The Churches and Modern Thought

EVIL FOR WHICH MAN IS NOT HELD RESPONSIBLE

The problem of pain, and of evil generally, has been partially discussed in the chapter on “Evolution.” The importance of this problem is very great, for, by the universal consent of Christendom (not of mankind, as we shall see later on), the very name of God carries with it the sense of goodness, the highest and best that we know of or can imagine. For this reason it is customary for the pious to regard every calamity reverently as a punishment from God, or as serving some good purpose. Thus the German Emperor, imbued from childhood with this pious theory, warned his people that the Japanese had been sent as a scourge from God, and Father Bernard Vaughan (preaching at Lancaster on August 26th, 1906) declared that God had uttered warnings to England by the eruption of Vesuvius and the San Franciscan and Chilian earthquakes. Can this supposition be maintained when the catastrophe occurs in the wrong place, when tornadoes and earthquakes destroy God’s own temples, and when the innocent suffer for the guilty? With the opinion of the scientist we are, or ought to be by now, familiar. “The fundamental axiom of scientific thought is that there is not, never has been, and never will be, any disorder in Nature. The admission of the occurrence of any event which was not the logical consequence of the immediately antecedent events, according to those definite, ascertained, or unascertained rules which we call the ‘laws of Nature,’ would be an act of self-destruction on the part of science” (Huxley on Catastrophes, p. 247 of his Essays on Controverted Questions).

I remember, at the time of the terrible catastrophe in Martinique, due to the eruption of Mont Pelée, asking a lady: “Do you think this wholesale slaughter and awful suffering has any connection with the wickedness of the afflicted people?” “Certainly,” she replied; “they must have been very wicked people.” It just so happened that the only man who escaped scatheless was a murderer who had been imprisoned in a cell below ground. So the theory she and I had been brought up to believe in would not work, whichever way you looked at it. The apologist has usually a number of strings to his bow; and, as the Old Testament teaching concerning bad men descending “quick into the pit” would not suit, he might argue that the criminal was given an opportunity for repentance. In that case, we must suppose that all the others who perished had no need of repentance. Again, with regard to the terrible tortures that many endured, it could be argued that those “whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth”; but what possible object could there be in this chastening during the last moments of their life upon earth? The agony of the death-struggle, suffered by the good and the bad alike, has yet to be shown to be in accord with the theory of a benevolent Deity.

The old-fashioned idea that catastrophes, plagues, famines, etc., were sent as punishments for our misdoings is gradually being modified. Dr. Flint says distinctly: “I cannot agree with those who think there is no mystery in mere pain—that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil.”219 It seems a pity that his advocacy for benevolence in the Deity should lead him afterwards to qualify this sensible statement by an amazing assertion which begs the whole question. “The character of pain itself,” he says, “is such as to indicate that its author must be a benevolent being—one who does not afflict for his own pleasure, but for his creatures’ profit.”220 The profit consists, we are told, in the fact that we are prevented through fear of pain from running into danger. How peculiarly appropriate and consolatory such a view of pain must be to, let us say, a person crippled with rheumatoid arthritis! Man’s highly sensitive and delicate organisation inevitably entails pain when no useful purpose of this kind can possibly be served; yet we are to suppose that an Omnipotent Being devised this crude and cruel method for teaching us to avoid the perils with which He Himself has surrounded us! One of our greatest living surgeons, Sir Frederick Treves, assures us221 that “the symptoms of disease are marked by purpose, and the purpose is beneficent.” “The processes of disease,” he goes on to explain, “aim not at the destruction of life, but at the saving of it.” Here, indeed, is more grist for the mill of the apologist. But what does this special pleading amount to? To this: Because through suffering we may survive a dangerous disease, we should be grateful to the Supreme Intelligence who created the preservative as well as the destructive microbes; we should be grateful to the Almighty who has fashioned friend and foe, and who, much to our discomfort, has selected our interior economy for the battlefield! Surely, if the surmise of benevolence is to be entertained at all, it must be at the sacrifice of the surmise of omnipotence. The Supreme Intelligence cannot be an “Almighty God” if He be the “Father of all mercies.”

There are Theists who candidly admit the perplexities of the situation. On the horns of a dilemma they have no option but to fall back upon the primitive theory: All unaccountable evil is the work of a hostile and evil power which seeks continually to frustrate the benevolent intentions of the Creator. “Speaking for myself,” says the author of Pro Fide,222 “I am unable to believe that hideous and excruciating diseases, such as cancer, which affect both men and animals, and which cannot, in the case of animals at least, be explained as a moral discipline, are the work of a good and benevolent God. I endorse absolutely the words of Dr. E. A. Abbott. ‘I cannot think,’ he says, ‘of diseases and pain, and the conflict in the animal world for life and death, as being, so to speak, part of God’s first intention.’” Disease, suffering, the struggle for existence, and the law of prey are then, after all, the Devil’s handiwork, and so is also, presumably, the law of the survival of the fittest. (Christian evolutionists, take note! In exonerating and extolling the evolutionary processes, you are exonerating and extolling the works of the Devil!) “The Zoroastrian view,” he continues, “must be rejected because it postulates two first principles, which is a plain metaphysical impossibility.” The view which is not open to this or any other objection, and which he calls the Theistic view, “supposes that a large share of the government of the material universe was committed, at the creation, to a personal spirit, of great, but not unlimited, power and intelligence, who, having been originally created good, subsequently fell, and introduced evil and disorder into the world.... This hypothesis of a personal devil has many advantages. It explains the whole of the facts; it avoids the postulation of two first causes; it vindicates the moral perfection of the Deity; and it allows the optimistic hope to be entertained that in the end good will triumph over evil.” All this is highly instructive. For it means that, in the opinion of an erudite apologist of the Church of England, flourishing a.d. 1906, the moral perfection of the Deity can only be vindicated on the hypothesis of a personal devil! Doubtless this hypothesis—and, remember, it is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one that is now generally discredited—fits in admirably; but the question is, Are we to accept it, however imaginary and opposed to the facts of science, just because it is so suitable?

There remains the usual retort of the religionist when closely cornered: “The finite mind cannot expect to understand the Infinite.” He appears to forget entirely that when he advances proofs of the God of his heart he himself is using his finite mind, and that his opponents therefore have an equal right to use theirs when criticising his “proofs.” This by the way. The particular point we have to notice is that the appeal to this negative argument amounts to an admission that the proofs do indeed appear all the other way. Thus in the question now before us, “Is the First Cause a beneficent intelligence?” we find that a statement confidently proclaimed by the pious is not only unsupported by evidence, but in spite of it—a mere assertion suggested by the emotions. With more modesty and (may I add?) with more common sense, the agnostic disclaims any knowledge of God, holding that human knowledge is limited to experience, and that, since the absolute and unconditioned, if it exists at all, cannot fall within experience, we have no right to assert anything whatever with regard to it.

EVIL FOR WHICH MAN IS HELD RESPONSIBLE

The very existence of the God of our hearts depends upon the proof of His morality. The argument from moral order seems at first sight a strong one. Morality, even adopting the naturalist’s explanation that it is only a social instinct, can be regarded as the result of a divine spark. Its beneficial influence on the happiness of the individual and the well-being of the race cannot be too strongly insisted upon as a well-ascertained fact. “Virtue is self-rewarding, and vice is self-punishing.”223 But the Rationalist asks: “Why design man’s nature so that he is more likely to go wrong, when he gets the chance, than to go right; and this in despite of the moral or social instinct?” The usual answer of the religionist is that, if we could not do wrong, we should be mere machines. “No doubt,” says the author of Pro Fide, “if God had made us what Mr. Huxley says we are, conscious automata, we should have been incapable of sin; but it is better to be men, with all the glorious possibilities of freedom and virtue, than to be machines, however excellent.” Now, do we allow our children to choose for themselves when we know they will choose wrongly? Do we not guard them against the inglorious possibilities—the slavery of vice? If we fail in our duty to them and they fall, should we add to our guilt by perpetrating on them unimaginable cruelties? Again, do we not prefer the fellowship of the good-natured? Yet these, according to the religionist, are the veriest automata compared with those who have inherited vicious or disagreeable characteristics, and do their best to fight against them. Be this as it may, the fact remains that the less fortunately endowed are seldom able to raise themselves up to the level of the more fortunately endowed—environment may, of course, elevate the one, as it may also degrade the other—and there is no doubt whose society we prefer. Why should it be better for men to be capable of—or, rather, may we not say prone to—sin? Why should their Maker grant them “glorious possibilities” which He has denied to Himself? Why should He alone be a machine that cannot go wrong? Surely there is something amiss in an argument that furnishes such inadequate excuses in order to explain why the Designer gave us natures infinitely inferior to His own.

Oh, Thou who man from basest clay didst make,And e’en for Paradise devised the snake,For all the sin wherewith the face of manIs blackened, man’s forgiveness give—and take!

Some of Nature’s plans would appear to be specially designed to bring out the worst side of the diverse nature implanted in man. The plan of the struggle for existence is a palpable instance. Take another—take the plan for the reproduction of life. Could any Omnipotent Being be proud of it? Let alone the unfair division of pain, which the discredited Eden story can now no longer account for, is it helpful to man in his struggle to improve his nature? The plan being God’s plan, it is enjoined upon us that the procreation of children is a sacred duty; but it is also plainly intimated that to abstain from marriage altogether is yet more meritorious. Similarly in Mithraism, Buddhism, the religions of ancient America and other pre-Christian cults, the sanctity of the celibate life is upheld. If man is not doing his best in obeying the behests of his Maker, how can he do right? Has he been given a fair chance when an instinct so hurtful is implanted in him that even its natural gratification in the divinely appointed manner is likely to hinder him in the cultivation of his spiritual nature; this although matrimony was ordained—so our prayer-book tells us—for a remedy against sin? The truth is that this necessary instinct, quite apart from its responsibility for much sorrow and strife and quite apart from its terrible tendency to perversion, is innately prejudicial to our moral elevation, and, in order to preserve a healthy, happy mind, the less we allow our thoughts to dwell upon its fulfilment the better.

Again, “a very little disorder in the organisation of the brain suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses, to shake the intellect from its throne, to paralyse the will, and to corrupt the sentiments and affections.”224 “How precise and skilful,” remarks Dr. Flint, lost in admiration of the Designer, “must be the adjustment between the sound brain and the sane mind!” “How fiend-like,” says the horrified Rationalist, “would be the Intellect which could have exercised its ingenuity to devise a mechanism inherently liable to get out of order, and thereby to transform its unhappy possessor into a fool or villain.” In the event of the latter result, moreover, man, according to Christ’s teaching (if honestly interpreted), is to suffer eternal torment!

CONSCIENCE

Regarding theories of the origin of conscience such as those of J. S. Mill, Bain, Darwin, and Spencer, Dr. Flint remarks: “It does not matter whether conscience be primary or derivative; it exists.”225 That it does matter is shown by the fact that the bulk of the apologists still stoutly maintain that conscience is a special attribute of man—a divine instinct—and is not derived from the lower animals. We have, I think, gone into this sufficiently in the previous chapter, and I shall confine my remarks to another aspect of the question—the fallibility of the moral consciousness.

“The existence,” it is urged, “of a moral principle within us, of a conscience which witnesses against sin and on behalf of holiness, is of itself evidence that God must be a moral being, one who hates sin and loves holiness.”226 Given the existence of a personal God, this argument is plausible enough till we examine it more closely. The liability of conscience to err is, or should be, a platitude. Its two components—the reason and the emotions—both being fallible, it necessarily follows that conscience must have the same quality. We have only to think for a moment to discover innumerable examples in proof of this. An illustration which occurs to me, and which will hurt no one’s susceptibilities, is that of the Wa Daruma. This is an East African tribe practising a strict morality which is all the more remarkable on account of the gross immorality of the neighbouring tribes. Nevertheless, the conscience of the Wa Daruma bids them kill their twin offspring. If conscience, then, be fallible, how is it a Theistic proof? Because, though it may make a mistake through an untutored reason, or through a reason clouded by deceptive emotions, the consciousness that there is a right or wrong at all is sufficient proof of a moral intelligence? So be it; but it is passing strange that God should allow conscience to deceive us. John Locke well said, many years ago: “Children are travellers newly arrived in a strange country: we should therefore make conscience not to deceive them.” Are we not children of God in a strange country? We would not deceive our children. The acquittal of conscience gives pleasure, as the condemnation gives pain—remorse—and every man must obey his conscience if he would be happy. What a thousand pities it seems that it should ever lead him into error! Should it not be a divine intuition of the right both in our religious beliefs and in our conduct?

It is an intuition of the right, the believer will say, when it tells you to believe in Christ and God. I would gladly think so; but every believer of every creed on the face of the earth says the same about his belief, and hence the amazing persistence of erroneous beliefs. When the voice of conscience is composed of a blind reliance on intuition (i.e., on the emotions) and a distrust of reason, how can the result be otherwise? The whole question of the truth of beliefs hinges upon whether intuition can or cannot be relied upon. We know that mistakes do occur through trusting to intuition, especially in the matter of beliefs; how, then, can we assume that it is infallible? Strange as the freaks of faith among cultured persons may appear, they are perfectly intelligible. They are the result of reliance on intuition rather than on reason. I will give an example. Who more logical, apparently, than John Henry Newman, the coadjutor of Whately in his popular work on logic? His illogical conduct is, therefore, particularly instructive. In 1832, after a visit to Rome, he wrote describing the Roman Catholic religion as polytheistic, degrading, and idolatrous,227 and then, after all, entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He did so because he found that the difficulties of the creed and of the canon of Scripture were insurmountable unless over-ridden by the authority of the Church. To escape becoming an agnostic he elected to join a Church calling herself infallible. He was able to come to this decision although, to his own knowledge, her infallibility was belied by her conduct! Further, so eloquent was his reasoning on the subject, so apparently logical, that some hundreds of clergymen joined him in making their submission to the Church of Rome. Underlying all this apparent inconsistency is the assertion, so eloquently pleaded by Cardinal Newman, of the supremacy of conscience and the correctness of intuition. So also have asserted the followers of every religion from all time, and to what have their consciences and intuitions led them—to truth, or to a pot-pourri of absurd and conflicting beliefs? We have the testimony of all history to prove the extreme fallibility of conscience. Conscience possesses no divine spark to keep a man from acting wrongly through ignorance. Even when knowledge is present we see, as in Cardinal Newman’s case, that the voice of conscience may still speak incorrectly; for reason is swamped when emotion’s flood-gate is left ajar.

Cardinal Newman’s opinions have a special interest for us at the present time. He held that, “apart from an interior and unreasoned conviction, there is no cogent proof of the existence of God”; that “the man who has not this interior conviction has no choice but to remain an agnostic, while the man who has it is bound sooner or later to become a Roman Catholic.”228

So inexplicable did his motives appear that Charles Kingsley accused him of saying that “truth for its own sake need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy.” Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, however, leaves no doubt of the author’s own personal rectitude. His premises—the infallibility of conscience and intuition—were false. But that is not an unusual feature of Christian apologetics. The keen intellects of the two pious brothers, John Henry and Francis William, were really buried beneath a mass of preconceptions. That of the latter, however, being less submissive, proceeded to a slow and sure upheaval, and finally Francis Newman rejected Christianity altogether.229 In the Apologia pro Vita Sua we find, I think, the key to Cardinal Newman’s convictions. He was intensely superstitious, and inclined also to be timid. On the opening page, where he gives the recollections of his boyhood, we read: “I used to wish the Arabian tales were true.” And again: “I was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion (when I was fifteen) used constantly to cross myself on going into the dark.”

FREEWILL

In my remarks on the “evil for which man is held responsible,” I have alluded to the Rationalist’s contention that man cannot be justly blamed for his actions, and that, if there be a God, He alone is to blame. This opens up the question of Freewill v. Determinism—a thorny question, which I should prefer, if only for considerations of space and my readers’ patience, to leave severely alone. A whole volume would be necessary to present the case for Determinism adequately, and I am fully aware that a few brief words will fail to convince; but, if I can remove a single iota of the misconceptions on this subject, I shall feel rewarded.

Kant defines an act of volition as an act which is determined by the anticipatory idea of the result of the act. Although he maintains that there must be a moral God, he fully admits that the forecast or anticipatory idea is the inevitable effect of precedent conditions, such as temperament (heredity), education (environment), and the like; and in a well-known passage he says that, if the whole history of the subject could be known, the voluntary acts of a man might be predicted with the same certainty as an eclipse. The tendency of modern psychology is in the same direction. All voluntary acts, we are told, depend on the memory of involuntary acts of the same sort previously performed. It is true that a few Christian psychologists leave room for a “sheer heave” of the will by means of which an idea naturally feeble is fortified and held in place; but when they speak in this wise they speak as metaphysicians. No metaphysical argument, it seems to me, can reconcile this inflexible causality with true freedom of will. How can the will be at one and the same time fettered and free? There is, I grant, every appearance of freewill; but it belongs to the category of appearances which deceive.

If we accept the Christian contention, we have to believe that a benevolent God gives us a free will, the power to choose between Him and the Devil, knowing, as in His omniscience He must, that the vast majority will make a sad use of their gift! The modern Christian admits that heredity and environment have their say also. Thus there are, in all, four forces struggling for the mastery—God, the Devil, heredity and environment; and it is the duty of the divinely-implanted free will to choose between them. Rather, is it not that there are two forces, and two forces only—heredity and environment—acting upon our brain, and our choice is the resultant of them? Undoubtedly man, as a self-conscious and reflecting animal, has what may be called the power of choice; but the way this power will be used would be a foregone conclusion did we know the sum-total of the effect of heredity and environment up to the moment of its use. “But,” it may be objected, “surely there is such a thing as will-power. We can overcome our heredity and environment by the exercise of our will. Temptations to which the weak-willed succumb do not affect the strong-willed. Here, at least, we have a distinct instance in which heredity and environment are overcome.” Yes, it is true, of course, that heredity and environment are continually being overcome by the happy possessor of sufficient will-power; but what we have to bear in mind is that it is not a portion, but the whole, of a man’s heredity and environment which must be taken into consideration. In the case of the man with the strong will, it is still his heredity and environment which have in the first instance settled the line of conduct to which, once resolved upon, he adheres so tenaciously. And, again, this particular quality of the mind which enables him to keep to his resolution is, like all other qualities of the mind, itself the product of heredity and environment.

The Determinism of science and the Freewill of metaphysics are essentially antagonistic. Determinism is completely subversive of Christian teaching. It is directly opposed to the Thirty-nine Articles of religion. Not only does it imply that man is not to blame for his actions, but that, if there be a God, He, and He alone, is to blame. Christian theologists are therefore its strenuous opponents. In their apologetic efforts one finds the strangest misconceptions of what is meant in a broad sense by heredity and environment. The best apology I have seen so far is by the Rev. P. N. Waggett, in a tractate called Science and Conduct.230 Father Waggett seems to realise better than most of his fellow-clerics the enormous influence of heredity and environment. Still he comes to the conclusion that “when, under given circumstances,” a man “does what, under those circumstances, and with his given constitution, he usually does not do,” he is exercising “some inward spring.” The fallacy in this argument is the common one. The effect of environment up to the moment of action has not been considered. The obscurity of the expression “given constitution” is doubtless unintentional, but it is none the less misleading. Father Waggett would be the first to admit that something must have occurred meanwhile to account for the new frame of mind. It is for him to show that an alteration in environment is not all that has occurred, and that there is room for this “inward spring.”