Frederick the Great, in the middle of the eighteenth century, attracted literary celebrities to his court, and gave an impulse, so far, to the German mind; but the French genius found more encouragement there than the German, and in his time French genius was speeding fast in the way of skepticism. Condillac, Cabanis, d'Holbach, Helvetius, were of that generation. The "Encyclopædists," the most brilliant men and women of the generation, were planning their work of demolition. Voltaire was the great name in contemporary literature. The books of Volney were popular towards the end of the century. Skepticism and materialism had the floor. It was fashionable to ridicule the belief in personal immortality, and in enlightened circles to deny the existence of God. The doctrines of Christianity were abandoned to priests and women; philosophers deemed them too absurd to be argued against. Had the assault been less witty and more scientific, less acrimonious and more reasonable, less scornful and more consistent, its apparent success might have been permanent. As it was, a change of mood occurred; a conservative spirit succeeded the destructive; order prevailed over anarchy; and the Catholic church, which had only been temporarily thrust aside—not fatally wounded, not by any means disposed of—regained its suspended power.
But rational or intellectual Christianity—in other words the system of Protestantism, in whatever form held—received a severe blow in France from these audacious hands. Religion took refuge in institutions and ceremonial forms; and there remained little else except a kernel of sentiment in a thin shell of tradition. What beliefs were entertained were accepted on authority; reason sought other fields of exercise, scientific, philosophical, literary; and a chill of indifference crept over the once religious world. From France, opinions adverse to Christianity were brought to America by travelled or curious people; they pervaded the creative minds of our earliest epoch, and penetrated far into the popular intelligence. The habit of thinking independently of authority and tradition became confirmed, and as a matter of course led to doubts and denials; for thinking was done in a temper of defiance, which constrained the thought to obey the wish. Such philosophical ideas as there were, came from France and England. Paley's was the last word in morals; the "Bridgewater Treatises" were the received oracles in religion; the rules of practical judgment had usurped the dominion of faith.
What pass things had come to in New England, in the centre of its culture, has been described in a previous chapter. It was time for a reaction to set in; and it came in the form of Transcendentalism. The "sensational" philosophy, it was contended, could not supply a basis for faith. Its first principle was "Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu." "There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses." From this principle nothing but skepticism could proceed. How, for instance, asks the Transcendentalist, can the sensational philosophy of Locke and his disciples give us anything approaching to a certainty of the existence of God? The senses furnish no evidence of it. God is not an object of sensation. He is not seen, felt, heard, tasted or smelt. The objects of sense are material, local, incidental; God is immaterial, universal, eternal. The objects of sense are finite; but a finite God is no God; for God is infinite. Is it said that by men of old, bible men, God was seen, heard, clasped in human arms? The reply is, that whatever Being was so apparent and tangible, could not have been God. To the assertion that the Being announced himself as God,—the infinite, the eternal God,—the challenge straightway is given: To whom did he say it? How can it be proved that he said it? Is the record of his saying it authentic? Might not the Being have made a false statement? Can we be certain there was no mental hallucination? Suppose these and other doubts of a similar character dispelled, still, hearing is not knowing. All we have is a tradition of God, a legend, a rumor, a dim reminiscence, that passes like a shadow across men's minds. The appeal to miracle is set aside by historical skepticism. The wonder lacks evidence; and to prove the wonder a miracle, is beyond achievement. A possibility, or at most, a probability of God's existence is all that sensationalism, with every advantage given it, can supply.
And if this philosophy fails to give an assurance of God's existence, the failure to throw light on his attributes is more signal. The senses report things as they exist in relations, not as they exist in themselves. Neither absolute power, absolute wisdom nor absolute goodness is hinted at by the senses. The visible system of things abounds in contradictions that we cannot reconcile, puzzles we cannot explain, mysteries we cannot penetrate, imperfections we cannot account for, wrongs we cannot palliate, evils we cannot cover up or justify. That a vein of wisdom, an element of goodness, an infusion of loving-kindness is in the world is evident; but to show that, is to go very little way towards establishing the attributes of a Perfect Being. A God of limited power, wisdom or goodness, is no God, and no other does Sensationalism offer. Transcendentalism points to the fact that under the auspices of this philosophy atheism has spread; and along with atheism the intellectual demoralization that accompanies the disappearance of a cardinal idea.
From this grave peril the Transcendentalist found an escape in flight to the spiritual nature of man, in virtue of which he had an intuitive knowledge of God as a being, infinite and absolute in power, wisdom and goodness; a direct perception like that which the senses have of material objects; a perception that gains in distinctness, clearness and positiveness as the faculties through which it is obtained increase in power and delicacy. To the human mind, by its original constitution, belongs the firm assurance of God's existence, as a half latent fact of consciousness, and with it a dim sense of his moral attributes. To minds capacious and sensitive the truth was disclosed in lofty ranges that lifted the horizon line, in every direction, above the cloud land of doubt; to minds cultivated, earnest, devout, aspiring, the revelation came in bursts of glory. The experiences of inspired men and women were repeated. The prophet, the seer, the saint, was no longer a favored person whose sayings and doings were recorded in the Bible, but a living person, making manifest the wealth of soul in all human beings. Communication with the ideal world was again opened through conscience; and communion with God, close and tender as is anywhere described by devotees and mystics, was promised to the religious affections.
The Transcendentalist spoke of God with authority. His God was not possible, but real; not probable, but certain. In his high confidence he had small respect for the labored reasonings of "Natural Religion;" the argument from design, so carefully elaborated by Paley, Brougham and the writers of the "Bridgewater Treatises," was interesting and useful as far as it went, but was remanded to an inferior place. The demonstration from miracle was dismissed with feelings bordering on contempt, as illogical and childish.
Taking his faith with him into the world of nature and of human life, the Transcendentalist, sure of the divine wisdom and love, found everywhere joy for mourning and beauty for ashes. Passing through the valley of Baca, he saw springs bubbling up from the sand, and making pools for thirsty souls. Wherever he came, garments of heaviness were dropped and robes of praise put on. Evil was but the prophecy of good, wrong the servant of right, pain the precursor of peace, sorrow the minister to joy. He would acknowledge no exception to the rule of an absolute justice and an inexorable love. It was certain that all was well, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. He was, as we have said, an optimist—not of the indifferent sort that make the maxim "Whatever is, is right" an excuse for idleness—but of the heroic kind who, by refreshing their minds with thoughts of the absolute goodness, keep alive their faith, hope, endeavor, and quicken themselves to efforts at understanding, interpreting and bringing to the surface the divine attributes. For himself he had no misgivings, and no alarm at the misgivings of others; believing them due, either to some misunderstanding that might be corrected, or to some moral defect that could be cured. Even Atheism, of the crudest, coarsest, most stubborn description, had no terrors for him. It was in his judgment a matter of definition mainly. Utter atheism was all but inconceivable to him; the essential faith in divine things under some form of mental perception being too deeply planted in human nature to be eradicated or buried.
Taking his belief with him into the world of history, the Transcendentalist discovered the faith in God beneath all errors, delusions, idolatries and superstition. He read it into unintelligible scriptures; he drew it forth from obsolete symbols; he dragged it to the light from the darkness of hateful shrines and the bloody mire of pagan altars. Mr. Parker meditated a work on the religious history of mankind, in which the development of the theistic idea was to be traced from its shadowy beginnings to its full maturity; and this he meant should be the crowning work of his life. Sure of his first principle, he had no hesitation in going into caves and among the ruins of temples. Had that work been completed, the Transcendentalist's faith in God would have received its most eloquent statement.
The other cardinal doctrine of religion—the immortality of the soul,—Transcendentalism was proud of having rescued from death in the same way. The philosophy of sensation could give no assurance of personal immortality. Here, too, its fundamental axiom, "Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu," was discouraging to belief. For immortality is not demonstrable to the senses. Experience affords no basis for conviction, and knowledge cannot on any pretext be claimed. The sensational school was divided into two parties. The first party confessed that the immortality of the soul was a thing not only unprovable, but a thing easily disproved, a thing improbable, and, to a clear mind, impossible to believe. The soul being a product of organization, at all events fatally implicated in organization, conditioned by it in all respects, must perish with organization, as the flower perishes with the stem. Of a spirit distinct from body there is, according to this school, no evidence, either before death or after. Man's prospect, therefore, is bounded by this life. Dreamers may have visions of another; mourners may sigh for another; ardent natures may hope for another; but to believe in another is, to the rational mind, according to this philosophy, impossible. The sentence "dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return," may seem a hard one; but as it cannot be reversed or modified, it must be accepted with submission; and in default of another life, the honest man will make the most of the life he has; not necessarily saying with the sensualist: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;" but with the hero reminding himself that he must "Work while it is day, for the night cometh in which no man can work." The modern disciples of this doctrine of annihilation speak in a tone of lofty courage of their destiny, and disguise under shining and many-colored garments of anticipation, the fact of their personal cessation. The thinkers find refuge in the intellectual problems of the present; the workers pile up monuments that shall endure when they are gone; poets like George Eliot, make grand music on the harp-strings of the common humanity; but the fact remains that the philosophy of experience abandons, or did before the advent of spiritualism—the expectation of an existence after death.
The other branch of the Sensational school fell back on authority, and received on the tradition of history what could not be verified by science. Immortality was accepted as a doctrine of instituted religion, taken on the credit of revelation, and sealed by the resurrection of Jesus. As an article of faith it was accepted without comment. If we have not seen the glorified dead, others have, and their witness is recorded in the Scriptures. Beyond that believers did not care to go; beyond that advised no one else to go. To question the genuineness of the Scriptures, to cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus, to intimate that the tradition of the church is a thin stream that murmurs pleasantly in the shade of the sacred groves, but would dry up if the sun-light were let in, was resented as an offence against reverence and morality. By such as these the belief that slipped away from the reason was detained by the will.