The reign of law

Front matter

Cornell University Ubrary BL 240. A69 1867

3 1924 017 820 626

Lei knowledge grow fi-om more to more, Bui more of reverence in us dwell: ' Thai mind and soul^ accoraing -well, May make one mvsic as he/ore^

Preface

QOME portions of this work have already appeared at various times' in the Edinburgh Review, in Good Words, and in Addresses to the Royal Society of Edinburgh during the years in which I had the honour of being President of that Body. The deep interest of the matter dealt with in those Papers has induced me to expand them, to add new chapters on other aspects of the same subject, and to publish the whole in a connected form.

Among many other deficiencies which may be observed in this Volume, there is one which demands explanation, lest a serious misundcr-

PREFACE.

standing should arise. I had intended to conclude with a chapter on " Law in Christian Theology." It was natural to reserve for that chapter all direct reference to some of the most fundamental facts of Human nature. Yet without such reference the Reign of Law, especially in the " Realm of Mind," cannot even be approached in some of its very highest and most important aspects. For the present, however, I have shrutik from entering upon questions so profound, of such critical import, and so inseparably connected with religious controversy. In the absence of any attempt to deal with this great branch of the inquiry, as well as in many other ways, I am painfully conscious of the narrow range of this work. I can only offer it as a very small contribution to the discussion of a boundless subject.

Inveraray, October 1866.

Contents

CHAP. . PAGE

I. THE SUPERNATURAL, I

II. LAW ; — ITS DEFINITIONS, 53

Chapter I. The Supernatural

' I "HE Supernatural — what is it ? What do we mean by it ? How do we define it ? M, Guizot* tells us that belief in it is the special difficulty of our time— that denial of it is the form taken by all modern assaults on Christian faith ; and again, that acceptance of it lies at the root, not only of Christianity, but of all positive religion whatever. These questions, then, concerning the Supernatural are questions of first importance. Yet we find them seldom distinctly put, and still more seldom distinctly answered. This is a

* IVEglise et la Soci^te Chretienne en l86l, ch. iv. p. ig.

A

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capital error in dealing with any question of philosophy. Half the perplexities of men are traceable to obscurity of thought hiding and breeding under obscurity of language. "The Supernatural " is a term employed often in different, and sometimes in contradictory, senses. It is difficult to make out whether M. Guizot himself means to identify belief in the Supernatural with belief in the existence of a God, or with belief in a particular mode of Divine action. But these are ideas quite separable and distinct. There may be some men who disbelieve in the Supernatural only because they are absolute atheists ; but it is certain that there are others who have great difficulty in believing in the Supernatural who are not atheists. What they doubt or deny is, not that God exists, but that He ever acts, or perhaps can act, unless in and through what they call the "Laws of Nature." M. Guizot, indeed, tells us that " God is the Supernatural in a Person." But this is a rhetorical figure rather than a definition. He may, indeed, contend that it is inconsistent to believe in a God, and yet to disbelieve in the Supernatural ; but

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he must admit, and indeed does admit, that such inconsistency is found in fact.

Theological and philosophical writers frequently use the Supernatural as synonymous with the Superhuman. But of course this is not the sense in which any one can have any diflSculty in believing in it. The powers and works of Nature are all superhuman — more than Man can account for in their origin — more than he can resist in their energy — more than he can understand in their effects. This, then, cannot be the sense in which so many minds find it hard to accept the Supernatural ; nor can it be the sense in which others cling to it as of the very essence of their religious faith. What, then, is that other sense in which the difficulty arises? Perhaps we shall best find it by seeking the idea which is competing with it, and by which it has been displaced. It is the Natural which has been casting out the Supernatural — the idea of Natural Law, — ^the universal reign of a fixed Order of things. This idea is a product of that immense development of the physical sciences which is characteristic of our time. We cannot read a

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periodical, or go into a lecture-room, without hearing it expressed. Sometimes, but rarely, it is stated with accuracy, and with due recognition of the limits within which Law can be said to comprehend the phenomena of the world. But generally it is expressed in language vague and hollow, covering inaccurate conceptions, and confounding under common forms of expression ideas which are essentially distinct. The mere ticketing and orderly assortment of external facts is constantly spoken of as if it were in the nature of Explanation, and as if no higher truth in respect to natural phenomena were to be attained or desired. And herein we see both the result for which Bacon laboured, and the danger against which Bacon prayed. It has been a glorious result of a right method in the study of Nature, that with the increase of knowledge the " human family has been endowed with new mercies." But every now and then, for a time at least, from "the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, incredulity and intellectual night have arisen in our minds."* » "This also we humbly beg that human things may not preju

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But let US observe exactly where and how the difficulty arises. The Reign of Law in Nature is, indeed, so far as we can observe it, universal. But the common idea of the Supernatural is that which is at variance with natural Law, above it, or in violation of it. Nothing, however wonderful, which happens according to Natural Law, would be considered by any one as Supernatural. The law in obedience to which a wonderful thing happens may not be known ; but this would not give it a supernatural character, so long as we assuredly believe that it did happen according to some law. Hence, it would appear to follow that a man thoroughly possessed of the idea of Natural Law as universal, never could admit anything to be supernatural; because on seeing any fact, however new, marvellous, or incomprehensible, he would escape into the conclusion that it was the result of some natural Law of which he had before been ignorant. No one will deny that, in respect to the

dice such as are Divine, neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in oar minds towards Divine mysteries." — The Student's Prayer, Bacon t Works.

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vast majority of all new and marvellous phenomena, this would be the true and reasonable conclusion. It is not the conclusion of pride, but of humility of mind. Seeing the boundless extent of our ignorance of the natural laws which regulate so many of the phenomena around us, and still more of so many of the phenomena within us, nothing can be more reasonable than to conclude, when we see something which is to us a wonder, that somehow, if we only knew how, it is "all right" — all according to the constitution and course of Nature. But then, to justify this conclusion, we must understand Nature in the largest sense,-^as including all that is

" In the round ocean, and in the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man" *

We must understand it as including every agency which we see entering, or can conceive from analogy as capable of entering, into the causation of the world. First and foremost among these is the agency of our own Mind and Will. Yet, strange to say, all reference to this agency is often tacitly excluded when we speak of the laws * Tintem Abbey.— Wordsworth.

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of Nature. One of our most distinguished living teachers of physical science* began, not long ago, a course of lectures on the phenomena of Heat by a rapid statement of the modern doctrine of the Correlation of Forces — how the one was convertible into the other — ^how one arose out of the other — ^how none could be evolved except from some other as a pre-existing source. "Thus," said the lecturer, " we see there is no such thing as spontaneousness in Nature." What ! — not in the lecturer himself ? Was there no " spontaneousness " in his choice of words — in his selection of materials — in his orderly arrangement of experiments with a view to the exhibition of particular results? It is not probable that the lecturer was intending to deny this ; it simply was that he did not think of it as within his field of view. His own Mind and Will were then dealing with the " laws of Nature," but it did not occur to him as forming part of those laws, or, in the same sense, as subject to them.

Does Man, then, not belong to Nature ? Is he above it — or merely separate from it, or a viola- • Professor Tyndall.

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tion of it ? Is he supernatural ? If so, has he any difficulty in believing in himself? Of course not. Self-consciousness is the one truth, in the light of which all other truths are known. Cogito, ergo sum, or volo, ergo sum — this is the one conclusion whicji we cannot doubt, unless Reason disbelieves herself. Why, then, are .'the faculties of the human mind and body not habitually included among the " laws of Nature .■' " Because a fallacy is getting hold upon . us from a want of definition in the use of terms. " Nature " is being used in the narrow sense of physical nature; and the whole world in which we ourselves live, and move, and have our being is excluded from it. But these selves of ours do belong to Nature. If we are ever to understand the difficulties in the way of believing in the Supernatural, we must first keep clearly .in view what we are to understand as included' in the Natural. Let us never forget, then, that the agency of Man is of all others the most . natural — the one with which we are most familiar — the only one, in fact, which we can be said,- even in any measure, to understand. When any wonderful event can

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be referred to the contrivance or ingenuity of Man, it is thereby at once removed from the sphere of the Supernatural, as ordinarily understood.

It must be remembered, however, that we are now only seeking a clear definition of terms ; and that provided this other meaning be clearly agreed upon, the Mind and Will of Man may be considered as separate from " nature," and belonging to the Supernatural. This view is taken in an able treatise on "Nature and the Supernatural," by Dr Bushnell, an American clergyman.* Dr Bushnell says : — " That is supernatural, whatever it be, that is either not in the chain of natural cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of cause and effect in nature, from without the chain." Again : — " If the processes, combinations, and results of our system of nature are interrupted or varied by the action, whether of God, or angels, or men, so as to bring to pass what would not come to pass in it by its own internal action, under the laws of mere cause and effect, such variations are in like manner supernatural." There is no other

* Nature and the Supernatural, as together constituting the one System of.God.- By Horace Bushnellj D,D. Edinburgh, i860.

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objection to this definition of the Supernatural, than that it rests upon a limitation of the terms " Nature " and " natural," which is very much at variance with the sense in which they are commonly understood. There is, indeed, a distinction which finds its expression in common language between the works of Man and the works of Nature. A honeycomb, for example, would be called a work of Nature, but not a steam-engine. This distinction is founded on a true perception of the fact that the Mind and Will of Man belong to an order of existence very different from physical laws, and very different also from the fixed and narrow instincts of the lower animals. It is a distinction bearing witness to the universal consciousness that the Mind of Man has within it something of a truly creative energy and force — that we are in a sense " fellow- workers with God," and have been in a measure " made partakers of the. Divine nature." But in that larger and wider sense in which we are here speaking of the Natural, it contains within it the whole phenomena of Man's intellectual and spiritual nature, as part, and the most familiar of all parts, of the visible system of things. In all ordinary senses of the term, Man and his doings belong to the Natural, as distinguished from the Supernatural.

We are thus coming nearer to some precise understanding of what the Supernatural may be supposed to mean. But before we proceed, there is another question which must be answered — What is the relation in which the agency of Man stands to the physical laws of Nature ? The answer, in part at least, is plain. His power in respect to those laws extends only first to their discovery and ascertainment, and then to their use. He can establish none : he can suspend none. All he can do is to guide, in a limited degree, the mutual action and reaction of the laws amongst each other. They are the tools with which he works — they are the instruments of his Will. In all he does or can do he must employ them. His ability to use them is limited both by his want of knowledge and by his want of power. The more he knows of them, the more largely he can employ them, and make them ministers of his purposes. This, as a general rule, is true; but it is subject to the second limitation just pointed out. Man already knows far more than he has power to convert to use. It is a true observation of Sir George Lewis * that Astronomy, for example, in its higher branches, has an interest almost purely scientific. It reveals to our knowledge perhaps the grandest and most sublime of the physical laws of Nature, But. a much smaller* amount of knowledge would suffice for the only practical applications which we have yet been able to make of these laws to our own use. Still, that knowledge has a reflex influence on our knowledge of ourselves, of our powers, and of the relations which subsist between the constitution of our own minds and the constitution of the universe. And in other spheres of inquiry, advancing knowledge of physical laws has been constantly accompanied with advancing power over the physical world. It has enabled us to do a thousand things, any one of which, a few generations ago, would -have been considered supernatural. Nor can it be said that this judgment of their character would have been erroneous. These things would have been superhuman then, though they * Astronomy of the Ancients^ p, 254,

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are not superhuman now. The same lecturer who told his audience that there was nothing spontaneous in Nature proceeded, by virtue of liis own knowledge of natural laws, and by his selecting and combining power, to present a whole series of phenomena — such as ice frozen in contact with red-hot crucibles — which certainly did not belong to the "ordinary course of Nature." Such an exhibition a few centuries ago, would beyond all doubt have subjected the lecturer on Heat to painful experience of that condition of matter. Nevertheless the phenomena so exhibited were natural phenomena — in this sense, that they were the product of natural laws. Only these laws were combined in action under extraordinary conditions, and these conditions were governed by the purpose and design of the lecturer, which design was '* spontaneous," if there is any meaning in the word. In like manner, if the progress of discovery is as rapid during the next 400 years as it has been during the last period of the same extent' men will be able to do many things which would now appear to be " supernatural." There is no difficulty in tonceiving how a complete knowledge ofall natural laws would give, if not complete power, at least degrees of power immensely greater than those which we now possess. Power of this kind, then, however great in degree, clearly does not answer that idea of the Supernatural which so many reject as inconceivable. What, then, is that idea? Have we not traced it to its den at last } By " supernatural " power, do we not mean power independent of the use of means, as distinguished from power depending on knowledge — even infinite knowledge — of the means proper to be employed .'

This is the sense — probably the only sense — in which the Supernatural is, to many minds, so difficult of belief. No man can have any difficulty in believing that there are natural laws of which he is ignorant ; nor in conceiving that there may be Beings who do know them, and can use them, even as he himself now uses the few laws with which he is acquainted. The real difficulty lies in the idea of Will exercised without the use of means— not in the exercise of Will through means which are beyond our knowledge.

Now, have we any right to say that belief in t/iis is essential to all Religion ? If we have not, then it is only putting, as so many other hasty sayings do put, additional difficulties in the way of Religion. The relation in which God stands to those rules of His government which are called " laws," is, of course, an inscrutable mystery to us. But those who believe that His Will does govern the world, must believe that ordinarily, at least, He does govern it by the choice and use of means. Nor have we any certain reason to believe that He ever acts otherwise. Extraordinary manifestations of His Will — signs and wonders — may be wrought, for aught we know, by similar instrumentality — only by the selection and use of laws of which Man knows and can know nothing, and which, if he did know, he could not employ.* Here, then, we come upon the question of

* This chapter, originally published as an article in the Edin lurgh Review for Oct. 1862, has been referred to in the remarkable work of Mr Lecky on " The Rise and Influence of Rationalism In Europe," (vol. i. ch. iL p. 195 note,) as conveying "a notion of a miracle which would not differ generically from a human act, though it would still be strictly available for evidential purposes." I am quite satisfied with this definition of the result. Beyond the immediate purposes of benevolence which were served by almost all the miracles of the New Testament, the only other purpose which miracles — ^^how we understand them ? what we would define them to be ? The common idea of a miracle is, a suspension or violation of the laws of Nature. This is a definition which places the essence of a miracle in a particular method of operation. But there is another definition which passes this by altogether, and dwells only on the agency by which, and the purpose for which, a wonderful work is wrought. "We would confine the word miracle," says Dr M'Cosh, * "to those events which were wrought in our world as a sign or proof of God making a supernatural interposition, or a revelation to Man." This definition is defective in so far as it uses the word " supernatural," which, as we have seen, itself requires definition as much as miracle. But from the general context and many individual passages in his treatise, it is sufficiently clear that the two conditions essential in Dr

is ever assigned to them is an " evidential purpose "—that is, a purpose that they might serve as signs of the presence of superhuman knowledge, and of the working of superhuman povi^er, They werq performed— in short— to assist faith, and not to confound reason.

• The Supernatural in relation to the Natural. By the Rev. James M'Cosh, LL.D. Macmillan,. Cambridge, i86i.

M'Cosh's view of a miracle, are that they are wrought by a Divine power for a Divine purpose, and are of a nature such as could not be wrought by merely human contrivance. In this sense a miracle means a superhuman work. This definition of a miracle does not exclude the idea of God working by the use of means, provided they are such means as are out of human reach. Indeed, in an important note, (p. 149,) Dr M'Cosh seems to admit that miracles are not to be considered " as against Nature " in any other sense than that in which "one natural agent may be against another — as water may counteract fire." Mr Mansel, in his "Essay on Miracles," adopts the word "superhuman" as the most accurate expression of his meaning. He says, "A superhuman authority needs to be substantiated by superhuman evidence ; and what is superhuman is miraculous."* It is important to observe that this

* Aids to Faith, p. 35- I" another passage, (p. 21,) Mr Mansel says that in respect to the great majority of the miracles recorded in Scripture, "the supernatural element appears . , . in the exercise of a personal power transcending the limits of man's will. They are not so much siifermatcrial as mpeikiimaii."

definition does not necessarily involve the idea of a "violation of the laws of Nature." It does not involve the idea of the exercise of Will apart from the use of means. It does not involve, therefore, that idea which appears to many so difficult of conception. It simply supposes, without any attempt to fathom the relation in which God stands to His own "laws," that out of His infinite knowledge of these laws, or of His infinite power of making them the instruments of His Will, He may and He does use them for extraordinary indications of His presence.

The reluctance to admit as belonging to the domain of Nature any special exertion of Divine power for special purposes, stands really in very close relationship to the converse notion, that where the operation of natural causes can be clearly traced, there the exertion of Divine power and Will is rendered less certain and less convincing. This is the idea which lies at the root of Gibbon's famous chapters on the spread of Christianity. He labours to prove that it was due to natural causes. In proving this, he evidently thinks he is disposing of the notion that

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Christianity spread by Divine power; whereas he only succeeds in pointing out~ some of the means which were employed to effect a Divine purpose. In like manner, the preservation of the Jews as a distinct People during so many centuries of complete dispersion, is a fact standing nearly if not absolutely alone in the history of the world. It is at variance with all other experience of the laws which govern the amalgamation with each other of different families of the human race. The case of the Gipsies has been referred to as somewhat parallel. But the facts of this case are doubtful and obscure, and such of them as we know involve conditions 'altogether dissimilar in kind. It is not surprising, therefore, that the preservation of the Jews, partly from the relation in which it stands to the apparent fulfilment of Prophecy, and partly from the extraordinary nature of the fact itself, is tacitly assumed by many persons to come strictly within the category of miraculous events. Yet in itself it is nothing more than a striking illustration how a departure from the " ordinary course' of nature " may be effected through the instrumentality

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of means which are natural and comprehen-r sible. An extraordinary resisting power has been given to the Jewish People against those dissolving and disintegrating forces which have caused the disappearance of every other race placed under similar conditions. They have been torn from home and country, and removed, not in a body, but in scattered fragments, over the world. Yet they are as distinct from every other people now as they were in the days of Solomon. Nevertheless this resisting power, wonderful though it be, is the result of special laws, overruling those in ordinary operation. It has been effected by the use of means. Those means have been superhuman — they have been beyond human contrivance and arrangement. But they belong to the region of the Natural. They belong to it not the less, but all the more, because in their concatenation and arrangement they seem to indicate the purpose of a living Will seeking and effecting the fulfilment of its designs. This is the manner after which our own living Wills in their little sphere effect their little objects. Is it difficult to believe that aftei' the same manner also the Divine Will, of which ours is the image only, works and effects its purposes ?

Our own experience shows that the universal Reign of Law is perfectly consistent with a power of making those laws subservient to design — even when the knowledge of them is but slight, and the power over them slighter still. How much more easy, how much more natural, to conceive that the same universality is compatible with the exercise of that Supreme Will before which all are known, and to which all are servants ! What difficulty in this view remains in the idea of the Supernatural ? Is it any other than the difficulty in believing in the existence of a Supreme Will — in a living God ? If this be the belief of which M. Guizot speaks when he says that it is essential to religion, then his proposition is unquestionably true. In this sense the difficulty of believing in the Supernatural, and the difficulty of believing in pure Theism, is one and the same. But if he means that it is necessary to Religion to believe in even the occasional "violation of law," — if he means that without such belief»

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signs and wonders cease to be evidences of Divine power, — then he announces a proposition which cannot be sustained. There is nothing in Religion incompatible with the belief that all exercises of God's power, whether ordinary or extraordinary, are effected through the instrumentality of means — that is to say, by the instrumentality of natural laws brought out, as it were, and used for a Divine purpose. To believe in the existence of miracles, we must indeed believe in the Superhuman and in the Supermaterial. But both these are familiar facts in Nature. We must believe also in a Supreme Will and a Supreme Intelligence ;' but this our own Wills and our own Intelligence not only enable us to conceive of, but compel us to recognise in the whole laws and economy of Nature, Her whole aspect "answers intelligently to our intelligence . — mind responding to mind as in a glass." * Once admit that there is a Being who — irrespective of any theory as to the relation in which

* Beginning Life : Chapters for Young Men on Religion, Study, and Business. By John TuUoch, D.D., Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews. Chap, iii., The Supernatural. Edinburgh, i860. P. 29.

the laws of Nature stand to His own Will — has at least an infinite knowledge of those laws, and an infinite power of putting them to use^then miracles lose every element of inconceivability. In respect to the greatest and highest of all ^that restoration of the breath of life which is not more mysterious than its original gift — there is no answer to the question which Paul asks, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible by you that Grod should raise the dead?"

This view of miracles is well expressed by Principal TuUoch : —

"The stoutest advocate of interference can mean nothing more than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of nature that a new issue arises on given circumstances. The ordinary issue is supplanted by a higher issue. The essential facts before us are a certain set of phenomena, and a Higher Will moving them. How moving them? is a question for human definition ; but the answer to which does not and cannot affect the Divine meaning of the change. Yet when we reflect that this Higher Will is everywhere reason and wisdom, it seems a juster as well as a more comprehensive view to regard it as operating by subordination and evolutiorl father than by 'interference' or 'violation.' Ac? cording to this view, the idea of Law is so far from being contravened by the Christian miracles, that it is taken up by them and made their very basis. They are the expression of a Higher Law, working out its wise ends among the lower and ordinary sequences of life and history. These ordinary sequences represent nature — nature, however, not as an immutable fate, but a plastic medium through which a Higher Voice and Will are ever addressing us, and which, therefore, may be wrought into new issues when the Voice has a new message, and the Will a special purpose for us."*