Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

In regard to Mr. Atkinson and his philosophy, accepted by her with such satisfaction, and which henceforth became the master-light of all her seeing, our allotted space will allow us only to speak very briefly. The results of this new mental departure could not but disturb and afflict many of her friends, to whom faith in God, Christ, and immortality was still dear. To Miss Martineau herself, however, her disbelief in these seemed a happy emancipation. She carried into the assertion of her new and unpopular ideas the same honesty and courage she had always shown, and also the same superb dogmatism and contempt for those who differed from her. Apparently it was always to her an absolute impossibility to imagine herself wrong when she had once come to a conclusion. In theory she might conceive it possible to be mistaken, but practically she felt herself infallible. The following examples will show how she speaks, throughout her biography, of those who held the opinions she had rejected.

Miss Martineau, being a Necessarian, says, "All the best minds I know are Necessarians; all, indeed, who are qualified to discuss the subject at all." "The very smallest amount of science is enough to enable any rational being to see that the constitution and action of will are determined by the influences beyond the control of the possessor of the faculty." She adds, that for more than thirty years she has seen how awful "are the evils which arise from that monstrous remnant of old superstition,—the supposition of a self-determining power, etc." Now, among those she had intimately known were Dr. Channing and James Martineau, neither of them believing in the doctrine of Necessity.

Speaking of Christianity, after she had rejected it, she calls it "a monstrous superstition." Elsewhere she speaks of "the Christian superstition of the contemptible nature of the body;" says that "Christians deprave their moral sense;" talks of "the selfish complacencies of religion," and of "the atmosphere of selfishness which is the very life of Christian doctrine and of every other theological scheme;" speaks of "the Christian mythology as a superstition which fails to make happy, fails to make good, fails to make wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies it took the place of." "For three centuries it has been undermined, and its overthrow completely decided." Thus easily does she settle the question of Christianity.

Miss Martineau ceased to believe in immortality; and immediately all believers in immortality became, to her mind, selfish or stupid, or both. "I neither wish to live longer here," she says, "nor to find life again elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it, and a mere act of restricted human imagination and morality to conceive of it." There is "a total absence of evidence for a renewed life." "I myself utterly disbelieve in a future life." She would submit, though reluctantly, to live again, if compelled to. "If I find myself conscious after the lapse of life, it will be all right, of course; but, as I said, the supposition appears to me absurd."

Under the instructions of Mr. Atkinson, Miss Martineau ceased to believe in a personal God, or any God but an unknown First Cause, identical with the Universe. The argument for Design, on which Mr. John Stuart Mill, for instance, lays such stress, seemed to her "puerile and unphilosophical." The God of Christians she calls an "invisible idol." He "who does justice to his own faculties" must give up "the personality of the First Cause." She considered the religion in her "Life in the Sick-Room" to have been "insincere;" which we, who know the perfect honesty of Harriet Martineau, must take the liberty to deny. Though declaring herself to be no Atheist, because she believes in an unknown and unknowable First Cause, she regards philosophical Atheists as the best people she had ever known, and was delighted in finding herself unacquainted with God, and so at peace.

It is curious to read these "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development," of which Harriet Martineau and Mr. Atkinson are the joint authors. The simple joy with which they declare themselves the proud discoverers of this happy land of the unknowable is almost touching. All that we know, say they, is matter or its manifestation. "Mind is the product of the brain," and "the brain is not, as even some phrenologists have asserted, the instrument of the mind." The brain is the source of consciousness, will, reason. Man is "a creature of necessity." "It seems certain that mind, or the conditions essential to mind, is evolved from gray vesicular matter." "Nothing in nature indicates a future life." "Knowledge recognizes that nothing can be free, or by chance; no, not even God,—God is the substance of Law." Whereupon Miss Martineau inquires whether Mr. Atkinson, in speaking of God, did not merely use another name for Law. "We know nothing beyond law, do we?" asks this meek disciple, seeking for information. Mr. Atkinson replies that we must assume some fundamental principle "as a thing essential, though unknown; and it is this which I wrongly enough perhaps termed God." But if it is wrong to call this principle God, and if they know nothing else behind phenomena, why do they complain so bitterly at being charged with Atheism? And directly Mr. Atkinson asserts that "Philosophy finds no God in nature; no personal being or creator, nor sees the want of any." "A Creator after the likeness of man" he affirms to be "an impossibility." For, though he professes to know nothing about God, he somehow contrives to know that God is not what others believe him to be. Eternal sleep after death he professes to be the only hope of a wise man. The idea of free-will is so absurd that it "would make a Democritus fall on his back and roar with laughter." "Christianity is neither reasonable nor moral." Miss Martineau responds that "deep and sweet" is her repose in the conviction that "there is no theory of God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush, so misleading as to make me mourn." And thus do the apostle and the disciple go on, triumphantly proclaiming their own limitations to the end of the volume.

And yet the effect of this book is by no means wholly disagreeable. To be sure, in their constant assertions of the "impossibility" of any belief but their own being true, their honest narrowness may often be a little amusing. They seem like two eyeless fish in the recesses of the darkness of the Mammoth Cave talking to each other of the absurdity of believing in any sun or upper world. But they are so honest, so sincere, so much in love with Truth, and so free from any self-seeking, that we find it easy to sympathize with their naïve sense of discovery, as they go sounding on their dim and perilous way. Only we cannot but think what a disappointment it must be to Harriet Martineau to find herself alive again in the other world. In her case, as Mr. Wentworth Higginson acutely remarks, we are deprived of the pleasure of sympathizing with her gladness at discovering her mistake, since another life will be to her a disagreeable as well as an unforeseen event.

Nor is it extraordinary, to those who trace Harriet Martineau's intellectual history, that she should have fallen into these melancholy conclusions. In her childhood and youth, most of the Unitarians of England, followers of Priestley, adopted his philosophy of materialism and necessity. Priestley did not believe in a soul, but trusted for a future life to the resurrection of the body. He was also a firm believer in philosophical necessity. An active and logical mind like Miss Martineau's, destitute of the keenness and profundity which belonged to that of her brother James, might very naturally arrive at a disbelief in anything but matter and its phenomena. From ignorance of these facts, Mrs. Chapman expresses surprise that the inconsistency of Harriet Martineau's belief in necessity, with other parts of her Unitarianism, "should not have struck herself, her judges, or the denomination at large." It would have been inconsistent with American Unitarianism, but it was not foreign from the views of English Unitarians at that time.

The publication of these "Letters" naturally caused pain to religious people, and especially to those of them who had known and honored Miss Martineau for her many past services in the cause of human freedom and progress. Many of these were Unitarians and Unitarian ministers, who had been long proud of her as a member of their denomination and one of their most valued co-workers. It seemed necessary for them to declare their dissent from her new views, and this dissent was expressed in an article in the "Prospective Review," written by her own brother, James Martineau. Mrs. Chapman now makes known, what has hitherto been only a matter of conjecture, that this review gave such serious offense to Miss Martineau that she from that time refused to recognize her brother or to have any further communication with him. Mrs. Chapman, who seldom or never finds her heroine in the wrong, justifies and approves her conduct also here, quoting a passage from the review in support of Miss Martineau's conduct in treating her brother as one of "the defamers of old times whom she must never again meet." In this passage Mr. Martineau only expresses his profound grief that his sister should sit at the feet of such a master as Mr. Atkinson, and lay down at his bidding her early faith in moral obligation, in the living God, in the immortal sanctities. He calls this "an inversion of the natural order of nobleness," implying that Mr. Atkinson ought to have sat at her feet instead; and, turning to the review itself, we find this the only passage in which a single word is said which could be regarded as a censure on Miss Martineau. But Mr. Atkinson is indeed handled with some severity. His language is criticised, and his logic is proved fallacious. Much the largest part of the review is, however, devoted to a refutation of his philosophy and doctrines. Now, as so large a part of the "Letters" is pervaded with denunciations of the bigotry which will not hear the other side of a question, and filled with admiration of those who prefer truth to the ties of kindred, friendship, and old association, we should have thought that Miss Martineau would rejoice in having a brother who could say, "Amica Harriet, sed magis amica veritas." Not at all. It was evident that he had said nothing about herself at which she could take offense; but in speaking against her new philosophy and her new philosopher he had committed the unpardonable sin. And Mrs. Chapman allows herself to regard it as a natural inference that this honest and manly review resulted from "masculine terror, fraternal jealousy of superiority, with a sectarian and provincial impulse to pull down and crush a world-wide celebrity." She considers it "incomprehensible in an advocate of free thought" that he should express his thoughts freely in opposition to a book which argued against all possible knowledge of God and against all faith in a future life. It is, however, only just to Miss Martineau to say that she herself has brought no such charges against her brother, but left the matter in silence. We cannot but think that it would have been better for Miss Martineau's reputation if her biographer had followed her example.

But, though we must object to Mrs. Chapman's views on this point, and on some others, we must add that her part of the second volume is prepared with much ability, and is evidently the result of diligent and loyal friendship. Miss Martineau could not have selected a more faithful friend to whom to confide the history of her life. On two subjects, however, we are obliged to dissent from her statements. One is in regard to Dr. Channing, whom she, for some unknown reason, systematically disparages. He was a good man, Mrs. Chapman admits, "but not in any sense a great one. With benevolent intentions, he could not greatly help the nineteenth century, for he knew very little about it, or, indeed, of any other. He had neither insight, courage, nor firmness. In his own Church had sprung up a vigorous opposition to slavery, which he innocently, in so far as ignorantly, used the little strength he had to stay." Certainly it is not necessary to defend the memory of Dr. Channing against such a supercilious judgment as this. But we might well ask why, if he is not a great man, and did not help the nineteenth century, his works should continue to be circulated all over Europe? Why should such men in France as Laboulaye and Rémusat occupy themselves in translating and diffusing them? Why should Bunsen class him among the five prophets of the Divine Consciousness in Human History,—speaking of "his fearless speech," his "unfailing good sense," and "his grandeur of soul, which makes him a prophet of the Christianity of the Future"? Bunsen calls him a Greek in his manly nature, a Roman in his civic qualities, and an apostle in his Christianity. And was that man deficient in courage or firmness who never faltered in the support of any opinions, however unpopular, whether it was to defend Unitarianism in its weak beginnings, to appear in Faneuil Hall as the leader against the defenders of the Alton mob, to head the petition for the pardon of Abner Kneeland, and to lay on the altar of antislavery the fame acquired by past labors? Is he to be accused of repressing the antislavery movement in his own church, when there is on record the letter in which he advocated giving the use of the church building to the society represented by Mrs. Chapman herself; and when the men of influence in his society refused it? Nor, in those days of their unpopularity, did Mrs. Chapman and her friends count Dr. Channing's aid so insignificant. In her article on "The Martyr Age," Miss Martineau describes the profound impression caused by Dr. Channing's sudden appearance in the State House to give his countenance and aid to Garrison and the Abolitionists, in what, she says, was a matter to them of life and death. And she adds, "He was thenceforth considered by the world an accession to their principles, though not to their organized body."