AN AGNOSTICS APOLOGY.

THE DRIFT OF MODERN THOUGHT

" If truth be with thy friend, be with them both "

George Herbert.

A great change has come over the temper of theological and anti-theological controversy during the last two or three generations. The courtesies of debate and the amenities of life are observed by the disputants to a degree that would have seemed weak paltering and a betrayal of the truth to the aggressive deists and fulminating theologians of the past century. It is, of course, a great gain to discussion when the antagonists can respect each other's conscientious belief, when they can argue without personal abuse, when the freethinker does not begin by insinuating or declaring that his opponents are accomplices in a gigantic imposture, or the divine by denouncing his adversaries as agents of the evil one. Regarded in this light, religious controversy of the present day has made a very great advance on that of half a century ago. But it is to be doubted if the change is wholly an improvement.To the student of these questions who seriously looks to these arguments for guidance, and does not regard them as merely graceful literary exercitations with buttoned foils, it must sometimes seem that is becoming courteous and polite theological controversy has lost much of its vigour and reality. Opposing sides make such concessions to each other, they talk so often in each other's phraseology, and are so ready to soften down all aspericies of definition, that it at times seems as though the actual diametric antagonism of the two classes of disputants becomes shadowy and indistinct, and lost in a mist of vague phrases without any very definite aim or meaning. Their contests, indeed, much resemble the wars carried on by mercenaries between the Italian republics when States were set up or overthrown by battles in which not a single man was killed on either side. The robustness and vigour of the earlier controversialists are not preserved in full force by their successors. In such a stage of the discussion it is refreshing to find a statement of one side of the argument expressed in all the trenchant incisive language employed by Mr. Leslie Stephen in the article contributed by him— "An Agnostics Apology" —to the Fortnightly Review for June. Not that we wish to imply that Mr. Stephen has resorted to the weapons which were so freely used in the old days, but have now by general consent been laid aside. But he has all the plain straightforwardness and outspoken directness of those times, with the impersonality of argument and adherence to courteous logic of the present day. Whoever in discussions of this nature may be in doubt as to his precise position, Mr Stephen has no doubt at all as to his. What he sees he sees with clear distinctness, and what he does not see he flatly refuses to pretend to see. He makes no assumption to a perfect theory of theology or cosmogony, or of the moral government of the world. But he is able to specify with vivid accuracy what he does know, and draws a plain line of circumscription between those things that he knows and those that he does not know, and that experience, he considers, warrants him in affirming cannot be known. He at the same time challenges, with great acuteness and vigour and in fresh, bright language, the claims of those who assume to know much which, to his belief, lies clearly beyond the limit of human knowledge. His style of argument gives a life and reality to the discussion which it does not always possess, and ensures the interest of all those who are desirous of seeing one aspect of the question presented in all the strength of which it is capable.

Mr. Stephen willingly accepts the term "agnostic," which has lately been introduced in place of some of the old terms which had so long been used in abusive senses that they came to possess the force of offensive epithets. He says:—

"The Agnostic is one who asserts—what no one denies—that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence. He asserts, further, what many theologians have expressly maintained, that those limits are such as to exclude at least what Mr. Lewes has so happily called 'metempirical' knowledge. But he goes further, and asserts, in opposition to theologians, that theology lies within this forbidden sphere. This last assertion raises the important issue; and, though I have no pretension to invent an opposition nickname, I may venture for the purposes of this article to describe the rival school a Gnostics.

"The Gnostic holds that our reason can in some sense transcend the narrow limits of experience. He holds that we can attain truths not capable of verification and not needing verification, by actual experiment or observation. He holds, further, that a knowledge of those truths is essential to the highest interests of mankind, and enables us in some sort to solve the dark riddle of the universe. A complete solution, as every one admits, is beyond our power. But some answer may be given to the doubts which harass and perplex us when we try to frame any adequate conception of the vast order of which we form an insignificant portion. We cannot say why this or that arrangement is what it is; we can say, though obscurely, that some answer exists and would be satisfactory if we could only find it. Overpowered, as every honest and serious thinker is at times overpowered, by the sight of pain, folly, and helplessness, by the jarring discords which run through the vast harmony of the universe, we are yet enabled to bear at times a whisper that all is well, to trust to it as coming from the most authentic source, and to know that only the temporary bars of sense prevents us from recognising with certainty that the harmony beneath the discords is a reality and not a dream. This knowledge is embodied in the central dogma of theology. God is the name of the harmony, and God is knowable. Who would not be happy in accepting this belief, if he could accept it honestly? Who would not be glad if he could say with confidence, the evil is transitory, the good eternal; our doubts are due to limitations destined to be abolished and the world is really an embodiment of love and wisdom, however dark it may appear to our faculties? And yet, it the so called knowledge be illusory, are we not bound by the most sacred obligations to recognise the facts? Our brief path is dark enough on any hypothesis. We cannot afford to turn aside every ignis fatuus without asking whether it leads to sounder footing or to hopeless quagmires. Dreams may be pleasanter for the moment than realities; but happiness must be won by adapting our lives to the realities. And who that has felt the burden of existence, and suffered under well-meant efforts at consolation, will deny that such consolations are the bitterest of mockeries ? Pain is not an evil; death is not a separation; sickness is but a blessing in disguise. Have the gloomiest speculations of avowed pessimists ever tortured sufferers like those kindly platitudes ? Is there a more cutting piece of satire in the language than the reference in our funeral service to the 'sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection?' To dispel genuine hopes might be painful, however salutary. To suppress these spasmodic efforts to fly in the face of facts would be be some comfort even in the distress which they are meant to alleviate.

" Besides the important question whether the Gnostic can prove his dogmas, there is therefore the further question whether the dogmas, if granted, have any meaning. Do they answer our doubts or mock us with the appearance of an answer? The Gnostics pride themselves on their knowledge. Have they anything to tell us? They rebuke what they call the 'pride of reason' in the name of a still more exalted pride. The scientific reasoner is arrogant because he sets limits to the faculty in which he trusts, and denies the existence of any other faculty. They are humble because they dare to tread in the regions which he declares to be inaccessible. But without bandying such accusations, or asking which pride is the greatest, the Gnostics are at least bound to show some ostensible justification for their complacency. Have they discovered a firm resting-place from which they are entitled to look down in compassion or contempt upon those who hold it to be a mere edifice of moonshine ? If they have diminished by a scruple the weight of one passing doubt, we should be grateful perhaps we should be converts. If not, why condemn Agnosticism ?"

Mr. Stephen passes some severe remarks on the results of the recent European conference at which some subjects connected with the Trinity, which had caused controversies ranging through many centuries, were determined by means of certain formulas, and "by the help of various languages." To him they only show:—

An utter ignorance of existing state of the world in the assumption that the question which really divides mankind is the double procession of the Holy Ghost; or an utter incapacity for speculation in the confusion of these dead excuviae of long past modes of thought with living intellectual tissue ; or an utter want of imagination, or of even a rudimentary sense of humour, in the hypothesis that the promulgation of such dogmas could produce any thing but the laughter of sceptics and the contempt of the healthy human intellect?

" The sect which requires to be encountered in these days is no one which boggles over the filioque, but certain successors of those Ephesians who told Paul that they did not even know 'whether there were any Holy Ghost.' But it explains some modern phenomena when we find that the leaders of theology hope to reconcile faith and reason, and to show that the old symbols have still a right to the allegiance of our hearts and brains, by putting forth these portentous propositions. We are struggling with hard facts, and they would arm us with the forgotten tools of scholasticism. We wish for spiritual food, and are to be put off with these ancient mummeries of forgotten dogma. If Agnosticism is the frame of mind which summarily rejects these imbecilities, and would restrain the human intellect from wasting its powers on the attempt to galvanise into sham activity this caput mortuum of old theology, nobody need be afraid of the name. Argument against such adversaries would be itself a foolish waste of time. Let the dead bury their dead, and Old Catholics decide whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the rather alone. Gentlemen indeed who still read the Athanasian Creed, and profess to attach some meaning to its statements have no right to sneer at their brethren who persist in taking things seriously. But for men who long for facts instead of phrases, the only possible course is to allow such vagaries to take their own course to the limbo to which they are naturally destined, simply noting, by the way, that modern Gnosticism may lead to puerilities which one blushes even to notice."

Further on he says :—

"You tell us to be ashamed of professing ignorance. Where is the shame of ignorance in matters still involved in endless and hopeless controversy ? Is it not rather a duty ? Why should a lad who has just run the gauntlet of his examinations, and escaped to a country parsonage, be dogmatic when his dogmas are denounced as erroneous by half the philosophers of the world ? What theory of the universe am I to accept as demonstrably established? At the very earliest dawn of philosophy men were divided by earlier forms of the same problems which divide them now. The only agreement I can discover is that there is no philosopher of whom his opponents have not said that his opinions lead logically either to Pantheism or Atheism.

"When all the witnesses thus contradict each other, the prima facie result is pure scepticism. There is no certainty. Who am I, if I were the ablest of modern thinkers, to say summarily that all the great men who differed from me are wrong, and so wrong that their difference should not even raise a doubt in my mind ? From such scepticism there is indeed one, and so far as I can see, but one escape. The very hopelessness of the controversy shows that the reasoners have been transcending the limits of reason. They have reached a point where as at the pole, the compass points indifferently to every quarter. Thus there is a chance that I may retain what is valuable in the chaos of speculation, and reject what is bewildering by confining the mind to its proper limits. But has any limit ever been suggested, except a limit which comes in substance to an exclusion of all ontology ? In short, if I would avoid utter scepticism, must I not be an Agnostic ?

After setting out the difficulties which beset the believer in the moral government of the world and a system of future punishment, Mr Stephen says:—

" There are two questions in short about the universe which must be answered to escape from Agnosticism.The great fact which puzzles the mind is the vast amount if evil. It may be answered that evil is an illusion, because God is benevolent; or it may be answered that evil is deserved, because God is just. In one case the doubt is removed by denying the existence of the difficulty; in the other it is made tolerable by satisfying our consciences. We have seen what natural reason can do towards justifying these answers. To escape from Agnosticism we become Pantheists; then the divine reality must be the counterpart of phenomenal nature, and all the difficulties recur. We escape from Pantheism by the illogical device of freewill. Then God is indeed good and wise, but God is no longer omnipotent. By His side we erect a fetish called freewill, which is potent enough to defeat all God's good purposes and to make His absence from His own universe the most conspicuous fact given by observation ; and which at the same time, is by its own nature intrinsically arbitrary in its action. Your Gnosticism tells us that an Almighty Benevolence is watching over everything, and bringing good out of all evil. Whence, then, comes the evil ? By freewill ; that is, by chance ! It is an exception, an exception which covers, say, half the phenomena, and includes all that puzzle us. Say boldly at once no explanation can be given, and then proceed to denounce Agnosticism. If, again, we take the moral problem, the Pantheist view shows desert as before God to be a contradiction in terms. We are what He has made us; nay, we are but manifestations of Himself—how can He complain? Escape from the dilemma by making us independent of God, and God, so far as the observed universe can tell us, becomes systematically unjust. He rewards the good and the bad, and gives equal reward to the free agent and the slave of fate. Where are we to turn for a solution ?

"Let us turn to revelation; that is the most obvious reply. By all means, though this is to admit that natural reason cannot help us; or in other words, directly produces more Agnosticism, though indirectly it makes an opening for revelation. There is, indeed, a difficulty here. Pure theism, as we have observed, is in reality as vitally opposed to historical revelation as simple scepticism. The word God is used by the metaphysician and the savage. It may mean anything from 'pure Being' down to the most degraded fetish. The 'universal consent' is a consent to use the same phrase for antagonistic conceptions—for order and chaos, for absolute unity or utter heterogeneity, for a universe governed by a human will or by a will of which man cannot form the slightest conception. This is of course a difficulty which runs off the orthodox disputant like water from a duck's back. He appeals to his conscience, and his conscience tells him just what he wants. It reveals a Being just at that point in the scale between the two extremes which is convenient for his purposes. I open, for example, a harmless little treatise by a divine who need not be named. He knows intuitively, so he says, that there is a God, who is benevolent and wise, and endowed with personality, that is to say, conceived anthropomorphically enough to be capable of acting upon the universe, and yet so far different from man as to be able to throw a decent veil of mystery over His more questionable actions. Well, I reply, my intuition tells me of no such Being. Then, says the divine, I can't prove any statements, but you would recognise their truth if your heart or your intellect were not corrupted; that is, you must he a knave or a fool. This is a kind of argument to which one is perfectly accustomed in theology. I am right, and you are wrong; and I am right because I am good and wise. By all means, and now let us see what your wisdom and goodness can tell us.

"The Christian revelation makes statements which, if true, are undoubtedly of the very highest importance. God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates even to say this without instantly contradicting themselves. Their doctrine frightens them. They explain in various ways that a great many people will be saved without believing, and that eternal damnation is not eternal nor damnation. It is only the vulgar who hold such views, and who, of course, must not he disturbed in them; but they are not for the intelligent. God grants uncovenanted mercies—that is, He sometimes lets a sinner off, though He has not made a legal bargain about it—an explanation calculated to exalt our conceptions of the Deity ! But let us pass over these endless shufflings from the horrible to the meaningless. Christianity tells us in various ways how the wrath of the Creator may be appeased and His goodwill insured. The doctrine is manifestly important to believers; but does it give us a clearer or happier view of the universe ? That is what is required for the confusion of Agnostics ; and, if the mystery were in part solved, or the clouds thinned in the slightest degree, Christianity would triumph by its inherent merits. Let us then, ask once more, Does Christianity exhibit the Ruler of their universe as benevolent or as just?

"If I were to assert that of every ten beings born into this world nine would be damned, that all who refused to believe what they did not hold to be proved, and all who sinned from overwhelming temptation, and all who had not had the good fortune to be the subjects of a miraculous conversion, or the recipients of a grace conveyed by a magical charm, would be tortured to all eternity, what would an orthodox theologian reply? He would not say, 'That is false;' I might appeal to the highest authorities for my justification; nor in fact could he on his own showing deny the possibility. Hell he says exists; he does not know who will be damned ; though he does know that all men are by nature corrupt and liable to be damned, if not saved by supernatural grace. He might, and probably would, now say, 'That is rash. You have no authority for saying how many will be lost and how many saved; you cannot even say what is meant by hell or heaven; you cannot tell how far God may be better than His word, though you may be sure that He won't be worse than His word.' And what is all this but to say, We know nothing about it? In other words, to fall back on Agnosticism ? The difficulty, as theologians truly say, is not so much that the evil is eternal, as that evil exists. That is in substance a frank admission that, as nobody can explain evil, nobody can explain anything. Your revelation which was to prove the benevolence of God, has proved only that God's benevolence may be consistent with the eternal and infinite misery of most of His creatures ; you escape only by saying that it is also consistent with their not being eternally and infinitely miserable. That is, the revelation reveals nothing."

As to the "great argument of Butler," to which disputants at this stage are sent, Mr Stephen observes :—

"His (i.e., Bishop Butler's) position is in any case plain. Christianity tell us, as he thinks, that God damns men for being bad, whether they could help it or not; and that He lets them off, or lets some of them off, for the sufferings of others. He damns the helpless, and punishes the innocent. Horrible! exclaims the infidel. Possibly, replies Butler, but nature is just as bad. All suffering is punishment. It strikes the good as well as the wicked. The father sins, and the son suffers. I drink too much and my son has the gout. In another world, we may suppose that the same system will be carried out more thoroughly. God will pardon some sinners because He punished Christ, and He will damn others everlastingly. That is His way. A certain degree of wrong-doing here leads to irremediable suffering, or rather to suffering remediable by death alone. In the next world there is no death ; therefore the suffering won't be remediable at all. The world is a scene of probation destined to fit us for a better life. As a matter of fact, most men make it a discipline of vice instead of a discipline of virtue ; and most men, therefore, will presumably be damned. We see the same thing in the waste of seeds and animal life, and may suppose, therefore, that it is part of the general scheme of Providence . . . .

"The believers who desire to soften away the old dogmas—in other words to take refuge from the unpleasant results of their doctrine with the Agnostics, and to retain the pleasant results with the Gnostics—have a different mode of escape. They know that God is just ; that evil will somehow disappear and apparent injustice be somehow redressed. The practical objection to this amiable creed suggests a sad comment upon the whole controversy. We fly to religion to escape from our dark forebodings. But a religion which stifles those forebodings always fails to satisfy us. We long to hear that they are groundless. Directly we are told that they are groundless, we distrust our authority. No poetry lives which reflects only the cheerful emotions. Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought. We can bring harmony out of melancholy, we cannot banish melancholy from the world. And the religious utterances, which are the highest form of poetry, are bound by the same law. There is a deep sadness in the world. Turn and twist the thought as you may, there is no escape. Optimism would be soothing if it were possible; in fact, it is impossible and therefore a constant mockery ; and of all dogmas that ever were invented, that which has least vitality is the dogma that whatever is, is right.

"Let us, however consider for a moment what is the net result of this pleasant creed. Its philosophical basis may be sought in pure reason or in experience; but, as a rule, its adherents are ready to admit that the pure reason requires the support of the emotions before such a doctrine can be established, and are therefore marked by a certain tinge of mysticism. They feel rather than know. The awe with which they regard the universe, the tender glow of reverence and love with which the bare sight of nature affects them, is to them the ultimate guarantee of their beliefs. Happy those who feel such emotions ! Only when they try to extract definite statements of facts from these impalpable sentiments they should beware how far such statements are apt to come into terrible collision with reality. And, meanwhile, those who have been disabused with Candide, who have felt the weariness and pain of all 'this unintelligible world,' and have not been able to escape into any mystic rapture have as much to say for their own version of the facts. Is happiness a dream or misery ; or is it all a dream ? Does not our answer vary with our health and with out condition? When, rapt in the security of a happy life, we cannot even conceive that our happiness will fail, we are practical optimists. When some random blow out of the dark crushes the pillars round which our life has been entwined as recklessly as a boy sweeps away a cobweb, when at a single step we plunge through the flimsy crust of happiness into the deep gulphs beneath, we are tempted to turn to pessimism. Who shall deride, and how? Of all questions that can be asked, the most important is surely this: Is the tangled web of this world composed chiefly of happiness or of misery ? and of all questions that can be asked, it is surely the most unanswerable. For in no other problem is the difficulty of discarding the illusions arising from our own experience, of eliminating 'the personal error' and gaining an outside standpoint, so hopeless." . . . .

"What, then, is the net result? One insoluble doubt has haunted men's minds since thought began in the world. No answer has ever been suggested. One school of philosophers hands it to the next. It is denied in one form only to reappear in another. The question is not which system excludes the doubt, but how it expresses the doubt. Admit or deny the competence of reason in theory, we all agree that it fails in practice. Theologians revile reason as much as Agnostics, they then appeal to it, and it decides against them. They amend their plea by excluding certain questions from its jurisdiction, and those questions include the whole difficulty. They go to revelation, and revelation replies by calling doubt mystery. They declare that their consciousness declares just what they want it to declare. Ours declares something else. Who is to decide? The only appeal is to experience and to appeal to experience is to admit the fundamental dogma of Agnosticism.

"Is it not, then, the very height of audacity in face of a difficulty which meets us at every turn, which has perplexed all the ablest thinkers in proportion to their ability which vanishes in one shape only to show itself in another, to declare roundly not only that the difficulty can be solved, but that it does not exist? Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant ? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only by incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of as ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness. Amidst all the endless and hopeless controversies which have left nothing but bare husks of meaningless words, we have been able to discover certain reliable truths. They don't take us very far, and the condition of discovering them has been distrust of a priori guesses, and the systematic interrogation of experience. Let us, say some of us, follow at least this clue. Here we shall find sufficient guidance for the needs of life, though we renounce for ever the attempt to get behind the veil which no one has succeeded in raising; if, indeed, there be any thing behind. You miserable Agnostics ! is the retort; throw aside such rubbish and cling to the old husks. Stick to the words which profess to explain everything; call your doubts mysteries and they won't disturb you any longer; and believe in those necessary truths of which no two philosophers have ever succeeded in giving the same version.

"Gentlemen, we can only reply, wait till you have some show of agreement amongst yourselves. Wait till you can give some answer, not palpably a verbal answer, to some one of the doubts which oppress us as they oppress you. Wait till you can point to some single truth, however trifling, which has been discovered by your method, and will stand the test of discussion and verification. Wait till you can appeal to reason without in the same breath vilifying reason. Wait till your divine revelations have something more to reveal than the hope that the hideous doubts which they suggest may possibly be without foundation. Till then, we shall be content to admit openly what you whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance. And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our scepticism we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon by your own bluster,"

The Argus 23 September 1876,