LECTURE II.
THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
'So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him.' Genesis i. 27.
The order of phenomena is not the highest revelation of God, nor is the voice of Science the only nor the most commanding voice that speaks to us about Him. The belief in Him and in the character which we assign to Him does not spring from any observation of phenomena, but from the declaration made to us through the spiritual faculty.
There is within us a voice which tells of a supreme Law unchanged throughout all space and all time; which speaks with an authority entirely its own; which finds corroboration in the revelations of Science, but which never relies on those revelations as its primary or its ultimate sanction; which is no inference from observations by the senses external or internal, but a direct communication from the spiritual kingdom, the kingdom, as philosophers call it, of things in themselves; which commands belief as a duty, and by necessary consequence ever leaves it possible to disbelieve; and in listening to which we are rightly said to walk not by sight but by faith.
Now, before going on to say anything more about the message thus given to us from the spiritual world, it is necessary to consider an objection that meets us on the threshold of all such doctrines, namely, that it is simply impossible for us to know anything whatever of things in themselves. Our knowledge, it is urged, is necessarily relative to ourselves, whereas absolute as distinct from relative knowledge is for ever beyond our reach. We can speak of what things appear to us to be; we cannot speak of what they are. We know or may know whatever comes under the observation of our senses as phenomena; we cannot know what underlies these phenomena. And sometimes it has been maintained that we not only cannot know what it is that underlies the phenomena, but cannot even know whether anything at all underlies the phenomena, and that, for aught we can tell, the whole world and all that exists or happens in it may be nothing but a system of appearances with no substance whatever. This doctrine of the relativity of all knowledge is not only applied to things external but to our very selves. We know ourselves, it is maintained, only through an internal sense which can only tell us how we appear to ourselves, but cannot tell us in any the least degree what we really are.
Now this contention is an instance of a tendency against which we are required to be perpetually on our guard. The final aim of all science and of all philosophy is to find some unity or unities that shall co-ordinate the immense complexity of the world in which we live. Now there is one and only one legitimate way of attaining this aim, and that is by patient, persevering study of the facts. But the facts turn out to be so numerous, so multifarious, that not one life nor one generation but many lives and many generations will assuredly not co-ordinate them sufficiently to bring this aim within probable reach. Hence the incessant temptation, first, to supply by hypothesis what cannot yet be obtained by observation, and, secondly, to bend facts to suit this hypothesis; and, if the framing of such hypotheses be legitimate, the distortion of facts is clearly not legitimate. It seems too long to wait for future ages to complete the task. We must in some sort complete it now; and for that purpose if the facts as we observe them will not suit, we must substitute other facts that will. Accordingly every doctrine must be made complete, and to make this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge complete, we must get rid of all exceptions. But there is one exception that we cannot get rid of, and that is the conviction of our own identity through all changes through which we pass. Every man amongst us passes through incessant changes. His body changes; he may even lose parts of it altogether; he may lose all control over some of his limbs, or over them all. And there are internal as well as external changes in each man. His affections change, his practices, his passions, his resolutions, his purposes, his judgments; everything possibly by which he knows his own character. But through all these changes he is conscious of being still one and the same self. And he knows this; and knows it, not as an inference from any observation of sense external or internal, but directly and intuitively. All other knowledge may conceivably be relative, a knowledge of things as they appear, not of things in themselves. But this is not; it is a knowledge of a thing as it is in itself; for amidst all changes in the phenomena of each man's nature, this still remains absolutely unchanged. We do speak of sameness in application to phenomena; we say this is the same colour as that; this is the same musical note as that; this is the same sensation as that. But here we mean a different thing by the word same. We mean indistinguishability. We mean that we cannot distinguish between the two colours, the two notes, the two sensations. And this no doubt is a relative knowledge, not a knowledge of things in themselves. But we do not mean incapacity of being distinguished when we speak of our own personal identity. When a man thinks to-day of his life of yesterday, and regards himself as the same being through, all the time, he does not simply mean that he cannot distinguish between the being that existed yesterday according to his memory and the being that exists to-day according to his present consciousness: he means that the being is one and the same absolutely and in itself.
And this conviction of personal identity will presently be found to fall in with the revelation of the Moral Law, which is my subject in this Lecture. For it is by virtue of this personal identity that I become responsible for my actions. I am not merely the same thinking subject, I am the same moral agent all through my life. If I changed as fast as the phenomena of my being changed, my responsibility for any evil deed would cease the moment the deed was done. No punishment would be just, because it would not be just to punish one being for the faults of a totally different being. The Moral Law in its application to man requires as a basis the personal identity of each man with himself.