SCIENCE AND
:HRISTIAN TRADITION
ESSAYS
BY
THOMAS H. HUXLEY
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1896
Q,^1
j ,
^ u tJiorized Edition.
PKEFACE
"FoR close upon forty years I have been writing with one
purpose ; from time to time, I have fought for that which seemed
to me the truth, perhaps still more, against that which I have
thought error ; and, in this way, I have reached, indeed over-
stepped, the threshold of old age. There, every earnest man
has to listen to the voice within : ' Give an account of thy
stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.'
" That I have been an unjust steward my conscience does not
bear witness. At times blundering, at times negligent, Heaven
knows : but, on the whole, I have done that which I felt able
and called upon to do ; and I have done it without looking to
the right or to the left ; seeking no man's favour, fearing no
man's disfavour.
" But what is it that I have been doing ? In the end one's
conceptions should form a whole, though only parts may
have found utterance, as occasion arose ; now do these exhibit
harmony and mutual connexion ? In one's zeal much of the old
gets broken to pieces ; but has one made ready something new,
fit to be set in the place of the old ?
"That they merely destroy without reconstructing, is the
especial charge, with which those who work in this direction
are constantly reproached. In a certain sense I do not defend
myself against the charge ; but I deny that any reproach is
deserved.
"I have never proposed to myself to begin outward construc-
tion ; because I do not believe that the time has come for it.
Our present business is with inward preparation, especially the
85676
vi PREFACE
preparation of those who have ceased to be content with the
old, and find no satisfaction in half measures. I have wished,
and I still wish, to disturb no man's peace of mind, no man's
beliefs ; but only to point out to those in whom they are
already shattered, the direction in which, in my conviction,
firmer ground lies. " l
So wrote one of the protagonists of the New
Reformation — and a well-abused man if ever
there was one — a score of years since, in the re-
markable book in which he discusses the negative
and the positive results of the rigorous application
of scientific method to the investigation of the
higher problems of human life.
Recent experience leads me to imagine that
there may be a good many countrymen of my
own, even at this time, to whom it may be profit-
able to read, mark and inwardly digest, the
weighty words of the author of that " Leben Jesu,"
which, half a century ago, stirred the religious
world so seriously that it has never settled down
again quite on the old foundations ; indeed, some
think it never will. I have a personal interest in
the carrying out of the recommendation I venture
to make. It may enable many worthy persons, in
whose estimation I should really be glad to stand
higher than I do, to become aware of the possibility
that my motives in writing the essays, contained
in this and the preceding volume, were not exactly
those that they ascribe to me.
1 D. F. Strauss, Der aUe und der neue Glaube (1872), pp. 9 10.
PREFACE Vli
I too have reached the term at which the still,
small voice, more audible than any other to the
dulled ear of age, makes its demand ; and I have
found that it is of no sort of use to try to cook the
accounts rendered. Nevertheless, I distinctly de-
cline to admit some of the items charged ; more
particularly that of having " gone oat of my way "
to attack the Bible ; and I as steadfastly deny
that " hatred of Christianity " is a feeling with
which I have any acquaintance. There are very
few things which I find it permissible to hate ; and
though, it may be, that some of the organisations,
which arrogate to themselves the Christian name,
have richly earned a place in the category of
hateful things, that ought to have nothing to do
with one's estimation of the religion, which they
have perverted and disfigured out of all likeness
to the original.
The simple fact is that, as I have already more
than once hinted, my story is that of the wolf and
the lamb over again. ' I have never " gone out of
my way " to attack the Bible, or anything else :
it was the dominant ecclesiasticism of my early
days, which, as I believe, without any warrant
from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.
I had set out on a journey, with no other
purpose than that of exploring a certain province
of natural knowledge ; I strayed no hair's breadth
from the course which it was my right and my
duty to pursue ; and yet I found that, whatever
V1U PREFACE
route I took, before long, I came to a tall and
formidable-looking fence. Confident as I might
be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible
right of way, before me stood the thorny
barrier with its comminatory notice-board — " No
Thoroughfare. By order. Moses." There seemed
no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping
round, as I saw some do, attract me. True there
was no longer any cause to fear the spring guns
and man-traps set by former lords of the manor ;
but one is apt to get very dirty going on all-fours.
The only alternatives were either to give up my
journey — which I was not minded to do — or to
break the fence down and go through it.
Now I was and ana, by nature, a law-abiding
person, ready and willing to submit to all legiti-
mate authority. But I also had and have a
rooted conviction, that reasonable assurance of
the legitimacy should precede the submission ; so
I made it my business to look up the manorial
title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical
"Moses" to exercise a control over the operations
of the reasoning faculty in the search after truth,
thirty centuries after his age, might be justifiable ;
but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justifi-
cation of claims so large required careful scrutiny.
Singular discoveries rewarded my industry.
The ecclesiastical " Moses " proved to be a mere
traditional mask, behind which, no doubt, lay the
features of the historical Moses— just as many a
PREFACE ix
mediaeval fresco has been hidden by the whitewash
of Georgian churchwardens. And as the aesthetic
rector too often scrapes away the defacement, only
to find blurred, parti-coloured patches, in which the
original design is no longer to be traced ; so, when
the successive layers of Jewish and Christian tra-
ditional pigment, laid on, at intervals, for near
three thousand years, had been removed, by even
the tenderest critical operations, there was not
much to be discerned of the leader of the Exodus.
Only one point became perfectly clear to me,
namely, that Moses is not responsible for nine-
tenths of the Pentateuch ; certainly not for the
legends which had been made the bugbears of
science. In fact, the fence turned out to be a mere
heap of dry sticks and brushwood, and one might
walk through it with impunity : the which I did.
But I was still young, when I thus ventured to
assert my liberty ; and young people are apt to be
filled with a kind of sceva indignatio, when they
discover the wide discrepancies between things as
they seem and things as they are. It hurts their
vanity to feel that they have prepared themselves
for a mighty struggle to climb over, or break their
way through, a rampart, which turns out, on close
approach, to be a mere heap of ruins ; venerable,
indeed, and archaeological ly interesting, but of no
other moment. And some fragment of the super-
fluous energy accumulated is apt to find vent in
strong language.
S PREFACE
Such, I suppose, was my case, when I wrote
some passages which occur in an essay reprinted
among " Darwiniana." l But when, not long ago
" the voice " put it to me, whether I had better
not expunge, or modify, these passages ; whether^
really, they were not a little too strong ; I had to
reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely
literary point of view, I might admit them to be
rather crude, I must stand by the substance of these
items of my expenditure. I further ventured to
express the conviction that scientific criticism of
the Old Testament, since 1860, has justified every
word of the estimate of the authority of the
ecclesiastical " Moses" written at that time. And,
carried away by the heat of self-justification, I even
ventured to add, that the desperate attempt now set
afoot to force biblical and post-biblical mythology
into elementary instruction, renders it useful and
necessary to go on making a considerable outlay in
the same direction. Not yet, has " the cosmogony
of the semi-barbarous Hebrew" ceased to be the
"incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium
of the orthodox ; " not yet, has " the zeal of the
Bibliolater " ceased from troubling ; not yet, are
the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest
from their fruitless toil "to harmonise impossi-
bilities," and " to force the generous new wine of
science into the old bottles of Judaism."
But I am aware that the head and front of my
l Collected Essays, vol. u., "On the Origin of Species" (1860).
PREFACE XI
offending lies not now where it formerly lay. Thirty
years ago, criticism of " Moses " was held by most
respectable people to be deadly sin; now it has
sunk to the rank of a mere peccadillo ; at least, if
it stops short of the history of Abraham. Destroy
the foundation of most forms of dogmatic Christi-
anity contained in the second chapter of Genesis, if
you will; the new ecclesiasticism undertakes to
underpin the superstructure and make it,atany rate
to the eye, as firm as ever: but let him be anathema
who applies exactly the same canons of criticism
to the opening chapters of " Matthew " or of
" Luke." School- children may be told that the
world was by no means made in six days, and that
implicit belief in the story of Noah's Ark is per-
missible only, as a matter of business, to their
toy-makers ; but they are to hold for the certainest
of truths, to be doubted only at peril of their
salvation, that their Galilean fellow-child Jesus,
nineteen centuries ago, had no human father.
Well, we will pass the item of 1860, said "the
voice." But why all this more recent coil about
the Gadarene swine and the like ? Do you pre-
tend that these poor animals got in your way,
years arid years after the " Mosaic •' fences we^e
down, at any rate so far as you are concerned ?
Got in my way? Why, my good "voice," they
were driven in my way. I had happened to
make a statement, than which, so far as I have
X PREFACE
Such, I suppose, was my case, when I wrote
some passages which occur in an essay reprinted
among " Darwiniana." l But when, not long ago
" the voice " put it to me, whether I had better
not expunge, or modify, these passages ; whether f
really, they were not a little too strong ; I had to
reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely
literary point of view, I might admit them to be
rather crude, I must stand by the substance of these
items of my expenditure. I further ventured to
express the conviction that scientific criticism of
the Old Testament, since 1860, has justified every
word of the estimate of the authority of the
ecclesiastical "Moses" written at that time. And,
carried away by the heat of self-justification, I even
ventured to add, that the desperate attempt now set
afoot to force biblical and post-biblical mythology
into elementary instruction, renders it useful and
necessary to go on making a considerable outlay in
the same direction. Not yet, has " the cosmogony
of the semi-barbarous Hebrew " ceased to be the
"incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium
of the orthodox ; " not yet, has " the zeal of the
Bibliolater " ceased from troubling ; not yet, are
the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest
from their fruitless toil " to harmonise impossi-
bilities," and " to force the generous new wine of
science into the old bottles of Judaism."
But I am aware that the head and front of my
1 Collected Essayst vol. ii., "On the Origin of Species" (1860).
PREFACE XI
offending lies not now where it formerly lay. Thirty
years ago, criticism of " Moses " was held by most
respectable people to be deadly sin; now it has
sunk to the rank of a mere peccadillo ; at least, if
it stops short of the history of Abraham. Destroy
the foundation of most forms of dogmatic Christi-
anity contained in the second chapter of Genesis, if
you will; the new ecclesiasticism undertakes to
underpin the superstructure and make it,atany rate
to the eye, as firm as ever: but let him be anathema
who applies exactly the same canons of criticism
to the opening chapters of "Matthew" or of
"Luke." School-children may be told that the
world was by no means made in six days, and that
implicit belief in the story of Noah's Ark is per-
missible only, as a matter of business, to their
toy-makers ; but they are to hold for the certainest
of truths, to be doubted only at peril of their
salvation, that their Galilean fellow-child Jesus,
nineteen centuries ago, had no human father.
Well, we will pass the item of 1860, said "the
voice." But why all this more recent coil about
the Gadarene swine and the like ? Do you pre-
tend that these poor animals got in your way,
years and years after the " Mosaic ;> fences we**e
down, at any rate so far as you are concerned ?
Got in my way ? Why, my good " voice/' they
were driven in my way. I had happened to
make a statement, than which, so far as I have
Xll PREFACE
ever been able to see, nothing can be more
modest or inoffensive; to wit, that I am con-
vinced of my own utter ignorance about a great
number of things, respecting which the great
majority of my neighbours (not only those of
adult years, but children repeating their cate-
chisms) affirm themselves to possess full infor-
mation. I ask any candid and impartial judge,
Is that attacking anybody or anything ?
Yet, if I had made the most wanton and arro-
gant onslaught on the honest convictions of other
people, I could not have been more hardly dealt
with. The pentecostal charism, I believe, ex-
hausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet
any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to
copious objurgations, strewn with such appella-
tions as "infidel" and "coward/' must be a
hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts the exist-
ence of a "gift of tongues" in the Churches
of our time; unless, indeed, it should occur to
him that some of these outpourings may have
taken place after " the third hoar of the day."
I am far from thinking that it is worth while
to give much attention to these inevitable inci-
dents of all controversies, in which one party has
acquired the mental peculiarities which are gene-
rated by the habit of much talking, with immunity
from criticism. But as a rule, they are the sauce of
dishes of misrepresentations and inaccuracies which
it may be a duty, nay, even an innocent pleasure.
PREFACE Xlll
to expose. In the particular case of which I am
thinking, I felt, as Strauss says, " able and called
upon " to undertake the business : and it is no
responsibility of mine, if I found the Gospels,
with their miraculous stories, of which the Gada-
rene is a typical example, blocking my way, as
heretofore, the Pentateuch had done.
I was challenged to question the authority for
the theory of " the spiritual world," and the prac-
tical consequences deducible from human relations
to it, contained in these documents.
In my judgment, the actuality of this spiritual
world — the value of the evidence for its objective
existence and its influence upon the course of
things — are matters, which lie as much within
the province of science, as any other question
about the existence and powers of the varied
forms of living and conscious activity.
It really is my strong conviction that a man
has no more right to say he believes this world
is haunted by swarms of evil spirits, without being
able to produce satisfactory evidence of the fact,
than he has a right to say, without adducing ade-
quate proof, that the circumpolar antarctic ice
swarms with sea-serpents. I should not like to
assert positively that it does not. I imagine
that no cautious biologist would say as much ; but
while quite open to conviction, he might properly
decline to waste time upon the consideration
of talk, no better accredited than forecastle
xiv PREFACE
"yarns," about such monsters of the deep.
And if the interests of ordinary veracity dictate
this course, in relation to a matter of so little
consequence as this, what must be our obligations
in respect of the treatment of a question which is
fundamental alike for science and for ethics ? For
not only does our general theory of the universe
and of the nature of the order which pervades it,
hang upon the answer ; but the rules of practical
life must be deeply affected by it.
The belief in a demonic world is inculcated
throughout the Gospels and the rest of the books
of the New Testament ; it pervades the whole
patristic literature ; it colours the theory and the
practice of every Christian church down to modern
times. Indeed, I doubt, if even now, there is
any church which, officially, departs from such a
fundamental doctrine of primitive Christianity as
the existence, in addition to the Cosmos with
which natural knowledge is conversant, of a world
of spirits ; that is to say, of intelligent agents, not
subject to the physical or mental limitations of
humanity, but nevertheless competent to interfere,
to an undefined extent, with the ordinary course of
both physical and mental phenomena.
More especially is this conception fundamental
for the authors of the Gospels. Without the belief
that the present world, and particularly that part
of it which is constituted by human society, has
been given over, since the Fall, to the influence
PREFACE XV
of wicked and malignant spiritual beings, governed
and directed by a supreme devil — the moral
antithesis and enemy of the supreme God —
their theory of salvation by the Messiah falls to
pieces. " To this end was the Son of God mani-
fested, that he might destroy the works of the
devil." i
The half-hearted religiosity of latter-day Chris-
tianity may choose to ignore the fact; but it
remains none the less true, that he who refuses to
accept the demonology of the Gospels rejects the
revelation of a spiritual world, made in them, as
much as if he denied the existence of such a person
as Jesus of Nazareth ; and deserves, as much as any
one can do, to be ear-marked " infidel " by our
gentle shepherds.
Now that which I thought it desirable to make
perfectly clear, on my own account, and for the
sake of those who find their capacity of belief in
the Gospel theory of the universe failing them, is
the fact, that, in my judgment, the demonology of
primitive Christianity is totally devoid of founda-
tion ; and that no man, who is guided by the
rules of investigation which are found to lead
to the discovery of truth in other matters, not
merely of science, but in the everyday affairs of
life, will arrive at any other conclusion. To those
who profess to be otherwise guided, I have nothing
1 1 John iii. 8.
XVI PREFACE
to say ; but to beg them to go their own way and
leave me to mine.
I think it may be as well to repeat what I have
said, over and over again, elsewhere, that a priori
notions, about the possibility, or the impossibility,
of the existence of a world of spirits, such as that
presupposed by genuine Christianity, have no
influence on my mind. The question for me is
purely one of evidence : is the evidence adequate
to bear out the theory, or is it not ? In my
judgment it is not only inadequate, but quite
absurdly insufficient. And on that ground, I
should feel compelled to reject the theory; even
if there were no positive grounds for adopting a
totally different conception of the Cosmos.
For most people, the question of the evidence
of the existence of a demonic world, in the long
run, resolves itself into that of the trustworthiness
of the Gospels; first, as to the objective truth
of that which they narrate on this topic ; second,
as to the accuracy of the interpretation which
their authors put upon these objective facts. For
example, with respect to the Gadarene miracle, it
is one question whether, at a certain time and
place, a raving madman became sane, and a herd
of swine rushed into the lake of Tiberias ; and
quite another, whether the cause of these occur-
rences was the transmigration of certain devils
from the man into the pigs. And again, it is one
question whether Jesus made a long oration on a
PREFACE XV11
certain occasion, mentioned in the first Gospel ;
altogether another, whether more or fewer of the
propositions contained in the "Sermon on the
Mount " were uttered on that occasion. One may
give an affirmative answer to one of each of these
pairs of questions and a negative to the other : one
may affirm all, or deny all.
In considering the historical value of any four
documents, proof when they were written and
who wrote them is, no doubt, highly important.
For if proof exists, that A B C and D wrote them,
and that they were intelligent persons, writing
independently and without prejudice, about facts
within their own knowledge — their statements
must need be worthy of the most attentive con-
sideration.1 But, even ecclesiastical tradition does
not assert that either " Mark " or " Luke " wrote
from his own knowledge — indeed " Luke " ex-
pressly asserts he did not. I cannot discover that
any competent authority now maintains that the
apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel which passes
under his name. And whether the apostle John
had, or had not, anything to do with the fourth
Gospel ; and if he had, what his share amounted
to ; are, as everybody who has attended to these
matters knows, questions still hotly disputed, and
with regard to which the extant evidence can
1 Not necessarily of more than this. A few centuries ago the
twelve most intelligent and impartial men to be found in
England, would have independently testified that the sun
moves, from east to west, across the heavens every day.
115
XV111 PREFACE
hardly carry no impartial judge beyond the
admission of a possibility this way or that.
Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious
probabilities is to be attained by approaching
the question from this side. It is otherwise if
we make the documents tell their own story : if
we study them, as we study fossils, to discover in-
ternal evidence of when they arose, and how they
have come to be. That really fruitful line of in-
quiry has led to the statement and the discussion
of what is known as the Synoptic Problem.
In the Essays (VII. — XI.) which deal with the
consequences of the application of the agnostic
principle to Christian Evidences, contained in this
volume, there are several references to the results
of the attempts which have been made, during
the last hundred years, to solve this problem.
And, though it has been clearly stated and
discussed, in works accessible to, and intelligible
by, every English reader,1 it may be well that I
should here set forth a very brief exposition of
the matters of fact out of which the problem has
arisen ; and of some consequences, which, as I con-
ceive, must be admitted if the facts are accepted.
These undisputed and, apparently, indisputable
data may be thus stated :
I. The three books of which an ancient, but
1 Nowhere more concisely and clearly than in Dr. Sutherland
Black's article "Gospels " in Chambers's Encyclopaedia. Refer-
ences are given to the more elaborate discussions of the problem.
PREFACE xix
very questionable, ecclesiastical tradition asserts
Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the authors,
agree, not only in presenting the same general
view, or Si/nopsis, of the nature and the order
of the events narrated; but, to a remarkable
extent, the very words which they employ
coincide.
II. Nevertheless, there are many equally marked,
and some irreconcilable, differences between
them. Narratives, verbally identical in some por-
tions, diverge more or less in others. The order
in which they occur in one, or in two, Gospels
may be changed in another. In " Matthew " and
in " Luke " events of great importance make their
appearance, where the story of " Mark " seems to
leave no place for them ; and, at the beginning and
the end of the two former Gospels, there is a
great amount of matter of which there is no
trace in " Mark."
III. Obvious and highly important differences,
in sjyje and substance, separate the three
" Synoptics," taken together, from the fourth
Gospel, connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with
the name of the apostle John. In its philosophical
proemium ; in the conspicuous absence of exorcistic
miracles ; in the self-assertive theosophy of the
long and diffuse monologues, which are so utterly
unlike the brief and pregnant utterances of Jesus
recorded in the Synoptics ; in the assertion that
the crucifixion took place before the Passover,
*X PREFACE
which involves the denial, by implication, of the
truth of the Synoptic story — to mention only a
few particulars — the " Joharmine" Gospel presents
a wide divergence from the other three.
IV. If bhe mutual resemblances and differences
of the Synoptic Gospels are closely considered, a
curious result comes out ; namely, that each may
be analyzed into four components. The first of
these consists of passages, to a greater or less
extent verbally identical, which occur in all three
Gospels. If this triple tradition is separated
from the rest it will be found to comprise :
a. A narrative, of a somewhat broken and
anecdotic aspect, which covers the period from the
appearance of John the Baptist to the discovery
of the emptiness of the tomb, on the first day
of the week, some six-and-thirty hours after
the crucifixion.
I. An apocalyptic address.
c. Parables and brief discourses, or rather,
centos of religious and ethical exhortations and
injunctions.
The second and the third set of components of
each Gospel present equally close resemblances to
passages, which are found in only one of the other
Gospels ; therefore it may be said that, for them,
the tradition is double. The foiwtli component
is peculiar to each Gospel ; it is a single tradition
and has no representative in the others.
To put the facts in another way : each Gospel
PREFACE XXI
is composed of a threefold tradition, two twofold
traditions, and one peculiar tradition. If the
Gospels were the work of totally independent
writers, it would follow that there are three wit-
nesses for the statements in the first tradition;
two for each of those in the second, and only one
for those in the third.
V. If the reader will now take up that ex-
tremely instructive little book, Abbott and Rush-
brooke's "Common Tradition" he will easily
satisfy himself that " Mark " has the remarkable
structure just described. Almost the whole of
this Gospel consists of the first component;
namely, the threefold tradition. But in chap. i.
23-28 he will discover an exorcistic story,
not to be found in "Matthew/* but repeated,
often word for word, in " Luke." This, therefore,
belongs to one of the twofold traditions. In chap,
viii. 1-10, on the other hand, there is a detailed
account of the miracle of feeding the four thou-
sand ; which is closely repeated in " Matthew " xv.
32-39, but is not to be found in " Luke/1 This is
an example of the other twofold tradition, possible
in " Mark/' Finally, the story of the blind man
of Bethsaida, "Mark" viii. 22-26, ^peculiar to
« Mark."
VI. Suppose that, A standing for the threefold
tradition, or the matter common to all three Gos-
pels ; we call the matter common to " Mark " and
:t Matthew " only — B ; that common to " Mark "
XX11 PREFACE
and " Luke " only — C ; that common to " Matthew *
and " Luke " only — D ; while the peculiar com-
ponents of " Mark," " Matthew/' and " Luke " are
severally indicated by E, F, G ; then the structure
of the Gospels may be represented thus :
Components of " Mark " = A-fB-f-C + E.
"Matthew" = A -f B -h D + F.
"Luke" = A + C+D-fG.
VII. The analysis of the Synoptic documents
need be carried no further than this point, in
order to suggest one extremely important, and,
apparently unavoidable conclusion ; and that is,
that their authors were neither three independent
witnesses of the things narrated ; nor, for the
parts of the narrative about which all agree, that
is to say, the threefold tradition, did they employ
independent sources of information. It is sim-
ply incredible that each of three independent
witnesses of any series of occurrences should
tell a story so similar, not only in arrangement
and in small details, but in words, to that of
each of the others.
Hence it follows, either that the Synoptic
writers have, mediately or immediately, copied
one from the other : or that the three have drawn
from a common source ; that is to say, from one
arrangement of similar traditions (whether oral
or written) ; though that arrangement may have
PREFACE xxiii
been extant in three or more, somewhat different
versions.
VIII. The suppositions (a) that " Mark " had
"Matthew" and "Luke" before him; and (/;)
that either of the two latter was acquainted with
the work of the other, would seem to involve some
singular consequences.
a. The second Gospel is saturated with the
lowest supernaturalism. Jesus is exhibited
as a wonder-worker and exorcist of the first rank.
The earliest public recognition of the Messiahship
of Jesus comes from an " unclean spirit"; he him-
self is made to testify to the occurrence of the
miraculous feeding twice over.
The purpose with which " Mark " sets out is
to show forth Jesus as the Son of God, and it is
suggested, if not distinctly stated, that he ac-
quired this character at his baptism by John.
The absence of any reference to the miraculous
events of the infancy, detailed by "Matthew"
and "Luke;" or to the appearances after the
discovery of the emptiness of the tomb ; is unin-
telligible, if " Mark " knew anything about them,
or believed in the miraculous conception. The
second Gospel is no summary : " Mark " can find
room for the detailed story, irrelevant to his main
purpose, of the beheading of John the Baptist, and
his miraculous narrations are crowded with minute
particulars. Is it to be imagined that, with
the supposed apostolic authority of Matthew
XXIV PREFACE
before him, lie could leave out the miraculous
conception of Jesus and the ascension ? Further,
ecclesiastical tradition would have us believe that
Mark wrote down his recollections of what Peter
taught. Did Peter then omit to mention these
matters ? Did the fact testified by the oldest
authority extant, that the first appearance of the
risen Jesus was to himself seem not worth men-
tioning ? Did he really fail to speak of the great
position in the Church solemnly assigned to him by
Jesus ? The alternative would seem to be the
impeachment either of Mark's memory, or of his
judgment. But Mark's memory, is so good that
he can recollect how, on the occasion of the stilling
of the waves, Jesus was asleep " on the cushion,"
he remembers that the woman with the issue had
" spent all she had " on her physicians ; that
there was not room " even about the door " on a
certain occasion at Capernaum. And it is surely
hard to believe that " Mark " should have failed to
recollect occurrences of infinitely greater moment,
or that he should have deliberately left them out,
as things not worthy of mention.
b. The supposition that " Matthew " was
acquainted with " Luke," or " Luke" with
"Matthew" has equally grave implications. If
that be so, the one who used the other could have
had but a poor opinion of his predecessor's his-
torical veracity. If, as most experts agree, " Luke "
is later than " Matthew," it is clear that he does
PREFACE XXV
not credit " Matthew's " account of the infancy ;
does not believe the " Sermon on the Mount "
as given by Matthew was preached ; does not be-
lieve in the two feeding miracles, to which Jesus
himself is made to refer ; wholly discredits
" Matthew's " account of the events after the
crucifixion; and thinks it not worth while to
notice " Matthew's " grave admission that " some
doubted."
IX. None of these troublesome consequences
pursue the hypothesis that the threefold tradition,
in one, or more, Greek versions, was extant before
either of the canonical Synoptic Gospels ; and that
it furnished the fundamental framework of their
several narratives. Where and when the three-
fold narrative arose, there is no positive evidence ;
though it is obviously probable that the traditions
it embodies, and perhaps many others, took their
rise in Palestine and spread thence to Asia Minor,
Greece, Egypt and Italy, in the track of the early
missionaries. Nor is it less likely that they
formed part of the " didaskalia " of the primitive
Nazarene and Christian communities.1
X. The interest which attaches to "Mark"
arises from the fact that it seems to present this
1 Those who regard the Apocalyptic discourse as a "vaticina-
tion after the event " may draw conclusions therefrom as to the
date of the Gospels in which its several forms occur. But the
assumption is surely dangerous, from an apologetic point of
view, since it begs the question as to the unhistorical character
of this solemn prophecy.
XXVI PREFACE
early, probably earliest, Greek Gospel narrative,
with least addition, or modification. If, as appears
likely from some internal evidences, it was com-
piled for the use of the Christian sodalities in
Rome ; and that it was accepted by them as an
adequate account of the life and work of Jesus, it
is evidence of the most valuable kind respecting
their beliefs and the limits of dogma, as conceived
by them.
In such case, a good Roman Christian of that
epoch might know nothing of the doctrine of the
incarnation, as taught by " Matthew " and " Luke " ;
still less of the "logos" doctrine of "John "; neither
need he have believed anything more than the
simple fact of the resurrection. It was open to
him to believe it either corporeal, or spiritual. He
would never have heard of the power of the keys
bestowed upon Peter ; nor have had brought to his
mind so much as a suggestion of trinitarian doc-
trine. He might be a rigidly monotheistic Judseo-
Christian, and consider himself bound by the
law : he might be a Gentile Pauline convert,
neither knowing of nor caring for such restrictions.
In neither case would he find in "Mark" any
serious stumbling-block. In fact, persons of all
the categories admitted to salvation by Justin, in
the middle of the second century,1 could accept
" Mark " from beginning to end. It may well be,
that, in this wide adaptability, backed by the
1 See p. 287 of this volume.
PREFACE XXVll
authority of the metropolitan church, there lies
the reason for the fact of the preservation of
" Mark," notwithstanding its limited and dogma-
tically colourless character, as compared with the
Gospels of " Luke " and " Matthew."
XI. " Mark," as we have seen, contains a re-
latively small body of ethical and religious in-
struction and only a few parables. Were these
all that existed in the primitive threefold tradi-
tion ? Were none others current in the Roman
communities, at the time " Mark " wrote, supposing
he wrote in Some ? Or, on the other hand, was
there extant, as early as the time at which
" Mark " composed his Greek edition of the
primitive Evangel, one or more collections of
parables and teachings, such as those which form
the bulk of the twofold tradition, common ex-
clusively to "Matthew" and "Luke," and are
also found in their single traditions ? Many have
assumed this, or these, collections to be identical
with, or at any rate based upon, the " logia," of
which ecclesiastical tradition says, that they were
written in Aramaic by Matthew, and that every-
body translated them as he could.
Here is the old difficulty again. If such ma-
terials were known to " Mark," what imaginable
reason could he have for not using them ? Surely
displacement of the long episode of John the Bap-
tist— even perhaps of the story of the Gadarene
swine — by portions of the Sermon on the Mount or
xxvili PREFACE
by one or two of the beautiful parables in the?
twofold and single traditions would have been
great improvements ; and might have been
effected, even though " Mark " was as much
pressed for space as some have imagined. But
there is no ground for that imagination ; Mark
has actually found room for four or five parables ;
why should he not have given the best, if he had
known of them ? Admitting he was the mere
pedissequus et breviator of Matthew, that even
Augustine supposed him to be, what could induce
him to omit the Lord's Prayer ?
Whether more or less of the materials of the two-
fold tradition D, and of the peculiar traditions F and
G, were or were not current in some of the com-
munities, as early as, or perhaps earlier than, the
triple tradition, it is not necessary for me to discuss;
nor to consider those solutions of the Synoptic
problem which assume that it existed earlier, and
was already combined with more or less narrative.
Those who are working out the final solution of the
Synoptic problem are taking into account, more
than hitherto, the possibility that the widely
separated Christian communities of Palestine,
Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, especially after the
Jewish war of A.D. 66-70, may have found them-
selves in possession of very different traditional
materials. Many circumstances tend to the con-
clusion that, in Asia Minor, even the narrative
part of the threefold tradition had a formidable
PREFACE XXIX
rival; and that, around this second narrative,
teaching traditions of a totally different order
from those in the Synoptics, grouped themselves ;
and, under the influence of converts imbued more
or less with the philosophical speculations of the
time, eventually took shape in the fourth Gospel
and its associated literature.
XII. But it is unnecessary, and it would te
out of place, for me to attempt to do more than
indicate the existence of these complex and diffi-
cult questions. My purpose has been to make it
clear that the Synoptic problem must force itself
upon every one who studies the Gospels with
attention ; that the broad facts of the case, and
some of the consequences deducible from these
facts, are just as plain to the simple English
reader as they are to the profoundest scholar.
One of these consequences is that the three-
fold tradition presents us with a narrative believed
to be historically true, in all particulars, by the
major part, if not the whole, of the Christian
communities. That narrative is penetrated, from
beginning to end, by the demonological beliefs of
which the Gadarene story is a specimen ; and, if
the fourth Gospel indicates the existence of another
and, in some respects, irreconcilably divergent
narrative, in which the demon ology retires into
the background, it is none the less there.
Therefore, the demonology is an integral and
inseparable component of primitive Christianity.
XXX PREFACE
The farther back the origin of the gospels is
dated, the stronger does the certainty of this con-
clusion grow ; and the more difficult it becomes to
suppose that Jesus himself may not have shared
the superstitious beliefs of his disciples.
It further follows that those who accept devils,
possession, and exorcism as essential elements
of their conception of the spiritual world may
consistently consider the testimony of the Gospels
to be unimpeachable in respect of the information
they give us respecting other matters which
appertain to that world.
Those who reject the gospel demonology, on
the other hand, would seem to be as completely
barred, as I feel myself to be, from professing to
take the accuracy of that information for granted.
If the threefold tradition is wrong about one
fundamental topic, it may be wrong about another,
while the authority of the single traditions, often
mutually contradictory as they are, becomes • a
vanishing quantity.
It really is unreasonable to ask any rejector of
the demonology to say more with respect to those
other matters, than that the statements regarding
them may be true, or may be false ; and that the
ultimate decision, if it is to be favourable, must
depend on the production of testimony of a very
different character from that of the writers of the
four gospels. Until such evidence is brought for-
ward, that refusal of assent, with willingness to
PREFACfe Xxxi
re-open the question, on cause shown, which is
what I mean by Agnosticism, is, for me the only
course open.
A verdict of "not proven" is undoubtedly
unsatisfactory and essentially provisional, so far
forth as the subject of the trial is capable of being
dealt with by due process of reason.
Those who are of opinion that the historical
realities at the root of Christianity, lie beyond the
jurisdiction of science, need not be considered.
Those who are convinced that the evidence is, and
must always remain, insufficient to support any
definite conclusion, are justified in ignoring the
subject. They must be content to put up with that
reproach of being mere destroyers, of which Strauss
speaks. They may say that there are so many
problems which are and must remain insoluble,
that the " burden of the mystery " " of all this
unintelligible world " is not appreciably affected
by one more or less.
For myself, I must confess that the problem of
the origin of such very remarkable historical
phenomena as the doctrines, and the social
organization, which, in their broad features cer-
tainly existed, and were in a state of rapid
development, within a hundred years of the
crucifixion of Jesus; and which have steadily
prevailed against all rivals, among the most intelli-
gent and civilized nations in the world ever since,
xxxil PREFACE
is, and always has been, profoundly interesting ;
and, considering how recent the really scientific
study of that problem, and how great the progress
made during the last half century in supplying the
conditions for a positive solution of the problem,
I cannot doubt that the attainment of such a
solution is a mere question of time.
I am well aware that it has lain far beyond my
powers to take any share in this great under-
taking. All that I can hope is to have done
somewhat towards " the preparation of those who
have ceased to be contented with the old and find
no satisfaction in half measures " : perhaps, also,
something towards the lessening of that great
proportion of my countrymen, whose eminent
characteristic it is that they find full "full satis-
faction in half measures." T. H. H.
HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE,
December 4ta, 1893.
CONTENTS
PROLOGDB 1
(Controverted Questions, 1892).
II
SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM [1887] . . 59
III
SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE [18S7] 90
IV
AK EPISCOPAL TRILOGY [1887] 126
V
THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS [1889] . . 160
116
XXxiv CONTENTS
VI
PA OF
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES [1891] ....... 192
VII
AGNOSTICISM [1889] 209
VIII
AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER [1889] 263
IX
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY [1889] 809
X
THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE [1890] 366
XI
ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S CONTROVERSIAL
METHODS [1891] 393
PROLOGUE
[Controverted Questions, 1892]
Le plus grand service qu'on puisse rendre a la science est d'y
faire place nette avant d'y rien construire. — CUVIER.
MOST of the Essays comprised in the present
volume have been written during the last six or
seven years, without premeditated purpose or
intentional connection, in reply to attacks upon
doctrines which I hold to be well founded ; or in
refutation of allegations respecting matters lying
/within the province of natural knowledge^ which I
believe to be erroneous ; and they bear the mark
of their origin in the controversial tone which
pervades them.
Of polemical writing, as of other kinds of war-
fare, I think it may be said, that it is often useful,
sometimes necessary, and always more or less of
an evil. It is useful, when it attracts attention to
topics which might otherwise be neglected; and
when, as does sometimes happen, those who come
to see a contest remain to think. It is necessary,
2 PROLOGUE 1
when the interests of truth and of justice are at
stake. C It is an evil, in so far as controversy
always tends to degenerate into quarrelling, to
swerve from the great issue of what is right and
what is wrong to the very small question of who
is right and who is wrong.J I venture to hope
that the • useful and the necessary were more
conspicuous than the evil attributes of literary
militancy, when these papers were first published ;
but I have had some hesitation about reprinting
them. If I may judge by my own taste, few
literary dishes are less appetising than cold
controversy ; moreover, there is an air of unfair-
ness about the presentation of only one side of
a discussion, and a flavour of unkindness in the
reproduction of " winged words/' which, however
appropriate at the time of their utterance, would
find a still more appropriate place in oblivion.
Yet, since I could hardly ask those who have
honoured me by their polemical attentions to
confer lustre on this collection, by permitting me
to present their lucubrations along with my own ;
and since it would be a manifest wrong to them to
deprive their, by no means rare, vivacities of
language of such justification as. they may derive
from similar freedoms on my part ; I came to the
conclusion that my best course was to leave the
essays just as they were written ; l assuring my
1 With a few exceptions, which are duly noted when they
amount to more than verbal corrections.
I PROLOGUE 3
honourable adversaries that any heat of which
signs may remain was generated, in accordance
with the law of the conservation of energy, by the
force of their own blows, and has long since been
dissipated into space.
But, however the polemical concomitants of
these discussions may be regarded — or better, dis-
regarded— there is no doubt either about the im-
portance of the topics of which they treat, or
as to the public interest in the " Controverted
Questions " with which they deal. Or rather,
the Controverted Question ; for disconnected as
these pieces may, perhaps, appear to be, they are,
in fact, concerned only with different aspects of a
single problem, with which thinking men have
been occupied, ever since they began seriously to
consider the wonderful frame of things in which
their lives are set, and to seek for trustworthy
guidance among its intricacies.
Experience speedily taught them that the
shifting scenes of the world's stage have a perma-
nent background ; that there is order amidst the
seeming confusion, and that many events take
place according to unchanging rules. To this
region of familiar steadiness and customary regu-
larity they gave the name of Nature. But, at the
same time, their infantile and untutored reason,
little more, as yet, than the playfellow of the
imagination, led them to believe that this tangible,
commonplace, orderly world of Nature was sur-
4* PROLOGUE I
rounded and interpenetrated by another intangible
and mysterious world, no more bound by fixed
rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and
passions which coursed through their minds and
seemed to exercise an intermittent and capricious
rule over their bodies. They attributed to the
entities, with which they peopled this dim and
dreadful region, an unlimited amount of that
power of modifying the course of events of which
they themselves possessed a small share, and
thus came to regard them as not merely beyond,
but above, Nature.
C Hence arose the conception of a " Supernature "
antithetic to " Nature " — the primitive dualism of
a natural world " fixed in fate " and a super-
natural, left to the free play of volition — which
has pervaded all later speculation and, for thou-
sands of years, has exercised a profound influence
on practice.) For it is obvious that, on this theory
of the Universe, the successful conduct of life
must demand careful attention to both worlds ;
and, if either is to be neglected, it may be safer
that it should be Nature. In any given contin-
gency, it must doubtless be desirable to know
what may be expected to happen in the ordinary
course of things ; but it must be quite as
necessary to have some inkling of the line likely
to be taken by supernatural agencies able, and
possibly willing, to suspend or reverse that course.
Indeed, logically developed, the dualistic theory
I PROLOGUE 5
must needs end in almost exclusive attention to
Supernature, and in trust that its over-ruling
strength will be exerted in favour of those who
stand well with its denizens. On the other hand,
the lessons of the great schoolmaster, experience,
have hardly seemed to accord with this conclusion.
They have taught, with considerable emphasis,
that it does not answer to neglect Nature ; and
that, on the whole, the more attention paid to her
dictates the better men fare.
Thus the theoretical antithesis brought about
a practical antagonism. CFrom the earliest times
of which we have any knowledge, Naturalism
and Supernatural ism have consciously, or uncon-
sciously,") competed and struggled with one an-
other ; and the varying fortunes of the contest
are written in the records of the course of civili-
sation, from those of Egypt and Babylonia, six
thousand years ago, down to those of our own
time and people.
/These records inform us that, so far as men
have paid attention to Nature, they have been .
rewarded for their pains. They have developed
the Arts which have furnished the conditions of
civilised existence ; and the Sciences, which have
been a progressive revelation of reality and have
afforded the best discipline of the mind in the
methods of discovering truth. They have accumu-
lated a vast body of universally accepted know-
ledge ; and the conceptions of man and of society,
6 PROLOGUE I
of morals and of law, based upon that knowledge,
are every day more and more, either openly or
tacitly, acknowledged to be the foundations of
right action.
History also tells us that the field of the
supernatural has rewarded its cultivators with a
harvest, perhaps not less luxuriant, but of a
different character. It has produced an almost
infinite diversity of Eeligions. These, if we set
aside the ethical concomitants upon which natural
knowledge also has a claim, are composed of
information about Supernature ; they tell us of
the attributes of supernatural beings, of their
relations with Nature, and of the operations by
which their interference with the ordinary course
of events can be secured or averted. It does
not appear, however, that supernaturalists have
attained to any agreement about these matters, or
that history indicates a widening of the influence
of supernaturalism on practice, with the onward
flow of time. On the contrary, the various
, religions are, to a great extent, mutually ex-
clusive ; and their adherents delight in charging
each other, not merely with error, but with
criminality, deserving and ensuing punishment
of infinite severity. In singular contrast with
natural knowledge, again, the acquaintance of
mankind with the supernatural appears the more
extensive and the more exact, and the influence
of supernatural doctrines upon conduct the greater,
I PROLOGUE 7
the further back we go in time and the lower the
stage of civilisation submitted to investigation.
Historically, indeed, there would seem to be an
inverse relation between supernatural and natural
knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in
precision and in trustworthiness, so has the
former shrunk, grown vague and questionable ; as
the one has more and more filled the sphere of
action, so has the other retreated into the region
of meditation, or vanished behind the screen of
mere verbal recognition.
Whether this difference of the fortunes of
Naturalism and of Supernaturalism is an indica-
tion of the progress, or of the regress, of
humanity ; of a fall from, or an advance towards,
the higher life ; is a matter of opinion. The point
to which I wish to direct attention is that the
difference exists and is making itself felt. Men
are growing to be seriously alive to the fact that
the historical evolution of humanity, which is
generally, and I venture to think not unreason-
ably, regarded as progress, has been, and is being,
accompanied by a co-ordinate elimination of the
supernatural from its originally large occupation of
men's thoughts. The question — How far is this
process to go ? — is, in my apprehension, t!Jfe
Controverted Question of our time. ^
Controversy on this matter — prolonged, bitter,
and fought out with the weapons of the flesh, as
8 PROLOGUE I
well as with those of the spirit — is no new thing
to Englishmen. We have been more or less
occupied with it these five hundred years. And,
during that time, we have made attempts to
establish a modus vivendi between the antagonists,
some of which have had a world-wide influence ;
though, unfortunately, none have proved univers-
ally and permanently satisfactory.
In the fourteenth century, the controverted
question among us was, whether certain portions
of the Supernaturalism of mediaeval Christianity
were well-founded. John Wicliff proposed a
solution of the problem which, in the course of
the following two hundred years, acquired wide
popularity and vast historical importance : Lollards,
Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Socin-
ians, and Anabaptists, whatever their disagree-
ments, concurred in the proposal to reduce the
Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits
sanctioned by the Scriptures. None of the chiefs
of Protestantism called in question either the
supernatural origin and infallible authority of the
Bible, or the exactitude of the account of the
supernatural world given in its pages. In fact,
they could not afford to entertain any doubt
about these points, since the infallible Bible was
the fulcrum of the lever with which they were
endeavouring to upset the Chair of St. Peter.
The " freedom of private judgment " which they
proclaimed, meant no more, in practice, than
I PROLOGUE 9
permission to themselves to make free with the
public judgment of the Roman Church, in respect
of the canon and of the meaning to be attached
to the words of the canonical books. Private
judgment — that is to say, reason — was (theoreti-
cally, at any rate) at liberty to decide what books
were and what were not to take the rank of
" Scripture " ; and to determine the sense of any
passage in such books. But this sense, once
ascertained to the mind of the sectary, was to be
taken for pure truth — for the very word of God.
The controversial efficiency of the principle of
biblical infallibility lay in the fact that the con-
servative adversaries of the Reformers were not in
a position to contravene it without entangling
themselves in serious difficulties ; while, since
both Papists and Protestants agreed in taking
efficient measures to stop the mouths of any more
radical critics, these did not count.
The impotence of their adversaries, however, did
not remove the inherent weakness of the position
of the Protestants. The dogma of the infallibility
of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that
of the infallibility of the Pope. If the former is
held by " faith," then the latter may be. If the
latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private
iudgment, why not the former ? Even if the
Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own
infallibility, the value of that self-assertion to
those who dispute the point is not obvious. On
10 PROLOGUE I
the other hand, if the infallibility of the Bible
was rested on that of a " primitive Church/' the
admission that the " Church " was formerly
ID fallible was awkward in the extreme for those
who denied its present infallibility. Moreover, no
sooner was the Protestant principle applied to
practice, than it became evident that even an
infallible text, when manipulated by private
judgment, will impartially countenance contra-
dictory deductions ; and furnish forth creeds and
confessions as diverse as the quality and the
information of the intellects which exercise, and
the prejudices and passions which sway, such
judgments. Every sect, confident in the deriva-
tive infallibility of its wire-drawing of infallible
materials, was ready to supply its contingent of
martyrs ; and to enable history, once more, to
illustrate the truth, that steadfastness under
persecution says much for the sincerity and still
more for the tenacity, of the believer, but very
little for the objective truth of that which he
believes. No martyrs have sealed their faith
with their blood more steadfastly than the
Anabaptists.
Last, but not least, the Protestant principle
contained within itself the germs of the destruc-
tion of the finality, which the Lutheran, Calvin-
istic, and other Protestant Churches fondly
imagined they had reached. Since their creeds
were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures,
I PROLOGUE 11
it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled
the canon defined the creed. If the private
judgment of Luther might legitimately conclude
that the epistle of James was contemptible, while
the epistles of Paul contained the very essence of
Christianity, it must be permissible for some
other private judgment, on as good or as bad
grounds, to reverse these conclusions ; the critical
process which excluded the Apocrypha could not
be barred, at any rate by people who rejected
the authority of the Church, from extending its
operations to Daniel, the Canticles, and Ecclesi-
astes ; nor, having got so far, was it easy to allege
any good ground for staying the further progress
of criticism. In fact, the logical development of
Protestantism could not fail to lay the authority
of the Scriptures at the feet of Reason ; and,
in the hands of latitudinarian and rationalistic
theologians, the despotism of the Bible was
rapidly converted into an extremely limited
monarchy. Treated with as much respect as
ever, the sphere of its practical authority was
minimised ; and its decrees were valid only so far
as they were countersigned by common sense, the
responsible minister.
The champions of Protestantism are much
given to glorify the Reformation of the sixteenth
century as the emancipation of Reason ; but it
may be doubted if their contention has any solid
ground ; while there is a good deal of evidence to
12 PROLOGUE I
show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom
had nothing whatever to do with the movement.
Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as
Wicliff; WicUff himself and Luther himself, when
they began their work ; were far enough from
any intention of meddling with even the most
irrational of the dogmas of medieval Super-
naturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to
Miinzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to
find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The
most that can be discovered is a proposal to
change masters. From being the slave of the
Papacy the intellect was to become the serf of the
Bible ; or, to speak more accurately, of somebody's
interpretation of the Bible, which, rapidly shifting
its attitude from the humility of a private judg-
ment to the arrogant Csesaro-papistry of a state-
enforced creed, had no more hesitation about
forcibly extinguishing opponent private judgments
and judges, than had the old-fashioned Pontiff-
papistry.
It was the iniquities, and not the irrationalities,
of the Papal system that lay at the bottom of the
revolt of the laity ; which was, essentially, an
attempt to shake off the intolerable burden of
certain practical deductions from a Supernatural-
ism in which everybody, in principle, acquiesced.
What was the gain to intellectual freedom of
abolishing transubstantiation, image worship, in-
dulgences, ecclesiastical infallibility; if consub-
I PROLOGUE 13
stantiation, real-unreal presence mystifications,
the bibliolatry, the " inner- light " pretensions, and
the demonology, which are fruits of the same
supernaturalistic tree, remained in enjoyment of
the spiritual and temporal support of a new
infallibility ? One does not free a prisoner by
merely scraping away the rust from his shackles.
It will be asked, perhaps, was not the Reforma-
tion one of the products of that great outbreak of
many-sided free mental activity included under
the general head of the Renascence ? Melanch-
thon, Ulrich von Hutten, Beza, were they not all
humanists ? Was riot the arch-humanist, Erasmus,
fautor-in-chief of the Reformation, until he got
frightened and basely deserted it ?
From the language of Protestant historians, it
would seem that they often forget that Reforma-
tion and Protestantism are by no means con-
vertible terms. There were plenty of sincere and
indeed zealous reformers, before, during, and
after the birth and growth of Protestantism, who
would have nothing to do with it. Assuredly,
the rejuvenescence of science and of art; the
widening of the field of Nature by geographical
and astronomical discovery; the revelation of the
noble ideals of antique literature by the revival of
classical learning ; the stir of thought, throughout
all classes of society, by the printers' work,
loosened traditional bonds and weakened the hold
of mediaeval Supernaturalism. In the interests
14? PROLOGUE I
of liberal culture and of national welfare, the
humanists were eager to lend a hand to anything
which tended to the discomfiture of their sworn
enemies, the monks, and they willingly supported
every movement in the direction of weakening
ecclesiasticaly interference with civil life. But the
bond of a common enemy was the only real tie
between the humanist and the protestant ; their
alliance was bound to be of short duration, and,
sooner or later, to be replaced by internecine
warfare. The goal of the humanists, whether
they were aware of it or not, was the attainment
of the complete intellectual freedom of the
antique philosopher, than which nothing could be
more abhorrent to a Luther, a Calvin, a Beza, or
a Zwingli.
The key to the comprehension of the conduct
of Erasmus, seems to me to lie in the clear appre-
hension of this fact. That he was a man of many
weaknesses may be true ; in fact, he was quite
aware of them and professed himself no hero.
But he never deserted that reformatory move-
ment which he originally contemplated ; and it
was impossible he should have deserted the
specifically Protestant reformation in which he
never took part. He was essentially a theological
whig, to whom radicalism was as hateful as it is
to all whigs ; or, to borrow a still more appropriate
comparison from modern times, a broad church-
man who refused to enlist with -either the High
I PROLOGUE 15
Church or the Low Church zealots, and paid the
penalty of being called coward, time-server and
traitor, by both. Yet really there is a good deal
in his pathetic remonstrance that lie does not see
why he is bound to become a martyr for that in
which he does not believe ; and a fair consideration
of the circumstances and the consequences of the
Protestant reformation seems to me to go a long
way towards justifying the course he adopted.
Few men had better means of being acquainted
with the condition of Europe ; none could be more
competent to gauge the intellectual shallowness
and self-contradiction of the Protestant criticism
of Catholic doctrine ; and to estimate, at its proper
value, the fond imagination that the waters let
out by the Renascence would come to rest amidst
the blind alleys of the new ecclesiasticism. The
bastard, whilom poor student and monk, become
the familiar of bishops and princes, at home in all
grades of society, could not fail to be aware of the
gravity of the social position, of the dangers
imminent from the profligacy and indifference of
the ruling classes, no less than from the anarchical
tendencies of the people who groaned under
their oppression. The wanderer who had lived
in Germany, in France, in England, in Italy, and
who counted many of the best and most influen-
tial men in each country among his friends, was
not likely to estimate wrongly the enormous
forces which were still at the command of the
117
16 PROLOGUE I
Papacy. Bad as the churchmen might be, the
statesmen were worse ; and a person of far more
sanguine temperament than Erasmus might have
seen no hope for the future, except in gradually
freeing the ubiquitous organisation of the Church
from the corruptions which alone, as he imagined,
prevented it from being as beneficent as it was
powerful. The broad tolerance of the scholar and
man of the world might well be revolted by the
ruffianism, however genial, of one great light of
Protestantism, and the narrow fanaticism, however
learned and logical, of others ; and to a cautious
thinker, by whom, whatever his shortcomings, the
ethical ideal of the Christian evangel was sin-
cerely prized, it really was a fair question,
whether it was worth while to bring about a
political and social deluge, the end of which no
mortal could foresee, for the purpose of setting up
Lutheran, Zwinglian, and other Peterkins, in the
place of the actual claimant to the reversion of
the spiritual wealth of the Galilean fisherman.
Let us suppose that, at the beginning of the
Lutheran and Zwinglian movement, a vision of its
immediate consequences had been granted to
Erasmus; imagine that to the spectre of the
fierce outbreak of Anabaptist communism, which
opened the apocalypse, had succeeded, in shadowy
procession, the reign of terror and of spoliation in
England, with the judicial murders of his friends,
More and Fisher ; the bitter tyranny of evangel-
I PROLOGUE 17
istic clericalism in Geneva and in Scotland ; the
long agony of religious wars, persecutions, and
massacres, which devastated France and reduced
Germany almost to savagery ; finishing with the
spectacle of Lutheranism in its native country
sunk into mere dead Erastian formalism, before
it was a century old ; while Jesuitry triumphed
over Protestantism in three-fourths of Europe,
bringing in its train a recrudescence of all the
corruptions Erasmus and his friends sought to
abolish; might not he have quite honestly
thought this a somewhat too heavy price to pay
for Protestantism ; more especially, since no one
was in a better position than himself to know
how little the dogmatic foundation of the new
confessions was able to bear the light which the
inevitable progress of humanistic criticism would
throw upon them ? As the wiser of his contem-
poraries saw, Erasmus was, at heart, neither
Protestant nor Papist, but an " Independent
Christian " ; and, as the wiser of his modern
biographers have discerned, he was the precursor,
not of sixteenth century reform, but of eighteenth
century " enlightenment " ; a sort of broad -church
Voltaire, who held by his "Independent Christian-
ity " as stoutly as Voltaire by his Deism.
In fact, the stream of the Renascence, which
bore Erasmus along, left Protestantism stranded
amidst the mudbanks of its articles and creeds:
while its true course became visible to all men,
18 PROLOGUE I
two centuries later. By this time, those in whom
the movement of the Renascence was incarnate
became aware what spirit they were of; and they
attacked Supernaturalism in its Biblical strong-
hold, defended by Protestants and Romanists
with equal zeal. In the eyes of the " Patriarch,"
Ultramontanism, Jansenism, and Calvinism were
merely three persons of the one " Infame " which
it was the object of his life to crush. If he
hated one more than another, it was probably the
last ; while D'Holbach, and the extreme left of
the free-thinking host, were disposed to show no
more mercy to Deism and Pantheism.
The sceptical insurrection of the eighteenth
century made a terrific noise and frightened not
a few worthy people out of their wits ; but cool
judges might have foreseen, at the outset, that
the efforts of the later rebels were no more likely
than those of the earlier, to furnish permanent
resting-places for the spirit of scientific inquiry.
However worthy of admiration may be the acute-
ness, the common sense, the wit, the broad
humanity, which abound in the writings of the
best of the free-thinkers ; there is rarely much to
be said for their work as an example of the
adequate treatment of a grave and difficult in-
vestigation. I do not think any impartial judge
will assert that, from this point of view, they are
much better than their adversaries. It must be
admitted that they share to the full the fatal
I PROLOGUE 19
weakness of a priori philosophising, no less than
the moral frivolity common to their age ; while a
singular want of appreciation of history, as the
record of the moral and social evolution of the
human race, permitted them to resort to pre-
posterous theories of imposture, in order to
account for the religious phenomena which are
natural products of that evolution.
For the most part, the Romanist and Protestant
adversaries of the free-thinkers met them with
arguments no better than their own ; and with
vituperation, so far inferior that it lacked the wit.
But one great Christian Apologist fairly captured
the guns of the free-thinking array, and turned
their batteries upon themselves. Speculative
" infidelity " of the eighteenth century type was
mortally wounded by the Analogy ; while the pro-
gress of the historical and psychological sciences
brought to light the important part played by the
mythopceic faculty; and, by demonstrating the
extreme readiness of men to impose upon them-
selves, rendered the calling in of sacerdotal
cooperation, in most cases, a superfluity.
Again, as in the fourteenth and the sixteenth
centuries, social and political influences came into
play. The free-thinking philosopkes, who objected
to Rousseau's sentimental religiosity almost as
much as they did to Ulnfdme, were credited with
the responsibility for all the evil deeds of
Rousseau's Jacobin disciples, with about as much
20 PROLOGUE 1
justification as Wicliff was held responsible for the
Peasants' revolt, or Luther for the Bauern-krieg.
In England, though our antien regime was not
altogether lovely, the social edifice was never in
such a bad way as in France ; it was still capable
of being repaired ; and our forefathers, very wisely,
preferred to wait until that operation could be
safely performed, rather than pull it all down
about their ears, in order to build a philosophically
planned house on brand-new speculative founda-
tions. Under these circumstances, it is not
wonderful that, in this country, practical men
preferred the gospel of Wesley and Whitfield to
that of Jean Jacques; while enough of the old
leaven of Puritanism remained to ensure the
favour and support of a large number of religious
men to a revival of evangelical supernaturalisin.
Thus, by degrees, the free -think ing, or the indif-
ference, prevalent among us in the first half of the
eighteenth century, was replaced by a strong
supernaturalistic reaction, which submerged the
work of the free-thinkers ; and even seemed, for
a time, to have arrested the naturalistic movement
of which that work was an imperfect indication.
Yet, like Lollardry, four centuries earlier, free-
thought merely took to running underground,
safe, sooner or later, to return to the surface.
My memory, unfortunately, carries me back to the
fourth decade of the nineteenth century, when the
I PROLOGUE 21
evangelical flood had a little abated and the tops
of certain mountains were soon to appear, chiefly
in the neighbourhood of Oxford ; but when never-
theless, bibliolatry was rampant; when church
and chapel alike proclaimed, as the oracles of God,
the crude assumptions of the worst informed and,
in natural sequence, the most presumptuously
bigoted, of all theological schools.
In accordance with promises made on my
behalf, but certainly without my authorisation, I
was very early taken to hear "sermons in the
vulgar tongue." And vulgar enough often was
the tongue in which some preacher, ignorant alike
of literature, of history, of science, and even* of
theology, outside that patronised by his own
narrow school, poured forth, from the safe
entrenchment of the pulpit, invectives against
those who deviated from his notion of orthodoxy.
From dark allusions to " sceptics " and " infidels,"
I became aware of the existence of people who
trusted in carnal reason ; who audaciously doubted
that the world was made in six natural days, or
that the deluge was universal ; perhaps even went
so far as to question the literal accuracy of the
story of Eve's temptation, or of Balaam's ass ; and,
from the horror of the tones in which they were
mentioned, I should have been justified in drawing
the conclusion that these rash men belonged to the
criminal classes. At the same time, those who
were more directly responsible for providing me
22 PROLOGUE I
with the knowledge essential to the right
guidance of life (and who sincerely desired to do
so), imagined they were discharging that most
sacred duty by impressing upon my childish mind
the necessity, on pain of reprobation in this world
and damnation in the next, of accepting, in the
strict and literal sense, every statement contained
in the Protestant Bible. I was told to believe,
and I did believe, that doubt about any of them
was a sin, not less reprehensible than a moral
delict. I suppose that, out of a thousand of my
contemporaries, nine hundred, at least, had their
minds systematically warped and poisoned, in the
name of the God of truth, by like discipline. I am
sure that, even a score of years later, those who
ventured to question the exact historical accuracy
of any part of the Old Testament and a fortiori of
the Gospels, had to expect a pitiless shower of
verbal missiles, to say nothing of the other dis-
agreeable consequences which visit those who, in
any way, run counter to that chaos of prejudices
called public opinion.
My recollections of this time have recently been
revived by the perusal of a remarkable document, l
signed by as many as thirty-eight out of the
twenty odd thousand clergymen of the Established
Church. It does not appear that the signataries
are officially accredited spokesmen of the ecclesias-
1 Declaration on the Truth of Holy Scripture. The 2\mcs9
18th December, 1891.
I PROLOGUE 23
tical corporation to which they belong ; but I feel
bound to take their word for it, that they are
" stewards of the Lord, who have- received the Holy
Ghost," and, therefore, to accept this memorial as
evidence that, though the Evangelicism of my early
days may be deposed from its place of power,
though so many of the colleagues of the thirty-eight
even repudiate the title of Protestants, yet the
green bay tree of bibliolatry flourishes as it did sixty
years ago. And, as in those good old times, whoso
refuses to offer i ncense to the idol is held to be guilty
of " a dishonour to God," imperilling his salvation.
It is to the credit of the perspicacity of the
memorialists that they discern the real nature of
the Controverted Question of the age. They are
awake to the unquestionable fact that, if Scripture
has been discovered " not to be worthy of un-
questioning belief," -faith "in the supernatural
itself" is, so far, undermined. And I may con-
gratulate myself upon such weighty confirmation
of an opinion in which I have had the fortune to
anticipate them. But whether it is more to the
credit of the courage, than to the intelligence, of
the thirty- eight that they should go on to pro-
claim that the canonical scriptures of the Old
and New Testaments " declare incontrovertible7
the actual historical truth in all records, both of
past events and of the delivery of predictions to
be thereafter fulfilled," must be left to the coming
generation to decide.
24 PROLOGUE I
The interest which attaches to this singular
document will, I think, be based by most thinking
men, not upon what it is, but upon that of which
it is a sign. It is an open secret, that the
memorial is put forth as a counterblast to a
manifestation of opinion of a contrary character,
on the part of certain members of the same
ecclesiastical body, who therefore have, as I
suppose, an equal right to declare themselves
" stewards of the Lord and recipients of the Holy
Ghost." In fact, the stream of tendency towards
Naturalism, the course of which I have briefly
traced, has, of late years, flowed so strongly, that
even the Churches have begun, I dare not say to
drift, but, at any rate, to swing at their moorings.
Within the pale of the Anglican establishment, I
venture to doubt, whether, at this moment, there
are as many thorough -going defenders of " plenary
inspiration " as there were timid questioners of
that doctrine, half a century ago. Commentaries,
sanctioned by the highest authority, give up the
" actual historical truth " of the cosmogomcal
and diluvial narratives. University professors of
deservedly high repute accept the critical decision
that the Hexateuch is a compilation, in which the
share of Moses, either as author or as editor, is
not quite so clearly demonstrable as it might be ;
highly placed Divines tell us that the pre-
Abrahamic Scripture narratives may be ignored ;
that the book of Daniel may be regarded as a
I PROLOGUE 25
patriotic romance of the second century B.C. ;
that the words of the writer of the fourth Gospel
are not always to be distinguished from those
which he puts into the mouth of Jesus. Conser-
vative, hut conscientious, revisers decide that
whole passages, some of dogmatic and some of
ethical importance, are interpolations. An uneasy
sense of the weakness of the dogma of Biblical
infallibility seems to be at the bottom of a
prevailing tendency once more to substitute the
authority of the " Church " for that of the Bible.
In my old age, it has happened to me to be taken
to task for regarding Christianity as a " religion
of a book " as gravely as, in my youth, I should
have been reprehended for doubting that proposi-
tion. It is a no less interesting symptom that
the State Church seems more and more anxious
to repudiate all complicity with the principles of
the Protestant -Reformation and to call itself
" Anglo-Catholic." Inspiration, deprived of its
old intelligible sense, is watered down into a
mystification. The Scriptures are, indeed, in-
spired ; but they contain a wholly undefined and
indefinable " human element " ; and this unfortu-
nate intruder is converted into a sort of biblical
whipping boy. Whatsoever scientific investigation,
historical or physical, proves to be erroneous, the
"human element" bears the blame; while the
divine inspiration of such statements, as by their
nature are out of reach of proof or disproof, is
26 PROLOGUE I
still asserted with all the vigour inspired by
conscious safety from attack. Though the pro-
posal to treat the Bible " like any other book "
which caused so much scandal, forty years ago,
may not yet be generally accepted, and though
Bishop Colenso's criticisms may still lie, formally,
under ecclesiastical ban, yet the Church has not
wholly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the
scientific tempter ; and many a coy divine, while
" crying I will ne'er consent," has consented to
the proposals of that scientific criticism which the
memorialists renounce and denounce.
A humble layman, to whom it would seem the
height of presumption to assume even the uncon-
sidered dignity of a " steward of science," may
well find this conflict of apparently equal ecclesi-
astical authorities perplexing — suggestive, indeed,
of the wisdom of postponing attention to either,
until the question of precedence between them is
settled. And this course will probably appear
the more advisable, the more closely the funda-
mental position of the memorialists is examined.
"No opinion of the fact or form of Divine
Revelation, founded on literary criticism [and I
suppose I may add historical, or physical, critic-
ism] of the Scriptures themselves, can be admitted
to interfere with the traditionary testimony of the
Church, when that has been once ascertained and
verified by appeal to antiquity." 1
1 Declaration Article 10.
I PROLOGUE 27
Grant that it is "the traditionary testimony of
the Church" which guarantees the canonicity of
each and all of the books of the Old and New
Testaments. Grant also that canonicity means
infallibility; yet, according to the thirty-eight,
this " traditionary testimony " has to be " ascer-
tained and verified by appeal to antiquity." But
" ascertainment and verification " are purely
intellectual processes, which must be conducted
according to the strict rules of scientific investiga-
tion, or be self-convicted of worthlessness. More-
over, before we can set about the appeal to
" antiquity/' the exact sense of that usefully
vague term must be defined by similar means.
" Antiquity " may include any number of centu-
ries, great or small ; and whether " antiquity " is
to comprise the Council of Trent, or to stop a
little beyond that of Nicsea, or to come to an
end in the time of Irenaeus, or in that of
Justin Martyr, are knotty questions which can be
decided, if at all, only by those critical methods
which the signataries treat so cavalierly. And
yet the decision of these questions is funda-
mental, for as the limits of the canonical scrip-
tures vary, so may the dogmas deduced from
them require modification. Christianity is one
thing, if the fourth Gospel, the Epistle to the
Hebrews, the pastoral Epistles, and the Apo-
calypse are canonical and (by the hypothesis) in-
fallibly true ; and ^another thing, if they are not.
28 PROLOGUE 1
As I have already said, whoso defines the canon
defines the creed.
Now it is quite certain with respect to some of
these books, such as the Apocalypse and the
Epistle to the Hebrews, that the Eastern and the
Western Church differed in opinion for centuries ;
and yet neither the one branch nor the other can
have considered its judgment infallible, since they
eventually agreed to a transaction by which each
gave up its objection to the book patronised by
the other. Moreover, the " fathers " argue (in a
more or less rational manner) about the canonicity
of this or that book, and are by no means above
producing evidence, internal and external, in
favour of the opinions they advocate. In fact,
imperfect as their conceptions of scientific method
may be, they not unfrequently used it to the best
of their ability. Thus it would appear that
though science, like Nature, may be driven out
with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely
comes back again. The appeal to " antiquity " is,
in fact, an appeal to science, first to define what
antiquity is ; secondly, to determine what " anti-
quity," so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly,
to prove that canonicity means infallibility. And
when science, largely in the shape of the abhorred
" criticism," has answered this appeal, and has
shown that "antiquity" used her own methods,
however clumsily and imperfectly, she naturally
turns round upon the appellants, and demands
I PROLOGUE 29
that they should show cause why, in these
days, science should not resume the work the
ancients did so imperfectly, and carry it out
efficiently.
But no such cause can be shown. If " antiquity "
permitted Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Irenoeus,
to argue for the reception of this book into the
canon and the rejection of that, upon rational
grounds, " antiquity " admitted the whole prin-
ciple of modern criticism. If Irenseus produces
ridiculous reasons for limiting the Gospels to four,
it was open to any one else to produce good
reasons (if he had them) for cutting them down
to three, or increasing them to five. If the
Eastern branch of the Church had a right to
reject the Apocalypse and accept the Epistle to
the Hebrews, and the Western an equal right to
accept the Apocalypse and reject the Epistle,
down to the fourth century, any other branch
would have an equal right, on cause shown, to
reject both, or, as the Catholic Church afterwards
actually did, to accept both.
Thus I cannot but think that the thirty-eight
are hoist with their own petard. Their " appeal to
antiquity " turns out to be nothing but a round-
about way of appealing to the tribunal, the juris-
diction of which they affect to deny. Having
rested the world of Christian supernaturalism on
the elephant of biblical infallibility, and furnished
the elephant with standing ground on the tortoise
30 PROLOGUE 1
of "antiquity/ they, like their famous Hindoo
analogue, have been content to look no further ;
and have thereby been spared the horror of dis-
covering that the tortoise rests on a grievously
fragile construction, to a great extent the work of
that very intellectual operation which they anathe-
matise and repudiate.
Moreover, there is another point to be considered.
It is of course true that a Christian Church
(whether the Christian Church, or not, depends on
the connotation of the definite article) existed
before the Christian scriptures ; and that the in-
fallibility of these depends upon the infalli-
bility of the judgment of the persons who
selected the books of which they are composed,
out of the mass of literature current among the
early Christians. The logical acumen of Augustine
showed him that the authority of the Gospel he
preached must rest on that of the Church to
which he belonged.1 But it is no less true that
the Hebrew and the Septuagint versions of most,
if not all, of the Old Testament books existed be-
fore the birth of Jesus of Nazareth ; and that their
divine authority is presupposed by, and therefore
can hardly depend upon, the religious body con-
stituted by his disciples. As everybody knows,
the very conception of a "Christ" is purely
1 Ego vero evangelic non crederem, nisi ecclesise Catholics
me commoveret auctoritas. — Contra Epistolam Manichcei,
cap. v.
I PROLOGUE 31
Jewish. The validity of the argument from the
Messianic prophecies vanishes unless their infallible
authority is granted ; and, as a matter of fact,
whether we turn to the Gospels, the Epistles, or
the writings of the early Apologists, the Jewish
scriptures are recognised as the highest court of
appeal of the Christian.
The proposal to cite Christian " antiquity " as a
witness to the infallibility of the Old Testament,
when its own claims to authority vanish, if certain
propositions contained in the Old Testament are
erroneous, hardly satisfies the requirements of lay
logic. It is as if a claimant to be sole legatee,
under another kind of testament, should offer his
assertion as sufficient evidence of the validity of
the will. And, even were not such a circular, or
rather rotatory, argument, that the infallibility of
the Bible is testified by the infallible Church,
whose infallibility is testified by the infallible
Bible, too absurd for serious consideration, it re-
mains permissible to ask, Where and when the
Church, during the period of its infallibility, as
limited by Anglican dogmatic necessities, has
officially decreed the " actual historical truth of
all records " in the Old Testament ? Was Augus-
tine heretical when he denied the actual historical
truth of the record of the Creation ? Father
Suarez, standing on later Roman tradition, may
have a right to declare that he was ; but it does
no* lie in the mouth of those who limit their
118
32 PROLOGUE I
appeal to that early " antiquity/' in which Augus-
tine played so great a part, to say so.
Among the watchers of the course of the world
of thought, some view with delight and some with
horror, the recrudescence of Super naturalism
which manifests itself among us, in shapes ranged
along the whole flight of steps, which, in this case,
separates the sublime from the ridiculous — from
Neo-Catholicism and Inner-light mysticism, at the
top, to unclean things, not worthy of mention in
the same breath, at the bottom. In my poor
opinion, the importance of these manifestations
is often greatly over-estimated. The extant forms
of Supernaturalism have deep roots in human
nature, and will undoubtedly die hard ; but, in
these latter days, they have to cope with an
enemy whose full strength is only just beginning
to be put out, and whose forces, gathering strength
year- by year, are hemming them round on every
side. This enemy is Science, in the acceptation of
systematised natural knowledge, which, during the
last two centuries, has extended those methods of
investigation, the worth of which is confirmed by
daily appeal to Nature, to every region in which
the Supernatural has hitherto been recognised.
When scientific historical criticism reduced the
annals of heroic Greece and of regal Eome to the
level of fables ; when the unity of authorship of the
Iliad was successfully assailed by scientific literary
I PROLOGUE 33
criticism ; when scientific physical criticism, after
exploding the geocentric theory of the universe
and reducing the solar system itself to one of
millions of groups of like cosmic specks, circling, at
unimaginable distances from one another through
infinite space, showed the supernatural istic theories
of the duration of the earth and of life upon it, to
be as inadequate as those of its relative dimensions
and importance had been ; it needed no prophetic
gift to spe that, sooner or later, the Jewish and
the early Christian records would be treated in
the same manner ; that the authorship of the
Hexateuch and of the Gospels would be as severely
tested ; and that the evidence in favour of the
veracity of many of the statements found in the
Scriptures would have to be strong indeed, if they
were to be opposed to the conclusions of physical
science. In point of fact, so far as I can discover,
no one competent to judge of the evidential
strength of these conclusions, ventures now to say
that the biblical accounts of the creation and of
the deluge are true in the natural sense of the
words of the narratives. The most modern Re-
concilers venture upon is to affirm, that some
quite different sense may be put upon the words ;
and that this non-natural sense may, with a little
trouble, be manipulated into some sort of non-
contradiction of scientific truth.
My purpose, in the essay (XVI.) which treats
of the narrative of the Deluge, was to prove, by
34 PROLOGUE I
physical criticism, that no such event as that
described ever took place ; to exhibit the untrust-
worthy character of the narrative demonstrated
by literary criticism ; and, finally, to account for
its origin, by producing a form of those ancient
legends of pagan Chaldsea, from which the biblical
compilation is manifestly derived. I have yet to
learn that the main propositions of this essay can
be seriously challenged.
In the essays (II., III.) on the narrative of the
Creation, I have endeavoured to controvert the
assertion that modern science supports, either the
interpretation put upon it by Mr. Gladstone, or
any interpretation which is compatible with the
general sense of the narrative, quite apart from
particular details. The first chapter of Genesis
teaches the supernatural creation of the present
forms of life ; modern science teaches that they
have come about by evolution. The first chapter
of Genesis teaches the successive origin — firstly,
of all the plants, secondly, of all the aquatic and
aerial animals, thirdly, of all the terrestrial ani-
mals, which now exist — during distinct intervals
of time ; modern science teaches that, throughout
all the duration of an immensely long past, so far
as we have any adequate knowledge of it (that is
as far back as the Silurian epoch), plants, aquatic,
aerial, and terrestrial animals have co-existed;
that the earliest known are unlike those which at
present exist ; and that the modern species have
I PROLOGUE 35
come into existence as the last terms of a series,
the members of which have appeared one after
another. Thus, far from confirming the account
in Genesis, the results of modern science, so far as
they go, are in principle, as in detail, hopelessly
discordant with it.
Yet, if the pretensions to infallibility set up,
not by the ancient Hebrew writings themselves,
but by the ecclesiastical champions and friends
from whom they may well pray to be delivered,
thus shatter themselves against the rock of
natural knowledge, in respect of the two most
important of all events, the origin of things and
the palingenesis of terrestrial life, what historical
credit dare any serious thinker attach to the
narratives of the fabrication of Eve, of the Fall,
of the commerce between the Bene Elohim and
the daughters of men, which lie between the
c/eational and the diluvial legends ? And, if
those are to lose all historical worth, what be-
comes of the infallibility of those who, according
to the later scriptures, have accepted them,
argued from them, and staked far-reaching dog-
matic conclusions upon their historical accuracy ?
It is the merest ostrich policy for contemporary
ecclesiasticism to try to' hide its Hexateuchal
head — in the hope that the inseparable connec-
tion of its body with pre-Abrahamic legends may
be overlooked. The question will still be asked,
if the first nine chapters of the Pentateuch are
36 PROLOGUE I
unhistorical, how is the historical accuracy of
the remainder to be guaranteed ? What more
intrinsic claim has the story of the Exodus than
that of the Deluge, to belief? If God did not
walk in the Garden of Eden, how can we be
assured that he spoke from Sinai ?
In some other of the following essays (IX., X.,
XL, XII., XIV., XV.) I have endeavoured to
show that sober and well-founded physical and
literary criticism plays no less havoc with the
doctrine that the canonical scriptures of the New
Testament "declare incontrovertibly the actual
historical truth in all records." We are told that
the Gospels contain a true revelation of the
spiritual world — a proposition which, in one sense
of the word "spiritual," I should not think it
necessary to dispute. But, when it is taken to
signify that everything we are told about the
world of spirits in these books is infallibly true ;
that we are bound to accept the demonology
which constitutes an inseparable part of their
teaching ; and to profess belief in a Supernatural-
ism as gross as that of any primitive people — it is
at any rate permissible to ask why ? Science
may be unable to define the limits of possibility,
but it cannot escape from the moral obligation
to weigh the evidence in favour of any alleged
wonderful occurrence ; and I have endeavoured to
show that the evidence for the Gadarene miracle
I PROLOGUE 37
is altogether worthless. We have simply three,
partially discrepant, versions of a story, about the
primitive form, the origin, and the authority for
which we know absolutely nothing. But the
evidence in favour of the Gadarene miracle is as
good as that for any other.
Elsewhere, I have pointed out that it is utterly
beside the mark to declaim against these conclu-
sions on the ground of their asserted tendency
to deprive mankind of the consolations of the
Christian faith, and to destroy the foundations
of morality ; still less to brand them with the
question-begging vituperative appellation of
" infidelity." The point is not whether they
are wicked ; but, whether, from the point of view
of scientific method, they are irrefragably true.
If they are, they will be accepted in time, whether
they are wicked, or not wicked. Nature, so far as
we have been able to attain to any insight into
her ways, recks little about consolation and makes
for righteousness by very round-about paths.
And, at any rate, whatever may be possible for
other people, it is becoming less and less possible
for the man who puts his faith in scientific
methods of ascertaining truth, and is accustomed
to have that faith justified by daily experience, to
be consciously false to his principle in any matter.
But the number of such men, driven into the use
of scientific methods of inquiry and taught to
trust them, by their education, their daily pro-
38 PROLOGUE I
fessional and business needs, is increasing and will
continually increase. The phraseology of Super-
naturalism may remain on men's lips, but in
practice they are" Naturalists. The magistrate
who listens with devout attention to the precept
" Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live " on
Sunday, on Monday, dismisses, as intrinsically
absurd, a charge of bewitching a cow brought
against some old woman; the superintendent of
a lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for
rational modes of treatment would have but a
short tenure of office ; even parish clerks doubt
the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the wind
is in the east ; and an outbreak of pestilence sends
men, not to the churches, but to the drains. In
spite of prayers for the success of our arms and
Te Deums for victory, our real faith is in big
battalions and keeping our powder dry ; in know-
ledge of the science of warfare ; in energy,
courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other
practical affairs, we act on the aphorism "Laborare
cst orare " ; we admit that intelligent work is the
only acceptable worship ; and that, whether there
be a Supernature or not, our business is with
Nature.
It is important to note that the principle of the
scientific Naturalism of the latter half of the nine-
teenth century, in which the intellectual move-
ment of the Renascence has culminated, and
X PROLOGUE 39
which was first clearly formulated by Descartes,
leads not to the denial of the existence of any
Supernature ; l but simply to the denial of the
validity of the evidence adduced in favour of this,
or of that, extant form of Supernaturalism.
Looking at the matter from the most rigidly
scientific point of view, the assumption that,
amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through
endless space, there can be no intelligence, as
much greater than man's as his is greater than
a blackbeetle's ; no being endowed with powers of
influencing the course of nature as much greater
than his, as his is greater than a snail's, seems to
me not merely baseless, but impertinent. Without
stepping beyond the analogy of that which is
known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities,
in ascending scale, until we reach something prac-
tically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omni-
presence, and omniscience. If our intelligence
can, in some matters, surely reproduce the past of
thousands of years ago and anticipate the future,
thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the
limits of possibility that some greater intellect,
even of the same order, may be able to mirror the/
whole past and the whole future ; if the universe
1 I employ the words "Supernature" and "Supernatural"
in their popular senses. For myself, I am bound to say that
the term ** Nature " covers the totality of that which is. The
world of psychical phenomena appears to me to be as much part
of "Nature" as the world of physical phenomena ; and I am
unable to perceive any justification for cutting the Universe
into two halves, one natural and one supernatural.
40 PROLOGUE I
is penetrated by a medium of such a nature that a
magnetic needle on the earth answers to a
commotion in the sun, an omnipresent agent is
also conceivable; if our insignificant knowledge
gives us some influence over events, practical
omniscience may confer indefinably greater power.
Finally, if evidence that a thing may be, were
equivalent to proof that it is, analogy might justify
the construction of a naturalistic theology and
demonology not less wonderful than the current
supernatural ; just as it might justify the peopling
of Mars, or of Jupiter, with living forms to which
terrestrial biology offers no parallel. Until human
life is longer and the duties of the present press
less heavily, I do not think that wise men will oc-
cupy themselves with Jovian, or Martian, natural
history ; and they will probably agree to a verdict
of " not proven " in respect of naturalistic theology,
taking refuge in that agnostic confession, which
appears to me to be the only position for people
who object to say that they 'know what they are
quite aware they do not know. As to the in-
terests of morality, I am disposed to think that
if mankind could be got to act up to this last
principle in every relation of life, a reformation
would be effected such as the world has not yet seen ;
an approximation to the millennium, such as no
N supernaturalistic religion has ever yet succeeded.
or seems likely ever to succeed, in effecting.
I PROLOGUE 41
I have hitherto dwelt upon scientific Naturalism
chiefly in its critical and destructive aspect.
But the present in carnation of the spirit of the
Renascence differs from its predecessor in the
eighteenth century, in that it builds up, as well
as pulls down.
That of which it has laid the foundation, of
which it is already raising the superstructure, is the
doctrine of evolution. But so many strange mis-
conceptions are current about this doctrine — it is
attacked on such false grounds by its enemies, and
made to cover so much that is disputable by some
of its friends, that I think it well to define as
clearly as I can, what I do not and what I do
understand by the doctrine.
I have nothing to say to any "Philosophy of
Evolution." Attempts to construct such a phil-
osophy may be as useful, nay, even as admirable,
as was the attempt of Descartes to get at a theory
of the universe by the same a priori road ; but, in
my judgment, they are as premature. Nor, for
this purpose, have I to do with any theory of the
" Origin of Species," much as I value that which
is known as the Darwinian theory. That the
doctrine of natural selection presupposes evolution
is quite true ; but it is not true that evolution
necessarily implies natural selection. In fact,
evolution might conceivably have taken place
without the development of groups possessing the
characters of species.
42 PROLOGUE I
For me/ the doctrine of evolution is no specula-
tion, but a generalisation of certain facts, which
may be observed by any one who will take the
necessary trouble. These facts are those which
are classed by biologists under the heads of
Embryology and of Palaeontology. Embryology
proves that every higher form of individual life
becomes what it is by a process of gradual differ-
entiation from an extremely low form ; palseonto -
logy proves, in some cases, and renders probable in
all, that the oldest types of a group are the
lowest; and that they have been followed by a
gradual succession of more and more differentiated
forms. It is simply a fact, that evolution of the
individual animal and plant is taking place, as a
natural process, in millions and millions of cases
every day ; it is a fact, that the species which have
succeeded one another in the past, do, in many
cases, present just those morphological relations,
which they must possess, if they had proceeded,
one from the other, by an analogous process of
evolution.
The alternative presented, therefore, is : either
the forms of one and the same type — say, e.g., that
of the Horse tribe l — arose successively, but inde-
pendently of one another, at intervals, during
myriads of years ; or, the later forms are modified
1 The general reader will find an admirably clear and concise
statement of the evidence in this case, in Professor Flower's
recently published work The Horse: a Study in Natural History,
I PROLOGUE 43
descendants of the earlier. And the latter sup-
position is so vastly more probable than the former,
that rational men will adopt it, unless satisfactory
evidence to the contrary can be produced. The
objection sometimes put forward, that no one yet
professes to have seen one species pass into another,
comes oddly from those who believe that mankind
are all descended from Adam. Has any one then yet
seen the production of negroes from a white stock,
xor vice versd ? Moreover, is it absolutely necessary
to have watched every step of the progress of a
planet, to be justified in concluding that it really
does go round the sun ? If so, astronomy is in a
bad way.
I do not, for a moment, presume to suggest that
some one, far better acquainted than I am with
astronomy and physics ; or that a master of the
new chemistry, with its extraordinary revelations ;
or that a student of the development of human
society, of language, and of religions, may not
find a sufficient foundation for the doctrine of
evolution in these several regions. On the contrary,
I rejoice to see that scientific investigation, in all
directions, is tending to the same result. And it
may well be, that it is only my long occupation
with biological matters that leads me to feel safer
among them than anywhere else. Be that as it
may, I take my stand on the facts of embryology
and of palaeontology ; and I hold that our present
knowledge of these facts is sufficiently thorough
44 PROLOGUE I
and extensive to justify the assertion that all
future philosophical and theological speculations
will have to accommodate themselves to some such
common body of established truths as the
following : —
1. Plants and animals have existed on our
planet for many hundred thousand, probably
millions, of years. During this time, their forms,
or species, have undergone a succession of changes,
which eventually gave rise to the species which
constitute the present living population of the
earth. There is no evidence, nor any reason to
suspect, that this secular process of evolution is
other than a part of the ordinary course of nature ;
there is no more ground for imagining the occur-
rence of supernatural intervention, at any moment
in the development of species in the past, than
there is for supposing such intervention to take
place, at any moment in the development of an
individual animal or plant, at the present day.
2. At present, every individual animal or plant
commences its existence as an organism of
extremely simple anatomical structure ; and it
acquires all the complexity it ultimately possesses
by gradual differentiation into parts of various
structure and function. When a series of specific
forms of the same type, extending over a long
period of past time, is examined, the relation
between the earlier and the later forms is analogous
to that between earlier and later stages of indi-
I PROLOGUE 45
vidual development. Therefore, it is a probable
conclusion that, if we could follow living beings
back to their earlier states, we should find them
to present forms similar to those of the individual
germ, or, what comes to the same thing, of those
lowest known organisms which stand upon the
boundary line between plants and animals. At
present, our knowledge of the ancient living world
stops very far short of this point.
3. It is generally agreed, and there is certainly
no evidence to the contrary, that all plants are
devoid of consciousness ; that they neither feel,
desire, nor think. It is conceivable that the
evolution of the primordial living substance should
have taken place only along the plant line. In
that case, the result might have been a wealth of
vegetable life, as great, perhaps as varied, as at
present, though certainly widely different from the
present flora, in the evolution of which animals
have played so great a part. But the living world
thus constituted would be simply an admirable
piece of unconscious machinery, the working out of
which lay potentially in its primitive composition ;
pleasure and pain would have no place in it ; it
would be a veritable Garden of Eden without any
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The
question of the moral government of such a world
could no more be asked, than we could reasonably
seek for a moral purpose in a kaleidoscope.
4. How far down the scale of animal life the
46 PROLOGUE I
phenomena of consciousness are manifested, it is
impossible to say. No one doubts their presence
in his fellow-men ; and, unless any strict Cartesians
are left, no one doubts that mammals and birds are
to be reckoned creatures that have feelings analo-
gous to our smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch,
pleasure, and pain. For my own part, I should
be disposed to extend this analogical judgment a
good deal further. On the other hand, if the
lowest forms of plants are to be denied conscious-
ness, I do not see on what ground it is to be
ascribed to the lowest animals. I find it hard to
believe that an infusory animalcule, a foraminifer,
or a fresh -water polype is capable of feeling ; and,
in spite of Shakspere, I have doubts about the
great sensitiveness of the "poor beetle that we
tread upon." The question is equally perplexing
when we turn to the stages of development of the
individual. Granted a fowl feels ; that the chick
just hatched feels ; that the chick when it chirps
within the egg may possibly feel ; what is to be
said of it on the fifth day, when the bird is there,
but with all its tissues nascent ? Still more, on
the first day, when it is nothing* but a flat cellular
disk ? I certainly cannot bring myself to believe
that this disk feels. Yet if it does not, there must
be some time in the three weeks, between the
first day and the day of hatching, when, as a con-
comitant, or a consequence, of the attainment by
the brain of the chick of a certain stage of
I PROLOGUE 47
structural evolution, consciousness makes its ap-
pearance. I have frequently expressed my in-
capacity to understand the nature of the relation
between consciousness and a certain anatomical
tissue, which is thus established by observation.
But the fact remains that, so far as observation and
experiment go, they teach us that the psychical
phenomena are dependent on the physical.
In like manner, if fishes, insects, scorpions, and
such animals as the pearly nautilus, possess
feeling, then undoubtedly consciousness was pres-
ent in the world as far back as the Silurian
epoch. But, if the earliest animals were similar
to our rhizopods and monads, there must have
been some time, between the much earlier epoch
in which they constituted the whole animal
population and the Silurian, in which feeling
dawned, in consequence of the organism having
reached the stage of evolution on which it
depends.
5. Consciousness has various forms, which may
be manifested independently of one another.
The feelings of light and colour, of sound, of
touch, though so often associated with those of
pleasure and pain, are, by nature, as entirely
independent of them as is thinking. An animal
devoid of the feelings of pleasure and of pain,
may nevertheless exhibit all the effects of sensa-
tion and purposive action. Therefore, it would be
a justifiable hypothesis that, long after organic
119
48 PKOLOGUE I
evolution had attained to consciousness, pleasure
and pain were still absent. Such a world would
be without either happiness or misery; no act
could be punished and none could be rewarded ;
and it could have no moral purpose.
6. Suppose, for argument's sake, that all
mammals and birds are subjects of pleasure and
pain. Then we may be certain that these forms
of consciousness were in existence at the beginning
of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time forth,
pleasure has been distributed without reference to
merit, and pain inflicted without reference to
demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction of the
higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the
severity of the pain, no less than the variety and
acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with
every advance in the scale of evolution. As
suffering came into the world, not in consequence
of a fall, but of a rise, in the scale of being, so
every further rise has brought more suffering.
As the evidence stands, it would appear that the
sort of brain which characterises the highest
mammals and which, so far as we know, is the
indispensable condition of the highest sensibility,
did not come into existence before the Tertiary
epoch. The primordial anthropoid was probably, in
this respect, on much the same footing as his pithe-
coid kin. Like them he stood upon his " natural
rights/' gratified all his desires to the best of his
ability, and was as incapable of either right or
I PROLOGUE 49
wrong doing as they. It would be as absurd as in
their case, to regard his pleasures, any more than
theirs, as moral rewards, and his pains, any more
than theirs, as moral punishments.
7. From the remotest ages of which we have
any cognizance, death has been the natural and,
apparently, the necessary concomitant of life. In
our hypothetical world (3), inhabited by nothing
but plants, death must have very early resulted
from the struggle for existence : many of the
crowd must have jostled one another out of the
conditions on which life depends. The occurrence
of death, as far back as we have any fossil record
of life, however, needs not to .be proved by such
arguments ; for, if there had been no death there
would have been no fossil remains, such as the
great majority of those we met with. Not only
was there death in the world, as far as the record
of life takes us; but, ever since mammals and
birds have been preyed upon by carnivorous
animals, there has been painful death, inflicted by
mechanisms specially adapted for inflicting it.
8. Those who are acquainted with the closeness
of the structural relations between the human
organisation and that of the mammals which
come nearest to him, on the one hand ; and with
the palseontological history of such animals as
horses and dogs, on the other ; will not be disposed
to question the origin of man from forms which
stand in the same sort of relation to Homo
50 PROLOGUE I
sapiens, as Hipparion does to Equus. I think it a
conclusion, fully justified by analogy, that, sooner
or later, we shall discover the remains of our less
specialised primatic ancestors in the strata which
have yielded the less specialised equine and
canine quadrupeds. At present, fossil remains of
men do not take us back further than the later
part of the Quaternary epoch ; and, as was to be
expected, they do not differ more from existing
men, than Quaternary horses differ from existing
horses. Still earlier we find traces of man, in
implements, such as are used by the ruder savages
at the present day. Later, the remains of the
paleolithic and neolithic conditions take us
gradually from the savage state to the civilisations
of Egypt and . of Mycenae ; though the true
chronological order of the remains actually dis-
covered may be uncertain.
9. Much has yet to be learned, but, at present,
natural knowledge affords no support to the notion
that men have fallen from a higher to a lower
state. On the contrary, everything points to a
slow natural evolution ; which, favoured by the
surrounding conditions in such localities as the
valleys of the Yang-tse-kang, the Euphrates,
and the Nile, reached a relatively high pitch, five
or six thousand years ago ; while, in many other
regions, the savage condition has persisted down
to our day. In all this vast lapse of time there
is not a trace of the occurrence of any genera]
I PROLOGUE 51
destruction of the human race ; not the smallest
indication that man has been treated on any
other principles than the rest of the animal
world.
10. The results of the process of evolution in
the case of man, and in that of his more nearly
allied contemporaries, have been marvellously
different. Yet it is easy to see that small primi-
tive differences of a certain order, must, in the
long run, bring about a wide divergence of the
human stock from the others. It is a reasonable
supposition that, in the earliest human organisms,
an improved brain, a voice more capable of
modulation and articulation, limbs which lent
themselves better to gesture, a more perfect hand,
capable among other things of imitating form in
plastic or other material, were combined with
the curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong
family affection of the next lower group ; and
that they were accompanied by exceptional length
of life and a prolonged minority. The last two
peculiarities are obviously calculated to strengthen
the family organisation, and to give great weight
to its educative influences. The potentiality of
language, as the vocal symbol of thought, lay in
the faculty of modulating and articulating the
voice. The potentiality of writing, as the visual
symbol of thought, lay in the hand that could
draw; and in the mimetic tendency, which, as we
know, was gratified by drawing, as far back as the
52 PROLOGUE I
days of Quaternary man. With speech as the
record, in tradition, of the experience of more
than one generation ; with writing as the record
of that of any number of generations; the
experience of the race, tested and corrected
generation after generation, could be stored up
and made the starting point for fresh progress.
Having these perfectly natural factors of the
evolutionary process in man before us, it seems
unnecessary to go further a-field in search of
others.
11. That the doctrine of evolution implies a
former state of innocence of mankind is quite
true ; but, as I have remarked, it is the innocence
of the ape and of the tiger, whose acts, however
they may run counter to the principles of
morality, it would be absurd to blame. The lust
of the one and the ferocity of the other are as
much provided for in their organisation, are as
clear evidences of design, as any other features
that can be named.
Observation and experiment upon the pheno-
mena of society soon taught men that, in order to
obtain the advantages of social existence, certain
rules must be observed. Morality commenced
with society. Society is possible only upon the
condition that the members of it shall surrender
more or less of their individual freedom of action.
In primitive societies, individual selfishness is a
centrifugal force of such intensity that it is
I PROLOGUE 53
constantly bringing the social organisation to the
verge of destruction. Hence the prominence of
the positive rules of obedience to the elders ; of
standing by the family or the tribe in all emergen-
cies; of fulfilling the religious rites, non-observ-
ance of which is conceived to damage it with the
supernatural powers, belief in whose existence is
one of the earliest products of human thought;
and of the negative rules, which restrain each
from meddling with the life or property of
another.
12. The highest conceivable form of human
society is that in which the desire to do what is
best for the whole, dominates and limits the
action of every member of that society. The
more complex the social organisation the greater
the number of acts from which each man must
abstain, if he desires to do that which is best for
all. Thus the progressive evolution of society
means increasing restriction of individual freedom
in certain directions.
With the advance of civilisation, and the
growth of cities and of nations by the coalescence
of families and of tribes, the rules which con-
stitute the common foundation of morality and of
law became more numerous and complicated, and
the temptations to break or evade many of them
stronger. In the absence of a clear apprehen-
sion of the natural sanctions of these rules, a
supernatural sanction was assumed ; and imagina-
54 PROLOGUE I
tiori supplied the motives which reason was
supposed to be incompetent to furnish. Religion,
at first independent of morality, gradually took
morality under its protection ; and the super-
naturalists have ever since tried to persuade
mankind that the existence of ethics is bound up
with that of supernaturalism.
I am not of that opinion, But, whether it is
correct or otherwise, it is very clear to me that,
as Beelzebub is not to be cast out by the aid of
Beelzebub, so morality is not to be established
by immorality. It is, we are told, the special
peculiarity of the devil that he was a liar from
the beginning. If we set out in life with pre-
tending to know that which we do not know ; with
professing to accept for proof evidence which we
are well aware is inadequate ; with wilfully
shutting our eyes and our ears to facts which
militate against this or that comfortable hypo-
thesis ; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve
the same character.
I have not the presumption to imagine that, in
spite of all my efforts, errors may not have crept
into these propositions. But I am tolerably
confident that time will prove them to be
substantially correct. And if they are so, I
confess I do not see how any extant supernatural-
istic system can also claim exactness. That they
are irreconcilable with the biblical cosmogony,
I PROLOGUE 55
anthropology, and theodicy is obvious; but they
are no less inconsistent with the sentimental
Deism of the "Vicaire Savoyard" and his
numerous modern progeny. It is as impossible,
to my mind, to suppose that the evolutionary
process was set going with full foreknowledge of
the result and yet with what we should under-
stand by a purely benevolent intention, as it is
to imagine that the intention was purely malevo-
lent. And the prevalence of dualistic theories
from the earliest times to the present day —
whether in the shape of the doctrine of the
inherently evil nature of matter ; of an Ahriman ;
of a hard and cruel Demiurge ; of a diabolical
"prince of this world," show how widely this
difficulty has been felt.
Many seem to think that, when it is admitted
that the ancient literature, contained in our
Bibles, has no more claim to infallibility than any
other ancient literature; when it is proved that
the Israelites and their Christian successors
accepted a great many supernaturalistic theories
and legends which have no better foundation than
those of heathenism, nothing remains to be done but
to throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper.
I have always opposed this opinion. It appears
to me that if there is anybody more objectionable
than the orthodox Bibliolater it is the heterodox
Philistine, who can discover in a literature which,
in some respects, has no superior, nothing but
56 PROLOGUE I
a subject for scoffing and an occasion for the
display of his conceited ignorance of the debt he
owes to former generations.
Twenty-two years ago I pleaded for the use of
the Bible as an instrument of popular education,
and I venture to repeat what I then said :
"Consider the great historical fact that, for
three centuries, this book has been woven into
the life of all that is best and noblest in English
history ; that it has become the national Epic of
Britain and is as familiar to gentle and simple,
from John o' Groat's House to Land's End, as
Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians ; that
it is written in the noblest and purest English
and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary
form ; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind,
who never left his village, to be ignorant of the
existence of other countries and other civilisations
and of a great past, stretching back to the
furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world.
By the study of what other book could children
be so much humanised and made to feel that each
figure in that vast historical procession fills, like
themselves, but a- momentary space in the interval
between the Eternities ; and earns the blessings or
the curses of all time, according to its effort to do
good and hate evil, even as they also are earning
their payment for their work ? " l
1 " The School Boards : What they Can do and what they
May do," 1870. Critiques and Addresses, p. 51.
I PROLOGUE 57
At the same time, I laid stress upon the neces-
sity of placing such instruction in lay hands ; in
the hope and belief, that it would thus gradually
accommodate itself to the coming changes of
opinion ; that the theology and the legend would
drop more and more out of sight, while the peren-
nially interesting historical, literary, and ethical
contents would come more and more into view.
I may add yet another claim of the Bible to the
respect and the attention of a democratic age.
Throughout the history of the western world, the
Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, have been the
great instigators of revolt against the worst forms
of clerical and political despotism. The Bible has
been the Magna, Charta of the poor and of the
oppressed ; down to modern times, no State has
had a constitution in which the interests of the
people are so largely taken into account, in which
the duties, so much more than the privileges, of
rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for
Israel in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus ; nowhere
is the fundamental truth that the welfare of the
State, in the long run, depends on the uprightness
of the citizen so strongly laid down. Assuredly,
the Bible talks no trash about the rights of man ;
but it insists on the equality of duties, on the
liberty to bring about that righteousness which is
somewhat different from struggling for " rights " ;
on the fraternity of taking thought for one's
neighbour as for one's self.
58 PROLOGUE I
So far as such equality, liberty, and fraternity
are included under the democratic principles
which assume the same names, the Bible is the
most democratic book in the world. As such it
began, through the heretical sects, to undermine
the clerico-political despotism of the middle ages,
almost as soon as it was formed, in the eleventh
century; Pope and King had as much as they
could do to put down the Albigenses and the
Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies; the Lollards and the Hussites gave them
still more trouble in the fourteenth and fifteenth ;
from the sixteenth century onward, the Protestant
sects have favoured political freedom in proportion
to the degree in which they have refused to
acknowledge any ultimate authority save that of
the Bible.
But the enormous influence which has thus
been exerted by the Jewish and Christian Scrip-
tures has had no necessary connection with
cosmogonies, demonologies, and miraculous inter-
ferences. Their strength lies in their appeals, not
to the reason, but to the ethical sense. I do not
say that even the highest biblical ideal is exclusive
of others or needs no supplement. But I do
believe that the human race is not yet, possibly
may never be, in a position to dispense with it.
II
SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC
REALISM
[1887]
NEXT to undue precipitation in anticipating the
results of pending investigations, the intellectual
sin which is commonest and most hurtful to those
who devote themselves to the increase of know-
ledge is the omission to profit by the experience /
of their predecessors recorded in the history of
science and philosophy. It is true- that, at the
present day, there is more excuse than at any
former time for such neglect. No small labour is
needed to raise one's self to the level of the acqui-
sitions already made ; and able men, who have
achieved thus much, know that, if they devote
themselves body and soul to the increase of their
store, and avoid looking back, with as much care
as if the injunction laid on Lot and his family
were binding upon them, such devotion is sure to
be richly repaid by the joys of the discoverer and
60 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
the solace of fame, if not by rewards of a less
elevated character.
So, following the advice of Francis Bacon, we
refuse inter mortuos qucerere vivum ; we leave the
past to bury its dead, and ignore our intellectual
ancestry. Nor are we content with that. We
follow the evil example set us, not only by Bacon
but by almost all the men of the Renaissance, in
pouring scorn upon the work of our immediate
spiritual forefathers, the schoolmen of the Middle
Ages. It is accepted as a truth which is indisput-
able, that, for seven or eight centuries, a long
succession of able men — some of them of trans-
cendent acuteness and encyclopaedic knowledge —
devoted laborious lives to the grave discussion
of mere frivolities and the arduous pursuit of
intellectual will-o'-the-wisps. To say nothing of
a little modesty, a little impartial pondering over
personal experience might suggest a doubt as to
the adequacy of this short and easy method of
dealing with a large chapter of the history of
the human mind. Even an acquaintance with
popular literature which had extended so far as
to include that part of the contributions of Sam
Slick which contains his weighty aphorism that
"there is a great deal of human nature in all
mankind," might raise a doubt whether, after all,
the men of that epoch, who, take them all round,
were endowed with wisdom and folly in much
the same proportion as ourselves, were likely to
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 61
display nothing better than the qualities of
energetic idiots, when they devoted their faculties
to the elucidation of problems which were to
them, and indeed are to us, the most serious
which life has to offer. Speaking for myself,
the longer I live the more I am disposed to
think that there is much less either of pure
folly, or of pure wickedness, in the world than is
commonly supposed. It may be doubted if any
sane man ever said to himself, " Evil, be thou my
good," and I have never yet had the good fortune
to meet with a perfect fool. When I have brought
to the inquiry the patience and long-suffering
which become a scientific investigator, the most
promising specimens have turned out to have a
good deal to say for themselves from their own
point of view. And, sometimes, calm reflection
has taught the humiliating lesson, that their
point of view was not so different from my own
as I had fondly imagined. Comprehension is
more than half-way to sympathy, here as else- I
where.
If we turn our attention to scholastic philosophy
in the frame of mind suggested by these prefatory
remarks, it assumes a very different character from
that which it bears in general estimation. No
doubt it is surrounded by a dense thicket of
thorny logomachies and obscured by the dust-
clouds of a barbarous an d perplexing terminology.
But suppose that, undeterred by much grime and
62 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II
by many scratches, the explorer has toiled through
this jungle, he comes to an open country which is
amazingly like his dear native land. The hills
which he has to climb, the ravines he has to
avoid, look very much the same ; there is the
same infinite space above, and the same abyss of
the unknown below ; the means of travelling are
the same, and the goal is the same.
That goal for the schoolmen, as for us, is the
settlement of the question how far the universe is
the manifestation of a rational order ; in other
words, how far logical deduction from indisput-
able premisses will account for that which has
happened and does happen. • That was the object
of scholasticism, and, so far as I am aware, the
object of modern science may be expressed in
the same terms. [ In pursuit of this end, modern
science takes into account all the phenomena of
the universe which are brought to our knowledge
by observation or by experiment. It admits that
there are two worlds to be considered, the one
physical and the other psychical ; and that though
there is a most intimate relation and interconnec-
tion between the two, the bridge from one to the
other has yet to be found ; that their phenomena
run, not in one series, but along two parallel lines. 1
To the schoolmen the duality of the universe
appeared under a different aspect. How this
came about will not be intelligible unless we
clearly apprehend the fact that they did really
H PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 63
believe in dogmatic Christianity as it was formu-
lated by the Roman Church. They did not give
a mere dull assent to anything the Church told
them on Sundays, and ignore her teachings for
the rest of the week ; but they lived and moved
and had their being in that supersensible theo-
logical world which was created, or rather grew
up, during the first four centuries of our reckoning,
and which occupied their thoughts far more than
the sensible world in which their earthly lot was
cast.
For the most part, we learn history from the
colourless compendiums or partisan briefs of mere
scholars, who have too little acquaintance with
practical life, and too little insight into specula-
tive problems, to understand that about which
they write. In historical science, as in all
sciences which have to do with concrete pheno-
mena, laboratory practice is indispensable ; and
the laboratory practice of historical science is
afforded, on the one hand, by active social and
political life, and, on the other, by the study of
those tendencies and operations of the mind which
embody themselves in philosophical and theologi-
cal systems. Thucydides and Tacitus, and, to come
nearer our own time, Hume and Grote, were men
of affairs, and had acquired, by direct contact with
social and political history in the making, the
secret of understanding how such history is made.
Our notions of the intellectual history of the
120
64 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
middle ages are, unfortunately, too often derived
from writers who have never seriously grappled
with philosophical and theological problems : and
hence that strange myth of a millennium of moon-
shine to which I have adverted.
However, no very profound study of the works
of contemporary writers who, without devoting
themselves specially to theology or philosophy,
were learned and enlightened — such men, for
example, as Eginhard or Dante — is necessary to
convince one's self, that, for them, the world of the
theologian was an ever-present and awful reality.
From the centre of that world, the Divine Trinity,
surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints,
contemplated and governed the insignificant sen-
sible world in which the inferior spirits of men,
burdened with the debasement of their material
embodiment and continually solicited to their
perdition by a no less numerous and almost as
powerful hierarchy of devils, were constantly
struggling on the edge of the pit of everlasting
damnation.1
1 There is no exaggeration in this brief and summary view of
the Catholic cosmos. But it would be unfair to leave it to be
supposed that the Reformation made any essential alteration,
except perhaps for the worse, in that cosmology which called
itself "Christian." The protagonist of the Reformation, from
whom the whole of the Evangelical sects are lineally descended,
states the case with that plainness of speech, not to say bru-
tality, which characterised him. Luther says that man is a
beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders ; sometimes
God rides him, and sometimes Satan. " Sic voluntas humana
in inedio posita est, ceu jumentum ; si insedeiit Deus, vult efc
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 65
The men of the middle ages believed that
through the Scriptures, the traditions of the
Fathers, and the authority of the Church, they
were in possession of far more, and more trust-
worthy, information with respect to the nature
and order of things in the theological world than
they had in regard to the nature and order of
things in the sensible world. And, if the two
sources of information came into conflict, so much
the worse for the sensible world, which, after all,
was more or less under the dominion of Satan.
Let us suppose that a telescope powerful enough
to show us what is going on in the nebula of the
sword of Orion, should reveal a world in which
stones fell upwards, parallel lines met, and the
fourth dimension of space was quite obvious. Men
of science would have only two alternatives before
them. Either the terrestrial and the nebular facts
must be brought into harmony by such feats of
subtle sophistry as the human mind is always
vadit, quo vult Deus. ... Si insederit Satan, vult et vadit,
quo vult Satan ; nee est in ejus arbitrio ad utrun. sessorem.
currere, ant eum quaerere, sed ipsi sessores certant ob ipsum
obtinendum et possidendum " (De Servo Arbttrio, M. Lutheri
Opera, ed. 1546, t. ii. p. 468). One may hear substantially the
same doctrine preached in the parks and at street-corners by
zealous volunteer missionaries of Evangelicism, any Sunday, in
modern London. Why these doctrines, which are conspicuous
by their absence in the four Gospels, should arrogate to them-
selves the title of Evangelical, in contradistinction to Catholic,
Christianity, may well perplex the impartial inquirer, who, if
he were obliged to choose between the two, might naturally
prefer that which leaves the poor beast of burden a little freedom
of choice.
66 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
capable of performing when driven into a corner ;
or science must throw down its arms in despair,
and commit suicide, either by the admission that
the universe is, after all, irrational, inasmuch as
that which is truth in one corner of it is absurdity
in another, or by a declaration of incompetency.
In the middle ages, the labours of those great
men who endeavoured to reconcile the system of
thought which started from the data of pure
reason, with that which started from the data of
Roman theology, produced the system of thought
which is known as scholastic philosophy ; the
alternative of surrender and suicide is exemplified
by Avicenna and his followers when they declared
that that which is true in theology may be false
in philosophy, and vice versd ; and by Sanchez
in his famous defence of the thesis " Quod nil
scitur"
To those who deny the validity of one of the
primary assumptions of the disputants — who
decline, on the ground of the utter insufficiency of
the evidence, to put faith in the reality of that
other world, the geography and the inhabitants of
which are so confidently described in the so-called x
Christianity of Catholicism — the long and bitter
contest, which engaged the best intellects for so
1 I say "so-called" not by way of offence, but as a protest
against the monstrous assumption that Catholic Christianity is
explicitly or implicitly contained in any trustworthy record of
the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 67
many centuries, may seem a terrible illustration
of the wasteful way in which the struggle for ex-
istence is carried on in the world of thought, no
less than in that of matter. But there is a more
cheerful mode of looking at the history of scholas-
ticism. It ground and sharpened the dialectic
implements of our race as perhaps nothing but
discussions, in the result of which men thought
their eternal, no less than their temporal, interests
were at stake, could have done. When a logical
blunder may ensure combustion, not only in the
next world but in this, the construction of syllo-
gisms acquires a peculiar interest. Moreover, the
schools kept the thinking faculty alive and active,
when the disturbed state of civil life, the mephitic
atmosphere engendered by the dominant ecclesi-
asticism, and the almost total neglect of natural
knowledge, might well have stifled it. And,
finally, it should be remembered that scholasticism
really did thresh out pretty effectually certain
problems which have presented themselves to
mankind ever since they began to think, and
which, I suppose, will present themselves so long
as they continue to think. Consider, for example,
the controversy of the Realists and the Nominal-
ists, which was carried on with varying fortunes,
and under various names, from the time of Scotus
Erigena to the end of the scholastic period. Has
it now a merely antiquarian interest ? Has
Nominalism, in any of its modifications, so com-
68 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II
pletely won the day that Realism may be regarded
as dead and buried without hope of resurrection ?
Many people seem to think so, but it appears to
me that, without taking Catholic philosophy into
consideration, one has not to look about far to
find evidence that Eealism is still to the fore, and
< indeed extremely lively.1
The other day I happened to meet with a
report of a sermon recently preached in St. Paul's
Cathedral. From internal evidence I am inclined
to think that the report is substantially correct.
But as I have not the slightest intention of finding
fault with the eminent theologian and eloquent
preacher to whom the discourse is attributed, for
employment of scientific language in a manner for
which he could find only too many scientific pre-
cedents, the accuracy of the report in detail is
not to the purpose. I may safely take it as the
embodiment of views which are thought to be
1 It may be desirable to observe that, in modern times, the
term "Realism" has acquired a si guifi cation wholly different
from that which attached to it in the middle ages. We com-
monly use it as the contrary of Idealism. The Idealist holds
that the phenomenal world has only a subjective existence, the
Realist that it has an objective existence, I am not aware that
any mediaeval philosopher was an Idealist in the sense in which
we apply the term to Berkeley. In fact, the cardinal defect
of their speculations lies in their oversight of the considera-
tions which lead to Idealism. If many of them regarded the
material world as a negation, it was an active negation ; not
zero, but a minus quantity.
n PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 69
quite in accordance with science by many excel-
lent, instructed, and intelligent people.
The preacher further contended that it was yet more difficult
to realise that our earthly home would become the scene of a
vast physical catastrophe. Imagination recoils from the idea
that the course of nature — the phrase helps to disguise the truth
— so unvarying and regular, the ordered sequence of movement
and life, should suddenly cease. Imagination looks more reason-
able when it assumes the air of scientific reason. Physical law,
it says, will prevent the occurrence of catastrophes only antici-
pated by an apostle in an unscientific age. Might not there,
however, be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of
a higher ? Thus every time we lifted our arms we defied the
laws of gravitation, and in railways and steamboats powerful
laws were held in check by others. The flood and the destruc-
tion of Sodom and Gomorrah were brought about by the opera-
tions of existing laws, and may it not be that in His illimitable
universe there are more important laws than those which sur-
round our puny life — moral and not merely physical forces ?
Is it inconceivable that the day will come when these royal and
ultimate laws shall wreck the natural order of things which
seems so stable and so fair ? Earthquakes were not things of
remote antiquity, as an island off Italy, the Eastern Archipelago,
Greece, and Chicago bore witness. ... In presence of a great
earthquake men feel how powerless they are, and their very
knowledge adds to their weakness. The end of human proba-
tion, the final dissolution of organised society, and the destruc-
tion of man's home on the surface of the globe, were none of
them violently contrary to our present experience, but only the
extension of present facts. The presentiment of death was com-
mon ; there were felt to be many things which threatened the
existence of society ; and as our globe was a ball of fire, at any
moment the pent-up forces which surge and boil beneath our
feet might be poured out ("Pall Mall Gazette," December 6,
1886).
The preacher appears to entertain the notion
70 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC EEALISM u
that the occurrence of a " catastrophe " l involves
a breach of the present order of nature — that it is
an event incompatible with the physical laws
which at present obtain. He seems to be of
opinion that " scientific reason " lends its authority
to the imaginative supposition that physical law
will prevent the occurrence of the " catastrophes "
anticipated by an unscientific apostle.
Scientific reason, like Homer, sometimes nods ;
but I am not aware that it has ever dreamed
dreams of this sort. The fundamental axiom of
scientific thought is that there is not, never has
been, and never will be, any disorder in nature.
The admission of the occurrence of any event
which was not the logical consequence of the
immediately antecedent events, according to these
definite, ascertained, or unascertained rules which
we call the " laws of nature," would be an act of
self-destruction on the part of science.
" Catastrophe " is a relative conception. For
ourselves it means an event which brings about
very terrible consequences to man, or impresses
his mind by its magnitude relatively to him. But
events which are quite in the natural order of
things to us, may be frightful catastrophes to other
sentient beings. Surely no interruption of the
1 At any rate a catastrophe greater than the flood, which, as
I observe with interest, is as calmly assumed by the preacher to
be an historical event as if science had never had a word to say
on that subject 1
n PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 71
order of nature is involved if, in the course of
descending through an Alpine pine-wood, I jump
upon an anthill and in a moment wreck a whole
city and destroy a hundred thousand of its inhabi-
tants. To the ants the catastrophe is worse than
the earthquake of Lisbon. To me it is the natural
and necessary consequence of the laws of matter
in motion. A redistribution of energy has taken
place, which is perfectly in accordance with
natural order, however unpleasant its effects may
be to the ants.
Imagination, inspired by scientific reason,
and not merely assuming the airs thereof, as it
unfortunately too often does in the pulpit, so far
from having any right to repudiate catastrophes
and deny the possibility of the cessation of motion
and life, easily finds justification for the exactly
contrary course. Kant in his famous " Theory of the
Heavens " declares the end of the world and its
reduction to a formless condition to be a necessary
consequence of the causes to which it owes its
origin and continuance. And, as to catastro-
phes of prodigious magnitude and frequent occur-
rence, they were the favourite asylum ignorantice
of geologists, not a quarter of a century ago. If
modern geology is becoming more and more
disinclined to call in catastrophes to its aid, it is
not because of any a priori difficulty in reconciling
the occurrence of such events with the universality
of order, but because the a posteriori evidence of
72 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II
the occurrence of events of this character in past
times has more or less completely broken down.
It is, to say the least, highly probable that this
earth is a mass of extremely hot matter, invested
by a cooled crust, through which the hot interior
still continues to cool, though with extreme slow-
ness. It is no less probable that the faults and
dislocations, the foldings and fractures, everywhere
visible in the stratified crust, its large and slow
movements through miles of elevation and depres-
sion, and its small and rapid movements which
give rise to the innumerable perceived and
unperceived earthquakes which are constantly
occurring, are due to the shrinkage of the crust
on its cooling and contracting nucleus.
Without going beyond the range of fair scienti-
fic analogy, conditions are easily conceivable which
should render the loss of heat far more rapid than
it is at present ; and such an occurrence would be
just as much in accordance with ascertained laws
of nature, as the more rapid cooling of a red-hot
bar, when it is thrust into cold water, than when
it remains in the air. But much more rapid
cooling might entail a shifting and re-arrangement
of the parts of the crust of the earth on a scale of
unprecedented magnitude, and bring about " catas-
trophes" to which the earthquake of Lisbon is
but a trifle. It is conceivable that man and his
works and all the higher forms of animal life
should be utterly destroyed; that mountain
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 73
regions should be converted into ocean depths
and the floor of oceans raised into mountains ;
and the earth become a scene of horror which
even the lurid fancy of the writer of the
Apocalypse would fail to portray. And yet, to
the eye of science, there would be no more disorder
here than in the sabbatical peace of a summer
sea. Not a link in the chain of natural causes and
effects would be broken, nowhere would there be
the slightest indication of the "suspension of a
lower law by a higher." If a sober scientific
thinker is inclined to put little faith in the wild
vaticinations of universal ruin which, in a less
saintly person than the seer of Patmos, might seem
to be dictated by the fury of a revengeful fanatic,
rather than by the spirit of the teacher who bid
men love their enemies, it is not on the ground
that they contradict scientific principles; but
because the evidence of their scientific value does
not fulfil the conditions on which weight is at-
tached to evidence. The imagination which
supposes that it does, simply does not " assume
the air of scientific reason."
I repeat that, if imagination is used within the
limits laid down by science, disorder is unimagin-
able. I If a being endowed with perfect intellectual
and aesthetic faculties, but devoid of the capacity
for suffering pain, either physical or moral, were
to devote his utmost powers to the investigation
of nature, the universe would seem to him to be a
74 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
sort of kaleidoscope, in which, at every successive
moment of time, a new arrangement of parts of
exquisite beauty and symmetry would present
itself; and each of them would show itself to be
the logical consequence of the preceding arrange-
ment, under the conditions which we call the laws
of nature. Such a spectator might well be filled
with that Amor intdlectualis Dei, the beatific
vision of the vita contemplative!,, which some of the
greatest thinkers of all ages, Aristotle, Aquinas,
Spinoza, have regarded as the only conceivable
eternal felicity; and the vision of illimitable
suffering, as df sensitive beings were unregarded
animalcules which had got between the bits of
glass of the kaleidoscope, which mars the prospect
to us poor mortals, in no wise alters the fact that
order is lord of all, and disorder only a name for
that part of the order which gives us pain.*]
The other fallacious employment of the names
of scientific conceptions which pervades the preach-
er's utterance, brings me back to the proper topic
of the present essay. It is the use of the word
" law " as if it denoted a thing — as if a " law of
nature," as science understands it, were a being
endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which
the phenomena expressed by that law are brought
about. The preacher asks, " Might not there be
a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of
a higher ? " He tells us that every time we lift
our arms we defy the law of gravitation. He asks
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 75
whether some day certain "royal and ultimate
laws " may not come and " wreck " those laws
which are at present, it would appear, acting as
nature's police. It is evident, from these expres-
sions, that " laws," in the mind of the preacher,
are entities having an objective existence in a
graduated hierarchy. And it would appear that
the "royal laws " are by no means to be regarded
as constitutional royalties : at any moment, they
may, like Eastern despots, descend in wrath
among the middle- class and plebeian laws, which
have hitherto done the drudgery of the world's
work, and, to use phraseology not unknown in our
seats of learning — " make hay " of their belong-
ings. Or perhaps a still more familiar analogy
has suggested this singular theory; and it is
thought that high laws may " suspend " low laws,
as a bishop may suspend a curate.
Far be it from me to controvert these views, if
any one likes to hold them. £ All I wish to remark
is that such a conception of the nature of " laws "
has nothing to do with modern science. It. is
scholastic realism — realism as intense and unmiti-
gated as that of Scotus Erigena a thousand years
ago. The essence of such realism is that it
maintains the objective existence of universals,
or, as we call them nowadays, general propositions.!
It affirms, for example, that " man " is a real
thing, apart from individual men, having its exist-
ence, not in the sensible, but in the intelligible
76 PSEUDO -SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
world, and clothing itself with the accidents of
sense to make the Jack and Tom and Harry
whom we know. Strange as such a notion may
appear to modern scientific thought, it really
pervades ordinary language. There are few
people who would, at once, hesitate to admit that
colour, for example, exists apart from the mind
which conceives the idea of colour. They hold it
to be something which resides in the coloured
object ; and so far they are as much Realists as if
they had sat at Plato's feet. Reflection on the
facts of the case must, I imagine, convince every
one that " colour " is — not a mere name, which
was the extreme Nominalist position — but a name
for that group of states of feeling which we call
blue, red, yellow, and so on, and which we beiieve
to be caused by luminiferous vibrations which
have not the slightest resemblance to colour ;
while these again are set afoot by states of the
body to which we ascribe colour, but which are
equally devoid of likeness to colour.
[ In the same way, a law of nature, in the scienti-
fic sense, is the product of a mental operation
upon the facts of nature which come under our
observation, and has no more existence outside
the mind than colour has.J The law of gravitation
is a statement of the manner in which experience
shows that bodies, which are free to move, do, in
fact, move towards one another. But the other
facts of observation, that bodies are not always
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 77
moving in this fashion, and sometimes move in a
contrary direction, are implied in the words " free
to move/' If it is a law of nature that bodies
tend to move towards one another in a certain
way ; it is another and no less true law of nature
that, if bodies are not free to move as they tend
to do, either in consequence of an obstacle, or of
a contrary impulse from some other source of
energy than that to which we give the name of
gravitation, they either stop still, or go another
way.
Scientifically speaking, it is the acme of absurd-
ity to talk of a man defying the law of gravitation
when he lifts his arm. The general store of
energy in the universe working through terrestrial-
matter is doubtless tending to bring the man's
arm down; but the particular fraction of that
energy which is working through certain of his
nervous and muscular organs is tending to drive
it up, and more energy being expended on the
arm in the upward than in the downward direc-
tion, the arm goes up accordingly. But the law
of gravitation is no more defied, in this case, than
when a grocer throws so much sugar into the
empty pan of his scales that the one which
contains the weight kicks the beam.
The tenacity of the wonderful fallacy that the
laws of nature are agents, instead of being, as they
really are, a mere record of experience, upon
which we base our interpretations of that which
78 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
does happen, and our anticipation of that which
will happen, is an interesting psychological fact ;
and would be unintelligible if the tendency of
the human mind towards realism were less strong.
Even at the present day, and in the writings of
men who would at once repudiate scholastic realism
in any form, " law " is often inadvertently em-
ployed in the sense of cause, just as, in common
life, a man will say that he is compelled by the
law to do so and so, when, in point of fact, all he
means is that the law orders him to do it, and
tells him what will happen if he does not do it.
We commonly hear of bodies falling to the ground
by reason of the law of gravitation, whereas that law
is simply the record of the fact that, according to
all experience, they have so fallen (when free to
move), and of the grounds of a reasonable expec-
tation that they will so fall. If it should be worth
anybody's while to seek for examples of such
misuse of language on my own part, I am not at
all sure he might not succeed, though I have
usually been on my guard against such looseness
of expression. If I am guilty, I do penance before-
hand, and only hope that I may thereby deter
others from committing the like fault. And I
venture on this personal observation by way of
showing that I have no wish to bear hardly
on the preacher for falling into an error for which
he might find good precedents. But it is one of
those errors which, in the case of a person engaged
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 79
in scientific pursuits, do little harm, because it is
corrected as soon as its consequences become
obvious ; while those who know physical science
only by name are, as has been seen, easily led to
build a mighty fabric of unrealities on this funda-
mental fallacy. In fact, the habitual use of the word
" law/' in the sense of an active thing, is almost
a mark of pseudo-science ; it characterises the
writings of those who have appropriated the
forms of science without knowing anything of
its substance.
There are two classes of these people : those ^
who are ready to believe in any miracle so long as
it is guaranteed by ecclesiastical authority; and
those who are ready to believe in any miracle so
long as it has some different guarantee. The
believers in what are ordinarily called miracles —
those who accept the miraculous narratives which
they are taught to think are essential elements of
religious doctrine — are in the one category;
the spirit-rappers, table-turners, and all the other
devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in
the other : and, if they disagree in most things
they agree in this, namely, that they ascribe to
science a dictum that is not scientific ; and that
they endeavour to upset the dictum thus foisted
on science by a realistic argument which is
equally unscientific.
It is asserted, for example, that, on a particular
occasion, water was turned into wine ; and, on the
121
80 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
other hand, it is asserted that a man or a woman
"levitated" to the ceiling, floated about there,
and finally sailed out by the window. And it is
assumed that the pardonable scepticism, with
which most scientific men receive these state-
ments, is due to the fact that they feel themselves
justified in denying the possibility of any such
metamorphosis of water, or of any such levi-
tatipn, because such events are contrary to the
laws of nature. So the question of the preacher
is triumphantly put: How do you know that
there are not " higher " laws of nature than your
chemical and physical laws, and that these higher
laws may not intervene arid " wreck" the latter?
The plain answer to this question is, Why
should anybody be called upon to say how he
knows that which he does not know? You are
assuming that laws are agents— efficient causes
of that which happens — and that one law can
interfere with another. To us, that assumption
is as nonsensical as if you were to talk of a propo-
sition of Euclid being the cause of the diagram
which illustrates it, or of the integral calculus
interfering with the rule of three. Your question
really implies that we pretend to complete know-
ledge not only of all past and present phenomena,
but of all that are possible in the future, and we
leave all that sort of thing to the adepts of
esoteric Buddhism. Our pretensions are infinitely
more modest. We have succeeded in finding out
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 81
the rules of action of a little bit of the universe ;
we call these rules " laws of nature," not because
anybody knows whether they bind nature or not,
but because we find it is obligatory on us to take
them into account, both as actors under nature,
and as interpreters of nature. We have any
quantity of genuine miracles of our own, and if
you will furnish us with as good evidence of your
miracles as we have of ours, we shall be quite
happy to accept them and to amend our expression
of the laws of nature in accordance with the new
facts.
As to the particular cases adduced, we are so
perfectly fair-minded as to be willing to help your
case as far as we can. You are quite mistaken in
supposing that anybody who is acquainted with the
possibilities of physical science will undertake
categorically to deny that water may be turned
into wine. Many very competent judges are
already inclined to think that the bodies, which we
have hitherto called elementary, are really com-
posite arrangements of the particles of a uniform
primitive matter. Supposing that view to be
correct, there would be no more theoretical diffi-
culty about turning water into alcohol, ethereal
and colouring matters, than there is, at this pres-
ent moment, any practical difficulty in working
other such miracles ; as when we turn sugar into
alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine, and succinic acid ;
or transmute gas-refuse into perfumes rarer than
82 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II
musk and dyes richer than Tyrian purple. If the
so-called " elements," oxygen and hydrogen, which
compose water, are aggregates of the same ultimate
particles, or physical units, as those which enter
into the structure of the so-called element "car-
bon," it is obvious that alcohol and other substances,
composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, may
be produced by a rearrangement of some of the
units of oxygen and hydrogen into the " element "
carbon, and their synthesis with the rest of the
oxygen and hydrogen.
Theoretically, therefore, we can have no sort of
objection to your miracle. And our reply to the
levitators is just the same. Why should not your
friend " levitate " ? Fish are said to rise and sink
in the water by altering the volume of an internal
air-receptacle ; and there may be many ways
science, as yet, knows nothing of, by which we, who
live at the bottom of an ocean of air, may do the
same thing. Dialectic gas and wind appear to be
by no means wanting among you, and why should
not long practice in pneumatic philosophy have
resulted in the internal generation of something a
thousand times rarer than hydrogen, by which, in
accordance with the most ordinary natural laws,
you would not only rise to the ceiling and float
there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one
of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit
swifter than train or telegram to " still-vexed
Bermoothes," and twit Ariel, if he happens to be
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 83
there, for a sluggard ? We have not the presump-
tion to deny the possibility of anything you affirm ;
only, as our brethren are particular about evidence,
do give us as much to go upon as may save us from
being roared down by their inextinguishable
laughter.
Enough of the realism which clings about " laws."
There are plenty of other exemplifications of its
vitality in modern science, but I will cite only one
of them.
This is the conception of " vital force " which
comes straight from the philosophy of Aristotle.
It is a fundamental proposition of that philosophy
that a natural object is composed of two constitu-
ents—the one its matter, conceived as inert or
even, to a certain extent, opposed to orderly and
purposive motion ; the other its form, conceived as
a quasi-spiritual something, containing or con-
ditioning the actual activities of the body and the
potentiality of its possible activities.
I am disposed to think that the prominence of
this conception in Aristotle's theory of things
arose from the circumstance that he was, to begin
with and throughout his life, devoted to biological
studies. In fact it is a notion which must force
itself upon the mind of any one who studies
biological phenomena, without reference to general
physics, as they now stand. Everybody who
observes the obvious phenomena of the develop-
ment of a seed into a tree, or of an egg into an
84 PSEUDO -SCIENTIFIC REALISM II
animal, will note that a relatively formless mass of
matter gradually grows, takes a definite shape and
structure, and, finally, begins to perform actions
which contribute towards a certain end, namely,
the maintenance of the individual in the first
place, and of the species in the second. Starting
from the axiom that every event has a cause, we
have here the cavsa finalis manifested in the last
set of phenomena, the causa materialis smdformalis
in the first, while the existence of a causa efficiens
within the seed or egg and its product, is a corollary
from the phenomena of growth and metamorphosis,
which proceed in unbroken succession and make
up the life of the animal or plant.
Thus, at starting, the egg or seed is nfatttr
having a " form " like all other material bodies.
But this form has the peculiarity, in contradistinc-
tion to lower substantial " forms," that it is a power
which constantly works towards an end by means
of living organisation.
So far as I know, Leibnitz is the only philosopher
(at the same time a man of science, in the modern
sense, of the first rank) who has noted that the
modern conception of Force, as a sort of atmosphere
enveloping the particles of bodies, and having
potential or actual activity, is simply a new name
for the Aristotelian Form.1 In modern biology, up
till within quite recent times, the Aristotelian con-
1 " Les formes des anciens ou Entelechies ne sont autre chose
que les forces'' (Leibnitz, Lettre au Ptre Bouvet, 1697).
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 85
ception held undisputed sway ; living matter was
endowed with " vital force," and that accounted for
everything. Whosoever was not satisfied with
that explanation was treated to that very " plain
argument " — "confound you eternally " — where-
with Lord Peter overcomes the doubts of his
brothers in the " Tale of a Tub " " Materialist " was
the mildest term applied to him — fortunate if he
escaped pelting with " infidel " and " atheist."
There may be scientific Rip Van Winkles about,
who still hold by vital force ; but among those
biologists who have not been asleep for the last
quarter of a century " vital force " no longer
figures in the vocabulary of science. It is a patent
survival of realism ; the generalisation from ex-
perience that all living bodies exhibit certain
activities of a definite character is made the basis
of the notion that every living body contains an
entity, " vital force/' which is assumed to be the
cause of those activities.
It is remarkable, in looking back, to notice to
what an extent this and other survivals of
scholastic realism arrested or, at any rate, impeded
the application of sound scientific principles to
the investigation of biological phenomena. When
I was beginning to think about these matters, the
scientific world was occasionally agitated by
discussions respecting the nature of the " species "
and " genera " of Naturalists, of a different order
from the disputes of a later time. I think most
86 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n
were agreed that a "species" was something
which existed objectively, somehow or other, and
had been created by a Divine fiat. As to the
objective reality of genera, there was a good deal
of difference of opinion. On the other hand,
there were a few who could see no objective reality
in anything but individuals, and looked upon both
species and genera as hypostatised universals. As
for myself, I seem to have unconsciously emulated
William of Occam, inasmuch as almost the first
public discourse I ever ventured upon, dealt with
" Animal Individuality," and its tendency was to
fight the Nominalist battle even in that quarter.
Realism appeared in still stranger forms at the
time to which I refer. The community of plan
which is observable in each great group of animals
was hypostatised into a Platonic idea with the
appropriate name of " archetype," and we were
told, as a disciple of Philo-Judaeus might have
told us, that this realistic figment was " the
archetypal light" by which Nature has been
guided amidst the " wreck of worlds." So, again,
another naturalist, who had no less earned a well-
deserved reputation by his contributions to positive
knowledge, put forward a theory of the production
of living things which, as nearly as the increase
of knowledge allowed, was a reproduction of the
doctrine inculcated by the Jewish Cabbala.
Annexing the archetype notion, and carrying it
to its full logical consequence, the author of this
II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 87
theory conceived that the species of animals and
plants were so many incarnations of the thoughts
of God — material representations of Divine
ideas — during the particular period of the world's
history at which they existed. But, under the
influence of the embryological and palaeontological
discoveries of modern times, which had already
lent some scientific support to the revived ancient
theories of cosmical evolution or emanation, the
ingenious author of this speculation, while denying
and repudiating the ordinary theory of evolution
by successive modification of individuals, main-
tained and endeavoured to prove the occurrence
of a progressive modification in the divine ideas
of successive epochs.
On the foundation of a supposed elevation of
organisation in the whole living population of any
epoch, as compared with that of its predecessor,
and a supposed complete difference in species
between the populations of any two epochs
(neither of which suppositions has stood the test
of further inquiry), the author of this speculation
based his conclusion that the Creator had, so to
speak, improved upon his thoughts as time went
on ; and that, as each such amended scheme of
creation carae up, the embodiment of the earlier
divine thoughts was swept away by a universal
catastrophe, and an incarnation of the improved
ideas took its place. Only after the last such
" wreck " thus brought about, did the embodiment?
88 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM II
of a divine thought, in the shape of the first man,
make its appearance as the ne phis ultra of the
cosmogonical process:
I imagine that Louis Agassiz, the genial back-
woodsman of the science of my young days, who
did more to open out new tracks in the scientific
forest than most men, would have been much
surprised to learn that he was preaching the
doctrine of the Cabbala, pure and simple. Ac-
cording to this modification of Neoplatonism by
contact with Hebrew speculation, the divine
essence is unknowable — without form or attribute ;
but the interval between it and the world of
sense is filled by intelligible entities, which are
nothing but the familiar hypostatised abstractions
of the realists. These have emanated, like
immense waves of light, from the divine centre,
and, as ten consecutive zones of Sephiroth, form
the universe. The farther away from the centre,
the more the primitive light wanes, until the
periphery ends in those mere negations, darkness
and evil, which are the essence of matter. On
this, the divine agency transmitted through the
Sephiroth operates after the fashion of the Aris-
totelian forms, and, at first, produces the lowest of
a series of worlds. After a certain duration the
primitive world is demolished and its fragments
used up in making a better ; and this process is
repeated, until at length a final world, with man
for its crown and finish, makes its appearance.
II * PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 89
It is needless to trace the process of retrogressive
metamorphosis by which, through the agency of
the Messiah, the steps of the process of evolution
here sketched are retraced. Sufficient has been
said to prove that the extremist realism current
in the philosophy of the thirteenth century can
be fully matched by the speculations of our own
time.
Ill
SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE
[1887]
IN the opening sentences of a contribution to the
last number of this Keview, l the Duke of Argyll
has favoured me with a lecture on the proprieties
of controversy, to which I should be disposed to
listen with more docility if his Grace's precepts
appeared to me to be based upon rational principles,
or if his example were more exemplary.
With respect to the latter point, the Duke has
thought fit to entitle his article " Professor Huxley
on Canon Liddon," and thus forces into prominence
an element of personality, which those who read
the paper which is the object of the Duke's
animadversions will observe I have endeavoured,
most carefully, to avoid. My criticisms dealt with
a report of a sermon, published in a newspaper,
and thereby addressed to all the world. Whether
that sermon was preached by A or B was not a
1 Nineteenth Century ', March 1887.
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 91
matter of the smallest consequence ; and I went
out of my way to absolve the learned divine to
whom the discourse was attributed, from .the
responsibility for statements which, for anything I
knew to the contrary, might contain imperfect, or
inaccurate, representations of his views. The
assertion that I had the wish, or was beset, by any
" temptation to attack ' Canon Liddon is simply
contrary to fact.
But suppose that if, instead of sedulously
avoiding even the appearance of such attack, I
had thought fit to take a different course ; suppose
that, after satisfying myself that the eminent
clergyman whose name is paraded by the Duke of
Argyll had really uttered the words attributed to
him from the pulpit of St. Paul's, what right
would any one have to find fault with my action
on grounds either of justice, expediency, or good
taste ?
Establishment has its duties as well as its
rights. The clergy of a State Church enjoy many
advantages over those of unprivileged and unen-
dowed religious persuasions ; but they lie under a
correlative responsibility to the State, and to
every member of the body politic. I am not
aware that any sacredness attaches to sermons.
If preachers stray beyond the doctrinal limits set
by lay lawyers, the Privy Council will see to it ;
and, if they think fit to use their pulpits for the
promulgation of literary, or historical, or scientific
92 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
errors, it is not only the right, but the duty, of the
humblest layman, who may happen to be better
informed, to correct the evil effects of such perver-
sion of the opportunities which the State affords
them ; and such misuse of the authority which its
support lends them. Whatever else it may
claim to be, in its relations with the State, the
Established Church is a branch of the Civil
Service ; and, for those who repudiate the eccle-
siastical authority of the clergy, they are merely
civil servants, as much responsible to the English
people for the proper performance of their duties
as any others.
The Duke of Argyll tells us that the " work
and calling" of the clergy prevent them from
" pursuing disputation as others can." I wonder if
his Grace ever reads the so-called " religious " news-
papers. It is not an occupation which I should
commend to any one who wishes to employ his
time profitably ; but a very short devotion to this
exercise will suffice to convince him that the
" pursuit of disputation," carried to a degree of
acrimony and vehemence unsurpassed in lay con-
troversies, seems to be found quite compatible with
the "work and calling" of a remarkably large
number of the clergy.
Finally, it appears to me that nothing can be
m worse taste than the assumption that a body of
English gentlemen can, by any possibility, desire
that immunity from criticism which the Duke of
HI SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 93
Argyll claims for them. Nothing would be more
personally offensive to me than the supposition
that I shirked criticism, just or unjust, of any
lecture I ever gave. I should be utterly ashamed
of myself if, when I stood up as an instructor of
others, I had not taken every pains to assure
myself of the truth of that which I was about to
say ; and I should feel myself bound to be even
more careful with a popular assembly, who would
take me more or less on trust, than with an
audience of competent and critical experts.
I decline to assume that the standard of
morality, in these matters, is lower among the
clergy than it is among scientific men. I refuse to
think that the priest who stands up before a con-
gregation, as the minister and interpreter of the
Divinity, is less careful in his utterances, less
ready to meet adverse comment, than the layman
who comes before his audience, as the minister
and interpreter of nature. Yet what should we
think of the man of science who, when his
ignorance or his carelessness was exposed, whined
about the want of delicacy of his critics, or pleaded
his " work and calling " as a reason for being let
alone ?
No man, nor any body of men, is good enough,
or wise enough, to dispense with the tonic of
criticism. Nothing has done more harm to the
clergy than the practice, too common among
laymen, of regarding them, when in the pulpit, as
94 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE III
a sort of chartered libertines, whose divagations
are not to be taken seriously. And I am well
assured that the distinguished divine, to whom the
sermon is attributed, is the last person who would
desire to avail himself of the dishonouring pro-
tection which has been superfluously thrown over
him.
So much for the lecture on propriety. But the
Duke of Argyll, to whom the hortatory style
seems to come naturally, does me the honour to
make my sayings the subjects of a series of other
admonitions, some on philosophical, some on
geological, some on biological topics. I can but,
rejoice that the Duke's authority in these matters
is not always employed to show that I am ignorant
of them ; on the contrary, I meet with an amount
of agreement, even of approbation, for which I
proffer such gratitude as may be due, even if
that gratitude is sometimes almost overshadowed
by surprise.
I am unfeignedly astonished to find that the
Duke of Argyll, who professes to intervene on
behalf of the preacher, does really, like another
Balaam, bless me altogether in respect of the
main issue.
I denied the justice of the preacher's ascription
to men of science of the doctrine that miracles
are incredible, because they are violations of
natural law ; and the Duke of Argyll says that he
believes my "denial to be well-founded. The
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 95
preacher was answering an objection which has
now been generally abandoned." Either the
preacher knew this or he did not know it. It
seems to me, as a mere lay teacher, to be a pity
that the " great dome of St. Paul's " should have
been made to " echo " (if so be that such stentorian
effects were really produced) a statement which,
admitting the first alternative, was unfair, and,
admitting the second, was ignorant.1
Having thus sacrificed one half of the preacher's
arguments, the Duke of Argyll proceeds to make
equally short work with the other half. It ap-
pears that he fully accepts my position that the
occurrence of those events, which the preacher
speaks of as catastrophes, is no evidence of dis-
order, inasmuch as such catastrophes may be
necessary occasional consequences of uniform
changes. Whence I conclude, his Grace agrees
with me, that the talk about royal laws "wrecking "
1 The Duke of Argyll speaks of the recent date of the demon-
stration of the fallacy of the doctrine in question. " Recent"
is a relative term, but I may mention that the question is fully
discussed in my book on Hume ; which, if I may believe my
publishers, has been read by a good many people since it ap-
peared in 1879. Moreover, I observe, from a note at page 89 of
The lli'ign of Law, a work to which I shall have occasion to
advert by and by, that the Duke of Argyll draws attention to
the circumstance that, so long ago as 1866, the views which I
hold on this subject were well known. The Duke, in fact,
writing about this time, says, after quoting a phrase of mine :
"The question of miracles seems now to be admitted on all
hands to be simply a questi'-n of evidence." In science, we
think that a teacher who ignores views which have been
discussed coram populo for twenty years, is hardly up to the
mark.
122
96 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
ordinary laws may be eloquent metaphor, but is
also nonsense.
And now comes a further surprise. After
having given these superfluous stabs to the slain
body of the preacher's argument, my good ally
remarks, with magnificent calmness : " So far,
then, the preacher and the professor are at one."
" Let them smoke the calumet." By all means :
smoke would be the most appropriate symbol of
this wonderful attempt to cover a retreat. After
all, the Duke has come to bury the preacher,
not to praise him ; only he makes the funeral
obsequies look as much like a triumphal pro-
cession as possible.
So far as the questions between the preacher
and myself are concerned, then, I may feel happy.
The authority of the Duke of Argyll is ranged on
my side. But the Duke has raised a number of
other questions, with respect to which I fear I
shall have to dispense with his support — nay,
even be compelled to differ from him as much, or
more, than I have done about his Grace's new
rendering of the " benefit of clergy."
In discussing catastrophes, the Duke indulges
in statements, partly scientific, partly anecdotic,
which appear to me to be somewhat misleading.
We are told, to begin with, that Sir Charles
Lyell's doctrine respecting the proper mode of
interpreting the facts of geology (which is com-
monly called uniformitarianism) "does not hold
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 97
its head quite so high as it once did." That is
great news indeed. But is it true ? All I can
say is that I am aware of nothing that has
happened of late that can in any way justify
it; and my opinion is, that the body of Ly ell's
doctrine, as laid down in that great work, "The
Principles of Geology," whatever may have hap-
pened to its head, is a chief and permanent con-
stituent of the foundations of geological science.
But this question cannot be advantageously dis-
cussed, unless we take some pains to discriminate
between the essential part of the uniformitarian
doctrine and its accessories ; and it does not
appear that the Duke of Argyll has carried his
studies of geological philosophy so far as this
point. For he defines uniformitarianism to be
the assumption of the " extreme slowness and
perfect continuity of all geological changes."
What " perfect continuity " may mean in this
definition, I am by no means sure ; but I can only
imagine that it signifies the absence of any break
in the course of natural order during the millions
of years, the lapse of which is recorded by
geological phenomena.
Is the Duke of Argyll prepared to say that any
geologist of authority, at the present day,; believes
that there is the slightest evidence of the occur-
rence of supernatural intervention, during the
long ages of which the monuments are preserved
to us in the crust of the earth ? And if he is not,
98 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
in what sense has this part of the uniformitarian
doctrine, as he defines it, lowered its pretensions
to represent scientific truth ?
As to the "extreme slowness of all geological
changes," it is simply a popular error to regard
that as, in any wise, a fundamental and necessary
dogma of uniformitarianism. It is extremely
astonishing to me that any one who has carefully
studied Lyell's great work can have so completely
failed to appreciate its purport, which yet is " writ
large " on the very title-page : " The Principles of
Geology, being an attempt to explain the former
changes of the earth's surface by reference to
causes now in operation." The essence of Lyell's
doctrine is here written so that those who run
may read ; and it has nothing to do with the
quickness or slowness of the past changes of the
earth's surface ; except in so far as existing
analogous changes may go on slowly, and there-
fore create a presumption in favour of the slowness
of past changes.
With that epigrammatic force which character-
ises his style, Buffon wrote, nearly a hundred and
fifty years ago, in his famous " Theorie de la
Terre " : " Pour juger de ce qui est arrive, et meme
de ce qui arrivera, nous n'avons qu'a examiner ce
qui arrive." The key of the past, as of the future,
is to be sought in the present ; and, only when
known causes of change have been shown to be
insufficient, have we any right to have recourse to
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 99
unknown causes. Geology is as much a historical
science as archaeology ; and I apprehend that all
sound historical investigation rests upon this
axiom. It underlay all Button's work and ani-
mated Lyell and Scope in their successful efforts
to revolutionise the geology of half a century ago.
There is no antagonism whatever, and there
never was, between the belief in the views which
had their chief and unwearied advocate in Lyell
and the belief in the occurrence of catastrophes.
The first edition of Lyell's " Principles," published
in 1830, lies before me ; and a large part of the
first volume is occupied by an account of volcanic,
seismic, and diluvial catastrophes which have
occurred within the historical period. Moreover,
the author, over and over again, expressly draws
the attention of his readers to the consistency of
catastrophes with his doctrine.
Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed with-
in the last three thousand years the devastation by deluge of a
large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of
such catastrophes, we are authorised to regard them as part of
the present order of nature, and they may be introduced into
geological speculations respecting the past, provided that we do
not imagine them to have been more frequent or general than
we expect them to be in time to come (vol. i. p. 89).
Again : —
If we regard each of the causes separately, which we know to
be at present the most instrumental in remodelling the state of
the surface, we shall find that we must expect each to be in
action for thousands of years, without producing any extensive
100 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE in
alterations in the habitable surface, and then to give rise, during
a very brief period, to important revolutions (vol. ii. p. 161). l
Lyell quarrelled with the catastrophists then,
by no means because they assumed that catas-
trophes occur and have occurred, but because
they had got into the habit of calling on their
god Catastrophe to help them, when they ought
to have been putting their shoulders to the wheel
of observation of the present course of nature, in
order to help themselves out of their difficulties.
And geological science has become what it is,
chiefly because geologists have gradually accepted
Lyell's doctrine and followed his precepts.
So far as I know anything about the matter,
there is nothing that can be called proof, that the
causes of geological phenomena operated more in-
tensely or more rapidly, at any time between the
older tertiary and the oldest palaeozoic epochs
than they have done between the older tertiary
epoch and the present day. And if that is so,
uniformitarianism, even as limited by Lyell,2 has no
1 See also vol. i. p. 460. In the ninth edition (1853), pub-
lished twenty-three years after the first, Lyell deprives even the
most careless reader of any excuse for misunderstanding him :
"So in regard to subterranean movements, the theory of the
perpetual uniformity of the force which they exert on the earth-
crust is quite consistent with the admission of their alternate
development and suspension for indefinite periods within limited
geographical areas " (p. 187).
2 A great many years ago (Presidential Address to the Geo-
logical Society, 1869) I ventured to'indicate that which seemed
to me to be the weak point, not in the fundamental principles
of uniformitarianism, but in uniformitarianism as taught by
Lyell. It lay, to my mind, in the refusal by Hutton, and in a
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO -SCIENCE 101
call to lower its crest. But if the facts were other-
wise/the position Ly ell took up remains impregnable.
He did not say that the geological operations of
nature were never more rapid, or more vast, than
they are now ; what he did maintain is the very
different proposition that there is no good evidence
of anything of the kind. And that proposition
has not yet been shown to be incorrect.
I owe more than I can tell to the careful study
of the " Principles of Geology " in my young
days ; and, long before the year 1856, my mind
was familiar with the truth that " the doctrine of
uniformity is not incompatible with great and
sudden changes," which, as I have shown, is
taught totidem verlis in that work. Even had it
been possible for me to shut my eyes to the sense
of what I had read in the " Principles," Whewell's
" Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," published
in 1840, a work with which I was also tolerably
familiar, must have opened them. For the
always acute, if not always profound, author, in
arguing against Lyell's uniformitarianism, ex-
less degree by Lyell, to look beyond the limits of the time
recorded by the stratified rocks. I said : " This attempt to
limit, at a particular point, the progress of inductive and de-
ductive reasoning from the things which are to the things which
were — this faithlessness to its own logic, seems to me to have
cost uniformitarianism the place as the permanent form of geo-
logical speculation which it might otherwise have held " (Lay
Sermons, p. 260). The context shows that " uniibrmitarianism "
here means that doctrine, as limited in application by Hutton
and Lyell, and that what I mean by "evolutionism" is con-
sistent and thoroughgoing uniformitarianism.
102 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
pressly points out that it does not in any way
contravene the occurrence of catastrophes.
With regard to such occurrences [earthquakes, deluges, etc.],
terrible as thoy appear at the time, they may not much affect
the average rate of change : there may be a cycle, though an
irregular one, of rapid and slow change : and if such cycles go
on succeeding each other, we may still call the order of nature
uniform, notwithstanding the periods of violence which it in-
volves. x
The reader who has followed me through this
brief chapter of the history of geological philoso-
phy will probably find the following passage in
the paper of the Duke of Argyll to be not a little
remarkable : —
Many years ago, when I had the honour of being President of
the British Association,'2 1 ventured to point out, in the presence
and in the hearing of that most distinguished man [Sir C. Lyell]
that the doctrine of uniformity was not incompatible with great
and sudden changes, since cycles of these and other cycles of
comparative rest might well be constituent parts of that uni-
formity which he asserted. Lyell did not object to this extended
interpretation of his own doctrine, and indeed expressed to me
his entire concurrence.
I should think he did ; for, as I have shown,
there was nothing in it that Lyell himself had not
said, six-and-twenty years before, and enforced,
three years before ; and it is almost verbally
identical with the view of uniformitarianism
taken by Whewell, sixteen years before, in a work
with which, one would think, that any one who
1 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 670. New
edition, 1847. 2 At Glasgow in 1856.
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 103
undertakes to discuss the philosophy of science
should be familiar.
Thirty years have elapsed since the beginner of
1856 persuaded himself that he enlightened the
foremost geologist of his time, and one of the most
acute and far-seeing men of science of any time,
as to the scope of the doctrines which the veteran
philosopher had grown gray in promulgating ;
and the Duke of Argyll's acquaintance with the
literature of geology has not, even now, become
sufficiently profound to dissipate that pleasant
delusion.
If the Duke of Argyll's guidance in that branch
of physical science, with which alone he has
given evidence of any practical acquaintance, is
thus unsafe, I may breathe more freely in setting
my opinion against the authoritative deliverances
of his Grace about matters which lie outside the
province of geology.
And here the Duke's paper offers me such a
wealth of opportunities that choice becomes em-
barrassing. I must bear in mind the good old
adage, " Non multa sed multum." Tempting as
it would be to follow the Duke through his
labyrinthine misunderstandings of the ordinary
terminology of philosophy, and to comment on
the curious unintelligibility which hangs about
his frequent outpourings of fervid language, limits
of space oblige me to restrict myself to those
points, the discussion of which may help to en-
104 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
lighten the public in respect of matters of more
importance than the competence of my Mentor
for the task which he has undertaken.
I am not sure when the employment of the
word Law, in the sense in which we speak of laws
of nature, commenced, but examples of it may be
found in the works of Bacon, Descartes, and
Spinoza. Bacon employs " Law " as the equiva-
lent of " Form," and I am inclined to think that
he may be responsible for a good deal of the
confusion that has subsequently arisen ; but I am
not aware that the term is used by other authori-
ties, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
in any other sense than that of "rule" or "definite
order" of the coexistence of things or succession
of events in nature. Descartes speaks of " regies,
que je nomine les lois de ]a nature/1 Leibnitz
says " loi ou regie generale," as if he considered
the terms interchangeable.
The Duke of Argyll, however, affirms that the
" law of gravitation " as put forth by Newton was
something more than the statement of an observed
order. He admits that Kepler's three laws " were
an observed order of facts and nothing more/'
As to the law of gravitation, " it contains an
element which Kepler's laws did not contain, even
an element of causation, the recognition of which
belongs to a higher category of intellectual con-
ceptions than that which is concerned in the mere
observation and record of separate and apparently
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 105
unconnected facts." There is hardly a line in
these paragraphs which appears to me to be in-
disputable. But, to confine myself to the matter
in hand, I cannot conceive that any one who had
taken ordinary pains to acquaint himself with the
real nature of either Kepler's or Newton's work
could have written them. That the labours of
Kepler, of all men in the world, should be called
" mere observation and record,'7 is truly wonderful.
And any one who will look into the " Principia,"
or the " Optics," or the " Letters to Bentley," will
see, even if he has no more special knowledge of
the topics discussed than I have, that Newton
over and over again insisted that he had nothing
to do with gravitation as a physical cause, and
that when he used the terms attraction, force, and
the like, he employed them, as he says, " mathe-
maticb " and not " physicb"
How these attractions [of gravity, magnetism, and electricity]
may be performed, I do not here consider. "What I call attrac-
tion may be performed by impulse or by some other means un-
known to me. I use that word here to signify only in a general
way any force by which bodies tend towards one another, what-
ever be the cause.1
According to my reading of the best authorities
upon the history of science, Newton discovered
neither gravitation, nor the law of gravitation ;
nor did he pretend to offer more than a conjecture
as to the causation of gravitation. Moreover, his
1 Optics, query 31.
106 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
assertion that the notion of a body acting where
it is not, is one that no competent thinker could
entertain, is antagonistic to the whole current
coDception of attractive and repulsive forces, and
therefore of " the attractive force of gravitation."
What, then, was that labour of unsurpassed mag-
nitude and excellence and of immortal influence
which Newton did perform ? In the first place,
Newton defined the laws, rules, or observed order
of the phenomena of motion, which come under
oar daily observation, with greater precision than
had been before attained ; and, by following out,
with marvellous power and subtlety, the mathe-
matical consequences of these rules, he almost
created the modern science of pure mechanics.
In the second place, applying exactly the same
method to the explication of the facts of astro-
nomy as that which was applied a century and a
half later to the facts of geology by Lyell, he set
himself to solve the following problem. Assuming
that all bodies, free to move, tend to approach
one another as the earth and the bodies on it do ;
assuming that the strength of that tendency is
directly as the mass and inversely as the squares
of the distances ; assuming that the laws of
motion, determined for terrestrial bodies, hold
good throughout the universe ; assuming that
the planets and their satellites were created and
placed at their observed mean distances, and that
each received a certain impulse from the Creator ;
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 107
will the form of the orbits, the varying rates of
motion of the planets, and the ratio between
those rates and their distances from the sun,
which must follow by mathematical reasoning
from these premisses, agree with the order of
facts determined by Kepler and others, or not ?
Newton, employing mathematical methods
which are the admiration of adepts, but which
no one but himself appears to have been able
to use with ease, not only answered this question
in the affirmative, but stayed not his constructive
genius before it had founded modern physical
astronomy.
The historians of mechanical and of astronomi-
cal science appear to be agreed that he was the
first person who clearly and distinctly put forth
the hypothesis that the phenomena comprehended
under the general name of " gravity " follow the
same order throughout the universe, and that all
material bodies exhibit these phenomena ; so that,
in this sense, the idea of universal gravitation
may, doubtless, be properly ascribed to him.
Newton proved that the laws of Kepler were
particular consequences of the laws of motion
and the law of gravitation — in other words, the
reason of the first lay in the two latter. But to
talk of the law of gravitation alone as the reason
of Kepler's laws, and still more as standing in
any causal relation to Kepler's laws, is simply a
misuse of language. It would really be interest-
108 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
ing if the Duke of Argyll would explain how he
proposes to set ab >ut showing that the elliptical
form of the orbits of the planets, the constant
area described by the radius vector, and the
proportionality of the squares of the periodic
times to the cubes of the distances from the sun,
are either caused by the " force of gravitation "
or deducible from the "law of gravitation/*
I conceive that it would be about as apposite to
say that the various compounds of nitrogen with
oxygen are caused by chemical attraction and
deducible from the atomic theory.
Newton assuredly lent no shadow of support to
the modern pseudo-scientific philosophy which
confounds laws with causes. I have not taken
the trouble to trace out this commonest of
. fallacies to its first beginning ; but I was familiar
with it in full bloom, more than thirty years ago,
in a work which had a great vogue in its day — the
" Vestiges of ike Natural History of Creation " — •
of which the first edition was published in 1844.
It is full of apt and forcible illustrations of
pseudo-scientific realism. Consider, for example,
this gem serene. When a boy who has climbed a
tree loses his hold of the branch, "the law of
gravitation unrelentingly pulls him to the ground,
arid then he is hurt/' whereby the Almighty is
quite relieved from any responsibility for the
accident. Here is the " law of gravitation "
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 109
acting as a cause in a way quite in accordance
with the Duke of Argyll's conception of ifc. In
fact, in the mind of the author of the " Vestiges,"
" laws " are existences intermediate between the
Creator and His works, like the " ideas " of the
Platonisers or the Logos of the Alexandrians.1
I may cite a passage which is quite in the vein of
Philo :—
We have seen powerful evidences that the construction of this
globe and its associates ; and, inferentially, that of all the other
globes in space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal
exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are
the expression of His will. What is to hinder our supposing
that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws
which are in like manner an expression of His will ? (p. 154, 1st
edition).
And creation " operating by law " is constantly
cited as relieving the Creator from trouble about
insignificant details.
I am perplexed to picture to myself the state of
mind which accepts these verbal juggleries. It is
intelligible that the Creator should operate
according to such rules as he might think fit to
lay down for himself (and therefore according to
law) ; but that would leave the operation of his
will just as much a direct personal act as it would
be under any other circumstances. I can also
understand that (as in Leibnitz's caricature of
Newton's views) the Creator might have made
1 The author recognises this in his Explanations.
110 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
the cosmical machine, and, after setting it going,
have left it to itself till it needed repair. But
then, by the supposition, his personal responsi-
bility would have been involved in all that it did ;
just as much as a dynamiter is responsible for
what happens, when he has set his machine going
and left it to explode.
The only hypothesis which gives a sort of mad
consistency to the Vestigiarian's views is the
supposition that laws are a kind of angels or
demiurgoi, who, being supplied with the Great
Architect's plan, were permitted to settle the
details among themselves. Accepting this doc-
trine, the conception of royal laws and plebeian
laws, and of those more than Homeric contests in
which the big laws " wreck " the little ones,
becomes quite intelligible. And, in fact, the
honour of the paternity of those remarkable ideas
which come into full flower in the preacher's dis-
course, must, so far as my imperfect knowledge
goes, be attributed to the author of the " Vestiges/'
But the author of the "Vestiges" is not the
only writer who is responsible for the current
pseudo-scientific mystifications which hang about
the term " law." When I wrote my paper about
" Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism," I had
not read a work by the Duke of Argyll, " The
Reign of Law," which, I believe, has enjoyed,
possibly still enjoys, a widespread popularity.
But the vivacity of the Duke's attack led me to
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 111
think it possible that criticisms directed else-
where might have come home to him. And, in
fact, I find that the second chapter of the work in
question, which is entitled " Law ; its definitions/1
is, from my point of view, a sort of " summa " of
pseudo-scientific philosophy. It will be worth
while to examine it in some detail.
In the first place, it is to be noted that the
author of the " Eeign of Law " admits that " law,"
in many cases, means nothing more than the
statement of the order in which facts occur, or, as
he says, "an observed order of facts" (p. 66).
But his appreciation of the value of accuracy of
expression does not hinder him from adding,
almost in the same breath, "In this sense the
laws of nature are simply those facts of nature
which recur according to rule " (p. 66). Thus
" laws," which were rightly said to be the state-
ment of an order of facts in one paragraph, are
declared to be the facts themselves in the next.
We are next told that, though it may be
customary and permissible to use " law " in the
sense of a statement of the order of facts, this is
a low use of the word ; and, indeed, two pages
farther on, the writer, flatly contradicting himself,
altogether denies its admissibility.
An observed order of facts, to be entitled to the rank of a law,
must be an order so constant and uniform as to indicate necessity,
and necessity can only arise out of the action of some compelling
force (p. 68).
123
112 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
This is undoubtedly one of the most singular
propositions that I have ever met with in a
professedly scientific work, and its rarity is
embellished by another direct self-contradiction
which it implies. For on the preceding page
(67), when the Duke of Argyll is speaking of the
laws of Kepler, which he admits to be laws, and
which are types of that which men of science
understand by "laws," he says that they are
" simply and purely an order of facts." Moreover,
he adds : " A very large proportion of the laws of
every science are laws of this kind and in this
sense."
If, according to the Duke of Argyll's admission,
law is understood, in this sense, thus widely and
constantly by scientific authorities, where is the
justification for his unqualified assertion that such
statements of the observed order of facts are not
" entitled to the rank " of laws ?
But let us examine the consequences of the
really interesting proposition I have just quoted.
I presume that it is a law of nature that "a
straight line is the shortest distance between two
points." This law affirms the constant association
of a certain fact of form with a certain fact of
dimension. Whether the notion of necessity
which attaches to it has an a priori or an a
posteriori origin is a question not relevant to the
present discussion. But I would beg to be
informed, if it is necessary, where is the " com-
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 113
polling force " out of which the necessity arises ;
and further, if it is not necessary, whether it loses
the character of a law of nature ?
I take it to be a law of nature, based on unex-
ceptionable evidence, that the mass of matter
remains unchanged, whatever chemical or other
modifications it may undergo. This law is one of
the foundations of chemistry. But it is by no
means necessary. It is quite possible to imagine
that the mass of matter should vary according to
circumstances, as we know its weight does. More-
over, the determination of the " force " which
makes mass constant (if there is any intelligi-
bility in that form of words) would not, so far as
I can see, confer any more validity on the law
than it has now.
There is a law of nature, so well vouched by
experience, that all mankind, from pure logicians
in search of examples to parish sextons in search
of fees, confide in it. This is the law that " all
men are mortal." It is simply a statement of
the observed order of facts that all men sooner or
later die. I am not acquainted with any law of
nature which is more "constant and uniform"
than this. But will any one tell me that death is
" necessary " ? Certainly there is no a priori
necessity in the case, for various men have been
imagined to be immortal. And I should be glad
to be informed of any " necessity " that can be
deduced from biological considerations. It is
114 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
quite conceivable, as has recently been pointed
out, that some of the lowest forms of life may
be immortal, after a fashion. However this
may be, I would further ask, supposing " all men
are mortal " to be a real law of nature, where and
what is that to which, with any propriety, the
title of "compelling force" of the law can be
given ?
On page 69, the Duke of Argyll asserts that the
law of gravitation " is a law in the sense, not
merely of a rule, but of a cause." But this
revival of the teaching of the "Vestiges" has
already been examined and disposed of; and when
the Duke of Argyll states that the " observed
order " which Kepler had discovered was simply a
necessary consequence of the force of "gravita-
tion," I need not recapitulate the evidence which
proves such a statement to be wholly fallacious.
But it may be useful to say, once more, that, at
this present moment, nobody knows anything
about the existence of a " force " of gravitation
apart from the fact ; that Newton declared the
ordinary notion of such force to be inconceivable ;
that various attempts have been made to account
for the order of facts we call gravitation, without
recourse to the notion of attractive force ; that, if
such a force exists, it is utterly incompetent to
account for Kepler's laws, without taking into the
reckoning a great number of other considerations ;
and, finally, that all we know about the " force "
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 115
of gravitation, or any other so-called "force," is
that it is a name for the hypothetical cause of an
observed order of facts.
Thus, when the Duke of Argyll says : " Force, as-
certained according to some measure of its operation
— this is indeed one of the definitions, but only
one, of a scientific law " (p. 71) I reply that it is a
definition which must be repudiated by every one
who possesses an adequate acquaintance with
either the facts, or the philosophy, of science, and be
relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies.
If the human mind had never entertained this
notion of " force," nay, if it substituted bare in-
variable succession for the ordinary notion of
causation, the idea of law, as the expression of a
constantly-observed order, which generates a cor-
responding intensity of expectation in our minds,
would have exactly the same value, and play its
part in real science, exactly as it does now.
It is needless to extend further the present
excursus on the origin and history of modern
pseudo-science. Under such high patronage as
it has enjoyed, it has grown and flourished until,
nowadays, it is becoming somewhat rampant.
It has its weekly " Ephemerides," in which every
new pseudo-scientific mare's-nest is hailed and
belauded with the unconscious unfairness of
ignorance ; and an army of " reconcilers/' enlisted
in its service, whose business seems to be to mix
the black of dogma and the white of science into
]16 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE III
the neutral tint of what they call liberal
theology.
I remember that, not long after the publication of
the " Vestiges," a shrewd and sarcastic countryman
of the author defined it as " cauld kail made het
again." A cynic might find amusement in the
reflection that, at the present time, the principles
and the methods of the much- vilified Vestigiarian
are being "made het again"; and are not only
" echoed by the dome of St. Paul's,"~but thundered
from the castle of Tnverary. But my turn of
mind is not cynical, and I can but regret the
waste of time and energy bestowed on the en-
deavour to deal with the most difficult problems
of science, by those who have neither undergone
the discipline, nor possess the information, which
are indispensable to the successful issue of such
an enterprise.
I have already had occasion to remark that the
Duke of Argyll's views of the conduct of con-
troversy are different from mine ; and this much-
to-be lamented discrepancy becomes yet more
accentuated when the Duke reaches biological
topics. Anything that was good enough for Sir
Charles Lyell, in his department of study, is cer-
tainly good enough for me in mine ; and I by no
means demur to being pedagogically instructed
about a variety of matters with which it has been
the business of my life to try to acquaint myself.
But the Duke of Argyll is not content with
HI SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 117
favouring me with his opinions about my own
business ; he also answers for mine ; and, at that
point, really the worm must turn. I am told
that " no one knows better than Professor
Huxley " a variety of things which I really do not
know; and I am said to be a disciple of that
" Positive Philosophy " which I have, over and
over again, publicly repudiated in language which
is certainly not lacking in intelligibility, whatever
may be its other defects.
I am told that I have been amusing myself
with a " metaphysical exercitation or logomachy "
(may I remark incidentally that these are not
quite convertible terms ?), when, to the best of my
belief, I have been trying to expose a process
of mystification, based upon the use of scientific
language by writers who exhibit no sign of
scientific training, of accurate scientific knowledge,
or of clear ideas respecting the philosophy of
science, which is doing very serious harm to the
public. Naturally enough, they take the lion's
skin of scientific phraseology for evidence that the
voice which issues from beneath it is the voice of
science, and I desire to relieve them from the
consequences of their error.
The Duke of Argyll asks, apparently with
sorrow that it should be his duty to subject me to
reproof —
"What shall we say of a philosophy which confounds the organic
with the inorganic, and, refusing to take note of a difference so
118 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
profound, assumes to explain under one common abstraction,
the movements due to gravitation and the movements due to the
mind of man ?
To which I may fitly reply by another question :
What shall we say to a controversialist who
attributes to the subject of his attack opinions
which are notoriously not his; and expresses
himself in such a manner that it is obvious he is
unacquainted with even the rudiments of that
knowledge which is necessary to the discussion
into which he has rushed ?
What line of my writing can the Duke of Argyll
produce which confounds the organic with the in-
organic ?
As to the latter half of the paragraph, I have
to confess a doubt whether it has any definite
meaning. But I imagine that the Duke is alluding
to my assertion that the law of gravitation is nowise
"suspended" or "defied" when a man lifts his
arm ; but that, under such circumstances, part of
the store of energy in the universe operates on the
arm at a mechanical advantage as against the
operation of another part. I was simple enough
to think that no one who had as much knowledge
of physiology as is to be found in an elementary
primer, -or who had ever heard of the greatest
physical generalisation of modern times — the
doctrine of the conservation of energy — would
dream of doubting my statement; and I was
further simple enough to think that no one who
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 119
lacked these qualifications would feel tempted to
charge me with error. It appears that my sim-
plicity is greater than my powers of imagination.
The Duke of Argyll may not be aware of the
fact, but it is nevertheless true, that when a man's
arm is raised, in sequence to that state of con-
sciousness we call a volition, the volition is not the
immediate cause of the elevation of the arm. On
the contrary, that operation is effected by a certain
change of form, technically known as " contraction "
in sundry masses of flesh, technically known as
muscles, which are fixed to the bones of the
shoulder in such a manner that, if these muscles
contract, they must raise the arm. Now each of
these muscles is a machine comparable, in a
certain sense, to one of the donkey-engines of a
steamship, but more complete, inasmuch as the
source of its ability to change its form, or contract,
lies within itself. Every time that, by contracting,
the muscle does work, such as that involved in
raising the arm, more or less of the material which
it contains is used up, just as more or less of the
fuel of a steam-engine is used up, when it does
work. And I do not think there is a doubt in the
mind of any competent physicist, or physiologist,
that the work done in lifting the weight of the arm
is the mechanical equivalent of a certain proportion
of the energy set free by the molecular changes
which take place in the muscle. It is further a
tolerably well-based belief that this, and all other
s^k-
I trv
v -n.br.rsr i
^£^JTOKW&/
120 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
forms of energy, are mutually convertible; and,
therefore, that they all come under that general
law or statement of the order of facts, called
the conservation of energy. And, as that certainly
is an abstraction, so the view which the Duke of
Argyll thinks so extremely absurd is really one of
the commonplaces of physiology. But this Review
is hardly an appropriate place for giving instruction
in the elements of that science, and I content
myself with recommending the Duke of Argyll to
devote some study to Book II. chap. v. section 4
of my friend Dr. Foster's excellent text-book of
Physiology (1st edition, 1877, p. 321), which begins
thus : —
Broadly speaking, the animal body is a machine for converting
potential into actual energy. The potential energy is supplied
by the food ; this the metabolism of the body converts into the
actual energy of heat and mechanical labour.
There is no more difficult problem in the world
than that of the relation of the state of conscious-
ness, termed volition, to the mechanical work
which frequently follows upon it. But no one can
even comprehend the nature of the problem, who
has not carefully studied the long series of modes
of motion which, without a break, connect the
energy which does that work with the general
store of energy. The ultimate form of the
problem is this : Have we any reason to believe
that a feeling, or state of consciousness, is capable
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 121
of directly affecting the motion of even the small-
est conceivable molecule of matter ? Is such a
thing even conceivable? If we answer these
questions in the negative, it follows that volition
may be a sign, but cannot be a cause, of bodily
motion. If we answer them in the affirmative, then
states of consciousness become undistinguishable
from material things ; for it is the essential nature
of matter to be the vehicle or substratum of
mechanical energy.
There is nothing new in all this. I have
merely put into modern language the issue
raised by Descartes more than two centuries ago.
The philosophies of the Occasionalists, of Spinoza,
of Malebranche, of modern idealism and modern
materialism, have all grown out of the contro-
versies which Cartesianisrn evoked. Of all this
the pseudo-science of the present time appears to
be unconscious ; otherwise it would hardly content
itself with " making het again " the pseudo- science
of the past.
In the course of these observations I have
already had occasion to express my appreciation
of the copious and perfervid eloquence which
enriches the Duke of Argyll's pages. I am
almost ashamed that a constitutional insensibility
to the Sirenian charms of rhetoric has permitted
me in wandering through these flowery meads, to
be attracted, almost exclusively, to the bare
places of fallacy and the stony grounds of deficient
122 > SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
information, which are disguised, though not con-
cealed, by these floral decorations. But, in his
concluding sentences, the Duke soars into a
Tyrtsean strain which roused even my dull soul.
It was liigli time, indeed, that some revolt should be raised
against that Reign of Terror which had come to be established
in the scientific world under the abuse of a great name, Pro-
fessor Huxley has not joined this revolt openly, for as yet, in-
deed, it is only beginning to raise its head. But more than once
— and very lately — he has uttered a warning voice against the
shallow dogmatism that has provoked it. The time is coming
when that revolt will be carried further. Higher interpretations
will be established. Unless I am much mistaken, they are
already coming in sight (p. 339).
I have been living very much out of the world
for the last two or three years, and when I read
this denunciatory outburst, as of one filled with
the spirit of prophecy, I said to myself, " Mercy
upon us, wha,t has happened ? Can it be that X.
and Y. (it would be wrong to mention the names
of the vigorous young friends which occurred to
'me) are playing Danton and Robespierre; and
that a guillotine is erected in the courtyard of
Burlington House for the benefit of all anti-
Darwinian Fellows of the Royal Society ? Where
are the secret conspirators against this tyranny,
whom I am supposed to favour, and yet not have
the courage to join openly ? And to think of my
poor oppressed friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer, * com-
pelled to speak with bated breath ' (p. 338)
certainly for the first time in my thirty-odd years'
HI SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 123
acquaintance with him ! " My alarm and horror
at the supposition that, while I had been fiddling
(or at any rate physicking), my beloved Rome
had been burning, in this fashion, may be
imagined.
I am sure the Duke of Argyll will be glad to
hear that the anxiety he created was of extremely
short duration. It is my privilege to have access
to the best sources of information, and nobody in
the scientific world can tell me anything about
either the " Reign of Terror " or " the Revolt."
In fact, the scientific world laughs most inde-
corously at the notion of the existence of either ;
and some are so lost to the sense of the scientific
dignity, that they descend to the -use of trans-
atlantic slang, and call it a " bogus scare." As to
my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer, I have every
reason to know that, in the " Factors of Organic
Evolution," he has said exactly what was in his
mind, without any particular deference to the
opinions of the person whom he is pleased to
regard as his most dangerous critic and Devil's
Advocate-General, and still less of any one else.
I do not know whether the Duke of Argyll
picture's himself as the Tallien of this imaginary
revolt against a no less imaginary Reign of Terror.
But if so, I most respectfully but firmly decline
to join his forces. It is only a few weeks since I
happened to read over again the first article
which I ever wrote (now twenty-seven years ago)
124 SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE m
on the " Origin of Species/' and I found nothing
that I wished to modify in the opinions that are
there expressed, though the subsequent vast
accumulation of evidence in favour of Mr. Dar-
win's views would give me much to add. As is
the case with all new doctrines, so with that of
Evolution, the enthusiasm of advocates has some-
times tended to degenerate into fanaticism ; and
mere speculation has, at times, threatened to
shoot beyond its legitimate bounds. I have
occasionally thought it wise to warn the more
adventurous spirits among us against these
dangers, in sufficiently plain language ; and I
have sometimes jestingly said that I expected,
if I lived long enough, to be looked on as a
reactionary by some of my more ardent friends.
But nothing short of midsummer madness can
account for the fiction that I am waiting till it is
safe to join openly a revolt, hatched by some
person or persons unknown, against an intellectual
movement with which I am in the most entire
and hearty sympathy. It is a great many years
since, at the outset of my career, I had to think
seriously what life had to offer that was worth
having. I came to the conclusion that the chief
good, for me, was freedom to learn, think, and say
what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on
that conviction, and have availed myself of the
" rara temporum felicitas ubi sent ire quse velis, et
qua3 sentias dicer e licet," which is now enjoyable,
Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 125
to the best of my ability ; and though strongly,
and perhaps wisely, warned that I should prob-
ably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with
the results of the line of action I have adopted.
My career is at an end. I have
Warmed both hands before the fire of life ;
and nothing is left me, before I depart, but to
help, or at any rate to abstain fi^m hindering,
the younger generation of men of science in doing
better service to the cause we have at heart than
I have been able to render.
And yet, forsooth, I am supposed to be waiting
for the signal of " revolt," which some fiery spirits
among these young men are to raise before I dare
express my real opinions concerning questions
about which we older men had to fight, in the
teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy — of
something which might almost justify even the
grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror —
before our excellent successors had left school.
It would appear that the spirit of pseudo-
science has impregnated even the imagination of
the Duke of Argyll. The scientific imagination
always restrains itself within the limits of prob-
ability.
IV
AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY
[1887]
IF there is any truth in the old adage that a
burnt child dreads the fire, I ought to be very
loath to touch a sermon, while the memory of what
befell me on a recent occasion, possibly not yet
forgotten by the readers of the Nineteenth Century,
is uneffaced. But I suppose that even the distin-
guished censor of that unheard-of audacity to
which not even the newspaper report of a sermon
is sacred, can hardly regard a man of science as
either indelicate or presumptuous, if he ventures
to offer some comments upon three discourses,
specially addressed to the great assemblage of
men of science which recently gathered at
Manchester, by three bishops of the State Church.
On my return to England not long ago, I found a
pamphlet l containing a version, which I presume
1 The Advance of Science. Three sermons preached in Man-
chester Cathedral on Sunday, September 4, 1887, during the
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 127
to be authorised, of these sermons, among the
huge mass of letters and papers which had
accumulated during two months' absence ; and I
have read them not only with attentive interest,
but with a feeling of satisfaction which is quite
new to me as a result of hearing, or reading,
sermons. These excellent discourses, in fact,
appear to me to signalise a new departure in the
course adopted by theology towards science, and
to indicate the possibility of bringing about an
honourable modus vivendi between the two. How
far the three bishops speak as accredited repre-
sentatives of the Church is a question to be
considered by and by. Most assuredly, I am not
authorised to represent any one but myself. But
I suppose that there must be a good many people
in the Church of the bishops' way of thinking ;
and I have reason to believe that, in the ranks of
science, there are a good many persons who, more
or less, share my views. And it is to these sensible
people on both sides, as the bishops and I must
needs think those who agrek with us, that my
present observations are addressed. They will
probably be astonished to learn how insignificant,
in principle, their differences are.
It is impossible to read the discourses of the
three prelates without being impressed by the
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, by the Bishop of Carlisle, the Bishop of Bedford, and
the Bishop of Manchester.
124
128 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
knowledge which they display, and by the spirit
of equity, I might say of generosity, towards
science which pervades them. There is no trace
of that tacit or open assumption that the rejection
of theological dogmas, on scientific grounds, is due
to moral perversity, wrhich is the ordinary note of
ecclesiastical homilies on this subject, and which
makes them look so supremely silly to men whose
lives have been spent in wrestling with these
questions. There is no attempt to hide away real
stumbling-blocks under rhetorical stucco ; no resort
to the tu quoque device of setting scientific blun-
ders against theological errors ; no suggestion that
an honest man may keep contradictory beliefs in
separate pockets of his brain ; no question that the
method of scientific investigation is valid, what-
ever the results to which it may lead ; and that the
search after truth, and truth only, ennobles the
searcher and leaves no doubt that his life, at any
rate, is worth living. The Bishop of Carlisle
declares himself pledged to the belief that " the
advancement of science, the progress of human
knowledge, is in itself a worthy aim of the greatest
effort of the greatest minds."
How often was it my fate, a quarter of a century
ago, to see the whole artillery of the pulpit brought
to bear upon the doctrine of evolution and its sup-
porters ! Any one unaccustomed to the amenities
of ecclesiastical controversy would have thought
we were too wicked to be permitted to live. But
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 129
let us hear the Bishop of Bedford. After a
perfectly frank statement of the doctrine of
evolution and some of its obvious consequences,
that learned prelate pleads, with all earnestness,
against
a hasty denunciation of what may be proved to have at least
some elements of truth in it, a contemptuous rejection of theories
which we may some day learn to accept as freely and with as
little sense of inconsistency with God's word as we now accept
the theory of the earth's motion round the sun, or the long
duration of the geological epochs (p. 28).
I do not see that the most convinced evolutionist
could ask any one, whether cleric or layman, to say
more than this ; in fact, I do not think that any
one has a right to say more, with respect to any
question about which two opinions can be held, than
that his mind is perfectly open to the force of
evidence.
There is another portion of the Bishop of Bed-
ford's sermon which I think will be warmly appre-
ciated by all honest and clear-headed men. He
repudiates the views of those who say that theology
and science
occupy wholly different spheres, and need in no way intermeddle
with each other. They revolve, as it were, in different planes,
and so never meet. Thus we may pursue scientific studies with
the utmost freedom and, at the same time, may pay the most
reverent regard to theology, having no fears of collision, because
allowing no points of contact (p. 29).
Surely every unsophisticated mind will heartily
130 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IT
concur with the Bishop's remark upon this con-
venient refuge for the descendants of Mr. Facing-
both-ways. " I have never been able to under-
stand this position, though I have often seen it
assumed." Nor can any demurrer be sustained
when the Bishop proceeds to point out that there
are, and must be, various points of contact between
theological and natural science, and therefore that
it is foolish to ignore or deny the existence of as
many dangers of collision.
Finally, the Bishop of Manchester freely admits
the force of the objections which have been raised,
on scientific grounds, to prayer, and attempts to
turn them by arguing that the proper objects of
prayer are not physical but spiritual. He tells us
that natural accidents and moral misfortunes are
not to be taken for moral judgments of God ; he
admits the propriety of the application of scientific
methods to the investigation of the origin and
growth of religions ; and he is as ready to recognise
the process of evolution there, as in the physical
world. Mark the following striking passage : —
And how utterly all the common objections to Divine revela-
tion vanish away when they are set in the light of this theory of
a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that there prevailed,
in those earlier days, views of the nature of God and man, of
human life and Divine Providence, which we now find to be
untenable ? That, we answer, is precisely what the theory of
development presupposes. If early views of religion and mor-
ality had not been imperfect, where had been the development ?
If symbolical visions and mythical creations had found no place
IV AN EPISCOPAL THILOGY 131
in the early Oriental expression of Divine truth, where had been
the development ? The sufficient answer to ninety-nine out of a
hundred of the ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of
a divine education of our race, is asked in that one word —
development. And to what are we indebted for that potent
word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at the same
moment so completely transformed our knowledge and dispelled
our difficulties ? To modern science, resolutely pursuing its
search for truth in spite of popular obloquy and — alas ! that one
should have to say it — in spite too often of theological denuncia-
tion (p. 53).
Apart from its general importance, I read this
remarkable statement with the more pleasure,
since, however imperfectly I may have endeavoured
to illustrate the evolution of theology in a paper
published in the Nineteenth Century last year,1 it
seems to me that in principle, at any rate, I may
hereafter claim high theological sanction for the
views there set forth.
If theologians are henceforward prepared to re-
cognise the authority of secular science in the man-
ner and to the extent indicated in the Manchester
trilogy; if the distinguished prelates who offer
these terms are really plenipotentiaries, then, so
far as I may presume to speak on such a matter,
there will be no difficulty about concluding a per-
petual treaty of peace, and indeed of alliance,
between the high contracting powers, whose
history has hitherto been little more than a record
of continual warfare. But if the great Chancellor's
1 Eeprinted in Vol. IV. of this collection.
132 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
maxim, "Do ut des," is to form the basis of
negotiation, I am afraid that secular science will
be ruined ; for it seems to me that theology, under
the generous impulse of a sudden conversion, has
given all that she hath ; and indeed, on one point,
has surrendered more than can reasonably be asked.
I suppose I must be prepared to face the reproach
which attaches to those who criticise a gift, if I
venture to observe that I do not think that the
Bishop of Manchester need have been so much
alarmed, as he evidently has been, by the objections
which have often been raised to prayer, on the
ground that a belief in the efficacy of prayer is
inconsistent with a belief in the constancy of the
order of nature.
The Bishop appears to admit that there is an
antagonism between the " regular economy of
nature " and the " regular economy of prayer "
(p. 39), and that "prayers for the interruption of
God's natural order " are of " doubtful validity "
(p. 42). It appears to me that the Bishop's
difficulty simply adds another example to those
which 1 have several times insisted upon in the
pages of this Review and elsewhere, of the mischief
which has been done, and is being done, by a mis-
taken apprehension of the real meaning of " natural
order " and " law of nature."
May I, therefore, be permitted to repeat, once
more, that the statements denoted by these terms
have no greater value or cogency than such as may
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 133
attach to generalisations from experience of the
past, and to expectations for the future based upon
that experience ? Nobody can presume to say
what the order of nature must be ; all that the
widest experience (even if it extended over all
past time and through all space) that events had
happened in a certain way could justify, would be a
proportionally strong expectation that events will
go on so happening, and the demand for a propor-
tional strength of evidence in favour of any asser-
tion that they had happened otherwise.
It is this weighty consideration, the truth of
which every one who is capable of logical thought
must surely admit, which knocks the bottom out of
all a priori objections either to ordinary " miracles "
or to the efficacy of prayer, in so far as the latter
implies the miraculous intervention of a higher
power. No one is entitled to say a priori that any
given so-called miraculous event is impossible ; £nd
no one is entitled to say a priori that prayer for
some change in the ordinary course of nature can-
not possibly avail.
The supposition that there is any inconsistency
between the acceptance of the constancy of natural
order and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the
more unaccountable as it is obviously contradicted
by analogies furnished by everyday experience.
The belief in the efficacy of prayer depends upon
the assumption that there is somebody, somewhere,
who is strong enough to deal with the earth and
us contents as men deal with the things and events
134 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
which they are strong enough to modify or control ;
and who is capable of being moved by appeals
such as men make to one another. This belief
does not even involve theism ; for our earth is an
insignificant particle of the solar system, while the
solar system is hardly worth speaking of in relation
to the All ; and, for anything that can be proved
to the contrary, there may be beings endowed
with full powers over our system, yet, practically,
as insignificant as ourselves in relation to the
universe. If any one pleases, therefore, to give un-
restrained liberty to his fancy, he may plead
analogy in favour of the dream that there may be,
somewhere, a finite being, or beings, who can play
with the solar system as a child plays with a toy ;
and that such being may be willing to do anything
which he is properly supplicated to do. For we
are not justified in saying that it is impossible for
beings having the nature of men, only vastly more
powerful, to exist ; and if they do exist, they may
act as and when we ask them to do so, just as our
brother men act. As a matter of fact, the great
mass of the human race has believed, and still
believes, in such beings, under the various names
of fairies, gnomes, angels, and demons. Certainly
I do not lack faith in the constancy of natural
order. But I am not less convinced that if I were
to ask the Bishop of Manchester to do me a kind-
ness which lay within his power, he would do it.
And I am unable to see that his action on my
request involves any violation of the order of
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 135
nature. On the contrary, as I have not the
honour to know the Bishop personally, my action
would be based upon my faith in that " law of
nature," or generalisation from experience, which
tells me that, as a rule, men who occupy the
Bishop's position are kindly and courteous. How
is the case altered if my request is preferred to
some imaginary superior being, or to the Most
High being, who, by the supposition, is able to
arrest disease, or make the sun stand still in the
heavens, just as easily as I can stop my watch, or
make it indicate any hour that pleases me ?
I repeat that it is not upon any a priori con-
siderations that objections, either to the supposed
efficacy of prayer in modifying the course of events,
or to the supposed occurrence of miracles, can be
scientifically based. The real objection, and, to
my mind, the fatal objection, to both these sup-
positions, is the inadequacy of the evidence to
prove any given case of such occurrences which
has been adduced. It is a canon of common
sense, to say nothing of science, that the more
improbable a supposed occurrence, the more
cogent ought to be the evidence in its favour. I
have looked somewhat carefully into the subject,
and I am unable to find in the records of any
miraculous event evidence which even approxi-
mates to the fulfilment of this requirement.
But, in the case of prayer, the Bishop points out
a most just and necessary distinction between its
136 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
effect on the course of nature, outside ourselves,
and its effect within the region of the supplicator's
mind.
It is a " law of nature," verifiable by everyday
experience, that our already formed convictions,
our strong desires, our intent occupation with
particular ideas, modify our mental operations to
a most marvellous extent, and produce enduring
changes in the direction and in the intensity of
our intellectual and moral activities. Men can
intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as
with alcohol or with bang, and produce, by dint
of intense thinking, mental conditions hardly
distinguishable from monomania. Demoniac pos-
session is mythical; but the faculty of being
possessed, more or less completely, by an idea
is probably the fundamental condition of what
is called genius, whether it show itself in the
saint, the artist, or the man of science. One
calls it faith, another calls it inspiration, a third
calls it insight ; but the " intending of the mind,"
to borrow Newton's well-known phrase, the con-
centration of all the rays of intellectual energy
on some one point, until it glows and colours the
whole cast of thought with its peculiar light, is
common to all.
I take it that the Bishop of Manchester has
psychological science with him when he insists
upon the subjective efficacy of prayer in faith, and
on the seemingly miraculous effects which such
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 137
"intending of the mind" upon religious and
moral ideals may have upon character and
happiness. Scientific faith, at present, takes it
no further than the prayer which Ajax offered;
but that petition is continually granted.
Whatever points of detail may yet remain open
for discussion, however, I repeat the opinion I
have already expressed, that the Manchester
sermons concede all that science, has an in-
disputable right, or any pressing need, to ask, and
that not grudgingly but generously; and, if the
three bishops of 1887 carry the Church with them,
I think they will have as good title to the
permanent gratitude of posterity as the famous
seven who went to the Tower in defence of the
Church two hundred years ago.
Will their brethren follow their just and
prudent guidance ? I have no such acquaintance
with the currents of ecclesiastical opinion as would
justify me in even hazarding a guess on such
a difficult topic. But some recent omens are
hardly favourable. There seems to be an im-
pression abroad — I do not desire to give any
countenance to it — that I am fond of reading
sermons. From time to time, unknown corre-
spondents— some apparently animated by the
charitable desire to promote my conversion, and
others unmistakably anxious to spur me to the
expression of wrathful antagonism — favour me with
reports or copies of such productions.
138 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
I found one of the latter category among the
accumulated arrears to which I have already
referred.
It is a full, and apparently accurate, report of a
discourse by a person of no less ecclesiastical rank
than the three authors of the sermons I have
hitherto been considering; but who he is, and
where or when the sermon was preached, are
secrets which wild horses shall not tear from
me, lest I fall again under high censure for
attacking a clergyman. Only if the editor of this
Review thinks it his duty to have independent
evidence that the sermon has a real existence, will
I, in the strictest confidence, communicate it to
him.
The preacher, in this case, is of a very different
mind from the three bishops — and this mind is
different in quality, different in spirit, and different
in contents. He discourses on the a priori
objections to miracles, apparently without being
aware, in spite of all the discussions of the last
seven or eight years, that he is doing battle with
a shadow.
I trust I do not misrepresent the Bishop of
Manchester in saying that the essence of his
remarkable discourse is the insistence upon the
" supreme importance of the purely spiritual in
our faith," and of the relative, if not absolute,
insignificance of aught else. He obviously per-
ceives the bearing of his arguments against the
IV -AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 139
alterability of the course of outward nature by
prayer, on the question of miracles in general;
for he is careful to say that " the possibility of
miracles, of a rare and unusual transcendence of
the world order is not here in question " (p. 38).
It may be permitted me to suppose, however, that,
if miracles were in question, the speaker who
warns us "that we must look for the heart of the
absolute religion in that part of it which prescribes
our moral and religious relations " (p. 46) would
not be disposed to advise those who had found the
heart of Christianity to take much thought about
its miraculous integument.
My anonymous sermon will have nothing to do
with such notions as these, and its preacher is not
too polite, to say nothing of charitable, towards
those who entertain them.
Scientific men, therefore, are perfectly right in asserting that
Christianity rests on miracles. If miracles never happened,
Christianity, in any sense which is not a mockery, which does
not make the term of none effect, has no reality. I dwell on
this because there is now an effort making to get up a non-mir-
aculous, invertebrate Christianity, which may escape the ban
of science. And I would warn you very distinctly against this
new contrivance. Christianity is essentially miraculous, and
falls to the ground if miracles be impossible.
Well, warning for warning, I venture to warn
this preacher and those who, with him, persist in
identifying Christianity with the miraculous, that
such forms of Christianity are not only doomed to
fall to the ground; but that, within the last
140 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY W
half century, they have been driving that way witli
continually accelerated velocity.
The so-called religious world is given to a strange
delusion. It fondly imagines that it possesses the
monopoly of serious and constant reflection upon
the terrible problems of existence ; and that those
who cannot accept its shibboleths are either mere
Gallios, caring for none of these things, or
libertines desiring to escape from the restraints of
morality. It does not appear to have entered the
imaginations of these people that, outside their
pale and firmly resolved never to enter it, there
are thousands of men, certainly not their inferiors
in character, capacity, or knowledge of the
questions at issue, who estimate those purely
spiritual elements of the Christian faith of which
the Bishop of Manchester speaks as highly as the
Bishop does ; but who will have nothing to do with
the Christian Churches, because in their appre-
hension and for them, the profession of belief in
the miraculous, on the evidence offered, would be
simply immoral.
So far as my experience goes, men of science are
neither better nor worse than the rest of the
world. Occupation with the endlessly great parts
of the universe does not necessarily involve
gieatness of character, nor dees microscopic study
of the infinitely little always produce humility.
We have our full share of original sin; need,
greed, and vainglory beset us as they do other
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 141
mortals ; and our progress is, for the most past,
like that of a tacking ship, the resultant of opposite
divergencies from the straight path. But, for all
that, there is one moral benefit which the pursuit
of science unquestionably bestows. It keeps the
estimate of the value of evidence up to the proper
mark ; and we are constantly receiving lessons,
and sometimes very sharp ones, on the nature of
proof. Men of science will always act up to their
standard of veracity, when mankind in general
leave off sinning ; but that standard appears to me
to be higher among them than in any other class
of the community.
I do not know any body of scientific men who
could be got to listen without the strongest ex-
pressions of disgusted repudiation to the exposition
of a pretended scientific discovery, which had no
better evidence to show for itself than the story
of the devils entering a herd of swine, or of the
fig-tree that was blasted for bearing no figs when
" it was not the season of figs." Whether such
events are possible or impossible, no man can say ;
but scientific ethics can and does declare that the
profession of belief in them, on the evidence of
documents of unknown date and of unknown
authorship, is immoral. Theological apologists
who insist that morality will vanish if their
dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider
the fact that, in the matter of intellectual veracity,
science is already a long way ahead cf the
142 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
Churches ; and that, in this particular, it is
exerting an educational influence on mankind of
which the Churches have shown themselves
utterly incapable.
Undoubtedly that varying compound of some
of the best and some of the worst elements of
Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by
the innate character of certain people of the
Western world, which, since the second century,
has assumed to itself -the title of orthodox
Christianity, " rests on miracles " and falls to the
ground, not "if miracles be impossible," but if
those to which it is committed prove themselves
unable to fulfil the conditions of honest belief.
That this Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my
mind, beyond a doubt ; but its fall will be neither
sudden nor speedy. The Church, with all the aid
lent it by the secular arm, took many centuries to
extirpate the open practice of pagan idolatry
within its own fold ; and those who have travelled
in southern Europe will be aware that it has not
extirpated the essence of such idolatry even yet.
Mutato nomine, it is probable that there is as much
sheer fetichism among the Roman populace now
as there was eighteen hundred years ago ; and if
Marcus Antoninus could descend from his horse and
ascend the steps of -the Ara Cceli church about
Twelfth Day, the only thing that need strike him
would be the extremely contemptible character of
the modern idols as works of art.
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 143
Science will certainly neither ask for, nor
receive, the aid of the secular arm. It will trust
to the much better and more powerful help of that
education in scientific truth and in the morals of
assent, which is rendered as indispensable, as it is
inevitable, by the permeation of practical life with
the products and ideas of science. But no one
who considers the present state of even the most
developed countries can doubt that the scientific
light that has come into the world will have to
shine in the midst of darkness for a long time.
The urban populations, driven into contact with
science by trade and manufacture, will more and
more receive it, while the pagani will lag behind.
Let us hope that no Julian may arise among them
to head a forlorn hope against the inevitable,
Whatever happens, science may bide her time in
patience and in confidence.
But to return to my "Anonymous." I am
afraid that if he represents any great party in the
Church, the spirit of justice and reasonableness
which animates the three bishops has as slender a
chance of being imitated, on a large scale, as their
common sense and their courtesy. For, not con-
tented with misrepresenting science on its specu-
lative side, " Anonymous " attacks its morality.
For two whole years, investigations and conclusions which
would upset the theories of Darwin on the formation of coral
islands were actually suppressed, and that hy the advice even of
those who accepted them, for fear of upsetting the faith and dis-
125
144 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
turbing the judgment formed by the multitude on the scientific
character — the infallibility— of the great master!
So far as I know anything about the matters
which are here referred to, the part of this passage
which I have italicised is absolutely untrue. I
believe that I am intimately acquainted with all
Mr. Darwin's immediate scientific friends : and I
say that no one of them, nor any other man of
science known to me, ever could, or would, have
given such advice to any one — if for no other
reason than that, with the example of the most
candid and patient listener to objections that ever
lived fresh in their memories, they could not so
grossly have at once violated their highest duty
and dishonoured their friend.
The charge thus brought by "Anonymous"
affects the honour and the probity of men of
science ; if it is true, we have forfeited all claim
to the confidence of the general public. In
my belief it is utterly false, and its real effect will
be to discredit those who are responsible for it.
As is the way with slanders, it has grown by
repetition. " Anonymous " is responsible for the
peculiarly offensive form which it has taken in his
hands; but he is not responsible for originating
it. He has evidently been inspired by an article
entitled " A Great Lesson," published in the Sep-
tember number of this Eeview. Truly it is " a
great lesson," but not quite in the sense intended
by the giver thereof!
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 145
In the course of his doubtless well-meant ad-
monitions, the Duke of Argyll commits himself
to a greater number of statements which are de-
monstrably incorrect and which any one who
ventured to write upon the subject ought to have
known to be incorrect, than I have ever seen
gathered together in so small a space.
I submit a gathering from the rich store for the
appreciation of the public.
First :—
Mr. Murray's new explanation of the structure of coral-reefs
and islands was communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh
in 1880, and supported with such a weight of facts and such a
close texture of reasoning, that no serious reply has ever been
attempted (p. 305).
" No serious reply has ever been attempted " ! I
suppose that the Duke of Argyll may have heard
of Professor Dana, whose years of labour devoted
to corals and coral-reefs when he was naturalist
of the American expedition under Commodore
Wilkes, more than forty years ago, have ever since
caused him to be recognised as an authority of the
first rank on such subjects. Now does his Grace
know, or does he not know, that, in the year 1885,
Professor Dana published an elaborate paper " On
the Origin of Coral-Reefs and Islands," in which,
after referring to a Presidential Address by the
Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain
and Ireland delivered in 1883, in which special
146 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
attention is directed to Mr. Murray's views Pro-
fessor Dana says : —
The existing state of doubt on the question has led the writer
to reconsider the earlier and later facts, and in the following
pages he gives his results.
Professor Dana then devotes many pages of his
very " serious reply " to a most admirable and
weighty criticism of the objections which have at
various times been raised to Mr. Darwin's doctrine,
by Professor Semper, by Dr. Rein, and finally by
Mr. Murray, and he states his final judgment as
follows : —
With the theory of abrasion and solution incompetent, all the
hypotheses of objectors to Darwin's theory are alike weak ; for
all have made these processes their chief reliance, whether ap-
pealing to a calcareous, or a volcanic, or a mountain-peak base-
ment for the structure. The subsidence which the Darwinian
theory requires has not been opposed by the mention of any fact
at variance with it, nor by setting aside Darwin's arguments in
its favour ; and it has found new support in the facts from the
" Challenger's" soundings off Tahiti, that had been put in array
against it, and strong corroboration in the% facts from the West
Indies.
Darwin's theory, therefore, remains as the theory that accounts
for the origin of reefs and islands.1
Be it understood that I express no opinion on
the controverted points. I doubt if there are ten
living men who, having a practical knowledge of
what a coral-reef is, have endeavoured to master
the very difficult biological and geological prob-
lems involved in their study. I happen to have
1 American Journal of Science, 1885, p. 190.
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 147
spent the best part of three years among coral-
reefs and to have made that attempt ; and, when
Mr. Murray's work appeared, I said to myself that
until I had two or three months to give to the
renewed study of the subject in all its bearings, I
must be content to remain in a condition of sus-
pended judgment. In the meanwhile, the man
who would be voted by common acclamation as the
most competent person now living to act as umpire,
has delivered the verdict I have quoted ; and, to
go no further, has fully justified the hesitation I
and others may have felfc about expressing an
opinion. Under these circumstances, it seems to
me to require a good deal of courage to say " no
serious reply has ever been attempted " ; and to
chicle the men of science, in lofty tones, for their
" reluctance to admit an error" which is not
admitted ; and for their " slow and sulky acqui-
escence" in a conclusion which they have the
gravest warranty for suspecting.
Second : —
Darwin himself had lived to hear of the new solution, and,
with that splendid candour which was eminent in him, his mind,
though now grown old in his own early convictions, was at least
ready to entertain it, and to confess that serious doubts had been
awakened as to the truth of his famous theory (p. 305).
I wish that Darwin's splendid candour could
be conveyed by some description of spiritual
" microbe " to those who write about him. I am
not aware that Mr. Darwin ever entertained
148 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY I?
" serious doubts as to the truth of his famous
theory"; and there is tolerably good evidence to
the contrary. The second edition of his work,
published in 1876, proves that he entertained no
such doubts then; a letter to Professor Semper,
whose objections, in some respects, forestalled
those of Mr. Murray, dated October 2, 1879, ex-
p esses his continued adherence to the opinion
"that the atolls and barrier reefs in the middle
of the Pacific and Indian Oceans indicate sub-
sidence"; and the letter of my friend Professor
Judd, printed at the end of this article (which
I had perhaps better say Professor Judd had
not seen) will prove that this opinion remained
unaltered to the end of his life.
Third:—
. . . Darwin's theory is a dream. It is not only unsound,
but it is in many respects the reverse of truth. With all his con-
scientiousness, with all his caution, with all his powers of ob-
servation, Darwin in this matter fell into errors as profound as
the abysses of the Pacific (p. 301).
Really ? It seems to me that, under the circum-
stances, it is pretty clear that these lines exhibit a
lack of the qualities justly ascribed to Mr. Darwin,
which plunges their author into a much deeper
abyss, and one from which there is no hope of
emergence.
Fourth : —
All the acclamations with which it was received were as the
shouts of an ignorant mob (p. 301).
IV AN EPISCOPAL TKILOGY 149
Bui surely it should be added that the Coryphaeus
of this ignorant mob, the fugleman of the shouts,
was one of the most accomplished naturalists and
geologists now living — the American Dana — who,
after years of independent study extending over
numerous reefs in the Pacific, gave his hearty
assent to Darwin's views, and after all that had
been said, deliberately reaffirmed that assent in
the year 1885.
Fifth :—
The overthrow of Darwin's speculation is only beginning to
be known. It has been whispered for some time. The cherished
dogma has been dropping very slowly out of sight (p. 301).
Darwin's speculation may be right or wrong, but I
submit that that which has not happened cannot
even begin to be known, except by those who have
miraculous gifts to which we poor scientific people
do not aspire. The overthrow of Darwin's views
may have been whispered by those who hoped for
it; and they were perhaps wise in not raising
their voices above a whisper. Incorrect state-
ments, if made too loudly, are apt to bring about
unpleasant consequences.
Sixth :—
Mr. Murray's views, published in 1880, are
said to have met with " slow and sulky ac-
quiescence " (p. 305). I have proved that they
cannot be said to have met with general acqui-
escence of any sort, whether quick and cheerful,
or slow and sulky ; and if this assertion is meant
150 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
to convey the impression that Mr. Murray's views
have been ignored, that there has been a conspiracy
of silence against them, it is utterly contrary to
notorious fact.
Professor Geikie's well-known " Textbook of
Geology " was published in 1882, and at pages 457-
459 of that work there is a careful exposition of
Mr. Murray's views. Moreover Professor Geikie
has specially advocated them on other occasions,1
notably in a long article on " The Origin of Coral -
Reefs," published in two numbers of " Nature " for
1883, and in a Presidential Address delivered in the
same year. If, in so short a time after the publi-
cation of his views, Mr. Murray could boast of a
convert, so distinguished and influential as the
Director of the Geological Survey, it seems to me
that this wonderful conspiration de silence (which
has about as much real existence as the Duke of
Argyll's other bogie, " The Reign of Terror ") must
have ipso facto collapsed. I wish that, when I was
a young man, my endeavours to upset some pre-
valent errors had met with as speedy and effectual
backing.
Seventh : —
. . . Mr. John Murray was strongly advised against the pub-
lication of his views in derogation of Darwin's long accepted
1 Professor Geikie, however, though a strong, is a fair and
candid advocate. He says of Darwin's theory, "That it may
be possibly true, in some instances, may be readily granted."
For Professor Geikie, then, it is not yet overthrown— still less a
dream.
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 151
theory of the coral islands, and was actually induced to delay it
for two years. Yet the late Sir Wyville Thomson, who was at
the head of the naturalists of the " Challenger" expedition, was
himself convinced by Mr. Murray's reasoning (p. 307).
Clearly, then, it could not be Mr. Murray's official
chief who gave him this advice. Who was it ? And
what was the exact nature of the advice given ?
Until we have some precise information on this
head, I shall take leave to doubt whether this
statement is more accurate tlian those which I
have previously cited.
Whether such advice was wise or foolish, just or
immoral, depends entirely on the motive of the
person who gave it. If he meant to suggest to
Mr. Murray that it might be wise for a young and
comparatively unknown man to walk warily, when
he proposed to attack a generalisation based on
many years' labour of one undoubtedly com-
petent person, and fortified by the independent
results of the many years' labour of another un-
doubtedly competent person ; and even, if neces-
sary, to take two whole years in fortifying his
position, I think that such advice would have been
sagacious and kind. I suppose that there are few
working men of science who have not kept their
ideas to themselves, while gathering and sifting
evidence, for a much longer period than two
years.
If, on the other hand, Mr. Murray was advised
to delay the publication of his criticisms, simply to
152 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
save Mr. Darwin's credit and to preserve some
reputation for infallibility, which no one ever
heard of, then I have no hesitation in declaring
that his adviser was profoundly dishonest, as well
as extremely foolish ; arid that, if he is a man of
science, he has disgraced his calling.
But, after all, this supposed scientific Achitophel
has not yet made good the primary fact of his ex-
istence. Until the 'needful proof is forthcoming, I
think I am justified in suspending my judgment as
to whether he is much more than an anti-scientific
myth. I leave it to the Duke of Argyll to judge
of the extent of the obligation under which, for
his own sake, he may lie to produce the evidence
on which his aspersions of the honour of scientific
men are based. I cannot pretend that we are
seriously disturbed by charges which every one
who is acquainted with the truth of the matter
knows to be ridiculous ; but mud has a habit of
staining if it lies too long, and it is as well to have
it brushed off as soon as may be.
So much for the " Great Lesson." It is followed
by a " Little Lesson," apparently directed against
my infallibility — a doctrine about which I should
be inclined to paraphrase Wilkes's remark to
George the Third, when he declared that he, at
any rate, was not a Wilkite. But I really should
be glad to think that there are people who need
the warning, because then it will be obvious that
this raking up of an old story cannot have beeD
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 153
suggested by a mere fanatical desire to damage
men of science. I can but rejoice, then, that
these misguided enthusiasts, whose faith in me
has so far exceeded the bounds of reason, should
be set right. But that " want of finish " in the
matter of accuracy which so terribly mars the
effect of the " Great Lesson," is no less conspicuous
in the case of the " Little Lesson," and, instead of
setting my too fervent disciples right, it will set
them wrong.
The Duke of Argyll, in telling the story of
Baihybius, says that my mind was " caught by this
new and grand generalisation of the physical basis
of life." I never have been guilty of a reclamation
about anything to my credit, and I do not mean
to be ; but if there is any blame going, I do not
choose to be relegated to a subordinate place
when I have a claim to the first. The responsi-
bility for the first description and the naming of
Baihybins is mine arid mine only. The paper on
" Some Organisms living at great Depths in the
Atlantic Ocean," in which I drew attention to this
substance, is to be found by the curious in the
eighth volume of the " Quarterly Journal of Micro-
scopical Science," and was published in the year
1868. Whatever errors are contained in that
paper are my own peculiar property ; but neither
at the meeting of the British Association in 1868,
nor anywhere else, have I gone beyond what is
there stated ; except in so far that, at a long-sub-
154 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
sequent meeting of the Association, being impor-
tuned about the subject, I ventured to express
somewhat emphatically, the wish that the thing
was at the bottom of the sea.
What is meant by my being caught by a
generalisation about the physical basis of life I
do not know ; still less can I understand the as-
sertion that Bathybius was accepted because of its
supposed harmony with Darwin's speculations.
That which interested me in the matter was the
apparent analogy of Bathybius with other well-
known forms of lower life, such as the plasmodia
of the Myxomycetes and the Rhizopods. Specu-
lative hopes or fears had nothing to do with the
matter ; and if Bathybius were brought up alive
from the bottom of the Atlantic to-morrow, the
fact would not have the slightest bearing, that I
can discern, upon Mr. Darwin's speculations, or
upon any of the disputed problems of biology. It
would merel}7 be one elementary organism the
more added to the thousands already known.
Up to this moment I was not aware of the
universal favour with which Bathybius was re-
ceived.1 Those simulators of an " ignorant mob "
who, according to the Duke of Argyll, welcomed
1 I find, moreover, that I specially warned my readers against
hasty judgment. After stating the facts of observation, I add,
" 1 have, hitherto, said nothing about their meaning, as, in an
inquiry so difficult and fraught with interest as this, it seems to
me to be in the highest degree important to keep the quest Join
of fact and the questions of interpretation well apart" (p. 210).
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 155
Darwin's theory of coral-reefs, made no demon-
stration in my favour, unless his Grace includes
Sir Wyville Thomson, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Bessels,
and Professor Haeckel under that head. On the
contrary, a sagacious friend of mine, than whom
there was no more competent judge, the late Mr.
George Busk, was not to be converted ; while, long
before the u Challenger " work, Ehrenberg wrote
to me very sceptically ; and I fully expected that
that eminent man would favour me with pretty
sharp criticism. Unfortunately, he died shortly
afterwards, and nothing from him, that I know of,
appeared. When Sir Wyville Thomson wrote to
me a brief account of the results obtained on board
the" Challenger" I sent this statement to "Nature,"
in which journal it appeared the following week,
without any further note or comment than was
needful to explain the circumstances. In thus
allowing judgment to go by default, I am afraid I
showed a reckless and ungracious disregard for the
feelings of the believers in my infallibility. No
doubt I ought to have hedged and fenced and
attenuated the effect of Sir Wyville Thomson's
brief note in every possible way. Or perhaps I
ought to have suppressed the note altogether, on
the ground that it was a mere ex partc statement.
My excuse is that, notwithstanding a large
and abiding faith in human folly, I did not know
then, any more than I know now, that there
was anybody foolish enough to be unaware that
156 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
the only people scientific or other, who never
make mistakes are those who do nothing ; or that
anybody, for whose opinion I cared, would not rather
see me commit ten blunders than try to hide one.
Pending the production of further evidence, I
hold that the existence of people who believe in
the infallibility of men of science is as purely
mythical as that of the evil counsellor who advised
the withholding of the truth lest it should conflict
with that belief.
I venture to think, then, that the Duke of
Argyll might have spared his " Little Lesson " as
well as his " Great Lesson " with advantage. The
paternal authority who whips the child for sins
he has not committed does not strengthen his
moral influence — rather excites contempt and re-
pugnance. And if, as would seem from this and
former monitory allocutions which have been
addressed to us, the Duke aspires to the position
of censor, or spiritual director, in relation to the
men who are doing the work of physical science,
he really must get up his facts better. There
will be an end to all chance of our kissing the rod
if his Grace goes wrong a third time. He must
•not say again that " no serious reply has been
attempted " to a view which was discussed and
repudiated, two years before, by one of the highest
extant authorities on the subject ; he must not say
that Darwin accepted that which it can be proved
he did not accept ; he must not say that a doctrine
IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 157
has dropped into the abyss when it is quite
obviously alive and kicking at the surface ; he
must not assimilate a man like Professor Dana to
the components of an " ignorant mob " ; he must
not say that things are beginning to be known
which are not known at all ; he must not say that
" slow and sulky acquiescence " has been given
to that which cannot yet boast of general acquies-
cence of any kind ; he must not suggest that a
view which has been publicly advocated by the
Director of the Geological Survey and no less
publicly discussed by many other authoritative
writers has been intentionally and systematically
ignored ; he must not ascribe ill motives for a
course of action which is the only proper one ;
and finally, if any one but myself were interested,
I should say that he had better not waste his time
in raking up the errors of those whose lives have
been occupied, not in talking about science, but
in toiling, sometimes with success and sometimes
with failure, to get some real work done.
The most considerable difference I note among
men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but
in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable
lapses. The Duke of Argyll has now a splendid
opportunity for proving to the world in which of
these categories it is hereafter to rank him.
DEAR PROFESSOR HUXLEY, — A short time
before Mr. Darwin's death, I had a conversation
158 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV
with him concerning the observations which had
been made by Mr. Murray upon coral-reefs, and
the speculations which had been founded upon
those observations. I found that Mr. Darwin had
very carefully considered the whole subject, and
that while, on the one hand, he did not regard the
actual facts recorded by Mr. Murray as absolutely
inconsistent with his own theory of subsidence,
on the other hand, he did not believe that they
necessitated or supported the hypothesis advanced
by Mr. Murray. Mr. Darwin's attitude, as I under-
stood it, towards Mr. Murray's objections to the
theory of subsidence was exactly similar to that
maintained by him with respect to Professor
Semper's criticism, which was of a very similar
character; and his position with regard to the
whole question was almost identical with that
subsequently so clearly defined by Professor Dana
in his well-known articles published in the
" American Journal of Science" for 1885.
It is difficult to imagine how any one, ac-
quainted with the scientific literature of the last
seven years, could possibly suggest that Mr.
Murray's memoir published in 1880 had failed to
secure a due amount of attention. Mr. Murray,
by his position in the " Challenger " office, occupied
an exceptionally favourable position for making
his views widely known; and he had, moreover,
the singular good fortune to secure from the first
the advocacy of so able and brilliant a writer as
17 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 159
Professor Archibald Geikie, who in a special dis-
course and in several treatises on geology and
physical geology very strongly supported the new
theory. It would be an endless task to attempt
to give references to the various scientific journals
which have discussed the subject, but I may add
that every treatise on geology which has been
published, since Mr. Murray's views were made
known, has dealt with his observations at con-
siderable length. This is true of Professor A. H.
Green's "Physical Geology," published in 1882;
of Professor Prestwich's " Geology, Chemical and
Physical " ; and of Professor James Geikie's " Out-
lines of Geology," published in 1886. Similar
prominence is given to the subject in De Lap-
parent's " Traite de Geologie," published in 1885,
and in Credner's " Elemente der Geologie," which
has appeared during the present year. If this be
a " conspiracy of silence," where, alas ! can the
geological speculator seek for fame ? — Yours very
truly, JOHN W. JUDD.
October 10, 1887.
126
V
THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE
MIRACULOUS
[1889]
CHARLES, or, more properly, Karl, King of the
Franks, consecrated Roman Emperor in St.
Peter's on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, and known
to posterity as the Great (chiefly by his agglutina-
tive Gallicised denomination of Charlemagne),
was a man great in all ways, physically and
mentally. Within a couple of centuries after his
death Charlemagne became the centre of innum-
erable legends ; and the myth-making process
does not seem to have been sensibly interfered
with by the existence of sober and truthful
histories of the Emperor and of the times which
immediately preceded and followed his reign, by a
contemporary writer who occupied a high and
confidential position in his court, and in that of
his successor. This was one Eginhard, or Einhard,
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 161
who appears to have been born about A.D. 770,
and spent his youth at the court, being educated
along with Charles's sons. There is excellent
contemporary testimony not only to Eginhard's
existence, but to his abilities, and to the place
which he occupied in the circle of the intimate
friends of the great ruler whose life he subse-
quently wrote. In fact, there is as good evidence
of Eginhard's existence, of his official position, and
of his being the author of the chief works attribut-
ed to him, as can reasonably be expected in the
case of a man who lived more than a thousand
years ago, and was neither a great king nor a
great warrior. The works are — 1. " The Life of
the Emperor Karl." 2. " The Annals of the
Franks." 3. " Letters." 4. " The History of the
Translation of the Blessed Martyrs of Christ, SS.
Marcellinus and Petrus."
It is to the last, as one of the most singular
and interesting records of the period during which
the Roman world passed into that of the Middle
Ages, that I wish to direct attention.1 It was
written in the ninth century, somewhere, appar-
ently, about the year 830, when Eginhard, ailing
in health and weary of political life, had with-
drawn to the monastery of Seligenstadt, of which
he was the founder. A manuscript copy of the
work, made in the tenth century, and once the
1 My citations are made from Teulet's Einhardi omnia qua
extant opera, Paris, 1840-1843, which contains a biography of the
author, a history of the text, with translations into French, and
many valuable annotations.
162 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v
property of the monastery of St. Bavon on the
Scheldt, of which Eginhard was Abbot, is still
extant, and- there is no reason to believe that, in
this copy, the original has been in any way inter-
polated or otherwise tampered with. The main
features of the strange story contained in the
" Historia Translationis " are set forth in the
following pages, in which, in regard to all matters
of importance, I shall adhere as closely as possible
to Eginhard's own words.
While I was still at Court, busied with secular affairs, I often
thought of the leisure which I hoped one day to enjoy in a
solitary place, far away from the crowd, with which the liber -
nlity of Prince Louis, whom I then served, had provided me.
This place is situated in that part of Germany which lies between
the Neckar and the Maine,1 and is nowadays called the Oden-
wald by those who live in and about it. And h'era having built,
according to my capacity and resources, not only houses and
permanent dwellings, but also a basilica fitted for the perform-
ance of divine service and of no mean style of construction, I
began to think to what saint or martyr I could best dedicate it.
A good deal of time had passed while my thoughts fluctuated
about this matter, when it happened that a certain deacon of
the Roman Church, named Deusdona, arrived at the Court for
the purpose of seeking the favour of the King in some affairs in
which he was interested. He remained some time ; and then,
having transacted his business, he was about to return to Rome,
when one day, moved by courtesy to a stranger, we invited
him to a modest refection ; and while talking of many things
at table, mention was made of the translation of the body of-
the blessed Sebastian,- and of the neglected tombs of the
1 At present included in the Duchies of Hesse- Darmstadt and
Baden.
2 This took place in the year 826 A.D. Tbe relics were
brought from Rome and deposited in the Church of St. Medardua
at Soissons.
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 163
martyrs, of which there is such a prodigious number at Rome ;
and the conversation having turned towards the dedication of
our new basilica, I began to inquire how it might be possible for
me to obtain some of the true relics of the saints which rest at
Rome. He at first hesitated, and declared that he did not know
how that could be done. Hut observing that I was both anxious
and curious about the subject, he promised to give me an answer
some other day.
When I returned to the question some time afterwards, he im-
mediately drew from his bosom a paper, which he begged me to
read when I was alone, and to tell him what I was disposed to
think of that which was therein stated. I took the paper and,
as he desired, read it alone and in secret. (Cap. i. 2, 3.)
I shall have occasion to return to Deacon
Deusdona's conditions, and to what happened
after Eginhard's acceptance of them. Suffice it,
for the present, to say that Eginhard's notary,
Ratleicus (Ratleig), was despatched to Rome and
succeeded in securing two bodies, supposed to be
those of the holy martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus ;
and when he had got as far on his homeward
journey as the Burgundian town of Solothurn,
or Soleure,1 notary Ratleig despatched to his
master, at St. Bavon, a letter announcing the
success of his mission.
As soon as by reading it I was assured of the arrival of the
saints, I despatched a confidential messenger to Maestri cht to
gather together priests, other clerics, and also laymen, to go out
to meet the coming saints as speedily as possible. And he and
his companions, having lost no time, after a few days met those
who had charge of the saints at Solothurn. Joined with them,
1 Now included in Western Switzerland.
164 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V
and with a vast crowd of people who gathered from all parts,
singing hymns, and amidst great and universal rejoicings, they
travelled quickly to the city of Argentoratum, which is now
called Strasburg. Thence embarking on the Rhine, they came
to the place called Portus, l and landing on the east bank of the
river, at the fifth station thence they arrived at Michilinstadt,2
accompanied by an immense multitude, praising God. This
place is in that forest of Germany which in modern times is called
the Odenwald, and about six leagues from the Maine. And
here, having found a basilica recently built by me, but not yet
consecrated, they carried the sacred remains into it and deposited
them therein, as if it were to be their final resting-place. As
Boon as all this was reported to me I travelled thither as quickly
as I could. (Cap. ii. 14.)
Three days after Eginhard's arrival began the
series of wonderful events which he narrates, and
for which we have his personal guarantee. The
first thing that he notices is the dream of a
servant of Ratleig, the notary, who, being set to
watch the holy relics in the church after vespers,
went to sleep and, during his slumbers, had a
vision of two pigeons, one white and one gray and
white, which came and sat upon the bier over the
relics ; while, at the same time, a voice ordered
the man to tell his master that the holy martyrs
had chosen another resting-place and desired to
be transported thither without delay.
Unfortunately, the saints seem to have for-
gotten to mention where they wished to go ; and,
with the most anxious desire to gratify their
1 Probably, according to Teulet, the present Sandhofer-fahrt,
a little below the embouchure of the Neckar.
a The present Michilstadt, thirty miles N.E. of Heidelberg.
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 165
smallest wishes, Eginhard was naturally greatly
perplexed what to do. While in this state of
mind, he was one day contemplating his " great
and wonderful treasure, more precious than all
the gold in the world," when it struck him that
the chest in which the relics were contained was
quite unworthy of its contents ; and, after vespers,
he gave orders to one of the sacristans to take the
measure of the chest in order that a more fitting
shrine might be constructed. The man, having
lighted a wax candle and raised the pall which
covered the relics, in order to carry out his
master's orders, was astonished and terrified to
observe that the chest was covered with a blood-
like exudation (loculum mirum in modum humore
sanguineo undique distillantem), and at once sent
a message to Eginhard.
Then I and those priests who accompanied me beheld this
stupendous miracle, worthy of all admiration. For just as when
it is going to rain, pillars and slabs and marble images exude
moisture, and, as it were, sweat, so the chest which contained
the most sacred relics was found moist with the blood exuding
on all sides. (Cap. ii. 16.)
Three days' fast was ordained in order that the
meaning of the portent might be ascertained. All
that happened, however, was that, at the end of
that time, the " blood," which had been exuding in
drops all the while, dried up. Eginhard is careful
to say that the liquid " had a saline taste, some-
thing like that of tears, and was thin as water
166 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS ?
though of the colour of true blood," and he clearly
thinks this satisfactory evidence that it was
blood.
The same night, another servant had a vision, in
which still more imperative orders for the removal
of the relics were given ; and, from that time forth,
" not a single night passed without one, two, or
even three of our companions receiving revelations
in dreams that the bodies of the saints were to be
transferred from that place to another." At last a
priest, Hi Id f rid, saw, in a dream, a venerable
white-haired man in a priest's vestments, who
bitterly reproached Eginhard for not obeying the
repeated orders of the saints ; and, upon this, the
journey was commenced. Why Eginhard delayed
obedience to these repeated visions so long does
not appear. He does not say so, in so many words,
but the general tenor of the narrative leads one to
suppose that Mulinheim (afterwards Seligenstadt)
is the " solitary place " in which he had built the
church which awaited dedication. In that case,
all the people about him would know that he
desired that the* saints should go there. If a
glimmering of secular sense led him to be a little
suspicious about the real cause of the unanimity of
the visionary beings who manifested themselves to
his entourage, in favour of moving on, he does- not
say so.
At the end of the first day's journey, the precious
relics were deposited in the church of St. Martin,
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS
in the village of Ostheim. Hither, a paralytic nun
(banctimonialis qucedam paralytica) of the name of
Ruodlang was brought, in a car, by her friends and
relatives from a monastery a league off. She spent
the night watching and praying by the bier of the
saints ; "and health returning to all her members,
on the morrow she went back to her place whence
she came, on her feet, nobody supporting her, or
in any way giving her assistance." (Cap. ii. 19.)
On the second day, the relics were carried to
Upper Mulinheim ; and, finally, in accordance with
the orders of the martyrs, deposited in the church
of that place, which was therefore renamed
Seligenstadt. Here, Daniel, a beggar boy of fifteen,
and so bent that " he could not look at the sky
without lying on his back, "collapsed and fell down
during the celebration of the Mass. " Thus he lay
a long time, as if asleep, and all his limbs straight-
ening and his flesh strengthening (receptafirmitate
nervorum), he arose before our eyes, quite well/'
(Cap. ii. 20.)
Some time afterwards an old man entered the
church on his hands and knees, being unable to
use his limbs properly : —
He, in presence of all of us, by the power of God and the
merits of the blessed martyrs, in the same hour in which he
entered was so perfectly cured that he walked without so much
as a stick. And he said that, though he had been deaf for five
years, his deafness had ceased along with the palsy. (Cap. iii.
33.)
168 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V
Eginhard was now obliged to return to the
Court at Aix-la-Chapelle, where his duties kept
him through the winter ; and he is careful to point
out that the later miracles which he proceeds to
speak of are known to him only at second hand.
But, as he naturally observes, having seen such
wonderful events with his own eyes, why should
he doubt similar narrations when they are re-
ceived from trustworthy sources ?
Wonderful stories these are indeed, but as they
are, for the most part, of the same general character
as those already recounted, they may be passed
over. There is, however, an account of a possessed
maiden which is worth attention. This is set forth
in a memoir, the principal contents of which are
the speeches of a demon who declared himself to
possess the singular appellation of " Wiggo," arid
revealed himself in the presence of many witnesses,
before the altar, close to the relics of the blessed
martyrs. It is noteworthy that the revelations
appear to have been made in the shape of replies
to the questions of the exorcising priest ; and there
is no means of judging how far the answers are,
really, only the questions to which the patient re-
plied yes or no.
The possessed girl, about sixteen years of age,
was brought by her parents to the basilica of the
martyrs.
When she approached the tomb containing the sacred bodies,
the priest, according to custom, read the formula of exorcism
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 169
over her head. When he began to ask how and when the
demon had entered her, she answered, not in the tongue of
the barbarians, which alone the girl knew, but in the Roman
tongue. And when the priest was astonished and asked how
she came to know Latin, when her parents, who stood by, were
wholly ignorant of it, "Thou hast never seen my parents," was
the reply. To this the priest, " Whence art thou, then, if these
are not thy parents ? " And the demon, by the mouth of the
girl, " I am a follower and disciple of Satan, and for a long time
I was gatekeeper (janitor) in hell ; but, for some years, along
with eleven companions, I have ravaged the kingdom of the
Franks." (Cap. v. 49. >
He then goes on to tell how they blasted the
crops and scattered pestilence among beasts and
men, because of the prevalent wickedness of the
people.1
The enumeration of all these iniquities, in
oratorical style, takes up a whole octavo page ; and
at the end it is stated, "All these things the
demon spoke in Latin by the mouth of the girl."
And when the priest imperatively ordered him to come out,
" I shall go," said he, "not in obedience to you, but on account
of the power of the saints, who do not allow me to remain any
longer." And, having said this, he threw the girl down on the
floor and there compelled her to lie prostrate for a time, as
though she slumbered. After a little while, however, he going
away, the girl, by the power of Christ and the merits of the
blessed mart}*rs, as it were awaking from sleep, rose up quite
well, to the astonishment of all present ; nor after the demon
had gone out was she able to speak Latin : so that it was plain
enough that it was not she who had spoken in that tongue, but
the demon by her mouth. (Cap. v. 51.)
1 In the Middle Ages one of the most favourite accusations
against witches was that they committed just these enormities.
170 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v
If the "Historia Translation is "contained nothing
more than has been laid before the reader, up to this
time, disbelief in the miracles of which it gives
so precise and full a record might well be regarded
as hyper-scepticism. It might fairly be said, Here
you have a man, whose high character, acute in-
telligence, and large instruction are certified by
eminent contemporaries ; a man who stood high in
the confidence of one of the greatest rulers of any
age, and whose other works prove him to be an
accurate and judicious narrator of ordinary events.
This man tails you, in language which bears the
stamp of sincerity, of things which happened within
his own knowledge, or within that of persons in
whose veracity he has entire confidence, while he
appeals to his sovereign and the court as witnesses
of others ; what possible ground can there be for
disbelieving him ?
Well, it is hard upon Eginhard to say so, but it
is exactly the honesty and sincerity of the man
which are his undoing as a witness to the mira-
culous. He himself makes it quite obvious that
when his profound piety comes on the stage, his
good sense and even his perception of right and
wrong, make their exit. Let us go back to the
point at which we left him, secretly perusing the
letter of Deacon Deusdona. As he tells us, its
contents were
that he [the deacon] had many relics of saints at home, and that
he would give them to me if I would furnish him with the
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 171
means of returning to Rome ; he had observed that I had two
mules, and if I would let him have one of them and would
despatch with him a confidential servant to take charge of the
relics, he would at once send them to me. This plausibly ex-
pressed proposition pleased me, and I made up my mind to test
the value of the somewhat ambiguous promise at once ; l so
giving him the mule and money for his journey I ordered my
notary Ratleig (who already desired to go to Rome to offer his
devotions there) to go with him. Therefore, having left Aix-
la-Chapelle (where the Emperor and his Court resided at the
time) they came to Soissons. Here they spoke with Hildoin,
abbot of the monastery of St. Medardus, because the said deacon
had assured him that he had the means of placing in his posses-
sion the body of the blessed Tiburtius the Martyr. Attracted
by which promises he (Hildoin) sent with them a certain priest,
Hunus by name, a sharp man (hominem callidum], whom he
ordered to receive and bring back the body of the martyr in
question. And so, resuming their journey, they proceeded to
Rome as fast as they could. (Cap. i. 3.)
Unfortunately, a servant of the notary, one
Reginbald, fell ill of a tertian fever, and impeded
the progress of the party. However, this piece of
adversity had its sweet uses ; for three days before
they reached Rome. Reginbald had a vision.
Somebody habited as a deacon appeared to him
and asked why his master was in such a hurry to
get to Rome ; and when Reginbald explained their
business, this visionary deacon, who seems to have
taken the measure of his brother in the flesh with
some accuracy, told him not by any means to
1 It is pretty clear that Eginhard had his doubts about the
deacon, whose pledges he qualifies as sponsiones incertce. But,
to be sure, he wrote after events which fully justified scep-
ticism.
172 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V
expect that Deusdona would fulfil his promises.
Moreover, taking the servant by the hand, he led
him to the top of a high mountain and, showing
him Rome (where the man had never been),
pointed out a church, adding " Tell Ratleig the
thing he wants is hidden there ; let him get it as
quickly as he can and go back to his master."
By way of a sign that the order was authori-
tative, the servant was promised that, from that
time forth, his fever should disappear. And as
the fever did vanish to return no more, the faith
of Eginhard's people in Deacon Deusdona natur-
ally vanished with it (et fidem diaconi promissis
non haberenf). Nevertheless, they put up at the
deacon's house near St. Peter ad Vincula. But,
time went on and no relics made their appearance,
while the notary and the priest were put off with
all sorts of excuses — the brother to whom the
relics had been confided was gone to Beneventum
and not expected back for some time, and so on
— until Ratleig and Hunus began to despair, and
were minded to return, infedo negotio.
But my notary, calling to mind his servant's dream, proposed
to his companion that they should go to the cemetery which
their host had talked about without him. So, having found and
hired a guide, they went in the first place to the basilica of the
blessed Tiburtius in the Via Labicana, about three thousand
paces from the town, and cautiously and carefully inspected the
tomb of that martyr, in order to discover whether it could be
opened without any one being the wiser. Then they descended
into the adjoining crypt, in which the bodies of the blessed
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 173
martyrs of Christ, Marcellinus and Petrus, were buried ; and,
having made out the nature of their tomb, they went away
thinking their host would not know what they had been about.
But things fell out differently from what they had imagined.
(Cap. L 7.)
In fact, Deacon Deusdona, who doubtless kept
an eye on his guests, knew all about their
manoeuvres and made haste to offer his services, in
order that, " with the help of God " (si Dens votis
eorum favere dignaretur) , they should all work
together. The deacon was evidently alarmed lest
they should succeed without his help.
So, by way of preparation for the contem-
plated vol avec effraction they fasted three days;
and then, at night, without being seen, they be-
took themselves to the basilica of St. Tiburtius,
and tried to break open the altar erected over
his remains. But the marble proving too solid,
they descended to the crypt, and, " having evoked
our Lord Jesus Christ and adored the holy
martyrs," they proceeded to prise off the stone
which covered the tomb, and thereby exposed the
body of the most sacred martyr, Marcellinus,
" whose head rested on a marble tablet on which
his name was inscribed." The body was taken
up with the greatest veneration, wrapped in a rich
covering, and given over to the keeping of the
deacon and his brother, Lunison, while the stone
was replaced with such care that no sign of the
theft remained.
174 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v
As sacrilegious proceedings of this kind were
punishable with death by the Roman law, it
seems not unnatural that Deacon Deusdona should
have become uneasy, and have urged R-atleig to be
satisfied with what he had got and be off with his
spoils. But the notary having thus cleverly
captured the blessed Marcellirms, thought it a
pity he should be parted from the blessed Petrus,
side by side with whom he had rested, for five
hundred years and more, in the same sepulchre (as
Eginhard pathetically observes) ; and the pious
man could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, until he
had compassed his desire to re-unite the saintly
colleagues. This time, apparently in consequence
of Deusdona' s opposition to any further resurrec-
tionist doings, he took counsel with a Greek monk,
one Basil, and, accompanied by Hunus, but saying
nothing to Deusdona, they committed another
sacrilegious burglary, securing this time, not only
the body of the blessed Petrus, but a quantity of
dust, which they agreed the priest should take,
and tell his employer that it was the remains of the
blessed Tiburtius. How Deusdona was " squared/'
and what he got for his not very valuable com-
plicity in these transactions, does not appear. But
at last the relics were sent off in charge of Lunison,
the brother of Deusdona, and the priest Hunus, as
far as Pavia, while Ratleig stopped behind for a
week to see if the robbery was discovered, and,
presumably, to act as a blind, if any hue and cry
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 175
was raised. But, as everything remained quiet, the
notary betook himself to Pavia, where he found
Lunison and Hunus awaiting his arrival. The
notary 's opinion of the character of his worthy
colleagues, however, may be gathered from the
fact that, having persuaded them to set out in
advance along a road which he told them he was
about to take, he immediately adopted another
route, and, travelling by way of St. Maurice and
the Lake of Geneva, eventually reached Soleure.
Eginhard tells all this story with the most naive
air of unconsciousness that there is anything
remarkable about an abbot, and a high officer of
state to boot, being an accessory, both before and
after the fact, to a most gross and scandalous act
of sacrilegious and burglarious robbery. And an
amusing sequel to the story proves that, where
relics were concerned, his friend Hildoin, another
high ecclesiastical dignitary, was even less scrupu-
lous than himself.
On going to the palace early one morning, after
the saints were safely bestowed at Seligenstadt, he
found Hildoin waiting for an audience in the
Emperor's antechamber, and began to talk to him
about the miracle of the bloody exudation. In the
course of conversation, Eginhard happened to
allude to the remarkable fineness of the garment
of the blessed Marcellinus. Whereupon Abbot
Hildoin observed (to Eginhard's stupefaction) that
his observation was quite correct. Much astonished
127
176 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v
at this remark from a person who was supposed
not to have seen the relics, Eginhard asked him
how he knew that ? Upon this, Hildoin saw that
he had better make a clean breast of it, and he
told the following story, which he had received
from his priestly agent, Hurms. While Hunus and
Lunison were at Pavia, waiting for Eginhard's
notary, Hunus (according to his own account) had
robbed the robbers. The relics were placed in a
church ; and a number of laymen and clerics, of
whom Hunus was one, undertook to keep watch
over them. One night, however, all the watchers,
save the wide-awake Hunus, went to sleep ; and
then, according to the story which this " sharp "
ecclesiastic foisted upon his patron,
it was borne in upon his mind that there must he some great
reason why all the people, except himself, had suddenly become
somnolent; and, determining to avail himself of the opportunity
thus offered (oblata occasione utendum), he rose and, having
lighted a candle, silently approached the chests. Then, having
burnt through the threads of the seals with the flame of the
candle, he quickly opened the chests, which had no locks ; J and,
taking out portions of each of the bodies which were thus ex-
posed, he closed the chests and connected the burnt ends of the
threads with the seals again, so that they appeared not to have
been touched ; and, no one having seen him, he returned to his
place. (Cap. iii. 23.)
Hildoin went on to tell Eginhard that Hunus at
first declared to him that these purloined relics
1 The words are scrinia sine clave, which seems to mean
"having no key." But the circumstances forbid the idea of
breaking open.
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 177
belonged to St. Tiburtius ; but afterwards con-
fessed, as a great secret, how he had come by
them, and he wound up his discourse thus :
They have a place of honour beside St. Medardus, where they
are worshipped with great veneration by all the people ; but
whether we may keep them or not is for your judgment. (Cap.
iii. 23.)
Poor Eginhard was thrown into a state of great
perturbation of mind by this revelation. An
acquaintance of his had recently told him of a
rumour that was spread about that Hunus had
contrived to abstract all the remains of SS.
Marcellinus and Petrus while Eginhard's agents
were in a drunken sleep ; and that, while the real
relics were in Abbot Hildoin's hands at St.
Medardus, the shrine at Seligenstadt contained
nothing but a little dust. Though greatly annoyed
by this " execrable rumour, spread everywhere by
the subtlety of the devil/' Eginhard had doubtless
comforted himself by his supposed knowledge of
its falsity, and he only now discovered how con-
siderable a foundation there was for the scandal.
There was nothing for it but to insist upon the
return of the stolen treasures. One would have
thought that the holy man, who had admitted
himself to be knowingly a receiver of stolen goods,
would have made instant restitution and begged
only for absolution. But Eginhard intimates that
he had very great difficulty in getting his brother
abbot to see that even restitution was necessary.
178 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS ?
Hildoin's proceedings were not of such a nature
as to lead any one to place implicit confidence in
anything he might say; still less had his agent,
priest Hunus, established much claim to confi-
dence; and it is not surprising that Eginhard
should have lost no time in summoning his notary
and Lunison to his presence, in order that he
might hear what they had to say about the
business. They, however, at once protested that
priest Hunus's story was a parcel of lies, and that
after the relics left Rome no one had any oppor-
tunity of meddling with them. Moreover, Lunison,
throwing himself at Eginhard 's feet, confessed
with many tears what actually took place. It will
be remembered that after the body of St. Mar-
cellinus was abstracted from its tomb, Ratleig
deposited it in the house of Deusdona, in charge
of the latter 's brother, Lunison. But Hunus,
being very much disappointed that he could not
get hold of the body of St. Tiburtius, and afraid
to go back to his abbot empty-handed, bribed
Lunison with four pieces of gold and five of silver
to give him access to the chest. This Lunison
did, and Hunus helped himself to as much as
would fill a gallon measure (vas sextarii mensuram)
of the sacred remains. Eginhard's indignation at
the " rapine " of this " nequissimus nebulo " is
exquisitely droll. It would appear that the
adage about the receiver being as bad as the thief
was not current in the ninth century.
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 179
Let us now briefly sum up the history of the
acquisition of the relics. Eginhard makes a con-
tract with Deusdona for the delivery of certain
relics which the latter says he possesses. Egin-
hard makes no inquiry how he came by them ;
otherwise, the transaction is innocent enough.
Deusdona turns out to be a swindler, and has
no relics. Thereupon Eginhard's agent, after due
fasting and prayer, breaks open the tombs and
helps himself.
Eginhard discovers by the self-betrayal of his
brother abbot, Hildoin, that portions of his relics
have been stolen and conveyed to the latter.
With much ado he succeeds in getting them back.
Hildoin's agent, Hunus, in delivering these
stolen goods to him, at first declared they were
the relics of St. Tiburtius, which Hildoin desired
him to obtain ; but afterwards invented a story of
their being the product of a theft, which the
providential drowsiness of his companions enabled
him to perpetrate, from the relics which Hildoin
well knew were the property of his friend.
Lunison, on the contrary, swears that all this
story is false, and that he himself was bribed by
Hunus to allow him to steal what he pleased from
the property confided to his own and his brother's
care by their guest Ratleig. And the honest
notary himself seems to have no hesitation about
lying and stealing to any extent, where the ac-
quisition of relics is the object in view.
180 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v
For a parallel to these transactions one must
read a police report of the doings of a " long firm "
or of a set of horse-coupers ; yet Eginhard seems
to be aware of nothing, but that he has been
rather badly used by his friend Hildoin, and the
" nequissimus nebulo " Hunus.
It is not easy for a modern Protestant, still less
for any one who has the least tincture of scientific
culture, whether physical or historical, to picture
to himself the state of mind of a man of the
ninth century, however cultivated, enlightened,
and sincere he may have been. His deepest con-
victions, his most cherished hopes, were bound up
with the belief in the miraculous. Life was a
constant battle between saints and demons for the
possession of the souls of men. The most super-
stitious among our modern countrymen turn to
supernatural agencies only when natural causes
seem insufficient ; to Eginhard and his friends the
supernatural was the rule ; and the sufficiency of
natural causes was allowed only when there was
nothing to suggest others.
Moreover, it must be recollected that the
possession of miracle-working relics was greatly
coveted, not only on high, but on very low
grounds. To a man like Eginhard, the mere
satisfaction of the religious sentiment was
obviously a powerful attraction. But, more than
this, the possession of such a treasure was an
immense practical advantage. If the saints were
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 181
duly flattered and worshipped, there was no
telling what benefits might result from their
interposition on your behalf. For physical evils,
access to the shrine was like the grant of the use
of a universal pill and ointment manufactory;
and pilgrimages thereto might suffice to cleanse
the performers from any amount of sin. A letter
to Lupus, subsequently Abbot of Ferrara, written
while Eginhard was smarting under the grief
caused by the loss of his much -loved wife Imma,
affords a striking insight into the current view of
the relation between the glorified saints and their
worshippers. The writer shows that he is any-
thing but satisfied with the way in which he has
been treated by the blessed martyrs whose re-
mains he has taken such pains to " convey " to
Seligenstadt, and to honour there as they would
never have been honoured in their Eoman ob-
scurity.
It is an aggravation of my grief and a reopening of my wound,
that our vows have been of no avail, and that the faith which
we placed in the merits and intervention of the martyrs has
been utterly disappointed.
We may admit, then, without impeachment of
Eginhard's sincerity, or of his honour under all
ordinary circumstances, that when piety, self-
interest, the glory of the Church in general, and
that of the church at Seligenstadt in particular,
all pulled one way, even the workaday principles
of morality were disregarded; and, a fortiori,
182 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V
anything like proper investigation of the reality
of alleged miracles was thrown to the winds.
And if this was the condition of mind of such a
man as Eginhard, what is it not legitimate to
suppose may have been that of Deacon Deusdona,
Lunison, Hunus, and Company, thieves and cheats
by their own confession, or of the probably
hysterical nun, or of the professional beggars, for
whose incapacity to walk and straighten them-
selves there is no guarantee but their own ? Who
is to make sure that the exorcist of the demon
Wiggo was not just such another priest as Hunus ;
and is it not at least possible, when Eginhard's
servants dreamed, night after night, in such a
curiously coincident fashion, that a careful inquirer
might have found they were very anxious to
please their master?
Quite apart from deliborate and conscious
fraud (which is a rarer thing than is often
supposed), people, whose mythopceic faculty is
once stirred, are capable of saying the thing that
is not, and of acting as they should not, to an
extent which is hardly imaginable by persons
who are not so easily affected by the contagion of
blind faith. There is no falsity so gross that
honest men and, still more, virtuous women,
anxious to promote a good cause, will not lend
themselves to it without any clear consciousness
of the moral bearings of what they are doing.
The cases of miraculously-effected cures of
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 183
which Eginhard is ocular witness appear to
belong to classes of disease in which malingering
is possible or hysteria presumable. Without
modern means of diagnosis, the names given to
them are quite worthless. One "miracle," how-\
ever, in which the patient, a woman, was cured by (
the mere sight of the church in which the relics \
of the blessed martyrs lay, is an unmistakable \
case of dislocation of the lower jaw; and it is ]
obvious that, as not unfrequently happens in such
accidents in weakly subjects, the jaws slipped
suddenly back into place, perhaps in consequence
of a jolt, as the woman rode towards the church. |
(Cap. v. 53.) l
There is also a good deal said about a very
questionable blind man — one Albricus (Alberich ?)
— who, having been cured, not of his blindness,
but of another disease under which he laboured,
took up his quarters at Seligenstadt, and came out
as a prophet, inspired by the Archangel Gabriel.
Eginhard intimates that his prophecies were ful-
filled ; but as he does not state exactly what they
were, or how they were accomplished, the state-
ment must be accepted with much caution. It is
obvious that he was not the man to hesitate to
" ease " a prophecy until it fitted, if the credit of
1 Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt of the " vana ac super-
stitiosa pnesumptio " of the poor woman's companions in trying
to alleviate her sufferings with ' ' herbs and frivolous incanta-
tions." Vain enough, no doubt, but the " mulierculae " might
have returned the epithet "superstitious" with interest.
184 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v
the shrine of his favourite saints could be increased
by such a procedure. There is no impeachment
of his honour in the supposition. The logic of the
matter is quite simple, if somewhat sophistical.
The holiness of the church of the martyrs guaran-
tees the reality of the appearance of the Archangel
Gabriel there ; and what the archangel says must
be true. Therefore, if anything seem to be wrong,
that must be the mistake of the transmitter ; and,
in justice to the archangel, it must be suppressed
or set right. This sort of " reconciliation " is not
unknown in quite modern times, and among people
who would be very much shocked to be compared
with a " benighted papist " .of the ninth century.
The readers of this essay are, I imagine, very
largely composed of people who would be shocked
to be regarded as anything but enlightened
Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of
them who have accompanied me thus far may be
disposed to say, " Well, this is all very amusing as
a story, but what is the practical interest of it ?
We are not likely to believe in the miracles worked
by the spolia of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, or by
those of any other saints in the Roman Calendar."
The practical interest is this : if you donotbelieve
in these miracles recounted by a witness whose
character and competency are firmly established,
whose sincerity cannot be doubted, and who
appeals to his sovereign and other contemporaries
as witnesses of the truth of what he says, in a
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 185
document of which a MS. copy exists, probably
dating within a century of the author's death,
why do you profess to believe in stories of a like
character, which are found in documents of the
dates and of the authorship of which nothing
is certainly determined, and no known copies of
which come within two or three centuries of the
events they record ? If it be true that the four
Gospels and the Acts were written by Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, all that we know of these
persons comes to nothing in comparison with our
knowledge of Eginhard ; and not only is there no '
proof that the traditional authors of these works
wrote them, but very strong reasons to the contrary
may be alleged. If, therefore, you refuse to believe
that " Wiggo " was cast out of the possessed girl
on Eginhard's authority,, with what justice can you
profess to believe that the legion of devils were
cast out of the man among the tombs of the
Gadarenes ? And if, on the other hand, you accept
Eginhard's evidence, why do you laugh at the
supposed efficacy of relics and the saint-worship of
the modern Romanists ? It cannot be pretended,
in the face of all evidence, that the Jews of the
year 30 A.D., or thereabouts, were less imbued
with the belief in the supernatural than were the
Franks of the year 800 A.D. The same influences
were at work in each case, and it is only reasonable
to suppose that the results were the same. If the
evidence of Eginhard is insufficient to lead reason-
186 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS T
able men to believe in the miracles he relates, a
fortiori the evidence afforded by the Gospels and
the Acts must be so.1
But it may be said that no serious critic denies
the genuineness of the four great Pauline Epistles
-.- — Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, and
Romans — and that in three out of these four Paul
lays claim to the power of working miracles.2
Must we suppose, therefore, that the Apostle to
the Gentiles has stated that which is false ? But
to how much does this so-called claim, amount ? It
.may mean much or little. Paul nowhere tells us
what he did in this direction ; and in his sore
need to justify his assumption of apostleship
against the sneers of his enemies, it is hardly likely
that, if he had any very striking cases to bring
forward, he would have neglected evidence so well
calculated to put them to shame. And, without
the slightest impeachment of Paul's veracity, we
must further remember that his strongly- marked
mental characteristics, displayed in unmistakable
fashion in these Epistles, are anything but those
which would justify us in regarding him as a
critical witness respecting matters of fact, or as a
1 Of course there is nothing new in this argument ; but it
does not grow weaker by age. And the case of Eginhard is ~far
more instructive than that of Augustine, because the- former
has so very frankly, though incidentally, revealed to us not
only his own mental and moral habits, but those of the people
about him.
2 See 1 Cor. xii. 10-28 ; 2 Cor. vi. 12 ; Rom. xv. 19.
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 187
trustworthy interpreter of their significance. When
a man testifies to a miracle, he not only states a
fact, but he adds an interpretation of the fact. We
may admit his evidence as to the former, and yet
think his opinion as to the latter worthless. If
Eginhard's cairn and objective narrative of the
historical events of his time is no guarantee for
the soundness of his judgment where the super-
natural is concerned, the heated rhetoric of the
Apostle of the Gentiles, his absolute confidence in
the " inner light/' and the extraordinary concep-
tions of the nature and requirements of logical
proof which he betrays, in page after page of his .
Epistles, afford still less security.
There is a comparatively modern man who shared
to the full Paul's trust in the " inner light," and
who, though widely different from the fiery evan-
gelist of Tarsus in various obvious particulars, yet,
if I am not mistaken, shares his deepest charac-
teristics. I speak of George Fox, who separated
himself from the current Protestantism of England,
in the seventeenth century, as Paul separated
himself from the Judaism of the first century, at
the bidding of the " inner light " ; who went
through persecutions as serious as those which
Paul enumerates; who was beaten, stoned, cast
out for dead, imprisoned nine times, sometimes for
long periods ; who was in perils on land and perils
at sea. George Fox was an even more widely-
travelled missionary ; while his success in founding
188 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V
congregations, and his energy in visiting them, not
merely in Great Britain and Ireland and the West
India Islands, but on the continent of Europe and
that of North America, were no less remarkable.
A few years after Fox began to preach, there were
reckoned to be a thousand Friends in prison in
the various gaols of England ; at his death, less
than fifty years after the foundation of the sect,
there were 70,000 Quakers in the United Kingdom.
The cheerfulness with which these people — women
as well as men — underwent martyrdom in this
country and in the New England States is one of
the most remarkable facts in the history of
religion.
No one who reads the voluminous autobiography
of " Honest George " can doubt the man's utter
truthfulness; and though, in his multitudinous
letters, he but rarely rises far above the incoherent
commonplaces of a street preacher, there can be
no question of his power as a speaker, nor any
doubt as to the dignity and attractiveness of his
personality, or of his possession of a large
amount of practical good sense and governing
faculty.
But that George Fox had full faith in his own
powers as a miracle-worker, the following passage
of his autobiography (to which others might be
added) demonstrates : —
Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I
had been kept a prisoner a pretty long time) I travelled aa
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 189
before, in the work of the Lord. And coming to Mansfield
Woodhouse, there was a distracted woman, under a doctor's
hand, with her hair let loose all about her ears ; and he was
about to let her blood, she being first bound, and many people
being about her, holding her by violence ; but he could get no
blood from her. And I desired them to unbind her and let her
ilone ; for they could not touch the spirit in her by which she
was tormented. So they did unbind her, and I was moved to
ipeak to her, and in the name of the Lord to bid her be quiet
ind still. And she was so. And the Lord's power settled her
oiind and she mended ; and afterwards received the truth and
continued in it to her death. And the Lord's name was
honoured ; to whom the glory of all His works belongs. Many
great and wonderful things were wrought by the heavenly power
in those days. For the Lord made bare His omnipotent arm and
manifested His power to the astonishment of many ; by the
healing virtue whereof many have been delivered from great
infirmities, and the devils were made subject through His name :
of which particular instances might be given beyond what this
unbelieving age is able to receive or bear. x
It needs no long study of Fox's writings, how-
ever, to arrive at the conviction that the distinc-
tion between subjective and objective verities had
not the same place in his mind as it has in that of
an ordinary mortal. When an ordinary person would
say " I thought so and so," or " I made up my
mind to do so and so," George Fox says, " It was
opened to me," or " at the command of God I
did so and so/' " Then at the command of God, on
the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being
just nineteen), I left my relations and brake off all
1 A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels,
Sufferings, and Christian Experiences, &e., of George Fox. Ed.
1694, pp. 27, 28.
190 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V
familiarity or friendship with young or old/1
"About the beginning of the year 1647 I was
moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox
hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he
brings before the reader with apocalyptic power in
the simple and strong English, alike untutored
and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his
contemporary, he was a master.
" And one morning, as I was sitting by the fire,
a great cloud came over me and a temptation beset
me ; and I sate still. And it was said, All things
come ly Nature. And the elements and stars came
over me ; so that I was in a manner quite clouded
with it. ... And as I sate still under it, and let it
alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice
arose in me which said, There is a living God who
made all things. And immediately the cloud and
the temptation vanished away, and life rose over
it all, and my heart was glad and I praised the
living God " (p. 13).
If George Fox could speak, as he proves in this
and some other passages he could write, his as-
tounding influence on the contemporaries of Milton
and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this modern
reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his
" Thus saith the Lord," " This is the work of the
Lord," steeped in supernaturalism and glorying in
blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the philo-
sopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for
evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably
V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 191
suggest the previous question : " How do you
know that the Lord saitli it ? " " How do you know
that the Lord doeth it ? " and who is compelled to
demand that rational ground for belief, without
which, to the man of science, assent is merely an
immoral pretence.
And it is this rational ground of belief which the
writers of the Gospels, no less than Paul, and Egin-
hard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that they
would regard the demand for it as a kind of blas-
phemy.
128
VI
POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES
[1891]
IN the course of a discussion which has been going
on during the last two years,1 it has been main-
tained by the defenders of ecclesiastical Christ-
ianity that the demonology of the books of the
New Testament is an essential and integral part
of the revelation of the nature of the spiritual
world promulgated by Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed,
if the historical accuracy of the Gospels and of
the Acts of the Apostles is to be taken for granted,
if the teachings of the Epistles are divinely in-
spired, and if the universal belief and practice of
the primitive Church 'are the models which all
later times must follow, there can be no doubt
that those who accept the demonology are in the
right. It is as plain as language can make it, that
the writers of the Gospels believed in the existence
1 1889-1891. See the next Essay (VII) and those which
follow it.
\ri POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 193
of Satan and the surbordinate ministers of evil as
strongly as they believed in that of God and the
angels, and that they had an unhesitating faith in
possession and in exorcism. No reader of the first
three Gospels can hesitate to admit that, in the
opinion of those persons among whom the tradi-
tions out of which they are compiled arose, Jesus
held, and constantly acted upon, the same theory
of the spiritual world. Nowhere do we find the
slightest hint that he doubted the theory, or
questioned the efficacy of the curative operations
based upon it.
Thus, when such a story as that about the
Gadarene swine is placed before us, the importance
of the decision, whether it is to be accepted or
rejected, cannot be overestimated. If the demon-
ological part of it is to be accepted, the authority
of Jesus is unmistakably pledged to the demono-
logical system current in JudaBa in the first
century. The belief in devils who possess men
and can be transferred from men to pigs, becomes
as much a part of Christian dogma as any article
of the creeds. If it is to be rejected, there are two
alternative conclusions. Supposing the Gospels to
be historically accurate, it follows that Jesus
shared in the errors, respecting the nature of the
spiritual world, prevalent in the age in which he
lived and among the people of his nation. If, on
the other hand, the Gospel traditions gives us only
a popular version of the sayings and doings of
194 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES v
•*>t
Jesus, falsely coloured and distorted by the super-
stitious imaginings of the minds through which it
had passed, what guarantee have we that a similar
unconscious falsification, in accordance with pre-
conceived ideas, may not have taken place in
respect of other reported sayings and doings ?
What is to prevent a conscientious inquirer from
finding himself at last in a purely agnostic position
with respect to the teachings of Jesus, and conse-
quently with respect to the fundamentals of
Christianity ?
In dealing with the question whether the
Gadarene story was to be believed or not, I con-
fined myself altogether to a discussion of the value
of the evidence in its' favour. And, as it was easy
to prove that this consists of nothing more than
three partially discrepant, but often verbally coin-
cident, versions of an original, of the authorship
of which nobody knows anything, it appeared to me
that it was wholly worthless. Even if the event
described had been probable, such evidence would
have required corroboration; being grossly improb-
able, and involving acts questionable in their
moral and legal aspect, the three accounts sank to
the level of mere tales.
Thus far, I am unable, even after the most care-
ful revision, to find any'flaw in my argument ; and
I incline to think none has been found by my
critics — at least, if they have, they have kept the
discovery to themselves.
VI POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 195
In another part of my treatment of the case I
have been less fortunate. I was careful to say
that, for anything I could "absolutely prove to the
contrary," there might be in the universe demonic
beings who could enter into and possess men, and
even be transferred from them to pigs ; and that
I, for my part, could not venture to declare a
priori that the existence of such entities was
" impossible." I was, however, no less careful to
remark that I thought the evidence hitherto
adduced in favour of the existence of such beings
" ridiculously insufficient " to warrant the belief in
them.
To my surprise, this statement of what, after
the closest reflection, I still conceive to be the
right conclusion, has been hailed as a satisfactory
admission by opponents, and lamented as a peril-
ous concession by sympathisers. Indeed, the tone
of the comments of some candid friends has been
such that I began to suspect that I must be en-
tering upon a process of retrogressive metamor-
phosis which might eventually give me a place
among the respectabilities. The prospect, perhaps,
ought to have pleased me ; but I confess I felt
something of the uneasiness of the tailor who said
that, whenever a customer's circumference was
either much less, or much more, than at the last
measurement, he at once sent in his bill ; and I
was not consoled until I recollected that, thirteen
years ago, in discussing Hume's essay on
196 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES VI
" Miracles," I had quoted, with entire assent, the
following passage from his writings : " Whatever is
intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies
no contradiction, and can never be proved false by
any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning
a priori"1
Now, it is certain that the existence of demons
can be distinctly conceived. In fact, from the
earliest times of which we have any record to the
present day, the great majority of mankind have
had extremely distinct conceptions of them, and
their practical life has been more or less shaped
by those conceptions. Further, the notion of the
existence of such beings " implies no contradiction/'
No doubt, in our experience, intelligence and
volition are always found in connection with a
certain material organisation, and never discon-
nected with it ; while, by the hypothesis, demons
have no such material substratum. But then, as
everybody knows, the exact relation between
mental and physical phenomena, even in ourselves,
is the subject of endless dispute. We may all
have our opinions as to whether mental pheno-
mena have a substratum distinct from that which
is assumed to underlie material phenomena, or not ;
though if any one thinks he has demonstrative
evidence of either the existence or the non-exist-
ence of a " soul/' all I can say is, his notion of
1 Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, p. 5 ; 1748
The passage is cited and discussed in my Hume, pp. 132, 133.
VI POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 197
demonstration differs from mine. But, if it be
impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of a
" substance " of mental phenomena — that is, of a
soul — independent of material "substance"; if the
idea of such a " soul " is " intelligible and can be
distinctly conceived/' then it follows that it is not
justifiable to talk of demons as " impossibilities."
The idea of their existence implies no more " con-
tradiction " than does the idea of the existence of
pathogenic microbes in the air. Indeed, the
microbes constitute a tolerably exact physical
analogue of the " powers of the air " of ancient
belief.
Strictly speaking,! am unaware of any thing that
has a right to the title of an " impossibility "
except a contradiction in terms. There are
impossibilities logical, but none natural. A " round
square/' a " present past/' " two parallel lines that
intersect/' are impossibilities, because the ideas
denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect,
are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the
subjects, square, past, parallel. But walking on
water, or turning water into wine, or "procreation
without male intervention, or raising the dead, are
plainly not " impossibilities " in this sense.
In the affirmation, that a man walked upon
water, the idea of the subject is not contradictory
of that in the predicate. Naturalists are familiar
with insects which walk on water, and imagination
has no more difficulty in putting a man in place of
198 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES vi
the insect than it has in giving a man some of the
attributes of a bird and making an angel of him ;
or in ascribing to him the ascensive tendencies of
a balloon, as the " levitationists " do. Undoubt-
edly, there are very strong physical and biological
arguments for thinking itextremely improbable that
a man could be supported on the surface of the
water as the insect is ; or that his organisation
could be compatible with the possession and use of
wings ; or that he could rise through the air without
mechanical aid. Indeed, if we have any reason to
believe that our present knowledge of the nature
of things exhausts the possibilities of nature, we
might properly say that the attributes of men are
contradictory of walking on water, or floating in
the air, and consequently that these acts are truly
"impossible" for him. But it is sufficiently
obvious, not only that we are at the beginning of
our knowledge of nature, instead of having arrived
at the end of it, but that the limitations of our
faculties are such that we never can be in a position
to set bounds to the possibilities of nature. We
have knowledge of what is happening and of what
has happened ; of what will happen we have and
can have no more than expectation, grounded on
our more or less correct reading of past experience
and prompted by the faith, begotten of that experi-
ence, that the order of nature in the future will
resemble its order in the past.
The same considerations apply to the other
VI POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 199
examples of supposed miraculous events. The
change of water into wine undoubtedly implies a
contradiction, and is assuredly " impossible," if we
are permitted to assume that the "elementary
bodies " of the chemists are, now and for ever,
immutable. Not only, however, is a negative
proposition of this kind incapable of proof, but
modern chemistry is inclining towards the contrary
doctrine. And if carbon can be got out of
hydrogen or oxygen, the conversion of water into
wine comes within range of scientific possibility — it
becomes a mere question of molecular arrange-
ment.
As for virgin procreation, it is not only clearly
imaginable, but modern biology recognises it as an
every-day occurrence among some groups of
animals. So with restoration to life after death.
Certain animals, long as dry as mummies, and, to
all appearance, as dead, when placed in proper
conditions resume their vitality. It may be said
that these creatures are not dead, but merely in a
condition of suspended vitality. That, however, is
only begging the question by making the incapa-
city for restoration to life part of the definition of
death. In the absence of obvious lesions of some
of the more important organs, it is no easy matter,
even for experts, to say that an apparently dead
man is incapable of restoration to life ; and, in
the recorded instances of such restoration, the
want of any conclusive evidence that the man
200 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES vi
was dead is even more remarkable than the
insufficiency of the testimony as to his coming to
life again.
It may be urged, however, that there is, at any
rate, one miracle certified by all three of the
Synoptic Gospels which really does " imply a con-
tradiction/' and is, therefore, " impossible " in the
strictest sense of the word. This is the well-
known story of the feeding of several thousand
men, to the complete satisfaction of their hunger,
by the distribution of a few loaves and fishes
among them; the wondrousness of this already
somewhat surprising performance being intensified
by the assertion that the quantity of the fragments
of the meal, left over, amounted to much more than
the original store.
Undoubtedly, if the operation is stated in its
most general form ; if it is to be supposed that a
certain quantity, or magnitude, was divided into
many more parts than the whole contained ; and
that, after the subtraction of several thousands of
such parts, the magnitude of the remainder
amounted to more than the original magnitude,
there does seem to be an a priori difficulty about
accepting the proposition, seeing that it appears
to be contradictory of the senses which we attach
to the words " whole " and " parts " respectively.
But this difficulty is removed if we reflect that
we are not, in this case, dealing with magnitude
in the abstract, or with " whole " and " parts " in
VI POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 201
their mathematical sense, but with concrete
things, many of which are known to possess the
power of growing, or increasing in magnitude.
They thus furnish us with a conception of growth
which we may, in imagination, apply to loaves
and fishes ; just as we may, in imagination, apply
the idea of wings to the idea of a man. It must be
admitted that a number of sheep might be fed on
a pasture, and yet there might be more grass on
the pasture, when the sheep left it, than there was
at first. We may generalise this and other
such facts into a perfectly definite conception of the
increase of food in excess of consumption ; which
thus becomes a possibility, the limitations of
which are to be discovered only by experience.
Therefore, if it is asserted that cooked food has
been made to grow in excess of rapid consumption,
that statement cannot logically be rejected as an
a priori impossibility, however improbable experi-
ence of the capabilities of cooked food may justify
us in holding it to be.
On the strength of this undeniable improba-
bility, however, we not only have a right to
demand, but are morally bound to require, strong
evidence in its favour before we even take it into
serious consideration. But what is the evidence
in this case ? It is merely that of those three
books,1 which also concur in testifying to the truth
1 The story in John vi. 5-14 is obviously derived from the
" five thousand" narrative of the Synoptics.
202 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES VI
of the monstrous legend of the herd of swine.
In these three books, there are five accounts of a
" miraculous feeding," which fall into two groups.
Three of the stories, obviously derived from some
common source, state that five loaves and two
fishes sufficed to feed five thousand persons, and
that twelve baskets of fragments remained over.
In the two others, also obviously derived from a
common source, distinct from the preceding, seven
loaves and a few small fishes are distributed to
four thousand persons, and seven baskets of
fragments are left.
If we were dealing with secular records, I sup-
pose no candid and competent student of history
would entertain much doubt that the originals of
the three stories and of the two are themselves
merely divergent versions of some primitive story
which existed before the three Synoptic gospels
were compiled out of the body of traditions current
about Jesus. This view of the case, however, is
incompatible with a belief in the historical
accuracy of the first and second gospels.1 For
these agree in making Jesus himself speak of both
the " four thousand " and the " five thousand "
miracle. " When I brake the five loaves among
the five thousand, how many baskets full of
broken pieces took ye up ? They say unto him,
twelve. And when the seven among the four
1 Matthew xvi. 5-12 ; Mark viii. 14-21.
VI POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 203
thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces
took ye up ? And they say unto him, seven."
Thus we are face to face with a dilemma the
way of escape from which is not obvious. Either
the " four thousand " and the " five thousand "
stories are both historically true, and describe two
separate events ; or the first and second gospels
testify to the very words of a conversation between
Jesus and his disciples which cannot have been
uttered.
My choice between these alternatives is deter-
mined by no a priori speculations about the possi-
bility or impossibility of such events as the feeding
of the four or of the five thousand. But I ask myself
the question, What evidence ought to be produced
before I could feel justified in saying that I
believed such an event to have occurred ? That
question is very easily answered. Proof must be
given (1) of the weight of the loaves and fishes at
starting ; (2) of the distribution to 4-5,000 persons,
without any additional supply, of this quantity
and quality of food ; (3) of the satisfaction of
these people's appetites; (4) of the weight and
quality of the fragments gathered up into the
baskets. Whatever my present notions of proba-
bility and improbability may be, satisfactory testi-
mony under these four heads would lead me to
believe that they were erroneous ; and I should
accept the so-called miracle as a new and unex-
pected example of the possibilities of nature.
204 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES vi
But when, instead of such evidence, nothing is
produced but two sets of discrepant stones,
originating nobody knows how or when, among
persons who could believe as firmly in devils which
enter pigs, I confess, that my feeling is one of
astonishment that any one should expect a reason-
able man to take such testimony seriously.
I am anxious to bring about a clear under-
standing of the difference between "impossi-
bilities " and " improbabilities," because mistakes
on this point lay us open to the attacks of
ecclesiastical apologists of the type of the late
Cardinal Newman ; acute sophists, who think it
fitting to employ their intellects, as burglars
employ dark lanterns ; for the discovery of other
people's weak places, while they carefully keep the
light away from their own position.
When it is rightly stated, the Agnostic view of
" miracles " is, in my judgment, unassailable. We
are not justified in the a priori assertion that the
order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us,
cannot change. In arguing about the miraculous,
the assumption is illegitimate, because it involves
the whole point in dispute. Furthermore, it is an
assumption which takes us beyond the range of
our faculties. Obviously, no amount of past
experience can warrant us in anything more than
a correspondingly strong expectation for the
present and future. We find, practically, that
VI POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 205
expectations, based upon careful observations of
past events, are, as a rule, trustworthy. We
should be foolish indeed not to follow the only guide
we have through life. But, for all that, our highest
and surest generalisations remain on the level of
justifiable expectations ; that is, very high proba-
bilities. For my part, I am unable to conceive of an
intelligence shaped on the model of that of man,
however superior it might be, which could be any
better off than our own in this respect ; that is,
which could possess logically justifiable grounds
for certainty about the constancy of the order of
things, and therefore be in a position to declare
that such and such events are impossible. Some
of the old mythologies recognised this clearly
enough. Beyond and above Zeus and Odin, there
lay the unknown and inscrutable Fate which, one
day or other, would ^crumple up them and the
world they ruled to give place to a new order of
things.
I sincerely hope that I shall not be accused of
Pyrrhonism, or of any desire to weaken the foun-
dations of rational certainty. I have merely
desired to point out that rational certainty is one
thing, and talk about " impossibilities," or " viola-
tion of natural laws," another. Rational certainty
rests upon two grounds — the one that the evidence
in favour of a given statement is as good -as it can
be ; the other that such evidence is plainly insuffi-
cient. In the foimer case, the statement is to be
206 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES vi
taken as true, in the latter as untrue ; until some-
thing arises to modify the verdict, which, however
properly reached, may always be more or less
wrong, the best information being never complete,
and the best reasoning being liable to fallacy.
To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us
in intellectual affairs, would be about as reasonable
as to object to live one's life, with due thought for
the morrow, because no man can be sure he will
be alive an hour hence. Such are the conditions
imposed upon us by nature, and we have to make
the best of them. And I think that the greatest
mistake those of us who are interested in the pro-
gress of free thought can make is to overlook these
limitations, and to deck ourselves with the dog-
matic feathers which are the traditional adorn-
ment of our opponents. Let us be content with
rational certainty, leaving irrational certainties to
those who like to muddle their minds with them.
I cannot see my way to say that demons are im-
possibilities ; but I am not more certain about any-
thing, than I am that the evidence tendered in
favour of the demonology, of which the Gadarene
story is a typical example, is utterly valueless. I
cannot see my way to say that it is " impossible "
that the hunger of thousands of men should be
satisfied out of the food supplied by .half-a-dozen
loaves and a fish or two ; but it seems to me mon-
strous that I should be asked to believe it on the
faith of the five stories which testify to such an
Vi POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 207
occurrence. It is true that the position that
miracles are "impossible" cannot be sustained.
But I know of nothing which calls upon me
to qualify the grave verdict of Hume : " There
is not to be found, in all history, any
miracle attested by a sufficient number of men,
of such unquestioned goodness, education, and
learning as to secure us against all delusion in
themselves ; of such undoubted integrity as to
place them beyond all suspicion of any design to
deceive others; of such credit and reputation in
the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal
to lose in case of their being detected in any
falsehood ; and at the same time attesting facts,
performed in such a public manner, and in so
celebrated a part of the world, as to render the
detection unavoidable : all which circumstances
are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testi-
mony of men." l
The preceding paper called forth the following criticism signed
" Agnosco," to which I append my reply : —
WHILE agreeing generally with Professor Huxley's remarks
respecting miracles, in " The Agnostic Annual for 1892," it has
seemed to me that one of his arguments at least requires quali-
fication. The Professor, in maintaining that so-called miraculous
events are possible, although the evidence adduced is not
sufficient to render them probable, refers to the possibility of
changing water into wine by molecular re -composition. He
tells us that, " if carbon can be got out of hydrogen or oxygen,
the conversion of water into wine comes within range of scientific
possibility." But in maintaining that miracles (so-called) have
1 Hume, Inquiry, sec. x., part ii.
129
208 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES vi
a prospective possibility, Professor Huxley loses sight — at least,
so it appears to me — of the question of their retrospective possi-
bility. For, if it requires a certain degree of knowledge and
experience, yet far from having been attained, to perform those
acts which have been called miraculous, it is not only improb-
able, but impossible likewise, that they should have been done
by men whose knowledge and experience were considerably
less than our own. It has seemed to me, in fact, that this
question of the retrospective possibility of miracles is more im-
portant to us Rationalists, and, for the matter of that, to
Christians also, than the question of their prospective possibility,
with which Professor Huxley's article mainly deals. Perhaps
the Professor himself could help those of us who think so, by
giving us his opinion.
I AM not sure that I fully appreciate the point raised by
" Agnosco," nor the distinction between the prospective and the
retrospective "possibility" of such a miracle as the conversion
of water into wine. If we may contemplate such an event as
"possible" in London in the year 1900, it must, in the same
sense, have been "possible" in the year 30 (or thereabouts) at
Cana in Galilee. If I should live so long, I shall take great
interest in the announcement of the performance of this opera-
tion, say, nine years hence ; and, if there is no objection raised
by chemical experts, I shall accept the fact that the feat has
been performed, without hesitation. But I shall have no more
ground for believing the Cana story than I had before ; simply
because the evidence in its favour will remain, for me, exactly
where it is. Possible or impossible, that evidence is worth
nothing. To leave the safe ground of " no evidence" for specu-
lations about impossibilities, consequent upon the want of
scientific knowledge of the supposed workers of miracles, appears
to me to be a mistake ; especially in view of the orthodox con-
tention that they possessed supernatural power and supernatural
knowledge. T. H. HUXLEY.
vn
AGNOSTICISM
[1889]
WITHIN the last few months, the public has
received much and varied information on the
subject of agnostics, their tenets, and even their
future. Agnosticism exercised the orators of the
Church Congress at Manchester.1 It has been
furnished with a set of " articles " fewer, but not
less rigid, and certainly not less consistent than
the thirty-nine ; its nature has been analysed,
and its future severely predicted by the most
eloquent of that prophetical school whose Samuel
is Auguste Comte. It may still be a question,
however, whether the public is as much the wiser
as might be expected, considering all the trouble
that has been taken to enlighten it. Not only
are the three accounts of the agnostic position
sadly out of harmony with one another, but I
1 See the Official Report of the Church Congress held at
Manchester, October 1888, pp. 253, 254.
210 AGNOSTICISM VII
propose to show cause for my belief that all three
must be seriously questioned by any one who
employs the term " agnostic " in the sense in
which it was originally used. The learned
Principal of King's College, who brought the
topic of Agnosticism before the Church Congress,
took a short and easy way of settling the
business : —
But if this be so, for a man to urge, as an escape from this
article of belief, that he has no means of a scientific knowledge
of the unseen world, or of the future, is irrelevant. His differ-
ence from Christians lies not in the fact that he has no know-
ledge of these things, but that he does not believe the authority
on which they are stated. He may prefer to call himself an
Agnostic ; but his real name is an older one — he is an infidel ;
that is to say, an unbeliever. The word infidel, perhaps, carries
an unpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should.
It is, and it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to
say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ.1
So much of Dr. Wace's address either explicitly
or implicitly concerns me, that I take upon
myself to deal with it ; but, in so doing, it must
be understood that I speak for myself alone. I
am not aware that there is any sect of Agnostics ;
1 [In this place and in the eleventh essay, there are references
to the late Archbishop of York which are of no importance to
my main argument, and which I have expunged because I desire
to obliterate the traces of a temporary misunderstanding with a
man of rare ability, candour, and wit, for whom I entertained a
great liking and no less respect. I rejoice to think now of
the (then) Bishop's cordial hail the first time we met after our
little skirmish, "Well, is it to be peace or war ?" I replied,
" A little of both." But there was only peace when we parted,
and ever after.]
VII
AGNOSTICISM 211
and if there be, I am not its acknowledged
prophet or pope. I desire to leave to the Comtists
the entire monopoly of the manufacture of imi-
tation ecclesiasticism.
Let us calmly and dispassionately consider Dr.
Wace's appreciation of agnosticism. The agnos-
tic, according to his view, is a person who says he
has no means of attaining a scientific knowledge
of the unseen world or of the future ; by which
somewhat loose phraseology Dr. Wace presumably
means the theological unseen world and future.
I cannot think this description happy, either in
form or substance, but for the present it may
pass. Dr. Wace continues, that is not "his
difference from Christians." Are there then any
Christians who say that they know nothing about
the unseen world and the future ? I was ignorant
of the fact, but I am ready to accept it on the
authority of a professional theologian, and I
proceed to Dr. Wace's next proposition.
The real state of the case, then, is that the
agnostic "does not believe the authority" on)
which "these things" are stated, which authority
is Jesus Christ. He is simply an old-fashioned
" infidel " who is afraid to own to his right name.
As "Presbyter is priest writ large," so is "ag-
nostic " the mere Greek equivalent for the Latin
" infidel." There is an attractive simplicity about
this solution of the problem; and it has that
advantage of being somewhat offensive to the
212 AGNOSTICISM VII
persons attacked, which is so dear to the less
refined sort of controversialist. The agnostic
says, " I cannot find good evidence that so and so
is true." " Ah," says his adversary, seizing his
opportunity, " then you declare that Jesus Christ
was untruthful, for he said so and so ; " a very
telling method of rousing prejudice. But suppose
that the value of the evidence as to what Jesus
may have said and done, and as to the exact
nature and scope of his authority, is just that
which the agnostic finds it most difficult to deter-
mine. . If I venture to doubt that the Duke of
Wellington gave the command " Up, Guards, and
at 'em ! " at Waterloo, I do not think that even
Dr. Wace would accuse me of disbelieving the
Duke. Yet it would be just as reasonable to do
this as to accuse any one of denying what Jesus
said, before the preliminary question as to what
he did say is settled.
Now, the question as to what Jesus really said
and did is strictly a scientific problem, which is
capable of solution by no other methods than
those practised by the historian and the literary
critic. It is a problem of immense difficulty,
which has occupied some of the best heads in
Europe for the last century ; and it is only of late
years that their investigations have begun to con-
verge towards one conclusion.1
1 Dr. Wace tells us, "It may be asked how far we can rely on
the accounts we possess of our Lord's teaching on these subjects."
vn AGNOSTICISM 213
That kind of faith which Dr. Wace describes
and lauds is of no use here. Indeed, he himself
takes pains to destroy its evidential value.
" What made the Mahommedan world ? Trust
and faith in the declarations and assurances of
Mahommed. And what made the Christian
world ? Trust and faith in the declarations and
assurances of Jesus Christ and His Apostles"
(/. c. p. 253). The triumphant tone of this
imaginary catechism leads me to suspect that its
author has hardly appreciated its full import.
Presumably, Dr. Wace regards Mahommed as an
unbeliever, or, to use the term which he prefers,
infidel; and considers that his assurances have
given rise to a vast delusion which has led, and is
leading, millions of men straight to everlasting
punishment. And this being so, the " Trust and
faith " which have " made the Mahommedan
world," in just the same sense as they have
And he seems to think the question appropriately answered by
the assertion that it "ought to he regarded as settled by M.
Kenan's practical surrender of the adverse case." I thought I
knew M. Kenan's works pretty well, but I have contrived to
miss this "practical" (I wish Dr. Wace had denned the scope
of that useful adjective) surrender. However, as Dr. Wace can
find no difficulty in pointing out the passage of M. Kenan's
writings, by which he feels justified in making his statement, I
shall wait for further enlightenment, contenting myself, for the
present, with remarking that if M. Kenan were to retract and
do penance in Notre-Dame to-morrow for any contributions to
Biblical criticism that may be specially his property, the main
results of that criticism, as they are set forth in the works of
Strauss, Baur, Keuss, and Volkmar, for example, would not be
sensibly affected.
214 AGNOSTICISM VII
"made the Christian world/' must be trust and
faith in falsehood. No man who has studied
history, or even attended to the occurrences of
everyday life, can doubt the enormous practical
value of trust and faith ; but as little will he be
inclined to deny that this practical value has not
the least relation to the reality of the objects of
that trust and faith. In examples of patient
constancy of faith and of unswerving trust, the
" Acta Martyrum " do not excel the annals of
Babism.1
The discussion upon which we have now _
entered goes so thoroughly to the root of the
whole matter ; the question of the day is so
completely, as the author of " Robert Elsmere "
says, the value of testimony, that I shall offer no
apology for following it out somewhat in detail ;
and, by way of giving substance to the argument,
I shall base what I have to say upon a case,
the consideration of which lies strictly within the
province of natural science, and of that particular
part of it known as the physiology and pathology
of the nervous system.
I find, in the second Gospel (chap, v.), a state-
ment, to all appearance intended to have the
same evidential value as any other contained in
1 [See De Gobineau, Les Religions et les Philosophies dnns
rAsie Centrale ; and the recently published work of Mr. E. G.
Browne, The Episode of the Bab.]
VII
AGNOSTICISM 215
that history. It is the well-known story of the
devils who were cast out of a man, and ordered,
or permitted, to enter into a herd of swine, to the
great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene,
or Gadarene, pig owners. There can be no doubt
that the narrator intends to convey to his readers
his own conviction that this casting out and
entering in were effected by the agency of Jesus
of Nazareth; that, by speech and action, Jesus
enforced this conviction ; nor does any inkling
of the legal and moral difficulties of the case
manifest itself.
On the other hand, everything that I know of
physiological and pathological science leads me to
entertain a very strong conviction that the pheno-
mena ascribed to possession are as purely natural
as those which constitute small-pox; everything
that I know of anthropology leads me to think
that the belief in demons and demoniacal posses-
sion is a mere survival of a once universal super-
stition, and that its persistence, at the present
time, is pretty much in the inverse ratio of the
general instruction, intelligence, and sound judg-
ment of the population among whom it prevails.
Everything that I know of law and justice con-
vinces me that the wanton destruction of other
people's property is a misdemeanour of evil
example. Again, the study of history, and
especially of that of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries, leaves no shadow of doubt
216 AGNOSTICISM VII
on my mind that the belief in the reality of
possession and of witchcraft, justly based, alike
by Catholics and Protestants, upon this and innu-
merable other passages in both the Old and New
Testaments, gave rise, through the special in-
fluence of Christian ecclesiastics, to the most
horrible persecutions and judicial murders of
thousands upon thousands of innocent men,
women, and children. And when I reflect that
the record of a plain and simple declaration upon
such an occasion as this, that the belief in witch-
craft and possession is wicked nonsense, would
have rendered the long agony of mediaeval
humanity impossible, I am prompted to reject, as
dishonouring, the supposition that such declar-
ation was withheld out of condescension to
popular error.
" Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the
man " (Mark v. 8),1 are the words attributed to
Jesus. If I declare, as I have no hesitation in
doing, that I utterly disbelieve in the existence of
" unclean spirits," and, consequently, in the possi-
bility of their " coming forth " out of a man, I
suppose that Dr. Wace will tell me I am
disregarding the testimony " of our Lord."
For, if these words were really used, the most
resourceful of reconcilers can hardly venture
to affirm that they are compatible with a dis-
belief "in these things." As the learned and
1 Here, as always, the revised version is cited.
VII AGNOSTICISM 217
fair-minded, as well as orthodox, Dr. Alexander
remarks, in an editorial note to the article
" Demoniacs," in the " Biblical Cyclopaedia " (vol.
i. p. 664, note) : —
... On the lowest grounds on which our Lord and His
Apostles can be placed they must, at least, be regarded as honest
men. Now, though honest speech does not require that words
should be used always and only in their etymological sense, it
does require that they should not be used so as to affirm what
the speaker knows to be false. Whilst, therefore, our Lord and
His Apostles might use the word 5a/;uoi>t£e<r0at, or the phrase,
tiaifj.dvioi' %x*lv> as a popular description of certain diseases,
without giving in to the belief which lay at the source of such a
mode of expression, they could not speak of demons entering
into a man, or being cast out of him, without pledging them-
selves to the belief of an actual possession of the man by the
demons. (Campbell, Prel. Diss. vi. 1, 10.) If, consequently,
they did not hold this belief, they spoke not as honest men.
The story which we are considering does not
rest on the authority of the second Gospel alone.
The third confirms the second, especially in the
matter of commanding the unclean spirit to come
out of the man (Luke viii. 29) ; and, although
the first Gospel either gives a different version of
the same story, or tells another of like kind, the
essential point remains : " If thou cast us out,
send us away into the herd of swine. And He
said unto them : Go ! " (Matt. viii. 31, 32).
If the concurrent testimony of the three
synoptics, then, is really sufficient to do away
with all rational doubt as to a matter of fact of
the utmost practical and speculative importance —
218 AGNOSTICISM VII
belief or disbelief in which may affect, and has
affected, men's lives and their conduct towards
other men, in the most serious way — then I am
bound to believe that Jesus implicitly affirmed
himself to possess a " knowledge of the unseen
world," which afforded full confirmation of the
belief in demons and possession current among
his contemporaries. If the story is true, the
mediaeval theory of the invisible world may be,
and probably is, quite correct ; and the witch-
finders, from Sprenger to Hopkins and Mather,
are much-maligned men.
On the other hand, humanity, noting the
frightful consequences of this belief; common
sense, observing the futility of the evidence on
which it is based, in all cases that have been
properly investigated ; science, more and more
seeing its way to inclose all the phenomena of
so-called " possession " within the domain of
pathology, so far as they are not to be relegated
to that of the police — all these powerful influences
concur in warning us, at our peril, against
accepting the belief without the most careful
scrutiny of the authority on which it rests.
I can discern no escape from this dilemma :
either Jesus said what he is reported to have
said, or he did not. In the former case, it is in-
evitable that his authority on matters connected
with the "unseen world" should be roughly
shaken; in the latter, the blow falls upon the
VII
AGNOSTICISM 219
authority of the synoptic Gospels, If their report
on a matter of such stupendous and far-reaching
practical import as this is untrustworthy, how can
we be sure of its trustworthiness in other cases ?
The favourite " earth," in which the hard-pressed
reconciler takes refuge, that the Bible does not
profess to teach science,1 is stopped in this
instance. For the question of the existence of
demons and of possession by them, though it lies
strictly within the province of science, is also of
the deepest moral and religious significance. If
physical and mental disorders are caused by de-
mons, Gregory of Tours and his contemporaries
rightly considered that relics and exorcists were
more useful than doctors; the gravest questions
arise as to the legal and moral responsibilities of
persons inspired by demoniacal impulses ; and our
whole conception of the universe and of our
1 Does any one really mean to say that there is any internal or
external criterion by which the reader of a biblical statement, in
which scientific matter is contained, is enabled to judge whether
it is to be taken au serieux or not ? Is the account of the
Deluge, accepted as true in the New Testament, less precise and
specific than that of the call of Abraham, also accepted as true
therein? By what mark does the story of the feeding with
manna in the wilderness, which involves some very curious
scientific problems, show that it is meant merely for edification,
while the story of the inscription of the Law on stone by the
hand of Jahveh is literally true ? If the story of the Fall is not
the true record of an historical occurrence, what becomes of
Pauline theology ? Yet the story of the Fall as directly con-
flicts with probability, and is as devoid of trustworthy evidence,
as that of the Creation or that of the Deluge, with which it
forms an harmoniously legendary series.
220 AGNOSTICISM VII
relations to it becomes totally different from what
it would be on the contrary hypothesis.
The theory of life of an average mediaeval
Christian was as different from that of an average
nineteenth-century Englishman as that of a West
African negro is now, in these respects. The
modern world is slowly, but surely, shaking off
these and other monstrous survivals of savage
delusions ; and, whatever happens, it will not re-
turn to that wallowing in the mire. Until the
contrary is proved, I venture to doubt whether, at
this present moment, any Protestant theologian,
who has a reputation to lose, will say that he
believes the Gadarene story.
The choice then lies between discrediting those
who compiled the Gospel biographies and dis-
believing the Master, whom they, simple souls,
thought to honour by preserving such traditions
of the exercise of his authority over Satan's
invisible world. This is the dilemma. No deep
scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the
revised version (on which it is to be supposed
all that mere scholarship can do has been done),
with the application thereto of the commonest
canons of common sense, is needful to enable us
to make a choice between its alternatives. It is
hardly doubtful that the story, as told in the first
Gospel, is merely a version of that told in the
second and third. Nevertheless, the discrepancies
are serious and irreconcilable ; and, on this ground
VII AGNOSTICISM 221
alone, a suspension of judgment, at the least, is
called for. But there is a great deal more to be
said. From the dawn of scientific biblical criti-
cism until the present day, the evidence against
the long-cherished notion that the three synoptic
Gospels are the works of three independent
authors, each prompted by Divine inspiration,
has steadily accumulated, until, at the present
time, there is no visible escape from the con-
clusion that each of the three is a compilation
consisting of a groundwork common to all three —
the threefold tradition ; and of a superstructure,
consisting, firstly, of matter common to it with
one of the others, and, secondly, of matter special
to each. The use of the terms "groundwork"
and " superstructure " by no means implies that
the latter must be of later date than the former.
On the contrary, some parts of it may be, and
probably are, older than some parts of the
groundwork.1
The story of the Gadarene swine belongs to
the groundwork ; at least, the essential part of it,
in which the belief in demoniac possession is
expressed, does; and therefore the compilers of
the first, second, and third Gospels, whoever they
1 See, for an admirable discussion of the whole subject, Dr,
Abbott's article on the Gospels in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ;
and the remarkable monograph by Professor Volkmar, Jesus
Nazarenus und die erste christliche Zc.it (1882). Whether we
agree with the conclusions of these writers or not, the method of
critical investigation which they adopt is unimpeachable.
222 AGNOSTICISM VII
were, certainly accepted that belief (which, indeed,
was universal among both Jews and pagans at
that time), and attributed it to Jesus.
What, then, do we know about the originator,
or originators, of this groundwork — of that three-
fold tradition which all three witnesses (in Paley's
phrase) agree upon — that we should allow their
mere statements to outweigh the counter argu-
ments of humanity, of common sense, of exact
science, and to imperil the respect which all
would be glad to be able to render to their
Master ?
Absolutely nothing.1 There is no proof, no-
thing more than a fair presumption, that any one
of the Gospels existed, in the state in which we
find it in the authorised version of the Bible,
before the second century, or, in other words,
sixty or seventy years after the events recorded.
And, between that time and the date of the
oldest extant manuscripts of the Gospels, there is
no telling what additions and alterations and
interpolations may have been made. It may be
said that this is all mere speculation, but it is a
good deal more. As competent scholars and
honest men, our revisers have felt compelled to
point out that such things have happened even
1 Notwithstanding the hard words shot at me from behind
the hedge of anonymity by a writer in a recent number of the
Quarterly Review, I repeat, without the slightest fear of refuta-
tion, that the four Gospels, as they have come to us, are the
work of unknown writers.
VII
AGNOSTICISM 223
since the date of the oldest known manuscripts.
The oldest two copies of the second Gospel end
with the 8th verse of the 16th chapter; the
remaining twelve verses are spurious, and it is
noteworthy that the maker of the addition has not
hesitated to introduce a speech in which Jesus
promises his disciples that "in My name shall
they cast out devils."
The other passage " rejected to the margin " is
still more instructive. It is that touching
apologue, with its profound ethical sense, of the
woman taken in adultery — which, if internal
evidence were an infallible guide, might well be
affirmed to be a typical example of the teachings
of Jesus. Yet, say the revisers, pitilessly, " Most
of the ancient authorities emit John vii. 53-viii.
11." Now let any reasonable man ask himself
this question. If, after an approximate settle-
ment of the canon of the New Testament, and
even later than the fourth and fifth centuries,
literary fabricators had the skill and the audacity
to make such additions and interpolations as
these, what may they have done when no one
had thought of a canon ; when oral tradition, still
unfixed, was regarded as more valuable than such
written records as may have existed in the latter
portion of the first century ? Or, to take the
other alternative, if those who gradually settled
the canon did not know of the existence of the
oldest codices which have come down to us ; or if,
130
224 AGNOSTICISM VII
knowing them, they rejected their authority, what
is to be thought of their competency as critics of
the text ?
People who object to free criticism of the
Christian Scriptures forget that they are what
they are in virtue of very free criticism ; unless
the advocates of inspiration are prepared to affirm
that the majority of influential ecclesiastics during
several centuries were safeguarded against error.
For, even granting that some books of the period
were inspired, they were certainly few amongst
many; and those who selected the canonical
books, unless they themselves were also inspired,
must be regarded in the light of mere critics, and,
from the evidence they have left of their intel-
lectual habits, very uncritical critics. When one
thinks that such delicate questions as those
involved fell into the hands of men like Papias
(who believed in the famous millenarian grape
story) ; of Irenseus with his " reasons " for the
existence of only four Gospels ; and of such calm
and dispassionate judges as Tertullian, with his
" Credo quia impossibile " \t the marvel is that the
selection which constitutes our New Testament is
as free as it is from obviously objectionable matter.
The apocryphal Gospels certainly deserve to be
apocryphal; but one may suspect that a little
more critical discrimination would have enlarged
the Apocrypha not inconsiderably.
At this point a very obvious objection arises
VII
AGNOSTICISM 225
and deserves full and candid consideration. It
may be said that critical scepticism carried to the
length suggested is historical pyrrhonism ; that if
we are altogether to discredit an ancient or a
modern historian, because he has assumed fabulous
matter to be true, it will be as well to give up
paying any attention to history. It may be said,
and with great justice, that Eginhard's " Life
of Charlemagne" is none the less trustworthy
because of the astounding revelation of credulity,
of lack of judgment, and even of respect for the
eighth commandment, which he has unconsciously
made in the " History of the Translation of the
Blessed Martyrs Marcellinus and Paul/' Or, to go
no further back than the last number of the
Nineteenth Century, surely that excellent lady, Miss
Strickland, is not to be refused all credence, because
of the myth about the second James's remains,
which she seems to have unconsciously invented.
Of course this is perfectly true. I am afraid
there is no man alive whose witness could be
accepted, if the condition precedent were proof
that he had never invented and promulgated a
myth. In the minds of all of us there are little
places here and there, like the indistinguishable
spots on a rock which give foothold to moss or
stonecrop ; on which, if the germ of a myth fall, it
is certain to grow, without in the least degree
affecting our accuracy or truthfulness elsewhere.
Sir Walter Scott knew that he could not repeat a
226 AGNOSTICISM
VII
story without, as he said, "giving it a new hat
and stick." Most of us differ from Sir Walter
only in not knowing about this tendency of the
mythopoeic faculty to break out unnoticed. But
it is also perfectly true that the mythopoeic faculty
is not equally active in all minds, nor in all
regions and under all conditions of the same mind.
David Hume was certainly not so liable to
temptation as the Venerable Bede, or even as
some recent historians who could be mentioned ;
and the most imaginative of debtors, if he owes
five pounds, never makes an obligation to pay a
hundred out of it. The rule of common sense is
primd facie to trust a witness in all matters, in
which neither his self-interest, his passions, his
prejudices, nor that love of the marvellous, which
is inherent to a greater or less degree in all man-
kind, are strongly concerned ; and, when they are
involved, to require corroborative evidence in exact
proportion to the contravention of probability by
the thing testified.
Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I
am unreasonably sceptical, if I say that the
existence of demons who can be transferred from
a man to a pig, does thus contravene probability.
Let me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no
a priori objection to offer. There are physical
things, such as tcenice and trichince, which can be
transferred from men to pigs, and vice versd, and
which do undoubtedly produce most diabolical
Vii AGNOSTICISM 227
and deadly effects on both. For anything I can
absolutely prove to the contrary, there may be
spiritual things capable of the same transmigra-
tion, with like effects. Moreover I am bound to
add that perfectly truthful persons, for whom I
have the greatest respect, believe in stories about
spirits of the present day, quite as improbable as
that we are considering.
So I declare, as plainly as I can, that I am unable
to show cause why these transferable devils should
not exist; nor can I deny that, not merely the
whole Roman Church, but many Wacean " infidels "
of no mean repute, do honestly and firmly believe
that the activity of such like demonic beings is in
full swing in this year of grace 1889.
Nevertheless, as good Bishop Butler says,
" probability is the guide of life ; " and it seems to
me that this is just one of the cases in which the
canon of credibility and testimony, which I have
ventured to lay down, has full force. So that,
with the most entire respect for many (by no
means for all) of our witnesses for the truth of
demonology, ancient and modern, I conceive their
evidence on this particular matter to be ridicu-
lously insufficient to warrant their conclusion.1
1 Their arguments, in the long run, are always reducible to
one form. Otherwise trustworthy witnesses affirm that such and
such events took place. These events are inexplicable, except
the agency of " spirits " is admitted. Therefore " spirits " were
the cause of the phenomena.
And the heads of the reply are always the same. Remember
228 AGNOSTICISM vn
After what has been said, I do not think that
any sensible man, unless he happen to be angry,
will accuse me of " contradicting the Lord and His
Apostles" if I reiterate my total disbelief in the
whole Gadarene story. But, if that story is dis-
credited, all the other stories of demoniac posses-
sion fall under suspicion. And if the belief in
demons and demoniac possession, which forms the
sombre background of the whole picture of primi-
tive Christianity, presented to us in the New
Testament, is shaken, what is to be said, in any
case, of the uncorroborated testimony of the
Gospels with respect to " the unseen world " ?
I am not aware that I have been influenced by
any more bias in regard to the Gadarene story
than I have been in dealing with other cases of
like kind the investigation of which has interested
me. I was brought up in the strictest school of
evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was old enough
to think for myself, I started upon my journey of
inquiry with little doubt about the general truth
of what I had been taught ; and with that feeling
Goethe's aphorism : " Alles factische ist schon Theorie." Trust-
worthy witnesses are constantly deceived, or deceive themselves,
in their interpretation of sensible phenomena. No one can
prove that the sensible phenomena, in these cases, could be
caused only by the agency of spirits : and there is abundant
ground for believing that they may be produced in other ways.
Therefore, the utmost that can be reasonably asked for, on the
evidence as it stands, is suspension of judgment. And, on the
necessity for even that suspension, reasonable men may differ,
according to their views of probability.
VII AGNOSTICISM 229
of the unpleasantness of being called an "infidel"
which, we are told, is so right and proper. Near
my journey's end, I find myself in a condition of
something more than mere doubt about these
matters.
In the course of other inquiries, I have had to
do with fossil remains which looked quite plain at
a distance, and became more and more indistinct
as I tried to define their outline by close inspec-
tion. There was something there — something
which, if I could win assurance about it, might
mark a new epoch in the history of the earth ;
but, study as long as I might, certainty eluded my
grasp. So has it been with me in my efforts to
define the grand figure of Jesus as it lies in the
primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the
kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs ? v
Or is he the stern Judge who frowns above the
altar of SS. Cos mas and Damianus ? Or can he
be rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic,
broken down by physical pain, of too many
mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus
of the second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel,
as the true Jesus ? What did he really say and
do ; and how much that is attributed to him, in
speech and action, is the embroidery of the various
parties into which his followers tended to split
themselves within twenty years of his death,
when even the threefold tradition was only
nascent ?
230 AGNOSTICISM
VII
If any one will answer these questions for me
with something more to the point than feeble talk
about the " cowardice of agnosticism/' I shall be
deeply his debtor. Unless and until they are
satisfactorily answered, I say of agnosticism in
this matter, " J*y suis, etfy reste"
But, as we have seen, it is asserted that I have
no business to call myself an agnostic ; that, if I
am not a Christian I am an infidel ; and that I
ought to call myself by that name of " unpleasant
significance." Well, I do not care much what I
am called by other people, and if I had at my side
all those who, since the Christian era, have been
called infidels by other folks, I could not desire
better company. If these are my ancestors, I pre-
fer, with the old Frank, to be with them wherever
, they are. But there are several points in Dr.
Wace's contention which must be elucidated
before I can even think of undertaking to carry
out his wishes. I must, for instance, know what
a Christian is. Now what is a Christian ? By
whose authority is the signification of that term
defined ? Is there any doubt that the immediate
followers of Jesus, the " sect of the Nazarenes,"
were strictly orthodox Jews differing from other
Jews not more than the Sadducees, the Pharisees,
and the Essenes differed from one another ; in fact,
only in the belief that the Messiah, for whom the
rest of their nation waited, had come ? Was not
their chief, "James, the brother of the Lord/'
VII
AGNOSTICISM 231
reverenced alike by Sadducee, Pharisee, and
Nazarene? At the famous conference which,
according to the Acts, took place at Jerusalem,
does not James declare that " myriads " of Jews,
who, by that time, had become Nazarenes, were
" all zealous for the Law " ? Was not the name
of " Christian " first used to denote the converts to
the doctrine promulgated by Paul and Barnabas at
Antioch ? Does the subsequent history of Chris-
tianity leave any doubt that, from this time forth,
the " little rift within the lute " caused by the new
teaching, developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch,
grew wider and wider, until the two types of doc-
trine irreconcilably diverged ? Did not the primi-
tive Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the
Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and Elkasaitism of
later ages, and finally die out in obscurity and
condemnation, as damnable heresy ; while the
younger doctrine throve and pushed out its shoots
into that endless variety of sects, of which the three
strongest survivors are the Roman and Greek
Churches and modern Protestantism ?
Singular state of things ! If I were to profess
the doctrine which was held by "James, the
brother of the Lord," and by every one of the
" myriads " of his followers and co-religionists in
Jerusalem up to twenty or thirty years after the
Crucifixion (and one knows not how much later at
Pella), I should be condemned, with unanimity, as
an ebionising heretic by the Roman, Greek, and
232 AGNOSTICISM VII
Protestant Churches ! And, probably, this hearty
and unanimous condemnation of the creed/held by
those who were in the closest personal relation
with their Lord, is almost the only point upon
which they would be cordially of one mind. On
the other hand, though I hardly dare imagine
such a thing, I very much fear that the " pillars "
of the primitive Hierosolymitan Church would
have considered Dr. Wace an infidel. No one can
read the famous second chapter of Galatians and
the book of Revelation without seeing how nar-
row was even Paul's escape from a similar fate.
And, if ecclesiastical history is to be trusted, the
thirty-nine articles, be they right or wrong,
diverge from the primitive doctrine of the Naza-
renes vastly more than even Pauline Christianity
did.
But, further than this, I have great difficulty
in assuring myself that even James, "the brother
of the Lord," and his "myriads" of Nazarenes,
properly represented the doctrines of their
Master. For it is constantly asserted by our
modern " pillars " that one of the chief features of
the work of Jesus was the instauration of Religion
by the abolition of what our sticklers for articles
and liturgies, with unconscious humour, call the
narrow restrictions of the Law. Yet, if James
knew this, how could the bitter controversy with
Paul have arisen ; and why did not one or
the other side quote any of the various sayings of
Til AGNOSTICISM 233
Jesus, recorded in the Gospels, which directly bear
on the question — sometimes, apparently, in oppo-
site directions ?
So, if I am asked to call myself an " infidel/' I
reply : To what doctrine do you ask me to be
faithful ? Is it that contained in the Nicene and
the Athanasian Creeds ? My firm belief is that
the Nazarenes, say of the year 40, headed by
James, would have stopped their ears and thought
worthy of stoning the audacious man who pro-
pounded it to them. Is it contained in the so-
called Apostles' Creed ? I am pretty sure that even
that would have created a recalcitrant commotion
at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of
Jerusalem, who had fled from the soldiers of Titus.
And yet, if the unadulterated tradition of the
teachings of " the Nazarene " were to be found
anywhere, it surely should have been amidst those
not very aged disciples who may have heard them
as they were delivered.
Therefore, however sorry I may be to be unable
to demonstrate that, if necessary, I should not be
afraid to call myself an " infidel/' I cannot do it.
" Infidel " is a term of reproach, which Christians
and Mahommedans, in their modesty, agree to
apply to those who differ from them. If he had
only thought of it, Dr. Wace might have used the
term "miscreant," which, with the same etymo- \
logical signification, has the advantage of being
still more " unpleasant " to the persons to whom
234 AGNOSTICISM VII
it is applied. But why should a man be expected
to call himself a " miscreant " or an " infidel " ?
That St. Patrick "had two birthdays because he
was a twin " is a reasonable and intelligible utter-
ance beside that of the man who should declare
himself to be an infidel, on the ground of denying
his own belief. It may be logically, if not ethi-
cally, defensible that a Christian should call a
Mahommedan an infidel and vice versd ; but, on
Dr. Wace's principles, both ought to call them-
selves infidels, because each applies the term to
the other.
Now I am afraid that all the Mahommedan world
would agree in reciprocating that appellation to
Dr. Wace himself. I once visited the Hazar
Mosque, the great University of Mahommedanism,
in Cairo, in ignorance of the fact that I was un-
provided with proper authority. A swarm of
angry undergraduates, as I suppose I ought to
call them, came buzzing about me and my guide ;
and if I had known Arabic, I suspect that " dog
of an infidel " would have been by no means the
most " unpleasant " of the epithets showered upon
me, before I could explain and apologise for the
mistake. If I had had the pleasure of Dr. Wace's
company on that occasion, the undiscriminative
followers of the Prophet would, I am afraid, have
made no difference between us ; not even if they
had known that he was the head of an orthodox
Christian seminary. And I have not the smallest
VII AGNOSTICISM 235
doubt that even one of the learned mollahs, if
his grave courtesy would have permitted him to
say anything offensive to men of another mode of
belief, would have told us that he wondered we
did not find it " very unpleasant " to disbelieve in
the Prophet of Islam.
From what precedes, I think it becomes suffi-
ciently clear that Dr. Wace's account of the origin
of the name of " Agnostic " is quite wrong. In-
deed, I am bound to add that very slight effort to
discover the truth would have convinced him that,
as a matter of fact, the term arose otherwise. I
am loath to go over an old story once more ; but
more than one object which I have in view will be
served by telling it a little more fully than it has
yet been told.
Looking back nearly fifty years, I see myself as
a boy, whose education has been interrupted, and
who, intellectually, was left, for some years, alto-
gether to his own devices. At that time, I was a
voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and
speculator of the first water, well endowed with
that splendid courage in attacking any and every
subject, which is the blessed compensation of
youth and inexperience. Among the books and
essays, on all sorts of topics from metaphysics to
heraldry, which I read at this time, two left indel-
ible impressions on my mind. One was Guizot's
" History of Civilisation," the other was Sir
William Hamilton's essay " On the Philosophy of
236 AGNOSTICISM VII
the Unconditioned/' which I came upon, by
chance, in an odd volume of the " Edinburgh
Review/' The latter was certainly strange reading
for a boy, and I could not possibly have under-
stood a great deal of it ; l nevertheless, I devoured
it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind the
strong conviction that, on even the most solemn
and important of questions, men are apt to take
cunning phrases for answers ; and that the limita-
tion of our faculties, in a great number of cases,
renders real answers to such questions, not merely
actually impossible, but theoretically inconceiv-
able.
Philosophy and history having laid hold of me
in this eccentric fashion, have never loosened their
grip. I have no pretension to be an expert in
either subject ; but the turn for philosophical and
historical reading, which rendered Hamilton and
Guizot attractive to me, has not only filled many
lawful leisure hours, and still more sleepless ones,
with the repose of changed mental occupation, but
has not unfrequently disputed my proper work -time
with my liege lady, N atural Science. In this way
I have found it possible to cover a good deal of
ground in the territory of philosophy ; and all the
more easily that I have never cared much about A's
1 Yet I must somehow have laid hold of the pith of the
matter, for, many years afterwards, when Dean Hansel's
Bampton Lectures were published, it seemed to me I already
knew all that this eminently agnostic thinker had to tell me.
VII AGNOSTICISM 237
or B's opinion's, but have rather sought to know
what answer he had to give to the questions I had
to put to him — that of the limitation of possible
knowledge being the chief. The ordinary exam-
iner, with his "State the views of So-and-so,"
would have floored me at any time. If he had
said what do you think about any given problem,
I might have got on fairly well.
The reader who has had the patience to follow
the enforced, but unwilling, egotism of this
veritable history (especially if his studies have led
him in the same direction), will now see why my
mind steadily gravitated towards the conclusions
of Hume and Kant, so well stated by the
latter in a sentence, which I have quoted else-
where.
" The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all
philosophy of pure reason is, after all, merely
negative, since it serves not as an organon for the
enlargement [of knowledge], but as a discipline for
its delimitation ; and, instead of discovering
truth, has only the modest merit of preventing
error." l
When I reached intellectual maturity and
began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a
theist, or a pantheist ; a materialist or an idealist ;
a Christian or a freethinker ; I found that the
more I learned and reflected, the less ready was
the answer ; until, at last, I came to the conclu-
1 Kritik der reinen Pernunft. Edit. Hartenstein, p. 256.
238 AGNOSTICISM VII
sion that I had neither art nor part with any of
these denominations, except the last. The one
thing in which most of these good people were
agreed was the one thing in which I differed from
them. They were quite sure they had attained a
certain "gnosis," — had, more or less successfully,
solved the problem of existence; while I was
quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong
conviction that the problem was insoluble. And,
with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not
think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that
opinion. Like Dante,
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
but, unlike Dante, I cannot add,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.
On the contrary, I had, and have, the firmest
conviction that I never left the " verace via " — the
straight road ; and that this road led nowhere else
but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled
forest. And though I have found leopards and
lions in the path ; though I have made abundant
acquaintance with the hungry wolf, that " with
privy paw devours apace and nothing said," as
another great poet says of the ravening beast; and
though no friendly spectre has even yet offered his
guidance, I was, and am, minded to go straight on,
until I either come out on the other side of the
VII
AGNOSTICISM 239
wood, or find there is no other side to it, at least,
none attainable by me.
This was my situation when I had the good
fortune to find a place among the members of that
remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since
deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Meta-
physicial Society. Every variety of philosophical
and theological opinion was represented there, and
expressed itself with entire openness ; most of my
colleages were -ists of one sort or another ; and,
however kind and friendly they might be, I, the
man without a rag of a label to cover himself with,
could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings
which must have beset the historical fox when,
after leaving the trap in which his tail remained,
he presented himself to his normally elongated
companions. So I took thought, and invented
what I conceived to be the appropriate title of
" agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively
antithetic to the " gnostic " of Church history, who
professed to know so much about the very things
of which I was ignorant ; and I took the earliest
opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show
that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To
my great satisfaction, the term took; and when
the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any
suspicion in the minds of respectable people, that
a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened
was, of course, completely lulled.
That is the history of the origin of the terms
131
240 AGNOSTICISM YII
" agnostic " and " agnosticism " ; and it will be ob-
served that it does not quite agree with the confi-
dent assertion of the reverend Principal of King's
College, that " the adoption of the term agnostic is
only an attempt to shift the issue, and that it in-
volves a mere evasion " in relation to the Church
and Christianity.1
The last objection (I rejoice as much as my
readers must do, that it is the last) which I have
to take to Dr. Wace's deliverance before the Church
Congress arises, I am sorry to say, on a question of
morality.
" It is, and it ought to be/' authoritatively de-
clares this official representative of Christian
ethics, " an unpleasant thing for a man to have
to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus
Christ" (l.c.p. 254).
Whether it is so depends, I imagine, a good deal
on whether the man was brought up in a Christian
household or not. I do not see why it should be
" unpleasant " for a Mahommedan or Buddhist to
say so. But that " it ought to be " unpleasant for
any man to say anything which he sincerely, and
after due deliberation, believes, is, to rny mind, a
proposition of the most profoundly immoral
character. I verily believe that the great good
which has been effected in the world by Christian-
ity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent
1 Report of the Church Congress, Manchester, 1888, p. 252.
VII
AGNOSTICISM 241
doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted,
that honest disbelief in their more or less astonish-
ing creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin of the
deepest dye, deserving and involving the same
future retribution as murder and robbery. If we
could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypoc-
risy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the viola-
tions of every obligation of humanity, which have
flowed from this source along the course of the
history of Christian nations, our worst imaginations
of Hell would pale beside the vision.
A thousand times, no ! It ought not to be un-
pleasant to say that which one honestly believes or
disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do
so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of man-
kind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty
of word or of deed, without erecting a sad con-
comitant of human weakness into something to be
admired and cherished. The bravest of soldiers
often, and very naturally, " feel it unpleasant " to
go into action ; but a court-martial which did its
duty would make short work of the officer who
promulgated the doctrine that his men ought to feel
their duty unpleasant.
I am very well aware, as I suppose most
thoughtful people are in these times, that the
process of breaking away from old beliefs is ex-
tremely unpleasant ; and I am much disposed to
think that the encouragement, the consolation, and
the peace afforded to earnest believers in even the
242 AGNOSTICISM vn
worst forms of Christianity are of great practical
advantage to them. What deductions must be
made from this gain on the score of the harm done
to the citizen by the ascetic other-worldliness of
logical Christianity ; to the ruler, by the hatred,
malice, and all. uncharitableness of sectarian
bigotry ; to the legislator, by the spirit of exclu-
siveness and domination of those that count them-
selves pillars of orthodoxy ; to the philosopher, by
the restraints on the freedom of learning and
teaching which every Church exercises, when it is
strong enough ; to the conscientious soul, by the
introspective hunting after sins of the mint and
cummin type, the fear of theological error, and the
overpowering terror of possible damnation, which
have accompanied the Churches like their shadow,
I need not now consider ; but they are assuredly
not small. If agnostics lose heavily on the one
side, they gain a good deal on the other. People
who talk about the t comforts of belief appear to
forget its discomforts ; they ignore the fact that
the Christianity of the Churches is something
more than faith in the ideal personality of Jesus,
which they create for themselves, plus so much as
can be carried into practice, without disorganising
civil society, of the maxims of the Sermon on the
Mount. Trip in morals or in doctrine (especially in
doctrine), without due repentance or retractation,
or fail to get properly baptized before you die, and
a plebiscite of the Christians of Europe, if they
VII AGNOSTICISM 243
were true to their creeds, would affirm your
everlasting damnation by an immense majority.
Preachers, orthodox and heterodox, din into our
ears that the world cannot get on without faith of
some sort. There is a sense in which that is as
eminently as obviously true ; there is another, in
which, in my judgment, it is as eminently as
obviously false, and it seems to me that the
hortatory, or pulpit, mind is apt to oscillate
between the false and the true meanings, without
being aware of the fact.
It is quite true that the ground of every one of
our actions, and the validity of all our reasonings,
rest upon the great act of faith, which leads us to
take the experience of the past as a safe guide in
our dealings with the present and the future.
From the nature of ratiocination, it is obvious that
the axioms, on which it is based, cannot be demon-
strated by ratiocination. It is also a trite obser-
vation that, in the business of life, we constantly
take the most serious action upon evidence of an
utterly insufficient character. But it is surely
plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to
dispense with ratiocination because ratiocination
cannot dispense with faith as a starting-point ;
and that because we are often obliged, by the
pressure of events, to act on very bad evidence, it
does not follow that it is proper to act on such
evidence when the pressure is absent.
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells
244 AGNOSTICISM
Vll
us that "faith is the assurance of things hoped
for, the proving of things not seen/' In the
authorised version, " substance " stands for
" assurance," and " evidence " for " proving,"
The question of the exact meaning of the two
words, vTrooraaL^ and 6X67^09, affords a fine field
of discussion for the scholar and the metaphysician.
But I fancy we shall be not far from the mark if
we take the writer to have had in his mind the
profound psychological truth, that men constantly
feel certain about things for which they strongly
hope, but have no evidence, in the legal or logical
sense of the word ; and he calls this feeling
" faith." I may have the most absolute faith that
a friend has not committed the crime of which he
is accused. In the early days of English history,
if my friend could have obtained a few more
compurgators of a like robust faith, he would have
been acquitted. At the present day, if I tendered
myself as a witness on that score, the judge would
tell me to stand down, and the youngest barrister
would smile at my simplicity. Miserable indeed
is the man who has not such faith in some of his
fellow-men — only less miserable than the man
who allows himself to forget that such faith is not,
strictly speaking, evidence ; and when his faith is
disappointed, as will happen now and again, turns
Timon and blames the universe for his own
blunders. And so, if a man can find a friend, the
hypostas's of all his hopes, the mirror of his
VII AGNOSTICISM 245
ethical ideal, in the Jesus of any, or all, of the
Gospels, let him live by faith in that ideal. Who
shall or can forbid him ? But let him not delude
himself with the notion that his faith is evidence
of the objective reality of that in which he trusts.
Such evidence is to be obtained only by the use
of the methods of science, as applied to history
and to literature, and it amounts at present to
very little.
It appears that Mr. Gladstone some time ago
asked Mr. Laing if he could draw up a short
summary of the negative creed ; a body of
negative propositions, which have so far been
adopted on the negative side as to *be what the
Apostles' and other accepted creeds are on the
positive ; and Mr. Laing at once kindly obliged
Mr. Gladstone with the desired articles — eight of
them.
If any one had preferred this request to me,
I should have replied that, if he referred to ag-
nostics, they have no creed ; and, by the nature of
the case, cannot have any. ^Agnosticism, in fact,
is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which
lies in the rigorous application of a single principle.!
That principle is of great antiquity ; it is as old as
Socrates ; as old as the writer who said, " Try all
things, hold fast by that which is good ; " it is the
foundation of the Reformation, which simply illus-
trated the axiom that every man should be able
246 AGNOSTICISM Vil
to give a reason for the faith that is in him ; it is
the great principle of Descartes ; it is the funda-
mental axiom of modern science. Positively the
principle may be expressed : In matters of the
intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take
you, without regard to any other consideration.
And negatively : In matters of the intellect do
not pretend that conclusions are certain which are
not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take
to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep
whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to
' look the universe in the face, whatever the future
may have in store for him.
The results of the working out of the agnostic
principle will vary according to individual know-
ledge and capacity, and according to the general
condition of science. That which is unproven to-
day may be proven by the help of new discoveries
to morrow. The only negative fixed points will
be those negations which flow from the demon-
strable limitation of our faculties. And the only
obligation accepted is to have the mind always
open to conviction. Agnostics who never fail in
carrying out their principles are, I am afraid, as
rare as other people of whom the same consistency
can be truthfully predicated. But, if you were to
moet with such a phoenix and to tell him that you
had discovered that two and two make five, he
would patiently ask you to state your reasons for
that conviction, and express his readiness to
VII AGNOSTICISM 247
agree with you if he found them satisfactory. The
apostolic injunction to " suffer fools gladly " should
be the rule of life of a true agnostic. I am deeply
conscious how far I myself fall short of this ideal,
but it is my personal conception of what agnostics
ought to be.
However, as I began by stating, I speak only
for myself; and I do not dream of anathematizing
and excommunicating Mr. Laing. But, when I
consider his creed and compare it with the
Athanasian, I think I have on the whole a
clearer conception of the meaning of the latter.
" Polarity," in Article VIII., for example, is a word
about which I heard a good deal in my youth,
when " Naturphilosophie " was in fashion, and
greatly did I suffer from it. For many years past,
whenever I have met with " polarity " anywhere
but in a discussion of some purely physical topic,
such as magnetism, I have shut the book. Mr.
Laing must excuse me if the force of habit was
too much for me when I read his eighth article.
And now, what is to be said to Mr. Harrison's
remarkable deliverance " On the future of agnos-
ticism " ? l I would that it were not my business
to say anything, for I am afraid I can say nothing
which shall manifest my great personal respect
for this able writer, and for the zeal and energy
with which he ever and anon galvanises the
1 Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1889.
248 AGNOSTICISM
VII
weakly frame of Positivism until it looks, more
than ever, like John Banyan's Pope and Pagan
rolled into one. There is a story often repeated,
and I am afraid none the less mythical on that
account, of a valiant and loud-voiced corporal in
command of two full privates who, falling in with
a regiment of the enemy in the dark, orders it to
surrender under pain of instant annihilation by
his force; and the enemy - surrenders accordingly.
I am always reminded of this tale when I read
the positivist commands to the forces of Chris-
tianity and of Science ; only the enemy show no
more signs of intending to obey now than they
have done any time these forty years.
The allocution under consideration has a
certain papal flavour. Mr. Harrison speaks
with authority and not as one of the com-
mon scribes of the period. He knows not only
what agnosticism is and how it has come about,
but what will become of it. The agnostic is
to content himself with being the precursor of
the positivist. In his place, as a sort of navvy
levelling the ground and cleansing it of such
poor stuff as Christianity, he is a useful creat-
ure who deserves patting on the back, on con-
dition that he does not venture beyond his
last. But let not these scientific Sanballats
presume that they are good enough to take part
in the building of the Temple — they are mere
Samaritans, doomed to die out in proportion as
VII
AGNOSTICISM 249
the Religion of Humanity is accepted by man-
kind. Well, if that is their fate, they have time
to be cheerful. But let us hear Mr. Harrison's
pronouncement of their doom.
"Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of
religion, an entirely negative stage, the point
reached by physicists, a purely mental conclusion,
with no relation to things social at all" (p. 154).
I am quite dazed by this declaration. Are there,
then, any " conclusions " that are not " purely
mental " ? Is there " no relation to things social "
in " mental conclusions " which affect men's
whole conception of life ? Was that prince of
agnostics, David Hume, particularly imbued with
physical science ? Supposing physical science
to be non-existent, would not the agnostic
principle, applied by the philologist and the
historian, lead to exactly the same results ? Is
the modern more or less complete suspension of
judgment as to the facts of the history of regal
Rome, or the real origin of the Homeric poems,
anything but agnosticism in history and in
literature ? And if so, how can agnosticism be
the " mere negation of the physicist " ?
" Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of
religion." No two people agree as to what is
meant by the term " religion " ; but if it means,
as I think it ought to mean, simply the reverence
and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to
realise that ideal in life, which every man ought
250 AGNOSTICISM
VII
to feel — then I say agnosticism has no more to do
with it than it has to do with music or painting.
If, on the other hand, Mr. Harrison, like most
people, means by " religion " theology, then, in my
judgment, agnosticism can be said to be a stage in
its evolution, only as death may be said to be
the final stage in the evolution of life.
"When agnostic logic is simply one of the canons of thought,
agnosticism, as a distinctive faith, will have spontaneously
disappeared (p. 155).
I can but marvel that such sentences as this,
and those already quoted, should have proceeded
from Mr. Harrison's pen. Does he really mean to
suggest that agnostics have a logic peculiar to
themselves ? Will he kindly help me out of my
bewilderment when I try to think of "logic"
being anything else than the canon (which, I
believe, means rule) of thought ? As to agnos-
ticism being a distinctive faith, I have already
shown that it cannot possibly be anything of the
kind, unless perfect faith in logic is distinctive of
agnostics ; which, after all, it may be.
Agnosticism as a religious philosophy per se rests on an almost
total ignoring of history and social evolution (p. 152).
But neither per se nor per aliud has agnosticism
(if I know anything about it) the least pretension
to be a religious philosophy ; so far from resting
on ignorance of history, and that social evolution
VII AGNOSTICISM 251
of which history is the account, it is and has
been the inevitable result of the strict adherence
to scientific methods by historical investigators.
Our forefathers were quite confident about the
existence of Romulus and Remus, of King Arthur,
and of Hengist and Horsa. Most of us have
become agnostics in regard to the reality of these
worthies. It is a matter of notoriety of which
Mr. Harrison, who accuses us all so freely of
ignoring history, should not be ignorant, that the
critical process which has shattered the founda-
tions of orthodox Christian doctrine owes its
origin, not to the devotees of physical science, but,
before all, to Richard Simon, the learned French
Oratorian, just two hundred years ago. I cannot
find evidence that either Simon, or any one of the
great scholars and critics of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries who have continued Simon's
work, had any particular acquaintance with
physical science. I have already pointed out
that Hume was independent of it. And certainly
one of the most potent influences in the same
direction, upon history in the present century, that
of Grote, did not come from the physical side.
Physical science, in fact, has had nothing directly
to do with the criticism of the Gospels ; it is
wholly incompetent to furnish demonstrative
evidence that any statement made in these his-
tories is untrue. Indeed, modern physiology can
find parallels in nature for events of apparently
252 AGNOSTICISM
VII
the most eminently supernatural kind recount-
ed in some of those histories.
It is a comfort to hear, upon Mr. Harrison's
authority, that the laws of physical nature show
no signs of becoming " less definite, less consistent,
or less popular as time goes on " (p. 154). How a
law of nature is to become indefinite, or " incon-
sistent," passes my poor powers of imagination.
But with universal suffrage and the coach-dog
theory of premiership in full view ; the theory, I
mean, that the whole duty of a political chief is
to look sharp for the way the social coach is
driving, and then run in front and bark loud — as
if being the leading noise-maker and guiding
were the same things — it is truly satisfactory to
me to know that the laws of nature are increasing
in popularity. Looking a,t recent developments
of the policy which is said to express the great
heart of the people, I have had my doubts of the
fact ; and my love for my fellow-countrymen has
led me to reflect, with dread, on what will happen
to them, if any of the laws of nature ever become
so unpopular in their eyes, as to be voted down by
the transcendent authority of universal suffrage.
If the legion of demons, before they set out on
their journey in the swine, had had time to hold
a meeting and to resolve unanimously " That the
law of gravitation is oppressive and ought to be
repealed," I am afraid it would have made no
sort of difference to the result, when their two
VII AGNOSTICISM 253
thousand unwilling porters were once launched
down the steep slopes of the fatal shore of
Gennesaret.
The question of the place of religion as an element of human
nature, as a force of human society, its origin, analysis, and
functions, has never been considered at all from an agnostic
point of view (p. 152).
I doubt not that Mr. Harrison knows vastly
more about history than I do ; in fact, he tells the
public that some of my friends and I have had
no opportunity of occupying ourselves with that
subject. I do not like to contradict any state-
ment which Mr. Harrison makes on his own
authority ; only, if I may be true to my agnostic
principles, I humbly ask how he has obtained
assurance on this head. I do not profess to know
anything about the range of Mr. Harrison's
studies ; but as he has thought it fitting to start
the subject, I may venture to point out that, on
evidence adduced, it might be equally permis-
sible to draw the conclusion that Mr. Harrison's
other labours have not allowed him to acquire
that acquaintance with the methods and results
of physical science, or with the history of philo-
sophy, or of philological and historical criticism,
which is essential to any one who desires to
obtain a right understanding of agnosticism.
Incompetence in philosophy, and in all branches
of science except mathematics, is the well-known
254» AGNOSTICISM
VII
mental characteristic of the founder of positivism.
Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality
in itself; the pity is that it not unfrequently leads
to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of
the strength of the master. It is only such
over-faithfulness which can account for a " strong
mind really saturated with the historical sense "
(p. 153) exhibiting the extraordinary forgetfulness
of the historical fact of the existence of David
Hume implied by the assertion that
it would be difficult to name a single known agnostic who has
given to history anything like the amount of thought and study
which he brings to a knowledge of the physical world (p. 153).
Whoso calls to mind what I may venture to
term the bright side of Christianity — that ideal of
manhood, with its strength and its patience, its
justice and its pity for human frailty, its helpful-
ness to the extremity of self-sacrifice, its ethical
purity and nobility, which apostles have pictured,
in which armies of martyrs have placed their
unshakable faith, and whence obscure men and
women, like Catherine of Sienna and John Knox,
have derived the courage to rebuke popes and
kings — is not likely to underrate the importance
of the Christian faith as a factor in human
history, or to doubt that if that faith should prove
to be incompatible with our knowledge, or neces-
sary want of knowledge, some other hypostasis of
men's hopes, genuine enough and worthy enough
VII AGNOSTICISM 255
to replace it, will arise. But that the incongruous
mixture of bad science with eviscerated papistry,
out of which Comte manufactured the positivist
religion, will be the heir of the Christian ages,
I have too much respect for the humanity of the
future to believe. Charles the Second told his
brother, " They will not kill me, James, to make
you king." And if critical science is remorselessly
destroying the historical foundations of the noblest
ideal of humanity which mankind have yet wor-
shipped, it is little likely to permit the pitiful
reality to climb into the vacant shrine.
That a man should determine to devote him-
self to the service of humanity — including
intellectual and moral self-culture under that
name ; that this should be, in the proper sense of
the word, his religion — is not only an intelligible,
but, I think, a laudable resolution. And I am
reatly disposed to believe that it is the only
religion which will prove itself to be unassailably
acceptable so long as the human race endures.
But when the Comtist asks me to worship
"Humanity" — that is to say, to adore the
generalised conception of men as they ever have
been and probably ever will be — I must reply
that I could just as soon bow down and worship
the generalised conception of a "wilderness of
apes." ' Surely we are not going back to the days
of Paganism, when individual men were deified,
and the hard good sense of a dying Vespasian
132
256 AGNOSTICISM VII
could prompt the bitter jest, "Ut puto Dens fio."
No divinity doth hedge a modern man, be he
even a sovereign ruler. Nor is there any one,
except a municipal magistrate, who is officially
declared worshipful. But if there is no spark of
worship-worthy divinity in the individual twigs
of humanity, whence comes that godlike splen-
dour which the Moses of Positivism fondly
imagines to pervade the whole bush?
I know no study which is so unutterably sad-
dening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it
is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the
darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the
marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He
is a brute, only more intelligent than the other
brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often
as not lead him to destruction ; a victim to
endless illusions, which make his mental existence
a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life
with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain
degree of physical comfort, and develops a more or
less workable theory of life, in such favourable
situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of
Egypt, and then, for thousands and thousands of
years, struggles, with varying fortunes, attended by
infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to
maintain himself at this point against the greed
and the ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a
point of killing and otherwise persecuting all
those who first try to get him to move on ; and ,
VII
AGNOSTICISM 257
when he has moved on a step, foolishly confers
post-mortem deification on his victims. He ex-
actly repeats the process with all who want to
move a step yet farther. And the best men of
the best epochs are simply those who make the
fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
That one should rejoice in the good man,
forgive the bad man, and pity and help all men to
the best of one's ability, is surely indisputable. It
is the glory of Judaism and of Christianity to have
proclaimed this truth, through all their aberra-
tions. But the worship of a God who needs
forgiveness and help, and deserves pity every
hour of his existence, is no better than that of
any other voluntarily selected fetish. The
Emperor Julian's project was hopeful in com-
parison with the prospects of the Comtist
Anthropolatry.
When the historian of religion in the twentieth
century is writing about the nineteenth, I foresee
he will say something of this kind :
The most curious and instructive events in the
religious history of the preceding century are the
rise and progress of two new sects called Mormons
and Positivists. To the student who has carefully
considered these remarkable phenomena nothing
in the records of religious self-delusion can appear
improbable.
The Mormons arose in the midst of the great
258 AGNOSTICISM vii
Republic, which, though comparatively insignifi-
cant, at that time, in territory as in the number of
its citizens, was (as we know from the fragments
of the speeches of its orators which have come
down to us) no less remarkable for the native
intelligence of its population than for the wide
extent of their information, owing to the activity
of their publishers in diffusing all that they could
invent, beg, borrow, or steal. Nor were they less
noted for their perfect freedom from all restraints
in thought, or speech, or deed ; except, to be sure,
the beneficent and wise influence of the majority,
exerted, in case of need, through an institution
known as " tarring and feathering/' the exact
nature of which is now disputed.
There is a complete consensus of testimony that
the founder of Mormonism, one Joseph Smith, was
a low-minded, ignorant scamp, and that he stole
the " Scriptures " which he propounded ; not being
clever enough to forge even such contemptible stuff
as they contain. Nevertheless he must have been
a man of some force of character, for a considerable
number of disciples soon gathered about him. In
spite of repeated outbursts of popular hatred and
violence — during one of which persecutions Smith
was brutally murdered — the Mormon body steadily
increased, and became a flourishing community.
But the Mormon practices being objectionable to
the majority, they were, more than once, without
any pretence of law, but by force of riot, arson, and
VII AGNOSTICISM 259
murder, driven away from the land they had
occupied. Harried by these persecutions, the
Mormon body eventually committed itself to the
tender mercies of a desert as barren as that of
Sinai ; and after terrible sufferings and privations,
reached the Oasis of Utah. Here it grew and
flourished, sending out missionaries to, and receiv-
ing converts from, all parts of Europe, sometimes
to the number of 10,000 in a year; until, in 1880,
the rich and flourishing community numbered
110,000 souls in Utah alone, while there were
probably 30,000 or 40,000 scattered abroad else-
where. In the whole history of religions there is
no more remarkable example of the power of faith ;
and, in this case, the founder of that faith was
indubitably a most despicable creature. It is
interesting to observe that the course taken by the
great Republic and its citizens runs exactly parallel
with that taken by the Roman Empire and its
citizens towards the early Christians, except that
the Romans had a certain legal excuse for their
acts of violence, inasmuch as the Christian
" sodalitia " were not licensed, and consequently
were, ipso facto, illegal assemblages. Until, in the
latter part of the nineteenth century, the United
States legislature decreed the illegality of poly-
gamy, the Mormons were wholly within the law.
Nothing can present a greater contrast to all
this than the history of the Positivists. This sect
arose much about the same time as that of the
260 AGNOSTICISM VII
Mormons, in the tipper and most instructed
stratum of the quick-witted, sceptical population
of Paris. The founder, Auguste Comte, was a
teacher of mathematics, but of no eminence in
that department of knowledge, and with nothing
but an amateur's acquaintance with physical,
chemical, and biological science. His works are
repulsive, on account of the dull diffuseness of
their style, and a certain air, as of a superior
person, which characterises them ; but nevertheless
they contain good things here and there. It
would take too much space to reproduce in detail
a system which proposes to regulate all human
life by the promulgation of a Gentile Leviticus.
Suffice it to say, that M. Comte may be described
as a syncretic, who, like the Gnostics of early
Church history, attempted to combine the sub-
stance of imperfectly comprehended contemporary
science with the form of Roman Christianity. It
may be that this is the reason why his disciples
were so very angry with some obscure people
called Agnostics, whose views, if we may judge by
the account left in the works of a great Positivist
controversial writer, were very absurd.
To put the matter briefly, M. Comte, finding
Christianity and Science at daggers drawn, seems
to have said to Science, "You find Christianity
rotten at the core, do you ? Well, I will scoop
out the inside of it." And to Romanism : " You
find Science mere dry light — cold and bare
VII
AGNOSTICISM 261
Well, I will put your shell over it, and so, as
schoolboys make a spectre out of a turnip and a
tallow candle, behold the new religion of Humanity
complete ! "
Unfortunately neither the Romanists, nor the
people who were something more than amateurs
in science, could be got to worship M. Comte's
new idol properly. In the native country of
Positivism, one distinguished man of letters and
one of science, for a time, helped to make up a
roomful of the faithful, but their love soon grew
cold. In England, on the other hand, there ap-
pears to be little doubt that, in the ninth decade
of the century, the multitude of disciples reached
the grand total of several score. They had the
advantage of the advocacy of one or two most
eloquent and learned apostles, and, at any rate,
the sympathy of several persons of light and
leading ; and, if they were not seen, they were
heard, all over the world. On the other hand, as
a sect, they laboured under the prodigious
disadvantage of being refined, estimable people,
living in the midst of the worn-out civilisation of
the old world ; where any one who had tried to
persecute them, as the Mormons were persecuted,
would have been instantly hanged. But the
majority never dreamed of persecuting them ; on
the contrary, they were rather given to scold and
otherwise try the patience of the majority.
The history of these sects in the closing years
262 AGNOSTICISM VII
of the century is highly instructive. Mormon-
ism ....
But I find I have suddenly slipped off Mr.
Harrison's tripod, which I had borrowed for the
occasion. The fact is, I am not equal to the
prophetical business, and ought not to have
undertaken it.
[It did not occur to me, while writing the
latter part of this essay, that it could be needful
to disclaim the intention of putting the religious
system of Comte on a level with Mormonism.
And I was unaware of the fact that Mr. Harrison
rejects the greater part of the Positivist Religion,
as taught by Comte. I have, therefore, erased
one or two passages, which implied his adherence
to the " Religion of Humanity " as developed by
Comte, 1893.]
VIII
AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER
[1889.]
THOSE who passed from Dr. Wace's article in the
last number of the " Nineteenth Century " to the
anticipatory confutation of it which followed in
"The New Reformation," must have enjoyed the
pleasure of a dramatic surprise — just as when the
fifth act of a new play proves unexpectedly bright
and interesting. Mrs. Ward will, I hope, pardon
the comparison, if I say that her effective clearing
away of antiquated incumbrances from the lists of
the controversy, reminds me of nothing so much
as of the action of some neat-handed, but strong-
wristed, Phyllis, who, gracefully wielding her
long-handled " Turk's head," sweeps away the
accumulated results of the toil of generations of
spiders. I am the more indebted to this luminous
sketch of the results of critical investigation, as it
is carried out among those theologians who are
men of science and not mere counsel for creeds,
264 AGNOSTICISM: A KEJOINDER vm
since it has relieved me from the necessity of
dealing with the greater part of Dr. Wace's
polemic, and enables me to devote more space to
the really important issues which have been
raised.1
Perhaps, however, it may be well for me to
observe that approbation of the manner in which
a great biblical scholar, for instance, Keuss, does
his work does not commit me to the adoption of
all, or indeed any of his views ; and, further, that
the disagreements of a series of investigators do
not in any way interfere with the fact that each
of them has made important contributions to the
body of truth ultimately established. If I cite
Buffon, Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Cuvier, as having
each and all taken a leading share in building up
modern biology, the statement that ev^ ry one of
these great naturalists disagreed with, and even
more or less contradicted, all the rest is quite
true ; but the supposition that the latter assertion
is in any way inconsistent with the former, would
betray a strange ignorance of the manner in which
all true science advances.
Dr. Wace takes a great deal of trouble to make
it appear that I have desired to evade the real
questions raised by his attack upon me at the
1 I may perhaps return to the question of the authorship of
the Gospels. For the present I must content myself vvith
warning my readers against any reliance upon Dr. Wace's state-
ments as to the results arrived at by modern criticism. They
are as gravely as surprisingly erroneous.
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 265
Church Congress. I assure the reverend Principal
that in this, as in some other respects, he has
entertained a very erroneous conception of my
intentions. Things would assume more accurate
proportions in Dr. W ace's mind, if he would
kindly remember that it is just thirty years since
ecclesiastical thunderbolts began to fly about my
ears. I have had the " Lion and the Bear " to
deal with, and it is long since I got quite used to
the threatenings of episcopal Goliaths, whose
croziers were like unto a weaver's beam. So that
I almost think I might not have noticed Dr.
Wace's attack, personal as it was ; and although,
as he is good enough to tell us, separate copies
are to be had for the modest equivalent of twopence,
as a matter of fact, it did not come under my
notice for a long time after it was made. May I
further venture to point out that (reckoning post-
age) the expenditure of twopence-halfpenny, or, at
the most, threepence, would have enabled Dr.
Wace so far to comply with ordinary conventions,
as to direct my attention to the fact that he had
attacked me before a meeting at which I was not
present ? I really am not responsible for the five
months' neglect of which Dr. Wace complains.
Singularly enough, the Eriglishry who swarmed
about the Engadine, during the three months
that I was being brought back to life by the
glorious air and perfect comfort of the Maloja, did
not, in my hearing, say anything about the
266 AGNOSTICISM: A EEJOINDER vill
important events which had taken place at the
Church Congress ; and I think I can venture to
affirm that there was not a single copy of Dr.
Wace's pamphlet in any of the hotel libraries
which I rummaged, in search of something more
edifying than dull English or questionable French
novels.
And now, having, as I hope, set myself right
with the public as regards the sins of commission
and omission with which I have been charged, I
feel free to deal with matters to which time and
type may be more profitably devoted.
I believe that there is not a solitary argument
I have used, or that I am about to use, which is
original, or has anything to do with the fact that
I have been chiefly occupied with natural science.
They are all, facts and reasoning alike, either
identical with, or consequential upon, propositions
which are to be found in the works of scholars
and theologians of the highest repute in the only
two countries, Holland and Germany,1 in which,
at the present time, professors of theology are to
be found, whose tenure of their posts does not
depend upon the results to which their inquiries
lead them.2 It is true that, to the best of my
1 The United States ought, perhaps, to be added, but I am
not sure.
2 Imagine that all our chairs of Astronomy had been founded
in the fourteenth century, and that their incumbents were bound
to sign Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with every respect for
the efforts of persons thus hampered to attain and expound the
\II1 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 267
ability, I have satisfied myself of the soundness of
the foundations on which my arguments are built,
and I desire to be held fully responsible for
everything I say. But, nevertheless, my position
is really no more than that of an expositor ; and
my justification for undertaking it is simply that
conviction of the supremacy of private judgment
(indeed, of the impossibility of escaping it) which
is the foundation of the Protestant Reformation,
and which was the doctrine accepted by the vast
majority of the Anglicans of my youth, before
that backsliding towards the " beggarly rudi-
ments " of an effete and idolatrous sacerdotalism
which has, even now, provided us with the saddest
spectacle which has been offered to the eyes of
Englishmen in this generation. A high court of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with a host of great
lawyers in battle array, is and, for Heaven knows
how long, will be, occupied with these very
questions of " washing of cups and pots and brazen
vessels," which the Master, whose professed
truth, I think men of common sense would go elsewhere to leavn
astronomy. Zeller's Vortrdge und Abhandlungc.n were published
and came into my hands a quarter of a century ago. The
writer's rank, as a theologian to begin with, and subsequently
as a historian of Greek philosophy, is of the highest. Among
these essays are two— Das Urchristenthum and Die Tubiuger
historische Schule — which are likely to be of more use to those
who wish to know the real state of the case than all that the
official "apologists," with their one eye on truth and the other
on the tenets of their sect, have written. For the opinion of a
scientific theologian about theologians of this stamp see pp. 225
and 227 of the Vortrage.
2G8 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER viil
representatives are rending the Church over these
squabbles, had in his mind when, as we are told,
he uttered the scathing rebuke : —
Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
This people honoureth me with their lips,
But their heart is far from me.
But in vain do they worship me,
Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.
(Markvii. 6-7.)
Men who can be absorbed in bickerings over
miserable disputes of this kind can have but little
sympathy with the old evangelical doctrine of the
" open Bible/' or anything but a grave misgiving
of the results of diligent reading of the Bible,
without the help of ecclesiastical spectacles, by
the mass of the people. Greatly to the surprise
of many of my friends, I have always advocated
the reading of the Bible, and the diffusion of the
study of that most remarkable collection of books
among the people. Its teachings are so infinitely
superior to those of the sects, who are just as busy
now as the Pharisees were eighteen hundred years
ago, in smothering them under " the precepts of
men " ; it is so certain, to my mind, that the Bible
contains within itself the refutation of nine-tenths
of the mixture of sophistical metaphysics and
old-world superstition which has been piled round
it by the so-called Christians of later times ; it is
BO clear that the only immediate and ready
antidote to the poison which has been mixed with
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 269
Christianity, to the intoxication and delusion of
mankind, lies in copious draughts from the
undefiled spring, that I exercise the right and
duty of^free judgment on the part of every man,
mainly for the purpose of inducing other ]aymen
to follow my example. If the New Testament
is translated into Zulu by Protestant missionaries,
it must be assumed that a Zulu convert is compe-
tent to draw from its contents all the truths which
it is necessary for him to believe. I trust that I
may, without immodesty, claim to be put on the
same footing as a Zulu.
The most constant reproach which is launched
against persons of my way of thinking is that it is
all very well for us to talk about the deductions
of scientific thought, but what are the poor and
the uneducated to do ? Has it ever occurred ~to
those who talk in this fashion, that their creeds
and the articles of their several confessions, their
determination of the exact nature and extent of
the teachings of Jesus, their expositions of the
real meaning of that which is written in the
Epistles (to leave aside all questions concerning
the Old Testament), are nothing more than
deductions which, at any rate, profess to be the
result of strictly scientific thinking, and which are
not worth attending to unless they really possess
that character ? If it is not historically true that
such and such things happened in Palestine
eighteen centuries ago, what becomes of Chris-
270 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vill
tianity ? And what is historical truth but that of
which the evidence bears strict scientific investi-
gation ? I do not call to mind any problem of
natural science which has come under my notice
which is more difficult, or more curiously
interesting as a mere problem, than that of the
origin of the Synoptic Gospels and that of the
historical value of the narratives which they
contain. The Christianity of the Churches stands
or falls by the results of the purely scientific
investigation of these questions. They were first
taken up, in a purely scientific spirit, about a
century ago ; they have been studied over and
over again by men of vast knowledge and critical
acumen ; but he would be a rash man who should
assert that any solution of these problems, as yet
formulated, is exhaustive. The most that can be
said is that certain prevalent solutions are
certainly false, while others are more or less
probably true.
If I am doing my best to rouse my countrymen
out of their dogmatic slumbers, it is not that they
may be amused by seeing who gets the best of it
in a contest between a " scientist " and a theolo-
gian. The serious question is whether theological
men of science, or theological special pleaders, are
to have the confidence of the general public;
it is the question whether a country in which it is
possible for a body of excellent clerical and lay
gentlemen to discuss, in public meeting assembled,
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 271
now much it is desirable to let the congregations
of the faithful know of the results of biblical,
criticism, is likely to wake up with anything short
of the grasp of a rough lay hand upon its
shoulder; it is the question whether the New
Testament books, being, as I believe they were,
written and compiled by people who, according to
their lights, were perfectly sincere, will not, when
properly studied as ordinary historical documents,
afford us the means of self-criticism. And it must
be remembered that the New Testament books
are not responsible for the doctrine invented by
the Churches that they are anything but ordinary
historical documents. The author of the third
gospel tells us, as straightforwardly as a man can,
that he has no claim to any other character than
that of an ordinary compiler and editor, who had
before him the works of many and variously
qualified predecessors.
In my former papers, according to Dr. Wace, I
have evaded giving an answer to his main propo-
sition, which he states as follows —
Apart from all disputed points of criticism, no one practically
doubts that our Lord lived, and that He died on the cross, in
the most intense sense of filial relation to His Father in Heaven,
and that Ha bore testimony to that Father's providence, love,
and grace towards mankind. The Lord's Prayer affords a
sufficient evidence on these points. If the Sermon on the Mount
alone be added, the whole unseen world, of which the Agnostic
refuses to know anything, stands unveiled before us. ... If
133
272 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER VTTT
Jesus Christ preached that Sermon, made those promises, and
taught that prayer, then any one who says that we know nothing
of God, or of a future life, or of an unseen world, says that he
does not believe Jesus Christ (pp. 354-355).
Again —
The main question at issue, in a word, is one which Pro-
fessor Huxley has chosen to leave entirely on one side— whether,
namely, allowing for the utmost uncertainty on other points of
the criticism to which he appeals, there is any reasonable doubt
that the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount afford a
true account of our Lord's essential belief and cardinal teaching
(p. 355).
I certainly was not aware that I had evaded the
questions here stated ; indeed I should say that I
have indicated my reply to them pretty clearly ;
but, as Dr. Wace wants a plainer answer, he shall
certainly be gratified. If, as Dr. Wace declares it
is, his " whole case is involved in " the argument
as stated in the latter of these two extracts, so
much the worse for his whole case. For I am of
opinion that there is the gravest reason for
doubting whether the " Sermon on the Mount "
was ever preached, and whether the so-called
"Lord's Prayer" was ever prayed, by Jesus of
Nazareth. My reasons for this opinion are, among
others, these : — There is now no doubt that the
three Synoptic Gospels, so far from being the work
of three independent writers, are closely inter-
dependent,1 and that in one of two ways. Either
1 I suppose this is what Dr. Wace is thinking about when he
says that I allege that there "is no visible escape " from the
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 273
all three contain, as their foundation, versions, to
a large extent verbally identical, of one and the
same tradition ; or two of them are thus closely
dependent on the third ; and the opinion of the
majority of the best critics has of late years more
and more converged towards the conviction that
our canonical second gospel (the so-called "Mark's"
Gospel) is that which most closely represents the
primitive groundwork of the three.1 That I take
to be one of the most valuable results of New
Testament criticism, of immeasurably greater im-
portance than the discussion about dates and
authorship.
But if, as I believe to be the case, beyond any
rational doubt or dispute, the second gospel is the
nearest extant representative of the oldest tradi-
tion, whether written or oral, how comes it that it
supposition of an Ur-Marcus (p. 367). That a "theologian of
repute " should confound an indisputable fact with one of the
modes of explaining that fact is not so singular as those who are
unaccustomed to the ways of theologians might imagine.
1 Any examiner whose duty it has been to examine into a case
of "copying" will be particularly well prepared to appreciate
the force of the case stated in that most excellent little book,
The Common Tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, by Dr. Abbott
and Mr. Rushbrooke (Macmillan, 1884). To those who have not
passed through such painful experiences I may recommend the
brief discussion of the genuineness of the " Casket Letters " in my
friend Mr. Skelton's interesting book, Maitland of Lethington.
The second edition of Holtzmann's Lehrbuch, published in 1886,
gives a remarkably fair and full account of the present results of
.criticism. At p. 366 he writes that the present burning question
is whether the "relatively primitive narrative and the root of
the other synoptic texts is contained in Matthew or in Mark.
It is only on this point that properly-informed (sachkundige)
critics differ," and he decides in favour of Mark.
274 AGNOSTICISM: A EEJOINDER vm
contains neither the " Sermon on the Mount " nor
the " Lord's Prayer," those typical embodiments,
according to Dr. Wace, of the " essential belief and
cardinal teaching " of Jesus ? Not only does
" Mark's " gospel fail to contain the " Sermon on
the Mount," or anything but a very few of the
sayings contained in that collection; but, at the
point of the history of Jesus where the " Sermon "
occurs in " Matthew/' there is in " Mark " an
apparently unbroken narrative from the calling of
James and John to the healing of Simon's wife's
mother. Thus the oldest tradition not only ignores
the " Sermon on the Mount," but, by implication,
raises a probability against its being delivered
when and where the later " Matthew " inserts it in
his compilation.
And still more weighty is the fact that the third
gospel, the author of which tells us that he wrote
after " many " others had " taken in hand " the
same enterprise; who should therefore have known
the first gospel (if it existed), and was bound to
pay to it the deference due to the work of an
apostolic eye-witness (if he had any reason for
thinking it was so) — this writer, who exhibits far
more literary competence than the other two,
ignores any " Sermon on the Mount," such as that
reported by " Matthew," just as much as the oldest
authority does. Yet " Luke " has a great many
passages identical, or parallel, with those in
" Matthew's " " Sermon on the Mount," which are,
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 275
for the most part, scattered about in a totally
different connection.
Interposed, however, between the nomination of
the Apostles and a visit to Capernaum ; occupying,
therefore, a place which answers to that of the
" Sermon on the Mount," in the first gospel, there
is, in the third gospel a discourse which is as closely
similar to the " Sermon in the Mount," in some
particulars, as it is widely unlike it in others.
This discourse is said to have been delivered in
a " plain " or " level place " (Luke vi. 17), and by
way of distinction we may call it the " Sermon on
the Plain."
I see no reason to doubt that the two Evan-
gelists are dealing, to a considerable extent, with
the same traditional material ; and a comparison
of the two " Sermons " suggests very strongly that
" Luke's " version is the earlier. The correspond-
dences between the two forbid the notion that
they are independent. They both begin with a
series of blessings, some of which are almost
verbally identical. In the middle of each (Luke
vi. 27-38, Matt. v. 43-48) there is a striking expo-
sition of the ethical spirit of the command given
in Leviticus xix. 18. And each ends with a pas-
sage containing the declaration that a tree is to be
known by its fruit, and the parable of the house
built on the sand. But while there are only 29
verses in the " Sermon on the Plain " there are
107 in the " Sermon on the Mount " ; the excess
in length of the latter being chiefly due to the
276 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vill
long interpolations, one of 30 verses before and
one of 34 verses after, the middlemost parallelism
with Luke. Under these circumstances it is quite
impossible to admit that there is more probability
that " Matthew's " version of the Sermon is histori-
cally accurate, than there is that Luke's version is
so ; and they cannot both be accurate.
" Luke " either knew the collection of loosely-
connected and aphoristic utterances which appear
under the name of the ' " Sermon on the Mount "
in " Matthew " ; or he did not. If he did not, he
must have been ignorant of the existence of such
a document as our canonical " Matthew/' a fact
which does not make for the genuineness, or the
authority, of that book. If he did, he has shown
that he does not care for its authority on a matter
of fact of no small importance ; and that does not
permit us to conceive that he believed the first gospel
to be the work of an authority to whom he ought
to defer, let alone that of an apostolic eye-
witness.
The tradition of the Church about the second
gospel, which I believe to be quite worthless, but
which is all the evidence there is for " Mark's "
authorship, would have us believe that " Mark "
was little more than the mouthpiece of the apostle
Peter. Consequently, we are to suppose that
Peter either did not know, or did not care very
much for, that account , of the "essential belief
and cardinal teaching " of Jesus which is con-
tained in the Sermon on the Mount ; and, certainly,
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 277
he could not have shared Dr. Wace's view of its
importance.1
I thought that all fairly attentive and intelligent
students of the gospels, to say nothing of theo-
logians of reputation, knew these things. But
how can any one who does know them have the
conscience to ask whether there is " any reason-
able doubt" that the Sermon on the Mount
was preached by Jesus of Nazareth ? If conjecture
is permissible, where nothing else is possible,
the most probable conjecture seems to be that
" Matthew," having a cento of sayings attributed —
rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say — to Jesus
among his materials, thought they were, or might
be, records of a continuous discourse, and put them
in at the place he thought likeliest. Ancient his-
torians of the highest character saw no harm in
composing long speeches which never were spoken,
and putting them into the mouths of statesmen
and warriors ; and I presume that whoever is re-
presented by " Matthew " would have been griev-
ously astonished to find that any one objected to
his following the example of the best models
accessible to him.
1 Holtzmann (Die synoptischen Evangelicn, 1863, p. 75),
following Ewald, argues that the ' Source A " ( = the threefold
tradition, more or less) contained something that answered to
the * c Sermon on the Plain " immediately after the words of our
present Mark, "And he cometh into a house" (iii. 19). But
what conceivable motive could "Mark" have for omitting it ?
Holtzmami has no doubt, however, that the "Sermon on the
Mount" is a compilation, or, as he calls it in his recently-
published Lehrbuch (p. 372), "an artificial mosaic work."
278 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vm
So with the "Lord's Prayer." Absent in our
representative of the oldest tradition, it appears
in both " Matthew " and " Luke." There is reason
to believe that every pious Jew, at the commence-
ment of our era, prayed three times a day,
according to a formula which is embodied in the
present " Schmone-Esre " l of the Jewish prayer-
book. Jesus, who was assuredly, in all respects, a
pious Jew, whatever else he may have been,
doubtless did the same. Whether he modified
the current formula, or whether the so-called
" Lord's Prayer " is the prayer substituted for the
" Schmone-Esre " in the congregations of the Gen-
tiles, is a question which can hardly be answered.
In a subsequent passage of Dr. Wace's article
(p. 356) he adds to the list of the verities which
he imagines to be unassailable, "The Story of the
Passion." I am not quite sure what he means by
this. I am not aware that any one (with the
exception of certain ancient heretics) has pro-
pounded doubts as to the reality of the crucifixion ;
and certainly I have no inclination to argue about
the precise accuracy of every detail of that
pathetic story of suffering and wrong. But, if
Dr. Wace means, as I suppose he does, that that
which, according to the orthodox view, happened
after the crucifixion, and which is, in a dogmatic
sense, the most important part of the story, is
1 See Schiirer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes, Zweiter Theil,
p. 384.
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A KEJOINDER 279
founded on solid historical proofs, I must beg leave
to express a diametrically opposite conviction.
What do we find when the accounts of the
events in question, contained in the three Synoptic
gospels, are compared together? In the oldest,
there is a simple, straightforward statement which,
for anything that I have to urge to the contrary,
may be exactly true. In the other two, there is,
round this possible and probable nucleus, a mass
of accretions of the most questionable character.
The cruelty of -death by crucifixion depended
very much upon its lingering character. If there
were a support for the weight of the body, as not
unfrequently was the practice, the pain during
the first hours of the infliction was not, necessarily,
extreme ; nor need any serious physical symptoms,
at once, arise from the wounds made by the nails
in the hands and feet, supposing they were nailed,
which was not invariably the case. When
exhaustion set in, and hunger, thirst, and nervous
irritation had done their work, the agony of the
sufferer must have been terrible ; and the more
terrible that, in the absence of any effectual
disturbance of the machinery of physical life, it
might, be prolonged for many hours, or even days.
Temperate, strong men, such as were the ordinary
Galilean peasants, might live for several days on
the cross. It is necessary to bear these facts in
mind when we read the account contained in the
fifteenth chapter of the second gospel.
280 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vill
Jesus was crucified at the third hour (xv. 25),
and the narrative seems to imply that he died
immediately after the ninth hour (v. 34). In this
case, he would have been crucified only six hours ;
and the time spent on the cross cannot have been
much longer, because Joseph of Arimathsea must
have gone to Pilate, made his preparations, and
deposited the body in the rock-cut tomb before
sunset, which, at that time of the year, was about
the twelfth hour. That any one should die after
only six hours' crucifixion could not have been at
all in accordance with Pilate's large experience of
the effects of that method of punishment. It,
therefore, quite agrees with what might be ex-
pected, that Pilate " marvelled if he were already
dead " and required to be satisfied on this point
by the testimony of the Roman officer who was in
command of the execution party. Those who
have paid attention to the extraordinarily difficult
question, What are the indisputable signs of
death ? — will be able to estimate the value of the
opinion of a rough soldier on such a subject;
even if his report to the Procurator were in no wise
affected by the fact that the friend of Jesus, who
anxiously awaited his answer, was a man of
influence and of wealth.
The inanimate body, wrapped in linen, was
deposited in a spacious,1 cool rock chamber, the
1 Spacious, because a young man could sit in it "on the right
side " (xv. 5), and therefore with plenty of room to spare.
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 281
entrance of which was closed, not by a well-fitting
door, but by a stone rolled against the opening,
which would of course allow free passage of air.
A little more than thirty-six hours afterwards
(Friday 6 P.M., to Sunday 6 A.M., or a little after)
three women visit the tomb and find it empty.
And they are told by a young man " arrayed in a
white robe" that Jesus is gone to his native
country of Galilee, and that the disciples and Peter
will find him there.
Thus it stands, plainly recorded, in the oldest
tradition that, for any evidence to the contrary,
the sepulchre may have been emptied at any time
during the Friday or Saturday nights. If it is
said that no Jew would have violated the Sabbath
by taking the former course, it is to be recollected
that Joseph of Arimathsea might well be familiar
with that wise and liberal interpretation of the
fourth commandment, which permitted works of
mercy to men — nay, even the drawing of an ox or
an ass out of a pit — on the Sabbath. At any
rate, the Saturday night was free to the most
scrupulous of observers of the Law.
These are the facts of the case as stated ty the
oldest extant narrative of them. I do not see why
any one should have a word to say against the
inherent probability of that narrative ; and, for my
part, I am quite ready to accept it as an historical
fact, that so much and no more is positively known
of the end of Jesus of Nazareth. On what
282 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vm
grounds can a reasonable man be asked to believe
any more ? So far as the narrative in the first
gospel, on the one hand, and those in the third
gospel and the Acts, on the other, go beyond what
is stated in the second gospel, they are hopelessly
discrepant with one another. And this is the more
significant because the pregnant phrase "some
doubted/' in the first gospel, is ignored in the
third.
But it is said that we have the witness Paul
speaking to us directly in the Epistles. There is
little doubt that we have, and a very singular
witness he is. According to his own showing,
Paul, in the vigour of his manhood, with every
means of becoming acquainted, at first hand, with
the evidence of eye-witnesses, not merely refused
to credit them, but " persecuted the church of God
and made havoc of it." The reasoning of Stephen
fell dead upon the acute intellect of this zealot for
the traditions of his fathers : his eyes were blind
to the ecstatic illumination of the martyr's
countenance " as it had been the face of an
angel ; " and when, at the words " Behold, I see
the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing
on the right hand of God/' the murderous mob
rushed upon and stoned the rapt disciple of Jesus,
Paul ostentatiously made himself their official
accomplice.
Yet this strange man, because he has a vision
one day, at once, and with equally headlong zeal,
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 283
flies to the opposite pole of opinion. And he is
most careful to tell us tha^t he abstained from any
re-examination of the facts.
Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood ; neither
went I up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me ;
but I went away into Arabia. (Galatians i. 16, 17.)
I do not presume to quarrel with Paul's
procedure. If it satisfied him, that was his affair ;
and, if it satisfies anyone else, I am not called upon
to dispute the right of that person to be satisfied.
But I certainly have the right to say that it would
not satisfy me, in like case ; that I should be very
much ashamed to pretend that it could, or ought
to, satisfy me ; and that I can entertain but a very
low estimate of the value of the evidence of people
who are to be satisfied in this fashion, when
questions of objective fact, in which their faith is
interested, are concerned. So that when I am
called upon to believe a great deal more than the
oldest gospel tells me about the final events of the
history of Jesus on the authority of Paul (1
Corinthians xv. 5-8) I must pause. Did he think
it, at any subsequent time, worth while " to confer
with flesh and blood," or, in modern phrase, to
re-examine the facts for himself ? or was he ready
to accept anything that fitted in with his
preconceived ideas ? Does he mean, when he
speaks of all the appearances of Jesus after the
crucifixion as if they were of the same kind, that
284 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER viil
they were all visions, like the manifestation to
himself? And, finally, Jiow is this account to be
reconciled with those in the first and third
gospels — which, as we have seen, disagree with
one another ?
Until these questions are satisfactorily answered,
I am afraid that, so far as I am concerned, Paul's
testimony cannot be seriously regarded, except as
it may afford evidence of the state of traditional
opinion at the time at which he wrote, say
between 55 and 60 A.D. ; that is, more than
twenty years after the event ; a period much more
than sufficient for the development of any amount
of mythology about matters of which nothing was
really known. A few years later, among the con-
temporaries and neighbours of the Jews, and, if
the most probable interpretation of the Apoca-
lypse can be trusted, among the followers of Jesus
also, it was fully believed, in spite of all the
evidence to the contrary, that the Emperor Nero
was not really dead, but that he was hidden away
somewhere in the East, and would speedily come
again at the head of a great army, to be revenged
upon his enemies.1
Thus, I conceive that I have shown cause foi
the opinion that Dr. Wace's challenge touching
the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, and
1 King Herod had not the least difficulty in supposing the
resurrection of John the Baptist — " John, whom I beheaded,
he is risen " (Mark vi. 16).
vm AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 285
the Passion was more valorous than discreet.
After all this discussion, I am still at the agnostic
point. Tell me, first, what Jesus can be proved
to have been, said, and done, and I will say
whether I believe him, or in him,1 or not. As Dr.
Wace admits that I have dissipated his lingering
shade of unbelief about the bedevilment of the
Gadarene pigs, he might have done something to
help mine. Instead of that, he manifests a total
want of conception of the nature of the obstacles
which impede the conversion of his " infidels."
The truth I believe to be, that the difficulties
in the way of arriving at a sure conclusion as to
these matters, from the Sermon on the Mount,
the Lord's Prayer, or any other data offered by
the Synoptic gospels (and d fortiori from the
fourth gospel), are insuperable. Every one of
these records is coloured by the prepossessions of
those among whom the primitive traditions arose,
and of those by whom they were collected and
edited : and the difficulty of making allowance for
these prepossessions is enhanced by our ignorance
of the exact dates at which the documents wero
first put together; of the extent to which they
1 I am very sorry for the interpolated " in," because citation
ought to be accurate in small things as in great. But what
difference it makes whether one "believes Jesus" or "believes
in Jesus" much thought has not enabled me to discover. If
you "believe him" you must believe him to be what he pro-
fessed to be — that is, "believe in him;" and if you "believe
in him" you must necessarily " believe him."
286 AGNOSTICISM: A KEJOINDER vill
have been subsequently worked over and inter-
polated ; and of the historical sense, or want of
sense, and the dogmatic tendencies of their
compilers and editors. Let us see if there is any
other road which will take us into something
better than negation.
There is a widespread notion that the " primi-
tive Church," while under the guidance of the
Apostles and their immediate successors, was a
sort of dogmatic dovecot, pervaded by the most
loving unity and doctrinal harmony. Protestants,
especially, are fond of attributing to themselves
the merit of being nearer "the Church of the
Apostles " than their neighbours ; and they are
the less to be excused for their strange delusion
because they are great readers of the documents
which prove the exact contrary. The fact is that,
in the course of the first three centuries of its
existence, the Church rapidly underwent a process
of evolution of the most remarkable character,
the final stage of which is far more different from
the first than Anglicanism is from Quakerism.
The key to the comprehension of the problem
of the origin of that which is now called
"Christianity," and its relation to Jesus of
Nazareth, lies here. Nor can we arrive at any
sound conclusion as to what it is probable that
Jesus actually said and did, without being clear on
this head. By far the most important and
subsequently influential steps in the evolution of
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 287
Christianity took place in the course of the
century, more or less, which followed upon the
crucifixion. It is almost the darkest period of
Church history, but, most fortunately, the begin-
ning and the end of the period are brightly
illuminated by the contemporary evidence of two
writers of whose historical existence there is no
doubt,1 and against the genuineness of whose
most important works there is no widely-admitted
objection. These are Justin, the philosopher and
martyr, and Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.- I
shall call upon these witnesses only to testify to
the condition of opinion among those who called
themselves disciples of Jesus in their time.
Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew,
which was written somewhere about the middle of
the second century, enumerates certain categories
of persons who, in his opinion, will, or will not, be
saved.2 These are : —
1. Orthodox Jews who refuse to believe that
Jesus is the Christ. Not Saved.
2. Jews who observe the Law ; believe Jesus to
be the Christ ; but who insist on the observance
of the Law by Gentile converts. Not Saved.
3. Jews who observe the Law ; believe Jesus to
1 True for Justin : but there is a school of theological critics,
who more or less question the historical reality of Paul, and the
genuineness of even the four cardinal epistles.
2 See Dial, cum Try phone, § 47 and § 35. It is to be under-
stood that Justin does not arrange these categories in order, as I
have done.
134
288 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vm
be the Christ, and hold that Gentile converts
need not observe the Law. Saved (in Justin's
opinion ; but some of his fellow-Christians think
the contrary).
4. Gentile converts to the belief in Jesus as the
Christ, who observe the Law. Saved (possibly).
5. Gentile believers in Jesus as the Christ, who
do not observe the Law themselves (except so far
as the refusal of idol sacrifices), but do not
consider those who do observe it heretics. Saved
(this is Justin's own view).
6. Gentile believers who do not observe the
Law, except in refusing idol sacrifices, and hold
those who do observe it to be heretics. Saved.
7. Gentiles who believe Jesus to be the Christ
and call themselves Christians, but who eat meats
sacrificed to idols. Not Saved.
8. Gentiles who disbelieve in Jesus as the
Christ. Not Saved.
Justin does not consider Christians who believe
in the natural birth of Jesus, of whom he implies
that there is a respectable minority, to be heretics,
though he himself strongly holds the preternatural
birth of Jesus and his pre-existence as the
" Logos " or " Word." He conceives the Logos to
be a second God, inferior to the first, unknowable
God, with respect to whom Justin, like Philo, is
a complete agnostic. The Holy Spirit is not re-
garded by Justin as a separate personality, and
is often mixed up with the " Logos/' The
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 289
doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul is,
for -Justin, a heresy ; and he is as firm a believer
in the resurrection of the body, as in the
speedy Second Coming and the establishment of
the millennium.
This pillar of the Church in the middle of
the second century — a much- travelled native of
Samaria — was certainly well acquainted with
Rome, probably with Alexandria ; and it is likely
that he knew the state of opinion throughout the
length and breadth of the Christian world as well
as any man of his time. If the various categories
above enumerated are arranged in a series
thus : —
s
Justin'* Chrittlanity
Judaea-Christianity Idolnthytic
Christianity Pnganiu
III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.
it is obvious that they form a gradational series
from orthodox Judaism, on the extreme left, to
Paganism, whether philosophic or popular, on the
extreme right ; and it will further be observed
that, while Justin's conception of Christianity is
very broad, he rigorously excludes two classes of
persons who, in his time, called themselves
Christians; namely, those who insist on circum-
cision and other observances of the Law on the
part of Gentile converts ; that is to say, the strict
Judaeo-Christians (II.) ; and, on the other hand,
those who assert the lawfulness of eating meat
290 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vin
offered to idols — whether they are Gnostic or not
(VII.) These last I have called " idolothytic "
Christians, because I cannot devise a better
name, not because it is strictly defensible etymo-
logically.
At the present moment, I do not suppose there
is an English missionary in any heathen land who
would trouble himself whether the materials of his
dinner had been previously offered to idols or not.
On the other hand, I suppose there is no Protestant
sect within the pale of orthodoxy, to say nothing of
the Roman and Greek Churches, which would
hesitate to declare the practice of circumcision and
the observance of the Jewish Sabbath and dietary
rules, shockingly heretical.
Modern Christianity has, in fact, not only shifted
far to the right of Justin's position, but it is of
much narrower compass.
Justin
Judceo-Christianity Modern Christianity Paganism
k IL TIL iv. v. VL VIL viii.
For, though it includes VII., and even, in saint
and relic worship, cuts a " monstrous cantle " out
of paganism, it excludes, not only all Judseo-
Christians, but all who doubt that such are
heretics. Ever since the thirteenth century, the
Inquisition would have cheerfully burned, and iu
Spain did abundantly burn, all persons who came
under the categories II., III. IV., V. And the
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 291
wolf would play the same havoc now, if it could
only get its blood-stained jaws free from the
muzzle imposed by the secular arm.
Further, there is not a Protestant body except
the Unitarian, which would not declare Justin
himself a heretic, on account of his doctrine of the
inferior godship of the Logos ; while I am very
much afraid that, in strict logic, Dr. Wace would
be under the necessity, so painful to him, of call-
ing him an " infidel," on the same and on other
grounds.
Now let us turn to our other authority. If
there is any result of critical investigations of the
sources of Christianity which is certain,1 it is that
Paul of Tarsus wrote the Epistle to the Galatians
somewhere between the years 55 and 60 A.D., that
is to say, roughly, twenty, or five-and-twenty years
after the crucifixion. If this is so, the Epistle to
the Galatians is one of the oldest, if not the very
oldest, of extant documentary evidences of the
state of the primitive Church. And, be it observed,
if it is Paul's writing, it unquestionably furnishes
us with the evidence of a participator in the
transactions narrated. With the exception of two
or three of the other Pauline Epistles, there is not
one solitary book in the New Testament of the
authorship and authority of which we have such
good evidence.
1 I guard myself against being supposed to affirm that even
the four cardinal epistles of Paul may not have been seriously
tampered with. See note 1, p. 287 above.
292 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vill
And what is the state of things we find dis-
closed ? A bitter quarrel, in his account of which
Paul by no means minces matters, or hesitates to
hurl defiant sarcasms against those who were
" reputed to be pillars " : James " the brother of
the Lord," Peter, the rock on whom Jesus is said
to have built his Church, and John, "the beloved
disciple." And no deference toward " the rock "
withholds Paul from charging Peter to his face with
" dissimulation."
The subject of the hot dispute was simply this.
Were Gentile converts bound to obey the Law or
not ? Paul answered in the negative ; and, acting
upon his opinion, he had created at Antioch (and
elsewhere) a specifically " Christian " community,
the sole qualifications for admission into which were
the confession of the belief that Jesus was the
Messiah, and baptism upon that confession. In
the epistle in question, Paul puts this — his
" gospel," as he calls it — in its most extreme form.
Not only does he deny the necessity of conformity
with the Law, but he declares such conformity to
have a negative value. "Behold, I, Paul, say
unto you, that if ye receive circumcision, Christ
will profit you nothing " (Galatians v. 2). He
calls the legal observances " beggarly rudiments/'
and anathematises every one who preaches to the
Galatians any other gospel than his own. That is
to say, by direct consequence, he anathematises the
Nazarenes of Jerusalem, whose zeal for the Law is
Vin AGNOSTICISM: A EEJOINDER 293
testified by James in a passage of the Acts cited
further on. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians,
dealing with the question of eating meat offered to
idols, it is clear that Paul himself thinks it a
matter of indifference ; but he advises that it
should not be done, for the sake of the weaker
brethren. On the other hand, the Nazarenes of
Jerusalem most strenuously opposed Paul's
" gospel," insisting on every convert becoming a
regular Jewish proselyte, and consequently on his ,
observance of the whole Law ; and this party was led
by James and Peter and John (Galatians ii. 9)
Paul does not suggest that the question of principle
was settled by the discussion referred to in Gala-
tians. All he says is, that it ended in the prac-
tical agreement that he and Barnabas should do
as they had been doing, in respect to the Gentiles ;
while James and Peter and John should deal in
their own fashion with Jewish converts. After-
wards, he complains bitterly of Peter, because,
when on a visit to Antioch, he, at first, inclined to
Paul's view and ate with the Gentile converts;
but when " certain came from James," " drew back,
and separated himself, fearing them that were of the
circumcision. And the rest of the Jews dissembled
likewise with him ; insomuch that even Barnabas
was carried away with their dissimulation "
(Galatians ii. 12-13).
There is but one conclusion to be drawn from
Paul's account of this famous dispute, the settle-
294 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vin
ment of which determined the fortunes of the
nascent religion. It is that the disciples at Jeru-
salem, headed by " James, the Lord's brother," and
by the leading apostles, Peter and John, were strict
Jews, who had objected to admit any converts
into their body, unless these, either by birth, or by
becoming proselytes, were also strict Jews. In
fact, the sole difference between James and Peter
and John, with the body of the disciples whom
they led and the Jews by whom they were
surrounded, and with whom they, for many years,
shared the religious observances of the Temple,
was that they believed that the Messiah, whom
the leaders of the nation yet looked for, had
already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Acts of the Apostles is hardly a very trust-
worthy history ; it is certainly of later date than
the Pauline Epistles, supposing them to be
genuine. And the writer's version of the confer-
ence of which Paul gives so graphic a description,
if that is correct, is unmistakably coloured with
all the art of a reconciler, anxious to cover up a
scandal. But it is none the less instructive on
this account. The judgment of the "council"
delivered by James is that the Gentile converts
shall merely " abstain from things sacrificed to
idols, and from blood and from things strangled,
and from fornication." But notwithstanding the
accommodation in which the writer of the Acts
would have us believe, the Jerusalem Church held
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 295
to its endeavour to retain the observance of the
Law. Long after the conference, some time after
the writing of the Epistles to the Galatians and
Corinthians, and immediately after the despatch of
that to the Komans, Paul makes his last visit to
Jerusalem, and presents himself to James and all
the elders. And this is what the Acts tells us of
the interview : —
And they said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many
thousands [or myriads] there are among the Jews of them which
have believed ; and they are all zealous for the law ; and they
have been informed concerning thee, that thou teachest all the
Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling
them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the
customs. (Acts xxi. 20, 21.)
They therefore request that he should perform a
certain public religious act in the Temple, in
order that
all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof they
have been informed concerning thee ; but that thou thyself
walkest orderly, keeping the law (ibid. 24). 1
How far Paul could do what he is here re-
quested to do, and which the 'writer of the Acts
goes on to say he did, with a clear conscience, if he
wrote the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinth-
ians, I may leave any candid reader of these
epistles to decide. The point to which I wish to
1 [Paul, in fact, is required to commit in Jerusalem, an act
of the same character as that which he brands as "dis^imula-
faon " on the pait of Peter in Antioch.]
296 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vill
direct attention is the declaration that the Jeru-
salem Church, led by the brother of Jesus and by
his personal disciples and friends, twenty years
and more after his death, consisted of strict and
zealous Jews.
Tertullus, the orator, caring very little about
the internal dissensions of the followers of Jesus,
speaks of Paul as a " ringleader of the sect of the
Nazarenes" (Acts xxiv. 5), which must have
affected James much in the same way as it would
have moved the Archbishop of Canterbury, in
George Fox's day, to hear the latter called a
"ringleader of the sect of Anglicans." In fact,
" Nazarene " was, as is well known, the distinctive
appellation applied to Jesus ; his immediate
followers were known as Nazarenes ; while the
congregation of the disciples, and, later, of converts
at Jerusalem — the Jerusalem Church — was em-
phatically the " sect of the Nazarenes," no more,
in itself, to be regarded as anything outside
Judaism than the sect of the Sadducees, or that
of the Essenes.1 In fact, the tenets of both the
Sadducees and the Essenes diverged much more
widely from the Pharisaic standard of orthodoxy
than Nazarenism did.
Let us consider the position of affairs now (A.D.
50-60) in relation to that which obtained in
1 All this was qnite clearly pointed out by Ritschl nearly
forty years ago. See Die Entstehung der alt-katholischeu Kirche
(1850), p. 108.
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 297
Justin's time, a century later. It is plain that
the Nazarenes — presided over by James, " the
brother of the Lord," and comprising within their
body all the twelve apostles — belonged to Justin's
second category of " Jews who observe the Law,
believe Jesus to be the Christ, but who insist on
the observance of the Law by Gentile converts,"
up till the time at which the controversy reported
by Paul arose. They then, according to Paul,
simply allowed him to form his congregations of
non-legal Gentile converts at Antioch and else-
where ; and it would seem that it was to these
converts, who would come under Justin's fifth
category, that the title of " Christian " was first
applied. If any of these Christians had acted
upon the more than half-permission given by
Paul, and had eaten meats offered to idols,
they would have belonged to Justin's seventh
category.
Hence, it appears that, if Justin's opinion,
which was probably that of the Church generally
in the middle of the second century, was correct,
James and Peter and John and their followers
could not be saved ; neither could Paul, if he
carried into practice his views as to the indiffer-
ence of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put
the matter another way, the centre of gravity of
orthodoxy, which is at the extreme right of the
series in the nineteenth century, was at the ex-
treme left, just before the middle of the first
298 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER VIII
century, when the " sect of the Nazarenes " consti-
tuted the whole church founded by Jesus and the
apostles ; while, in the time of Justin, it lay mid-
way between the two. It is therefore a profound
mistake to imagine that the Judaeo-Christians
(Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later times were
heretical outgrowths from a primitive universalist
" Christianity." On the contrary, the universalist
" Christianity " is an outgrowth from the
primitive, purely Jewish, Nazarenism; which,
gradually eliminating all the ceremonial and
dietary parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside
its parent, and all the intermediate stages of its
development, into the position of damnable
heresies.
Such being the case, we are in a position to
form a safe judgment of the limits within which
the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have been
confined. Ecclesiastical authority would have us
believe that the words which are given at the end
of the first Gospel, " Go ye, therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost," are part of the last commands of
Jesus, issued at the moment of his parting with
the eleven. If so, Peter and John must have
heard these words ; they are too plain to be mis-
understood ; and the occasion is too solemn for
them ever to be forgotten. Yet the " Acts " tells
us that Peter needed a vision to enable him so
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 299
much as to baptize Cornelius; and Paul, in the
Galatians, knows nothing of words which would
have completely borne him out as against those
who, though they heard, must be supposed to
have either forgotten, or ignored them. On the
other hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to
have heard the " Sermon on the Mount," know
nothing of the saying that Jesus had not come to
destroy the Law, but that every jot and tittle of
the Law must be fulfilled, which surely would
have been pretty good evidence for their view of
the question.
We are sometimes told that the personal
friends and daily companions of Jesus remained
zealous Jews and opposed Paul's innovations,
because they were hard of heart and dull of
comprehension. This hypothesis is hardly in
accordance with the concomitant faith of those
who adopt it, in the miraculous insight and super-
human sagacity of their Master ; nor do I see any
way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox
postulate ; namely, that Matthew was the author
of the first gospel and John of the fourth. If that
is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no
dullard; and as for the fourth gospel — a theo-
sophic romance of the first order — it could have
been written by none but a man of remarkable
literary capacity, who had drunk deep of
Alexandrian philosophy. Moreover, the doctrine
of the writer of the fourth gospel is more remote
300 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vm
from that of the " sect of the Nazarenes " than is
that of Paul himself. I am quite aware that
orthodox critics have been capable of maintaining
that John, the Nazarene, who was probably well
past fifty years of age, when he is supposed to have
written the most thoroughly Judaising book in
the New Testament — the Apocalypse — in the
roughest of Greek, underwent an astounding
metamorphosis of both doctrine and style by the
time he reached the ripe age of ninety or so, and
provided the world with a history in which the
acutest critic cannot [always] make out where the
speeches of Jesus end and the text of the narrative
begins ; while that narrative is utterly irreconcil-
able, in regard to matters of fact, with that of his
fellow-apostle, Matthew.
The end of the whole matter is this : — The
"sect of the Nazarenes/' the brother and the
immediate followers of Jesus, commissioned by
him as apostles, and those who were taught by
them up to the year 50 A.D., were not " Christians"
in the sense in which that term has been under-
stood ever since its asserted origin at Antioch, but
Jews — strict orthodox Jews — whose belief in the
Messiahship of Jesus never led to their exclusion
from the Temple services, nor would have shut
them out from the wide embrace of Judaism.1
1 "If every one was baptized as soon as he acknowledged Jesus
to be the Messiah, the first Christians can have been aware of no
other essential differences from the Jews." — Zeller, Vortrdge
(1865), p. 26.
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 301
The open proclamation of their special view about
the Messiah was doubtless offensive to the
Pharisees, just as rampant Low Churchism is
offensive to bigoted High Churchism in our own
country ; or as any kind of dissent is offensive to
fervid religionists of all creeds. To the Sadducees,
no doubt, the political danger of any Messianic
movement was serious ; and they would have been
glad to put down Nazarenism, lest it should end
in useless rebellion against their Eoman masters,
like that other Galilean movement headed by
Judas, a generation earlier. Galilee was always a
hotbed of seditious enthusiasm against the rule of
Rome ; and high priest and procurator alike had
need to keep a sharp eye upon natives of that
district. On the whole, however, the Nazarenes
were but little troubled for the first twenty years
of their existence ; and the undying hatred of the
Jews against those later converts, whom they
regarded as apostates and fautors of a sham
Judaism, was awakened by Paul. From their
point of view, he was a mere renegade Jew,
opposed alike to orthodox Judaism and to ortho-
dox Nazarenism ; and whose teachings threatened
Judaism with destruction. And, from their point
of view, they were quite right. In the course of
a century, Pauline influences had a large share in
driving primitive Nazarenism from being the very
heart of the new faith into the position of scouted
error ; and the spirit of Paul's doctrine continued
302 AGNOSTICISM I A REJOINDER viil
its work of driving Christianity farther and farther
away from Judaism, until " meats offered to idols "
might be eaten without scruple, while the
Nazarene methods of observing even the Sabbath,
or the Passover, were branded with the mark of
Judaising heresy.
But if the primitive Nazarenes of whom the
Acts speaks were orthodox Jews, what sort of
probability can there be that Jesus was anything
else? How can he have founded the universal
religion which was not heard of till twenty years
after his death ? l That Jesus possessed, in a rare
degree, the gift of attaching men to his person and
to his fortunes ; that lie was the author of many
a striking saying, and the advocate of equity, of
love, and of humility ; that . he may have dis-
regarded the subtleties of the bigots for legal
observance, and appealed rather to those noble
conceptions of religion which constituted the pith
and kernel of the teaching of the great prophets
of his nation seven hundred years earlier ; and
that, in the last scenes of his career, he may have
embodied the ideal sufferer of Isaiah, may be, as
I think it is, extremely probable. But all this
involves not a step beyond the borders of orthodox
1 Dr. Harnack, in the lately-published second edition of his
Dogmengeschichte, says (p. 39), "Jesus Christ brought forward
no new doctrine ; " and again (p. 65), " It is not difficult to set
against every portion of the utterances of Jesus an observation
which deprives him of originality." See also Zusatz 4, on the
same page.
viii AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 303
Judaism. Again, who is to say whether Jesus
proclaimed himself the veritable Messiah, ex-
pected by his nation since the appearance of the
pseudo-prophetic work of Daniel, a century and a
half before his time ; or whether the enthusiasm
of his followers gradually forced him to assume
that position?
But one thing is quite certain : if that belief in
the speedy second coming of the Messiah which
was shared by all parties in the primitive Church,
whether Nazarene or Pauline; which Jesus is
made to prophesy, over and over again, in the
Synoptic gospels ; and which dominated the life
of Christians during the first century after the
crucifixion ; — if he believed and taught that, then
assuredly he was under an illusion, and he is re-
sponsible for that which the mere efHuxion of time
has demonstrated to be a prodigious error.
When I ventured to doubt "whether any
Protestant theologian who has a reputation to
lose will say that he believes the Gadarene story/'
it appears that I reckoned without Dr. Wace,
who, referring to this passage in my paper,
says : —
He will judge whether I fall under his description ; but I
repeat that I believe it, and that he has removed the only objec-
tion to my believing it (p. 363).
Far be it from me to set myself up as a judge
135
304 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vill
of any such delicate question as that put before
me ; but I think I may venture to express the
conviction that, in the matter of courage, Dr.
Wace has raised for himself a monument cere
perennius. For redly, in my poor judgment, a
certain splendid intrepidity, such as one admires
in the leader of a forlorn hope, is manifested
by Dr. Wace when he solemnly affirms that he
believes the Gadarene story on the evidence
offered. I feel less complimented perhaps than I
ought to do, when I am told that I have been an
accomplice in extinguishing in Dr. Wace's mind
the last glimmer of doubt which common sense
may have suggested. In fact, I must disclaim all
responsibility for the use to which the information
I supplied has been put. I formally decline to
admit that the expression of my ignorance whether
devils, in the existence of which I do not believe,
if they did exist, might or might not be made to
go out of men into pigs, can, as a matter of logic,
have been of any use whatever to a person who
already believed in devils and in the historical
accuracy of the gospels.
Of the Gadarene story, Dr. Wace, with all
solemnity and twice over, affirms that he " believes
it." I am sorry to trouble him further, but what
does he mean by " it " ? Because there are two
stories, one in " Mark " and " Luke," and the other
in " Matthew." In the former, which I quoted
in my previous paper, there is one possessed
VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 305
man ; in the latter there are two. The story is
told fully, with the vigorous homely diction and
the picturesque details of a piece of folklore, in
the second gospel. The immediately antecedent
event is the storm on the Lake of Gennesaret.
The immediately consequent events are the
message from the ruler of the synagogue and the
healing of the woman with an issue of blood.
In the third gospel, the order of events is exactly
the same, and there is an extremely close general
and verbal correspondence between the narratives
of the miracle. Both agree in stating that there
was only one possessed man, and that he wa3
the residence of many devils, whose name was
" Legion."
In the first gospel, the event which immediately
precedes the Gadarene affair is, as before, the
storm ; the message from the ruler and the healing
of the issue are separated from it by the accounts
of the healing of a paralytic, of the calling of
Matthew, and of a discussion with some Pharisees.
Again, while the second gospel speaks of the
country of the *' Gerasenes " as the locality of the
event, the third gospel has " Gerasenes,"
" Gergesenes," and " Gadarenes " in different
ancient MSS. ; while the first has " Gadarenes."
The really important points to be noticed,
however, in the narrative of the first gospel, are
these — that there are two possessed men instead
of one; and that while the story is abbreviated by
306 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER vm
omissions, what there is of it is often verbally
identical with the corresponding passages in the
other two gospels. The most unabashed of
reconcilers cannot well say that one man is the
same as two, or two as one ; and, though the
suggestion really has been made, that two different
miracles, agreeing in all essential particulars,
except the number of the possessed, were effected
immediately after the storm on the lake, I should
be sorry to accuse any one of seriously adopting it.
Nor will it be pretended that the allegory refuge
is accessible in this particular case.
So, when Dr. Wace says that he believes in the
synoptic evangelists' account of the miraculous
bedevilment of swine, I may fairly ask which of
them does he believe ? Does he hold by the one
evangelist's story, or by that of the two evan-
gelists ? And having made his election, what
reasons has he to give for his choice ? If it is
suggested that the witness of two is to be taken
against that of one, not only is the testimony
dealt with in that common-sense fashion against
which the theologians of his school protest so
warmly ; not only is all question of inspiration at
an end, but the further inquiry arises, After all, is
it the testimony of two against one ? Are the
authors of the versions in the second and third
gospels really independent witnesses ? In order to
answer this question, it is only needful to place
the English versions of the two side by side, and
VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 307
compare them carefully. It will then be seen that
the coincidences between them, not merely in
substance, but in arrangement, and in the use of
identical words in the same order, are such, that
only two alternatives are conceivable : either one
evangelist freely copied from the other, or both
based themselves upon a common source, which
may either have been a written document, or a
definite oral tradition learned by heart. Assuredly,
these two testimonies are not those of independent
witnesses. Further, when the narrative in the
first gospel is compared with that in the other two,
the same fact comes out.
Supposing, then, that Dr. Wace is right in his
assumption that Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote
the works which we find attributed to them by
tradition, what is the value of their agreement,
even that something more or less like this par-
ticular miracle occurred, since it is demonstrable,
either that all depend on some antecedent state-
ment, of the authorship of which nothing is known,
or that two are dependent upon the third ?
Dr. Wace says he believes the Gadarene story ;
whichever version of it he accepts, therefore, he
believes that Jesus said what he is stated in all the
versions to have said, and thereby virtually
declared that the theory of the nature of the
spiritual world involved in the story is true.
Now I hold that this theory is false, that it is a
monstrous and mischievous fiction ; and I unhesi-
308 AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER vm
tatingly express my disbelief in any assertion that
it is true, by whomsoever made. So that, if Dr.
Wace is right in his belief, he is also quite right
in classing me among thepeople he calls " infidels ";
and although I cannot fulfil the eccentric expec-
tation that I shall glory in a title which, from my
point of view, it would be simply silly to adopt,
I certainly shall rejoice not to be reckoned among
"Christians" so long as the profession of belief in
such stories as the Gadarene pig affair, on the
strength of a tradition of unknown origin, of which
two discrepant reports, also of unknown origin,
alone remain, forms any part of the Christian
faith. And, although I have, more than once,
repudiated the gift of prophecy, yet I think I
may venture to express the anticipation, that if
" Christians " generally are going to follow the line
taken by Dr. Wace, it will not be long before all
men of common sense qualify for a place among
the " infidels."
IX
AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
[1889]
Nemo ergo ex me scire quaerat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte
ut nescire discat. — AUGUSTINUS, De Civ. Dei, xii. 7.
1 THE present discussion has arisen out of the use,
which has become general in the last few years, of
the terms "Agnostic" and "Agnosticism."
The people who call themselves " Agnostics "
have been charged with doing so because they
have not the courage to declare themselves
" Infidels." It has been insinuated that they
have adopted a new name in order to escape the
unpleasantness which attaches to their proper
denomination. To this wholly erroneous imputa-
tion, I have replied by showing that the term
" Agnostic " did, as a matter of fact, arise in a
manner which negatives it; and my statement
has not been, and cannot be, refuted. Moreover,
1 The substance of a paragraph, which precedes this has been
transferred to the Prologue.
310 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
speaking for myself, and without impugning the
right of any other person to use the term in
another sense, I farther say that Agnosticism is
not properly described as a " negative " creed, nor
indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as
it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a
principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual.
This principle may be stated in various ways, but
they all amount to this : that it is wrong for a
man to say that he is certain of the objective
truth of any proposition unless he can produce
evidence which logically justifies that certainty.
This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my
opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism.
(That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as
immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are
propositions which men ought to believe, without
logically satisfactory evidence; and that repro-
bation ought to attach to the profession of
disbelief in such inadequately supported pro-
positions. The justification of the Agnostic
principle lies in the success which follows upon
its application, whether in the field of natural, or
in that of civil, history ; and in the fact that, so
far as these topics are concerned, no sane man
thinks of denying its validity. J
C Still speaking for myself, I add, that though
Agnosticism is not, and cannot be, a creed, except
in so far as its general principle is concerned ; yefc
that the application of that principle results in
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 311
the denial of, or the suspension of judgment
concerning, a number of propositions respecting
which our contemporary ecclesiastical " gnostics "
profess entire certainty. ] And, in so far as these
ecclesiastical persons can be justified in their old-
established custom (which many nowadays think
more honoured in the breach than the observance)
of using opprobrious names to those who differ
from them, I fully admit their right to call me
and those who think with me " Infidels " ; all I
have ventured to urge is that they must not
expect us to speak of ourselves by that title.
The extent of the region of the uncertain, the
number of the problems the investigation of
which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary
according to the knowledge and the intellectual
habits of the individual Agnostic. I do not very
much care to speak of anything as " unknowable." l
What I am sure about is that there are many
topics about which I know nothing ; and which,
so far as I can see, are out of reach of my faculties.
But whether these things are knowable by any
one else is exactly one of those matters which is
beyond my knowledge, though I may have a
tolerably strong opinion as to the probabilities of
the case. Relatively to myself, I am quite sure
that the region of uncertainty — the nebulous
country in which words play the part of realities
1 I confess that, long ago, I once or twice made this mistake ;
even to the waste of a capital *U.' 1893.
312 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
— is far more extensive than I could wish.
Materialism and Idealism ; Theism and Atheism ;
the doctrine of the soul and its mortality or
immortality — appear in the history of philosophy
like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally
slaying one another and eternally coming to life
again in a metaphysical " Nifelheim." It is
getting on for twenty-five centuries, at least, since
mankind began seriously to give their minds to
these topics. Generation after generation, phil-
osophy has been doomed to roll the stone uphill ;
and, just as all the world swore it was at the top,
down it has rolled to the bottom again. All this
is written in innumerable books ; and he who will
toil through them will discover that the stone is
just where it was when the work began. Hume
saw this; Kant saw it; since their time, more and
more eyes have been cleansed of the films which
prevented them from seeing it; until now the
weight and number of those who refuse to be the
prey of verbal mystifications has begun to tell in
practical life.
It was inevitable that a conflict should arise
between Agnosticism and Theology ; or rather, I
ought to say, between Agnosticism and Ecclesias-
ticism. For Theology, the science, is one thing;
and Ecclesiasticism, the championship of a fore-
gone conclusion ] as to the truth of a particular
1 '"'Let us maintain, before we have proved. This seeming
paradox is the secret of happiness" (Dr. Newman : Tract 85, p. 85)
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 313
form of Theology, is another. . With scientific
Theology, Agnosticism has no quarrel. On the
contrary, the Agnostic, knowing too well the
influence of prejudice and idiosyncrasy, even on
those who desire most earnestly to be impartial,
can wish for nothing more urgently than that the
scientific theologian should not only be at perfect
liberty to thresh out the matter in his own
fashion ; but that he should, if he can, find flaws
in the Agnostic position ; and, even if demonstra-
tion is not to be had, that he should put, in their
full force, the grounds of the conclusions he thinks
probable. The scientific theologian admits the
Agnostic principle, however widely his results
may differ from those reached by the majority of
Agnostics.
But, as between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasti-
cisra, or, as our neighbours across the Channel
call it, Clericalism, there can be neither peace nor
truce. The Cleric asserts that it is morally wrong
not to believe certain propositions, whatever the
results of a strict scientific investigation of the
evidence of these propositions. He tells us " that
religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature." *
He declares that he has prejudged certain con-
clusions, and looks upon those who show cause
for arrest of judgment as emissaries of Satan. It
necessarily follows that, for him, the attainment
of faith, not the ascertainment of truth, is the
1 Dr. Newman, Essay on Development p. 357.
314 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
highest aim of mental life. And, on careful
analysis of the nature of this faith, it will too
often be found to be, not the mystic process of
unity with the Divine, understood by the religious
enthusiast ; but that which the candid simplicity
of a Sunday scholar once defined it to be.
"Faith," said this unconscious plagiarist of
Tertullian, "is the power of saying you believe
things which are incredible."
L Now I, and many other Agnostics, believe that
faith, in this sense, is an abomination ; and though
we do not indulge in the luxury of self-righteous-
ness so far as to call those who are not of our way
of thinking hard names, we do feel that the
disagreement between ourselves and those who
hold this doctrine is even more moral than
intellectual.^ It is desirable there should be an
end of any mistakes on this topic. If our clerical
opponents were clearly aware of the real state of
the case, there would be an end of the curious
delusion, which often appears between the lines
of their writings, that those whom they are so
fond of calling " Infidels " are people who not
only ought to be, but in their hearts are, ashamed
of themselves. It would be discourteous to do
more than hint the antipodal opposition of this
pleasant dream of theirs to facts.
The clerics and their lay allies commonly tell
us, that if we refuse to admit that there is good
ground for expressing definite convictions about
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 315
certain topics, the bonds of human society will
dissolve and mankind lapse into savagery. There
are several answers to this assertion. One is that
the bonds of human society were formed without
the aid of their theology; and, in the opinion of
not a few competent judges, have been weakened
rather than strengthened by a good deal of it.
Greek science, Greek art, the ethics of old Israel,
the social organisation of old Rome, contrived to
come into being, without the help of any one who
believed in a single distinctive article of the
simplest of the Christian creeds. The science,
the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and
social theories, of the modern world have grown
out of those of Greece and Rome — not by favour
of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings
of early Christianity, to which science, art, and
any serious occupation with the things of this
world, were alike despicable.
Again, all that is best in the ethics of the
modern world, in so far as it has not grown out
of Greek thought, or Barbarian manhood, is the
direct development of the ethics of old Israel.
There is no code of legislation, ancient or modern,
at once so just and so merciful, so tender to the
weak and poor, as the Jewish law ; and, if the
Gospels are to be trusted, Jesus of Nazareth
himself declared that he taught nothing but that
which lay implicitly, or explicitly, in the religious
and ethical system of his people.
316 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
And the scribe said unto him, Of a truth, Teacher, thou
hast well said that he is one ; and there is none other but he
and to love him with all the heart, and with all the under-
standing, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour
as himself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and
sacrifices. (Mark xii. 32, 33.)
Here is the briefest of summaries of the teaching
of the prophets of Israel of the eighth century ;
does the Teacher, whose doctrine is thus set forth
in his presence, repudiate the exposition ? Nay ;
we are told, on the contrary, that Jesus saw that
he " answered discreetly/' and replied, " Thou art
not far from the kingdom of God."
So that I think that even if the creeds, from
the so-called " Apostles ' ' to the so-called
" Athanasian," were swept into oblivion ; and even
if the human race should arrive at the conclusion
that, whether a bishop washes a cup or leaves it
unwashed, is not a matter of the least consequence,,
it will get on very well. The causes which have
led to the development of morality in mankind,
which have guided or impelled us all the way
from the savage to the civilised state, will not
cease to operate because a number of ecclesiastical
hypotheses turn out to be baseless. And, even if
the absurd notion that morality is more the child
of speculation than of practical necessity and
inherited instinct, had any foundation ; if all the
world is going to thieve, murder, and otherwise
misconduct itself as soon as it discovers that
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 317
certain portions of ancient history are mythical ;
what is the relevance of such arguments to any
one who holds by the Agnostic principle ?
Surely, the attempt to cast out Beelzebub by the
aid of Beelzebub is a hopeful procedure as com-
pared to that of preserving morality by the aid of
immorality. For I suppose it is admitted that an
Agnostic may be perfectly sincere, may be com-
petent, and may have studied the question at issue
with as much care as his clerical opponents. But,
if the Agnostic really believes what he says, the
" dreadful consequence " argufier (consistently, I
admit, with his own principles) virtually asks him
to abstain from telling the truth, or to say what
he believes to be untrue, because of the supposed
injurious consequences to morality. " Beloved
brethren, that we may be spotlessly moral, before
all things let us lie," is the sum total of many an
exhortation addressed to the " Infidel." Now, as
I have already pointed out, we cannot oblige our
exhorters. We leave the practical application of
the convenient doctrines of " Reserve " and " Non-
natural interpretation" to those who invented
them.
I trust that I have now made amends for any
ambiguity, or want of fulness, in my previous ex-
position of that which I hold to be the essence of
the Agnostic doctrine. Henceforward, I might
hope to hear no more of the assertion that
we are necessarily Materialists, Idealists, Atheists,
318 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
Theists, or any other ists, if experience had led me
to think that the proved falsity of a statement
was any guarantee against its repetition. And
those who appreciate the nature of our position
will see, at once, that when Ecclesiasticism
declares that we ought to believe this, that, and
the other, and are very wicked if we don't, it is
impossible for us to give any answer but this:
We have not the slightest objection to believe
anything you like, if you will give us good grounds
for belief; but, if you cannot, we must respectfully
refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality
and insure our own damnation several times over.
We are quite content to leave that to the decision
of the future. The course of the past has im-
pressed us with the firm conviction that no good
ever comes of falsehood, and we feel warranted in
refusing even to experiment in that direction.
In the course of the present discussion it has
been asserted that the " Sermon on the Mount "
and the " Lord's Prayer " furnish a summary and
condensed view of the essentials of the teaching of
Jesus of Nazareth, set forth by himself. Now this
supposed Summa of Nazarene theology distinctly
affirms the existence of a spiritual world, of a
Heaven, and of a Hell of fire ; it teaches the
Fatherhood of God and the malignity of the
Devil ; it declares the superintending providence of
the former and our need of deliverance from the
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 319
machinations of the latter ; it affirms the fact of
demoniac possession arid the power of casting out
devils by the faithful. And, from these premises,
the conclusion is drawn, that those Agnostics who
deny that there is any evidence of such a character
as to justify certainty, respecting the existence and
the nature of the spiritual world, contradict the
express declarations of Jesus. I have replied to
this argumentation by showing that there is strong
reason to doubt the historical accuracy of the
attribution to Jesus of either the " Sermon on
the Mount " or the " Lord's Prayer " ; and, there-
fore, that the conclusion in question is not
warranted, at any rate, on the grounds set
forth.
But, whether the Gospels contain trustworthy
statements about this and other alleged historical
facts or not, it is quite certain that from them,
taken together with the other books of the New
Testament, we may collect a pretty complete
exposition of that theory of the spiritual world
which was held by both Nazarenes and Christians ;
and which was undoubtedly supposed by them to
be fully sanctioned by Jesus, though it is just as
clear that they did not imagine it contained any
revelation by him of something heretofore un-
known. If the pneumatological doctrine which
pervades the whole New Testament is nowhere
systematically stated, it is everywhere assumed.
The writers of the Gospels and of the Acts take it
136
320 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
for granted, as a matter of common knowledge;
and it is easy to gather from these sources a
series of propositions, which only need arrange-
ment to form a complete system.
In this system, Man is considered to be a
duality formed of a spiritual element, the soul;
and a corporeal1 element, the body. And this
duality is repeated in the Universe, which consists
of a corporeal world embraced and interpenetrated
by a spiritual world. The former consists of the
earth, as its principal and central constituent, with
the subsidiary sun, planets, and stars. Above the
earth is the air, and below is the watery abyss.
Whether the heaven, which is conceived to be
above the air, and the hell in, or below, the sub-
terranean deeps, are to be taken as corporeal or
incorporeal is not clear. f However this may be,
the heaven and the air, the earth and the abyss,
are peopled by innumerable beings analogous in
nature to the spiritual element in man, and these
spirits are of two kinds, good and bad. The chief
of the good spirits, infinitely superior to all the
others, and their creator, as well as the creator of
the corporeal world and of the bad spirits, is God.
1 It is by no means to be assumed that "spiritual" and "cor-
poreal " are exact equivalents of " immaterial " and " material "
in the minds of ancient speculators on these topics. The
"spiritual body" of the risen dead (1 Cor. xv.) is not the
"natural" " flesh and blood " body. Paul does not teach the
resurrection of the body in the ordinary sense of the word
"body"; a fact, often overlooked, but pregnant with many
consequences.
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 321
His residence is heaven, where he is surrounded
by the ordered hosts of good spirits ; his angels, or
messengers, and the executors of his will through-
out the universe.
On the other hand, the chief of the bad spirits
is Satan, the devil par excellence. He and his
company of demons are free to roam through all
parts of the universe, except the heaven. These
bad spirits are far superior to man in power and
subtlety ; and their whole energies are devoted to
bringing physical and moral evils upon him, and
to thwarting, so far as their power goes, the
benevolent intentions of the Supreme Being. In
fact, the souls and bodies of men form both the
theatre and the prize of an incessant warfare
between the good and the evil spirits — the powers
of light and the powers of darkness. By leading
Eve astray, Satan brought sin and death upon
mankind. As the gods of the heathen, the demons
are the founders and maintainers of idolatry ; as
the " powers of the air " they afflict mankind with
pestilence and famine ; as " unclean spirits " they
cause disease of mind and body.
The significance of the appearance of Jesus, in
the capacity of the Messiah, or Christ, is the
reversal of the satanic work by putting an end to
both sin and death. He announces that the
kingdom of God is at hand, when the " Prince of
this world " shall be finally " cast out " (John xii.
31) from the cosmos, as Jesus, during his earthly
322 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
career, cast him out from individuals. Then will
Satan and all his devilry, along with the wicked
whom they have seduced to their destruction, be
hurled into the abyss of unquenchable fire — there
to endure continual torture, without a hope of
winning pardon from the merciful God, their
Father ; or of moving the glorified Messiah to one
more act of pitiful intercession ; or even of
interrupting, by a momentary sympathy with
their wretchedness, the harmonious psalmody of
their brother angels and men, eternally lapped in
bliss unspeakable.
The straitest Protestant, who refuses to .admit
the existence of any source of Divine truth,
except the Bible, will not deny that every point
of the pneumatological theory here set forth has
ample scriptural warranty. The Gospels, the
Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse assert the
existence of the devil, of his demons and of Hell,
as plainly as they do that of God and his angels
and Heaven. It is plain that the Messianic and
the Satanic conceptions of the writers of these
books are the obverse and the reverse of the same
intellectual coinage. If we turn from Scripture
to the traditions of the Fathers and the confes-
sions of the Churches, it will appear that, in this
one particular, at any rate, time has brought
about no important deviation from primitive
belief. From Justin onwards, it may often be a
fair question whether God, or the devil, occupies
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 323
a larger share of the attention of the Fathers.
It is the devil who instigates the Roman authori-
ties to persecute ; the gods and goddesses of
paganism are devils, and idolatry itself is an
invention of Satan ; if a saint falls away from
grace, it is by the seduction of the demon ; if
heresy arises, the devil has suggested it ; and
some of the Fathers1 go so far as to challenge
the pagans to a sort of exorcising match, by way
of testing the truth of Christianity. Medieval
Christianity is at one with patristic, on this head.
The masses, the clergy, the theologians, and the
philosophers alike, live and move and have their
being in a world full of demons, in which sorcery
and possession are everyday occurrences. Nor
did the Reformation make any difference. What-
ever else Luther assailed, he left the traditional
demonology untouched ; nor could any one have
entertained a more hearty and uncompromising
belief in the devil, than he and, at a later period,
the Calvinistic fanatics of New England did.
Finally, in these last years of the nineteenth
century, the demonological hypotheses of the first
century are, explicitly or implicitly, held and
occasionally acted upon by the immense majority
of Christians of all confessions.
1 Tortullian (Apolog. adv. Gentes, cap. xxiii.) thus challenges
the Roman authorities : let them bring a possessed person into
the presence of a Christian before their tribunal , and if the
demon does not confess himself to be such, on the order of the
Christian, let the Chiistian be executed out of hand.
324 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
Only here and there has the progress of scien-
tific thought, outside the ecclesiastical world, so
far affected Christians, that they and their
teachers fight shy of the demonology of their
creed. They are fain to conceal their real dis-
belief in one half of Christian doctrine by judi-
cious silence about it ; or by flight to those
refuges for the logically destitute, accommodation
j or allegory. But the faithful who fly to allegory
/ "in order to escape absurdity resemble nothing so
much as the sheep in the fable who — to save their
Wlives — jumped into the pit. The allegory pit is
too commodious, is ready to swallow up so much
more than one wants to put into it. If the story
of the temptation is an allegory; if the early
recognition of Jesus as the Son of God by the
demons is an allegory ; if the plain declaration of
the writer of the first Epistle of John (iii. 8),
" To this end was the Son of God manifested,
that He might destroy the works of the devil," is
allegorical, then the Pauline version of the Fall
may be allegorical, and still more the words of
consecration of the Eucharist, or the promise of
the second coming ; in fact, there is not a dogma
of ecclesiastical Christianity the scriptural basis
of which may not be whittled away by a similar
process.
As to accommodation, let any honest man who
can read the New Testament ask himself whether
Jesus and his immediate friends and disciples can
IX ' AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 325
be dishonoured more grossly than by the supposi-
tion tha-t they said and did that which is attri-
buted to them ; while, in reality, they disbelieved
in Satan and his demons, in possession and in
exorcism ? l
An eminent theologian has justly observed that
we have no right to look at the propositions of the
Christian faith with one eye open and the other
shut. (Tract 85, p. 29.) It really is not permis-
sible to see, with one eye, that Jesus is affirmed
to declare the personality and the Fatherhood of
God, His loving providence and His accessibility
to prayer; and to shut the other to the no less
definite teaching ascribed to Jesus, in regard to
the personality and the misanthropy of the devil,
his malignant watchfulness, and his subjection to
exorcistic formulae and rites. Jesus is made to
say that the devil " was a murderer from the
beginning " (John viii. 44) by the same authority
as that upon which we depend for his asserted
declaration that " God is a spirit " (John iv. 24).
To those who admit the authority of the famous
Vincentian dictum that the doctrine which has
been held " always, everywhere, and by all " is to
be received as authoritative, the demonology
must possess a higher sanction than any other
Christian dogma, except, perhaps, those of the
Resurrection and of the Messiahship of Jesus ;
1 See the expression of orthodox opinion upon the " accommo-
dation " subterfuge already cited above, p. 217.
326 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
for it would be difficult to name any other points
of doctrine on which the Nazarene does not differ
from the Christian, and the different historical
stages and contemporary subdivisions of Chris-
tianity from one another. And, if the demon -
ology is accepted, there can be no reason for
rejecting all those miracles in which demons play
a part. The Gadarene story fits into the general
scheme of Christianity ; and the evidence for
" Legion " and their doings is just as good as any
other in the New Testament for the doctrine
which the story illustrates.
It was with the purpose of bringing this great
fact into prominence ; of getting people to open
both their eyes when they look at Ecclesiasticisin ;
that I devoted so much space to that miraculous
story which happens to be one of the best types
of its class. And I could not wish for a better
justification of the course I have adopted, than
the fact that my heroically consistent adversary
has declared his implicit belief in the Gadarene
story and (by necessary consequence) in the
Christian demonology as a whole. It must be
obvious, by this time, that, if the account of the
spiritual world given in the New Testament, pro-
fessedly on the authority of Jesus, is true, then
the demonological half of that account must be
just as true as the other half. And, therefore,
those who question the demonology, or try to
explain it away, deny the truth of what Jesus
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 327
said, and are, in ecclesiastical terminology, " Infi-
dels" just as much as those who deny the
spirituality of God. This is as plain as anything
can well be, and the dilemma for my opponent
was either to assert that the Gadarene pig-bedevil-
ment actually occurred, or to write himself down
an " Infidel." As was to be expected, he chose
the former alternative ; and I may express my
great satisfaction at finding that there is one spot
of common ground on which both he and I stand.
So far as I can judge, we are agreed to state one
of the broad issues between the consequences of
agnostic principles (as I draw them), and the con-
sequences of ecclesiastical dogmatism (as he ac-
cepts it), as follows.
Ecclesiasticism says: The demonology of the
Gospels is an essential part of that account of
that spiritual world, the truth of which it de-
clares to be certified by Jesus.
Agnosticism (mejudicc) says : There is no good
evidence of the existence of a demoniac spiritual
world, and much reason for doubting it.
Hereupon the ecclesiastic may observe : Your
doubt means that you disbelieve Jesus ; therefore
you are an " Infidel " instead of an " Agnostic."
To which the agnostic may reply : No ; for two
reasons : first, because your evidence that Jesus
said what you say he said is worth very little ;
and secondly, because a man may be an agnostic,
in the sense of admitting he has no positive
328 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
knowledge, and yet consider that he has more or
less probable ground for accepting any given
hypothesis about the spiritual world. Just as a
man may frankly declare that he has no means of
knowing whether the planets generally are in-
habited or not, and yet may think one of the two
possible hypotheses more likely than the other, so
he may admit that he has no means of knowing
anything about the spiritual world, and yet may
think one or other of the current views on the
subject, to some extent, probable.
The second answer is so obviously valid that it
needs no discussion. I draw attention to it simply
in justice to those agnostics who may attach
greater value than I do to any sort of pneumato-
logical speculations; and not because I wish to
escape the responsibility of declaring that, whether
Jesus sanctioned the deinonological part of Chris-
tianity or not, I unhesitatingly reject it. The
first answer, on the other hand, opens up the
whole question of the claim of the biblical and
other sources, from which hypotheses concerning
the spiritual world are derived, to be regarded as
unimpeachable historical evidence as to matters of
fact.
Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the
Gospel narratives, I was anxious to get rid of the
common assumption that the determination of the
authorship and of the dates of these works is a
matter of fundamental importance. That assump-
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 329
tion is based upon the notion that what contem-
porary witnesses say must be true, or, at least, has
always bprimd facie claim to be so regarded; so
that if the writers of any of the Gospels were
contemporaries of the events (and still more if
they were in the position of eye-witnesses) the
miracles they narrate must be historically true,
and, consequently, the demonology which they
involve must be accepted. But the story of the
" Translation of the blessed martyrs Marcellinus
and Petrus," and the other considerations (to
which endless additions might have been made
from the Fathers and the mediaeval writers) set
forth in a preceding essay, yield, in my judgment,
satisfactory proof that, where the miraculous is
concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability,
nor undoubted honesty, nor knowledge of the
world, nor proved faithfulness as civil historians,
nor profound piety, on the part of eye witnesses
and contemporaries, affords any guarantee of the
objective truth of their statements, when we know
that a firm belief in the miraculous was ingrained
in their minds, and was the pre-supposition of
their observations and reasonings.
Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demon-
strable that we have no real knowledge of the
authorship, or of the date of composition of the
Gospels, as they have come down to us, and
that nothing better than more or less probable
guesses can be arrived at on that subject, I have
330 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
not cared to expend any space on the question.
It will be admitted, I suppose, that the authors of
the works attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, whoever they may be, are personages whose
capacity and judgment in the narration of ordin-
ary events are not quite so well certified as those
of Eginhard ; and we have seen what the value of
Eginhard's evidence is when the miraculous is in
question.
I have been careful to explain that the argu-
ments which I have used in the course of this
discussion are not new ; that they are historical
and have nothing to do with what is commonly
called science ; and that they are all, to the best
of my belief, to be found in the works of theologi-
ans of repute.
The position which I have taken up, that the
evidence in favour of such miracles as those
recorded by Eginhard, and consequently of
mediaeval demonology, is quite as good as that in
favour of such miracles as the Gadarene, and con-
sequently of Nazarene demonology, is none of iny
discovery. Its strength was, wittingly or un-
wittingly, suggested, a century and a half ago, by
a theological scholar of eminence ; and it has been,
if not exactly occupied, yet so fortified with bas-
tions and redoubts by a living ecclesiastical
Vauban, that, in my judgment, it has been ren-
dered impregnable. In the early part of the last
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 331
century, the ecclesiastical mind in this country
was much exercised by the question, not exactly
of miracles, the occurrence of which in biblical
times was axiomatic, but by the problem : When
did miracles cease ? Anglican divines were quite
sure that no miracles had happened in their day,
nor for some time past ; they were equally sure
that they happened sixteen or seventeen centuries
earlier. And it was a vital question for them to
determine at what point of time, between this
terminus a quo and that terminus ad quern,
miracles came to an end.
The Anglicans and the Romanists agreed in
the assumption that the possession of the gift of
miracle-working was primd facie evidence of the
soundness of the faith of the miracle-workers.
The supposition that miraculous powers might be
wielded by heretics (though it might be supported
by high authority) led to consequences too fright-
ful to be entertained by people who were busied
in building their dogmatic house on the sands of
early Church history. If, as the Romanists main-
tained, an unbroken series of genuine miracles
adorned the records of their Church, throughout
the whole of its existence, no Anglican could
lightly venture to accuse them of doctrinal cor-
ruption. Hence, the Anglicans, who indulged in
such accusations, were bound to prove the modern,
the mediaeval Roman, and the later Patristic,
miracles false ; and to shut off the wonder-working
332 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ;x
power from the Church at the exact point of
time when Anglican doctrine ceased and Roman
doctrine began. With a little adjustment — a
squeeze here and a pull there — the Christianity
of the first three or four centuries might be made
to fit, or see in to fit, pretty well into the Anglican
scheme. So the miracles, from Justin say to
Jerome, might be recognised ; while, in later
times, the Church having become " corrupt " —
that is to say, having pursued one and the same
line of development further than was pleasing to
Anglicans — its alleged miracles must needs be
shams and impostures.
Under these circumstances, it may be imagined
that the establishment of a scientific frontier
between the earlier realm of supposed fact and
the later of asserted delusion, had its difficulties ;
and torrents of theological special pleading about
the subject flowed from clerical pens ; until that
learned and acute Anglican divine, Conyers
Middleton, in his " Free Inquiry," tore the sophis-
tical web they had laboriously woven to pieces, and
demonstrated that the miracles of the patristic
age, early and late, must stand or fall together,
inasmuch as the evidence for the later is just as
good as the evidence for the earlier wonders. If
tho one set are certified by contemporaneous
witnesses of high repute, so are the other; and,
in point of probability, there is not a pin to choose
between the two. That is the solid and irrefrag-
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 333
able result of Middleton's contribution to the
subject. But the Free Inquirer's freedom had its
limits ; and he draws a sharp line of demarcation
between the patristic and the New Testament
miracles — on the professed ground that the
accounts of the latter, being inspired, are out of
the reach of criticism.
A century later, the question was taken up by
another divine, Middleton's equal in learning and
acuteness, and far his superior in subtlety and
dialetic skill ; who, though an Anglican, scorned the
name of Protestant ; and, while yet a Churchman,
made it his business, to parade, with infinite skill, the
utter hollowness of the arguments of those of his
brother Churchmen who dreamed that they could
be both Anglicans and Protestants. The argument
of the " Essay on the Miracles recorded in the Eccle-
siastical History of the Early Ages" 1 by the present
[1889] Roman Cardinal, but then Anglican Doctor,
John Henry Newman, is compendiously stated by
himself in the following passage : —
If the miracles of Church history cannot be defended by the
arguments of Leslie, Lyttleton, Paley, or Douglas, how many of
the Scripture miracles satisfy their conditions ? (p. cvii).
And, although the answer is not given in so many
words, little doubt is left on the mind of the
1 I quote the first edition (1843). A second edition appeared
in 1870. Tract 85 of the Travis for the Times should be read
with this Essay. If I were called upon to compile a Primer of
"Infidelity," I think I should save myself trouble by making a
selection from these works, and from the Essay on Development
by the same author.
334 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
reader, that, in the mind of the writer, it is : None.
In fact, this conclusion is one which cannot be
resisted, if the argument in favour of the Scripture
miracles is based upon that which laymen,
whether lawyers, or men of science, or historians,
or ordinary men of affairs, call evidence. But
there is something really impressive in the
magnificent contempt with which, at times, Dr.
Newman sweeps aside alike those who offer and
those who demand such evidence.
Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which
would not have a verdict in their favour in a court of justice ;
that is, they employ against Scripture a weapon which Pro-
testants would confine to attacks upon the Church ; as if moral
and religious questions required legal proof, and evidence were
the test of truth J (p. cvii).
" As if evidence were the test of truth " ! — although
the truth in question is the occurrence, or the
non-occurrence, of certain phenomena at a certain
time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation
of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical
and the scientific mind is enough to take away
the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical
organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption
that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a
religious end, in any way alters the fact that they
profess to be historical events, things that actually
1 Yet, when it suits his purpose, as in the Introduction to the
Essay on Development, Dr. Newman can demand strict evidence
in religious questions as sharply as any "iniidel author"; and
he can even profess to yield to its force (JSssay on Mir odes, 1870 ;
note, p. 391).
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 335
happened; and, as such, must needs be exactly
those subjects about which evidence is appropriate
and legal proofs (which are such merely because
they afford adequate evidence) may be justly
demanded. The Gadarene miracle either hap-
pened, or it did not. Whether the Gadarene
" question " is moral or religious, or not, has
nothing to do with the fact that it is a purely
historical question whether the demons said what
they are declared to have said, and the devil-
possessed pigs did, or did not, rush over the heights
bounding the Lake of Gennesaret on a certain day
of a certain year, after A.D. 26 and before A.D. 36 :
for vague and uncertain as New Testament
chronology is, I suppose it may be assumed that
the event in question, if it happened at all, took
place during the procuratorship of Pilate. If that
is not a matter about which evidence ought to be
required, and not only legal, but strict scientific
proof demanded by sane men who are asked to
believe the story — what is ? Is a reasonable
being to be seriously asked to credit statements,
which, to put the case gently, are not exactly
probable, and on the acceptance or rejection of
which his whole view of life may depend, without
asking for as much " legal " proof as would send
an alleged pickpocket to gaol, or as would suffice
to prove the validity of a disputed will ?
" Infidel authors " (if, as I am assured, I may
answer for them) will decline to waste time on
137
336 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
mere darkenings of counsel of this sort ; but to
those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr,
Newman is a truly formidable antagonist. What,
indeed, are they to reply when he puts the very
pertinent question : —
whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the
Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of resem-
blance, whatever that be, to those contained in Scripture — as
if the Almighty could not do in the Christian Church what He
had not already done at the time of its foundation, or under the
Mosaic Covenant — whether such reasoners are not siding with
the sceptic,
and
whether it is not a happy inconsistency by which they con-
tinue to believe the Scriptures while they reject the Church1
(P. liii).
Again, I invite Anglican orthodoxy to consider this
passage : —
the narrative of the combats of St. Antony with evil spirits, is a
development rather than a contradiction of revelation, viz. of
such texts as speak of Satan being cast out by prayer and
fasting. To be shocked, then, at the miracles of Ecclesiastical
history, or to ridicule them for their strangeness, is no part of a
scriptural philosophy (pp. liii-liv).
Further on, Dr. Newman declares that it has
been admitted
that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and cir-
cumstance between the miracles of Scripture and of Church
1 Compare Tract 85, p. 110 ; " I am persuaded that were men
but consistent who oppose the Church doctrines as being
unscriptural, they would vindicate the Jews for rejecting the
Gospel. "
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 337
history ; but this is by no means the case (p, Iv). . . . speci-
mens are not wanting in the history of the Church, of miracles
as awful in their character and as momentous in their effects as
those which are recorded in Scripture. The fire interrupting
the rebuilding of the Jewish temple, and the death of Arius, are
instances, in Ecclesiastical history, of such solemn events. On
the other hand, difficult instances in the Scripture history are
such as these : the serpent in Eden, the Ark, Jacob's vision for
the multiplication of his cattle, the speaking of Balaam's ass,
the axe swimming at Elisha's word, the miracle on the swine,
and various instances of prayers or prophecies, in which, as in
that of Noah's blessing and curse, words which seem the result
of private feeling are expressly or virtually ascribed to a Divine
suggestion (p. Ivi).
Who is to gainsay our ecclesiastical authority
here ? " Infidel authors " might be accused of a
wish to ridicule the Scripture miracles by putting
them on a level with the remarkable story about
the fire which stopped the rebuilding of the
Temple, or that about the death of Arius — but
Dr. Newman is above suspicion. The pity is that
his list of what he delicately terms " difficult "
instances is so short, Why omit the manufacture
of Eve out of Adam's rib, on the strict historical
accuracy of which the chief argument of the
defenders of an iniquitous portion of our present
marriage law depends ? Why leave out the
account of the " Bene Elohim " and their gallan-
tries, on which a large part of the worst practices
of the mediaeval inquisitors into witchcraft was
based ? Why forget the angel who wrestled with
Jacob, and, as the account suggests, somewhat
338 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
over-stepped the bounds of fair play, at the end of
the struggle ? Surely, we must agree with Dr.
Newman that, if all these camels have gone down,
it savours of affectation to strain at such gnats as
the sudden ailment of Arius in the midst of his
deadly, if prayerful,1 enemies ; and the fiery explo-
sion which stopped the Julian building operations.
Though the words of the " Conclusion " of the
"Essay on Miracles" may, perhaps, be quoted
against me, I may express my satisfaction at finding
myself in substantial accordance with a theologian
above all suspicion of heterodoxy. With all my
heart, I can declare my belief that there is just as
good reason for believing in the miraculous slay-
ing of the man who fell short of the Athanasian
power of affirming contradictories, with respect to
the nature of the Godhead, as there is for believing
in the stories of the serpent and the ark told in
Genesis, the speaking of Balaam's ass in Numbers,
or the floating of the axe, at Elisha's order, in the
second book of Kings.
It is one of the peculiarities of a really sound
1 According to Dr. Newman, "This prayer [that of Bishop
Alexander, who begged God to ' take Arius away '] is said to
have been offered about 3 p. M. on the Saturday ; that same
evening Arius was in the great square of Constantine, when he
was suddenly seized with indisposition" (p. clxx). The
"infidel" Gibbon seems to have dared to suggest that "an
option between poison and miracle" is presented by this
case ; and, it must be admitted, that, if the Bishop had been
within the reach of a modern police magistrate, things might
have gone hardly with him. Modern " Infidels," possessed of a
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 339
argument that it is susceptible of the fullest
development ; and that it sometimes leads to con-
clusions unexpected by those who employ it. To
my mind, it is impossible to refuse to follow Dr.
Newman when he extends his reasoning, from the
miracles of the patristic and mediaeval ages back-
ward in time, as far as miracles are recorded.
But, if the rules of logic are valid, I feel com-
pelled to extend the argument forwards to the
alleged Roman miracles of the present day, which
Dr. Newman might not have admitted, but which
Cardinal Newman may hardly reject. Beyond
question, there is as good, or perhaps better,
evidence for the miracles worked by our Lady of
Lourdes, as there is for the floating of Elisha's axe,
or the speaking of Balaam's ass. But we must go
still further ; there is a modern system of thauma-
turgy and demonology which is just as well
certified as the ancient.1 Veracious, excellent,
slight knowledge of chemistry, are not unlikely, with no less
audacity, to suggest an "option between fire-damp and miracle"
in seeking for the cause of the fiery outburst at Jerusalem.
1 A writer in a spiritualist journal takes me roundly to task
for venturing to doubt the historical and literal truth of the
Gadarene story. The following passage in his letter is worth
quotation : " Now to the materialistic and scientific mind, to the
uninitiated in spiritual verities, certainly this story of the
Gadarene or Gergesene swine presents insurmountable difficulties ;
it seems grotesque and nonsensical. To the experienced, trained,
and cultivated Spiritualist this miracle is, as I am prepared to
show, one of the most instructive, the most profoundly useful,
and the most beneficent which Jesus ever wrought in
the whole course of His pilgrimage of redemption on earth."
Just so. And the first page of this same journal presents the
following advertisement, among others of the same kidney : —
" To WEALTHY SPIRITUALISTS.— A Lady Medium of tried
340 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
sometimes learned and acute persons, even philo-
sophers of no mean pretensions, testify to the
" levitation " of bodies much heavier than Elisha's
axe ; to the existence of " spirits " who, to the
mere tactile sense, have been indistinguishable
from flesh and blood ; and, occasionally, have
wrestled with all the vigour of Jacob's opponent ;
yet, further, to the speech, in the language of raps,
of spiritual beings, whose discourses, in point of
coherence and value, are far inferior to that of
Balaam's humble but sagacious steed. I have not
the smallest doubt that, if these were persecuting
times, there is many a worthy " spiritualist " who
would cheerfully go to the stake in support of his
pneumatological faith ; and furnish evidence, after
Paley's own heart, in proof of the truth of his
doctrines. Not a few modern divines, doubtless
struck by the impossibility of refusing the spirit-
ualist evidence, if the ecclesiastical evidence is
accepted, and deprived of any a priori objection
by their implicit belief in Christian Demonology,
show themselves ready to take poor Sludge
seriously, and to believe that he is possessed by
other devils than those of need, greed, and vain-
glory.
Under these circumstances, it was to be
power wishes to meet with an elderly gentleman who would be
willing to give her a comfortable home and maintenance in
Exchange for her Spiritualistic services, as her guides consider
her health is too delicate for public sittings : London preferred. —
Address ' Mary,' Office of Light."
Are we going back to the days of the Judges, when wealthy
Micah set up his private ephod, teraphim, and Levite ?
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 341
expected, though it is none the less interesting to
note the fact, that the arguments of the latest
school of " spiritualists " present a wonderful
family likeness to those which adorn the subtle
disquisitions of the advocate of ecclesiastical
miracles of forty years ago. It is unfortunate for
the " spiritualists " that, over and over again, cele-
brated and trusted media, who really, in some
respects, call to mind the Montanist 1 and gnostic
seers of the second century, are either proved in
courts of law to be fraudulent impostors ; or, in
sheer weariness, as it would seem, of the honest
dupes who swear by them, spontaneously confess
their long-continued iniquities, as the Fox women
did the other day in New York.2 But, whenever
a catastrophe of this kind takes place, the believers
are no wise dismayed by it. They freely admit
that not only the media, but the spirits whom they
summon, are sadly apt to lose sight of the elemen-
tary principles of right and wrong ; and they
triumphantly ask : How does the occurrence of
1 Consider Tertullian's "sister" ("hodie apud nos"), who
conversed with angels, saw and heard mysteries, knew men's
thoughts, and prescribed medicine for their bodies (De Anima,
cap. 9). Tertullian tells us that this woman saw the soul as
corporeal, and described its colour and shape. The "infidel"
will probably be unable to refrain from insulting the memory
of the ecstatic saint by the remark, that Tertullian's known
views about the corporeality of the soul may have had some-
thing to do with the remarkable perceptive powers of the
Montanist medium, in whose revelations of the spiritual world he
took such profound interest.
2 See the New York World for Sunday, 21st October, 1888 ;
and the Report of the Seybcrt Commission^ Philadelphia, 1887.
342 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
occasional impostures disprove the genuine mani-
festations (that is to say, all those which have not
yet been proved to be impostures or delusions) ?
And, in this, they unconsciously plagiarise from the
churchman, who just as freely admits that many
ecclesiastical miracles may have been forged ; and
asks, with calm contempt, not only of legal proofs,
but of common- sense probability, Why does it
follow that none are to be supposed genuine ?
I must say, however, that the spiritualists, so far
as I know, do not venture to outrage right reason
so boldly as the ecclesiastics. They do not sneer
at " evidence " ; nor repudiate the requirement of
legal proofs. In fact, there can be no doubt that
the spiritualists produce better evidence for their
manifestations than can be shown either for the
miraculous death of Arius, or for the Invention of
the Cross.1
From the " levitation " of the axe at one end
of a period of near three thousand years to the
" levitation " of Sludge & Co. at the other end,
there is a complete continuity of the miraculous,
with every gradation, from the childish to the
stupendous, from the gratification of a caprice to
the illustration of sublime truth. There is no
1 Dr. Newman's observation that the miraculous multipli-
cation of the pieces of the true cross (with which "the whole
world is filled," according to Cyril of Jerusalem ; and of which
some say there are enough extant to build a man-of-war) is no
more wonderful than that of the loaves and fishes, is one that I do
not see my way to contradict. See Essay on Miracles, 2d ed.
p. 163.
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 343
drawing a line in the series that might be set out
of plausibly attested cases of spiritual interven-
tion. If one is true, all may be true ; if one is
false, all may be false.
This is, to my mind, the inevitable result of
that method of reasoning which is applied to the
confutation of Protestantism, with so much suc-
cess, by one of the acutest and subtlest disput-
ants who have ever championed Ecclesiasticism
— and one cannot put his claims to acuteness
and subtlety higher.
. . . the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever
there were a safe truth it is this. . . . " To be deep in history
is to cease to be a Protestant." x
I have not a shadow of doubt that these anti-
Protestant epigrams are profoundly true. But I
have as little that, in the same sense, the " Chris-
tianity of history is not " Romanism ; and that
to be deeper in history is to cease to be a
Romanist. The reasons which compel my doubts
about the compatibility of the Roman doctrine,
or any other form of Catholicism, with history,
arise out of exactly the same line of argument as
that adopted by Dr. Newman in the famous
essay which I have just cited. If, with one hand,
Dr. Newman has destroyed Protestantism, he has
1 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, by J. H.
Newman, D.D., pp. 7 and 8. (1878.)
344 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
annihilated Romanism with the other ; and the
total result of his ambidextral efforts is to shake
Christianity to its foundations. Nor was any oney
better aware that this must be the inevitable
result of his arguments — if the world should
refuse to accept Roman doctrines and Roman
miracles — than the writer of Tract 85.
Dr. Newman made his choice and passed over
to the Roman Church half a century ago. Some
of those who were essentially in harmony with
his views preceded, and many followed him. But
many remained; and, as the quondam Puseyite
and present Ritualistic party, they are continuing
that work of sapping and mining the Protest-
antism of the Anglican Church which he and his
friends so ably commenced. At the present time,
they have no little claim to be considered
victorious all along the line. I am old enough to
recollect the small beginnings of the Tractarian
party ; and I am amazed when I consider the
present position of their heirs. Their little leaven
has leavened, if not the whole, yet a very large
lump of the Anglican * Church ; which is now
pretty much of a preparatory school for Papistry.
So that it really behoves Englishmen (who, as I
have been informed by high authority, are all
legally, members of the State Church, if they
profess to belong to no other sect) to wake up to
what that powerful organisation is about, and
whither it is tending. On this point, the writings
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 345
of Dr. Newman, while he still remained within
the Anglican fold, are a vast store of the best
and the most authoritative information. His
doctrines on Ecclesiastical miracles and on
Development are the corner-stones of the Tract-
arian fabric. He believed that his arguments led
either Homeward, or to what ecclesiastics call
" Infidelity," and I call Agnosticism. I believe
that he was quite right in this conviction ; but
while he chooses the one alternative, I choose the
other ; as he rejects Protestantism on the ground
of its incompatibility with history, so, a fortiori,
I conceive that Romanism ought to be rejected ;
and that an impartial consideration of the evi-
dence must refuse the authority of Jesus to
anything more than the Nazarenism of James
and Peter and John. And let it not be supposed
that this is a mere "infidel" perversion of the facts.
No one has more openly and clearly admitted the
possibility that they may be fairly interpreted in
this way than Dr. Newman. If, he says, there
are texts which seem to show that Jesus contem-
plated the evangelisation of the heathen :
. . . Did not the Apostles hear our Lord ? and what was their
impression from what they heard ? Is it not certain that the
Apostles did not gather this truth from His teaching? (Tract
85, p. 63).
He said, ' * Preach the Gospel to every creature. " These words
need have only meant "Bring all men to Christianity through
Judaism." Make them Jews, that they may enjoy Christ's
privileges, which are lodged in Judaism ; teach them those
346 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
rites and ceremonies, circumcision and the like, which hitherto
have been dead ordinances, arid now are living : and so the
Apostles seem to have understood them (ibid. p. 65).
So far as Nazarenism differentiated itself from
contemporary orthodox Judaism, it seems to have
tended towards a revival of the ethical and
religious spirit of the prophetic age, accompanied
by the belief in Jesus as the Messiah, and by
various accretions which had grown round Judaism
subsequently to the exile. To these belong the
doctrines of the Kesurrection, of the Last Judg-
ment, of Heaven and Hell ; of the hierarchy of
good angels ; of Satan and the hierarchy of evil
spirits. And there is very strong ground for
believing that all these doctrines, at least in the
shapes in which they were held by the post-exilic
Jews> were derived from Persian and Babylonian l
sources, and are essentially of heathen origin.
How far Jesus positively sanctioned all these
indrainings of circumjacent Paganism into Juda-
ism ; how far any one has a right to declare, that
the refusal to accept one or other of these
doctrines, as ascertained verities, comes to the
same thing as contradicting Jesus, it appears to
1 Dr. Newman faces this question with his customary ability.
"Now, I own, I am not at all solicitous to deny that this
doctrine of an apostate Angel and his hosts was gained
from Babylon : it might still be Divine nevertheless. God who
made the prophet's ass speak, and thereby instructed the
prophet, might instruct His Church by means of heathen
Babylon " (Tract 85, p. 83). There seems to be no end to the
apologetic burden that Balaam's ass can carry.
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 347
me not easy to say. But it is hardly less difficult
to conceive that he could have distinctly nega-
tived any of them ; and, more especially, that
demonology which has been accepted by the
Christian Churches, in every age and under all
their mutual antagonisms. But, I repeat my
conviction that, whether Jesus sanctioned the
demonology of his time and nation or not, it is
doomed. The future of Christianity, as a dog-
matic system and apart from the old Israelitish
ethics which it has appropriated and developed,
lies in the answer which mankind will eventually^
give to the question, whether they are prepared to
believe such stories as the Gadarene and the
pneumatological hypotheses which go with it, or
not. My belief is they will decline to do any-
thing of the sort, whenever and wherever their
minds have been disciplined by science. And
that discipline must, and will, at once follow and
lead the footsteps of advancing civilisation.
The preceding pages were written before I
became acquainted with the contents of the May
number of the " Nineteenth Century/' wherein I
discover many things which are decidedly not to
my advantage. It would appear that " evasion "
is my chief resource, " incapacity for strict argu-
ment " and " rottenness of ratiocination " my main
mental characteristics, and that it is "barely
credible" that a statement which I profess to
348 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
make of my own knowledge is true. All which
things I notice, merely to illustrate the great
truth, forced on me by long experience, that it is
only from those who enjoy the blessing of a firm
hold of the Christian faith that such manifesta-
tions of meekness, patience, and charity are to be
expected.
I had imagined that no one who had read
my preceding papers, could entertain a doubt as
to my position in respect of the main issue, as
it has been stated and restated by my opponent :
an Agnosticism which knows nothing of the relation of man to
God must not only refuse belief to our Lord's most undoubted
teaching, but must deny the reality of the spiritual convictions
in which He lived. l
That is said to be " the simple question which is
at issue between us," and the three testimonies to
that teaching and those convictions selected are
the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, and
the Story of the Passion.
My answer, reduced to its briefest form, has
been : In the first place, the evidence is such that
the exact nature of the teachings and the convic-
tions of Jesus is extremely uncertain; so that
what ecclesiastics are pleased to call a denial of
them may be nothing of the kind. And, in the
second place, if Jesus taught the demonological
system involved in the Gadarene story — if a belief
1 Nineteenth Century, May 1389 (p. 701).
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 349
in that system formed a part of the spiritual con-
victions in which he lived and died — then I, for
my part, unhesitatingly refuse belief in that
teaching, and deny the reality of those spiritual
convictions. And I go further and add, that,
exactly in so far as it can be proved that Jesus
sanctioned the essentially pagan demon olooical
theories current among the Jews of his age,
exactly in so far, for me, will his authority in
any matter touching the spiritual world be weak-
ened.
With respect to the first half of my answer, I
have pointed out that the Sermon on the Mount,
as given in the first Gospel, is, in the opinion of
the best critics, a " mosaic work " of materials
derived from different sources, and I do not under-
stand that this statement is challenged. The only
other Gospel — the third — which contains some-
thing like it, makes, not only the discourse, but the
circumstances under which it was delivered, very
different. Now, it is one thing to say that there
was something real at the bottom of the two
discourses — which is quite possible; and another
to affirm that we have any right to say what that
something was, or to fix upon any particular
phrase and declare it to be a genuine utterance.
Those who pursue theology as a science, and bring
to the study an adequate knowledge of the ways of
ancient historians, will find no difficulty in provid-
ing illustrations of my meaning. I may supply
350 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY
IX
one which has come within range of my own
limited vision.
In Josephus's " History of the Wars of the Jews "
(chap, xix.), that writer reports a speech which
he says Herod made at the opening of a war with
the Arabians. It is in the first person, and would
naturally be supposed by the reader to be intended
for a true version of what Herod said. In the
" Antiquities," written some seventeen years later,
the same writer gives another report, also in the
first person, of Herod's speech on the same
occasion. This second oration is twice as long as
the first and, though the general tenor of the two
speeches is pretty much the same, there is hardly
any verbal identity, and a good deal of matter is
introduced into the one, which is absent from the
other. Josephus prides himself on his accuracy ;
people whose fathers might have heard Herod's
oration were his contemporaries; and yet his
historical sense is so curiously undeveloped that
he can, quite innocently, perpetrate an obvious
lite'rary fabrication ; for one of the two accounts
must be incorrect. Now, if I am asked whether I
believe that Herod made some particular state-
ment on this occasion ; whether, for example, he
uttered the pious aphorism, " Where God is, there
is both multitude and courage," which is given in
the " Antiquities," but not in the " Wars," I am
compelled to say I do not know. One of the two
reports must be erroneous, possibly both are : at
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 351
any rate, I cannot tell how much of either is true.
And, if some fervent admirer of the Idumean
should build up a theory of Herod's piety upon
Josephus's evidence that he propounded the
aphorism, is it a " mere evasion " to say, in reply,
that the evidence that he did utter it is worth-
less ?
It appears again that, adopting the tactics of
Conachar when brought face to face with Hal o'
the Wynd, I have been trying to get my simple-
minded adversary to follow me on a wild-goose
chase through the early history of Christianity, in
the hope of escaping impending defeat on the
main issue. But I may be permitted to point out
that there is an alternative hypothesis which
equally fits the facts; and that, after all, there
may have been method in the madness of my
supposed panic.
For suppose it to be established that Gentile
Christianity was a totally different thing from the
Nazarenism of Jesus and his immediate disciples ;
suppose it to be demonstrable that, as early as the
sixth decade of our era at least, there were violent
divergencies of opinion among the followers of
Jesus ; suppose it to be hardly doubtful that the
Gospels and the Acts took their present shapes
under the influence of those divergencies ; sup-
pose that their authors, and those through whose
hands they passed, had notions of historical vera-
city not more eccentric than those which Josephus
138
352 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
occasionally displays : surely the chances that the
Gospels are altogether trustworthy records of the
teachings of Jesus become very slender. And,
since the whole of the case of the other side is
based on the supposition that they are accurate
records (especially of speeches, about which ancient
historians are so curiously loose), I really do ven-
ture to submit that this part of my argument bears
very seriously on the main issue ; and, as ratio-
cination, is sound to the core.
Again, when I passed by the topic of the
speeches of Jesus on the Cross, it appears that I
could have had no other motive than the dictates
of my native evasiveness. An ecclesiastical dig-
nitary may have respectable reasons for declining
a fencing match " in sight of Gethsemane and
Calvary " ; but an ecclesiastical " Infidel " ! Never.
It is obviously impossible that, in the belief that
" the greater includes the less," I, having declared
the Gospel evidence in general, as to the sayings of
Jesus, to be of questionable value, thought it need-
less to select for illustration of my views, those
particular instances which were likely to be most
offensive to persons of another way of thinking.
But any supposition that may have been enter-
tained that the old familiar tones of the ecclesias-
tical war-drum will tempt me to engage in such
needless discussion had better be renounced. I
shall do nothing of the kind. Let it suffice that
I ask my readers to turn to the twenty-third
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 353
chapter of Luke (revised version), verse thirty-four,
and he will find in the margin
Some ancient authorities omit : And Jesus said "Father, for-
give them, for they know not what they do."
So that, even as late as the fourth century,
there were ancient authorities, indeed some of the
most ancient and weightiest, who either did not
know of this utterance, so often quoted as char-
acteristic of Jesus, or did not believe it had been
uttered.
Many years ago, I received an anonymous letter,
which abused me heartily for my want of moral
courage in not speaking out. I thought that one
of the oddest charges an anonymous letter-writer
could bring. But I am not sure that the plentiful
sowing of the pages of the article with which I am
dealing with accusations of evasion, may not seem
odder to those who consider that the main strength
of the answers with which I have been favoured
(in this review and elsewhere) is devoted, not to
anything in the text of my first paper, but to a
note which occurs at p. 212. In this I say :
Dr. Wace tells us : "It may be asked how far we can rely on
the accounts we possess of our Lord's teaching on these subjects."
And he seems to think the question appropriately answered by
the assertion that it "ought to be regarded as settled by M.
Kenan's practical surrender of the adverse case."
I requested Dr. Wace to point out the passages
of M. Kenan's works in which, as he affirms, this
354 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
" practical surrender " (not merely as to the age
and authorship of the Gospels, be it observed, but
as to their historical value) is made, and he has
been so good as to do so. Now let us consider
the parts of Dr. Wace's citation from Renan which
are relevant to the issue : —
The author of this Gospel [Luke] is certainly the same as the
author of the Acts of the Apostles. Now the author of the
Acts seems to be a companion of St. Paul — a character which
accords completely with St. Luke. I know that more than one
objection may be opposed to this reasoning : but one thing, at
all events, is beyond doubt, namely, that the author of the
third Gospel and of the Acts is a man who belonged to the
second apostolic generation ; and this suffices for our purpose.
This is a curious " practical surrender of the
adverse case." M. Renan thinks that there is no
doubt that the author of the third Gospel is the
author of the Acts — a conclusion in which I
suppose critics generally agree. He goes on to
remark that this person seems to be a companion
of St. Paul, and adds that Luke was a companion
of St. Paul. Then, somewhat needlessly, M.
Renan points out that there is more than one
objection to jumping, from such data as these, to
the conclusion that " Luke " is the writer of the
third Gospel. And, finally, M. Renan is content
to reduce that which is " beyond doubt " to the
fact that the author of the two books is a man of
the second apostolic generation. Well, it seems to
me that I could agree with all that M. Renan
TX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 355
considers " beyond doubt " here, without surren-
dering anything, either " practically " or theoretic-
ally.
Dr. Wace ("Nineteenth Century," March, p.
363) states that he derives the above citation
from the preface to the 15th edition of the " Vie
de Jesus/' My copy of " Les fivangiles, dated
1877, contains a list of Kenan's " (Euvres Com-
pletes," at the head of which I find "Vie de
Je*sus," 15e Edition. It is, therefore, a later work
than the edition of the " Vie de Jesus " which Dr.
Wace quotes. Now " Les Evangiles," as its name
implies, treats fully of the questions respecting
the date and authorship of the Gospels ; and any
one who desired, not merely to use M. Kenan's
expressions for controversial purposes, but to give
a fair account of his views in their full signifi-
cance, would, I think, refer to the later source.
If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might
have found some as decided expressions of opinion,
in favour of Luke's authorship of the third Gospel,
as he has discovered in " The Apostles." I men-
tion this circumstance, because I desire to point
out that, taking even the strongest of Kenan's
statements, I am still at a loss to see how it
justifies that large-sounding phrase, " practical
surrender of the adverse case." For, on p. 438 of
"Les Evangiles," Kenan speaks of the way in
which Luke's " excellent intentions " have led him
to torture history in the Acts ; he declares Luke
356 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
to be the founder of that " eternal fiction which is
called ecclesiastical history " ; and, on the pre-
ceding page, he talks of the "myth" of the
Ascension — with its " mise en scene voulue" At
p. 435, I find " Luc, ou Tauteur quel qu'il soit du
troisieme ]£vangile " ; at p. 280, the accounts of
the Passion, the death and the resurrection of
Jesus, are said to be " peu historiques " ; at p. 283,
" La valeur historique du troisieme Evangile est
surement moindre que celles des deux premiers."
A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy, this
" surrender " ! And, all the while, the scientific
student of theology knows that, the more reason
there may be to believe that Luke was- the com-
panion of Paul, the more doubtful becomes his
credibility W he really wrote the Acts. For, in
that case, he could not fail to have been acquainted
with Paul's account of the Jerusalem conference,
and he must have consciously misrepresented it.
We may next turn to the essential part of Dr.
Wace's citation (" Nineteenth Century," p. 365)
touching the first Gospel : —
St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for
the discourses. Here are the "oracles" — the very notes taken
while the memory of the instruction of Jesus was living and
definite.
M. Renan here expresses the very general
opinion as to the existence of a collection of
" logia," having a different origin from the text
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIA1HTY. 357
in which they are embedded, in Matthew.
" Notes " are somewhat suggestive of a shorthand
writer, but the suggestion is unintentional, for M.
Renan assumes that these "notes" were taken,
not at the time of the delivery of the "logia" but
subsequently, while (as he assumes) the memory
of them was living and definite ; so that, in this
very citation, M. Renan leaves open the question
of the general historical value of the first Gospel ;
while it is obvious that the accuracy of " notes "
taken, not at the time of delivery, but from
memory, is a matter about which more than one
opinion may be fairly held. Moreover, Renan
expressly calls attention to the difficulty of dis-
tinguishing the authentic " logia " from later
additions of the same kind (" Les ]£vangiles,"
p. 201). The fact is, there is no contradiction
here to that opinion about the first Gospel which
is expressed in " Les Evangiles " (p. 175).
The text of the so-called Matthew supposes the pre-existence
of that of Mark, and does little more than complete it. He
completes it in two fashions — first, by the insertion of those
long discourses which gave their chief value to the Hebrew
Gospels ; then by adding traditions of a more modern forma-
tion, results of successive developments of the legend, and to
which the Christian consciousness already attached infinite
value.
M. Renan goes on to suggest that besides
"Mark/' "pseudo-Matthew7' used an Aramaic
version of the Gospel, originally set forth in that
358 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
dialect. Finally, as to the second Gospel (" Nine-
teenth Century," p. 365) : —
He [Mark] is full of minute observations, proceeding, beyond
doubt, from an eye-witness. There is nothing to conflict with
the supposition that this eye-witness . . . was the Apostle
Peter himself, as Papias has it.
Let us consider this citation by the light of
" Les ^vangiles " : —
This work, although composed after the death of Peter, was,
in a sense, the work of Peter ; it represents the way in which
Peter was accustomed to relate the life of Jesus (p. 116).
M. Renan goes on to say that, as an historical
document, the Gospel of Mark has a great
superiority (p. 116) ; but Mark has a motive for
omitting the discourses, and he attaches a " puerile
importance" to miracles (p. 117). The Gospel of
Mark is less a legend, than a biography written
with credulity (p. 118). It would be rash to say
that Mark has not been interpolated and re-
touched (p. 120).
If any one thinks that I have not been warranted
in drawing a sharp distinction between " scientific
theologians " and " counsels for creeds " ; or that
my warning against the too ready acceptance of
certain declarations as to the state of biblical
criticism was needless ; or that my anxiety as to
the sense of the word "practical" was super-
fluous; let him compare the statement that M.
Renan has made a "practical surrender of the
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 359
adverse case " with the facts just set forth. For
what is the adverse case ? The question, as Dr.
Wace puts it, is, " It may be asked how far can
we rely on the accounts we possess of our Lord's
teaching on these subjects." It will be obvious
that M. Renan's statements amount to an adverse
answer — to a "practical" denial that any great
reliance can be placed on these accounts. He
does not believe that Matthew, the apostle, wrote
the first Gospel ; he does not profess to know who
is responsible for the collection of " logia," or how
many of them are authentic ; though he calls the
second Gospel the most historical, he points out
that it is written with credulity, and may have
been interpolated and retouched ; and, as to the
author, " quel qu'il soit," of the third Gospel, who
is to " rely on the accounts " of a writer, who
deserves the cavalier treatment which "Luke"
meets with at M. Renan's hands ?
I repeat what I have already more than once
said, that the question of the age and the author-
ship of the Gospels has not, in my judgment, the
importance which is so commonly assigned to it ;
for the simple reason that the reports, even of
eye-witnesses, would not suffice to justify belief in
a large and essential part of their contents ; on
the contrary, these reports would discredit the
witnesses. The Gadarene miracle, for example, is
so extremely improbable, that the fact of its being
reported by three, even independent, authorities
3GO AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY i*
could not justify belief in it, unless we had the
clearest evidence as to their capacity as observers
and as interpreters of their observations. But it
is evident that the three authorities are not inde-
pendent ; that they have simply adopted a legend,
of which there were two versions ; and instead of
their proving its truth, it suggests their super-
stitious credulity : so that if " Matthew/' " Mark/'
and " Luke " are really responsible for the Gospels,
it is not the better for the Gadarene story, but
the worse for them.
A wonderful amount of controversial capital
has been made out of my assertion in the note to
which I have referred, as an obiter dictum of no
consequence to my argument, that if Kenan's
work1 were non-extant, the main results of
biblical criticism, as set forth in the works of
Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar, for example,
would not be sensibly affected. I thought I had
explained it satisfactorily already, but it seems
that my explanation has only exhibited still more
of my native perversity, so I ask for one more
chance.
.In the course of the historical development of
any branch of science, what is universally observed
is this : that the men who make epochs, and are
the real architects of the fabric of exact know-
ledge, are those who introduce fruitful ideas or
1 I trust it may not be supposed that I undervalue M. Kenan's
labours, or intended to speak slightingly of them.
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 361
methods. As a rule, the man who does this
pushes his idea, or his method, too far ; or, if he
does not, his school is sure to do so ; and those
who follow have to reduce his work to its proper
value, and assign it its place in the whole. Not
unfrequently, they, in their turn, overdo the
critical process, and, in trying to eliminate error,
throw away truth.
Thus, as I said, Linnaeus, Buffon, Cuvier,
Lamarck, really " set forth the results " of a
developing science, although they often heartily
contradict one another. Notwithstanding this
circumstance, modern classificatory method and
nomenclature have largely grown out of the work
of Linnaeus ; the modern conception of biology, as
a science, and of its relation to climatology, geo-
graphy, and geology, are, as largely, rooted in the
results of the labours of Buffon ; comparative
anatomy and palaeontology owe a vast debt to
Cuvier's results ; while invertebrate zoology and
the revival of the idea of evolution are intimately
dependent on the results of the work of Lamarck.
In other words, the main results of biology up to
the early years of this century are to be found in,
or spring out of, the works of these men.
So, if I mistake not, Strauss, if he did not
originate the idea of taking the mythopceic faculty
into account in the development of the Gospel
narratives, and though he may have exaggerated
the influence of that faculty, obliged scientific
362 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
theology, hereafter, to take that element into
serious consideration ; so Baur, in giving promin-
ence to the cardinal fact of the divergence of the
Nazarene and Pauline tendencies in the primitive
Church; so Reuss, in setting a marvellous example
of the cool and dispassionate application of the
principles of scientific criticism over the whole
field of Scripture ; so Volkmar, in his clear and
forcible statement of the Nazarene limitations of
Jesus, contributed results of permanent value in
scientific theology. I took these names as they
occurred to me. Undoubtedly, I might have
advantageously added to them ; perhaps, I might
have made a better selection. But.it really is
absurd to try to make out that I did not know
that these writers widely disagree ; and I believe
that no scientific theologian will deny that, in
principle, what I have said is perfectly correct.
Ecclesiastical advocates, of course, cannot be
expected to take this view of the matter. To
them, these mere seekers after truth, in so far as
their results are unfavourable to the creed the
clerics have to support, are more or less " infidels,"
or favourers of " infidelity " ; and the only thing
they care to see, or probably can see, is the fact
that, in a great many matters, the truth-seekers
differ from one another, and therefore can easily
be exhibited to the public, as if they did nothing
else ; as if any one who referred to their having,
each and all, contributed his share to the results
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 363
of theological science, was merely showing his
ignorance ; and as if a charge of inconsistency
could be based on the fact that he himself often
disagrees with what they say. I have never
lent a shadow of foundation to the assumption
that I am a follower of either Strauss, or Baur, or
Reuss, or Volkmar, or Renan ; my debt to these
eminent men — so far my superiors in theological
knowledge — is, indeed, great ; yet it is not for
their opinions, but for those I have been able to
form for myself, by their help.
In Agnosticism: a Rejoinder (p. 266), I have
referred to the difficulties under which those pro-
fessors of the science of theology, whose tenure of
their posts depends on the results of their investi-
gations, must labour ; and, in a note, I add —
Imagine that all our chairs of Astronomy had been founded
in the fourteenth century, and that their incumbents were
bound to sign Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with every
respect for the efforts of persons thus hampered to attain and
expound the truth, I think men of common sense would go
elsewhere to learn astronomy.
I did not write this paragraph without a know-
ledge that its sense would be open to the kind of
perversion which it has suffered ; but, if that was
clear, the necessity for the statement was still
clearer. It is my deliberate opinion : I reiterate
it ; and I say that, in my judgment, it is extremely
inexpedient that any subject which calls itself a
science should be entrusted to teachers who are
364 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY ix
debarred from freely following out scientific
methods to their legitimate conclusions, whatever
those conclusions may be. If I may borrow a
phrase paraded at the Church Congress, I think it
" ought to be unpleasant " for any man of science
to find himself in the position of such a teacher.
Human nature is not altered by seating it in a
professorial chair, even of theology. I have very
little doubt that if, in the year 1859, the tenure
of my office had depended upon my adherence to
the doctrines of Cuvier, the objections to them set
forth in the " Origin of Species " would have had
a halo of gravity about them that, being free to
teach what I pleased, I failed to discover. And,
in making that statement, it does not appear to
me that I am confessing that I should have been
debarred by " selfish interests " from making
candid inquiry, or that I should have been biassed
by " sordid motives." I hope that even such a
fragment of moral sense as may remain in an
ecclesiastical "infidel" might have got me through
the difficulty ; but it would be unworthy to deny,
or disguise, the fact that a very serious difficulty
must have been created for me by the nature of
my tenure. And let it be observed that the
temptation, in my case, would have been far
slighter than in that of a professor of theology ;
whatever biological doctrine I had repudiated,
nobody I cared for would have thought the worse
of me for so doing. No scientific journals would
IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 365
have howled me down, as the religious newspapers
howled down my too honest friend, the late
Bishop of Natal ; nor would my colleagues of the
Koyal Society have turned their backs upon me,
as his episcopal colleagues boycotted him.
I say these facts are obvious, and that it is
wholesome and needful that they should be
stated. It is in the interests of theology, if it be
a science, and it is in the interests of those
teachers of theology who desire to be something
better than counsel for creeds, that it should be
taken to heart. The seeker after theological
truth and that only, will no more suppose that I
have insulted him, than the prisoner who works
in fetters will try to pick a quarrel with me, if I
suggest that he would get on better if the fetters
were knocked off; unless indeed, as it is said does
happen in the course of long captivities, that the
victim at length ceases to feel the weight of his
chains, or even takes to hugging them, as if they
were honourable ornaments.1
1 To-day's Times contains a report of a remarkable speech by
Prince Bismarck, in which he tells the Reichstag that he has
long given up investing in foreign stock, lest so doing should
mislead his judgment in his transactions with foreign states.
Does this declaration prove that the Chancellor accuses himself
of being "sordid5' and " selfish" ; or does it not rather show
that, even in dealing with himself, he remains the man of
realities ?
X
THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE
[1890]
I HAD fondly hoped that Mr. Gladstone and I had
come to an end of disputation, and that the
hatchet of war was finally superseded by the
calumet, which, as Mr. Gladstone, I believe,
objects to tobacco, I was quite willing to smoke
for both. But I have had, once again, to discover
that the adage that whoso seeks peace will ensue
it, is a somewhat hasty generalisation. The
renowned warrior with whom it is my misfortune
to be opposed in most things has d ug up the axe
and is on the war-path once more. The weapon
has been wielded with all the dexterity which
long practice has conferred on a past master in
craft, whether of wood or state. And I have
reason to believe that the simpler sort of the
great tribe which he heads, imagine that my scalp
is already on its way to adorn their big chiefs
wigwam. I am glad therefore to be able to
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 367
relieve any anxieties which my friends may
entertain without delay. I assure them that my
skull retains its normal covering, and that though,
naturally, I may have felt alarmed, nothing
serious has happened. My doughty adversary
has merely performed a war dance, and his blows
have for the most part cut the air. I regret to
add, however, that by misadventure, and I am
afraid I must say carelessness, he has inflicted
one or two severe contusions on himself.
When the noise of approaching battle roused
me from the dreams of peace which occupy my
retirement, I was glad to observe (since I must
fight) that the campaign was to be opened upon
a new field. When the contest raged over the
Pentateuchal myth of the creation, Mr. Gladstone's
manifest want of acquaintance with the facts and
principles involved in the discussion, no less than
with the best literature on his own side of the
subject, gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I
had my adversary at a disadvantage. The sun of
science, at my back, was in his eyes. But, on the
present occasion, we are happily on an equality.
History and Biblical criticism are as much, or
as little, my vocation as they are that of Mr.
Gladstone ; the blinding from too much light, or
the blindness from too little, may be presumed to
be equally shared by both of us.
Mr. Gladstone takes up his new position in the
country of the Gadarenes. His strategic sense
139
368 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x
justly leads him to see that the authority of the
teachings of the synoptic Gospels, touching the
nature of the spiritual world, turns upon the
acceptance, or the rejection, of the Gadarene and
other like stories. As we accept, or repudiate,
such histories as that of the possessed pigs, so
shall we accept, or reject, the witness of the
synoptics to such miraculous interventions.
It is exactly because these stories constitute
the key-stone of the orthodox arch, that I
originally drew attention to them ; and, in spite
of my longing for peace, I am truly obliged to
Mr. Gladstone for compelling me to place my case
before the public once more. It may be thought
that this is a work of supererogation by those
who are aware that my essay is the subject of
attack in a work so largely circulated as the
" Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture " ; and who
may possibly, in their simplicity, assume that it
must be truthfully set forth in that work. But
the warmest admirers of Mr. Gladstone will hardly
be prepared to maintain that mathematical accu-
racy in stating the opinions of an opponent is the
most prominent feature of his controversial method.
And what follows will show that, in the present
case, the desire to be fair and accurate, the
existence of which I am bound to assume, has
not borne as much fruit as might have been
expected.
In referring to the statement of the narrators,
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 369
that the herd of swine perished in consequence of
the entrance into them of the demons by the per-
mission, or order, of Jesus of Nazareth, I said :
"Everything that I know of law and justice
convinces me that the wanton destruction of other
people's property is a misdemeanour of evil
example " (" Nineteenth Century/' February,
1889, p. 172).
Mr. Gladstone has not found it convenient to
cite this passage ; and, in view of various con-
siderations, I dare not assume that he would assent
to it, without sundry subtle modifications which,
for me, might possibly rob it of its argumentative
value. But, until the proposition is seriously
controverted, I shall assume it to be true, and
content myself with warning the reader that
neither he nor I have any grounds for assuming
Mr. Gladstone's concurrence. With this caution,
I proceed to remark that I think it may be
granted that the people whose herd of 2000 swine
(more of fewer) was suddenly destroyed suffered
great loss and damage. And it is quite certain
that the narrators of the Gadarene story do not,
in any way, refer to the point of morality and
legality thus raised ; as I said, they show no
inkling of the moral and legal difficulties which
arise.
Such being the facts of the case, I submit that
for those who admit the principle laid down, the
conclusion which I have drawn necessarily follows;
370 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWIXE x
though I repeat that, since Mr. Gladstone does
not explicitly admit the principle, I am far from
suggesting that he is bound by its logical con-
sequences. However, I distinctly reiterate the
opinion that any one who acted in the way
described in the story would, in my judgment,
be guilty of " a misdemeanour of evil example."
About that point I desire to leave no ambiguity
whatever; and it follows that, if I believed the
story, I should have no hesitation in applying
this judgment to the chief actor in it.
But, if any one will do me the favour to turn
to the paper in which these passages occur, he
will find that a considerable part of it is devoted
to the exposure of the familiar trick of the
" counsel for creeds," who, when they wish to
profit by the easily stirred odium theologicum, are
careful to confuse disbelief in a narrative of a
man's act, or disapproval of the acts as narrated,
with disbelieving and vilipending the man himself.
If I say that " according to paragraphs in several
newspapers, my valued Separatist friend A. B. has
houghed a lot of cattle, which he considered to be
unlawfully in the possession of an Irish land-
grabber ; that, in my opinion, any such act is a
misdemeanour of evil example ; but, that I utterly
disbelieve the whole story and have no doubt that
it is a mere fabrication : " it really appears to me
that, if any one charges me with calling A. B. an
immoral misdemeanant, I should be justified in
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 371
using very strong language respecting either his
sanity or his veracity. And, if an analogous charge
has been brought in reference to the Gadarene
story, there is certainly no excuse producible, on
account of any lack of plain speech on my part.
Surely no language can be more explicit than that
which follows :
" I can discern no escape from this dilemma ;
either Jesus said what he is reported to have said,
or he did not. In the former case, it is inevitable
that his authority on matters connected with the
* unseen world' should be roughly shaken; in the
latter, the blow falls upon the authority of the
synoptic Gospels'' (p. 173). "The choice then
lies between discrediting those who compiled the
Gospel biographies and disbelieving the Master,
whom they, simple souls, thought to honour by
preserving such traditions of the exercise of his
authority over Satan's invisible world " (p. 174).
And I leave no shadow of doubt as to my own
choice : " After what has been said, I do not
think that any sensible man, unless he happen to
be angry, will accuse me of ' contradicting the Lord
and his Apostles ' if I reiterate my total disbelief
in the whole Gadarene story " (p. 178).
I am afraid, therefore, that Mr. Gladstone must
have been exceedingly angry when he committed
himself to such a statement as follows :
So, then, after eighteen centuries of worship offered to our
Lord by the most cultivated, the most developed, and the most
372 KEEPERS OF THE HEED OF SWINE x
progressive portion of the human race, it has been reserved to a
scientific inquirer to discover that He was no better than a law-
breaker and an evil-doer. . . . How, in such a matter, came the
honours of originality to be reserved to our time and to Professor
Huxley? (Pp. 269, 270.)
Truly, the hatchet is hardly a weapon of pre-
cision, but would seem to have rather more the
character of the boomerang, which returns to
damage the reckless thrower. Doubtless such
incidents are somewhat ludicrous. But they have
a very serious side ; and, if I rated the opinion of
those who blindly follow Mr. Gladstone's leading,
but not light, in these matters, much higher than
the great Duke of Wellington's famous standard
of minimum value, I think I might fairly beg
them to reflect upon the general bearings of this
particular example of his controversial method.
I imagine it can hardly commend itself to their
cool judgment.
After this tragi-comical ending to what an old
historian calls a "robustious and rough coming
on " ; and after some praises of the provisions of
the Mosaic law in the matter of not eating pork —
in which, as pork disagrees with me and for some
other reasons, I am much disposed to concur,
though I do not see what they have to do with
the matter in hand — comes the serious onslaught.
Mr. Huxley, exercising his rapid judgment on the text, does
not appear to have encumbered himself with the labour of in-
quiring what anybody else had known or said about it. He has
Jt KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 373
thus missed a point which might have been set up in support of
his accusation against our Lord. (P. 273.)
Unhappily for my comfort, I have been much
exercised in controversy during the past thirty
years ; and the only compensation for the loss of
time and the trials of temper which it has inflicted
upon me, is that I have come to regard it as a
branch of the fine arts, and to take an impartial and
aesthetic interest in the way in which it is conducted,
even by those whose efforts are directed against
myself. Now, from the purely artistic point of
view (which, as we are all being told, has nothing to
do with morals), I consider it an axiom, that one
should never appear to doubt that the other side
has performed the elementary duty of acquiring
proper elementary information, unless there is
demonstrative evidence to the contrary. And I
think, though I admit that this may be a purely
subjective appreciation, that (unless you are quite
certain) there is a "want of finish/7 as a great
master of disputation once put it, about the sug-
gestion that your opponent has missed a point on
his own side. Because it may happen that he
has not missed it at all, but only thought it un-
worthy of serious notice. And if he proves that,
the suggestion looks foolish.
Merely noting the careful repetition of a charge,
the absurdity of which has been sufficiently ex-
posed above, I now ask my readers to accompany
me on a little voyage of discovery in search of the
374 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE *
side on which the rapid judgment and the
ignorance of the literature of the subject lie. I
think I may promise them very little trouble, and
a good deal of entertainment.
Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that the Gadarene
swinefolk were " Hebrews bound by the Mosaic
law " (p. 274) ; and he conceives that it has not
occurred to me to learn what may be said in
favour of and against this view. He tells us
that
Some commentators have alleged the authority of Joseplms
for stating that Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews,
from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was inno-
cent and lawful. (P. 273.)
Mr. Gladstone then goes on to inform his
readers that in his painstaking search after truth
he has submitted to the labour of personally
examining the writings of Josephus. Moreover,
in a note, he positively exhibits an acquaintance,
in addition, with the works of Bishop Wordsworth
and of Archbishop Trench ; and even shows that
he has read Hudson's commentary on Josephus.
And yet people say that our Biblical critics do
not equal the Germans in research ! But Mr.
Gladstone's citation of Cuvier and Sir John
Herschel about the Creation myth, and his ignor-
ance of all the best modern writings on his own
side, produced a great impression on my mind. I
have had the audacity to suspect that his ac-
quaintance with what has been done in Biblical
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 375
history might stand at no higher level than his
information about the natural sciences. However
unwillingly, I have felt bound to consider the
possibility that Mr. Gladstone's labours in this
matter may have carried him no further than
Josephus and the worthy, but somewhat antique,
episcopal and other authorities to whom he refers ;
that even his reading of Josephus may have been
of the most cursory nature, directed not to the
understanding of his author, but to the discovery
of useful controversial matter ; and that, in view
of the not inconsiderable misrepresentation of my
statements to which I have drawn attention, it
might be that Mr. Gladstone's exposition of the
evidence of Josephus was not more trustworthy.
I proceed to show that my previsions have been
fully justified. I doubt if controversial literature
contains anything more piquant than the story I
have to unfold.
That I should be reproved for rapidity of judg-
ment is very just : however quaint the situation
of Mr. Gladstone, as the reprover, may seem to
people blessed with a sense of humour. But it is
a quality, the defects of which have been painfully
obvious to me all my life ; and I try to keep my
Pegasus — at best, a poor Shetland variety of that
species of quadruped — at a respectable jog-trot, by
loading him heavily with bales of reading. Those
who took the trouble to study my paper in good
faith and not for mere controversial purposes,
376 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE X
have a right to know, that something more than a
hasty glimpse of two or three passages of Joseph us
(even with as many episcopal works thrown in)
lay at the back of the few paragraphs I devoted to
the Gadarene story. I proceed to set forth, as
briefly as I can, some results of that preparatory
work. My artistic principles do not permit m
present, to express a doubt that Mr. Gladstone
was acquainted with the facts I am about to
mention when he undertook to write. But, if he
did know them, then both what he has said and
what he has not said, his assertions and his
omissions alike, will require a paragraph to them-
selves.
The common consent of the synoptic Gospels
affirms that the miraculous transference of devils
from a man, or men, to sundry pigs, took place
somewhere on the eastern shore of the Lake of
Tiberias ; " on the other side of the sea over
against Galflee," the western shore being, without
doubt, included in the latter province. But there
is no such concord when we come to the name of
the part of the eastern shore, on which, according
to the story, Jesus and his disciples landed. In the
revised version, Matthew calls it the " country of
the Gadarenes :" Luke and Mark have " Gerasenes.*
In sundry very ancient manuscripts " Gergesenes "
occurs.
The existence of any place called Geigesa, how-
ever, is declared by the weightiest authorities
i KEEPERS OF THE HEKD OF SWINE 377
whom I have consulted to be very questionable ;
and no such town is mentioned in the list of the
cities of the Decapolis, in the territory of which
(as it would seem from Mark v. 20) the transaction
was supposed to take place. About Gerasa, on
the other hand, there hangs no such doubt. It
was a large and important member of the group
of the Decapolitan cities. But Gerasa is more than
thirty miles distant from the nearest part of the
Lake of Tiberias, while the city mentioned in the
narative could not have been very far off the scene
of the event. However, as Gerasa was a very im-
portant Hellenic city, not much more than a score
of miles from Gadara, it is easily imaginable that
a locality which was part of Decapolitan territory
may have been spoken of as belonging to one of
the two cities, when it really appertained to the
other. After weighing all the arguments, no
doubt remains on my mind that "Gadarene"
is the proper reading. At the period under con-
sideration, Gadara appears to have been a good-
sized fortified town, about two miles in circum-
ference. It was a place of considerable strategic
importance, inasmuch as it lay on a high ridge at
the point of intersection of the roads from Tiberias,
Scythopolis, Damascus, and Gerasa. Three miles
north from it, where the Tiberias road descended
into the valley of the Hieromices, lay the famous
hot springs and the fashionable baths of Arnatha,
On the north- east side, the remains of the extensive
378 KEEPEKS OF THE HERD OF SWINE *
neci opolis of Gadara are still to be seen. Innu-
merable sepulchral chambers are excavated in the
limestone cliffs, and many of them still contain
sarcophaguses of basalt ; while not a few are con-
verted into dwellings by the inhabitants of the
present village of Una Keis. The distance of
Gadara from the south-eastern shore of the Lake
of Tiberias is less than seven miles. The nearest
of the other cities of the Decapolis, to the north, is
Hippos, which also lay some seven miles off, in the
south-eastern corner of the shore of the lake. In
accordance with the ancient Hellenic practice,
that each city should be surrounded by a certain
amount of territory amenable to its jurisdiction,1
and on other grounds, it may be taken for
certain that the intermediate country was divided
between Gadara and Hippos ; and that the citizens
of Gadara had free access to a port on the lake.
Hence the title of "country of the Gadarenes "
applied to the locality of the porcine catastrophe
becomes easily intelligible. The swine may well
be imagined to have been feeding (as they do now
in the adjacent region) on the hillsides, which slope
somewhat steeply down to the lake from the north-
ern boundary wall of the valley of the Hieromices
(Nahr Yarmuk], about half-way between the city
1 Thus Josephus (lib. ix. ) says that his rival, Justus, per-
suaded the citizens of Tiberias to " set the villages that belonged
to Gadara and Hippos on fire ; which villages were situated on
the borders of Tiberias and of the region of Scythopolis. "
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 379
and the shore, and doubtless lay well within the
territory of the polis of Gadara.
The proof that Gadara was, to all intents and pur-
poses, a Gentile, and not a Jewish, city is complete.
The date and the occasion of its foundation are
unknown ; but it certainly existed in the third
century B.C. Antiochus the Great annexed it to
his dominions in B.C. 198. After this, during
the brief revival of Jewish autonomy, Alexander
Jannseus took it ; and for the first time, so far as
the records go, it fell under Jewish rule. l From
this it was rescued by Pompey (B.C. 63), who
rebuilt the city and incorporated it with the
province of Syria. In gratitude to the Romans
for the dissolution of a hated union, the Gadarenes
adopted the Pompeian era on their coinage.
Gadara was a commercial centre of some import-
ance, and therefore, it may be assumed, Jews
settled in it, as they settled in almost all con-
siderable Gentile cities. But a wholly mistaken
estimate of the magnitude of the Jewish colony
has been based upon the notion that Gabinius,
proconsul of Syria in 57-55 B.C., seated one of the
five sanhedrims in Gadara. Schiirer has pointed
out that what he really did was to lodge one of
them in Gazara, far away on the other side of the
Jordan. This is one of the many errors which have
arisen out of the confusion of the names Gadara,
Gazara, and Gafrara.
1 It is said to have been destroyed by its captors.
380 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE *
Augustus made a present of Gadara to Herod
the Great, as an appanage personal to himself;
and, upon Herod's death, recognising it to be a
" Grecian city " like Hippos and Gaza,1 he trans-
ferred it back to its former place in the province
of Syria. That Herod made no effort to judaise
his temporary possession, but rather the contrary,
is obvious from the fact that the coins of Gadara,
while under his rule, bear the image of Augustus
with the superscription Se^Sotrro? — a flying in the
face of Jewish prejudices which, even he, did not
dare to venture upon in Judaea. And I may
remark that, if my co-trustee of the British
Museum had taken the trouble to visit the
splendid numismatic collection under our charge,
he might have seen two coins of Gadara, one of
the time of Tiberius and the other of that of
Titus, each bearing the effigies of the emperor on
,the obverse : while the personified genius of the
city is on the reverse of the former. Further,
the well-known works of De Saulcy and of Ekhel
would have supplied the information that, from
the time of Augustus to that of Gordian, the
Gadarene coinage had the same thoroughly Gen-
tile character. Curious that a city of " Hebrews
bound by the Mosaic law " should tolerate such a
mint!
1 " But as to the Grecian cities, Gaza and Gadara and Hippos,
he cut them off from the kingdom and added them to Syria."
—Josej.hus, Warst II. vi. 3. See also Antiquities^ XVII. xi. 4.
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 381
Whatever increase in population the Ghetto of
Gadara may have undergone, between B.C. 4 and
A.D. 66, it nowise affected the gentile and anti-
Judaic character of the city at the outbreak of the
great war ; for Josephus tells us that, immediately
after the great massacre of CeEsarea, the revolted
Jews " laid waste the villages of the Syrians and
their neighbouring cities, Philadelphia and Se-
bonitis and Gerasa and Pella and Scythopolis,
and after them Gadara and Hippos " (" Wars," II.
xviii. 1). I submit that, if Gadara had been a
city of " Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law," the
ravaging of their territory by their brother Jews,
in revenge for the massacre of the Csesarean Jews
by the Gentile population of that place, would
surely have been a somewhat unaccountable pro-
ceeding. But when we proceed a little farther, to
the fifth section of the chapter in which this state-
ment occurs, the whole affair becomes intelligible
enough.
Besides this murder at Scythopolis, the other cities rose up
against the Jews that were among them : those of Askelou slew
two thousand five hundred, and those of Ptolemais two thousand,
and put not a few into bonds ; those of Tyre also put a great
number to death, but kept a greater number in prison ; more-
over, those of Hippos and those of Gadara did the like, while
vhey put to death the boldest of the Jews, but kept those of
whom they were most afraid in custody ; as did the rest of the
cities of Syria according as tl^y every one either hated them or
were afraid of them.
Josephus Is not always trustworthy, but he has
382 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x
no conceivable motive for altering facts here ; lie
speaks of contemporary events, in which he him-
self took an active part, and he characterises the
cities in the way familiar to him. For Josephus,
Gadara is just as much a Gentile city as
Ptolemais ; it was reserved for his latest commen-
tator, either ignoring, or ignorant of, all this, to
tell us that Gadara had a Hebrew population,
bound by the Mosaic law.
In the face of all this evidence, most of which
has been put before serious students, with full
reference to ' the needful authorities arid in a
thoroughly judicial manner, by Schurer in his
classical work,1 one reads with stupefaction the
statement which Mr. Gladstone has thought fit to
put before the uninstructed public :
Some commentators have alleged the authority of Josephus
for stating that Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews,
from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was inno-
cent and lawful. This is not quite the place for a critical ex-
amination of the matter ; but I have examined it, and have
satisfied myself that Josephus gives no reason whatever to
suppose that the population of Gadara, and still less (if less may
be) the population of the neighbourhood, and least of all the
swine-herding or lower portion of that population, were other
than Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law. (Pp 373-4.)
Even " rapid judgment " cannot be pleaded in
excuse for this surprising statement, because a
" Note on the Gadarene miracle " is added (iii a
special appendix), in which the references are
1 Geachichtcdesj-'dischcn VoUces im Zeitolter Christi, 1886-90.
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 383
given to the passages of Josephus, by the im-
proved interpretation of which, Mr. Gladstone
has thus contrived to satisfy himself of the thing
which is not. One of these is " Antiquities " XVII,
xiii. 4, in which section, I regret to say, I can find
no mention of Gadara. In " Antiquities," XVII. xi.
4, however, there is a passage which would appear
to be that which Mr. Gladstone means ; and I will
give it in full, although I have already cited part
of it :
There were also certain of the cities which paid tribute to
Archelaus ; Strato's tower, and Sebaste, with Joppa and Jeru-
salem ; for, as to Gaza, Gadara, and Hippos, they were Grecian
cities, which Caesar separated from his government, and added
them to the province of Syria.
That is to say, Augustus simply restored the state
of things which existed before he gave Gadara,
then certainly a Gentile city, lying outside Judaea,
to Herod as a mark of great personal favour. Yet
Mr. Gladstone can gravely tell those who are not
in a position to check his statements :
The sense seems to be, not that these cities were inhabited by
a Greek population, but that they had politically been taken out
of Judaea and added to Syria, which I presume was classified as
simply Hellenic, a portion of the great Greek empire erected by
Alexander. (Pp. 295-6.)
Mr. Gladstone's next reference is to the " Wars/'
III. vii. 1 :
So Vespasian marched to the city Gadara, and took it upon
the first onset, because he foun 1 it destitute of a considerable
140
384 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x
number of men grown up fit for war. He then came into it,
and slew all the youth, the Romans having no mercy on any age
whatsoever ; and this was done out of the hatred they hore the
nation, and because of the iniquity they had been guilty of in
the affair of Cestius.
Obviously, then, Gadara was an ultra-Jewish
city. Q.E.D. But a student trained in the use
of weapons of precision, rather than in that of
rhetorical tomahawks, has had many and painful
warnings to look well about him, before trusting an
argument to the mercies of a passage, the context
of which he has not carefully considered. If Mr.
Gladstone had not been too much in a hurry to
turn his imaginary prize to account — if he had
paused just to look at the preceding chapter of
Josephus — he would have discovered that his
much haste meant very little speed. He would
have found ("JWars," III. vi. 2) that Vespasian
marched from his base, the port of Ptolemais
(Acre), on the shores of the Mediterranean into
Galilee ; and, having dealt with the so-called
" Gadara," was minded to finish with Jotapata,
a strong place about fourteen miles south-east of
Ptolemais, into which Josephus, who at first had
fled to Tiberias, eventually threw himself—
Vespasian arriving before Jotapata " the very
next day." Now, if any one will take a decent
map of Ancient Palestine in hand, he will see that
Jotapata, as I have said, lies about fourteen miles
in a straight line east-south-east of Ptolemais,
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 385
while a certain town, " Gabara " (which, was also
held by the Jews), is situated, about the same
distance, to the east of that port. Nothing can be
more obvious than that Vespasian, wishing to
advance from Ptolemais into Galilee, could not
afford to leave these strongholds in the possession
of the enemy ; and, as Gabara would lie on his
left flank when he moved to Jotapata, he took
that city, whence his communications with his
base could easily be threatened, first. It might
really have been fair evidence of demoniac posses-
sion, if the best general of Rome had marched
forty odd miles, as the crow flies, through hostile
Galilee, to take a city (which, moreover, had just
tried to abolish its Jewish population) on the
other side of the Jordan ; and then marched back
again to a place fourteen miles off his starting-
point.1 One would think that the most careless
of readers must be startled by this incongruity
into inquiring whether there might not be some-
thing wrong with the text ; and, if he had done so,
he would have easily discovered that since the
time of Reland, a century and a half ago, careful
scholars have read Gabara for Gabara.1
Once more, I venture to point out that training
1 If William the Conqueror, after fighting the battle of
Hastings, had marched to capture Chichester and then returned
to assault Rye, being all the while anxious to reach London, hia
proceedings would not have been more eccentric than Mr. Glad-
stone must imagine those of Vespasian were.
- See Reland, Palestina (1714), t. ii. p. 771. Also Robinson,
Later Biblical Researches (1856), p 87 note.
386 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x
in the use of the weapons of precision of science
may have its value in historical studies, if only in
preventing the occurrence of droll blunders in
geography.
In the third citation (" Wars," IV. vii.) Josephus
tells us that Vespasian inarched against " Gadara/'
which he calls the metropolis of Peraea (it was
possibly the seat of a common festival of the
Decapolitan cities), and entered it, without oppo-
sition, the wealthy and powerful citizens having
opened negotiations with him without the know-
ledge of an opposite party, who, " as being inferior
in number to their enemies, who were within the
city, and seeing the Romans very near the city,"
resolved to fly. Before doing so, however, they,
after a fashion unfortunately too common among
the Zealots, murdered and shockingly mutilated
Dolesus, a man of the first rank, who had pro-
moted the embassy to Vespasian ; and then " ran
out of the city." Hereupon, "the people of
Gadara " (surely not this time " Hebrews bound
by the Mosaic law ") received Vespasian with joy-
ful acclamations, voluntarily pulled down their
wall, so that the city could not in future be used
as a fortress by the Jews, and accepted a Roman
garrison for their future protection. Granting
that this Gadara really is the city of the
Gadarenes, the reference, without citation, to the
passage, in support of Mr. Gladstone's contention
seems rather remarkable. Taken in conjunction
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 387
with the shortly antecedent ravaging of the
Gadarene territory by the Jews, in fact, better
proof could hardly be expected of the real state of
the case ; namely, that the population of Gadara
(and notably the wealthy and respectable part
of it) was thoroughly Hellenic; though, as in
Ca3sarea and elsewhere among the Palestinian
cities, the rabble contained a considerable body of
fanatical Jews, whose reckless ferocity made them,
even though a mere minority of the population, a
standing danger to the city.
Thus Mr. Gladstone's conclusion from his study
of Josephus, that the population of Gadara were
" Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law," turns out to
depend upon nothing better than a marvellously
complete misinterpretation of what that author
says, combined with equally marvellous geogra-
phical misunderstandings, long since exposed
and rectified ; while the positive evidence that
Gadara, like other cities of the Decapolis, was
thoroughly Hellenic in organisation, and essenti-
ally Gentile in population, is overwhelming.
And, that being the fact of the matter, patent
to all who will take the trouble to enquire about
what has been said about it, however obscure to
those who merely talk of so doing, the thesis that
the Gadarene swineherds, or owners, were Jews
violating the Mosaic law shows itself to be an
empty and most unfortunate guess. But really,
whether they that kept the swine were Jews, or
388 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE X
whether they were Gentiles, is a consideration
which has no relevance whatever to my case. The
legal provisions, which alone had authority over
an inhabitant of the country of the Gadarenes,
were the Gentile laws sanctioned by the Roman
suzerain of the province of Syria, just as the only
law, which has authority in England, is that re-
cognised by the sovereign Legislature. Jewish
communities in England may have their private
code, as they doubtless had in Gadara. But an
English magistrate, if called upon to enforce their
peculiar laws, would dismiss the complainants
from the judgment seat, let us hope with more
politeness than Gallio did in a like case, but quite
as firmly. Moreover, in the matter of keeping
pigs, we may be quite certain that Gadarene law
left everybody free to do as he pleased, indeed
encouraged the practice rather than otherwise.
Not only was pork one of the commonest and one '
of the most favourite articles of Roman diet ; but,
to both Greeks and Romans, the pig was a sacri-
ficial animal of high importance. Sucking pigs
played an important part in Hellenic purificatory
rites ; and everybody knows the significance of the
Roman suovetaurilia, depicted on so many bas-
reliefs.
Under these circumstances, only the extreme
need of a despairing " reconciler " drowning in a
sea of adverse facts, can explain the catching at
such a poor straw as the reckless guess that the
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 389
swineherds of the " country of the Gadarenes "
were erring Jews, doing a little clandestine busi-
ness on their own account. The endeavour to
justify the asserted destruction of the swine by the
analogy of breaking open a cask of smuggled
spirits, and wasting their contents on the ground,
is curiously unfortunate. Does Mr. Gladstone
mean to suggest that a Frenchman landing at
Dover, and coming upon a cask of smuggled brandy
in the course of a stroll along the cliffs, has the
right to break it open and waste its contents on
the ground ? Yet the party of Galileans who,
according to the narrative, landed and took a walk
on the Gadarene territory, were as much foreigners
in the Decapolis as Frenchmen would be at Dover.
Herod Antipas, their sovereign, had no jurisdic-
tion in the Decapolis— they were strangers and
aliens, with no more right to interfere with a pig-
keeping Hebrew, than I have a right to interfere
with an English professor of the Israelitic faith, if
I see a slice of ham on his plate. According to
the law of the country in which these Galilean
foreigners found themselves, men might keep pigs
if they pleased. If the men who kept them were
Jews, it might be permissible for the strangers to
inform the religious authority acknowledged by the
Jews of Gadara; but to interfere themselves, in such
a matter, was a step devoid of either moral or legal
justification.
Suppose a modern English Sabbatarian fanatic,
390 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x
who believes, on the strength of his interpretation
of the fourth commandment, that it is a deadly sin
to work on the " Lord's Day," sees a fellow Puritan
yielding to the temptation of getting in his harvest
on a fine Sunday morning — is the former justified
in setting fire to the latter's corn ? Would not
an English court of justice speedily teach him
better ?
In truth, the government which permits private
persons, on any pretext (especially pious and
patriotic pretexts), to take the law into their own
hands, fails in the performance of the primary
duties of all governments ; while those who set
the example of such acts, or who approve them, or
who fail to disapprove them, are doing their best
to dissolve civil society : they are compassers of
illegality and fautors of immorality.
I fully understand that Mr. Gladstone may not
see the matter in this light. He may possibly
consider that the union of Gadara with the
Decapolis,by Augustus, was a " blackguard " trans-
action, which deprived Hellenic Gadarene law of
all moral force ; and that it was quite proper for a
Jewish Galilean, going back to the time when the
land of the Girgashites was given to his ancestors,
some 1500 years before, to act, as if the state of
tilings which ought to obtain, in territory which
traditionally, at any rate, belonged to his fore-
fathers, did really exist. And, that being so, I
can only say I do not agree with him, but leave
X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 391
the matter to the appreciation of those of our
countrymen, happily not yet the minority, who
believe that the first condition of enduring liberty
is obedience to the law of the land.
The end of the month drawing nigh, I thought
it well to send away the manuscript of the fore-
going pages yesterday, leaving open, in my own
mind, the possibility of adding a succinct charac-
terisation of Mr. Gladstone's controversial methods
as illustrated therein. This morning, however, I
had the pleasure of reading a speech which I
think must satisfy the requirements of the most
fastidious of controversial artists ; and there occurs
in it so concise, yet so complete, a delineation of
Mr. Gladstone's way of dealing with disputed
questions of another kind, that no poor effort of
mine could better it as a description of the aspect
which his treatment of scientific, historical, and
critical questions presents to me.
The smallest examination would have told a man of his capa-
city and of his experience that he was uttering the grossest
exaggerations, that he was basing arguments upon the slightest
hypotheses, and that his discussions only had to be critically
examined by the most careless critic in order to show their
intrinsic hollowness.
Those who have followed me through this paper
will hardly dispute the justice of this judgment,
severe as it is. But the Chief Secretary for
392 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x
Ireland has science in the blood ; and has the
advantage of a natural, as well as a highly
cultivated, aptitude for the use of methods of
precision in investigation, and for the exact
enunciation of the results thereby obtained.
XI
ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR GLADSTONE'S
CONTROVERSIAL METHODS
[1891]
THE series of essays, in defence of the historical
accuracy of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures,
contributed by Mr. Gladstone to " Good Words/1
having been revised and enlarged by their author,
appeared last year as a separate volume, under
the somewhat defiant title of " The Impregnable
Rock of Holy Scripture."
The last of these Essays, entitled " Conclusion/'
contains an attack, or rather several attacks,
couched in language which certainly does not err
upon the side of moderation or of courtesy, upon
statements and opinions of mine. One of these
assaults is a deliberately devised attempt, not
merely to rouse the theological prejudices in-
grained in the majority of Mr. Gladsone's readers,
but to hold me up as a person who has endeavoured
to besmirch the personal character of the object of
their veneration. For Mr. Gladstone asserts that
394 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
I have undertaken to try " the character of our
Lord " (p. 268) ; and he tells the many who are, as
I think unfortunately, predisposed to place im-
plicit credit in his assertions, that it has been
reserved for me to discover that Jesus "was no
better than a law-breaker and an evil-doer ! "
(p. 269).
It was extremely easy for me to prove, as I did
in the pages of this Review last December, that,
under the most favourable interpretation, this
amazing declaration must be ascribed to extreme
confusion of thought. And, by bringing an
abundance of good-will to the consideration of the
subject, I have now convinced myself that it is
right for me to admit that a person of Mr. Glad-
stone's intellectual acuteness really did mistake
the reprobation of the course of conduct ascribed
to Jesus, in a story of which I expressly say I do
not believe a word, for an attack on his character
and a declaration that he was " no better than a
law-breaker, and an evil-doer." At any rate, so far
as I can see, this is what Mr. Gladstone wished
to be believed when he wrote the following
passage : —
I must, however, in passing, make the confession that I did
not state with accuracy, as I ought to have done, the precise
form of the accusation. I treated it as an imputation on the
action of our Lord ; he replies that it is only an imputation on
the narrative of three evangelists respecting Him. The differ-
ence, from his point of view, is probably material, and I there-
fore regret that I overlooked it.1
1 Nineteenth Century, February 1891, pp. 339-40.
XI PECULIAK CONTKOVERSIAL METHODS 395
Considering the gravity of the error which is
here admitted, the fashion of the withdrawal
appears more singular than admirable. From my
"point of view" — not from Mr. Gladstone's
apparently — the little discrepancy between the
facts and Mr. Gladstone's carefully offensive
travesty of them is " probably " (only " probably ")
material. However, as Mr Gladstone concludes
with an official expression of regret for his error,
it is my business to return an equally official ex-
pression of gratitude for the attenuated reparation
with which I am favoured.
Having cleared this specimen of Mr. Gladstone's
controversial method out of the way, I may
proceed to the next assault, that on a passage in
an article on Agnosticism (" Nineteenth Century,"
February 1889), published two years ago. I there
said, in referring to the Gadarene story, " Every-
thing I know of law and justice convinces me
that the wanton destruction of other people's
property is a misdemeanour of evil example."
On this, Mr. Gladstone, continuing his candid and
urbane observations, remarks (;' Impregnable
Rock," p. 273) that, " Exercising his rapid judg-
ment on the text," and "not inquiring what
anybody else had known or said about it," I had
missed a point in support of that "accusation
against our Lord " which he has now been con-
strained to admit I never made.
The "point " in question is that " Gadara was a
396 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
city of Greeks rather than of Jews, from whence
it might be inferred that to keep swine was
innocent and lawful." I conceive that I have
abundantly proved that Gadara answered exactly
to the description here given of it ; and I shall
show, by and by, that Mr. Gladstone has used
language which, to my mind, involves the admission
that the authorities of the city were not Jews.
But I have also taken a good deal of pains to
show that the question thus raised is of no
importance in relation to the main issue.1 If
Gadara was, as I maintain it was, a city of the
Decapolis, Hellenistic in constitution and con-
taining a predominantly Gentile population, my
case is superabundantly fortified. On the other
hand, if the hypothesis that Gadara was under
Jewish government, which Mr. Gladstone seems
sometimes to defend and sometimes to give up,
were accepted, my case would be nowise weakened.
At any rate, Gadara was not included within the
jurisdiction of the tetrach of Galilee ; if it had
been, the Galileans who crossed over the lake to
1 Neither is it of anv consequence whether the locality of the
supposed miracle was Gadara, or Gerasa, or Gergesa. But I may
say that I was well acquainted with Origen's opinion respecting
Gergesa. It is fully discussed and rejected in Riehm's Hand-
worterbuch. In Kitto's Biblical Cyclopaedia (ii. p. 51) Professor
Porter remarks that Origen merely " conjecture* " that Gergesa
was indicated ; and he adds, "Now, in a question of this kind
conjectures cannot be admitted. We must implicitly follow the
most ancient and creditable testimony, which clearly pronounces
in favour of Ta^aprjv&v. This reading is adopted by Tischendorf,
Alford, and Tregelles."
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 397
Gadara had no official status ; and they had no
more civil right to punish law-breakers than any
other strangers.
In my turn, however, I may remark that there
is a " point " which appears to have escaped Mr.
Gladstone's notice. And that is somewhat un-
fortunate, because his whole argument turns upon
it. Mr. Gladstone assumes, as a matter of course,
that pig-keeping was an offence against the " Law
of Moses " ; and, therefore, that Jews who kept
pigs were as much liable to legal pains and
penalties as Englishmen who smuggle brandy
(" Impregnable Rock/' p. 274).
There can be no doubt that, according to the
Law, as it is defined in the Pentateuch, the pig
was an " unclean " animal, and that pork was
a forbidden article of diet. Moreover, since pigs
are hardly likely to be kept for the mere love of
those unsavoury animals, pig-owning, or swine-
herding, must have been, and evidently was
regarded as a suspicious and degrading occupation
by strict Jews, in the first century A.D. But I
should like to know on what provision of the
Mosaic Law, as it is laid down in the Pentateuch,
Mr. Gladstone bases the assumption, which is
essential to his case, that the possession of pigs
and the calling of a swineherd were actually
illegal. The inquiry was put to me the other
day ; and, as I could not answer it, I turned up
the article "Schwem" in Riehm's standard
398 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
" Handworterbuch," for help out of my difficulty ;
but unfortunately without success. After speaking
of the martyrdom which the Jews, under Antiochus
Epiphanes, preferred to eating pork, the writer
proceeds : —
It may be, nevertheless, that the practice of keeping pigs may
have found its way into Palestine in the Grseco-Roman time,
in consequence of the great increase of the non-Jewish popula-
tion ; yet there is no evidence of it in the New Testament ;
the great herd of swine, 2,000 in number, mentioned in the
narrative of the possessed, was feeding in the territory of
Gadara, which belonged to the Decapolis ; and the prodigal
son became a swineherd with the native of a far country into
which he had wandered ; in neither of these cases is there
reason for thinking that the possessors of these herds were
Jews.1
Having failed in my search, so far, I took up
the next work of reference at hand, Kitto's
"Cyclopaedia" (vol. iii. 1876). There, under
" Swine/' the writer, Colonel Hamilton Smith,
seemed at first to give me what I wanted, as he
says that swine " appear to have been repeatedly
introduced and reared by the Hebrew people,2
notwithstanding the strong prohibition in the Law
of Moses (Is. Ixv. 4)." But, in the first place,
1 I may call attention, in passing, to the fact that this author-
ity, at any rate, has no sort of doubt of the fact that Jewish
Law did not rule in Gadara (indeed, under the head of " Gadara,"
in the same work, it is expressly stated that the population of
the place consisted "predominantly of heathens"), and that he
scouts the notion that the Gadarene swineherds were Jews.
2 The evidence adduced, so far as post-exile times are con-
cerned, appears to me insufficient to prove this assertion.
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 399
Isaiah's writings form no part of the "Law of
Moses " ; and, in the second place, the people
denounced by the prophet in this passage are
neither the possessors of pigs, nor swineherds, but
these " which eat swine's flesh and broth of
abominable things is in their vessels." And when,
in despair, I turned to the provisions of the Law
itself, my difficulty was not cleared up. Leviticus
xi. 8 (Revised Version) says, in reference to the
pig and other unclean animals : " Of their flesh ye
shall not eat, and their carcasses ye shall not
touch." In the revised version of Deuteronomy,
xiv. 8, the words of the prohibition are identical,
and a skilful refiner might possibly satisfy himself,
even if he satisfied nobody else, that " carcase "
means the body of a live animal as well as a dead
one ; and that, since swineherds could hardly avoid
contact with their charges, their calling was im-
plicitly forbidden. 1 Unfortunately, the authorised
version expressly says " dead carcase " ; and thus
the most rabbinically minded of reconcilers might
find his casuistry foiled by that great source of
surprises, the "original Hebrew.'' That such
check is at any rate possible, is clear from the fact
that the legal uncleanness of some animals, as
food, did not interfere with their being lawfully
possessed, cared for, and sold by Jews. The
1 Even Leviticus xi. 26, cited without reference to the con-
text, will not serve the purpose; because the swine is " cloven-
footed " (Lev. xi. 7).
141
400 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
provisions for the ransoming of unclean beasts
(Lev. xxvii. 27) and for the redemption of their
sucklings (Numbers xviii. 15) sufficiently prove this.
As the late Dr. Kalisch has observed in his '' Com-
mentary " on Leviticus, part ii. p. 129, note : —
Though asses and horses, camels and dogs, were kept by the
Israelites, they were, to a certain extent, associated with the
notion of impurity ; they might be turned to profitable account
by their labour or otherwise, but in respect to food they were an
abomination.
The same learned commentator (loc. cit. p. 88)
proves that the Talmudists forbade the rearing of
pigs by Jews, unconditionally and everywhere ;
and even included it under the same ban as the
study of Greek philosophy, " since both alike were
considered to lead to the desertion of the Jewish
faith." It is very possible, indeed probable, that
the Pharisees of the fourth decade of our first
century took as strong a view of pig-keeping as
did their spiritual descendants. But, for all that,
it does not follow that the practice was illegal.
The stricter Jews could not have despised and
hated swineherds more than they did publicans ;
but, so far as I know, there is no provision in the
Law against the practice of the calling of a tax-
gatherer by a Jew. The publican was in fact
very much in the position of an Irish process-
server at the present day — more, rather than less,
despised and hated on account of the perfect
legality of his occupation. Except for certain
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 401
sacrificial purposes, pigs were held in such
abhorrence by the ancient Egyptians, that
swineherds were not permitted to enter a temple,
or to intermarry with other castes ; and anj one
who had touched a pig, even accidentally, was
unclean. But these very regulations prove that
pig-keeping was not illegal ; it merely involved
certain civil and religious disabilities. For the
Jews, dogs were typically " unclean animals ; but,
when that eminently pious Hebrew, Tobit, " went
forth" with the angel "the young man's dog"
went" with them " (Tobit v. 16) without apparent
remonstrance from the celestial guide. I really
do not see how an appeal to the Law could have
justified any one in drowning Tobit's dog, on the
ground that his master was keeping and feeding
an animal quite as " unclean " as any pig.
Certainly the excellent Raguel must have failed to
see the harm of dog-keeping, for we are told that,
on the travellers' return homewards, " the dog
went after them " (xi. 4).
Until better light than I have been able to
obtain is thrown upon the subject, therefore, it is
obvious that Mr. Gladstone's argumentative house
has been built upon an extremely slippery
quicksand ; perhaps even has no foundation at all.
Yet another " point " does not seem to have
occurred to Mr. Gladstone, who is so much shocked
that I attach no overwhelming weight to the
assertions contained in the synoptic Gospels, even
402 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
when all three concur. These Gospels agree in
stating, in the most express, and to some extent
verbally identical, terms, that the devils entered
the pigs at their own request,1 and the third
Gospel (viii. 31) tells us what the motive of the
demons was in asking the singular boon : " They
intreated him that he would not command them
to depart into the abyss." From this, it would
seem that the devils thought to exchange the
heavy punishment of transportation to the abyss
for the lighter penalty of imprisonment in swine.
And some commentators, more ingenious than
respectful to the supposed chief actor in this
extraordinary fable, have dwelt, with satisfaction,
upon the very unpleasant quarter of an hour
which the evil spirits must have had, when the
headlong rush of their maddened tenements
convinced them how completely they were taken
in. In the whole story, there is not one solitary
hint that the destruction of the pigs was intended
as a punishment of their owners, or of the
swineherds. On the contrary, the concurrent
testimony of the three narratives is to the effect
that the catastrophe was the consequence of
diabolic suggestion. And, indeed, no source could
1 1st Gospel : " And the devils "besought him, saying, If Thou
cast us out send us away into the herd of swine." 2d Gospel :
"They besought him, saying, Send us into the swine." 3d
Gospel : " They inlreated him that he would give them leave ta
enter into them."
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 403
be more appropriate for an act of such manifest
injustice and illegality.
I can but marvel that modern defenders of the
faith should not be glad of any reasonable excuse
for getting rid of a story which, if it had been
invented by Voltaire, would have justly let loose
floods of orthodox indignation.
Thus, the hypothesis, to which Mr. Gladstone so
fondly clings, finds no support in the provisions of
the " Law of Moses " as that law is defined in the
Pentateuch ; while it is wholly inconsistent with
the concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels,
to which Mr. Gladstone attaches so much weight.
In my judgment, it is directly contrary to every-
thing which profane history tells us about the
constitution and the population of the city of
Gadara ; and it commits those who accept it to a
story which, if it were true, would implicate
the founder of Christianity in an illegal and in-
equitable act.
Such being the case, I consider myself excused
from following Mr Gladstone through all the
meanderings of his late attempt to extricate
himself from the maze of historical and exegetical
difficulties in which he is entangled. I content
myself with assuring those who, with my paper
(not Mr. Gladstone's version of my arguments) in
hand, consult the original authorities, that they
will find full justification for every statement I
404 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
have made. But in order to dispose those who
cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe
that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his
own cause plays no part in inducing ine to speak
thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the
following examination, which shall be as brief as I
can make it, of the seven propositions in which
Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary
of my " errors."
When, in the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the Holy See declared that certain proposi-
tions contained in the works of Bishop Jansen
were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal
replied that, while they were ready to defer to
the Papal authority about questions of faith and
morals, they must be permitted to judge about
questions of fact for themselves ; and that, really,
the condemned propositions were not to be found
in Jansen's writings. As everybody knows, His
Holiness and the Grand Monarque replied to this,
surely not unreasonable, plea after the manner of
Lord Peter in the " Tale of a Tub." It is, there-
fore, not without some apprehension of meeting
with a similar fate, that I put in a like plea
against Mr. Gladstone's Bull. The seven proposi-
tions declared to be false and condemnable, in
that kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly
compares with the authoritative style of the
Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or may
not be true. But they are not to be found in
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 405
anything I have written. And some of them
diametrically contravene that which I have
written. I proceed to prove my assertions.
PROP. 1. Throughout the paper he confounds to-
g ether what I had distinguished, namely, the city
of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a
mere pom cerium, but as a rural district.
In my judgment, this statement is devoid of
foundation. In my paper on " The Keepers of
the Herd of Swine " I point out, at some length,
that, " in accordance with the ancient Hellenic
practice," each city of the Decapolis must have
been " surrounded by a certain amount of territory
amenable to its jurisdiction " : and, to enforce this
conclusion, I quote what Josephus says about the
" villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos."
As I understand the teTmpomerium or pommrium?
it means the space which, according to Roman
custom, was kept free from buildings, immediately
within and without the walls of a city ; and which
defined the range of the auspicia urlana. The
conception of a pomcerium as a " vicinage attached
to" a city, appears to be something quite novel
and original. But then, to be sure, I. do not know
how many senses Mr. Gladstone may attach to the
word " vicinage."
Whether Gadara had a pomcerium, in the
proper technical sense, or not, is a point on which
I offer no opinion. But that the city had a very
1 See Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung, Bd. III. p. 408.
406 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
considerable "rural district" attached to it and
notwithstanding its distinctness, amenable to the
jurisdiction of the Gentile municipal authorities,
is one of the main points of my case.
PROP. 2. He more fatally confounds the local civil
government and its following, including, perhaps,
the whole wealthy class and those attached to it, with
the ethnical character of the general population.
Having survived confusion No. 1, which turns
out not to be on my side, I am now confronted in
No. 2 with a "more fatal" error — and so it is, if
there be degrees of fatality ; but, again, it is Mr.
Gladstone's and not mine. It would appear, from
this proposition (about the grammatical interpre-
tation of which, however, I admit there are diffi-
culties), that Mr. Gladstone holds that the " local
civil government and its following among the
wealthy," were ethnically different from the
"general population." On p. 348, he further
admits that the " wealthy and the local governing
power " were friendly to the Romans. Are we
then to suppose that it was the persons of Jewish
" ethnical character " who favoured the Romans,
while those of Gentile " ethnical character " were
opposed to them? But, if that supposition is
absurd, the only alternative is that the local civil
government was ethnically Gentile. This is
exactly my contention.
At pp. 379 to 391 of the essay on "The
Keepers of the Herd of Swine " I have fully
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 407
discussed the question of the ethnical character
of the general population. I have shown that,
according to Josephus, who surely ought to have
known, Gadara was as much a Gentile city as
Ptolemais ; I have proved that he includes Gadara
amongst the cities " that rose up against the Jews
that were amongst them," which is a pretty
definite expression of his belief that the " ethnical
character of the general population " was Gentile.
There is no question here of Jews of the Roman
party fighting with Jews of the Zealot party, as
Mr. Gladstone suggests. It is the non- Jewish
and anti-Jewish general population which rises
up against the Jews who had settled " among
them."
PROP. 8. His one item of direct evidence as to the
Gentile character of the city refers only to the former
and not to the latter.
More fatal still. But, once more, not to me. I
adduce not one, but a variety of " items " in proof
of the non- Judaic character of the population of
Gadara : the evidence of history ; that of the
coinage of the city ; the direct testimony of
Josephus, just cited — to mention no others. I
repeat, if the wealthy people and those connected
with them — the "classes" and the "hangers on"
of Mr. Gladstone's well-known taxonomy — were,
as he appears to admit they were, Gentiles ; if the
" civil government " of the city was in their hands,
as the coinage proves it was ; what becomes of
408 PECULIAK CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
Mr. Gladstone's original proposition in "The
Impregnable Rock of Scripture " that " the popu-
lation of Gadara, and still less (if less may be) the
population of the neighbourhood/' were " Hebrews
bound by the Mosaic law " ? And what is the
importance of estimating the precise proportion of
H'ebrews who may have resided, either in the city
of Gadara or in its dependent territory, when, as
Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful
to say " seems "), the government, and conse-
quently the law, which ruled in that territory and
defined civil right and wrong was Gentile and not
Judaic ? But perhaps Mr. Gladstone is prepared
to maintain that the Gentile " local civil govern-
ment" of a city of the Decapolis administered
Jewish Law ; and showed their respect for it,
more particularly, by stamping their coinage with
effigies of the Emperors.
In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me
errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone
has given away his case.
PROP. 4. He fatally confounds the question of
political party with those of nationality and of
religion, and assumes that those who took the side
of Rome in the factions that prevailed could nut be
subject to the Mosaic Law.
It would seem that I have a feline tenacity of
life ; once more, a " fatal error/' But Mr. Glad-
stone has forgotten an excellent rule of contro-
versy ; say what is true, of course, but mind that
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 409
it is decently probable. Now it is not decently
probable, hardly indeed conceivable, that any one
who has read Josephns, or any other historian of
the Jewish war, should be unaware that there
were Jews (of whom Joseplms himself was one)
who " Romanised " and, more or less openly,
opposed the war party. But, however that may
be, I assert that Mr. Gladstone neither has
produced, nor can produce, a passage of my
writing which affords the slightest foundation for
this particular article of his indictment.
PROP. 5. His examination of the text of
Josephus is alike one-sided, inadequate, and
erroneous.
Easy to say, hard to prove. So long as the
authorities whom I have cited are on my side, I
do not know why this singularly temperate and
convincing dictum should trouble me. I have yet
to become acquainted with Mr. Gladstone's claims
to speak with an authority equal to that of scholars
of the rank of Schiirer, whose obviously just and
necessary emendations he so unceremoniously
pooh-poohs.
PROP. 6. Finally, he sets aside, on grounds not
critical or historical, but partly subjective, the
primary historical testimony on the subject, namely,
that of the three Synoptic Evangelists, who write as
contemporaries and deal directly with the subject,
neither of which is done ly any other authority.
Really this is too much ! The fact is, as anybody
410 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
can see who will turn to my article of February
1889 [VII. supra], out of which all this discussion
has arisen, that the arguments upon which I rest the
strength of my case touching the swine-miracle, are
exactly " historical " and " critical/' Expressly, and
in words that cannot be misunderstood, I refuse to
rest on what Mr. Gladstone calls " subjective "
evidence. I abstain from denying the possibility
of the Gadarene occurrence, and I even go so far as
to speak of some physical analogies to possession.
In fact, my quondam opponent, Dr. Wace,
shrewdly, but quite fairly, made the most of these
admissions ; and stated that I had removed the
only " consideration which would have been a
serious obstacle " in the way of his belief in the
Gadarene story. l
So far from setting aside the authority of the
synoptics on " subjective " grounds, I have taken
a great deal of trouble to show that my non-belief
in the story is based upon what appears to me to
be evident ; firstly, that the accounts of the three
synoptic Gospels are not independent, but are
founded upon a common source ; secondly, that,
even if the story of the common tradition pro-
ceeded from a contemporary, it would still be
worthy of very little credit, seeing the manner in
which the legends about mediaeval miracles have
been propounded by contemporaries. And in
» Nineteenth Century, March 1889 (p. 362).
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 411
illustration of this position I wrote a special essay
about the miracles reported by Eginhard. l
In truth, one need go no further than Mr.
Gladstone's sixth proposition to be convinced that
contemporary testimony, even of well-known and
distinguished persons, may be but a very frail reed
for the support of the historian, when theological
prepossession blinds the witness.2
PROP. 7. And he treats the entire question, in the
narrowed form in which it arises upon secular testi-
mony, as if it were capable of a solution so clear and
1 " The Value of Witness to the Miraculous." Nineteenth
Century, March 1889.
2 I cannot ask the Editor of this Review to reprint pages of
an old article, — but the following passages sufficiently illustrate
the extent and the character of the discrepancy between the
facts of the case and Mr. Gladstone's account of them : —
"Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I am
unreasonably sceptical if I say that the existence of demons who
can be transferred from a man to a pig does thus contravene
probability. Let me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no d
priori objection to offer. ... I declare, as plainly as I can,
that I am unable to show cause why these transferable devils
should not exist." . . . ("Agnosticism," Nineteenth Century.
1889, p. 177).
" What then do we know about the originator, or originators,
of this groundwork — of that threefold tradition which all three
witnesses (in Paley's phrase) agree upon — that we should allow
their mere statements to outweigh the counter arguments of
humanity, of common sense, of exact science, and to imperil
the respect which all would be glad to be able to render to their
Master?" (ibid. p. 175).
1 then go on through a couple of pages to discuss the value of
the evidence of the synoptics on critical and historical grounds.
Mr. Gladstone cites the essay from which these passages are
taken, whence I suppose he has read it ; though it may be that
he shares the impatience of Cardinal Manning where my writings
are concerned. Such impatience will account for, though it will
not excuse, his sixth proposition.
412 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
summary as to warrant the use of tke extremest
weapons of controversy against those who presume to
differ from him.
The six heretical propositions which have gone
before are enunciated with sufficient clearness to
enable me to prove, without any difficulty, that,
whosesoever they are, they are not mine. But
number seven, I confess, is too hard for me. I
cannot undertake to contradict that which I do
not understand.
What is the " entire question " which " arises "
in a " narrowed form " upon " secular testimony " ?
After much guessing, I am fain to give up the
conundrum. The " question " may be the owner-
ship of the pigs ; or the ethnological character of
the Gadarenes ; or the propriety of meddling with
other people's property without legal warrant.
And each of these questions might be so
" narrowed " when it arose on " secular testimony "
that I should not know where I was. So I am
silent on this part of the proposition.
But I do dimly discern, in the latter moiety of
this mysterious paragraph, a reproof of that use of
" the extremest weapons of controversy " which is
attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe
that I guide myself, in such matters, very much by
the maxim of a great statesman, " Do ut des." If
Mr. Gladstone objects to the employment of such
weapons in defence, he would do well to abstain
from them in attack. He should not frame
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 413
charges which he has, afterwards, to admit are
erroneous, in language of carefully calculated
offensiveness ("Impregnable Kock," pp. 269-70) ; he
should not assume that persons with whom he
disagrees are so recklessly unconscientious as to
evade the trouble of inquiring what has been said
or known about a grave question (" Impregnable
Rock," p. 273) ; he should not qualify the results of
careful thought as "hand-over-head reasoning "
(" Impregnable Rock," p. 274) ; he should not, as in
the extraordinary propositions which I have just
analysed, make assertions respecting his opponent's
position and arguments which are contradicted by
the plainest facts.
Persons who, like myself, have spent their
lives outside the political world, yet take a mild
and philosophical concern in what goes on in it,
often find it difficult to understand what our
neighbours call the psychological moment of this
or that party leader, and are, occasionally; loth to
believe in the seeming conditions of certain kinds
of success. And when some chieftain, famous in
political warfare, adventures into the region of
letters or of science, in full confidence that the
methods which have brought fame and honour in
his own province will answer there, he is apt to
forget that he will be judged by these people, on
whom rhetorical artifices have long ceased to take
effect ; and to whom mere dexterity in putting
414 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS XI
together cleverly ambiguous phrases, and even the
great art of offensive misrepresentation, are un-
speakably wearisome. And, if that weariness
finds its expression in sarcasm, the offender really
has no right to cry out. Assuredly, ridicule is no
test of truth, but it is the righteous meed of some
kinds of error. Nor ought the attempt to con-
found the expression of a revolted sense of fair
dealing with arrogant impatience of contradiction,
to restrain those to whom " the extreme weapons
of controversy " come handy from using them.
The function of police in the intellectual, if not in
the civil, economy may sometimes be legitimately
discharged by volunteers.
Some time ago, in one of the many criticisms
with which I am favoured, I met with the remark
that, at our time of life, Mr. Gladstone and I might
be better occupied than in fighting over the
Gadarene pigs. And, if these too famous swine
were the only parties to the suit, I, for my part,
should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But,
under the beneficent rule of the Court of
Chancery, in former times, it was not uncommon,
that a quarrel about a few perches of worthless
land, ended in the ruin of ancient families and the
engulfing of great estates ; and I think that our
admonisher failed to observe the analogy — to
note the momentous consequences of the judgment
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 415
which may be awarded in the present apparently in-
significant action in re the swineherds of Gadara.
The immediate effect of such judgment will be
the decision of the question, whether the men of
the nineteenth century are to adopt the demon-
ology of the men of the first century, as divinely
revealed truth, or to reject it, as degrading falsity.
The reverend Principal of King's College has
delivered his judgment in perfectly clear and
candid terms. Two years since, Dr. Wace said
that he believed the story as it stands ; and con-
sequently he holds, as a part of divine -revelation,
that the spiritual world comprises devils, who,
under certain circumstances, may enter men and
be transferred from them to four-footed beasts.
For the distinguished Anglican Divine and Biblical
scholar, that is part and parcel of the teachings
respecting the spiritual world which we owe to the
founder of Christianity. It is an inseparable part
of that Christian orthodoxy which, if a man
rejects, he is to be considered and. called an
"infidel." According to the ordinary rules of
interpretation of language, Mr. Gladstone must
hold the same view.
If antiquity and universality are valid tests of
the truth of any belief, no doubt this is one of the
beliefs so certified. There are no known savages,
nor people sunk in the ignorance of partial civili-
sation, who do not hold them. The great majority
142
416 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
of Christians have held them and still hold them.
Moreover the oldest records we possess of the
early conceptions of mankind in Egypt and in
Mesopotamia prove that exactly such demonology,
as is implied in the Gadarene story, formed the
substratum, and, among the early Accadians,
apparently the greater part, of their supposed
knowledge of the spiritual world. M. Lenormant's
profoundly interesting work on Babylonian magic
and the magical texts given in the Appendix to
Professor Sayce's " Hibbert Lectures " leave no
doubt on this head. They prove that the doctrine
of possession, and even the particular case of pig
possession,1 were firmly believed in by the Egyp-
tians and the Mesopotarnians before the tribes of
Israel invaded Palestine. And it is evident that
these beliefs, from some time after the exile
and probably much earlier, completely interpene-
trated the Jewish mind, and thus became insep-
arably interwoven with the fabric of the synoptic
Gospels.
Therefore, behind the question of the acceptance
of the doctrines of the oldest heathen demonology
as part of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity,
there lies the question of the credibility of the
1 The wicked, before being annihilated, returned to the world
to disturb men ; they entered into the body of unclean animals,
"often that of a pig, as on the Sarcophagus of Seti J. in the
Soane Museum." — Leuorinant, C/taldean Magic, p. 88, Editorial
Note.
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 417
Gospels, and of their claim to act as our instruct-
ors, outside that ethical province in which they
appeal to the consciousness of all thoughtful men.
And still, behind this problem, there lies another
— how far do these ancient records give a sure
foundation to the prodigious fabric of Christian
dogma, which has been built upon them by the
continuous labours of speculative theologians,
during eighteen centuries ?
I submit that there are few questions before
the men of the rising generation, on the answer
to which the future hangs more fatally, than this.
We are at the parting of the ways. Whether the
twentieth century shall see a recrudescence of the
superstitions of mediaeval papistry, or whether it
shall witness the severance of the living body of
the ethical ideal of prophetic Israel from the car-
case, foul with savage superstitions and cankered
with false philosophy, to which the theologians
have bound it, turns upon their final judgment of
the Gadarene tale.
The gravity of the problems ultimately involved
in the discussion of the legend of Gadara will, I
hope, excuse a persistence in returning to the sub-
ject, to which I should not have been moved by
merely personal considerations.
With respect to the diluvial invective which
overflowed thirty -three pages of the " Nineteenth
418 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi
Century " last January, I doubt not that it has a
catastrophic importance in the estimation of its
author. I, on the other hand, may be permitted
to regard it as a mere spate ; noisy and threatening
while it lasted, but forgotten almost as soon as it
was over. Without my help, it will be judged by
every instructed and clear-headed reader; and
that is fortunate, because, were aid necessary, I
have cogent reasons for withholding it.
In an article characterised by the same qualities
of thought and diction, entitled " A Great Lesson/1
which appeared in the " Nineteenth Century " for
September 1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged
the whole body of men of science, interested in the
question, with having conspired to ignore certain
criticisms of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of
coral reefs ; and, secondly, he asserted that some
person unnamed had " actually induced " Mr. John
Murray to delay the publication of his views on
that subject " for two years."
It was easy for me and for others to prove that
the first statement was not only, to use the Duke
of Argyll's favourite expression, " contrary to fact,"
but that it was without any foundation whatever.
The second statement rested on the Duke of
Argyll's personal authority. All I could do was to
demand the production of the evidence for it. Up
to the present time, so far as I know, that evidence
has not made its appearance ; nor has there been
XI PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 410
any withdrawal of, or apology for, the erroneous
charge.
Under these circumstances most people will
understand why the Duke of Argyll may feel
quite secure of having the battle all to himself,
whenever it pleases him to attack me.
[See the note at the end of " Hasisadra's
Adventure" (vol iv. p. 283). The discussion on
coral reefs, at the meeting of the British Associa-
tion this year, proves that Mr. Darwin's views are
defended now, as strongly as in 1891, by highly
competent authorities. October 25, 1893.]
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