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ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES 
 
THE BAIRD LECTURE FOR 1877 
 
ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES f 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT FLINT 
 
 D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'theism,' 'HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE 
 AND FRENCH BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND,' ETC. 
 
 NINTH EDITION 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MCMXVII 
 
 AU Rights reserved 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The present volume is closely connected with the 
 work entitled * Theism,' which was published in 
 1877. The two works may be regarded as two 
 parts of a system of Natural Theology which is 
 still very far from complete. 
 
 The chief omission in the present volume 
 relates to Agnosticism. The explanation of the 
 omission is that the author was anxious to avoid, 
 in a semi - popular work, abstruse metaphysical 
 discussion, and has long cherished the hope of 
 being able, at some future time, to publish a 
 historical account and critical examination of the 
 various phases of Modern Agnosticism. 
 
 He has again to thank Mr James A. Campbell 
 of Stracathro for kindly assisting him in the work 
 of revision. 
 
 JOHNSTONE Lodge, Craigmillar Park, 
 Edinburgh, 2.0th May 1879. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE TO FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 The alterations in this edition are chiefly in the literary 
 references. Lecture VII., and the Notes connected with 
 it, have been left unchanged. They may be compared 
 with the very elaborate examination of Sir John Lubbock's 
 views on the atheism of savage peoples in G. Roskoff's 
 ' Religionswesen der Rohesten Naturvolker/ a work pub- 
 lished the year after the first edition of the present volume, 
 and in which the results arrived at are precisely those 
 which I had reached. Ample confirmation of these results 
 will also be found in Paul Gloatz's ' Spekulative Theologie 
 in Verbindung mit der Religionsgeschichte,' 1883-84; 
 and in W. Schneider's ' Die Religion der Afrikanischen 
 Naturvolker.' Among the many works which have ap- 
 peared in recent years dealing with Theism and Anti- 
 Theism, it is proper to mention the following — the 
 'Philosophical Basis of Theism' (1883), by Professor 
 Samuel Harris of Yale; the ' Philosophy of Theism (1884), 
 by the late Dr Ward ; ' Modern Theories in Philosophy 
 and Religion' (1885), by Principal Tulloch; 'Aspects of 
 Theism ' (1893), by Professor Knight; and 'Theism as 
 grounded in Human Nature, historically and critically 
 handled' (1893), by W. L. Davidson, LL.D. 
 
 Johnstone Lodge, Craigmillar Park, 
 Edinburgh, isi May 1894. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECT. PAGE 
 
 I. ATHEISM, I 
 
 II. ANCIENT MATERIALISM, 39 
 
 III. MODERN MATERIALISM, 74 
 
 IV. CONTEMPORARY OR SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM, . Ill 
 V. POSITIVISM, 176 
 
 VI. SECULARISM, 211 
 
 VII. ARE THERE TRIBES OF ATHEISTS? . . . 250 
 
 VIII. PESSIMISM, , 290 
 
 IX. HISTORY OF PANTHEISM, 334 
 
 X. PANTHEISM, 3^0 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 I. THE TERMS THEISM, DEISM, ATHEISM, AND ANTI- 
 THEISM, 441 
 
 II. ABSOLUTE ATHEISM IMPLIES INFINITE KNOWLEDGE, . 446 
 
 III. PHYSICUS 450 
 
 IV. HISTORY, CAUSES, AND CONSEQUENCES OF ATHEISM, . 456 
 
Contents. 
 
 V. lange's history of materialism, 
 
 VI. CHINESE MATERIALISM, 
 VII. HINDU MATERIALISM, . 
 VIII. EARLY GREEK MATERIALISM, 
 IX. EPICUREAN MATERIALISM, 
 X. MATERIALISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 XI. MATERIALISM OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGH 
 TEENTH CENTURIES, . 
 XII. LA METTRIE, .... 
 XIIL MIRABAUD AND VON HOLBACH, 
 XIV. ENGLISH MATERIALISM IN THE FIRST HALF OF 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 
 XV. RECENT MATERIALISM, . 
 XVI. MATERIALISM AND FORCE, , 
 XVII. MATERIALISM AND LIFE, 
 XVIII. MATERIALISM AND MIND, 
 XIX. MATERIALISM AND MORALITY, 
 XX. POSITIVISM AND ITS SCHOOLS, 
 XXI. POSITIVIST LAW OF THREE STATES, 
 XXIL THE POSITIVIST RELIGION, . 
 
 XXIII. HISTORY OF SECULARISM, 
 
 XXIV. THE ATHEISM OF SECULARISM, 
 XXV. DARWINISM AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF RELIGION, 
 
 XXVI. ALLEGED ATHEISM OF SOUTH AMERICAN TRIBES, 
 XXVII. ALLEGED ATHEISM OF NORTH AMERICAN TRIBES, 
 XXVIII. ALLEGED ATHEISM OF POLYNESIANS AND AUS- 
 TRALASIANS, 
 
 XXIX. ALLEGED ATHEISM OF AFRICAN TRIBES, 
 XXX. ALLEGED ATHEISM OF ESQUIMAUX, 
 XXXL SIR J. LUBBOCK'S MISCELLANEOUS INSTANCES OF 
 
 ATHEISTICAL PEOPLES, 
 
 XXXIL POLYTHEISM, . . 
 
 459 
 462 
 
 463 
 465 
 467 
 468 
 
 469 
 472 
 
 473 
 
 474 
 479 
 485 
 488 
 496 
 500 
 
 504 
 506 
 
 507 
 508 
 
 513 
 519 
 521 
 523 
 
 524 
 528 
 
 530 
 
 531 
 532 
 
Contents. 
 
 XI 
 
 XXXIII. PESSIMISM, . 
 
 XXXIV. HISTORIES OF PANTHEISM, 
 XXXV. HINDU PANTHEISM, 
 
 XXXVI. GREEK PANTHEISM, 
 XXXVII. JORDANO BRUNO, 
 XXXVIII. SPINOZA, 
 
 XXXIX. MODERN GERMAN PANTHEISM, 
 XL. MODERN FRENCH PANTHEISM, 
 XLI. MODERN ENGLISH PANTHEISM, 
 
 533 
 536 
 
 539 
 
 541 
 
 544 
 546 
 
 551 
 
 553 
 
 554 
 
ANTI-THEISTIC THEORIES. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 ATHEISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the course of lectures which I delivered last 
 year I endeavoured to show that theism was 
 true ; that there was an overwhelming weight of 
 evidence in favour of the belief that the heavens 
 and the earth and all that they contain owe their 
 existence and continuance in existence to the wis- 
 dom and will of a supreme, self-existent, omnipo- 
 tent, omniscient, righteous, and benevolent Being, 
 who is distinct from, and independent of, what He 
 has created In the course which I have under- 
 taken to deliver this year, I wish to subject to 
 examination the theories which are opposed to 
 theism, and I hope to be able to prove that they 
 are essentially irrational and erroneous. When 
 
 A 
 
2 A7iti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 engaged in the attempt to establish that theism 
 has a broad and solid foundation both in fact and 
 reason, I contented myself with simply warding 
 off the attacks of those who deny that it has such 
 a foundation. But obviously more than this may 
 and should be done. It is our right and our duty 
 to inquire also if those who reject and assail theism 
 are themselves standing on firm ground, and if the 
 systems which have been raised in hostility to 
 theism are as impregnable as we have found itself 
 to be. It is this right which I intend to exercise ; 
 it is this duty which I shall endeavour to perform. 
 In dealing with theories which have nothing 
 in common except that they are antagonistic to 
 theism, it is necessary to have a general term to 
 designate them. Anti- theism appears to be the 
 appropriate word. It is, of course, much more 
 comprehensive in meaning than the term atheism. 
 It applies to all systems which are opposed to 
 theism. It includes, therefore, atheism. No sys- 
 tem is so opposed to theism as atheism ; it is the 
 extreme form of opposition to it. But short of 
 atheism there are anti - theistic theories. Poly- 
 theism is not atheism, for it does not deny that 
 there is a Deity; but it is anti -theistic, since it 
 denies that there is only one. Pantheism is not 
 atheism, for it admits that there is a God ; but it 
 is anti-theism, for it denies that God is a Being 
 distinct from creation and possessed of such attri- 
 
W/m^ Theism is. 3 
 
 butes as wisdom, and holiness, and love. Every 
 theory which refuses to ascribe to God an attribute 
 which is essential to a worthy conception of His 
 character is anti - theistic. Only those theories 
 which refuse to acknowledge that there is evidence 
 even for the existence of a God are atheistic.^ 
 
 An examination of anti-theistic theories ought 
 evidently to begin with atheism, — the complete 
 negation of theism. The term atheism, although 
 much less general in signification than anti-theism, 
 includes a multitude of systems. Atheism has a 
 great variety of forms. Its advocates are by no 
 means agreed among themselves. On the con- 
 trary, if their comparatively small number be 
 taken into account, they are far more divided 
 into sects than theists. They are at one only in 
 their utter rejection of theism. I am not aware 
 of any positive distinctive principle which atheists 
 hold in common. As soon as they attempt to 
 state a doctrine which may fill the place of theism, 
 dissension breaks out among them at all points. 
 It is an obvious consequence of the fact that 
 atheism is thus indefinite, divided, and varied, that 
 its chief phases must be discussed separately. It 
 cannot be treated fairly by being treated as what 
 it is not, — a single, self-consistent system. It is 
 really a series or aggregation of discordant and 
 conflicting systems. At the same time, some 
 
 ^ See Appendix I. 
 
4 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 general remarks regarding it may not be without 
 use. 
 
 Atheism is the rejection of belief in God. It 
 teaches either that there is no God, or that it is 
 impossible for man to know that there is a God, or 
 that there is no sufficient reason for believing that 
 there is a God. In other words, it either absolute- 
 ly denies that there is a Divine Being; or it denies 
 that the human mind is capable of discovering 
 whether or not there is a Divine Being; or it 
 simply maintains that no valid proof of the ex- 
 istence of a Divine Being has been produced. 
 Atheism in the form of a denial of the existence 
 of a God has been called dogmatic atheism ; 
 atheism in the form of doubt of man's ability to 
 ascertain whether there is a God or not has been 
 called sceptical atheism ; atheism in the form of 
 mere rejection of the evidence which has been 
 presented for the existence of a God may be 
 called critical atheism. There is no individual 
 system of atheism, however, which is exclusively 
 dogmatic, exclusively sceptical, or exclusively 
 critical. These terms express accurately only 
 ideal distinctions which have never been exactly 
 realised. Sceptical atheism and critical atheism 
 are inseparable. A purely dogmatic atheism 
 would be utterly incredible. Sceptical atheism 
 and critical atheism have always been much 
 more prevalent than dosnaatic atheism. In 
 
Existence of Atheism. 5 
 
 every form — even in its most modest form — 
 atheism pronounces all belief in God a delusion, 
 and all religion a fable. What is called practical 
 atheism is not a kind of thought or opinion, but 
 a mode of life. It may coexist with a belief in 
 the being of a God. It is the living as if there 
 were no God, whether we believe that there is a 
 God or not. 
 
 The existence of atheism has often been doubted. 
 It has been held to be absolutely impossible for 
 a man entirely to throw off belief in God. The 
 thought of a universe without a creator, without 
 a presiding mind and sustaining will, without a 
 judge of right and wrong, has seemed to many to 
 be so incredible that they have refused to admit 
 that it could be sincerely entertained by the human 
 mind. And it may be conceded that there is an 
 element of truth underlying this view. The whole 
 nature of man presupposes and demands God, and 
 is an enigma and self-contradiction if there be no 
 God. The reason of man can only rest in the 
 Divine Reason as the first cause ; his affections 
 tend to a supreme good which can only be found 
 in God ; his conscience contains a moral law which 
 implies a moral lawgiver. He can only be con- 
 scious of himself as dependent, finite, and imper- 
 fect, and consequently as distinguished from that 
 which is absolute, infinite, and perfect. In this 
 sense all theists will probably hold that the soul 
 
6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 bears within it a latent and implicit testimony 
 against atheism and on behalf of theism ; and the 
 opinion is one which cannot be refuted otherwise 
 than by what would amount to a refutation of 
 theism itself But although man's whole nature 
 cries for God, and can only find its true life in 
 God, there can be little doubt that he may so 
 contradict himself, so violate the most essential 
 principles of his own nature, as to persuade him- 
 self that there is no reason in the universe higher 
 than his own, no good which is not earthly and 
 perishable, no righteous judge, no infinite and 
 eternal God. The number of those who have 
 gone this length may not have been so large as 
 it has sometimes been represented. Many have 
 certainly been called atheists unjustly and ca- 
 lumniously. Some may possibly have professed 
 themselves to be atheists who really professed a 
 religious belief which they overlooked. But that 
 there have been atheists — that there are atheists 
 — cannot reasonably be denied. When men teach 
 the most manifest and explicit atheism — when 
 they avow themselves to be atheists — when they 
 glory in the name — we must take them at their 
 word. To say that they do not conscientiously 
 believe what they teach is an assertion which no 
 one has a right to make unless he can conclusive- 
 ly prove it, and for which there will be found in 
 many cases no proof whatever. The strangest 
 
Existence of A theism, 7 
 
 and most monstrous beliefs can be conscientiously 
 held by the weak and erring children of men. The 
 absurdities of superstition make easily credible the 
 sincerity of atheism. If one man can honestly 
 believe that there are a thousand fantastic gods, 
 another may honestly believe that there is no 
 god. Without hesitation or reservation, therefore, 
 I grant that Feuerbach fully meant what he said 
 when he wrote, " There is no God ; it is clear as 
 the sun and as evident as the day that there is no 
 God, and still more that there can be none ; '' 
 Gustave Flourens when he penned these words, 
 " Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the begin- 
 ning of wisdom. If mankind would make true 
 progress, it must be on the basis of atheism ; " and 
 Mr Bradlaugh when he told his audience, "My 
 friend Mr Holyoake says, with regard to the 
 words infidelity and atheism, that he objects to 
 them because of the opprobrium which has gath- 
 ered round them. The people who fight for old 
 nationalities remember the words of opprobrium 
 that have been heaped on their country and their 
 cause, but only to fight to redeem cause and coun- 
 try from that opprobrium. They do not admit the 
 opprobrium to be deserved, but they fight to show 
 that the whole is a lie. And I maintain the oppro- 
 brium cast upon the word atheism is a lie. I believe 
 atheists as a body to be men deserving respect, 
 and I do not care what kind of character religious 
 
8 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 men may put round the word atheist. I would 
 fight until men respect it." I know no reason for 
 suspecting the sincerity of these men or of these 
 statements, and therefore I do not suspect it. 
 
 There are open and avowed atheists whom we 
 are bound to believe to be what they profess them- 
 selves to be. There are also some who disclaim 
 atheism, yet who plainly teach it under other 
 names. A large amount of the speculation which 
 is called pantheistic might with equal propriety be 
 called atheistic. Many materialists have repelled 
 the charge of atheism, because they held matter 
 to be endowed with eternal unchanging properties 
 and powers ; many positivists and secularists have 
 fancied that they could not be properly called 
 atheists because they did not undertake to prove 
 that there is no God, but only to show that there is 
 no reason for supposing that there is one ; but, of 
 course, belief in the eternity of matter and motion 
 is not belief in the existence of God, and atheism 
 is not only the belief that God's existence can be 
 disproved, but also the belief that it cannot be 
 proved. We have no desire to attach to any man 
 a name which he dislikes, but a regard to truth 
 forbids us to concede that atheism only exists 
 where it is avowed. 
 
 Atheists have seldom undertaken to do more 
 than to refute the reasons adduced in favour of 
 belief in God. They have rarely pretended to 
 
The Denial that there is a God, 9 
 
 prove that there is no God ; they have maintained 
 that the existence of God cannot be established, 
 but not that His non-existence can be established ; 
 they have tried to justify their unbelief, but they 
 have not sought to lay a foundation for disbelief. 
 And the reason is obvious. It is proverbially 
 difficult to prove a negative, and there can be no 
 negative so difficult to prove as that there is no 
 God. Were a man to be landed on an unknown 
 island, the print of a foot, a shell, a feather, a 
 scratch on the bark of a tree, the perforation or 
 indentation or upheaval of a little earth, would be 
 sufficient to show him that some living creature 
 had been there ; but he would require to traverse 
 the whole island, and examine every nook and 
 corner, every object and every inch of space in 
 it, before he was entitled to affirm that no living 
 creature had been there. The larger the territory 
 to be traversed and examined, the more difficult 
 would it necessarily be to show that it had not a 
 single animal inhabitant. So to show that there 
 is a God may be very easy, but to prove that there 
 is certainly none must be extremely difficult, if not 
 impossible. There may be as many witnesses to 
 God's existence as there are creatures in the whole 
 compass of heaven and earth, but before we can 
 be sure that nothing testifies to His existence, we 
 must know all things. The territory which has in 
 this case to be surveyed and investigated is the 
 
lO Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 universe in all its length and breadth ; it is eter- 
 nal time and boundless space, with all the events 
 which have occurred in time, and all the objects 
 which occupy space. Before a man can be war- 
 ranted to affirm that nowhere throughout all this 
 territory is there any trace of God's existence, 
 he must have seen it all and comprehended it 
 all, which would require omnipresence and om- 
 niscience, or, in other words, would imply that he 
 is himself God. 
 
 Foster and Chalmers have so admirably pre- 
 sented this argument in celebrated passages of 
 their writings that it is unnecessary to dwell upon 
 it further.^ It has only been attempted to be 
 refuted by an author who has fallen into singular 
 mistakes as to its nature. Mr Holyoake fancies 
 that it turns upon an arbitrary use of the words 
 " denial " and *' knowledge." There is not the 
 slightest foundation for such a notion. The word 
 denial, and even all the sentences which contain 
 it, might be deleted without the argument losing 
 a particle of its force. The word knowledge is 
 employed in its ordinary and most general signifi- 
 cation. The knowledge of the eyesight is no more 
 demanded of the atheist for his negation than it 
 is alleged by the theist for his affirmation. The 
 whole argument turns simply on the manifest and 
 indubitable difference between proving an affirma- 
 ^ See Appendix II. 
 
The Denial that there is a God. 1 1 
 
 tive and proving a negative. From that difference 
 it follows necessarily that the inference that there is 
 a God may be warranted by a very limited know- 
 ledge of nature, but that the inference that there 
 is no God can only be warranted by a complete 
 knowledge of nature. If the author mentioned had 
 not thoroughly misconceived the character of the 
 argument he would never have imagined that it 
 could be thus refuted by inversion. " The wonder," 
 he says, "turns on the great process by which a man 
 could grow to the immense intelligence which can 
 know that there is a God. What powers, what lights 
 are requisite for this attainment ! This intelligence 
 involves the very attributes of Divinity, which must 
 therefore be possessed by the theist while they are 
 pretended to be sought. For unless this man is 
 omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every 
 place in the universe, he cannot know but there 
 may be, in some place, manifestations of nature 
 independent of Deity, by which even he would be 
 overpowered. If he does not know absolutely 
 every agent in the universe, the one that he does 
 not know may be the eternal source of all life. If 
 he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, 
 and does not know that God is so — that which is so 
 may be the eternal and independent element which 
 animates nature. If the theist is not in absolute 
 possession of all the propositions which constitute 
 universal truth, the one which he wants may be, 
 
12 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 that nature is the primordial and sole existence. 
 If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of 
 all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be 
 nature. If he does not know everything that has 
 been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, 
 some things may have been done by nature. Thus, 
 unless the theist knows all things — that is, pre- 
 cludes all other independent existence by being 
 the infinite existence himself — he does not know 
 that the nature whose supremacy he rejects, does 
 not self-subsist and act on its own eternal essence." 
 Foster's argument is here travestied, but certainly 
 not answered. Where is the wonder that men 
 should know that there is a God } Such knowledge 
 must indeed be elevated and glorious, but it may 
 well be within the reach of a feeble and limited 
 intelligence. It implies a certain likeness to God, 
 but none of the distinctive attributes of God. A 
 single square foot of earth may contain numerous 
 proofs that there is a God, but only the entire 
 universe can furnish evidence that there is none. 
 He who does not know absolutely every agent in 
 the universe cannot be sure that the one of which 
 he is ignorant may not be the eternal source of all 
 life and thought, while the most familiar manifesta- 
 tions of life and thought may reasonably convince 
 him that their eternal source cannot be dead and 
 thoughtless matter. If the theist undertook to 
 prove the non-existence of nature^ — that there 
 
The Denial that there is a God, 13 
 
 are no natural causes and no effects produced by 
 them, — he would venture on the same kind of task 
 as that of the atheist who attempts to establish 
 that there is no God, and his audacity might then 
 be rebuked and his want of wisdom evinced by the 
 same kind of reasoning. In that case refutation 
 by inversion would be legitimate and conclusive ; 
 but it is clearly inapplicable in any other case. 
 Before it can be employed some one must be 
 found to maintain that there is no nature, which 
 is the only proposition corresponding to there is 
 no God. But no theist maintains the non-exist- 
 ence of nature. What he maintains is that nature 
 is an effect whose cause is God. 
 
 If the argument of Foster and Chalmers be well 
 founded, atheism ought certainly not to be a self- 
 confident system. It can never be sure that there 
 is no God, and can never have a right to deny that 
 there is a God. It must simply affirm that theism 
 has not been proved true, and must abandon the 
 hope of ever proving it to be false. It must rest 
 in a state of suspense and hesitation from which 
 there is no probability of deliverance, unless by 
 theism being proved true. It must never express 
 itself more strongly than by such phrases as 
 "there is no knowing whether there be a God 
 or not," — "there is no saying," — "it doth not yet 
 appear." Is this not a very strange and dreary 
 condition for the human mind to be condemned 
 
14 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 to abide in ? If such be the natural condition of 
 the human mind, must not the constitution both 
 of the mind and of the universe in relation to the 
 mind be about the worst conceivable? But is it 
 not much more likely that atheists have deceived 
 themselves, than that either the mind or the uni- 
 verse has been so badly made as atheism im- 
 plies? Is it not much more likely that atheism 
 is false, than that the human mind has been made 
 not for truth, but for doubt ? 
 
 To deny that God can be known is scarcely less 
 presumptuous than to deny that God is. For, it 
 will be observed, it assumes that we are capable of 
 describing the limits both of human attainment 
 and of Divine power. It assumes that we are 
 not only able to say here is a proposition which 
 the human mind can never ascertain to be true, 
 but also here is a proposition which cannot be re- 
 vealed to be true even by an infinite mind, suppos- 
 ing such a mind to exist. It assumes, that is to 
 say, in the first place, a kind of knowledge of the 
 human mind such as no man has got. We can 
 discover the conditions and laws to which reason- 
 ing and research must be conformed if the human 
 mind would attain truth ; but we cannot ascertain 
 the external limits of intellectual progress. To 
 lay down that this or that proposition, which in- 
 volves in itself no contradiction, can never be 
 known, never be proved, is sheer dogmatism. The 
 
The Denial that God can be known. 1 5 
 
 mind has no right to assign fixed limits to its own 
 advancement in knowledge ; it has no warrant 
 even for doubting that it may advance for ever, 
 its horizon constantly receding, its range of vision 
 growing always wider and more distinct. When 
 the atheist declares, therefore, that God cannot be 
 known, he dogmatises presumptuously as to the 
 limits of human power ; he arrogates to him- 
 self a superhuman knowledge of the possible at- 
 tainments of the human mind. But worse than 
 this, while denying that an infinite mind can ever 
 be known, he assumes that he himself knows what 
 an infinite mind would be capable of He tells us 
 in one breath that we can never know even the 
 existence of an almighty Being, and in the next 
 that he himself knows what such a Being could 
 not do ; that he knows that God could not make 
 His existence known to us. Under the apparent 
 humility of the declaration God cannot be known, 
 there lurks the affirmation that a finite mind can 
 trace the limits of infinite power. Therefore, I 
 say, to deny that God can be known is scarcely 
 less presumptuous than to deny that God is. It 
 implies in him who makes the denial the posses- 
 sion of a Divine attribute — the possession of infi- 
 nite knowledge. 
 
 The atheist, then, who would not virtually de- 
 clare himself to be a god, must not venture to 
 deny either that God is or that God can be known^ 
 
1 6 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 but must be content merely to deny the sufficiency 
 of the evidence for God's existence. He must be 
 content to be a mere critic; he is bound to confess 
 that atheism is really no theory or explanation of 
 the universe ; that no positive or independent or 
 scientific proof of it need be looked for ; and that 
 facts sufficient to overthrow it may be brought to 
 light any instant. Atheists are, however, seldom 
 thus diffident, and we cannot wonder that they are 
 not. There are very few minds which could ac- 
 quiesce in a hopeless and inexplicable hesitancy 
 and suspense. Atheism would make no converts 
 unless it showed more confidence than it is ration- 
 ally entitled to do. 
 
 Not unfrequently it displays great confidence. 
 Thus Von Holbach, in the * System of Nature/ 
 tells his readers that the existence of God is " not 
 a problem, but simply an impossibility." But for 
 this strong statement he had only the weak rea- 
 son that "we cannot know God truly unless we 
 are God." We have just seen that to know there 
 is no God, or that God cannot be known, implies 
 such knowledge as only a God can have, but that 
 only a very little knowledge may suffice reason- 
 ably to convince us that there is a God. Feuer- 
 bach, as I have already mentioned, declares it 
 " clear as the sun and as evident as the day, not 
 only that there is no God, but that there can be 
 none." We seek in vain, however, for the demon- 
 
Atheism often Dogmatic. 1 7 
 
 stration of this startling assertion. In its place there 
 is presented to us an unreasoned and superficial 
 hypothesis as to the origin, nature, and history of 
 religion. Religion, in Feuerbach's opinion, is self- 
 delusion in the form of self-deification. It is his 
 own nature which man projects out of himself, per- 
 sonifies, and worships. He idealises himself, be- 
 lieves the ideal real, and adores the imaginary 
 being whom he has created. Religion is thus a 
 phase of insanity under which the whole human race 
 laboured for thousands of years, until the one wise 
 man appeared who discovered that his fellow-men 
 had been idiotically bowing and cringing before 
 their own shadow. It is this discovery which makes 
 it " clear as the sun and evident as the day, not 
 only that there is no God, but that there can 
 be none." Mainlander claims, in his painfully 
 gloomy work, to have for the first time founded 
 atheism on a scientific basis. But to accomplish 
 his task he finds it necessary to represent Chris- 
 tianity as, like Budhism, a system of atheism. 
 Maintaining the atheism of these two religions, he 
 infers that atheism is the natural goal of human 
 development. The mass of assertions which he 
 accumulates around this ludicrous argument he 
 assures us is a scientific demonstration. Czolbe, 
 Diihring, and some other German atheists, might 
 be referred to as equally audacious in profession 
 and feeble in performance. A zealous English 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 advocate of atheism, Mr Bradlaugh, has frequently 
 said, "If God is defined to mean an existence 
 other than the existence of which I am a mode, 
 then I deny God, and affirm that it is impossible 
 God can be. That is, I affirm one existence, and 
 deny that there can be more than one." But the 
 terms " existence " and " mode " are here em- 
 ployed in so peculiar and equivocal a manner that 
 the declaration may have either a theistic, pan- 
 theistic, or atheistic meaning. It has no proper 
 or definite meaning. 
 
 Atheism is essentially irrational when not 
 merely critical. And even when merely critical 
 it is not very rational. This statement is based 
 on the entire argumentation in the previous course 
 of lectures. The chief aim of that course was to 
 exhibit the evidence for the existence of God, and 
 the proof of theism is necessarily the refutation of 
 atheism. Further, a secondary aim, kept in view 
 throughout, was directly to repel the objections 
 which atheism has brought against the validity and 
 sufficiency of the fundamental theistic proofs ; 
 to show that their weight is scarcely appreciable 
 when fairly poised against the reasons in the op- 
 posite scale, and that, almost without exception, 
 the subtlest and most plausible of them indicate 
 only defects or difficulties in the metaphysics of 
 religious speculation, and should have no influence 
 whatever on the practical 'decision, at which the 
 
Atheism not satisfactory to the Intellect 19 
 
 mind ought to arrive, as to whether there is a God 
 or not. If I succeeded in doing so I must, of 
 course, have refuted the atheism which rests on 
 these objections, — the atheism which is purely 
 critical. But whether I succeeded or not, it will 
 be better now to offer some general considerations 
 on atheism in its intellectual, emotional, and moral 
 aspects, than to return on what has been already 
 done, or at least, on what has been already tried 
 to be done.^ 
 
 II. 
 
 How does atheism satisfy the intellect ? There 
 is around us a world of order and beauty ; a world 
 in which elements are wonderfully compounded 
 and qualities wonderfully associated — in which 
 there is at once an admirable regularity and an 
 admirable diversity — in which all things work 
 together. What explanation does atheism give 
 of this world } There is an atheism which does 
 not pretend to give any explanation ; which tells 
 us even that there is no explanation to be given, 
 and that it is foolish to ask for any. This kind 
 of atheism, to be consistent, ought to forbid all 
 investigation whatever ; ought to lay an arrest on 
 thought and research at the very outset of their 
 course ; ought to explain nothing ; ought not to 
 recognise that there is any such thing as law and 
 
 * See Appendix TIT. 
 
20 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 order. This kind of atheism is a direct and com- 
 plete violation of the rational principle in man. 
 The human intellect is by its very constitution 
 compelled to seek first causes for events, and final 
 causes for order and adaptation ; and it has no 
 right to stop short, as the atheist would have it, 
 when it cannot advance farther without rising to 
 the apprehension of a Creative Reason. If it will 
 not go as far as its principles legitimately lead, it 
 has no right to start at all; it must deny itself 
 entirely ; it must wholly renounce its own nature. 
 In other words, a brute may, but a man cannot, be 
 a consistent atheist of this class. Pure empiricism 
 is so far beneath humanity as to be beyond its 
 reach, and can support nothing either human or 
 rational. 
 
 There is an atheism which teaches that the world 
 is but the last effect of an eternal succession of 
 causes and efifects, and that there has been no first 
 cause. The mind, however, rejects as absolutely 
 absurd the notion of an eternal series of worlds 
 which depends on no originating principle. It 
 demands a first cause, a true and self-existent first 
 cause. A series may be indefinitely extensible ; 
 it cannot be infinitely extended. Where there is 
 a last term there must have been a first term. If 
 each of a series of effects be dependent, all the 
 effects of that series must be dependent, and on 
 a cause which precedes them. If the last link of a 
 
Atheisin not satisfactory to the Intellect. 21 
 
 chain be supported by the link above it, that by 
 the third Hnk, the third by the fourth, and so on, 
 the entire chain cannot hang upon nothing. An 
 endless adjournment of causes is a process which 
 is meaningless and useless, and in which reason 
 can never acquiesce. For reason to abandon belief 
 in a self- existent eternal cause for belief in an 
 eternal series, every part of which is the effect of 
 an antecedent cause, while the whole is an effect 
 without a cause, is a suicidal, a self-destructive act. 
 Besides, the supposition of the eternity of the 
 series of worlds obviously cannot free us from the 
 necessity of believing in an eternally operative in- 
 telligence to account for the order, the mechanical 
 and organic adjustments, the finite minds, &c., to 
 be found in these worlds. The conviction which a 
 man feels when looking at St Paul's that it must 
 have had an architect of wonderful genius, is not 
 disturbed or lessened by his knowledge that it was 
 built two centuries ago. And in like manner, the 
 inference that the world must have had an intel- 
 ligent cause ought to be as legitimate and strong 
 were it eternal, or the last of an eternal series, as 
 if it were the only world and had been created 
 four thousand years or four days ago. The infer- 
 ence from order and adjustment to intelligence is 
 unaffected by the consideration of time ; it is valid 
 for all time, and for eternity as well as for time. 
 The eternity of the series of worlds supposed can 
 
22 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 be no evidence that it is uncaused by intelligence , 
 it can only entitle us to affirm that if the series 
 have a cause, the cause must be eternal, since the 
 effect is eternal. The hypothesis of an eternal 
 series of worlds is thus an utterly vain and un- 
 reasonable device ; a most futile attempt to evade 
 the obligation of belief in God. 
 
 There is an atheism which teaches us that mat- 
 ter and its laws account for all the harmonies and 
 utilities of nature, for all the faculties and aspira- 
 tions of the human soul, and for the progress of 
 history. But this form of atheism also, popular 
 although it be, fails to establish any of its pre- 
 tensions. It neither accounts for matter and its 
 laws nor shows that they do not require to be 
 accounted for. It assumes the self- existence of 
 matter and its laws, although theism founding on 
 science undertakes to show that they must have 
 had an origin. The basis of this atheism is there- 
 fore a manifest petitio principii. And, even with 
 its initial assumption, it does not explain the har- 
 monies of the physical universe, nor the properties 
 of vegetable and animal life, nor the mind of man, 
 nor his moral principles and religious convictions. 
 It puts what is lowest and most imperfect first, 
 what is highest and moet perfect last. It regards 
 this contradiction of all rational thinking as a 
 grand achievement. 
 
 There is an atheism, incredible as it may sound 
 
AtJieisnt not satisfactory to the Intellect. 23 
 
 which teaches that the universe, with all its objects 
 and laws, is the creation of the finite human mind. 
 What we call outward things are, according to this 
 hypothesis, but mental states. All that is is ego ; 
 is the self-acting of itself and limiting itself, and so 
 producing the non-ego or universe. Such is the 
 doctrine on which a kind of atheism has been 
 founded, which has sometimes received the name 
 of autotheism, seeing that it would make man his 
 own God and the creator of the heavens and earth. 
 The celebrated Fichte was, at a certain stage of 
 his philosophical career, accused of atheism in this 
 form. He was supposed to teach a purely sub- 
 jective idealism which would have been irreconcil- 
 able with any worthier religious theory ; to main- 
 tain that the moral order of the universe which 
 he identified with God was, like the universe itself, 
 the creation of the personal ego. But he indig- 
 nantly repelled the charge and denied that he had 
 ever confounded the personal with the absolute 
 egOy or taught a purely subjective idealism, or 
 overlooked that development is inexplicable with- 
 out belief in an immutable Being ; and although 
 the view generally given of his philosophy is in- 
 consistent with these exculpatory statements, I 
 believe that they must be accepted. It is admitted 
 on all hands that, later in life, this noble-minded 
 man was neither subjective idealist nor autotheist. 
 Schopenhauer and others do not hesitate to tell 
 
24 Aftti-Thetstic Theories. 
 
 us that within the mind, some of them expressly 
 say within the brain, of man, the immensities of 
 time and space and all their contents lie enclosed ; 
 in Schopenhauer's own language, " did not human 
 brains, objects scarcely as big as a large fruit, 
 sprout up incessantly, like mushrooms, the world 
 would sink into nothingness." This strange hypo- 
 thesis finds a strange counterpart in the specula- 
 tions of two of the latest of German atheists as to 
 the magnitude of the brain. Schopenhauer thought 
 it no bigger than it seemed to be, and yet sup- 
 posed that it contained the universe. Czolbe and 
 Ueberweg fancy that its apparent size is but an 
 extremely diminished picture of its real size ; that, 
 in fact, it is colossal, stretching beyond the fixed 
 stars, and covering the whole field of vision. Cer- 
 tainly either the universe would require to be 
 much smaller than it is, or the mind of man much 
 greater than it is, before the notion that the latter 
 is the source or cause of the former can be for a 
 moment entertained. The atheism which makes 
 the finite mind the creator and sustainer of the 
 universe is its own best refutation. 
 
 Atheism, then, yields no satisfaction to the 
 reason, but is in all its forms a violation of the 
 conditions of rational belief. Does it satisfy better 
 the demands of the heart ? The atheist is without 
 God in the world, and therefore has only the 
 world. Will the world without God satisfy a 
 
Atheism not satisfactory to the Heart. 25 
 
 human heart ? No man will venture to maintain 
 that material things and outward advantages — 
 meat and drink and raiment, wealth, honours, 
 influence — can satisfy it. The heart of man — the 
 atheist himself, if he be a person of any refinement 
 and elevation of character, will grant at once — can- 
 not be content with merely material and earthly 
 good ; it must have something which responds to 
 higher faculties than the sensuous and the selfish. 
 It would be to insult the atheist to suppose him 
 even to doubt this. What he will say is that 
 although without God there remains to him truth, 
 beauty, and virtue, and that these things will 
 yield to him such satisfaction as his nature admits 
 of, and one of which he needs not be ashamed. 
 Let us see. 
 
 The truth in which the atheist must seek the 
 satisfaction of his heart can only be, of course, 
 mere truth, — truth apprehended not as expressive 
 of the thought and affection and will of God, but 
 as expressive of the properties and relations of 
 material things and human beings. Suppose, how- 
 ever, that a man knew not only all that science 
 has at present to tell, but all that it will ever be 
 able to tell about the world of matter and the 
 mind of man and human history, would it be 
 reasonable to expect this fully to satisfy him ? I 
 think not. Were all that is to be known about the 
 material universe actually known, the man whe 
 
26 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 knew it would simply have within himself the true 
 reflection of what was existing without him ; on 
 his spirit which thinks there would simply be a 
 correct picture of that which does not think. But 
 the soul which would not be satisfied with the 
 very world itself, could it have it, will surely not 
 be satisfied with that pale reflection of it which 
 constitutes science. The soul which is itself so 
 superior every way to the world cannot have for 
 its highest end merely to serve as a mirror to it, 
 and to show forth not the likeness and glory of 
 God, but of what is without life, without reason, 
 and without love. And were all that is to be 
 known about the mind of man actually known, 
 the soul which knew it would only have a know- 
 ledge of itself But could any person except a 
 fool rest in complacent contemplation of himself.^ 
 True self-knowledge is very much the reverse of 
 pleasant or satisfying. Shame and terror are 
 often its most natural effects. Science, culture, 
 truth, when separated from their one eternal 
 source in the Infinite Life, the Infinite Love, show 
 us nothing higher than our own poor selves — 
 nothing that we can look up to — no object of 
 trust, of adoration, of affection. How, then, can 
 they satisfy hearts the true life of which consists 
 in the exercise of faith and hope, reverence and 
 love } Severed from what will worthily develop 
 the higher emotional principles of human nature, 
 
Atheism not satisfactory to the Heart. 27 
 
 they may lead the soul into a land as waste and 
 famishing as what only concerns the body, or even 
 into a still more howling and hungry wilderness. 
 The spiritual affections if denied appropriate sus- 
 tenance, if presented only with purely intellectual 
 truth, will either die of inanition to the sore im- 
 poverishment of the mind, or they will live on to 
 torment it with a pain more grievous than that of 
 unappeased animal appetite. For true it is, as an 
 eloquent preacher has said, in words which I can- 
 not exactly recall, but which are nearly as follows : 
 "There is on earth a greater misfortune than to 
 crave for bread and not to have it, and a sad- 
 ness more complete than that of bereavement, 
 sickness, poverty, even pushed to their extrem- 
 est limits ; there is the bitterness of a soul which 
 has studied, and searched, and speculated, which 
 has pursued with eager and anxious heart, truth 
 in many directions, and yet, because it sought 
 it away from the light and life which are in 
 God, has only found in all directions doubt and 
 nothingness." 
 
 What we cannot find in truth, however, may we 
 not find in the enjoyment of the beautiful in 
 nature and art .-* In his last work — * The Old and 
 the New Faith ' — this is what Strauss points to as 
 a substitute for religion. The admiration of fair 
 scenery, of painting, music, and poetry, may, it \s 
 hoped, fill the void in the heart caused by the 
 
28 Anti-Theistic Theories^ 
 
 absence of faith in God. The picture-gallery, the 
 concert-room, the theatre, may help us to dispense 
 with the Church and its services. Now, certainly, 
 it is greatly to be desired that the love of the 
 beautiful in nature and art were more widely 
 diffused among all classes of the community. He 
 who contributes to its cultivation and extension 
 confers on his fellow-men no mean boon, no slight 
 service. But so far from being able to supply the 
 place of the love of God, the love of the beautiful 
 itself withers and corrupts, becomes weak or be- 
 comes foul, severed from that love. Art of a high 
 and healthy order has ever drawn its inspiration 
 largely from religion. The grandest buildings, the 
 most beautiful paintings, the noblest music, the 
 greatest poems, are religious. The arts have 
 hitherto spread and advanced in the service of 
 religion, or at least in connection with it. They 
 have never flourished except in a spiritual atmo- 
 sphere which is the breath of religious faith 
 Atheism — unbelief — has, alike in ancient and 
 in modern times, and in all lands, been found 
 fatal to art. Before it is entitled to point us to 
 art as a substitute for religion, it must be able to 
 show us where there is an art which can elevate 
 and improve the mind that has not been directly 
 or indirectly engendered by religion. It must 
 show us that it can create and sustain a noble art. 
 Atheistical art, so far as the world has yet known 
 
Atheism^ Art, and N attire. 29 
 
 it, has been art of a diseased and degrading kind. 
 It need scarcely be added that art, whether good 
 or bad, can never be more for the majority of men 
 than a source of comparatively rare, fragmentary, 
 and temporary enjoyment. It is for the leisure 
 hour and for the lighter moods and occasions of 
 life; not for times either of heavy toil or heavy 
 trial. It were well that hard-working men valued 
 art more generally and highly than they do, and 
 so enjoyed such power as it possesses, — a real and 
 precious power of its kind, — to refresh those who 
 are weary, and to soothe those who are troubled ; 
 but it were ill that they abandoned for it religion. 
 Art is a beautiful flower, but religion is a strong 
 staff. Art is a sweet perfume, but religion is 
 necessary sustenance. Without aid from art the 
 spirit will lack many a charm, but without aid 
 from religion it will lack life itself. 
 
 It is said that nature lies open to the inspection 
 and contemplation of all, and presents the same 
 beauties and sublimities to the atheist as to the 
 theist } It must be answered that the atheist and 
 the theist, so far as they are thoughtful and self- 
 consistent men, cannot but view nature very dif- 
 ferently and feel very differently towards it. To 
 the atheist nature may be beautiful and sublime, 
 but it must be, above all, terrible. Nature stands 
 to him in place of Deity, but is the mere embodi- 
 ment of force, the god of the iron foot, without ear 
 
30 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 for prayer, or heart for sympathy, or arm for help. 
 It is immense, it is sublime, it sparkles with 
 beauties, but it is senseless, aimless, pitiless. It is 
 an interminable succession of causes and effects, 
 with no reason or love as either their beginning or 
 end ; it is an unlimited ocean of restlessness and 
 change, the waves of which heave and moan, under 
 the influence of necessity, in darkness for evermore; 
 it is an enormous mechanism, driving and grinding 
 on of itself from age to age, but towards no goal 
 and for no good. Says Strauss himself, "■ In the 
 enormous machine of the universe, amid the in- 
 cessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels — 
 amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps 
 and hammers — in the midst of this terrific com- 
 motion, man, a helpless and defenceless creature, 
 finds himself placed — not secure for a moment, 
 that on some unguarded motion, a wheel may 
 not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him 
 to powder. This sense of abandonment is at first 
 very awful." And we may add, the longer it is 
 realised it should grow more and more awful, ever 
 deeper, denser, and darker, until the atheist feels 
 that for him to talk of heartily enjoying nature 
 were a cruel mockery of his own helplessness. We 
 can only be rationally free to enjoy nature when 
 we have confidence that one hand of an almighty 
 Father is working the mechanism of the universe 
 and another guiding His children in the midst of 
 
Atheism, and Morality. 31 
 
 it, so that neither wheel nor hammer shall injure 
 one hair of their heads. 
 
 When truth and beauty fail, will the atheist find 
 his virtue suffice ? Will morality, when exclusive 
 of service to God, when separated from the thought 
 of God, satisfy and sustain the human heart ? 
 Does atheism meet the claims and supply the 
 wants of conscience ? This is to ask, in other 
 words, if a man will be as strong for duty without 
 as with belief in an almighty and perfect moral 
 Judge and Governor ? And the question is surely 
 one which answers itself The believer in God has 
 every motive to virtue which the unbeliever has, 
 and he has his belief in addition, which is the 
 mightiest motive of all. It is often hard enough 
 even for the believing man to conquer his passions, 
 to bear the burden which Providence imposes, and 
 to be valiant for the right against wrong ; but how 
 much harder must it be for the unbeliever ? His 
 evil desires are not checked by the feeling that 
 Infinite Justice beholds them and condemns, nor 
 are his strivings after God sustained by the con- 
 sciousness that the Almighty and All-merciful ap- 
 proves and favours them. When he sees false- 
 hood widely triumphant over truth, vice over 
 virtue, he has no right to expect that it will ever 
 be otherwise. If the highest wisdom and goodness 
 in existence are man's own, the mystery is not 
 that the world is so bad as it is, but that it is 
 
32 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 not indescribably worse. When sickness and loss 
 come to the atheist they may be patiently and 
 bravely borne, but they cannot be welcomed as 
 they may by one who feels that they are sent 
 to him by supreme wisdom and love to purify and 
 discipline his character, and to work out in him 
 and for him an exceeding weight of glory. It is 
 not for him to say — 
 
 " Oh ! there is never sorrow of heart 
 That shall lack a timely end, 
 If but to God we turn, and ask 
 Of Him to be our friend I " 
 
 And what can he say in its stead ? When death 
 enters his home and strikes down some dear one, 
 he hears no Father's voice, sees no Father's hand, 
 feels no consolation of a comforting Spirit, but sits, 
 in a darkness which is unrelieved by a single ray 
 of light, mourning over the work of the senseless 
 energies of nature. When death lays hold of him- 
 self, and he knows that there is no escape, he can 
 only yield himself up to a dread uncertainty, or to 
 the cold comfort of annihilation, the hope of being 
 dissolved into the elements of which he was at first 
 compounded — earth to earth, ashes to ashes ; mind 
 and heart as well as body to ashes — thoughts, affec- 
 tions, virtue to ashes ; all, dust to dust. Is there 
 much encouragement to virtue there ? 
 
 The atheist may reply, I take from life no moral 
 support which it really possesses ; I do not remove 
 
Atheism and Morality. 33 
 
 God from the world, but find the world without 
 God, and I cannot rest my confidence on what 
 seems to me to be a fiction. He may urge, also, 
 that truth must be accepted, whether it appear to 
 us to be all that is morally desirable or not. But 
 one who answers thus cannot have understood the 
 tenor of what we have advanced. If the atheist be 
 right, of course it is not he who takes from life any 
 hope, or strength, or charm which truly belongs 
 to it. That truth must be accepted, whether sweet 
 or bitter, consoling or desolating, is what no one 
 doubts. But the question is, Can truth and good- 
 ness be at variance with one another t Can the 
 belief of falsehood be more favourable to the 
 moral perfection of mankind than the belief of 
 truth ? The most intrepid lover of truth may 
 well hesitate before he answers in the affirmative. 
 It is probably, indeed, impossible to show on 
 atheistical principles why reason and virtue should 
 not be in antagonism — why falsehood, if believed, 
 should not be more conducive in many cases to 
 virtue and happiness than truth ; but the conclu- 
 sion is none the less one which must seem per- 
 fectly monstrous to any mind which is not griev- 
 ously perverted either intellectually or morally. 
 If it were accepted, mental life could have no 
 unity or harmony. For who could decide be- 
 tween the competing and conflicting claims of 
 truth and virtue, of reason and morality ? Neither 
 
 C 
 
34 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the truth unfavourable to morality nor the morality 
 capable of being injured by truth would deserve, 
 or could be expected to receive, the homage due 
 to truth and morality when allied and accordant. 
 
 Atheism has not unfrequently been advocated 
 on political grounds. Religion has been presented 
 as the support of tyranny and the cause of strife. 
 Its abolition, it has been argued, would emancipate 
 the mind and secure peace. This view will always 
 be found to rest on the confusion of religion with 
 superstition. But superstition is as distinct from 
 religion as from atheism. Superstition and athe- 
 ism are both contraries to religion, and, as was 
 long ago remarked, are closely akin. They are 
 related to religion as the alternating feverish heat 
 and shivering cold of bodily disease are related 
 to the equable temperature of health. The one 
 gives rise to the other; the one easily passes 
 into the other. Each is to a large extent charge- 
 able, not only with the evils which it directly pro- 
 duces, but with those which it originates by way 
 of reaction. Both flow from ignorance and errone- 
 ous views of Divine things. " The atheist," as Plu- 
 tarch tells us, " thinks that there is no God ; the 
 superstitious man would fain think so, but believes 
 against his will, for he fears to do otherwise. Super- 
 stition generates atheism, and afterwards furnishes 
 it with an apology, which, although neither true nor 
 lovely, yet lacks not a specious pretence." On the 
 
Atheism and Politics. 35 
 
 other hand, atheism drives men into superstition. 
 Wherever it spreads, religious credulity and ser- 
 vility spread along with it, or spring up rapidly 
 after it. A reasonable religion is the only effec- 
 tive barrier against either atheism or superstition. 
 
 It has been disputed whether atheism or super- 
 stition be politically the more injurious. Perhaps 
 the problem is too vague to be resolved. But cer- 
 tainly the spread of atheism in a land may well 
 be regarded with the most serious alarm. In the 
 measure that a people ceases to believe in God 
 and an eternal world, it must become debased, 
 disorganised, and incapable of achieving noble 
 deeds. History confirms this on many a page. 
 "All epochs," wrote Goethe, "in which faith, 
 under whatever form, has prevailed, have been 
 brilliant, heart-elevating, and fruitful, both to con- 
 temporaries and posterity. All epochs, on the 
 contrary, in which unbelief, under whatever form, 
 has maintained a sad supremacy, even if for the 
 moment they glitter with a false splendour, vanish 
 from the memory of posterity, because none care 
 to torment themselves with the knowledge of that 
 which has been barren." 
 
 "The idea of an intelligent First Cause," says 
 Mazzini, " once destroyed, — the existence of a 
 moral law, supreme over men, and constituting 
 an obligation, a duty imposed upon all men, is 
 destroyed with it ; so also all possibility of a law 
 
36 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 of progress, or intelligent design, regulating the 
 life of humanity. Both progress and morality 
 then become mere transitory facts, having no 
 deeper source than the tendency or impulse of 
 individual organisation ; no other sanction than 
 the arbitrary will or varying interest of individ- 
 uals, or — force. In fact, the only imaginable 
 sources of life are — God, chance, or the blind, 
 insuperable force of things ; and if we deny the 
 first to accept either of the others, in the name 
 of whom, or of what, can we assume any right to 
 educate } In the name of whom, or of what, can 
 we condemn the man who abandons the pursuit 
 of the general good through egotism } In the 
 name of whom, or of what, can you protest 
 against injustice, or assert your duty and right 
 of contending against it? Whence can you de- 
 duce the existence of an aim common to all 
 men, and therefore giving you an authority to 
 declare to them that they are bound by duty to 
 fraternal association in pursuit of that common 
 aim > " 
 
 The prevalence of atheism in any land must 
 bring with it national decay and disaster. Its 
 triumph in our land would bring with it, I believe, 
 hopeless national ruin. If the workmen of the 
 large towns of this country were, as a body, to 
 adopt the principles which have at certain periods 
 swayed the minds of the workmen of Paris and 
 
Prevalence of A theism. 37 
 
 Lyons, — were as a body to adopt atheism and its 
 concomitant beliefs, — utter anarchy would be in- 
 evitable. In such a case, owing to the very pros- 
 perity we have reached, and the consequent ex- 
 treme concentration of population within a narrow 
 circuit, the problem of government would be a 
 hundredfold more difficult in England than it has 
 been in France and Germany even in their darkest 
 days. But no man who examines the signs of the 
 times can fail to see much tending to show that 
 atheism may possibly come to have its day of 
 fatal supremacy. Polytheism there is nothing to 
 fear from. Pantheism, except in forms in which 
 it is hardly distinguishable from atheism, there is 
 comparatively little to fear from. It is improbable 
 that this country will be afflicted to any great ex- 
 tent with a fever of idealistic pantheism resem- 
 bling that which Germany has passed through. 
 What chiefly threatens us is atheism in the forms 
 of agnosticism, positivism, secularism, materialism, 
 &c. ; and it does so directly and seriously. The 
 most influential authorities in science and philo- 
 sophy, and a host of the most popular representa- 
 tives of literature, are strenuously propagating it. 
 Through the periodical press it exerts a formida- 
 ble power. It has in our large centres of popula- 
 tion missionaries who, I fear, are better qualified 
 for their work than many of those whom our 
 Churches send forth to advocate to the same classes 
 
38 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the cause of Christianity. There is a great deal in 
 current modes of thought and feeling, and in the 
 whole constitution and character of contemporary- 
 society, to favour its progress. Atheism is a foe 
 opposition to which, and to what tends to produce 
 it, ought to draw together into earnest co-opera- 
 tion all who believe in God and love their country.'' 
 
 * See Appendix IV. 
 
Materialism. 39 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 ANCIENT MATERIALISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the present day there is no kind of anti-theism, 
 no kind of atheism, so prevalent and so formidable 
 as materialism. Wherever we find just now an 
 anti-theistic or atheistic system popular, we may 
 be certain that it is either a form of materialism or 
 that it has originated in materialism, and draws 
 from it its life and support. It is necessary for 
 us, therefore, to turn our attention to materialism, 
 the chief and central source of contemporary anti- 
 theistic speculations. I shall treat of it at some 
 length, owing to its importance, but I shall treat 
 of it only in so far as it is anti-theistic. It has 
 other aspects and relations, but these I do not re- 
 quire to consider. With much that has sometimes 
 been included in materialism, I have fortunately 
 here no concern. 
 
 Materialists have not unfrequently sought to 
 
46 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 represent the history of physical science and 
 speculation as inseparable from, if not identical 
 with, the history of materialism. Their right to 
 do so is, of course, denied by all their opponents. 
 Spiritualists of every class maintain that nothing 
 accomplished by physical science has carried us 
 by a single step nearer materialism. All consist- 
 ent theists believe that the progress of physical 
 science has been a continuous illustration of the 
 power, wisdom, and goodness of God. Material- 
 ism cannot be allowed, therefore, quietly and illo- 
 gically to take for granted that the interests of 
 physical science are specially bound up with its 
 own. At the same time it may be acknowledged, 
 and I desire to acknowledge it cordially, that 
 materialism and materialistic theories have largely 
 contributed to the advancement of physical science, 
 and have indirectly profited even mental science. 
 It would be altogether unjust to regard them as 
 merely hurtful or merely useless. They have 
 suggested and stimulated the most varied re- 
 searches. It is no accidental circumstance that 
 they have abounded during every age in which 
 physical science has been prosecuted with vigour 
 and success. Wherever physical science is gener- 
 ally enterprising it must also be often audacious. 
 If it were never unreasonably hopeful and ambi- 
 tious, its achievements would be comparatively 
 few and mean. The material universe can be 
 
Materialism and Physical Science. 41 
 
 under-estimated as well as over-estimated, and the 
 exaggerations even of materialism are needful to 
 secure its being estimated aright. It was Cole- 
 ridge, I think, who, when asked what could be the 
 use of the stars if not inhabited, replied that it 
 might be to show that dirt was cheap. The theo- 
 logians, the metaphysicians, the moral philoso- 
 phers, and large classes of religionists have always 
 been prone to regard matter as merely "dirt," 
 and to forget that it is the wonderful work and 
 glorious manifestation of God ; and so long as this 
 error is committed, the opposite error may serve 
 a providential purpose. Ignorance of physical 
 nature, or injustice to it, is fatal even to philo- 
 sophy and theology. There was very little ma- 
 terialism during the middle ages ; but at that 
 time, also, physical science languished and died, 
 and the philosophical theology which prevailed 
 dogmatised, in consequence, so confidently and 
 foolishly on the origin and nature of the universe 
 and its relations to the Creator, that the grandest 
 truths were discredited by being associated with 
 the most ridiculous blunders. 
 
 There is a prevalent notion that materialism is 
 at least a very definite theory which, whether true 
 or false, cannot be mistaken for any ©then In 
 reality it is a general term which has many and 
 discordant applications, and which comprehends a 
 crowd of heterogeneous theories. There are sys- 
 
42 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 terns which may with equal right be designated 
 materialistic or pantheistic, and even materialistic 
 or idealistic. The only kind of system of which 
 history supplies no record is one which would 
 answer truly to the name of materialism. The 
 name would naturally denote a theory which ex- 
 plains the universe by what is known as matter, 
 or by matter as known through ordinary observa- 
 tion or scientific investigation. There neither is, 
 however, nor ever has been, any such theory. It 
 is a universal characteristic of materialism that it 
 supposes matter to be more than it is known to be; 
 that it imaginatively exalts and glorifies matter 
 beyond what sense or science warrants. It always 
 attributes to matter eternity and self- existence ; 
 sometimes it supposes it to be likewise essentially 
 active ; sometimes it endows it with life, with sen- 
 sation, with volition, with intelligence. Systems 
 which agree in verbally representing matter as the 
 foundation and explanation of the universe, differ 
 enormously as to what matter is, but they all, 
 without exception, ascribe to matter properties of 
 which experience teaches us nothing. 
 
 It is perhaps impossible to fix precisely where 
 the history of materialism begins. To say that it 
 is "as old •but not older than philosophy," is to 
 say nothing, unless you say how old philosophy is. 
 But philosophy existed in union with religion long 
 before it existed in a state of independence, and 
 
Origin of Materialism, 43 
 
 for anything we know to the contrary, may be as 
 old as human reason itself. Notwithstanding the 
 prevalence of the contrary opinion, there is evi- 
 dence that even the lowest forms of religion have 
 originated in a speculative impulse. They are not 
 mere embodiments of the feelings of fear, or love, 
 or dependence, but consist in great part of rude 
 speculations, strange fancies, as to the making and 
 the meaning of nature and of man. The ruder 
 tribes of men seem unable to conceive either of 
 mere matter or mere spirit ; they spiritualise mat- 
 ter and materialise spirit ; souls and gods are sup- 
 posed by them to be material beings, and material 
 things to have souls and divine powers ; they can- 
 not think of matter and spirit as separate exist- 
 ences. Fetichism, animism, animal - worship, na- 
 ture-worship, have all their root in this mental 
 incapacity. All these forms of religion may with 
 almost as much propriety be called materialistic 
 as the professedly materialistic theories of the 
 recent speculators who, in the name of science, 
 ascribe life and sense and other potencies even 
 to the ultimate elements of matter. The feeble 
 power of abstraction which characterises uncul- 
 tured man has always made him, to a consider- 
 able extent, a materialist. He has been unable 
 to think of mind and matter apart ; of a body 
 without spirit or spirit without body ; of na- 
 ture without God or God without nature. Man 
 
44 Anti-Theistic Theoi'ies. 
 
 has been unable until comparatively late times 
 either to raise or answer the question, Was mind 
 before matter or matter before mind ? The Jews 
 seem to have been the first nation raised above 
 such materialism, and raised also, in consequence, 
 above pantheism to a true theism. It is the Bible 
 which has impressed on the human mind the great 
 thought of the creation of matter by the will, the 
 word of God. 
 
 The rude religious materialism now referred to 
 is, of course, a very different thing from a specula- 
 tive anti-religious materialism, but it explains why, 
 as soon as speculation appeared and assumed an 
 anti- religious attitude, it should have presented 
 itself in the form of materialism. In spite of all 
 that has been said against speculation, however, it 
 is not the rule, it is only the exception, for it to be 
 anti-religious ; it is not the rule, but only the excep- 
 tion, for it to lead to materialism. The tendency of 
 speculation, of refined and disciplined reflection of 
 thought which seeks really to comprehend what it 
 has before it, is, if history may be credited, to get 
 beyond matter, not to rest in it. The history of 
 materialism impartially written is not a very bril- 
 liant one. Comparatively few of the world's great- 
 est thinkers have been adherents of this system. 
 Its advocates have often done it little credit.^ 
 
 In China, more than three hundred years before 
 
 ^ See Appendix V. 
 
Chinese Materialism. 45 
 
 the Christian era, an avowedly atheistical materi- 
 alism was widely prevalent. It was the chief task 
 in life of one of the most celebrated Chinese philo- 
 sophers, Meng-tseu, better known in the West as 
 Mencius, to combat this doctrine, and the views 
 of man's duty and destiny which were based on 
 it. He believed it to have caused a vast amount 
 of harm to his country, and that no society could 
 long exist which entertained it. A few lines from 
 an essay of one of the men whose teaching he 
 strove to counteract will probably be sufficient to 
 convince you that he was not far wrong. Yang 
 Choo said, " Wherein people differ is the matter of 
 life ; wherein they agree is death. While they are 
 alive we have the distinctions of intelligence and 
 stupidity, honourableness and meanness ; when 
 they are dead we have so much rottenness de- 
 caying away, — this is the common lot. Yet intel- 
 ligence and stupidity, honourableness and mean- 
 ness, are not in one's power ; neither is that 
 condition of putridity, decay, and utter disap- 
 pearance. A man's life is not in his own hands, 
 nor is his death ; his intelligence is not his own, 
 nor is his stupidity, nor his honourableness, nor 
 his meanness. All are born and all die ; — the in- 
 telligent and the stupid, the honourable and the 
 mean. At ten years old some die ; at a hundred 
 years old some die. The virtuous and the sage 
 die; the ruffian and the fool also die. Alive, 
 
46 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 they were Yaou and Shun, the most virtuous of 
 men ; dead, they are so much rotten bone. Alive, 
 they were Klee and Chow, the most wicked of 
 men ; dead, they are so much rotten bone. Who 
 could know any difference between their rotten 
 bones .? While alive, therefore, let us hasten to 
 make the best of life. When about to die, let 
 us treat the thing with indifference and endure 
 it ; and seeking to accomplish our departure, so 
 abandon ourselves to annihilation." 
 
 Plainer language than this there could not 
 be. The whole essay is of the same character 
 and tenor. Its author was avowedly without 
 God and without hope in the world. He thought 
 human beings were mere combinations of particles 
 of dust, and would dissolve into particles of dust 
 again. He saw that however differently men lived, 
 their common lot was death ; and he fancied that 
 after death there was nothing left but "rotten 
 bone." A man lives virtuously, but if he is un- 
 happy all through life, as the virtuous often are, 
 his virtue would seem, since there is no future 
 world, to have done him no good. You may 
 praise him after he is dead, but that is no more 
 to him than to the trunk of a tree or a clod of 
 earth. Or he may live what is called a vicious 
 life, but if he have thereby the joy of gratifying 
 his desires, any blame you may give him after he 
 is dead will not take away from the reality of his 
 
HindiL Materialism. 47 
 
 enjoyment. Blame is to the bad man, after death, 
 like praise to the good man — as worthless as it is 
 to the trunk of a tree or a clod of earth. Fame, 
 therefore, according to Yang Choo, is but a phan- 
 tom, virtue is but a delusion, and enjoyment has 
 alone some reality and good in it. Hence he 
 advises men not to care for praise or blame, virtue 
 or vice, except as a means of enjoyment ; to seek 
 merely to make themselves as happy as they can 
 while happiness is within their reach ; to eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow they die. That is one of the 
 oldest systems of ethical materialism and of ma- 
 terialistic ethics. It is a very simple theory, and 
 to the vast majority of men it will seem a very 
 consistent theory. A few exceptionally consti- 
 tuted natures may combine a materialistic creed 
 with generous and self-denying conduct, but the 
 ordinary man of all lands and ages will find in a 
 materialism which denies God and a future life the 
 justification of sensuality and selfishness.^ 
 
 None of the greater systems of Hindu phil- 
 osophy can be properly classed as materialistic; 
 but among the minor systems there is one — the 
 Charvaka philosophy — closely akin to that just 
 described. It assumes that perception by the 
 / senses is the only source of true knowledge. It 
 maintains that the four elements of earth, air, fire, 
 and water, are the original principles of all things, 
 
 ^ See Appendix VL 
 
48 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and that they are eternal. It represents intel 
 llgence as resulting from a modification of the 
 aggregate of these elements, when combined and 
 transformed into the human body, just as the 
 power of inebriation is produced by the mixing 
 of certain ingredients. The faculty of thought, 
 according to it, is destroyed when the elements 
 from which it arises are dissolved. There is no 
 soul apart from the body : the soul is only the 
 body distinguished by the attribute of intelligence. 
 The various phenomena of the world are produced 
 spontaneously from the inherent nature of things, 
 and there is nothing supernatural — no God, no 
 fate even, no other world, no final liberation, no 
 recompense for acts. Prosperity is heaven and 
 adversity is hell, and there is no other heaven or 
 hell. The so-called sacred books — the three Vedas 
 — were composed by rogues or buffoons. The 
 exercises of religion and the practices of asceticism 
 are merely a means of livelihood for men devoid 
 of intellect and manliness. The sole end — the 
 only reasonable end — of man is enjoyment : — 
 
 "While life remains let a man live happily, let him feed on ghee, 
 even though he runs in debt ; 
 When once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return again?" 
 
 That, so far as I know, is the only system of 
 thorough materialism among the philosophies of 
 India. And certainly, in one sense, it is as thor- 
 ough as can be imagined. It shows no reverence 
 
Greek Materialism, 49 
 
 for any Icind of authority or tradition — no defer- 
 ence to respectability or public opinion. It recoils 
 from no consequence of its principles. At the 
 same time, it is manifestly a very poor and ignoble 
 kind of philosophy. It is the theory of men who 
 wish to dispense with all thoughts of God and of 
 a moral government, in order that they may feel 
 free to indulge in a selfish and sensuous life.'^ 
 
 II. 
 
 Philosophy began its wonderful career in Greece 
 by attempting to resolve all the phenomena of 
 the universe into a single material first principle, 
 such as water, or air, or fire ; or rather, it began 
 by conjecturing how all things might have been 
 evolved from such a principle. And yet it was 
 not merely materialistic, for matter was supposed 
 to be filled by other than material powers — by 
 spontaneity, by life, by intelligence. The first sys- 
 tem of Greek materialism, properly so called, was 
 that wrought out by Leucippus, and especially 
 by Democritus, in the fifth century before Christ. 
 The materialism of the present day is substanti- 
 ally the materialism of Democritus. This explains 
 why some recent German writers, favourable to 
 materialism, have extolled Democritus as a spec- 
 ulative and scientific genius of the very highest 
 
 ^ See Appendix VII. 
 D 
 
50 A7iti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 order, equal or superior to Plato and Aristotle. 
 For such an opinion the fragmentary sentences 
 which are all that remain of his numerous works 
 supply no warrant. At the same time, Democritus 
 was undoubtedly a man of great knowledge for 
 the age in which he lived, a clear and consistent 
 if not very profound thinker, and endowed with 
 remarkable aptitudes for mathematical and phys- 
 ical investigation. There is, further, no reason to 
 question that the high reputation which he gained 
 for moral worth — for modesty, disinterestedness, 
 integrity, for cheerful wisdom, for love of truth — 
 was well merited. The views of moral life which 
 he inculcated are the very best that one can con- 
 ceive associated with materialistic and atheistic 
 principles. He held that the sovereign good of 
 man was not to be found in the pleasures of sense, 
 in wealth, in honours, or power — not in external 
 things, nor in what depends on accident or on 
 others — but in tranquillity of mind, in a well- 
 regulated, pure, and peaceful souL There are 
 true and beautiful thoughts in his fragments on 
 veracity, on courage, on prudence, on justice, on 
 the restraint of passion, the regulation of desire, 
 respect for reason, obedience to law, &c. 
 
 Democritus explained the universe by means of 
 space and atoms — the empty and the full. The 
 atoms, infinite in number, moving in infinite space, 
 give rise to infinite worlds. These atoms are eter- 
 
Atomism of Democritus. 51 
 
 nal, and they are imperishable. There is no real 
 creation and no real destruction ; nothing comes 
 from nothing, and what is ultimate in anything 
 never ceases to be ; what is called creation is 
 merely combination, what is called destruction is 
 merely separation. The quantity of matter in the 
 world, and consequently the quantity of force — 
 for force is merely matter in motion — can neither 
 be increased nor diminished, but must be ever 
 the same. The atoms, he further held, have in 
 themselves no qualitative differences, but merely 
 quantitative ; they differ from one another only 
 in shape, arrangement, and position. All the 
 apparently qualitative differences in objects are 
 due simply to the quantitative differences of the 
 atoms which compose them. Water differs from 
 iron merely because the atoms of the former are 
 smooth and round, and do not fit into but roll 
 over each other; while those of the latter are 
 jagged and uneven and densely packed together. 
 In thus resolving all qualitative differences into 
 quantitative differences, the system of Democritus 
 involved a distinct and marked advance over 
 Chinese and Hindu materialism, or any of the 
 previous Greek philosophies which had attempted 
 to explain the world by physical principles. The 
 soul Democritus regarded as only a body within 
 the body, made of more delicate atoms ; thought 
 as only a more refined and pure sensation ; and 
 
52 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 sensations as the impressions produced by images 
 which emanated from external objects. 
 
 He could not, of course, overlook the obvious 
 question, Why do the atoms move, and how do 
 they so combine as to give rise to a world at once 
 so orderly and varied ? He answered that nothing 
 happened at random, but everything according to 
 law and necessity ; that the atoms were infinite in 
 number and endlessly diversified in form ; and 
 that in falling through boundless space they 
 dashed against each other, since the larger ones 
 moved more rapidly than the smaller ; and that, 
 rebounding and whirling about, they formed ag- 
 gregates, vortices, worlds, without number. He 
 thus sought to banish from nature every notion of 
 a final cause and supreme ordaining Mind, and to 
 substitute for them a purely mechanical, uncon- 
 scious, aimless necessity. He referred the popular 
 conceptions of Deity partly to an incapacity to 
 understand fully the phenomena of which we are 
 witnesses, and partly to the impressions occasioned 
 by atmospheric and stellar phenomena. He thus 
 laid the foundation and drew the plan of a sys- 
 tem of atheistical materialism which is sometimes 
 presented to us as the most important creation 
 of modern science. 
 
 A system like this manifestly contains in itself 
 the eerms of its own contradiction and destruction. 
 It tends necessarily to sensationalism and scepti- 
 
Atomism of Democritus. 53 
 
 cism, and both of these devour, as it were, the 
 mother which begat them. If matter be the sole 
 source and substance of the universe, sensatioa 
 must be due to the impression of matter on 
 matter, and thought must be but an elaboration 
 of sensation, with no truth or reality in it beyond 
 what it derives from sensation. But in that case 
 what do we know of matter ? Nothing at all : 
 we know merely our own sensations of colour, of 
 hearing, of smell, &c., and conjecture, for some 
 mysterious reason or other, that these are the 
 results of material objects acting on a material 
 subject. Democritus saw this, — that there was 
 no heat or cold out of relation to feeling, no bitter 
 or sweet out of relation to the sense of taste, no 
 colour independent of the sense of sight, or sound 
 independent of that of hearing. He granted that 
 all that our senses inform us about things is 
 purely relative to the senses of the individual — is 
 not what things are in themselves, but what they 
 appear to be to the particular person whose senses 
 are affected. He supposed only space and the 
 atoms to be real. But what evidence had he as a 
 materialist and sensationalist for his atoms ? None 
 of his senses could apprehend them ; and although 
 sense was so little to be trusted, there was nothing 
 on his principles, and can be nothing on materi- 
 alistic principles, equally to be trusted, or, indeed, 
 to be trusted at all, apart from it. Thus Demo- 
 
54 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 critus was virtually affirming that there was all 
 truth in sensation, and that there was no truth 
 in it. No wonder that he said truth lay at the 
 bottom of a well and was hard to find. No 
 wonder that men came after him who said that 
 there was no such thing as truth ; that there 
 was nothing for reason save appearance and 
 opinion, and no higher law of life than worldly 
 prudence.^ 
 
 The speculations of Democritus, it cannot be 
 doubted, contributed not a little to the inaugura- 
 tion of the era of the Sophists. The men who 
 are known in history under this designation are 
 now generally admitted to have been until re- 
 cently represented as even worse than they were. 
 They may certainly be credited with having ren- 
 dered service to logic, and still more to rhetoric 
 — with having awakened a critical and inquiring 
 spirit — and with having contributed very consid- 
 erably to the increase of ideas and the spread of 
 intellectual culture. Whatever merits, however, 
 we may thus assign to them, will not warrant us 
 to reverse or do more than unessentially modify 
 the verdict which history so long unhesitatingly 
 pronounced against them. They were not men 
 who sought or found, who believed in or loved 
 truth. Their fundamental principles, so far as 
 they had any, were that sense is the source of all 
 
 * See Appendix VIII. 
 
Greek A nti- Materialism. 5 5 
 
 thought — that man is the measure of all things 
 — that nothing is by nature true or false, good 
 or bad, but only by convention. It seemed to 
 Socrates and to Plato that these principles were 
 erroneous, and must involve in ruin, reason, virtue, 
 and religion, the individual soul and society ; and 
 they made it their mission in life to refute them, 
 and to prove that directly contrary principles are 
 to be held ; — that thought underlies sense — that 
 the soul is better than the body — that there are 
 for all men who would search for them, a truth and 
 goodness which are not individual and conven- 
 tional, but universal and eternal — that the search 
 for them is the prime duty of man — and that the 
 finding of them is his distinctive dignity and glory. 
 The idea which Anaxagoras had introduced into 
 Greek philosophy — the idea, that the order in 
 the universe could only be accounted for by the 
 working of an Eternal Reason — was welcomed 
 by Socrates, and shaped with admirable art into 
 the theistic argument which is most offensive to 
 materialism, — the design argument for the exist- 
 ence of God from the evidences of design in 
 nature, and especially in the animal frame. Plato 
 strove to show that all phenomena presupposed 
 eternal ideas, and that these gradually led up to 
 the Supreme Idea — the highest good — God. Aris- 
 totle was scarcely less opposed to materialism than 
 Plato, and in his theory of causes he constructed a 
 
$6 Anti-Theistic T/ieories. 
 
 fortress which all the forces of materialism have, 
 down to this day, assailed in vain. Unfortunately, 
 neither Plato nor Aristotle was able to raise him- 
 self to the sublime thought which seems to us so 
 simple — the thought of absolute creation, of crea- 
 tion out of nothing by an act of God's omnipotent 
 will. Both granted to matter a certain inde- 
 pendence of God ; both believed it to be in itself 
 uncreated. Both failed, in consequence, to gain 
 a complete and decisive victory over materialism. 
 Perhaps, also, their philosophies were too large 
 and many-sided to find a lodgment in ordinary 
 minds. Certain it is that they were followed by 
 greatly inferior systems, which, owing in part, per- 
 haps, to their very superficiality and narrowness, 
 acquired no small popularity. 
 
 One of these systems was substantially just the 
 philosophy of Democritus revived and developed. 
 Epicurus, its author, was by no means what he 
 boasted himself to be — a " self-taught man," an 
 original thinker — but he had the qualities which en- 
 abled him to render his views widely popular. In 
 his lifetime he gathered around him multitudes of 
 friends. His memory was cherished by his followers 
 with extraordinary veneration ; in fact, they paid 
 to him the same sort of idolatrous homage which 
 Comte yielded to Madame Clothilde de Vaux, J. 
 S. Mill to his wife, and certain Comtists to their 
 master. Worship is natural to man, and when cut 
 
Epicurea7i Materialism. 57 
 
 off from the true object of his worship he will 
 lavish his afifections on objects unworthy of them. 
 The philosophy of Epicurus was materialism in 
 the most finished form which it acquired in the 
 ancient world. It had the great good fortune also 
 to find in the Roman poet Lucretius an expositor 
 of marvellous genius — the brightest star by far 
 in the constellation of materialists. The atomic 
 materialism of the present day is still substantial- 
 ly the materialism which Epicurus and Lucretius 
 propounded. It seems necessary, therefore, and 
 may not be without present interest, to consider 
 briefly the principles and pretensions of the mate- 
 rialism maintained by the famous Greek philoso- 
 pher and the still more famous Roman poet. 
 
 It is a theory, I may remark, which originated 
 in a practical motive. Epicurus avowedly did not 
 seek truth for truth's sake. He sought it, and 
 taught others to seek it, only so far as it appeared 
 to be conducive to happiness. Truth, like virtue, 
 was in his eyes, and in the eyes of his followers, to 
 be cultivated merely as a means of avoiding pain 
 and procuring pleasure. The Epicureans sought, 
 therefore, an explanation of the universe which 
 would free men from religious fears, and from re- 
 ligious beliefs so far as these caused fear. Such 
 an explanation they found in the theory of De- 
 mocritus, and hence they adopted it. The great 
 reason why Lucretius glories in the Epicurean 
 
58 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 theory is, that it emancipates the mind from all 
 dread of the Divine anger, and all belief in a 
 future world. Now, it may fairly be doubted, 
 I think, if a system which springs from such 
 a motive can be other than very defective. I 
 grant that there was considerable excuse for the 
 motive in the evils which superstition had caused, 
 and which Lucretius has so powerfully described. 
 In judging either Epicurus or Lucretius, it would 
 be most unjust and uncharitable to forget that 
 the religion with which they were familiar was so 
 fearfully corrupt and degrading as naturally to 
 occasion disbelief in, and aversion to, all religion. 
 But none the less is it true that those whose chief 
 interest in the study of nature is the hope of find- 
 ing the means of destroying or dispelling religion 
 are almost certain to fall into grave mistakes in 
 their attempts to explain nature. The Epicureans 
 did so. At the same time, the motive, such as it 
 was, induced them to study nature more intensely 
 than they would otherwise have done, or than 
 the rest of their contemporaries did ; and physical 
 science profited from this in no small measure. 
 With all its defects the atomic doctrine is the 
 most valuable theory, falling within the sphere 
 of physical science, which modern times have in- 
 herited from antiquity. That all physical things 
 at least may be resolved into atomic elements ; 
 that these elements can neither be created nor 
 
Epicurean Materialism* 59 
 
 destroyed, neither increased nor diminished in 
 number, by natural forces ; that matter may con- 
 sequently change endlessly in form and force in 
 direction, but that the quantity of matter and the 
 amount of force in the world are always the same, — 
 are scientific conceptions so grand that the modern 
 world is apt to believe that the ancient world could 
 not have possessed them. There can be no doubt, 
 however, that all these ideas are more than two 
 thousand years old. They lay at the very founda- 
 tion of the atomic philosophy. All that the most 
 recent science has done in regard to them has been 
 to verify them in particular instances by exact 
 experiments. Modern men of science are apt to 
 imagine that this is really for the first time to have 
 established them. But this is not the case. No 
 general truth can be established by experiment, or 
 be seen by the eye or touched by the hand. It can 
 only be reached by thought, and thought reached 
 all the general truths in question really, although 
 vaguely, very long ago. I cannot admit that there 
 is an essential difference even in method between 
 the ancient and the modern atomists. To say that 
 the former assumed their theory, and unfolded its 
 applications by reasoning down from it, and that 
 the latter reverse the process and reason up to 
 it by induction, is thoroughly inaccurate. The 
 ancients proceeded so far by induction ; it is only 
 so far that the moderns can proceed by it. 
 
6o Aiiti'Tlieistic Theories. 
 
 According to the theory we are considering, the 
 ultimate elements of things are body and space — 
 the atom and the void. Space is limitless, im- 
 measurable ; the gleaming thunderbolt speeding 
 through it for ever would fail to traverse it, or 
 even in the least to lessen what of it remained. 
 The atoms are numberless, ungenerated, infran- 
 gible, unchangeable, indestructible. Their only 
 qualities are form, magnitude, and density ; and 
 their variations in these respects account for the 
 diverse qualities in the diverse objects of the 
 universe. This theory ought at once to raise the 
 questions, — What proof is there that these indivis- 
 ible atoms are really ultimate in any other sense 
 than that they are the primary constituents of 
 body } What evidence is there that they are self- 
 existent ? Why should reason stop with them and 
 seek no explanation of them ? How is it that they 
 account not only for other things but for them- 
 selves } But to these questions we get no rational 
 replies. These are questions which materialism 
 has never dared fairly to confront and grapple 
 with. It has always shown, on the contrary, by 
 its evasion of them, a certain vague and confused 
 consciousness that there is something unsound and 
 insecure at its very basis. Materialism, which is 
 so bold in hypothetical explanations of things, is 
 strangely timid in self-criticism. 
 
 Epicurean materialism, like all materialism, 
 
Epicurean Materialism. 6 1 
 
 affirms matter to be eternal ; but when you seek 
 a reason for the assertion, you can find none save 
 that it is impossible something should come from 
 nothing. That is to say, Epicurean materialism, 
 like all materialism, starts with an illegitimate 
 application of the principle of causality, or of its 
 axiomatic expression, — " Nothing which once was 
 not could ever of itself come into being." By the 
 great body of thoughtful men, both in ancient and 
 modern times, this has been taken to mean merely 
 that nothing can be produced without an adequate 
 cause ; that every change demands a full explana- 
 tion ; that every phenomenon must have a suffici- 
 ent ground. Epicurus, Lucretius, and materialists 
 in general, assume it to mean that, since matter is, 
 matter must always have been ; that matter could 
 never have been created ; that the world was un- 
 caused. If the assumption be a mere assumption 
 — if no reason be given for this extraordinary in- 
 terpretation — it is a most inexcusable procedure. 
 Now, vast as the literature of materialism is, you 
 will search it through in vain, from the fragments 
 of Democritus to the last edition of Biichner, for 
 a single reason, a single argument, to justify this 
 manifest begging of the whole question. Instead, 
 you will find only poetical and rhetorical reitera- 
 tions of the assumption itself, diffuse assertions of 
 the eternity, indestructibility, and self-existence of 
 matter. Materialism thus starts with an irrational 
 
62 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 assumption, the true character of which it endeav- 
 ours to conceal by appealing merely to the ima- 
 gination. 
 
 It was not enough, however, for the purpose 
 which the atomic atheists had in view that they 
 should merely suppose the atoms to be eternal. It 
 was further necessary for them to suppose that the 
 atoms, although without colour or any property 
 perceptible to the senses, had every variety of 
 shape, and the particular sizes, required to enable 
 them to compose the vast variety of things in the 
 universe. If they had all been alike, they could, 
 according to the admission of the atomists them- 
 selves, have formed no universe. But, curiously 
 enough, while admitting that they did not see that 
 they were bound to ask and to explain how the 
 atoms came to be unlike ; how some of them came 
 to be smooth and round, others to be cubical, others 
 to be hooked and jagged, &c. ; and, in a word, how 
 they all came to be just so shaped as to be able 
 collectively to constitute an orderly and magnifi- 
 cent universe. Still more curiously, all materialism 
 down to this day has been afflicted with the same 
 blindness. My belief is, that if it were not thus 
 blind it would die. The light would kill it. It 
 would see that the atoms on which it theorised 
 could not be really ultimate, and implied the 
 power and wisdom of God. 
 
 The Epicurean materialists found that, even 
 
Epicurean Materialism. 63 
 
 when they had imagined their atoms to be eternal, 
 and to be endowed with suitable shapes, their 
 hypothesis would not work. They found that 
 they required to put something more into their 
 atoms before they could get a universe from them. 
 For they had to ask themselves, How do the 
 atoms ever meet and combine ? It is obvious 
 that if they all fall in straight lines, and with 
 the same rapidity, they can never meet. Hence 
 Democritus said that the larger ones move faster 
 than the smaller ones, and that this is the cause 
 of their collision and combination. But, objected 
 Aristotle, that cannot be the case in a perfect 
 vacuum where no resistance whatever is offered to 
 the fall of bodies, whether large or small. There 
 all bodies must fall with equal rapidity. The 
 Epicureans admitted that this objection was fatal 
 to the atomic theory as presented by Democritus. 
 Still, as they denied any intelligent First Cause, 
 they had to devise some hypothesis of the contact 
 and aggregation of the atoms. They imagined, 
 accordingly, a small deviation of the atoms from 
 a straight line. But how can this deviation be 
 produced } Not from without the atoms, since 
 nothing but void space is supposed to be with- 
 out them, and all divine or supernatural interpo- 
 sition is expressly rejected. The Epicureans had 
 therefore no other resource than to hold that the 
 atoms were endowed with a certain spontaneity, 
 
64 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and deviated from the straight line of their own 
 accord ; they ascribed to them a slight measure of 
 freewill. They have often been ridiculed for this, 
 and, it cannot be denied, with justice ; but it is also 
 obvious that there was scarcely any other hypo- 
 thesis for them to adopt, so long as they adhered 
 to their atheism and materialism. 
 
 In even a brief and general estimate of the 
 Epicurean system, this notion, that " when bodies 
 fall sheer down through empty space by their own 
 weights, at quite uncertain times and spots they 
 swerve a little, yet only the least possible, from 
 their course," must have due stress laid on it. For 
 it was no accessory or subordinate feature of the 
 Epicurean theory, but what was most distinctive 
 as well as original in it ; what differentiated it 
 from the allied doctrine of Democritus on the one 
 hand, and from the antagonistic doctrine of the 
 Stoics on the other. It was precisely by means 
 of this conception that Epicurus and Lucretius 
 fancied they escaped the necessity of believing 
 either in the creative and providential action of 
 God, or in the sway of fate, — the two beliefs 
 which seemed to them to be the great enemies 
 of mental peace. 
 
 The hypothesis of a slight power of deviation in 
 the atoms was rested on two reasons. In the first 
 place, it was needed to explain the formation of 
 the universe without the intervention of a super- 
 
Epicurean Materialism. 65 
 
 natural cause. The formation of the universe 
 supposed collision of the atoms. But variety of 
 shape and even difference of weight failed to 
 account for this. If empty space offers no resist- 
 ance to anything in any direction at any time, all 
 things, whatever their weight, must move through 
 it with equal velocity. If they so move, however, 
 in perfectly parallel lines, they must move, for ever, 
 without clashing against one another, and con- 
 sequently without producing varied motions and 
 compound bodies. Thus nature never would have 
 formed anything. How, then, could aught have 
 been produced } Only by a certain freedom of 
 action in nature, or by the free action, the inter- 
 vention, of a Being above nature. But it was a 
 foregone conclusion with Epicurus and Lucretius, 
 just as it is with a host of modern scientific men, 
 that they would not seek for anything above 
 nature — that they would not believe there could 
 be anything beyond matter. They were deter- 
 mined to account for everything entirely by 
 natural principles, by material primordia. There- 
 fore they were compelled to ascribe contingency to 
 nature, spontaneity to matter. At the same time 
 they had a respect for facts, and therefore attri- 
 buted to nature as little contingency, to matter as 
 little spontaneity, as possible. The atoms must 
 swerve a little, and yet so very little, that neither 
 they nor the bodies composed of them can be 
 
 E 
 
66 Anti-Theistic TJteories. 
 
 described as moving " slantingly " or " obliquely," 
 since this the reality would refute. The only 
 deviations possible must be imperceptible de- 
 viations. It has been said that the Epicureans, by 
 ascribing to atoms the power of deviation, intro- 
 duced a quite incalculable element into their 
 system. But they had foreseen the objection, and 
 also that they could return to it a twofold answer, 
 — namely, first, that the deviations were impercep- 
 tible, leaving all that was perceptible calculable, 
 so that there could be nowhere any miracle or 
 interruption of natural action ; and secondly, that 
 althoug-h it could not be determined when and 
 where an atom would act in the way of deviation, 
 once it had so acted all the results could be 
 determined — or, in other words, that spontaneity 
 and law, contingency and calculation, were not 
 incompatible. Much might, perhaps, be said in 
 defence of these answers. The weakness of the 
 hypothesis lay less at this point than in ignoring 
 the consideration that if the atoms possessed the 
 power of deviation that was itself a fact to be 
 accounted for. Whence came the countless hosts 
 of atoms to be all provided with so remarkable a 
 characteristic } Some one ground or cause was 
 demanded for their all agreeing in this curious and 
 useful peculiarity. Such single ground or cause 
 could only be a something above and beyond 
 themselves. The feeble wills with which the 
 
Epicurean Materialism. 67 
 
 atoms were supposed to be endowed implied a 
 mighty supernatural will as their source. For not 
 recognising this single ultimate will Epicurus and 
 Lucretius had no relevant reason. They stopped 
 short at the atoms in sheer wilfulness ; they saw 
 nothing beyond them because they had before- 
 hand determined on no account to look beyond 
 them. 
 
 In the second place, the hypothesis of a certain 
 degree of spontaneity in the atoms recommended 
 itself to the Epicureans as a warrant for rejecting 
 fatalism, and as an explanation of free will in living 
 things. Epicurus pronounced the fatalism of the 
 physicists and philosophers even more disquieting 
 and discouraging than superstition ; the goodwill 
 of the gods might be gained by honouring them, 
 but there are no means by which fate can be 
 controlled. He and his followers accepted free- 
 will in man as a fact fully guaranteed to them by 
 consciousness and observation. But if there be 
 freewill in man there must be freewill elsewhere 
 to account for it ; only nothing can come from 
 nothing ; only necessity from necessity. If, then, 
 there be no Being above nature, and all must be 
 explained from nature, freewill must have its 
 cause in nature, and nature cannot be wholly 
 subject to necessity. " If all motion is ever linked 
 together, and a new motion ever springs from 
 another in a fixed order, and first beginnings do 
 
6S Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 not by swerving make some commencement of 
 motion to break through the decrees of fate, that 
 cause follow not cause from everlasting, whence 
 have all living creatures here on earth, whence, I 
 ask, has been wrested from the fates the power 
 by which we go forward whither the will leads 
 each, by which likewise we change the direction 
 of our motions neither at a fixed time nor fixed 
 place, but when and where the mind itself has 
 prompted ? " The Roman poet could give to this 
 question of his own no more rational answer on 
 materialistic principles than the one which has been 
 mentioned. If the materialist maintain that there 
 is nothing but necessity in nature, he must main- 
 tain also that there is nothing but necessity in 
 man. If he admit that there is spontaneity or 
 freedom in man, he must admit that it is inherent 
 likewise in nature. Necessity in both nature and 
 man, or freedom in both, is the only reasonable 
 alternative. The effort to deduce truly voluntary 
 movements from purely mechanical causes is 
 nonsensical. But when Epicurus and Lucretius 
 followed reason so far, why did they not follow it 
 farther, and pack reason as well as will into their 
 atoms, and emotion and conscience too, and so 
 endow each atom with a complete mind } They 
 might at least have anticipated Professor Clifford, 
 and told us that " a moving molecule of inorganic 
 matter possesses a small piece of mind-stuff." 
 
Epicuremi Materialism. 69 
 
 Having conformed their atoms to the needs of 
 their system, the Epicureans proceeded to explain 
 how the universe was formed ; how from the 
 boundless mass of matter, heaven, and earth, and 
 ocean, sun and moon, rose in nice order. The 
 atoms, so we are told, "jostling about of their own 
 accord, in infinite modes, were often brought to- 
 gether confusedly, irregularly, and to no purpose, 
 but at length they successfully coalesced ; at least, 
 such of them as were thrown together suddenly 
 became, in succession, the beginnings of great 
 things — as earth, and air, and sea, and heaven." 
 With magnificent breadth of conception, and often 
 with genuine scientific insight, Lucretius, follow- 
 ing the guidance of Epicurus, has described how, 
 in obedience to mechanical laws, from atoms of 
 "solid singleness," inorganic matter assumed its 
 various forms and organic nature passed through 
 its manifold stages ; what living creatures issued 
 from the earth ; how speech was invented ; how 
 society originated and governments were insti- 
 tuted ; how civilisation commenced ; and in what 
 ways religion gained an entry into men's hearts. 
 He thoroughly appreciated the significance of the 
 doctrine of evolution in the system of materialism. 
 The development theory has been ingeniously 
 improved at many particular points in recent 
 times, but it has not been widened in range. It 
 was just as comprehensive in the hands of Lucre- 
 
yo Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 tius as it is in those of Herbert Spencer. Its aim 
 and method are still the same ; its problems are 
 the same ; its principles of solution are the same ; 
 the solutions themselves are often the same. I 
 state this as a fact, not as a reproach; for I do not 
 object to the development theory in itself, but 
 only to it in association with atheism. Atheism 
 has done much to discredit it ; it has contributed 
 nothing to the proof of atheism. 
 
 The Epicurean materialists refused to recognise 
 anywhere the traces of a creative or governing 
 Intelligence. The mechanical explanation which 
 they gave of the formation of things seemed to 
 them to preclude the view that aught was effected 
 by Divine power or wisdom. Like their successors 
 in modern times, they regarded efficient causes as 
 incompatible with final causes ; and, like them 
 also, they dwelt in confirmation of their opinion 
 on the alleged defects of nature, blaming the 
 arrangements of the heavens and the earth with 
 the same vehemence and narrowness which have 
 become so familiar to us of late. And yet they 
 were not unwilling to admit the existence of the 
 gods worshipped by the people, if conceived of as 
 only a sort of etherealised men, utterly uncon- 
 nected with the world and its affairs. " Beware," 
 says Epicurus, " of attributing the revolutions of 
 the heaven, and eclipses, and the rising and setting 
 of stars, either to the original contrivance or con- 
 
Epicurean Materialism. 71 
 
 tinued regulation of a Divine Being. For business, 
 and cares, and anger, and benevolence, are not 
 accordant with happiness, but arise from weak- 
 ness, and fear, and dependence on others." The 
 Epicureans, in fact, conceived of the gods as ideal 
 Epicureans — as beings serenely happy, without 
 care, occupation, or sorrow. 
 
 To belief in the immortality of the soul they 
 offered strenuous opposition. It was one of the 
 prime recommendations of materialism in their 
 eyes, that it supplied them with arms to combat 
 this belief They laboured to prove the soul ma- 
 terial in order that they might infer it to be mortal, 
 and with such diligence that scarcely a plausible 
 argument seems to have escaped them. They 
 could not, they felt, emancipate men from fear 
 of future retribution otherwise than by persuading 
 them that there was no future to fear — that death 
 was an eternal sleep. Therefore they taught that 
 "the nature of the mind cannot come into being 
 alone without the body, nor exist far away from 
 sinews and blood ; " that " death concerns us not 
 a jot, since the nature of the mind is proved to 
 be mortal ; " that " death is nothing to us, for that 
 which is dissolved is devoid of sensation, and that 
 which is devoid of sensation is nothing to us." 
 All the consolation which Lucretius can offer to 
 the heart shrinking at the prospect of death, is the 
 reflection that it will escape the ills of life. 
 
^2 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 ** But thy dear home shall never greet thee more 1 
 No more the best of wives 1 thy babes beloved, 
 Whose haste half met thee, emulous to snatch 
 The dulcet kiss that roused thy secret soul, 
 Again shall never hasten! nor thine arm. 
 With deeds heroic, guard thy country's weal ! 
 
 * O mournful, mournful fate 1 ' thy friends exclaim ; 
 
 * One envious hour of these invalued joys 
 Robs thee for ever ! ' But they add not here, 
 
 * It robs thee, too, of all desire of joy ' — 
 
 A truth once uttered, that the mind would free 
 From every dread and trouble. * Thou art safe I 
 The sleep of death protects thee, and secures 
 From all the outnumbered woes of mortal life.' " 
 
 It is strange that a thoughtful mind — that a 
 susceptible heart — that a man of poetic genius — 
 could for a moment have deluded himself with the 
 fancy that humanity was to be comforted in its 
 sorrows, or strengthened for its duties, by a notion 
 like this. No human being can be profited by 
 being told that he will die as the brute dieth ; that 
 death will free him from pain and fear only by 
 robbing him of all joy and love. But such is the 
 only gospel which materialism has to offer. The 
 system of which the first word is, In the beginning 
 there was nothing except space and atoms, has for 
 its last word, Eternal Death ; as the system of 
 which the first word is, In the beginning God 
 created the heavens and the earth, has for its last 
 word, Eternal Life. What man who has a mind 
 to think can hesitate to choose between Eternal 
 Reason and Eternal Unreason } What man whc 
 
Epicurean Materialism. 73 
 
 has a heart to feel can hesitate to choose between 
 Eternal Life and Eternal Death ? ^ 
 
 Yet there are those who hesitate to choose ; and 
 there are those who choose wrongly. Much may 
 be said in excuse of those who thus doubted and 
 erred in pagan Greece and Rome. The only re- 
 ligions with which they were acquainted gave the 
 most inconsistent and perverted views, both of 
 Deity and of the world to come. If men in their 
 abhorrence of these religions unhappily rejected 
 all religion, we must pity them even more than we 
 condemn them. But we live in a later and more 
 favoured age, when God has been clearly revealed 
 in the beauty of holiness and love, and when life 
 and immortality have been brought to light. A 
 higher good than the greatest of Greek or Roman 
 sages ever longed for has been placed within the 
 reach of the humblest, the poorest, the least in- 
 structed. The way has been made plain by which 
 we may be freed from fear of death, and from fear 
 of all that lies beyond death. We can have no 
 excuse for preferring death to life. Eternal death 
 ought to be no bribe to us. Light has come into 
 the world. Let us not be among those who choose 
 darkness rather than light. 
 
 * See Appendix IX. 
 
74 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 MODERN MATERIALISM. 
 
 In the middle ages there was little physical science 
 and almost no materialism. This was not be- 
 cause there were few great minds or little mental 
 activity in those ages, but because the human in- 
 tellect was then almost exclusively occupied with 
 religion and theology. Christianity rested on the 
 belief that there was a God, the Creator of the 
 universe and the Father of spirits, who had in the 
 fulness of time made a special and perfect revela- 
 tion of His character and will in Jesus Christ. 
 Before the light and power of this belief, ancient 
 materialism, like ancient polytheism, faded and 
 withered away. The Christian Church in its earli- 
 est days had to battle with heathenism and Juda- 
 ism, open and avowed, or with suppressed tend- 
 encies towards both, expressing themselves in the 
 form of heresy. It had neither the time nor the 
 inclination to busy itself directly with theories 
 
Materialism in the Middle Ages, 75 
 
 which it felt confident of being able to destroy by 
 simply propagating itself. The Christian Fathers, 
 down to the fall of the Roman empire, had their 
 energies fully occupied in the defence of funda- 
 mental truths of religion, and especially of those 
 involved in the great doctrine of the Trinity. The 
 schoolmen sought to elaborate the faith which they 
 had inherited into a comprehensive philosophy. 
 Scholasticism was essentially the union, or, per- 
 haps, rather the fusion of theology and philosophy. 
 It proceeded on the assumption that there are not 
 two studies, one of philosophy and the other of 
 religion, but that true philosophy is true religion, 
 and true religion is true philosophy. A theologi- 
 cal philosophy was alone possible in the middle 
 ages, and the widespread and intense interest felt 
 in it shows how well adapted it was to meet the 
 desires of men in those times. Medieval specu- 
 lation was, as a whole, theistic and Christian; it 
 was, as a whole, an effort to comprehend as well 
 as to apprehend Christian truth. Even when 
 not so it might be pantheistic, but it was not 
 materialistic. Mohammedanism, although it was 
 not found to be incompatible with the culture 
 of physical science, was no less hostile to ma- 
 terialism than Christianity. Thus for centuries 
 materialism had almost no existence, almost no 
 history.^ 
 
 ^ See Appendix X. 
 
'J 6 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 With the downfall of scholasticism and the 
 emancipation of the mind from ecclesiastical 
 authority, materialistic tendencies began to mani- 
 fest themselves ; but it is late even in modern 
 times before we reach a completely materialistic 
 system. Lord Bacon ranked Democritus higher 
 than Aristotle, but he was no materialist ; he 
 simply regarded the atomic hypothesis as lumin- 
 ous and fruitful. 
 
 " I had rather," he wrote, "believe all the fables in 
 the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than 
 that this universal frame is without Mind ; and 
 therefore, God never wrought miracles to convince 
 atheism, because His ordinary works convince it. 
 It is true, a little philosophy inclineth man's 
 mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bring- 
 eth men's minds about to religion ; for while the 
 mind of man looketh upon the second causes 
 scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go 
 no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of 
 them confederate and linked together, it must 
 needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even 
 that school which is most accused of atheism doth 
 most demonstrate religion — that is the school of 
 Leucippus, and Democritus, and Epicurus ; for it is 
 a thousand times more credible, that four mutable 
 elements and one immutable fifth essence, duly 
 and eternally placed, need no God, than that an 
 army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, 
 
Materialism in England. yy 
 
 should have produced this order and beauty 
 without a Divine Marshal." 
 
 Gassendi, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, a contemporary and friend yet opponent 
 of Descartes, laboured to present the life and the 
 doctrines of Epicurus in the most favourable light. 
 He endeavoured to prove that all physical pheno- 
 mena might be accounted for by the vacuum and 
 atoms, and referred to mathematical and mechan- 
 ical laws. He rejected, however, all Epicurean 
 tenets which seemed to him inconsistent with 
 Christian truth. He maintained God to be the 
 Creator of the atoms, the first cause and ultimate 
 explanation of all things. Some of his contempo- 
 raries insinuated doubts as to the sincerity of his 
 religious professions, and some of the historians 
 of philosophy have repeated them, but they are 
 wholly unsupported by evidence, and quite incon- 
 sistent with our general knowledge of the high 
 personal character of the man. 
 
 Among his friends was the famous Thomas 
 Hobbes. He was, perhaps, more of a materialist 
 not only than any man of his generation, but than 
 any writer to be met with in literature until we 
 come down to the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. He held that we can only reason where 
 we can add and subtract, combine and divide. 
 But where is that } Only where there is what 
 will compound and divide, only where there are 
 
^S Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 bodies and bodily properties, since there is no 
 place for composition or division, no capacity of 
 more or less, in spirit. The consequence is plain, 
 — there can be no science, no philosophy of spirit. 
 Spirit even as finite is beyond comprehension, 
 beyond the range of experiment and sense, and 
 therefore beyond reasoning and beyond science ; 
 and still more is it so with Spirit as infinite, 
 eternal, ingenerable, incomprehensible, that is with 
 the doctrine of God or Theology. We have here 
 a narrow notion of the nature of reasoning, and 
 then a notion of its object made equally narrow 
 to suit it. The reduction of reasoning to the pro- 
 cesses of addition and subtraction, and the denial 
 that philosophy can be conversant about anything 
 but body and bodily properties, depend on each 
 other, but are both errors. Philosophy as universal 
 science has a right to extend wherever truth is 
 attainable by reason. Is spiritual truth attainable 
 through reason } Hobbes answered that it was not — 
 that only truth about bodies was attainable. This, 
 however, he forgot to prove. In consequence of 
 assuming it, he represented man as capable of reli- 
 gion only through inspiration, tradition, authority, 
 apart from and independent of reason, which knows 
 not and cannot know God truly. Religion is thus a 
 thing which cannot be proved true; which must be 
 accepted on some other ground than that of truth. 
 Philosophy, then, according to Hobbes, is con- 
 
Materialism in England. 79 
 
 versant only with bodies and their properties. It 
 is the sum of human knowledge so far as reasoned 
 about bodies. He refers all thought to sensation, 
 and all sensation to matter and motion, sense 
 being simply motion in the organs and interior 
 parts of man's body, caused by external objects 
 pressing either immediately or mediately the organ 
 proper to each sense. The pressure, he holds, 
 when continued by the mediation of the nerves, 
 and other strings and membranes of the body to 
 the brain, causes there a resistance or counter- 
 pressure which, because outward, seems to be 
 some matter without, and consists as to the eye 
 in a light or colour, to the ear in a sound, to the 
 nostril in an odour, to the tongue and palate in a 
 savour, and to the rest of the body in heat, cold, 
 hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we 
 discern by feeling ; and when the action of an 
 object is continued from the eyes, ears, and other 
 organs to the heart, the real effect there is nothing 
 but motion or endeavour, and the appearance or 
 sense of that motion is delight or trouble of mind, 
 pleasure or pain. He thus resolves mind into mat- 
 ter, thought and feeling into mechanical action. 
 
 And yet Hobbes was not the sort of man to 
 make a mere materialist. The materialist must 
 not think. If he think he will ask himself what 
 matter is, and that is enough to break the sway 
 of matter. Now Hobbes was a thinker. He 
 
8o Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 accordingly put to himself the question, What is 
 matter ? The result was, that he found matter 
 in the materialist sense virtually to vanish. He 
 found that we know nothing of matter in itself; 
 that what we know is what he calls '* the seeming," 
 " the apparition," " the phenomenon ; " that colour 
 is just what is seen, sound just what is heard, but 
 not inherent qualities of objects independent of 
 seeing and hearing ; that the matter which he 
 supposed to cause by its motions in our senses 
 these and other perceptions of the material world 
 we cannot see, hear, or apprehend by any sense. 
 No human sense has ever laid hold of it, or can 
 describe a single quality it possesses. It is some- 
 thing utterly mysterious and unknown. Hobbes 
 confessed all this. What right, then, had he to 
 say that this mysterious matter was the substance 
 and explanation of the world ? None at all. Nay, 
 had he been consistent he would have refused 
 wholly to admit its existence. He would have 
 said it was useless and unprovable. He would 
 have been an idealist 
 
 Besides, while Hobbes excluded religion from 
 the sphere of what can be proved, he accepted it 
 as matter of faith. He severed it from reason to 
 rest it on authority. And in thus denying theo- 
 logy to be rational knowledge he did no more 
 than Descartes and little more than Bacon, whose 
 principles did not so logically lead to this issue as 
 
 ^ 
 ^ 
 
Materialism in England. 8 1 
 
 his. These three thinkers all referred theology 
 and philosophy to entirely distinct sources. They 
 represented the one as having nothing to do with 
 the other ; as having each an authority of its own ; 
 *s having each a province in which for the other 
 to enter is an act of usurpation. They drew the 
 sharpest separation between reason and faith, 
 philosophy and religion. They sought to save the 
 one from the possibility of antagonism with the 
 other, by describing them as quite unconnected in 
 their principles, processes, and character. This 
 was a reaction from the scholastic dogmatism 
 which had ignored their real distinctions and en- 
 deavoured to make all science theological and all 
 theology strict science. Hobbes professed himself 
 to be an orthodox English Churchman. We have 
 certainly no warrant to charge him with atheism. 
 
 The materialism even of Hobbes was thus in- 
 complete. But no system of materialism more 
 complete than his appeared in Great Britian until 
 very recent times. When we remember the moral 
 condition of the nation from the restoration of 
 the Stuart dynasty in 1660 to the close of the 
 eighteenth century, how low the general tone of 
 spiritual life was throughout the whole period, how 
 corrupt and profligate at certain dates, we can 
 feel no surprise that numerous works were pub- 
 lished in advocacy of materialistic tenets. The 
 remarkable fact is one which our historians of 
 
 V"- F 
 
 '^ 
 
82 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 literature and philosophy have not attempted to 
 explain — namely, that the authors of none of these 
 works should have been thorough materialists. He 
 is, of course, a very incomplete materialist who 
 admits the necessity of a God to account for 
 matter. But English materialism throughout the 
 whole period specified was of this timid character. 
 The materialism of Coward and of Dodwell, of 
 Hartley and of Priestley, was limited to denial of 
 the spirituality of the soul. What materialism there 
 was in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, it must be added, was triumphantly 
 answered. The refutations of materialism were 
 not only far more numerous than the defences of 
 it, but also, as a rule, much abler. Cudworth and 
 More, Newton and Boyle, Clarke and Sherlock 
 and Butler, headed a host of eminent men who 
 took the field on the right side, and drove the 
 materialists from every position which they ven- 
 tured to take up. The history of materialism in 
 England is the reverse of brilliant. 
 
 It was only when transplanted from England to 
 France, in the generation before the Revolution, 
 that materialism grew up to maturity. A variety 
 of causes which have been often traced, and which 
 it is unnecessary in this rapid survey to specify, 
 had there prepared a soil suitable for its recep- 
 tion. And yet comparatively few of the philoso- 
 phers popular in that sceptical and corrupt age 
 
Materialism in France, 83 
 
 had the hardihood to advocate it in its atheistical 
 form. Voltaire despised it as sheer stupidity. 
 Rousseau hated it with all his heart. Condillac 
 argued against it with conviction and ability. It 
 was only after he had drifted through various 
 stages of deism and pantheism that Diderot settled 
 in materialistic atheism. The adherents of this 
 system did not become numerous until close on 
 the eve of the Revolution. The men of this 
 second generation who devoted themselves to its 
 advocacy were fanatically zealous in its behalf; but 
 they were also wholly destitute of originality, or 
 even ingenuity, and without literary talent of any 
 kind. Perhaps the best representatives of French 
 materialism in the eighteenth century were La 
 Mettrie and Von Holbach.^ 
 
 The physician La Mettrie, in his ' Natural His- 
 tory of the Sour (1745), his 'Man Machine' 
 (1748), and other works, was the first frankly 
 to declare himself a materialist He was little 
 thought of in his own day as a man, a physician, 
 or a philosopher. It is characteristic of ours, how- 
 ever, that within the last few years several authors 
 — Assezat and Qu^pat in France, Lange and Du 
 Bois-Reymond in Germany — should have tried to 
 rehabilitate him, as it is called, — to prove that he 
 was a most excellent person, better skilled in 
 medicine than the rest of his profession, and an 
 
 ^ See Appendix XI. 
 
84 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 original philosophical genius. I confess, I think, 
 they could not have been less profitably occu- 
 pied. To represent La Mettrie as either a man of 
 much moral worth or of much talent is to falsify 
 history. 
 
 He does not absolutely deny that there is a 
 God. It shows the mental calibre of the man 
 that he should, in one sentence, say that it is very 
 probable there may be a God, and then, in those 
 which immediately follow, that there are no grounds 
 for believing in the existence of God — that even 
 if there be a God, there is no need for us to have 
 any religion — and that it is foolish to trouble our- 
 selves as to whether there is a God or not. In 
 one page he affirms that it is perfectly indifferent 
 to our happiness whether God does or does not 
 exist, and a few pages further on he is pleased to 
 inform us that the world will never be happy till 
 atheism is universal. It did not occur to him that 
 although both of these assertions might very well 
 be false, they certainly could not both be true. 
 The reason which he gave for the opinion that the 
 world could not be happy until atheism was uni- 
 versal was, that only then would religious wars 
 and strifes cease. Well, of course, if there were 
 no religion people could not fight about it. But, 
 obviously, they might still fight about other things, 
 and even fight about them more frequently and 
 ignobly than they do at present, just because of 
 
Materialism in France. 85 
 
 the absence of religion. Dogs have no reh'gion, 
 but they quarrel over a bone. Take away from 
 man all interests and motives higher than those 
 of a beast, and you do not thereby secure that 
 he will be peaceable ; on the contrary, you insure 
 that he will quarrel as a beast and not as a man. 
 
 La Mettrie denies that there is much difference 
 between man and beast. He thought the higher 
 apes more closely related to human beings than 
 most Darwinians even would admit them to be. 
 He was anxious that they should be learned the 
 use of language by Amman's method of instruct- 
 ing the deaf and dumb, and hoped that mankind 
 would thus receive a numerous and valuable addi- 
 tion to their ranks. Any superiority which he 
 admitted man to have over them — it was very 
 little — he attributed wholly to the better organisa- 
 tion of his brain and to the education which he 
 received. The brain, he held, was the soul — the 
 part of the body which thinks — a part endowed 
 with fibres of thinking, just as the legs have 
 muscles of motion. Of course, death, which de- 
 stroys the rest of the body, destroys the brain — 
 the so-called soul. When death comes the farce 
 of human life is played out. In consistency with 
 these views he represented pleasure — -sensuous 
 pleasure — as the chief end of life. He excused 
 vices on the ground that they are organic diseases, 
 and that man cannot control himself. He jeers 
 
86 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 at modesty and chastity, at love and friendship. 
 He is often coarse and cynical. This is the man 
 who, the recent writers I have mentioned com- 
 plain, has hitherto not had justice done to him. 
 It would have been a wiser and truer charity in 
 them if they had left his memory in the obscurity 
 which befits it.^ 
 
 Von Holbach was a German baron settled in 
 Paris — rich, kind-hearted, and generous ; well read, 
 especially in physical science ; with considerable 
 intellect of a heavy kind ; — the very centre, how- 
 ever, of the infidelity collected in the French 
 capital, as he kept open house, and gave the 
 philosophers excellent entertainment, with perfect 
 freedom to ventilate at his table the wildest and 
 profanest of their theories. He was undoubtedly 
 the chief author of that notorious work which has 
 been called the Bible of atheistical materialism — 
 the ' System of Nature.' It appeared in 1770, and 
 bore two falsehoods on its title-page : it professed 
 to be written by a M. de Mirabaud, a deceased 
 secretary of the Academy, who had had nothing 
 to do with its composition ; and it professed to be 
 published at London, whereas it was really pub- 
 lished at Amsterdam. Its style is at once de- 
 clamatory and dreary ; but it has qualities which 
 render it a favourite instrument of atheistical 
 propagandism. It is inspired by an honest fan- 
 
 ^ See Appendix XII. 
 
Materialism in France. 8y 
 
 aticism. Its author is always terribly in earnest 
 — sometimes, it must be confessed, ludicrously so. 
 He never betrays any signs of want of confidence 
 in his own conclusions. His generalisations are 
 frequently imposing. His argumentation is often 
 not wanting in acuteness, subtilty, or plausibility. 
 The book which perplexed for a time the mind 
 of Chalmers, has, doubtless, fatally perverted the 
 judgment of many an average intellect. 
 
 A distinctive feature of the work is the explicit- 
 ness with which the idea of God is assailed — with 
 which His existence is denied. Epicurus and 
 Lucretius, even, in spite of their anxiety to throw 
 off the yoke of religion, did not refuse to believe 
 that there were gods, but only that they acted 
 on the world or were interested in human affairs. 
 All the materialists of England stopped short of 
 a denial of the Divine Existence. La Mettrie 
 himself affirmed the probability of the Divine 
 Existence, although he proceeded forthwith to 
 show its non - probability. In the * System of 
 Nature* there is no compromise or indecision on 
 this point. The denial of the Divine Existence is 
 open and absolute. The belief in His existence 
 is directly, vehemently, elaborately attacked. The 
 origin of religion is traced to fear, ignorance, and 
 the experience of misery, and described as ir- 
 rational and mischievous in all its forms. The 
 only notion of God which is not absurd is held 
 
88 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 to be that which identifies Him with the moving 
 power in nature. Deism is rejected as untenable 
 in itself, and as leading to superstition. Atheism 
 is maintained to be the truth, the true system, the 
 true philosophy, which must be accepted wherever 
 nature is rightly understood. 
 
 This truth, Von Holbach seriously assures us, 
 is not calculated for the vulgar, not suitable to the 
 great mass of mankind. " Atheism," he writes, 
 "supposes reflection; requires intense study; de- 
 mands extensive knowledge ; exacts a long series 
 of experiences ; includes the habit of contemplat- 
 ing nature ; the faculty of observing her laws, 
 which, in short, embraces the comprehensive study 
 of the causes producing her various phenomena 
 — her multiplied combinations, together with the 
 diversified actions of the beings she contains, as 
 well as their numerous properties. In order to be 
 an atheist, or to be assured of the capabilities of 
 nature, it is imperative to have meditated on her 
 profoundly ; a superficial glance of the eye will not 
 bring man acquainted with her resources ; optics 
 but little practised on her powers will be unceas- 
 ingly deceived ; the ignorance of actual causes will 
 always induce the supposition of those which are 
 imaginary ; credulity will thus reconduct the natu- 
 ral philosopher himself to the feet of superstitious 
 phantoms, in which either his limited vision or his 
 habitual sloth will make him believe he shall find 
 
Materialism in France. 89 
 
 the solution of every difficulty." While Holbach 
 was writing these words history was falsifying 
 them by showing that atheism was a creed which 
 the vulgarest of the vulgar could easily learn. 
 The masses whom the philosophers despised were 
 overhearing them, and finding no difficulty in 
 understanding the propositions, There is no God, 
 There is no soul, There is nothing in the universe 
 which may not be resolved into matter and 
 motion. These propositions have never been 
 proved by any one ; but the stupidest of men 
 may understand them without difficulty, and be- 
 lieve them and act on them to his own ruin and 
 his neighbours' injury. Our atheistical men of 
 science need not suppose that atheistical material- 
 ism is a kind of wisdom which they can keep to 
 themselves, so that it will not get into the posses- 
 sion of the dangerous classes, who may make a 
 frightful use of it. The dangerous classes, explain 
 it how you may, are just those who have always 
 shown a special aptitude for believing it. Hol- 
 bach, to do him justice, although he thought the 
 masses unqualified to understand and appreciate 
 atheism, did not wish or endeavour to conceal 
 it from them ; on the contrary, he wished and 
 zealously strove to propagate it among them. 
 The result amply proved that the task was not 
 a difficult one. 
 
 What Holbach substitutes for God is matter 
 
90 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 and motion. These two, he holds, are inseparable. 
 Matter is not dead but essentially active. Obser- 
 vation and reflection, he says, ought to convince 
 us that everything in nature is in continual mo- 
 tion ; that there is not one of its parts, however 
 minute, that enjoys true repose ; that nature acts 
 in all ; that she would cease to be nature if she 
 did not act. To the obvious question, Whence 
 did nature receive her motion ? he answers, " We 
 do not know, neither do you ; we never shall, you 
 never will." It is a most unreasonable answer to 
 a most reasonable question. Those who put the 
 question are men who offer reasons for believing 
 that the materials and the motions of the universe 
 are so fashioned, combined, and arranged as to 
 point back to a true and intelligent cause ; and 
 no one can have a right to set aside their reasons 
 by merely asserting that it can never be known 
 whence motion comes. The contention of the 
 theist is, that it may be perfectly well known that 
 both matter and motion come from a Supreme 
 and Intelligent Will. Further, to affirm that 
 matter moves of its own peculiar energies — that 
 it is essentially active and alive — is contrary to a 
 truth which all experience confirms, and on which 
 all physical and mechanical calculations are based, 
 — namely, that matter moves only as it is moved 
 — that if not acted on it will never move — and 
 that if once set in motion it will only cease mov- 
 
Materialism in France, 91 
 
 ing through being resisted. He who believes in 
 the activity of matter must abandon beHef in its 
 inertia. Like all materialists, Holbach had to 
 ascribe to matter more than he had right to do, 
 in order to be able to deduce the more from it 
 This is also to be observed, that Holbach's heart 
 had at least as much to do as his head with ascrib- 
 ing activity and life to nature. It craved for more 
 than a merely material universe. It had affections 
 and aspirations which could only have been satis- 
 fied by a very different answer to the problem of 
 existence than that which materialism had to offer, 
 and although they never were satisfied they exert- 
 ed some influence. Speculative atheist although 
 he was, Holbach unconsciously felt the need of 
 having a being to worship. He denied nature's 
 God, but the soul within him worked through his 
 imagination, and transformed nature until he could 
 adore it as his god. All through his book he is 
 ever and again vindicating, glorifying, and invok- 
 ing nature as a kind of deity. What is this, for 
 example, but prayer to nature as to a god, but 
 worship of an unenlightened and inconsistent 
 kind ? " O nature, sovereign of all beings ! and 
 ye, her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, and 
 truth ! remain for ever our revered protectors : it 
 is to you that belong the praises of the human 
 race ; to you appertains the homage of the earth. 
 Show us then, O nature, that which man ought 
 
92 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 to do in order to obtain the happiness which thou 
 makest him desire. Banish error from our mind, 
 wickedness from our hearts, confusion from our 
 footsteps ; cause knowledge to extend its benig- 
 nant reign, goodness to occupy our souls, serenity 
 to dwell in our bosoms/' 
 
 There are numerous passages of this character 
 in the ' System of Nature.* Sometimes even a 
 better genius than his own familiar spirit takes 
 possession of its author, and causes him utterly to 
 forget that he is the avowed enemy of theism, and 
 a believer only in matter and motion. Witness a 
 passage like the following, which is in direct con- 
 tradiction to the atheism he usually and explicitly 
 inculcates : " The great Cause of causes must 
 have produced everything ; but is it not lessening 
 the true dignity of the Divinity to introduce Him 
 as interfering in every operation of nature — nay, 
 in every action of so insignificant a creature as 
 man, — as a mere agent, executing His own eternal, 
 immutable laws; when experience, when reflec- 
 tion, when the evidence of all we contemplate, 
 warrants the idea that this ineffable Being has ren- 
 dered nature competent to every effect, by giving 
 her those irrevocable laws, that eternal, unchange- 
 able system, according to which all the beings 
 she sustains must eternally act .-* Is it not more 
 worthy of the exalted mind of the Great Parent 
 of parents, ens entiuniy more consistent with truth, 
 
Materialism in France. 93 
 
 to suppose that His wisdom, in giving these im- 
 mutable, these eternal laws to the macrocosm, 
 foresaw everything that could possibly be re- 
 quisite for the happiness of the beings contained 
 in it ; that, therefore, He left it to the invariable 
 operation of a system, which never can produce 
 any effect that is not the best possible that cir- 
 cumstances, however viewed, will admit ? " 
 
 In the work under consideration, order and con- 
 fusion are maintained to have no existence in 
 nature itself All is necessarily in order, we are 
 told, since everything acts and moves according 
 to constant and invariable laws ; confusion is 
 consequently impossible. But as it is at the 
 same time admitted that a series of motions or 
 actions, although necessitated, may or may not 
 conspire to one common end, and as coexistent 
 individuals of any kind may either promote or 
 oppose the development of one another, the 
 reality both of order and confusion is actually 
 granted while professedly denied. That a child 
 should be born without eyes or legs is as much 
 an effect of natural causes as that it should be 
 born with them; but seeing that eyes and legs 
 are really useful to human beings, and not merely 
 supposed by them to be useful, the possession 
 or want of eyes and legs may be characterised 
 with the strictest propriety as an example of 
 order or confusion. In like manner, theft and 
 
94 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 murder, whatever their motives or the character 
 of their causation, are instances of real disorder 
 in the moral world, because violations of a law 
 which is not created by any thoughts or imag- 
 inations of ours. There is a plain distinction 
 between causation and fitness, and the latter is 
 as really in nature as the former. 
 
 Man, according to Holbach, is entirely material. 
 Immateriality and spirituality he pronounces to 
 be meaningless words. The mental faculties he 
 represents as only determinate manners of act- 
 ing which result from the peculiar organisation 
 of the body ; feeling, thought, and will, as only 
 modifications of the nerves and brain. He re- 
 iterates and amplifies these assertions, but he 
 does not prove them ; and, indeed, they are ob- 
 viously not only erroneous but nonsensical. The 
 brain is a thing which can be examined by sight 
 and other senses ; its minutest changes might be 
 traced by an eye of sufficient strength, or by an 
 ordinary eye assisted by a sufficiently powerful 
 microscope; but a thought, a feeling, a volition 
 cannot even be conceived as perceived by the 
 sight or any sense. When a man describes any 
 state of consciousness as a modification of the 
 brain, or of any part of the body, he uses lan- 
 guage to which no meaning can be attached. 
 
 Holbach, believing that there is no God, and 
 that all that is called spirit in man is merely a 
 
Materialism in France. 95 
 
 modification of the body, naturally denies both 
 immortality and freewill. The belief in a future 
 life is represented as a dream, a delusion. The 
 grave is supposed to receive into it the whole 
 man. Free agency is regarded as a mere fiction, 
 "Man's life," we are told, "is a line drawn by 
 nature from which he cannot swerve even for an 
 instant. He is born without his own consent ; 
 his organisation in no wise depends upon him- 
 self; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his 
 habits are in the power of those who cause him 
 to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by 
 causes, whether visible or concealed, over which 
 he has no control, and which necessarily deter- 
 mine his way of thinking and manner of acting. 
 He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise or 
 foolish, rational or irrational, without his will go- 
 ing for anything in these various states." 
 
 There is thus, according to Holbach, no God, 
 no soul, no future life, no freewill. Many will 
 think that from these premises he should have 
 drawn the conclusion, there is no morality. He 
 did not quite do that, for the man was greatly 
 better than his system; but, of course, he could 
 not inculcate a pure or high morality. He could 
 only rest duty on self-interest. He could only 
 recommend virtue as a means to each man's 
 happiness. " Disinterested," he tells us, " is a 
 term only applied to those of whose motives 
 
96 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 we are ignorant, or whose interest we approve," 
 and " virtue is only the art of rendering one's self 
 happy by the felicity of others." It would be 
 unjust and ungenerous to deny that he recom- 
 mended the various personal and social virtues 
 with warmth, and in the accents of sincerity ; but 
 it was on grounds which can be naturally and 
 readily employed to excuse vice.^ 
 
 The moral principles advocated by La Mettrie 
 and Holbach were not peculiar to them. Hel- 
 vetius. Saint Lambert, Morelly, and a host of 
 other writers, likewise inculcated a more or less 
 refined selfishness, as the sole sure basis both of 
 ethical theory and ethical life. They could not 
 consistently do anything else. Materialism and 
 sensationalism can provide no other basis for 
 morality than self-love. But on such a basis 
 morality can never either rise high or stand 
 firm. The nation whose life rests on so crum- 
 bling a corner-stone is on the eve of a catastrophe. 
 This was exemplified in the case of France. It 
 would be incorrect, I believe, to say that the 
 sceptics and atheists of that country caused, with 
 their false and pernicious principles, either the 
 Revolution or the horrors which accompanied it. 
 The corrupt and disorganised state of society at 
 that time contributed to form scepticism and 
 atheism not less than scepticism and atheism 
 
 ^ See Appendix XIII. 
 
Materialism in France. 97 
 
 contributed to deteriorate society. There was 
 action and reaction. The atheism of the epoch 
 was as much the effect as the cause of its cor- 
 ruption. It was, certainly, not wholly either the 
 effect or the cause, but was partly both. Further, 
 the enormous and bewildering mass of events and 
 declarations called the French Revolution need 
 not be pronounced either wholly or mainly evil, 
 nor need the sceptical philosophers be denied to 
 have been largely instrumental in diffusing salu- 
 tary truths as well as pernicious errors. We may 
 give all due justice to the Revolution and its 
 authors and yet hold that its worst features were 
 the natural expressions of the materialistic and 
 atheistic views and the selfish and sensuous prin- 
 ciples prevalent in the generation which accom- 
 plished it, and in the generation which preceded 
 it. When God was decreed a non- entity and 
 death an eternal sleep, when divine worship was 
 abolished and marriage superseded, the rights of 
 property disregarded, and life lavishly and wan- 
 tonly sacrificed, the atheistical materialism of La 
 Mettrie and Von Holbach was seen bearing its 
 appropriate poisonous fruit. If you convince men 
 that in nature and destiny they are not essentially 
 different from the beasts that perish, it may well 
 be feared that they will live and act as beasts, 
 casting off, as far as they can, all the restraints 
 imposed by human and divine institutions, all 
 
 G 
 
98 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the bonds of the family, the Church, and the 
 State. 
 
 While materialism contributed in a considerable 
 measure to bring about the Revolution, the Revo- 
 lution did little to diffuse materialism and much 
 to discredit it. A reaction set in. A vast intellec- 
 tual and moral change, the causes of which have 
 not yet, perhaps, been adequately traced, came 
 over the European mind. Religion, poetry, litera- 
 ture, science, philosophy, were all permeated and 
 quickened by a new and deeper spirit. The con- 
 sequence was that materialism lost its hold on 
 men's minds and sank into general contempt. 
 The generation that admired Goethe and Schiller, 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, Fichte, ScheUing, 
 Hegel, Cousin, Hamilton, could only wonder that 
 a theory so poor and shallow as materialism had 
 ever exerted a wide and powerful influence. It 
 seemed as if its day were past ; as if it could 
 never return, except, perhaps, in some very 
 subtle and refined form. 
 
 But it is not to be hoped that materialism will 
 ever quite be got rid of, so long as the constitution 
 of the human mind and the character of human 
 society remain substantially what they are. Physi- 
 cal nature and its laws explain much, and so long 
 as the human mind is prone to exaggeration, and 
 education is imperfect and one-sided, and society 
 is more under the influence of the seen than the 
 
Prevalence at Present of Materialism. 99 
 
 unseen, of the temporal than the eternal, it may be 
 anticipated that many will fancy that matter and 
 motion explain everything — and this fancy is the 
 essence of materialism. Thus materialism is a 
 danger to which individuals and societies will 
 always be more or less exposed. The present 
 generation, however, and especially the generation 
 which is growing up, will obviously be very speci- 
 ally exposed to it ; as much so, perhaps, as any 
 generation in the history of the world. Within 
 the last thirty years the great wave of spiritualistic 
 or idealistic thought, which has borne to us on its 
 bosom most of what is of chief value in the nine- 
 teenth century, has been receding and decreasing ; 
 and another, which is in the main driven by ma- 
 terialistic forces, has been gradually rising behind 
 it, vast and threatening. It is but its crests that 
 we at present see ; it is but a certain vague shak- 
 ing produced by it that we at present feel ; but we 
 shall probably soon enough fail not both to see 
 and feel it fully and distinctly. Materialism has 
 gained to itself a lamentably large proportion of 
 the chiefs of contemporary science, and it finds 
 in them advocates as outspoken and enthusiastic 
 as were Lucretius and Holbach. Multitudes are 
 disposed to listen and believe with an uninquir- 
 ing and irrational faith. Materialism — atheistical 
 materialism — may at no distant date, unless earn- 
 estly and wisely opposed, be strong enough to 
 
100 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 undertake to alter all our institutions, and to 
 abolish those which it dislikes. 
 
 How is it that materialism has reappeared in 
 such force ? The following considerations may 
 yield a partial answer. In the first place, the 
 materialism of the eighteenth century has actu- 
 ally descended to, or been inherited by, the pres- 
 ent generation. Although for a considerable time 
 materialism was feeble and unpopular, it was never 
 wholly without defenders. The continuity of its 
 history was at no point completely broken. In 
 England, for example, three generations of Dar- 
 wins have entertained materialistic convictions. 
 Works like Thomas Hope's * Essay on the Origin 
 and Progress of Man,' and the anonymous * Ves- 
 tiges of Creation,' connect the ^Zoonomia' of 
 Erasmus Darwin with the ' Origin of Species ' of 
 Charles Darwin. The principles of sensational- 
 ism found not a few zealous defenders when the 
 antagonistic doctrine was at the height of its suc- 
 cess, and sensationalism is intimately related to 
 materialism. About 1840 atheism began to be 
 openly avowed to a considerable extent among 
 the working classes, and what has since been 
 called secularism made its appearance. Secular- 
 ism involves materialism. In 1851 Mr Henry G. 
 Atkinson and Miss Harriet Martineau published 
 their ' Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and 
 Development,* advocating without reservation or 
 
Causes of Contemporary Materialism. loi 
 
 restraint a crude materialism and utter atheism. 
 They taught that " philosophy finds no God in 
 nature, nor sees the want of any;" that "fitness 
 in nature is no evidence of design ; " that " all 
 causes are material causes influenced by surround- 
 ing circumstances ; " that " mind is the manifesta- 
 tion or expression of the brain in action ; " that 
 " instinct, passion, thought, are effects of organised 
 substances ; " that " only ignorance conceives the 
 will to be free ; " that " there is no more sin in a 
 crooked disposition than in a crooked stick in the 
 water, or in a hump-back or a squint ; " and that 
 " we ought to be content that in death the lease 
 of personality shall pass away, and that we shall 
 be as we were before we were — in a sleep for 
 evermore." It was no wonder that England was 
 shocked to be asked in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century to receive this old and sad story as good 
 news of great joy. But in the years which have 
 since elapsed a host of compositions have appeared 
 avowing quite as nakedly disbelief in God, spirit- 
 freedom, responsibility, and belief only in the pro- 
 perties and products of matter.^ 
 
 Materialism was still more influential in France 
 than in England throughout the first half of the 
 present century. What little philosophy there 
 was under the revolutionary governments and 
 the Empire proceeded mainly on sensationalistic 
 
 ^ See Appendix XIV. 
 
I02 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 or materialistic principles. Cabanis, De Tracy, 
 Volney, Garat, Broussais, Azais, adhered essen- 
 tially to the popular philosophical creed of the 
 eighteenth century. Other systems of thought in 
 process of time appeared and gained a temporary 
 supremacy. The theocratic and eclectic theories, 
 in particular, had for a season the most brilliant 
 success, and both were hostile to materialism in 
 all its forms. Alongside of them, however, arose 
 and spread the socialistic doctrines and schools, 
 which all favoured more or less both theoretical 
 and ethical materialism. The rehabilitation of 
 the flesh — the subordination of everything in man 
 to his stomach and senses — was the common aim 
 of the socialistic schemes for the improvement of 
 humanity. Even when the existence of God was 
 not denied, as in the system of Fourier, duty 
 was dethroned and sensuous desire raised into 
 the vacant throne. The condemnation of social- 
 ism is that it has shown itself blind to spiritual 
 and open-eyed to material interests. M. Emile 
 de Girardin expressed clearly and pointedly, not 
 merely his own faith, but that of the vast majority 
 of his socialistic countrymen, when he laid down 
 as established truths — 
 
 '* That God has no existence ; or that if He exists, it is im- 
 possible for man to demonstrate the fact. 
 That the world exists of itself, and of itself solely. 
 That man has no original sin to ransom. 
 
Causes of Contemporary Materialism. 103 
 
 That he bears about him memory and reason, as flame 
 bears with it heat and light. 
 
 That he lives again in the flesh only in the child that he 
 begets. 
 
 That he survives intellectually only in the idea or the deed 
 by which he immortalises himself. 
 
 That he has no ground for expecting to receive in a future 
 life a recompense or punishment for his present con- 
 duct. 
 
 That morally good and ill do not exist substantially, abso- 
 lutely, incontestably, by themselves; that they exist only 
 nominally, relatively, arbitrarily. 
 
 That, in fact, there only exist risks, against which man, 
 obeying the law of self-preservation within him, and 
 giving law to matter, seeks to insure himself by the 
 means at his command." 
 
 The principles of materialism in combination with 
 socialism have been widely taught in France for 
 about half a century. The creed of the Commune 
 of Paris had been a prevalent and uninterrupted 
 tradition among certain classes during that length 
 of time. 
 
 It may be remarked, in the second place, that 
 idealism itself led to materialism. This was espe- 
 cially the case in Germany, where idealism had for 
 a considerable time the field almost entirely to 
 itself Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, reigned in succes- 
 sion. The sway of the last was for a time very 
 widely and humbly acknowledged. It seemed as 
 if he had founded an empire which would last — 
 as if absolute idealism had been demonstrated to 
 
I04 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 be the definitive philosophy. But he had not been 
 dead eight years before his empire was divided 
 into three conflicting kingdoms, his disciples into 
 three schools, of which one was theistic, another 
 pantheistic, and the third atheistic In that short 
 period a number of his disciples had found, or 
 fancied that they found, that absolute idealism 
 was little else than another name for material- 
 ism. Michelet and Strauss, while adhering to 
 the distinction between idea and nature, logic 
 and physics, contended that God is personal only 
 in man, and the soul immortal only in God, mean- 
 ing thereby that God as God is not personal, and 
 real souls not immortal. Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, 
 Max Stirner, Arnold Ruge, reduced the idea to 
 mere nature and returned to naked atheism. With 
 a strange fanatical sincerity they preached that 
 the universal being of humanity, or the individual 
 man or nature, was the sole object of supreme 
 veneration. 
 
 In another way idealism occasioned materialism. 
 Its excesses under the manipulation of Fichte, 
 Schelling, Hegel, and their followers, provoked a 
 reaction in favour of empiricism. Speculation by 
 its audacity, combined with weakness and wordi- 
 ness, excited aversion. Men whose hopes had been 
 so often deceived by ideas, resolved to put con- 
 fidence only in facts. They determined to build 
 entirely on the data of the senses, and to follow 
 
Causes of Contemporary Materialism. 105 
 
 exclusively the guidance of the physical sciences. 
 If they had done this they would necessarily have 
 been silent about God, the soul, the moral law, the 
 destiny of man, for these are subjects on which 
 mere sense and physical science have nothing to 
 say. At the same time, they are subjects on which 
 man as a rational and moral being cannot help 
 reflecting. The consequence in Germany was, that 
 many persons took to judging of them from the 
 merely physical science point of view. In the name 
 of this or that mechanical or biological generalisa- 
 tion, they hastened to inform the public that there 
 could be no God, no soul, no freedom, &c. Moles- 
 chott, Vogt, Biichner, were in the van of this new 
 movement, which is sometimes called scientific 
 materialism. As all the world knows, it has had 
 extraordinary success. 
 
 The chief reason, I remark in the third place, of 
 the prevalence of the so-called scientific material- 
 ism has been the rapid and brilliant progress in 
 recent times of the physical, and especially of the 
 biological sciences. All the sciences of material 
 nature — astronomy, natural philosophy, chemistry, 
 geology, physiology, natural history, &c. — have 
 been within the Hfetime of the present generation 
 wonderfully enriched with discoveries of facts and 
 laws, and signally productive of inventions which 
 have increased human wealth, comfort, and power. 
 The mental, moral, and theological sciences have 
 
lo6 Anti-Theistic TJieories. 
 
 not advanced with anything like the same speed ; 
 they can point to no similar harvest of indisputable 
 and benignant results ; if they have made any con- 
 quests, these have necessarily not been of a kind to 
 dazzle the eye and impress the imagination. It 
 is not surprising, therefore, that physical science 
 should have attracted general and engrossing at- 
 tention ; that it should to a large extent have been 
 cultivated and appreciated in a one-sided manner ; 
 that what had been seen to do so much should 
 by many have been fancied to possess unlimited 
 powers. But this is equivalent to saying that it 
 is not surprising that many scientific men should 
 have become materialists, and should have imagined 
 their materialism due to their science, although 
 really due to their ignorance. 
 
 The mere study of physical nature does not 
 carry us beyond matter and its processes. Its 
 most elaborate methods can give us no apprehen- 
 sion of God, or soul, or moral sense. So far as 
 mere physical science can discern, "if God had 
 slept a million years, all things would be the 
 same." No telescope or microscope can enable us 
 to detect freewill or any other attribute of mind. 
 Physical science can only tell us of physical ob- 
 jects, physical properties, and physical laws. If 
 no other voice is to be heard, no other witness to 
 be called, the verdict of reason must necessarily be 
 that materialism is true. 
 
Causes of Contemporary Materialism. 107 
 
 The recent progress of the biological sciences, 
 and the great popularity which they enjoy, are 
 also very noteworthy circumstances in this con- 
 nection. The least observant minds can hardly 
 fail to have been struck with the remarkable man- 
 ner in which these sciences have come to the front 
 during the last twenty or thirty years. It would be 
 easy to indicate the causes of this, but it is its 
 consequences which concern us. Materialism has 
 clearly gained by it in more ways than one. Nat- 
 uralists and physiologists are more apt, perhaps, 
 to become materialists than natural philosophers, 
 because it is possible for the former to be greatly 
 distinguished in their vocations without requiring 
 ever seriously to ask what matter is, but hardly 
 for the latter, who have to deal with it in its more 
 general and essential nature. The natural philo- 
 sopher may denounce as metaphysics the question, 
 What is matter } but he is not only always trying 
 to answer the question, but his answer, as a rule, 
 comes so near that of the metaphysician, that he 
 is rarely a materialist. It is in the form of ex- 
 aggerations of the influence of physical agencies, 
 and of physiological qualities, that materialism is 
 generally made use of as a principle of scientific 
 explanation ; and this is done by those whose 
 studies are least fitted to disclose to them what 
 the natural philosopher, and still more, the specu- 
 lative thinker, are perfectly aware of, that much 
 
io8 Anti'T/ieistic TJuories. 
 
 more can be said for a mathematical theory of 
 matter or a mental theory of matter, than for a 
 material theory of mind and history. 
 
 The advance of science into the various pro- 
 vinces of the organic world has favoured material- 
 ism still more by its influence on the character 
 of the scientific spirit. Regions have now been 
 entered, where to proceed rigidly, according to the 
 rules either of deduction or induction, is as yet 
 often impossible ; where not a step can be taken 
 which is not conjectural and venturesome ; where 
 at every turn a host of hypotheses must be devised 
 and tested. What an enormous number of hypo- 
 theses have been suggested by and associated with 
 the Darwinian doctrine of development, itself still 
 a hypothesis ! This state of things is inevitable, 
 but none the less is there a serious danger in it. 
 Men of science are not unlikely in such circum- 
 stances to forget what the demands of scientific 
 method really are, and to allow the plausible often 
 to pass for the probable, and the probable for the 
 proved. What may be called the scientific con- 
 science, or, at least, scientific conscientiousness, 
 runs a serious risk of loss and injury. The risk 
 has, I fear, already largely passed into reality. Is 
 it not painfully obvious that a large number of 
 those who profess to give us scientific instruction 
 in biology, ethnology, sociology, &c., have the very 
 vaguest views of what proof is ? Is there not a 
 
Causes of Conte^nporary Materialism. 109 
 
 very large increase of men, esteemed scientific, who 
 cannot distinguish a process of imagination from 
 one of induction ? Is there not rapidly rising up 
 a pseudo-scientific school of savants whose notions 
 of evidence are essentially different from those of 
 the older type of scientific man represented by 
 a Herschell or Faraday, a Brewster, Forbes, or 
 Thomson ? It seems to me that these questions 
 must be answered in the affirmative ; and that it 
 is almost exclusively from the new school — the 
 school which draws its resources largely from im- 
 agination — that the ranks of the so-called scientific 
 materialism of our day are recruited. 
 
 Such causes of the spread of materialism as the 
 following might also be dwelt upon, but it must 
 suffice simply to mention them, {a) Political and 
 social dissatisfaction. In some countries and in 
 certain classes this has been a most powerful cause. 
 In proof, I need only refer to secularism in Eng- 
 land and to socialism in France and Germany. 
 {b) The growth of rationalism and of aversion to 
 the supernatural. Materialism is the natural and 
 logical culmination of this movement. It is only in 
 and through materialism that the elimination of 
 everything supernatural can be reached, {c) The 
 predominance of material interests, — of the mer- 
 cantile spirit, — of the love of wealth, worldly dis- 
 play, and pleasure. The life determines theory 
 even more than theory influences life. 
 
no Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 Materialism, it must be added, has another 
 class of causes. It has all the reasons which it 
 can urge on its own behalf. It would be unfair, 
 at this stage, to insinuate that these are either 
 few or feeble. We shall examine them in next 
 lecture. 
 
The A rgument for Materialism. 1 1 1 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 CONTEMPORARY OR SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 Materialism as a reasoned theory of the uni- 
 verse, — materialism as a philosophy, — is more than 
 two thousand years old. During that long period 
 it has had various fates and fortunes. It has at 
 one time ebbed, and at another flowed ; it has 
 suffered many checks and defeats, and has also 
 enjoyed many successes and triumphs. It has 
 never been more than partially and temporarily 
 vanquished ; it has sometimes seemed as if it 
 would carry all before it, and leave no foe unde- 
 stroyed. Its least sympathetic critic must admit 
 that it has shunned neither conflict with the most 
 formidable antagonists nor the scrutiny of the 
 doubting and discussing intellect ; that, on the 
 contrary, its course has been a continuous cam- 
 paign against all kinds of powers and principalities 
 in the name of free thought and scientific truth ; 
 
112 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 and that when it has prospered, it has not been 
 under the shadow of authority, but in the light of 
 reason. It may be true that whenever it has been 
 widely prevalent, moral, social, and political influ- 
 ences have contributed to its diffusion ; that inter- 
 ests and passions have often been as helpful to it 
 as reasons. But the same may be said with equal 
 justice of all systems. No doctrine rests exclu- 
 sively on intellectual grounds, or triumphs merely 
 in the strength of pure reason. Materialism, it 
 cannot be denied, has constantly appealed to 
 reason, and has prevailed most in epochs charac- 
 terised by activity of reason. It has not faded 
 and decayed, but grown and flourished, with the 
 increase and expansion of scientific light. It was 
 never more prevalent than in the present day, 
 when the spirit of investigation is everywhere 
 obviously and energetically at work. 
 
 Materialism could never have thus lasted and 
 flourished had it not been a very plausible the- 
 ory. It could never have had the history which 
 it has had unless it had much to say for itsel£ 
 Make full allowance for interests and passions 
 operating in its favour, yet interests and passions 
 can only sustain and propagate either themselves 
 or any doctrine or movement when they are ac- 
 companied by the persuasion that reason is on 
 their side. Nothing is more impotent than mere 
 passion — blind passion, — except it be mere interest 
 
The Argument for Materialisrn, 113 
 
 — interest consciously separated from or opposed to 
 truth. Materialism must be able to adduce in its 
 favour arguments which are fitted to impress and 
 convince both the popular and the scientific mind. 
 Its claims to acceptance must rest on grounds 
 which, while not recondite or difficult to under- 
 stand, are yet of a kind calculated to satisfy many 
 intellects which have been disciplined by physical 
 science. 
 
 That this is the case I must endeavour to show. 
 It is clearly impossible to examine in a single 
 lecture even a very few of the most celebrated 
 vindications of contemporary materialism, while 
 it would hardly be fair or satisfactory to discuss 
 merely one of them. It seems necessary, therefore, 
 to treat of contemporary materialism, or, as it is 
 sometimes called, scientific materialism, in a gen- 
 eral way. This requires that I should begin by 
 indicating as comprehensively as is consistent with 
 brevity the general character of the argumentation 
 which is employed in its support 
 
 In the first place, then, materialism claims to 
 satisfy better than any other system the legitimate 
 demands of the reason for unity. There cannot 
 be more than one ultimate explanation of things. 
 If the variety of existences in the universe are 
 traced back to two or more causes, the intellect 
 must sooner or later perceive that it has stopped 
 abruptly and left its work incomplete. The two 
 
 H 
 
114 Anh-Theistic Theories. 
 
 or more causes which have been reached neces- 
 sarily limit and condition one another. Whence 
 and why are they thus bounded and associated ? 
 The question cannot be evaded. Reason demands 
 an answer to it, and no answer can be found in the 
 several finite and co-ordinate causes themselves ; 
 it must be found in a single higher cause on which 
 they are dependent. It is only by reaching unity 
 that we can get above the limits and conditions 
 which are conclusive evidences of dependence. 
 Hence every form of dualism must be rejected as 
 a theory of existence. Only a monistic philosophy 
 can be a true philosophy. But theism, say ma- 
 terialists, is essentially dualistic. It traces the 
 diversity of phenomena in the universe not to one 
 cause, but to two causes. It refers some things to 
 mind, and other things to matter, and maintains 
 that matter and mind are substantially distinct. 
 It leaves us with two principles, and by so doing 
 virtually reduces even the one which it pronounces 
 infinite to something finite, while it renders it 
 impossible for us to conceive of the connection 
 between matter and mind otherwise than as 
 arbitrary. Materialism, on the other hand, is 
 monism. It explains the whole world in terms of 
 matter. It resolves everything in nature — order, 
 organisation, life, sensation, thought, poetry, re- 
 ligion, history — into combinations and motions of 
 matter. It exhibits the universe as a perfectly 
 
The Argument for Materialism. 115 
 
 homogeneous and coherent system naturally 
 evolved out of a single primary existence. It 
 thus satisfies the demands of philosophy or rational 
 theory for unity. Idealism, it is true, sets up rival 
 pretensions. It professes to start with the self- 
 identity or absolute unity of thought, and to ex- 
 plain matter as a stage in the development or as a 
 phase of the manifestation of thought. But are not 
 its claims obviously less satisfactory t We know 
 nothing of ideas or thoughts except as states 
 of human consciousness, as affections or products 
 of that in ourselves which we call mind. They 
 are special phenomena in the life or experience 
 of men, and men are themselves only a species 
 of natural existences — a class of animals — appa- 
 rently the last evolved in the terrestrial sphere 
 of things. Man is included in the universe, and 
 ideas are included in man. Reason consequently 
 requires us to seek the explanation of man and 
 ideas in what is common and primary in the uni- 
 verse — matter and motion. To attempt to explain 
 what is ancient by what is recent, the general by 
 the particular, the macrocosm by the microcosm, 
 universal existence by the modifications of highly 
 specialised organisations, is a monstrous va-repov 
 TTporepov, a manifest violation of the laws of scien- 
 tific method. Thought, which is independent of 
 human consciousness, can only be affirmed to 
 exist by an arbitrary act of the individual mind, 
 
Ii6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and is no real principle, but a mystical assump- 
 tion ; thought, which is dependent on human 
 consciousness, can no more be the unity which 
 accounts for the universe, than the characteristic 
 features of the leaves of a particular kind of tree 
 can be the sole and adequate explanation of the 
 entire vegetable kingdom. 
 
 Further, materialism claims to be the only 
 theory which satisfactorily shows that all things 
 have come to be what they are in a truly nat- 
 ural manner. When describing the evolution of 
 the universe from unity to multiplicity, it appeals 
 to no arbitrary or imaginary factor, no principle 
 which is supernatural, no process which transcends 
 or contravenes science. It represents the universe 
 as a self-consistent and perfect system, in which 
 everything that happens follows necessarily from 
 the powers inherent in the system itself. Theism, 
 on the contrary, supposes that the universe in 
 itself is incoherent and imperfect, and that the 
 explanation of many things in it must be sought 
 for out of itself. It conceives of the matter of the 
 world as created ; of its powers as derived ; of its 
 order as contrived ; and of certain events and 
 existences comprehended in it as produced by 
 special acts of Divine interposition. Such a view, 
 say materialists, is essentially anti- scientific. It 
 implicitly denies not only that the world is a 
 scientific unity, but that its phenomena are expli- 
 
The Argument for Materialism. wj 
 
 cable in a natural manner, whereas the chief end of 
 science is to show that the world is a systematic 
 unity, and that all its phenomena can be naturally 
 explained. Idealism may, indeed, be here again 
 opposed to materialism. Idealism also professes 
 to account in a strictly natural manner for all that 
 is explicable. It starts from the unity of a single 
 principle, and has recourse only to immanent pro- 
 cesses, excluding entirely acts of supernatural in- 
 terference. Idealism, however, it will be replied, 
 breaks down the moment it is brought into real 
 contact with external nature. The supposition of 
 its truth implies that the various operations of 
 the physical world can be explained by the laws 
 of an impersonal and unconscious dialectic; that 
 mechanical, chemical, and organic processes are 
 essentially notional or rational. But this is a 
 hypothesis which physical science Avill not allow 
 us to entertain. The attempt to interpret me- 
 chanical, chemical, and organic facts in connection 
 with it has always resulted either in caricaturing 
 or contradicting the explanations of them given 
 by physical science. In other words, it has invari- 
 ably led to dualism of the worst kind, — the dual- 
 ism which consists in irreconcilable antagonism 
 between philosophy and science. Hegelianism 
 supplies us with a striking illustration and proof 
 Hegel and his followers saw more clearly than the 
 idealists of any other school had done that it was 
 
Ii8 Anti-Theistic TJieories. 
 
 incumbent upon them to show that nature was a 
 system of which the processes were the stages and 
 expressions of an immanent logical evolution, and 
 they laboured strenuously and ingeniously at the 
 task. What was the result ? A so-called philo- 
 sophy of nature, which physical science is forced 
 to condemn as a gigantic swindle. In the Hegelian 
 philosophy of nature, idealism made evident its 
 scientific bankruptcy. It is very different with 
 materialism, which accepts and incorporates the 
 whole of physical science without alteration or per- 
 version ; which founds upon the results of physical 
 research, and tries to extend its principles and 
 apply its methods as far as is legitimately possible. 
 A closely - connected excellence claimed by 
 materialism is that of being the most intelligible 
 of systems. It is maintained that we never truly 
 understand a fact or process of which we cannot 
 form a distinct and precise image or picture. 
 Whenever a thing is scientifically explained, the 
 mind is enabled to form to itself a definite and 
 clear conception of how that thing came to be 
 what it is. But pseudo- explanations — as, for 
 example, those given of natural phenomena by 
 ancient and scholastic philosophy — are invariably 
 vague and mystical. Can anything, however, 
 except matter and material processes, be definitely 
 and minutely imaged } Can anything else be esti- 
 mated with quantitative accuracy ? Can there be 
 
The Argument for Materialism. 119 
 
 any exact knowledge — ix.^ science — so long as ma- 
 terial properties are not reached ? The materialist 
 answers all these questions in the negative. And, 
 at the same time, he contends that the theistic 
 mode of accounting for the universe by the crea- 
 tive fiat of an Eternal Being is particularly unin- 
 telligible. Such a supposition seems to him to be 
 one which cannot, properly speaking, be realised 
 in thought at all. A man may verbally express 
 it, and even fancy that he believes it, yet it is in 
 itself essentially inconceivable. 
 
 From preliminary considerations like the fore- 
 going, the materialist may proceed to what is 
 strictly his argument, which still remains to be 
 stated. It consists in maintaining that the facts 
 of nature do not in any case demand for their 
 explanation a principle or principles distinct from 
 matter. The properties of matter are the sole, the 
 direct, and the immediate objects of the senses. 
 They confront the mind from the earliest dawn 
 of consciousness, and are apprehended by it long 
 before self- reflection is elicited. Touch, taste, 
 sight, hearing, and smell, all converge on matter, 
 and constrain us to commence with it. Before 
 we abandon it and its properties, the necessity of 
 having recourse to a distinct substance with dis- 
 tinct properties must be clearly made out. In the 
 inorganic world no such necessity arises. Yet it 
 is a world rich in differences, presenting a vast 
 
I20 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 variety of constituents and forces, of stages and 
 processes, of colours, sounds, savours, and odours. 
 The objects of one sense are quite unlike those of 
 another, and light, heat, electricity, and magnet- 
 ism appear to be entirely distinct. But examina- 
 tion discovers everywhere an essential sameness. 
 It was the glory of the atomic or materialistic 
 philosophy of ancient Greece to have recognised 
 that the diversity of things was only secondary ; 
 that underneath the phenomenal variety was real 
 identity; that all qualitative distinctions might 
 be resolved into quantitative distinctions. This 
 truth has not only been fully confirmed in modern 
 times, but has been brilliantly supplemented and 
 completed by the great discovery of the correla- 
 tion of forces. Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, 
 chemical affinity, and mechanical motion, have 
 been ascertained to be convertible. Any one of 
 them may be transformed into any other. They 
 are but modes of the movements which take place 
 among the molecules of matter. They are but the 
 metamorphoses of a common force, which is un- 
 changeable in amount although variable in quality. 
 Does the anti - materialist argue that, however 
 the case may stand with the inorganic world, 
 organisation cannot be conceived of as a product 
 of molecular combinations and mechanical forces ? 
 Does he contend that there is a chasm or gulf 
 between inorganic and organic nature, and that 
 
The A rgument for Materialism. 121 
 
 materialism fails to bridge over the distance be- 
 tween the one region and the other ? It may be 
 replied that this is an argument based not on 
 knowledge but on ignorance, and addressed not 
 to knowledge but to ignorance. Because we do 
 not know that purely physical forces can construct 
 a living cell as we know that they can build up a 
 crystal, we infer that they cannot do the former. 
 But logic warrants no such inference. A solution 
 of continuity, a chasm, in knowledge is no proof 
 that there is a solution of continuity or chasm in 
 nature. Ignorance cannot be legitimately reasoned 
 from as if it were knowledge. 
 
 Further, Is not the gap in science being gradu- 
 ally filled up } Is not knowledge as it advances 
 making it apparent that there is no gap in nature 
 at the point indicated t In the light of recent 
 science we cannot but vividly realise that matter 
 is capable of transformations so diversified and 
 wonderful that we must be very cautious before 
 we venture to assign limits to its powers of adap- 
 tation, change, and efficiency. The same particle 
 of it may in succession be a constituent of a drop 
 of dew, of an invisible vapour, of a crystal of snow, 
 of a mineral, of the stem, sap, flower, or fruit of 
 a plant, and of the flesh, blood, bone, or brain of 
 man, performing necessarily very diff"erent func- 
 tions in the several instances. Crystallisation is a 
 process scarcely less marvellous in itself and in its 
 
122 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 results than growth. Why are we not to believe 
 that in the latter process no less than in the former 
 every molecule is placed in its position not by any 
 external power, whether creative mind or vital 
 principle, but by attractions and repulsions due to 
 the natures of the molecules themselves ? If mat- 
 ter can display in special circumstances the struc- 
 tural powers exhibited in crystallisation, why may 
 it not in other, perhaps more complex circum- 
 stances, manifest the organic powers witnessed in 
 vegetable and animal growth ? 
 
 It was until recently supposed that there was a 
 chasm which could not be bridged over between 
 the very chemistry of inorganic and organic bodies, 
 and that no animal substances could be com- 
 pounded by the chemist. This doctrine is now 
 overthrown. The supposed break in nature which 
 was regarded as indicating the presence and inter- 
 vention of a distinct principle in organised struc- 
 tures is now found to have been but a blank in our 
 knowledge. "Not many years since," says Mr 
 Spencer, " it was held as certain that the chemical 
 compounds distinguished as organic could not be 
 formed artificially. Now, more than a thousand 
 organic compounds have been formed artificially. 
 Chemists have discovered the art of building them 
 up from the simpler to the more complex ; and 
 do not doubt that they will eventually produce 
 the most complex." 
 
The Argument for Materialism. 123 
 
 That the matter of organic bodies is the same 
 as that of inorganic objects has, of course, a very- 
 important bearing on the question whether or not 
 vitahty is resolvable into the mechanical properties 
 and chemical processes of matter. What that 
 bearing is I shall leave it to Professor Huxley to 
 state. Treating of the " Physical Basis of Life," 
 he writes : " Plants are the accumulators of the 
 power which animals distribute and dispense. But 
 it will be observed that the existence of the mat- 
 ter of life depends on the pre-existence of certain 
 compounds — namely, carbonic acid, water, and 
 ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from 
 the world, and all vital phenomena come to an 
 end. They are related to the protoplasm of the 
 plant as the protoplasm of the plant is to that 
 of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
 nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon 
 and oxygen unite in certain proportions, and under 
 certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; 
 hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen 
 and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new 
 compounds, like the elementary bodies of which 
 they are composed, are lifeless. But when they 
 are brought together under certain conditions, 
 they give rise to the still more complex body, 
 protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phe- 
 nomena of life. I see no break in this series of 
 steps in molecular complication, and I am unable 
 
124 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 to understand why the language which is appli- 
 cable to any one term of the series may not be 
 used to any of the others. We think fit to call 
 different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydro- 
 gen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various 
 powers and activities of these substances as the 
 properties of the matter of which they are com- 
 posed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed 
 in a certain proportion, and the electric spark is 
 passed through them, they disappear, and a quan- 
 tity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their 
 weights, appears in their place. There is not the 
 slightest parity between the passive and active 
 powers of the water and those of the oxygen 
 and hydrogen which have given rise to it. . . . 
 Nevertheless, we do not hesitate to believe that, 
 in some way or another, the properties of the 
 water result from the properties of the component 
 elements of the water. We do not assume that a 
 something called aquosity entered into and took 
 possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as 
 it was formed, and then guided the aqueous 
 particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, 
 or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. . . . 
 Does anybody quite comprehend the modus oper 
 audi of an electric spark, which traverses a mix- 
 ture of oxygen and hydrogen .'' What justification 
 is there, then, for the assumption of the existence 
 in the living matter of a something which has no 
 
The A rgument for Materialism. 125 
 
 representative or correlative in the not-living mat- 
 ter which gave rise to it ? What better philoso- 
 phical status has ' vitality ' than ' aquosity ' ? And 
 why should * vitality ' hope for a better fate than the 
 other ' itys ' which have disappeared since Martinus 
 Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the 
 meat-jack by its inherent ' meat-roasting quality,' 
 and scorned the materialism of those who ex- 
 plained the turning of the spit by a certain mech- 
 anism worked by the draught of the chimney?" 
 
 The mere chemical analysis of inorganic bodies, 
 then, proves that as to substance or matter they 
 are identical with inorganic objects. But science, 
 it is contended, carries us much farther, not merely 
 inferentially from this unity of composition, but 
 directly by demonstrating that what is called vital 
 force is simply mechanical and chemical force 
 transformed through the special conditions under 
 which it acts. The human body is as incapable 
 of generating force as is a steam-engine or a gal- 
 vanic battery. It only distributes the force which 
 it receives from the world without, and varies its 
 manifestations to the senses. Its every action 
 and process — walking and climbing, pulling and 
 pushing, respiration and digestion, assimilation 
 and excretion — can be shown to be either a 
 mechanical or chemical operation. The force 
 displayed by animals in muscular contractions is 
 entirely derived from the energy stored up in the 
 
126 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 food which they consume. The heat which is 
 diffused through their frames is due to chemical 
 combination. Digestion is simply a form of 
 combustion. The circulation of the blood is 
 indubitably a mechanical movement effected by 
 mechanical force. What room is left in organ- 
 isms for a vital force essentially distinct from the 
 inorganic powers of matter? It is unnecessary to 
 dwell longer on an argument which has been so 
 often presented to the English public in the brill- 
 iant expositions of Professor Tyndall. 
 
 The significance of the doctrine of evolution 
 must also not be overlooked in the present 
 connection. A few years ago every group of 
 organisms called a species was supposed to have 
 originated in a direct creative act or miracle 
 Now, this hypothesis is almost universally aban- 
 doned. Its place is occupied by Darwinianism or 
 some other form of the development theory. An 
 enormous mass of facts has been collected from 
 astronomy, geology, geography, biology, linguis- 
 tics, &c., and presented in a light which has con- 
 vinced most scientific men that from a few organic 
 forms, if not from a single organism, of the 
 simplest kind, all organised beings have been 
 gradually, naturally, and necessarily formed and 
 distributed. But if this theory be true (and those 
 who deny its truth must disprove it), obviously the 
 probability is very great that, as there has been 
 
The A rgtcment for Materialism. 1 27 
 
 no supernatural interposition in the course of the 
 evolution of organic beings, so there was none 
 when life and organisation first began to be, and 
 consequently, that no absolutely new principle, no 
 immaterial vital force, was then abruptly and in- 
 explicably inserted into nature. 
 
 If it be admitted, on the strength of the fore- 
 going and similar considerations, that even a single 
 vital cell may have originated in the laboratory 
 of nature, under peculiar conditions, from the 
 combination of inorganic elements and the action 
 of chemical and mechanical forces, it can be left 
 to the Darwinian theory of development to ex- 
 plain how that single cell might, in the course of 
 millions on millions of years, by successive infini- 
 tesimally minute modifications, be the source from 
 which every plant and animal in the world has 
 derived its life and organisation. In so far as 
 biology accomplishes, or attempts to accomplish, 
 tliis task, it may be held to be simply a stage or 
 section of the materialistic theory, and materialism 
 to be identical with biological science. 
 
 It will be said that there is an impassable 
 barrier between vegetable and animal life — that 
 plants can never have risen into animals, nor ani- 
 mals degenerated into plants. Mr Spencer has 
 thus answered this argument when replying to Dr 
 Martineau : " This is an extremely unfortunate 
 objection to raise. For though there are no 
 
128 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 transitions from vegetal to animal life at the 
 places Mr Martineau names (where, indeed, no 
 biologist would look for them), yet the connection 
 between the two great kingdoms of living things 
 is so complete that separation is now regarded as 
 impossible. For a long time naturalists endeav- 
 oured to frame definitions such as would, the one 
 include all plants and exclude all animals, and the 
 other include all animals and exclude all plants. 
 But they have been so repeatedly foiled in the 
 attempt that they have given it up. There is no 
 chemical distinction that holds ; there is no struc- 
 tural distinction that holds ; there is no functional 
 distinction that holds ; there is no distinction as 
 to mode of existence that holds. Large groups 
 of the simpler animals contain chlorophyll, and 
 decompose carbonic acid under the influence of 
 light, as plants do. Large groups of the simpler 
 animals, as you may observe in the diatoms from 
 any stagnant pool, are as actively locomotive as 
 the minute creatures classed as animals seen along 
 with them. Nay, among these lowest types of liv- 
 ing things it is common for the life to be now pre- 
 dominantly anim.al, and presently to become pre- 
 dominantly vegetal. The very name zoospores^ given 
 to germs of AlgcB^ which for a while swim about 
 actively by means of cilia, and presently settling 
 down grow into plant-forms, is given because of this 
 conspicuous community of nature. So complete 
 
The A rgurnent for Materialism. 1 29 
 
 is this community of nature, that for some time 
 past many naturalists have wished to establish for 
 these lowest types a sub -kingdom, intermediate 
 between the animal and the vegetal : the reason 
 against this course being, however, that the diffi- 
 culty crops up afresh at any assumed place where 
 this intermediate sub-kingdom may be supposed 
 to join the other two. Thus the assumption on 
 which Mr Martineau proceeds is diametrically op- 
 posed to the conviction of naturalists in general." 
 — Cont. Rev., June 1872. 
 
 There remains the barrier of mind or conscious- 
 ness. The materialist maintains that science 
 proves that matter is, in this case, also an ade- 
 quate principle of explanation. All the powers of 
 the human mind may be traced to roots in the 
 lower animals. The life of the body and its 
 functions are manifestations of the same generic 
 principle as the so-called life of the soul and its 
 functions. There is only a difference of degree 
 between the highest mental and the lowest vital 
 faculties. There is no absolute break or distinc- 
 tion, but, on the contrary, a continuous progres- 
 sion along the entire psychological line which runs 
 from the protogenes and protamceba to Plato and 
 Shakespeare, and yet in the two former the mo- 
 tions, which are the evidences of their animality, 
 are scarcely, if at all, distinguishable from the 
 contractions and expansions of certain colloidal 
 
 I 
 
130 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 substances. The doctrines of the correlation of 
 forces and of development are as applicable to 
 the explanation of mind as of life. Mind is force, 
 the highest development of force, the force which 
 is accumulated in the brain and nerves ; and men- 
 tal force is as exactly correlated with vital and 
 with physical force as these are with each other. 
 It may be proved by a variety of scientific con- 
 siderations that all forces come under the same 
 generalisation. Motion, heat, and light, may be 
 transformed into sensation, emotion, and thought ; 
 and these may be reconverted into motion, heat, 
 and light. The theory of development has been 
 employed with success by a host of investigators 
 in the elucidation of all kinds of mental pheno- 
 mena. The result has been to show that the 
 phenomena peculiar to human psychology may 
 be resolved into simpler states, and that these 
 may be traced backwards and downwards until 
 the primordial properties of matter are reached. 
 The argument for materialism may now, per- 
 haps, be fitly concluded in the words of Professor 
 Huxley : " I take it to be demonstrable that it is 
 utterly impossible to prove that anything what- 
 ever may not be the effect of a material and 
 necessary cause, and that human logic is equally 
 incompetent to prove that any act is really spon- 
 taneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, 
 by the assumption, has no cause ; and the attempt 
 
The A rgument for Materialism. 131 
 
 to prove such a negative as this, is, on the very 
 face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus 
 a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that 
 any given phenomenon is not the effect of a ma- 
 terial cause, any one who is acquainted with the 
 history of science will admit that its progress has, 
 in all ages, meant, and now more that ever means, 
 the extension of the province of what we call mat- 
 ter and causation, and the concomitant gradual 
 banishment from all regions of human thought 
 of what we call spirit and spontaneity. And as 
 surely as every future grows out of the past and 
 present, so will the physiology of the future grad- 
 ually extend the realm of matter and law until it 
 is coextensive with knowledge, with feeling, and 
 with action. The consciousness of this great truth 
 weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of 
 the best minds of these days. They watch what 
 they conceive to be the progress of materialism, 
 in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels 
 when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps 
 over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of 
 matter threatens to drown their souls ; the tight- 
 ening grasp of law impedes their freedom ; they 
 are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased 
 by the increase of his wisdom.*' ^ 
 
 ^ See Appendix XV. 
 
132 Anti-Theistic Ttieories, 
 
 II. 
 
 A general view of the argument in favour of 
 materialism has now been laid before you. My 
 next duty is to examine whether or not the reason- 
 ing which it includes and involves is valid. 
 
 Is it true, then, I ask, that materialism satisfies 
 the legitimate demands of the reason for unity ? 
 I grant that reason, when in quest of an ultimate 
 explanation of things, imperatively demands unity, 
 and that only a monistic theory of the universe 
 can deserve the name of a philosophy. While 
 aware that the desire for unity has given rise to 
 countless aberrations, and that it needs to be care- 
 fully watched lest it create factitious unities when 
 it fails to find real unities, I yet unhesitatingly 
 acknowledge that it originates in, and is the 
 expression of, the very constitution of rational 
 thought, which can never regard a number of 
 co-ordinate causes as other than a group of sec- 
 ondary causes. But the question is. Is material- 
 ism monism } or, in other words, Is matter one ? 
 I answer, No. Matter cannot possibly be con- 
 ceived of as properly one. Materialism is neces- 
 sarily multitudinism, and as such must inevitably 
 be pronounced an essentially unphilosophical and 
 irrational hypothesis. 
 
 The world presented to us by the senses and 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 133 
 
 immediate consciousness is certainly not one, and 
 is held by nobody to be one. It is a vast complex 
 of objects, agencies, and conditions — stars, stones, 
 plants, animals, light, heat, electricity, thoughts, 
 feelings, volitions. Its contents may have a unity 
 imparted to them by generalisation, but merely a 
 unity which is given to them from without and for 
 a purpose, — a unity which depends on the point 
 of view from which things are considered. There 
 may be any number of such unities ; there may 
 be even more of them than there are things. Real 
 unity cannot be thus reached. Nor is it thus but 
 by analysis that materialists seek it. Things may 
 be resolved into their elements ; compounds may 
 be reduced to simples. This process of analysis 
 might conceivably take us far towards a sort of 
 unity in a strictly scientific manner. I cannot 
 indeed admit its sufficiency to take us quite even 
 to the unity of a single physical element, for no 
 such element, no single entirely uncompounded 
 element, can ever produce another. Two physical 
 elements may produce a third, but no one element 
 can ever produce anything. It must for ever re- 
 main itself There is, however, no obvious reason 
 why analysis should not have proved that there 
 are only two, or at least a very few, physical ele- 
 ments, out of which have been formed by succes- 
 sive combinations all material substances, the so- 
 called elements included. But it has in reality 
 
134 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 done nothing of the kind ; it has not taken us a 
 step towards unity. The ancient Greek philoso- 
 phers beUeved the elements of matter to be far 
 fewer than do our modern chemists. It is just the 
 reverse of the truth to affirm that the tendency of 
 physical research has been to demonstrate the 
 unity or simplicity of matter. Chemical science 
 may display that tendency in the future, but it 
 has not displayed it in the past. Even if we are 
 content to ignore mind, to treat psychical ele- 
 ments as if they had no existence, scientific 
 analysis takes us to about sixty- four ultimates 
 instead of to one ultimate. Had the number been 
 much smaller — had it been only two — it would 
 still have been a result incompatible with a ma- 
 terialistic monism. Reason cannot acquiesce even 
 in two ultimates, although much less, of course, in 
 sixty-four. 
 
 It may very well be that many of the substances 
 which chemists at present call elementary are not 
 simple. Spectrum analysis and the phenomena of 
 allotropy suggest the conclusion that some of 
 them are complex. It is free to any one to conjec- 
 ture that they have all been formed by compound- 
 ing and recompounding absolutely indecompos- 
 able and homogeneous units. But it is free to no 
 one to put this forward as more than a conjecture, 
 or to conceal that the analysis of the so-called 
 elementary substances might result not in dimin- 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 135 
 
 ishing but in increasing the number of substances 
 which would have to be admitted, at least provi- 
 sionally, as ultimate. In the present state of our 
 knowledge this is just as legitimate a conjecture as 
 the opposite. We have as yet no properly scien- 
 tific reason for believing that the elements of 
 matter are really fewer than they are supposed 
 to be. We are very far, indeed, from being 
 entitled to affirm that there is only one physical 
 element. But until this conclusion is established, 
 the original of the materialist cannot even be re- 
 garded as one in kind. His matter is not all of 
 the same sort. It is essentially a multiplicity of 
 things specifically distinct. It cannot, consequently, 
 be the basis of a monistic system of thought. 
 
 Let me, however, make to the materialist an 
 enormous concession, and one to which he is not 
 entitled. Let me suppose him to have done what 
 he has certainly not done — to have proved what 
 he has merely conjectured — namely, that there 
 exists but a single truly elementary physical sub- 
 stance. Let me, further, not press him with any 
 of the perplexing questions which suggest them- 
 selves as to the nature of the wholly undifferen- 
 tiated, absolutely homogeneous matter which his 
 single primordial element must be. Matter, let it 
 be granted, then, is reducible to a single physical 
 constituent. That proves matter to be of one kind 
 or sort. But does it prove it to be one ? This is 
 
136 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the decisive question, and obviously the only pos- 
 sible answer is a negation. A pure, homogeneous, 
 physical element is not in the least a real unity. 
 It is an aggregate of parts, each of which is as 
 much a substance as the whole. You may take a 
 portion of it from one place and another portion 
 of it from another place — a yard, say, or a mile 
 distant — and these portions may be perfectly alike, 
 yet they are also perfectly distinct. The one is 
 not the other. They are not identical ; not one. 
 A physical element, therefore, although entirely 
 pure and unmixed, is necessarily a multitude. It 
 consists of as many substances as it consists of 
 atoms. Real unity is precisely what it has not 
 and cannot have in itself. To talk of materialistic 
 monism is, therefore, as self - contradictory as to 
 talk of a circular square. It is a kind of speech 
 which betrays intellectual bankruptcy. 
 
 The unsatisfactoriness of materialism as regards 
 the demand of reason for unity becomes only the 
 more evident when we take into consideration the 
 fact that force is always combined with matter. 
 This fact is disputed by no one, but opinions 
 differ widely as to how matter and force are com- 
 bined. Is matter the cause of force } Is force a 
 result of matter.? An answer in the affirmative 
 is, perhaps, the only one which materialism can 
 consistently give. It is an answer, however, 
 which satisfies the principle of unity at the ex- 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 137 
 
 pense of the principle of causality, and is, be- 
 sides, inherently unintelligible. How can matter 
 be the cause of force or any other effect unless 
 it have force to cause the effect ? A matter 
 which produces force without force is a cause 
 which is destitute of power to be a cause. Mat- 
 ter which is mere matter — matter which is ante- 
 cedent to force — is matter which explains no- 
 thing ; and that such matter should, in a uni- 
 verse of which the original principle is matter, be 
 always and everywhere accompanied by force, is 
 a greater mystery than any contained in theology 
 or metaphysics. 
 
 Hence the majority of materialists have pre- 
 ferred to represent matter and force as at once 
 inseparable and co-ordinate. According to this 
 view both are ultimate, and the one is not related 
 to the other as cause and effect. But what, then, 
 becomes of the unity or monism of the materialist } 
 It vanishes, and in its place there emerges a dual- 
 ity by which he cannot fail to be embarrassed. 
 But the difficulty which he has now to encounter 
 has been so accurately and comprehensively stated 
 by Professor Calderwood, that quotation will com- 
 pletely serve my purpose. " The perplexity of 
 the problem under a materialistic theory is not 
 lessened but increased when duality of origin is 
 assigned, by introducing Force in addition to 
 Material Substance. Duality of existence, with co- 
 
138 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 eternity of duration, involves perplexity sufficient 
 to bar logical procedure. This duality of exist- 
 ence implies diversity of nature and mutual re- 
 striction ; and these two, diversity and limitation, 
 raise anew the problem which they were meant to 
 solve. The explanation needs to be explained. 
 Again, matter and force are postulated primarily 
 to account for motion, but in accounting for mo- 
 tion, they are proved insufficient to account for 
 existence. That which needs to have force exerted 
 upon it in order to be moved is not self-sufficient, 
 and the same is true of the force which needs 
 matter on which to exert its energy." — Hand- 
 Book of Moral Philosophy, pp. 235, 236. 
 
 Force may be conceived of as neither the effect 
 of matter nor co-ordinate with it, but its cause. 
 This is a not uncommon view, and much may be 
 urged in its support. But obviously, if it be true, 
 materialism is erroneous. Matter is in this case 
 not what is first in the universe — force is before it ; 
 and indeed matter, when thus reduced to a mere 
 effect of force acting on sense, is virtually abolished 
 as a substance. The universe of matter is resolved 
 into a universe of force. The force may, however, 
 be conceived of as merely physical force. Would 
 this universe of physical force be a unity ? Cer- 
 tainly not. As physical force — force indissolubly 
 associated with a material manifestation — it could 
 merely h^ force of one kind, not one force. It must 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 139 
 
 necessarily be as divisible, as multiple, as its mate- 
 rial manifestation. The force in one place could 
 not but be distinct from the force in another place. 
 A world of physical force must be a world which 
 is simply an aggregate of physical forces. 
 
 It follows from what has been said that the 
 world can have no real unity either in mere matter 
 or mere physical force. If reason is to find the 
 unity it seeks, it must go farther and deeper ; it 
 must not stop short of an immaterial cause of 
 matter, of an indivisible source of divisible forces, 
 of a power which can give to what is essentially 
 multiple the unity of arrangement and plan. Mon- 
 ism can have no other solid basis than the truth 
 that the universe "lives and moves and has its 
 being" in a single creative and providential Mind, 
 "of whom, through whom, and to whom are all 
 things." 
 
 We have next to examine whether or not the 
 claim of materialism to be a system which pro- 
 ceeds on principles that are strictly natural and 
 scientific, is well founded. It seems to me that it 
 is not. One of its principles is that there is noth- 
 ing in the universe except matter, and what is 
 explicable by matter; that to refer to anything 
 else as a cause is to appeal to an arbitrary or 
 imaginary factor. Now, whatever the affirmation 
 here may be as a conclusion, it is plainly irrational 
 and unscientific as a principle. The man who 
 
140 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 begins investigation with it comes to nature with 
 an d priori dogma, and insists that she shall only 
 tell him what he already wishes to believe. That 
 is not scientific, but essentially anti - scientific. 
 Genuine science demands that nature shall be al- 
 lowed to speak for herself and be believed, whether 
 she teaches that the principles required for the 
 explanation of her phenomena are few or many. 
 No factor ought to be pronounced arbitrary or 
 imaginary until proved to be not required for the 
 explanation of facts. The materialist, if he would 
 be truly scientific, must be content to wait until 
 he has finished his argumentation against the 
 spiritualist and the theist before he affirms that 
 to trace effects to God or the soul is to appeal to 
 an arbitrary factor. But where are there materi- 
 alists to be found who are willing to do anything 
 of the kind } I know of none. Almost without 
 exception, materialists assume at the outset that 
 science is bound to recognise only material causes, 
 and their whole argumentation is largely depen 
 dent on this assumption. 
 
 A second principle of materialism is that the 
 higher must be explained by the lower, the supe- 
 rior by the inferior. Comte was perhaps the first 
 clearly to point out that this is the universal and 
 distinctive characteristic of materialism. It ac- 
 counts for force by matter, for the orderly by the 
 unorderly, for the organic by the inorganic, for 
 
General Objections to Materialism, 141 
 
 life by chemistry and mechanism, for thought, 
 feeling, and volition, by molecular motions in the 
 brain and nerves. It assumes that this is the 
 peculiarly and exclusively scientific method of 
 procedure. But the assumption is unwarranted so 
 long as the anti-materialist can argue on rational 
 grounds that this so-called scientific procedure is 
 a continuous violation of the principle of causality. 
 And this, I need scarcely say, is precisely what 
 the anti-materialist maintains. He undertakes to 
 show that, at every fresh stage in the materialistic 
 course of explanation, there is more in the alleged 
 effect than in the assigned cause, or, in other 
 words, that there is something in the so-called 
 effect which is traced to no cause, and conse- 
 quently, that something is implied to be produced 
 by nothing. Materialism professes to accept the 
 axiom that "nothing comes from nothing" more 
 strictly than any other system ; but its critics 
 complain that the principle of which it makes the 
 most frequent application is that the greater may 
 be caused by the less — that something may come 
 from nothing. The materialist declares his in- 
 ability to believe in creation by the infinite power 
 of an infinite mind, but he seems to his opponents 
 to display a wonderful capacity for believing in a 
 whole series of creations out of nothing and by 
 nothing. It is not for me to pronounce at present 
 whether this accusation be well founded or ill 
 
142 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 founded. It is sufficient for my immediate pur- 
 pose that materialism can have no claim to be 
 considered scientific until the charge is disproved. 
 There can be nothing scientific in continuously 
 violating the law of causality. 
 
 Yet some persons seem to see nothing irrational 
 even in such violation. The author of a recently 
 published work, entitled *A Candid Examination 
 of Theism ' — an author who writes under the nom 
 de plume of " Physicus " — quotes these words of 
 Locke : " 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." He then adds, "Now, 
 as this presentation is strictly formal, I shall 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 per- 
 fections that can ever 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 con- 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 143 
 
 tain, is a statement which logic and common-sense 
 alike condemn as absurd." — (P. 21.) Indeed! 
 The affirmation of Locke which is here met with 
 a " direct contradiction," and pronounced " simply 
 untrue," may not have been unexceptionably ex- 
 pressed, but it just means that every cause must 
 be a sufficient cause, — that a weight of four 
 pounds, for example, cannot balance one of ten 
 pounds ; and he who meets it with a direct con- 
 tradiction needs, of course, no contradiction, espe- 
 cially if he has failed to perceive that a cause is 
 only a cause in so far as it displays actual power 
 and perfection. It is curious, however, that the 
 writer mentioned should be able to quote an ar- 
 gument to the same effisct from Mr J. S. Mill's 
 * Essay on Theism.' We there read : " 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 pro- 
 ducts 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 sub- 
 stitution of greater elaboration and higher organ- 
 
144 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 isation 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/' — (P. 152.) 
 One asks with astonishment, Is it really meant to 
 be said thit vegetables and animals are wholly- 
 caused by soil and manure ? Have the sun and 
 parent vegetables and animals, and many other 
 adjacent and antecedent agencies, contributed 
 nothing to their perfections ? No sane person has 
 ever fancied that there may not be more in an 
 effect than in any of its partial causes. The ques- 
 tion is. Can there be more in an effect than in its 
 complete cause, whether that be a single cause or 
 the sum of a multitude of partial causes ? Reason 
 affirms it to be self-evident that there cannot, and 
 not a fact or analogy in nature is at variance with 
 the affirmation. The latest and most elaborate 
 result of development can have no perfection 
 which it has not derived from some of the agents 
 which have concurred in its formation. But what- 
 soever is first of all things must be the whole cause 
 of all things. Secondary causes cannot add to 
 what it contributes, since they only impart of what 
 they have themselves received from it. Therefore 
 it must necessarily contain in itself all the perfec- 
 tions that can ever after exist To deny this is 
 wholly to set aside the law of causality. It is not 
 what **Physicus" calls it^ a "childishly easy refuta- 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 145 
 
 tion " of Locke's argument, but it is childish in 
 every respect. 
 
 The materialist believes that he takes up a 
 specially respectful attitude towards science, and 
 defers more to its teaching than does the theist. 
 But this, again, is what cannot be granted. The 
 materialist goes to science with a theory which he 
 ought to be content to derive from it, and which 
 must make it impossible for him to study such 
 departments of knowledge as psycholgoy, ethics, 
 and history — not to speak of theology — in an 
 unprejudiced and liberal manner. He cannot but 
 be as incapable of impartiality in estimating the 
 teachings of the mental sciences as the idealist in 
 judging of the doctrines of the physical sciences. 
 The theist, in reality, occupies a far more advan- 
 tageous position. He can be both just and def- 
 erential alike towards the physical and mental 
 sciences ; he is committed to no one mode of ex- 
 plaining phenomena ; he is bound to accept the 
 facts and laws of all science just as science gives 
 them ; and when science shows him that God has 
 operated in nature, mind, or history, otherwise 
 than he imagined, he can, without having any 
 reason to be ashamed, because in perfect consis- 
 tency with his principles, modify his theology in 
 accordance with the new information which he has 
 received. If force be not explicable by matter — 
 the living by the dead — species by evolution — 
 
 K 
 
146 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 mental phenomena by physical properties, — mate- 
 rialism must be erroneous. Were all these posi- 
 tions proved, theism would not be disproved. 
 
 The view which is expressly maintained by 
 some, and tacitly assumed by many materialists 
 — the view that only explanations which can be 
 subjected to the verification of the senses, or repre- 
 sented in imagination as processes which the senses 
 might trace if their powers were sufficiently magni- 
 fied, are truly scientific — is also untenable. Genu- 
 ine explanation requires, of course, definite thought, 
 and is generally attained in regard to physical 
 things only with the discovery of exact quanti- 
 tative relations ; but thought, which merely recalls 
 or represents sense, is seldom definite, and even in 
 physical investigation the path of progress is from 
 sense towards pure thought. Scientific comprehen- 
 sion is only attained when intelligence has got 
 beyond figurate or pictorial conception, and has 
 freed itself from the material and sensuous elements 
 contained in immediate perception. Scarcely any 
 cause has had a more perverting influence on the 
 study of mental and moral facts than the bias 
 which the mind derives from its familiar converse 
 with the objects of sense to assimilate all other 
 objects to these, and to think of them under mate- 
 rial categories, or according to material analogies. 
 The philosopher and the theologian require to be 
 constantly on their guard against being deluded 
 
General Objections to Materialism. 147 
 
 by the subtle operation of the same cause, seeing 
 that a multitude of religious and speculative be- 
 liefs which reason must reject flow from this 
 source. Materialism undoubtedly owes much of 
 its success to habitually addressing the mind in 
 figurate language and through sensuous imagery. 
 Instead of convincing the understanding by strictly 
 relevant reasons, it meets at one and the same 
 time its craving for satisfaction and its aversion 
 to exertion, by hypotheses agreeable to the ima- 
 gination, because capable of being easily repre- 
 sented in a pictorial or sensuous form. But in the 
 eyes of thoughtful men, this, the great secret of its 
 power, is an evidence of its scientific worthlessness. 
 Materialism must ever be plausible to the popular 
 understanding, but simply, so its opponents think, 
 because it is content to stop short at the plausible 
 and popular. 
 
 III. 
 
 Thus far I have only dealt with the generalities 
 of materialism. It is now necessary to come to 
 particulars. 
 
 The materialist supposes that there is a matter 
 which precedes every form of mind, and exists 
 independently of all thought. But can he prove 
 this ? It requires to be proved, because it seems 
 to many untrue, and even contradictory. Mere 
 
148 Anti-Theistic TJieories. 
 
 matter — matter in itself — matter as an exclusively 
 objective fact, or as wholly independent of intelli- 
 gence, — is, they hold, unknown and unknowable 
 matter. It is no more possible, so they tell us, to 
 think of such matter than to think of a centreless 
 'circle, or a stick with merely one end. The only 
 matter which by any stretch of mind can be con- 
 ceived or imagined as even a possible object of 
 knowledge, — thus runs the averment, — is matter 
 which is not alone, but accompanied by mind ; 
 matter which is relative to and dependent on 
 mind. But if this be true, on what ground can 
 the materialist maintain that there is any such 
 thing as the matter of which he talks } If that 
 which he represents as the sum and substance and 
 explanation of all existences is an absolute con- 
 tradiction in thought, what authority has he for 
 attributing to it real being and wonderful powers } 
 If matter is never known and cannot be known 
 to have an independent existence, how does he 
 reach the conclusion that it has an independent 
 existence } 
 
 This argument, familiar to the students of Pro- 
 fessor Ferrier's * Institutes of Metaphysic,' com- 
 pletely blocks the path of the materialist, so that 
 he must remove it before he can proceed. Now 
 I pronounce no opinion on the absolute validity 
 of the argument. It signifies not for my present 
 purpose whether it proves merely the truism that 
 
special Objections to Materialism, 149 
 
 matter cannot be known without a mind to know 
 it, or conclusively demonstrates that matter cannot 
 exist without some mind to perceive or think of 
 it. It is sufficient to remark that there appears to 
 be but one way by which it may conceivably be 
 shown that the argument does not establish all' 
 that it was meant to do, and that this way is 
 clearly not open to the materialist. Although the 
 knowledge of matter must always be accompanied 
 by a knowledge of mind, matter and mind may, 
 with at least an appearance of reason, be argued 
 to be known as distinct and independent, and 
 therefore, to be distinct and independent. But 
 the materialist is obviously precluded from thus 
 arguing, because his materialism necessarily in- 
 volves sensationalism, and sensationalism neces- 
 sarily signifies that all knowledge of matter is 
 dependent on the particular constitution of the 
 senses of the individual. Matter can be for the 
 materialist merely what it is felt to be, or what 
 it is imagined to be in consequence of being felt. 
 He cannot consistently pretend to any knowledge 
 of it as it is in itself, or to any knowledge of its 
 properties as independent objective facts. The 
 doctrine of real presentationism is incompatible 
 with a materialistic theory of the nature of know» 
 ledge ; and yet, where this doctrine is not main- 
 tained, matter cannot even be seriously argued to 
 precede or to exist apart from mind. 
 
150 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 The materialist, then, supposes that there exists 
 a matter which is merely objective or entirely in- 
 dependent of thought ; but he has no reply to give 
 to any one who maintains that he can only know 
 matter as that which is inseparably associated with 
 mind, and essentially dependent upon thought, 
 or, in other words, that the matter by which he 
 pretends to explain intelligence is matter which 
 presupposes intelligence. He thus starts with a 
 fatal self-contradiction, from which he cannot free 
 himself by any alteration or amendment of his 
 views of matter short of entire renunciation of the 
 doctrine that matter is the absolute first of exist- 
 ence — the original of all things. He may cease to 
 think of matter per se as possessed of definiteness 
 and form — he may drop out of his conception of 
 it one distinctive property after another — he may 
 resolve it into conditioned, and even into uncon- 
 ditioned force, — but the self-contradiction will cling 
 to him at the last as firmly as at the first. To get 
 rid of it he may commit mental suicide by casting 
 himself into the abyss of the " unknowable ; " but it 
 will hold on by him there more triumphantly than 
 ever, and will not be shaken oft" until he confess 
 that the unknowable is at least known not to be 
 devoid of knowledge any more than of force. 
 
 Materialism, I remark next, affirms that matter 
 is eternal without justifying the assertion. Mate- 
 rialism is manifestly bound to prove the eternity 
 
Special Objections to Materialism. 151 
 
 of matter, since all that is distinctive of the system 
 rests on this presupposition. Unless matter be 
 eternal it must have been originated. The whole 
 argumentation of the theist in support of the doc- 
 trine of the Divine existence is designed to show 
 that the world is not eternal, not self- existent. 
 That there is something eternal and self-existent, 
 the atheist, pantheist, and theist, the material- 
 ist and the spiritualist, agree in acknowledging. 
 None of them calls upon the others to explain 
 the mystery of self- existence. Every sane mind 
 receives that mystery and credits other minds 
 with doing the same. Doubt and difference of 
 opinion are only possible as to what is self-existent 
 or eternal. Is it mind or matter, personal or im- 
 personal, knowable or unknowable } The theist 
 believes it to be mind, and produces what he 
 deems relevant and conclusive evidence to prove 
 that it is mind. What evidence has the material- 
 ist to the contrary, and for believing that matter is 
 that which is self-existent and eternal } 
 
 Many materialists have the candour to acknow- 
 ledge that they have none whatever. They con- 
 fess entire ignorance on the subject. They are 
 ready to accept as a true statement of their posi- 
 tion that made by Professor Tyndall on a cele- 
 brated occasion. " If you ask the materialist 
 whence is this matter of which we have been dis- 
 coursing, who or what divided it into molecules, 
 
152 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 who or what impressed upon them this necessity 
 of running into organic forms, he has no answer. 
 Science is also mute in reply to these questions. 
 But if the materialist is confounded and science 
 rendered dumb, who else is entitled to answer? 
 To whom has the secret been revealed ? Let us 
 lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, 
 one and all. Perhaps the mystery may resolve 
 itself into knowledge at some future day. The 
 process of things upon this earth has been one of 
 amelioration. It is a long way from the iguanodon 
 and his contemporaries to the president and mem- 
 bers of the British Association. And whether we 
 regard the improvement from the scientific or from 
 the theological point of view, as the result of pro- 
 gressive development, or as the result of succes- 
 sive exhibitions of creative energy, neither view 
 entitles us to assume that man's present faculties 
 end the series — that the process of amelioration 
 stops at him. A time may therefore come when 
 this ultra -scientific region by which we are now 
 enfolded, may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to 
 human, investigation." Now, what is the precise 
 meaning of these words } Is it not that although 
 until the far-distant future age arrives when there 
 are beings on the earth as much superior to the 
 president and members of the British Association 
 as these are to the iguanodon and his contempo- 
 raries, no reason be found for believing that matter 
 
special Objectiojts to Materialism. 153 
 
 is eternal, self-active, and endowed with the pro- 
 mise and potency of all order, life, and thought, 
 yet men may even now speak and reason as if 
 they were quite certain that it is ? But surely, if 
 this be what it means, "the long way from the 
 iguanodon and his contemporaries to the presi- 
 dent and the members of the British Association " 
 has been as conspicuously one of progress in 
 absurdity as in science. A man who has no rea- 
 son for believing that matter is eternal, must not 
 merely bow his head and acknowledge his igno- 
 rance, but he must cease ascribing eternity to 
 matter, and confess that he has no right to be a 
 materialist. If, notwithstanding his avowed igno- 
 rance and the evidence adduced to prove matter 
 created, he habitually assumes that matter is eter- 
 nal, what else can be said than that he arbitrar- 
 ily chooses to believe matter eternal, because he 
 would otherwise be bound to believe it created ? 
 
 How is it that materialists are in general will- 
 ing to take their stand in such a position ? Is it 
 because they cannot find one more tenable ? In 
 other words, is it because the only reasons that 
 can be given for believing matter eternal are 
 worse than none ? Perhaps it is. At all events, 
 the only reasons that have been given are so weak 
 that the slightest examination is sufficient com- 
 pletely to discredit them. 
 
 A German materialist (Dr Lowenthal) gives the 
 
154 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 following as an argument : " What has no end can 
 have no beginning. What cannot be destroyed 
 can also not be created. Matter cannot be de- 
 stroyed, and consequently cannot be created ; it 
 is without end, and therefore likewise without 
 beginning — is eternal." But what right can any 
 person have to assume that "what has no end can 
 have no beginning " ? The words I have just 
 quoted may have no end, but certainly they had 
 a beginning ; they may be eternal a parte post 
 although they were not eternal a parte ante, but 
 originated with Dr Lowenthal on a definite day 
 not many years ago. The assertion that " matter 
 cannot be destroyed " needs proof, yet receives 
 none. There is no warrant for saying more than 
 that matter cannot be destroyed by natural powers 
 and processes. There can be no warrant, there- 
 fore, for inferring more than that matter cannot 
 be created by natural powers and processes. But 
 this inference is scarcely worth the trouble of 
 drawing. It is unnecessary to take any round- 
 about way to arrive at so easily accessible a truth 
 as that matter cannot create or destroy itself But 
 the gulf between this plain truth and the assertion 
 that matter cannot be created or destroyed is im- 
 mense, although materialists have pretended to 
 identify them, being unable to find a passage from 
 the one to the other. 
 
 Buchner, Moleschott, and some other material- 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 155 
 
 ists, teach that physical science has proved that 
 matter is absolutely incapable of increase or dimi- 
 nution, creation or annihilation. Physical science 
 has done nothing of the kind. It refuses to draw 
 absolute conclusions. It carefully abides within 
 the conditions of experience and experiment. It 
 certifies that matter is undestroyed by any of the 
 processes of nature or any of the arts of man, and 
 it infers that what has not destroyed it in the past 
 will not destroy it in the future. It disowns, how- 
 ever, the inference that matter cannot be destroyed 
 or created even by infinite power. It cannot afford 
 so glaringly to violate the laws of logic. It does 
 not pretend to be able to tell what infinite power 
 can do, and still less what it cannot do. 
 
 The assertion which Biichner and Moleschott 
 erroneously represent as a generalisation of science, 
 Mr Herbert Spencer far more erroneously pro- 
 nounces " an a priori cognition of the highest 
 order." Of course, neither this nor any other 
 cognition of matter is an a priori cognition even 
 of the lowest order. Matter is only known i 
 posteriorly and as essentially contingent. No 
 number of the uniformities of experience relative 
 to the nature and properties of matter has been 
 shown to produce one of those absolute unifor- 
 mities of thought which are entitled to be called 
 necessary or d. priori truths. We may not be able 
 to conceive a process of creation, the manner in 
 
156 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 which the quantity of matter might be absolutely 
 increased, nor a process of annihilation, the manner 
 in which the quantity of matter might be abso- 
 lutely diminished, but we have no difficulty in 
 conceiving that there should be more or less mat- 
 ter in the universe than there is. It requires no 
 great stretch of imagination to suppose the whole 
 of empty space filled with matter, or no matter at 
 all in space. He who denies that one can truly 
 think the quantity of matter to be increased or 
 diminished — that one can believe that matter has 
 been created or that it will be annihilated — has 
 allowed his reason to be too much influenced by 
 the impressions of sense> and has signally confused 
 empirical generalisation with necessary truth. 
 
 The reason most commonly given for regarding 
 matter as eternal is that it:, creation is inconceiv- 
 able. Is, then, creation inconceivable .? Not in the 
 sense of essentially unthinkable, — not in the sense 
 that a centreless circle or triangular square cannot 
 be conceived, — not in the only sense which would 
 fix creation down as impossible. Is it even incon- 
 ceivable in the sense of necessarily unimaginable 
 by the human mind .-* It may be so. Perhaps 
 the mind of man with its present faculties coulc' 
 not be made to comprehend the nature of an act 
 of creation. But we have no right to affirm that 
 such is the case. Its proof would, in fact, require 
 the very knowledge which is pronounced to be 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 157 
 
 unattainable. If the mind cannot prove creation 
 to be inherently absurd or self- contradictory, it 
 cannot be entitled to pronounce it unknowable ; 
 for it knows no other unknowable than the absurd, 
 and it can have no right to affirm anything to be 
 unknowable which it does not know to be so. To 
 know anything to be unknowable is a self-contra- 
 diction, unless by the unknowable is meant merely 
 the self-contradictory. We certainly know far too 
 little about the nature of matter — if there be any 
 matter except the manifestation of force to mind — 
 to assert that we could not be made to understand 
 its creation. We are merely entitled to say that 
 we do not understand it, and cannot understand 
 it until our knowledge of the nature of matter is 
 greatly increased. The inconceivability of crea- 
 tion is, in fact, no real unthinkableness, but the 
 natural effect of a weakness of imagination which 
 is amply explained by inexperience and igno- 
 rance. It is no reason whatever for setting aside 
 the arguments urged by the theist in favour of 
 the belief in creation. The materialist himself 
 believes in a multitude of facts which are in the 
 same sense equally inconceivable. 
 
 It may be remarked, in the next place, that 
 materialism is inconsistent with its own theory of 
 knowledge. It implies that all knowledge is ob- 
 tained through the bodily organs of sense ; that 
 we know nothing except what our senses tell us ; 
 
158 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 that the limits of sensible experience are the limits 
 of knowledge. Yet it starts, and necessarily starts, 
 with assertions manifestly at variance with this 
 doctrine. It affirms either the existence of atoms 
 or the infinite divisibility of matter. Have atoms 
 ever been reached by any sense ? No, they are 
 inaccessible to sense. Can sense prove the infinite 
 divisibility of matter } No ; the very notion of 
 sense possessing such a power is absurd. Then, 
 matter is affirmed to be eternal. But is eternity 
 an object of sense ? Has any materialist seen or 
 touched eternity } Has any creature ever had an 
 eternal sensation ? Again, no. The very men 
 who assert that matter is eternal are found at 
 other times assuring us that we have no idea of 
 eternity, on the ground that all our knowledge is 
 derived from sensation. What sort of system is it, 
 however, which is thus inconsistent and self-con- 
 tradictory at its very foundation ? Surely it is one 
 little entitled to be considered either satisfactory 
 or scientific. 
 
 Again, materialism, as I have already indicated, 
 has no reasonable account to give us of force. It 
 is not required, of course, to give us an account 
 of the absolute nature of force in itself Force 
 is known only through its effects — only from 
 experience. More, therefore, is not asked from 
 materialism than that it shall give an intelligible, 
 non-contradictory view of the relation of force to 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 159 
 
 matter. But instead of meeting this demand it 
 represents their relationship only in ways which 
 reason and science refuse to sanction. The ma- 
 jority of materialists assert that force is inherent 
 in matter ; that matter is essentially active ; that 
 matter and force are inseparable, and have co- 
 existed from all eternity. But this assertion is 
 the denial of a fundamental law of physical science 
 — the law stated by Newton in the words, " Every 
 body perseveres in its state of rest or of moving 
 uniformly in a straight line, except in so far as it 
 is made to change that state by external forces." 
 This law is conclusively proved, both experimen- 
 tally and by the consequences involved in deny- 
 ing it. If true, however, matter is in itself inert, 
 inactive, without power of originating motion or 
 producing change ; and the view of the relation of 
 matter and force, assumed as axiomatically evi- 
 dent by a host of materialists, is anti-scientific and 
 erroneous in the highest degree. If true, the argu- 
 ment of Aristotle for a first mover is plainly a 
 very strong one. If a body cannot move itself it 
 must be moved by a cause distinct from itself, and 
 this external cause, if a body, must be moved by 
 another cause, and so on in a regress which, not to 
 be ad infinitum, must end in a cause which is self- 
 acting, and consequently not a body. It has been 
 attempted to meet this argument by affirming that 
 matter is endowed with a property of attraction, 
 
i6o Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 in virtue of which, while each separate molecule 
 of matter is inert, two molecules are active, each 
 being a cause of motion in the other. But the 
 reply is inadequate, as it ignores two important 
 considerations. The first is, that inertia and at- 
 traction are not facts of the same rank or value. 
 Inertia is presupposed in all the phenomena of 
 attraction, is implied in every correct conception 
 of mechanical motion, and can clearly neither be 
 eliminated from the notion of matter nor reduced 
 to any simpler property of matter. Attraction, 
 on the other hand, as a cause of gravity, as an 
 efficient property of matter, is an occult and hypo- 
 thetical quality, in the existence of which few men 
 of science very seriously believe, although they 
 feel themselves incompetent to displace it by any 
 more plausible conjecture. The vast majority of 
 physicists will readily subscribe Newton's words 
 to Bentley : " You sometimes speak of gravity as 
 essential and inherent to matter. Pray, do not 
 ascribe that notion to me ; for the cause of gravity 
 is what I do not pretend to know." Many of them 
 will not refuse assent even to his much stronger 
 statement: "That gravity should be innate, in- 
 herent, and essential to matter, so that one body 
 may act upon another at a distance through a 
 vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, 
 by and through which their action and force may 
 be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great 
 
special Objections to Materialism. i6i 
 
 an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in 
 philosophical matters a competent faculty of think- 
 ing, can ever fall into it." The materialist is not 
 entitled, then, to assume that the phenomena 
 ascribed to attraction will not in process of time 
 be explained by the general laws of motion. Let 
 us suppose, however, that attraction, instead of 
 being thus proved to be a useless fiction, is ascer- 
 tained to be a real property and efficient cause. 
 What is it precisely that in this case has been 
 established } Only my second consideration — 
 only a conclusion which materialism cannot ac- 
 cept Matter is thereby proved to be a something 
 which cannot have its reason of existence in itself. 
 No molecule, on this supposition, is what it is, or 
 is moved as it is, of itself The cause of the posi- 
 tion and state of each molecule is out of itself in 
 all the other molecules. This dependence of each 
 upon all must have a reason which embraces all, 
 yet which can neither be in the parts, since each 
 part is dependent — nor in the whole, since it can 
 have nothing which it has not derived from the 
 parts which compose it. 
 
 The hypothesis that matter is essentially active 
 seems not to be tenable. Is there any more plaus- 
 ible view as to the relation of matter to force 
 which the materialist can adopt.? Apparently 
 not. The conjecture which has sometimes been 
 
 I. 
 
1 62 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 thrown out, and which Dr Lowenthal has deliber- 
 ately adopted — that force is not essential to matter, 
 but the result of its aggregation — is too ridiculous 
 for discussion. Force can no more be accounted 
 for by aggregation than the strength of a horse 
 can be accounted for by the motion of the cart 
 which it draws. Aggregation presupposes, and 
 therefore cannot explain, force. But no other 
 supposition appears to remain except that matter 
 has the power of putting itself in motion, — has 
 in some degree the faculty of volition or self- 
 determination. This, the supposition which Epi- 
 curus and Lucretius adopted, is growing in favour 
 with modern materialists. Anthropomorphism in 
 physics was probably never more prevalent than 
 at present, especially among those who denounce 
 anthropomorphism in theology. Confidently deny 
 freewill to man and confidently ascribe it to 
 atoms, and you stand a good chance just now of 
 being widely acknowledged as a great physical 
 philosopher, and are sure at least of being hon- 
 oured as an "advanced thinker." But nonsense 
 does not cease to be nonsense when it becomes 
 popular. The notion of an atom of matter putting 
 itself in motion is a still more glaring contradiction 
 of the law of inertia than an atom eternally and 
 necessarily active. It also confounds matter and 
 mind, and even nature and miracle. It may be 
 taught as a truth of physical science, but it is 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 163 
 
 in reality a delusion due to metaphysical night- 
 
 mare.^ 
 
 Further, materialism leaves unexplained and 
 inexplicable the order, laws, and harmony in 
 nature. Material elements chaotically combined 
 and material forces working blindly, atoms jostling 
 together at random and powers unconditioned and 
 uncorrelated by intelligence with a view to an end, 
 cannot be rationally thought of as producing these 
 things. The universe is a result which implies 
 that its hosts of constituents have been prepared 
 and arranged, and that the hosts of forces associ- 
 ated with them have been directed and marshalled, 
 by a Divine Intelligence. Order universally reigns, 
 where elements out of which confusion might have 
 arisen and might still arise are present and abun- 
 dant ; all things proceed under the influence of 
 laws, unfailing and unerring, which apply at once 
 to the minutest part and to the mightiest whole ; 
 contingencies are constantly provided for by a 
 system of compensations of the most elaborate 
 and exquisite description ; and of these facts, as 
 I endeavoured to show when treating of the design 
 argument, the materialist can either give no ex- 
 planation or devises explanations which are futile 
 in the extreme. 
 
 Is life also a fact which presents a problem that 
 materialism cannot solve t Is there a chasm be- 
 1 See Appendix XVI. 
 
164 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 tween the dead and the living which cannot be 
 bridged over by mere matter and its laws ? The 
 debate on this question is at present so extremely- 
 keen that its importance in a religious reference is, 
 it seems to me, in danger of being exaggerated. 
 Materialism must be refuted before we reach this 
 point, if it is ever to be refuted. Were sponta- 
 neous generation proved, materialism would re 
 main as far from established as before. Those 
 who are certain that there is a God may with 
 perfect composure leave it to science to ascertain 
 under what conditions He has caused life to ap- 
 pear. In fact, the question as to the mode of the 
 origination of life, although of immense scientific 
 interest, is of very subordinate religious signifi- 
 cance. It is, further, a question which is often 
 answered in a dogmatic and anti-scientific spirit. 
 Many assert that it is absolutely impossible that 
 life should originate from the interaction of mo- 
 lecular forces, while materialists in general de- 
 mand that the contrary should be conceded from 
 the outset. Both parties are in error. We can- 
 not tell what is possible or impossible in such a 
 case, prior to a comprehensive knowledge, such as 
 science seeks to attain, of all that actually is. We 
 have even no right, it seems to me, either to deny 
 or to admit that it is conceivable that under cer- 
 tain conditions life may originate in inorganic 
 matter. Our power of conception is dependent 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 165 
 
 on our means of conception, our data, our ac- 
 quaintance with relevant facts. What we cannot 
 conceive to-day science may make conceivable to- 
 morrow ; but we must not anticipate to-day what 
 belongs to to-morrow. 
 
 Let us appeal, then, merely to facts and science. 
 Do they afford any grounds for the materialistic 
 explanation of the origin of life.'* Certainly not. 
 So far as our knowledge extends, there is not a 
 single fact to warrant the hypothesis that life has 
 originated from mere matter, from what is inert 
 and inactive. The spontaneous generation of life 
 from the lifeless has often been asserted, and has 
 sometimes been attempted to be proved, but un- 
 doubtedly the verdict of science is that organisms 
 arise only from organisms, that life is only pro- 
 duced by that which lives. Endeavours like those 
 of Crosse, and Pouchet, and Bastian, to establish 
 the contrary, have only demonstrated their own 
 futility, and increased the probability that omne 
 vivunt ex vivo is a law of nature which has no 
 exceptions. No man has ever changed any in- 
 organic matter into a living vegetable without the 
 help of a pre-existing vegetable germ ; nor vege- 
 table matter into animal, without an animal germ. 
 All known facts give their testimony against spon- 
 taneous generation. 
 
 Further, the phenomena of life are very peculiar 
 and quite unexplained by the mechanics and 
 
1 66 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 chemistry of matter. In every living thing, for 
 example, there is a working as a whole, and a 
 working from within, and a working to an end, to 
 which we see nothing similar in the merely inor- 
 ganic world. Crystals display geometrical regu- 
 larity and symmetry and variety of species or 
 type, but, as Miiller says, " There is in the crystal 
 no relation between its configuration and the ac- 
 tivity of the whole." It has the unity which results 
 from juxtaposition and arrangement, but in no 
 degree the unity of reciprocal action and influence 
 which belongs alike to the simplest and the most 
 complex of living beings. In every plant and 
 animal the whole is not merely composed of the 
 parts, but acts as a whole through and by its parts, 
 each part needing, conditioning, and influencing 
 the whole, and the whole needing, conditioning, 
 and influencing the parts. In the inorganic world 
 forces are never seen acting thus, and nothing that 
 we know of the inorganic powers of nature can 
 reasonably lead us to suppose that they are ca- 
 pable of acting thus. Again, all dead bodies are 
 wholly passive, wholly subject to the physical and 
 chemical forces which act upon them, entirely 
 moved from without ; but all living beings, so far as 
 observation extends, are only partially subject to 
 these forces, displaying in addition a certain power 
 of suspending or modifying their operations, of 
 employing them instead of obeying them, of acting 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 167 
 
 from within as well as of being acted on from 
 without. In this respect every living plant and 
 animal is unlike every dead plant and animal, and 
 every inorganic object. Now, how can this power 
 of acting from within, — one to which there is 
 nothing properly analogous in lifeless matter, — 
 come from without, from lifeless matter.-* How 
 can mechanical and chemical forces result in a 
 force which resists and rules themselves, and which 
 enables that which possesses it to act of and for 
 itself, — in a faculty of adaptation to circumstances, 
 of selective assimilation, growth, inherent renewal, 
 and reproduction.? Further, all that is living is, 
 what nothing that is dead is, an end unto itself. 
 A living being is no mere mean, but to a large 
 extent an immanent whole — that is, one which has 
 its reason of being, its ends of action, in itself. It 
 is a unity of which all the elements, parts, and 
 energies are co-ordinated by a central power to 
 its self-preservation and self-perfection. But this 
 implies plan and purpose, thought, foresight, and 
 prophecy ; and how are these to be accounted for 
 by mere matter and motion ? 
 
 I might appropriately, if time permitted, confirm 
 and supplement what has just been said, by point- 
 ing out in the processes of nutrition and growth, 
 in the healing and repairing of injured parts, and 
 in propagation or reproduction, a number of dis- 
 tinctive characteristics which seem imperatively to 
 
1 68 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 demand for their explanation more than merely 
 mechanical and chemical causes. Enough has 
 been said, however, I hope, to show that when Mr 
 Spencer, or any other person, tells us that the 
 argument against the materialistic hypothesis of 
 the origin of life is one in which ignorance is made 
 to do the part of knowledge, he gives a very un- 
 fair and inadequate view of it. The argument is 
 based, first, on the universal and uniform experi- 
 ence which establishes the law omne vivum ex vivo; 
 and secondly, on what observation and science in- 
 form us are the properties of inorganic powers on 
 the one hand, and the distinctive features of life 
 on the other. It is, consequently, based wholly 
 on knowledge. And it is an argument of great 
 strength, completely satisfying all the requirements 
 of the methods both of agreement and of difference. 
 Like all other arguments, however, as to the laws 
 of nature, it does not demonstrate the impossibility 
 — does not absolutely exclude the possibility — 
 that the law may in some unknown case or cases 
 not have held good. This bare possibility Mr 
 Spencer and the materialists eagerly lay hold of, 
 and actually oppose and prefer to the positive 
 argument. Because they can fancy that the 
 powers of inorganic nature may once have acted 
 in a way in which they are never known to have 
 acted, and in which they certainly never act now, 
 they conclude that these powers did really once 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 169 
 
 act in that exceptional, not to say miraculous, 
 manner. I should like to see it shown that this is 
 not to make ignorance do the part of knowledge. 
 In my opinion, the materialist charges upon his 
 opponent the vice of his own reasoning. 
 
 But recent discoveries of science, we are told, 
 go far to prove that there is no such chasm as is 
 alleged between the dead and the living, the inor- 
 ganic and organic. In support of this affirmation, 
 however, real and relevant evidence cannot be 
 found. It is true that until recently many chemists 
 supposed that no organic substance could be arti- 
 ficially composed from inorganic constituents, and 
 also true that a multitude of organic substances 
 have now been so formed. The inference is that 
 chemists may err and may have their errors cor- 
 rected by experience and investigation, but cer- 
 tainly not that a single forward step has been 
 taken in bridging over the gulf between life and 
 death. Suppose every organic substance — even 
 brain, blood, nerve, albumen, protoplasm itself — 
 to be resolved, as I doubt not every organic sub- 
 stance may and will be resolved, into inorganic 
 elements, and what follows if out of the elements 
 involved no substance can be built up which is not 
 dead, not one which manifests a single vital pro- 
 perty ? Simply that there is nothing even in the 
 most elaborate organic structures, or in the cor- 
 poreal parts and elements most closely associated 
 
I/O Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 with vitality, which is essentially different from 
 mere dust of the earth ; that the entire body of 
 man himself is but "dust and ashes," and that 
 when you reach what is highest and most admi- 
 rable in it, the border of the gulf between matter 
 and the living soul is merely touched. How can 
 any person be so illogical as to describe this as 
 filling up or bridging over the gulf? 
 
 The assertion sometimes made that life has 
 been proved to be merely a form of mechanical 
 and chemical force, is without the least founda- 
 tion. What has been proved is, that life does not 
 create force, and that vital actions are carried on 
 by means of mechanical and chemical forces. Life 
 has been shown to do no mechanical or chemical 
 work itself, but it has not been shown that it does 
 not determine the direction in which mechanical 
 and chemical forces work when they are within 
 the living organism ; and until that has been 
 shown, nothing has been done to prove that it 
 does not perform a function to which the ordinary 
 physical powers are incompetent. The driver of 
 a railway train does not add to the force generated 
 in its engine, but he has notwithstanding a place 
 and use. A master mason may expend no part 
 of his strength in the actual construction of a 
 house while he is superintending his labourers 
 and builders, but who would consider the proof 
 of that to be equivalent to a demonstration that 
 
special Objections to Materialism, 171 
 
 he had been of no service, or was even a purely 
 mythical personage ? 
 
 The argument from evolution to spontaneous 
 generation is clearly not a strong one. The former 
 may suggest a presumption in favour of the latter, 
 but this cannot supply the place of, or warrant us 
 to dispense with, direct and positive proof. 
 
 ^s there a definite boundary- line between the 
 plant and the animal ? Is the organic world divis- 
 ible into a vegetable and animal kingdom, or is 
 there an intermediate kingdom protista ? These 
 two questions, it seems to me, are irrelevant in the 
 materialistic controversy, and it is to be regretted 
 that they should have been drawn into it, espe- 
 cially as biology, to which they properly belong, 
 is not yet prepared to give them definite answers, 
 and the danger of making ignorance do the part 
 of knowledge in discussing them is extremely 
 great.^ 
 
 There is, then, a gulf between the dead and the 
 living over which materialism throws no bridge. 
 Science must confess that it needs a power not 
 present in matter to account for life. 
 
 Mind, I remark next, presents to materialism a 
 still greater difficulty. No kind of reasonable con- 
 ception can be formed of a process by which mo- 
 lecular changes will pass into or produce sensation, 
 pleasure or pain, perception, memory, judgment, 
 
 ^ See Appendix XVII. 
 
172 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 desire, or will. This objection to materialism was 
 admirably put by Professor Tyndall — in words 
 which he has not yet retracted, and which he will 
 find it hard to refute, should he wish to do so — 
 when he wrote : " The passage from the physics of 
 the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness 
 is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought 
 and a definite molecular action in the brain occur 
 simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual 
 organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, 
 which would enable us to pass, by a procejs of 
 reasoning, from the one phenomena to the other. 
 They appear together, but we do not know why. 
 Were our minds and senses so expanded, strength- 
 ened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and 
 feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we 
 capable of following all their motions, all their 
 grouping, all their electrical discharges, if such 
 there be ; and were we intimately acquainted with 
 the corresponding states of thought and feeling, — 
 we should probably be as far as ever from the solu- 
 tion of the problem, How are these physical pro- 
 cesses connected with the facts of consciousness ? 
 The chasm between the two classes of phenomena 
 would still remain intellectually impassable." Ma- 
 terialism presents itself as an intelligible theory of 
 the universe, and yet it has not succeeded in ex- 
 plaining a single fact in the world of conscious- 
 ness. It hopes to be able some day to show us 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 173 
 
 future Shakespeares " potential in the fires of the 
 sun," but as yet it cannot find the sensations of a 
 protamoeba even in its own protoplasm.^ 
 
 There are two other objections to materialism 
 which are as strong as any that have been urged, 
 but which I must be content merely to indicate. 
 
 First, then, materialism is inconsistent with the 
 testimony of our moral consciousness, with the 
 facts of our moral nature. We perceive a distinc- 
 tion between right and wrong ; we feel that we are 
 free to choose between them ; that we are respon- 
 sible, however, for our choice ; that we are praise- 
 worthy or blameworthy, &c. These perceptions 
 and feelings are facts as certain as any in the 
 world, and the theory which cannot honestly ac- 
 cept them ought to be rejected. But materialism 
 cannot. It must deny them, or explain them away, 
 or invent untenable hypotheses as to their origin. 
 
 Secondly, materialism refuses satisfaction to 
 the spiritual wants, aspirations, and convictions 
 of men. It denies the existence of God and of 
 the soul. It acknowledges nothing that is higher 
 than the seen, or better than the temporal. It 
 resolves religion in all its length and breadth into 
 a delusion. It openly threatens to turn it out of 
 the world. But, as we have seen, reason and 
 morality are to be turned out also. Only when 
 reason, morality, and religion have all been got 
 * See Appendix XVIII. 
 
1/4 Anti-Theistic TJuories. 
 
 rid of, will materialism have the worid to itself. 
 And then the worid will not be worth having.^ 
 
 Let me conclude by entirely dissenting from 
 words of Professor Huxley, which I have already 
 quoted in this lecture. His assertion that "it is 
 utterly impossible to prove that anything what- 
 ever may not be the effect of a material and neces- 
 sary cause," is an arbitrary and unphilosophical 
 dogma which need not, however, disquiet us, since 
 up to the present hour no single fact of order, life, 
 mind, morality, or religion, has been proved to be 
 the effect of a material cause. His assertion that 
 human logic is incompetent to show that any act 
 is really spontaneous has no other ground than 
 his strange misconception of what is meant by a 
 spontaneous act, — than the fancy that "a really 
 spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, 
 has no cause." His assertion that "any one who 
 is acquainted with the history of science will ad- 
 mit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and 
 now more than ever means, the extension of the 
 province of what we call matter and causation, 
 and the concomitant gradual banishment from all 
 regions of human thought of what we call spirit 
 and spontaneity," only proves that he is more a 
 follower of Comte than he is himself aware of, and 
 has incautiously adopted one of that author's most 
 superficial and erroneous generalisations. His pro- 
 phecy as to the future would have been differ- 
 
 * See Appendix XIX. 
 
special Objections to Materialism. 175 
 
 ent if he had studied the past more thoroughly 
 and independently, although, perhaps, the wisest 
 course would have been not to prophesy at all. 
 He has erred in thinking that it is the progress oi 
 materialism which alarms its opponents ; it is its 
 spread — a very different thing — which alarms them ; 
 its rapid diffusion when it is making no real pro- 
 gress ; the humiliating fact that so many not un- 
 educated persons are thoughtless enough to believe 
 its proud and empty promises, although there are 
 no achievements to justify them. He tells us 
 that " many of the best minds of these days watch 
 what they conceive to be the progress of material- 
 ism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage 
 feels when, during an eclipse, the great shadow 
 creeps over the face of the sun." I thought that 
 during an eclipse it was over the face of the earth 
 that the great shadow crept ; but that is of no 
 consequence. This is, that, although where the 
 shadow of materialism creeps there may be many 
 to believe that there is no sun, the sun is by no 
 means affected either by the shadow or by the 
 foolish unbelief which accompanies it, but remains 
 where and what it was, and when the shadow is 
 past will be seen to be bright, beneficent, mighty, 
 and terrible as ever. They who believe so cannot 
 crouch and tremble before a shadow, whatever 
 those may do who believe that the shadow is more 
 than a shadow, — that it is greater than the sun, — • 
 that it will be eternal. 
 
1^6 Anti'TJieistic Theories, 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 POSITIVISM. 
 
 Positivism is to be the subject of the present 
 lecture. It is a doctrine which is closely related 
 both in history and character to scepticism on 
 the one hand, and to materialism on the other. 
 It owes its existence to the partly concurrent 
 and partly counteractive operation of these two 
 theories. It is a link between them ; a cross 
 or hybrid in which their respective qualities are 
 combined, although incapable of being truly har- 
 monised. 
 
 The term positivism has been objected to both 
 on philological and logical grounds, but any faults 
 it may have are not of a seriously dangerous kind, 
 and it is my wish to avoid all controversies merely 
 or mainly verbal. It was not, perhaps, a term 
 greatly needed, and it may not be the best which 
 could have been devised ; but now that it ha 
 
The System of Comte, lyy 
 
 been invented and so widely accepted and em- 
 ployed, it cannot be got rid of, and we must 
 be content simply to guard against its being 
 applied in ways calculated to create or foster 
 prejudice. It was put in circulation by M. 
 Auguste Comte, a man of remarkable intellec- 
 tual power, but also of immoderate intellectual 
 self-conceit and arrogance. He was born in 1798, 
 and died in 1857. There is an able biography of 
 him by the late M. Littre ; and there are a mul- 
 titude of sketches of his life, executed with dif- 
 ferent degrees of care and skill. His voluminous 
 writings have been translated into our language 
 by a few of his English disciples with self-denying 
 zeal, and in a manner which leaves nothing to be 
 desired. 
 
 M. Comte has no valid claim to be considered 
 the originator of the theory to which he gave a 
 new name and a vigorous impulse. It was taught 
 in all its essential principles by Protagoras and 
 others in Greece more than four hundred years 
 before the Christian era. Positivism is the phe- 
 nomenalism of the Greek sophists revived and 
 adapted to the demands of the present age. 
 Hume and Kant and Saint Simon were posi- 
 tivists before the appearance of positivism. It 
 is scarcely possible to find in Comte's writings 
 an original view — except on the subject of scien- 
 tific method — which is generally accepted by 
 
 M 
 
178 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 those who are called his disciples. He formed, 
 indeed, a great many original notions, — notions 
 his own by right of paternity or creation, — but 
 these children of his brain few even of his warm 
 admirers have felt inclined to adopt. They are 
 the mere vagaries of an individual mind, and must 
 be left out of account by those who are judging 
 of the general doctrine of positivism. But al- 
 though all the chief ideas of Comte had been 
 clearly and repeatedly enunciated by earlier 
 thinkers, he had great strength and skill in 
 systematising doctrines and elaborately apply- 
 ing principles, and his influence has been both 
 extensive and intense. 
 
 The Positivism which he taught, taken as a 
 whole, is at once a philosophy, a polity, and a 
 religion. It professes to systematise all scientific 
 knowledge, to organise all industrial and social 
 activities, and to satisfy all spiritual aspirations 
 and affections. It undertakes to explain the past, 
 to exhibit the good and evil, strength and weak- 
 ness, of the present, and to forecast the future ; to 
 assign to every science, every large scientific gen- 
 eralisation, every principle and function of human 
 nature, and every great social force, its appropri- 
 ate place ; to construct a system of thought inclu- 
 sive of all well-established truths, and to delineate 
 a scheme of political and religious life in which 
 
The System of Comte. 179 
 
 duty and happiness, order and progress, opinion 
 and emotion, will be reconciled and caused to 
 work together for the good alike of the indivi- 
 dual and of society. It sets before itself, in a 
 word, an aim of the very largest and grandest 
 kind conceivable ; and as Comte believed that 
 he had been signally successful in performing 
 his mighty task, we need hardly wonder that he 
 should have boldly claimed to have rendered 
 to his race the services both of a St Paul and 
 an Aristotle. 
 
 Is the system as consistent as it is undoubt- 
 edly comprehensive ? Comtists themselves cannot 
 agree as to the answer which ought to be given 
 to this question. A few of the more enthusiastic 
 and thoroughgoing among them — such as Dr 
 Bridges, Mr Congreve, and, in a lesser degree, 
 perhaps, Mr Harrison — reply in the affirmative, 
 and accept the system as a whole. A much larger 
 number answer in the negative, and will have 
 nothing to do with the positivist religion. I 
 have no wish to take part in this controversy, 
 which is of no very great importance, and in re- 
 gard to which, besides, I have elsewhere stated 
 the conclusion at which I have arrived. As, how- 
 ever, the philosophy and religion of Comte are 
 both anti-theistic, and yet, in my opinion, incon- 
 sistent with each other, I must consider them 
 
i8o Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 separately, — the one in so far as it would simply 
 push theism aside, and the other in so far as it 
 would provide a substitute for it. 
 
 What, then, is the attitude of the positive 
 philosophy towards religion ? As represented by 
 Comte, it may be thus described. We know, 
 and can know, nothing except physical pheno- 
 mena and their laws. The senses are the sources 
 of all true thinking, and we can know nothing 
 except the phenomena which they apprehend, 
 and the relations of sequence and resemblance 
 in which these phenomena stand to one another. 
 Mental phenomena can all be resolved into ma- 
 terial phenomena, and there is no such thing dis- 
 coverable as either efficient or final causation, as 
 either an origin or purpose in the world, as, con- 
 sequently, either a creative or providential intelli- 
 gence. The mind in its progress necessarily finds 
 out that phenomena cannot be reasonably referred 
 to supernatural agents, as at a later period that 
 they cannot be referred to occult causes, but that 
 they must be accepted as they present themselves 
 to the senses, and arranged according to their 
 relationships of sequence or coexistence, similar- 
 ity or dissimilarity. Wherever theological specu- 
 lation is found, there thought is in its infancy. 
 
 Now, the first remark which this suggests is, 
 that it is not consistent even as a theory of posi- 
 tivism. It is to a considerable extent a mate- 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion. i8i 
 
 rialistic theory, and so far as it is materialism 
 it is not properly positivism. Materialism sup- 
 poses matter to be more than a phenomenon. It 
 supposes it to be a substance and a cause. The 
 positivist may answer that such phenomena as 
 feelings and thoughts are not resolved into ma- 
 terial substances or causes, but into material 
 phenomena. The self-contradiction, however, is 
 not thus to be got rid of If we know merely 
 phenomena, we never can be warranted to say 
 that those which we call mental can be resolved 
 into those which we call physical. We can only 
 be warranted in saying that the two classes of 
 phenomena are related as coexistent or successive, 
 similar or dissimilar. Comte went far beyond this, 
 and therefore far beyond a self- consistent posi- 
 tivism — i,e.^ phenomenalism. 
 
 Further, the limitation or reduction of pheno- 
 mena to material phenomena is unwarranted. We 
 have a direct and immediate knowledge of think- 
 ing, feeling, and willing, and simply as phenomena 
 these are markedly distinct from the phenomena 
 called material. They are never, as material phe- 
 nomena always are, the objects of our senses. But 
 we are at least as sure of their existence as of 
 the existence of material phenomena, and to deny 
 or overlook their existence is to reject or ignore 
 that which is most indubitable. There is no tes- 
 timony so strong as the direct immediate testi- 
 
1 82 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 mony of consciousness. When we feel or think 
 or will, when we perceive or remember, love or 
 hate, we know that we do so with a certainty the 
 most absolute. The consciousness which a man 
 has of any state of mind at the moment when 
 he experiences it, is not sufficient to inform him 
 whether the state be simple or complex, original 
 or derivative — whether it be coextensive with 
 human consciousness or extend into the con- 
 sciousness of the lower animals, or be peculiar 
 to the consciousness of a portion of the human 
 race or to the individual himself; nor is it suffi- 
 cient to establish whether there be anything out- 
 wardly corresponding to it, but it is sufficient to 
 establish beyond all doubt that there is such a 
 fact in the mental experience of the individual. 
 The most thorough scepticism cannot challenge 
 its evidence when limited to this sphere. It is 
 only, in fact, at this barrier that absolute scepti- 
 cism is arrested. Absolute scepticism refuses to 
 admit that in external or sense perception things 
 appear to us as they actually — i.e., in themselves 
 — are, but not that internal or self consciousness 
 apprehends its objects as they really exist. In 
 external perception what apprehends is mind, and 
 what is apprehended belongs to an altogether 
 different world, which may or may not correspond 
 to it ; whereas in internal perception the object 
 itself falls within the consciousness, exists only as 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion, 183 
 
 it is known and is known only as it exists, con- 
 sciousness and existence being here coincident, 
 and in fact identical. Internal consciousness 
 thus carries with it stronger evidence than sense. 
 The so-called positivism, therefore, which affirms 
 that the objects of sense are the only phenomena 
 apprehended, instead of keeping close to facts, as 
 it pretends to do, contradicts the facts which the 
 experience of every moment of conscious exist- 
 ence testifies to in the most direct and decisive 
 manner. Its most obvious characteristic is the 
 disregard of facts. A number of the adherents of 
 positivism have, consequently, left the company of 
 Comte at this point. They have insisted, very 
 properly, that mental states are positive facts, and 
 the appropriate data of science no less than phys- 
 ical processes.^ 
 
 The attempt to defend Comte's position by 
 maintaining that the phenomena of thought, feel- 
 ing, and volition are not denied, but only referred 
 to the bodily organisation, and thereby included 
 among material phenomena, fails in two respects. 
 In the first place, it cannot justify what it main- 
 tains. Mental states may have physical conditions 
 and antecedents, but no mental state has ever 
 been resolved into what is physical. In the second 
 place, if consciousness could be fully explained by 
 organisation, that would prove the truth of mate- 
 
 ^ See Appendix XX. 
 
184 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 rialism, which, as I have already said, is inconsis- 
 tent with positivism. When positivism says more 
 than that the phenomena called mental are so and 
 so related to the phenomena called material — when 
 it says that the former can be referred to or 
 resolved into the latter, so as to be really material 
 phenomena, — it supposes to be true what it pro- 
 fesses to deny — viz., the reality of causes and sub- 
 stances ; it supposes that matter is not an aggre- 
 gate of phenomena, but a substance or cause, or 
 both. 
 
 This leads me to remark that positivism is not 
 thorough. It goes only so far as is convenient 
 for it, not so far as it logically ought. Comte as- 
 sumes material phenomena to be the primary and 
 ultimate known existences, — those from which 
 science must start, and on which it must rest. 
 But the least reflection shows us that the assump- 
 tion is wholly groundless. The first thing which 
 scepticism has swallowed up has always been the 
 world of sense — these material phenomena. It 
 has always found that if the senses are our sole 
 means of knowing, the sole things known must be 
 sensations, and sensations are states of conscious- 
 ness — phenomena of mind, not of matter. If we 
 know only phenomena, it is not material pheno- 
 mena we know, but mental phenomena. What we 
 call material phenomena are in that case mere 
 illusions. The materialistic positivism of Comte 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion. 185 
 
 is bound to abdicate in favour of the idealistic 
 positivism of Mill, which confines all our know- 
 ledge to mental phenomena. 
 
 This brings us decidedly farther on the way 
 to the goal which, nolens volens, positivism must 
 arrive at — viz., scepticism. It is not belief in God 
 only which it must discard, but belief in matter 
 also; and not belief merely in matter in some 
 special philosophical sense, not belief merely in 
 some material essence or substance distinct from 
 phenomena, but in material phenomena themselves. 
 If we know only phenomena, we know only mental 
 phenomena ; the whole universe is on that sup- 
 position an aggregate of states of mind, and when 
 we think of time or space, sea or sky, as without 
 us we are self- deluded ; there is and can be no 
 knowledge of what is without. Mr Mill, it is true, 
 tries to preserve something, and to show that we 
 may be philosophers and yet believe in a sort of 
 •'outer" or material world. We may believe in it, 
 he thinks, as "a permanent possibility of sensa- 
 tions." But no. A possibility is not a phenome- 
 non. If we know only what is phenomenal, we 
 cannot know what is possible as distinct from and 
 explanatory of the phenomenal. Nor can a mere 
 experience of phenomena inform us that any of 
 them will be permanent, since experience is neces- 
 sarily limited to the actual, to what is and to what 
 has been. Indeed the phrase "a permanent pos- 
 
1 86 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 sibility of sensation " is unintelligible. It must 
 have been meant either for "a permanent possi- 
 bility of producing sensations " or " a permanent 
 possibility of experiencing sensations." But mat- 
 ter is certainly no possibility of experiencing sen- 
 sations. That matter is sentient is a groundless 
 fancy, not a positive fact, although in the course 
 of the ages a few thinkers and dreamers have en- 
 tertained the notion. And matter cannot be a 
 possibility of producing sensations in the view of 
 a consistent positivism which refuses to recognise 
 causation, efficiency. A consistent positivism must 
 be a purely idealistic positivism. Even the dim 
 ghost of matter which Mr Mill would retain must 
 be discarded. 
 
 And it will not suffice. Mind must likewise go. 
 Mind cannot be identified with its phenomena. If 
 we know only phenomena we know only a series 
 of states of consciousness. We can, on that sup- 
 position, have no right to say, as Mr Mill does, 
 that a mind is " a thread of consciousness." It can 
 only be a general term for a succession of states of 
 consciousness unconnected by any thread. We can 
 have no right, if positivism be true, to use language 
 like this : " As body is the mysterious something 
 which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the 
 mysterious something which feels and thinks." It 
 is not the language of positivism to point us to 
 mysterious somethings. On the contrary, as long 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion. 187 
 
 as it has any regard for consistency, it will warn 
 us to have nothing to do with " mysterious some- 
 things," but to keep close to experienced pheno- 
 mena. Positivism must give up, then, both matter 
 and mind. What remains? Phenomena — but 
 these reduced to states of consciousness which 
 have neither object nor subject, — states of con- 
 sciousness which seem to be, but are not, what 
 they seem, — states of consciousness of a kind 
 which consciousness is unconscious of, and which 
 thought cannot conceive. It is to this bourn that 
 positivism must inevitably come. Reason can 
 only lead it to annihilation. 
 
 Comte lays his interdict on all speculation as 
 to the origin of the world. He condemns both 
 theism and atheism, both the affirmation and the 
 denial of the existence of God. Belief and dis- 
 belief are, he thinks, in this case alike unreason- 
 able. The mind should absolutely refuse either to 
 believe or disbelieve on such a subject. Now this 
 is an obviously absurd view, an obviously most 
 erroneous advice, except on two suppositions — 
 namely, that there is no reason whatever in favour 
 either of theism or atheism, or that the reasons for 
 the one exactly counterbalance those for the other. 
 We have no right to withhold belief where there 
 is reason for belief, nor to believe otherwise than 
 according to reason. But all forms of theoretical 
 atheism give some reasons for their claims to be 
 
1 88 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 received, and theism maintains that it has an 
 overwhelming weight of reason on its side. In 
 these circumstances, no man is entitled to withhold 
 any more than to yield belief as he pleases. No 
 man is entitled to evade the responsibility of care- 
 fully considering what is to be believed and dis- 
 believed on the greatest subject with which human 
 thought can be occupied, by the arbitrary and 
 unreasoned assertion that belief and disbelief in 
 reference to it are both unwarranted. No man 
 has a right to make such an assertion without 
 trying to prove it. It is an assertion which needs 
 proof as much as any theory of the origin of the 
 world. 
 
 It is an assertion which does not appear, at least 
 at the first glance, as if it would be easy of proof 
 For what does its proof imply } Manifestly both 
 the disproof of all the theories which have been 
 entertained as to the origin of things — theism, 
 pantheism, polytheism, and even materialism — 
 and proof that all theories which may in future be 
 started on the same subject must be equally in 
 vain. The latter task, as I showed in my first 
 lecture, must transcend human power. The human 
 mind of to-day cannot know what will be dis- 
 covered by the human mind a hundred, a thou- 
 sand, a million years hence. Only an infinite 
 mind can foreknow what a finite mind will know 
 throughout eternity. It is absurd for a philosophy 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion. 189 
 
 which professes to confine itself to experience to 
 dogmatise on what man may or may not possibly 
 know. He who would prove that God cannot be 
 known, must prove that there is something essen- 
 tially self-contradictory in the very notion of the 
 Divine existence and nature. But that cannot be 
 proved by experience ; it can only be proved, if it 
 can be proved at all, by the self-criticism of reason, 
 by the metaphysical process which positivism pro- 
 nounces worthless. 
 
 A simple refutation of the proofs adduced on 
 behalf of the various forms of religion must be 
 admitted to be a more hopeful undertaking, but 
 even it is not one in which positivism has suc- 
 ceeded. It has brought nothing new to light 
 against pantheism. It has favoured materialism 
 instead of overcoming and expelling it Its argu- 
 ments against theism have consisted to a large 
 extent of ancient and superficial fallacies, the 
 weight of which are as nothing compared with the 
 reasons in the opposite scale. Before casting aside 
 a belief like that in God — a belief entertained 
 by a long succession of generations, by millions 
 of men, by the noblest intellects which the world 
 has ever known — a belief the most fruitful in 
 great thoughts and great deeds — a belief which 
 could not be displaced without shaking society 
 from top to base, — the examination of its foun- 
 dations ought to be impartial and profound ; but 
 
190 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 positivism has undertaken no examination of the 
 kind. 
 
 The only argument with any claim to be re- 
 garded as original or distinctive which positivism 
 has employed against theism, is that which some of 
 its supporters rest on the so-called law of the three 
 states. Comte, as every one knows who knows 
 anything regarding his views, holds that specu- 
 lation is first theological, then metaphysical, and 
 finally positive ; or, in other words, is first a refer- 
 ence of phenomena to supernatural volitions, then 
 to occult causes, and finally the mere arranging of 
 them according to their relations of sequence and 
 coexistence, likeness or unlikeness. He believed 
 that he had established that the progressive march 
 of human thought was from the first to the last 
 of these states, and that when the last was reached, 
 those which preceded it were left behind ; that 
 when positive science was attained, theological and 
 metaphysical speculation were necessarily seen to 
 be illegitimate and worthless. Some, however, who 
 have imagined that they adopted his law — the late 
 Mr J. S. Mill and Mr J. Morley, for example- 
 would ignore its negative bearing, at least towards 
 theology, and suppose it to mean merely that in 
 the positive epoch all phenomena, physical and 
 social, will be looked upon as following a fixed 
 order, although that order may have been ordained 
 by God. With positivists of this class I need here 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion. 191 
 
 have no controversy. I am only surprised that 
 they should be able to suppose that they accept 
 Comte's law as proposed by himself. If he had 
 seen that positivist thought was not exclusive of 
 theological thought ; that when you had reached 
 a law of phenomenon, so far from having done 
 with all questions as to whether or not these phe- 
 nomena have any relation to God, you were only 
 brought into a position to ask, Is this law not an 
 ordinance of God } — is it not an expression of His 
 will? — I should have had nothing to object to him. 
 But had he seen that, he would have seen also 
 that his positivism was a comparatively small 
 and partial thing, however true it might be within 
 the narrow limits in that case assigned to it. Cer- 
 tainly, as a matter of fact, he did not see it. He 
 clearly and explicitly taught the contrary. He 
 distinctly held that positivism so excludes meta- 
 physics and theology, that positivism completed 
 would be metaphysics and theology eliminated 
 from the entire intelligible world. 
 
 For this dogma, however, he produced no his- 
 torical evidence. There was, in fact, none to pro- 
 duce. The scientific proof of law has in no single 
 instance been found to include or involve disproof 
 of a lawgiver. In no nation, and with respect 
 to no single science or even single scientific truth, 
 has the human mind yet reached a position which 
 is beyond or above theism, or from which theism 
 
192 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 can be seen to be untrue ; so that Comte's law, as 
 propounded by himself, is in its negative reference, 
 in which alone it concerns us here, wholly un- 
 warranted by facts. Comte has mistaken, as I 
 have previously had occasion to prove, in a work 
 on the ' Philosophy of History in France and 
 Germany,' three coexistent states for three suc- 
 cessive stages of thought, three aspects of things 
 for three epochs of time. Theology, metaphysics, 
 and positive science, instead of following only 
 after one another, each constituting an epoch, have 
 each pervaded all epochs — have coexisted from 
 the earliest times to the present day. There has 
 been no passing away of any one of them. Each 
 new positive science brings with it principles which 
 the metaphysician finds it requisite to submit to 
 an analytic examination, and in which he finds 
 new materials for speculation ; and also, in the 
 measure of its success, results in which the theo- 
 logian finds some fresh disclosure of the thoughts 
 and character of God. Underneath all positive or 
 empirical science there is metaphysics ; above all 
 such science there is theology ; and these three 
 are so related that every advance of science must 
 extend the spheres both of true metaphysics and 
 true theology. Hence history, far from showing 
 that theology and metaphysics are purely of her 
 domain, merely passing phases of thought pre- 
 paratory for positive science, illusions of the 
 
Positivism in relation to Religioji. 193 
 
 infancy and youth of humanity through which 
 the mind must pass on its way to maturity, certi- 
 fies, on the contrary, that all three have constantly 
 existed together, — that while each has been gradu- 
 ally emancipating itself from the interference and 
 control of the others, each has been advancing 
 and evolving within its proper sphere and in due 
 relationship to the others ; that they are distin- 
 guishable but not divisible ; that they represent 
 real aspects of existence and respond to eternal 
 aspirations of the human heart. I do not dwell, 
 however, on this, because I have elsewhere done 
 so. Suffice it to say that the appeal of the 
 positivist to history for a testimony unfavour- 
 able to theism, evokes only a declaration on its 
 behalf.i 
 
 Let us consider for a moment the positivist 
 appeal to reason. Under this head Comte's fun- 
 damental objection to theism and theology is, that 
 they imply that man can attain to a knowledge of 
 causes, whereas causes are, he holds, absolutely in- 
 accessible to the human intellect. He admits that 
 a religious theory of the world, a belief in a divine 
 Author of the world, is inevitable, if reason can 
 rise to causes, but he denies that it can. To deny, 
 however, is always easy; to prove a negative is 
 always difficult. In order to prove the negative 
 in question, M. Comte must have proved that he 
 
 ^ See Appendix XXI. 
 N 
 
194 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 himself was not a cause ; that it could not be fairly 
 concluded that he was the efficient and intelligent 
 author of the books which he took credit to him- 
 self for having written ; that the apparent evi- 
 dences of mind in these works were deceptive, and 
 did not warrant the reference of them to mind as 
 their cause. The only reasons which he advanced 
 aeainst the theistic conclusion should have led him 
 straight to suspense of judgment respecting the 
 causation involved in the production of his own 
 works. They were as good grounds for declar- 
 ing illusory the evidence for his own existence as 
 for disregarding the evidence for God's existence, 
 although, of course, extremely insufficient grounds 
 for doing either the one or the other. If from the 
 combination of letters in a book we can legiti- 
 mately rise to the mind of the author as at least 
 one of the causes of its existence, a knowledge of 
 causes, in the only sense in which a theist is inter- 
 ested in maintaining that they can be known, is 
 clearly not inaccessible to the human intellect, 
 but within its easy reach. If, on the other hand, 
 positivists are justified in asserting that causes are 
 absolutely unknowable, let them not expect us to 
 believe that they themselves are the authors of 
 books and speeches ; that their invisible thoughts 
 and volitions have originated printed and audible 
 words. If a human mind can reveal itself as in a 
 certain sense a cause through paper and printer's 
 
Positivism in relation to Religion. 195 
 
 ink, it is utterly arbitrary to deny that the Divine 
 mind may reveal itself as in the same sense a 
 cause through the arrangements and forms of the 
 material universe. 
 
 All the reasonings of positivists against causes 
 resolve themselves at last into the single argument 
 — We cannot see causality, and therefore we cannot 
 know causes ; our senses show us succession but 
 not causation, antecedents and consequents but 
 not causes and effects ; and we know nothing, and 
 have no right to believe anything, beyond what 
 our senses show us. In other words, their entire 
 argumentation proceeds on a superficial hypothesis 
 as to the nature of knowledge — one which fails to 
 note that the mind itself is the most important 
 factor in knowledge, and that the simplest and 
 directest experience presupposes a constitution in 
 thought as well as in things. Causes are inferred 
 to be metaphysical fictions because sensation is 
 assumed to be the sole means of knowledge, the 
 only true ground of belief, and the complete meas- 
 ure of existence. But these assumptions are crude 
 and unfounded dogmas. To those who believe 
 that there is no such state as mere sensation — 
 that thought and belief must always go beyond 
 sensation — that the idea of cause is a necessary 
 condition of intellectual activity — and that pheno- 
 mena can only be apprehended and conceived of 
 by the help of this idea, — the reasoning of the 
 
196 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 positivist must seem a manifest begging of the 
 question. 
 
 When treating last year of the design argument, 
 I examined all the objections of Comte against 
 final causes which seemed to me possessed of any 
 plausibility. On this point, therefore, I shall merely 
 remark now, that if, as he maintained, we can 
 know nothing of final causes, nothing of the pur- 
 poses which things are meant to accomplish, the 
 arguments by which he attempted to show that 
 they might have realised their final causes, fulfilled 
 their purposes, better than they do, ought in self- 
 consistency never to have been used. If we can 
 have no notion of the purpose of a thing, we can- 
 not judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose or not, 
 whether it is fulfilling it well or ill. Comte's un- 
 qualified denial of the possibility of knowing the 
 ends of things is glaringly inconsistent with his 
 attempts to prove that things might have been 
 constituted and arranged in a happier and more 
 advantageous manner. For a man who avows 
 complete ignorance of the purposes of things to 
 try to show that they are not fulfilling their pur- 
 poses, or might fulfil them more successfully, is 
 the most suicidal, self-contradictory undertaking 
 imaginable. It shows that he himself finds it 
 impossible really to believe what he rashly affirms. 
 It shows that in spite of his theory the belief 
 in final causes is so rooted in his intellectual 
 
The Positivist Religion. 197 
 
 nature that he assumes it even when reasoning 
 against it. 
 
 II. 
 
 Were positivism established as a philosophy, no 
 room would be left for religion in the ordinary 
 sense of the term. If the mind can know nothing 
 except the phenomena of immediate experience, 
 if sensations and feelings be the matter of all its 
 thoughts, if God be wholly beyond its cognisance, 
 it is inevitably condemned to confine its beliefs, 
 anticipations, fears, and joys, to this visible and 
 temporal scene of things. This being the case, 
 how can there be any religion ? Till comparatively 
 late in his career, Comte did not suppose there 
 could be any, and did not feel the want of any. 
 He considered "religiosity," as he called it, "a 
 mere weakness, and avowal of want of power." 
 But in the latter part of his life he passed through 
 certain experiences which convinced him that the 
 heart was as essential a part of humanity as the 
 head ; that the spirit required to be satisfied as 
 well as the intellect. He felt in himself wants 
 which mere science could not supply, and recog- 
 nised, in consequence, that the human race could 
 not dispense with a religion. With characteristic 
 boldness he proceeded to invent what he was 
 pleased to designate a religion. This so-called 
 
198 Anti'Theistic TJieories. 
 
 religion has not as yet obtained many adherents, 
 and does not appear as if it would be more suc- 
 cessful in the future, although its founder felt no 
 doubt that it would speedily supersede all former 
 faiths. Few of those who are positivists in philo- 
 sophy are also positivists in religion. As a rule, 
 positivists have no religion. And in this, I think, 
 they are quite consistent. 
 
 M. Comte laid the basis of his proposed reli- 
 gious reformation in a radical alteration of the 
 signification of the word religion. Religion had 
 been previously always understood to imply be- 
 lief in a God — to rest on some affirmation of the 
 supernatural. M. Comte wished to present as a 
 religion a theory of life which involved no belief 
 in a God — no affirmation of the supernatural. He 
 gained his end simply enough by employing the 
 word religion in a peculiar sense. But, of course, 
 there was and could be no justification of this 
 procedure. The human race has rights in such 
 a term as religion which are not to be sacrificed 
 to the will of any individual. The business of a 
 thinker dealing with this and similar words is, to 
 ascertain what they have hitherto meant and what 
 they actually mean, and to apply them as other 
 men have done and do ; for him to impose a sig- 
 nification of his own upon them is alike an arbi- 
 trary and an arrogant act, and one which tends to 
 generate confusion and error. A religion which is 
 
The Positivist Religion. 199 
 
 independent of a belief in a God is a conception of 
 the same kind as a circle whose radii are not all 
 equal. Belief in a God is of the very essence of all 
 that men have been accustomed to call religion, 
 and whatever is not inclusive of this belief ought 
 to be expressed by some other term than religion. 
 What, however, is religion, according to M. 
 Comte } It is, he says, " the synthetic idealisation 
 of our existence, " or " that state of perfect unity 
 which is the distinctive mark of man's existence, 
 both as an individual and in society, when all the 
 constituent parts of his nature, moral as well as 
 physical, are made habitually to converge towards 
 one common unity." Mr J. S. Mill accepted M. 
 Comte's view on this subject, and gave it expres- 
 sion in clear and simple terms. These are the 
 conditions necessary to constitute a religion in the 
 positivist sense of the word, as stated by Mr Mill : 
 "There must be a creed or conviction claiming 
 authority over the whole of human life ; a belief, 
 or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted, respecting 
 human destiny and duty, to which the believer in- 
 wardly acknowledges that all his actions ought to 
 be subordinate. Moreover, there must be a senti- 
 ment connected with this creed, or capable of being 
 invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it, in 
 fact, the authority over human conduct to which 
 it lays claim in theory." According to this doc- 
 trine, " if a person has an ideal object, his attach- 
 
2(X) Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 ment and sense of duty towards which are able to 
 control and discipline all his other sentiments and 
 propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, 
 that person has a religion." 
 
 Such is the account of religion given by M. 
 Comte and Mr Mill. What are we to think of 
 it ? Well, it could scarcely be more inaccurate 
 than it is. Were we not told that it was meant 
 for an account of religion, we should certainly 
 never have imagined anything of the kind, and, 
 even after being told this, it is somewhat difficult 
 to believe it. The distinguished authors of the 
 description have succeeded about as well as would 
 a painter who, designing to represent a man, should 
 draw the likeness of a horse or some other animal. 
 They have given a sort of picture not of religion 
 at all, but of morality, and have consequently 
 done what they could inextricably to confound 
 religion and morality. Conscience, as the supreme 
 legislative principle in man, is necessarily the power 
 which is in possession of the synthetic ideal of life. 
 Its dictates constitute the law of unity to which all 
 the parts and faculties of human nature should 
 habitually converge. It essentially consists of " a 
 creed or conviction claiming authority over the 
 whole of human life, and a sentiment connected 
 with this creed, or capable of being invoked by it, 
 giving it the authority over human conduct to 
 which it lays claim in theory." When language 
 
The Positivist Religion. 201 
 
 is used with propriety, " if a person has an ideal 
 object, his attachment and sense of duty towards 
 which are able to control and discipline all his 
 other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe 
 to him a rule of life," what that person will be said 
 to have is a good moral character. Thus the 
 Comtist account of religion corresponds in some 
 measure to morality. But it has scarcely the 
 most distant resemblance to religion. Test it by 
 application to any of the heathen religions, with 
 the exception of Buddhism, and its inaccuracy will 
 be seen at once ; while Buddhism only answers 
 to it so far in consequence of being a system of 
 philosophy and a code of ethics as well as a reli- 
 gion. Religion is not essentially synthetic. It 
 does not necessarily tend to unity, and still less is 
 it necessarily a state of perfect unity. In almost 
 all its lower forms, and even in the worships of 
 India and Greece, in may be seen to work towards 
 division and multiplicity. The tendency to unity 
 is only manifested in a religion when the theoris- 
 ing reason obtains the mastery over imagination 
 and phantasy. The mythological processes are 
 the reverse of synthetic or unifying. Nor does 
 religion necessarily and of itself prescribe a uni- 
 versal and comprehensive rule of life. One of the 
 most obtrusive facts presented by the history of 
 religion is, that only in its higher types does reli- 
 gion enter into alliance with morality, and add its 
 
202 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 sanction and consecration to a general code of 
 conduct. Religion as religion, may be, and in 
 countless cases is, grievously divorced from the 
 sense of duty. The separation is, of course, to be 
 deplored, but its possibility, and, still more, its 
 frequent actual occurrence, prove that to identify 
 religion with morality is altogether inadmissible. 
 Further, religion does not imply idealisation in the 
 sense meant by Comte and Mill. Imagination, 
 there is no doubt, enters largely into religion, and 
 worshippers always conceive of their gods as in 
 some respects superior to themselves. But ideal- 
 isation as a conscious formation of types of per- 
 fection, or a deliberate imaginative glorification 
 of anything, so as to make it an ideal object in 
 contradistinction to a real object, is not a religious 
 but a purely poetical process. Ideals cannot even 
 be idols. 
 
 Yet Comte might have gone still farther from 
 the truth as to the nature of religion than he 
 actually did. The idealisation which he demanded 
 was the idealisation of a reality, — the idealisation 
 of t'le Great Being or Humanity. It was not the 
 idealisation which is pure fiction — which is wholly 
 irrespective of truth — which has no connection 
 whatever with reality. Comte thus left it possible 
 for a successor to acquire the fame of originality 
 by maintaining that the essence of religion was 
 such pure or absolutely baseless idealisation ; and 
 
The Positivist Religio7i. 203 
 
 this»^ I regret to say, is precisely what has been 
 done by Lange, the author of the * History of 
 Materialism.' He has followed to the very end 
 the path opened by Comte ; and although the 
 end be an abyss, he has cast himself into it. He 
 does not propose, like Strauss, to substitute poetry 
 for religion, but he regards religion as merely a 
 kind of poetry. Man, he holds, has, and can have, 
 no knowledge of anything transcending positive 
 experience, no cognisance of supernatural reality, 
 no apprehension of spiritual truth. At the same 
 time, he also holds that knowledge, experience, 
 and truth, are insufficient to satisfy the wants of 
 human nature. He insists that there are tenden- 
 cies or instincts in the heart which crave for ideal 
 objects that respond exclusively to the emotions. 
 The spirit, in his view, can only find peace by 
 creating a home for itself in the ideal world. But 
 it must beware of falling into the delusion that the 
 contents of that world are truths. It must regard 
 them merely as means of emotional development 
 and culture. Hymns like " Rock of Ages cleft 
 for me," and "Jesus, lover of my soul," may be 
 retained and devotionally used, provided it be 
 remembered that they are simply poetry — that 
 they have no basis in reality. 
 
 The mere statement of such a view is a sufficient 
 refutation of it. What it represents as religion is 
 an idiotic and immoral mimicry of religion. Lange 
 
204 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 has given no reasons for entertaining it, and I need 
 give none for rejecting it. I have noticed it merely 
 to show that as to the nature of religion there is 
 even a lower depth than that into which Comte 
 fell. He failed to see that only a religion which 
 is based on the conviction that there is a reality 
 higher than man's highest ideals, can satisfy the 
 intellect and heart; and he fancied, in consequence, 
 that a finite being — a being which can be exalted 
 and magnified by idealisation — was an appropriate 
 object of adoration. But great as was this error, 
 it was, of course, far less monstrous than to teach 
 that religion was wholly independent of belief in 
 truth or reality, and that men ought only to wor- 
 ship in the future what they know to be the fictions 
 of their own minds. 
 
 The positivist religion presents to us as an ob- 
 ject of worship a trinity of existences — the earth, 
 space, and humanity. The earth is called the 
 Supreme Fetich, space the Supreme Medium 
 and humanity the Supreme Being. The positivist 
 is instructed duly to commemorate the services of 
 our common mother, the earth, and of her coeval 
 institution, space ; but humanity is to be the chief 
 object of his worship. True piety consists in hav- 
 ing the thoughts, affections, and volitions ever bent 
 on the preservation and amelioration of humanity. 
 This humanity is by no means, however, what is 
 ordinarily called humanity. It is something very 
 
The Positivist Religion. 205 
 
 peculiar indeed. It is neither human nature, nor 
 the human race, nor the aggregate of living men. 
 It is said to be an organism of which individuals 
 and generations, whether belonging to the past, 
 present, or future, are inseparable parts, and yet it 
 excludes multitudes of the human species, and 
 includes some of the lower animals. It does not 
 comprehend savage and unprogressive peoples, or 
 individuals without any particular merits. It con- 
 sists for the most part of the dead and the unborn. 
 The majority of the living are only its servants, 
 without the power at present of becoming its 
 organs. It is only seven years after they are 
 dead, and on condition of their being found worthy 
 of "subjective immortality," that they are to be 
 " incorporated in the Supreme Being." The in- 
 corporation is to be effected by the vote of the 
 positivist community. As the positivist believes 
 in the annihilation of all the dead, and as the 
 future generations are not yet in existence, his 
 Supreme Being is obviously a being which is 
 largely no being at all, an entity which is for the 
 most part a non-entity. The notion of it is, in 
 fact, so self-contradictory, that it can only be 
 expressed in language which seems intended to 
 caricature it. 
 
 That this should be the case is all the more 
 remarkable, because Comte was fully aware how 
 incumbent upon him it was accurately to deter- 
 
2o6 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 mine what was to be meant by humanity. He 
 knew and acknowledged that a clear and consis- 
 tent conception of the signification of the term was 
 to his theory of religion as indispensable as is a 
 solid and well-laid foundation-stone to a building ; 
 that to attain and exhibit such a conception was 
 his first duty in connection with the new faith 
 which he desired to propagate ; and that if he 
 failed in this part of his self-imposed task, his 
 failure as a rival of St Paul must be fatal and 
 total. Impressed with these convictions, he could 
 not, as a conscientious thinker, do otherwise than 
 bestow much labour in attempting to ascertain 
 and explain the nature of the humanity which he 
 represented as an object of worship. His failure 
 certainly cannot be attributed to his having shrunk 
 from the requisite exertion. He toiled long and 
 hard on the subject. Still fail he did, and most 
 signally. The notion of humanity as he has pre- 
 sented it in the * Positive Polity,' although the 
 very corner-stone of his religion, is so self-con- 
 tradictory and incoherent, that it can only be 
 expressed in Hibernicisms. It is composed of 
 concrete and abstract, positive and metaphysical 
 elements, of facts and fictions, of entity and non- 
 entity. An obvious inference is, that Comte can-* 
 not have founded the religion of humanity. 
 
 While the object of the positivist faith is ex- 
 tremely ill defined, its organisation and worship 
 
The Positivist Religion. 207 
 
 are most minutely delineated. This is the conse- 
 quence, however, not of internal self-consistency 
 and reasonableness, but of imitation of Roman 
 Catholicism. While Comte abandoned the great 
 and comprehensive principles which the Roman 
 Catholic Church holds in common with the rest 
 of the Christian world, he retained many of the 
 distinctive prejudices which it sanctions and en- 
 genders, and copied its policy and ritual in describ- 
 ing the constitution and prescribing the worship 
 of what he believed would be the religion of the 
 future. He demanded that there should be set 
 apart to the service of humanity an order of 
 priests or savants, composed of positivist philoso- 
 phers, hierarchically arranged, with a supreme 
 pontiff at their head, to whom absolute powers 
 are to be intrusted in intellectual or spiritual 
 matters. This priesthood is to be salaried by 
 the State ; is to have the entire charge of public 
 education and of the practice of medicine ; and 
 is to counsel, and, if need be, reprove the temporal 
 power. The high priest must reside in Paris, the 
 holy city of the new religion. There are to be 
 ecclesiastical courts and laws. The temples should 
 all face towards Paris, and are to be furnished 
 with altars, images, &c. The dress of the clergy 
 is to be rather more feminine than masculine. 
 Eighty -one solemn festivals, secondary or prin- 
 cipal, are to constitute the worship annually paid 
 
2o8 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 to the Great Being by its servants assembled in 
 its temples. Each step in life is to have its special 
 consecration, and hence the sacraments of the new 
 religion are to be nine in number, — presentation, 
 initiation, admission, destination, marriage, matu- 
 rity, retreat, transformation, and incorporation. 
 Private prayers are to be presented thrice a-day ; 
 the morning prayer is to be an hour, the mid-day 
 prayer a quarter of an hour, and the evening 
 prayer half an hour in length. What is called 
 "the beautiful creation of the medieval mind — 
 the woman with the child in her arms," is selected 
 as the symbol of humanity ; and " to give life and 
 vividness to this symbol, and to worship in general, 
 each positivist is taught to adopt as objects of his 
 adoration his mother, his wife, his daughter, allow- 
 ing the principal part to the mother, but blending 
 the three into one compound influence — represent- 
 ing to him humanity in its past, its present, and 
 its future. 
 
 I must not more minutely describe the monstrous 
 mixture of atheism, fetichism, ultramontanism, and 
 ritualism, which claims to be the Religion of Hu- 
 manity, so absurd and grotesque is it. Almost 
 its only noble characteristic is the spirit of disin- 
 terestedness which it breathes, the stress which it 
 lays on the duty of living for the good of others. 
 In this respect it has imitated, although longo 
 
The Positivist Religion. 209 
 
 intervallOy the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But unlike 
 the Gospel, although it enjoins love to one another 
 with the urgency which is due, it unseals no fresh 
 source and brings to light no new motives of love. 
 A mere doctrinal inculcation of the duty of active 
 and affectionate beneficence, under the barbarous 
 name of altruism, is its highest service as a sys- 
 tem of religion, what it has added thereto being 
 worse than useless, because tending to render even 
 " the royal law " of love itself ridiculous.^ 
 
 Is it not instructive that Comte should have 
 been unable to devise anything better than the 
 so-called religion of which I have been speaking, 
 and that neither he nor any other person who has 
 attempted to raise a substitute for Christianity on 
 the basis of science has failed signally to display 
 his own feebleness and folly } The character of 
 the religions which have been invented in the pre- 
 sent age is no slight indirect confirmation of the 
 divine origin of the religion which they would 
 displace. If all that men can do in the way of 
 religious invention, even in the nineteenth century, 
 and with every help which science can give them, 
 is like what we have seen them doing, the religion 
 which has come down to us through so many cen- 
 turies can have been no human invention. It could 
 not have been originated by science ; and were it 
 
 1 See Appendix XXII. 
 O 
 
2IO Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 withdrawn, science would assuredly find no substi- 
 tute for it. Take it away and we should be left 
 even at this hour in absolute spiritual darkness 
 and helplessness. That is the truth which all 
 modern attempts to found and form new religions 
 concur in establishing. 
 
Secularism* 21 1 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 SECULARISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 The subject of my last lecture was Positivism. 
 Now I wish to speak of Secularism. These two 
 theories are nearly related in nature. They are 
 manifestations of the same principles and tenden- 
 cies. They may almost be said to be the two 
 halves of the same whole ; in other words, secu- 
 ralism may be regarded as the theory of life or 
 conduct which flows from the theory of belief or 
 knowledge that constitutes the substance of posi- 
 tivism. And yet it would be an error to represent 
 secularism as historically an offshoot of positivism. 
 It may fairly claim, I believe, to be as much of 
 English growth as positivism must be admitted to 
 be of French growth. Its representatives have 
 been, it is true, considerably influenced by the 
 writings of the founder of positivism, and still more 
 influenced by the writings of his English followers, 
 
212 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 particularly by those of Mr J. S. Mill and G. H. 
 Lewes ; but in the main their scepticism is a 
 native product Thomas Paine and Richard 
 Carlile, Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, Robert 
 Owen and George Combe, — all contributed at least 
 as much to the formation of secularism as Auguste 
 Comte. 
 
 It is difficult, or rather impossible, to ascertain 
 to what extent secularism is prevalent. There are, 
 so far as I know, no reliable statistics on the 
 subject. Many are doubtless complete secularists 
 who do not call themselves so, and who belong to 
 no secularist society. On the other hand, some 
 who call themselves secularists, and perhaps even 
 the majority of the members of some of the secu- 
 larist societies, hold probably only a very small 
 part of what is usually implied by the term secu- 
 larism. Mr Holyoake represents what may be 
 called one school of secularists, and Mr Brad- 
 laugh another ; and one main difference between 
 them is, that the former denies that the principles 
 of secularism include atheism, while the latter 
 affirms that they do. Yet even Mr Bradlaugh 
 does not hold that atheism is a necessary con- 
 dition of membership in secularist associations. 
 Such membership may, consequently, be in some, 
 or even in many cases, merely the expression of 
 more or less dissatisfaction with the theology 
 taught in our churches, and of sympathy with 
 
Prevalence of Secularism. 213 
 
 certain projected social and political changes. It 
 may not exclude either belief in a God or belief in 
 a future state. Hence even those who ought to 
 know best the strength of secularism are found 
 to differ widely from one another as to what its 
 strength is, and as to whether its strength be in- 
 creasing or not. In proof, I may quote from the 
 discussion between Messrs Bradlaugh and Holy- 
 oake held in the New Hall of Science, London, 
 in 1870. The former thus replies to the latter's 
 statement that the Freethought party is in a state 
 of disorganisation : " I presume my friend means 
 relatively to some other period of their existence. 
 It is so disorganised, that I think we can send 
 something like a hundred petitions to the House 
 of Commons in favour of any measure we desire to 
 support. It is so disorganised, that within three 
 days I will undertake to have all the principal 
 towns of England and Scotland placarded with 
 any particular placard which it is desired to have 
 brought before the notice of the people. It is so 
 disorganised, that there is not a large town, not 
 a village in England, not a large town in the south 
 of Scotland, and not many in the north, not many 
 in the south-west of Ireland, that within four or 
 five days I could not have any kind of communi- 
 cation placed by the hands of the members of the 
 Secular Society in the hands of the clergymen of 
 those towns. I am not speaking of what could be 
 
214 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 done. I am speaking of what has been done 
 during the last few years. Our organisation has 
 been such that we have played a part in the 
 political action of the country which has made 
 itself felt " (p. 56). Mr Holyoake answers : " Mr 
 Bradlaugh wanders through this land proclaim- 
 ing the principles of secularism as though they 
 were atheism, and arguing with the clergy. Why, 
 when I go now to Glasgow, to Huddersfield, to 
 Liverpool, to Manchester, I find the secularists 
 there unadvanced in position. Even in Northamp- 
 ton, which Mr Bradlaugh knows, I found them 
 lately meeting on the second floor of a public- 
 house, where I found them twenty or twenty-five 
 years ago. In Glasgow they are in the same 
 second-rate position they were in twenty- five or 
 thirty years ago. What have we been doing } 
 Does not this show an obsolete policy ? Ranters, 
 Muggletonians, Mormons, and men of their stamp, 
 are superior to acting so. Any party in the pre- 
 sent state of opinion in the world could with 
 thought have done more. The most ordinary sects 
 build or hire temples, and other places, where their 
 people decently meet. Mr Bradlaugh, with all his 
 zeal and appeals, finds to-day that all London can 
 do is to put up this kind of place in which we now 
 meet opposite a lunatic asylum, where people, so 
 the enemy says, naturally expect to find us. He 
 is even obliged to tell you that at the West-end of 
 
Prevalence of Secularism. 215 
 
 London he does not think highly of their state. 
 Now, we who have principles of materialism, and 
 descant incessantly on their superiority and effi- 
 cacy, what halls of splendour and completeness we 
 ought to put up ! . , . All that Mr Bradlaugh 
 said about the organisation of the party was not 
 an answer to what I said. I spoke of the organisa- 
 tion of ideas in it I spoke of the number of your 
 paying members that belong to your societies in 
 any part of the country. Look at the poverty of 
 their public resources. Look at the few people of 
 local repute that will consent to share their name 
 and association. Why do they not do it.^ Because 
 they find no definite principle set down which 
 does not involve them in atheism and infidelity. 
 The truth is, that there are liberal theists, liberal 
 believers in another life, liberal believers in God, 
 perfectly willing to unite together with the extrem- 
 est thinkers, for secular purposes, giving effect to 
 every form of human liberty — but they refuse to 
 be saddled with the opprobrium of opinions they 
 do not hold, or do dislike." 
 
 These two estimates of the strength and progress 
 of secularism by its two best-known representatives 
 are very different, and yet probably they are not 
 really contradictory. I am inclined to believe 
 that they are both fair and unexaggerated state- 
 ments, and that if we combine them, instead of 
 contrasting them, we shall come tolerably near to 
 
2i6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the truth. If secularism be dissociated from atheism 
 it may be as strong as Mr Bradlaugh represents it 
 to be, while if explicitly committed to atheism it 
 may be as weak as Mr Holyoake represents it to 
 be. Some of the advocates of atheistic secularism 
 speak as if they represented the great body of the 
 artisans of our large towns. This would be most 
 alarming if it were true ; but no real evidence has 
 been produced to show that it is true, and I for one 
 entirely disbelieve it. I should be surprised if in 
 Edinburgh, for example, there were not on the 
 communion rolls of many a single congregation 
 the names of more artisans — and skilled artisans 
 too — than there are of avowedly atheistical secu- 
 larists in the whole city ; and yet, I daresay, what 
 secularists there are could get a large number of 
 signatures to petitions in favour of purely secular 
 education, the disestablishment and disendowment 
 of the National Church, the abolition of the House 
 of Lords, and a great many other things, wise and 
 foolish. On the other hand, it may not improb- 
 ably be the case that the strength of the most 
 thorough secularism is by no means fully repre- 
 sented by the number of its avowed adherents ; 
 that many are decidedly in sympathy with it who 
 do not decidedly attach themselves to it ; and that 
 many are on the way which would lead to accept- 
 ance of the atheism which it teaches who have 
 not vet reached that goal. I believe that atheism 
 
Rise of Secularism. 217 
 
 is more diffused at present among the literary 
 classes of this country than among the labouring 
 classes ; but no doubt it is far too prevalent among 
 the latter also — so prevalent that piety and patriot- 
 ism both demand that every wise effort be made 
 energetically to counteract it. 
 
 Secularism is the most prevalent form of unbelief 
 amongst the manual workers of this country ; it is 
 almost confined to them ; and the chief causes of 
 its spread, and of the character which it bears, 
 must be sought for in their history. It has always 
 been closely associated with political dissatisfac- 
 tion, and no candid and well-informed person will 
 deny that the political dissatisfaction has been to 
 a considerable extent reasonable and just. The 
 French Revolution caused even in this country not 
 merely a temporary reaction from the kind of un- 
 belief which prevailed before it, but a sort of gen- 
 eral anti- revolutionary terror, largely characterised 
 by blindness, bigotry, and violence. The terror 
 gradually died away ; and the blindness, bigotry, 
 and violence discredited even what was true in the 
 principles with which they had been associated. 
 The long war with France and a selfish and unjust 
 commercial legislation spread wide and terrible 
 suffering among the poor; and the blind opposition 
 of the governing classes to political progress, and of 
 the clergy to religious freedom, naturally produced 
 a dangerous irritation which gave rise at once to 
 
21 8 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 demands for the most radical political changes, 
 and to the most sweeping rejection of the hitherto 
 accepted religious beliefs. 
 
 Mr Owen, whose socialistic views found for a 
 time a multitude of believers sufficiently sincere 
 to endeavour to realise them in practice, severely 
 denounced all the religions of the world, but he 
 never ceased to be a theist, and latterly became a 
 spiritualist. Jeremy Bentham and several of the 
 group of thinkers who gathered around him were 
 atheists ; but, although far from timid men, they 
 had not courage enough to avow publicly their 
 real sentiments on the subject of religion, lest by 
 doing so they should lessen their influence as po- 
 litical and juridical reformers. It was only from the 
 ranks of the working classes that there came forth 
 men with the full courage of their convictions— 
 men who not merely dared openly to avow athe- 
 ism, as well as republicanism and socialism, but to 
 defend their atheism before the courts of law, and 
 to endure for it imprisonment and other penalties. 
 Such men were Charles Southwell, Thomas Cooper, 
 George Jacob Holyoake, Thomas Paterson, &c. ; 
 and these men are to be regarded as the founders 
 and first propagators of Secularism. It would be 
 unjust to refuse them the honour due to their 
 courage and honesty ; and there can be no doubt 
 that by their brave and self-sacrificing conduct 
 they merited well of their fellow-countrymen, no 
 
Persecution of Secularists. 219 
 
 matter how erroneous may have been the convic- 
 tions for which they suffered. Those who prose- 
 cuted them supposed, of course, that they were 
 defending Christianity, but Christianity can be 
 defended in no such way. It forbids all prose- 
 cution — all persecution — for the sake of religion. 
 Force cannot possibly propagate the truth, or 
 produce the faith, or promote the love in which 
 the Gospel consists. The Gospel is intolerant, 
 indeed, with the intolerance which is inherent 
 in the very nature of truth. Truth can only 
 be neglected by a man at his peril. No man is 
 morally free to believe a lie of any kind. All 
 truth carries with it the right to be believed, and 
 moral truth carries with it, in addition, the right 
 to be obeyed. The Gospel as truth, moral and 
 spiritual truth, the highest truth, yea, the truth, 
 does demand of us accordingly that we both be- 
 lieve and obey it — that we submit ourselves to it 
 in mind, heart, and life. It holds us guilty if we 
 do not. It warns us that either unbelief or dis- 
 obedience is a most grievous sin, and will have 
 most grievous consequences. But this intolerance, 
 if it be intolerance, has nothing to do with coercion. 
 Truth cannot be furthered by force. It must rest 
 its claims to allegiance solely on evidence sub- 
 mitted to the scrutiny of reason and conscience; 
 and if its evidence be rejected, however per- 
 versely, there is no help for that in compulsion, 
 
220 Anti-Theistic TJuories. 
 
 which can only add to what sin already exists the 
 sin of hypocrisy. Persecution can never arise from 
 zeal for the Gospel as truth — from zeal for the Gos- 
 pel properly understood. If ever due to zeal in 
 any measure, and not to pride, selfishness, anger, 
 ambition, and other hateful lusts which war against 
 the soul, and set men at strife and war with one 
 another, it must be to a zeal which is in alliance 
 with error. Zeal for the Gospel and erroneous 
 views of its nature may lead to persecution, but 
 never zeal and true views of its nature. If the 
 kingdom of God be thought of as a kingdom of 
 truth, — if to receive, love, and obey the truth as it 
 is in Jesus be felt to be the only means of belong- 
 ing to it, — the utmost intensity of zeal cannot in- 
 cline or tempt us to the use of force, since force 
 can have no tendency to promote the interests of 
 such a kingdom. The men, therefore, who by their 
 courage and endurance were specially instrumental 
 in convincing their countrymen that persecution 
 for the avowal and advocacy even of atheism is a 
 folly and a crime, have really rendered a service to 
 the cause of Christian truth, and their names will 
 not be recorded without honour when the history 
 of our century is impartially written. 
 
 The person to whom Secularism owes its name, 
 and who has done most to make it what it is in 
 England, is George Jacob Holyoake, and it is 
 chiefly as presented by him that I shall consider it 
 
Relation of Secularism to Atheism. 221 
 
 for a little. In doing so, we must determine first 
 how secularism is related to religion. As I have 
 already indicated, there is on this point a funda- 
 mental difference of opinion among secularists. 
 Mr Holyoake and those who agree with him hold 
 that secularism ought to start with the study of 
 nature as manifested to us, and ignore religion. 
 Mr Bradlaugh and those who agree with him hold 
 that secularism can only be founded in the disproof 
 and rejection of religion. Mr Holyoake is an athe- 
 ist in the same sense and to the same extent as 
 Mr Bradlaugh. He objects, however, to the name, 
 while Mr Bradlaugh does not The ground of his 
 objection is that atheist is understood to mean 
 "one who is not only without God, but without 
 morality." But surely it can only be in very bad 
 dictionaries and by very uncandid persons that the 
 word atheist is so defined and employed. It pro- 
 perly means merely a man who thinks that there 
 is reason for disbelieving that there is a God, or a 
 man who thinks that there is no reason for believ- 
 ing that there is a God. It is in the latter sense 
 that both Mr Holyoake and Mr Bradlaugh are 
 atheists, and the former is so as much as the latter, 
 and he fully acknowledges this, although he would 
 prefer to be called a cosmist to being called an 
 atheist. It is not because he does not accept and 
 advocate atheism in the only sense in which it is 
 accepted and advocated by Mr Bradlaugh that he 
 
222 AiiH-Theistic Theories. 
 
 entirely differs from him on the question as to 
 whether atheism is or is not involved in secularism. 
 
 What, then, are his reasons for maintaining that 
 secularism ought to be severed from atheism? The 
 first is that the severance is rationally necessary. 
 Secularism is, in his view, a theory of life and its 
 duties founded exclusively on a study of the laws 
 of nature. Theism, pantheism, and atheism, are 
 all hypotheses as to the origin of these laws. But 
 if we know what the laws are we may order our 
 life according to them, although ignorant of their 
 origin, or whatever hypothesis we may adopt as to 
 their origin. Our present existence is a fact ; and 
 men may agree, and ought to agree, to deal with 
 it as such, although they cannot agree as to 
 whether there is a future life or not '* To ignore 
 is not to deny. To go one way is not to deny 
 that there may be, to other persons, another way. 
 To travel by land is not to deny the water. The 
 chemist ignores architecture, but he does not deny 
 it. And so the secularist concerns himself with 
 this world without denying or discussing any other 
 world, either the origin of this, or the existence of 
 that" 
 
 Now I think this reasoning will not stand even 
 a slight examination. One science is, it is true, 
 distinct from another, and yet to cultivate one is 
 not to deny another. So theology, as a mere de- 
 partment of thought, is distinct from the physical 
 
Relation of Secularism to Atheism. 223 
 
 and mental sciences, and he who studies the latter 
 may not direct his attention to the former. But 
 observe, first, that although the sciences are so far 
 distinct that to cultivate one is not to deny another, 
 they are also so related that he who cultivates one 
 cannot afford to ignore others. The student of 
 astronomy will not succeed if he ignores mathe- 
 matics. If you entertain false views of mechanical 
 and chemical laws you will never correctly explain 
 geological phenomena. And in like manner, if 
 there be a theology which directly or indirectly 
 denies any law of nature, the science which estab- 
 lishes that there is such a law must do more than 
 merely ignore the theology which disowns it — it 
 must oppose that theology. It cannot otherwise 
 maintain its own truth and self-consistency. Then 
 observe, secondly, that secularism is not mere know- 
 ledge, but an art, or at least the theory of an art, 
 professedly based on knowledge, and that con- 
 sequently it cannot reasonably ignore any kind of 
 knowledge which may concern it as an art. Archi- 
 tecture is an art — the art of building houses — and 
 as such it cannot afford to ignore any kind of 
 knowledge that bears on the building of houses. 
 An architecture which took no account of the law 
 of gravitation and other principles of mechanics, 
 of the properties of stone, lime, and wood, of wind 
 and water, light and air, would be only the art of 
 trying to build houses tiiat would not stand, or 
 
224 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 which could not be inhabited if they did. Apply 
 this to the case before us. Secularism professes 
 to teach us a more difficult and complex art than 
 that of building houses — the art of ordering our 
 lives aright in this world — the art of properly dis- 
 charging our duties in this present life ; and at 
 the same time secularism, as represented by Mr 
 Holyoake, tells us that we may ignore the ques- 
 tions, Is there a God } is there a future world .^ 
 I ask if such secularism be not precisely like an 
 architecture which would advise us to take no 
 account in building our houses of light and air, 
 and therefore not to trouble ourselves about win- 
 dows and ventilators ? Give me reason to believe 
 that there is no God and no future existence, and 
 then I shall have reason to ignore them ; but to 
 ask me to ignore them before you have done so, is 
 neither more nor less than to ask me to act like a 
 fool. If I cannot find out that there is a God or 
 a future life, I must be convinced by reason that I 
 cannot. If I can find out anything about them, I 
 ought to do my best to find out as much about 
 them as I can. And whatever I find out, or think 
 I find out about them, I am bound as a reasonable 
 and moral being to take account of in my conduct 
 in this life. 
 
 But Mr Holyoake has another reason. He 
 wishes secularism to be a positive, peaceful, fruit- 
 ful system. He dislikes a merely negative form 
 
Relation of Secularism to Atheism. 225 
 
 of freethought. He comes into the provinces and 
 finds secularist societies ruled by young orators 
 who are mere negationists, who have no capital in 
 principles, whose whole stock-in-trade is denial of 
 what somebody else holds, and he says that that 
 is not secularism in any possible sense, and does 
 harm rather than good by angering people instead 
 of instructing them. To remedy this he would 
 have secularists to intrench themselves in the in- 
 culcation of purely secular principles, and to apply 
 their energies directly and mainly to the develop- 
 ment and realisation of these principles, with little 
 or no regard either to atheism or theism. 
 
 The motive originating and underlying this 
 argument is most honourable to Mr Holyoake, 
 and is in accordance with his character. But I 
 cannot see the justice of it in itself It does not 
 seem relevant against even a secularist like Mr 
 Bradlaugh, because, of course, he is able to reply 
 that he teaches atheism because he thinks theism 
 very pernicious, so that to destroy it is to do a vast 
 amount of good ; and that he also teaches what is 
 positive in secularism, when he has shown that he 
 has a right to be a secularist at all. Nor can the 
 argument recommend itself to the theist. To him 
 Mr Holyoake's secular principles, in so far as they 
 do not involve atheism, will seem to belong to 
 himself as much as to Mr Holyoake. What truth 
 of science, he will say, is there which I do not 
 
 P 
 
226 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 accept as much as you ? What law of secular duty 
 do you acknowledge which I reject ? As a theist 
 I am bound by even more obligations than you 
 are to honour all science and all duty. It is only 
 by your atheism, therefore, and by the negations 
 implied in your atheism, that you can distinguish 
 yourself from me. All the purely positive truth 
 in your secularism, all the science, all the duty, 
 is not more yours than it is mine, although I reject 
 utterly your secularism, and maintain that man 
 has no duties more important than those which 
 he owes to his God, and that it is sheer folly for 
 an immortal being to live as if death were the end 
 of all. 
 
 It must be added that Mr Holyoake acknow- 
 ledges that he was not uninfluenced in the forma- 
 tion and adoption of his opinion by considerations 
 of expediency. In the debate already referred to 
 he said : " The principles of secularism, which I 
 maintain are definable quite apart from the Bible, 
 quite apart from atheism, are not the imaginary, 
 or incoherent, or capricious selection from a variety 
 of principles, resting merely or only on my author- 
 ity — they were principles which we had acquired 
 by the slow accretion of controversy, by contesting 
 for them from platform to platform all over the 
 country ; and when they were drawn up, I sub- 
 mitted them in the aggregate form, many years 
 after they had been separately formulated, to Mr 
 
Relation of Secularism to Atheism, 227 
 
 J. S. Mill, and asked him whether or not, in his 
 judgment, we had made such a statement of 
 secular principles as were worthy to stand as self- 
 defensive principles of the working class, as an 
 independent mode of opinion which should no 
 longer involve them in the necessity of taking on 
 their shoulders the responsibility of an atheistic 
 or infidel propagandism except when it suited the 
 purpose of a member to do it. He admitted it in 
 terms which it was a reward to read. It was not 
 until we had the sanction of one so competent to 
 judge, that these principles were promulgated in a 
 definite manner as the principles of a party. The 
 reason they were drawn up in the form ultimately 
 submitted to the public was this : we found in 
 i memorable address by Sir James Stephen, at 
 Cambridge, it was represented that Mr Grote, 
 Mr Mill, and other eminent philosophers whom he 
 named, had been so outraged by the offensive ob- 
 servations of the clergy — by their charging every 
 man of science with infidelity, scepticism, or athe- 
 ism — that they refused any longer to take notice 
 of Christianity ; they had withdrawn from it, they 
 stood apart from it, they constructed a system of 
 their own, they had a philosophy of their own, 
 they had principles whereby they regulated their 
 own line of conduct ; and when the minister spoke 
 they no longer felt called upon to regard him ; they 
 could deny his authority to give an opinion on 
 
228 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 their proceedings. The clergyman applies to them, 
 but they make no response ; he preaches his doc- 
 trine, but they condescend to no criticism. The 
 result is, the clergyman, when too late, has to 
 exclaim, ' The philosophers pass us by, they ignore 
 Christianity, and in the end we shall have to be- 
 come suppliants for their attention, because we 
 repelled them when they were suppliants for ours.' 
 Now it struck me, that was a far prouder and more 
 triumphant thing to accomplish than any wild 
 warring against theologians ; we were at the mercy 
 of their overwhelming power. My purpose was to 
 put into the hands of the working classes prin- 
 ciples which should serve their purpose in the 
 same way, and make them equally independent 
 and equally proud, defiant, and unassailable." 
 
 This seems to me to be an argument of a lower 
 type. It is an appeal to policy such as one would 
 scarcely have expected from Mr Holyoake. A 
 man who had so courageously avowed the most 
 unpopular sentiments regarding religion, and so 
 unflinchingly borne the consequences, might well 
 have been supposed little to admire the conduct 
 of any one who, however eminent, should shrink 
 from the responsibility implied in the conviction 
 that Christianity is a gigantic delusion, and ven- 
 ture only to attack it secretly, anonymously, or 
 posthumously. If Christianity be, in the judg- 
 ment of any person, an imposture, which has pro- 
 
Relation of Secularism to Atheism. 225 
 
 duced, and is daily producing, a host of moral, 
 social, and political evils, how can he, as an honest 
 man, take no notice of it, or even slight notice of 
 it ? Is he not as much bound earnestly to assail 
 it as one who esteems it an incalculable blessing 
 is bound zealously to defend and propagate it ? 
 Is he not all the more bound to oppose it, because 
 its influence is wide and powerful ? He who is not 
 for it must be against it. Neutrality is logically 
 and morally impossible. Reason and conscience 
 prescribe a policy which must be conformed to 
 whatever expediency may suggest, and that policy 
 is not one of concealment and evasion. But even 
 an expediency which is real and not merely ap- 
 parent, universal and not simply individual, must 
 declare against the course recommended by Mr 
 Holyoake. Supposing Sir James Stephen's ac- 
 count of the conduct of Mr Grote, Mr Mill, &c., 
 to have been correct, was the policy attributed to 
 them really beneficial to any person but them- 
 selves, and those whom they regarded as their 
 opponents } Mr Grote writing his ' History of 
 Greece,' and Mr Mill writing his * Logic,' were, no 
 doubt, admirably employed, and deservedly merit- 
 ing the gratitude of their contemporaries and of 
 posterity ; but what did they effect thereby against 
 Christianity } How did they injure it by ignoring 
 it } Who were the clergymen who became sup- 
 pliants for their attention ? Was there any clergy- 
 
230 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 man so stupid as to expect that Christianity should 
 be either attacked or defended in a * History of 
 Greece/ or in a scientific treatise on * Logic ' ? The 
 policy ascribed to Mr Grote and Mr Mill is as 
 absurd as would be that of an admiral who, if 
 ordered to reduce Cronstadt, should, by way of 
 carrying out his commission, stay in London and 
 write a work on mechanics or navigation. That 
 might be good policy for him, but it would have 
 little effect on Cronstadt. Christianity cannot 
 and will not leave secularism alone. If it have 
 any belief in itself, any life and sincerity, it must 
 attack by all fair means a system so utterly alien 
 to itself. Is secularism prepared to renounce the 
 right of reply and counter-attack } I should be 
 rejoiced to hear it; but I must candidly admit 
 that the reasons of my satisfaction would be a 
 conviction that the policy would prove a very bad 
 one for secularism, and, still more, the belief that 
 its adoption might be accepted as a sign that 
 secularists distrusted their power to refute the 
 claims of Christianity. 
 
 I fail to see, then, that Mr Holyoake*s position 
 is at all an intelligible one. Mr Bradlaugh's I 
 quite understand ; indeed, it would be rather diffi- 
 cult not to understand words like these: "What 
 we say is, and what you do not say is, that the- 
 ological teachings prevent human improvement, 
 and that it is the duty of every secularist to make 
 
Relation of Secularism to Atheism. 231 
 
 active war on theological teachings. It is no use 
 saying, ignore the clergy. You cannot talk of 
 ignoring St Paul's Cathedral — it is too high. You 
 cannot talk of ignoring the Religious Tract So- 
 ciety — it is too wealthy. You cannot talk of 
 ignoring Oxford and Cambridge Universities — 
 they are too well endowed. They command 
 too many parties to enable you to ignore their 
 power, but you may strive to crush it out a 
 little at a time. You cannot strike all errors 
 effectually at once, but you can strike at some 
 and encourage others to strike too. This is the 
 secularist's work Paine and Carlile cut out years 
 ago. This is the secularist's work Southwell 
 and yourself undertook. This is the secularist's 
 work in which every man has got his share to do, 
 who feels as I feel. The secularist's work which 
 we have to do is to cut down, as my friend put it, 
 the banyan-tree of superstition, which tree seeks 
 to send its roots down into every baby brain, and 
 which holds by the habit-faith of the rich, and by 
 the ignorant credulity of the poor. Every branch 
 of this superstitious tree bears poisonous fruit; 
 but before you can get the branches effectively 
 destroyed, you must cut away the roots as well 
 as gently train the tree. The upas-tree of reli- 
 gion overspreads the whole earth ; it hides with 
 its thick foliage of churchcraft the rays of truth 
 from humankind, and we must cut at its root and 
 
232 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 strip away its branches that reason's rays may go 
 shining through, and give fertility to the human 
 soil, long hidden from their genial warmth." 
 
 There can be no doubt what this means ; no 
 doubt that it signifies war, — war open and inces- 
 sant — a war of life and death — war to the utter- 
 most So be it. There really is, I believe, no 
 other relationship possible between religion and 
 secularism.^ 
 
 II. 
 
 Let us now proceed to the consideration of the 
 leading positive principles of secularism. 
 
 The first of these, as stated by Mr Holyoake, 
 is, "That precedence should be given to the 
 duties of this life over those which pertain to 
 another life." And the reason alleged for it is, 
 that " this life being the first in certainty, ought to 
 have the first place in importance." " We do not 
 say that every man ought to give an exclusive 
 attention to this world, because that would be to 
 commit the old sin of dogmatism, and exclude the 
 possibility of another world, and of walking by 
 different light from that by which alone we are 
 able to walk. But as our knowledge is confined to 
 this life, and testimony and conjecture and prob- 
 ability are all that can be set forth with respect 
 
 1 See Appendix XXII I. 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 233 
 
 to another life, we think we are justified in giving 
 precedence to the duties of this state, and of attach- 
 ing primary importance to the morality of man to 
 man." 1 
 
 Mr Holyoake expresses his principle in this 
 form so that he may not exclude theists from the 
 secularist ranks. The message of secularism to 
 them is, Be more worldly and less pious ; think 
 much about this world and little about the next ; 
 much about man and little about God. I know 
 no message which the world needs less, seeing that 
 it is one which not only avowed secularists, but 
 millions of professed Christians, are already acting 
 on with all their might. It is true, however, that 
 all but convinced atheists and the most careless of 
 men have hitherto felt that doing so was wrong and 
 inexcusable. There are few men even among those 
 most engrossed by the cares and interests of this 
 present life, who have not at times felt that there 
 is another life of which it were well to think more. 
 Bibles and religious books, sermons and Sundays, 
 the monitions of conscience, the reflections of rea- 
 son, " sorrow dogging sin, afflictions sorted, anguish 
 of all sizes," the rapid flight of time, the instability 
 of human things, the loss of friends, the warnings 
 of disease, the prognostications of death, all speak 
 of the claims of eternity ; and few have not thereby 
 
 ^ * Discussion between the Rev. Brewin Grant and G. J. Holy- 
 oake' (London, 1853), p. 39. 
 
234 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 been sometimes at least transiently impressed with 
 the conviction that these claims had been sadly 
 neglected. But secularism scouts the idea. It 
 says to the merely nominal Christian, to the man 
 who lives as if his religion were a dream or a lie, 
 that he is quite right ; and it says this, if Mr 
 Holyoake be a correct interpreter of it, not on the 
 ground that religion is a delusion or a lie, but on 
 the ground that the present life is more certain 
 and more important than another life. 
 
 This would be a very comfortable doctrine to 
 many minds, if it were not so irrational that only 
 very few will be able to believe it. There is nothing 
 particularly certain about the present life. What 
 is certain even about the present moment, except 
 that before you can so much as think of it it has 
 already ceased to be, and you can no longer either 
 discharge duty or enjoy pleasure in it ? The present 
 is so evanescent that it hardly concerns us at all. 
 And as to the future, who is certain of what a day 
 or an hour will bring forth } Who can reckon with 
 confidence on to-morrow t We may easily be far 
 more certain of the existence of God and of the 
 immortality of the soul than that we shall be alive 
 on the morrow. The one thing certain about this 
 life is that it is uncertain. And as it is not only 
 uncertain but short at the longest, the notion that 
 it can be more important than eternal life is a fancy 
 for which there can be no possible warrant. 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 235 
 
 The secularist principle in question is erroneous 
 for this further reason, that it falsely distinguishes 
 duties into duties of this life and duties which 
 pertain to another life. That is not a distinction 
 which can be reasonably defended. If there be a 
 God, the duties which we owe to Him are duties of 
 this life. If there be a future world, it is our pres- 
 ent duty to take full account of that fact. On the 
 other hand, all our duties are duties to God, and 
 the way in which all our duties are discharged will 
 have an influence on our eternal destiny. There 
 is thus no absolute separation possible between 
 secular and spiritual duties ; and still less can they 
 be rationally opposed. A man who neglects any 
 of his so-called secular duties must look for God's 
 disapproval. He who would live a truly pious life 
 must work the works of integrity and uprightness, 
 of benevolence and mercy, of temperance, prudence, 
 and industry. A man will surely not do his duty 
 in and for this world worse but better because he 
 feels that God blesses his efforts in the cause of 
 truth and goodness ; and that when the labours of 
 life are ended, he will, if he have acquitted himself 
 faithfully, enter not into utter annihilation but into 
 eternal happiness. 
 
 It is, then, most irrational and improper advice 
 to tell a man who believes it even probable that 
 there is a God, or that there is a future world, that 
 he may be comparatively heedless of his duties 
 
236 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and interests as regards them without guilt or 
 danger. If a man disbelieve in God and the 
 future world, or believe that nothing can be known 
 about them, he cannot, of course, be reasonably 
 expected to give them even a subordinate place 
 either in thought or practice. He can owe no duty 
 to what does not exist, — no thought to the un- 
 knowable. If this world be all that our intellects 
 can apprehend, our sole attention should be given 
 to it. Secularism, in order to be self- consistent, 
 must be complete, must be as exclusive as Chris- 
 tianity, must demand for the world our whole 
 mind and heart, our whole strength and life. But 
 in this form it is obviously a doctrine which none 
 but convinced and confirmed atheists can do other- 
 wise than utterly repudiate. It is a doctrine, also, 
 by which the world will only lose. No good cause 
 on earth will be more energetically promoted, no 
 evil cause will be more energetically opposed, with- 
 out faith in God and His eternal mercy and justice 
 than with it. Where the love of God is not, love to 
 man will certainly not be stronger in consequence. 
 A second secularist principle is, that " science is 
 the providence of man, and that absolute spiritual 
 dependency may involve material destruction." If 
 men, we are told, would have things go well with 
 them, they must discover and apply the laws of 
 nature. They must learn what is true before they 
 can do what is right, or can so act as to secure 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 237 
 
 happiness. Evil can be warded off and good can 
 be obtained only by following the directions of 
 science ; prayer is useless, experience proving that 
 it receives no answer ; dependence on providence 
 is a delusion, as we are under the dominion of 
 general laws, and special providence there is none. 
 
 This is the substance of an argument which in 
 Mr Holyoake's hands assumes many forms, and 
 which all secularists often employ. There is noth- 
 ing true in it, however, to which the theist cannot 
 cordially assent. He believes that every law dis- 
 covered by science is a law of God to which man 
 is bound to pay due respect. The whole of science 
 is more sacred to him than it can possibly be to 
 the secularist, for, in addition to having the sacred- 
 ness of truth, it has the sacredness of being a 
 manifestation of God's character and will. Unless 
 a very unintelligent and inconsistent man, indeed, 
 he must feel more deeply than the secularist that 
 every truth of science is entitled to his reverence, 
 and to such obedience as he can give to it He 
 can make no exclusions, exceptions, or reserva- 
 tions, but must accept science in all its length and 
 breadth, so far as his powers and opportunities 
 extend. Secularism has no peculiar, and still less 
 any exclusive, right to science. Theism has at 
 least an equal claim to it, and to whatever good 
 can be derived from it. 
 
 All that properly belongs to secularism is the 
 
238 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 denial of the utility of prayer and the existence of 
 providence. It opposes science to prayer and pro- 
 vidence. But this is what those who believe in the 
 two latter never do, so that the prayer and pro- 
 vidence attacked by secularism are conceptions or 
 misconceptions of its own. The theist believes in 
 prayer, but he does not believe in mere prayer — 
 in prayer which despises the use of means — in 
 prayer which dispenses with watching and work- 
 ing. He believes in providence, but he does not 
 believe in tempting providence — in casting himself 
 down from a height with the expectation that 
 angels will take charge of him — in a spiritual de- 
 pendency which neglects the aids to material 
 safety. The man who truly prays cannot credit 
 the allegation that experience proves that prayer 
 receives no answer. That is not his experience. 
 He is conscious of having daily asked for spiritual 
 blessings, and conscious of having daily received 
 them. He knows a sphere of existence in which 
 not the exception to the law but the law itself is, 
 Seek and ye shall find, Ask and it shall be given 
 unto you — a realm where sincere and earnest peti- 
 tions are always directly accomplished. There are 
 innumerable blessings, unfortunately unknown and 
 unvalued by the secularist, although they are far 
 more real and precious than bodily and external 
 advantages ; and these blessings, which science does 
 not pretend to offer us, and which general laws 
 
Positive Principles of Secularis7n. 239 
 
 do not bring us, unless prayer itself be included 
 among general laws, the experience of all who 
 have sincerely asked them, or, in equivalent terms, 
 the experience of all who have truly prayed testi- 
 fies, are never withheld. In asking for these bless- 
 ings, which are the main objects of prayer, we can 
 ask unconditionally and absolutely, directly and 
 definitely, not even needing, as it were, to say. 
 Thy will be done, since we already assuredly 
 know that God's will is to grant them to whoever 
 truly asks them, while He will not, yea cannot, 
 grant them to those who do not ask. Other bless- 
 ings, however seemingly desirable, reasonable and 
 pious men seek only in subordination to spiritual 
 blessings. They never ask for them except con- 
 ditionally. They are conscious that what they 
 think best may be really bad, and that what mere 
 nature shrinks from most may be for their highest 
 good. They ask, therefore, for apparent temporal 
 good only in so far as it may be agreeable to God 
 to give it, and with the added supplication that 
 He will give or withhold according to His pleas- 
 ure, since His pleasure is ever in His children's 
 welfare. All true prayer for temporal things is 
 essentially prayer that God's will in regard to 
 these things may become our will, through our 
 will being elevated and conformed to His ; it cer- 
 tainly never is prayer that His will, whether hid 
 in His eternal counsels or expressed in His gen- 
 
240 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 eral laws, should yield and give place to a will so 
 blind and arbitrary as ours. There is no evidence 
 that a single true prayer has been unanswered. 
 There is the evidence of every truly prayerful 
 man's experience that prayer is daily answered, 
 and that it brings light, and strength, and blessing 
 where science is utterly powerless and useless. 
 
 Science is admirable, and we grudge it no praise 
 to which it is entitled ; but we must deny that it 
 can be a substitute for providence. It is at the 
 utmost an indication of some of the rules — a 
 delineation of part of the plan — of providence. It 
 has no existence in itself, no power of its own. It 
 is but a name for a kind of human knowledge, 
 which must be appropriated and applied by a 
 human mind before it can be of any avail. It will 
 only be of use to us if we make use of it. We may 
 either make a good or a bad use of it. We con- 
 stantly see it employed to injure men as well as 
 to benefit them. There is as much science dis- 
 played on the battle-field as in the hospital or 
 the factory. The possession of it is no guarantee 
 whatever that it will be honourably and bene- 
 ficially employed. To use science worthily and 
 well we must not only be conversant with it, but 
 we must be good men. How are men to be good, 
 however — how are they to have right affections 
 and aims — without dependence on God, without 
 prayer, without Divine grace "*. This is a problem 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 241 
 
 which secularism must consider far more seriously 
 than it has done. Science does not make men 
 good ; and where men are bad, science will be per- 
 verted to the service of evil. But surely nothing 
 which is merely instrumental, and especially noth- 
 ing which can be perverted, is properly designated 
 providence. 
 
 The third fundamental principle of secularism 
 is, that man has an adequate rule of life indepen- 
 dently of belief in God, immortality, or revelation. 
 Morality and not religion, it maintains, is our busi- 
 ness. The former is not based on the latter, nor 
 inseparable from it, nor even advantageously asso- 
 ciated with it. We can and ought to disjoin them. 
 Abandoning religion, we should cultivate a purely 
 natural and human morality. An adequate stand- 
 ard of such morality, secularists generally believe, 
 may be found in utility. Secularism has practi- 
 cally adopted utilitarianism as its ethical doctrine, 
 and maintains that it supplies a guide of conduct 
 which is independent of religion. 
 
 Now I do not oppose secularism at this point 
 by arguing that morality is founded on religion. 
 It is, on the whole, more correct to say that 
 religion is founded on morality than that morality 
 is founded on religion. We cannot know God as 
 a moral Being to whom we stand in moral rela- 
 tions, if we have no moral notions until we know 
 God, if we are unconscious of moral relationship 
 
 Q 
 
242 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 until conscious of Divine relationship. A man, we 
 admit, may endeavour to regulate, and may so far 
 actually regulate, his life, from a regard to what is 
 due to humanity, without any reference to God. 
 He may attend to what reason and conscience tell 
 him should be his conduct to his fellow-men, the 
 lower animals, and himself, and put away every 
 idea of duty to the Divine Being, of regard to the 
 Divine will. But clearly this morality is most 
 defective unless it can justify itself by proof that 
 there is no God, or that nothing is due to God. 
 If there be a God, and especially if God be the 
 very author of our moral nature and the moral 
 law, to pay no moral regard to Him must be most 
 wicked behaviour. If there be a God, morality 
 must be as incomplete when religious duties are 
 neglected as it would be were no attention given 
 to personal or social duties. 
 
 Further, the morality which ignores religion is 
 inherently weak because inherently self-contradic- 
 tory. There is in the very nature of the moral 
 law a reference to God which cannot be denied 
 without disrespect to its whole authority. The 
 law bids man sacrifice pleasure, property, reputa- 
 tion, life itself, everything, if need be, to duty. But 
 can this moral law be a righteous and rational law 
 on any other supposition than that the sacrifice 
 will not be in vain, and that the power which, 
 through conscience, demands the sacrifice, will 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 243 
 
 justify the demand by the final issue of things, 
 the eventual victory of the right over pleasure and 
 expediency? I cannot see how it can. The notion 
 of a law demanding that a man should sacrifice 
 not merely apparent to real good, or a lower to a 
 higher good, but his real and highest good — that 
 he should lose life and soul without hope of finding 
 them again — is the notion of a moral law which is 
 profoundly immoral. Conscience in enjoining such 
 a law must be at hopeless variance with reason and 
 with itself. If a man say, ** I will not obey such 
 a law," conscience will condemn him, and yet it 
 must also acquit him and condemn itself. In 
 other words, conscience and moral law require, in 
 order to be self-consistent and reasonable, to be 
 supplemented by the notion of a moral govern- 
 ment and a moral Governor. The demands of 
 duty necessarily imply that both humanity and 
 nature are under the rule of a God of righteous- 
 ness and are moving onwards to a moral goal — the 
 triumph of goodness. " It is not enough to know," 
 says Ullmann, " that the good has a certain author- 
 ity and supreme right given it by man. No ; we 
 must possess a much higher assurance ; we must 
 be convinced that the final triumph of goodness is 
 a part of the grand world-plan ; that the great 
 design of creation, the reason for which the world 
 exists, is, that goodness may come to its full real- 
 isation. And this certainly can be gained only 
 
244 Afiti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 from the conviction that the moral law of human 
 life has its source in the very same power which 
 called the whole economy of the world into exist- 
 ence, and which is conducting it to its goal. If, 
 then, the moral law be necessarily derived from a 
 personal Being, even from Him who created and 
 governs the universe, then is the source of the 
 moral law none other than the living, the personal 
 God." 
 
 Again, religion may be admitted not to be the 
 foundation of morality and yet maintained to be a 
 sanction of morality, which supplies to it motive 
 and inspiration. In this respect its moral value 
 may be immense. What do all men stand so 
 much in need of as motive power to love and do 
 what is right ? Our moral theories may be unex- 
 ceptionable, while our moral practices are inexcus- 
 able. We may have a clear and accurate appre- 
 hension of the whole moral code, and yet not the 
 heart or will to execute aright a single precept 
 of it. To know the moral law is not enough ; to 
 do it — in all its length and breadth — with the 
 whole heart, strength, and might, is what is re- 
 quired. Whence are we to get power to do it 
 apart from religion } The best men the world has 
 seen have confessed in all ages that they could not 
 find this power in themselves, and were even cer- 
 tain that it was not in themselves. The more I 
 interrogate consciousness and history, the more 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 245 
 
 convinced I become that they were not deluded, 
 and that if we feel differently it is not because 
 we are better or know better than they, but be- 
 cause we are worse and know ourselves worse. It 
 is only through a power above nature that nature 
 can be raised above itself, and that morality can 
 be "lighted up with the emotion and inspiration 
 needful for carrying the sage along the narrow 
 way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man 
 along it at all." And how can a man fail to 
 draw strength from faith in God ? How can he 
 believe in a God of perfect justice without being 
 encouraged and strengthened to do justice ? or 
 in a God of love without having a powerful in- 
 ducement to love all the creatures of God, and 
 to perform works of love ? Is there no power to 
 arrest and restrain from evil and ruin, in the 
 dread of the Divine displeasure against sin ? Can 
 a desire to do wrong even exist along with a vivid 
 realisation of His presence in any heart ? The 
 saintly Leighton spoke from experience, and so 
 as to give expression to the experience of thou- 
 sands of the most excellent of the earth when he 
 said: "One glance of God, a touch of His love, 
 will free and enlarge the heart, so that it can deny 
 all, and part with all, and make an entire renounc 
 ing of all, to follow Him." Now, if I am to 
 defer to experience, to facts, to induction, I can- 
 not disregard this experience, especially as it is 
 
246 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 just what reason would lead me to expect. The 
 secularist may tell me that he has no such experi- 
 ence. Of course he has not ; he could not be a 
 secularist if he had. But that one man lacks is no 
 evidence that another man does not possess ; the 
 absence of experience is not counter- experience. 
 I may even be free to think that secularist worth 
 at its best — and I have no wish to disparage it — 
 falls greatly short of saintly excellence, and that 
 the want of the experience mentioned is precisely 
 what explains why it does. 
 
 Atheism — secularism — shuts out, then, some of 
 the most impressive motives to virtuous conduct 
 by relieving men from a sense of responsibility to 
 a Supreme Being, and excluding from view His 
 universal presence and infinite perfection ; whereas 
 religion leaves all secular motives to morality in- 
 tact, while it adds to them spiritual motives of vast 
 efficacy and of the most elevating and purifying 
 character. 
 
 The alliance of secularism with utilitarianism 
 has not, I think, strengthened the former in any 
 way, but merely narrowed it. Utilitarianism is one 
 of several doubtful and disputed theories in the 
 philosophy of ethics which can only be indepen- 
 dently and intelligently estimated by specially dis- 
 ciplined students. Ordinary men, secularists in- 
 cluded, must leave theories as to the foundation 
 of morality to philosophers, or take them on trust 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 247 
 
 from philosophers. The mass of secularists can 
 be utilitarians merely by electing on very insuffi- 
 cient grounds to be led by Mr J. S. Mill and Pro- 
 fessor Bain beyond their depth. They would be 
 wiser to keep on the bank, or at least to keep in 
 shallow water. 
 
 Neither the theist nor the Christian is called 
 upon to refute utilitarianism, because neither 
 theism nor Christianity commits its adherents 
 to any theory as to the foundation of rectitude. 
 Utilitarianism in itself is neither atheistical nor 
 unchristian. It is clear that if there be a God 
 and a future life, utilitarianism cannot afford to 
 omit them from its calculations. If there be a 
 God, utility must be the indication of His will, 
 and it must be useful to attend to His will. If 
 there be a future life, it must be a very absurd 
 kind of utilitarianism which, while resting all 
 morality on pleasure and pain, yet overlooks in 
 its reckonings those pleasures and pains which are 
 far the greatest of all. At the same time, utili- 
 tarianism is, I hold, a speculation which no person 
 has yet proved, which has only been supported by 
 reasonings in which causes and consequences have 
 been strangely confounded, which proceeds from 
 narrow and erroneous conceptions as to the consti- 
 tution of human nature, and which presents no 
 adequate barrier to the most unworthy views of 
 morality. It starts from the supposition that 
 
248 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 pleasure is the sole end of life, the one thing desir- 
 able ; yet if such were the case, the selfish system, 
 not utilitarianism, would be the correct system of 
 ethics, and there would be no real morality at all. 
 If pleasure be the one thing a man naturally 
 desires, that pleasure must be his own, and he can 
 only seek the pleasure of others so far as that may 
 be conducive to his own and for the sake of his 
 own, — he can never do good to others for their 
 sake and have as much regard to the pleasures of 
 others as his own. Of course, utilitarianism, not- 
 withstanding this, inculcates disinterestedness, bids 
 us sacrifice our individual interest to the general 
 interest. But in the name of what does it bid us 
 do so } Is it in the name merely of interest } If 
 interest as such is the chief end of man, why should 
 I sacrifice my own to that of others } If the 
 supreme good of life is happiness, why am I not 
 to conclude that the supreme good of my life is 
 my happiness 1 Utilitarianism has no satisfactory 
 answer to these questions. Mr Mill, on whom 
 chiefly secularists rely with unreasoned confidence, 
 did not even venture to attempt to answer them, 
 but contented himself with merely telling us, what 
 nobody denied, that utilitarianism inculcates dis- 
 interestedness. I must not embark, however, on 
 the mare magnum of utilitarianism. 
 
 Enough has now been said, perhaps, to show 
 that secularism has nothing true to offer to any 
 
Positive Principles of Secularism. 249 
 
 class of men which they may not find elsewhere, 
 dissociated from the errors, the negations, which 
 characterise this phase of unbelief This would 
 probably not fail to be almost universally seen and 
 acknowledged if those who in the higher ranks of 
 life make profession of religion would display a 
 heartier and a manlier interest in those who are 
 in the lower ranks, so that no man might be 
 tempted to believe that religion is one of the 
 things which stand either in the way of his per- 
 sonal happiness or of justice to his class.^ 
 
 » See Appendix XXIV. 
 
250 Anti-Theistic Theories^ 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 ARE THERE TRIBES OF ATHEISTS? 
 
 In the first Lecture of this course I stated that 
 some authors had denied that there were any- 
 real or sincere atheists, but that I did not see 
 how this view could be successfully maintained. 
 In recent times a very different view has found a 
 large number of advocates. It has been argued 
 that religion, so far from being a universal, is not 
 even a general characteristic of man ; that so far 
 from there being no atheists in the world, there 
 are numerous tribes, and even some highly culti- 
 vated nations, wholly composed of atheists. The 
 belief to which in ancient times Cicero and Plutarch 
 in well-known passages gave eloquent expression — 
 the belief that wherever men exist they have some 
 form of religion — can no longer be taken for granted ; 
 for many now assert, and some have laboured to 
 prove, that there are peoples who have neither reli- 
 gious ideas, nor gods, nor any kind of worship- I 
 
Nature of the Qtiestion. 251 
 
 shall now examine this view ; but before entering 
 on its direct discussion, a few preliminary remarks 
 seem necessary. 
 
 First, then, the question, Are there entire tribes 
 and nations which have no religious beliefs or prac- 
 tices whatever ? is a question as to a matter of fact. 
 It ought to be decided, therefore, solely by an 
 appeal to facts. But it is very apt to be decided, 
 and has very often been decided, by the theolog- 
 ical or philosophical prepossessions of those who 
 have undertaken to answer it. Men like Biichner, 
 Pouchet, O. Schmidt, show by the very tone in 
 which they pronounce many of the lower tribes of 
 men to be totally devoid of religious sentiments, 
 that they deem this to be a stroke which tells 
 strongly against religion. It is impossible, I think, 
 for an impartial person, even were he on the whole 
 to approve of their conclusion, to read what they 
 have written, and to mark how they have written, 
 on this subject, without perceiving that they have 
 been more animated by dislike of religion than by 
 the love of truth. On the other hand, with many 
 it is a foregone conclusion that religion must be 
 universal ; and their reason for affirming it to be 
 universal is, not that the relevant facts prove this, 
 but that the honour of religion seems to them to 
 require it. Now on neither side can this be justi- 
 fied. The truth alone ought to be sought, and it 
 can only be found in the facts. The answer to the 
 
252 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 question, Are there peoples without religion ? ought, 
 if legitimately obtained, to be taken into account 
 in deciding whether or not man is an essentially 
 religious being ; but it is not legitimately obtained 
 if deduced from a foregone conclusion on that sub- 
 ject Its place is among the premisses of an argu- 
 ment for or against the proposition that religion is 
 rooted in man's very nature, not among corollaries 
 from it 
 
 There need not, perhaps, be great anxiety on 
 either side to arrive at a particular answer. Were 
 it made out that there are some degraded tribes 
 which have no conception of the supernatural, 
 little, it seems to me, would be proved either for or 
 against religion. It would only show that circum- 
 stances might be so unfavourable, and the minds 
 of men so inactive, dark, and debased, that the 
 religious principles or tendencies of human nature 
 could not manifest themselves. Of course, if it 
 were adequately proved that atheism is so very 
 widely prevalent as some maintain, — if it were 
 established, in other words, that not only a great 
 number of barbarous and semi-barbarous peoples 
 are devoid of all religion, but that the many mill- 
 ions of Buddhists in China and Japan are strictly 
 and properly atheists, — atheism would have con- 
 siderable reason for exultation. For, though even 
 that would certainly not prove atheism true or the- 
 ism false, it would convince unprejudiced minds that 
 
Preliminary Cautiojis. 253 
 
 human nature was not constitutionally framed for 
 religion. It would very much weaken, if it did not 
 destroy, the weighty argument for religion which the 
 religious history of man presents. Still we have 
 manifestly no right to reject the view that atheism 
 is thus widely spread, merely because we dislike 
 some of the inferences which would follow from it 
 We are bound to ask, Is it thus widely spread ? — 
 a question which can only be answered by an appeal 
 to facts ; and facts ought always to be studied with 
 minds as free as possible from preconceptions. 
 
 Not a few of the writers who have recently dis- 
 cussed the subject have been intent on showing 
 that the facts conform to the Darwinian or some 
 other theory of development. They have adapted 
 the facts to their theory, instead of testing their 
 theory by the facts. This is, of course, an unscien- 
 tific and erroneous mode of procedure. And, it 
 may be added, it is one to which the development 
 theory does not logically require us to have re- 
 course. It is as consistent with even the Darwinian 
 form of the development theory that the origin of 
 religion should be at any one point as at any other. 
 It may have been antecedent to the origin of man, 
 contemporaneous with it, or subsequent to it.^ 
 
 I remark, in the second place, that great care and 
 caution require to be exercised before we draw a 
 negative conclusion in a matter of the kind under 
 
 » See Appendix XXV. 
 
254 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 consideration. The question belongs to one of the 
 least advanced of sciences — the science of compar- 
 ative psychology. The religious characteristics of 
 men are mental peculiarities which can only be 
 successfully studied by those who are accustomed 
 to trace and analyse mental processes. But how 
 few of those who travel among savage peoples have 
 received any instruction in mental science, and 
 how little mental science is there of a kind calcu- 
 lated to serve as a guide to the correct observation 
 and interpretation of intellectual, moral, and reli- 
 gious phenomena ! The men who write those books 
 of travels in which distant lands and savage peoples 
 are described, are often more than ordinarily coa- 
 versant with zoology, botany, and other physical 
 sciences, and they can describe accurately plants, 
 animals, geological and meteorological facts, the 
 bodily peculiarities of human beings, weapons, 
 canoes, &c., but they very seldom give much trust- 
 worthy information as to the mental operations of 
 the aborigines with whom they have come into 
 contact. Even such eminent observers of out- 
 ward nature as Mr Wallace and Mr Bates, for 
 example, were obviously able to make out ex- 
 tremely little as to the inner life of the Amazon- 
 ian tribes. When a traveller tells us that he found 
 among the natives of some barbarous land no 
 traces of religious belief, we must consider whether 
 or not he had the means and opportunities required 
 
Preliminary Cautions. 255 
 
 to arrive at the truth in the matter; whether or 
 not he was sufficiently master of the tribal lan- 
 guage to converse easily in it ; whether or not he 
 had so thoroughly gained the confidence of those 
 whose religious beliefs he sought to ascertain that 
 they were quite open and unreserved in communi- 
 cating to him their most secret and most sacred 
 thoughts and feelings ; whether or not his inquiries 
 were of a really intelligent kind ; how far these 
 inquiries extended ; how far the impression which 
 he derived from his intercourse with some indi- 
 viduals might have been modified if he had had 
 more intercourse with other individuals of the 
 same community ; whether he knew much, little, 
 or nothing of their songs and traditions, &c. A 
 foreigner is very rarely a competent and impartial 
 judge. It is so even with respect to civilised peo- 
 ples, and must be still more so with respect to 
 barbarous peoples. After years of residence in 
 England, a Frenchman's book on English life is 
 apt to be on many points amusingly absurd. 
 What must, then, the liabilities to error be in the 
 case of countries rarely or never visited before, and 
 which the traveller merely hurries through, know- 
 ing imperfectly or not at all the languages spoken ? 
 In savage countries the stranger is generally an 
 object of dislike, or at least of distrust Disinter- 
 ested curiosity is what an uncivilised man cannot 
 understand, and to question him is often of itself 
 
256 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 sufficient to render him suspicious and evasive. 
 He is, in general, specially averse to being ques- 
 tioned about his religious beliefs. It doubtless 
 seems to him a sort of profanation to converse 
 regarding them with one whom he perceives to 
 despise them, and a humiliation to give expression 
 to his vague feelings and incoherent convictions on 
 such matters before one whom he cannot but feel 
 to be intellectually above him. If the questioner 
 be a missionary seeking to propagate the prin- 
 ciples of his own faith, of course the barbarian is 
 all the more likely to take refuge in silence and 
 feigned ignorance. 
 
 In confirmation of these remarks, I may quote 
 the following sentences from the valuable work of 
 Mr Tylor on ' Primitive Culture.' He says : " Even 
 with much time, and care, and knowledge of lan- 
 guage, it is not always easy to elicit from savages 
 the details of their theology. They try to hide 
 from the prying and contemptuous foreigner their 
 worship of gods who seem to shrink, like their 
 worshippers, before the white man and his mightier 
 Deity. Mr Sproat's experience in Vancouver's 
 Island is an apt example of this state of things. 
 He says : ' I was two years among the Ahts, with 
 my mind constantly directed towards the subject 
 of their religious beliefs, before I could discover 
 that they possessed any ideas as to an overruling 
 power or a future state of existence. The traders 
 
Preliminary Cautions. 257 
 
 on the coast, and other persons well acquainted 
 with the people, told me that they had no such 
 ideas, and this opinion was confirmed by conversa- 
 tion with many of the less intelligent savages ; but 
 at last I succeeded in getting a satisfactory clue.' 
 It then appeared that the Ahts had all the time 
 been hiding a whole characteristic system of re- 
 ligious doctrines as to souls and their migrations, 
 the spirits who do good and ill to men, and the 
 great gods above all. Thus, even where no posi- 
 tive proof of religious ideas among any particular 
 tribe has reached us, we should distrust its denial 
 by observers whose acquaintance with the tribe in 
 question has not been intimate as well as kindly." 
 
 I would remark, in the third place, that we must 
 beware of denying that a rude and feebly devel- 
 oped religion is religion at all. We must not ex- 
 pect too much. Many who have affirmed that such 
 and such peoples were destitute of religion have 
 done so because these peoples did not believe in 
 one supreme God, or had no proper conception of a 
 Creator or Moral Governor. They have identified 
 religion with theism, and represented as destitute 
 of religion tribes whose doctrines fell so far short 
 of their own that they thought them unworthy to 
 be designated religious. As the early Christians 
 were called atheists because they disowned the 
 gods of pagan Rome, so several heathen tribes 
 have been called atheists by those who could find 
 
 R 
 
258 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 among them no traces of belief in the one true 
 God ; or if not called atheists they have been said 
 to have no religion but merely supeistitions. Tes- 
 timony of this kind, however, is quite worthless 
 when the point to be decided is whether religion is 
 universal or not. Superstition, as understood by 
 the writers referred to, just means false religion, 
 and the presence of false religion is as good evi- 
 dence of the existence of religion as the presence 
 of true religion. The distinction between religion 
 and superstition is a very important one in its 
 proper place, but it has no relevancy here, and the 
 employment of it in this connection is a sure sign 
 of confusion of thought. We have no right to 
 identify religion with particular phases of religion. 
 We have no right to pronounce a low or bad 
 religion no religion at all. We have no right to 
 include in our definition of religion the belief in 
 one Supreme Being, in the creation of the world, 
 in the immortality of the soul, or a regulated out- 
 ward worship, or a priesthood, &c. We are in- 
 quiring whether or not religion in some form is 
 everywhere to be discovered ; and in order to arrive 
 at a correct answer, we must not ignore or discard 
 any form of it, however humble or ignoble, how- 
 ever undeveloped or degenerate. 
 
 We must be content with a minimum definition, 
 — with the definition which comprehends all pheno- 
 mena admitted to be religious. Perhaps if we say 
 
Preliminary Cautions. 259 
 
 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 — one excluding nothing which can be 
 called religion, and including nothing which is only 
 partially present in religion. It is in this its widest 
 sense that we have to understand religion when we 
 discuss whether or not there are peoples destitute 
 of religion. 
 
 Of the recent writers who have undertaken to 
 show that there are peoples wholly without religi- 
 ous ideas, feelings, or practices, Sir John Lubbock 
 is, so far as I am aware, entitled to the credit of 
 having bestowed most care on the argument. He 
 has certainly written with more knowledge and in 
 a more scientific spirit than Bijchner, Pouchet, O. 
 Schmidt, or Moritz Wagner. He has brought to- 
 gether a much larger number of apparent facts 
 than any one else on the same side has done. He 
 has presented them in a manner to which, so far 
 as tone and temper are concerned, no objection 
 can be fairly taken. If he err, as I think he does, 
 it is only his science which is at fault. I shall 
 follow, therefore, his statement of the argument 
 against the universality of religion, as presented 
 in the last edition of his * Prehistoric Times,' and 
 examine it paragraph by paragraph, as there 
 
26o Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 seems to be no other way of satisfactorily deal- 
 ing with it. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock writes, then, thus : " Accord- 
 ing to Spix and Martins, Bates, and Wallace, some 
 of the Brazilian Indians were entirely without re- 
 ligion. Burmeister confirms this statement, and 
 in the list of the principal tribes of the valley of 
 the Amazons, published by the Hakluyt Society, 
 the Chuncos are stated ' to have no religion what- 
 ever,' and we are told that the Curetus * have no 
 idea of a Supreme Being/ The Tupinambas 
 of Brazil had no religion. The South American 
 Indians of the Gran Chaco are said by the mis- 
 sionaries to have ' no religious or idolatrous belief 
 or worship whatever ; neither do they possess any 
 idea of a God, or of a Supreme Being. They make 
 no distinction between right and wrong, and have 
 therefore neither fear nor hope of any present or 
 future punishment or reward, nor any mysterious 
 terror of some supernatural power, whom they 
 might seek to assuage by sacrifices or supersti- 
 tious rites.' Bates tells us ' that some of the Indian 
 tribes on the Upper Amazons have no idea of a 
 Supreme Being, and consequently have no word 
 to express it in their own languages.' Azara also 
 makes the same statement as regards many of the 
 South American tribes visited by him." 
 
 These are Sir John Lubbock's instances from 
 South American tribes. But I find that they are 
 
Sir y. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 261 
 
 all either erroneous or insufficiently established. 
 Gerland (' Anthropologische Beitrage/ i. 283) has 
 correctly pointed out that the passage of Spix and 
 Martius to which Sir J. Lubbock refers, instead oi 
 saying that the Brazilian Indians were entirely 
 without religion, tells us that, although engrossed 
 in the present, they had a certain reverence for the 
 moon and particular stars, believed in a Principle 
 of Evil, had priests who professed to have inter- 
 course with demons, and highly honoured certain 
 animals which they supposed to be messengers 
 from the dead. This is a very different story in- 
 deed. I do not doubt that, "in the list of the 
 principal tribes of the valley of the Amazons, 
 published by the Hakluyt Society, the Chuncos 
 are stated * to have no religion whatever,' and we 
 are told that the Curetus have no idea of a Su- 
 preme Being ; ' " but what proof is there that these 
 statements are not unwarranted ? It will never do 
 to believe such statements — sweeping negatives — 
 merely because they happen to be printed. The 
 assertion that the Tupinambas of Brazil had no 
 religion is not to be received. It is unsupported 
 by any positive evidence ; contradicted by the 
 testimony of Stade, for example, who was nine 
 months a prisoner among them ; and inconsist- 
 ent with the fact that several later writers have 
 described the religion of the Tupi race. Tupan, 
 the thunder-god, was the chief deity. The mis- 
 
262 Anti-Theistic TJteories. 
 
 sionaries cited by Lubbock have obviously painted 
 the Indians of the Gran Chaco in too sombre 
 colours. Instead of making no distinction be- 
 tween right and wrong, the Indians of the Gran 
 Chaco appear to be among the best of the 
 American tribes. For example, they do not tor- 
 ture the prisoners whom they take in war, and 
 treat kindly the captive women and children. 
 About their mental life little is known, however, 
 as they are irreconcilably hostile to their civilised 
 neighbours, have no villages, and live very much 
 on horseback. As to the assertion of Mr Bates, it 
 rests on too narrow a conception of what religion 
 is, which, as I have already said, must not be iden- 
 tified with belief in one Supreme Being, or in a 
 Creator properly so called. Further, it greatly 
 needs confirmation, being contrary to the facts 
 and testimonies collected by J. G. Miiller and by 
 Waitz. It is inexplicable that Sir John Lubbock 
 should have ignored as he does researches so well 
 known and highly appreciated by students of the 
 natural history of man. Then we should not only 
 have been told that Don Felix de Azara denies 
 religion to many of the American tribes visited by 
 him, but also that he describes the religious beliefs 
 and practices of the very tribes which he denies 
 to have religion. This must strike every one who 
 reads his work ; and Valckenaer, D'Orbigny, and 
 Tylor have called attention to it. His statement 
 
Sir y. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 263 
 
 that the tribes he visited had no religion needs no 
 other contradiction than his own. I am glad to 
 perceive that Lubbock does not include, as Locke 
 and various writers have done, the Caribs among 
 peoples without a religion, for they are known to 
 have worshipped a god of the moon, of the sun, of 
 the wind, of the sea, and a number of evil spirits, 
 with Mabocha as their chief But I think he 
 might have told us that Humboldt, whose travels 
 in South America were so extensive, whose explo- 
 rations were so varied, scientific, and successful, 
 and who was certainly uninfluenced by traditional 
 theological beliefs, found no tribes and peoples 
 without a religion ; and that Prince Max von 
 Neuwied, in all his many and wide wanderings 
 in Brazil, tells us that he had found no tribes of 
 which the members did not give manifest signs 
 of religious feelings.-^ 
 
 Sir J. Lubbock thus proceeds : " Father Bae- 
 gert, who lived as a missionary among the Indians 
 of California for seventeen years, affirms that 
 'idols, temples, religious worship or ceremonies, 
 were unknown to them, and that they neither 
 believed in the true and only God, nor adored 
 false deities ; ' and M. de Perouse also says that 
 'they had no knowledge of a God or of a future 
 state.* Golden, who had ample means of judging, 
 assures us that the celebrated ' five nations ' of 
 
 1 See Appendix XXVI. 
 
264 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Canada * had no public worship nor any word for 
 God;' and Hearne, who lived amongst the North 
 American Indians for years, and was perfectly 
 acquainted with their habits and language, says 
 the same of some tribes on Hudson's Bay." 
 
 Now to the assertion of Father Baegert we may 
 oppose a most interesting account of the faith of 
 the Californians left by Father Boscana, one of 
 the earliest missionaries to Upper California. Mr 
 Bancroft, whose researches have been most labo- 
 rious and extensive, informs us that " the Califor- 
 nian tribes, taken as a whole, are pretty uniform 
 in the main features of their theogonic beliefs. 
 They seem, without exception, to have had a 
 hazy conception of a lofty, almost supreme being ; 
 for the most part referred to as a Great Man, the 
 Old Man Above, the One Above ; attributing to 
 him, however, as is usual in such cases, nothing 
 but the vaguest and most negative functions and 
 qualities. The real practical power that most 
 interested them, who had most to do with them 
 and they with him, was a demon, or body of 
 demons, of a tolerably pronounced character " 
 (iii. 158). The view adopted by Sir J. Lubbock 
 regarding the Californians is irreconcilable also 
 with the series of testimonies adduced by Waitz. 
 Then the negative reports of Colden (1755) and 
 of Hearne (1769-1772) are not to be allowed to 
 outweigh the contrary reports of numerous other 
 
Sir jf. Lubbock's histances Examined. 265 
 
 witnesses no less credible. Further, we are not 
 justified in concluding that a people has no reli- 
 gion because it has "no public worship nor any 
 word for God." It is clearly proved that the 
 Canadian Indians believed in supernatural beings, 
 and, in fact, in legions of spirits. The sorcery 
 prevalent among them may be viewed as a per- 
 verted form of worship. The Koniagas even 
 believe in a chief deity, the Thlinkets in a creator 
 of all beings and things, the Haidahs suppose the 
 great solar spirit to be the Creator and Supreme 
 Ruler, &c. &c. Belief in a former of the universe 
 is, in fact, the rule among the North American 
 Indians. The exceptions are few and doubtful.^ 
 Sir J. Lubbock, passing from North America to 
 Polynesia and Australasia, thus continues: "In 
 the ' Voyage de I'Astrolabe ' it is stated that the 
 natives of the Samoan and Solomon Islands in 
 the Pacific had no religion ; and in the ' Voyage of 
 the Novara ' the same is said of the Caroline 
 Islanders. The Samoans ' have neither moraes, 
 nor temples, nor altars, nor ofi"erings, and con- 
 sequently none of the sanguinary rites observed 
 at the other groups. In consequence of this, the 
 Samoans were considered an impious race ; and 
 their impiety became proverbial with the people 
 of Rarotonga, for, when upbraiding a person who 
 neglected the worship of the gods, they would call 
 
 ^ See Appendix XXVII, 
 
266 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 him ' a godless Samoan.' On Damood Island, 
 between Australia and New Guinea, Jukes could 
 find no 'traces of any religious belief or obser- 
 vance.' Duradawan, a sepoy, who lived some 
 time with the Andaman Islanders, maintained 
 that they had no religion, and Dr Mouatt believes 
 his statements to be correct. Some of the Aus- 
 tralian tribes, also, are said to have no religion. 
 In the Pellew Islands Wilson found no religious 
 buildings, nor any sign of religion. Mr Wallace, 
 who had excellent opportunities for judging, and 
 whose merits as an observer no one can question, 
 tells us that, among the people of Wanumbai, in 
 the Aru Islands, he could find no trace of a reli- 
 gion ; adding, however, that he was but a short 
 time among them." 
 
 It is very strange that Sir John should continue 
 through three editions of his work to represent the 
 Samoan Islanders as destitute of religious beliefs. 
 Williams, in the passage quoted, says nothing of 
 the kind, but, what is very different indeed, that 
 they were considered impious and called godless 
 by their neighbours, because they did not worship 
 in the same manner as they did. They were 
 called "godless" by the people of Rarotonga, just 
 as the early Christians were called godless by the 
 pagan Romans. Williams merely cites the Raro- 
 tongan proverb, but Sir John asks us to endorse 
 it. That is impossible, especially since the Rev 
 
Sir y. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 267 
 
 George Turner has given us, in his 'Nineteen 
 Years in Polynesia' (i 861), a valuable and elabo- 
 rate account of the Samoan religion. That the 
 natives of the Samoan Islands should ever have 
 been stated to have no religion, shows only how 
 little credit ought to be attached to general state- 
 ments of the kind, when not founded on close and 
 careful examination. The treachery and ferocity 
 of the Solomon Islanders have prevented Euro- 
 peans acquiring much acquaintance with their 
 characters, but that they are not without religious 
 beliefs is proved by their having idols, sometimes 
 ten or more feet high, to which they make offer- 
 ings of food. Gerland, one of the leading ethnol- 
 ogists of Germany, has shown that the inhabi- 
 tants of the Caroline Islands are not destitute 
 of religious conceptions. Jukes was but a short 
 time in Damood Island, one of the Torres Islands, 
 and Meinicke has described the religious beliefs 
 prevalent in these islands. That "Duradawan, a 
 sepoy, who lived some time with the Andaman 
 Islanders, maintained that they had no religion," 
 by no means proves that they have none. A far 
 more intelligent man. Father Mersenne, so well 
 known as the friend of Descartes, spent most of 
 his life in Paris, and yet affirmed that there were 
 sixty thousand atheists in that city. Dr Mouatt 
 had no intimate or lengthened intercourse with 
 the Andaman Islanders. Sir J. Lubbock does 
 
268 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 injustice to Captain Wilson, who believed himself 
 to have ascertained that the Pellew Islanders had 
 some notions of a religion, and certainly believed 
 in a future life. It is improbable that the Wa- 
 numbai are without religion, since it appears from 
 the testimonies of Kolff, of Wallace himself, &c., 
 that the other Aru Islanders are not. Gabelentz, 
 in his work on the ' Melanesian Languages,' has 
 shown that words for God, Spirit, &c., are very 
 widely diffused over the Australasian and Poly- 
 nesian areas. Our author perhaps deserves com- 
 mendation for not having spoken more copiously 
 and confidently about the Australian tribes. Most 
 writers who maintain that the atheism of igno- 
 rance is man's original condition, lay great em- 
 phasis on the alleged absence of religion among 
 the natives of Australia. But in doing so they 
 rest on what is only alleged and not real. In 
 proof, I may quote from Mr Tylor, who is ad- 
 mitted to be second to no one in this country as 
 an ethnologist. He says : " It is not unusual for 
 the very writer who declares in general terms the 
 absence of religious phenomena among some sav- 
 age people, himself to give evidence that shows 
 his expressions to be misleading. Thus Dr Lang 
 not only declares that the aborigines of Australia 
 have no idea of a supreme divinity, creator, and 
 judge — no object of worship, no idol, temple, or 
 sacrifice, but that, ' in short, they have nothing 
 
Sir y, Lubbock's Instances Examined. 269 
 
 whatever of the character of religion, or of reli- 
 gious observance, to distinguish them from the 
 beasts that perish.' More than one writer has 
 since made use of this telling statement, but with- 
 out referring to certain details which occur in the 
 very same book. From these it appears that a 
 disease like smallpox, which sometimes attacks 
 the natives, is ascribed by them * to the influence 
 of Budyah, an evil spirit who delights in mis- 
 chief ; ' that when the natives rob a wild bees' 
 hive, they generally leave a little of the honey for 
 Buddai ; that at certain biennial gatherings of the 
 Queensland tribes, young girls are slain in sac- 
 rifice to propitiate some evil divinity ; and that, 
 lastly, according to the evidence of the Rev. W. 
 Ridley, 'whenever he has conversed with the 
 aborigines, he found them to have definite tradi- 
 tions concerning supernatural beings, — Baiame, 
 whose voice they hear in thunder ; Turramullan, 
 the chief of demons, who is the author of disease, 
 mischief, and wisdom, and appears in the form of 
 a serpent at their great assemblies,' &c. By the 
 concurring testimony of a crowd of observers, it is 
 known that the natives of Australia were at their 
 discovery, and have since remained, a race with 
 minds saturated with the most vivid belief in 
 souls, demons, and deities."^ 
 
 Sir John Lubbock next seeks proofs of his thesis 
 1 See Appendix XXVIII. 
 
2/0 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 in India. "The Yenadies and the Villees, accord- 
 ing to Dr Short, are entirely without any belief in 
 a future state ; and again, Hooker tells us that the 
 Lepchas of Northern India have no religion." 
 
 Now the former of these statements, even if true, 
 is not relevant. Belief in a future state is not to 
 be identified with religion. The ancient Hebrews 
 have often been accused of ignorance of a future 
 life, but no one has ever said that they were 
 without any religion. Then, the account of Dr 
 Hooker's testimony regarding the Lepchas is most 
 inadequate and misleading. Here are Dr Hooker's 
 words from his Himalayan Journals : " The Lep- 
 chas profess no religion, though acknowledging 
 the existence of good and bad spirits. To the 
 good they pay no heed. ' Why should we ? ' they 
 say : ' the good spirits do us no harm ; the evil 
 spirits, who dwell in every rock, grove, and moun- 
 tain, are constantly at mischief, and to them we 
 must pray, for they hurt us.' Every tribe has a 
 priest-doctor ; he neither knows nor attempts to 
 practise the healing art, but he is a pure exorcist, 
 all bodily ailments being deemed the operation of 
 devils, who are cast out by prayers and invocations. 
 Still they acknowledge the Lamas to be very holy 
 men, and were the latter only moderately active, 
 they would soon convert all the Lepchas *' (i 
 135). It was absurd and self-contradictory in Dr 
 Hooker to begin these lines with the words, '' The 
 
Sir y. LubbocJ^s Instances Examined. 271 
 
 Lepchas profess no religion." These words should 
 clearly not have been there, and Sir J. Lubbock 
 would then not have been able to improve them 
 into " the Lepchas of Northern India have no re- 
 ligion." It is clear from Hooker's own words that 
 such is very far from being the case. Substantially 
 his account is in perfect agreement with that con- 
 tained in Colonel Dalton's * Descriptive Ethnol- 
 ogy of Bengal, compiled from Official Documents.' 
 Colonel Dalton, chiefly on the authority of Dr A. 
 Campbell (see Note in the Journal of the Asiatic 
 Society, Bengal, 1840), informs us that the Lepchas 
 are mostly Buddhists, and have priests, who are 
 educated partly at home and partly in the great 
 monasteries of Thibet. All testimony regarding 
 the Lepchas agrees in representing them as a 
 physically handsome, constitutionally timid and 
 peaceable, morally affectionate, and religiously 
 susceptible people. 
 
 I pass on to what Sir John has to say of Africa, 
 so far as the subject in hand is concerned. " Cap- 
 tain Grant could find ' no distinct form of religion ' 
 in some of the comparatively civilised tribes visit- 
 ed by him. According to Burchell, the Bachapins 
 (Caffres) had no form of worship or religion. They 
 thought ' that everything made itself, and that trees 
 and herbs grew by their own will' They had no 
 belief in a good deity, but some vague idea of an 
 evil being. Indeed the first idea of God is almost 
 
2/2 Anti-Thcistic Theories. 
 
 always as an evil spirit. Speaking of the Foulahs 
 of Wassoulo, in Central Africa, Cailli6 states : * I 
 tried to discover whether they had any religion of 
 their own — whether they worshipped fetishes, or the 
 sun, moon, or stars — but I could never perceive any 
 religious ceremony among them.' Again, he says 
 of the Bambaras, that, 'like the people of Was- 
 soulo, they have no religion, — adding, however, 
 that they have great faith in charms. Burton also 
 states that some of the tribes in the lake districts of 
 Central Africa ' admit neither God, nor angel, nor 
 devil.' Speaking of Hottentots, Le Vaillant says : 
 ' Je n'y ai vu aucune trace de religion, rien qui ap- 
 proche meme de I'idee d'un etre vengeur et remu- 
 nerateur. J'ai vecu assez longtemps avec eux, chez 
 eux au sein de leurs deserts paisibles; j'ai fait, 
 avec ces braves humains, des voyages dans des 
 regions fort eloignees ; nuUe part je n'ai rencon- 
 tre rien qui ressemble ^ la religion.' Livingstone 
 mentions that on one occasion, after talking to a 
 Bushman for some time, as he supposed, about the 
 Deity, he found that the savage thought that he 
 was speaking about Sekomi, the principal chief of 
 the district." 
 
 This passage is as incorrect as those which pre- 
 cede it. Captain Grant, in his walk across Africa, 
 could not be expected to acquire an intimate know- 
 ledge of the tribes he visited, and his not finding a 
 "distinct form of religion" among some of these 
 
 I 
 
Sir y. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 273 
 
 tribes can be no proof of their not possessing even 
 the rudiments of religion. The lower forms of 
 religion are occasionally very indistinct. What 
 Burchell affirms of the want of religion in a partic- 
 ular Caffre tribe, is more than counterbalanced by 
 the fact that the Caffre tribes in general are well 
 known to have religious beliefs and rites ; while, 
 even according to the account of Burchell, the tribe 
 mentioned had a vague idea of an evil being. The 
 Foulahs are mostly Mohammedans, and what Cail- 
 lie says about the absence of religion among them 
 can only be true of individuals over a limited area, 
 and in exceptionally unfavourable circumstances. 
 The warmest of Mr Burton's friends will hardly 
 include among his merits caution and moderation 
 either of judgment or statement. Le Vaillant's 
 estimate of the Hottentots is inconsistent with 
 the testimonies of many other travellers. The 
 story about Livingstone and the Bushman prob- 
 ably illustrates merely the difficulty of conver- 
 sational intercourse between a Scotchman and a 
 Bushman. It should at least have been remem- 
 bered that Livingstone has written in regard to the 
 peoples of South Africa, " There is no need for 
 beginning to tell even the most degraded of these 
 people of the existence of a God, or of a future 
 state — the facts being universally admitted. . . . 
 On questioning intelligent men among the Back- 
 wains as to their former knowledge of good and 
 
 S 
 
2/4 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 evil, of God, and of a future state, they have scouted 
 the idea of any of them ever having been without 
 a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects." 
 Sir John Lubbock has done well not to endorse 
 Sir Samuel Baker's statements as to tribes without 
 religion visited by him in Central Africa. Their 
 inaccuracy was generally detected as soon as pub- 
 lished. Other travellers had discovered and de- 
 scribed what Sir Samuel fancied did not exist. 
 Professor O. Schmidt refers us to " the Niam-Niam, 
 that highly interesting dwarf-people of Central 
 Africa," as an example of a people " without a 
 word for God." It so happens that the Niam- 
 Niam are 7iot a dwarf-people, and have a word for 
 God. Prof Schmidt should have known some- 
 thing about Schweinfurth's book before appealing 
 ro it. 
 
 The next case adduced by our author is very 
 instructive. He writes : " Speaking of the Esqui- 
 maux, Ross says, ' Ervick, being the senior of the 
 first party that came on board, was judged to be 
 the most proper person to question on the subject 
 of religion. I directed Sacheuse to ask him if he 
 had any knowledge of a Supreme Being ; but after 
 trying every word used in his own language to 
 express it, he could not make him understand 
 what he meant. It was distinctly ascertained that 
 he did not worship the sun, moon, stars, or any 
 ^ See Appendix XXIX. 
 
Sir J. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 275 
 
 image or living creature. When asked what the 
 sun or moon was for, he said to give light. He 
 had no knowledge or idea how he came into being, 
 or of a future state ; but said that when he died he 
 would be put into the ground. Having fully ascer- 
 tained that he had no idea of a beneficent Supreme 
 Being, I proceeded, through Sacheuse, to inquire if 
 he believed in an evil spirit ; but he could not be 
 made to understand what it meant. . . . He was 
 positive that in this incantation he did not receive 
 assistance from anything, nor could he be made to 
 understand what a good or an evil spirit meant' " 
 
 Now, I ask, is it reasonable to conclude from the 
 fact that a single Esquimaux, when questioned by 
 Captain Ross, through an interpreter who could 
 only speak a different dialect from that of the per- 
 son questioned, did not give evidence of possessing 
 any definite ideas regarding a Divine Being, that 
 there are Esquimaux peoples without any religious 
 opinions or sentiments } The Esquimaux peoples 
 are known to have a tolerably developed religion. 
 They suppose the world to be ruled by various 
 supernatural beings, who are overruled by a su- 
 preme being. To certain men, called " angakok," 
 there is supposed to be granted a certain control 
 over the ordinary deities for purposes of good.^ 
 
 Sir John Lubbock thus concludes his argument : 
 *• In some cases travellers have arrived at their 
 
 ^ See Appendix XXX. 
 
276 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 views very much to their own astonishment. Thus 
 Father Dobritzhoffer says : ' Theologians agree in 
 denying that any man in possession of his reason 
 can, without a crime, remain ignorant of God for 
 any length of time. This opinion I warmly de- 
 fended in the University of Cordoba, where I fin- 
 ished the four years' course of theology begun at 
 Gratz, in Styria. But what was my astonishment 
 when, on removing from thence to a colony of 
 Abipones, I found that the whole language of these 
 savages does not contain a single word which ex- 
 presses God or a divinity. To instruct them in 
 religion, it was necessary to borrow the Spanish 
 word for God, and insert into the catechism " Dios 
 ecnam coogerik," *' God the creator of things." ' 
 We have already observed a case of this kind in 
 Kolben, who, in spite of the assertions of the na- 
 tives themselves, felt quite sure that certain dances 
 must be of a religious character, * let the Hotten- 
 tots say what they will.' Again, Mr Matthews, 
 who went out to act as missionary among the Fue- 
 gians, but was soon obliged to abandon the hope- 
 less task, observed only one act 'which could be 
 supposed devotional.' He sometimes, we are 
 told, ' heard a great howling or lamentation about 
 sunrise in the morning; and upon asking Jemmy 
 Button what occasioned the outcry, he could ob- 
 tain no satisfactory answer : the boy only saying, 
 " People very sad, cry very much." ' This appears 
 
Sir y. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 277 
 
 so natural and sufficient an explanation, that why 
 the outcry should be supposed devotional, I must 
 confess myself unable to see. Once more, Dr 
 Hooker states that the Khasias, an Indian tribe, 
 had no religion. Colonel Yule, on the contrary, 
 says that they have ; but he admits that breaking 
 hens' eggs is ' the principal part of their religious 
 practice.' But if most travellers have expected to 
 find a religion everywhere, and have been con- 
 vinced, almost against their will, that the reverse 
 is the case, it is quite possible that there may have 
 been others who have too hastily denied the exist- 
 ence of a religion among the tribes they visited. 
 However this may be, those who assert that even 
 the lowest savages believe in a Supreme Deity, 
 affirm that which is directly contrary to the evi- 
 dence. The direct testimony of travellers on this 
 point is indirectly corroborated by their other 
 statements. How, for instance, can a people who 
 are unable to count their own fingers, possibly 
 raise their mind so far as to admit even the rudi- 
 ments of a religion } " 
 
 On this paragraph I have to make the follow- 
 ing remarks. Father Dobritzhoffer went out to the 
 Abipones, expecting to find among them a know 
 ledge of God, and not finding even a word to 
 designate God, he concluded that they had no 
 religion. He expected, that is to say, far too 
 much ; and not finding it, he concluded that there 
 
278 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 was nothing whatever in the way of religion to 
 find. Missionaries have erred thus very often. 
 They have identified religion with true religion ; 
 and when they could not discover the latter, they 
 have denied the existence of the former. From 
 the want of a word for God in a language, it cannot 
 be fairly inferred that those who use the language 
 have no belief in gods, no religious notions or feel- 
 ings. The Australians have no word for tree, or 
 fish, or bird, but they are certainly not ignorant of 
 trees, fishes, and birds. This is not all, for Dobritz- 
 hofier, too, disproves his own assertion. He tells 
 us how the Abipones paid a certain reverence to 
 the stars, and, in particular, how they associated 
 the Pleiades with a chief deity — a highest spiritual 
 agent; how they believed in evil spirits, in sorcery, 
 8z:c. As to Kolben and the Hottentots, I do not 
 understand on what grounds Sir John Lubbock 
 suppresses the fact that Kolben informs us that 
 the Hottentots of his time had a firm faith in a 
 supreme power, which they termed Gounya Te- 
 quoa, or the' god of all gods, although they paid 
 him no adoration ; and that they had an evil deity, 
 called Toutouka, whom they supposed to be the 
 author of all mischief in the universe, and to whom 
 they offered sacrifices in order to appease his ill- 
 temper. That the Hottentots worship the moon is 
 quite certain, apart from Kolben's testimony ; and 
 Sir John Lubbock bad no right whatever to set 
 
Sir y. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 279 
 
 Kolben's testimony aside. The Fuegians are not 
 known to have any well-defined notions of religion, 
 but they have superstitions and conjurors. We re- 
 quire to wait for information as to what their beliefs 
 really are. Mr Darwin and Mr Matthews seem to 
 have been both dependent on the Jemmy Button 
 mentioned by Sir John Lubbock in their inquiries 
 regarding the religious sentiments of the Fuegians. 
 I must confess I cannot consider Jemmy's explana- 
 tion of the facts described by Mr Matthews as quite 
 so satisfactory as Sir John thinks it. That people 
 should cry very much when they are sad is natural 
 enough ; but the peculiarity of the case is the cry- 
 ing at a particular time, is the assembling to howl 
 or lament at sunrise. No amount of sadness, it 
 seems to me, can account for that; while, of course, 
 a little religious belief would. Then, as to the 
 Khasias, the testimony of Dr Hooker is again mis- 
 represented precisely as in the case of the Lepchas, 
 while nothing is adduced to disprove that of Colo- 
 nel Yule. The Khasias recognise the existence of 
 a Supreme Being, although they only worship the 
 inferior spirits, who are supposed to inhabit the 
 mountains, glens, and heaths. They offer liba- 
 tions to the gods before drinking. '* Breaking 
 hens' eggs" is their method of taking auguries — 
 and perhaps one not more ridiculous than those 
 practised by the ancient Greeks and Romans.^ 
 
 1 See Appendix XXXI. 
 
28o Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 I have now laid before you the evidence which 
 Sir John Lubbock has been able to bring forward 
 in support of the position that there are many 
 peoples and tribes wholly destitute of religion. 
 He has shown more industry in the collection of 
 facts favourable to the conclusion which he draws 
 than any other ethnologist or anthropologist, so 
 far as' I know, and for his industry he certainly 
 deserves commendation ; but it is impossible to 
 credit him with having carefully and critically 
 ascertained what are to be regarded as facts and 
 what not. I do not charge him with having al- 
 lowed any theological prepossessions to bias his 
 judgments as to the facts. I gladly acknowledge 
 that he displays nothing of the utterly unscientific 
 and anti- religious bitterness which characterises 
 what some have written on this subject. I look 
 at his proposition and proof purely from an anthro- 
 pological point of view, and I find that the pro- 
 position is not made out, that the proof is wholly 
 unsatisfactory — for the so-called facts which consti- 
 tute the proof are not really facts. But " how," he 
 asks, " can a people who are unable to count their 
 own fingers, possibly raise their minds so far as 
 to admit even the rudiments of a religion?" I 
 answer, first, by asking, Is it then quite certain 
 that there are peoples unable to count their own 
 fingers } I know that the statement has become 
 a commonplace among anthropologists, but I do 
 
Sir jf. Lubbock's Instances Examined. 28) 
 
 not find that there is much evidence produced for 
 it. The AustraHans, according to Sir John Lub- 
 bock, cannot count above three, and have no word 
 for any higher number. Yet one of his own vo- 
 cabularies shows how they count far above three. 
 Thus t7^es, their word for three, thrice repeated is 
 nine, which shows that these Australians can not 
 only count above three but can count by multi- 
 plying threes. The evidence on which anthro- 
 pologists have concluded that the Australians 
 cannot count above three would prove that Eng- 
 lishmen cannot count thirteen and upwards, since 
 thirteen, fourteen, &c., are only three and ten, 
 four and ten, &c., put together. But, further, 
 whether the Australians can or can not count their 
 own fingers, it is certain that they have the rudi- 
 ments of a religion; and we are bound to accept 
 what is fact whether we can account for it or not, 
 whether we can reconcile it with some other fact 
 or not. 
 
 I do not venture to maintain that there are no 
 tribes, no peoples, wholly destitute of religion, 
 wholly without any sense of dependence on in- 
 visible powers. It may be that there are. I only 
 say that, so far as I can judge, it has not been 
 made out that there is any such tribe, any such 
 people ; and the examination of Sir John Lub' 
 bock's instances, far from leading me to his con- 
 clusion, leaves me with the conviction that, if 
 
282 Ajiti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 there be any such peoples they must be very few 
 indeed. 
 
 But I must not overlook that an attack on 
 the universality of religion, or at least on the uni- 
 versality of belief in a God, has been made from 
 another side. The very marvellous system of 
 thought called Buddhism, which originated in 
 India about five hundred years before the advent 
 of Christ, has spread over a greater area of the 
 earth, and gained more adherents than even Chris- 
 tianity, and by peaceful means — by the power of 
 persuasion — not by force of arms, not by persecu- 
 tion. Disregarding all distinctions of class, nation, 
 and race, and enforcing no social laws or theories, 
 but concentratini^ its whole energy on showing the 
 way to eternal deliverance from evil, it has propa- 
 gated itself in a much more remarkable manner 
 than Mohammedanism. Although driven out of 
 India — Nepaul excepted — after having flourished 
 there for centuries, its devoted missionaries have 
 spread it over Ceylon and Burmah, China and 
 Japan, Tartary and Thibet. But Buddhism, we 
 are told, is a system of atheism ; and the three 
 hundred millions of people by whom it is em- 
 braced, ignore in the most absolute manner the 
 notion not only of a future state but of a deity. 
 "There is not the slightest trace of a belief in 
 God in all Buddhism," says M. Barthelemy Saint- 
 Hilaire ; and many others speak as strongly. 
 
Are Buddhists Atheists? 283 
 
 A very little examination, however, shows that 
 such statements are stronger than they ought to 
 be, and that they cannot but mislead unless they 
 are explained and limited. In this religion which 
 is characterised as atheistic, gods are represented as 
 appearing on numerous occasions. In the legend 
 of Buddha the gods of the Hindu pantheon are 
 familiar personages, and never is a shadow of doubt 
 thrown on their existence. " It is not enough to 
 say," writes Saint-Hilaire, "that Buddha does not 
 believe in God. He ignores Him in such a com- 
 plete manner, that he does not even care about 
 denying His existence ; he does not care about 
 trying to abolish Him ; he neither mentions such 
 a being in order to explain the origin or the anterior 
 existence of man and his present life, nor for the 
 purpose of conjecturing his future state and his 
 eventual freedom. Buddha has no acquaintance 
 whatsoever with God, and, quite given up to his 
 own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never 
 cast his eyes so far or so high." Now, if by God 
 be meant the true God, this is what no one will 
 either deny or be surprised at ; but every account 
 of Buddhism, M. Saint-Hilaire's included, and all 
 the literature of Buddhism yet made known to the 
 European world, agree in showing that Buddha 
 has always been supposed by the millions of his 
 followers to have been familiar with gods, and 
 heavens, and hells, innumerable. You will not 
 
284 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 read long in almost any Buddhist book without 
 meeting with gods. The Lalitavistara introduces 
 us to Buddha before his incarnation. "The scene 
 is laid in heaven. Surrounded and adored by 
 those that are adored, the future Buddha an- 
 nounces that the time has come for him to assume 
 a mortal body, and recalls to the assembled gods 
 the precepts of the law. When in the bosom of 
 his mother Ma}'a Devi he receives the homage 
 of Brahma, of ^akra the master of the gods, of 
 the four kings of the inferior gods, of the four 
 goddesses, and of a multitude of deities. When he 
 enters into the world the divine child is received 
 by Indra the king of the gods, and Brahma the 
 lord of creatures. When arrived at manhood, and 
 hesitating to break the bonds which attached him 
 to the world, it is the god Hridera — the god of 
 modesty — who encourages him and reminds him 
 that the hour of his mission has come. Before he 
 can become Buddha he has to be tempted by 
 Mara, the god of the love of sin and of death, and 
 to struggle against the hosts of hell commanded 
 by their chief." And so on, and so on. Every- 
 where gods, even in what M. Saint-Hilaire himself 
 regards as one of the most ancient and authentic 
 records of primitive Buddhism. But all these 
 legends, he says, are " extravagances." Well, there 
 is no doubt about that, but they are extravagances 
 of religious belief And the very absurdity and 
 
A re Buddhists A theists ? 285 
 
 naivete of them testifies to the energy of the belief 
 In spite of its absurdities, and by its very absurd- 
 ities even, the Buddhistic legend testifies that 
 Buddhists believe in gods. But an atheism which 
 includes a belief in gods is an atheism of a very 
 strange kind, or rather a system which everywhere 
 avows the existence and action of gods is not 
 usually, and can only very improperly be, called 
 atheism. 
 
 But, it will be said, Brahma, Indra, and all the 
 other deities recognised in Buddhism, will dis- 
 appear with the universe itself. They are not 
 regarded as truly gods, because they are not 
 regarded as eternal. They have come out of 
 nothingness and will go back to nothingness. 
 Now observe that if we are to reason in this way, 
 if we are to call every system atheistic which 
 implies atheism, we must come to the conclusion 
 that there is no religion in the world except where 
 a consistent theism prevails ; that all forms of 
 polytheism and of pantheism are simply varie- 
 ties of atheism. For polytheism and pantheism 
 are both essentially self-contradictory, and must 
 logically pass over either into atheism or theism. 
 There is no consistent, independent, middle term 
 between these two. What is not the one, ought, 
 logically considered, to be the other. 
 
 All the Greek gods and goddesses were believed 
 by their worshippers to have been born, or, at least, 
 
286 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 to have had an origin ; there was admitted to have 
 been a time when they were not, and it was felt 
 that there might be a time when they would not 
 be. Whence had they come ? Their worshippers 
 did not clearly put and resolutely face the ques- 
 tion, but the question existed, and it could only 
 be answered in an atheistic or in a theistic man- 
 ner. If they came out of nothing, or were the 
 products of chance, or the effects of eternal matter 
 and its inherent powers, then what underlay this 
 polytheism was atheism. If, on the other hand, 
 these gods were the creatures of a self- existent, 
 eternal Mind, what underlay the polytheism was 
 theism. But if theism had been clearly appre- 
 hended it would have been seen at once that there 
 was no evidence for the polytheism at all ; that it 
 was a system of fictions and fancies which dis- 
 honoured the one all-sufficient God. And what 
 is true in this respect of Greek polytheism is true 
 of all polytheism. In so far as it falls short of 
 theism it involves atheism. It is not, however, on 
 this account to be called atheism. It is to be de- 
 scribed as what it is, not as what it involves. 
 
 Then, all pantheism involves atheism. An im- 
 personal reason, an impersonal God, is not, if you 
 insist on self- consistency, on logical definitenes? 
 and thoroughness, a reason, a god at all. A reason 
 which is unconscious and which belongs to no one 
 subject, a God who has no existence in himself, 
 
A re Buddhists A theists ? 287 
 
 who has no proper self, is not logically distinguish- 
 able from what is not reason, from what is not 
 God. But in describing a system we have no right 
 to represent it as being what we hold it ought 
 logically to have been. Pantheism may, like poly- 
 theism, be logically bound either to rise to theism 
 or to sink to atheism, but it is, for all that, neither 
 theism nor atheism. 
 
 Hence I maintain that although Buddhism 
 should be logically resolvable into atheism, al- 
 though its fundamental principles should be shown 
 logically to involve atheism, Buddhists are not to 
 be described as atheists. Even millions of men 
 may stultify themselves and accept a creed the 
 fundamental principles of which involve monstrous 
 consequences which few, if any, of its adherents 
 deduce from them. It is clear and certain that 
 the adherents of Buddhism are, as a rule, not 
 atheists in any sense which shows that the human 
 heart can dispense with belief in Divine agency. 
 Their Buddhism does not prevent their believing 
 in many gods, and this at once puts them on a 
 level with polytheists. Besides, Buddha is re- 
 garded by them as a god. When Saint- Hilaire 
 denies that they have deified Buddha, he main- 
 tains a position which is contradicted by every 
 Buddhist writing and by every Buddhist believer 
 in the world, unless he means that they have not 
 invested him with all the attributes of the true 
 
288 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 God, which is what no one, of course, ever thought 
 of asserting that they had done. It is incontest- 
 able, indeed, that they suppose Buddha to have 
 been once, or rather to have been often, a man, 
 and even to have been a rat, a frog, a crow, a 
 hare, and many other creatures ; but it is as incon- 
 testable that they suppose him not only to have 
 been four times Mahu-Brahma, the supreme god 
 of the Hindus, but in becoming Buddha, to have 
 raised himself higher than the highest gods, and 
 to have attained omnipotence, omniscience, and 
 other divine attributes. We cannot say that they 
 do not believe him to have been a god because 
 they believe him to have been born, while we 
 admit that the Greeks believed Jupiter to have 
 been a god, although they also believed him to 
 have been born ; we cannot say that they did not 
 believe him to have been a god, because they be- 
 lieve him to have gone into Nirvana, even granting 
 Nirvana to be non-existence, while we admit that 
 the ancient Germans believed Odin to be a god, 
 although they also believed that he would be 
 devoured by the wolf Fenris. 
 
 An impartial examination of the relevant facts, 
 it appears to me, shows that religion is virtually 
 universal. The world has been so framed, and the 
 mind so constituted, that man, even in his low- 
 est estate, and over all the world, gives evidence 
 of possessing religious perceptions and emotions. 
 
Religion virtually Universal. 289 
 
 However beclouded with ignorance, sensuousness, 
 and passion his nature may be, certain rays from a 
 higher world reach his soul. However degraded 
 and perverted it may be, there remains a some- 
 thing within it which the material and the sensu- 
 ous cannot satisfy, and which testifies that God is 
 the true home of the Spirit.^ 
 
 1 See Appendix XXXII. 
 
290 Anti-Theistic Theorus. 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 PESSIMISM. 
 
 In the concluding portion of last lecture I argued 
 that the millions of persons who profess the doc- 
 trine of Buddha were not to be summarily de- 
 scribed as atheists and denied to have any reli- 
 gious beliefs or aspirations. I did not, however, 
 argue that Buddhism was not logically resolv- 
 able into atheism, or maintain that it did not 
 very distinctly involve atheism. In all heathen 
 religions there are atheistical tendencies. In 
 every form of pantheism and of polytheism un- 
 belief is interwoven with faith. But there is pro- 
 bably no religion which comes so near atheism, 
 or which to the same extent involves atheism, 
 as Buddhism. It originated in the essentially 
 atheistical conviction that the existence of the 
 universe is an illusion, and the existence of sentient 
 and rational beings an incalculable evil, — in the 
 settled contempt for nature and life, which was 
 
Ancient and Modern Pesshnism. 291 
 
 the logical outcome of Brahminical pantheism, and 
 a result at which all Hindu philosophy arrived. 
 The atheism and the pessimism which came to 
 light in Buddhism were latent in Brahminism from 
 the first, and became prominent and conspicuous 
 in various forms in the course of its development. 
 Instead of looking at the phenomena of the world, 
 history, and mind, as manifestations of the power, 
 wisdom, and goodness of an infinite Creator and 
 Father, who by means of them discloses Himself 
 to his children, and educates and disciplines them 
 for a good and gracious issue, the thinkers of 
 India, even when pronouncing these phenomena 
 to be intimately connected with the substance of 
 Divinity, the sole existence, irreligiously viewed 
 them as mischievous mockeries, fitted only to 
 deceive and enslave all that was noble in human 
 nature. The atheism and pessimism of Buddhism 
 were the ripened fruits of that root of bitterness. 
 
 In quite recent times a system very similar to 
 Buddhism has appeared in Germany, and been 
 advocated by Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, and 
 numerous other writers. Like Buddhism, it has 
 sprung from a scepticism which was itself the pro- 
 duct of pantheism. It is the atheism of pantheism 
 evolved into a rival doctrine. It has already been 
 presented to the German people in various forms, 
 and has acquired a somewhat startling popularity 
 among them. There can be no doubt that many 
 
292 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 who do not accept it in its entirety largely sym- 
 pathise with its dogmas as to life, death, and 
 eternity. In all probability it will obtain, before 
 long, literary representatives in this country, who, 
 while finding perhaps few to adopt the fantastic 
 metaphysics of its founders, may be easily able 
 widely to diffuse some of its falsest principles and 
 dreariest conclusions. I entertain not the least 
 hope that it will soon entirely disappear. Those 
 who regard it as a merely transient and superficial 
 fashion of thought, as a touch or shade of spec- 
 ulative disease which will speedily vanish away, 
 cannot perceive what is, however, manifestly the 
 truth, that, with all its defects, it has the great 
 merit of distinctly raising a question of enormous 
 importance, which has been strangely overlooked 
 even by philosophy ; and further, that it is neither 
 an inconsistent nor an unreasonable answer to that 
 question, certain widely prevalent principles being 
 presupposed. 
 
 The question to which I refer is. What is the 
 worth of life } It is a question which few healthy 
 and busy practical men, especially if moderately 
 successful, ever ask, even in its immediate personal 
 application to their own ambitions and enterprises. 
 It generally needs disappointment, sickness, or 
 grief to raise even momentarily the suspicion that 
 human life may be but a vanity, and its schemes 
 only shadows ; and the vast majority of those on 
 
Mission of Pessimism. 293 
 
 whom this suspicion is forced, strive to get rid of it 
 as quickly as they can. In natures with a thirst 
 for happiness too deep to be quenched in the 
 shallow waters of experience, or with a keen per- 
 ception of the law of good, and an equally keen 
 consciousness of a law in the members warring 
 against it and bringing it into subjection, dis- 
 appointment with this life, if not counteracted by 
 faith in one which is better, may settle into the 
 conviction that the world is but 
 
 "One desert, 
 Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, 
 But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks, 
 Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness." 
 
 In times when society is disorganised, when old 
 faiths and old ideals have lost their charm and 
 power, when culture is widely spread, but corrup- 
 tion is still more diffused, a feeling of life's nothing- 
 ness may be profound and prevalent, and may ex- 
 press itself in many forms. And, in fact, a vein of 
 pessimism may be traced almost throughout his- 
 tory. Its throbs may be heard in the sad refrains 
 of many a poet — as, for instance, within the present 
 century, in those of a Byron in England, a Heine 
 and Lenau in Germany, a Musset and Ackermann 
 in France, a Leopardi in Italy, and a Campoamof 
 in Spain. 
 
 It was reserved, however, for the modern pessimist 
 philosophers of Germany distinctly to recognise that 
 
294 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the question as to the worth of human life deserved 
 to be regarded as one of the chief problems of 
 thought. It was reserved for them also to present 
 as a reasoned and even demonstrated answer to it, 
 what had previously only been uttered as a cry of 
 agony or weariness, that life was worth less than 
 nothing, — that non-existence was better than ex- 
 istence. Although all the philosophers of ancient 
 Greece and Rome had sought to ascertain the end 
 of life, they all tacitly agreed to identify it with the 
 good. None who came after them until Schopen- 
 hauer appeared, ventured directly and explicitly to 
 deny the truth of that assumption. But such a 
 denial was indispensably needed in order to dispel 
 the dogmatic slumber which weighed on the human 
 mind as to this matter. And the denial came. 
 Pessimism, like Macbeth, has murdered sleep. 
 Henceforth no man who cultivates philosophy, and 
 especially no man who cultivates moral philosophy, 
 can remain ignorant that the question. What is the 
 worth of life } demands from him as much serious 
 consideration as the question, Is man a free or a 
 necessitated agent } or as the question. What is 
 the foundation of virtue } Nor can the awakening 
 stop here ; but from the philosophical consciousness 
 it must descend to the common consciousness, and 
 must spread until all intelligent and educated men 
 are brought to feel that the theme is one on which 
 they are bound to meditate. In this I see an 
 
Mission of Pessimism. 295 
 
 ample providential justification of pessimism. It 
 has its mission ; and now that it is here, it will not 
 pass away until that mission is accomplished — which 
 will not be, so long as atheistical principles are pre- 
 valent. It can only be overcome through the re- 
 pression and refutation of atheism. If the present 
 life be all ; if there be no God and no immortality ; 
 if nothing have value except what can be empiri- 
 cally measured and weighed, — it may be possible 
 to prove that such assertions as that consciousness 
 is necessarily and essentially pain ; that misery is 
 always in excess of happiness ; that the course of 
 things is only from bad to worse, &c, — are exag- 
 gerations ; but not, I think, to disprove that what 
 good there is in life is so mingled with sin, suffer- 
 ing, and delusion, that a wise man may reasonably 
 and deliberately wish that he had never been born. 
 More than this pessimism is not logically bound to 
 maintain ; and this it may successfully maintain 
 against all who agree with it in the acceptance of 
 atheistical principles. Of course, this is of itself, 
 in my opinion, a very good reason for not accept- 
 ing atheistical principles without the most careful 
 consideration. 
 
 It is impossible for me, within the limits at my 
 disposal, to describe and examine the various 
 systems of pessimism separately. I shall therefore 
 group them together, and endeavour to give a 
 certain unity and interest to my treatment of them 
 
296 Anti-T/ietstic Theories, 
 
 by comparing, on a few fundamental points, the 
 doctrines of Schopenhauer and Hartmann with 
 that of Buddha. The sole purpose in view, it 
 must be kept in mind, is to determine whether the 
 pessimistic conceptions of the world, life, death, 
 and eternity, are such that we ought to abandon 
 for them our theism, or such as should lead us to 
 value it more. 
 
 The chief difference between oriental Buddhism 
 and German pessimism is the obvious one, that 
 the former is inseparable from faith in a legendary 
 person, while the latter consists of a series or col- 
 lection of merely abstract systems. Buddhism 
 cannot be dissociated from Buddha ; pessimism has 
 no necessary connection with Schopenhauer, or 
 Hartmann, or any other person. The founder of 
 Buddhism was Siddharta, also designated Gotama, 
 Sakyamuni, and especially Buddha — i. ^., the " en- 
 lightened." He belonged to the royal race of the 
 Sakyas, who lived in northern India, in the district 
 called Oude. Legend mentions Kapilavastu as his 
 birthplace. The age in which he lived is so far 
 from determined, that while some fix 543 B.C as 
 the year of his death, others prefer 368 B.C. ; and 
 every new inquirer into the subject seems to come 
 to a new result. Buddha renounced his princely 
 rank for the ascetic state ; convinced himself of 
 the unsatisfactoriness of Brahminism ; taught the 
 fundamental principles of the creed now associated 
 
Buddhism more than a Theory. 297 
 
 with his name ; and by the persuasiveness of his 
 speech, the benevolence and attractiveness of his 
 disposition, and the truth, or apparent truth, of 
 what he inculcated, gained numerous adherents. 
 The legends which have been invented about him 
 form of themselves an enormous literature ; but 
 what I have just said is, I believe, nearly all that 
 we certainly know about him. So far as I can 
 judge, the attempts made to separate between fact 
 and fiction in the legend of Buddha are almost as 
 delusive as the attempts which used to be made 
 to account for the attributes and actions assigned 
 to Jupiter by the character and deeds of a ruler of 
 Crete. While Buddha, however unlike Confucius 
 or Mohammed, is almost entirely a mythical, and 
 not an historical personage, the myth of Buddha 
 is far more important in the system of Buddhism 
 than the life of Confucius in the system of Con- 
 fucianism, or of Mohammed in Mohammedanism. 
 It is a peculiarity which Buddhism alone shares 
 with Christianity, that it concentrates itself in a 
 person. It presents an ideal. It embodies its 
 teaching in an example. It gives an object for 
 affection. This, there can be no doubt, is one of 
 the main sources whch has enabled it, in spite of 
 the withering nature of its dogmas, to spread so 
 extensively, to root itself so deeply, and to retain 
 its hold so tenaciously. For the character of the 
 mythical Buddha, although in many respects wildly 
 
298 Antt-Theistic Theories. 
 
 extravagant, is invested with an undeniable moral 
 grandeur and spiritual impressiveness. It exhibits 
 in the most striking manner all the gentler vir- 
 tues. It is simply amazing how far on this side it 
 transcends the Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and 
 Epicurean ideals of the sage, and how mean and 
 superficial even it causes the boasted wisdom of 
 the classical world to appear. Among its features 
 are a love without limits, self-sacrifice, justice, 
 purity. Buddha is represented as freely enduring 
 the severest afflictions, and freely foregoing for ages 
 final beatitude in order to work out the salvation 
 of others. He announced his law as a law of good 
 news to all. He preached his gospel to the poor 
 no less than to the rich, to the Soudra as unre- 
 servedly as to the Brahmin. He took to his heart 
 all living creatures. He enjoined a charity which 
 was not limited by race, caste, religion, or anything 
 else. He counselled all to live a virtuous life, 
 gentle and prudent, lowly and teachable, resolute 
 and diligent, unshaken in misfortune, uninfluenced 
 by partiality, wrath, folly, or fear, faithful in the 
 discharge of the relative duties, and actively be- 
 nevolent ; and to all who thus live, whatever be 
 their station, circumstances, or creed, he promised 
 victory over this world, and, if not Nirvana, re- 
 birth in heavenly mansions. Hence, doubtless, it 
 is that he has gained so many hearts, and drawn 
 from them, as it were, the confession of the young 
 
Get man Pessimism merely a Theory. 299 
 
 householder Sighala, "It is wonderful, master! it 
 is wonderful ! 'Tis as if one should set up again 
 that which is overthrown, or should reveal that 
 which is hidden, or should direct the wanderer into 
 the right path, or hold out a lamp in the darkness, 
 — so that they that have eyes to see shall see. 
 Yea, even thus has the blessed Lord made known 
 the truth to me in many a figure. And I, even I, 
 do put my trust in thee, and in thy law, and in thy 
 church. Receive me. Lord, as thy disciple and 
 true believer from this time forth, as long as life 
 endures." 
 
 The modern German philosophers who accept 
 the Buddhist theory of existence and life as sub- 
 stantially the true one, to which Christianity and 
 every other form of theism must give place, do not 
 ask us, of course, to accept any legend or myth like 
 that of Buddha. They only seek for assent to the 
 fundamental doctrines of an essentially Buddhistic 
 creed. They set forth a modified Buddhism with- 
 out Buddha, and thus strike off a multitude of 
 extravagances which European minds could never 
 be expected to entertain. If they thus, however, 
 relieve the system from a heavy burden, they also 
 deprive it of its chief source of strength and vitality. 
 Buddhism without Buddha — Buddhism reduced to 
 a merely atheistic and pessimistic theory — would 
 be a wretched substitute even for Buddhism in its 
 integrity. It is impossible to imagine what virtues 
 
300 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 it could either elicit or sustain. It may spread, but 
 only in a sceptical and cynical age. It can no 
 more reasonably be expected to call forth enthu- 
 siasm for the true, the beautiful, and the good, than 
 snow and ice can reasonably be expected to kindle 
 a conflagration and set the world on fire. Its 
 diffusion through a society can only mean that 
 vital power is ebbing from it, and the chill of death 
 creeping over it. Life cannot be sustained on the 
 doctrine that there is nothing worth living for. 
 Modern pessimism is merely this doctrine elabor- 
 ately developed. Buddhism is this also, but it is a 
 great deal more ; and in what it is more, lies chiefly 
 the reason why it has exerted in many respects a 
 beneficial influence. 
 
 I might proceed to indicate a number of differ- 
 ences between Buddhism and German pessimism, 
 which arise from the ancient and Asiatic origin of 
 the former and the modern and European origin 
 of the latter ; but as time forbids, and this is not a 
 philosophical essay, but a lecture with a practical 
 purpose in view, I hasten to say that Buddhism 
 and the recent forms of pessimism are substantially 
 agreed as to the nature and worth of existence. 
 Buddhism has the merit of possessing a perfectly 
 definite aim. It professes to show men how they 
 may be delivered from evil. But what is evil ? 
 Evil, according to Buddhism, is of the very essence 
 of existence. Wherever existence is there is evil. 
 
Pessimism and the Worth of Existence. 301 
 
 It is not man only, but all sentient beings, which 
 have been made to mourn ; it is not this world only 
 ivhich is a vale of tears, but all other worlds are 
 also vain and doomed to misery. Buddha looks 
 through the whole universe ; at every insect, every 
 creeping thing, the fish of the sea, the fowl of the 
 air, and the beast of the field ; at man, in all stages 
 from birth to death, and in all conditions from the 
 monarch to the mendicant; at the generations 
 which have passed away, and at those which are 
 to come ; at the worlds above and the worlds 
 below, and at the innumerable intelligences which 
 inhabit them, — and he sees that nowhere is there 
 any true peace or secure happiness. Wherever the 
 stream of existence flows — yea, even when it is 
 through the lives of the highest gods — there un- 
 reality and uncertainty are to be found, and sorrow 
 is to be feared. Christianity rests on the belief 
 that God made all things very good, and that the 
 evil in the world is due to sin, — to the perversity 
 of the creaturely will. Buddhism, on the contrary, 
 rests on the belief that all things are very bad ; 
 that existence is in itself evil ; and that sin is only 
 one of the necessary consequences of existence. 
 It does not deny that there are pleasures, but it 
 maintains that they are so rooted in delusion, and 
 so surely followed by pains, that a wise man must 
 desire not to be captivated by them. It admits 
 that there are many seeming good things in life. 
 
302 A7iti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 but holds that they are all merely seemingly good. 
 It recognises that there are in every order of exist- 
 ences and actions some relatively good, but not 
 that any are absolutely good. Many things are 
 better than other things, but the best of all is not 
 to be at all. Parinibbana — complete extinction — 
 is the highest good. 
 
 Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and their followers, 
 endorse the Buddhist view. The former, indeed, 
 draws a still darker picture. He falls into exag- 
 gerations from which Buddha and his followers 
 kept themselves free, and which are not necessar- 
 ily implied in the pessimistic theory of existence. 
 The world, according to him, is the worst possible. 
 Had it been worse it would not have been able to 
 exist at all. Had man been made only a little 
 more wretched — had a small amount of deceitful 
 pleasure not been poured into his cup — he would 
 have refused to endure life. Things would thus 
 have been better if they had been worse, seeing 
 that humanity would then have taken its fate into 
 its own hands and put an end to itself Life is ne- 
 cessarily and hopelessly wretched. To live is to 
 desire, to desire is to want, to want is to suffer, and 
 hence to live is to suffer. No man is happy except 
 when drunk or deluded ; his happiness is only like 
 that of a beggar who dreams that he is a king. 
 Nothing is worth the trouble which it costs us. 
 Wretchedness always outweighs felicity. The his- 
 
Pessimism and the Worth of Existence. 303 
 
 tory of man is a long, confused, and painful dream. 
 The notion of any plan or progress in it is errone- 
 ous. He who has read one chapter of it has read 
 all. It is a tiresome repetition of horrors and follies 
 which are ever essentially alike, however they may 
 differ in accidentals. In a word, Schopenhauer 
 has put forth all his power as a writer — and he was 
 a vigorous and striking writer — to depict life as 
 utterly worthless and wretched. 
 
 Von Hartmann is rather more cautious. He 
 will not say that the world is the worst possible ; 
 he will not deny even that it may be the best pos- 
 sible, since we do not know what is possible ; but 
 he holds decidedly that it is worse than would have 
 been no world at all. He does not, like Schopen- 
 hauer, represent pleasure as merely negative and 
 pain as alone positive, as the very ground and 
 essence of life, but he fully accepts as true the 
 well-known words of Sophocles, " Not to have 
 been born at all is the happiest fate, and the next 
 best is to die young ; " and those of Byron — 
 
 *' Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen. 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free ; 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something better — not to be," 
 
 He believes himself able to prove, by an appeal 
 to the experience both of individuals and of so- 
 ciety, that pain preponderates in a high degree over 
 pleasure, evil over good. He does not deny that 
 
304 A7iti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 there is a kind of progress and plan in history, 
 and yet he regards history as, on the whole, an 
 irrational process, the successive epochs of which 
 are so many stages of illusion. In the first of 
 these stages, — that which is represented by child- 
 hood in the development of the individual, and 
 antiquity in the development of the race, — man 
 hopes to be able to find happiness in this world, 
 in the pleasures and pursuits and honours of the 
 earthly life ; but this hope is at length found out 
 to be deceptive. The soul learns the vanity of the 
 earthly life and earthly things ; learns that there is 
 no rest or satisfaction for it in, them. With Chris- 
 tianity a new stage of history, corresponding to 
 adolescence in the individual, is entered on. Dis- 
 appointed with this world, man looks for another 
 and seeks to lay up for himself treasure in heaven. 
 What he knows he cannot find in the present life 
 he hopes may await him in a future life. But as 
 the thoughts of men are widened, and as criticism, 
 science, and speculation spread, that hope likewise 
 is seen to have no rational warrant, and the indi- 
 vidual is forced to acknowledge that he has no- 
 thing worth living for either in the present or the 
 future. Hope, however, dies hard in the human 
 breast. Hence when men no longer dare to look 
 for anything for themselves as individuals, they 
 still believe in a collective progress of their race. 
 This is their hope in the age in which we live, — 
 
Pessimism and the Worth of Existence. 305 
 
 the manhood of humanity, the third stage of the 
 world's history ; but it also is an illusion. Wealth 
 may be increased, mechanical inventions multi- 
 plied, and culture more widely diffused, but mor- 
 ality varies little, and the development of intellect 
 diminishes happiness. The political changes which 
 socialists demand will inevitably be realised, but 
 those who suppose that men will be any the better 
 when these changes have been effected will cer- 
 tainly be disappointed. The progress of history is 
 not the growth of any positive good in history, but 
 the growth of man's consciousness of the nothing- 
 ness and vanity of human life. 
 
 The mere statement of views like those just in- 
 dicated should be sufficient to render the believer 
 in a God of wisdom and of love profoundly grate- 
 ful that his faith saves him from assenting to dog- 
 mas so false and so terrible. It is only through 
 the possession of a well - grounded faith in the 
 perfections of God that we can be warranted in 
 entertaining a cheerful view of the destinies of 
 mankind. To be " without God " is, in the esti- 
 mate of reason, equivalent to being " without hope 
 in the world." This does not imply, however, that 
 grave exaggerations may not be detected in the 
 reasonings and calculations on which Schopen- 
 hauer and Hartmann have based their conclusions. 
 On the contrary, the most manifest exaggerations 
 abound. The pessimists are plainly not impartial 
 
 U 
 
3o6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 seekers after truth, but the zealous pleaders of a 
 special cause ; they are good advocates and bad 
 judges ; they make more than is warranted of 
 whatever seems to be in favour of the view which 
 they have espoused, and they depreciate or distort 
 whatever appears to be inconsistent with it. 
 
 The main reason which Schopenhauer alleges 
 in proof of the essential wretchedness of life is a 
 badly executed psychological analysis — one viti- 
 ated by a metaphysical hypothesis. The principle 
 that pleasure is merely negative, and that pain 
 alone is positive, is derived by him from the more 
 general principle that all is will — that the essence 
 of all things is an effort, a striving, identical with 
 that which, when manifested in ourselves under the 
 light of consciousness, is called will. But all effort, 
 he holds, springs from want, which is pain so long 
 as unsatisfied, and which is no sooner satisfied than 
 a new want, a new pain, is engendered. Willing is 
 essentially suffering, and therefore life as essentially 
 willing is essentially suffering. The more elevated 
 the being, the fuller the life, the more the suffer- 
 ing. The lowest animals suffer least. The man 
 of genius is of all men the most miserable. Pleas- 
 ures are only the momentary alleviations of pain ; 
 happiness is but an evanescent illusion. 
 
 There is manifest error and morbid exaggera- 
 tion in such a view as this. Life implies desire, 
 and desire in a derivative being implies want, but 
 
Pessimis7n and the Worth of Exist e7ice. 307 
 
 if the want is always supplied there need be little 
 or no suffering. The prospect of enjoyment, not 
 the experience of suffering, may be, and in many 
 cases is, the stimulus to activity. Where feelings 
 of unrest and disquiet are the causes or occasions 
 of exertion, there may be in the exertion and in 
 the result attained by it far more pleasure than 
 pain. It is pleasure which springs from the fulfil- 
 ment of the natural conditions of life ; it is pain 
 which flows from their non-fulfilment ; and hence, 
 as a general rule, happiness doubtless preponder- 
 ates over misery in the animal viorld. All that 
 can be legitimately inferred from the mere exist- 
 ence of want, is that the being which is conscious 
 of want is a dependent being. Pain is not inhe- 
 rent in want, but is the consequence of want unsup- 
 plied. A consciousness of want is the root of all 
 spiritual strength and perfection. The life of com- 
 plete human blessedness is a life which is realised 
 not to be inherent in self, but to flow from an in- 
 finite source for the continuous supply of every 
 want Want easily passes into pain, but in itself 
 it is simply an expression of finiteness, of limita- 
 tion. All sufferings which are needed to bring 
 men to a sense of their wants are amply justified, 
 because what they lead to is not evil, but a some- 
 thing purely good, if there be an adequate and 
 appropriate supply of these wants. 
 
 Then the stages of illusion described by Hart- 
 
308 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 mann are mainly illusions of his own. Even in 
 antiquity, — in the Greco- Roman world, — it was 
 only the foolish who hoped to find happiness in 
 the pleasures and pursuits and honours of earthly 
 life ; and the foolish hope so still. The majority 
 of men, and especially of thoughtful men, in Greece 
 and Rome, never cherished any illusion of the kind. 
 It is possible for men, even in the savage state, to 
 see the stupidity of such a hope ; while atheist 
 philosophers, even in the nineteenth century, are 
 apt to believe in its reasonableness, because they 
 have no other hope. On the other hand, that hope 
 in a future life is an illusion — that wise men have 
 discovered it to be without solid foundation, — is 
 an assertion which atheists have made ever since 
 atheism existed, but which is as unproved at pres- 
 ent as on the first day it was uttered. As to faith 
 in human progress, it is obviously not only recon- 
 cilable with faith in God and immortality, but 
 more dependent on it than on anything else. 
 Faith in God is the chief support and source of 
 faith in progess. If the former be rejected the 
 latter will not long be retained. In a word, Von 
 Hartmann's conception of the course of history 
 is very superficial and erroneous — one devised to 
 serve the requirements of his general theory of 
 existence, with extremely little regard to the really 
 relevant facts. 
 
 It is easy to show that Hartmann has under- 
 
Pessimism and the Worth of Existence. 309 
 
 valued what are generally regarded as the advan- 
 tages of life, and exaggerated what seem to be its 
 disadvantages. Yet it is not easy, or even pos- 
 sible, satisfactorily to refute his fundamental thesis 
 by data drawn entirely from the pleasures and 
 pains of common experience in the present life. 
 Experience is a very ambiguous term. It may 
 mean merely our perceptions and sensations ; it 
 may mean these and all other states of immediate 
 consciousness ; it may be so widened as to include, 
 besides, all that can be established by induction ; 
 and it may signify all that we perceive, feel, and 
 can prove in any valid way. In its narrower sig- 
 nifications it is an inadequate basis on which to 
 pronounce general judgments ; if its third appli- 
 cation is legitimate, so is its fourth ; and in that 
 its widest meaning, experience is coextensive 
 with knowledge, in which case God and a future 
 life will be contended to be objects of experience. 
 Then the present life is extremely uncertain and 
 variable, both as regards quantity and quality. It 
 may be a thing of mere moments or of many 
 years, and may have the most diverse sorts of 
 fortunes. What is the worth of a life of a few 
 hours of suffering, or of a few years of sickliness 
 and disease? There are tens and hundreds of 
 thousands of such lives. A man may live long 
 in health and prosperity, but there may be be- 
 fore him a few years of agony and wretchedness 
 
3IO A7iti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 When he is dead, how will you weign the many 
 years of moderate pleasure which he has enjoyed 
 against the few years of severe pain which he 
 has suffered, so as to decide which scale has been 
 the heavier ? Can you, judging by mere pleasures 
 and pains, reasonably pronounce any man happy 
 before he is dead ? Further, what the pessimist 
 means by the present life is only a fragment of 
 the present life of religious men. The world of 
 duty and of spiritual communion is as real to 
 them now as the world of sense. The pains and 
 pleasures which the atheist regards as the sole and 
 ultimate elements of calculation, seem to them 
 facts which can only be judged of aright when 
 viewed in relation to facts of greater importance. 
 How can we estimate the worth of life by con- 
 sidering exclusively the mere fragment of a frag- 
 ment of it } If there be a moral life as well as a 
 physical life — if the moral life be higher than the 
 physical life instead of subordinate to it — if there 
 be a God — and if immortality be a reality, — the 
 reasoning of the pessimist is, indeed, plainly er- 
 roneous, but not more so than the endeavour to 
 refute it by arguing on the supposition that there 
 is no independent moral life, no God, and no 
 eternal state of being. The pessimist view of 
 existence can only be met by a religious view of 
 existence. 
 
 Mr Sully, the author of a very able work on 
 
Mr Sully on the Pessimistic View of Existence. 311 
 
 the subject under consideration, argues for the 
 contrary opinion. He urges as his first reason 
 that " it is by no means agreed among men that 
 experience does guarantee the truth either of a 
 future life or of the existence of a benevolent 
 Creator," — that "many persons very distinctly 
 reject the evidences of natural theology." To 
 this objection it is a sufficient reply that the ques- 
 tion is not as to what is agreed among men, but 
 as to what is true. Far more persons very dis- 
 tinctly reject the philosophical principles assumed 
 in Mr Sully's argumentation than the belief in God 
 and a future life. His second and principal reason 
 is, that " the worth of human life, so far from being 
 made dependent on theological conceptions, is 
 itself one of the facts on which the propositions 
 of theology have to establish themselves, or to 
 which at least they have to accommodate them- 
 selves ; " that " the truth of the existence of a 
 benevolent Creator is directly affected by the 
 pessimist reading of human life;" and that "the 
 belief in a future life must be affected so far as 
 the assurance of a wise and good God on which 
 it reposes is affected." It is an argument which 
 proves just the opposite of what it is supposed by 
 Mr Sully to do. Certainly, if the pessimist read- 
 ing of life be correct the theistic view of it must 
 be erroneous. Does it follow that theism ought 
 to take no account of pessimism, and of what it 
 
312 Anti-Theistic TJieories. 
 
 alleges to be facts which substantiate its account 
 of the worth of life ? Manifestly not. The plain 
 duty of the theist is just the reverse; it is to ex- 
 amine all the facts brought forward by pessimism, 
 to compare them with all the other facts on which 
 itself rests, and to show that the true reading of 
 human life, when it is surveyed in a sufficiently 
 comprehensive way, is not pessimist but theistic. 
 This is what theism does. I know of no facts 
 brought forward by Schopenhauer or Hartmann 
 which I have not taken into consideration in my 
 argumentation for theism when estimating the 
 objections which may be urged to the Divine 
 wisdom, benevolence, and justice. I allow more 
 weight even to these facts than Mr Sully seems 
 inclined to do. Why is pessimism to be discussed 
 in a way which would be utterly unreasonable in 
 regard to theism .-* If theism is true, pessimism is 
 false ; if what theism alleges in its support are 
 real facts, properly interpreted and derived from 
 a far wider field of existence and knowledge than 
 are those on which pessimism relies, pessimism 
 must be an erroneous reading of life, necessarily 
 resulting from the attempt to explain a text with- 
 out regard to its context. How then can it be 
 reasonable either for an advocate or critic of it 
 to say. Let us have nothing to do with theism or 
 theology.? let us concern ourselves with nothing 
 but the question, Is there an overplus of pleasure 
 
Mr Stilly on the Pessimistic View of Existerice. 3 1 3 
 
 or pain in life? The question as to the worth 
 of life is one which cannot be so narrowed and 
 isolated. It is essentially a question which be- 
 longs to the philosophy of final causes. The 
 worth of life cannot be weighed in the false bal- 
 ances of the so-called Science of Hedonics. 
 
 What solution, we naturally ask, does Mr Sully 
 give to the problem raised by pessimism, after 
 having consented to deal with it in the narrow and 
 partial manner which has been specified ? This : 
 there are in the world certain permanent conditions 
 of happiness, such as wealth, family connections, 
 agreeable occupations, self-culture, a due adjust- 
 ment of the aims of life, the voluntary direction 
 of our attention to what is pleasing rather than 
 to what is painful, and the furtherance of others' 
 interests so far as they are involved in the pursuit 
 of our own happiness ; if we thoughtfully and 
 carefully seek satisfaction through the attainment 
 of these things, we shall secure a clear surplus of 
 enjoyment over misery ; and we may comfort our- 
 selves with the hope that the world is growing a 
 more and more desirable place in which to live. 
 It is an answer which one can conceive might 
 become popular among the unreflecting members 
 of English middle-class society, but which is not 
 likely to be widely accepted by more competent 
 judges. Surely experience has proved that happi- 
 ness is not to be found in wealth, family connec< 
 
314 Anti-Theistic TJuories. 
 
 tions, agreeable occupations, and the like. Surely 
 it is certain that millions cannot gain more than 
 daily bread for themselves and their families, even 
 in the most disagreeable occupations. The self- 
 culture which aims merely at happiness cannot 
 fail to miss its aim, and will probably be as pro- 
 ductive of evil as of good. To attend to what is 
 pleasing rather than to what is painful is, as a 
 general rule, a most immoral and mischievous 
 maxim. We are all far too much inclined to get 
 out of the way of sorrow ; and what we really need 
 to be told is, attend rather to what is painful than 
 to what is pleasing. To further others' interests in 
 the pursuit of our own happiness is a playing at 
 virtue which can only lead the conscience to a con- 
 sciousness of hypocrisy. We have no experience 
 that the world will grow happier. Experience is 
 only of the present and the past, not of the future ; 
 and the present and past afford merely data for 
 vague conjectures as to whether happiness will 
 increase or diminish in the future. There is, it 
 seems to me, no probability that the world will 
 grow a more and more desirable place to live in, 
 if faith in God and the hope of immortality are 
 gradually to decay until they ultimately die out 
 of the human consciousness. 
 
 Mr Sully acknowledges that his answer is not 
 one which will satisfy " the greed of human nature." 
 He is quite right there. Yet that greed is a most 
 
Mr Sully on the Pessimistic View of Existence. 315 
 
 noteworthy fact of experience, and no answer which 
 does not satisfy it is a solution of the problem as 
 to the worth of life. There is nothing so insati- 
 able as the human soul, and there is nothing which 
 receives from this world so little satisfaction. There 
 is a vast disproportion between the demands of the 
 heart and the realities of experience. The soul is 
 so ambitious, and the world is so easily exhausted, 
 that they do not seem to have been made for each 
 other. Our hearts are far too large for any worldly 
 life ; the worldly life could only satisfy far smaller 
 hearts. But the heart can ill bear the perpetual 
 contradiction between itself and life ; to be always 
 asking, and never receiving ; to be incessantly 
 agitated and incessantly disappointed. It longs 
 for rest — for peace. And it has a choice between 
 two ways which both lead to rest, but to rest of 
 very different kinds. It may take the broad and 
 beaten path which lies in lowering the heart to 
 the level of worldly life ; in compressing it until it 
 is small enough ; in restricting its desires to what 
 experience shows earth will afford ; in learning to 
 ask little and to expect little. This is the way 
 in which many seek and find rest ; but it is the 
 infallible mark of a low and vulgar philosophy to 
 recommend or sanction a procedure which leads 
 through the degradation of the whole nature to 
 the rest of spiritual death. True wisdom counsels 
 us to try the other, although narrower and more 
 
3i6 Ajiti-TheisHc Theories. 
 
 arduous path ; to seek an experience as elevated 
 and rich as our highest instincts crave for ; to be 
 content only with a good which will really satisfy 
 the greed of the heart ; to make the rest not of 
 stifled but of satisfied desire — not of death, but of 
 life — our goal. 
 
 Pessimism, we are now prepared to expect, must 
 rest on the most defective notion of God, or rather 
 must be virtually without God, since not otherwise 
 could it have taken so appalling a view of things. 
 
 The dogma which has been mentioned as an 
 essential article of the creed of Sakyamuni, — the 
 dogma that existence is inherently evil, — that 
 existence, even in the highest intelligences of the 
 celestial worlds, is evil, — leaves no room for any 
 true belief in God. If existence be in every form 
 and aspect evil, it cannot need Divine intelligence 
 and goodness to account for existence ; and if 
 existence does not require a God to explain it, 
 non-existence may explain itself. While, there- 
 fore, Buddhism readily embraces the gods of the 
 various countries which it has overrun, it acknow- 
 ledges no Supreme Creative and Governing Reason. 
 It assumes that there is an eternal succession of 
 worlds, and that human souls revolve perpetually 
 in the urn of fate, disappearing and reappearing 
 and passing through countless forms from a clod 
 of earth to a god; but it does not ask how the 
 series of worlds began, or whence souls originally 
 
Pessimism and A theism. 317 
 
 came. Like the positivism and agnosticism of 
 modern Europe, it is content to regard the universe 
 as a chain of secondary events, or a web of phe- 
 nomena and relations, and treats all inquiries after 
 the origin of things as vain and useless. While it 
 knows of no First Cause, however, it affirms the 
 existence of a mysterious law of causality condi- 
 tioning the uninterrupted succession of causes and 
 effects; and this law, which is what is called Karma, 
 is of a moral as well as a physical nature. What 
 determines the future is the aggregate result of 
 past actions. The condition of each one to-day 
 depends not only on what he has done since he 
 was born, but equally on what he did myriads 
 of years ago. There is thus, according to Bud- 
 dhism, a sort of moral government in the universe, 
 although there is no Moral Governor; at least, 
 there is a very comprehensive and rigid moral 
 fatalism. When a world is destroyed, as in the 
 cycles of change every world must often be, and 
 when not an atom of matter in it, or a soul which 
 belongs to it, is left, good and bad works remain, 
 with their eternal consequences, and give rise to a 
 world and souls again. 
 
 Buddha is not the First Cause, not a God, not a 
 God-man, but a man-God. The notion that man 
 can attain by his own exertions divine attributes 
 — can by prayers and sacrifices, and mental and 
 bodily discipline, become a god, even in spite of 
 
3l8 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 the opposition of the gods — is a very widely spread 
 one in naturalistic and pantheistic religions. It 
 was distinctly recognised in Brahminism ; and from 
 Brahminism Buddhism borrowed it, or, we may 
 even say, Buddhism was based on this belief of 
 Brahminism. Buddha is a man-God : a man who 
 has risen to be higher than the highest of gods, 
 because he resolved to do so, and through a course 
 of millions of years, and hundreds of births and 
 deaths, ever kept steadily before him the purpose 
 that he would find the way by which the souls of 
 men might escape from the miseries of their inces- 
 sant wanderings from existence to existence. 
 
 When we turn from Buddha to Schopenhauer, 
 the transition as regards the fundamental point 
 before our attention at present is not very great. 
 Schopenhauer could not endure theism. The way 
 in which he tried to account for the universe with- 
 out referring to God was as follows : The world of 
 experience, he argues, is but our representation ; or, 
 in other words, the objects of our knowledge are 
 the products of our intellects. There is no world 
 of such objects existing outside of us, and corre- 
 sponding to our representations. The known world 
 is produced by the minds which know it, and has 
 no existence except in these minds. It is a mere 
 phenomenon of consciousness ; it is a delusion — a. 
 dream. But beneath this unreal world there is — so 
 Schopenhauer argued — a real one, which is con 
 
Pessimism mid Atheism. 319 
 
 stituted by what he calls will. This will is said to 
 realise itself in the various physical forces, and in 
 the activities of vegetable and animal life, as well 
 as in what are commonly termed wills. It is not 
 accompanied or guided by intellect, but it precedes 
 and creates intellect. This blind will — which is the 
 will of no one — produces and pervades the whole 
 world. It is the one reality from which are re- 
 flected all appearances. What Karma is in the 
 creed of Buddha, Will is in the creed of Schopen- 
 hauer. It is his substitute for God. But if we ask, 
 How is its existence to be known } he cannot tell 
 us ; and if he could, the telling us would be of no 
 use, since, on his own showing, knowledge is delu- 
 sion. If we ask him. What is this will which you 
 say is alone real, the true and ultimate explanation 
 of the universe ? he has to reply, — " There is no 
 possible answer to that question ; for in so far as a 
 thing is known, it is not real, but only a phenome- 
 non." Thus what he says just amounts to this : 
 " All that we know is delusion ; and although what 
 I call will is real, it is only real in so far as I know 
 nothing about it." Such is the theory which he 
 puts forth as much more profound, and self-con- 
 sistent, and lucid than atheism. 
 
 Von Hartmann attempts to explain the universe 
 by what he designates the Unconscious. He re- 
 gards the Unconscious as comprehensive of an 
 omnipotent will and an omniscient intelligence. 
 
320 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 He represents both the primal will and the primal 
 intelligence as unconscious ; but as this is a mere 
 negative predicate, and as he shows us neither how 
 nor why they are united, he is manifestly from 
 the outset, with all his pretensions to monism, an 
 irrational dualist. The unconscious, he argues, 
 creates and constitutes matter, which, according 
 to his view, is only an arrangement of atomic forces 
 that are themselves unconscious volitions which 
 have for objects unconscious representations or 
 ideas. It likewise originates and presides over the 
 evolution of organisation and life, so that its opera- 
 tions may be traced in all biological and psycho- 
 logical processes, and in the general course of his- 
 tory. It attains to consciousness in man through 
 the separation of intelligence from will. And the 
 growth of intelligence consists in ever more clearly 
 recognising the folly of the work of the will. 
 
 I do not need to occupy time in criticising fan- 
 cies so arbitrary and self- contradictory as those 
 which have just been described. The latest of 
 them is as unreasonable as the earliest. Buddha's 
 Karma or impersonal moral fate is in no respect a 
 less satisfactory explanation of things than either 
 Schopenhauer's will or Hartmann's unconscious- 
 ness. In one respect it is decidedly preferable; 
 it is moral, it is not mere force. Karma, Will, the 
 Unconscious, — all three, conceived of as substitutes 
 for God, are pure myths. That the two last should 
 
Pessimism and Atheism. 321 
 
 nave originated and found acceptance in a highly 
 educated country, and in a scientific age, shows 
 that something more is required than education 
 and science to protect us from superstitions as 
 gross as any that haunted the medieval mind. 
 
 Neither Schopenhauer nor Hartmann has ven- 
 tured to adopt the cardinal doctrine of Asiatic Bud- 
 dhism, the dogma of the man-God, of the develop- 
 ment of man into God ; but even this extravagant 
 and hideous tenet has found a European advocate 
 in M. Renan. He begins the book intitled 'Dia- 
 logues et Fragments Philosophiques,' published in 
 1876, by maintaining that two things are certain, 
 — first, that neither nature nor history offers the 
 least trace of the intervention of a will higher than 
 the human, or, in other words, not the least trace 
 of the existence or action of a God ; and second, 
 that, notwithstanding this, the world has an end 
 and labours at a vast and mysterious work. He 
 next proceeds to argue that it is probable that the 
 work and end of the world are the evolution and 
 organisation of God by reason. Thus, although 
 there was no God at the beginning of the world, 
 there will be one in process of time. God did not 
 create the world, but the world is labouring to 
 bring forth God. It is truly wonderful how far 
 atheism and evolution together may carry the 
 human imagination. 
 
 I remark, in the next place, that the systems 
 
 X 
 
322 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 under consideration are very similar in the views 
 which they present as to the way in which we are 
 overpowered by evil. Buddhism although essen- 
 tially atheistical, professes to be a religion which 
 discloses salvation. It represents the attainment 
 of salvation as dependent on a knowledge of the 
 causes which account for existence. Existence is 
 evil. The causes of existence are, therefore, the 
 causes of evil. The immediate cause of existence 
 is attachment Attachment — a certain cleaving to 
 existence — is what keeps us bound down to it ; 
 enslaved under the law of transmigration. Attach- 
 ment, the cause of existence, is itself an effect, the 
 cause of which is desire, the pursuit of what pleases, 
 and aversion to what is disagreeable. Desire is, in 
 its turn, the effect of sensation, through which we 
 become aware of the qualities of things, and so 
 are moved to seek or avoid them. Sensation is 
 still no more than an effect. Its cause is contact ; 
 not necessarily physical contact, but contact either 
 through the external senses or the internal sense. 
 Contact is therefore, in its turn, consequent upon 
 the six seats or centres of sensation, five of which 
 are external, and one internal, this last comprehend- 
 ing all that we call sentiments, — all states of feeling 
 which are not dependent upon any of our bodily 
 organs, but arise from mental causes. The seats 
 of sensation are, in like manner, referred to form, 
 form to consciousness, consciousness to conception, 
 
Pessimism and the Cause of Evil. 323 
 
 and conception to ignorance. Ignorance is the 
 ultimate cause of this chain of twelve alternate 
 causes and effects. It is described as consisting 
 essentially in regarding what is evanescent as per- 
 manent, what is illusion as reality, or, in other 
 words, in supposing anything that exists to be 
 anything else than a mockery and an evil. 
 
 The theory of Schopenhauer is much the same. 
 All phenomenal existence, according to him, is 
 but a dream, and all individuality but a delusion. 
 Life, though grounded in the essence of things and 
 a result of necessity, is a mere vanity. It has its 
 root in the will to live ; it is a cleaving to exist- 
 ence, a striving after satisfaction ; but striving 
 springs from desire, desire from want, want from 
 suffering, and all from delusion or ignorance. 
 Were it not for ignorance of the worthlessness of 
 life, there would be no will to live; there would 
 be no life. 
 
 The teaching of Von Hartmann is at this point 
 in agreement with that of Schopenhauer. It is to 
 the working of the irrational will of the Uncon- 
 scious that he ascribes alike the origin of existence 
 and of evil. That will has broken away from the 
 primitive harmony of the Unconscious, and nature 
 and life are the deplorable consequences. Reason 
 — unconscious reason — follows after to undo as far 
 as possible the evil which will has produced, and to 
 convince it of the mischief which it has caused, and 
 
324 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 is causing ; but before it succeeds, all history must 
 be traversed, all delusions experienced, all follies 
 committed. The new Buddhism is, in this connec- 
 tion, so far as I can see, neither more profound nor 
 more reasonable than the old. 
 
 We pass on to consider what pessimism has to 
 teach concerning the chief end or highest good of 
 human life. In the Buddhism of Buddha the 
 series of causes accounting for the continued flow 
 of existence or evil is regarded as of extreme im- 
 portance. The nature of the salvation must corre- 
 spond to the nature of the evil, and the method 
 in which the salvation is to be attained must cor- 
 respond to the causes of what makes it necessary. 
 Hence it is perfectly natural that the discovery of 
 the order and connection of the causes enumerated 
 should seem to the Buddhist to have solved the 
 enigma, to have dispelled the mystery, of the uni- 
 verse. The nature of the evil must, as I have said, 
 determine the nature of the salvation. Now the 
 evil is existence. It is existence in itself — exist- 
 ence in every form and aspect it can assume. This 
 would lead us to infer that the salvation must be 
 the opposite of existence, — must be non-existence, 
 annihilation, complete extinction. And the sur- 
 mise is too true. The reward which Buddhism 
 holds forth to its votaries as the highest attainable, 
 even by a Buddha, is perfect Nirvana — nothing- 
 ness, the absolute void, the state in which nothing 
 
Pessimism and the Chief Good. 325 
 
 remains of that which constitutes existence, the 
 entire absence of sensation and self-consciousness. 
 It is difficult to credit that men should have been 
 able to form such a view of the chief good ; and 
 the European students of Buddhism have tried as 
 much as they could to resist the conclusion that 
 this was what it taught, but they have found it vain 
 to resist the evidence any longer. With the ex- 
 ception, perhaps, of Max Miiller, all the leading 
 authorities on Buddhism are agreed that what it 
 points to as the ultimate goal of a pious life is not 
 merely a state of repose, of non-agitation, or a state 
 of unconsciousness, as in sleep, but extinction, an- 
 nihilation, nonentity. This conclusion cannot be 
 affected by any discussion as to the meaning and 
 application of the celebrated word Nirvana. It 
 may be held as proved that the Nirvana on which 
 the Buddhists lavish such superlative praises is, in 
 their oldest writings almost always, and in their 
 later writings very often, not annihilation, but a 
 state of unruffled calm, of blissful freedom from 
 anxiety, desire, sorrow, and sin. This, I think, has 
 been nearly made out by Max Miiller and Childers. 
 But Nirvana is itself a state with stages. It may 
 be complete or incomplete. He who enters into it 
 is not at the end of his life. He is only sure that 
 he will arrive there; that he will not be reborn. 
 What is the very end } What is Parinirvana ? 
 There seems to be no doubt that the only answer 
 
326 Anti-TJuistic Theories. 
 
 is — eternal and absolute nothingness. Were it 
 otherwise, Buddhism would stand charged with the 
 most manifest inconsistency. It knows no absolute 
 god, no world-soul, no being into which the perfect 
 man could enter or be absorbed ; for every god, 
 every soul, every being, is illusion and vanity. It 
 distinctly condemns as a heresy the notion that man 
 has any true self, any real individuality, or is more 
 than a mere temporary aggregate of qualities. 
 Buddhism, after having pronounced a sentence of 
 condemnation against all existence, was compelled 
 by force of logic to confound perfected salvation 
 with complete extinction. 
 
 As to this point, however, we must be on our 
 guard against certain exaggerations which are cur- 
 rent. Some authors write as if the terrible nega- 
 tion in which Buddhism ends were one of the chief 
 sources of its strength — as if the void abyss to 
 which it points were full of attractions to the ori- 
 ental mind — as if hundreds of millions of human 
 beings were so strangely constituted as to hunger 
 after absolute vacuity and thirst for eternal death. 
 There are no grounds for such a view. What the 
 Buddhist laity hope for from obedience to the pre- 
 cepts of their faith is to be born again in some 
 higher and purer state of being than that through 
 which they are at present passing. The Nirvana 
 which is eulogised in the Buddhist Scriptures, and 
 after which the Buddhist saints are represented as 
 
Pessimism and the Chief Good. 327 
 
 striving, is not the cessation of existence, but ces- 
 sation from passion and change. All Buddhist 
 thinkers are not orthodox and logical ; and doubt- 
 less many of them are not nihilists. In the pop- 
 ular legends there are stories of Buddhas who have 
 come back from Nirvana ; and although this is in 
 manifest contradiction to the Buddhist creed as a 
 whole, it is a circumstance which ought to be noted, 
 as showing that there is a popular Buddhism which 
 is unconsciously in contradiction to Buddhism as 
 a theory. " In China," we are told by Professor 
 Martin of Pekin, "the Nirvana was found to be 
 too subtle an idea for popular contemplation ; and 
 in order to furnish the people with a more attrac- 
 tive object of worship, the Buddhists brought for- 
 ward a goddess of mercy, whose highest merit was, 
 that having reached the verge of Nirvana, she 
 declined to enter, preferring to remain where she 
 could hear the cries and succour the calamities of 
 those who were struggling with the manifold evils 
 of a world of change." The human heart, we may 
 be assured, is essentially the same all the world 
 over. 
 
 The pessimist philosophers of Germany are very 
 orthodox Buddhists, so far as regards the belief 
 that annihilation is our being's end and aim. 
 According to Schopenhauer, life will gradually be 
 seen to be what it really is — an empty and illusive 
 form. As this knowledge grows, the will to live 
 
328 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 must gradually cease. Men will refuse to preserve 
 themselves or propagate their species, and will 
 welcome death as their highest good. Thus at 
 length individuality, personal existence, will pass 
 completely away, and life will be cancelled in 
 the nothingness of eternity. The blunders of the 
 creative power will thus be corrected and effaced. 
 But Schopenhauer fails to give us any assurance 
 that when this has been accomplished that power 
 will not begin again to blunder as foolishly and 
 mischievously as before. All that he seems sure 
 of is that it cannot do any worse than it has done. 
 His hope that it may do nothing at all is far from 
 consistent with his general opinion of its character. 
 So irrational an agent cannot be expected to act 
 rationally. Von Hartmann maintains that after 
 men have passed from deception to deception they 
 will at length recognise the utter vanity of exist- 
 ence, sigh after eternal extinction, and seek and 
 find it in a collective and concerted act of self- 
 destruction. Reason, he teaches us, will ultimately 
 convince the will that it is better for it not to be, 
 and induce it to annihilate itself He does not 
 inform us, however, in what way it is possible for 
 the universal will to annihilate itself. Is there any 
 dynamite, asks Dr Ebrard, not irrelevantly, which 
 will serve the purpose.^ Herr von Hartmann 
 ought to know. He seems to suppose that the 
 human race by annihilating itself can annihilate 
 
Pessimism and the Chief Good. 329 
 
 the power which originated the universe ; but can 
 he seriously believe so manifest an absurdity ? 
 
 Herr Bahnsen stands alone among pessimists 
 in distinctly denying that even the poor hope of 
 annihilation is legitimate. This vigorous thinker 
 is the most thorough and uncompromising of all 
 the advocates of pessimism. He maintains that 
 the world and life are not only essentially irra- 
 tional and wretched, but will be eternally so. He 
 holds that his fellow-pessimists have no right to 
 promise that the agony of creation will ever ter- 
 minate. If his view be correct, the words which 
 Dante read over the gate of hell might be inscribed 
 on the portals of the universe — 
 
 "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate." 
 
 That his view is not correct cannot, I believe, be 
 proved on pessimistic principles. That evil will 
 have an end, if existence is essentially evil, may 
 be believed on the word of Buddha or Schopen- 
 hauer or Hartmann, but reason for believing it 
 there can be none. The hope of the extinction 
 of evil in a world essentially evil is an unreason- 
 able hope, and can only be based on blind faith. 
 But notwithstanding this, the latest Buddhists, with 
 the one exception mentioned, like the earliest — 
 those who live on the banks of the Spree and the 
 Main, like those who live beside the Meinam and 
 the Cambodia — look to " nothingness as an asylum 
 
330 Anii-Theistic Theories. 
 
 from which there is no return, and in which the 
 soul has no longer anything to fear, nor anything 
 to expect." 
 
 In conclusion, we would ask, What is the path 
 which pessimism advises us to pursue in order to 
 attain the goal which it sets before us ? How are 
 we to reach what it represents as our ultimate 
 destination ? 
 
 Buddhism finds an answer implied in its doc- 
 trine of the series of causes of existence. To 
 break the chain of causes is what is required. 
 This can only be done through discovering the 
 worthlessness of existence, and ceasing from all 
 attachment, all sensuous cleaving, to it in any 
 form. To secure detachment from life, a code of 
 morality is the first thing enjoined. Buddhism is 
 predominantly an ethical doctrine. And it is as 
 such that it is chiefly entitled to praise. It does 
 not fall within the scope of this lecture to dwell 
 on the merits of its moral teaching, but I gladly 
 recognise that they are very great, although not 
 unaccompanied and uncounteracted by serious de- 
 fects. No other heathen system is pervaded by 
 so elevated and pure an ethical spirit. It shows 
 the most wonderful appreciation of the beauties of 
 such virtues as meekness, patience, forgiveness of 
 injuries, compassion, and charity. It is inspired, 
 like Christianity, with a sense of the glory of self- 
 sacrifice. At first sight it almost seems as if the 
 
Pessimism and the Way to the Chief Good. 331 
 
 morality which it preached were essentially evan- 
 gelical. Yet this is by no means the case. For, 
 as has been justly said, "if our earliest impres- 
 sion is the closeness of the parallel between the 
 morality of Buddhism and the morality of the 
 Cross, our second impression is the wideness of 
 their contrast. In Christianity, self-sacrifice is 
 divine ; in Buddhism, it is purely human, and pro- 
 posed as the substitute for a religion. In Chris- 
 tianity, self-sacrifice contemplates the amelioration 
 of the world; in Buddhism, it contemplates getting 
 out of the world. In Christianity, self-sacrifice is 
 proclaimed to be the source of the highest ulti- 
 mate joy; in Buddhism, it is offered as a means 
 of suicide. . . . The morality of Buddhism, beau- 
 tiful as it is in its outward precepts, is still the 
 product of a root of bitterness, and owes its exist- 
 ence to the despair of all rest" ^ Then morality 
 alone cannot lead, according to Buddhism, to Nir- 
 vana. It is a help towards freeing the soul from 
 the thraldom of the causes of existence, but it is 
 no more than a help. The direct path to Nirvana 
 is meditation and asceticism. No one who does 
 not traverse this path — no one who does not 
 become a self- mortifying monk or recluse — can 
 hope for more from his obedience to the moral 
 law of Buddhism than to escape the hells and 
 
 ^ Matheson — 'Growth of the Spirit of Christianity,' vol. i. pp. 
 28, 29. 
 
332 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 to transmigrate into something better than he has 
 been. 
 
 In entire accordance with this teaching, Schopen- 
 hauer maintains that the will to live must be rooted 
 out by fasting, by voluntary poverty, by meek sub- 
 mission to injury, by absolute chastity, and, in a 
 word, by the various exercises of asceticism. His 
 practice did not in the least correspond to this 
 part of his theory, as he was particularly careful 
 of his life, health, and money, had a most exclu- 
 sive and selfish regard to his own comfort, and was 
 decidedly the reverse of either meek or patient. 
 But his ethical creed was perfectly orthodox in the 
 Buddhistic sense, although his life was heretical. 
 Von Hartmann is much less orthodox even in 
 creed. He admits that it is hopeless to expect 
 men to mortify the flesh and destroy life by ascetic 
 practices, and would have his followers live just as 
 other people do, in the trust that the world, owing 
 to the delusions and disenchantments of history, 
 will gradually, without individuals taking any care 
 about the matter, work out its own salvation — that 
 is, its own destruction. In the East, multitudes 
 of men have earnestly striven to act on their pes- 
 simism. In the West, no one has as yet, so far as 
 I am aware, seriously tried to do so. 
 
 The theory which we have been considering 
 answers successfully few, if any, of the demands 
 of the reason, the conscience, or the heart It re- 
 
Pessimism and the Gospel. 333 
 
 gards the world as irrational, and so, of course, 
 does not explain it It lays good and evil under 
 the same condemnation. It seeks to empty the 
 soul of the susceptibilities which it cannot satisfy, 
 and to extirpate the desires which it cannot regu- 
 late. It tends to arrest all social progress. The 
 rest which it promises is that of the grave. We 
 ought, I think, to carry away from the contempla- 
 tion of it a deepened gratitude to God for the gift 
 of that Gospel which has shown us the true cause 
 of the world's misery and the true way of salvation 
 That even in our own day, and in Christian lands, 
 the Gospel should by some have been deliberately 
 rejected in the name of science and philosophy, 
 and the Buddhist theory reproduced as a substi- 
 tute for it, only shows in a glaring and terrible 
 light that what is esteemed the most modern 
 wisdom may be very ancient folly.^ 
 
 » See Appendix XXXIII. 
 
334 Afiti-Theistic Theories 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 HISTORY OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 Pantheism is a word of very wide and very vague 
 import. It has been used to designate an immense 
 variety of systems which have prevailed in the 
 East and the West in ancient and modern times 
 It is, in fact, a word so vague that few thinkers 
 have defined it to their own satisfaction. There is 
 no general agreement as to its meaning, and it has 
 been applied to all sorts of doctrines, the worst and 
 the best. It has been so understood as to include 
 the lowest atheism and the highest theism — the 
 materialism of Holbach and Biichner, and the 
 spiritualism of St Paul and St John. There is a 
 materialistic pantheism which cannot be rigidly 
 separated from other materialism, and there has 
 been much talk of late of a Christian pantheism 
 which can only be distinguished from Christian 
 theism if theism be identified, or rather confounded, 
 with deism. The term pantheism ought, of course, 
 
Nature of Pantheism. 33 5 
 
 to be so understood, if possible, as to be altogether 
 inapplicable to either atheistic or theistic systems ; 
 but we must remember that systems of thought, 
 and especially systems of religion, are seldom, if 
 ever, perfectly homogeneous and self- consistent. 
 It is seldom, if ever, possible to refer them to 
 a class with absolute accuracy, or to find that a 
 definition exactly suits them. Even in regard to 
 materialism, I had to remark that the only kind 
 of system of which its history supplies no record 
 is one which would answer truly to the name of 
 materialism. In the same way there is probably 
 no pure pantheism. The systems designated 
 pantheistic are only more or less so ; they contain 
 likewise, in almost every instance, some atheistic, 
 polytheistic, or theistic elements. It would be 
 therefore unfair to judge any system solely and 
 rigidly by a definition of pantheism. Each pan- 
 theistic system must be judged of in itself and as a 
 whole in order to be impartially estimated. Why 
 each system has come to be what it is, and why 
 one system differs from another, are questions 
 which the history of religious philosophy professes 
 to answer, and which it is continually learning to 
 answer in a more thorough and satisfactory manner, 
 while the characteristic at once common to all the 
 systems, and distinctive of them, is still not very 
 clearly or exactly determined. 
 
 What is pantheism } The following is as definite 
 
33^ Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 a general answer as I can give. Pantheism is the 
 theory which regards all finite things as merely 
 aspects, modifications, or parts of one eternal and 
 self-existent being; which views all material objects, 
 and all particular minds, as necessarily derived 
 from a single infinite substance. The one absolute 
 substance — the one all -comprehensive being — it 
 calls God. Thus God, according to it, is all that 
 is ; and nothing is which is not essentially included 
 in, or which has not been necessarily evolved out 
 of, God. It may conceive of the one substance in 
 many and most dissimilar ways, but it is only pan- 
 theism on condition of conceiving of it as one. 
 For example, there can only be materialistic pan- 
 theism where there is believed to be materialistic 
 monism. Its adherents are those who regard mat- 
 ter as ultimately not an aggregate of atoms but a 
 unity, — who are so devoid of perspicacity as not to 
 see that materialism and monism are in reality 
 contradictory conceptions. Pantheism may also 
 represent the derivation of the multiplicity of phen- 
 omena from the unity of substance as taking place 
 in many very different ways, but it cannot be truly 
 pantheism unless it represent it as a necessary 
 derivation. It must regard it not as a freely willed 
 production, but as an eternal process which could 
 not have been other than what it has been. In 
 order that there may be pantheism, monism and 
 determinism must be combined. It is only then 
 
Nature of Pantheism. 337 
 
 that the All of Nature is believed to be coexten- 
 sive with God — only then that the Divine Being 
 is supposed to be fully or exhaustively expressed 
 in the Divine manifestations. 
 
 According to the view I have just stated, no 
 system which does not include determinism and 
 exclude freedom is truly pantheistic. I refuse to 
 have any controversy with certain so-called forms 
 of pantheism which I do not regard as properly pan- 
 theistic, and which are certainly not anti-theistic. 
 If matter could be resolved into force, and force 
 could be reasonably inferred to be a phase or 
 exertion of Divine power — if the laws of matter 
 could be shown to be modes of God's agency, and 
 the properties of matter modes of His manifes- 
 tation — if Berkleyanism could be proved true, — 
 some persons would say that, so far as the physi- 
 cal universe was concerned, pantheism had been 
 established. I should say nothing of the kind, and 
 should consider such an application of the term 
 pantheism as not only unwarranted but injudicious, 
 because unnecessarily provocative of religious pre- 
 judice. Physical nature is not represented by the 
 view to which I refer as in the least degree more 
 commensurate with the Divine power than by the 
 common view. It may have been the free pro- 
 duction of a volition, and may be an inexpressibly 
 less adequate measure of the might of God, than a 
 thought or word is of the power of man. It may 
 
 Y 
 
33^ Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 have left in God an infinite energy which He can 
 direct and apply according to the good pleasure of 
 His will. In like manner, if all human minds were 
 proved to exist — as some have supposed them to 
 do — through the conditions of intelligence called 
 primary ideas ; and if these primary ideas could be 
 ascertained to be — what some hold that they are — 
 thoughts of God, not only present in the mind of 
 man, but constituting it what it is, — although Divine 
 thought would thereby be represented as the sub- 
 stance, so to speak, of human minds, yet if a dis- 
 tinct individuality and real freedom could be justly 
 attributed to these minds, pantheism in the strict 
 and proper sense would not be established. The 
 creature is so dependent on the Creator as to exist 
 only in, through, and by Him. What amount of 
 being it has in itself no man can tell. The quantity 
 of being, the degree of being, possessed by the 
 creature is certainly indeterminate. The finite 
 cannot weigh itself in the balances of substance or 
 being with the Infinite. It cannot ascertain what 
 measure of being, what amount of substance, it 
 has, as distinguished from the Infinite. Nor is it 
 necessary that it should try to do so in order to 
 preserve itself from pantheism and its errors. It 
 will be sufficient for this purpose that it adhere 
 to the plain testimony of consciousness and con- 
 science, to the great facts of freedom and responsi- 
 bility. In knowing ourselves as self-conscious and 
 
Nature of Pantheism. 339 
 
 self-acting with a certainty far greater than any 
 reasoning to the contrary can produce, we have 
 a guarantee that the pantheism which includes 
 fatalism is false, — and there is, properly speaking, 
 no other pantheism. 
 
 Pantheism is, as regards the relation of God to 
 the world, the opposite extreme to what apologetic 
 writers call deism. The latter theory represents 
 God as a personal Being who exists only above 
 and apart from the world, and the world as a some- 
 thing which, although created by God, is now in- 
 dependent of Him, and capable of sustaining and 
 developing itself and performing its work, without 
 His aid, in virtue of its own inherent energies. It 
 not only distinguishes God from the world, but 
 separates and excludes Him from the world. 
 Pantheism, on the contrary, denies that God and 
 nature either do or can exist apart. It regards 
 God without nature as a cause without effect or 
 a substance without qualities, and nature without 
 God as an effect without a cause or qualities with- 
 out a substance. It sees in the former an abstract 
 conception of a power without efficiency — and in 
 the latter, of a shadow which is cast by no reality. 
 It therefore represents God and nature as eter- 
 nally and necessarily coexistent, as the indissol- 
 uble phases of an absolute unity, as but the inner 
 and outer side of the same whole, as but one 
 existence under a double aspect. Theism takes 
 
340 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 an intermediate view. It maintains with deism 
 that God is a personal Being, who created the 
 world intelligently and freely, and is above it and 
 independent of it ; but it maintains also with pan- 
 theism that He is everywhere present and active 
 in the world, " upholding all things by the word of 
 His power," and so inspiring and working in them 
 that " in Him they live, and move, and have their 
 being." It contradicts deism in so far as that 
 system represents the universe as independent of 
 God, and pantheism in so far as it represents God 
 as dependent on the universe. It excludes what 
 is erroneous and retains what is correct in both 
 deism and pantheism. It is thus at once the pure 
 truth and the whole truth. 
 
 Pantheism has appeared in a far greater variety 
 of phases, and has presented a far richer combina- 
 tion of elements, than materialism. It has always 
 endeavoured to comprehend and harmonise aspira- 
 tions and facts, ideas and realities, the infinite and 
 the finite. It has tried all methods of investiga- 
 tion and exposition, and has assumed a multitude 
 of forms. It has had great constructive skill dis- 
 played on it, and has been adorned with all sorts 
 of beauties. But just because its history is far 
 broader and richer than that of materialism, it is 
 also one which it is far more difficult worthily to 
 delineate. It is not much to be wondered at that 
 there should be no adequate history of pantheism. 
 
Hindu Pantheism. 341 
 
 I cannot attempt to trace even the general course 
 of that history, and yet I cannot wholly ignore the 
 subject, seeing that pantheism can only be under- 
 stood through the study of its actual development. 
 Nothing can be more delusive than an estimate 
 of pantheism based exclusively on a definition or 
 general description.^ 
 
 It is an error to regard India as the sole fountain- 
 head of pantheism. Wherever we find traces of 
 speculation on the origin of things, there we also 
 find traces of pantheism. But nowhere was the 
 soil so congenial to it as in India, and nowhere 
 else has it flourished so luxuriantly. It has over- 
 spread the whole land — overgrown the whole 
 Hindu mind and life. The pantheism of India, 
 however, has always been to some extent com- 
 bined or associated with theism. There are hymns 
 in the Rig-Veda, relative to creation, which are 
 distinctly more monotheistic than pantheistic In 
 many passages of the Upanishads, the national 
 epics, and the philosophical soutras and commen- 
 taries, the Universal Soul is certainly not described 
 as strictly impersonal. But theism in India was 
 never either strong or pure, and has never been 
 
 1 See Appendix XXXIV. 
 
342 Anti- 1 heistic Theories. 
 
 able even to hold its own against the deeply and 
 firmly rooted pantheism of the land. 
 
 The literature of India shows us the successive 
 stages through which its religion has passed. The 
 earliest is that disclosed to us in the oldest Vedic 
 hymns. It was a phase of religious naturalism. 
 The objects and aspects of the universe, and espe- 
 cially light and its manifestations, assumed in 
 the imaginations and feelings of the primitive 
 Aryan settlers in India a divine character. The 
 bright sky, the sun, the dawn, the fire, the winds, 
 the clouds, were deemed by them to be instinct 
 with life, thought, and affection — beings to whom 
 prayers and sacrifices ought to be offered — agents 
 at once physical and divine. With such deities, 
 however, the mind could not long rest in a pro- 
 gressive society. They were too vague and in- 
 determinate; they wanted character and individ- 
 uality. The intellect, the imagination, the heart, 
 craved for more definite personalities, and grad- 
 ually developed naturalism into, or replaced it 
 by, anthropomorphism. Elemental deities yielded 
 to human deities. The two states indicated are, 
 however, merely stages of a single process. The 
 naturalism by no means wholly excluded the at- 
 tributing of human qualities to the deified natural 
 powers, and the anthropomorphism absorbed into 
 itself much of the naturalism out of which it had 
 crrown. It would also seem that a certain con- 
 
Hindu Pa7itheism. 343 
 
 sciousness of an ultimate unity underlying the 
 worshipped powers and persons — of a common 
 Divine source, of which they were the issues and 
 expressions — was never entirely extruded or ex- 
 tinguished by the polytheism of either of these 
 two stages. It was in greatest danger, perhaps, 
 of being lost under the latter, when imagination 
 was actively creating anthropomorphic deities; but 
 even then the craving of mind and heart after unity 
 was seen in the exaltation of some one of the gods 
 to supremacy. This led, however, only to self- 
 contradiction and confusion ; now one god, and 
 now another — now Varuna, now Indra, now Agni 
 — being represented and revered as the highest, or 
 even the absolute, deity. With the rise and pre- 
 dominance of a cultured, thoughtful, speculative 
 class, the priestly class, a more elevated, abstract, 
 and comprehensive unity was conceived of — Brah- 
 ma. The idea of Brahma is that of a being inde- 
 finable in itself, but perceptible in its forms, the 
 substantial reality of all that exists, the universal 
 life in which the world is absorbed and from which 
 it issues. This idea was the natural result of the 
 whole course of religious thought represented in 
 the Vedas, although in the Vedas it is only found 
 in a quite rudimentary condition. All subsequent 
 Hindu speculation, however, contributed either 
 directly or indirectly to evolve it. To explain in 
 detail how and why, would be to write the longest 
 
344 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and most important chapter in the history of Hin- 
 du civilisation. In what we may call the straight 
 line of development lie the works which may be 
 regarded as the sources and authorities of the 
 philosophy which is generally admitted to have 
 most fully deduced the conclusions implied in the 
 Vedas, and which is undoubtedly the completest 
 expression of Hindu pantheism — the Vedanta phil- 
 osophy. The chief stages of the growth of this 
 philosophy out of its Vedic germ, can be traced by 
 the help of the literary documents with consider- 
 able certainty ; but I can, of course, merely indi- 
 cate the general character of its doctrine. 
 
 The central idea in the Vedanta theory is, that 
 there is only one real being, and that this being 
 is absolutely one. All material things and finite 
 minds are conceived of as but emanations from 
 the sole entity, and all that seems to imply inde- 
 pendent existence is referred to ignorance. The 
 whole of science is comprised, according to Vedant- 
 ism, in the one formula — " Brahma alone exists ; 
 everything else is illusion." The truth of this 
 formula is held to be implied in the very idea of 
 Brahma, as the one eternal, unlimited, pure, and 
 perfect being. If there existed a multitude of 
 realities which had an origin and an end, which 
 were finite, compounded, and imperfect, they must 
 have originated in Brahma. But this they could 
 not have done, it is argued, unless Brahma had 
 
Hindu Pantheism. 345 
 
 within himself the real principle of multiplicity, 
 limitation; or, in other words, unless he were really 
 not one, not eternal, not perfect. To ascribe real 
 being and individuality to anything but Brahma, 
 is equivalent to denying that Brahma is Brahma. 
 Nor can there be any qualities and distinctions 
 in Brahma. The absolute unity must be at once 
 absolute reality and absolute knowledge. Were 
 absolute being and absolute knowing not identi- 
 cal, there could be no absolute identity, no being 
 absolutely one. Brahma, the universal soul, is the 
 absolute knowledge which is inclusive of, and self- 
 identical with, reality. But absolute knowledge 
 cannot be the knowledge of anything, for this im- 
 plies the distinction of subject and object, which is 
 of itself a limitation both of subject and object. 
 Absolute knowledge must exclude the dualism of 
 subject and object, and every kind of synthesis 
 and relation. 
 
 Thus argues the Vedantist. What are we to 
 think of his argument } Merely that it is logi- 
 cally valid. It deduces correctly a false conclusion 
 from a false principle. He who will hold to the 
 belief in an absolute abstract unity must neces- 
 sarily identify knowing and being, and deny that 
 pure knowing admits of a distinction between 
 subject and object. But such a unity as this 
 cannot be reasonably entertained by the mind. 
 To ask reason to start from it, is to ask it to 
 
34^ Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 start with a contradiction of its own fundamental 
 laws. Besides, no kind of multiplicity or diversity 
 can ever be shown to be consistent with such unity. 
 The existence in some sense, however, of a multi- 
 tude of different things, cannot be denied and must 
 be accounted for. We perceive a variety of separ- 
 ate finite objects and are conscious of imperfection 
 and limitation in ourselves. We do not perceive 
 an infinite unity which is neither subject nor 
 object, and which is perfect and unlimited, nor 
 are we conscious of identity with it. How are 
 we to explain this on the Vedantist hypothesis ? 
 How are we to reconcile the reason which denies 
 with the consciousness which affirms distinctions 
 and limitations t How are we to connect the one 
 and the many, the absolute and the relative ? 
 
 The hypothesis of emanation may be had re- 
 course to, but it is obviously insufficient. Emana- 
 tion is a physical process, and only possible be- 
 cause matter is essentially multiple and divisible. 
 The fire sends forth sparks just because it is no 
 unity but a multitude — an aggregate. The sparks 
 are not identical either with one another or with 
 the fire ; they and all other parts of the fire are 
 distinct from one another, although all the parts 
 are of the same sort. The notion of emanation 
 and the notion of absolute unity are exclusive 
 of each other. The Vedantists saw this, and con- 
 fessed that all the similes which they made use 
 
Hindu Pantheism. 347 
 
 of drawn from instances of emanation in physical 
 nature were radically defective. They claimed no 
 more for them than that they might help intelli- 
 gence in what they described as its dream-state, 
 to believe that nothing exists except Brahma. In 
 other words, they admitted that these similes were 
 addressed, not to the reason, but to the imagina- 
 tion. Hence it was necessary for them to supple- 
 ment the hypothesis of emanation by another — 
 that of illusion caused by ignorance. 
 
 The problem which they had to solve was to 
 reconcile their theory of only one being with their 
 consciousness of many beings. It was a problem 
 which they could not solve, but they so far con- 
 cealed their failure to solve it by making, as Dr 
 Ballantyne has said, "the fact itself do duty for 
 its own cause." The soul does not know that God 
 alone is, and that finite souls and finite things are 
 not, because it does not know it — because it is 
 ignorant. Were it not for ignorance the worlds 
 of sense and consciousness would not appear — 
 God alone would be. It is ignorance which has 
 made the appearances that we call worlds and 
 souls, and these appearances are mere illusions — 
 deceits. They are maya. It is impossible, of 
 course, to find any satisfaction in such an hypo- 
 thesis. Who is it that Brahma is deceiving } 
 Himself. Why should he do that } And how 
 can he do it t Ignorance and illusion are im- 
 
348 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 plied in our consciousness of the world and of 
 self being false, but they are not implied in, nor 
 even consistent with, its being true that there is 
 no being save one absolute and perfect being. 
 The latter supposition precludes the possibility 
 of ignorance, appearance, illusion, &c. The Ve- 
 dantists, however, could not dispense with igno> 
 ranee and illusion. It was only thus that they 
 could seem to adhere to their absolute unity. It 
 was only in the state of illusion that they could 
 think of Brahma, and only with the help even 
 of very material imagery that they could speak 
 of him. 
 
 I might now proceed to explain the Vedanta 
 theory of the three qualities of ignorance, which, 
 separately or in combination, obscure the know- 
 ledge which constitutes the essence of the soul ; 
 and of its two powers, the one originating belief 
 in our consciousness of personality, and the other 
 accounting for the dream that there is an external 
 world. I might also dwell on the Vedanta theory 
 of the nature and laws of the evolution of phe- 
 nomena. The transformations of Brahma, of which 
 the evolution consists, are supposed to take place 
 according to both a diminishing and an increasing 
 progression, the former being from more to less 
 perfect, and the latter from less to more definite. 
 I am compelled, however, to leave unconsidered 
 these and other portions of the system, and must 
 
Hindu Pantheism. 349 
 
 content myself with merely stating that the theory 
 of human life and destiny, based on the view of 
 God and nature which has been delineated, is just 
 that which we should have anticipated. The end 
 of man is regarded as the perfect repose which 
 must result from union with the absolute. It is 
 held to be only attainable through the science 
 which is comprised in the formula — "one only 
 without a second." The way to reach true science 
 is maintained to be meditation on Revelation, with 
 renunciation of the world and pious dispositions 
 and exercises. The effects of it are described as 
 freedom from ignorance, error, the possibility of 
 sin, desire, activity, transmigration, and change. 
 Whoever knows Brahma becomes Brahma. He 
 is freed from the illusion that he has any distinct 
 personal existence. He shakes off pleasure and 
 pain, virtue and vice, all distinctions and qualities. 
 He returns into the essence whence he came, and 
 attains the highest identity. In a word, from the 
 pantheism of the Vedanta philosophy, all its chief 
 consequences are deduced with a boldness and 
 consistency which justify its claim to be regarded 
 as among the greatest systems to which specula- 
 tion has given birth. 
 
 In the pantheism of the Vedanta doctrine the 
 finite is lost in the infinite. Along with the affir- 
 mation of an impersonal God there is the negation 
 of the reality of the worlds, both of sense and con- 
 
350 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 sciousness. In other words, the issue of this kind 
 of pantheism is acosmism. But pantheism is just 
 as Hkely to issue in atheism. Those who are 
 determined to reach an absolute unity, while yet 
 feeling constrained to admit that physical objects 
 and finite minds have a veritable existence, must 
 sacrifice the infinite to the finite — God to nature, — 
 must represent God as an abstraction and nullity. 
 From this virtual atheism there is but a step to 
 avowed atheism. The Sankhya philosophy and 
 Buddhism are the Hindu exemplifications of this 
 tendency of pantheistic speculation.^ 
 
 From India let us pass on to Greece. In India 
 philosophy as a rule rests on the Vedas. Its sys- 
 tems are classed as orthodox or heterodox. Hence 
 Hegel has aptly compared the Hindu to the scho- 
 lastic systems, as being systems of philosophy 
 within systems of theology. Even the Sankhya 
 system, which can hardly be said to acknowledge 
 the authority of the Vedas, and which is really 
 atheistical in character, yet proposes to itself for 
 final aim a religious end, the securing of salva- 
 tion to man, and recommends the pursuit of truth 
 only as a means to that end. In Greece it was 
 otherwise. Philosophy there had from the first 
 a sort of consciousness of a function of its own. 
 It invoked no anterior or supernatural authority. 
 The influence of religion upon it was real and 
 
 1 See Appendix XXXV. 
 
Greek Pantheism. 351 
 
 considerable, but indirect and secondary. It was 
 content to trust entirely in reason, and to aim at 
 nothing beyond truth. 
 
 All the pre - Socratic schools of Greek philos- 
 ophy, with the exception of that of Democritus, 
 were more or less pantheistic ; but only in the 
 Eleatic philosophy does early Greek pantheism 
 appear fully developed. It bears a most striking 
 resemblance to the Vedanta theory. Almost all 
 that is needed to convert Vedanta doctrine into 
 Eleatic doctrine is to substitute the word Being 
 for the word Brahma. The more closely I have 
 examined and compared the two systems, the 
 more I have been impressed with this truth ; and 
 yet there can be no doubt that the one system was 
 as thoroughly Greek as the other was thoroughly 
 Hindu. 
 
 The Eleatic philosophy was founded by Xeno- 
 phanes, and brought to perfection by Parmenides. 
 I shall state very briefly its leading principles as 
 taught by the latter. His cardinal principle is 
 the opposition of being and appearance, truth and 
 opinion, reason and sense. To being corresponds 
 reason ; to appearance, sense. Reason apprehend- 
 ing being is truth ; sense apprehending appearance 
 is opinion. Being and appearance, reason and 
 sense, truth and opinion, are essentially irrecon- 
 cilable and contradictory. All truth belongs to 
 reason, which alone can apprehend being. There 
 
352 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 is no truth in sense ; and the credit which men 
 attach to its testimony is merely a proof of their 
 tendency to follow " the road of appearance, where 
 nought but fallacy reigneth." Parmenides had the 
 courage to challenge the authority of external im- 
 pressions, and of all reasoning from them, and dis- 
 tinctly to deny that material things exist as we 
 see them, or need exist at all because we believe 
 that we see them. So far as the senses and their 
 objects were concerned, he was an avowed sceptic. 
 His scepticism, however, was a means, and not an 
 end. He denied, and laboured to destroy, the 
 authority of sense, but only in order to affirm and 
 establish the authority of reason. He desired 
 that reason should rule without a rival. His phil- 
 osophy was, therefore, essentially not scepticism, 
 but dogmatic idealism. It rested on reason alone, 
 and on reason understood in the strictest, narrow- 
 est, most exclusive manner — on reason reduced to 
 a single idea, and expressed in a single truth. 
 
 What was the truth which he regarded as the 
 one truth, the whole truth } It was this : " Being 
 is, and cannot but be ; not-being is not, and can- 
 not be. One can affirm everything of being, and 
 nothing of not-being." He started where his pre- 
 decessor, Xenophanes, ended. Xenophanes passed 
 from the thought of God to the thought of abso- 
 lute being ; Parmenides began with absolute being. 
 He was quite aware of the sort of contradiction 
 
Greek Pantheis7n. 353 
 
 involved in saying at one and the same time, " not- 
 being is not, and cannot be," and " one can affirm no- 
 thing of not-being." He felt that he had to speak 
 so because the very notion of not-being is a contra- 
 diction, and all speech about it must be a contra- 
 diction. " One can neither know not-being," he 
 said, " nor express it in words : for it has in it 
 no possibility of being." His not-being did not 
 mean non-existence, but all that sense and ordi- 
 nary thought apprehend as existence ; it included 
 earth, air, ocean, and the minds of men. The 
 whole multiple and divisible universe was what he 
 held to be the not-being, which is to reason a con- 
 tradiction so great that it is impossible even to 
 speak of it in a rational manner. His "what is 
 not is not" was not a truism, but a paradox. 
 
 In deducing a doctrine of being, Parmenides 
 displayed great speculative boldness and ability. 
 I can merely state the results at which he arrived. 
 1°, Being, he argued, is absolutely one. It is not 
 an abstract unity, but the only reality. It so is 
 that it alone is. 2°, Being, he further affirmed, is 
 continuous and indivisible ; it is everywhere like 
 to itself, and everywhere alike present. Were 
 there parts in being there would be plurality, and 
 being would not be one — that is, would not be 
 being. There can be no differences or distinctions 
 in being ; for what is different and distinct from 
 being must be not-being, and not-being is not 
 
 z 
 
354 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 3°, Being, he also maintained, is incapable of 
 change or motion in space. It cannot exist either 
 in a state of rest or movement analogous to the 
 rest and movement of the material world. We 
 conceive of bodies only as in space, and of their 
 changes only as changes of their parts relative to 
 different points of space ; but absolute being has 
 no parts with relations to the different points of 
 what is called space. Bodies and their parts, space 
 and its points, are mere appearances, with which true 
 being has nothing in common. 4°, Being, he further 
 argued, is immobile in time. It can have neither 
 birth nor destruction, past nor future. 5°, Being was 
 affirmed by him to be perfect — itself alone an end 
 or limit to itself 6^ Being, he likewise held — 
 anticipating Hegel as he had anticipated Kant — 
 is identical with thought. It could not otherwise 
 be absolutely one. "Thought," he said, "is the 
 same thing as being. Thought must be being; 
 for being exists, and non-being is nothing." And 
 again, "But thought is identical with its object; 
 for without being, on which it rests, you will not 
 find thought — nothing, in fact, is or will be dis- 
 tinct from being." 
 
 Parmenides, you will perceive, was not a man 
 easily daunted. Pantheism has rarely been more 
 consistent and complete than it was in his hands. 
 The world was as entirely lost in his Being as in the 
 Vedantist Brahma. But as in India, so in Greece, 
 there was a pantheism of a contrary kind — one vs- 
 
Greek Pantheism. 355 
 
 which unity was virtually lost in multiplicity, the 
 absolute in the phenomenal. Perhaps the Hera- 
 clitean doctrine was the best example presented 
 by the history of Greek philosophy of a pan- 
 theism of this kind. Heraclitus, having sought in 
 vain for any permanent principle, for any abso- 
 lute being, was led to maintain that the universe 
 is merely a process of incessant change ; that its 
 essence is not being, but becoming ; that fire per- 
 vaded by intelligence is its universal ground and 
 fittest symbol ; and that the human mind is a 
 portion of the all-pervasive mind, and can only 
 attain truth through communion with it. 
 
 With Socrates and Plato the course of spec- 
 ulation took, on the whole, a theistic direction. 
 In Aristotle it tended rather towards pantheism. 
 Stoicism was originally and predominantly a ma- 
 terialistic or hylozoic form of pantheism; but some 
 of its greatest representatives conceived of God in 
 a decidedly theistic manner as the supreme moral 
 reason. In stoicism everything was subordinated 
 to morality, and only its ethics was sublime. Its 
 theology was crude and confused, and I pass over 
 it without regret.^ 
 
 II. 
 
 Christianity did not arrest the progress of pan- 
 theism as it did that of materialism. On the 
 
 ^ See Appendix XXXVI. 
 
356 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 contrary, it seemed to stimulate and increase its 
 activity. In the second, third, fourth, and fifth 
 centuries of our era there was a vast amount of 
 pantheistic speculation influenced by and influ- 
 encing Christianity, sometimes directly opposing 
 it, sometimes endeavouring to incorporate its doc- 
 trines and establish them on a philosophical basis, 
 and sometimes claiming to be identical with it and 
 entitled to its authority. I need only remind you 
 of the Gnostic systems, and of the Neo- Platonic 
 philosophy of Alexandria. When Gnosticism and 
 Neo-Platonism seemed to be vanquished and de- 
 stroyed, they were, in reality, merely transformed 
 They entered into Judaism with the Cabbala, and 
 into Christianity with the writings of the so-called 
 Dionysius the Areopagite. On the threshold of 
 the middle ages a very remarkable man — John 
 Scott Erigena — made a most vigorous and elabo- 
 rate attempt to reconcile and combine a panthe- 
 istic philosophy and the doctrine of the Christian 
 Church, on the assumption that philosophy and 
 religion are substantially one — philosophy veiled 
 in the form of tradition being religion, and religion 
 unveiled from the form of tradition by reason 
 being philosophy. He explained Scripture as the 
 symbolic self-manifestation of the absolute, and 
 gave ingenious speculative expositions of the 
 Trinity, the creation of the world and of man, the 
 incarnation of the Logos, &c., according to prin- 
 
Medieval Pantheism. 357 
 
 ciples derived from Plotinus and Proclus, Origen 
 and Maximus the Confessor, and especially the 
 pseudoDionysius. The latest English historian 
 of pantheism tells us that there was little or no 
 pantheism in the middle ages. This is about as 
 accurate as it would be to say that there are no 
 Methodists at present in England or Ultramon- 
 tanists in France. Pantheism was prevalent all 
 through the middle ages ; and medieval pan- 
 theism, unlike modern pantheism, was not con- 
 fined to speculative individuals, but was adopted 
 by considerable communities — the Beghards and 
 Beguines, the Brothers and Sisters of the Free 
 Spirit, the Turlupins, the Adamites, the Familists, 
 the Spiritual Libertines, &c. This popular pan- 
 theism was partly due to the persistence of the 
 ancient pagan spirit among the uneducated masses, 
 and partly to reaction from the externality and 
 formalism which characterised medieval Christi- 
 anity. It died away before the light of the 
 Reformation, owing to Protestantism giving to 
 the religious instincts of the people a satisfaction 
 which Romanism denied to them. 
 
 In the year 1600 the brilliant inaugurator of 
 modern pantheism, Jordano Bruno, was burned 
 at Rome. His bold, teeming, imaginative mind, 
 susceptible to the most varied influences, origin- 
 ated a grandiose system, rich in its elements and 
 vast in its scope, but devoid of self-consistency, 
 
358 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 method, and proof. It combined without harmon- 
 ising the Eleatic, Neo - Platonic, and naturalistic 
 pantheisms ; naturalism being perhaps predomi- 
 nant, owing to the powerful hold which the dis- 
 coveries of Copernicus, and the idea of an infinity 
 of worlds, had taken of the author's mind. Bruno 
 was the precursor of Spinoza, by whom his writ- 
 ings were carefully studied.^ 
 
 Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is the most celebrated 
 of all pantheists, and I must delineate as dis- 
 tinctly as I can within the narrow limits to which 
 I am confined his theory of God, and of the rela- 
 tion of God to the universe. It is a theory which 
 was drawn from a multitude of sources — the 
 Talmud, the Cabbala, Maimonides, Ben Gerson, 
 Chasdai Creskas, Bruno, Descartes, &c. — which 
 was slowly and gradually developed, and which 
 passed through various phases in its author's mind 
 before it was elaborated into the shape which it 
 assumed in the last and greatest of his works, the 
 * Ethica.' It is in its final form that we must look 
 at it 
 
 Thinking philosophy ought to be purely deduc- 
 tive — ought to start from a single point fixed by 
 the necessities of reason, and be carried on by 
 sheer force of logic in the form of a continuous 
 demonstration to all its consequences — Spinoza 
 very naturally, and had his supposition been cor- 
 
 1 See Appendix XXXVII. 
 
Spinoza. 359 
 
 rect, very justly, imagined that the order of know- 
 ledge must be the same as the order of existence. 
 What is first in reality must, he thought, be first 
 in science. So he began with God, the first, the 
 self- existent Being. This, however, cannot but 
 be a stumbling-block to all who believe that the 
 inductive process is that of philosophy, or even 
 that philosophy has to take account of the results 
 of the inductive sciences. In all inductive science, 
 principles which are first in the order of nature 
 are last in the order of intelligence. It is only in 
 mathematical science that first principles are first 
 in the order both of nature and intelligence. All, 
 therefore, who cannot admit that philosophy is 
 mathematical or demonstrative science — who ac- 
 knowledge that unity is her goal or aim, but deny 
 that it is her starting-point — ^will feel that Spinoza 
 has begun at the wrong end, however natural it 
 may have been for him to begin at that end. 
 
 His doctrine of the Divine nature is unfolded in 
 a series of thirty-seven propositions, all professedly 
 demonstrated, and many of them having corol- 
 laries and scholia. This series of propositions is 
 prefaced by eight definitions and seven axioms. 
 Most of the axioms look very innocent, but they 
 are not as innocent as they look. There seems to 
 be no danger in assenting to such an affirmation 
 as "All that is, is either in itself, or in some thing 
 other than itself," which is axiom first ; but danger 
 
36o Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 there is ; and you will find this axiom used under 
 proposition sixth to prove that there is nothing in 
 the universe but substance and the affections of 
 substance; under proposition fifteenth, to prove 
 that thought and extension are either attributes 
 of God, or modes of His attributes ; and so in 
 many other places, precisely as if there was only 
 one way of being in a thing, or as if in denoted a 
 particular kind of inherence. It seems quite safe 
 to assent to a statement like this, " Whatever can 
 be thought of as non - existing does not in its 
 essence involve existence," but no ; it is true only 
 if it is the truism. Whatever can be thought of as 
 non-existing need not be thought of as existing ; 
 whereas it is not so understood, but in application 
 is made to do duty for the very different affirma- 
 tion, What can be conceived of as existing in its 
 essence involves existence, so as to conceal in 
 some measure one great failure of the system — 
 its inability to establish that the notions it deals 
 with answer to what really exists. 
 
 The definitions, unlike the axioms, present 
 difficulties which almost every one who reads 
 them in some measure feels. Spinoza had given 
 them many an altering touch to bring them into 
 the form which they bear in the Ethics, as he 
 always found that, although they seemed to him 
 the simplest and most self-evident truths, his 
 friends felt it difficult to accept, or even to under 
 
Spinoza. 361 
 
 stand them. I have no time to examine these 
 definitions of "cause of itself," "the finite in its 
 kind," "substance," "attribute," "mode," "God," 
 " free and necessary," " eternity ; " but I must enter 
 my decided protest against the opinion expressed 
 by Mr Lewes and others, that no criticism of them 
 is needed, since they are definitions of terms. 
 " They need not," says Mr Lewes, " long be dwelt 
 on, although frequently referred to by Spinoza ; 
 above all, no objection ought to be raised against 
 them as unusual or untrue, for they are the mean- 
 ings of various terms in constant use with Spinoza, 
 and he has a right to use them as he pleases, pro- 
 vided he does not afterwards depart from this use, 
 which he is careful not to do." Well, no doubt 
 Spinoza had so far a right to define the terms he 
 intended to use as he pleased, on condition of 
 keeping strictly to his definitions, but he may also 
 have abused his right. Euclid might have called 
 the circle a square and the square a circle, might 
 have interchanged the names of line and surface 
 and solid, yet defined them all correctly, and rea- 
 soned on them all correctly ; but it would have 
 been a very unwise thing in him to have thus 
 severed and opposed the popular and scientific 
 use of these terms, and would have led to much 
 confusion even in mathematics. Now Spinoza 
 has done something not very different from this 
 in his definitions of "substance," "mode," ''free 
 
362 Anti-Theislic Theories. 
 
 and necessary," and "eternity." Further, if we 
 may not object to a man's definitions of terms 
 as unusual or untrue, we certainly may object to 
 them if obscure, if ambiguous, if self-contradictory, 
 if definitions of the inherently absurd. If Euclid's 
 definition of a circle, for example, had been diffi- 
 cult to understand, or if it had been as true of a 
 square as of a circle, or if he had oft"ered us a defi- 
 nition of a square circle, or of parallel lines that 
 meet, we should have had abundance of reason 
 to object. And obscurity, ambiguity, self-contra- 
 diction, are just the charges which will be brought 
 against such definitions as those which Spinoza 
 gives of " cause of itself" and " substance." As to 
 the statement that he was careful not to depart from 
 that use of his terms which he prescribed to him- 
 self by his definitions, I have no doubt that he was 
 careful — that he did his best — being thoroughly 
 honest and sincere, anxious to deceive no one, 
 anxious not to deceive himself; but I have as 
 little doubt that with all his care he was not suc- 
 cessful, and that his use of terms was often in- 
 consistent with his definitions, or consistent only 
 through the ambiguity of the definitions. Nor 
 could he help himself A man who reasoned in 
 geometry from definitions of square circles and 
 parallel lines that meet, would find it impossible 
 to be consistent in his use of terms ; scarcely more 
 possible was a consistent use of them to one who 
 
Spinoza. 363 
 
 started, like Spinoza, with definitions of " cause of 
 itself" and " substance in itself." 
 
 His central definition is that of God : •' God is a 
 being absolutely infinite ; in other words, God is 
 substance, constituted by an infinity of attributes, 
 each of which expresses an eternal and infinite 
 essence." This is presented to us as an intuitive 
 truth, clear and certain in its own self- evidence, 
 as a principle on which we may safely reason 
 to any length, with the conviction of knowing as 
 thoroughly what it means as we know what Euclid 
 means by isosceles, or scalene, or right-angled tri- 
 angle. In reality, it is far more mysterious than 
 any proposition contained in the creeds of the 
 Church respecting the Trinity or the Incarnation. 
 It is difficult to understand how Spinoza could 
 expect that men would receive as self-evident, on 
 the bare statement of it, such an assertion as that 
 " God is substance constituted by an infinity of 
 attributes ; '' or how he could overlook that if sub- 
 stance is constituted by attributes it cannot be 
 what he himself defines it to be, " that which is in 
 itself, and is conceived by itself, or that the concep- 
 tion of which does not involve the conception of 
 anything else as that from which it is formed." The 
 definition of God I have called Spinoza's central 
 definition, because it includes, takes up into itself, the 
 other definitions. There occur in it, you will have 
 observed, the words substance, attribute, infinite, 
 
364 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 eternal. It includes, therefore, directly, the defini 
 tions given of these four words. It includes the 
 word "essence," which should have been defined 
 here, and is dejfined in part second. It includes 
 the phrase "absolutely infinite," which receives 
 not a definition, but an explanation that amounts 
 to a definition. The only definitions which it does 
 not directly include are those of " cause in itself," 
 " free," and " mode ; " but the two former are so 
 defined as to be identical with substance, as to be 
 substance itself in two aspects, and the last as 
 an affection of substance. Directly or indirectly, 
 therefore, the definition of God includes all the 
 other definitions. The consequence is obvious. 
 It is that, directly or indirectly, that definition 
 includes all that is obscure, ambiguous, self-con- 
 tradictory, in all the definitions. It is a guarantee 
 that whatever there is of this kind in any of these 
 definitions will be worked into the doctrine of the 
 Divine nature, and will corrupt that doctrine. 
 
 Spinoza was not fortunate, then, at the com- 
 mencement of his undertaking. Was he more 
 successful afterwards.'* Some persons think so. 
 Spinozism has been pronounced "a faultless de- 
 monstration." This is far from my opinion. The 
 paralogisms, the fallacies, in Spinoza are, I believe, 
 simply countless, because he started with vague 
 and ambiguous principles and pursued a hopeless 
 course. Had he been less convinced that he was 
 
Spinoza. 365 
 
 right, or less able, he would have been stopped at 
 countless points ; but the intense and honest convic- 
 tion of being right could not make him to be right, 
 and no ability could achieve the impossible. 
 
 The whole of his doctrine concerning God is in 
 germ in his definition of God. The first great stage 
 in its development is formed by the attempted 
 proof of the identity of the ideas of God and of 
 substance. The notion of substance defined, as has 
 been mentioned, is the foundation of his definition 
 of God, of his entire theological doctrine, of his 
 whole philosophy. A less solid or secure founda- 
 tion there could not be. Substance in itself, which 
 is what is defined, is simply what no human mind 
 has ever apprehended or can apprehend. Every 
 attempt to define substance in itself, or to reason 
 on it, must be repelled as a violation of the laws 
 of human thought, of the essential limitations of 
 human knowledge. Spinozism is a system founded 
 on this error. Spinoza had the firmest conviction 
 that he had a clear, distinct, and true idea of 
 substance in itself, that he might safely trust his 
 fortunes to it, and that all that he could infer from 
 it by strict logic would be eternal verities, certain 
 as anything in Euclid, far more certain than mere 
 experience and sense. He proceeded accordingly 
 to demonstrate, as he supposed, such propositions 
 concerning it as that substance is prior in nature 
 to its accidents ; that two substances having dif- 
 
366 AntUTheistic Theories. 
 
 ferent attributes have nothing in common with 
 each other ; that it is impossible that there should 
 be two or more substances of the same nature or of 
 the same attribute ; that one substance cannot be 
 created by another substance ; that to exist per- 
 tains to the nature of substance ; that all substance 
 is necessarily infinite ; that all substance is abso- 
 lutely infinite ; that this sole and singular substance 
 — this absolutely infinite substance — is God, in 
 whom whatever is is, without whom nothing can 
 be conceived, of whom all that is must be some 
 sort of attributes or modes. Thus he gradually 
 worked out the conclusion that God is the one 
 and all of substance, beyond which there is noth- 
 ing, and in which all that is has such being as 
 belongs to it. 
 
 The second great stage in the development of 
 his doctrine of the Divine nature is the deduction 
 of the attributes of the one absolutely infinite sub- 
 stance. An attribute is defined by him as "what- 
 ever the intellect perceives of substance as con- 
 stituting the essence of substance." Substance 
 and attributes are inseparable. Substance has 
 necessarily attributes, each of which expresses in 
 its own way the essence of substance, and is there- 
 fore, as that essence is, infinite, although only in 
 its own way. Substance has necessarily even an 
 infinity of attributes, for it is absolutely infinite, and 
 only an infinity of attributes can adequately repre- 
 
Spinoza. 367 
 
 sent a nature which is not only infinite but abso- 
 lutely or infinitely infinite. Out of this infinite 
 number of attributes two only are known to us, — 
 extension and thought. God is conceived as think- 
 ing substance when He is apprehended by the mind 
 under the attribute of thought, and as extended 
 substance when He is conceived under the attribute 
 of extension; but thinking substance and extended 
 substance are not two substances distinct from one 
 another, but the one substance apprehended by the 
 mind of man, now under this attribute, now under 
 that. Extension as a Divine attribute is, accord- 
 ing to Spinoza, very different from the finite ex- 
 tension which belongs to body : it has no length, 
 bulk, depth, shape, divisibility, or movability, and 
 in referring it to Deity none of these things are 
 referred to Him ; it is incapable of being appre- 
 hended by sense or imagination ; capable only of 
 being apprehended by reason. Divine thought is 
 likewise altogether different from human thought : 
 it is absolute thought — thought which has infinite 
 substance itself for object ; which is in no way 
 limited or determined ; which is unconditioned by 
 anything like a faculty of understanding ; which 
 falls under no law of succession, separation, 01 
 plurality. 
 
 The doctrine has still another stage. Substance 
 with its attributes is God as the cause or source 
 of the universe. But what is the universe itself.^ 
 
368 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 What are the sun and stars, earth and ocean ? 
 What are living things, human bodies and human 
 minds, human experience and human history? 
 They are, Spinoza argues, modes of the attributes 
 of God. Modes express the essence of the attri- 
 butes as the attributes express the essence of 
 substance. The modes of each attribute are neces- 
 sarily finite in nature, because an attribute is not 
 a substance, and therefore not infinitely infinite ; 
 but they are necessarily infinite in number, because 
 each attribute has a real although particular in- 
 finity. Infinite thought must express itself by an 
 infinite number of ideas, and infinite extension 
 by an infinite variety of magnitudes, forms, and 
 motions. These modes constitute and compose the 
 whole world of the senses and the whole world of 
 consciousness. Man himself is but a combina- 
 tion of these modes. His soul is a mode of Di- 
 vine thought, and his body is a mode of Divine 
 extension. 
 
 I think this doctrine must be admitted to be 
 devoid neither of simplicity nor grandeur. It has 
 certainly been constructed with wonderful archi- 
 tectonic skill. God is the one and all. He is the 
 infinitely infinite, the only substance. From this 
 substance necessarily proceeds an infinity of par- 
 ticular attributes. From each attribute necessarily 
 proceeds an infinite number of finite. These modes 
 constitute what is called the universe. There is 
 
Spinoza. 369 
 
 nothing which is not necessarily evolved from, and 
 essentially included in, God. Of course this is 
 pantheism. And yet it is very easy to err as to 
 where the pantheism of it lurks, as a few remarks 
 may help to show. 
 
 Take the first stage of the doctrine which has 
 been delineated. Many have thought that when 
 Spinoza has reached the conclusion that there is 
 only one substance, and that God is that substance, 
 he has attained the completest possible pantheism. 
 But no ; pantheism is still, properly speaking, far 
 distant. For Spinoza includes, it must be remem- 
 bered, in his definition of substance, as the very 
 essence of what he means by it, the notion of 
 self-existence. We may fairly object that it was 
 injudicious thus to give the word a meaning so 
 unusual ; still, of course, we must interpret it as he 
 was pleased to employ it. Do this, however, and 
 manifestly there is no substance but God, for there 
 is no other self-existent being. Everything else, 
 everything in nature, every finite mind, exists only 
 through another than itself, exists only through 
 God — i.e., is not a Spinozistic substance. In like 
 manner, the proposition that one substance cannot 
 be produced by another substance has been repre- 
 sented as equivalent to a denial of the possibility 
 and reality of creation, a denial of the very first 
 words of the Bible, — "In the beginning God created 
 the heavens and the earth." But again there is 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Anti-TJuistic Theories 
 
 obvious misconception. If God created the heavens 
 and the earth, the heavens and the earth are not 
 self-existent — are not, according to Spinoza, sub- 
 stances. Spinoza does not deny that God pro- 
 duced things, but that He produced things the 
 essences of which involve existence. What he 
 affirms is, that God is not only the cause why 
 things begin to exist, but also why they continue 
 in existence. His language is pantheistic in sound, 
 but had he adhered strictly to his own definitions 
 it would have been quite consistent with theism in 
 signification. Not unnaturally, however, he was 
 the dupe of his own language, and fancied that he 
 disproved the possibility of creation in the ordinary 
 acceptation of the doctrine. 
 
 When we pass to his theory of the Divine attri- 
 butes we find that, under a specious appearance of 
 consistency, it is so incoherent and confused that 
 no definite designation can be appropriately at- 
 tached to it. We welcome his affirmation that 
 God has an infinity of attributes which are un- 
 known to us, as an admission that God in infinite 
 ways transcends the powers of apprehension pos- 
 sessed by finite minds. But we are compelled to 
 ask. Can there be in a substance which is abso- 
 lutely one, as conceived of by Spinoza, any attri- 
 butes which are not relative to minds distinct from 
 that substance } Can there be any attributes ob- 
 jectively in the substance itself.? If the answer be 
 
Spinoza. 37 1 
 
 in the negative — be that the attributes of substance 
 exist only for minds, or arise only from the rela- 
 tions of substance to minds — substance is obviously 
 not the absolute and comprehensive unity from 
 which all proceeds, but implies, yea, presupposes 
 the existence of minds which are distinct from it. 
 It becomes impossible to regard it as the primary 
 and universal existence, apart from which nothing 
 is, or as more than a merely secondary and par- 
 ticular object of mind. If the answer be in the 
 affirmative, the notion of substance is none the less 
 displaced and destroyed. The unity of substance 
 disappears, for, as by Spinoza's express declara- 
 tion, each attribute is essentially distinct from 
 every other, the substance is represented as an 
 aggregation of distinct and irreducible essences. 
 The whole being even of substance disappears, 
 for the attributes must exhaust the substance of 
 which they are the necessary and complete ex- 
 pression. The absolute substance vanishes, and 
 in its place appears an infinite number of uncon- 
 nected attributes. 
 
 Of these attributes Spinoza professed to ex- 
 plain only two — extension and thought. He does 
 so on the ground that these are the only attri- 
 butes of which the human understanding has 
 any knowledge. Yet the general outcome of his 
 argumentation regarding them is that the human 
 understanding^ has virtually no knowledge of them. 
 
372 Anti-Theistic TJieories. 
 
 Because he said that God is extended, some have 
 inferred that he supposed God to be corporeal ; 
 but he endeavoured to guard himself against this 
 error by denying to extension everything which 
 characterises body, and ascribing to it a number 
 of peculiarities which body does not possess. As 
 to thought, he maintained that thought in God is 
 of an entirely different nature from thought in 
 man — that the one bears no more resemblance to 
 the other than the dog, a sign in the heavens, 
 does to the dog, an animal which barks. Thus 
 the only two attributes which he admits to be 
 accessible to the human mind he also represents 
 as really inaccessible to it, and utterly unlike the 
 extension or thought of which we have any ex- 
 perience. If the Divine thought have no more 
 resemblance to human thought than the dog-star 
 to the dog that barks, we have no knowledge of 
 the former whatever, and merely deceive ourselves 
 when we call it thought at all. This so-called 
 pantheism, instead of helping us to realise that 
 God is near to us, practically assures us that God 
 as God, as natura naturanSy is unknowable by us, 
 and, in fact, that there is no God who can be a 
 God for the human mind. 
 
 At the third stage of his theory, Spinoza main- 
 tains that all finite things are modes of the Divine 
 attributes of the one Divine substance. No lan- 
 guage could be more pantheistic as mere language. 
 
Spinoza. 373 
 
 But, of course, it must be remembered that by con- 
 fining the name of substance to the self-existent, 
 self-subsistent, he had condemned himself to the 
 use of pantheistic language, however free of pan- 
 theistic taint his thought might have been. He 
 could not call finite things substances ; he must 
 deny them to be substances. What could he call 
 them ? Once you agree to restrict the term sub- 
 stance to what is absolute and self- existent, it 
 matters comparatively little what name you give 
 to that which is relative and created. If you call 
 it a mode, that means merely that it is derived 
 from and dependent on what is self- existent 
 Spinoza's language, "all finite things are modes 
 of the one Divine substance,'' means no more, if 
 strictly interpreted, than that all finite things are 
 derived from, and dependent on, the one self-ex- 
 istent Being. Unfortunately, however, he has made 
 it impossible for us thus to interpret him. His 
 language must be read in the light of the fact that 
 he withholds alike from the substance and the 
 modes — from the self-existent Being and the de- 
 rivative and dependent existences — freedom of 
 will, true personality. He affirms, indeed, that 
 God is free ; but he is careful to explain that by 
 free he really means necessary ; that Divine lib- 
 erty is Divine activity necessarily determined by 
 the Divine nature, although independent of any 
 extraneous cause. He also expressed his belief 
 
374 Anti-Thtistic Theories, 
 
 in the Divine personality, even when admitting 
 that he could form no clear conception of it, but 
 practically he ignored it in his theory. The result 
 was the sacrifice of all individual lives, of all per- 
 sonal character and action, of all freedom and 
 responsibility, to a dead, unintelligible, fatalistic 
 unity. Spinoza was a man of a singularly pure 
 and noble nature, yet he was compelled by the 
 force of logic to draw from his pantheism immoral 
 and slavish consequences which would speedily 
 ruin any individual or nation that ventured to 
 adopt them. 
 
 It would not have been difficult to draw from 
 it atheism itself That was certainly not what 
 Spinoza taught or meant to teach. What he main- 
 tained was, that the Divine existence is the one 
 true existence, and that the whole system of what 
 we call nature exists only through connection with 
 it. He did not say that space, as we understand 
 space, and time, in the sense of duration, and the 
 worlds which are in space and time, and what 
 these worlds contain, are all that there is ; on the 
 contrary, he said that, besides these things, there 
 was the whole universe of true being — substance 
 with infinite attributes unknown to us, and with 
 others somewhat known, absolute extension, ab- 
 solute eternity, absolute thought, absolute activ- 
 ity. None the less did his idea of God involve the 
 
Spinozism. 375 
 
 very doctrine to which it seemed to be the contrary- 
 extreme. If the absolute substance must express 
 itself necessarily and completely in its attributes, 
 it must be absorbed and exhausted in these at- 
 tributes ; and if they in turn must necessarily and 
 completely evolve into modes, only modes will 
 remain. It may be said that substance, attributes 
 and modes are eternally distinct, although eter- 
 nally connected ; but this cannot be rationally 
 thought or believed if absolute activity be ne- 
 cessary activity. In this case the monism of 
 Spinoza must inevitably disintegrate and dissolve 
 into monadism — his pantheism into atheism or 
 naturalism.^ 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on Spinozism from 
 a desire to present one good example of what a 
 pantheistic system is, it being impossible for me in 
 the circumstances to delineate a variety of typical 
 instances. I might have selected my specimen 
 from later times, and discoursed on the pantheism 
 of a Fichte, or Schelling, or Hegel. But I am 
 convinced that this would have been unprofitable. 
 The theories of any of these thinkers can only 
 be intelligently exhibited and fairly criticised in 
 lengthened expositions which permit much ex- 
 planation and illustration. Good brief summaries 
 of their systems exist in various histories of phil- 
 
 1 See Appendix XXX VII I. 
 
37^ Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 osophy, but I doubt if unprofessional students will 
 be greatly the wiser after the perusal even of the 
 best of them. 
 
 So far as the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, 
 and Hegel were pantheistic in their nature, or had 
 a pantheistic interpretation imposed upon them, 
 they presented only very inadequate and un- 
 worthy views of God. He is surely not to be 
 identified with the moral order of the universe, or 
 with an absolute indifference of subject and object 
 which develops itself in reality and ideality, nature 
 and spirit, or with a self-evolving impersonal pro- 
 cess which, after having traversed all the spheres 
 of matter and mind, attains a knowledge of its 
 Godhead in the speculative reason of man. These 
 are not rational thoughts but foolish fancies, al- 
 though there may have been associated with them 
 much that is true, suggestive, and profound. It 
 was natural, therefore, that the idealistic pantheism 
 attributed to the philosophers just named should 
 have very soon almost disappeared even in Ger- 
 many itself. It was like a fountain of mingled 
 sweet and bitter waters which had scarcely 
 emerged into the light of day before they parted 
 into two distinct streams, the one being that which 
 is known as speculative theism, and the other bear- 
 ing various names, but always presenting some 
 phase of naturalistic or humanitarian atheism. 
 Pantheism is always in unstable equilibrium be- 
 
Recent Pantheism, 377 
 
 tween theism and atheism, and is logically neces- 
 sitated to elevate itself to the one or to descend to 
 the other.^ 
 
 When idealism is followed from Germany into 
 France it becomes still more difficult to decide 
 whether or not it is to be described as pantheism 
 in any of the forms which it has there assumed. 
 The Abb6 Maret, one of the historians of panthe- 
 ism, represents not only M. Cousin but all the 
 chief members of the Eclectic school as pantheists. 
 This is, however, a very exaggerated view. M. 
 Cousin himself can merely be charged with hold- 
 ing tenets which involve pantheism, not with ex- 
 plicitly teaching it ; while the eclectics as a body 
 have maintained the cause of theism with con- 
 spicuous zeal and talent. The views of M. 
 Renan as to Deity are so vague and incoherent 
 that one hesitates to attach to them any name. 
 He prays with rapt devotion to the Father, the 
 Father in heaven, and we fancy we are overhear- 
 ing the supplications of a Christian theist; he 
 vows, " I think there is not in the universe an 
 intelhgence superior to that of man," and we con- 
 clude that he is an atheist ; he asks, " Who knows 
 if the highest term of progress after millions of 
 ages may not evoke the absolute consciousness of 
 the universe, and in this consciousness the awak- 
 ening of all that lived ? " and we answer here is 
 
 1 See Appendix XXXIX. 
 
3;8 
 
 Anti-TJieistic Theories. 
 
 pantheism : but what he really is, or even in the 
 main is it is almost impossible to ascertain. The 
 theism, I fear, is a mere semblance, and "Our 
 Father in heaven " on his lips merely equivalent 
 to " Our Father the abyss," to whom he assures 
 us that "we feel ourselves to be in mysterious 
 affinity." The true state of his mind, if we may 
 venture to say so, appears to be one of perpetual 
 oscillation between atheism and pantheism — be- 
 tween a God who is merely " the category of the 
 ideal" and a God who is a blind but mighty 
 fatality, labouring to bring forth by a slow and 
 painful self-evolution an absolute intelligence — a 
 man -God, in whose consciousness the thoughts 
 and feelings of all the generations of humanity 
 may be comprehended. 
 
 The ablest attempt which has been made in 
 France in the present day to substitute for the 
 ordinary idea of God one derived from the prin- 
 ciples of idealism, is that of M. Vacherot in 
 his * Metaphysics and Science.* With all his 
 speculative enthusiasm and talent, however, he 
 has only reached the poor result that God must 
 be regarded as the ideal of the reason, as ab- 
 stract but not real being, as what exists only by 
 thought and for thought. We can scarcely call 
 this pantheism, because, instead of implying that 
 God is the source, substance, and explanation of 
 the universe, it supposes that He is the source, 
 
Recent Pantheism. 379 
 
 substance, and explanation of nothing — existing 
 merely as a notion.^ 
 
 In our English speech pantheism has been sung 
 by Shelley, preached by Emerson, and recom- 
 mended in loose rhetorical fashion by various 
 writers, but it has not yet been presented in the 
 form of a carefully reasoned theory.^ 
 
 ^ See Appendix XL, • See Appendix XLl. 
 
3^0 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 PANTHEISM. 
 
 I. 
 
 When we observe how widespread pantheism is, 
 and has always been, we are naturally led to ask, 
 Why has it proved so attractive ? The considera- 
 tion of this question may be combined with that 
 of another equally important : Does it deserve to 
 be as attractive as it has actually proved to be ? 
 These are the two questions which I shall keep 
 before me in the present lecture. While endeav- 
 ouring so far to answer both, I shall consider them, 
 as I have just indicated, not apart, but in connec- 
 tion. Thus viewed they are practically equivalent 
 to the single question. What are the real and ap- 
 parent merits and defects of pantheism ? 
 
 Let us, in the first place, seek an answer by 
 judging of pantheism as a response to the purely 
 and properly religious wants of human nature. 
 
Pantheism in relation to Religion. 381 
 
 Now, obviously, pantheism is in this reference 
 incomparably superior to atheism. In every form 
 it gives some answer to our religious cravings. In 
 every form atheism gives none. Pantheism always 
 presents at least a little sustenance for the spirit, 
 and sometimes a comparatively rich supply. Athe- 
 ism yields nothing whatever which can satisfy the 
 higher appetites of a human being. It pronounces 
 everything a vanity except what is finite and fleet- 
 ing. It is most natural, therefore, that the general 
 mind and heart of humanity should never have 
 hesitated when the alternative presented to it was 
 pantheism or atheism to prefer the former. 
 
 Then pantheism has a decided advantage over 
 polytheism in virtue of its emphatic affirmation of 
 the unity and infinity of God. It responds, in con- 
 sequence, to imperative demands of reason which 
 polytheism contradicts. Hence while the human 
 mind has always found itself compelled, as soon as 
 it began to philosophise, either to assail polythe- 
 istic beliefs or to interpret them in a way which 
 changes their entire character, it has, on the con- 
 trary, been always led by speculation to adopt 
 pantheistic tenets. It is just when polytheism be- 
 gins to pass into pantheism that philosophy makes 
 its appearance ; and, in fact, it is the philosophy 
 which accounts for the transition. Further, pan- 
 theism has the power of rendering polytheism sub- 
 servient to its advancement. It can provide it with 
 
382 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 a basis of intellectual principles ; it can devise 
 plausible reasons even for its most extravagant 
 details ; it can make itself indispensable to it ; 
 and by doing so it can secure the assistance of 
 all the forces of faith and superstition possessed 
 by polytheism. This may be a source of enor- 
 mous influence, as the example of India con- 
 vincingly shows. 
 
 Further, pantheism has a certain marked supe- 
 riority over every doctrine or system which leads 
 men to think of creation as independent of the 
 Creator, or of God as withdrawn from His crea- 
 tures. Where theism has degenerated into deism, 
 or Christianity into a mere intellectual creed, it is 
 not unnatural that pantheism should prevail. In 
 such a case its spread may serve a providential 
 purpose as a counterpoise to the opposite extreme 
 of error. It is the expression of a sense of a Divine 
 presence in the universe. It insists on the all-per- 
 vading activity of God. It is belief in Him as 
 One 
 
 " 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. " 
 
 In the possession of this truth it has nothing 
 which a true theism, such as we find in the Bible, 
 
Pantheism in relation to Religion. 383 
 
 has not also, but it has a truth which the human 
 soul needs, which theists have often not prized 
 enough, and which many professed theists have 
 virtually forgotten altogether. 
 
 Pantheism likewise ministers in some degree to 
 devout emotion and affection by centring all in, and 
 even by sacrificing all to, the one absolute Exist- 
 ence. It teaches men to rise both above the good 
 and the evil of the visible and temporal world, and 
 to yearn after eternal rest in the world of immu- 
 table being. It teaches them to sacrifice egotism 
 and to glory in being parts and particles of God. 
 That many minds can find a certain satisfaction 
 and strength in this teaching the wide prevalence 
 of pantheism in religion abundantly proves. It 
 pervades all Hindu religion, and elicits and sus- 
 tains in many a Hindu mind a piety which concen- 
 trates the thoughts and energies with such wonder- 
 ful intensity and exclusiveness on eternity, that 
 time and the things of time appear only the delu- 
 sions of a dream. It has in every age of Christian 
 history presented itself either as the rival and op- 
 ponent of Christian doctrine, or with the claim to 
 be its highest and truest expression ; and many 
 great and elevated minds have been found to listen 
 to it, and to look to the absorption in the Infinite 
 which it promises as their highest good. 
 
 Pantheism, however, falls far short of giving such 
 satisfaction to the religious wants of man as a true 
 
384 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 theism supplies. It does well to insist on the omni- 
 presence of God, and on the complete and ceaseless 
 dependence of the universe on His power. But all 
 true theism does the same. There is no pantheism 
 in the Bible, yet no book is more thoroughly per- 
 vaded and inspired by the thought that finite things 
 are not self-existent, nor self-sustained, nor self- 
 evolved, but that God is over all and in all, the 
 ground of existence, the source of life, the giver 
 of every good. This thought is implied on each 
 page. It is strikingly expressed in the words of 
 the Psalmist when he says, — " If I ascend up into 
 heaven. Thou art there : if I make my bed in 
 hell, behold. Thou art there. If I take the wings 
 of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts 
 of the sea ; even there shall Thy hand lead me : " 
 of the prophet, — " Am I a God at hand, saith the 
 Lord, and not a God afar off.!* Can any hide him- 
 self in secret places that I shall not see him } saith 
 the Lord : do not I fill heaven and earth } saith 
 the Lord : " of the Apostle Paul, — " For in God we 
 live, and move, and have our being : " and of the 
 Apostle John, — " He that dwelleth in love dwelleth 
 in God, and God in him." To call language of 
 this kind pantheistic has no warrant in reason, and 
 no other tendency than to mislead. The truth 
 that "of God, and through Him, and to Him, are 
 all things," is common to pantheism and theism, 
 and distinguishes both from deism. There is more, 
 
Pantheism in relation to Religion. 385 
 
 however, than this to be said. Pantheism is, in 
 fact, far from teaching the full truth even as to 
 God's presence. It cannot consistently conceive 
 of it as a personal and spiritual, but only as a 
 natural and necessary, presence. It tells us that 
 God is in all that we see and touch and hear, — in 
 the light of day, the springing grass, and whisper- 
 ing breeze ; but it tells us too that the God who is 
 there is present only as substance, force, and law, 
 not as reason, love, and will. If so — if God is only 
 thus present to us in the elements and agencies 
 of nature, — His presence is, in reality, only their 
 presence. It adds nothing to their presence. 
 Were it withdrawn, if the things themselves ex- 
 isted, there would be no difference. Imagination 
 and poetry may endeavour to make something of 
 the distinction between the presence of a merely 
 impersonal God in nature and the mere presence 
 of nature, but I do not see how either reason or a 
 reasonable faith, either philosophy or religion, can 
 attach any importance to it. If the God who is in 
 the sunbeam can only be present as its light and 
 heat, the sunbeam without God must be equivalent 
 to the sunbeam with God. Only when God is felt 
 to be the creative and legislative Reason — the 
 supreme Will, free, righteous, and loving, — can His 
 presence in the objects and processes of nature 
 acquire a real religious significance. If He is even 
 only so present in ourselves that there is no dis- 
 
 2 B 
 
386 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 tinction between Him and us, between His power 
 and our power, His presence with us is not dis- 
 tinguishable from His absence from us. Another 
 sort of presence is needed before the soul can be 
 satisfied, — the presence of one spirit with another 
 spirit. Religion implies, undoubtedly, that we 
 realise God's presence with us ; but it equally im- 
 plies, what pantheism denies, that He is personally 
 distinct from us ; that He can have affection and 
 compassion towards us, and that we can love Him 
 with an unselfish love; that He can guide and 
 help us, and that we may trust Him as we can- 
 not trust ourselves ; and that we may fear Him as 
 one whom we can offend, and pray to Him as one 
 who can hear and answer us. 
 
 Religion supposes faith, love, hope ; but pan- 
 theism when it denies the personality of God re- 
 fuses to these affections an appropriate object. It 
 withholds from the view of the spirit what can 
 alone satisfy its best and deepest feelings. The 
 less of determinate personal character God is re- 
 garded as having, the less is it possible to love or 
 trust Him. When supposed to be wholly indeter- 
 minate and impersonal, no room at all is left for a 
 religion characterised by the personal affections. 
 To a necessarily self-evolving impersonal God — 
 whether conceived of as substance, identity, force, 
 law, process, or idea — the only worship which can 
 reasonably be offered is a cold, passionless resigna- 
 
Pantheism in relation to Religion. 387 
 
 tion, which submits because it must, which bows 
 not to love but to power, and which looks forward 
 to the eternal loss of individual existence as the 
 inevitable destination of man. The soul craves for 
 union with God, and can have no healthy spirit- 
 ual life except through union with Him ; but the 
 value, and even possibility of such union must de- 
 pend not only on the disposition of man, but on 
 the character of God. Pantheism, however, would 
 divest God of character : it denies to Him self- 
 consciousness, fatherly love, providential care, re- 
 deeming mercy: under pretence of exalting Him 
 above all categories of thought and existence it 
 reduces Him to the level of dead things, of neces- 
 sary processes, of abstract ideas, or even to the 
 still lower level of the unknowable and non-ex- 
 istent ; and it thereby leaves no room for that 
 union with God in rational, pure, and holy love, 
 which is the only basis, the grand distinction, the 
 power, and the glory of true religion. It offers to 
 enable us to realise better than any other theory 
 the omnipresence of God, but it represents Him 
 as in reality inaccessible either to intelligence or 
 affection. It keeps the word of promise to the ear, 
 but breaks it to the heart. 
 
 History confirms what has just been said. It 
 shows that pantheism can only find room for a 
 religion of affectionate devotion by being untrue 
 to its distinctive principles. The more consistent 
 
388 Anti-TJieistic Theories. 
 
 it is, the less religious it is. In Brahminism and 
 Buddhism we perceive how a deep sense of the 
 evils of the present life, and a vivid fear of the evils 
 which may be endured in the future phases of 
 existence, may cause men to yearn intensely and 
 to labour earnestly for the extinction of person- 
 ality, or even for utter annihilation, but the ab- 
 solute Being of the one system and the absolute 
 Fate of the other are alike unloved. The mystical 
 piety of India, when strictly pantheistic, knows 
 nothing of the gratitude for Divine mercy and the 
 trust in Divine righteousness which characterise 
 evangelical piety. Instead of love and commun- 
 ion in love, it can only commend to us the con- 
 templation of an object which is incomprehen- 
 sible, devoid of all affections, and indifferent to 
 all actions. When feelings like love, gratitude, 
 and trust are expressed in the hymns and 
 prayers of Hindu worship, it is in consequence 
 of a virtual denial of the principles of pantheism ; 
 it is because the mind has consented to regard as 
 real what it had previously pronounced illusory, 
 and to personify what it had declared to be im- 
 personal. Hinduism holds it to be a fundamental 
 truth that the absolute Being can have no per- 
 sonal attributes, and yet it has not only to allow 
 but to encourage its adherents to invest that Being 
 with these attributes, in order that by thus tern- 
 
Pantheism in relation to Religion. 389 
 
 porarily deluding themselves they may evoke in 
 their hearts at least a feeble and transient glow of 
 devotion. It has even been forced, by its inability 
 to elicit and sustain a religious life by what is 
 strictly pantheistic in its doctrine, to crave the help 
 of polytheism, and to treat the foulest orgies and 
 cruellest rites of idolatry as acts of reasonable wor- 
 ship paid indirectly to the sole and supreme Being. 
 It finds polytheism to be the indispensable supple- 
 ment of its pantheism. It is the personal gods of 
 Hindu polytheism, and not the impersonal principle 
 of Hindu pantheism, that the Hindu people wor- 
 ship. No people can worship what they believe 
 to be entirely impersonal. Even in the so-called 
 religions of nature the deified natural powers are 
 always personified. It is only as persons that 
 they are offered prayers and sacrifices. In lands 
 where polytheism has been destroyed the pantheist 
 still finds himself unable to worship mere indeter- 
 minate Being, and hence he becomes a worshipper 
 either of humanity in general or of the individuals 
 whom he regards as heroes. He can only conceive 
 of his God as having reality in the progress of the 
 human race or in the souls of great men. Says 
 one of our modern pantheists, " The universal does 
 not attract us until housed in an individual. Who 
 heeds the waste abyss of possibilities } The ocean 
 is everywhere the same, but it has no character 
 
390 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 unless seen with the shore or the ship." In so 
 far as pantheists, Hegel and Cousin, Carlyle and 
 Emerson, are also hero -worshippers, man -wor- 
 shippers. 
 
 I have said that the ability of pantheism to ally 
 itself with polytheism accounts for its prevalence 
 in certain lands ; but I must add that, although a 
 power, this ability is not a merit. It is a power for 
 evil — a power which sustains superstition, corrupts 
 the system which possesses it, deludes and de- 
 grades the human mind and heart, and arrests 
 social progress. Educated Hindus are often found 
 to represent it as an excellence of Brahminism, 
 that it not only tolerates but embraces and incor- 
 porates the lower phases of religion. They con- 
 tend that it thereby elevates and purifies poly- 
 theism, and helps the minds of men to pass from 
 the lowest stage of religious development grad- 
 ually up to the highest. The opinion may seem 
 plausible, but neither reason nor experience con 
 firms it. Pantheism can give support to poly- 
 theism, and receive support from it, but only at 
 the cost of sacrificing all its claims to be a rational 
 system, and of losing such moral virtue as it pos- 
 sesses. If it look upon the popular deities as mere 
 fictions of the popular mind, its association with 
 polytheism can only mean a conscious alliance 
 with falsehood, the deliberate propagation of lies, 
 a persistent career of hypocrisy. If, on the other 
 
Pa?ttheism in relation to Religion. 391 
 
 hand, it regard them as really manifestations of 
 the absolute Being, it must believe this on the 
 authority of revelation or tradition, for it is impos- 
 sible to pretend that their existence and the reality 
 of their exploits can be proved by reason. But in 
 this case pantheism manifestly ceases to have any 
 title to rationality. Instead of showing itself to 
 be a system explanatory of facts, it convicts itself 
 of being a device to give plausibility to fables. 
 Whatever can account for what is false as easily 
 as for what is true, cannot really account for what 
 is true. Then, as to the testimony of experience^, 
 India alone is surely sufficient proof that the union 
 of pantheism with polytheism does not correct but 
 stimulate the extravagances of the latter. Pan- 
 theism, instead of elevating and purifying Hindu 
 polytheism, has contributed to increase the number, 
 the absurdity, and the foulness of its superstitions. 
 While in India pantheism has allied itself to 
 polytheism, in Germany it has often professed to 
 accept even the most distinctive doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity. Many followers of Hegel have claimed 
 to find in the mysteries of faith the profoundest 
 speculative truths, while utterly rejecting and de- 
 spising them as presented in Scripture and by the 
 Church. They have talked of the Father, the Son, 
 and the Spirit; of the incarnation and atonement; 
 of the Word and sacraments ; of the resurrection 
 and eternal life, — as if they were sincere and fer- 
 
392 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 vent believers, and yet have been virtually atheists 
 The form of pantheism which they have adopted 
 has enabled them to present their anti-religious 
 negations in the language which had been appro- 
 priated to the expression of positive Christian 
 tenets. It has allowed them, while discarding 
 sacred things, to retain sacred names and vener- 
 ated formulas. Now, undoubtedly, pantheism in 
 Germany has owed much of its success to this 
 power of assuming the aspect of the system to 
 which it is most opposed. Through availing itself 
 thereof it has not only commended its doctrines to 
 some who would have been shocked by them if they 
 had been presented without disguise, but it has 
 been able to work an amount of harm which it 
 could never otherwise have done, by substituting 
 for the principles of the Gospel dogmas nominally 
 the same but really as different as darkness from 
 light or poison from food. But, again, it must 
 be said that power is by no means identical with 
 merit Satan is only the more dangerous because 
 he can take the form of an angel of light ; and he is 
 none the worthier of our esteem when he presents 
 himself in this character. So pantheism will re- 
 ceive no credit either from truly intelligent or 
 scrupulously honest men because of its pov/er of 
 seeming to be what it is not, and of explaining 
 away or perverting what it professes to interpret 
 and confirm. 
 
Pantheism in relation to Religion. 393 
 
 I have admitted that pantheism, judged of from 
 a religious point of view, ranks high above atheism. 
 I am entitled, yea, bound, to add that it is very 
 apt to sink down to the same low level. It has 
 often been observed that it has throughout its 
 whole history vacillated between atheism — the 
 denial that there is really a God, — and acosmism — 
 the denial that there is really a world. The reason 
 is obvious. It can only defend its claim to have 
 reached the knowledge of absolute unity by virtu- 
 ally suppressing either the infinite or the finite — 
 by representing either nature as an illusion or God 
 as an abstraction. This truth has been so convinc- 
 ingly established by M. Saisset that it would be a 
 waste of labour to dwell upon it. Dr Liddon has 
 presented it concisely in these words : " In con- 
 ceiving of God, the choice before a pantheist lies 
 between alternatives from which no genius has 
 as yet devised a real escape. God, the panthe- 
 ist must assert, is literally everything ; God is 
 the whole material and spiritual universe ; He 
 is humanity in all its manifestations ; He is by 
 inclusion every moral and immoral agent ; and 
 every form and exaggeration of moral evil, no 
 less than every variety of moral excellence and 
 beauty, is part of the all -pervading, all-compre- 
 hending movement of His universal life. If this 
 revolting blasphemy be declined, then the God 
 of pantheism must be the barest abstraction of 
 
394 Anti-TJieistic Theories, 
 
 abstract being ; He must, as with the Alexandrian 
 thinkers, be so exaggerated an abstraction as to 
 transcend existence itself ; He must be conceived 
 of as utterly unreal, lifeless, non-existent ; while 
 the only real beings are those finite and deter- 
 minate forms of existence whereof * nature' is 
 composed. This dilemma haunts all the histori- 
 cal transformations of pantheism, in Europe as 
 in the East, to-day as two thousand years ago. 
 Pantheism must either assert that its God is the 
 one only existing being whose existence absorbs 
 and is identified with the universe and humanity; 
 or else it must admit that He is the rarest and 
 most unreal of conceivable abstractions ; in plain 
 terms, that He is no being at all."^ If pantheism 
 must thus sacrifice, however, either the infinite to 
 the finite or the finite to the infinite — either God 
 to nature or nature to God — it is not difficult to 
 see which will be in greatest danger of being 
 surrendered. Profoundly speculative and deeply 
 devotional minds may refuse on any account to 
 abandon their faith in the infinite, and be content 
 to sacrifice the existence of the worlds of sense 
 and consciousness ; but ordinary minds will as- 
 suredly never be able to persuade themselves that 
 all finite things, themselves included, are mere 
 illusions and nonentities, and will, consequently, 
 confound God with the universe — thereby resolv- 
 
 ^ Bampton Lectures for 1866 — 8vo ed., pp. 448, 449. 
 
Pantheism in relation to Morality. 395 
 
 ing God as distinguished from nature into a mere 
 notion or name. 
 
 Religion and morality are so allied, that when 
 we treat of the relation of pantheism to one of 
 them, we cannot leave wholly out of consideration 
 its relation also to the other. In fact, it is pre- 
 cisely in its non-recognition of the moral relations 
 on which the communion of sinful man with a holy 
 God ought to rest that pantheism most signally 
 fails as a religion. Through its blindness to the 
 holiness of God and the sinfulness of man it can 
 only elicit and sustain a piety which is exclusive 
 of morality. It allows, yea, leads, its votaries to 
 believe that they can be religious without caring 
 to be righteous. It implies that all self-accusa- 
 tion is self-deception, since the worst passions and 
 vilest actions of humanity are states and opera- 
 tions of the One Absolute Being. Man cannot be 
 justly held responsible for what truly belongs to 
 God — for affections or deeds which are necessarily 
 manifestations of the Divine nature. This charac- 
 teristic of pantheism has doubtless been to many 
 an attraction. It is only too natural that those 
 who love sin should not desire to have to do with 
 a God who hates it. Piety without morality can- 
 not fail to please many better than a piety which 
 is inclusive of morality. But such a piety can 
 never truly satisfy a living and awakened soul. 
 Conscience is an ineradicable principle of the 
 
39^ Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 human spirit ; it is even the highest principle of 
 the human spirit, because it testifies to the exist- 
 ence and presence of a law which is the expression 
 of a supremely high and holy nature. There is 
 no principle to which religion is more bound to 
 conform and yield satisfaction, yet pantheism con- 
 tradicts its most sacred and certain convictions, 
 and directly tends to eradicate and destroy it. 
 
 Yes, pantheism is not only an inadequate reli- 
 gion, but it strikes at the very roots of morality, 
 and strives to set aside its fundamental postulates. 
 Man feels himself a free agent and responsible for 
 his conduct. He recognises an order or law which 
 impresses him as sacred, and he has a conviction 
 that he can either bring his life into harmony with 
 it or war against it. He acknowledges obligations 
 and rights ; he experiences the joys of an approv- 
 ing conscience, and the bitterness of remorse. The 
 pantheist is a man, and these convictions and feel- 
 ings are known to him as well as to other men ; 
 and he may, as many pantheists do, try earnestly 
 to retain them, to do justice to them, to incor- 
 porate them into his system. But the task is 
 a hopeless one. If evil be no less necessary or 
 divine than good, evil must be but good in an- 
 other way we are not skilled in, and neither God 
 nor man can reasonably condemn it If human 
 personality and freedom are illusions, then must 
 obligation, guilt and retribution be the absurdest 
 
Pantheism in relation to Morality. 397 
 
 fictions. In a word, from pantheistic premisses 
 we can only legitimately infer that " whatever is, 
 IS right," or that "might is right." 
 
 Pantheists who have had any regard to logic 
 have never been able to reach other conclusions. 
 The advocates of the Vedanta doctrine teach that 
 sin is neither real in itself nor capable of reaching 
 to what is real in man ; that it is but a creation of 
 ignorance ; that " though the soul plunge itself in 
 sin, like a sword in water, it shall in no wise cling 
 to it;" that the distinctions of right and wrong are 
 mere appearances which will vanish as soon as the 
 dream -state of life is dispelled. The beautiful 
 Bhagavad Gita distinctly teaches that what are 
 called right actions and wrong actions are alike 
 to God; that He may be served with evil as well 
 as with good. It may be said that Stoicism, 
 although a form of pantheism, was sublimely 
 moral — a system which inspired and moulded 
 heroic natures and nourished the noblest virtues. 
 But it must be borne in mind that the entire 
 morality of Stoicism rested on affirmations which 
 no Stoic ever made even a serious attempt to 
 reconcile either with the unity of existence or the 
 fatalism of events. Stoic morality was rooted in 
 the belief that reason and righteousness ruled the 
 universe, and, above all, in the conviction that the 
 will is outside of the sphere of fate — that it is free ; 
 that man is the absolute lord of his own actions ; 
 
398 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 that the soul is essentially above fate, and equal 
 to Jove himself. Stoicism escaped the moral con- 
 sequences of its pantheism only by disregarding 
 speculative consistency, and asserting the most 
 manifest contradictions with truly Roman au- 
 dacity. Pass to Spinoza. He had the merit of 
 at least making desperate efforts to attain con- 
 sistency. What sort of moral creed, then, did he 
 deduce from pantheistic principles } One which 
 almost looks as if it had been the joint production 
 of a Thomas a Kempis and a Thomas Hobbes, 
 containing, as it does, along with a rule of life 
 which is rather too good for saints so long as 
 they are in the flesh, another which is only fol- 
 lowed by the brutes. Spinoza was a naturally 
 noble-minded man, and so he taught that virtue 
 is the intellectual love of God ; but he was also a 
 pantheist and a reasoner, and therefore he taught, 
 too, that the measure of man's right is his power 
 and appetite; that the best right is that of the 
 strongest. In like manner, whenever Hegelian 
 pantheism has been fully thought out and clearly 
 expressed, evil has been maintained to be essential 
 to the self-manifestation of God and necessarily 
 involved in the existence of good, might has been 
 proclaimed to be right, success has been held to 
 be its own sufficient justification, war has been de- 
 fended on immoral grounds, and personal liberties 
 have been despised. The whole history of panthe. 
 
Pantheism in relation to Morality. 399 
 
 ism, in fact, teaches that no true system of ethics 
 or politics can be based on a pantheistic founda- 
 tion ; that neither individuals nor societies can 
 derive a healthy moral life from a pantheistic 
 source. 
 
 Von Hartmann, in a celebrated but superficial 
 book on the Religion of the Future, has asserted 
 that theism is inconsistent with morality, since 
 there can be no moral worth in the obedience of 
 the will to any law which is not of its own making ; 
 and that pantheism is the true basis of morality, 
 since it alone enables us to conceive of the will as 
 its own law. Such statements show great want 
 both of insight and reflection. If the will did give 
 itself a law, its obedience to that law would be mor- 
 ally worthless. It cannot be reasonably imagined 
 to be morally bound to obey a law which it has it- 
 self created, or, indeed, to be morally bound at all, 
 unless under a law which is not of its own making. 
 The will is not its own law, and cannot even be 
 conceived of as its own law. 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, de- 
 pendent and independent. To be its own rule were 
 for it the same as to be without rule. Besides, 
 nothing can be more obvious than that pantheism 
 does not allow us to conceive of the will as deter- 
 mining itself, as giving itself a law, or being a law 
 
400 Anti-Theisiic Theories. 
 
 to itself. It makes it, on the contrary, impossible 
 for us consistently to believe in any real self-deter- 
 mination or self-control as belonging to the will. 
 Pantheism leaves no possibility of the existence of 
 will properly so called. Let it be granted that 
 there is true will in God or man, and pantheism 
 cannot be maintained to be a rational theory of the 
 universe. 
 
 It is more plausible — more correct even — to 
 argue that pantheism ministers moral strength to 
 men by teaching them to realise that God worketh 
 in them and through them. By inculcating its 
 doctrine of the immanence of God in all human 
 thought and action, while at the same time espe- 
 cially insisting on the achievements of power and 
 genius as the manifestations of the Divine agency, 
 it has gained for itself a sympathy and exerted an 
 influence which are far from inconsiderable. The 
 conqueror, the philosopher, the poet, feels him- 
 self borne upwards, as it were, and along a path 
 of glory and success, by the force of an indwelling 
 God. The hours of highest achievement and joy 
 are those in which man is frequently least con- 
 scious of his weaknesses and limitations as a man, 
 and most prone to identify himself with God. Pan- 
 theism may give strength both for endurance and 
 action, although it is more closely connected with 
 the pride of power than with power itself It does 
 nothing, however, in a moral respect which a true 
 
Pantheism in relation to Morality. 401 
 
 theism does not accomplish in a wiser and more 
 efficacious way. Such a theism as that which 
 underlies Christianity tells us that we may have 
 strength from God for all our work if we only seek 
 for it ; that God is well pleased to work in every 
 humble heart both to will and to do ; and, at the 
 same time, it does not tell us, like pantheism, that 
 whatever we will and do is His willing and doing ; 
 that whether we pray or refrain from prayer, our 
 work will be His work. It teaches us to trust in 
 God for all good gifts and for grace to perform all 
 good works ; while it does not, like pantheism, 
 make this great lesson of none effect by destroying 
 the distinction between good and evil, — between 
 dwelling in God and living in sin, — between being 
 filled with the spirit of God and filled with ambi- 
 tion or pride or lust. 
 
 The distinction of good and evil, then, like the 
 reality of a power of self-determination, is a barrier 
 to pantheism. A plain man who holds fast to what 
 his conscience testifies as to the opposition of 
 right and wrong, will always have an adequate 
 argument in hand against a self- consistent and 
 thorough pantheism. For pantheism would oblit- 
 erate the distinction between them, or make evil 
 the mere absence of good or a lesser good. It 
 cannot allow that moral good and evil are in direct 
 and positive antagonism. It is bound to maintain 
 that the one involves the other, and that both are 
 
 2 C 
 
402 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 needed to complete a whole. It sees in their op- 
 position only an instance of the dualism so abun- 
 dantly exemplified by the polarities of nature, — 
 by action and reaction, darkness and light, heat 
 and cold, male and female, motion and rest, matter 
 and spirit. But who that faithfully adheres to the 
 testimony of conscience can be deceived by such a 
 view ? Must a man not be already blind to the 
 difference between right and wrong who does not 
 regard with profound distrust every assertion or 
 insinuation to the effect that they are alike neces- 
 sary, alike essential to the order and harmony of 
 the universe ? Will he not demand rigid proof for 
 every assertion or insinuation of the kind ? If he 
 demand it, he will certainly not obtain it. It is 
 easy to show that there is a rational and harmon- 
 ious connection between light and darkness, heat 
 and cold, and all the other so-called polarities of 
 nature ; that they come from the same mind, be- 
 long to the same system, and work together to the 
 same end ; that their conflicts are only apparent, 
 while their co-operation is real. But no man has 
 ever proved that truth and falsehood, virtue and 
 vice, are similarly connected. Many have asserted 
 it. None, however, have produced other evidence 
 for it than illusory analogies, or deductions from 
 false premisses. Conscience pronounces sin that 
 which is not necessary — that which ought not to 
 be. Reason declares it unreasonable, and finds 
 
Pantheism in relation to Esthetic Enjoyme^it. 403 
 
 that it is never in and of itself a means to good, 
 whatever good may spring from opposition to it. 
 Right and wrong are absolutely exclusive of each 
 other. There can be no compromise between them, 
 or reconciliation of them. They cannot blend and 
 merge into any common higher result. The one 
 can only be satisfied by the annihilation of the 
 other. All this pantheism is logically necessitated 
 to deny, but in so doing dashes itself against a 
 rock. 
 
 I might now proceed to consider the moral char- 
 acter of the optimism, the historical fatalism, the 
 glorification of war, the hero-worship, and the con- 
 tempt for weakness, poverty, and suffering virtue, 
 which pantheism generates ; but I have elsewhere 
 done this so fully,^ that I shall leave this part of 
 my subject without further remark, and pass from 
 where the dogma we are examining is weakest to 
 where it is, perhaps, strongest. 
 
 It has often been observed that pantheism exer- 
 cises a special attraction over aesthetic and artistic 
 natures. It appeals more eft"ectively to the emo- 
 tional susceptibility than to the conscience. For 
 while it refrains from representing God as a moral 
 personality, it exults in describing Him as a plastic 
 force which fills the universe with forms of beauty 
 and grandeur, — the 
 
 Historical Philosophy in France, pp. 452-479. 
 
404 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 "Eternal spring 
 Of life and death, of happiness and woe. 
 Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene 
 That floats before our eyes in wavering light." 
 
 Now there are many minds in which the sense of 
 beauty is stronger than the conviction of obliga- 
 tion, — which are more pained by the contempla- 
 tion of aesthetic deformity than of moral evil, — 
 which are repelled by the thought of God as a 
 Governor and Judge, yet attracted by the thought 
 of Him as the 
 
 ** Soul of those mighty spheres 
 Whose changeless paths thro' heaven's deep silence lies ; 
 Soul of that smallest being, 
 The dwelling of whose life 
 Is one faint April sun-gleam." 
 
 It is quite natural that such minds should be taken 
 captive by a system which does not disturb them 
 with admonitions about sin and retribution, pardon 
 and grace, and holiness ; but which, while adding 
 to their interest in nature and human life, allows 
 them to rest in the admiration of beauty as devo- 
 tion to God. This is not, however, because the 
 sense of beauty misleads in itself, or is in excess 
 even in those who are thus deceived. The explan- 
 ation of their fall is no excellence, but a defect. It 
 is not because of the vividness and susceptibility 
 of their aesthetic sympathies that those to whom I 
 refer become pantheists, and adore a God who has 
 
Pantheism in relation to Esthetic Enjoyment. 405 
 
 life and activity but no moral attributes ; it is be- 
 cause of the comparative feebleness and deadness 
 of their moral principles. It is not because their 
 sense of beauty is too strong, and they are exqui- 
 sitely alive to the charms of nature ; but because 
 their sense of duty is too weak, and they are 
 strangely insensible to the hatefulness of sin and 
 to the claims of righteousness. It is because their 
 minds are one-sided and ill-balanced, and especially 
 because reverence for holiness is not, as it ought to 
 be, the central conviction of their souls. There 
 can be, I need scarcely say, no true piety which 
 rests on sympathy with the beautiful to the exclu- 
 sion of reverence for moral excellence, or even in 
 which aesthetic emotions are not subordinated to 
 moral convictions. A being like man, who lives 
 continually under moral law, cannot safely luxu- 
 riate in a mere religion of beauty. 
 
 But while this is to be kept in mind, it must also 
 be maintained that theism, rightly apprehended, 
 can sustain and satisfy all sensibilities to beauty 
 not only as well as pantheism, but much better. 
 It fully recognises the truth in virtue of which 
 pantheism attracts aesthetic natures, although it 
 recognises other truths as of still greater moment 
 Its acknowledgment of God as a personal moral 
 Governor and Judge does not prevent its also ac- 
 knowledging that He creates with plastic hand all 
 lovely things, adorns even the desert flower, born 
 
4o6 Anti-Theisiic Theories. 
 
 to blush unseen by any eye but His own, and 
 elaborately moulds and delicately tints even the 
 tiniest creatures in the depths of the ocean, be- 
 cause His own character spontaneously impels 
 Him to make His works beautiful, and divinely to 
 rejoice over what is beautiful. When poetry rep- 
 resents God as present and operative in nature 
 — wheeling the silent spheres, shining in the sun, 
 hurling the tempest forth, feeding and guiding His 
 creatures, or speaking in the reason and conscience 
 of man — some are ready to pronounce it panthe- 
 istic. They are not, however, to be commended 
 or imitated. It is not pantheism to show forth the 
 omnipresence of God. To say that it is, is to do 
 gross injustice to theism. Only a theism falsely 
 so called will refuse cordially to endorse whatever 
 language merely helps us to realise that God fills 
 and pervades His creation, and that in Him it lives 
 and moves, and has its being. We must take 
 some other view of pantheism than one which 
 would compel us to include the psalmists and 
 prophets of Israel, Christ and His apostles and 
 their followers in all ages, among its expositors 
 and adherents. 
 
 All the power, then, which pantheism possesses 
 to satisfy the aesthetic capacities of man, theism 
 also possesses. But it possesses far more. Behind 
 nature it shows us not only a plastic force, but a 
 perfect spirit. And this should increase our en- 
 
Pantheism in relation to Aesthetic Enjoyment. 407 
 
 joyment of nature — even of mere physical nature 
 — which is beautiful to us in proportion as we per- 
 ceive in it reflections of the graces of spirit. Physi- 
 . cal things must be all the more sublime and fair 
 for disclosing to the mind the majesty, the love, 
 and tenderness of a perfect spirit. It is only in 
 such a spirit that the mind can perceive an ideal 
 of spiritual beauty. A perfectly holy spirit must 
 be a perfectly beautiful spirit, and the system 
 which presents to us an infinite spirit, perfect in 
 all holy beauties, can alone completely satisfy the 
 aesthetic mind. It necessarily and directly re- 
 sponds to the aesthetic no less than to the moral 
 nature of men. It may call its disciples to work, 
 indeed, rather than to enjoy, but the work which it 
 prescribes is to realise a perfect ideal. It teaches 
 to yearn for that beauty of universal holiness of 
 which material beauty is but the shadow. The 
 God of pantheism is no spiritual ideal, and can 
 demand from worshippers no spiritually ideal life. 
 Further, pantheism, it seems to me, has a nat- 
 ural tendency to vitiate and destroy art by de- 
 priving it of a moral basis and moral motives. I 
 admit that, in so far as it is antagonistic to atheism, 
 or deism, or even a merely scholastic theism, it 
 fosters art. Probably in all ages in which art has 
 flourished the pantheistic spirit has been more or 
 less influential. Yet it appears obvious that the 
 decided predominance of pantheism, and still more 
 
408 Aiiti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 its exclusive sway, would be as fatal to art as 
 even atheism or deism. It would lead straight to 
 belief in the moral indifference of art, and would 
 favour the rise and spread of merely naturalistic or 
 sensuous schools of poetry and painting. It could 
 not sustain the faith to which art owes its highest 
 achievements, and which can alone maintain it in 
 the vigour of perennial youth — the faith that 
 " earth fills her lap with treasures not her own," — 
 that there is no pathos equal to that of moral con- 
 flict, and no sublimity equal to that of moral 
 achievement, — that natural beauties are suggestive 
 of spiritual perfections. Were our poets to breathe 
 no finer ether than that which pantheism supplies, 
 they might for a time give us songs of luscious 
 sweetness and intoxicating delight, but the inevit- 
 able foulness of corruption would appear at length. 
 It is of singers who have been inspired from a 
 loftier and purer source that men will say — 
 
 ** Blessings be on them, and eternal praise, 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares — 
 The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 Would pantheism not lead painters into such an 
 aesthetic and ethical heresy as that their highest 
 achievements were to be won through the repre- 
 sentation of mere nature, or even of mere nudity ? 
 And were any such heresy to become general ; 
 were our painters not to remember that they have 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 409 
 
 higher work to do than to portray the unripe 
 graces of a Cupid, or the sensuous charms of a 
 Venus ; should they fail to realise that to become 
 truly great in their profession they must be able 
 to understand and interpret what is spiritually and 
 morally significant, and that, consequently, they 
 must possess, along with other gifts, the power of 
 spiritual and moral vision, — then, assuredly, the 
 painter's noble art would soon become degraded 
 in the unworthy hands of those who professed to 
 cultivate it. 
 
 II. 
 
 We have now seen how pantheism is related to 
 religion, to morality, and to art. Let us further 
 consider how it is related to thought itself, or to 
 what is called philosophy, — i.e., thought at its best 
 — the highest thought on the highest themes. 
 
 Pantheism has always exerted a powerful attrac- 
 tion on speculative intellects. It has drawn not a 
 few of the ablest of them closely and entirely to 
 itself. The secret of its power over them is not 
 difficult to discover. Pantheism professes to have 
 reached what philosophy aspires to attain. It 
 claims to know and to make known the one prin- 
 ciple from which all dependent existence is logi- 
 cally and necessarily derived, — the one principle to 
 know which is to know everything. It pretends 
 
410 Atiti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 to have reached an absolute unity from which it 
 can show how the entire worlds of existence and of 
 knowledge have been evolved. Now all philosophy- 
 strives after unity. It is its aim, its task, to reduce 
 complexity to simplicity, the many to the one. It 
 is not to be wondered at if it should often imagine 
 that its dream has been realised ; if it should be 
 ready to believe that its desires have been fulfilled. 
 The search after absolute knowledge has ended 
 with many in their acquiescence in some form of 
 pantheism. The search itself is inevitable, for its 
 cause lies in the very nature of knowledge. It has 
 been truly enough said that " to know is to limit ; " 
 and yet nothing is more characteristic of know- 
 ledge than that it is impossible to assign to it any 
 external or objective limits. There are few propo- 
 sitions, perhaps, which more need to be thought- 
 fully appreciated than just this, — TJie 07ily ascer- 
 tainable Iwtitations of reason hi the investigation 
 of truth are those which are i7iherent in its own 
 constitution. Reason has its limits in its own 
 laws. It is the business of psychology and logic 
 to discover what these laws are. When they are 
 known the powers of reason are known, because 
 reason can never claim to be irrational. It is use- 
 less, however, to attempt to mark off the external 
 or objective boundaries of rational research ; use- 
 less to attempt to draw a line in the outward uni- 
 verse, beyond which all will be a terra incognita^ 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 411 
 
 and within which all is explicable. There is ab- 
 surdity — self-contradiction — in the very attempt. 
 To draw a line separating the knowable from the 
 unknowable we must have already done what we 
 affirm to be impossible, — known the unknowable. 
 We cannot draw a boundary unless we see over it. 
 There can be no within for us where there is no 
 without. We can set no limit to anything if we 
 know that there is nothing beyond it. We cannot 
 say that any fact or doctrine whatever is in itself, 
 or in its own nature, unknowable ; because to have 
 a right to say this we should require to know it in 
 itself or in its own nature ; and if we could know 
 it thus, it manifestly could not be unknowable. 
 There can, in fact, be nothing unknowable in itself, 
 — nothing unknowable for reason in itself. There 
 can be no other unknowable for reason than the 
 irrational or self-contradictory — which is to say, 
 there is nothing really unknowable, since the 
 irrational or self-contradictory is known as that 
 in which there is nothing to know. Thus in 
 all knowledge there is not only limitation, but 
 comprehension of what is within, and apprehen- 
 sion of what is without, the limit. And the appre- 
 hension which transcends limitation while imply- 
 ing it, can never be absorbed into or exhausted by 
 the comprehension which is defined by limitation 
 while implying the unlimited. The apprehension 
 of the unlimited, thus accompanying, in every act 
 
4I2 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 of knowledge, the comprehension of the limited, 
 forces on the mind at every moment the conscious- 
 ness that beyond the little which we comprehend 
 there is always more to be comprehended. A con- 
 sciousness, generally unreflective, of the relation- 
 ship of the finite to the infinite, as thus implied in 
 the very nature of knowledge, is the profoundest 
 and most powerful stimulus to the continuous and 
 indefinite progress of knowledge. But is there any 
 wonder that it should, in certain minds, lead not 
 only to progress, but to discontent with such pro- 
 gress as they find themselves capable of making ? 
 To feel one's self at every step as if in contact with 
 the infinite, and yet to be able to grasp only some 
 small fragment of the finite ; to be always haunted 
 by the absolute, yet always to come clearly face to 
 face merely with the relative ; to pursue what one 
 never exactly reaches ; to find that in no direc- 
 tion has our labour an assignable end, — is apt to 
 become painful, and especially painful to those who 
 are most given to reflection, and most possessed by 
 the craving for truth. What can be more natural 
 than that some of those who thus sufier should not 
 only seek relief by endeavouring to attain to a dis- 
 tinct and independent knowledge of the absolute 
 and unconditional ground of all derivative exist- 
 ences and secondary truths, but succeed in per- 
 suading themselves that they had found both this 
 relief and this knowledge } There will always be 
 
Pantheism in relation to PhilosopJiy. 413 
 
 Bome to whom the hope of an absolute science, 
 such as pantheism promises, will be the most se- 
 ductive that can be presented. 
 
 If this hope had been less seductive — if the pro- 
 mise, "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall 
 be as gods," had not been to certain minds a very 
 powerful temptation, — the essential futility of pan- 
 theism must have been long ago recognised. Un- 
 less strongly biassed in its favour, men could not 
 have failed to see that it is as little fitted to satisfy 
 the intellect as to satisfy the heart and conscience. 
 History of itself would have shown them this. It 
 exhibits pantheism as bearing on its very face the 
 most suspicious marks of illegitimacy. For pan- 
 theism has appeared only in a succession of dis- 
 connected, or very loosely connected, systems, 
 which do not supplement, but contradict, one 
 another. In all its purer and more self-consistent 
 forms it has been no more than the private doc- 
 trine of some individual philosopher, or of a little 
 school of persons who have consented to accept 
 him as an authority. No school of the kind has 
 flourished long, owing to the arbitrariness and in- 
 coherence characteristic of all pantheistic creeds. 
 What a contrast does pantheism present in this 
 respect to theism, the history of which is a single, 
 uninterrupted, ever - progressive, ever - expanding 
 movement ! Pantheism is a sporadic and con- 
 tracted phenomenon ; theism is permanent and 
 
414 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 comprehensive. The former has at particular sea 
 sons given satisfaction for a short time to individ- 
 uals and parties ; the latter has been an unfailing 
 strength and joy to all classes of men in all ages. 
 
 It is not difficult to perceive reasons why pan- 
 theism should not have been more to humanity 
 than what history shows it to have been. It is 
 because it has radical defects, which bring it into 
 necessary conflict with reason. It goes fatally 
 astray at the very outset The absolute unity 
 which it seeks is a mere delusion, a mere dream. 
 There is no path either to it or from it. The 
 absolute unity as conceived of by pantheism 
 is something entirely indeterminate — something 
 which has no distinctive characteristics, and of 
 which, prior to its self- manifestation or develop- 
 ment, nothing can be definitely affirmed or denied 
 — yet which, by an inherent necessity, progres- 
 sively determines itself, and evolves out of itself 
 all distinctions and all definite objects, so as to 
 constitute the whole universe of being and thought, 
 the infinite and the finite, the necessary and the 
 contingent, the material and the spiritual. But 
 this unity is a mere idol of the mind. Belief in it 
 is intellectual idolatry. The hope of ever reaching 
 it is consummate folly. 
 
 The absolute unity of pantheism has been con- 
 ceived of in all sorts of ways, but, no matter how 
 conceived of, diversity, multiplicity, the actual uni- 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy, 415 
 
 verse as we know it, has ever been derived from it 
 only by surreptitiously dealing with it as if it were 
 the opposite of what it is pretended to be — as if it 
 were not absolutely one, but, on the contrary, as 
 multiple and complex as what is deduced from it. 
 And it could not be otherwise, because from ab- 
 solute unity nothing but absolute unity can come, 
 or rather absolutely nothing can come. 
 
 There are pantheists who have sought absolute 
 unity in a material principle, and who have con- 
 structed systems of what is called materialistic 
 pantheism. Such pantheism is essentially identi- 
 cal with materialism ; and every objection which 
 applies to materialism at all tells against it in the 
 form of materialistic pantheism. Order, life, mind, 
 and morality are all facts as unexplained by mate- 
 rialism when professing to be monism as when 
 confessing itself to be multitudinism. For it is the 
 profession which is erroneous, and the confession 
 which is correct. Unity can never be reached by 
 materialistic pantheism, nor can variety ever be 
 explained by it. For — as I had occasion to insist 
 when discussing materialism — there is no real one- 
 ness known, or even conceivable, in matter. The 
 purest physical element is no real unity, but a 
 plurality or aggregation of parts, each of which is 
 as much a unity as the whole. Every particle of 
 the purest physical element is distinct from every 
 other. And no single absolutely pure physical 
 
41 6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 element can be imagined as producing an element 
 different in kind from itself. Such production 
 would be absolute creation, and creation without a 
 cause. Further, matter absolutely one must be 
 matter which is entirely indeterminate. But there 
 is no evidence for the existence of such matter. 
 The only reasons ever produced for belief in its 
 existence have been worthless metaphysical sub- 
 tilties. And if it did exist, it would explain 
 exceedingly little. Far from accounting for 
 or dispensing with mind, it would at every step 
 imply and demand it. Plato and Aristotle con- 
 vinced themselves that the material universe must 
 have an uncreated basis, called by the former 
 " nurse " and " receptacle," and by the latter 
 " first-timber " and " the underlying ; " but both 
 had the perspicacity to see that such ultimate 
 matter could at the most be merely a condition 
 and possibility of things; that it must receive 
 reality, forms, and attributes from an eternal and 
 active Reason ; that to suppose it to give rise to 
 definite objects and organisms, and finally to gen- 
 erate intelligence, was an opinion which no thought- 
 ful mind could entertain. 
 
 There are pantheists who have sought the abso- 
 lute unity in physical force, and who have con- 
 structed systems of dynamical pantheism. They, 
 too, have searched and laboured in vain. Mere 
 force is as unintellig^ible as mere matter. Is there 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 417 
 
 a force which is the force of no being or thing ? 
 If there is not, clearly the absolute cannot be in 
 mere force ; and I am not aware that any person 
 has shown that there is — that there can be action 
 without an agent. And if it were proved, absolute 
 unity would be far from reached. Every physical 
 force is necessarily divisible force, and has, there- 
 fore, no strict essential unity. And a physical 
 force strictly one in kind can no more produce 
 diversity than can a single physical element. It 
 may be supposed to have a law within it necessi- 
 tating action, and that law must be in it all, and 
 must necessitate everywhere the same action, a 
 dreary monotony of change, out of which no 
 variety can come. 
 
 There are pantheists who have conceived of the 
 absolute unity under the similitude of organic life. 
 To them the universe has presented itself as a vast 
 organism, everywhere instinct with a self-develop- 
 ing vitality. But surely there can be neither 
 unity nor absoluteness in a life which is insepar- 
 able from physical conditions, confined within 
 organic limits, and which grows like a plant or 
 an animal. Anthropomorphism may be a poor 
 theory, but it must be better than phytomorphism 
 or zoomorphism. To conceive of the absolute 
 after the analogy of a plant or a beast may be 
 poetical, but it is so plainly irrational as to call 
 for no discussion. 
 
 2 D 
 
41 8 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 None but superficial thinkers, however, have 
 believed that the type of absolute unity was to 
 be found in the physical or organic world. The 
 material, the dynamical, and the organic forms of 
 pantheism have only had admirers among those in 
 whose minds speculation is in its infancy. Ele- 
 vated and comprehensive intellects, when they 
 have unhappily adopted pantheism, have almost 
 always become metaphysical pantheists. Let us 
 look, therefore, at the central ideas of some of the 
 metaphysical forms of pantheism. 
 
 There is a pantheism which places absolute 
 unity in absolute being, and which represents the 
 worlds of sense and of consciousness as illusions. 
 Finding that it cannot explain variety by unity, it 
 sacrifices variety to unity, so far as it is possible 
 for the human mind to do this. It maintains that 
 there is no real being but one, and that all the 
 objects of ordinary experience, and all the distinc- 
 tions of the common understanding, are illusions. 
 This has been the doctrine of men of great specu- 
 lative genius, and is as consistent a theory of pan- 
 theism as has yet been devised. On at least two 
 grounds, however, it may, I think, be safely pro- 
 nounced a failure. First, it admits that besides 
 the one real being there are appearances or illu- 
 sions. But even appearances or illusions are 
 phenomena which require to be explained. And 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 419 
 
 they cannot be explained on the hypothesis of 
 absolute unity. They imply that besides the abso- 
 lute being there are minds which can be haunted 
 by appearances, and which can be deluded into 
 believing that these appearances are realities. 
 Secondly, the pantheism which maintains that 
 there is no being except one, is under the neces- 
 sity of allying itself with a scepticism which will 
 not allow it to maintain that there is even one 
 being. It is only by the help of a scepticism 
 which denies the validity of the primary percep- 
 tions and fundamental laws of mind, that it can 
 und ertake to show that plurality, time, and change 
 are illusions. But such scepticism is a very dan- 
 gerous associate. It is as ruinous to any one sys- 
 tem which professes to be a system of truth as to 
 any other; and no one system can legitimately 
 make use of it against another. If philosophical 
 scepticism be conclusive, the positive assertions 
 of pantheism must all be arbitrary. If we may 
 not believe in plurality, neither may we believe 
 in unity. If we may deny that time exists, not- 
 withstanding that it is a necessary condition of 
 thought, we may equally deny that eternity exists, 
 since we can give no other reason for our belief in 
 the existence of eternity than for our belief in the 
 existence of time. 
 
 There is another pantheism which, instead of 
 
420 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 sacrificing, like the one just mentioned, all variety 
 to unity, endeavours to find an absolute unity 
 which includes all variety. It rejects the view 
 that God and the world, mind and matter, are sub- 
 stantially distinct, and maintains that there is but 
 one substance — " that which exists in itself and is 
 conceived by itself, or, in other words, that the 
 conception of which does not require the concep- 
 tion of anything else antecedent to it." Infinite 
 extension and infinite thought are represented by 
 it as simply attributes of this substance, and all 
 minds and bodies as modes of these attributes. It 
 thus traces the material and mental worlds back 
 into a single all-comprehensive substance. This is 
 the kind of pantheism which was expounded with 
 so much genius by Spinoza. There are many ob- 
 jections to it, but I have only to indicate here that 
 what it proclaims to be absolute unity is nothing 
 of the kind. For, first, this substance, although it 
 can be conceived per se, still must be conceived. 
 It is an object of thought, and only afiirmed to 
 exist in virtue of being an object of thought. The 
 existence of substance is implied in the essence of 
 substance as part of its idea; such is the reason 
 given for asserting the existence of substance. But 
 if so, we have obviously here not one thing but two 
 things — substance and the idea of substance — 
 and the first is last and the last first. These two 
 cannot be fused into one. The idea of substance 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 421 
 
 cannot be resolved into the substance itself, seeing 
 that, apart from the idea, there is no warrant for 
 belief in the existence of substance ; nor can sub- 
 stance itself be resolved into its idea, since it is 
 admitted that there may be in the substance itself 
 an infinity of attributes of which we have no idea, 
 and since, if substance be reducible to, or convert- 
 ible with its idea, the pantheism of substance must 
 be false, and must give place to absolute idealism. 
 Secondly, substance cannot be known per se, but 
 only through properties which are in relation to 
 the minds that know them. Nothing can be 
 known unless it has qualities which can be appre- 
 hended. But if this be the case, the attributes 
 and modes of substance are its aspects towards 
 minds, and hence substance, instead of explaining 
 and comprehending minds, implies and presup- 
 poses them. Thirdly, if we waive the objection 
 just stated, and grant that the attributes of sub- 
 stance are objectively and essentially in the sub- 
 stance itself, manifestly the substance can no 
 longer be thought of as an absolute unity, but 
 only as an aggregation of distinct essences. When 
 Spinoza maintained that extension and thought 
 were eternally and essentially, but not substan- 
 tially, distinct, he was obviously granting a real 
 duality and affirming a merely nominal unity. 
 
 There is another pantheism which, perceiving 
 the defects of the foregoing theory, places absolute 
 
422 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 unity in the absolute identity of subject and ob- 
 ject, of the ideal and the real, of spirit and nature. 
 It holds spirit and nature to be fundamentally 
 the same — spirit being invisible nature, and nature 
 visible spirit — and refers both back to a principle 
 which transcends yet comprehends them, which 
 originates and constitutes the spheres both of 
 thought and being, and by its self-evolution forms 
 the entire universe into an organic whole. This 
 is the central idea in the pantheism of Schelling. 
 It is not one, I think, which will bear examination. 
 For, in the first place, what it affirms to be the 
 absolute is really a process of development, or 
 at least something subject to growth — something 
 which advances from lower to higher, from worse 
 to better. But surely everything of the kind, 
 whether viewed in itself or as a process, or at 
 its latest and most definite stage as a product, 
 must be finite and relative. Infinity and pro- 
 gress, absoluteness and development, are mutu- 
 ally exclusive ideas. Secondly, the identity of 
 subject and object is a self-contradictory phrase 
 and conception. It is like the identity of black 
 and white, odd and even, male and female ; in 
 other words, it is an alleged instance of the 
 identity of correlatives. But just in so far as 
 there is identity there is not correlation, and in 
 so far as there is correlation there is not identity. 
 Thirdly, the human mind cannot form the least 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 423 
 
 notion of a self-identical subject-object. All con- 
 sciousness involves the dualism of subject and 
 object It is only realised as a relation. The 
 terms of the relation may be self and a modifica- 
 tion of self, for the object is not necessarily apart 
 from or out of the Ego ; but wherever there is 
 consciousness there is relation, and wherever there 
 is relation there is dualism. Consciousness can 
 no more transcend the dualism of subject and 
 object than a man can get away from himself 
 Fourthly, if there be such an absolute as is 
 alleged, the knowledge of its existence must be 
 identical with its existence. In the apprehension 
 of the absolute subject- object there must be no 
 distinction between knowing and being. But this 
 implies that the knowledge of the absolute is 
 not only unlike any knowledge of which we are 
 conscious, but is knowledge of which we can- 
 not possibly be conscious — knowledge which an- 
 nihilates our consciousness at the moment that it 
 identifies us with God. Schelling admitted that 
 his absolute could only be apprehended by a very 
 peculiar and indescribable act. Certainly any de- 
 scription he gave of it was peculiarly unintelligible 
 and absurd, as has been shown in a masterly man- 
 ner by Sir Wm. Hamilton in his essay on the 
 Philosophy of the Unconditioned. I am aware that 
 the correctness of Sir Wm. Hamilton's representa- 
 tion has been challenged, and the relevancy of his 
 
424 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 criticism denied, by a writer who has made an 
 earnest special study of the works of Schelling;^ 
 but I cannot find that any essential inaccuracy 
 has been shown to exist in Sir William's account, 
 although it may be granted to be incomplete ; 
 while his criticism would, it seems to me, remain 
 substantially applicable, even if the rival but not 
 really contradictory version as to what Schelling 
 taught were adopted. Finally, if the existence of 
 a unity of the sort imagined be granted to be 
 known, it must still be explained how the sub- 
 ject and object, with their various stages and 
 phases, have been produced by and from it. This 
 is a task which has not been successfully accom- 
 plished. The attempts made by Schelling to con- 
 strue, as he called it, from the absolute principle 
 even the possible world, were quite fanciful. He 
 himself confessed that he was wholly unable to 
 explain by it the actual world, or even to show 
 that there was real existence. He spent his later 
 life in labouring to build up a theistic system to 
 supplement this rather serious defect in his earlier 
 philosophy. 
 
 Many pantheists failing to find a satisfactory 
 type of unity either in physical nature or in a 
 sphere common to matter and mind, have en- 
 
 ^ See the paper on " Schelling's Life and Letters" in the 'Fort- 
 nightly Review,' Nov. i, 1870 ; and that on ** Mr G. H. Lewes on 
 Schelling and Hegel" in the 'Contemporary Review,' Sept, 1872, 
 by Mr J. S. Henderson, 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 425 
 
 deavoured to discover it in mind itself : while they 
 still refuse to accept the view that a perfect and 
 personal spirit can alone account for the universe. 
 Hence we have a class of pantheisms based on 
 such conceptions as a universal Me, an absolute 
 Idea, and unconditioned Will, &c. These forms 
 of pantheism may be called psychical pantheisms, 
 in order to distinguish them from those which I 
 have designated physical and metaphysical. 
 
 There is a pantheism which describes the abso- 
 lute principle as a universal Ego which compre- 
 hends every particular Ego — a pure Me which 
 transcends yet manifests itself in every empirical 
 Me — a free and active Selfhood ilchheit) which 
 posits the physical world as not-self, and objecti- 
 fies itself in the moral order of the world. But 
 this Ego or Me is, we are told, not a person ; it 
 becomes conscious only in individuals, and has no 
 existence apart from the world which it originates. 
 God is merely another name for the moral order 
 of the world. What are we to think of this view, 
 which was made famous by Fichte } What I 
 think of it is that he who accepts it must be 
 very easily satisfied. The very notion of a uni- 
 versal Ego — of an Ego which is no Ego in par- 
 ticular, and yet which is every particular Ego — 
 is an arbitrary and absurd mental fiction. What 
 cannot know itself to be a self — what cannot say 
 Me in contradistinction to Thee — has no right to be 
 
426 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 thought or spoken of as an Ego or Me. All that 
 is real in the so-called universal Ego is the multi- 
 plicity of definite individuals in which it is alleged 
 to attain consciousness. The pure Me is affirmed 
 to be not a person, and to have no self-conscious- 
 ness, no knowledge of itself or in itself That is, 
 of course, so much the more reason for denying 
 it to be a Me at all. If impersonal and uncon- 
 scious it may be an entity or a fiction — some sort 
 of thing or some sort of abstraction — but it must 
 certainly be something far too mean and poor to 
 be called an Ego. It comes to consciousness, it 
 is said, in each empirical Ego. But this assertion 
 must be distinctly denied. If the pure Ego is not 
 conscious of itself in itself, neither is it conscious 
 of itself in the empirical Ego. The empirical Ego 
 is conscious only of its own self Consciousness, 
 in fact, knows nothing of a universal unconscious 
 Ego. If we grant the existence of such an Ego, 
 the worlds of consciousness and perception must 
 still be shown to be derivable from it. In this 
 part of his task Fichte is admitted on all hands 
 to have utterly failed. The physical world, in- 
 deed, he hardly even attempted to explain ; he 
 sought rather to explain it away. 
 
 Shall we adopt, then, Hegel's theory of the 
 absolute } He reduced everything to thought, 
 and deduced everything from thought. The 
 material and the moral world, nature and his- 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 427 
 
 tory, science, art, and religion, are, according to 
 him, but stages of an idea, apart from which they 
 have no existence, by the movement of which they 
 are constituted, and through which they are formed 
 into an organic and logical whole. Hegel professes 
 to give us a philosophy demonstrated from begin- 
 ning to end, as it starts with the absolute first — the 
 simplest notion of reason — pure being — and thence 
 derives all knowledge and evolves all reality in a 
 continuous process of reasoning from abstract and 
 implicit to concrete and explicit, everywhere deter- 
 mined by the principle of the identity of contraries. 
 Vast ingenuity was shown in the elaboration and 
 application of this notion, but I have only to do 
 with the general notion itself, which need not 
 detain us long, since it involves all that is most 
 objectionable in the view of Schelling which we 
 have already given reasons for rejecting. It rep- 
 resents the absolute reality, for example, as the 
 result or completion of a process of development. 
 This is of itself enough to warrant its condemna- 
 tion. An absolute which is either in the course of 
 being developed or which has been developed is 
 sheer nonsense, but unfortunately it is also non- 
 sense of a kind which leads very easily to mon- 
 strous blasphemies. Hegelianism has never been 
 able to show that the only idea of God compatible 
 with its principles is not that of a God gradually 
 evolved from unconsciousness to consciousness, and 
 
428 Anti-TheisHc Theories. 
 
 thence onwards to the height of the wisdom ol 
 Hegel. Then, Hegel's view, like Schelling's, pro- 
 ceeds throughout on the assumption of the identity 
 of thought and being — a position which ought not 
 to be assumed but proved, and which is nowhere 
 proved. Can it be proved } Is it true } No. 
 Whatever is known is, and whatever is may be 
 known — infinite knowledge must be coextensive 
 with infinite existence — but that knowing and 
 being are identical is what by no effort of mind 
 can be rationally conceived or believed. Further, 
 Hegel, although he starts with a conception which 
 allows him to treat his thoughts as things, can only 
 seem to explain the evolution of things by making 
 absurdity the essence of reason and the principle 
 of demonstration. He calmly tells us that ordi- 
 nary and formal logic — those principles and pro- 
 cesses of reasoning to which we owe all the dis- 
 coveries of science and all the inventions of art — 
 cannot explain the concrete, and that the true 
 philosopher must disregard such logical laws as 
 the axioms of identity and contradiction, and sub- 
 stitute for them the identity of contradictories. In 
 other words, he undertakes to demonstrate his 
 system, but on condition that we accept as good 
 reasonings what sane judgment pronounces to be 
 bad arguments. He professes to explain the gen- 
 eration of God, man, and nature, from the pure 
 being which is equivalent to pure nothing; but 
 
Pantheism in relation to Philosophy. 429 
 
 it is on the assumption that contradiction is the 
 essence of existence and of reason. Well, no 
 doubt, pure nothing as mother, and pure absurd- 
 ity as father, might be expected to beget a re- 
 markable family, and have done so in the dis- 
 coveries of Hegelianism. But true reason can, I 
 fear, have nothing to do either with the parents 
 or their children, It must still continue to recog- 
 nise Ex nihilo nihil fit as an axiom, and to with- 
 hold its admiration from contradictions. It may 
 be added that true reason must treat impersonal 
 thought — thought without a thinker — and uncon- 
 scious thought, or thought of which consciousness 
 is only an accident — an acquisition attained in 
 man — as unthinkable thought, a highly ridiculous 
 kind of thought, closely akin to the pure being 
 which is pure nothing, yet possesses the power of 
 becoming everything. 
 
 Since Hegel's time pantheism has decidedly 
 gone from bad to worse. Hegel placed the abso- 
 lute unity in reason and sought to deduce every- 
 thing from reason, although he unfortunately mis- 
 took unreason for reason ; but those who have come 
 after him have openly likened the absolute to what 
 is devoid of reason in us — to blind Will (Schopen- 
 hauer), to the Unconscious (Von Hartmann), to 
 the Irrational (Bahnsen), &c. Thus they have 
 transformed pantheism into atheism and pessim- 
 ism. This is what pantheism has developed into ; 
 
430 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and one is at a loss to conceive what can come 
 next. Beyond pessimism and the glorification of 
 unreason there would seem to be nothing but 
 nihilism and the worship of the Devil. I have 
 elsewhere, however, said perhaps enough about 
 the views of the absolute given by the pessimistic 
 forms of pantheism. 
 
 I may reaffirm, then, that the pretended abso- 
 lute unity of pantheism always turns out, when 
 critically examined, to be a unity merely in name, 
 and otherwise to be an idol of the imagination, or 
 at least a thoroughly inadequate explanation of 
 the universe. The fact that such unity, just be- 
 cause arbitrary and fictitious, can be conceived 
 of, however, in a great variety of ways, is one of 
 the main sources of the strength and permanence 
 of pantheism speculatively considered. The system 
 is a very Proteus. In any one form it is weak ; but 
 when worsted in one form it can readily appear 
 in another, and the struggle must be renewed. 
 Or, to change the figure, it is an enemy which 
 is neither strong in attack nor in direct defence, 
 but which is skilled in the art of retreat and pos- 
 sessed of numerous cities of refuge. None of these 
 cities stands a long siege ; but when one of them is 
 taken the conqueror has often the mortification of 
 seeing another behind it, where his old enemy is 
 blowing trumpets and waving flags, as if he had 
 been gaining a victory instead of suffering a defeat. 
 
Consequeitces of Pantheism. 43 1 
 
 Belief in pantheistic unity is, if my argumenta- 
 tion has been valid, intellectual idolatry. It is an 
 idolatry which requires us to make the most enor- 
 mous and costly sacrifices. Let us consider for 
 a moment what some of these are. First, then, 
 all the arguments employed by theism to show 
 the existence of a God of wisdom and righteous- 
 ness must be discarded. These arguments are as 
 relevant against pantheism as against atheism. 
 Now, of course, no one can reasonably object to 
 their rejection after refutation, but we are bound 
 to insist that they be not rejected until they are 
 refuted, — that they be proved and not assumed to 
 be inconclusive. With our reasons for belief in a 
 living personal God the belief itself must neces- 
 sarily be abandoned, and instead of a Father, 
 Judge, and Redeemer, we must be content with 
 some so - called Absolute which neither knows 
 itself nor cares for us. What a wretched ex- 
 change! And with loss of belief in a personal 
 God we must lose all the hopes and assurances 
 attached to that belief, and become burdened with 
 all the consequences which flow from its denial. 
 I shall not attempt to transcribe the dismal bal- 
 ance-sheet. 
 
 Further, pantheism by affirming the identity of 
 thought and existence calls on us to sacrifice all 
 objects of thought which cannot be conceived of 
 otherwise than as distinct from thought, and which 
 
432 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 must be first presented to the mind before they 
 can be represented by it ; while, by referring the 
 phenomena of matter and of mind to one sub- 
 stance, it requires us either to sacrifice both to an 
 indeterminate existence which cannot be appre- 
 hended nor even imagined, or at least to sacrifice 
 the one to the other. But we cannot make sacri- 
 fices of this kind without being necessitated to 
 make others which are perhaps still greater. If 
 we hold fast to the indeterminate, and persist in 
 evolving from it both the material and mental 
 worlds, we must have another organ of apprehen- 
 sion than ordinary men, and employ a different 
 sort of logic than that of the common understand- 
 ing. Our minds must have intuitions and pro- 
 cesses which are entirely superhuman — a know- 
 ledge which transcends consciousness, and a dialec- 
 tic which is independent of the laws of thought. 
 If, on the other hand, we suppress either matter or 
 mind, it can only be by an application of scepticism 
 which we are logically bound to repeat and to 
 generalise until no object or faculty continues to 
 be acknowledged as trustworthy. Pantheism in- 
 evitably involves either mysticism or scepticism ; 
 and both mysticism and scepticism mean the 
 sacrifice, the suicide of reason. 
 
 Then it requires us also to regard as delusive 
 the consciousness which each man possesses of 
 being a self or person. Whoever knows himself as 
 
Conseguejices of Pantheism. 43 3 
 
 a self, a person, knows that he is not a mere part 
 of God or of any other being ; he knows himself 
 as different from God and from every other being. 
 The self-consciousness which is in each man can- 
 not at once be his own proper self-consciousness 
 and the self-consciousness which has been acquired 
 by God. Self-consciousness is single, not dual. 
 But there are millions on millions of self-conscious 
 beings or persons in the world. And pantheism, 
 in order to adhere to its dogma of absolute unity, 
 must contradict the testimony borne by the con- 
 sciousness of all these beings. It is logically 
 bound to affirm that each of them is under a 
 delusion when he supposes himself to be truly a 
 self or person. But what does this imply ? Why, 
 that from true persons, really distinct from all 
 other beings — free, responsible, moral — it must 
 reduce and degrade them to mere semblances j for 
 with personality, their freedom of will, responsi- 
 bility, duty, must be likewise sacrificed. I should 
 have to dwell long on this if I were to attempt to 
 exhibit the various particulars which are involved, 
 and therefore I must be content with the mere 
 general declaration that pantheistic unity can only 
 be attained at the cost of the abandonment of all 
 the fundamental moral convictions and spiritual 
 aspirations of humanity. 
 
 It is only an intellectual idol like the pantheis- 
 tic unity which can demand sacrifices so numerous 
 
 2 E 
 
434 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 and enormous. It demands them just because it 
 is an intellectual idol — a false unity — a unity of a 
 kind which can never be legitimately attained. We 
 cannot but recognise both the finite and the infinite, 
 the relative and the absolute, the contingent and the 
 necessary ; but we cannot by the utmost effort of 
 reason reduce them to one absolute essence from 
 which the whole universe of thought and being 
 may be shown to have necessarily proceeded. 
 
 The highest unity to which the finite mind can 
 rise is, it seems to me, the unity of a single crea- 
 tive intelligent Will — the one infinite personal 
 God of theism. To this unity all multiplicity 
 may be traced back. It is no abstract and dead 
 unity, but one which is real, which is all-compre- 
 hensive, which fully explains both the unity and 
 variety of the universe, and which fully satisfies at 
 once the demands of the intellect and the heart ; 
 for it is a unity which contains the infinite fulness 
 of power, wisdom, and love. It is an absolute 
 unity in the only sense in which that phrase con- 
 veys an intelligible and credible meaning — that is 
 to say, it is one Being which is self-existent and 
 self-sufficient, which is entirely independent of 
 every other being, and possessed in itself of every 
 excellence in an infinite measure ; while it is the 
 sole and free source of all finite excellence. 
 Whatever the pantheist describes as an absolute 
 unity must be one and absolute in some way much 
 
Theistic and Pantheistic Unity. 435 
 
 inferior to this. The unity of matter, the unity of 
 force, the unity of all that is unconscious and im- 
 personal, is unessential and derivative, yea, even 
 illusory if separated from the underlying and 
 original unity of a self- active mind. Only that 
 which says " I " cannot be divided or supposed to 
 be divided ; and that which says " I," while abso- 
 lutely indivisible, may possess an infinite wealth 
 of powers and properties. The absoluteness of an 
 infinite which necessarily originates the finite is a 
 relative and dependent absoluteness ; it is the 
 absoluteness of a being which is not self-sufficient 
 — which is as dependent on what it produces as 
 that which it produces is dependent on it — which 
 is necessarily related to the finite — which, although 
 an infinite that is necessarily and completely active, 
 has only a finite result. This is a curious absolute- 
 ness; or rather, it is a manifest absurdity which 
 involves the negation of the principle of causality 
 and of every other principle of rational thought. 
 The theist keeps free from it. God is absolute in 
 the view of the theist, because He alone is self- 
 dependent and self-complete — because He stands 
 in necessary relation to nothing finite, and yet can 
 constitute and enter into all relations with the 
 finite, which He chooses, and which are consist- 
 ent with His intrinsic perfections. According to 
 theism, whatever is, and is not God, is a creature 
 of God, and no creature of God has, like God, 
 
43^ Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 necessary existence. According to theism, God 
 is the one necessary Being, and He being self- 
 sufficient, needs no other beings in order to realise 
 perfect self-consciousness or to secure perfect bless- 
 edness. This seems to me a much more consistent 
 and satisfactory view of absoluteness than that of 
 the pantheist. 
 
 It must be admitted, of course, that from the 
 unity to which theism refers us, an absolute science 
 such as pantheism promises cannot possibly be 
 deduced. Alike the infinity and the freedom of 
 the single supreme will make it impossible that 
 a finite mind should so comprehend it as to be 
 able logically to determine its decisions and acts. 
 In the very knowing, indeed, that there is a God, 
 we know that He is infinite, eternal, and unchange- 
 able, in His power, wisdom, and holiness ; but this 
 knowledge of His general attributes can never 
 justify our pretending to specify what must be His 
 particular doings, or to maintain more than that 
 none of His doings will be found to be unworthy 
 of His character. The finite mind may legiti- 
 mately convince itself that there is an infinite 
 mind, but it can never so comprehend such a mind 
 as to be capable of speculatively deducing what 
 it can or must or will do. Absolute science is the 
 science of an infinite reason, and not the science 
 which can be attained by a creature like man ; it 
 is knowledge in which there is no distinction be- 
 
Pantlieism and the Idea of Creation. 437 
 
 tween comprehension and apprehension — in which 
 there is no imperfection or incompleteness — on 
 which there can be no alteration, and to which 
 there can be no addition, — and therefore it is 
 knowledge necessarily and for ever beyond the 
 reach of all finite intelligences. " Who by search- 
 ing can find out God ? Who can find out the 
 Almighty unto perfection?" 
 
 Pantheism stumbles at the idea of creation. It 
 affirms that creation is inconceivable, and infers 
 that it is impossible. In treating of materialism, 
 I have indicated that the assertion is equivocal and 
 the inference illegitimate. But another argument 
 has been employed. The idea of the creation of a 
 finite universe in time has been pronounced dishon- 
 ouring to God, as implying that His omnipotence is 
 to a large extent inoperative. What, we are asked, 
 was Omnipotence doing before creation } How 
 and why did infinite power produce only a finite 
 effect ^ Is power unused not power wasted } Is 
 there not something irrational and repellent in the 
 thought of an omnipotence which originates only 
 a limited sum of results — which has no adequate 
 operation or object } To break or avoid the force 
 of these questions some theologians have main- 
 tained that God does all that He can — that His 
 activity is the full expression of His ability ; and 
 others have argued that nature is an eternal and 
 infinite creation. These are views, however, which. 
 
438 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 far from warding off pantheism, inevitably tend 
 to it ; and they grievously offend against reason, 
 which declares it an absurdity that even an infinite 
 power should produce an infinite effect within a 
 finite sphere — within limits of time and space. 
 Is, then, omnipotence never fully exercised ? Is 
 infinite power never fully productive ? We have 
 no right to think so. Although omnipotence can- 
 not express itself fully in the finite world to which 
 we belong, the Divine nature may be in itself an 
 infinite universe where this and all other attributes 
 can find complete expression. Is either God's 
 power or His activity to be measured exclusively 
 by the production or support of beings distinct 
 from Himself? If so, obviously, unless His power 
 be perpetually and completely exercised about 
 finite things. His activity is not equal to His power, 
 and He is not infinitely active, but only infinitely 
 capable of acting. Even infinite activity, however, 
 and absolutely infinite production, cannot be rea- 
 sonably denied to the Divine nature. As activity 
 is a perfection, infinite activity may be reasonably 
 held to be a supreme perfection which must be 
 ascribed to God. If an absolutely infinite agent 
 acts according to all the extent of its absolutely 
 infinite nature, it must necessarily produce an 
 absolutely infinite effect ; the effect would not 
 otherwise be proportionate to the cause. The 
 production of an absolutely infinite effect must be 
 
Pantheism and the Idea of Creation. 439 
 
 a far greater perfection than the creation of any 
 number of finite effects, and the mind may feel 
 constrained to refer such production to God. So 
 be it. But must the infinite effect fall within the 
 realm of contingency, of time, of space } Must 
 it not, on the contrary, belong to the sphere of the 
 essential, the eternal, the absolute .-* Must it not 
 lie within instead of without the Godhead } Must 
 it not be such an effect as theologians mean when 
 they speak of the eternal generation of the Word 
 or the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit } It 
 cannot, I think, be such an effect as external crea- 
 tion. God can never find or produce without Him- 
 self an object equal to Himself and fully com- 
 mensurate with His essential, necessary activity 
 and love. The Divine nature must have in itself 
 a plenitude of power and glory to which the pro- 
 duction of numberless worlds can add nothing. 
 
 Any difficulties not merely verbal and mani- 
 festly superficial which pantheists have raised as 
 to the nature of the Divine personality likewise 
 lead, I believe, tp the conclusion, not that we should 
 reject theism, but that we should reverence and 
 appreciate more highly the Christian doctrine of 
 the Trinity — a mystery indeed, yet one which 
 explains many other mysteries, and which sheds 
 a marvellous light on God, on nature, and on man. 
 I have appealed, however, throughout this course 
 of lectures, only to reason ; and I am quite willing 
 
440 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 that my arguments against pantheism and all 
 other anti-theistic theories, as well as my argu- 
 ments on behalf of theism, should be judged of by 
 reason alone, without my reference to revelation. 
 
 I now bring these lectures to a close. It is with 
 the trust that they may not have been wholly 
 unprofitable to you, or unaccompanied by the 
 blessing of God. To His name be honour and 
 glory for ever. Amen. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 Note I., page 3. 
 
 The terms Theism, Deism, Atheism, and 
 Anti-Theism. 
 
 There is considerable uncertainty as to the derviation 
 of thebs, the term from which comes theism. Herodotus 
 (ii. 52) traces it to tithenai^ to place or set. The Pelas- 
 gians, he says, did not give particular names to their 
 gods, but " called them theoi, because of having placed 
 {thelites) all things in order." Were this etymology cor- 
 rect, the recognition of order was what moved the Pelas- 
 gians to designate the objects of their worship theoi. On 
 this supposition the Greek name for God was an im- 
 mediate creation of the teleological principle — an ex- 
 pression or deposit of the design argument. Herodotus 
 believed it to be so. 
 
 Plato (Cratylus, xvi. 397) derives thebs from fheein, 
 to run. He represents Socrates as saying that " the first 
 men connected with Greece considered those only as 
 gods, whom many of the barbarians at present regard as 
 such, — the sun, and the moon, and the earth, and the 
 
442 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 stars, and the heavens. Now as they perceived all 
 these moving and running round in a perpetual course, 
 from this nature of running they called them gods (ciTro 
 Ta.vT(]% ttJs <^vcr€a)? r^s rcnj Oelv Oeovg avTOv? eTrovo/xacat) , 
 but afterwards, perceiving that there were others, they 
 called them all by the same name." 
 
 When the philological importance of Sanscrit began 
 to be realised, the derivations of the term from Greek 
 fell into disfavour, and it was almost universally sup- 
 posed to have come from the root dtv (shining), like the 
 Sanscrit deva, Latin deus, divus, and the Greek Zeus. 
 This derivation is now, however, rejected by some of 
 the highest authorities. Schleicher went back to the 
 etymology suggested by Plato ; Hainebach has defended 
 that given by Herodotus ; and Curtius inclines to derive 
 from a root Oes (to beseech). Fick decides in favour of 
 a Sanscrit root dht, to shine, to look, to be pious. If 
 the last of these views be correct, the root thought of 
 t/ieos and deus is the same, although each has had its 
 own root-word. It seems certain that they cannot have 
 grown out of the same verbal root. 
 
 Deism is distinguished from theism by probably all 
 recent theologians in substantially the same manner. 
 Some oppose it to theism ; others include it in theism as 
 a species in a genus; but this does not prevent their 
 agreeing as to the distinction to be drawn. Deism is 
 regarded as, in common with theism, holding, in opposi- 
 tion to atheism, that there is a God, and, in opposition 
 CO pantheism, that God is distinct from the world, but 
 as differing from theism in maintaining that God is sep- 
 arate from the world, having endowed it with self-sus- 
 taining and self-acting powers, and then abandoned it to 
 itself. Writing of my previous volume, Mr Bradlaugh 
 
Appendix : Note I. 443 
 
 (Nat. Ref., Jan. 6, 1878) says: "You draw a distinc- 
 tion between deism and theism (p. 91), for which I am 
 not aware that there is any warranty. Surely both deist 
 and theist mean precisely the same — viz., believer in 
 * Deus,' ' Theos/ '• God.' You may have any qualifying 
 words to express the character of the belief, as Christian 
 Theism, or Mahommedan Theism, but I do not under- 
 stand that the use of the Latin or Greek form conveys, 
 or ought to convey, any different or distinguishable 
 meaning." In reply, I would observe that the distinc- 
 tion is not at all of my drawing, but one made use of by 
 all contemporary Christian apologists. The distinction 
 is, further, a real distinction, yet one which, so far as I 
 know, there is no suitable qualifying word to express. 
 Terais like Christian and Mohammedan certainly do 
 not, as they merely characterise different forms of theism 
 proper, or at least of theism as distinguished from deism. 
 On this account it seems to me that the distinction would 
 have been warranted even had the etymology of deism 
 and theism been the same, whereas this is, as has been 
 already indicated, extremely doubtful. 
 
 At the same time it must be admitted that the word 
 " deist," when used in the manner indicated, may occa- 
 sion injustice. It may be confounded — and in fact often 
 is confounded — with a different application of the term, 
 — with what may be called its historical application. 
 Christian apologists, as a rule, when speaking of the so- 
 called " English deists," represent them as having denied 
 that God was present and active in the laws of nature. 
 This is erroneous and unfair. One or two of them may 
 have done so, but certainly what as a body they denied 
 was merely that God worked otherwise than through 
 natural laws. It is curious that the orthodox writers 
 
444 Anti-TJieistic Theories. 
 
 who first unjustly accused the deists of representing God 
 as having withdrawn from His universe, and abandoned 
 it to its own resources, have frequently the same charge 
 now brought against themselves. It is very common, 
 for instance, to find Paley and other natural theologians 
 of the eighteenth century censured as having imagined 
 that God made the universe as a watchmaker makes 
 a watch, and then left it to itself, merely looking on to 
 see how it goes. Of course the censure has no foun- 
 dation whatever, and only shows discreditable careless- 
 ness and ignorance in those who pronounce so unjust 
 a judgment. 
 
 The terms atheism and anti-theism have been other- 
 wise distinguished than they are in the lecture. Anti- 
 theism has sometimes been understood as not a more 
 but a less general term than atheism — as, in fact, a species 
 or division of atheism. For instance, Dr Chalmers 
 (Nat. TheoL, ch. ii. p. 59) writes thus: ** Judging from 
 the tendency and efi"ect of his arguments, an atheist 
 does not appear positively to refuse that a God may 
 be ; but he insists that He has not discovered Himself, 
 whether by the utterance of His voice in audible revela- 
 tion, or by the impress of His hand upon visible nature. 
 His verdict on the doctrine of a God is only that it is 
 not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but 
 an atheist. He is not an anti-theist." And on p. 61 : 
 "Atheism might plead a lack of evidence within its 
 own field of observation. But anti-theism pronounces 
 both upon the things which are and the things which 
 are not within that field. It breaks forth and beyond 
 all those limits that have been prescribed to man's ex- 
 cursive spirit by the sound philosophy of experience; 
 and by a presumption the most tremendous, even the 
 
Appendix: Note I. 445 
 
 usurpation of all space and of all time, it afRrms that 
 there is no God." Dr Chalmers, it will be perceived, 
 limits atheism to critical and sceptical atheism, and iden- 
 tifies anti-theism with dogmatic atheism. On this account 
 it is surprising that Mr Holyoake (Reasoner, xi. 15, 
 232) should have written: "The course to be taken is 
 to use the term secularists as indicating general views, 
 and accept the term atheist at the point at which ethics 
 declines alliance with theology; always, however, ex- 
 plaining the term atheist to mean 'not seeing God,' 
 visually or inferentially — never suffering it to be taken 
 (as Chalmers, Foster, and many others represent it) for 
 anti-theism — that is, hating God, denying God, — as hating 
 implies personal knowledge as the ground of dislike, and 
 denying implies infinite knowledge as the ground of dis- 
 proof" Chalmers and Foster obviously laboured not 
 to efface but to emphasise the very distinction which 
 Mr Holyoake himself draws. 
 
 My chief reason for preferring the distinction between 
 atheism and anti-theism explained in the lecture to that 
 drawn by Dr Chalmers and Mr Holyoake is, that it is of 
 greater practical use. There is little need for a single 
 term to specify dogmatic atheism ; there is great need 
 for a single term at once inclusive and distinctive of all 
 theories opposed to theism. The word non-theistic is 
 unsatisfactory, not merely because of its hybrid origin 
 and character, but also because it is far too comprehen- 
 sive. Theories of physical and mental science are non- 
 theistic, even when in no degree, directly or indirectly, 
 antagonistic to theism. 
 
44^ Anii-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note II., page lo. 
 
 Absolute Atheism implies Infinite Knowledge. 
 
 The passage from John Foster to which reference is 
 made in the lecture is the following: "The wonder 
 turns on the great process, by which a man could grow 
 to the immense intelligence that can know there is no 
 God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this 
 attainment? This intelligence involves the very attri- 
 butes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless 
 this man is omnipresent — unless he is at this moment in 
 every place in the universe, — he cannot know but there 
 may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which 
 even he would be overpowered. If he does not abso- 
 lutely know every agent in the universe, the one that he 
 does not know may be God. If he is not himself the 
 chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is 
 so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in abso- 
 lute possession of all the propositions that constitute 
 universal truth, the one which he wants may be that 
 there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the 
 cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may 
 be a God. If he does not know everything that has 
 been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some 
 things may have been done by a God. Thus unless he 
 knows all things — that is, precludes another Deity by 
 being one himself — he cannot know that the Being 
 whose existence he rejects does not exist" — (Essays, 
 
 p. 35) 15th ed.) 
 
 The criticism of Mr Holyoake on this argument, to 
 which reference is also made in the lecture, will be found 
 
Appendix : Note II. 447 
 
 on pp. 75, 76 of his 'Trial of Theism,' 1858. "Two 
 points," he says, "are to be noticed. Foster puts a 
 strict, an arbitrary, and an absolute sense upon the word 
 
 * denial.' Next, that he introduces a false element into 
 the argument — that of personal knowledge — which is for- 
 bidden to the atheist when he introduces it into reason- 
 ing. A single remark will show the fallacy of this as- 
 sumption. It is quite true that we do not ' know ' that ^ 
 God does not exist ; it is also true that no theist knows_J 
 that He does exist. If I ask a theist the question, Have 
 you any actual knowledge through the senses that God 
 exists ? he will probably tell me that I am both ignorant 
 and presumptuous. He will remind me that 'no man 
 hath seen God at any time.' He will tell me that the 
 existence of Deity is not a fact of the senses — that it is 
 not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of revelation, or 
 an argument from analogy — a logical inference — or an 
 intuition — or a feeling — or a question of probability, 
 when we reason inductively from causes to effects — or a 
 
 * necessity of the intellect ' when speculation tires on the 
 wing, and thought has exhausted its utmost force. If, 
 therefore, the theist is without the knowledge that God 
 does exist, why should Foster demand of the atheist the 
 knowledge that God does not exist ? If the theist refuses 
 the test of eyesight for his affirmation, why does he de- 
 mand it of the atheist for his 'denial'? If the theist 
 may use argument, why not the atheist ? If the theist 
 may reason and can reason only on the evidence of the 
 intellect, why do Foster, Chalmers, and all divines de- 
 mand from the atheist evidence of the senses? The 
 case fairly stated stands thus : The theist says, all 
 things considered — all present argument weighed — it is 
 clear to me that God exists. The atheist says, all things 
 
44^ Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 considered — all present argument weighed — it appears to 
 me that the infinite secret is beyond our finite powers to 
 penetrate. Foster cannot be said to recognise this fact. 
 He refutes our position by evading it; and those who 
 do not know, or do not care to discern what it is, assume 
 a question settled which indeed is not truly touched." 
 
 It often happens that even able and candid men at- 
 tempt to refute arguments which they have failed to 
 understand. Of this there could not be a clearer and 
 more striking, almost startling, instance than these words 
 of Mr Holyoake. It is impossible to read them without 
 perceiving that, when he wrote them, he had not the 
 most remote conception of what Foster meant or aimed 
 at. He plainly did not perceive that Foster's argument 
 was in no degree or respect directed against critical 
 atheism — against what Mr Holyoake calls "our posi- 
 tion" — but entirely and exclusively against absolute or 
 dogmatic atheism. Failing in some inexplicable way to 
 perceive this, he naturally fell into those curious mistakes 
 which he presents as criticisms. 
 
 Chalmers's restatement of Foster's argument is pre- 
 sented in the following passage : " To be able to say 
 that there is a God, we may have only to look abroad 
 on some definite territory, and point to the vestiges that 
 are given of His power and His presence somewhere. 
 To be able to say that there is no God, we must walk 
 the whole expanse of infinity, and ascertain by observa- 
 tion that such vestiges are to be found nowhere. Grant 
 that no trace of Him can be discerned in that quarter of 
 contemplation which our puny optics have explored, 
 does it follow that, throughout all immensity, a Being 
 with the essence and sovereignty of a God is nowhere to 
 be found? Because through our loopholes of communi- 
 
Appendix : Note II. 449 
 
 cation with that small portion of external nature which 
 is before us, we have not seen or ascertained a God, 
 must we therefore conclude of every unknown and un- 
 trodden vastness in this illimitable universe that no 
 Divinity is there ? Or because, through the brief suc- 
 cessions of our little day, these heavens have not once 
 broken silence, is it therefore for us to speak to all the 
 periods of that eternity which is behind us, and to say 
 that never hath a God come forth with the unequivocal 
 tokens of his existence ? Ere we can say that there is 
 a God, we must have seen, on that portion of nature to 
 which we have access, the print of His footsteps, or 
 have had direct intimation from Himself, or been satis- 
 fied by the authentic memorials of His converse with 
 our species in other days. But ere we can say that 
 there is no God, we must have roamed over all nature, 
 and seen that no mark of a Divine footstep was there ; 
 and we must have gotten intimacy with every existent 
 spirit in the universe, and learned from each that never 
 did a revelation of the Deity visit him ; and we must 
 have searched, not into the records of one solitary 
 planet, but into the archives of all worlds, and thence 
 gathered that, throughout the wide realms of immensity, 
 not one exhibition of a reigning and living God ever has 
 been made. . . . To make this out we should need 
 to travel abroad over the surrounding universe till we 
 had exhausted it, and to search backward through all 
 the hidden recesses of eternity; to traverse in every 
 direction the plains of infinitude, and sweep the out- 
 skirts of that space which is itself interminable ; and 
 then bring back to this little world of ours the report of 
 a universal blank, wherein we had not met with one 
 manifestation or one movement of a presiding God. 
 
 2 F 
 
450 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 For man not to know of a God, he has only to sink 
 beneath the level of our common nature. But to deny 
 Him, he must be a God himself. He must arrogate the 
 ubiquity and omniscience of the Godhead." — Natural 
 Theology, vol. i. b. i. ch. ii. 
 
 Note III., page 19. 
 
 Physicus. 
 
 In * A Candid Examination of Theism ' by " Physi- 
 cus," the argumentation in my previous volume has been 
 subjected to a lengthened examination (see "Supple- 
 mentary Essay II.," pp. 152-180). It is not, perhaps, 
 very necessary, yet it may not be altogether undesirable, 
 to make a few remarks on the criticisms with which I 
 have been honoured. 
 
 Physicus has withdrawn his faith from theism and 
 transferred it to the metaphysical physics expounded by 
 Mr Herbert Spencer, but pronounced scientifically in- 
 defensible by such physicists as Sir W. Thomson, Clerk- 
 Maxwell, Balfour Stewart, Tait, &c. He manifestly de- 
 sires to be impartial, but is far from very successful in 
 this respect. Thus, at the very outset of his work he 
 tells us that, " with the partial exception of Mr Mill, no 
 competent writer has hitherto endeavoured, once for all, 
 to settle the long-standing question of the rational prob- 
 ability of theism;" that "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 
 
Appendix : Note III. 45 1 
 
 assuming that the need of such an explanation is absent 
 in the case of theism — as though the attribute in ques- 
 tion were more conceivable when posited in a Deity 
 than when posited elsewhere;" and that "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.' " The first of these 
 statements virtually pronounces incompetent all writers 
 on natural theology, except Mr Mill and Physicus; the 
 second ascribes to theism a mode of reasoning which it 
 has never employed ; and the third travesties the argu- 
 ment which it declares to be prevalent. Such errors 
 are extremely common in the pages of Physicus. He 
 is, nevertheless, an interesting writer. 
 
 His objections to the reasoning by which I attempt 
 to show that on no plausible theory of the nature of 
 matter can it be concluded to be self- existent, or any- 
 thing more than an effect, arise entirely from over- 
 looking the hypothetical and disjunctive character of 
 my argumentation. Thus, for example, he censures 
 my having "adopted the absurd argument" by which 
 Professor Clerk- Maxv/ell endeavours to show that atoms 
 cannot have been made by any of the processes called 
 natural, and thinks it relevant to assert that the atomic 
 theory is probably not true. Why, my approval of 
 Professor Clerk-Maxwell's argument is expressly stated 
 to be conditioned by the supposition that the atomic 
 theory of the ultimate nature of matter is true, while I 
 have nowhere indicated that I myself adopt that theory 
 or prefer it to others. The same remark applies to his 
 criticism of the argument founded on the vortex-ring 
 hypothesis of the origin of matter, as to which he has 
 further failed to perceive that it rests on the idea of a 
 
452 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 perfect fluid. His notion that the argument as to the 
 non- eternal character of heat implies a knowledge of 
 the universe as a whole, has not the slightest reason or 
 relevancy. I have adopted none of the theories alluded 
 to, as I should thereby have weakened my argument 
 and represented theism as dependent on some partic- 
 ular speculation in physics, when in reality its evidence 
 is greatly superior to what can be brought forward for 
 the majority of scientific doctrines. I merely argued 
 that, from any plausible theory of matter, it follows that 
 matter is not to be regarded as self-existent ; and that 
 the reasoning by which it has been attempted to prove 
 that heat is non-eternal, requires to be refuted by those 
 who assert or assume that the world is eternal. 
 
 He passes from that part of my work which he has 
 failed to understand, in consequence of disregarding the 
 theory of disjunctive syllogisms and the principles of 
 physics, to my treatment of the design argument. This 
 he admits to have been quite conclusive against all 
 opponents until he himself appeared. " For this argu- 
 ment assumes, rightly enough, that the only alternative 
 we have in choosing our hypothesis concerning the final 
 explanation of things, is either to regard that explana- 
 tion 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 
 
Appendix: Note III. 453 
 
 so long as it remained impossible to suggest any natural 
 principle whereby such a result could have been conceiv- 
 ably effected by such causes. But it is evident that 
 Professor Flint's time-honoured argument is now com- 
 pletely overthrown, unless it can be proved that there is 
 some radical error in the reasoning whereby I have en- 
 deavoured 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 For- 
 tuity, but between Intelligence and Natural Causation." 
 From words like these one would suppose that Physicus 
 had discovered a quite new explanation of the order of 
 the universe. But no ; when we turn to Chapters iv. 
 and vi. — those to which he so triumphantly points us — 
 we find that he has merely to tell us, what materialists 
 have constantly told us, from Leucippus and Democritus 
 downwards — namely, that " all and every law follows as 
 a necessary consequence from the persistence of force 
 and the primary qualities of matter," and that he pre- 
 sents to us a number of loose statements to this effect, 
 singly as " illustrations," and collectively as a *' demon- 
 stration," of it. If the design argument is not valid 
 against the reasoning in these chapters it was never valid 
 in any reference. Physicus produces no particle of evi- 
 dence to show that force is a " self-existent substance " or 
 " eternal substratum," and explains in no single case how 
 without law it should produce law, or how it should pro- 
 duce order, unless so defined as to quantity, so dis- 
 tributed, and otherwise so conditioned, as to presuppose 
 intelligence. The root of a large amount of his con- 
 
454 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 fusion is to be traced to his entertaining mythical and 
 anti-scientific notions about ''force" and "the persist- 
 ence of force," which a deliberate and candid perusal 
 of the chapters on " the varieties of energy " and " the 
 conservation of energy " in any good treatise on Physics 
 might possibly dissipate. 
 
 The criticisms on the evidence for the moral attributes 
 of God entirely ignore its character and weight as a 
 whole, and need no other answer than that the sentences 
 objected to should be restored to their original connec- 
 tion and interpreted in relation to their context. 
 
 It is impossible to read the following passages from 
 the work of Physicus without deeply deploring that a 
 blunder in physics should have caused so much con- 
 fusion in an interesting intellect, and inflicted so much 
 pain on an apparently noble nature : — 
 
 " If it had been my lot to have lived in the last genera- 
 tion, I should certainly have rested in these * sublime 
 conceptions' as an argument supreme and irrefutable. 
 I should have felt that the progress of physical know- 
 ledge 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 ter- 
 rific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who 
 look may now behold advancing as a deluge, black ^vith 
 destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most 
 cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and 
 burying our highest life in mindless desolation. Science, 
 
Appendix : Note III. 45 5 
 
 whom erstwhile we thought a very Angel of God, point- 
 ing 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." — Pp. 51, 52. 
 
 **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 
 A'hen 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 
 
45 6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 whether it be due to my intelligence not being suffi- 
 ciently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or 
 whether it be due to the memory of those sacred associa- 
 tions 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 medi- 
 tation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the 
 precept know thyself has become transformed into the 
 terrific oracle to (Edipus — * Mayest thou ne'er know the 
 truth of what thou art.' " 
 
 Be not Martyrs by Mistake. 
 
 Note IV., page 38. 
 History, Causes, and Consequences op Atheism. 
 
 Few works were written expressly against atheism 
 until the sixteenth century was considerably advanced. 
 The ' Antiatheon ' of Fr. Boria, published at Toulouse in 
 15 6 1, the * Atheomachie ' of De Bourgeville, published 
 at Paris in 1564, the ' Atheomachie ' of Baruch Caneph, 
 published at Geneva in 1581, and the ' Atheomastix ' of 
 G. Ab. Assonlevilla, published at Antwerp in 1598, were 
 among the earliest specimens of the class. 
 
 Publications of this kind followed one another in 
 rapid succession during the seventeenth century. Among 
 those which appeared in English, the following may 
 be specified : Martin Fotherby's * Atheomastix' (1622) ; 
 Walter Charleton's 'Darkness of Atheism expelled by 
 the Light of Nature' (1652); Henry More's 'Antidote 
 against Atheism' (1662); Sir Charles Wolseley's *Un- 
 
Appendix: Note IV. 457 
 
 reasonableness of Atheism' (1669); J. M.'s 'Atheist 
 Silenced* (1672); John Howe's 'Living Temple, against 
 Atheism, or Epicurean Deism' (First Part, 1675); Ralph 
 Cudworth's * True Intellectual System of the Universe, 
 wherein all the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is 
 confuted, and its Impossibility demonstrated' (1678); 
 Richard Bentley's * Boyle Lecture : A Confutation of 
 Atheism' (1692); J. Edwards's 'Thoughts on the Causes 
 and Occasions of Atheism ' (1695); and A. B.'s * Mystery 
 of Atheism, or the Devices to Propagate it' (1699). 
 
 A continuous stream of attacks on atheism flowed 
 from the press all through the eighteenth century. A 
 mere catalogue of them would fill many pages. It is a 
 fact which merits to be carefully noted, that during the 
 long period which intervened from about the middle of 
 the sixteenth to about the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, notwithstanding the multitude of books written 
 against atheism, scarcely any — perhaps none — appeared 
 in its defence. Its assailants were rather at war with a 
 tendency or frame of spirit prevalent in society, than 
 with definite forms of atheism, strictly so called. Their 
 application of the terms atheism and atheist was generally 
 very loose — often quite reckless. Epicureanism, even 
 when combined with Deism, Hobbism, and Spinozism, 
 were long treated as the chief manifestations of atheism. 
 There were probably, however, in the period referred to, 
 a large number of real atheists, although they did not 
 consider it desirable to propagate their opinions through 
 the printing-press. 
 
 Attempts were early made to sketch the history of 
 atheism, as, e.g.^ by Niemann in 1668, Reiser in 1669, 
 Jenkins Thomas in 1709 (1716), and Reimann in 1725. 
 But there is even at present no general history of atheism 
 of much value. One of the most ridiculous works of 
 
4.58 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 a historical character on atheism is the * Dictionnaire 
 des Athees ' (1799), by the enthusiastic atheist, P. S. 
 Mardchal. Here Justin Martyr, Saint Augustine, Pas- 
 cal, Bossuet, Leibnitz, and the most virtuous and pious 
 men of all ages, are glorified as atheists. In partial 
 excuse it must be remembered that Reimann, in the 
 excess of his Protestant zeal, has enlarged his list of 
 atheists with Roman Catholic divines, and that Ro- 
 man Catholic writers have frequently relegated the re- 
 formers .and other Protestant theologians to the same 
 category. 
 
 From the very rise of a specifically anti - atheistical 
 literature, the desire was manifested to trace the causes 
 of atheism, but the harsh and illiberal mode of viewing 
 difi"erences of opinion so long and widely prevalent, had 
 a very injurious effect on the investigation. Much that 
 is excellent on this subject will be found vigorously stated 
 by Prof. J. S. Blackie in his * Natural History of Atheism ' 
 
 (1877). 
 
 The question, whether or not atheism is compatible 
 with morality and with political security and prosperity, 
 was keenly and fully discussed in numerous writings 
 published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 The history of this controversy, which is a remarkable 
 testimony to the intellectual influence of Machiavelli 
 and Bayle, deserves to be written. It seems quite for- 
 gotten and unknown at present. 
 
 In note 11. of Appendix to 'Theism,' I have indicated 
 the works in which the relation of religion to morality 
 seems to me to have been most thoughtfully discussed. 
 Reference may also be made to the paper by W. H. 
 Mallock on *' Modern Atheism : its Attitude towards 
 Morality," in the 'Contemporary Review,' Jan. 7, 1877. 
 
Appendix: Note V. 459 
 
 Note V., page 44. 
 Lange's History of Materialism. 
 
 The only general History of Materialism worthy of 
 mention is the * Geschichte des Materialismus ' of F. A. 
 Lange. Few works in the department of philosophy 
 have recently attracted so much attention or been so 
 highly praised. 
 
 It everywhere shows clearness, vigour, and critical 
 acuteness of intellect, a wide acquaintance with the 
 positive sciences, a competent knowledge of the writings 
 of the chief ancient and modem materialists, and the 
 power of natural and spirited expression. It has no 
 claim, however, to be considered as in any sense an 
 epoch - making book, and is not without great faults. 
 Strictly speaking, it is not a history of materialism, but 
 a history of science, written on the assumption that the 
 whole world of knowledge can alone be explained by 
 matter and mechanism. It is, to a far larger extent, an 
 exposition of the theories and a discussion of the prob- 
 lems which seem to its author to bear on materialism, 
 than an account and criticism of directly materialistic 
 speculations. It nowhere gives evidence of original 
 research or great erudition, and has thrown little new 
 light on any period of the history the course of which 
 it traces. The view which it presents of the history of 
 the opposition to materialism is most inadequate through- 
 out. The ability of materialists and the worth of their 
 writings are, in general, overestimated. 
 
 The work is divided into two books, the one devoted 
 lo materialism before Kant, and the other to materialism 
 
460 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 since Kant. The former book contains four sections. 
 The first section treats of materialism in antiquity, oi 
 rather in classical antiquity, for nothing is said about 
 the materialism of China or India, or any other nation 
 than Greece and Rome. The special subjects of its five 
 chapters are — the atomism of Democritus ; the sensa- 
 tionalism of the Sophists and the ethical materialism of 
 Aristippus ; the reaction of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle 
 against materialism and sensationalism ; the doctrine of 
 Epicurus; and the poem of Lucretius. The second 
 section is occupied with the transition period, which 
 extends from the decay of the ancient civilisation to 
 Bruno, Bacon, and Descartes. The third section deals 
 with the materialism of the seventeenth century, and 
 has three chapters, which are devoted respectively to 
 Gassendi, as the restorer of Epicureanism ; to Hobbes ; 
 and to Boyle, Newton, Locke, and Toland. The fourth 
 section treats of the materialism of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. It contains, first, an account of the influence of 
 English materialism on France and Germany; next, 
 an exposition of the materialistic views of La Mettrie; 
 then an analysis of Holbach's * System of Nature ; ' 
 and finally, an estimate of the reaction against material- 
 ism in Germany — an estimate which takes into account 
 the philosophy of Leibnitz, Wolfianism, and German 
 Spinozism. 
 
 The second book of Lange's ' History of Materialism ' 
 is likewise divided into four sections. Section first 
 discusses the Kantian philosophy in its relation to 
 materialism, and then describes the phases of the so- 
 called philosophical materialism propagated by Feuer- 
 bach. Max Stimer, Biichner, Moleschott, and Czolbe. 
 Section second consists of four chapters, which have for 
 
Appendix : Note V, 461 
 
 their subjects the bearing of materialism on exact re- 
 search, the relation between matter and force, scientific 
 cosmogony, and Darwinism and teleology. The third 
 section treats of man's place in the animal world, the 
 relation of brain and soul, scientific psychology, the 
 physiology of the organs of sense, and the world as 
 representation. The last section deals with ethical 
 materialism and religion. 
 
 The most general results at which Lange arrives are, 
 that there is no genuine science except that which 
 explains phenomena in terms of matter and motion; 
 that all our mental capacities, and even the laws of 
 intuition and thought, must be traceable to the elements 
 and organisation of the brain; that all material objects, 
 including the brain and the organs by which we perceive, 
 think, and will, are mere phenomena or experiences; 
 that no other world can be known by us than the phe- 
 nomenal and empirical world, which must be elucidated 
 by materialism and mechanism ; that philosophy is not 
 science, and has nothing to do with truth, but should be 
 cultivated as a poetry of notions ; that religion is essential 
 to human nature, but must be entirely severed from 
 belief; and that philosophy and religion, when thus 
 understood, will afford a solid basis for moral and 
 aesthetic culture, secure social progress, and vastly 
 benefit humanity. The doctrine composed of these 
 propositions has been actually hailed by a rather numer- 
 ous class of persons as itself a philosophy which triumph- 
 antly refutes materialism, and worthily completes the 
 work of Kant. But in spite of their noisy and foolish 
 applause, I venture to afl^irm that if German philosophy 
 should have for its ultimate outcome this conglomerate 
 of materialism, scepticism, and nonsense, it will have to 
 
462 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 be regarded as the greatest fiasco the world has ever wit« 
 nessed. 
 
 Lange's history has been translated into English by 
 Mr Thomas, and into French by Professor Nolen. The 
 French translator is the author of three able articles on 
 the book — two essays published in the 'Rdvue Philo- 
 sophique' (October and December 1877), and a memoir 
 read before the Academie des Sciences Morales et 
 Politiques, and published in a separate form (Paris, 
 Reinwald & Co., 1877). Vaihinger's 'Hartmann, Diih- 
 ring, und Lange ' is an important and instructive book, 
 although its author is far too enthusiastic an admirer of 
 Lange. 
 
 Note VI., page 47. 
 Chinese Materialism. 
 
 The essay of Yang Choo was translated into English 
 by Dr Legge in the prolegomena to the edition of ' Men- 
 cius,' contained in his Chinese classics. The works of 
 Licius, to whom it owes its preservation and transmis- 
 sion, have recently been completely translated into 
 German by Ernest Faber, in his * Naturalismus bei den 
 alten Chinesen ' (1877). 
 
 There is said to be comparatively little theoretical 
 materialism in China, although practical materialism is 
 nowhere more prevalent. We know, however, very little 
 about the course of Chinese thought from the eleventh 
 century to the present time. Probably Chinese scholars 
 have at length done something like justice to the ancient 
 
Appendix: Note VIL 463 
 
 ciassics of the celestial empire. If so, it is extremely to 
 be desired that they would now direct their attention to 
 the study of its later literature and philosophy. 
 
 Note VII., page 49. 
 Hindu Materialism. 
 
 The Charvaka system is described in the * Sarva-Dar- 
 sana-Sangraha,' which has been translated into English 
 by Professor Cowell, The part of the work which 
 relates to the Charvaka doctrine will be found in the 
 * Pandit,' vol. ix., No. 103, pp. 162-166. 
 
 All the Hindu systems of philosophy, except Vedant 
 ism, expressly teach the eternity of a material principle 
 from which the universe has been evolved, but they also 
 teach the eternity of soul. The Vaiseshika system is 
 a physical philosophy based on an atomic theory. It 
 explains all material objects, and changes by the aggre- 
 gation, disintegration, and redintegration of uncaused, 
 eternal, imperceptible, indivisible atoms; but it differs 
 from the atomism of Democritus in at least two respects 
 — it assigns to the atoms qualitative distinctions, and it 
 does not represent them as capable of constituting souls. 
 It is doubtful whether or not its founder, Kanada, and 
 some of his followers, believed in a supreme spirit. Each 
 soul was supposed to be eternal, and infinitely extended 
 or ubiquitous, although only knowing, feeling, and act- 
 ing where the body is. The Vaiseshika aphorisms of 
 Kanada, with comments from two Hindu expositors, 
 
464 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 have been translated by Professor A. E. Gough (Benares, 
 1873). For general accounts of the system, consult 
 Colebrooke's * Essays/ and Monier Williams's * Indian 
 Wisdom.' 
 
 The Sankhya system is atheistical, and approaches 
 nearly to materialism, notwithstanding that it affirms 
 the eternity of innumerable distinct souls. It assigns 
 activity and self-consciousness not to soul but to nature. 
 Its general doctrines may be thus summarised : 1°. Its 
 aim is to make impossible human pain by arresting the 
 course of transmigration. 2°. It professes to accom- 
 plish this by means of science. 3°. It represents science 
 as consisting of a thorough knowledge of the developed 
 principle or the world, of the undeveloped principle or 
 nature, and of the soul. 4°. It also represents it as a 
 knowledge of twenty-five elements of things and cate- 
 gories of intelligence, which may, however, be all reduced 
 to nature and soul. 5°. It expresses the relations of the 
 twenty-five principles to one another in the following 
 formula : " Nature, root of all, is no product ; seven 
 principles are products, and productive; sixteen are 
 products only ; soul is neither a product nor productive." 
 
 The chief sources of information as to the Sankhya 
 philosophy are accessible to students unacquainted with 
 Sanscrit. Most of the Sutras of Kapila have been trans- 
 lated into French by B. St Hilaire, in the ' Mdmoires de 
 rinstitut' for 1852. There is an English translation of 
 the first book, as also of a Hindu commentary on it, by 
 Dr Ballantyne. Of the valuable production called the 
 Karika, there are no less than five European translations 
 — Lassen's, Panthier's, Windischman's, Colebrooke's, and 
 St Hilaire's. The volume which contains Colebrooke's 
 translation comprises also two commentaries on the 
 
Appendix: Note VIII. 465 
 
 Karika, — one by Professor H. H. Wilson ; and another, 
 which he has rendered from the vernacular into Eng- 
 lish, and is, consequently, a book of the highest im- 
 portance to a student of the Sankhya system. It was 
 published in 1837, under the auspices of the Oriental 
 Society. 
 
 There is an article by Dr Muir, on " Indian Material- 
 ists," in the * Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,* vol. 
 xix. 
 
 Note VIII., page 54. 
 Early Greek Materialism. 
 
 See Mullach's * Fragmenta Philosophorum Grae- 
 corum,* pp. 340-377, for what remains of the writings 
 of Democritus. The accounts of his system given by 
 Hegel, Zeller, Lange, Grote, and Ferrier may be speci- 
 fied as of exceptional ability and interest. 
 
 Lange connects Empedocles with Democritus, on the 
 ground that he was the first to put forth the idea of 
 the gradual natural development of organised beings. 
 Anaximander is better entitled to this distinction. His 
 conception of development was also much more like 
 Darwin's than was that of Empedocles, inasmuch as it 
 supposed an advance from simple to complex forms, or a 
 process of differentiation, whereas the Empedoclean view 
 was that of a combination of heterogeneous organs. If 
 the great merit of a biological hypothesis, however, be, 
 as Lange fancies, the setting aside of the idea of final 
 causes, the latter notion may claim a certain superiority: 
 
 2 G 
 
466 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 indeed, from this point of view, absurdity itsell is an 
 advantage. A natural orderly development cannot pos- 
 sibly help to disprove the existence of a final cause or of 
 a supreme reason. 
 
 I have elsewhere had occasion to make the following 
 remarks regarding the two philosophers above men- 
 tioned : " Anaximander, one of the earliest of Greek 
 philosophers, working out his idea of the Infinite or 
 Unconditioned being the first principle of the universe, 
 arrived both at a sort of rude nebular hypothesis and a 
 sort of rude development hypothesis. From the airctpov, 
 or primitive unconditioned matter, through an inherent 
 and eternal energy and movement, the two original con- 
 traries of heat and cold separate : what is cold settles 
 down to the centre, and so forms the earth ; what is hot 
 ascends to the circumference, and so originates the bright, 
 shining, fiery bodies of heaven, which are but the frag- 
 ments of what once existed as a complete shell or 
 sphere, but in time burst and broke up, and so gave 
 rise to the stars. The action of the sun's heat on the 
 watery earth next generated films or bladders, out of 
 which came difierent kinds of imperfectly organised 
 beings, which were gradually developed into the ani- 
 mals which now live. Man's ancestors were fishlike 
 creatures which dwelt in muddy waters, and only, as 
 the sun slowly dried up the earth, became gradually 
 fitted for life on dry land. A similar view was held by 
 the poet, priest, prophet, and philosopher Empedocles. 
 He taught that out of the four elements of earth, air, 
 fire, and water, and under the moving power of Love 
 resisting Hate, plants, animals, and man were in suc- 
 cession, and after many an effort, and many a futile 
 
Appendix : Note IX. 467 
 
 conjunction of organs, generated and elaborated into 
 their present shapes." — 'Historical Philosophy in France,' 
 p. 91, where the authorities for these statements are in- 
 dicated. 
 
 Note IX., page 73. 
 Epicurean Materialism. 
 
 For Epicurus and his doctrines our chief sources of 
 information are the writings of Diogenes Laertius, 
 Lucretius, and Cicero. In the general history of phil- 
 osophy by Maurice, Lewes, Zeller, Ueberweg, &c., Epi- 
 cureanism is well discussed; also in Lange's ' Geschichte 
 des Materialismus,' and Carrau's * La Morale Utilitaire ' 
 (1875). But probably the most important work on the 
 subject is Guyau's *La Morale d'Epicure et ses rapports 
 avec les doctrines contemporaines' (1878). 
 
 The study of Lucretius owes much in this country to 
 Munro's masterly edition of the ' De rerum natura.' The 
 literature regarding the greatest poet of materialism is 
 extensive. I must be content to specify the magnificent 
 essay on the genius of Lucretius in Professor Sellar's 
 ' Roman Poets of the Republic ; ' the thoughtful and 
 beautiful little treatise of Professor Veitch, entitled 
 ' Lucretius and the Atomic Theory ; ' and the interesting 
 volume by Mr Mallock in Blackwood's '* Ancient Classics 
 for English Readers." 
 
468 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note X., page 75. 
 
 Materialism in the Middle Ages. 
 
 Lange devotes eighty pages of his * History of Mate- 
 rialism ' to the middle ages. He presents to us in them, 
 however, instead of a properly historical narrative and 
 exposition, merely general dissertations on the relation 
 of the monotheistic religions to materialism — on the 
 Aristotelian doctrine of matter and form and its influence 
 on scholasticism — and on the return of materialistic views 
 with the revival of the sciences. It may be a matter 
 of opinion whether these dissertations are profound or 
 superficial, clear or confused; but no person who has 
 made any study of medieval history is likely to regard 
 them as learned. The author obviously knew nothing 
 whatever at first hand, and little even at second hand, 
 concerning medieval writers. Hence he substitutes for 
 them Humboldt and Liebig, J. S. Mill, Sir W. Hamilton, 
 Trendelenburg, Fortlage, &c. 
 
 A history of theoretical materialism in the middle 
 ages could not be written, for the simple reason that 
 there was none to write. A historical account might 
 have been given, however, of the course of medieval 
 thought respecting the nature of matter and the problem 
 of its eternity or non- eternity ; the materialistic views 
 which were entertained as to the character and origin 
 of life and soul might have been indicated; and the 
 manifestations of ethical materialism during the period 
 might have been described. A considerable amount 
 of information as to the discussion of the problem of 
 the eternity and non -eternity of matter will be found 
 
Appendix : Note XL 469 
 
 in Rabbi Schmiedl's * Studien ' and in Kaufmann's 
 * Attributenlehre/ 
 
 Note XI., page 83. 
 
 Materialism of the Seventeenth and 
 Eighteenth Centuries. 
 
 Lange's account of the relation of Gassendi to mate- 
 rialism seems to me to be one-sided. The learned and 
 worthy priest, by distinctly maintaining that the atoms 
 of matter were not eternal, and by elaborately arguing 
 that they merely explained physical things — by repre- 
 senting them as created ex nihilo by the Divine Will — 
 and by strenuously defending both the immateriality and 
 the immortality of the soul, — did at least as much to 
 dissociate atomism from materialism as to further the 
 cause of materialism by his atomism. He may be fairly 
 held to have been rather the precursor of that long 
 series of rational assailants of materialism, which in- 
 cluded in England such men as Cudworth, Henry 
 More, John Smith, Richard Bentley, &c, of whom, 
 strangely enough, Lange appears never to have heard 
 — than the coryphaeus of modem materialism itself. 
 The account given of the system of Gassendi by 
 Damiron in his *Essai sur I'Histoire de la Philosophie 
 en France au xvii* siecle,' (t. i.), is fuller and truer. 
 
 Lange does not seem to have been aware of the 
 attempts made by Overton, Dodwell, and Coward, dur- 
 ing the seventeenth century and the early years of the 
 eighteenth century, to prove the soul material and 
 
470 Anti-Tlieistic Theories. 
 
 naturally mortal, or of the discussions to which these 
 attempts gave rise. 
 
 It is a pleasure to be able to recognise that Lange's 
 account of the French materialism of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury is at once extremely able and generally correct. 
 
 Among the French writers belonging to the latter half 
 of the eighteenth century who may fairly be classed as 
 atheists were, besides La Mettrie (1709-1751) and Von 
 Holbach (1723- 1789), Diderot (17 13-1784), Helvetius 
 (17 1 5-1 771), D'Alembert (17 17-1 783), Lalande (1732- 
 1807), Naigeon (1738-1810), Condorcet (1743-1794), 
 and Marechal (i 750-1 803). La Mettrie, Diderot, Hel- 
 vetius, and D'Alembert may be regarded as forming an 
 earlier, and Lalande, Naigeon, Condorcet, and Mardchal 
 a later group, with Von Holbach as the connecting 
 link. 
 
 Diderot's scepticism assumed the form of materialistic 
 atheism, or materialistic pantheism, only after he be- 
 came an associate of Holbach. He is the subject of 
 two elaborate and excellent works — the one by Rosen- 
 kranz and the other by J. Morley. Almost half a 
 century ago, when the materials for forming an esti- 
 mate of his character were much less abundant than 
 now, and wholly unassorted, it was divined by Mr 
 Carlyle with the true insight of genius, and portrayed 
 with a skill which has not since been matched. 
 
 Helvetius avoided a frank avowal of materialism, but 
 his entire doctrine — one deeply stained with sensual and 
 selfish principles — implied it. Perhaps the best exposi- 
 tion and criticism of it will be found in Cousin's ' Hist 
 de la Phil. Mor. au dix-huitibme sibcle,' lemons iv., v. 
 
 D'Alembert gave expression to his views regarding 
 religion only in his private conversation and correspon- 
 
Appendix : Note XL 471 
 
 dence. He had a clear perception of some of the diffi- 
 culties to an acceptance of materialism. And hence, 
 notwithstanding his intimacy with Diderot, his unbelief 
 assumed rather an agnostic than a materialistic form. 
 He was the only morally worthy, or even morally decent 
 man, belonging to the older atheistical group. Its three 
 other members had some good qualities, but they were 
 shamelessly impure, licentious, and untruthful. It is a 
 significant but lamentable fact that sympathy with their 
 sceptical views should have of late led many literary 
 men to eulogise their characters, to exaggerate their 
 good qualities, and to ignore or excuse their vices. 
 
 Lalande is known almost entirely by his distinguished 
 services to science ; but he actively assisted his friend 
 Mar^chal in propagating atheism. He contributed 
 largely to the * Dictionnaire des Athdes.' 
 
 Condorcet — a man of noble and generous nature — was 
 an enthusiast for the philosophy which explains every- 
 thing by matter and sensation. In my article " Con- 
 dorcet," in the * Ency. Brit.,' a general view of his life 
 and teaching will be found, with references to the best 
 sources of information regarding him. 
 
 Naigeon and Mardchal were fanatical preachers of 
 the gospel according to Diderot and Holbach. The 
 numerous writings of both are at present deservedly for- 
 gotten ; but of course, in a time when the literary dis- 
 coveries of materialists are not less remarkable than 
 their scientific achievements, no one can be sure but 
 that Naigeon may be speedily announced to have been 
 equal to Newton — and Marechal to have really been, 
 what he aspired to be, another Lucretius. 
 
 Laplace was reputed to be an atheist by some of his 
 contemporaries. In his writings he seems to have stu- 
 
4/2 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 diously refrained from the expression of religious opin- 
 ion ; and this, it must be remembered, at a time when 
 the profession of atheism was a passport to popularity. 
 
 In the * De la Nature' (4 tom. 1761-66) and other 
 works of Robinet, an ingenious and grandiose theory 
 of evolution was expounded. Although not materialistic, 
 and still less atheistic, it was of such a character that it 
 must have helped to swell the stream of eighteenth- 
 century materialism. It has been well treated of by 
 Damiron in his ' Memoires pour servir k I'histoire de la 
 Philosophic au xviii* sibcle,' and by Rosenkranz in the 
 ' Z\ Der Gedanke ' B*. i. 
 
 Note XIL, page 86. 
 La Mettrie. 
 
 The ;£loge of Frederick the Great on La Mettrie is 
 reprinted in Assezat's edition of ' L'homme machine ' 
 (1865). M. Assezat initiated the process of rehabilitat- 
 ing the memory of La Mettrie. Lange followed in 1866. 
 M. Nerde Quepat published in 1873 ^is 'EssaisurLa 
 Mettrie, sa vie et ses oeuvres.' Although it gives far too 
 favourable a view, both of the conduct of La Mettrie 
 and of his writings, it can be commended as an industri- 
 ously and intelligently composed production. Du Bois- 
 Reymond's eulogium was pronounced before the Royal 
 Academy of Prussia in 1875. 
 
 Lange, in the chapter dedicated to La Mettrie, has 
 collected, reproduced in a clear and condensed form, 
 and skilfully combined the most plausible and judicious 
 
Appendix : Note XI 11. 473 
 
 views enunciated in that author's writings. This gives 
 as result a most flattering reflection of La Mettrie's char- 
 acter as a thinker. Unfortunately the real La Mettrie 
 was rambling, incoherent, and self contradictory to the 
 last degree. It would, in consequence, not be diflficult 
 to make about as truthful a picture of him as Lange's, 
 and from materials likewise supplied by his own books, 
 yet which should represent him, in accordance with the 
 description of D'Argens, as " fou, au pied de la lettre." 
 "Sa tete," says Diderot, "est si troublee et ses idees sont 
 k tel point decousues, que, dans la meme page, une 
 assertion sensee est heurtde par une assertion foUe, et 
 une assertion folle par une assertion sensee." 
 
 Note XIII., page 96. 
 
 MiRABAUD AND VON HOLBACH. 
 
 J. B. de Mirabaud died in 1760, ten years before the 
 publication of the ' Systbme de la Nature ' which bore 
 his name on its title-page. Naigeon says that he had 
 seen a MS. of Mirabaud, entitled ' Des Lois du monde 
 physique et du monde morale,' in which views similar to 
 those in the * Syst^me ' were advocated. If this state- 
 ment could be relied on, the conjecture might be per- 
 mitted that the MS. was made use of by Holbach and 
 his friends. Mirabaud was, undoubtedly, a materialist 
 and an enemy of Christianity, although, perhaps, not an 
 atheist. His ' Sentiments des philosophes sur la nature 
 de Tame' (1743), and *Le Monde, son origine et son 
 antiquite' (1751), show quite clearly to what school of 
 
474 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 thought he belonged. His literary reputation was chiefly 
 due to his translation of Tasso's * Jerusalem Delivered/ 
 published in 1724. He was perpetual secretary of the 
 French Academy from 1742 until his death. There is 
 an account of him by D'Alembert in the first volume of 
 the * Histoire des membres de I'Academie frangaise.' 
 
 Von Holbach was at least the chief author of the 
 * System of Nature.' He was a diligent and ready writer, 
 and must have done some good service by his French 
 translations of German scientific works. The anti-reli- 
 gious publications of which he was in whole or in part 
 the author are very numerous. Most of them were pub- 
 lished by Michael Rey of Amsterdam. They all ap- 
 peared either without name or under false names. A 
 list of them is given in Barbier's * Dictionary of Anony- 
 mous Works.' 
 
 Lange's account of the * System of Nature' is elaborate 
 and laudatory. Mr Morley's, in his * Diderot,' is of a 
 very similar character. N. S. Bergier's * Examen du 
 Mat^rialisme,' 2 tom., 1771, is a good refutation. 
 
 Note XIV., page loi. 
 
 English Materialism in the First Half of the 
 Nineteenth Century. 
 
 Dr Erasmus Darwin's * Zoonomia, or the Laws of Or- 
 ganic Life,' 2 vols., does not strictly fall to be mentioned 
 here, as it was published in 1794-96 ; but, along with the 
 - Botanic Garden ' and ' Phytologia,' it did much to keep 
 
Appmdix: Note XIV. 475 
 
 materialism in existence during the earlier part of the 
 lentury. Its fundamental idea was that vegetables and 
 animals originated in living filaments, susceptible of irri- 
 tation. Irritability develops, so argued Dr Darwin, into 
 sensibility, and sensibility into perception, memory, and 
 reason. The theory was annihilated by Dr Thomas 
 Brown in his ' Observations on the Zoonomia/ Edinb., 
 1798. 
 
 Dr Erasmus Darwin was very famous in his day, 
 although he never attained, of course, the height of repu- 
 tation which has been reached by his grandson, Dr 
 Charles Darwin. His mind was in many respects similar 
 in character, the chief difference being that his fancy was 
 even more fertile and bold, and that he was less patient 
 and methodical in the investigation of facts. Regarding 
 him see the following work, — * Erasmus Darwin, by Ernst 
 Krause, tr. by W. S. Dallas. With a Preliminary Notice 
 by Charles Darwin: 1879.' Also Dr J. H. Stirling's 
 ' Darwinianism,' 1894. 
 
 The *■ Essay on the Origin and Prospects of Man ' (3 
 vols., 1 831), by Mr Thomas Hope, is an almost unread- 
 able production. Its sentences often defy alike logical 
 and grammatical analysis. How the author of ' Anas- 
 tasius' could have written in so trailing, involved, and 
 obscure a fashion is a mystery. The existence of God 
 as the inconceivable primary cause, from which all other 
 causes and effects proceed by way of radiation, emana- 
 tion, or evolution, is affirmed; but, if there be some 
 theism or pantheism in this the work otherwise seems 
 to be thoroughly materialistic. A single sentence will, 
 perhaps, be a sufficient specimen both of its style and of 
 its science. In answer to the fundamental question, 
 " On what depends, between the bodies merely inorganic 
 and lifeless and the bodies organic and living, the differ- 
 
47^ Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 ence which leaves in the former a total absence of organ- 
 isation, life, and growth, and to the latter first gives the 
 possession of these new attributes?" Mr Hope writes 
 thus : " It only depends on this, that in the former 
 bodies, when their first molecules, from opposite sides 
 driven together and meeting, are made to consolidate 
 and cohere sufficiently to have of the new substances 
 still fluid that enter and penetrate between them, by the 
 pressure of electricity of a combining sort and of cold 
 from without, and by the resistance or counter-pressure 
 of the former solids from within, a portion again stopped, 
 condensed, congealed, and made to combine and con- 
 solidate, of these new substances from without, during 
 their consolidation the pressure on the former ones 
 within already consolidated, so exceeds in these former 
 ones from within their elasticity or power to yield to that 
 pressure of these outer ones, without being by it broken, 
 dispersed, and decombined, as not to be able themselves 
 to remain solid and cohering, while these new ones are 
 added to them; — as we see in stones which when hu- 
 midity driven is there by combining electricity and cold 
 congealed, it soon makes them burst and themselves 
 again decombine ; whereas in the latter bodies, when of 
 the new fluids driven in them a portion is stopped, con- 
 gealed, consolidated and made to cohere together, the 
 extension which these new fluids experience in being 
 consolidated in crystalline forms, disperses not by its 
 pressure the former solids, nor decombines these entirely, 
 but, by the elasticity these possess, only makes them also 
 in their turn extend, till by their extension they again 
 exert over the new ones consolidating a counter-pressure, 
 sufficient to make these also cohere even with them- 
 selves, and thus gradually increase the general mass of 
 
Appendix: Note XIV. 477 
 
 substances solid and cohering, in so doing, make it ex- 
 hibit the phenomena called of life and growth." — Vol. 
 
 ii- PP- 35> 36. 
 
 Shortly after the book appeared, Mr Carlyle justly 
 described it as *'a monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences 
 are heaped and huddled together, and the principles of 
 all are, with a childlike innocence, plied hither and 
 thither, or wholly abolished in case of need ; where the 
 First Cause is figured as a huge Circle, with nothing to 
 do but radiate ' gravitation ' towards its centre ; and so 
 construct a Universe, wherein all, from the lowest cucum- 
 ber with its coolness, up to the highest seraph with his 
 love, were but * gravitation,' direct or reflex, *in more 
 or less central globes ; ' " "a general agglomerate of all 
 facts, notions, whims, and observations, as they lie in 
 the brain of an English gentleman : all these thrown into 
 the crucible, and if not fused, yet soldered or conglutin- 
 ated with boundless patience; and now tumbled out 
 here, heterogeneous, amorphous, unspeakable, a world's 
 wonder." 
 
 Mr Hope's work is frequently referred to, and occa- 
 sionally quoted, in the * Vestiges of the Natural History 
 of Creation' (1844), published anonymously, but now 
 acknowledged to be written by the late Dr R. Chambers. 
 The existence of a personal Deity is distinctly recognised 
 in this latter work, but all the forms of life and mind are 
 taught to have been necessarily evolved from primary 
 nebulous matter. The theory which it expounds is sub- 
 stantially the theory of evolution at preseiit prevalent. It 
 was criticised by Sir D. Brewster in the ' North British 
 Review,' No. 3 ; by Prof. Dod in an elaborate article which 
 was republished in the second series of the 'Princeton 
 Theological Essays ; ' by Mr Hugh Miller in ' Footprints 
 
478 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 of the Creator ; ' by Prof. Sedgwick in the * Edinburgh 
 Review,' No. 82 ; and by Dr Whewell in ' Indications of 
 a Creator,' &a It is, perhaps, worth noting that Karl 
 Vogt translated the * Vestiges' into German in 1847. 
 
 In volumes i. and ii. of the * Oracle of Reason,' pub- 
 lished in 1842 and 1843, there is a series of forty-eight 
 papers on " The Theory of Regular Gradation," in which 
 it is maintained that "all the facts which form the 
 sciences tend to the conclusion that the inherent pro- 
 perties of * dull matter,' as some bright portions of it have 
 designated it, are good and sufficient to produce all the 
 varied, complicated, and beautiful phenomena of the 
 universe ; " that " matter can make men and women, and 
 every other natural phenomenon — unassisted, undirected, 
 and uncontrolled." In these papers atheism is openly 
 avowed. Their author was a Mr William Chilton. 
 
 In Prof. J. S. Blackie's ' Natural History of Atheism,' 
 pp. 221-247, the materialistic and atheistic views of Mr 
 Atkinson and Miss Martin eau are stated and criticised. 
 
 Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie seer, ex- 
 pounded in his ' Principles of Nature and her Revela- 
 tions,' 2 vols., the doctrine that all matter is gradually 
 advancing under the influence of an Organiser towards a 
 spiritual state, and that souls have been generated from 
 matter until they became substantive existences which 
 will survive the death of the body, and pass from lower 
 to higher stages of being, according to eternal laws of 
 progression. 
 
 Many so-called spiritualists are materialists, and even 
 atheists, teaching that all things originate in nature, and 
 are governed by physical necessity. Materialism, al- 
 though incompatible with theism and rational religion^ 
 is quite consistent with mythology and superstition. 
 
Appendix : Note X V. 479 
 
 Note XV., page 131. 
 Recent Materialism. 
 
 Among the recent defenders of materialism in Ger- 
 many, Moleschott, Vogt, Biichner, Lowenthal, Haeckel, 
 Diihring, and Strauss may be named. Jacob Moles- 
 chott's * Kreislauf des Lebens ' (Circulation of Life), pub- 
 lished in 1852, was the first systematic exposition of 
 what is called scientific materialism. It was written in 
 a popular style, and contained a considerable amount of 
 interesting biological information, but contributed noth- 
 ing to the proof of the fundamental dogmas of materi- 
 alism ; these, indeed, it borrowed fi*om that feeble pro- 
 duction of Ludwig Feuerbach, which it pronounces to be 
 " the immortal critique of religion." 
 
 Charles Vogt threw himself with great vigour and 
 violence into the conflict excited by Moleschott's book, 
 and by a celebrated discourse of Rudolph Wagner " On 
 the Creation of Man and the Substance of the Soul" 
 (1854). His 'Lectures on Man, his place in creation 
 and in the history of the earth,' published in 1863, 
 have been translated into English, and show well what 
 manner of person he is. 
 
 Louis Biichner has been probably the most efficient 
 and successful of the popularisers of contemporary ma- 
 terialism. His ' Matter and Force ' (1855), ' Nature and 
 Science' (1862), and 'Man's Place in Nature' (1869), 
 have passed through many editions, and been translated 
 into most European languages. The first mentioned of 
 these books seems to have almost taken the place formerly 
 filled by Holbach's 'System of Nature.' There have been 
 
480 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 many replies to it ; that of M. Janet, * Materialism of the 
 Present Day' — of which there is a good translation by 
 Gustave Masson — combines most happily, perhaps, ele- 
 gance as to form with thoroughness as to substance. 
 
 Edward Lowenthal regards even the authors just men- 
 tioned as neither sufficiently materialistic nor specula- 
 tively consistent, seeing that they affirm the coexistence 
 of two principles — matter and force. He maintains that 
 matter is alone primordial, and that force is merely a 
 product of atomic aggregation. He also labours to con- 
 struct " a religion without a creed " on his materialism, 
 and to form an " international freethinkers' association," 
 from which he expects great results; in a word, he 
 aspires to be the founder of what he calls " Cogitanten- 
 thum" (Thinkingdom), which is to take the place of 
 Christendom. His ' System and History of Naturalism,' 
 first published in 1861, is now in its fifth edition. The 
 system is very feebly and loosely constructed, and the 
 history is very inaccurate. 
 
 Ernst Haeckel is the most enthusiastic and influen- 
 tial of German Darwinists. His reputation as a " mor- 
 phologist " and " zoologist " stands very high. He is a 
 thorough materialist and atheist, but he prefers to call 
 himself a monist. He regards the eternity of matter as 
 a law of nature, and spontaneous generation as a scien- 
 tific certainty. He gets enraged when he hears of final 
 causes; and he tells those who dare to doubt of the ape- 
 origin of humanity, that *'it is an interesting and in- 
 structive circumstance that those men are chiefly indig- 
 nant at the discovery of the natural development of man 
 from the monkey, between whom and our common 
 tertiary ancestors there is the least observable diff"erence, 
 whether as to intellectual capacity or cerebral character- 
 
Appendix : Note XV. 481 
 
 istics." His * General Morphology,' published in 1866, 
 his ' Natural History of Creation/ of which the first 
 edition appeared in 1868, and his * Anthropogenie ' 
 (1874), are the works in which he has expounded his 
 so-called monism. The second and third of them have 
 been translated into English. For a good general ex- 
 position of his system, based on the * Natural History of 
 Creation,' see M. Leon Dumont's ' Haeckel et la th^orie 
 de revolution en Allemagne.' 
 
 Eugene Diihring has endeavoured in various works to 
 establish and apply a so-called *' philosophy of reality " 
 which is essentially materialistic. He gave a general 
 exposition of his system in a ' Course of Philosophy ' 
 published in 1875. The work has considerable merits; 
 but, besides other defects, it has the fatal fault of seldom 
 giving proofs either of its affirmations or its negations. 
 The book of Hans Vaihinger, mentioned in Note V., 
 will be found highly useful to the student of Diihring's 
 philosophy. 
 
 David F. Strauss closed his literary career by a " Con- 
 fession," in which materialism and pantheism were blended 
 together, and Darwinism was accepted as the new and 
 true Gospel. The celebrity which he had acquired, and 
 his talent as a writer, were the chief reasons why this 
 confession — 'The Old and the New Faith,' 1873 — 
 excited a remarkable amount of attention. As regards 
 real intellectual substance it is poor, superficial, and 
 confused. The " new faith " is a faith as old as specu- 
 lative error. As held by Strauss it is an unreasoned 
 faith in the eternity of matter, in spontaneous genera- 
 tion, in the incarnation of the ape, and in the truth of 
 optimism, although the world is ruled by blind and aim- 
 less, unconscious and unmoral forces. Its central posi- 
 
 ^ H 
 
482 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 tive and constructive idea is that the universe — the 
 totality of existence designated nature — is the only God 
 which the modern mind enlightened by science can 
 consent to worship. Among the multitude of reviews 
 which the book called forth, those of Rauwenhoff and 
 Nippold, of Huber, of Vera, of Henry B. Smith (* Philo- 
 sophy and Faith,' pp. 443-488), of J. Hutchison Stirling 
 ('Athenaeum,' June 1873), and of Ulrici, might be speci- 
 fied. Ulrici's article — an annihilating and unanswerable 
 criticism of the philosophical postulates and dogmas 
 of the latest faith of Strauss — has been translated into 
 English, with an introduction, by Dr Krauth. 
 
 Materialism has now for almost thirty years been 
 spreading more and more widely in Germany, with what 
 results the future will show. It has owed its success to 
 the spirit of the times ; not to any intellectual superiority 
 of its advocates over its opponents. Schaller, Lotze, 
 J. H. Fichte, Ulrici, Bona Meyer, Huber, Hoffmann, 
 Froschammer, Fabri, Weiss, Wigand, and a host of others, 
 have done all that could be desired in the way both of 
 repelling and of returning its attacks. There is consider- 
 able exaggeration current as to the extent, and especially 
 as to the quality, of its conquests. The highest class 
 of German thinkers is chiefly composed of those who 
 regard materialism as the least satisfactory of philoso- 
 phical systems. 
 
 In France scarcely any work of merit has recently ap- 
 peared in defence of materialism, if positivism be not 
 counted as materialism. The communistic conspirator, 
 A. Blanqui, wrote a curious little book entitled 'L'Eter- 
 nitd par les astres, hypot^se astronomique ' (1872), which 
 showed very considerable literary talent, and which 
 
Appendix: Note XV. 483 
 
 was very ingeniously reasoned out from the assumption 
 that matter is infinite both in extension and duration. 
 He displayed in it his characteristic disregard of the 
 nature of the consequences of his principles. Thus he 
 contended that, since there must be all possible com- 
 binations of worlds if matter be absolutely infinite, there 
 must be many worlds like the present — stars with, for 
 example, duplicates in them of France, Paris, the Com- 
 mune, and Blanqui, and even of all these at every stage 
 of their existence. He neither proved, however, that 
 matter is doubly infinite, nor that we have such a com- 
 prehension of absolute as to be able to deduce from it 
 definite inferences. 
 
 M. Lef^vre, in his *La Philosophic' (1879), has writ- 
 ten the history of philosophy from a materialistic stand- 
 point, and given a general exposition of the system of 
 materialism. 
 
 In the work of M. Caro — 'Le Mat^rialisme et la 
 Science' — the pretensions of so-called scientific mate- 
 rialism are very searchingly tested, and the conclusion 
 that the positive sciences can neither displace nor re- 
 place metaphysics is very convincingly maintained. 
 
 In England, Mr Herbert Spencer, Professors Huxley 
 and Tyndall, and a few other writers of distinguished 
 philosophical or scientific talents, have done far more to 
 difiuse materialism than any of those who are willing to 
 avow themselves materialists. Never was materialism 
 more fortunate than when it secured to itself the sym- 
 pathy and support of minds so vigorous and so richly 
 gifted. It is quite incorrect, however, to say that in this 
 country the foremost scientific men have, as a body, gone 
 over to the materialistic camp or to the side of scepti- 
 
484 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 cism. This assertion was lately made by Mr Froude; 
 and it called forth from Professor Tait the following 
 unanswerable reply : " When we ask of any competent 
 authority, who were the ' advanced,' the ' best,' and the 
 'ablest' scientific thinkers of the immediate past (in 
 Britain), we cannot but receive for answer such names as 
 Brewster, Faraday, Forbes, Graham, Rowan Hamilton, 
 Herschel, and Talbot. This must be the case unless we 
 use the word science in a perverted sense. Which of 
 these great men gave up the idea that nature evidences 
 a designing mind? But perhaps Mr Froude refers to 
 the advanced thinkers still happily alive among us. The 
 names of the foremost among them are not far to seek. 
 But, unfortunately for his assertion, it is quite certain 
 that Andrews, Joule, Clerk-Maxwell, Balfour Stewart, 
 Stokes, William Thomson, and suchlike, have each and 
 all of them, when the opportunity presented itself, spoken 
 in a sense altogether different from that implied in Mr 
 Froude's article. Surely there are no truly scientific 
 thinkers in Britain farther advanced than these." See 
 'International Review' for November 1878, Art. "Does 
 Humanity require a New Revelation ? " 
 
 Among those who have combated materialism with 
 ability in publications written in English, the following 
 may be mentioned : Dr L. S. Beale, Professor Bowen, 
 Principal Caird, Dr Carpenter, President Chadbourne, 
 Professor Cocker, Rev. Joseph Cook, Principal Dawson, 
 Dr S. Harris, Dr Hickok, Dr Hodge, Professor Le Conte, 
 Professor Leebody, President M'Cosh, Dr Macvicar, Dr 
 Martineau, Professor Clerk-Maxwell, Professor Mivart, 
 President Porter, Professors Balfour Stewart and Tait, 
 Dr Hutchison Stirling, and Principal TuUoch. 
 
Appendix: Note XVI. 485 
 
 Note XVI., page 163. 
 
 Materialism and Force. 
 
 Professors Balfour Stewart and Tait, in the preface 
 to the fifth edition of the ingenious and suggestive work 
 entitled ' The Unseen Universe/ say : " As professors of 
 natural philosophy we have one sad remark to make. 
 The great majority of our critics have exhibited almost 
 absolute ignorance as to the proper use of the term Force^ 
 which has had one, and only one, definite scientific sense 
 since the publication of the * Principia.' As such men are 
 usually among the exceptionally well educated, ignorance 
 of this important question must be all but universal." 
 The observation is probably only too true. And per- 
 haps professors of natural philosophy have themselves 
 contributed largely to the mental confusion which pre- 
 vails on the subject. The definitions and descriptions of 
 force given by writers on physics are conflicting enough 
 to explain and excuse almost any amount of ignorance 
 and error regarding it Faraday tells us that " matter is 
 force;" Grove that "force is an afifection of matter;" 
 and Dubois-Reymond that "force is nothing else than 
 an abortion of the irresistible tendency to personifica- 
 tion." Professor Moleschott declares that "force is 
 essential to matter ; " Professor Spiller aflftrms that " no 
 material constituent of body is originally endowed with 
 force ; " and Dr Winslow maintains that " matter is a 
 mere vehicle which possesses and holds force as a bladder 
 holds water or a sack meal." Professor Balfour Stewart 
 uses the word force as meaning " that which changes the 
 
486 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 state of a body, whether that state be one of rest or of 
 motion ; " but Professor Barker means by it " motion 
 itself;" and Dr Bastian understands by it "a mode of 
 motion." If all professors of natural philosophy would 
 use the word Force, and, I may add, the word Energy, 
 in the same definite, intelligible, and self-consistent way 
 as Professors Stewart and Tait, Clerk-Maxwell and Sir 
 William Thomson, a vast amount of mental confusion 
 would speedily pass away. In this reference, a perusal 
 of Chap. III. of * The Unseen Universe ' cannot be too 
 strongly recommended. 
 
 Both the scientific and the religious consequences of 
 error as to the signification and relationship of energy 
 and force may be very serious. To affirm of force what 
 is true of energy is as great a mistake as to confound the 
 birth-rate of a country with its population. In con- 
 sequence of this error, Mr Herbert Spencer has trans- 
 formed or transmogrified the grand law of the Conserva- 
 tion of Energy — the law that, " in any system of bodies 
 whatever, to which no energy is communicated by ex- 
 ternal bodies, and which parts with no energy to external 
 bodies, the sum of the various potential and kinetic 
 energies remains for ever unaltered" — into a so-called 
 law of the Persistence of Force — the dogma that " the 
 quantity of force remains always the same " — which 
 physical science wholly disowns. "The sole recorded 
 case," observe Professors Stewart and Tait, " of true per- 
 sistency or indestructibility of force which we recollect 
 having ever met with, occurs in connection with Baron 
 Munchausen's remarkable descent from the moon. It 
 is, no doubt, a very striking case 3 but it is apparently 
 vmique, and it was not subjected to scientific scrutiny." 
 
Appendix: Note. XVI. 487 
 
 It is much to be regretted that professional critics and 
 popular writers should have so generally gone to Mr 
 Herbert Spencer's chapter on "The Persistence of Force" 
 for enlightenment as to the subject of which it treats, 
 although probably in no other eight consecutive pages in 
 the English language are there so many physical and 
 metaphysical errors combined. Many of these persons, 
 not having had their senses educated by appropriate 
 scientific instruction to discern between good and evil in 
 such matters, have been under the delusion that in per- 
 using the chapter indicated they were refreshing them- 
 selves with water drawn from the fountain of pure truth, 
 when they were really intoxicating themselves with " the 
 wine of the Borgias." The dreadful consequences which 
 have sometimes resulted from this mistake may be seen 
 exemplified in the case of " Physicus." 
 
 A number of Mr Spencer's errors regarding force are 
 well refuted by Professor Birks in his ' Modern Physical 
 Fatalism,' pp. 159-196. 
 
 On the nature and relationship of matter and force 
 the three following works are important : Harms, ' Philo- 
 sophische Einleitung in die Encyklopaedie der Physik ; ' 
 Huber, * Die Forschung nach der Materie ; ' and Dauriac, 
 * Des Notions de matibre et de force dans les sciences de 
 la nature.* 
 
488 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note XVII., page 171. 
 Materialism and Life. 
 
 Materialism is obviously unproved so long as life is 
 not shown to be a property or an effect of matter. Life 
 has certainly not yet been shown to be either the one 
 or the other. " The present state of knowledge," says 
 Professor Huxley, in his article on *' Biology," in the 
 * Encyclopaedia Britannica,' "furnishes us with no link 
 between the living and the not-living." 
 
 Numerous definitions have been given of life, but 
 even the best of these definitions appear to be seriously 
 defective. Biology has not yet succeeded in forming a 
 precise and accurate notion of what life is. Perhaps we 
 must be content to understand by it, so far as it falls 
 under the consideration of physical science, the cause of 
 the direction and co-ordination of the movements or 
 actions characteristic of bioplasmic matter. 
 
 Mr Herbert Spencer (Principles of Biology, vol. i. pp. 
 60, 61) has well indicated the unsatisfactoriness of the 
 definition of Schelling — " Life is the tendency to indi- 
 viduation ; " of that of Richerand — " Life is a collection 
 of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited 
 time in an organised body ; " of that of De Blainville — 
 " Life is the twofold internal movement of composition 
 and decomposition, at once general and continuous;" 
 and of that of Lewes — " Life is a series of definite and 
 successive changes, both of structure and composition, 
 which take place within an individual without destroying 
 its identity." Mr Spencer has also laboured to provide a 
 better definition ; and some writers suppose that his sue- 
 
Appendix: Note XV IL 489 
 
 cess has been almost complete. Thus Professor Bain 
 (Logic, Part II. p. 258) says : "Choosing assimilation as 
 a characteristic fact of bodily life, and reasoning as an 
 example of mental life, and contrasting both with the 
 characters of dead matter, Mr Herbert Spencer arrives 
 at the following highly complex definition : i. Life con- 
 tains a process or processes of change, 2. The change 
 is not a simple or individual act, but a series or succession 
 of changes. 3. Life involves a plurality of simultaneoiis 
 as well as successive changes. 4. The changes are 
 heterogeneous y or various in character. 5. The various 
 changes all combine to a definite result. 6. Finally, the 
 changes are in correspondence with external coexistences 
 and sequences. In sum : Life is a set of changes, simul- 
 taneous and successive, combined to a definite result, 
 and in correspondence with external circumstances. 
 Or, in a briefer form, Life is the continuous adjustment 
 of internal relations to external relations. So carefully 
 has the comparison been conducted, that no exception 
 could be taken to any part of this definition. Every one 
 of the particulars occurs in all living bodies, and in no 
 kind of dead matter." This estimate I cannot but 
 regard as much too favourable. There is not a single 
 particular in Mr Spencer's definition which is not as 
 characteristic of the action of a watch as of the life of 
 a plant or animal. His so-called definition is a sort of 
 expression of what is common to the manifestations of 
 machinery, life, and mind ; but it gives us no informa- 
 tion either as to what mechanism, life, and thought are, 
 or as to how we are to distinguish them. It professes to 
 be a definition of life, but really leaves life wholly out of 
 account, in order to facilitate the work incumbent on a 
 materialistic philosophy. In fact, Mr Spencer has not 
 
4-90 Anti'Theistic Theories, 
 
 sought a definition in a rational way. It is vain to 
 attempt to define life by generalising its own eff"ects. 
 Biologists of all schools have abandoned this method 
 of procedure as utterly unscientific, and now seek to 
 accomplish their aim by the experimental study of life 
 in its simplest forms. The true method to be followed 
 has perhaps never been so clearly traced as by the 
 illustrious French physiologist recently deceased, M. 
 Claude Bernard, in his 'Legons sur phenombnes de 
 la vie communs aux animaux et auxvegetaux' (1878). 
 M. Bernard has been often claimed as a materialist and 
 as a positivist; but, in reality, his profound physiological 
 science led him to results fatal both to materialism and 
 to positivism ; and a careful study of the work mentioned 
 will render impossible the acceptance of all definitions 
 of the kind to which that of Mr Spencer belongs — defi- 
 nitions based on a merely outside or superficial view of 
 the manifestations of life. 
 
 Science is not only entitled but bound to trace the 
 stream of life back as far as it can. The hypothesis of 
 Mr Darwin, that all terrestrial organisms may have ori- 
 ginated in a single primordial germ, which was produced 
 when the earth was fitted to receive it, is a perfectly 
 legitimate scientific hypothesis, although, of course, it 
 should not be believed until it is proved. Equally 
 legitimate in a scientific point of view is the hypothesis 
 that life did not originate on this earth, but has come to 
 it from remote and older worlds. This h)rpothesis has 
 been presented in two forms. 
 
 I. According to M. Edgar Quinet (La Creation, T. 
 ii. L. xi. ch. ii.), Professor Preyer (Deutsche Rundschau, 
 Heft 7), and Dr O. Zacharias (Athenaeum, Bd. i. pp. 
 413-429), life is not fixed and limited to certain points 
 
Appendix: Note XVIL 491 
 
 of space or periods of time ; is of a cosmical, not of a 
 terrestrial nature ; has been coeval with the universe \ 
 has passed from nebula to nebula; and has been de- 
 rived by the earth from the mass whence it was itself 
 detached. Professor Preyer, indeed, imagines that living 
 and organic existences preceded and deposited all dead 
 and inorganic matter. Even when not urged in this 
 burlesque shape, the view that life has come to the earth 
 from the mass whence it was severed seems untenable. 
 Contemporary science is very far astray if our planet 
 has not passed through a condition in which its tem- 
 perature must have been fatal to all life. 
 
 2. According to Sir William Thomson (Address to the 
 British Association in 187 1), and Helmholtz (Preface to 
 the second part of the first volume of the German 
 translation of Thomson and Tait's * Natural Philosophy'), 
 life may have been carried to our earth in the clefts or 
 crevices of meteoric stones — the fragments of shattered 
 worlds, once rich in vital forms. The attempt of 
 Zollner, in his work 'On Comets,' to show that this 
 conception is essentially unscientific, is extremely weak. 
 Of course the hypothesis does not explain the origin 
 of life, but only suggests that its origin may have to 
 be sought much further away than where scientists are 
 looking for it. This, however, is all that it proposes to 
 do. It does not profess, at least as stated by Sir William 
 Thomson, to be a theory of the origin of life, but only a 
 possible way of accounting for the origin of terrestrial 
 life. The obj ection that the heat of the meteoric stones 
 must have been incompatible with their conveyance of 
 life does not seem to have been substantiated. Ap- 
 parently the heat in a deep crevice of a large meteorite 
 HTOuld not be so intense as to destroy a living germ. 
 
492 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 But although the hypothesis is quite scientific in its 
 nature, and has not been shown to involve any physical 
 impossibility, no positive evidence has been produced 
 on behalf of it. 
 
 Many anti-theists in the present day feel constrained 
 by their inability to account, on purely physical prin- 
 ciples, for the life associated with matter, to maintain its 
 eternity. Thus some of those who trace it in the way 
 which has just been mentioned from our world to others, 
 forthwith conclude that it is coeval with matter, and that 
 both matter and life must be regarded as unoriginated. 
 They overlook that the life under consideration is life 
 which implies material conditions, and these of a kind 
 not necessarily involved in the very constitution of 
 matter; that it could only appear when the universe 
 was in a certain state of development ; that it could 
 not have existed, for example, in a nebula. To trace 
 life from world to world can never show it to be eternal, 
 if it can appear in no world which has not passed through 
 certain stages before reaching the condition in which 
 alone life can be realised. Besides, the assumption that 
 matter is eternal is unscientific and arbitrary. 
 
 The old hypothesis of a world-soul has also recently 
 been revived in various forms, and presented as an ex- 
 planation of the origination of life in individual organisms. 
 In this way materialism loses itself in pantheism, while 
 in no form is the hypothesis of a world-soul demanded 
 or supported by critically ascertained and scientifically 
 interpreted facts. 
 
 Then there are speculators who would efface the 
 distinction between the living and the dead, the organic 
 and the inorganic, by ascribing to every atom of matter 
 a small portion or faint degree of life. Those who pro- 
 
Appendix: Note XV 11. 493 
 
 ceed thus take the suggestions of fancy for the findings 
 of reason; they abandon true science for a worthless 
 metaphysics — natural philosophy for Naturphilosophie, 
 They manifestly leave the problem which they profess 
 to solve as mysterious as ever. What is commonly 
 called dead matter is certainly not alive in the same 
 sense as what is commonly called living matter; and 
 to call it alive in some other sense does not help us in 
 the least to understand how it can originate life in 
 the ordinary sense of the term. No real problem can 
 be solved by merely verbal artifices. 
 
 The only scientific proof of the materialistic concep- 
 tion of life would be the establishment of the hypo- 
 thesis of spontaneous generation, or, as it is now 
 often termed, "abiogenesis." M. Pouchet in France, 
 and Dr Bastian in England, have laboured to supply 
 the requisite proof. They have utterly failed, even in 
 the judgment of those who persist in believing with- 
 out proof in spontaneous generation. In M. Pasteur's 
 *Mdmoire sur les Corpuscules organisdes suspendus 
 dans I'Atmosphere ; ' in Prof. Tyndall's essays on " Dust 
 and Disease," and "Putrefaction and Infection;" in 
 Prof. Lister's "Contribution to the Germ Theory of 
 Putrefaction and other Fermentative Changes " in vol. 
 xxvii. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin- 
 burgh, &c., — ample evidence will be found for rejecting 
 the notion of spontaneous generation. 
 
 Several eminent scientific men, who are constrained 
 to admit that there is no experimental evidence that 
 life can arise save from antecedent life, notwithstanding, 
 believe that spontaneous generation actually occurred 
 in an inaccessible and exceptional past. Thus Prof. 
 Huxley, in his Address to the British Association, says : 
 
494 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 " If it were given me to look beyond the abyss of 
 geologically recorded time to the still more remote 
 period when the earth was passmg through physical and 
 chemical conditions, which it can no more see again 
 than a man can recall his infancy, I should expect to 
 be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from 
 non-living matter;" and Prof. Tyndall, also in an 
 Address to the British Association, declares : " By an 
 intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experi- 
 mental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we 
 in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstand- 
 ing our professed reverence for its Creator, have hither- 
 to covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency 
 of all terrestrial life." The attitude of mind revealed by 
 these words is not a reasonable one. We cannot be 
 justified in believing a scientific hypothesis in favour of 
 which we fail to find a single relevant fact, while every 
 experiment undertaken to prove it ends in confirming 
 the rule of which it would be the violation. Our belief 
 in the continuity of nature must be conformed to our 
 knowledge of the continuity of experience. The right 
 of belief claimed by Professors Huxley and Tyndall is, 
 in this instance, a right to believe without evidence and 
 against evidence. It need scarcely be pointed out that 
 if matter could produce life, the improbability of its hav- 
 ing produced it only in a passing crisis of its history 
 must be regarded as enormous. What physical and 
 chemical forces did once, they would surely do often, if 
 not continually. Matter now has not lost any known 
 property or power which it possessed when in a cooling 
 state, nor has it been shown that its molecular constitu- 
 tion is greatly changed, while it is certainly better fitted 
 for the support of life. What reason is there for imag- 
 
Appendix : Note X VII. 495 
 
 ining that it was ever more fitted than at present for 
 originating life? 
 
 The attempt to explain life by Protoplasm is generally 
 acknowledged to have failed. The reader will find 
 materials for forming a judgment on the controversy in 
 Prof. Huxley's ' Physical Basis of Life,' in Dr Lionel 
 Beale's ' Protoplasm,' and Dr Hutchison Stirling's * Con- 
 cerning Protoplasm.' The Rev. Joseph Cook, in several 
 of his second series of Boston Monday Lectures, presents 
 Dr Lionel Beale's results in a very popular and effective 
 manner. I regret to perceive, however, that he and 
 others should accept so readily Dr Lionel's view that 
 the body is divisible into dead and living matter, the 
 latter being a comparatively small portion, which be- 
 comes red under the application of carmine. I confess 
 I fail to see that his division will hold, and believe that 
 every kind of matter — Beale's so-called living matter 
 included — will ultimately be analysed into inorganic 
 elements. 
 
 The world-renowned Bathybius of Huxley, Haeckel, 
 and Strauss, has turned out to be "a sea-mare's nest." 
 The explorations of the Challenger have shown that the 
 supposed "vast sheet of living matter enveloping the 
 whole earth beneath its seas " is little more than a 
 deposit of gypsum. Huxley, with characteristic candour, 
 hastened, as soon as the results of these explorations 
 were communicated to him, to acknowledge his mistake. 
 Even Haeckel no longer argues that the existence of 
 Bathybius is proved, but ventures only to maintain that 
 its non-existence is not proved. 
 
 Were this note not already too long, I should have 
 submitted Haeckel's views concerning the origin of life 
 to a special examination. It may be necessary to state 
 
49^ Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 in order to prevent misconceptions as to my own posi- 
 tion, that I do not regard the explanation of life by 
 mechanical and chemical causes as absurd or impossible, 
 or as involving any difficulties nearly so great as those 
 which consciousness or mind presents to materialism. 
 
 To the references already given in this note add, Sir 
 W. Turner's * Cell Theory, Past and Present — Inaugural 
 Address,' 1890, and Prof. Calderwood's 'Evolution and 
 Man's Place in Nature,' 1893. 
 
 Note XVIII. , page 173. 
 Materialism and Mind. 
 
 My chief reason for passing so briefly over the materi- 
 alistic attempts to account for mental phenomena is the 
 manifest inadequacy of these attempts. When material- 
 ism comes to deal with mind it simply breaks down. It 
 has not as yet been able to bring forward any fact which 
 proves more than that the mind is intimately connected 
 with, and largely dependent on, the body — a conclusion 
 which affords no support to materialism. 
 
 It may be of use to note some of the more prominent 
 respects in which materialism fails when it undertakes to 
 account for mind. 
 
 I. It leaves unexplained the fact that physical and 
 mental phenomena are distinguished by differences far 
 greater than any of those which distinguish other phe- 
 nomena. Materialists represent the contrasts between 
 matter and mind as similar to the distinctions between 
 dififerent states of matter. This only shows that they do 
 not realise what the facts of the case are. The unlike- 
 ness between any physical and any mental phenomenon 
 is incomparably greater than the unlikeness between any 
 two physical phenomena. It is an entirely peculiar un- 
 
Appendix: Note XVI 11. 497 
 
 likeness. What is called matter may pass through many 
 stages, may assume many phases, and may perform many 
 functions ; but in all its transformations, even the most 
 surprising, it never ceases to be an object of sense, a 
 something external, extended, bounded, divisible, mov- 
 able, &c. ; while no phenomenon of mind — no thought, 
 volition, or feeling — ever has any of these properties, but 
 has a number of other properties never found in matter. 
 The perception of this truth early led men to believe that 
 the phenomena called mental could not be resolved into, 
 or accounted for by, those called material ; and the most 
 recent materialism has not succeeded in showing that 
 any other belief can be reasonably entertained. 
 
 Prof. Bain, in his volume on * Mind and Body,' while 
 explicitly admitting that mental and bodily states are 
 ** utterly contrasted " and " cannot be compared," main- 
 tains that the physical and the mental are "the two 
 sides of a double-faced unity." But he has not shown 
 that utterly contrasted qualities can coinhere in a single 
 substance, nor that what is unextended can either be 
 a side of anything or have a side of its own. Further, 
 as Prof. Tyndall remarks in his Birmingham lecture, 
 — "It is no explanation to say that the objective and 
 subjective effects are two sides of one and the same 
 phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two 
 sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There 
 are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit 
 this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it 
 forms into frost- ferns upon a window-pane? If not, 
 why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked 
 to this mysterious companion — consciousness ? " 
 
 II. Materialism fails to show that molecular changes 
 in the nerves or brain ever pass into mental states. This 
 
 2 I 
 
498 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 is the argument employed by Tyndall in the quotation 
 given in the lecture. Striking statements to the same 
 effect will be found in Du Bois-Reymond's * Ueber die 
 Grenzen des Naturerkennens,' pp. 20, 21, and in Dr 
 Ferrier's 'Functions of the Brain,' pp. 255, 256. Says the 
 former : " I will now proVe conclusively, as I believe, that 
 not only is consciousness unexplained by material con- 
 ditions in the present state of our science (which all will 
 admit), but that, in the very nature of things, it never 
 can be explained by these conditions. The most ex- 
 alted mental activity is no more incomprehensible in its 
 material conditions than is the first grade of conscious- 
 ness — namely, sensation. With the first awakening of 
 pleasure and pain experienced upon earth by some 
 creature of the simplest structure appeared an impass- 
 able gulf, and the world became doubly incomprehen- 
 sible." Says the latter : "We may succeed in determining 
 the exact nature of the molecular changes which occur 
 in the brain when a sensation is experienced, but this 
 will not bring us one whit nearer the explanation of the 
 nature of that which constitutes the sensation. The one 
 is objective and the other subjective, and neither can be 
 expressed in terms of the other." 
 
 III. Materialism fails to explain the unity of conscious- 
 ness. This is an old because an obvious argument, but 
 the ablest thinkers in Europe still regard it as valid and 
 invincible. It has been presented with masterly skill by 
 Lotze both in his ' Medical Psychology' and in his ' Mikro- 
 kosmos.* A careful statement of it, with reference to 
 modern theories, will also be found in an article by Prof. 
 Bowen in the 'Princeton Review' for March 1878 — 
 " Dualism, Materialism, or Idealism ? " 
 
 IV. The consciousness of personal identity is also a 
 
Appendix : Note XVII L 499 
 
 fact with which materialism has not yet succeeded in 
 showing that it can be reconciled. There is no doubt 
 as to the fact. Thought, memory, and the sense of re- 
 sponsibility, amply attest it. Have materialists shown 
 how it can be harmonised with the hypothesis that man 
 is merely body, and the certainty that all the elements 
 and atoms of the body are in perpetual change and cir- 
 culation ? The answer must be in the negative. This 
 seems to me to be very convincingly proved in M. 
 Janet's * Materialism of the Present Day,' ch. vii. 
 
 V. Another mental fact with which materialism has not 
 yet shown itself to be reconcilable is self-consciousness. 
 In self-consciousness the mind distinguishes itself from all 
 material objects, including all the organs of its own body. 
 It appears to itself to know and feel itself to be distinct 
 from the external world, distinct from its body, distinct 
 from its brain. It may, of course, be mistaken : this 
 apparent opposition of body and soul which is essen- 
 tially inherent in self-consciousness may be an illusion 
 altogether, or there may be some way of transcending it 
 which will allow us to assign to it a certain value, and 
 yet to identify soul and body ; but materialism has cer- 
 tainly hitherto failed to show it to be mistaken, and has 
 never even dealt seriously with the problem which the 
 fact referred to presents. The problem is not one likely 
 to be solved by merely calling body "object-conscious- 
 ness," and the soul a " side," or by any similar verbal 
 perversities. 
 
 VI. Materialism does not account for the internal 
 spontaneity or the self- activity which is characteristic 
 of mind. It has not yet proved either that we are 
 moved wholly from without, or that we are mere auto- 
 mata. It claims to have done so, but the claim has for- 
 
500 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 tunately not been made good. On this point see Meyer's 
 ' Philosophische Zeitfragen,' k. viii. ; the paper of Prof. 
 Huxley in the * Fortnightly Review 'for Nov. 1874, on 
 the question — "Are animals automata?" the articles 
 of Dr Carpenter, Prof. Mivart, and the Duke of Argyll 
 in the 'Contemporary Review' during 1875, suggested 
 by it ; and Dr Elam's ' Automatism and Evolution.' 
 
 VII. Materialism is irreconcilable with the moral feel- 
 ings of human nature. 
 
 Note XIX., page 174. 
 
 Materialism and Morality. 
 
 M. Tissot has endeavoured to show, in his ' Principes 
 du droit public' (liv. ii. ch. i.), that materialism does not 
 necessarily preclude belief in God, free-will, moral law, 
 and a future life. His argument is skilfully presented, 
 but it is not conclusive ; indeed, it will be found when 
 strictly examined to amount merely to the plea that 
 since materialism is essentially inconsistent, we have no 
 right to demand that it shall be consistent, or to censure 
 its special inconsistencies. He contends that because 
 materialism ascribes force to matter, it may with equal 
 reason ascribe to it life ; that if it may hold matter to be 
 capable of life, it may likewise hold it to be capable of 
 thought ; that when it acknowledges matter may think, 
 nothing forbids it also to admit, on the testimony of 
 consciousness, that matter may be, in certain circum- 
 stances, possessed of free-will ; and that to whatever it 
 assigns free-^vill it may assign true morality. Now what 
 
Appendix: Note XIX, 501 
 
 such argumentation really proves is, not that material- 
 ism is innocuous, but that it is absurd — not that it is 
 compatible with morality, but that it is incompatible 
 with reason. It shows that materialism starts from the 
 first with the assumption that matter is not matter, but 
 something more than matter, and that at every onward 
 step it has renewed recourse to this assumption; in 
 other words, it shows that materialism is consistently 
 unreasonable. 
 
 The views of morality actually taught by many con- 
 temporary materialists are extremely debasing. It 
 would be easy and perhaps useful to prove this by 
 quotations, but it would also be painful, and I refrain. 
 Mivart (' Lessons from Nature,* ch. xiii.), J. B. Meyer 
 (*Phil. Zeitfragen,' kap. ix.), and various other writers, 
 have touched on the subject. It is lamentable to ob- 
 serve how widely heathenish and even brutish senti- 
 ments as to individual and social morality are springing 
 forth, especially in Germany, from the materialism which 
 is at present prevalent. 
 
 The argument from conscience against materialism 
 is thus stated by an able American author. Prof. G. P. 
 Fisher : " No man of sane mind can deny that the 
 phenomena of the moral nature are as real as any which 
 the senses or instruments of a physicist can observe. 
 They are facts which science, in the large sense of the 
 term, must take notice of or abdicate its functions. To 
 ignore the vast and various phenomena which connect 
 themselves with the sense of moral responsibleness is 
 impossible. What account shall be given of moral 
 praise and blame — of self-approval and censure ? Here 
 these feelings are, and here they always have been. Do 
 they testify to the truth ? If they do not, then away with 
 
502 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the language which only serves to deceive ; away with 
 all the multiform expressions of moral approbation or 
 condemnation ; away with courts of law and the other 
 infinitely various manifestations of the sense of justice 
 and moral accountableness on which the entire fabric 
 of social life reposes ! The evolutionist must allow 
 that these verdicts of the moral faculty, be their genesis 
 what it may, are as valid as are any judgments of the 
 intellect. The moral discernment rests on as solid a 
 foundation as the intellectual perceptions. Now apply 
 the doctrine that the determinations of the will — the 
 faithfulness of St John and the treachery of Judas 
 alike — are the necessary effect of atomic movements 
 of matter. They simply indicate a certain molecular 
 action of the matter in a comer of the brain. Their 
 moral approval or condemnation, the joy of one who 
 has triumphed over a temptation, the remorse of one 
 who has betrayed the innocent, are the veriest folly. 
 A man who maliciously shoots his neighbour has no 
 more occasion to blame himself for the deed than has 
 a horse who destroys a man's Hfe by a kick. Men call 
 such an animal, in figurative speech, a vicious animal; 
 and if materialism is true, there is no other kind of vice 
 possible to a. human being. Tyndall, in one of his late 
 productions, argues that this doctrine of molecular ethics 
 is perfectly consistent with the application of motives for 
 the purpose of inducing men to act in one way rather 
 than another. These motives, it is implied, are forces 
 thrown into the scale that the beam may rise on the 
 opposite side. This is the statement which fatalists of 
 every time are for ever making. But the point insisted 
 upon is not the freedom of the will as found by direct 
 •consciousness, although this evidence of man's moral 
 
Appendix : Note XIX, 503 
 
 freedom is incontrovertible ; but the phenomena of 
 moral approval and disapproval, of guilt, self-accusation, 
 and remorse, are the facts demanding some explanation 
 which shall not destroy their reality in the very act 
 of attempting to explain them. Here it is that the 
 materialistic psychology breaks down. Nor can it be 
 said that this is opposing a doctrine by merely pointing 
 out its mischievous consequences. The affirmations of 
 conscience referred to as putting to rout the advocates 
 of materialism are as truly perceptions and judgments 
 as are any of the propositions that result from the 
 exercise of the senses or the understanding. If mate- 
 rialistic evolution, as predicated of moral action, be 
 true, the rational nature is at war with itself. There is 
 an insoluble contradiction in human intelligence itself, 
 which no sophistical juggle of words can avail to cover 
 up, much less to remove." — * Princeton Review,' January 
 1878, pp. 210, 211. 
 
 Principal Tulloch, in the first of his * Croall Lectures/ 
 makes some interesting remarks to the same effect. 
 What he says of *'sin," for example, in the following 
 passage may be applied to all the phenomena of our 
 moral consciousness. " It " — the doctrine of materialistic 
 evolution — "leaves no room for the idea of sin. For 
 that which is solely a growth of nature cannot contain 
 anything that is at variance with its own higher laws. 
 If the individual and social man alike are merely the 
 outcome of natural forces working endlessly forward 
 toward higher and more complex forms, then, whatever 
 man is, he is not and cannot be a sinner. The mixed 
 product of internal and external forces — of what is called 
 organism and environment — he may, at certain stages 
 of his progress, be very defective. But he has not fallen 
 
504 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 below any ideal he might have reached. He is only at 
 any point what the sum of natural factors which enter 
 into his being have made him. The two conceptions of 
 sin and of development, in this naturalistic sense, can- 
 not coexist. I cannot be the outcome of natural law 
 and yet accountable for the fact that I am no better 
 than I am." 
 
 Carneri, Jaeger, and others have attempted to apply 
 Darwinism to morals. Miss Cobbe, Ebrard, R. Schmid, 
 Triimpelmann, Wigand, and others, have criticised it in 
 this relation. 
 
 Note XX., page 183. 
 
 Positivism and its Schools. 
 
 The chief works regarding positivism published before 
 1874 were mentioned on p. 259 of my 'Philosophy of 
 History in France and Germany.' The following publi- 
 cations may be specified as having appeared since that 
 date : Many excellent papers by M. Pillon, and some by 
 M. Renouvier, in the 'Critique Philosophique ' for the 
 years 1875 ^.nd 1878; 'La Philosophie Positive,' a 
 review, edited by MM. Littre and Wyroubofif j ' La Revue 
 Occidentale,' edited by M. Pierre Lafitte ; the articles of 
 Mr Harrison on " The Religious and Conservative 
 Aspects of Positivism," in the 'Contemporary Review,' 
 vols. XXVI. and xxvii. ; E. Littre, ' Fragments de Philoso- 
 phie Positive' (1876); M. Ferraz, 'Etude sur la Philoso- 
 phie en France,' ch. vi. (1877); ^- Caro on ' M. Littrd 
 et la Positivisme' (1883); E. Caird, 'The Social Phil- 
 osophy and Religion of Comte'; H. Gruber, 'August 
 Comte, der Begriinder des Positivismus,' and 'Der 
 Positivismus vom Tode August Comte's bis auf unsere 
 
Appendix : Note XX. 505 
 
 Tage' (1857-1891); and R. Flint's 'Historical Philo- 
 sophy in France,' ch. x. 
 
 Positivists who acknowledge any allegiance to Comte 
 may be thus grouped in relation to him. First, those 
 who accept his system as a whole — the philosophy, the 
 polity, and the religion. Their head, the present Comt- 
 ist pontiff, is M. Lafitte; and among their representa- 
 tives in France are M. Audiffrent, Dr Robinet, and M. 
 S^merie ; and in England Dr Bridges, Mr Congreve, and 
 Mr Harrison. Their literary organ is the ' Revue Occi- 
 dentale.' Second, those who accept the entire general 
 philosophy of Comte, but reject his polity and religion. 
 Their acknowledged chief was M. Littre; M. Naquet, 
 Dr Robin, and M. Wyrouboff are now among their best 
 known representatives. Their organ, *La Philosophic 
 Positive,' was founded in 1867. Third, those who do 
 not accept even the philosophy of Comte as a whole, 
 but who profess to receive the spirit, method, and prin- 
 ciples of his teaching as to the doctrine of science. They 
 are often called English positivists, although, of course, 
 writers like M. Taine must be included among them. 
 They are simply phenomenalists and experimentalists. 
 They have no common system of doctrine, and their 
 Comtism is so variable as to be indefinable. 
 
 Positivism is a hopelessly ambiguous term, and has 
 been claimed by and applied to diverse and dissimilar 
 theories. Some consider themselves positivists because 
 they are positive that matter is the only reality ; others 
 because they are positive that sensation is the source and 
 measure of all knowledge ; others because they are posi- 
 tive that there is no God, no soul, and no future life ; 
 others because they are positive that there is nothing 
 positively certain; and others for other reasons. 
 
5o6 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note XXL, page 193. 
 PosiTiviST Law of Three States. 
 
 Mr J. Morley and Dr Paulsen have expressed their 
 dissent from my views as to Comte's so-called " law of 
 three states," but neither of them has really dealt with 
 the facts which I adduced as irreconcilable with it. My 
 account of its history has been abundantly confirmed by 
 M. Pillon in Nos. 6, 8, lo, 11, 23, 24, and 25, of the 
 * Critique Philosophique ' for 1875. These articles gave 
 much offence to M. AudifFrent, Robinet, Semerie, and 
 the orthodox positivists generally, but they are quite 
 accurate and conclusive. 
 
 Dr Paulsen's reason (see his able review of my * Philo- 
 sophy of History ' in the * Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsycho- 
 logie,' Bd. 8, Hft. 4) for maintaining the consistency of 
 Comte's alleged law with theism, is that theism is a form 
 of belief, but not a kind of knowledge. There is here 
 involved a twofold oversight : for, first, Comte's law is 
 not a law of states of knowledge but of states of be- 
 lief; and, second, the assertion that theism is belief but 
 not knowledge is unproved, and stands in great need of 
 proof. 
 
 The inadequacy and self-contradictions of the so-called 
 law of three states will be found clearly pointed out in 
 Shield's 'Philosophia Ultima,' vol. i., pt. ii., ch. ii., 
 pp. 287-314; and in Caird's 'Social Philosophy of 
 Comte.' 
 
Appendix: Note XXIL 507 
 
 Note XXIL, page 209. 
 The Positivist Religion. 
 
 There is an excellent account of the Comtist religion, 
 and much interesting information as to its history, in the 
 essay " Positivism " in Principal Tulloch's ' Modern 
 Theories in Philosophy and Religion.' 
 
 As to the French orthodox positivists, M. Ribot re- 
 marks, — "Many of them are animated with a truly 
 religious faith, and I have heard them speak with an 
 enthusiasm worthy of the brightest epoch of the middle 
 age." They can hardly surpass in zeal and unction 
 some of their English brethren. The ' Sermons ' of Mr 
 Congreve, and the articles of Mr Harrison on the reli- 
 gious aspects of positivism, show pulpit qualifications of 
 a very high order, and especially a fervour which reminds 
 one sometimes of Jeremy Taylor, and sometimes of 
 Samuel Rutherford. 
 
 Dr M'Cosh's ' Positivism and Christianity ' is less 
 rhetorical but more reasonable. Mr C. Staniland Wake, 
 in * The Evolution of Morality,' vol. ii. ch. viii., takes, 
 perhaps, somewhat too favourable a view of the " Reli- 
 gion of Humanity." He recognises, however, the defects 
 in Comte's conception of the Grand -Etre, and justly 
 insists that the merits which it possesses are ethical 
 rather tlian religious. 
 
508 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note XXIII., page 232. 
 
 History of Secularism. 
 
 Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, Thomas Paine, Robert 
 Taylor, Richard Carlile, and Robert Owen, may be de- 
 scribed as those who directly prepared the way for the 
 secularist movement. Bentham and Mill did so by the 
 manner in which they inculcated utilitarianism and polit- 
 ical reform, not by the explicit avowal of their atheistical 
 opinions. As to their attitude towards religion, see Pro- 
 fessor Bain's remarks in ' Mind,' vol. ii. p. 527, and J. S. 
 Mill's Autobiography, pp. 38-44, 69, 70. The attacks of 
 Paine, Taylor, and Carlile on Christianity were animated 
 by a spirit which could not stop short of bitter antagonism 
 to all religion. There is a memoir of Paine by Cheetham 
 (1809), and another by Rickman (18 15); an account of 
 Taylor in Iconoclast, and Watts' * Half-Hours with the 
 Freethinkers;' and a notice of Carlile, by Holyoake 
 (1853). Paine and Taylor professed to be deists; the 
 latest creed of Carlile was a kind of naturalism presented 
 in a strange semi-scriptural phraseology. Paine's views 
 must be sought for in his Theological Works ; Taylor's 
 in the * Devil's Pulpit ' and ' Diegesis ; ' and Carlile's in the 
 volumes of the * Republican,' * Lion,' * Christian Warrior,' 
 &c The influence of the benevolent utopianist, Robert 
 Owen, was decidedly secularist and anti-religious. He 
 identified God with nature, or at least with " the mys- 
 terious power in nature which permeates every particle 
 of the elements which compose the universe." A Hst of 
 his principal works will be found in Mr Holyoake's 
 notice of his * Life and Last Days' (1859). 
 
Appendix: Note XXIII. 509 
 
 Perhaps the earliest periodical organ of popular atheism 
 in this country was the * Oracle of Reason,' the first 
 number of which appeared in November 6, 1841, and 
 the last on December 2, 1843. I^ the course of its brief 
 existence it had four editors — Charles Southwell, George 
 Jacob Holyoake, Thomas Paterson, and William Chilton, 
 the first three being in rapid succession imprisoned for 
 blasphemy. Mr Southwell, when his term of imprison- 
 ment was expired, started, in 1842, the 'Investigator;' 
 and in 1843 'The Movement' succeeded the * Oracle of 
 Reason.' These periodicals advocated opinions of the 
 same kind as those which are at present maintained in 
 more temperate and becoming language by the * National 
 Reformer,' ' Secular Review,' and * Liberal.* Their chief 
 contributors may be said to have been the representa- 
 tives of the first generation of secularists. Mr Holyoake 
 is probably the only one of them of any note still alive. 
 In * Half-Hours with Freethinkers ' there is an account of 
 Mr Charles Southwell ; also of Mrs Emma Martin, who 
 likewise belonged to the earliest secularist group. 
 
 In 185 1 Mr Holyoake first made use of the term 
 "Secularist," as more appropriate and distinctive than 
 "Atheist;" and in 1852 he commenced organising the 
 English freethinkers according to the principles of secu- 
 larism. For a short time he had an ally in Mr Thomas 
 Cooper, but in 1856 this honest and courageous man 
 became convinced of the truth of Christianity. Mr 
 Holyoake edited for many years a periodical called the 
 ' Reasoner.' His most interesting work is, ' The Trial of 
 Theism' (1858). I willingly acknowledge that it con- 
 tains much which is suggestive, and much even which is 
 true and important, although I naturally deem its criti- 
 cism of theism very inconclusive. Of Mr Holyoake's 
 
5IO Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 discussions the best known, perhaps, are the Coopei 
 Street and the Glasgow discussions with the Rev. 
 Brewin Grant, the discussion with the Rev. Mr 
 Townley, and the discussion with Mr Bradlaugh. The 
 biographical and critical essay of Sophia Dobson Collet, 
 entitled "George Jacob Holyoake and Modem Atheism " 
 (1855), is well worthy of perusal. Mr Austin Holyoake 
 has aided his brother in attacking Christianity and 
 theism, and is the author of *' Thoughts on Atheism," 
 " Does there Exist a Moral Governor of the Universe ? " 
 and several other pamphlets. 
 
 Among the most active and prominent secularists of 
 a later date, the following may be mentioned : i. Charles 
 Bradlaugh, President of the National Secular Society, 
 editor of the ' National Reformer,' author of ' The Free- 
 thinkers' Text-book,' pt. i. ; * A Plea for Atheism ; ' and 
 many political and anti-religious pamphlets. Mr Brad- 
 laugh displayed great controversial activity. Of his 
 numerous discussions, I may mention these : {a) The 
 Credibility and Morality of the Four Gospels. The 
 authorised and verbatim Report of the Five Nights' Dis- 
 cussion, at Halifax, between the Rev. T. D. Matthias, 
 Baptist Minister, and Iconoclast : London, i860, {b) 
 A Discussion on the question. Has Man a Soul ? between 
 the Rev. T. Lawson of Bacup, and Iconoclast of Lon- 
 don: Manchester, 1 86 1. (^) Christianity and Secularism; 
 Report of a Public Discussion between Mr W. Hutchings 
 and Mr C. Bradlaugh, held in the Public Hall, Wigan, 
 on February 4 and 5, 1861, on the question. Whether 
 is Christianity or Secularism best calculated to promote 
 human happiness? Wigan, 1861. {d) A Full Report of 
 the Discussion between Mr Mackie (editor of the ' War- 
 rington Guardian ') and Iconoclast (Mr Bradlaugh) in 
 
Appendix : Note XXIII. 511 
 
 the Music Hall, Warrington, April 10 and 11, 1861, on 
 the question, What does the Bible teach about God ? Lon- 
 don : Ward & Co. {e) The Existence of God : A Dis- 
 cussion between Rev. Woodville Woodman, Minister of 
 the New Jerusalem Church, Kersley, Lancashire, and 
 Iconoclast, editor of the ' National Reformer,' held at 
 Wigan, on February 18 to 21, 1861. London: J. S. Hod- 
 son. (/) Is the Bible a Divine Revelation ? A Discussion 
 between Rev. W. Woodman and Iconoclast, held at 
 Ashton-under-Lyne,onOctober 2ist, 2 2d, 28th, and 29th: 
 London, 1861. {£) Modern Atheism and the Bible: 
 Report of the Discussion between the Rev. W. Barker, 
 Minister of Church Street Chapel, Blackfriars, and 
 Iconoclast, editor of the ' National Reformer,* held at 
 Cowper Street Schoolroom, September 1862 : London. 
 {h) Two Nights' Public Discussion between Thomas 
 Cooper and Charles Bradlaugh, on the Being of a God 
 as the Maker and Moral Governor of the Universe, at 
 the Hall of Science, London, February i and 2, 1864. 
 {i) What does Christian Theism Teach ? verbatim Re- 
 port of the Two Nights' Discussion between the Rev. 
 A. J. Harrison and C. Bradlaugh : London, 1872. (/) 
 South Place Debate between Rev. B. Grant and C. 
 Bradlaugh : London, 1875. For a Church of England 
 clergyman's view of Mr Bradlaugh and the Secular 
 Movement, see ' Heterodox London,' by Dr Maurice 
 Davies. 
 
 2. Charles Watts, editor of the * Secular Review,' 
 author of " Christian Evidences Criticised," " Why am I 
 an Atheist ?" " Secularism in its Various Relations," and 
 other pamphlets. Of the discussions in which he has 
 taken part, those of which I have seen reports are; 
 {(i) Debate on the Christian Evidences between Mr C. 
 
512 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 Watts and B. H. Cooper, Esq., at Stratford, February i6 
 and 23, 1871 : London, (b) Full Report of the Public 
 Discussion on the question, Is the Belief in an Infinite 
 Personal Being Reasonable and Beneficial? between 
 the Rev. Wm. A damson, Evangelical Union Minister, 
 Edinburgh, and Mr C. Watts, Accredited Agent of the 
 National Secular Society, London, in the New Waver- 
 ley Hall, Edinburgh, on 4th and 5th of March 1872 : 
 Glasgow and London, {c) Four Nights' Public Dis- 
 cussion between the Rev. A. Stewart (of Aberdeen) and 
 Mr C. Watts, on, — Is the Belief in the Being of an 
 Infinite Personal God Reasonable? and Are the Four 
 Gospels Authentic and worthy of Credit? London, 1873. 
 
 3. George William Foote, editor of the ' Liberal,' and 
 author of * Secularism Restated,' &c. He seeks to follow 
 a via media between the paths of Mr Holyoake and Mr 
 Bradlaugh. 
 
 4. Annie Besant, who has written Part 11. of the 
 'Freethinkers' Text -book,' *My Path to Atheism,' 
 
 * History of the Great French Revolution,' ' The Gospel 
 of Atheism,' and various pamphlets. These works dis- 
 play talents which might have done much service in a 
 good cause. Mrs Besant has now become a theosophist. 
 
 The anti-secularist position is well defended by the 
 Rev. Mr Adamson, Mr Hutchings, the Rev. T. Lawson, 
 and the Rev. Mr Woodman, in the discussions above 
 mentioned, and by Dr Sexton in his ' Fallacies of Secular- 
 ism.' To the Rev. Professor Blaikie we owe two excel- 
 lent papers — " Christianity and the Life that now is," and 
 " Christianity and Secularism compared in their influence 
 and effects " — which have appeared as Nos. 4 and 7 of 
 
 * Present Day Tracts.' I am not aware that there is any 
 good history of Secularism. 
 
 I 
 
Appendix : Note XXI V. 513 
 
 Note XXIV,, page 249. 
 The Atheism of Secularism. 
 
 I have not dealt specially with the arguments em- 
 ployed by secularists in favour of atheism, because there 
 is nothing special in these arguments. 
 
 Mr Holyoake's attempt to overthrow the design argu- 
 ment by extending it, is the most original and distinctive 
 portion of his reasoning against theism. It will be found 
 in his ' Paley Refuted,' ' Trial of Theism,' ' Discussion 
 with Townley,' &c. Conceding for his purpose that the 
 design argument proves the personality of a Designer, he 
 contends that all analogy and experience prove that 
 every person is organised — that wherever there is intel- 
 ligence there must be a brain, senses, and nerves — and 
 concludes that the organisation of Deity must teem with 
 marks of design, not less than other organisations, and 
 consequently that Deity can only be thought of as a 
 being who has had a maker. If the view I have given 
 of the design argument be correct, such reasoning as this 
 is obviously irrelevant. The design argument is from 
 order to inteUigence, and to intelligence only. Its infer- 
 ence is in no degree or respect to organisation — to brain, 
 senses, and nerves. 
 
 Miss Collet, in the essay mentioned in the previous 
 note, has some interesting remarks on Mr Holyoake's 
 argument \ and Dr J. Buchanan, in ' Faith in God and 
 Modern Atheism,' vol. ii. pp. 242-261, refutes it in a 
 most elaborate manner. 
 
 This singular argument, which Mr Holyoake many 
 years ago rendered familiar to English working men, has 
 
 2 K 
 
514 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 recently been reproduced by the late Prof. Clifford and 
 the distinguished German physiologist Du Bois-Rey- 
 mond, and addressed by them to scientifically educated 
 persons. I quote the words of Du Bois-Reymond in 
 order to have the pleasure of quoting also a part of the 
 admirable reply given to them by Dr Martin eau. Du 
 Bois-Reymond's words are: ''What can you say then 
 to the student of nature if, before he allows a psychical 
 principle to the universe, he asks to be shown, some- 
 where within it, embedded in neurine and fed with warm 
 arterial blood under proper pressure, a convolution of 
 ganglionic globules and nerve-tubes proportioned in size 
 to the faculties of such a mind." Dr Martineau's words 
 are : " ' What can we say ? ' I say, first of all, that this 
 demand for a Divine brain and nerves and arteries comes 
 strangely from those who reproach the theist with * an- 
 thropomorphism.' In order to believe in God, they 
 must be assured that the plates in ' Quain's Anatomy ' 
 truly represent Him. If it be a disgrace to religion to 
 take the human as measure of the Divine, what place in 
 the scale of honour can we assign to this stipulation? 
 Next, I ask my questioner whether he suspends belief in 
 his friend's mental powers till he has made sure of the 
 contents of their crania? and whether, in the case of 
 ages beyond reach, there are no other adequate vestiges 
 of intellectual and moral life in which he places a ready 
 trust? Immediate knowledge of mind other than his own 
 he can never have : its existence in other cases is gath- 
 ered from the signs of its activity, whether in personal 
 lineaments or in products stamped with thought : and 
 to stop this process of inference with the discovery of 
 human beings is altogether arbitrary, till it is shown that 
 the grounds for extending it are inadequate. Further, I 
 
Appendix: Note XXIV, 515 
 
 would submit that, in dealing with the problem of the 
 Universal Mind, this demand for organic centralisation 
 is strangely inappropriate. It is when mental power has 
 to be localised, bounded, lent out to individual natures, 
 and assigned to a scene of definite relations, that a focus 
 must be found for it, and a molecular structure with de- 
 terminate periphery be built for its lodgment. And were 
 Du Bois-Reymond himself ever to alight on the por- 
 tentous cerebrum which he imagines, I greatly doubt 
 whether he would fulfil his promise and turn theist at 
 the sight : that he had found the Cause of causes would 
 be the last inference it would occur to him to draw : 
 rather would he look round for some monstrous creature, 
 some kosmic megatherium, born to float and pasture on 
 the fields of space. . . . Quite in the sense of Du 
 Bois-Reymond's objection was the saying of Laplace, 
 that in scanning the whole heaven with the telescope 
 he found no God ; which again has its parallel in Law- 
 rence's remark that the scalpel, in opening the brain, 
 came upon no soul. Both are unquestionably true, 
 and it is precisely the truth of the second which viti- 
 ates the intended inference from the first. Had the 
 scalpel alighted on some perceptible ^xh^ we might 
 have required of the telescope to do the same ; and, on 
 its bringing in a dumb report, have concluded that there 
 was only mechanism there. But, in spite of the knife's 
 failure, we positively know that conscious thought and 
 will were present, yet no more visible, yesterday : and 
 so, that the telescope misses all but the bodies of the 
 universe and their light, avails nothing to prove the 
 absence of a Living Mind through all. If you take the 
 wrong instruments, such quaesita may well evade you. 
 The test-tube will not detect an insincerity, or the micro- 
 
5i6 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 scope analyse a grief. The organism of nature, like that 
 of the brain, lies open, in its external features, to the 
 scrutiny of science ; but, on the inner side, the life of 
 both is reserved for other modes of apprehension, of 
 which the base is self- consciousness and the crown is 
 rehgion." — * Modem Materialism,' pp. 66-69. 
 
 The most distinctive and peculiar feature, perhaps, in 
 the atheism of Mr Bradlaugh, is the extent to which it is 
 rested on the notion of substance enunciated by Spinoza 
 in the definition — "Substance is that which exists in 
 itself, and is conceived per se ; in other words, the con- 
 ception of which does not require the conception of 
 anything else antecedent to it." It is strange that Mr 
 Bradlaugh should not have seen that this notion, this 
 definition, implies that we can have a priori and absolute 
 knowledge, and is utterly incompatible with the doc- 
 trine that all our knowledge is relative and based on the 
 senses. If he can conceive substance per se, and not 
 merely through its qualities, effects, and relationships to 
 his o^vn faculties, he is logically bound to abandon sen- 
 sationalism and all its consequences, and betake himself 
 to absolute ideaUsm or to mysticism. Indeed, following 
 in the footsteps of Spinoza, he actually treads for a short 
 distance the high a priori road, without apparently being 
 aware that he is on it, and gets as far as the conclusion 
 that there is only one substance. It is to be regretted 
 that he should not have more carefully inquired whether 
 there is even one. I have never seen it proved that there 
 is even one substance in Spinoza's sense of the term. 
 Defining substance in the way indicated, the creation or 
 origination of substance is, of course, absolutely incon- 
 ceivable to Mr Bradlaugh. If we mean by substance 
 only what is self-existent, the creation of substance is a 
 
Appendix: Note XXIV. 517 
 
 manifestly self-contradictory expression, equivalent to the 
 origination of the unoriginated. 
 
 "Substance" is not the only metaphysical spectre 
 which haunts the mind and disturbs the reasonings of 
 Mr Bradlaugh. " Infinity " is nearly as bad. In fact, for 
 a person possessed of a typically English intellect, Mr 
 Bradlaugh shows, in dealing with theism, a curious pre- 
 dilection for metaphysical conundrums. As a good ex- 
 ample of this, I may adduce the reasoning by which he 
 endeavours, in a criticism of my volume on 'Theism 
 (see 'National Reformer,' Dec. 23, 1877), to show that 
 the universe cannot have been originated by God. 
 " This new universe," he says, " was either better than 
 God, or it was worse than God, or it was identical with 
 God. But it could not have been better than the infin- 
 itely perfect. Nor can the infinitely good be conceived 
 as capable of resulting in that which was a deterioration. 
 Nor can the theory of absolute sameness be maintained, 
 as this would render it impossible to distinguish between 
 the creator and the created." From this argument, it 
 would appear that Mr Bradlaugh's idea of an infinitely 
 perfect Being is that of a Being unable to produce any 
 finite eff"ect. According to his view, infinite perfection 
 is equivalent to utter weakness. This rivals Hegel's 
 * Being and Not-Being are the Same.' Mr Bradlaugh 
 thus proceeds : " This new universe must have been 
 something added to that which existed prior to its origi- 
 nation, or it was nothing added. But the instant you 
 conceive something added to God, you fatally impugn 
 His infinity, or you succeed in affirming infinity and the 
 new universe added to it — which is nonsense." Let Mr 
 Bradlaugh try another application of this reasoning, and 
 he will hardly fail to see that it is a mere metaphysical 
 
5i8 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 cobweb. He himself exists, and, being of a certain size, 
 fills a certain amount of space. Yet before he existed, 
 space was infinite, and whether he existed or not space 
 would be infinite. Does his existence, then, fatally im- 
 pugn the infinity of space ? And unless it be nonsense 
 to aflSrm infinity and Mr Bradlaugh added to it, why 
 should it be nonsense to aflSrm infinity and the universe 
 added to it? Mr Bradlaugh continues: "You afl&rm 
 that the universe owes its existence to the reason and 
 will of God — that is, that the universe did not always 
 exist, but that God reasoned about it and decided that 
 it should exist. Now, as the universe did not always 
 exist, prior to its origination its non-existence must have 
 been reasonable or unreasonable to God. But it cannot 
 be supposed that the infinitely wise and powerful would 
 have endured the unreasonable; therefore, while the 
 universe did not yet exist, its non-existence must have 
 been reasonable. But if it ever were unreasonable that 
 the universe should exist, and if God was then the sole 
 infinite existence, and infinitely wise, it would have al- 
 ways been unreasonable that the universe should origi- 
 nate, and there would never have been any creation." 
 It is hardly necessary to point out that Mr Bradlaugh 
 here confounds reason with reasoning. No intelligent 
 man thinks or speaks of God as reasoning. But stranger 
 even than this oversight is the conception of infinite 
 wisdom implied in Mr Bradlaugh's argument. Infinite 
 wisdom is assumed to be incompatible with the origina- 
 tion of anything finite at a definite time. If so, infinite 
 wisdom must be much inferior to human wisdom in its 
 humblest form. 
 
 There is an impression in some quarters that atheism 
 is advocated in a weak and unskilful manner by the chiefs 
 
Appendix : Note XX V. 519 
 
 of secularism It is an impression in which I do not 
 share. Most of the writers who are striving to diffuse 
 atheism in Hterary circles are not to be compared in 
 intellectual strength with either Mr Holyoake or Mr 
 Bradlaugh. The working men of England may be as- 
 sured that they have heard from the secularists nearly 
 everything in behalf of atheism which is at all plausible. 
 
 Note XXV., page 253. 
 Darwinism and the Universality of Religion. 
 
 Darwinians are obviously not logically bound to deny 
 that religion is a universal characteristic of the human 
 race. They may even quite consistently maintain that 
 traces of it will be found not only among all tribes of 
 men, but among various species of animals. And this 
 is what several of them actually hold. 
 
 Mr Darwin himself merely ventures to suggest that 
 the dog is susceptible of "a distant approach" to re- 
 ligious emotion. He says : " The feeling of religious 
 devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, 
 complete submission to an exalted and mysterious 
 superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, 
 gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other ele- 
 ments. No being could experience so complex an 
 emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral 
 faculties to at least a moderately high level. Never- 
 theless we see some distant approach to this state of 
 mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, as- 
 sociated with complete submission, some fear, and 
 
520 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 perhaps other feelings." Not a few evolutionists go 
 much farther, and, indeed, represent as evidences of 
 religion all the tokens of confidence and gratitude to- 
 wards man displayed by the lower animals. M. Houzeau 
 ( * ;^tudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux,' pp. 
 271-273) thinks that there are many persons and even 
 peoples not so religious as the dog. 
 
 As to this view, it may suffice to say that trust and 
 gratitude are not in themselves religious emotions. 
 They only become so when their objects are, or are 
 supposed to be, supernatural beings. A man's confi- 
 dence in and affection to a fellow-man are not religious 
 emotions. Why, then, should a beast's confidence in 
 or affection towards a man be so designated? A man 
 is not to a dog an invisible being, an agent inaccessible 
 to its senses. It may be replied that the object of 
 man's worship may be a visible being, and that, in fact, 
 numerous peoples adore stones, plants, and animals. 
 If the religion of a man may display itself in the 
 worship of a beast, why should not a beast show itself 
 to be religious in the worship of a man ? The answer 
 is that a man never worships a beast merely as a beast ; 
 while we have no reason to suppose that a beast in 
 trusting or loving a man regards him as anything else 
 than a man. When a man worships a beast, he worships 
 it not as what it really is, but as the type or symbol, the 
 mask or embodiment, of a Divine Being. It is some 
 unseen agent — some mysterious power — manifested in, 
 or at least somehow associated with, the beast, that he 
 really adores. Low, therefore, as his worship is, there 
 is a spiritual sense — a consciousness of the Invisible and 
 Divine — at the root of it. Can it be shown that there 
 is anything of the kind in a dog when it fawns upon a 
 
Appendix-. Note XXV I. 521 
 
 man, or in a horse when, by neighing, it solicits human 
 assistance ? Unless this is shown, the act of a human 
 being adoring even a beast must be held to be utterly 
 unlike any act of a beast towards a man. 
 
 Note XXVI., page 263. 
 
 Alleged Atheism of South American Tribes. 
 
 The words of Spix and Martins are as follows : 
 "Chained to the present, he (the Brazilian Indian) 
 hardly ever raises his eyes to the starry firmament. Yet 
 he is actuated by a certain awe of some constellations, 
 as of everything that indicates a spiritual connection of 
 things. His chief attention, however, is not directed to 
 the sun, but to the moon, according to which he calcu- 
 lates time, and from which he is used to deduce good 
 and evil. As all that is good passes without notice by 
 him, and only what is disagreeable makes an impression 
 on him, he acknowledges no cause of good, or no God, 
 but only an evil principle which meets him sometimes in 
 the form of a lizard, of a man with stag's feet, of a croc- 
 odile, or an ounce; sometimes transforms itself into a 
 swamp, &c. ; leads him astray, vexes him, brings him 
 into difficulty and danger, and even kills him. They 
 ascribe a direct intercourse with the demons to their 
 paje, who is acquainted with many powerful herbs, 
 appears to be at the same time their priest and phy- 
 sician, and contrives to maintain his credit among them 
 by all kinds of conjuring tricks. In extraordinary cases 
 he is applied to for his advice, which he gives, after con 
 
522 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 suiting the demons, for which purpose he generally uses 
 a dark tempestuous night. Certain animals, for instance, 
 a kind of goatsucker, and the screaming kinds of vulture, 
 caracarai, and caoha, are messengers from the dead to 
 the paje, and therefore highly respected by everybody." 
 — * Travels in Brazil,' b. iv. ch. ii. 
 
 What Mr Wallace says is : "I cannot make out that 
 they have any belief that can be called a religion. They 
 appear to have no definite idea of a God ; if asked who 
 they think made the rivers, and the forests, and the sky, 
 they will reply that they do not know, or sometimes that 
 they suppose that it was * Tupanan,' a word that appears 
 to answer to God, but of which they understand nothing. 
 They have much more definite ideas of a bad spirit, 
 'Jurapari,' or Devil, whom they fear, and endeavour 
 through their pajes to propitiate. When it thunders 
 they say the ' Jurapari ' is angry, and their idea of nat- 
 ural death is that the Jurapari kills them. At an eclipse 
 they believe that this bad spirit is killing the moon, and 
 they make all the noise they can to frighten him away." — 
 * Travels on the Amazons and Rio Negro,' p. 530 : 1853. 
 
 The statement of Mr Bates ( * The Naturalist on the 
 River Amazons,' vol. ii. ch. iii., pp. 162, 163, 1863) is sup- 
 stantially identical with that of Mr Wallace, his fellow- 
 traveller. The only definite information in it is that the 
 Indian Vicente did not know the cause of lightning, 
 and had never reflected on who made the sun, stars, and 
 trees. If Vicente had known the cause of lightning he 
 must have been more learned than a European savant 
 before the time of Franklin; and if he had meditated 
 on the maker of the sun, stars, and trees, his religion 
 must have been of a more thoughtful character than 
 that of the ordinary ancient Greek or Roman. 
 
Appendix: Note XXVII. 523 
 
 If Ebrard's view (see ' Apologetik,' ii. 359 and 366) 
 of the Malayan origin of the Tupi tribes of South America 
 could be established, it would follow that these tribes 
 must have gradually fallen away from the worship of one 
 supreme god, Tupan. No one, I think, who has not a 
 theory to maintain, can consider the circumstances in 
 which most of the Brazilian Indian tribes are placed 
 without coming to the conclusion that they must have 
 sunk from a higher intellectual and religious level. 
 Small colonies of English or Irish peasants placed in 
 the same circumstances would be certain to degenerate 
 rapidly. 
 
 Note XXVII., page 265. 
 Alleged Atheism of North American Tribes. 
 
 For the evidence which Waitz has collected as to the 
 religion of the Indians of California, see ' Anthropologie 
 der Naturvolker,' Bd. iv. pp. 243, 244. Father Baegert's 
 account will be found in the Smithsonian Transactions, 
 1863-64, and Father Boscana's in Bancroft's 'Native Races 
 of the Western States of America,' vol. iii. pp. 161- 170. 
 
 The works of Bancroft, Miiller, and Waitz are those 
 which contain most information on the religion of the 
 North American tribes, although the publications of 
 Catlin, Schoolcraft, &c., still retain their value. Dr 
 Brinton's 'Myths of the New World ' (1868) is not always 
 as convincing as it is interesting. 
 
 It is to be regretted that Miiller should have adopted 
 a theory which has so little real foundation as that the 
 
524 Anti-Theistic TJieories. 
 
 worship of ghosts is characteristic of northern tribes and 
 cold regions, and the worship of the sun of southern 
 tribes and warm regions. This theory — which would 
 require Senegambia, for example, to be extremely cold 
 — injuriously affects his exposition, and still more his 
 explanation of facts. But his constant exaggeration 
 of the power of physical influences and comparative 
 neglect of the operation of historical causes do not 
 prevent his work from being valuable as a collection 
 of materials. 
 
 Note XXVIII., page 269. 
 
 Alleged Atheism of Polynesians and 
 Australasians. 
 
 Jukes was only a single day on Dalrymple or Damood 
 Island. He found that the people had neat and good 
 huts, and he saw a building dififerent from, and much 
 superior to, any of the rest. After describing it, he 
 says : " Whether this was their temple, their place for 
 depositing the dead, or a chiefs house, we could not 
 make out. We, however, saw no appearance of any 
 chief, or of one man exercising authority among them ; 
 neither could we discover any traces of religious belief 
 or observance." — 'Voyage of H.M.S. Fly,' vol. i. p. 164. 
 This testimony is supposed by Sir J. Lubbock to be 
 evidence that the Damood Islanders are atheists. 
 
 Captain Wilson was unfavourably circumstanced for 
 making inquiries into the religion of the Pellew Islanders; 
 but no one, I think, who reads the interesting pages 
 (216-220) which he has devoted to the subject in his 
 
Appendix: Note XXVIII. 525 
 
 Account of the Pellew Islands/ will fail to find Sir J. 
 Lubbock's view of his evidence inaccurate. 
 
 Mr Wallace was six weeks at Wanumbai, and all that 
 he tells us of his residence there (see the ' Malay 
 Archipelago,' vol. ii. ch. xxxi.) is confirmatory of his 
 own statement, that "he could not get much real know- 
 ledge of the customs of its people." He was himself, 
 however, regarded as a sorcerer, who would make his 
 dead birds and beasts live again when he returned to 
 England, and who had caused the unusual spell of good 
 weather which coincided with his visit. 
 
 The following works throw much light on the char- 
 acter of Polynesian beliefs : Sir George Grey's ' Poly- 
 nesian Mythology' (1855), Rev. R. Taylor's 'Telkaa 
 Mani' (1855), Waitz, vol. v., Fomander's 'Account of the 
 Polynesian Race,' vol. i., and the Rev. Mr Gill's ' Myths 
 and Songs from the South Pacific Islands' (1876). 
 They show that savages who have been supposed to 
 have no religious conceptions have had really a rich 
 mythology, resting on metaphysical ideas about the 
 source and development and order of existences, such as 
 a priori theorists and rash generalisers would have assur- 
 edly declared could never have entered a savage mind. 
 
 The most widely diffused Polynesian term for God is 
 atua. According to Mr Gill, it signifies kernel, pith, or 
 life, God being conceived of as the core of the world and 
 the life of humanity ; according to Mr Taylor, beyond, as 
 a man's shadow — hence a spirit, God, or anythi?ig beyond 
 our cof?iprehension. Max Miiller (* Hibbert Lectures,* pp. 
 89, 90) expresses himself very decidedly in favour of the 
 view of Mr Gill. 
 
 From a " Report on Australian Languages and Tradi- 
 tions " in the ' Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
 
526 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Feb. 1878, I make the following extracts. The Rev. C 
 C. Greenway, speaking of the Karailoroi, says : "Baiami, 
 Baiame, or Bhiahmee, is regarded as the maker of all 
 things. The names signify ' maker ' or ' cutter out,' 
 from the verb bhai, baialli^ baia. He is regarded as the 
 rewarder or punish er of men, according to their conduct. 
 He sees all, and knows all, if not directly, through the 
 subordinate deity of Turramulan, who presides at the 
 Bora. Bhaiami is said to have been once on the earth. 
 Turramulan is meditator in all the operations of Bhaiami 
 upon man, and in all man's transactions with Bhami. 
 'Turramulan' means 'leg on one side only,' one- 
 legged. Turramulan has a wife called Muni Burribian 
 — that is, egg or life, and milk or nourishing — who has 
 charge of the instruction and supervision of women. 
 For women may not see or hear Turramulan on pain of 
 death. The 'tohi' (smoke, spirit, heart, central life) — 
 that which speaks, thinks, determines within man — does 
 not die with the body, but ascends to Bhaiami, or trans- 
 migrates into some other form. It may be a wandah 
 {wunda) or spirit wandering about the earth. The 
 'bunna,' flesh or material part, perishes; the *wundah' 
 may become a white man. The transmigration of the 
 'tohi' is generally to a superior condition; but those 
 who are very wicked go to a more degraded and miser- 
 able condition." Mr Thomas Honery, writing of the 
 Wailwun people, reports : " Bai-ame made all things. 
 He first made man at the Murula (a mountain between 
 the Narran and the Barwon). Bai-ame once lived 
 among men. There is, in the stony ridges between the 
 Barwon and the Narran, a hole in a rock, in the shape 
 of a man, two or three times as large as an ordinary 
 man, where Bai-ame used to go to rest himself. He 
 
Appendix: Note XXVIII. 527 
 
 had a large tribe around him there, whom he fed at a 
 place called ' Midul.' Suddenly he vanished from them 
 and went up to heaven. Still, though unseen, he pro- 
 vides them with food, making the grass to grow. They 
 believe that he will come back to them at some future 
 time." Of the aborigines on the Page and the Isis, we 
 are told that they believe that '' the deity who comes 
 down at their ' Bora ' is very good and very powerful. 
 He is very ancient, but never gets older. He saves 
 them by his strength. He can pull trees up by the 
 roots and remove mountains. If anything attacks them 
 he tears it to pieces." In the language of Illawarre, 
 " Mirrirul " is the word for God. " The people say that 
 'Mirrirul' made all things. Their old men have told 
 them that there is, beyond death, a large tree, on which 
 Mirrirul stands to receive them when they die. The good 
 he takes up to the sky, the bad he sends to another 
 place to be punished." 
 
 In the same number of the above-mentioned journal, 
 Mr C. H. E. Carmichael draws attention to the account 
 given by Monsignor Salvado of the Benedictine Mission 
 in New Nursia, in Western Australia. It was long be- 
 fore the Benedictines ascertained that the natives had 
 any religious beliefs, as regarding these beliefs they 
 were " singularly and obstinately reticent." Ultimately, 
 according to Monsignor Salvado, it was found that 
 "they believe in an Omnipotent Being, creator of 
 heaven and earth, whom they call Motogon, and whom 
 they imagined as a very tall, powerful, and wise man of 
 their own country and complexion. His mode of crea- 
 tion was by breathing : e.g.^ to create the earth, he said, 
 'Earth, come forth,' — and he breathed, and the earth 
 was created. So with the sun, the trees, the kangaroo, 
 
528 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 &c. Motogon, the author of good, is confronted with 
 Cienga, the author of evil. This latter being is un- 
 chainer of the whirlwind and the storm, and the invis- 
 ible author of the death of their children ; wherefore 
 the natives fear him exceedingly. What is remarkable, 
 however, is, that although the natives believe themselves 
 to be afflicted by Cienga, they do nothing to propitiate 
 him. When a sudden thunderstorm comes upon them, 
 they raise hideous cries, strike the earth with their feet, 
 imprecate death and misfortune upon Cienga, whom 
 they think the author of it, and then take refuge under 
 the nearest trees. The general belief is, that Cienga 
 prowls about at night among the trees \ and for this 
 reason the natives can scarcely be got to stir from their 
 fire after sunset. Only mothers who have lately lost a 
 child will brave these dangers to go in quest of its soul, 
 and if they hear the cry of a bird in the bush, will spend 
 hours there calling upon it and begging it to come to 
 them. So strong is the Australian mother's love." 
 
 Note XXIX., page 274. 
 Alleged Atheism of African Tribes. 
 
 The second volume of Waltz's 'Anthropology' gives by 
 far the best general view of African religions. I should 
 have attempted to summarise his statements, had this 
 not been already and recently done by Professor Max 
 Miiller in his Hibbert Lectures. The facts collected 
 by Waitz show not only that all the African peoples 
 regarding which we possess any considerable amount 
 
Appendix: Note XXIX. 529 
 
 of information have religious conceptions, but that the 
 belief in a Supreme Being is very widely spread among 
 them. 
 
 The travels of Baker, Barth, Cameron, Grant, Speke, 
 and Stanley have not contributed greatly to our know- 
 ledge of the religions of the peoples they visited. Their 
 not seeing in certain cases traces of religion, may per- 
 haps be some slight evidence that what is called fetich- 
 ism is not prevalent in districts which they traversed. 
 
 Sir Samuel Baker says of the Dinkas, Shilluks, Nuehrs, 
 and other White Nile tribes, that " they are without a 
 belief in a Supreme Being, neither have they any form 
 of worship or idolatry, nor is the darkness of their 
 minds enlightened by even a ray of superstition." But 
 as Mr Tylor ('Primitive Culture,' vol. i. pp. 423, 424) has 
 pointed out, the religions of these very tribes have been 
 described by Kaufmann, Brun-RoUet, Lejean, and other 
 travellers. All the evidence which Sir Samuel produces 
 for the atheism of the Latukas is a conversation with 
 the chief Commoro regarding the future life and the 
 resurrection. — See ' Albert N'Yanza,' vol. i. pp. 246- 
 250. The impression which the report of the conver- 
 sation leaves on my mind is, that Commoro was not 
 frankly stating his own views, but trying to ascertain 
 those of his interrogator. Even if this were not the case, 
 however, his disbelief of a future life was obviously a 
 conclusion arrived at through considerable reflection. 
 When Sir Samuel made a mistaken application of St 
 Paul's metaphor of the grain of wheat, Commoro detected 
 the fallacy at once. Sir Samuel was, in consequence, 
 obliged to "give up the religious argument as a failure;" 
 but instead of inferring that here was a Latuka Hume 
 or Bradlaugh, whose very scepticism plainly implied 
 
 2 L 
 
530 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 religious thought, he concluded that " in this wild, naked 
 savage " (" one of the most clever and common - sense 
 savages that I had seen in these countries," says he 
 elsewhere), "there was not even a superstition upon 
 which to found a religious feeling." 
 
 Probably the best work on the Hottentots, Bushmen, 
 and Kafhrs is G. Fritsch's ' Eingeborenen Siid-Afrikas,' 
 1872. Canon Callaway's account of the religion of the 
 Kaffirs is well known ; also Casalis' work on the Bas- 
 sutos. The sketches of the religion of the Hottentots 
 by Prichard in his * Natural History of Man ' and ' Re- 
 searches ' are very much superior to most of the later 
 accounts. The celebrated missionary Robert Moffat 
 affirms that the Bechuanas, Kaffirs, &c., have no reli- 
 gion \ yet in chapters xv. and xvi. of his ' Missionary 
 Labours and Scenes in South Africa ' he supplies a con- 
 siderable amount of evidence to the contrary. 
 
 Note XXX., page 275. 
 
 Alleged Atheism of Esquimaux. 
 
 Probably the best account of the religion of the 
 Esquimaux will be found in the introduction to Dr H, 
 Rink's 'Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,' — see pp. 
 35-64. According to it, few traces of ideas as to the 
 origin and early history of the world and the supreme 
 powers are discoverable among them. They believe, 
 however, that the whole visible world is ruled by powers 
 or " owners," each of which is ^n inua — a person or soul. 
 
Appendix: Note XX XL 531 
 
 They divide it into an upper and under world, and sup- 
 pose the latter to be the best, because it is warm and 
 rich in food. Its inhabitants are called the arsissut — 
 i.e., those who live in abundance. Souls which go to 
 the upper world are imagined to suffer from cold and 
 hunger. They are called the assartut — i.e., ball-players ; 
 and the aurora borealis is ascribed to their being engaged 
 in their favourite occupation. The supreme ruler dwells 
 with the happy deceased in the under world, and makes 
 the subordinate rulers helping spirits, or tornat, to the 
 angakut. A secondary deity, represented as a female, 
 is credited with sending forth all animals needed for food. 
 Witchcraft is distinguished from the power of the anga- 
 kut, and, being deemed selfish and evil, is punished. 
 The Esquimaux have prayers, invocations, spells, am- 
 ulets, and a priesthood. Religious belief is the chiei 
 connecting-link between their scattered tribes. 
 
 Note XXXI., page 279. 
 
 Sir J. Lubbock's Miscellaneous Instances of 
 Atheistical Peoples. 
 
 Dobrizhoffer's work was originally published in Latin 
 at Vienna in 1784, but there is an English translation of 
 it by Sara Coleridge — * An Account of the Abipones, an 
 Equestrian People of Paraguay,' 3 vols., 1822. 
 
 That the Hottentots, as Kolben reports, not only 
 worshipped the moon, but believed in a higher deity, is 
 distinctly testified to by G. Schmidt, Ziegenbalg, Kolb, 
 
532 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 and other missionaries. The Kaffirs have derived some 
 of their chief rehgious conceptions from the Hottentots. 
 Thus the Kaffir Unkulunkulu has originated in the Hot- 
 tentot Heitsi-eibib, or moon-god — a fact which renders 
 very doubtful the conjecture of Mr Spencer and others, 
 that the former is to be regarded as merely a deified an- 
 cestor. Among the names by which the Kaffirs express 
 their highest and most general apprehension of divinity 
 — Utixo (the inflicter of pain), Umdali (the shaper or 
 former), and Umenzi (the creator) — the first has been 
 adopted from the Hottentots. 
 
 Colonel Dalton's account of the Khasias will be found 
 in pp. 54-58 of the work already mentioned, and Colonel 
 Yule's Note on the Khasia Hills and people in No. 152 
 of the Asiatic Society's Journal (1844). Hooker's account 
 (vol. ii. pp. 273-277) is drawn mainly from the informa- 
 tion of Mr Inglis, and quite agrees with that in Yule's 
 Note. His words as to the religion of the Khasias are 
 certainly curious, but Sir John Lubbock's use of them is 
 much more so. The words are, — "The Khasias are 
 superstitious, but have no religion ; like the Lepchas, 
 they believe in a Supreme Being, and in deities of the 
 grove, cave, and stream." 
 
 Note XXXII., page 289. 
 
 Polytheism. 
 
 The author at one time hoped to devote two lectures 
 to polytheism, and to the theories which have been pro- 
 mulgated regarding its origin, nature, and evolution, but 
 
Appendix: Note XXXIII. 533 
 
 he has found it necessary to leave these subjects undis- 
 cussed, at least for the present. Had the limits of this 
 work allowed of their consideration, he would have 
 endeavoured to show that the view of the character and 
 conditions of theistic proof given in the third lecture 
 of ' Theism ' affords the only foundation for a true and 
 comprehensive theory of the natural development of re- 
 ligion. In the last volume of his ' Philosophy of History ' 
 he will have an opportunity of examining whether the 
 hypotheses as to henotheism, animism, fetichism, spirit- 
 ism, the succession of the simpler phases of religion, &c., 
 as held by Max Miiller, Mr Spencer, Mr Tylor, Sir 
 John Lubbock, and others, are psychologically well 
 founded and historically justified or not. 
 
 Note XXXIH., page 333. 
 
 Pessimism. 
 
 Mr Sully's 'Pessimism' (1877) is the ablest work — 
 whether regarded as a history or a criticism — which has 
 yet been written on the subject of which it treats. It is 
 especially rich in excellent psychological observations 
 and suggestions. In the lecture I have felt constrained 
 strongly to express dissent from Mr Sully on one im- 
 portant point, but I cordially rejoice that there is in our 
 language such a work to which the student of pessimism 
 can be referred. 
 
 As to the history of pessimism, besides Mr Sully's first 
 eight chapters, Huber's * Pessimismus ' and Gass's * Optl- 
 mismus und Pessimismus ' may be consulted. 
 
534 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 On Buddhism there are admirable works by Burnouf, 
 Saint Hilaire, Stanislas Julien, Feer, Senart, Koppen, 
 Wassiljew, Schiefner, Spence Hardy, Rhys Davids, Old- 
 enberg, &c. 
 
 The collected edition of Schopenhauer's works by 
 Frauenstadt is in seven volumes. Some translations 
 from them have appeared in the ' Journal of Speculative 
 Philosophy,' edited by W. T. Harris. For biographi- 
 cal information respecting their author see Gwinner's 
 'Arthur Schopenhauer, aus personlichen Umgange dar- 
 gestellt,' Frauenstadt and Lindner's 'Arthur Schopen- 
 hauer, von ihm, iiber ihn,' and Miss Zimmern's 'Arthur 
 Schopenhauer.' The German books, pamphlets, lec- 
 tures, articles, &c., on Schopenhauer and his system are 
 very numerous. Among English criticisms of his philo- 
 sophy one of the best is Professor Adamson's in ' Mind,' 
 No. 4. There is an excellent French work on *La 
 Philosophie de Schopenhauer,' by M. Ribot. 
 
 Von Hartmann has given us a brief autobiography 
 which will be found in his ' Gesammelte Studien.' His 
 * Philosophie des Unbewussten ' is stereotyped in its 
 seventh edition. The ablest examinations of it known 
 to me are O. Schmidt's ' Naturwissenschaftliche Grund- 
 lagen der Philosophie des Unbewussten,' Renouvier's 
 articles in the ' Critique Philosophique,' Ann^e iii., and 
 Bonatelli's in 'La Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane,' 1875-76. 
 Hartmann published in 1872 an anonymous refutation 
 of his own principles and hypotheses — ' Das Unbewus- 
 ste vom Standpunkt der Physiologic und Descendenz- 
 theorie.* 
 
 Frauenstadt is, among pessimists, the writer most dis- 
 tinguished by good sense. His ' Briefe uber die Schop- 
 enhauerische Philosophic' (1854) and his 'Neue Briefe' 
 
Appendix : Note XXXIIL 535 
 
 (1876) are valuable as expositions and apologies; while 
 works like his *Das Sittliche Leben/ *Blicke in die 
 intel. phy. und mor. Welt/ &c, have very considerable 
 merits which are independent of their relation to a 
 system. In the 'Revue Philosophique ' for May and 
 July, 1876, there is an essay by Hartmann on "Schopen- 
 hauer et Frauenstadt." 
 
 Bahnsen, to whom reference is made in the lecture, 
 has stated his views in ' Zur Philosophie der Geschichte ' 
 (1872), *Das Tragische als Weltgesetz' (1877), and 
 other works. See regarding him Hartmann's "Un 
 nouveau disciple de Schopenhauer" in the *Rev. Phil.,' 
 Nos. I and 2 for 1876. 
 
 Mainlander in his * Philosophie derErlosung' (1876) 
 rivals even Bahnsen as an apostle of despair. Says 
 Wundt : " A gloomy melancholy pervades this work, 
 which shows clearly how short a step it is from Schop- 
 enhauer's Will-manifestations to a system of mystical 
 emanation. God, it is here set forth, was the original 
 Unity of the world, but He is so no longer, since the 
 world broke up into a multiplicity of particular things. 
 God willed that nought should be, but His essence pre- 
 vented the immediate coming to pass of nothingness; 
 the world meanwhile behoved to fall asunder into a 
 multiplicity, whose separate entities are all clashing with 
 one another as they struggle to arrive at the state of 
 nothingness. It is not, therefore, the Will-to-live, as 
 Schopenhauer said, that maintains the change of phe- 
 nomena, but the Will-to-die ; and this is coming ever 
 nearer to its fulfilment, since in the mutual struggle of 
 all things the sum-total of force grows ever less. In the 
 view of this author, the highest moral duty is that nega- 
 tion of existence which would cut short the unlimited 
 
536 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 continuance of individual life in the future by the cessa- 
 tion of all sexual connection." 
 
 Taubert, Du Prel, Venetianer, Volkelt, Noirb, Von 
 Hellwald, and various other writers in Germany, adhere 
 by slighter or stronger ties to the pessimist philosophy. 
 
 The best French work on pessimism is Caro's * Pes- 
 simisme au xix«. Sibcle' (1878). 
 
 Pessimists dwell, of course, on the sad realities of 
 suffering and death. As to these facts I may refer my 
 readers to the ingenious considerations by which Dr 
 Macvicar endeavours to show that they are not to be 
 regarded as limitations of power, wisdom, or goodness in 
 the Creator. See his ' Sketch of a Philosophy,' Pt. iv. 
 ch. X. This remarkable and profound work has not 
 obtained the attention which it merits. 
 
 Note XXXIV., page 341, 
 
 Histories of Pantheism. 
 
 M. Emile Saisset's ' Essai de Philosophie Religieuse' 
 is, on the whole, the ablest work on pantheism. A good 
 English translation of it, under the title of * Modem 
 Pantheism,' was published by T. and T. Clark of Edin- 
 burgh, in 1863. It does not treat of oriental or classical 
 pantheism. It consists of two parts. The first part 
 contains seven historical studies or treatises with these 
 titles : (i) Theism of Descartes ; (2) God in the system of 
 Malebranche ; (3) Pantheism of Spinoza ; (4) God in the 
 system of Newton; (5) Theism of Leibnitz; (6) Scepti- 
 cism of Kant ; and (7) Pantheism of Hegel. A common 
 
Appejidix: Note XXXIV, 537 
 
 aim connects and unifies these treatises — namely, the en- 
 deavour to trace the development and to test the worth 
 of the pantheistic notion of Deity. The second part is 
 composed of nine meditations on the following topics : 
 (i) Is there a God? (2) Is God accessible to reason? 
 (3) Can there be anything but God? (4) God the Crea- 
 tor; (5) Is the world infinite? (6) Providence in the 
 universe ; (7) Providence in man ; (8) The mystery of 
 suffering; and (9) Religion. The fifth meditation is the 
 most questionable in its reasoning. M. Saisset contends 
 that the infinity of God implies the infinity of the created 
 universe, but only a relative infinity ; or, in other words, 
 illimitable extension in time and space. His chief argu- 
 ment for the conclusion is that there is no proportion 
 between a finite creation and an infinite Creator, and 
 hence that the creation must be relatively infinite in 
 order to be worthy of the Creator. Obviously, however, 
 if the argument be good at all, it is good for more than 
 this conclusion. There is no proportion between abso- 
 lute and relative infinity. If a finite creation cannot be 
 worthy of an absolutely infinite Creator, neither can a 
 relatively infinite creation be worthy of Him ; but crea- 
 tion must be an effect completely equal to and exhaustive 
 of its cause ; or, in other words, pantheism, against 
 which M. Saisset has so ably contended, must be true. 
 There is a criticism of M. Saisset's work in Dean Han- 
 sel's * Letters, Lectures, and Reviews.' 
 
 The *Essai sur le Pantheisme' (1841), by the Abbd 
 Maret, is a work much inferior to M. Saisset's ; but it 
 contains a considerable amount of information, and its 
 reasoning is often judicious and conclusive. It was very 
 favourably received by the Roman Catholic clergy of 
 France, one of its leading ideas being that a denial of 
 
538 Aiiti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 the doctrine of the Roman Catholic must inevitably lead 
 to pantheism. This notion was admirably exposed by 
 Saisset in an article, "De la Philosophie du Clergd," 
 published in his ' Essais sur la Philosophie, et la Reli 
 gion au xix«. Sibcle* (1845). 
 
 In the loth volume of the ' Memoirs of the Royal 
 Society of Gottingen ' there is a Latin dissertation — De 
 ortu et progressu Pantheismi inde a Xenophane Colo- 
 phonio primo ejus auctore usque ad Spinozam Commen- 
 tatio — by the laborious German historian of philosophy, 
 J. G. Buhle. G. B. Jasche's ' Pantheismus nach seinen 
 verschiedenen Hauptformen, seinen Ursprung und Fort- 
 gange,' &c. (1826), is a three-volumed work of no great 
 merit. 
 
 The Rev. J. Hunt's * Essay on Pantheism' (1866) is 
 so good that one cannot but regret that it is not better. 
 It is the result of very wide reading, but of too rapid 
 reading. As a statement of the opinions of others it is, 
 I think, thoroughly accurate ; but obviously the author 
 required more time than he allowed himself to form his 
 own opinions, and to arrange and master the materials 
 which he had collected. If Mr Hunt, now that he has 
 admirably finished a still more laborious task, were again 
 to take up the subject, he might, with comparative ease, 
 produce by far the most satisfactory history of pan- 
 theism. 
 
 The anonymous * General Sketch of the History of 
 Pantheism,' in 2 vols., the first of which appeared 
 in 1878, is well written, but not otherwise to be com- 
 mended. The author's dislike of labour disqualifies him 
 for historical work. He says that his sketch is " chiefly 
 a compilation, taken more frequently from translations 
 and abridgments of originals, than from the originals 
 
Appendix: Note XXXV, 539 
 
 themselves ; " but, in reality, the first volume — the only 
 one which I have examined — is chiefly a compilation 
 from three books, — Maurice's ^ Moral and Metaphysical 
 Philosophy,' Lewes's ' History of Philosophy/ and Dra- 
 per's ' Intellectual Development of Europe.' He has 
 given an account of oriental pantheism apparently with- 
 out reading even a single translation. His independence 
 both of originals and translations as to Greek pantheism 
 seems also to have been nearly complete. 
 
 Note XXXV., page 350. 
 Hindu Pantheism. 
 
 Besides the well-known works of Max Miiller, Muir, 
 and Monier Williams, A. Ludwig's ' Philosoph. und 
 Relig. Anschauungen des Veda' (1875), and P. Asmus's 
 *Indo-Germanische Religion' (1875 and 1877), ^xe to 
 be recommended to those who wish to understand the 
 thoughts which gave rise to the Vedas. 
 
 The first stage of the growth of the pantheistic philo- 
 sophy of India out of its Vedic germ is that which is 
 represented by the most ancient of the class of writings 
 designated Upanishads. In eleven or twelve of these 
 Upanishads the principles of the Vedanta philosophy are 
 more or less explicitly contained. A very full account 
 of this stage of the doctrine, supported by abundant 
 citations from the originals, will be found in M. Reg- 
 naud's contributions to the ' Revue Philosophique ' 
 during the last three years. The Upanishads contain 
 
540 Anti-Theistic Theories, 
 
 merely the elements of the Vedantist philosophy. The 
 work which sets before us its next stage consists of 555 
 aphorisms, known as the Vedanta or Brahma Sutras, and 
 attributed to Vyasa, called also Badarayana, who is sup- 
 posed to have lived in or near the fifth century of our 
 era. Here the doctrine is developed in a systematic 
 form, and the objections of rival systems are combated. 
 A summary of the teaching of these Sutras is given by 
 Regnaud in * Rev. Phil.,' No. 2, 1878. The epoch of 
 commentators followed, one of whom, Sankara, obtained 
 an extraordinary influence, and secured for the Vedanta 
 doctrine a decided supremacy among the philosophies^ 
 of India. The work which gives the clearest and most 
 succinct exposition of the system at the time when it was 
 completely developed, is that designated the Vedanta- 
 Sara, or Essence of the Vedanta, Its author, Sadananda- 
 Togindra, is believed to have lived about the tenth 
 century. An English translation of it by Roer was pub- 
 lished at Calcutta in 1845. 
 
 In the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Puranas, the 
 pantheism of India is to be studied in alliance with its 
 mythology. For a general view of these works see 
 Monier Williams's * Indian Wisdom.' Accounts of them, 
 and translations from them, are numerous. 
 
 In none of the Hindu philosophies was the doctrine 
 of creation admitted. The theists of India no less thac 
 its pantheists — those who affirmed no less than those 
 who denied the personality of God — assumed the 
 eternity of the substance of the world. Thus the 
 ancient theistic treaties, edited and translated by Pro- 
 fessor Co well — the Kusumanjali — argues for the exist- 
 ence of a supreme personal Lord " from the existence 
 of effects, from the combination of atoms, from the 
 
Appendix : Note XXX VI. 541 
 
 support of the earth in the sky, from traditional arts, 
 from belief in revelation, from the Veda, from its sen- 
 tences, and from particular numbers ; " but it takes for 
 granted that material atoms existed from eternity. The 
 reasoning by which the belief in creation is set aside by 
 Hindu philosophers is ever substantially that which we 
 find thus expressed in a Sutra of the Sankhya system : 
 " There cannot be the production of something out of 
 nothing; that which is not cannot be developed into that 
 which is : the production of what does not already exist 
 potentially is impossible; because there must of necessity 
 be a material out of which a product is developed ; and 
 because everything cannot occur everywhere at all times ; 
 and because anything possible must be produced from 
 something competent to produce it." 
 
 Note XXXVI., page 355. 
 Greek Pantheism. 
 
 Pantheism so pervades all Greek philosophy that the 
 history of Greek pantheism must be studied in the his- 
 tory of Greek philosophy. Hegel, Zeller, Ferrier, Grote, 
 and others, will here serve as guides. For the literature 
 regarding the several philosophies Ueberweg may be 
 consulted. 
 
 Parmenides gave his thoughts to the world in a poem, 
 Hept ^va-etos, of which fragments remain, making up in 
 all 153 lines. They are the chief source for a knowledge 
 of his system. They have been edited in the * Reliquiae ' 
 of Karsten and in the * Fragmenta ' of Mullach. The 
 dialogue Parmenides in the * Corpus Platonicum,' even 
 
542 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 if a genuine work of Plato, is not an authority as to the 
 teaching of the philosopher whose name serves as its 
 title. There is a good French Monograph on Parmen- 
 ides by M. Riaux (1840). 
 
 No Greek philosopher thought of God as truly creative, 
 or of the universe as in its very substance the result of 
 the Divine action. Aristotle, in affirming that the ancient 
 philosophers believed the world to have been made, has 
 frequently been supposed to have testified that they be- 
 lieved the universe to have been created out of nothing. 
 But this is an undoubtedly incorrect interpretation. The 
 assertion that a thing is made does not imply that noth- 
 ing existed out of which it could be made. Many of 
 the ancients attributed to the universe a beginning, and 
 at the same time regarded matter as eternal. The origin 
 of things which they described was their origin from mat- 
 ter, not the origin of matter. See this learnedly proved 
 in a dissertation of Mosheim, " On Creation out of 
 Nothing," in the third volume of his edition of Cud- 
 worth's 'Intellectual System.' 
 
 Those who, like Clement of Alexandria, Huet, Cud- 
 worth, &c., have maintained that Plato believed in crea- 
 tion ex nihilo have mistaken what he taught about the 
 phenomenal world of sense — about body as possessed 
 of forms and qualities — with what he taught about the 
 primary matter which the world of bodies presupposes. 
 Those who suppose him to have meant by the eternity 
 of matter merely the eternal existence in the Divine 
 Mind of the idea of matter, overlook that the idea of the 
 universe can be no less eternal than that of matter, and 
 that a Divine idea could never be conceived of as disor- 
 derly, malignant, disobedient to the Divine will, and the 
 source of the evil and sin in the world. It is necessary 
 
Appendix: Note XXX VI. 543 
 
 to admit that Plato held that beneath the perpetual 
 changes of sensible phenomena there was an unchange- 
 able subject, different from the Deity and the Divine 
 ideas, existing in a sphere independent of temporal orig- 
 ination, not produced by the Divine will, yet required as 
 the means and occasion of the manifestation of Divine 
 intelligence in the organisation of the world. 
 
 Aristotle distinctly taught the eternity both of matter 
 and of the universe, but he conceived of primary matter 
 as a mere capacity, — not as an actual substantial exist- 
 ence, which necessarily implies a synthesis of matter and 
 form, dependent on the action of an energising cause, 
 which must be both an efficient and a final cause. 
 " Matter, in the theory of Aristotle," says Sir Alexander 
 Grant, " is something which must always be presupposed, 
 and yet which always eludes us, and flies back from the 
 region of the actual into that of the possible. Ultimate 
 matter, or 'first timber' necessarily exists as the condi- 
 tion of all things, but it remains as one of those possibil- 
 ities which can never be realised, and thus forms the 
 antithesis to God, the ever-actual. From all this it may 
 be inferred that Aristotle would have considered it very 
 unphilosophical to represent Matter, as some philosophers 
 of the present day appear to do, as having had an inde- 
 pendent existence, and as having contained the germs, 
 not only of all other things, but even of Reason itself, so 
 that out of Matter Reason was developed. According to 
 Aristotle, it is impossible to conceive Matter at all as 
 actually existing, far less as the one independent ante- 
 cedent cause of all things ; and it is equally impossible 
 to think of Reason as non-existent, or as having had a 
 late and derivative origin." — Ancient Classics for English 
 Readers, * Aristotle,* pp. 167, 168. 
 
544 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 The Stoic conception of the relation of God to the 
 world is very similar to the Aristotelian. They are 
 viewed as two distinguishable yet inseparable aspects of 
 Being — two sides of the one all-comprehensive existence 
 — two phases of the one actual substance. God is the 
 productive energy, and matter is the ground or sub- 
 stratum on and in which this energy works. God is that 
 by which, and matter is that through which, everything 
 is ; and in all things both coexist, neither pure spirit nor 
 pure matter having actual existence. 
 
 Various reasons were given by the Greek philosophers 
 for denying the creation of matter and for affirming its 
 eternity. Their weakness is very ably shown in Pear- 
 son's work * On the Creed,' Art. I., chap. v. 
 
 Note XXXVII., page 358 
 JoRDANO Bruno. 
 
 There never should have been any doubt entertained 
 as to the indebtedness of Spinoza to Bruno ; but since 
 the discovery of the ' Brief Treatise ' of the latter, it is 
 possible only in the minds of those who are not com- 
 petently informed. A single fact may be mentioned 
 to show how the discovery has thrown light on the 
 relationship. 
 
 Appended to the second chapter of the ' Brief Treatise ' 
 are two dialogues — the first between the personifica- 
 tions, Understanding, Love, Reason, and Desire; and 
 the second between two interlocutors, Erasmus and 
 Theophilus. The German critical historians of phil- 
 
Appendix: Note XXXVII. 545 
 
 osophy have started a controversy as to whether these 
 dialogues were written before, or after, or along with the 
 rest of the treatise. As to the direct and immediate 
 object of their inquiry, they seem to me to have done 
 little more than raise a very thick cloud of dust, the 
 reverse of helpful to clear vision ; but they have brought 
 out one important fact — viz., that the second and longer 
 of these dialogues, which is occupied with the idea of 
 God, the fundamental idea in Spinoza's system, may be 
 almost composed, pieced together, from sentences of 
 Bruno. That there were many general resemblances 
 between the doctrine of Spinoza and of the celebrated 
 Neapolitan pantheist — that there were even some resem- 
 blances so special that they could only be accounted for 
 by the later thinker having received from the earlier — 
 had already been perceived ; but the fact now mentioned 
 has naturally led to a great deal of renewed and minute 
 inquiry in this direction. The consequence has been 
 that Spinoza has been ascertained to have absorbed 
 Bruno not less than Descartes. 
 
 On Bruno, see Chr. Bartholmbss, *Jordano Bruno,' 2 
 tom. (1846-47), and Domenico Berti, 'Vita di Giordano 
 Bruno' (1868). There are two instructive articles on 
 his philosophy by Prof. Barach in the 13th vol. of the 
 ' Philosophische Monatshefte.' His Italian works have 
 been edited by Wagner, and some of his Latin works by 
 Gfrorer. 
 
 There is a good * Histoire du Pantheisme Populaire 
 au Moyen Age et au Seizibme Siecle,' by Auguste Jundt. 
 
 2 M 
 
546 Aiiti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note XXXVIIL, page 375. 
 Spinoza. 
 
 The discovery first of letters of Spinoza and then ol 
 the ' Brief Treatise, concerning God, Man, and Human 
 Happiness,' has recently given a fresh stimulus to the 
 study of his writings. It has brought into the foreground 
 the questions, What were the sources of his philosophy? 
 and, How did it grow up in the mind of its author ? It 
 ha^s lighted the way to the answers. 
 
 As regards the inquiry into the sources of his doctrine, 
 here, as everywhere else in the history of philosophy, the 
 result of investigation has been proof of the falsity and 
 shallowness of the notion of Hegel that philosophies 
 have succeeded one another in a single linear series, 
 like beads on a string, or Indians in a file, or like a 
 straight line of buckets, each lesser destined to be 
 emptied into a bigger in front of it. Here, as every- 
 where else, it has been found that the history of philoso- 
 phy is not in the least like a single thread, but is rather 
 like a very broad web ; and that a great man does not 
 hang on to a particular other great man, but rather to 
 the whole past and the whole present. Another result 
 is that Spinoza has been ascertained to have borrowed 
 far more from others than was supposed. It has taken 
 long to make out, even approximately, the extent to which 
 he was indebted to others, because, like most writers of 
 his age, he very seldom gives a reference to authors who 
 had preceded him ; when he does refer to them, it is 
 generally to indicate dissent from some of their views. 
 The result ascertained was, however, one which might 
 
Appendix: Note XXXVIII. $47 
 
 have been anticipated, and which will lower no reason- 
 able man's estimate of Spinoza's ability. The vast 
 system which he constructed, viewed as a whole, is one 
 of the most original which the entire history of philoso- 
 phy presents. It certainly would have been neither so 
 vast nor so original had the architect attempted to make 
 his bricks for himself. 
 
 In the previous note I have mentioned that Spinoza 
 has been shown by the recent investigations to have 
 owed not a little to Bruno. It must be added that he has 
 been proved beyond all doubt to have derived far more 
 from authors of his own race than had been supposed. 
 He will never be understood by any one who forgets 
 that he was by birth and training a Jew; that the first 
 and most powerful influences which acted on his mind 
 were Jewish ; that he knew the Hebrew Scriptures from 
 his youth ; that he was early initiated into the study of 
 the Talmud ; that he had become conversant even be- 
 fore he left school with the writings of the famous 
 Jewish scholars and thinkers who lived in France, Spain, 
 North Africa, &c., during the middle ages. This has 
 often been practically forgotten, however, owing to the 
 want of Jewish learning which exists among Gentiles. A 
 working knowledge of Hebrew is one of the rarest ac- 
 complishments among Gentile philosophers. Hence, had 
 the Jews themselves not come to the rescue, we would 
 probably still have been ignorant of the closeness and 
 comprehensiveness of the relation between Spinoza and 
 earlier Jewish thinkers. But this they have done, and 
 the works of Franck and Munk, Joel and Mises, Bemays, 
 Benemozegh, and Jarackewsky, &c., have to a great ex- 
 tent laid bare those roots of Spinozism which were fixed 
 in Jewish soil. They have amply proved that, to be 
 
548 Anti'Theistic Theories. 
 
 conceived of rightly, he must be viewed as connecting 
 and combining two great developments of thought — an 
 Eastern and a Western, a Jewish and a Gentile; that 
 nothing was more natural than that a Jew, situated as he 
 was, should have been the founder of Rationalism ; that 
 he founded it mainly by combining, developing, and 
 organising the ideas and principles of a long series of 
 Jewish Biblical students ; and that he also derived many 
 of the elements and doctrines of his speculative system 
 from Jewish sources. 
 
 The political theory of Spinoza, which he expounds in 
 a special treatise, is in the main derived from Hobbes, 
 whose ' De Give ' and ' Leviathan ' acquired from their 
 first publication great celebrity on the Gontinent. Spinoza 
 refers to Hobbes, but only slightly, and in his usual way 
 of indicating dissent. The differences between the two 
 authors are not inconsiderable, and are interesting ; but 
 the similarities are far more numerous. Spinoza was an 
 able political thinker, but much less so than Hobbes, 
 and he rather modified the political theory of Hobbes 
 than formed one of his own. The German historians 
 of the progress of political science decidedly err when 
 they place him in this department on a level with the 
 Englishman. 
 
 The discovery of Spinoza's indebtedness to the authors 
 mentioned here led some to underestimate the influence 
 exercised on him by Descartes. They have avoided the 
 error of regarding Spinozism as an exaggerated or cor- 
 rupted Gartesianism only to fall into that of denying 
 essential connections between the two systems. The 
 latter error is as great as the former. Nothing has come 
 to light to justify it. In some respects the recently dis- 
 covered compositions show even more clearly than those 
 
Appendix: Note XXXVIII. 549 
 
 previously published how great were Spinoza's obligations 
 to Descartes. For instance, his account of the affections 
 in the * Brief Treatise ' follows Descartes almost slavishly; 
 while his theory of the affections in the ' Ethics ' so little 
 resembles the theory out of which it was developed, that 
 he can speak of Descartes as having merely exhibited in 
 treating of the passions " his own singular ingenuity and 
 acuteness." There is no doubt that Spinoza received 
 from Descartes the definition of substance, such a con- 
 ception of two substances derived from and dependent 
 on God — viz., spirit or thought, and matter or extension 
 — as was capable of easy conversion into the conception 
 of their being merely affections of one infinite substance, 
 and other notions of the utmost significance in his sys- 
 tem. It only requires to be remembered that these no- 
 tions entered into a mind already possessed with others 
 which necessarily and powerfully influenced them. There 
 is no doubt that he received from Descartes the mathe- 
 matical method of philosophical exposition. It only re- 
 quires to be remembered that this method was not essen- 
 tial to his philosophy, and was only employed by him 
 after his system had been substantially constituted ; that 
 the secret of his doctrine must not be sought for in the 
 mathematical method, or in any " particular mathematical 
 image." 
 
 The recent discoveries also show clearly that Spinoza's 
 system was very slowly and gradually developed, and 
 passed through various phases in its author's mind before 
 it was elaborated into the shape which it assumes in the 
 ' Ethics.' It is true that Spinoza died at the early age 
 of forty-four, and that his ' Ethics ' were ready for the 
 press two years before his death ; but the * Brief Trea- 
 tise,' which traverses almost the whole ground afterwards 
 
550 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 surveyed in the * Ethics,' was certainly written not less 
 than seventeen years before his death, and probably more; 
 so that fifteen years at least, and perhaps twenty or twenty- 
 one years, intervened between the first written sketch and 
 the final form of the ' Ethics,' during the whole of which 
 time the strenuous and incessant work of Spinoza's life 
 was the elaboration of a philosophy of which all the main 
 features and essential principles were apprehended by 
 him from the commencement. The * Brief Treatise ' and 
 the ' Ethics ' are the two extreme terms in the growth of 
 the philosophy of Spinoza ; and although in the course of 
 that growth scarcely a single thought escaped modifica- 
 tion, still, as the growth had been a continuous and con- 
 sistent self-development, even its two extreme stages cor- 
 respond in all their features as the countenance of the 
 adult man to that of the child. It is not yet possible, 
 however, to trace clearly and certainly the process of 
 growth from the one of these terms to the other. It has 
 not yet even been determined beyond doubt in what order 
 the intervening works were composed. In the absence 
 of direct testimony this can only be done by careful 
 examination of their contents, — by a delicate, subtle, 
 subjective kind of criticism, very apt to lead different 
 inquirers to different and discordant results. In fact, 
 the order of the composition of the works has to be de- 
 termined from the course of the development of the 
 thought, and the course of the development of the 
 thought from the order of the composition of the works, 
 with no external help except what is furnished by the 
 letters arranged and studied chronologically. There are 
 internal grounds for supposing that the fragment on the 
 "Improvement of the Mind" was written immediately 
 after the 'Brief Treatise,' the ' Theologico-PoHtical Trea- 
 
Appendix: Note XXXIX. 551 
 
 tise ' next in order, then the ' Exposition of Cartesianism 
 and Metaphysical Reflections/ and so that these repre- 
 sent the successive stages through which the thought of 
 Spinoza has to be traced in its progress from the time 
 when it referred everything to the unity of nature to the 
 time when it referred everything to the unity of substance 
 — from the ' Brief Treatise ' to the ' Ethics \ ' but the 
 reasons for arranging these works in the order indicated 
 are merely probabilities, and some of them very feeble 
 probabilities. 
 
 The literature regarding Spinoza is enormous. For a 
 general view of it consult Ueberweg's * History of Philo- 
 sophy,' vol. ii. pp. 56-60 (Eng. tr.) and, if still fuller in- 
 formation is desired. Van der Linde's * B. Spinoza Bibli- 
 ographic ' ( 1 8 7 1 ). The recently published monograph of 
 Theodore Camerer — ' Die Lehre Spinoza's ' — is an ex- 
 tremely thorough and able work. The same may be said 
 of the treatises of F. Pollock, Dr Martineau, and Prin- 
 cipal Caird. The best English translation of the works 
 of Spinoza is that of R. H. M. Elwes, in 2 vols , London, 
 1883. 
 
 Note XXXIX., page 377. 
 Modern German Pantheism. 
 
 In my ' Philosophy of History in Europe ' I have given 
 some account of the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, 
 and Hegel, and literary references which may be useful 
 to those who are engaged in their study. 
 
 The collected edition of Fichte's work by his son is 
 in eight volumes. His ' Popular Writings ' have been 
 translated into English by Dr William Smith; his 'Science 
 
552 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 of Knowledge' and 'Science of Rights ' by A. E. Kroeger, 
 His philosophy is ably described in Kuno Fischer's 
 *Geschichte der Neuem Philosophie/ Bd. v., in Harms' 
 'Philosophie seit Kant,' and in the special works of 
 Busse and Lowe, &c. The best account, perhaps, of 
 his religious doctrine is Fr. Zimmer's * Joh. Gottl. Fichte's 
 Religionsphilosophie ' (1878). 
 
 The complete edition of SchelHng's works is in four- 
 teen volumes. There is a careful exposition of the suc- 
 cessive modifications of his doctrine of the Absolute in 
 the two last articles of the second volume of Hoffmann's 
 
 * Philosophische Schriften.' Several of his writings have 
 been translated in the * Journal of Speculative Philoso- 
 phy,' edited by W. T. Harris. 
 
 The complete edition of Hegel's works is in eighteen 
 volumes. Haym and Rosenkranz have treated of his 
 life from very different points of view. There is an 
 English translation of his 'Logic' by Wallace; of his 
 
 * Philosophy of History ' by Sibree ; and of his ' Pheno- 
 menology of Spirit,' * Propaedeutik,' and parts of his 
 
 * History of Philosophy,' in the * Journal of Speculative 
 Philosophy.' Cabot's article " Hegel " in the ' North 
 American Review,' April 1868. and Dr Hutchison Stir- 
 ling's "Secret of Hegel," may be mentioned. Also 
 Prof. A. Seth's ' Hegehanism and Personality,' 1887. 
 
 The various recent phases of modem German pan- 
 theism have been perhaps nowhere more minutely 
 delineated than in the volumes of Hoffmann's *Pbilo- 
 sophische Schriften.' 
 
Appendix: Note XL. 553 
 
 Note XL., page 379. 
 Modern French Panthef^^m. 
 
 The philosophy of Cousin has been treated of by 
 Damiron, by Alaux, by Secretan, by Janet, &c. In my 
 * Historical Philosophy in France ' I have examined 
 what may be held to be the pantheistic principles and 
 consequences involved in his theory of history. On the 
 question whether he can be correctly described as a pan- 
 theist or not, see Dr Henry's preface to the fourth edition 
 of his translation of the * Elements of Psychology ' (N. 
 Y., 1856), and an article of Dr Hodge, entitled "The 
 Princeton Review and Cousin's Philosophy," reprinted 
 from the ' Princeton Review ' in the * Brit, and For. Ev. 
 Rev.,' vol. v., No. xvii. (1856). 
 
 The Saint-Sim onian religion and polity rested on the 
 pantheistic conception that God is all that is, and that 
 matter and spirit are not separate existences, but the two 
 sides or aspects of the Divine substance. On this sub- 
 ject, see pp. 58-68 of the previously mentioned 'Etude' 
 of M. Ferraz. 
 
 In M. Caro's ' L'Idde de Dieu ' the views of M. Renan 
 and of M. Vacherot regarding God are subjected to a 
 thorough and decisive criticism. 
 
554 Anti-Theistic Theories. 
 
 Note XLI., page 379. 
 Modern English Pantheism. 
 
 Pantheism is advocated by Mr Charles Bray in " Illu- 
 sion and Delusion ; or, Modern Pantheism versus Spirit- 
 ualism," and by F. W. J., in ' Spiritual Pantheism.' Both 
 tracts are undated, and both were published at the press 
 of the late Mr Scott of Norwood. 
 
 In Mr J. Allanson Picton's * Mystery of Matter ' 
 (1873) there is an eloquent essay on what is called 
 "Christian Pantheism;" and in the 'Sermons' (1875) ^^ 
 the late Rev. Peter S. Menzies of Melbourne there is 
 an eloquent discourse bearing the same title. This so- 
 called " Christian pantheism " is represented as distinct 
 from, and opposed to, the pantheism " which absorbs in 
 a mechanically ruled, eternal universe the free personality 
 of God," and the pantheism "which represents moral 
 good and moral evil as equally agreeable to God, and 
 equally the direct creation of His will." 
 
 Much has been written about the pantheism of Carlyle. 
 Some would, perhaps, class Matthew Arnold as a pan- 
 theist, in virtue of his faith in a "stream of tendency 
 which makes for righteousness." 
 
 Pantheism has been unfortunate in Britain ; indeed it 
 has not been presented in a form worthy of discussion. 
 It has displayed itself to rather more advantage in 
 America. See ' Transcendentalism in New England : 
 A History.' By Octavius B. Frothingham (New York, 
 1876). 
 
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