Let us confess that, if a revelation be possible at all, it cannot be more worthy of God to give one even from "within" than in such a shape as a "book"; since without a "BOOK" man remains an idolater, in spite of his fine "spiritual faculties," and a barbarian, in spite of his sublime intellect; in fact, not much better than the beasts, in spite of all those noble capacities which, although they are in him, are as it were hopelessly locked up till he has obtained this key to their treasures.
Nor do I think that the invectives of the modern spiritualists on this point are particularly becoming, when we reflect not only that they freely give mankind what Harrington declares to be to him, and I must say are equally to me, their "book-revelations," but in very deed, as he truly affirms, have given us nothing else. It has been much the same with all who have rejected historical Christianity, from Lord Herbert's time downwards.
I paused, and Fellowes mused. At last he said, "I cannot feel convinced that the 'absolute religion' is (as Mr. Parker says) essentially the same in all men, and internally revealed. The want exists in all, and there must, according to the arrangements of universal nature, be the supply; just as the eye is for the light, and the light is for the eye. As he says, 'we feel instinctively it must be so.'"
"Unhappily," said Harrington, "Mr. Parker says that many things must be which we find are not, and this among the number. At least I, for one, shall not grant that the sort of spiritual 'supply' which is to the Calmuck, or the savage 'besmeared with the blood of human sacrifices,' at all resembles that uniform light which is made for all people's eyes."
Fellowes seemed still perplexed with his old difficulty. "I cannot help thinking," he began again, "that the 'spiritual faculty' acts by immediate 'insight,' and has nothing to do with 'logical processes' or 'intellectual propositions,' or the sensational or the imaginative parts of our nature; that it 'gazes immediately upon spiritual truth.' Now in the argument you have constructed, you have expressly implied the contrary. You have said, you know, that, even if you granted men to be in possession of 'spiritual and moral truth,' there might still be large space for a divinely constructed book from the reflex operation of the intellect, the imagination, and so forth, upon the products of the spiritual faculty; both directly, and also indirectly, inasmuch as external influences modify or stimulate them."
"But," said I, "does not Mr. Newman himself, in the first part of his Treatise on the Soul, admit the reciprocal action of all these on the too plastic spiritual products; and as to 'logical and intellectual processes,' does he not continually employ them—for his system of opinions, though he will not allow them to be employed against it? And by what other means than through the intervention of your senses, by which you read his pages,—your imagination, by which you seize his illustrations,—your intellect, by which you comprehend his arguments, did he reclaim you, as you say he has done, from many of your ancient errors? How else, in the name of common sense, did he get access to your soul at all?"
"I cannot pretend to defend Mr. Newman's consistency," said he, "in his various statements on this subject. I acknowledge I am even puzzled to find out how he did convince me, upon his hypothesis."
"Are you sure," said I, laughing, "that he ever convinced you at all? However, all your perplexity seems to me to arise from supposing the spiritual powers of man to act in greater isolation from his other powers than is conceivable or even possible. Not apart from these, but in intimate conjunction with them, are the functions of the soul performed. The divorce between the 'spiritual faculties' and the intellect, which your favorite, Mr. Newman, has attempted to effect, is impossible. It is an attempt to sever phenomena which coexist in the unity of our own consciousness. I am bound in justice to admit, that there are others of our 'modern spiritualists' who condemn this attempt to separate what God hath joined so inseparably. Even Mr. Newman does practically contradict his own assertions; and outraged reason and intellect have avenged his wrongs upon them by deserting him when he has invoked them, and left him to express his paradoxes in endless perplexity and confusion. But this conversation is no bad preface to some observations on this important fallacy, (as I conceive,) which I have appended to the paper I have read, and, with your leave, I will finish with them." They assented, and I proceeded.
It is very common for philosophers, spiritual and otherwise, to be guilty of two opposite errors, both exposed in the first book of the Novum Organum. One is, that of supposing the phenomena which they have to analyze more simple, more capable of being reduced to some one principle, than is really the case; the other, that of introducing a cumbrous complexity of operations unknown to nature. It is unnecessary here to adduce examples of the last; quite as frequently, at least, man apt to be guilty of the first. He imagines that complex and generally deeply convoluted phenomena he is called to investigate are capable of being more summarily analyzed than they can be. The ends to be answered in nature by the same set of instruments are in many cases so various, and in some respects so limit and traverse one another, that though the same multiplicity of ends is attained more completely, and in higher aggregate perfection, than by any device which man's ingenuity could substitute for them, yet those instruments are necessarily very complex at the best. Look, for example, at the system of organs by which, variously employed, we utter the infinite variety of articulate sounds, perform the most necessary of all vital functions (that of respiration), masticate solid food, and swallow fluids. The miracle is, that any one set of organs in any conceivable juxtaposition should suffice to discharge with such amazing facility and rapidity these different and rapidly alternated functions; yet I suppose few who have studied anatomy will deny, that, though relatively to the variety of purposes it has to perform the apparatus is very simple, it is absolutely very complex; and that its parts play into one another with great facility indeed, but with endless intricacy.
To apply these observations to my special object. To one who attentively studies man's immaterial anatomy, much the same complexity is, I think, apparent; the philosopher is too apt to assume it to be much more simple than it is. It is the very error, as I conceive, into which some of you modern "spiritualists" fall when considering the phenomena of our religious nature. You do not sufficiently regard man as a complicated unity; you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities of his nature,—the different parts of it, sensational, emotional, intellectual, moral, spiritual,—as set off from one another by a sharper boundary line than nature acknowledges. They all work for immediate ends, indeed; but they all also work for, with, and upon each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in one indivisible mind, or rather constitute it, they form one most intricate machine: and it can rarely happen that the particular phenomena of our interior nature we happen to be investigating do not involve many others. Throughout his book on the "Soul," we find Mr. Newman employing expressions (though I admit there are others which contradict them) which imply that the phenomena of religion, of what he calls "spiritual insight," may be viewed in clearer distinction from those of the intellect, than, as I conceive, they ever can be; and that a much clearer separation can be effected between them than nature has made possible. To hear him sometimes speak, one would imagine that the logical, the moral, and the spiritual are held together by no vital bond of connection; nay, from some expressions, one would think that the "logical" faculty had nothing to do with religion, if it is not to be supposed rather to stand in the way of it; that the "intellect" and the "spiritual faculty" may each retire to its "vacant interlunar cave," and never trouble its head about what the other is doing. Thus he says in one place, "All the grounds of Belief proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with Faith at all." (Soul, p. 223.) In another, "The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul." (ibid. p. 245) "How, then, can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led?" (ibid. p. 245.) And accordingly you see he everywhere affirms that we ought not to have any better or worse opinion of any man for his "intellectual creed"; and that "religious progress" cannot be "anticipated" till intellectual "creeds are destroyed." (Phases, p. 222.)