It was, I fancy, a gradual perception of these difficulties which led to the decay of the Society. Meanwhile there were many pleasant meetings, and, if the discussions came to be little more than a mutual exhibition to each other of the various persons concerned, I hope and believe that each tended to the conviction that his antagonist had neither horns nor hoofs. The discussions, moreover, produced a considerable crop of Magazine articles; and helped to spread the impression that certain very important problems were being debated, upon the decision of which immense practical consequences might depend. It might be curious to inquire how far the real interest in these arguments extended, and whether the real state of the popular mind is a vivid interest in the war between scientific theories and traditional beliefs, or may more fitly be described as a languid amusement in outworn problems. Fitzjames, at any rate, who always rejoiced, like Cromwell's pikemen, when he heard the approach of battle, thought, as his letters show, that the forces were gathering on both sides and that a deadly struggle was approaching. The hostility between the antagonists was as keen as it had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though covered for the present by decent pretences of mutual toleration. He contributed during this period a paper upon Newman's 'Grammar of Assent' to 'Fraser's Magazine'; and he wrote several articles, partly the product of the Metaphysical Society, in the 'Contemporary Review' and the 'Nineteenth Century,' both under the editorship of Mr. Knowles.
I shall speak of them so far as they illustrate what was, I think, his definite state of mind upon the matters involved. His chief encounters were with Cardinal Manning ('Contemporary Review,' March and May 1874), and with W. G. Ward ('Contemporary Review,' December 1874), and with Mr. Gladstone ('Nineteenth Century,' April 1877). The controversy with Mr. Gladstone turned upon certain points raised in Sir G. C. Lewis's book upon 'Authority in Matters of Opinion.' The combatants were so polite, and their ultimate difference, which was serious enough, was so mixed up with discussions of Lewis's meaning, that a consideration of the argument would be superfluous. The articles directed against Manning, to which his antagonist replied in succeeding numbers of the Review, were of more interest. The essence of Fitzjames's argument was a revival of his old challenge to Newman. He took occasion of a pamphlet by Manning to ask once more the very pertinent question: You claim to represent an infallible and supernatural authority which has indefeasible rights to my allegiance; upon what grounds, then, is your claim based? To establish it, you have first to prove that we have such a knowledge of God as will enable us to draw special inferences as to particular institutions; next, that Christ was an incarnation of that God; then, that Christ founded a particular institution; and, finally, that the institution was identical with the Catholic Church. The argument covers a very wide ground; and I think that Fitzjames never wrote with more concentrated vigour. I have a certain difficulty in speaking of Manning's reply; because it has apparently come to be understood that we are bound to pay insincere compliments to a good man's understanding when he disagrees with our views. Now I am quite willing to admit that Manning was a most amiable and well-meaning person; but I am unable to consider him seriously as a reasoner. The spectacle which he presented on this occasion, at least, was that of a fluent popular preacher, clutched by a powerful logician, and put into a witness-box to be thoroughly cross-examined. The one quality I can discover in his articles is a certain dexterity in evading plain issues and covering inconsistencies by cheap rhetoric. The best suggestion to be made on his side would be that he was so weak an advocate that he could not do justice to the argument.
The controversy with W. G. Ward was of different character. Ward, with his usual courtesy to intellectual antagonists, had corresponded with Fitzjames, in whose writings he was much interested. He now challenged his opponent to republish a paper upon 'necessary truths,' which had been read to the Metaphysical Society. Fitzjames accordingly reproduced it with a comment, and Ward replied in the next number. Ward was undoubtedly a man of much dialectical ability, and, I think, in some directions more familiar than his opponent with metaphysical subtleties. Fitzjames considered himself to have had the best of the argument, and says that the 'Tablet' admitted his superiority. I presume, however, that Ward would have returned the opposite verdict. I am the less inclined to pronounce any opinion because I believe that most competent people would now regard the whole discussion as turning upon a false issue. In fact, it was the old question, so eagerly debated by J. S. Mill and Ward, as to the existence of intuitions and 'necessary truths.' Neither Mill's empiricism nor Ward's belief in intuitions 'in the sense required' would, I fancy, be now regarded as satisfactory. I think that Fitzjames was greatly superior in vigour of expression; but the argument is not one to be answered by a single Yes or No.
I cannot even touch such controversies here. My only desire is to indicate Fitzjames's intellectual attitude. It is sufficiently manifest in these articles. He argues that Ward's position is really suicidal. Certain things are pronounced by Ward to be impossible even for Omnipotence—as, for example, to make a trilateral figure which shall not be also triangular. Carry out this view, says Fitzjames, and you make our conceptions the measure of reality. Mysteries, therefore, become nonsense, and miracles an impossibility. In fact, Ward's logic would lead to Spinoza, not to the deity of Catholic belief. Ward might retort that Fitzjames's doctrines would lead to absolute scepticism or atheism. Fitzjames, in fact, still accepts Mill's philosophy in the fullest sense. All truth, he declares, may be reduced to the type, 'this piece of paper is blue, and that is white.' In other words, it is purely empirical and contingent. The so-called intuitive truths 'two and two make four' only differ from the truth, 'this paper is white' in that they are confirmed by wider experience. All metaphysical verbiage, says Fitzjames, whether Coleridge's or Ward's, is an attempt to convert ignorance into superior kind of knowledge, by 'shaking up hard words in a bag.' Since all our knowledge is relative to our faculties, it is all liable to error. All our words for other than material objects are metaphors, liable to be misunderstood—a proposition which he confirms from Horne Tooke's nominalism. All our knowledge, again, supposes memory which is fallible. All our anticipations assume the 'uniformity of nature,' which cannot be proved. And, finally, all our anticipations also neglect the possibility that new forces of which we know nothing may come into play.
Such convictions generally imply agnosticism as almost a necessary consequence. They might seem to show that what I have called the utilitarian element in his thoughts had effectually sapped the base of the Puritanic element. I certainly think that this was to some extent the case. Fitzjames had given up the belief that the Gospel narrative could be proved after the Paley method, and that was the only method which, according to him, was legitimate. He had, therefore, ceased to believe in the historical truth of Christianity. After going to India he did not take part in church services, and he would not, I am sure, have used such language about his personal convictions as he used in all sincerity at the time of the 'Essays and Reviews' controversy. In short, he had come to admit that no belief in a supernatural revelation could be maintained in the face of modern criticism. He often read Renan with great interest; Renan, indeed, seemed to him to be sentimental, and too favourable to the view that a religion might have a certain artistic value independent of its truth. But he was as far as Renan or as the most thorough-going of historical critics from believing in the divinity of Christ or the truth of the Christian inspiration. But, in spite of this, he still held to his version of the doctrine of probability. It is summed up in Pascal's famous il faut parier. We can neither put aside the great religious questions nor give a positive answer to them. We must act on the hypothesis that one answer or the other is true; but we must not allow any juggling to transmute a judgment of probability into an undoubting conviction of truth. There are real arguments on both sides, and we must not ignore the existence of either. In the attack upon Manning he indicates his reasons for believing in a God. He accepts the argument from final causes, which is, of course, the only argument open to a thorough empiricist, and holds that it is not invalidated, though it is, perhaps, modified by recent scientific inquiries. It is probable, therefore, that there is a God, though we cannot regard the point as proved in such a sense as to afford any basis for expecting or not expecting a revelation. On the contrary, all analogy shows that in theological, as in all other matters, the race has to feel its way gradually to truth through innumerable errors. In writing to a friend about the Manning article he explains himself more fully. Such articles, he says, give a disproportionate importance to the negative side of his views. His positive opinions, if 'vague, are at least very deep.' He cannot believe that he is a machine; he believes that the soul must survive the body; that this implies the existence of God; that those two beliefs make 'the whole difference between the life of a man and the life of a beast.' The various religions, including Christianity, try to express these beliefs, and so long as they are honestly and simply believed are all good in various degrees. But when the creeds are held on the ground of their beauty or utility, not on the ground of their demonstrable truth, they become 'the most corrupt and poisonous objects in the world, eating away all force, and truth, and honour so far as their influence extends.' To propose such beliefs on any ground but the ground of truth, 'is like keeping a corpse above ground because it was the dearest and most beloved of all objects when it was alive.' He does not object to authority as such. He has no objection to follow a doctor's directions or to be loyal to an official superior, and would equally honour and obey anyone whom he could trust in religious questions. But he has never found such a guide. 'A guide is all very well if he knows the way, but if he does not, he is the most fatal piece of luggage in the world.'
To use his favourite language, therefore, he still regarded a 'sanction' as absolutely necessary to the efficacy of moral or religious teaching. His constant criticism upon positivists and agnostics is that their creeds afford no satisfactory sanction. They cannot give to the bad man a reason for being good. But he was equally opposed to sham sanctions and sham claims to authority. As a matter of fact, his attack upon such claims led most people to classify him with the agnostics. Nor was this without reason. He differed less in reality, I think, from Professor Huxley or Mr. Harrison than from Ward or Cardinal Manning. In the arguments at the 'Metaphysical Society' he was on the left wing as against both Catholics and the more or less liberal theologians, whose reasoning seemed to him hopelessly flimsy. His first principles in philosophy were those of the agnostics, and in discussing such principles he necessarily took their part. He once told Mr. Harrison that he did not wish to have any more controversies with him, because dog should not fight dog. He sympathised as heartily as any man could do in the general spirit of rationalism and the desire that every belief should be the outcome of the fullest and freest discussions possible. Every attempt to erect a supernatural authority roused his uncompromising antagonism. So long as people agreed with him upon that point, they were at one upon the main issue. His feeling was apparently that expressed in the old phrase that he would go with them as far as Hounslow though he did not feel bound to go to Windsor.
Writing a few months later to the same correspondent, he observes that the difference between them is partly a difference of character. Circumstances have developed in him a 'harsh and combative way of thinking and writing in these matters.' Yet he had felt at times that it required so much 'effort of will to face dreary and unpleasant conclusions' that he could hardly keep his mind in the direction, or what he thought the direction, of truth without much pain. He could happily turn to neutral subjects, and had (I rather doubt the accuracy of the phrase) 'a peculiarly placid turn of mind.' He admits that a desire for knowledge is right and inevitable, but all experience shows our fallibility and the narrow limits of our knowledge. We know, however, that 'we are bound together by innumerable ties, and that almost every act of our lives deeply affects our friends' happiness.' The belief again (in the sense always of belief of a probability) in the fundamental doctrines of God and a future state imposes an 'obligation to be virtuous, that is, to live so as to promote the happiness of the whole body of which I am a member. Is there,' he asks, 'anything illogical or inconsistent in this view?'
At any rate, it explains his 'moral indignation' against Roman Catholicism. In the first place, Catholicism claims 'miraculous knowledge' where there should be an honest confession of ignorance. This original vice has made it 'to the last degree dishonest, unjust, and cruel to all real knowledge.' It has been the enemy of government on rational principles, of physical science, of progress in morals, of all knowledge which tends to expose its fundamental fallacies. Its theological dogmas are not only silly but immoral. The doctrines of hell, purgatory, and so forth, are not 'mysteries,' but perfectly unintelligible nonsense, first representing God as cruel and arbitrary, and then trying to evade the consequence by qualifications which make the whole 'a clumsy piece of patchwork.' God the Father becomes a 'stern tyrant,' and God the Son a 'passionate philanthropist.' Practically his experience has confirmed this sentiment. He does 'really and truly love, at all events, a large section of mankind, though pride and a love of saying sharp things have made me, I am sorry to say, sometimes write as if I did not,' and whatever he has tried to do, he has found the Roman Catholic Church 'lying straight across his path.' Men who are intellectually his inferiors and morally 'nothing at all extraordinary,' have ordered him to take for granted their views upon law, morals, and philosophy, and when he challenges their claim can only answer that he is wicked for asking questions.
He fully admits the beauty of some of the types of character fostered by the Roman Catholic Church, although they imply a false view of certain Cardinal points of morality, and argues that to some temperaments they may have a legitimate charm. But that does not diminish the strength of his convictions that the dogmas are radically absurd and immoral, or that the whole claim to authority is opposed to all rational progress. In the Manning articles he ends by accepting the issue as between the secular view and the claims of a priesthood to authority. In the last resort it is a question whether State or Church shall rule. He prefers the State, because it has more rational aims, uses more appropriate means, has abler rulers, produces verifiable results, and has generally 'less nonsense about it.' The clergy are 'male old maids'; often very clever, charitable, and of good intentions, but totally devoid of real wisdom or force of mind or character, and capable on occasions of any amount of spite, falsehood, and 'gentle cruelty.' It is impossible to accept the claims of the priesthood to supernatural authority. If ultimately a division has to be made, human reason will have to decide in what shape the legal sanction, 'or, in other words, disciplined and systematic physical force,' shall be used. We shall then come to the ultima ratio, after all compromises have been tried. There may be an inevitable conflict. The permanent principles of nature and society, which are beyond all laws, will decide the issue. But Manning's is a mere quack remedy.
This represents one aspect of Fitzjames's character. The struggle which is going on is a struggle between priest and layman, mysticism and common sense, claims to supernatural authority and clear downright reasoning from experience, and upon all grounds of theory and practice he is unequivocally on the side of reason. I need only add a remark or two. In the first place, I think that he never materially altered this position, but he was rather less inclined after a time to take up the cudgels. He never lost a conviction of the importance of his 'sanction.' He always held to the necessity of some kind of religious belief, although the precise dogma to be maintained became rather more shadowy. But, as the discussion went on, he saw that in practice his own standing-ground was becoming weaker. The tendency of men who were philosophically on his own side was to regard the whole doctrine of a future life as not only beyond proof but beyond all legitimate speculation. Hence he felt the force of the dilemma to which he was exposed. A genuine religion, as he says in a remarkable letter, must be founded, like all knowledge, on facts. Now the religions which include a theology rest on no facts which can stand criticism. They are, therefore, doomed to disappear. But the religions which exclude theology—he mentions Buddhism and Positivism as examples—give no adequate sanction. Hence, if theology goes, the moral tone of mankind will be lowered. We shall become fiercer, more brutal, more sensual. This, he admits, is a painful and even a revolting conclusion, and he therefore does not care to enlarge upon it. He is in the position of maintaining that a certain creed is at once necessary to the higher interests of mankind, and incapable of being established, and he leaves the matter there.