The philosophy of belief; or, Law in Christian theology

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Chapter I. INTUITIVE THEOLOGY

ITS DEFINITIONS AND THEIR RESULTS.

The first demand made upon us in any discussion touching the philosophy of rehgion, is to define the meaning of the word Nature. On the one hand, the use of it is indispensable. On the other hand, the abuses of it are inveterate. We shall soon find that there is no possible definition which does not condemn the thoughtless assumptions involved in that distinction, which has become common only in modern times, between what we loosely call the Natural and the Supernatural. This is no question of opinion. It is purely a question of definition. In the classical philosophies the word Nature played a great part. But in them it certainly did not mean physical phenomena alone, nor even any mere aggregate of these taken as a whole. On the contrary, it meant some universal agency which was

B conceived as lying behind and above all phenomena. To that agency mental characteristics were habitually ascribed, and all the elements that constitute personality. Thus, for example, Cicero expressly says that as we cannot say without impiety that anything is superior to universal Nature, we must confess that divine reason is contained within her ^. In this, and in many other utterances of Greek and Roman thinkers, it is evident not only that there was no antithesis in their minds between what are now called the Natural and the Supernatural, but even that Nature, with them, did most especially mean some universal although invisible Personality — a sense closely corresponding with that which is now treated as if it were a conception wholly distinct, if not alien, from that of Nature. But there is no possibility of defending any such distinction. It is true, indeed, that there is a distinction obvious to us all, between mind and matter — between a mental faculty and a physical force — although even here the close, and apparently inseparable, connexion between these two great categories, in all living creatures, is as obvious as their broad distinctions. There is also, in our eyes at least, a wide and palpable distinction between the Organic and the Inorganic — between the Living and the Not-living — between a mere physical force, or any number of physical forces considered in themselves, and those combinations of them, in living creatures, by which so many things are done, and of which the world is full.

' Cicero, De Legibus, Bk. ii. 7.

All these distinctions are intelligible enough. But those things between which they distinguish, are all alike comprehended within the great system which we call(^'ature7\ The word has no meaning at all except as a name for the sum of all existences (y■isible^and (in-y ^^Ai>^ Nature includes not_on1y the miniij^LlIlfLllI^dlh all its worksj^ biiLaiso_\vhatever other and higher Mind there may^be^^ of which his is but_an_emanation or a fragment. No other ^sfinitiohj is possible for any of_us^^h(I_are. xagable of(^nalyzin^d:he contents j2f our own thoughts and the meaning of our own words. The clear and calm intellect of Bishop Butler was impatient under the fallacies that harboured in the 'confused and undetermined' senses in which men use the words nature and natural ^. In one of the most memorable of his writings he did a good deal to unravel the confusions he complained of ^. In our own time J. S. Mill has submitted the word Nature to a rigorous and complete analysis ^. He rightly treats this analysis as an essential preliminary to any discussion on the philosophy of religion. He shows that in the proper sense ' Nature is a collective name for everything that(is.' jj[t means 'the sum of all pheT" nomena with the causes which produce them.' Moreover, it includes ' not only all that happens, but all that isj:apable of happening.' He declares that ' the unused capability of causes is as much a part of the idea of Nature as those which take effect.' This definition cannot be gainsaid. Every logician must admit its truth.

' Analogy, Pt. I, chap. i. ^ Sermon II on Human Nature.

^ Three Essays on Religion. No. I, Nature.

B 2

A much more recent author has adopted it in nearly the same words. ' For myself, I am bound to say,' writes Mr. Huxley^ 'that the term "Nature" covers the totality of that which is ^.' Yet this is clearly a definition which reduces the word 'supernatural' to nonsense. There can be nothing outside the totality of existence. Moreover, even as we commonly employ it, the word ' natuiVJiasjio^oundar^. And even if we could think of it as having a boundary, we are all conscious that no more than a mere fraction of its contents, even inside that boundary, is known to us. But it is obviously impossible to say of any agency that it is outside of, or above, Nature, unless we knowall that what we call Nature does actually include. And assuredly any assumption that the system of things in which we live does not include any mind or will except our own, is a negative assumption as inconsistent with the universal impressions of mankind, as it is incompatible with science. The laws which science traces arenas we have seen^, essentially laws of mind— ynteljigibl^ to ^u^JritelTigenc^. and^.rgr-ognized Cby iy only because of their close relation Jto ijs^ own pjTwer^ ^r\r\ to its owu perceptions.

There is, however, a real distinction of immense importance to be observed in this matter, which has been much forgotten, or has lain wholly unobserved. It is one thing to say that, as a fact, Nature is fuU'of ymr mind whirh ic; nfhpr pnrl (^^h'j^''^ th rl " OUT '^WP

although having some close analogies with it, whilst it

• Essays on Coiifroverted Subjects, p. 35.

^ Reign of Law, passim ; and Unity of Nature.

is quite another thing to say that in Nature, including ourselves, we can search out that other mind, as regards its seat, its character, or its ultimate relations to the general system under which we live. So much as we can ever discover on these farther questions, from visible and external things alone, or from the character and constitution of our own minds, is only to be reached in the form of inference — of inference, too. beset with many intellectual difficulties, and not a few perplexities even of a moral kind. But as regards the mere existence in Nature of the essential qualities of mind, as distinguished from the qualities of matter and of the physical forces, it is demonstrable that the ubiquitous presence of this higher agency is not a matter of inference alone, but is an object of direct and immediate recognition by the highest mental faculties — which arc the Jiigiigst senses — we possess. It is a pure matter of fact, as susceptible of proof as any other fact, that the human mind, looking into Nat-ure, sees, jin^allthe phenomena of the world, a great deal which is obviously of its own kind and, quality.

The most striking proof of this fact is to be found in the automatic action of the mind, whether popular or scientific, as recorded in the growth, in the significance, and in the use, of human speech. Much has been said and written on the fallacies due to language. VyjBuli-iiLUch too little has been seen or thought__of^e stores of <ki=:dnrn' nnd{knowledge' ^^hich_are_often_ hi d under our forms of articulate expression. Yet this is really an all-important thought. As a matter of fact men find it quite impossible to describe natural phenomena, and their lawS; without usingthelanguageof mind in a thousand ways. This is all the more remarkable since so many of them have taken to^rving very hard to do so. But they always fail, ^he failure is to be seen in (two" characteristic indications — either in the continual and unconscious relapse into the language of purpose and into n^ion^iYJ2Jlj|lg^lllglJl§Jld. JJ^lhg (fesort^ to^form^j^f (e?^)ressiotvvv^ omit altogether to take any aotics of some of the most importaiyt facts in the phenomena which Nature presents, and which it is their duty — and professedly, at least, their endeavour — faithfully to report. Of this last result — that, namely, of scamping the work of the full and adequate description of natural phenomena in order to keep clear of the language of design — I have given some striking examples in a former volume^. But the other result— that, namely, of using the language of design freely, for the purposes of description, without any conscious perception whatever of its significance in philosophy — is much the most usual result. This arises from the fact that there are comparatively few men who deliberately set themselves to exclude from their account of facts, or from their definition of natural laws, features which are the most conspicuous as well as the most important of all. Mr. Herbert Spencer, indeed, does set himself to this attempt as an essential part of his philosophy, and we see an example of the consequence in the phrases he has invented, to express the essence of the wonderful changes which are characteristic in the development of organic life.

' Unity of Natwr, ch. viii.

Probably no words which have ever been chosen for the expression of human thought are so empty of adequate or appropriate meaning for the true description of the facts of organic development as the words he has chosen for this purpose. He calls the wondrous evolution of organic forms a progress from 'homogeneity to heterogeneity.' But to this we shall return. In the meantime let us observe that the great majority of writers on physical science , take no special pains to eliminate such ideas, or such words, expressive of purpose, as they may feel it to be necessary to employ for the full description of the facts they have to deal with. And it is most instructive to observe how charged their language constantly and consequently is with the recognition of purpose and design. Darwin, as I have elsewhere shown ^, never takes the least trouble to avoid this language ; and, as he himself told me in conversation, the presence of these mental elements in organic development, was often borne in upon him with overwhelming force, although at other times, he added, it seemed to vanish from before his eyes. Nor is this surprising. As regards all its higher theological accompaniments, and its developments into religious belief, it is very easy and very natural to forget the indelible impression which Nature makes upon us of the existence of some omnipresent mind. But all these supplementary conceptions of theology constitute a subject quite separable from the simple recognition of mind as an elementary and a fundamental fact in the economy of Nature. It is

^ Reign of Law, ch. i. pp. 37-50 (fifth edition).

quite as impossible, for example, to describe, fully and in__detail, the — structure nf_ a bird's wing, and of each individual feather in the series of its quill|,

FTthout referring to the whole as an apparatus for sustaining_flighJ^-as it would be to describe a steam-engine fully, without any reference to the fact that it is an apparatus for driving a wheel, or a paddle, or a screw. The subserviency of structure to function, and the priority in time of structural growth to the actual or possible discharge of structural function, are not only facts, but they are the dominant facts in the whole organic world ; and the inevitable result is that in them the human mind is compelled to recognize the invariable law of preparation, of prevision, of development in time — not by use, but for use — when it seeks to find an adequate expression for its own direct perceptions in the science of Biology.

Some scientific writers now speak with great contempt of the tendency to personify the physical forces and phenomena of Nature, and declare this tendency to be the origin and explanation of all theological conceptions. In a sense this may be true. But it only throws us back upon the question as to the origin and the significance of this universal tendency of the human mind to personify the agencies of Nature. Whence came it, and what does it mean?

Is it indeed an universal tendency, or is it confined to minds in a rude condition of prijnitive- ignorance or superstition^ This last is the suggestion of those who denounce it. Yet these very men are themselves continually inventing new phrases and forms of expression which are essentially personifications, and depend entirely on that element of meaning for all the plausibility they profess. Q Natural selection^ an obvious^ example. In this phrase Nature is supposed to act as a pigeon-fancier_acts^in so breeding^his_fayourite birds as to produce varieties^mth specially (^evelope^!^ s:^owers or aspecfs, ■ The whole attractiveness of the phrase, and the whole aptitude it has shown for being used in a (great variety of senses^ and as accounting for a great variety of accomplished results, depends upon this (^'nalogy' between the working of(^ Nature' as a personiHcation and the personal working of a breeder of stock. This sort of language, therefore, from which men cannot escape, even when they try hardest to do so, would not seem to be the result of any mere ignorant fancy by which we project ourselves into external N_ature, but is evidently the result of an (Instinctive recognjtionj of i"haf- sperial kind of agency which is. indeed, familiarly known to us as existing withinourselves^. buX-'^vhirh jj:_jLlsn universally recognized and identified as ^existing outside of us, and around us, on every side. It is a reflection of that infinite Reason — that ' Logos ' — of which we partake, and without which in Nature ' was not anything made that was made.' All things, including ourselves, are full of it. It cannot be excluded, or even put aside, and yet it cannot be directly or farther known otherwise than as an indisputable existence, not less pervading than it is mysterious.

But there is another very curious witness to the universal perception of this existence of mind as an lO

INTUITIVE THEOLOGY [CH.

ingredient in all adequate descriptions of Nature, and especially of organic forms, besides the constant reference to it involved in such instinctive phrases as ' exquisite adaptations ' or ' beautiful contrivances.' And curiously enough this other witness is brought forward by the very arguments which are sometimes used to condemn what are called teleological explanations. There are some minds which, under the influence of a modern phase of thought, are repelled by the very idea of design in Nature. They feel as if it were an idea founded exclusively on our own human consciousness, and on the narrow limitation of our powers. They cannot think of the final causes in Nature as acting under like limitations as to space and time, or as to any of the powers and opportunities which are so conditioned. They feel as if it were an unworthy notion of any supposed divine Power that it should be likened to some great artificer making things on the same principle on which we are compelled to make them, in order to effect our purposes. This aspect of the subject is quite intelligible, but obviously it is one which has no tendency to exclude the abstract conception of mind as omnipresent in Nature. On the contrary, it usually takes the form of representing the human idea of contrivance and design as involving unworthy and inadequate conceptions of a mind, which is regarded as, somehow, so supreme as to be above such necessities of what we call mechanical contrivance and invention. These, it is thought, involve the idea of limitations, whereas it is farther thought, we cannot suppose the existence of l] ITS DEFINITIONS AND THEIR RESULTS II

any limitations on a really Supreme Will. Such suggestions are not unnatural. There is no other objection to them than this consideration — that our recognition of mind must be determined by its recognizable qualities as known to us, and that we must accept the evidence of manifestations which are unmistakable. Our speculative faculties are altogether untrustworthy on such subjects, when they try to soar into regions with no atmosphere of knowledge to sustain their wings. Apart from facts, they have no foothold in the courts of truth. It is a certain fact, and not a fancy, that in Nature all things are done by the use of appropriate means, and by the subordination of material structures to future work and function. Why it should be so is quite another question. That is a question which rises into the domain of theology, properly so called — that is to say, it belongs to the category of questions touching the ultimate character and qualities of the mind which is obviously concerned in the phenomena of Nature. But we are now speaking simply of mind in itself — of mental phenomena as distinguished from the blind and mechanical action of the physical forces. We may wonder, and we must wonder, why it is that the mental characteristics_ which we recognize in the works of Nature should be so very like^jour ovvMrLsomejoOtsiJeatmies ; and yet, on the other hand, it may well occur to us that if the mind that we see in Nature were wholly and absolutely unlike our own, we should have no means of recognizing it at all, and we may well surmise that such likeness as we do see, may be the result of

INTUITIVE THEOLOGY [CH.

attributes which are inseparable from the whole constitution of the Universe and of its Author.

Thpre^ is^however, one great and obvioiLS jdifference between^^urjown worksjand the (works^ of Nature^ which may perhaps suggest to us the possibihty of a corresponding difference in the methods of causation. And this difference may reconcile our speculative notions of a Supreme Power with the observed facts of that Power working in a way that seems so much too like our own. That difference lies m tlie^ djstinctiQn bet\veen^mayn^^and_^eatmg^or, in other words, between ^(development, and ^fnanufacture?' The last of these two methods — the method of manufacture— is^ always (^ur[wa^;;2£-niaking' thing,s. The first of these (two piethods, namely, that of ^rowtK^oPdeveTopmerTt^r is the {6nrversal method of Nature in all her works. We make things by a visible handling from the outside, as it were, of matter and of the material forces. In Nature all things are made, as it appears to us, by an absolute taking possession of matter and of the material forces, and by endowing them, as it were, with an indwelling subordination and obedience. Yet. if we examine closely the operation of our own minds, we shall come to the conclusion that the ultimate seat and centre of design, even in ourselves, lies behind and above the processes of manufacture, and is really as invisible and as inaccessible to a full understanding of it as it is in external Nature. V/ith us the act of conceiving a design is a purely mental act — independent, so far as we can feel or see^ of time, or space, or of any external l] ITS DEFINITIONS AND THEIR RESULTS I3

matter. This is creation, or comes as near to it as our faculties enable us to think of it at all. It is only when we come to the execution of the design — to the embodiment of it in outward form — that the difference arises so conspicuously between our methods and the methods of external Nature. We have to use our hands laboriously in preparing materials, in shaping them, in combining them, in running them into moulds, and when all the bits of a mechanism have been so prepared, we have to put them together in the necessary adjustments. In Nature all this kind of visible and external handwork, is superseded. But nothing else is superseded. The combinations and adjustments in themselves, are not superseded; on the contrary, they are always conspicuous, and the highest and most satisfactory investigations of science consist in nothing else than in the tracing and identification of them. But they are brought about and effected in a manner widely different from the only manner in which we can work our way to analogous results. We cannot get matter and the physical forces to obey us except by an external handling. Our minds cannot be immanent in them. We cannot eet, as it were, inside of them, so as to inspire them, as it would almost seem, with the spirit of an absolute and passive obedience. Yet, none the less, in the primary work of conceiving any design, in setting it up in the mind's eye, in imagining it, and, it may almost be said, in seeing it as it is to be when clothed in form, we feel as independent of matter as are the . designs which we recognize in Nature.

T4 INTUITIVE THEOLOGY [CH.

The history of all great human conceptions and designs, whether in the fields of literature, or of art, or of mechanical invention, are full of examples in which we see and feel this great distinction between the purelyjTientaJjfliDiik, and the later and lower_work of handling and^ha^ing^matter- All great buildings, some of which have raised and inspired the human mind for centuries, have been so conceived — from the vast cathedrals which lift their arches amidst the busy haunts of men, to the lovely temples which, in the wastes of Paestum or Girgente, still impress us with a sense of majesty and repose. Nay, there may be, and there are, other designs of the same kind, but greater, which have never been embodied in any material form at all, because of the immense distance which separates, in us, between mental and material constructions. I am myself in possession of a striking example. My friend, the late Mr. James Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam-hammer — an instrument which has had immense consequences in extending the power of man over all the work which steam alone can do — was a great mechanic, and he was able to embody his imaginings in material forms of adjusted structure. But he was also, in conception, v^ajTiighty architects He once conceived the design of a Castle of Otranto, and drew the design in outline. It is a superb creation. Lofty walls, with endless towers and turrets, crown the summits of a great precipice, and impress upon the mind the ideas at once of impregnable strength, and of such power as could need no defence.

The work of actually erecting such a castle would require an army of men, almost such as that which built the pyramids of Egypt, and for as long a time. But it would have required more than this, in the work needed to embody the forms of beauty with which its details abounded. Yet in Nasmyth's mind this magnificent design rose as a sudden inspiration, and even the comparatively slight work of tracing its outlines on paper was as separate from the mental operation, as intellect and imagination are separate from the materials of pen, ink, and paper, or of wood, and stone, and lime. The same profound distinction is illustrated in the story of his celebrated mechanical invention of the steam-hammer. He has often told me that the idea flashed upon him suddenly and in a moment when he was at tea. He was so absolutely certain of its material practicability and of its mechanical success, that he at once drew up the specification and wrote instructions for a patent. James Watt's still more celebrated conception of the separate condenser in the steam-engine, is another example of the same kind, except that in this case there was a much longer way to be travelled in getting the required command over materials, and over difficulties of mere mechanical construction. In all these cases, and in a thousand others, the difference and distinction between the conceiving mind and the mere artificer is a difference as wide as exists between any two things cognizible by our intelligence. In Nature this distinction vanishes.

That which does not vanish, however, but becomes, on the contrary, supreme and solitary in its reality, are all those highest functions of mind which consist in the conceiving of results, and in the absolute command oyer the means of attain inp^them which is incomprehensible to_us. It is the artificer, with his laborious work, who disappears, not the designer occupying the throne of ultimate conception and of effective causation. The very idea of an artificer disappears in Nature, only because there are no materials which seem to be refractory in the hands of that mind which is so supreme — no weights too heavy to be lifted, no forms of matter which will not yield their elementary substances to design except under conditions which it is difficult or impossible to secure. In Nature the elements of matter — analyzed — dissociated — selected — can, in some cases, be actually seen rushing, through prepared channels, to take their appointed place in the building up of new organic structures, controlled and guided by some invisible force, or impulse, entirely different from any which we can yoke to our service. But this difference does not alter in the least the obvious relation of the results to all that we recognize as mind. The same principle appears throughout the whole region of animal mechanics and of organic chemistry. Let us take a single example out of an endless list. Some substances are capable of exerting a powerful chemical action in decomposing others. But the separation of compounded elements is an essential step towards re-combination in new forms. All_organic creatures need food ; but food consists in matter decomposed in such a way as to afford facilities for re-combination. Npw^t.is,^ law of chemical action

I'J ITS DEFINITION'S AND THEIR RESULTS I7

that in order to be ma.de_ea^ and rapidly effectual, it must be allowed_^22ortuiiity -and <s9.dvantage,'. and_^ that for this purpose the substance to be decorgposed must be so broken up, or ground down mechanically, that its particles shall be well exposed to the decomposing agent. For this purpose, therefore, the raw materials of food must be so treated. It~Ts lor^^this end that teeth, or some equivalent weapons with muscles to work them, have to be provided. When we have to gain the same end, which is a constant necessity in every laboratory, we have to use the pestle and mortar to triturate, and grind down, the material which we wish to decompose. This is a mechanical operation. It is the work of a mere artificer. But in Nature the triturating apparatus grows, or is developed, with the very germ of the organism which needs it — but always before the need arises. And thus, we can see, and be absolutely sure, that it is^/"<?^us£^ and not^_y use, that it is developed. Some foreseeing of that which is to come, presides over the whole operation. Provision always is preceded by prevision, ([^aturalselectioii,'* as an agency in developing structures prioiLJa^ their functional use, if it has any meaning at all, is^simpjy a mental and directing choice. All the plausibility it possesses, as a phrase, rests upon, and consists in, its implicit reference to the analogies of mind. It is plain, therefore, that the somewhat refined and subtle objection to the old argument from design, that it represents the mind which is supreme in Nature as the mind of a mere artificer, is an objection which

c l8 INTUITIVE THEOLOGY [cK.

rests on incomplete analysis. It confounds the high functions of a conceiving mind, with the far lower functions of a mere executive mechanic. It fails to recognize that divine element, existing even in ourselves, which needs no external materials to work with, and which seems, so far as our consciousness is concerned, to be independent even of space and time, and to belong altogether to the region of the invisible. We have seen the instinctive witness borne by scientific men in their use of language. There is another powerful evidence — never hitherto sufficiently recognized — that the presence of mind in Nature is not a fancy, or any mere inference, but a fact of which we have certain and direct perception. That evidence consists not in the use ojily, but in the very structure of language, and in the etymology of words. For language^_like thought itself, of which it is tjie vesture, j^s^not madey(^^but growg^^r[ls(^deveTope9> It is the automatic expression of, and the witness to, that which we do really see — all the more to be trusted because of the fact that it is an unconscious witness. It is like the photographic surfaces, which are now made so wonderfully sensitive that, when turned to the sky, they become impressed with the images of stars and of other heavenly bodies which escape altogether from the grasp of conscious vision. So it is with words. It is vain to dispute their selfrecording testimony. They cannot report anything which does not really shine in upon the self-consciousness of man, or, in other words, which he does not really see. The structure of the physical retina is

Ij ITS DEFINITIONS AND THEIR RESULTS I9

complex and delicate, almost beyond conception, and the truthfulness of its response to the impinging rays of light, is perfect within a special range. But the delicacy and complexity of this structure is as nothing in comparison with the delicacy and complexity of that other mental retina which Jies behind, or beyond, it.— which corrects all its ^inverted imagesL and reads off its own interpretationsjol-them^jn the inner, and finer, light of mind. Hence it is that words which have been moulded in that light, and have been instinctively adopted as a true rendering of that which men see in Nature, constitute in themselves the best proof of that rendering as the direct and immediate perception of a fact. Such, for example, is the witness borne by the word ' organ ' for the functional parts of the living frame in all animals. ' Organon ' is a Greek_word, and it means an instrument, an implement, z^^toolj/^ the making, or moving, or doing of something else ^. This is one of the many words which lose much of their significance and force by the familiarity of repetition. As, in the case of a coin in daily use, we never think of the image and superscription that are stamped upon it, although to these it owes its value, so, in the use of a familiar word we forget the mint in which it was struck, and the precious metal of original meaning to which its currency is due. Yet if we substitute some other word which has not become familiar by constant repetition, but which is exactly equivalent, then the full significance of our language is forced upon us.