with An Apology for Scepticism
144 REVIEWS. The Survived; London : Remington & Co.
Tiie author of this book has not been unhappy in his choice of a title for his work. We are presented with the history of a man who, for a number of years, had made trial of nearly every phase of religious belief, and finally, rejecting all visible forms, became what is called a free-thinker, though the spirit of holiness, or a sacred kind of sentiment, survived. The term scepticism, as employed by the writer, does not signify the Pyrrhonic absurdity, universal doubt, but ” mere cognisance, serving as an habitual mould of judgment, that we are liable to erroneous certitudes, and are incapable of distinguishing true from erroneous certitudesin other words, that we are liable to error, and are destitute of a criterion of truth. What is shown us of the changes in feeling, the struggles with recognised temptations, the thoughts about God, is mainly drawn from notes written during a period of seventeen years, and which constitute the bulk of this volume. Other manuscripts, how- ever, have fallen into the hands of the author, and we are given copious definitions of the philosophical terms used by his annotator. From these we gather that ” Mark Smith “?the name given to the character before us?was a student of Aristotle, Leibnitz, Butler, and Faber. His life must have been a curious one. Swayed by violent passions, anger, and vanity, he contrived to exercise on the whole a wonderful self- restraint, believing everything, even faith, to be dependent on will. Let us give the history of his ejectment from Christianity in the author’s own words : ” Mark Smith had communed on an Easter Sunday. A former schoolfellow railed at him in the evening as being a dupe of faith. Mark undertook to defend his faith. ‘ You will find my argument,’ said the other, ‘ in Volney. Refute that, and you refute me.’ Mark had no doubt that he could refute all opposers of Christianity, and undertook to read Volney, in order to restore the faith of his schoolfellow. A faint fear of danger to his own faith appeared in him as he was about to open the volume, and he prayed to be protected from sophistry. He took the volume to bed with him and rend till daylight. How he winced at the name of pious impostor applied to Moses ! It was the first sacrilege he encountered. He went to sleep a free-thinker, and has never since returned to any recognised fold of Christ.” It is not very clear, from the introduction, when the changes in the sentiments of Mark Smith happened. We are told that in his twentieth year he lived a solitary life in the country, and that a ” pan- theistic sentiment of nature obtained in him,” and that he was in his fourth decade before he clearly knew what was signified by ” moral principle “?viz. that it is not another name for goodness or virtue, but a rule of conduct conformable to virtue, and that its subject is one who lives by rule instead of impulse. It is a matter of regret that the different epochs of each distinct phase of belief are not traced out in their persequent order. The religious principle in Mark Smith seems to have been of morbid susceptibility?much like that of St. Francis of Assisi, whom he accused as possessing that very nature. At one time we find him repining and disappointed at the apparent ” failures of Providence to help him in his war on his old self;” at another, by the exercise of the newly-discovered prerogative of will, ” resolved that God’s government gives room for prayer not discredited by frequent failure;” and we are told that this ” arbitrament” served for many years as a sufficient theoretic ground of regular prayer. Although belonging to no particular sect, he still frequented a Protestant church with his family and tried to pass current in the world as a Christian. When twitted, by an acquaintance who knew his sentiments, for attend- ing church, he politely answered that he did so ” to eschew you and your like.” It would seem the same thoughts passed through his mind that have of late occurred to some of our learned scientific men, who themselves reject revelation, viz. that it is impossible to find any code of morals, or indeed any education whatever, to supply the place of Christianity and the old landmarks for their children.
It would be unfair towards the author of the volume before us to say too much of his own views as expressed in his some- what lengthy Introduction; let us look at one or two of Mark Smith’s own notes. The idea of an art toward sanctification was gradually evolved by his mind, and one of his objections to the hypothesis of the supernaturalness of the sentiment of God is this (page 174): “To suppose human nature to be sus- ceptible of the sentiment of God from the immediate action of God upon the heart is to suppose that God gratuitously with- holds a sentiment which is not only sanctifying, but itself the chief element of sanctity, and that He suffers man to torture himself and pollute the universe by a sinful nature, which a Divine solution could speedily dissipate.” And at page 176 he says: ” The nature of man is such that there is an unobvious absurdity in supposing that God could immediately excite this sentiment, although we have evidence that He sometimes acts immediately upon the soul; and indeed it is not improbable that the sentiment is a necessary condition of this immediate action.” It will be evident from these excerpts that the opinions of Pascal had no small play in directing and starting the ideas of their writer. Here is another of his notes (page 254) : ” There is a class of men who seem to themselves and others to be hierarchs of common sense. They are men of science, and usefully active in the promotion or application of science. As a rule, people of this class regard religion as a delusion. They ascribe to mere cerebration what the religious ascribe to the present action of Divine power. The Holy Spirit is a mere product of cerebral decomposition?an electrical delusion. But is not this judgment also the creature of cere- bration ? and what guarantee has the judge that he is not the dupe ? By what criterion, applied to both cerebrations, shall we distinguish the true one ? Christ has given us such a criterion: ‘ By their fruits ye shall know them.’ Whether will it be more for human prosperity that aversion to religion, or aversion to irreligion, shall prevail with the bulk of man- kind ? If it be better that we altogether turn our backs upon God, the infidel cerebration is the wise one.” And again (January 7, 1876) : ” Is not insanity the alternative of peace ?” He had before said empressement was the sign of unsoundness ; quiet of sanity; that peace that passeth understanding was the sign of perfection. Then comes the startling question, ” Is not the world a madhouse, because of the Holy Ghost ? ” But notwithstanding all his speculations, and the frequent clouding of his faith, Mark Smith appears, as will be judged from some of his concluding notes, to have won in life’s war- fare ; and his moods were constitutional and arising from physical nervousness. No doubt much of the anxiety we most of us feel at times is purely physical nervousness, and it affects our higher faith, and even our reason ; but then, in turn, a higher faith and reason will affect it, and tend to tran- quilise and remove it. One’s faith and reason must ever rise higher and higher as the duties and cares of life increase ; and as it is the intention of God that we should go through this discipline, and be elevated in this way, He therefore lays on us heavier cares and higher duties. We are never let alone, and the end is blessed, though no doubt the way is sometimes rough. We have no means of overcoming but by faith?faith sometimes almost unknown to ourselves. We cannot alter circumstances, and we must not be altered by them. We must be Christian fatalists, holding by the Divine hand in light and darkness, and safe not by what we see, but by what we trust. Physical nervous- ness is, no doubt, a thing that takes us by surprise, and cannot always be under the control of faith and reason, bnt a constant habit of holding on will much tend to tranquilise it. That Mark Smith survived all the gusts that swept through him, we can hardly doubt, if the character given him by his friend be a true one. ” Of uncharity he is all but healed. The least motion of anger challenges the will to eject it, and the most violent emotions are instantly quelled. Frequently circumstances which would formerly have roused his indignation awaken instead the spirit of the good physician. He is at peace with men who have maligned him, robbed him, insulted him, and especially with an enemy who strove with him on his hearth, within the precincts of family affection, and, for revenge and emolument, fomented an insurrection that threatened to make him home- less. He would gladly have all of them to be his friends and intimates if the relation were made possible by repentance, their souls being thereby rescued from the infernal influence of which they are dupes, victims, and implements
Moreover, he is in conformity with the mind of Christ, who enjoins us to ‘judge not at all,’ and to forgive always. Since in so frail a heart so much has been effected, experience war- rants the hope that man may be rescued from the spirit of violence; and one of the chief objects of this work is to stir up an insurrection against the devil, and arm the insnrgents with charity. To do this, is it not to be a soldier of Christ, the Captain of our salvation ; and if there be anything new in the method, is it not a mere evolution of Christianity ?” In the short Apology for Scepticism with which the volume before us concludes, the attempt is made to undermine Mr. John Henry Newman’s defence of dogmatism against modern science, as laid down in his ” Grammar of Assent.” The reader will find the author flooding him with his own definitions of some- thing like forty philosophical terms, and some of these are, to put it mildly, decidedly original and slightly ludicrous. We cannot well see that much is gained by such subtleties as the following (p. 434): “Attention has not been hitherto rightly defined, nor its species, fascinated and conative attention, dis- cerned. Following the analogy of the term field of vision, let the term objective field signify all the objects that simul- taneously occupy the mind. As in the field of vision the more central object, comprising one or more objects, is vivid, and the rest more or less obscure, so there is a central part of the objec- tive field that excels in vividness the rest of the field. Let thi3 part, comprising one or more objects, be distinguished as central object, and the objectivity as central objectivity. From time to time we intentionally, with consciousness of effort, shift the centre of the objective field. We intentionally, with conscious- ness of effect, turn from this or that topic of conversation to another; from this or that person whose business is ended, to this or that other person who waits for us. The shifted conscious- ness is attention.”
Everyone knows the difference between simple notice and fixed attention, but it is not easy to see what dry distinctions, like the one just quoted, and kindred ones on other terms, have to do with the argument or apology for scepticism. We can under- stand his drift better when the author speaks to us of inferen- tial generalisation, and gives, as he does, an admirable definition of induction and inference. Again, when we come to the organic structure of the human body, especially of the brain, which is a blind cause of cognition, and to reason, which is governed, or rather created, by the brain, the line of argument becomes plain enough. He says (pp. 456-7): ” The system of the emotive faculties, susceptibilities, or organs is a blind cause of cognition. Fear in the coward generates certitude of danger in view of circumstances that excite those conjectures in the courageous. ‘ Trifles light as air, are to the jealous, confirma- tions strong as proofs of holy writ.’ If suspicion rouse anger, the anger substitutes certitude for suspicion. Love engenders cognition of angelic qualities in the beloved ; aversion, qualities of the opposite kind. Self-esteem regales its idol with cogni- tion of self-excellence, and makes swans of his geese. Reverence equally knows the truth of the doctrine which authority teaches, whether the authority be that of Chrishna or of Christ. Cognition generated by and involved with emotion tends to be instinctive. A man may be intellectually certain that Cosmos is a creature governed by its Creator, who rewards virtue and punishes sin, and be without a sentiment of the importance of and obedience to the Divine imperative ; but if reverence, prudence, or fear, or all three, breathe the breath of life into the cognition, it be- comes faith, and manifests itself by works. Works are the measure of faith. When intellectual certitude is enhanced by emotion ; when, in other words, we acquire a cordial cognition of what was before only known to the intellect, we seem to our- selves at first to have discovered; and when the object of our previous cognition insists upon its identity with that of the apparently new cognition, we are reluctant to admit that so in- different a thing is one with an object so flush with life and power. The merely intellectual certitude is what Father New- man terms notional assent, and certitude flush with emotion is what he terms real assent. Apart from the self-confidence of real assent, and the discredit with which it prejudices the mind against all adverse theses, the study of it elicits nothing that is favourable to the cause of dogmatism, but, on the contrary, puts into greater relief the precariousness of cognition that is the effect of blind causes.”
With the more direct refutation of dogmatism on the ground of our radical fallibility, which is evinced by the law of our mental constitution, it is unnecessary to deal. Differences of mental structure, as the author tells us, determine opposite data in different minds. But it is not so clear what the argu- ment gains by being padded with incidents of the psychical effects of disease.
These are quite exceptional cases, and though they are doubtless interesting in their proper place, can have no bearing, at least in the way of adducing proof, upon the evidence of our radical fallibility. Acute diseases of the brain, and the psy- chical effects of drugs or alcohol, denote no more to us in this place than do the exceptional cases of blind, deaf, or dumb in the realm of things purely physical.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.