It is generally assumed that when a man has clearly perceived agnosticism to be the only legitimate attitude of reason to rest in with regard to religion (as I will subsequently show that it is), he has thereby finished with the matter; he can go no further. The main object of this treatise is to show that such is by no means the case. He has then only begun his enquiry into the grounds and justification of religious belief. For reason is not the only attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually employs for the ascertainment of truth. Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in their respective spheres even of everyday life; faith, trust, taste, &c., are as needful in ascertaining truth as to character, beauty, &c., as is reason. Indeed we may take it that reason is concerned in ascertaining truth only where causation is concerned; the appropriate organs for its ascertainment where anything else is concerned belong to the moral and spiritual region.
As Herbert Spencer says, 'men of science may be divided into two classes, of which the one, well exemplified by Faraday, keeping their religion and their science absolutely separate, are unperplexed by any incongruities between them, and the other of which, occupying themselves exclusively with the facts of science, never ask what implications they have. Be it trilobite or be it double star, their thought about it is much like the thought of Peter Bell about the primrose[44].' Now, both these classes are logical, since both, as to their religion, adopt an attitude of pure agnosticism, not only in theory, but also in practice. What, however, have we to say of the third class, which Spencer does not mention, although it is, I think, the largest, viz. of those scientific men who expressly abstain from drawing a line of division between science and religion [and then judge of religion purely on the principles and by the method of science[45]]?
There are two opposite casts of mind—the mechanical (scientific, &c.) and the spiritual (artistic, religious, &c.). These may alternate even in the same individual. An 'agnostic' has no hesitation—even though he himself keenly experience the latter—that the former only is worthy of trust. But a pure agnostic must know better, as he will perceive that there is nothing to choose between the two in point of trustworthiness. Indeed, if choice has to be made the mystic might claim higher authority for his direct intuitions.
Mr. Herbert Spencer has well said, in the opening section of his Synthetic Philosophy, that wherever human thought appears to be radically divided, [there must be truth on both sides and that the] 'reconciliation' of opposing views is to be found by emphasizing that ultimate element of truth which on each side underlies manifold differences. More than is generally supposed depends on points of view, especially where first principles of a subject are in dispute. Opposite sides of the same shield may present wholly different aspects[46]. Spencer alludes to this with special reference to the conflict between science and religion; and it is in this same connexion that I also allude to it. For it seems to me, after many years of thought upon the subject, that the 'reconciliation' admits of being carried much further than it has been by him. For he effects this reconciliation only to the extent of showing that religion arises from the recognition of fundamental mystery—which it may be proved that science also recognizes in all her fundamental ideas. This, however, is after all little more than a platitude. That our ultimate scientific ideas (i.e. ultimate grounds of experience) are inexplicable, is a proposition which is self-evident since the dawn of human thought. My aim is to carry the 'reconciliation' into much more detail and yet without quitting the grounds of pure reason. I intend to take science and religion in their present highly developed states as such, and show that on a systematic examination of the latter by the methods of the former, the 'conflict' between the two may be not merely 'reconciled' as regards the highest generalities of each, but entirely abolished in all matters of detail which can be regarded as of any great importance.
In any methodical enquiry the first object should be to ascertain the fundamental principles with which the enquiry is concerned. In actual research, however, it is by no means always the case that the enquirer knows, or is able at first to ascertain what those principles are. In fact, it is often only at the end of a research, that they are discovered to be the fundamental principles. Such has been my own experience with regard to the subject of the present enquiry. Although all my thinking life has been concerned, off and on, in contemplating the problem of our religious instincts, the sundry attempts which have been made by mankind for securing their gratification, and the important question as to their objective justification, it is only in advanced years that I have clearly perceived wherein the first principles of such a research must consist. And I doubt whether any one has hitherto clearly defined this point. The principles in question are the nature of causation and the nature of faith.
My objects then in this treatise are, mainly, three: 1st, to purify agnosticism; 2nd, to consider more fully than heretofore, and from the stand-point of pure agnosticism, the nature of natural causation, or, more correctly, the relation of what we know on the subject of such causation to the question of Theism; and, 3rd, again starting from the same stand-point, to consider the religious consciousnesses of men as phenomena of experience (i.e. as regarded by us from without), and especially in their highest phase of development as exhibited in Christianity.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] [I.e. supernatural but not strictly Divine Persons. Surely, however, the proposition is not maintainable.—Ed.]
[39] [This is another instance of recurrence to an earlier thought; see Burney Essay, p. 25, and cf. Mind and Motion and Monism, p. 117, note 1.—Ed.]
[40] Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, i. 308.