LETTER V.
TO A FRIEND WHO SEEMED TO TAKE CREDIT TO HIMSELF, INTELLECTUALLY, FROM THE NATURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman—Religious belief protects traditions, but does not weaken the critical faculty itself—Illustration from the art of etching—Sydney Smith—Dr. Arnold—Earnest religious belief of Ampère—Comte and Sainte-Beuve—Faraday—Belief or unbelief proves nothing for or against intellectual capacity.
I happened once to be travelling in Switzerland with an eminent citizen of that country, and I remember how in speaking of some place we passed through he associated together the ideas of Protestantism and intellectual superiority in some such phrase as this: “The people here are very superior; they are Protestants.” There seemed to exist, in my companion’s mind, an assumption that Protestants would be superior people intellectually, or that superior people would be Protestants; and this set me thinking whether, in the course of such experience as had fallen in my way, I had found that religious creed had made much difference in the matter of intellectual acumen or culture.
The exact truth appears to be this. A religious belief protects this or that subject against intellectual action, but it does not affect the energy of the intellectual action upon subjects which are not so protected. Let me illustrate this by a reference to one of the fine arts, the art of etching. The etcher protects a copper-plate by means of a waxy covering called etching-ground, and wherever this ground is removed the acid bites the copper. The waxy ground does not in the least affect the strength of the acid, it only intervenes between it and the metal plate. So it is in the mind of man with regard to his intellectual acumen and his religious creed. The creed may protect a tradition from the operation of the critical faculty, but it does not weaken the critical faculty itself. In the English Church, for example, the Bible is protected against criticism; but this does not weaken the critical faculty of English clergymen with reference to other literature, and many of them give evidence of a strong critical faculty in all matters not protected by their creed. Think of the vigorous common sense of Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses at a time when it needed not only much courage but great originality to expose them! Remember the intellectual force of Arnold, a great natural force if ever there was one—so direct in action, so independent of contemporary opinion! Intellectual forces of this kind act freely not only in the Church of England, but in other Churches, even in the Church of Rome. Who amongst the scientific men of this century has been more profoundly scientific, more capable of original scientific discovery than Ampère? Yet Ampère was a Roman Catholic, and not a Roman Catholic in the conventional sense merely, like the majority of educated Frenchmen, but a hearty and enthusiastic believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The belief in transubstantiation did not prevent Ampère from becoming one of the best chemists of his time, just as the belief in the plenary inspiration of the New Testament does not prevent a good Protestant from becoming an acute critic of Greek literature generally. A man may have the finest scientific faculty, the most advanced scientific culture, and still believe the consecrated wafer to the body of Jesus Christ. For since he still believes it to be the body of Christ under the apparent form of a wafer, it is evident that the wafer under chemical analysis would resolve itself into the same elements as before consecration; therefore why consult chemistry? What has chemistry to say to a mystery of this kind, the essence of which is the complete disguise of a human body under a form in all respects answering the material semblance of a wafer? Ampère must have foreseen the certain results of analysis as clearly as the best chemist educated in the principles of Protestantism, but this did not prevent him from adoring the consecrated host in all the sincerity of his heart.
I say that it does not follow, because M. or N. happens to be a Protestant, that he is intellectually superior to Ampère, or because M. or N. happens to be a Unitarian, or a Deist, or a Positivist, that he is intellectually superior to Dr. Arnold or Sydney Smith. And on the other side of this question it is equally unfair to conclude that because a man does not share whatever may be our theological beliefs on the positive side, he must be less capable intellectually than we are. Two of the finest and most disciplined modern intellects, Comte and Sainte-Beuve, were neither Catholics, nor Protestants, nor Deists, but convinced atheists; yet Comte until the period of his decline, and Sainte-Beuve up to the very hour of his death, were quite in the highest rank of modern scientific and literary intellect.
The inference from these facts which concerns every one of us is, that we are not to build up any edifice of intellectual self-satisfaction on the ground that in theological matters we believe or disbelieve this thing or that. If Ampère believed the doctrines of the Church of Rome, which to us seem so incredible, if Faraday remained throughout his brilliant intellectual career (certainly one of the most brilliant ever lived through by a human being) a sincere member of the obscure sect of the Sandemanians, we are not warranted in the conclusion that we are intellectually their betters because our theology is more novel, or more fashionable, or more in harmony with reason. Nor, on the other hand, does our orthodoxy prove anything in favor of our mental force and culture. Who, amongst the most orthodox writers, has a more forcible and cultivated intellect than Sainte-Beuve?—who can better give us the tone of perfect culture, with its love of justice, its thoroughness in preparation, its superiority to all crudeness and violence? Anglican or Romanist, dissenter or heretic, may be our master in the intellectual sphere, from which no sincere and capable laborer is excluded, either by his belief or by his unbelief.