{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31941/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31941","id":"gutenberg_31941","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31941","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Rationalism"],"text":"Produced by Brian Foley, Martin Pettit and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPHILOSOPHIES ANCIENT AND MODERN\n\nRATIONALISM\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nRELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN\n\n\n+Animism.+ By EDWARD CLODD, author of _The Story of Creation_.\n\n+Pantheism.+ By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of _The Religion of the\nUniverse_.\n\n+The Religions of Ancient China.+ By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor\nof Chinese in the University of Cambridge.\n\n+The Religion of Ancient Greece.+ By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham\nCollege, Cambridge, author of _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_.\n\n+Islam.+ By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of\nHis Majesty's Privy Council, author of _The Spirit of Islam and Ethics\nof Islam_.\n\n+Magic and Fetishism.+ By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on\nEthnology at Cambridge University.\n\n+The Religion of Ancient Egypt.+ By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE,\nF.R.S.\n\n+The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria.+ By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late\nof the British Museum.\n\n+Early Buddhism.+ By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The\nRoyal Asiatic Society.\n\n+Hinduism.+ By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed\nBooks and MSS., British Museum.\n\n+Scandinavian Religion.+ By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the\n_Oxford English Dictionary_.\n\n+Celtic Religion.+ By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University\nCollege, Aberystwyth.\n\n+The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland.+ By CHARLES SQUIRE,\nauthor of _The Mythology of the British Islands_.\n\n+Judaism.+ By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in\nCambridge University, author of _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_.\n\n+The Religion of Ancient Rome.+ By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.\n\n+Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan.+ By W. G. ASTON, C.M.G.\n\n+The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru.+ By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.\n\n+Early Christianity.+ By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.\n\n+The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion.+ By Professor J. H.\nLEUBA.\n\n+The Religion of Ancient Palestine.+ By STANLEY A. COOK.\n\n+Manicheeism.+ By F. C. CONYBEARE. (_Shortly._)\n\n\nPHILOSOPHIES\n\n\n+Early Greek Philosophy.+ By A. W. BENN, author of _The Philosophy of\nGreece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century_.\n\n+Stoicism.+ By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of _Deductive Logic_,\neditor of the _Apology of Plato_, etc.\n\n+Plato.+ By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of\n_The Problem of Conduct_.\n\n+Scholasticism.+ By Father RICKABY, S.J.\n\n+Hobbes.+ By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.\n\n+Locke.+ By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.\n\n+Comte and Mill.+ By T. WHITTAKER, author of _The Neoplatonists,\nApollonius of Tyana and other Essays_.\n\n+Herbert Spencer.+ By W. H. HUDSON, author of _An Introduction to\nSpencer's Philosophy_.\n\n+Schopenhauer.+ By T. WHITTAKER.\n\n+Berkeley.+ By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.\n\n+Swedenborg.+ By Dr. SEWALL.\n\n+Nietzsche: His Life and Works.+ By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.\n\n+Bergson.+ By JOSEPH SOLOMON.\n\n+Rationalism.+ By J. M. ROBERTSON.\n\n+Lucretius and the Atomists.+ By EDWARD CLODD.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nRATIONALISM\n\nBy J. M. ROBERTSON\n\nAUTHOR OF 'A SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT' 'LETTERS ON REASONING,' ETC.\n\n\nLONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD\n1912\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                          PAGE\nSec. 1. THE TERM                                1\n\nSec. 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION                  7\n\nSec. 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE                12\n\nSec. 4. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE            20\n\nSec. 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE      27\n\nSec. 6. THE MEANING OF REASON                  37\n\nSec. 7. THE TEST OF TRUTH                      47\n\nSec. 8. ULTIMATE PROBLEMS                      62\n\nSec. 9. IDEALS                                 76\n\n\n\n\nRATIONALISM\n\n\n\n\nSec. 1. THE TERM\n\n\nThe names 'rationalist' and 'rationalism' have been used in so many\nsenses within the past three hundred years that they cannot be said to\nstand quite definitely for any type or school of philosophic thought.\nFor Bacon, a 'rationalist' or _rationalis_ was a physician with _a\npriori_ views of disease and bodily function; and the Aristotelian\nhumanists of the Helmstadt school were named _rationalistas_ about the\nsame period by their opponents. A little later some Continental scholars\napplied the name to the Socinians and deists; and later still it\ndesignated, in Britain, types of Christian thinkers who sought to give a\nrelatively reasoned form to articles of the current creed which had\ngenerally been propounded as mysteries to be taken on faith. The claim\nto apply 'reason' in such matters was by many orthodox persons regarded\nas in itself impious, while others derided the adoption of the title of\n'rationalist' or 'reasonist' by professing Christians as an unwarranted\npretence of superior reasonableness. Used in ethics, the label\n'rationalism' served in the earlier part of the eighteenth century to\nstigmatise, as lacking in evangelical faith, those Christians who sought\nto make their moral philosophy quadrate with that of 'natural religion.'\nLater in the century, though in England we find the status of 'rational'\nclaimed for orthodox belief in miracles and prophecies as the only valid\nevidence for Christianity,[1] rationalism became the recognised name for\nthe critical methods of the liberal German theologians who sought to\nreduce the supernatural episodes of the Scriptures to the status of\nnatural events misunderstood; and several professed histories of modern\n'rationalism' have accordingly dealt mainly or wholly with the\ndevelopments of Biblical criticism in Germany.\n\nNew connotations, however, began to accrue to the terms in virtue of the\nphilosophical procedure of Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, though his\n_Religion within the Bounds of Simple [blossen] Reason_ went far to\ncountenance the current usage; and when Hegel subsequently proceeded to\nidentify (at times) reason with the cosmic process, there were set up\nimplications which still give various technical significances to\n'rationalism' in some academic circles. In the brilliant work of\nProfessor William James on _Pragmatism_, for instance, the term is\nrepresented as connoting, in contrast to the thinking of 'tough-minded'\nempiricists, that of a type or school of 'tender-minded' people who are\ncollectively--\n\n\n     'Rationalistic (going by \"principles\")\n     Intellectualistic\n     Idealistic\n     Optimistic\n     Religious\n     Free-willist\n     Monistic\n     Dogmatical.'\n\n\nYet it is safe to say that in Britain, for a generation back, the name\nhas carried to the general mind only two or three of the connotations in\nProfessor James's list, and much more nearly coincides with his contrary\nlist characterising 'the tough-minded':--\n\n\n     'Empiricist (going by \"facts\")\n     Sensationalistic\n     Materialistic\n     Pessimistic\n     Irreligious\n     Fatalistic\n     Pluralistic\n     Skeptical'\n\n\n--though here again the item 'pluralistic' does not chime with the\ncommon conception, and 'pessimistic' is hardly less open to challenge.\n'Intellectualistic' appears to be aimed at Hegelians, but would be\nunderstood by many as describing the tendency to set up 'reason' against\n'authority'; and Professor James's 'rationalists,' who would appear to\ninclude thinkers like his colleague Professor Royce, would not be so\ndescribed in England by many university men, clergymen, or journalists.\nThe name 'rationalist,' in short, has come to mean for most people in\nthis country very much what 'freethinker' used to mean for those who did\nnot employ it as a mere term of abuse. It stands, that is to say, for\none who rejects the claims of 'revelation,' the idea of a personal God,\nthe belief in personal immortality, and in general the conceptions\nlogically accruing to the practices of prayer and worship.\n\nPerhaps the best name for such persons would be 'naturalist,' which was\nalready in use with some such force in the time of Bodin and Montaigne.\nKant, it may be remembered, distinguished between 'rationalists,' as\nthinkers who did not deny the possibility of a revelation, and\n'naturalists' who did. But though 'natural_ism_,' has latterly been\nrecognised by many as a highly convenient term for the view of things\nwhich rejects 'supernaturalism,' and will be so used in the present\ndiscussion, the correlative 'natural_ist_' has never, so to speak, been\nnaturalised in English. For one thing, it has been specialised in\nordinary language in the sense of 'student of nature,' or rather of what\nhas come to be specially known as 'natural history'--in particular, the\nlife of birds, insects, fishes, and animals. And, further, the term\n'naturalism,' like every other general label for a way of thinking, is\nliable to divagations and misunderstandings. Some thinkers (known to the\npresent writer only through the accounts given of them by others) appear\nto formulate as a philosophic principle the doctrine that the best way\nto regulate our lives is to find out how the broad processes of 'Nature'\nis tending, and to conform to it alike our ideals and our practice. The\nnotion is that if, say, Nature appears to be making for the\nextermination of backward races, we should try to help the process\nforward. It is doubtful whether more than a very small number of\ninstructed men have ever entertained such a principle. It is certainly\nnot the expression of the philosophy of those ancients who sought to\n'live according to Nature'; and it would certainly not have been\nassented to by such modern 'naturalists' as Spencer and Huxley and\nMill. But if the principle is current at all, it makes the name of\n'naturalist' as ambiguous philosophically as 'rationalist' can be.[2]\n\nAnd similar drawbacks attach to another set of terms which have much to\nrecommend them--'positive,' 'positivist,' and 'positivism.' They stand\ntheoretically for (1) the provable, (2) the attitude of the seeker for\nintelligible proof in all things, (3) the conviction that the rights of\nreason are ultimate and indefeasible. But here again, to say nothing of\nthe equivoque of 'positive,' we are met by a claim of pre-emption, the\nclaim of Comte to associate the 'ism' specifically with his system,\ntheoretic and practical. And for the majority of men with positivist\nproclivities, the gist of the 'practical application' of Comte is\nincompatible with the positive spirit. Positivism with a capital P is\nthereby made for them, as it was for Littre, something alien to\npositivism as the free scientific spirit would seek to shape it. And a\nwrangle over the ownership of the word would be a waste of time.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] See _A Full Answer to a late View of the Internal Evidence of the\nChristian Religion, in a Dialogue between a Rational Christian and his\nFriend_. London, 1777. The orthodox writer deals severely with some\nlines of Christian apologetics which have since had vogue.\n\n[2] The somewhat awkward term 'naturalistic,' which is sometimes useful,\nis hereinafter used in relation to the sense above given for\n'naturalism.'\n\n\n\n\nSec. 2. THE PRACTICAL POSITION\n\n\nThe usages being so, most of us who can answer to the term 'rationalist'\nmay reasonably let its general force be decided for us by the stream of\ntendency in ordinary speech; and, recognising the existence of other\napplications, one may usefully seek to give a philosophic account of\nwhat its adoption seems to involve. That is to say, the present treatise\ndoes not undertake to present, much less to justify, all the views which\nhave ever been described as 'rationalistic,' but merely to present\ncurrent rationalism in the broad sense indicated, as on the one hand an\noutcome of tendencies seen at work in the earlier movements so named,\nand on the other hand as apparently committing its representatives to a\ncertain body or class of conclusions. For there is this capital element\nin common for all the stirrings known by the name of rationalism, that\nthey stand for 'private judgment' as against mere tradition or mere\nauthority. Early 'rationalists' might indeed seek to put a\nquasi-rational form upon tradition, and to give reasons for recognising\nauthority. But in their day and degree they had their active part in the\nevolution of the critical faculty, inasmuch as they outwent the line of\nmere acquiescence; and views which to-day form part of uncritically\naccepted creeds were once products of innovating (however fallacious)\nreasoning. There is no _saltum mortale_ in the evolution of thought. The\nvery opponents of the rationalist often claim to be more rational than\nhe, and must at least use his methods up to a certain point. This is\ndone even by the quasi-skeptical school, of whom some claim to\nsubordinate reason to some species of insight which they either omit to\ndiscriminate intelligibly from the process of judgment, or do not admit\nto need its sanction.\n\n'Rationalism,' then, is to be understood relatively. To be significant\nto-day, accordingly, it should stand first and last for the habit and\ntendency to challenge the doctrines which claim 'religious' or\nsacrosanct authority--to seek by reflection a defensible theory of\nthings rather than accept enrolment under traditional creeds which\ndemand allegiance on supernaturalist grounds.\n\nOf such thinkers the number is daily increasing. There are now,\nprobably, tens of thousands of more or less instructed men and women in\nthis country who would call themselves rationalists in the broad sense\nabove specified as now generally current. They are all, probably,\nDarwinians or evolutionists, mostly 'monists' in Spencer's way,\n'determinists' in the philosophic sense of that term if they have worked\nat the 'free-will' problem at all, and non-believers in personal\nimmortality. Very few, at least, bracket the term 'rationalist' with\n'spiritualist' in describing themselves: the two tendencies nearly\nalways divide sharply, though it cannot be said that in strict logic\nthey are mutually exclusive. Of most, the philosophic attitude\napproximates broadly to that of Spencer, though many recognise and avow\nthe inexpertness of Spencer's metaphysic. Only a few, probably, if any,\ncould properly be termed 'skeptics' in the strict philosophic sense of\ndoubters of all inferences. That is a mental attitude more often\nprofessed by defenders of 'revelation,' as Pascal and Huet, who seek to\nmake the judgment despair of itself in preparation for an act of assent\nwhich is already discredited by such despair. Yet it belongs to the\nrationalistic attitude to be ready, in consistency, to analyse all one's\nown convictions and listen candidly to all negations of them. A belief\nin the possibility of rational certitude is implicit in every process of\nsincere criticism; but the discrimination or gradation of certitudes is\nthe task of rational philosophy.\n\nAs we shall see, quasi-rational certitude as regards the process of\nevolution is challenged from two points of view by professed believers\nin the reality of that process. One school argues that scientific\nconclusions are all uncertain because the ultimate assumptions of\nscience are unverifiable, and that, accordingly, religious assumptions,\nbeing neither more nor less rational than others, may 'reasonably'\nstand. Others argue that the process of judgment or reasoning which is\nheld to establish scientific truth is not adequate to any theory of\ninterpretation; and that, accordingly, some species of divination--which\nin the terms of the case eludes judgment--is to be relied on. Such\nthinkers ostensibly profess to 'reason' to the effect that reasoning is\ninvalid. Against them, those who claim to hold by reason as the totality\nof judgment may fitly call themselves by the name 'rationalist.'\n\nGiven such a general attitude, then, to what philosophic form is it\njustifiably to be reduced? Those who have longest meditated the question\nwill perhaps be the least quick to give a precise and confident answer.\nIf training in the scrupulous use of reason sets up any mental habit in\nface of large problems, it is the habit of tentative approach; and the\nrationalist of to-day should be a much less readily self-satisfied\nthinker than the former claimants to the name. Professor James, indeed,\nis able to reconcile an ostensible certainty of rightness of method and\nresult with much experience in investigation. 'A pragmatist,' he tells\nus, 'turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate\nhabits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction\nand insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from fixed principles, closed\nsystems, and pretended absolutes and origins.' One is delighted to hear\nit; but it is perhaps the course of prudence for most of us to doubt our\npower of getting entirely clear of inveterate habits.[3] Scrutiny of\nphilosophic literature fails to reveal any one who entirely succeeded in\nit, even slowly. A constant concern for revision, then, would seem to be\nforced upon the professed rationalist, who knows how often the appeal to\nreason has yielded mere modifications of error, one unjustifiable\ncredence ousting another. 'Knows,' one says, because the error is\nprovable to the satisfaction of the judgment which seeks certainty.\nSuch negative knowledge is the promise of positive.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[3] 'Pragmatism' soon becomes 'she' in Professor James's hands. Mr.\nSchiller seems to prefer 'it'; but he too makes much play with\npragmatism as an entity. Whatever be the amount of 'abstraction'\ninvolved, the verbal method savours of very old-established\nmalpractices.\n\n\n\n\nSec. 3. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE\n\n\nIt is fitting, then, at the very outset to make a critical scrutiny of\nthe implications of our term. Rationalism, broadly, implies the habitual\nresort to reason, to reflection, to judgment. The rationalist, in\neffect, says, 'That which I find to be incredible I must disbelieve,\nwhatever prestige may attach to its assertion; that which I find to be\ndoubtful or inconceivable I will so describe. Finding the practice of\nprayer to be incompatible not only with any sincere belief in natural\nlaw, but with the professed religious beliefs of the more educated of\nthose who resort to it, I will not pray. Seeing all religions to be but\nhalting manipulations of the guesses and intuitions of savages, to be\nstill as uncritically credulous in their affirmations as they are blind\nin their denials, and to be thus mere loose modifications of older\nbeliefs felt to be astray, I will go behind them all for my own theory\nof things, getting all the help I can alike from those who have reasoned\nmost loyally on the deeper problems involved, and from those who have\nstriven most circumspectly to understand the process of causation in\nthe universe.'\n\nSo far, the procedure is one of rejecting demonstrably fallacious\nbeliefs in regard to the general order of things, substantially on the\nlines on which tested and testable conclusions have been substituted for\nold delusions in what we term 'the sciences.' At every step the\nrationalist is assailed, just as were and are the reformers of the\nsciences; first by angry epithets, then by bad arguments as to\n'evidence,' then by cooler attempts to demonstrate that his method will\nlead to moral harm, whether or not to present or future punishment at\nthe hands of an angry God. In particular he is assured that on his\nprinciples there can be no restraint upon men's evil proclivities; and\nthat even the most thoughtful man runs endless dangers of wrong-doing\nwhen he substitutes his private judgment for the 'categorical\nimperative' embodied either in religious codes or in the current body of\nmorality.[4] To such representations the critical answer is that\nundoubtedly the application of reason to moral issues incurs the risks\nof fallacy which beset all reasoning in science so-called; but that, on\nthe other hand, every one of those risks attaches at least equally to\nall acceptance of 'authoritative' teaching. Galileo could not well err\nworse than ancient Semites or Christian priests in matters scientific;\nand Clifford could not conceivably div agate more dangerously in morals\nthan did the plotters and agents of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.\nEven if we put out of the account the overwhelming record of undenied\nwickedness wrought in the name of God and faith, there never has been,\nand there is no prospect of our ever seeing, unanimity of moral opinion\namong even the most disciplined types of religious believers in\n'authority.' Even in the Catholic Church it would be difficult to find\nany two men of judicial habit of mind who agree in all points as to what\nis 'right.'\n\nNor is the rationalist's position a whit more open to utilitarian\ncriticism (for his religious opponents, it will be observed, are\nnarrowly utilitarian even in professing to combat _his_ utilitarianism)\nwhen he is challenged upon his acceptance of 'the voice of conscience,'\notherwise the 'categorical imperative.' The Kantian argument on that\nhead is a fallacy of shifting terms. Mental hesitation as to obeying the\nsense of 'ought' is the proof of the vacillation of the perception of\n'oughtness.' When I feel, first, that I 'ought' to forgive a peculator,\nand then that I 'ought' to give him up to 'justice'; or, alternatively,\nthat I ought to rise earlier, and, again, that I may as well enjoy more\nsleep, I have reduced the 'categorical imperative' to the last term in a\ncalculation. And exactly the same thing is done by the believer who is\nperplexed as to the 'voice of God.' Religious history and biography are\nfull of avowals, on the one hand, of the murderous clash of convictions\nalike resting on 'revelation' of all kinds, and, on the other hand, of\nthe agonies of zealots 'wrestling in prayer' to know what is really the\ndivine will.[5] Cromwell's life illustrates both orders of dilemma, with\na sufficiency of resultant moral evil to arrest propaganda on the side\nof faith. And the philosopher of the 'categorical imperative' miscarries\nas instructively as does the soldier of divine will. Kant, on the one\nhand, vetoes even the telling of a lie to a would-be murderer to put him\nastray, and, on the other hand, commends to 'enlightened' clergymen the\nsystematic preaching of their religion in a double sense, because\n_populus vult decipi_. The 'categorical imperative,' as propounded by\nhim, is a form of self-deception.\n\nWhen, again, the psychic facts are critically faced and the 'categorical\nimperative' is rationally recognised as either the sum of the persisting\nmoral judgments or the mere verbalism that we ought to do what we feel\nwe ought to do, the rationalist is still at no disadvantage, utilitarian\nor other. It is not there that his tether tightens. Religious morality,\nas finally ratified by the more thoughtful among religious men, is but\nthe endorsement of 'natural' morality. There is not one social\ncommandment, as distinguished from religious or ritualist dogma, that\ndid not emerge as a prescription of the natural moral sense, primitive\nor otherwise--a supererogatory proof that the religious prescriptions\nare from the same source. All surviving religious ethic is to-day\nactually accredited as such, precisely because--and only in so far\nas--it conforms to natural judgment. Without resort to that tribunal,\nthe religionist could not discriminate between the sanction of the sixth\ncommandment and the law of the levirate, which he has cancelled.\n\nThe religious sanction, therefore, is logically null, in terms of the\nreligious man's own mental processes.[6] There is left him, to discredit\nthe rationalist, only the threat that the God whom he terms infinitely\ngood will or may punish the unbeliever for not believing on the strength\nof a Bible packed with incredible narrative and indefensible doctrine.\nThe anti-rationalist position is thus reduced to 'Pascal's wager'--at\nonce the most childish and, from the standpoint of other and nobler\nreligious thought, the most irreligious argument ever advanced by a\ncompetent intelligence on the side of faith. Pascal's thesis is that if\nthe unbeliever is wrong, he runs a frightful risk of future torment;\nwhereas, if he should after all be right, he will be no worse off after\ndeath for having believed. So the 'belief' required of him is a simple\nmindless and faithless conformity to a conditional threat. To such moral\nperversity can religion persuade.\n\nTo Pascal's wager there have been many retorts. Mill declared that if a\nGod should doom him to hell for having been unable to believe in such a\nGod, 'to hell he would go'--glad, by implication, not to be in heaven.\nMansel's sole answer was a puerile attempt at a pious sneer. Clifford,\nin effect, denounced the Pascalian appeal for what it was, a base appeal\nto fear.[7] But it is unnecessary to resort to such logical\nsupererogation. There are two obvious and decisive rebuttals to Pascal's\ndoctrine on purely logical ground. Firstly, his thesis is available to\nthe Moslem or the polytheist no less than to the Christian; and when put\nfrom either of these sides it leaves the Christian running the very risk\nwith which he menaces the unbeliever. He may have chosen the wrong God.\nSecondly, the hypothetical Good God, if in any intelligible sense worthy\nof the name, would conceivably be as likely to send Pascal to hell for\ndishonouring him as to send the honest atheist there for refusing to\nmake-believe. The pietist has dishonoured himself to no purpose.\n\nThe _a posteriori_ argument for religious conformity has thus come to\nnothing; and the process of argument has revealed the\nreligio-utilitarian champion of morality as traitor to that cause. There\nis left him, indeed, the plea that religious fears and sanctions are\ngood for the ill-disposed believer, who ought, therefore, not to be\ndisillusioned. As regards the simple dogma of deity, the position has\nthe emphatic support of Voltaire. But Voltaire declined to use the\nfavourite menaces of faith, as do many religionists of to-day; and if\nthose menaces are to be rationally vindicated, there must first be\nraised the question whether they could not be improved upon for the\npurpose professed. Leaving that task to those who affect them, the\nrationalist may claim to be justified in acting on the maxim that\nhonesty is the best policy in the intellectual as in the commercial\nlife. There has been no such historical harvest of moral betterment from\nthe religion of fear as could induce him of all men to employ it as a\nmoral prophylactic.\n\nThus far he figures as the vindicator of simple veracity against those\nwho, in the name of morals, would make it of no account. He has still to\nmeet, indeed, the challenge: What of the ill-disposed among your own way\nof thinking? If an unbeliever should see his way to gain by falsehood\nor licit fraud, what should deter him? Much satisfaction appears to be\nderived by many well-meaning people from the propounding of this\ndilemma. They may or may not be gratified by the answer that if a\nrationalist should not be, by training and bias, spontaneously averse to\nlying and cheating, or generally unwilling to do otherwise than he would\nbe done by, or sensitive enough to the blame of his fellows to fear it,\nthere is indeed no more security for his veracity or honesty than for\nthat of a typical Jesuit or a pious company promoter. One can but add\nthat, seeing that in the terms of the case he began by unprofitably\navowing an unpopular opinion, he is presumably, on the average, rather\nless likely to lie for gain than those who confessedly find the sheer\nfear of consequences a highly important consideration in their own plan\nof life, and who have at the same time the promise from their own code\nof plenary pardon for all sins on the simple condition of ultimate\nrepentance.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[4] Even Professor F. H. Bradley, the ablest of living English\nphilosophers, is responsible for the proposition that 'to wish to be\nbetter than the world is to be already on the threshold of immorality'\n(_Ethical Studies_, 1876, p. 180). As the book has not been reprinted,\ndespite much demand, it may be inferred that the author no longer stands\nto all its positions.\n\n[5] Thus we are told of the heroic Gordon that he was 'perplexed\nperpetually, and perpetually in doubt as to the precise will of God with\nhim' (W. S. Blunt, _Gordon at Khartoum_, 1911, p. 88).\n\n[6] The logical analysis may be carried further, as by Mr. A. J.\nBalfour:--'To assume a special faculty which is to announce ultimate\nmoral laws can add nothing to their validity, nor will it do so the more\nif we suppose its authority supported by such sanctions as remorse or\nself-approval. Conscience regarded in this way is not ethically to be\ndistinguished from any external authority, as, for instance, the Deity,\nor the laws of the land' (_A Defence of Philosophic Doubt_, 1879, p.\n345).\n\n[7] The same might be said of Mrs. Browning's minatory picture of the\nmoment's passage\n\n\n     ''Twixt the dying atheist's negative,\n     And God's face waiting after all'--\n\n\nround the corner with a flail, belike. Religion cannot be more\ndishonoured than by the moral ideals of some of its champions.\n\n\n\n\nSec. 4. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGE\n\n\nBut we have now clearly imported into the rationalist philosophy a\nprinciple or factor which ostensibly rivals or primes reason. The\nrationalist avows a moral bias--an attitude towards his fellows, a moral\n'taste,' let us say--which partly determines his reasoned judgment. He\nhas a conception of goodness in virtue of which he finds 'revelation'\nfrequently repellent and the popular 'God' a chimera; even as the\nbeliever finds them satisfactory because they are in part conformable to\nhis moral and speculative bias, and he has been brought up to pretermit\njudgment beyond those limits. This bias appears to be partly congenital,\npartly acquired; though most men are agreed that many who reveal a given\nbias would have presented another had they been differently trained.\nCertain forms of congenital bias, that is to say, yield more or less\neasily to others, specially fostered or exercised. Whatever be the\nrespective force of the generative factors, the fact of bias remains;\nand there is no escape from the conclusion that it operates in regard to\n'intellectual' as well as to 'moral' judgments--to judgments, that is,\nof causal interpretation or non-moral discrimination as well as to\njudgments upon human action.\n\nThe rationalist, in fact, is merely a person who in certain directions\ncarries the processes of doubt, analysis, and judgment further than do\npersons of a different habit of mind. His neighbour, who believes in\n'God' or 'the saints' or Mrs. Eddy, may chance to carry those processes\nin other directions further than he,--may be more reflective and\nexperimental and judicious, for instance, in matters of diet,--may even\nbe an analytical thinker in matters of science to which the so-called\nrationalist has given no independent thought. There are well-known\ninstances of men of science who by analysis widen the bounds of physical\nknowledge while accepting, in ways which other men find grotesquely\nuncritical, loose propositions on psychic existence. When sounds are\nheard from furniture, the rationalist, with his naturalistic bias, looks\nfor explanations in terms of physics; while the spiritualist, even if he\nchance to be a professed physicist, looks for them in terms of\nspeculative psychics.\n\nUpon a strictly impartial and 'objective' consideration, the two kinds\nof bias are seen to be alike forms of craving, desires seeking\nsatisfaction. Both inquirers seek for 'causes.' But one has the habit of\nseeking causes in terms of sequences of known or intelligible processes,\ncapable of willed repetition; the other yearns to find proof of the\nexistence of non-material personalities in the cosmos and in his\npersonal neighbourhood, and, believing in such existence in advance,\neither provisionally or rootedly, hopes to bring others to his way of\nthinking by a demonstration that certain physical phenomena are not\nphysically producible. And it must be granted him that herein he is\ntheoretically at par with the man of science--physical or moral--who,\nhaving spontaneously framed a hypothesis, seeks to find that facts\nconform to it. Every man with a hypothesis, broadly speaking, wants to\nfind that facts are so-and-so.\n\nThe rationalist, then, has his bias like another. Though it takes in\npart a critical or negative form, it is fundamentally as positive as\nanother. He has come to crave for coherence and consistency in\nnarratives, statements, explanations, arguments, propositions, and\nsystems of thought; even as his 'contrary' or competitor has come to\ncrave for evidence that something 'supernatural' wields a purposive and\n'intelligent' control, mediate or immediate, over all things, using\namong others 'supernormal' means. This 'contrary' thinker may or may not\nbelieve in 'spirits' in the ordinary sense, may or may not believe in\nthe immortality of human minds; but if he is really to be an opponent of\nthe rationalist bias he is to be classed as having a bias to traditional\nor authoritative views of the cosmos, to religious as against\nnaturalistic explanations of history, to a conception of the human as of\nthe extra-human processes in terms of a controlling will and purpose. He\ntoo, it is true, must have some craving for coherence and\nconsistency--else he could not debate and reason at all; but the other\ncraving in him has primed that.\n\nIt is a fallacy, we may note in passing, to suppose that the 'agnostic'\nattitude, so-called, is something between the two main forms of bias\nhere posited. Agnosticism, logically carried out, can differentiate from\nother forms of rationalism only in local limitation of belief; and in\npractice it is not often found to do even that. The agnostic inevitably\nbegins in terms of the rationalist bias, in craving for coherence and\nconsistency of statement; and his most circumspect negations stand for\nprecaution against inconsistent credulity. But precisely in virtue of\nthat bias, he is the opponent of the supernaturalist bias. He does not\nin effect merely say, 'I do not know': he implicitly says 'You do not\nknow' to the professor of non-natural knowledge.\n\nBias, then, being clearly posited, the debate at once turns--as indeed\nit usually does even without formal acknowledgment of bias--to a\ncompetition of claims to consistency. All debate presupposes agreement\non something. As antagonists _in_ religion appeal either to God-idea or\nto Bible, to probability or to usage, to expediency or to authority, or\nto historic evidence for one revelation as against another, so\nantagonists upon the fundamentals of religion appeal to accepted laws of\nproof, measures of evidence, consistency of reasoning. The most\ntenacious of traditionists must put his case in a 'reasoned' form. And\ntherein, of course, lies the secret of the gradual historic dissolution\nof traditional credence in the minds of those who come at all within the\nrange of the argument. Every act of reasoning--as priesthoods are more\nor less clearly aware--is a concession to the rationalist position to\nbegin with; and only superior skill in fence can ostensibly countervail\nthe advantage thus given to the disputant who claims that reason must\ndetermine beliefs. Reasoning against the validity of reason is\nrecognisable as suicidal by all who can reason coherently. If reason be\nuntrustworthy, what is the value of reasoning to that effect? Either you\ngo by reason or you do not. If not, you are out of the debate, or you\nare grasping your sword by the blade, a course not long to be persisted\nin. Even the skeptical defender of religion, following religious\nprecedent, says, 'Come now, let us reason together.'\n\nThus we reach the standing anomaly that the defence of faith against\nrationalistic criticism alternately takes the courses of pronouncing the\nappeal to reason a foolish presumption, and of claiming to reason more\nfaithfully than the rationalist. The two positions being, to say the\nleast, incompatible from the point of view of dialectic, we must fight\nupon one or the other at a time; and, having briefly dealt with the\nformer, we may fitly consider at greater length the latter. The more\nphilosophic assailant of the rationalist, we assume, professes after all\nto stand or fall by reasoning. That is to say, he claims to hold his\nsupernaturalist positions in logical and moral consistency with his\nhistorical positions, his practice as a judge or juror, as a man of\nscience, as a critic in politics, as a man of honour, as a player of\ncricket by the rules of the game. As a matter of fact, however, he at\ntimes goes about the task by way of an undertaking to show, not that his\nbeliefs are well founded in reason, but that no beliefs are; and that\nhis beliefs are therefore at least as valid as any one else's. All the\nwhile he is ostensibly appealing to reason, to judgment. That position\nin turn must be considered.\n\n\n\n\nSec. 5. THE SKEPTICAL RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE\n\n\nThe philosophic issue under this head has been usefully cleared for\nEnglish readers by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his _Defence of Philosophic\nDoubt_; and, in another sense, very usefully for rationalists by the\nsame writer in his work _The Foundations of Belief_. The gist of the\nformer treatise is an expansion of the proposition of Hume that all\nmoral judgments, on analysis, are found to root in a sentiment or bias.\nIn particular, Mr. Balfour argues that all scientific beliefs so-called,\nhowever immediately proved, rest upon general beliefs which are\n'incapable of proof.' It is noteworthy that never through the whole\ntreatise does Mr. Balfour analyse the concept of 'proof,' though his\nmain aim is ostensibly to discriminate between proved and unproved\npropositions. It may be worth while, then, at this stage, to note the\nrisks of intellectual confusion in connection with the term proof. The\ncommon conception, implicit in Mr. Balfour's argument, is that\nconcerning a 'proved' thing either we have, or men of science say we\nhave, a right of certainty, as it were, which we cannot have concerning\nanything not proved or not capable of proof. The simple fact is that the\nvery idea of proof involves that of uncertainty you seek to prove that\nwhich is not unquestionable. To prove is to _probe_,[8] to test. The\nidea of 'demonstration,' which seems commonly to connote special\ncertainty, carries us no further. It means a 'showing,' a 'letting you\nsee with your own eyes.' In geometry, it stands for a chain of reasoning\nin which every step rests upon previous steps which ultimately rest upon\naxioms and definitions agreed upon. There the process is one of\nanalysis--a showing that a proposition formerly unknown as such is\nreally contained in or implied by propositions known. Certainty follows.\nYet there is abundant record of 'proofs' or 'tests' which were\nfallacious, and of ostensible demonstrations which were flawed--modes of\nsquaring the circle, for instance. The ultimate in the matter is the\nbelief arrived at or evoked; and the significant fact for us is, that\nbeliefs ostensibly so arrived at may be false, because the cited proof\nor evidence is erroneous or the demonstration inconsequent.\n\nCertainty, on the other hand, attaches in the highest degree to certain\nbeliefs that, in the nature of the case, are 'incapable of proof,' that\nis, of being tested. No belief is more certain for all men than the\nbelief that they will all die, though the event, posited as future,\ncannot as such be 'tested.' In this case, the connotation of the word\n'proof,' nevertheless, is by common consent transferred to the concept\nof mortality: the invariable dying of all previous men is allowed to be\n'proof,' or decisive evidence, that all living men will die to the last\ngeneration. In regard to some other certainties, the concept of 'proof'\nis wholly irrelevant. You cannot 'prove' that you feel a pain, though it\nis one of the most certain of all facts for you while it lasts. If,\nthen, any general scientific or other belief be shown to be 'incapable\nof proof,' in this merely negative sense (as distinguished from 'capable\nof disproof'), that is no argument against it for any practical or\nphilosophic purpose. Such a belief is that in the 'uniformity of\nnature,' which is held by the same tenure as that in the mortality of\nall men. It cannot be 'proved,' either as to the past or the future, in\nthe sense of being tested, save as regards past particulars, which are\nnecessarily a small selection from the totality of phenomena. For the\nfuture, in the terms of the case, there can be no proof. Yet no man has\nany more doubt as to the rising of the sun to-morrow than as to his own\nultimate death. Concerning this we are quite certain, which we cannot be\nas to many things reasonably held to have been 'proved.' Such and such\nare our 'certainties.'\n\nWhat, then, is Mr. Balfour's case against men of 'science,' and those\nwhom he calls 'the Freethinkers'? It may be put under three heads.\n\n1. They are lax, he thinks, in their conception of proof. As it happens,\nhe argues against Mill's criticism of the syllogism, which is that there\ncan be no real inference from the premisses of a syllogism, because in\nthe major premiss there is already asserted what is afterwards asserted\nin the conclusion. Mr. Balfour's reply is, that 'So long as in fact we\ndo assert the major premiss without first believing the conclusion, so\nlong will the latter be an inference from the former.' Now, Mill's\nexpress contention is that we never do assert the major premiss without\nfirst believing the conclusion; and the dispute resolves itself into one\nas to the proper meaning of 'inference.' Mill is at this point guarding\nagainst erroneous conceptions of proof; his thesis being that the\n'proof' of the conclusion is not given in the major, but in the body of\nevidence on which that is founded, and which carries the conclusion at\nthe same time. As the kind of syllogism in question is the old one\nabout the mortality of Sokrates, Mill here takes as 'proof' the evidence\nwhich all men now reckon sufficient to establish the fact of universal\nhuman mortality, though, as aforesaid, it is not literally a complete\n'proof' at all. Mr. Balfour is arguing, if anything relevant to his main\nthesis, that a so-called 'inference' which is merely a statement in one\nparticular of what is believed of all such particulars, is a 'real'\ninference, and therefore somehow more valid than inferences not so\ndrawn. Perhaps he does not mean this: if so, the argument has no bearing\non his main case.\n\nConcerning 'inference,' the proper development of Mill's position would\nbe that the processes of reasoning properly to be so called are either\nhypotheses still to be tested or beliefs held by the tenure of\nuncontradicted experience. And inferences of the latter kind are in fact\nof the most various degrees of certainty. We 'infer' that we shall all\ndie, not from the generalisation that all men are mortal, but from the\naccepted fact that all men hitherto have been. The major premiss in the\ntypical syllogism is itself the inference. But we also infer, from a\nmuch narrower experience, that inasmuch as pitchblende, say, has been\nfound to yield radium in certain very small quantities, other\npitchblende will do so in future. Here the certainty is distinctly less:\nfew men would wager heavily on it. And we may at once grant to Mr.\nBalfour that in this and many other cases 'scientific beliefs' fall far\nshort of 'certainty,' as that term is established for us by other\nbeliefs. As Mill put it, inference from particulars never can be\nformally cogent. He might have added as aforesaid, that all real\ninference as to events is from particulars, and that formal cogency\nbelongs only to mathematics. Mr. Balfour says he will not 'go so far' as\nMill. So that, whatever be Mill's inconsistencies--and they are\nmany--Mill was at this point somewhat less confident of belief than Mr.\nBalfour.\n\n2. Mr. Balfour impugns what he takes to be 'the most ordinary view of\nscientific philosophy, ... that science, in so far as it consists of a\nstatement of the laws of phenomena, is founded entirely on observation\nand experiment,' which 'furnish not only the occasions of scientific\ndiscovery, but also the sole evidence of scientific truth--evidence,\nhowever, which is considered by most men of science not only amply\nsufficient, but also as good as any which can be well imagined.'[9] In\nthis statement there are obvious laxities, which may serve as openings\nfor idle dispute. No man of science, surely, holds that all statements\nof the laws of phenomena are equally well 'proved' by observation and\nexperiment. They do hold that such a proposition as that of 'the\nuniformity of nature,' considered as a 'law of phenomena,' is founded on\nobservation and experiment, as fully as any proposition of natural mode\ncan be. But there is obvious room for ambiguity, again, in the\nexpression 'laws of phenomena.' Let us consider, for instance,\n\n3. Mr. Balfour's contention that the 'law of universal causation' is\nincapable of proof, and cannot properly be said to be founded on\nobservation and experiment. Here the rationalist may safely grant him\nhis whole case--at least the present writer does. He is right, I submit,\nin his criticism of Mill's ostensible attempt to prove that the\nso-called 'law of universal causation' is deduced from observation and\nexperiment. I will further waive the question whether he rebuts the\nproof offered by Kant for his proposition that 'the judgment of sequence\ncannot be made without the presupposition of the judgment of causality,'\nwhich, like many of Kant's formulas, seems to me very awkwardly phrased.\nBut I advance without hesitation the proposition that all reflection\nupon events involves the conception of universal causation, and that all\nreflection upon things involves the conception of them _in eventu_.[10]\nAnd this necessary assumption is not as such a product of observation\nand experiment, though we can never exactly say how far experience may\ncondition[11] our manner of making the assumption. It is quite needless\nto trace the history of it in human experience, for it is clearly\npre-human. If from a tree you fire at and wound a tiger who sees you, he\nwill try to get at you, plainly regarding you as the cause of his wound,\nthough he may never have been shot or seen a shot fired before. The\naccuracy of his inference is worth noting, though he might chance, of\ncourse, to have been wounded by a shot fired by an unseen companion of\nyours. It may 'reasonably' be 'inferred' (to use terms which Mr. Balfour\nwould probably censure), that man has always obeyed the law of _thought_\nthus illustrated; and no number of wrong particular inferences can\naffect the inevitableness of his assumption that any event has a cause.\nThe _concept_ of cause roots in primary animal habit.\n\nIs this assumption, then, a 'law of phenomena' in Mr. Balfour's sense?\nis it to be ruled out, on his principles, as not being founded on\nobservation and experiment? and are men of science thereby shown to be\nwrong in holding that every scientific statement of the laws of\nphenomena is so founded? I do not see how he can thus argue; for he has\nexpressly contended (p. 135), that 'A law of nature refers to a fixed\nrelation, _not_ between the totality of phenomena, but between extremely\nsmall portions of that totality.' Is a law of phenomena, then, something\nother than a law of nature? This he cannot mean; and the conclusion is\nthat the so-called 'law of universal causation' is not properly to be\ncalled a law of nature, or a law at all, unless we are so to call a\nnecessary element of all reflection upon nature.\n\nThe dispute here, in short, resolves itself into a question of\nterminology; and it is quite likely that many men of science, and many\nfreethinkers, have used lax terminology. But as regards the\nreasonableness of their beliefs, or their way of believing, in contrast\nwith those of the supernaturalists whom Mr. Balfour champions, he has\nthus far made out no hostile case whatever. And when we come to what\nappear to be his conclusions, they are such as can wring no\nrationalist's withers. Our ultimate premisses, he contends, are\nincapable of proof. Granted--if the assumption of universal causation is\nto be termed a premiss, as is that of the uniformity of nature. The\npractical issue for him appears to be contained in this passage (italics\nours):--\n\n\n     'That men ought not to give up on speculative grounds the belief in\n     \"the uniformity of nature, or any other great principle,\" I hold,\n     as the reader will see if his patience lasts to the end of the\n     volume, with as much persistence as any man. But I must altogether\n     take exception to the statement, which is the central point of the\n     argument just stated, namely, that the fact that these principles\n     work in practice is _any ground for believing them to be even\n     approximately true_' (p. 145).\n\n\nOur patience may easily stand the suggested test, since Mr. Balfour's\nbook is for the most part extremely well written; and unless I have\ntotally misunderstood him, his conclusions are (_a_) that he and we do\nwell to accept the general body of accepted scientific doctrines,\nincluding those of the theory of evolution and the uniformity of nature,\nwithout _any ground for believing them to be even approximately true_;\nand (_b_) that he and his co-believers do equally well to hold what he\nvaguely indicates (p. 324) as 'the Theological opinions to which I\nadhere,' _also_ without 'any ground for believing them to be even\napproximately true.' In a sentence (p. 320) of which the diction is\nnoticeably lax, he says:--\n\n\n     '...I and an indefinite number of other persons, if we contemplate\n     Religion and Science as unproved systems of belief standing side by\n     side, _feel a practical need for both_; and if this need is, in the\n     case of those few and fragmentary scientific truths by which we\n     regulate our animal actions, or an especially imperious and\n     indestructible character--on the other hand, _the need for\n     religious truth, rooted as it is in the loftiest region of our\n     moral nature_, is one from which we would not, if we could, be\n     freed.... _We are in this matter_,' he adds, '_unfortunately\n     altogether outside the sphere of Reason_.'\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[8] This is the elucidation of the puzzling phrase, 'the exception\nproves the rule,' so often fallaciously used. It comes from the Latin\nschoolmen's 'Exceptio _probat_ regulam,' where the meaning is patent\nenough.\n\n[9] _Defence of Philosophic Doubt_, p. 13.\n\n[10] Compare Professor Royce:--'Our intelligent ideas of things never\nconsist of mere images of things, but always involve a consciousness of\nhow we propose to act towards the things of which we have ideas'\n(_Gifford Lectures_, 1900, i. 22).\n\n[11] I exclude the possibility that 'experience' might be construed to\nmean the entire development of the mind from infancy. Such a\nconstruction would reduce the argument to insignificance all round.\n\n\n\n\nSec. 6. THE MEANING OF REASON\n\n\nThe problem as to 'the sphere of Reason' could not be more effectually\nraised. Mr. Balfour clearly implies that there _is_ a sphere of Reason,\nbut forces a perplexed query as to when he believes himself to enter it.\nEvidently, by his own definitions, his whole political life is lived\noutside it. Alike his generalisations from past history, and his\npredictions of the future, are such as afford 'no ground for believing\nthem to be even approximately true': those of his opponents, of course,\ncoming for him under the same category. He would, perhaps, hold himself\nto be in the sphere of Reason when following a proposition in\nmathematics; but he does not admit himself to be there even when he\nconsents to believe that he will die, and that he had better avoid\nprussic acid. 'No experience, however large,' he insists (p. 75), 'and\nno experiments, however well contrived and successful, could give us\n_any reasonable assurance_ that the co-existences or sequences which\nhave been observed among phenomena will be repeated in the future.' Not\n'certainty,' be it observed, but 'any reasonable assurance.' That is to\nsay, we have no reasonable assurance that we shall die.\n\nObviously the extravagance of this proposition is calculated. The point\nis that no belief whatever concerning life and death and morality and\nthe process of nature can be justified by 'reason'; and that accordingly\nno religious belief whatever can be discredited on the score of being\nopposed to reason or 'unreasonable.' If not more reasonable than the\nmost carefully tested or the most widely accepted belief in science, or\nthe belief that the sun will rise or fire burn to-morrow, or that we\nshall all die, it is not less reasonable than they. Therefore, believe\nas your bias leads.\n\nIt is only fair to Mr. Balfour to say that there is nothing new in his\nposition, though probably it has never before been quite so violently\nformulated. The Greek Pyrrho (fl. 300-350 B.C.) argued that almost all\npropositions were doubtful; and some of his followers are said to have\nbeen consistent enough to doubt whether they doubted. In the dialogues\nof Cicero we find the skeptical method employed, with supreme\ninconsistency, by the official exponents of unbelieved doctrines, to\ndiscredit competing doctrines. Among the pagans it was also turned, with\nno special religious purpose, against all forms of dogmatic doctrine by\nSextus the Empiric (fl. 200-250 A.C.); and in the early Christian\ndialogue of Minucius Felix a pagan is presented as turning it against\nChristianity. In the later Middle Ages it is resorted to by Cornelius\nAgrippa, previously a great propounder of fantastic propositions in\nscience, against the current science of his time, and in favour of a\nreturn to the simplicity of the early Christian creed. Still later, it\nwas much resorted to, after the Reformation, by Catholics for the\npurpose of discrediting Protestantism; and Pascal and Huet, the latter\nin particular, sought to employ it against 'unbelief.' Huet left behind\nhim, as his legacy to his church and generation, what Mark Pattison has\ntermed 'a work of the most outrageous skepticism'; and Pascal's use of\nthe method has left a standing debate as to whether he himself was a\n'skeptic.' In England, on the Protestant side, Bishop Berkeley put forth\nan argument to the effect that the Newtonian doctrine of fluxions\ninvolved the acceptance of unproved 'mysteries,' and that those who\napplied it had accordingly no excuse for rejecting the mysteries of\nChristianity.\n\nFinally, it is fair to note that Mr. Balfour's nihilistic treatment of\nreason has a surprising sanction in Hume, to say nothing of the other\nwriters who have practically limited reasoning to mathematical\ndeduction. That great thinker, with his frequent great carelessness,\nwrote that\n\n\n     'Our conclusions from experience [of cause and effect] are not\n     founded on reasoning, or any process of the understanding'\n     (_Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding_, Sect. iv. Part ii.,\n     par. 2).\n\n     'All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not of\n     reasoning' (Sect. v., par. 3).\n\n     'All these [spontaneous feelings] are a species of natural\n     instincts, which no reasoning _or process of the thought and\n     understanding_ is able either to produce or to prevent' (_Ib._ par.\n     6).\n\n\nBut Hume, be it noted, would in his earlier life have recoiled from Mr.\nBalfour's religious Irrationalism, for in his deistic period he wrote\nthat the belief in Deity is 'conformable to sound reason.' And, what is\nmore important, he in effect cancelled his own remarks on reason, above\ncited, by writing as follows in Note B on the _Inquiry_ cited:--\n\n\n     'Nothing is more usual than for writers, even on moral, political,\n     or physical subjects, to distinguish between reason and experience,\n     and to suppose that these species of argumentation (_sic_) are\n     entirely different from each other. The former are taken for the\n     mere result of our intellectual faculties, which, by considering _a\n     priori_ the nature of things, and examining the effects that must\n     follow from their operation, establish particular principles of\n     science and philosophy. The latter are supposed to be derived\n     entirely from sense and observation, by which we know what has\n     actually happened from the operation of particular objects, and are\n     thence able to infer what will for the future result from them....\n     But notwithstanding that this distinction be thus universally\n     received, both in the active and speculative scenes of life, I\n     shall not scruple to pronounce that it is at bottom erroneous, or\n     at least superficial.'\n\n\nHume, it will be observed, is not here bent on vindicating the rational\ncharacter of direct inference from observation: he had set out in the\ntext by disparaging customary thinking as non-rational; and he is now\nclaiming for the 'reasoning' man that experience goes a long way to\ngenerate his reasoning processes. 'The truth is,' he says in his final\nparagraph, 'an inexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were\nhe absolutely inexperienced.' It is a fragmentary note to a hasty\npassage; but at least it concedes that reasoning _is_ largely a matter\nof inference from experience, and thus decisively gainsays the assertion\nin the text that no inference from experience is an 'effect of\nreasoning,' inasmuch as it says such inference is reasoning; that\nreasoning is a working of the mind on the facts of life; and that the\ncommon distinction between reasoning and [beliefs derived direct from]\nexperience 'is at bottom erroneous, or at least superficial.'[12] If, he\nsays in the fourth paragraph of the Note, 'If we examine those\n_arguments_ which, in any of the sciences above mentioned, are supposed\nto be the _mere_ effects of reasoning and reflection, they will be found\nto _terminate_ at last in some general principle or conclusion for which\nwe can assign no _reason_ but observation and experience.' If an\nargument be not a process of reasoning, neither word is intelligible. If\nan argument terminates (=has one end) in a conclusion founded on\nobservation, and if that observation be a 'reason' for a proposition,\nthen arguing is reasoning.\n\nIf not, what is Mr. Balfour's book? By his own definition, _that_ is\n'outside the sphere of Reason,' inasmuch as it is a series of negative\npropositions which, like their denied contraries, must be 'incapable of\nproof.' What term, then, would he apply to his argument, if he admits\nthat he is arguing?\n\nThe philosophic skeptic, it would appear, has logically overreached\nhimself--a very usual consummation. There is little sign that any of the\nreligious skeptics above named ever made any converts to religion; and\nthere is much 'reason' to think that they turned many to unbelief. Mr.\nBalfour from time to time speaks of 'reasonable people' and of\n'absurdity.' But he leaves us in the dark as to what absurdity means,\nand his thesis excludes from the 'reasonable' class alike all religious\npersons and all scientific persons, unless, possibly, mathematicians as\nsuch. Since there is no 'reasonable assurance' for the belief that the\nsun will rise to-morrow, and politicians have no ground in reason for\nanything they say as such, the mass of the ordinary beliefs of educated\nmankind are not reasonable or rational; and since we have no 'reason'\nfor believing in either mortality or immortality, we can have no reason\nfor believing (whether we do or not) in Mr. Balfour, who avowedly\nbelieves in both without reason. His book, by implication, is not an\nappeal to reason, is not a process of reasoning, and can give no\n'reasonable assurance' of anything, positive or negative, to anybody.\nAll this by his own showing.\n\nThe rationalist, it should seem, has small cause to deprecate such\nantagonism. He could hardly have a more comprehensive clearing of the\nfield of dialectic for the formulation of his own conception of reason\nand reasoning, and his own appeal to the reason of reasonable people. As\nthus:--\n\n1. _Reason_ is our name for (_a_) the sum of all the judging processes;\n(_b_) the act of reflex judgment; (_c_) 'private judgment' as against\nobedience to authority; and (_d_) the state of sanity contrasted with\nthat of insanity; and '_a_ reason' is a fact or motive or surmise which\nwe judge sufficient to induce us or others to believe or do (or doubt or\nnot do) something without much or any danger of error, failure, or\ninjury.\n\n2. _Reasoning_ is our name for the process of comparing or stating\n'reasons why' certain propositions or judgments should be believed or\ndisbelieved, or certain acts done or not done.\n\n3. We are emphatically 'in the sphere of Reason' when we are reflecting\nand reasoning, as distinct from merely feeling, sensating, desiring, or\nhating; but even the feelings are, as it were, part of the stuff of\nReason. Strictly speaking, we are in the sphere of Reason even when we\nbelieve what we are told to believe on matters outside the knowledge of\nour instructors (in so far as we credit them with greater wisdom than\nour own), or try to believe that what we would like to be true must be\ntrue because we would like it (inasmuch as we are proceeding\nreflectively on a 'reason why'); though in these cases we are reasoning\nfallaciously--that is, in a way which can lead to manifold error and\ninjury.\n\n4. _Reasonable_ is our approbatory epithet for an action, course, or\nperson that is guided by reasoning which we see to exclude most risks of\nerror and injury--save of course where the taking of risk of injury is\nassumed.\n\nEvery one of these definitions is justified by the dictionary to begin\nwith, though the dictionaries, of necessity, note further conflicting\nmeanings, as when reason is indicated as 'the faculty or capacity of the\nhuman mind by which it is distinguished from the intelligence of the\nlower animals,' or hazily distinguished, on philosophic authority, from\n'the understanding.' But the lexicographer loyally notes that _a_ reason\nis 'a thought or consideration offered in support of a determination or\nan opinion'; and that _to_ reason means, among other things, 'to reach\nconclusions by a systematic comparison of facts,' 'to examine or discuss\nby arguments.' These senses are implicit in daily usage.\n\nThe concept of Reason, in short, must include the whole factory of\nbeliefs. The judging faculty, the judging propensity, is a complex of\ninstincts, experiences, inferences, and necessities of thought. It\noriginates at an animal stage, and conserves to the last animal\nelements--as when, without any process of calculation, you infer, as it\nwere through the muscular sense, that a top-heavy omnibus is likely to\noverbalance, or that in riding your bicycle round a sharp corner you\nmust incline your body inwards. It deals with diet and medicine, art and\nindustry, no less than with theology and science and politics. In the\nformer, its accepted procedure is obviously a set of survivals of more\nor less tested ideas from among an infinity of detected mistakes; and\nthe moral law of the intellectual life for the rationalist, the\nprinciple which best justifies his assumption of that name, is that\nevery belief or preference whatever is fitly to be tried by all or any\nof the tests by which beliefs have been sifted in the past, or may more\neffectually be tested in the future. We are to do with both our\nreligion and our science in general what we have done in the past and\nare still doing with our medicine, our sanitation, our education, our\nphysics, our historiography.\n\nWithout more ado, then, we may proceed to ask how reasons for beliefs\nare ultimately to be appraised by reasonable and consistent people--in\nother words, how beliefs are honestly to be justified.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[12] So Kant: 'Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without\nconceptions are blind' (_Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, ed. Kirchmann,\n1870, p. 100); and Comte: 'There is no absolute separation between\nobserving and reasoning' (_Politique Positive_, 1851, i. 500).\n\n\n\n\nSec. 7. THE TEST OF TRUTH\n\n\nIt may have been observed, with or without perplexity, that Mr. Balfour\nspecified a 'need for religious _truth_' as his ground for holding his\nunspecified 'theological beliefs,' this after bracketing Religion and\nScience as alike 'unproved systems,' consisting (by implication) of a\nbody of propositions as to which we have not 'any ground for believing\nthem to be even approximately true.' The skeptico-religious conception\nof truth being thus found to be as nugatory as that of 'reason' put\nforward from the same quarter, we are compelled to posit one more\nconformable to common sense, common usage, and common honesty. For the\ngenerality of instructed men, truth in secular affairs means not merely\n'that which is trowed,' but (_a_) that which we have adequate 'reason'\nto trow, and (_b_) that of which our acceptance is consistent with our\nway of testing credences of any or all other kinds. The ultimate\ncriterion of our beliefs, in short, is the consistency with which we\nhold them.\n\nBy this test the ground is rapidly cleared of skeptico-religious\nliterature. That puts a spurious problem to mask a real one. The\nquestion for us is not and cannot be whether, seeing that by inference\nfrom experience some of the beliefs we now hold are likely to be found\nfalse by posterity, we have any right to accept one belief and discredit\nanother. The skeptic is himself doing so in this very argument, and all\nthe time. His whole intellectual life is one of judgments and\npreferences. There is no intellectual life without them. The question is\nwhether we have applied to any one belief or set of beliefs the tests we\nhave applied to others: whether, for instance, we can honestly profess\nto believe in prayer or the doctrine of the Trinity or heaven and hell\nas we believe in Gresham's Law or the effects of quinine or the\nroundness of the earth; whether we have criticised the religion in which\nwe were brought up as we criticise Mohammedanism or any other; whether\nwe have scrutinised the legends of our creed as we have scrutinised the\nlegend of King Arthur and his Knights; or whether, on the other hand, we\nhold the atomic theory or faith in vaccination by mere authority, while\nwe dispute about religious teaching in the schools.\n\nThis does not mean that we are to apply the same kind of test to every\nkind of proposition; that we are to ask for evidence of immortality as\nwe ask for evidence of the Darwinian theory. The test is one of\nconsistency. Does the belief in immortality, we are to ask, consist with\neither our knowledge or our imagination? Do we hold it critically and\ncoherently or as a mere congeries of irreconcilable propositions? Do we\nask ourselves what we mean by 'meeting again'? Is it anything more than\na fantasy which we affirm for our own comfort or the supposed comfort of\nothers, or for the sake of mere conformity with popular sentiment? No\nthoughtful man, perhaps, will deny that he holds some of his opinions by\nsome such easy tenure; were it only for the reason that consistent\nascertainment is often laborious, and that common consent has to be\nallowed to take its place in regard to many beliefs of plainly inferior\nimportance. But religious beliefs are not so classed by those who\nseriously debate them; and here, if ever, the challenge to scrutiny and\nconsistency is imperative.\n\nAnd so disturbing is the challenge that for centuries past the higher\nreligious consciousness has been engaged in an unceasing effort to\npersuade itself and its antagonists of the secular or mundane\nreasonableness of its supernaturalist creed. Religious life is seen\ngoing on at two widely removed standpoints: one that of the emotional\nbeliever who knows no conceptual difficulties, and is concerned only to\nmaintain in himself and others the quasi-ecstatic state of faith; the\nother that of the would-be reasoner who is concerned to secure peace of\nmind by arguing down his own misgivings and the positive antagonism of\nunbelief. Between those extremes, probably, is lived the mass of\nreligious life so-called, untouched either by ecstasy or by conceptual\nunbelief as distinguished from passive conformity. But the conflict of\nthe thinking minority is unceasing; and orthodox professions of triumph\ndeceive no one who is really engaged in the struggle.\n\nOn both sides it has long been a question of balancing 'probabilities,'\na conflict of 'reasons.' Bacon, declaring that he would 'rather believe\nall the fables in the Golden Legend and the Koran than that this\nuniversal frame is without a mind,' opened a door that let in all the\nforces of doubt. The Koran is the form in which the God-idea recommended\nitself to the Moslem mind, as the Bible is the form in which it\ncommended itself to the Christian; and if for each the other is always\nfabulising in detail, where could be the certitude of the common\ndoctrine? Was mind any likelier to be the form of the power of the\nuniverse than any other of the anthropomorphic characteristics of\nJehovah and Allah and Zeus? However that might be, Bacon was appealing\nto the sheer sense of probability; the 'Evidences' of Grotius were\naddressed to the same kind of judgment; and Pascal's 'wager' was a blank\nappeal to the principle of chances plus the instinct of fear. Butler,\nanxiously striving to reduce the straggling deistic controversy to its\nlogical bases, accepted the test of probability as the guide of life;\nand Gladstone, his last champion, with all his show of sheer faith,\nstrenuously endorses the doctrine. The vital question is seen to be,\nthen, whether the Butlerian 'believer' or the rationalist is the more\nloyal to that standard of probability by which each avowedly guides\nhimself.\n\nBut Butler, in the very act of professedly basing his case on\nprobability, introduced the contrary principle. Gladstone, gravely\nreprehending that Jesuit doctrine misleadingly termed Probabilism--which\npermits of a choice of the less probable course in morals and\nbelief--supposed himself to be upholding a true Probabilism in Butler.\nThe fact is that Butler, seeking to checkmate the Deists, committed\nhimself to anomaly as a mark of revelation. 'You believe,' he virtually\nargued, 'in a benevolent God of Nature, though Nature is full of\nostensible cruelty and heartlessness: if these moral anomalies do not\nstagger your deism, why should anomalies in the Scriptures be for you an\nargument against their being a divine revelation? Should you not rather\nexpect to find difficulties in the revelation as in Nature?' So that the\nchampion of the standard of probability ends by putting an element of\nimprobability as a mark of divine truth.\n\nIt was long ago pointed out that Butler's argument was thus as good for\nIslam or any other religion as for Christianity. Gladstone framed a\nfutile rebuttal to the effect that Christianity had marks of truth, in\nrespect of prophecy and miracles, which Islam lacked--a mere\nstultification of the Butlerian thesis. The Moslem could retort that if\nhis creed succeeded more rapidly than the Christian with special marks\nof anomaly upon it, those were presumably the right anomalies! By the\nButlerian analogy of Nature, what sort of anomalies, pray, were to be\nexpected in a divine revelation? Gladstone actually made it a\ndisqualification of Islam that it had succeeded by the sword; this when\nhis own creed had slain more than ever did Islam. But on Butler's\nprinciples, his plea was vain even if true. If a divinely ruled Nature\nbe red in tooth and claw, why should not the divine faith be so\nlikewise? What is the lesson, by deistic analogy, of the volcano?\n\nThe complete answer to Butler, of course, lies in stating the simple\nfact that analogy leads rationally to the conclusion that all the\nalleged revelations are alike human products. If every one in turn is\nfound to embody cosmological delusion, historical falsity, fabulous\nnarrative, barbarous ethic, and irrational sanctions, all of which are\nby each believer singly admitted to be the normal marks of human\nstumbling, the case is at an end. The one salient and sovereign\nprobability is the one that the believer ignores.\n\nWhen this mountainous fact is realised, the full force of the Butlerian\nargument is seen to recoil on its premiss no less than on its\nconclusion. The dilemma that was to turn deists into Christians is\nsimply the confutation of all theism. Upon none of the tested\nprinciples of inference now normally acted on by men of science, men of\nbusiness, and men of affairs, is it rationally to be inferred that the\nuniverse is ruled by a superhuman Good Male Person, who loves and hates,\npunishes and rewards, plans and reconsiders, injures and compensates. As\nlittle are we entitled to infer that it is governed by a Superhuman Bad\nPerson, or a number of Superhuman Persons, male or female, good or bad,\nor both. The polytheistic and theistic solutions are the natural ones\nfor unreflecting ignorance and priestly policy, and the latter remains\nthe natural one for reverent ingrained prejudice, alias inculcated\nfaith; but it is only so much sophisticated folklore for the student of\nlife, nature, history, philosophy. The latest forms of it are but\ndefecations of the earlier. For Arnold, trained in reverence and avid of\nreverend sanctions, the deity of his fellows is confessedly but a\n'magnified non-natural man'; and his substituted\n'Something-not-ourselves-which-makes-for-righteousness,' in turn, is for\nhis critics but an evasion of the problem of the\nsomething-not-ourselves-which-makes-for-unrighteousness.\n\nIn sum, then, the case for rationalism as against the creeds is that\nthey recognise no rational test for truth, and apply none. They are\nall, to say the least, grossly improbable in the light of the fullest\nhuman knowledge; and the acceptance of them means either passive\ndisregard of the principle of sufficient reason or the habitual\nemployment of arguments which upon any other kind of issue would be\nrecognised by all competent men as at best utterly inadequate. Theology\nis the most uncandid of all the current sciences; its results are the\nmost self-contradictory; its premisses the most incoherent. Upon those\ntheologians, then, who accuse the rationalist of self-will and\nprejudice, he is forced to retort the charge with a double emphasis.\nThey are daily disloyal to the Canon of Consistency, which is for him\nthe moral law of the intellectual life. Claiming to propound the highest\ntruth, they override all the tests by which truth is to be known.\n\nThe modern defence of 'faith,' whether Christian or theistic, is less\nand less an attempt to prove truth of doctrine--save as regards the\ndefence of historicity; more and more an attempt to prove its usefulness\nor its comfortableness. Faith has turned utilitarian, as regards its\napologetics. John Mill erred somewhat, indeed, in endorsing the\nstatement that down to his time much had been written on the truth of\nreligion, and 'little, at least in the way of discussion or controversy,\nconcerning its usefulness.' Christian bishops early learned to claim for\ntheir creed a gift of prosperity; and in the eighteenth century there\nwas an abundance of utilitarian vindication of the faith. But latterly\nthis has more and more coloured the whole defence. Either as a promise\nof peace or as one of comfort and stimulus, as a plea for emotional\nindulgence or for the joy of the sense of deliverance from\nresponsibility for sin, as a guarantee for good government or as a\ncondition of general progress, Christianity is defended on any ground\nrather than on that of the truth of its narratives or the conformity of\nits doctrine to good sense, moral or other. And the pleas are\nentertainingly internecine.\n\nOne day we are told that it makes for race-survival; the next, that it\nis a spiritual stay for races that are dying out, and a great deathbed\ncomfort to ex-cannibals, with a past of many murders. A creed which\ninvolves a cosmology is recommended, not by such arguments as may\ncommend a cosmology, but by pleas of subjective agreeableness which in\nany discussion of historic fact would be felt to savour of trifling.\n\nAnd this simple and spontaneous sophistry is in a measure kept in\ncountenance by quasi-philosophies such as that of the 'Will to Believe'\nand that latterly termed Pragmatism. The former, as brilliantly\npropounded by the late Professor James, amounts simply to this, that in\nmatters on which there is no good or sufficient evidence either way, we\ndo well to believe what we would like to believe. As the precept comes\nfrom the thinker who passed on to students the counsel of Pascal\nconcerning the opiate value of religious practices,[13] it is easy to\ninfer how it will tend to be interpreted. And the second philosophy is\nlike unto the first, in so far as it conveys, under cover of the true\nformula that the valid beliefs are those which affect action, the\nantinomian hint that if we think we have found any belief a help to\naction, it is thereby sufficiently certificated as true.\n\nThe rationalist comment on Pragmatism, thus applied, is that it really\ndiscredits the religious beliefs of most men, inasmuch as they never\nrelate their faith to action in general, would not stake a shilling on a\nprayer, have no working faith in providence, and do not in the least\ndesire to pass from this life to another. But these men do not study\nphilosophy; while the emotional believers, who really feel their faith\nto be a help in life, do not need the pragmatist's precept, and believe\nwithout it.\n\nWhat is true in Pragmatism is of the essence of Rationalism. Our lives\nat their best are made valid for us by our mutual trust, our reciprocal\nsincerities; and Rationalism consists in the effort to extend\nintellectual and moral sincerity to the study of all problems. It may\npermit, none the less, of some such genial or affectionate glozing of\nsome facts as love and friendship tend to set up in the relations of\npersons, tolerance taking on the vesture of sympathy; and it no more\nmakes for Gradgrindism, or the belittlement of any of the higher joys,\nthan for concentration on the lower. Its antagonists alternately indict\nit for 'gloom' and for licence; for coldness and for 'Epicureanism'; for\nseeking only happiness, and for turning happiness out of doors. The\ncontradictions of the indictment tell of its collective origin in mere\nhostility of temper. Rationalism, of all codes and modes of\nlife-philosophy, must most seek to make the best of life.\n\nSome professed rationalists, indeed, at times grind in the mills of the\nPhilistines by professing an apprehension lest their fellows, in\npursuing truth, should lose sight of beauty; and such misconceiving\nmentors plead confusedly for some formal association of rationalism with\nthe arts of feeling, with poetry, with music, with drama, with\nfiction--as if without cultivating these things _in the name of_\nRationalism we should be divested of them or discredited as not\npossessing them. The fallacy is of a piece with that which identifies\nChristianity with progress in civilisation. The rationalistic bias is in\nactual experience found to be as compatible with any aesthetic bias as\nwith the scientific, specially so called; though in point of fact a\nscientific culture is in itself more conducive to rationalism in respect\nof historical and ultimate problems than is culture in the arts, which\nare mostly enjoyed, appraised, and even practised without deliberate\nresort to critical analysis.\n\nSome rationalists, again, have been found to contend that the critical\nanalysis of things aesthetic is destructive of aesthetic joy--an error of\nerrors, involving blindness to the facts that even a science is in\nitself ultimately perceptible as an artistic construction, and that all\nthe arts live and renew themselves by the sense of truth. The solution\nof the verbal conflict lies in recognising that rationalism is after all\nbut a name for considerate consistency in the intellectual life, where\nconsistency is still so sadly little cultivated, and where established\nhabits and institutions tend so powerfully to its exclusion; whereas in\nthe arts there is no call for such specific championship. There the very\njoy of novelty is soon potent to overcome the resistance of\nhabit--which, for the rest, roots in structural or acquired limitations\nnot greatly dependent upon cultivation or neglect of the rationalistic\nhabit. A man of science or of critical research may be dull to new\nrefinements of aesthesis where an unscientific emotionalist _may_ be\nsensitive to them.\n\nRecognising all this, the balanced rationalist will shun as a special\nsin of religion the ritualising of his joys, the sectarian extension of\nhis differences of credence to the field of aesthetics. His rationalism\nas such implies no one of the special 'isms' of the arts; though there\nhe may be an 'ist' like another. For him all art, all literature, all\nbeauty, is so much of Nature's fruitage; and Christian cathedral and\nMoslem mosque can yield him pleasures which Christian and Moslem can\nnever derive from _his_ distinctive intellectual work. He may even take\nartistic satisfaction in contemplating the figure of the winged angel\nwhich Christianity took over from Paganism, without believing it to be\nthe image of a reality, as so many pietists have so childishly done for\nthousands of years. 'Religious' music can minister to him in virtue of\nthe common psychosis. His very names for himself and his intellectual\ncode are but insistences on complete inner loyalty to a moral law which\nmost men profess to obey, and which all of necessity obey in many if not\nin most matters.\n\nThe time is for him even in sight, as it were, when most men will\nrecognise and live by that law; and when that day comes there will be no\nmore need to profess rationalism than to profess, as a creed, any of the\ndaily reciprocities by which society subsists. But till that day comes\nhe marks himself, and is marked--to his frequent discomfort, it may\nbe--by his insistence, in the deepest matters, on that law of truth\nwhich so many still persistently subordinate to pleas or preferences of\nauthority or habit, convention or subjective taste. Avowing it as his\nbias, if so challenged, he claims that it is the bias to perfection in\nthe intellectual life as the bias to order and sympathy is the bias to\nperfection in the civil.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[13] See Professor James's _Principles of Psychology_, 1891, ii. 321.\n\n\n\n\nSec. 8. ULTIMATE PROBLEMS\n\n\nTo a surprising degree, the philosophic disputes of the ages turn upon\nthe same problems; and to an extent that is nothing short of sinister,\nthey resolve themselves for most of the onlookers, if not of the\nparticipants, into the question of the maintenance of the popular\nreligion. Thus academic theists in our own day are found resenting the\ntendency of ancient freethinkers to discredit and disestablish the Gods\nof Olympus, who for the academics themselves, as for everybody else, are\na set of chimeras. Are we to infer that the current academic\nphilosophies, even where constructive, are no better bottomed than the\npopular credences they seek to shelter? Kant's 'critical' philosophy was\nby himself soon turned to the account of pulpit religion; Fichte ended\nin restating the gospels in terms of his pantheistic personal equation;\nHegel soon attained to the championship of the Prussian State Church;\nLotze has reformulated Christianity to the end of giving it continuance\nas a creed for the educated. Nietzsche said with substantial truth that\nthe vogue of Kant has been that of a philosopher who enabled theological\nteachers to put a philosophic face upon a doctrine not otherwise\npresentable to their students; and the vogue of Berkeley in England has\nbeen of a similar kind.\n\nIn our own day the fortunes of new treatises in popular philosophy turn\nupon their adaptability to orthodox sophistics. Our generation has seen\nin succession (1) the absurd work of the late Professor Drummond on\n'Natural Law in the Spiritual World' welcomed as turning the tables on\n'science' by showing that its doctrines are fundamentally at one with\nthose of the faith; (2) the still more absurd work of Mr. Benjamin Kidd\non 'Social Evolution' hailed as demonstrating by ratiocination that the\nreasonable course for society is not to reason; and (3) the incomparably\nsubtler books of Mr. Balfour acclaimed (whether or not read) as proving\nthat reason cannot bite on religious opinions, and that we could never\nenjoy our music and our dinners as we do if we thought of ourselves\nmerely as evolved from animal forms, without somewhere inserting Deity\nas the sanction and exemplar of our preferences, aesthetic or moral.[14]\nAlways the acclamation tells of a passion somehow to humiliate\n'science,' to put reason in the wrong, to triumph over 'negation,' to\nshow that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of\nin any philosophy which does not make play with 'spirit,' worship, and\nthe supernatural.\n\nThe cure, however, is never found to be permanent; and latterly we see\nthe not very accommodating philosophy of M. Bergson grasped at as\nyielding some kind of weapon wherewith to beat back the advance of the\never-encroaching assailant. Sooth to say, neither the analyses nor the\nsyntheses of M. Bergson are in any way damaging to rationalism, or in\nany way rationally ancillary to supernaturalism. The anti-rationalists\nhave clutched eagerly at his dictum that reason, considered as a light\nupon the universe, is a poor thing; and that there is something in us\nhigher than intelligence. Apart from the disparaging form given\n(gratuitously) to the content of these propositions, there is nothing in\nthem that has not been rationalistically put. That is to say, it is a\nrationalistic proposition that new truths are reached neither by\ndeduction nor by induction, but by a leap of the judgment, by\nspontaneous guess or hypothesis. What then?\n\nTo say or imply that the guessing faculty is something incomparably\nhigher than intelligence is one of the inconsequences of M. Bergson,\nwhose very acute analysis is apt to play upon special problems without\ncontrolling his own dialectic procedure. The sobering fact is that the\nfalse hypotheses are reached in the same way as the true, the wrong\nguesses in the same way as the right, the delusions in the same way as\nthe discoveries. The very theses in science which M. Bergson contemns\nwere reached by the way which he arbitrarily pronounces 'superior' to\nthe way of reason. And the court of appeal that determines which is\nwhich, is after all just that intelligence or reason which M. Bergson,\nimitating one of the old methods he has ably helped to discredit, had\nverbally belittled in merely discriminating its function. No prerogative\nwhatever can thereby be conferred upon either the guessing faculty or\nthe guesser as such. The 'divining' faculty is not more divine than\nanother: it is not really more wonderful to catch fish than to cook\nthem; and the gift of establishing hypotheses is as rare as the gift of\nframing them. When all is said, the self-confidence of the\ntranscendentalist avails for none but himself: as his own craving for\ncountenance shows, his hypothesis must pass muster before reason if it\nis to persuade.\n\nAnd for this among other reasons, M. Bergson's attack upon Spencer and\nother generalisers in science for their 'mechanical' way of conceiving\nevolution is no blow to 'science,' as M. Bergson would probably avow,\nthough he is lax enough to delimit science at times in his dialectic.\nHis own way of stating evolution is only another mode of science. To\ncall 'science' superficial is to be so; for the demonstration that any\nscientific doctrine is inadequate must itself be science or nothing. And\nhere again M. Bergson's criticism, though searching, is not new, however\nfreshly put. In respect of his sociology in particular, Mr. Spencer has\nbeen repeatedly so criticised; and it is here alone that his limitation\nof method is really serious, inasmuch as it affects his prescriptions.\nAs regards the conception of sub-human evolution, his way of reducing\nthe past to 'pieces' of evolution is not only not injurious, it was the\nonly way in which evolution in Nature could well have been realised by\nmen. M. Bergson is all for the 'creative' aspect of evolution, the\nLiving Now, the emergence of the latest phenomenon as not merely the\nresult of the one before, but the living manifestation of the whole. But\nthis is simply the instinctive, pre-scientific relation to the problem,\nreturned to and restored, as it had need be, to its place in a\nscientific schema from which it had been dropped precisely because it\nled nowhere.\n\nM. Bergson has suffered, probably, from the zeal even of instructed\nexponents, to say nothing of the acclamations of the amateur; but\nperhaps even M. Bergson, by reason of his linear mode of advance,\nmisconceives the full significance of his own restatements of perceptual\nand conceptual fact. His theorem has been represented as vindicating the\nthesis of Mr. Samuel Butler's 'Luck or Cunning'--the thesis, namely,\nthat animal survival and progress are to be conceived in terms of gift\nor effort rather than of environment; that Lamarckism, once more, is\ntruer than Darwinism. But the argument overlooks the fact that Cunning\nmay be envisaged as Luck; and that Lamarckism without Darwinism halts\nfar worse than Darwinism without Lamarckism. At best, the 'living' view\nof evolution is but a complement of the other, a return from analysis to\noutcome. Put singly, it is no addition to knowledge.\n\n\n     'We called the chess-board white: we call it black,'\n\n\nthe onlooker might say, with Browning; while the analyst might retort\nthat, like the savage, he was quite conscious of the ever-moving point\nof life, the Living Now, but preferred to give his mind to the still\nand spacious past, and 'to cut it up into pieces' by way of knowing\nsomething about the law of things, past, present, and future.\n\nThe morally valid element in M. Bergson's insistence on 'creative\nevolution' (again an old term, by the way) is the vindication of\npersonality as a creative form. But this was not necessary as regards\nthe rational determinist, whose position really assumed it, though\npossibly individual determinists may have obscured the truth by their\nphraseology. As of old, anti-rationalists persist in assuming that the\ndeterminist view of things, mostly accepted by the rationalist, impairs\ncharacter by reducing will to a 'mechanism.' But that is a calculated\nobscuration of the doctrine. It is a bad sophism to assert that 'the\nrejection of mechanism by non-libertarians is a mere phrase. Sooner or\nlater they have to affirm that man is mechanically determined.'[15] It\nis not so. 'Going Universe' negates Machine. _That_ concept adheres to\nthe schema of those who affirm the universe to be _made_: Naturalism\nexcludes it. Theistic determinism _does_ make man a mere vessel, a tool:\nfor Naturalism he is an individuation of the Living All. The\nintelligent determinist never was and never will be put out by his\nconceptual recognition of himself as part of an infinite sequence; and\nhe has no need of M. Bergson's (untenable) restatement of the problem of\nfree-will and determinism to the effect that the will is sometimes free\nand sometimes not. That is indeed a hopeless fallacy--an illicit\ninference from the unduly stressed re-discovery that new truth is\nreached by a leap and not by a sequence. To say that we are 'free' when\nwe have an original idea or guess is to miss the logical truth set forth\nby so unsophisticated a philosopher as Locke--that the concept of\n'freedom' is irrelevant to every process of thought. M. Bergson insists\non the irrelevance of spatial terms to psychic processes, but overlooks\nthe equal irrelevance of terms of preventable personal action.\n\nPrecisely because he is, so to say, the latest outcome of the universe,\nthe rational determinist will insist upon 'pulling his weight' and\nhaving things go, as far as may be, in the way he prefers. No one's\nright is better! And he can confidently claim that here, where he is\nphilosophically at one with the thorough-going theist, he has all the\npossible moral gain from his determinism without an iota of the theist's\nperplexity. That gain consists in the lead to mercy in human affairs.\nThe theist-determinist is certainly not, as some Christian rhetoricians\n(ignorant of Christian history) affirm all determinists must be, either\na coward or a licentious knave, in the ordinary sense. Augustine and\nLuther and Calvin and Knox were neither, though all four were sadly\nsinful men. But the theistic determinist is open always on the one hand\nto the paralysing thought that if he should err he is resisting God, and\non the other to the equally deadly instigation of the thought that those\nwho resist him are God's enemies. To escape both snares he must turn\nthorough pantheist=non-theist. And the upshot is that the theistic\ndeterminist is never merciful, whereas the rational determinist is at\nleast under a logical compulsion to be so, however he may resist or\ndivagate. He is free to defend himself, and to defend society; but in so\nfar as he hates and hurts he is illogical, and in so far as he makes\npunishment retaliation, or prevention punitive, he is either confounding\nhimself or setting lust against light.\n\nWere there no other betterment from the substitution of the non-theistic\nfor the theistic relation to ultimate problems, this might be held to\noutweigh all claims on the other side, to say nothing of the simple\nrationality of the negative solution. But that is, of course, in itself\ndecisive. The logically strongest form of the theistic case as against\nthe non-theist is that, even as he lives and moves in gravitation\nwithout any subjective consciousness of it, so he may be controlled in\nevery thought by a transcendent volition. But this argument, which\nexcludes M. Bergson's formula of our occasional 'freedom' of will,\nequally shelters determinism from the contention that we are 'conscious'\nof freedom of thought. Even as we are demonstrably conditioned by\ngravitation while unconscious of its control, we are demonstrably\nconditioned by our experience and structure as regards even our guesses.\nNeither the ignorant nor the ungifted man makes the valid new\nhypothesis.\n\nThere remain for use by the theist only the old reproaches that a\nnon-theistic philosophy is 'desolate,' 'negative,' 'materialistic,' and\nincapable of explaining the universe. The last is a mere _ignoratio\nelenchi_, for the very essence of the non-theistic challenge is that\nevery 'explanation of the universe' is an imposture, exposed as such\neither by its self-contradictions or by its evasions. The normal theist\neither bilks the problem of evil by avowing it to be a mystery--a thing\nhe cannot explain--or falls back on the alternative evasions that there\ncannot be good without evil (that is to say, that good needs evil, which\nis thus good) or that 'partial ill is universal good,' and that evil is\nthus _non-ens_--which again is a denial of any moral problem. To\ncomplain of 'negation' as such while making such negations as these is\nto be more entertaining than impressive.\n\nAnd to be told that, in putting aside these logomachies, he is depriving\nhimself of intellectual and moral comfort, is for the rationalist no\nperturbing experience. He is what he is because he knows the utter\ninanity of the theistic declamation about his putting in place of the\n'Immeasurable Divine Eye' a 'vast bottomless Eye-Socket'; knows that for\nthe vast mass of mankind the imagined Eye has been a menace of all their\nmyriad ills, that its levin slays them like flies, that the iron has\nentered uncounted millions of souls who daily prayed for divine succour.\nThe prate of his 'negation' is as childish as the complaint of the\navowal that we cannot reach the planet Jupiter, not to say the\nconstellation Hercules: he does but affirm the incontrovertible truth\nthat an infinite universe cannot be compassed by our thought, and that\nto assert its permeation by 'mind'--a finite process of perception and\ndiscrimination, verbally defined as transcending both--is to pay\nourselves with words. To the Berkeleyan formula that existence is only\nas perceived, and that without perception there can be no existence, he\nanswers, similarly, that the first proposition means only that we\nperceive what we perceive, and that the second is mere intellectual\nnullity, a verbal pretence to unthinkable knowledge. The further\nZenonian frivolity of the denial of an 'external world' needs from him\nno further comment than this, that in the terms of the argument\n'external' has no meaning, and the proposition, therefore, none either.\nIt may be left to the denier of existence 'outside consciousness' to\ntell us _where_ consciousness is. The inquiry may perhaps lead him to\nthe discovery that he, the professed foe of materialism, has been\nlimiting consciousness to the compass of the skull.\n\nThe ultimate claims of the theist to spiritual superiority and serenity\nare oddly bracketed with the charges of arrogance and Epicureanism\nconstantly made by him against his antagonist. All alike are irrelevant\nto the issue of truth; and all alike tell of other motives than those of\ntruth-seeking. Those other motives are substantially what our\ntheological ancestors called 'will-worship,' self-pleasing, the bias of\npre-supposition, the aversion to surrender. All theistic dialects alike\nsing the song of self-esteem. The spiritist pronounces his gainsayer\n'impercipient,' thus inexpensively cutting the knot of argument; and,\nhimself a wilful continuator of the thought-forms of the savage,\ndeclares himself to be transcending the earthiness of the sciences in\nvirtue of which he is civilised. All this is a poor way of proving\nserenity; as poor, at bottom, as the perpetual display of wrath at\ngainsaying by men who claim to have the backing of Omnipotence.\nConsciousness of intercourse with the supernatural has never ostensibly\navailed to give the common run of theists imperturbability in their\nintercourse with the naturalist.\n\nAnd if in the stress of controversy the rationalist should in turn prove\nhimself capable of perturbation, let him, avowing that he claims no\nsupernatural stay, at least plead that he sets up no intellectual\n'colour line,' and that his gospel is after all fraternal enough. Once\nmore, he does but ask the theist to take one more step in a criticism\nwhich he has already carried far, with small trouble to himself. Every\nreligion sets aside every other: the rationalist only sets aside one\nmore. Every theist has negated a million Gods save one: the rationalist\ndoes but negate the millionth. And in doing this, he is not committing\nthe verbal nullity of saying, There is no God--a formula never fathered\nby a considerate atheist. God, undefined,=_x_; and we do not say, There\nis no _x_. Of the defined God-idea, whichsoever, we demonstrate the\nuntenableness; but in giving the theist an inconceivable universe we\nsurely meet his appetite for the transcendent.\n\nRationalism, when all is said, is the undertaking, in George Eliot's\nphrase, to do without opium. And perhaps the shrewdest challenge to it\nis the denial that the average man can so abstain--a denial which may be\nbacked by the reminder that the framer of the phrase did not. A jurist\nonce cheerfully assured the present writer that the mass of men will\nnever do without alcohol and religion. He was not aware that he was\nadapting a Byronic blasphemy. It may be that in a world in which most\nmen chronically crave alternately stimulants and narcotics, he was in a\nmeasure right. But as one of his two necessaries is already under a\nwidening medical indictment and avoidance, it may be that the other will\nfare similarly. In any case, is not the ideal a worthy one, as ideals\ngo?\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[14] It is an orthodox writer who applies to this ratiocination the tag,\n_Credibile est quia ineptum est_, dismissing it as 'a blending of\nsceptical analysis with credulous assertion' (Rev. Dr. Mackintosh,\n_Hegel and Hegelianism_, p. 219).\n\n[15] Rev. Dr. R. Mackintosh, _Hegel and Hegelianism_, 1903, p. 216.\n\n\n\n\nSec. 9. IDEALS\n\n\nIdeals, obviously, are part--the best part--of our bias: to that\nadmission we may unhesitatingly revert. By his bias the rationalist can\nafford to be tried. Intellectually he makes truth his paramount\nconsideration, and morally he insists upon the same sincerity in things\nintellectual as men profess to practise in honourable intercourse. I\nhave heard a distinguished Christian scholar denounce these canons as\ncommanding such an outrage as telling a child of its mother's shame. The\ncharge is an illustration of the strange malice of which piety is\ncapable. No human being ever proposed to communicate all truth of any\nkind to children; and the limit to the gratuitous telling of wounding\ntruth is fixed by normal courtesy and sympathy as regards the sufferings\neven of adults. The charge is in fact one more illustration of the\nanti-veridical bias of pietism--the need to distort and pervert the case\nagainst the rationalist.\n\nAnd if pietism can thus distort the bearing of the intellectual canons\nof rationalism, much more habitually does it distort the specific\npurport of rationalist morals. The fact that naturalism implies\nutilitarianism is transformed into the proposition that utilitarianism\nmeans the subordination of all play of sympathy to an incessant calculus\nof profit. As we have seen, theism and Christianity alike do chronically\nsubordinate the veridical instinct--a moral instinct like another--to\nlower considerations of utility; and only too often in history do we see\nthem annulling the instincts of mercy and reciprocity by the law of\ndogma. Not by propounders of that test is the rationalist to be put to\nshame. The very basis of Christianity, in fine, is an other-world\nutilitarianism. 'What _profits_ it a man----?'\n\nUtilitarianism means for him, in brief, what it meant when it first took\nshape as a moral plea--the testing of traditional moral canons, and\ntheir annulment when they are seen to be mere survivals of barbarism,\nsanctioned only by custom and religion; never the substitution of a\ncalculus of utility for an accepted moral canon in every act of life.\nAny general moral rule rationally seen to be broadly utilitarian is\nthereby vindicated _qua_ rule; and to put its practice at the hazard of\nevery trying emergency would be to sin against the very principle of\nutility. For the rest, the rationalist has his moral bias like another;\nand in virtue of it, as animating rationalisers of various developments,\nhas been wrought the main part of the modern purification of working\nmorality, though the moral instinct in religious men has responded, and\nhas at times initiated reformation. It is left to the religionist to\nargue that a bias which has wrought for truth, justice, and mercy will\nsomehow fail to preserve other virtues. No reminiscence of the sexual\nhistory of Christian societies can restrain Christian advocates from\nimputing to the spirit of reason a tendency to promote promiscuity in\nthe sex relation and thus to overthrow 'the family.' Holding as they do\nthat the family is the keystone of society and civilisation, they in\neffect argue that the practice of rational calculation of means and ends\nwill destroy both. Pessimism could no further go; and if this be not the\nheight of pessimism it is a stress of false-witness which puts the\naccuser outside the pale of controversy. As an imputation upon known\nrationalists in general the theorem is simply false. The systematic\nrevival of Aryan polygamy has been a religious process; and the freest\npractitioners of sexual choice among reasoning unbelievers, the Russian\nNihilists, have been notoriously monogynous.\n\nIt may be hoped that we shall in future hear less and less in these\nmatters of the extremities of orthodox malice or misgiving, as we hear\nless and less of the old plea that whereas a bad believer may be held\nin moral check by his religious fears, a bad unbeliever will fear only\nthe police. The statistics of the jails do not encourage that line of\napologetics; and the records of the Society for the Prevention of\nCruelty to Children do not go to show either that rationalism makes\nparents cruel or that religion keeps them kind. The plain truth is that\nupon bad bias law is the main check; and that the most vaunted religious\nmethods of developing the good bias of the weak have latterly been\nsystematically supplemented, in the organisation, for instance, of the\nSalvation Army so called, by secular methods which are the avowal of the\nfinal and general futility of the others.\n\nIn no other direction are the moral ideals of rationalism less fully\nvindicated by the movement of civilisation. The humane and scientific\ntreatment of criminals has actually been antagonised, in the name of the\nChristian doctrine of sin, from the ranks of the Howard Society,\nestablished to promote such humane treatment. Rationalism can no other:\nreligion seems willing to leave it the credit. Above all, the great\ncause of Peace on earth--the very motto (a mistranslation, as it\nhappens) cited as that of nascent Christianity--visibly depends more\nand more on the spread of rational calculation, the spirit of reason,\nrather than on that of faith, however faithfully many a good Christian\ncontinues to plead for it. There is no Peace Church: even Quakerism has\nlatterly had its war-mongers; and there is no record in history that the\ndoctrine of the Fatherhood of God ever withheld men from fratricidal\nwar.\n\nWe shall still hear, it may be, that the intellectual pride of\nrationalism is in tendency anti-democratic; Gibbon and Hume being cited\nas cases in point. And the rationalist democrat, shunning the lead of\nhis antagonist to panacea-mongering, may here at once--or once\nmore--confess that the spirit of reason in things intellectual is no\nguarantee for the immediate elimination of egoism in human relations.\nChristianity has claimed to be such a guarantee--with the results we\nknow. But it is flatly inconceivable that the spirit which challenges\nall authority and anomaly in doctrine can tend to conserve either\ntyranny or social and political inequality. The very apologists who make\nthe charge are the successors and coadjutors of those who have charged\nupon irreligious philosophy the generating of the French Revolution.\nAnti-democratic rationalists there will be, as there have been; but for\nevery one such there are a hundred of the contrary ideal; and it is not\nin conservative parties that they are found to avow themselves. For\nrationalism, on the side of thought, must forever mean liberty,\nequality, fraternity, 'the giving and receiving of reasons,' the\ncomplete reciprocity of judgment. To all races, all castes, it makes the\nsame appeal, being as universalist as science, naming no master,\nproffering no ritual, holding out no threat. The rationalist, as such,\ncan have no part in the errant Darwinism which would conserve struggle\nbecause struggle _has_ yielded progress; much less in the\npseudo-Darwinism which would further degrade backward races because they\nhave been ill-placed. Of race-hatred he cannot be guilty without\ninfidelity to his first principles.\n\nAnd if all this be termed vaunting, the objector may, perhaps, be\nplacated by the repeated avowal that neither is rationalism proclaimed\nto be a wholly new way for the nations, nor is the rationalist as such\nacclaimed as the monopolist of good. He respectfully urges upon the best\nand ablest followers of other flags that under his they will not\ndeteriorate or be less cherished; that their gifts are precious in his\neyes; that he wants their collaboration for humanity's sake. His\npanegyric of Reason is but the praise of what is wisest and best in man:\nhis 'ism' is the concern to put off dead husks of opinion, to lift all\nlife to the plane of light. The religionist may, if he must, come over\nwith permission to call the cultus of truth and sanity a religion: some\nthere are who suppose themselves to solve the dispute by that means, as\nSpencer thought to solve it by inviting Science and Religion to join\nhands in an avowal of a common ignorance. Such eirenicons do not seem\nwidely acceptable: it is really better to let words keep their historic\nmeanings than wilfully to change their values.\n\nBut if the question be whether rationalism is a creed to live by, an\nideal to live by, let these pages be taken as giving part of the answer.\n\n\nPrinted by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh\nUniversity Press","title":"Rationalism","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":17904}