HAS SPENCER’S DOCTRINE OF INCONCEIVABILITY DRIVEN RELIGION INTO THE UNKNOWABLE?
BY REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN.
The service rendered to humanity by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the elaboration of the Synthetic Philosophy, should command the admiration and gratitude of all broad-minded men. There are certain fallacies in the argument by which Religion is relegated into the “Unknowable,” however, to which it will be the purpose of this essay to call the reader’s attention. If Religion really be, by its very nature, unknowable, it follows that as man grows in intelligence, the extent to which it occupies his thought will tend to diminish towards final extinction. It is a thoroughly wholesome state of affairs that, like all things which claim our consideration, Religion should again and again be compelled to step into the arena to vindicate its right to hold sway over humanity. Nor is the attitude of many minds which places Religion upon the defensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perverse spirit, but, on the contrary, it results from the questionings of those eager to find the truth and anxious to “prove all things” and cast error aside. Let us see if Religion can withstand the fierce onslaught, threatening its very life, which Mr. Spencer makes in his “First Principles” (pp. 3-123).
Our author’s first attempt is to “form something like a general theory of current opinions,” so as neither to “over-estimate nor under-estimate their worth.” As a special case from the examination of which he hopes to derive a general method, he traces the evolution of government from the beginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning government is wholly true or false; “each of them insists upon a certain subordination of individual actions to social requirements…. From the oldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advanced political theory of our own day, there is on this point complete unanimity.” He speaks of this subordination as a postulate “which is, indeed, of self-evident validity,” as ranking “next in certainty to the postulates of exact science.” As the result of his search for “a generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous,” he concludes: “This method is to compare all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true throughout its divergent modifications.”
What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of his method to government? A postulate which he announces to be of “self-evident validity,” an “unquestionable fact”—that is all! His method is a statement of the process of abstraction. Very useful though it is in determining what one or more predicates may be affirmed of many objects of thought which differ widely otherwise or in revealing truths, as he points out, respecting which men can by no possibility disagree, it cannot assist us in discriminating between true and false “discordant constituents,” for which purpose a simple method would be helpful. Certainly this is not the method which gave us the most “advanced political theory” of the day! The fact is, that when used, as Mr. Spencer suggests, it shrivels the total content of any subject under consideration, down to the one truth lying at the foundation of the most primitive theory. In the case of Religion, he alleges that the one point upon which there is entire unanimity between the most divergent creeds, between the lowest fetichism and the most enlightened Christianity, is this: “That there is something to be explained.” An interesting piece of information, surely! Yes, but “the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.” Over against this, we have the magnificent superstructure of modern Science, erected by the employment of methods quite other than the one which he esteems competent to overthrow Religion.
The postulate, a straight line may be drawn between two points, while it makes a geometry possible, reveals nothing as to the properties of lines; so, in the present case, the proposition resulting from the process of abstraction, “there is something to be explained,” affirms that, at least à priori, Religion is possible, but decides nothing as to the truth or falsity of unnumbered statements which millions of people have believed for centuries to belong to the domain of Religion. This method does not and cannot discredit Religion.
“Religious ideas of one kind or another,” says Mr. Spencer, “are almost universal…. We are obliged to admit that, if not supernaturally derived, as the majority contend, they must be derived out of human experiences, slowly accumulated and organized…. Considering all faculties,” under the evolutionary hypothesis, “to result from accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the organism with its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist in the environment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined the growth of the feeling in question, and so are obliged to admit that it is as normal as any other faculty…. We are also forced to infer that this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare…. Positive knowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possible thought. At the utmost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question—what lies beyond?… Throughout all future time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness—if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of experience.” Religion is “a constituent of the great whole; and being such must be treated as a subject of Science with no more prejudice than any other reality.”