[NatTheo] The Voices of Babel

1900 | John Gerard

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

The Voices of Babel
John Gerard S.J.

IF one thing should be clearer than another to students of modern scientific literature, it is that the philosophers of our generation are in process of building an edifice more enduring than bronze, and more lofty, not only than the ancient pyramids of kings, but than anything that men or demigods ever yet contrived to rear upon the earth. The unceasing discoveries of science, not only give us knowledge of the facts of Nature, but, cemented and compacted by exact thought, grow into a stately pile which has already pierced the clouds and vapours hitherto bounding mortal vision, and shown us what is above them, or, more truly, what is not. For the great net result of discovery in these sublime regions is assuredly this, that they are empty and void, containing nothing of all that with which human ignorance has credited them hitherto. All proves to be as unsubstantial as the baseless fabric of a dream, except only the tower of science, and the solid earth of material facts whereon its base reposes. There is no God in sight beyond, no power, no will, no mind. Heaven has been taken by storm, in the sense that the light of knowledge has been cast into its recesses, and they have been found to be empty; and men need therefore trouble themselves no more about anything there, or about anything that professes to issue thence.

The materialist assures us, looking down to the base on which material science rests, that matter is all, and all is matter. In it, says Professor Tyndall, "we discern the promise and potentiality of all terrestrial life. We claim, and we shall wrest from theology, the entire domain of cosmological theory. The doctrine of evolution derives man, in his totality, from the interaction of organism and environment through countless ages past." "Thought," says Moleschott, "is a movement of matter." Man is therefore only a machine so constructed as to think, and in the mechanics of thought the chief factor is phosphorus; "without phosphorus, no thought." From this, of course, it follows that we are, as Professor Huxley has hinted, "but the cunningest of Nature's clocks," and, if so, we need not trouble ourselves about any rule of action, for we can no more help doing what we do, than a clock can help striking.

But no sooner is the materialistic creed enunciated, than it is drowned in a tumult of scientific indignation. It is a doctrine, Mr. Leslie Stephen tells us, already dead and buried, and "it has died because it is too absurd a doctrine even for philosophers. It is as easy as it is edifying to expose materialism. As Comte says, it is the most illogical form of metaphysics." Professor Huxley, though he sails very near the wind in its regard, is resolved to find a way to avoid falling into a doctrine of which, he tells us, "I believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error." "Utter materialism and necessarianism," according to the same authority, is "crass"; it "may paralyze the energies, and destroy the beauties of a life." Professor Clifford pronounces it, though resting on high authority, to be a "singular" doctrine, "founded on confusion of thought." Mr. Leslie Stephen goes on to stigmatize it as a "degrading" doctrine which "men of science have abandoned as completely as metaphysicians." He declares that "to say that intellect is made up of phosphates is, not so much error, as sheer nonsense."

Materialism, then, is clearly naught according to scientific canons. Our religion, therefore, if religion we must have, should consist in respecting and acting on those principles which mankind have, somehow or other, come to acknowledge. This is the simple creed formulated by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. "If," he says, "human life is in the course of being fully described by science, I do not see what materials there are for any religion, or indeed what would be the use of one, or why it is wanted. We can get on very well without one, for though the view of life which science is opening to us gives us nothing to worship, it gives us an infinity of things to enjoy. The world seems to me a very good one, if it would only last; love, friendship, ambition, science, literature, art, politics, commerce, professions, trades, and a thousand other things will go on equally well, as far as I can see, whether there is or is not a God."

But this simple creed finds scant favour in other well-informed quarters: in fact its simplicity is not precisely considered to constitute a merit. No, no! theology, to be sure, is gone: a clean sweep has been made of that; but Mr. Harrison is quite positive that religion must remain: we must have an object towards which to direct our love and our duty, and a sense of duty to make us do it. Mr. Spencer concurs. Mr. Spencer is as firm as Mr. Harrison, that religion there must be, and that it is the highest outcome of development.

Of like mind is Professor Clifford. All religions hitherto existent, have, it is true, been, to his mind, as bad as can be; so bad that they must be spoken of in whatever terms seem most likely to pain and shock their adherents. But for all that, says he, "there are forms of religious emotion which do not thus undermine the conscience," and such a form is "Cosmic Emotion."

But Mr. Harrison will not stand this; it is flat pantheism. For Cosmic Emotion means awe, and delight, and poetic rapture, in view of the universe as such, of the starry heavens, the clouds, the ocean, the alps. And how can this be religion unless the universe be God? But to say that everything is God is just as absurd as to say that everything is matter. To say that everything is God is to say that right and wrong are equally Divine, that "being and not being are identical, and that the identity of being consists in its being the union of two contradictories." "If," he continues, "God and universe are identical expressions, we had better drop one of them. Let us, in the name of sense, get rid of these big, vague words, and having got rid of God and soul, as a verbal spiritualism, let us say simply things, and have the courage of our opinions, and boldly profess as our creed, 'I believe in nothing except in things in general!'"

So far, therefore, it would appear that we have not got far forward in our quest: but then we have not yet given ear to the great upsetter of theologies, Mr. Spencer. He tells us in effect that others miss the mark, because they do not look with the philosophic eye, and do not look in the right direction: they do not duly explore the new region into which science has lifted us. It contains nothing, to be sure, which we know, or can know: but what then? It follows that it contains what we know not and can never know: the great Unknowable. This must be the true object of evolved worship; in it we shall find all that we require: "An Infinite, Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." But we are not to mistake him: it is not another name for God.

Mr. Harrison clearly conceives this to be of all ridiculous proposals by far the most ridiculous. It can at best, he declares, give us a "Ghost of Religion." And as to its object: why the Unknowable? And why spell it with a big U? If you know nothing about it, how do you know it is unknowable? And how that it is infinite, eternal, or an energy, not energies? Write it with a small letter, therefore, and call it the unknown. But, however it be spelled, Mr. Harrison is quite certain that it will never do for a god; and he sets to work with infinite gusto to hew in pieces Mr. Spencer's idol. "To make a religion out of the Unknowable," he says, "is far more extravagant than to make it out of the Equator, or the Binomial Theorem." "If religion there is still to be, it cannot be found in this No-man's land and know-nothing creed". Its creed, "summed up in one dogma--The Unknowable is everywhere, and Evolution is its prophet" and its potency to do religious work he thus illustrates: "A child comes up to our Evolutionist friend, looks up in his wise and meditative face, and says: 'O wise and great master! what is religion?' And he tells that child: 'It is the presence of the Unknowable.' 'But what,' asks the child, 'am I to believe about it?' 'Believe that you can never know anything about it.' 'But how am I to learn to do my duty?' Oh, for duty you must turn to the known--to moral and social science.'"

Sir James Stephen joins in the onslaught with equal zest. "In fact," he says, "Mr. Spencer's conclusion appears to me to have no meaning at all. If this is the prospect before religion, it would surely be simpler to say that the prospect before it is that of extinction. But if this conclusion is reached, why not say so plainly?" But, as we have seen, this is just the conclusion that must not be reached. Religion there must be, and as Mr. Spencer cleared the ground of theology, so Mr. Harrison has cleared it of all rival philosophic systems, including Mr. Spencer's own.

All have erred fundamentally, he tells us, who do not look for a basis at once solid and vital whereon to build. Science alone can give us solidity, but only one branch of science can give vitality besides. "Religion is not a thing of star-gazing and staring, but of life and action." Where are we to find a basis for such a religion as will do all this? Theology is out of the question, for, ex hypothesi, it has been finally disposed of by Mr. Spencer. We are confined to science, and, as already intimated, amongst the objects whereof science treats, there is but one that can awaken in us any feeling that prompts to action. This solitary object is man: it follows that man must be the object of rational religious emotion, and that the religion of science must be that founded by M. Comte: the Religion of Humanity, or Positivism.

"The purpose of the Positive Scheme," Mr. Harrison tells us, "is to satisfy rational people that, though the ecstatic 'worship' of supernatural divinities has come to an end, intelligent love and respect for our human brotherhood will help us to do our duty in life. In plain words, the Religion of Humanity means recognizing your duty to your fellow-men on human grounds." In this we find a motive power sufficient to make us live well, a stimulus made more active when we cast a respectful glance at the more bright particular stars of our race who have so lived in the Past--the saints of the Positivist Calendar. Such, in outline, is Mr. Harrison's position. His statement has the merit of being perfectly clear and intelligible : but alas! alas! the clearer he makes it, the more does it excite the scorn and contradiction of his philosophic friends: nay, they find in it every one of those fatal flaws he has taught them to see in other systems, aggravated by not a few peculiar to itself.

Says Sir James Stephen, "Is not Mr. Harrison's own creed open to every objection which he urges against Mr. Spencer's? Humanity with a capital H, is neither better nor worse fitted to be a god, than the Unknowable, with a capital U." Mr. Spencer has a chapter of faults equally grave to urge against it. In the first place, Positivism is essentially unphilosophic; it contradicts the law of evolution: it is a "Retrogressive Religion." Its unphilosophic character is manifest in its absurd respect for authority. Moveover Mr. Spencer discovers in it precisely the same absurdity which Mr. Harrison found in Pantheism: it tries to blend contradictories, in ranking equally amongst its saints men who hated each other fiercely and each other's principles, and who set a diametrically opposite example to the world--Frederick the Great and St. Paul, Louis the Eleventh and Washington, Locke, Cyrus, and Fenelon, to say nothing of Hercules and Orpheus. Surprise is the feeling awakened in Mr. Spencer on observing the incongruity between the astounding claims made by the propounder of this new creed, and the great intelligence of disciples whose faith "appears proof against the shock which these astounding claims produce on ordinary minds."

Professor Huxley, too, fails to be impressed either with the creed or its founder. He acknowledges that he found M. Comte potent in destruction, but thus continues: "Great, however, was my perplexity, not to say disappointment, as I followed the progress of this 'mighty son of earth' in his work of reconstruction. Undoubtedly Dieu disappeared, but the Nouveau Grand-Etre Supreme, a gigantic fetish, turned out brand-new by M. Comte's own hands, reigned in His stead. Roi also was not heard of, but in his place I found a minutely-defined social organization which, if it ever came into practice, would exert a despotic authority such as no sultan has rivalled and no Puritan presbytery, in its palmiest days, could hope to excel. While as for the culte systematique de l'Humanite, I, in my blindness, could not distinguish it from sheer Popery, with M. Comte in the chair of St. Peter and most of the names of the saints changed." Professor Huxley, moreover, considers M. Comte a singularly unfortunate head for a scientific religion: "that part of M. Comte's writings which deals with the philosophy of physical science appeared to me to possess singularly little value, and to show that he had but the most superficial and merely second-hand knowledge of most branches."

But it is for the object of devotion that the full vials of scorn are reserved. "The Great Being Humanity," says Mr. Spencer, has done nothing for us, and how could it? Look at the common herd of unphilosophic men and see what a sorry lot they are. "Even if, instead of being the dull, leaden-hued thing it is, the bubble Humanity had reached that stage of iridescence of which, happily, a high sample of a man or a woman sometimes shows us a beginning, it would still owe whatever there was in it of beauty to that Infinite Eternal Energy, out of which Humanity has quite recently emerged, and into which it must in course of time subside." "I am told," he continues, "that by certain of M. Comte's disciples... prayer is addressed to 'holy' Humanity. Had I to choose an epithet, I think 'holy' is about the last which would occur to me." Still less would the epithet "holy" suggest itself to Sir James Stephen. "Mankind," he exclaims, "is the object of our worship--mankind; a stupid, ignorant, half-beast of a creature, For my part, I would as soon worship the ugliest idol in India."

There is a game known to unphilosophic children as Blindman's Buff. In it all have full use of their eyes, excepting him on whom for the moment devolves the office of seeking. Would it not rather appear as if the Fates, in sportive mood, had turned the game of our philosophers into something of the kind? They are marvellously keen-sighted, none keener, so long as they have but to worry and harass the unfortunate groper after truth, and they never fail to find the exact right spot on which to pummel him. But the moment their own turn comes to set out on the quest, as if they had donned the fatal bandage, they are inevitably delivered over helpless to their tormentors.

It would therefore seem that the result of our quest is not very brilliant, and that having gone out for wool we are likely to come home shorn to the quick, stripped, not only of theology, but of the comforts of philosophy as well. But of our pentathlon of rival systems, which would appear to exhaust the possibilities, can any one outlive the thrust of the poisoned rapier that we have seen pass from hand to hand in the course of the struggle? If these be indeed the clear thinkers we have been taught to take them for, is it not most disquieting to have a verdict of four to one against every single proposal that has been put forward?

If any positive verdict be at all within our reach, it must certainly be arrived at by a process similar to that adopted by the Greeks when they wished to decide who had been the hero of Salamis. Each of the captains who had to vote put himself first, but they unanimously put Themistocles second. And in our inquiry it is to be observed that while none of the disputants will grant any status at all to any philosophic groundwork of religion, except his own peculiar vanity, they acknowledge that the old belief had after all some sort of merit. It was false, to be sure on that they are agreed but it could and did to some extent influence the lives of men; and was therefore far better for its purpose than the substitutes proposed by rival sages, which can never do anything of the kind.

Thus Professor Clifford, though as a rule anything connected with the name of God produces upon him much the same effect as we read of in the case of the young man "whom immediately the spirit troubled, and being thrown down he rolled about foaming," in a passage unusually plain and clear "fully admits" that the theistic hypothesis is in itself "a reasonable hypothesis, and an explanation of the facts," which is a great deal more than he will say for "that singular materialism of high authority and recent date," which he appears to consider the only possible philosophical rival of his own creed.

So Mr. Harrison for his part, sticking stoutly to his text that "the essence of religion is, not to answer a question, but to govern and unite bodies of men," and while positively certain that neither the cultus of the Unknowable nor Cosmic Emotion will ever do this for one instant, yet acknowledges that "theologies long did it," did it "for twenty or thirty centuries," and did it so well that "the hallowed name of religion has meant in a thousand languages man's deepest convictions, his surest hopes, the most sacred yearnings of his heart, that which can bind in brotherhood generations of men, comfort the fatherless and the widow, uphold the martyr at the stake, and the hero in his long battle." This is surely pretty well, and it would seem that on its own principles Positivism should include in its objects of veneration the agent which has done all this for humanity; for undoubtedly theology has thus, by Mr. Harrison's showing, done a great deal more for mankind than any individual saint of the Positivist calendar.

When declaiming against Mr. Spencer's Unknowable, and recounting all that it would have to do in order to supply the void left in human needs by the destruction of faith, Harrison emphatically tells us that men demand something to worship. This cannot be the Unknowable: but he presently adds that neither is it Humanity. "We do not ask anyone to worship Humanity." "Humanity is neither the shadow of God, nor the substitute for God, nor has it any analogy with God." Can he be serious, then, in proposing to make it take the place of God, and in expecting it to fill the void which he himself so eloquently described as the result of the disappearance of belief in God?

Sir James Stephen, for once, fully agrees with Mr. Harrison about Humanity. It certainly is not an object of worship, and therefore Sir James infers that no more than Cosmic Emotion or the cult of the Unknowable will it have the slightest chance of doing any sort of work at all. He does not, as we have heard, himself see the need of any religion at all, but he takes advantage of the "originality" of this position to assure all and sundry of his philosophic friends that if religion there is to be they will find none to work at all but Christianity. It has worked so long, precisely because it differs in every essential respect from its proposed substitutes. Unlike the creeds of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison, it deals with the Personal, not the Abstract, with the Known, not the Unknown. Jesus Christ, says he, has reigned so long, "the object of passionate devotion and enthusiasm" to so great a multitude of all times and all lands, only because He has been believed to be living, and to possess authority which His acts had proved to be Divine. All who set about to found a new religion, without providing themselves with some sort of credentials to the same effect, are foredoomed to failure; and Sir James points the moral by the well-known story of Talleyrand, who, when consulted by a Frenchman as to the best mode of getting a new creed afloat, recommended him to try the effect of being crucified and rising again in three days.

The practical conclusions, then, to be gathered from this war of words would seem to reduce themselves to two. Man requires a religion for a special work; and this special work can as a matter of fact be done only by a theology. At any rate, when we thus see theology stamped, at the hands of its bitterest enemies, with what looks so strangely like a note of truth, we must needs be thrown back on our starting-point, and ask ourselves whether it be not just possible that, after all, the walls are still standing whereof this not altogether harmonious blare of trumpets has announced the overthrow.

And still confining our attention to the testimony of our advanced thinkers, without any addition of our own, it is, to say the least, instructive to observe that, while the work of destroying theology has been done by pure exercise of reasoning, and while our friends think a great deal on one another's reasoning power so long as it is in agreement with themselves, they find no absurdities too great for it to perpetrate, so soon as they begin to differ.

Mr. Spencer, for example, to whom, according to Mr. Harrison, belongs the chief credit of having cleared out Olympus, wins this praise by an essay which, while in accordance with Mr. Harrison's views, is described as " packed with thought to a degree unusual even with Mr. Herbert Spencer," as a "memorable essay" wherein the evolutionary creed is formulated "with a definiteness such as it never wore before," and theology receives a blow that is absolutely "final." But in the self-same essay, and indeed in that part of it which is its main purport, having the misfortune to disagree with Mr. Harrison, Mr. Spencer, we are assured, proceeds to fall into "a paradox as memorable as any in the annals of the human mind," to talk "a theologico-metaphysico jargon," and to take refuge from an awkward dilemma by a mere rhetorician's artifice. Moreover he falls into "the slip slop of theologians"; he asks us to take things as "proved" on the strength of "a pile of clippings made to order"; he makes singular slips in logic; he has fallen at various times into astounding paradoxes, which Mr. Harrison respects him too much to recall; and finally he is warned, great philosopher that he is, "that philosophers who live, not so much in glass houses, as in very crystal palaces of their own imagination, should give up the pastime of throwing stones at their neighbours' constructions."

It is undoubtedly very sad to find an apostle of the understanding doing all this sort of thing; but if we turn from Mr. Harrison's to Sir James Stephen's account of the matter, it looks no better. To him the evidence for Mr. Spencer's fundamental theory seems weak; he reminds Sir James of the blind heathen derided by Isaias, "He works his words about this way and that, he accounts with part for ghosts and dreams, and the residue thereof he maketh a god, and saith Aha, I am wise, I have seen the truth." While Mr. Harrison, who can generally be trusted to give as good as he gets, sets down Sir James' utterances about Humanity as "the ravings of Timon of Athens."

Finally, to explain in one word the vagaries of his antagonists, Mr. Harrison tells us that they are "merely philosophers attacking an opponent."

Just so! Philosophers attacking an opponent are evidently not to be trusted for philosophy. It would appear to be the part of wisdom not to take on faith, bitter opponents as they are, their own assertion that belief in God has received its death-blow at their hands. We must first examine their reasoning, and, which is far more, must make sure that we understand it. It may be that we shall fail to make head or tail of it; and should we be lucky enough to discover what it means, it is not impossible that we shall yet find in it some of those fatal flaws which in one another's case they have shown us in such profusion.

In a word, to confine ourselves to what we have heard, does it not seem to ordinary common sense, that, on their own showing, our philosophic thinkers, who would find in mere human science an object to satisfy the heart of man, are engaged in a Danaid's task of filling sieves with water, a task at which all the wit of man may labour everlastingly in vain? Does it not appear that we may sum up the matter in the words of a thinker at least as clear as any to whom we have been listening, when he speaks of "the impatience I feel at able men daring to put out for our acceptance theories so hollow and absurd." So speaks Cardinal Newman, and, surely, by his mouth speaks common sense.

From Essays on Un-Natural History (1900) by Rev. John Gerard S.J.
Condensed and edited by ECO.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

1. Let us not suppose that deniers of design, teleology, and the metaphysics of natural theology have an easy time of it, or are without massive philosophic troubles of their own.

2. Horatio Newman (Scopes trial evolutionist) said: "We teachers of evolution in the colleges have no sinister designs upon the religious faith of our students." But we see that, as a matter of historical fact, this completely false. Many evolutionary prophets did have designs on the relgious faith of the people and, as did the characters in Gerard's essay, they made that absolutely clear. Gerard's essay scratches the surface of a powerful current in British thought: philosophers disseminating loads of scientifically-sanctioned anti-religious propaganda by playing the Scientist card for all it was worth, while building new (and absurd) scientific religions for us to believe in. We can add a few more names to those Gerard mentioned: Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Julian Huxley.

3. Is there a teleology-denying philosophy which is consistent, not prima facie absurd, in accord with reason and experience, and capable of withstanding moderate scrutiny without falling to pieces?

4. The characters mentioned in this essay unwillingly bring up the point that there is something in man that can only be satisfied by God. This is a significant theme in Natural Theology: it leads to an important body of arguments. We will get around to them.

5. Credit for the 'destruction' of theology does not solely belong to these science-pounding philosophers: some credit is also due to the self-loathing 19th century expositors of Natural Theology, be they Anglican or non-denomenationals or nebulous theists or whatnot. We will return to this point in the future.

6. A comment on 19th century British idealists, who seem (to me at least) hardly distinguishable from 19th century British materialists. From Joyce's Natural Theology (chapter 15):

The idealism which has won such a hold upon English speculation owes all its fundamental positions to the German philosopher Hegel... English idealists are, further, hampered by a prejudice from which none amongst them seems to be free, to the effect that no other philosophy is possible save one framed on monist principles. They mention creationist systems, not to refute them, but merely to dismiss them as 'precritical,' 'mediaeval,' 'having no place either in serious thinking or in genuine religion,' etc., etc. Thus Professor Pringle-Pattison [in The Idea of God], speaking of God viewed as an absolute Creator, writes: "This solitary ante-mundane figure is the residuum of a primitive and pictoral fashion of thinking, a magnified man, but rarified to bare mind." This attitude is part and parcel of that strange but deeply-rooted conviction that the centuries during which intellectual life was most active in every university of Western Europe, were dark ages, wholly barren in speculative thought: that they may safely be dismissed without the trouble of studying their productions or even asking what they were. It is needless to say that such a prejudice can only be detrimental to those who allow themselves to entertain it... [scholastic philosophy] was no 'residuum of a primitive and pictoral manner of thinking,' but a solidly constructed metaphysical system, grounding its solutions on a firm base of reasoning, a system consistent alike with itself and with the data of experience. It would be difficult to say as much for idealism... No one who had any acquaintance with the Scholastic metaphysics, even though he might not adopt the system, could maintain that creationism is a wholly unphilosophical conception, having "no place in serious thinking."

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Natural Theology Series
Natural Theology, Design, Teleology, and Metaphysics

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Selections scavenged from the oblivion of old and forgotten books.
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01 Argyll - Man as the Representative of the Supernatural

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[LiteKeeper]

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[Fichori]

"There is no Potter," said one clay pot to another. "We just oozed up out of the ground and the burning heat of the sun dried us in this shape."

"Where did our pretty painted patterns come from?" asked the other clay pot.

"Oh, those," replied the first clay pot, "Those are just naturally occurring pigments."

I have come to believe that a certain percentage of the worlds population are completely irrational.

And they all grow up to become 'scientists'.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Romans 1:22-23