Far fewer, because far more strongly declared, are the literary lodestars of that harbourless sea, where all beyond the horizon of cloud and billow seems veiled and uncertain. Some amongst them may, after all, be but wandering lights themselves[d], floating and drifting like meteors which glimmer at nightfall across shadowy waters. Others appear really fixed in a dim and joyless firmament where the Present only is true, the remote Past a conjecture, and the Future altogether inscrutable. According to them this bounded prospect is the true goal and real aim of our transitory life,—within it the trials and griefs of humanity assume their proper dimensions and pale their ineffectual terrors, while peace, like a river of Eden, flows out over the once martyred but now ransomed race of man. Even in our own imperfect struggling day, the human creature may be happy who certainly knows that this mixed existence is his All—that outside it he can live no life except in the memory of his fellow-men—that there is no God, no futurity of individual progress or perfection; but that one thing happens equally to the good and the bad—the wise and the unwise. This knowledge brings happiness, because it chases from the breast self-centred hope and fear: the man who accepts this blank beholds himself, as he really is, an atom of the Universal Whole—borne now by the irresistible tide of force into sunlight—borne soon by the same irresistible tide into a darkness of the shadow of death.
Compared with this creed, the martyrs of Monotheism were self-loving—for did not they hope? Compared with this simple creed, all who have stopped short on the threshold of frightful crimes, and hesitated to stain their souls, were also self-loving—for did they not fear?
A great variety of remonstrances have been addressed to writers of this latter type[e]. Social consequences have been eloquently urged against hypotheses which, if realised, would weaken, or perhaps destroy, self-control, foresight, and self-improvement. In reply we are told that these objects of pursuit still appear good and useful to benevolent eyes. But it should be remembered that our age is one of transition—half-developed as it were in Doubt. Our benevolent men have not yet been fully disciplined in the coming school. Who, therefore, shall safely predict for us the effects of its proposed discipline? Add that, looking at the civilised world in general, certain ideas (illusions, as they are sometimes called) respecting a Futurity influenced by our present right and wrong-doing, are ingrained in cultured man, and may perhaps be described as connate with his nineteenth-century existence[f]. Is it possible, then, for any one to say beforehand what may or may not be the consequence of uprooting cherished principles fitted in their own nature to exercise so practical an influence?
Remonstrances of this kind, however truthful and valuable in themselves, would be out of place in the ensuing pages. A contribution to the constructive science of Natural Theology must rest its arguments upon the reason of the case, to the exclusion of many interesting and persuasive considerations. All questions of Sociology, have, however, a special fascination for numerous thinkers who are unlikely to overlook negative conclusions lying close upon the confines of their own science, and to them the treatment of such questions must be remitted.
That these phases of thought have not, in fact, escaped the consideration of benevolent observers, may be inferred from the special circumstances under which this Essay is composed. Into every condition (each being required by the exigencies of the subject) the present writer enters with honest cordiality. His wish and aim is to place before those who, while they doubt, still debate, certain reasonable considerations which have appeared convincing to other speculative minds. And he may defend himself from any possible charge of causeless intermeddling with other men's concerns, in the words of one amongst our most genuinely English poets:—
"'Twere well, says one sage, erudite, profound,
Terribly arch'd and aquiline his nose,
And overbuilt with most impending brows,
'Twere well could you permit the World to live
As the World pleases: what's the World to you?