Supernatural Religion Volume I Part 11

Finally all excess and all deficiency must disappear, that is, all unfitness must disappear; that is, all imperfection must disappear.

Thus the ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain? as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die.

For why do we infer that all men will die P Simply because, in an immense number of past experiences, death has uniformly occurred. Similarly then as the experiences of all people in all times?experiences that are embodied in maxims, proverbs, and moral precepts, and that are ill.u.s.trated in biographies and histories, go to prove that organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable,

then is the one above deduced from it--that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-- unquestionable also.

Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.

Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the const.i.tution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness. As surely as the tree becomes bulky when it stands alone, and slender if one of a group; as surely as the same creature a.s.sumes the different forms of cart-horse and racehorse, according as its habits demand strength or speed; as surely as a blacksmith's arm grows large, and the skin of a labourer's hand thick; as surely as the eye tends to become long-sighted in the sailor, and shortsighted in the student; as surely as the blind attain a more delicate sense of touch; as surely as a clerk acquires rapidity in writing and calculation; as surely as the musician learns to detect an error of a semitone amidst what seems to others a very babel of sounds; as surely as a pa.s.sion grows by indulgence and diminishes when restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as surely as there is any efficacy in educational culture, or any meaning in such terms as habit, custom, practice; so surely must the human faculties be moulded into complete fitness for the social state; so surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect." Social Statics, stereotyped ed. 1868, p.

78 f.

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stern decree of nature. The invariable action of law of itself eliminates the unfit Progress is necessary to existence; extinction is the doom of retrogression. The highest effect contemplated by the supposed Revelation is to bring man into perfect harmony with law, and this is ensured by law itself acting upon intelligence. Only in obedience to law is there life and safety. Knowledge of law is imperatively demanded by nature. Ignorance of it is a capital offence.

If we ignore the law of gravitation we are dashed to pieces at the foot of a precipice, or are crushed by a falling rock; if we neglect sanatory law, we are destroyed by a pestilence; if we disregard chemical laws, we are poisoned by a vapour. There is not, in reality, a gradation of breach of law that is not followed by an equivalent gradation of punishment. Civilization is nothing but the knowledge and observance of natural laws. The savage must learn them or be extinguished; the cultivated must observe them or die. The balance of moral and physical development cannot be deranged with impunity. In the spiritual as well as the physical sense only the fittest eventually can survive in the struggle for existence. There is, in fact, an absolute upward impulse to the whole human race supplied by the invariable operation of the laws of nature acting upon the common instinct of self-preservation. As, on the one hand, the highest human conception of infinite wisdom and power is derived from the universality and invariability of law, so that universality and invariability, on the other hand, exclude the idea of interruption or occasional suspension of law for any purpose whatever, and more especially for the correction of supposed original errors of design which cannot have existed, or for the attainment of objects already provided for in the order of nature.

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Upon the first groundless a.s.sumption of a Divine design of such a revelation follows the hypothetical inference that, for the purpose of making the communication from the unseen world, a miracle or visible suspension of the order or nature is no irregularity, but part of the system of the universe. This, however, is a mere a.s.sertion, and no argument An avowed a.s.sumption which is contrary to reason is followed by another which is contrary to experience. It is simply absurd to speak of a visible suspension of the order of nature being part of the system of the universe. Such a statement has no meaning whatever within the range of human conception. Moreover, it must be remembered that miracles--or "visible suspensions of the order of nature"--are ascribed indifferently to Divine and to Satanic agency. If miracles are not an anomaly or irregularity on the supposition of the Divine design of a revelation, upon what supposition do Satanic miracles cease to be irregularities? Is the order of nature, which it is a.s.serted is under the personal control of G.o.d, at the same time at the mercy of the Devil?

Archbishop Trench has, as usual, a singular way of overcoming the difficulty. He says:--"So long as we abide in the region of nature, miraculous and improbable, miraculous and incredible may be admitted as convertible terms. But once lift up the whole discussion into a higher region, once acknowledge something higher than nature, a kingdom of G.o.d, and men the intended denizens of it, and the whole argument loses its strength and the force of its conclusions.... He who already counts it likely that G.o.d will interfere for the higher welfare of men, who believes that there is a

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n.o.bler world-order than that in which we live and move, and that it would be the blessing of blessings for that n.o.bler to intrude into and to make itself felt in the region of this lower, who has found that here in this world we are bound by heavy laws of nature, of sin, of death, which no powers that we now possess can break, yet which must be broken if we are truly to live,--he will not find it hard to believe the great miracle, the coming of the Son of G.o.d in the flesh, &c... And as he believes that greatest miracle, so will he believe all other miracles, &c."(1) In other words, if we already believe the premises we shall not find it difficult to adopt the conclusions--if we already believe the greatest miracle we shall not hesitate to believe the less--if we already believe the dogmas we shall not find it hard to believe the evidence by which they are supposed to be authenticated. As we necessarily do abide in the

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region of nature, in which Dr. Trench admits that miraculous and incredible are convertible terms, it would seem rather difficult to lift the discussion into the higher region here described without having already abandoned it altogether.

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CHAPTER III. REASON IN RELATION TO THE ORDER OF NATURE

The argument of those who a.s.sert the possibility and reality of miracles generally takes the shape of an attack, more or less direct, upon our knowledge of the order of nature. To establish an exception they contest the rule. Dr. Mozley, however, is not content with the ordinary objections advanced by apologists but, boldly entering into the mazes of a delicate philosophical problem, he adopts sceptical arguments and seeks to turn the flank of the enemy upon his own ground. He conducts his attack with unusual force and ability. "Whatever difficulty there is in believing in miracles in general," he says, "arises from the circ.u.mstance that they are in contradiction to or unlike the order of nature. To estimate the force of this difficulty, then, we must first understand what kind of belief it is which we have in the order of nature; for the weight of the objection to the miraculous must depend on the nature of the belief to which the miraculous is opposed."(1) Dr. Mozley defines the meaning of the phrase, "order of nature" as the _connection_ of that part of the order of nature of which we are ignorant with that part of it which we know, the former being expected to be such and such, _because_ the latter is. But how do we justify this expectation of

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_likeness?_ We cannot do so, and all our arguments are mere statements of the belief itself, he affirms, and not reasons to account for it.

It may be said, e.g., that when a fact of nature has gone on repeating itself a certain time, such repet.i.tion shows that there is a permanent cause at work, and that a permanent cause produces permanently recurring effects. But what is there to show the existence of a permanent cause?

Nothing. The effects which have taken place show a cause at work to the extent of these effects, but not further. That this cause is of a more permanent nature we have no evidence. Why then do we expect the further continuance of these effects.(2) We can only say: because we believe the future will be like the past. After a physical phenomenon has even occurred every day for years we have nothing but the past repet.i.tion to justify our certain expectation of its future repet.i.tion.(3) Do we think it giving a reason for our confidence in the future to say that, though no man has had experience of what is future, every man has had experience of what was future? It is true that what is future becomes at every step of our advance what was future, but that which is now still future is not the least altered by that circ.u.mstance; it is as invisible, as unknown, and as unexplored as if it were the very beginning and the very starting-point of nature. At this starting-point of nature what would a man know of its future course? Nothing. At this moment he knows no more.(4) What ground of reason, then, can we a.s.sign for our expectation that any part of the course of nature will the next moment be like what it has been up to this moment, i.e., for our belief

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in the uniformity of nature? None. It is without a reason. It rests upon no rational ground, and can be traced to no rational principle.(1) The belief in the order of nature being thus an "unintelligent impulse" of which we cannot give any rational account, Dr. Mozley concludes, the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained that miracles, as opposed to the order of nature, were opposed to reason. A miracle in being opposed to our experience is not only not opposed to necessary reasoning, but to any reasoning.(2) We need not further follow the Bampton Lecturer, as with clearness and ability he applies this reasoning to the argument of "Experience," until he pauses triumphantly to exclaim: "Thus step by step has philosophy loosened the connection of the order of nature with the ground of reason, befriending, in exact proportion as it has done this, the principle of miracles."(3)

We need not here enter upon any abstract argument regarding the permanence or otherwise of cause: it will be sufficient to deal with these objections in a simpler and more direct way. Dr. Mozley, of course, acknowledges that the principle of the argument from experience is that "which makes human life practicable; which utilizes all our knowledge; which makes the past anything more than an irrelevant picture to us; for of what use is the experience of the past to us unless we believe the future will be like it?'(4) Our knowledge in all things is relative, and there are sharp and narrow limits to human thought. It is therefore evident that, in the absence of absolute knowledge, our belief must be accorded to that of which we have

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more full cognizance rather than to that which is contradicted by all that we do know. It may be "irrational" to feel entire confidence that the sun will "rise" tomorrow, or that the moon will continue to wax and wane as in the past, but we shall without doubt retain this belief, and reject any a.s.sertion, however positive, that the earth will stand still to-morrow, or that it did so some thousands of years ago. Evidence must take its relative place in the finite scale of knowledge and thought, and if we do not absolutely know anything whatever, so long as one thing is more fully established than another, we must hold to that which rests upon the more certain basis. Our belief in the invariability of the order of nature, therefore, being based upon more certain grounds than any other human opinion, we must of necessity refuse credence to a statement supported by infinitely less complete testimony, and contradicted by universal experience, that phenomena subversive of that order occurred many years ago, or we must cease to believe anything at all. If belief based upon unvarying experience be irrational, how much more irrational must belief be which is opposed to that experience.

According to Dr. Mozley, it is quite irrational to believe that a stone dropped from the hand, for instance, will fall to the ground. It is true that all the stones we ourselves have ever dropped, or seen dropped, have so fallen, and equally true that all stones so dropped as far back as historic records, and those still more authentic and ancient records of earth's crust itself go, have done the same, but that does not justify our belief, upon any grounds of reason, that the next stone we drop will do so. If we be told, however, that upon one occasion a stone so dropped, instead of falling to the ground, rose

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up into the air and continued there, we have only two courses open to us: either to disbelieve the fact, and attribute the statement to error of observation, or to reduce the past to a mere irrelevant picture, and the mind to a blank page equally devoid of all belief and of all intelligent reasoning.

Dr. Mozley's argument, however, is fatal to his own cause. It is admitted that miracles, "or visible suspensions of the order of nature,"(1) cannot have any evidential force unless they be supernatural, and out of the natural sequence of ordinary phenomena.

Now, unless there be an actual order of nature, how can there be any exception to it? If our belief in it be not based upon any ground of reason,--as Dr. Mozley maintains, in order to a.s.sert that miracles or visible suspensions of that order are not contrary to reason,--how can it be a.s.serted that miracles are supernatural? If we have no rational ground for believing that the future will be like the past, what rational ground can we have for thinking that anything which happens is exceptional, and out of the common course of nature? Because it has not happened before? That is no reason whatever; because the fact that a thing has happened ten millions of times is no rational justification of our expectation that it will happen again. If the reverse of that which had happened previously took place on the ten million and first time we should have no rational ground for surprise, and no reason for affirming that it did not occur in the most natural manner. Because we cannot explain its cause? We cannot explain the cause of anything. Our belief that there is any permanent cause is a mere unintelligent impulse. We can only say that there is a cause

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sufficient to produce an isolated effect, but we do not know the nature of that cause, and it is a mere irrational instinct to suppose that any cause produces continuous effects, or is more than momentary. A miracle, consequently, becomes a mere isolated effect from an unknown cause, in the midst of other merely isolated phenomena from unknown causes, and it is as irrational to wonder

at the occurrence of what is new, as to expect the recurrence of what is old. In fact, an order of nature is at once necessary, and fatal, to miracles. If there be no order of nature, miracles cannot be considered supernatural occurrences, and have no evidential value; if there be an order of nature, the evidence for its immutability must consequently exceed the evidence for these isolated deviations from it. If we are unable rationally to form expectations of the future from unvarying experience in the past, it is still more irrational to call that supernatural which is merely different from our past experience. Take, for instance, the case of supposed exemption from the action of the law of gravitation, which Archbishop Trench calls "a lost prerogative of our race:"(1) we cannot rationally affirm that next week we may not be able to walk on the sea, or ascend bodily into the air. To deny this because we have not hitherto been able to do so is unreasonable; for, as Dr.

Mozley maintains, it is a mere irrational impulse which expects that which has. .h.i.therto happened, when we have made such attempts, to happen again next week. If we cannot rationally deny the possibility, however, that we may be able at some future time to walk on the sea or ascend into the air, the statement that these phenomena have already occurred loses all its force, and such occurrences

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cease to be in any way supernatural. If, on the other hand, it would be irrational to affirm that we may next week become exempt from the operation of the law of gravitation, it can only be so by the admission that unvarying experience forbids the entertainment of such a hypothesis, and in that case it equally forbids belief in the statement that such acts ever actually took place. If we deny the future possibility on any ground of reason, we admit that we have grounds of reason for expecting the future to be like the past, and therefore contradict Dr. Mozley's conclusion; and if we cannot deny it upon any ground of reason, we extinguish the claim of such occurrences in the past to any supernatural character. Any argument which could destroy faith in the order of nature would be equally destructive to miracles.

If we have no right to believe in a rule, there can be no right to speak of exceptions. The result in any case is this, that whether the principle of the order of nature be established or refuted, the supernatural pretensions of miracles are disallowed.

More than this, however, must inevitably be deduced from Dr. Mozley's reasoning. In denying, as he does, the doctrine of a permanent cause, Dr. Mozley must equally renounce, as without foundation in reason, the a.s.sumption of a permanent agent working miracles. Not only do the supposed miracles, in the complete isolation of all effects, cease to be supernatural or even exceptional, but as it cannot be affirmed that there is any cause of a nature more permanent than its existing or known effects, it is obvious that miracles cannot be traced to an eternal Being of permanent omnipotence. If Dr. Mozley, therefore, be understood to adopt this reasoning as his own, he has involved himself, in the

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necessary abandonment both of miracles as supernatural occurrences, and of a permanent and unlimited cause of miracles. If, on the other hand, he has merely s.n.a.t.c.hed the sword of an adversary to turn it against him, he has unfortunately impaled himself upon the borrowed weapon.

2.

Throughout the whole of his argument against the rationality of belief in the order of nature, the rigorous precision which Dr. Mozley unrelentingly demands from his antagonists is remarkable. They are not permitted to deviate by a hair's breadth from the line of strict logic, and the most absolute exactness of demonstration is required. Anything like an a.s.sumption or argument from a.n.a.logy is excluded; induction is allowed to add no reason to bare and isolated facts; and the belief that the sun will rise to-morrow morning is, with pitiless severity, written down as mere unintelligent impulse. Belief in the return of day, based upon the unvarying experience of all past time, is declared to be without any ground of reason. We find anything but fault with strictness of argument; but it is fair that equal precision should be observed by those who a.s.sert miracles, and that a.s.sumption and inaccuracy should be excluded. Hitherto, as we have frequently pointed out, we have met with very little or nothing but a.s.sumption in support of miracles; but, encouraged by the inflexible spirit of Dr. Mozley's attack upon the argument from experience, we may look for similar precision from himself.

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Proceeding, however, from his argument against the rationality of belief in the order of nature to his more direct argument for miracles, we are astonished to find a total abandonment of the rigorous exactness imposed upon his antagonists, and a complete relapse into a.s.sumptions. Dr.

Mozley does not conceal the fact. "The peculiarity of the argument of miracles," he frankly admits, "is, that it begins and ends with an a.s.sumption; I mean relatively to that argument."(1) Such an argument is no argument at all; it is a mere _pet.i.tio principii_, incapable of proving anything. The nature of the a.s.sumptions obviously does not in the slightest degree affect this conclusion. It is true that the statement of the particular a.s.sumptions may const.i.tute an appeal to belief otherwise derived, and evolve feelings which may render the calm exercise of judgment more difficult, but the fact remains absolute, that an argument which "begins and ends with an a.s.sumption" is totally impotent. It remains an a.s.sumption, and is not an argument at all.

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Notwithstanding this unfortunate and disqualifying "peculiarity" we may examine the argument. It is as follows: "We a.s.sume the existence of a Personal Deity prior to the proof of miracles in the religious sense; but with this a.s.sumption the question of miracles is at an end; because such a Being has necessarily the power to suspend those laws of nature which He has Himself enacted."(1) The "question of miracles," which Dr.

Mozley here a.s.serts to be at an end on the a.s.sumption of a "Personal Deity," is of course merely that of the _possibility_ of miracles; but it is obvious that, even with the precise definition of Deity which is a.s.sumed, instead of the real "question" being at an end, it only commences. The power to suspend the laws of nature being a.s.sumed, the will to suspend them has to be demonstrated, and the actual occurrence of any such suspension, which, it has already been shown, is contrary to reason. The subject is, moreover, complicated by the occurrence of Satanic as well as Divine suspensions of the order of nature, and by the necessity of a.s.suming a Personal Devil as well as a Personal Deity, and his power to usurp that control over the laws of nature, which is a.s.sumed as the prerogative of the Deity, and to suspend them in direct opposition to G.o.d. The express ascription of miracles to the special intervention of a Personal G.o.d is also, as we have seen, excluded by the Scriptural admission that there are other supernatural beings capable of performing them. Even Dr. Newman has recognized this, and, in a pa.s.sage already quoted, he says: "For the cogency of the argument from Miracles depends on the a.s.sumption, that interruptions in the course of nature must ultimately proceed from G.o.d; which is not true, if they may be

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effected by other beings without His sanction."(1) The first a.s.sumption, in fact, leads to nothing but a.s.sumptions connected with the unseen, unknown and supernatural, which are beyond the limits of reason.