Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

From The National Review.

THE CLOTHES OF RELIGION.

furnished them by the keeper. Others, again, thought themselves to be great personages in history - Cæsar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or the Duke of Wellington. "And the most curious part of it is," he added, "that many of these are most intelligent and sensible if only you do not discuss their monomania with them. They talk about other subjects in such a way that you would not suspect them to be mad at all." This was too much for the visitor. It seemed impossible that a man who was really a monomaniac, and who saw this very peculiarity so distinctly in others, should be unconscious of it in himself. "There must be some mistake," he thought, "this cannot be the man of whom the doctor spoke. He must be one of the officials connected with the place."

A STUDENT of human character was once anxious to see over a lunatic asylum. The doctor who superintended it, being very busy, said to him that he would depute one of his patients to show him over it. "He is a very intelligent man," he said, "though a monomaniac. He talks so sensibly on subjects unconnected with his monomania that you would never | suspect any deficiency in his mental furniture. And, indeed, I think it possible that you will not discover where his mind has given way." The visitor found it just as the doctor had prophesied. His guide talked to him about all subjects connected with the asylum—and, indeed, about other subjects too, with intelligence quite above the average. The phenomena of mad- Just as he was preparing to leave, his ness, and the peculiarities of mad people, guide pointed to a man who sat reading a formed a specially favorite topic, and his book in a room the door of which was remarks upon them were most sensible, open, near the entrance of the asylum. and betrayed not the slightest sign of his "We were talking," he said, "of monomalady. The visitor found it hard, in mania. There is a curious specimen of a spite of the doctor's information, to be monomaniac; a very well-read, sensible, lieve that a man so like others in his way and intelligent man, until you get him on of talking and thinking-nay, so much Greek history. Then you will find out above the average in common sense and his weakness. He is persuaded that he intelligence was indeed mad, and half is Alexander the Great, and nothing thought that the doctor must have made will shake his conviction. Like the phi-. some mistake, or that the patient had re- losopher in Johnson's 'Rasselas,' who covered from any mental derangement he | Ithought he could control the winds and might once have had. However, as he the weather, he acknowledges that he was approaching the end of his inspection, cannot prove to you that it is so, but he thought he would make one attempt to nevertheless he knows that he is. Why, test his condition directly, and asked him he remembers the battle of Arbela, and if there were not such people as monoma-poor Darius's flight. He will describe niacs in the asylum. His guide promptly Diogenes to you minutely, and his conanswered that there were many such, and versations with him. He will give you forthwith commenced an interesting de- an accurate picture of the appearance of scription of the various forms of mono- Thais and Timoleon, and a graphic acmania he had come across. Some, he count of the scene of Dryden's ode; he said, fancied themselves to be made of says he remembers the whole thing vivglass, and rubbed their hands hard with idly." The visitor remarked that it was towels in the morning until they declared very curious. "You know he is not Alexthat the dust was gone, and that they ander," said the guide, showing for the were in their natural state of transpar- first time a somewhat wild look in his ency; others considered that certain indi- eyes. The other took this as a joke. “I viduals were constantly plotting against should think there was considerable doubt their lives, and that it was necessary for as to his identity," he replied. "Ah, but," them always to sleep with a loaded re- said the guide, “I know he is not; I have volver - the place of which was, how good reason to know,” and he looked very ever, generally supplied by a toy gun mysterious. "I will confide a secret to

you," be continued; "I have not yet told | points out that "the attempt, so to speak, you my name. I am Philip of Macedon, to put a little unction into the unknowand until I came to this place I had never | able," by describing it in terms "with so set eyes on that man. I remember my deep a theological ring as we hear in the son Alexander well; he was much taller phrase 'infinite and eternal energy from and fairer. I can't possibly be mistaken." which all things proceed,' "" is really a The cat was out of the bag, and our friend "philosophical inaccuracy." He reduces went away much amused and even more Mr. Spencer's statement to its true logsurprised. ical limits, and divests it of the unction and enthusiasm which that writer had endeavored to infuse into it in the following passage:

[ocr errors]

I have told this story-which I believe to be substantially true at some length, because it is, I think, a very instructive parallel to something which aroused the Fully accepting Mr. Spencer's logical canattention of many of us within the last ons, one does not see why it should be called few months. I speak of the utterances an "absolute certainty." "Practical belief" of Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Frederic satisfies me; and I doubt the legitimacy of Harrison on the subject of religion, in substituting for it "absolute certainty." "Inthe Nineteenth Century. Readers of the finite" and "Eternal," also, can mean to Mr. essays to which I refer will recollect that Spencer nothing more than "to which we Mr. Spencer, after explaining that the old know no limits, no beginning or end," and, for idea of a personal God, such as Christian- my part, I prefer to say this. Again, "an EnThe Unknowable ity believes in, is plainly unscientific, and ergy"-why an Energy? is merely a development of the primitive may certainly consist of more than one enbelief in ghosts, and that we have no capa-ergy. To assert the presence of one uniform bility of acquiring any knowledge as to the ultimate cause of existence, bequeaths us, with his parting breath, a few capital letters for a religion. He has destroyed for us, it is true, certain objects of worship and belief to which we fondly clung, conscience, God, the soul; but he does not "leave us orphans." He sends his spirit to comfort us with a new religion, whose deity is the unknowable. The Christian God consisted of a Trinity, namely, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The unknowable will not be behindhand in this respect. It, too, consists of a trinity infinity, eternity, and energy. It is "absolutely certain," he says, that we are in "the presence of an infinite and eternal energy, from which all things proceed." And this unknowable energy is, he explains, the true object of the sentiments of awe and worship—and a far more worthy object than the old-fashioned God whom it endeavors to replace.

energy is to profess to know something very
homogeneous and ever identical throughout
important about the Unknowable; that it is
the Universe. And, then, "from which all
things proceed," is, perhaps, a rather equivo-
cal reversion to the theologic type. In the
Athanasian Creed the Third Person "pro-
ceeds" from the First and the Second.
this process has always been treated as a mys-
tery; and it would be safer to avoid the phrases
of mysticism. Let us keep the old words, for
we all mean much the same thing; and I pre-
fer to put it thus. All observation and medi-
tation, Science and Philosophy, bring us

But

66

to

the practical belief that man is ever in the

presence of some energy or energies, of which he knows nothing, and to which, therefore, he would be wise to assign no limits, conditions, or functions." This is, doubtless, what Mr. Spencer himself means. For my part I prefer his old term the Unknowable. Though I have always thought that it would be more philosophical not to assert of the Unknown that it is Unknowable. And, indeed, I would rather not use the capital letter, but stick literally to our evidence, and say frankly the unknown.

This is, to my mind, quite unanswerable common sense. Mr. Spencer has no

Here, then, is the religion which Mr. Spencer has left us; and Mr. Harrison, in some very pregnant sentences, and with the aid of some very happily con-right- has, indeed, no logical powerceived phrases, has shown that Mr. Spencer's bequest is really not a religion at all, but only the ghost of a religion. He

to have his cake after he has eaten it. If we have no reason to believe in an allpowerful and all-holy Author of Nature, we

can have no right to cherish the feeling of our dreams." His conclusion is stated in boundless awe and reverence which such yet stronger terms in the following pas. a being alone could rightly claim. Still sages, which must be quoted, as I shall less right have we to squander such feel- shortly have to refer to them in detail: ings upon the unknown energies which "How mere a phrase must any religion /underlie the phenomena with which we be of which neither belief, nor worship, are acquainted. What reason have we to nor conduct can be spoken!" "A mother suppose these energies worthy of rever- wrung with agony for the loss of her child, ence at all, except on a principle which, or the wife crushed by the death of her as Mr. Harrison tersely puts it, would children's father, or the helpless and the hold "ignotum omne pro divino"? The oppressed, the poor and the needy, men, fact seems to be that Mr. Spencer, belong-women, and children, in sorrow, doubt, ing as he does to that race of religious and want, longing for something to comanimals called "man," and unable in con- fort them and to guide them, something to sequence to do without an object of wor- believe in, to hope for, to love, and to ship, having pursued his critical philos- worship, they come to our philosopher, ophy to the point where absolute negation and they say, 'Your men of science have is reached in the domain of theology, routed our priests, and have silenced our finding nothing else within his reach, is old teachers. What religious faith do you forced to worship it; and to give it a little give us in its place?' And the philosomore dignity, he has to dress its skeleton-pher replies (his full heart bleeding for like form in capitals, and write it Absolute them), and he says, 'Think on the UnknowNegation. Here is his monomania. To suppose that by dressing up nothing he can make it something and not merely something, but the object of those deepest feelings which, for good and for ill, have played a wider and more important part than any others in the history of our race is surely little short of a monomania. To conceive that out of the statements "Noth ing can be known," and "A sort of a something exists beyond our knowledge," we can evolve the absolutely certain existence of an unknowable object of worship, consisting of an infinite and eternal energy whence all things proceed, is to introduce a new species of evolution which Mr. Spencer himself could hardly sanction when in his right mind. The leap is very great, and Darwin confesses that natura non facit saltum.

able.' And in the hour of pain, danger, or death, can any one think of the Unknowable, hope anything of the Unknowable, or find any consolation therein?" "The precise and yet inexhaustible language of mathematics enables us to express, in a common algebraic formula, the exact combination of the unknown raised to its highest power of infinity. That formula is x, . . . where two or three are gathered together to worship the Unknowable they may be heard to profess their unwearying belief in x„, even if no weak brother with ritualistic tendencies be heard to cry, 'O x, love us, help us, make us one with thee!'"

...

So far, I repeat, Mr. Harrison has shown so just an appreciation of the consequences of the Agnostic position, so quick an eye in detecting and exposing Mr. Harrison seems to me, then, in this Mr. Spencer's mania for transforming portion of his criticism, to reason with an scientific negation into an object of woraccuracy and sobriety which are quite be- ship, by means of his own enthusiasm yond praise. He brings Agnosticism back and capital letters, and so clear an insight to its true position, and it resumes its into the deflection from just reason which character of negation. "So stated," he this involves, that he figures as before all says, "the positive creed of Agnosticism things a sober and cautious thinker. If still retains its negative character." And the death-knell of the old theology be inthis cannot be religion. Religion can- deed sounded, all reasonable religious not be found in this No-man's-land and worship must die with it. No enthusiasm know-nothing-creed. Better bury religion and no rhetoric can persuade a sensible at once than let its ghost walk uneasy in man that it is reasonable to worship that

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

which he has no means of knowing to be | prayers any better than ; how we can

worthy of worship. We must be content, be grateful to it if it is an abstraction; if theism be destroyed, to bid farewell to how it can deserve gratitude if it is the religion for good and all, and, in company net result of human and natural forces on with Mr. Huxley rather than Mr. Spen- an unhappy world; how it can comfort us cer, to look upon all speculations and in sickness, or give us hope on the bed of thoughts connected with it as of no more death any better than the Unknowable, — practical concern to us than the politics these difficulties, which naturally arise, of any supposed inhabitants of the moon. Mr. Harrison does not explain. ConAt this point, however, as we give ut- sistency and sobriety of reasoning vanish terance with a sigh to this conclusion, we directly he touches on his monomania, observe a strange look come over Mr. and enthusiasm and capitals are the order Harrison's face. "I am sure the Un- of the day. In company with Mr. Spenknowable will not afford a rational reli- cer, he has relentlessly pursued the path gion," he says in effect. We readily of negation, until they have arrived at the assent, and allow the point to have been common conclusion that all that is known proved by him. "Ah! but I am quite is phenomenal nature in its operation on certain it cannot be the real religion," he mankind. Here, then, is the exhaustive continues, "because I know that the wor- division of all things - Phenomenal Na ship of Humanity is the real religion." "Iture and the Unknown. But at this point am Philip of Macedon, and I know that is not my son." We are startled beyond description. He continues - and we can listen to the explanation as given in his own words, "The religion of man in the vast cycles that are to come will be the reverence for Humanity as supported by Nature." His hearers are inclined to in. terrupt him: "Prune down your capital letters, at all events. Let us examine your statements on their own merits. - as they are in themselves, and without the clothing of enthusiasm. You have been ruthlessly undressing the Infinite Eternal Energy; you have knocked all assumed dignity out of the Unknowable; you have laughed at it because it has managed to get itself spelt with a capital U; in common fairness, then, do the same by your own gods. Let us see calmly, and by careful and sober analysis, what humanity supported by nature comes to, in itself, and without unction or capitals; and how far it will be able to serve us as a religion." But we must hear Mr. Harrison out. "The final religion of enlightened man," he continues, "is the systematized and scientific form of the spontaneous religion of natural man. Both rest on the same elements: belief in the Power which controls his life, and grateful reverence for the Power so acknowledged. The primitive man thought that Power to be the object of Nature as affecting man. The cultured man knows that Power to be Humanity itself, controlling and controlled by Nature according to natural law." This is certainly a marvellous collapse of the critical and cautious spirit by which the earlier portion of Mr. Harrison's paper was distinguished. How humanity controlled by nature can hear our

[ocr errors]

comes before us the truth of the saying, Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret. All that need of something to reverence which George Eliot lays down as a primary demand of our nature, the satisfaction of which is essential to hap piness, comes in full force upon both. It matters not that their reason has decided that nothing exists to satisfy the need. A starving man has been known to endeavor to appease his hunger by eating a pair of boots, in default of any more attractive species of food; and in like manner the Positivist and the Agnostic, finding in reach only nature and the unknown, make a desperate effort to satisfy their religious cravings with these very unpromising objects. The Positivist takes one boot, the Agnostic the other. The former takes nature, the latter the unknown; and by a mental process which can only be characterized as monomania, they contrive to enjoy a sort of religious Barmecide's feast.

The truth seems to be that these philosophers having conspired together to kill all real religion — the very essence of which is a really existing, personal God, known to exist, and accessible to the prayers of his creatures - and having, as they suppose, accomplished their work of destruction and put religion to death, have proceeded to divide its clothes between them. By the clothes of religion I mean those ideas and corresponding emotions with which we invested the objects of religious faith, and which were their nat ural and due adornment, and the phrases which had become associated with reli gious feelings and belief. The saying of the Psalmist, which was applied to other slayers of their God, may be used of these

also, Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea et super vestem meam miserunt sortem."

No

But before proceeding further, let me endeavor to explain more in detail my The ideas of infinity, eternity, and pow- meaning in calling the religious language er, which have hitherto clothed the Deity, and conceptions which the Agnostic and fell to Mr. Spencer's share, together with Positivist have preserved "clothes of relithe correlative emotion of awe. Mr. Har-gion." The very essence of religion is rison came in for a larger quantity belief and trust. All the emotions which though perhaps less indispensable, and the great object of true religion arouses, more allied to the perfection of dress whether as God creating or as God incarwhich Christianity introduced than to the nate, have their whole raison d'être in simple clothes of natural religion-nec- our absolute belief and trust. They are essary for decency and dignity. Broth- called forth by facts and realities, and erly love, the improvement, moral, mental their beauty, depth, and essential characand material, of our fellow-men, self-sacri- ter depend on this. They differ from fice for the general good, devotion to an mere sentiment just as a man's love for ideal here are some of the "clothes of his wife differs from the sentiment he religion " which Mr. Harrison and the may have for a heroine of romance. Positivists have appropriated. And hav- love is too ardent for God, because he ing appropriated them, both these philos- is all good and all-loving; no awe too ophers try to persuade themselves and deep, because he is all-wise and all-powerthe world that, after all, the clothes are ful; no trust too absolute, because he the important part of religion, and that if never deserts them that put their trust in they dress up something else in the same him. So too as to the sentiments proper clothes it will do just as well as the old to Christianity. The martyrs did not die faith. Mr. Spencer dresses up the un- for a feeling or an idea as such; they died knowable with infinity, eternity, and en- becaused they believed Christ to be God, ergy; Mr. Harrison dresses up humanity and that he bid them go through all torwith brotherly love, and the worship of ments rather than deny him. They bean ideal. But the clothes won't fit. The lieved him to exist, and that death would world may be duped for a time, and imag- unite them to him whom they loved, for ine that where the garments are there the whom they suffered, whose smile was reality must be; but this cannot last. It their joy, whose every word and action is not the cowl that makes the monk, and was their rule of life, and union with it is not the clothes that make religion. whom was the only perfect end of their The misfit is too apparent to remain long being. "If Christ is not risen," said the unnoticed; and then, again, the clothes apostle, "then is your faith vain." The cannot even cover the whole substance of root of their devotion was belief in a real the new creed. Mahomet and Hume, two fact. Convince the would-be martyr that of the saints in the Positivist calendar, Christ is no longer in existence, is not are patent excrescences; and the clothes approving his action, and will not welof Christianity can by no stretching be come him after he has passed through the made to cover them at all. Red Riding gates of death, and his love and devotion Hood thought for a time that the wolf evaporate. The essence of the deepest which had put on her grandmother's feelings consist in their being aroused by clothes was her grandmother in reality; a reality; and if that be taken away, the but the long, rough arms, the big eyes, and feelings themselves lose all meaning and the large teeth, which the clothes could dignity. The clothes of a handsome man not hide, helped to betray its real nature. are intended to set off the essential digThe clothes of religion will never fit either nity of his appearance. Put them on a the unknowable or humanity. The misfit scarecrow, and be they never so rich and will arouse suspicion; and if suspicion well made, their dignity is gone. Their makes us look closely we shall see the dignity was part of his dignity. And so teeth and rough arms. But it is not un- too religious sentiments depend for their til each has been stripped of its clothes dignity on religious belief on belief in that it will be visible in its full deformity really existing objects to which they may or, rather, to drop for a moment our be worthily applied. latest comparison, in its full meagreness and unsubstantiality. Mr. Harrison has stripped the unknowable. Let us now endeavor to strip his own deity-"Humanity, as controlling and controlled by nature according to natural law."

I say, then, that all these feelings, ideas, and emotions which are associated with religion are its fitting clothes, but that the essence of religion, the central figure which they adorn, is trust in real objects worthy of these things; and further, that

« VorigeDoorgaan »