SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS.
I.
COSMIC THEISM.[[37]]
Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable is a doctrine of so much speculative importance, that it behoves all students of philosophy to have clear views respecting its character and implications. Mr. Spencer has himself so fully explained the character of this doctrine, that no attentive reader can fail to understand it; but concerning those of its implications which may be termed theological—as distinguished from religious—Mr. Spencer is silent. Within the last two or three years, however, there has appeared a valuable work by an able exponent of the new philosophy; and in this work the writer, adopting his master's teaching of the Unknowable, proceeds to develop it into a definite system of what may be termed scientific theology. And not only so, but he assures the world that this system of scientific theology is the highest, the purest, and the most ennobling form of religion that mankind has ever been privileged to know in the past, or, from the nature of the case, can ever be destined to know in the future. It is a system, we are told, wherein the most fundamental truths of Theism are taught as necessary deductions from the highest truths of Science; it is a system wherein no single doctrine appeals for its acceptance to any principle of blind or credulous faith, but wherein every doctrine can be fully justified by the searching light of reason; it is a system wherein the noblest of our aspirations and the most sublime of our emotions are able to find an object far more worthy and much more glorious than has ever been supplied to them by any of the older forms of Theism; and it is a system, therefore, in which, with a greatly enlarged and intensified meaning, we may worship God, and all that is within us bless His holy name. Assuredly a proclamation such as this, emanating from the most authoritative expounders of modern thought, as the highest and the greatest result to which a rigorous philosophic synthesis has led, is a proclamation which cannot fail to arrest our most serious attention. Nay, may it not do more than this? May it not appeal to hearts which long have ceased to worship? May it not once more revive a hope—long banished, perhaps, but still the dearest which our poor natures have experienced—that somewhere, sometime, or in some way, it may yet be possible to feel that God is not far from any one of us? For to those who have known the anguish of a shattered faith, it will not seem so childish that our hearts should beat the quicker when we once more hear a voice announcing to a world of superstitious idolaters—"Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." But if, when we have listened to the glad tidings of the new gospel, we find that the preacher, though apparently in earnest, is not worthy to be heard again on this matter; and if, as we turn away, our eyes grow dim with the memory of a vanished dream, surely we may feel that the preacher is deserving of our blame for obtruding thus upon the most sacred of our sorrows.
Mr. John Fiske is, as is well known, an author who unites in himself the qualities of a well-read student of philosophy, a clear and accurate thinker, a thorough master of the principles which in his recent work he undertakes to explain and to extend, and a writer gifted in a remarkable degree with the power of lucid exposition. Such being the intellectual calibre of the man who elaborates this new system of scientific theology, I confess that, on first seeing his work, I experienced a faint hope that, in the higher departments of the Philosophy of Evolution as conceived by Mr. Spencer and elaborated by his disciple, there might be found some rational justification for an attenuated form of Theism. But on examination I find that the bread which these fathers have offered us turns out to be a stone; and thinking that it is desirable to warn other of the children—whether of the family Philosophical or Theological—against swallowing on trust a morsel so injurious, I shall endeavour to point out what I conceive to be the true nature of "Cosmic Theism."
Starting from the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, Mr. Fiske, following Mr. Spencer, proceeds to show how the doctrine implies that there must be a mode of Being to which human knowledge is non-relative. Or, in other words, he shows that the postulation of phenomena necessitates the further postulation of noumena of which phenomena are the manifestations. Now what may we affirm of noumena without departing from a scientific or objective mode of philosophising? We may affirm at least this much of noumena, that they constitute a mode of existence which need not necessarily vanish were our consciousness to perish; and, therefore, that they now stand out of necessary relation to our consciousness. Or, in other words, so far as human consciousness is concerned, noumena must be regarded as absolute. "But now, what do we mean by this affirmation of absolute reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? Do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum Matter? Our conclusion cannot be stated in any such form.... Our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of phenomena, external or internal, can be framed without postulating an Absolute Existence of which phenomena are the manifestations. And now let us carefully note what follows. We cannot identify this Absolute Existence with Mind, since what we know as Mind is a series of phenomenal manifestations.... Nor can we identify this Absolute Existence with Matter, since what we know as Matter is a series of phenomenal manifestations.... Absolute Existence, therefore,—the Reality which persists independently of us, and of which Mind and Matter are the phenomenal manifestations,—cannot be identified either with Mind or with Matter. Thus is Materialism included in the same condemnation with Idealism.... See then how far we have travelled from the scholastic theory of occult substrata underlying each group of phenomena. These substrata were but the ghosts of the phenomena themselves; behind the tree or the mountain a sort of phantom tree or mountain, which persists after the body of perception has gone away with the departure of the percipient mind. Clearly this is no scientific interpretation of the facts, but is rather a specimen of naïve barbaric thought surviving in metaphysics. The tree or mountain being groups of phenomena, what we assert as persisting independently of the percipient mind is a something which we are unable to condition either as tree or as mountain.
"And now we come down to the very bottom of the problem. Since we do postulate Absolute Existence, and do not postulate a particular occult substance underlying each group of phenomena, are we to be understood as implying that there is a single Being of which all phenomena, internal and external to consciousness, are manifestations? Such must seem to be the inevitable conclusion, since we are able to carry on thinking at all only under the relations of Difference and No-difference.... It may seem that, since we cannot attribute to the Absolute Reality any relations of Difference, we must positively ascribe to it No-difference. Or, what is the same thing, in refusing to predicate multiplicity of it, do we not virtually predicate of it unity? We do, simply because we cannot think without so doing."[[38]]
A single Absolute Reality being thus posited, our author proceeds, towards the close of his work, to argue that as this Reality cannot be conceived as limited either in space or time, it constitutes a Being which corresponds with our essential conception of Deity. True it is devoid of certain accessory attributes, such as personality, intelligence, and volition; but for this very reason, it is insisted, the theistic ideal as thus presented is a purer, and therefore a better, ideal than has ever been presented before. Nay, it is the highest possible form of this ideal, as the following considerations will show. In what has consisted that continuous purification of Theism which the history of thought shows to have been effected, from the grossest form of belief in supernatural agency as exhibited in Fetichism, through its more refined form as exhibited in Polytheism, to its still more refined form as exhibited in Monotheism? In nothing but in a continuous process of what Mr. Fiske calls "deanthropomorphisation." Consequently, must we not conclude that when we carry this process yet one step further, and divest our conception of Deity of all the yet lingering remnants of anthropomorphism which occur in the current conceptions of Deity, we are but still further purifying that conception? Assuredly, the attributes of personality, intelligence, and so forth, are only known as attributes of Humanity, and therefore to ascribe them to Deity is but to foster, in a more refined form, the anthropomorphic teachings of previous religions. But if we carefully refuse to limit Deity by the ascription of any human attributes whatever, and if the only attributes which we do ascribe are such as on grounds of pure reason alone we are compelled to ascribe, must we not conclude that the form of Theism which results is the purest and the most refined form in which it is possible for Theism to exist? "From the anthropomorphic point of view it will quite naturally be urged in objection, that this apparently desirable result is reached through the degradation of Deity from an 'intelligent personality' to a 'blind force,' and is therefore in reality an undesirable and perhaps quasi-atheistic result."[[39]] But the question which really presents itself is, "theologically phrased, whether the creature is to be taken as a measure of the Creator. Scientifically phrased, the question is whether the highest form of Being as yet suggested to one petty race of creatures by its ephemeral experience of what is going on in one tiny corner of the universe, is necessarily to be taken as the equivalent of that absolutely highest form of Being in which all the possibilities of existence are alike comprehended."[[40]] Therefore, in conclusion, "whether or not it is true that, within the bounds of the phenomenal universe the highest type of existence is that which we know as humanity, the conclusion is in every way forced upon us that, quite independently of limiting conditions in space or time, there is a form of Being which can neither be assimilated to humanity nor to any lower type of existence. We have no alternative, therefore, but to regard it as higher than humanity, even 'as the heavens are higher than the earth,' and except for the intellectual arrogance which the arguments of theologians show lurking beneath their expressions of humility, there is no reason why this admission should not be made unreservedly, without the anthropomorphic qualifications by which its effect is commonly nullified. The time is surely coming when the slowness of men in accepting such a conclusion will be marvelled at, and when the very inadequacy of human language to express Divinity will be regarded as a reason for a deeper faith and more solemn adoration."[[41]]