I lay no stress on certain flaws in the fundamental propositions that 'we have no knowledge of anything but phenomena, and that our knowledge of phenomena is only relative, not absolute; that we know not the essence nor the real mode of production of any fact, but only its relations to other facts in the way of succession or similitude; that the constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are all we know about them, and that their causes, whether efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable.' I will only suggest that our mere consciousness of possessing some knowledge of phenomena is itself a knowledge distinct from the knowledge which constitutes its subject—distinct, that is, from the knowledge of phenomena; that if it were possible for us to be aware of only one single fact, we should know something about that fact, notwithstanding that there were no other facts which it could be perceived to have preceded or followed, or to which it could be likened, even as a polype with a stomach-ache would know something about a stomach-ache, although ignorant that it had a stomach, and oblivious of any former sensation, whether painful or pleasurable; and that if the causes of phenomena be utterly unknown, our ignorance of them ought not to be so signified as to sound like knowledge, as it does when resemblances are said to link, and sequences to unite, phenomena together, thereby warranting the inference that one phenomenon succeeds another because the two are so linked and united.
These, however, are trifles—mere spots on the sun one might say, were but the surface on which they appear altogether sunlike—and I leave them without additional remark except that, although it may perhaps have been hypercritical to point them out, still the language of a new philosophy, claiming to supersede all old ones, ought to be proof even against hypercriticism. I pass on to a generalisation, termed by Mr. Mill 'the key to Comte's other generalisations: one on which all the others are dependent, and which forms the back-bone, so to speak, of his philosophy,' insomuch that 'unless it be true he has accomplished little.' This is the so much vaunted discovery that all human thought passes necessarily through three stages, beginning with the theological, and proceeding through the metaphysical to the positive. These three terms, however, in the novel sense in which they are used by Comte, stand very urgently in need of definition. By the theological is to be understood that stage of the mind in which the facts of the universe are regarded as governed by single and direct volitions of a being or beings possessed of life and intelligence. It is the stage in which winds are supposed to blow, seas to rage, trees to grow, and mountains to tower aloft, either because winds, seas, trees, and mountains are themselves alive and so act of their own accord; or because there is a spirit dwelling in each of them which desires that it shall so act; or because each separate class of objects is superintended by an out-dwelling divinity, which similarly desires; or, finally, because one single divinity, supreme over all things, initiates and maintains all the apparently spontaneous movements of inanimate bodies. In the metaphysical stage, phenomena are ascribed not to volitions, either sublunary or celestial, but to realised abstractions—to properties, qualities, propensities, tendencies, forces, regarded as real existences, inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in which they reside; while the characteristic of the positive stage is the universal recognition that all phenomena without exception are governed by invariable laws, with which no volitions, natural or supernatural, interfere. These being the three stages, the discovery of which as a series necessarily passed through by human thought in its progress towards maturity, constitutes one of Comte's chief glories, I almost tremble at my own audacity, shrinking from the sound myself am making, when by inexorable sense of duty constrained to declare that the grand discovery is after all merely that of a distinction without a difference.
What Comte chiefly condemned in the metaphysical mode of thought, are the conception of mental abstractions as real entities which exert power and produce phenomena, and the enunciation of these entities as explanations of the phenomena; and certainly 'it is,' as Mr. Mill says, or rather was, previously to his own ingenious solution of it, 'one of the puzzles of philosophy, how mankind, after inventing a set of mere names to keep together certain combinations of ideas and images, could have so far forgotten their own act as to invest these creations of their will with objective reality, and mistake the name of a phenomenon for its efficient cause.' Those natural laws, however, on which Positivism relies—are not they as purely mental abstractions as the essences, virtues, properties, forces, and what not, for which it is proposed to substitute them? Yet since Positivism regards these laws as 'governing' phenomena, and having phenomena 'subject' to them, must it not necessarily regard them likewise as realised abstractions, as real entities? Plainly, if its language be taken literally, its professors must acknowledge that it does, unless they prefer to stultify themselves by propounding such unmitigated nonsense as that power may be exercised, and phenomena produced, by non-entities. But if so, what else is Positivism than another form of that very metaphysicism which it condemns? and a form, too, peculiarly obnoxious to Mr. Mill's caustic remark that 'as in religion, so in philosophy, men marvel at the absurdity of other people's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own, and the same man is unaffectedly astonished that words can be mistaken for things, who is treating other words as if they were things every time he opens his mouth.'
Possibly, however, it may be replied that 'government by natural laws' is a phrase which Positivists never use except metaphorically, and by which they never mean more than certain successions of events.[47] Very well. Either, then, they acknowledge no real government of phenomena at all, in which case to speak of phenomena as governed by law is, if not a purely gratuitous mystification, as glaring an instance as can well be conceived of a 'bare enunciation of facts, put forward as a theory or explanation of them:' or, if they do recognise real government, then they must suppose that, behind those mere mental abstractions, laws or order of Nature, there must be some lawgiver or other being that originally issued the laws, or ordained the order, and still enforces them, or maintains it. But if this be the positivist faith, then, that we may discover its other self, we have only to go still further back; as far back, however, as to the theological stage, supposed to have been so early left behind, yes, even unto the deities or deity that the metaphysical entities had displaced. Positivism, in short, is in this dilemma: either the mode of thought claimed by it as peculiarly its own is simply that process so justly ridiculed by Comte himself as the 'naïf reproduction of phenomena as the reason for themselves,' and by Mr. Lewes as 'a restatement' (by way of explanation) 'of the facts to be explained;' or it is at any rate nothing more than a return, either to the metaphysical or to the theological mode of thought, according as one or the other is adopted of the only two interpretations that can possibly be placed on its own nomenclature. A new mode it certainly is not. It is either no mode of thought at all, but merely an empty form of words; or it is at best only a new name for one or other of two old-fashioned modes, both of which its author denounces as false from the beginning, and now worn out and obsolete into the bargain.
Of other features of Comtist philosophy it would be out of place to speak here,[48] where, indeed, that philosophy would not have been mentioned at all but for its having been transformed by its author into a religion, and that, too, an atheistical religion—the 'Religion of Humanity.' To myself, as to most people, a religion without a God is a contradiction in terms. To constitute what is almost universally understood by religion it does not suffice that there be a 'creed or conviction claiming authority over the whole of human life: a belief or set of beliefs deliberately adopted respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate:' nor that there be in addition 'a sentiment connected with this creed or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it, in fact, the authority over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory:' nor yet that there be, moreover, 'an ideal object, the believer's attachment and sense of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life.'[49] That such an object is fully capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong to enforce the most rigid rule of life, will certainly not be denied by me, privileged as I am to count among my friends more than one whose whole life is little else than a life of devotion to an object, 'the general interest of the human race,' plainly incapable of affording them in exchange that 'eternity of personal enjoyment' to which ordinary devotees look forward as their reward, and whose virtue I honour as approaching the sublime, on account of its independence of all the props and stimulants which ordinary virtue finds indispensable. But the sublimest virtue does not of itself constitute religion. For, besides the 'creed,' 'conviction,' and 'sentiment' indicated above, there is needed some suitable object of worship to which the soul may alternately bow down in humble reverence, and look up in fervent love—some being to whom its prayer, praise, and thanksgiving may be fittingly addressed. This want, recognised—as one of the few who do not recognise it admits—by nine out of every ten persons, was distinctly recognised by Comte, who, however, attempted to supply it by pointing, not to God, but to Man. His reason for this was not a conviction that there is no God. On the contrary, he habitually disclaimed, not without acrimony, dogmatic atheism; and once even condescended so far as to declare that 'the hypothesis of design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a blind mechanism.' But in the 'mature state of intelligence' at which his mind had arrived, 'conjecture founded on analogy did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory upon.' He preferred a religious theory without a basis, and therefore adopted one as destitute of support as the tortoise on which stands the earth-upholding elephant of Hindoo mythology; selecting, as the 'Grand Être' to be worshipped, 'the entire Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, past, present, and future.' For this great collective non-existence, this compound of that which is, that which has been but has ceased to be, and that which is not yet, he elaborated a minute ritual of devotional observances, and would, if he had had the chance, have consecrated a complete sacerdotal hierarchy, subordinated to himself as supreme pontiff. Having, for fear of recognising what possibly might not be, begun by, wilfully and with his eyes open, recognising what could not possibly be, he proceeded to invest this sanctified non-existence with precisely those attributes best calculated to render it unfit to receive the admiration he prescribed for it. That feeble Humanity—the actually living portion thereof, that is—may need and be the better for our services, which Divine Omnipotence of course cannot be, was distinctly urged by him as a reason why prayers, or at least those outpourings of feeling which he so designated, should be addressed to the former and not to the latter. That Humanity is in a constant state of progress, so that both the collective mass and choice specimens of each successive generation of men must always be superior to the corresponding masses and specimens of all previous generations, is a prime article of the Comtist creed; but not the less is it an imperative injunction of the Comtist rubrick that religious homage shall be paid, not only to the collective 'Grand Être' of Humanity, but also to individual worthies of past ages—that superiors shall consequently fall down before, and worship, and take as models, their intellectual and moral inferiors. The fact of a religion made up of tenets like these having been thought out by one of the profoundest of reasoners does not prevent its being the very perfection of unreason. Even though on the one side there were nothing more than some doubt whether Deity might not exist, still with complete certainty on the other of the non-existence of 'Humanity,' Deity ought in fairness to have at least the benefit of the doubt. In selection for adoration, that which only perhaps may be, at any rate deserves to be, preferred to that which positively is not. The excess of superstition with which St. Paul reproached the Athenians, for raising an altar to the 'Unknown God,' looks like excessive circumspection, beside the solemn dedication of temples to a chimera known not to be. Nay, even Isaiah's maker of graven images is at length outdone. Even he who, having hewn down a tree, 'burneth part thereof in the fire, with part thereof eateth flesh, roasteth roast, and is satisfied, warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire; and with the residue maketh a god, yea, his graven image, and falleth down unto it and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god'—even he has at last found more than his match in irrationality. For he has at least before him a visible tangible block of wood, not the mere memory of one that has long ago rotted, nor the dream of one that is yet to grow, whereas that mental figment, Consecrated Humanity, is not even a real shadow, but only a fancied one, a shadow cast by no substance. And it is to Comtists of all people—intellectual salt of the earth as they are—that this figment is recommended for adoration—yes, to those who, pharisaically standing aloof from the common herd, thank their imaginary substitute for God, or whatever else it is they deem thankworthy, that they are not blind as other men are, and least of all as those dazed metaphysicians who actually personify their own mental abstractions. No wonder that such extreme provocation should try the patience of all but the stanchest disciples. No wonder that Mr. Lewes himself should seem half inclined to apostrophise his quondam master in words resembling those once addressed to Robespierre, 'Avec ton Grand Être, tu commences à m'embêter.'
Here make we one more pause. This chapter's theme is, as was betimes premised, not the strength of theism, but the weakness of atheism. I have in it attempted to execute a design which, according to Boswell, was conceived by Lord Hailes, and approved by Dr. Johnson, that of writing an essay, Sur la crédulité des incrédules, and I think I have succeeded so far as to show that, if any one who can swallow atheism affects to strain at theism, it cannot, at any rate, be for want of a sufficiently capacious gullet.
CHAPTER VI.
LIMITS OF DEMONSTRABLE THEISM.
Thought without Reverence is barren. The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mécanique Céleste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a pair of spectacles, behind which there is no eye. Let those who have eyes look through him; then he may be useful.—Sartor Resartus.