The Churches and Modern Thought

“Animals, in the presence of phenomena which they do not understand, retire confounded. Savage man does the same. But he, at least, hazards the attempt of an explanation by investing the objects or phenomena in question with life and sentiments similar to his own. Later this same savage, discovering or believing to discover in himself a double being, the one corporeal and the other spiritual, transfers the new notions regarding himself to objects without himself, to stones, plants, animals, or stars.... Religions, at first more or less elementary, with their founders and priests, do not appear until later.... For a long time the sorcerer—that is to say, a man less credulous than the rest, and adroit in the sense of knowing how to reap personal advantage from the beliefs of his fellows—stood alone in his class. Sorcerer and medicine man at once, he distributed amulets, drove out spirits from the bodies of the deceased, and caused the rains to fall.... The sacerdotal caste arose, at times recruiting itself from the outside and at times hereditary. More intelligent than the others, more disposed to reflect, the priests were naturally inclined to seek more satisfactory explanations from the phenomena of nature, to distinguish general causes from particular causes, to reduce the number of the spirits, to champion the most important of these, and even to symbolise many of them. The cult of heroes, of personages in the tribe who had rendered it valuable services, and of ancestors, was mingled with the preceding beliefs. Having to speak to simple people, for whom it was necessary to materialise things, they were obliged to recast their ideas and to expound them by the help of fables and myths, which soon essayed to explain in a tangible form the origin of things, the existing phenomena of nature, and often to guide the conduct of men. These were the first attempts of philosophy, already as utilitarian as they were mystical.”

“Religions consecrated a multitude of usages and ceremonies from which the sacerdotal class lived, and which greatly augmented its power; and they also exerted a strong political influence. Again, they led up to genuine moral codes, such as those of Brahma and Buddha in India, and Confucius in China.... The utilitarian idea appears to have dominated among the Phœnician and Canaanite peoples. It gave rise to the doctrine of a personal national God, who had created man and the people whom he had chosen and whose destinies he directed. He exacted from them blind and exclusive worship and obedience to the laws which he promulgated. In return he protected them, reserving his right of terrestrial punishment.... The Egyptians are related to the Hindus by their belief in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls from animal to animal.... The conception of a judgment after death passed through these peoples [the Egyptians] to the polytheism of Greece and Rome.... Greek philosophy rose audaciously to the loftiest and boldest conceptions, not conceptions crowning an intellectual edifice, but conceptions which dominate it in imaginary realms of space. Aristotle belongs apart. He is at once scientist and philosopher. He observes nature. He is the founder of natural history, of anthropology, of political science, and of political economy. According to Graef, he is also the founder of political philosophy, because he was the first to introduce positive facts into philosophy.... In the general run, they [the Greek philosophers] were dialecticians, sophists, and intellectual gymnasts only. But, such as they were, they founded free inquiry, disintegrated the national polytheistic beliefs, and prepared the way for the revolution which was on the verge of accomplishment.”

“In an unknown [?] corner of Judæa, on the banks of a lake, the glad tidings burst forth of a coming regeneration, and a voice was heard pleading the cause of the feeble, the humble, and the oppressed, and saying: ‘Love ye one another!’ The doctrine, at first local and inculcated by a small number of apostles, soon extended with St. Paul to the Gentiles, and thenceforward its progress was rapid [?]. Philosophy was not indifferent to it.... Christianity, in effect, instead of conquering the pagan world, was conquered by it, as Huxley has remarked.... During the Middle Ages science had disappeared from the West. Philosophy, hemmed in between metaphysics and theology, became scholasticism, which sought to reconcile Plato, Plotinus, and Aristotle with the needs of orthodoxy, and split hairs over subtle essences and entities.... Then a concourse of circumstances occurred which, as fifteen centuries before, was to transform the Western world, although differently, and which inaugurated modern times, to wit: The return to the West of the knowledge that had taken refuge among the Arabs; the discovery of printing, which spread everywhere trustworthy texts; the discovery of the New World, which quadrupled the surface of the earth to be observed and studied; the awakening of science, with Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Rondelet, Vesalius, Harvey; and, finally, the Reformation.”

“On the downfall of scholasticism the first care of philosophy was not the renouncing of what had been its essence, the search for the absolute by intuition [italics are mine] and reason, but the overhauling of its methods, which it sought to render more precise.... The subsequent divergencies were rooted less in the varying intellectual and logical make-up of each philosopher and in their method of applying their faculties than in their individual ways of feeling and conceiving. Philosophy in effect is simply a struggle between these elements.... Nevertheless, the conquests of science began to make themselves felt. There was now less insistence on God and more on the world, man, morals, and the conditions of social life. The over-hanging metaphysical cloud is still more or less heavy, but at spots it suffers the light to pass through. There are two streams: the one continues Descartes—in France with Pascal, Bossuet, Fénélon, and Malebranche, in Germany with Spinoza and Leibnitz; the other, in England, is represented by Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke.... Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke are the inaugurators of a school which is characterised by its practical spirit, its observation and analysis of psychological facts, and by its disposition to refer the conduct of man to the advantages which he draws therefrom. It led to Adam Smith, who discovers the sanction of morality in the public approbation of what is right; to Bentham, who sees it in interest rationally understood; to Hume and the Scottish school; and finally to the existing school of John Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer. Locke, on the other hand, is also the starting-point of the French school of the eighteenth century, which is characterised by a tendency at once anti-clerical, altruistic, and sentimental.”

“We shall say nothing of the philosophy of the nineteenth century of the German school, which represents speculative philosophy, and the English, which is physiological in bent, and of which we have the highest opinion. In France the most notable achievement is the attempt which was made by Auguste Comte. For Comte metaphysics must be entirely eliminated. The day of intuitions, à priori conceptions, entities, innate ideas, is past. If a problem cannot be solved, it is to be let alone. Psychology is only a branch of physiology, and the latter a division of biology. Morals rest not upon any imperative obligation, but upon the altruism which education developes. There are no rights besides those which society confers. Human knowledge has passed through three stages: one of faith or theology, one of conceptions or metaphysics, and one of observation or science. These, in turn, are the basal principles of science, and would be perfect if the positivist school were faithful to them. But in its own bosom even there are refractory spirits who suffer themselves unconsciously to be ruled by their sentiments rather than by observation, and who are constantly lapsing back into the old methods.... For me there is but one method of knowing what is, and of inducing therefrom what has been and what will be—and that is observation; all suggestions which transgress this method are void.”

From his examination of the evolution of philosophy Dr. Topinard draws, by way of résumé, the following conclusions:—

a. Philosophy, like religion, is the outcome of the belief in the supernatural held by man in his more or less primitive state.

b. The philosophic spirit and the spirit which created the arts and letters have as common characters their subjectivity, their need of imagining and of constructing, and their firm belief in the reality of their conceptions.

c. Philosophy is opposed to science. It answers to the impatient need of man to explain at once things which elude his comprehension.

d. At the present day philosophy still lives, but is losing its initial character and sees itself obliged more and more to reckon with science and practice.

e. We are obliged to admit that the group of human faculties which has given birth to philosophy has a less prolonged future than the group which has given rise to science.

f. Philosophy, although on the wane, and apparently in disaccord with the end of the nineteenth century, has nevertheless a beautiful domain to exploit.

These conclusions concerning the past and present of philosophy cannot be disseminated too widely. So many refuse point-blank to inquire into their belief, because they have been led to think that this will entail their wading through a mass of philosophical writings, and because they expect to find these either incomprehensible or unconvincing. Properly speaking, Christians should be the first to admit that apologists who attempt to defend their Faith by abstruse arguments are sadly inconsistent. For it is written, Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Let the humble truth-seeker take heart. Whatever the value or present tendency of philosophy may or may not be, the truth about the Christian religion can be ascertained without a knowledge of metaphysics.

Metaphysics does not, and never will, appeal to the average man. He agrees with the scoffer, who says: “When the man who is speaking no longer knows what he is talking about, and the man who is listening never knew what he was talking about, that is metaphysics!” The obscurity inherent in profound and abstract philosophy may well be objected to, not only as painful and fatiguing, but as the inevitable source of uncertainty and error. “Here, indeed,” exclaims Hume, in his essay on The Different Species of Philosophy, “lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness.” It is accurate and just reasoning like that of Hume, in his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which, to quote his words again, “is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.”

It may be urged that the famous Scottish philosopher and historian has been unduly severe in his sceptical views concerning speculative philosophy, or that he would have been less severe upon the later metaphysical thinking which was affected by his criticisms. There still remains, in any case, one feature common to all philosophies: their difficulty. Philosophy is only studied, and, indeed, can only be thoroughly understood, by the few. Take, for example, that intellectual phenomenon, Hegelianism, the spirit and method of which have leavened the whole mass of philosophical thought in Germany. It is confessedly one of the most difficult of all philosophies. One has heard what Hegel himself is supposed to have said: “Only one man ever understood me, and even he couldn’t.” This difficulty of comprehension has an important bearing on the argument for Agnosticism. Granting that there is such a God as Hegel would have us accept, how can anyone suppose for a moment that a Deity wrapping Himself up in such obscurity would be unreasonable enough to expect all mankind to believe in Him? He must not only pardon, but approve of, Agnosticism. A God, whose existence can only be proved, if it can be proved at all, by the abstruse arguments of a Hegel, is not a God anxious to reveal Himself to His creatures.

POPULAR ARGUMENTS

Chapter VII.

FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS

§ 1. Preliminary Remarks. The Power of Christianity for Good

Finally we have to consider some arguments that have often quite as much weight with the believer as Bible apologetics or Theistic proofs. They are: (1) The power of Christianity for good; (2) the marvellous spread of Christianity; (3) the witness of the Christian martyrs; and (4) the universality of the religious instinct. The first of these—the power of Christianity for good—opens up a large question, and I have thought it advisable, therefore, to select for special investigation two popular beliefs springing from this source—namely, the belief that woman owes her present position to Christianity, and the belief that the overthrow of Christianity would endanger society and the nation. The point now under consideration is not whether Christianity ought to have been, but whether it has been, a power for good. Although the apologist, when hard pressed as to this or that evidence of failure, attributes it to the fault of man, he nevertheless continues stoutly to maintain that Christianity has indeed worked wonders for mankind. This we should certainly expect of it, if it be a true belief, and it is a claim therefore which cannot be too closely investigated.

It would be a comparatively easy, though lengthy, task to make out an exceedingly strong case against Christianity by enlarging upon the inhumanity and immorality of the Dark Ages, and comparing this with the far more humane and moral conduct of men in pre-Christian civilisations. One could point to the rock-graven edicts of King Asoka (263–226 B.C.), and show that in the matter of discountenancing slavery, of humanity to prisoners, of denouncing war, of founding hospitals, of abolishing blood sacrifices, of inculcating religious toleration, and of teaching purity of life, all that is now so complacently claimed for Christianity was anticipated. Or again, one might dwell on the dark side of Christendom, even in this year of grace 1907, and draw some very odious comparisons, especially as we have so recently been presented with the object-lesson of a heathen race which excels many, and equals any, of the Christian races in nearly all those virtues we prize and call Christian. But I have no intention of embarking upon such a wide sea of controversy.

One controversial subject, however, I feel bound to notice, because the disputed point is at the root of the whole matter. We are so accustomed to hear every humane or unselfish deed, and every moral act, described as Christian that “good” and “Christian” have almost become synonymous terms. It never occurs to us to ask, or we never give a second thought to the question, how much the humane principles now accepted among civilised nations may be due to education, experience, and evolution, and how much to Christian influence. The Rationalist attributes the improvement chiefly to the former, and, in any case, to the working of natural forces; the Christian chiefly to the latter, and, in any case, to the working of supernatural forces.

All that is beneficial in civilisation, both on its material and on what is called its spiritual side, is placed by the Christian to the credit of Christianity, and the hand of God is traced with becoming reverence in every discovery which ameliorates our lot. This, although the promoters and discoverers are often non-Christians, and although it is well known that it is the Church that has chiefly delayed the advance of science. Whatever may be the case now, the education of the masses never concerned her in olden times. Rather her concern was then that the people should not be educated, much as it is in Russia at the present time. Such education as she did encourage was of the type imparted in the Mohammedan University at Cairo to-day—the three R’s and the Koran—and for similar reasons. As late as 1846 Cobden writes to a friend on the subject of national education: “I took the repeal of the Corn Laws as light amusement compared with the difficult task of inducing the priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated.” Again, Lord Macaulay, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, in the first chapter of his History of England, says that “during the last three centuries to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor.”

So long as organisms are adapted to their environment, neither progressive nor retrogressive development will occur. Because, after the Dark Ages, Europe progressed while Asia stagnated and Africa retrogressed, is modern civilisation to be placed to the credit of the Christian religion? As rationally might any one of the ancient civilisations be credited to the popular superstition of the country then in the van of progress. To such absurd lengths are these pretensions carried that we find persons ignorant enough and fanatical enough to attribute the present predominance of Christian nations to their religion. For a reply to such I cannot better that given by a learned Buddhist monk to a missionary who had told him that nations of the West had become powerful because of their Christianity. “The fact is,” retorted the monk, “that nations have become powerful in the degree to which they have rejected the precepts of Christianity, in the extent to which they have substituted for the Christian maxim of ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ that other maxim which shoots 300 bullets a minute.”

Returning to the only contention really worth considering, let us assume that there has been moral progress in Christendom, and let us assume also that this has nothing to do with the advance of Humanitarianism in the present, or with pre-Christian (Buddhist, for instance) teaching in the past. Are we to conclude that this is a proof of the divine origin of Christianity? I must confess I fail to see how any improvement which there may be in the matter of coarse vice among the proletariat, of dishonesty among the commercial classes, of corruptness among the professional, and of sensuality among the leisured classes, can be any proof that Jesus, one of the world’s reformers, was God Incarnate. Christian teaching embodies precepts of the greatest ethical value, borrowed, as we now know, from the doctrines of ancient moralists and religious teachers. Would it not indeed be strange if this teaching had done no good whatever—if the leaven had had no elevating influences at all, whereas the teachings of Confucius and Buddha have produced those admirable results which even Christians are at last prepared to admit? Dr. Warschauer explains in Anti-Nunquam, p. 72, that Agnostics are good men, “because, willingly or unwillingly, they have taken in Christian ideas through every pore.” How, then, does he explain the virtues of the Japanese?

Let us now leave generalisation, and investigate in some detail an important Christian argument which has the contention of Christianity’s power for good as its source. It forms a striking illustration of the way fallacies may arise from a hard-and-fast adhesion to convictions that are justified rather by the heart than by history.

§ 2. Christianity Woman’s Best Friend.243

The majority of women still remain true believers. There appear to be numerous reasons, psychological and educational, for their attitude. Woman is more imaginative, more emotional, and more sensitive to external suggestion than man. As to her education, men, even those who have no religious belief whatever, prefer to keep her in ignorance of their views, partly under a vague notion that unbelief would undermine her virtue and lessen her amiability, and partly because they deem her religious influence an essential element in the upbringing of their children. In addition to all this, woman is taught by the Church that Christianity is her best friend. Prominent prelates of the Church proclaim that “the Gospel has given woman the position she holds to-day.”244 Nothing could very well be more contrary to fact. One can only suppose that these expounders of the truth are speaking according to the dictates of their hearts, and without having really studied the question, or else that they believe their cause is served by deliberately closing their eyes to inconvenient facts. The question is one of supreme importance, as it is chiefly women who are now the mainstay of the Faith.

People with little or no knowledge of those portions of history that specially bear upon the question are easily deceived. The average woman’s ideas concerning the pre-Christian civilisations are decidedly vague. Her ideas may also be further confused by lurid accounts from the pulpit of the licentiousness prevalent among the upper classes during the earlier and also the last years of the Roman Empire; while nothing is told her about the unrestrained licence of the aristocracy during the Middle Ages, and the degraded condition of the masses during, say, the eighteenth century, “when,” says Sir Walter Besant, “for drunkenness, brutality, and ignorance, the Englishman of the baser kind reached the lowest depth ever reached by civilised man.” Clerics who unconsciously mislead their congregations with this argument cannot be aware of those hard facts of history which render it untenable. For their benefit, and for the benefit of their dupes, let us glance at a few of these facts.

The status of women among the “barbarians” is vouched for by the Romans, their enemies, and therefore unexceptionable witnesses. Nothing impressed the Romans more than the equality of the sexes among the northern nations, the man’s reverence for womanhood, the woman’s sympathy with manhood, and the high code of morality that was the natural outcome of this well-balanced state of society.

At a time when the men of the “Chosen People” were insulting and unjust to their women, heathen women enjoyed a position which their Christian, not to mention their Mohammedan, descendants might well envy. “Polygamy only began to disappear among the Jews in the fifth century B.C., and so curious was the influence of the Old Testament on the early Christian Church that several of the Fathers could not bring themselves to condemn it, and it was not officially suppressed by the Church until A.D. 1060. Luther and the Reformers allowed it even later. Yet polygamy was one of the surest signs of a contempt of woman, and it had been rejected by Greeks, Romans, and barbarians long before the Hebrews began to perceive its enormity.”245

“The part women played in old Japan,” writes the founder of the first university for women in Japan,246 “was very remarkable, especially before the arrival of Buddhism and Confucianism. Men and women were almost equal in their social position. There was then no shadow of the barbarous idea that men were everything and women nothing. Women’s power even in politics was great, and history tells us that there were nine women who ascended the throne in olden times. Women in general were not inferior to men physically, mentally, or morally. They were noted for their bravery, and distinguished themselves on the field of battle. In the literary world they were not less noted for their brilliant productions. Their moral conduct was most blameless, and commanded universal respect. Their natural temperament was cheerful and optimistic, and charmed the sterner sex. Such being the attainments and characteristics of women in olden times, we can fairly believe that they were as well educated as men were, although there were not existing any institutions of instruction for women. This was the springtime of Japanese womanhood, when it blossomed undisturbed, and exerted a strong and beneficial influence on the life of old Japan. The introduction of Buddhism and Confucianism, however, began to create great changes in the position of women. And yet so powerful were women in society when these two religions came to Japan that their rapid spread in our country was due to the earnest endeavours of women.” Speaking of the feudal age, he remarks: “The social environment of the age and the prevalence of Buddhism and Confucianism worked hand in hand to bring about the subjection of women.” The analogy between the experiences of the Japanese lady and her European sister is a striking one. (There is an analogy, too, between the conduct of the Buddhist priests and that of the Roman Catholic priests in the Middle Ages, or even in Southern Italy to-day. “The sins of the present generation of priests,” said Count Okuma in the course of an interview, “are many, and the hells about which they preach are prepared for the like of them.”247 “The majority of the priests are utterly degenerate and hopelessly ignorant.”248)