Leaders of religious thought in the nineteenth century: Newman, Martineau, Comte, Spencer, Browning, / Mellone, Sydney Herbert, 1869-

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IVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO 



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LEADERS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 



IN THE 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY 



" Plus 1'homme a su, plus il a pu ; mais aussi moins 
il a fait, moins il a su." BUFFON. 



LEADERS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 



IN THE 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY 



NEWMAN COMTE 

MARTINEAU SPENCER 
BROWNING 



BY 

SYDNEY HEKBEKT MELLONE 

M.A. LOND., D.Sc. EDIN. 

MINISTER OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF HOLYWOOD, 

COUNTY DOWN J 

EXAMINER IN MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS 



WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 

EDINBURGH AND LONDON 

MCMII 



All Kights reserved 



PREFACE. 



THE substance of this book was delivered 
as a course of lectures before an unsec- 
tarian theological institution, the Divinity 
School of Meadville, Pennsylvania. The 
subject of the course is the Source and 
Meaning of Belief in the Divine Being. 
This is always the great central problem 
of religious thought. In discussing the 
subject, the author preferred to arrive at 
his results by means of a comparison and 
estimate of some typical forms of religious 
thought. The reasons for selecting the 
five thinkers named on the title-page are 
suggested at the conclusion of the opening 
chapter ; and, it is hoped, those reasons 
will be found justified in the chapters which 
follow. 



VI PREFACE. 

These thinkers were not chosen simply 
in order to be examined in turn as a group 
whose various doctrines have no special 
connection among themselves ; although, if 
they had merely been set side by side in 
this way, they would still represent the 
most important tendencies of nineteenth- 
century thought on " the Problem of God." 
They were chosen in order to be carefully 
compared together, because, in the author's 
view, their principal and fundamental teach- 
ings, while differing widely, throw much 
light on each other and on the great 
problem already named. 

The author was led to his main position 
by perceiving the need of reconciling the 
two methods of Theism which are usually 
known as Rationalism and Mysticism. 
These types of thought have hitherto pro- 
ceeded in mutual independence ; they have 
been supposed to rest on opposite and even 
antipathetic moods of mind. They both 
contain important truths that cannot be 
dispensed with. The various forms of 
Rationalism have received full justice in 



PREFACE. Vll 

the century which has just ended ; while 
Mysticism has been generally " despised 
and rejected." There are, however, signs 
of a growing tendency to do justice to it. 
This is seen on the philosophical side, in 
the place which Experience holds in the 
argument of such works as Mr Bradley's 
Appearance and Reality, Professor Pringle- 
Pattison's Man's Place in the Cosmos, Pro- 
fessor Royce's Gifford Lectures, Professor 
Ormond's Foundations of Knowledge; and 
on the theological side, in the treatment 
of Mysticism in Mr Inge's Bampton Lec- 
tures, Professor Caldecott's Philosophy of 
Religion, and Mr Upton's Hibbert Lectures. 
In the present volume stress is laid on six 
connected points : the necessity of real ex- 
perience as the ground of all forms of belief; 
the necessity of a rational interpretation 
of experience before it can be the ground 
of any belief; the impossibility of separat- 
ing experience and reason, or relying on 
one to the exclusion of the other ; the 
necessity of recognising infinite variety in 
the forms both of experience and of ration- 



VI 11 PREFACE. 

ality among men ; the necessity of distin- 
guishing experience and its interpretation, 
because, though both vary, they may be, as 
it were, " independent variables " ; and above 
all, the value of Work, activity and energy 
of spirit, in moulding experience and so af- 
fording new data for knowledge. The prin- 
ciples here stated in such an abstract form 
are applied in the following chapters to the 
concrete subjects of religious belief. 

The discussion of abstract "metaphysical" 
difficulties is foreign to the author's object, 
and all philosophical questions brought for- 
ward are dealt with as simply as is con- 
sistent with accurate thought. 

The view taken of Browning's contribution 
to the problem has, perhaps, some slight 
claim to originality. The chapters dealing 
with Dr Martineau's doctrine have been 
revised and expanded since his death, 
which took place after the delivery of the 

course. 

S. H. MELLONE. 

HOLYWOOD, BELFAST, 
January 1902. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PACK 

I. LIGHT ON THE WAY ..... 1 

II. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN .... 46 

in. NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT ' . . 76 

IV. JAMES MARTINEAU ..... 106 

V. WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? . .146 

VI. FORMS OF AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM . 182 

VII. THE AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER . 219 

VIII. ROBERT BROWNING ..... 248 

SUMMARY . . 291 



INDEX OF NAMES ..... 299 



LEADERS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

IN THE 

NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

CHAPTEE I. 

LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

SUMMARY. 

OUR task is to compare the ways in which certain 
representative thinkers of the nineteenth century have 
set out to find the Seat of Authority in Religion ; and our 
object is to reach by this means a conception, as satisfy- 
ing as possible, of what is the true and permanent 
basis of religious belief. 

In order to carry through such an inquiry with any 
success, four main " rules of criticism " must be under- 
stood. The conflict between the old and the new in 
religious belief is really a Development, in which the 
old is changing its form. This development has of 
necessity a negative and a positive side; the spirit of 
the age is " unmaking to remake " (first rule), Con- 

A 



2 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

flict of opinion over religious and other similar questions 
arises from the nature of the case ; for, in such matters, 
language is not in a sufficiently advanced state to pro- 
vide a proper expression for thought (second rule) ; and 
usually our minds cannot fully grasp those thoughts and 
feelings which have been the real grounds of our con- 
clusions. The reason of this familiar fact is one which 
cuts deep ; much may be present and active in the mind, 
of which the mind itself is only vaguely aware (third 
rule). This is true for the mind of a community or an 
age, as well as for that of an individual. A historical 
illustration may be found in the " Age of the Kevolu- 
tion " ; a more significant one, in the " Transition from 
Paganism to Christianity." We must analyse this tran- 
sition, and briefly inquire into the intellectual and moral 
disintegration of the ancient world. 

Our fourth rule of criticism is this. The mutual strife 
among current beliefs is attended by many evils ; but it 
is one of the most important means by which truer be- 
liefs are suggested, developed out of the prevailing ones, 
and confirmed, especially in the case of ideas which, 
when compared, are seen to be opposite and equally one- 
sided. Hence we may see the importance of the negative 
and critical element in the development of Truth. 

We observe at the beginning of the century a gen- 
eral spiritual awakening and reaction against deistic and 
mechanical views. A special form which this reaction 
took was led by Newman. We begin, therefore, by con- 
trasting Newman and Martineau, as representing two 
theological standpoints in polar opposition. 

EGBERT Louis STEVENSON, in one of his 
suggestive parables, tells us of a certain 
man who rode forth into the world to find 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 3 

" the touchstone of the trial of truth," the 
stone in whose light " the seeming goes, 
and the being shows." Wherever he 
came to a place of habitation he would 
ask the men if they had heard of it. 
And in every place the men answered, 
" Not only have we heard of it, but we 
alone of all men possess the thing itself, 
and it hangs by the side of our chimney 
to this day." And then the man would be 
glad, and beg for a sight of it. Some- 
times it would be a piece of a mirror 
that showed the seeming of things ; and 
they said to him, " What more do you 
want ? There is no truth but the plain 
truth." And then he would say, " This 
can never be, for there should be more 
than the seeming." And sometimes it 
would be a piece of coal, which showed 
nothing; and then he would say, "This 
can never be, for at least there is the 
seeming." And sometimes it would be 
a touchstone indeed, beautiful in hue, the 
light dwelling in its sides ; and when he 
found this he would beg the thing, and 
the persons of that place would give it 



4 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

to him, for all men were very generous 
of that gift ; so that at last he had his 
wallet full of them. And when he halted 
by the side of the way he would take 
them out and try them ; but nothing 
ever came of it. Each one seemed ex- 
cellent by itself; yet when he put them 
together each one seemed to put out the 
shining of the others and make all their 
colours dull. But the desire of finding 
the one test of truth was so strong within 
him that for years he persevered in his 
search. At last he received a clear pebble 
that had no beauty and no colour. He 
looked upon it scornfully, and shook his 
head. " It will only be like the rest,' 
he said ; but he took it and rode away. 
Presently, alighting from his horse, he 
emptied forth his wallet by the wayside, 
and tried the new touchstone on the 
others. " Now in the light of each other 
all the touchstones lost their hue and fire, 
and withered like stars at morning ; but 
in the light of the pebble their beauty 
remained, only the pebble was the most 
bright. And the traveller smote upon his 



LIGHT Ott THE WAY. 5 

brow : How if it be the truth, he cried, that 
all are a little true ? And he took the 
pebble, and turned its light upon the 
heavens, and they deepened about him like 
the pit ; and he turned it on the hills, and 
the hills were cold and rugged, but life ran 
in their sides so that his own life bounded ; 
and he turned it on the dust, and he beheld 
the dust with joy and terror ; and he turned 
it on himself, and he knelt down and 
prayed." 

I have quoted this because it expresses 
in pictorial form one of the most important 
truths to be remembered by all who wish 
to guide and help the thoughts of their 
fellow-men to-day. What is the real mean- 
ing of the conflict between the "old" and 
the "new" thought? There is no end to 
the doubts and difficulties concerning reli- 
gion which this conflict occasions in the 
minds of those who allow themselves to 
think ; but the confusion has a meaning. 
Not, that faith is dying out ; but that faith 
is changing its form, and the old forms are 
being forsaken. We are tired of seeking 
the living among the dead, a living faith 



6 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

among the ruins of old creeds ; the Lord 
of Truth beckons us to follow Him into a 
grander world of larger and more satisfying 
knowledge. Yet, the seeker after truth 
may not turn away from all that men have 
thought about God and duty and eternal 
life, and treat it as a mere accumulation of 
" error " ; he has to take possession of these 
" errors," and find the good that was in 
them the truth that made them survive. 
Olive Schreiner, in her beautiful book called 
Dreams, represents the truth -seeker as one 
climbing a mountain with slow, toilsome 
steps ; but this is a false analogy. He has 
not to scale any height that takes him away 
from earth ; he has to take possession of 
this earth and enter into it. Stevenson's 
picture is far more true and real. The true 
touchstone is not a rival to the others ; it is 
that which makes the others reveal what 
light is in them. Is it a small thing to 
realise that every faith which is widely and 
devoutly believed, from generation to gen- 
eration, must have some degree of truth in 
it ? It cannot possess all the truth it may 
not possess even an important truth yet 



LIGHT OX THE WAY. 7 

it has a fragment, worth searching for and 
preserving. This is, of course, the reason 
why it is believed why men cling to it 
and even fight for it against what seems to 
be destroying it. And what we want is 
for old faiths to be recast into new forms, 
with their deeper meaning shining through 
more clearly ; the form changing, the old 
spirit remaining to grow more pure and 
high. 

This conclusion must be distinguished from 
that of mere " indifferentism." It does not 
mean that we may 

" Prolong and enjoy the gentle resting 
From further tracking and trying and testing." 

In his Christmas Eve Browning tells us of a 
disciple to whom it was granted to hold the 
hem of Christ's vesture and follow Him in a 
brief pilgrimage among the faiths of men. 
And to his surprise he learns that Christ has 
a share in every expression of human faith, 
even in the little whitewashed chapel with 
its narrow-minded, self-satisfied congregation 
of countryfolk and its shouting preacher, 
even amid the magnificent sensuous cere- 



8 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

monies of the mass at St Peter's in Rome, 
even in the lecture - room of the German 
university, whose professor is proving that 
the life of Christ is only a myth with a deep 
moral meaning. Not one of these is uri- 
visited by the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter. 
And so, in a few moments' reverie, the 
disciple falls into a mood of " mild in- 
differentism," since all faiths originally had 
one colour, and differ only as one Light 
refracted and broken up in various ways : 

"This tolerance is a genial mood ! 
One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, 
And sees, each side, the good effects of it, 
A value for religion's self, 
A carelessness about the sects of it. 
Let me enjoy my own conviction, 
Nor watch my neighbour's faith with fretful ness, 
Still spying there some dereliction 
Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness." 

But his enjoyment of this tolerant mood was 
brief : 

" I looked, and far there, ever fleeting 
Far, far away, the receding gesture, 
And the looming of the lessening vesture, 
Swept forward from my stupid hand, 
While I watched my foolish heart expand 
In a lazy glow of benevolence, 
O'er the varied modes of man's belief." 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 9 

" Genial tolerance," " mild indifferentism," 
the Spirit of Truth has no part in these. 
We needs must " track, and try, and test," 
only not by turning away from anything 
which the mind and heart of our race has 
produced. This is why the task of the 
sincere religious thinker is so hard. In all 
beliefs truth and error are closely inter- 
mingled. He will have to do his best to 
separate the truth from the error, so that 
the truth may shine as much as possible in 
freedom from the obstructing influence of its 
combination with the error. If he destroys, 
he must at the same time create, just as 
all real growth involves destruction and 
creation, or has a negative and a positive 
side. 

Related to the result which we have 
reached is a twofold principle which may be 
suggested by a passage from Browning, 
who gives perhaps its most forcible expres- 
sion. I refer to the Pope's famous soliloquy 
on the incapacity of Language : 

" Expect nor question nor reply 
At what we figure as God's judgment bar ! 
None of this vile way by the barren words 



10 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

Which, more than any deed, characterise 

Man as made subject to a curse. 

Why, can he tell you what a rose is like, 

Or how the birds fly, and not slip to false 

Though truth serve better? Man must tell his mate 

Of you, me, and himself, knowing he lies, 

Knowing his fellow knows the same will think 

' He lies, it is the method of a man ! ' 

Therefore these filthy rags of speech, this coil 

Of statement, comment, query, and response, 

Tatters all to contaminate for use, 

Have no renewing : He, the Truth, is, too, 

The Word. We men, in our degree, may know 

There, simply, instantaneously, as here 

After long time and amid many lies." 

Here we touch on one of Browning's 
favourite thoughts, expressed by him in 
many ways. In Sordello, it is said that 
" Perceptions whole reject so pure a work 
of thought as language " ; and Sordello, 
when he tries to express his infinite dreams 
and desires in words, finds language only a 
" makeshift," the " bravest of expedients." 
When the Pope would put into words his own 
deepest convictions, he finds that " speech 
babbles thus " ; and Rabbi Ben Ezra tells 
us of " fancies which break through language 
and escape, and yet help to make up what 
we are worth to God." We describe our 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 11 

feelings and ideas in words which cannot 

o 

convey them ; and we are obliged to accept 
the expressions and act upon them as if 
they were perfect, while we know that they 
are not. Hence the Pope's paradox : " He 
lies, it is the method of a man." 

All who have come in contact with writ- 
ten or oral discussions on religious, theo- 
logical, or philosophical matters, will have 
noticed one thing above all else : how some- 

o 

times confusion reigns supreme solely 
through verbal misunderstandings. When 
a number of persons are " exchanging ideas," 
as we say, on these difficult subjects, the 
most which may be hoped for not that it 
is a small thing is that the ideas shall be 
really " exchanged" : that each person shall 
learn to understand the others' point of 
view, receiving their real thoughts into his 
own mind, and that he shall get his own 
thoughts expressed in such a way that the 
others can receive them in return. The 
more unaccustomed we are to thinking and 
speaking about the subjects in question, the 
harder it is for us to arrive at this mutual 
understanding. The topics lie outside our 



12 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

common, everyday ways of thinking. The 
difficulty in discussing them has the twofold 
source that Browning speaks of : language 
can never mean quite the same for different 
minds ; and in certain cases it is impossible 
to get our real meaning properly expressed 
in language. Let us look at the first of 
these more carefully. 

It is possible for people to fancy that 
they are thinking about a thing, when in 
reality they are no more thinking about it 
than if they were asleep and dreaming of 
it. It is possible for people to fancy that 
they are exchanging thoughts, when in real- 
ity they are only comparing their mental 
pictures. These " mental images " - as 
the psychologists call them are really 
memories of things perceived by our senses, 
memories combined in new ways. The 
images formed by different minds may, of 
course, roughly resemble one another, and 
hence may be compared by means of lan- 
guage, when the words stand for mental 
pictures rather than for thoughts. This has 
been called " picture thinking." But in real 
thinking, the mind grasps not merely some 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 13 

kind of image or picture of a thing ; it 
grasps the relations between the parts 
which make up that picture its intellect- 
ual plan or scheme. So far as we are able 
to do this, we begin to understand the 
thing ; and it is possible for such thoughts 
to agree perfectly, to be identically the same, 
though in different minds. 

Picture -thinking and real thinking are 
always mingled together in our minds ; 
hence it is so hard for words to mean the 
same for us all, so long as we are only 
human beings. While their meanings form 
part of ordinary experience, they get rubbed 
round, so to speak, into being practically 
the same for all minds ; but where the facts 
which the words refer to are unfamiliar, the 
great difficulty is to get them to suggest 
the same thoughts to different people. 

We have seen that the fixed expression of 
thought in language may be inadequate to 
the thought itself; and it is also true that 
the thought may be inadequate to the reality 
which it endeavours to express. This prin- 
ciple has more far - reaching consequences 



14 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

than the former one. Some of its conse- 
quences are familiar enough. How often we 
find difficulty in expressing all that we want 
to express, all that we feel or realise within 
us ! But we must notice carefully what this 
extremely common experience implies. It 
implies that that which we desire to express 
is in our minds, but is there only in the 
form of a feeling or vague impression ; and 
this we cannot get translated into precise 
ideas. 

Consider what Cardinal Newman, in his 
Grammar of Assent, calls a " real belief." 
Any belief is a " real " belief, if its subject- 
matter comes home to a man, or has come 
home to him, by the way of actual experi- 
ence, of whatever kind the experience may 
be sense, imagination, emotion, or action. 
Such beliefs have the common quality of 
being intimately bound up with, or at least 
intimately affecting, the growth of character 
and personality. To be capable of this, our 
thoughts must have that stability which 
comes of their connection with our personal 
experience. A belief of this sort does not 
consist merely of intellectual statements, as a 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 15 

creed or confession of faith or statement of 
opinion does ; it is a principle of life rather 
than a declaration of the intellect it tends 
to grow into the man and become part of 
himself. In this sense, when a man's belief 
grows wider and deeper, it is because his 
whole nature, or some vital part of it, has 
grown. It often happens that those who 
hold a real belief of this kind most intensely, 
whose lives may be entirely moulded by it, 
are the very ones who are least able to ex- 
press it in an intellectual form in the form 
of definite assertions which can be clearly 
understood. Either they cannot express it 
in this way at all, or, if they do, their intel- 
lectual formulation of it may be insufficient 
or even wrong. Would it not be absurd to 
expect a child to set down the particulars of 
its belief in its father and mother, in the 
form of a number of propositions beginning 
with "I believe," like a creed ? Is the reason 
simply because the child is a child is not 
old enough or wise enough ? No ; for as 
regards all our deepest beliefs, the real roots 
of our personal character, we are in the same 
position ourselves our best expression of 



16 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

them will only be imperfect, as Sordello and 
the Pope, in Browning's poems, tell us. 

The reason of this apparent incapacity 
of Reason is simply that man's moral and 
spiritual affections may grow faster or go 
farther than his intelligence can go ; or they 
may contain a complexity of material greater 
than his intelligence can grasp. This is more 
especially the case when the feelings assume 
unfamiliar forms or give rise to unusual 
experiences, as in every religious or moral 
"awakening" : their true meaning is veiled, 
for the mass of mankind, until intelligence 
has developed sufficiently to overtake them. 

The distinction on which we have been 
dwelling is of supreme importance for under- 
standing the nature and growth of religious 
belief. It is the distinction between what is 
present in the mind in the form of a vague 
feeling or undefined experience, and what 
is also present to the mind in the form of 
thoughts which can be transmitted from 
one to another. To express it in a slightly 
different form, it is the distinction between 
what we feel or experience within us, and 
what we not only feel but also understand. 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 17 

In the one case the feeling is there but is 
not understood, or is only vaguely under- 
stood ; in the other case the feeling is still 
there, but thought has begun to grasp its 
meaning. Our capacity for knowledge and 
insight grows when we pass from the former 
state into the latter never an easy passage 
to take ; indeed, intelligence may destroy the 
feeling altogether in attempting to under- 
stand it, and thereby mutilate our nature. 
When the interpretation has acquired some 
degree of coherence, it can be " abstracted " 
from experience, and then becomes a general 
conception or theory. Such are general 
mathematical and physical propositions ; 
such are psychological, theological, and other 
doctrines, creeds, and statements of opin- 
ion. Assent given to these is called by New- 
man " notional" assent. We assent notion- 
ally when we accept the general meaning of 
a statement which we meet with, without 
making any particular application of it. The 
reader will form his own conclusion as to 
how much of the professed religion of modern 
civilised lands consists of " notional assents." 
Assents of this kind have little or no effect 

B 



18 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

upon character ; but, of course, notional as- 
sents may, and often do, gradually become 
real beliefs. 

This same distinction is required to appre- 
ciate the movements of the collective mind 
of a race or of an age. Particular moods 
of mind, and ways of looking at realities, 
prevail in particular nations or periods of 
time, just as they do in particular men ; so 
that it is not a mere fancy to talk of the 
Zeitgeist, the mind or spirit of an age. Thus 
we may speak of the spirit of the Middle Age 
in Europe, the spirit of the Reformation, 
the spirit of Modern Thought, the American 
spirit, and so forth. The Age has to grow 
to understand itself and its own deepest 
needs, just as each man has : otherwise, as 
history shows, the men of that Age can only 
grope on their way with painful steps, and 
may end by " stumbling and falling in dis- 
astrous night." There have been many stages 
of human progress when Lowell's fine words 
were true many ages besides this present 
one : 

" I hear the Soul of Man around me waking, 
Like a great sea, its frozen fetters breaking, 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 19 

.And flinging up to heaven its sunlight spray, 
Tossing huge continents in scornful play, 
And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder, 
That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder ; 
For high and still more high the murmurs swell 
Of inward strife for truth and liberty." 

But there is needed some one to read these 
storm -signals of the time, to "tell the age 
what all its signs have meant." The great 
desires and feelings rising out of the heart 
of nature require great thoughts to keep 
pace with them and read their meanings ; 
otherwise they can only work blindly and 
therefore disastrously. 

One of these great awakenings of the 
human spirit took place, with an outburst 
of new ideas, at the end of the last century 
the age of the Revolution. The young, 
forward-looking spirits of all lands hailed 
it as the clear dawn of a brighter day. 
It is not too much to say, with Renan 
" After having groped for many long years 
in the darkness of infancy, without con- 
sciousness of itself, the time came when 
Humanity, like the individual, took pos- 
session of itself, as it were, when it became 
aware of its own strength, when it felt 



20 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

itself to be a living unity." Humanity took 
its stand as a free moral being, responsible 
for itself. But why did this awakening 
have so many evil consequences ? Because 
the men who guided the new movements 
did not understand the feeling which caused 
them as they rose in the heart of the race ; 
their leaders could not read the meaning 
of this new consciousness of being a living 
unity. They were the political theorists 
of the age, the disciples in politics of 
Rousseau and Voltaire ; and the better 
thought of modern times has shown that 
the political theories of that day were beset 
with radical and fatal errors. Yet they 
led the way : as Kenan says, history shows 
us nothing analogous to the fact that we 
see at the end of the last century, " of 
theorists, men in no way concerned with 
actual politics, radically changing the whole 
of previously received ideas, and carrying 
a great revolution consciously and deliber- 
ately on the faith of their systems." It is 
a memorable historical example of a sound 
feeling guided and interpreted by faulty 
theories. Humanity still feels itself to be 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 21 

a living unity. Emerson says there are 
" accents of the Holy Ghost the heedless 
world hath never lost," and this is one. 
But we have better interpreters to tell us 
what this feeling means ; and it would be 
well if we had as many to tell us what 
Religion means, by the same process of 
interpreting man's nature. 

We must dwell on the supreme historical 
example of this law, that the discernment 
of truth depends on man's discovery of what 
he is and what he is fitted to be. 

The illustration is one which is very 
tempting to dwell upon, but also very 
difficult to deal with the state of things 
at the time when Christianity began to 
spread in the world. 

The belief of the earliest Christians 
throughout the Greek and Roman world 
must have been that living belief of which 
we have been speaking, which is an element 
in character and takes its place among 
the springs of action. Hence our thought 
may fail to grasp it ; and doubtless for this 
reason not many of the first Christians 
could have given any sufficient intellectual 



22 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

account of the power which their acquaint- 
ance with the life and teachings of Jesus 
gave them. We must remember that it 
was a real power, which many of them 
gained for the first time. This is true, 
notwithstanding the numbers of "perverts" 
who at the first sign of persecution hastened 
to sacrifice in the temples of the established 
religion. To be Christians, men had not 
merely to say this or that, or go through 
any routine of action or form of words, for 
creeds and ceremonies had scarcely begun 
to arise ; nor had they to exercise their 
reasoning faculties merely, for the great 
majority of the converts had no intellectual 
powers above the ordinary level, and were 
not drawn from the classes who were men- 
tally cultivated ; but in order to be Chris- 
tians and maintain their faith, they had to 
possess in a high degree that almost inde- 
finable quality which we call strength or 
force of character, and their hardships and 
sufferings served to call this forth. 

In order to understand why this simple 
doctrine came to them almost as a new 
life, let us try to realise the kind of world 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 23 

in which the first apostles of Christianity 
went forth. We shall best do this by 
contrasting it with the classical Greek 
world as it was at its best the Greece 
which we are thinking of when we speak 
of Greek architecture, sculpture, or litera- 
ture. " Greece " was not one, but many 
States, embracing a number of independent 
commonwealths. Now, in such a common- 
wealth, the majority of the "citizens" 
that is, of those who had civic rights could 
satisfy themselves by the place and function 
which they found in its affairs ; and they 
could find guidance for their lives in its 
laws and customs. And when all the 
citizens were able to meet together in a 
general congress to hear the affairs of the 
State discussed, " public life " meant much 
more for them than it can ever mean for 
us ; and the part which the citizen took 
in it gave free play to his best desires and 
needs. Instinctively he would act on the 
two characteristic Greek maxims which may 
be rendered "learn thine own powers" 
and " carry none to excess." The Greek 
delighted in the beauty and brightness and 



24 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

joy of this world ; he sought to make life 
a harmony of the soul and the body, each 
life being only one note in a wider harmony 
of many different lives. As long as the 
Greek spirit sought instinctively to express 
itself thus, the great problem of the duty 
and destiny of the individual man, or the 
" salvation of the soul," could hardly arise. 
Philosophy pondered its problems and sought 
to understand things, but this was just 
for the sake of understanding them, and 
not expressly " for all men's good," which 
Epicurus afterwards supposed to be the 
chief aim of philosophic thought. On the 
contrary, it was pure scientific speculation, 
dealing with such subjects as the basis 
of certainty, the laws of thought, the laws 
of Nature, the meaning of the world. Thus 
the spirit of the community expressed itself, 
practically, in making human life free and 
beautiful, and yet reasonable ; and theoreti- 
cally, in an intellectual interpretation of 
this life which was complete enough to 
prevent any serious discord between the 
speculations of the greatest thinkers and 
the general feeling of the time. 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 25 

Iii a few generations more, this harmony, 
both on its theoretical and practical sides, 
was destined to be utterly broken up, and all 
its elements scattered abroad like dust ; and 
the causes of this were partly external, 
partly internal. Turning our attention first 
to the latter, we notice that the free har- 
monious social life had in itself defects and 
limitations which prepared the way for its 
approaching fate. We observe that it was 
limited to the one community. The Greek 
could not conceive it as realised otherwise 
than in a small self-contained commonwealth 
like the one in which he lived. We observe 
also that even within the single State the 
highest life was attainable only by citizens 
who had leisure, and the means and oppor- 
tunity of self-cultivation. The multitude of 
slaves, menials, and dependents had no share 
in it at all ; and they formed the larger part 
of the population. Indeed, if we include 
these in our idea of the community, then 
such a State as Athens, for example, the 
most enlightened of Greek States, deserves 
to be called an " oligarchy " rather than a 
"republic." We observe, finally, that the 



26 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

Ideal itself, the Greek conception of the 
highest life as it was theoretically expressed 
by the philosophers, was defective. It was 
a combination of two ideals, an intellectual 
and a moral ; and there is a significant 
difference in the places assigned to them, 
which may be illustrated well by reference 
to the teaching of Aristotle. First is 
placed the Ideal of Truth or the rational 
comprehension of things, the Ideal of man's 
intellectual consciousness as such. This is 
made of supreme worth ; the life of ordinary 
virtue has value only as facilitating the 
development of Reason. 

In Professor William Wallace's words, the 
Divine Life for Aristotle is a " life of mental 
self-realisation, of philosophical truth-seeking 
and truth-seeing, ever successful, yet peren- 
nially interesting ; justice and virtue, holiness 
and mercy, have no meaning here." This 
intellectual Ideal is one which a man can 
pursue for himself alone ; it is " individual- 
istic " in the modern sense of the word. The 
moral Ideal, as we have seen, could hardly 
be thought of by the Greek as being other 
than social. Plato and Aristotle are as 



LIGHT OX THE WAY. 27 

emphatic as St Paul in teaching that we are 
members one of another, that man cannot 
live to himself alone. Yet the idea of 
applying this, outside the limits of the State, 
was far from their thought ; and within, it 
had little effect on the moral and religious 
imagination of the common people. 

Bearing in mind these defects in the 
Greek Ideal of life, we can see the meaning 
of the great political changes that were to 
come. The conquest of the small Greek 
States by the Macedonian kings broke up 
the exclusive feeling which each community 
had possessed before ; then, the conquest of 
the powerful Persian empire by the Mace- 
donian Alexander the Great brought Greece 
under one government with the East ; and, 
finally, the increasing conquests of the 
Roman power brought Greece and the 
East under one government with the West. 
The Greek city-states were dissipated, so to 
speak, as the rock -pools are by the rising 
tide. The bonds which had held the citizen 
to the small environment of his own common- 
wealth were cut through, and he was trans- 
planted into an environment indefinitely 



28 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

wide. The old willing, self -satisfy ing in- 
terest in public life could no longer exist. 
The new means of travel and intercourse 
between different lands broke up old asso- 
ciations and weakened patriotic ties. Man 
had somehow to make himself, not a citizen 
of a State whose territory covered a few 
square miles, but a citizen of the world. It 
could not be done. There was nothing to 
replace the lost feeling of brotherhood, of 
unity and mutual responsibility, which had 
prevailed among all who " counted for some- 
thing " in the life of the State ; while the 
condition of the populace remained as before, 
or grew worse. 

The most striking sign of the times was 
not the immorality and brutality which 
existed in parts of the Roman Empire, and 
of which we read so much ; for, terrible as 
this was, there were already forces at work 
tending to destroy it. What was most 
characteristic of the age was the breaking 
up of old bonds of connection which had held 
men together. Hence the deepest need of 
the age was a conception of the Divine 
Kingdom which would be of universal ap- 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 29 

plication, making it a kingdom in which 
each and all might have a portion. In other 
words, there was needed a theoretical and 
practical recognition of the individual man 
as such, which would at the same time allow 
him to express his will in free harmony with 
his fellow -men. What, then, was the in- 
tellectual development of the age, and how 
far did it understand this need ? Look first 
at its theoretical teaching. Plato had laid 
stress on the greatness of the difference 
between the ideal or divine world, where 
eternal Truth and Beauty dwell, and the 
world of things that we can touch and see ; 
and on the greatness of the difference be- 
tween the highest rational life and the life of 
emotion and passion. Aristotle, his suc- 
cessor, made the highest life one of pure 
intellectual activity. In the period which 
followed, this " intellectual is t " tendency 
grew stronger still. The highest or purely 
rational life became something divine, which 
was more and more removed from the natural 
life of this world, and at length was opposed 
to the world in its very nature ; so that men 
could not reach anything divine and holy, 



30 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

anything in which their spirits could rest, 
except by forsaking all the interests which 
make up this earthly life of ours. Similarly, 
on its practical side, the mind of the age 
made the isolation of individuals more sharply 
felt. Profoundly dissatisfied with the actual 
world, men tried in Stoicism and kindred 
systems to escape from it by withdrawing 
wholly into themselves : " Abstain and 
endure ; be not dependent for thy happi- 
ness on the accidents of the surrounding 
world be sufficient for thyself" ! This 
relentless resignation was only an expression 
of defeat. 

Thus, when men needed above all things 
to be brought nearer to one another and 
nearer to divine realities, the mind of the 
age emphasised their isolation and separ- 
ation in both respects. There was no 
great prophetic or scientific genius for three 
centuries after the death of Aristotle no 
one with insight enough to tell the age 
what all its restless distracted feeling meant. 
This is the supreme instance which history 
affords, of the human mind not only being 
ignorant of its own deepest needs, but con- 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 31 

ceiving them to be the opposite of what 
they really were. There is no need to dwell 
on the way in which primitive Christianity 
brought forth an idea of the Kingdom of 
Heaven which was equal to universalising 
the righteousness which Plato taught, mak- 
ing it a life in which all could share ; and 
the way in which it brought men nigh unto 
God by finding that the divinest life had 
verily been lived on this earth. 

The meaning of our principle must now 
surely be evident, whether it is applied to 
the single life or to the life of the age. 
Self-knowledge, in every direction of it, has 
and must have degrees of truth. It attains 
truth by rationalising or interpreting the 
facts of immediate experience, which are 
always real, but may be so tumultuous as 
to entail disastrous consequences, if the in- 
tellect is not sufficiently developed to be 
capable of giving them adequate form or 
expression. 

We have been dwelling on a little group 
of principles which endeavour to express 
the conditions on which the progressive 



32 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

growth of truth depends. The fourth and 
last of these now comes under our notice. 

Some observers have supposed that the 
ceaseless conflict and confusion among re- 
ligious and other beliefs proves that truth 
can never be attained by man. This is 
only to apply to all our spiritual life on its 
intellectual side, a mode of criticism which 
is constantly applied in particular cases : as 
when the defenders of the " orthodox " view 
of the Bible speak about the " discordant 
theories of the so-called Higher Critics." 
The assumption seems to be that if those 
who are investigating the truth in any 
branch of inquiry disagree in their methods 
or conclusions, they are proved to be pursu- 
ing an illusion. This assumption is not only 
false as a matter of fact and experience ; it 
is absurd, from the nature of our intelligence. 
The attainment of truth would be impossible 
without this mutual struggle. Of Truth, 
as of Goodness, we may say sub pondere 
crescit its growth is only possible through 
strife and opposition overcome. Let us con- 
sider this principle in its ethical aspect for 
a moment. The higher ethical teaching 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 33 

of to-day which is that of Christianity 
from the beginning shows that the victory 
of Goodness comes through its work in 
transforming evil : not annihilating the evil, 
but, as it were, rearranging the energy and 
turning it to good purposes, "unmaking to 
remake." What Christian thinkers have 
called Love is the root and vital principle 
of all the highest human goodness. And 
this living Love which is Divine, the Love 
which is ever bearing, believing, hoping, 
enduring, rejoicing not in iniquity but re- 
joicing in the truth the Love which not 
only can do this but must needs do it 
could never come to be but for the suffer- 
ings, sins, mistakes, and conflicts of life : 
while yet it is ever overcoming these and 
turning them to good. So, in matters of 
the intellect, Truth is in its own way a 
transforming power which can be realised 
only through the conflict of partial truths. 
This has been finely said by Professor 
Pfleiderer : 

To learn from History aright, we need an insight, 
penetrating through the confused play of outward events 
into the reality of men and things, into the deep 

C 



34 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

thoughts which are the controlling motives underlying 
even the apparent discord of individual passions ; we 
need an unprejudiced appreciation of the necessity even 
of the oppositions and conflicts, the errors and passions 
of men, because, as Hegel says, following Heracleitus, 
strife is the father of all things, and only through the 
strife of partial rights and one-sided truths can the whole 
truth of God struggle into existence ; we need an in- 
telligent reverence for the heroic figures in history, in 
whom is embodied the genius of nations or ages, 
who as instruments of a higher Power have roused the 
thought slumbering in the souls of all, have given it 
clear expression, and in mighty deeds have summoned it 
to life. 1 

The conflict of beliefs, then, is not between 
the true on one side and the false on the 
other, but between partial truths, each 
mingled with partial errors. The question 
is never, Which of these two opposite beliefs 
is right, and which wrong? but, What is 
the truth and error in each ? And to 
answer this question, we have to find a 
point of view above both the conflicting 
principles, from which to criticise them ; 
that is, we need a principle containing more 
truth than either of them. Were it not 
for this contradiction and opposition, the 
higher principle could never emerge even 

1 Development of Theology, p. 70. 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 35 

the mere need for it could never be felt. 
The attainment of truth is only possible 
because different human thinkers defend 
different and conflicting beliefs and theories 
so that here one thing is upheld, there 
the opposite. It counts for nothing that 
this or that individual man gives up the 
effort, and despairs of real knowledge, fall- 
ing back on Scepticism or Credulity ; human 
Reason is possessed of immortal energy, and 
attacks its problems again and ever again, 
with irresistible, undying confidence in it- 
self and in its power of attaining to real 
knowledge at last. 

There is a very significant form which the 
conflict among beliefs may take, and often 
has taken. We know how often it happens 
that in the history of human thought two 
extreme conclusions on some important ques- 
tion are formed and maintained in opposi- 
tion to one another. This is especially the 
case in questions of theology and philosophy, 
and political and social ethics. Now in such 
cases Aristotle gives a profound meaning to 
the old Greek maxim ft^Se^ ayav (" nothing 
in excess"), by teaching that what is re- 



36 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

quired is TO Siopie>, the rational discrimina- 
tion which enables us to find a middle way 
between the two extremes. I hasten to add 
an explanation, lest this should seem the 
merest barren commonplace. There are two 
ways of finding a mean between two ex- 
tremes. One of them is simply to take what 
the two extreme views have in common, and 
throw away all their differences. As a 
general rule, the differences are so extensive 
as between the extreme form of State- 
socialism and the extreme form of Individ- 
ualism that the only " mean " which we 
can get between them by this way amounts 
to nothing at all : we have only a barren 
" suspense of judgment." This is sometimes 
treated as if it were the special mark of 
profound thought and of a mind free from 
prejudice. I fear that in many cases it is 
only the mark of intellectual indolence or 
cowardice. But there is another method 
of finding a middle way, a middle way 
which does not contain less than either of 
the extremes, but more than either. This 
was the " mean " that Aristotle had in view ; 
and to reach it, it is essential that we should 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 37 

be reasonable or rational. This does not 
mean that we should always be arguing, 
endeavouring to pass from premises to con- 
clusions by discursive argument ; the most 
reasonable portion of the community does 
not consist of the people who are constantly 
engaged in reasoning. It is the best result 
of a genuine education a genuine training 
of the mind so to widen the mind on all 
its sides that it is capable of this kind of 
rational discrimination. It takes the whole 
man not merely the logical faculty to 
find the true mean between the extremes. 
To do this we must rise above them both, 
find the truth that there is in each, and 
include it in a higher truth. It is never 
easy to do this ; but whenever we can do it 
with two opposing doctrines or beliefs, we 
may be sure we have gone beyond them 
both to a deeper truth. The value of their 
conflict and their opposition is just to sug- 
gest the need for the deeper truth, and 
sometimes also to suggest the way to reach 
it. Hence sometimes the most instructive 
criticism of beliefs is simply to compare 
them. In the sequel we shall often have 



38 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

to contrast various views and attitudes of 
mind with one another, and the one will 
throw light on the other. 

If now we try to put into one question 
the essence of our modern demand upon 
religious thought the point which is the 
focus of all prevailing perplexities - - the 
question will be this : What or where is the 
depository of truth or certainty ? What 
can we definitely rely upon ? If we could 
reach this " Seat of Authority " and rest 
upon it, we should know where we are ; 
but as it is, the various religious bodies 
not only are ignorant of their real posi- 
tion, but are almost afraid to inquire into 
it. To some minds, perhaps, the outcome 
of the doctrines on which we have been 
dwelling that Truth always has degrees, 
is always growing from less to more in 
History, and at the best is stained by error 
- will seem far from satisfactory. They 
will appear to imply that everything must 
be left an open question. It is well to 
have a general trust in Reason ; but if 
everything is thus left an " indeterminate 
equation," the old question recurs, Where 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 39 

is the Seat of Authority ? Whatever form 
of belief we may accept, it would seem to 
be a blind bargain a leap in the dark. 

If by "leaving everything an open ques- 
tion" the objector means, "concluding that 
no one may go to work by the light of his 
own private reason and conscience, and draw 
up a catalogue of statements, theological, 
ethical, or philosophical, which shall be 
inviolable certainties," then truly we have 
left everything " open." Such " certainty," 
affirmative or negative, is intellectually 
absurd and ethically undesirable. We can 
reach only what is relatively the most true 
for us. Truth, like goodness, is a growing 
power in our race ; and neither of them can 
be pursued save by penetrating to the heart 
of what man has already accomplished in 
the accumulation of moral ideas and ideals, or 
of intellectual beliefs and systems. No one 
but a prophet introducing a new movement 
into the world has the right to seek them 
in any other way. Only one who tries to 
detach himself from the spiritual streams 
of tendency in humanity is trying to take 
a " leap in the dark." He seeks to set up 



40 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

reason and conscience, in the particular 
forms which they have taken in himself, 
as absolute judges and critics of the general 
spiritual life of humanity ; while in reality 
it is this progressive life of humanity which 
penetrates and partly creates his individual 
personality, with all its habits of thought 
and feeling. A great spiritual heritage has 
come down to us. We know that it is a 
growth of truth and error together : hence 
we need to develop its contents into forms 
which, when judged by the wider experience 
of to-day, contain more truth or express 
more reality ; and principles, such as those 
which we have been considering, are the 
natural furniture of reason for doing this. 
Our experience must be in every direction 
deep as well as wide, and our Reason power- 
ful enough to grasp its meaning, and 
sympathetic enough to reach the heart of 
what in the past was thought to be the mean- 
ing of experience and has come down to us 
as " true belief." Experience and its rational 
interpretation these two inseparable fac- 
tors, ever variable yet ever progressive 
constitute the basis of human knowledge. 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 41 

The beginning of the last century marked 
the dawn of a new era in social, political, 
and religious thought and life, one of the 
results of the great awakening which made 
the Age of the Revolution. Limiting our 
attention to England, we find that during 
the eighteenth century religious thought, 
among cultivated people, was ruled by the 
main ideas of Locke's Essay concerning 
Human Understanding. That is to say, 
thought was governed by a great respect 
for facts and realities ; the soundest kind 
of reasoning was that which began with 
facts ; and the most real fact, from which 
we cannot get away, with which we must 
always start and to which we must ever 
return, was that infinite machine which we 
call Nature, the world of things that can 
be seen and touched. Nature a machine 
that was the scientific motto of the time : 
a machine which somehow had been set 
going. Paley argued that we might reason 
from the universe to its divine Maker, just 
as we do from any other machine (a watch, 
for instance) to its human maker. Thus 
religious thought became a hard and dry 



42 LTGHT ON THE WAY. 

logical " supernaturalism." l The evidence 
of the senses was taken as the final test 
of truth ; and God was believed in as the 
cause of the physical world which our senses 
show us. His being was still further de- 
fined by appeal to " revelation " ; the re- 
velation was believed in because of the 
miracles and prophecies which were sup- 
posed to have accompanied it. We find 
the same reliance on the tangible facts of 
the senses in the moral sphere. Thus Paley 
explains Virtue as "doing good to man- 
kind, in obedience to the Will of God, 
and for the sake of everlasting happiness." 
Hope for heaven and fear of hell are the 
motives appealed to. Locke, again, had al- 
ready given the following account of " the 
true ground of morality " : it is " the will 
and law of a God who sees men in the dark, 
has in His hands rewards and punishments, 
and power to call to account the proudest 
offender." 

This general view of things is now called 

1 Of course such ideas have survived right down to our own 
day. But the point is, that they were maintained^by the 
leaders of thought in the eighteenth century ; and this is far 
from true of the nineteenth. 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 43 

Deism. We may contrast the deistic view 
of Nature with that idea which Words- 
worth and Carlyle to mention no others 
-have so often expressed, that Nature 
is no dead machine but the living gar- 
ment of God ; and we may contrast the 
deistic view of God with that faith which 
has been held by poets and thinkers of 
every age and nation, and has been power- 
fully uttered in Carlyle's outburst l against 
the idea of " An Architect who constructed 
the world, sitting as it were apart, and 
guiding it and seeing it go": "God is not 
only there, but here or nowhere, in that 
life-breath of thine, in that act and thought 
of thine : and thou wert well to look to 
it." These are voices of the reaction 
against Deism. The result of the deistic 
tendency was, that by the end of the 
century, religious life in England had very 
much decayed. J. H. Newman, writing in 
1839, spoke of "the dry and superficial 
character of the religious teaching of the 
last generation, or century," and of " the 

1 Cf. his chapter on " Natural Supernaturalisra " in Sartor 
Resartus. 



44 LIGHT ON THE WAY. 

need felt by both the hearts and intellects 
of the nation for a deeper philosophy." 
And he goes on to describe the reaction : 

It is not so much a movement as a spirit afloat, rising 
up in hearts where it was least suspected, and working 
itself, though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably 
as hardly to admit of precaution and encounter on any 
ordinary human rules of opposition. It is the spiritual 
awakening of spiritual wants. 1 

What Newman here speaks of was part 
of the whole reaction which was led by 
Coleridge and Wordsworth, which was 
helped by Scott, and which was to be 
carried on by Carlyle against a revival 
of deistic thought in his own day. If we 
were dealing with the general development 
of English thought at the time, it would 
be necessary to dwell on all these writers 
in turn ; but we only need to observe the 
outcome of the religious and theological 
side of the reaction. It is usual to regard 
J. H. Newman and Frederick Maurice as 
representative of the two great movements 
in this awakening spirit, the two which 
afterwards in England were called the 
High Church and the Broad Church move- 

1 Apologia, p. 96. 



LIGHT ON THE WAY. 45 

ments. But for our purpose it will be 
more instructive to contrast with Newman 
the teaching of one whose system stands 
at the opposite pole : the eminent Unitarian 
thinker, James Martineau. This will pre- 
pare the way for the study of another 
pair of thinkers who also though both 
are thorough Agnostics stand facing in 
opposite ways : Auguste Comte and Herbert 
Spencer. Of what we may learn from these 
four leaders of thought, we shall endeavour 
to make, as it were, an arch. Then we 
shall turn to Robert Browning ; and what 
we may learn from him will form the 
keystone. 



46 



CHAPTEK II. 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 
SUMMARY. 

NOTICING briefly Newman's relation to the Oxford 
" Tractarian " movement, we observe the following per- 
sonal characteristics which go to explain the development 
of his opinions : (1) His reverence for Antiquity. Kenan 
suggests an explanation of this feeling. (2) His insist- 
ence on dogma as of essential importance in religion ; 
it is necessary to have a dogmatic system which must 
be absolutely true. This may be contrasted with the 
opposite extreme view, of which we may give examples. 
The conclusion is, that the work of thought in producing 
doctrine is a necessary part of religion, especially at the 
present day, when thoroughness in religious doctrine is 
required above all else ; but it is not the essential part 
of religion. 

His theory of belief in the University Sermons rests 
on a distinction between the implicit but real belief and 
its explicit intellectual interpretation : the latter must 
always be partly inadequate. We may examine the 
contrast between the use which Newman makes of this 
psychological fact or law and the use which we have 
made of it. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 47 

In the Essay on Development of Doctrine he contends 
that Roman Catholic Christianity is a true development 
from, and therefore at bottom identical with, primitive 
Christianity. This rests on a wrong view of what devel- 
opment means. On the other hand, his objections to the 
popular Protestant principle of " the Bible and the Bible 
only " are sound, and suggest points which modern 
Biblical Criticism has developed. We may examine the 
error in his view of development, and the impossibility 
of finding an " infallible " authority. On the other hand, 
the opposite extreme must be avoided. The history of 
doctrine is not a gradual corruption of primitive purity 
and simplicity ; and we cannot doctrinally " return to 
Christ" in any real sense of the words. 

OUR purpose here will not require us to 
think over in detail the history of the Ox- 
ford " Tractarian " movement, which New- 
man led for the first eight years of its 
existence (1833 to 1841). It was originated 
with a design which was in the main poli- 
tical to restore the authority of the Angli- 
can episcopacy ; but its leaders well knew 
the unspiritual character of the actual Epis- 
copate of the time, and its dull resistance 
to moral reforms. The Church was in 
danger of becoming like the dry bones in 
the valley of Ezekiel's vision. Newman in 
his Apologia speaks several times almost 
with contempt of the " traditional Church- 



48 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

of-Englandism " and " high Toryism " which 
prevailed in the first quarter of the century. 
The "Oxford movement " was a reawaken- 
ing of religious thought not merely of 
thought about religion. It was part of 
that general spiritual awakening to which 
we referred at the end of the last chapter ; 
but owing to the religious temper of its 
leaders it became reactionary. The spirit 
of reaction in the Church of England always 
begins if it is strong and vigorous by 
disavowing the Reformation, and is prepared 
to go much further in the same direction ; 
this was Newman's spirit. If the spirit of 
reaction is feeble, it merely appeals to taste, 
elaborates high ritual, and employs ecclesi- 
astical symbolism of every kind. This was 
the spirit of the Oxford movement after 
Newman left it. The strong reaction works 
with more or less clear consciousness " to- 
wards Rome " ; the other is only a feeble 
imitation of Roman ceremonial. Love of 
Truth has led many through despair of 
" private judgment" to the Church of Rome, 
as it led Newman ; I question whether love 
of ritual has done so. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 49 

The divergence of the movement from the 

o 

ideals of Anglicanism began to appear in 
1841, when Newman published a tract in 
which he endeavoured to fix the relation of 
the Thirty -nine Articles of the Church to 
Roman doctrine. This caused a great divi- 
sion among the adherents of the movement, 
and many who had hitherto been its friends 
ceased to countenance it. Some even joined 
in the denunciations which the Evangelicals 
had from the beginning poured upon its 
"drift towards Rome." Newman had been 
trying to defend the system of what he called 
" Catholic Truth " meaning the Catholicism 
of the Fathers as a via media between 
Romanism on the one hand and " popular 
Protestantism " on the other ; but four years 
more of reflection convinced him that the 
grounds and reasons for which he accepted 
the system of " Catholic Truth " as authori- 
tative required him to accept also the whole 
system of Papal Catholicism. In 1845 he 
sought admission into the Church of Rome 
a step in which he was followed by a 
hundred and fifty prominent clergymen and 
laymen. 

D 



50 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

Newman's development expresses consis- 
tently the real spirit of the Oxford move- 
ment. This matter is of much more than 
merely historical interest : Newman stands 
for types of thought and feeling which are 
still strong, and which require to be under- 
stood. 

One of his most marked characteristics 
was an inborn reverence for Antiquity - 
above all, of course, for Christian antiquity. 
Thus in the Apologia he says, speaking of 
his thoughts during the year 1832 : 

With the Establishment, thus threatened and divided, 
I contrasted the fresh vigorous power in the first cen- 
turies, of which I was reading ; . . . I ever kept before 
me that there was something greater than the Established 
Church, and that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, 
set up from the beginning. 

He was urging men to study the Fathers, 
about the time when his brother Francis 
was beginning a progress away from ortho- 
doxy. There is in history what Renan has 
called a kind of optical illusion : 

The present century is always seen through a cloud 
of dust raised by the whirl of actual life ; and we can 
scarcely distinguish, in this whirlwind, the real signs 
of the time or the heart and mind of the age. This 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 51 

crowd of transitory interests has vanished from before 
the Past, which thus appears to us grave, severe, dis- 
interested. Looking at it by means of its books and 
monuments only in other words, as manifested in its 
thought we are tempted to believe that people did 
nothing else than think. 1 

The noise of the street, the stir of the 
market-place, and all the temporal interests 
and motives which sometimes ruled its 
thought, do not come down to posterity. 
When the men of the future see us, freed 
from all that disturbing tumult, perhaps 
they will judge us as many of us judge 
the Past. Whether this be the reason or 
not, it is certain that there are many who, 
like Newman, care nothing for the present 
when compared with the Past ; they try 
to make themselves merely children of the 
Past, and sometimes of a Past that is dead. 
We must try to make ourselves children 
of a Past that is living, and of a Present 
that is destined to live. 

Newman's religious convictions began to 
take form in boyhood, and in youth he was 
a thorough Calvinist. This probably ac- 
counts for a vein of austerity in his character, 

1 L'Avenir de la Science, ch. iv. 



52 JOHN HENHY NEWMAN. 

which only became softened down after he 
joined the Church of Rome. The almost 
inhuman austerity of many of his utter- 
ances in the Parochial and Plain Sermons 
may be contrasted with the ethical tone of 
the sermons preached at the Oratory and 
elsewhere. 

Equally important with his reverence for 
the Past was his feeling of the essential 
function of dogma in religion. In the 
Apologia he says : 

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the funda- 
mental principle of my religion; I cannot enter into 
the idea of any other sort of religion. Religion as a 
mere sentiment is to me a dream and a mockery. 

The justice of the last remark may be 
fully granted. Religion involves ideas as 
well as feelings and actions; and in these 
days the demand is that the ideas shall 
be far more clearly and thoroughly thought 
out. There are many to - day who write 
and speak as if they had forgotten this. 
It almost seems as if they imagined that 
religious ideas, religious thought in the 
proper sense, were of no importance. In 
some cases this even leads to mistaking 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 53 

vagueness and confusion of mind for spirit- 
uality. In others, the idea seems to be 
that because certain theological controver- 
sies are now extinct, and many venerable 
doctrines are dying away, we can dispense 
with doctrine that is, with appeals to 
the intellect altogether. Thus, a recent 
writer says : 

The Trinitarian controversy is passing away, it is 
ceasing to interest. Subjects such as the spiritual 
nature of man, the Infinite in the soul, the brotherhood 
of races, the inherent possibilities of human society, 
and the everlasting union of the Divine with the human 
spirit, are vastly more important and urgent than the 
question of the unity and trinity of Persons in the 
Godhead. 1 

Most true, we reply : but are we to come 
to any definite conclusions on these great 
questions ? If so, how can we do it without 
thought, without " doctrine " ? Are men, 
who have reached diametrically opposite 
conclusions on such matters, to work to- 
gether in Churches ? If so, for what can 
they work ? 

When the same writer goes on to say, 
" We want more and more, in these days, 

1 From a pamphlet by the Rev. E. I. Fripp. 



54 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

churches broadly and spiritually Christian," 
his position is not so satisfactory as it 
seems. The practical meaning of religion 
is indeed "the principal thing"; but that 
practical meaning has to be thought out. 
There is a danger which besets very many 
liberal religious thinkers now, the danger 
of harping on such phrases as " the Father- 
hood of God " and " the Brotherhood of 
Man," and at the same time failing to bring 
out their real meaning. I have sometimes 
heard a preacher discourse on such topics 
as this, that God is our Father and that 
we are all brothers : he has dwelt on the 
beauty of this faith how "broad and 
spiritual " it is ; and this has seemed good 
to listen to. But when I have thought it 
over afterwards, and to use a plain and 
homely phrase tried to find what it really 
comes to, it has dwindled away and there 
has been nothing to grasp. When we 
plunge into the work of the busy world, the 
daily hopes and fears and needs of men 
in the strain and stress of life for these 
things are always with us then this lan- 
guage of the Fatherhood of God and the 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 55 

Brotherhood of Man may easily come to 
be "a tale of little meaning, though the 
words be strong." We need to have such 
ideas brought home to life ; that is, instead 
of listening to any general discourse about 
God as a Father, we need to be shown how 
God works to find Him at work in the 
common life around us. The demand that 
this age makes is, as it was in ages past, 
" ' Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us ! ' 
Show us the Father at work, show us His 
judgments and chastisements, His revelation, 
His love, mercy, and help : bring all these 
things home to us ! " The spirit of the age 
speaks here ; and hymns, prayers, sermons, 
service that fail to hear and answer the 
appeal are obsolete and dead. Help us to 
see what God's Fatherhood is see it with 
our eyes, not merely speak about it ; help 
us to see with our eyes how all men are 
brothers, and how they may learn to be 
more so ! 

Thus the work of thought in producing 
doctrine is a necessary part of religion ; on 
the other hand we do not say that it is 
the essential part. But Newman would 



56 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

insist that it verily is the essential part ; 
"my battle," he says, "was against Liberal- 
ism i.e., the anti- dogmatic principle and 
its developments." We cannot have religion 
without the absolute dogmas of a personal 
God, of His incarnation and His various 
relations to man, in this life and the next, 
together with the numerous subordinate 
doctrines flowing from these ; and we must 
be sure that each of these dogmas is 
accurately and perfectly true. It is in 
seeking an authority for this complex 
dogmatic system that Newman is gradually 
driven to the haven of Roman Catholic 
" infallibility." The root of the matter 
lies in his failure to distinguish between 
religion itself and a particular expression 
of it in doctrine and ritual. In conse- 
quence of this, his deeply religious nature 
and earnest desire for real conviction led 
him to regard dogma as of supreme im- 
portance ; and this again led him to the 
Church of Rome. 

Newman's failure to distinguish between 
religion and the intellectual expression of 
its contents is remarkable, for he himself 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 57 

works out an account of Belief which would 
render this distinction necessary. 

Let us first consider some of his utter- 
ances before he joined the Church of Rome. 
It will be sufficient to select some passages 
from the Sermons Preached before the Uni- 
versity of Oxford. A recurring thought in 
these is that we do not become aware of 
religious truth by conscious investigation. 

To speak of a rational Faith need not mean more than 
that Faith is accordant to right Reason in the abstract, 
not that it results from it in the particular case. True 
Faith admits, but does not require, the exercise of what 
is commonly called Reason [or Argument]. l 

Then, we may ask, is the process which 
leads to Faith inexplicable? "Yes, in 
part," answers Newman : 

There are two processes distinct from each other, 
the original process of reasoning, and next the process of 
investigating our reasonings. All men reason, for to 
reason is nothing more than to gain truth from former 
truth, without the intervention of sense; but all men 
do not reflect upon their own reasonings, much less 
reflect truly and accurately, so as to do justice to their 
own meaning ; but only in proportion to their abilities 
and attainments. In other words, all men have a reason, 
but not all men can give a reason. We may devote 



1 Sermons x. and xiii. 



58 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

these two exercises of mind as unconscious and conscious 
reasoning, or as Implicit Reason and Explicit Reason. . . . 
That these two exercises are not to be confounded to- 
gether would seem too plain for remark, except that they 
have been confounded. Clearness in argument certainly 
is not indispensable to reasoning well. Accuracy in 
stating doctrine or principles is not essential to feeling 
and acting on them. The exercise of analysis is not 
necessary to the integrity of the process analysed. The 
process of reasoning is complete in itself, and indepen- 
dent ; the analysis is but an account of it ; it does not 
make the conclusion correct; it does not make the 
inference rational. 

And in Implicit Reasoning there may be 
many conditions influencing the mind which 
it is impossible for it to express in words : 

No analysis is subtle and delicate enough to represent 
adequately the state of mind under which we believe, or 
the subjects of belief, as they are presented to our 
thoughts. ... Is it not hopeless to expect that the 
most diligent and anxious investigation can end in more 
than in giving some very rude description of the living 
mind, and its feelings, thoughts, and reasonings 1 

Now surely this must apply to religious 
dogmas also as well as to the process 
which produces them : and if so, no dogma 
can be accurately and perfectly true. If 
our analysis or intellectual expression of 
the process which leads to Faith must be 
partly inadequate, so must the dogma be, 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 59 

which is only an intellectual expression 
of the Faith itself. And therefore dogma 
cannot be the essential part of religion ; 
the essential part is what dogma imperfectly 
expresses and sometimes distorts. 

We notice that Newman just reverses 
this conclusion. He first points out that 
because men's arguments may be bad while 
their implicit reasons are good, because 
their professed grounds are no sufficient 
measure of their real ones, on this account, 
the evidence which can be given for a 
belief usually appears insufficient or in- 
conclusive ; indeed the real grounds can- 
not be stated in an intellectually conclusive 
form the belief cannot be completely 
" proved." So far he is on the solid ground 
of fact ; no one of us could assign conclusive 
proofs for his deepest beliefs, religious or 
other, while yet these beliefs have grown 
into his mind, become part of himself, and 
are felt to be practically " certain " or in- 
evitable. But from this Newman goes on 
to infer that it is a law of our nature to 
form settled beliefs on inconclusive evidence, 
to feel a certainty disproportioried to the 



60 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

evidence which can be explicitly produced 
to justify it. Thus he says : 

Faith is a process of the Reason in which so much of 
the grounds of inference cannot be exhibited, so much 
lies in the character of the mind itself, in its general 
view of things, its estimate of the probable and the 
improbable, its impressions concerning God's will, and its 
anticipations derived from its own inbred wishes, that 
it [Faith] will ever seem to the world irrational and des- 
picable ; till, that is, the event confirms it. ... The 
Word of Life is offered to a man ; and, on its being 
offered, he has faith in it. Why 1 On these two grounds, 
the word of its human messenger, and the likelihood 
of the message. And why does he feel the message to 
be probable 1 Because he has a love for it, love being 
strong though the testimony is weak. He has a keen 
sense of the intrinsic excellence of the message, of its 
desirableness, of its likeness to what it seems to him 
Divine Goodness would vouchsafe, did it vouchsafe any, 
of the need of a revelation, and its probability. Thus 
Faith is the reasoning of a religious mind, or of what 
Scripture calls a right or renewed heart, which acts upon 
presumptions rather than evidence, which speculates and 
ventures on the future without being sure of it. 1 

This last sentence, together with the re- 
mark about the event confirming Faith, 
seems to imply the view that the test of 
religious truth is that it works: in other 
words, that life as we know it, or as in 
our best moments we should wish it to be, 

1 Sermon xi. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 61 

can be built upon it. But Newman does 
not develop tbis line of thought. In any 
case prior to the application of this test, 
we must ask ourselves " what is life as we 
know it, and what is it that as human 
beings we require that it should be ? " 

The view to which we were led is that 
the "centre of gravity" of religion lies in 
the experience which the dogmas attempt 
to interpret. Newman's view is that the 
centre of gravity lies in the dogmas re- 
garded as absolutely true. He admits that 
the arguments which can be adduced in 
favour of these amount at best only to a 
presumption or probability ; but we can rest 
in them as certainties because of the psy- 
chological law above mentioned. Thus the 
only ground of certainty is the power of 
the emotions and the will to hold some- 
thing to be certain : the intellect can only 
produce various " probabilities " to help be- 
lief. This was the kind of Faith which 
animated the many fanatical sects which arose 
during the Reformation period in Europe. 
It is a merely subjective test i.e., it makes 
each man for himself the determinant of 



62 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

Truth. As Professor Pfleiderer observes, 
this merely subjective or personal certainty 
cannot rest upon itself, but to render it 
secure requires the support of the greatest 
possible number of other persons that is, 
of external authority. This argument New- 
man elaborates in the Grammar of Assent, 
written after he had been many years in the 
Church of Rome. Many passages in this 
book are encumbered with needlessly subtle 
distinctions ; but it is one of the ablest in- 
quiries into the nature of Belief which has 
been written in this century. Its prin- 
ciples are kindred to those of Mr Bal four's 
Defence of Philosophic Doubt and Founda- 
tions of Belief. We shall examine them more 
fully in the sequel. He accurately assigns 
some of the psychological laws under which 
beliefs are formed, but draws a fatally 
erroneous conclusion from them. 

Before turning to the Grammar of Assent, 
we must look at the Essay on the Develop- 
ment of Christian Doctrine : while Newman 
was completing this book he was thinking 
himself into the Roman Catholic Church. 

It is quite in the modern spirit in its way 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 63 

of approaching the problem ; it views the 
history in the light of the idea of Develop- 
ment. Christian doctrine was not given to 
the world originally in a perfect form. 
" The principle of development," he says, 
" is discernible from the first years of 
Catholic teaching up to the present day, 
and gives to that teaching a unity and in- 
dividuality." But the conclusion is not at 
all in the modern spirit. It is as he ex- 
presses it in the Apologia that this prin- 
ciple [development] " served as a sort of 
test, which the Anglicans could not exhibit, 
that modern Rome was in truth ancient 
Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople " " an 
argument in favour of the identity of Roman 
and primitive Christianity." His position 
is that either the Roman developments of 
Christianity are the true ones, or the whole 
history of doctrine is a history of gradual 
corruption. He reaches the view that the 
Roman developments are the true ones 
because as we shall see his argument 
rests on a mistaken view of what develop- 
ment implies. But we may first see how he 
meets the other view, that the process is 



64 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

one in which the primitive purity and sim- 
plicity of the Gospel becomes gradually 
corrupted. 

This would be maintained by two differ- 
ent parties, in different ways. The ortho- 
dox Protestant would say : " ' The Bible, 
and the Bible only, is the religion of Pro- 
testants ! ' We appeal from the Church to 
the Bible." The modern liberal religious 
thinker would say : " ' Christianity as Christ 
preached it is our religion ! ' We appeal 
from the Church, and from the Bible itself, 
or parts of it, to Christ." It is desired to 
substitute " the spiritual religion of Christ 
for the speculative religion of Christendom." 

Let us first examine the principle, Back 
to the Scriptures. 

Newman, chiefly through his mother's in- 
fluence, had been educated in a deep and sin- 
cere reverence for the Bible : this never left 
him, but it changed its form. He saw that 
it is plainly absurd to appeal to the Bible 
as an infallible source of doctrine. S. T. 
Coleridge said in his Confessions of an In- 
quiring Spirit : " How can infallible truth 
be infallibly conveyed in defective and 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 65 

fallible expressions," such as all human lan- 
guage must necessarily be ? It appears that 
Newman would have assented to this. In 
the Essay which we are speaking of, he shows 
how it is impossible to abide by the mere 
letter of the books, if only because we need 
to understand the letter for instance in 
such a phrase as " the Word became Flesh " 
and this gives rise to many further quest- 
ions, especially as the structure of the books 
is so unsystematic and various, and their 
style so figurative and indirect. He shows 
that orthodox Protestantism is under a de- 
lusion when it supposes that all its doctrines 
are taught in the Bible, or even that they 
may be easily and plainly deduced from its 
words. 1 In the Apologia he observes that 
what the mere Protestant does is to take " a 
large system of theology " and " apply it to 
Scripture"- read into the words of the book 
a system derived from, and given to him by, 
the historical development of Christianity, 
which he wishes to forsake. 

Other questions as Newman shows 
such as the extent of the Canon and the 

1 Ch. ii. i. and ii. 
E 



66 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

limits of inspiration, cannot be settled by 
appeal to the Bible, for the prophets and 
apostles gave no decision about them. While 
thus objecting to the maxim of " The Bible 
and the Bible only," Newman would of course 
appeal to ecclesiastical tradition to settle such 
questions. But the breakdown and general 
abandonment of the traditional view as to 
the origin and composition of the Old Testa- 
ment books, and the doubt as to some of 
those in the New Testament, have made the 
argument so strong that neither Protestant 
nor Catholic has any ground to stand upon 
from which to appeal to the Bible as infallible. 
Lastly, Newman points out that to appeal 
to the Bible is not to escape the uncertainty 
of appealing to an authority which is grow- 
ing ; for within the Biblical religion itself 
there is a development through the prophets 
to Jesus, whose words are in their turn de- 
veloped by the apostles : " the whole truth, 
or large portions of it, are told, yet only in 
their rudiments, or in miniature ; and they 
are expanded and finished in their parts as 
the course of revelation proceeds." Similarly, 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. G7 

" in the apostolic teaching, no historical 
point can be found at which the growth 
of doctrine ceased." To recognise that 
growth involves not only expansion and 
completion of detail, but the dying away of 
old forms, would turn the statements just 
quoted into expressions of the modern view 
of evolution as regards Hebraism and Chris- 
tianity. But Newman failed to see the 
importance of what we have called the 
" negative element " in development. To 
this point we shall have to return immedi- 
ately. 

His conclusion is, that the Bible was never 
intended to teach doctrine but only to prove 
it, and that if we would learn doctrine we 
must have recourse to the formularies of the 
Church. This view, he had long before de- 
cided, was " self-evident to those who have 
at all examined the structure of Scripture." 
He says : 

We are told that God has spoken. Where 1 In a 
book ] We have tried it and it disappoints ; it dis- 
appoints us, that most holy and blessed gift, not from 
fault of its own, but because it is used for a purpose for 
which it was not given. The Ethiopian's reply, when 



68 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

St Philip asked him if he understood what he was 
reading, is the voice of Nature : " How can I, unless 
some man shall guide me ? " l 

But the distinction between " teaching " 
and " proving " doctrine from the Bible is not 
very clear. If it is true that any one can 
find in the words of the book any doctrine 
which he is determined to find there and 
Newman seems implicitly to admit this, 
within limits it is also true that by similar 
determination any doctrine can be proved 
from the book. 

The other principle to which we referred 
was, " Back to Jesus." Against those who 
would maintain that the developments of 
ecclesiastical theology have been a series 
of " corruptions of Christianity," he adduces 
" notes " by which a true development may 
be distinguished from a corrupt growth : 

The point to be ascertained is the unity and identity 
of the idea with itself through all stages of its develop- 
ment, from first to last ; to guarantee this substantial 
unity, it must be seen to be one in type ; one in its 
system of principles ; one in its assimilative power 
towards externals ; one in its logical consecutiveness ; 
one in the witness of its earlier phases to its later; one 



Essay on Development, ch. ii. ii. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 69 

in the protection which its later extend to its earlier; 
and one in its union of vigour with continuance, that is, 
in its tenacity. 1 

On this doctrine two remarks must be 
made. 

The attempt to apply any theory of de- 
velopment to justify the actual claim of the 
Church to be infallible is suicidal : for the 
notion of infallibility, and the supposed in- 
fallible guide, are themselves products of the 
development, and therefore cannot be final. 
As Newman says himself, " no historical 
point can be found at which the growth of 
doctrine ceased and the rule of faith was once 
for all settled." But he affirms that the in- 
fallible authority, outside the development, 
must have existed from the beginning, to 
provide a means of distinguishing true de- 
velopments from false, for the benefit of 
individuals who were in the development, 
and therefore were unable to see the issues 
of the movements of thought around them. 
We reply that this insight is of course the 
gift of the Teacher or Prophet the gift of 

1 L'ssay, chapter v., at end. On these claims, see Martineau, 
Seat of Authority, " The Catholics and the Church." 



70 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

ethical or spiritual genius, which always 
varies in its degrees. Newman's attempt to 
prove the reality of the " infallible " guide 
is, I think, too feeble to be intelligibly 
summarised. 1 No doubt such an infallible 
authority, guiding the progress of Thought, 
would have been and would still be very 
useful ; but we can scarcely on that account 
assume its reality. The idea itself is a late 
product of the growth of ecclesiasticism. 

Newman overlooks an essential condition 
of growth, if he does not altogether exclude 
it by his sixth " note." In a genuine de- 
velopment of ideas the new truth often 
abrogates the old and takes its place. We 
have not merely as Newman seems to say 
a gradual expansion and growing compli- 
cation of detail in old ideas ; we have a new 
interpretation of old experiences. Every sig- 
nificant idea or thought is or in its origin 
was an interpretation of some experience. 
New enterprises and experiences of man's 
soul require new ideas to express their 
meaning ; and these shed new light on old 
experiences and call for new and truer inter- 
1 Ch. ii. S ii. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 71 

pretations of them. Old interpretations, old 
forms of expression, become useless and have 
to be cast off ; they may survive they may 
even be religiously preserved intact and re- 
peated as Divine truth, but they soon become 
a mere form of words : the meaning which 
once gave them life has gone. Thus the 
development of Christian doctrine cannot 
claim to be specially rational ; there is 
nothing in its nature to prevent errors, fic- 
tions, and even degrading superstitions from 
becoming an integral part of it. We have 
already seen the value of the conflict between 
different forms of belief as helping men to 
arrive at truer ideas. It is for history to 
show us the process in detail as thoroughly 
as it can. 

On the other hand, neither can we set it all 
aside as a mere corruption, as Dr Martineau 
appears to do in his Seat of Authority. This 
position we have already illustrated. There 
is no reason to believe in any " bias of original 
sin " in man's intelligence, 1 by which he loves 
to cherish false beliefs generation after gener- 

1 Zola seems to imply this in his celebrated trilogy, Lourdes, 
Rome, Paris. Cf. especially his Introduction to Lourdes. 



72 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

ation. And the creeds and doctrinal systems 
of Christendom were not made through mere 
perversity ; they were made in order to give 
expression to certain deep convictions about 
what we are and why we are sent into this 
world. But we have seen that it is scarcely 
possible for any one to put into precise 
language all his belief when the belief is 
what Newman calls a real belief, i.e., is part 
of the man himself and a sign of what his 
character is growing to be. Every such belief 
goes deeper than the mere holding of opinions ; 
and our intellectual expression of these be- 
liefs that mould our lives can only be partial 
and imperfect. This is the main reason for 
the variety and divergence in the expressions 
of such beliefs particularly religious beliefs ; 
although there are of course numerous his- 
torical conditions which have co-operated in 
fixing the form of any particular religious 
creed. 

As for a "return to Christ," it does not 
appear that any real "return" is possible 
except in a metaphorical or imaginative 
sense of the word. We cannot put our- 
selves into that personal relation with him 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 73 

which his hearers and followers had. 1 Much 
of his power must have been due to what 
he was, his personal charm and manner of 
teaching. He taught " not as the Scribes," 
not with constant appeal to ancient written 
and oral tradition, but " as one having 
authority" i.e., by means of brief, telling 
sayings coming straight from a deep sym- 
pathy with men and a clear understanding 
of their needs. We cannot see him as they 
saw him, or feel that marvellous personal 
force, that inspiration and help which his 
first followers found in him. 

When, therefore, we speak of Christ as 
supreme, we can only mean that the spirit 
of the ethical and religious movement which 
he started is supreme ; we cannot mean the 
historical Jesus of Nazareth in abstraction 
from this movement, because only through 
it is he revealed to us. We cannot appeal 
to him in contrast with historical Christian- 
ity, but only to the true spirit of historical 
Christianity against perversions of it ; and 
we cannot rely upon historical Christianity 

1 See Newman's Sermon on " Personal Influence the Means 
of Propagating Truth " in the University Sermons. 



74 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 

in contrast with Jesus, because we know 
that he really existed, and his work origin- 
ated the historical movement in which it 
merged as a mighty river in a mightier 
sea. 

If we seek to know Jesus as he was, we 
have only his sayings to guide us, and only 
too few of them ! His sayings are collected 
together in our gospels in all kinds of order 
and disorder ; and to understand them we 
have to take them and think over their 
meaning one by one. Perhaps we come 
nearest to the mind of Jesus himself when 
we do this. People sometimes speak as if 
the discourses of Jesus, as the Sermon on 
the Mount, have come down to us just as 
he himself delivered them, in respect of 
their order and connection. There is no 
shadow of support for such a view, and all 
probability points in the other direction. 
His teaching is not given to us in the form 
of a system arranged for us. It was put 
forth as seed is scattered, to borrow the 
imagery of his wonderful parable, and his 
hearers had to grow those seeds for them- 
selves, and we must for ourselves. And not 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 75 

only are his sayings like seeds that grow ; 
they are like bright lights, helping us to 
track out the pathway of truth amid the 
mists of error in the Christianity of the 
creeds and orthodox churches around us. 

The fundamental opposition between our 
view and that of Cardinal Newman has now 
been fully developed ; yet in every case we 
have recognised that his insight is superior 
to that of his opponents, and that at the 
worst he has but overstated a truth. His 
view of the necessity of dogma in religion, 
his distinction between an implicit but real 
belief and its intellectual expression, his 
appeal to history regarded as a development, 
his assertion that the Bible is not a store- 
house whence doctrines can be drawn at 
pleasure, and that the origin of Christianity 
cannot be separated from its history, on 
all these points we have only modified his 
conclusions. 

But his fixed assumption that a dogma 
can be absolutely true and final (save in so 
far as subsequent dogmas further define it) 
we have rejected as a fatal error. 



76 



CHAPTER III. 



NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 



SUMMARY. 

WE notice first the " psychological bias " of Newman's 
inquiry. This means that we have before us two ques- 
tions. One is, " What is the state of mind called Belief, 
and what are the laws of its growth 1 " The other is, 
" What are the tests of a true Belief 1 " Newman en- 
deavours to make an answer to the first do duty for an 
answer to the second. 

Newman's theistic presupposition, based on the evidence 
of Conscience, is equivalent to a postulate of the rationality 
of the world. Examining his analysis of Belief, and his 
contrast between believing and reasoning, we find the es- 
sential conclusions to be these : we cannot either believe 
or act without going beyond what we are able to prove 
by argument ; and the characteristic of the highest state 
of assurance is, our inability to think the opposite. His 
theory of Belief requires to be supplemented in two 
points : in explanation of the fact that our beliefs go 
beyond what we can prove by argument, and in explan- 
ation of the fact that if we insisted on proof for every- 
thing we should never come to action. We instinctively 
trust the rational experience of the race, which is the 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 77 

foundation of the beliefs that we cannot " prove." We 
may find real examples of how such " practical certain- 
ties " grow ; but if they are trustworthy, their foundation 
lies in human experience. 

Newman's attempt to make the inertia of the feeling 
of practical certainty (without any appeal to universal 
rational experience) into a test of truth, requires him to 
show that a feeling of certainty once established is per- 
manent or " indefectible." But where the feeling is really 
inevitable and permanent, as in the case of the axioms 
of logic and mathematics, this is no test of truth, but a 
ground of utter scepticism, unless our belief in these 
principles can be shown to rest, in the last resort, also 
upon Eeason and Experience. And we can see that 
certitudes once believed to be permanent may change, 
both through changes in the course of individual experi- 
ence and changes in the Spirit of the Age. Newman is 
therefore compelled to appeal to another test of Truth. 

Newman argues that the spread of Christianity in the 
ancient world requires us to assume a miraculous or anti- 
natural Power at work. But we have seen (ch. i.) 
that the social and intellectual state of the ancient world 
was such that the spread of Christianity is not a mystery ; 
and a consideration of its moral state points to the same 
conclusion. 

THE theory of Belief which Newman ex- 
pounds in his Grammar of Assent has 
already been mentioned ; there are many 
passages of his earlier writings where it is 
present in germ. But it is re -stated and 
set forth so completely in the Grammar 
of Assent, that this work requires special 



78 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

notice. As before, we shall find, even in 
what we are compelled to regard as his 
errors, more instruction than there would 
be in the true conclusions of many less able 
and less consistent thinkers. 

Instead of Newman's term " Assent," I 
shall invariably use " Belief," which at 
least as used in modern Psychology ex- 
presses exactly what he intended by 
" assent." 

We notice first the psychological bias of 
the whole discussion. An emendatio intel- 
lectus, he seems to say, is in no sense pos- 
sible ; we cannot lay down rules for reason- 
ing, or ask how " ought " we to proceed in 
order to arrive at true beliefs. We must 
take the human mind as we find it, as it 
comes from its Maker ; the laws according 
to which the mind acts are regarded not 
only as a " constituted order " but as His 
will. We can only ask, How, as a matter 
of fact, do men reason ? What, in fact, is 
belief, and how is it arrived at and main- 
tained ? Thus, he says : 

That is to be accounted a normal operation of our 
nature which men in general do actually instance | that 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 79 

is a law of our minds, which is exemplified in action 
on a large scale, whether a priori it ought to be a law 
or no. Our hoping is a proof that hope, as such, is not 
an extravagance; and our possession of certitude is a 
proof that it is not a weakness or an absurdity to be 
certain. How it conies about that we can be certain is 
not for me to determine ; for me it is sufficient that 
certitude is felt. It is unmeaning in us to find fault 
with our own nature, which is nothing else than we 
ourselves, instead of using it according to the use of 
which it ordinarily admits. We must appeal to man 
himself, as a fact, and not to any antecedent theory, 
in order to find what is the law of his mind as 
regards Inference and Belief. If, then, such an appeal 
does bear me out in deciding, as I have done, that the 
course of inference is ever more or less obscure, while 
belief is ever distinct and definite, and yet that what 
is in its nature thus absolute does in fact follow upon 
what in outward manifestation is thus complex, indirect 
and recondite, what is left but to take things as they 
are, and resign ourselves to what we find ? That is, 
instead of devising, what cannot be, some sufficient 
science of reasoning which may compel certitude in 
concrete conclusions, to confess that there is no ultim- 
ate test of truth besides the testimony borne to truth 
by the mind itself; and that this phenomenon, per- 
plexing as we may find it, is a normal and inevitable 
characteristic of the mental constitution of a being like 
man on a stage such as the world. 1 

How far is this general attitude justifiable ? 

It is plain that we cannot form an " an- 
tecedent theory" of what belief and reason- 

1 Grammar of Assent, ch, ix, 



80 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

ing ought to be, and bring it to the mind 
from the sky so to speak, testing our mental 
operations by it. So far we must assent to 
Newman's conclusion. Still there is a great 
difference between two questions which New- 
man does not distinguish. The first is, 
What are the rational grounds which men 
do in fact assign for this or that belief? 
the second is, What are the real or ultimate 
grounds of the belief, that is, those which 
might and could be assigned for it, and ought 
to be, if we wish to go to the bottom of it ? 
Newman does not ignore this question ; he 
tries to make the psychological analysis of 
Belief and of its usual causes do duty for 
an answer to it. Let us see to what con- 
clusions this procedure leads him, and how 
far they are consistently worked out. 

But, first, there is one vastly important 
conviction which never passes out of New- 
man's mind ; in the light of it all his inquir- 
ies are conducted. And it should not pass 
out of his reader's mind either. This is his 
firm assurance that Conscience, meaning 
our consciousness of moral authority, the 
authoritative claim which duty and right 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 81 

make upon us, affords direct evidence of 
the existence of God as a personal intelli- 
gent Moral Governor of the world. He de- 
clares this in one or more passages in each 
of his works. In the Apologia he says : 

" I find it impossible to believe in my own existence 
without believing in Him who lives as a personal, all- 
seeing, all-judging being in my conscience." Again : 
11 The being of God is as certain to me as the certainty 
of my own existence, though when I try to put the 
grounds of that certainty into logical shape I find a 
difficulty in doing so. ... I am far from denying the 
real force of the arguments in proof of a God drawn 
from the general facts of human society and the course 
of history, but these do not warm me or enlighten me ; 
they do not take away the winter of my desolation, . . . 
or make my moral being rejoice." 

This witness of conscience is the one deep 
belief in which Cardinal Newman is at one 
with his brother and with Dr Martineau. 
In the sequel we shall have to compare 
different statements of it, as a fact, and 
examine the forms into which, as an infer- 
ence, it may be thrown. At present we 
only note an important consequence of it 
in Cardinal Newman's mind. The evidence 
of conscience has an even more important 
place in his system than in Dr Martineau's, 

F 



82 NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

For having thus arrived at belief in a ruling 
moral Power, and since Truth is of such 
great moral and spiritual value, he feels en- 
titled to assume that God will have pro- 
vided for man's attainment of truth, not 
merely by " revelation," but by so forming 
the natural constitution of man's mind that 
he can attain it, and will attain it in the 
end. We may therefore trust our beliefs, 
even though we cannot express in any 
rational form their causes and grounds. 
This invites comparison with the thought, 
frequently expressed to - day, that though 
intellectual and moral truths are the pro- 
ducts of natural evolution, or even of mere 
natural selection, yet we can trust those 
truths if evolution is a divine method. 

Newman suggests the argument more 
than once in the Grammar of Assent, We 
may express it in another form a form 
which he would have repudiated, but which 
nevertheless brings out its main point. If 
we may believe that the constitution or 
framework of the world, including that of 
man's mind, is rational in the deeper sense 
of the word, in which morality itself is 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 83 

rational, if the world is intelligible and is 
a harmony, we may also believe that the 
laws and principles of thought which are 
necessary to understand it must be reliable ; 
we may believe too that nothing irrational 
can permanently survive, and that our 
minds will not be able to rest for ever in 
falsehood. But such a Faith in a ration- 
ality of the Whole is a desperate leap in 
the dark unless we can find some traces of 
rationality in the parts ; and Newman does 
not find many in the operations of the mind 
on which belief rests. 

His general position is this. In the 
case of most beliefs, among the innumer- 
able causes of each there will be many 
causes which we cannot find ; and among 
those which we can find, there are not 
many which we can express as reasons. 
But it is a law of our nature that beliefs 
must grow and take definite shape in our 
minds and have some degree of permanence. 
Sometimes they have many strong reasons 
in their favour ; but we are constantly form- 
ing beliefs which we hold with a tenacity 
out of all proportion to the reasons we can 



84 NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

adduce for them. Newman usually de- 
scribes Belief as " absolute " or " uncondi- 
tional," to contrast it with imaginations, 
guesses, opinions, or estimates of probabil- 
ity ; it is, so to speak, a substantial solid 
state of mind ; or, to vary the metaphor, it 
has ballast and anchor-cable. A belief when 
formed is for a time at least a settled fact. 

Newman shows conclusively that beliefs 
do not grow only through reasoning on the 
part of the person who holds them : 

First, we know from experience that beliefs may 
endure without the presence of the inferential acts upon 
which they were originally elicited. It is plain that, 
as life goes on, we are not only inwardly formed and 
changed by the accession of habits, but we are also 
enriched by a great multitude of beliefs .and opinions, 
and that on a variety of subjects. These, held, as some 
of them are, almost as first principles, constitute as it 
were the furniture and clothing of the mind. Some- 
times we are fully conscious of them ; sometimes they 
are implicit, or only now and then come directly before 
our reflective faculty. Still they are beliefs, and when 
we first admitted them we had some kind of reason, 
slight or strong, recognised or not, for doing so. How- 
ever, whatever those reasons were, even if we ever 
realised them, we have long forgotten them. Whether 
it was the authority of others, or our own observation, 
or our reading, or our reflections which became the 
warrant of our belief, anyhow we received the matters 



NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 85 

in question into our minds, and gave them a place there. 
We believed them and we still believe, though we have 
forgotten what the warrant was. At present they are 
self-sustained in our minds, and have been so for long 
years. They are in no sense " conclusions/' and imply 
no process of reasoning. Here, then, is a case where 
Belief stands out as distinct from inference. Again, 
sometimes assent fails while the reasons for it, and the 
recognition of those reasons, are still present and in 
force. Our reasons may seem to us as strong as ever, 
yet they do not secure our assent. Our beliefs, founded 
on them, were and are not ; we cannot perhaps tell 
when they went; we may have thought that we still 
held them, until something happened to call our atten- 
tion to the state of our minds. Sometimes of course a 
cause may be found why they went; there may have 
been some vague feeling that a fault lay at the ultimate 
basis, or in the underlying conditions, of our reasonings ; 
or some misgiving that the subject-matter of them lay 
beyond the reach of the human mind ; or a conscious- 
ness that we had gained a broader view of things in 
general than when we first gave our assent; or that 
there were strong objections to our first convictions 
which we had never taken into account. But this is 
not always so ; sometimes our mind changes so quickly, 
so unaccountably, so disproportionately to any tangible 
arguments to which the change can be referred, and with 
such abiding recognition of the force of the old argu- 
ments, as to suggest the suspicion that moral causes, 
arising out of our condition, age, company, occupations, 
fortunes, are at the bottom. However, what once was 
assent is gone ; yet the perception of the old arguments 
remains, showing that inference is one thing and belief 
another. And as belief sometimes dies out without 
tangible reasons sufficient to account for its failure, so 



8G NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT/ 

sometimes in spite of strong and convincing arguments 
it is never given. We sometimes find men loud in their 
admiration of truths which they never profess. As, by 
the law of our mental constitution, obedience is quite 
distinct from faith, and men may believe without 
practising, so is belief also independent of our acts of 
inference. Very numerous are the cases in which good 
arguments, confessed by us to be good, nevertheless are 
not strong enough to incline our minds ever so little to 
the conclusion at which they point. But why is it that 
we do not believe a little, in proportion to those argu- 
ments 1 On the contrary, we throw the full onus pro- 
bandi on the side of the conclusion, and we refuse to 
believe it at all until we can believe it altogether. The 
proof is capable of growth ; but the belief either exists 
or does not exist. 1 

Newman goes on to point out that there is 
always a connection between them ; the 
arguments adverse to a conclusion naturally 
hinder assent ; the inclination to believe is 
greater or less according as the particular 
act of inference expresses a stronger or 
weaker probability ; belief always implies 
grounds in reason, implicit if not explicit, 
and cannot be rightly held without suf- 
ficient grounds ; still, as we have seen, be- 
lief (1) may remain when the reasons are 
forgotten, (2) may fail or be withdrawn 
though the reasons remain, (3) may be 

1 Grammar of Assent, ch. vi. 1. 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 8f 

withheld when there are good reasons for 
giving it, and in general does not vary in 
strength as the reasons vary. This " sub- 
stantiveness " of the act of belief is the 
point to be established. 

Further : the utmost we can do in the 
way of rationally supporting a belief is to 
find a convergence of reasons in its favour, 
a larger or smaller number of considera- 
tions, each of which is a reason for the 
belief; but which do not either singly or 
together amount to complete proof. If we 
are able to show that it is " truth-like," 
this is all we can do by reasoning. If 
you prefer it you may call these reasons 
"probabilities," and say with Butler "prob- 
ability is the guide of life." But as New- 
man observes in his Apologia: 

The danger of this view in the case of many minds is 
its tendency to destroy in them all absolute certainty [I 
should prefer to say, all settled beliefs], leading them to 
consider every conclusion as doubtful, and resolving truth 
into a set of opinions which it is safe indeed to profess, 
but not possible to embrace with full internal assent. 

The reason why Butler's doctrine appears 
unsatisfactory is that the word " prob- 



88 NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

ability" always suggests some kind of for- 
mal estimate or calculation. It is not true 
that such calculations are the guide of life, 
nor would it be well if they were. Calcula- 
tion, in all its forms, is wholly inadequate to 
the solution of problems arising out of man's 
higher life. But if Butler's doctrine means 
by " probability " an assemblage of converg- 
ing reasons, then it is true ; for these may 
have a total effect on the mind, which it 
may apprehend almost instinctively, and 
which may lead to the firm and lasting 
conviction which Newman calls " certitude." 
Nay, they not only may but must lead to 
this, for by the laws of our mind we cannot 
rest in probability ; rightly or wrongly our 
belief tends to settle into certitude or to 
die away. 

Just as we cannot believe anything with- 
out our belief being stronger than the reasons 
for it will warrant, so we cannot act without 
going beyond what we are able to prove : 

Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences ; 
we shall never have done beginning if we determine to 
begin with proof. . . . Resolve to believe nothing, and 
you must prove your proofs and analyse your elements, 
sinking farther and farther, and finding " in the lowest 



NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 89 

depth a lower deep," till you come to the broad bosom 
of scepticism. ... I am not maintaining that all proofs 
are equally difficult, and all propositions equally debate- 
able ; some assumptions are greater than others, and some 
doctrines involve postulates larger than others and more 
numerous. [But] knowledge of premises, and inferences 
upon them, this is not to live ; life is for action : to 
act you must assume, and that assumption is faith. 1 

Newman points out another characteristic 
of the highest state of assurance, or " cer- 
titude " : 

No one can be called certain of a proposition whose 
mind does not spontaneously and promptly reject, on 
their first suggestion, as idle, as impertinent, as sophis- 
tical, any objections which are directed against its truth. 
No man is certain of a truth who can endure the thought 
of the fact of its contradictory existing or occurring ; 
and that not from any set purpose or effort to reject 
that thought, but, as I have said, by the spontaneous 
action of the intellect. What is contradictory to the 
truth fades out of the mind, with its apparatus of argu- 
ment, as fast as it enters it ; and though it be brought 
back to the mind ever so often by the pertinacity of an 
opponent, or by a voluntary or involuntary act of im- 
agination, still that contradictory proposition and its 
arguments are mere phantoms and dreams, in the light 
of our certitude, and their very entering into the mind 
is the first step of their going out of it. Such is the 
state of our minds towards the heathen fancy that Ence- 
ladus lies under Etna, or (not to take so extreme a case) 
that Joanna Southcote was a messenger from heaven, or 

1 Ch. iv. 8 3. 



90 NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

the Emperor Napoleon really had a star. Equal to this 
peremptory assertion of negative propositions is the re- 
volt of the mind from suppositions incompatible with 
positive statements of which we are certain, whether 
abstract truths or facts : as that a straight line is the 
longest possible distance between its two extreme points, 
that Great Britain is in shape an exact square or circle, 
that I shall escape dying, or that my intimate friend is 
false to me. 1 

Here Newman is in accord with the best 
modern psychology. The test of belief is 
the impossibility or difficulty, as the case 
may be, of thinking the opposite. Suppose 
A C is a thought which is incompatible with 
the thought A B : "in the case of complete 
doubt it is equally easy to frame the thought 
A B and its opposing alternative A C. In 
the ideal case of complete assurance it is im- 
possible to frame the thought A C, so that 
we are absolutely constrained to think A B. 
Between complete doubt and complete assur- 
ance there are all manners of gradations, 
proportioned to the difficulty of mentally 
substituting AC for A B," - - that is, the 
belief A B may be more or less intense 
and deeply rooted. 2 In these respects a 

1 Ch. vi. 2. 

2 Stout, Analytic Psychology, vol. ii. p. 241. 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 91 

belief may vary, although, as Newman 
says, it must always " either exist or not 
exist." 

We must grant that as psychology, 
Newman's account of belief is substantially 
sound. But in two important points it 
needs to be supplemented. He dwells on 
the fact that a number of inconclusive but 
converging arguments may produce a fairly 
intense feeling of certitude. Very often the 
explanation of this fact is that the real 
grounds of the belief, the grounds which 
have actually operated in the mind to pro- 
duce it, are imperfectly expressed in the 
" arguments." In the Grammar of Assent 
Newman appears to overlook the importance 
of this fact. We quoted passages from the 
University Sermons where he clearly indi- 
cated it ; but even there we found that he 
failed to see how the expression of the be- 
lief itself is quite as likely to be imperfect 
as the expression of the grounds which led 
to it ; so that a certitude may be well 
founded and just, while yet we may err in 
the dogmatic form in which we have ex- 
pressed it. The certitude cannot be claimed 



92 NEWMAN'S ' GRAMMAR OF ASSENT/ 

for the intellectual contents of the belief. 
This is the only explanation of the import- 
ant fact which Newman indicates so clearly 
in his University Sermon xiii. : 

It is hardly too much to say that almost all reasonings 
formally adduced in moral and religious and philo- 
sophical inquiries are rather specimens and symbols of 
the real grounds than those grounds themselves. They 
do but approximate to a representation of the general 
character of the proof which the writer wishes to con- 
vey to another's mind. They cannot, like mathematical 
proof, be formally followed with an attention confined 
to what is stated, and with the admission of nothing 
but what is urged. Rather they are hints towards, and 
samples of, the true reasoning, and demand an active, 
ready, candid, and docile mind, which can throw itself 
into what is said, neglect verbal difficulties, and pursue 
and carry out principles. 

He remarks that if we insisted on proof 
for everything, we should never come to 
action. Froude very justly observes that 
" this is perfectly true as regards individual 
persons ; the clerk, as Carlyle says, cannot 
be always verifying his ready - reckoner. 
Yet the conclusions on which we act are 
resting on producible evidence somewhere, 
if we cannot each of us produce it ourselves. 
They are the results of past experience 
and intellectual thought, which are tested, 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 93 

enlarged, and modified by the practice of 
successive generations. We accept them 
confidently, not from any internal convic- 
tion of their being necessarily true, but from 
an inference of another kind, that if untrue 
they would have been disproved." New- 
man missed the significance of the fact that 
we as single persons, one by one, cannot 
assign reasons for many of our beliefs, be- 
cause he has limited his attention to the 
individual person and not dwelt on the 
psychological connections between the mind 
of the single person and what we may call 
the general mind of the race. Froude's 
reply brings out the bearing of these con- 
nections on the matter of belief. We know 
that the individual life is part of a wider 
social life which has a solidarity and con- 
tinuity of its own. The vast majority of 
a man's beliefs, of every kind, do not rest 
on his consciously reasoned assent ; they are 
generated in his mind through all the in- 
numerable ways in which his social surround- 
ings act on him. So that there is a multi- 
tude of beliefs in trusting which a man is 
trusting the experience of his age and his 



94 NEWMAN'S c GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

race ; he is not merely trusting to the dead- 
weight of a conviction which has somehow 
come to be fixed in his own mind. 

Take the case of the "laws of thought" ; 
let us consider how these acquire certitude. 
There are certain principles which are post- 
ulates of knowledge, in the sense that with- 
out them even science cannot begin to work. 
If they are false, every fabric of knowledge 
falls to pieces, for they are the general bonds 
of connection which hold it together, and 
only through them has our knowledge even 
the small extent of coherence which it now 
possesses. Such postulates are, the exist- 
ence of oneself as a rational or thinking 
being ; the existence of a world beyond one's 
personal consciousness, which is relatively 
permanent and independent, and to which 
other similar rational beings are similarly 
related ; and the trustworthiness of those 
logical principles which lie at the basis 
of scientific reasoning. Traditionally these 
are called " laws of thought " or " necessities 
of thought " ; but we can find a more preg- 
nant designation when we compare the 
general activity of thought to the activity 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 95 

of a living organic body. Then the intel- 
lectual postulates appear as the vital pro- 
cesses or functions e.g., digestion, circula- 
tion, respiration by which the life of the 
organism is preserved and its growth effected ; 
they are the vital functions of thought. If 
it is true, on the one hand, that they are 
products of the very structure of our in- 
telligence, and on the other hand, that the 
known world is always found to conform to 
them, or that it is always possible to inter- 
pret our physical experience by their means, 
then we should expect beforehand that both 
the individual and the social mind would be 
so framed as to accept them with perfect 
readiness, so that what we might call the 
mental line of least resistance, or least fric- 
tion, would lie in the direction of their 
adoption as principles trustworthy to think 
by and reliable to act upon. We should 
expect to find them handed down by social 
inheritance i.e., embedded in those social 
forces of spoken and written language, tra- 
dition, education, and so forth, by which the 
mental furniture of the individual mind is 
largely organised. Above all, there is the 



96 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

fact that the most fundamental of the in- 
tellectual postulates are of such a character 
that without them not only the activity of 
intelligence, but even the existence of men 
in any organised social communities, would 
be impossible. Such considerations explain 
how, when these postulates are stated in 
the form of definite propositions, the mind 
at once accepts them as "self -evident 
truths," whose " opposite is inconceivable," 
or as " ultimate certainties," according to 
the current modes of description. This 
we may call practical certainty; the whole 
mind, as at once intellectual, emotional, 
and active, is so framed that all men with 
the utmost readiness accept and act upon 
certain general propositions ; and this is 
" common sense." In the same way a great 
number of beliefs of a less general kind come 
to be " practical certainties," and form part 
of our common intellectual instincts. 

This kind of " practical certainty " is New- 
man's only test of truth. The settled con- 
viction that we have hold of the truth and 
can give some reasons for it is sufficient 
evidence that we have hold of it in reality. 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 97 

The test of firm belief, that we cannot think 
the opposite, he takes as the test of truth. 
And since what is once true is always true, 
this view involves the assumption that certi- 
tude is " indefectible," hence Newman is 
compelled to attempt a proof of this. 

Take once more the case of the " laws 
of thought." The certitude with which we 
hold them is indefectible ; this may be 
granted. But this alone is no rational 
evidence of their truth. Their real trust- 
worthiness, as a means of interpreting our 
sense - experience and thereby obtaining 
scientific knowledge, can only arise from 
the fact that they belong to the framework 
of our intelligence, and therefore are postu- 
lates which must be granted if science is 
to exist and knowledge be possible. If they 
do not thus rest upon the nature of in- 
telligence, sharing in the general authority 
of Reason, their " practical certainty " affords 
the strongest support for total scepticism ; 
this is demonstrated with perfect clearness 
in Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. If 
these habits of belief are not a deposit 
from experiences that have been moulded 

G 



98 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

by the structure of Reason, they are simply 
the product of non- rational forces, the in- 
fluence of social custom and " authority." 
This is Hume's conclusion. The true philos- 
opher yields gracefully to impressions and 
maxims which he finds as a matter of fact 
have most sway over himself. " I may- 
nay, I must yield to the current of nature 
in submitting to my senses and under- 
standing, and in this blind submission I 
show most perfectly my sceptical principles;" 
for, after all, " if we believe that fire warms 
or that water refreshes, 'tis only because it 
costs us too much pains to think otherwise." 
If, on the other hand, reason has a structure 
of its own, and our habits of belief are a 
deposit moulded by its informing activity, 
then the best inquiry into the foundations 
of Belief will be to investigate that structure 
as thoroughly as possible. The coercive 
force of the "habits of belief" and "certi- 
tudes " will be irrelevant, we need not appeal 
to their practical necessity. 

With regard to the " certitudes " of a less 
general character which we are constantly 
forming, Newman is seriously embarrassed 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 99 

in his attempt to prove their indefecti- 
bility. 1 The candour of the discussion is 
beyond praise, and the skill with which it 
is conducted is as great as the candour ; 
but the reader feels that the attempt is 
hopeless. A belief may be so firmly estab- 
lished that we cannot think the opposite, 
for a time ; but new discoveries, new ex- 
periences, new points of view may arise, 
which are capable of changing even such a 
belief. And there is a deeper irresistible 
agency which transforms or destroys beliefs 
so gradually that it may easily be over- 
looked. This is the Zeitgeist or spirit of 
the age, producing a certain psychological 
"atmosphere" or "climate," favourable to the 
life of certain modes of belief, unfavourable 
and even fatal to the life of others. No 
" certitude " can stand for long against this 
transforming force. This is why some ot 
the doctrines and methods of Cardinal New- 
man's own Church are impossible to-day : the 
modern mind refuses even to discuss them. 

In dealing with the " iridefectibility of 
certitude " Newman dwells on the special 

1 Ch. vii. 2. 



100 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

marks of that feeling to such an extent as 
to be almost compelled to conclude that 
most of us cannot tell which of our beliefs 
are permanent certitudes, and therefore true, 
and which are not. Although the spon- 
taneous rejection of the opposite is a fair 
psychological test of the firmest sort of 
belief, to make this a test of truth is to 
shut our eyes to any further evidence that 
may be forthcoming. Froude justly observes, 
" the reasonable person would say that in- 
stead of rejecting suggestions incompatible 
with such prepossessions, one is bound to 
welcome them and look for them with the 
most scrupulous impartiality." In the end 
Newman is driven to appeal to a test out- 
side that of mere felt conviction ; minds 
which are highly cultivated all round, are 
the only reliable guides in discovering the 
certitudes in which we ought to rest. This 
is an appeal to those who are wisest and 
best ; their firm convictions are true ! With 
this test of truth we need have no serious 
quarrel. But it would require to be stated 
in quite a different form ; those convictions 
are truest which best serve man's highest life. 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 101 

It is easy to see the spirit of Newman's 
argument how he was led to his conclusion. 
Thus (l) he points out that what is once true 
is always true : hence true knowledge must 
be permanent knowledge. (2) In view of 
his theistic presupposition he assumes that 
the human mind is made for truth, and so 
rests in truth as it cannot rest in falsehood. 
(3) When, therefore, we find that the mind 
can form beliefs which after investigation 
has confirmed their probability become 
irreversible and are accompanied by a 
specific sense of intellectual satisfaction and 
repose, what is more natural than to suppose 
that those beliefs in which the mind can rest 
must be true, and since it is possible to rest 
in them unconditionally, must be absolutely 
true? Yet the test fails, as we have seen. 
It is natural for us to form firm and solid 
beliefs ; but this is not to have certainty in 
the intellectual interpretation of them. New- 
man showed, as we saw, that however wisely 
we interpret the grounds of our belief, we 
fall short of finding conclusive reasons for it ; 
and this same law holds good of the belief 
itself. The fact is that the principles from 



102 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

which he started are erroneously conceived. 
We grant that the human mind is madeybr 
truth : this follows equally from Newman's 
theistic presupposition and from our postulate 
of the Rationality of the World. But this 
does not show that we are made for the 
attainment of absolute or perfect truth. 
Again, we are made for feeling and action as 
well as for knowing truth ; and usually we 
may be conscious of a principle quite clearly 
enough to act upon it safely, while we are in 
doubt or confusion when we try to state it in 
the intellectual form of a truth. We grant 
also that what is once true must be always 
true, with the reservation that truth from its 
nature as a work of thought must grow ; 
and its growth is not a process in which old 
absolute truths remain with new ones added 
on to them ; it is a process in which old 
truth becomes organically modified and trans- 
formed and taken up into a new and wider 
truth : there can be no growth without the 
operation of a negative and critical element. 
That is why old forms of truth which survive 
unchanged hinder true development. That 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 103 

is why Catholicism cannot be a true develop- 
ment of Christianity. 

The motive of Newman's argument is of 
course to show how, while we cannot prove 
that the Catholic Church, or any other 
institution, is an infallible authority, we may 
yet feel certain that it is, and rest in that 
certainty, if we can only find some probable 
reasons in its favour. But this is possible 
only when we shut our eyes to the multitude 
of probable reasons against it. He has not 
given us a complete systematic statement of 
all the probabilities in its favour ; but one of 
the most important is this : the early spread 
of Christianity, and the bravery and endur- 
ance of primitive Christians, are inexplicable 
apart from the assumption that a miraculous 
power was at work. This would be main- 
tained by many who would with us entirely 
reject Newman's view that Catholicism is 
identical with Christianity. 

We saw that the state of the ancient 
world was such that the spread of Chris- 
tianity was no mystery ; positive constructive 
ideas were needed, of a universal kind, that 



104 NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 

is, appreciable by all. Moral reconstruction 
was needed too ; and this latter point has 
been explained with admirable clearness by 
Froude : 

" We mean by Christianity the principles 
taught by Christ upon the Mount, and which, 
as the type of human perfection, he illus- 
trated in his character ; we mean by the 
power which enabled it to grow, a spiritual 
influence working from mind to mind rather 
than an external supernatural force. In so 
far as the Church has adhered to the original 
pattern, in so far as it has aimed at making 
men good rather than furnishing their intel- 
lects with orthodox formulas, it has fulfilled 
its part in regenerating mankind." 

To a great extent the Church has lost 
both the form and the spirit of primitive 
Christianity ; but, as Froude says, so far as 
it has been true to the original pattern, " the 
spread of it ceases to be a mystery." "The 
Roman world was sunk in lies, insincere 
idolatry, and the coarsest and most revolting 
profligacy. There is something in human 
nature, in all times and countries, which 
revolts against such things ; something which 



NEWMAN'S 'GRAMMAR OF ASSENT.' 105 

says that lies are to be abhorred, and that 
purity is better than bestiality ; and when 
the bad side of things is at its worst, the 
nobler sort of men refuse to put up with it 
longer. The Roman Government offered to 
the devotion of the Empire a Divus Nero 
or a Diwis Domitianus. The image of a 
peasant of Palestine, a being of stainless 
integrity, appeared simultaneously, pointing 
to a Father in heaven, and requiring men 
in his name to lead pure and self-sacrificing 
lives. And if it be true that man is more 
than a beast, and that moral insight and 
self- consciousness are a part of his natural 
endowment, we require no miracles to explain 
why millions of men and women, with such 
alternatives before them, were found to 
choose the better part." 



106 



CHAPTER IV. 

JAMES MARTINEAU. 

SUMMARY. 

RECALLING the essence of Newman's view of religion, 
and of the one which we have contrasted with it, we find 
that Martineau starts from the same position as Newman, 
but works in the opposite direction. He regards the 
existing dogmatic systems only as an accumulation of 
errors, to he cast aside. The way to truth is to rely 
solely on the Conscience and Reason of the individual 
man. 

Belief in God is based by Martineau on three lines of 
argument. The first is, that the existence of the world 
implies a creative and designing (i.e., intelligent) cause. 
We may mention some of the many thinkers who give 
this argument their support. But it requires to be 
thoroughly modified. In the first place, our experience 
of active power in willing does not warrant the assump- 
tion of a divine or creative will ; for our wills are very 
limited in range and are in no sense " creative." And, 
in the second place, the argument from Design cannot be 
maintained, in its original form, in the face of modern 
scientific doctrines. To-day it has become the problem 
of interpreting natural Evolution. We may point out, 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 10*7 

with illustrations from recent thought, the ways in which 
Evolution may he understood. 

The second line of thought starts with the fact of 
moral obligation, and infers a divine Lawgiver. We 
notice various groups of thinkers who maintain " Ethical 
Theism," so understood. But is the passage from man's 
Conscience to God as Lawgiver a mere inference ? If so, 
God and man are separate beings, and the inference 
breaks down, for the moral consciousness, separated from 
God, might exist if there were no God. We find that 
this separation leads to " Ethical Deism," and individual- 
ism in an extreme form. Each individual is supposed to 
have power to work out his own moral salvation unaided. 
This involves an exaggeration of the power of the indi- 
vidual will, an inadequate view of moral evil, and a 
denial of the social solidarity of men. We may notice 
how this individualism bears on the case between the 
Unitarian and the Evangelical. We find in Dr Mar- 
tineau a truer view of the unity of the social life of men, 
which provides for " mediation " between the individual 
and God. 

WE have suggested the view that Religion 
is the interpretation of an experience. This 
idea will have to be more fully worked out 
before its value can be estimated. 

We saw that with Newman, the " experi- 
ence " is restricted to the one fact of Moral 
Authority or Obligation, as given to us in 
Conscience. The central or vital part of 
Religion he takes to be the vast system of 
precept and dogma which, with him, corre- 



108 JAMES MARTINEAtJ. 

spends to what we have called the " interpre- 
tation " of the experience. It is obvious that 
the simple fact of Conscience will not hear 
the weight of this system, hence an external 
authority must be found ; and this authority 
must be infallible, because the doctrines must 
be absolutely true. To this we have opposed 
the view that the centre of gravity in real 
Religion is the " experience." The " inter- 
pretation " may express, with varying degrees 
of fulness, what the experience means ; but 
it remains a partial expression at the best. 
Hence our central question is always this, 
What is the experience which, with its in- 
terpretation, makes Religion ? We now pro- 
ceed to consider Dr Martineau's answer to 
this question. 

Dr Martineau is at one with Cardinal 
Newman in his view of Conscience as the 
natural basis of Theism, although he finds 
another fundamental basis which he regards 
as of equal importance. His contrast to 
Newman consists of course in his giving up 
the principle of absolute or infallible dogma, 
so that no authority outside the soul seems 
to be needed. But he rejects the dogmatic 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 109 

principle, not in favour of our principle that 
doctrines are imperfect expressions of re- 
ligious realities. He rejects the historical 
forms of doctrine, because he believes that 
criticism has shown them to be a baseless 
fabric of human invention : 

Christianity, as defined or understood in all the Churches 
which formulate it, has been mainly evolved from what 
is transient and perishable in its sources, from what is 
unhistorical in its traditions, mythological in its pre- 
conceptions, and misapprehended in the oracles of its 
prophets. From the fable of Eden to the imagination 
of the last trumpet, the whole story of the Divine order 
of the world has been dislocated and deformed. The 
blight of birth -sin with its involuntary perdition; the 
scheme of expiatory redemption with its vicarious salva- 
tion ; the Incarnation with its low postulates of the 
relation between God and Man, and its unworkable doc- 
trine of two natures in one person ; the official trans- 
mission of grace through material elements in the keeping 
of a consecrated corporation ; the second coming of Christ 
to summon the dead and part the sheep from the goats at 
the general judgment, all are the growth of a mythical 
literature, or Messianic dreams, or Pharisaic theology, or 
sacramental superstition, or popular apotheosis. 1 

Is not this an embarrassing conclusion for 
a thinker who believes in the infallible con- 
science of man and the all-wise Providence 
of God ? Surely the judgment is too severe. 

1 Seat of Authority, p. 650. 



110 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

It is possible if we admit that there may 
be degrees of truth to find ethical and re- 
ligious truths implicit in every fundamental 
dogma of the Christian system : Divine 
Judgment, Justification by Faith, Mediation, 
Divine Mercy and Forgiveness, Atonement, 
Vicarious Suffering, and above all in that 
grand achievement of Christian thought, the 
doctrine of the Incarnation of God in Man. 

Passing from these preliminary thoughts, 
we observe that in Dr Marti neau's Theism 
there are three lines of thought in combina- 
tion, each one of which has been taken by 
various groups of writers as the basal prin- 
ciple of religious belief. Dr Martineau has 
not welded them together into a consistent 
whole ; but this is a common characteristic 
of the work of the greatest thinkers. 

We will consider first the time-honoured 
Argument from Cause and Design. Put in 
one sentence, it is an argument from the 
creation to a Creator. It must be remem- 
bered that the truth and importance of this 
mode of inference are affirmed in the official 
tradition of the Church of Rome. Thus, the 



JAMES MARTINEAU. Ill 

Vatican Council of 1870 declared, Sancta 
Mater Ecclesia tenet et docet Deum . . . 
naturali humance rationis lumine e rebus 
creatis certo cognosci posse; the existence 
of God may be known with certainty, by 
the unaided reason of man, from the works 
which He has created. l If so, belief in God 
may be securely reached by a merely logical 
road. This idea is by no means peculiar 
to Roman Catholic theologians. Locke ex- 
pounds it vigorously in his Essay concerning 
Human Understanding, Paley, in his Natural 
TJieology (1803), and Chalmers, in his "Bridg- 
water Treatise " on TJie Adaptation of Ex- 
ternal Nature to the Intellectual and Moral 
Constitution of Man (1834). Among more 
recent writers, the same argument is placed 
in the forefront of theistic " proofs " by 
Tulloch, in his Burnett Essay on Theism 
(1855), and by Mozley, Bampton Lectures 
(1865), and by Flint, Theism (1876). The 
argument is made one of the main pillars 
on which the structure of Theism rests, in 
Martineau's great work, A Study of Religion 

1 It is evident that Newman departed far from the official 
tradition of his Church. 



112 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

(1887). This attempt to pass "from Nature 
up to Nature's God" consists of a twofold 
argument, the world needs a Creator, and 
the traces of design in Nature imply a 
Designer. In the hands of Paley and 
Locke, both arguments are made to rest 
on the deistic view of Nature as a vast 
machine, of which the Deity is the maker 
and contriver ; and traces of this assumption 
cling to the arguments in every statement of 
them, even in that of Dr Martineau. And 
they were originally elaborated long before 
the idea of Evolution had been applied, as 
now it has been, in every sphere of exist- 
ence, animal life, mind, society, civilisation, 
morality, art, and religion. This moving, 
living, growing world, this world that is 
not yet made, is very different from the 
world from which the old arguments set out 
to find a " wise Architect." To - day they 
must change their form, and change it funda- 
mentally, or be relegated to the various 
" refuges of the obsolete " which still survive. 
Dr Martineau's version of the argument 
from Causality is simple and clear ; but it 
will not prove what is desired. He insists 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 113 

that the only causes which we know are our 
wills ; we are " real causes," for we are the 
causes of our own actions. This assumption 
is a natural one, and it is made and defended 
by some of the foremost psychologists of the 
day. 1 But Dr Martineau goes on to say that 
the world needs a Cause, and since Will 
alone is cause there must be a Divine Will. 
Now, this passage from the human will as 
cause to the Divine Will as creative cause 
does not seem to be logically possible. My 
will certainly moves my arm ; but I may 
will all day without being able to move 
anything beyond the reach of my arm ; and 
surely this essential difference between the 
human will and the assumed Divine or 
Creative Will cannot be treated as un- 
important. It may well be true that 
"causality" is a conception arising in con- 
nection with our own activity and trans- 
ferred to Nature ; but, when so transferred, 
it gives us no Divine Cause. It only 
warrants us in seeking to explain natural 
events as "causes" one of another. 

1 See "Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism (Gifford Lectures), 
vol. ii. p. 130 ff. 

H 



114 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

What can we say of the " design argu- 
ment " to-day ? It is now merely an obsolete 
way of raising the question, What is the 
meaning of natural evolution? 1 We may 
use the word " growth," as it is equally 
suitable. First of all, "growth " means the 
continual appearance of something new. In 
considering the meaning of the word, we 
may always keep in mind the growth of a 
living body. The thing which grows does 
not merely go on, like a rolling stone which 
gathers no moss ; it comes to be something 
new something better or worse than it was 
before. Dr Martineau has expressed this 
as follows, referring to what we may call 
" upward " evolution : 

Evolution consists in the perpetual emergence of some- 
thing new, which is an increment of being on its prior 
term, and therefore more than its equivalent, and entitled 
to equal confidence and higher rank. This, however, 
though holding good throughout, has an exceptionally 
forcible validity at certain stages of the evolution. 
Though all the differences evolved are something new, 
and may fall upon an observer's mere perception as 
equally unexpected, yet, when scrutinised by reason, 



1 "Evolution" and "Natural Selection" are two very 
different things. The latter is thought to be one of the 
natural causes which brought about Evolution. 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 115 

some may retain their character of absolute surprise, 
for which there was and could be nothing to prepare us ; 
while others may prove to be, like an unsuspected pro- 
perty of a geometrical figure, only a new grouping of 
data and relations already in hand. 1 

There are three different conceptions of 
growth current in our own day : they are not 
always distinguished, and when not distin- 
guished lead to much confusion of thought. 
They arise from different views of the con- 
nection between the old and the new in 
evolution; this is the "explanation" of the 
process. 

We may be content to trace out only the 
order of succession in which the various new 
forms emerge : we may deal only with their 
history in time. For example, in the evolu- 
tion of the material world, we may set up, as 
the utmost possible in the way of explan- 
ation, an account of the successive phases 
of the world's appearance as it cooled and 
assumed the form of a solid mass ; we may 
then mark the time when the first germs of 
life appeared, then the extending variety 
of living forms as new races and species 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. p. 393 (3rd ed.) 



116 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

emerged, and so on. Similarly in the 
evolution of mind, we may distinguish the 
successively more complex or " higher " 
forms of consciousness, and mark the order 
in which they come out. All through we 
should only be answering the question which 
may be colloquially expressed as " which 
comes after which ? " 

But the natural inclination to " explain " 
the evolution of things or rather, as it is at 
present, to make evolution explain things- 
leads us beyond this impartially historical 
view of Development ; and in two different 
directions, according to the two divergent 
methods of seeking for inner connections in 
the various stages of evolution. One view 
regards the earlier stages as manufacturing 
and thus explaining the later. Dr Mar- 
tineau, in the passage which I quoted above, 
observed that there are many cases in which 
the " increments of being," the new differ- 
ences which emerge, may be explained as a 
" new grouping of data and relations already 
in hand," " not spontaneous, from the isolated 
thing, but due to changed conditions in the 
scene of its existence, modifying its external 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 117 

relations and through these its internal 
nature." Here there is nothing really new 
we have only a rearrangement of the old. 
The view of which I am speaking considers 
that all advances in evolution are of this 
type. Thus organic life would be only a 
new complication of matter and motion ; and 
the higher stages of conscious life only a new 
complication of physical sensations. This 
conception of evolution is seriously main- 
tained by Spencer, among others : his clear 
statement of it may be quoted : 

The law which " unifies the successive changes through 
which sensible existences separately and together pas's," 
is a law of " the redistribution of matter and motion." 
" Whatever aspect of it we are for the moment consider- 
ing, evolution is always to be regarded as fundamentally 
an integration of matter and dissipation of motion, which 
may be and usually is accompanied by other transforma- 
tions of matter and motion. The primary redistribution 
ends by forming aggregates which are ' simple ' where it 
is rapid, but which become ' compound ' in proportion as 
its slowness allows the effects of secondary redistributions 
to accumulate." " Organic aggregates differ from other 
aggregates alike in the quantity of motion which they 
contain and the amount of rearrangement of parts which 
accompanies their progressive integration." l 



1 For exposition of this view see First Principles, Part II., 
ch. xii., xiii. 



118 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

The ideal of this mode of explanation 
usually known as Naturalism is to make 
our knowledge of the whole history of the 
universe into one continuous chain in which 
our reason could pass from link to link, seeing 
at each step how the earlier ones made the 
later. "Explanation by beginning" is the 
watchword of this method. But this ideal 
is now generally admitted to be by the 
nature of things impossible. There are, as Dr 
Martineau says, differences evolved, " which, 
when scrutinised by reason, retain their 
character of absolute surprise, for which there 
was and could be nothing to prepare us " in 
the previous conditions. 

Dr Martineau has pointed out two of these 
"hitches in the evolutionary deduction": the 
appearance of sentience and the appearance 
of conscious rationality and freedom. No 
combination of modes of motion could produce 
a sensation, and no complication of sensations 
could produce rational thought. Few would 
contradict this at present ; we might say 
none, for those who profess to show the evol- 
ution of consciousness from matter-in-motion 
endow the matter with sentience first ; and 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 119 

similarly in the'" evolution" of thought from 
sensations, the latter are first endowed with 
thought. The German physiologist, Dubois 
Reymond, insists that there are seven " world- 
riddles " which science can never solve. These 
are : (l) the origin of matter and force ; (2) 
the origin of motion in matter ; (3) the origin 
of life ; (4) the origin of the adaptations (of 
means to end) in Nature ; (5) the origin of 
sentient consciousness ; (6) the origin of 
language (that is, of Reason) ; (7) the origin 
of freedom and responsibility. We may go 
further than Dr Martineau and say that not 
one of these could be evolved from a previous 
state of things in which it simply was not : 
the earlier stages of evolution do not manu- 
facture the later. One crucial case of this 
supposed " manufacture" is the evolution of 
the sense of moral authority " out of" the 
experience of social utility, as maintained by 
Spencer and others. The impossibility of it 
in this case has been trenchantly stated by 
Dr Martineau: 

I can understand how society, taking the individual 
in hand, can create a must for him, but not how it can 
create an ourjlit ; and as self-interest, by which alone it 



120 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

works, does not begin to be anything else by length of 
days, but only becomes a swifter thought and an easier 
habit of the same type, it is useless to borrow millenniums 
in order to turn it into duty. 

" Explanation by beginning" is no explan- 
ation at all ; and the attempt to carry it 
through is now played out. 

The other way of explaining evolution 
takes as its motto, " explanation by end." 
This is the conception which seems likely to 
rule the future. A quotation from Pro- 
fessor Seth Pringle-Pattison will show how 
a representative philosophic thinker of to- 
day expresses this thought : 

I cannot for a moment accept the view of evolution 
which makes it consist in a cunning manufacture of some- 
thing out of nothing. Man certainly does develop these 
moral qualities, and he develops them himself, for only 
what is self-acquired can be a moral acquisition at all. 
But in his own strength he can do nothing. It is to 
misread the whole nature of development to suppose that 
man, as an isolated finite creature, could take a single 
step in advance. Such a being, supposing it possible 
for such a being to exist, would remain eternally fixed 
in a dead sameness of being. What it was, it would 
remain. Development or progress is not the making of 
something out of nothing, but the unfolding or mani- 
festation of that which in another aspect eternally is. It 
is possible, therefore, only to a being who forms part of 
a divinely guided process, and who draws in consequence 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 121 

from a fount of eternal fulness. Just as it is impossible, 
therefore, to believe that there is no knowledge in the 
universe greater than that of man or beings like him, so 
it is incredible that there should be no Eternal Goodness, 
as the source of those ideals of which we are conscious 
as the guiding star of all our progress, but which we our- 
selves so palpably fail to realise. ... All explanation of 
the higher by the lower, such as the naturalistic theories 
attempt, is a precise inversion of the true account. The 
antecedents assigned are not the causes of the conse- 
quents : for by antecedents the naturalistic theories mean 
the antecedents (matter and energy, for example) in 
abstraction from their consequents, the antecedents as 
we might suppose them to be if no such consequents had 
ever issued from them. So conceived, however, the 
antecedents have no real existence, they are mere ab- 
stract aspects of the one concrete fact which we call the 
universe. The true nature of the antecedents is only 
learned by reference to the consequents which follow; 
the true nature of the cause becomes apparent only in 
the effect. All ultimate or philosophical explanation 
must look to the end. Hence the futility of all attempts 
to explain human life in terms of the merely animal, to 
explain life in terms of the inorganic, and ultimately to 
find a sufficient formula for the cosmic process in terms 
of the redistribution of matter and motion. 

Thus, to say that the lower (e.g., expe- 
rience of social utility) was the cause of the 
higher (e.g., our consciousness of the moral 
worth of altruism) means only that the lower 
consciousness was a condition of the appear- 
ance of the higher ; the former directly pre- 



122 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

pared the way for the latter, and so indirectly 
helped it, prepared "the fulness of the 
time " l in which it was to come. Similarly, 
to trace the historical evolution of religion 
means really to find the order in which the 
various forms of religion appeared, and the 
way in which the earlier ones prepared the 
way for the later, how the human spirit 
was training itself to appreciate the new and 
higher phases of truth which succeeded. 

It is therefore unhistorical and contrary 
to evolutional principles to suppose that there 
is no more in the later form than in the 
earlier. This would be the case if the earlier, 
considered merely as so many events in time, 
produced the later ; for the effect cannot 
contain more than the cause which produced 
it. To take an example : it is contrary to 
evolutional principles to suppose that the 
primitive forms of religion respect for an- 
cestors, and animistic views of Nature 
simply produced the later ones. If it were 
so, then all religion as we have it now would 
be a psychological illusion ; for it would 
appear to be something quite other and 

1 Galatians iv. 4. 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 123 

better than it really is. That this has been 
proved is more or less consciously believed 
by many ; but we must insist that it rests 
on a complete misunderstanding of what 
scientific evolution means. Some confusion 
might be avoided if it were customary to 
distinguish between origins and beginnings. 
The first aim of any theory of evolution is to 
find beginnings and trace them on to ends 
or results, recognising that the end throws 
more light on the origin of the principle 
whose evolution is being traced, than the 
beginning. 

It is interesting to find that the view of 
Evolution expressed in the above quotation 
has been adopted by a very able inquirer 
who began by studying the subject on the 
lines of Mr H. Spencer : Professor Fiske, of 
Harvard. His Cosmic Philosophy (1874) 
represents Spencer's attitude ; but when he 
realised the meaning of man's position as 
the highest product of natural Evolution, he 
found in human nature the key to all Nature 
and the true foundation of theistic belief 
And this point of view he has expressed in 
a series of brief but valuable works : Man's 



124 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

Destiny (1881), The Idea of God (1885), 
and Through Nature to God (1899). The 
simplest statement of this transformed ver- 
sion of the old argument may be given 
thus. 1 Here, outside of us, enclosing us, is 
an infinite Power, a Power that was here 
before we were, that will be here after we 
have gone away, a Power that persists 
through all the countless changes of its 
manifestation, a Power of whose existence 
we are certain. This Power is the cause of 
Evolution of all that Evolution has brought 
forth. What have we a right to think about 
this Power ? We may take our stand upon 
the principle that no effect can contain more 
than the cause which produced it ; and we 
may judge the great world-power by what it 
has accomplished. It has produced world- 
wide order, harmony, and beauty ; but far 
more than this it has produced life, con- 
sciousness, thought, love. Thought is; the 
power, then, of which Thought is a mani- 
festation is not less than Thought. That 
which is the cause of Thought in the whole 

1 See, for example, Mr M. J. Savage's vigorous booklet, 
Four Great Questions. 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 125 

human race must be at least equal to Thought, 
however it may transcend it beyond the 
farthest reach of our imagination. Love is ; 
and that out of which it came cannot be 
something less, something poorer, something 
with no element of self-sacrifice in it. 

These brief suggestions may suffice to 
show the general character of the argument 
from Nature to God, in the only form in 
which that argument has any force at the 
present day. 

We have said the Argument from Cause 
and Design, in its old form, if taken as the 
main approach to belief in God, belongs to 
an obsolete type of thought. Even if we 
suppose the argument to have a conclusive- 
ness which it does not possess, it is still 
incapable of producing a satisfying con- 
viction, a " real belief " ; and the God whose 
existence is "proved" is only a Mighty 
Designer. The object of religious belief 
and worship must be something more than 
this : he is not required only to account 
for the creation of the world. Hence, while 
the arguments of the eighteenth century 



126 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

have survived, with fairly vigorous life, 
through the nineteenth century, there has 
been a rapid increase in the number of 
those on whose minds these arguments made 
little impression. Other foundations were 
needed to satisfy the expansive power of 
the poetic imagination in a Wordsworth, 
a Coleridge, and a Carlyle ; l to find the 
divine meaning of Beauty as Shelley and 
Keats sought for it ; and to satisfy the 
ethical impulses of an age which quickly 
accomplished the Abolition of Slavery, 
Reform of the Criminal Code, Catholic 
Emancipation, and Freedom of Trade. 

Other foundations have been sought for ; 
and the most deeply significant appeal for 
a new source of belief rests in the words 
of a modern thinker on " a conviction of 
the absolute value of the ethical life." Our 
conception of God must be based on what 
we can discern in the moral nature of man, 
which lies at the basis of religion, arid 

1 The reader will remember Carlyle's attack on the notion 
of " proof of a God," " a probable God," and his constant 
polemic against " the mechanical system of thought " to which 
such ideas belong. 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 127 

beneath all forms of its best expressions. 
But if this attitude of mind is to have any 
meaning for us, we must understand that 
it rests upon a conviction which the intellect 
alone, exerted to its uttermost power, could 
never establish. I will express this con- 
viction in the words of Frederick Robertson 
of Brighton. " In the darkest hour through 
which a human soul can pass, whatever 
else is doubtful, this, at least, is certain : 
if there be no God and no future state, yet 
even then it is better to be generous than 
to be selfish, better to be chaste than licen- 
tious, better to be true than false, better 
to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed, 
beyond all earthly blessedness, is the man 
who in the tempestuous darkness of the 
soul has dared to hold fast to these vener- 
able landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who, 
when all is drear and cheerless within and 
without, when his teachers terrify him and 
his friends shrink from him, has obstinately 
clung to moral good. Thrice blessed, be- 
cause his night shall pass into clear bright 
day." This conviction, that moral goodness 
is not a mere utilitarian convenience or a 



128 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

disguised prudence but an independent 
reality, is the basis of the Argument from 
Moral Obligation. 

This argument was stated in an impress- 
ive form by Butler in his Sermons (1726) 
and Analogy of Religion (1736). In thus 
taking his stand on " the absolute value of 
the ethical life," in an age of Scepticism 
and Deism, his insight was both original 
and profound ; but the necessities of con- 
troversy made his work rather a series of 
"splendid fragments" than a systematic 
exposition. Butler's position, as regards 
the Ethical factor in religious belief, is a 
striking anticipation of that of Kant, whose 
resort to ethical experience for the mainstay 
of belief has been described as " the most 
important contribution of modern philosophy 
towards a vital Theism." Among recent 
philosophical writers, this view is taken 
by Professor Fraser in his Gifford Lectures 
(1896), by Professor A. Seth Pringle r Pat- 
tison in Tivo Lectures on Theism and Man's 
Place in the Cosmos (1897), and by Pro- 
fessor G. H. Howison in The Conception of 
God (1898). These all follow the path 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 129 

marked out by the Ethical Theism of Kant, 
while seeking to avoid certain defects in 
Kant's treatment to which we shall have 
to refer in the sequel. In Dr Temple's 
Bampton Lectures (1884) the moral argu- 
ment is made of primary importance. The 
value of a combination of the two lines 
of thought the argument from Cause and 
Design, and the argument from Moral 
Obligation had long before been shown 
by Hooker as a theologian and Berkeley 
as a philosopher ; and in recent times they 
have frequently been treated together. In 
his Study of Religion Dr Martineau sets 
the two arguments side by side as together 
constituting a sufficient basis for rational 
Theism. We have seen the modification 
that is required in the first of these two 
arguments. Our question now is In what 
form may the Argument from Moral Obliga- 
tion be stated ? 

Dr Martineau bases it on the fundamental 
ethical fact of Obligation. In a conflict of 
springs of action, where we recognise a 
higher and a lower course, we have no right 
to dispose of ourselves as we please : we 

I 



130 JAMES MARTINEATJ. 

are bidden to follow the higher, by a law over 
us not of our own making, a command not 
to be canvassed but obeyed. What is Dr 
Martineau's interpretation of this great fact ? 

If the sense of authority means anything at all, it 
means the discernment of something higher than we, 
having claims on our self, therefore no mere part of 
it; hovering over and transcending our personality, 
though also mingling with our consciousness and mani- 
fested in its intimations. If I rightly interpret this 
sentiment, I cannot therefore stop within my own limits, 
but am irresistibly carried on to the recognition of 
another than I. Nor does that other remain without 
further witness : the predicate " higher than I " takes 
me yet a step beyond ; for what am I ? A person : 
higher than whom no " thing " assuredly, no mere 
phenomenon, can be ; but only another Person, greater 
and higher, and of deeper insight. 1 

It is claimed, then, that we may pass by a 
process of inference from man's conscience 
to God. On this point we must concentrate 
our attention. Let us take a case in which 
this inference is not made and it is not 
usually made by men in their ordinary life 
the consciousness of moral authority is there 
all the same. But does it apart from the 
inference contain any sort of direct appre- 

1 Types of Ethical Theory (2nd edition), vol. ii. p. 104. 
The italics are in the original. 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 131 

hension or experience of the Divine *? If it 
does not, then our moral consciousness is 
complete in itself, and there seems no ground 
for a logical passage to a divine cause outside 
it. Dr Martineau asks " whether an insulated 
nature can be a seat of authority at all." It 
is indeed hard to understand how a being, 
who is conceived to exist as Dr Martineau 
in this argument conceives man to exist, 
could ever be conscious of imperfection and 
an obligation to be better. For God and 
Man are conceived to be separate beings, 
just as we are separate from each other ; 
and if God, the Infinite Person, is strictly 
other than man, the finite person, then the 
latter must be capable of existing as a self- 
sufficient being, even if there were no God. 
One might well ask, how could such a being 
be conscious of himself as imperfect, and, as 
it were, "rise above himself" as he does in 
comparing himself with others and passing 
judgment on himself. But the difficulty is 
not in the least solved by assuming that 
" another Person " is perfect. We have God 
and man confronting each other as separate 
beings, divided in their existence ; and man 



132 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

is really a seat of authority to himself, except 
when his reflective faculty wakes up suffici- 
ently to make the inference to God ; and the 
inference appears to be simply groundless. 

Cardinal Newman has an interesting pass- 
age which, as he uses it, to enforce the 
need of reliance on the Church of Rome, 
contains a subtle petitio principii, but which 
will serve to illustrate our point. He sup- 
poses the case of a man thinking himself out 
from Catholicism to Atheism. " First, he 
would protest against the sacrifice of the 
Mass ; next, he gave up baptismal regen- 
eration and the sacramental principle ; then 
he asked himself whether dogmas were not a 
restraint on Christian liberty as well as 
sacraments ; then came the question, What, 
after all, was the use of teachers of religion ? 
Why should any one stand between him and 
his Maker ? After a time it struck him that 
this obvious question had to be answered by 
the Apostles as well as by the Anglican 
clergy ; so he came to the conclusion that 
the true and only revelation of God to 
Man is that which is written in the heart. 
This did for a time, and he remained a 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 133 

Deist. But then it occurred to him that 
this inward moral law was there within the 
breast, whether there were a God or not, 
and that it was a roundabout way of enforc- 
ing that law to say that it came from God, 
and simply unnecessary, seeing that it carried 
with it its own sacred and sovereign author- 
ity, as our feelings instinctively testified ; and 
when he turned to look at the physical 
world around him, he really did not see 
what scientific proof there was of the 
Being of God at all ; and it seemed to 
him that all things would go on quite as 
well as at present, without that hypothesis 
as with it." l If the soul of man is separate 
in existence from God, and is yet capable of 
having a moral consciousness as its crown 
and completion, man would be capable of 
having the moral consciousness if there were 
nothing divine outside himself. Hence it 
would seem that if there can only be a 
logical passage from man to God, if the 
knowledge of God is nothing more than 
an hypothesis to account for facts of con- 
sciousness with which He is in no real or 

1 Grammar of Assent, ch. vii. 2. 



134 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

vital connection, then the logical passage 
and the hypothesis break down. The in- 
terpretation of our moral consciousness which 
is needed must proceed by another way ; and 
this way is shown by Dr Martineau himself. 
Before we proceed to consider this third 
line of thought, we must look further at 
some of the bearings of the inadequate in- 
terpretation of conscience which we have 
just examined. The idea of God's moral 
relations to Man, which is involved in it, 
is of great historical importance. It was 
worked out consistently by Kant, and, in 
the form which he gave it, is known as 
Ethical Deism. With Kant the mere bind- 
ing force of the " categorical imperative " is 
made the basis on which rests belief in God, 
in His moral government of the world, in a 
future life, and in human freedom. All these 
are inferential postulates from our moral 
nature, which taken in itself is conceived as 
so absolutely self-sufficient as to have no 
need of any interaction with God. In this 
case, the view taken of Redemption naturally 
identifies it with individual moral progress, 
a "salvation" which is worked out by the 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 135 

natural activity of the individual mind, and 
which implies nothing more on the divine 
side than the original creation of man and 
his endowment with Reason and free-will. 
Kant's own statement has special features 
which we need not enter into ; but his mean- 
ing is at one with the results of what we 
have called Dr Martineau's second line of 
thought, which may be thus summed up : 
" God's part is done when, having made us 
free, he shows to us our best ; ours now 
remains to pass from illumination of con- 
science to surrender of will." l 

The great mistake of the Kantian con- 
ception lies in its ethical individualism, 
which leads to an inadequate view of 
human life, and especially of moral evil and 
its remedies. This defect is deeply rooted 
in much of modern Unitarian Thought. I 
owe much to Unitarian thinkers, and feel 
it a privilege to have been under Unitarian 
influences, and to serve the group of Churches 
called by this name ; but none the less do I 
believe that there is a serious weakness in 
the current Unitarian presentation of re- 

1 Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 106. 



136 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

ligion, which may be detected in Dr Mar- 
tineau's writings whenever he is on the line 
of Ethical Deism. 

The idea is that each man, as a moral 
personality, rests entirely on himself, on his 
own Reason and personal freedom, and may 
make moral advance independently of the 
influences of Nature and human society. 
The human race consists of a vast number 
of spiritual " atoms " ; and between them 
there is no moral "reciprocity" or "solidarity," 
such as makes possible a common spirit 
capable of being divinely educated. Hence 
Dr Martineau, seeking for the Seat of 
Authority, makes no appeal to the history 
of mankind, or to the past or present ex- 
perience of our race. There can be no 
" degrees of truth " ; the true can be 
separated from the false ; and for this, the 
reason and conscience of the individual man 
are sufficient : 

If the sacred leaven diffuses itself through the mass 
of our humanity, and in quickening our nature is dis- 
solved into it, there remains no rule for separating what 
is divine and authoritative except the tests by which 
in moral and spiritual things we know the true from 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 137 

the false, the holy from the unholy. . . . Eeason for 
the rational, conscience for the right these are the sole 
organs for appreciating the last claims upon us, the 
courts of ultimate appeal, whose verdict it is not only 
weakness but treason to resist. 1 

Hence Dr Martineau will not hear of any 
" legislative function vested in the general 
assembly of dead and unborn men, together 
with the miscellany of living populations," 
and in speaking of a supposed manufacture 
of " Right by social vote," he pours scorn 
on public opinion as a moral influence. Men 
are separate units, created alike ; each one 
is a type of human nature. Thus, without 
asking a question of our fellowmen, we know 
that the revelation of authority to one mind 
is valid for all. This is not Dr Martineau's 
last word, as we shall see ; and it is a view 
which has died out of the higher thought of 
the time ; but it survives by the mere dead 
weight of inherited prejudice, in much of the 
popular political and religious thinking of 
the day. 

This view of life weakens the Unitarian 

1 Seat of Authority, p. 169. 



138 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

doctrine and strengthens the adverse 
doctrine. It weakens Unitarian doctrine 
because it leads to a non-recognition of the 
truth contained in the ancient dogmas of 
inherited evil and man's moral incapacity. 
There is a special reason for this with men 
like Kant and Martineau. There are among 
us some who, by their very purity of heart 
and stainless integrity of character, tend to 
under-estimate the weakness of ordinary 
humanity and exaggerate the power of 
moral freedom. Hence they may fail to 
understand the full meaning of Sin : that it 
is more than any act or series of acts, that 
it comes to be a corruption of character 
which is not cured by ceasing to disobey. 
They miss seeing the hold which evil may 
have on human nature. The following 
passage from Martineau reveals the writer 
to us : 

Whoever is faithful to a first grace that opens on him 
shall receive another in advance of it ; and, if still he 
follows the messenger of God, angels ever brighter shall 
go before his way. Every duty done leaves the eye 
more clear, and enables gentler whispers to reach the 
ear ; every brave sacrifice incurred lightens the weight of 
the clinging self which holds us back ; every storm of 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 139 

passion swept away leaves the air of the mind transparent 
for more distant visions, and thus by a happy concord 
of spiritual attractions, the helping graces of heaven 
descend and meet the soul intent to rise. 1 

Is this steady progress towards moral 
perfection always possible for the individual 
man ? Is it true that however far a man has 
let himself go on the downward way he can 
at any time turn and begin a gradual process 
of ascent ? This is an ideal theory that 
does not accord with the facts of life. 

If the physical instincts of the body, or 
avarice or any of the passions which delight 
to feed alone in solitary selfishness, are in- 
dulged for long, there is a growing atrophy 
of those powers in the man which are dis- 
tinctively human and potentially divine ; 
conscience and reason are quenched, self- 
consciousness and self- command withered, 
all the finer qualities of our nature are de- 
stroyed one by one, there is the loss of all 
the higher self, which is the true loss of the 
soul. And without dwelling on such disasters 

1 Seat of Authority, p. 107. Elsewhere (p. 55) Dr Mar- 
tineau speaks as if moral evil means only that, with disuse 
and rejection, the higher springs of action retire and vanish 
out of sight. 



140 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

of the soul as this, surely it is not true that 
the effects of indulging our lower desires I 
mean the real effects on self and character 
can be obliterated simply by effort and 
change of will. The effects may indeed pass 
out of range of our self-consciousness and be 
forgotten ; but they work in secret still. 

One great means by which evil tendencies 
come to be so deeply rooted in man's nature 
is through effects of environment and social 
and physical inheritance. We know that 
the sins of the fathers are visited on the 
children and in them ; we know that there 
are forms of companionship and association 
which draw out the bad and foster it, and 
repress the good in those who are subject to 
them ; we know that there are conditions of 
life which make it almost impossible that 
those who share in them can grow to be 
other than morally stunted, degraded beings, 
full of anti - social and criminal impulses. 
What avails individual effort here for 
turning to the path towards a perfect 
human life ? 

This it is which gives force to the ordinary 
evangelical doctrine that, for salvation from 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 141 

sin and the inheritance of goodness and bless- 
edness, we need a supernatural force. We 
must not suppose that evangelicalism can be 
simply identified with the crude notion that 
Christ's righteousness is imputed to sinful 
men, and his sufferings taken as a substitute 
for what they deserve, as in the line 

Jesus did it, did it all, long, long ago. 

The more thoughtful evangelical says that 
we must " do it," and do it all ; but adds 
that we cannot " of ourselves." This is the 
burden of his preaching : "I cannot do it, 
you cannot, nobody can" i.e., do what is 
really God's will, involving progress towards 
moral perfection. What does this imply ? 
Surely a consciousness that self as an isol- 
ated unit which according to the current 
conception it is cannot "do it," or do any- 
thing worth doing : and so far the evangelical 
is quite right. But he then appeals to an 
external superhuman force, connected with 
Christ. Now to employ philosophical term- 
inology - - this is to correct one abstract 
view by another abstraction. What do I 
mean by an abstract view ? It is one which 



142 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

takes a fragment of truth about something 
and then treats it as the whole truth about 
that thing. Thus, it is true that each man 
has a life of his own, which no other can live 
for him, which is not made by its surround- 
ings ; this is part of the truth. Abstract 
thought takes this and supposes it to be the 
whole truth about man supposes that he is 
by nature an isolated being, a detached per- 
sonality, and that he can live a proper moral 
and spiritual life without help from Nature, 
human society, or God. The evangelical 
sees that a soul, in this state of detachment, 
could do nothing ; so he corrects this view 
by the opposite abstraction, derived from 
another fragment of truth. It is true that, 
while each of us is in vital union with Nature, 
humanity, and God, and draws all his in- 
spiration from these sources, their life is in 
a sense " outside " of ours, or beyond us : 
this again is part of the truth. This the 
evangelical takes to be the whole truth, and 
supposes that the Divine Life is merely out- 
side of us ; as though God and God's work 
in Christ were forces entirely separate from 
the soul and could come to help it only by 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 143 

way of supernatural interference from with- 
out. 

In protesting against this, the Unitarian 
harks back to the first abstraction ; he de- 
nounces the doctrine of " a broken will, in- 
competence or inability to fulfil God's law " ; 
he appeals everywhere to " man, as a grand, 
thinking, willing being, able to see and do 
what is right " ; he appeals to Jesus, who, he 
thinks, " places man, competent in brain, 
competent in will-power, places him, with- 
out any sacrifice, any mediation of any kind, 
any vicarious atonement, any substituted 
Saviour, places him face to face with his 
Father, his God ; and tells him to deal 
directly with Him, to become reconciled 
with Him." To give up one abstraction 
in order to fall back on the opposite 
one is a poor kind of " reform." The 
true solution of the difficulty signalised by 
the evangelical is to recognise that even the 
natural connection of the individual with the 
race provides for "mediation" on every hand 
between him as a single finite person and 
God. This also explains the inheritance of 
evil, and affords an inexhaustible fount of 



144 JAMES MARTINEAU. 

hope in providing for the inheritance of good. 
To say nothing- of what Reason itself does, 
there are social feelings and impulses which 
from the beginning bind each one instinct- 
ively to the community. It remains true 
that of our own selves we do nothing ; all 
that is best in each single life is vitally de- 
pendent on the general life of humanity, and 
ultimately on the Divine Life. This is the 
view of " man's relation to the community" 
which is likely to hold the future ; and Dr 
Martineau himself has given it eloquent ex- 
pression : 

The process of social evolution so implicates together 
the individual agent and his fellows that we can scarce 
divide the causal factors into individual and social, inner 
and outer. Bodily, no doubt, each man stands there by 
himself, while his family are grouped separately around 
him ; but spiritually he is not himself without them, and 
the major part of his individuality is relative to them, 
as theirs is relative to him. He has no self which is not 
reflected in them and of which they are not reflections ; 
and this reveals itself by a kind of moral amputation, if 
death should snatch them away and put his selfhood to 
the test of loneliness. It is the same with the larger 
groups which enclose him in their sympathetic embrace. 
His country, with its history and its institutions, and all 
that these imply, is not external to himself : its life-blood 
courses through his veins, inseparably mingled with his 
own. The social union is most inadequately represented 



JAMES MARTINEATJ. 145 

as a compact or tacit bargain, subsisting among separate 
units, agreeing to combine for specific purposes and for 
limited times, and then disbanding again to their several 
isolations. It is no such forensic abstraction, devised as 
a cement for mechanically conceived components ; but a 
concrete though spiritual form of life, penetrating and 
partly constituting all persons belonging to it. ... What 
we call a conflict between a private and a public interest, 
and treat as a dissension between a man's inner self and 
an outward society, is not really a wrestling-match be- 
tween two independent organisms or personalities, un- 
less it comes to physical rebellion and war. The inner 
man is himself the scene of the living strife; the 
public interest that pleads Avith him is his interest, too ; 
the society that withstands him is his society ; it is no 
foreign and intrusive power that confronts and stops his 
calculating prudence, or the madness of his pleasure or 
his passion, but his own share of an altruistic reason and 
love that live and throb in other hearts and minds as 
well. 1 



1 Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii., " Hedonism with Evolu- 
tion," 7. 



146 



CHAPTER V. 

WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 
SUMMARY. 

THERE is reason to believe that all Eeligion, of the 
deeper and more vital sort, rests at bottom not on any 
process of argument, but on a direct experience which it 
tries to interpret. Thus, modern Poetry has shown how 
we may feel through Nature the reality of a Life, richer 
and fuller far than ours, but in vital kinship with it 
not a separate existence as of " another Person." And 
in our Ideals, when the presence of the true, the beauti- 
ful, or the good lifts us above ourselves, the Ideal itself 
becomes no longer a dream of future possibility, but an 
experience of a present Reality ; it becomes an appre- 
hension of the indwelling God. Even in sorrow of the 
most hopeless sort, God's relation to us is felt to be at 
once personal and far more richer, fuller, and more 
comforting than any human personal relations can be. 
This is Symbolism ; any portion of human experience 
may become a direct revelation of the Divine. But 
there are degrees of Truth and Worth in our experi- 
ences : and the highest is the Ethical. 

This brings us to the third line of thought in Dr 
Martineau's system. Our ethical knowledge of God is 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 147 

not an inference from the moral consciousness, but a 
deeper insight into what the moral consciousness verily 
is. This is achieved when the sentiment of moral 
authority is transformed into Reverence. Reverence 
is the regard for a goodness which not only ought to be 
but already is real, though not yet in our own self. Of 
this there are two stages. The first is Reverence for a 
Goodness higher than our own, objectively realised in 
some other person's character. But what we attribute 
to him can be known to us only by some faint gleams 
and movements of it within ourselves ; we have there- 
fore a direct experience (however vague) of it. Thus, 
in the second stage of Reverence, the manifestation of a 
real higher goodness without wakens Reverence for a real 
higher goodness manifested within. This becomes noth- 
ing less than an apprehension of the indwelling God. 

The preceding considerations enable us to determine 
the meaning of Revelation. The extreme deistic view 
is, that creation is left to itself save for occasional 
divine interferences ; revelation is thus a particular 
historical event. This conception, both in its extreme 
and in its modified forms, must be discarded. Our 
view makes Revelation not a historical event but a 
process continually proceeding and growing. The 
argument which attempts to show that there must have 
been a miraculous revelation, would (if it were true) 
prove too much. It is not hard to see the motives 
which led to the limitation of revelation to events in 
the past ; they arose from confusing the moral and 
spiritual principles of a Prophet's teaching with the 
particular forms in which he expressed it, and which 
were peculiar to his own age and race. 

A FAVOURITE doctrine of many religious 
thinkers may perhaps be expressed as fol- 



148 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

lows. It is only possible for us to know, 
or even to think of, the existence of God, 
because the Divine Life is present to us or 
in us directly and immediately ; on the basis 
of this direct experience our intelligence 
works as it were by a reconstructive vision, 
interpreting it, and so producing ideas, 
questions, and theories about God and about 
things divine. 

To the present writer this doctrine seems 
to be profoundly true and important ; but 
the difficulties which it presents to many 
minds are very great, and a discussion of 
some of these may be of service. 

Let us first expand and explain the main 
thought. Whenever we have a vivid con- 
sciousness of the worth of some human 
Ideal, we have also in however vague or 
germinal a form a direct consciousness of 
the Divine Life as a present Reality, sus- 
taining the Ideal. No one is entirely with- 
out this God-consciousness ; but, like all our 
consciousness, it is the interpretation of an 
experience ; so that the experience may be 
expressed in a more true or a more mistaken 
form, and also may itself vary in extent, 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 149 

depth, or worth. Thus it is possible to be 
a fellow -worker with the Divine Life and 
Labour, and to feel it and know it also ; 
it is possible to feel as well as know that 
the Eternal is our resting-place and under- 
neath us are the everlasting arms that the 
Power Divine is quickening the spirit and 
inspiring strength within. The moments 
when such experiences are vividly felt and 
clearly interpreted are indeed rare ; one 
aspect or the other, the strength of the 
experience or the interpretation of it, only 
too often fails. But only wilful blindness 
can deny its reality for some and its possi- 
bility for all ; and this, when it really 
happens, is the highest moment in worship, 
the most precious moment in our whole life. 
Some of the ways in which it comes to pass 
may be spoken of in particular. 

We may feel and know the Eternal Love 
of God shining to us, as it were, through 
the beauty and glory of the world in which 
we live. This thought, which has been the 
special inspiration of modern poetry in the 
Western world, need not be dwelt on here. 
But sometimes Divine peace and strength 



150 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

rise on our hearts, uncalled for by the out- 
ward world. In sorrow and suffering there 
is "a deeper voice across the storm " ; a 
voice, still and small, yet stronger than the 
tumult of our grief, saying, " It is I be not 
afraid." I will mention two expressions of 
this, which have reached me. One says : 
" This [the feeling of God's sustaining pres- 
ence] only came to me after great trouble 

very depths of trouble ; and the realisa- 
tion of God which it brought seemed to 
make all the trouble worth while. But I 
cannot put it properly into words, and I do 
not like to try." Another : " My experience 
tells me that it is in and after sorrow of the 
most hopeless sort as in the death of one 
we love that God's relation to us is felt to 
be at once personal and fuller, richer and 
more comforting than any human personal 
relations can be." Many could bear witness 
to this, if they were willing or able to speak. 
A similar experience arises at times when 
the presence of something true or beautiful 
or good uplifts us above ourselves. He who 
is working for some noble or precious cause 

be it the cause of Truth, scientific thought 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 151 

and discovery or the cause of Beauty, to 
which the artist gives his heart or, highest 
of all, steadfast faithful work in the cause 
of duty and human welfare, in the great 
world, the city, or the home when one 
gives himself up to such a cause, he some- 
times finds that he is not alone, even if 
others give no sympathy, no help ; he seems 
to rest upon an Almighty strength that 
flows into him and, as we said, uplifts him 
above himself. And so he becomes possessed 
of a power which is more than the power of 
his single self. The very strength of God 
has revealed itself within him. 

There are many who will be ready to say, 
" But nothing of this kind ever comes to 
me." In reality it may come and we may 
scarcely recognise it. There are psycho- 
logical laws which explain how this may be. 
We must remember first that every one's 
soul or real self call it what you will is 
not something with a substantially fixed 
constitution, and which is self-contained, like 
a sphere a sort of " mighty atom," a thing 
with definite limits, which grows only by 
adding on new habits or new pieces of know- 



152 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ? 

ledge. The real self is a thing which is 
always growing by putting forth native 
powers, assimilating its experiences, and 
organising them according to laws of its 
own. In the next place, the limits of the 
self are not at all clearly defined : they cer- 
tainly are not the same as the limits of 
clear consciousness. That part of our ex- 
periences and inner thoughts and feelings 
of which we are clearly conscious (i.e., which 
we fully know that we have) is only a 
small part of what we really experience 
and think and feel all the time. The 
deeper currents of feeling, for the person 
himself who feels them, are the easiest to 
overlook ; but they are none the less really 
stirring within him, and perhaps producing 
their effects among the feelings of which 
he is clearly conscious ; and so it is with 
thought and with desire. In a word- 
self-knowledge has degrees of truth; at 
one time it may be more, at another 
less ; and we never " know " or consciously 
take in with perfect accuracy the whole of 
what is stirring within us. Hence while 
no one can truly say that he simply has 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 153 

no such experience, no one can say that 
his own interpretation of the experience 
has absolute accuracy or truth. 

If then our real self is not a self- con- 
tained thing, there is nothing contradictory 
in supposing that it is rooted in an Infinite 
Being, in whom every human spirit has its 
roots, and who is the source of life and 
strength to all. And if our distinct or 
clear consciousness of ourselves always has 
different degrees of truth, then in many 
cases it may not extend far enough to 
take in the " roots " of our being ; we may 
not recognise our connection with or de- 
pendence upon the Infinite and Universal. 
Or, again, there may be a vague sense of 
dependence, a " longing," which- may have 
to satisfy itself as best it can among the 
opportunities afforded by the interests and 
duties of life outside the individual. Or, 
once more, this vague " divine discontent " 
may rise to a consciousness of our depend- 
ence on the Divine Life, and of God's sus- 
taining help. 

Those who adopt this view of the founda- 
tions of Religion may be aptly described as 



154 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

Symbolists. In their thought every visible 
and invisible creature may become to us an 
appearance of God. There is no part of 
human experience, in the widest sense of the 
word experience, which may not come to be 
both felt and known as a direct manifesta- 
tion of the Divine Life. I say " felt and 
known " ; for our experiences may become 
a manifestation of God not merely as a 
matter of inference, or of speculative 
thought, but of feeling, this being the 
least unsatisfactory term which our lang- 
uage provides. Any experience may be- 
come a religious experience. This is not to 
say that all experiences are of equal value 
for this purpose ; "to assert that one, on the 
whole, is worth no more than another, is 
fundamentally vicious," as Mr F. H. Bradley 
curtly says in this connection. The presence 
of God may be discerned in the manifold 
experiences of life, in different degrees and 
with diverse values ; and the highest value 
as a Divine manifestation belongs to the 
Ideals which humanity forms, in advance 
of all its past experience and attainment. 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 155 

The varying degrees of truth in self-know- 
ledge are well known ; hence as I have 
ventured to express it in another place, 
" nothing follows from the mere fact that 
this or that man, or most men, do not recog- 
nise in their Ideals anything which they are 
inclined to call the presence and self-revela- 
tion of the Divine. It is fatal blindness to 
deny that in such Ideals there is an experi- 
ence which can only so be described. There 
is a conscious self-surrender in man's earnest 
scientific work, in his sincerest and pro- 
foundest philosophic thinking, in his devo- 
tion to that which has real and abiding 
beauty, above all, in his yielding to the 
promptings of humanity and love. Herein 
he is not merely realising himself in the 
light of an idea of what is highest and best ; 
he is also consciously surrendering himself to 
what is the Everlasting Real. The human 
race is constantly beset by such experience ; 
aroused, it may be, by thinking over the 
achievements of intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual genius, or by the personal appeals 
of such, or by the mysterious yet very real 



156 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

influences of the beautiful and sublime in 
Nature or in human life." l Hence the 
Symbolist need not be, and ought not to 
be, an " individualist " in religion. He can 
tell us what he has experienced, and .how he 
has tried to interpret his experience, of the 
everlasting realities of God ; and his witness 
may be valid for other men, because the 
sources of his experience lie in the universal 
characteristics of humanity, whose deeper 
meaning all men are capable of feeling and 
knowing as he feels and knows them. 

From Symbolism we must carefully dis- 
tinguish Mysticism, although both have 
been called by the same name. Mysticism 
has always supposed that the experience of 
God can only be reached by means which 
are independent of the ordinary experiences 
of life. In its extreme form this attitude 
of mind takes the whole world the world 
of sensible objects and of human interests 
to be a barrier placed between the Soul 
and God ; the way of perfection consists in 

1 See Philosophical Criticism and Construction, ch. vii. 4, 
where this conception is discussed from the specially philo- 
sophical point of view. 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 157 

escaping from all these things until the im- 
passioned soul in its upward flight loses 
itself in the formless and viewless light 01 
God. The secrets of such a life are all 
within. The beauty of Nature has no 
ministry for it ; and it regards the witness 
of man's moral and aifectional life and its 
daily multiplied grace with indifference. 
There is a touch of this feeling in Cole- 
ridge's lines : 

" It were a vain endeavour 

That I should gaze for ever 
On that green light that lingers in the West ; 
I may not hope from outward forms to win 
The passion and the life whose fountains are within." 

There is a touch of the same pure Mys- 
ticism in many a sincere religious soul who 
is ready to say that the realisation of God 
" will come if you try to have it." We can- 
not sincerely try to have a sense of God's 
presence ; for the very attempt makes the 
thought of self so prominent as to obscure 
not only the divine relation which we seek, 
but even our relation to the ordinary in- 
terests of life. 

Mr W. R. Inge, in his valuable and sug- 



158 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

gestive Bampton Lectures on Christian 
Mysticism, has shown the dangers of this 
method of belief, if such it may be called, 
which is not limited to Christendom or 
even to the Western World. It encourages, 
of necessity, the via negativa both in thought 
and action. It leaves the mind with a 
thought of God which is simply the nega- 
tion of all positive meaning. " Nearly all 
that repels us," says Mr Inge, " in medieval 
mysticism its ' other- worldliness ' and pass- 
ive hostility to civilisation, the emptiness 
of its ideal life, its maltreatment of the body, 
its disparagement of family life, the respect 
which it paid to indolent contemplation- 
springs from this one root." 

But Symbolism teaches that the experi- 
ence of God's real existence is not some- 
thing apart from all the human interests 
and natural experiences of life. It can 
come only through these natural experi- 
ences by deepening them. The roots that 
join man to God are the same as those that 
join men to one another and to Nature ; 
only they go deeper. Hence if we seek the 
realisation of God, it will not come by " try- 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 159 

ing," but only by merging the thought of 
self in reverence for life and its duties. Un- 
less we lose our lower self in enthusiasm 
for some worthy cause in love, in work, or 
in trouble, it may be we can never reach 
that realisation of our higher self which 
leads to a consciousness of God. 

Confusion is often thrown around this 
profoundly important question, when an 
experience is misinterpreted, and the mis- 
taken interpretation regarded as of equal 
worth and importance with the experience 
itself. Thus, suppose some one is convinced 
that he realises the presence of a Personal 
Being "outside himself" who cares for him. 
His statement is a pure contradiction in 
terms, if "outside" means "apart from." 
One cannot have a direct apprehension, by 
way of feeling, of something from which 
oneself is detached. That which is directly 
present to us in experience is that from 
which ex vi termini we are not detached- 
it is that whose Life we share. All that the 
expression " outside oneself" can mean here, 
is that the Power whose inner presence is 
felt and known is a Power on which one's 



160 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

own small struggling self is dependent, and 
which is far more than oneself deeper, 
stronger, more abiding. 

Religious experience, when reasonably in- 
terpreted, does not seem even to suggest 
the mechanical view of the Infinite and the 
finite as two separate beings confronting 
one another. What is felt or experienced, 
in the proper sense, comes to us as an en- 
largement of our higher self. It comes, 
indeed, at the expense of the lower self it 
comes only as the lower is subdued ; but we 
lose our life to gain it. The higher aspects 
of our personal life are deepened and inten- 
sified, and we begin to know the unexplored 
heights and depths of the soul itself. We 
come in touch with the vital bonds that 
unite us to the Infinite. It is at once an 
enlargement of our higher life and self- 
revelation of the divine life. 

Expounders of Dr Martineau's ethical and 
religious teaching usually represent him as 
holding that our knowledge of God through 
Conscience is nothing but an inference from 
the fact of moral authority as experienced. 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 161 

There is no real or vital union between God 
and the soul ; we merely infer the existence 
of God, which thus becomes a theory to 
explain certain facts. There is no doubt 
that numerous passages might be quoted 
from Dr Martineau's writings in support of 
the opinion that this was his complete and 
final view. It is certain, however, that there 
are other passages which suggest an im- 
portant modification of this view, constit- 
uting in fact a third line of thought which 
will prove to be identical with what we have 
called Symbolism. 

Dr Martineau, in a passage which we have 
already quoted, speaks of the Divine as 
" mingling" with our Conscience, and " mani- 
fested" in its intimations. We come to the 
root of the matter when we ask, " Manifested, 
how ? By a process of inference only, or by 
that and something more f " This is the 
great Enigma of the Spiritual Life. We 
may refrain from the attempt to form any 
idea of the present relation between God and 
the human personality ; but if we do not 
refrain from it, we must either regard man 
as a detached and "insulated" being, or re- 



162 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

gard him as organically united to God. This 
means not only that the life of God flows 
into man's deepest life ; it means that man's 
deepest life is part of the life of God. The 
finite person is in as close union with, and 
draws energy as continually from, the Divine 
Life, as a member of a living body does from 
the life of the whole. 

From this point of view, Dr Martineau's 
statement that an insulated nature cannot 
be a seat of authority at all, appears in a 
new light. To be conscious of moral authority 
is to be conscious of imperfection, and we 
could not be this unless we had within us 
an absolute standard by which we judge our- 
selves. This suggests that we are not insul- 
ated or detached personalities, because the 
obligatory Ideal of which we are dimly con- 
scious is the very presence of the Divine in us. 

Now there are passages where Dr Mar- 
tineau does more than suggest this view. 
Thus he speaks of the relation between " the 
moral consciousness and the Divine author- 
ity " as being " one, not so much of inference, 
as of identification ; the ideas overlapping 
and being entwined together as functions of 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 163 

the same conception." 1 Again : " This revela- 
tion of authority, this knowledge of the 
better, this inward conscience, this moral 
ideality call it what you will is the pres- 
ence of God in man." 2 Still more explicitly, 
he speaks of our ethical knowledge of God 
as, not an inference from the moral con- 
sciousness, but a truer insight into what the 
moral consciousness verily is : 

When conscience was found to be inseparably blended 
with the Holy Spirit, . . . the cold obedience to a 
mysterious necessity was exchanged for the allegiance of 
personal affection. And this is the true emergence from 
the darkness of ethical law to the tender light of the 
life divine. The veil falls from the shadowed face of 
moral authority, and the directing love of the all-holy 
God shines forth. 3 

But the root of the matter is reached in 
understanding that what we call " the recog- 
nition of conscience as the voice of God " is 
really the transformation of the sense of 
moral authority into Reverence. Dr Mar- 
tineau's profoundly suggestive account of 
this change is so striking that I do not 
resist the temptation to quote it in full. 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. p. 235 (2nd edition). 
J Seat of Authority, p. 105. s Ibid., p. 75. 



164 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

The essence of the change is that in our 
consciousness of moral authority we are 
aware of the moral Ideal simply as something 
which ought to be but is not ; we reverence 
it when we are aware of it as actually real- 
ised and then it comes home to us with a 
personal claim far superior in vividness and 
effect to any " categorical imperative " or any 
moral doctrine. The first stage of Reverence 
arises when we see a higher goodness realised 
in another human life. Dr Martineau says : 

The posture of mind which I describe as Reverence 
cares for right actions not simply as good phenomena, but 
as functions of pure, of faithful, of self-devoted, of lofty 
character. Not content to rest with the fruits, it presses 
on to the lovely or stately nature that bore them. And 
in thus passing from them to their producing source, the 
feeling itself undergoes a change. In place of an appro- 
bation which looks with complacency down, it becomes 
a homage which looks reverently up, and finds itself in 
presence, not of a definite thing done, but of a living 
doer, the cause of it and of indefinite other possibilities 
of nobleness ; and so it is transferred from the level of 
ethical satisfaction to the plane of personal affection and 
aspiration. Till this change takes place, there is hardly 
any sacred element in the ideas of right. The moralities 
of conduct occupy the human and civic platform; but 
even in our relations with each other, some other light 
call it poetic or call it divine dawns upon the heart, 
when the revelations of some pathetic experience, or the 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 165 

disclosures of some rare biography, have opened to us the 
interior of a tender and strenuous soul, and kindled the 
heights above us with a fresh glory. 

I have spoken thus far of Reverence in its direction 
upon persons ; distinguishing it from simple approbation 
in this that in approbation we look to the particular 
act, with praise of its inward spring as compared with its 
tempting rival ; while Eeverence looks through and past 
the act to the type of character which it expresses, as 
compared with the relative weakness of our own. In 
order to take this outward direction upon objective good- 
ness, the sentiment must, however, have had a prior stage 
of experience. For that inward disposition and character 
in another, upon which it now fixes, is nothing that can 
be seen or heard or touched ; its presence before us is 
learnt by suggestion, by outward signs, of language, look, 
and act, which, we are aware, have but one interpretation. 
We read him by the key of sympathy, and what we 
attribute to him is known to us by its gleams and 
movements within ourselves. There it is that we have 
learnt the feeling that is due to it ; that it has looked 
upon us from above ; that it has spoken to us in tones 
that lift us towards it. ... The call at once carries our 
eye up ; thence the authority descends ; and instead of 
passing like coins of exchange, between men that make 
them and men that take them, it lies upon each, it lies 
upon all ; it has the grasp of a moral unity, the range 
of a moral universality ; it is the overflow of Infinite 
Perfection into the finite mind. 

This, says Dr Martineau, is the final 
revelation of conscience, the issue of its 
full development ; and he proceeds : 

Thus, within our own consciousness, we find the same 



166 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

difference which was observable in the appreciation of 
others, between simply moral approbation and the feeling 
of Keverence. The latter cannot express itself without 
resorting, in the notice of affection and character, to 
language more than ethical, and plainly crossing the 
boundary into the field of Religion. It lives in the 
presence of souls that are holy, of dispositions that are 
heavenly, of tempers that are saintly, of Love that is 
Divine. 1 

It is, therefore, not enough to say that 
" over a free and living person nothing 
short of a free and living person can have 
authority." What has authority must be 
more than the dictate of a free and living 
person ; it must be a principle of life which 
is more than merely due to his personality, 
but is revealed by him because it is realised 
in his character. Through being his Real, it 
becomes revealed to us if we fall short of it 
as our Ideal. 

This intervening position alone it is which renders the 
function of a Mediator, Uplifter, Inspirer, possible ; 
and that not instead of immediate revelation, but simply 
as making us more aware of it and helping us to inter- 
pret it. For in the very constitution of the human soul 
there is provision for an immediate apprehension of God. 
But often in the transient lights and shades of conscience 
we pass on and " know not who it is " ; and not till we 



Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. p. 223 ff. 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 167 

see in another the victory that shames our own defeat, 
and are caught up by an enthusiasm for some realised 
heroism or sanctity, the authority of right and the 
beauty of holiness come home to us as an appeal 
literally Divine. 1 

Thus it is that other souls, going beyond our 
attainments, but not beyond our possibilities, 
first call Reverence into life. But they do 
so because the manifestation of realised 
goodness without awakens Reverence for the 
absolute, universal goodness which is or may 
be revealed within. When this happens, 
Reverence is passing into its highest stage, 
where when Reason has grown deep enough 
to interpret it it becomes nothing less than 
an apprehension of the indwelling God. This 
highest stage is reached when, " independ- 
ently of actual or visible heroes or saints 
on whom Reverence may fix when they are 
present, it finds for itself the means of 
exercise ; it goes forth in faith upon in- 
visible objects, and discerns, behind the veil 
of the actual, a better and a higher before 
which it humbles itself with cries of depend- 
ence and adoration." When this happens, 
our aspiration after goodness which ought to 

1 Seat of Authority, p. 652. 



168 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

be, becomes the inspiration of Goodness which 
already is, in the deepest sense of the word ; 
a Divine Life of Goodness, which is real all 
through our life of change, struggle, and 
growth ; a Life on which our personal life 
is vitally dependent, and which is waiting, 
with all the might of its Reality, to flow 
gently into the wavering will and uplift the 
drooping resolves to the heights of a nobler 
constancy. 

In one of his finest passages Dr Mar- 
tineau has expressed the final meaning of 
the Symbolist view : 

Amid all the sickly talk about Ideals, which has 
become the commonplace of our age, it is well to re- 
member that so long as they are dreams of future 
possibility, and not faiths in present reality, so long 
as they are a mere self-painting of the yearning spirit, 
and not its personal surrender to immediate communion 
with Infinite Perfection, they have no more solidity or 
steadiness than floating air-bubbles glittering in the sun- 
shine and broken by the passing wind. . . . The very 
gate of entrance to Religion, the moment of new birth, 
is the discovery that your gleaming Ideal is the ever- 
lasting Real no transient brush of a fancied angel's 
wing, but the abiding presence and persuasion of the 
Soul of souls. 

We may not often pass with clear con- 
sciousness into this stage of Reverence ; but 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 169 

the great variations in self-knowledge are 
familiar to all, and what is a matter of the 
most intimate experience is often far from 
being a matter of clear discernment. This 
is why we need the Mediator, revealing 
through his life higher objects for our rev- 
erence. Hence the vast importance of 
social life as a means of Divine revelation ; 
not merely the organised institutions of 
civilisation, but "society" as a common life 
of thought and feeling animating its mem- 
bers and affording them insight into one 
another's real being. 

From the point of view which we have 
now reached, we may see what meaning can 
be given to Divine Revelation. 



The traditional view or at least one of 
the traditional views of revelation may be 
expressed somewhat as follows. God, having 
created the world and the human race, leaves 
the whole to itself; remains silent and inac- 
tive as far as the world is concerned, except 
at certain times when he " intervenes " to 
communicate new truth, which the " un- 



170 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

aided reason " of man would never discover ; 
and to authenticate it by the performance of 
miracles, events which by no natural means 
could ever be accounted for. It will be seen 
that the essence of this view, its fundamental 
presupposition, is an extremely deistic view 
of God's relation to Creation : hence all His 
"interventions" in the natural or created 
order are supernatural or rather anti-natural 
in the strictest sense. Necessary develop- 
ments of this are such ideas as the following : 
special and peculiar inspiration of certain 
books, special miracles occurring at certain 
periods of the earth's history, events pro- 
duced by causes unlike and beyond all 
natural causes, a specially miraculous 
teaching given through some chosen indi- 
viduals at that period. 

The gradual disappearance of these beliefs 
at the present day is very evident at least 
in their old rigid form ; but this is only a 
consequence of the disappearance of the old 
mechanical and deistic views of God. If the 
whole course of Nature and human life re- 
quires the incessant sustaining activity of 
God, then it is plain that no events can 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 171 

be absolutely extra-natural in the old sense ; 
for the daily sunrise and sunset are as di- 
rectly works of God as would be such an 
event as the one recorded in the book of 
Joshua. 

Notwithstanding this, the old view of rev- 
elation survives in a modified form, not 
bound up with the notion that God has 
nothing to do with the " natural " course of 
events. It is claimed that we may reason- 
ably believe in a revelation which consists in 
the communication of Truth, Truth of vital 
importance for man's moral welfare to know, 
but which man's reason would never have 
discovered without the special divine act to 
aid it, and which, when communicated, his 
reason can only in part comprehend. But 
the revelation or communication is still re- 
garded as a special historical event, it is 
limited in time and place. 

The view to which we have been led is 
this. Man's nature cannot be understood 
save as sharing in the wider, universal life 
which is divine, on which all our rational 
life depends. Revelation is then a name for 
the constant relation between the indwelling 



172 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

God and the spirits of men ; and history is 
a genuine unfolding of the divine purpose. 
We are continually judging ourselves and 
our deeds, in the light of our standards of 
Truth, Beauty, Goodness ; in so doing we 
are realising the revelation, assimilating it 
to ourselves. 

The vital union of God and Man is never 
dissolved : that is only another way of say- 
ing that the revelation and inspiration are 
never withdrawn ; but at certain times it- 
takes a special form, and the extent and 
depth of its effects are more clearly dis- 
cerned and the presence of the divine is 
more nearly felt. These are the occasions 
round which traditions gather, and to which 
the name of revelation tends to be restricted. 
These occasions are so important practically, 
that the restriction would be admissible if it 
were not too rigidly conceived ; if it were 
remembered that in these so-called special 
revelations there is the same kind of relation 
between God and man, inner and outer, per- 
sonal and social, new and traditional, which 
there is in the general course of history : the 
difference is only one of form and degree. 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 173 

From this point of view no truth, if we go 
to the bottom of it, could be discovered with- 
out divine aid, and no goodness or beauty 
realised. Thus if we prefer, we may say 
that man's " unaided reason " could not have 
discovered it ; but this is only because no 
man's reason ever is " unaided " in the sense 
of being without any share in the wider life 
of the universal Reason. 

In this sense revelation is not a particular 
historical event, but something continually 
going on. The real danger of the notion 
that revelations are before all else historical 
events is, its tendency to fall back into the 
old deist ic view which says, there is and has 
been no revelation whatever but the one 
which happened at this or that particular 
time and place. Why should we accept this 
restriction as reasonable or " antecedently 
probable " ? Cardinal Newman says (Apol- 
ogia) : "I look out of myself into the 
world, and there I see a sight which fills 
me with unspeakable distress. The world 
seems simply to give the lie to that great 
truth of which my whole being is full [the 
revelation of God through conscience]." 



174 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

And in a passage of moving eloquence 
he endeavours to compel the conclusion 
that " either there is no Creator or this 
living society of men is in a true sense dis- 
carded from his presence ... if there be a 
God, since there be a God, the human race 
is implicated in some terrible aboriginal 
calamity ; it is out of joint with the pur- 
poses of its Creator." If, then, it were the 
merciful will of the Creator to interfere, 
what methods would be naturally involved 
in his purpose ? Since the world is in so 
abnormally evil, so anarchical a state, it 
^vould be no surprise if the interposition 
were equally extraordinary, or what is 
called " miraculous." We need not pursue 
the argument further as Newman presents 
it. It has already proved too much. 

Surely if Newman's view of the world 
were all the truth, then no man's conscience 
could be trusted in its verdict that there is 
an almighty and loving Will that rules. 
This is only an example of a whole class 
of arguments which attempt to show the 
need of a supernatural revelation from the 
fact of human ignorance and evil. The 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 175 

argument if true proves too much. It gives 
no probability of a Revelation ; it gives 
much improbability that there is a Re- 
vealer. And, in a still more embarrassing 
way, they prove too much. The facts of 
evil, ignorance, and sin show that the super- 
natural revelation, if it has happened, has 
failed to do its work, the work which might 
reasonably be expected of a miraculous 
agency. 

If human progress is the slow growth of 
man's powers, wisdom, and goodness, edu- 
cated by a gradual progressive Divine in- 
spiration, then we should expect to find in 
the world all the signs of small beginnings 
and slow struggling achievements ; but we 
should not expect this of the direct inter- 
positions of an almighty providence. If 
there has been a supernatural intervention 
to save men, experience shows that it must 
have been contending with obstacles almost 
as strong as itself. The force and capacity 
of the revelation itself cannot have been 
supernatural. 

If we want to consider what human sin 
and failure imply, we must consider their 



176 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

place in human experience as a whole. We 
must consider human capacities altogether. 
And the most striking and deeply significant 
of man's capacities is this that he is always 
rising above all his past experiences and past 
achievements or failures, and judging them, 
or reading their worth in the light of some- 
thing better. Psychology and history unite 
to tell us that this could never be, were there 
not a constant self- communication of the 
divine Life to man, and self -revelation of 
the eternal reason. 

We can understand in a general way 
the motives which lead to a limitation of 
revelation to one time and place. A great 
Prophet a moral and spiritual genius is 
one in whom the immanent Divine Life is 
stirring, expressing itself in new sources and 
streams of feeling which he seeks to inter- 
pret or express in new thoughts, which are 
really new insights into the meaning of 
human life and its relation to the life of 
God. Thus his teaching is at once the work 
of " his own reason " or rather his own 
conscious feelings and convictions and the 
work of Divine Revelation ; and it appears 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 177 

as a revelation to his contemporaries because 
it is a new and higher stage of man's inter- 
preting insight into the meaning of things. 
What happens then ? Mr Upton, in his 
Hibbert Lectures, has explained the process 
most thoroughly and clearly. It is a par- 
ticular case of the contrast and confusion 
between a real belief or experience and its 
temporary intellectual expression. 

" Whenever a new and vivifying central 
belief takes possession of a great soul, it 
immediately tends to modify and partly re- 
construct the prophet's general conception of 
the World. With the new belief as a living 
principle, the religious reformer constructs 
out of the scientific ideas, or metaphysical 
theories, conscious or unconscious, and the 
recognised social relations which he shares 
with his contemporaries the highest and 
most satisfactory account which he can form 
of God and His present and future dealings 
with humanity. The reverent but uncritical 
disciple recognises, in virtue of his own 
moral and spiritual insight, that the Refor- 
mer is giving utterance to ideas of a most 
inspiring and elevating character, ideas 

M 



178 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

which the hearer, though he is vividly con- 
scious of their truth and worth, feels that he 
himself could not have originated. They 
seem to him to be as in truth they are 
divinely inspired ; but to the disciple, at his 
lower level of spiritual awakenment, the in- 
spiration appears wholly to transcend the 
possibilities of mere humanity. The master 
thus becomes invested with a certain super- 
human character ; and the disciples come to 
ascribe to every feature of the prophet's 
teaching that absolute certainty which only 
belongs to the vital and essential principle 
in it. This confusion between the essential 
spirit of the prophet's teaching and the acci- 
dents of its intellectual embodiment is still 
further extended when as in the case of 
Christianity the same absolute worth is 
ascribed to the recorded religious utterances 
of his earliest followers. Thus the eternal 
principles which dogmatic religions enshrine, 
and which are the sources of their mighty 
power for good, become associated on equal 
terms with a set of doctrines and ideas which 
have no universal validity, which belong to 
a particular stage of social usage or culture, 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE"? 179 

of scientific knowledge or philosophical specu- 
lation ; and all alike are represented in the 
articles of dogmatic religion as infallible 
truth, which cannot be called in question 
save at the risk of ecclesiastical excommuni- 
cation and exclusion from the heaven of 
God's approving sympathy." In " revela- 
tion " there is always a vital principle which 
is itself progressive, embodied in various 
transitory forms. To limit revelation to 
some mere event of history, is to limit it to 
some one embodiment, which in the course 
of time and human progress will come into 
direct conflict with scientific knowledge and 
philosophic thought and sometimes even 
with moral insight : and thus the very 
essence of religion is discredited. 

It has been said that this view of revelation 
identifies it with " subjective inspiration," and 
abolishes its "objective side," that is, the 
instrumentality of infallible persons or books. 
But the objection is pointless unless " sub- 
jective" means undivine, which throws us 
back on the old Deism ; and it may be 
asked, if this is so, how is the divinity of 
the so-called "objective" revelation to be 



180 WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 

proved ? The truth revealed has to be 
" subjectively " recognised and assimilated 
by man ; but truth cannot be revealed to 
incapacity. If the human mind is naturally 
undivine, it could not grasp divine truth, or 
would have no apprehension of its value and 
significance. Could we, in such a case, fall 
back on " external criteria," such as the 
working of miracles, mere exhibitions of 
anti-rational and anti-natural power ? There 
seems really to be no conceivable connection 
between the possession of such power even 
if it were historically proved and the pos- 
session of divine truth. The two things 
have nothing in common. As Dr Mar- 
tineau trenchantly observes, " external cri- 
teria i.e., unmoral rules for finding moral 
things, physical rules for finding spiritual 
things there can be none." 

If " subjective " means created, imagined, 
or thought merely by the finite mind, as 
such, then our view of revelation expressly 
excludes its " subjectivity." The most char- 
acteristic facts of human nature would be 
inexplicable if man were merely a finite or 
self-contained being. Every man is in vital 



WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? 181 

union with Humanity and with God, even 
though the Divine Image and Superscription 
there have been all but effaced. The solid- 
arity of the race accounts for the diverse 
degrees and manners of revelation and media- 
tion ; and it is the train of human souls, in 
their several degrees of nobleness, who are 
for us the angels that ascend and descend on 
the ladder that leads from Earth to Heaven. 



182 



CHAPTER VI. 

FORMS OF AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 
SUMMARY. 

IT is evident that belief in God as an Infinite Man, 
superintending the course of events for our benefit (the 
old idea of Providence), is dying out of the modern 
mind. Dissatisfaction with this conception is the root 
of much of the prevalent " unbelief," as is evident from 
the confessions of Richard Jefferies, Olive Schreiner, 
and William Watson, among many others. Such con- 
fessions do not imply that the spiritual roots of 
religious faith are dead. 

What is known as Positivism is descended from David 
Hume, and (when consistently carried out) means com- 
plete intellectual scepticism. The Positivists, however, 
stop half-way, saving scientific and rejecting theological 
beliefs. The peculiarity of Comte's Positivism is that it 
regards Religion as a necessary part of human nature. 
Comte gives a true analysis of the ' three factors that 
constitute Religion ; but his " Religion of Humanity " 
fails to satisfy what is required by his own analysis. 

He holds a decided view (maintained also by Huxley) 
as to the opposition between human morality and the 
course of physical Nature. The natural conclusion is 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 183 

that physical Nature has not produced the whole of 
human nature ; that human morality and human ideals 
have a deeper root. Even in physical Nature we find 
what may be called anticipations of human morality. 

WE have now reviewed two types of thought 
which start from the same position and move 
in directions exactly opposite to one another. 
The common starting-point was the convic- 
tion that in our sense of moral authority 
we have an intimation that there is a 
personal moral Governor of the world, 
everywhere present and active ; or, as Dr 
Martineau expresses it in the Preface to his 
Study of Religion, " an ever-living God, 
a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe 
and holding moral relations with mankind." 1 
Cardinal Newman, going in search of a 
system of dogmas expressing the dealings 
of the moral Governor with man dogmas 
which must be absolutely true rests on the 
Infallibility of the Church ; an authority 
merely external. Dr Martineau and Francis 
W. Newman, destructively criticising the 

1 I am now speaking only of those lines of thought 
in Dr Martineau which converge into ethical deism and 
individualism. 



184 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

authority of the Bible and the Church, 
rest on the Infallibility of Conscience as 
expressing God's relation to man ; an au- 
thority merely internal. We found in Dr 
Martineau's writings lines of thought which 
converge in another view, a view which 
seemed to go beyond either of these two 
opposites, and embrace the truth in each ; 
to this view we shall have to return. But 
first we may adduce evidence to show that 
the deistic conception of God as an external 
Ruler and Judge is directly responsible for 
most of the " indifference to religion " and 
" unbelief " of which we hear so much 
to-day. 

The metaphor of government or kingship 
admirably adapts itself to the deistic view, 
suggesting as it does externality (to man and 
the world) and mere power (over man and 
the world) ; the ruler is a distinct being from 
the ruled, and has power to impress his will 
upon the ruled. This is precisely the idea 
of God which is dying out of the modern 
mind ; and it does not appear that any 
truer conception has yet found general 
acceptance. 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 185 

We are asked to accept the notion of an 
Infinite Man, superintending the course of 
events in the world. To speak of " Infinite 
Mind and Will," and repudiate the expres- 
sion " Infinite Man/' is to make only a 
verbal change. Man is mind and will ; and 
an Infinite Man is what God has been taken 
to be : this conception has dominated the 
piety of Christendom its hymns and its 
prayers for centuries. In order to illus- 
trate our meaning, let us notice some of the 
characteristics of the selection of hymns in 
Dr Martineau's two hymn - books. These 
hymns are typical, as a passage! in the Pre- 
face to the latter selection shows : " The 
religious conditions under which this book 
is produced have determined the literary 
principles followed in its compilation. It is 
offered to a Nonconformist Broad Church 
by an Editor whose prevailing feeling carries 
him less to Broad Church sources than to 
other springs, Catholic, Mystical, Semi- 
puritan, Lutheran, Wesleyan, and gives 
him therefore what he most loves, and what 
speaks most truly for him, mingled with 
much which neither he nor his readers can 



186 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

believe. May he drop this impossible ele- 
ment, and save the rest ? Or is he bound 
to forego the whole, and accept his silent 
exile from a chorus in which he longs to 
join, and which gives him a voice infinitely 
better than his own ? The common-sense of 
Christendom has rightly recognised a rule 
between these two extremes." Hence there 
is a large circle of hymns which have to be 
simply put aside ; others are acceptable with 
an omission or alteration ; others are taken 
without change. " In the recent Anglican 
hymnals, exaggerated emphasis is laid on 
objective and mythological elements which 
have found their way into the faith of 
Christendom " ; here simple exclusion is 
necessary, almost without exception. The 
same is true of hymns reciting Biblical in- 
cidents which are certainly unhistorical, and 
hymns which dwell on apocalyptic represen- 
tations of the future. Dr Martineau pro- 
ceeds to observe that " the whole hope of 
any gathering together of Christians in a 
comprehensive ' City of God ' depends on a 
gradual fatting away of transitory from per- 
manent elements in the sacra transmitted 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 187 

from the past." Let us notice the result, as 
far as the idea of God is concerned. 

In the earlier compilation, Hymns for the 
Christian Church and Home, various aspects 
of the Divine Being are dwelt upon. God 
is, first, " the object of praise and homage " ; 
here the tone of the hymns is modelled on 
that of the laudatory passages in the Hebrew 
Psalms : he is also " glorious in his works," 
in the created world, with its signs of wis- 
dom and power. Again, God is " excellent 
in his providence," in the seasons and order 
of the created world, the gifts of nature, the 
general disposition of events, and the paternal 
government of man. Once more, God is 
" venerable in himself," and " for particular 
attributes," i.e., in his relations to men : here 
we have a recital of metaphysical attri- 
butes, immensity, inscrutableness, eternity, 
power, omnipresence, omniscience, wisdom, 
righteousness, and love, which is identified 
with mere beneficence. 

These are general types of the ideas which 
we have in view when we say that God is 
regarded as an Infinite Man. What view of 
human life is taken in connection with these 



188 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

ideas ? Life is represented as consisting of 
" allotments " and " trials," divinely sent ; 
its brevity and nothingness are dwelt on, 
compared with the " duration of God " and 
of the soul. The consciousness of imperfec- 
tion, failure, and sin, is rightly treated as a 
" feeling after God," and the aspect of life as 
a warfare is rightly emphasised ; but the 
"practice of holiness"- that is, of duty re- 
garded as obedience to God's will appears 
simply as the cultivation of " personal excel- 
lences" and "duties to others." 

These general views of God and of man 
remain the same in the later compilation, 
Hymns of Praise and Prayer, with two 
important additional sections which intro- 
duce the idea of God revealing himself posi- 
tively in the individual soul and in the 
constitution and history of humanity. But 
the range given to these ideas is extremely 
narrow. There is no recognition of Humanity 
as a concrete spiritual form of life, and of 
man's social nature ; there is no recognition 
of any inborn tendencies in men to good 
or evil. Man is treated as being so inde- 
pendent of his fellow-creatures, so "master 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 189 

of himself," as to exclude any real spiritual 
influence of one or another, for good or evil ; 
and there is much celebration of the awful- 
ness of his individual responsibility, but no 
hint of any collective responsibility of Society 
for its members. 

Thus, on the whole, it would seem that 
the future gathering together of Christians 
into a "city of God" cannot be on the basis 
of the religious principles here suggested. 
" Orthodox " Christianity of course takes the 
same abstract view of God ; but it has the 
great advantage of being able to hold up the 
concrete historical personality of Christ as a 
source of divine power. Hence it can make 
a far more effective appeal to the feelings 
and imagination, and so to conduct and char- 
acter, than is possible through dwelling on 
an abstract God who can be described only 
by metaphysical attributes, or known only 
as an object to be " praised." Even the 
great doctrine of divine Fatherhood is in 
danger of becoming an ineffective abstrac- 
tion or a mere sentiment, if taken apart 
from Chmst ; for its historical meaning in 
Christendom surely arose from the fact that 



190 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

God was regarded as the Father of CJirist 
that is, as a Fount of Goodness adequate 
to produce and sustain a life like Christ's. 
Apart from this relation, the Fatherhood of 
God is only a sentimental expression for the 
old doctrine of Providence. 

It seems to be true that the belief in such 
a Providence, that is, in an Infinite Person 
outside ourselves who physically provides, is 
dying out of the modern mind, and at least 
in its old form will never live again. Some- 
times we seem to hear the spirit of man rise 
up to reject it, not in bitterness but grief 
that " the Great Companion is dead." But 
the many rest in utter indifference to the 
meaning of religion, through the feeling that 
there is no truth in it ; the few, feeling that 
" Man is the only Providence," devote them- 
selves to working while it is day, saying 
with Clifford, " Let us join hands and help, 
for to-day we are alive together." 

Sometimes a sense of " the unfathomable 
injustice of the nature of things" comes 
upon the mind with such force that we can 
scarcely think of anything else. Thus, 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 191 

Richard Jefferies exclaims, in his Story of 
my Heart: 

How can I adequately express my contempt for the 
assertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and 
beneficent end, and are ordered by a humane intelli- 
gence? It is the most utter falsehood, and a crime 
against the human race. . . . Human suffering is so 
great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly write of it. 
I could not go into hospitals and face it, as some do, lest 
my mind should be temporarily overcome. The whole 
and the worst the Pessimist can say is far beneath the 
least particle of the truth, so immense is the misery of 
man. It is the duty of all rational beings to acknow- 
ledge the truth. There is not the least trace of directing 
intelligence in human affairs. . . . Any one who will con- 
sider the affairs of the world at large, and of the indi- 
vidual, will see that they do not proceed in the manner 
they would do for our happiness if a man of humane 
breadth of view were placed at their head, with unlimited 
power, such as is credited to the intelligence which does 
not exist. A man of intellect and humanity could cause 
everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner. 

The same bitter repudiation of the old con- 
ception of a " beneficent " Providence is 
found in Olive Schreiner's two powerful and 
moving books, The Story of an African 
Farm and Trooper Peter Halket of Ma- 
shonaland. In the former, with unflinch- 
ing courage she exposes the shallowness of 



192 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

the conventional ideas of God's government. 
And in her later book she shows us the pic- 
ture of a Company, stronger even than the 
companies where " liability " in gold is 
" limited," the oldest Company on earth, 
consisting of those who have spent them- 
selves for the good of their kind : this 
Company is the Providence of the world. 

From another point of view, the spirit of 
antagonism to the Hebrew conception of 
God has found expression in a well-known 
poem by William Watson, from which I 
quote some verses : 

When, overarched by gorgeous night, 

I wave my trivial self away ; 
When all I was to all men's sight 

Shares the erasure of the day ; 
Then do I cast my cumbering load, 
Then do I gain a sense of God. 

Not him that with fantastic boasts 
A sombre people dreamt they knew ; 

The mere barbaric God of Hosts 

That edged their sword and braced their thew ; 

A God they pitted 'gainst a swarm 

Of neighbour Gods less vast of arm. 

A God like some imperious King, 

Wroth, were his realm not duly awed ; 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 193 

A God for ever hearkening 

Unto his self -commanded laud ; 
A God for ever jealous grown 
Of carven wood and graven stone. 

A God whose ghost, in arch and aisle, 
Yet haunts his temple and his tomb ; 

Man's giant shadow, hailed divine. 

He proceeds to expand the idea that the 
God whom we do dimly know or feel has no 
moral interest in man : 

The work of heaven ! 'Tis waiting still 
The sanction of the heavenly will. 

Here there comes out the feeling that the 
disappearance of this belief is not all loss ; it 
is the disappearance of a form of expression 
for the Divine Life, which like the idea of 
Heaven as a "place" where people "go" 
may be pleasing to the imaginative emotions, 
yet in a manner lowers the object which 
we endeavour to express by it. Even 
Watts' well-known hymn, beginning " Be- 
fore Jehovah's awful throne," fine as it is, 
considered as poetry, jars upon us by dwell- 
ing almost entirely on Majestic Power as the 
essence of the Divine Nature. What is 
there in Power that claims our adoration 

N 



194 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

or gratitude, or our " praise," even if 
" without our aid " it " formed us of clay, 
and made us men " ? All the revived 
Hebrew piety of Christendom celebrates 
God as mere external Power, and His Pro- 
vidence as mere external beneficence ; and 
it is impossible for any one imbued with the 
modern spirit to enter into either of these 
sentiments, because he will feel that the 
Power is not adorable and there are no 
traces of the Providence. The truth is 
that this idea of a Providence, acting in 
general and in particular, has made the 
problem of evil an utterly insuperable ob- 
stacle to faith in modern times. We are 
required to believe in an Infinite Man all- 
powerful in virtue of his infinity regu- 
lating events both in the mass and in their 
details. Hence the vast range of evil, which 
cannot be brought home to human freedom, 
must appear as comparable to what in a 
human governor we should call blundering 
or mismanagement. The apologist can only 
fall back on the ancient commonplace, " The 
ways of Providence are inscrutable " : to 
which men reply, "Is an inscrutable Pro- 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 195 

vidence a Providence at all ? " Or, like 
Carlyle, he can indulge in a vilification of 
man, with the idea of showing that most of 
what happens to him is well deserved. Yet 
still, the question which the child asks at its 
mother's knee "Why did God let it hap- 
pen?"- is the question which is wearing away 
the belief in an almighty external Governor 
to - day. All the attributes which the old 
theology assigned to God are recognised as 
belonging to the Power which sustains the 
Universe all but two : Immensity, Eternity, 
Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Inscrutableness 
are there, but not Wisdom and Love. 

The extent to which the Churches them- 
selves to-day are honeycombed with agnosti- 
cism would, if accurately estimated, probably 
be a most startling revelation. Clergymen 
and ministers fondly imagine that bodily 
presence in their buildings even at their 
most sacred ordinances, such as the Lord's 
Supper signifies that the heart of faith is 
there also. They forget the many forces 
which induce participation in the forms and 
ceremonies of public worship long after all 
faith has died away. The influence of what 



196 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

is socially correct and becoming the stronger 
influences of friends and relatives a general 
unwillingness to break with the past for the 
sake of gaining nothing better even the 
mere inertia of habit and custom, all help 
to keep up the outward, apparent strength 
of many religious institutions which cling 
most firmly to the forms of the past. 

Let us notice carefully what this " agnos- 
ticism" has done. It has rejected and with 
a true instinct an ancient symbolical ex- 
pression for God's relation to the world of 
men and things, which represents Him as 
Creator, Contriver, and beneficent Governor ; 
and, knowing of no better expression, it has 
lost all belief in any wisdom or love but that 
which springs from the brains and hearts of 
men. Of course it has many varying forms, 
it is crude and ignorant, it is hard and dog- 
matic, it is reasoned and thoughtful, it is 
sympathetic and reverent. To suppose that 
all "unbelief" arises because it is blind to 
goodness and so " scan's God's work in 
vain," as Cowper seems to imply in his 
well-known hymn, or to suppose that it 
arises from a lack of deep feeling, would 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 197 

be only a shallow impertinence. It is just 
because of their depth of feeling that many 
minds, at the present time, reject the old 
conventional form of Theism. Among so- 
called Agnostics are some of the finest 
spirits of our day, who from sheer veracity 
and reverence will not speak of " God," but 
only of the " Force that informs all things." 
But the instincts of faith often outlast its out- 
ward forms or intellectual expressions ; and 
agnosticism is often only a place of refuge 
where faith hides while she is changing. 

I proceed to consider more carefully two 
types of systematic Agnosticism : one, that 
which goes by the name of Positivism ; the 
other, represented in the works of Herbert 
Spencer. I cannot hope to do more than 
dwell on some of the most important aspects 
of these modes of thought. A full critical 
discussion of all their grounds and impli- 
cations would involve a philosophical treat- 
ise on the Theory of the basis and limits 
of Knowledge. 

The word Positivism has become associated 
with the general views of the French thinker 



198 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

Auguste Comte ; but this provides for a 
double use of the term. First, it signifies 
Comte's view of the limits of knowledge : 
in this sense, Positivism is an important 
and characteristically English mode of 
thought, which he adopted. But it also 
signifies Comte's " Religion of Humanity," 
which he offers as a substitute for what has 
hitherto been called religion. We shall have 
to consider both branches of his doctrine, for 
in both it may be very instructively contrasted 
with Herbert Spencer's. But we must first 
make a passing reference to the father of the 
Positivist theory of knowledge, David Hume. 
Locke had taught that all our sound know- 
ledge depends on " experience," that is, is 
derived from the " facts " which our senses 
show us, and from reflection on these facts. 
Experience is thus limited to the physical 
senses, and consists of sensations produced 
in us by the external world. Hume replied 
that ideas acquired by this means do not 
constitute real knowledge that is, know- 
ledge of anything beyond these particular 
facts of experience themselves. His most 
important illustration of this is the idea of 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 199 

cause. Experience whether we mean by 
this word the order of our own thoughts 
and feelings or the order of things in space 
shows us only regular orders of succession 
among the various facts which make it up. 
We cannot conclude that there is an inner 
bond of connexion still less a necessary 
bond between two things, because in ex- 
perience they always come in a certain 
order ; and we cannot conclude that there 
is a general absolute law of cause and effect 
that everything must have a cause- 
simply on the ground that we have grown 
accustomed to seeing one thing come regu- 
larly after another, during the short span of 
experience which makes up our life. Thus 
Hume denies that there is any real connec- 
tion between particular facts. Experience, 
he says, shows none. Experience only shows 
us particular facts coming after and before 
one another, existing side by side with each 
other, and being like and unlike each other. 
These are the limits of our knowledge. Now 
notice the consequences of this breakdown of 
the principle of causality. We have no right 
to pass from the particular facts which our 



200 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

senses give us, to real or material things 
which cause the sensations ; we have no 
right to argue from "the world" i.e., our 
experience as a whole to a God as its 
original cause ; we have no right to pass 
from our particular ideas and feelings to a 
real self or soul which "has" them, and 
makes them a unity. In each case we 
should be attempting to make out a real 
connection between facts of experience and 
some supposed thing which is not a part 
of experience at all. Hume says that ex- 
perience, by force of custom acting on our 
feeling and imagination, is able to produce a 
number of beliefs in us which are groundless 
e.g., that one real thing acts on another, 
when in truth we only perceive one change 
followed by another. Thus, " if we believe 
that fire warms and water refreshes, it is 
only because it costs us too much pains to 
think otherwise ! " 

In the main Comte adopts this theory of 
knowledge or no-knowledge ; he considers 
it a very convenient weapon for getting 
rid of Theology, and for putting scientific 
knowledge on a sure foundation ; the 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 201 

latter is certainly a curious turn to give to 
a doctrine which is accurately summed up 
in the remark which we have just quoted 
from Hume. 

Most English Positivists follow Comte in 
stopping half way in their Scepticism, and, 
like J. S. Mill and G. H. Lewes, insist that 
a scientific knowledge of phenomena is pos- 
sible, but no other knowledge. We have no 
means of telling whether anything beyond 
phenomena exists, much less of knowing 
about it if it does exist. Comte, however, 
regards theology as springing from real needs 
of our nature, needs which ought to be 
satisfied ; and the characteristic of his Posi- 
tivism is the attempt to give them a new 
and better satisfaction. He would say " new 
and better," because he had formed a very 
strict and narrow idea of what " theology " 
meant and taught. For him, theology 
means a rigid deistic monotheism with its 
corollary of ethical individualism. This con- 
ception he attacks with much bitterness, 
dwelling especially on its anti - social ten- 
dencies ; and, as we have seen, it is open to 
attack on every side. He considers that the 



202 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

essence of Christianity consists in the same 
deistic individualism. He admits indeed 
that this central conception was modified 
by subsequent doctrines, such as those de- 
veloped in the Pauline and Johannine 
writings, which bring God nearer to man 
and men nearer to one another ; but with 
strange disregard for history he regards 
these doctrines as external accretions, or 
even as the conscious inventions of particular 
men with the object of making Christianity 
socially more workable. Certainly if his 
view of what " theology " must be were a 
true one, we should have to grant to him 
that a quite new presentation of religion is 
necessary for the needs of the present and 
the coming time. Still, Comte's mistaken 
attitude to the past does not detract from 
the merit of his recognition that in humanity 
there are vital needs which the mere know- 
ledge of " phenomena " is unable to satisfy. 
How does he propose to satisfy them ? 

He explains carefully the elements of which 
a Religion must consist. When we have a 
coherent self-consistent thought of an object 
which is more than our finite selves ; and if 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 203 

also it is one in which our affections can rest, 
as being our highest good, and which we can 
take as the aim of all living, then we have 
religion. Religion is necessary to give unity 
to life ; without it, we are tossed to and fro 
not only by " every wind of doctrine " but by 
every transient impulse. Cointe is most 
emphatic in asserting that a religious view 
of life is necessary to give it harmony, both 
in the case of the single person and of society. 
The three elements of religion are as we 
have said submission to a Power which is 
more than we ; love or reverence for that 
Power as being the direct source of all our 
good ; and co-operation with it as one that 
needs our help, one with whom in St Paul's 
words we may be " fellow - workers," and 
with regard to whom we have therefore a 
certain degree of independence. The first of 
these elements, without the second and third, 
yields only resignation to a resistless Force 
outside ourselves. The first and second, 
without the third, yield only the passive 
contemplative acquiescence of mysticism ; 
the Divine tends to appear as an all-absorb- 
ing sea which leaves no room for the ex- 



204 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

istence of the finite. But when the supreme 
Object is thought of, not only as Mighty 
Power and as eternally-complete quiescent 
Perfection, but also as a self-realising Power 
of Goodness, which like a "Man of War" 
demands our efforts to help it, then we have 
the main factors in a vital religion. That 
Comte's analysis of which I have here given 
a free reproduction is profoundly true, we 
cannot doubt. In particular, the old abstract 
idea of Divine " omnipotence " has no moral 
or religious value whatever. It makes im- 
possible the deeply suggestive thought ex- 
pressed by St Paul, " We are fellow-labourers 
with God," and compels us to think of all 
conflict as falling entirely outside the Divine 
Being. But when we think of God as " a 
Man of War," not because He has to con- 
tend with foreign powers, but because the 
realisation of His own Purposes requires, 
within the evolution of each, a process of 
antagonism, strife, and transforming victory ; 
and when we think of ourselves as intimately 
involved in this process, which is an antag- 
onism not between good and bad but between 
partial evils having a " soul of goodness,"- 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 205 

then we may think of ourselves as, in a most 
intimate sense, charged with a Divine mis- 
sion here, of which our often hard and pain- 
ful struggles and conflicts are an essential 
condition. 

Where does Comte look for this Object of 
Religion ? By reason of his " positive " 
theory of knowledge he holds that the 
Power which lies behind phenomena as 
their bearer, or which controls them, is 
wholly beyond our ken ; our thought and 
feeling are alike without access to it ; for us 
it does not exist. Its work, in the pheno- 
menal order of the natural world, appears 
only as a blind fatality, indifferent to man's 
weal or woe. To find the Object of Religion, 
Comte turns from Nature to Man. In his 
Catechism of the Positive Religion he says : 
" We have the idea of a single vast and 
eternal Being, Humanity, destined by socio- 
logical laws [i.e., by laws belonging to its 
own nature] to constant development under 
the preponderating influence of biological and 
cosmological necessities." Thus as he ex- 
presses it elsewhere "towards Humanity, 
who is for us the only true Grand Eire, we, 



206 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

the conscious elements of whom she is com- 
posed, shall henceforth direct every aspect 
of our life, individual or collective. Our 
thoughts will be devoted to the knowledge 
of Humanity, our affections to her love, our 
actions to her service." Comte and his fol- 
lowers stretch realistic metaphors to the 
utmost in describing this Supreme Being. 
Here we see the remarkable contrast be- 
tween his Positivism and the Positivism 
which grew up in the school of Locke and 
Hume. Comte, as we saw, accepts the 
main ideas of this school as regards know- 
ledge, that knowledge consists of the 
isolated impressions of sense. This doc- 
trine has been usually combined with an 
individualistic theory of society, that, as 
there are no rational bonds of connection 
among the impressions which make up any 
one's experience, so there are none among 
individual men in society. The latter theory 
Comte rejects with all his might. 

Of course conventional theology has a short 
way with Comte's view of Humanity. It 
replies that Humanity is an abstraction, hav- 
ing no existence outside our own thoughts ; 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 207 

it is a mere idea of the qualities which dis- 
tinguish man from the animals beneath him. 
Here conventional theology is at one with 
many followers of the English school of 
Positivism, and especially with the French 
atheists of the time of Diderot and d'Hol- 
bach, who developed Locke's ethical indi- 
vidualism to extremes, regarding man as 
" by nature " either unsocial, or at least 
as not depending upon his fellow - men 
for any of his intellectual, ethical, and 
spiritual resources. From this point of 
view " Humanity " is nothing but a word, 
merely an abstract term ; and " Society " 
is only a name for the collection of units 
which are individual men. This idea, no 
doubt, is still deeply rooted in popular 
theological and political thinking; but it is 
abandoned by nearly all reflecting minds 
to-day, who recognise that Comte's meta- 
phorical language concerning " Humanity " 
expresses a truth of deep importance. It is 
not only that the single life cannot be lived 
unless in some kind of harmony with other 
lives, a harmony worked out both in reason 
and in feeling ; but in reason and feeling 



208 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

alike each man is carried beyond himself and 
draws vital spiritual nourishment from the 
reason and feeling of others. It is literally 
true, as St Paul says, that men are " mem- 
bers one of another." Humanity is, in short, 
a real organic life penetrating its members 
and partly constituting or making each of 
them what he is. 

But of all the types of Humanity, which 
are we to take as the object of religion ? 
Comte observes that " Humanity is not 
composed of all individuals or groups of 
men, past, present, and future, taken in- 
discriminately." The Humanity which is to 
be reverenced consists of the best, those 
who have been greatest intellectually, ethic- 
ally, and spiritually. " The new Grand 
Eire is formed by the co-operation only of 
such existences as are of a kindred nature 
with itself; excluding such as have proved 
only a burden to the human race." It is 
quite true that all the nobly great, all the 
best, are working out a spiritual kingdom 
of Humanity within the general life of the 
race ; but we must carefully consider in 
what way from Comte's point of view 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 209 

this kingdom can be said to exist. This 
Supreme Being is indeed much more than 
a name or an idea in our heads ; but it is 
a name only for the present accumulated 
inheritance of humanity's spiritual pro- 
gress. Does it then satisfy Comte's ac- 
count of what is necessary for religion ? 
No ; it is not a Real Power which is more 
than ourselves. It satisfies the other condi- 
tions : it is an object which we can rever- 
ence, and on which our affections can rest, 
and in whose realisation we can take part ; 
for it is a real growth, in which the achieve- 
ments of the past survive through their 
effects in the present. But this is the only 
way in which the past exists ; in what other 
way could it be real ? Thus in this sense 
only is Humanity a Real Power that we 
are moved by our thoughts of the past and 
by all its conscious and unconscious effects 
in our own selves. Comte is not even en- 
titled to say that Humanity is the source of 
our ideals and our various kinds of human 
good ; it simply consists of these ideals and 
these forms of good, so far as they have 
attained realisation and perpetuated them- 

o 



210 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

selves, and so far as they are sources of 
inspiration. 

If there is an absolute Being who is the 
source of all our good, we are rationally com- 
pelled to identify it with the Power which sus- 
tains the phenomena of Nature. Otherwise, 
the so-called Being only exists so far as we 
have realised it : even its further realisation 
is as yet only a possibility, set before us as 
an ideal. But whence comes this imperious, 
persuasive Ideal ? Dr Edward Caird in his 
excellent little work on TJie Social Philosophy 
and Religion of Comte points out that the 
same arguments which break down the divi- 
sion between man and man, break down the 
division between man and Nature : " the 
only philosophical difficulty is to conceive 
how man can transcend his private or par- 
ticular individuality at all ; and, if that is 
shown to be for him possible, there is no 
reason whatever for denying that he can 
and must rise to the knowledge of God, the 
absolute or objective unity of the world " ; 
and this unity, regarded in its intellectual 
aspect, is simply the goal of science. 

Comte dwells on the indifference to all 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 211 

human aims which characterises natural 
laws and forces. This world-old problem 
stands in the way of our identifying the 
Source of our ideals with the Source of 
natural law ; or as Huxley would have 
said - - prevents us from regarding the 
"ethical process" of 'humanity as having 
anything in common with the " cosmic pro- 
cess" of the universe. Yet at the same 
time the existence of this problem is the 
very fact which prompts us to make the 
identification which may seem a paradox. 
Consider what our relation to Nature really 
is. Man is formed out of the dust of 
the earth ; physically, we are made of the 
same stuff as the plants and stones. We 
are bound by countless ties to the world on 
which we live ; w r e are earth of its earth, 
it is flesh of our flesh. We are enclosed by 
a network of laws that never fail ; we are 
like prisoners bound on every side by a 
million unfelt bonds which never give way, 
like " a magic web woven through and 
through us, . . . penetrating us with a net- 
work subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet 
bearing in it the central forces of the world." 



212 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

The aspect under which the physical uni- 
verse first presents itself to us is that of a 
vast system of forces acting by laws which 
never vary ; and this is what has " beset us 
behind and before" and "laid its hand upon 
us." How are we profited if a being, un- 
related to these forces, has inspired us to 
search after truth and goodness, if for any- 
thing we knew to the contrary the nature 
of the universe, by whose life ours is en- 
folded, may render it impossible that truth 
and goodness should ever be effectively real- 
ised ? We may be willing to trust in the 
highest desires and aspirations to which 
man's nature rises ; but what avails it, if 
we do not know their relation to the world 
around us ? 

Professor Huxley, in his Lecture on Evolu- 
tion and Ethics, has given us a most forcible 
and eloquent statement of the opposition be- 
tween Nature and human morality, and has 
shown how for ages past mankind has found 
itself face to face with the same dread prob- 
lem of evil ; and how in seeking to know 
" whether there is or is not a sanction for 
morality in the ways of the cosmos," it has 
learnt at last that " cosmic nature is no 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 213 

school of virtue, but the headquarters of the 
enemy of ethical nature." To this Cornte 
would have heartily assented ; and indeed 
the difference between the ethical and the 
cosmic process is not to be denied, though it 
is sometimes exaggerated. But when we 
consider the fact on which we have been 
dwelling, that so large a part of our life 
is actually bound up with the cosmic pro- 
cess itself, what are we to make of this 
opposition between the same cosmic process 
and that higher part of ourselves which pro- 
duces ideal morality? It suggests to us that 
what Huxley calls the " cosmic process " has 
not produced all the contents of man's soul ; 
that our distinctively human qualities and 
powers are not the product of mere phys- 
ical evolution. The fatalistic machinery of 
Nature - - her forces and her laws, which 
prevail all through and indeed constitute 
the "material universe" -must somehow 
be subordinate to a deeper reality, whose 
laws are related to, and expressed in, human 
ideals of goodness. Only if we can hold this, 
can we allow the absolute authority which 
Comte and Huxley in different ways - 
claim for the ethical life. 



214 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

It is going too far to say with Huxley and 
Comte that the cosmic process bears no sort 
of relation to the ethical : this is not true, 
even if we only look at Nature "phenomen- 
ally." The most important illustration is 
mentioned by Comte himself. The merely 
physical conditions of existence require the 
partial suppression of that natural animal 
egoism which at first is man's strongest im- 
pulse. Subsequently, prudence consciously 
ratifies this suppression, and recognises 
further positive advantages which accrue 
from exchange of services and even from 
unrequited helpfulness ; and self-restraint, 
thus becoming voluntary, makes room for 
the emergence and control of the unselfish 
impulses. Huxley reminds us of this too, 
and remarks that even in animal life there is 
a foreshadowing of human morality : 

Of course, strictly speaking, social life and the ethical 
process, in virtue of which it advances towards perfec- 
tion, are part and parcel of the general process of evolu- 
tion, just as the gregarious habit of innumerable plants 
and animals, which has been of immense advantage to 
them, is so. A hive of bees is an organic polity, a society 
in which the part played by each member is determined 
by organic necessities. . . . Among birds and mammals, 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 215 

societies are formed, of which the bond in many cases 
seems to be purely psychological ; that is to say, it 
appears to depend upon the liking of the individuals 
for each other's company. The tendency of individ- 
uals to over self-assertion is kept down by fighting. 
Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and 
fear come into play, and enforce a greater or less 
renunciation of self-will. To this extent the general 
cosmic process begins to be checked by a rudimentary 
ethical process which is, strictly speaking, part of the 
former. 

That the mere cosmic process itself should 
thus prepare the way for the ethical, is surely 
a fact of deep significance. It is one of those 
suggestions which Nature gives us sugges- 
tions silently made and easy to overlook 
that beneath the " cosmic process " of relent- 
less blind force, of seemingly aimless evolu- 
tion and dissolution, of life, growth, and 
struggle, pain, decay, and death, beneath 
this there is a deeper cosmic process which 
is verily related to man, and what is most 
fundamental in Nature is not foreign to 
human goodness and human ideals. If we 
are obliged to say of nature, regarded as 
" phenomenon," " We are earth of its earth, 
it is flesh of our flesh," this is not the last 
word ; our reason goes behind the pheno- 



216 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

mena to their Ground arid Source, and there 
it finds that of which it can say 

" We are heart of Thy Heart, 
Thou art Soul of our soul ! " 

But we must not miss the truth which 
Comte's conception of a Divine Humanity 
expresses. I will venture to affirm that all 
the best religious thinking of modern times 
has this in common, to regard God as re- 
vealed through or manifested in the human 
race : either in the whole history and achieve- 
ments and ideals of humanity, or specially in 
one man, Christ, whose personal life is pic- 
torially or symbolically taken as the type of 
Humanity at its best, as embodying the 
human Ideal. Comte's deification of human- 
ity is a partial recognition of this great truth 
that God is revealed through man. George 
Eliot who was a convinced Positivist en- 
deavoured to give in her books a pictorial ex- 
pression of this partial truth, and even states 
it herself as clearly as could be wished : 

My books have for their main bearing a conclusion, 
without which I could not have cared to write any re- 
presentation of human life namely, that the fellowship 
between man and man, which has been the principle of 



AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 217 

development, social and moral, is not dependent on con- 
ceptions of what is not man ; and that the idea of God, 
so far as it has been a high spiritual influence, is the idea 
of a goodness entirely human i.e., an exaltation of the 
human. 



Far be it from me to deny the truth of any 
part of the principle here expressed ; but it 
must be supplemented. We may affirm with 
confidence that the idea of an exalted human 
goodness could never have been a high spir- 
itual influence, if men had actually thought 
of it as only an aspiration of their own 
hearts. They find a goodness, above their 
own, realised in their brethren, and how- 
ever moving is the reverence it excites, this 
is not enough. "Their imperfections, the 
mingling in them of littleness and greatness, 
the alternations of sweetest affection with 
peevish jealousy, of sublime intelligence 
and trifling vanity, bring to us some of our 
saddest experiences, and dash our highest 
enthusiasms with humiliation. In the very 
moments of purest homage they extort from 
us the sigh for a perfect spirit, where our 
trust and love may be for ever safe." Thus 
we are led to the idea of God, not as mean- 



218 AGNOSTICISM AND POSITIVISM. 

ing only the highest achievements of our 
race in the past and our loftiest idea of its 
possibilities in the future, but as represent- 
ing the deepest of realities, the everlasting 
foundation of all existence, which reveals 
itself in the inspiring power of our highest 
rational ideals. It is not a thing which is 
" not man," but is an abiding reality im- 
manent in humanity, and revealed through 
humanity. The best deeds of the human 
race are only broken lights of the Life 
Divine ; but though broken, they are lights, 
lights proceeding from the one perfect 
Light. 



219 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

SUMMARY. 

SPENCER seeks for Truth by dropping all the points in 
which the various conflicting beliefs differ : a process 
which leads to nothing. 

His rejection of the Positivist doctrine, that the Ab- 
solute Power behind phenomena does not exist for us, is 
justified ; but his own doctrine, that this Power exists 
but is unknowable, is palpably inconsistent. Our view 
of what is knowable depends on our conception of the 
" laws of thought." Spencer's doctrine originates in a 
definition of the Infinite which is taken as an axiom or 
" law of thought," that it excludes the finite from it- 
self : a definition which is mistaken and groundless. 
His test of truth the " inconceivability of the oppo- 
site " does not distinguish between conceiving and im- 
agining, and in effect is equivalent to Newman's test by 
the mere invincible Reeling of certainty. 

Spencer's view of the permanent and true element in 
religion takes it to be " awe of the Unknowable " ; but 
it does not appear that any feeling is possible towards 
what is strictly unknowable. We arrive at a know- 
ledge of " the Absolute " by seeking for the origin of 



220 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

our Ideals, and most chiefly of that " ethical process " 
which Huxley showed to be so different in tendency 
from the " cosmic process " (the phenomenal or physical 
order of Nature). Hence we see that the strength of 
Comte's Religion of Humanity lies in its teaching 
that our highest conception of the Divine must he 
directly based on our conception of what is highest in 
the human. 

Comte offers for our worship a Goodness not rooted 
in any reality higher than mankind ; Spencer offers for 
our worship a Reality or Power unrelated to anything 
human : two opposite extremes. Our view seems to 
save the truth in both. 



WE found that Comte started with the con- 
ception that our knowledge never extends 
beyond " phenomena," that is to say, our 
sound and reliable knowledge ; and we 
found that he held up for our religious 
inspiration a moral ideal, truly conceived 
to embrace the development of all that is 
best in Humanity, but with no Real Power- 
as its source and sustainer. Spencer starts 
with the same conception, that the know- 
ledge which science and common life give us 
is limited to phenomena. But he finds the 
only true element in religion to be a vague 
feeling directed towards the Power under- 
neath phenomena, which is the most real of 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 221 

all things, but has no sort of relation to 
humanity and its ideals. 

He begins by reminding us that as there 
is a soul of goodness in things which are 
evil, so there is a soul of truth in beliefs 
which are mistaken : 

A candid acceptance of this general principle, and an 
adoption of the course it indicates, will greatly aid us in 
dealing with those chronic antagonisms by which men 
are divided. Applying it not only to current ideas with 
which we are personally unconcerned, but also to our own 
ideas and those of our opponents, we shall be led to 
form far more correct judgments. We shall be ever 
ready to suspect that the convictions we entertain are 
not wholly right, and that the adverse convictions are 
not wholly wrong. On the one hand, we shall not, in 
common with the great mass of the unthinking, let our 
beliefs be determined by the mere accident of birth in a 
particular age on a particular part of the earth's surface ; 
and on the other hand, we shall be saved from that error 
of entire and contemptuous negation which is fallen 
into by most who take up an attitude of independent 
criticism. 

This is a truth whose consequences reach 
far, and which we have already illustrated 
in several ways. But Spencer proceeds to 
make a use of it very different from that 
which we have had in view. He shows, in- 
deed, how religious beliefs are ail-but uni- 



222 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

versally diffused, how they have always had 
a deep controlling influence all through 
human history, and how they have been 
able to hold their ground notwithstanding 
the attacks of science. Such facts afford 
almost certain proof that religion involves 
or rests upon some important truth. But 
science, which stands in unceasing conflict 
with religious dogmas, is one and impreg- 
nable, while religions are various and are 
in conflict among themselves also. Hence 
the underlying truth can only be found by 
dropping everything that distinguishes the 
particular religions, first from one another, 
and then from science. When this is done, 
we arrive at the conception of a universal 
Power or Energy, sustaining all things, and 
unknowable by us. 

The reader will remember how we saw 
that the conflict between different beliefs, 
when each was true in some degree, often 
suggested a way of arriving at a better 
truth. This was by finding a middle way 
between the opposite assertions. But the 
middle way consisted in finding a principle 
which included what truth there was in the 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 223 

two extremes, embracing both in a deeper 
truth. By simply dropping the different 
factors which oppose one another, we are 
led to a principle which has less truth than 
either of the extremes ; and if this process is 
carried on far enough, we shall be led at 
length to conclude that every " First Prin- 
ciple" is a bottom unthinkable or unknow- 
able. This is just what Spencer does, ac- 
cording to his own statement of the right 
way of finding the truth in mistaken be- 
liefs : 

To compare all opinions of the same genus ; to set 
aside as more or less discrediting one another those 
various special and concrete elements in which such 
opinions disagree ; to observe what remains after the 
discordant constituents have been eliminated ; and to 
find for this remaining constituent that abstract expres- 
sion which holds true throughout its divergent modifi- 
cations. 

We must observe that to contrast science 
and religion in this way shows a funda- 
mental misconception of their respective 
objects. Spencer observes that " every re- 
ligious creed," from the most primitive 
fancies to the most fully developed theol- 
ogy, " is definable as a theory of original 



224 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

causation," " an hypothesis which is sup- 
posed to render the universe intelligible." 
Now the best authorities on the History of 
Religion are agreed that when religions are 
classified " morphologically," that is, accord- 
ing to the manner in which the constituent 
factors of each are related to one another, 
they form as it were an elliptic area, whose 
two foci are " nature religion " and " ethical 
religion." l Spencer's observation is sub- 
stantially true of nature religions : the gods 
and spirits with which they deal are before 
all things " theories of original causation," 
ways of explaining the world ; and, as they 
develop, their idea of God's relation to man 
is a resultant of their ideas of his relation to 
the world, as in the ancient Vedic religion, 
and the Hellenic and Greco-Roman. But 
even in nature religions their development 
brings to light a fact which Spencer at 
least when he is contrasting scientific and 
religious causation appears to overlook. 
The causes which religion has in view are 
different in kind from those which science 
has in view. The objects with which science 

1 These terms are preferred by Professor Tiele. 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 225 

deals meet us in the course of outward ex- 
perience ; its facts and its causes are all in 
space and time ; and all scientific theories of 
causation must be verifiable by reference to 
events in space and time. But the objects 
of religion are not mere events, they are 
theories of the Ground and Meaning of 
events ; hence the constant use of such 
terms as Infinite, Absolute, First Cause, 
Ultimate Cause, &c. In ethical religions 
the direct moral relation of the gods to men 
is the centre of all ideas and beliefs. Many 
theories of creation and world -government 
may be formed, but the motive of it all is 
the moral interaction between God and Man. 
God's relation to the world is so conceived as 
to develop and explain and justify his rela- 
tion to man. Of this, the Hebrew religion 
is the best example. Hence science,- which 
tries to understand physical nature, cannot 
touch the predominant motive in ethical re- 
ligions which is based on man's moral 
nature. The two can only conflict if there 
has been an illegitimate extension given to 
theory on one side or the other. As every 
one knows, this has largely taken place ; 

P 



226 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

science has claimed to include man in its 
physical explanations of the world, and re- 
ligion has insisted on retaining an obsolete 
theory of Nature. Hence " Man's place in 
Nature " has been the scientific, philosophic, 
and religious cause celebre during the latter 
half of the nineteenth century. 

Analysing in detail Spencer's difference 
from Comte, we come first to his protest 
against the extreme " phenomenalist " doc- 
trine, that an Absolute Power beneath phe- 
nomena does not exist, for us. 

Dr Martineau l has observed that " Spen- 
cer's testimony against the merely phe- 
nomenal doctrine is of high value ; ... it 
betrays his appreciation of that outlook 
beyond the region of phenomena for the con- 
ditions of religion, which cannot, eventually, 
be content to gaze into an abyss without 
reply." Spencer insists that the very con- 
ception of experience implies something of 
which there is experience ; and that " it is 
rigorously impossible to conceive that our 

1 Dr Martineau's discussions of the systematic doctrine of 
Agnosticism, in his Essays on Mansel and Spencer, and in 
his Study of Religion, are among his most brilliant philo- 
sophical achievements. 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 227 

knowledge is a knowledge of appearances 
only, without at the same time conceiving a 
reality of which they are appearances ; for 
appearance without reality is unthinkable." * 
There is no difficulty in granting that we 
are in the presence of a universal Power on 
which we and all things depend, but which 
is "absolute" i.e., dependent on nothing 
beyond itself. Our difficulties all begin 
when we attempt to define this Power. 

Spencer's famous doctrine of the Unknow- 
able may be briefly but accurately expressed 
thus : we can know that the Absolute Power 
is, but not what it is. Now observe that if 
this doctrine is understood strictly, it is self- 
contradictory, for it forbids us to think what 
it is whose existence we affirm. If we can 
know that the Absolute exists, we can know 
it by thought only ; and how can there be a 
thought with nothing thinkable a thought 
of what is unthinkable ? Dr Martineau truly 
says : 

By calling this existence a Power, Spencer surely 
removes it by one mark from the Unknown ; but besides 



1 First Principles, Part I. ch. iv. 26 (3rd edition). 



228 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

this, we are obliged, he says, to regard that Power as 
omnipresent, as eternal, as One, as Cause manifested in 
all phenomena : a list of predicates scanty indeed when 
measured by the requisites of religion, but too copious 
for the plea of nescience. 

Too copious, in truth : as when, in an 
article published in the Nineteenth Century, 1 
Spencer indulges in a destructive analysis of 
the idea of God as a personal i.e., conscious 
and self-conscious Being, and then proceeds 
to say : 

Among the mysteries which become the more mys- 
terious the more they are thought about, there will 
remain the one absolute certainty, that we are over in 
presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which 
all things proceed. 

If we can know all this, surely we can 
know something more ; and the declaration 
that Reality is unknowable must be given 
up. What can have led one who is after all 
a capable thinker, to such a palpably self- 
contradictory conclusion ? The answer is 
that all such conclusions depend on the view 
taken of the structure of Thought or Intel- 
ligence. When we are " thinking," in the 
proper sense going through a process of 

1 January 1884. 



AGNOSTICISM OP HERBERT SPENCER. 229 

thought in order to arrive at a piece of 
knowledge about something we are using 
our intelligence ; and our intelligence is a 
real power or function, which for the moment 
we may, by a rough metaphor, compare to 
a tool. A tool of construction almost in- 
finite in its complexity ; in fact, its com- 
plexity is such that it can partly take itself 
to pieces, and can manufacture itself, for the 
more it works the more complex it becomes ! 
There are many kinds of ordinary work 
which this marvellous tool will do easily ; 
we all have to learn how to use it for these, 
and our use of it becomes almost an instinct, 
so that we never need to think about the 
construction of the tool. But when we want 
to know all the kinds of work which it will 
do, and to find whether there is any limit to 
its powers, then surely we must understand 
how it is made and learn the laws of its own 
structure. No one has any right to say 
positively what it will not do, unless he 
explains that part of its structure which 
prevents it doing this work. That is to 
say, there may be an agnosticism which is 
mere dogmatism, resting on an unwilling- 



230 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

ness or an incapacity to examine the laws of 
our intelligence. But, given the willingness 
and capacity to inquire into the laws of our 
intellectual machinery, we must remember 
how these laws are so complex that different 
results may be arrived at in different cases ; 
and the limits assigned to what is thinkable 
and knowable depend entirely on the view 
taken of the structure and laws of thought. 
According to Spencer's view of these laws, 
we are compelled to divide the universe 
into two parts. One is the part where 
knowledge is possible : the sphere of the 
"relative," the "conditioned," the "finite," 
so called because things in it are related 
to one another, because the state of one 
depends on the states of others, and 
hence is said to be " conditioned " by them, 
and because they are all finite existences. 
This is the region of " phenomena," as 
ordinary Positivism understands the word. 
The other region is that of the Absolute, 
the Unconditioned, the Infinite ; this is 
the so-called Unknowable, about which, as 
we have seen, a good deal is known after 
all. Yet it is supposed to be unthinkable : 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 231 

why ? Because if the Infinite were think- 
able, this would mean that it could be an 
object of thought for some thinker ; and then 
it would not be Infinite, Absolute, or Un- 
conditioned. Not Infinite ; for he, the 
thinker, would be beyond it, thinking about 
it ; not Absolute, for it would be related 
to him, to his consciousness ; not Uncon- 
ditioned, for in so far as he knew it, it 
would be dependent upon him. In becom- 
ing an object of his thought, it would be- 
come finite, relative, conditioned. Such is 
the view of Thought which Spencer adopts 
from Sir W. Hamilton and Dean Mansel. 
When we consider Spencer's argument 
carefully, we see that its root fallacy is 
this : the assumption that the Infinite of 
necessity wholly excludes the finite from 
itself, and hence lies altogether outside the 
range of any finite thinker's thought. But 
such an Infinite is the emptiest fiction of 
a mistaken logic. To assign supreme reality 
to such an abstraction is the counterpart of 
the error which we spoke of at the begin- 
ning, the error of supposing that Truth 
is attained simply by leaving out opposites. 



232 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

If it were so, the most true would be the 
most abstract, the most empty, the furthest 
away from the concrete contents of our 
thought. So here, the most real existence 
is taken to be that which has least in com- 
mon with the concrete facts of experience, 
and which therefore excludes from itself 
things finite which differ from one another. 
But what if it be a law of thought that 
every real unity is like a living soul in being 
unity of many different and indeed opposite 
qualities ? What if the Infinite the most 
real unity of all be that which embraces 
everything finite while it transcends all ? 
What if the Infinite, so far from excluding 
the finite, is necessarily related to the finite ? 
In this case finite beings can only know one 
another and act upon one another in virtue 
of their relation to the Infinite, while in 
their turn they do not limit the Infinite 
but realise it. And then the Absolute is 
revealed in and through its appearances. 
That is the real meaning of the principle 
on which Spencer himself insists, that the 
appearance cannot be without the reality, 
for it is the appearance of the reality. 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 233 

We must observe here that several of 
Spencer's arguments in Part I. of the First 
Principles seem to rest on the assumption 
that we are obliged to ask a cause for 
existence as such. Surely this is a fallacy 
also. We ask after causes for changes, and 
for beginnings, in time for events, in a word. 
Hence it is quite pointless to say, " If we 
admit that there can be something itself 
uncaused [e.g., a Divine Cause], there is no 
reason to assume a cause for anything." 1 
Experience shows us the world as a vast 
system of changes and new beginnings ; and 
science and philosophy are one prolonged 
search for causes, one persistent endeavour 
to connect these events causally with one 
another, and to penetrate beneath them to 
deeper causes. The deepest cause of all 
would be what Spencer calls " uncaused," 
for it would be the Source and Ground 
of all. 

We notice that in his First Principles 
and elsewhere Spencer works great execu- 
tion by applying to the objects of religious 
and other beliefs the test of what is " con- 

1 Chapter ii. 12, p. 37 (3rd edition). 



234 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

ceivable." The reader will remember that 
we had to distinguish between real thinking 
and picture-thinking, thought and imagina- 
tion. Sometimes more especially in the 
chapter on "Ultimate Religious Ideas "- 
Spencer uses "conceivable" in one sense, 
sometimes in the other. It is evident that 
the conceivable and the imaginable are dif- 
ferent mental products : thus even a pleasure 
or pain, considered as mere feeling, is not a 
thing of which we can form any kind of 
mental picture ; but we can conceive it, for 
we know what the term means. In his 
Principles of Psychology Spencer lays down 
a test of truth, which he calls " the Universal 
Postulate," whose application if it were re- 
liable would be frustrated by the confusion 
between thinking and imagining, a con- 
fusion which it is very easy to fall into, in 
spite of great care taken to avoid it. He 
says that an ultimate truth is that whose 
" opposite " is " inconceivable." Now all argu- 
ments depending on the mere psychological 
experiment of trying whether something is 
" conceivable " or not, are most untrust- 
worthy, mainly through the confusion just 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 235 

mentioned ; yet Spencer makes these argu- 
ments the bases of his system. 

Apart from this difficulty, the " Universal 
Postulate " is no reliable test of truth. 
Among the various statements of it which 
Spencer has given, the following is one of 
the most precise : 

An abortive effort to conceive the negation of a pro- 
position shows that the cognition expressed is one of 
which the predicate invariably exists along with its 
subject ; and the discovery that the predicate always 
exists along with its subject, is the discovery that this 
cognition is one which we are compelled to accept. 

One of our ablest living psychologists, 
commenting on this passage, has well said 
that this is no test of truth ; it is only a test 
of belief : 

It may always happen that what is found to be 
unthinkable at one time may become thinkable at 
another, and vice versa. New data and new points 
of view are always capable of working a change ; to 
fall back on the unthinkableness of the opposite as a 
test of truth is simply to shut our eyes to further 
evidence; logically, Mr Spencer's position is identical 
with that attributed to ladies it simply amounts to 
saying that "a thing is because it is." It makes the 
mere existence of a belief, or at any rate of a full 
assurance, the evidence of its truth. 1 



1 G. F. Stout, Analytic Psychology, vol. ii. p. 241. 



236 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

It is almost startling to find that Spencer's 
position here is the same as that of Cardinal 
Newman, who makes " indefectibility of cer- 
titude" the test of truth. The "indefecti- 
bility " is equivalent to " inconceivability of 
the opposite." And as we saw, it amounts 
to no more than a very strong mental im- 
pulse to hold certain beliefs : to find in this 
impulse, as a mere fact, a reason for the 
belief, is to say that there are no reasons 
only feelings, impulses, and psychological 
causes. In any case Spencer seems to make 
a rather arbitrary selection among the " firm 
assurances" of consciousness. One of the 
firmest is the conviction of every one that 
"himself" is more than the mere succession 
of his thoughts and feelings : this Spencer 
rejects as illusion. Another is the con- 
viction that in experience we have a direct 
hold upon reality in many of its details, and 
not merely upon a substitute coming be- 
tween us and things as they are ; but 
Spencer affirms that we know only appear- 
ance, not reality. The view which we have 
advanced is that the reality is known 
through the phenomenon ; the knowledge 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 237 

may be very partial and very fragmentary, 
but it is none the less true of reality, until 
it is corrected by fuller truth. 

The second great difference between 
Spencer and Comte is in their respective 
views of the surviving element in religion. 
Spencer thinks it is only the feeling of awe 
in the presence of an Infinite Mystery ; 
this, he says, is " the truly religious ele- 
ment in religion," which " has always been 
good." " The consciousness of an inscrutable 
power manifested to us through all phe- 
nomena," a power " whose nature transcends 
intuition and is beyond imagination," " gives 
the religious sentiment the widest possible 
sphere of action." The chapter in which 
Spencer expounds this conclusion is one 
which can hardly fail to make a deep im- 
pression on the reader. I must quote in 
full its most important passage : 

Those who espouse the alternative position [to agnos- 
ticism, i.e., Theism] make the erroneous assumption that 
the choice is between personality and something lower 
than personality ; whereas the choice is rather between 
personality and something higher. Is it not possible 
that there is a mode of Being as much transcending 



238 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical 
motion 1 It is true that we are totally unable to con- 
ceive any such higher mode of being. But this is not 
a reason for questioning its existence ; it is rather the 
reverse. Have we not seen how utterly incompetent 
our minds are to form even an approach to a conception 
of that which underlies phenomena? Is it not proved 
that this incornpetency is the incompetency of the Con- 
ditioned to grasp the Unconditioned? Does it not 
follow that the Ultimate Cause cannot in any respect 
be conceived by us because it is in every respect greater 
than can be conceived? And may we not, therefore, 
rightly refrain from assigning to it any attributes what- 
ever, on the ground that such attributes, derived as they 
must be from our own natures, are not elevations but 
degradations ? 

Indeed it seems somewhat strange that men should 
suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the 
object of their worship to themselves. Not in asserting 
a transcendent difference, but in asserting a transcendent 
likeness, consists the element of their creed which they 
think essential. It is true that from the time when 
the rudest savages imagined the causes of all things to 
be creatures of flesh and blood like themselves, down to 
our own time, the degree of assumed likeness has been 
diminishing. But though a bodily form and substance, 
similar to that of man, has long since ceased among 
cultivated races to be a literally conceived attribute of 
the Ultimate Cause though the grosser human desires 
have also been rejected as unfit elements of the con- 
ception though there is some hesitation in ascribing 
even the higher human feelings, save in greatly idealised 
shapes, yet it is still thought not only proper, but im- 
perative, to ascribe the most abstract qualities of our 
nature. To think of the Creative Power as in all 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 239 

respects anthropomorphous, is now considered impious 
by men who yet hold themselves bound to think of the 
Creative Power as in some respects anthropomorphous ; 
and who do not see that the one proceeding is but an 
evanescent form of the other. It is alike our highest 
wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through 
which all things exist as The Unknowable. 

This passage seems to combine important 
truths with serious errors. First, we must 
ask, what sort of "religion" is this? The 
doctrine that " we cannot form even an 
approach to a conception of that which 
underlies phenomena " means, as we saw, 
that the absolute has nothing in common with 
the finite, God has nothing in common 
with man, nor man with God. The best 
qualities of our nature may develop to the 
uttermost, but by this we come to have 
less in common with the Absolute, less re- 
semblance to it, than the formless life of 
feeling in which consciousness began ; and 
our knowledge may grow to any extent 
without coming any nearer to a knowledge 
of the Absolute. But if so, surely the very 
existence of the Absolute is best forgotten, 
and our energies turned to the many in- 
terests arising out of the region which can 



240 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

be known. Suppose we were gazing into 
the dead face of a sphinx, a face without 
motion, expression, or life, would it not be 
mere imbecility to indulge a feeling of awe 
and reverence ? Even so would it be to 
reverence " the unknowable Energy from 
which all things proceed," if it is utterly 
unknowable. We should have to recognise 
that what Spencer calls " the truly religious 
element in religion " would be little more 
than a form of mental disease. If we try 
to exalt the Absolute into a region beyond 
thought and beyond expression, we shall 
have to return to the view of Gomte and 
Hume, that the Absolute does not exist for 
us : we could no more indulge feelings to- 
wards it than we could indulge them in the 
questions at issue in " lunar politics." Pro- 
fessor Huxley expressed the legitimate con- 
clusion when he said : 

If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants 
of the moon are, and I reply that I do not know ; that 
neither I, nor any one else, have any means of knowing ; 
and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble 
myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has 
any right to call me a sceptic. On the contrary, in 
replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 241 

truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of 
time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a 
great many problems about which we are naturally 
curious, and shows us that they are essentially questions 
of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being 
answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men 
who have work to do in the world. And he thus 
ends one of his Essays : " If we take in hand any 
volume of divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, 
let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning 
concerning quantity or number 1 ? No. Does it con- 
tain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of 
fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the 
flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and 
illusion." 

But Spencer, notwithstanding the incon- 
sistency, is driven to recognise the reality 
of an infinite Power, everywhere present and 
active ; and Huxley, notwithstanding these 
brave words, finds that if we stay by the 
positivist view of Nature, knowing nothing 
but her outward events, we have an inex- 
plicable mystery on our hands. The great 
value of his Romanes Lecture on Evolution 
and Ethics lies in its forcible assertion of the 
divergence between the " ethical process " 
which the human spirit has created, and 
the phenomenal cosmic process. Whence 
comes this imperious tendency in man's 

Q 



242 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

nature to construct a kingdom of his own, 
independently of the outwardly unmoral and 
inhuman forces of Nature, and sometimes 
in direct opposition to them ? Nay, set 
aside all other forms of the human ideal, 
and consider the realisation of knowledge 
only. How is it that the human race never 
falls into lasting intellectual despair, but 
attacks its problems with renewed energy 
again, and ever again, with irresistible un- 
dying confidence in its power of reaching 
real knowledge at last ? Positivism itself 
does homage to this tendency, and practically 
recognises its ideal as supreme ; and the 
question, What is its meaning, whence 
comes it ? presses for an answer. Accord- 
ing to the religious view of the world, it 
is the " Infinite and Eternal Energy from 
which all things proceed," seeking to express 
and realise itself through a human ideal. 
So, too, we regard our ideals of Love and 
Goodness, and of Beauty, as affording inter- 
pretative insight into the Nature of the 
Absolute. This is not an evanescent form 
of the " anthropomorphism " of savages ; it 
is an "anthropomorphism" which is capable 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 243 

of growing in depth and critical power with 
the growth of human nature. 

This brings us once more to see the 
strength of Comte's view, that the object 
of religion is Humanity. It is true that 
he missed an essential factor when he re- 
fused to allow that this object is an abiding 
and complete reality. The Religion of 
Humanity confines the divine life to the 
short process of human history ; and the 
tendency of this limitation is to undermine 
the very sentiment of reverence which 
prompted it, and to deaden our sense of 
the infinite greatness and infinite mystery 
of the world. But none the less it is pro- 
foundly true that our highest conception 
of the Divine must be a conception derived 
directly from what is best in the human. 
This gives us a deeper and a truer "rela- 
tivity of knowledge " than the one which 
Spencer has in view ; one which the author 
of an ancient book expressed thus : 

" How shall we have strength to glorify 
Him? For he is himself greater than all his 
works. Many things greater than these are 
yet to be revealed ; for we have seen but 



244 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBE11T SPENCER. 

a few of his works. Who hath seen Him, 
that he may declare him ? And who shall 
magnify him as he is ? We may say many 
things, yet we shall not attain ; and the 
sum of our words is, He is all. When there- 
fore ye glorify the Lord, exalt him as much 
as ye can ; for even yet will he exceed : 
and when ye exalt him, put forth your full 
strength, be not weary ; for ye will never 
attain." 1 

" Be not weary ; for ye will never attain!" 
If we are able to grasp the idea of an Infinite 
which does not exclude the finite from itself, 
but embraces it and of a finite that does 
not limit the Infinite, but realises it, then 
we see that the experience of the finite may 
be a direct revelation of the Infinite, which 
is not "degraded" by predicates derived 
from that experience. It is true that any 
such predicate falls far short of the Reality, 
and in this sense " the Ultimate Cause is in 
every respect greater than can be conceived." 
But this does not mean that it is " unknow- 
able," as the late Principal Caird of Glasgow 
has eloquently and forcibly shown. "It is 

1 Ecclesiasticus xliii. 27 ff. 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 245 

because we conceive of the Unknown not 
as ' a mystery absolutely and for ever be- 
yond our comprehension/ but as containing 
more of what is admirable to us than we 
can grasp, because our intelligence is con- 
fronted by an object which is immeasurably 
above it in its own line, that there is awak- 
ened within us a sense of our own littleness 
in contrast with its greatness. In the pres- 
ence even of finite excellence of human 
genius and learning we may be conscious 
of feelings of deep humility and silent re- 
spectful admiration ; and this, too, may be 
reverence for the unknown. But that which 
makes this reverence a possible and whole- 
some feeling is that it is reverence not for 
a mere blank inscrutability, but for what 
I can think of as an intelligence essentially 
the same as my own, though far exceeding 
mine in its range and power. ... In like 
manner, the grandeur which surrounds the 
thought of the Absolute, the Infinite Reality 
beyond the finite, can only arise from this, 
not that it is something utterly inconceiv- 
able and unthinkable, but that it is the 
realisation of our highest ideal of spiritual 



246 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 

excellence. The homage rendered to it is 
that which is felt for a being ' in whom are 
hid all the treasures of wisdom and know- 
ledge/ all the inexhaustible wealth of that 
boundless realm of truth in which thought 
finds ever increasing stimulus to aspiration, 
ever growing food for wonder or delight." 

There remains a question which may 
already have occurred to the reader. If 
our highest and truest conceptions of the 
Absolute can only be fragmentary repre- 
sentations of the real truth, how is this 
related to the view that the Absolute is 
organically united to the finite the union 
being so intimate as to be sometimes a 
matter of direct experience ? The one prin- 
ciple explains the other. The value of this 
experience depends entirely on the way in 
which it is interpreted ; and the interpre- 
tation itself has as many different degrees 
of truth as there are in the conceptions of 
God. The mode of conception which we 
have been defending may be expressed thus : 
God is the Truth in all that is true, the 
Beauty in all that is beautiful, the Goodness 
in all that is good. This is not a formula 



AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER. 247 

which can be simply accepted or simply 
rejected : it is one whose significance is sug- 
gested as a fruitful subject for reflection. 
Its necessary consequence is that the ap- 
prehension of God is always at bottom a 
direct experience. 



248 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ROBERT BROWNING. 

SUMMARY. 

IF Religion is an experience (of the absolute worth and 
reality of our Ideals) together with the intellectual in- 
terpretation of that experience, then the worth of Religion 
depends on the range and depth of the experience as well 
as on the thoroughness of its intellectual interpretation. 
The great lesson of Browning's poetry is the value of 
Work (effort, energy of spirit) in deepening experience 
and so affording new data for knowledge. His appeal is 
to the completest possible human experience tested and 
interpreted by Work ; and he goes forth to survey human 
nature in all its degrees of greatness and vileness. His 
general conclusion is that " this world's no blot for us, 
nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good " (Fra 
Lippo Lippi) ; " earth changes, but thy soul and God 
stand sure " (R. Ben Ezra) ; " all's love yet all's law " 
(Saul). Some personal characteristics account for his 
peculiarities of style. 

His central problem is the reconciliation of universal 
Power and Law with Love (Reverie). His faith is that 
they are at bottom one (see The Pope, 1362-1383). The 
strenuous mood of mind will find that experience verifies 



ROBERT BROWNING. 249 

this. Reason cannot verify it, because Reason, for 
Browning, is only a critical and not a constructive 
power; it can only observe and criticise experience. 
Hence active productive energy of spirit is the only 
way to the meaning of things. 

Work, for Browning, means work out; by working 
things out we arrive at the truth and goodness in them. 
(1) By thinking out an intellectual theory to the end, we 
find the errors in it ; what is not true cannot be thought 
out consistently. Thus we may " wring knowledge from 
ignorance " (Rephari). (2) By working out evil its true 
character is betrayed and it fails; hence strenuousness 
in wrong-doing is better than a compromise of wicked- 
ness and prudence (see The Statue and the Bust, and 
Fifine, 128, 129). This doctrine is apparently immoral, 
but not really so ; he considers the effect of the energy 
on the soul of the worker, and is prompted by a hatred 
of the spirit of half-heartedness (Revelation iii. 15, com- 
pared with Ecclesiastes vii. 16, 17). Further, stren- 
uousness in evil, leading as it must do to failure, may 
awaken to life the germs of good in the soul (see The 
Pope, 1001-1003). (3) On the other hand, stren- 
uousness in working out what is good is the way to 
make the soul grow, so that it can find things in reality 
working together for good. This is what is meant by 
the " Will to Believe." See M. Ben Ezra, " welcome each 
rebuff"; Fifine, 55; and Bishop Blougram, "when the 
fight begins within himself." Rephan is the story of a 
" perfect " world, where no effort was needed, and which 
proved inferior to the present world. 

Some of the consequences of growth in the case of the 
soul are that man's perfection cannot be a state of 
absolute knowledge and goodness, which in us would 
mean stagnation (see A Death in the Desert], and that 
the range of man's desires is a sign of his greatness, of 



250 ROBERT BROWNING. 

what he may become (R. Ben Ezra, vii. ; Saul, xviii., 
&c.) The object of the growth is to learn the power 
and reality of Love (.4 Death in the Desert). Brown- 
ing's view of the highest Love is the same as in 1 John 
ch. iv. There are Degrees of Worth in Love, for Love 
is the feeling that any creature has for what it takes to 
be its good. Signs that Love is Power are its necessity 
for any fruitful work among men (hence Paracelsus 
failed) and its "faint beginnings" in Nature. .The 
Power which has produced the world has produced us 
and the standard by which we condemn the world ; if 
that Power is the source of the evil in the world it is 
also the source of the human Love which spends itself in 
overcoming the evil (see Saul, and R. Ben Ezra, "re- 
joice we are allied"). 

Browning's view of the problem of evil is important. 
Evil is " stuff for transmuting " ; it exists to be trans- 
formed by the victorious progress of good. The living 
Love which is divine, the Love which must be ever bear- 
ing, believing, hoping, enduring, rejoicing not in iniquity 
but rejoicing in the truth, could never come to be but for 
the sufferings, sins, mistakes, and conflicts of life ; which 
it still overcomes and in some measure turns to good. 

THE proposition with which we began was, 
that religion is the interpretation of an ex- 
perience. We now see that this may be 
expanded as follows. The intellectual inter- 
pretation gives religious doctrine or theory. 
The experience is the basal element in re- 
ligion. This experience is not merely a 
part of the finite individual ; it involves 



ROBERT BROWNING. 251 

an inflowing of the Divine Life ; and it 
concentrates itself or comes to a head in 
our consciousness of the authoritative Ideals, 
-Truth, Beauty, goodness, which disturb 
us with a moving claim to be realised and 
embodied in the work of life. In our con- 
sciousness of these as our Ideals, and yet 
as real far beyond what we are, there lies 
the germ of an immediate consciousness of 
God as their Source and Sustainer. 

The interpretation, doctrine, theory, or 
explanation, may indicate the meaning of 
the experience with a greater or less degree 
of Truth ; upon this its value depends, and 
in the end it must always be tested by 
the experience. But the experience itself 
may vary in depth and power and meaning ; 
how then is the experience itself to be 
tested ? Are we to be content to take it 
simply for what it is, as if to say, " Thus 
and thus are the limits of my experience, 
my range of fact, and to anything beyond 
this I will pay no attention " ? Evidently 
such an attitude is quite irrational. The 
experience of a man depends partly upon 
what lie is. His own interpretation of it 



252 ROBERT BROWNING. 

tends to become established as a real belief 
and part of himself, and thus reacts on the 
experience which it interprets. And his 
activity is not all taken up in thinking, 
the production of ideas, the interpreting 
function of thought ; its central power lies 
in what Schopenhauer called Will ; and 
by Will that is, by energy of spirit 
more than by anything else, human ex 
perience is moulded and made. 

Thus, when we consider the two facts 
on which Belief depends Experience and 
its Interpretation we cannot wonder at 
the resulting variety and conflict. We hear 
of the " duty to doubt " ; but there are 
different kinds of doubt ; and to relapse 
into the passive or negative attitude of 
unproductive doubt is so far from being a 
" duty," that we might almost call it a 
disease ; it is to turn clean away from the 
possibility of knowing anything of the 
grounds of Belief. We shall find good 
reasons for thinking that Belief can never 
be given to a man merely from without, 
whether by argument or any other means ; 
and to " doubt " in this fashion is equivalent 



ROBERT BROWNING. 253 

to a passive waiting for Belief to come. 
It would be just as unreasonable if the 
scientific investigator were to wait passively 
for knowledge to come to him ; while in fact 
results of value are only possible when a 
prepared mind, trained by previous ex- 
perience, thought, and research, comes to 
Nature full of guesses and theories to be 
tested, not by mere observation, but by care- 
fully devised experiments. This was what 
Tyndall meant by saying that " with ac- 
curate experiment and observation to work 
upon, imagination becomes the architect of 
physical science." l In scientific research 
it may be truly said that we make the 
experience which we interpret. And in 
practical volition, in an even more real and 
intimate sense, we make our experience. As 
regards the social welfare of our race, and 
the possibilities of spiritual personality, we 
must will right, before the truth can be 
known, there must be a will in order to 
believe ; and then there is positive material 

1 Tyndall, Fragments of Science, Essay on " The Scientific 
use of the Imagination." Cf. Life and Letters of Charles 
Danrin, vol. i. p. 126. 



254 ROBERT BROWNING 

for our thought to interpret. We may or 
may not interpret the material adequately ; 
but the foundation and possibility of the 
interpretation are there. 

In leading up to this statement of the 
problem of Belief, I have led up to the great 
lesson of Browning's poetry, which so many 
of his interpreters have failed to bring out. 
Belief arises from an experience together 
with its intellectual interpretation ; hence 
the worth of the belief depends on the 
range and depth of the experience as well 
as on the thoroughness of the interpre- 
tation. Browning's main thought is, the 
value of work that is, effort and energy 
of spirit in deepening experience and so 
affording new data for knowledge. His 
appeal is to the completest possible human 
experience tested and interpreted by Work, 
active productive energy of spirit is the 
way to the meaning of things. 

Many of the peculiarities attaching to 
his statement of this view arise from the 
limitation of Reason which he emphatically 
asserts ; but the fundamental truth of the 
view in question is not bound up with the 
truth or error of his view of Reason, In 



ROBERT BROWNING. 255 

his later and more reflective poems, such 
as La Saisiaz and Ferishtatis Fancies, he 
seems to have settled into a scepticism 
with regard to the power of our intelligence 

almost as complete as that of Hume. It 
is of course impossible to maintain the ex- 
treme sceptical position, and Browning con- 
tradicts it every time he utters a thought. 
But it is possible to maintain that Reasoning 
can produce no new truth from itself, that 
it is only critical and cannot be constructive, 

that by Reasoning there is no road to 
fresh positive truth in things human or 
divine ; and by this position Browning con- 
sistently abides. His opinion of Reason 
resembles that which William Law laid 
down in his Way to Divine Knowledge: 

Reason has only its one, work or power, which it can- 
not alter or exceed ; and that one work is, to he a bare 
observer and comparer of things that manifest themselves 
by the senses. When, therefore, Eeason takes upon it to 
determine things not manifested to it by the senses, as to 
judge about a divine JS"ew Birth, a divine Faith, or how the 
soul wants or does not want God, it is then as much out 
of its place or office as the eye that takes upon it to smell. 

Browning, however, believed that Reason 
could also observe and interpret the facts 
presented to it by man's moral and spiritual 



256 ROBERT BROWNING. 

nature ; and he believed this too thoroughly 
even to speak of it. He is riot aware that 
he is really appealing to the rational inter- 
pretation of experience in the ethical and 
religious sphere. 

Approaching the question from this point 
of view, and granting that what Browning 
calls Reason is incompetent by its own 
powers to reach the real meaning of life, 
the next question is : By what means, then, 
can we reach it ? And the answer can only 
be : By the help of the other sides of our 
complex nature, by such facts as come to 
us in the way of direct experience, by in- 
tuitions and perceptions, by the creative 
imagination, by the nobler and deeper 
emotions ; but, by these when they are 
submitted to the test of action. In a word, 
Browning's appeal is to the completest pos- 
sible human experience, deepened by work 
and interpreted by thought. 

His object is to meet the need to which 
we have referred elsewhere, the demand 
of this age : " Show us the Father in human 
life." l He goes forth to see all human life, 

1 Cf. John xiv. 8. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 257 

from its brightest and noblest to its dark- 
est and meanest side ; he examines the 
possible greatness and the possible vileness 
of man ; and from this universal survey 
he conies back with a great conviction of 

hope : 

All that is, at all, 
Lasts ever, past recall ; 
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure. 1 

The evil in the world in the end only 
ministers to the growth of good : 

This world's no blot for us 

Nor blank ; it means intensely and means good ; 
To find its meaning is my meat and drink. 

Thus, one of his characters, David, says : 

I have gone the whole round of creation ; I saw and 

I spoke ; 
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received 

in my brain 
And pronounced on the rest of his handwork, returned 

him again 

His creation's approval or censure ; I spoke as I saw ; 
I report as a man may of God's work, all's love yet 

all's law. 

Others have taken the same survey of all 
human life and work, and have brought back 

1 Rabbi Ben Ezra, xxvii. 
R 



258 ROBERT BROWNING. 

a very different verdict. Shakespeare did 
so ; and his last word was this : 

These our actors, 

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
Are melted into air, into thin air : 
And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

The philosophical and poetical expressions 
of this thought or mood, rather have been 
many and various in every age. To fall into 
this mood is no peculiarity of over-reflective 
minds. The so-called "practical" man, or 
the "man of the world," has sometimes a 
momentary pause in his blind rush after 
he knows not what, when there comes over 
him a great longing for a peace and rest 
which would annihilate the struggle for 
existence. There is no one who does not 
sometimes feel the strange attractiveness of 
that idea of the Divine Life which makes 
it to be absolute quietness, perfect inaction : 
no one who does not sometimes feel that a 



ROBERT BROWNING. 259 

state of utter stillness would be the most 
blessed life of all. Shelley felt this when 
in the Adonais he wrote : 

The one remains, the many change and pass ; 

Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly ; 

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 

Stains the white radiance of eternity, 

Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die, 

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! 

Follow where all is fled ! 

Elizabeth Browning came near to expressing 
the same thought, in a few fine stanzas 1 
which I proceed to quote : 

What would we give to our beloved ? 
The hero's heart, to be unmoved, 
The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep, 
The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse, 
The monarch's crown, to light the brows ? 
He giveth His beloved sleep. 

What do we give to our beloved ? 

A little faith, all undisproved ; 

A little dust, to overweep ; 

And bitter memories, to make 

The whole earth blasted for our sake. 

He giveth His beloved sleep. 

" Sleep soft, beloved," we sometimes say, 
But have no tune to charm away 



1 From a poem on the words " He giveth His beloved 
sleep" (Psalm cxxvii. 2). 



260 ROBERT BROWNING. 

Sad dreams, that through the eyelids creep ; 
But never mournful dream again 
Shall break the peaceful slumber, when 
He giveth His beloved sleep. 

earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
men, with wailing in your voices ! 
delved gold, the wailers heap ! 
strife, curse that o'er it fall ! 
God strikes a silence through you all, 
And giveth His beloved sleep. 

Cardinal Newman, too, felt the weariness 
which comes from the constant strife in- 
volved in the never-ending torrent of ex- 
istence ; and, in his Apologia, he gives voice 
to it thus : 

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its 
various history, the many races of men, their starts, their 
fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and 
then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, 
their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random 
achievements and acquirements ; the impotent con- 
clusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and 
broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution 
of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the 
progress of things as if from unreasoning elements and 
not towards final causes ; the greatness and littleness of 
man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain 
hung over his futurity ; the disappointments of life, the 
defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental 
anguish ; the prevalence and intensity of sin, the per- 
vading idolatries, corruptions, the dreary hopeless irre- 



ROBERT BROWNING. 261 

ligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet 
exactly described in the Apostle's words, " having no 
hope, and without God in the world," all this is a 
vision to dizzy and appal, and inflicts on the mind the 
sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely beyond 
human solution. 

Thoughts like these have driven many to 
take refuge in the belief that such a life is 
only "vanity and a striving after wind"; 
and that the most blessed life is one where 
everything which makes our life here has 
ceased to be. Buddhism in ancient times, 
and the pessimism of Schopenhauer in our 
own day, have drawn the last conclusion 
from this feeling that " we are such stuff 
as dreams are made on." 

It is impossible not to feel the pathetic 
beauty and power of the thoughts which we 
have heard our witnesses utter ; it is im- 
possible not to recognise their force. But 
to speak of happiness, peace, freedom, as 
realised in a state of still stagnation that 
cannot be distinguished from absolute nothing- 
ness, is to empty these words of all their 
meaning. 

Now this was Robert Browning's deep 
conviction. His mood is always the opposite 



262 ROBERT BROWNING. 

of the one which we have been describing. 
Life for him is no dream ; it is intensely 
real. This conviction even marked his per- 
sonal characteristics : he was fond of life on 
all its sides its lighter aspects, fashion, 
amusement, things outwardly attractive, not 
fond only of the deeper aspects which he well 
knew. Here he represents the tendencies 
of the present time, which are to make life 
no dream. Another characteristic, specially 
marking his thought, also makes him a re- 
presentative of the Present. He is over- 
whelmed by a flood of ideas suggestions, 
speculations, possibilities -- concerning the 
deep problems of human life and destiny. 
The problems brood over Browning, rather 
than he over them. This accounts for many 
of the peculiarities of his poetical work. 
His interest in such problems is so intense 
that he often forces metrical forms to ex- 
press thoughts for which they are not 
suited ; and this results in a style very 
often crabbed and harsh, sometimes con- 
fused, sometimes utterly unintelligible. 
There are many passages in his writing 
which show what a lyric poet he might 



ROBERT BROWNING. 263 

have been. It has been said with some 
truth that many of his longer pieces should 
have been written in prose, when the ar- 
gumentation, of which they are full, would 
not have been trammelled by any necessities 
of poetic form. Our purpose here, however, 
will not allow us to speak further of Brown- 
ing's personality or of his artistic work. 

What is the central problem which in 
Browning's view is to be solved by the 
interpretation of experience through Work ? 
It is this. There is a jGrreat Power behind 
the varying phenomena of Nature a Power 
which acts according to Law ; and the Laws 
form one harmonious system. This is evi- 
dent, however brief a " surview of things " 
we take. Many emphatic expressions of it 
might be selected ; the following, from the 
Reverie, is fairly typical : 

Thus much is clear, 
Doubt annulled thus much : I know. 

All is effect of cause ; 

As it would has willed and done 
Power ; and my mind's applause 
Goes, passing laws each one, 
To Omnipotence, Lord of laws. 

But what kind of omnipotence is it ? Is 



264 ROBERT BROWNING. 

it the embodiment and realisation of our 
highest needs and highest good ; or is it 
the unknowable, of which 110 qualities cog- 
nisable by the human mind can be predi- 
cated ? This is the question which touches 
the very core of our modern doubt. 1 
Browning expresses it as the relation of 
Power to Love. These are the two factors 
of which we found Spencer laying exclusive 
stress on one, and Comte on the other ; in 
Professor Huxley's language, they are the 
"cosmic process" and the "ethical process." 
Power is all about us, besetting us behind 
and before ; we come from it, we are in its 
grasp, and it is more and mightier than we. 
Love belongs to us, and inspires all that is 
best in Humanity ; yet Power seems on 
the surface to disregard it utterly. In spite 
of this mysterious opposition, Browning has 
an enthusiastic faith that at bottom Power 
and Love are one. This faith he is always 
trying to verify by all the countless different 
aspects of human experience ; he is always 
trying to " show us the Father," the mighty 
spirit of good working through all things. 

1 See William Watson's Rope of the World. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 265 

It is a restless faith. Here again he partly 
represents the Present ; for even the most 
genuine faith to-day is very restless, al- 
ways trying to verify itself, and seeking 
better intellectual expression. Browning's 
last word on the problem is this : 

From the first, Power was, I knew. 

Life has made clear to me 
That, strive but for closer view, 

Love were as plain to see. 1 

Work is of supreme importance for Brown- 
ing because it is the only means of finding 
what life or experience is, the only way of 
solving the great problem which we have 
stated. Work is for life what tillage is 
for the earth ; for without it life is barren 
of goodness and of truth. 

Work, with Browning, means work out; 
he urges this as the great test, because the 
laws of life are such that what is simply 
bad cannot be worked out. He claims to 
have proved this by his dramatic pictures 
of human experience, and to have shown 
that by working things out we arrive at 
the truth and goodness in them. 

1 Reverie (Asolando). Cf. The Pope, 1362-1383. 



266 ROBERT BROWNING. 

We first see that errors may be tested 
thus. This intellectual aspect of the quest- 
ion is not developed by Browning. But 
it is in this sphere that the operation of 
the law is most clearly seen, the law that 
evil cannot be worked out without destroy- 
ing itself. Evil in the realm of intelligence 
is simply error ; hence the law is that error 
cannot be worked out consistently. If a 
thorough attempt is made to think it out 
in all its implications, the error betrays itself 
by becoming incoherent and self- contra- 
dictory. Like a building whose axis is 
inclined to the plane of its foundation, it 
can be built up to a certain stage, but if 
persisted in, it falls in ruins. This result 
is possible because propositions or pieces of 
knowledge are not like blocks which can 
never grow, and which can be set side 
by side without having any effect on one 
another. Any piece of knowledge, when 
thought about, comes to be developed so 
that its bearings are seen ; and indeed it 
may then be seen to have an effect on every 
other piece of knowledge which we possess ; 
while at the same time its true nature be- 



ROBERT BROWNING. 267 

comes apparent, as in the case of a growing 
plant. Error, when thus thought out, be- 
trays itself at length. To go through this 
strenuous " thinking out " requires an in- 
telligence of more than ordinary power. As 
a rule we are so far from doing it, that each 
one's various opinions, if developed, would 
end in an intellectual chaos. 

The law shows that neither the human 
mind nor the world is made so as to 
allow men to rest in error with lasting 
success ; error, persisted in, at length will 
not work. Experience shows how men 
have thus " wrung knowledge from ignor- 
ance" (Repliaii). 

We see in the next place that a corre- 
sponding law holds in the ethical sphere. 
Evil, persisted in, sooner or later will not 
work, it betrays itself as contrary to the 
nature of things. This is the most in- 
sistent thought in Browning's teaching. 1 
If a man will work out his wickedness and 
hate to the bitter end, and so "try con- 

1 The well-known passage from The Statue and the Butt 
may be referred to : " Let a man contend to the utter- 
most . . . " ; also Fifine, lv., cxxviii., cxxix. ; &c. 



268 ROBERT BROWNING. 

elusions with the world," he will find that 

he is subject 

To the reign 

Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit 
To have its way with man, not man his way with it. 

This doctrine may seem to be immoral ; 
and so far as the morality of a man's 
action depends on its consequences to others, 
it certainly is so. But from Browning's 
point of view it is not so ; for when he 
says " work," " work out," he is always 
thinking of the effect of the work on the 
worker himself. Hence he teaches that, 
when we look deeply enough, we see how 
strenuousness in evil is better than half- 
hearted wickedness, which abstains only 
through weakness from acting out its real 
nature. It is true that he who is too 
cowardly or too stupid to be thoroughly 
wicked may thereby cause less pain and 
suffering to others ; but his evil disposition 
does not become a good one by the addition 
of stupidity or cowardice ; and in the end 
his endeavour to avoid trying conclusions 
with the world, only makes its judgment 
on him the more terrible. Hesitancy, sloth, 



ROBERT BROWNING. 269 

indolence, are things wholly pernicious. 
Equally objectionable is the spirit of com- 
promise, which hesitates to be either good 
or bad with decision, the spirit which 
" prompts while pulling back, refuses yet 
concedes," - - which prompted the too wise 
advice given by the Preacher : "Be not 
righteous over much, neither make thyself 
over wise : why shouldest thou destroy thy- 
self? Be not over much wicked, neither 
be thou foolish : why shouldest thou die 
before thy time ? " l Here Browning would 

say 

Thickheads might recognise 
The Devil, that old stager, at his trick 
Of " general utility," who leads 
Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way. 

Such appreciation of strenuousness in evil 
does not mean that any man is to be allowed 
to work out his wickedness, unchecked by 
the better will of others consciously striving 
against him ; only let the check be given 
with no feeble hand and heart, but with 
all your might. Then the conscious striv- 
ing against him becomes part of the great 

1 Ecclesiastes vii. 16, 17 ; cf. Revelation iii. 15. 



270 ROBERT BROWNING. 

conspiracy of the world to transform evil 
into good, the reality of which he has 
to learn. Vigour and intensity in evil 
makes experience teach him who thus preys 
upon his kind, that the world has another 
destiny than to be the instrument of such 
deeds. 

Even more than this may be effected by 
such experiences. They may even kindle 
in the soul of the wrong- doer some gleams 
of good, of that Good 

Which in the absolutest drench of dark 

Ne'er wants a witness, some stray beauty-beam, 

To the despair of hell. 

The career of Guido is Browning's greatest 
study in the progress of evil. This creature 
has been called " the subtlest and most 
powerful compound of vice in our literature;" 
he is put among companions congenial to 
his nature, mother, mistress, brothers, 
himself 

The midmost blotch of black 

Discernible in the group of clustered crimes they call 

Their palace. 

The poet's genius has given us in one word 
an illustration of how in the vilest there still 



ROBERT BROWNING. 271 

remains the possibility of reverence for truth 
and reality, how man may be "by hate 
taught love." The one word is Guido's last 

O 

word, when cruelty, lies, deception of self 
and others, avail no more, and the end 
comes in the shape of the grim reality of 
being led away to the scaffold. Then he 
calls on the earthly powers who have been 
wellnigh his accomplices, and upon the sup- 
posed heavenly ones who have exacted his 
lip - service before. But even as he utters 
the names, familiar as the objects of his 
hypocritical invocation, so instinctively, in 
this extremity, he knows that these are but 
creatures of fancy ; so instinctively he knows 
that in human love and faithfulness and 
heroism, realised in man or woman, there 
lies more of Divine Power than in all the 
empty phrases of churchly convention ; he 
knows that these have been realised in the 
object of all his hate and his vile designs, 
and with his latest breath he calls upon her ; 
he turns from the phantoms to the reality 
at last : 

Abate Cardinal Christ Maria God ! 
Pompilia ! Will you let them murder me ? 



272 ROBERT BROWNING. 

We have been speaking of the necessity of 
strenuousness even in evil : so long as we 
consider the moral agent alone, vigour in 
wrong-doing is better than weakness. It 
may be imagined that the thinker who has 
dared to teach this will have a good under- 
standing of the worth of strenuousness in 
the way that is right. The man who is 
full of this spirit will learn by experience 
that he is in touch with the heart of things, 
and that goodness is in harmony with what 
is deepest and strongest in man and the 
world. 

Let him wait God's instant men call years ; 
Meanwhile hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
Do out the duty ! Through such souls alone 
God stooping shows sufficient of his light 
For us in the dark to rise by. 1 

There are few more beautiful passages in 
English literature than some of those in 
which Browning has expressed this thought, 
that only when the strenuous mood comes 
in play and the power of the spirit begins 
to grow, can we find things working to- 

1 Pompilia, 1841-1845. 



EGBERT BROWNING. 273 

gether for good. Bishop Blougram says, in 
his own half-cynical way : 

When the fight begins within himself 
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, 
Satan looks up beneath his feet, both tug, 
He's left, himself, in the middle : the soul wakes 
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life. 1 

It is this application of Browning's general 
principle which invites comparison with the 
process which Professor James calls " willing 
to believe," and the comparison will throw 
light on Browning's meaning. 

Professor James says : " We have a con- 
ception which, being opposed by another, is 
only probable. But we feel that it is so 
good that it is Jit to be true ; it ought to be 
true ; it must be true. And then we say, 
' it shall be true for me ; it is true.' " That 
this is a psychologically true account of a 
frequent process of experience would not, I 
suppose, be disputed in any quarter ; or at 
any rate, the only dispute would be as to 
the best way of expressing the facts. Pro- 
fessor James affirms that the process is also 
ethically justifiable ; we may believe certain 

1 Cf. Fiftne, Iv. 
S 



274 ROBERT BROWNING. 

things for the simple reason that it is good 
for our moral nature to believe them. 1 But 
as long as man is rational and rational 
with the Reason which is more than a cal- 
culating mechanism we cannot be perman- 
ently satisfied with this answer. If our 
only choice is between these two things, 
on the one side, indifference to the larger 
needs of the ethical and spiritual life, in the 
interest of mere intellectual accuracy ; and 
on the other side, indifference to the larger 
demands of reason, in the interest of mere 
ethical edification, then it is hard to tell 
which is the worse alternative. The question 
which Reason puts with regard to any belief 
. is this : Is it true of that mysterious Reality 
on which we and all things depend, which 
has brought us forth, which holds us in its 
grasp, and to which we shall return in the 
end ? 

I have already implied that cases, in 
Browning's pictures of life, might be adduced 
to show that he too rested in this " ethical 
subjectivism," as it may be called ; 2 but 
surely this is not his deeper view. Brown - 

1 See Prof. W. James' brilliant Essay, The Will to Believe. 

2 Of. La Saisiaz. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 275 

ing's teaching is this : the process as de- 
scribed by Professor James is ethically 
justifiable, because, in thus "willing to be- 
lieve" the conception at issue, we initiate 
activities which have the effect of making 
new forms of experience ; and from these, if 
we are able adequately to interpret them, 
we may learn what degree of truth is in- 
volved in the conception which we believe. 
And Browning applies this doctrine, as we 
have seen, to the case of believing that what 
is good is true, and acting it out. Truth of 
belief, he teaches, dawns upon the world 
in consequence of " right action." In the 
experience which is thus made, when it 
is adequately interpreted, we find evidence 
that " all things work together for good," 
i.e., that the Absolute Good will realise 
itself, even through the conflicts and antag- 
onisms of human life. This conviction was 
Browning's ; and to illustrate it, he drama- 
tises these " conflicts and antagonisms," in 
some- of their grandest and some of their 
meanest forms, as modes of experience made 
by the energy of the human spirit. 

Browning's conception of " strenuousness 
in evil" is a case of the same kind as that 



276 ROBERT BROWNING. 

which we have been considering, but with 
an opposite object. In its ultimate form the 
conception would be like that of Milton, in 
his picture of Satan summing up the en- 
deavour of his titanic energy henceforth : 
" Evil, be thou my good ! " That evil be 
wrought, is the concentrated purpose of his 
whole being at every moment of time. He 
who thus, when willing some evil action, 
believes in it, is never hypocritical, never 
offers any " unconscious homage to virtue." 
And in this spirit he finds experience show 
the self- destructive character of the evil 
which is done. This is the very point of 
Browning's contrast between strenuous and 
half-hearted wickedness ; the latter does not 
believe in itself, or is half afraid of itself. 
Though it may do less mischief, it is further 
away from learning the truth ; while the career 
of a Caesar Borgia teaches its lesson, as Kenan 
says, comme une aMme, comme une tempete. 

The mystery of moral growth i.e., the 
growth of what is distinctively human is 
that it can only be through positive con- 
flict that is, through Work : 



ROBERT BROWNING. 277 

Then, welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go ! 

Be our joy three parts pain ! 

Strive and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge 
the throe. 

He tells us of a spirit who had tried a world 
where there was no rebuff, no sting or pain, 
no strain or throe. The Star " Rephan " 
was a perfect world : 

No want whatever should be, is now ; 

No growth that's change ; and change comes how 

To royalty born with crown on brow 1 

Nothing begins so needs to end ; 

Where fell it short at first 1 Extend 

Only the same ; no change can mend. 

In this world the spirit lives, a world 
where there is neither rosebud nor faded 
rose, but all are full-blown roses, neither 
fading nor opening. Here, since perfection 
must needs be independent of service, there 
is no call for service or work or effort of 
any kind ; there is neither hope nor fear, 
neither advance nor retreat. But, some- 
how, this perfection irks the spirit, and 
it grows to long for a difference in thing 
and thing 



278 ROBERT BROWNING. 

That should shock ray sense 
With a want of worth in them all, and thence 
Startle me up by an Infinite 
Discovered above and below. . . . 
A voice said, " So wouldst thou strive, not rest, 
Burn and not smoulder, win by worth, 
Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth ? 
Thou art past Eephan, thy place be Earth ! " 

Thus work, overcoming and transforming 
obstacles which are only " stuff for trans- 
muting " 1 is the great means of making 
our nature grow. Browning does not 
directly teach that only by ourselves work- 
ing can we find the Divine Life at work 
in our experience ; but it is a necessary 
consequence of what he does teach, for work 
is necessary for our growth, and whatever 
knowledge of the Divine Life is possible 
to us is a result of our growth. 

The mind which grows is not a mind 
which starts with a fixed set of faculties 
remaining the same, and whose progress 
consists in the addition of new pieces of 
knowledge, etc., on to it. The thing which 
grows is constantly becoming something 
new, according to inner laws of its own : 

1 Fifine, Iv. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 279 

like the earth, it " bringeth forth fruit of 
itself," in its proper stages, " first the 
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn 
in the ear " ; l the most we can do is to help 
it to grow. And it is either growing or 
decaying. Thus any mental power, im- 
agination, intelligence, or some particular 
kind of memory or will, must be either 
growing through use or tending to die out. 
Hence it was said, "To him that hath, shall 
be given ; but from him that hath not, shall 
be taken even that which he hath." 2 The 
apparent contradiction arises because it is 
not true that we can either simply have 
any mental acquirement or power, or simply 
have it not; just as it is not true that we 
can either simply be something be good, 
for example, or simply be not good. We 
are either coming to have or to be it, or 
we are losing it ; in the one case more 
power will be given in the other, the 
dying power will soon be dead. 

Other very important results flow from 
the fact that the mind is always growing. 
We can never have the Absolute Truth 

1 Mark iv. 26-28. 2 Cf. Mark iv. 24, 25. 



280 ROBERT BROWNING. 

or perfect Knowledge clearly before us ; 
for that would mean that our intellectual 
growth had come to an end : 

Man is not God but hath God's end to serve, 

A master to obey, a course to take, 

Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. 

Grant this, then man must pass from old to new, 

From vain to real, from mistake to fact, 

From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. 1 

Again, because man grows, his period of 
progress, and therefore of work, must be 
indefinitely long ; for the lower the want, 
the sooner satisfied : 

The body sprang 
At once to the height, and stayed : but the soul no ! 

Duly, daily, needs provision be 
For keeping the soul's progress possible, 
Building new barriers as the old decay, 
Saving us from evasion of life's proof. 2 

Once more, because man grows, it is right 
to judge him by his best moments, even if 
they fail : 

What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me. 3 



1 A Death in the Desert. 2 Ibid. 

3 Rabbi Ben Ezra, vii. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 281 

Man is exalted rather by what he Would 
do than by what he Does. 1 This thought 
occurs in many passages in Paracelsus, 
Fifine, and others among the longer poems ; 
and in Christina, By the Fireside, Dis Aliter 
Visum, and many more among the shorter 
ones. It is no paradox, because what man 
Would Do is a sign of what he may Become 
or grow to Be. 

If we ask, what is the object of the 
growth, the aim of all living, the answers 
are of this kind : 

Life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, believe the aged friend, 
Is just our chance of the prize of learning love, 
How Love might be, hath been indeed, and is. 2 

What, then, is Browning's conception of 
Love ? Love is the vital principle, the 
source or origin, of all the highest human 
goodness ; again, Love is one with the 
Power which wields the world, and makes 
that power Divine, so that it may be called 
by the traditional name of God. Love is 
thus the principle of union between man 
and God ; in growing in Love, we grow 

1 Cf. Saul, xviii. 2 A Death in tJie Desert. 



282 ROBERT BROWNING. 

into closer union with God ; but man's Love 
is God's Love too. Browning's teaching is 
distinctly that of the Johannine writings 
in the New Testament : " God is Love ; 
and he that dwelleth in Love, dwelleth in 
God, and God in him." l The word Love 
is often used very vaguely ; and any general 
definition of it is hard to find. But by 
Browning, as Professor Royce has observed, 
the word is used, in his reflective passages, 
" in a very pregnant and at the same time 
a very inclusive sense, almost, one might 
say, as a technical term." It " includes the 
tenderer affections, but is in no wise limited 
to them ; it means the affection which any 
being has towards what that being takes 
to be his highest good." 

This observation seems very just ; and 
it provides for Browning's illustrations of 
the various kinds and degrees of Love, as 
well as for his insistence on the need of 
strenuous activity for human growth. For 
the creature will endeavour to realise, by 
effort, what it takes to be its. own good ; 
and this realisation will mean the expan- 

1 See especially 1 John iv. 12, 16, 18, 20. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 283 

sion of its own nature, putting forth new 
powers and assimilating new experiences. 
The worth of Love depends on how far the 
good, which it strives for, includes or ex- 
cludes the good of others. Browning fre- 
quently limits Love to affection for the 
higher kinds of good, " true good," as we 
say. The lower kinds of good are then 
Love's " faint beginnings," springing partly 
from imperfect ideas of what good is. The 
story of Paracelsus is Browning's grandest 
illustration of how needful Love is for any 
fruitful human work. Paracelsus failed, be- 
cause in his passionate pursuit of knowledge 
he grew indifferent to the real needs of men. 
He thought only of the power which know- 
ledge gave him ; he would help men only 
as it were from an eminence, doling down 
to them fragments of his own great ideas : 

" In my own heart love had not been made wise 
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind." 

Browning's faith that God the universal 
Power is Love is a summary conclusion 
from his experience and observation of life. 
This faith he tried to illustrate, rather than 



284 ROBERT BROWNING. 

to defend by argument ; for in the end our 
understanding of it and belief in it depends 
just on the extent of our experience. He 
illustrates his conviction that Love is Power 
in several definite directions : by showing 
the necessity of Love for the accomplishment 
of any real good among men ; by dwelling 
on its sublimity in man, even to the extent 
of saying 

A loving worm, within its clod, 
Were diviner than a loveless God 
Amid his worlds. 

He illustrates it by showing the faint be- 
ginnings of Love in the natural world, among 
the animals, and by dwelling on the beauty 
and sublimity of Nature ; l again, by show- 
ing how the process of natural evolution 
finds its consummation in man, while " in 
completed man begins anew a tendency to 
God." In a more directly argumentative 
mood, Browning occasionally faces the pro- 
blem of the evil in the world, which we 

1 This is much more in the background in Browning than 
in other modern poets, because of his supreme interest in 
human nature; but see the noble nature-pieces in Paracelsus 
and Pauline. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 285 

condemn when judged by the standard of 
human love and goodness ; and in effect he 
says : " The Power which has produced the 
world has also produced us and the standard 
by which we condemn the world ; if that 
Power is the source of the evil in the world 
it is also the source of the human love which 
spends itself in overcoming the evil." In 
Saul an impressive form is given to this 
argument : 

Do I find Love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, 
That I doubt His own love can compete with it ? Here, 

the parts shift 1 ? 
Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, what 

Began ? 
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this 

man, 
And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet 

alone can? 
Would I suffer for him that I love ? so wouldst Thou 

so wilt Thou ! 
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost 

crown, 
And Thy Love fill infinitude wholly ! 

" He who did most, must bear most ; " and 
we, who share in that doing, must share in 
the bearing. We must share in the eternal 
sacrifice and pain of creation, we must 



286 ROBERT BROWNING. 

share in its eternal labouring and giving, 
else we shall be excluded likewise from its 
eternal joy : 

Rejoice we are allied 

To That which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive ! 

A spark disturbs our clod ; 

Nearer we hold of God 
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. 

This reminds us of what James Hinton finely 
said : 

Herein lies the mystery of pain ; that in association 
with love it ceases to be an evil. The pains of martyrs 
or the losses of self-sacrificing devotion are never classed 
among the evil things of the world. They are its bright 
places rather, the culminating points at which humanity 
has displayed its true glory and reached its perfect level. 
An irrepressible pride and gladness are the feelings they 
elicit: a pride which no regret can drown, a gladness 
which no indignation can overpower. . . . Doubtless we 
are right to loathe and repudiate pain and count its 
endurance an evil ; . . . but the question is, what is the 
happiness for which human nature is fitted, to which it 
should aspire ? . . . Should pain be merely absent, or 
swallowed up in Love and turned to joy 1 l 

This brings us to Browning's most original 
and profound thought in the everlasting 
problem of reconciling Power and Love. 

1 Mystery of Pain, pp. 12-38. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 287 

The growth of goodness is positively im- 
possible without conflict with evil. Evil 
is "stuff for transmuting"; it exists in 
order that goodness may grow in strength 
by the exercise of overcoming and trans- 
forming the evil. This is the idea which 
Comte hinted at, that the Good is a power 
which can realise itself only through actual 
conflicts and oppositions among partial and 
imperfect goods. To justify this view, 
Browning analyses the manifold forms of 
evil, even the very worst, searching them 
through and through to find their meaning 
and whither they tend to go ; and he con- 
cludes that there is no failure or misery 
or corruption which does not have right 
in it a germ of goodness. Hence he can 
say, in La Saisiaz : 

I see the good of evil, why our world began at worst : 
Since time means amelioration, tardily enough displayed, 
Yet a mainly onward moving, never wholly retrograde. 
We know more though we know little, we grow stronger, 

though still weak ; 
Partly see though all too purblind, stammer though we 

cannot speak. 

And of human progress in general, Para- 
celsus says : 



288 ROBERT BROWNING. 

All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
Their error, upward tending all though weak ; 
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
And do their best to climb and get to him. 

Hence the victory of goodness comes through 
its work in transforming evil, not anni- 
hilating it, but rearranging the material 
and turning it to good purposes, " unmaking 
to remake." The same law holds of good- 
ness as of truth : truth is a transforming 
power which can be realised only through 
the conflict of partial truths : so it is with 
goodness. This is why it is possible for 
life to " succeed, in that it seems to fail." l 
Man, who is liable to err, thereby proves 
himself higher than the star-fish ; it is 
whole in body and soul, but 

What's whole can increase no more, 
Is dwarfed and dies, since here's its sphere. 

Abt Vogler asks, 

What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
For the fulness of the days'? Have we withered or 
agonised 1 



1 Rabbi Ben 



ROBERT BROWNING. 289 

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing 

might issue thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be 

prized 1 

Rabbi Ben Ezra turns with contempt from the 
" finished and finite clods, untroubled by a 
spark," who have nothing further to attain 
to. For himself, the imperfections of his 
nature are comforts, warning him how much 
he has yet to learn and to be ; he sees 

It was better, youth 
Should strive, through acts uncouth, 
Toward making, than repose on aught found made. 

Iii the little poem Life in a Love, we see 
how living Love consists in a succession of 
failures, which, though failures, yet bring one 
nearer the beloved. In The Last Ride there 
is an actual pleasure in the thought of imper- 
fection, since it promises something more : 

Who knows what's fit for us ? Had Fate 
Proposed bliss here should sublimate 
My being had I signed the bond 
Still one must lead some life beyond, 
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. 
This foot once planted on the goal, 
This glory-garland round my soul, 
Could I descry such ? Try and test ! 

T 



290 ROBERT BROWNING. 

I shrink back shuddering from the quest. 
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best ? 
Now heaven and she are beyond this ride. 

Closely related is the thought, expressed for 
example in Old Pictures in Florence and 
Andria del Sarto, that " what's conie to 
perfection perishes." If we try to conceive 
of absolute perfection, the utter completion 
of all our powers, we fail altogether, or else 
we arrive at the idea of something which 
as in Rephan is only too plainly inferior 
to the present world. Not that Perfection 
is inconceivable ; it is beyond us but on our 
own line. 

Thus, the living Love which is Divine, 
the Love which is ever bearing, believing, 
hoping, enduring, rejoicing not in iniquity 
but rejoicing in the truth the Love which 
not only can do this but must needs do it, 
could never come to be but for the sufferings, 
sins, mistakes, and conflicts of life : which it 
still overcomes and turns to good. Rising 
then, as we may, from the thought of what 
is highest in man to the thought of God, we 
think of the All-perfect as living no life of 
stagnant " omnipotence " : we think of Him 



SUMMARY. 291 

as thinking most, loving most, doing most, 
and therefore as bearing most, but with a 
labour and sacrifice which are perpetually 
merged in the joy of victorious attainment, 
and all for the redemption of the creatures 
of his Love. The life of Love, the life of 
labour and sacrifice, the life of God, are the 
same : in that life it is our highest privilege 
to share. 



SUMMARY. 

We may now bring together and sum- 
marise our main results. Our object all 
through has been to arrive at some satisfy- 
ing conception of the source and meaning 
of belief in the Divine Being. The thinkers 
whom we have examined have borne witness 
" in divers manners " to a fundamental point 
of view, which gives a new and wider and 
deeper meaning to the old idea, that the 
truth of Religion is based directly on our 
actual experience. 

What is " experience " ? In ordinary 



292 SUMMARY. 

thought and language there is a close con- 
nection between experience and reality ; the 
main feature of " experience " is that in it 
something real comes home to us. But the 
word is constantly used in some limited sense 
or other, in the interest of some narrow 
system of thought. The most unfortunate 
and unjustifiable of these limitations is to 
make it mean only the facts which our bodily 
senses appear to give us. Yet it is from this 
arbitrary limitation that Positivism derives 
all its prestige from appearing to have a 
monopoly of " experience " and of the real, 
solid foundation of knowledge \vhich the 
word suggests. Experience, far from being 
a fixed, finite thing, is a seed, a germ, a 
potency ; it may be almost infinitely magni- 
fied in capacity and character, in intensity 
and scope. 

Whatever enters into our living experi- 
ence is real ; this is true throughout the 
many different forms which such experience 
may take. Thus, in simple sense-experience, 
such as the perception of a sound or colour, 
in intelligent " observation," as of some- 
thing that arouses our interest, in the 



SUMMARY. 293 

" instinctive " verdicts of conscience, and the 
social and sympathetic feelings, in these 
and all other types of experience there is the 
actual -presence of something real, something 
that we "get at" directly. The kinds and 
degrees of experience are infinite, for they 
comprise all the infinite variety of realised 
objects of human thought and action. Hence 
the type of experience which a man will 
have, depends first of all on the direction 
which his own activities take on his " work," 
in Browning's sense of the word ; but it de- 
pends also on the intensity with which he 
puts forth the native energies of his spirit 
into those activities. By this effort and 
energy his very personality will grow in 
power as his experience grows in depth of 
meaning. This is Browning's great con- 
tribution to the problem. Again, whatever 
an experience may be, before it can teach us 
any lesson it must be thought about ; and as 
human intelligence has in itself infinite 
varieties of maturity and power, this adds 
a new set of variations to experience. These 
things are true of whole ages and races of 
men as well as of individuals ; and the his- 



294 SUMMARY. 

torical forms of belief depend on these two 
" variables" degrees of intensity and scope 
in experience, and degrees of truth in its 
interpretation. 

Amid all this boundless complexity and 
manifoldness of experience, where can the 
Idea of the Divine Being have its source ? 
In all kinds of experience, something real 
comes home to us ; in what kind of experi- 
ence does the " something real " appear as 
the very presence of the Divine ? Speaking, 
at the close of his Gifford Lectures, of a 
possible experience of the heavenly life, the 
late Principal Caird said : " Even here, in 
this earthly life of ours, there are moments, 
few and far between, when the infinitude of 
the spiritual nature reveals itself, when the 
gross vesture of carnality seems to fall away, 
and a latent splendour of spiritual nobleness, 
nothing less than divine, to be disclosed. 
When thought comes with a rush of inspira- 
tion on the mind of the man of genius, when 
in the experience of very holy and saintly 
men infinite hopes and aspirations flow in 
upon the soul, raising it above the littleness 
and narrowness of life, quelling every ignoble 



SUMMARY. 295 

thought, silencing every baser passion ; or 
when the call for some great act of self- 
sacrifice has arisen, and the sense of duty 
triumphs over all lower impulses, and the 
deed of heroism and self-devotion is done, 
in these and like experiences there are pre- 
monitions of a larger, diviner life within this 
nature of ours." Yet when viewed in the 
light of our conception of experience and its 
interpretation even these rarest and highest 
spiritual experiences of the best and noblest 
of men are seen to be only a specially intense 
form of an experience which is shared by all 
who endeavour to realise their ideals. Human 
ideals, embodied in the work of life, become 
symbols of the Divine Being. Whether it is 
truth that is sought, or beauty, or righteous- 
ness, or human love, if we seek to possess 
and be possessed by any of these things, we 
shall find in them traces and motions of a 
strength that is not of our making and yet 
becomes ours as we work. Or if we think 
that ire have no experience which can be thus 
interpreted, none, even in our moments of 
sincerest work, none, even when we have 
lost all thought of self in " doing out the 



296 SUMMARY. 

duty " and living out the love that is claimed 
from us, then it remains for us to accept as 
true the insight of others who, working out 
the same ideals, find in them "gleams of the 
Everlasting Real," even a strength rooted 
in the " deep things of God." We share the 
same experience with them ; but for us the, 
light of its meaning may be closed, while for 
them the light begins to break forth. Let us 
understand, once for all, how great are the 
variations which an experience of the same 
kind or type may have for different beings, 
and how many are the motives leading to 
divergent interpretations of what is experi- 
enced : and then we can understand that 
the germs of the experience of God are uni- 
versal. The consciousness of weakness and 
dependence, the restlessness that issues in 
" divine discontent," the unwillingness to 
be satisfied with any merely temporary good, 
these are some of the first beginnings of 
what in its intenser, clearer form becomes a 
recognition of God in the ideals of man. 

If this is the Source of belief in the Divine 
Being, we know what we mean when we 
speak of God ; the Eternal Perfection, the 



SUMMARY. 297 

Absolute Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, 
whose Light 

" guides the nations, groping on their way, 
Stumbling and falling in disastrous night, 
Yet hoping ever for the Perfect Day." 

In this Perfect Life, all that our strug- 
gling Ideals point to is for ever realised ; 
and every Ideal of ours partial, fragment- 
ary, and imperfect though it be is a direct 
revelation of some aspect of the Absolute 
Perfection, in whom all Ideals are consum- 
mated. Thus do all the paths of human 
goodness begin and end in God, although 
men may not always see this, and may not 
always know Who goes with them and 
guides their footsteps when with earnest 
effort they keep to the upward path. 

The only possible "proof" that the ap- 
peals, which Truth and Love make to us, 
are literally Divine, is found in living up to 
them as far as we are able. This is the 
final meaning of Browning's message to the 
age. If Duty, for instance, is Divine, there 
can be no way of "proving" it but through 
an experience which can be attained only 
by living the life of Duty. Doubt is indeed 



298 SUMMARY. 

possible : but that is true of all such doubts, 
which we were told long ago : they can be 
" ended by action alone." " Truth must be 
ground for every man by himself out of its 
husk, with such help as he can get, indeed, 
but not without stern labour of his own : " 
and the deepest truth of life the Divine 
meaning of life's duties and ideals can be 
won only in the work of life. Yet it may 
be won by all ; it may be hidden from the 
wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes ; 
it is the truth of which the Master said, 
" Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and 
ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened 
unto you." 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



When a name is the subject of a passing allusion only, the 
reference is marked r. 



PACJB 

Aristotle, Ethics, r . . . . 26, 29 

, on the Middle Way . . . .35 

Balfour, A. J., r . . . . . .62 

Bradley, F. H., r . . . . .154 

Browning, E. B., r . . . . 259 

Browning, Robert, his Teaching . 250 ff., 293, 297 

, on Indifferentism .... 7 

, on Thought and Language ... 9 

Butler, J., r . . . . 87, 128 

Caird, E., on Comte . . . . .210 

Caird, J., on Agnosticism .... 245 

, on Inspiration . . . . 294 

Carlyle, on Deism . . . 43, 44, 126 

Chalmers, Thomas, r . . . .111 

Clifford, W. K, r . . . . . 190 

Coleridge, on Inspiration of the Bible . . .64 

, r . . . . .44, 126, 157 

Comte, his Positivism ..... 200 ff. 
, r 45, 264 

Diderot, r ..... 207 



300 INDEX OF NAMES. 

Eliot, George, on Positivism . . . .216 

Emerson, r . . . . .41 

Fiske, J., on Evolution .... 123, 124 

Flint, R.,r Ill 

Fraser, A. C., r . . . . . .128 

Fripp, E. I., on Dogma in Eeligion . . .53 
Froude, J. A., on Practical Certainty . . 92, 100 
, on Influence of early Christian Morality . 104 

Hamilton, Sir W., r . . . .231 

Hinton, J., Mystery of Pain . . . .286 

d'Holbach, r 207 

Howison, G. H. _. . . . . 128 
Hume, Scepticism, r ". . . .97, 98, 198 ff. 
Huxley, on Nature and Morality . 211 ff., 241, 264 
, on Insoluble Problems .... 241 

Inge, W. E., on Mysticism . . . .158 

James, W., on the Will to Believe . . 273, 274 

Jeffreys, E., on Providence . . . .191 

Kant, r . . . . . . 129, 134 

Keats, r ...... 126 

Law, W., on Eeason in Eeligion . . . 255 

Lewes, G. H., r . . . . . .201 

Locke, r 41, 42, 111, 112, 198 

Mansel, H. L., r . . . . . 231 

Martineau, J., on the Argument from Cause and Design 11 1 ff. 

, on Evolution . . . . . 114ff. 

, on the Argument from Moral Obligation . 126 ff. 

, his Ethical Individualism . . 135 ff., 183 

, on Social Unity . . . . .144 

, on Union of Man and God . . 161 ff., 184 



INDEX OF NAMES. 301 

Martineau, J., on the Place of Reverence in Religion . 164 ff. 

, on Revelation . . . . . 170 ff, 

, Theology of his Hymn-books . . . 185 ff. 

, on Agnosticism .... 226, 227 

, r 45, 69, 71, 81 

Maurice, F. D., r . . . . .44 

Mill, J. S., r 201 

Milton, r . . . . . . .276 

Mozley, H., r Ill 

Newman, F. W., r . . . . 81, 183 

Newman, J. H., on Real Belief . . .14 

, on Notional Assent . . . .17 

, on Romanticism . . . . .43 

, Reaction in the Church of England . . 47 ff. 

, Reverence for Antiquity . . . . 50 ff. 

, on Necessity of Dogma . . . . 52 ff. 

, Doctrine of Belief ( University Sermons) . 57 ff, 91, 92 

, on Development of Doctrine . . . 62 ff. 

, Grammar of Assent . . . 62, 76 ff. 

, on Witness of Conscience to God . 81, 107, 132 
, on Revelation . . . . .173 

, Outlook on Life ..... 260 
, and Spencer ..... 236 

Paley, r . . . . . 41, 42, 111, 112 

Pfleiderer, O., on Truth in History . 33 

, r 62 

Plato, Ethics, r . . . . . 26, 29, 31 

Pringle-Pattison, A. S., on Evolution . . . 120 

, r . . . . . . .128 

Renan, E., on the Revolution . . . .19 

, on Regard for Antiquity . . . .50 

Reymond, Dubois, on Evolution . . .119 

Robertson, F. W., on Moral Obligation . .127 

Royce, J., on Browning .... 282 



302 



INDEX OF NAMES. 



Schopenhauer, r 

Schreiner, Olive, on Providence 

, r . 

Shakespeare, The Tempest, r . 

Shelley, r 

Spencer, H., his Agnosticism . 

, on Evolution 

, r . 

Stevenson, R. L., on Degrees of Truth . 

Stoics, r . 

Stout, G. F., on Belief . 

, on Spencer's Test of Truth 

Temple, F., r 
Tiele, C. P., r . 
Tulloch, J., r 
Tyndall, J., r . 

Upton, C. B., on Revelation 

Wallace, W., on Aristotle 
Ward, J., r 
Watts, I., r 
Watson, W., r . 
Wordsworth, r . 

Zola, r . 



. 261 

. 191 

6 

. 258 

126, 259 

. 220 ff. 

. 117 

45, 264 

. 1,2 

30 

90 

. 235 

129 
. 224 

111 
. 253 

. 177 

26 
113 

. 193 

192, 264 

126 

71 



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