The insuppressible book...

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Last Words about Agnosticism and the Religion of

Humanity 140

II

I pass now to consider the fifteen pages of Mr. Spencer's article in which he attacks the writings of Auguste Comte. And I begin by pointing out that this was not at all the issue between us, so that this attack savors of the device known to lawyers as 'prejudice,' or 'abusing the plaintiff's attorney.' I gave reasons for thinking that the Unknowable could never be the foundation of a Creed. I added, in some twenty lines at most, that Humanity could be. Throughout my article I did not refer to Comte. My argument was entirely independent of any religious ordinances whatever, whether laid down by i

Comte or any one else. Mr. Mill, in his work on Comte, has emphatically asserted that Humanity is an idea pre-eminently fitted to be the object of religion. And very many powerful minds agree with Mr. Mill so far, though they do not accept the organized form of religion as Auguste Comte conceived it. To what degree, and in what sense, I may accept it, is not doubtful ; for I have striven for years past to make it known in my public utterances. But, until I put forward Auguste Comte as an infallible authority, until I preach or practise everything laid down in the Positive Polity, it is hardly an answer to me in a philosophical discussion to jest for the fiftieth time about Comte's arrogance, or about the banners to be used in the solemn processions, or about addressing prayer to 'holy' Humanity. My friends and I address no prayers to Humanity as 'holy' or otherwise ; we use no banners, and we never speak of Comte as Mahometans speak of Mahomet, or as Buddhists speak of Buddha. For my own part, I am continually saying, and I say it deliberately now, that I look upon very much that Comte threw out for the future as tentative and purely Utopian. Since I have held this language for many years in public, I do not think that Mr. Spencer is justified in describing me as a blind devotee. And when he parries a criticism of his own philosophy, by ridiculing practices and opinions for which I have never made myself responsible, I hardly think he is acting with the candid mind which befits the philosopher in all tilings.

For this reason I shall not trouble myself about the ' eccentricities' which he thinks he can discover in the writings of Comte. A thousand eccentricities in Comte would not make it reasonable in Spencer to worship the Unknowable ; and it would be hard indeed to match the eccentricity of venerating as the sole Reality that of which we only know that we can know nothing and imagine nothing. But there are other good reasons for declining to discuss with Mr. Spencer the writings of Comte. The first is that he knows nothing whatever about them. To Mr. Spencer the writings of Comte are, if not the Absolute Unknowable, at any rate the Absolute Unknown. I have long endeavored to persuade Mr. Spencer to study Comte, all the more as he owes to him so much indirectly through others. But, so far as I know, I have not induced him to do so. And his recent criticisms of these writings show the same thing. They add nothing, I may say, to the criticism contained in the work of Mr. Mill, or indeed to the obvious witticisms to be read any week in the Saturday Review. To turn over the pages of the Positive Polity and find many things which seem paradoxical is an exercise easy enough ; but to grasp the conceptions of Comte, or indeed of any philosopher, seriously, is labor of a different kind.

Nothing is easier than to make cheap ridicule of any philosopher whatever. The philosopher necessarily works in a region of high abstraction, and largely employs the resources of deduction. He is bound by his office to deal freely with wide generalizations ; and to follow his principles across all apparent obstacles. Every philosopher accordingly falls from time to time into astounding paradoxes ; he is always accused by the superficial of arrogance ; by the wits of absurdity ; by the public of blindness. It is the fate of philosophers ; and the charges, it must be allowed, are often founded in reason. Descartes, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Hegel, may in turn be attacked for certain hypotheses of theirs as the most arrogant of men and the wildest of sophists. How often has Mr. Spencer shared the same fate ! There are those who think that no other living man has ever ventured on assertions at once so dogmatic and so paradoxical. I have too much respect for Mr. Spencer to quote any one of these wonderful bits of philosophic daring. I recognize in him a real philosopher of a certain order, and I seek to understand his system as a whole ; nor am I dismayed in my studies by a thousand things in his theories, which certainly do seem to me very hard sayings. Mr. Spencer has himself just published a very remarkable work, ' the Man versus the State ; ' to which he hardly expects to make a convert except here and there, and about which an unfriendl}' critic might say that it might be entitled 'Mr. Spencer against All England.' I shall not certainly criticise him for that. But it is a signal instance of the isolated position assumed from time to time by philosophers. Philosophers who live, not so much in 'glass houses' as in very crystal palaces of their own imagination, of all people, one would think, should give up the pastime of throwing stones at their neighbors' constructions.

I give an instance of the way in which Mr. Spencer misunderstands Comte. Mr. Spencer speaks of Comte's Historical Calendar as a i canonization,' as a list of ' saints,' to be ' worshipped ' day by day, as a means of ' regulating posterity,' and as part of the 4 deification' of Humanity. And he further represents this list of historical names as a strictly classified selection of men in degree of personal merit. Now every part of this view is an error. So far from this calendar being permanently imposed on posterity, Comte himself speaks of it as provisional, to serve a temporary purpose. And what is that purpose? Why, to impress on the mind the general course of human civilization. Comte calls it 4 a concrete view of man's history.' It is not meant to be a classification in real order of merit. It is not essentially personal at all. The names are given and always spoken of as ' types,' concrete embodiments of manifold elements in the civilization of the past. Over and over again Comte says that the type and its place are often chosen without reference to personal merit to represent a class, a nation, or a movement. They are not called, or treated of as ' saints.' There is no ' canonization,' no 4 worship,' no ascription of perfection, or absolute merit of any kind. The whole scheme from beginning to end is, what Comte calls it, a concrete view of man's history, a mode of impressing on the minds of modern men what they owe in so many ways to men in the past.

The exigencies of a calendar, with its months, weeks, and days, preclude any real classification of merit ; nor is any such thing attempted. It is a mode of teaching history, using the artifice of associating the names of certain famous men with months, weeks, and days. And the object is to impress on the mind the multiplicity of the forces and elements which make upcivilization. To suppose that all names which occupy similar places represent men of exactly equal merit is a gratuitous piece of absurdity introduced into a fine conception. Even in the Church Calendar there is St. Paul's Day and St. Swithin's Day, though no one supposes that St. S within is regarded as the equal of St. Paul. But Comte's Historical Calendar has no analogy with the Catholic Calendar at all. It is a concrete view of history, intended to commemorate the sum of human civilization. 1

I shall certainly not enter into any defence of it. It seems to me the best synthetic scheme of history which has ever been constructed on a single page.

i A single example may show with how little care Mr. Spencer looked at Comte. He complains that Comte should put Bichat above Newton, because he finds that Bichat heads a month in the Calendar, and Newton a week. Now, Comte never instituted any personal comparison between Newton and Bichat. But he explained that for the last month, which represents the course of modern science, he must choose a biologist and not a mathematician, on the ground of the superior importance of Biology. The Calendar was constructed more than thirty years ago, when certainly a thoroughly adequate type of Biology was not quite accessible. For grounds fully explained he chose Bichat. Newton takes his place with the mathematicians ; but any idea that Bichat's intellect was superior to Newton's has not the smallest authority in anything said by Comte.

But I am far from supposing it perfect, nor ao I doubt that it might easily be amended or revised. Mr. Spencer seems astounded that Cyrus and Godfrey, Terence and Juvenal, Froissart and Palissy, should hold in it the places they do. To discuss that question would involve a long historical argument, and I am not at all disposed to enter into any historical argument with Mr. Spencer. With all his scientific learning, and his manifold gifts, Mr. Spencer is seldom regarded as having much to tell us within the historical field. It is here that his inferiority to Comte is most strikingly seen. Those who know the harmonious power with which Comte has called forth into life the vast procession of the ages can best judge how weak by his side Mr. Spencer appears. In Mr. Spencer's theory of history the past teaches little but a few Quaker-like maxims ; that it is very like a savage to fight, and that military activity and superstition are the sources of all evil. Certainly Comte, as heartily as Spencer, has condemned the military spirit in this age, and the continuance of all fictitious beliefs. But he is not so blind to facts that he does not recognize the historical uses of the military life in the past, and the beauty of many theological types. And thus it is that he feels honor for Godfrey the Crusader, as well as for Socrates the philosopher ; for the conquerors Cyrus and Sesostris, as well as for Penn the Quaker, and St. Paul the Apostle.

There is a certain ' fallacy of the Den ' running through Mr. Spencer's historical notions, of which his article gives very striking examples. Possessed by nis theory of indefinite ' differentiation, the course of civilization presents itself to his mind as a perpetual development of new forces — progression in a constant series of divergent lines. According to this view of history, an institution, an idea, an energy which the civilization of to-day has abandoned is finally condemned ; to revive it under new forms, is retrogression. Since savages respected their ancestors, it would be savage to respect our ancestors. Since we have been tending, during the last two or three centuries, to lessen all temporal and spiritual influence on the individual, we must go on till we have reduced both to zero. Since war is inhuman, the qualities and habits which the military life promoted are equally abominable. To revive anything which modern society has discarded is retrogression. For the test with Mr. Spencer is not whether it is relatively good or bad for man, but is found in the fact of Evolution absolutely.

Now, this error affects all that Mr. Spencer says about the history of civilization. The truth is, as Comte has so wonderfully shown, the story of man's development is a tale of continued revival, reconstruction, and fresh adjustments of social life. Old habits, thoughts, and energies spring into a new life, under altered forms, and in new co-ordination. Development means not indefinite differentiation, but continuous growth, with organic re-adjustment of the organism to its environment. And that organic re-adjustment is constantly demanding the renewal of dormant elements, and the new uses of old things. I should be sorry to think that Humanity were for ever condemned to lose everything which the taste of this somewhat cynical, material and democratic generation is pleased to throw off. The phrase Retrogressive Religion does not frighten me at all. Any religion that the Future of Man is to have will be retrogressive in this sense ; that it will revive something of religious feelings which were once more active in the world than they happen to be to-day. Whether an enthusiastic regard for the welfare of our human race be retrogressive religion or not I care little. I should have thought it to be a new and a progressive type of creed, more so than the worship of the Ultimate Cause, and the Creative Power, and the All-Being ; where I find, indeed (and where the Christian World finds also), retrogression into Metaphysic and Theology.