第177章 Chapter VI(41)

He illustrates the case by analogies with other bodies,such as the Anglican Church.(271)But why stop there?How did the first beliefs aria from which the full theological doctrine expanded?

Newman again suggests the answer.They arise from the 'natural religions'or superstitions,many of which were admittedly embodied in the Church.(272)We have only to carry out his view logically,and the 'supernatural'element becomes needless.

Christian and Hebrew legends take their place in the general process of human thought,and the assertion of the ultimate authority of one particular body is simply the description of the arbitrary claims which it developed under natural conditions.If we keep the earth in the centre of our system,we require a supernatural force to make the sun revolve.Let things fall into their right order and all becomes harmonious.

The positions thus occupied by the leading writers of the time indicate the true issues.The 'dogmatists,'the 'liberals,'and the 'Utilitarians'are virtually agreed upon one point.The Paley theology was in a hopeless position.Protestantism could only lead to infidelity.The arguments from design and from miracles are radically incoherent.They confuse a scientific with a philosophical argument,and cannot lead legitimately to proving the existence of a supreme or moral ruler of the universe.While accepting scientific methods they are radically opposed to scientific results,because they tend to prove intervention instead of order,and disappear as scientific knowledge extends.

Mill's attempt to suggest some kind of tentative and conjectural theology was obviously hopeless,and interesting only as showing his sense of the need of some kind of religion which would embody high ethical ideals and stimulate the purest emotions.Empiricism was destructive of the historical creeds,but could not of itself supply the place of the old faiths.

Here then we come to the great problems by which men are still perplexed.The Utilitarian,which is the scientific view,lays down an unassailable truth.A religious creed,so far as it is a statement of fact,must state facts truly,and be in conformity with the results of scientific teaching.Moreover,no theology can be legitimately constructed upon this basis.The gods become figments;and theology is relegated to the region of the unknowable.If that be the whole truth,religious creeds are destined to disappear as knowledge is extended and organised systematically.'Philip Beauchamp,gives the true Utilitarian position.Religion,however,as J.S.Mill felt,is a name for something far wider.It means a philosophy and a poetry;a statement of the conceptions which men have formed of the universe,of the emotions with which they regard it,and of the ethical conceptions which emerge.It has played,as it still continues to play,a vitally important function in human life,which is independent of the particular statements of fact embodied in the historical creed.The 'mystical'doctrine,represented by Carlyle,corresponds to this element of religion.

Men will always require some religion if religion corresponds not simply to their knowledge,but to the whole impression made upon feeling and thinking beings by the world in which they live.The condition remains that the conceptions must conform to the facts;our imagination and our desires must not be allowed to override our experience;or our philosophy to construct the universe out of a priori guesses.What doctrine can be developed upon those terms,whether a 'religion of humanity'in some shape be possible,is still an open question.To the dogmatist this view seemed to be equivalent to the simple evaporation of all religion into mere vague emotional mist.To him a religion appeared essentially as a system of discipline or a great social organism,governing men's passions and providing them with a cult and a concrete vision of the universe.The difficulty is that such a creed cannot be really deduced from a general philosophy.The dogma has to be based upon 'authority,'instead of basing the authority upon proof That is a radically incoherent position,and leads to the acceptance of the dogmas and traditions which have become essentially incredible,and to a hopeless conflict with science.To found a religion which shall be compatible with all known truth,which shall satisfy the imagination and the emotions,and which shall discharge the functions hitherto assigned to the churches,is a problem for the future.I must be content with this attempt to indicate what was the relation to it of the Utilitarian position.

NOTES:

1.Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of the Principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings was first published in 1865.I refer to the fourth edition (1872).The book was more changed than any of Mill's other writings in consequence of the insertion of replies to various criticisms.A list of those replies is given in the preface to the third and fourth editions.The essays on 'Religion'appeared in 1874.

2.See Veitch's Life of Hamilton (1869),and an article by Hamilton's daughter in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

3.A letter from Hamilton to Dr Parr in 1820(Parr's Works,vii,194-202),on occasion of the contest at Edinburgh,gives an account of his studies.He was personally unknown to Dugald Stewart,to whom he desires Parr to write a letter upon the advantages of studying ancient philosophy,to be shown to the Town Council (who then elected the professor).Hamilton says that he took up nearly all Aristotle,most of Plato,and of Cicero's philosophical works;that he had read many Greek commentators upon Plato and Aristotle and that many of his books were declared to be too metaphysical for the schools and were forbidden to be taken up again.Veitch gives a similar account.

4.Napier's Correspondence,p.70.