Chapter 26

"Very consistent, I think; for you doubtless perceive that if we say they can obtain a reasonable ground of assurance of the facts of remote history,--so that, if any thing did or does depend on their believing it, they are truly in possession of a warrant for acting on that belief,--I say you then see whither our argument, Mr. Newman's and yours and mine, is going; it vanishes,--oichetai, as Socrates would say. If, for example, men can attain reasonable certainty in relation to Alfred and Cromwell, alas! they may do the like in reference to Christ; and many persons will say much more easily. Now, with my too habitual scepticism, I confess to a feeling of difficulty here. You know there are thousands and tens of thousands amongst us, who, if you asked respecting the history of Alfred the Great or Oliver Cromwell, would glibly repeat to you all the principal facts of the story,--as they suppose; and if you ask them whether they have ever investigated critically the sources whence they had obtained their knowledge, they will say, No; but that they have read the things in Hume's History; or, perhaps, (save the mark!) in Goldsmith's Abridgment! But they are profoundly ignorant of even the names of the principal authorities, and have never investigated one of the many doubtful points which have perplexed historians; nay, as to most of them, are not even aware that they exist. Yet nothing can be more certain, than that their supposed knowledge would embrace by far the most important conclusions at which the most accurate historians have arrived. It would be principally in a supposed juster comprehension of minor points--of details--that the latter would have an advantage over them; compensated, however, by a 'plentiful assortment' of doubts on other points, from which these simple souls are free; doubts which are the direct result of more extensive investigation, but which can scarcely be thought additions to our knowledge;--they are rather additions to our ignorance. The impressions of the mass of readers on all the main facts of the two memorable periods respectively would be the same as those of more accurate critics. Now what I want to know is, whether you would admit that these superficial inquirers--the bulk of your decent countrymen, recollect--can be said to have an intelligent belief in any such history; whether you think them justified in saying that they are certain of the substantial accuracy of their impressions, and that they may laugh in your face (which they assuredly would do) if you told them that it is possible that Alfred may have existed, and been a wise and patriotic prince; and that probably Oliver Cromwell was Protector of England, and died in 1658; but that really they know nothing about the matter."

"Of course they would affirm that they are as assured of the substantial accuracy of their impressions as of their own existence," replied Fellowes.

"But what answer do you think they ought to give, my friend? Do you think that they can affirm a reasonable ground of belief in these things?"

"I confess I think they can."

"Ah! then I fear you are grossly inconsistent with Mr. Newman's principles, and must so far distrust his argument against historic religion. If you think that this ready assent to remote historic events may pass for a reasonable conviction and an intelligent belief, I cannot see why it should be more difficult to attain a similar confidence in the general results of a religious history; and in that case it may also become men's duty to act upon that belief. On the other hand, if it be not possible to obtain this degree of satisfaction in the latter case, neither for similar reasons will it be in the former. If you hold Mr. Newman's principles consistently, seeing that neither in the one case nor the other can the bulk of mankind attain that sort of critical knowledge which he supposes necessary to certainty, you ought to deny that any common man has any business to say that he believes that he is certain of the main facts in the history either of Alfred or Cromwell."

"You do not surely mean to compare the importance of a belief in the one case with the importance of a belief in the other?" rejoined Fellowes.

"I do not; and can as little disguise from myself that such a question has nothing to do with the matter. The duty in the one case depends entirely on the question whether such a conviction of the accuracy of the main facts and more memorable events, as may pass for moral certainty, and justify its language and acts, be possible or not. If, from a want of capacity and opportunity for a thorough investigation of all the conditions of the problem, it be not in the one case, neither will it be in the other. If this be a fallacy, be pleased to prove it such,--I shall not be sorry to have it so proved. But at present you seem to me grossly inconsistent in this matter. I have also my doubts (to speak frankly) whether we must not apply Mr. Newman's principle (to the great relief of mankind) in other most momentous questions, in which the notion of duty cannot be excluded, but enters as an essential element. I cannot help fancying, that, if his principle be true, mankind ought to be much obliged to him; for he has exempted them from the necessity of acting in all the most important affairs of life. For example, you are, I know, a great political philanthropist; you plead for the duty of enlightening the masses of the people on political questions, --of making them intelligently acquainted with the main points of political and economical science. You do not despair of all this?"

"I certainly do not," said Fellowes.

"A most hopeless task," said Harrington, "on Mr. Newman's principle. The questions on which you seek to enlighten them are, many of them, of the most intricate and difficult character,--are, all of them, dependent on principles, and involve controversies, with which the great bulk of mankind are no more competent to deal than with Newton's 'Principia.' An easy, and often erroneous assent, on ill-comprehended data, is all that you can expect of the mass; and how can it be their duty, when it may often be their ruin, to act upon this? A superficial knowledge is all that you can give them; thorough investigation is out of the question. Most men, I fear, will continue to believe it at least as possible for the common people to form a judgment on the validity of Paley's 'Evidences,' as on the reasonings of Smith's 'Political Economy.' They will say, if the common people can be sufficiently sure of their conclusions in the latter case to take action upon them,--that is, to render action a duty,--the like is possible in the former. Should you not hold by your principle, and say, that, as from the difficulty of the investigation it is not possible for the bulk of mankind to attain such a degree of certainty as to make belief in an 'historical religion' a duty, so neither, for the like reason, can it be their duty to come to any definite conclusion, or to take any definite action, in relation to the equally difficult questions of politics, legislation, political economy, and a variety of other sciences? I will take another case. I believe you will not deny that you are profoundly ignorant of medicine, nor that, though the most necessary, it is at the same time the most difficult and uncertain of all the sciences. You know that the great bulk of mankind are as ignorant as yourself; nay, some affirm that physicians themselves are about as ignorant as their patients; it is certain that, in reference to many classes of disease, doctors take the most opposite views of the appropriate treatment, and even treat disease in general on principles diametrically opposed! A more miserable condition for an unhappy patient can hardly be imagined.

"Though our own life, or that of our dearest friend in the world, hangs in the balance, it is impossible for us to tell whether the art of the doctor will save or kill. I doubt, therefore, whether you ought not to conclude, from the principle on which we have already said so much, that God cannot have made it a poor wretch's duty to take any step whatever; nay, since even the medical man himself often confesses that he does not know whether the remedies he uses will do harm or good, it may be a question whether he himself ought not to relinquish his profession, at least if it be a duty in man to act only in cases in which he can form something better than conjectures."

"Well," said Fellowes, laughing; "and some even in the profession itself say, that perhaps it might not be amiss if the patient never called in such equivocal aid, and allowed himself to die, not secundum artem, but secundum naturam."

"And yet I fancy that, in the sudden illness of a wife or child, you would send to the first medical man in your street, or the next, though you might be ignorant of his name, and he might be almost as ignorant of his profession; at least, that is what the generality of mankind would do."

"They certainly would."

"But yet, upon your principles, how can it be their duty to act on such slender probabilities, or, rather, mere conjectures, in cases so infinitely important?"

"I know not how that may be, but it is assuredly necessary."

"Well, then, shall we say it is only necessary, but not a duty? But then, if in a case of such importance God has made it thus necessary for man to act in such ignorance, people will say he may possibly have left them in something less than absolute certainty in the matter of an 'historical religion.'--Ah! it is impossible to unravel these difficulties. I only know, that, if the principle be true, then as men in general cannot form any reasonable judgment, not only on the principles of medical science, but even on the knowledge and skill of any particular professor of it, (by their ludicrous mis-estimate of which they are daily duped both of money and life to an enormous extent,) it cannot be their duty to take any steps in this matter at all. The fair application, therefore, of the principle in question would, as I say, save mankind a great deal of trouble;--but, alas! it involves us philosophers in a great deal."

"I cannot help thinking," said Fellowes, "that you have caricatured the principle." And he appealed to me.

"However ludicrous the results," said I, "of Harrington's argument, I do not think that his representation, if the principle is to be fairly carried out, is any caricature at all. The absurdity, if anywhere, is in the principle aimed; viz. that God cannot have constituted it man's duty to act, in cases of very imperfect knowledge, and yet we see that he has perpetually compelled him to do so; nay, often in a condition next door to stark ignorance. To vindicate the wisdom of such a constitution may be impossible; but the fact cannot be denied. The Christian admits the difficulty alike in relation to religion and to the affairs of this world. He believes, with Butler, that 'probability is the guide of life';--that man may have sufficient evidence, in a thousand cases,--varying, however, in different individuals,--to warrant his action, and a reasonable confidence in the results, though that evidence is very far removed from certitude;--that similarly the mass of men are justified in saying that they know a thousand facts of history to be true, though they never had the opportunity, or capacitor, of thoroughly investigating them, and that the great facts of science are true, though they may know no more of science than of the geology of the moon;--that the statesman, the lawyer, and the physician are justified in acting, where they yet are compelled to acknowledge that they act only on most unsatisfactory calculations of probabilities, and amidst a thousand doubts and difficulties;--that you, Mr. Fellowes, are justified in endeavoring to enlighten the common people on many important subjects connected with political and social science, in which it is yet quite certain that not one in a hundred thousand can ever go to the bottom of them; of which very few can do more than attain a rough and crude notion, and in which the bulk must act solely because they are persuaded that other men know more about the matters in question than themselves;--all which, say we Christians, is true in relation to the Christian religion, the evidence for which is plainer, after all, than that on which man in ten thousand cases is necessitated to hazard his fortune or his life. If you follow out Mr. Newman's principle, I think you must with Harrington liberate mankind from the necessity of acting altogether in all the most important relations of human life. If it be thought not only hard that men should be called perpetually to act on defective, grossly defective evidence, but still harder that they should possess varying degrees even of that evidence, it may be said that the difference perhaps is rather apparent than real. Those whom we call profoundly versed in the more difficult matters which depend on moral evidence, are virtually in the same condition as their humbler neighbors; they are profound only by comparison with the superficiality of these last. Where men must act, the decisive facts, as was said in relation to history, may be pretty equally grasped by all; and as for the rest, the enlargement of the circle of a man's knowledge is, in a still greater proportion, the enlargement of the circle of his ignorance; for the circumscribing periphery lies in darkness. Doubts, in proportion to the advance of knowledge, spring up where they were before unknown; and though the previous ignorance of these was not knowledge, the knowledge of them (as Harrington has said) is little better than an increase of our ignorance."

"If, as you suppose, it cannot be our duty to act in reference to any 'historical religion' because a satisfactory investigation is impossible to the mass of mankind, the argument may be retorted on your own theory. You assert, indeed, that in relation to religion we have an internal 'spiritual faculty' which evades this difficulty; yet men persist in saying, in spite of you, that it is doubtful,--1st, whether they have any such; 2d, whether, if there be one, it be not so debauched and sophisticated by other faculties, that they can no longer trust it implicitly; 3d, what is the amount of its genuine utterances; 4th, what that of its aberrations; 5th, whether it is not so dependent on development, education, and association, as to leave room enough for an auxiliary external revelation;--on all which questions the generality of mankind are just as incapable of deciding, as about any historical question whatever."

Here Fellowes was called out of the room. Harrington, who had been glancing at the newspaper, exclaimed,--"Talk about the conditions on which man is left to act indeed! Only think of his gross ignorance and folly being left a prey to such quack advertisements as half fill this column. Here empirics every day almost invite men to be immortal for the small charge of half a crown. Here is a panacea for nearly every disease under heaven in the shape of some divine elixir, and, what is more, we know that thousands are gulled by it. How satisfactory is that condition of the human intellect in which quack promises can be proffered with any plausible chance of success!"

I told him I thought the science of medicine would yield an argument against religious sceptics which they would find it very difficult to reply to.

"How so?"

"Ah! it is well masked; but I know you too well to allow me to doubt that you suspect what I am referring to."

"Upon my word, I am all in the dark."

"Is there not," said I, "a close analogy between the condition of men in reference to the health of their bodies and the science by which they hope to conserve or restore it, and the health of their souls and the science by which they hope to conserve or restore that? Has not God placed them in precisely the same difficulty and perplexity in both cases,--nay, as I think, in greater in relation to medicine,--and yet is not man most willing and eager to apply to its most problematic aid, imparted even by the most ignorant practitioners, rather than be without it altogether? The possession which man holds most valuable in this world, and most men, alas! more valuable than aught in any other world,--LIFE itself,--is at stake; it is subjected to a science, or rather an art, proverbially difficult in theory and uncertain in practice, about which there have been ten thousand varieties of opinion, --whimsically corresponding to the diversity of sect, creed, and priesthood, on which sceptics like you lay so much stress; in which even the wisest and most cautious practitioners confess that their art is at best only a species of guessing; while the patient can no more judge of the remedies he consents, with so much faith, to swallow on the knowledge of him who prescribes them, than he can of the perturbations of Jupiter's satellites. Yet the moment he is sick, away he goes to this dubious oracle, and trusts it with a most instructive faith and docility, as if it were infallible. All his doubts are mastered in an instant. I strongly suspect yours would be. Ought you not in consistency to refuse to act at all in such deplorable deficiency of evidence?"

"Well," said he, "consistent or inconsistent, it must be admitted that the parallel is very complete,--and amusing." And he then went on, as he was apt to do, when an analogy struck his fancy. "Let me see,--yes, our unlucky race is condemned to put its most valued possession on the hazard of a wise choice, without any of the essential qualifications for wisely making it; a man cannot at all tell whether his particular priest in medicine understands and can skilfully apply even his own theory. Yes," he went on, "and I think (as you say) we might find, not only in the partisans of different systems of physic, the representatives of the various priesthoods, but in their too credulous--or shall we say, too faithful patients? --the representatives of all sects. There is, for example, the superstitious vulgar in medicine,--the gross worshipper of the Fetish, who believes in the efficacy of charm, and spell, and incantation, of mere ceremonial and opus operatum; then there is the polytheist, who will adore any thing in the shape of a drug, and who is continually quacking himself with some nostrum or other from morning to night; who not only takes his regular physician's prescriptions, but has his household gods of empirical remedies, to which he applies with equal devotion. Then there is the Romanist in medicine, who swears by the infallibility of some papal Abernethy, and the unfailing efficacy of some viaticum of a blue pill."

"And who," said I, "would represent our friend who has just left the room, and who has tried every thing?"

"Why," he replied, "I think he is in the condition of a little boy of whom I heard a little while ago, whose mother was a homoeopathist, and kept a little chest, from which she dispensed to her family and friends, perhaps as skilfully as the doctor himself could have done. The little fellow, going into her dressing-room, opened this box, and, thinking that he had fallen on a score of 'millions' (as children call them), swallowed up his mother's whole doctor's shop before he could be stopped. It was happy, said the doctor, when called in, that the little patient had swallowed so many, or he would have been infallibly killed. Or perhaps we may liken our friend to that humorous traveller, Mr. Stephens, who tells us, that, having been provided at Cairo, by a skilful physician there, with a number of remedies for some serious complaint to which he was subject, found, to his dismay, when suffering under a severe paroxysm in the fortress of Akaba, that he had lost the directions which told him in what order the medicines were to be taken. Whether pill, powder, or draught was to come first, he knew not: 'on which,' says he, 'in a fit of desperation, I placed them all in a row before me, and resolved to swallow them all serialim till I obtained relief.' George has equal faith."

"You have omitted," said I, "one character,--that of the sceptic, who believes in no medicine at all; who sturdily dies with his doubts unresolved, and unattended by any physician. But it must be confessed that he is a still rarer character than the sceptic in religion. Nature, my dear Harrington, everywhere decides against you."

"I acknowledge," he said, "that we are but a scanty flock in any department of life; but, upon my word, the parallel you have suggested is so striking, that I think I must in consistency, extend my scepticism to physic at least, and, if I am ill, refrain from availing myself of so uncertain an art, practised by such uncertain hands and which are to be selected by one who cannot even guess whether they are ignorant or skilful;--doctors, who may perhaps, as Voltaire said, put drugs of which they know nothing into bodies of which they know still less."

"Act upon that resolution, Harrington," said I, "and you will at least be consistent: but, depend upon it, nature will confute you."

"Why," said he, jestingly, "perhaps in the case of medicine, at all events, I might face the consequences of scepticism'. I remember reading, in some account of Madagascar, that the natives are absolutely without the healing art; 'and yet,' says the author, with grave surprise, 'it is not observed that the number of deaths is increased.' Perhaps, thought I, that is the cause of it."

"The statistics," I replied, "of more civilized countries amply refute you, and show you that, uncertain as is the evidence on which God has destined and compelled men to act in this, the most important affair of the present life, and absolute as is the faith they are summoned to exercise, neither is the study of the art (uncertain as it is in itself), nor the dependence of patients upon it (still more precarious as that is), unjustified on the whole by the result; and as to the abuses of downright quackery, a little prudence and common sense are required, and are sufficient to preserve men from them."

He mused, and, I thought, seemed struck by this analogy between man's temporal and spiritual condition I said no more, hoping that he would ponder it. ____

July 25. I had been so much interested in the discussion between Harrington and young Robinson on the fair application of the principle of Strauss to history in general, that I could not resist the temptation to tell the youth, in secret, that I thought the matter would admit of further discussion, and that he would do well to challenge Harrington plausibly to show that some undoubted modern event might, when it became remote history, be rendered dubious to posterity. He willingly acted on the hint the next morning. To some remark of his, Harrington replied thus:--

"Assuming with you, that Strauss has really cast suspicion on the historic character of the bulk of the transactions recorded in the New Testament, I must suspect that there is not an event in history, if at all remote, which, arguing exactly on the same principles, may not be made doubtful; and that is--"

"Why, now," replied the other, "do you think it possible that the events of the present year" (referring to the Papal Aggression), "which are making such a prodigious noise in England, will ever stand a chance of being similarly treated some centuries hence?"

"If they are ever treated at all," said Harrington; "but you must have observed that it is the tendency of man to make ridiculous miss-estimates of the importance of the transactions of his own age, and to imagine that posterity will have nothing to do but to recount them. He is much mistaken; they forget or care not a doit for nine tenths of what he does; and misrepresent the tenth," continued he, laughing.