GOULD'S ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF.[11]

GOULD'S ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF.[11]

In this book the author considers what are the natural religious wants of man's soul; he shows how these cravings have given birth to various religious systems; he considers to what extent these systems are capable of satisfying man's moral nature, including in this survey every ancient and modern belief except Christianity; and proves that they have all failed in a greater or less degree. In a second volume he intends "to show how that Christianity by its fundamental postulate—the Incarnation—assumes to meet all these instincts; how it actually does so meet them; and how failure is due to counteracting political or social causes." (P. 6.)

In other words, we have here a treatise on religion from the à priori, rationalistic or philosophic stand-point. The work is done as well as we could expect from a non-Catholic author. But like most other books of the same stamp, written by those outside of the church, it contains many errors and false statements of facts. As it has attracted no little attention, and may be considered as a type of a large class, we will give some quotations from it, to show how cautiously these books are to be read, and how little confidence can be placed in their assertions.

In his preface, the author says that, besides the historical revelation, "We have a revelation in our own nature.... On this revelation the church of the future must establish its claims to acceptance." (P. 6.) If Christ was God, as we firmly believe, or even an inspired teacher sent by God, the first and only thing necessary is to know what he taught. We must examine extrinsic evidence which bears on the inspiration, authenticity, and genuineness of the historical documents in which his teaching is contained. Intrinsic evidence derived from the examination of that teaching, and the consideration of its complete harmony with man's spiritual nature, must be assigned a second, not a first place.

In the following passages, which are certainly not a little ridiculous, we have naturalism and materialism:

"Mysticism is produced by the combustion of the gray vascular matter in the sensorium—the thalami optici and the corpora striata." (P. 355.)

"Prayer is a liberation of force. When the emotions are excited, rapid combustion of nervous tissue ensues, and the desire that inevitably follows to do something is the signal that an amount of power has been generated, and equilibrium is disturbed." (P. 387.)

"Pantheism," we are told, p. 292, "is the philosophy of reason—of reason, it may be, in its impotence," (most assuredly!) "but of such reason as man is gifted with here."

On page 319, speaking of Kant, he says, "All the arguments advanced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God crumbled into dust beneath his touch." The truth is precisely the opposite. Kant has "crumbled into dust," and "all the arguments adduced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God" remain as unshaken as before he was born.

We are told, on page 79, that the chief reason why all men have believed in the immortality of the soul, is because they could not form even a conception of its annihilation. On the contrary, any one who has ever slept soundly can conceive its annihilation without any difficulty, though he might experience a good deal in endeavoring to picture to himself an existence without end. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, however, even in philosophy, does not rest on any such weak arguments.

That most wonderful fact of history, in which the finger of God evidently appears, namely, the preservation of the Jewish people and their belief for the past eighteen hundred years, in the face of causes which, according to every natural law, ought long ago to have destroyed both creed and nation, is accounted for (p. 205) simply by their possession of "the Talmud, which is a minute rule of life," etc. Credat Judæus Apella.

"A man of thought will not steal, because he knows he is violating a law of sciology." (P. 278.) Were all the men in the world "sciologists," and "men of thought," we would not be in the least inclined to trust our property to the slender protection afforded by a law of "sciology."

Every native of the "Gem of the Ocean" will be delighted to learn that "The suffering Celt has his Brian Boroimhe, ... who will come again ... to inaugurate a Fenian millennium," (p. 407;) and students of history will be surprised to know that

"Marie Antoinette was informed of the execution of Robespierre by a woman in the street below the prison putting stones in her apron, and then, with her hand falling on them, scattering them on the ground." (P. 187.)

Marie Antoinette was not alive when Robespierre was executed. The above incident occurred in the life of Josephine Beauharnais.

On pages 133-134, we are told substantially that for the first three or four centuries after Christ, God governed the Christian world directly! Then, for a time, through the priests alone! Afterward, for several centuries, through kings alone! Now the whole Christian world is ruled solely by "the open Bible!" This is a good example of how most non-Catholic writers, when speaking of religion, are always ready to sacrifice historical truth for the sake of a generalization or a rhetorical flourish.

"Its primitive organization (that is, of the church) was purely democratic. It recognized the right of the governed to choose their governor." (P. 201.) We never knew before that the people of Ephesus elected Timothy to be their ruler, or the people of Crete, Titus. We thought St. Paul appointed both of them, and that he told Timothy, "The things which thou hast heard from me before many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men who shall be fit to teach others also," (Epis. to Timothy ii. 2;) and that he wrote to Titus, "... ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed thee." (Epis. to Titus i. 5.)

"When Hildebrand gathered up the reins of government in his powerful hand to transmit them to his successors, the ecclesiastical elective primacy became an absolute supremacy." (P. 201.)

In the Arabian Nights, if any difficulty occurs to interfere with the plot of a story, genii or fairies are straightway introduced, perform very coolly some astounding act, and presto! all goes smoothly again. So, when Protestant authors, in writing history, come across any fact that stands in the way of their preconceived anti-Catholic theories, and logic cannot remove it, they introduce "priestcraft," "Hildebrand," "the cunning Jesuits," etc.; these prodigies shoulder the difficulty, walk off with it, and then "it is all perfectly clear." "Priestcraft," for instance, invented the whole sacramental system and foisted it on the church, no one knows when, where, or how. "Hildebrand" created the papal power. It did not exist before his time. "The cunning Jesuits"—ah! it would require more than a Thousand and One Arabian Nights to recount all the wondrous achievements of these mythological characters. Their latest act has been the convocation of the present œcumenical council, which they rule with an iron hand. In fact, the editor of this magazine, who is a member of the council, has written to us privately that now their power and tyranny have become so great that when the council is in full session you have to ask a special permission of "the cunning Jesuits" if you desire to sneeze or even wink! (Isn't it awful, reader? But this, you know, is strictly entre nous. You mustn't mention it to any body on any consideration, unless, of course—as is not at all impossible—you should hereafter learn the same thing from the Atlantic Cable!)

The saints of the Catholic Church in modern times, we read, (p. 362,) "are ecstatics, crazy nuns, and sentimental boys." Such, therefore, were Sts. Alphonsus Liguori, Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Vincent de Paul, Charles Borromeo, Francis of Sales, Theresa, Jane de Chantal, and the two Catherines! Well, we live to learn!

Mr. Gould, in order, it would appear, to give an air of originality—or, more correctly, aboriginality—to his book, chooses to employ the term idol as signifying any representation of the Deity, (whether it receive divine worship or not,) even the intellectual conception or purely philosophic idea! "Idolatry, then, is the outward expression of the belief in a personal God." (P. 176.) According to this new nomenclature, we must style all Christians idolaters!

"A fetish is a concentration of spirit or deity upon one point." (P. 177.) So with sticks, stones, and snakes, he ranks the Sacred Host—the Catholic fetish!

"The attribution to the Deity of wisdom and goodness is every whit as much anthropomorphosis as the attribution of limbs and passions." (P. 175.) So all worshippers of the Deity (for the impersonal "God" of pantheism is simply no God at all) are anthropomorphists as well as "idolaters"!

The last remark we have quoted from the author is not true. The soul alone is not the man; neither is the body alone; but soul and body together. Whoever, therefore, attributes to God only the spiritual attributes of man, cannot be properly termed an anthropomorphist. In any case, however, we most decidedly object to any one's applying to sacred things terms rendered opprobrious by long and correct usage. The effect of such an act is to confuse the reader, and its tendency is to bring what is holy into contempt. Perhaps this was the author's intention.

As might easily be supposed from the foregoing examples, the writer of this book is one of the nineteenth century illuminati, and in favor of "unrestrained freedom of thought," etc., (the chief enemies of which are historical facts, sound logic, and common-sense.) We will now listen for a moment while, in good orthodox Protestant fashion, he is "shouting the battle-cry of freedom."

"Sacerdotal despotism succeeded in the middle ages in concentrating all power over consciences and intelligences in the hands of an order whose centre was in Rome." (P. 138.)

"The Reformation was a revolt against that oppressive despotism of the Roman theocracy which crushed the human intellect and paralyzed freedom of action." (P. 139.)

"Under an infallible guide, regulating every moral and theological item of his (man's) spiritual being, his mental faculties are given him that they may be atrophied, like the eyes of the oyster, which, being useless in the sludge of its bed, are reabsorbed." (P. 140.)

"Theocratic legislation hampers every man's action from the cradle to the grave.... The Israelites are a case in point. They were tied down ... lest they should desert monotheism for idolatry." (P. 204.)

"In a theocracy there is neither individuality, personality, nor originality.... It has restrained independence, shackled commerce, conventionalized art, mummified science, cramped literature, and stifled thought," etc. (Pp. 207, 208.)

What a pity that we poor "Romanists" are so "benighted," etc., etc., that we don't in the least appreciate these modern Solons, who seem to think that every one should be "progressive;" that is, spend his life in dragging himself out of one humbug only to fall into another; or, as the wise critic of The Nation put it a short time ago, in speaking of a story in The Catholic World, a young man ought to be like a ship, and devote his existence to sailing about—on the boundless ocean, we suppose, of infidel nonsense![12]

Finally, we read, (pp. 138, 139.)

"'Strange destiny, that of theology, to be condemned to be for ever attaching itself to those systems which are crumbling away,' writes M. Maury; 'to be essentially hostile to all science that is novel, and to all progress!'"

We shall only remark that, were religion to spend her time in pinning her faith to all the "novel," "scientific," "progressive" systems that spring up every day and straightway begin to crumble, even while these learned "sciologists" are tossing high their caps in air and shouting out in impressive chorus, "Where now is theology?"—it would, we think, be even stranger still.

We have devoted this much space to showing up some of the falsehoods in this book because it is not all false nor all stupid; it is a philosophic and, to some extent, a learned work; it is written in a brilliant and attractive style. This class of works dazzle; but when written by non-Catholics, they are not to be trusted. The only deep, and, at the same time, sound scholarship in the world is in the Catholic Church. Those who protest against her protest against the truth; even the most learned among them, on many most essential matters, are surprisingly ignorant; but what they want in knowledge they make up generally in flash rhetoric and humbug novelty, and that suits this enlightened age just as well.

Too many persons, however, when they see much that is true in a book, are inclined to believe it all true; and so with a considerable amount of food they will swallow a great deal of poison. This is a mistake. No author is ever wholly wrong. The falsest say many things that are true.

To show how error and truth may be found side by side in the same work, we will give some quotations from our author in which his ideas are sufficiently, or even strikingly, correct.

He thus speaks of asceticism:

"From whatever motive an ascetic life is undertaken, the result is accumulation of force. The ascetic cuts himself off, as much as possible, from all means of liberating force. His voluntary celibacy and abstinence from active work place at his disposal all that force which would be discharged by a man in the world in muscular action and in domestic affection.... Withdrawal from society intensifies his individuality, and, unless the ideas formed in his brain be such as can excite his emotion, he becomes completely self-centred. But if the object of his contemplation be one which is calculated to draw out his affections, the result is a coördinate accumulation of mental and affectional power." (P. 348.)

"Luther, a man of coarse and vigorous animalism, was no ascetic." (P. 350.)

The doctrine of Zwinglius, he tells us, was simply pantheism, and that of Calvin he considers undeserving the name of Christianity.

"Alongside of Mohammedanism must be placed a parallel development in Europe, which, though nominally Christian, is intrinsically deistic. Consciously it was not so, but logically it was; and in its evolution it proved a striking counterpart to Islamism.

"Zwinglius had taught that God was infinite essence, absolute being, (τὸ Esse.) The being of creatures, he said, was not opposed to the being of God, but was in and by him. Not man only, but all creation, was of divine race. Nature was the force of God in action, and every thing is one. Sin he held to be the necessary consequence of the development of man, and to be, not a disturbance of moral order, but the necessary process in the development of man, who has no free-will.

"Calvin's idea of God was quite as absolute as that formed by Zwinglius, but it was not so pantheistic, though he did not shrink from calling nature God. The Deity was to him the great autocrat, whose absolute will allotted to man his place in time and in eternity. Beyond the pale of the church, he taught, there was no remission to be hoped for, nor any chance of salvation; for the church was the number of the predestined, and God could not alter his decision without abrogating his divinity." (P. 266.)

"He swept away the sacramental system; if he held to Christianity, it was in name, not in theory, for his doctrine excluded it as a necessary article. He deprived the atonement of its efficacy and significance, and he left the Incarnation unaccounted for, save by the absolute decree of the divine and arbitrary will which he worshipped as God." (P. 267.)

He thus speaks of the Reformation and of its cardinal principle:

"But what was the result of the Reformation? The establishment of a royal along side of a biblical theocracy. The crown became the supreme head to order what religion is to consist of, how worship is to be conducted, and what articles of faith are to be believed." (P. 139.)

"The Scriptures were then assumed to be the ultimate authority on doctrine and ethics; they were supposed to contain 'all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.'

"This mode of arresting modification is not, however, final, and cannot in the nature of things be final; for, firstly, the significance of the terms in which the revelation is couched must be subject to the most conflicting interpretations; and secondly, the authority of the revelation will be constantly exposed to be questioned, and the genuineness of the documents to be disputed." (P. 134.)

Buddhism he calls the Protestantism of the East.

"Its cold philosophy and thin abstractions, however they might exercise the faculties of anchorites, have proved insufficient of themselves to arrest man in his career of passion and pursuit; and the bold experiment of influencing the heart and regulating the conduct of mankind by the external decencies and the mutual dependencies of morality, unsustained by higher hopes, has proved in this instance an unredeemed and hopeless failure." (P. 353.)

"In confiding all to the mere strength of the human intellect, and the enthusiastic self-reliance and determination of the human heart, it makes no provision for defence against those powerful temptations before which ordinary resolution must give way." (P. 354.)

"The mass of the population are profoundly ignorant of, and utterly indifferent to, the tenets of their creed.... 'The same results appear in the phases of Buddhism beyond India,' says M. Maupied; 'in the north of Asia and in China it has arrived at a sort of speculative atheism, which has not only arrested proselytism, but which is self-destructive, and which in the end will completely ruin it.' It is not a religion but a philosophy. (P. 355.)

"This close resemblance seems to have been felt on first contact of Calvinism and Buddhism; for we find in 1684 the Dutch government importing at its own expense Buddhist missionaries from Arracan to Ceylon to oppose the progress of Catholicism." (P. 353.)

He is not in line with those, so numerous in this age and country, who hold to the Chinese notion that intellectual and material progress is every thing.

"On the whole, it will be found that the amount of happiness in a race not highly civilized is far more general, and its sum total far higher, than that of an over-civilized race. The rude and simple Swiss peasantry are thoroughly happy, while in a large city like London, the upper stratum of society is engaged in nervous quest of pleasure which ever eludes them, while the lower is plunged in misery. Besides, what is really meant by the progress of the species? The only tangible superiority of a generation over that which has preceded it, appears to consist in its having within its reach a larger accumulation of scientific or literary materials for thought, or a greater mastery over the forces of inanimate nature; advantages not without their drawbacks, and at any rate of a somewhat superficial kind. Genius is not progressive from age to age; nor yet the practice, however it may be with the science, of moral excellence. And, as this progress of the species is only supposed, after all, to be an improvement of its condition during men's first lifetime, the belief—call it, if you will, but a dream—of a prolonged existence after death reduces the whole progress to insignificance. There is more, even as regards quantity of sensation, in the spiritual well-being of one single soul, with an existence thus continuous, than in the increased physical or intellectual prosperity, during one lifetime, of the entire human race." (P. 59-60.)

Nor does he appear to believe in the Protestant method of converting people, and causing them to "experience religion." We read on page 358 that, while Wesley was preaching at Bristol,

"'one, and another, and another,' we are told, 'sank to the earth. They dropped on every side as thunderstruck.' Men and women by 'scores were sometimes strewed on the ground at once, insensible as dead men.' During a Methodist revival in Cornwall, four thousand people, it is computed, fell into convulsions. 'They remained during this condition so abstracted from every earthly thought, that they staid two, and sometimes three days and nights together in the chapels, agitated all the time by spasmodic movements, and taking neither repose nor refreshment. The symptoms followed each other usually as follows: A sense of faintness and oppression, shrieks as if in the agony of death or the pains of labor, convulsions of the muscles of the eyelids—the eyes being fixed and staring—and of the muscles of the neck, trunk, and arms; sobbing respiration, tremors, and general agitation, and all sorts of strange gestures. When exhaustion came on, patients usually fainted, and remained stiff and motionless until their recovery.'" (P. 358.)

Finally, in speaking of the "diverse forms of ceremonial expression," he says,

"Jacob leans on his staff to pray, Moses falls flat on his face, the Catholic bows his knee, and the Protestant settles himself into a seat." (P. 114.)

We don't know whether to prefer Protestant taste, or Feejee, or Hindoo.

"Thus, out of love to a mother, the Feejee eats her, and the European erects a mausoleum. The sentiment is the same, but the mode of exhibition is different." (P. 115.)

"The Hindoo represents Brahm, the Great Absolute, absorbed in self-contemplation, as a man wrapped in a mantle, with his foot in his mouth, to symbolize his eternity and his self-satisfaction." (P. 188.)

We remarked before that the author of this book displays considerable learning. Here is a specimen which gives some pleasant information about the old Saxon laws:

"Three shillings were deemed sufficient compensation for a broken rib, while a fine of twenty shillings was inflicted for a dislocation of the shoulder. If a man cut off the foot or struck out the eye of another, he was compelled to make satisfaction with fifty shillings. Each tooth had its fixed price: for a front tooth, six shillings were demanded; for a canine tooth, four; and for a molar, only one shilling; the pain incurred by a loss of a double tooth, however, led King Alfred to alter this portion of the law, as unjust, and he raised the price of a molar to fifteen shillings." (P. 364.)

He thinks that the idea of compensation, which is here certainly clearly set forth, gave rise to the religious idea of sacrifice.

We will close with a favorable specimen of his style. He thus describes Greece:

"Under a blue sky, in which the clouds lie tranquil like lodged avalanches, in the midst of a twinkling sea, strewed with fairy groups of islands, is a little mulberry-leaf of land attached to a continental bough, a little land ribbed with mountain-chains of rough-hewn marble, veined with purple gorges, pierced with winding gulfs; a land of vineyards and olive-groves, where roses bloom all the year, and where the pomegranate holds its glowing cheek to a sun that is never shorn of its rays." (P. 148.)

We have given these quotations at length, partly because they are a little remarkable as coming from such a source, but chiefly to show that a book may be excellent in some respects, and nevertheless contain very many most false things. Our end will have been attained if we have shown that whatever comes from non-Catholic pens, even the best, is not to be trusted, whenever, directly or indirectly, matters pertaining to philosophy, theology, or ecclesiastical history are treated of. These books at best are half-blind guides; and such are never desirable, and generally dangerous.