The soul, its sorrow and its aspirations: an essay towards the natural history of the soul, as the true basis of theology

Front matter

E UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

THE SOUL.

ITS SORROWS AND ITS ASPIRATIONS:

Preface

The analogy and contrast between Moral and Spiritual knowledge deserves remark. A long period passed in the history of mankind, during which Morals w T ere regarded as something essentially Dogmatic, and indeed to a considerable extent Arbitrary and varying with political institutions. The Morality of every great national system was long supposed to depend entirely on the external authority which promulgated it : only in the later stages of mental culture is it clearly discerned, that Ethics, as a science, is as unchangeable as the ethical nature of man. Thenceforward the idea that there can be anything arbitrary in morals faded away ; and the authoritative sanction which is superadded to moral precepts became valued, not as that which is essential to guarantee their truth to a cultivated moral nature, but as that which (like parental command) enforces action while the moral sense is in its infancy. And this was perhaps the very feeling of the great apostle Paul towards the law of Moses. He venerated its precepts, as a mature man those of his aged schoolmaster ; whose rod he no longer dreads, though he sees it to be wholesome that he once dreaded it : but after Faith was come, he was no longer under the Schoolmaster. So also, that in spiritual things each worshipper sees by a light within him, and is directly dependent on God, not on his fellow men, is an axiom pervading the thought of every New-Testament writer.

In Morals, it is something to gain external right conduct, even if there be as yet no internal love of goodness or insight into its nature ; hence the Dogmatic principle derives there a real practical value, which is developed in Law. It is important to keep people from mutual violence, even by an armed police or by arguments addressed to selfishness : and such constraint of the conduct by fear or by other lower motives, is a part of necessary training. It is a highly valuable result, if a man avoid falsehood and impurity, though he may know no better reason than his

PREFACE.

vii father's or his priest's command. But there not only is no spiritual object in his worshipping God solely because a father or a priest commands it, but the very statement is intrinsically absurd. That is not worship at all, which is rendered in obedience to mere dictation ; for worship is a state of the Affections, and these are not under the controul of the Will. A man who desires to worship, but has little heart for it, can only say to God, " Draw me, and I will follow after Thee f and he must needs have some heart in him, to say as much as this. At the suggestion or order of another we may present our bodies in a church or at a confessional, (which, if done without insight, is a mora!, not a spiritual, obedience,) but it is essentially impossible to worship God spiritually unless we are drawn and led by forces internal to the Soul itself. The coming of the Spirit into a system of Law, is that which intrinsically converts it into Gospel. It is useful to have spiritual teachers : and if they be wise, it is wise to listen reverently to them : but their lessons have not been successful, until the learner has gained an eye for seeing the truth ; and believes no longer because of his teacher's word, but because he has an Anointing from the Holy One, and knoweth all things. And this is the sole object of spiritual, as distinguished from moral, teaching, — to minister the Spirit ; to impart spiritual eyesight, and spiritual forces. Those truths, and those only, are properly to be called Spiritual, the nature of which admits of their being directly discerned in the Soul, just as Moral truths in the Moral Sense : and he is a spiritual man, not who believes these at second hand, (which is a historical or dead faith,) but who sees internally, and knows directly. To guide towards the method of ascertaining these, is the object of the present treatise : and whatever may at first seem to be digressive, is nevertheless intended to conduce to a greater fulness of insight into this cardinal point.

The First Chapter treats of the Infancy of the Soul, viii

.PREFACE.

under that rudimentary Religion, which we may possess without conscious reflection on self; — that in which we contemplate the great external realities of Faith, as if we had no personal relations towards them. It ends with the establishment of reverence towards a Personal Deity, when Morals and Religion at length coalesce. The Second Chapter concerns the spiritual phenomena called out by the sense that we ought to be what we are not, in the presence of God. It ought (if it were scientifically complete) to include all the dreadful results of Remorse and capricious or gloomy Asceticism ; but I shrank from the odious task as needless, and have depicted only a few strongly-marked, but not fanatical experiences, issuing in happy results. The Third Chapter exhibits the soul struggling after a sense of its Personal Relation to God, with the happy and remarkable results of its success, and its means of recovering this sense, when lost. The Fourth treats of the Ideal of spiritual excellence, and of the Aids from without towards attaining it. The Fifth discusses the grounds on which the soul forms Hopes and Aspirations concerning a future life ; and the Sixth closes with reflections on the state and prospects of practical Christianity.

If these pages shall save any persons from the desolating negations which are abroad, and show those who know not on what to rest their faith, to what quarter they must look for solid ground ; and still more, if I shall have stimulated independent thought in men of holy feeling and devout practice, and shall have made them meditate solemnly on the insufficiency of our present Theology to evangelize any portion of the professedly unbelieving world; — I ought to regard this as recompensing me for the very serious moral effort, which it has cost me to publish this book.

March 1849.

TO THIRD EDITION.

The best men cannot agree theoretically concerning Religion, while they differ on Metaphysics and Logical speculations : but their difference of judgment does not imply any want of candour, nor any mutual contempt. This belongs to an inferior order of mind and heart, which desires an excuse for thinking ill ; and to such it is wholly fruitless to enter into explanations. But, as far as possible, to hinder any really candid persons from being misled by hostile reviewers, who find it easier to pretend that I contradict myself, than to aid towards positive truth ; I must add a few words to clear up my moral estimate of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

The books so denoted differ extremely in moral value, as also in literary importance. Nevertheless they form, in some sense, an organic whole, since the later books grew out of the earlier ones ; the more puerile conceptions were gradually laid aside or transformed, and new ideas also were brought in gradually, and were grafted on to the old stock. We can therefore speak of the religion as having a certain Unity of its own, in spite of the enormous diversity between Genesis, Leviticus, Isaiah, and John.

This Unity seems to me mainly to depend on the belief of the Sympathy of the most High with his devoted servants, and his desire of their Moral Perfection.

In this belief I think that there resides a prolific germ, which makes the Bible a book of vast worth and a root of

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PREFACE.

goodness to those who wisely venerate it. The doctrine may be found, occasionally expressed, in the best of the Greeks or Romans; but it pervades the Bible, and therefore is constantly re-appearing in every form of Christianity.

Nevertheless, there are numerous errors, not merely external, but moral and spiritual, in the Bible ; some peculiar to certain parts, others pervading the whole. These need not much affect the value of the book to those who know that it is imperfect, and who habitually seek to separate its pearls from its chaff. But to those who imagine the whole book to be infallible, its errors become always hurtful, often dangerous and sometimes fatal. As in every sect, if the founder be venerated too much, his weakest points of character and his most foolish opinions become typical to his followers ; so the errors of the Bible are precisely what must become characteristic of those who bow to it fanatically. Its errors indeed are no more self-coherent than error in general ; hence many schools of error are necessarily propagated from it. Of these, by far the worst is the Papal school, which has ended by dethroning the Bible, but was founded on a slavish adoration of its letter.

Individuals may rise to the highest pitch of moral excellence as yet possible to man, while holding to a theoretic confession of the infallibility of the Bible. But it is my conviction, that the Protestant world collectively can no more make progress without overthrowing this dogma, than the Papal world without overthrowing the collateral superstition of the Pope's infallibility. In the case of any recent writer, we all understand that to idolize him is to convert every accidental error of his into a fountain of pestilence : and, however great our veneration of his wisdom, we know instinctively that to proclaim his words infallible would be profane and dangerous beyond calculation.

And here I complain, that men put Falsehood for Truth,

PREFACE.

XI in charging presumption and audacity on those who shrink from investing a human book or a human person with divine honours. To take on ourselves the responsibility of avowing that all the words bound up between certain lids are Absolute Truth, — to guarantee all the consequences that follow from such a dogma, — this is extremely audacious; as everybody at once feels it if applied to any new example. The audacity and presumption of bidding men to run all risks of pernicious error, in accepting the words of a book as all divine, certainly is not obviated by the fact that the book is old and foreign, and its origin thereby somewhat obscured.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I, Introductory Remarks 1 II. Sense of the Infinite without us . . 7

III. Sense of Sin 45

Chapter I. Introductory Remarks

Against the earlier editions of this Essay, objections have been urged, which seem to be based on doctrines in Morals or Metaphy sics different from what I acknowledge. I have therefore determined to prefix consecutively some judgments on these subjects which recommend themselves to me. Of course nothing new is pretended : any real novelty would strongly imply error.

1. To acknowledge the Unity of the human mind, is no reason against speaking of separate Faculties. Even if, at all times, in all actions, all parts of the mind act together, it is not the less certain that different men have different excellences and different abilities, and that the parts of the mind have in them a different prominence, and are differently blended. Therefore we are forced to say, one man excels in Imagination, another in Logical Analysis, a third in Moral Discrimination, a fourth has a genius for Combination, and so on. But in thus recognizing Special Faculties, we do not disintegrate the mind.

2. Demonstration, or Proof, consists in so connecting a hitherto doubtful proposition with one or more that are undoubted, as to assure us of the truth of the former. Hence First Principles

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THE SOUL t cannot be demonstrated ; for if they could be referred to others more evident, (or earlier known,) they would not be first principles. Of course therefore, the foundations of all science transcend formal logic.

3. First Principles commend themselves to us as Presumptions, by their apparent reasonableness. They ara confirmed, first, by general acceptance, — or by an acceptance widening with men's intelligence ; secondly, by the perpetual harmony of the results drawn from them by severe reasonings and manifold combinations.

4. No alledged first principle can be even plausible, when it is arbitrary and wilful. Some persons are so infatuated, or so dishonest, as to argue, that " since we must have some first principles, and cannot prove any, we may as well assume one, as another." But certainly we must not assume any which manifestly refutes itself. A man would seem to be joking, who proposed for belief, as the first principle of all human knowledge, that the Grand Lama of Tibet is omniscient, or the Archbishop of Paris infallible; for we have certainly no more a priori knowledge of these personages than of a thousand others ; and it is mere wilfulness to prefer Paris to Canterbury, or the Lama to the Sultan. Yet it is very common in certain schools of religion, to pretend that the infallibility of " the Church, 55 or " the Bible," can be, and is, a first principle of human knowledge ; when even the Unity of the many societies collectively called the Church, and of the many books collectively called the Bible, is by no means a priori clear ; and when, at any rate, the Church is not the only community in the world, nor the Bible the only book ; when therefore it is prima facie quite as plausible to claim infallibility for every other community, and every other book, — if no reasons are to be given.

So far from admitting such propositions even provisionally, we must evidently disbelieve them until proved, and must necessarily demand an exceedingly cogent proof of that which has so little ii priori to accredit it.

5. Inconsistency is a certain proof of Error ; and in fact, Error is so easily incoherent, that we can hardly believe it ever to possess absolute harmony. In proportion therefore as our doctrines admit of combination and application, so as to bring them within the regions where they might be confuted, if false,— does our confidence in their truth accumulate, if no confutation is met. Truth can have no confirmations, except as we attain some power of detecting error. Therefore, without a development of incredulity, there can be no single step towards wisdom and permanent knowledge. Yet the non-detection of incongruities can

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

s never demonstrate that there are none to be detected, or that our conceptions agree with an external reality. If any one chooses to imagine human life to be a self-consistent dream, it is useless to argue with him, for we certainly shall never refute him,

6. Some assume as a first principle, that the Mind is made for Truth, or, that our faculties are veracious. Perhaps the real first principle here rather is, that " no higher arbiter of truth is accessible to man, than the mind of man." When people treat this as a proud sentiment, they do but show confusion of thought. On the contrary, it avows the sober proposition (which is certain, if anything can be), that man is finite, tied down within his own sphere, limited by his limited faculties ; this is, in other words, to avow that he has no inlets or tests of truth, other than those faculties afford.

To oppose this by asserting that the infallibility of Church or Bible is a first principle, needing no proof, is wilful and ridiculous, as has been said. To oppose it by asserting such infallibility, while yet allowing that the infallibility needs to be proved, is to blunder grossly. For no proof can have a certainty higher than the accuracy and veracity of the faculties which conduct the proof.

If, by divine enlightenment, individuals receive what is equivalent to new faculties, they may become proportionably more capable of discerning and attaining truth. But such new faculties, if intended as an inheritance of all mankind, are not to be disowned as not human ; nor can we dispense with testing by the old the soundness of the new; nor can any one, on the ground of his possessing such new faculties, claim belief, at least without first proving to men's ordinary understanding that he does possess them in some peculiar and exclusive measure.

7. Moral Truth is developed by experience and reasoning combined with the faculty peculiarly named Moral ; which alone can pronounce on the relative value of inward impulses, desires, and pleasures, and alone decides that we ought to follow the higher and nobler. Morality cannot be resolved into the pursuit of the greatest happiness for the greatest number : first, because it remains to settle what is Happiness ; secondly, because it remains to answer : why ought I to seek any man's happiness ? To say that it is my interest, is not identical with saying that it is my duty.

A meaner soul chooses a meaner thing as its best. If one man regard Ease, a second Power, a third Knowledge, a fourth Active Excitement, a fifth Love, as the chief good s

B 2 i neither observation nor argument can mediate between them. The mind itself decides which ought to be preferred ; and in enunciating the word ought, assumes its moral position. If any one deliberately prefers selfish profligacy to kindness and justice, and would rather have a jocund and boisterous course, with the chance of its being a short one, than any tranquil happiness, this is nothing but a difference of Taste, until a moral judgment interferes, to pronounce the one wrong and the other right ; nor do we make him virtuous, by merely inducing him to choose another sort of selfishness.

The brutes in general act by unconscious impulse : a mere rational agent will act also by conscious impulse, which ws call Motive ; but a moral agent is guided by convictions of Duty.

8. For the growth of the Moral faculties human society is needful, and human history is profitable ; but no one particular society is needed, nor any particular history. Human Morality could not be altered by the disappearance of a nation or an individual out of history ; for it depends, not on what this or that man is, but on what human nature collectively is. A remarkable individual or nation may at certain times by example have stimulated new moral thought in our race, but their personality does not enter Moral Science. It may be true that " Moses was the meekest of men it may be equally true, that his conduct led to new views of the virtue of meekness : but no proposition of moral philosophy ought to contain the name of Moses. Its propositions are general ; those of History are special, or relate to individuals.

Nor can Morals be made argumentatively to depend on facts of remote history, without disowning the universality of moral obligation. This universality assumes a direct and homely knowledge of right and wrong. If I am to obey the Ten Commandments on the ground that a divine voice pronounced them from Mount Sinai (and not because I and you and collective humanity discern them to be right), every one of us needs to ascertain a very distant and obscure matter of history, before he is under obligation to obey the decalogue.*

All the same remarks apply, as to the essential difference between a Historical and a Spiritual proposition.

9. The Moral faculty has been above described, as that which pronounces on the relative worth of our different impulses or attractions, and enunciates the duty of selecting the higher. By

* Of course the above is mere illustration. The Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue is without validity for Gentiles.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

the Will is understood, the inward power which actually makes a selection. Thus, if we are simultaneously impelled, — to do what is just, — to gratify a friend, — and to gain lucre or honour ; — and it be impossible to secure more than one of these ends ; by an act of the Will we choose and adopt one of these.

If no power of choice existed in man, but he were determined by an externally imposed necessity, it would be absurd in others to blame him, and a very superfluous self-torment to blame himself. Yet we know, that without self-reproof, there can be no deep-seated or fruitful virtue. In proportion therefore as the existence of active Will is disbelieved, practical virtue is impaired.

The same follows in another way ; namely, since no man will make an effort, unless he believes that there is power within him, No sane man will struggle to break a chain which he believes will defy his utmost exertions. No insane man will move a limb which he fancies to be paralyzed. If we have no power of Will, to choose and to reject, and thereby to determine and guide our action, self-discipline and self-control are really impossible ; nor will he* who believes it to he impossible, ever attempt it. — Those who call themselves Necessarians have of course some good qualities without cultivation : others have been cultivated by them from childhood, before they became converts to this creed ; many virtues have thus become habitual to them : but from the time that they adopted the doctrine of Necessarianism, they have inevitably ceased to cultivate virtue, except at intervals while forgetting their creed and believing as other men. If any one could hold the creed from childhood, and the belief were always active, he neither would nor could attempt self-guidance, and would be a mere creature of desire.

10. Though the Will is a real power, it is limited, like other powers ; and it grows up out of insensible beginnings. Moreover, it is either weakened or superseded by Habit. In a vicious habit, the Will is oppressed or paralyzed ; in a virtuous habit, all effort of the will is superfluous : right action is carried on, as in preserving the balance of the body, without exertion or struggle, and the moral strength is reserved for other service.

A perfect state of the Will does not suffice for right conduct : knowledge, experience, and other intellectual combinations are often requisite to decide what is right, in external affairs.

11. Wherever there may be foresight of action, we recognize the existence of Law, which implies, not Compulsion, but Certainty. In the movements of inanimate matter, all now recognize pervading Law. At the other extreme, where a perfect Will resides, there also is Law; for it is certain that it will act aright ;

THE SOUL.

and another mind sufficiently powerful would be able to predict its doings. The Habit of right action, is a Law made by itself, for itself. — But where Will is imperfect, and where there is a struggle, an element of uncertainty proportion ably interferes, and instead of one Law, there are two or more Laws crossing and clashing. This is not the sphere of divine harmony; it is the sphere of human conflict and partial lawlessness : and to look for certainty in it, is very gratuitous.

Chapter II. Sense Of The Infinite Without Us

All human knowledge, like human power, is bounded ; and it is then most accurate, when we can sharply draw the line which shows where ignorance begins. In actual life, our region of sensible light, where the common understanding guides us, is always encircled with a dimmer belt, beyond which are glimpses of partial light, and then, infinite darkness ; but, though we do not pass suddenly from positive knowledge to absolute ignorance, we are, in every direction, distinctly aware of both states. To different minds, moreover, the sphere through which the understanding ranges, varies exceedingly ; and many adults, especially in savage nations, remain all their lives like children.

It is thus a condition of human existence, to be surrounded with but moderately diffused light, that instructs the understanding, and illimitable haziness, that excites the imagination : and this being our natural and necessary case, the question suggests itself, whether the obscurity, as well as the light, is adapted to call forth any sentiments within us, or in any way tend to the perfection of our nature. And happily, the reply to this question immediately suggests itself, upon referring to the case of children. How lovely in a child is that modesty, which springs from an unaffected consciousness of ignorance ; especially when joined with a belief that others know. When new knowledge puffs up, and amiable diffidence is lost, all feel that a bad exchange has been made. If so, we attain one fixed point. We perceive that the region of dimness is not wholly without relations towards our moral state. There is a proper effect s which it ought to produce upon us, and which deserves to be more closely analyzed.

The case of the child will still farther aid our examination. Eeverence towards parental judgments not only is approved as salutary, in order to gain the advantage of a wiser guidance ; but in itself, especially in the earlier years of childhood, commends itself to all as a beautiful and excellent state of feeling. A very young child has no measure whatever of a parent's wisdom : it is to him unbounded. He neither knows, nor expects ever to know, the limits of it ; and, therefore, his reverence is capable of being absolute. A w r hole world of sentiment is wrapt up in the relations felt and acted upon by such a child ; sentiment, which none are brutish enough to fail to appreciate. Not all the knowledge, nor all the wisdom, nor all the prudence and self-control, nor all the manly independence, which a child of five years old could, under human limitations, attain, would compare in value to the loving reverence, sure trust, and unreflecting joy which such a child may exercise towards a parent, whose wisdom and goodness appear to him illimitable.

Are then these exercises of heart a source of happiness and of moral perfection in infancy, and are they not desirable for the adult ? Or are they desirable, yet not possible, for those, whose understandings have opened wide enough to see that all human minds are limited, all human hearts shallow, and that no object worthy of absolute reverence comes within the reach of sense ? Certainly it is no artificial dogma, invented by priests or needing enforcement by princes, that the man who has reverence for nothing has a hard, dry, and barren soul. In the English tongue, indeed, the very word Soul appears to have been intended to express that side of our nature, by which we are in contact with the Infinite. The Soul is to things spiritual, what the Conscience is to things moral ; each is the seat of feeling, and thereby tlie organ of specific information to us, respecting its own subject. If all human Souls and Consciences felt absolutely alike, we should fitly regard their enunciations as having a certainty on a par with the perceptions of Sense : only, as Sense is matured in an earlier stage, and is less dependent on higher cultivation than the Conscience and the Soul, the decisions of Sense are undoubtedly far easier to ascertain — not therefore more certain when ascertained.

In the child and in the savage, as the Conscience is but half developed, so is it manifestly with the Soul. The former is built up out of certain rudimentary sympathies and perceptions, co-operating with an experience of human tendencies, under the

SENSE OF THE INFINITE.

stimulus of which the moral powers expand, until moral Truth is at length discerned by direct vision. The Natural History of the Soul is far less simple, as must be expected of a higher organ : its diseases also are more hidden and more embarrassing, and in consequence its pathology will assume an apparently disproportionate part of a true theology. For if Theology is " a science of God, 5> it cannot omit to treat of the bright or sullied state of the mirror, in which alone God's face is to be seen. How to keep it ever bright, is the problem for every practical Christian ; to unfold the practical rules in connection with an extended knowledge of the entire man, so as to reconcile Passion, Prudence, Duty, Free Thought, and Reverence, is perhaps the highest form that the problem can assume to the Theologian.

In order to see the whole from its commencement, it is well to begin from the study of the elementary phenomena out of which are evolved the ideas of something boundless beyond us- — of Supernatural Power — of Divine Existence — and finally of One Infinite God ; and, in passing, the collateral degraded types of each new sentiment or judgment will be remarked upon.

1. AWE.

The child of a good and wise parent, before attaining an age when it can meditate on the parent's finite powers, is certain to learn that there is One higher still, worshipped by him with prayer and praise. This is at first, and for some time, mere hearsay, destitute of any religious power on the heart, until a higher idea of infinity is attained. The gloom of night (deadly night, as Homer terms it), more universally perhaps than any other phenomenon, first awakens an uneasy sense of vastness. A young child accustomed to survey the narrow limits of a lighted apartment, wakes in the night and is frightened at the dim vacancy. No nurse's tales about spectres are needed to make the darkness awful. Nor is it from fear of any human or material enemy : it is the negation, the unknown, the unlimited, which excites and alarms ; and sometimes the more, if mingled with glimpses of light.