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

by Charles Bradlaugh

He urged that religion is the accidental result of birth and education, and that therefore variety of creed should not be cause of quarrel between men, as such variety is the result of circumstances over which the men themselves have had no control; and he urges that as each sect claims to be the only true one, we ought to rise superior to all sects, and without being terrified by the fear of future punishment, or allured by the hope of future happiness, "be content with such practical religion as consists in performing the duties of life." Buckle, who speaks in high terms of Charron, says, "The Sorbonne went so far as to condemn Charron's great work, but could not succeed in having it prohibited."

René Descartes Duperron, a few years later than Bacon (he was born in 1596, at La Haye, in Touraine, died 1650, at Stockholm) established the foundations of the deductive method of reasoning, and applied it in a manner which Bacon had apparently carefully avoided. Both Descartes and Bacon addressed themselves to the task of substituting for the old systems, a more comprehensive and useful spirit of philosophy; but while Bacon sought to accomplish this by persuading men to experiment and observation, Descartes commenced with the search for a first and self-evident ground of all knowledge. This, to him, is found in consciousness. The existence of Deity was a point which Bacon left untouched by reason, yet with Descartes it was the first proposition he sought to prove. He says, "I have always thought that the two questions of the existence of God and the nature of the soul, were the chief of those which ought to be demonstrated rather by philosophy than by theology, for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to believe in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it does not seem possible ever to persuade the infidels to any religion unless we first prove to them these two things by natural reason." To prove this existence of God and the immortality of the soul, Descartes needed a firm starting point, one which no doubt could touch, one which no argument could shake. He found this point in the fact of his own existence. He could doubt everything else, but he could not doubt that he, the thinking doubter, existed. His own existence was the primal fact, the indubitable certainty, which served as the base for all other reasonings, hence his famous "Cogito ergo sum:" I think, therefore I am. And although it has been fairly objected that Descartes did not exist because he thought, but existed and thought; it is nevertheless clear that it is only in the thinking that Descartes had the consciousness of his existence. The fact of Descartes' existence was, to him, one above and beyond all logic, Evidence could not add to the certitude, no scepticism could impeach it. Whether or not we agree with the Cartesian philosophy, or the reasonings used to sustain it, we must admire the following four rules which he has given us, and which, with the view of consciousness in which we do not entirely concur, are the essential features of the basis of a considerable portion of Descartes' system;—

"1. Never to accept anything as true but what is evidently so; to admit nothing but what so clearly and distinctly presents itself as true, that there can be no reason to doubt it.

"2. To divide every question into as many separate parts as possible, that each part being more easily conceived, the whole may be more intelligible.

"3. To conduct the examination with order, beginning by that of objects the most simple, and therefore the easiest to be known, and ascending little by little up to knowledge of the most complex.

"4. To make such exact calculations, and such circumspections as to be confident that nothing essential has been omitted."

"Consciousness being the basis of all certitude, everything of which you are clearly and distinctly conscious must be true: everything which you clearly and distinctly conceive, exists, if the idea involve existence."

It should be remarked that consciousness being a state of condition of the mind, is by no means an infallible guide? Men may fancy they have clear ideas, when their consciousness, if carefully examined, would prove to have been treacherous. Descartes argued for three classes of ideas—acquired, compounded, and innate. It is in his assumption of innate ideas that you have one of the radical weaknesses of his system. Sir William Hamilton points out that the use of the word idea by Descartes, to express the object of memory, imagination, and sense, was quite a new usage, only one other writer, David Buchanan, having previously used the word idea with this signification.

Descartes did not write for the mass, and his philosophy would have been limited to a much narrower circle had its spread rested on his own efforts. But the age was one for new thought, and the contemporaries and successors of Descartes carried the Cartesian logic to extremes he had perhaps avoided, and they taught the new philosophy to the world in a fearless spirit, with a boldness for which Descartes could have given them no example. Descartes, who in early life had travelled much more than was then the custom, had probably made the personal acquaintance of most of the leading thinkers of Europe then living; it would be otherwise difficult to account for the very ready reception given by them to his first work. Fortunately for Descartes, he was born with a fair fortune, and escaped such difficulties as poorer philosophers must needs submit to. There is perhaps a per contra side. It is more than possible that if the needs of life had compelled him, Descartes' scientific predilections might have resulted in more immediate advantage to society. His philosophy is often pedantic to weariness, and his scientific theories are often sterile. The fear of poverty might have quickened some of his speculations into a more practical utterance. Buckle reminds us that Descartes "was the first who successfully applied algebra to geometry; that he pointed out the important law of the sines; that in an age in which optical instruments were extremely imperfect, he discovered the changes to which light is subjected in the eye by the crystalline lens; that he directed attention to the consequences resulting from the weight of the atmosphere, and that he detected the causes of the rainbow." "Descartes," says Saintes, "throwing off the swaddling clothes of scholasticism, resolved to owe to himself alone the acquisition of the truth which he so earnestly desired to possess. For what else is the methodical doubt which he established as the starting point in his philosophy, than an energetic protest of the human mind against all external authority? Having thus placed all science on a philosophical basis, no matter what, he freed philosophy herself from her long servitude, and proclaimed her queen of the intellect. Hence every one who has wished to account to himself for his existence, every one who has desired to know himself to know nature, and to rise to its author; in a word, all who have wished to make a wise use of their intellectual faculties, to apply them, not to hollow speculations which border on nonentity, but to sensible and practical inquiries, have taken and followed some direction from Descartes." It is almost amusing when philosophers criticise their predecessors. Mons. Henri Bitter denies to Descartes any originality of method or even of illustration, while Hegel describes him as the founder of modern philosophy, whose influence upon his own age and on modern times it is impossible to exaggerate. To attempt to deal fully and truly with Descartes in the few lines which can be spared here, is impossible; all that is sought is to as it were catalogue his name in the seventeenth century list. Whether originator or imitator, whether founder or disciple, it is certain that Descartes gave a sharp spur to European thought, and mightily hastened the progress of heresy. It is not the object or duty of the present writer to examine or refute any of the extraordinary views entertained by Descartes as to vortices. Descartes himself is reported to have said "my theory of vortices is a philosophical romance." Science in the last three centuries has travelled even more rapidly than philosophy; and most of the physical speculations of Descartes are relegated to the region of grandly curious blunderings. There is one point of error held by Descartes sufficiently entertained even to-day—although most often without a distinct appreciation of the position—to justify a few words upon it. Descartes denied mental faculties to all the animal kingdom except mankind. All the brute kingdom he regarded as machines without intelligence. In this he was logical, even in error, for he accorded a soul to man which he denied to the brute. Soul and mind with him are identified, and thought is the fundamental attribute of mind. To admit that a dog, horse, or elephant can think, that it can remember what happened yesterday, that it can reason ever so incompletely, would be to admit that that dog, horse, or elephant, has some kind of soul; to avoid this he reduces all animals outside the human family to the position of machines. To-day science admits in animals, more or less according to their organisation, perception, memory, judgment, and even some sort of reason. Yet orthodoxy still claims a soul for man even if he be a madman from his birth, and denies it to the sagacious elephant, the intelligent horse, the faithful dog, and the cunning monkey. His proof of the existence of Deity is thus stated by Lewes:—"Interrogating his consciousness, he found that he had the idea of God, understanding by God, a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent. This, to him, was as certain a truth as the truth of his own existence. I exist: not only do I exist, but exist as a miserably imperfect finite being, subject to change, greatly ignorant, and incapable of creating anything. In this, my consciousness, I find by my finitude that I am not the All; by my imperfection, that I am not perfect. Yet an infinite and perfect being must exist, because infinity and perfection are implied as correlatives in my ideas of imperfection and finitude. God therefore exists: his existence is clearly proclaimed in my consciousness, and can no more be a matter of doubt, when fairly considered, than my own existence. The conception of an infinite being proves his real existence; for if there is not really such a being, I must have made the conception; but if I could make it, I can also unmake it, which evidently is not true; therefore there must be, externally to myself an archetype from which the conception was derived. All that we clearly and distinctly conceive as contained in anything, is true of that thing. Now we conceive, clearly and distinctly, that the existence of God is contained in the idea we have of him—Ergo, God exists." It may not be out of place to note at this demonstration, that the Jesuit writer, Father Hardouin, in his "Atheists Unmasked," as a recompense for this demonstration of the existence of Deity, places Descartes and his disciples, le Grand and Regis, in the first rank of atheistical teachers. Voltaire, commenting on this, remarks, "The man who had devoted all the acuteness of his extraordinary intellect to the discovery of new proofs of the existence of a God, was most absurdly charged with denying him altogether." Speaking of the proof of the existence of Deity, "Demonstrations of this kind," says Froude, "were the characteristics of the period. Descartes had set the example of constructing them, and was followed by Cudworth, Clarke, Berkeley, and many others besides Spinoza. The inconclusiveness of the method may perhaps be observed most readily in the strangely opposite conceptions formed by all these writers of the nature of that Being whose existence they nevertheless agreed, by the same process, to gather each out of their ideas. It is important, however, to examine it carefully, for it is the very keystone of the Pantheistic system. As stated by Descartes, the argument stands something as follows:—God is an all-perfect Being, perfection is the idea which we form of Him, existence is a mode of perfection, and therefore God exists. The sophism, we are told, is only apparent, existence is part of the idea—as much involved in it as the equality of all lines drawn from the centre to the circumference of a circle is involved in the idea of a circle. A non-existent all-perfect Being is as inconceivable as a quadrilateral triangle. It is sometimes answered that in this way we may prove the existence of anything, Titans, Chimaeras, or the Olympian gods; we have but to define them as existing, and the proof is complete. But this objection is summarily set aside; none of these beings are by hypothesis absolutely perfect, and, therefore, of their existence we can conclude nothing. With greater justice, however, we may say, that of such terms as perfection and existence we know too little to speculate. Existence may be an imperfection for all we can tell, we know nothing about the matter. Such arguments are but endless petitiones principii—like the self-devouring serpent, resolving themselves into nothing. We wander round and round them, in the hope of finding some tangible point at which we can seize their meaning; but we are presented everywhere with the same impracticable surface, from which our grasp glides off ineffectual."

Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury, is one of those men more often freely abused than carefully read; he was born April 5th, 1588, died 1679. He was "the subtlest dialectician of his time," and one of the earliest English advocates of the materialistic limitation of mind; he denies the possibility of any knowledge other than as resulting from sensation; his doctrine is in direct negation of Descartes' theory of innate ideas, and would be fatal to the orthodox dogma of mind as spiritual. "Whatever we imagine," he says, "is finite. Therefore, there is no idea, no conception of anything we call infinite." In a brief pamphlet on his own views, published in 1680, in reply to attacks upon him, he writes, "Besides the creation of the world there is no argument to prove a Deity," and "that it cannot be decided by any argument that the world had a beginning;" but he professes to admit the authority of the Magistrate and the Scriptures to override argument. He says that he does not "believe that the safety of the state depends upon the safety of the church." Some of Hobbes' pieces were only in Latin, others were issued in English. In one of those on Heresy, he mentions that by the statute of 1 Edward VI. cap 12, there is provision for the repeal of all former acts of parliament "made to punish any manner of doctrine concerning religion."