Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions Part 34

[40] I should like further to add the expression of my indebtedness to two works by Herr Julius Lippert, _Der Seelencult in seinen Beziehungen zur alt-hebraischen Religion_, and _Die Religionen der europaischen Culturvolker_, both published in 1881. I have found them full of valuable suggestions.

[41] See among others the remarkable work of Fustel de Coulanges, _La cite antique_, in which the social importance of the old Roman ancestor-wors.h.i.+p is brought out with great clearness.

[42] Supposed to be "the finer or more aeriform part of the body," standing in "the same relation to the body as the perfume and the more essential qualities of a flower do to the more solid substances" (Mariner, vol. ii.

p. 127).

[43] A kind of "clients" in the Roman sense.

[44] It is worthy of remark that [Greek: daimon] among the Greeks, and _Deus_ among the Romans, had the same wide signification. The _dii manes_ were ghosts of ancestors = Atuas of the family.

[45] _Voyages aux iles du Grand Ocean_, t. i. p. 482.

[46] _Te Ika a Maui: New Zealand and its Inhabitants_, p. 72.

[47] Compare: "And Samuel said unto Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me?" (1 Sam. xxviii. 15).

[48] Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 238.

[49] See Lippert's excellent remarks on this subject, _Der Seelencult_, p.

89.

[50] _Sciography_ has the authority of Cudworth, _Intellectual System_, vol. ii. p. 836. Sciomancy ([Greek: skiomanteia]), which, in the sense of divination by ghosts, may be found in Bailey's _Dictionary_ (1751), also furnishes a precedent for my coinage.

[51] "Kami" is used in the sense of Elohim; and is also, like our word "Lord," employed as a t.i.tle of respect among men, as indeed Elohim was.

[52] [The a.s.syrians thus raised a.s.sur to a position of pre-eminence.]

[53] I refer those who wish to know the reasons which lead me to take up this position to the works of Reuss and Wellhausen, [and especially to Stade's _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_.]

[54] Bunsen, _Egypt's Place_, vol. v. p. 129, note.

[55] See Birch, in _Egypt's Place_, vol. v.; and Brugsch, _History of Egypt_.

[56] Even by Graetz, who, though a fair enough historian, cannot be accused of any desire to over-estimate the importance of Egyptian influence upon his people.

[57] Graetz, _Geschichte der Juden_, Bd. i. p. 370.

[58] See the careful a.n.a.lysis of the work of the Alexandrian philosopher and theologian (who, it should be remembered, was a most devout Jew, held in the highest esteem by his countrymen) in Siegfried's _Philo von Alexandrien_, 1875. [Also Dr. J. Drummond's _Philo Judaeus_, 1888.]

[59] I am not unaware of the existence of many and widely divergent sects and schools among the Jews at all periods of their history, since the dispersion. But I imagine that orthodox Judaism is now pretty much what it was in Philo's time; while Peter and Paul, if they could return to life, would certainly have to learn the catechism of either the Roman, Greek, or Anglican Churches, if they desired to be considered orthodox Christians.

[60] Dante's description of Lucifer engaged in the eternal mastication of Brutus, Ca.s.sius, and Judas Iscariot--

"Da ogni bocca dirompea co' denti Un peccatore, a guisa di maciulla, Si che tre ne facea cos dolenti.

A quel dinanzi il mordere era nulla, Verso 'l graffiar, che tal volta la schiena Rimanea della pelle tutta brulla"--

is quite in harmony with the Pisan picture and perfectly Polynesian in conception.

[61] See the famous _Collection of Papers_, published by Clarke in 1717.

Leibnitz says: "'Tis also a supernatural thing that bodies should _attract_ one another at a distance without any intermediate means." And Clarke, on behalf of Newton, caps this as follows: "That one body should attract another without any intermediate _means_ is, indeed, not a _miracle_, but a contradiction; for 'tis supposing something to act where it is not."

[62] I may cite in support of this obvious conclusion of sound reasoning, two authorities who will certainly not be regarded lightly by Mr. Lilly.

These are Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The former declares that "Fate" is only an ill-chosen name for Providence.

"Prorsus divina providentia regna const.i.tuuntur humana. Quae si propterea quisquam fato tribuit, quia ipsam Dei voluntatem vel potestatem fati nomine appellat, _sententiam teneat, linguam corrigat_" (Augustinus _De Civitate Dei_, V. c. i.)

The other great doctor of the Catholic Church, "Divus Thomas," as Suarez calls him, whose marvellous grasp and subtlety of intellect seem to me to be almost without a parallel, puts the whole case into a nutsh.e.l.l, when he says that the ground for doing a thing in the mind of the doer is as it were the pre-existence of the thing done:

"Ratio autem alicujus fiendi in mente actoris existens est quaedam prae-existentia rei fiendae in eo" (_Summa_, Qu. xxiii. Art. i.)

If this is not enough, I may further ask what "Materialist" has ever given a better statement of the case for determinism, on theistic grounds, than is to be found in the following pa.s.sage of the _Summa_, Qu. xiv. Art. xiii.

"Omnia quae sunt in tempore, sunt Deo ab aeterno praesentia, non solum ea ex ratione qua habet rationes rerum apud se presentes, ut quidam dic.u.n.t, sed quia ejus intuitus fertur ab aeterno supra omnia, prout sunt in sua praesentialitate. _Unde manifestum est quod contingentia infallibiliter a Deo cognosc.u.n.tur_, in quantum subduntur divino conspectui secundum suam praesentialitatem; et tamen sunt futura contingentia, suis causis proximis comparata."

[As I have not said that Thomas Aquinas is professedly a determinist, I do not see the bearing of citations from him which may be more or less inconsistent with the foregoing.]

[63] 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 brutality, which characterised him. Luther says that man is a beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders; sometimes G.o.d rides him, and sometimes Satan. "Sic voluntas humana in medio posita est, ceu jumentum; si insederit Deus, vult et vadit, quo vult Deus.... Si insederit Satan, vult et vadit, quo vult Satan; nec est in ejus arbitrio ad utrum sessorem currere, aut eum quaerere, sed ipsi sessores certant ob ipsum obtinendum et possidendum" (_De Servo Arbitrio_, 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 themselves the t.i.tle 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.

[64] I say "so-called" not by way of offence, but as a protest against the monstrous a.s.sumption that Catholic Christianity is explicitly or implicitly contained in any trustworthy record of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

[65] It may be desirable to observe that, in modern times, the term "Realism" has acquired a signification wholly different from that which attached to it in the middle ages. We commonly 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 considerations 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 quant.i.ty.

[66] At any rate a catastrophe greater than the flood, which, as I observe with interest, is as calmly a.s.sumed by the preacher to be an historical event as if science had never had a word to say on that subject!

[67] "Les formes des anciens ou Entelechies ne sont autre chose que les forces" (Leibnitz, _Lettre au Pere Bouvet_, 1697).

[68] _Nineteenth Century_, March 1887.

[69] The Duke of Argyll speaks of the recent date of the demonstration 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 appeared in 1879. Moreover, I observe, from a note at page 89 of _The Reign of Law_, a work to which I shall have occasion to advert by and by, that the Duke of Argyll draws attention to the circ.u.mstance 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 question 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.

[70] See also vol. i. p. 460. In the ninth edition (1853), published 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).

[71] A great many years ago (Presidential Address to the Geological 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 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 deductive 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 geological speculation which it might otherwise have held" (_Lay Sermons_, p. 260). The context shows that "uniformitarianism"

here means that doctrine, as limited in application by Hutton and Lyell, and that what I mean by "evolutionism" is consistent and thoroughgoing uniformitarianism.

[72] _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, vol. i. p. 670. New edition, 1847.

[73] At Glasgow in 1856.

[74] _Optics_, query 31.

[75] The author recognises this in his _Explanations_.

[76] "The Advance of Science." Three sermons preached in Manchester Cathedral on Sunday, September 4, 1887, during the meeting of the British a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, by the Bishop of Carlisle, the Bishop of Bedford, and the Bishop of Manchester.

[77] _American Journal of Science_, 1885, p. 190.