Volume 5 — SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN TRADITION

BY THOMAS H. HUXLEY

NEW YORK, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1902

PREFACE.

I.

PROLOGUE1

(Controverted Questions, 1892).

II.

SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM [1887]59

III.

SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE [1887]90

IV.

AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY [1887]126

V.

THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS [1889]160

VI.

POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES [1891]192

VII.

AGNOSTICISM [1889]209

VIII.

AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER [1889]263

IX.

AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY [1889]309

X.

THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE [1890]366

XI.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S CONTROVERSIAL METHODS [1891] 393

"For close upon forty years I have been writing with one purpose; from time to time, I have fought for that which seemed to me the truth, perhaps still more, against that which I have thought error; and, in this way, I have reached, indeed over-stepped, the threshold of old age. There, every earnest man has to listen to the voice within: 'Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.'

"That I have been an unjust steward my conscience does not bear witness. At times blundering, at times negligent, Heaven knows: but, on the whole, I have done that which I felt able and called upon to do; and I have done it without looking to the right or to the left; seeking no man's favor, fearing no man's disfavor.

"But what is it that I have been doing? In the end one's conceptions should form a whole, though only parts may have found utterance, as occasion arose; now do these exhibit harmony and mutual connexion? In one's zeal much of the old gets broken to pieces; but has one made ready something new, fit to be set in the place of the old?

"That they merely destroy without reconstructing, is the especial charge, with which those who work in this direction are constantly reproached. In a certain sense I do not defend myself against the charge; but I deny that any reproach is deserved.

"I have never proposed to myself to begin outward construction; because I do not believe that the time has come for it. Our present business is with inward preparation, [1]

So wrote one of the protagonists of the New Reformation—and a well-abused man if ever there was one—a score of years since, in the remarkable book in which he discusses the negative and the positive results of the rigorous application of scientific method to the investigation of the higher problems of human life.

Recent experience leads me to imagine that there may be a good many countrymen of my own, even at this time, to whom it may be profitable to read, mark and inwardly digest, the weighty words of the author of that "Leben Jesu," which, half a century ago, stirred the religious world so seriously that it has never settled down again quite on the old foundations; indeed, some think it never will. I have a personal interest in the carrying out of the recommendation I venture to make. It may enable many worthy persons, in whose estimation I should really be glad to stand higher than I do, to become aware of the possibility that my motives in writing the essays, contained in this and the preceding volume, were not exactly those that they ascribe to me.

The simple fact is that, as I have already more than once hinted, my story is that of the wolf and the lamb over again. I have never "gone out of my way" to attack the Bible, or anything else: it was the dominant ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe, without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.

I had set out on a journey, with no other purpose than that of exploring a certain province of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair's breadth from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue; and yet I found that, whatever

Now I was and am, by nature, a law-abiding person, ready and willing to submit to all legitimate authority. But I also had and have a rooted conviction, that reasonable assurance of the legitimacy should precede the submission; so I made it my business to look up the manorial title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical "Moses" to exercise a control over the operations of the reasoning faculty in the search after truth, thirty centuries after his age, might be justifiable; but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justification of claims so large required careful scrutiny.

Singular discoveries rewarded my industry. The ecclesiastical "Moses" proved to be a mere traditional mask, behind which, no doubt, lay the features of the historical Moses—just as many a

Only one point became perfectly clear to me, namely, that Moses is not responsible for nine-tenths of the Pentateuch; certainly not for the legends which had been made the bugbears of science. In fact, the fence turned out to be a mere heap of dry sticks and brushwood, and one might walk through it with impunity: the which I did. But I was still young, when I thus ventured to assert my liberty; and young people are apt to be filled with a kind of sæva indignatio, when they discover the wide discrepancies between things as they seem and things as they are. It hurts their vanity to feel that they have prepared themselves for a mighty struggle to climb over, or break their way through, a rampart, which turns out, on close approach, to be a mere heap of ruins; venerable, indeed, and archæologically interesting, but of no other moment. And some fragment of the superfluous energy accumulated is apt to find vent in strong language.

[2] But when, not long ago "the voice" put it to me, whether I had better not expunge, or modify, these passages; whether, really, they were not a little too strong; I had to reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely literary point of view, I might admit them to be rather crude, I must stand by the substance of these items of my expenditure. I further ventured to express the conviction that scientific criticism of the Old Testament, since 1860, has justified every word of the estimate of the authority of the ecclesiastical "Moses" written at that time. And, carried away by the heat of self-justification, I even ventured to add, that the desperate attempt now set afoot to force biblical and post-biblical mythology into elementary instruction, renders it useful and necessary to go on making a considerable outlay in the same direction. Not yet, has "the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew" ceased to be the "incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium of the orthodox;" not yet, has "the zeal of the Bibliolater" ceased from troubling; not yet, are the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest from their fruitless toil "to harmonise impossibilities," and "to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism."

Well, we will pass the item of 1860, said "the voice." But why all this more recent coil about the Gadarene swine and the like? Do you pretend that these poor animals got in your way, years and years after the "Mosaic" fences were down, at any rate so far as you are concerned?

Got in my way? Why, my good "voice," they were driven in my way. I had happened to

Yet, if I had made the most wanton and arrogant onslaught on the honest convictions of other people, I could not have been more hardly dealt with. The pentecostal charism, I believe, exhausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to copious objurgations, strewn with such appellations as "infidel" and "coward," must be a hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts the existence of a "gift of tongues" in the Churches of our time; unless, indeed, it should occur to him that some of these outpourings may have taken place after "the third hour of the day." I am far from thinking that it is worth while to give much attention to these inevitable incidents of all controversies, in which one party has acquired the mental peculiarities which are generated by the habit of much talking, with immunity from criticism. But as a rule, they are the sauce of dishes of misrepresentations and inaccuracies which

I was challenged to question the authority for the theory of "the spiritual world," and the practical consequences deducible from human relations to it, contained in these documents.

In my judgment, the actuality of this spiritual world—the value of the evidence for its objective existence and its influence upon the course of things—are matters, which lie as much within the province of science, as any other question about the existence and powers of the varied forms of living and conscious activity.

It really is my strong conviction that a man has no more right to say he believes this world is haunted by swarms of evil spirits, without being able to produce satisfactory evidence of the fact, than he has a right to say, without adducing adequate proof, that the circumpolar antarctic ice swarms with sea-serpents. I should not like to assert positively that it does not. I imagine that no cautious biologist would say as much; but while quite open to conviction, he might properly decline to waste time upon the consideration

The belief in a demonic world is inculcated throughout the Gospels and the rest of the books of the New Testament; it pervades the whole patristic literature; it colours the theory and the practice of every Christian church down to modern times. Indeed, I doubt if, even now, there is any church which, officially, departs from such a fundamental doctrine of primitive Christianity as the existence, in addition to the Cosmos with which natural knowledge is conversant, of a world of spirits; that is to say, of intelligent agents, not subject to the physical or mental limitations of humanity, but nevertheless competent to interfere, to an undefined extent, with the ordinary course of both physical and mental phenomena.

More especially is this conception fundamental for the authors of the Gospels. Without the belief that the present world, and particularly that part of it which is constituted by human society, has [3]

The half-hearted religiosity of latter-day Christianity may choose to ignore the fact; but it remains none the less true, that he who refuses to accept the demonology of the Gospels rejects the revelation of a spiritual world, made in them, as much as if he denied the existence of such a person as Jesus of Nazareth; and deserves, as much as any one can do, to be ear-marked "infidel" by our gentle shepherds.

Now that which I thought it desirable to make perfectly clear, on my own account, and for the sake of those who find their capacity of belief in the Gospel theory of the universe failing them, is the fact, that, in my judgment, the demonology of primitive Christianity is totally devoid of foundation; and that no man, who is guided by the rules of investigation which are found to lead to the discovery of truth in other matters, not merely of science, but in the everyday affairs of life, will arrive at any other conclusion. To those

I think it may be as well to repeat what I have said, over and over again, elsewhere, that a priori notions, about the possibility, or the impossibility, of the existence of a world of spirits, such as that presupposed by genuine Christianity, have no influence on my mind. The question for me is purely one of evidence: is the evidence adequate to bear out the theory, or is it not? In my judgment it is not only inadequate, but quite absurdly insufficient. And on that ground, I should feel compelled to reject the theory; even if there were no positive grounds for adopting a totally different conception of the Cosmos.

For most people, the question of the evidence of the existence of a demonic world, in the long run, resolves itself into that of the trustworthiness of the Gospels; first, as to the objective truth of that which they narrate on this topic; second, as to the accuracy of the interpretation which their authors put upon these objective facts. For example, with respect to the Gadarene miracle, it is one question whether, at a certain time and place, a raving madman became sane, and a herd of swine rushed into the lake of Tiberias; and quite another, whether the cause of these occurrences was the transmigration of certain devils from the man into the pigs. And again, it is one

In considering the historical value of any four documents, proof when they were written and who wrote them is, no doubt, highly important. For if proof exists, that A B C and D wrote them, and that they were intelligent persons, writing independently and without prejudice, about facts within their own knowledge—their statements must needs be worthy of the most attentive consideration.[4] But, even ecclesiastical tradition does not assert that either "Mark" or "Luke" wrote from his own knowledge—indeed "Luke" expressly asserts he did not. I cannot discover that any competent authority now maintains that the apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel which passes under his name. And whether the apostle John had, or had not, anything to do with the fourth Gospel; and if he had, what his share amounted to; are, as everybody who has attended to these

Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious probabilities is to be attained by approaching the question from this side. It is otherwise if we make the documents tell their own story: if we study them, as we study fossils, to discover internal evidence, of when they arose, and how they have come to be. That really fruitful line of inquiry has led to the statement and the discussion of what is known as the Synoptic Problem.

In the Essays (VII.—XI.) which deal with the consequences of the application of the agnostic principle to Christian Evidences, contained in this volume, there are several references to the results of the attempts which have been made, during the last hundred years, to solve this problem. And, though it has been clearly stated and discussed, in works accessible to, and intelligible by, every English reader,[5] it may be well that I should here set forth a very brief exposition of the matters of fact out of which the problem has arisen; and of some consequences, which, as I conceive, must be admitted if the facts are accepted.

I. The three books of which an ancient, but very questionable, ecclesiastical tradition asserts Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the authors, agree, not only in presenting the same general view, or Synopsis, of the nature and the order of the events narrated; but, to a remarkable extent, the very words which they employ coincide.

II. Nevertheless, there are many equally marked, and some irreconcilable, differences between them. Narratives, verbally identical in some portions, diverge more or less in others. The order in which they occur in one, or in two, Gospels may be changed in another. In "Matthew" and in "Luke" events of great importance make their appearance, where the story of "Mark" seems to leave no place for them; and, at the beginning and the end of the two former Gospels, there is a great amount of matter of which there is no trace in "Mark."

III. Obvious and highly important differences, in style and substance, separate the three "Synoptics," taken together, from the fourth Gospel, connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with the name of the apostle John. In its philosophical proemium; in the conspicuous absence of exorcistic miracles; in the self-assertive theosophy of the long and diffuse monologues, which are so utterly

IV. If the mutual resemblances and differences of the Synoptic Gospels are closely considered, a curious result comes out; namely, that each may be analyzed into four components. The first of these consists of passages, to a greater or less extent verbally identical, which occur in all three Gospels. If this triple tradition is separated from the rest it will be found to comprise:

a. A narrative, of a somewhat broken and anecdotic aspect, which covers the period from the appearance of John the Baptist to the discovery of the emptiness of the tomb, on the first day of the week, some six-and-thirty hours after the crucifixion.

b. An apocalyptic address.

c. Parables and brief discourses, or rather, centos of religious and ethical exhortations and injunctions.

The second and the third set of components of each Gospel present equally close resemblances to passages, which are found in only one of the other Gospels; therefore it may be said that, for them, the tradition is double. The fourth component

To put the facts in another way: each Gospel is composed of a threefold tradition, two twofold traditions, and one peculiar tradition. If the Gospels were the work of totally independent writers, it would follow that there are three witnesses for the statements in the first tradition; two for each of those in the second, and only one for those in the third.

V. If the reader will now take up that extremely instructive little book, Abbott and Rushbrooke's "Common Tradition" he will easily satisfy himself that "Mark" has the remarkable structure just described. Almost the whole of this Gospel consists of the first component; namely, the threefold tradition. But in chap. i. 23-28 he will discover an exorcistic story, not to be found in "Matthew," but repeated, often word for word, in "Luke." This, therefore, belongs to one of the twofold traditions. In chap. viii. 1-10, on the other hand, there is a detailed account of the miracle of feeding the four thousand; which is closely repeated in "Matthew" xv. 32-39, but is not to be found in "Luke." This is an example of the other twofold tradition, possible in "Mark." Finally, the story of the blind man of Bethsaida, "Mark" viii. 22-26, is peculiar to "Mark."

VI. Suppose that, A standing for the threefoldtradition, or the matter common to all three Gospels; we call the matter common to "Mark" and "Matthew" only—B; that common to "Mark" and "Luke" only—C; that common to "Matthew" and "Luke" only—D; while the peculiar components of "Mark," "Matthew," and "Luke" are severally indicated by E, F, G; then the structure of the Gospels may be represented thus:

Components of"Mark" = A + B + C + E.

""Matthew" = A + B + D + F.

""Luke" = A + C + D + G.

VII. The analysis of the Synoptic documents need be carried no further than this point, in order to suggest one extremely important, and, apparently unavoidable conclusion; and that is, that their authors were neither three independent witnesses of the things narrated; nor, for the parts of the narrative about which all agree, that is to say, the threefold tradition, did they employ independent sources of information. It is simply incredible that each of three independent witnesses of any series of occurrences should tell a story so similar, not only in arrangement and in small details, but in words, to that of each of the others.

Hence it follows, either that the Synoptic writers have, mediately or immediately, copied one from the other: or that the three have drawn from a common source; that is to say, from one

VIII. The suppositions (a) that "Mark" had "Matthew" and "Luke" before him; and (b) that either of the two latter was acquainted with the work of the other, would seem to involve some singular consequences.

a. The second Gospel is saturated with the lowest supernaturalism. Jesus is exhibited as a wonder-worker and exorcist of the first rank. The earliest public recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus comes from an "unclean spirit"; he himself is made to testify to the occurrence of the miraculous feeding twice over.

The purpose with which "Mark" sets out is to show forth Jesus as the Son of God, and it is suggested, if not distinctly stated, that he acquired this character at his baptism by John. The absence of any reference to the miraculous events of the infancy, detailed by "Matthew" and "Luke;" or to the appearances after the discovery of the emptiness of the tomb; is unintelligible, if "Mark" knew anything about them, or believed in the miraculous conception. The second Gospel is no summary: "Mark" can find room for the detailed story, irrelevant to his main purpose, of the beheading of John the Baptist, and his miraculous narrations are crowded with minute

b. The supposition that "Matthew" was acquainted with "Luke," or "Luke" with "Matthew" has equally grave implications. If that be so, the one who used the other could have had but a poor opinion of his predecessor's historical

IX. None of these troublesome consequences pursue the hypothesis that the threefold tradition, in one, or more, Greek versions, was extant before either of the canonical Synoptic Gospels; and that it furnished the fundamental framework of their several narratives. Where and when the threefold narrative arose, there is no positive evidence; though it is obviously probable that the traditions it embodies, and perhaps many others, took their rise in Palestine and spread thence to Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt and Italy, in the track of the early missionaries. Nor is it less likely that they formed part of the "didaskalia" of the primitive Nazarene and Christian communities.[6]

In such case, a good Roman Christian of that epoch might know nothing of the doctrine of the incarnation, as taught by "Matthew" and "Luke"; still less of the "logos" doctrine of "John"; neither need he have believed anything more than the simple fact of the resurrection. It was open to him to believe it either corporeal or spiritual. He would never have heard of the power of the keys bestowed upon Peter; nor have had brought to his mind so much as a suggestion of trinitarian doctrine. He might be a rigidly monotheistic Judæo-Christian, and consider himself bound by the law: he might be a Gentile Pauline convert, neither knowing of nor caring for such restrictions. In neither case would he find in "Mark" any serious stumbling-block. In fact, persons of all the categories admitted to salvation by Justin, in the middle of the second century,[7] could accept "

XI. "Mark," as we have seen, contains a relatively small body of ethical and religious instruction and only a few parables. Were these all that existed in the primitive threefold tradition? Were none others current in the Roman communities, at the time "Mark" wrote, supposing he wrote in Rome? Or, on the other hand, was there extant, as early as the time at which "Mark" composed his Greek edition of the primitive Evangel, one or more collections of parables and teachings, such as those which form the bulk of the twofold tradition, common exclusively to "Matthew" and "Luke," and are also found in their single traditions? Many have assumed this, or these, collections to be identical with, or at any rate based upon, the "logia," of which ecclesiastical tradition says, that they were written in Aramaic by Matthew, and that everybody translated them as he could.

Here is the old difficulty again. If such materials were known to "Mark," what imaginable reason could he have for not using them? Surely displacement of the long episode of John the Baptist—even pedissequus et breviator of Matthew, that even Augustine supposed him to be, what could induce him to omit the Lord's Prayer?

Whether more or less of the materials of the twofold tradition D, and of the peculiar traditions F and G, were or were not current in some of the communities, as early as, or perhaps earlier than, the triple tradition, it is not necessary for me to discuss; nor to consider those solutions of the Synoptic problem which assume that it existed earlier, and was already combined with more or less narrative. Those who are working out the final solution of the Synoptic problem are taking into account, more than hitherto, the possibility that the widely separated Christian communities of Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, especially after the Jewish war of A.D. 66-70, may have found themselves in possession of very different traditional materials. Many circumstances

XII. But it is unnecessary, and it would be out of place, for me to attempt to do more than indicate the existence of these complex and difficult questions. My purpose has been to make it clear that the Synoptic problem must force itself upon every one who studies the Gospels with attention; that the broad facts of the case, and some of the consequences deducible from these facts, are just as plain to the simple English reader as they are to the profoundest scholar.

One of these consequences is that the threefold tradition presents us with a narrative believed to be historically true, in all its particulars, by the major part, if not the whole, of the Christian communities. That narrative is penetrated, from beginning to end, by the demonological beliefs of which the Gadarene story is a specimen; and, if the fourth Gospel indicates the existence of another and, in some respects, irreconcilably divergent narrative, in which the demonology retires into the background, it is none the less there.

It further follows that those who accept devils, possession, and exorcism as essential elements of their conception of the spiritual world may consistently consider the testimony of the Gospels to be unimpeachable in respect of the information they give us respecting other matters which appertain to that world.

Those who reject the gospel demonology, on the other hand, would seem to be as completely barred, as I feel myself to be, from professing to take the accuracy of that information for granted. If the threefold tradition is wrong about one fundamental topic, it may be wrong about another, while the authority of the single traditions, often mutually contradictory as they are, becomes a vanishing quantity.

It really is unreasonable to ask any rejector of the demonology to say more with respect to those other matters, than that the statements regarding them may be true, or may be false; and that the ultimate decision, if it is to be favourable, must depend on the production of testimony of a very different character from that of the writers of the

A verdict of "not proven" is undoubtedly unsatisfactory and essentially provisional, so far forth as the subject of the trial is capable of being dealt with by due process of reason.

Those who are of opinion that the historical realities at the root of Christianity, lie beyond the jurisdiction of science, need not be considered. Those who are convinced that the evidence is, and must always remain, insufficient to support any definite conclusion, are justified in ignoring the subject. They must be content to put up with that reproach of being mere destroyers, of which Strauss speaks. They may say that there are so many problems which are and must remain insoluble, that the "burden of the mystery" "of all this unintelligible world" is not appreciably affected by one more or less.

For myself, I must confess that the problem of the origin of such very remarkable historical phenomena as the doctrines, and the social organization, which in their broad features certainly existed, and were in a state of rapid development, within a hundred years of the crucifixion of Jesus; and which have steadily prevailed

I am well aware that it has lain far beyond my powers to take any share in this great undertaking. All that I can hope is to have done somewhat towards "the preparation of those who have ceased to be contented with the old and find no satisfaction in half measures": perhaps, also, something towards the lessening of that great proportion of my countrymen, whose eminent characteristic it is that they find "full satisfaction in half measures."

T.H.H.

HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE, December 4th, 1893.

FOOTNOTES:

PROLOGUE

[Controverted Questions, 1892]

Le plus grand service qu'on puisse rendre à la science est d'y faire place nette avant d'y rien construire.—CUVIER.

Most of the Essays comprised in the present volume have been written during the last six or seven years, without premeditated purpose or intentional connection, in reply to attacks upon doctrines which I hold to be well founded; or in refutation of allegations respecting matters lying within the province of natural knowledge, which I believe to be erroneous; and they bear the mark of their origin in the controversial tone which pervades them.

Of polemical writing, as of other kinds of warfare, I think it may be said, that it is often useful, sometimes necessary, and always more or less of an evil. It is useful, when it attracts attention to topics which might otherwise be neglected; and when, as does sometimes happen, those who come to see a contest remain to think. It is necessary, [8] assuring my

But, however the polemical coincomitants of these discussions may be regarded—or better, disregarded—there is no doubt either about the importance of the topics of which they treat, or as to the public interest in the "Controverted Questions" with which they deal. Or rather, the Controverted Question; for disconnected as these pieces may, perhaps, appear to be, they are, in fact, concerned only with different aspects of a single problem, with which thinking men have been occupied, ever since they began seriously to consider the wonderful frame of things in which their lives are set, and to seek for trustworthy guidance among its intricacies.

Experience speedily taught them that the shifting scenes of the world's stage have a permanent background; that there is order amidst the seeming confusion, and that many events take place according to unchanging rules. To this region of familiar steadiness and customary regularity they gave the name of Nature. But, at the same time, their infantile and untutored reason, little more, as yet, than the playfellow of the imagination, led them to believe that this tangible, commonplace, orderly world of Nature was surrounded

Hence arose the conception of a "Supernature" antithetic to "Nature"—the primitive dualism of a natural world "fixed in fate" and a supernatural, left to the free play of volition—which has pervaded all later speculation and, for thousands of years, has exercised a profound influence on practice. For it is obvious that, on this theory of the Universe, the successful conduct of life must demand careful attention to both worlds; and, if either is to be neglected, it may be safer that it should be Nature. In any given contingency, it must doubtless be desirable to know what may be expected to happen in the ordinary course of things; but it must be quite as necessary to have some inkling of the line likely to be taken by supernatural agencies able, and possibly willing, to suspend or reverse that course. Indeed, logically developed, the dualistic theory

Thus the theoretical antithesis brought about a practical antagonism. From the earliest times of which we have any knowledge, Naturalism and Supernaturalism have consciously, or unconsciously, competed and struggled with one another; and the varying fortunes of the contest are written in the records of the course of civilisation, from those of Egypt and Babylonia, six thousand years ago, down to those of our own time and people.

These records inform us that, so far as men have paid attention to Nature, they have been rewarded for their pains. They have developed the Arts which have furnished the conditions of civilised existence; and the Sciences, which have been a progressive revelation of reality and have afforded the best discipline of the mind in the methods of discovering truth. They have accumulated a vast body of universally accepted knowledge; and the conceptions of man and of society, of morals and of law, based upon that knowledge,

History also tells us that the field of the supernatural has rewarded its cultivators with a harvest, perhaps not less luxuriant, but of a different character. It has produced an almost infinite diversity of Religions. These, if we set aside the ethical concomitants upon which natural knowledge also has a claim, are composed of information about Supernature; they tell us of the attributes of supernatural beings, of their relations with Nature, and of the operations by which their interference with the ordinary course of events can be secured or averted. It does not appear, however, that supernaturalists have attained to any agreement about these matters, or that history indicates a widening of the influence of supernaturalism on practice, with the onward flow of time. On the contrary, the various religions are, to a great extent, mutually exclusive; and their adherents delight in charging each other, not merely with error, but with criminality, deserving and ensuing punishment of infinite severity. In singular contrast with natural knowledge, again, the acquaintance of mankind with the supernatural appears the more extensive and the more exact, and the influence of supernatural doctrines upon conduct the greater, the further back we go in time and the lower the stage of civilisation

Whether this difference of the fortunes of Naturalism and of Supernaturalism is an indication of the progress, or of the regress, of humanity; of a fall from, or an advance towards, the higher life; is a matter of opinion. The point to which I wish to direct attention is that the difference exists and is making itself felt. Men are growing to be seriously alive to the fact that the historical evolution of humanity, which is generally, and I venture to think not unreasonably, regarded as progress, has been, and is being, accompanied by a co-ordinate elimination of the supernatural from its originally large occupation of men's thoughts. The question—How far is this process to go?—is, in my apprehension, the Controverted Question of our time.

Controversy on this matter—prolonged, bitter, and fought out with the weapons of the flesh, as well as with those of the spirit—is no new thing modus vivendi between the antagonists, some of which have had a world-wide influence; though, unfortunately, none have proved universally and permanently satisfactory.

In the fourteenth century, the controverted question among us was, whether certain portions of the Supernaturalism of mediæval Christianity were well-founded. John Wicliff proposed a solution of the problem which, in the course of the following two hundred years, acquired wide popularity and vast historical importance: Lollards, Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Socinians, and Anabaptists, whatever their disagreements, concurred in the proposal to reduce the Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits sanctioned by the Scriptures. None of the chiefs of Protestantism called in question either the supernatural origin and infallible authority of the Bible, or the exactitude of the account of the supernatural world given in its pages. In fact, they could not afford to entertain any doubt about these points, since the infallible Bible was the fulcrum of the lever with which they were endeavouring to upset the Chair of St. Peter. The "freedom of private judgment" which they proclaimed, meant no more, in practice, than permission to themselves to make free with the public

The impotence of their adversaries, however, did not remove the inherent weakness of the position of the Protestants. The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the Pope. If the former is held by "faith," then the latter may be. If the latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private judgment, why not the former? Even if the Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own infallibility, the value of that self-assertion to those who dispute the point is not obvious. On the other hand, if the infallibility of the Bible

Last, but not least, the Protestant principle contained within itself the germs of the destruction of the finality, which the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and other Protestant Churches fondly imagined they had reached. Since their creeds were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures, it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled

The champions of Protestantism are much given to glorify the Reformation of the sixteenth century as the emancipation of Reason; but it may be doubted if their contention has any solid ground; while there is a good deal of evidence to show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom

It was the iniquities, and not the irrationalities, of the Papal system that lay at the bottom of the revolt of the laity; which was, essentially, an attempt to shake off the intolerable burden of certain practical deductions from a Supernaturalism in which everybody, in principle, acquiesced. What was the gain to intellectual freedom of abolishing transubstantiation, image worship, indulgences, ecclesiastical infallibility; if consubstantiation, real-unreal presence mystifications,

It will be asked, perhaps, was not the Reformation one of the products of that great outbreak of many-sided free mental activity included under the general head of the Renascence? Melanchthon, Ulrich von Hutten, Beza, were they not all humanists? Was not the arch-humanist, Erasmus, fautor-in-chief of the Reformation, until he got frightened and basely deserted it?

From the language of Protestant historians, it would seem that they often forget that Reformation and Protestantism are by no means convertible terms. There were plenty of sincere and indeed zealous reformers, before, during, and after the birth and growth of Protestantism, who would have nothing to do with it. Assuredly, the rejuvenescence of science and of art; the widening of the field of Nature by geographical and astronomical discovery; the revelation of the noble ideals of antique literature by the revival of classical learning; the stir of thought, throughout all classes of society, by the printers' work, loosened traditional bonds and weakened the hold of mediæval Supernaturalism. In the interests of liberal culture and of national welfare, the

The key to the comprehension of the conduct of Erasmus, seems to me to lie in the clear apprehension of this fact. That he was a man of many weaknesses may be true; in fact, he was quite aware of them and professed himself no hero. But he never deserted that reformatory movement which he originally contemplated; and it was impossible he should have deserted the specifically Protestant reformation in which he never took part. He was essentially a theological whig, to whom radicalism was as hateful as it is to all whigs; or, to borrow a still more appropriate comparison from modern times, a broad churchman who refused to enlist with either the High Church or the Low Church zealots, and paid the

Few men had better means of being acquainted with the condition of Europe; none could be more competent to gauge the intellectual shallowness and self-contradiction of the Protestant criticism of Catholic doctrine; and to estimate, at its proper value, the fond imagination that the waters let out by the Renascence would come to rest amidst the blind alleys of the new ecclesiasticism. The bastard, whilom poor student and monk, become the familiar of bishops and princes, at home in all grades of society, could not fail to be aware of the gravity of the social position, of the dangers imminent from the profligacy and indifference of the ruling classes, no less than from the anarchical tendencies of the people who groaned under their oppression. The wanderer who had lived in Germany, in France, in England, in Italy, and who counted many of the best and most influential men in each country among his friends, was not likely to estimate wrongly the enormous forces which were still at the command of the Papacy. Bad as the churchmen might be, the

Let us suppose that, at the beginning of the Lutheran and Zwinglian movement, a vision of its immediate consequences had been granted to Erasmus; imagine that to the spectre of the fierce outbreak of Anabaptist communism, which opened the apocalypse, had succeeded, in shadowy procession, the reign of terror and of spoliation in England, with the judicial murders of his friends, More and Fisher; the bitter tyranny of evangelistic clericalism in Geneva and in Scotland; the

In fact, the stream of the Renascence, which bore Erasmus along, left Protestantism stranded amidst the mudbanks of its articles and creeds: while its true course became visible to all men, two centuries later. By this time, those in whom

The sceptical insurrection of the eighteenth century made a terrific noise and frightened not a few worthy people out of their wits; but cool judges might have foreseen, at the outset, that the efforts of the later rebels were no more likely than those of the earlier, to furnish permanent resting-places for the spirit of scientific inquiry. However worthy of admiration may be the acuteness, the common sense, the wit, the broad humanity, which abound in the writings of the best of the free-thinkers; there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation. I do not think any impartial judge will assert that, from this point of view, they are much better than their adversaries. It must be admitted that they share to the full the fatal weakness of a priori philosophising, no less than

For the most part, the Romanist and Protestant adversaries of the free-thinkers met them with arguments no better than their own; and with vituperation, so far inferior that it lacked the wit. But one great Christian Apologist fairly captured the guns of the free-thinking array, and turned their batteries upon themselves. Speculative "infidelity" of the eighteenth century type was mortally wounded by the Analogy; while the progress of the historical and psychological sciences brought to light the important part played by the mythopœic faculty; and, by demonstrating the extreme readiness of men to impose upon themselves, rendered the calling in of sacerdotal cooperation, in most cases, a superfluity.

Again, as in the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, social and political influences came into play. The free-thinking philosophes, who objected to Rousseau's sentimental religiosity almost as much as they did to L'Infâme, were credited with the responsibility for all the evil deeds of Rousseau's Jacobin disciples, with about as much justification as Wicliff was held responsible for theBauern-krieg. In England, though our ancien régime was not altogether lovely, the social edifice was never in such a bad way as in France; it was still capable of being repaired; and our forefathers, very wisely, preferred to wait until that operation could be safely performed, rather than pull it all down about their ears, in order to build a philosophically planned house on brand-new speculative foundations. Under these circumstances, it is not wonderful that, in this country, practical men preferred the gospel of Wesley and Whitfield to that of Jean Jacques; while enough of the old leaven of Puritanism remained to ensure the favour and support of a large number of religious men to a revival of evangelical supernaturalism. Thus, by degrees, the free-thinking, or the indifference, prevalent among us in the first half of the eighteenth century, was replaced by a strong supernaturalistic reaction, which submerged the work of the free-thinkers; and even seemed, for a time, to have arrested the naturalistic movement of which that work was an imperfect indication. Yet, like Lollardry, four centuries earlier, free-thought merely took to running underground, safe, sooner or later, to return to the surface.

My memory, unfortunately, carries me back to the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, when the evangelical flood had a little abated and the

In accordance with promises made on my behalf, but certainly without my authorisation, I was very early taken to hear "sermons in the vulgar tongue." And vulgar enough often was the tongue in which some preacher, ignorant alike of literature, of history, of science, and even of theology, outside that patronised by his own narrow school, poured forth, from the safe entrenchment of the pulpit, invectives against those who deviated from his notion of orthodoxy. From dark allusions to "sceptics" and "infidels," I became aware of the existence of people who trusted in carnal reason; who audaciously doubted that the world was made in six natural days, or that the deluge was universal; perhaps even went so far as to question the literal accuracy of the story of Eve's temptation, or of Balaam's ass; and, from the horror of the tones in which they were mentioned, I should have been justified in drawing the conclusion that these rash men belonged to the criminal classes. At the same time, those who were more directly responsible for providing me with the knowledge essential to the right guidance a fortiori of the Gospels, had to expect a pitiless shower of verbal missiles, to say nothing of the other disagreeable consequences which visit those who, in any way, run counter to that chaos of prejudices called public opinion.

My recollections of this time have recently been revived by the perusal of a remarkable document,[9] signed by as many as thirty-eight out of the twenty odd thousand clergymen of the Established Church. It does not appear that the signataries are officially accredited spokesmen of the ecclesiastical corporation to which they belong;

It is to the credit of the perspicacity of the memorialists that they discern the real nature of the Controverted Question of the age. They are awake to the unquestionable fact that, if Scripture has been discovered "not to be worthy of unquestioning belief," faith "in the supernatural itself" is, so far, undermined. And I may congratulate myself upon such weighty confirmation of an opinion in which I have had the fortune to anticipate them. But whether it is more to the credit of the courage, than to the intelligence, of the thirty-eight that they should go on to proclaim that the canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testaments "declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled," must be left to the coming generation to decide.

A humble layman, to whom it would seem the height of presumption to assume even the unconsidered dignity of a "steward of science," may well find this conflict of apparently equal ecclesiastical authorities perplexing—suggestive, indeed, of the wisdom of postponing attention to either, until the question of precedence between them is settled. And this course will probably appear the more advisable, the more closely the fundamental position of the memorialists is examined.

"No opinion of the fact or form of Divine Revelation, founded on literary criticism [and I suppose I may add historical, or physical, criticism] of the Scriptures themselves, can be admitted to interfere with the traditionary testimony of the Church, when that has been once ascertained and verified by appeal to antiquity."[10]

Now it is quite certain with respect to some of these books, such as the Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the Eastern and the Western Church differed in opinion for centuries; and yet neither the one branch nor the other can have considered its judgment infallible, since they eventually agreed to a transaction by which each gave up its objection to the book patronised by the other. Moreover, the "fathers" argue (in a more or less rational manner) about the canonicity of this or that book, and are by no means above producing evidence, internal and external, in favour of the opinions they advocate. In fact, imperfect as their conceptions of scientific method may be, they not unfrequently used it to the best of their ability. Thus it would appear that though science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely comes back again. The appeal to "antiquity" is, in fact, an appeal to science, first to define what antiquity is; secondly, to determine what "antiquity," so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly, to prove that canonicity means infallibility. And when science, largely in the shape of the abhorred "criticism," has answered this appeal, and has shown that "antiquity" used her own methods, however clumsily and imperfectly, she naturally turns round upon the appellants, and demands

But no such cause can be shown. If "antiquity" permitted Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Irenæus, to argue for the reception of this book into the canon and the rejection of that, upon rational grounds, "antiquity" admitted the whole principle of modern criticism. If Irenæus produces ridiculous reasons for limiting the Gospels to four, it was open to any one else to produce good reasons (if he had them) for cutting them down to three, or increasing them to five. If the Eastern branch of the Church had a right to reject the Apocalypse and accept the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Western an equal right to accept the Apocalypse and reject the Epistle, down to the fourth century, any other branch would have an equal right, on cause shown, to reject both, or, as the Catholic Church afterwards actually did, to accept both.

Thus I cannot but think that the thirty-eight are hoist with their own petard. Their "appeal to antiquity" turns out to be nothing but a round-about way of appealing to the tribunal, the jurisdiction of which they affect to deny. Having rested the world of Christian supernaturalism on the elephant of biblical infallibility, and furnished the elephant with standing ground on the tortoise

Moreover, there is another point to be considered. It is of course true that a Christian Church (whether the Christian Church, or not, depends on the connotation of the definite article) existed before the Christian scriptures; and that the infallibility of these depends upon the infallibility of the judgment of the persons who selected the books of which they are composed, out of the mass of literature current among the early Christians. The logical acumen of Augustine showed him that the authority of the Gospel he preached must rest on that of the Church to which he belonged.[11] But it is no less true that the Hebrew and the Septuagint versions of most, if not all, of the Old Testament books existed before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth; and that their divine authority is presupposed by, and therefore can hardly depend upon, the religious body constituted by his disciples. As everybody knows, the very conception of a "Christ" is purely Jewish. The validity

The proposal to cite Christian "antiquity" as a witness to the infallibility of the Old Testament, when its own claims to authority vanish, if certain propositions contained in the Old Testament are erroneous, hardly satisfies the requirements of lay logic. It is as if a claimant to be sole legatee, under another kind of testament, should offer his assertion as sufficient evidence of the validity of the will. And, even were not such a circular, or rather rotatory, argument, that the infallibility of the Bible is testified by the infallible Church, whose infallibility is testified by the infallible Bible, too absurd for serious consideration, it remains permissible to ask, Where and when the Church, during the period of its infallibility, as limited by Anglican dogmatic necessities, has officially decreed the "actual historical truth of all records" in the Old Testament? Was Augustine heretical when he denied the actual historical truth of the record of the Creation? Father Suarez, standing on later Roman tradition, may have a right to declare that he was; but it does not lie in the mouth of those who limit their

Among the watchers of the course of the world of thought, some view with delight and some with horror, the recrudescence of Supernaturalism which manifests itself among us, in shapes ranged along the whole flight of steps, which, in this case, separates the sublime from the ridiculous—from Neo-Catholicism and Inner-light mysticism, at the top, to unclean things, not worthy of mention in the same breath, at the bottom. In my poor opinion, the importance of these manifestations is often greatly over-estimated. The extant forms of Supernaturalism have deep roots in human nature, and will undoubtedly die hard; but, in these latter days, they have to cope with an enemy whose full strength is only just beginning to be put out, and whose forces, gathering strength year by year, are hemming them round on every side. This enemy is Science, in the acceptation of systematized natural knowledge, which, during the last two centuries, has extended those methods of investigation, the worth of which is confirmed by daily appeal to Nature, to every region in which the Supernatural has hitherto been recognised.

When scientific historical criticism reduced the annals of heroic Greece and of regal Rome to the level of fables; when the unity of authorship of the Iliad was successfully assailed by scientific literary

My purpose, in the essay (XVI.) which treats of the narrative of the Deluge, was to prove, by

In the essays (II., III.) on the narrative of the Creation, I have endeavoured to controvert the assertion that modern science supports, either the interpretation put upon it by Mr. Gladstone, or any interpretation which is compatible with the general sense of the narrative, quite apart from particular details. The first chapter of Genesis teaches the supernatural creation of the present forms of life; modern science teaches that they have come about by evolution. The first chapter of Genesis teaches the successive origin—firstly, of all the plants, secondly, of all the aquatic and aerial animals, thirdly, of all the terrestrial animals, which now exist—during distinct intervals of time; modern science teaches that, throughout all the duration of an immensely long past so far as we have any adequate knowledge of it (that is as far back as the Silurian epoch), plants, aquatic, aerial, and terrestrial animals have co-existed; that the earliest known are unlike those which at present exist; and that the modern species have

Yet, if the pretensions to infallibility set up, not by the ancient Hebrew writings themselves, but by the ecclesiastical champions and friends from whom they may well pray to be delivered, thus shatter themselves against the rock of natural knowledge, in respect of the two most important of all events, the origin of things and the palingenesis of terrestrial life, what historical credit dare any serious thinker attach to the narratives of the fabrication of Eve, of the Fall, of the commerce between the Bene Elohim and the daughters of men, which lie between the creational and the diluvial legends? And, if these are to lose all historical worth, what becomes of the infallibility of those who, according to the later scriptures, have accepted them, argued from them, and staked far-reaching dogmatic conclusions upon their historical accuracy?

It is the merest ostrich policy for contemporary ecclesiasticism to try to hide its Hexateuchal head—in the hope that the inseparable connection of its body with pre-Abrahamic legends may be overlooked. The question will still be asked, if the first nine chapters of the Pentateuch are

In some other of the following essays (IX., X., XI., XII., XIV., XV.) I have endeavoured to show that sober and well-founded physical and literary criticism plays no less havoc with the doctrine that the canonical scriptures of the New Testament "declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records." We are told that the Gospels contain a true revelation of the spiritual world—a proposition which, in one sense of the word "spiritual," I should not think it necessary to dispute. But, when it is taken to signify that everything we are told about the world of spirits in these books is infallibly true; that we are bound to accept the demonology which constitutes an inseparable part of their teaching; and to profess belief in a Supernaturalism as gross as that of any primitive people—it is at any rate permissible to ask why? Science may be unable to define the limits of possibility, but it cannot escape from the moral obligation to weigh the evidence in favour of any alleged wonderful occurrence; and I have endeavoured to show that the evidence for the Gadarene miracle is

Elsewhere, I have pointed out that it is utterly beside the mark to declaim against these conclusions on the ground of their asserted tendency to deprive mankind of the consolations of the Christian faith, and to destroy the foundations of morality; still less to brand them with the question-begging vituperative appellation of "infidelity." The point is not whether they are wicked; but, whether, from the point of view of scientific method, they are irrefragably true. If they are, they will be accepted in time, whether they are wicked, or not wicked. Nature, so far as we have been able to attain to any insight into her ways, recks little about consolation and makes for righteousness by very round-about paths. And, at any rate, whatever may be possible for other people, it is becoming less and less possible for the man who puts his faith in scientific methods of ascertaining truth, and is accustomed to have that faith justified by daily experience, to be consciously false to his principle in any matter. But the number of such men, driven into the use of scientific methods of inquiry and taught to trust them, by their education, their daily professional Te Deums for victory, our real faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we act on the aphorism "Laborare est orare"; we admit that intelligent work is the only acceptable worship; and that, whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature.

It is important to note that the principle of the scientific Naturalism of the latter half of the nineteenth century, in which the intellectual movement of the Renascence has culminated, and which [12] but simply to the denial of the validity of the evidence adduced in favour of this, or of that, extant form of Supernaturalism.

Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the assumption that, amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through endless space, there can be no intelligence, as much greater than man's as his is greater than a blackbeetle's; no being endowed with powers of influencing the course of nature as much greater than his, as his is greater than a snail's seems to me not merely baseless, but impertinent. Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. If our intelligence can, in some matters, surely reproduce the past of thousands of years ago and anticipate the future, thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the limits of possibility that some greater intellect, even of the same order, may be able to mirror the whole past and the whole future; if the universe

That of which it has laid the foundation, of which it is already raising the superstructure, is the doctrine of evolution. But so many strange misconceptions are current about this doctrine—it is attacked on such false grounds by its enemies, and made to cover so much that is disputable by some of its friends, that I think it well to define as clearly as I can, what I do not and what I do understand by the doctrine.

I have nothing to say to any "Philosophy of Evolution." Attempts to construct such a philosophy may be as useful, nay, even as admirable, as was the attempt of Descartes to get at a theory of the universe by the same a priori road; but, in my judgment, they are as premature. Nor, for this purpose, have I to do with any theory of the "Origin of Species," much as I value that which is known as the Darwinian theory. That the doctrine of natural selection presupposes evolution is quite true; but it is not true that evolution necessarily implies natural selection. In fact, evolution might conceivably have taken place without the development of groups possessing the characters of species.

The alternative presented, therefore, is: either the forms of one and the same type—say, e.g., that of the Horse tribe[13]—arose successively, but independently of one another, at intervals, during myriads of years; or, the later forms are modified vice versâ? Moreover, is it absolutely necessary to have watched every step of the progress of a planet, to be justified in concluding that it really does go round the sun? If so, astronomy is in a bad way.

I do not, for a moment, presume to suggest that some one, far better acquainted than I am with astronomy and physics; or that a master of the new chemistry, with its extraordinary revelations; or that a student of the development of human society, of language, and of religions, may not find a sufficient foundation for the doctrine of evolution in these several regions. On the contrary, I rejoice to see that scientific investigation, in all directions, is tending to the same result. And it may well be, that it is only my long occupation with biological matters that leads me to feel safer among them than anywhere else. Be that as it may, I take my stand on the facts of embryology and of palæontology; and I hold that our present knowledge of these facts is sufficiently thorough

1. Plants and animals have existed on our planet for many hundred thousand, probably millions, of years. During this time, their forms, or species, have undergone a succession of changes, which eventually gave rise to the species which constitute the present living population of the earth. There is no evidence, nor any reason to suspect, that this secular process of evolution is other than a part of the ordinary course of nature; there is no more ground for imagining the occurrence of supernatural intervention, at any moment in the development of species in the past, than there is for supposing such intervention to take place, at any moment in the development of an individual animal or plant, at the present day.

2. At present, every individual animal or plant commences its existence as an organism of extremely simple anatomical structure; and it acquires all the complexity it ultimately possesses by gradual differentiation into parts of various structure and function. When a series of specific forms of the same type, extending over a long period of past time, is examined, the relation between the earlier and the later forms is analogous to that between earlier and later stages of individual

3. It is generally agreed, and there is certainly no evidence to the contrary, that all plants are devoid of consciousness; that they neither feel, desire, nor think. It is conceivable that the evolution of the primordial living substance should have taken place only along the plant line. In that case, the result might have been a wealth of vegetable life, as great, perhaps as varied, as at present, though certainly widely different from the present flora, in the evolution of which animals have played so great a part. But the living world thus constituted would be simply an admirable piece of unconscious machinery, the working out of which lay potentially in its primitive composition; pleasure and pain would have no place in it; it would be a veritable Garden of Eden without any tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The question of the moral government of such a world could no more be asked, than we could reasonably seek for a moral purpose in a kaleidoscope.

4. How far down the scale of animal life the

In like manner, if fishes, insects, scorpions, and such animals as the pearly nautilus, possess feeling, then undoubtedly consciousness was present in the world as far back as the Silurian epoch. But, if the earliest animals were similar to our rhizopods and monads, there must have been some time, between the much earlier epoch in which they constituted the whole animal population and the Silurian, in which feeling dawned, in consequence of the organism having reached the stage of evolution on which it depends.

5. Consciousness has various forms, which may be manifested independently of one another. The feelings of light and colour, of sound, of touch, though so often associated with those of pleasure and pain, are, by nature, as entirely independent of them as is thinking. An animal devoid of the feelings of pleasure and of pain, may nevertheless exhibit all the effects of sensation and purposive action. Therefore, it would be a justifiable hypothesis that, long after organic

6. Suppose, for argument's sake, that all mammals and birds are subjects of pleasure and pain. Then we may be certain that these forms of consciousness were in existence at the beginning of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time forth, pleasure has been distributed without reference to merit, and pain inflicted without reference to demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction of the higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the severity of the pain, no less than the variety and acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with every advance in the scale of evolution. As suffering came into the world, not in consequence of a fall, but of a rise, in the scale of being, so every further rise has brought more suffering. As the evidence stands it would appear that the sort of brain which characterizes the highest mammals and which, so far as we know, is the indispensable condition of the highest sensibility, did not come into existence before the Tertiary epoch. The primordial anthropoid was probably, in this respect, on much the same footing as his pithecoid kin. Like them he stood upon his "natural rights," gratified all his desires to the best of his ability, and was as incapable of either right or

7. From the remotest ages of which we have any cognizance, death has been the natural and, apparently, the necessary concomitant of life. In our hypothetical world (3), inhabited by nothing but plants, death must have very early resulted from the struggle for existence: many of the crowd must have jostled one another out of the conditions on which life depends. The occurrence of death, as far back as we have any fossil record of life, however, needs not to be proved by such arguments; for, if there had been no death there would have been no fossil remains, such as the great majority of those we met with. Not only was there death in the world, as far as the record of life takes us; but, ever since mammals and birds have been preyed upon by carnivorous animals, there has been painful death, inflicted by mechanisms specially adapted for inflicting it.

8. Those who are acquainted with the closeness of the structural relations between the human organisation and that of the mammals which come nearest to him, on the one hand; and with the palæontological history of such animals as horses and dogs, on the other; will not be disposed to question the origin of man from forms which stand in the same sort of relation to Homo , as Hipparion does to Equus. I think it a conclusion, fully justified by analogy, that, sooner or later, we shall discover the remains of our less specialised primatic ancestors in the strata which have yielded the less specialised equine and canine quadrupeds. At present, fossil remains of men do not take us hack further than the later part of the Quaternary epoch; and, as was to be expected, they do not differ more from existing men, than Quaternary horses differ from existing horses. Still earlier we find traces of man, in implements, such as are used by the ruder savages at the present day. Later, the remains of the palæolithic and neolithic conditions take us gradually from the savage state to the civilizations of Egypt and of Mycenæ; though the true chronological order of the remains actually discovered may be uncertain.

9. Much has yet to be learned, but, at present, natural knowledge affords no support to the notion that men have fallen from a higher to a lower state. On the contrary, everything points to a slow natural evolution; which, favoured by the surrounding conditions in such localities as the valleys of the Yang-tse-kang, the Euphrates, and the Nile, reached a relatively high pitch, five or six thousand years ago; while, in many other regions, the savage condition has persisted down to our day. In all this vast lapse of time there is not a trace of the occurrence of any general

10. The results of the process of evolution in the case of man, and in that of his more nearly allied contemporaries, have been marvellously different. Yet it is easy to see that small primitive differences of a certain order, must, in the long run, bring about a wide divergence of the human stock from the others. It is a reasonable supposition that, in the earliest human organisms, an improved brain, a voice more capable of modulation and articulation, limbs which lent themselves better to gesture, a more perfect hand, capable among other things of imitating form in plastic or other material, were combined with the curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong family affection of the next lower group; and that they were accompanied by exceptional length of life and a prolonged minority. The last two peculiarities are obviously calculated to strengthen the family organisation, and to give great weight to its educative influences. The potentiality of language, as the vocal symbol of thought, lay in the faculty of modulating and articulating the voice. The potentiality of writing, as the visual symbol of thought, lay in the hand that could draw; and in the mimetic tendency, which, as we know, was gratified by drawing, as far back as the

11. That the doctrine of evolution implies a former state of innocence of mankind is quite true; but, as I have remarked, it is the innocence of the ape and of the tiger, whose acts, however they may run counter to the principles of morality, it would be absurd to blame. The lust of the one and the ferocity of the other are as much provided for in their organisation, are as clear evidences of design, as any other features that can be named.

Observation and experiment upon the phenomena of society soon taught men that, in order to obtain the advantages of social existence, certain rules must be observed. Morality commenced with society. Society is possible only upon the condition that the members of it shall surrender more or less of their individual freedom of action. In primitive societies, individual selfishness is a centrifugal force of such intensity that it is

12. The highest conceivable form of human society is that in which the desire to do what is best for the whole dominates and limits the action of every member of that society. The more complex the social organisation the greater the number of acts from which each man must abstain if he desires to do that which is best for all. Thus the progressive evolution of society means increasing restriction of individual freedom in certain directions.

With the advance of civilisation, and the growth of cities and of nations by the coalescence of families and of tribes, the rules which constitute the common foundation of morality and of law became more numerous and complicated, and the temptations to break or evade many of them stronger. In the absence of a clear apprehension of the natural sanctions of these rules, a supernatural sanction was assumed; and imagination

I am not of that opinion. But, whether it is correct or otherwise, it is very clear to me that, as Beelzebub is not to be cast out by the aid of Beelzebub, so morality is not to be established by immorality. It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the devil that he was a liar from the beginning. If we set out in life with pretending to know that which we do not know; with professing to accept for proof evidence which we are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully shutting our eyes and our ears to facts which militate against this or that comfortable hypothesis; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve the same character.

I have not the presumption to imagine that, in spite of all my efforts, errors may not have crept into these propositions. But I am tolerably confident that time will prove them to be substantially correct. And if they are so, I confess I do not see how any extant supernaturalistic system can also claim exactness. That they are irreconcilable with the biblical cosmogony,

Many seem to think that, when it is admitted that the ancient literature, contained in our Bibles, has no more claim to infallibility than any other ancient literature; when it is proved that the Israelites and their Christian successors accepted a great many supernaturalistic theories and legends which have no better foundation than those of heathenism, nothing remains to be done but to throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper.

I have always opposed this opinion. It appears to me that if there is anybody more objectionable than the orthodox Bibliolater it is the heterodox Philistine, who can discover in a literature which, in some respects, has no superior, nothing but

Twenty-two years ago I pleaded for the use of the Bible as an instrument of popular education, and I venture to repeat what I then said:

"Consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has become the national Epic of Britain and is as familiar to gentle and simple, from John o' Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest English and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind, who never left his village, to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilisations and of a great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of what other book could children be so much humanised and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between the Eternities; and earns the blessings or the curses of all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil, even as they also are earning their payment for their work?"[14]

I may add yet another claim of the Bible to the respect and the attention of a democratic age. Throughout the history of the western world, the Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, have been the great instigators of revolt against the worst forms of clerical and political despotism. The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed; down to modern times, no State has had a constitution in which the interests of the people are so largely taken into account, in which the duties, so much more than the privileges, of rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus; nowhere is the fundamental truth that the welfare of the State, in the long run, depends on the uprightness of the citizen so strongly laid down. Assuredly, the Bible talks no trash about the rights of man; but it insists on the equality of duties, on the liberty to bring about that righteousness which is somewhat different from struggling for "rights"; on the fraternity of taking thought for one's neighbour as for one's self.

But the enormous influence which has thus been exerted by the Jewish and Christian Scriptures has had no necessary connection with cosmogonies, demonologies, and miraculous interferences. Their strength lies in their appeals, not to the reason, but to the ethical sense. I do not say that even the highest biblical ideal is exclusive of others or needs no supplement. But I do believe that the human race is not yet, possibly may never be, in a position to dispense with it.

FOOTNOTES:

SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM

[1887]

Next to undue precipitation in anticipating the results of pending investigations, the intellectual sin which is commonest and most hurtful to those who devote themselves to the increase of knowledge is the omission to profit by the experience of their predecessors recorded in the history of science and philosophy. It is true that, at the present day, there is more excuse than at any former time for such neglect. No small labour is needed to raise one's self to the level of the acquisitions already made; and able men, who have achieved thus much, know that, if they devote themselves body and soul to the increase of their store, and avoid looking back, with as much care as if the injunction laid on Lot and his family were binding upon them, such devotion is sure to be richly repaid by the joys of the discoverer and

So, following the advice of Francis Bacon, we refuse inter mortuos quærere vivum; we leave the past to bury its dead, and ignore our intellectual ancestry. Nor are we content with that. We follow the evil example set us, not only by Bacon but by almost all the men of the Renaissance, in pouring scorn upon the work of our immediate spiritual forefathers, the schoolmen of the Middle Ages. It is accepted as a truth which is indisputable, that, for seven or eight centuries, a long succession of able men—some of them of transcendent acuteness and encyclopædic knowledge—devoted laborious lives to the grave discussion of mere frivolities and the arduous pursuit of intellectual will-o'-the-wisps. To say nothing of a little modesty, a little impartial pondering over personal experience might suggest a doubt as to the adequacy of this short and easy method of dealing with a large chapter of the history of the human mind. Even an acquaintance with popular literature which had extended so far as to include that part of the contributions of Sam Slick which contains his weighty aphorism that "there is a great deal of human nature in all mankind," might raise a doubt whether, after all, the men of that epoch, who, take them all round, were endowed with wisdom and folly in much the same proportion as ourselves, were likely to

If we turn our attention to scholastic philosophy in the frame of mind suggested by these prefatory remarks, it assumes a very different character from that which it bears in general estimation. No doubt it is surrounded by a dense thicket of thorny logomachies and obscured by the dust-clouds of a barbarous and perplexing terminology. But suppose that, undeterred by much grime and

That goal for the schoolmen, as for us, is the settlement of the question how far the universe is the manifestation of a rational order; in other words, how far logical deduction from indisputable premisses will account for what which has happened and does happen. That was the object of scholasticism, and, so far as I am aware, the object of modern science may be expressed in the same terms. In pursuit of this end, modern science takes into account all the phenomena of the universe which are brought to our knowledge by observation or by experiment. It admits that there are two worlds to be considered, the one physical and the other psychical; and that though there is a most intimate relation and interconnection between the two, the bridge from one to the other has yet to be found; that their phenomena run, not in one series, but along two parallel lines.

To the schoolmen the duality of the universe appeared under a different aspect. How this came about will not be intelligible unless we clearly apprehend the fact that they did really

For the most part, we learn history from the colourless compendiums or partisan briefs of mere scholars, who have too little acquaintance with practical life, and too little insight into speculative problems, to understand that about which they write. In historical science, as in all sciences which have to do with concrete phenomena, laboratory practice is indispensable; and the laboratory practice of historical science is afforded, on the one hand, by active social and political life, and, on the other, by the study of those tendencies and operations of the mind which embody themselves in philosophical and theological systems. Thucydides and Tacitus, and, to come nearer our own time, Hume and Grote, were men of affairs, and had acquired, by direct contact with social and political history in the making, the secret of understanding how such history is made. Our notions of the intellectual history of the

However, no very profound study of the works of contemporary writers who, without devoting themselves specially to theology or philosophy, were learned and enlightened—such men, for example, as Eginhard or Dante—is necessary to convince one's self, that, for them, the world of the theologian was an ever-present and awful reality. From the centre of that world, the Divine Trinity, surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints, contemplated and governed the insignificant sensible world in which the inferior spirits of men, burdened with the debasement of their material embodiment and continually solicited to their perdition by a no less numerous and almost as powerful hierarchy of devils, were constantly struggling on the edge of the pit of everlasting damnation.[15]

In the middle ages, the labours of those great men who endeavoured to reconcile the system of thought which started from the data of pure reason, with that which started from the data of Roman theology, produced the system of thought which is known as scholastic philosophy; the alternative of surrender and suicide is exemplified by Avicenna and his followers when they declared that that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy, and vice versâ; and by Sanchez in his famous defence of the thesis "Quod nil scitur."

To those who deny the validity of one of the primary assumptions of the disputants—who decline, on the ground of the utter insufficiency of the evidence, to put faith in the reality of that other world, the geography and the inhabitants of which are so confidently described in the so-called[16] Christianity of Catholicism—the long and bitter contest, which engaged the best intellects [17]

The other day I happened to meet with a report of a sermon recently preached in St. Paul's Cathedral. From internal evidence I am inclined to think that the report is substantially correct. But as I have not the slightest intention of finding fault with the eminent theologian and eloquent preacher to whom the discourse is attributed, for employment of scientific language in a manner for which he could find only too many scientific precedents, the accuracy of the report in detail is not to the purpose. I may safely take it as the embodiment of views which are thought to be

The preacher further contended that it was yet more difficult to realise that our earthly home would become the scene of a vast physical catastrophe. Imagination recoils from the idea that the course of nature—the phrase helps to disguise the truth—so unvarying and regular, the ordered sequence of movement and life, should suddenly cease. Imagination looks more reasonable when it assumes the air of scientific reason. Physical law, it says, will prevent the occurrence of catastrophes only anticipated by an apostle in an unscientific age. Might not there, however, be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of a higher? Thus every time we lifted our arms we defied the laws of gravitation, and in railways and steamboats powerful laws were held in check by others. The flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were brought about by the operation of existing laws, and may it not be that in His illimitable universe there are more important laws than those which surround our puny life—moral and not merely physical forces? Is it inconceivable that the day will come when these royal and ultimate laws shall wreck the natural order of things which seems so stable and so fair? Earthquakes were not things of remote antiquity, as an island off Italy, the Eastern Archipelago, Greece, and Chicago bore witness.... In presence of a great earthquake men feel how powerless they are, and their very knowledge adds to their weakness. The end of human probation, the final dissolution of organised society, and the destruction of man's home on the surface of the globe, were none of them violently contrary to our present experience, but only the extension of present facts. The presentiment of death was common; there were felt to be many things which threatened the existence of society; and as our globe was a ball of fire, at any moment the pent-up forces which surge and

The preacher appears to entertain the notion that the occurrence of a "catastrophe"[18] involves a breach of the present order of nature—that it is an event incompatible with the physical laws which at present obtain. He seems to be of opinion that "scientific reason" lends its authority to the imaginative supposition that physical law will prevent the occurrence of the "catastrophes" anticipated by an unscientific apostle.

Scientific reason, like Homer, sometimes nods; but I am not aware that it has ever dreamed dreams of this sort. The fundamental axiom of scientific thought is that there is not, never has been, and never will be, any disorder in nature. The admission of the occurrence of any event which was not the logical consequence of the immediately antecedent events, according to these definite, ascertained, or unascertained rules which we call the "laws of nature," would be an act of self-destruction on the part of science.

"Catastrophe" is a relative conception. For ourselves it means an event which brings about very terrible consequences to man, or impresses his mind by its magnitude relatively to him. But events which are quite in the natural order of

Imagination, inspired by scientific reason, and not merely assuming the airs thereof, as it unfortunately too often does in the pulpit, so far from having any right to repudiate catastrophes and deny the possibility of the cessation of motion and life, easily finds justification for the exactly contrary course. Kant in his famous "Theory of the Heavens" declares the end of the world and its reduction to a formless condition to be a necessary consequence of the causes to which it owes its origin and continuance. And, as to catastrophes of prodigious magnitude and frequent occurrence, they were the favourite asylum ignorantiæ of geologists, not a quarter of a century ago. If modern geology is becoming more and more disinclined to call in catastrophes to its aid, it is not because of any a priori difficulty in reconciling a posteriori evidence of the occurrence of events of this character in past times has more or less completely broken down.

It is, to say the least, highly probable that this earth is a mass of extremely hot matter, invested by a cooled crust, through which the hot interior still continues to cool, though with extreme slowness. It is no less probable that the faults and dislocations, the foldings and fractures, everywhere visible in the stratified crust, its large and slow movements through miles of elevation and depression, and its small and rapid movements which give rise to the innumerable perceived and unperceived earthquakes which are constantly occurring, are due to the shrinkage of the crust on its cooling and contracting nucleus.

Without going beyond the range of fair scientific analogy, conditions are easily conceivable which should render the loss of heat far more rapid than it is at present; and such an occurrence would be just as much in accordance with ascertained laws of nature, as the more rapid cooling of a red-hot bar, when it is thrust into cold water, than when it remains in the air. But much more rapid cooling might entail a shifting and rearrangement of the parts of the crust of the earth on a scale of unprecedented magnitude, and bring about "catastrophes" to which the earthquake of Lisbon is but a trifle. It is conceivable that man and his

I repeat that, if imagination is used within the limits laid down by science, disorder is unimaginable. If a being endowed with perfect intellectual and æsthetic faculties, but devoid of the capacity for suffering pain, either physical or moral, were Amor intellectualis Dei, the beatific vision of the vita contemplativa, which some of the greatest thinkers of all ages, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, have regarded as the only conceivable eternal felicity; and the vision of illimitable suffering, as if sensitive beings were unregarded animalcules which had got between the bits of glass of the kaleidoscope, which mars the prospect to us poor mortals, in no wise alters the fact that order is lord of all, and disorder only a name for that part of the order which gives us pain.

The other fallacious employment of the names of scientific conceptions which pervades the preacher's utterance, brings me back to the proper topic of the present essay. It is the use of the word "law" as if it denoted a thing—as if a "law of nature," as science understands it, were a being endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which the phenomena expressed by that law are brought about. The preacher asks, "Might not there be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of

Far be it from me to controvert these views, if any one likes to hold them. All I wish to remark is that such a conception of the nature of "laws" has nothing to do with modern science. It is scholastic realism—realism as intense and unmitigated as that of Scotus Erigena a thousand years ago. The essence of such realism is that it maintains the objective existence of universals, or, as we call them nowadays, general propositions. It affirms, for example, that "man" is a real

In the same way, a law of nature, in the scientific sense, is the product of a mental operation upon the facts of nature which come under our observation, and has no more existence outside the mind than colour has. The law of gravitation is a statement of the manner in which experience shows that bodies, which are free to move, do, in

Scientifically speaking, it is the acme of absurdity to talk of a man defying the law of gravitation when he lifts his arm. The general store of energy in the universe working through terrestrial matter is doubtless tending to bring the man's arm down; but the particular fraction of that energy which is working through certain of his nervous and muscular organs is tending to drive it up, and more energy being expended on the arm in the upward than in the downward direction, the arm goes up accordingly. But the law of gravitation is no more defied, in this case, than when a grocer throws so much sugar into the empty pan of his scales that the one which contains the weight kicks the beam.

The tenacity of the wonderful fallacy that the laws of nature are agents, instead of being, as they

Even at the present day, and in the writings of men who would at once repudiate scholastic realism in any form, "law" is often inadvertently employed in the sense of cause, just as, in common life, a man will say that he is compelled by the law to do so and so, when, in point of fact, all he means is that the law orders him to do it, and tells him what will happen if he does not do it. We commonly hear of bodies falling to the ground by reason of the law of gravitation, whereas that law is simply the record of the fact that, according to all experience, they have so fallen (when free to move), and of the grounds of a reasonable expectation that they will so fall. If it should be worth anybody's while to seek for examples of such misuse of language on my own part, I am not at all sure he might not succeed, though I have usually been on my guard against such looseness of expression. If I am guilty, I do penance beforehand, and only hope that I may thereby deter others from committing the like fault. And I venture on this personal observation by way of showing that I have no wish to bear hardly on the preacher for falling into an error for which

There are two classes of these people: those who are ready to believe in any miracle so long as it is guaranteed by ecclesiastical authority; and those who are ready to believe in any miracle so long as it has some different guarantee. The believers in what are ordinarily called miracles—those who accept the miraculous narratives which they are taught to think are essential elements of religious doctrine—are in the one category; the spirit-rappers, table-turners, and all the other devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in the other: and, if they disagree in most things they agree in this, namely, that they ascribe to science a dictum that is not scientific; and that they endeavour to upset the dictum thus foisted on science by a realistic argument which is equally unscientific.

The plain answer to this question is, Why should anybody be called upon to say how he knows that which he does not know? You are assuming that laws are agents—efficient causes of that which happens—and that one law can interfere with another. To us, that assumption is as nonsensical as if you were to talk of a proposition of Euclid being the cause of the diagram which illustrates it, or of the integral calculus interfering with the rule of three. Your question really implies that we pretend to complete knowledge not only of all past and present phenomena, but of all that are possible in the future, and we leave all that sort of thing to the adepts of esoteric

As to the particular cases adduced, we are so perfectly fair-minded as to be willing to help your case as far as we can. You are quite mistaken in supposing that anybody who is acquainted with the possibilities of physical science will undertake categorically to deny that water may be turned into wine. Many very competent judges are already inclined to think that the bodies, which we have hitherto called elementary, are really composite arrangements of the particles of a uniform primitive matter. Supposing that view to be correct, there would be no more theoretical difficulty about turning water into alcohol, ethereal and colouring matters, than there is, at this present moment, any practical difficulty in working other such miracles; as when we turn sugar into alcohol,

Theoretically, therefore, we can have no sort of objection to your miracle. And our reply to the levitators is just the same. Why should not your friend "levitate"? Fish are said to rise and sink in the water by altering the volume of an internal air-receptacle; and there may be many ways science, as yet, knows nothing of, by which we, who live at the bottom of an ocean of air, may do the same thing. Dialectic gas and wind appear to be by no means wanting among you, and why should not long practice in pneumatic philosophy have resulted in the internal generation of something a thousand times rarer than hydrogen, by which, in accordance with the most ordinary natural laws, you would not only rise to the ceiling and float there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit