ADDITIONAL NOTE.
ON THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCES APPLIED TO THE STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE EYE.
The present Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford wrote, in 1867, as follows:—
"The chances of any accidental variation in such an instrument being an improvement are small indeed. Suppose, for instance, one of the surfaces of the crystalline lens of the eye of a creature, possessing a crystalline and cornea, to be accidentally altered, then I say, that unless the form of the other surface is simultaneously altered, in one only way out of millions of possible ways, the eye would not be optically improved. An alteration also in the two surfaces of the crystalline lens, whether accidental or otherwise, would involve a definite alteration in the form of the cornea, or in the distance of its surface from the centre of the crystalline lens, in order that the eye may be optically better. All these alterations must be simultaneous and definite in amount, and these definite amounts must coexist in obedience to an extremely complicated law. To my apprehension then, that so complex an instrument as an eye should undergo a succession of millions of improvements, by means of a succession of millions of accidental alterations, is not less improbable, than if all the letters in the 'Origin of Species' were placed in a box, and on being shaken and poured out millions on millions of times, they should at last come out together in the order in which they occur in that fascinating and, in general, highly philosophical work.
"But my objections do not stop here. The improvement of an organ must be an improvement relative to the new circumstances by which the organ is surrounded. Suppose, then, that an eye is altered for the better in relation to one set of circumstances under which it is placed. By-and-bye there arise a second set of circumstances, and the eye is again, by Natural Selection, altered and improved relatively to the second set of circumstances. What is there to make the second set of circumstances such that the second improvement (relative to them) shall be an improvement or progress in the direction of the ultimate goal of the human eye? Why should not the second improvement be a retrogression away from the ultimate organ now possessed by man, and necessary to his well-being? But all this suiting of the succession of circumstances is to go on, not once or twice, but millions on millions of times. If this be so, then not only must there be a Bias in the order of the succession of the circumstances, or, at all events, in the vast outnumbering of the unfavourable circumstances by the favourable, but so strong a bias, as to remove the whole process from the accidental to the intentional. The bias implies the existence of a Law, a Mind, a Will. The process becomes one not of Natural Selection, but of Selection by an Intelligent Will." Analogies in the Progress of Nature and Grace, (being the Hulsean Lectures for 1867,) Appendix A, p. 125 seq. The whole article should be carefully studied by the reader.
[CHAPTER VI.]
CAUSATION.
"Chidhar, the Prophet ever-young
Thus loosed the bridle of his tongue.
"I journeyed by a goodly Town,
Beset with many a garden fair,
And asked of one who gathered down
Large fruit, 'how long the Town was there
He spoke, nor chose his hand to stay,
'The town has stood for many a day,
And will be here for ever and aye.'
"A thousand years passed by and then
I went the self-same road again.
"No vestige of that Town I traced,—
But one poor swain his horn employed,—
His sheep unconscious browsed and grazed,
I asked 'when was that Town destroyed?'
He spoke, nor would his horn lay by,
'One thing may grow and another die,
But I know nothing of Towns—not I.'
"A thousand years went on and then
I passed the self-same place again.
"There in the deep of waters cast
His nets one lonely fisherman,
And as he drew them up at last
I asked him 'how that Lake began?'
He looked at me and laughed to say,
'The waters spring for ever and aye,
And fish is plenty every day.'
"A thousand years passed by and then
I went the self-same road again.
"I found a country wild and rude,
And, axe in hand, beside a tree,
The Hermit of that Solitude,—
I asked 'how old that Wood might be?'
He spoke, 'I count not time at all,
A tree may rise, a tree may fall,
The Forest overlives us all,'
"A thousand years went on and then
I passed the self-same place again.
"And there a glorious City stood,
And 'mid tumultuous market-cry,
I asked 'Where rose the Town? where Wood
Pasture and Lake forgotten lie?'
They heard me not, and little blame,—
For them the world is as it came,
And all things must be still the same.
"A thousand years shall pass, and then
I mean to try that road again."
Lord Houghton, after Rückert.
"What a modern talks of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough,—saleable, curious, good for propelling steam-ships! With our Sciences and Cyclopædias, we are apt to forget the divineness, in those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering."—Carlyle. Heroes.
"Two worlds, the one intellectual, the other sensual, were equally given to us from the beginning, and all attempts to deduce them from one principle (except the Deity) have failed."—Von Feuchtersleben.
"What am I? how produced? and for what end?
Whence drew I being? to what period tend?
Am I th' abandon'd orphan of blind chance?
Dropped by wild atoms in disorder'd dance?
Or from an endless chain of causes wrought,
And of unthinking substance, born with thought?
By motion which began without a Cause,
Supremely wise, without design or laws."—Arbuthnot.
"Pouvoir c'est vouloir."—Guesses at Truth.
"If only once weird Time had rent asunder
The curtain of the Clouds, and shown us Night
Climbing into the awful Infinite
Those stairs whose steps are worlds, above and under,
Glory on glory, wonder upon wonder!...
"Ah! sure the heart of Man, too strongly tried
By Godlike Presences so vast and fair,
Withering with dread, or sick with love's despair,
Had wept for ever, and to Heaven cried,
Or struck with lightnings of delight had died!
"But he, though heir of Immortality,
With mortal dust too feeble for the sight,
Draws thro' a veil God's overwhelming light;
Use arms the Soul—anon there moveth by
A more majestic Angel—and we die!"
Frederick Tennyson.
SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER VI.
The two last Chapters are intended to be read consecutively, but are formally separated in order to mark the transition of Argument. If this is borne in mind, and the line of thought pursued continuously, there will appear to be little need for further elucidation.
The main object of the present Chapter is to distinguish the physical chain of Sequency from Causation properly so termed. In other words to divide the World, as we see it, into two spheres; the Mechanical and the Personal.
The former is characterized by invariable Sequency. The latter by Causation, and by causal interference with the mechanical chain of antecedent and consequent.
Inferences are drawn from these contrasted facts.
Analysis.—Causation not explained by any of the empirical sciences. Time accounts for nothing. Explicit statements of scientific men on the subject. "Inquire elsewhere." This is one good reason for the study of Natural Theology.
Only one kind of true Cause known to us by Experience. Distinction between a true Cause and the invariable antecedent of an invariable consequent. Antecedent enters Chain of natural sequency; Cause does not. Cause must account for the several links of Chain, for the connection between those links, and for the entire Chain considered as a Whole and Unity in Nature. This position illustrated and investigated. How grasped by the young mind. Its verification.
Known facts of Causation result in the Unknowable; a condition which attaches to the most certain of all truths. Personality a case in point. Another case that of alterations caused by Volition in chains of Natural Sequency. Common-sense allowances made for this last fact.
Application à fortiori to the Divine Personality. Presumption for miracles; its nature and limits. Intervention does not destroy Order and Unity. Hence we distinguish two possible kinds of Evidence, from,—
1. General Order of World.
2. Occasional variation.
Both leading up to a Supreme causal Personality.
CHAPTER VI.
CAUSATION.
This sixth Chapter occupies a totally different sphere of Thought from the one preceding it. Instead of examining the world as it now is, we shall inquire what its present existence necessarily presupposes. Time, in the ordinary meaning of the word, is no factor in our calculation. We have to deal with Time's antecedents.
These words sound like a long farewell to our companion and auxiliary,—Natural Science! Geology, Palæontology, Astronomy, are unanimous in telling us of periods immeasurably remote. But, they are all silent on two more distant and profound subjects—a Beginning and an Eternity. In the world best known to us, vast cycles—each comprehending many ages of life—- point back to preceding cycles made up of ages more numerous still, during which the world was absolutely void of life. Upon that primæval fabric, are graved long records of changes beyond the reach of Thought. A single epoch,—the era when our globe, an incandescent mass of matter, was cooling in its flight,—is alone sufficient to exhaust all our imaginative powers. Did water first surround the glowing orb as a heated vapour? Did clouds first descend upon it like a fiery rain-storm? Suppose some sentient creature floating through ether to look upon the unformed world,—how wild, how weird must have been the spectacle! How different from what earth and ocean may appear to any similar Intelligence now.
Science discoursing upon such topics is more poetical than the most sublime poetry. And the science that does speak of them is the widest of all sciences, After certain cycles of ages, the Biologist hands us over to the Mineralogist and the Chemist. After certain other cycles, we give up those guides in turn; and gauge nature by measuring mass, speed, force, comparing our own orb with kindred orbs, and trying to collect what the comparison can say respecting the earliest conditions of the Universe. But, all this is no answer to our proposed question concerning Time's antecedents. "The territory of physics" says a well-known physicist, "is wide, but it has its limits from which we look with vacant gaze into the region beyond."[211] And these words are evidently true. Time serves, in this respect, as the index of our incapacity. We travel back from the period of Man to the period of a ferny coal field, a trilobite or an Eozoon, and from thence to the period when nebulous light-masses shone out through illimitable space. No doubt, when we have learned to contemplate such vapoury states of attenuated matter, we have learned a great deal. Modern analysis finds in them the elementary constituents of our own planetary system; the same elements which glow with greater apparent brilliancy in our Sun. But this is not all. To the sober eye of science, those fires, which burned before stars were kindled, display in their splendours materials entering into the composition of our transitory frames; materials required continually by our bodies and by our productive arts. We live, if modern science may be trusted, by the assimilation of elements now shining in the celestial sphere; elements which glittered there through long cycles of ages before our Earth was. And we employ the same elements in the common industries of civilisation.[212] This bewildering thought seems to link us with that Sun, which is the glory of our day, with those wandering lamps which make night beautiful; and with all the hosts of heaven, which have always fascinated the upward gaze of man, and have sometimes won his heart to worship them.
The more overwhelming these thoughts appear, the grander is the emphasis of our yet unanswered question. We have seen that we are able to travel backwards—not in fancy, but in reason—from era to era, however incalculable the measurement of each era may be; and, when our travels have reached their utmost goal, we find the marvellous Continuity of Nature still unbroken. And this very fact, is, in itself, a sufficient proof that we have not approached Time's antecedents. What we have really done, is to carry the Present with us into an immeasurably distant Past. We know not yet what is presupposed by both,—we cannot say what went before them.
It is very important for us to be thoroughly clear upon the result. For there is a sort of unreflecting idea afloat, that if vast periods of Time are conceived, the whole Universe is conceived also. All seems explained, since everything may come to pass in Time! So it may, in one sense. Time gives opportunity; but then there must be a moving power[213] to work in the opportunity. Let it therefore be distinctly borne in mind, that Time causes nothing. To dispense with a spring of action, is to imagine that Time will stop the river's flow, or that the river will stop without a cause in time:—
"Rusticus expectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum."
In reality, Time accounts neither for good nor for evil, neither for the end nor yet for the beginning of any single work.
And the same is true respecting any chain, however long, made up of antecedents and consequents, however numerous. We see in them movements propagating movements; but then we are obliged to ask, what moved the first of them? The reader may remember Professor Huxley's picture of a cosmic vapour, from a knowledge of which a sufficient Intelligence might have predicted our present world. Looking further, we find this cosmic vapour to be composed (as he says) of molecules possessing forces or properties; in other words, what he really described was a potential Universe; not a Cause, but an already caused production. What, then, caused it?
It was not the Professor's business,—nor is it the business of any Physiologist or of any Physicist, to explain what lies beyond the territories of his science. Consequently he does not account for the existence of this "primitive nebulosity." The "sufficient Intelligence" is only spoken of a possible interpreter or prophet. And Professor Huxley is right and wise in his reticence.
Professor Tyndall is equally wise and right in telling us that "Science knows much of this intermediate phase of things that we call nature, of which it is the product; but science knows nothing of the origin or destiny of nature."[214]
There is always a rightness and wisdom in stating a limit, and an issue, distinctly. No one endowed with clearness of vision, will think the Universe as likely to be adequately accounted for by an eternal nebula, as by an eternity of Mind. No one will exactly state to himself, the meaning of such words as Chance, Time, Law, and others of a like description; and, with those meanings in remembrance, pronounce that any or all of them can explain the origin of anything. But by popular lecturers and article-makers, immeasurable series of conditions are sometimes mentioned in a manner which almost implies that, because immeasurable, the speaker or writer supposes that such conditions may possibly be creative.
Any reader of current literature will scarcely need reminding, that most modern savants usually acquiesce in, and feel burdened by, a sense of "the Inscrutable." And therefore, when summing up the results of scientific truth, they honestly and consistently reduce their disciples to an alternative,—an alternative of which no disciple of any special science ought reasonably to complain. Choose, they tell him, between confessing, "here is the Incomprehensible—here I rest;" or, if you please, endeavouring to "find other means of knowledge, which we do not pretend to furnish." This is no more than to say, and say fairly, "Be satisfied with such information as we can give,—or, if you please, inquire elsewhere." And this seems reasonable; for who would assert that a Professor of Poetry ought to give competent instruction in the Calculus?
We may assume that every student of Natural Theology has made up his mind to "inquire elsewhere." And it is the part of an earnest man so to do. Were not the Future linked to the Present, we all might feel less earnest, less persevering, less anxious for inquiry. Yet, if there be a Future beyond our Present, we at once perceive a weight of reason beyond all powers of estimate, why such a connecting chain must certainly exist. All our experience, every argument from analogy, and all morality, fall into one and the same scale. But of this, more hereafter. There is no doubt that our wisdom and our duty coincide with our natural instincts, in bringing us to this resolution. We may not be able to learn all we could wish of that Future which follows our present; but what we can truly learn is to us a treasure beyond price. Let us, therefore, proceed as fellow-pilgrims in the search.
It is an undeniable fact—one amongst the hard and actual facts which life teaches—that, in the whole of our experience, we never know of more than one kind of cause,—a cause, that is, in the true sense of originating any event or series of events. Nothing can be more certain as respects our knowledge of the material world. From this point of view, Sir J. Herschel describes Brown's book on "Cause and Effect" as "a work of great acuteness and subtlety of reasoning on some points, but in which the whole train of argument is vitiated by one enormous oversight; the omission, namely, of a distinct and immediate personal consciousness of causation in his enumeration of that sequence of events, by which the volition of the mind is made to terminate in the motion of material objects. I mean the consciousness of effort, accompanied with intention thereby to accomplish an end, as a thing entirely distinct from mere desire or volition on the one hand, and from mere spasmodic contraction of muscles on the other."[215]
This causation we experience continually. A heavy stone falls from a wall, and kills a man. No one threw it. We say it fell—or, as a physicist might express it, obeyed the law of gravitation. But we may remember that from the tower of Thebez "a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head and all to break his scull." We form quite a different opinion of this event. We say, here is a case in which "the volition of the mind is made to terminate in the motion of a material object." Some might accuse, others excuse, the woman of Thebez; but all would argue that she caused the death of Abimelech.
Your boy wants to beat a chair which has fallen upon him; you tell him why he must not, and all you say is sound philosophy. He also wants to kill his cat for devouring his canary bird; and again you philosophize correctly. But, suppose your young philosopher for his own pleasure wrings his canary bird's neck? The chair fell by mechanical law—the cat obeyed the law of her hungry instinct—but your boy is culpable. He was the true cause of his own cruel act,—in a word he was responsible. And this same truth of Causation, involved in Responsibility, and constituting one of its necessary factors, is like Mind in Mr. Mill,—a truth which we must accept—inexplicable, but unquestionably real. We know that Will is a Cause,—and we do not actually know of any other cause in the wide Universe. The fact comes home to us in a variety of ways. Was Thurtell the cause or the physical antecedent of Weare's death? If not the cause, we ought never to think him, or any murderer, slaver, torturer, or tyrant, at all in the wrong; neither can we hold them in any manner responsible.
Let the reader put this case to himself in as many different shapes as he can. The result will always come to the same issue. We may suppose a Nebula, Law, Force, so arranged as to be the physical antecedent of a world. And nothing can be more marvellous than the idea of such an arrangement! But we cannot imagine any existence really causing an effect, save one,—a Will. Therefore, if we wish to go beyond Nebula, Law, or Force, which are merely physical antecedents,—and ask what caused one or all of them, we are obliged (so far as we are disciples of experience) to say their Cause was a Will. And when we say this, we allege a sufficient reason.
A few paragraphs back, we availed ourselves of the authoritative verdict pronounced by scientific thinkers, on the question of what is, and what is not, from their point of view, knowable. And we saw where physics terminated,—that is, in a Nebula. This is their limit.
Yet, there is nothing to hinder a physicist from becoming also a Natural Theologian. It is not every man who will rest in a negative conclusion. Professor Baden Powell was among the malcontents in this respect; and we desire now to quote from his writings some passages referred to in the argument of a former Chapter.
But before doing so, it would be unfair to conceal that a tribute of gratitude appears due to writers who mark the boundary of their own thought, however little we ourselves desire to stay acquiescently within its limitations. There is honesty in their act;—there is an incitement for other men to try out their lines of thinking also. Finally, all such writers are unexceptionable witnesses to the interest and reality belonging to a separate science of Natural Theology. In all these respects, they occupy a totally different position from the indifferentist or sneering sceptic; and it would be injustice to confound such broad distinctions of moral aspect. With this acknowledgment let us return to Baden Powell.
In his "Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth"[216] he writes thus:—
"The study of physical causes (understood in the simple meaning which we have before endeavoured to fix,) while it supplies the unassailable evidence of design and adjustment, as unavoidably carries us thence onward to the idea of an Intelligence from which that design emanated, and of an agency by which that adjustment was produced. It brings us, in a word, to recognise an influence of another kind, of an order different from, and far above that of physical causes or material action:—to acknowledge a sublime moral cause, the universally operating source of creative power and providential wisdom.[bd] ... We have already noticed, in other cases, the ambiguities arising from the diversity of meaning attached to the same term "cause." Here, then, it becomes more peculiarly necessary if we adopt the popular expression, "the First Cause," to recur carefully to the distinction, if we would preserve any clearness of reasoning.
"We refer to senses of the term absolutely distinct in kind. Nor is it a term of mere verbal difference. It is of importance, whether in guarding against fallacies in evidence or in answering the cavils of scepticism.... When we ascend to the contemplation of creative intelligence, the distinction is not between a prior and a subsequent train of material action, but between physical order and moral volition. It will thus be apparent that the metaphor so often used of the chain of natural causes whose last and highest link is its immediate connexion with the Deity;—the very phrase of a succession of secondary causes traced up to a first cause,—and the like, (so commonly employed,) are founded on a totally mistaken analogy.
"If we retain such metaphorical language at all, it would be a more just mode of speaking to describe the Deity as the Divine artificer of the whole chain,—not to connect Him with its links;—to represent the secondary causes as combined into joint operation by His power and will,—but not to make Him one of them." And again;—"If we require the aid of metaphor in attempting to give utterance to those vast conceptions with which the mind is overpowered, instead of speaking of the first and secondary links in a chain of causation, and the like, let us rather recur to the analogy of the arch (before introduced,) and we shall be adopting at once a more just and expressive figure, and shall here run no risk of speaking as if we confounded the stones with the builder,—their mutually supporting force with the skill of the architect who adjusted them."[217]
What Baden Powell called "physical causation," is now more commonly known as invariable antecedency, or invariable succession. Antecedents and consequents are phenomena of the natural world,—and the connection between them is their Law.
Now, suppose we take the Alphabet to represent a series of these antecedents and consequents, the latter invariably following the former; it does not, (as far as argument goes,) in the least signify what the series really is, any more than when we calculate algebraically. But to make things plain, let the Alphabet represent 26 cycles of succession; each cycle containing as many millions of years, or ages, as you choose to grant for the duration of the Natural Universe. We may state the problem thus,—the law of succession being assumed in our series as constant.
If we have Z, there certainly must have been Y, and conversely;—
If there were no Y, there cannot possibly be Z. We go on,—
If Y, then certainly X;
If no X, then Y is impossible.
As we know Z in fact, we get back to Y; and, as we find Y, we retrogress to X.
And the retrogression continues, say till we reach B,—
If B, certainly A;
If no A, then B is impossible.
But, what are we to say of A?
If A then certainly—what?
If no what?—then A is impossible.
It does not signify how far the chain of physical law may extend. From its very essence and definition, you must arrive finally at a first link. Or, in other words, the Continuity of Nature may go back through Time immeasurable,—Time will after all lead you to Time's antecedents. And when you have arrived at your first link, and inquire what must necessarily have preceded Time, it is well to consider the sort of account which alone you can accept, because it alone will sufficiently satisfy your reason.
You want, then, something which properly accounts first for A; next for the link between A and B; and thirdly, by consequence, for the whole Alphabet.
If, with this statement in mind, the reader turns back to the extracts made from Powell, he will see the force of several points strongly put by the Professor. He will see, for example, how inevitably physical causation carries us back to another, and very diverse Causation,—diverse in kind—not simply different in degree. Also, how the idea of Cause in this latter sense, takes us quite out of the physical nexus. And, further, that the only admissible Conception of a First Universal Cause, must be a conception of something which will not only bring about A, but likewise account for the entire series, linked together and consecutive, into one resulting Whole. For the Whole itself; in brief for the Many and the One.
We have now to ask further, what Facts can tell us respecting these two kinds of Causation. And let us again employ our letters, but rather in a different way.
Suppose P stands for a fact, which may also be described as a natural phenomenon. To account for P we go back to O, retrogress to N, M, and so on, as shewn already.
Again, suppose another fact which cannot be described as a natural phenomenon. Let us try whether P may, with equal propriety, stand for a human production or performance. That is—whether, instead of being a mere phenomenal fact, it may also be spoken of as an act.
We want then to account for P, thus considered. A striking circumstance appears at once evident, that to find the "why" of human activity we do not look to any antecedent;—we look to a consequent, or a series of consequences. The question we ask is,—with what view P became an act? In other words, we try to account for P, not by O, N, M, etc., but by Q, R, S, etc. For example: let P represent a murder. The crime was done for the sake of money, and for things which money will purchase; that is, the consequents,—Q, R, S, and so on, forming a series designed;—gains and purposes, long or short. But, no one would say that another series foregoing (O, N, M) necessitated the act;—that they were the certain antecedents of a necessary consequent (P) the murder. If it were so, we should have to congratulate the murderer for having been forced into so profitable a performance, and we should also have to leave him in the peaceable enjoyment of his profits.
Acts, therefore,—or volitional facts—move forwards through a series of consequents; while phenomena—that is, physical facts—run backwards through a series of antecedents.
If pressed to find a Cause for an act, we are never in a position to say,—
If P, then certainly O;
If no O, then P is impossible.
We say, on the contrary, that the Cause of the act was Volitional,—that is, it was done by an agent or person acting. And further, that the consequents (Q, R, S, etc.) represent the purpose of the actor or agent, and that he is responsible for having adopted them as his prevalent motives or inducements.
But from these necessities of thought which hold alike as abstract truths, and in practical experience, several inferences follow:—
A volitional cause or agent, may stand before a series of consequents;—but cannot be ranged after such a series.
Our series represented by the Alphabet, was taken to be a series of invariable sequency. That is, each factor (letter) presupposed antecedents, which necessitated every factor in succession. Therefore we cannot represent any agent or volitional Cause, by an element (or letter) of that series at all. Nor yet his act. It follows on no such chain of antecedents. It is done in view of certain consequents.
If, therefore, we ask what can be conceived respecting the causation of the Universe,—its cause must (as Powell says), be placed absolutely outside and prior to the whole series. In other words,—a volitional or First cause can never belong to the physical chain of antecedent and consequent, bound together by natural law. And the reason is plain: in no true sense can such Cause ever be a necessary consequent at all. Such a Cause calls into existence, not only A, but the whole consecutive alphabet, representing cycles of millions of ages. Not the world's primæval state alone,—- but the whole law-connected Universe. Thus, First Cause, and Secondary cause, apply not to difference of sequency alone,—but to an intrinsic and essential distinction. And, this distinction is so vast, that between the World's First Cause, and any given Secondary cause, there is fixed a gulf of separation as wide as the whole potential Universe.
Another way of looking at the subject of Causation may appear simpler to some minds.
Let the reader recal the problems of Idealism and Realism already discussed. He will also remember what Mr. Masson calls "the paramount result" to Mill and Hamilton alike;—the inevitable persuasion all men have of their own distinctness from an external world of things and persons surrounding them.
With this accepted result in remembrance, let the reader ask himself the further question, how he became originally impressed with the grand division of that world of objectivity,—how he first separated Persons from Things? He will account for the conception in some such way as this:—As a child, he was injured both by his nurse and his nursery table. He discovered that the table had been placed where it stood; but that his nurse struck him with a passionate intention of compelling him to obey her, against his own will. And, thus, in the succession of little troubles and events perpetually going on, he learned to distinguish them all into two broad classes: events dependent on previous circumstances, such as the position of the table; and events productive of intentional consequences, such as the ill temper of his nurse. The first class of events he could control by a change of outside conditions;—he could either move the table or keep his body out of its way. But, the nurse he had to humour and conciliate; and he soon found, to his cost, that very often his efforts to win her favour were unavailing, because her temper was so very, very bad. And this whole process of Childish reasoning became confirmed in after life by his practical reason, and verified by finding it work well every day. The child who thus ceases to blame the table for hurting him, but blames the temper of the nurse, is the "father of the Man," who praises or blames only when he discovers a true cause; and steadily ascribes Causation to a Will. And, employ what words we choose, this causative power is the grand tenable distinction between Persons and Things. And no amount of refined theory will ever induce us to act upon any other supposition. We remain fixed in our belief that a true Cause must, without exception, be always a true Personality.
It is worth while observing, likewise, with what emphasis of words, mankind marks its sense of this fact. We all say that we see such and such a cause,—or such and such a will at work. And the energy of expression is justified by analysis. For, when we see an orange or a cathedral, what we really perceive through our eye, may be summed as coloured surface, outline, light and shade. And seeing this, we say that we see the solid;—that is, seeing effects, we maintain that we see the cause. Moreover, this is true, if we remember that seeing is a compound process; the eye of the mind looking through the eye of the body. And we ventured to use the same language in our last chapter, and also to justify it, when we spoke of seeing the Intelligible. The man, therefore, is not far wrong who says that he sees God everywhere.
Look at the subject in whatever point of view we will,—as an abstract question—as a calculable problem—or an affair of plain common sense,—the result must finally come to one and the same thing. There can be no Cause,—no First to stand before (not in) the series of sequences, except a Being, Will, Personality.
Now as a matter of truth, there must necessarily exist some sufficient account of the Universe. Physical Science is right to speak of it as unknowable[218] by Physical investigation. It cannot lie in the physical series,—it must stand prior to the whole. It admits of no antecedent; but the sum of all existence is its consequent. Therefore, the sufficient account is a first Being, Will, and Personality. We must accept the result and acknowledge its truth, because it is an inevitable fact, if the question is argued upon the ground of other facts practically known, and not of theory, conjecture, or supposed possibilities. But it involves theoretical difficulties which we must acknowledge to be inexplicable. We cannot, however, forget that many other truths and matters of fact are inexplicable also.[219]
A circumstance equally true, and equally incapable of theoretical explanation, may be stated as follows. If we revert, once more, to our representative letters of the alphabet, it will be recollected that the letter P was taken to represent a crime,—a murder for the sake of gain. P had for its consequents Q, R, S, but did not depend on the antecedents O, N, M; it was introduced extraneously into the series. In other words, the crime entailed a number of effects, which had in reality been premeditated by the murderer; while, in itself, it was to be accounted for only as the act of a Volitional Cause or Agent. And the remarkable point to us now, is the circumstance that such a designed series of events can thus be introduced into the order of nature by man's spontaneous choice. These determinations are in fact alterations in the ordinary course of Nature; and contradictions of its absolutely invariable sequency.[be] This fact, again, appears to be theoretically inexplicable, yet is practically true; and we verify its truth by determinations of the deepest interest and importance to our individual selves. Sometimes, men almost stand aghast at the consequences of choosing obstinately; and, through years of sorrow, accuse their own, and their friends' pertinacity.
Possibly, the difficulty in theory may be in some degree softened by the admissions of physical philosophers,—inventors and craftsmen of all sorts,—respecting the considerable allowance to be made for "functioning" their abstract calculations. The necessity of such allowance distinctly proves, that, even in the most exact of applied sciences, pure theory and practical result do not commonly coincide. And, when we look to the concerns of human society, it must be confessed that no amount of sovereign power, insight of statesmen, or experience grounded on precedent or on knowledge of mankind, does away with the absolute necessity of allowing what is called a "margin" for the actual working of any law, scheme, contrivance, or political constitution. Speculative people are apt to find this truth verified to their cost and disappointment; and, perhaps, one reason for the general success of English administrators in government and colonization, is their habit of making very large allowances throughout all the practical arrangements. In managing the world, they consider the non-calculable element of Will,—and allow for the way in which it breaks in, with sometimes tremendous effect, upon the otherwise regular current of affairs.
But if this be true of the human Will, what ought to be said
of the Divine? If we, with our limited power and understanding, can thus interrupt many series of events in our world, what shall we say concerning the Volitional Cause of the whole Universe? Concerning a Personality, which was before the chain of phenomenal antecedent and consequent began, and Which (as we have shewn must hold true of a First Cause), actually willed the whole as a whole, and arranged the end from the beginning? Recurring to our selected figure of the Alphabet, this primary Will, this incomprehensible Person is, in our view, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, and beside Him there is none other.[220]
So far, therefore, as a consideration of the world goes, and of mankind as existing in the world, arguments from analogy would lead to some positive expectation of Miracles. Our belief in the Uniformity of Nature does not exclude them; and our practical experience gives rise to a probability of their occurrence. When, however, we lift up our eyes to the Divine Mind as Supreme Reason, Miracles appear to us inconceivable without an adequate occasion. For we ourselves strive to act on true, fitting, and reasonable grounds of purpose; and shall we think less of Him, "Who teacheth Man knowledge"? But to pursue this last topic as it deserves, would carry us away from the domain of Natural Theology, and into that of Theology true and proper.
Our business has lain with the Natural world, human nature itself included. And in examining the successional chain, we have perceived that it is not forged of Adamant. Yet there is so much connection and unity running throughout it, that we may with the greatest justice speak of the order and course of nature. And, perhaps the highest kind of evidence to the being and attributes of God conceivable by us, lies in the concurrence of two separate kinds of proof; both resting on the reality of Divine causation viewed relatively to the World we inhabit. The one,—when we trace (as in this Chapter we have shewn that men ought to trace), the chain of natural sequence up to a Personal First Cause. The other,—when we find reason to believe that the First Cause and Creator of the world, has seen fit to interfere with its orderly course in a manner which distinguishes His intervention from our common every-day experience.
For such intervention, we could probably conceive no greater fitness, no nobler occasion, than the purpose of raising Men above themselves, and assuring them that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in their Philosophies. And what human dream, vision, or philosophy, could ever have foreseen the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him?
[CHAPTER VII.]
RESPONSIBILITY.
"The astronomers said, 'Give us matter, and a little motion, and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass, and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all this mighty order grew.'"—Emerson. Nature.
"The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round him.... Such recognition of Nature one finds to be the chief element of Paganism: recognition of Man, and his Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shalt and Thou shalt not."—Carlyle. Heroes.
"Our Religion is not yet a horrible restless Doubt, still less a far horribler composed Cant; but a great heaven-high Unquestionability, encompassing, interpenetrating the whole of Life. Imperfect as we may be, we are here, to testify incessantly and indisputably to every heart, That this Earthly Life, and its riches and possessions, and good and evil hap, are not intrinsically a reality at all, but are a shadow of realities eternal, infinite; that this Time-world, as an air-image, fearfully emblematic, plays and flickers in the grand still mirror of Eternity; and man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great."—Carlyle. Past and Present.
"Goodness and greatness are not means but ends.
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man?—Three treasures, life and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night—
Himself, his Maker, and the Angel Death."
S. T. Coleridge.
"Omnia terrena
Per vices sunt aliena:
nescio sunt cuius;
mea nunc, cras huius et huius.
Dic, homo, quid speres,
si mundo totus adheres;
nulla tecum feres,
licet tu solus haberes."
From "This World is false and vain," lines 41-48.
"Threefold is the march of Time,
The Future, lame and lingering, totters on;
Swift as a dart the Present hurries by;
The Past stands fixed in mute Eternity.
"To urge his slow advancing pace
Impatience nought avails,
Nor fear, nor doubt, can check his race,
As fleetly past he sails.
No spell, no deep remorseful throes
Can move him from his stern repose.
"Mortal! they bid thee read this rule sublime:
Take for thy councillor the lingering one;
Make not the flying visitor thy friend,
Nor choose thy foe in him that standeth without end."
After Confucius, by Sir. J. Herschel.
"The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of mine own frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us: that mass of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind: that surface that tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any: I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty; though the number of the arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind: whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun."
Sir T. Browne. Religio Medici.
ἴσον δὲ νύκτεσσιν αἰεί,
ἴσα δ' ἐν ἁμέραις ἅλιον ἔχοντες ἀπονέστερον
ἐσλοὶ δεδόρκαντι βίον, οὐ χθόνα ταράσσοντες ἐν χερὸς ἀκμᾷ
κεινὰν παρὰ δίαιταν· ἀλλὰ παρὰ μὲν τιμίοις
θεῶν, οἵτινες ἔχαιρον εὐορκἱαις, ἄδακρυν νέμονται
αἰῶνα·....
..... ἔνθα μακάρων
νᾶσος ὠκεανἰδες
αὖραι περιπνέοισιν, ἄνθεμα δὲ χρυσοῦ φλέγει,
τὰ μὲν χερσόθεν ἀπ' ἀγλαῶν δενδρέων, ὕδωρ δ' ἄλλα φέρβει
ὅρμοισι τῶν χέρας ἀναπλέκοντι καὶ κεφαλὰς.
Pindar. Olymp. II.
"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty! if that name thou love
Who art a Light to guide, a Rod
To check the erring, and reprove;
Thou who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe;
From vain temptations dost set free;
From strife and from despair; a glorious ministry.
"I, loving freedom, and untried;
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust:
Resolved that nothing e'er should press
Upon my present happiness,
I shoved unwelcome tasks away;
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.
"Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought,
I supplicate for thy controul;
But in the quietness of thought:
Me this uncharter'd freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose which ever is the same.
"Yet not the less would I throughout
Still act according to the voice
Of my own wish; and feel past doubt
That my submissiveness was choice:
Not seeking in the school of pride
For 'precepts over dignified,'
Denial and restraint I prize
No farther than they breed a second Will more wise.
"Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace:
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
And Fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens through Thee are fresh and strong.
"To humbler functions, awful Power!
I call thee: I myself commend
Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh! let my weakness have an end!
Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!"
Wordsworth. Poems, 1807.
SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER VII.
The object of this Chapter is to shew that the universally enforced maxim of Responsibility unites in itself two factors.
(1.) A true power of Causation, as explained in Chapter VI.
(2.) A moral distinction of Right and Wrong.
This second element of Responsibility is next investigated, and the Moral antithesis shewn to be inalienable. Right can never be Wrong, nor Wrong ever Right. Justice must certainly prevail at last.
From the connection of Morality with Causation, it may be inferred that the moral Law has its ultimate existence in a Supreme Personality—a just and sovereign God. This conclusion is verified. Human life and Human death read us the same lesson.
Corollary.—If the conclusion just drawn be accepted, and to know God be Life Eternal, we may also infer an à priori probability of some Supernatural assistances, intended to strengthen our human weaknesses and diminish our ignorance. This latter purpose would seem likely to include a better aid to happiness, and a more complete code of Moral Maxims.
Analysis.—As a social fact, Responsibility is universal, and accounted inalienable by any individual man. Responsibility involves Causation in the highest sense, together with Moral Sensibility.
Attempts to refine away ethical Rightness. An appeal to consciousness proposed:—Distinctness of moral feeling;—and its Permanence. Antithesis of Right and Wrong an irreconcileable Antagonism. Contrasted with correlation of Power and Function; this antithesis never fluent, but rigorous, immutable, imperishable, absolute. Ultimate coincidence of Happiness with Virtue is a necessary result of Independent Morality.
Moral Law exists conceivably in and by a Will alone; as—
1. Its cause and spring of movement.
2. Its source of expression and practical authority.
Being supreme, it exists in and by a Supreme Moral Will or Personality. That is to say, in and by God.
This conception verified. World inexplicable without Man. Man inexplicable without God; Whom to know is Life Eternal.
Corollary.—Supernatural assistance apparently to be expected when Moral Law is viewed as a human endowment proceeding from God. Thus Man is made for God, and God has not made Man in vain.
Confirmation from—
1. Image of Divine Love in Nature. 2. Nature of religious Trust as a Belief of Reason. 3. Incompleteness of our ethical knowledge apart from such assistance. 4. Universal expectation of Mankind.
L'Envoy.
CHAPTER VII.
RESPONSIBILITY.
Responsibility is the most serious fact of our whole human world. The affairs of life could not go on for a single day if there were no Responsibility. We never release any man from its burden, without incapacitating him, at the same time, alike from business and from enjoyment. We lay it upon childhood, as soon as the child is able to reflect upon his own actions and to choose deliberately;—we do not take it away from a collected and self-controlled age. And every reasonable Man who stands by an open grave, or knows that he is rapidly approaching his own, feels, (above all other pressures,) the unending prospect of Responsibility. Looking at this prospect, we look into our deepest solitude;—
"Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die."
None of our fellows, the dear companions of our Soul, can carry our burden then. And though they walk by our side in life, and cheer us with their love, they cannot really bear that burden now. And, thus, in the most serious and solemn fact of our existence, we are always isolated and alone.
But Responsibility is something better to every one of us than a burden;—it is also an incalculable benefit. A man who has no true sense of responsibility, is an unformed human being;—and, in proportion as we feel it inwardly, and express the feeling by consideration and self-control, we make progress in real manliness. On this account, Responsibility may be pronounced our chief aid in the formation of a manly character. And, probably, among all the sources of human happiness, none yields a more unbroken serenity, than the habitual consciousness of being enabled to act up to the single mark of our responsibilities.
When a man has attained such practical wisdom, it "maketh his face to shine." His daily endeavour to do right, instead of causing him anxiety and disquietude, gives a buoyancy to the spirit; which shows itself in a peculiar brightness of countenance, unlike every other cheerful glance and aspect. The beaming faces, with which early Italian artists painted their good men and saintly women, are excellent illustrations of this expressional beauty.
Let us consider, through one chapter more, what Natural Theology has to say upon this subject.
Responsibility has been shewn to involve, as one of its constituent principles, an idea of Causation. It is, also, clear that to hold a man responsible, he must be supposed to possess some power of distinguishing Right from Wrong. In our last chapter, we drew from the principle of Causation certain conclusions regarding the Universal First Cause. We have now to examine the principle of Moral Sensibility.
Every one at all acquainted with modern controversy, is aware that few questions have been more keenly mooted, than the origin of moral distinctions among mankind. The debate respecting them has run, for a great part of its course, parallel with that on the origin of our primary intellectual beliefs, alluded to in a former chapter. Neither of these controversies concerns us beyond a certain point. Our business lies with the facts of human nature, rather than with theories concerning any supposed possibilities as to their growth and accretion. But, one caution we suggested respecting the case of intellect, holds good and is important to every moral inquirer. Let the analyst beware of his alembic! There is nothing more easy than to vaporize reality altogether, by way of exalting a philosophy.[221] And in Morality, the result is far worse than in speculation. The distinctive character of our Moral Consciousness is the "essence" which lends to a right action its peculiar fragrance and beauty. Invaluable per se, it will surely be found of a nature so delicate and fugitive as to escape the tests of analytic psychologists. Yet when this is fled, the residuum must be worthless to Moral philosophy.
The "essence" just mentioned, merits a few minutes' attention. Men have been known to assert that their feeling of appreciation in respect of a very lovely woman, was precisely similar to their appreciation of a handsome horse. No doubt, the right answer is to tell such a man that he is utterly blind to the true loveliness of woman; and does not deserve to call a creature so excellent, his wife. You may, also, point out to him the various distinctive characters of female excellence,—refinement, purity, depth of feeling, self devotion, the noblest heroism, and so on. But if the man has put all his perceptions of diverse excellences into a private alembic, and sublimated them into one of the lowest among æsthetic susceptibilities; no argument will really convince him. The truly bright æsthetic eye—the grander imaginative powers are wanting,—the man is mentally colour-blind.
The same truth holds good of theorists who tell us dogmatically that our Moral Sensibility is nothing better than an accretion of baser materials which may be stripped off from each other in the reverse order of their growth, just like the coats of a stalactite or a tulip-root. As may readily be surmised, there is great difference of dogma, when judgment comes to be pronounced on the moral core and centre of the whole. Some are for the needs of society,—some utility in general,—the greater part for individual advantage. Others take theoretically polar directions; and with them, rightness consists either in quietism, or else in self-immolation. Self-approving feelings, (each advocate tells us,) have clustered round his pet growing point; and the clustering has endowed us with all the moral sense we happen to possess. Here again, it is doubtful whether a right answer will convince the experimentalist, bent on turning lead into gold. Yet whether convincing or not, most honest hearts would prompt an indignant rejoinder. The world at large, however, is likely to prove a more successful arbiter. The utilitarian will find that he excites little sympathy even when general utility forms his moral kernel;—and, when it is no more than a personal gain of worldly advantages, he will not improbably be called a rascal. Then "Quietism" can never hope much favour in the busy workshop of the West. Though it may seem strange to some minds, self-immolation has by far the greatest chance of winning suffrages; one chief reason being, that the man who sacrifices his own private advantage, has evidently spurned expediency and selfishness. Even those who think his theoretical views erroneous—and possibly mischievous, will applaud his victory over the meaner passions.
Each hour of thought the reader can bestow on moral distinctions, will turn to certain good. At the very least, it must help to form a habit of self-examination. And for this purpose, very simple interrogatories bring out very useful responses. If the reader be a rose grower, let him inquire into his own feelings, when he plucks the fairest flower in his garden, to give fragrance and colour to the sick room of a poor but sensitive little invalid. He will certainly perceive a wide interval between his pleasure in admiring the glowing rose, and his pleasure in adding to the scanty luxuries of the poor sick child. Thus, although a benevolent action be a truly beautiful thing, yet there is a difference between the rose grower's impressions of mere beauty, and of pure benevolence. A difference too between his enjoyment of beauty, and his enjoyment in benevolently resigning to another, the object which charmed him because it was beautiful. Time, also, makes a vast difference between the two emotions. We cannot recal a delicious odour, as truly as we can reproduce a pretty sight before our retrovertive eye. The image of the rose remains, after its sweet fragrance has departed. But much, much longer than either, remains the moral impression graved upon the mind. That little pleasure enjoyed in a brief self-denial, will repeat itself through half a century of years.
Permanence is, indeed, one characteristic which demonstrates the paramount excellence of all moral impressions. It is so difficult to repeat to ourselves the sensation of physical pleasure or physical pain, that many writers on pathologic topics speak of it as a thing impossible. Certainly, its greatest vividness is in dreams; and above all, "ægri somnia"—sick visions—seem to possess the strongest reproductive power. It is curious, however, to observe the manner in which dreams themselves put on a moral meaning. Who does not remember Sir W. Scott's lines in the "Lady of the Lake," on the returning phantoms of early youth,—change, loss, and separation? But those phantoms are pale shadows, compared with what we have all felt in our visionary hours,—the consciousness of our own absolute loneliness,—of our death,—of a hopeless, endless isolation. Even the very thought of our spiritual life,[222] as distinguished from mere corporeal life, is terrible to us and hardly to be borne. So overwhelming is the idea of the demand of Justice upon each of us;—the law of human Responsibility.
It is remarkable, too, that the most common-sense practical people sometimes feel these impressions the most acutely. One reason may arise from the circumstance, that the spiritually imaginative temperament of such persons is vigorous,—has few occasions of employment; and throws its unexhausted force into those strong "Michel-Angelesque" realizations.
Whatever may be thought on this point, there is no truth of our whole Manhood more striking, as well as more evident, than the independent vitality of our Moral Consciousness. Let us suppose, for example's sake, that the reader was once unhappy enough to injure a neighbour, a friend, or relation. Let the injury be something which you in your heart know to be truly injurious;—a thing impossible in your better moments,—but still a thing done. Now, let years elapse, and when the thought recurs and the deed is reacted, you feel how wrongful it was. And when you grow old, and there are few left to love you, the feeling will become far more deep. Put oceans, continents, tropics, between yourself and your injured one; the reality is not at all less real. The same stars no longer look down upon you by night,—the sun does not bring back the same seasons at the same time,—but your act is Timeless;—and, though night and day vary, its criminality remains the same. And worst of all,—the injured one may die, whilst no act of reparation may have been performed by you,—no word of love or ruth escaped your lips. The deed is irremediable, and you are the doer of it. Neither Space nor Duration of years can alter the fact. There is a moral mark set upon your conscience; and no human sympathy can heal, nor even alleviate the sorrow. Most likely, you never attempt to explain to others the pain you feel, because were the case another's you would hardly comprehend it yourself. Thousands have gone to the grave, carrying heavy burdens of this kind almost or altogether unsuspected.
Exemption from the laws of Time and Space, is perhaps the most wonderful characteristic of our Moral Consciousness. With this solitary exception, we seem to find ourselves in perpetual subjection to those laws. But in the realm of Morals it is the reverse. The endless theoretical contradictions about the Finite and the Infinite, (to which we have more than once alluded,) bear witness to this fact. Morality at once puts the two together;—what in its sphere of commission was a finite crime, is likewise an infinite immorality. We count up our faults as sins; but, when viewed awhile in the light of conscience, they are most burdensome to us as being, not sins, but Sin. Look at the pre-Christian Eumenides; the last writing of St. John the Evangelist; the confessions of Augustine; and the life of John Bunyan; to which we might add more than one great Oxford life;—and, through them all, the profound sense of Sin underlies every other utterance.
Another salient character of the moral sense, actually existing among mankind, may be outlined as follows. We have already considered the manner in which laws appear to human intelligence, as types, ideas, or relations. Amongst them, we paid particular attention to the relativity between Power and Function. And, when viewing these as polar opposites, with a chain or nexus between them, we saw that the opposition was, in a certain sense, fluent. Function changed into Power more than once, before each complex process of production became entirely accomplished. Power, in accomplishing its errand, continually was lost, and vanished away in Function. But between Right and Wrong, the opposition is fixed, contradictory, and enduring. Any Logic or Rhetoric which attempts to make the antithesis appear fluent, is justly condemned as special pleading, and the art of an oratorical Sophist. The only question asked of the Sophistical speaker, is whether the error he tries to excuse was wilful, or unintentional; whether it was a mistake, or a confusion of distinctly-opposed moral dictates. So Demosthenes says to Œschines, "Among all other men I observe these principles and these distinctions to prevail. Does any one wilfully do wrong? He is the object of indignation and of punishment. Does any one commit an error unintentionally? He is pardoned, not punished.... All this is established not only in all our jurisprudence, but by Nature herself in her unwritten laws, and in the very constitution of the human mind."[223]
And we may all feel quite sure that this is the normal decision of Mankind.
Right and Wrong stand out as irreconcileable antagonists, contending for the empire of the world. A man who watches the strife without deep interest, and never mingles in the fray because he thinks its issue immaterial, is no better than a Pessimist.
Compare a Duty with a Function, (in the wide sense we assigned to the latter conception,) and two points will at once be evident. First, how strong the contrast, how wide the interval, between the Law of productive work, and the law of moral activity. Secondly, how inextinguishable the contradiction between Right and Wrong. One man undertakes some mechanical utilitarian function, dependent on the pleasure or life of a superior; to whom he is in no other respect bound, nor in any way accountable. Another is a husband, a father, or a son. The object of his natural affection, is also the being to whom his tender offices of devotion are morally due. For different reasons, the daily lives of both these men have become first irksome,—then, very wearisome,—finally, almost odious to themselves. The man of routine goes to visit his ailing superior, and is permitted to enter the sick room. He undraws a curtain and looks upon the face of a dead man. Between the departed and himself, there existed no natural love, nor any acquired hate, neither duty nor demand. The link was simply official, and it is broken. Next month, there will be a new Superior who knows not Joseph. Another subordinate will occupy the post of routine; and, under the circumstances, to be released from the old toil is a sort of happiness. The tedious function of the past is over; and he carries his powers into a more hopeful employment. Yet Man is always something to Man, if both are genuine; and there arise a thousand regretful memories, and thoughts of kindly interchange of gestures, looks, and words. After a time, the last change of all is thought of as a thing to be deplored, but gone by,—a thing simply irremediable.
But how different, when the man who has been morally bound—say the son—sees a dead face upturned from his father's pillow! Here is another link of service broken;—service of another kind,—a duty. It is gone, the sick bed attendance, the harass, the vexation, endured with a recalcitrant feeling, and sometimes an openly determined opposition. And how much is gone besides! The feeling of resistance vanishes, when there is no longer a Will to be resisted; the harass and vexation appear unwholesome phantoms. To look on the life of a father or a near friend, after death, is like looking on a moonlighted landscape; its harsher features are lost in lengthening shadow; all that we thought rugged and stern, appears subdued and blended with a thousand fondly-remembered softnesses. A mild and silvery radiance flows over the whole familiar scene;—we gaze and sigh,—and sigh and gaze again. To think of its becoming veiled from our eyes, seems like losing a portion of our own existence.
And what more is gone besides? The son's thought, which used to mingle so strangely with his feelings of distaste,—that, some day, he would fill up the measure of that which was consciously lacking in his filial duty and devotion. He has now no power of offering sorrow to obtain the remission of claims unsatisfied, no possibility of saying, "Father, I have sinned"! He would die by inches, if, with each slow degree of mortality he could revoke a short period of the Past.
In other concerns of life all beyond human cure is also beyond human care; but this concern is a matter of Right and Wrong. To say the Wrong is irremediable, is to utter the sharpest cry of Remorse,—the last word of a long Despair.
It is always thus, when the moral rule intervenes. It is so, when an injured friend dies,—the injurer is fast bound by the crime he has committed. It is so, when the Son thinks he has to face things undone which ought to have been done,—the opportunity of doing them now lost for ever. Inability to remedy a wrong makes our sorrow inextinguishable. And we know by experience, that such a sorrow is unlike every other sorrow. It differs in kind from all trains of ordinary feeling, and seems to belong less to our emotional life than to be a dictate of our sovereign reason. And the moral rule is so. In the eye of Practical Reason which (so far as human nature goes), constitutes our supreme guide, a claim of Morality is absolutely rigorous—absolutely supreme—and if unsatisfied, absolutely inexorable.
To suppose anything less, would be to annihilate the whole moral law. For, how can you, or I, or any one, be required to immolate our life, freedom, fortune, or even our ordinary enjoyments, unless the rule be perfectly unyielding; perfectly unchangeable? To be binding now,—it must be binding under all circumstances, and binding always. If a single claim remain unsatisfied the admission is fatal. Broken once, the law is broken everlastingly. Every man might conceive that his own case was, possibly, just one marked for exception. Who, then, would sacrifice at the altar of Right-doing all earthly goods; undergo chains, ignominy, dungeon-solitude, pain, lingering hopelessness, and death? Who, then, would be able to stand by, and see all these inflictions undergone by one he loves best, when compliance with wrong-doing would surely set the sufferer free? It is the certainty of an equal and unrelenting law, which makes all kinds of endurance possible.
If no other reason existed, this one would suffice to prove that, unless human nature is a falsehood, happiness must ultimately coincide with virtue. How distantly removed their final coincidence may be, is a point which can have no influence on the certitude of our knowledge. We speak here, as we speak of parallel lines which cannot meet through infinity;—only we speak the reverse way;—it is for all infinity that virtue must become happiness. If a man will seriously sit down, and try the contrary hypothesis out to himself, he will see that if held true, Morality ceases to be imperial, and Man ceases to be human. The claim of Right is to rule the Universe, entire, and in every part. Before that claim, all knowledge, scientific, phenomenal, inferential, must fail and vanish away. Whatever else be true or untrue, this must be rigorous, unalterable, imperishable truth. Upon this truth, each reasonable being, percipient of it, is required to act in his own individual person. Therefore, in the case of each individual it must hold absolutely true. And thus the moral endowment of Man is not a general sense of Morality; no indeterminate impulse towards excellence floating before him; no mere thought that past generations were made for us, and we for a coming race. What we really know and acknowledge as moral truth, is each Man's strict accountability, individual, isolated, and inalienable. Otherwise, individual rightness cannot be demanded, and individual suffering for conscience-sake must become, in some eyes Utopian,—to most sufferers intolerable. The moral law is therefore supreme, or it would be ineffectual. It is individually specializing, otherwise it could not claim individual obedience. And to be supreme, both in final effect and present empire over each human being, it must obviously be—(as our practical Reason apprehends it)—Universal. To such a sovereignty there is nothing great, nothing small. Time sets no bounds, while Reason beholds in it the ultimate perfection and sum of all that went before it.
Towards that complete coincidence of happiness with virtue, the aspiration of good and the sighs of sorrowful souls, have been breathed continually. In its realization alone, can our noblest capabilities be realized. For, there is nothing in this world commensurate with the capacious longings of the human spirit. Here, too often, it droops like a beautiful plant in a strange unkindly soil; and, when it blooms its brightest, we feel that under other influences it might bloom more brightly still. True humanity is marked by its own specific character, as the fit inhabitant of a far more excellent sphere.
We ask with some eagerness, how may these things be? And the primary answer to this question lies within the circuit of our knowledge. Our own consciousness, the facts of life, and the reason of the thing, all agree in one result. Moral law exists only in, and for, a Will; and by a Will alone can it be made effectual. In this respect, it resembles the Law of Production, which, apprehended ideally by intelligence, becomes realized by the moving force of Will. Moreover, we have seen that Will is true Causation, and therefore in Will exists the first ground of Movement. We know in fact of no other. Neither is any other Causality conceivable by us, even in hypothesis; and we think this causative power of Will only by knowing its real existence and verifying its workings through their issues.
Yet further. The Moral Law, as a sovereign command, is addressed to our Wills; and unless it were the Expression of a Will, we know it could never be executed. The Law would remain a dead letter,—a thought of Intelligence,—an abstract speculation,—ineffective because impractical. Therefore, when we speak of a Supreme Moral law, we speak of a Supreme Moral Will; an idea we sometimes express by true Being, or true Personality. We speak, that is, of God.
Experience deepens to us every day the meaning of this final word. In the world of our present habitation, we see a confused mass of striving Wills,—the good and just not always in the ascendant,—rightful commands disregarded,—a sovereign rule not visibly asserted. To affirm the possible continuance of these practical contradictions, would be to deny the ultimate Moral Unity of moral purposes. This Divine consummation is, then, the finality towards which all things must in reason be tending. For even as human nature explains all other nature,—as the Moral Law explains all other law,—so God explains Man. Explains his existence, otherwise inexplicable, by the anticipated victory of Right over Wrong,—and the complete satisfaction of his unsatisfied aspirations. By presenting, that is to say, an adequate object,—a Personality infinitely great and infinitely good,—to the eye of Man's reason,—the desire of his heart,—the striving endeavour, and ceaseless energy of Man's whole essential being;—his affections, his will, his spirit.
This elevating thought comes home to each one of us, bringing with it a peace of mind unutterable. We know that the time must come, when thought and memory shall grow faint. Our brain will lose its quick apprehensive motion, and all our bodily powers must sink and languish. Our eyes will refuse to see the faces of those we love; our hands to return their kindly pressure; our nerves to thrill at their voices. But, whosoever has learnt the lesson which God's world, and God's gifts to Man, were meant to teach him, may truthfully say—"My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for Ever."
Corollary.—One reflection will probably have occurred to every reader of the last few pages. The rigour of the moral law demonstrates to us the necessary existence of a future state of recompense, and the supremacy of a sovereign Will—a divine Judge. Now, does not this very rigour leave man as hopeless, as if he were altogether without God? Can he ever expect to perform the behests of that pure and perfect Will? This difficulty would appear valid, were there nothing in the idea of God thus given us, to furnish rejoinders, such for example, as the following.—How could the Supreme Judge make any difference between those who are His anxious servants, and those who turn away from His infinite purity with hatred or indifference, if all men were alike overwhelmed in one common failure by reason of an inexorable law? How, again, could He satisfy the aspirations of earnest but half-hopeless human souls, without gathering them to His presence and to Himself? The manner in which such a happiness results to men, may be an enigma, so far as Natural Theology is concerned;—but if so, it is an enigma, of which, those who reason on this ground, may foresee that there will certainly be granted some solution. And we are not left quite in the dark as to how that solution may be found;—a truth we may perceive from the ensuing considerations:—
The moral law is presented to Man's practical reason with all its consequences. The divine Idea, when once apprehended, becomes the object of Man's noblest affections. God, Who graved His law of Right and Wrong upon the conscious will of His creature, wrote also a law of love upon His creature's human heart.
Hence we view the Supreme Being, as a God who formed and endowed Man for Himself. It was thus, that Man's nature received its only possible explanation. Hence, also, the sufficient account of a capacity for happiness which this world can never give;—and, along with it, the earnest of its ultimate satisfaction.
But these evidences of the Divine finger, prove also a Divine intention. The supreme ruler of the Universe has, by them, written upon Man's nature a purpose of making His creature happy. And if so, we cannot but conclude that to the Divine attribute of love, which inspired the glad promise, we may look for its certain fulfilment. In this point of view, a miracle worked for such a moral and spiritual purpose as the ennoblement and blessedness of Humanity, ceases in one sense to be a miracle. It becomes not only credible, but probable. And in reality, any event appears less improbable than that incredible and most unlovely issue,—the self-contradictory thought, that God has made Man in vain.
These considerations are drawn from our Moral nature, as just described. There are other considerations at hand to confirm them.
In treating the subject of Production, we saw Intelligence involved in every Idea, and preceding every process. When referred to the Universe, Intelligence was necessarily conceived as vast and immeasurable. In order to discern the other attributes of that universal Intelligence, we examined the characteristics of Design apparent in nature, and saw everywhere a spirit of superhuman tenderness breathed over our beautiful world. Thus, if there be any personal relation between the Author of Nature and our race, it ought to be one of trust on our side, demanded by care and beneficence on His. And this feeling is heightened by the charm of lavish kindness,—the prodigality of a love Divine.
Again, if we turn to one chapter of this Essay farther back, and bring to mind the rise and progress of our primary beliefs, we cannot but ask ourselves the question, how is it that the first religious idea of the Aryan race—the "Heaven-father"—should coincide with the most typical utterances of our loveliest childhood, and our most advanced manhood, now?—Is He really our Father? If so, may we not expect much from His hand? He is a Person, not an Abstract Entity,—a Force,—or a Thing. Our Father will give us, not a stone—but bread;—bread from Heaven—bread from Himself. And we see that He giveth liberally, and upbraideth not.
This is not all. The rigour of the Moral Law is an irreconcileable Antithesis between Right and Wrong,—a gulf which no human subtlety can bridge. But with all this rigour, it leaves unresolved, to a very considerable extent, one set of doubts perpetually recurring to an honest mind. Is this or that particular point a duty;—is it right or wrong;—or is its observance open to debate? There are obvious reasons, arising from the necessities of moral culture and improvement, why such points should, within certain limits, be indeterminate. This whole topic, however, belongs properly to Natural Religion, a separate subject from Natural Theology. Still, for our present purpose, an important consequence of the inexactness is clear.—It gives rise to a reasonable expectation of some more extensive code not unlikely to be vouchsafed us, harmonizing with, and supplementary to, the law of our moral consciousness. And at every age of Man's history, and throughout every country of his habitation, there always did, in fact, prevail an expectant attitude of mind, looking on all sides for the tokens of Divine Revelation. It was felt also by the wisest, that no human foresight could decide beforehand, what aids to higher knowledge and moral virtue might be given along with it. Certainly, every reasonable idea of the great and good God, formed a ground for hope and confident anticipation of the Highest and the Best.
This Essay has reached its close. May it be permitted its writer to drop the tone of an Essayist, and to say that every word of it has come from his heart?
May he likewise ask two favours of the intelligent reader; neither of them he trusts unreasonably onerous?
His first request is that the convergent effect of the separate considerations urged in this Essay, may be fairly taken into account. Indeed, the writer once thought of appending a kind of conspectus or "summing up."—But he would thus have added another full chapter to a book which has grown considerably in his hands. Neither might the summary be altogether welcome to the more candid minds amongst those who doubt, yet honestly debate. Most such readers prefer putting results and consilient reasonings into a connected shape for themselves. The writer may however venture on soliciting some special attention to the breadth of field ranged over;—the wide circumference from which his various arguments and illustrations have converged. This point is one of considerable value. Great credit is given to the accordant testimony of witnesses who have come together from distant parts of the world.
The other favour requested, is that every person who desires to form a deliberate judgment on the grand topics at issue, will carefully weigh in the balance what alternative he can embrace, if he refuses to be a Theist. An alternative, that is, sufficient to account for the human Will and Reason, for such a world as our own, and for so symmetrical and beautiful a Universe.
The system we have advocated on grounds of Reason, asserts that the first Cause of all Things and all Beings known to us, is God. This account alone is sufficingly complete, and coherent. Against it alone, no fatal objection has ever been alleged. And this single fact ought to have a preponderating weight in the balance.
When finally compared together, the motives of our Choice (as presented by Natural Theology), stand thus:—
If explanations of the Universe explain unequally, that account ought to be chosen which is easiest in itself, explains the most, and is the least self-contradictory.
If several explanations appear equal to the deliberative eye, then we must choose the noblest per se; and, as Men, we ought to prefer that which is the most elevating, and most germane to Humanity. In it, will be contained the only true Law of human Progress.
Either motive of our final Choice—still more, both these motives—will bring us to God; and with reason—"For we are also His offspring."
THE END.
Watson and Hazell, Printers, London and Aylesbury