THE TRUE RATIONALISM

\



JJihil obstat.

Carolus Widdowson, S.J.,

Censor deputatus.

Imprimatur.

* Jacobus Augustinus,
A rchiet• S, A ndr. Edimburgen.

die 27 1908.

\



THE TRUE
RATIONALISM
A LECTURE DELIVERED IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW BEFORE

ST NINIAN’S SOCIETY

BY THE REV. M. POWER, S.J., B.A.

To 2pyov dvOpuTrov ipvxvs ^pyeta Kara \6yov,

—Aristotle, Eth Nic. i. 6

l

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

SANDS & COMPANY

ST LOUIS, MO.

B. HERDER, 17 South Broadway

1908



BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE ANGLO-JEWISH CALENDAR FOR

EVERY DAY IN THE GOSPELS

Crown 8vo. Price 2s. 6c#.

f\ v

;



CONTENTS

PAOB

Foreword .... • 7
Introduction • . ii

I. Rationalism or Foolishness ? . • 14

II. Praise of Rationalism . • 1 7

III. Definition of Rationalism « . 22

IV. Inerrancy of the Senses • . 26

V. Materialistic Basis of Rationalistic Idea-

LOGY • • • 32

VI. Inerrancy of Reason • % • 43

VII. Reason in Command • • • 53

VIII. The Headship of all Headships • 57

IX. The Old and the New Rationalism Sub

Judice ...... 65

5





FOREWORD

This Lecture was somewhat hurriedly put

together after a long illness—an extenuating
circumstance which may be charitably thought

to account for some of its defects and omissions.

Throughout its composition, I have had

before my eyes and mind the figures of

Aristotle, founder of the Peripatetic school of

philosophy, and his great Christian commen-

tator, St Thomas Aquinas. It has long been

my ambition to reproduce, however inade-

quately, some of the features of these two illus-

trious Rationalists, in the conviction that their

account of, and plea for, the headship of human

Reason, were never more sorely needed than

in an age when the many derivatives of the



8 FOREWORD

word Ratio (Reason) are in constant and vigor-

ous circulation, while the faculty itself is left

unregarded, unanalysed, and undisciplined, to

the detriment, if not the ruin, of philosophy and

religion alike.

To Mr W. L. Marsh, Organising Secretary

of St Ninian’s Society, University of Glasgow,

I am very grateful for the invitation to join the

ranks of Lecturers in the Union Hall of the

University. I disappointed him once, for the

reason above stated, but he kindly renewed his

request, and the Lecture was duly given on

the 24th February 1908.
1

Messrs Hodder & Stoughton, London, E.C.,

have undertaken to publish next autumn the

series of Lectures delivered by many speakers

before St Ninian’s Society during the Winter

Session of 1907-8, and covering a wide field of

philosophical and religious thought.

It was with some misgivings that, at the

instance of friends, I approached this eminent

firm of publishers and craved permission to

1
Professor Phillimore in the Chair.



FOREWORD 9

anticipate the large volume in which my Lecture

is to be embodied, and to publish it thus early

in the year in booklet form. Throughout their

correspondence with me, they showed much

consideration and courtesy, and granted my

application without reserve or condition. To

them, as well as to the members of St Ninian’s

Society, who gave me a cordial welcome and an

attentive hearing, my best thanks are due and

tendered.

M. Power, S.J.

Lauriston Street,

Edinburgh, April 27, 1908.



t

/

\



THE TRUE RATIONALISM

INTRODUCTION
m

Gentlemen,—To lull all fears to rest, and as
part requital of the great favour you have

done me, I think I can promise that I shall

not overpass the philosophical boundaries of

my title, nor raid the realm of Theology, nor

trouble you with hard sayings touching Divine

Revelation or the Supernatural. Thus I hope

to confine myself to the elementary psychology

which is the basis of Rationalism.

Some apology may be due for a title which

seems to imply that there are two distinct

forms of Rationalism—one true, the other false.
Rationalism, like Christianity, has no plural.

False Rationalism is a contradiction in terms,

implying that a man may follow the guidance of

the light of reason, follow it irrationally, and be

u



12 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

landed in unreason. There are true and false

Rationalists, as there are true and false Chris-

tians : that is to say, there are people who take

a good name in vain
;
nevertheless the thing

underlying the name is one, and not two.

When, then, in the course of my lecture, I am

found to prefix the epithet “true” or “false”

to Rationalism, you will understand that in

the first case, I plead guilty to an innocent

tautology, and in the second, I am indulging

in a fafon de parler which, though not logical,

is deservedly popular.

On this difficult subject I shall do my best

to be clear. I am an old schoolmaster, not a

Gifford lecturer, and I fail to see why it is

incumbent on me, when addressing an educated

audience, to doff the week-day style which

goes down with my collier-friends, and to

don the Sunday clothes of a stiff and stilted

phraseology. I may have two suits of clothes,

but I have only one kind of style
;
for men are

the same everywhere and I am everywhere the

same with men.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 13

The Rationalism I shall try to expound

has^had the start of the Rationalism, say, of

the Rationalist Press Association, by about

2200 years, and has drawn to it the greatest

intellects of the world from Aristotle through

St Thomas Aquinas down to the little group

of Oxford scholars who are now engaged on a

new edition of the Opera Omnia of the founder

of the Peripatetic school. I am old-fashioned

enough to believe that this long duration

through the centuries and this wide-spread

influence exercised over the choicest and

weightiest of medieval minds, establish some

sort of presumption that the old system is at

least as worthy of investigation as the new.

Not even to us of the twentieth century

has antiquity lost all its charms. The only

quarrel I have with the University of Glasgow

—a quarrel much accentuated in the case of
the University of Edinburgh—is, that it is not
older than the Papal Charter dated 7th January

1450. Perhaps you would all be better pleased

if your alma mater had as many grey hairs on



14 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

her head—or should I say was as bald-headed ?
—as Paris or Bologna or Oxford, or even St
Andrews. The younger the baby, the more

beautiful it is. So say some mothers. The

older the institution, the more venerable it is.

So say I. But we may both be wrong—the
mothers and I. Anyhow, what I call the

True Rationalism of the Aristotelian school

once sat in the chairs of Glasgow University

in pre- Reformation and post- Reformation days,

figures largely in the works of Robert Baillie,

the very capable and very Calvinistic Principal

of the seventeenth century, and, for aught I

know, is still enthroned within these walls. In

such company I am not ashamed to own my-

self a Rationalist of the ancient type.

I.—Rationalism or Foolishness?

Before we come to a scientific definition of

Rationalism, let me call attention to this point

—if we are not Rationalists, we are fools. But



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 15

there is no one here deserving of this reproach.

Therefore all of us here are Rationalists.

That is a syllogism beloved of the Peripatetics
;

it is also a comfort to this assembly. Between

Rationalism and Foolishness there is no

tertium quid. In human nature

—

qua
1 human

nature—the only light is reason. Where that is
not given at all, even in germ, you have not

men before you, but lower animals. When the

use of that faculty which makes a man a man,

is impeded by physiological or pathological

conditions, we are imbeciles. If we extinguish

that light ourselves by a course of physical or

psychical excess, we are self-made lunatics,

pro rata
,

i.e., in proportion to the mental area

which we empty of light or invest with dark-

ness. Rationalists or Irrationalists we must

all be in every moment of conscious or

deliberate action. If any course of speculative

thought is seen to be irrational, we are obliged,

1 Qua a favourite relative particle with the schoolmen. It is

the Aristotelian D, and is getting into English books, and even

into leaders in The Glasgow Herald,



16 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

in deference to the law of reason, not to enter

that path, or to quit it if entered. If we do not,

we are, I shudder to say it, intellectual fools,

pro rata. Similarly, if in the moral sphere, a

course of action is known by the light of reason

to be unreasonable, we are constrained to leave

that action undone, and if we persist in doing

it, we are moral fools—again pro rata.
To come to particulars. If Christianity is

shown by reason to be irrational or anti-

rational, it is, gentlemen, your duty and mine

to abandon it to-morrow or perhaps to-night.

Again, if ultra-Socialism commends itself to

calm and dispassionate reason as the sole and

sufficient remedy for all social ills, we must,

as consistent Rationalists, evacuate our present

position, go over in a body to the Glasgow

Socialists, and embrace the Manifesto which

was painted with the flaming brush of Con-

fiscation as recently as November last. The

one great human force to keep us in the old

paths of the Faith is Rationalism. The one

impelling power to necessitate our migration



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 17

to opposite fields of thought and action is

Rationalism. If man is a rational animal, we

cannot get out of Rationalism any more than

we can get out of our skin.
s

I take it, then, we are all Rationalists, and

our determination to remain so is strengthened

by the consideration that the type of the non-

Rationalist is the born idiot, and the type of

the anti- Rationalist is—Mr Robert Blatchford.

II.—Praise of Rationalism
*

I

Bonum rationis est hominis bonum}

Homo maxime est mens hominis,2

A panegyric is not always rational in its

substance, and its length sometimes makes it

highly irrational. Hence I must not linger

long on this section. Besides, as we are all

1 “The good of reason is the good of man.”— St Augustine,
De Trin., vi., 8.

2 “ Man is pre-eminently the mind of man.”—St Thomas
Aquinas, Summa

,
1-2, q. 29, art. 4.

B



18 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

Rationalists, because all non-fools, too much

praise of Rationalism might be considered

flattery of us Rationalists, and thus stir up the

vanity latent, if not blatant, in every human

breast. Hence, to escape the danger of any-

thing like complicity in guilt, I shall let much

of the praising be done by others. Summum

animce est ipsa ratio}—“ It is Reason which is
the summation of the soul,” says St Thomas,

the interpreter par excellence of Aristotle, and

the faithful disciple of the Greek master whom

he always calls
“
the Philosopher.” And

again : Causa et radix humani boni est ratio}

—

“The cause and root of man’s good is Reason.”

And more strongly still : Nihil est majus

mente rationali nisi Deus
,

8— “ There is
nothing greater than the thinking mind,

except God.” 4

1 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa

,

2-2, q. 53, art. 3.

2
Ibid., 1-2, q. 66, art. 1.

3
Ibid., Supplem., q. 16, art 6.

4
St Augustine had written the same sentence with “human

”

instead of “thinking” mind. St Thomas, who was a great

believer in angelic spirits and their resplendent intelligences,

remembers that in the mental scale they come between man

1



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 19

Rationalism is often said to be a formidable

foe of Religion. It was once thought to be

its best friend. There is some mistake here,

that prompts me to refer you to a foregoing

remark about Rationalism true and false.

Let Rationalism grow from more to more in

Religion, and Religion will be all the better for

it. If reason got a fair chance, would it, think

you, lead us into the welter of doubt and strife

and recrimination in which this dear land is

plunged, and plunged so long that it is matter

of conjecture whether she will ever emerge with

breath enough in her body to pronounce the

name of God ? An enemy hath done this

thing, and no friend. The best human friend

of Divine Truth is the thing that makes man

most like to the mind of God, and that is

reason. If Rationalism, through such agen-

cies as the Rationalist Press Association,

proclaims itself the enemy of Christianity,

make sure, with the aid of your reason, which

and God, and so adroitly changes the word “ human ” to

“ thinking.”



20 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

kind of Rationalism is speaking, the false or

the true. If “ Modernism ” poses as the friend

of Religion, let reason pause and see whether

such friendly professions come well from

a system which belittles and belies reason, and

is therefore the death of Rationalism, rather

than the life of Religion. “We could not

believe,” says St Augustine, “if we had not

rational souls.”
1 With rational souls men can

disbelieve, but is it the rational element in the

soul that is in arms against Faith, or has their

reason capitulated to such foes of reason as

ignorance, passion, or pride ? In the religious

sphere, which constitutes, as Matthew Arnold

says, “ the three-fourths of life,” there is room

for the exercise of reason, and yet this depart-

ment is just the one where reason is exercised

least. This looks badly for truth, consider-

ing that, in the words of Bishop Butler,

“ Reason is the only faculty we have where-

with to judge concerning anything, even

religion itself.”
4

In the search for the true

1 Epist 120, n. 3.
2 Analogy

,
etc.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 21

religion, reason is wanted, even more than

in the search for anything else. “It is a

disgrace,” cries St Augustine, “ to believe

any man without good reason. Why expect

and importune me to do it ?
” 1 And St

Thomas adds, “A rational man should not

believe unless he sees that the proposition

believed were worthy of his belief, by reason

of the evidence of accompanying signs, or for

some good reason.”
2

Dispraise of a great thing may be as

culpable as praise of what is ignoble.

Rationalism is the highest of all the “isms.”

To underrate it is to deride, and to denounce

it is to forswear the noblest attribute of

human nature. Outside of it no one can find

human salvation. Whatever views philo-

sophers have held of the genesis of man,

whatever theories about his essence have been

broached, established, attacked, or exploded,

whether we be illimitable nothings or the sum

1 De Utilitate Credendi
,
xiv., 31.

2 Summa
,
2-2, q. 1, art. 4.



22 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

of all things, the sport of chance or the objects

of design, the scions of brutes or the sons of

God, the expansion of a bodiless idea or the

resultant force of dead matter, the cunning

workmanship of demiurges or the clumsy

experiment of one of nature’s journeymen

;

whencesoever we are and whithersoever tend-

ing, all are agreed that there is in us such a

thing as thought, and to this thinking power

in the last resort, the truth or falsehood of

every judgment that sweeps the area of

consciousness must be referred, and by this

power the final word of acceptance or con-

demnation on every imaginable creed, system,

or hypothesis must be pronounced.

III.—Definition of Rationalism

It is no grave fault of mine, I submit, to

have deferred the definition of Rationalism so

long
;

it is rather a covert compliment to you,



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 23

gentlemen, that you know the thing before I

define it.

A very conspicuous feature of the old

Rationalists is the love of definition. They

not only could not get on without it
;

they

simply revelled in it. Were it only to humour

them, let us define Rationalism to be that

system of philosophy which upholds the

headship of human reason.

Exception may well be taken to this form of

words as a near approach to tautology. It

comes to this, that human reason upholds the

headship of human reason. It is to be hoped

it does. What else is head within man except

his head ? A man sticks up for himself, why

not reason for itself, especially as there is

nothing else worth sticking up for ? The man

indeed may be in the wrong in his self-defence,

whereas reason cannot err in its declaration

that it cannot knock under to something

inferior, that it cannot abdicate or substitute

in its place a locum tenens. If any such com-

petitor or rival or representative is to be found,



24 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

reason asks, where is it ? and there is no

answer. There is only one runner in the race,

and it has a walk-over. Cast about for the

main thing in the material universe, and your

mind will not only light upon, but get fixed on,

man, and your scrutiny of man can lead to no

other conclusion than that the biggest thing

amidst all his littlenesses is his power of

thought. “ Narrow the world, roomy the brain

of man,” says Schiller. With equal truth,

perhaps, we could reverse the epithets and

speak of the roomy world and the narrow

brain, but it is not a question of space here, but

of relative positions in the scale of being .
1

The thinking power lodged in the convolutions

of the little organ called the brain of man, is

confessedly of a higher order than the vast

stretch of ether “ which bathes the shores of

the farthest star,” and comes under the designa-

tion of the “lower creation.” Reason, then,

knows itself to be head, and this fact will

1 This “ scale ” is a great favourite with Pope in his Essay on

Man.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 25

enable us to leave out all reference to reason as

upholding herself, and define Rationalism more

simply as the headship of reason.

“Supremacy” would not do as well. It

means too much. We may stand head and

shoulders above all that is of the earth earthy,

but we are certainly not supreme over it, as we

find to our cost, when we try to tackle it and

bring it under control. In this tussle, if any-

thing is supreme, it is not our minds but

certain “laws of Nature” which are not only

not of our making, but are often directly

opposed to our will. If Sir Gilbert Scott, the

architect of this University, saw a stone at the

bottom of the ravine, and judged it worthy to

mount to the top of the tower on Gilmorehill,

you know how little he could do with his mind

and will, if, furnished with these weapons alone,

he entered into conflict with the phenomena

of gravitation, and commanded the stone to

rise. The stone would not move, and the

bystander might laugh. A happy compromise

between Nature and Sir Gilbert would follow,



26 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

and the block and pulley would lift the stone

into mid-air. All the while this mechanical

device would be as much under the “ law of

gravity ” as the weight moved. We may coax

Nature and play into her hands, but it is folly

to talk of supremacy over forces which we

are powerless to check or change in any sub-

stantial way. “ Supremacy,” then, has no

place in our definition. We are really and

truly heads over some things, but what are

we supreme over ? I, for one, don’t know.

IV.

—

Inerrancy of the Senses

My panegyric of reason was pretty strong.

As I went on, somebody may have i egarded me

as a kind of Rugby footballer who was going a

little too fast and furious, and ought to be

stopped. I am afraid I must go on, and take

my chance of a tripping. I am going to call

reason inerrant or infallible. The shock may



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 27

possibly be intensified when I add that the

senses of man, inferior though they necessarily

are to the dominant reason, are themselves

entitled to be called inerrant.

Applying a little of the old Rationalism to

Sensism, I venture to assert with the Aristo-

telian scholastics that our senses are per se

infallible guides in their limited domain.

Never wrong themselves, they do seem to

mislead us, especially when the organs of sense

are ill-equipped, to begin with, or have suffered

some lesion, or are forced to work under

abnormal conditions. Hampered or vitiated

though they be, they do the only thing they

can do—their mechanical best—and if error
of judgment follows, it cannot be imputed to

the non-judging sense, but to some other

faculty in us. When a sense is from any

cause, congenital or other, defective in structure

or function, it fails, of course, but it cannot

turn false witness. Aristotle applied to this

breakdown of a sense a Greek phrase which

is nearly always mistranslated by the English



28 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

“accidentally” or “casually.”
1

There is no

such thing as chance. No cataract on the

eye comes “casually.” Another thing which

the Peripatetics always did with mishaps

among the senses, was to ignore them and

turn back to the general rule of their normal

operation—and we cannot blame them. They
were not oculists, or aurists, or specialists,

but only philosophers.

The proper object, say of the sense of vision,

is that condition of the thing seen which we

call its colour, and nothing else, not hardness

nor softness, nor nearness, nor distance. The

normal eye—and we always assume unless
positive proof to the contrary is forthcoming, that

all our eyes are normal—can distinguish between
red and green in coloured objects. Ten

thousand pairs of eyes set in the skulls of

ten thousand rational men, see a train passing

a signal at express speed and hurrying to

destruction. This great body of spectators

1

This famous term is kcltcl crvfipe(3r]K6s • medieval Latin,

per accidens. It generally means out of the normal course

of nature, and approximates to napci (f>t<riv.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 29

gives evidence, we will suppose, as to the

colour of the signal lamps. All are positive

it was a red light. We are making no inquiry
I

into the mental processes going on in the

minds of the eye-witnesses, but are only con-

cerned with their eyes. Are we absolutely

convinced, after hearing the signalman and the

ten thousand, that the red colour was seen

by this vast crowd ? I think we are. We

received their united assertion with confidence.

They could not be mistaken. The evidence

is overwhelming. We are sure of the infalli-

bility of the host of witnesses, but, be it

observed, not more sure of it than they are of

the infallibility of their sense of sight which

recorded the sensation which they call the

sensation <}f redness. The reactive sense

has had an impression made on it. It cannot

have more, and it cannot have less. If it

had less, it could not be a sense in action
;

if

it had more, the added element would be

foreign matter to the simple sense. It records

because it cannot help recording, and it does



30 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

no more than record because it has not got it

in it to do more. The eye must act under the

stimulus of light, and act as necessarily and

as “ rightly ” as vibrations in the ether
;
equally

for the ether and the optic nerve, there is no

room to go wrong in. This is at once

Rationalism and common sense. The objection

that some out of the ten thousand are suffering

from colour-blindness would be dismissed by

the Aristotelians with the remark that these few

had better see the oculist, as men whose eyes

were “ ill-disposed ” or filled by some redundant

“humour.” Not a very scientific way of

putting it, yet not against common sense.

These sufferers, not having fulfilled the con-

ditions of the test, are politely informed that

their evidence about their own visual experi-

ences is not questioned. In its morbid condi-

tion their retina acted with the perfect accu-

racy of an imperfect organ, as a “game” leg

kicks with all the little force it can command.

The sensation of green in the case in point

was, in view of the damaged apparatus, rightly



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 31

recorded, and no other record could be made.

Nevertheless, the colour-blind are asked to

retire from the public court, with condolence on

their weakness, but without a stain on their

visual honour. This done, the main thesis

remains in possession—the eye “ in being,”
which confines itself, as it must, to the percep-

tion of a lighted or coloured surface, is infallible

in its record of its own peculiar sensation.

The conclusion may be applied with profit to

the other senses. The ear is infallible, though

the deaf man hears no thunderclap
;
the taste

is infallible though the furred tongue of the

patient reports that sweet is bitter and bitter

sweet. Everbody calls the holly-leaf prickly

though the thick-skinned hand does not feel

it. In all such cases of sense-impression, the

sense-impressed are infallibly sure—the hearing
man of the sound, the eating man of the taste,

and the wounded man of the puncture.

It may be doubted a priori whether the

master-factor in man is in worse case than the

lower recipients of sense-impressions. It is a



32 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

great thing not to be able to go wrong. The

senses, as shown, cannot err in their respec-

tive provinces. Can it be inferred that the

reason is similarly endowed ? The question

will be best answered after something has been

said of the origin of ideas generated in the

mind from material objects, through the senses.

V.

—

Materialistic Basis of Rationalistic

Idealogy

The immediate object of sense perception

having been discussed, the question arises

:

What is the immediate object of the intellect

of man?—You will notice that I carefully
refrain from slighting your intelligence by

any reference to the theory that sense and

intellect are one.—Dub me a materialist, when
you hear the answer. The immediate object

of the intellectual faculty is the essential nature

of material objects brought under its notice by

the action of the senses. If the play of the

l



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 33

senses does not fall on a material object, or if,

for any reason, that play becomes inoperative,

not only does no mental process follow, but all

such processes are impossible. Next to our

dependence on God comes our dependence on

matter. Over-emphasis on the dependence of

our original ideas on God leads to a false

mysticism
;
over-emphasis on the dependence

of thought on matter leads to a false idealogy,
l

which inevitably issues in a blend of blank

materialism and craven agnosticism. The

agnostic is constantly harking back to the

empirical truth that the highest intellectual

ideas have their source in the low stratum of

material objects. Then false analogy comes

in, tumbling on the top of phrases—the stream
cannot rise higher than its source

;

(it can by

the pump)
;

the ill-bred boy must grow into

the vulgar man (not always)
;
base blood will

out (unless it be refined)
;

you can’t make a

silk purse out of a sow’s ear (dermatologists

can do something very like it). Hence it is

argued that intellectual ideas must pay the

c



34 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

penalty of their lowly origin, and can never look

up with steady gaze at the supra-materialistic

conceptions of the alleged science of Natural

Theology. Yet somehow, in spite of the warn-

ing words of the wise, and in the midst of all

these sagacious head-shakes, we do manage to

do the trick. As a matter of stubborn fact,

and apart from all flimsy theory, we do get on,

weighted though we are with ideas of material-

istic origin. We do contrive to look through

Nature up to Nature’s God. Lowly though

they are in the beginning, our ideas are fairly

detachable from the matter which gave them

birth, and can and do rise, as in the case of

Lord Kelvin of Belfast and Glasgow—0 clarum
et venerabile nomen !—to a conspicuous place
on a highly exalted spiritual plane. Higher

and higher is the ascent, but we do not quail,

not even when we come to the First Cause of

all. “ Ecce Deus vincens scientiam nostram}

Lo ! it is God, and God known, and God still

overtopping our knowledge. That God is

1

Job xxxvi. 26, in Vulgate.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 35

known to the great Biblical poet is shown by the

magnificent passage on the material creation,

that follows this striking text.

Outside this world of sense there are realities,

and they are reached through the world of

sense, and when so reached they are found

with earthly vapours about them, and wearing

the poor texture in which our material senses

could not but clothe them, and of which our

loftiest aspirations after truth cannot wholly

divest them. They are truly known, though

far from adequately and with many limitations.

They are apprehended by reason mediately,

through the bodily organs, and somewhat

distortedly, like things seen in the dusk, but

not mockingly and not fallaciously. They are

ours, but not by insight or intuition. Freed

from the bonds of matter themselves, they

lend no support to the theory of our emancipa-

tion from what Plato called a thraldom, and

Aristotle a natural necessity. We have to

wait on the senses before we become their

masters. We must take the consequences of



36 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

the essentially materialistic origin of ideas, and

confess that the strongest intellect that ever

took wing aloft, does not enter into possession

of the full meaning of any one supra-sensible

truth. Cognitio earum \veritatum\ non est

humana possessio,—“ Clear knowledge of
these truths is not in the possession of

man.” 1 Thus speaks the true materialism of

the old Rationalism, and it was in this sense

that I invited you to call me a materialist.

Just as I said that we must be Rationalists or

fools, I may add now that we must either be

materialists in our psychology, or demi-gods

or some such preposterous thing. No matter

how the spiritual faculty within may seize on,

transform and idealise sensations previously

derived from material substances, there can be

no grist for the intellectual mill except that

which is borne through the canals of the

senses. Thus the disembodied spirit of the

infant whose first breath is its last is doomed,

unless there be wondrous modes of tuition in

1
St Thomas following Aristotle.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 37

the spirit-world, to go through its eternity

without a single vestige of the thought and

ratiocination which mortals can acquire, solely

through the use and study of the material

creation .
1 Where there is no kind of physical

stimulus or molecular motion in the organ of

the brain, the scientific fear may well be

entertained that the mental correlative of this

material change will never appear in the form

of an intellectual idea.

Granted there are no innate ideas — and
no one has ever gone within measurable

distance of proving it—whence are ideas to
come save from the senses ? Perhaps from

spirit acting on spirit
;

but this is specula-

tion. A melancholy corollary is that some

medical students who depart this life in the

bloom oftheir “first year,” may remain for ever as

destitute of all notions of anatomy as the infant

may be of all forms of intellectual life— and
who can contemplate without a shudder a medical

eternity without an idea of a human skeleton !

1 No reference will be expected here to the supernatural

state of the baptised infant.



38 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

The very intangible, because highly spiritual,

action of mind on an object of sense may

possibly be illustrated thus :—A man and a
cat seated together at the fire are looking

together at a common object, say a coal-

scuttle. The same sense-impressions, we may

assume, are made on both, but the man is

thinking and the cat— I beg pardon of some
students of feline psychology—is not, and
cannot. Abstracting from the thisness and

thusness of the object, the man sees at a

glance that it is a vessel for coal. Note the

significance of the indefinite article. The

moment we say in our mind “

a

vessel” we

are putting the scuttle in a class, we are

generalising or forming a generic idea not of

the individual piece of metal, but of the genus

“vessel” to which we assign it. And this is

a small thing, you say, this overlooking of all

the individualising notes of the coal-scuttle

and this formation of the large concept of

vessel. Why, every definition in a dictionary

does this, and who respects the lexicographer ?



THE TRUE RATIONALISM • 39

Seriously, gentlemen, this process that
comes

so easy to you and to me as we gaze at the

scuttle, is of such vast import that if you write

down this ridiculously simple definition, “A

coal-scuttle is a vessel for coal,” an expert in

the old Rationalism will undertake to prove
to

you that you are possessed of a faculty
far

transcending sense, a faculty non-material and

spiritual, and therefore indivisible and therefore

indestructible
;
in a word, that you have a soul

and an immortal one too. Wherever there

is a mental leap from the individual
to

generalisation about the individual, it takes

a spiritual soul to perform the feat.
Matter

moves only in its own plane. It never jumps

up out of it, for it knows of no such relation

as up or down, nor of anything outside
or

above its concentrated self. It never refers

an object which is seen to a class of objects

not seen. You see a harmonium ; you think

of reed instruments and class it with them.

You are doing what is impossible to matter

or mere sense. No animal has ever been



40 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

known to make the smallest attempt at the

universal idea that lurks in the simplest

definition of the commonest object of sense.

Every line in the despised dictionary is a

proof of the non-material character of the

mind. No trained horse or dog or elephant,

in spite of the magniloquent puffs of their

trainers, has come within shouting distance

even of the clumsy definition that has made

a certain boy immortal. “A button is what,
when it isn t sewed on, makes breeches fall

down. In the wide sweep it takes of a large

class of wearing apparel, the definition is a

noble generalisation and essentially intellectual.

The idea underlying the word “thing” or even

the slang, “thingamy,” is that of Being in

general
;
by its very simplicity it defies analysis,

and dwells in so rarefied an atmosphere that

no material organ or function has ever moved

a step in its direction; yet it is the concept

that is never wanting in each and every

operation of the human mind.

Take another example of intellectual power not



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 41

shared by any being below the level of man.

From one tiny bit of radium, the student of this

mysterious substance, who has some know-

ledge of its inner (not innermost) nature,

will be able to generalise, and feels himself

irresistibly prompted to generalise and to assert

with absolute confidence that the phenomena

he has been exhibiting will be repeated in

every piece of radium, should that mineral be

discovered lying in numberless beds, each a

hundred feet thick, in the uttermost parts of

the world. How does the one piece in his

hand—and few men have ever held two—tell
him that? It does not tell him. He could

not rise an inch above the specimen he holds

between finger and thumb, unless he had

within him the far-carrying pinions of a

spiritual soul. Conscious or sub-conscious,

this power of generalisation is always present

to the thinking man, and the general

ideas which he forms and formulates with

lightning speed and inexhaustible fertility

and often without an effort, are invariably



42 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

absent from the world of matter and

sense.

The triumph of the Idea over the matter in

which it was cradled can be studied in a variety

of daily experiences. The eye of the observer

stationed on a long stretch of railroad, sees

convergence in the parallel lines of rails
;
the

mind while admitting the optical necessity

of this phenomenon, knows that the rails are

at every point equally far apart, that they

neither meet nor tend to meet .
1

It has

grasped the idea of parallelism, and has

travelled a long way in idealism since the

eyes first rested on two parallel lines. Again,

in a badly drawn diagram, where the radii of

a circle are anything but equal, the geometrical

student pursues the protracted course of his

reasoning, undisturbed by the glaring

inequality revealed by the compass, discards

all the defects of the draughtsman, and

finally arrives at the ideally perfect conclusion

1 The mistake of John Stuart Mill on this point is now very

generally recognised and even ridiculed.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 43

that the angle ABC = DEF, which is obviously

not the case on paper. His mind is soaring

high above the figure, though all the concepts

it is manipulating and combining, came in the

first instance from the drawn symbols seen

long ago.

The process started by matter ends in the

spurning of matter under the springy foot
of

mind.

VI.

—

Inerrancy of Reason

The phrase “ Inerrancy of Reason
” may be

at once irritating and mirth-provoking.
Any-

how, it sometimes causes a look of disgust
and

sometimes a giggle. The human mind,

groping after the shadow of truth, or, worse

still, running amok of truth, is hardly a fit

subject for truth to abide in. It is not
always

doing as you say, reply the scholastics, and
it

is gross exaggeration to say that it is.
There

are two noble definitions of Aristotle which
of

themselves would seem to disprove the state-



44 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

ment that the chief function of reason is to go

wrong, (i) Man is a rational animal. (2)

Truth is an equation between the subject know-

ing and the object known. Against this latter,

all the forces of Kant and the German meta-

physicians are engaged in a truceless war, but

the definition stands unshaken. Certitude is

attainable, and we are as conscious at times that

we have it as that we are possessed of free will.

Take the so-called simple, but really

amazing, process of the immediate mental

apprehension of the generic nature of a

material object. In this the human mind is

inerrant. The simplest case of simple appre-

hension is perhaps found in the experience of

seeing an undefined object moving in the dark.

It may be inanimate, or a man or a beast. On

this we pronounce no judgment, and if we did

we should probably be in error. All we say of

it is that it is “a moving thing.” The insigni-

ficant looking word “ thing,” as has been noted,

implies the widest possible generalisation : it is

the embodiment of the most transcendental



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 45

of all concepts—that of Being—and is always a

standing witness to the existence and action of

mind. Of this and this only we are certain

—

that there is before us a moving thing. Here,

if ever, the truth has been taken in, and vague

though the object of thought is, the truth has

been apprehended in such perfection that a

true equation of cognition has been established

between the cognising subject and the object

cognised. We are certain that there is a

moving thing under our eyes, and that we have

mentally grasped it and annexed it, and this

without the least possibility of doubt. What

is true of the senses is true of the mind.

The mind is inerrant in the act of simple

apprehension of a material thing. Challenge

this conclusion and the way is opened wide

for the introduction of a scepticism which

would make a clean sweep of the possibility of

knowledge. If this inerrancy in the primary

action of the mind is denied, it would follow

that no judgment pronounced by the same

faculty can be trusted, not even the judgments



46 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

embodied in the axioms of Euclid. “ The

whole is greater than the part.” That is a

judgment, and is universally regarded, except

by the out-and-out sceptic, as an infallible one
;

but it is worthless unless the simple apprehen-

sion of the subject and predicate of the

proposition has been infallible too.

As to these judgments, the number of which

I fear is often understated, little need be said.

They are to be found most thickly clustered in

pure mathematics, and constitute a class of

propositions which carry on their face the

unquestioned and unquestionable evidence of

their truth. Of these, in turn, it must be said

that unless they are known at a glance of

reason to be infallible, no mathematical reason-

ing based on them has the slightest claim to

validity. To assume them is unreasonable, for

assumptions are made in the twilight, and these

propositions in the lustre of reason. Nor can

any man prove such a statement, as that two

parallel lines indefinitely produced will never

meet. It is one of the principia per se nota,



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 47

the fundamental propositions known through

themselves and not through antecedents
;
and

to try to go below any one of them would be

the same as to try to descend a lower rung than

the lowest rung of a ladder. One cannot get

under truths which have no under-side, so

deep are they imbedded in the roots of rational

nature.

Not only in the region of mathematics are

these inerrant judgments found. Science is

full of them, and without them she cannot

teach or even live. As a scientist, you are

sure you have got at the essentially carbonic

nature of a piece of coal. You know nothing,

we will suppose, about the extent of the coal-

fields that nature has laid out. For all you

know, they may yield only ounces or billions of

tons
;

yet you are certain, that whatever the

output is, be it as small as radium or as large

as water, all the specimens, if they be really

coal, will have carbon as a main constituent.
%

What makes you so confident ? The confi-

dence is not based on any assumption about



48 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

the “uniformity of nature.” You have

explored only an infinitesimal portion of

nature, and an assumption of the kind, like the

Kantian assumption of the reality of the

external world, is anathema to reason, which

loves the light and shuns the darkness.

Examine your own consciousness and you will

find that you are sure of all coal in nature,

because you are sure of the correctness of your

universal concept of coal, derived from the

examination of this single sample in your

laboratory. If you deny your certitude here,

you have no right to generalise about what you

have not seen or analysed—that is, you must
hold your peace, resign your chair of chemistry,

and give no more scientific lectures on coal or

carbon.

Better for you and better for your classes to

maintain with Rationalism that on a vast

number of scientific problems the judgment of

men of science is simply inerrant. That on a

vaster number they go wrong, I do not deny,

but sooner or later they will be found out, and



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 49

the finder-out will again be human reason, and

human reason again inerrant.

Passing from this department of rational

judgments, we are not to assume that the next

step forward will land us in the boundless field

occupied by the mental freaks and vagaries,

blindnesses and blunders of the human mind.

If the easy work of the simple apprehension of

a moving object of sense is infallibly done, and

if the more complex process of formulating the

judgments of the mathematician and the scien-

tist can be infallibly performed, it is likely

enough that these latter, when linked logically

together, will lead to a whole series of proposi-

tions that can be known to be as infallible as

the antecedent ones that have occupied and

satisfied the mind. Thus we are prompted to

extend the area of the inerrancy of reason to

an indefinite number of cases of ratiocination.

The propositions of geometry supply the

aptest illustration. After the long process of

reasoning required to establish the truth that

the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of

D



50 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

the squares on the other two sides of a triangle,

the mind of the student is convinced that his

final conclusion is quite as stable and unassail-

able and impossible to doubt, as any one of the

axioms which were taken up and utilised on his

way to the goal.

Thus we find ourselves in a position to sum

up our triple division of the infallible operations

of human reason.

(i.) In the simple apprehension of material

objects duly presented by the senses,

reason is infallible.

(2.) In many judgments, notably those of

pure mathematics and applied science,

the same claim of reason must be

allowed.

(3.) In many forms of ratiocination, the

same infallibility for the same faculty

must be asserted.

This granted, the ground may be said to be

cleared for what at first sight will appear an

overbold generalisation. It is this:—Reason,



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 51

as such, is always inerrant. The rational man,

needless to say, can go wrong both in his

judgments and in his ratiocination. He may

judge from a rubicund nose that a teetotaller is

a hard drinker. He may work out a long

reasoned problem in algebra, and find that his

solution comes to this impossible equation

:

(

a

+ b) (a — b) = a
s — b3 . But it is to be

observed that it is not his reason that has

betrayed him into these mistakes. Something

that is more like unreason than reason has

insinuated itself into his psychical states, and,

without any conscious co-operation on his

part, has fallen foul of his reason, warped it,

distorted it, stifled or ejected it, with the result

that the rational processes he was engaged on

are dislocated, enfeebled, or destroyed. It is

not his reason that has failed
;

it is the factor

of ignorance or inattention or self-confidence or

prejudice or passion that has brought about

the wreck of what was intended to be a highly

rational work. The “intromission,” to use a

legal phrase, of this foreign factor has



52 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

rendered the labours of the rational man

abortive and his conclusions false. So does it

happen with the youthful, or even the mature,

arithmetician. The boy knows his arithmetic

table and knows it to be infallible, but some

disturbing cause like carelessness creeps in, or

some “ brain-storm ” of distraction blows, and

the answer to the long sum issues in a shape

which can only be true if 2 + 2 are 5. The

something wrong is not due to the printed

tables, but only to the boy’s departure from

this unerring code.

If reason as such and in its own sphere were

liable to error, we may well ask, what is there

to put the error right ? The only possible answer

is “ reason.” But ex hypothesi reason is of itself

and at its own work liable to error. How, then,

can it undertake to eliminate error? But it

can, and it is the only way.

The final conclusion, I own, is startling to

modern ears, but it is none the less inevitable,

and has been reached by the chief of

the schoolmen long ago. No one of the



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 53

multitudinous errors that find entrance into

the mental states and processes of the rational

man, can be referred to reason as its source.

They come from other causes too numerous to

mention here and too deep for me to unearth.

Reason as such is inerrant. I may be blind,

but I do not see what there is to say against

this summing-up.

VII.—Reason in Command

Where there are warring interests in a king-

dom the government, if it is to hold its own,
*

must keep those forces under supervision and

control. Of the conflicts between the higher

and lower natures in man, I need say nothing,

except that we all have the same experience as

St Paul, and know that the struggle is there,

and chronic and truceless.

Of the necessity of preserving order in the

midst of a rebellion, in which we well know

which is the rightful authority and which the

lawless usurper, we are equally well aware, but



54 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

I am not going to dwell on it, lest I should

rise or degenerate into a preacher. No

Rationalist, I suppose, can doubt that reason

must stick to the helm and weather the storm

as best it can, while the wild waves are saying,

“Oh, how jolly to be a fool!” Granted that

reason has got the headship and is the only

faculty at all fitted for high station, it is clear

that it must keep its position, and that in two

main departments—(i) in abstract thought ; (2)
in concrete operation .

1

In the first, reason

claims to direct all mental processes
;

in the

second, to preside over the whole field of

human action, which is in turn subdivided

into (a) intelligent action on external nature,

(b) moral action, with all its concomitants.

(1) The rule for this headship in speculative

thought may be laid down thus :—Conclusions
arrived at in all complex mental processes are

then and then only fully rational and certainly

valid when they are reducible to first principles

which no sane man can deny. Thus the most

1 In speculativisj in operabilibus, in Scholastic Latin.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 55

elaborate investigations of the pure mathema-

tician can be justified to himself, or to others

on demand, if he can show that on analysis

these conclusions can be brought down to

some formula as impregnable as this—two
straight lines cannot enclose a space.

(2) (a) To test the conclusions arrived at by

the practical reason, engaged on intelligent

action on matter, the rule is much the same.

Such conclusions are good if, on examination,

they are found to be directly or indirectly con-

formable to some practical principle of

mechanico-rational work. Thus a great

engineering scheme is shown to be sound

when it is analysed into such feasible details as

damming a dammable stream, or tunnelling a

hill which lends itself to tunnelling.

(2) (
6
)
Closely analogous to the above, is

the rule for testing the conclusions of the

practical reason or conscience
1

when the

1 The labyrinthine difficulties in which modern philosophers

have become entangled since they called “Conscience” a

“ faculty ” distinct from reason, and hoisted it into a position

above reason, were not known to the ancients.



56 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

subject matter is moral action. Thus every
form of business transaction which can be

shown not to fall within the proscribed area of

theft or fraud, and which is therefore proved

to be in harmony with an elementary principle

of the natural law, is pronounced by reason to

be morally right and just.

The rule is capable of endless exten-
sion, not only to personal but to political

morality. Thus, if a civil Government

proposes a revolution in matters educational

and recommends its new Bill as fair and
righteous, it must be able to show that the
moral character claimed for the measure is in
full accord with such primary principles of

morality as that the rights of parents over

children have the first claim, and that all alleged
rights in conflict with these are grievous wrongs .

1

1 The teaching of the old Rationalism on this point is out-
spo en and fearless. Lex hilmana in tantum habet rationem
legis, m quantum est secundum rationem rectam,—'“Human
law has in it the true character of law, only in so far as it is
conformable to right reason.”-(St Thomas, Summa, 1-2, q. o<
art. 3). Again, Oportet quod lex sit aliqua ratione regulata •
* hoc modo mtelligilur quod voluntas principis habet vigorem



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 57

It would seem, then, that the headship of

reason covers a very wide sphere, within man

and outwith, and that this queen has de jure a

vast host of subjects, though many of these are

de facto engaged in, or preparing for revolt.

VIII.—The Headship of All Headships

The rational survey of things beneath us is

good
;
of things around us is better

—

Circum-

spice

!

of things above us is best—Suspice !
Artists in colour bewail the fact that to most

men who walk this earth, cloudland is an

unknown land, because they will not take the

trouble to see what a pageant is prepared in the

skies for the man with eyes uplifted. The

survey of things at our feet is not enough. If

legis : alioquin voluntas principis magis esset iniquitas quam

lex,
—“Law must have for its regulator some character of

reason
;
and in this way is the saying to be understood that the

will of the Governor has the force of law ; otherwise the will of

the Governor would be tyranny rather than law.”—(St Thomas,
Summa

,
1-2, q. 90, art. 1).

D 2



58 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

too protracted', it may be positively injurious.

If there is anything above our heads, it behoves

us to look up and see what it is, especially if

there is reason to believe that along with the

sight destined for our eyes, there is a voice

from heaven that is meant to reach our ears.

Reason knows it is set above something, but

knows it not more infallibly than it knows that

someone sits above it. To every man with

anything like good will, even though his hear-

ing of her is listless and his service grudging,

queen-reason has the same message to deliver.

She is where she is by divine appointment, and

she is not supreme. Then she points upwards,

and though men cannot mistake the gesture,

they prefer not to follow it, and their truant

eyes go down again.

It is a good thing, gentlemen, as you stand

at a level crossing on a railroad to look both

ways, up and down. If you look only down,

there may be an express on the other side

hurling itself at you with the ferocity of death.

There are, it is to be feared, many Rationalists



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 59

who train themselves systematically never to

look above themselves, and this, they think, is

to pay court to reason. They are satisfied

when they have heard the very partial message

of reason concerning her own headship, that

they are on the top—top-dogs, I think, is the
slang for them—and that as very much lies
within them and beneath them, and nothing at

all towers above them, they have nothing to

look up at. That is their position, and were

it my business to criticise it, I should be

compelled to begin a long treatise on Natural

Theology and the knowableness of God.

There they are, but does reason bid them stay

there or go up higher? They say they are

high enough on the peak of reason, but it is

not the pretty things they say of reason that

count
;

it is what reason bids them do. She

cannot acquiesce in her own worship; she

rends her garments at the thought, and bids

them go to a higher mount and there adore

her God and theirs. If they would only

hearken to her voice, as they profess to do,



ro THE TRUE RATIONALISM

they would go. “ The knowledge of God,”

says Bossuet, “is the most certain of all the
V

kinds of knowledge that we have through

reasoning.”
1 The old Rationalism gave out

that it had proved the existence of God from

reason. The whole of the then learned world,

which had eyes as keen as ours and possibly

thoughts far deeper
,

2
was satisfied on examina-

tion that the proofs amounted to demonstra-

tions. In our own day the proofs are said to

be no proofs, but the saying is all we can get

out of the “ Rationalist ”
;
the proofs are not

disproved. In other branches of knowledge, as

in astronomy, the old “ proofs ” that the earth

was flat or stationary, have been manfully

tackled and torn to pieces. To the old proofs

of the existence of God, drawn from causation,

this honour of refutation has not been accorded.

They are flouted, not refuted, and the Rational-

1 “ La connaissance de Dieu est la plus certaine de toutes

celles que nous avons par le raisonnement.”-—Traitt du libre

arbitre

,

c. iv.

a Cardinal Newman expresses the same opinion far more

strongly.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 61

ist who joins in the jeering chorus is really

engaged in giving battle to reason, humouring

a fashion and endorsing an untruth.

The worst offence you can commit against

reason is to discredit and give the lie to its own

protestations that it came from God and is under

God. The reason which makes us rational

men and thus capable of offering these half-

reasoned insults to our nature, declares that the

autonomy claimed for it is a fiction, and that it

will have nothing to do with it.

Of course, if reason be really autonomous,

the flag of the old Rationalism must be struck.

Then truly is queen-reason supreme, because

there is no reasonable God above her. Her

being she owes to no one. Her pre-eminence

is her own. She is free as the air to say what

she lists within herself, and to prescribe what

she likes to her subordinates, to keep them in

check if she so desires, or to give them a loose

rein. She is equally in possession of Home Rule

and Home Misrule, and has no one to thank

for the gift. She has never strayed, because she



62 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

was never tethered
;
she never rebels, because

she was never a subject
;
she cannot be called

unruly or ungoverned, because such terms

imply a relation to a ruler or a government,

and that is just what a truly autonomous power

must repudiate—with as much warmth as
the Principal of the University of X., who, on

being told by a common constable to move on,

remarked that he was the autonomous head of

an autonomous institution
—

“which is all rot,”

said the officer as he moved him on.

You have heard the declaration of autonomy.
— './*«!"' ‘Jvl \

I am not going to subject it to analysis, still

less to hold it up to scorn, but I ask you, Is

this the voice of reason or of unreason ? Does

the rational being use this language, or the

irrational ? Does reason know that it is a

product of a higher reason, as surely as it

knows that a watch is made by a watch-

maker
1

and life comes from life? It is for

1 Paley’s old argument about the watch has often been

called “ childish .’
5

It is easy to call it names, but hard to

refute it. Feeble as it is said to be, it is stronger than the

attack on it, and still holds the field.



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 63

you as Rationalists to answer the question.

And if you reach to a higher reason as the

efficient cause of your lower one, you must go

on with your inquiry till you touch the Highest

Reason, and that is God
;
and if God has or

rather is Reason Itself, He is surely at liberty

to express His Reason as we do ours in language

spoken or written, and to enter into intimate

relationship with men through a Man He

chooses to send. With all the vigour of reason

in you, judge of the Life of this Man, who was

wise and not foolish, who was truthful and never

lied, who asserted and proved the assertion,

that He was sent from God, and was God, and

to be obeyed as God.

It looks as if the Rationalist was becoming

obedient and submissive. Becoming ! He was

never anything else. Reason is always obedient

to something higher than itself. Only un-

reason rebels. To wean myself and you from

this tempting subject, I turn to the splendours

of Ruskin.

“ Restraint is always the more honourable



64 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

... It is restraint which characterises the

higher creature and betters the lower creation.

From the ministering of the archangel to the

labour of the insect, from the poising of a

planet to the gravitation of a grain of dust, the

power and glory of all creatures and all matter

consists in their obedience, not in their freedom.

. . . That principle to which policy owes its

stability, life its happiness, faith its acceptance,

and creation its continuance, is obedience. . . .

That is a treacherous phantom which men call

liberty, most treacherous indeed of all phantoms,

for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show

us that not only its attainment but its being

was impossible. ... If by liberty you mean

chastisement of the passions, discipline of the

intellect, subjection of the will
;

if you mean

the fear of inflicting, the shame of committing

wrong
;

if you mean respect for all who are in

authority, and consideration for all who are in

dependence, veneration for the good, mercy to

the evil, sympathy with the weak
;

if you mean

watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 65

pleasures, and perseverance in all toils, why do

you name this by the same word by which the

luxurious mean license and the reckless mean

change, by which the rogue means rapine and

the fool equality, by which the proud mean

anarchy and the malignant mean violence. Call

it by any name rather than this, but its best and

truest is Obedience.”

A moment ago I referred to the proof given

by Christ of His Godhead, and meant, of course,

the Resurrection of His dead Body. That is

challenged, and by Rationalists too.

IX.

—

The Old and the New Rationalism

Sub Judice

It were impossible to enter here into the

question of the Resurrection, but I cite it as a

good illustration of the way in which the true

Rationalist is often called on to decide on the

rationality or irrationality of opposing argu-



66 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

merits. There is one thing he is not allowed

to do, and that is to shirk the responsibility of

thinking for himself or to parry all appeal to

his own reason by the cowardly device of

declaring that learned men are equally divided

on this or that contentious matter—and who is
he to decide when doctors disagree ?

The little story I append will make my

meaning clear, and will also give me an oppor-

tunity of not supplying you with a solution

to a difficulty which you can solve for your-
y m

selves.

Some time ago, I was in conversation with

an intelligent Lithuanian Jew, and we got on

the subject of the Resurrection of our Lord.

My friend rose from his chair, opened a drawer

and turning to me said, “ I leave this gold

piece here and I close the drawer. In a few

hours I return, open the drawer, and lo ! the

coin is gone. What am I to conclude ? This

and this only : A thief has been and done it.

So was it with the abstraction of the body of

your Messiah.”



THE TRUE RATIONALISM 67

Straightway the words of another Jew, St

Matthew, flashed to my mind : “ Say ye his

disciples come by night and stole him away

while we slept . . . and this saying was spread

abroad among the Jews and endureth until

this day.”
1

Now, it is clear from the whole trend of this

lecture, that they cannot both be Rationalists

—

the man who upholds and the man who denies

the Resurrection. Who is to judge between

them ? You with your reason
;
you as Ration-

alists. It is for you to say, in all these attacks

on Christianity, which is the man who is using

his reason and which. the man who is uncon-

sciously blindfolding it. And I say it without

fear of challenge or contradiction, that there

are scores of modern theories against the

Resurrection, that are no better or no worse

than the chest-of-drawers argument of my

Hebrew friend. The evidence is before you

—

that I take for granted—and you are required,
as I was required in that little incident, to

1
Matt, xxviii. 13, 15.



68 THE TRUE RATIONALISM

keep your reason on the judicial bench, to come

to a well-balanced decision, and to establish

yourselves, even if you fail to win others, in

Rationalism and Truth

\

PRINTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH.