Part 56

But the secret is an open one--the practical monitions are plain enough, which declare that on our dealings with matter depend our weal and woe, physical and moral. The state of mind which rebels against the recognition of the claims of 'materialism' is not unknown to me. I can remember a time when I regarded my body as a weed, so much more highly did I prize the conscious strength and pleasure derived from moral and religious feeling--which, I may add, was mine without the intervention of dogma. The error was not an ignoble one, but this did not save it from the penalty attached to error. Saner knowledge taught me that the body is no weed, and that treated as such it would infallibly avenge itself. Am I personally lowered by this change of front? Not so. Give me their health, and there is no spiritual experience of those earlier years--no resolve of duty, or work of mercy, no work of self-renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy in the life and aspects of nature--that would not still be mine; and this without the least reference or regard to any purely personal reward or punishment looming in the future.

And now I have to utter a 'farewell' free from bitterness to all my readers; thanking my friends for a sympathy more steadfast, I would fain believe, if less noisy, than the antipathy of my foes; and commending to these a passage from Bishop Butler, which they have either not read or failed to lay to heart. 'It seems,' saith the Bishop, 'that men would be strangely headstrong and self-willed, and disposed to exert themselves with an impetuosity which would render society insupportable, and the living in it impracticable, were it not for some acquired moderation and self-government, some aptitude and readiness in restraining themselves, and concealing their sense of things.'

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XI. THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

[Footnote: Fortnightly Review.]

PRIOR to the publication of the Fifth Edition of these 'Fragments' my attention had been directed by several estimable, and indeed eminent, persons, to an essay by the Rev. James Martineau, as demanding serious consideration at my hands. I tried to give the essay the attention claimed for it, and published my views of it as an Introduction to Part 11. of the 'Fragments.' I there referred, and here again refer with pleasure, to the accord subsisting between Mr. Martineau and myself on certain points of biblical Cosmogony. 'In so far,' says he, 'as Church belief is still committed to a given Cosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to scientific refutation.' And again: 'It turns out that with the sun and moon and stars, and in and on the earth, before and after the appearance of our race, quite other things have happened than those which the sacred Cosmogony recites.' Once more: 'The whole history of the genesis of things Religion must surrender to the Sciences.' Finally, still more emphatically: 'In the investigation of the genetic order of things, Theology is an intruder, and must stand aside.' This expresses, only in words of fuller pith, the views which I ventured to enunciate in Belfast. 'The impregnable position of Science,' I there say, 'may be stated in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest from Theology, the entire domain of Cosmological theory.' Thus Theology, so far as it is represented by Mr. Martineau, and Science, so far as I understand it, are in absolute harmony here.

But Mr. Martineau would have just reason to complain of me, if, by partial citation, I left my readers under the impression that the agreement between us is complete. At the opening of the eighty-ninth Session of the Manchester New College, London, on October 6, '1874, he, its principal, delivered an Address bearing the title 'Religion as affected by Modern Materialism;' the references and general tone of which make evident the depth of its author's discontent with my previous deliverance at Belfast. I find it difficult to grapple with the exact grounds of this discontent. Indeed, logically considered, the impression left upon my mind by an essay of great aesthetic merit, containing many passages of exceeding beauty, and many sentiments which none but the pure in heart could utter as they are uttered here, is vague and unsatisfactory. The author appears at times so brave and liberal, at times so timid and captious, and at times, if I dare say it, so imperfectly informed, regarding the position he assails.

At the outset of his Address Mr. Martineau states with some distinctness his 'sources of religious faith.' They are two--'the scrutiny of Nature' and 'the interpretation of Sacred Books.' It would have been a theme worthy of his intelligence to have deduced from these two sources his religion as it stands. But not another word is said about the 'Sacred Books.' Having swept with the besom of Science various 'books' contemptuously away, he does not define the Sacred residue; much less give us the reasons why he deems them sacred. [Footnote: Mr. Martineau's use of the term 'sacred' is unintentionally misleading. In his later essays we are taught that he does not mean to restrict it to the Bible. He does not, however, mention the 'books' beyond those of the Bible to which he would apply the term. 1879.] His references to 'Nature,' on the other hand, are magnificent tirades against Nature, intended, apparently, to show the wholly abominable character of man's antecedents if the theory of evolution be true. Here also his mood lacks steadiness. While joyfully accepting, at one place, 'the widening space, the deepening vistas of time, the detected marvels of physiological structure, and the rapid filling-in of the missing links in the chain of organic life,' he falls, at another, into lamentation and mourning over the very theory which renders 'organic life' 'a chain.' He claims the largest liberality for his sect, and avows its contempt for the dangers of possible discovery. But immediately afterwards he damages the claim, and ruins all confidence in the avowal. He professes sympathy with modern Science, and almost in the same breath he treats, or certainly will be understood to treat, the Atomic Theory, and the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, as if they were a kind of scientific thimble-riggery.

His ardour, moreover, renders him inaccurate causing him to see discord between scientific men where nothing but harmony reigns. In his celebrated Address to the Congress of German Naturforscher, delivered at Leipzig, three years ago, Du Bois-Reymond speaks thus: 'What conceivable connection subsists between definite movements of definite atoms in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand such primordial, indefinable, undeniable, facts as these: I feel pain or pleasure; I experience a sweet taste, or smell a rose, or hear an organ, or see something red ... It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent as to their own position and motion, past, present, or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should result from their joint action.'

This language, which was spoken in 1872, Mr. Martineau 'freely' translates, and quotes against me. The act is due to misapprehension. Evidence is at hand to prove that I employed similar language twenty years ago. It is to be found in the 'Saturday Review' for 1860; but a sufficient illustration of the agreement between my friend Du Bois-Reymond and myself, is furnished by the discourse on 'Scientific Materialism,' delivered in 1868, then widely circulated, and reprinted here. The reader who compares the two discourses will see that the same line of thought is pursued in both, and that perfect agreement reigns between my friend and me. In the very Address he criticises, Mr. Martineau might have seen that precisely the same position is maintained. A quotation will prove this: 'Thus far,' I say, 'our way is clear, but now comes my difficulty. Your atoms are individually without sensation, much more are they without intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this problem? Take your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine them separate and sensationless; observe them running together and forming all imaginable combinations. This, as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the mind. But can you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise? Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of billiard balls? ... I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches the olfactory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualise the waves of aether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the motion thus imparted at the periphery, and to see in idea the very molecules of the brain thrown into tremors. My insight is not baffled by these physical processes. What baffles and bewilders me is the notion that from these physical tremors things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, thought, and emotion can be derived.' It is only a complete misapprehension of our true relationship that could induce Mr. Martineau to represent Du Bois-Reymond and myself as opposed to each other.

'The affluence of illustration,' writes an able and sympathetic reviewer of this essay, in the 'New York Tribune,' 'in which Mr. Martineau delights often impairs the distinctness of his statements by diverting the attention of the reader from the essential points of his discussion to the beauty of his imagery, and thus diminishes their power of conviction. 'To the beauties here referred to I bear willing testimony; but the reviewer is strictly just in his estimate of their effect upon my critic's logic. The 'affluence of illustration,' and the heat, and haze, and haste, generated by its reaction upon Mr. Martineau's own mind, often produce vagueness where precision is the one thing needful--poetic fervour where we require judicial calm; and practical unfairness where the strictest justice ought to be, and I willingly believe is meant to be, observed.

In one of his nobler passages Mr. Martineau tells us how the pupils of his college have been educated hitherto: 'They have been trained under the assumptions (1) that the Universe which includes us and folds us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind; (2) that the world of our abode is the scene of a moral government, incipient but not complete; and (3) that the upper zones of human affection, above the clouds of self and passion, take us into the sphere of a Divine Communion. Into this over-arching scene it is that growing thought and enthusiasm have expanded to catch their light and fire.'

Alpine summits seem to kindle above us as we read these glowing words; we see their beauty and feel their life. At the close of one of the essays here printed, [Footnote: 'Scientific Use of the Imagination.'] I thus refer to the 'Communion' which Mr. Martineau calls 'Divine': "Two things," said Immanuel Kant, "fill me with awe--the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in man." And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased, and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend. Though 'knowledge' is here disavowed, the 'feelings', of Mr. Martineau and myself are, I think, very much alike. He, nevertheless, censures me--almost denounces me--for referring Religion to the region of Emotion. Surely he is inconsistent here. The foregoing words refer to an inward hue or temperature, rather than to an external object of thought. When I attempt to give the Power which I see manifested in the Universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun 'He' regarding it; I dare not call it a 'Mind;' I refuse to call it even a 'Cause.' Its mystery overshadows me; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which some of my neighbours try to make it fit, seem to me to distort and desecrate it.

It is otherwise with Mr. Martineau, and hence his discontent. He professes to know where I only claim to feel. He could make his contention good against me if, by a process of verification, he would transform his assumptions into 'objective knowledge.' But he makes no attempt to do so. They remain assumptions from the beginning of his Address to its end. And yet he frequently uses the word 'unverified,' as if it were fatal to the position oh which its incidence falls. 'The scrutiny of Nature' is one of his sources of 'religious faith:' what logical foothold does that scrutiny furnish, on which any one of the foregoing three assumptions could be planted? Nature, according to his picturing, is base and cruel: what is the inference to be drawn regarding its Author? If Nature be 'red in tooth and claw,' who is responsible? On a Mindless nature Mr. Martineau pours the full torrent of his gorgeous invective; but could the 'assumption' of 'an Eternal Mind'--even of a Beneficent Eternal Mind--render the world objectively a whit less mean and ugly than it is? Not an iota. It is man's feelings, and not external phenomena, that are influenced by the assumption. It adds not a ray of light nor a strain of music to the objective sum of things. It does not touch the phenomena of physical nature--storm, flood, or fire--nor diminish by a pang the bloody combats of the animal world. But it does add the glow of religious emotion to the human soul, as represented by Mr. Martineau. Beyond this I defy him to go; and yet he rashly--it might be said petulantly--kicks away the only philosophic foundation on which it is possible for him to build his religion.

He twits incidentally the modern scientific interpretation of nature because of its want of cheerfulness. Let the new future,' he says, 'preach its own gospel, and devise, if it can, the means of making the tidings glad.' This is a common argument: 'If you only knew the comfort of belief!' My reply is that I choose the nobler part of Emerson, when, after various disenchantments, he exclaimed, 'I covet truth!' The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this. Besides, 'gladness' is an emotion, and Mr. Martineau theoretically scorns the emotional. I am not, however, acquainted with a writer who draws more largely upon this source, while mistaking it for something objective. 'To reach the Cause,' he says, 'there is no need to go into the past, as though being missed here, He could be found there. But when once He has been apprehended by the proper organs of divine apprehension, the whole life of Humanity is recognised as the scene of His agency.' That Mr. Martineau should have lived so long, thought so much, and failed to recognise the entirely subjective character of this creed, is highly instructive. His 'proper organs of divine apprehension '--given, we must assume, to Mr. Martineau and his pupils, but denied to many of the greatest intellects and noblest men in this and other ages--lie at the very core of his emotions.

In fact, it is when Mr. Martineau is most purely emotional that he scorns the emotions; it is when he is most purely subjective that he rejects subjectivity. He pays a just and liberal tribute to the character of John Stuart Mill. But in the light of Mill's philosophy, benevolence, honour, purity, having 'shrunk into mere unaccredited subjective susceptibilities, have lost all support from Omniscient approval, and all presumable accordance with the reality of things.' If Mr. Martineau had given them any inkling of the process by which he renders the 'subjective susceptibilities' objective, or how he arrives at an objective ground of 'Omniscient approval,' gratitude from his pupils would have been his just meed. But, as it is, he leaves them lost in an iridescent cloud of words, after exciting a desire which he is incompetent to appease.

'We are,' he says, in another place, 'for ever shaping our representations of invisible things into forms of definite opinion, and throwing them to the front, as if they were the photographic equivalent of our real faith. It is a delusion which affects us all. Yet somehow the essence of our religion never finds its way into these frames of theory: as we put them together it slips away, and, if we turn to pursue it, still retreats behind; ever ready to work with the will, to unbind and sweeten the affections, and bathe the life with reverence, but refusing to be seen, or to pass from a divine hue of thinking into a human pattern of thought.' This is very beautiful, and mainly so because the man who utters it obviously brings it all out of the treasury of his own heart. But the 'hue' and 'pattern' here so finely spoken of, the former refusing to pass into the latter, are neither more nor less than that 'emotion,' on the one hand, and that 'objective knowledge,' on the other, which have drawn this suicidal fire from Mr. Martineau's battery.

I now come to one of the most serious portions of Mr. Martineau's pamphlet--serious far less on account of its 'personal errors,' than of its intrinsic gravity, though its author has thought fit to give it a witty and sarcastic tone. He analyses and criticises 'the materialist doctrine, which, in our time, is proclaimed with so much pomp, and resisted with so much passion. "Matter is all I want," says the physicist; "give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe."' It is thought, even by Mr. Martineau's intimate friends, that in this pamphlet he is answering me. I must therefore ask the reader to contrast the foregoing travesty with what I really do say regarding atoms: 'I do not think that he [the materialist] is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and motions _explain_ everything. In reality, they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance.' [Footnote: Address on 'Scientific Materialism.'] This is very different from saying, 'Give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe.' Mr. Martineau continues his dialogue with the physicist: '"Good," he says; "take as many atoms as you please. See that they have all that is requisite to Body [a metaphysical B], being homogeneous extended solids." "That is not enough," his physicist replies; "it might do for Democritus and the mathematicians, but I must have something more. The atoms must not only be in motion, and of various shapes, but also of as many kinds as there are chemical elements; for how could I ever get water if I had only hydrogen elements to work with?" "So be it," Mr. Martineau consents to answer, "only this is a considerable enlargement of your specified datum [where, and by whom specified?]--in fact, a conversion of it into several; yet, even at the cost of its monism [put into it by Mr. Martineau], your scheme seems hardly to gain its end; for by what manipulation of your resources will you, for example, educe Consciousness?"'

This reads like pleasantry, but it deals with serious things. For the last seven years the question here proposed by Mr. Martineau, and my answer to it, have been accessible to all. The question, in my words, is briefly this: 'A man can say, "I feel, I think, I love," but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?' And here is my answer: 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 process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, 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 groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.' [Footnote: Bishop Butler's reply to the Lucretian in the 'Belfast Address' is all in the same strain.]

Compare this with the answer which Mr. Martineau puts into the mouth of his physicist, and with which I am generally credited by Mr. Martineau's readers, both in England and America--'"It [the problem of consciousness] does not daunt me at all. Of course you understand that all along my atoms have been affected by gravitation and polarity; and now I have only to insist with Fechner on a difference among molecules: there are the inorganic, which can change only their place, like the particles in an undulation; and there are the organic, which can change their order, as in a globule that turns itself inside out. With an adequate number of these our problem will be manageable." "Likely enough," we may say ["entirely unlikely," say I], "seeing how careful you are to provide for all emergencies; and if any hitch should occur in the next step, where you will have to pass from mere sentiency to thought and will, you can again look in upon your atoms, and fling among them a handful of Leibnitz's monads, to serve as souls in little, and be ready, in a latent form, with that Vorstellungs-faehigkeit which our picturesque interpreters of nature so much prize."'

'But surely,' continues Mr. Martineau, 'you must observe that this "matter" of yours alters its style with every change of service: starting as a beggar with scarce a rag of "property" to cover its bones, it turns up as a prince when large undertakings are wanted. "We must radically change our notions of matter," says Professor Tyndall; and then, he ventures to believe, it will answer all demands, carrying "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." If the measure of the required "change in our notions" had been specified, the proposition would have had a real meaning, and been susceptible of a test. It is easy travelling through the stages of such an hypothesis; you deposit at your bank a round sum ere you start, and, drawing on it piecemeal at every pause, complete your grand tour without a debt.'

The last paragraph of this argument is forcibly and ably stated. On it I am willing to try conclusions with Mr. Martineau. I may say, in passing, that I share his contempt for the picturesque interpretation of nature, if accuracy of vision be thereby impaired. But the term Vorstellungs-faehigkeit, as used by me, means the power of definite mental presentation, of attaching to words the corresponding objects of thought, and of seeing these in their proper relations, without the interior haze and soft penumbral borders which the theologian loves. To this mode of interpreting nature' I shall to the best of my ability now adhere.