Chapter 24

Even then, if we conceded that elementary "spiritual and moral truth" is not only congruous to man's faculties, but in some shape universally recognized and possessed, it might yet be contended, from the manner in which such truth is dependent for its power and vitality on the forms in which it comes in contact with the human spirit and stimulates it, that ample space is left for such a divine instrument as the Bible; and that it would be in perfect conformity with the laws of our nature, --in analogy with the known modes in which external aids give efficacy to such truth. At the same time, be pleased once more to remember, that I concede so much only for argument's sake; I contend that in the stricter sense, without some external aid,--and the Bible may be at least as effectual,--the religious faculty will not expand at all; and that, even where there are these indispensable external influences, the recognition of the truth is obscure or bright, as those influences vary in their degrees of appropriateness. Where they are rude and imperfect, (as amongst barbarous nations) we have the spectacle of a soul which struggles towards the light, like a plant to which but small portion of the sun's rays is admitted; it depends on the free admission of the light whether or not it shall arrive at its full development,--its beauty, its fragrance, and its color. The most that merely human culture can promise, even under the most favorable circumstances, (witness ancient Greece!) is that men, in some few favored instances, may possibly attain those truths which it may be admitted are congenital to the soul, and easily recognized when once propounded but which, in fact, few men, by nature's sole teaching, ever do clearly attain. It is infinitely important that the path, dimly explored by sages alone, should be thrown open to mankind. Is it not even possible, then, that this task should be performed by a book like the Bible? and if such a book were given, would it not be, I once more ask, in analogy with the fundamental laws of the soul's development,--its uniform dependence on external influences for any result, and the variable nature of that result, as the influence itself is more or less appropriate? To affirm that each man at once, by in internal illumination alone, attains a clear recognition of even elementary "moral and spiritual truth" is to ignore the laws according to which the soul's activity is developed, and to contradict universal experience, which tells us that the great majority of mankind are but in partial possession of this "spiritual and moral truth," and hold it for the most part in connection with the most prodigious and pernicious errors.

You will perceive that I have here chosen to argue the question of the possibility and utility of a "revelation" on your own grounds; but recollect what I have said, that, in fact, the principal reasons for a revelation would still remain in force, even if all you demand were conceded. It is a point which I do not find that Mr. Newman's dictum affects.

There may obviously be other facts and other truths as intimately connected with man's destinies and happiness as the elementary truths of religious and moral science; facts and truths which may be necessary to give efficacy to mere elementary principles, and to supply motives to the performance of moral precepts. And how ample in this respect are man's necessities, and how large the field for a "divine revelation," if we content ourselves with such a meagre theology as that of Mr. Parker and Mr. Newman, you see plainly enough in the questions asked by Harrington! How many of Mr. Newman's and Mr. Parker's assumptions--the moment they step beyond such "spiritual and moral truth" as is "elementary" indeed--does Harrington declare that he finds unverified by his own consciousness, and needing, if true, an authority to confirm them far more weighty than theirs! As to the terms of access to the Supreme Being,--his aspects towards man,--man's duties towards him,--the future destinies, even the future existence, of the soul (a point on which these writers are themselves divided),--the boasted "progress" of the race, which they "prophesy," indeed, but without any credentials of their mission,--you see how on all these points Harrington maintains--and oh! how many, if the Bible be untrue, must maintain with him--that he is in total darkness!

III. But I must proceed to show yet further, if you will have patience with me, that, supposing a divine external revelation to be given, it is in striking analogy, not only with the primary laws of development of our whole intellectual and spiritual being, but with the fact-- undeniable, however unaccountable--that our subjection to external influence does, in truth, not only mould and modify, but usually determine, our intellectual and religious position. We see not only some external influence is necessary to awaken activity at all, but that it is actually so powerful and so inevitable from the manner in which man enters the world, and is brought up in it,--his long years of dependence, absolute dependence, on the education which is given him (and what an education it has ever been for the mass of the race!),--that it makes all the difference, intellectually and morally, between a New Zealand savage and an Englishman,--between the grossest idolater and the most enlightened Christian. This fact affects alike our intellectual and spiritual condition. The savage can use his senses better than the civilized; but the interval is trifling compared with that between the intellectual condition of a man can appreciate Milton and Newman, and that of our Teutonic ancestors. Its the sentiments of a nature there is the same wide gulf--or rather wider--between a Hottentot and a Paul. Yet the same "susceptibilities" and "potentialities" are in each human mind. The same remark applies to the sense of the beautiful and sublime; the characteristic faculties are in all mankind; it is education which elicits them. Nay, would you not stare at a man who should affirm that education was not itself a species of "revelation," simply because the truths thus communicated were all "potentially" in the mind before? The fact is, that education is of coordinate importance with the very faculties without which it cannot be imparted.

Now we cannot break away from that law of development with which our individual existence is involved, and which necessarily (as far as any will of ours is concerned) is a most important, nay, the most important, element in that tertium quid which man becomes in virtue of the threefold elements which constitute him:--1st, a given internal constitution of mind; 2d. the modifying effects of the actual exercise of his faculties and their interaction with one another, resulting in habits; and, 3d, that external world of influences which supplies the materiel from which this strange plant extracts its aliment, and ultimately derives its fair fruits or its poisonous berries. All this is inevitable, upon the supposition that man was to be a social, not a solitary being,--linked by an indissoluble chain to those who came before and to those who come after him,--dependent, absolutely dependent, upon others for his being, his training, his whole condition, civil, social, intellectual, moral, and religious. If, then, an external instrument of moral and religious culture were Given by God to man, would it not be in strict analogy with this tremendous and mysterious law of human development?

IV. I must be permitted to proceed yet one step further, and affirm that the very form in which this presumed revelation has (as we say) been given--that of a Book--is also in strict analogy with the law by which God himself has made this an indispensable instrument of all human progress. We have just seen that man is what he is, as much (to say the least) by the influence of external influence as by the influence of the internal principles of his constitution; it must be added, that to make that external influence of much efficiency at all, still more to render it either universally or progressively beneficial, the world waits for a--BOOK. Among the varied external influences amidst which the human race is developed, this is incomparably the most important, and the only one that is absolutely essential. Upon it the collective education of the race depends. It is the sole instrument of registering, perpetuating, transmitting thought.

Yes, whatever trivial and vulgar associations may impair our due conceptions of this grandeur of this material and artificial organon of man's development, as compared with the intellectual and moral energies, which have recourse to it, but which are almost impotent without it. God has made man's whole career of triumphs dependent upon this same art of writing! The whole progress of the world he has created, he has made dependent upon the Alphabet! Without this the progress of the individual is inconceivably slow, and with him, for the most part, progress terminates. By this alone can we garner the fruits of experience,--become wise by the wisdom of others, and strong by their strength. Without this man everywhere remains, age after age, immovably a savage; and, if he were to lose it when he has once gained it, would, after a little ineffectual flutter by the aid of tradition, sink into barbarism again. Till this cardinal want is supplied, all considerable "progress" is impossible. It may look odd to say that the whole world is dependent on any thing so purely artificial; but, in point of fact, it is only another way of stating the truth that God has constituted the race a series of mutually dependent beings; and as each term of this series is perishable and evanescent, the development and improvement of the race must depend on an instrument by which an inter-connection can be maintained between its parts; till then, progress must not only be most precarious, but virtually impossible. To the truth of this all history testifies. I say, then, not only that, if God has given man a revelation at all, he has but acted in analogy with that law by which he has made man so absolutely dependent upon external culture, but that if he has given it in the very shape of a book, he has acted also in strict analogy with the very form in which he has imposed that law on the world. He has simply made use of that instrument, which, by the very constitution of our nature and of the world, he has made absolutely essential to the progress and advancement of humanity. May we not conclude from analogy, that if God has indeed thus constituted the world, and if he busies himself at all in the fortunes of miserable humanity, he has not disdained to take part in its education, by condescendingly using that very instrument which himself has made the condition of all human progress? I think, even if you hesitate to admit that God has given us a "book-revelation," you must admit it would be at least in manifest coincidence with the laws of human development and the "constitution and course of nature."

To conclude; I must say that Mr. Newman, in his account of the genesis of religion, does himself in effect admit (as Harrington has remarked) an "external revelation," though not in a book. For what else is that apparatus of external influences by which the several preparatory or auxiliary emotions are awakened, and the development of your "spiritual faculty" effected?--contact with the outward world,--with visible and material nature,--the instruction of the living voice! You acknowledge all this without derogation, as you imagine, to the sublime and divine functions of the indwelling "spiritual" power, why this rabid, this, I might almost say, puerile (if I ought not rather to say fanatical), hatred of the very notion of a "book-revelation"?

Let us confess that, if a revelation be possible at all, it cannot be more worthy of God to give one even from "within" than in such a shape as a "book"; since without a "BOOK" man remains an idolater, in spite of his fine "spiritual faculties," and a barbarian, in spite of his sublime intellect; in fact, not much better than the beasts, in spite of all those noble capacities which, although they are in him, are as it were hopelessly locked up till he has obtained this key to their treasures.

Nor do I think that the invectives of the modern spiritualists on this point are particularly becoming, when we reflect not only that they freely give mankind what Harrington declares to be to him, and I must say are equally to me, their "book-revelations," but in very deed, as he truly affirms, have given us nothing else. It has been much the same with all who have rejected historical Christianity, from Lord Herbert's time downwards.

I paused, and Fellowes mused. At last he said, "I cannot feel convinced that the 'absolute religion' is (as Mr. Parker says) essentially the same in all men, and internally revealed. The want exists in all, and there must, according to the arrangements of universal nature, be the supply; just as the eye is for the light, and the light is for the eye. As he says, 'we feel instinctively it must be so.'"

"Unhappily," said Harrington, "Mr. Parker says that many things must be which we find are not, and this among the number. At least I, for one, shall not grant that the sort of spiritual 'supply' which is to the Calmuck, or the savage 'besmeared with the blood of human sacrifices,' at all resembles that uniform light which is made for all people's eyes."

Fellowes seemed still perplexed with his old difficulty. "I cannot help thinking," he began again, "that the 'spiritual faculty' acts by immediate 'insight,' and has nothing to do with 'logical processes' or 'intellectual propositions,' or the sensational or the imaginative parts of our nature; that it 'gazes immediately upon spiritual truth.' Now in the argument you have constructed, you have expressly implied the contrary. You have said, you know, that, even if you granted men to be in possession of 'spiritual and moral truth,' there might still be large space for a divinely constructed book from the reflex operation of the intellect, the imagination, and so forth, upon the products of the spiritual faculty; both directly, and also indirectly, inasmuch as external influences modify or stimulate them."

"But," said I, "does not Mr. Newman himself, in the first part of his Treatise on the Soul, admit the reciprocal action of all these on the too plastic spiritual products; and as to 'logical and intellectual processes,' does he not continually employ them--for his system of opinions, though he will not allow them to be employed against it? And by what other means than through the intervention of your senses, by which you read his pages,--your imagination, by which you seize his illustrations,--your intellect, by which you comprehend his arguments, did he reclaim you, as you say he has done, from many of your ancient errors? How else, in the name of common sense, did he get access to your soul at all?"

"I cannot pretend to defend Mr. Newman's consistency," said he, "in his various statements on this subject. I acknowledge I am even puzzled to find out how he did convince me, upon his hypothesis."

"Are you sure," said I, laughing, "that he ever convinced you at all? However, all your perplexity seems to me to arise from supposing the spiritual powers of man to act in greater isolation from his other powers than is conceivable or even possible. Not apart from these, but in intimate conjunction with them, are the functions of the soul performed. The divorce between the 'spiritual faculties' and the intellect, which your favorite, Mr. Newman, has attempted to effect, is impossible. It is an attempt to sever phenomena which coexist in the unity of our own consciousness. I am bound in justice to admit, that there are others of our 'modern spiritualists' who condemn this attempt to separate what God hath joined so inseparably. Even Mr. Newman does practically contradict his own assertions; and outraged reason and intellect have avenged his wrongs upon them by deserting him when he has invoked them, and left him to express his paradoxes in endless perplexity and confusion. But this conversation is no bad preface to some observations on this important fallacy, (as I conceive,) which I have appended to the paper I have read, and, with your leave, I will finish with them." They assented, and I proceeded.

It is very common for philosophers, spiritual and otherwise, to be guilty of two opposite errors, both exposed in the first book of the Novum Organum. One is, that of supposing the phenomena which they have to analyze more simple, more capable of being reduced to some one principle, than is really the case; the other, that of introducing a cumbrous complexity of operations unknown to nature. It is unnecessary here to adduce examples of the last; quite as frequently, at least, man apt to be guilty of the first. He imagines that complex and generally deeply convoluted phenomena he is called to investigate are capable of being more summarily analyzed than they can be. The ends to be answered in nature by the same set of instruments are in many cases so various, and in some respects so limit and traverse one another, that though the same multiplicity of ends is attained more completely, and in higher aggregate perfection, than by any device which man's ingenuity could substitute for them, yet those instruments are necessarily very complex at the best. Look, for example, at the system of organs by which, variously employed, we utter the infinite variety of articulate sounds, perform the most necessary of all vital functions (that of respiration), masticate solid food, and swallow fluids. The miracle is, that any one set of organs in any conceivable juxtaposition should suffice to discharge with such amazing facility and rapidity these different and rapidly alternated functions; yet I suppose few who have studied anatomy will deny, that, though relatively to the variety of purposes it has to perform the apparatus is very simple, it is absolutely very complex; and that its parts play into one another with great facility indeed, but with endless intricacy.

To apply these observations to my special object. To one who attentively studies man's immaterial anatomy, much the same complexity is, I think, apparent; the philosopher is too apt to assume it to be much more simple than it is. It is the very error, as I conceive, into which some of you modern "spiritualists" fall when considering the phenomena of our religious nature. You do not sufficiently regard man as a complicated unity; you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities of his nature,--the different parts of it, sensational, emotional, intellectual, moral, spiritual,--as set off from one another by a sharper boundary line than nature acknowledges. They all work for immediate ends, indeed; but they all also work for, with, and upon each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in one indivisible mind, or rather constitute it, they form one most intricate machine: and it can rarely happen that the particular phenomena of our interior nature we happen to be investigating do not involve many others. Throughout his book on the "Soul," we find Mr. Newman employing expressions (though I admit there are others which contradict them) which imply that the phenomena of religion, of what he calls "spiritual insight," may be viewed in clearer distinction from those of the intellect, than, as I conceive, they ever can be; and that a much clearer separation can be effected between them than nature has made possible. To hear him sometimes speak, one would imagine that the logical, the moral, and the spiritual are held together by no vital bond of connection; nay, from some expressions, one would think that the "logical" faculty had nothing to do with religion, if it is not to be supposed rather to stand in the way of it; that the "intellect" and the "spiritual faculty" may each retire to its "vacant interlunar cave," and never trouble its head about what the other is doing. Thus he says in one place, "All the grounds of Belief proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with Faith at all." (Soul, p. 223.) In another, "The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul." (ibid. p. 245) "How, then, can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led?" (ibid. p. 245.) And accordingly you see he everywhere affirms that we ought not to have any better or worse opinion of any man for his "intellectual creed"; and that "religious progress" cannot be "anticipated" till intellectual "creeds are destroyed." (Phases, p. 222.)

Here one would imagine that the intellectual, moral, and spiritual had even less to do with the production of each other's results than matter and mind reciprocally have with theirs. These last, we see, in a thousand cases act and react upon one another; and modify each other's peculiar products and operations in a most important manner. How much more reasonably may we infer that the elementary faculties of the same indivisible mind will not discharge their functions without important reciprocal action; that in no case can we have the process pure and simple as the result of the operation of a single faculty!

If it were not so, I see not how we are to perform any of the functions of a spiritual nature, even as defined by you and your favorite writers; unless, indeed, you would equip the soul with an entire Sunday suit of separate capacities of reasoning, remembering, imagining, hoping, rejoicing, and so on, to be expressly used by the "soul" alone when engaged in her spiritual functions; quite different from that old, threadbare, much-worn suit of faculties, having similar functions indeed, but exercised on other objects.