Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification

by Charles Bradlaugh

A writer in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana describes him as "the one, perhaps, whose heart was most free from scepticism, and whose understanding was most prone to it." Berkeley is here dealt with as one specially contributing to the growth of sceptical thought, and not as an Idealist only. Arthur Collier published, about the same time as Berkeley, several works in which absolute Idealim is advocated. Collier and Berkeley were mouthpieces for the expression of an effort at resistance against the growing Spinozistic school. They wrote against substance assumed as the "noumenon lying underneath all phenomena—the substratum supporting all qualities—the something in which all accidents inhere." Collier and his writings are almost unknown; Berkeley's name has become famous, and his arguments have served to excite far wider scepticism than have those of any other Englishman of his age. Most religious men who read him misunderstand him, and nearly all misrepresent his theory. Hume, speaking of Berkeley, says, "Most of the writings of that very ingenious philosopher form the best lessons of scepticism which are to be found, either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes, however, in his title page (and undoubtedly with great truth) to have composed his book against the sceptics, as well as against the Atheists and Freethinkers. But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are in reality merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction," Berkeley wrote for those who "want a demonstration of the existence and immateriality of God, or the natural immortality of the soul," and his philosophy was intended to check materialism. The key-note ot his works may be found in his declaration, "The only thing whose existence I deny, is that which philosophers call Matter or corporeal substance." The definition given by Berkeley of matter is one which no materialist will be ready to accept, i.e.f "an inert, senseless substance in which extension, figure, and motion do actually exist." The "Principles of Human Knowledge" is the work in which Berkeley's Idealism is chiefly set forth, and many have been the volumes and pamphlets written in reply. Whatever might have been Berkeley's intention as to refuting scepticism, the result of his labours was to increase it in no ordinary degree; Dr. Pye Smith thug summarises Berkeley's views:—"He denied the existence of matter as a cause of our perceptions, but firmly maintained the existence of created and dependent spirits, of which every man is one; that to suppose the existence of sensible qualities and of a material world, is an erroneous deduction from the fact of our perceptions; that those perceptions are-nothing but ideas and thoughts in our minds; that these are produced in perfect uniformity, order, and consistency in all minds, so that their occurrence is according to fixed rules which may be called the laws of nature; that that Deity is either the immediate or the mediate cause of these perceptions, by his universal operation on created minds; and that the created mind has a power of managing these perceptions, so that volitions arise, and all the phenomena of moral action and responsibility. The great reply to this is, that it is a hypothesis which cannot be proved, which is highly improbable, and which seems to put upon the Deity the inflicting on man a perpetual delusion."

The weakness of Berkeley's system as a mere question of logic is, that while he requires the most rigorous demonstration of the existence of what he defines as matter, he assumes an eternal spirit with various attributes, and also creates spirits of various sorts. He creates the states of mind resulting from the sensation of surrounding phenomena into ideas, existing independent of the ego, when in truth, man's ideas are not in addition to man's mind; but the aggregate of sensative ability, and the result of its exercise is the mind, just as the aggregate of functional ability and activity is life. The foundation of Berkeley's faith in the invisible "eternal spirit" in angels as "created spirits," is difficult to discover, when you accept his argument for the rejection of visible phenomena. He in truth should have rejected everything save his own mind, for the mental processes are clearly not always reliable. In dreams, in delirium, in insanity, in temporary disease of particular nerves of sensation, in some phases of magnetic influence, the ideas which Berkeley sustains so forcibly are admittedly delusions. As in George Berkeley, so we have in Bishop Butler, an illustration of the endeavour to check the rapidly enlarging scepticism of this century. Joseph Butler was born in 1692, died 1752, and will be long known by his famous work on the "Analogy of Religion" to the course of nature. In this place it is not our duty to do more than point out a few features of the argument, observing that this elaborate piece of special pleading for natural and revealed religion, is evidence that danger was apprehended by the clergy, from the spread of Freethought views amongst the masses. A popular reply was written to provide against the growing popular objection; Bishop Butler argues that "we know that we are endued with certain capacities of action, of happiness and misery; for we are conscious of acting, of enjoying pleasure, and of suffering pain. Now that we have these powers and capacities before death, is a presumption that we shall retain them through, and after death; indeed a probability of it abundantly sufficient to act upon, unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the destruction of those living powers." It may be fairly submitted in reply, that here the argument from analogy is as utterly faulty, as if in the spring season a traveller should say of a wayside pool, it is here before the summer sun shines upon it, and will be here during and after the summer drought, when ordinary experience would teach him that as the pool is only gathered during the rainy season in the hollow ground, so in the dry hot summer days, it will be gradually evaporated under the blazing rays of the July sun. As to the human capacities, experience teaches us that they have changed with the condition of the body; emotional feelings and animal passions, the gratification of which ensured temporary pleasure or pain, have varied, have been newly felt, and have died out in different periods and conditions of our lives, and the presumption is against the complete endurance of all these "capacities for action," &c., even during the whole life, and much more strongly, therefore, against their endurance after death. Besides which—continuing the argument from analogy—my "capacities" having only been manifested since my body has existed, and in proportion to my physical ability, the presumption is rather that the manifestation which commenced with the body, will finish as the body finishes. Further, it is fair to presume that "death is the destruction of those living powers," for death is the cessation of organic functional activity; a cessation consequent on some change or destruction of organisation. Of course, the word "destruction" is not here used in any sense of annihilation of substance, but as meaning such a change of condition that vital phenomena are no longer manifested. But, says Butler, "we know not at all what death is in itself, but only some of its effects, such as the dissolution of flesh, skin, and bones, and these effects do in nowise appear to imply the destruction of a living agent." Here, perhaps, there is an unjustifiable assumption in the words "living agent," for if by living agent is only meant the animal which dies, then the destruction of flesh, skin, and bones does fairly imply the destruction of the living agent, but if by living agent is intended more than this, then the argument is speciously and unfairly worded. But beyond this, if Bishop Butler's argument has any value, it proves too much. He says—"Nor can we find anything throughout the whole analogy of nature, to afford us even the slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers.... by death." That is, Bishop Butler applies his argument for a future state of existence, not only to man, but to the whole animal kingdom; and it may be fairly conceded that there is as much ground to presume that man will live again, as there is that the worm will live again, which, being impaled upon a hook, is eaten by the gudgeon, or that the gudgeon will live again which, threaded as a bait, is torn and mangled to death by a ravenous pike, or that the pike will live again after it has been kept out of water till rigid, then gutted, scaled, stuffed with savoury condiments, broiled, and ultimately eaten by Piscator and his family. Bishop Butler's argument, that because pleasure or pain is uniformly found to follow the acting or not acting in some particular manner, there is presumptive analogy in favour of future rewards and punishments by Deity, appears weak in the extreme. According to Butler, God is the author of nature. Nature's laws are such, that punishment, immediate or remote, follows non-observance, and reward, more or less immediate, is the result of observance; and because God is by Butler's argument, assumed as the author of nature, and has therefore already punished or rewarded once; we are following Butler, to presume that he will after death punish or reward again for an action upon which he has already adjudicated. In his chapter on the Moral Government of God, Butler says, "As the manifold appearances of design and of final causes in the constitution of the world, prove it to be the work of an intelligent mind, so the particular final causes of pleasure and pain distributed amongst his creatures, prove that they are under his government—what may be called his natural government of creatures endowed with sense and reason." But taking Bishop Butler's own position, what sort of government is demonstrated by this argument from analogy? God, according to Bishop Butler's reasoning, designed the whale to swallow the Clio Borealis, which latter he designed to be so swallowed, but which he nevertheless invested with some 300,000 suckers, to enable it in its turn to seize the minute animalcule on which it lives. God designed Brutus to kill Caesar, Orsini to be beheaded by Louis Napoleon. These, according to Butler, would be all under the special control of God's government. Deity would guide the Clio Borealis into the mouth of the whale, guide the dagger of Brutus, and arrange for the enjoyment of the cancan by princes of the blood royal. Bishop Butler's theory that our present life is a state of trial and probation, is met by the difficulty, that while he assumes the justice and benevolence of God as moral governor, he has the fact, that many exist with organisations and capacities so originally different, that it is manifestly most unfair to put one and the same reward, or one and this same publishment for all. The Esquimaux or Negro is not on a level at the outset of life with the Caucasian races. How from analogy can any one argue in favour of the doctrine that an impartial judge who had started them in the race of life unfairly matched, would put the same prize before all, none of the starters being handicapped? Bishop Butler's argument on the doctrine of necessity, is that which one might expect to find from a hired nisi prius advocate, but which is read with regret coming from the pen of a gentleman, who ought to be striving to convince his erring brethren by the words of truth alone. He says, suppose a child to be educated from his earliest youth in the principles of "fatalism," what then? The reply is, that a necessitarian knowing that a certain education of the human mind was most conducive to human happiness, would strive to impart to his children education of that character. That a worse "fatalism" is inculcated in the doctrine of a fore-ordaining and ever-directing providence, planning and controlling every one of the child's actions, than ever was taught in necessitarian essays. That the child would be taught the laws of existence, and would be shown how certain conduct resulted in pleasure, and certain other conduct was during life attended with pain, and that the result of such teaching would be far more efficacious in its moral results, than the inculcation of a present responsibility, and an ultimate heaven and hell, in which latter doctrine, nearly all Christians profess to believe, but nearly all act as if it were not of the slightest consequence whether any such paradise or infernal region exists.

Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, born October 1,1672, died November 15,1751, may be taken as one of the school of polished deistical writers, who, though comparatively few, fairly enough represent the religious opinions of the large majority of the journalists of the present day. In the course of Bolingbroke's "Letters on the Study of History," a strong sceptical spirit is manifested, and he speaks in one of "the share which the divines of all religions have taken in the corruption of history." In another he thus deals with the question of the Bible:—"It has been said by Abbadie, and others, 'that the accidents which have happened to alter the texts of the Bible, and to disfigure, if I may say so, the scriptures in many respects, could not have been prevented without a perpetual standing miracle, and that a perpetual standing miracle is not in the order of providence.' Now I can by no means subscribe to this opinion. It seems evident to my reason that the very contrary must be true; if we suppose that God acts towards men according to the moral fitness of things; and if we suppose that he acts arbitrarily, we can form no opinion at all. I think these accidents would not have happened, or that the scriptures would have been preserved entirely in their genuine purity notwithstanding these accidents, if they had been entirely dictated by the Holy Ghost: and the proof of this probable proposition, according to our clearest and most distinct ideas of wisdom and moral fitness, is obvious and easy. But these scriptures are not so come down to us: they are come down broken and confused, full of additions, interpolations; and transpositions, made we neither know when, nor by whom; and such, in short, as never appeared on the face of any other book, on whose authority men have agreed to rely. This being so, my lord, what hypothesis shall we follow? Shall we adhere to some such distinction as I have mentioned? Shall we say, for instance, that the scriptures were originally written by the authors to whom they are vulgarly ascribed, but that these authors writ nothing by inspiration, except the legal, the doctrinal, and the prophetical parts, and that in every other respect their authority is purely human, and therefore fallible? Or shall we say that these histories are nothing more than compilations of old traditions, and abridgements of old records, made in later times, as they appear to every one who reads them without prepossession and with attention?"

It has been alleged that Pope's verse is but another rendering of Bolingbroke's views without his "aristocratic nonchalance," and that some passages of Pope regarded as hostile to revealed religion, were specially due to the influence of Bolingbroke; and more than one critic has professed to trace identities of thought and expression in order to show that Pope was largely indebted to the published works of St. John.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh, 26th April, 1711, and died 1776. He created a new school of Freethinkers, and is to-day one of the most esteemed amongst sceptical authors. He was a profound thinker, and an easy, elegant writer, who did much to give a force and solidity to extreme heretical reasonings, which they had hitherto been regarded as lacking. His heretical essays have had a far wider circulation since his death, than they enjoyed during his life. Many volumes have been issued in the fruitless endeavour to refute him, and all these have contributed to widen the circle of his readers. He adopted and advocated the utilitarian and necessitarian theory of morals, and wrote of ordinary theism and religion, as arising from personification of unknown causes, for general or special phenomena. He held and advanced the idea, which Buckle so fully states, and endeavours to prove in his "History of Civilisation"—viz., that general laws operate amongst peoples, and influence and determine their so-called moral conduct, much as other laws do the orbits of planets, the occurrences of eclipses, &c. His arguments against miracles, as evidences for revealed religion, remain unrefuted, although they have been made the subject of many attacks. He contends, in effect, that in each account of a miraculous occurrence, there is always more prima facie probability of error, or bad faith on the part of the narrator, than of interference with those invariable sequences known as natural laws, and there was really no reply in the conclusion of Dr. Campbell, to the effect that we have equally to trust human testimony for an account of the laws of nature and for the narratives of miracles, for in truth you never have the same character of human testimony for the latter as for the former. And, further, while in the case of human testimony as to natural events, it is evidence which you may test and compare with your own experience. This is not so as to miracles, declared at once to be out of the range of all ordinary experience. "Men," he says, "are carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to repose faith in their senses. When they follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images presented to the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but representatives of the other. But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception. So far, then, we are necessitated by reasoning to contradict the primary instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses. But here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would obviate the cavils and objections of the sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of nature, for that led us to quite a different system, which is acknowledged fallible, and even erroneous, and to justify this pretended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity. Do you follow the instinct and propensities of nature in assenting to the veracity of the senses? But these lead you to believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object—(Idealism.) Do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external? You here depart from your natural propensities, and more obvious sentiments; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, which can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that the perceptions are connected with external objects—(Scepticism.)"

Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, born in 1689 near Bordeaux, died at Paris 1755, who earned considerable fame by his "Lettres Persanes," is more famous for his oft-referred to work "L'Esprit des Lois." Victor Cousin describes him as "the man of our country who has best comprehended history, and who first gave an example of true historic method." In the publication of certain of his ideas on history, Montesquieu was the layer of the foundation-stone for an edifice which Buckle would probably have gloriously crowned had his life been longer. Voltaire, who sharply criticises Montesquieu, declares that he has earned the eternal gratitude of Europe by his grand views and his bold attacks on tyranny, superstition, and grinding taxation. Montesquieu urged that virtue is the true essence of republicanism, but misled by the mistaken notions of honour held by his predecessors and contemporaries, he declared honour to be the principle of monarchical institutions. Voltaire reminds him that "it is in courts that men, devoid of honour, often attain to the highest dignities; and it is in republics that a known dishonourable citizen is seldom trusted by the people with public concerns." Montesquieu wrote in favour of a constitutional monarchy such as then existed in England, and his work shadowed forth a future for the middle class in France.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, born 20th February, 1694, at Chatenay, died 30th May, 1778, may be fairly written of as the man to whose fertile brain and active pen, to whose great genius, fierce irony, and thorough humanity, we owe much more of the rapid change of popular thought in Europe during the last century than to any other man. His wit, like the electric flash, spared nothing; his love for his kind would have made him the protector of everything weak, his desire to protect himself from the consequences of his truest utterances, often dims the hero-halo with which his name is surrounded. Born and trained amongst a corrupt and selfish class, it is not wonderful that we find some of their pernicious habits clinging to parts of his career. On the contrary, it is more wonderful to find that he has shaken off so much of the consequences of his education. Neither in politics nor in theology was he so very extreme in his utterances as many deemed him, for while he occasionally severely handled individual monarchs, we do not find him the preacher of republicanism. On the contrary, he is often severe against some of the advanced political views of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He nevertheless suggests that it might have been "the art of working metals which originally made kings, and the art of casting cannons which now maintains them," and as a commentary on kingly conduct in the matter of taxation, declares that "a shepherd ought to shear his sheep, and not to flay them." In theological controversy he wrote as a Theist, and declares "Atheism and Fanaticism" to be "two monsters which may tear society in pieces, but the Atheist preserves his reason, which checks his propensity to mischief, while the fanatic is under the influence of a madness constantly urging him on." For the ancient Jews, and for the Hebrew records, Voltaire entertained so thorough a feeling of contemptuous detestation, that in his "Defense de mon Oncle," and his articles and letters on the Jews, we find utter disbelief in them as a chosen people, and the strongest abhorrence of their brutal habits, heightened in expression by the scathing satire of his phrases. To the more modern descendants of Abraham he said: "We have repeatedly driven you away through avarice; we have recalled you through avarice and stupidity; we still, in more towns than one, make you pay for liberty to breathe the air; we have, in more kingdoms than one, sacrificed you to God; we have burned you as holocausts—for I will not follow your example, and dissemble that we have offered up sacrifices of human blood; all the difference is, that our priests, content with applying your money to their own use, have had you burned by laymen; while your priests always immolated their human victims with their own sacred hands. You were monsters of cruelty and fanaticism in Palestine; we have been so in Europe."

Writing on miracles, Voltaire asks: "For what purpose would God perform a miracle? To accomplish some particular design upon living beings? He would then, in reality, be supposed to say—I have not been able to effect by my construction of the universe, by my divine decrees, by my eternal laws, a particular object; I am now going to change my eternal ideas and immutable laws, to endeavour to accomplish what I have not been able to do by means of them. This would be an avowal of his weakness, not of his power; it would appear in such a being an inconceivable contradiction. Accordingly, therefore, to dare to ascribe miracles to God is, if man can in reality insult God, actually offering him that insult. It is saying to him—You are a weak and inconsistent being. It is therefore absurd to believe in miracles; it is, in fact, dishonouring the divinity."

Those who are inclined to attack the character of Voltaire, should read the account of his endeavours for the Calas family. How, when old Calas had been broken alive on the wheel at Toulouse, and his family were ruined, Voltaire took up their case, aided them with means, spared no effort of his pen or brain, and ultimately achieved the great victory of reversing the unjust sentence, and obtaining compensation for the family. It, then, these Voltaire-haters have not learned to love this great heretic, let them study the narrative of his even more successful endeavours on behalf of the Sirvens; more successful, because in this case he took up the fight before an unjust judgment could be delivered, and thus prevented the repetition of such an iniquitous execution as had taken place in the Galas case. The cowardly slanders as to his conduct when dying are not worth notice; those spit on the grave of the dead who would not have dared to look in the face of the living.

Claud Adrian Helvetius was born at Paris 1715, and died December 1771. His best known works are "De l'Esprit," published 1758; "Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances Humaines," 1746; "Traite des Systemes," 1749; "Traite des Sensations," 1758. Rousseau wrote in reply to Helvetius, but when the Parliament of Paris condemned the work "De l'Esprit," and it was in consequence burned by the common hangman, Rousseau withdrew his refutatory volume. Helvetius argues that any religion, of which the chiefs are intolerant, and the conduct of which is expensive to the state, "cannot long be the religion of an enlightened and well governed nation. The people that submit to it will labour only to maintain the ease and luxury of the priesthood; each of its inhabitants will be nothing more than a slave to the sacerdotal power. A religion to be good should be tolerant and little expensive. Its clergy should have no authority over the people. A dread of the priest debases the mind and the soul, makes the one brutish and the other slavish. Must the ministers of the altar always be armed with the sword of the state? Can the barbarities committed by their intolerance ever be forgotten? The earth is yet drenched with the blood they have spilled. Civil tolerance alone is not sufficient to secure the peace of nations. Every dogma is a seed of discord and injustice sown amongst mankind."