History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion

by Adam Storey Farrar

Literature rather than religion was the source from which the mind of France began to imbibe the deep and spiritual conceptions which obliterated the materialism [pg 291] of the revolution. The spiritual tone of such a writer as Chateaubriand,[868] similar to that of the Romantic literature of Germany, awakened in France early in the century the conceptions of a world of spirit, of chivalrous honour, of immortal hope, of divine Providence; and led mankind to feel that there was something in them nobler than mere material organism; even a spirit that yearned for the world invisible. Chateaubriand showed,[869] in answer to the school of Voltaire, that Christianity was not merely suited to a rude age, but was the friend of art, of intellect, of improvement. The church as yet possessed only little influence. Beginning to revive under the fostering influence of Napoleon, who saw clearly the necessity of cultivating religion, its moral usefulness was lessened by falling under the suspicion of opposing the public liberty, when patronised by the government after the re-establishment of the monarchy.

The nobler conceptions just described, whether they arose from literature or from religion, gradually penetrated into the minds of thoughtful men; and, the ground being thus prepared, several rival systems of thought gradually sprang up in the fifteen years (1815-1830) of the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. Accordingly, when the revolution of 1830 gave freedom to France, there was a universal activity of mind, and free thought assumed a bolder attitude; sceptical, if compared with the Christian standard, but embodying deep moral convictions, if compared with the unbelief of the last century. Among the definite schemes of philosophy, theoretical or practical, which were proposed for acceptance, the first which we shall notice was Socialism.[870]

It originated with St. Simon.[871] The stirring events of the great revolutionary era, together with the social philosophy of Rousseau which preceded it, had directed attention to the philosophy of social life. St. Simon had lived through this period, and early in the present century devoted himself to the study of schemes of social reform; and shortly before his death in 1825, announced his ideas as a new religion, a new Christianity. In the ferment which followed the revolution of 1830, the opinions of this dreamer became suddenly popular, and, enlisting around them some distinguished minds, forced themselves on the attention of the public during the two following years; and as the political schemes which resulted from them have left their mark on the theological literature of the time, they merit some attention.

St. Simonism offered itself as a system of religion, of philosophy, and of government, which should be the perfect cure of all the evils which existed. The source of these evils St. Simon conceived to be the want of social unity; individualism, selfishness, to be the cause of virtual anarchy. He considered that philosophy and religion had striven in vain to remedy the evil, because they had not made the spiritual to bear upon the material interests of mankind. This, which was the true remedy, he proposed to discover historically.

Borrowing the thought of the German philosophers, he sought it in the elements which are to operate on human nature in the progress of its development. The mode of development by which society advances to perfection he found in a supposed law, that society shows two great epochs, which in long cycles alternate,—the organic [pg 293] and the critical; the former, where the individual is obedient to the purpose of the society; the second, where the individual rises against it. He found two instances of them in the ancient and modern world respectively, viz. in the ancient pagan period and its disruption; and again in the Catholic centralization of the middle ages, and the disorganization which succeeded from the time of the Reformation to the French revolution. He considered himself to be raised up to announce the dawn of the third organic period, the world's millennium, a new epoch, and a new religion. It was to be the realisation of the fraternity, which the great moral teachers of the world had promised and prepared. This religion consisted in raising the industrial classes, by a scheme which it is irrelevant to our purpose to explain.

Contemporaneously with this socialist system was that of Fourier,[872] which, though presented more as a scheme of social amelioration, and less as a religion, implied the same abnegation of Christianity. Starting from an avowedly pantheistic view of philosophy, the author of it gradually passed through the sciences, until he arrived at man, and reached the study of human history and constitutions. Exaggerating the good elements of human nature, and ignoring the necessity for any other than a social power to amend the heart, he traced the source of evil to social competition, and proposed to rearrange society on the principle of substituting co-partnership for competition.[873] The two ideas accordingly which these speculations introduced were;—first, that European society was approaching a crisis, the peculiarity of which, as distinct from former ones, would be, that it would be an industrial revolution; and the industrial mind would obtain the mastery of the administration; and, secondly, that the accompaniment [pg 294] would be a new organization of industry on the principle of co-operation. We cannot track these schools into their ramifications[874] and their indirect expression in lighter literature,[875] nor notice the levelling system of communism or co-operative socialism which completed the cycle;[876] but it will be remembered, that when the revolution of 1848 ensued, the schemes for organization of labour were one of its peculiarities; the social republic of those who regarded the democracy as a means, mixed with the political republicans, who thought it to be an end.

It will be noticed that the schemes of these socialist philosophers, though analogous as political theories, in proposing organization of labour and consequent monopoly, to the English socialism of Owen before named, are unlike it in philosophical origin and religious tendency. In philosophical origin his system rests on sensation, theirs on feeling; his degrades human nature, theirs elevates it. His denounces priestcraft as imposture, and religion as obsolete; theirs, though identifying religion and industry, regards religion as the highest [pg 295] expression of humanity, the great goal to which nature is developing: his leads to deism or atheism, theirs to pantheism. Yet theirs is not less hurtful, for they reject with contempt the dogmatic teaching of revelation, though they appropriate the Christian virtues; like the German philosophy they resolve the Deity into a law, according to which the universe evolves.

One of the minds however which was trained in the school of St. Simon, viz. Comte,[877] has developed a system known by the name of Positivism, which in its effects is not merely thus negative, but amounts to positive and dogmatic unbelief. He showed traces of the school from which he sprang, both in considering politics to be the highest science, in regarding humanity as a progress, and in adducing individualism as the sole cause of social evil and anarchy. He commenced similarly by taking an estimate of the present state of knowledge, and seizing the law which presides over the progress of knowledge.[878] This law he stated as consisting of three stages, through which each science passes as it grows to perfection; the first, the theological or imaginative stage, wherein the mind inquires into final causes, and refers phenomena to special providence; the second, the metaphysical, wherein the idea of supernatural or personal causes being discarded, it seeks for abstract essences; the third, the positive, wherein it rests content with generalized facts, and does not ask for causes.[879] The first in its religious phase is theistic; the second pantheistic; the third atheistic. The perfection of science consists in reaching the third stage, wherein the knowledge is strictly generalized from sensation. Having thus seized the law which presides [pg 296] over intellectual development, and settled the limits of the human reason to be confined to phenomena, agreeing in this respect with the ideologists, and opposed to Cousin, he next offered a classification of the sciences, commencing with the simplest, and showing that, as the mind passes from the simple to the complex, the methods of investigation multiply; accompanying his account by a delineation of the steps in each case by which science attains perfection; and thus gradually ascending to the science of man[880] and society, to which the preliminary investigation had been the preface, designed to prepare the way for showing how the science of society may be similarly brought into the positive stage.

Such is the scheme of Comte. The very breadth of it possesses an attraction; and if viewed merely as a logic of the sciences, it may justly command attention. Many of the analyses which he supplies of the methods and history of science are masterly; and his generalisations, even when hasty, are fertile in suggestion. He was a most original and powerful thinker; scientific rather than artistic. But his philosophy, viewed as a whole, is a grand system of materialism which is silent about God, spirit, personal immortality; diametrically opposed to Christianity, in that it makes man's social duty higher than his individual, science the only revelation, demonstration the only authority, nature's laws the only providence, and obedience to them the only piety; and destroys Christianity by destroying the possibility of its proof. In later life this distinguished man, feeling the unutterable yearnings of the religious sentiment, and the necessity that his philosophy should afford satisfaction to them, invented the system of religion developed in his catechism;[881] in which, in a manner analogous to that employed by Feuerbach or St. Simon, he regarded the collective humanity as the true God, the proper object of worship and reverence; and marked out a church and a cult, [pg 297] the caricature of the Catholic church, in which the world's heroes should receive canonization. The probability of mental derangement palliates the absurdity of this system in the originator, but throws the burden of responsibility from the master upon those who are insane enough to adopt it.

We have traced two of the schools which flourished in the second quarter of this century. Another remains, which has incurred from opponents the charge of pantheism, viz. the idealist school, commonly called the Eclectic; ([44]) which was especially dominant in France, and in the university of Paris, during the rule of the Orleans dynasty. Viewed as a philosophy it is a very noble one. Implying, as its name denotes, an attempt to reap the harvest of the industry of all preceding schools of philosophy, it was the chief means of restoring intellectual and spiritual belief to France, and of creating the great movement of historical study which marks that period of French literature. Commencing with a reaction against the materialist and sensationalist school, it sought, by imitating the mode by which Reid had refuted the philosophical scepticism of Hume, to find a method for restoring belief in spiritual realities; and afterwards, when its chief leader Cousin[882] had been exiled to Germany, he brought back an acquaintance with the successive speculative schools which existed there.