The Fallen Star, or, the History of a False Religion Part 8

Of a surety Morven was a great man!

CONCLUSION

It was the last night of the old year, and the stars sat, each upon his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. The night was dark and troubled, the dread winds were abroad, and fast and frequent hurried the clouds beneath the thrones of the kings of night.

But ever and anon fiery meteors flashed along the depths of heaven, and were again swallowed up in the graves of darkness.

And far below his brethren, and with a lurid haze around his...o...b.. sat the discontented star that had watched over the hunters of the North.

And on the lowest abyss of s.p.a.ce there was spread a thick and mighty gloom, from which, as from a caldron, rose columns of wreathing smoke; and still, when the great winds rested for an instant on their paths, voices of woe and laughter, mingled with shrieks, were heard booming from the abyss to the upper air.

And now, in the middest night, a vast figure rose slowly from the abyss, and its wings threw blackness over the world. High upward to the throne of the discontented star sailed the fearful shape, and the star trembled on his throne when the form stood before him face to face. And the shape said: "Hail, brother!--all hail!"

"I know thee not," answered the star: "thou art not the archangel that visitests the kings of night."

And the shape laughed loud. "I am the fallen star of the morning.--I am Lucifer, thy brother. Hast thou not, O sullen king, served me and mine?

and hast thou not wrested the earth from thy Lord who sittest above and given it to me by _darkening the souls of men with the religion of fear?_ Wherefore come, brother, come;--thou hast a throne prepared beside my own in the fiery gloom. Come.--The heavens are no more for thee." Then the star rose from his throne, and descended to the side of Lucifer. For ever hath the spirit of discontent had sympathy with the soul of pride.

And slowly they sank down to the gulf of gloom. It was the first night of the new year, and the stars sat each on his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. But sorrow dimmed the bright faces of the kings of night, for they mourned in silence and in fear for a fallen brother.

And the gates of the heaven of heavens flew open with a golden sound, and the swift archangel fled down on his silent wings; and the archangel gave to each of the stars, as before, the message of his Lord; and to each star was his appointed charge.

And when the heraldry seemed done, there came a laugh from the abyss of gloom, and half way from the gulf rose the lurid shape of Lucifer, the fiend.

"Thou countest thy flock ill, O radiant shepherd. Behold! one star is missing from the three thousand and ten."

"Back to thy gulf, false Lucifer!--the throne of thy brother hath been filled."

And lo! as the archangel spake, the stars beheld a young and all l.u.s.trous stranger on the throne of the erring star; and his face was so soft to look upon, that the dimmest of human eyes might have gazed upon its splendor unabashed; but the dark fiend alone was dazzled by its l.u.s.tre, and, with a yell that shook the flaming pillars of the universe, he plunged backwards into the gloom.

Then, far and sweet from the arch unseen, came forth the voice of G.o.d:

"Behold! _on the throne of the discontented star sits the star of hope; and he that breathed into mankind the Religion of Fear hath a successor in him who shall teach earth the Religion of Love._"

And evermore the Star of Fear dwells with Lucifer, and the Star of Love keeps vigil in heaven.

ON THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

By Lord Brougham

A DISSERTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

The question which has more than, any other hara.s.sed metaphysical reasoners, but especially theologians, and upon which it is probable that no very satisfactory conclusion will ever be reached by the human faculties, is the Origin and Sufferance of Evil.

Its existence being always a.s.sumed, philosophers have formed various theories for explaining it, but they have always drawn very different inferences from it.

The ancient Epicureans argued against the existence of the Deity, because they held that the existence of Evil either proved him to be limited in power or of a malignant nature; either of which imperfections is inconsistent with the first notions of a divine being.

In this kind of reasoning they have been followed both by the atheists and sceptics of later times.

Bayle regarded the subject of evil as one of the great a.r.s.enals from whence his weapons were to be chiefly drawn. None of the articles in his famous Dictionary are more labored than those in which he treats of this subject. _Monichian_, and still more _Paulician_, almost a.s.sume the appearance of formal treatises upon the question; and both _Marchionite_ and _Zoroaster_ treat of the same subject. All these articles are of considerable value; they contain the greater part of the learning upon the question; and they are distinguished by the acuteness of reasoning which was the other characteristic of their celebrated author.

Those ancient philosophers who did not agree with Epicurus in arguing from the existence of evil against the existence of a providence that superintended and influenced the destinies of the world, were put to no little difficulty in accounting for the fact which they did not deny, and yet maintaining the power of a divine ruler. The doctrine of a double principle, or of two divine beings of opposite natures, one beneficent, the other mischievous, was the solution which one cla.s.s of reasoners deemed satisfactory, and to which they held themselves driven by the phenomena of the universe.

Others unable to deny, the existence of things which men denominate evil, both physical and moral, explain them in a different way. They maintained that physical evil only obtains the name from our imperfect and vicious or feeble dispositions; that to a wise man there is no such thing; that we may rise superior to all such groveling notions as make us dread or repine at any events which can befall the body; that pain, sickness, loss of fortune or of reputation, exile, death itself, are only accounted ills by a weak and pampered mind; that if we find the world tiresome, or woeful, or displeasing, we may at any moment quit it; and that therefore we have no right whatever to call any suffering connected with existence on earth an evil, because almost all sufferings can be borne by a patient and firm mind; since if the situation we are placed in becomes either intolerable, or upon the whole more painful than agreeable, it is our own fault that we remain in it.

But these philosophers took a further view of the question which especially applied to moral evil. They considered that nothing could be more groundless than to suppose that if there were no evil there could be any good in the world; and they ill.u.s.trated this position by asking how we could know anything of temperance, fort.i.tude or justice, unless there were such things as excess, cowardice and injustice.

These were the doctrines of the Stoics, from whose sublime and impracticable philosophy they seemed naturally enough to flow. Aulus Gellius relates that the last-mentioned argument was expounded by Chrysippus, in his work upon providence. The answer given by Plutarch seems quite sufficient: "As well might you say that Achilles could not have a fine head of hair unless Thersites had been bald; or that one man's limbs could not be all sound if another had not the gout."

In truth, the Stoical doctrine proceeds upon the a.s.sumption that all virtue is only the negative of vice; and is as absurd, if indeed it be not the very same absurdity, as the doctrine which should deny the existence of affirmative or positive truths, resolving them all into the opposite of negative propositions. Indeed, if we even were to admit this as an abstract position, the actual existence of evil would still be unnecessary to the idea, and still more to the existence, of good. For the conception of evil, the bare idea of its possibility, would be quite sufficient, and there would be no occasion for a single example of it.

The other doctrine, that of two opposite principles, was embraced by most of the other sects, as it should seem, at some period or other of their inquiries. Plato himself, in his later works, was clearly a supporter of the system; for he held that there were at least two principles, a good and an evil; to which he added a third, the moderator or mediator between them.

Whether this doctrine was, like many others, imported into Greece from the East, or was the natural growth of the schools, we cannot ascertain.

Certain it is that the Greeks themselves believed it to have been taught by Zoroaster in Asia, at least five centuries before the Trojan war; so that it had an existence there long before the name of philosophy was known in the western world.

Zoroaster's doctrine agreed in every respect with Plato's; for besides Oomazes, the good, and Arimanius, the evil principle, he taught that there was a third, or mediatory one, called Mithras. That it never became any part of the popular belief in Greece or Italy is quite clear.

All the polytheism of those countries recognized each of the G.o.ds as authors alike of good and evil. Nor did even the chief of the divinities, under whose power the rest were placed, offer any exception to the general rule; for Jupiter not only gave good from one urn and ill from another, but he was also, according to the barbarous mythology of cla.s.sical antiquity, himself a model at once of human perfections and of human vices.

After the light of the Christian religion had made some way toward supplanting the ancient polytheism, the doctrine of two principles was broached; first by Marcion, who lived in the time of Adrian and Antonius Pius, early in the second century; and next by Manes, a hundred years later. He was a Persian slave, who was brought into Greece, where he taught this doctrine, since known by his name, having learned it, as is said, from Scythia.n.u.s, an Arabian. The Manichean doctrines, afterwards called also Paulician, from a great teacher of them in the seventh century, were like almost all the heresies in the primitive church, soon mixed up with gross impurities of sacred rites as well as extravagant absurdities of creed.

The Manicheans were, probably as much on this account as from the spirit of religious intolerance, early the objects of severe persecution; and the Code of Justinian itself denounces capital punishment against any of the sect, if found within the Roman dominions.

It must be confessed that the theory of two principles, when kept free from the absurdities and impurities which were introduced into the Manichean doctrine, is not unnaturally adopted by men who have no aid from the light of revelation,[1] and who are confounded by the appearance of a world where evil and good are mixed together, or seem to struggle with one another, sometimes the one prevailing, and sometimes the other; and accordingly, in all countries, in the most barbarous nations, as well as among the most refined, we find plain traces of reflecting men having been driven to this solution of the difficulty.

It seems upon a superficial view to be very easily deducible from the phenomena; and as the idea of infinite power, with which it is manifestly inconsistent, does by no means so naturally present itself to the mind, as long as only a very great degree of power, a power which in comparison of all human force may be termed infinite, is the attribute with which the Deity is believed to be endued. Manichean hypothesis is by no means so easily refuted. That the power of the Deity was supposed to have limits even in the systems of the most enlightened heathens is unquestionable. They, generally speaking, believed in the eternity of matter, and conceived some of its qualities to be so essentially necessary to its existence that no divine agency could alter them.

They ascribed to the Deity a plastic power, a power not of creating or annihilating, but only of moulding, disposing and moving matter. So over mind they generally give him the like power, considering it as a kind of emanation from his own greater mind or essence, and destined to be re-united with him hereafter. Nay, over all the G.o.ds, and of superior potency to any, they conceived fate to preside; an overruling and paramount necessity, of which they formed some dark conceptions, and to which the chief of all the G.o.ds was supposed to submit. It is, indeed, extremely difficult to state precisely what the philosophic theory of theology was in Greece and Rome, because the wide difference between the esoteric and exoteric doctrines, between the belief of the learned few and the popular superst.i.tion, makes it very difficult to avoid confounding the two, and lending to the former some of the grosser errors with which the latter abounded. Nevertheless, we may rely upon what has been just stated, as conveying, generally speaking, the opinion of philosophers, although some sects certainly had a still more scanty measure of belief.

But we shall presently find that in the speculation of the much more enlightened moderns, Christians of course, errors of a like kind are to be traced. They constantly argue the great question of evil upon a latent a.s.sumption, that the power of the Deity is restricted by some powers or qualities inherent in matter; notions a.n.a.logous to that of faith are occasionally perceptible; not stated or expanded indeed into propositions, but influencing the course of the reasoning; while the belief of infinite attributes is never kept steadily in view, except when it is called in as requisite to refute the Manichean doctrines.

Some observers of the controversy have indeed not scrupled to affirm that those of whom we speak are really Manicheans without knowing it; and build their systems upon a.s.sumptions secretly borrowed from the disciples of Zoroaster, without ever stating those a.s.sumptions openly in the form of postulates or definition.

The refutation of the Manichean hypothesis is extremely easy if we be permitted to a.s.sume that both the principles which it supposes are either of infinite power or of equal power. If they are of infinite power, the supposition of their co-existence involves a contradiction in terms; for the one being in opposition to the other, the power of each must be something taken from that of the other; consequently neither can be of infinite power. If, again, we only suppose both to be of equal power, and always acting against each other, there could be nothing whatever done, neither good or evil; the universe would be at a standstill; or rather no act of creation could ever have been performed, and no existence could be conceived beyond that of the two antagonistic principles.

Archbishop Tillotson's argument, properly speaking, amounts to this last proposition, and is applicable to equal and opposite principles, although he applies it to two beings, both infinitely powerful and counteracting one another. When he says they would tie up each other's bands, he might apply this argument to such antagonistic principles if only equal, although not infinitely powerful. The hypothesis of their being both infinitely powerful needs no such refutation; it is a contradiction in terms. But it must be recollected that the advocates of the Manichean doctrine endeavor to guard themselves against the attack by contending, that the conflict between the two principles ends in a kind of compromise, so that neither has it all his own way; there is a mixture of evil admitted by the good principle, because else the whole would beat a standstill; while there is much good admitted by the evil principle, else nothing, either good or evil, would be done. Another answer is therefore required to this theory than what Tillotson and his followers have given.

_First_, we must observe that this reasoning of the Manicheans proceeds upon the a.n.a.logy of what we see in mortal contentions; where neither party having the power to defeat the other, each is content to yield a little to his adversary, and so, by mutual concession, both are successful to some extent, and both to some extent disappointed. But in a speculation concerning the nature of the Deity, there seems no place for such notions.

_Secondly_, the equality of power is not an arbitrary a.s.sumption; it seems to follow from the existence of the two opposing principles. For if they are independent of one another as to existence, which they must needs be, else one would immediately destroy the other, so must they also, in each particular instance, be independent of each other, and also equal each to the other, else one would have the mastery, and the influence of the other could not be perceived. To say that in some things the good principle prevails and in others the evil, is really saying nothing more than that good exists here and evil there. It does not further the argument one step, nor give anything like an explanation. For it must always be borne in mind that the whole question respecting the Origin of Evil proceeds upon the a.s.sumption of a wise, benevolent and powerful Being having created the world. The difficulty, and the only difficulty, is, how to reconcile existing evil with such a Being's attributes; and if the Manichean only explains this by saying the good Being did what is good, and another and evil Being did what is bad in the universe, he really tells us nothing more than the fact; he does not apply his explanation to the difficulty; and he supposes the existence of a second Deity gratuitously and to no kind of purpose.