An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

Consider, first, that in order to be aware of the existence of the ultimate and unknown power, we must possess some faculty in our constitution by which that power is felt. It must, so to speak, come in contact with us at some point in our nature.

Now, no sensible perception can lead us to this conception as a generalization. The whole universe, regarded merely as a series of presentations to the senses, contains not a single object which can possibly suggest it. Nor can any combination of such presentations be shown to include within them any such idea. Neither can the existence of such a power be inferred by the exercise of the reasoning faculty. There is no analogical case from which the inference can be drawn. When we reason we proceed from something known to something unknown, and conclude that the latter, resembling the former in one or more of its qualities, will resemble it also in the quality yet to be established. In exploring, for instance, some deserted spot, we find traces of a building. Now, previous experience has taught us that such buildings are only found where human builders have made them. We conclude, therefore, that we have stumbled upon a work of human hands. Suppose we explore further and find the remains of the building very extensive. We now draw the further inference that it was inhabited by a wealthy man, because we know that only the wealthy can afford to live in magnificent houses. But if prolonged excavation lead to the discovery of long rows of buildings, of various sizes and having streets between them, we confidently assert that we have unearthed a ruined city; for we are aware that no single man, however rich or powerful, is likely to have built so much. Of these three inferences, the first only is, strictly speaking, infallibly true. But the others are rendered by familiar analogies so highly probable as to be practically certain. Now let the thing sought be, not some single cause of a single phenomenon, or the various causes of various phenomena, but the ultimate cause of all phenomena whatever,—where is the corresponding case on which we can proceed to argue? Plainly there is none. There is no other world or system to which we can appeal and say, "Those stars and those planets were made by a God, therefore our own sun and its planets must have been made by a God also." Every single argument we can frame to establish the existence of deity assumes in its major premiss the very thing to be proved. It takes for granted that phenomenal objects require a cause, and were not the idea of this necessity already in the mind it could not take one single step. For if it be contended, say, that the world could not exist without a Creator, we have but to ask, "Why not?" and our adversary can proceed no further with his argument. All he can ever do is to appeal to a sentiment in us corresponding to the sentiment of which he himself is conscious.

Thus it appears that neither direct observation, nor reasoning, which is generalized observation, supplies the material for an induction as to the existence of an Unknowable Cause. Yet this idea is so persistent in the human race as to resist every effort to do without it. In one form or another it invariably creeps in. There is but one possible explanation of such a fact: namely, that it is one of those primary constituents of our nature which are incapable of proof because they are themselves the foundations on which proof must be erected. We cannot demonstrate a single law of nature without supposing a world external to ourselves. And we cannot suppose a world external to ourselves without referring explicitly or implicitly to an unknown entity manifested in that world. The faculty by which this truth is known must be considered as a kind of internal sense. It is a direct perception. And precisely as objects of direct perception by the senses appear widely dissimilar at different distances, to different men, and to the same man at different times, so the object of the religious emotion is variously conceived in different places and ages, by different men, and by the same man at different times. Moreover, as the religious sentiment in the mind of man perceives its object, the Ultimate Being, so that Being is conceived as making itself known to the mind of man through the religious sentiment. A reciprocal relation is thus established; the Unknowable causing a peculiar intuition, the mind of man receiving it. And this is the grain of fact at the foundation of the numerous statements of religious men, that they have felt themselves inspired by God, that he speaks to them and speaks through them, that they enter into communion with him in prayer, and obey his influence during their lives. We need not discard such feelings as idle delusions. In form they are fanciful and erroneous; in substance they are genuine and true. And in a higher sense the adherent of the universal religion may himself admit their title to a place in his nature. To use the words of a great philosopher, "he, like every other man, may consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause;" "he too may feel that when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief" (Spencer's "First Principles," 2d ed., § 34, p. 123).

But we may go still deeper in our examination of the nature of the relation between the Ultimate Being and the mind of man. To do so we must briefly recur to the philosophical questions touched upon in the eighth chapter of this Book. We there discussed four possible modes of viewing the great problem presented by the existence of sensible objects: Common and Metaphysical Realism, Moderate and Complete Idealism. Let us briefly reconsider these several systems to discover whether any of them affords a satisfactory solution.

Common Realism is excluded by the consideration that it treats the qualities of external objects as existing in those objects and not in the percipient subject. It requires but little reflection to prove that such qualities are modes of consciousness, not modes of absolute being. This defect is surmounted in Metaphysical Realism, which, however, is liable to the fatal objection, that it takes for granted an abstract substance in material things, which substance is like the Unknowable, utterly inconceivable, yet is not the Unknowable, and is incapable of accounting for any of the manifestations belonging to the mental order. So that we should have a superfluous entity brought in to form the substance of matter, of which entity neither our senses, nor our reason, nor our emotions, give us any information. For matter, in the abstract, is not the matter perceived by the senses; nor is it the object of the religious sentiment; nor is its existence capable of any kind of proof save that which consists in establishing the necessity of some kind of Permanent Reality below phenomena. And this Reality is not only the substratum of material, but of all phenomena whatsoever. Moderate Idealism is in no better case. For in denying all true existence except to living creatures it fails utterly to give any rational account of that order of events which is universally and instinctively referred to external causes, nor can it find any possible origin for the living creatures in whose reality it believes. Extreme Idealism recognizes no problem to be dealt with, and can therefore offer no solution.

Each of these systems, however, while false as a whole, contains a partial truth. Extreme Idealism is the outcome of the ordinary, unreflecting Realism; for if the Common Realist be convinced that appearances do not imply existence, and if he believe in no existence but appearances, the ground is cut from under his feet, and he remains standing upon nothing. He knows only phenomena, and the phenomena are mere ideas of his own mind. The truth common to these two extremes is that so emphatically asserted by Berkeley, that the esse of material objects is percipi; that we exhaust the physical phenomenon when we describe its apparent qualities, and need not introduce besides these a material substance to which those qualities are related as its accidents. They are not the accidents, but the actual thing, in so far as it is material. Metaphysical Realism and moderate Idealism are united in the recognition of the truth that the phenomena are not the ultimate realities, and that the qualities of bodies, when analyzed, are subjective, not objective; forms of the human mind, and not independent, external existences.

Hence these various philosophies, like the various religions of which they are in some sort metaphysical parallels, must be considered as preparing the way for the admission of that all-embracing truth which is the common ground of metaphysics and religion.

Examine a simple objective phenomenon. Then you find that you can separate it into all its component qualities: its color, taste, smell, extension, and so forth; and that after all these qualities have been taken into account nothing of the object remains save the vague feeling of an unknown cause by which the whole phenomenon is produced. All the apparent qualities, without exception, are resolvable into modes of consciousness, but the whole object is not so resolvable. For the question still remains, How did we come to have those modes of consciousness? Thus the analysis of the commonest material object leads us straight to an unknowable origin of known manifestations. And each particular phenomenon brings us to the same result. But are we to assume a special Unknowable for each special object? A little consideration will show that the division and subdivision we make of the objects of sensible perception resembles their apparent qualities in being purely subjective, and indeed more than subjective, arbitrary. For I consider an object as one or many, according to the point of view from which I regard it. The glass which I hold in my hand is at this moment one; but the next moment it is shivered into a thousand atoms, and each of these atoms is of complex character, and resolvable into still simpler parts. The planet we inhabit is, for the astronomer, one object; for the geologist a number of distinct rocks; for the botanist it is composed of mineral and vegetable constituents, and of these, the latter, which alone engage his attention, are numerous and various; for the chemist it consists of an infinite multitude of elementary atoms variously combined. Hence unity and multiplicity are mere modes of subjective reflection; not ultimate modes of objective being. And the Unknowable cannot, strictly speaking, be regarded as either one or many, since each alike implies limitation and separation from something else. Rather is it all-comprehending; the Universal Foundation upon which unity and multiplicity alike are built.

Material things, then, are analyzable into modes of consciousness with an unknown cause to which these modes are due. But what is consciousness itself? Like matter, it has its subjective and its objective aspect. The subjective aspect consists of its various phenomenal conditions; the sensations which we ascribe to outward objects as their producing causes, and the emotions, passions, thoughts, and feelings which we conceive as of internal origin. The objective aspect consists of the unknown essence itself which experiences these various states; of the very self which is supposed to persist through all its changes of form; of the actual being which is the ultimate Reality of our mental lives. The existence of this ultimate Ego is known as an immediate fact of consciousness, and cannot be called in question without impugning the direct assurance which every one feels of his own being as apart from his particular and transient feelings. Nobody believes that he is the several sensations and emotions which he experiences in life; he believes that he has them. And if the existence of the Unknowable underlying material manifestations is perceived by a direct, indubitable inference, the existence of the Unknowable underlying mental manifestations is perceived without an inference at all by an intuition from which there is no appeal. For no one can even attempt to reason with me about this conviction without resting his argument upon facts, and inferences from facts, which are in themselves less certain than this primary certainty which he is seeking to overthrow.

Existence, then, is known to us immediately in our own case; mediately in every other—consequently, the only conception we can frame of existence is derived from ourselves. Hence when we say that anything exists, we can only mean one of two things: either that it exists as a mode of human consciousness, as in the case of material things; or that it exists per se, and is the very substance of consciousness itself. And the former of these modes of existence is altogether dependent upon a conscious subject. A material object is a congeries of material qualities, none of which can be conceived at all except in relation to some percipient subject. Take away the subject, and color, extension, solidity, sound, smell, and every other quality, vanish into nothing. The existence of these qualities, and hence the existence of matter itself in its phenomenal character, is relative and secondary. There remains therefore only the second of these two modes of existence as absolute and primary. The substance of consciousness, then, is the one reality which is known to exist; and in no other form is existence in its purity conceivable by us. For if we attempt to conceive a something as existent which is neither object nor subject, neither that which is felt nor that which feels, neither that which is thought nor that which thinks, we must inevitably fail. There is no tertium quid which is neither mind nor matter of which we can frame the most remote conception. We may, if we please, imagine the existence of such a tertium quid, but the hypothesis is altogether fanciful, and would have nothing in science, nothing in the construction of the human mind, to render it even plausible. Indeed, it would be making an illegitimate use of the word "existence" to apply it in such a sense. Existence to us means consciousness, and never can mean anything else. We cannot by any effort conceive a universe previous to the origin of life in which there was no consciousness; for the moment we attempt to conceive it, we import our own consciousness into it. We think of ourselves as seeing or feeling it. The effort, therefore, to frame an idea of any existing thing without including consciousness in the idea is self-defeating, and when we predicate Existence of the Unknown Cause, we predicate its kinship to that ultimate substance of the mind from which alone our conception of absolute existence is derived.