; and third,--again to intuit, by another immediate perception, precisely similar in kind to the others, the fact, at least, of the perfectly harmonious combination of all _a priori_ elemental principles, in all possible systematic processes, into a perfect unity,--an absolute, infinite person,--god. to illustrate. . the reason asserts that "malice is criminal;" and that it is _necessarily_ criminal; or, in other words, that no act, of any will, can make it otherwise than it is. the assertion, then, that "malice is criminal," is an axiom, and conditions all being, god as well as man. . the reason asserts that every mathematical form must be seen in space and time, and it affirms the same necessity in this as in the former case. . the full illustration of this point would be anselm's _a priori_ argument for the existence of god. his statement of it should, however, be so modified as to appear, not as an _a priori_ argument for the existence of god, but as an amplified declaration of the fact, that the existence of god is a first principle of reason; and as such, can no more be denied than the multiplication table. objection.--this doctrine degrades god to the level of the finite; both being alike conditioned. answer.--by no means; as will be seen from the two following points. . it is universally acknowledged that god must be self-existent, which means, if it means anything, that the existence of god is _beyond his own control_; or, in other words, that self-existence is an _a priori_ elemental principle, which conditions god's existing at all. . in the two instances under consideration, the word condition has entirely different significations. god is conditioned only by _himself_. not only is this conditioning not a limitation, properly speaking, but the very absence of limitation. the fact that he is absolute and infinite, is a condition of his existence. man's conditions are the very opposite of these. he is relative, instead of absolute; finite, instead of infinite; dependent, instead of self-existent. hence he differs in _kind_ from god as do his conditions. such being the function of the pure reason, it is fully competent to solve the difficulties raised by sir william hamilton and his followers; and the statement of such solution is the work immediately in hand. much of the difficulty and obscurity which have, thus far, attended every discussion of this subject, will be removed by examining the definitions given to certain terms;--either by statement, or by implication in the use made of them;--by exposing the errors involved; and by clearly expressing the true signification of each term. by way of criticism the general statement may be made,--that the limitists--as was natural from their rejection of the faculty of the pure reason--use only such terms, and in such senses, as are pertinent to those subjects which come under the purvey of the understanding and the sense; but which are entirely impertinent, in reference to the sphere of spiritual subjects. the two following phases of this error are sufficient to illustrate the criticism. . the terms infinite and absolute are used to express abstractions. for instance, "_the infinite_, from a human point of view, is merely a name for the absence of those conditions under which thought is possible." "it is thus manifest that a consciousness of the absolute is equally self-contradictory with that of the infinite."--_limits of religious thought_, pp. and . if asked "absolute" what? "infinite" what? will you allow person, or other definite term to be supplied? mansel would reply--no! no possible answer can be given by man. now, without passing at all upon the question whether these terms can represent concrete objects of thought or not, it is to be said, that the use of them to express abstract notions, is utterly unsound. the mere fact of abstraction is an undoubted limitation. there may be an infinite and absolute person. by no possibility can there be an abstract infinite. . but a more glaring and unpardonable error is made by the limitists in their use of the words infinite and absolute, as expressing quantity. take a few examples from many. "for example, we can positively conceive, neither an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great that we cannot also conceive it as a relative part of a still greater whole; nor an absolute part, that is, a part so small, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative whole, divisible into smaller parts. on the other hand, we cannot positively represent, or realize, or construe to the mind (as here understanding and imagination coincide), an infinite whole, for this could only be done by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite wholes which would itself require an infinite time for its accomplishment; nor, for the same reason, can we follow out in thought an infinite divisibility of parts."--_hamilton's essays_, p. . "the metaphysical representation of the deity as absolute and infinite, must necessarily, as the profoundest metaphysicians have acknowledged, amount to nothing less than the sum of all reality."--_limits of religious thought_, p. . "is the first cause finite or infinite?... to think of the first cause as finite, is to think of it as limited. to think of it as limited, necessarily implies a conception of something beyond its limits; it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as bounded, without conceiving a region surrounding its boundaries."--_spencer's first principles_, p. . the last extract tempts one to ask mr. spencer if he ever stood on the north side of the affections. besides the extracts selected, any person reading the authors above named, will find numerous phrases like these: "infinite whole," "infinite sum," "infinite number," "infinite series," by which they express sometimes a mathematical, and sometimes a material amount. upon this whole topic it is to be said, that the terms infinite and absolute have, and can have, no relevancy to any object of the sense or of the understanding, judging according to the sense, or to any number. there is no whole, no sum, no number, no amount, but is definite and limited; and to use those words with the word infinite, is as absurd as to say an infinite finite. and to use words thus, is to "multiply words without knowledge." again, the lines of thought which these writers pursue, do not tend in any degree to clear up the fogs in which they have lost themselves, but only make the muddle thicker. take, for instance, the following extract:-- "thus we are landed in an inextricable dilemma. the absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious; it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as simple; it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can it be conceived by the absence of difference; it cannot be identified with the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it. the one and the many, regarded as the beginning of existence, are thus alike incomprehensible."--_limits of religious thought_, p. . the soul, while oaring her way with weary wing, over the watery waste of such a philosophy, can find no rest for the sole of her foot, except on that floating carcase of a doctrine, chaos is god. the simple fact that such confusion logically results from the premises of the limitists, is a sufficient warrant for rejecting their whole system of thought,--principle and process; and for striking for a new base of operations. but where shall such a base be sought for? on what immutable ararat can the soul find her ark, and a sure resting-place? man seeks a rock upon which he can climb and cry, i know that this is truth. where is the everlasting rock? in our search for the answer to these queries, we may be aided by setting forth the goal to be reached,--the object to be obtained. by observation and reflection man comes to know that he is living in, and forms part of, a system of things, which he comprehensively terms the universe. the problem is,--_to find an ultimate ground, a final cause, which shall be adequate to account for the existence and sustentation of this universe_. there are but two possible directions from which the solution of this problem can come. it must be found either within the universe, or without the universe. can it be found within the universe? if it can, one of two positions must be true. either a part of the universe is cause for the existence of the whole of the universe; or the universe is self-existent. upon the first position nothing need be said. its absurdity is manifested in the very statement of it. a full discussion, or, in fact, anything more than a notice of the doctrine of pantheism, set forth in the second point, would be beyond the intention of the author. the questions at issue lie not between theists and pantheists, but between those who alike reject pantheism as erroneous. the writer confesses himself astonished that a class of rational men could ever have been found, who should have attempted to find the ultimate ground of the universe _in itself_. all that man can know of the facts of the universe, he learns by observation; and the sum of the knowledge he thus gains is, that a vast system of physical objects exists. from the facts observed, he draws conclusions: but the stream cannot rise higher than its fountain. with reference to any lesser object, as a watch, the same process goes on. a watch is. it has parts; and these parts move in definite relations to each other; and to secure a given object. if now, any person, upon being asked to account for the existence of the watch, should confine himself wholly to an examination of the nature of the springs, the wheels, the hands, face, &c., endeavoring to find the reason of its being within itself, the world would laugh at him. how much more justly may the world laugh, yea, shout its ridicule, at the mole-eyed man who rummages among the springs and wheels of the vast machine of the universe, to find the reason of _its_ being. in the former instance, the bystander would exclaim,--"the watch is an evidence of intelligence. man is the only intelligent being on the earth; and is superior to the watch. man made the watch." and his assertion would be true. _a fortiori_ would a bystander of the universe exclaim, "the universe is an evidence of intelligence. an intelligent being, superior to the universe, made the universe." and his assertion is true. we are driven then to our last position; but it is the gibraltar of philosophy. the ultimate ground of the universe must be sought for, and can only be found, without the universe. from this starting-point alone can we proceed, with any hope of reaching the goal. setting out on our new course we will gain a step by noticing a fact involved in the illustration just given. the bystander exclaims, "the watch is an evidence of intelligence." in this very utterance is necessarily expressed the fact of two diverse spheres of existence: the one the sphere of matter, the other the sphere of mind. one cannot think of matter except as inferior, nor of mind except as superior. these two, matter and mind, comprise all possible existence. the reason not only cannot see _how_ any other existence can be, but affirms _that_ no other can be. mind, then, is the ultimate ground of the universe. what mind? by examination, man perceives what appears to be an order in the universe, concludes that there is such an order, assumes the conclusion to be valid, and names the order nature. turning his eye upon himself, he finds himself not only associated with, but, through a portion of his faculties, forming a part of that nature. but a longer, sharper scrutiny, a profounder examination, reveals to him his soul's most secret depth; and the fact of his spiritual personality glows refulgent in the calm light of consciousness. he sees himself, indeed, in nature; but he thrills with joy at the quickly acquired knowledge that nature is only a nest, in which he, a purely supernatural being, must flutter for a time, until he shall be grown, and ready to plume his flight for the spirit land. if then, man, though bound in nature, finds his central self utterly diverse from, and superior to nature, so that he instinctively cries, "my soul is worth more than a universe of gold and diamonds;" _a fortiori_ must that being, who is the ultimate ground, not only of nature, but of those supernatural intelligences who live in nature, be supernatural, spiritual, and supreme? just above, it was seen that matter and mind comprise all possible existence. it has now been found that mind, in its highest form, even in man, is pure spirit; and as such, wholly supernatural. it has further been determined, that the object of our search must be the supreme spirit. just at this point it is suitable to notice, what is, perhaps, the most egregious and unpardonable blunder the limitists have made. in order to do this satisfactorily, the following analysis of the human mind is presented. the soul is a spiritual person, and an animal nature. to this animal nature belong the sense and the understanding. it is universally acknowledged,--at least the limitists will not deny,--that the sense and the understanding are wholly within, and conditioned by nature. observe then their folly. they deny that a part can account for a whole; they reject pantheism; _and yet they employ only those faculties which they confess are wholly within and conditioned by nature_--for they deny the existence of the pure reason, the perceptive faculty of the spiritual person--_to search, only in nature, for the cause of nature_. a fly would buzz among the wheels of a clock to as little purpose. the result arrived at just above, now claims our careful attention. _the ultimate ground of the universe is_ the supreme spirit. to appreciate this result, we must return to our analysis of man. in his spiritual personality we have found him wholly supernatural. we have further found that, only as a spiritual person is he capable of pursuing this investigation to a final and valid termination. if, then, we would complete our undertaking, we must ascend into a sphere whose light no eagle's eye can ever bear; and whose atmosphere his daring wing can never beat. there no sense can ever enter; no judgments are needed. through reason--the soul's far-darting eye,--and through reason alone, can we gaze on the immutable. turning this searching eye upon ourselves, we find that man, as spiritual person, is a pure reason,--the faculty which gives him _a priori_ first principles, as the standard for conduct and the forms for activity,--a spiritual sensibility, which answers with emotive music to the call of the reason; and lastly, a will, in which the person dwells central, solitary, and supreme, the final arbiter of its own destiny. every such being is therefore a miniature final cause. the goal of our search must be near at hand. in man appears the very likeness of the being we seek. his highest powers unmistakably shadow forth the form of that being, who is the final. man originates; but he is dependent for his power, and the sphere of that power is confined to his own soul. we seek a being who can originate, who is utterly independent; and the sphere of whose activity extends wherever, without himself, he chooses. man, after a process of culture, comes to intuit some first principles, in some combinations. we seek a being who necessarily sees, at once and forever, all possible first principles, in all possible relations, as the ideal forms for all possible effort. man stumbles along on the road of life, frequently ignorant of the way, but more frequently perversely violating the eternal law which he finds written on his heart. we seek a being who never stumbles, but who is perfectly wise; and whose conduct is in immutable accord with the _a priori_ standards of his reason. man is a spiritual person, dependent for existence, and limited to himself in his exertions. he whom we seek will be found to be also a spiritual person who is self-existent, and who sets his own bounds to his activity. that the line of thought we are now pursuing is the true one, and that the result which we approach, and are about to utter, is well founded, receives decisive confirmation from the following facts. man perceives that malice must be criminal. just so the eternal eye must see it. a similar remark is true of mathematical, and all other _a priori_ laws. sometimes, at least, there awakens in man's bosom the unutterable thrill of benevolence; and thus he tastes of the crystal river which flows, calmly and forever, through the bosom of the "everlasting father." for his own conduct, man is the final cause. in this is he, must he be, the likeness of the ultimate. spiritual personality is the highest possible form of being. it is then a form common to god and man. here, therefore, philosophy and revelation are at one. with startling, and yet grateful unanimity, they affirm the solemn truth, "god made man in his own image." we reach the goal at last. the final truth stands full in the field of our vision. "i am alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, saith jehovah, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the almighty." that spiritual person who is self-existent, absolute, and infinite, is the ultimate ground, the final cause of the universe. the problem of the universe is solved. we stand within the portico of the sublime temple of truth. mortal has lifted, at last, the veil of isis, and looked upon the eternal mysteries. it is manifest now, how irrelevant and irreverent those expressions must be, in which the terms infinite and absolute are employed as signifying abstractions or amounts. they can have no meaning with reference to the universe. but what their true significance is, stands out with unmistakable clearness and precision. . _absoluteness is that distinctive spiritual_ quality _of the necessary being which establishes him as unqualified except by himself, and as complete_. . absoluteness and unconditionedness are,--the one the positive, and the other the negative term expressive of the same idea. . _infinity is that distinctive spiritual_ quality _of the necessary being which gives to him universality_. absoluteness and infinity are, then, spiritual qualities of the self-existent person, which, distinguishing him from all other persons, constitute him unique and supreme. it is a law of logic, which even the child must acknowledge, that whenever, by a process of thought, a result has been attained and set forth, he who propounds the result is directly responsible for all that is logically involved in it. the authority of that law is here both acknowledged and invoked. the most rigid and exhaustive logical development of the premises heretofore obtained, which the human mind is capable of, is challenged, in the confidence that there can be found therein no jot of discrepancy, no tittle of contradiction. as germain, and important to the matter in hand, some steps in this development will be noted. in solving the problem placed before us, viz: to account for the being and continuance of the universe, we have found that the universe and its cause are two distinct and yet intimately and necessarily connected beings, the one dependent upon the other, and that other utterly independent; and so that the one is limited and finite, and the other absolute and infinite; that the one is partly thing and partly person, and that to both thing and person limitation and finiteness belong; while the other is wholly person, and consequently the pure, absolute, and infinite person. we have further found that absoluteness and infinity are spiritual qualities of that one person, which are incommunicable, and differentiate him from all other possible beings; and which establish him as the uncaused, self-active ground for all possible beings besides. it is then a person with all the limitations and conditions of personality,--a person at once limited and unlimited, conditioned and unconditioned, related and unrelated, whose limitations, conditions, and relations are entirely consistent with his absoluteness and infinity, who is the final cause, the ultimate ground of the universe. the finite person is self-conscious, and in a measure self-comprehending; but he only partially perceives the workings of his own being. _a fortiori_, must the infinite person be self-conscious, and exhaustively self-comprehending. the finite person is an intellect, sensibility, and will; but these are circumscribed by innumerable limitations. so must the infinite person be intellect, sensibility, and will; but his intellect must be universal genius; his sensibility pure delight, and his will, as choice, universal benevolence, and as act, omnipotence. . as intellect, the infinite person is universal genius. then, he "must possess the primary copies or patterns of what it is possible may be, in his own subjective apprehension;" or, in other words, "the pure ideals of all possible entities, lie as pure reason conceptions in the light of the divine intelligence, and in these must be found the rules after which the creative agency must go forth." these _a priori_ "pure ideals" are _conditional_ of his knowledge. they are the sum and limit of all possible knowledge. he must know them as they are. he cannot intuit, or think otherwise than in accordance with them. however many there may be of these ideals, the number is fixed and definite, and must be so; and so the infinite person must see it. in fine, in the fact of exhaustive self-comprehension is involved the fact, that the number of his qualities, attributes, faculties, forms of activity, and acts, are, and must be limited, definite, and so known to him; and yet he is infinite and absolute, and thoroughly knows himself to be so. . as sensibility, the infinite person is pure delight. then he exists in a state of unalloyed and complete bliss, produced by the ceaseless consciousness of his perfect worth and worthiness, and his entire complacency therein. yet he is pleased with the good conduct, and displeased with the evil conduct, of the moral beings he has made. and if two are good, and one better than another, he loves the one more than the other. yet all this in no way modifies, or limits, or lessens his own absolute self-satisfaction and happiness. . as will, the infinite person is, in choice, universal benevolence; in act, omnipotence. _a._ in choice, the whole personality,--both the spontaneous and self activity, are entirely and concordantly active in the one direction. some of the objects towards which this state manifests itself may be very small. the fact that each receives the attention appropriate to his place in the system of beings in no way modifies the great heart, which spontaneously prompts to all good acts. but _b._ in act, the infinite person, though omnipotent, is, always must be, limited. his ability to act is limited and determined by the "pure ideals," in which "must be found the rules after which the creative agency must go forth." in act he is also limited by his choice. the fact that he is universal benevolence estops him from performing any act which is not in exact accordance therewith. he cannot construct a rational being, to whom two and two will appear five; and if he should attempt to, he would cease to be perfect goodness. again, the infinite person performs an act--of creation. the act is, must be, limited and definite; and so must the product--the universe be. he cannot create an unlimited universe, nor perform an infinite act. the very words unlimited universe, and as well the notions they express, are contradictory, and annihilate each other. further, an infinite act, even if possible, would not, could not create, or have any relation to the construction of a universe. an infinite act must be the realization of an infinite ideal. the infinite person has a thorough comprehension of himself; and consequently a complete idea of himself. that idea, being the idea of the infinite person, is infinite; and it is the only possible infinite idea. he finds this idea realized in himself. but, should it be in his power to realize it _again_, that exertion of power would be an infinite act, and its product another infinite person. no other infinite act, and no other result, are rationally supposable. the universe, then, however large it be, is, must be, limited and definite. its magnitude may be inconceivable to us; but in the mind of its creator every atom is numbered. no spirit may ever have skirted its boundary; but that boundary is as clear and distinct to his eye as the outline of the alps against a clear sky is to the traveller's. the questions where? how far? how long? how much? and the like, are pertinent only in the universe; and their answers are always limited and definite. the line of thought we have been pursuing is deemed by a large class of thinkers not only paradoxical, but utterly contradictory and self-destructive. we speak of a person, a term which necessarily involves limitation and condition, as infinite and absolute. we speak of this infinity and absoluteness as spiritual qualities, which are conditional and limiting to him. we speak of him as conditioned by an inability to be finite. in fine, to those good people, the limitists, our sense seems utter nonsense. it is required, therefore, for the completion of this portion of our task, to present a rational ground upon which these apparent contradictions shall become manifestly consistent. in those sentences where the infinite person is spoken of as limited and unlimited, &c., it is evident that there is a play upon words, and that they apply to different qualities in the personality. it is not said, of course, that the number of his faculties is limited and unlimited; or that his self-complacency is boundless and constrained; or that his act is conditioned and unconditioned. nor are these seeming paradoxes stated to puzzle and disturb. they are written to express a great, fundamental, and all-important truth, which seems never once to have shadowed the minds of the limitists,--a truth which, when once seen, dispels forever all the ghostly battalions of difficulties which they have raised. the truth is this. that being whose limitations, conditions, and relations are wholly subjective, _i. e._ find their whole base and spring in his self; and who is therefore entirely free from on all possible limitations, conditions, and relations, from without himself; and who possesses, therefore, all possible fulness of all possible excellences, and finds the perennial acme of happiness in self-contemplation, and the consciousness of his perfect worth; and being such is ground for all other possible being; is, in the true philosophical sense, unrelated, unconditioned, unlimited. or, in other words, the conditions imposed by universal genius upon the absolute and infinite person are _different in kind_ from the conditions imposed upon finite persons and physical things. the former in no way diminish aught from the fulness of their possessor's endowments; the latter not only do so diminish, but render it impossible for their possessor to supply the deficiency. the following dictum will, then, concisely and exactly express the truth we have attained. _those only are conditions, in the philosophical sense, which diminish the fulness of the possessor's endowments._ an admirable illustration of this truth can be drawn from some reflections of laurens p. hickok, d. d., which we quote. "what we need is not merely a rule by which to direct _the process_ in the attainment of any artistic end, but we must find the legislator who may determine the end itself"... whence is the ultimate behest that is to determine the archetype, and control the pure spontaneity in its action. * * * * * "must the artist work merely because there is an inner want to gratify, with no higher end than the gratification of the highest constitutional craving? can we find nothing beyond a want, which shall from its own behest demand that this, and not its opposite, shall be? grant that the round worlds and all their furniture are _good_--but why good? certainly as means to an end. grant that this end, the happiness of sentient beings, is _good_--but why good? because it supplies the want of the supreme architect. and is this the _supreme good_? surely if it is, we are altogether within nature's conditions, call our ultimate attainment by what name we may. we have no origin for our legislation, only as the highest architect finds such wants within himself, and the archetypal rule for gratifying his wants in the most effectual manner; and precisely as the ox goes to his fodder in the shortest way, so he goes to his work in making and peopling worlds in the most direct manner. here is no will; no personality; no pure autonomy. the artist finds himself so constituted that he must work in this manner, or the craving of his own nature becomes intolerable to himself, and the gratifying of this craving is _the highest good_." we attain hereby a mark by which to distinguish the diminishing from the undiminishing condition. a sense of want, _a craving_, is the necessary result of a diminishing condition. hence the presence of any craving is the distinguishing mark of the finite; and that plenitude of endowments which excludes all possible craving or lack, is the distinguishing mark of the infinite and absolute person. in this plenitude his infinity and absoluteness consist; and it is, therefore, conditional of them. upon this plenitude, as conditional of this person's perfection, dr. hickok speaks further, as follows:-- "we must find that which shall itself be the reason and law for benevolence, and for the sake of which the artist shall be put to his beneficent agency above all considerations that he finds his nature craving it. it must be that for whose sake, happiness, even that which, as kind and benevolent, craves on all sides the boon to bless others, itself should be. not sensient nor artistic autonomy, but a pure ethic autonomy, which knows that within itself there is an excellency which obliges for the sake of itself. this is never to be found, nor anything very analogous to it, in sensient nature and a dictate from some generalized experience. it lies within the rational spirit, and is law in the heart, as an inward imperative in its own right, and must there be found.... this inward witnessing capacitates for self-legislating and self-rewarding. it is inward consciousness of a worth imperative above want; an end in itself, and not means to another end; a user of things, but not itself to be used by anything; and, on account of its intrinsic excellency, an authoritative determiner for its own behoof of the entire artistic agency with all its products, and thus a conscience excusing or accusing. "this inward witnessing of the absolute to his own worthiness, gives the ultimate estimate to nature, which needs and can attain to nothing higher, than that it should satisfy this worthiness as end; and thereby in all his works, he fixes, in his own light, upon the subjective archetype, and attains to the objective result of that which is befitting his own dignity. it is, therefore, in no craving want which must be gratified, but from the interest of an inner behest, which should be executed for his own worthiness' sake, that 'god has created all things, and for his pleasure they are and were created.'" in the light of the foregoing discussion and illustrations, the division of conditions into two classes--the one class, conditions proper, comprising those which diminish the endowments of the being upon whom they lie, and are ground for a craving or lack; and the other class, comprising those conditions which do not diminish the endowments of the being upon whom they lie, and which are, therefore, ground for perfect plenitude of endowments, and of self-satisfaction on account thereof--is seen to be thoroughly philosophical. and let it be here noted, that the very construction, or, if the term suit better, perception of this distinction, is a decisive evidence of the fact, and a direct product of the operation of the pure reason. if our intellect comprised only what the limitists acknowledge it to be, a sense and an understanding, not only could no other but diminishing conditions be thought of, but by no possibility could a hint that there were any others flit through the mind. such a mind, being wholly in nature, and conditioned by nature, _cannot_ climb up out of nature, and perceive aught there. but those conditions which lie upon the infinite person are supernatural and spiritual; and could not be even vaguely guessed at, much more examined critically and classified, but by a being possessed of a faculty the same in kind with the intellect in which such spiritual conditions inhere. the actual processes which go on in the mind are as follows. the sense, possessing a purely mechanical structure, a structure not differing in _kind_ from that of the vegetable,--both being alike entirely conditioned by the law of cause and effect,--perceives phenomena. the relation of the object to the sensorium, or of the image to the sensory, and the forms under which the sense shall receive the impression, are fixed. because the sense acts compulsorily, in fixed mechanical forms, it is, by this very construction, incapable, not only of receiving impressions and examining phenomena outside of those forms, but it can never be startled with the guess that there _is_ anything else than what is received therein. for instance: a man born blind, though he can have no possible notion of what light is, knows that light is, from the testimony of those who can see. but if a race of men born blind should be found, who had never had any communication with men who could see, it is notorious that they could have no possible notion even that light was. a suspicion of its existence could never cross their minds. this position is strengthened and established beyond controversy, by the failure of the mind in its efforts to construct an entirely new sense. every attempt only intensifies our appreciation of the futility of the effort. from fragments of the five senses we might, perhaps, construct a patchwork sixth; but the mind makes no presentation to itself of a new sense. the reason is, that, to do so, the sense, as mental faculty, must transcend the very conditions of its existence. it is precisely with the understanding as with the lower faculty. it cannot transcend its limits. it can add no item to the sum of human knowledge, except as it deduces it from a presentation by the sense. hence its conditions correspond to those in its associate faculty. it is manifest, then, that a being with only these faculties may construct a _system_, but can never develop a _science_. it can arrange, classify, by such standards as its fancy may select, the phenomena in nature; but this must be in accordance with some sensuous form. _no law can be seen_, by which it ought to be so, and not otherwise. such classification must always be determined by the number of stamens in the flower, for instance; and that standard, though arbitrary, will be as good as any other, _unless there comes a higher faculty_ which, overlooking all nature, perceives the _a priori_ law working in nature, which gives the ultimate ground for an exhaustive development of a science which in its _idea_ cannot be improved. it is manifest, further, that those conditions, to which we have applied the epithet proper, lie upon the two faculties we have been considering. in this we agree with the limitists. it now behooves to present the fact that the faculty whose existence was proved in the earlier part of our work, is competent to overlook, and so comprehend nature, and all the conditions of nature, and thereby assign to said conditions their true and inferior place, while it soars out of nature, and intuits those _a priori_ laws which, though the conditions of, are wholly unconditioned _by nature_; but which are both the conditions of and conditioned by the supernatural; and this in an entirely different sense from the other. this is the province of the pure reason. standing on some lofty peak, above all clouds of sense, under the full blaze of eternal truth, the soul sees all nature spread like a vast map before her searching eye, sharply observes, and appreciates all the conditions of nature; and then, while holding it full in the field of her vision, with equal fulness perceives that other land, the spiritual plains of the supernatural, sees them too in all their conditionings; and sees, with a clearness of vision never approximated by the earthly eye, the fact that these supernatural conditions are no deprivation which awaken a want, but that they inhere and cohere, as final ground for absolute plenitude of endowments and fulness of bliss, in the self-existent person. it will be objected to the position now attained, that it involves the doctrine that the pure reason in the finite spiritual person is on a par with the universal genius in the infinite spiritual person. the objection is fallacious, because based upon the assumption that likeness in mode of action involves entire similarity. the mode of action in the finite pure reason is precisely similar to that of the universal genius; the objects perceived by both are the same, they are seen in the same light, and so are in accord; but the _range_ of the finite is one, and the _range_ of the infinite is another; and so diverse also are the circumstances attending the act of seeing. the range of the finite reason is, _always must be, partial_: the range of the infinite reason is, _always must be, exhaustive_ (not infinite). in circumstances, the finite reason is created dependent for existence, must begin in a germ in which it is inactive, and _must_ be developed by association with nature, and under forms of nature; and can never, by any possibility of growth, attain to that perfectness in which it shall be satisfied, or to a point in development from which it can continue its advance as _pure spirit_. it always must be spirit in a body; even though that be a spiritual body. the infinite reason is self-existent, and therefore independent; and is, and always must be, in the absolute possession of all possible knowledge, and so cannot grow. hence, while the infinite and finite reasons see the same object in the same light, and therefore _alike_, the difference in range, and the difference in circumstance, must forever constitute them dissimilar. the exact likeness of sight just noticed is the _necessary a priori_ ground upon which a moral government is _possible_. in thus declaring the basis upon which the above distinction between the two classes of conditions rests, we have been led to distinguish more clearly between the faculties of the mind, and especially to observe how the pure reason enables us thereby to solve the problems she has raised. in this radical distinction lies the rational ground for the explication of all the problems which the limitists raise. it also appears that the terms must, possible, and the like, being used to express no idea of restraint, as coming from without upon the infinite person, or of lack or craving, as subsisting within him, are properly employed in expressing the fact that his _self, as a priori ground for his activity_, is, though the only, yet a real, positive, and irremovable limit, condition, and law of his action. of two possible ends he may freely choose either. of all possible modes of action he may choose one; but the constituting laws of the self he _cannot_, and the moral laws of his self he _will not_, violate. that point has now been reached at which this branch of the discussion in hand may be closed. the final base from which to conduct an examination of the questions respecting absoluteness and infinity has been attained. in the progress to this consummation it was found that a radical psychological error lay at the root of the philosophy taught by the limitists. their theory was seen to be partial, and essentially defective. qualities which they do not recognise were found to belong to certain mental affirmations. four classes of these affirmations or ideas were named and illustrated; and by them the fact of the reason was established. then its mode of activity and its functions were stated; and finally the great truth which solves the problem of the ages was, by this faculty, attained and stated. it became evident that the final cause of the universe must be found without the universe; and it was then seen that that spiritual person who is self-existent, absolute, and infinite, is the ultimate ground, the final cause, of the universe. definitions of the terms absolute and infinite suitable to such a position were then given, with a few concluding reflections. from the result thus secured the way is prepared for an examination of the general principles and their special applications which the limitists maintain, and this will occupy our future pages. part ii. an examination of the fundamental proposition of the limitists, and of certain general corollaries under it. it has been attempted in the former pages to find a valid and final basis of truth, one which would satisfy the cravings of the human soul, and afford it a sure rest. in the fact that god made man in his own image, and that thus there is, _to a certain extent_, a community of faculties, a community of knowledge, a community of obligations, and a community of interests, have we found such a basis. we have hereby learned that a part of man's knowledge is necessary and final; in other words, that he can know the truth, and be sure that his knowledge is correct. if the proofs which have been offered of the fact of the pure reason, and the statements which have been made of the mode of its activity and of its functions, and, further, of the problem of the universe, and the true method for solving it, shall have been satisfactory to the reader, he will now be ready to consider the analysis of sir william hamilton's fundamental proposition, which was promised on an early page. we there gave, it was thought, sufficiently full extracts for a fair presentation of his theory, and followed them with a candid epitome. in recurring to the subject now, and for the purpose named, we are constrained at the outset to make an acknowledgment. it would be simple folly, a childish egotism, to pass by in silence the masterly article on this subject in the "north american review" for october, , and after it to pretend to offer anything new. whatever the author might have wrought out in his own mental workshop,--and his work was far less able than what is there given,--that article has left nothing to be said. he has therefore been tempted to one of two courses: either to transfer it to these pages, or pass by the subject entirely. either course may, perhaps, be better than the one finally chosen; which is, while pursuing the order of his own thought, to add a few short extracts therefrom. one possibility encourages him in this, which is, that some persons may see this volume, who have no access to the review, and to whom, therefore, these pages will be valuable. to save needless repetition, this discussion will presuppose that the reader has turned back and perused the extracts and epitome above alluded to. upon the very threshold of sir william hamilton's statement, one is met by a logical _faux pas_ which is truly amazing. immediately after the assertion that "the mind can know only the _limited and the conditionally limited_," and in the very sentence in which he denies the possibility of a knowledge of the infinite and absolute, _he proceeds to define those words in definite and known terms_! the infinite he defines as "the unconditionally unlimited," and the absolute as "the unconditionally limited." or, to save him, will one say that the defining terms are unknown? so much the worse, then! "the infinite," an unknown term, may be represented by _x_; and the unconditionally unlimited, a compound unknown term, by _ab_. now, who has the right to say, either in mathematics or metaphysics, in any philosophy, that _x_=_ab_? yet such dicta are the basis of "the philosophy of the unconditioned." but, one of two suppositions is possible. either the terms infinite and absolute are known terms and definable, or they are unknown terms and undefinable. yet, hamilton says, they are unknown and definable. which does he mean? if he is held to the former, they are unknown; then all else that he has written about them are batches of meaningless words. if he is held to the latter, they are definable; then are they known, and his system is denied in the assertion of it. since his words are so contradictory, he must be judged by his deeds; and in these he always assumes that we have a positive knowledge of the infinite and absolute, else he would not have argued the matter; for there can be no argument about nothing. our analysis of his theory, then, must be conducted upon this hypothesis. turn back for a moment to the page upon which his theory is quoted, and read the last sentence. is his utterance a "principle," or is it a judgment? is it an axiom, or is it a guess. the logician asserts that we know only the conditioned, and yet bases his assertion upon "the principles," &c. what is a principle, and how is it known? if it is axiom, then he has denied his own philosophy in the very sentence in which he uttered it. and this, we have no hesitation in saying, is just what he did. he blindly assumed certain "fundamental laws of thought,"--to quote another of his phrases--to establish the impotence of the mind to know those laws _as fundamental_. again, if his philosophy is valid, the words "must," "necessary," and the like are entirely out of place; for they are unconditional. in the conditioned there is, can be, no must, no necessity. from these excursions about the principle let us now return to the principle itself. it may be stated concisely thus: there are two extremes,--"the absolute" and the "infinite." these include all being. they are contradictories, that is, one must be, to the exclusion of the other. but the mind can "conceive" of neither. what, then, is the logical conclusion? _that the mind cannot conceive of anything._ what is his conclusion? that the mind can conceive of something between the infinite and the absolute, which is neither the one nor the other, but a _tertium quid_--the conditioned. where did this _tertium quid_ come from, when he had already comprehended everything in the two extremes? if there is a mean, the conditioned, and the two extremes, then "excluded middle" has nothing to do with the matter at all. to avoid the inevitable conclusion of his logic as just stated, hamilton erected the subterfuge of _mental imbecility_. to deny any knowledge to man, was to expose himself to ridicule. he, therefore, and his followers after him, drew a line in the domain of knowledge, and assigned to the hither side of it all knowledge that can come through generalizations in the understanding; and then asserted that the contradictions which appeared in the mind, when one examined those questions which lie on the further side of that line, resulted from the impotency of the mind to comprehend the questions themselves. this was, is, their psychology. how satisfactory it may be to man, a hundred years, perhaps, will show. but strike out the last assertion, and write, both are cognizable; and then let us proceed with our reasoning. the essayist in the north american presents the theory under four heads, as follows:-- " . the infinite and absolute as defined, are contradictory and exclusive of each other; yet, one must be true. " . neither of them can be conceived as possible. " . each is inconceivable; and the inconceivability of each is referable to the same cause, namely, mental imbecility. " . as opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between them." the first and fourth points require our especial attention. . let us particularly mark, then, that it is _as defined_, that the terms are "contradictory." the question, therefore, turns upon the definitions. undoubtedly the definitions are erroneous; but in order to see wherein, the following general reflections may be made:-- the terms infinite and absolute, as used by philosophers, have two distinct applications: one to space and time, and one to god. such definitions as are suitable to the latter application, and self-consistent, have already been given. though reluctant to admit into a philosophical treatise a term bearing two distinct meanings, we shall waive for a little our scruples,--though choosing, for ourselves, to use the equivalent rather than the term. such definitions are needed, then, as that absolute space and time shall not be contradictory to infinite space and time. let us first observe hamilton's theory. according to it, space, for instance, is either unconditional illimitation, or it is unconditional limitation; in other words, it is illimitable, or it is a limited whole. the first part of the assertion is true. that space is illimitable, is unquestionably a self-evident truth. any one who candidly considers the subject will see not only that the mind cannot assign limits to space, but that the attempt is an absurdity just alike in kind with the attempt to think two and two five. the last part is a psychological blunder, has no pertinence to the question, and is not what hamilton was groping for. he was searching for the truth, that _there is no absolute unit in space_. a limited whole has nothing to do with the matter in hand--absoluteness--at all. the illimitability of space, which has just been established as an axiom, precludes this. what, then, is the opposite pole of thought? we have just declared it. there is no absolute unit of space; or, in other words, all division is in space, but space is indivisible. this, also, is an axiom, is self-evident. we attain, then, two poles of thought, and definitions of the two terms given, which are exhaustive and consistent. "space is illimitable. space is indivisible." the one is the infinity of space, the other is the absoluteness of space. the fact, then, is, all limitation is _in_ space, and all division is _in_ space; but space is neither limited or divided. one of the logician's extremes is seen, then, to have no foundation in fact; and that which is found to be true is also found to be consistent with, nay, essential to, what should have been the other. having hitherto expressed a decided protest against any attempt to find out god through the forms of space and time, a repetition will not be needed here. god is only to be sought for, found, and studied, by such methods as are suitable to the supreme spiritual person. hence all the attempts of the limitists to reason from spatial and temporal difficulties over to those questions which belong to god, are simply absurd. the questions respecting space and time are to be discussed by themselves. and the questions respecting god are to be discussed by themselves. he who tries to reason from the one to the other is not less absurd than he who should try to reason from a farm to the multiplication table. in sir william hamilton's behalf it should be stated, that there is just a modicum of truth underlying his theory,--just enough to give it a degree of plausibility. the sense, as faculty for the perception of physical objects, or their images, and the understanding as discursive faculty for passing over and forming judgments upon the materials gathered by the sense, lie under the shadow of a law very like the one he stated. the sense was made _incapable_ of perceiving an ultimate atom or of comprehending the universe. from the fact that the sense never has perceived these objects, the understanding concludes that it never will. only by the insight and oversight of that higher faculty, the pure reason, do we come to know that it never _can_. it was because those lower faculties are thus walled in by the conditions of space and time, and are unable to perceive or conceive anything out of those conditions, and because, in considering them, he failed to see the other mental powers, that sir william hamilton constructed his philosophy of the unconditioned. . neither of them can be conceived as possible. literally, this is true. the word "conceive" applies strictly to the work of the understanding; and that faculty can never have any notion of the infinite or absolute. but, assuming that "conceive" is a general term for cognize, the conclusion developed just above is inevitable. if all being is in one or the other, and neither can be known, nothing can be known. . they cannot be known, because of mental imbecility. if man can know nothing because of mental imbecility, why suppose that he has a mental faculty at all? why not enounce, as the fundamental principle of one's theory, the assertion, all men are idiots? this would be logically consistent. the truth is, the logician was in a dilemma. he must confess that men know something. by a false psychology he had ruled the reason out of the mind, and so had left himself no faculty by which to form any notion of absoluteness and infinity; and yet they would thrust themselves before him, and demand an explanation. hence, he constructed a subterfuge. he would have been more consistent if he had said, there is no absolute and infinite. the conditioned is the whole of existence; and this the mind knows. " . as opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between them." what the essayist in the north american says upon this point is so apt, and so accords with our own previous reflections, that we will not forbear making an extract. "the last of the four theses will best be re-stated in hamilton's own words; the italics are his. 'the conditioned is the mean between two extremes--two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which _can be conceived as possible_, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one _must be admitted as necessary_.' this sentence excites unmixed wonder. to mention in the same breath the law of excluded middle, and two contradictions with a mean between them, requires a hardihood unparalleled in the history of philosophy, except by hegel. if the two contradictory extremes are themselves incogitable, yet include a cogitable mean, why insist upon the necessity of accepting either extreme? this necessity of accepting one of two contradictories is wholly based upon the supposed impossibility of a mean; if the mean exists, that may be true, and both the contradictories false. but if a mean between the two contradictories be both impossible and absurd, (and we have hitherto so interpreted the law of excluded middle,) hamilton's conditioned entirely vanishes." upon a system which, in whatever aspect one looks at it, is found to be but a bundle of contradictions and absurdities, further criticism would appear to be unnecessary. having, impliedly at least, accepted as true sir william hamilton's psychological error,--the rejection of the reason as the intellectual faculty of the spiritual person,--and having, with him, used the terms limit, condition, and the like, in such significations as are pertinent to the sense and understanding only, the limitists proceed to present in a paradoxical light many questions which arise concerning "the infinite." they take the ground that, to our view, he can be neither person, nor intellect, nor consciousness; for each of these implies limitation; and yet that it is impossible for us to know aught of him, except as such. then having, as they think, completely confused the mind, they draw hence new support for their conclusion, that we can attain to no satisfactory knowledge on the subject. the following extracts selected from many will show this. "now, in the first place, the very conception of consciousness, in whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies distinction between one object and another. to be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not. but distinction is necessarily a limitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished from another, it must possess some form of existence which the other has not, or it must not possess some form which the other has. but it is obvious that the infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from the finite, by the absence of any quality which the finite possesses; for such absence would be a limitation. nor yet can it be distinguished by the presence of an attribute which the finite has not; for as no finite part can be a constituent of an infinite whole, this differential characteristic must itself be infinite; and must at the same time have nothing in common with the finite.... "that a man can be conscious of the infinite, is thus a supposition which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself. consciousness is essentially a limitation; for it is the determination of the mind to one actual out of many possible modifications. but the infinite, if it is conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything, and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. but again, it must also be conceived as actually everything, and potentially nothing; for an unrealized potentiality is likewise a limitation. if the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. if it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness.... "rationalism is thus only consistent with itself when it refuses to attribute consciousness to god. consciousness, in the only form in which we can conceive it, implies limitation and change,--the perception of one object out of many, and a comparison of that object with others. to he always conscious of the same object, is, humanly speaking, not to be conscious at all; and, beyond its human manifestation, we can have no conception of what consciousness is."--_limits of religious thought_, pp. - . "as the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of positive thought--thought necessarily supposes conditions. to _think_ is to _condition_; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought.... "thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought; known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal. we admit that the consequence of this doctrine is--that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. departing from the particular, we admit that we can never, in out highest generalizations, rise above the finite; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of philosophy." "in all this, so far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially agree; for a more complete admission could not be imagined, not only that a knowledge, and even a notion, of the absolute is impossible for man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such a knowledge even in the deity himself, without contradicting our human conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself."--_sir william hamilton's essays_, pp. , , . "the various mental attributes which we ascribe to god--benevolence, holiness, justice, wisdom, for example--can be conceived by us only as existing in a benevolent and holy and just and wise being, who is not identical with any one of his attributes, but the common subject of them all; in one word, a _person_. but personality, as we conceive it, is essentially a limitation and relation. our own personality is presented to us as relative and limited; and it is from that presentation that all our representative notions of personality are derived. personality is presented to us as a relation between the conscious self and the various modes of his consciousness. there is no personality in abstract thought without a thinker: there is no thinker unless he exercises some mode of thought. personality is also a limitation; for the thought and the thinker are distinguished from and limit each other; and the various modes of thought are distinguished each from each by limitation likewise...."--_limits of religious thought_, p. . "personality, with all its limitations, though far from exhibiting the absolute nature of god as he is, is yet truer, grander, more elevating, more religious, than those barren, vague, meaningless abstractions in which men babble about nothing under the name of the infinite and personal conscious existence, limited though it be, is yet the noblest of all existence of which man can dream.... it is by consciousness alone that we know that god exists, or that we are able to offer him any service. it is only by conceiving him as a conscious being, that we can stand in any religious relation to him at all; that we can form such a representation of him as is demanded by our spiritual wants, insufficient though it be to satisfy our intellectual curiosity."--_limits of religious thought_, p. . the conclusions of these writers upon this whole topic are as follows:-- "the mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions subversive of each other as equally possible; _but only as unable to understand_ as possible two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true.... and by a wonderful revelation we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensive reality."--_sir william hamilton's essays_, p. . "to sum up briefly this portion of my argument. the conception of the absolute and infinity, from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with contradictions. there is a contradiction in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others; and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. there is a contradiction in conceiving it as one; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. there is a contradiction in conceiving it as personal; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. it cannot, without contradiction, be represented as active; nor, without equal contradiction, be represented as inactive. it cannot be conceived as the sum of all existence; nor yet can it be conceived as a part only of that sum."--_limits of religious thought_, pp. , . we have quoted thus largely, preferring that the limitists should speak for themselves. their doctrine, as taught, not simply in these passages, but throughout their writings, may be briefly summed up as follows. the human mind, whenever it attempts to investigate the profoundest subjects which come before it, and which it is goaded to examine, finds itself in an inextricable maze of contradictions; and, after vainly struggling for a while to get out, becomes nonplussed, confused, confounded, dazed; and, falling down helpless and effortless in the maze, and with devout humility acknowledging its impotence, it finds that the "highest reason" is to pass beyond the sphere and out of the light of reason, into the sphere of a superrational and therefore dark, and therefore _blind_ faith. but it is to be stated, and here we strike to the centre of the errors of the limitists, that a perception and confession of mental impotence is _not_ the logical deduction from their premises. lustrous as may be their names in logic,--and sir william hamilton is esteemed a sun in the logical firmament,--no one of them ever saw, or else dared to acknowledge, the logical sequence from their principles. they have climbed upon the dizzy heights of thought, and out on their verge; and there they stand, hesitating and shivering, like naked men on alpine precipices, with no eagle wings to spread and soar away towards the eternal truth; and not daring to take the awful plunge before them. behold the gulf from which they shrink. mr. mansel says:-- "it is our duty, then, to think of god as personal; and it is our duty to believe that he is infinite. it is true that we cannot reconcile these two representations with each other, as our conception of personality involves attributes apparently contradictory to the notion of infinity. but it does not follow that this contradiction exists anywhere but in our own minds: it does not follow that it implies any impossibility in the absolute nature of god. the apparent contradiction, in this case, as in those previously noticed, is the necessary consequence of an attempt on the part of the human thinker to transcend the boundaries of his own consciousness. it proves that there are limits to man's power of thought; and it proves no more."--_limits of religious thought_, p. . or, to put it in sharp and accurate, plain and unmistakable english. "it is our duty to think of god as personal," when to think of him as personal is to think a lie; "to believe that he is infinite," when so to believe is to believe the lie already thought; and when to believe a lie is to incur the penalty decreed by the bible--god's book--upon all who believe lies. and this is the religious teaching of a professed christian minister in one of the first universities in the world. not that mr. mansel meant to teach this. by no means. but it logically follows from his premises. in his philosophy the mind instinctively, necessarily, and with equal authority in each case, asserts that there must be an infinite being; that that being must be self-conscious, must be unlimited; and that consciousness is a limitation. these assertions are contradictory and self-destructive. what follows then? that the mind is impotent? no! it follows that the mind is a deceiver! we learn again the lesson we have learned before. it is not weakness, it is falsehood: it is not want of capacity, it is want of integrity that is proved by this contradiction. man is worse than a hopeless, mental imbecile, he is a hopeless, mental cheat. but is the result true? how can it be, when with all its might the mind revolts from it, as nature does from a vacuum? true that the human mind is an incorrigible falsifier? with the indignation of outraged honesty, man's soul rejects the insulting aspersion, and reasserts its own integrity and authority. ages of controversy have failed to obliterate or cry down the spontaneous utterance of the soul, "i have within myself the ultimate standard of truth." it now devolves to account for the aberrations of the limitists. the ground of all their difficulties is simple and plain. while denying to the human mind the faculty of the pure reason, they have, _by the (to them) undistinguished use of that faculty_, raised questions which the understanding by no possibility could raise, which the reason alone is capable of presenting, and which that reason alone can solve; and have attempted to solve them solely by the assistance, and in the forms of, the sense and the understanding. their problems belong to a spiritual person; and they attempt to solve them by the inferior modes of an animal nature. better, by far, could they see with their ears. all their processes are developed on the vicious assumption, that the highest form of knowledge possible to the human mind is a generalization in the understanding, upon facts given in the sense: a form of knowledge which is always one, whether the substance be distinguished in the form, be a peach, as diverse from an apple; or a star, as one among a million. the meagreness and utter insufficiency of this doctrine, to account for all the phenomena of the human mind, we have heretofore shown; and shall therefore need only now to distinguish certain special phases of their fundamental error. as heretofore, there will be continual occasion to note how the doctrine of the limitists, that the understanding is man's highest faculty of knowledge, and the logical sequences therefrom respecting the laws of thought and consciousness vitiate their whole system. one of their most important errors is thus expressed:--"to be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not." "thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of subject and object of thought known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal." in other words, our highest possible form of knowledge is that by which we examine the peach, distinguish its qualities among themselves, and discriminate between them and the qualities of the apple. and sir william hamilton fairly and truly acknowledges that, as a consequence, science, except as a system of objects of sense, is impossible. the fact is, as has been made already sufficiently apparent, that the diagnosis by the limitists of the constitution of the mind is erroneous. their dictum, that all knowledge must be attained through "relation, plurality, and difference," is not true. there is a kind of knowledge which we obtain by a direct and immediate _sight_; and that, too, under such conditions as are no limitation upon the object thought. for instance, the mind, by a direct intuition, affirms, "malice is criminal." it also affirms that this is an eternal, immutable, universal law, conditional for all possibility of moral beings. this direct and immediate sight, and the consciousness attending it, are _full_ of that one object, and so are occupied only with it; and it does not come under any forms of relation, plurality, and difference. so is it with all _a priori_ laws. the mode of the pure reason is thus seen to be the direct opposite of that of the understanding and the sense. intimately connected with the foregoing is a question whose importance cannot be overstated. it is one which involves the very possibility of god's existence as a self-conscious person. to present it, we recur again to the extracts made just above from sir william hamilton. "consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other." subsequently, he makes the acknowledgment as logically following from this: "that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such knowledge," _i. e._ of the absolute, "even in the deity himself." that is, god can be believed to be self-conscious only on the ground that the human intellect is a cheat. the theory which underlies this assertion of the logician--a theory not peculiar to the limitists, but which has, perhaps, been hitherto universally maintained by philosophers--may be concisely stated thus. in every correlation of subject and object,--in every instance where they are to be contrasted,--the subject must be one, and the object must be _another and different_. hamilton, in another place, utters it thus: "look back for a moment into yourselves, and you will find, that what constitutes intelligence in our feeble consciousness, is, that there are there several terms, of which the one perceives the other, of which the other is perceived by the first; in this consists self-knowledge," &c. mark the "several terms," and that the one can only see the other, never itself. this position is both a logical and psychological error. it is a logical error because it _assumes_, without argument, that there is involved in the terms subject and object such a logical contradiction and contradistinction that the subject cannot be object to itself. this assumption is groundless. as a matter of fact, it is _generally_ true that, so far as man is concerned, the subject is one, and the object another and different. but this by no means proves that it is _always_ so; it only raises the presumption that such may be the case. and when one comes to examine the question in itself, there is absolutely no logical ground for the assumption. it is found to be a question upon which no decision from logical considerations can have any validity, because _it is purely psychological_, and can only be decided by evidence upon a matter of fact. furthermore, it is a psychological error, because a careful examination shows that, in some instances, the opposite is the fact; that, in certain experiences, the subject and object are identical. this fact that the subject and object are often identical in the searching eye of human reason, and _always_ so under the eye of universal genius, is of too vast scope and too vital importance to be passed with a mere allusion. it seems amazing that a truth which, the instant it is stated, solves a thousand difficulties which philosophy has raised, should never yet have been affirmed by any of the great spiritual-eyed thinkers, and that it should have found utterance, only to be denied, by the pen of the limitists. a word of personal reminiscence may be allowed here. the writer came to see this truth during a process of thought, having for its object the solution of the problem, how can the infinite person be self-comprehending, and still infinite? while considering this, and without ever having received a hint from any source that the possibility of such a problem had dawned on a human mind before, there blazed upon him suddenly, like a heaven full of light, this, which appeared the incomparably profounder question: how can any soul, not god only, but any soul, be a self-examiner? why don't the limitists entertain and explain this? it was only years after that he met the negative statement in herbert spencer's book. the difficulty is, that the limitists have represented to their minds the mode of the seeing of the reason, by a sensuous image, as the eye; and because the eye cannot see itself, have concluded that the reason cannot see itself. it is always dangerous to argue from an illustration; and, in this instance, it has been fatal. if man was only an animal nature, and so only a _receiver_ of impressions, with a capacity to generalize from the impressions received, the doctrine of the limitists would be true. but once establish that man is also a spiritual _person_, with a reason, which sees truth by immediate intuition, and their whole teaching becomes worthless. the reason is not receptivity merely, or mainly; it is originator. in its own light it gives to itself _a priori_ truth, and itself as seeing that truth; and so the subject and object are identical. this is one of the differentiating qualities of the spiritual person. our position may be more accurately stated and more amply illustrated and sustained as follows: _sometimes, in the created spiritual person, and always in the self-existent, the absolute and infinite spiritual person, the subject and object are_ identical. . sometimes in the created spiritual person, the subject and object are identical. the question is a question of fact. in illustrating the fact, it will be proved. when a man looks at his hands, he sees they are instruments for _his_ use. when he considers his physical sense, he still perceives it to be instrument for _his_ use. in all his conclusions, judgments, he still finds, not himself, but _his_ instrument. even in the pure reason he finds only _his_ faculty; though it be the highest possible to intellect. yet still he searches, searches for the _i am_; which claims, and holds, and uses, the faculties and capacities. there is a phrase universally familiar to american christians, a fruit of new england theology, which leads us directly to the goal we seek. it is the phrase, "self-examination." in all thorough, religious self-examination the subject and object are identical. in the ordinary labors and experiences of life, man says, "i can do this or that;" and he therein considers only his aptitudes and capabilities. but in this last, this profoundest act, the assertion is not, "i can do this or that." it is, "i am this or that." the person stands unveiled before itself, in the awful sanctuary of god's presence. the decision to be made is not upon the use of one faculty or another. it is upon the end for which all labor shall be performed. the character of the person is under consideration, and is to be determined. the selfhood, with all its wondrous mysteries, is at once subject and object. the i am in man, alike in kind to that most impenetrable mystery, the eternal i am of "the everlasting father," is now stirred to consider its most solemn duty. how shall the finite i am accord _itself_ to the pure purpose of the infinite i am? it may be, possibly is, that some persons have never been conscious of this experience. to some, from a natural inaptitude, and to others, from a perverse disinclination, it may never come. some have so little gift of introspection, that their inner experiences are never observed and analyzed. their conduct may be beautiful, but they never know it. their impressions ever come from without. another class of persons shun such an experience as balshazzar would have shunned, if he could, the handwriting on the wall. their whole souls are absorbed in the pursuit of earthly things. they are intoxicated with sensuous gratification. the fore-thrown shadow of the coming thought of self-examination awakens within them a vague instinctive dread; and they shudder, turn away, and by every effort avoid it. sometimes they succeed; and through the gates of death rush headlong into the spirit-land, only to be tortured forever there with the experience they so successfully eluded here. for the many thousands, who know by experience what a calm, candid, searching, self-examination is, now that their attention has been drawn to its full psychological import, no further word is necessary. they know that in that supreme insight there was seen and known, at one and the same instant, in a spontaneous and simultaneous action of the soul, the seer and the seen as one, as identical. and this experience is so wide-spread, that the wonder is that it has not heretofore been assigned its suitable place in philosophy. . always in the self-existent, the absolute and infinite, spiritual person, the subject and object are identical. this question, though one of fact, cannot be determined _by us_, by our experience; it must be shown to follow logically from certain _a priori_ first principles. this may be done as follows. eternity, independence, universality, are qualities of god. being eternal, he is ever the same. being independent, he excludes the possibility of another being to whom he is necessarily related. being universal, he possesses all possible endowment, and is ground for all possible existence; so that no being can exist but by his will. as universal genius, all possible objects of knowledge or intellectual effort are immanent before the eye of his reason; and this is a _permanent state_. he is an object of knowledge, comprehending all others; and therefore he _exhaustively_ knows himself. he distinguishes his self as object, from no what else, because there is no else to distinguish his self from; but having an exhaustive self-comprehension, he distinguishes within that self all possible forms of being each from each. he is absolute, and never learns or changes. there is nothing to learn and nothing to change to, except to a wicked state; and for this there _can be to him no temptation_. he is ever the same, and hence there can be no instant in time when he does not _exhaustively_ know himself. thus always in him are the subject and object identical. these two great principles, viz: that the pure reason sees _a priori_ truth _immediately_, and out of all relation, plurality and difference, and that in the pure reason, in self-examination, the subject and object are identical, by their simple statement explode, as a pythagorean system, the mental astronomy of the limitists. reason is the sun, and the sense and the understanding, with their satellite faculties, the circumvolving planets. the use of terms by the limitists has been as vicious as their processes of thought, and has naturally sprung from their fundamental error. we will note one in the following sentence. "consciousness, in the only form in which we can conceive it, implies limitation and change,--the perception of one object out of many, and a comparison of that object with others." conceive is the vicious word. strictly, it is usable only with regard to things in nature, and can have no relevancy to such subjects as are now under consideration. it is a word which expresses _only_ such operations as lie in the sense and understanding. the following definition explains this: "the concept refers to all the things whose common or similar attributes or traits it conceives (con-cepis), or _grasps together_ into one class and one act of mind."--_bowen's logic_, p. . this is not the mode of the reason's action at all. it does not run over a variety of objects and select out from them the points of similarity, and grasp these together into one act of mind. it sees one object in its unity as pure law, or first truth; and examines that in its own light. hence, the proper word is, _intuits_. seen from this standpoint, consciousness does _not_ imply limitation and change. a first truth we always see as _absolute_,--we are conscious of this sight; and yet we know that neither consciousness nor sight is any limitation upon the truth. we would paraphrase the sentence thus: consciousness, in the highest form in which we know it, implies and possesses _permanence_; and is the light in which pure truth is seen as pure object by itself, and forever the same. it is curious to observe how the understanding and the pure reason run along side by side in the same sentence; the inferior faculty encumbering and defeating the efforts of the other. take the following for example. "if the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. if it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness." the presence in language of the word infinite and its cognates is decisive evidence of the presence of a faculty capable of entertaining it as a subject for investigation. this faculty, the reason having presented the subject for consideration, the understanding seizes upon it and drags it down into her den, and says, "can be that which it is not." this she says, because she cannot act, except to conceive, and cannot conceive, except to distinguish this from something else; and so cannot perceive that the very utterance of the word "infinite" excludes the word "else." the understanding conceives the finite as one and independent, and the infinite as one and independent. then the reason steps in, and says the infinite is all-comprehending. this conflicts with the understanding's _conception_, and so the puzzle comes. in laboring for a solution, the reason's affirmation is expressed hypothetically: "if it (the infinite) is actually everything;" and thereupon the understanding puts in its blind, impertinent assertion, "it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else." _there is nothing else from which to distinguish it._ the perception of the reason is as follows. the infinite person comprehends intellectually, and is ground for potentially and actually, all that is possible and real; and so there can be no else with which to compare him. because, possessing all fulness, he is actually everything, by this characteristic feature of completeness he distinguishes himself from nothing, which is all there is, (if no-thing--void--can be said to _be_,) beside him; and from any part, which there is within him. thus is he object to himself in his own consciousness. this vicious working of the understanding against the reason, in the same sentences, can be more fully illustrated from the following extracts. "god, as necessarily determined to pass from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to pass either _from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better_. a third possibility that both states are equal, as contradictory in itself, and as contradicted by our author, it is not necessary to consider."--_sir william hamilton's essays_, p. . "again, how can the relative be conceived as coming into being? if it is a distinct reality from the absolute, it must be conceived as passing from non-existence into existence. but to conceive an object as non-existent is again a self-contradiction; for that which is conceived exists, as an object of thought, in and by that conception. we may abstain from thinking of an object at all; but if we think of it, we cannot but think of it as existing. it is possible at one time not to think of an object at all, and at another to think of it as already in being; but to think of it in the act of becoming, in the progress from not being into being, is to think that which, in the very thought, annihilates itself. here again the pantheistic hypothesis seems forced upon us. we can think of creation only as a change in the condition of that which already exists; and thus the creature is conceivable only as a phenomenal mode of the being of the creator."--_limits of religious thought_, p. . "god," a word which has _no significance_ except to the reason: "as necessarily determined,"--a phrase which belongs only to the understanding. the opposite is the truth: "to pass from absolute essence." this can have no meaning except to the pure reason: "to relative manifestation." this belongs to the understanding. it contradicts the other; and the process is absurd. the mind balks in the attempt to think it. in creation there is no such process as "passing from absolute essence to relative manifestation." the words imply that god, in passing from the state of absolute essence, ceased to be absolute essence, and became "relative manifestation." all this is absurd; and is in the understanding and sense. god never _became_. the creator is still absolute essence, as before creation; and the logician's this or that are both false; and his third possibility is not a contradiction, but the truth. the fact of creation may be thus stated. the infinite person, freely according his will to the behest of his worth, and yet equally free to not so accord his will, put forth from himself the creative energy; and this under such modes, that he neither lost nor gained by the act; but that, though the latter state was diverse from the first, still neither was better than the other, but both were equally good. before creation, he possessed absolute plenitude of endowments. all possible ideals were present before his eye. all possible joy continued a changeless state in his sensibility. his will, as choice, was absolute benevolence; and, as act, was competent to all possible effort. to push the ideal out, and make it real, added nothing to, and subtracted nothing from, his fulness. the fact must be learned that muscular action and the working of pure spirit are so diverse, that the inferior mode cannot be an illustration of the superior. a change in a pure spirit, which neither adds nor subtracts, leaves the good unchanged. hence, when the infinite person created, he passed neither from better to worse, nor from worse to better; but the two states, though diverse, were equally good. we proceed now to the other extract. "again, how can the relative," etc. "if the relative is a distinct reality from the absolute," then each is _self-existent_, and independent. the sentence annihilates itself. "it must be conceived as passing from non-existence into existence." the image here is from the sense, as usual, and vicious accordingly. it is, that the soul is to look into void, and see, out of that void, existence come, without there being any cause for that existence coming. this would be the phenomenon to the sense. and the sense is utterly unable to account for the phenomenon. the object in the sense must appear as _form_; but in the reason it is idea. mr. mansel's presentation may well be illustrated by a trick of jugglery. the performer stands before his audience, dressed in tights, and presents the palms of his hands to the spectators, apparently empty. he then closes his right hand, and then opening it again, appears holding a bouquet of delicious flowers, which he hands about to the astonished gazers. the bouquet seems to come from nothing, _i. e._ to have no cause. it appears "to pass from non-existence to existence." but common sense corrects the cheating seeming, and asserts, "there is an adequate cause for the coming of the bunch of flowers, though we cannot see it." precisely similar is creation. could there have been a sense present at that instant, creation would have seemed to it a juggler's trick. out of nothing something would have seemed to come. but under the correcting guide of the pure reason, an adequate cause is found. before creation, the infinite person did not manifest himself; and so was actually alone. at creation his power, which before was immanent, he now made emanent; and put it forth in the forms chosen from his reason, and according to the requirement of his own worth. nothing was added to god. that which was ideal he now made actual. the form as idea was one, the power as potentiality was another, and each was in him by itself. he put forth the power into the form, the potentiality into the idea, and the universe was. thus it was that "the relative came into being." in the same manner it might be shown how, all along through the writings of the limitists, the understanding runs along by the reason, and vitiates her efforts to solve her problems. we shall have occasion to do something of this farther on. the topic now under discussion could not be esteemed finished without an examination of the celebrated dictum, "to think is to condition." those who have held this to be universally true, have also received its logical sequence, that to the finite intellect god cannot appear self-comprehending. in our present light, the dictum is known to be, not a universal, but only a partial, truth. it is incumbent, therefore, to circumscribe its true sphere, and fix it there. we shall best enter upon this labor by answering the question, what is thinking? first. in general, and loosely, any mental operation is called thinking. second. specifically, all acts of reflection are thinkings. under this head we notice two points. _a._ that act of the understanding in which an object presented by the sense is analyzed, and its special and generic elements noted, and is thus classified, and its relations determined, is properly a thinking. thus, in the object cat i distinguish specifically that it is domestic, and generically that it is carnivorous. _b._ that act of the finite spiritual person by which he compares the judgments of the understanding with the _a priori_ laws of the pure reason, and by this final standard decides their truth or error. thus, the judgment of the young indian warrior is, that he ought to hunt down and slay the man who killed his father in battle. the standard of reason is, that malice is criminal. this judgment is found to involve malice, and so is found to be wrong. third, the intuitions of the reason. these, in the finite person, come _after_ a process of reflection, and are partly consequent upon it; yet they take place in another faculty, which is developed by this process; but they are such, that by no process of reflection _alone_ could they be. thinking, in the universal genius, is the _sight_, at once and forever, of all possible object of mental effort. it is necessary and _spontaneous_, and so is an endowment, not an attainment; and is possessed without effort. we are prepared now to entertain the following statements:-- a. so far as it represents thinking as the active, _i. e._ causative ground, or agent of the condition, the dictum is not true. the fact of the thinking is not, cannot be, the ground of the condition. the condition of the object thought, whatever the form of thinking may be, must lie as far back at least as the ground of the thinker. thus, god's self, as ground for his genius, must also be ground for _all_ conditions. yet men think of an object _in its conditions_. this is because the same being who constructed the objects in their conditions, constructed also man as thinker, _correlated to those conditions_, so that he should think upon things _as they are_. in this view, to think is not condition, but is mental activity in the conditions already imposed. thus it is with the understanding; and the process of thinking, as above designated, goes on in accordance with the law stated in _a_, of the second general definition. it follows, therefore, b. that so far as the dictum expresses the fact, that within the sphere of conditions proper,--observing the distinction of conditions into two classes heretofore made,--the finite intellect must act under them, and see those objects upon which they lie, accordingly,--as, for instance, a geometrical figure must be seen in time and space,--so far it is true, and no farther. for instance: to see an eagle flying, is to see it under all the conditions imposed upon the bird as flying, and the observer as seeing. but when men intuit the _a priori_ truth, malice is criminal, they perceive that it lies under no conditions proper, but is absolute and universal. we perceive, then, c. that for all mental operations which have as object pure laws and ideal forms, and that being in whom all these inhere, this dictum is not true. the thinker may be conditioned in the proper sense of that term; yet he entertains objects of thought which are unconditioned; and they are not affected by it. thus, it does not affect the universality of the principle in morals above noted that i perceive it to be such, and that necessarily. assuming, then, that by the dictum, to think is to condition, is meant, not that the thinker, by the act of thinking, constructs the conditions, but that he recognizes in himself, as thinking subject, and in the object thought, the several conditions (proper) thereof,--the following statements will define the province of this dictum. . the universe as physical object, the observing sense, and the discursive understanding, lie wholly within it. . created spiritual persons, _as constituted beings,_ also lie wholly within it. _but it extends no farther._ on the other hand, . created spiritual persons, in their capacities to intuit pure laws, and pure ideal forms; and those laws and forms themselves lie wholly without it. . so also does god the absolute being in whom those laws and forms inhere. or, in general terms, when conditions (proper) already lie upon the object thought, since the thinker must needs see the object under its conditions, it is true that, to think is to condition. but so far as it is meant that thinking is such a kind of operation that it cannot proceed except the object be conditioned, it is not true; for there are processes of thought whose objects are unconditioned. the question, "what are space and time?" with which mr. spencer opens his chapter on "ultimate scientific ideas," introduces a subject common to all the limitists, and which, therefore, should be considered in this part of our work. a remark made a few pages back, respecting an essay in the "north american review" for october , applies with equal force here in reference to another essay by the same writer, in the preceding july number of that periodical. at most, his view can only be unfolded. he has left nothing to be added. in discussing a subject so abstruse and difficult as this, it would seem, in the present stage of human thought at least, most satisfactory to set out from the reason rather than the sense, from the idea rather than the phenomenon; and so will we do. in general, then, it may be said that space and time are _a priori_ conditions of created being. the following extracts are in point. "pure space, therefore, as given in the primitive intuition, is pure form for any possible phenomenon. as unconjoined in the unity of any form, it is given in the primitive intuition, and is a cognition necessary and universal. though now obtained from experience, and in chronological order subsequent to experience, yet is it no deduction from experience, nor at all given by experience; but it is wholly independent of all experience, prior to it, and without which it were impossible that any experience of outer object should be." "pure time, as given in the intuition, is immediately beheld to be conditional for all possible period, prior to any period being actually limited, and necessarily continuing, though all bounded period be taken away."--_rational psychology_, pp. , . again, a clearly defined distinction may be made between them as conditions. space is the _a priori_ condition of _material_ being. should a spiritual person, as the soul of a man, be stripped of all its material appurtenances, and left to exist as pure spirit, it could hold no communication with any other being but god; and no other being but he could hold any communication with it. it would exist out of all relation to space. not so, however, with time. time is the _a priori_ condition of all created being, of the spiritual as well as material. in the case just alluded to, the isolated spiritual person would have a consciousness of succession and duration, although he would have no standard by which to measure that duration, he could think in processes, and only in processes, and thus would be necessarily related to time. dr. hickok has expressed this thus: "space in reference to time has no significancy. time is the pure form for phenomena as given in the internal sense only, and in these there can be only succession. the inner phenomenon may endure in time, but can have neither length, breadth, nor thickness in space. a thought, or other mental phenomenon, may fill a period, but cannot have superficial or solid content; it may be before or after another, but not above or below it, nor with any outer or inner side."--_rational psychology_, p. . space and time may also be distinguished thus: "space has three dimensions," or, rather, there can be three dimensions in space,--length, breadth, and thickness. in other words, it is solid room. "time has but one dimension," or, rather, but one dimension can enter into time,--length. in time there can only be procession. space and time may then be called, the one "statical," the other "dynamical," illimitation. following the essayist already referred to, they may be defined as follows: "space is the infinite and indivisible receptacle of matter. "time is the infinite and indivisible receptacle of existence." both, then, are marked by receptivity, indivisibility, and illimitability. the one is receptivity, that material object may come into it; the other, that event may occur in it. there is for neither a final unit nor any limit. all objects are divisible in space, and all periods in time; and thus also are all limits comprehended, but they are without limit. turning now from these more general aspects of the subject, a detailed examination may be conducted as follows. the fundamental law given by the reason is, as was seen above, that space and time are _a priori_ conditions of created being. we can best consider this law in its application to the facts, by observing two general divisions, with two sub-divisions under each. space and time have, then, two general phases, one within, and one without, the mind. each of these has two special phases. the former, one in the sense, and one in the understanding. the latter, one within, and one without, the universe. first general phase within the mind. first special phase, in the sense. "as pure form in the primitive intuition, they are wholly limitless, and void of any conjunction in unity, having themselves no figure nor period, and having within themselves no figure nor period, but only pure diversity, in which any possible conjunction of definite figures and periods may, in some way, be effected." in other words, they are pure, _a priori_, formal laws, which are conditional to the being of any sense as the perceiver of a phenomenon; and yet this sense could present no figure or period, till some figure or period was produced into it by an external agency. as such necessary formal laws, space and time "have a necessity of being independently of all phenomena." or, in other words, the fact that all phenomena _must_ appear in them, lies beyond the province of power. this, however, is no more a limit to the deity than it is a limit to him that he cannot hate his creatures and be good. in our experience the sense gives two kinds of phenomena: the one the actual phenomena of actual objects, the other, ideal phenomena with ideal objects. the one is awakened by the presentation, in the physical sense, of a material object, as a house; the other, by the activity of the imaging faculty, engaged in constructing some form in the inner or mental sense, from forms actually observed. upon both alike the formal law of space and time must lie. second special phase, in the understanding. although there is pure form, if there was no more than this, no notion of a system of things could be. each object would have its own space, and each event its own time. but one object and event could not be seen in any relation to another object and event. in order that this shall be, there must be some ground by which all the spaces and times of phenomena shall be joined into a unity of space and time; so that all objects shall be seen in one space, and all events in one time. "a notional connective for the phenomena may determine these phenomena in their places and periods in the whole of all space and of all time, and so may give both the phenomena and their space and time in an objective experience." the operation of the understanding is, then, the connection, by a notional, of all particular spaces and times; _i. e._ the space and time of each phenomenon in the sense, into a comprehensive unity of space and time, in which all phenomena can be seen to occur; and thus a system can be. in a word, not only must each phenomenon be seen in its own space and time, but all phenomena must be seen in _one_ space and time. this connection of the manifold into unity is the peculiar work of the understanding. an examination of the facts as above set forth enables us to construct a general formula for the application to all minds of the fundamental law given by the reason. that law, that all objects must be seen in space, and all events in time, involves the subordinate law: _that no mind can observe material objects or any events except under the conditions of space and time_; or, to change the phraseology, _space and time are_ a priori _conditional to the being of any mind or faculty in a mind capable of observing a material object or any event_. this will, perhaps, be deemed to be, in substance, kant's theory. however that may be, this is true, but is only _a part of the truth_. the rest will appear just below. the reader will notice that no exception is made to the law here laid down, and will start at the thought that this law lies upon the deity equally as upon created beings. no exception is made, because none can be truthfully made. the intellect is just as unqualified in its assertion on this point as in those noticed on an earlier page of this work. equally with the laws of numbers does the law of space and time condition all intellect. the deity can no more see a house out of all relation to space and time than he can see how to make two and two five. second general phase, without the mind. first special phase, within the universe. all that we are now to examine is objective to us; and all the questions which can arise are questions of fact. let us search for the fact carefully and hold it fearlessly. to recur to the general law. it was found at the outset that reason gave the idea of space and time as pure conditions for matter and event. we are now to observe the pure become the actual condition; or, in other words, we are to see the condition _realized_. since, then, we are to observe material objects and events in a material system, it is fitting to use the sense and the understanding; and our statements and conclusions will conform to those faculties. we have a concept of the universe as a vast system in the form of a sphere in which all things are included. this spherical system is complete, definite, limited, and so has boundaries. a portion of "immeasurable void"--space--has been occupied. where there was nothing, something has become. now it is evident that the possibility of our having a concept of the universe, or of a space and a time in the universe, is based upon the presence of an actual, underlying, all-pervading substance, which fills and forms the boundaries of the universe, and thus enables spaces and times to be. we have no concept except as in limits, and those limits are conceived to be substance. in other words, space is distance, and time is duration, in our concept. take away the boundaries which mark the distance, and the procession of events which forms the duration, and in the concept pure negation is left. to illustrate. suppose there be in our presence a cubic yard of vacuum. is this vacuum an entity? not at all. it can neither be perceived by the sense nor conceived by the understanding. yet it is a space. speaking carelessly, we should say that this cube was object to us. why? because it is enclosed by substantial boundaries. all, then, that is object, all that is entity, is substance. in our concept, therefore, a space is solid distance within the substance, and the totality of all distances in the universe is conceived to be space. again; suppose there pass before our mind a procession of events. one event has a fixed recurrence. in our concept the procession of events is a time, and the recurring event marks a period in time. the events proceeding are all that there is in the concept; and apart from the procession a conception of time is impossible. the procession of all the events of the universe, that is _duration_, is our concept of time. thus, within the universe, space is solid distance and time is duration; and neither has any actuality except as the universe is. let us assume for a moment that our concept is the final truth, and observe the result. in that concept space is limited by matter, and matter is conceived of as unlimited. this result is natural and necessary, because matter, substance, "a space-filling force," is the underlying notional upon which as ground any concept is possible. if matter is truly illimitable, then materialistic pantheism, which is really atheism, logically follows. again; in our concept time is duration, and duration is conceived of as unlimited. if so, the during event is unlimited. from this hypothesis idealistic pantheism logically follows. but bring our concept into the clear light, and under the searching eye of reason, and all ground for those systems vanishes instantly. instead of finding matter illimitable and the limit for a space, space is seen to be illimitable and pure condition, that matter may establish a limit within it. and time, instead of being duration, and so limited by the during event, is found to be illimitable and pure condition, that event may have duration in it. this brings us to the second special phase, without or independent of the universe. we have been considering facts in an objective experience, and have used therefore the sense and understanding, as was proper. what we are now to consider is a subject of which all experience is impossible. it can therefore be examined only by that faculty which presents it, the pure reason. remove now from our presence all material object in space, and all during event in time; in a word, remove the universe, and what will be left? as the universe had a beginning, and both it and all things in it are conditioned by space and time, so also let it have an end. will its conditions cease in its ceasing? could another universe arise, upon which would be imposed no conditions of space and time? these questions are answered in the statement of them. those conditions must remain. when we have abstracted from our _concept_ all substance and duration, there is left only _void_. hence, in our concept it would be proper to say that without the universe is void, and before the universe there was void. also, that in void there is no thing, no where, and no when; or, void is the negation of actual substance, space and time. but pure space and time, as _a priori_ conditions that material object and during event may be, have not ceased. there is still _room_, that an object may become. there is still _opportunity_, that an event may occur. by the reason it is seen that these conditions have the same necessary being for material object and occurring event, as the conditions of mental activity have for mind; and they have their peculiar characteristics exactly according with what they do condition, just as the laws of thought have their peculiar characteristics, which exactly suit them to what they condition. if there be a spiritual person, the moral law must be given in the intuition as necessarily binding upon him; and this is an _a priori_ condition of the being of such person. precisely similar is the relation between space and time as _a priori_ conditions, and object and event upon which they lie. the moral law has its characteristics, which fit it to condition spiritual person. space and time have their characteristics, which fit them to condition object and event. space, then, as room, and time as opportunity, and both as _a priori_ conditions of a universe, must have the same necessity of being that god has. they _must_ be, as he _must_ be. but observe, they are pure conditions, and no more. they are neither things nor persons. the idea of them in the reason is simple and unanalyzable. they can be assigned their logical position, but further than this the mind cannot go. the devout religious soul will start, perhaps, at some of the positions stated above. we have not wrought to pain such soul, but only for truth, and the clue of escape from all dilemmas. the only question to be raised is, are they true? if a more patient investigation than we have given to this subject shall show our positions false, then we shall only have failed as others before us have; but we shall love the truth which shall be found none the less. but if they shall be found true, then is it certain that god always knew them so and was always pleased with them, and no derogation to his dignity can come from the proclamation of them, however much they may contravene hitherto cherished opinions. most blessed next after the saviour's tender words of forgiveness are those pure words of the apostle john, "no lie is of the truth." the conclusions to which we have arrived enable us to state how it is that primarily god was out of all relation to space and time. he was out of all relation to space, because he is not material object, thereby having limits, form, and position in space. he was out of all relation to time, because he holds immediately, and at once, all possible objects of knowledge before the eye of his mind. hence he can learn nothing, and can experience no process of thought. within his mind no event occurs, no substance endures. yet, while this is true, it is equally true that, as the creator, he is conditioned by space and time, just as he is conditioned by himself; and it may be found by future examination that they are essential to that self. but, whatever conclusion may be arrived at respecting so difficult and abstract a subject, this much is certain: god, as the infinite and absolute spiritual person, self-existent and supreme, is the great fact; and space and time, whatever they are, will, _can_ in no wise interfere with and compromise his perfectness and supremacy. it is a pleasure to be able to close this discussion with reflections profound and wise as those contained in the following extract from the essay heretofore alluded to. "the reciprocal relations of space, time, and god, are veiled in impenetrable darkness. many minds hesitate to attribute real infinity to space and time, lest it should conflict with the infinity of god. such timidity has but a slender title to respect. if the laws of thought necessitate any conclusion whatever, they necessitate the conclusion that space and time are each infinite; and if we cannot reconcile this result with the infinity of god, there is no alternative but to accept of scepticism with as good a grace as possible. no man is worthy to join in the search for truth, who trembles at the sight of it when found. but a profound faith in the unity of all truth destroys scepticism by anticipation, and prophesies the solutions of reason. space is infinite, time is infinite, god is infinite; three infinites coexist. limitation is possible only between existences of the same kind. there could not be two infinite spaces, two infinite times, or two infinite gods; but while infinites of the same kind cannot coexist, infinites of unlike kinds may. when an hour limits a rod, infinite time will limit infinite space; when a year and an acre limit wisdom, holiness, and love, infinite space and time will limit the infinite god. _but not before._ time exists ubiquitously, space exists eternally, god exists ubiquitously and eternally. the nature of the relations between the three infinites, so long as space and time are ontologically incognizable, is utterly and absolutely incomprehensible; but to assume contradiction, exclusion, or mutual limitation to be among these relations, is as gratuitous as it is irreverent." part iii. an examination in detail of certain important passages in the writings of the limitists. additional reflections upon the writings of sir william hamilton. it never formed any part of the plan of this work to give an extended examination of the logician's system of metaphysics, or even to notice it particularly. from the first, it was only proposed to attempt the refutation of that peculiar theory which he enounced in his celebrated essay, "the philosophy of the unconditioned," a monograph that has generally been received as a fair and sufficient presentation thereof; and which he supplemented, but never superseded. if the arguments adduced, and illustrations presented, in the first part, in behalf of the fact of the pure reason, are satisfactory, and the analysis and attempted refutation of the celebrated dictum based upon two extremes, an excluded middle and a mean, in the second part, are accepted as sufficient, as also the criticisms upon certain general corollaries, and the explanation of certain general questions, then, so far at least as sir william hamilton is concerned, but little, if any, further remark will be expected. a few subordinate passages in the essay above referred to may, however, it is believed, be touched with profit by the hand of criticism and explanation. to these, therefore, the reader's attention is now called. in remarking upon cousin's philosophy, hamilton says: "now, it is manifest that the whole doctrine of m. cousin is involved in the proposition, _that the unconditioned, the absolute, the infinite, is immediately known in consciousness, and this by difference, plurality, and relation_." it is hardly necessary to repeat here the criticism, that the terms infinite, absolute, &c. are entirely out of place when used to express abstractions. as before, we ask, infinite--what? the fact of abstraction is one of the greatest of limitations, and vitiates every such utterance of the limitists. the truth may be thus stated:--the infinite person, or the necessary principle as inhering in that person, is _immediately_ known in consciousness, and this, not by difference, plurality, and relation, but by a direct intuition of the pure reason. in this act the object seen--the idea--is held right in the reason's eye; and so is seen by itself and in itself. hence it is not known by difference, because there is no other object but the one before that eye, with which to compare it. neither is it known by plurality, because it is seen by itself, and there is no other object contemplated, with which to join it. nor is it known by relation, because it is seen to be what it is _in itself_, and as out of all relation. a little below, in the same paragraph, hamilton again remarks upon cousin, thus:--"the recognition of the absolute as a constitutive principle of intelligence, our author regards as at once the condition and the end of philosophy." the true idea, accurately stated, is as follows. the fact that, by a constituting law of intelligence, the pure reason immediately intuits absoluteness as the distinctive quality of _a priori_ first principles, and of the infinite person in whom they inhere, is the condition, and the application of that fact is the end of philosophy. these two erroneous positions the logician follows with his celebrated "statement of the opinions which may be entertained regarding the unconditioned, as an immediate object of knowledge and of thought." the four "opinions," to which he reduces all those held by philosophers, are too well known to need quotation here. they are noticed now, only to afford an opportunity for the presentation of a fifth, and, as it is believed, the true opinion, which is as follows. the infinite person is "inconceivable," but is cognizable as a fact, is known to be, and is, to a certain extent, known to be such and such; all this, by an immediate intuition of the pure reason, of which the spiritual person is definitely conscious; and that person is so seen to be primarily unconditioned, _i. e._ out of all relation, difference, and plurality. "inconceivable." as we have repeatedly said, this word has no force except with regard to things in nature. is cognizable as a fact, &c. nothing can be more certain than that an _exhaustive_ knowledge of the deity is impossible to any creature. but equally certain is it, that, except as we have some true, positive, _reliable_ knowledge of him _as he is_, we cannot be moral beings under his moral government. take, for instance, the moral law as the expression of god's nature. . either "god is love," or he is not love--hate; or he is indifferent, _i. e._ love has no relation to him. if the last alternative is true, then the other two have no relevancy to the subject in hand. upon such a supposition, it is unquestionably true that he is utterly inscrutable. then are we in just the condition which the limitists assert. but observe the results respecting ourselves. our whole moral nature is the most bitter, tantalizing falsehood which it is possible for us to entertain as an object of knowledge. we feel that we ought to love the perfect being. at times we go starving for love to him and beg that bread. he has no love to give. he never felt a pulsation of affection. he sits alone on his icy throne, in a realm of eternal snow; and, covered with the canopy, and shut in by the panoply, of inscrutable mystery, he mocks our cry. we beg for bread. he gives us a stone. does such a picture instantly shock, yea, horrify, all our finer sensibilities? does the soul cry out in agony, her rejection of such a conclusion? in that cry we hear the truth in god's voice; for he made the soul. still less can the thought be entertained that he is hate. it is impossible, then, to think of god except as _love_. we know what love is. we know what god is. there is a somewhat common to the deity and his spiritual creatures. this enables us to attain a final law, as follows. _in so far as god's creatures have faculties and capacities in common with him, in so far do they know him positively; but in all matters to which their peculiarities as creatures pertain, they only know him negatively;_ i. e. _they know that he is the opposite of themselves._ that passage which was quoted in a former page, simply to prove that sir william hamilton denied the reality of the reason as distinct from the understanding, requires and will now receive a particular examination. he says: "in the kantian philosophy, both faculties perform the same function; both seek the one in the many;--the idea (idee) is only the concept (begriff) sublimated into the inconceivable; reason only the understanding which has 'overleaped itself.'" in this sentence, and the remarks which follow it, the logician shows that he neither comprehends the assigned function and province of the reason, nor possesses any accurate knowledge of the mental phenomena upon which he passes judgment. a diagnosis could not well be more thoroughly erroneous than his. for "both faculties" do _not_ "perform the same function." only the understanding seeks "the one in the many." the reason seeks _the many in the one_. the functions and modes of activity of the two faculties are exactly opposite. the understanding runs about through the universe, and gathers up what facts it may, and concludes truth therefrom. the reason sees the truth _first_, as necessary _a priori_ law, and holding it up as standard, measures facts by it, or uses the sense to find the facts in which it inheres. besides, the author, in this assertion, is guilty of a most glaring _petitio principii_. for, the very question at issue is, whether "both faculties" do "perform the same function"; whether "both" do "seek the one in the many." in order not to leave the hither side of the question built upon a bare assertion, it will be proper to revert to a few of those proofs adduced heretofore. the reason sees the truth first. take now the assertion, malice is criminal. is this primarily learned by experience; or is it an intuitive conviction, which conditions experience. or, in more general terms, does a child need to be taught what guilt is, before it can feel guilty, as it is taught its letters before it can read; or does the feeling of guilt arise within it spontaneously, upon a breach of known law. if the latter be the true experience, then it can only be accounted for upon the ground that an idea of right and wrong, as an _a priori_ law, is organic in man; and, by our definition, the presentation of this law to the attention in consciousness is the act of the reason. upon such a theory the one principle was not sought, and is not found, in the many acts, but the many acts are compared with, and judged by, that one standard, which was seen _first_, and as necessarily true. take another illustration. all religions, in accounting for the universe, have one common point of agreement, which is, that some being or beings, superior to it and men, produced it. and, except perhaps among the most degraded, the more subtle notion of a final cause, though often developed in a crude form, is associated with the other. these notions must be accounted for. how shall it be done? are they the result of experience? then, the first human beings had no such notions. but another and more palpable objection arises. are they the result of individual experience? then there would be as many religions as individuals. but, very ignorant people have the experience,--persons who never learned anything but the rudest forms of work, from the accumulated experience of others; nor by their own experience, to make the smallest improvement in a simple agricultural instrument. how, then, could they learn by experience one of the profoundest speculative ideas? as a last resort, it may be said they were taught it by philosophers. but this is negatived by the fact, that philosophers do not, to any considerable extent, teach the people, either immediately or mediately; but that generally those who have the least philosophy have the largest influence. and what is most in point, none of these hypotheses will account for the fact, that the gist of the idea, however crude its form, is everywhere the same. be it a fetish, or brahm, or god, in the kernel final cause will be found. it would seem that any candid mind must acknowledge that no combined effort of men, were this possible, could secure such universal exactitude. but turn now and examine any individual in the same direction, as we did just above, respecting the question of right and wrong, and a plain answer will come directly. the notion of first cause, however crude and rudimentary its form, is organic. it arises, then, spontaneously, and the individual takes it--"the one,"--and in it finds a reason for the phenomena of nature--"the many,"--and is satisfied. and this is an experience not peculiar to the philosopher; but is shared equally by the illiterate,--those entirely unacquainted with scientific abstractions. these illustrations might be carried to an almost indefinite length, showing that commonly, in the every-day experiences of life, men are accustomed not only to observe phenomena and form conclusions, as "it is cloudy to-day, and may rain to-morrow," but also to measure phenomena by an original and fixed standard, as, "this man is malicious, and therefore wicked." between the two modes of procedure, the following distinction may always be observed. conclusions are always doubtful, only probable. decisions are always certain. conclusions give us what may be, decisions what must be. the former result from concepts and experience, the latter from intuitions and logical processes. thus is made plain the fact that, to give it the most favorable aspect, sir william hamilton, in his eagerness to maintain his theory, has entirely mistaken one class of human experiences, and so was led to deny the actuality of the most profound and important faculty of the human mind. in view of the foregoing results, one need not hesitate to say that, whether he ever attempted it or not, kant never "has clearly shown that the idea of the unconditioned can have no objective reality," for it is impossible to do this, the opposite being the truth. its objective reality is god; it therefore "conveys" to us the most important "knowledge," and "involves" no "contradictions." moreover, unconditionedness is a "simple," "positive," "notion," and not "a fasciculus of negations"; but is an attribute of god, who comprehends all positives. a little after, hamilton says: "and while he [kant] appropriated reason as a specific faculty to take cognizance of these negations, hypostatized as positive, under the platonic name of _ideas_," &c. here, again, the psychological question arises, is the reason such a faculty? are its supposed objects negations? are they hypostatized as positive? evidently, if we establish an affirmative answer to the first question, a negative to the others follows directly, and the logician's system is a failure. again, the discrimination of thought into _positive_ and _negative_ is simply absurd. all thought is _positive_. the phrase, negative thought, is only a convenient expression for the refusal of the mind to think. but "ideas" are not thoughts at all, in the strict sense of that term. it refers to the operations of the mind upon objects which have been presented. ideas are a part of such objects. all objects in the mind are positive. the phrase, negative object, is a contradiction. but, without any deduction, we see immediately that ideas are positives. the common consciousness of the human race affirms this. the following remark upon cousin requires some notice. "for those who, with m. cousin, regard the notion of the unconditioned as a positive and real knowledge of existence in its all-comprehensive unity, and who consequently employ the terms _absolute_, _infinite_, _unconditioned_, as only various expressions for the same identity, are imperatively bound to prove that their idea of _the one corresponds, either with that unconditioned we have distinguished as the absolute, or with that unconditioned we have distinguished as the infinite, or that it includes both, or that it excludes both_. this they have not done, and, we suspect, have never attempted to do." the italics are hamilton's. the above statement is invalid, for the following reasons. the absolute, therein named, has been shown to be irrelevant to the matter in hand, and an absurdity. it is self-evident that the term "limited whole," as applied to space and time, is a violation of the laws of thought. since we seek the truth, that absolute must be rejected. again, the definitions of the terms absolute and infinite, which have been found consistent, and pertinent to space and time, have been further found irrelevant and meaningless, when applied to the being, the one, who is the creator. that being, existing primarily out of all relation to space and time, must, if known at all, be studied, and known as he is. the terms infinite and absolute will, of necessity, then, when applied to him, have entirely different significations from what they will when applied to space and time. so, then, no decision of questions arising in this latter sphere will have other than a negative value in the former. the questions in that sphere must be decided on their own merits, as must those in this. what is really required, then, is, that the one, the person, be shown to be both absolute and infinite, and that these, as qualities, consistently inhere in that _unity_. as this has already been done in the first part of this treatise, nothing need be added here. some pages afterwards, in again remarking upon m. cousin, hamilton quotes from him as follows: "the condition of intelligence _is difference_; and an act of knowledge is only possible where there exists a plurality of terms." in a subsequent paragraph the essayist argues from this, thus: "but, on the other hand, it is asserted, that the condition of intelligence, as knowing, is plurality and difference; consequently, the condition of the absolute as existing, and under which it must be known, and the condition of intelligence, as capable of knowing, are incompatible. for, if we suppose the absolute cognizable, it must be identified either, first, with the subject knowing; or, second, with the object known; or, third, with the indifference of both." rejecting the first two, hamilton says: "the _third_ hypothesis, on the other hand, is _contradictory of the plurality of intelligence_; for, if the subject of consciousness be known as one, a plurality of terms is not the necessary condition of intelligence. the alternative is therefore necessary: either the absolute cannot be known or conceived at all, or our author is wrong in subjecting thought to the conditions of plurality and difference." in these extracts may be detected an error which, so far as the author is informed, has been hitherto overlooked by philosophers. the logician presents an alternative which is unquestionably valid. yet with almost, if not entire unanimity, writers have been accustomed to assign plurality, relation, difference, and--to adopt a valuable suggestion of mr. spencer--likeness, as conditions of all knowledge; and among them those who have claimed for man a positive knowledge of the absolute. the error by which they have been drawn into this contradiction is purely psychological; and arises, like the other errors which we have pointed out, from an attempt to carry over the laws of the animal nature, the sense and understanding, by which man learns of, and concludes about, things in nature, to the pure reason, by which he sees and knows, with an _absolutely certain_ knowledge, principles and laws; and to subject this faculty to those conditions. now, there can be no doubt but that if the logician's premiss is true, the conclusion is unavoidable. if "an act of knowledge is only possible where there exists a plurality of terms," then is it impossible that we should know god, _or that he should know himself_. the logic is impregnable. but the conclusion is revolting. what must be done, then? erect some makeshift subterfuge of mental impotence? it will not meet the exigency of the case. it will not satisfy the demand of the soul. nay, more, she casts it out utterly, as a most gross insult. unquestionably, but one course is left; and that is so plain, that one cannot see how even a limitist could have overlooked it. correct the premiss. study out the true psychology, and that will give us perfect consistency. hold with a death-grip to the principle that _every truth is in complete harmony with every other truth_; and hold with no less tenacity to the principle that the human intellect is true. and what is the true premiss which through an irrefutable logic will give us a satisfactory, a true, an undoubted conclusion. this. a plurality of terms is _not_ the necessary condition of intelligence; but objects which are pure, simple, unanalyzable, may be directly known by an intellect. or, to be more explicit. plurality, relation, difference, and likeness, are necessary conditions of intelligence through the sense and understanding; but they do not in the least degree lie upon the reason, which sees its objects as pure, simple ideas which are _self-evident_, and, consequently, are not subject to those conditions. whatever knowledge we may have of "mammals," we undoubtedly gain under the conditions of plurality, relation, difference, and likeness; for "mammals" are things in nature. but absoluteness is a pure, simple, unanalyzable idea in the reason, and as such is seen and known by a direct insight as out of all plurality, relation, difference, and likeness: for this is a _quality_ of the self-existent person, and so belongs wholly to the sphere of the supernatural, and can be examined only by a spiritual person who is also supernatural. let us illustrate these two kinds of knowledge. . the knowledge given by the sense and understanding. this is of material objects. take, for example, an apple. the sense observes it as one of many apples, and that many characteristics belong to it as one apple. among these, color, skin, pulp, juices, flavor, &c. may be mentioned. it observes, also, that it bears a relation to the stem and tree on which it grows, and, as well, that its several qualities have relations among themselves. one color belongs to the skin, another to the pulp. the skin, as cover, relates to the pulp as covered, and the like. the apple, moreover, is distinguished from other fruits by marks of difference and marks of likeness. it has a different skin, a different pulp, and a different flavor. yet, it is like other fruits, in that it grows on a tree, and possesses those marks just named, which, though differing among themselves, according to the fruit in which they inhere, have a commonality of kind, as compared with other objects. this distinguishing, analyzing, and classifying of characteristics, and connecting them into a unity, as an apple, is the work of the sense and understanding. . the knowledge given by the pure reason. this is of _a priori_ laws, of these laws combined in pure archetypal forms, and of god as the supreme being who comprehends all laws and forms. a fundamental difference in the two modes of activity immediately strikes one's attention. in the former case, the mode was by distinguishment and _analysis_. in the latter it is by comprehension and _synthesis_. take the idea of moral obligation to illustrate this topic. no one but a limitist will, it is believed, contend against the position of dr hopkins, "that this idea of obligation or _oughtness_ is a simple idea." this being once acceded, carries with it the whole theory which the author seeks to maintain. how may "a simple idea" be known? it cannot be distinguished or analyzed. being simple, it is _sui generis_. hence, it cannot be known by plurality or relation, difference or likeness. if known at all, it must be known _as it is in itself_, by a spontaneous insight. such, in fact, is the mode of the activity of the pure reason, and such are the objects of that activity. in maintaining, then, the doctrine of "intellectual intuition," m. cousin was right, but wrong in subjecting all knowledge "to the conditions of plurality and difference." near the close of the essay under examination sir wm. hamilton states certain problems, which he is "confident" cousin cannot solve. there is nothing very difficult about them; and it is a wonder that he should have so presented them. following the passage--which is here quoted--will be found what appear simple and easy solutions. "but (to say nothing of remoter difficulties)--( ) how liberty can be conceived, supposing always a plurality of modes of activity, without a knowledge of that plurality;--( ) how a faculty can resolve to act by preference in a particular manner, and not determine itself by final causes;--( ) how intelligence can influence a blind power, without operating as an efficient cause;--( ) or how, in fine, morality can be founded on a liberty which at best only escapes necessity by taking refuge with chance;--these are problems which m. cousin, in none of his works, has stated, and which we are confident he is unable to solve." . liberty cannot be _conceived_. it must be intuited. there is "a plurality of modes," and there is "a knowledge of that plurality." . "a faculty" cannot resolve to act; cannot have a preference; and cannot determine itself _at all_. only a _spiritual person_ can _resolve_, can have a preference, can determine. . intelligence cannot influence. blind power cannot be influenced. only a spiritual person can be influenced, and he by object through the intelligence as medium, and only he can be an efficient cause. . morality cannot "be founded on a liberty, which only escapes necessity by taking refuge with chance;" and, what is more, such a liberty is impossible, and to speak of it as possible is absurd. what vitiates the processes of thought of the limitists so largely, crops out very plainly here: viz., the employment both in thinking and expressions of faculties, capacities, and qualities, as if they possessed all the powers of persons. this habit is thoroughly erroneous, and destructive of truth. the truth desired to answer this whole passage, may be stated in exact terms thus: the infinite and absolute spiritual person, the ultimate and indestructible, and indivisible and composite unit, possesses as a necessary quality of personality pure liberty; which is freedom from compulsion or restraint in the choice of one of two possible ends. this person intuits a multitude of modes of activity. he possesses also perfect wisdom, which enables him, having chosen the right end, to determine with unerring accuracy which one of all the modes of activity is the best to secure the end. involved in the choice of the end, is the determination to put in force the best means for securing that end. hence this person decides that the best mode shall _be_. he also possesses all-power. this is _his_ endowment, not that of his intelligence. the intelligence is not person, but _faculty_ in the person. so is it with the _power_. so then this person, intuiting through his intelligence what is befitting his dignity, puts forth, in accordance therewith, his power; and is efficient cause. such a being is neither under necessity nor chance. he is not under necessity, because there is no constraint which compels him to choose the right end, rather than the wrong one. he is not under chance, because he is _certain_ which is the best mode of action to gain the end chosen. in this distinction between ends and modes of activity, which has been so clearly set forth by rev. mark hopkins, d. d., and in the motions of spiritual persons in each sphere, lie the ground for answering _all_ difficulties raised by the advocates of necessity or chance. with these remarks we close the discussion of hamilton's philosophical system, and proceed to take up the teachings of his followers. review of "limits of religious thought." this volume is one which will always awaken in the mind of the candid and reflective reader a feeling of profound respect. the writer is manifestly a deeply religious man. the book bears the marks of piety, and an earnest search after the truth respecting that august being whom its author reverentially worships. however far wrong we may believe him to have gone in his speculative theory, his devout spirit must ever inspire esteem. though it is ours to criticize and condemn the intellectual principles upon which his work is based, we cannot but desire to be like him, in rendering solemn homage to the being he deems inscrutable. in proceeding with our examination, all the defects which were formerly noticed as belonging to the system of the limitists will here be found plainly observable. following his teacher, mr. mansel holds the understanding to be the highest faculty of the human intellect, and the consequent corollary that a judgment is its highest form of knowledge. the word "conceive" he therefore uses as expressive of the act of the mind in grasping together various marks into a concept, when that word and act of mind are utterly irrelevant to the object to which he applies them; and hence they can have no meaning as used. we shall see him speak of "starting from the divine, and reasoning down to the human"; or of "starting from the human, and reasoning up to the divine"; where, upon the hypothesis that the two are entirely diverse, no reasoning process, based upon either one, can reach the other. on the other hand, if any knowledge of god is possible to the created mind, it is only on the ground that there is a similarity, an exact likeness in certain respects, between the two; in other words, that the creator plainly declared a simple fact, in literal language, when he said, "god made man in his own image." if man's mind is wholly unlike god's mind, he cannot know truth as god knows it. and if the human intellect is thus faulty, man cannot be the subject of a moral government, for every subject of a moral government is amenable to law. in order to be so amenable, he must know the law _as it is_. no phantasmagoria of law, no silhouette will do. it must be immediately seen, and known to be binding. truth is _one_. he, then, who sees it as it is, and knows it to be binding, sees it as god sees it, and feels the same obligation that god feels. and such an one must man be if he is a moral agent. whether he is such an agent or not, we will not argue here; since all governments and laws of society are founded upon the hypothesis that he is, it may well be assumed as granted. of the "three terms, familiar as household words," which mr. mansel, in his second lecture, proceeds to examine, it is to be said, that "first cause," if properly mentioned at all, should have been put last; and that "infinite" and "absolute" are not pertinent to cause, but to person. so then when we consider "the deity as he is," we consider him, not as cause, for this is _incidental_, but as the infinite and absolute person, for these three marks are _essential_. further, these last-mentioned terms express ideas in the reason; while the term cause expresses "an _a priori_ element of connection, and thus a primitive understanding-conception." hardly more satisfactory than his use of the term cause is his definition of the terms absolute and infinite. he defines "the absolute" to be "that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other being," when it is rather the exclusion of the possibility of any other being. again, he defines "the infinite" to be "that which is free from all possible limitation; that than which a greater is inconceivable; and which, consequently, can receive no additional attribute or mode of existence which it had not from all eternity." "that which" means the thing which, for which is neuter. mr. mansel's infinite is, then, the _thing_. this _thing_ "is free from all possible limitation." how can that be when the being he thus defines is, must be, necessarily existent, and so is bound by one of the greatest of limitations, the inability to cease to be. but some light may be thrown upon his use of the term "limitation" by the subsequent portions of his definition. the thing "which is free from all possible limitation" is "that than which a greater is inconceivable." moreover, this greatest of all possible things possesses all possible "attributes," and is in every possible "mode of existence" "from all eternity." respecting the phrase "than which a greater is inconceivable," two suppositions may be made. either there may be a thing "greater" than, and diverse from, all other things; or there may be a thing greater than, and including all, other things. probably the latter is mr. mansel's thought; but it is materialistic pantheism. this being must be in every "mode of existence" "from all eternity." personality is a "mode of existence"; therefore this being must forever have been in that mode. but impersonality is also a mode of existence, therefore this being must forever have been in that mode. yet again these two modes are contradictory and mutually exclusive; then this being must have been from all eternity in two contradictory and mutually exclusive modes of existence! is further remark necessary to show that mr. mansel's definition is thoroughly vitiated by the understanding-conception that infinity is amount, and is, therefore, utterly worthless? can there be a thing so great as to be without limits? has greatness anything to do with infinity? manifestly not. it becomes necessary, then, to recur to and amplify those definitions which we have already given to the terms he uses. absoluteness and infinity are qualities of the necessary being. absoluteness is that quality of the necessary being by which he is endowed with self-existence, self-dependence, and totality. or in other words, having this quality, he is wholly independent of any other being; and also the possibility of the existence of any other independent being is excluded; and so he is the complete, the final, upon whom all possible beings must depend. infinity is that quality of the necessary being which gives him universality in the totality. it expresses the fact, that he possesses all possible endowments in perfection. possessing these qualities, that being is free from any external restraint or limitation; but those restraints and limitations, which his very constituting elements themselves impose, are not removed by these qualities. for instance, the possession of love, mercy, justice, wisdom, power, and the like, are essential to god's entirety; and the possession of them in _perfect harmony_ is essential to his perfectness in the entirety. this fact of perfect harmony, exact balance, bars him from the _undue_ exercise of any one of his attributes; or, concisely, his perfection restrains him from being imperfect. we revert, then, to the fundamental distinction, attained heretofore, between improper limitations, or those which are involved in perfection; and proper limitations, or those which are involved in deficiency and dependence; and applying it here, we see that those limitations, which we speak of as belonging to god, are not indicative of a lack, but rather are necessarily incidental to that possession of all possible perfection which constitutes him the ultimate. in this view infinity can have no relevancy to "number." it is not that god has one, or one million endowments. it asks no question about the number; and cares not for it. it is satisfied in the assertion that he possesses _all that are possible_, and in perfect harmony. it is, further, an idea, not a concept. it must be intuited, for it cannot be "conceived." no analogy of "line" or "surface" has any pertinence; because these are concepts, belonging wholly in the understanding and sense, where no idea can come. yet it may be, _is_, the quality of an intelligence endowed with a limited number of attributes;--for there can be no number without limitation, since the phrase unlimited number is a contradiction of terms;--but this limitation involves no lack, because there are no "others," which can be "thereby related to it, as cognate or opposite modes of consciousness." without doubt it is, in a certain sense, true, that "the metaphysical representation of the deity, as absolute and infinite, must necessarily, as the profoundest metaphysicians have acknowledged, amount to nothing less than the sum of all reality." this sense is that all reality is by him, and for him, and from him; and is utterly dependent upon him. but hegel's conclusion by no means follows, in which he says: "what kind of an absolute being is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included." this is founded upon the suppressed premiss, that such a being _must_ do what he does, and his creatures _must_ do what they do; and so evil must come. this much only can be admitted, and this may be admitted, without derogating aught from god's perfectness: viz., that he sees in the ideals of his reason _how_ his laws may be violated, and so, how sin may and will be in this moral system; but it is a perversion of words to say that this knowledge on the part of god is evil. the knowing how a moral agent may break the perfect law, is involved in the knowing how such agent may keep that law. but the fact of the knowledge does not involve any whit of consent to the act of violation. on the other hand, it may, does, become the ground for the putting forth of every wise effort to prevent that act. again; evil is produced by those persons whom god has made, who violate his moral laws. he being perfectly wise and perfectly good, for perfectly wise and good reasons sustains them in the ability to sin. there can be, in the nature of things, no persons at all, without this ability to sin. but god does not direct them to sin; neither when they do sin does any stain fall upon him for sustaining their existence during their sinning. that definition of the term absolute, upon which hegel bases his assertion, is one fit only for the sense and understanding; as if god was the physical sum of all existence. it is materialistic pantheism. but by observing the definitions and distinctions, which have been heretofore laid down, it may be readily seen how an actual mode of existence, as that of finite person, may be denied to god, and no lack be indicated thereby. hegel's blasphemy may, then, be answered as follows: god is the infinite and absolute spiritual person. personality is the form of his being. the form cannot be empty. organized essence fills the form. infinity and absoluteness are _qualities_ of the person as thus organized. the quality of absoluteness, for instance, as transfusing the essence, is the endowment of pure independence, and involves the exclusion of the possibility of any other independent being, and the possession of the ability to create every possible dependent being. in so far, then, as hegel's assertion means that no being can exist, and do evil, except he is created and sustained by the deity, it is true. but in so far as it means--and this is undoubtedly what hegel did mean--that god must be the efficient author of sin, that, forced by the iron rod of fate, he must produce evil, the assertion is utterly false, and could only have been uttered by one who, having dwelt all his life in the gloomy cave of the understanding, possessed not even a tolerably correct notion of the true nature of the subject he had in hand,--the character of god. from the above considerations it is apparent that all the requirements of the reason are fulfilled when it is asserted that all things--the universe--are dependent upon god; and he is utterly independent. the paragraphs next succeeding, which have been quoted with entire approbation by mr. herbert spencer, are thoroughly vitiated by their author's indefensible assumption, that cause is "indispensable" to our idea of the deity. as was remarked above, the notion of cause is incidental. the deity may or may not become a cause, as he shall decide. but he has no choice as to whether he shall be a person or not. hence we may freely admit that "the cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect: the cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect of the cause." it is also true that "the conception"--idea--"of the absolute implies a possible existence out of all relation." the position we have taken is in advance of this, for we say, involves an actual existence out of all relation. introducing, then, not "the idea of succession in time," but the idea of the logical order, we rightly say, "the absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a cause." nor are we here "checked by the third conception, that of the infinite." "causation is a possible mode of existence," and yet "that which exists without causing" is infinite. how is this? it is thus. infinity is the universality of perfect endowment. now, taking as the point of departure the first creative nisus or effort of the deity, this is true. before that act he was perfect in every possible endowment, and accorded his choice thereto. he was able to create, but did not, for a good and sufficient reason. in and after that act, he was still perfect as before. that act then involved no _essential_ change in god. but he was in one mode of being before, and in another mode of being in and after that act. yet he was equally perfect, and equally blessed, before as after. what then follows? this: that there was some good and sufficient reason why before that act he should be a potential creator, and in that act he should become an actual creator: and this reason preserves the perfection, _i. e._ the infinity of god, equally in both modes. when, then, mr. mansel says, "if causation is a possible mode of existence, that which exists without causing is not infinite, that which becomes a cause has passed beyond its former limits," his utterance is prompted by that pantheistic understanding-conception of god, which thinks him the sum of all that was, and is, and ever shall be, or can be; and that in all this, he is _actual_. on the other hand, as we have seen, all that is required to fulfil the idea of infinity is, that the being, whom it qualifies, possesses all fulness, has all the forms and springs of being in himself. it is optional with him whether he will create or not; and his remaining out of all relation, or his creating a universe, and thus establishing relations to and for himself, in no way affect his essential nature, _i. e._ his infinity. he is a person, possessing all possible endowments, and in this does his infinity consist. in this view, "creation at any particular moment of time" is seen to be the only possible hypothesis by which to account for the universe. such a _person_, the necessary being, must have been in existence before the universe; and his first act in producing that universe would mark the first moment of time. no "alternative of pantheism" is, can be, presented to the advocates of this theory. on the other hand, that scheme is seen to be both impossible and absurd. one cannot disagree with mr. mansel, when in the next paragraph he says, that, "supposing the absolute to become a cause, it will follow that it operates by means of free will and consciousness." but the difficulties which he then raises lie only in the understanding, and may be explained thus. always in god's consciousness _the subject and object are identical_. all that god is, is always present to his eye. hence all relations always appear subordinate to, and dependent upon him; and it is a misapprehension of the true idea to suppose, that any relation which falls _in idea_ within him, and only becomes actual at his will, is any proper limitation. both subject and object are thus absolute, being identical; and yet there is no contradiction. the difficulty is further raised that there cannot be in the absolute being any interrelations, as of attributes among themselves, or of attributes to the being. this arises from an erroneous definition of the term absolute. the definition heretofore given in this treatise presents no such difficulty. the possession of these attributes and interrelations is essential to the exclusion by then possessor of another independent being; and it is a perversion to so use a quality which is essential to a being, that it shall militate against the consistency of his being what he must be. if then "the almost unanimous voice of philosophy, in pronouncing that the absolute is both one and simple," uses the term "simple" in the same sense that it would have when applied to the idea of moral obligation, viz., that it is unanalyzable, then that voice is wrong, just as thoroughly as the voice of antiquity in favor of the ptolemaic system of astronomy was wrong; and is to be treated as that was. on such questions _opinions_ have no weight. the search is after a knowledge which is sure, and which every man may have within himself. we land, then, in no "inextricable dilemma." the absolute person we see to be conscious; and to possess complexity in unity, universality in totality. by an immediate intuition we know him as primarily out of all relation, plurality, difference, and likeness; and yet as having, of his own self, established the universe, which is still entirely dependent upon him; from which he differs, and with which he is not identified. again mr. mansel says: "a mental attribute to be conceived as infinite, must be in actual exercise on every possible object: otherwise it is potential only, with regard to those on which it is not exercised; and an unrealized potentiality is a limitation." with our interpretation the assertion is true and contains no puzzle. every mental attribute of the deity is most assuredly "in actual exercise," upon every one of its "possible objects" _as ideas_. but the objects are not therefore actual. neither is there any need that they should ever become so. he sees them just as clearly, and knows them just as thoroughly as ideals, as he does as actual objects. all ideal objects are "unrealized potentialities"; and yet they are the opposite of limitations proper. but this sentence, as an expression of the thought which mr. mansel seemingly wished to convey, is vitiated by the presence of that understanding-conception that infinity is amount, which must be actual. once regard infinity as _quality_ of the necessarily existent person, and it directly follows that this or that act, of that person, in no way disturbs that infinity. the quality conditions the acting being; but the act of that being cannot limit the quality. the quality is, that the act may be; not the reverse. hence the questions arising from the interrelations of power and goodness, justice and mercy, are solved at once. infinity as quality, not amount, pervades them all, and holds them all in perfect harmony, adjusting each to each, in a melody more beautiful than that of the spheres. even "the existence of evil" is "compatible with that of" this "perfectly good being." he does not will that it shall be; neither does he will that it shall not be. if he willed that it should not be, and it was, then he would be "thwarted"; but only on such a hypothesis can the conclusion follow. but he does will that certain creatures shall be, who, though dependent upon him for existence and sustenance, are, like him, final causes,--the final arbiters of their own destinies, who in the choice of ends are unrestrained, and may choose good or ill. he made these creatures, knowing that some of them would choose wrong, and so evil would be: but _he_ did not will the evil. he only willed the conditions upon which evil was possible, and placed all proper bars to prevent the evil; and the _a priori_ facts of his immutable perfection in endowments, and of his untarnished holiness, are decisive of the consequent fact, that, in willing those conditions, god did the very best possible deed. if it be further asserted that the fact, that the being who possesses all possible endowments in perfection could not wisely prevent sin, is a limitation; and, further, that it were better to have prevented sin by an unwise act than to have permitted it by a wise act; it can only be replied: this is the same as to say, that it is essential to god's perfection that he be imperfect; or, that it was better for the perfect being to violate his self than to permit sin. if any one in his thinking chooses to accept of such alternatives, there remains no ground of argument with him; but only "a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversary." carrying on his presentation of difficulties, mr. mansel further remarks: "let us however suppose for an instant, that these difficulties are surmounted, and the existence of the absolute securely established on the testimony of reason. still we have not succeeded in reconciling this idea with that of a cause: we have done nothing towards explaining how the absolute can give rise to the relative, the infinite to the finite. if the condition of causal activity is a higher state than that of quiescence, the absolute, whether acting voluntarily or involuntarily, has passed from a condition of comparative imperfection to one of comparative perfection; and therefore was not originally perfect. if the state of activity is an inferior state to that of quiescence, the absolute, in becoming a cause, has lost its original perfection." on this topic we can but repeat the argument heretofore adduced. let the supposition be entertained that perfection does not belong to a state, but to god's nature, to what god _is_, as ground for what god does, and standing in the logical order before his act; and it will directly appear that a state of quiescence or a state of activity in no way modifies his perfection. what god is, remains permanent and perfect, and his acts are only manifestations of that permanent and perfect. it follows, then, taking the first moment of time as the point of departure, that, before that point, god was in a state of complete blessedness, and that after that point he was also in such a state; and, further, that while these two states are equal, there is not "complete indifference," because there was a reason, clearly seen by the divine mind, why the passage from quiescence to activity should be when it was, and as it was, and that this reason having been acknowledged in his conduct, gives to the two states equality, and yet differentiates the one from the other. "again, how can the relative be conceived as coming into being?" it cannot be _conceived_ at all. the faculty of the mind by which it forms a concept--the discursive understanding--is impotent to conceive what cannot be conceived--the act of creation. the changes of matter can be concluded into a system, but not the power by which the matter came to be, and the changes were produced. if the how is known at all, it must be seen. the laws of the process must be intuited, as also the process as logically according with those laws. the following is believed to be an intelligible account of the process, and an answer to the above question. the absolute and infinite person possesses as _a priori_ organic elements of his being, all possible endowments in perfect harmony. hence all laws, and all possible combinations of laws, are at once and always present before the eye of his reason, which is thus constituted universal genius. these combinations may be conveniently named ideal forms. they arise spontaneously, being in no way dependent upon his will, but are rather _a priori_ conditional of any creative activity. so, too, they harmoniously arrange themselves into systems,--archetypes of what may be, some of which may appear nobler, and others inferior. this person, being such as we have stated, possesses also as endowment all power, and thereby excludes the possibility of there being any "_other_" power. this power is adequate to do all that _power_ can do,--to accomplish all that lies within the province of power. so long as the person sees fit not to exert his power, his ideal forms will be only ideals, and the power will be simply power. but whenever he shall see fit to send forth his power, and organize it according to the ideal forms, the universe will become. in all this the person, "of his own will," freely establishes whatever his unerring wisdom shows is most worthy of his dignity; and so the actualities and relations which he thus ordains are no proper limit or restraint, for they in no way lessen his fulness, but are only a manifestation of that fulness,--a declaration of his glory. in a word, creation is that executive act of god by which he combines with his power that ideal system which he had chosen because best, or _it is the organization of ample power according to perfect law_. if one shall now ask, "how could he send forth the power?" it is to be replied that the question is prompted by the curiosity of the "flesh," man's animal nature; and since no representation--picture--can be made, no answer can be furnished. it is not needed to know _how_ god is, or does anything, but only that he does it. all the essential requirements of the problem are met when it is ascertained in the light of the reason, that all fulness is in god, that from this fulness he established all other beings and their natural relations, and that no relation is _imposed_ upon him by another. the view thus advanced avoids the evil of the understanding-conception, that creation is the bringing of something out of nothing. there is an actual self-existent ground, from which the universe is produced. neither is the view pantheistic, for it starts with the _a priori_ idea of an absolute and infinite person who is "before all things, and by whom all things consist,"--who organizes his own power in accordance with his own ideals, and thus produces the universe, and all this by free will in self-consciousness. on page eighty-four, in speaking "of the atheistic alternative," mr. mansel makes use of the following language: "a limit is itself a relation; and to conceive a limit as such, is virtually to acknowledge the existence of a correlative on the other side of it." upon reading this sentence, some sensuous form spontaneously appears in the sense. some object is conceived, and something outside it, that bounds it. but let the idea be once formed of a being who possesses all limitation within himself, and for whom there is no "other side," nor any "correlative," and the difficulty vanishes. we do not seek to account for sensuous objects. it is pure spirit whom we consider. we do not need to form a concept of "a first moment in time," or "a first unit of space," nor could we if we would. to do so would be for the faculty which forms concepts to transcend the very laws of its organization. what we need is, to see the fact that a spirit is, who, possessing personality as form, and absoluteness and infinity as qualities, thereby contains all limits and the ground of all being in himself, and antithetical to whom is only negation. from the ground thus attained there is seen to result, not the dreary sahara of interminable contradictions, but the fair land of harmonious consistency. a spirit, sole, personal, self-conscious, the absolute and infinite person, is the being we seek and have found; and upon such a being the soul of man may rest with the unquestioning trust of an infant in its mother's arms. one cannot pass by unnoticed the beautiful spirit of religious reverence which shines through the closing paragraphs of this lecture. it is evident with what dissatisfaction the writer views the sterile puzzles of which he has been treating, and what a relief it is to turn from them to "the god who is 'gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.'" the wonder is, that he did not receive that presentation which his devout spirit has made, as the truth--which it is--and say, "i will accept this as final. my definitions and deductions shall accord with this highest revelation. this shall be my standard of interpretation." had he done so, far other, and, as it is believed, more satisfactory and truthful would have been the conclusions he would have given us. in his third lecture mr. mansel is occupied with an examination of the human nature, for the purpose, if possible, of finding "some explanation of the singular phenomenon of human thought," which he has just developed. at the threshold of the investigation the fact of consciousness appears, and he begins the statement of its conditions in the following language: "now, in the first place, the very conception of consciousness, in whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies _distinction between one object and another_. to be conscious we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not." in this statement mr. mansel unconsciously assumes as settled, the very question at issue; for, the position maintained by one class of writers is, that in certain of our mental operations, viz., in intuitions, the mind sees a simple truth, idea, first principle, as it is, in itself, and that there is no distinction in the act of knowledge. it is unquestionably true that, in the examination of objects on the sense, and the conclusion of judgments in the understanding, no object can come into consciousness without implying a "distinction between one object and another." but it is also evident that a first truth, to be known as such, must be intuited--seen as it is in itself; and so directly known to have the qualities of necessity and universality which constitute it a first truth. of this fact sir william hamilton seems to have been aware, when he denied the actuality of the reason,--perceiving, doubtless, that only on the ground of such a denial was his own theory tenable. but if it shall be admitted, as it would seem it must be, that men have necessary and universal convictions, then it must also be admitted that these convictions are not entertained by distinguishing them from other mental operations, but that they are seen of themselves to be true; and thus it appears that there are some modes of consciousness which do not imply the "distinction" claimed. the subsequent sentences seem capable of more than one interpretation. if the author means that "the infinite" cannot be infinite without he is also finite, so that all distinction ceases, then his meaning is both pantheistic and contradictory; for the word infinite has no meaning, if it is not the opposite of finite, and to identify them is undoubtedly pantheism. or if he means "that the infinite cannot be distinguished" as independent, from the finite _as independent_, and thus, as possessing some quality with which it was not endowed by the infinite person, then there can be no doubt of his correctness. but if, as would seem, his idea of infinity is that of amount, is such that it appears inconsistent, contradictory, for the infinite person to retain his infinity, and still create beings who are really other than himself, and possessing, as quality, finiteness, which he cannot possess as quality, then is his idea of what infinity is wrong. infinity is quality, and the capacity to thus create is essential to it. all that the reason requires is, that the finite be created by and wholly dependent upon the infinite person; then all the relations and conditions are only _improper_,--such as that person has established, and which, therefore, in no way diminish his glory or detract from his fulness. when, then, mr. mansel says, "a consciousness of the infinite, as such, thus necessarily involves a self-contradiction, for it implies the recognition, by limitation and difference, of that which can only be given as unlimited and indifferent," it is evident that he uses the term infinite to express the understanding-conception of unlimited amount, which is not relevant here, rather than the reason-idea of universality which is not contradictory to a real distinction between the infinite and finite. there is also involved the unexpressed assumption that we have no knowledge except of the limited and different, or, in other words, that the understanding is the highest faculty of the mind. it has already been abundantly shown that this is erroneous,--that the reason knows its objects in themselves, as out of all relation, plurality, difference, or likeness. dropping now the abstract term "the infinite," and using the concrete and proper form, we may say: we are conscious of infinity, _i. e._ we are conscious that we see with the eye of reason infinity as a simple, _a priori_ idea; and that it is quality of the deity. . we are conscious of the infinite person; in that we are conscious, that we see with the eye of reason the complex _a priori_ idea of a perfect person possessing independence and universality as qualities of his self. but we are not conscious of him in that we exhaustively comprehend him. as is said elsewhere, we know that he is, and to a certain extent, but not wholly what he is. in further discussing this question mansel is guilty of another grave psychological error. he says, "consciousness is essentially a limitation, for it is the determination to one actual out of many possible modifications." there is no truth in this sentence. consciousness is not a limitation; it is not a determination; it is not a modification. it may be well to state here certain conclusions on this assertion, which will be brought out in the fuller discussion of it, when we come to speak of mr. spencer's book. consciousness is _one_, and retains that oneness throughout all modifications. these occur in the unity as items of experience affect it. doubtless dr. hickok's illustration is the best possible. consciousness is the _light_ in which a spiritual person sees the modifications of himself, _i. e._ the activity of his faculties and capacities. like space, only in a different sphere, it is an illimitable indivisible unity, which is, that all limits may be in it--that all objects may come into it. if, then, only one modification--object--comes into it at a time, this is because the faculties which see in its light are thus organized;--the being to whom it belongs is partial; but there is nothing pertaining to consciousness _as such_, which constitutes a limit,--which could bar the infinite person from seeing all things at once in its light. this person, then, so far as known, must be known as an actual absolute, infinite spirit, and hence no "thing"; and further as the originator and sustainer of all "_things_,"--which, though dependent on him, in no way take aught from him. he may be known also, as potentially everything, in the sense that all possible combinations, or forms of objects, must ever stand as ideals in his reason; and he can, at his will, organize his power in accordance therewith. but he must also be known as free to create or not to create; and that the fact that many potential forms remain such, in no way detracts from his infinity. another of mr. mansel's positions involve conclusions which, we feel assured, he will utterly reject. he says, "if all thought is limitation,--if whatever we conceive is, by the very act of conception, regarded as finite,--the infinite, from a human point of view, is merely a name for the absence of those conditions under which thought is possible." "from a human point of view," and _we_, at least, can take no other, what follows? that the deity _can have no thoughts_; cannot know what our thoughts are, or that we think. but three suppositions can be made. either he has no thoughts, is destitute of an intellect; or his intellect is universal genius, and he sees all possible objects at once; or there is a faculty different in kind from and higher than the reason, of which we have, can have, no knowledge. the first, though acknowledged by hamilton in a passage elsewhere quoted, and logically following from the position taken by mr. mansel, is so abhorrent to the soul that it must be unhesitatingly rejected. the second is the position advocated in this treatise. the third is hinted at by mr. herbert spencer. we reject this third, because the reason affirms it to be impossible; and because, being unnecessary, by the law of parsimony it should not be allowed. to advocate a position of which, in the very terms of it, the intellect can have no possible shadow of knowledge, is, to say the least, no part of the work of a philosopher. "the condition of consciousness is" not "distinction" in the understanding-conception of that term. so consciousness is not a limitation, though all limits when cognized are seen in the light of consciousness. according to the philosophy we advocate, god is a particular being, and is so known; yet he is not known as "one thing out of many," but is known in himself, as being such and such, and yet being _unique_. when mr. mansel says, "in assuming the possibility of an infinite object of consciousness, i assume, therefore, that it is at the same time limited and unlimited," he evidently uses those terms with a signification pertinent only to the understanding. he is thinking of _amount_ under the forms of space and time; and so his remark has no validity. he who thinks of god rightly, will think of him as the infinite and absolute spiritual person; and will define infinity and absoluteness in accordance therewith. if the views now advanced are presentations of truth, a consistent rationalism _must_ attribute "consciousness to god." _we_ are always conscious of "limitation and change," because partiality and growth are organic with us. but we can perceive no peculiarity in consciousness, which should produce such an effect. on the contrary we see, that if a person has little knowledge, he will be conscious of so much and no more. and if a person has great capabilities, and corresponding information, he is conscious of just so much. whence, it appears, that the "limitation and change" spring from the nature of the constitution, and not from the consciousness. if, then, there should be one person who possessed the sum of all excellencies, there could arise no reason from consciousness why he should be conscious thereof. mr. mansel names as the "second characteristic of consciousness, that it is only possible in the form of a _relation_. there must be a subject, or person conscious, and an object or thing of which he is conscious." this utterance, taken in the sense which mr. mansel wishes to convey, involves the denial of consciousness to god. but upon the ground that the subject and object in the deity are always identical the difficulty vanishes. but how can man be "conscious of the absolute?" if by this is meant, have an exhaustive comprehension of the absolute person, the experience is manifestly impossible. but man may have a certain knowledge, _that_ such person is without knowing in all respects _what_ he is, just as a child may know that an apple is, without knowing what it is. again mr. mansel uses the terms absolute and infinite to represent a simple unanalyzable being. in this he is guilty of personifying an abstract term, and then reasoning with regard to the being as he would with regard to the term. absoluteness is a simple unanalyzable idea, but it is not god; it is only one quality of god. so with infinity. god is universal complexity; and to reason of him as unanalyzable simplicity is as absurd as to select the color of the apple's skin, and call that the apple, and then reason from it about the apple. so, then, though man cannot comprehend the absolute person _as such_, he has a positive idea of absoluteness, and a positive knowledge that the being is who is thus qualified. upon the subsequent question respecting the partiality of our knowledge of the infinite and absolute person, a remark made above may be repeated and amplified. we may have a true, clear, thorough knowledge _that_ he exists without having an exhaustive knowledge of _what_ he is. the former is necessary to us; the latter impossible. so, too, the knowledge by us, of any _a priori_ law, will be exhaustive. yet while we know that it _must_ be such, and not otherwise, it neither follows that we know all other _a priori_ laws, nor that we know all the exemplifications of this one. and since, as we have heretofore seen, neither absoluteness nor infinity relate to number, and god is not material substance that can be broken into "parts," but an organized spirit, we see that we may consider the elements of his organization in their logical order; and, remembering that absoluteness and infinity as qualities pervade all, we may examine his nature and attributes without impiety. mr. mansel says further: "but in truth it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that neither the absolute nor the infinite can be represented in the form of a whole composed of parts." this is tantamount to saying, the spiritual cannot be represented under the form of the material--a truth so evident as hardly to need so formal a statement. but what the divine means is, that that being cannot be known as having qualities and attributes which may be distinguished in and from himself; which is an error. god is infinite. so is his knowledge, his wisdom, his holiness, his love, &c. yet these are distinguished from each other, and from him. all this is consistent, because infinity is _quality_, and permeates them all; and not amount, which jumbles them all into a confused, _indistinguishable_ mass. in speaking of "human consciousness" as "necessarily subject to the law of time," mr. mansel says, "every object of whose existence we can be in any way conscious is necessarily apprehended by us as succeeding in time to some former object of consciousness, and as itself occupying a certain portion of time." in so far as there is here expressed the law of created beings, under which they must see objects, the remark is true. but when mr. mansel proceeds further, and concludes that, because we are under limitation in seeing the object, it is under the same limitation, so far as we apprehend it in being seen, he asserts what is a psychological error. to show this, take the mathematical axiom, "things which are equal to the same things, are equal to one another." except under the conditions of time, we cannot see this, that is, we do, must, occupy a time in observing it. but do we see that the axiom is under any condition of time? by no means. we see, directly, that it is, _must be_, true, and that in itself it has no relation to time. it is thus _absolutely_ true; and as one of the ideas of the infinite and absolute person, it possesses these his qualities. we have, then, a faculty, the reason, which, while it sees its objects in succession, and so under the law of time, also sees that those objects, whether ideas, or that being to whom all ideas belong, are, _in themselves_, out of all relation to time. thus is the created spiritual person endowed; thus is he like god; thus does he know "the infinite." hence, "the command, so often urged upon man by philosophers and theologians, 'in contemplating god, transcend time,'" means, "in all your reflections upon god, behold him in his true aspect, in the reason-idea, as out of all relation." it is true that "to know the infinite" _exhaustively_, "the human mind must itself be infinite." but this knowledge is not required of that mind. only that knowledge is required which is possible, viz., that the deity is, and what he is, _in so far as we are in his image_. again; personality is not "essentially a limitation and a relation," in the sense that it necessarily detracts aught from any being who possesses it. it rather adds,--is, indeed, a pure addition. we appear to ourselves as limited and related, not because of our personality, but because of our finiteness as _quality_ in the personality. hence we not only see no reason why the complete and universal spirit should not have personality, but we see that if he was destitute of it, he must possess a lower form of being,--since this is the highest possible form,--which would be an undoubted limitation; or, in other words, we see that he must be a person. in what mr. mansel subsequently says upon this subject, he presents arguments for the personality of god so strong, that one is bewildered with the question, "how could he escape the conviction which they awaken? how could he reject the cry of his spiritual nature, and accept the barren contradictions of his lower mind?" let us note a few sentences. "it is by consciousness alone that we know that god exists, or that we are able to offer him any service. it is only by conceiving him as a conscious being, that we can stand in any religious relation to him at all,--that we can form such a representation of him as is demanded by our spiritual wants, insufficient though it be to satisfy our intellectual curiosity." "personality comprises all that we know of that which exists; relation to personality comprises all that we know of that which seems to exist. and when, from the little world of man's consciousness and its objects, we would lift up our eyes to the inexhaustible universe beyond, and ask to whom all this is related, the highest existence is still the highest personality, and the source of all being reveals himself by his name, 'i am.'" "it is our duty, then, to think of god as personal; and it is our duty to believe that he is infinite." we may at this point quote with profit the words of that book whose authority mr. mansel, without doubt, most heartily acknowledges. "and for this cause god shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." "i have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth." either god is personal or he is not. if he is, then all that we claim is conceded. if he is not personal, and "it is our duty to think" of him as personal, then it is our duty to think and believe a _falsehood_. this no man, at least neither mr. mansel nor any other enlightened man, _can_ bring his mind to accept as a moral law. the soul instinctively asserts that obligation lies parallel with _truth_, and "that no lie is of the truth." so, then, there can be no duty except where truth is. and the converse may also be accepted, viz.: where an enlightened sense of duty is, there is truth. when, therefore, so learned and truly spiritual a man as mr. mansel asserts "that it is our duty to think god personal, and believe him infinite," we unhesitatingly accept it as the utterance of a great fundamental truth in that spiritual realm which is the highest realm of being, and so, as one of the highest truths, and with it we accept all its logical consequences. it is a safe rule anywhere, that if two mental operations seem to clash, and one must be rejected, man should cling to, and trust in the higher--the teaching of the nobler nature. thus will we do, and from the divine's own ground will we see the destruction of his philosophy. "it is our duty to think of god as personal," because he is personal; and we know that he is personal because it is our duty to think him so. we need pay no regard to the perplexities of the understanding. we soar with the eagle above the clouds, and float ever in the light of the sun. the teachings of the moral sense are far more sure, safe, and satisfactory than any discursions of the lower faculty. therefore it is man's wisdom, in all perplexity to heed the cry of his highest nature, and determine to stand on its teachings, as his highest knowledge, interpret all utterances by this, and reject all which contradict it. at the least, the declaration of this faculty is _as_ valid as that of the lower, and is to be more trusted in every disagreement, because higher. still further, no man would believe that god, in the most solemn, yea, awful moment of his self-revelation, would declare a lie. the bare thought, fully formed, horrifies the soul as a blasphemy of the damned. yet, in that supreme act, in the solitude of the sinaitic wilderness, to one of the greatest, one of the profoundest, most devout of men, he revealed himself by the pregnant words, "i am": the most positive, the most unquestionable form in which he could utter the fact of his personality. this, then, and all that is involved in it, we accept as truth; and all perplexities must be interpreted by this surety. in summing up the results to which an examination of the facts of consciousness conducted him, mr. mansel utters the following psychological error: "but a limit is necessarily conceived as a relation between something within and something without itself; and the consciousness of a limit of thought implies, though it does not directly present to us, the existence of something of which we do not and cannot think." not so; for a limit may be seen to be wholly within the being to whom it belongs, and so _not_ to be "a relation between something within and something without itself." this is precisely the case with the deity. all relations and limits spring from within him, and there is nothing "without" to establish the relation claimed. this absence of all limit from without is rudely expressed in such common phrases as this: "it must be so in the _nature of things_." this "nature of things" is, in philosophical language, the system of _a priori_ laws of the universe, and these are necessary ideas in the divine reason. it appears, then, that what must be in the nature of things, finds its limits wholly within, and its relations established by the deity. with these remarks the author would close his criticism upon mr. mansel's book. we start from entirely different bases, and these two systems logically follow from their foundations. if sir william hamilton is right in his psychology, his follower is unquestionably right in his deductions. but if that psychology is partial, if besides the understanding there is the reason, if above the judgment stands the intuition, giving the final standard by which to measure that judgment, then is the philosophical system of the divine utterly fallacious. the establishment of the validity of the pure reason is the annihilation of "the philosophy of the unconditioned." on the ground which the author has adopted, it is seen that "god is a spirit," infinite, absolute, self-conscious, personal; and a consistent interpretation of these terms has been given. we have found that certain objects may be seen as out of all relation, plurality, difference, or likeness. consciousness and personality have also been found to involve no limit, in the proper sense of that term. on the contrary, the one was ascertained to be the light in which any or all objects might be seen under conditions of time, or at once; and that this seeing was according to the capacity with which the being was endowed, and was not determined by any peculiarity of the consciousness; while the other appeared to be the highest possible form of existence, and that also in which god had revealed himself. from such a ground it is possible to go forward and construct a rational theology which shall verify by reason the teachings of the bible. review of mr. herbert spencer's "first principles." in the criticisms heretofore made, some points, held in common by the three writers named early in this work, have been, it may be, passed over unnoticed. this was done, because, being held in common, it was believed that an examination of them, as presented by the latest writer, would be most satisfactory. therefore, what was peculiar in thought or expression to sir wm. hamilton or mr. mansel, we have intended to notice when speaking of those writers. but where mr. spencer seems to present their very thought as his own, it has appeared better to remark upon it in his latest form of expression. mr. spencer also holds views peculiar to himself. these we shall examine in their place. and for convenience' sake, what we have to say will take the form of a running commentary upon those chapters entitled, "ultimate religious ideas," "ultimate scientific ideas," "the relativity of all knowledge," and "the reconciliation." before entering upon this, however, some general remarks will be pertinent. . like his teachers, mr. spencer believes that the understanding is the highest faculty of the human intellect. this is implied in the following sentence: "those imbecilities of the understanding that disclose themselves when we try to answer the highest questions of objective science, subjective science proves to be necessitated by the laws of that understanding."--_first principles_, p. . his illustrations, also, are all, or nearly all, taken from sensuous objects. in speaking of the universe, evidently the _material_ universe is present to his mind. his questions refer to objects of sense, and he shows plainly enough that any attempt to answer them by the sense or understanding is futile. hence he concludes that they cannot be answered. but those who "know of a surety," that man is more than an animal nature, containing a sense and an understanding; that he is also a spiritual person, having an _eye_, the pure reason, which can _see_ straight to the central truth, with a clearness and in a light which dims and pales the noonday sun, know also that, and how, these difficulties, insoluble to the lower faculties, are, in this noble alembic, finally dissolved. . as mr. spencer follows his teachers in the psychology of man's faculties, so does he also in the use of terms. like them, he employs only such terms as are pertinent to the sense and understanding. so also with them he is at fault, in that he raises questions which no sense or understanding could suggest even, questions whose very presence are decisive that a pure reason is organic in man; and then is guilty of applying to them terms entirely impertinent,--terms belonging only to those lower tribunals before which these questions can never come. for instance, he always employs the word "conceive" to express the effort of the mind in presenting to itself the subjects now under discussion. in some form of noun, verb, or adjective, this word seems to have rained upon his pages; while such terms as "infinite period," "infinitely divisible," "absolutely incompressible," "infinitesimal," and the like, dot them repeatedly. let us revert, then, a moment to the positions attained in an earlier portion of this work. it was there found that the word conceive was _utterly irrelevant_ to any subject except to objects of sense and the understanding in its work of classifying them, or generalizing from them, so, also, with regard to the other terms quoted, it was found that they not only presented no object of thought to the mind, but that the words had no relation to each other, and could not properly be used together. for instance, infinite has no more relation to, and can no more qualify period, than the points of the compass are pertinent to, and can qualify the affections. the phrase, infinite period, is simply absurd, and so also are the others. the words infinite and absolute have nothing to do with amount of any sort. they can be pertinent only to god and his _a priori_ ideas. many, perhaps most of the criticisms in detail we shall have to make, will be based on this single misuse of words; which yet grows naturally out of that denial and perversion of faculties which mr. spencer, in common with the other limitist writers, has attempted. on the other hand, it is to be remembered, that, if we arrive at the truth at all, we must _intuit_ it; we must either see it as a simple _a priori_ idea, or as a logical deduction from such ideas. . a third, and graver error on mr. spencer's part is, that he goes on propounding his questions, and asserting that they are insoluble, apparently as unconscious as a sleeper in an enchanted castle that they have all been solved, or at least that the principles on which it would seem that they could be solved have been stated by a man of no mean ability,--dr. hickok,--and that until the proposed solutions are thoroughly analyzed and shown to be unsound, his own pages are idle. he implies that there is no cognition higher than a conception, when some very respectable writers have named intuitions as incomparably superior. he speaks of the understanding as if it were without question the highest faculty of man's intellect, when no less a person than coleridge said it would satisfy his life's labor to have introduced into english thinking the distinction between the understanding, as "the faculty judging according to sense," and the reason, as "the power of universal and necessary convictions," which, being such, must necessarily rank far above the other. and finally he uses the words and phrases above disallowed, and the faculties to which they belong, in an attempt to prove, by the citation of a few items in an experience, what had already been demonstrated by another in a process of as pure reasoning as calculus. no one, it is believed, can master the volume heretofore alluded to, entitled "rational psychology," and so appreciate the _demonstration_ therein contained, of the utter incompetency of the sense or understanding to solve such questions as mr. spencer has raised by his incident of the partridge, (p. ,) and the utter irrelevancy to them of the efforts of those faculties, without feeling how tame and unsatisfactory in comparison is the evidence drawn from a few facts in a sensuous experience. one cares not to see a half dozen proofs, more or less that a theory is fallacious who has learned that, and why, the theory _cannot_ be true. let us now take up in order the chapters heretofore mentioned. "ultimate religious ideas." the summing up of certain reflections with which this chapter opens, concludes thus: "but that when our symbolic conceptions are such that no cumulative or indirect processes of thought can enable us to ascertain that there are corresponding actualities, nor any predictions be made whose fulfilment can prove this, then they are altogether vicious and illusive, and in no way distinguishable from pure fictions,"--p. . so far very good; but his use of it is utterly unsound. "and now to consider the bearings of this general truth on our immediate topic--ultimate religious ideas." but this "general truth" has _no_ bearings upon "ultimate religious ideas"; how then can you consider them? _no_ ideas, and most of all religious ideas, are conceptions, or the results of conceptions--or are the products of "cumulative or indirect processes of thought." they are not results or products _at all_. they are organic, are the spontaneous presentation of what is inborn, and so must be directly seen to be known at all. man might pile up "cumulative processes of thought" for unnumbered ages, and might form most exact conceptions of objects of sense,--conceptions are not possible of others,--and he could never creep up to the least and faintest religious idea. on the next page, speaking of "suppositions respecting the origin of the universe," mr. spencer says, "the deeper question is, whether any one of them is even conceivable in the true sense of that word. let us successively test them." this is not necessary. it has already been _demonstrated_ that a conception, or any effort of the understanding, cannot touch, or have relation to such topics. but it does not follow, therefore, that no one of them is cognizable at all; which he implies. take the abstract notion of self-existence, for example. no "vague symbolic conceptions," or any conception at all, of it _can be formed_. a conception is possible only "under relation, difference, and plurality." _this_ is a pure, simple idea, and so can only be known in itself by a seeing--an immediate intuition. it is seen by itself, as out of all relation. it is seen as simple, and so is learned by no difference. it is seen as a unit, and so out of all plurality. the discursive faculty cannot pass over it, because there are in it no various points upon which that faculty may fasten. it may, perhaps, better be expressed by the words pure independence. again, it is _not_ properly "existence without a beginning," but rather, existence out of all relation to beginning; and so it is an idea, out of all relation to those faculties which are confined to objects that did begin. because we can "by no mental effort" "form a conception of existence without a beginning," it does not follow that we cannot _see_ that a being existing out of all relation to beginning _is_. "to this let us add" that the intuition of such a being is a complete "explanation of the universe," and does make it "easier to understand" "that it existed an hour ago, a day ago, a year ago"; for we see that this being primarily is _out of all relation to time_, that there is no such thing as an "infinite period," the phrase being absurd; but that through all the procession of events which we call time he _is_; and that before that procession began--when there was no time, he was. thus we see that all events are based upon him who is independent; and that time, in our general use of it, is but the measure of what he produces. we arrive, then, at the conclusion that the universe is not self-existent, not because self-existence cannot be object to the human mind, and be clearly seen to be an attribute of one being, but because the universe is primarily object to faculties in that mind, which cannot entertain such a notion at all; and because this notion is _seen_ to be a necessary idea in the province of that higher faculty which entertains as objects both the idea and the being to whom it primarily belongs. the theory that the universe is self-existent is pantheism, and not the theory that it is self-created, though this latter, in mr. spencer's definition of it, seems only a phase of the other. to say that "self-creation is potential existence passing into actual existence by some inherent necessity," is only to remove self-existence one step farther back, as he himself shows. potential existence is either no existence at all, or it is positive existence. if it is no existence, then we have true self-creation; which is, that out of nothing, and with no cause, actual existence starts itself. this is not only unthinkable, but absurd. but if potential existence is positive, it needs to be accounted for as much as actual. while, then, there can be no doubt as to the validity of the conclusions to which mr. spencer arrives, respecting the entire incompetency of the hypotheses of self-existence and self-creation, to account for the universe, the distinction made above between self-existence as a true and self-creation as a pseudo idea, and the fact that the true idea is a _reality_, should never be lost sight of. by failing to discriminate--as in the understanding he could not do--between them, and by concluding both as objects alike impossible to the human intellect, and for the same reasons, he has also decided that the "commonly received or theistic hypothesis"--creation by external agency--is equally untenable. in his examination of this, he starts as usual with his ever-present, fallacious assumption, that this is a "conception"; that it can be, _is_ founded upon a "cumulative process of thought, or the fulfilment of predictions based on it." these words, phrases, and notions, are all irrelevant. it is not a conception, process, or prediction that we want; it is a _sight_. hence, no assumptions have to be made or granted. no "proceedings of a human artificer" _can in the least degree_ "vaguely symbolize to us" the "method after which the universe" was "shaped." this differed in _kind_ from all possible human methods, and had not one element in common with them. mr. spencer's remarks at this point upon space do not appear to be well grounded. "an immeasurable void"--space--is not an entity, is _no_ thing, and therefore cannot "exist," neither is any explanation for it needed. his question, "how came it so?" takes, then, this form: how came immeasurable nothing to be nothing? nothing needs no "explanation." it is only _some_ thing which must be accounted for. the theory of creation by external agency being, then, an adequate one to account for the universe, supplies the following statement. that being who is primarily out of all relation, produced, from himself, and by his immanent power, into nothing--space, room, the condition of material existence,--something, matter and the universe became. "the genesis of the universe" having thus been explained and seen to be "the result of external agency," we are ready to furnish for the question, "how came there to be an external agency?" that true answer, which we have already shadowed forth. that pure spiritual person who is necessarily existent, or self-existent, _i. e._ who possess pure independence as an essential attribute, whose being is thus fixed, and is therefore without the province of power, is the external agency which is needed. this person, differing in kind from the universe, cannot be found in it, nor concluded from it, but can only be known by being seen, and can only be seen because man possesses the endowment of a spiritual _eye_, like in kind to his own all-seeing eye, by which spiritual things may be discerned. this person, being thus seen immediately, is known in a far more satisfactory mode than he could be by any generalizations of the understanding, could he be represented in these at all. the knowledge of him is, like his self, _immutable_. we know that we stand on the eternal rock. our eye is illuminated with the unwavering light which radiates from the throne of god. nor is this any hallucination of the rhapsodist. it is the simple experience which every one enjoys who looks at pure truth in itself. it is the pure reason seeing, by an immediate intuition, god as pure spirit, revealed directly to itself. it is, then, because self-existence is a pure, simple idea, organic in man, and seen by him to be an attribute of god, that god is known to be the creator of the universe. having attained to this truth, we readily see that the conclusions which mr. spencer states on pages , , as that "self-existence is rigorously inconceivable"; that the theistic hypothesis equally with the others is "literally unthinkable"; that "our conception of self-existence can be formed only by joining with it the notion of unlimited duration through past time"; so far as they imply our destitution of knowledge on these topics, are the opposite of the facts. we _see_, though we cannot "conceive," self-existence. the theistic hypothesis becomes, therefore, literally thinkable. we see, also, that unlimited duration is an absurdity; that duration must be limited; and that self-existence involves existence out of all relation to duration. mr. spencer then turns to the nature of the universe, and says: "we find ourselves on the one hand obliged to make certain assumptions, and yet, on the other hand, we find these assumptions cannot be represented in thought." upon this it may be remarked: . what are here called assumptions are properly assertions, which man makes, and cannot help making, except he deny himself;--necessary convictions, first truths, first principles, _a priori_ ideas. they are organic, and so are the foundation of all knowledge. they are not results learned from lessons, but are _primary_, and conditional to an ability to learn. but supposing them to be assumptions, having, at most, no more groundwork than a vague guess, there devolves a labor which mr. spencer and his coadjutors have never attempted, and which, we are persuaded, they would find the most difficult of all, viz., to account for the fact of these assumptions. for the question is pertinent and urgent; . how came these assumptions to suggest themselves? where, for instance, did the notion of self come from? analyze the rocks, study plants and their growth, become familiar with animals and their habits, or exhaust the sense in an examination of man, and one can find no notion of self. yet the notion is, and is peculiar to man. how does it arise? is it "created by the slow action of natural causes?" how comes it to belong, then, to the rudest aboriginal equally with the most civilized and cultivated? was it "created" from nothing or from something? if from something, how came that something to be? we might ask, does not the presentation of any phenomenon involve the actuality of a somewhat, in which that phenomenon inheres, and of a receptivity by which it is appreciated? does not the fact of this assumption, as a mental phenomenon, involve the higher fact of some mental ground, some form, some capacity, which is both organic to the mind, and organized in the mind, in accordance with which the assumption is, and which determines what it must be? or are we to believe that these assumptions are mere happenings, without law, and for which no reason can be assigned? again we press the question, how came these assumptions to suggest themselves? . "these assumptions cannot be represented in thought." if "thought" is restricted to that mental operation of the understanding by which it generalizes in accordance with the sense, the statement is true. but if it is meant, as seems to be implied, that the notions expressed in these assumptions are not, cannot be, clearly and definitely known at all by the mind, then it is directly contrary to the truth. the ideas presented by the phrases are, as was seen above, clear and definite. since mr. spencer has quoted _in extenso_, and with entire approbation, what mr. mansel says respecting "the cause, the absolute, and the infinite," we have placed the full examination of these topics in our remarks upon mr. mansel's writings, and shall set down only a few brief notes here. upon this topic mr. spencer admits that "we are obliged to suppose _some_ cause"; or, in other words, that the notion of cause is organic. then we must "inevitably commit ourselves to the hypothesis of a first cause." then, this first cause "must be infinite." then, "it must be independent;" "or, to use the established word, it must be absolute." one would almost suppose that a _rational_ man penned these decisions, instead of one who denies that he has a _reason_. the illusion is quickly dispelled, however, by the objections he lifts out of the dingy ground-room of the understanding. it is curious to observe in these pages a fact which we have noticed before, in speaking of sir william hamilton's works, viz.: how, on the same page, and in the same sentence, the workings of the understanding and reason will run along side by side, the former all the while befogging and hindering the latter. mr. spencer's conclusions which we have quoted, and his objections which we are to answer, are a striking exemplification of this. frequently in his remarks he uses the words limited and unlimited, as synonymous with finite and infinite, when they are not so, and cannot be used interchangeably with propriety. the former belong wholly in the sense and understanding. the latter belong wholly in the pure reason. the former pertain to material objects, to mental images of them, or to number. the latter qualify only spiritual persons, and have no pertinence elsewhere. limitation is the conception of an object _as bounded_. illimitation is the conception of an object as without boundaries. rigidly, it is a simple negation of boundaries, and gives nothing positive in the concept. finity or finiteness corresponds in the reason to limitation in the sense and understanding. it does not refer to boundaries at all. it belongs only to created spiritual persons, and expresses the fact that they are partial, and must grow and learn. only by its place in the antithesis does infinity correspond in the reason to illimitation in the lower faculties. it is _positive_, and is that quality of the pure spirit which is otherwise known as _universality_. it expresses the idea of _all possible endowments in perfect harmony_. from his misuse of these terms mr. spencer is led to speak in an irrelevant manner upon the question, "is the first cause finite or infinite?" he uses words and treats the whole matter as if it were a question of material substance, which might be "bounded," with a "region surrounding its boundaries," and the like, which are as out of place as to say white love or yellow kindness. his methods of thought on these topics are also gravely erroneous. he attempts an analysis by the logical understanding, where a synthesis by the reason is required,--a synthesis which has already been given by our creator to man as an original idea. it is not necessary to examine some limited thing, or all limited things, and wander around their boundaries to learn that the first cause is infinite. we need to make no discursus, but only to look the idea of first cause through and through, and thoroughly analyze it, to find all the truth. by such a process we would find all that mr. spencer concedes that "we are obliged to suppose," and further, that such a being _must be_ self-existent. and this conviction would be so strong that the mind would rest itself in this decision: "a thousand phantasmagoria of the imagination may be wrong," says the soul, "but this i know must be true, or there is no truth in the universe." one sentence in the paragraph now under consideration deserves special notice. it is this. "but if we admit that there can be some thing uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for anything." this "assumes" the truth of a major premise all _things_ are substantially alike. if the word "thing" is restricted to its exact limits,--objects of sense,--then the sentence pertains wholly to the sense and understanding, and is true. but if, as it would seem, the implication is meant that there are no other entities which can be object to the mind except such "things," then it is a clear _petitio principii_. for the very question at issue is, whether, in fact, there is not one entity--"thing"--which so differs in kind from all others, that it is uncaused, _i. e._ self-existent; and whether the admission that that entity is uncaused does not, because of this seen difference, satisfy the mind, and furnish a reasonable ground on which to account for the subordinate causes which we observe by the sense. in speaking of the first cause as "independent," he says, "but it can have no necessary relation within itself. there can be nothing in it which determines change, and yet nothing which prevents change. for if it contains something which imposes such necessities or restraints, this something must be a cause higher than the first cause, which is absurd. thus, the first cause must be in every sense perfect, complete, total, including within itself all power, and transcending all law." we cannot criticize this better, and mark how curiously truth and error are mixed in it, than by so parodying it that only truth shall be stated. the first cause possesses within himself all possible relations as belonging to his necessary ideals. hence, change, in the exact sense of that term, is impossible to him, for there is nothing for him to _change to_. this is not invalidated by his passing from inaction to action; for creation involves no change in god's nature or attributes, and so no real or essential change, which is here meant. but he is the permanent, through whom all changes become. he is not, then, a _simple_ unit, but is an organized being, who is ground for, and comprehends in a unity, all possible laws, forms, and relations, as necessary elements of his necessary existence,--as endowments which necessarily belong to him, and are conditional of his pure independence. hence, these restraints are not "imposed" upon him, except as his existence is imposed upon him. they belong to his self, and are conditional of his being. so, then, instead of "transcending all law," he is the embodiment of all law; and his perfection is, that possessing this endowment, he accords his conduct thereto. a being who should "transcend all law" would have no reason why he should act, and no form how he should act, neither would he be an organism, but would be pure lawlessness or pure chaos. pure chaos cannot organize order; pure lawlessness cannot establish law; and so could not be the first cause. as mr. spencer truly says, "we have no alternative but to regard this first cause as infinite and absolute." and now having learned, by a true diagnosis of the mental activities, that the positions we have gained are fixed, final, irrevocable; and further, that they are not the "results" of "reasonings," but that first there was a seeing, and then an analysis of what was seen, and that the seeing is _true_, though every other experience be false; we _know_ that our position is not "illusive," but that we stand on the rock; and that what we have seen is no "symbolic conception of the illegitimate order," but is pure truth. for the further consideration of this subject, the reader is referred back to our remarks on that passage in mr. mansel's work, which mr. spencer has quoted. a few remarks upon his summing up, p. _et seq._, will complete the review of this chapter. "passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of" consistency, we would find in any rigorous analysis, that atheism and pantheism are self-contradictory; but we _have found_ that theism, "when rigorously analyzed," presents an absolutely consistent system, in which all the difficulties of the understanding are explained to the person by the reason, and is entirely thinkable. such a system, based upon the necessary convictions of man, and justly commanding that these shall be the fixed standard, in accordance with which all doubts and queries shall be dissolved and decided, gives a rational satisfaction to man, and discloses to him his eternal rest. in proceeding to his final fact, which he derives as the permanent in all religions, mr. spencer overlooks another equally permanent, equally common, and incomparably more important fact, viz: that fetishism, polytheism, pantheism, and monotheism,--all religions alike assert _that a god created the universe_. in other words, the great common element, in all the popular modes of accounting for the vast system of things in which we live is, _that it is the product of an agency external to itself, and that the external agency is personal_. take the case of the rude aboriginal, who "assumes a separate personality behind every phenomenon." he does not attempt to account for all objects. his mind is too infantile, and he is too degraded to suspect that those material objects which appear permanent need to be accounted for. it is only the changes which seem to him to need a reason. behind each change he imagines a sort of personal power, superior to it and man, which produces it, and this satisfies him. he inquires no further; yet he looks in the same direction as the monotheist. in this crude form of belief, which is named fetishism, we see that essential idea which can be readily traced through all forms of religion, that some _personal_ being, external, and superior to the things that be, produced them. nor is atheism a proper exception to this law. for atheism is not a religion, but the denial of all religion. it is not a doctrine of god, but is a denial that there is any god; and what is most in point, it never was a _popular_ belief, but is only a philosophical sahara over which a few caravans of speculative doubters and negatists wander. neither can hindu pantheism be quoted against the position taken: for brahm is not the universe; neither are brahma, vishnu, and siva. brahm does not lose his individuality because the universe is evolved from him. _now_ he is thought of as one, and the universe as another, although the universe is thought to be a part of his essence, and hereafter to be reabsorbed by him. _now_, this part of his essence which was _produced_ through brahma, vishnu, and siva, is _individualized_; and so is one, while he is another. thus, here also, the idea of a proper external agency is preserved. the facts, then, are decisively in favor of the proposition above laid down. "_our_ investigation" discloses "a fundamental verity in each religion." and the facts and the verity find no consistent ground except in a pure theism, and there they do find perfect consistency and harmony. it is required, finally, in closing the discussion of this chapter, to account for the fact that, upon a single idea so many theories of god have fastened themselves; or better, perhaps, that a single idea has developed itself in so many forms. this cannot better be done than in the language of that metaphysician, not second to plato, the apostle paul. in his epistle to the romans, beginning at the th verse of the st chapter, he says: "because that which may be known of god is manifest to them; for god hath shewed it unto them. for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. because that, when they knew god, they glorified him not as god, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened: professing themselves to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible god into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." this passage, which would be worthy the admiring study of ages, did it possess no claim to be the teaching of that being whom mr. spencer asserts it is _impossible for us to know_, gives us in a popular form the truth. man, having organic in his mind the idea of god, and having in the universe an ample manifestation to the sense, of the eternal power and godhead of the creator of that universe, corresponding to that idea, perverted the manifestation to the sense, and degraded the idea in the reason, to the service of base passion. by this degradation and perversion the organic idea became so bedizened with the finery of fancy formed in the understanding, under the direction of the animal nature, as to be lost to the popular mind,--the trappings only being seen. when once the truth was thus lost sight of, and with it all that restraint which a knowledge of the true god would impose, men became vain in their imaginations; their fancy ran riot in all directions. cutting loose from all law, they plunged into every excess which could be invented; and out of such a stimulated and teeming brain all manner of vagaries were devised. this was the first stage; and of it we find some historic hints in the biblical account of the times, during and previous to the life of abraham. where secular history begins the human race had passed into the second stage. crystallization had begun. students were commencing the search for truth. religion was taking upon itself more distinct forms. the organic idea, which could not be wholly obliterated, formed itself distinctly in the consciousness of some gifted individuals, and philosophy began. philosophy in its purest form, as taught by socrates and plato, presented again the lost idea of pure theism. but the spirituality which enabled them to see the truth, lifted them so far above the common people, that they could affect only a few. and what was most disheartening, that same degradation which originally lost to man the truth, now prevented him from receiving it. thus it was that by a binding of the reason to the wheels of passion, and discursing through the world with the understanding at the beck of the sense, the many forms of religion became. "ultimate scientific ideas." on a former page we have already attempted a positive answer to the question, "what are space and time," with which mr. spencer opens this chapter. it was there found that, in general terms, they are _a priori_ conditions of created being; and, moreover, that they possess characteristics suitable to what they condition, just as the _a priori_ conditions of the spiritual person possess characteristics suitable to what they condition. it was further found that this general law is, from the necessity of the case, realized both within the mind and without it; that it is, must be, the form of thought for the perceiving subject, corresponding to the condition of existence for the perceived object. it also appeared that the universe as object, and the sense and understanding as faculties in the subject, thus corresponded; and further, that these faculties could never transcend and comprehend space and time, because these were the very conditions of their being; moreover, that by them all spaces and times must be considered with reference to the universe, and apart from it could not be examined by them at all. yet it was further found that the universe might in the presence of the reason be abstracted; and that, then, pure space and time still remained as pure _a priori_ conditions, the one as _room_, the other as _opportunity_, for the coming of created being. space and time being such conditions, _and nothing more_, are entities only in the same sense that the multiplication table and the moral law are entities. they are _conditions_ suited to what they condition. in the light of this result let us examine mr. spencer's teachings respecting them. strictly speaking, space and time do not "exist." if they exist (ex sto), they must stand out somewhere and when. this of course involves the being of a where and a when in which they can stand out; and that where and when must needs be accounted for, and so on _ad infinitum_. again, mr. spencer would seem to speak, in his usual style, as if they, in existing "objectively," had a _formal_ objective existence. yet this, in the very statement of it, appears absurd. the mind apprehends many objects, which do not "exist." they only are. thus, as has just been said, space and time, as conditions of created being, _are_. they are entities but not existences. they are _a priori_ entities, and so are _necessarily_. by this they stand in the same category with all pure laws, all first principles. "moreover, to deny that space and time are things, and so by implication to call them nothings, involves the absurdity that there are two kinds of nothings." this sentence "involves the absurdity" of assuming that "nothing" is an entity. if i say that space is nothing, i say that it presents no content for a concept, and cannot, because there is no content to be presented. it is then _blank_. just so of time. as nothings they are, then, both equally blank, and destitute of meaning. now if mr. spencer wishes to hold that nothing represented by one word, differs from nothing represented by another, we would not lay a straw in his way, but yet would be much surprised if he led a large company. again, having decided that they are neither "nonentities nor the attributes of entities, we have no choice but to consider them as entities." but he then goes on to speak of them as "things," evidently using the word in the same sense as if applying it to a material object, as an apple or stone; thereby implying that entity and thing in that sense are synonymous terms. upon this leap in the dark, this blunder in the use of language, he proceeds to build up a mountain of difficulties. but once take away this foundation, once cease attempting "to represent them in thought as things," and his difficulties vanish. space is a condition. perhaps receptivity, indivisibility, and illimitability are attributes. if so, it has attributes, for these certainly belong to it. but whether these shall be called attributes or not, it is certain that space is, is a pure condition, is thus a positive object to the reason, is qualified by the characteristics named above; and all this without any contradiction or other insuperable difficulty arising thereby. on the ground now established, we learn that extension and space are _not_ "convertible terms." extension is an attribute of matter. space is a condition of phenomena. it is only all _physical_ "entities which we actually know as such" that "are limited." from our standpoint, that space is _no_ thing, such remarks as "we find ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded space," appear painfully absurd. "we find ourselves" just as "totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded" love. such phrases as "mental image" have _no relevancy_ to either space or time. in criticizing kant's doctrine, which we have found _true_ as far as it goes, mr. spencer evinces a surprising lack of knowledge of the facts in question. "in the first place," he says, "to assert that space and time, as we are conscious of them, are subjective conditions, is by implication to assert that they are not objective realities." but the conclusion does not follow. if the reader will take the trouble to construct the syllogism on which this is based, he will at once perceive the absurdity of the logic. it may be said in general that all conditions of a thinking being are both subjective and objective: they are conditions of his being--subjective; and they are objects of his examination and cognizance--objective. is not the multiplication table an objective reality, _i. e._, would it not remain if he be destroyed? and yet is it not also a subjective law; and so was it not originally discovered by introspection and reflection? again he says, "for that consciousness of space and time which we cannot rid ourselves of, is the consciousness of them as existing objectively." now the fact is, that primarily we do not have _any_ consciousness of space and time. _consciousness has to do with phenomena._ when examining the material universe, the _objects_, and the objects as at a distance from each other and as during, are what we are conscious of. for instance, i view the planets jupiter and saturn. they appear as objects in my consciousness. there is a distance between them; but this distance _is_ not, except as they _are_. if they are not, the word distance has no meaning with reference to them. take them away, and i have no consciousness of distance as remaining. these planets continue in existence. they endure. this endurance we call time, but if they should cease, one could not think of endurance in connection with them as remaining. here we most freely and willingly agree with mr. spencer that "the question is, what does consciousness directly testify?" but he will find that consciousness on this side of the water testifies very differently from his consciousness: as for instance in the two articles in the "north american review," heretofore alluded to. here, "the direct testimony of consciousness is," that spaces and times within the universe are without the mind; that space and time, as _a priori_ conditions for the possibility of formal object and during event, are also without the mind; but the "testimony" is none the less clear and "direct" that space and time are laws of thought in the mind corresponding to the actualities without the mind. and the question may be asked, it is believed with great force, if this last were not so, how could the mind take any cognizance of the actuality? again, most truly, space and time "cannot be conceived to become non-existent even were the mind to become non-existent." much more strongly than this should the truth be uttered. they could not become non-existent if the universe with every sentient being, yea, even--to make an impossible supposition--if the deity himself, should cease to be. in this they differ no whit from the laws of mathematics, of logic, and of morals. these too would remain as well. thus is again enforced the truth, which has been stated heretofore, that space and time, as _a priori_ conditions of the universe, stand in precisely the same relation to material object and during event that the multiplication table does to intellect, or the moral law to a spiritual person. it will now be doubtless plain that mr. spencer's remarks sprang directly from the lower faculties. the sense in its very organization possesses space and time as void forms into which objects may come. so also the understanding possesses the notional as connecting into a totality. these faculties cannot be in a living man without acting. activity is their law. hence images are ever arising and _must_ arise in the sense, and be connected in the understanding, and all this in the forms and conditions of space and time. he who thinks continually in these conditions will always _imagine_ that space and time are only without him--because he will be thinking only in the iron prison-house of the imagining faculty--and so cannot transcend the conditions it imposes. now how shall one see these conditions? they do "exist objectively"; or, to phrase it better, they have a true being independent of our minds. in this sense, as we have seen, every _a priori_ condition must be objective to the mind. what is objective to the sense is not space but a space, _i. e._ a part of space limited by matter; and, after all, it is the boundaries which are the true object rather than the space, which cannot be "conceived" of if the boundaries be removed. without further argument, is it not evident that there space, like all other _a priori_ conditions, is object only to the reason, and that as a condition of material existence? at the bottom of page we have another of mr. spencer's psychological errors:--"for if space and time are forms of thought, they can never be thought of; since it is impossible for anything to be at once the _form_ of thought and the matter of thought." although this topic has been amply discussed elsewhere, it may not be uninstructive to recur to it again. exactly the opposite of mr. spencer's remark is the truth. the question at issue here is one of those profound and subtile ones which cannot be approached by argument, but can be decided only by a _seeing_. it is a psychological question pertaining to the profoundest depths of our being. if one says, "i see the forms of thought," and another, "i cannot see them," neither impeaches the other. all that is left is to stimulate the dull faculty of the one until he can see. the following reflections may help us to see. mr. spencer's remark implies that we have no higher faculty than the sense and the understanding. it implies, also, that we can never have any _self_-knowledge, in the fundamental signification of that phrase. we can observe the conduct of the mind, and study and classify the results; but the laws, the constitution of the activity itself must forever remain closed to us. as was said, when speaking of this subject under a different phase, the eye cannot see and study itself. it is a mechanical organism, capable only of reaction as acted upon, capable only of seeing results, but never able to penetrate to the hidden springs which underlie the event. just so is it with the sense and understanding. they are mere mechanical faculties capable of acting as they are acted upon, but never able to go behind the appearance to its final source. on such a hypothesis as this all science is impossible, but most of all a science of the human mind. if man is enclosed by such walls, no knowledge of his central self can be gained. he may know what he _does_; but what he _is_, is as inscrutable to him as what god is. as such a being, he is only a higher order of brute. he has some dim perceptions, some vague feelings, but he has no _knowledge_; he is _sure_ of nothing. he can reach no ground which is ultimate, no _rock_ which he knows is _immutable_. is man such a being? the longings and aspirations of the ages roll back an unceasing no! he is capable of placing himself before himself, of analyzing that self to the very groundwork of his being. all the laws of his constitution, all the forms of his activity, he can clearly and amply place before himself and know them. and how is this? it is because god has endowed him with an eye like unto his own, which enables man to be self-comprehending, as he is self-comprehending,--the reason, with which man may read himself as a child reads a book; that man can make "the _form_ of thought the _matter_ of thought." true, the understanding is shut out from any consideration of the forms of thought; but man is not simply or mainly an understanding. he is, in his highest being, a spiritual person, whom god has endowed with the faculty of vision; and the great organic evil, which the fall wrought into the world, was this very denial of the spiritual light, and this crowding down and out of sight, of the spiritual person beneath the animal nature, this denial of the essential faculties of such person, and this elevation of the lower faculties of the animal nature, the sense and understanding, into the highest place, which is involved in all such teachings as we are criticizing. mr. spencer's remarks upon "matter" are no nearer the truth. in almost his first sentence there is a grievous logical _faux pas_. he says: "matter is either infinitely divisible or it is not; no third possibility can be named." yet we will name one, as follows: _the divisibility of matter has no relation to infinity_. and this _third_ supposition happens to be the truth. but it will be said that the question should be stated thus: either there is a limit to the divisibility of matter, or there is no limit. this statement is exhaustive, because limitation belongs to matter. of these alternatives there can be no hesitation which one to choose. there is a limit to the divisibility of matter. this answer cannot be given by the physical sense; for no one questions but what it is incapable of finding a limit. the mental sense could not give it, because it is a question of actual substance and not of ideal forms. the reason gives the answer. matter is limited at both extremes. its amount is definite, as are its final elements. these "ultimate parts" have "an under and an upper surface, a right and a left side." when, then, one of these parts shall be broken, what results? not _pieces_, as the materialist, thinking only in the sense, would have us believe. when a final "part" shall be broken, there will remain _no matter_,--to the sense nothing. to it, the result would be annihilation. but the reason declares that there would be left _god's power_ in its simplicity,--that final unit out of which all diversity becomes. the subsequent difficulties raised respecting the solidity of matter may be explained thus. and for convenience sake, we will limit the term matter to such substances as are object to the physical sense, like granite, while force shall be used to comprise those finer substances, like the ether, which are impalpable to the physical sense. matter is composed of very minute ultimate particles which do not touch, but which are held together by force. the space between the atoms, which would otherwise be _in vacuo_, is _full_ of force. we might be more exhaustive in our analysis, and say--which would be true--that a space-filling force composes the universe; and that matter is only force in one of its modifications. but without this the other statement is sufficient. when, then, a portion of matter is compressed, the force which holds the ultimate particles in their places is overcome by an external force, and these particles are brought nearer together. now, how is it with the moving body and the collision? bisect a line and see the truth. c a--------b a body with a mass of is moving with a velocity of along the line from a to b. at c it meets another body with a mass of at rest. from thence the two move on towards b with a velocity of . what has happened? in the body there was a certain amount of force, which set it in motion and kept it in motion. and just here let us make a point. _no force is ever lost or destroyed. it is only transferred._ when a bullet is fired from a gun, it possesses at one _point_ a maximum of force. from that point this force is steadily _transferred_ to the air and other substances, until all that it received from the powder is spent. but at any one point in its flight, the sum of the force which has been transferred since the maximum, and of the force yet to be transferred, will always equal the maximum. now, how is it respecting the question raised by mr. spencer? the instant of contact is a point in time, _not a period_, and the transfer of force is instantaneous. c, then, is a _point_, not a period, and the velocity on the one side is and the other side , while the momentum or force is exactly equal throughout the line. if it is said that this proves that a body can pass from one velocity to another without passing through the intermediate velocities, we cannot help it. the above are the facts, and they give the truth. the following sentence of mr. spencer is, at least, careless. "for when, of two such units, one moving at velocity strikes another at rest, the striking unit must have its velocity instantaneously reduced to velocity ; must pass from velocity to velocity without any lapse of time, and without passing through intermediate velocities; must be moving with velocities and at the same instant, which is impossible." if there is any sense in the remark, "instantaneously" must mean a _point_ of time _without period_. for, if any period is allowed, the sentence has no meaning, since during that period "the striking unit" passes through all "intermediate velocities." but if by instantaneously he means _without period_, then the last clause of the sentence is illogical, since instant there evidently means a period. for if it means point, then it contradicts the first clause. there, it is asserted that was "_reduced_" to , _i. e._ that at one point the velocity was , and at the next point it was , and that there was _no time_ between. if was instantaneously reduced to , then the velocity was next after the velocity , and not coeval with it. thus it appears that these two clauses which were meant to be synonymous are contradictory. bearing in mind what we have heretofore learned respecting atoms, we shall not be troubled by the objections to the newtonian theory which follow. in reply to the question, "what is the constitution of these units?" the answer, "we have no alternative but to regard each of them as a small piece of matter," would be true if the sense was the only faculty which could examine them. but even upon this theory mr. spencer's remarks "respecting the parts of which each atom consists," are entirely out of place; for the hypothesis that it is an ultimate atom excludes the supposition of "parts," since that phrase has no meaning except it refers to a final, indivisible, material unit. all that the sense could say, would be, "what this atom is i know not, but that it is, and _is not divisible_, i believe." but when we see by the reason that the ultimate atom, when dissolved, becomes god's power, all difficulty in the question vanishes. having thus answered the above objections, it is unnecessary to notice the similar ones raised against boscovich's theory, which is a modification of that of newton. mr. spencer next examines certain phenomena of motion. the fact that he seeks for absolute motion by the _physical sense_, a faculty which was only given us to perceive relative--phenomenal--motion, and is, _in its kind_, incapable of finding the absolute motion, (for if it should see it, it could not _know_ it,) is sufficient to condemn all that he has said on this subject. for the presentations which he has made of the phenomena given us by the sense does not exhaust the subject. the perplexities therein developed are all resolvable, as will appear further on. the phenomena adduced on page are, then, merely _appearances_ in the physical sense; and the motion is merely relative. in the first instance, the captain walks east with reference to the ship and globe. in the second, he walks east with reference to the ship; the ship sails west with reference to the globe; while the resultant motion is, that he is _stationary_ with reference to this larger object. what, then, can the sense give us? only resultant motion, at the most. so we see that "our ideas of motion" are not "illusive," but _deficient_. the motion is just what it appears, measured from a given object. it is _relative_, and this is all the sense _can_ give. our author acknowledges that "we tacitly assume that there are real motions"; that "we take for granted that there are fixed points in space, with respect to which all motions are absolute; and we find it impossible to rid ourselves of this idea." a question instantly arises, and it seems to be one which he is bound to entertain, viz: how comes this idea to be? we press this question upon mr. spencer, being persuaded that he will find it much more perplexing than those he has entertained. undoubtedly, "absolute motion cannot even be imagined." _no_ motion can be imagined, though the moving body may be. but by no means does it follow, "much less known." this involves that the knowing faculty is inferior to, and more circumscribed than, the imagining faculty, when the very opposite is the fact. neither does it follow from what is said in the paragraph beginning with, "for motion is change of place," that "while we are obliged to think that there is absolute motion, we find absolute motion incomprehensible." the universe is limited and bounded, and is a sphere. we _may_ assume that the centre of the sphere is at rest. instantly absolute motion becomes comprehensible, for it is motion measured from that point. surely there can be no harm in the _supposition_. the reason shows us that the supposition is the truth; and that that centre is the throne of the eternal god. in this view not only is motion, apart from the "limitations of space," totally unthinkable, but it is absolutely impossible. motion _cannot_ be, except as a formal body is. hence, to speak of motion in "unlimited space" is simply absurd. formal object _cannot_ be, except as _thereby_ a limit is established in space. hence it is evident that "absolute motion" is not motion with reference to "unlimited space," which would be the same as motion without a moving; but is motion with reference to that point fixed in space, around which all things revolve, but which is itself at perfect rest. "another insuperable difficulty presents itself, when we contemplate the transfer of motion." motion is simply the moving of a body, and _cannot be transferred_. the _force_ which causes the motion is what is transferred. all that can be said of motion is, that it is, that it increases, that it diminishes, that it ceases. if the moving body impinges upon another moving body, and causes it to move, it is not motion that is transferred, but the force which causes the motion. the motion in the impinging body is diminished, and a new motion is begun in the body which was at rest. again it is asked: "in what respect does a body after impact differ from itself before impact?" and further on: "the motion you say has been communicated. but how? what has been communicated? the striking body has not transferred a _thing_ to the body struck; and it is equally out of the question to say that it has transferred an _attribute_." observe now that a somewhat is unquestionably communicated; and the question is:--what is it? query. does mr spencer mean to comprehend the universe in "thing" and "attribute"? he would seem to. if he does, he gives a decision by assertion without explanation or proof, which involves the very question at issue, which is, is the somewhat transferred a "thing" or an "attribute"; and a decision directly contrary to the acknowledgment that a somewhat has been communicated? on the above-named hypothesis his statement should be as follows: a somewhat has been communicated. "thing" and "attribute" comprise all the universe. neither a thing, nor an attribute has been communicated, _i. e._ no somewhat has been communicated; which contradicts the evidence and the acknowledgment. if on the other hand mr. spencer means that "thing" and "attribute" comprise only a part of the universe, then the question is not fairly met. it may be more convenient for the moment to conclude the universe in the two terms thing and attribute; and then, as attribute is essential to the object it qualifies, and so cannot be communicated, it will follow that a thing has been communicated. this thing we call force. it is not in hand now to inquire what force is. it is manifest to the sense that the body is in a different state after impact, than it was before. something has been put into the body, which, though not directly appreciable to the sense, is indirectly appreciable by the results, and which is as real an addition as water is to a bowl, when poured in. before the impact the body was destitute of that kind of force--motor force would be a convenient term--which tended to move it. after the impact a sufficiency of that force was present to produce the motion. it may be asked, where does this force go to when the motion diminishes till the body stops. it passes into the substances which cause the diminution until there is no surplus in the moving body, and at the point of equilibrium motion ceases. if it be now asked, where does this force ultimately go to, it is to be said that it comes from god, and goes to god, who is the final. the sense gives only subordinate answers, but the reason leads us to the supreme. if the view adopted be true, mr. spencer's halving and halving again "the rate of movement forever," is irrelevant. it is not a _mental operation_ but an _actual fact_ which is to be accounted for. take a striking illustration. a ball lying on smooth ice is struck with a hockey. away it goes skimming over the glassy surface with a steadily diminishing velocity till it ceases. it starts, it proceeds, it stops. these are the facts; and the mental operation must accord with them. there is put into the ball, at the instant of contact, a certain amount of motor force. from that instant onward, that force flows out of the ball into the resisting substances by which it is surrounded, until none is left. and it is just as pertinent to ask how all the water can flow out of a pail, as how all the motor force can flow out of a moving substance. "the smallest movement is separated" by no more of "an impassable gap from no movement," _than it is from a larger movement above it_. that which will account for a movement four becoming two, will account for a movement two becoming zero. the "puzzle," then, may be explained thus. time is the procession of events. let it be represented by a line. take a point in that line, which will then mark its division but represent _no period_. on one side of that point is rest; on the other motion. that point is the point of contact, and occupies no period. at this point the motion is maximum. the force instantly begins to flow off, and continues in a steady stream until none is left, and the body is again at rest. here, also, we take a point. this is the point of zero. it again divides the line. before the bisection is motion; after the bisection is rest. all this cannot be perceived by the sense, nor conceived by the understanding. it is seen by the reason. now observe the actual phenomenon. the ball starts, proceeds, stops. from maximum to zero there is a steady diminution, or nearly enough so for the experiment; at least the diminution can be averaged for the illustration. then comparing motion with time, the same difficulty falls upon the one as the other. if the motion is halved, the time must be; and so, "mentally," it is impossible to imagine how a moment of time can pass. to the halving faculty--the sense--this is true, and so we are compelled to correct our course of procedure. this it is. the sense and understanding being impotent to discover an absolute unit of any kind, the sense _assumes_ for itself what meets all practical want--a standard unit, by which it measures parts in space and time. so motion must be measured by some assumed standard; and as, like time,--duration,--it can be represented by a line, let them have a common standard. suppose, then, that the ball's flight occupies ten minutes of time. the line from m to z will be divided into ten exactly equal spaces; and it will be no more difficult to account for the flow of force from to , than from to . also let it be observed that the force, like time, is a unit, which the sense, for its convenience, divides into parts; but that neither those parts, nor any parts, have any real existence. as time is an indivisible whole, measured off for convenience, so any given force is such a whole, and is so measured off. all this appearing and measuring are phenomenal in the sense. it is the reason which sees that they can be _only_ phenomenal, and that behind the appearance is pure spirit--god, who is primarily out of all relation. on page , near the close of his illustration of the chair, mr. spencer says: "it suffices to remark that since the force as known to us is an affection of consciousness, we cannot conceive the force as existing in the chair under the same form without endowing the chair with consciousness." this very strange assertion can only be true, provided a major premiss, no force can be conceived to exist without involving an affection of consciousness in the object in which it _apparently_ inheres, is true. such a premiss seems worse than absurd; it seems silly. we cannot learn that force exists, without our consciousness is affected thereby; but this is a very different thing from our being unable to conceive of a force as _existing_, without there is a consciousness in the object through which it _appears_. if mr. spencer had said that no force can be, without being exerted, and no force can be exerted, without an affection of the consciousness of the exertor, he would have uttered the truth. we would then have the following result. primarily all force is exerted by the deity; and he is conscious thereof. he draws the chair down just as really as though the hand were visible. secondarily spiritual persons are endowed by their creator with the ability to exert his force for their uses, and so i lift the chair. the great error, which appears on every page of mr. spencer's book and invalidates all his conclusions, shows itself fully here. he presents images from the sense, and then tries to satisfy the reason--the faculty which calls for an absolute account--by the analyses of that sense. his attempt to "halve the rate," his remark that "the smallest movement is separated by an impassable gap from no movement," and many such, are only pertinent to the sense, can never be explained by the sense, and are found by the reason to need, and be capable of, no such kind of explanation as the sense attempts; but that the phenomena are appearances in _wholes_, whose partitions cannot be absolute, and that these wholes are accounted for by the being of an absolute and infinite person--god, who is utterly impalpable to the sense, and can be known only by the reason. the improper use of the sense mentioned above, is, if possible, more emphatically exemplified in the remarks upon "the connection between force and matter." "our ultimate test of matter is the ability to resist." this is true to the sense, but no farther. "resist" what? other matter, of course. thus is the sensuousness made manifest. in the sense, then, we have a material object. but force is not object to the sense directly, but only indirectly by its effects through matter. the sense, in its percept, deems the force other than the matter. hence it is really no more difficult for the sense to answer the question, how could the sun send a force through , , of miles of void to the earth and hold it, than through solid rock that distance? all that the sense _can do_ is to present the phenomena. it is utterly impotent to account for the least of them. in the following passage, on page , mr. spencer seems to have been unaccountably led astray. he says: "let the atoms be twice as far apart, and their attractions and repulsions will both be reduced to one fourth of their present amounts. let them be brought within half the distance, and then attractions and repulsions will both be quadrupled. whence it follows that this matter will as readily as not assume any other density; and can offer no resistance to any external agents." now if this be true, there can be no "external agents" to which to offer any "resistance." it is simply to assert that all force neutralizes itself; and that matter is impossible. but the conclusion does not "follow." it is evidently based on the supposition that the "attractions and repulsions" are _contra_-acting forces which exactly balance each other, and so the molecules are held in their position by _no_ force. instead of this, they are _co_-acting forces, which are wholly expended in holding the molecules in their places. the repulsions, then, are expended in resisting pressure from without which seeks to crowd the particles in upon themselves and thus disturb their equilibrium; while the attractions are expended in holding the particles down to their natural distance from each other when any disturbing force attempts to separate them. hence, referring to the two cases mentioned, in the first instance the power of resistance is reduced to one fourth, and this corresponds with the fact; and in the second instance the power of resistance is increased fourfold, and this corresponds with the fact. we thus arrive at the end of mr. spencer's remarks concerning the material universe and of our strictures thereon. perhaps the reader's mind cannot better be satisfied as to the validity of these strictures than by presenting an outline of the system furnished by the reason, and upon which they are based. the reason gives, by a direct and immediate intuition, and as a necessary _a priori_ idea, god. this is a _spontaneous_, synthetical act, precisely the same in kind with that which gives a simple _a priori_ principle, as idea. in it the reason intuits, not a single principle seen to be necessary simply, but the fact that all possible principles _must_ be combined in a perfectly harmonious unity, in a single being, who thereby possesses all possible endowments; and so is utterly independent, and is seen to be the absolute and infinite person, the perfect spirit. this act is no conclusion of the one from the many in a synthetical judgment, but is entirely different. it is the necessary seeing of the many in the one; and so is not a judgment but an intuition, not a guess but a certainty. god, then, is known, when known at all, not "by plurality, difference, and relation," but by an _immediate_ insight into his unity, and so is directly known as he is. and the whole universe is, that creatures might be, to whom this revelation was possible. among the other necessary endowments which this intuition reveals, is that of immanent power commensurate with his dignity, and adequate to realize in actual creatures the necessary _a priori_ ideas, which he also possesses as endowments. power is, then, a simple idea, incapable of analysis; and which cannot therefore be defined, except by synonymous terms; and to which president hopkins's remark upon moral obligation is equally pertinent; viz: "that we can only state the occasion on which it arises." from these data the _a priori_ idea of the universe may be developed as follows:-- god, the absolute and infinite person, possesses, as inherent endowment forever immanent in himself, universal genius; which is at once capacity and faculty, in which he sees, and by which he sees, all possible ideas, and these in all possible combinations or ideals. thus has he all possible knowledge. from the various ideal systems which thus are, he, having perfect wisdom, and according his choice to the behest of his own worth, selects that one which is thus seen to be best; and thereby determines the forms and laws under which the universe shall become. he also possesses, as inherent endowment, all power; _i. e._ the ability to realize every one of his ideals; but _not_ the ability to violate the natural laws of his being, as to make two and two five. the ideal system is only ideal: the power is simply power; and so long as the two remain isolated, no-thing will be. therefore, in order to the realization of his ideal, it must be combined with the power; _i. e._, the power must be organized according to the ideal. how, then, can the power, having been sent forth from god, be organized? thus. if the power goes forth in its simplicity, it will be expended uselessly, because there is no substance upon which it may be exercised. it follows, then, that, if exercised at all, it must be exercised upon _itself_. when, therefore, god would create the universe, he sent forth two "pencils," or columns of power, of equal and sufficient volume, which, acting upon each other from opposite directions, just held each other in balance, and thus force was. these two "pencils," thus balancing each other, would result in a sphere of "space-filling force." the point of contact would determine the first place in space, and the first point in time; from which, if attainable, an absolute measure of each could be made. all we have now attained is the single duality "space-filling force," which is wholly homogeneous, is of sufficient volume to constitute the universe, and yet by no means _is_ the universe. there is only chaos, "without form and void, and darkness" is "upon the face of the deep." now must "the spirit of god move upon the face of the waters"; then through vast and to us immeasurable periods of time, through cycle and epicycle, the work of organization will go on. ever moving under forms laid down in the _a priori_ ideal, god's power turns upon itself, as out of the crush of elemental chaos the universe is being evolved. during this process, whatever of the force is to act under the law of heat in the _a priori_ ideal, assumes that form and the heat force becomes; whatever is to act under the law of magnetism, assumes that form, and magnetic force becomes; so of light, and the various forms of matter. at length, in the revolution of the cycles, the universe attains that degree of preparation which fits it for living things to be, and the life force is organized; and by degrees all its various forms are brought forth. after another vast period that point is reached when an animal may be organized, which shall be the dwelling-place for a time of a being whose life is utterly different in kind from any animal life, and man appears. now in all these vast processes, be it observed that god is personally present, that the first energy was his, and that every subsequent energizing act is his special and personal act. he organized the duality, force. he then organized this force into heat-force, light-force, magnetic-force, matter-force, life-force, and soul-force. and so it is that his personal supervision and energy is actually present in every atom of the universe. when we turn from this process of thought to the sensible facts, and speak of granite, sandstone, schist, clay, herbage, animals, yes, of the thousand kinds of substance which appear to the eye, it is to be remembered that all these are but _forms to the sense_ of that "reason-conception," force,--that primal duality, which power acting upon itself becomes. now as the machine can never carve any other image than those for which it is specially constructed, and must work just as it is made to work, so the sense, which is purely mechanical, can never do any other than the work for which it was made, can never transcend the laws of its organization. it can only give forms--results, but is impotent to go behind them. it can only say _that things are_, but never say _what_ or _why_ they are. seen in the light of the theory which has thus been presented, mr. spencer's difficulties vanish. matter is force. motion is matter affected by another form of force. the "puzzle" of motion and rest is only phenomenal to the sense; it is an appearance of force acting through another force. it may also be said that the universe is solid force. there is no void in it. there is no nook, no crevice or cranny, that is not full of force. to seek, then, for some medium through which force may traverse vast distances, is the perfection of superfluity. from centre to circumference it is present, and controls all things, and is all things. so it is no more difficult to see how force reaches forth and holds worlds in their place, than how it draws down the pebble which a boy has thrown into the air. it is no substance which must travel over the distance, it is rather an inflexible rod which swings the worlds round in their orbits. whether, then, we look at calcined crags or lilies of the valley, whether astronomy, or geology, or chemistry be our study, the objects grouped under those sciences will be found to be equally the results of this one force, acting under different laws, and taking upon itself different forms, and becoming different objects. that faculty and that line of thought, which have given so readily the solution of the difficulties brought to view by mr. spencer's examination of the outer world, will afford us an easier solution, if possible, of the difficulties which he has raised respecting the inner world. that which is not of us, but is far from us, may perchance be imperfectly known; but ourselves, what we are, and the laws of our being, may be certainly and accurately known. and this is the highest knowledge. it may be important, as an element of culture, that we become acquainted with many facts respecting the outer world. it cannot but be of the utmost importance, that we know ourselves; for thus only can we fulfil the behest of that likeness to god, in which we were originally created. we seek for, we may obtain, we _have obtained_ knowledge in the inner world,--a knowledge sure, steadfast, immutable. it seems to be more than a mere verbal criticism, rather a fundamental one, that it is not "our states of consciousness" which "occur in succession"; but that the modifications in our consciousness so occur. consciousness is _one_, and retains that oneness throughout all modifications. these occur in the unity, as items of experience affect it. is this series of modifications "of consciousness infinite or finite"? to this question experience _can_ give no answer. all experiments are irrelevant; because these can only be after the faculty of consciousness is. they can go no further back than the _forms_ of the activity. these they may find, but they cannot account for. a law lies on all those powers by which an experiment may be made, which forever estops them from attaining to the substance of the power which lies back of the form. the eye cannot examine itself. the sense, as mental capacity for the reception of impressions, cannot analyze its constituents. the understanding, as connective faculty concluding in judgments, is impotent to discover why it must judge one way and not another. it is only when we ascend to the reason that we reach the region of true knowledge. here, overlooking, analyzing all the conduct of the lower powers, and holding the self right in the full blaze of the eye of self, man attains a true and fundamental _self-knowledge_. from this mount of vision we know that infinity and finiteness have no pertinence to modifications of consciousness, or in fact to any series. we attain to the further knowledge that this series is, _must be_, limited; because the constituted beings, in whom it in each case inheres, are limited, and had a beginning. it matters not now to inquire how a self-conscious person could be created. it is sufficient to know that one has been created. this fact involves the further fact that consciousness, as an actuality, began in the order of nature, after the being to whom it belongs as endowment, or, in other words, an organization must be, before the modifications which inhere in that organization can become. the attainment of this as necessary law is far more satisfactory than any experience could be, were it possible; for we can never know but that an experience may be modified; but a law given in the intuition is immutable. the fact, ascertained many pages back, that the subject and the object are identical under the final examination of the reason, enables us to attain the present end of the chain. the question is one of fact, and is purely psychological. it cannot be passed upon, or in any way interfered with, by logical processes. it is only by examination, by seeing, that the truth can be known. faraday ridiculed as preposterous the pretension that a vessel propelled by steam could cross the ocean, and demonstrated, to his entire satisfaction, the impossibility of the event. yet the savannah crossed, and laughed at him. just so here, all arguing is folly. the question is one of fact in experience. and upon it the soul gives undoubted answer, as we have stated. nor is it so difficult, as some would have us believe, to see how this may be. consciousness is an indivisible unity, and, as we have before seen, may best be defined as the light in which the person intuits his own acts and activities. this unity is abiding, and is ground for the modifications. it is, then, _now_, and the person now knows what the present modification _is_. the person does not need to look to memory and learn what the former modification was. it immediately knows what the modification _is_ now. thus a simple attainment of the psychological truth through a careful examination dispels as a morning mist the whole cloud of mr. spencer's difficulties. well might president hopkins say, "the only question is, what is it that consciousness gives? if we say that it does thus give both the subject and the object, that simple affirmation sweeps away in a moment the whole basis of the ideal and skeptical philosophy. it becomes as the spear of ithuriel, and its simple touch will change what seemed whole continents of solid speculation into mere banks of german fog." we have learned, then, that it is not possible, or necessary, either to "perceive" or "conceive" the terminations of consciousness, because this involves the discovery, by _mechanical_ faculties, of their own being and state before they became activities on the one hand, which is a contradiction, and on the other an utter transcending of the sphere of their capability, the attempt to do which would be a greater folly than would be that of the hand to see jupiter. but we have intuited the law, which declares the necessity of a beginning for us and all creatures; and we ever live in the light of the present end. when, then, mr. spencer says that "consciousness implies perpetual change and the perpetual establishment of relations between its successive phases," we know that he has uttered a fundamental psychological error, in fact, that almost the opposite is the truth. consciousness is the permanent, the abiding, the changeless. it is the light of the personal eye. into it all changes come; but they are only _incidental_. in the finite and partial person, they come, because such person _must grow_; and so, because of his partiality and incompleteness, they become necessary incidents; but let there be a person having all knowledge, who therefore cannot learn, having all perfection, who therefore cannot change, and it is plain that these facts in no way interfere with his consciousness. all variety is immanent in its light, and no change can come into it because _there is no change to come_; but this person sees _all_ his endowments _at once_, in the unity of this his light, just as we see _some_ of our endowments in the unity of this our light. the change is not in the consciousness, but in the objects which come into it. this view also disposes of the theory that "any mental affection must be known as like these foregoing ones or unlike those"; that, "if it is not thought of in connection with others--not distinguished or identified by comparison with others, it is not recognized--is not a state of consciousness at all." such comparison we have found only incidental in consciousness, pertaining to things in the sense and understanding and not essential. thus does a true psychology dissipate all these difficulties as a true cosmology explained the perplexities "of motion and rest." take another step and we can answer the question "what is this that thinks?" it is a spiritual person. what, then, is a spiritual person? a substance--a kind of force--the nature of which we need inquire about no further than to know that it is suitable to the use which is made of it, which is organized, according to a set of constituting laws, into such spiritual person. the substance without the laws would be simple substance, and nothing more. the laws without the substance would be only laws, and could give no being having no ground in which to inhere. but the substance as ground and the complete set of laws as inhering in the ground, and being its organization when combined, become a spiritual person who thinks. the _ego_, that is the sense of personality, is only one of the forms of activity of this being, and therefore cannot be said to think. the pages now before us are all vitiated by the theory that "successive impressions and ideas constitute consciousness." once attain to the true psychology of the person, and learn that consciousness is as stated above,--an abiding light into which modifications come,--and there arises no difficulty in believing in the reality of self, and in entirely justifying that belief by reason. yea, more, from such a standpoint it is utter unreason, the height of folly, to doubt for an instant, for immanent and central in the light of reason lies the solemn fact of man's selfhood. we arrive, then, directly at mr. spencer's conclusion, that "clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one--in which subject and object are identified," and we _know_ that such a state is an actuality. mr. mansel may hold that such an assertion is the annihilation of both, but he is wholly wrong. the savannah has crossed the atlantic. we attain, then, exactly the opposite result from mr. spencer. we have seen that "ultimate scientific ideas are all" presentative "of realities" which can "be comprehended." we have, indeed, found it to be true, that, "after no matter how great a progress in the colligation of facts and the establishment of generalizations ever wider and wider,--after the merging of limited and derivative truths in truths that are larger and deeper, has been carried no matter how far,--the fundamental truth remains as much beyond reach as ever." but having learned this, we do not arrive at the conclusion that "the explanation of that which is explicable does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains behind." on the other hand we know that such a conclusion is erroneous, and _that the method by which it is reached is a false method, and utterly irrelevant to the object sought_. could this lesson but be thoroughly learned, mr. spencer's work, and our work, would not have been in vain. only by a method differing from this in kind--a method in which there is no "colligation of facts," and no "generalizations" concluded therefrom, but a simple, direct insight into pure truth--can "the fundamental truth" be known; and thus it may be known by every human soul. "_god made man in his own image._" in our scheme there is ample room for the man of science, with the eye of sense, to run through the universe, and gather facts. with telescope and microscope, he may pursue them, and capture innumerable multitudes of them. but having done this, we count it folly to attempt to generalize truth therefrom. but holding up the facts in the clear light of reason, and searching them through and through, we _see_ in them the immutable principle, known by a spontaneous, immediate, intuitive knowledge to be immutable, and thus we "_know the truth_." "the relativity of all knowledge." in the opening of this chapter, mr. spencer states the result, which, in his opinion, philosophy has attained as follows: "all possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result; the only result arrived at being the negative one above stated--that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown." he then sets down a considerable list of names of philosophers, who are claimed by sir william hamilton as supporters of that position. such a parade of names may be grateful to the feelings of the limitists, but it is no support to their cause. the questions at issue are of such a nature that no array of dignities, of learning, of profound _opinions_, can have a feather's weight in the decision. for instance, take problem xlvii, of the first book of euclid. what weight have human opinion with reference to its validity? though a thousand mathematicians should deny its truth, it would be just as convincing as now; and when a thousand mathematicians assert its truth, they add no item to the vividness of the conviction. the school-boy, who never heard of one of them, when he first reads it, knows it must be so, and that this is an inevitable necessity, beyond the possibility of any power or will to change. on principles simple, fixed, and final, just like those of mathematics, seen by the same eye and known with the same intellectual certainty, and by logical processes just as pure, conclusive, _demonstrative_ as those of geometry, _and by such alone_, can the questions now before us be settled. but though names and opinions have no weight in the final decision, though a demonstration is demanded and must be given, still it is interesting to note the absence of two names, representatives of a class, which must ever awaken, among the devout and pure-hearted, attention and love, and whose teachings, however unnoticed by mr. spencer, are a leaven working in the minds and hearts of men, which develop with continually increasing distinctness the solemn and sublime truth, that the human mind is capable of absolute knowledge. plato, with serious, yea, sad countenance, the butt of jeer and scoff from the wits and comedians of his day, went about teaching those who hung upon his lips, that in every human soul were ideas which god had implanted, and which were final truth. and jesus christ, with a countenance more beautifully serious, more sweetly sad, said to those jews which believed on him, "if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; _and ye shall know the truth_, and the truth shall make you free." it may seem to men who grope about in the dismal cavern of the animal nature--the sense and understanding--wise to refuse the light, and reject the truths of the pure reason and the god-man, and to call the motley conglomeration of facts which they gather, but cannot explain, philosophy; but no soul which craves "the higher life" will, can be satisfied with such attainments. it yearns for, it cries after, yea, with ceaseless iteration it urges its supplication for the highest truth; and it shall attain to it, because god, in giving the tongue to cry, gave also the eye to see. the spiritual person in man, made in the very image of god, can never be satisfied till, stripped of the weight of the animal nature, it sees with its own eye the pure reason, god as the highest truth. and to bring it by culture, by every possible manifestation of his wondrous nature, up to this high mount of vision, is one object of god in his system of the universe. the teaching of the word--that august personage, "who came forth from god, and went to god," has been alluded to above. it deserves more than an allusion, more than any notice which can be given it here. it is astonishing, though perhaps not wholly unaccountable, that the writings of the apostles john and paul have received so little attention from the metaphysicians of the world, as declarations of metaphysical truths. even the most devout students of them do not seem to have appreciated their inestimable value in this regard. the reason for this undoubtedly is, that their transcendent importance as declarations of religious truth has shone with such dazzling effulgence upon the eyes of those who have loved them, that the lesser, but harmoniously combining beams of a true spiritual philosophy have been unnoticed in the glory of the nobler light. it will not, therefore, we trust, be deemed irreverent to say that, laying aside all questions of the divinity of christ, or of the inspiration of the bible, and considering the writings of john and paul merely as human productions, written at some time nobody knows when, and by some men nobody knows who, they are the most wonderful revelations, the profoundest metaphysical treatises the world has ever seen. in them the highest truths, those most difficult of attainment by processes of reflection, are stated in simple, clear language, and _they answer exactly to the teachings of the reason_. upon this, president hopkins says: "the identity which we found in the last lecture between the teaching of the constitution of man and the law of god, was not sought. the result was reached because the analysis would go there. i was myself surprised at the exactness of the coincidence." nor is this coincidence to be observed simply in the statement of the moral law. in all questions pertaining to man's nature and state, the two will be found in exact accord. no law is affirmed by either, but is accorded to by the other. in fine, whoever wrote the book must have had an accurate and exhaustive knowledge of man, about whom he wrote. without any reference then to their religious bearings, but simply as expositions of metaphysical truths, the writings of the two authors named deserve our most careful attention. what we seek for are laws, final, fixed laws, which are seen by a direct intuition to be such; and these writings are of great value, because they cultivate and assist the reason in its search for these highest truths. one need have no hesitation, then, in rejecting the authority of mr. spencer's names, aye, even if they were a thousand more. we seek for, and can obtain, that which he cannot give us--a demonstration; which he cannot give us because he denies the very existence of that faculty by which alone a demonstration is possible. as his empiricism is worthless, so is his rationality. no "deduction" from any "_product_ of thought, or process of thought," is in any way applicable to the question in hand. intuitions are the mental actions needed. light is neither product nor process. we pass over, then, his whole illustration of the partridge. it proves nothing. he leads us through an interminable series of questions to no goal; and says there is none. he gives the soul a stone, when it cries for bread. one sentence of his is doubtless true. "manifestly, as the _most_ general cognition at which we arrive cannot be reduced to a more general one, it cannot be understood." of course not. when the understanding has attained to the last generalization _by these very terms_, it cannot go any farther. but by no means does his conclusion follow, that "of necessity, therefore, explanation must eventually bring us down to the inexplicable. the deepest truth which we can get at must be unaccountable. comprehension must become something other than comprehension, before the ultimate fact can be comprehended." how shall we account for the last generalization, and show this conclusion to be false? thus. hitherto there have been, properly speaking, no comprehensions, only perceptions in the sense and connections in the understanding. "the sense _distinguishes_ quality and _conjoins_ quantity; the understanding _connects_ phenomena; the reason _comprehends_ the whole operation of both." the reason, then, overseeing the operations of the lower faculties, and possessing within itself the _a priori_ laws in accordance with which they are, _sees_ directly and immediately why they are, and thus comprehends and accounts for them. it sees that there is an end to every process of generalization; and it then sees, what the understanding could never guess, that _after_--in the order of our procedure--the last generalization there is an eternal truth, in accordance with which process and conclusion were and must be. there remains, then, no inexplicable, for the final truth is seen and known in its very self. the passages quoted at this point from hamilton and mansel have been heretofore examined, and need no further notice. we will pass on then to his subsequent reflections upon them. it is worthy of remark, as a general criticism upon these comments, that there is scarcely one, if there is a single expression in the remainder of this chapter, which does not refer to the animal nature and its functions. the illustrations are from the material world, and the terms and expressions are suited thereto. with reference to objects in the sense, and connections in the understanding, the "fundamental condition of thought," which mr. spencer supplies, is unquestionably valuable. there is "likeness" as well as "relation, plurality, and difference." but observe that both these laws alike are pertinent only to the sense and understanding, that they belong to _things in nature_, and consequently have no pertinence to the questions now before us. we are discussing _ideas_, not _things_; and those are simple, and can only be seen, while these are complex, and may be perceived, distinguished, and conceived. if any one shall doubt that mr. spencer is wholly occupied with things in nature, it would seem that after having read p. , he could doubt no longer. "animals," "species or genus," "mammals, birds, reptiles, or fishes," are objects by which he illustrates his subject. and one is forced to exclaim, "how can he speak of such things when they have nothing to do with the matter in hand? what have god and infinity and absoluteness to do with 'mammals, birds, reptiles, or fishes'? if we can know only these, why speak of those?" it would seem that the instant they are thus set together and contrasted, the soul must cry out with an irrepressible cry, "it is by an utterly different faculty, and in entirely other modes, that i dwell upon god and the questions concerning him. these modes of the animal nature, by which i know 'mammals,' are different in kind from those of the spiritual person, by which i know god and the eternal truth." and when this distinction becomes clearly appreciated and fixed in one's mind, and the query arises, how could a man so confound the two, and make utter confusion of the subject, as the limitists have done, he can hardly refrain from quoting romans i. _et seq._ against them. let us observe now mr. spencer's corollary. "a cognition of the real as distinguished from the phenomenal must, if it exists, conform to this law of cognition in general. the first cause, the infinite, the absolute, to be known at all, must be classed. to be positively thought of, it must be thought of as such or such--as of this or that kind." to begin with the law which is here asserted, is _not_ a "general" law, and so does not lie upon all cognition. it is only a special law, and lies only upon a particular kind of cognition. this has been already abundantly shown; yet we reproduce one line of proof. no mathematical law comes under his law of cognition; neither can he, nor any other limitist, make it appear that it does so come. his law is law only for things in nature, and not for principles. since then all ideas are known in themselves--are _self-evident_, and since god, infinity, and absoluteness are ideas, they are known in themselves, and need not be classed. so his corollary falls to the ground. can we have any "sensible experience" of god? most certainly not. yet we can have just as much a sensible experience of him as of any other person--of parent, wife, or child. did you ever see a person--a soul? no. can you see--"have sensible experience of"--a soul? no. what is it, then, that we have such experience of? plainly the body--that material frame through which the soul manifests itself. the universe is that material system through which god manifests himself to those spiritual persons whom he has made; and that manifestation is the same in kind as that of a created soul through the body which is given it. it follows then,--and not only from this, but it may be shown by further illustration,--that every other person is just as really inscrutable to us as god is; and further, that, if we can study and comprehend the soul of our wife or child, we can with equal certainty study, and to some extent comprehend, the soul of god. or, in other words, if man is only an animal nature, having a sense and understanding, all personality is an insoluble mystery; all spiritual persons are alike utterly inscrutable. and this is so, because, upon the hypothesis taken, man is destitute of any faculty which can catch a glimpse of such object. a sense and understanding can no more see, or in any possible manner take cognizance of, a spiritual person than a man born blind can see the sun. again, we say he is destitute of the faculty. will mr. spencer deny the fact of the idea of personality? will he assert that man has no such notion? let him once admit that he has, and in that admission is involved the admission of the reality of that faculty by which we know god, for the faculty which cognizes personality, and cognizes god, is one and the same. although we do not like certain of mr. spencer's terms, yet, to please him, we will use them. some conclusions, then, may be expressed thus: god as the deity cannot be "classed"; he is unique. this is involved in the very terms by which we designate him. yet we cognize him, but this is by an immediate intuition, in which we know him as he is in himself. "we shall see him as he is," says the apostle; and some foretastes of that transcendent revelation are vouchsafed us here on earth. but the infinite person, _as person_, must be "assimilated" with other persons. yet his infinity and absoluteness, _as such_, cannot be "grouped." and yet again, _as qualities_, they can be "grouped" with other qualities. unquestionably between the creator, _as such_, and the created, _as such_, "there must be a distinction transcending any of the distinctions existing between different divisions of the created." god as self-existent differs in kind from man as dependent, and this difference continues irrevocable; while that same god and that same man are _alike_ in kind _as persons_. this is true, because all spiritual persons are composite beings; and while the essential elements of a spiritual person are common to created persons and the uncreated person, there are _other_ characteristics, _not essential_ to personality, which belong some to the created, and some to the uncreated, and differentiate them. or, in other words, god as person, and man as person, are alike. yet they are diverse in kind, and so diverse in kind that it is out of the range of possibility for that diversity to be removed. how can this be explained? evidently thus. there are _qualities_ transfusing the personality which cannot be interchangeable, and which constitute the diversity. personality is _form_ of being. qualities transfuse the form. absoluteness and infinity are qualities which belong to one person, and are such that they thereby exclude the possibility of their belonging to any other person; and so they constitute that one to whom they belong, unique and supreme. dependence and partiality are also qualities of a spiritual person, but are qualities of the created spiritual person, and are such as must always subordinate that person to the other. in each instance it is, "_in the nature of things_," impossible for either to pass over and become the other. each is what he is by the terms of his being, and must stay so. but from all this it by no means follows that the dependent spiritual person can have no knowledge of the independent spiritual person. on the other hand, it is the high glory of the independent spiritual person, that he can create another being "in his own image," to whom he can communicate a knowledge of himself. "like as a father pitieth his children, so jehovah pitieth them that fear him." out of the fact of his father-hood and our childhood, comes that solemn, and, to the loving soul, joyful fact, that he teaches us the highest knowledge just as really as our earthly parents teach us earthly knowledge. this he could not do if we had not the capacity to receive the knowledge; and we could not have had the capacity, except he had been able, in "the nature of things," and willing to bestow it upon us. while, then, god as "the unconditioned cannot be classed," and so as unconditioned we do not know him "as of such or such kind," after the manner of the understanding, yet we may, do, "see him as he is," do know that he is, and is unconditioned, through the insight of the reason, the eye of the spiritual person, and what it is to be unconditioned. we now reach a passage which has filled us with unqualified amazement. as much as we had familiarized ourselves with the materialistic teachings of the limitists, we confess that we were utterly unprepared to meet, even in mr. spencer's writings, a theory of man so ineffably degrading, and uttered with so calm and naïve an unconsciousness of the degradation it involved, as the following. although for want of room his illustrations are omitted, it is believed that the following extracts give a fair and ample presentation of his doctrine. "all vital actions, considered not separately but in their ensemble, have for their final purpose the balancing of certain outer processes by certain inner processes. "there are unceasing external forces, tending to bring the matter of which organic bodies consist, into that state of stable equilibrium displayed by inorganic bodies; there are internal forces by which this tendency is constantly antagonized; and the perpetual changes which constitute life may be regarded as incidental to the maintenance of the antagonism.... "when we contemplate the lower kinds of life, we see that the correspondences thus maintained are direct and simple; as in a plant, the vitality of which mainly consists in osmotic and chemical actions responding to the coexistence of light, heat, water, and carbonic acid around it. but in animals, and especially in the higher orders of them, the correspondences become extremely complex. materials for growth and repair not being, like those which plants require, everywhere present, but being widely dispersed and under special forms, have to be formed, to be secured, and to be reduced to a fit state for assimilation.... "what is that process by which food when swallowed is reduced to a fit form for assimilation, but a set of mechanical and chemical actions responding to the mechanical and chemical actions which distinguish the food? whence it becomes manifest, that, while life in its simplest form is the correspondence of certain inner physico-chemical actions with certain outer physico-chemical actions, each advance to a higher form of life consists in a better preservation of this primary correspondence by the establishment of other correspondences. divesting this conception of all superfluities, and reducing it to its most abstract shape, we see that life is definable as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. and when we so define it, we discover that the physical and the psychial life are equally comprehended by the definition. we perceive that this, which we call intelligence, shows itself when the external relations to which the internal ones are adjusted begin to be numerous, complex, and remote in time and space; that every advance in intelligence essentially consists in the establishment of more varied, more complete, and more involved adjustments; and that even the highest achievements of science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally.... "and lastly let it be noted that what we call _truth_, guiding us to successful action and the consequent maintenance of life, is simply the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations; while _error_, leading to failure and therefore towards death, is the absence of such accurate correspondence. "if, then, life in all its manifestations, inclusive of intelligence in its highest forms, consists in the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations, the necessarily relative character of our knowledge becomes obvious. the simplest cognition being the establishment of some connection between subjective states, answering to some connection between objective agencies; and each successively more complex cognition being the establishment of some more involved connection of such states, answering to some more involved connection of such agencies; it is clear that the process, no matter how far it be carried, can never bring within the reach of intelligence either the states themselves or the agencies themselves." or, to condense mr. spencer's whole teaching into a few plain every-day words, man is an animal, and only an animal, differing nowhat from the dog and chimpanzee, except in the fact that his life "consists in the establishment of more varied, more complete, and more involved adjustments," than the life of said dog and chimpanzee. mark particularly the sententious diction of this newly arisen sage. forget not one syllable of the profound and most important knowledge he would impart. "life in all its manifestations, inclusive of intelligence in its highest forms, consists in the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." see, there is not a limit, not a qualification to the assertion! now turn back a page or two, reader, if thou hast this wonderful philosophy by thee, and gazing, as into a cage in a menagerie, see the being its author would teach thee that thou art. from the highest to the lowest forms, life is one. in its lower forms, life is a set of "direct and simple" "correspondences." "but in animals, _and especially in the higher orders of them_," and, of course, most especially in the human animal as the highest order, "the correspondences become extremely complex." as much as to say, reader, you are not exactly a plant, nor are you yet of quite so low a type as the chimpanzee aforesaid; but the difference is no serious matter. you do not differ half as much from the chimpanzee as the chimpanzee does from the forest he roves in. all the difference there is between you and him is, that the machinery by which "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations" is carried on, is more "complex" in you than in the chimpanzee. he roams the forest, inhabits some cave or hollow tree, and lives on the food which nature spontaneously offers to his hairy hand. you cut down the forest, construct a house, and live on the food which some degree of skill has prepared. he constructs no clothing, nor any covering to shield him from the inclemency of the weather, but is satisfied with tawny, shaggy covering, which nature has provided. you on the contrary are destitute of such a covering, and rob the sheep, and kill the silk-worm, to supply the lack. but in all this there is no _difference in kind_. the mechanism by which life is sustained in you is more "complex," it is true, than that by which life is sustained in him; there arise, therefore, larger needs, and the corresponding "intelligence" to supply those needs. but sweet thought, cheering thought, oh how it supports the soul! your life in its highest form is only this animal life,--is only the constructive force by which that "extremely complex" machinery carries on "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." all other notions of life are "superfluities." reader, in view of the teaching of this new and widely heralded sage, how many "superfluities" must you and i strip off from our "conception" of life! and with what bitter disappointment and deep sadness should we take up our lamentation for man, and say: how art thou fallen, oh man! thou noblest denizen of earth; yea, how art thou cast down to the ground. but a little ago we believed thee a spiritual being; that thou hadst a nature too noble to rot with the beasts among the clods; that thou wast made fit to live with angels and thy creator, god. but a little ago we believed thee possessed of a psychical life--a soul; that thou wouldst live forever beyond the stars; and that this soul's life was wholly occupied in the consideration of "heavenly and divine things." a little ago we believed in holiness, and that thou, consecrating thyself to pure and loving employments, shouldst become purer and more beautiful, nobler and more lovely, until perfect love should cast out all fear, and thou shouldst then see god face to face, and rejoice in the sunlight of his smiling countenance. but all this is changed now. our belief has been found to be a cheat, a bitter mockery to the soul. we have sat at the feet of the english sage, and learned how dismally different is our destiny. painful is it, oh reader, to listen; and the words of our teacher sweep like a sirocco over the heart; yet we cannot choose but hear. "the pyschical life"--the life of the soul, "the immortal spark of fire,"--and the physical life "are _equally_ definable as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." we had supposed that intelligence in its highest forms was wholly occupied with the contemplation of god and his laws, and the great end of being, and all those tremendous questions which we had thought fitted to occupy the activities of a spiritual person. we are undeceived now. we find we have shot towards the pole opposite to the truth. now "we perceive that this which we call intelligence shows itself when the external relations to which the internal ones are adjusted begin to be numerous, complex, and remote in time or space; that _every advance in intelligence essentially consists in the establishment of more varied, more complete, and more involved adjustments; and that even the highest achievements of science_ are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as _exactly to tally_ with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally." in such relations consists the life of the "caterpillar." in such relations, _only a little "more complex,"_ consists the life of "the sparrow." such relations only does "the fowler" observe; such only does "the chemist" know. this is the path by which we are led to the last, the highest "truth" which man can attain. thus do we learn "that what we call _truth_, guiding us to successful action, and the consequent maintenance of life, is _simply_ the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations; while error, leading to failure and therefore towards death, is the absence of such accurate correspondence." what a noble life, oh, reader, what an exalted destiny thine is here declared to be! the largest effort of thine intelligence, "the highest achievement of science," yea, the total object of the life of thy soul,--thy "psychial" life,--is to attain such exceeding skill in the construction of a shelter, in the fitting of apparel, in the preparation of food, in a word, in securing "the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations," and thus in attaining the "_truth_" which shall guide "us to successful action and the consequent maintenance of life," that we shall secure forever our animal existence on earth. study patiently thy lesson, oh human animal! con it o'er and o'er. who knows but thou mayest yet attain to this acme of the perfection of thy nature, though it be far below what thou hadst once fondly expected,--mayest attain a perfect knowledge of the "_truth_," and a perfect skill in the application of that truth, _i. e._ in "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"; and so be guided "to successful action, and the consequent maintenance of life," whereby thou shalt elude forever that merciless hunter who pursues thee,--the grim man-stalker, the skeleton death. but when bending all thy energies, yea, all the powers of thy soul, to this task, thou mayest recur at some unfortunate moment to the dreams and aspirations which have hitherto lain like golden sunlight on thy pathway. let no vain regret for what seemed thy nobler destiny ever sadden thy day, or deepen the darkness of thy night. true, thou didst deem thyself capable of something higher than "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"; didst often occupy thyself with contemplating those "things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard"; didst deem thyself a son of god, and "a joint-heir with jesus christ," "of things incorruptible and undefiled, and which fade not away, eternal in the heavens"; didst sometimes seem to see, with faith's triumphant gaze, those glorious scenes which thou wouldst traverse when in the spirit-land thou shouldst lead a pure spiritual life with other spirits, where all earthliness had been stripped off, all tears had been wiped away, and perfect holiness was thine through all eternity. but all these visions were only dreams; they wholly deluded thee. we have learned from the lips of this latest english sage that thy god is thy belly, and that thou must mind earthly things, so as to keep up "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." such being thy lot, and to fulfil such a lot being "the highest achievement of science," permit not thyself to be disturbed by those old-fashioned and sometimes troublesome notions that "_truth_" and those "achievements" pertained to a spiritual person in spiritual relations to god as the moral governor of the universe; that man was bound to know the truth and obey it; that his "errors" were violations of perfect law,--the truth he knew,--were _crimes_ against him who is "of too pure eyes to behold iniquity, and cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance"; that for these crimes there impended a just penalty--an appalling punishment; and that the only real "failure" was the failure to repent of and forsake the crimes, and thus escape the penalty. far other is the fact, as thou wilt learn from this wise man's book. as he teaches us, the only "error" we can make, is, to miss in maintaining perfectly "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations,"--is to eat too much roast beef and plum-pudding at dinner, or to wear too scanty or too thick clothing, or to expose one's self imprudently in a storm, or by some other carelessness which may produce "the absence of such accurate correspondence" as shall secure unending life, and so lead to his only "failure"--the advance "towards death." when, then, oh reader! by some unfortunate mischance, some "error" into which thine ignorance hath led thee, thou hast rendered thy "failure" inevitable, and art surely descending "towards death," hesitate not to sing with heedless hilarity the old epicurean song, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." sing and be gay the livelong day, thinking no whit of to-morrow. enjoy while you may all pleasure and play, for after death is no sorrow. thou hast committed thine only "error" in not maintaining "the accurate correspondence"; thou hast fallen upon thine only "failure," the inevitable advance "towards death." than death no greater evil can befall thee, and that is already sure. then let "dance and song," and "women and wine," bestow some snatches of pleasure upon thy fleeting days. delightful philosophy, is it not, reader? poor unfortunate man, and especially poor, befooled, cheated, hopeless christian man, who has these many years cherished those vain, deceitful dreams of which we spoke a little ago! to be brought down from such lofty aspirations; to be made to know that he is only an animal; that "life in all its manifestations, inclusive of intelligence in its highest forms, consists in the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." do you not join with me in pitying him? and such is the philosophy which is heralded to us from over the sea as the newly found and wonderful truth, which is to satisfy the hungering soul of man and still its persistent cry for bread. and this is the teacher, mocking that painful cry with such chaff, whom newspaper after newspaper, and periodical after periodical on this side the water, even to those we love best and cherish most, have pronounced one of the profoundest essayists of the day. perhaps he can give us some sage remarks upon "laughter," as it is observed in the human animal, and on that point compare therewith other animals. but, speaking in all sincerity after the manner of the book of common prayer, we can but say, "from all such philosophers and philosophies, good lord deliver us." few, perhaps none of our readers, will desire to see a denial in terms of such a theory. when a man, aspiring to be a philosopher, advances the doctrine that not only is "life in its simplest form"--the animal life--"the correspondence of certain inner physico-chemical actions with certain outer physico-chemical actions," but that "_each advance to a higher form of life_ consists in a better preservation of this primary correspondence"; and when, proceeding further, and to be explicit, he asserts that not only "the physical," _but also "the psychical life_ are _equally_" but "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"; and when, still further to insult man, and to utter his insult in the most positive, extreme, and unmistakable terms, he asserts "that even the highest achievements of science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally,"--that is, that the highest science is the attainment of a perfect cuisine; in a word, when a human being in this nineteenth century offers to his fellows as the loftiest attainment of philosophy the tenet that the highest form of life cognizable by man is an animal life, and that man can have no other knowledge of himself than as an animal, of a little higher grade, it is true, than other animals, but not different in kind, then the healthy soul, when such a doctrine is presented to it, will reject it as instantaneously as a healthy stomach rejects a roll of tobacco. with what a sense of relief does one turn from a system of philosophy which, when stripped of its garb of well-chosen words and large sounding, plausible phrases, appears in such vile shape and hideous proportions, to the teachings of that pure and noble instructor of our youth, that man who, by his gentle, benignant mien, so beautifully illustrates the spirit and life of the apostle john,--rev. mark hopkins, d. d., president of williams college. no one who has read his "lectures on moral science," and no lover of truth should fail to do so, will desire an apology for inserting the following extract, wherein is presented a theory upon which the soul of man can rest, as at home the soldier rests, who has just been released from the libby or salisbury charnel-house. "and here, again, we have three great forces with their products. these are the vegetable, the animal, and the rational life. "of these, vegetable life is the lowest. its products are as strictly conditional for animal life as chemical affinity is for vegetable, for the animal is nourished by nothing that has not been previously elaborated by the vegetable. 'the profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is served by the field.' "again, we have the animal and sensitive life, capable of enjoyment and suffering, and having the instincts necessary to its preservation. _this_, as man is now constituted, _is conditional for his rational life_. the rational has its roots in that, and manifests itself only through the organization which that builds up. "_we have, then, finally and highest of all, this rational and moral life, by which man is made in the image of god._ in man, as thus constituted, we first find a being who is capable of choosing his own end, or, rather, of choosing or rejecting the end indicated by his whole nature. this is moral freedom, _and in this is the precise point of transition from all that is below to that which is highest_. for everything below man the end is necessitated. whatever choice there may be in the agency of animals of means for the attainment of their end,--and they have one somewhat wide,--they have none in respect to the end itself. this, for our purpose, and for all purposes, is the characteristic distinction, so long sought, between man and the brute. man determines his own end; the end of the brute is necessitated. up to man everything is driven to its end by a force working from without or from behind; but for him the pillar of cloud and of fire puts itself in front, and he follows it or not, as he chooses. "in the above cases it will be seen that the process is one of the addition of new forces, with a constant limitation of the field within which the forces act.... it is to be noticed, however, that while the field of each added and superior force is narrowed, yet nothing is dropped. each lower force shoots through, and combines itself with all that is higher. because he is rational, man is not the less subject to gravitation and cohesion and chemical affinity. he has also the organic life that belongs to the animal. in him none of these are dropped; _but the rational life is united with and superinduced upon all these_, so that man is not only a microcosm, but is the natural head and ruler of the world. he partakes of all that is below him, _and becomes man by the addition of something higher_.... here, then, is our model and law. have we a lower sensitive and animal nature? let that nature be cherished and expanded by all its innocent and legitimate enjoyments, for it is an end. but--and here we find the limit--let it be cherished _only as subservient to the higher intellectual life_, for it is also a means." the italics are ours. satisfactory, true, and self-sustained as is this theory,--and it is one which like a granite gothic spire lifts itself high and calm into the atmosphere, standing firm and immovable in its own clear and self-evident truth, unshaken by a thousand assaulting materialistic storms,--we would buttress it with the utterances of other of the earth's noble ones; and this we do not because it is in any degree needful, but because our mind loves to linger round the theme, and to gather the concurrent thought of various rarely endowed minds upon this subject. exactly in point is the following--one of many passages which might be selected from the works of that profoundest of english metaphysicians and theologians, s. t. coleridge:-- "and here let me observe that the difficulty and delicacy of this investigation are greatly increased by our not considering the understanding (even our own) in itself, and as it would be were it not accompanied with and modified by the coöperation of the will, the moral feeling, and that faculty, perhaps best distinguished by the name of reason, of determining that which is universal and necessary, of fixing laws and principles whether speculative or practical, and of contemplating a final purpose or end. this intelligent will--having a self-conscious purpose, under the guidance and light of the reason, by which its acts are made to bear as a whole upon some end in and for itself, and to which the understanding is subservient as an organ or the faculty of selecting and appropriating the means--seems best to account for that progressiveness of the human race, _which so evidently marks an insurmountable distinction and impassable barrier between man and the inferior animals, but which would be inexplicable, were there no other difference than in the degree of their intellectual faculties_."--_works_, vol. i. p. . the italics are ours. the attention of the reader may with profit be also directed to the words of another metaphysician, who has been much longer known, and has enjoyed a wider fame than either of those just mentioned; and whose teachings, however little weight they may seem to have with mr. spencer, have been these many years, and still are received and studied with profound respect and loving carefulness by multitudes of persons. we refer to the apostle paul, "there is, therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in christ jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." that is, who do not walk after the law of the animal nature, but who do walk after the law of the spiritual person, for it is of this great psychological distinction that the apostle so fully and continually speaks. "for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. for the minding of the flesh is death, but the minding of the spirit is life and peace; because the minding of the flesh as enmity against god, for it is not subject to the law of god, neither indeed can be." _romans_ viii. , , , . this i say, then, "walk in the spirit and fulfil not the lust of the flesh. for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other."--_galatians_ v. , . upon these passages it should be remarked, by way of explanation, that our translators in writing the word spirit with a capital, and thus intimating that it is the holy spirit of god which is meant, have led their readers astray. the apostle's repeated use of that term, in contrasting the flesh with the spirit, appears decisive of the fact that he is contrasting, in all such passages, the animal nature with the spiritual person. but if any one is startled by this position and thinks to reject it, let him bear in mind that the law of the spiritual person in man and of the holy spirit of god is _identical_. the reader will hardly desire from us what his own mind will have already accomplished--the construction in our own terms, and the contrasting of the system above embodied with that presented by mr. spencer. the human being, man, is a twofold being, "flesh" and "spirit," an animal nature and a spiritual person. in the animal nature are the sense and the understanding. in the spiritual person are the reason, the spiritual sensibilities, and the will. the animal nature is common to man and the brutes. the spiritual person is common to man and god. it is manifest, then, that there is "an insurmountable distinction and impassable barrier" not only "between man and the inferior animals," but between man as spiritual person, and man as animal nature, and that this is a greater distinction than any other in the universe, except that which exists between the creator and the created. what relation, then, do these so widely diverse natures bear to each other? evidently that which president hopkins has assigned. "because he is rational, man is not the less subject to gravitation and cohesion and chemical affinity. he has also the organic life that belongs to the plant, and the sensitive and instinctive life that belongs to the animal." thus far his life "is the correspondence of certain inner physico-chemical actions with certain outer physico-chemical actions,"--undoubtedly "consists in the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"; and being the highest order of animal, his life "consists in the establishment of more varied, more complete, and more involved adjustments" than that of any other animal. what, then, is this life for? "this, as man is now constituted, is _conditional for his rational life_." "the rational life is united with and _superinduced upon all these_." as god made man, and in the natural order, the "flesh," the animal life, is wholly subordinate to the "spirit," the spiritual life. and the spirit, or spiritual person of which paul writes so much,--does this also, this "intelligence in its highest form," consist "in the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations"? are the words of the apostle a cheat, a lie, when he says, "for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the spirit"--_i. e._ by living with the help of the holy spirit, in accordance with the law of the spiritual person--"do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live?" and are mr. spencer's words, in which he teaches exactly the opposite doctrine, true? wherein he says: "and lastly let it be noted that what we call truth," &c., (see _ante_, p. ,) wherein he teaches that "if ye live after the flesh," if you are guided by "_truth_," if you are able perfectly to maintain "the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations," "ye shall not surely die," you will attain to what is _successful action_, the preservation of "life," of "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," of the animal life, and thus your bodies will live forever--the highest good for man; but if you "mortify the deeds of the body," if you pay little heed to "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," you will meet with "_error_, leading to failure and therefore towards death,"--the death of the body, the highest evil which can befall man,--and so "ye shall" not "live." proceeding in the direction already taken, we find that in his normal condition the spiritual person would not be chiefly, much less exclusively, occupied with attending to "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," but would only regard these in so far as is necessary to preserve the body as the ground through which, in accordance with the present dispensation of god's providence, that person may exert himself and employ his energies upon those objects which belong to his peculiar sphere, even the laws and duties of spiritual beings. the person would indeed employ his superior faculties to assist the lower nature in the preservation of its animal life, but this only as a means. god has ordained that through this means that person shall develop and manifest himself; yet the life, continuance in being, of the soul, is in no way dependent on this means. strip away the whole animal nature, take from man his body, his sense and understanding, leave him--as he would then be--with no possible medium of communication with the universe, and he, the i am, the spiritual person, would remain intact, as active as ever. he would have lost none of his capacity to see laws and appreciate their force; he would feel the _bindingness_ of obligation just as before; and finally, he would be just as able as in the earlier state to make a choice of an ultimate end, though he would be unable to make a single motion towards putting that choice into effect. the spiritual person, then, being such that he has in himself no element of decomposition, has no need, for the preservation of his own existence, to be continually occupied with efforts to maintain "the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations." yet activity is his law, and, moreover, an activity having objects which accord with this his indestructible nature. with what then will such a being naturally occupy himself? there is for him no danger of decay. he possesses within himself the laws and ideals of his action. as such, and created, he is near of kin to that august being in whoso image he was created. his laws are the created person's laws. the end of the creator should be that also of the created. but god is infinite, while the soul starts a babe, an undeveloped germ, and must begin to learn at the alphabet of knowledge. what nobler, what more sublime and satisfactory occupation could this being, endowed with the faculties of a god, find, than to employ all his power in the contemplation of the eternal laws of the universe, _i. e._ to the acquisition of an intimate acquaintance with himself and god; and to bend all his energies to the realization by his own efforts of that part in the universe which god had assigned him, _i. e._, to accord his will entirely with god's will. this course of life, a spiritual person standing in his normal relation to an animal nature, would pursue as spontaneously as if it were the law of his being. but this which we have portrayed is not the course which human beings do pursue. by no means. one great evil, at least, that "the fall" brought upon the race of man, is, that human beings are born into the world with the spiritual person all submerged by the animal nature; or, to use paul's figure, the spirit is enslaved by the flesh; and such is the extent of this that many, perhaps most, men are born and grow up and die, and never know that they have any souls; and finally there arise, as there have arisen through all the ages, just such philosophers as sir william hamilton and mr. spencer, who in substance deny that men are spiritual persons at all, who say that the highest knowledge is a generalization in the understanding, a form of a knowledge common to man and the brutes, and that "the highest achievements of science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally." it is this evil, organic in man, that paul portrays so vividly; and it is against men who teach such doctrines that he thunders his maledictions. we have spoken above of the spiritual person as diverse from, superior to, and superinduced upon, the animal nature. this is his _position_ in the logical order. we have also spoken of him as submerged under the animal nature, as enslaved to the flesh. by such figures do we strive to express the awfully degraded _condition_ in which every human being is born into the world. and mark, this is simply a natural degradation. let us then, as philosophers, carry our examination one step farther and ask: in this state of things what would be the fitting occupation of the spiritual person. is it that "continuous adjustment"? he turns from it with loathing. already he has served the "flesh" a long and grievous bondage. manifestly, then, he should struggle with all his might to regain his normal condition to become naturally good as well as morally good,--he should fill his soul with thoughts of god, and then he should make every rational exertion to induce others to follow in his footsteps. we attain, then, a far different result from mr. spencer. "the highest achievements of science" for us, our "truth," guiding us "to successful action," is that pure _a priori_ truth, the eternal law of god which is written in us, and given to us for our guidance to what is truly "successful action,"--the accordance of our wills with the will of god. what we now reach, and what yet remains to be considered of this chapter, is that passage in which mr. spencer enounces, as he believes, a new principle of philosophy, a principle which will symmetrize and complete the hamiltonian system, and thus establish it as the true and final science for mankind. since we do not view this principle in the same light with mr. spencer, and especially since it is our intention to turn it upon what he has heretofore written, and demolish that with it, there might arise a feeling in many minds that the whole passage should be quoted, that there might be no doubt as to his meaning. this we should willingly do, did our space permit. yet it seems not in the least necessary. that part of the passage which contains the gist of the subject, followed by a candid epitome of his arguments and illustrations, would appear to be ample for a fair and sufficiently full presentation of his theory, and for a basis upon which we might safely build our criticism. these then will be given. "there still remains the final question--what must we say concerning that which transcends knowledge? are we to rest wholly in the consciousness of phenomena? is the result of inquiry to exclude utterly from our minds everything but the relative; or must we also believe in something beyond the relative? "the answer of pure logic is held to be, that by the limits of our intelligence we are rigorously confined within the relative; and that anything transcending the relative can be thought of only as a pure negation, or as a non-existence. 'the _absolute_ is conceived merely by a negation of conceivability,' writes sir william hamilton. 'the _absolute_ and the _infinite_,' says mr. mansel, 'are thus, like the _inconceivable_ and the _imperceptible_, names indicating, not an object of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere absence of the conditions under which consciousness is possible.' from each of which extracts may be deduced the conclusion, that, since reason cannot warrant us in affirming the positive existence of what is cognizable only as a negation, we cannot rationally affirm the positive existence of anything beyond phenomena. "unavoidable as this conclusion seems, it involves, i think, a grave error. if the premiss be granted, the inference must doubtless be admitted; but the premiss, in the form presented by sir william hamilton and mr. mansel, is not strictly true. though, in the foregoing pages, the arguments used by these writers to show that the absolute is unknowable, have been approvingly quoted; and though these arguments have been enforced by others equally thoroughgoing, yet there remains to be stated a qualification, which saves us from that scepticism otherwise necessitated. it is not to be denied that so long as we confine ourselves to the purely logical aspect of the question, the propositions quoted above must be accepted in their entirety; but when we contemplate its more general, or psychological aspect, we find that these propositions are imperfect statements of the truth; omitting, or rather excluding, as they do, an all-important fact. to speak specifically:--besides that _definite_ consciousness of which logic formulates the laws, there is also an _indefinite_ consciousness which cannot be formulated. besides complete thoughts, and besides the thoughts which, though incomplete, admit of completion, there are thoughts which it is impossible to complete, and yet which are still real, in the sense that they are normal affections of the intellect. "observe in the first place, that every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated, distinctly postulates the positive existence of something beyond the relative. to say that we cannot know the absolute, is, by implication, to affirm that there _is_ an absolute. in the very denial of our power to learn _what_ the absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption _that_ it is; and the making of this assumption proves that the absolute has been present to the mind, not as a nothing but as a something. similarly with every step in the reasoning by which this doctrine is upheld. the noumenon, everywhere named as the antithesis of the phenomenon, is throughout necessarily thought of as an actuality. it is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of which they are appearances; for appearance without reality is unthinkable." after carrying on this train of argument a little further, he reaches this just and decisive result. "clearly, then, the very demonstration that a _definite_ consciousness of the absolute is impossible to us, unavoidably presupposes an indefinite consciousness of it." carrying the argument further, he says: "perhaps the best way of showing that, by the necessary conditions of thought, we are obliged to form a positive though vague consciousness of this which transcends distinct consciousness, is to analyze our conception of the antithesis between relative and absolute." he follows the presentation of certain "antinomies of thought" with an extract from sir william hamilton's words, in which the logician enounces his doctrine that in "correlatives" "the positive alone is real, the negative is only an abstraction of the other"; or, in other words, the one gives a substance of some kind in the mind, the other gives simply nothingness, void, absolute negation. criticizing this, mr. spencer is unquestionably right in saying: "now the assertion that of such contradictories 'the negative is _only_ an abstraction of the other'--'is _nothing else_ than its negation'--is not true. in such correlatives as equal and unequal, it is obvious enough that the negative concept contains something besides the negation of the positive one; for the things of which equality is denied are not abolished from consciousness by the denial. and the fact overlooked by sir william hamilton is, that the like holds, even with those correlatives of which the negative is inconceivable, in the strict sense of the word." proceeding with his argument, he establishes, by ample illustration, the fact that a "something constitutes our consciousness of the non-relative or absolute." he afterwards shows plainly by quotations, "that both sir william hamilton and mr. mansel do," in certain places, "distinctly imply that our consciousness of the absolute, indefinite though it is, is positive not negative." further on he argues thus: "though philosophy condemns successively each attempted conception of the absolute; though it proves to us that the absolute is not this, nor that, nor that; though in obedience to it we negative, one after another, each idea as it arises; yet as we cannot expel the entire contents of consciousness, there ever remains behind an element which passes into new shapes. the continual negation of each particular form and limit simply results in the more or less complete abstraction of all forms and limits, and so ends in an indefinite consciousness of the unformed and unlimited." thus he brings us to "the ultimate difficulty--how can there possibly be constituted a consciousness of the unformed and unlimited, when, by its very nature, consciousness is possible only under forms and limits?" this he accounts for by by hypostatizing a "raw material" in consciousness which is, must be, present. he presents his conclusion as follows: "by its very nature, therefore, this ultimate mental element is at once necessarily indefinite and necessarily indestructible. our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought, to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence." ... "to sum up this somewhat too elaborate argument:--we have seen how, in the very assertion that all our knowledge, properly so called, is relative, there is involved the assertion that there exists a non-relative. we have seen how, in each step of the argument by which this doctrine is established, the same assumption is made. we have seen how, from the very necessity of thinking in relations, it follows that the relative itself is inconceivable, except as related to a real non-relative. we have seen that, unless a real non-relative or absolute be postulated, the relative itself becomes absolute, and so brings the argument to a contradiction. and on contemplating the process of thought, we have equally seen how impossible it is to get rid of the consciousness of an actuality lying behind appearances; and how, from this impossibility, results our indestructible belief in that actuality." the approval which has been accorded to certain of the arguments adduced by mr. spencer in favor of his especial point, that the absolute is a positive somewhat in consciousness, and to that point as established, must not be supposed to apply also to that hypothesis of "indefinite consciousness" by which he attempts to reconcile this position with his former teachings. on the contrary, it will be our purpose hereafter to show that this hypothesis is a complete fallacy. as against the positions taken by sir william hamilton and mr. mansel, mr. spencer's argument may unquestionably be deemed decisive. admitting the logical accuracy of their reasoning, he very justly turns from the logical to the psychological aspect of the subject, takes exception to their premiss, shows conclusively that it is fallacious, and gives an approximate, though unfortunately a very partial and defective presentation of the truth. indeed, the main issue which must now be made with him is whether the position he has here taken, and which he puts forth as that peculiar element in his philosophical system, that new truth, which shall harmonize hamiltonian limitism with the facts of human nature, is not, when carried to its logical results, in diametrical and irreconcilable antagonism to that whole system, and all that he has before written, and so does not annihilate them. it will be our present endeavor to show that such is the result. perhaps we cannot better examine mr. spencer's theory than, first, to take up what we believe to be the element of truth in it, and carry out this to its logical results; and afterwards to present what seem to be the elements of error, and show them to be such. . "we are obliged to form a positive though vague consciousness of" "the absolute." without criticizing his use here of consciousness as if it were a faculty of knowledge, and remembering that we cannot have a consciousness of anything without having a knowledge commensurate with that consciousness, we will see that mr. spencer's assertion is tantamount to saying, we have a positive knowledge that the absolute is. it does not seem that he himself can disallow this. grant this, and our whole system follows, as does also the fallacy of his own. our argument will proceed thus. logic is the science of the pure laws of thought, and is mathematically accurate, and is absolute. being such, it is law for all intellect, for god as well as man. but three positions can be taken. either it is true for the deity, or else it is false for him, or else it has no reference to him. in the last instance god is chaos; in the second he and man are in organic contradiction, and he created man so; the first is the one now advocated. the second and third hypotheses refute themselves in the statement of them. nothing remains but the position taken that the laws of logic lie equally on god and man. one of those laws is, that, if any assertion is true, all that is logically involved in it is true; in other words, all truth is in absolute and perfect harmony. this is fundamental to the possibility of logic. now apply this law to the psychological premiss of mr. spencer, that we have a positive knowledge that the absolute is. a better form of expression would be, the absolute being is. it follows then that he is in a _mode_, has a _formal_ being. but three hypotheses are possible. he is in no mode, he is in one mode; he is in all modes. if he is in no mode, there is no form, no order, no law for his being; which is to say, he is chaos. chaos is not god, for chaos cannot organize an orderly being, and men are orderly beings, and were created. if he is in all modes, he is in a state of utter contradiction. god "is all in every part." he is then all infinite, and all finite. infinity and finiteness are contradictory and mutually exclusive qualities. god is wholly possessed of contradictory and mutually exclusive qualities, which is more than unthinkable--it is absurd. he is, must be, then, in one mode. let us pause here for a moment and observe that we have clearly established, from mr. spencer's own premiss, the fact that god _is limited_. he must be in one mode to the exclusion of all other modes. he is limited then by the necessity to be what he is; and if he could become what he is not, he would not have been absolute. since he is absolute, he is, to the exclusion of the possibility of any other independent being. other beings are, and must therefore be, dependent on and subordinate to him. since he is superior to all other beings he must be in the highest possible mode of being. personality is the highest possible mode of being. this will appear from the following considerations. a person, possesses the reason and law of his action, and the capacity to act, within himself, and is thus a _final cause_. no higher form of being than this can be needed, and so by the law of parsimony a hypothesis of any other must be excluded. god is then a person. we have now brought the argument to that point where its connection with the system advocated in this treatise is manifest. if the links are well wrought, and the chain complete, not only is this system firmly grounded upon mr. spencer's premiss, but, as was intimated on an early page, he has in this his special point given partial utterance to what, once established, involves the fallacy not only of all he has written before, but as well of the whole limitist philosophy. it remains now to remark upon the errors in his form of expressing the truth. . mr. spencer's error is twofold. he treats of consciousness as a faculty of knowledge. he speaks of a "vague," an "indefinite consciousness." let us examine these in their order. _a._ he treats of consciousness as a faculty of knowledge. in this he uses the term in the inexact, careless, popular manner, rather than with due precision. as has been observed on a former page, consciousness is the light in which the person sees his faculties act. thus some feeling is affected. this feeling is cognized by the intellectual faculty, and of this the person is conscious. hence it is an elliptical expression to say "i am conscious of the feeling." the full form being "i am conscious that i know the feeling." thus is it with all man's activities. applying this to the case in hand, it appears, not that we are conscious of the absolute, but that we are conscious that the proper intellectual faculty, the pure reason, presents what absoluteness is, and that the absolute person is, and through this presentation--intuition--the spiritual person knows these facts. we repeat, then, our position: consciousness is the indivisible unity, the light in which the person sees all his faculties and capacities act; and so is to be considered as different in kind from them all as the peculiar and unique endowment of a spiritual person. _b._ mr. spencer speaks of a "vague," an "indefinite consciousness." the expression "vague consciousness" being a popular and very common one, deserves a careful examination, and this we hope to give it, keeping in mind meantime the position already attained. the phrase is used in some such connection as this, "i have a vague or undefined consciousness of impending evil." let us analyze this experience. in doing so it will be observed that the consciousness, or rather the seeing by the person in the light of consciousness, is positive, clear, and definite, and is the apprehension of a feeling. again, the feeling is positive and distinct; it is a feeling of dread, of threatening danger. what, then, is vague--is undefined? this. that cause which produces the feeling lies without the reach of the cognitive faculties, and of course cannot be known; because what produces the feeling is unknown, the intellectual apprehension experiences a sense of vagueness; and this it instinctively carries over and applies to the feeling. yet really the sense of vagueness arises from an ignorance of the cause of the feeling. strictly speaking, then, it is not consciousness that is vague; and so mr. spencer's "_indefinite_ consciousness, which cannot be formulated," has no foundation in fact. but this may be shown by another line of thought. consciousness is commensurate with knowledge, _i. e._, man can have no knowledge except he is conscious of that knowledge; neither can he have any consciousness except he knows that the consciousness is, and what the consciousness is, _i. e._, what he is conscious of. now all knowledge is definite; it is only ignorance that is indefinite. when we say that our knowledge of an object is indefinite, we mean that we partly know its characteristics, and are partly ignorant of them. thus then also the result above stated follows; and what mr. spencer calls "_indefinite_ consciousness" is a "_definite_ consciousness" that we partly know, and are partly ignorant of the object under consideration. in the last paragraph but one, of the chapter now under consideration, mr. spencer makes a most extraordinary assertion respecting consciousness, which, when examined in the light of the positions we have advocated, affords another decisive evidence of the fallacy of his theory. we quote it again, that the reader may not miss of giving it full attention. "by its very nature, therefore, this ultimate mental element is at once necessarily indefinite and necessarily indestructible. our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally _the unconditioned consciousness_, or _raw material of thought_, to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence." upon reading this passage, the question spontaneously arises, what does the writer mean? and it is a question which is not so easily answered. more than one interpretation may be assigned, as will appear upon examination. a problem is given. to find what the "raw material of thought" is. since man has thoughts, there must be in him the "raw material of thought"--the crude thought-ore which he smelts down in the blast-furnace of the understanding, giving forth in its stead the refined metal--exact thought. we must then proceed to attain our answer by analyzing man's natural organization. since man is a complex, constituted being, there is necessarily a logical order to the parts which are combined in the complexity. he may be considered as a substance in which a constitution inheres, _i. e._, which is organized according to a _set_ of fixed laws, and that set of laws may be stated in their logical order. it is sufficient, however, for our purpose to consider him as an organized substance, the organization being such that he is a person--a selfhood, _self-active_ and capable of self-examination. the raw material of _all_ the activities of such a person is this organized substance. take away the substance, and there remains only the set of laws as _abstract_ ideas. again, take away the set of laws, and the substance is simple, unorganized substance. in the combining of the two the person becomes. these, then, are all there is of the person, and therefore in these must the raw material be. from this position it follows directly that any capacity or faculty, or, in general, every activity of the person, is the substance acting in accordance with the law which determines that form of the activity. to explain the term, form of activity. there is a _set_ of laws. each law, by itself, is a simple law, and is incapable of organizing a substance into a being. but when these laws are considered, as they naturally stand in the divine reason, in relation to each other, it is seen that this, their standing together, constitutes ideals, or forms of being and activity. to illustrate from an earthly object. the law of gravitation alone could not organize a universe; neither could the law of cohesion, nor of centripetal, nor centrifugal force, nor any other one law. all these laws must be acting together,--or rather all these laws must stand together in perfect harmony, according to their own nature, thus constituting an ideal form, in accordance with which god may create this universe. for an illustration of our topic in its highest form, the reader is referred to those pages of dr. hickok's "rational psychology," where he analyzes personality into its elements of spontaneity, autonomy, and liberty. from that examination it is sufficiently evident that either of these alone cannot organize a person, but that all three must be present in order to constitute such a being. there are, then, various forms of activity in the person, as reason, sensibility, and will, in each of which the organized substance acts in a mode or form, and this form is determined by the set of organizing laws. consciousness also is such a form. the "raw material of thought," then, must be this substance considered under the peculiar form of activity which we call consciousness, but _before the substance thus formulated has been awakened into activity by those circumstances which are naturally suited to it, for bringing it into action_. now, by the very terms of the statement it is evident that the substance thus organized in this form, or, to use the common term, consciousness considered apart from and prior to its activity, can never be known _by experience_, i. e., _we can never be conscious of an unconscious state_. "unconditioned consciousness" is consciousness considered as quiescent because in it have been awakened no "definite forms"--no "thinking." "in the nature of things," then, it is impossible to be conscious of an "unconditioned consciousness." yet mr. spencer says that "our consciousness of the unconditioned," which he has already asserted and proved, is a "positive," and therefore an active state; is identical with, is "literally the unconditioned consciousness," or consciousness in its quiescent state, considered before it had been awakened into activity, which is far more absurd than what was just above shown to be a contradiction. to escape such a result, a less objectionable interpretation may be given to the dictum in hand. it may be said that it looks upon consciousness only as an activity, and in the logical order after its action has begun. we are, then, conscious, and in this is positive action, but no definite object is present which gives a form in consciousness, and so consciousness _returns upon itself_. we are conscious that we are conscious, which is an awkward way of saying that we are self-conscious, or, more concisely yet, that we are conscious; for accurately this is all, and this is the same as to say that the subject and object are identical in this act. the conclusion from this hypothesis is one which we judge mr. spencer will be very loath to accept, and yet it seems logically to follow. indeed, in a sentence we are about to quote, he seems to make a most marked distinction between self-consciousness and this "consciousness of the unconditioned," which he calls its "obverse." but whatever mr. spencer's notion of the "raw material of thought" is, what more especially claims our attention and is most strange, is his application of that notion. to present this more clearly, we will quote further from the passage already under examination. "as we can in successive mental acts get rid of all particular conditions, and replace them by others, but cannot get rid of that undifferentiated substance of consciousness, which is conditioned anew in every thought, there ever remains with us a sense of that which exists persistently and independently of conditions. at the same time that by the laws of thought we are rigorously prevented from forming a conception of absolute existence, we are by the laws of thought equally prevented from ridding ourselves of the consciousness of absolute existence: this consciousness being, as we here see, the obverse of our self-consciousness." now, by comparing this extract with the other, which it immediately follows, it seems plain that mr. spencer uses as synonymous the phrases "consciousness of the unconditioned," "unconditioned consciousness," "raw material of thought," "undifferentiated substance of consciousness," and "consciousness of absolute existence." let us note, now, certain conclusions, which seem to follow from this use of language. we are conscious "of absolute existence." no person can be conscious except he is conscious of some state or condition of his being. absolute existence is, therefore, a state or condition of our being. also this "consciousness of absolute existence"--as it seems _our_ absolute existence--is the "raw material of thought." but, again, as was shown above, this "raw material," this "undifferentiated substance of consciousness," if it is anything, is consciousness considered as capacity, and in the logical order before it becomes, or is, active; and it further appeared that of this quiescent state we could have no knowledge by experience. but since the above phrases are synonymous, it follows that "consciousness of absolute existence" is the "undifferentiated substance of consciousness," is a consciousness of which we can have no knowledge by experience, is a consciousness of which we can have no consciousness. is this philosophy? it would be but fair to suppose that there is some fact which mr. spencer has endeavored to express in the language we are criticizing. there is such a fact, a statement of which will complete this criticism. unquestionably, in self-examination, a man may abstract all "successive mental acts," may consider himself as he is, in the logical order before he _has experiences_. in this he will find "that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence"; or, in other words, that it is an organic law of our being that there cannot be an experience without a being to entertain the experience; and hence that it is impossible for a man to think or act, except on the assumption that he is. but all this has nothing to do with a "consciousness of the unconditioned," or of "absolute existence"; for our existence is not absolute, and it is _our_ existence of which we are conscious. the reality and abidingness of _our_ existence is ground for _our_ experience, nothing more. even if it were possible for us to have a consciousness of our state before any experience, or to actually now abstract all experience, and be conscious of our consciousness unmodified by any object, _i. e._ to be conscious of unconsciousness, this would not be a "consciousness of absolute existence." we could find no more in it, and deduce no more from it, than that our existence was involved in our experience. such a consciousness would indeed appear "unconditioned" by the coming into it of any activity, which would give a form in it; but this would give us no notion of true unconditionedness--true "absolute existence." this consciousness, though undisturbed by any experience, would yet be conditioned, would have been created, and be dependent upon god for continuance in existence, and for a chance to come into circumstances, where it could be modified by experiences, and so could grow. while, then, mr. spencer's theory gives us the fact of the notion of the necessity of our existence to our experience, it in no way accounts for the fact of our consciousness of the unconditioned, be that what it may. but to return from this considerable digression to the result which was attained a few pages back, viz: that what mr. spencer calls "_indefinite_ consciousness" is a "_definite_ consciousness" that we partly know, and are partly ignorant of the object under consideration. let this conclusion be applied to the topic which immediately concerns us,--the character of god. but three suppositions are possible. either we know nothing of god, not even that he is; or we have a partial knowledge of him, we know that he is, and all which we can logically deduce from this; or we know him exhaustively. the latter, no one pretends, and therefore it needs no notice. the first, even if our own arguments are not deemed satisfactory, has been thoroughly refuted by mr. spencer, and so is to be set aside. only the second remains. respecting this, his position is that we know that god is and no more. admit this for a moment. we are conscious then of a positive, certain, inalienable knowledge that god is; but that with reference to any and all questions which may arise concerning him we are in total ignorance. here, again, it is apparent that it is not our consciousness or knowledge that is vague; it is our ignorance. we might suggest the question--of what use can it be to man to know that god is, and be utterly and necessarily, yea, organically ignorant of what he is? let the reader answer the question to his own mind. it is required to show how the theory advocated in this book will appear in the light of the second hypothesis above stated. man knows that god is, and what god is so far as he can logically deduce it from this premiss; but, in so far as god is such, that he cannot be thus known, except wherein he makes a direct revelation to us, he must be forever inscrutable. to illustrate. if the fact that god is, be admitted, it logically follows that he must be self-existent. self-existence is a positive idea in the reason, and so here is a second element of knowledge respecting the deity. thus we may go on through all that it is possible to deduce, and the system thus wrought will be the science of natural theology, a science as pure and sure as pure equations. its results will be what god must be. looking into the universe we will find what must be corresponding with what is, and our knowledge will be complete. again, in many regards god may be utterly inscrutable to us, since he may possess characteristics which we cannot attain by logical deductions. for instance, let it be granted that the doctrine of the trinity is true--that there are three persons in one godhead. this would be a fact which man could never attain, could never make the faintest guess at. he might, unaided, attain to the belief that god would forgive; he might, with the profound and sad-eyed man of greece, become convinced that some god must come from heaven to lead men to the truth; but the notion of the trinity could never come to him, except god himself with carefulness revealed it. respecting those matters of which we cannot know except by revelation, this only can be demanded; and this by inherent endowment man has a right to demand; viz: that what is revealed shall not contradict the law already "written in the heart." yet, once more, there are certain characteristics of god that must forever be utterly inscrutable to every created being, and this, because such is their nature and relation to the deity, that one cannot be endowed with a faculty capable of attaining the knowledge in question. such for instance are the questions, how is god self-existent, how could he be eternal, how exercise his power, and the like? these are questions respecting which no possible reason can arise why we should know them, except the gratification of curiosity, which in reality is no reason at all, and therefore the inability in question is no detriment to man. by the discussion which may now be brought to a close, two positions seem to be established. . that we have, as mr. spencer affirms, a positive consciousness that the absolute being is, and that this and all which we can logically deduce from this are objects of knowledge to us; in other words, that the system advocated in this volume directly follows from that premiss. . that any doctrine of "indefinite consciousness" is erroneous, that the vagueness is not in consciousness, but in our knowledge; and further, that the hypothesis of a consciousness of the "raw material of thought" is absurd. "the reconciliation." it would naturally seem, that, after what is believed to be the thorough refutation of the limitist scheme, which has been given in the preceding comments on mr. spencer's three philosophical chapters, the one named in our heading would need scarce more than a notice. but so far is this from being the case, that some of the worst features in the results of his system stand out in clearest relief here. before proceeding to consider these, let us note a most important admission. he speaks of his conclusion as bringing "the results of speculation into harmony with those of common sense," and then makes the, for him, extraordinary statement, "common sense asserts the existence of reality." in these two remarks it would appear to be implied that common sense is a final standard with which any position most be reconciled. the question instantly arises, what is common sense? the writer has never seen a definition, and would submit for the reader's consideration the following. common sense _is the practical pure reason_; it is that faculty by which the spiritual person sees in the light of consciousness the _a priori_ law as inherent in the fact presented by the sense. for the sake of completeness its complement may be defined thus: judgment is the practical understanding; it is that faculty by which the spiritual person selects such means as he thinks so conformed to that law thus intuited, as to be best suited to accomplish the object in view. a man has good common sense, who quickly sees the informing law in the fact; and good judgment, who skilfully selects and adapts his means to the circumstances of the case, and the end sought. of course it will not be understood that it is herein implied that every person who exercises this faculty has a defined and systematic knowledge of it. the reader will readily see the results which directly follow from mr. spencer's premiss. it is true that "common sense asserts the existence of a reality," and this assertion is true; but with equal truth does it assert the law of logic; that, if a premiss is true, _all that is logically involved in it is true_. it appears, then, that mr. spencer has unwittingly acknowledged the fundamental principle of what may be called the coleridgian system, the psychological fact of the pure reason, and thus again has furnished a basis for the demolition of his own. it was said above that some of the evil results of mr. spencer's system assumed in this chapter their worst phases. this remark is illustrated in the following extract: "we are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon; phenomena being, so far as we can ascertain, unlimited in their diffusion, we are obliged to regard this power as omnipresent; and criticism teaches us that this power is wholly incomprehensible. in this consciousness of an incomprehensible omnipresent power we have just that consciousness on which religion dwells. and so we arrive at the point where religion and science coalesce." the evils referred to may be developed as follows: "we are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon." this may be expressed in another form thus: every phenomenon is a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon. some doubt may arise respecting the precise meaning of this sentence, unless the exact signification of the term phenomenon be ascertained. it might be confined to material appearances, appreciable by one of the five senses. but the context seems to leave no doubt but that mr. spencer uses it in the wider sense of every somewhat in the universe, since he speaks of "phenomena" as "unlimited." putting the definition for the term, the sentence stands: every somewhat in the universe is "a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon." it follows, then, that there is no somewhat in the universe, except we are acted upon by it. our being arises to be accounted for. either we began to be, and were created, or the ground of our being is in ourselves, our being is pure independence, and nothing further is to be asked. this latter will be rejected. then we were created. but we were not created by mr. spencer's "some power," because it only _acts upon us_. in his creation, man was not acted upon, because there was no man to be acted upon; but in that act a being was originated _who might be acted upon_. then, however, we came into being, another than "some power" was the cause of us. but the act of creating man was a somewhat. every somewhat _in_ the universe is "a manifestation of some power." this is not such a manifestation. therefore the creation of man took place outside the universe. or does mr. spencer prefer to say that the creation of man is "a manifestation of some power acting upon" him! the position above taken seems the more favorable one for mr. spencer. if, to avoid the difficulties which spring from it, he limits the term phenomenon, as for instance to material appearances, then his assertion that phenomena are unlimited is a contradiction, and he has no ground on which to establish the omnipresence of his power. but another line of criticism may be pursued. strictly speaking, all events are phenomena. let there be named an event which is universally known and acknowledged, and which, in the nature of the case, cannot be "a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon," and in that statement also will the errors of the passage under consideration be established. the experience by the human soul of a sense of guilt, of a consciousness of ill-desert, is such an event. no "power" can make a sinless soul feel guilty; no "power" _can relieve a sinful soul from feeling guilty_. the feeling of guilt does not arise from the defiance of power, _it arises from the violation of law_. and not only may this experience be named, but every other experience of the moral nature of man. in this connection let it be observed that mr. spencer always elsewhere uses the term phenomenon to represent material phenomena in the material universe. throughout all his pages the reader is challenged to find a single instance in which he attempts to account for any other phenomena than these and their concomitants, the affections of the intellect in the animal nature. indeed, so thoroughly is his philosophy vitiated by this omission, that one could never learn from anything he has said in these pages, that man had a moral nature at all, that there were any phenomena of sin and repentance which needed to be accounted for. in this, sir william hamilton and mr. mansel are just as bad as he. yet in this the limitists have done well; it is impossible, on the basis of their system, to render such an account. to test the matter, the following problem is presented. to account, on the basis of the limitist philosophy, for the fact that the nations of men have universally made public acknowledgment of their guilt, in having violated the law of a superior being; and that they have offered propitiatory sacrifices therefor, except in the case of those persons and nations who have received the bible, or have learned through the koran one of its leading features, that there is but one god, and who in either case believe that the needful sacrifice has already been made. another pernicious result of the system under examination is, that it affords no better ground for the doctrine of deity's omnipresence than _experience_. mr. spencer's words are: "phenomena being, _so far as we can ascertain_, unlimited in their diffusion, we are obliged to regard this power as omnipresent." now, if he, or one of his friends, should happen to get wings some day, and should just take a turn through space, and should happen also to find a limit to phenomena, and, skirting in astonishment along that boundary, should happen to light upon an open place and a bridge, which invited them to pass across to another sphere or system of phenomena, made by another "power,"--said bridge being constructed "'alf and 'alf" by the two aforesaid powers,--then there would be nothing to do but for the said explorer to fly back again to england, as fast as ever he could, and relate to all the other limitists his new experience; and they, having no ground on which to argue against or above experience, must needs receive the declaration of their colaborator, with its inevitable conclusion, that the power by which we are here acted upon is limited, and so is not omnipresent. but when, instead of such a fallacious philosophy, men shall receive the doctrine, based not upon human experience, but upon god's inborn ideas that phenomena are limited and god is omnipresent, and that upon these facts experience can afford no decision, we shall begin to eliminate the real difficulties of philosophy, and to approach the attainment of the unison between human philosophy and the divine philosophy. attached to the above is the conclusion reached by mr. spencer in an earlier part of his work, that "criticism teaches us that this power is wholly incomprehensible." we might, it is believed, ask with pertinence, what better, then, is man than the brute? but the subject is recurred to at this time, only to quote against this position a sentence from a somewhat older book than "first principles," a book which, did it deserve no other regard than as a human production, would seem, from its perfect agreement with the facts of human nature, to be the true basis for all philosophy. the sentence is this: "beloved, let us love one another, for love is of god; and every one that loveth, is born of god, _and_ knoweth god." but the gross materialism of mr. spencer's philosophy presents its worst phase in his completed doctrine of god. mark. a "phenomenon" is "a manifestation of some power." "in this consciousness of an incomprehensible omnipresent power we have just that consciousness on which religion dwells. and so we arrive at the point where religion and science coalesce." an "incomprehensible omnipresent power" is all the deity mr. spencer allows to mankind. this power is omnipresent, so that we can never escape it; and incomprehensible, so that we can never know the law of its action, or even if it have a law. at any moment it may fall on us and crush us. at any moment this globe may become one vast vesuvius, and all its cities herculaneums and pompeiis. of such a deity the children of men may either live in continual dread, or in continual disregard; they may either spend their lives clad in sackcloth, or purple and fine linen; bread and water may be their fare, or their table may be spread like that of dives; by merciless mortification of the flesh, by scourges and iron chains, they may seek to propitiate, if possible, this incomprehensible, omnipresent power; or, reckless of consequences, they may laugh and dance and be gay, saying, we know nothing of this power, he may crush us any moment, let us take the good of life while we can. the symbols of such a deity are the "rough and ragged rocks," the hills, the snow-crowned mountains titan-piled; the avalanche starting with ominous thunder, to rush with crash and roar and terrible destruction upon the hapless village beneath it; the flood gathering its waters from vast ranges of hills into a single valley, spreading into great lakes, drowning cattle, carrying off houses and their agonized inhabitants, sweeping away dams, rending bridges from their foundations, in fine, ruthlessly destroying the little gatherings of man, and leaving the country, over which its devastating waters flowed, a mournful desolation; and finally, perhaps the completest symbol of all may be found in that collection of the united streams and lakes of tens upon tens of thousands of miles of the earth's surface, into the aorta of the world, over the rough, rocky bed of which the crowded waters rush and roar, with rage and foam, until they come suddenly to the swift tremendous plunge of niagara. it should be further noticed, that this philosophy is in direct antagonism with that of the bible,--that, if spencerianism is true, the bible is a falsehood and cheat. instead of mr. spencer's "power," the bible presents us a doctrine of god as follows: "and god said unto moses, i am that i am. and he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of israel, i am hath sent me unto you."--_exodus_ iv. . this declaration, the most highly metaphysical of any but one man ever heard, all the limitists, even devout mr. mansel, either in distinct terms, or by implication, deny. that other declaration is this: "beloved, let us love one another: for love is of god; and every one that loveth is born of god, and knoweth god. he that loveth not, knoweth not god; _for god is love_."-- _john_ iv. , . direct as is the antagonism between the two philosophies now presented, the later one appears in an especially bad light from the fact, that, being very recent and supported by a mere handful of men, its advocates have utterly neglected to take any notice of the other and elder one, although the adherents of this may be numbered by millions, and among them have been and are many of the ablest of earth's thinkers. true, the great majority of bible readers do not study it as a philosophical treatise, but rather as a book of religious and spiritual instruction; yet, since it is the most profoundly philosophical book which has ever been in the hands of man, and professedly teaches us not only the philosophy of man, but also the philosophy of god, it certainly would seem that the advocates of the new and innovating system should have taken up that one which it sought to supplant, and have made an attempt, commensurate with the magnitude of the work before them, to show its position to be fallacious and unworthy of regard. instead of this they have nowhere recognized the existence even of this philosophy except in the single instance of a quotation by mr. mansel, in which he seems tacitly to acknowledge the antagonism we have noted. in mr. spencer's volume this neglect is especially noteworthy. judging from internal evidence, one would much sooner conclude that it was written by a hindu pundit, in a temple of buddha, than by an englishman, in a land of bibles and christian churches. now, although the bible may stand in his estimation no higher than the bahgavat-gita, yet the mere fact that it is, and that it presents a most profound philosophy, which is so largely received in his own and neighboring nations, made it imperative upon him not only to take some notice of it, but to meet and answer it, as we have indicated above. another fault in mr. spencer's philosophy, one which he will be less willing to admit, perhaps, than the above, and, at the same time, one which will be more likely forcibly to move a certain class of mind, is, that it is in direct antagonism to human nature. not only is the bible a falsehood and a cheat, if mr. spencer's philosophical system is true, but human nature is equally a falsehood and a cheat. to specify. human nature universally considers god, or its gods, as persons; or, in other words, all human beings, or at least with very rare exceptions, spontaneously ascribe personality to deity. this position is in no wise negatived by the fact of the buddhist priesthood of india, or of a class of philosophical atheists in any other country. man is endowed with the power of self-education; and if an individual sees, in the religion in which he is brought up, some inconsistency, which he, thinking it, as it may be, integral, for philosophical reasons rejects, and all religion with it, he may educate himself into speculative atheism. but no child is an atheist. not even shelley became such, until he had dashed against some of the distorted and monstrous _human_ theologies of his day. but counting all the buddhists, and all the german atheists, and all the english atheists, and all the american atheists, and all other atheists wherever they may be found, they will not number one tenth of the human race. on what ground can the unanimity of the other nine tenths be accounted for? there appears none possible, but that the notion that god is a person, _is organic in human nature_. another equally universal and spontaneous utterance of mankind is, that there is a likeness, in some way, between god and man. there are the grossest, and in many instances most degrading modes of representing this; but under them all, and through them all, the indelible notion appears. the unanimity and pertinacity of this notion, appearing in every part of the globe, and under every variety of circumstance, and reappearing after every revolution, which, tearing down old customs and worships, established new ones, can without doubt only be accounted for on the precise ground of the other,--that the notion _is organic in man_. a third utterance of the human race, standing in the same category with these two, is, that the deity can be propitiated by sacrifice. this also has had revolting, yea most hideous and unrighteous forms of expression, even to human sacrifices. but the notion has remained indestructible through all ages, and must therefore be accounted for, as have been the others. over against the i am, which human nature presents and the bible supports; over against him in whose image man and the bible say man was created; and over against him who, those two still agreeing witnesses also affirm, is moved by his great heart of love to have mercy on those creatures who come to him with repentance, mr. spencer gives us, as the result of _science_, an incomprehensible omnipresent _power_; only a power, nothing more; and that "utterly inscrutable." for our part, whatever others may do, we will believe in human nature and the bible. on the truthfulness of these two witnesses, as on the central rock in the universe, we plant ourselves. here do we find our gibraltar. mr. spencer further says that on the consciousness of this power "religion dwells." now, so far is this assertion from according with the fact, that on his hypothesis it is impossible to account for the presence of religion as a constitutive element of the human race. religion was primarily worship, the reverential acknowledgment, by the sinless creature, of the authority of the creator, combined with the adoration of his absolute holiness; but since sin has marred the race, it has been coupled with the offering in some forms of a propitiatory sacrifice. but if the deity is only power; or equally, if this is all the notion we can form of him, we are utterly at a loss to find aught in him to worship, much less can we account for the fact of the religious nature in us, and most of all are we confounded by the persistent assertion, by this religions nature, of the personality and mercy of god, for power can be neither personal nor merciful. mr. spencer proceeds to strengthen as well as he can his position by stating that "from age to age science has continually defeated it (religion) wherever they have come into collision, and has obliged it to relinquish one or more of its positions." in this assertion, also, he manifests either a want of acquaintance with the facts or a failure to comprehend their significance. religion may properly be divided into two classes. . those religions which have appeared to grow up spontaneously among men, having all the errors and deformities which a fleshly imagination would produce. . the religion of jesus christ. . from the three great ideas mentioned above, no science has ever driven even the religions of this class. it has, indeed, corrected many _forms of expression_, and has sometimes driven _individuals_, who failed to distinguish between the form, and the idea which the form overlies, into a rejection of the truth itself. . respecting the religion of jesus christ, mr. spencer's remark has no shadow of foundation. since the beginning of its promulgation by jehovah, and especially since the completion of that promulgation by our saviour and his apostles, not one whit of its practical law or its philosophy has been abated; nay, more, to-day, in these american states, there may be found a more widespread, thoroughly believed, firmly held, and intelligent conviction of god's personality, and personal supervision of the affairs of men, of his fatherhood, and of that fatherhood exercised in bringing "order out of confusion," in so conducting the most terrible of conflicts, that it shall manifestly redound, not only to the glory of himself, but to the very best good of man, so manifestly to so great a good, that all the loss of life, and all the suffering, is felt to be not worthy to be compared to the good achieved, and that too _most strongly by the sufferers_, than was ever before manifested by any nation under heaven. the truth is, that, in spite of all its efforts to the contrary, criticism has ever been utterly impotent to eliminate from human thinking the elements we have presented. its utmost triumph has been to force a change in the form of expression; and in the bible it meets with forms of expression which it ever has been, is now, and ever shall be, as helpless to change as a paralytic would be to overturn the himalaya. the discussion of the topic immediately in hand may perhaps be now properly closed with the simple allusion to a single fact. just as far as a race of human beings descends in the gradations of degradation, just so far does it come to look upon deity simply as power. african fetishism is the doctrine that deity is an incomprehensible power, rendered into the form of a popular religion; only the religion stands one step higher than the philosophy, in that it assumes a sort of personality for the power. on page the following extract will be found: "and now observe that all along, the agent which has effected the purification has been science. we habitually overlook the fact that this has been one of its functions. religion ignores its immense debt to science; and science is scarcely at all conscious how much religion owes it. yet it is demonstrable that every step by which religion has progressed from its first low conception to the comparatively high one it has now reached, science has helped it, or rather forced it to take; and that even now, science is urging further steps in the same direction." in this passage half truths are so sweepingly asserted as universal that it becomes simply untrue. the evil may be stand under two heads. . it is too philosophical. mr. spencer undertakes to be altogether too profound. since he has observed that certain changes for the better have been made in some human religions, by the study of the natural sciences, he jumps to the conclusion that religion has been under a state of steady growth; and of course readily assumes--for there is not a shadow of other basis for his assertion--that the "first" "conception" of religion was very "low." this assumption we utterly deny, and demand of mr. spencer his proof. for ourselves we are willing to come down from the impregnable fortresses of the bible upon the common ground of the grecian mythology, and on this do battle against him. in this we are taught that the golden age came _first_, in which was a life of spotless purity; after which were the silver and brazen ages, and the iron age in which was crime, and the "low conception" of religion came _last_. how marked is the general agreement of this with the bible account! . but more and worse may be charged on this passage than that it is too philosophical. mr. spencer constructs his philosophy first and cuts his facts to match it. this is a common mistake among men, and which they are unconscious of. now the fact is, science was _not_ "the agent which effected the purification." religion owes a very small debt to science. science can never be more than a supplement, "a handmaid" to religion. religion's first position was not a low one, but nearly the highest. afterwards it sunk very low; but men sunk it there. science never "helped it" or "forced it" one atom upwards. science alone only degrades religion and gives new wings and hands to crime. this will be especially manifest to those who remember what mr. spencer's doctrine of science is. he says: "that even the _highest_ achievements of science are resolvable into mental relations of coexistence and sequence, so coördinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of coexistence and sequence that occur externally." of course the highest _object_ of science will be "_truth_"; and this, our teacher tells us, "is simply the accurate correspondence of subjective to objective relations." to interpret. a science of medicine, a science of ablutions, a science of clothing, a science of ventilation, a science of temperature, and to some largely, to many chiefly, a science of _cookery_ do, combined, constitute science, and the preservation of the body is its highest attainment. is this science "the agent which has effected the purification of religion?" what then is the truth? "lo this have i found, that god hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."--_eccl._ vii. . the first religion was a communion with god. the creator taught man, as a father would his children. but when man sinned, he began to seek out many inventions, and sank to that awful state of degradation hinted at in the fragmentary sketches of the popular manners and customs of the times of abraham,--_gen._ xii. xxv.; which paul epitomizes with such fiery vigor in the first chapter of romans, and which may be found fully paralleled in our own day. at the proper time, god took mankind in hand, and began to develop his great plan for giving purity to religion. so he raised up moses, and gave to israel the levitical law. or if mr. spencer shall deny the biblical account of the origin of the five books of moses, he at least cannot deny that they have a being; and, placing them on the same ground of examination and criticism as herodotus, that they were written more than a thousand years before the christian era. now mark. whoever wrote them, they remained as they were first framed, and no one of the prophets, who came after, added one new idea. they only emphasized and amplified "the law." so far then as this part of religion was concerned, science never helped a particle. yea, more, the words to moses in the wilderness were never paralleled in the utterances of man before the christian era. "in the fulness of time god sent his own son." however defective was the former dispensation, he, who appeared to most of the men of his day as only a carpenter's son, declared to mankind the final and perfect truth. as the system taught by moses was not the result of any philosophical developments, but was incomparably superior to the religion of the most civilized people of the world, at whose court moses was brought up, and was manifestly constructed _de novo_, and from some kind of revelation, so this, which the carpenter's son taught, was incomparably superior to any utterance which the human soul had up to that time, or has since, made. it comes forth at once complete and pure. it utters the highest principles in the simplest language. indeed, nothing new was left to say when john finished his writing; and the canon might well be closed. and since that day, has religion advanced? not a syllable. the purest water is drank at the old fountain. but it will be said that the cause of religion among men has advanced. very true, but science did not advance it. you can yet count the years on your fingers since men of science generally ceased to be strenuously hostile to religion. religion, in every instance, has advanced just where it has gone back, and drank at the old fountains. who, then, has purified religion? god is "the agent which has effected the purification." god is he to whom religion owes "its immense debt," not science. he it is who has brought her up to her present high position. when, now, we see how completely mr. spencer--to use a commonplace but very forcible phrase--has "ruled god out of the ring," how impertinent seems his rebuke, administered a few pages further on, in the passage beginning, "volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious," to those who believe that god means what he says, and that men may know him. these men at least stand on a far higher plane than he who teaches that an "incomprehensible omnipresent power" is all there is for us to worship, and his words will sound to them like the crackling of thorns under a pot. there does not appear in this chapter any further topic that has not already been touched upon. with these remarks, then, the examination of this chapter, and of mr. spencer's first principles, may be closed. conclusion. if it has ever been the reader's lot to examine paley's "evidences of christianity," or the "sermons of president dwight on the existence of god"; and if he has risen from their perusal with a feeling of utter unsatisfaction, enduring the same craving for a sure truth harassing as before, he will have partly shared the experience which drove the author forward, until he arrived at the foundation principles of this treatise. those works, and all of that class are, for the object they have in view, worthless; not because the various statements they make are untrue, not because elegant language and beauty of style are wanting; but because they are radically defective in that, their _method_ is irrelevant to the subject in hand; because in all the arguments that have been or can be brought forward there is nothing decisive and final; because the skeptic can thrust the sharp sword of his criticism through every one of them; because, in fine, the very root of the matter, their method itself is false, and men have attempted to establish by a series of arguments what must be ground for the possibility of an argument, and can only be established by the opposite, the _a priori_ method. though the limitist philosophy has no positive value, it has this negative one, that it has established, by the most thorough-going criticism, the worthlessness of the _a posteriori_ processes of thought on the matter in hand. yea, more, the existence of _any_ spiritual person cannot be proved in that way. you can prove that the boy's body climbs the tree; but never that he has a soul. this is always taken for granted. lest the author should appear singular in this view, he would call the attention of the reader to a passage in coleridge's writings in which he at once sets forth the beauty of the style and incompetency of the logic of dr. paley's book. "i have, i am aware, in this present work, furnished occasion for a charge of having expressed myself with slight and irreverence of celebrated names, especially of the late dr. paley. o, if i were fond and ambitious of literary honor, of public applause, how well content should i be to excite but one third of the admiration which, in my inmost being, i feel for the head and heart of paley! and how gladly would i surrender all hope of contemporary praise, could i even approach to the incomparable grace, propriety, and persuasive facility of his writings! but on this very account, i feel myself bound in conscience _to throw the whole force of my intellect in the way of this triumphal car_, on which the tutelary genius of modern idolatry is borne, even at the risk of being crushed under the wheels." instead of the method now condemned, there is one taught us in the book, and the only one taught us there, which is open to every human being, for which every human being has the faculty, and respecting which all that is needed is, that the person exercise what he already has. the boy could not learn his arithmetic, except he set himself resolutely to his task; and no man can learn of god, except he also fulfils the conditions, except he consecrate himself wholly to the acquisition of this knowledge, except his soul is poured out in love to god; "for every one that _loveth, is born of god, and knoweth god_." we come then to the knowledge of god by a direct and immediate act of the soul. the reason, the sensibility, and the will, give forth their combined and highest action in the attainment of this knowledge. as an intellectual achievement, this is the highest possible to the reason. she attains then, to the ultima thule of all effort, and of this she is fully conscious. nor is there awakened any feverish complaining that there are no more worlds to conquer. in the contemplation of the ineffable goodness she finds her everlasting occupation, and her eternal rest. plainly, then, both reason and revelation teach but a single, and that the _a priori_ method, by which to establish for man the fact of the being of god. let us buttress this conclusion with other lines of thought. reader, now that it is suggested to you, does it not seem in the highest degree improbable, that the most important truths which can pertain to man, truths which do not concern primarily the affairs of this life, but of his most exalted life, the life of the spiritual person as the companion of its creator, should be based upon an inferior, less satisfactory, and less adequate foundation of knowledge, than those of our childhood's studies, of the arithmetic and the algebra? the boy who cons the first pages of his arithmetical text-book, soon learns what he knows to be _self-evident_ truths. he who should offer to _prove_ the truth of the multiplication-table, would only expose himself to ridicule. when the boy has attained to youth, and advanced in his studies, the pages of the algebra and geometry are laid before him, and he finds new and higher orders of self-evident truths. would any evidence, any argument, strengthen his conviction of the validity of the axioms? yea, rather, if one should begin to offer arguments, would he not instinctively and rightfully feel that the confession was thereby tacitly made, that self-evidence was not satisfactory; and would he not, finding his spontaneous impulse, and his education, so contradictory, be _liable_ to fall into complete skepticism? if now there be this spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal conviction respecting matters of subordinate importance, can it be possible,--i repeat the question, for it seems to carry with it irresistibly its own and the decisive answer,--can it be possible that the decisions of questions of the highest moment, that the knowledge of the principles of our moral being and of the moral government to which we are amenable, and most of all of the governor who is at once creator, lawgiver, and judge, is not based on at least equally spontaneous, yea, abiding, yea, unalterable, yea, universal convictions? and when the teacher seemingly, and may it not with truth be said _actually_, distrusting the reliability of such a conviction, goes about to bolster up his belief, and the belief of his pupil, in the existence of god, and thereto rakes together, with painstaking labor, many sticks and straws of evidence, instead of looking up to the truth which shines directly down upon him with steady ineffable effulgence, is it at all strange that the sharper-eyed pupil, keenly appreciating the contradiction between his spontaneous conviction and his teaching, should become uncertain which to follow, a doubter, and finally a confirmed skeptic? if, then, it is incredible that the fundamental principles of man's moral nature--that to which all the other elements of his being are subordinate, and for which they were created--are established on inferior grounds, and those less satisfactory than the grounds of other principles; and if, on the other hand, the conviction is irresistible, that they are established on the highest grounds, and since the truths of mathematics are also based on the highest ground, self-evidence, and since there can be none higher than the highest, it follows that the moral principles of the universe, so far as they can be known by man, have _precisely the same foundation of truthfulness as the principles of mathematics--they are_ self-evident. but some good reader will check at the result now attained because it involves the position that the human reason is the final standard of truth for man. good reader, this position is involved, and is true; and for the sake of christ's religion it must be taken. the only possible ground for a thoroughly satisfactory and thoroughly unanswerable christian philosophy, is the principle that _the human reason is the final standard of truth for man_. it has been customary for the devout bible-reader to esteem that book as his final standard; and to such an extent in many instances has his reverential regard for it been carried, that the expression will hardly be too strong for truth, that it has become an object of worship; and upon the mind of such a one the above assertion will produce a shock. while the author would treat with respect every religious feeling, he would still remind such a person that the bible is the moral school-book of the spiritual person in man, which god himself prepared for man's use, and must in every case be inferior and subordinate to the being whom it was meant to educate; and furthermore, that, by the very fact of making man, god established in him the standard, and the right to require that this fact be recognized. mark, god made the standard and thus established the right. this principle may be supported by the following considerations: . the church universally has acted upon it; and none have employed it more vigorously than those who have in terms most bitterly opposed it. one of the class just referred to affirms that the bible is the standard of truth. "admit," says a friend standing by, "that it would be if it were what it purports to be; but what evidence is there that this is the case." thereupon the champion presents evidence from the fathers, and evidence from the book itself; and finally closes by saying, that such an array of evidence is ample to satisfy any _reasonable_ man of its truth and validity. his argument is undoubtedly satisfactory; but if he has not appealed to a reasonable man, _i. e._ to the reason, _i. e._, if he has not acknowledged a standard for _the_ standard, and thus has not tacitly, unconsciously and yet decisively employed the reason as the highest standard of truth, then his conduct has for us no adequate expression. . nicodemus and christ, in express terms, recognized the validity of this standard. said the ruler to christ, "we know that thou art a teacher come from god: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except god be with him."--_john_ iii. . in these words, he both recognized the validity of the standard, and the fact that its requirements had been met. but decisively emphatic are the words of our saviour: "if i had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my father."--_john_ xv. . as if he had said, "while i appeared among them simply as a man, i had no right to claim from them a belief in my mission; but when i had given them adequate and ample evidence of my heavenly character, when, in a word, i had by my works satisfied all the rational demands for evidence which they could make, then no excuse remained for their rejection of me." the doctrine of this treatise, that man may know the truth, and know god, is one which will never be too largely reflected upon by the human mind, or too fully illustrated in human thought. in no better strain can we bring our work to a close than by offering some reflections on those words of jesus christ which have formed the title of our book. "then said jesus to those jews which believed on him, 'if ye continue in my word, _then_ are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"--_john_ viii. , . throughout all the acts of christ, as recorded in john and especially during the last days of his life, there may be traced the marks of a super-human effort to express to the jews, in the most skilful manner, the nature and purport of his mission. he appeared to them a man; and yet it would seem as if the godhead in him struggled with language to overcome its infirmities, and express with perfectest skill his extraordinary character and work. but "he came unto his own, and his own received him not." being then such, even the divine man, jesus christ possessed in his own right _an absolute and exhaustive metaphysic_. we study out some laws in some of their applications; he knew all laws in all their applications. in these his last days he was engaged in making the most profound and highly philosophical revelations to his followers that one being ever made to another. or does the reader prefer to call them religious? very well: for here religion and philosophy are identical. being engaged in such a labor, it is certain that no merely human teacher ever used words with the careful balancing, the skilful selection, the certain exactitude, that jesus did. hence in the most emphatic sense may it be said, that, whether he used figurative or literal language, he meant just what he said. the terms used in the text quoted are literal terms, and undoubtedly the passage is to be taken in its most literal signification. in these words then, in this passage of the highest philosophical import, is to be found the basis of the whole _a priori_ philosophy. they were spoken of the most important truths, those which pertain to the soul's everlasting welfare; but as the greater includes the less, so do they include all lesser science. in positive and unmistakable terms has christ declared the fact of knowledge. god knows all truth. in so far as we also know the truth, in so far are we like him. and mark, this is knowledge, a purely intellectual act. love is indeed a _condition_ of the act, but it is not the very act itself. on this subject it is believed that the christian church has failed to assert the most accurate doctrine. too generally has this knowledge been termed a spiritual knowledge, meaning thereby, a sort of an impression of happiness made upon the spiritual sensibility; and this state of bliss has been represented as in the highest degree desirable. beyond all question it is true, that, when the spiritual person, with the eye of reason, sees, and thus knows the truth, seeing it and knowing it because his whole being, will, and intellect is consecrated to, wrapt in the effort, and he is searching for it as for hid treasures, there will roll over his soul some ripples of that ineffable delight which is a boundless ocean in deity. but this state of the sensibility follows after, and is dependent upon, the act of love, and the act of knowledge. there should be, there was made in christ's mind, a distinction in the various psychical modifications of him who had sold all that he had to buy the one pearl. the words of christ are to be taken, then, as the words of the perfect philosopher, and the perfect religionist. bearing, as he did, the destiny of a world on his heart, and burdened beyond all utterance by the mighty load, his soul was full of the theme for which he was suffering, he could speak to man only of his highest needs and his highest capabilities. the truth which man may know, then, is not only eternal,--all truth is eternal,--but it is that eternal truth most important to him, the _a priori_ laws of the spiritual person and of all his relations. the what he is, the why he is, and the what he ought to become, are the objects of his examination. when, then, a spiritual person has performed his highest act, the act of unconditional and entire consecration to the search after the truth, _i. e._ to god; and when, having done this he ever after puts away all lusts of the flesh, he shall in this condition become absorbed, wrapt away in the contemplation of the truth; then his spiritual eye will be open, and will dart with its far-glancing, searching gaze throughout the mysteries of the universe, and he will know the truth. before, when he was absorbed in the pursuit of the things of sense, he could see almost no _a priori_ principles at all, and what he did see, only in their practical bearing upon those material and transitory things which perish with their using; but now balancing himself on tireless pinion in the upper ether, anon he stoops to notice the largest and highest and most important of those objects which formerly with so much painful and painstaking labor he climbed the rugged heights of sense to examine, and having touched upon them cursorily, to supply the need of the hour, he again spreads his powerful god-given wings of faith and love, and soars upward, upward, upward, towards the eternal sun, the infinite person, the final truth, god. then does he come to comprehend, "to know, with all saints, what is the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of god." then do the pure _a priori_ laws, especially those of the relations of spiritual persons, _i. e._ of the moral government of god, come full into the field of his vision. then in the clear blaze, in the noonday effulgence of the ineffable, eternal sun, does he see the law which binds god as it binds man,--that law so terrible in its demands upon him who had violated it, that the infinite person himself could find no other way of escape for sinning man but in sending "his only-begotten son into the world." and he who is lifted up to this knowledge needs no other revelation. all other knowledge is a child's lesson-book to him. all lower study is tasteless; all lower life is neglected, forgotten. he studies forever the pure equations of truth; he lives in the bosom of god. such an one may all his life-long have been utterly ignorant of books. a poor negro on some rice plantation, he may have learned of god only by the hearing of the ear, but by one act, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he has passed all the gradations of earthly knowledge, and taken his seat on the topmost form in heaven. he received little instruction from men; but forevermore god is his teacher. this of which we have been speaking is, be it remembered, no rhapsody of the imagination. it is a simple literal fact respecting man's intellect. it is the same in kind, though of far nobler import, as if upon this act of consecration there should be revealed to every consecrated one, in a sudden overwhelming burst of light, the whole _a priori_ system of the physical universe. this is not so revealed because it is not essential, and so would only gratify curiosity. the other and the higher is revealed, because it is essential to man's spiritual life. in the culminating act, then, of a spiritual person, in the unreserved, the absolute consecration of the whole being to the search after truth, do we find that common goal to which an _a priori_ philosophy inevitably leads us, and which the purest, christ's, religion teaches us. thus does it appear that in their highest idea philosophy and religion are identical. the rock upon which both alike are grounded is eternal. the principles of both have the highest possible evidence, for they are self-evident; and, having them given by the intuition of the reason, a man can cipher out the whole natural scheme of the universe as he would cipher out a problem in equations. he has not done it, because he is wicked; and god has given him the bible, as the mathematical astronomy of the moral heavens, as a school-book to lead him back to the goal of his lost purity. how beautiful, then, art thou, o religion, supernal daughter of the deity! how noble in thy magnificent preëminence! how dazzling in thy transcendent loveliness! thou sittest afar on a throne of pearl; thy diadem the morning stars, thy robe the glory of god. founded is thy throne on eternity; and from eternity to eternity all thy laws are enduring truth. sitting thus, o queen, more firmly throned than the snow-capped mountains, calmer than the ocean's depths, in the surety of thy self-conscious integrity and truth, thou mayest, with mien of noblest dignity, in unwavering confidence, throw down the gauntlet of thy challenge to the assembled doubters of the universe. it may be that to some minds, unaccustomed to venturing out fearlessly on the ocean of thought, with an unwavering trust in the pole-star truth in the human soul, certain of the positions attained and maintained in this volume will seem to involve the destruction of all essential distinction between the creator and the created. if the universe is a definite and limited object, some created being may, at some period, come to know every atom of it. moreover, if there is a definite number of the qualities and attributes--the endowments of deity, some one may learn the number, and what they are, and come at length to have a knowledge equal to god's knowledge. even if this possibility should be admitted,--which it is not, for a reason to appear further on,--yet it would in no way involve that the creature had, in any the least degree, reduced the difference in _kind_ which subsists between him and the creator. a consideration of the following distinctive marks will, it would seem, be decisive upon this point. god is self-existent. his creatures are dependent upon him. self-existence is an essential, inherent, untransferable attribute of deity; and so is not a possible attainment for any creature. every creature is necessarily dependent upon the creator every moment, for his continuance in being. let him attain ever so high a state of knowledge; let him, if the supposition were rational, acquire a knowledge equal to that of deity; let him be endowed with all the power he could use, and he would not have made, nor could he make an effort even, in the direction of removing his dependence upon his creator. in the very height of his glory, in the acme of his attainment, it would need only that god rest an instant, cease to sustain him, and he would not be, he would have gone out, as the light goes out on a burner when one turns the faucet. again, the mode by which their knowledge is attained is different in kind; and the creature never can acquire the creator's mode. the deity possesses his knowledge as a necessary endowment, given to him at once, by a spontaneous intuition. hence he could never learn, for there was no knowledge which he did not already possess. thus he is out of all relation to time. the creature, on the other hand, can never acquire any knowledge except through processes; and, what is more, can never review the knowledge already acquired, except by a process which occupies a time. this relation of the creature to time is organic; and this distinction between the creature and creator is thus also irremovable. another organic distinction is that observed in the mode of seeing ideals. the divine reason not only gives ideas, _a priori_ laws, but it gives all possible images, which those laws, standing in their natural relations to each other, can become. thus all ideals are realized to him, whether the creative energy goes forth, and power is organized in accordance therewith, or not. here again the creature is of the opposite kind. the creature can never have an idea until he has been educated by contact with a material universe; and then can never construct an ideal, except he have first seen the elements of that ideal realized in material forms. to illustrate: the infant has no ideas; and there is no radical difference between the beginning of a human being and any other created spiritual person. he has a rudimentary reason, but it must grow before it can make its presentations, and the means of its education must be a material system. let a spiritual person be created, and set in the universe, utterly isolated, with no medium of communication, and it would stay forever just what it was at the beginning, a dry seed. the necessity of alliance with a material universe is equally apparent in the mature spiritual person. such a one cannot construct a single ideal, except he have seen all the elements already in material forms. he who will attempt to construct an ideal of any _thing_, which never has been, as a griffin, and not put into it any form of animals which have been on earth, will immediately appreciate the unquestionableness of this position. therefore it is that no one can, "by searching, find out god." the creature can only learn what the creator declares to him. still another element of distinction, equally marked and decisive as those just named, may be mentioned. the deity possesses as inherent and immanent endowment power, or the ability of himself to realize his ideals in objects. thus is he the creator. if this were not so, there could have been no universe, for there was no substance and no one to furnish a substance but he. the creature, on the other hand, cannot receive as a gift, neither attain by culture the power to create. hence he can only realize his ideals in materials furnished to his hand. pigments and brushes and chisels and marble must be before painters and sculptors can become. each and every one of the distinctions above made is _organic_. they cannot be eliminated. in fact their removal is not a possible object of effort. the creature may _wish_ them removed; but no line of thought can be studied out by which a movement can be made towards the attainment of that wish. it would seem, then, that, such being the facts, the fullest scope might fearlessly be allowed to the legitimate use of every power of the creature. such, it is believed, is god's design. the end. transcriber's note: archaic/multiple spellings and punctuation of the original have been maintained. _the expositor's library_ modern substitutes for christianity by the very rev. pearson mcadam muir d.d. minister of glasgow cathedral chaplain in ordinary to the king _christus vincit, christus regnat, christus imperat_ hodder and stoughton london -- new york -- toronto first published . . . december second edition . . . october in memoriam s. a. m. june , . october , february , {vii} contents i page popular impeachments of christianity . . . . . ii morality without religion . . . . . . . . . . iii the religion of the universe . . . . . . . . . iv the religion of humanity . . . . . . . . . . . {viii} v theism without christ . . . . . . . . . . . . vi the tribute of criticism to christ . . . . . . appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . authorities consulted . . . . . . . . . . . . index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . { } i popular impeachments of christianity 'why call ye me lord, lord, and do not the things which i say?'--s. luke vi. . 'the name of god is blasphemed among the gentiles through you.'--romans ii. . 'what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of god without effect?'--romans iii. . 'by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.'-- s. peter ii. . 'so is the will of god, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.'-- s. peter ii. . { } i popular impeachments of christianity that there is at present a widespread alienation from the christian faith can hardly be denied. sometimes by violent invective, sometimes by quiet assumption, the conclusion is conveyed that christianity is obsolete. whatever benefits it may have conferred in rude, unenlightened ages, it is now outgrown, it is not in keeping with the science and discovery of modern times. 'the good lord jesus has had his day,'[ ] is murmured in pitying condescension towards those who still suffer themselves to be deceived by the antiquated superstition. the statements in which our forefathers embodied the relations { } between god and man are no longer, except by a very few, considered adequate; and there is everywhere a demand that those statements should be recast. is not all this an irresistible proof that the beliefs of the church have been abandoned, that the old notions of the divine care, the spiritual world, the everlasting life, cannot be maintained, must be relegated to the realm of imagination? the blessings with which christianity is commonly credited spring from other sources: the evils with which society is infected are its result, direct or indirect. i such accusations, it may occur to us, cannot be made seriously: they bear their refutation in the very making; they cannot be propounded with any expectation of being accepted. this may seem self-evident to us: it is not self-evident to multitudes of eager, { } earnest men. the accusations are persistently made by vigorous writers and impassioned speakers, and are received as incontrovertible propositions. however astonishing, however painful, it may be for us to hear, it is well that we should know, what, in largely circulated books and periodicals, and in mass meetings of the people, is said about the faith which we profess, and about us who profess it. listen to some of the terms in which christianity is impeached. 'i undertake,' says mr. winwood reade, 'i undertake to show that the destruction of christianity is essential to the interests of civilisation; and also that man will never attain his full powers as a moral being, until he has ceased to believe in a personal god, and in the immortality of the soul. christianity must be destroyed.'[ ] 'the hostile evidence,' says mr. philip { } vivian, 'appears to be overwhelming. christianity cannot be true. provided that we see things as they really are, and not as we wish them to be, we cannot but come to this conclusion. we cannot get away from facts. modern knowledge forces us to admit that the christian faith cannot be true.'[ ] 'i want,' exclaims mr. vivian carey, who has apparently, like lord herbert of cherbury, received a revelation to prove that no revelation has been given, 'i want to destroy the fetich of centuries and to instil in its place a life of duty, and of faith in god and man, and i believe there is a power that has impelled me to attempt this task.... a system that has produced such results must be essentially bad.... it will not be difficult to create a faith and a religion that will serve the needs of humanity, where christianity has so deplorably failed.'[ ] { } 'if christianity,' argues mr. charles watts, 'were potent for good, that good would have been displayed ere now.... the ties of domestic affection, the bonds of the social compact, the political relations of rulers and ruled, all have surrendered themselves to its influence. yet with all these advantages, it has proved unable to keep pace with a progressive civilisation.'[ ] 'in a really humane and civilised nation,' mr. robert blatchford contends, 'there should be and need be no such thing as ignorance, crime, idleness, war, slavery, hate, envy, pride, greed, gluttony, vice. but this is not a humane and civilised nation, and never will be while it accepts christianity as its religion. these are my reasons for opposing christianity.'[ ] 'christianity,' he iterates and reiterates, 'is not true.'[ ] 'onward, ye children of the new faith!' { } exultantly cries mr. moncure d. conway. 'the sun of christendom hastes to its setting, but the hope never sets of those who know that the sunset here is a sunrise there!'[ ] such is the manner in which the downfall of christianity is now proclaimed. and the impression is prevalent that, though in all ages christianity has been the object of doubt and of scorn, yet never has it been rejected with such intensity of hatred as now, never have keen criticism and deep earnestness, wide learning and shrewd mother-wit been so combined in the attack. it is not merely the reckless, the dissolute, the frivolous who turn away from its reproofs, seeking excuses for their self-indulgence, but it is the thoughtful, the austere, the high-principled, the reverent, the unselfish, who are engaged in a crusade against all that we, as christians, hold dear. 'to the old spirit of mockery, coarse or refined, to the old wrangle of argument, { } also coarse or refined, has succeeded the spirit of grave, measured, determined negation.'[ ] men whose integrity and elevation of character are beyond suspicion, take their places among the rebels against the authority of christ. they are fighting, they assert, not for the removal of a check to their vices, but for the introduction of a nobler ideal. in the demolition of christianity, in the sweeping away of every vestige of religious belief, religious custom, religious hope, they imagine themselves to be conferring inestimable benefits upon mankind. christianity, in their view, is the product of delusion and the buttress of all social ills. ii the contrast which so many are drawing between the present and the past is not a little exaggerated. there have been few periods in which christianity has not been the { } object of animadversion and attack, in which its speedy downfall has not been confidently predicted. it was two hundred years ago that dean swift wrote _an argument to prove that the abolishing of christianity in england may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps not produce those many good effects proposed thereby_': the dean, with scathing sarcasm, ridiculing at once the conventional customs by which christianity was misrepresented, and the supercilious ignorance which assumed that it was extinct.[ ] it was about a quarter of a century later that bishop butler, in the advertisement to his _analogy of religion to the constitution and course of nature_, stated, 'it is come, i know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now, at length, discovered to be fictitious. and accordingly they treat it as if, { } in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.' and the bishop drily gave as the aim of the _analogy_: 'thus much, at least, will be here found, not taken for granted but proved, that any reasonable man who will thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much assured as he is of his own being, that it is not, however, so clear a case that there is nothing in it.' the assumption that christianity is a thing of the past can hardly be more prevalent now than it was then; and the groundlessness of the assumption then may lead to the conclusion that the assumption is equally groundless now. since the days of butler or of swift, the progress of christianity has not ceased: its developments of thought and { } life have been among the most remarkable in its whole career. the exultation over its decay in the twentieth century may possibly be found as premature and as vain as the exultation over its decay in the eighteenth century, or in any of the centuries which have gone before. iii the most popular impeachments of christianity are mainly these. it is a mass of false and superstitious beliefs long exploded. it is the opponent of progress and inquiry, the discoveries of science having been made in direct defiance of its teaching and its influence. it is the champion of oppression and tyranny. it aims at keeping the poor in ignorance and destitution. it prostrates itself before the rich and seeks the patronage of the great. it so insists on people being absorbed in { } the thought of heaven that it practically precludes them from doing any good on earth. it is a system of selfishness, inculcating the dogma that no one need care for anything except the salvation of his own soul.[ ] it is the foster-mother of all the evil and misery by which society is distressed. dishonesty, cruelty, slavery, war, persecution, avarice, drunkenness, vice, would seem to be its natural fruits. 'how calm and sweet the victories of life,' shrieked shelley in one of his early poems. 'how terrorless the triumph of the grave ... ... but for thy aid religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, and heaven with slaves! thou taintest all thou look'st upon!'[ ] what shall we say to these accusations? christians have been credulous and superstitious, have argued and acted as if only in { } the abnormal and exceptional could the divine presence be found, as if god were a hard taskmaster and capricious tyrant. they have resisted progress and inquiry, blindly refusing to see the light which was streaming upon them. they have unquestionably been guilty of miserable pride towards inferiors in wealth or in station, and guilty of miserable sycophancy towards the rich and the powerful. christians have too frequently neglected the material well-being of the community, have suffered disgraceful outward conditions to remain without protest, have not striven to shed abroad happiness and brightness in squalid and wretched lives. christians have been art and part in fostering such conditions as wrung from compassionate and indignant hearts the _song of the shirt_ and the _cry of the children_. christians have imagined that correctness of belief would make up for falseness of heart, and loudness of profession for depravity of { } practice. christians have supposed that in religion all that has to be striven for is the salvation of one's own soul, have even represented the joy of the redeemed as heightened by a contemplation of the torments of the lost. christians must bear the responsibility of much of the abounding vice which they have not earnestly tried to combat where it already exists, and which, in various forms, they have introduced into regions where it was unknown before. lawlessness and degradation in the slums, fraud and dishonesty in trade, gross revelations in the fashionable world; bigotry, slander, scandals in the ecclesiastical world; plots, wars, treacheries, assassinations, in the political world: these things ought not so to be. the fiercest denunciations, the most withering satires, which unbelievers have employed, do not exceed in intensity of condemnation the judgment which christian preachers and christian writers have pronounced.[ ] { } in all ages of the church the most powerful weapon against christianity has been the example of christians. the faith which they nominally hold has been judged by the lives which they actually lead.[ ] 'christianity,' said a bishop of the eighteenth century, 'would perhaps be the last religion a wise man would choose, if he were guided by the lives of those who profess it.'[ ] but is this to admit that the hope of the world lies in renouncing christianity? that in confining ourselves to the seen and the temporal, we shall best elevate mankind? that the prospect of annihilation and the absence of wisdom, love, and providence in the order of the universe constitute the most glorious gospel which can be proclaimed? nothing of the kind. it is only proved that many christians are not acting according to their belief, that their practice does not square with their { } profession. the belief and the profession are not proved to be wrong and bad. it would be unreasonable to argue that, because a man who has been vehemently sounding the praises of truthfulness is convicted of deliberate lying, therefore truthfulness is shown to be worthless. it is equally unreasonable to identify christianity with everything to which it is most definitely opposed, to represent it as the enemy of everything which it was intended to maintain, and then to conclude that christianity is discredited.[ ] as we should argue from the detection of a liar, not that lying is right, but that he should return to the ways of truth, so we should argue from the lives of christians who live in flagrant contradiction to the precepts of our lord and his apostles, not that the precepts should be rejected, but that they should be kept; not that christianity should be abolished, but that it should be obeyed. { } christians have created prejudice, hatred, against christianity, but it is not christianity which they have been exhibiting. we repudiate the hideous travesty which they have made, the hideous travesty which is credulously or maliciously accepted by assailants as a correct representation. christianity is not a religion of darkness and superstition: it calls to its disciples 'be children of light: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.' christianity does not sycophantishly court the rich and despise the poor: it tells the stories of the rich man and lazarus, and of the rich fool, and it declares 'ye cannot serve god and mammon.' christianity does not teach that the life which a man leads is of less consequence than the belief which he professes: it demands, 'why call ye me, lord, lord, and do not the things which i say?' christianity is not selfish, is not a system which inculcates the saving of one's own soul as the first and last of duties: { } 'he that loveth his life shall lose it. bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of christ. by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.' it is surely reasonable to demand that christianity shall be judged, not by its misrepresentations, but by what it is in itself, not as it has been perverted by bitter enemies, or by false disciples, but as it is proclaimed and manifested in its author and finisher. iv in the face of such tremendous indictments, what is the duty incumbent on us who profess and call ourselves christians? certainly not that we should abjure the name, but that we should remember what the name signifies. we ought to consider our ways, to give ourselves to self-examination. there must be something amiss when such hideous portraits can be painted with any expectation of their being taken as correct likenesses. it is right { } that we should repel with indignation the ludicrous and intolerable caricatures which are presented as our belief, the unwarrantable consequences which are deduced from it. it is right that we should remove misapprehensions and refute calumnies; but, above all it is necessary that we should take heed to our own conduct and our own character. the scandals which we have so much reason to deplore owe their existence, not to christianity, but to the absence of christianity. and the very sneers which greet any departure from rectitude or morality on the part of a professing christian prove that such a departure is not a manifestation, but a renunciation of christianity, that what is expected of christians is the highest and the best that human nature can produce. 'if,' argues mr. blatchford, 'if to praise christ in words and deny him in deeds be christianity, then london is a christian city and england is a christian nation. for it is { } very evident that our common english ideals are anti-christian, and that our commercial, foreign, and social affairs are run on anti-christian lines.'[ ] as mr. blatchford's life is spent in deploring the baseness of 'our common english ideals,' and in exposing the iniquity of the methods in which 'our commercial, foreign, and social affairs' are conducted, the logical inference would seem to be that, as anti-christian ideals and anti-christian lines have so signally failed, it might be well to give christian ideals and christian lines a trial. 'in a really humane and civilised nation,' mr. blatchford maintains, 'there should be, and there need be, no such thing as poverty, ignorance, crime, idleness, war, slavery, hate, envy, pride, greed, gluttony, vice. but,' he continues his curious argument, 'this is not a humane and civilised nation, and never will be while it accepts christianity as its religion. these,' { } so he adds as an irresistible conclusion, 'these are my reasons for opposing christianity.'[ ] very good reasons, if christianity taught such a creed and encouraged such a morality. but that any human being should give such a description of the purpose of christian faith indicates either that the describer is swayed by blindest prejudice or else that no genuine christian has ever crossed his path. 'what if some do not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of god of none effect? god forbid: yea, let god be true, but every man a liar.' truth continues to be truth, though people who talk much about it may be false. goodness continues to be goodness, though people who sing its praises may be thoroughly depraved. generosity does not cease to be generosity, though its beauty should be extolled by a miser. courage does not cease to be courage, though its heroism should be extolled by a coward. temperance { } is temperance, though we should be assured of the fact by the thick speech of a drunkard. the virtue is admirable, even when those who acknowledge how admirable it is do not practise it. that christianity towers so far above the attainments of its average disciples, nay, above the attainments of its saintliest, is itself a kind of evidence of its divine origin. 'when the king of the tartars, who was become christian,' says montaigne, 'designed to come to lyons to kiss the pope's feet, and there to be an eyewitness of the sanctity he hoped to find in our manners, immediately our good s. louis sought to divert him from his purpose: for fear lest our inordinate way of living should, on the contrary, put him out of conceit with so holy a belief. and yet it happened quite otherwise to this other, who going to rome to the same end, and there seeing the dissolution of the prelates and people of that time, settled { } himself so much the more firmly in our religion, considering how great the force and dignity of it must necessarily be that could maintain its dignity and splendour amongst so much corruption and in so vicious hands.' god's truth abides whether men receive it or deny it. christ is the way, the truth, and the life, though every so-called christian should become apostate. the woes of the world are to be cured by more christianity, not by less; and on us, in whose hands have been placed its holy oracles, rests the responsibility of proving its inestimable advantage ourselves and of conferring it on all mankind. wherever christianity has really flourished, untold blessings have been the result.[ ] with all the sad deficiencies and sadder perversions by which its course has been chequered, no influence for good can be compared with it in elevating character, in diffusing peace and { } goodwill, in fitting men to labour and to endure. the diffusion of the spirit of christianity is a synonym for the diffusion of all that tends to the true well-being of the world. only as genuine christianity, the christianity of christ, prevails, will mankind be morally and spiritually lifted into a higher sphere. put together the wisest and most ennobling suggestions of those who regard christianity as obsolete and you find that it is virtually christianity which is delineated. it is in the prevalence of principles and practices which, however they may be designated, are in reality christian, that the salvation of society and of individuals will be found. in the absence of such principles and practices will be found the secret of ruin, disorder, dissolution, and decay. it is false christianity against which the tornado of abuse is really directed. where genuine christianity appears, and is recognised as genuine, it commands respect. { } even the most virulent of recent assailants, who seriously considers that, until we get rid of the 'incubus of the modern christian religion, our civilisation will so surely decay that we shall become an entirely decadent race,' and who complacently announces that 'it will not be difficult to create a faith and a religion which will serve the needs of humanity where christianity has so signally failed,' even he is graciously pleased to allow, 'i have no quarrel with christianity as a code of morals. the sermon on the mount, no matter who preached it, is quite sufficient, if its teaching was only practised instead of preached, to make this world an eminently desirable place in which to live. my quarrel is concerned with the professional promoters and organisers of religion who have made the very name of christianity to stink in the nostrils of honest men.' in other words, it is not to christianity, but to christians by whom it is misrepresented, that he is opposed, and he { } cannot refrain from granting, though surely with transparent inconsistency, that it is by the noble lives of christians that christianity has been so long preserved. 'it won, with its beauty and sentiment, the allegiance of many who were true and manly. and it is such as these who have raised the gospel from the slough of infamy. it is such as these who, in the darkest ages, have perpetuated by the goodness of their lives the faith that is left to-day. it is the virtues of christians, not the virtue of christianity, that keeps the faith alive.'[ ] the very opposite is nearer the truth. the virtues of christians are simply the outcome of the virtue of christianity: it is the vices of christians which compose the deepest 'slough of infamy' into which the gospel has ever been plunged. but from all these charges and counter-charges, it would seem to be clear that real { } christianity compels respect even where it is viewed with aversion, that its progress is hindered by nothing so much as by the unworthiness of its adherents, that it gains assent by nothing so much as by the manifestation of christian lives. will any one venture to deny that the world would be vastly improved were every one in it to be a genuine christian, animated by christian motives, doing christian deeds? the revolution would be immense, indescribable: it would be the end of all evil: it would be the establishment of all good. no man's hand would be against another, all would strive together for the welfare of the whole, there would be no contention save how to excel in love and in good works. the human imagination cannot depict anything more glorious, more ennobling, than the will of god done on earth as it is done in heaven, and this is what would be if the thoughts of every heart were brought { } into captivity to the obedience of christ. the most splendid dreams of the most exalted visionaries would be more than fulfilled: everything true and lovely and of good report would be ratified and confirmed: everything false and vile would be changed and purified, and nothing to hurt or destroy or defile would remain. the fulfilment of that ideal is simply the universal prevalence of christianity, the universal triumph of christ. the systems and tendencies at which we are about to glance owe their vitality to the faith which they attempt to supersede. they are, in so far as they are good, either tending towards christianity or borrowing from it. the insufficiency of mere material well-being, the irresistible association of religion with morality, the worship of the universe, the worship of humanity, all are signs of the ineradicable instinct of the unseen and eternal, of the unquenchable thirst for the living god; and belief in the living { } god finds its noblest illustration and confirmation in him who said, 'he that hath seen me hath seen the father,' in him to whom the searching scrutiny of critical inquirers, as well as the fervid devotion of believers, bears so marvellous a witness. we hope to show not only that the abolition of christianity might 'be attended with sundry inconveniences,' or that the assumption of there being 'nothing in' christianity is 'not so clear a case,' but we hope to show that if, amid present perplexity and estrangement, many feel themselves obliged to go back and walk no more with christ, we, for our part, as we hear his voice of tender reproach, 'will ye also go away?' can only, with heartfelt conviction, give the answer, 'lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.' [ ] tennyson, _in the children's hospital_. [ ] _the martyrdom of man_. [ ] _the churches and modern thought_. [ ] _parsons and pagans_. [ ] _secularists' manual_. [ ] _god and my neighbour_. [ ] _ibid_. [ ] _earthward pilgrimage_. [ ] dean church, _pascal and other sermons_, p. . [ ] appendix i. [ ] appendix ii. [ ] _queen mab_. [ ] hans faber, _das christentum der zukunft_. [ ] appendix. [ ] sir leslie stephen, _english thought in the eighteenth century_, vol. i. p. [ ] appendix iv. [ ] _god and my neighbour_. [ ] _god and my neighbour_, ch. ix. p. . [ ] appendix v. [ ] _parsons and pagans_. { } ii morality without religion 'i am sought of them that asked not for me: i am found of them that sought me not.'--isaiah lxv. . 'not the hearers of the law are just before god, but the doers of the law shall be justified. for when the gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.'--romans ii. - . 'strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without god in the world.'--ephesians ii. . 'the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness.'--titus i. . { } ii morality without religion that religion and morality have no necessary connection is a popular assumption. in books, in pamphlets, in magazines, on platforms, in ordinary conversation, it is loudly proclaimed or quietly insinuated that the morality of the future will be independent morality, morality without sanction. morality, it is iterated and reiterated, can get on quite well without religion: religion is a positive hindrance to morality. this view is, no doubt, extreme. perhaps it is only here and there in the writings which fall into the hands of most of us, or in the circles with which most of us mingle, that the matter is stated so bluntly and so plainly. but in { } not a few writings of wide circulation, and in whole classes of the community, the statement is made as if beyond contradiction. even in works which we are all reading, and in companies where we daily find ourselves, the logical conclusion of arguments, the natural inference from assumptions, would be simply that extreme position. there is no use in evading the fact that if some highly popular opinions are accepted, no statement of the uselessness of religion in any form or system can be too extreme. the mere assurance that religion is a reality, is a benefit, is a necessity, though it may not seem a great deal to establish, though it may leave a host of problems still to solve, would be a gain to many, would sweep away the chief doubts by which they are perplexed. there need not, on our part, be any hesitation in declaring, to begin with, that religion { } without morality is worthless. the attempt to keep them apart, to regard them as independent of each other, has often enough been made by nominal champions of religion. the upholding of certain views regarding god and his relations to mankind has been considered sufficient to make up for neglect of the duties incumbent on ordinary mortals. the performance of certain rites and ceremonies has been considered an adequate compensation for the commission of deliberate crimes. instances might easily be cited of persons engaged in villainous schemes, achieving deeds of dishonesty which will cause ruin to hundreds of innocent victims, executing plots of fiendish revenge, with little regard for human life, and no regard at all for truth, but exceedingly punctilious in attention to religious observances. one of the most cold-blooded murderers that ever disgraced the habitable globe was careful not to neglect any act of devotion, and while { } perpetrating the most nefarious basenesses never failed to write in his diary the most pious sentiments. that kind of religion is worse than nothing, was rightly regarded as increasing the horror and loathsomeness of the monster's life. in a minor degree, we have all seen illustrations of the same incongruity, we may even have detected indications of it in ourselves, the tendency to imagine that the more we go to church or frequent the sacraments or read the bible, we are entitled to latitude in our conduct. there is no tendency against which we need to be more constantly on our guard, none which is more strongly, more terrifically, denounced in the old testament and in the new, by prophets and apostles, and by the lord jesus christ himself. unbelievers in christianity are perfectly right when they say that religion without morality is absolutely worthless. { } ii we may go further. we may admit, nay, we must vehemently maintain, that morality without religion is far better than religion without morality. look at this man who makes no profession of religion, but who is temperate, honest, self-sacrificing for the public good. look at that man who made a loud profession, but who was leading a life of secret vice, who was false to the trust reposed in him, who appropriated what had been committed to his charge. can there be any doubt, we are triumphantly asked, that of these two, the religious is inferior to the irreligious? there can be no doubt whatever, would be the reply of every well-instructed christian. morality without religion is incalculably better than religion without morality. but what does this prove with regard to christianity? it simply proves how eternally true is the parable { } of our lord: 'a certain man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, son, go work to-day in my vineyard. he answered and said, i will not, but afterwards he repented and went. and he came to the second and said likewise. and he answered and said, i go, sir, and went not. whether of them twain did the will of his father? they say unto him, the first,' and our lord confirmed the answer. iii that kind of comparison between religion and morality is most misleading, for such 'religion' is not religion at all. it may be hypocrisy, it may be superstition, it may be self-deception: christianity it is not, and never can be. the contrast is not really between morality and religion, but between morality and immorality, falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition. whatever else the kingdom of god may be, it is at least { } righteousness: where there is no righteousness, there can be no kingdom of god. whatever else christian doctrine may be, it is at least a doctrine according to godliness, a teaching in accordance with the eternal laws of righteousness. for purposes of analysis and convenience, we may distinguish between religion and morality, and show them working in different spheres, but it is utterly erroneous to suppose that they can be actually divorced. in every right and rational representation of the christian religion, morality is included and imbedded, otherwise it is only a maimed and mutilated religion which is held out for acceptance. on the other hand, in all true morality, especially in its highest and purest manifestations, religion is present. it is possible to decry morality. 'mere morality,' in the current acceptation of the phrase, may lack a good deal, may be a phase of self-righteousness, self-interest, cold calculation, { } a keeping up of appearances before the world, but morality itself is of a higher strain: it is the fulfilment of every duty to one's self and to one's neighbour: it implies that each duty is done from the right motive: the purer and loftier it becomes the more it encroaches on the religious domain: it is crowned and glorified with a religious sanction: it is, visible or hidden, conscious or unconscious, a doing of the will of god. morality, to hold its own, must be 'touched by emotion,' and morality touched by emotion is identical with religion. to admit moral obligation in all its length and breadth, and depth and height, is to admit god.[ ] iv a curious illustration of the fact that morality, to be permanent, needs the inspiration of religion, that morality, at its best and purest, tends to become religion, is { } afforded in such a work as dr. stanton coit's _national idealism and a state church_. dr. coit has for twenty years been engaged in founding ethical societies, and his high and disinterested aims need not be called in question. but the book is evidence that in order to support the lofty principles which he so earnestly expounds, he is obliged to call in the aid of principles which he imagined himself to have discarded. he begins by denying the supernatural in every shape and form. he will have none of a personal god, or of a personal immortality. there is no higher being than man. all trust must be shifted from supernatural to human agencies. 'combined human foresight, the general will of organised society, assumes the rôle of creative providence.' 'this is, then, the presupposition of all moral judgment in harmony with which i would reconstruct the religions of the world: that no crime and no good deed that happens in this world shall { } ever be traced to any other moral agencies than those actually inhabiting living human bodies and recognised by other human beings as fit subjects of human rights and privileges.' in other words, morality, morality alone, morality without any sanction from above, or any hope from beyond, is the all-sufficient strength and ennoblement of man. but what is the superstructure which dr. stanton coit proceeds to build upon this foundation? one would naturally expect that prayer and churches and sacraments would have no place. but these are exactly what he insists on retaining; these will apparently be more important, more necessary, in the future than in the past. 'we should appropriate and adapt the materials furnished us by the rites and ceremonies of the historic church. as the woodbird, bent on building her nest, in lieu of better materials makes it of leaves and of feathers from her breast, so may we use what is familiar, old, { } and close at hand. it is all ours; and the homelike beauty of the church of the future will be enhanced by the ancient materials wrought into its new forms.' so much enhanced, indeed, that most people will be inclined to tolerate the new forms simply because of the ancient materials which are allowed to remain. among the ancient materials which dr. coit appropriates or adapts, prayer occupies a prominent place. and he is severe upon those, _e.g._, comte and dr. congreve, who would banish petition from the sphere of worship. he delights in pointing out that, in despite of themselves, they include requests for personal blessings. nor is prayer to be a mere aspiration or inarticulate longing of the soul. 'no mental activity can become definite, coherent, and systematic, and remain so, except it be embodied and repeated in words.... a petition that does not, or cannot, or will not, formulate itself in words, and let the lips move to shape them, and the { } voice to sound them, and the eye to visualise them on the written or printed page, becomes soon a mere torpor of the mind, or a meaningless movement of blind unrest, or a trick of pretending to pray. perfected prayer is always spoken.' to whom, or to what, this prayer, uttered or unexpressed, is to be offered, may be difficult of comprehension. it is not to god, as we have hitherto employed that sacred name; but dr. coit insists that the word 'god' shall be retained, and that we have no right to deny to this god the attribute of personality. 'any one who worships either a concrete social group or an abstract moral quality may justly protest against the charge that his god is impersonal: he may insist that it is either superpersonal or interpersonal, or both.' the worship of nature appears to be discouraged, and to be considered as of comparatively little worth. 'we dare never forget that moral qualities stand to us in a { } different dynamic relation from the grass and the stars and the sea--no effects upon us or upon these will result from petitions even of a most righteous man to them. but no one can deny that prayers to purity, serenity, faith, humanity, england, man, woman, to milton, to jesus, do create a new moral heaven and a new earth for him who thirsts after righteousness.' leaving the name of our lord out of the discussion, why should a prayer to serenity have more moral influence than a prayer to the sea? why should a prayer to the stars be less efficacious than a prayer to milton, whose soul was like a star and dwelt apart? we have only to invest the stars and the sea with certain qualities evolved from our own imagination to make them as worthy of worship as either milton or serenity. dr. coit is scathing in his criticism of the positivist prayers, whether of comte or of dr. congreve: they are 'screamingly funny': 'the most monstrous { } absurdity ever perpetrated by a really good and great man.' the epithets are possibly justified; but are they quite inapplicable to one who supposes that an invocation of the living and eternal god means no more than an invocation of england, or faith, or woman? it is only when god has become to us an abstraction that an abstraction can take the place of god. a manual of services fitted to a nation's present needs is what, according to dr. coit, is required to ensure the progress and triumph of the ethical movement. 'until the new idealism possesses its own manual of religious ritual, it cannot communicate effectively its deeper thought and purpose. the moment, however, it has invented such a means of communication, it would seem inevitable that a rapid moral and intellectual advancement of man must at last take place, equal in speed and in beneficence to the material advancement which followed { } during the last century in the wake of scientific inventions.' the ritual of ethical societies will not outwardly differ much from the ritual to be found in existing religions. its details have yet to be arranged or 'invented.' the only things certain are that a book of prayers ought to be provided at once, and that in swinburne's _songs before sunrise_ may be found an 'anthology of prayer suitable for use in the church of humanity,' prayers 'as sublime and quickening in melody and passion as anything in the hebrew prophets or the litany of the church.' dr. coit does not denounce theology as theology, he even insists on being himself ranked among theologians. his readers may be surprised to learn on what doctrines he dwells with particular fondness. he laments that belief in the existence and power of the devil should be waning. 'we may not believe in a personal devil, but we must believe in a devil who acts very like a person.' { } he predicts that teachers will more and more teach a doctrine of hell-fire. out of kindness they will terrify by presenting the evil effects, indirect and remote, of selfish thoughts and dispositions. 'we must frighten people away from the edge of the abyss which begins this side of death.' finally, though, of course, the word is not used in the ordinary sense, the necessity of the doctrine of the incarnation is upheld. 'the incarnation must for ever remain a fundamental conception of religion. until all men are incarnations of the principle of constructive moral beneficence, and to a higher degree, jesus will remain pre-eminent; and it is quite possible that in proportion as he is approached, gratitude to him will increase rather than diminish.' 'even should any one ever in the future transcend him, still it will only be by him and in glad acknowledgment of the debt to him. there never can in the future be a dividing of the world into christianity { } and not christianity. it will only be a new and more christian christianity, compatible with liberty and reason.' thus the drift and tendency of this book bring us back, however unintentionally, to the faith of which it appears, at first sight, to be the renunciation. it establishes irresistibly that morality, to be living and permanent, must have religious sanction and inspiration, that we need to be delivered from the awful thraldom of evil, that the supreme realities are the things which are unseen; that prayer is the life of the soul; that public worship is a necessity; that in christ the greatest redemptive power has been embodied, and the purest vision of the eternal has been granted; and that, in its adaptation to human needs, its fostering of human aspirations, its ministering to human sorrows, its renewal of human penitence, its consecration of life and its hope in death, no ethical society yet devised gives any { } symptom of being able to supplant the church of him who said, 'come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and i will give you rest.' v now, from the fact that morality at its best assumes a religious tinge, merges itself in religion, we may legitimately infer that, without the inspiration of religion, morality at its best will not long prevail.[ ] 'love, friendship,' said sir james fitzjames stephen, 'good nature, kindness carried to the height of sincere and devoted affection, will always be the chief pleasures of life, whether christianity is true or false; but christian charity is not the same as any of these, or all of these put together, and i think that if christian theology were exploded, christian charity would not survive it.'[ ] at present, when religion has pervaded everything with its sacred sanctions, it is easy to say that religion { } would not be greatly missed were it discarded, and that morality would be unaffected. this is pure conjecture. to test its worth we should need a state of society from which every vestige of religion had disappeared. it will not do to retain any of the beliefs or the customs which owe their origin to a sense of the unseen and eternal, to a sense of any power above ourselves, ruling our destinies and instilling into our minds thoughts and desires and hopes beyond the visible and the material. if morality, in the limited acceptation of the term, is sufficient for the elevation and welfare of mankind, it is not to be supported by any admixture of religion: it must prove its power by itself. religion must be utterly abolished, its every sanction must be universally rejected, its every impulse must have universally ceased before it can be contended with any measure of assurance that the world will be none the worse, may be even the better, for its vanishing. { } if religion is a delusion, remember what must be eliminated from our convictions. there can be no higher tribunal than that of man by which our actions can be judged.[ ] a life of outward propriety is the utmost that can be demanded of us, if it is only against the wellbeing of our neighbour or the promotion of our own happiness that we can transgress. what has human law to do with our hearts? what legislation can deal with 'envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness,' unless they manifest themselves in outward acts? a base, unloving, impure, acrimonious, untruthful man may crawl through life, never having been arrested, never having been sentenced to any term of penal servitude. he can stand erect before all the laws of the country and say, 'all these have i kept from my youth up.' and unless there be a higher law than the law of man, unless there be a law written on our hearts by the finger of { } god, unless there be one to whom, above and beyond all earthly appearances, we can mournfully declare, 'against thee, thee only, have i sinned,' nothing more can be reasonably demanded. if there is nothing higher than the visible, it can be only visible results which are of any value. the giving of money to help the needy, and the giving of money in order to obtain a reputation for generosity, must stand on the same level. the widow's mite will be worth infinitely less than the shekels which come from those who devour widows' houses. if there be none to search the heart, none save poor frail fellow-mortals to whom we must give account, what an incentive to purity of motive and loftiness of aspiration is removed! but let men talk as they will, there is a conscience in them which whispers, it does matter whether our hearts as well as our actions are right; it does matter whether we have good motives, good intentions; there is a scrutiny of hearts, { } making and to be made more fully yet; there is one before whom, even though we have not broken the law of the land, we confess with anguish, against thee have i sinned and done evil in thy sight: where i appear most irreproachable, thine eye detecteth error: it is not the occasional trespass that i have chiefly to lament, it is the sin that is almost part and parcel of my very being, the sin that corrodes even where it does not glare, the sin that undermines even where it does not crash. vi the most thoughtful of those who have lost faith in the living god and in fellowship with him hereafter, look on this life with a pessimistic eye. without trust in the unseen and eternal, life is worthless, an idle dream. with its harassing cares, with its petty vexations, with its turbulence and strife, its sorrows, its breaking up of old associations, its quenching the light of our { } eyes, 'o dreary were this earth, if earth were all!' on the stage of the world, 'the play is the tragedy man, the hero the conqueror worm!' we cannot but extend the deepest sympathy, the warmest admiration to those who, bereft of belief and of hope, yet cling tenaciously to moral goodness.[ ] 'what is to become of us,' asks the pensive amiel, 'when everything leaves us, health, joy, affections, the freshness of sensation, memory, capacity for work, when the sun seems to us to have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of all its charms? ... there is but one answer, keep close to duty. be what you ought to be; the rest is god's affair.... and supposing there were no good and holy god, nothing but universal being, the law of the all, an ideal without hypostasis or reality, duty would still be the key of the enigma, the pole star of a wandering { } humanity.'[ ] who does not see that it is the lingering faith in god which gives strength to this conviction and that, were the faith obliterated, the natural conclusion would be for the cultured, 'vanity of vanities: all is vanity'; and for the multitudes, 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' 'i remember how at cambridge,' says mr. f. w. h. myers of george eliot, 'i walked with her once in the fellows' garden of trinity on an evening of rainy may: and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet calls of men--the words _god, immortality, duty_--pronounced with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the _first_, how unbelievable the _second_, and yet how peremptory and absolute the _third_. never, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and uncompromising law. i { } listened and night fell: her grave, majestic countenance turned toward me like a sibyl's in the gloom, and it was as though she withdrew from my grasp one by one the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates. and when we stood at length and parted, amid that columnar circuit of the forest trees, beneath the last twilight of starless skies, i seemed to be gazing, like titus at jerusalem, on vacant seats and empty halls, on a sanctuary with no presence to hallow it, and heaven left lonely of a god.'[ ] withdraw belief in a god above and in a life beyond, the only reason for obedience to duty and morality will be either our own pleasure, the doing what is most agreeable to ourselves; or sympathy, the bearing of others' burdens, in the hope that when we have passed away there may be some on earth who will reap the harvest which we have { } sown; or public opinion, the views which are prevalent in a particular time in a particular region; and these reasons are hardly likely to produce a morality which will be other than that of self-indulgence, of despair, or of conventionality.[ ] 'we can get on very well without a religion,' said sir james fitzjames stephen, 'for though the view of life which science is opening to us gives us nothing to worship, it gives us an infinite number of things to enjoy. the world seems to me a very good world, if it would only last. it is full of pleasant people and curious things, and i think that most men find no difficulty in turning their minds away from its transient character.' if it would only last! but it does not last: those dearer to us than ourselves are snatched away. could anything be more selfish, more despicably base than to go about saying, all that is of no { } consequence, so long as i meet with pleasant people and have an infinite number of things to enjoy? it is true that an infinite number of my fellow-creatures may not be enjoying an infinite number of things, may have trouble in recalling almost anything worthy of the name of enjoyment, but why should i be depressed by that? i find no difficulty in turning away my mind from the misfortunes of others. 'we can get on very well without religion.' no doubt without it some of us can have agreeable society and a variety of pleasures more or less refined; but this does not prove that religion is no loss. on the same principle, we can get on very comfortably without honesty, without sobriety, without purity, without generosity. we can get on very comfortably indeed without anything except without a heart which is intent on self-gratification, and which excludes all thought of the wants and woes of the world. 'let us eat and drink, for { } to-morrow we die,' is the irresistible, though rather inconsistent, conclusion of that sublime austerity which so indignantly repudiates the merest hint of reward or hope within the veil, and which so sensitively shrinks from the mercenariness of the religion of the cross. 'the wages of sin is death: if the wages of virtue be dust, would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly!'[ ] what are the facts? what is the growing tendency where men think themselves strong enough to do without religious beliefs, when they have been proclaiming that the suppression of religion will be the exaltation of a purer morality? there are plenty of indications that the laws of morality are found to be as irksome as the dictates of religion. the first step is to cry out for a higher morality, to censure the morality of { } the new testament as imperfect and inadequate, as selfish and visionary. the next step is to question the restraints of morality, to clamour for liberty in regard to matters on which the general voice of mankind has from the beginning given no uncertain verdict. the last step is to declare that morality is variable and conventional, a mere arbitrary arrangement, which can be dispensed with by the emancipated soul. the literature which assumes that religion is obsolete does not, as a rule, suffer itself to be much hampered by the fetters of morality. the non-religion of the future is what, we are confidently told, increasing knowledge of the laws of sociology will of necessity bring about. should that day ever dawn, or rather let us say, should that night ever envelop us, it will mean the diffusion of non-morality such as the world has never known.[ ] [ ] appendix. [ ] appendix vi. [ ] _nineteenth century_, june . [ ] appendix vii. [ ] appendix viii. [ ] _journal intime_, ii. [ ] _modern essays_. [ ] appendix ix. [ ] tennyson, _wages_. [ ] appendix x. { } iii the religion of the universe 'whither shall i go from thy spirit? or whither shall i flee from thy presence.'--psalm cxxxix. . 'do i not fill heaven and earth? saith the lord.'--jeremiah xxiii. . 'the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.'-- kings viii. . 'in him we live, and move, and have our being.'--acts xvii. . 'one god and father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.'--ephesians iv. . 'of him, and through him, and to him are all things: to whom be glory for ever. amen.'--romans xi. . 'that god may be all in all.'-- corinthians xv. . { } iii the religion of the universe among proposed substitutes for christianity, none occupies a more prominent place than pantheism, the identity of god and the universe. 'pantheism,' says haeckel, 'is the world system of the modern scientist.'[ ] pantheism, or the religion of the universe, is, in one aspect, a protest against anthropomorphism, the making of god in the image of man. it is in supposing god to be altogether such as we are, to be swayed by the same motives, to be actuated by the same passions as we are, that the most deadly errors have arisen. robert browning, in _caliban upon setebos_, represents a half-brutal { } being who lives in a cave speculating upon the government of the world, wondering why it came to be made, and what could be the purpose of the creator in making it. every motive that could sway the savage mind is in turn discussed: pleasure, restlessness, jealousy, cruelty, sport. 'because i, caliban,' such is the process of his reasoning, 'delight in tormenting defenceless animals, or would crush any one that interfered with my comfort, or do things because my taskmaster obliges me to do them, so must it be with him who made the world.' with great grotesqueness, but with marvellous power, the degraded monster argues as to the reasons which could have prompted the unseen ruler to frame the earth and its inhabitants. everything that he attributes to god is in keeping with his own base nature. what is the explanation of the horrors which have been perpetrated in the name of god? the sacrifice of human { } beings, of vanquished enemies, or of the nearest and the dearest, the agonies of self-torture, did not these originate in the transference to the invisible god of the emotions and principles by which men were guiding their own lives? they had no notion of forbearance and forgiveness and patience, therefore they did not think that there could be forgiveness with god. they were to be turned aside from their fierce, revengeful purposes by bribes and by the protracted sufferings of their foes, therefore they thought that god might be bribed by gifts or propitiated by pains. what they were on earth, delighting in bloodshed and conquest and revelry, that, they supposed, must be the being or the beings who ruled in the world unseen. i god is not as man is, this was a lesson which ancient prophets struggled to teach. he is not a man that he should lie, or a son { } of man that he should repent. he is not to be conceived as influenced by the petty hopes and fears and jealousies which influence the mass of mortals. 'my thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the lord. for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' he is infinitely exalted above the best and wisest of his children and to see in him only their likeness is not to see him aright. it is not to be denied that the writers of the old testament employ anthropomorphic language to vivify the justice and goodness of the eternal. they speak of his eyes and of his face, of his hands and of his arm and of his voice. they speak of him walking in the garden and smelling a sweet savour. they speak of him repenting and being jealous and coming down to see what is done on earth. such figures, however, as a rule, have a force { } and an appropriateness which never can become obsolete or out of date. they even heighten the majesty and spotless holiness of god. they are felt to be, at most, words struggling to express what no words can ever convey: they are the readiest means of impressing on the dull understanding of men their practical duty, of letting them know with what purity and righteousness they have to do. it is not in such figures that any harm can ever lie. the error of taking literally such phrases as 'hands' or 'arm' or 'voice' is not very prevalent, but the error of framing god after our moral image is not distant or imaginary. there is a mode of speaking about divine purposes and divine motives which must jar on those who have begun to discern the divine majesty, to whom the thought of the all-embracing presence has become a reality. { } ii the representation of the almighty and eternal as one of ourselves, as animated by the lowest passions and paltriest prejudices of mankind, as a 'magnified and non-natural' human being, is recognised as ludicrously inadequate and terribly distorted. the representation of the creator as 'sitting idle at the outside of the universe and seeing it go,' as having brought it into being and afterwards left it to itself, as mingling no more in its events and evolution, is utterly discarded. it is, however, to such representations that the assaults of modern critics are directed, and in the overthrow of such representations it is imagined that christianity itself is overthrown. the assailants maintain that christianity in attributing personality to god makes him in the image of man, and separates him from the universe. but what is meant by personality? it does not mean a { } being no higher than man, with the limitations and imperfections of man.[ ] mr. herbert spencer, who would not ascribe personality to god, yet affirmed that the choice was not between personality and something lower than personality, but between personality and something higher. 'is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion?'[ ] the description of personality given by the author of the _riddle of the universe_ would be repudiated by every educated christian. 'the monistic idea of god, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognises the divine spirit in all things. it can never recognise in god a "personal being," or, in other words, an individual of limited extension in space, or even of human form. god is everywhere.'[ ] that conclusion,--we { } are not concerned with the steps by which the conclusion is reached,--does not strike one as a modern discovery. in what authoritative statement of christian doctrine god is defined as _not_ being everywhere, or 'an individual of limited extension in space, or even of human form,' we are unaware. there is apparent misunderstanding in the supposition that we have to take our choice between god as entirely severed from the world, and god existing in the world. god, it is asserted in current phraseology, cannot be both immanent and transcendent; he cannot be both in the world and above it. 'in theism,' so haeckel draws out the comparison, 'god is opposed to nature as an extra-mundane being, as creating and sustaining the world, and acting upon it from without, while in pantheism god, as an intra-mundane being, is everywhere identical with nature itself, and is operative within the world as "force" or { } "energy."'[ ] if there is no juggling with words here, it can hardly be juggling with words to point out that so far as 'space' goes, an intra-mundane being, rather than an extra-mundane, is likely to be 'limited in extension.' iii the imagination that the christian god is a personality like ourselves, and is to be found only above and beyond the world, finds perhaps its strangest expression in some of the writings of that ardent lover of nature, the late richard jefferies. 'i cease,' so he writes in _the story of my heart_, 'to look for traces of the deity in life, because no such traces exist. i conclude that there is an existence, a something higher than soul, higher, better, and more perfect than deity. earnestly i pray to find this something better than a god. there is something superior, higher, more good. for this i search, labour, { } think, and pray.... with the whole force of my existence, with the whole force of my thought, mind, and soul, i pray to find this highest soul, this greater than deity, this better than god. give me to live the deepest soul-life now and always with this soul. for want of words i write soul, but i think it is something beyond soul.' could anything be more pathetic or, at the same time, more self-refuting? how can anything be greater than the infinite, more enduring than the eternal, better than the all-pure and all-perfect? it could be only the god of unenlightened, unchristian teaching, whom he rejected. the god whom he sought must be not only in but beyond and above all created or developed things. it was, indeed, the higher than the highest that he worshipped. it was for god, for the living god, that his eager soul was athirst, and it is in god, the living god, that his eager soul is now, we humbly trust, for ever satisfied. { } iv 'the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him.' 'whither shall i go from thy spirit? or whither shall i flee from thy presence?' 'my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways saith the lord.' 'in him we live and move and have our being.' 'of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory for ever. amen.'[ ] now it cannot be denied that some who have striven to express after this fashion the unutterable majesty and the universal presence of god, who have endeavoured to demonstrate that god is in all things, and that all things are in god, have at times failed to make their meaning plain. either from the obscurity of their own language, or from the obtuseness of their readers, they have been considered atheists. while vehemently asserting that god is { } everywhere, they have been taken to mean that god is nowhere. the actual conclusion to be drawn from the treatises of spinoza, the reputed founder of modern pantheism, is still undecided. but no one now would brand him with the name of atheist. he was excommunicated by jews and denounced by christians, yet there are many who think that his aim, his not unsuccessful aim, was to establish faith in the unseen and eternal on a basis which could not be shaken. so far from denying god, he was, according to one of the greatest of german theologians, 'a god-intoxicated man.' 'offer up reverently with me a lock of hair to the manes of the holy, repudiated spinoza! the high world-spirit penetrated him: the infinite was his beginning and his end: the universe his only and eternal love.... he was full of religion and of the holy spirit, and therefore he stands alone and unreachable, master in his art above the profane multitude, { } without disciples and without citizenship.'[ ] dean stanley went so far as to say that 'a clearer glimpse into the nature of the deity was granted to spinoza, the excommunicated jew of amsterdam, than to the combined forces of episcopacy and presbytery in the synod of dordrecht.'[ ] such a judgment is rather hard upon the divines who took part in that celebrated synod, but at any rate it indicates that the great philosopher, misunderstood and persecuted, was elaborating in his own way, this great truth, 'in him we live and move and have our being.' 'of him, and through him are all things.' v in their loftiest moments, contemplating the marvels of the heavens above and the earth beneath, devout souls have, wherever they looked, been confronted with the vision of god. 'what do i see in all { } nature?' said fénelon, 'god. god is everything, and god alone.' 'everything,' said william law, 'that is in being is either god or nature or creature: and everything that is not god is only a manifestation of god; for as there is nothing, neither nature nor creature, but what must have its being in and from god, so everything is and must be according to its nature more or less a manifestation of god.' it is the thought which has inspired poets of the most diverse schools, which has been their most marvellous illumination and ecstasy. now it is alexander pope: all are but parts of one stupendous whole whose body nature is, and god the soul. now it is william cowper: there lives and works a soul in all things and that soul is god. now it is james thomson of _the seasons_: these, as they change, almighty father! these are but the varied god. the rolling year is full of thee. { } now it is william wordsworth: i have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man a motion and a spirit which impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things. now it is lord tennyson: the sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains, are not these, o soul, the vision of him who reigns? * * * * * speak to him thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit can meet. closer is he than breathing and nearer than hands or feet. certainly, we may say, nothing atheistic in utterances like these: they are the utterances of lofty thought, of profound piety, of soaring aspiration, and of childlike faith. they have a pantheistic tinge: what is there to dread in pantheism? not much in { } pantheism of that kind: would there were more of it! but it will be observable that, in the instances cited, though god is in nature and manifesting himself through it, there is a clear distinction between nature and god. it may seem as if it were merely the sky, the sun, the stars, the ocean, that are apostrophised: in reality it is a life, a spirit, a power not themselves, in which they live and move and have their being: not to them, but to that, are the prayers addressed. and, we venture to think, it is scarcely ever otherwise: scarcely ever is the visible alone invoked: identify god as men will with the material universe, or even with the force and energy with which the material universe is pervaded, when they enter into communion with it, in spite of themselves they endow it with the life and the will and the purpose which they have in theory rejected. but the absolute identification of god and the universe, the assumption that above and { } beneath and through all there is no conscious righteousness and wisdom and love overruling and directing, _that_ is a belief to be resisted, a belief which enervates character and enfeebles hope.[ ] 'whoever says in his heart that god is _no more_ than nature: whoever does not provide _behind the veil of creation_ an infinite reserve of thought and beauty and holy love, that might fling aside this universe and take another, as a vesture changing the heavens and they are changed, ... is bereft of the essence of the christian faith, and is removed by only accidental and precarious distinctions from the atheistic worship of mere "natural laws."'[ ] 'in our worship we have to do, not so much with his finite expression in created things as with his own free self and inner reality ... all _religion_ consists in _passing nature by_, in order to enter into direct personal relation { } with him, soul to soul. it is _not_ pantheism to merge all the life of the physical universe in him, and leave him as the inner and sustaining power of it all. it is pantheism to rest in this conception: to merge him in the universe and see him only there: and not rather to dwell with him as the living, holy, sympathising will, on whose free affection the cluster of created things lies and plays, as the spray upon the ocean.'[ ] vi god is _not_ as we are, and yet he _is_ as we are. god is not made in the image of man, but man is made in the image of god. it is through human goodness and human purity and human love that we attain our best conceptions of the divine goodness and purity and love. 'if ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly father { } give the holy spirit to them that ask him?' picture to yourself what is highest and best in the human relationship of father and child: be sure that the heavenly father will not fall below, but will infinitely transcend, that standard. all the justice and goodness which we have seen on earth are the feebler reflection of his. it is by learning that the utmost height of human goodness is but a little way towards him that we learn to think of him at all aright. but the justice and the love by which he acts are different only in degree, and not in kind, from ours. when we think of god as altogether such as we are, we degrade him, we have before us the image of the imperfect; when we try to think of him under no image and to discard all figures, he vanishes into unreality and nothingness, but when we see him in christ, we have before us that which we can grasp and understand, and that in which there is no imperfection. { } if there is no god but the universe, we have a universe without a god. worship is meaningless, faith is a mockery, hope is a delusion. if the universe is god, all things in the universe are of necessity divine. the distinction between right and wrong is broken down. in a sense very different from that in which the phrase was originally employed, 'whatever is, is right.' nothing can legitimately be stigmatised as wrong, for there is nothing which is not god. 'if all that is is god, then truth and error are equally manifestations of god. if god is all that is, then we hear his voice as much in the promptings to sin as in the solemn imperatives of conscience. this is the inexorable logic of pantheism, however disguised.'[ ] 'i know,' says mr. frederic harrison, 'what is meant by the power and goodness of an almighty creator. i know what is meant by the genius and patience { } and sympathy of man. but what is the all, or the good, or the true, or the beautiful? ... the "all" is not good nor beautiful: it is full of horror and ruin.... there lies this original blot on every form of philosophic pantheism when tried as the basis of a religion or as the root-idea of our lives, that it jumbles up the moral, the unmoral, the non-human and the anti-human world, the animated and the inanimate, cruelty, filth, horror, waste, death, virtue and vice, suffering and victory, sympathy and insensibility.'[ ] where these distinctions are lost, where this confusion exists, what logically must be the consequence? honesty and dishonesty, truth and falsehood, purity and impurity, kindness and brutality, are put upon a level, are alike manifestations of the one or the all. it is said that in our day the sense of sin has grown weak, that men are not troubled { } by it as once they were. there is a morbid, scrupulous remorsefulness for wrong-doing, a desponding conviction that repentance and restoration are impossible, which may well be put away. but that sin should be no longer held to be sin, that evil should be wrought and the worker experience no pang of shame, would surely indicate moral declension and decay. were the time to come when, universally, mankind should commit those actions and cherish those passions which, through all ages in all lands, have gone by the name of sin, should become so heedless to the voice of conscience, that conscience should cease to speak, the time would have come when men, being past feeling, would devote themselves with greediness to anything that was vile, so long as it was pleasant, the bonds of society would be loosened and destruction would be at hand. the religion of the universe ignores the facts of life, the sorrow, the struggle, { } the depravity, the need of redemption. fortunately, human beings in general are still inclined to mourn because of imperfection or of baseness: still they are inclined at times to cry out, 'who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' and still they have the opportunity of joyfully or humbly saying, 'i thank god through jesus christ our lord.' 'and now at this day,' listen to the ungrudging admission of perhaps the most earnest english apostle of pantheism, mr. allanson picton: 'we of all schools, whether orthodox or heterodox so-called, whether believers or unbelievers in supernatural revelation, all who seek the revival of religion, the exaltation of morality, the redemption of man, draw, most of us, our direct impulse, and all of us, directly or indirectly, our ideals from the speaking vision of the christ. such a claim is justified, not merely by the spiritual power still remaining in the church, { } but almost as much by the tributes paid, and the uses of the gospel teaching made in the writings of the most distinguished among rationalists.... such writers have felt that somehow jesus still holds, and ought to hold, the heart of humanity under his beneficial sway. excluding the partial, imperfect and temporary ideas of nature, spirits, hell, and heaven, which the galilean held with singular lightness for a man of his time, they have acquiesced in and even echoed his invitation to the weary and heavy laden, to take his yoke upon them and learn of him. and that means to live up to his gospel of the nothingness of self, and of unreserved sacrifice to the eternal all in all.'[ ] if such is the conclusion of rationalism and of pantheism, how much more ought it to be the conclusion of christianity. the imagination of a god confined to times and places, visiting the world only occasionally, { } manifesting himself in the past and not in the present, ought to be as foreign to the christian church as to any rationalist or pantheist. be it ours to show that we believe in god who filleth all things with his presence, who is from everlasting to everlasting, that to us there is but one god the father, by whom are all things and we in him, and one lord, jesus christ, by whom are all things and we by him, that god has identified himself with us in jesus christ, his son. be it ours to lose ourselves in him. for, after all our questionings as to the government of the world, as to abounding misery and degradation, as to what lies beyond the veil for ourselves and for others, this is our hope and our confidence: 'god hath concluded all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all. o the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of god! how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. for who hath { } known the mind of the lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? for of him and through him and to him are all things: to whom be glory for ever. amen.' [ ] _riddle of the universe_. [ ] appendix xi. [ ] _first principles_. [ ] _confession of faith of a man of science_. [ ] _riddle of the universe_. [ ] appendix xii. [ ] schleiermacher. [ ] _st. andrews addresses_. [ ] appendix xiii. [ ] martineau, _hours of thought_, ii. p. . [ ] martineau, _hours of thought_, ii. p. . [ ] _faith of a christian_. [ ] _creed of a layman_, p. . [ ] _religion of the universe_. { } iv the religion of humanity 'and god said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'--genesis i. . 'when i consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? for thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honour.'--psalm viii. - thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. for in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. but now we see not yet all things put under him. but we see jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that he by the grace of god should taste death for every man.'--hebrews ii. , . { } iv the religion of humanity the position which religion, and especially the christian religion, assigns to man, to man as he ought to be, is very high. he is made in the image of god, he is a little lower than the angels, a little lower than god, he is a partaker of the divine nature. but as the corruption of the best is the worst, there is nothing in the whole creation more miserable, more loathsome, than man as he has forgotten his high estate and plunged himself into degradation. 'what man has made of man,' is the saddest, most deplorable sight in all the world. amid the awful splendour of the winning loveliness of nature, 'only man is vile.' that is the terrible { } verdict which may be pronounced upon him renouncing his birthright, surrendering himself to the powers which he was meant to keep in subjection. it is not the verdict to be pronounced on man as man, the child of the highest and the heir of all the ages. the appeal of religion, the appeal of christianity above all, has continually been, o sons of men, sully not your glorious garments, cast not away your glorious crown. i it is irreligion, it is unbelief, which comes and says, lay aside these fantastic notions as to your greatness: you are the creatures of a day: you belong, like other animals, to the world of sense, and you pass away along with them: a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast. banish your delusive hopes; confine yourselves to reality; waste not your time in the pursuit of phantoms: make the best of the world in { } which you are: seize its pleasures: shut your eyes to its sorrows: enjoy yourselves in the present and let the future take care of itself: follow the devices and desires of your own hearts in the comfortable assurance that there is no judgment to which you can be brought, save that which exists in the realm of imagination. listening to such whispers, obeying such suggestions, walking in such courses, the spectacle which man presents can be viewed only with compassion, with horror, or with disdain. his ideals, his aspirations, his self-sacrifices are only so many phases of self-deception. the natural conclusion to be drawn from denying the spiritual origin and eternal prospects of man must be that he is of no more account than any of the transitory beings around him, that, if he has any superiority over them, it is only the superiority of a skill with which he can make them the instruments of { } his purposes. with no glimpses of a higher world, with no inspirations from a spirit nobler than his own, he can hardly regard the achievements of heroism as other than acts of madness, he can be fired with no desire to emulate them, he cannot well be trusted to perform ordinary acts of honesty and morality, let alone extraordinary acts of generosity and magnanimity, should they come in collision with his objects and ambitions. unless above himself he can erect himself, how mean a thing is man! deny his divine fellowship, extirpate his heavenly anticipations, and it might seem as if no race on earth would be so poor as do him reverence. ii one thing is assumed by not a few, the absurdity of the almighty caring for such a race, and therefore the impossibility of the incarnation. 'which,' asks mr. frederic { } harrison, 'is the more deliriously extravagant, the disproportionate condescension of the infinite creator, or the self-complacent arrogance with which the created mite accepts, or rather dreams of, such an inconceivable prerogative? his planet is one of the least of all the myriad units in a boundless infinity; in the countless æons of time he is one of the latest and the briefest; of the whole living world on the planet, since the ages of the primitive protozoon, man is but an infinitesimal fraction. in all this enormous array of life, in all these æons, was there never anything living which specially interested the creator, nothing that the redeemer could care for, or die for? if so, what a waste creation must have been! ... why was all this tremendous tragedy, great enough to convulse the universe, confined to the minutest speck of it, for the benefit of one puny and very late-born race?'[ ] { } but is it not the fact that along with the discovery of man's utter insignificance, there has come the discovery of powers and faculties unknown and unsuspected, so that more than ever all things are in subjection to him, his dominion has become wider, his throne more firmly established? is it not the fact that the whole realm of nature is explored by him, is compelled to minister to his wants or to unfold its treasures of knowledge? is it not the fact that more than ever it can be said: the lightning is his slave: heaven's utmost deep gives up her stars, and, like a flock of sheep, they pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on. the tempest is his steed: he strides the air. and the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare 'heaven, hast thou secrets? man unveils me: i have none.'[ ] is it not the fact that deposed from his position of proud pre-eminence as centre of the universe, man has by his labours and his ingenuity reasserted his high prerogative { } to be lord of the creation? the printing-press, the railway, the telegraph, how have inventions like these invested him with an influence which he did not possess before! and is it not the fact that when most conscious of our nothingness before the immensities around us, when humbled and prostrate before the infinite of which we have caught a transitory glimpse, we are also most conscious of our high destiny, we are lifted above the earthly to the heavenly, we discern that, though we cannot claim a moment, yet eternity is ours? 'what, then, is man! what, then, is man! he endures but an hour and is crushed before the moth. yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains, not to this wild death element of time; that triumphs over time, and _is_, and will be, when time shall be no more.'[ ] { } man's place in the universe may, according to dr. alfred russel wallace, be nearer the centre of things than has so commonly come to be accepted. modern discovery, he maintains, has thrown light on the interesting problem of our relation to the universe; and even though such discovery may have no bearing upon theology or religion, yet, he thinks, it proves that our position in the material creation is special and probably unique, and that the view is justified which holds that 'the supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body of man.' and another, a convinced and ardent disciple of evolution, the late professor john fiske, argues that, 'not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of humanity is to be the glorious consummation of nature's long and tedious work.... man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among god's { } creatures.... the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of god's handiwork, the human soul.'[ ] if this be so, this conclusion arrived at by those who do not hold the ordinary faith of christendom, then the objection that the incarnation could not have taken place for the redemption of such a race as ours, in a world which is so poor a fraction of the infinite universe, falls to the ground; and the protest of a devout modern poet carries conviction with it: this earth too small for love divine! is god not infinite? if so, his love is infinite. too small! one famished babe meets pity oft from man more than an army slain! too small for love! was earth too small to be of god created? why then too small to be redeemed?[ ] man may, or may not, occupy a 'central position in the universe': other worlds may, { } or may not, be inhabited: this earth may be but a minute and insignificant speck amid the mighty all, this at least is certain, that not by mere magnitude is our rank in the scale of being to be decided, and that in the spirit of man will be found that which approaches most nearly to him who is spirit. 'the man who reviles humanity on the ground of its small place in the scale of the universe is,' according to mr. frederic harrison, 'the kind of man who sneers at patriotism and sees nothing great in england, on the ground that our island holds so small a place in the map of the world. on the atlas england is but a dot. morally and spiritually, our fatherland is our glory, our cradle, and our grave.'[ ] iii hence, one of the ablest attempts to supersede christianity is that which goes by { } the name of positivism or the religion of humanity, which sets man on the throne of the universe, and makes of him the sole object of worship. 'a helper of men outside humanity,' said the late professor clifford, 'the truth will not allow us to see. the dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us, and, as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure, of him who made all gods and shall unmake them. from the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the face of our father _man_ looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, "before jehovah was, i am." the founder of the organised religion of humanity was auguste comte, who died in the year . he held that in the development of mankind there are three stages: the first, the theological, in which { } worship is offered to god or gods; the second, the metaphysical, in which the human mind is groping after ultimate truth, the solution of the problems of the universe; the third, the positive, in which the search for the illusive and the unattainable is abandoned, and the real and the practical form the exclusive occupation of the thoughts. on sunday, october , , he concluded a course of lectures on the general history of humanity with the uncompromising announcement, 'in the name of the past and of the future, the servants of humanity, both its philosophical and practical servants, come forward to claim as their due the general direction of this world. their object is to constitute at length a real providence, in all departments, moral, intellectual, and material. consequently they exclude, once for all, from political supremacy, all the different servants of god, catholic, protestant, or deist, as being at once behindhand and { } a source of disturbance.' all religions were banished by the truly 'uncompromising announcement': they were all condemned as futile and unreal. the best that could be said of the worship of the past was that it directed 'provisionally the evolution of our best feelings, under the regency of god, during the long minority of humanity.' but the fact that religion will not be banished, that it must somehow find expression, never received fuller verification. we do not dwell upon the private life of comte, its eccentricities and inconsistencies, but this at least cannot be omitted: he practised a course of austere religious observances, he worshipped not only humanity at large, but he paid special adoration to a departed friend such as hardly the devoutest of roman catholics has ever paid to the virgin mary. positivism became, what professor huxley called it, 'catholicism _minus_ christianity.' comte laid down for the guidance of his { } disciples, who are potentially all mankind, rules which no existing religious communion can surpass in minuteness. the supreme object of worship is the great being, humanity, the sum of human beings, past, present, and future. but as it is only too evident that too many of these beings in the past and the present, whatever may be said about the future, are not very fitting objects of worship, humanity, the great being, must be understood as including only worthy members, those who have been true servants of humanity. the emblem of this great being is a woman of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms; and this emblem is to be placed in all temples of humanity and carried in all solemn processions. the highest representatives of humanity are the mother, the wife, and the daughter; the mother representing the past, the wife the present, and the daughter the future. these are in the abstract to be regarded as the guardian { } angels of the family. to these angels every one is to pray three times daily, and the prayers, which may be read, but which must be the composition of him who uses them, are to last for two hours. humanity, the world, and space form the completed trinity of the positivist religion. there are nine sacraments: presentation, initiation, admission, destination, marriage, maturity, retirement, transformation, incorporation. there is a priesthood, to whom is committed the duties of deciding who may or may not be admitted to certain offices during life, of deciding also whether or not the remains of those who have been dead for seven years should be removed from the common burial-place, and interred in 'the sacred wood which surrounds the temple of humanity,' every tomb there 'being ornamented with a simple inscription, a bust, or a statue, according to the degree of honour awarded.' the priests are to receive so comprehensive { } a training that they are not to be fully recognised till forty-two years of age. they are to combine medical knowledge with their priestly qualifications. three successive orders are necessary for the working of the organisation: the aspirants admitted at twenty-eight, the vicars or substitutes at thirty-five, and the priests proper at forty-two. the religion of humanity has a calendar, each month of twenty-eight days being in one aspect dedicated to some social relation, and in another to some famous man representing some phase of human progress: moses, homer, aristotle, cæsar, st. paul, gutenberg, shakespeare. each day of the year is dedicated to one or more great men or women, five hundred and fifty-eight in number, and the last day of the year is the festival of all the dead. 'our calendar is designed to remind us of all types of the teachers, leaders, and makers of our race: of the many modes in which the servants of humanity { } have fulfilled their service. the prophets, the religious teachers, the founders of creeds, of nations and systems of life: the poets, the thinkers, the artists, kings, warriors, statesmen and rulers: the inventors, the men of science and of all useful arts.... every day of the positivist year is in one sense a day of the dead, for it recalls to us some mighty teacher or leader who is no longer on earth.... but the three hundred and sixty-four days of the year's calendar have left one great place unfilled.... those myriad spirits of the forgotten dead, whom, no man can number, whose very names were unknown to those around them in life, the fathers and the mothers, the husbands and the wives, the brothers and the sisters, the sturdy workers and the fearless soldiers in the mighty host of civilisation--shall we pass them by? ... it is those whom to-night we recall, all those who have lived a life of usefulness in their generation, though { } they tugged as slaves at the lowest bank of oars in the galley of life, though they were cast unnoticed into the common grave of the outcast, all whose lives have helped and not hindered the progress of humanity, we recall them all to-night.'[ ] iv the religion of humanity has numbered among its adherents, in part or in whole, several celebrated persons in this country, such as richard congreve, dr. bridges, professor beesley, cotter morison, george eliot. but at present it has no more eloquent and earnest advocate than mr. frederic harrison, who, in _the creed of a layman_, and several other recent volumes, has passionately proclaimed its principles. for more than fifty years he has been its apostle: 'every other aim or occupation has been subsidiary and instrumental to this.'[ ] it { } is true that in some points he has retained his independence, and while those outside accuse him of fanaticism, some of his fellow-believers suspect him of heresy.[ ] but he himself is assured that in the worship of humanity he has obtained the solution of his doubts[ ] and the satisfaction of his spirit, and on his gravestone or his urn he would have inscribed the words, _he found peace_.[ ] there is much that is marvellously elevated in thought as well as exquisite in expression, profoundly devout as well as brilliantly argued, in the narrative of his progress towards his present position. but when his vehement statements are carefully examined, it will almost inevitably be seen that all that is good and sensible in them is an unconscious reproduction of christianity. his negations disappear: the affirmations which he makes are those which the church has always { } maintained. the faith of his childhood permeates and strengthens and beautifies the creed which he adopted in his maturer years. the unity of mankind, the memory of the departed, the necessity of living for others, these are no novelties in christianity. it is in christ that they have specially been brought to light, in him that they find their highest ratification, without him they remain unfulfilled, with him they attain to consistency and power. the great being, humanity, is only an abstraction.[ ] 'there is no such thing in reality,' principal caird reminds us, 'as an animal which is no particular animal, a plant which is no particular plant, a man or humanity which is no individual man. it is only a fiction of the observer's mind.' there is logical force as well as humorous illustration in the contention of dean page roberts, that there is no more a humanity apart { } from individual men and women than there is a great being apart from all individual dogs, which we may call caninity, or a transcendent durham ox, apart from individual oxen, which may be named bovinity.'[ ] nor does the geniality of mr. chesterton render his argument the less telling: 'it is evidently impossible to worship humanity, just as it is impossible to worship the savile club: both are excellent institutions to which we may happen to belong. but we perceive clearly that the savile club did not make the stars and does not fill the universe. and it is surely unreasonable to attack the doctrine of the trinity as a piece of bewildering mysticism, and then to ask men to worship a being who is ninety million persons in one god, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.'[ ] can it be doubted that the great being, { } the sum of human beings, is less conceivable, less worthy of worship than the great being, the god and father of our lord jesus christ?[ ] can it be doubted that the claim of humanity to worship is less credible if we exclude the perfect man, christ jesus, from our view? can it be doubted that the positivist motto, 'live for others,' gains a force and a meaning unapproached elsewhere from the life and death of him who said, 'the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many?' humanity knit together in one, purified from every stain, glorious and adorable, is a lofty and inspiring idea, but nowhere has it been disclosed save in the man christ jesus, the word made flesh, the brightness of the father's glory and the express image of his person. { } v dr. richard congreve owns that much of the religion of humanity exists already in the christian faith, but, in one respect, he asserts that the religion of humanity can claim to be entirely original. 'we accept, so have all men. we obey, so have all men. we venerate, so have some in past ages, or in other countries. we add but one other term, we love.'[ ] that is what distinguishes this new religion and proves its superiority to the old: its votaries have attained this new principle and mode of life: they love one another. the boldness of the claim may stagger us. we turn over the pages of the new testament. we see that love is the fulfilling of the law; is the end of the commandment; is the sum of the law and the prophets; is placed at the very summit of christian graces; is the bond of perfectness; { } is manifested in a life and a death which, after nineteen centuries, remain without a parallel. we recall the touching legend that in his old age the apostle s. john was daily carried into the assembly of the ephesian christians, simply repeating to them, over and over, the words, 'love one another. this is our lord's command, fulfil this and nothing else is needed.' we recall that in early centuries the sympathy and helpfulness by which christians of all ranks and races were united called forth from heathen spectators the amazed and respectful exclamation, 'see how these christians love one another!' recalling these things, we cannot but be startled that, in the nineteenth century of the christian era, a teacher should, with any expectation of being believed, have ventured to affirm that the great discovery which it has been reserved for the present day to make is that of loving one another. ignorance of christianity, misrepresentation { } of christianity, we may well call it: ignorance inconceivable, misrepresentation inconceivable: and yet, as we consider the state of christendom, do we not see what palliates the ignorance and the misrepresentation? have we not reason to confess that, if the commandment be not new, universal obedience to it would be new indeed? may the calm assurance that love is foreign to christianity not startle us into the conviction that we have forgotten what, according to our lord's own declaration, the chief feature of christianity ought to be? 'by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.' vi 'how can we,' it has been well said, 'be asked to give the name of religion of humanity to a religion that ignores the greatest human being that ever lived, and the very source from which the religion of humanity { } sprang?'[ ] man in himself, man so full of imperfections, man having no connection with any world but this, man unallied to any power higher, nobler than himself, is this to be our god? which is more reasonable: to set up the race of man, unpurified, unredeemed, worthless and polluted, as the object of adoration, or to maintain that 'man indeed is the rightful object of our worship, but in the roll of ages, there has been but one man whom we can adore without idolatry, the man christ jesus'?[ ] the religion of humanity, so called, would have us worship man apart from christ whom yet all acknowledge to be the glory of mankind, but we call on men to worship christ jesus, for in him we see man without a stain, we see our nature redeemed and consecrated, we see ourselves brought nigh to the infinite god. we adore humanity, but humanity { } in its purity: we adore humanity, but only as manifesting in the only begotten son the glory of the eternal father. thus we place no garland around the vices of the human race: thus we abase, and thus we exalt: thus are we humbled to the dust, thus are we raised to the highest heavens. apart from christ, the magnitude of the creation may well depress and overwhelm: apart from christ the human race is morally imperfect instead of being a fit object of blind adoration. seeing christ, we not only feel our inconceivable nothingness in presence of the infinite majesty, but we stand erect and unpresumptuously say, 'we wonder not that thou art mindful of those for whom that son of man lived and died, we are in him partakers of the divine nature. there thou beholdest thine own image.' made in the image of god, such is the ideal of man that comes to us from the beginning of his history; and such is the ideal { } that once, and once only, has been realised. '_ecce homo_! behold the man!' said pontius pilate, in words more full of significance than he knew, pointing to the victim of priestly hatred and popular fickleness. behold the man! man as he ought to be, the image of god. before that divine humanity we reverently bow, to that divine humanity we humbly consecrate ourselves, in fellowship with it alone we learn and manifest the true worth and dignity of man. one writing frantically to exalt mankind and to depreciate christianity, tells us how he sat on a cliff overhanging the seashore and gazed upon the stars, murmuring, 'o prodigious universe, and o poor ignorant, that could believe all these were made for him!' but the sight of a steamship caused him to rejoice at the triumph of art over nature, and to exclaim, 'if man is small in relation to the universe, he is great in relation to the earth: he abbreviates distance and time, { } and brings the nations together.' then he saw that man is ordained to master the laws of which he is now the slave; he believed that if man could understand this mission, a new religion would animate his life, and, in the strength of this revelation, the writer says that he sang in ecstasy to the waters and winds and birds and beasts, he felt a rapture of love for the whole human race, he resolved to preach the new gospel far and wide, and proclaim the glorious mission of mankind.[ ] on the whole the old gospel will be found as ennobling, as inspiring, as practical as the new. all that this new gospel aims at, we, as christians, already believe: and we possess a divine token, a sacred pledge which is foreign to it: we believe that a higher destiny is in store for us than even the construction of wonders of mechanical skill.[ ] stripped of all rhetoric, the conclusion of unbelief in god and immortality can only { } be 'man is what he eats': the conclusion of christianity, 'there is but one object greater than the soul, and that is its creator.' one in a certain place testified, saying, 'what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him? thou madest him a little lower than the angels: thou crownest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.' for in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. but now we see not yet all things put under him. but we see jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour. we see him who is our brother and our forerunner within the veil; and in his exaltation we behold our own.[ ] no vision of the future can surpass that which the christian church { } has cherished from the beginning, that we shall all 'come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the son of god, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of christ ... from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.' [ ] _creed of a layman_, p. . [ ] shelley, _prometheus unbound_. [ ] thomas carlyle. [ ] _man's destiny_, p. , [ ] aubrey de vere. [ ] _creed of a layman_, p. . [ ] frederic harrison, _creed of a layman_. [ ] _memories and thoughts_, p. . [ ] _memories and thoughts_, p. . [ ] appendix xiv. [ ] _creed of a layman_. [ ] appendix xv. [ ] _some urgent questions in christian lights_. [ ] _heretics_, p. . [ ] appendix xvi. [ ] appendix xvii. [ ] e. a. abbott, _through nature to christ_. [ ] frederick william robertson, _sermon on john's rebuke of herod_. [ ] winwood reade, _the outcast_. [ ] appendix xviii. [ ] appendix xix. { } v theism without christ 'ye believe in god, believe also in me.'--s. john xiv. . 'i am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the father but by me.'--s. john xiv. . 'he that hath seen me hath seen the father.'--s. john xiv. . 'neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'--acts iv. . 'he that abideth in the doctrine of christ, he hath both the father and the son.'-- s. john . { } v theism without christ by theism without christ is not meant a system like judaism or mohammedanism, but a modern school which maintains that faith in god becomes weakened and impaired by being associated with faith in jesus. there are those who cling with tenacity to the first article of the apostles' creed, 'i believe in god the father almighty,' but who reject with equal fervour the second article of the creed, 'and in jesus christ, his only son, our lord.' they resist with horror the suggestion that the world is under no overruling providence, or that the humblest human being is not regarded with the tender love of the infinite god: they rival the most { } mystical worshipper in the ardour of the language with which in prayer they address the father in heaven, but they refuse to bow in the name of jesus: they go to the father, as they think, without him: they assert that to look to him is virtually to look away from god. they are as hostile as we can be to the substitutes for christianity which we have been considering. they have no sympathy with those who loudly deny that there is a god, or with those who say that it is impossible to find out whether there is a god or not, or with those who think that the creator and the creation are one, that the universe is god, or with those who, not believing in any unseen and eternal god, insist that the proper object of the worship of mankind is man. in the proclamation of the existence of an all-wise and all-holy being, in the proclamation that he has made the world and rules it to its minutest detail, in the proclamation that { } there is a life beyond the grave, they are the allies of the christian church. but then they go on to argue, for those who hold these doctrines, christ is quite superfluous: to hold them in their purity christ must be dethroned and his name no longer specially revered. some may still wish to speak of him as among the great teachers of the world, but some, in order to preserve these precious truths unmixed, decline in a very fanaticism of unbelief to assign him even that position. i the declaration of our lord, 'no man cometh unto the father but by me,' has been a chief stumbling-block and rock of offence. are we to believe, it is asked, that only the comparatively few to whom the knowledge of jesus christ has come can possibly be accepted of the father? when the words were spoken the number of his disciples was exceedingly small. did he mean that the { } father could be approached only by that handful of people, that all beyond were banished from the divine presence and must inevitably perish? that this is what he meant both the friends and the foes of christianity have at times been agreed in holding. the friends have imagined that they were thereby exalting the claim of christ to be the one mediator. it may be a terrible mystery that the vast majority of the human race should have no opportunity of believing in him, should be even unacquainted with his name. we can only bow before the inscrutable decree, and strive with all our might, not only that our own faith may be deepened, but that the knowledge of christ may be diffused over all the earth, so that some here and there may be rescued. there is little wonder that such a view should have given rise to questionings and opposition, should have been rejected as inconsistent with mercy and with justice. it is an { } interpretation on which hostile critics have laid stress as incontestably proving the narrowness and bigotry of the christian creed. if we bear in mind who it is that is presumed to say, 'no man cometh unto the father but by me,' the misconception disappears. it is not merely an individual man, separate from all others, giving himself out as a wise and infallible teacher. he who makes the stupendous claim is one who by the supposition embodies in himself human nature in its perfection, who is identified with his brethren, who says, 'he that hath seen me hath seen the father.' the life which he manifests is the life of god. he is set forth as the way to the father: in mercy and in blessing the way is disclosed in him: it is not in harsh and rigid exclusiveness that he speaks, debarring the mass of mankind: it is in tender comprehensiveness, inviting all without distinction of race or circumstance, opening a new { } and living way for all into the holiest. it is the breaking down of all barriers between man and man, between man and god, not the setting up of another barrier high and insurmountable. when christ declares 'no man cometh unto the father but by me,' he is not declaring that the way is difficult and impassable, he is pointing out a way of deliverance which all may tread. so far from laying down a hard and burdensome dogma to be accepted on peril of pains and penalties, he is imparting a hope and a consolation in which all may rejoice. if we believe him to be the word of god made flesh, if we see in him the brightness of the father's glory, it becomes a truism to say that only through him can life and healing be imparted to mankind. when he himself says, 'i am the way, the truth and the life,' it is natural for him to add, 'no man cometh unto the father but by me.' it will { } be granted by all who believe in god that, apart from god, no soul of man can have life eternal. the most strenuous advocate of the salvation of the virtuous heathen will grant that their salvation does not descend from the idol of wood and stone before which they grovel. it is from the true god, the living god, that the blessing proceeds. it is his touch, his spirit, his presence which has consecrated the earnest though erring worship of the poor idolater. no one who believes in the infinite and eternal god could possibly say that the monstrous image whose aid is invoked by the devout heathen is itself the answerer of his prayer, the cause of his deliverance from sin, the bestower of immortality upon him. the utmost that can be said is that in the costly sacrifices, the painful penances, the passionate prayers which he presents to the object of his adoration, the almighty love discerns a longing after something nobler and better, { } and accepts the service as directed really, though unconsciously, to him. the feeble hands and helpless, groping blindly in the darkness, touch god's right hand in that darkness and are lifted up and strengthened.[ ] but it is the hand of god that they touch. it is from the one omnipotent god that every blessing comes: it is the one omnipotent god who turns to truth and life and reality every sincere and struggling and imperfect attempt to serve him on the part of those who know not his nature or his name. and what is true of god is equally true of christ, the manifestation of god. only grant him to be the incarnate word of god, and it becomes plain that salvation can no more exist apart from him than apart from the father. this word of god is the light that lighteth every man. whatever truth, whatever knowledge of the divine, anywhere { } exists is the result of that illumination. the sparks which shine even in the darkness of heathendom betoken the presence of that light, not wholly extinguished by the folly and ignorance of man. that is the one sun of righteousness which gives light everywhere, though in many places the clouds are so dense that the beams can scarcely penetrate. now, if that word has become flesh, if that light has become embodied in human form, we are still constrained to say, there is no true light but his, it is in his light that all must walk if they would not stray, there is no guide, no deliverer, save him. christ discloses, brings to view, all the saving health which has ever been, all the power of restoring, cleansing, healing, which has ever worked in the souls of men. the one power by which any human being, in any age or in any land, has ever been fitted for the presence of the all holy god, is made manifest in christ. 'neither is there { } salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.' we need have no hesitation in asserting that all who in any age or in any land, or in any religion, have come to the father must have come through the son of man, the eternal word made flesh. we do not contend, as has too frequently been contended, that beyond the limits of christianity, beyond, it may be, the limits of one section of christianity, there is no truth believed, no acceptable service rendered. we hail with gratitude the lofty thoughts and the noble achievements of some who do not in word acknowledge christ as lord. in the vision of the light that lighteth every man, we see how light can find its way to regions farthest from the fount of day.[ ] 'now,' as is well said by the present bishop { } of birmingham, who will hardly be accused of any tendency to minimise the claims of christianity, 'this is no narrow creed. christianity, the religion of jesus, is the light: it is the one final revelation, the one final religion, but it supersedes all other religions, jewish and pagan, not by excluding, but by including all the elements of truth which each contained. there was light in zoroastrianism, light in buddhism, light among the greeks: but it is all included in christianity. a good christian is a good buddhist, a good jew, a good mohammedan, a good zoroastrian; that is, he has all the truth and virtue that these can possess, purged and fused in a greater and completer light. christianity, i say, supersedes all other religions by including these fragments of truth in its own completeness. you cannot show me any element of spiritual light or strength which is in other religions and is not in christianity. nor can you { } show me any other religion which can compare with christianity in completeness of light: christianity is the one complete and final religion, and the elements of truth in other religions are rays of the one light which is concentrated and shines full in jesus christ our lord.'[ ] ii from whatever cause, whether as a reaction against the mode in which this great truth has been at times presented, there have been, and there are, attempts to supersede christianity because of its narrowness. religion must not be identified with any one name: god manifests himself to all, and no mediator is needed. theism, therefore, the worship of the one almighty and eternal being, not christianity, in which a human name is associated with the divine name, can alone pretend to be the universal religion, the { } religion of all mankind. it is not the first time that such an attempt to do without christianity and to do away with it has been made. in the eighteenth century there was a similar movement. to this day at ferney, near geneva, is preserved the chapel which voltaire erected for the worship of god, of god as distinguished from christ as divine or as mediator between god and man. voltaire thought that he could overthrow and crush the faith of christ, but he none the less erected a temple to god. the deists upheld what they called the religion of nature and repudiated revelation. _christianity not mysterious; christianity as old as the creation_, were among the works issued to show the superiority of natural religion, its freedom from difficulties, its agreement with reason, its universality. the most enduring memorial of the controversy is bishop butler's _analogy of religion to the constitution and course of nature_, { } in which it was argued that the natural religion of the deists was beset by as many difficulties as the revelation of the christians, that those who were not hindered from believing in god by the problems which nature presented need not be staggered by the problems which were presented by christianity. bishop butler's argument was directed against a special set of antagonists, an argument, it may be said, of little avail against the scepticism of the present day. the argument seems to have been unanswerable by those to whom it was addressed. the grounds on which they rejected the revelation of christ were shown to be inadequate. when they accepted this or that article of natural religion, they had accepted what was as difficult of belief as this or that part of the revelation which they rejected. the mysteries which existed in the religion with which they would have nothing to do were in harmony with the { } mysteries which existed in the religion which they declared to be necessary for the welfare of society. that retort may be made with even more effect to those who so far occupy that same ground to-day. they rejoice to believe that there is a god, that he is not far off, that he communicates himself to their souls, that the love which we bear to one another is but a faint image of the love which he bears to us, that the noblest qualities which exist in us exist more purely, more gloriously in him, that we are in very deed his children and are called to manifest his likeness. it is by prayer, both in public and in private, both in congregations and alone with the alone, that his love and his help can be comprehended and used. he is no absent god: his ear is not heavy that it cannot hear, nor his arm shortened that it cannot save. with this belief we, as christians, have no dispute: we gladly go along with theists in asserting it: we { } only wonder at their unwillingness to go along with us a little further. for if god be such as they glowingly depict him, if our relations to him be such as they esteem it our greatest dignity to know, there is nothing antecedently impossible in the thought that one man has heard his voice more clearly, has surrendered to his will more entirely, than any other in the history of the ages and the races of mankind: nothing antecedently impossible in the thought that to one man his truth has been conveyed more brightly, more fully than to any other; that in one man the lineaments of the divine image may be seen more distinctly than in any other. if god be such, and if our relations to god be such, as theists describe, why should they shrink with distrust or with antipathy from a son of man who has borne witness to those truths in his life and in his death with a steadfastness of conviction which none other has ever surpassed; who, according { } to the records which we possess of him, habitually lived to do the father's will and died commending his spirit into the father's hands: a son of man who could truly be said to be in heaven while he was on earth? if god be such, and our relations to god be such, as theists describe, would not that son of man be the confirmation of their thoughts? would not his testimony be of infinite value on their side? would he himself not be the radiant illustration, the eagerly longed for proof of the truth for which they contend? they believe in god: why should it, on their own showing, be so hard to believe in christ? iii the theism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is in some respects different from the deism of the eighteenth. it is not so cold, the god in whom it believes is not so distant from his creatures. but it is not { } less vehement in its depreciation of christianity as a needless and even harmful addition to the religion of nature. conspicuous among the advocates of this modern theism have been francis william newman, miss frances power cobbe, and the rev. charles voysey. francis newman, in his youth, belonged, like his brother the famous cardinal, to the strictest sect of evangelicals, but, like the cardinal also, drifted away from them, though in a totally different direction.[ ] as he found the untenableness of certain views which he had cherished, the insufficiency of certain arguments which he had employed, he came with much anguish of mind to the conclusion that the whole fabric of historical christianity was built upon the sand. he rapidly renounced belief after belief, and caused widespread distress and dismay by a crude attack upon the moral perfection of { } our lord. his conviction that christianity had nothing special to say for itself, and that one religion was as good as another, seems to have been mainly brought about by a discussion which he had with a mohammedan carpenter at aleppo. 'among other matters, i was particularly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his people that our gospels are spurious narratives of late date. i found great difficulty of expression, but the man listened to me with much attention, and i was encouraged to exert myself. he waited patiently till i had done and then spoke to the following effect: "i will tell you, sir, how the case stands. god has given to you english many good gifts. you make fine ships, and sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons, and you have rich nobles and brave soldiers; and you write and print many learned books (dictionaries and grammars): all this is of god. but there is one thing that god has withheld { } from you and has revealed to us; and that is the knowledge of the true religion by which one may be saved."'[ ] but although newman was led to give up christianity, and practically to hold that one religion was as good as another, he clung tenaciously to what he supposed to be common to all religions, belief in god, a belief deep and ardent. the rationalism of the deists did not approve itself to him. 'our deists of past centuries tried to make religion a matter of the pure intellect, and thereby halted at the very frontier of the inward life: they cut themselves off even from all acquaintance with the experience of spiritual men.'[ ] he nourished his soul with psalms and hymns: he sought communion with god. he saw the weakness of morality without the inspiring power of religion. 'morals can seldom gain living energy without the impulsive force derived from spirituals.... however { } much plato and cicero may talk of the surpassing beauty of virtue, still virtue is an abstraction, a set of wise rules, not a person, and cannot call out affection as an existence exterior to the soul does. on the contrary, god is a person; and the love of him is of all affections by far the most energetic in exciting us to make good our highest ideals of moral excellence and in clearing the moral sight, so that that ideal may keep rising. other things being equal (a condition not to be forgotten) a spiritual man will hold a higher and purer morality than a mere moralist. not only does duty manifest itself to him as an ever-expanding principle, but since a larger and larger part of duty becomes pleasant and easy when performed under the stimulus of love, the will is enabled to concentrate itself more on that which remains difficult and greater power of performance is attained.'[ ] where shall we find a more { } vivid or more spiritual description of the rise and progress of devotion in the soul than in the words of this man, who placed himself beyond the pale of every christian communion? 'one who begins to realise god's majestic beauty and eternity and feels in contrast how little and transitory man is, how dependent and feeble, longs to lean upon him for support. but he is _outside_ of the heart, like a beautiful sunset, and seems to have nothing to do with it: there is no getting into contact with him, to press against him. yet where rather should the weak rest than on the strong, the creature of the day than on the eternal, the imperfect than on the centre of perfection? and where else should god dwell than in the human heart? for if god is in the universe, among things inanimate and unmoral, how much more ought he to dwell with our souls! and they, too, seem to be infinite in their cravings: who but he can satisfy them? thus a restless { } instinct agitates the soul, guiding it dimly to feel that it was made for some definite but unknown relation towards god. the sense of emptiness increases to positive uneasiness, until there is an inward yearning, if not shaped in words, yet in substance not alien from that ancient strain, "as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, o god; my soul is athirst for god, even for the living god."'[ ] mr. newman, in his later days, we understand, had modified the bitterness of his opposition to historical christianity and was ready to avow himself as a disciple of christ. miss frances power cobbe was another devout spirit who, with less violence but equal decisiveness, accepted theism as apart from christianity. in her case, even more visibly than in mr. newman's, it was not christianity which she rejected, but sundry distortions of it with which it had in her mind become { } identified. she wrote not a few articles so permeated with the christian spirit and imbued with the christian hope that the most ardent believer in christ could read them with entire approval and own himself their debtor. she took an active part in many philanthropic movements, and she was an earnest and eloquent advocate of faith in the divine ordering of the world and in human immortality. 'theism,' she said, 'is not christianity _minus_ christ, nor judaism _minus_ the miraculous legation of moses, nor any other creed whatsoever merely stripped of its supernatural element. it is before all things the positive affirmation of the absolute goodness of god: and if it be in antagonism to other creeds, it is principally because of, and in proportion to, their failure to assert that goodness in its infinite and all-embracing completeness.'[ ] 'god is over us, and heaven { } is waiting for us all the same, even though all the men of science in europe unite to tell us there is only matter in the universe and only corruption in the grave. atheism may prevail for a night, but faith cometh in the morning. theism is "bound to win" at last: not necessarily that special type of theism which our poor thoughts in this generation have striven to define: but that great fundamental faith, the needful substruction of every other possible religious faith, the faith in a righteous and loving god, and in a life of man beyond the tomb.'[ ] 'all the monitions of conscience, all the guidance and rebukes and consolations of the divine spirit, all the holy words of the living, and all the sacred books of the dead, these are our primary evidences of religion. in a word, the first article of our creed is "i believe in god the holy ghost." after this fundamental dogma, we accept { } with joy and comfort the faith in the creator and orderer of the physical universe, and believe in god the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. and lastly we rejoice in the knowledge that (in no mystic athanasian sense, but in simple fact) "_these two are one_." the god of love and justice who speaks in conscience, and whom our inmost hearts adore, is the same god who rolls the suns and guides the issues of life and death.'[ ] in an able paper, _a faithless world_, in which miss cobbe combated the assertion of sir james fitzjames stephen, that the disappearance of belief in god and immortality would be unattended with any serious consequences to the material, intellectual, or moral well-being of mankind, she forcibly said, 'i confess at starting on this inquiry, that the problem, "is religion of use, or can we do as well without it?" seems to me { } almost as grotesque as the old story of the woman who said that we owe vast obligations to the moon, which affords us light on dark nights, whereas we are under no such debt to the sun, who only shines by day, _when there is always light_. religion has been to us so diffused a light that it is quite possible to forget how we came by the general illumination, save when now and then it has blazed out with special brightness.' the comment is eminently just, but does it not apply with equal force to miss cobbe herself? the theism which she professed was the direct outcome of christianity, could never have existed but for christianity, was, in all its best features, simply christianity under a different name. that theism, as a separate organisation, gives little evidence of conquering the world is shown by the fact that, after many years, it boasts of only one congregation, that of the theistic church, swallow street, piccadilly, { } of which the rev. charles voysey is minister. mr. voysey was at one time vicar of a parish in yorkshire, where he issued, under the title of _the sling and the stone_, sermons attacking the commonly accepted doctrines of the church of england, and was in consequence deprived of his living. he is distinctly anti-christian in his teaching; strongly prejudiced against anything that bears the christian name: criticising the sayings and doings of our lord in a fashion which indicates either the most astonishing misconception or the most melancholy perversion. but his sincerity and fervour on behalf of theism are unmistakable. he describes it as _religion for all mankind, based on facts which are never in dispute_. the book which is called by that title is written for the help and comfort of all his fellowmen, 'chiefly for those who have doubted and discarded the christian religion, and in consequence have become agnostics or { } pessimists.' it is prefaced by a dedication, which is also a touching confession of personal faith: 'in all humility i dedicate this book to my god who made me and all mankind, who loves us all alike with an everlasting love, who of his very faithfulness causeth us to be troubled, who punishes us justly for every sin, not in anger or vengeance, but only to cleanse, to heal, and to bless, in whose everlasting arms we lie now and to all eternity.'[ ] mr. voysey has compiled a prayer book for the use of his congregation. the ordinary service is practically the morning or evening service of the book of common prayer, with all references to our lord carefully eliminated. the hymn _jesus, lover of my soul_ is changed to _father, refuge of my soul_; and the hymn just as i am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, o lamb of god, i come, { } is rendered: just as i am without one plea, but that thy lore is seeking me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, o loving god, i come. the service respecting our duty, and the service of supplication have merits of their own, but, except for the wanton omission of the name which is above every name, there is nothing in them which does not bear a christian impress. 'christianity _minus_ christ' would seem to be no unfair definition of their standpoint: and without christ they could not have been what they are. the father who is set forth as the object of worship and of trust is the father whom christ declared, the father who, but for the manifestation of christ, would never have been known. far be it from us to deny that the father has been found by those who have sought him beyond the limits of the church: this only we affirm that those by whom he { } has been found, have, consciously or unconsciously, drawn near to him by the way of christ. nothing of value in modern theism is incompatible with christianity: nothing of value which would not be strengthened by faith in him who said, 'he that hath seen me hath seen the father.' iv the strange objection to faith in christ is sometimes made that it interferes with faith in the father. the notion of mediation is regarded as derogatory alike to god and to man. there is no need for any one to come between: no need for god to depute another to bear witness of him: no need for us to depute another to secure his favour, as from all eternity he is love. the assumption, the groundless assumption, underlying this conception is that the mediator is a barrier between man and god, a hindrance not a help to fellowship with the divine: that one { } goes to the mediator because access to god is debarred. whatever may occasionally have been the unguarded statements of representatives of christianity, it is surely plain that no such doctrine is taught, that the very opposite of such doctrine is taught, in the new testament. 'we do not,' says m. sabatier, 'address ourselves to jesus by way of dispensing ourselves from going to the father. far from this, we go to christ and abide in him, precisely that we may find the father. we abide in him that his filial consciousness may become our own; that the spirit may become our spirit, and that god may dwell immediately in us as he dwells in him. nothing in all this carries us outside of the religion of the spirit: on the contrary, it is its seal and confirmation.'[ ] the whole object of the work of christ, as proclaimed by himself, or as interpreted { } by his apostles, was to show the father, to bring men to the father. 'believest thou not that i am in the father, and the father in me? the words that i speak unto you i speak not of myself: but the father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.' he 'came and preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nigh. for through him we both have access by one spirit unto the father.' to argue that to come to christ is a substitute for coming to god, is an inducement to halt upon the way, is an absolute travesty and perversion. to refuse to see the glory of god in the face of jesus christ is not to bring god near: it is to remove him further from our vision. that god should come to us, that we should go to god, through a mediator, is only in accordance with a universal law. 'why,' says one, who might be expected from his theological training to speak otherwise, 'why, _all_ knowledge is "mediated" even of { } the simplest objects, even of the most obvious facts: there is no such thing in the world as immediate knowledge, and shall we demur when we are told that the knowledge of god the father also must pass, in order to reach us at its best and purest, through the medium of "that son of god and son of man in whom was the fulness of the prophetic spirit and the filial life?" ... of this at least i feel convinced, that where faith in the father has grown blurred and vague in our days, and finally flickered out, the cause must in many instances be sought--i will not say in the wilful rejection, but--in the careless letting go of the message and personality of the son.'[ ] so far from the thought of the father being ignored or set aside by the thought of christ, we may rather say with s. john, 'whosoever denieth the son, the same hath not the father: he that confesseth the son hath the father also.' 'he { } that abideth in the doctrine of christ, he hath both the father and the son.' the homage that we render thee is still our father's own; nor jealous claim or rivalry divides the cross and throne.[ ] v the notion that theism as contrasted with christianity is a mark of progress and of spirituality is a pure imagination. 'more spiritual it may be than the traditional christianity which consists in rigid and stereotyped forms of practice, of ceremonial, of observance, of dogma: but not more spiritual than the teaching of christ himself, the end and completion of whose work was to bring men to the father, to teach them that god is a spirit, and to send the spirit of the father into the hearts of the disciples. it would be a strange perversity if men should reject christ in the name of spiritual { } religion when it is to christ, and to him alone, that they owe the conception of what spiritual religion is.'[ ] to preach the doctrines of theism without reference to christ is to deprive them of their most sublime illustration, their most inspiring force, and their most convincing proof. it is as christ is known that god is believed in. the attempt to create enthusiasm for god while banishing the gospel of christ meets with astonishingly small response. the 'religion for all mankind' makes but little progress, is, in spite of the labours of five-and-thirty years, confined, as we have seen, almost to a solitary moderately sized congregation. and whether or not the 'facts' on which the religion is based 'are never in dispute,' the religion itself is often-times disputed very keenly. modern assaults upon religious faith are, as a rule, directed quite as much against theism as { } against christianity.[ ] it is the love, or even the existence, of the living god, it is human responsibility, it is life beyond the grave, that are called in question as frequently as the resurrection of christ. the assurance that god at sundry times and in divers manners has spoken by prophets renders it not more but less improbable that he should speak by a son: the assurance that there is life beyond the grave for all renders it not more but less improbable that jesus rose from the dead. conversely those who believe in jesus believe with a double intensity in him whom he revealed. 'ye believe in god,' said christ, 'believe also in me.' for many of us now, it is because we believe in christ that we believe also in god. the almighty and eternal is beyond our ken: the grace and truth of jesus christ come home to our hearts. the word that was in the beginning with god and was god, { } is wrapt in impenetrable mystery: the word made flesh can be seen and handled: has wrought with human hands the creed of creeds in loveliness of perfect deeds, more strong than all poetic thought.[ ] and however it may be in a few exceptional cases, where people nominally renouncing christ desperately cleave to a fragment of the faith of their childhood, the fact remains that, where he ceases to be acknowledged, faith in the father whom he manifested tends, gradually or speedily, to vanish. vi the superiority of theism to deism simply consists in its being more christian. with the ideas of god which 'theists' hold, we can, as christians, most cordially sympathise. we can sincerely say, 'hold to them firmly, they are your life: let no man rob you of { } them by any vain deceit.' but we cannot help also asking, 'whence have you drawn those lofty ideas? where have you obtained so exalted a conception of the divine being in his mingled majesty and lowliness, in his inconceivable greatness, and his equally inconceivable compassion? we turn from the picture of god which, with so much labour, so much skill, so much moral earnestness, you have exhibited, and we behold the original in christ and his teaching. however unconsciously, it is his truth, it is his features, that you have reproduced. you have been brought up in the church of christ, or you have been brought into contact with its influences, and you have imbibed its teachings, perhaps more deeply than some who would not dare to question its smallest precepts. still, christ's teaching you have not outgrown, from christ himself you have not escaped. you cannot go from his presence or flee from his spirit. those { } views which you hold so strongly, which are to you the most ennobling that have ever been given of god and of religion, where is it that alone they are to be found? in places where christianity has gone before. no doubt, belief in god is not confined to christian countries: worship of the maker of heaven and earth exists where the name of christ has never been heard, but not such belief, _such_ worship, as that for which those persons contend. the god whom they adore will not be found anywhere save where christianity has penetrated. in this country it is the desperate clinging to one portion of the christian faith when all else has been abandoned: in other lands, in india, for example, where representatives of this way of thinking are not uncommon, it is the rapturous welcome of one of the sublime truths of christianity before which the idolatries of their forefathers are passing away. it is safe to call it a transition stage: { } it will either part with the fragment of christianity which it retains and become merged in doubt and speculation and unbelief; or it will include yet more of the christianity of which it has grasped a part: its belief in god will be crowned and confirmed by its belief in christ. for, speaking to those who cherish faith in the all-righteous and all-loving god as the only hope for the regeneration of mankind, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that where faith in christ fades, faith in god has a tendency to become vague and dim. he ceases to be thought of as a friend and help at hand: he is resolved into a creator infinitely distant or into a law, immovable, inexorable, a blind, unconscious fate. it is christ who gives life to the thought of god. it is the word made flesh that makes the eternal word more real. the attempt of the deists to purify religion by the preaching of a god who had not { } revealed himself, and could not reveal himself, in a son, came to nothing. voltaire's chapel at ferney still stands, but nobody worships in it. religion seemed to slumber: belief in god seemed to be decaying, when the preaching of the name and the work of christ again aroused it into life. and so it is now. whatever the ability, whatever the sincerity of the advocates of belief in god without reference to christ, it lacks motive-power, it lacks the missionary spirit. if we may judge by the past, theism without christ is a faith which will not spread, which will not lay hold on the labouring and the heavy laden: which may be maintained as a theory, but which will not be as a fire in the souls of men diffusing itself by kindling other souls. it is from christ alone, from christ the manifestation of what god is in heart and mind, from christ the manifestation of what man ought to be, from christ who said, 'in my father's house are many { } mansions: he that hath seen me hath seen the father,' that there comes with an authority to which, in face of the difficulties besetting the present and the future, the human soul will bow, with a soothing power to which the human spirit will gladly yield--it is from christ alone that there comes the divine injunction, 'let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in god, believe also in me.' it is as he is clearly seen and truly known that the clouds of error and superstition vanish from the face of god, and men are drawn to worship and to trust. [ ] longfellow, _song of hiawatha_. [ ] keble, _christian year_. [ ] bishop gore, _the christian creed_. [ ] appendix xx. [ ] _phases of faith_. [ ] _the soul: its sorrows and aspirations_. [ ] _the soul: its sorrows and aspirations_. [ ] _the soul_. [ ] _alone to the alone_. [ ] _alone to the alone_. [ ] _alone to the alone_. [ ] appendix xxi. [ ] _the religions of authority and the religion of the spirit_. [ ] j. warschauer, _coming of christ_. [ ] whittier, _our master_. [ ] r. b. bartlett, _the letter and the spirit_: bampton lecture. [ ] appendix xxii. [ ] tennyson, _in memoriam_. { } vi the tribute of criticism to christ 'for their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.'--deuteronomy xxxii. . 'he asked his disciples, saying, whom do men say that i, the son of man, am? and they said, some say that thou art john the baptist; some elias; and others jeremias or one of the prophets.'--s. matthew xvi. , . 'what think ye of christ? whose son is he?--s. matthew, xxii. . 'and there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for some said, he is a good man: others said, nay, but he deceiveth the people.'--s. john vii. . 'then said jesus unto the twelve, will ye also go away? then simon peter answered him, lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.'--s. john vi. , . { } vi the tribute of criticism to christ[ ] of the investigations of modern criticism the most serious are those which have concerned the person of our lord. it has been felt both by assailants and by defenders of the faith that, so long as his supremacy remains acknowledged, christianity has not been overthrown. other doctrines once considered all-important may fall into comparative abeyance: whether they are upheld or rejected or modified, matters little to christianity as christianity. but more and more it has grown clear that christ himself { } is the article of a standing or a falling church. if this doctrine is not of god, if he is not the way, the truth, and the life, christianity, whatever benefits may have been associated with its career, must be ranked among religions which have passed away. but so long as he is admitted to be the authority and standard in the moral and spiritual realm, so long as his name is above every name, the work of destruction is not accomplished. hence, renewed attempts have of late been made to tear the crown from his brow, to reduce him to the level of common men, to relegate him to the domain of myth, even to deny that he ever existed. although, in certain quarters at present, this last and extreme position is loudly asserted, it is hardly necessary to occupy much time in examining it, the trend of all criticism, even of the most rationalistic, being so decidedly opposed to { } it. to deny that he existed is commonly felt to be the outcome of the most arbitrary prejudice, the conclusions of whately's _historic doubts relative to napoleon buonaparte_ remaining grave and weighty in comparison. that jesus of nazareth lived and taught and was crucified, that, immediately after his death, his disciples were proclaiming that he had risen, and was their living inspiration, these are facts which can be denied only by the very extravagance of scepticism. and the admission of these simple facts implies a great deal more than is commonly supposed. i it is the fashion for hostile critics to say, 'christianity is not dependent upon christ: it is the creation of the semi-historical paul, not of the unhistorical jesus. there is at best no more connection between christendom and christ than between america and { } amerigo vespucci.[ ] see how much christians have been obliged to give up: see how belief after belief has had to be surrendered; see how they are now left with the merest fragment of their ancient creed, how evidently they will soon be compelled to part with the little to which they still desperately cling.' the conclusion is somewhat hasty and premature. the fragment which remains is after all the main portion of the creed of the early disciples. where that fragment is declared and held and lived in, there is the presence and the power of the christian faith. we need not trouble ourselves about sundry points which, at one epoch or another, have come to be denied or ignored: we need not say anything either for them or against them. we have to take our stand on what is accepted, not on what is rejected. and for the moment we may { } venture to take our stand only on what is accepted by the critics least biassed in favour of the traditional views of christendom. those who have come to imagine it to be a mark of advanced culture to break with all religion, to confine their attention to the fleeting present, to reject all that claims to have divine sanction, may listen with respect to the words of some who appear in fancied hostility to christianity. we are not assuming that because men are great in science or history or philosophy they must be great in spiritual things. their achievements in their own sphere, let us gratefully recognise; their uprightness, their single-heartedness, let us imitate; and if by chance they are sincere christians as well as able men, let us rejoice; if they are not professing christians at all and yet bear witness to the beneficial influence of christianity and the unique power of the words and character of christ, let us hail with { } pleasure their tribute of admiration as a testimony impartial and unanswerable to the pre-eminence of our lord, but let not our faith in god, our knowledge of our saviour, be dependent on their verdict. the faith of the gospel does not stand or fall with their approval or disapproval. in matters of criticism we do well to defer to scholars, in matters of science we do well to defer to men of science. but in matters pertaining to the inner life, to the development of character, to the knowledge of things pure and lovely and of good report, such men have no exclusive claim to be listened to. and it would be absurd to say that we cannot make up our minds as to whether christ is worthy to be revered and loved and followed until we have ascertained what is said about him by authorities in physics, or geology, or astronomy, by statesmen or novelists or writers of magazine articles, by inventors of ingenious machines or authors of { } sensational stories. if they speak scoffingly, if they do not recognise any sacredness in his spirit and life, it will be impossible for us to take him as our moral and spiritual guide. we might almost as well say that we will not trust the truthfulness or goodness of our father or mother or brother or friend of many years, unless, from persons eminent in literature or science or politics, we have testimonials assuring us that our affection for those with whom we are so closely associated is not a delusion. that is a matter, we should all feel, with which the great and distinguished, however justly great and distinguished, have really nothing to do. it is a matter for ourselves, a matter in which our own experience is worth more than the verdict of people, however learned in their own line, who do not, and cannot, know the friend or relative as we know him ourselves. still, we regard it as an additional { } compliment to his worth, and an additional confirmation of our own faith, if those who have been jealously scrutinising his conduct declare that they can find no fault in him.[ ] if it is made plain that the positive teaching of men unconnected with any church, untrammelled by any creed, is a virtual assertion of much that is most dear to christianity, if it is made plain that even where there is strong denial there is also much reference to christ, it may have more weight than the most cogent arguments or the most glowing appeals of orthodox divines or devout believers. the evangelists delight to record instances of unexpected, unfriendly, unimpeachable testimony to the power of christ. it is not only that the simple-minded people were astonished at his doctrine, but that the soldiers who were sent to silence him { } returned, smitten with amazement, saying, 'never man spake like this man.' it is not only that a grateful penitent washed his feet with tears, but that the unprincipled governor who sentenced him to death declared 'i find in him no fault at all.' it is not only that an apostle confesses, 'thou art the christ the son of the living god,' but that the centurion who watched over his crucifixion exclaimed, 'certainly this was a righteous man: this was a son of god.' it is similar unprejudiced witness that we may hear around us still, the witness of those who profess to have another rule of life than ours, and to be in no degree influenced by our traditions. we must not expect too much from this kind of evidence: we must not expect clear logical proof of every article rightly or wrongly identified with the popularly termed 'orthodox' creed. it would destroy the value of the evidence { } simply to quote orthodox doctrines in orthodox language. what we rather offer is the testimony of those who have resigned their grasp on much that we may deem essential. it is because in a sense we may call them 'enemies' that we ask them to be 'judges' in the great controversy. it is exactly because they are incredulous, or sceptical, or irreligious that we cite them at all. we confine ourselves to the utterances of men who are commonly cited as hostile to the commonly accepted faith of christ, or who do not rank among the number of his nominal disciples, or who at least have discussed his claims by critical and historical methods, endeavouring fairly to take into account all the facts which the circumstances warrant. we say to those who disown the authority of christ: it is not to the words of evangelists or preachers that your attention is sought: it is to the words of those whom you { } profess to respect, of those because of whose supposed antagonism to christianity you are rejecting him. we ask you to listen to them and to consider whether he of whom such men speak in such terms is to be so lightly set aside as you have fancied. ii it will be strange if, accepting even that scanty creed, we do not find ourselves speedily accepting much more. when it is heartily acknowledged that jesus of nazareth lived and died, and that his first followers found strength and irresistible power in the conviction that he had conquered death and the grave, it is of necessity that we go further. the extreme sceptics who maintain that he never existed are, for the purpose of controversy, wise in their generation, for, once his existence is admitted, his mysterious power begins to tell. we are confronted { } with an influence by which, consciously or unconsciously, we must be affected, a knowledge which we must acquire, an authority to which we must bow. let us not think merely of those who have, in utter devotion, yielded their hearts and souls to him through all the centuries, of the institutions and customs which owe their existence directly to him; let us think of the manifestations which are so often visible in those who do not suspect whence the manifestations come, let us think of the tributes of affection, of homage, of devotion which are paid by those to whom the ancient faith in his divinity appears to be an illusion or an impossible exaggeration. scarcely any critic of recent years has been regarded as more destructive than professor schmiedel. indignant attack after indignant attack has been made upon him for arguing that only nine sayings attributed to our lord can be accepted as genuine, that { } all else is involved in suspicion. what schmiedel really does maintain is that these nine sayings must of necessity be accepted as genuine, cannot be rejected by any sane canon of criticism, and that the acceptance of these nine sayings, these 'foundation-pillars,' compels the acceptance of a great deal besides. '_what then have i gained in these nine foundation pillars_? you will perhaps say "very little": i reply, "i have gained just enough." having them, i know that jesus must really have come forward in the way he is said to have done.... in a word, i know, on the one hand, that his person cannot be referred to the region of myth; on the other hand, that he was man in the full sense of the term, and that, without of course denying that the divine character was in him, this could be found only in the shape in which it can be found in any human being. i think, therefore, that if we knew no more we should { } know by no means little about him. but as a matter of fact the foundation-pillars are but the starting-point for our study of the life of jesus.'[ ] and this study, he concludes, gives us nothing less than 'pretty well the whole bulk of jesus' teaching, in so far as its object is to explain in a purely religious and ethical way what god requires of man and wherein man requires comfort and consolation from god.' the standpoint of professor schmiedel is not the standpoint of the church as a whole: he fearlessly and aggressively endeavours to remove any misconception on that subject: all the more remarkable that, renouncing so much, he incontrovertibly establishes so much, incontrovertibly establishes, we may not unreasonably contend, a great deal more than he admits: he cannot, we may think, stop logically where he does. all this may, or may not, be legitimately argued: there can { } be no doubt that one whose dislike of traditional dogmas is excessive, and whose scrutiny of the gospel records is minute and unsparing, forces us to say of jesus, what manner of man is this? it is the same with the general tendency of modern criticism. from the day that strauss accomplished his destructive work, the figure of jesus as a historical reality has been more and more endowed with power.[ ] no age has so occupied itself with him, none has so endeavoured to recall the features of his character, to apply his teachings to the solution of social questions, as this age of ruthless inquiry. the inquirers may have abjured tradition, but almost without exception they have profoundly reverenced, if they have not actually worshipped, jesus of nazareth, and they have found in his gospel moral and spiritual light and life. { } some thirty years ago, m. andré lefèvre, a fervid disciple of materialism, an uncompromising and bitter opponent of every symptom of religious manifestation, could not help discerning 'with the clairvoyance of hatred,' the influence of christianity in modern thought. 'descartes, leibnitz, locke, condillac, newton, bonnet, kant, hegel, spinoza himself, toland and priestley, rousseau, all are christians somewhere.... voltaire himself has not completely eliminated the virus: his deism is not exempt from it.'[ ] the same thing is still occurring. in the most unexpected quarters we find the fascination of christ remaining. men not acknowledging themselves to be his followers, defiantly proclaiming that they are not his followers, that they can hardly be even interested in him, are yet perpetually returning, in what they themselves will confess as their higher moments, to the thought of { } him, trying to make plain why it is that for them there is in him no beauty that they should desire him. for example, this is how mr. h. g. wells, the popular author of so many imaginative works, attempts frankly to explain his attitude: 'i hope i shall offend no susceptibilities when i assert that this great and very definite personality in the hearts and imaginations of mankind does not, and never has, attracted me. it is a fact i record about myself without aggression or regret. i do not find myself able to associate him in any way with the emotion of salvation.' but mr. wells goes on to say: 'i admit the splendid imaginative appeal in the idea of a divine human friend and mediator. if it were possible to have access by prayer, by meditation, by urgent outcries of the soul, to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses, who stooped down from the light, who was at once great and little, limitless in power { } and virtue, and one's very brother; if it were possible by sheer will in believing to make and make one's way to such a helper, who would refuse such help? but i do not find such a being in christ. i do not find, i cannot imagine such a being. i wish i could. to me the christian christ seems not so much a humanised god as an incomprehensibly sinless being, neither god nor man. his sinlessness wears his incarnation like a fancy dress, all his white self unchanged. he had no petty weaknesses. now the essential trouble of my life is its petty weaknesses. if i am to have that love, that sense of understanding fellowship which is, i conceive, the peculiar magic and merit of this idea of a personal saviour, then i need some one quite other than this image of virtue, this terrible and incomprehensible galilean with his crown of thorns, his bloodstained hands and feet. i cannot love him any more than i can love a man { } upon the rack.' 'the christian's christ is too fine for me, not incarnate enough, not flesh enough, not earth enough. he was never foolish and hot-eared and inarticulate, never vain, he never forgot things, nor tangled his miracles.'[ ] there is no disputing about tastes; and it is impossible to refute one who tells us that he cannot see and cannot understand, though we may lament and be astonished at his disabilities. why a man upon the rack should not be loved, or why the prime qualification for the saviour of mankind should be the plentiful possession of petty weaknesses, or why it should be necessary for him to be sometimes foolish and to have a bad memory, or what necessary connection there is between hot-ears and the salvation of the world, need not detain us long. for in spite of this apparently curious longing for a deliverer who shall be weak and vain { } and forgetful and hot-eared, and foolish, and of the earth earthy, mr. wells shows us that the urgent outcry of his soul is for a being limitless in power and virtue and one's very brother; and though he says that he does not find such a being in christ, it is exactly what christians have in all ages been finding. 'we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in times of need.' iii the instance which we have cited is exceptional among modern doubters, among those who have deliberately set themselves without violent prejudice to study the claims of christianity. be it in poetry or prose, in scientific criticism or in imaginative { } biography, with remarkable unanimity, while stubbornly refusing to accept the creed of the church, they so depict him that the natural conclusion of their representation is, 'oh, come let us adore him.' there is scarcely any of them who would not sympathise with the admission and aspiration of b. wimmer in his confession, _my struggle for light_: 'i cannot but love this unique child of god with all the fervour of my soul, i cannot but lift up eyes full of reverence and rapture to this personality in whom the highest and most sacred virtues which can move the heart of man shine forth in spotless purity throughout the ages. even if many a trait in his portrait, as the gospels sketch it for us, be more legendary than historical, yet i feel that here a man stands before me, a man who really lived and has a place in history like that of no other man: indeed i feel that even the legends concerning him possess a truth in that they spring from the { } spirit which passed from him into his church. i know what i have to thank him for. i would in my inmost self be so closely united with him that he may live in my spirit and bear absolute sway in my soul. i will not be ashamed of his cross and i will gladly endure the insults which men have directed, and still often enough direct, against him and his truth.' that is the characteristic and dominant note of the more recent criticism. the almost universal conclusion is that the perfect ideal has been depicted in the christ of the gospels, and has been depicted because the reality had been seen in jesus of nazareth.[ ] is it not allowable to declare that the writers, let them say what they will about their rejection of the doctrine of the church concerning the incarnation and the atonement of christ, are practically his disciples, that the ardour of their faith in him not { } infrequently puts to shame the coldness of us who call him lord?[ ] there is scarcely extravagance in the assertion that, as we recognise the part which strauss and renan played, and the unconscious help which they rendered, 'we may well say now "_noster_" strauss and "_noster_" renan. they were, in their measure, and, according to their respective abilities, defenders of the faith.'[ ] while it is possible to lament that among christian apologists there are timid surrenders and faithless forebodings, it is yet more possible to reply that 'whereas our critics were at one time infidels and our bitter enemies, they are now proud of the name of christian and ready to be the friends, as far as that is permitted, of every form of orthodoxy in christianity.'[ ] the language in which, at any rate, they express their conception of him is sometimes { } more devout, more exalted, than the language which used to be employed by professed apologists. the hindu theist, protab chandra mozoomdar, who stood outside the fold of christianity, joyfully proclaimed, 'christ reigns. as the law of the spirit of heavenly life, he reigns in the bosom of every believer.... christ reigns as the recogniser of divine humanity in the fallen, the low, and the despicable, as the healer of the unhappy, the unclean, and the sore distressed. reigns he not in the sweet humanity that goes forth to seek and to save its kin in every land and clime, to teach and preach, and raise and reclaim, to weep and watch and give repose? he reigns as sweet patience and sober reason amid the laws and orders of the world; as the spirit of submission and loyalty he reigns in peace in the kingdoms of the world.... christ reigns in the individual who feebly watches his footprints in the tangled mazes of life. { } he reigns in the community that is bound together in his name. as divine humanity, and the son of god, he reigns gloriously around us in the new dispensation.'[ ] or listen to the rhapsody with which mrs. besant, once an atheist, now a theosophist, depicts his influence from age to age: 'his the steady inpouring of truth into every brain ready to receive it, so that hand stretched out to hand across the centuries and passed on the torch of knowledge, which thus was never extinguished. his the form which stood beside the rack and in the flames of the burning pile, cheering his confessors and his martyrs, soothing the anguish of their pains and filling their hearts with his peace. his the impulse which spoke in the thunder of savonarola, which guided the calm wisdom of erasmus, which inspired the deep ethics of the god-intoxicated spinoza.... his the beauty that allured fra { } angelico and raphael and leonardo da vinci, that inspired the genius of michael angelo, that shone before the eyes of murillo, and that gave the power that raised the marvels of the world, the duomo of milan, the san marco of venice, the cathedral of florence. his the melody that breathed in the masses of mozart, the sonatas of beethoven, the oratorios of handel, the fugues of bach, the austere splendour of brahms. through the long centuries he has striven and laboured, and, with all the mighty burden of the churches to carry, he has never left uncared for and unsolaced one human heart that cried to him for help.'[ ] when we read sentences like these by themselves we say, here is unqualified acceptance of the christian faith. and even when we are told that we must not take the sentences in their literal and natural meaning, that they apply not to him whose earthly { } career is sketched in the gospels, but to an ideal being evolved out of the writer's imagination, we are surely entitled to answer, it is of jesus that the words are spoken, whether their meaning is to be taken literally or figuratively; if they have any meaning at all, they indicate a being without a parallel. that there should be so extraordinary a conflict of opinion regarding him, that the greatest intellects as well as the simplest souls should hail him as divine, that the most critical should still find their explanations insufficient to account for the impression which he made upon his contemporaries and continues to wield to this day, at least renders him absolutely unique. men may disbelieve a great deal; they cannot disbelieve that this amazing personality has a place in the heart of the world which no other has ever occupied. the alleged imaginary ideal has had on earth only one approximate embodiment. nay, we are { } forced to confess, without the actual character disclosed from nazareth to calvary, the ideal would never have been conceived. iv robert browning has described in his _christmas eve_ a certain german professor lecturing upon the myth of christ and the sources whence it is derivable. but as the listeners wait for the inference that faith in him should henceforth be discarded, 'he bids us,' says the supposed narrator of the story, 'when we least expect it take back our faith': go home and venerate the myth i thus have experimented with. this man, continue to adore him rather than all who went before him, and all who ever followed after. this is a correct though humorous summary of much prevalent scepticism. while critics destroy with the one hand, they build up { } with the other; while they seem intent on rooting out every remnant of trust in christ, they frequently conclude by passionately beseeching us to make him our model and our king, our pattern and our guide. if there is anything which is calculated at once to arouse us who profess and call ourselves christians and to make us ashamed, it is that the diligence with which his example is followed, the earnestness with which his words are studied, by some whom we hold to have abandoned the catholic faith, throw into the shade the obedience, the love, the earnestness which prevail among ourselves. they who follow not with us are casting out devils in his name. it is with us, they are careful to say, and not with him that they are waging war. they may dispute the incidents of his recorded life: they may insist on reducing him to the level of humanity, but they also insist that in so doing they act according to his own { } mind, that they refuse, for the very love which they bear him, to surround him with a glory which he would have rejected. devoid of the errors which have led astray his successors, exalted far above the wisest and the best of those who have spoken in his name, it is the function of criticism to show him in his fashion as he lived, to sweep away the falsehoods which have gathered round him in the course of ages.[ ] we do not seek to read into the emotional language of such writers a significance which they would repudiate, but we are surely entitled to point out that in spite of themselves they are bringing their tribute of homage to the king of the jews, the king of all mankind. they grant so much that, it seems to us, they must grant yet more. we, at any rate, cannot stop where they deem themselves obliged to stop. we must go further, we hear other voices swell the { } chorus of adoration, we have the witness not only of those who, in awe and wonderment have exclaimed, 'truly this was a son of god,' but we have the witness of those who from heartfelt conviction are able to say, 'the life which i now live in the flesh i live by the faith of the son of god, who loved me and gave himself for me.' and to them we humbly hope to be able to respond, 'now we believe not because of the language of others, whether honest doubters or devout disciples, for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the christ, the saviour of the world.' 'restate our doctrines as we may,' to sum up all in the words of one who began his career as a teacher in the confidence that jesus of nazareth was merely a man, but whom closer study and deepening experience have brought to a fuller faith, 'reconstruct our theologies as we will, this age, like every age, beholds in him the way to god, the { } truth of god, the life of god lived out among men: this age, like every age, has heard and responds to his call, "come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and i will give you rest": this age, like every age, finds access to the father through the son. these things no criticism can shake, these certainties no philosophy disprove, these facts no science dissolve away. he is the religion which he taught: and while the race of man endures, men will turn to the crucified son of man, not with a grudging, "thou hast conquered, o galilean!" but with the joyful, grateful cry, "my lord and my god."'[ ] v he who was lifted up on the cross is drawing all men to himself, wise and unwise, friend and foe, devout and doubting, is ruling even where his authority is disavowed, is { } causing hearts to adore where intellects rebel. the patriotic english baron, simon de montfort, as he saw the royal forces under prince edward come against him, was filled with admiration of their discipline and bearing. 'by the arm of s. james,' he cried, recalling with soldierly pride that to himself they owed in great measure their skill, 'they come on well: they learned that not of themselves, but of me.' the church of christ, when confronted with the benevolence, the integrity, the zeal of some who are arrayed against her, may naturally say, 'they live well indeed: they learned that not of themselves, but of me.' 'you are probably,' was the homely expostulation of benjamin franklin with thomas paine, 'you are probably indebted to religion for the habits of virtue on which you so justly value yourself. you might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank amongst { } our most distinguished authors. for among us,' continued franklin satirically, 'it is not necessary, as among the hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.' the blows inflicted on christianity come from unfilial hands and hearts, from hands and hearts which have been strengthened and nurtured on christianity itself, from hands and hearts which, but for the lingering christianity that still impels them, would soon be paralysed and dead. the ideals which systems intended to supersede christianity set before them are, to all intents and purposes, only christianity under another name. where the ideals go beyond ordinary christian practice, they are only a nearer approximation to the supreme ideal which has never been fulfilled save in jesus christ himself. wherever there is truth in them which is not generally accepted, or which comes as a surprise, investigation { } will show that it is an aspect of christianity which christians have been neglecting, that it is a manifestation of the mind of christ, a development of his principles. look where we will, the men that are making real moral and spiritual progress are those who are in touch with him. their beliefs about him may not be accurate, their conception of his nature and work may be defective, but it is his name, his spirit, his power, it is himself that is the secret of their life. one part of his teaching has sunk into their hearts, one element of his character has mysteriously impressed them. they have touched the hem of his garment, the shadow of his apostle passing by has glided over them, and they have been roused from weakness and death. 'he that was healed wist not who it was, for jesus had conveyed himself away.' so it happened in the days of his flesh: so is it happening still: they that are set free may not yet know to whom { } their freedom is to be ascribed. now, as on the way to emmaus, when men are communing together and reasoning, jesus himself may be walking with them, though their eyes are holden that they do not know him. john stuart mill, whose acute intellect, whose spotless rectitude, whose public spirit, whose non-religious training naturally made him the idol of those to whom christianity was a bygone superstition, came in his later days, not indeed to accept the orthodox creed, but yet to stretch out his longing hand to christ, believing that he might have 'unique commission from god to lead mankind to truth and virtue.' george eliot, whose genius was ever labouring to fill up the void which the rejection of her early faith had made, consoled her dying hours, as she had inspired her most ennobling pages, with the _imitation of christ_. matthew arnold, most cultured of critics, joins hands with the most fervid of evangelists in maintaining that { } 'there is no way to righteousness but the way of jesus.' the name of christ--none other name under heaven given among men will ever prove a substitute for that. renouncing faith in christ, is there life, is there salvation for man to be found in the doctrines, the names, the influences which are so vehemently extolled? is there one of them which so satisfies the cravings of the heart, which enkindles such glorious hopes, which inspires to such holy living, which inculcates so universal a brotherhood, as christianity? is there one of them which, at the best, is more than a keeping of despair at bay, than a resolute acceptance of utter overthrow, than a blindness to the tremendous issues which are involved?[ ] will the culture which is devoted, and cannot but be devoted, exclusively to the outward, which imparts a knowledge of science or art or literature, be found sufficient to { } rescue men from the slavery of sin or from the torment of doubt? will the progress which is altogether occupied with the material and the physical, with providing better houses and better food and better wages, produce happiness without alloy and remove the sting and dread of death?[ ] will the reiteration of the dogma that we are but fleeting shadows, that there is nothing to hope for in the future, that we are all the victims of delusion, tend to elevate and benefit our downcast race? will the attempt to worship what has never been made known, what is simply darkness and mystery, be more successful in raising men above themselves than the worship of the righteousness and the love which have been made manifest in christ? will the attempt to supplant the worship of jesus christ, in whom was no sin, by the worship of humanity at large, of humanity stained with guilt and crime as { } well as illumined here and there with deeds of heroism, of humanity sunk to the level of the brutes as well as exalted to the level of whatever we may suppose to be the highest, seeing that there is really no higher existence with which to compare it--will this worship of itself, with all its baseness and imperfection, this turning of mankind into a mutual adoration society, make humanity divine? will even the assurance that far-distant ages will have new inventions, fairer laws, more abundant wealth be any deliverance to us from our burdens, any salvation from our individual sorrow and guilt and shame? can we to whom the likeness of christ has been shown, can we imagine that any of these efforts to answer the yearning of mankind for deliverance from the body of this death will prove an efficient substitute for him? and if we forsake him, it must be in one or other of these directions that we go. { } vi but the signs of the times are full of hope. in social work at home, in the progress of missions abroad, in revivals of one kind and another, in growing reverence for holy things, in a renewed interest in religion as the most vital of all topics, even in strange spiritual manifestations not within the church, we have, amid all that is discouraging and depressing, indication of the coming kingdom. the cry, 'back to christ,' with all the truth that is in it, is only half a truth if it does not also mean 'forward to christ.' he is before us as well as behind us, and the hope of the world is the gathering together of all things in him. should there be, as there has been over and over again in days gone by, a widespread unbelief, a rejection of his divine revelation, of this we may be sure--it will be only for a time. when the sceptical physician, in tennyson's poem, murmured: 'the good lord jesus has had his day,' { } the believing nurse made the comment: 'had? has it come? it has only dawned: it will come by and by.' a thought most sad, though most inspiring. 'only dawned.' why is christianity after all these centuries only beginning to be manifested? it is at least partly because of the apathy, the divisions, the evil lives of us who profess and call ourselves christians, because we have wrangled about the secondary and the comparatively unimportant, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, because we have so left to those beyond the church the duty of proclaiming and enforcing principles which our lord and his apostles put in the forefront of their teaching. we have narrowed the kingdom of christ, we have claimed too little for him, we have forgotten that he has to do with the secular as well as with the spiritual, that he must be king of the nation as well as of the church. but now in the growing { } prominence of social questions, which so many fear as an evidence of the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one another are no small part of the kingdom of christ? for all sorts and conditions of men, for masters and servants, for rulers and ruled, for employers and employed, there is ever accumulating proof that only as they bear themselves towards each other in the spirit of the new testament can there be true harmony and mutual respect; that only, in short, as the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our lord and of his christ will men in reality bear one another's burdens; that only as the everlasting gospel of the everlasting love prevails will all strife and contention, whether personal or political or ecclesiastical or national, come to an end; that only as men enter into the fellowship of that son of man who came not to be { } ministered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many will the glorious vision of old be fulfilled: i saw in the night vision, and behold one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him. and there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages shall serve him. his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. [ ] in this lecture are included some paragraphs from a sermon long out of print, _the witness of scepticism to christ_, preached before the synod of lothian and tweeddale. [ ] g. lommel, _jesus von nazareth_ (quoted in pfannmüller's _jesus im urteil der jahrhunderte_). [ ] appendix xxiii. [ ] _jesus in modern criticism_. [ ] h. weinel, _jesus im neunzehnten jahrhundert_. [ ] quoted in e. naville, _le témoignage du christ_. [ ] _first and last things: a confession of faith and rule of life_. [ ] appendix xxiv. [ ] appendix xxv. [ ] _lux hominum_, preface. [ ] _lux hominum_, p. . [ ] _the oriental christ_. [ ] _esoteric christianity_. [ ] appendix xxvi. [ ] j. warschauer, _the new evangel_. [ ] appendix xxvii. [ ] appendix xxviii. { } appendices appendix i 'i hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in defence of real christianity such as used in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages) to have an influence upon men's beliefs and actions. to offer at the restoring of that would indeed be a wild project: it would be to dig up foundations: to destroy at one blow all the wit and half the learning of the kingdom, to break the entire frame and constitution of things, to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the professors of them; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, and shops into deserts; and would be full as absurd as the proposal of horace, where he advises the romans all in a body, to leave their city, and seek a new seat in some remote part of the world, by way of cure for the corruption of their manners.'--dean swift, _an argument to prove that the abolishing of christianity in england may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences_. { } appendix ii while the state of our race is such as to need all our mutual devotedness, all our aspiration, all our resources of courage, hope, faith, and good cheer, the disciples of the christian creed and morality are called upon, day by day, to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling and so forth. such exhortations are too low for even the wavering mood and quacked morality of a time of theological suspense and uncertainty. in the extinction of that suspense and the discrediting of that selfish quacking i see the prospect for future generations of a purer and loftier virtue, and a truer and sweeter heroism than divines who preach such self-seeking can conceive of.'--harriet martineau, _autobiography_, vol. ii. p. . 'noble morality is classic morality, the morality of greece, of rome, of renaissance italy, of ancient india. but christian morality is slave morality _in excelsis_. for the essence of christian morality is the desire of the individual to be saved: his consciousness of power is so small that he lives in hourly peril of damnation and death and yearns thus for the arms of some saving grace.'--_f. nietzsche_, by a. r. orage, p. . { } 'they [christians] have never learnt to love, to think, to trust. they have been nursed and bred and swaddled and fed on fear. they are afraid of death: they are afraid of truth: they are afraid of human nature: they are afraid of god.... they deal in a poor kind of old wives' fables, of lackadaisical dreams, of discredited sorcery, and white magic, and call it religion and the holy of holies. they wander about in a sickly soil of intellectual moonshine, where they mistake the dense and sombre shadows for substances. they want to stop the clocks of time that it may never be day, and to hoodwink the eyes of the nations that they may lead the people as so many blind.'--robert blatchford, _clarion_, march , . { } appendix iii 'in georgia, indeed, as the jesuits had found it in south america, the vicinity of a white settlement would have proved the more formidable obstacle to the conversion of the indian. when tounchichi was urged to listen to the doctrines of christianity, he keenly replied, "why, there are christians at savannah! there are christians at frederica!" nor was it without good apparent reason that the poor savage exclaimed, "christian much drunk! christian beat men! christian tell lies! devil christian! me no christian!"'--southey, _life of john wesley_, vol. i. p. . 'i was then carried in spirit to the mines where poor oppressed people were digging rich treasures for those called christians, and heard them blaspheme the name of christ, at which i was grieved, for to me his name was precious. i was then informed that these heathens were told that those who oppressed them were the followers of christ, and they said among themselves, "if christ directed them to use us in this sort, this christ is a cruel tyrant."'--_journal of john woolman_, p. . { } appendix iv 'what many upright and ardent souls have rejected is a misconception, a caricature, a subjective christianity of their own, a traditional delusion, which no more resembles real christianity than the conventional christ of the painted church window resembles jesus christ of nazareth. it is true that at this moment the great majority of the people of this country never go to any place of worship, and this is yet more the case on the continent of europe. does it in the least degree indicate that the masses of the european nations have weighed christianity in the balance and found it wanting? nothing of the sort. the overwhelming majority of them have not the faintest conception of what christianity is. i myself have met a great number of so-called "agnostics" and "atheists" in our universities, among our working-men, and in society, but i have never yet met one who had rejected the christianity of christ.'--hugh price hughes, preface to _ethical christianity_. { } appendix v 'wheresoever christianity has breathed it has accelerated the movement of humanity. it has quickened the pulses of life, it has stimulated the incentives of thought, it has turned the passions into peace, it has warmed the heart into brotherhood, it has fanned the imagination into genius, it has freshened the soul into purity. the progress of christian europe has been the progress of mind over matter. it has been the progress of intellect over force, of political right over arbitrary power, of human liberty over the chains of slavery, of moral law over social corruption, of order over anarchy, of enlightenment over ignorance, of life over death. as we survey this spectacle of the past, we are impressed that this study of history is the strongest evidence for god. we hear no argument from design but we feel the breath of the designer. we see the universal life moulding the individual lives, the one will dominating many wills, the infinite wisdom utilising the finite folly, the changeless truth permeating the restless error, the boundless beneficence bringing blessing out of all.... and what shall we say of the future? ... ours is a position in some respects analogous to that of the mediaeval world: the landmarks of the past are fading, the lights in the future are but dimly seen. yet it is the study of the landmarks that helps us to wait for the light, and our highest hope is born of memory. in the view { } of that retrospect, we cannot long despair. we may have moments of heart-sickness when we look exclusively at the present hour: we may have times of despondency when we measure only what the eye can see. but looking on the accumulated results of bygone ages as they lie open to the gaze of history, the scientific conclusion at which we must arrive is this, that the course of christianity shall be, or has been, the path of a shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day.'--g. matheson, _growth of the spirit of christianity_ (chap, xxxviii., 'dawn of a new day'). { } appendix vi 'shadows and figments as they appear to us to be in themselves, these attempts to provide a substitute for religion are of the highest importance, as showing that men of great powers of mind, who have thoroughly broken loose not only from christianity but from natural religion, and in some cases placed themselves in violent antagonism to both, are still unable to divest themselves of the religious sentiment or to appease its craving for satisfaction. 'that the leaders of the anti-theological movement at the present day are immoral, nobody but the most besotted fanatic would insinuate: no candid antagonist would deny that some of them are in every respect the very best of men.... but what is to prevent the withdrawal of the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon the morality of the mass of mankind? ... rate the practical effect of religious beliefs as low and that of social influences as high as you may, there can surely be no doubt that morality has received some support from the authority of an inward monitor regarded as the voice of god.... 'the denial of the existence of god and of a future state, in a word, is the dethronement of conscience: and society will pass, to say the least, through a dangerous interval, before social conscience can fill the vacant throne.'--goldwin smith, 'proposed substitutes for religion,' _macmillan's magazine_, vol. xxxvii. { } appendix vii 'it no less takes two to deliver the game of duty from trivial pretence and give it an earnest interest. how can i look up to myself as the higher that reproaches me? issue commands to myself which i dare not disobey? ask forgiveness from myself for sins which myself has committed? surrender to myself with a martyr's sacrifice? and so through all the drama of moral conflict and enthusiasm between myself in a mask and myself in _propria persona_? how far are these semblances, these battles in the clouds, to carry their mimicry of reality? are we to _worship_ the self-ideality? to _pray_ to an empty image in the air? to trust in sorrow a creature of thought which is but a phenomenon of sorrow? no, if religious communion is reduced to a monologue, its essence is extinct and its soul is gone. it is a living relation, or it is nothing: a response to the supreme reality. and vainly will you search for your spiritual dynamics without the rock eternal for your [greek] _pou stô_'--james martineau, essays iv. , _ideal substitutes for god_. { } appendix viii 'it is an awful hour--let him who has passed through it say how awful--when life has lost its meaning and seems shrivelled into a span--when the grave appears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the void from which god himself has disappeared. in that fearful loneliness of spirit ... i know but one way in which a man may come forth from his agony scathless: it is by holding fast to those things which are certain still--the grand, simple landmarks of morality. 'in the darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain. if there be no god and no future state yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward. blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. thrice blessed is he who, when all is drear and cheerless within and without, when his teachers terrify him and his friends shrink from him, has obstinately clung to moral good. thrice blessed, because his night shall pass into clear bright day.'--f. w. robertson, _lectures, addresses, etc._, p. . { } appendix ix 'let me say at once that if after the elimination of all untruths from christianity, we could build a belief in god and immortality on the residue, we should then have a far more powerful incentive to right conduct than anything that i am about to urge.'--philip vivian, _churches and modern thought_, p. . { } appendix x 'without prejudice, what would be the effect upon modern civilisation if the divine ideal should vanish from modern thought? 'it would be presumptuous to attempt a description, rather because it is so hard to picture ourselves and our outlook deprived of what we have held during thousands of generations, our very _raison d'être_, than because we cannot calculate at least a part of what would have to happen. without pretending to undertake that exercise, it may not be too bold to conclude definitely, what has been suggested argumentatively throughout: namely, that moral goodness, as we trace it in the past, as we enjoy it in the present, as we reckon upon it in the future, would be found undesirable and therefore impracticable. a new "morality" would doubtless take its place and set up a new ideal of goodness; but the former would no more represent the elements we so far call moral than the latter would embody the conceptions we now call good: the more logically the inevitable system were followed up, the more progressively would moral inversion be realised. 'it does not seem credible that the new morality could escape being egoistic and hedonistic, and these principles alone would dictate complete reversal of all our present notions as to what is noble, what is useful, what is good. an egoist hedonism that should not be selfish and sensual is a fond { } superstition; it would have to be both and frankly. all the prophylactic expedients whereby a reciprocal egoism must safeguard its sensuous rights would certainly be there; and they represent in spirit and in practice whatever we have learned to consider execrable. we do not require professor haeckel[ ] to inform us, with the triumphal rhetoric that accompanies a grand new discovery, of the prudential homicide which is to confer a supreme blessing upon humanity, for it has raged throughout antiquity, and still stalks abroad in daylight wherever the kingdom of men is not also the kingdom of christ. ten minutes' thought is sufficient to convince any rational man or woman what must inevitably follow in a world of animal rationalism, where no souls are immortal, where the human will is the supreme will and there is eternal peace in the grave. it could scarcely transpire otherwise than that "euthanasia" should replace care of the chronic sick and indigent aged; that infanticide should be in a large category of circumstances encouraged, and in some compelled; that suicide should offer a rational escape from all serious ills, leaving a door ever hospitably ajar to receive the body bankrupt in its capacity for sensual enjoyment, the only enjoyment henceforth worthy of the name. these are the "virtues" under the new morality; there are other things of which it were not well to speak. imagination turns its back. in a world that has never been without its gods, among human creatures who have never existed without a conscience, deeds have been done and horrors have been practised through centuries, through ages, that make annals read like ogre-tales and books of travels like the works of morbid novelists; and the worst always goes unrecorded. what then ought we to anticipate for a world yielding obedience to nothing loftier { } than the human intellect, seeking no prize obtainable outside the individual life time, logically incapable of any gratification outside the individual body, convinced of nothing save eternal oblivion in the ever-nearing and inevitable grave, and reposed on the calm assurance that "goodness" and "badness," "virtue" and "vice" (whatever these terms may then correspond to) are recompensed, indifferently, by nothing better and nothing worse than physical animal death?'--jasper b. hunt, b.d., _good without god: is it possible_? p. . [ ] see _the wonders of life_, chap. v., popular translation, and other works. { } appendix xi 'when we say that god is personal, we do not mean that he is localised by mutually related organs; that he is hampered by the physical conditions of human personality. we mean that he is conscious of distinctness from all other beings, of moral relation to all living things, and of power to control both from without and from within the action of every atom and of every world. this is what we mean by personality in god. it is not a materialistic idea. it is essentially spiritual. it is a breakwater against the destruction of the very thought of god, or the submersion of it in the mere processes of eternal evolution. there is a pantheism which obliterates every trace of divine personality, which takes from god consciousness, will, affection, emotion, desire, presiding and over-ruling intelligence. but such pantheism is better known as atheism. it destroys the only god who can be a refuge and a strength in time of trouble. it annihilates that mighty conscience which drives the workers of iniquity into darkness and the shadow of death, if possible, to hide themselves. it closes the divine ear against the prayer of faith. it abolishes all sympathy, all communion between the father and the children. it makes god not the world's life, but the world's grave. therefore, against all such pantheism our being revolts.'--peter s. menzies, _sermons_ ('christian pantheism'). { } appendix xii 'there is an old testament pantheism speaking unmistakably out of the lips of the prophets and the psalmists, ... so interwoven with their deepest thoughts of god, that any hesitation to receive it would have been traced by them most probably to purely heathen conditions of thought, which ascribes to every divinity a limited function, a separate home, and a restricted authority.... but undoubtedly the most unequivocal and outspoken pantheist in the bible is st. paul. he speaks in that character to the athenians, affirming all men to be the offspring of god, and, as if this were not a sufficiently close bond of affinity, adding, "in him we live and move and have our being." his pantheistic eschatology casts a radiance over the valley of the shadow of death, which makes the th chapter of st corinthians one of the most precious gifts of divine inspiration which the holy volume contains. "and when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that god may be all and all." nor, if he had wished to administer a daring shock to the ultra-calvinism of our own confessional theology, could he have uttered a sentiment more hard to reconcile with any view of the universe that is not pantheistic than that contained in the nd verse of the present chapter: "for god hath concluded them all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all." it { } is quite clear in the face of all this scripture evidence that there is a form of pantheism which is not only innocent, defensible, justifiable, but which we are bound to teach as of the essence of all true theology. nothing could be more childish than that blind horror of pantheism which shudders back from it as the most poisonous form of rank infidelity.'--peter s. menzies, _sermons_ ('christian pantheism'), { } appendix xiii 'pantheism gives noble expression to the truth of god's presence in all things, but it cannot satisfy the religious consciousness: it cannot give it escape from the limitations of the world, or guarantee personal immortality or (what is most important) give any adequate interpretation to sin, or supply any adequate remedy for it.... christian theology is the harmony of pantheism and deism. on the one hand christianity believes all that the pantheist believes of god's presence in all things. "in him," we believe, "we live and move and are; in him all things have their coherence." all the beauty of the world, all its truths, all its goodness, are but so many modes under which god is manifested, of whose glory nature is the veil, of whose word it is the expression, whose law and reason it embodies. but god is not exhausted in the world, nor dependent upon it: he exists eternally in his triune being, self-sufficing, self-subsistent.... god is not only in nature as its life, but he transcends it as its creator, its lord--in its moral aspect--its judge. so it is that christianity enjoys the riches of pantheism without its inherent weakness on the moral side, without making god dependent on the world, as the world is on god.'--bishop gore, _the incarnation of the son of god_, p. . { } appendix xiv 'the supreme power on this petty earth can be nothing else but the humanity, which, ever since fifty thousand--it may be one hundred and fifty thousand--years has slowly but inevitably conquered for itself the predominance of all living things on this earth, and the mastery of its material resources. it is the collective stream of civilization, often baffled, constantly misled, grievously sinning against itself from time to time, but in the end victorious; winning certainly no heaven, no millennium of the saints, but gradually over great epochs rising to a better and a better world. this humanity is not all the human beings that are or have been. it is a living, growing, and permanent organism in itself, as spencer and modern philosophy establish. it is the active stream of human civilization, from which many drop out into that oblivion and nullity which is the true and only hell.'--f. harrison, _creed of a lagman_, p. . { } appendix xv mr. frederic harrison's creed 'is open to every objection which he so justly brings against what he regards as mr. spencer's creed. these reasons are broad, common, and familiar. so far as i know they never have been, and i do not believe they ever will be, answered. the first objection is that humanity with a capital h (mr. harrison's god) is neither better nor worse fitted to be a god than his unknowable with a capital u. they are as much alike as six and half-a-dozen. each is a barren abstraction to which any one an attach any meaning he likes. humanity, as used by mr. harrison, is not an abstract name for those matters in which all human beings as such resemble each other, as, for instance, a human form and articulate speech.... humanity is a general name for all human beings who, in various ways, have contributed to the improvement of the human race. the positivist calendar which appropriates every day in the year for the commemoration of one or more of these benefactors of mankind is an attempt to give what a lawyer would call "further and better particulars" of the word. if this, or anything like this, be the meaning of mr. harrison's god, i must say that he, she, or it appears to me quite as ill-fitted for worship as the unknowable. how can a man worship an indefinite number of dead people, most of whom are unknown to him even by name, and many of whose characters { } were exceedingly faulty, besides which the facts as to their lives are most imperfectly known? how can he in any way combine these people into a single object of thought? an object of worship must surely have such a degree of unity that it is possible to think about it as distinct from other things, as much unity at least as the english nation, the roman catholic church, the great western railway. no doubt these are abstract terms, but they are concrete enough for practical purposes. every one understands what is meant when it is asserted that the english nation is at war or at peace; that the pope is the head of the roman catholic church; that the great western railway has declared a dividend; but what is humanity? what can any one definitely assert or deny about it? how can any one meaning be affixed to the word so that one person can be said to use it properly and another to abuse it? it seems to me that it is as unknowable as the unknowable itself, and just as well, and just as ill, fitted to be an object of worship.'--sir james fitzjames stephen, 'the unknowable and unknown,' _nineteenth century_, june . { } appendix xvi 'deism and pantheism are both so irrational, so utterly inadequate to explain the simplest facts of our moral and spiritual life that neither of them can long hold mankind together. positivism, which has made a systematic and memorable attempt to fill the gap, itself bears witness to the craving of human nature for some stronger bond than such systems can supply; while its appreciation of the necessity of religion gives it an importance not possessed by mere agnosticism. yet it is impossible to look at an encyclopædic attempt to grasp all knowledge and all history, such as that made by the founder of positivism, without a deep, oppressive sadness.... 'can men heap fact upon fact and connect science with science in a splendid hierarchy and find no better end than this? is such a review to come to this, that we must worship either actual humanity with all its meanness and wickedness, or ideal humanity which does not yet exist, and, if this world is all in all, may never come into being? ... for ideal humanity, however moral and enlightened, if unaided by god, as the posivitist holds, is still earth-bound and sense-bound.... we are told that it is common sense to recognise that much is beyond us. perfectly true. but it is not common sense to worship an ignorant and weak humanity which certainly made nothing, and has in itself no assurance { } of continuance in the future, nay rather, a very clear probability of destruction, if simply left to itself. 'what positivism surely needs to give it hope and consistency is the doctrine of the logos, of the eternal word and reason, the creator, orderer, and sustainer of all things, who has taken a stainless human nature that he might make men capable of all knowledge. this divine humanity of the logos, drawing mankind into himself, is indeed worthy of all worship. in loving him, we learn really what it is to "live for others." in looking to him we cease from selfishness and pride. such a worship of humanity is not a mere baseless hope, but a reality appearing in the very midst of history, a reality apprehended by faith indeed, but by a faith always proving itself to those, and by those, who hold it fast in love. there is room, then, ample room, and a loud demand for the re-establishment of a christian philosophy based upon the incarnation.'--john wordsworth (bishop of salisbury), _the one religion_, pp. - . { } appendix xvii the invariable laws under which humanity is placed have received various names at different periods. destiny, fate, necessity, heaven, providence, all are so many names of one and the same conception: the laws which man feels himself under, and that without the power of escaping from them. we claim no exemption from the common lot. we only wish to draw out into consciousness the instinctive acceptance of the race, and to modify the spirit in which we regard them. we accept: so have all men. we obey: so have all men. we venerate: so have some in past ages or in other countries. we add but one other term--we love. we would perfect our submission and so reap the full benefits of submission in the improvement of our hearts and tempers. we take in conception the sum of the conditions of existence, and we give them an ideal being and a definite home in space, the second great creation which completes the central one of humanity. in the bosom of space we place the world, and we conceive of the world and this our mother earth as gladly welcomed to that bosom with the simplest and purest love, and we give our love in return. thou art folded, thou art lying in the light which is undying. 'thus we complete the trinity of our religion, humanity, the world, and space. so completed we recognise power to { } give unity and definiteness to our thoughts, purity and warmth to our affections, scope and vigour to our activity. we recognise its powers to regulate our whole being, to give us that which it has so long been the aim of all religion to give--internal union. we recognise its power to raise us above ourselves and by intensifying the action of our unselfish instincts to bear down unto their due subordination our selfishness. we see in it yet unworked treasures. we count not ourselves to have apprehended but we press forward to the prize of our high calling. but even now whilst its full capabilities are unknown to us, before we have apprehended, we find enough in it to guide and strengthen us.'--'_the new religion in its attitude towards the old_: a sermon preached at south field, wandsworth, wednesday, th moses ( th january ), on the anniversary of the birth of auguste comte, th january , by richard congreve.' j. chapman: king william street, strand, london. { } appendix xviii 'we have compared positivism where it is thought to be strongest with christianity where it is thought to be weakest. and if the result of the comparison even then has been unfavourable to positivism, how will the account stand if every element in christianity be taken into consideration? the religion of humanity seems specially fitted to meet the tastes of that comparatively small and prosperous class who are unwilling to leave the dry bones of agnosticism wholly unclothed with any living tissue of religious emotion, and who are at the same time fortunate enough to be able to persuade themselves that they are contributing, or may contribute, by their individual efforts to the attainment of some great ideal for mankind. but what has it to say to the more obscure multitude who are absorbed, and wellnigh overwhelmed, in the constant struggle with daily needs and narrow cares, who have but little leisure or inclination to consider the precise rôle they are called on to play in the great drama of "humanity," and who might in any case be puzzled to discover its interest or its importance? can it assure them that there is no human being so insignificant as not to be of infinite worth in the eyes of him who created the heavens, or so feeble but that his action may have consequence of infinite moment long after this material system shall have crumbled into nothingness? does it offer consolation to those who are in grief, hope to those who { } are bereaved, strength to the weak, forgiveness to the sinful, rest to those who are weary and heavy laden? if not, then whatever be its merits, it is no rival to christianity. it cannot penetrate or vivify the inmost life of ordinary humanity. there is in it no nourishment for ordinary human souls, no comfort for ordinary human sorrow, no help for ordinary human weakness. not less than the crudest irreligion does it leave us men divorced from all communion with god, face to face with the unthinking energies of nature which gave us birth, and into which, if supernatural religion be indeed a dream, we must after a few fruitless struggles be again resolved.'--right hon. arthur j. balfour, _the religion of humanity_. { } appendix xix 'truly if humanity has no higher prospects than those which await it from the service of its modern worshippers its prospects are dark indeed. its "normal state" is a vague and distant future. but better things may yet be hoped for when the true light from heaven shall enlighten every man, and the love of goodness shall everywhere come from the love of god, and nobleness of life from the perfect example of the lord.'--john tulloch, d.d. ll.d., _modern theories in philosophy and religion_, p. . { } appendix xx mr. frederic harrison came under the influence of both the newmans. 'john henry newman led me on to his brother francis, whose beautiful nature and subtle intelligence i now began to value. his _phases of faith, the soul, the hebrew monarchy_ deeply impressed me. i was not prepared either to accept all this heterodoxy nor yet to reject it; and i patiently waited till an answer could be found.'--_the creed of a layman_. { } appendix xxi even mr. voysey admits the constraining power of the cross: 'that is still the noblest, most sublime picture in the whole bible, where the christ is hanging on the cross, and the tears and blood flow trickling down, and the last words heard from his lips are "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." that love and pity will for ever endure as the type and symbol of what is most divine in the heart of man. thank god! it has been repeated and repeated in the lives and deaths of millions besides the christ of calvary. but wherever found it still claims the admiration, and wins the homage of every human heart, and is the crowning glory of the human race.--c. voysey, _religion for all mankind_, p. . { } appendix xxii 'not only the syrian superstition must be attacked, but also the belief in a personal god which engenders a slavish and oriental condition of the mind, and the belief in a posthumous reward which engenders a selfish and solitary condition of the heart. these beliefs are, therefore, injurious to human nature. they lower its dignity, they arrest its development, they isolate its affections. we shall not deny that many beautiful sentiments are often mingled with the faith in a personal deity, and with the hopes of happiness in a future state; yet we maintain that, however refined they may appear, they are selfish at the core, and that if removed they will be replaced by sentiments of a nobler and purer kind.'--winwood reade, _martyrdom of man_, p. . { } appendix xxiii 'there is a servile deference paid, even by christians, to incompetent judges of christianity. they abjectly look to men of the world, to scholars, to statesmen, for testimonies to the everlasting and self-evidencing verities of heaven! and if they can gather up, from the writings or speeches of these men, some patronising notices of religion, some incidental compliment to the civilising influence of the bible, or to the aesthetic proprieties of worship, or to the moral sublimity of the character or gospel of christ, they forthwith proclaim these tributes as lending some great confirmation to the truth of god! so we persist in asking, not "is it true? true to our souls?" or, "has the lord said it?" but, "what say the learned men, the influential men, the eloquent men?" shame upon these time-serving concessions, as unmanly as they are fallacious. go back to the hovels, rather, and take the witnessing of the illiterate souls whose hearts, waiting there in poverty or pain, or under the shadow of some great affliction, the lord himself hath opened.'--f. d. huntingdon, _christian believing and living_. { } appendix xxiv 'it is foreign to our purpose to discuss the various theories which have been advanced to explain the genesis and power of the christian religion from the cynical gibbon to the sentimental renan and the rationalist strauss. one remark may be permitted. it has been our lot to read an immense amount of literature on this subject, and with no bias in the orthodox direction, we are bound to admit that no theory has yet appeared which from purely natural causes explains the remarkable life and marvellous influence of the founder of christianity.'--hector macpherson, _books to read and how to head them_. { } appendix xxv the song of a heathen sojourning in galilee, a.d. . if jesus christ is a man, and only a man, i say that of all mankind i cleave to him, and to him will i cleave alway. if jesus christ is a god, and the only god, i swear i will follow him through heaven and hell, the earth, the sea, and the air! richard watson gilder. { } appendix xxvi 'i distinguish absolutely between the character of jesus and the character of christianity--in other words between jesus of nazareth and jesus the christ. shorn of all supernatural pretensions, jesus emerges from the great mass of human beings as an almost perfect type of simplicity, veracity, and natural affection. "love one another" was the alpha and omega of his teaching, and he carried out the precept through every hour of his too brief life.... but how blindly, how foolishly my critics have interpreted the inner spirit of my argument, how utterly have they failed to realise that the whole aim of the work is to justify jesus against the folly, the cruelty, the infamy, the ignorance of the creed upbuilt upon his grave. i show in cipher, as it were, that those who crucified him once would crucify him again, were he to return amongst us. i imply that among the first to crucify him would be the members of his own church. but nowhere surely do i imply that his soul, in its purely personal elements, in its tender and sympathising humanity was not the very divinest that ever wore earth about it.'--robert buchanan in letter of january to _daily chronicle_ regarding his poem _the wandering jew_. _robert buchanan: his life, life's work, and life's friendships_, by harriett jay, pp. - . { } appendix xxvii 'i do not believe i have any personal immortality. i am part of an immortality perhaps, but that is different. i am not the continuing thing. i personally am experimental, incidental. i feel i have to do something, a number of things no one else could do, and then i am finished, and finished altogether. then my substance returns to the common lot. i am a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose: that served, and my skull and teeth, my idiosyncrasy and desire will disperse, i believe, like the timbers of the booth after a fair.'--h. g. wells, _first and last things_, p. . { } appendix xxviii 'the estate of man upon this earth of ours may in course of time be vastly improved. so much seems to be promised by the recent achievements of science, whose advance is in geometrical progression, each discovery giving birth to several more. increase of health and extension of life by sanitary, dietetic, and gymnastic improvement; increase of wealth by invention and of leisure by the substitution of machinery for labour: more equal distribution of wealth with its comforts and refinements; diffusion of knowledge; political improvement; elevation of the domestic affections and social sentiments; unification of mankind and elimination of war through ascendency of reason over passion--all these things may be carried to an indefinite extent, and may produce what in comparison with the present estate of man would be a terrestrial paradise. selection and the merciless struggle for existence may be in some measure superseded by selection of a more scientific and merciful kind. death may be deprived at all events of its pangs. on the other hand, the horizon does not appear to be clear of cloud.... let our fancy suppose the most chimerical of utopias realised in a commonwealth of man. mortal life prolonged to any conceivable extent is but a span. still over every festal board in the community of terrestrial bliss will be cast the shadow of approaching death; and the sweeter life becomes the more bitter death will be. { } the more bitter it will be at least to the ordinary man, and the number of philosophers like john stuart mill is small.'--goldwin smith: _guesses at the riddle of existence_ ('is there another life?'). 'in return for all of which they have deprived us, some prophets of modern science are disposed to show us in the future a city of god _minus_ god, a paradise _minus_ the tree of life, a millennium with education to perfect the intellect, and sanitary improvements to emancipate the body from a long catalogue of evils. sorrow no doubt will not be abolished; immortality will not be bestowed. but we shall have comfortable and perfectly drained houses to be wretched in. the news of our misfortunes, the tidings that turn the hair white, and break the strong man's heart will be conveyed to us from the ends of the earth by the agency of a telegraphic system without a flaw. the closing eye may cease to look to the land beyond the river; but in our last moments we shall be able to make a choice between patent furnaces for the cremation of our remains, and coffins of the most charming description for their preservation when desiccated.'--archbishop alexander: _witness of the psalms to christ and christianity_, p. . { } authorities consulted abbott, e. a., _through nature to christ_. armstrong, e. a., _back to jesus; man's knowledge of god; agnosticism and theism in the nineteenth century_. arthur, w., _god without religion; religion without god_. aveling, f. 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(correspondence from _daily telegraph_.) drawbridge, c. l., _is religion undermined_? drummond, j., _via, veritas, vita_. du bose, w. p., _the gospel and the gospels_. eaton, j. r. t., _the permanence of christianity_. faber, hans, _das christentum der zukunft_. fairbairn, a. m., _christ in modern theology_. { } farrar, a. s., _critical history of free thought_. farrar, f. w., _seekers after god; witness of history to christ_. fiske, john, _the idea of god as affected by modern knowledge; through nature to god; man's destiny_. fitchett, w. h., _beliefs of unbelief_. flint, r., _theism; anti-theistic theories_. footman, h., _reasonable apprehensions and reassuring hints_. fordyce, j., _aspects of scepticism_. forrest, d. w., _the christ of history and of experience_. frommel, gaston, _�tudes religieuses et sociales; �tudes morales et religieuses_. gindraux, j., _le christ et la pensée moderne_ (translation from pfennigsdorf). gladden, washington, _how much is left of the old doctrines_? gore, o., bishop, _the incarnation of the son of god; the christian creed_. guyau, m., _l'irréligion de l'avenir; la morale sans sanction_. haeckel, e., _riddle of the universe; the confession of faith of a man of science_. harnack, adolf, _what is christianity?; christianity and history_. harrison, a. j., _problems of christianity and scepticism_. harrison, frederic, _memories and thoughts; the creed of a layman_. haw, george (edited by), _religious doubts of democracy_. henson, h. hensley, _popular rationalism; the value of the bible_. hillis, n. d., _influence of christ in modern life_. { } hoffmann, f. s., _the sphere of religion_. hunt, jasper b., _good without god_. hunt, john, _christianity and pantheism_. hutton, r. h., _essays theological and literary; contemporary thought and thinkers; aspects of religious and scientific thought_. huxley, t. h., _evolution and ethics_. illingworth, j. r., _personality human and divine; divine immanence_. _is christianity true_? (lectures in central hall, manchester). jastrow, morris, _the study of religion_. jefferies, richard, _the story of my heart: my autobiography_. jones, harry (edited by), _some urgent questions in christian lights_. kutter, herrmann, _sie müssen_. lecky, w. e. h., _history of european morals_. liddon, h. p., _the divinity of our lord and saviour jesus christ; some elements of religion_. lilly, w. s., _the great enigma; the claims of christianity_. lodge, sir oliver, _the substance of faith_. lucas, bernard, _the faith of a christian_. _lux hominum_. _lux mundi_. maitland, brownlow, _theism or agnosticism; steps to faith_. mallock, w. h., _reconstruction of belief_. { } marson, o. l., _following of christ_. martin, a. s., 'christ in modern thought' (hastings's _dictionary of christ and the gospels_, appendix). martineau, harriet, _autobiography_. martineau, james, _ideal substitutes for god; a study of religion; hours of thought_. matheson, g., _growth of the spirit of christianity_. matheson, a. scott, _the gospel and modern substitutes_. menzies, allan, _s. paul's view of the divinity of christ_. menzies, p. s., 'christian pantheism' (in _sermons_). momerie, a. w., _belief in god; immortality; origin of evil_. monod, wilfrid, _aux croyants et aux athées; peut-on rester chrétien_? mories, a. s., _haeckel's contribution to religion_. morison, j. cotter, _the service of man_. mozoomdar, protab chandra, _the oriental christ_. myers, f. w. h., _modern essays_. naville, ernest, _le père céleste; le christ; le temoignage du christ et l'unité du monde chrétien_. neumann, arno, _jesus_. newman, f. w., _the soul: its sorrows and aspirations; phases of faith_. nolloth, c. f., _the person of our lord and recent thought_. oxenham, h. n., _essays ethical and religious_. _oxford house tracts_. palmer, w. s., _an agnostic's progress; the church and modern men_. peile, j. h. f., _the reproach of the gospel_. pfannmüller, gustav, _jesus im urteil der jahrhunderte_. { } picard, l'abbé, _christianity or agnosticism?; la transcendance de jésus christ_. picton, j. allanson, _the religion of the universe; pantheism: its story and significance_. plumptre, e. h., _christ and christendom_. _present day tracts_ (r. t. s.). pringle-pattison, a. seth, _man's place in the cosmos_. reade, winwood, _the martyrdom of man; the outcast_. _religion and the modern mind_ (st. ninian's society lectures). renesse, _jesus christ and his apostles and disciples in the twentieth century_. robinson, o. h., _human nature a revelation of the divine; studies in the character of christ_. romanes, g. j., _thoughts on religion_. sabatier, a., _the religions of authority and the religion of the spirit_. sanday, w., _life of christ in recent research_. savage, m. j., _religion for to-day; the life beyond_. schmiedel, p. w., _jesus and modern criticism_. seaver, r. w., _to christ through criticism_. _secularist's manual_. seeley, j. r., _ecce homo; natural religion_. sen, keshub chunder, india asks, _who is christ_? sheldon, h. o., _unbelief in the nineteenth century_. simpson, p. carnegie, _the fact of christ_. smith, goldwin, _guesses at the riddle of existence; lectures on the study of history; the founder of christianity_. smyth, newman, _old faiths in new light_. stanley, a. p., 'theology of the nineteenth century' (in _essays on church and state_); _christian institutions_. { } stephen, j. fitzjames, 'the unknowable and unknown' (_nineteenth century_, june ); _liberty, equality, and fraternity_. stephen, leslie, _an agnostic's apology; english thought in the eighteenth century_. swete, h. b. (edited by), _cambridge theological essays_. swift, dean, _the abolishing of christianity_. _topics for the times_ (s. p. c. k.). tulloch, j., _modern theories in theology and philosophy; movements of religious thought_. van dyke, h., _the gospel for an age of doubt; the gospel for a world of sin_. vivian, philip, _the churches and modern thought_. voysey, c., _religion for all mankind_. wace, h., _christianity and morality_. wallace, alfred russel, _man's place in the universe_. warschauer, j., _the new evangel; jesus: seven questions; anti-nunquam; jesus or christ?_ watkinson, w. l., _influence of scepticism on character_. weinel, h., _jesus im nevmzehnten jahrhundert_. welsh, r. e., _in relief of doubt_. wells, h. g., _first and last things, a confession of faith and rule of life_. wilson, j. m., _problems of religion and science_. wimmer, r., _my struggle for light_. wordsworth, john, bishop, _the one religion_. young, john, _the christ of history_. { } index abbott, edwin a., . alexander, archbishop, . amiel, h. f., . anthropomorphism, , , . arnold, matthew, . 'back to christ,' . balfour, a. j., . bartlett, r. e., . besant, mrs., . blatchford, robert, , , . browning, robert, , . buchanan, robert, . butler, bishop, , . caird, principal, . calendar, positivist, . _caliban upon setebos_, . carey, vivian, , . chesterton, g. k., . christ the only way, , . ---- the substance of christianity, . christianity, influence of, , . ---- misrepresentation of, , . christians, inconsistency of, , , , , . _christmas eve_, . church, dean, . clifford, w. k., . cobbe, frances power, , . coit, dr. stanton, . comte, auguste, . congreve, richard, , . conway, moncure d., . cowper, william, . criticism, . deism, , , , , . de vere, aubrey, . eliot, george, , . enemies, witness of, . fénelon, . fiske, john, . gilder, r. w., . gore, bishop, , . great being of positivism, , , . haeckel, . harrison, frederic, , , , , , , . hughes, hugh price, . humanity, christ, the ideal of, . ---- religion of, , , , , , . huntingdon, bishop, . immortality, denial of, , , . impeachments of christianity, , . incarnation, , . jefferies, richard, . law, william, . lefèvre, a., . macpherson, hector, . man, . martineau, harriet, . ---- james, . material progress, , . matheson, george, . mediation, . menzies, p. s., , . mill, john stuart, . montaigne, . morality and religion, , , , , . ---- religion without, . mozoomdar, p. c., . myers, f. w. h., . newman, f. w., , . nietzsche, . pantheism, , , , , . personality of god, , , , . picton, j. allanson, . pope, alexander, . positivism, , , . prayer, . reade, winwood, , , . renan, e., . roberts, w. page-, dean, . robertson, frederick william, , . sabatier, a., . schleiermacher, . schmiedel, p. w., . shelley, , . sin, sense of, . smith, goldwin, , . spencer, herbert, . spinoza, . stanley, dean, . stephen, sir j. f., , , . ---- sir leslie, . strauss, d. f., . swift, dean, , . tennyson, , , . 'theism,' , , . thomson, james, . tulloch, john, . uniqueness of christ, , . vivian, philip, , . voltaire, , . voysey, rev. charles, , . wallace, alfred russel, . warschauer, j., , . watts, charles, . wells, h. g., , . wesley, john, . wimmer, r., . woolman, john, . wordsworth, john, bishop, . ---- william, . printed by t. and a. constable, printers to his majesty at the edinburgh university press the expositors library cloth, /- net each volume. the new evangelism. prof. henry drummond, f.r.s.e. the mind of the master. rev. john watson, d.d. the teaching of jesus concerning himself. rev. prof. james stalker, d.d. fellowship with christ. rev. r. w. dale, d.d., ll.d. studies on the new testament. prof. f. godet, d.d. the life of the master. rev. john watson, d.d. studies of the portrait of christ.-- vol. i. rev. george matheson, d.d. studies of the portrait of christ.-- vol. ii. rev. george matheson, d.d. the jewish temple and the christian church. rev. r. w. dale, d.d., ll.d. the ten commandments. rev. r. w. dale, d.d., ll.d. the fact of christ. rev. p. carnegie simpson, m.a. the cross in modern life. rev. j. g. greenhough, m.a. heroes and martyrs of faith. prof. a. s. peake, d.d. a guide to preachers. principal a. e. garvie, m.a., d.d. modern substitutes for christianity. rev. p. mcadam muir, d.d. ephesian studies. right rev. h. c. g. moule, d.d. the unchanging christ. rev. alex mclaren, d.d., d.litt. the god of the amen. rev. alex mclaren, d.d., d.litt. the ascent through christ. rev. e. griffith jones, b.a. studies on the old testament. prof. f. godet, d.d. london: hodder and stoughton