Part 5

Pantheism has only one way in which to escape from the mystery of evil, and that is to deny all distinction between right and wrong, between moral good and moral evil. Of course there can be no such thing as sin for the pantheist, because all, according to his creed, is nature and development and necessity. Holiness is a matter of taste or sentiment. Conscience is an illusive development; what we regard as divine morality is but utilitarianism sentimentalized and exalted into sacred law under the influence of unenlightened impulse and antique superstition, a mere affair of the association of ideas which science will some day explain away. The ontology and ethics of Pantheism may be summed up in one sentence, "Whatever is, is; and there is neither right nor wrong, but all is fate and nature." Pantheism--I say Pantheism just as truly and completely as atheism, for the difference between the two, as we have seen, is but one of name and phrase, and both alike deny God and conscience--Pantheism thus does cruel violence to every better instinct of our nature, outrages all the demands of religion and government, whether human or divine, and makes itself the direst foe of human progress and well-being. Many pantheists, doubtless, have been and are virtuous, even noble, men; some, I am prepared to believe, may even, in a certain sense, be religious men. But the direct tendency of the pantheistic philosophy is confessedly what I have now stated. When moral and pure, its pure morality can be nothing more, at least in theory, than a refined utilitarianism. Only as such can any pantheist pretend to impose morality as law.

To sum up, may I not say that Pantheism, whether in its metaphysical or its moral aspect, is the dream of men who will not admit that there is in the universe anything beyond what their senses immediately reveal to them? Its philosophy was represented in the last century in its lower and more popular form by Condorcet; the basis of whose system was laid in the principle, "penser c'est sentir,"--thought is nothing more than sense or feeling; in its higher and more intellectual form it was represented by the sceptical sense-idealism of Hume. At the present day Bain and Mill have endeavoured to develop the principle of Condorcet in harmony with the higher and more subtle philosophy of Hume. The result appears to be a sort of nihilistic sense-idealism. Matter is probably nothing different from our mental ideas--so far Berkeley, no less than Hume, is followed; our ideas, however developed, are yet essentially only the combination and interfusion of our sensations and sense-associations; meantime there is no evidence of the real and substantial existence either of the world outside us, or of ourselves as true and separate selves or persons, or of God. Such at least would seem to be the metaphysics of the distinctively _English_ school of Pantheism, _i.e._, of Pantheism rendered into philosophic system by the English mind. The German Pantheism has _infected_ the _tendencies_ of English thought and criticism, but, notwithstanding the influence of Hegel at Oxford, has not been reproduced in any English system of egoistic Pantheism. In their aspects and results, in relation to theism and Christian faith, the German egoistic Pantheism and the English sense-idealistic Pantheism strictly coincide.

Such then is the highest philosophy to-day of those who, refusing to be called atheists, nevertheless reject all faith in God; of those who, rejecting Christian theism, claim to be positively neither more nor less than the men of science. Men of science though they be, their philosophy is the philosophy of nescience and the philosophy of despair. We need be under no apprehension that such a philosophy will ever be generally accepted. It is too strong, too sorrowful, too nauseous a composition to suit the common taste. It not only dissolves morality and its foundations, but it precludes all hope of immortality. The race indeed may be immortal and progressively great and glorious, although how even so much can be known is more than I can see; but the individual man by man, woman by woman, child by child, perishes each one for ever. Men and women with yearning, loving hearts, with tender and passionate affections, who have buried their dead out of their sight, and who could not endure to live if they were doomed to sorrow without hope, cannot but reject with loathing and horror such doctrines as these. Men of various culture, of manifold intellectual resources, who live in the midst of refined and accomplished society, and who are not suffering from the pang of immedicable anguish and irreparable bereavement, may possibly live so merely intellectual and speculative a life, may be so wholly absorbed in mere science, may have so far separated themselves from all that belongs to the heart's affections and the trembling religious sensibilities of human nature, as to adopt the philosophy of nihilism with hardy calmness, although I confess that it passes my power to understand or conceive this; such men may be content to follow their speculative conclusions into the "blackness of darkness" for ever, and may thus, if not less, be more than the common crowd of humanity. But such a philosophy will not content those who share the ordinary wants and sensibilities of our race. The working, sorrowing, loving, hoping men and women of this human race will no more be able to satisfy themselves with any atheistic or, if any should prefer so to call it, pantheistic philosophy, than they can "feast upon the east wind." They will cleave to that Christian truth and faith which has "brought life and immortality to light," and which, in "showing" to the craving heart of needy, sorrowing, sinful man "the Father" reconciled in Christ, has blessedly "sufficed" a longing world.

Indeed, it would seem that, when, it comes to the point, even distinguished leaders in the ranks of those against whose views I have been arguing, find it impossible to give up their faith, at least in immortality. Rénan is unquestionably one of the most distinguished leaders among those men of learning and culture who deny the existence of a creative will and Personal God. Yet Rénan cannot make up his mind that he has lost for ever his beloved sister; that she has passed into the night of nothingness into which he must soon follow her. In the dedication to her memory of his "Life of Jesus," he addresses an invocation to "the pure soul of his sister Henriette, who died at Byblos, Sept. 24th, 1861;" and appeals to her "to reveal to him, from the bosom of God in which she rests, those truths which are mightier than death, and take away the fear of death."

Rénan, then, after all, cannot give up his sister, nor, if it were only for her sake, his belief in immortality. And yet how utterly unscientific is such a belief, if science is to be defined and limited in accordance with the principles of the anti-theistic philosophy. Where can our men of mere sense-science find any physical basis of immortality? There is no hope, no instinct or faith, at once so indissolubly bound up with our nature, so necessary to the development of all that is best in man, and so utterly destitute of evidence and basis in merely natural science, as our assurance of immortality. If we are to retain our belief in immortality, we must maintain our faith in realities above and apart from sense, in realities which cannot be tested or investigated by any appliances of natural science. If immortality be true, Pantheism cannot be true.

What, then, have we found respecting the seductive and too fashionable illusion which has led astray so many minds, especially of speculative, restless, and daring intelligence, in the present age? We have found that Pantheism is essentially only atheism in disguise, and occupies a position in which it combines against itself the arguments which theists have to allege against atheism, and atheists against theism; that, while it dethrones the true God, it sets up in His place Development and Natural Selection as its divinities, clothing them with the attributes which it denies to deity; that its development hypothesis will not bear the test of science, of the natural science to which it professes to appeal; that the origin of protoplasm, the attributes of man, and the growth and transformation of germ-cells, alike refuse to accord with the hypothesis; that the very nature of science itself, as recognizing law and organization, is incompatible with any philosophy which denies theism; that the moral difficulties which rise up as a barrier against a denial of the Christian theism are no less insurmountable than the metaphysical and scientific difficulties; that morality, conscience, natural affection, immortal hope, every deepest, most tender and sacred, most blessed and humanising, instinct of our nature is violated by the denial of a personal and holy God and Judge; in a word, that our whole humanity revolts against it.

May I venture to hope that the views which I have now endeavoured to set forth may have some weight with young and inquiring spirits? No more terrible suffering can there be, than for an honest, loving, and virtuous nature to become involved in the meshes of pantheistic doubt and unbelief. We must make up our minds to bear with many profound and painful mysteries which are not to be solved by man; but may the good Spirit of God save us each and all from losing our childlike faith in His almighty, omnipresent, and absolutely good and holy government and providence!

POSITIVISM.

BY THE

REV. W. JACKSON, M.A., F.S.A.,

LATE FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD.

POSITIVISM.

Everybody in this room has, I suppose, heard of the "positive" sciences, or "Positivism" in some shape or other.

What does "Positivism" mean?

A system based on _positive_ facts. But what are facts? They are (says the Positivist) observed phenomena. As for metaphysical conceptions of all sorts, these are _negatives_ with nothing real, nothing positively true in them. Truth must be sought amongst observed phenomena.

It is worth our while to examine this last proposition. Take a "_phenomenon_." You have all observed colour,--what is it?

A physicist, if you ask him, will tell you of a modification in a ray of light variously produced--by refraction, for example--as when sunlight breaks a dark cloud into many-tinted beauty. But how if all the world of men and animals were blind?

The physiologist will step in and speak to you of the structure of the eye--the susceptibility of its retina for special impressions; there he says you may find colour.

Put both accounts together, and they appear as part-causes, each a factor helping to make up a result; which result physicist and physiologist would agree to call colour.

Yet again: Suppose the human and animal world were deprived of all consciousness, all which in the widest meaning we call mind--their eyes remaining like mirrors, telescopes, microscopes; perfect instruments, only every kind of intelligence, instinctive or rational, gone. Where would colour then be? The sun might play upon cloud or rain, the light of a rainbow be reflected in the eye. Were there but perceiving mind, the impression would exist. But we are supposing the impressible to be wanting; there is no sensation, no percipient; colour must remain unknown, for there is nothing capable of observing it.

Now this shows you, first, how important it is to emphasize the word _observed_ added to phenomenon. It shows you, secondly, _where_ the ultimate seat of every observation really lies; each observed phenomenon, each positive fact, is at last neither more nor less than a mental state. The evidence for each fact is the condition of your own mind, your consciousness as it is called. You may sift the thing witnessed, verify, examine, and cross-examine; but after all, your own consciousness is the first real evidence you have got.

It would seem, then, that the most positive of all sciences would be the science of mind; and the next most positive the sciences which enable us to draw conclusions from our positively existing mental states; the statements, we may call them, which our minds make to us. Yet, strange to say, the very first thing Positivism does is to dispense with a science of mind, as mind, altogether. Mr. Mill makes it a severe reproach against Comte, that he ignores both psychology and logic; recognizes no power in the mind, even of self-observation; accepts no theory even of the inductive process. Mr. Mill characterises Comte's want of mental science as "a grave aberration."[12] It is indeed so. This appears plainly enough in the example just adduced from our commonest sensation, the every-day phenomenon of colour. It was made up, you saw, of three factors, a physical antecedent, a condition of the sensitive apparatus, and a mind which received into its consciousness the impression instrumentally conveyed to it. This last, you will remember, was the _first_ fact to us. It is _the_ fact: the revelation of an outward world, its changes and its continuing presence, its rest and its constant motion. Without this fact of inward consciousness, nature would have possessed no more significance than pictures seen in the eyes of the newly dead.

Such being the case, it needs no argument to show the importance of making quite sure that our interpretation of nature is correct. If there be any unobserved illusion in our sensory instruments, or what must evidently be much worse, in our percipient mind, truth is at an end, and falsehood received in its stead. Hence the necessity of observing our own observations, subjecting our consciousness to scrutiny, and being acquainted with the criteria, not only of our perceptions, but of our judgments. It is this process of analysis and criticism which forms a large part of the method of verification,--a method the value of which did not escape the great Greek philosophers, though some recent writers seem to fancy it a modern discovery.

Inexperienced observers are often so little aware of the pre-eminent importance of this critical process, that I will detain you with an illustration of it for the benefit of my younger auditors. My example shall be taken from perception _par excellence_--our eyesight, _the_ sense pronounced surest both in poetry and prose. You will remember your Horace

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem, Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quæ Ipse sibi tradit spectator.

And almost everybody else has said the same, as witness the old proverb, "Seeing is believing." Now I will mention five instances in which people believe they see something, and do not see it; in other words, the objective antecedent is wanting, and the impression is produced partly by the sensory apparatus, partly by the mind itself. As I describe these instances one by one, let my hearers ask themselves, How does this illusion come about? Is it produced by our optic instrument or by our mental activity?

First, then, Take a lighted stick, and whirl it rapidly round and round. You believe you see a circle of sparks--in reality it is no more than a simple train, and on a like illusion the Catherine-wheel is constructed. Again, put yourself in the hands of an optically inclined friend, and let him operate upon you thus. He shall place a cardboard down the middle axis of your face, quite close against your nose--one side of his board, say the right, coloured a brilliant red, the left a vivid green. After an instant or two let him suddenly substitute another board, white on both sides. Do my young friends guess what will follow? Your right eye will see green, your left red--the reverse of what they saw before; yet neither will see correctly, for both eyes are looking at uncoloured surfaces.

Thirdly, Watch the full moon rising--how large and round she looks, resting as it were upon that eastern hill, and seen amidst the tops of its forest trees! How much larger and broader than when she hangs aloft in upper sky! Has every one here learned the true reason why? If not, look at her through a slit in a card, and her diameter will be the same. Fourthly, A schoolboy is crossing his bedroom in the deep dark night, anxiously hoping that his head may not come into collision with the bed-post. Though carefully and successfully avoiding it, he imagines of a sudden that the blow is imminent. Quick as thought he stops to save his head, and, behold, the room is as quickly filled with sparks or flames of fire. Another moment, and all becomes dark once more. I have heard many a schoolboy exclaim over this phenomenon, but never knew one who could explain it. Finally, did you ever, on opening your eyes in a morning, close them quickly again, and keep them shut, directing them as if to look straight forwards? Most persons of active nervous power, after a few trials--say a dozen, or a score--are surprised to see colours appear and flit before the sight. Some years ago, Germany's greatest poet tried, at the suggestion of her greatest physiologist, a series of experiments on these coloured images. He found that by an effort of will he could cause them to come and go, govern their movement, march, and succession. And this took place under no conditions of impaired sensation, nor any hallucination of a diseased mind. A thoroughly healthy will succeeded in impressing itself upon physical instruments, controlling their law, and creating at its own pleasure an unfailingly bright phantasmagoria.

Some here may, others may not, have apprehended the distinctions between our five cases. The first two are due to the sensory apparatus, its optical laws of continued impression and complementary colour. In the latter three, mind intervenes. The enlarged size of the moon occurs through rapid comparison, the fiery lights in a dark room through instinctive apprehension, both influences of mind on the sensory system. The fifth and most interesting of all is no bad example of interference between moral and material law. The will truly causative (you may remark) overrules the natural process of physical impression, alters it, and creates a designed effect. I wish I could induce my young friends to devise a number of experiments on similar mixed cases, and, having tried them, to dissect out their real laws. These sharpenings of the critical faculty are exceedingly useful--they cultivate clearness; and most people know that two-thirds among our mistakes in life are caused by confusion of thought.

Besides all other uses, such lessons teach at once the necessity, as we said before, of observing your own observations. And as, first, the real witness of every observation is our mind; every fact[168] which comes through our bodily senses being to us a mental impression, it seems but common sense to hear above all things what mind has to say for and about itself. Then, secondly, where would be the benefit derived from our observations, if we could not reason upon them, or could place no confidence in our own reasonings? Yet the art of reasoning is so purely a mental process, that it can be represented by symbols as abstract and free from material meaning as if they were bare algebraic signs. Thirdly, in the most accurate of sciences mind extends our knowledge far beyond the circle of observation, and gives us axiomatic assurance of its own accuracy. Who ever saw, or ever can see, all straight lines in all conceivable positions, yet who doubts that throughout the whole universe no two straight lines ever did inclose or can inclose a space? And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference to any of us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral nature, and what is the value of that evidence, and the laws deducible therefrom? How true it thus appears that "know thyself" lies at the root of all knowledge, and that the man who receives no witness from within can know nothing as he ought to know it!

Comte swept away all these and the like considerations by a neat little fiction of his own. We cannot observe ourselves observing, he said, we cannot observe ourselves reasoning. So, then, logic becomes a chimera, and psychology a word of contempt. Respecting this fallacy, Mr. Mill thinks the only wonder is that it should impose on any one. Clearly it imposed on Comte himself. But, "what organon," asks Mill, "for the study of our moral and intellectual functions does M. Comte offer in lieu of the direct mental observation which he repudiates? We are almost ashamed to say it is phrenology!" Mill regards this statement as a _reductio ad absurdum_, but the actual organon substituted is more absurd still. Comte's phrenology was not the phrenology of Gall or Spurzheim, but a funny small bantling of his own, a sort of "infant phenomenon," called into existence not without a Positive purpose. In plain words, mind was no longer to give evidence respecting itself. We must study its laws in brain. How any true correspondence of brain and mind could be known unless both were studied, does not appear. Comte overlooked the question in his anxiety to substitute for psychology and its laws a bodily function and _its_ laws. Yet his motive appears to have been excellent! He regarded this dwarfed superficial phrenology, Mr. Mill tells us, "as extricating the mental study of man from the metaphysical stage, and elevating it to the positive." The chief gist of which sentence, bewildering to the uninitiated, opens up the very core and centre of the Positive system--a subject for dissection of some considerable human interest.

Each science is brought into the positive stage when it is co-ordinated according to positive laws--"systematized," Comte would say. He has a perfect mania for systematization; system is with him almost an equivalent for truth. Of course, the real value of every system turns entirely on its co-ordinating method, or principle of formation; and Comte's, we see, was one of positive laws. The nature of these laws is, therefore, the essence and turning-point of the whole matter. I cannot impress upon you too strongly the paramount importance of keeping this truth steadily in view.

But if any one inquires exactly what these laws are, he asks, I fear, a puzzling question. Puzzling, for this reason that, say what one will--employ any words, however carefully selected--one may become liable to the charge of raising a false impression. Positivist _savans_ themselves do not use any uniform phraseology, and many phrases they do use are necessarily derived from philosophies most disedifying to Positive ears.

Examples showing what sort of law is really meant are therefore always welcome; and few could be more instructive than this way of making mind Positive. Comte did not falter in his purpose. Later on he explained the necessity (for his system, you understand) of bringing our intellectual and moral phenomena under the same law with other phenomena of animal life; and reduced them, not to brain action pure and simple, but to cerebral functions, controlled by the viscera and vegetative movements of our bodily existence.

Let us look at the meaning of all this. Soul used to be conceived of as different in _kind_ from body. The brain, the nervous system, the body, were its organs, allies, machines. Sometimes they, especially the instruments through which the soul more immediately works, exercised reaction on their sovereign employer; they impeded or suspended her functions, and troubled her serenity. But though they might cloud the manifestation, they could not destroy the essence of a living soul. What they did was temporal and transitory; but they shall pass away and be dissolved, while soul will endure for ever.