Non-omnipotent God.
This amended conception of Providence is more admissible and more reconcilable with the real and imperfect world that we are familiar with. But it must be confessed that the amendment amounts to an almost complete cancellation. If Providence is to be reduced thus simply to one of the forces at work in nature, to the force that makes more or less partially and provisionally for goodness, there is nothing to distinguish it from the power that makes for evolution, from natural selection, or from any other beneficent natural law. To personify such laws is futile scientifically; and, practically, is it so very useful? Or conceive the being as existent side by side with these laws and watching their operation, but unable to contravene it; but so to do is to return to the conception of an ineffective, immobile God. The prime condition of existence for a God is to be good for something; a non-omnipotent God soon comes to be an impotent God. The actual world marks the extreme limits of the power of such a God, and at some stage in the course of evolution the unconscious forces of nature, leagued together against the principle of goodness, may succeed in paralyzing it entirely.
Is such a God to be conceived as eternal?
More than that, is a non-omnipotent God to be conceived as eternal? If not, He is in no very striking respect superior to man. His power is so slight that He has not even been able to make it very clearly manifest to mankind that it exists at all. Or if He is eternal, and eternally present in all things, then His lack of power is growing and becoming radical. One may in any event congratulate one’s self that a blind and indifferent universe has, among all possible combinations, fallen by chance into the one which constitutes our present world; but a God who has pursued goodness conscientiously through a whole eternity demonstrates His complete incapacity, if He has succeeded in producing nothing better than such a miscarriage of the ideal as this universe. The judgment that may fairly be passed upon the world is altogether dependent upon the question who made it and who created life; if the world is self-evolved, it may well appear to us as possessing a certain beauty, as giving an earnest of better things; but if it is the work of an intelligent will, present in all things, and persisting in its designs throughout the eternity of the past, it is inevitable that one should feel that this volition has not been possessed of great power, that the importance of the victory is not in proportion to the duration of the struggle, that such a God does not constitute a very solid support, and that His existence is a matter of indifference to the future of the universe. Is such a God more powerful than humanity, or even so powerful? His eternity is but a proof of voluntary or forced inaction; far from dignifying Him it debases Him. On the surface of the earth there are many species of insects which were probably in existence before the race of man. In the transparent amber that belongs to tertiary strata may be seen the little corselet of the melipones caught and held there these past five hundred thousand years. Are these distant predecessors of the human race on that account more venerable?
The religion of humanity.
John Stuart Mill, a disciple of Auguste Comte, put forth this theory of a non-omnipotent Providence, conceived on the model of the human will, with a certain mental reservation; his real meaning was that for many cultivated men such a being, labouring for goodness, according to the utmost of its limited power, would be confounded with humanity, taken as a whole. Humanity is, in effect, according to Comte, a great being of divine aspirations, to whom one might, with all one’s heart, render homage; in especial, if one leaves out of account the individuals who are, properly speaking, only parasites, and do not co-operate for the production of the common result, whom progress consists precisely in excluding from society. Religion, on this theory, is the state of spiritual unity resulting from the convergence of all our thoughts and all our actions toward the service of humanity. This, as Mill said, is a genuine religion, quite capable of resisting sceptical attack and of undertaking the labour of the older cults. According to this doctrine, Providence is simply humanity, looking after the interest of its individual members. Such a Providence, regarded as one with human volition, might assuredly be accepted by any philosopher; it marks, as we shall see later, the extreme limit of which the development of the notion of a Special Providence is susceptible, the point at which this notion and the conception of human morality become one. The precept to love mankind in God becomes transformed into the precept to love God in mankind. For a philosopher who identifies God with his ideal, both precepts are equally true and beautiful. We have ourselves shown how the religious sentiment in the course of its evolution tends to become one with the respect and love of humanity, and how religious faith tends to develop into a moral faith, and a simple and active hopefulness in the triumph of moral goodness.
Criticised.
John Stuart Mill’s and Comte’s ideas are thus shielded against criticism so long as they are taken in a general and almost metaphorical sense; but if they are to be interpreted literally and made the basis of a cult and a religion of humanity, they are puerile simply. Precisely because Providence can be realized by humanity, the cult for Providence, with all its ceremonies, invocations, adorations, which are manifest and ridiculous paganism, must be suppressed. Every organism exemplifies a certain sort of Providence—even the social organism, which is the equilibrium of the laws of life. The totality of an organism is truly admirable, and one may readily understand how any individual member, if he is endowed with consciousness, might admire the whole to which he belongs; but how could he make it the object of a cult? The cellules which constitute me might well be interested in the preservation of what I call myself and help each other, and by that very fact help me to that end, but they could not adore me. Love of humanity is one thing, and idolatry of humanity, or sociolatry, according to Comte’s term, is another. A really sincere and enlightened love of humanity is the very opposite of such idolatry; would be by it compromised and corrupted. The cult for humanity reminds one of the antique, naïve cult for the family, for the lares, for the hearth, for the sacred fire kept alive beneath the ashes. To preserve respect and love to-day does not require a resuscitation of all these superstitions; respect and love pass from heart to heart without need of ceremonial as a medium. The Positivist religion, far from being a step in advance, is a step backward toward the superstitious beliefs which have been banished because they were useless, and consequently harmful.