' 
 
 RELIGION:" 
 
 ARMSTRONG 
 
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 3 735 
 
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 < 
 
 UN (,k!;AT 
 .SUBJECTS- XVII 
 
LIBRARY 
 
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 1. Words by the Wayside. By 
 
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 [Second Edition. 
 
 2. Faith the beginning, Self-sur- 
 
 render the fulfilment, of the 
 Spiritual Life. By JAMES MAR- 
 
 TINEAU, D.D.,D.C.L. [Second Edition. 
 
 3< Reconsiderations and Reinforce- 
 ments. By J. M. WHITON, Ph.D. 
 
 4. Mischievous Goodness, AND OTHER 
 
 PAPERS. By CHARLKS A. BEERY, D.D. 
 
 5. The Jealousy of God, AND OTHER 
 
 PAPERS. By JOHN PULSFORD, D.D. 
 
 6. How to Become like Christ, AND 
 
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 9. The Angels of God, AND OTHER 
 
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 17. Martineau's " Study of Religion," 
 
 By EICHARD A. ARMSTRONG, 
 
Small Books on Great Subjects. XVII. 
 
 MARTINEAU'5 " STUDY OF RELIGION." 
 By RICHARD A. ARMSTRONG* 
 
MARTINEAU'S 
 
 "STUDY OF RELIGION :" 
 
 An Analysis and Appreciation. 
 
 By 
 
 Richard A. Armstrong. 
 
 London : 
 
 JAMES CLARKE & CO., 
 
 13 & 14, Fleet Street. 1900. 
 
Edition, February, 1900. 
 
Preface. 
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU was born at 
 Norwich on April 21, 1805. He 
 died in London on January 11, 
 1900. 
 
 Twelve years ago, at the age of 
 eighty-two, he published ff A Study 
 of Beligion." At the request of 
 the then Editor of The Inquirer, I 
 contributed to that journal a series 
 of articles constituting, not so 
 much a review, as a brief analysis 
 and exposition of the work. It is 
 these articles which are here col- 
 lected together, with only such 
 slight variations as the lapse of 
 years and the death of Dr. Marti- 
 neau make necessary. 
 
 227435 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 Dr. Martineau has left to the 
 world (besides volumes of sermons 
 famous throughout Christendom, 
 devotional compositions in hymn 
 and canticle and prayer of the 
 rarest beauty and spirituality^ 
 collections of essays and addresses 
 in many departments of philosophy, 
 theology, criticism, and even in 
 politics and sociology, and an ex- 
 tended monograph on Spinoza,) 
 three great works summing up the 
 thought and study of his life, 
 namely, "Types of Ethical Theory" 
 (1885), "A Study of Religion" 
 (1888), and " The Seat of Authority 
 in Religion " (1 890) . Each work is 
 unique in its kind. The first is 
 the most powerful and competent 
 reply that has been made to the 
 advocates of the Utilitarian and 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 Determinist theories of morals. 
 The second takes up the ethical 
 position of the first and extends it 
 to a vindication of Theistic belief 
 incomparable, in my view, in force 
 and scope. The third combines 
 with a restatement of the grounds 
 of Theism the most trenchant 
 criticism in literature of the 
 Eoman Catholic and Protestant 
 positions, and an examination of 
 the original documents of Chris- 
 tianity abreast of the most ad- 
 vanced Continental scholarship. 
 
 To religious inquirers at a cer- 
 tain stage probably the most 
 illuminating and helpful of all 
 Martineau's writings is " The Seat 
 of Authority," and it is less 
 weighted with the technical 
 language of philosophy than the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " Types " or the " Study." But 
 it has not the concentrated unity 
 of the prior essays. And, dis- 
 tinguished as was the critical 
 scholarship of Martin eau, it is not 
 of the same authority as his philo- 
 sophical thinking. Many will go 
 with him the whole way in his 
 great Theistic argument, yet part 
 company with him sharply in 
 his New Testament criticism. To 
 such a man, for example, as the 
 late Eichard Holt Hutton, the 
 " Types " and the " Study " seemed 
 almost perfect arguments, while 
 he could not fail vehemently to 
 dissent from many chapters in 
 "The Seat of Authority." 
 Tennyson, too, enthusiastic about 
 the "Study of Keligion," was 
 deeply disappointed by the later 
 
PREFACE . XI 
 
 work. The most commanding 
 strength of the great teacher was 
 undoubtedly concentrated in the 
 " Study of Religion." That is his 
 supreme positive contribution to 
 religious philosophy. While I 
 personally go with him in much 
 in his last great volume from 
 which many will dissent, I must 
 still hold "A Study of Religion" 
 to be his greatest constructive 
 contribution to human thought. 
 
 Believing, as I do, that in these 
 great chapters Martineau has laid 
 down indestructibly the lines on 
 which the highest and truest 
 religious thinking of the twen- 
 tieth Christian century must pro- 
 ceed, I have willingly agreed to 
 the republication of my humble 
 restatement of the main elements 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 of the argument. To read and 
 digest "A Study of Eeligion" 
 demands not only a considerable 
 leisure, but a familiarity with 
 philosophical literature and ter- 
 minology somewhat beyond that 
 common to the average culture of 
 our times. I want to help a few 
 earnest men and women who may 
 shrink from the high task of 
 studying the " Study " for them- 
 selves, to follow some of its 
 reasoning and assimilate some of 
 its results. If a sprinkling of 
 these few should proceed from the 
 perusal of my simple pages to the 
 pages of the philosopher himself, 
 I shall feel myself the more richly 
 rewarded. 
 
 It will be seen that Martineau 
 based his argument for God on 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 two chief f oundations, the demand 
 of the human understanding for a 
 Living Cause behind phenomena, 
 and the demand of the human 
 conscience for a Living Righteous- 
 ness behind the moral law. In a 
 little book of my own, mainly 
 based upon his teachings, "God 
 and the Soul/' I was led to add 
 a third argument to these, namely, 
 the perception by the emotional 
 nature of man of a Living Love 
 behind things sublime and beau- 
 tiful an intuitive sense of a 
 Divine Presence in Nature such 
 as that of which Wordsworth 
 is the prophet. It seems justifi- 
 able and not unimportant to 
 record that, in the last con- 
 versation which I was privi- 
 leged to hold with the great 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 teacher (in February, 1897), he 
 gave a most generous and cordial 
 recognition to this contention, 
 asserting that in his view the 
 argument from this intuition was 
 of parallel force and rank to the 
 arguments from causality and 
 conscience. 
 
 With a reverence and gratitude 
 which words cannot measure to 
 him whose thinking has illumin- 
 ated all iny path, I send forth this 
 booklet as a lowly tribute to his 
 memory. 
 
 EICHAKD A. ARMSTRONG. 
 
 Liverpool, 
 
 Feb. 2, 1900. 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory 1 
 
 II. What is " Religion " P ... 11 
 
 III. From Ethics to Religion ... 20 
 
 IV. Can We Really Know ? ... 33 
 
 Y. The World-Maker 46 
 
 VI. The Fountain of Holiness... 64 
 
 VII. Pitfalls of Philosophy ... 80 
 
 VIII. Shall the Soul Die ? . 101 
 
MARTINEAU'S 
 "STUDY OF RELIGION:" 
 
 An Analysis and Appreciation. 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 AFTER the appearance of Dr. 
 Martineau's "Types of Ethical 
 Theory/' in the year 1885, there 
 were those who awaited the second 
 Magnum Opus * of the great 
 prophet-philosopher with an eager- 
 ness which it would be difficult to 
 exaggerate. Since his voice had 
 been withdrawn from the pulpit 
 which he adorned with so splendid 
 a power, Dr. Martineau had from 
 
 * " A Study of Religion, its Sources and 
 Contents." By James Martineau, D.D., 
 Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1888. 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 time to time thrown into the 
 whirlpool of controversy essays or 
 addresses which called back the 
 combatants to the supreme issues 
 of Faith and Unfaith. He whose 
 name comparatively young men 
 remembered to have heard pro- 
 nounced, not without tones of 
 apprehension, as that of a some- 
 what rash questioner of accepted 
 truths, and that even by men who 
 claimed to be in the forefront of 
 theology, had now for a score of 
 years held, in the estimate of 
 ever-widening numbers, the post 
 of chief advocate of a philosophical 
 Faith against the pleas of an 
 agnostic Scepticism daily growing 
 in confidence and volume. But, 
 save in the College Class-rooms, 
 the defence had hitherto been 
 conducted through isolated pam- 
 phlets and articles. There was a 
 deepening impatience for a com- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 plete and consolidated utterance 
 which should present to all the 
 world the reasons why a scholar 
 of culture unsurpassed, a philoso- 
 pher of profundity by many deemed 
 unparalleled, still clung to the 
 belief that there was a Heavenly 
 Father to hearken to the prayer of 
 his old age, a God to side with 
 righteousness in the conflicts of 
 the nations and the centuries. 
 The grounds for giving the " Types 
 of Ethical Theory" priority to the 
 (e Study of Keligion" were after- 
 wards amply elucidated in the 
 latter work. But it is undeniable 
 that disappointment widely pre- 
 vailed that the author had not 
 first secured the publication of his 
 argument on what was felt to be 
 the superior topic, the supreme 
 problem of Theism itself. There 
 was a tremor of apprehension lest 
 the well-worn brain should not 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 retain the marvel of its subtlety 
 or the pen the miracle of its elo- 
 quence through another tale of 
 years. And the thanksgiving in 
 many hearts when, already well 
 launched on his ninth decade, the 
 great thinker at last put forth 
 this book, was not less fervent than 
 many a thanksgiving for the vic- 
 tories of armies or for return from 
 the gates of death. 
 
 The pages of "A Study of 
 Religion " proved to embrace a dis- 
 cussion which is exactly denned by 
 the title. They comprise exactly 
 that, a study of Religion; they 
 seek and find its sources in the in- 
 tellectual and moral constitution of 
 man ; they unfold its essence held 
 to be the belief in a Living God 
 directing the universe and sustain- 
 ing moral relations with mankind, 
 and its further outcome including 
 the belief in the immortality of man. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The felicitous partnership of 
 typical Philosophy and typical 
 Piety which presided for so many 
 years over Manchester New Col- 
 lege* in the time preceding Dr. 
 Martineau's own principalship is 
 secured against all possibility of 
 oblivion in the beautiful dedica- 
 tory words which stand at the 
 threshold of the temple : 
 
 In memory of an unbroken friendship 
 through thirty years' companionship in 
 Duty and in Study with JOHN JAMES 
 TAYLER, and of the quickening influence 
 of his ripe scholarship and tender Piety, 
 these Yolumes, prepared at his desire 
 and animated by his fellowship of spirit, 
 are affectionately dedicated to the Pupils 
 whom we sought to help on their way to 
 Wise and Faithful Life. 
 
 * An institution dedicated to "Free 
 Teaching and Free Learning " in Theology, 
 apart from the inculcation of particular doc- 
 trinal opinions now Manchester College, 
 Oxford. 
 
6 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 It is as one of those rarely 
 privileged pupils that I venture to 
 put forth these chapters. 
 
 The Preface (running to a dozen 
 pages) opens with an anecdote 
 recording the chagrin of an un- 
 named " English Positivist," when 
 Mr. Fiske, the brilliant author of 
 " Cosmic Philosophy " appeared as 
 the prophet of individual immor- 
 tality. And the anecdote intro- 
 duces the contention that all 
 metaphysics all thinking, that 
 is, "about the origin and the 
 end of things " inevitably lead 
 to religious belief. And so we are 
 brought face to face at once with 
 the great question whether, as 
 Comte would have it, we are to 
 confine all intellectual inquiry to 
 the facts and " happenings " which 
 come under our actual observa- 
 tion, or whether the causes and 
 ultimate issues of facts and 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 " happenings " are also a fair field 
 of inquiry. 
 
 It is needless to say that Dr. 
 Martineau uncompromisingly vin- 
 dicates the latter view; and, in- 
 deed, he presses relentlessly the 
 contention that you cannot even 
 think of a phenomenon, without 
 assuming a permanent reality, 
 which is not a phenomenon, behind 
 it.* Causality and Right are the 
 unescapable groundwork respec- 
 tively of natural and moral pheno- 
 mena. And these two are the im- 
 pregnable basis of the Belief in God. 
 
 Those who were deeply stirred 
 by the eloquent Theistic argument 
 of Professor Fiske, in his two well- 
 
 * " The old Vedantists held that there 
 could be nothing objective or phenomenal, 
 unless there was something real beneath 
 it, in comparison with which anything else 
 might be called unreal, that is, phenomenal. 
 Thus even our unreal world could not 
 exist unless there was at the back of it a 
 something real/' Max Muller, " Auld Lang 
 Syne/' second series, p. 102. 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 known Harvard Addresses, * must 
 feel a wondering interest in the 
 logic with which Dr. Martineau 
 presses on him the acknowledg- 
 ment of the validity, even in 
 Evolution days, of the argument 
 from Design; and will, perhaps, 
 feel a little ashamed that their own 
 vision was not keen enough to see 
 that Fiske must either give up 
 the " teleological meaning/' " the 
 dramatic tendency" which he finds 
 in nature, "the mighty goal," 
 and " the glorious consummation " 
 towards which, to his view, all 
 things move, or else frankly admit 
 a <e design " of God, a divine 
 ef purpose," a rational and intend- 
 ing thought, working from the first 
 till now. We would only suggest 
 
 * "The Destiny of Man viewed in the 
 Light of his Origin/' and " The Idea of 
 God as affected by Modern Knowledge." 
 To these must now be added the three 
 essays comprised in the volume, " Through 
 Nature to God" (Macmillan, 1899). 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 that Fiske seems to us, where he 
 shrinks from applying terms of 
 design and purpose to God, to have 
 his gaze fixed on the limitations, 
 the necessities for contrivance and 
 management, which cling so closely 
 to every actual design or purpose 
 of man, and to be moved by the 
 desire to free God from the sus- 
 picion of subjection to any like 
 conditions. 
 
 Dr. Martineau apprehended that 
 these volumes would " variously con- 
 flict with the prevailing opinions 
 and tendencies of the time." 
 " Possibly/ 3 he adds, " there may 
 yet be a minority among persons 
 accustomed to reflect on the ques- 
 tions here discussed, who may find 
 in them the satisfaction of fellow- 
 ship, if not some clearing and con- 
 firmation of conviction ; and be 
 encouraged, through mere force 
 of sympathy, to cherish and vindi- 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 cate the deep and simple pieties 
 on which the sanctity of life de- 
 pends." 
 
 There proved indeed to be no 
 small number whose sympathy and 
 gratitude were kindled by so noble 
 and potent a vindication of a 
 reasoned faith in a God Supreme 
 and Holy. In these articles we 
 hope to discharge the humble 
 function of placing before others, 
 who may not be prepared at once 
 to confront all the array of 
 subtle argument marshalled by 
 the veteran author, yet now that 
 he is gone would fain know some- 
 what of his teachings^ some ac- 
 count of his main conclusions in 
 what we account his greatest 
 work; and the road by which they 
 are reached. 
 
II. 
 
 WHAT Is "RELIGION"? 
 
 DR. MARTINEAU at the outset 
 clears the ground by recalling to 
 what he deems their proper and 
 historical significance certain great 
 terms now too loosely used in 
 religious controversy. The word 
 " Religion " itself is to stand for 
 " belief in an Ever-living God, that 
 is, in a Divine Mind and Will 
 ruling the Universe and holding 
 moral relations with mankind." 
 Be it noted, however, in passing, 
 that on a subsequent page the 
 right of the Positivist homage to 
 "the nobles and martyrs of his- 
 tory " to call itself a " religion of 
 humanity " is passed without 
 
12 WHAT is "RELIGION"? 
 
 challenge. But taking Eeligion 
 to stand broadly for belief in God, 
 Dr. Martineau reminds us further 
 of the sharp line drawn by our 
 older writers between Natural 
 Eeligion, derived from reflection 
 on the physical and moral world, 
 and Supernatural Religion^ gained 
 by some immediate communication 
 from God. Still seeking to lay 
 out his terminology by broad and 
 clear definition, he points out that 
 the term "Eeligion" covers cer- 
 tain beliefs secondary to its cen- 
 tral affirmation, while the term 
 " Theism " stands for the primary 
 belief alone, and "Atheism" for 
 its rejection or its absence. 
 
 Eecent writers, however, have 
 not found this simple nomencla- 
 ture adequate to their arguments. 
 Tor while an older school of 
 writers saw in Theology and 
 Eeligion the intellectual and 
 
WHAT is "RELIGION"? 13 
 
 emotional aspects of the same 
 thing, inseparable as the convex 
 and concave sides of a surface, 
 their successors contend that the 
 religious emotion may be fully 
 developed altogether apart from 
 any proper theological affirmation 
 whatever. And it is indeed true 
 that of the three kinds of enthu- 
 siasm which are found in all the 
 highest developments of Beligion, 
 wonder at the order impressed by 
 God upon the universe, admiration 
 of the beauty issuing from his 
 will, and reverence for the Divine 
 goodness manifested, the last may 
 really find the same kind of object 
 on which to expend itself in a 
 merely human world as in a world 
 which is God's ; because human 
 goodness is of the same kind 
 however different in degree as 
 that which believers in God revere 
 in Him. Nay^ writers such as the 
 
14 WHAT is "RELIGION"? 
 
 brilliant author of " Natural 
 Religion " find the enthusiasm of 
 scientific wonder and of artistic 
 admiration little different from 
 that of moral veneration, and so 
 reduce Keligion to " habitual and 
 permanent admiration." This 
 distinguished essayist whom we 
 lost a few years subsequently to Dr. 
 Martineau's criticism goes further 
 still; he claims the epithet of 
 " Theism " for a view of the world 
 which empties it of all sign of the 
 God causal and moral recognised 
 by believers of an older type, 
 even identifying the mere flux of 
 phenomena, which is all he knows, 
 with the august and transcendent 
 God. And yet Professor Seeley 
 comes to this not without much 
 confusion, for what is to him on 
 one page identical with God, 
 appears on another as the mani- 
 festation of God. Dr. Martineau 
 
WHAT is "RELIGION"? 15 
 
 charges the famous professor with 
 confounding two issues which are 
 wholly distinct, the issue whether 
 there is any permanent causal 
 power behind the ever-shifting 
 scene of outward nature, and the 
 issue whether the changes of 
 nature proceed by uniform law or 
 by miracle. There is no antagon- 
 ism, as Seeley seems to suppose, 
 between law in nature and God 
 behind nature ; but there is a most 
 momentous antithesis, which Seeley 
 appears to ignore, between the 
 changing scene of nature and the 
 unchanging God from whose 
 power those changes spring. 
 
 But the relentless critic has not 
 yet done with the author of 
 " Natural Religion " and the mis- 
 chief wrought by his very original 
 use of words. If " Theist " stands 
 to the Cambridge Professor simply 
 for one who recognises some order 
 
16 WHAT IS " RELIGION "P 
 
 in the universe, "Atheist" is re- 
 duced in his mind to stand for one 
 who denies or ignores such order. 
 But as no one deliberately makes 
 intellectual denial of all order in 
 the sequence of phenomena, the 
 term can only be retained at all 
 by attaching it to men whose 
 practical temper seems to imply an 
 inadequate sense of the uniformity 
 of law, such as the man who bump- 
 tiously defies the powers of nature, 
 the man who is too poor spirited 
 to trust them, and the man who is 
 purely cynical, and drifts for lack 
 of any moral anchorage. But 
 while the last of these moods 
 is not without some atheistic 
 colouring, Dr. Martineau re- 
 gards the dubbing of the two 
 former tempers atheistic as the 
 reductio ad absurdum of an inde- 
 fensible use of an old group of 
 terms in new senses, 
 
WHAT is "RELIGION"? 17 
 
 The struggle to maintain the 
 nomenclature of Theism without 
 its faith, and thus to make the 
 least of the differences dividing 
 those who still pray to God from 
 those who know not so much as 
 whether there be any Holy Ghost, 
 is touching in the man whose 
 theistic convictions have died 
 away, generous in the man in 
 whom they still have the glow 
 of life; but none the less it 
 is unavailing and misleading. 
 Are we asked to recognise 
 wonder at order and admiration 
 of loveliness, without any good- 
 ness to revere, as an adequate 
 Eeligion ? 
 
 It is impossible : homage to an automa- 
 ton-universe is no better than mummy - 
 worship would be to one who has known 
 what it is to love and trust, and embrace 
 the living friend. In short, a human soul 
 so placed would itself be higher than 
 
 2 
 
18 WHAT is 
 
 aught it knows within immensity, and 
 could worship nothing there without 
 idolatry. 
 
 And even if to the wonder and 
 the admiration we add the moral 
 reverence which the Comtist pays 
 to the good and great of our own 
 race^ or to our own ideal possibi- 
 lities,, the " Eeligion " obtained is 
 but a culture* of "Broken gods/' 
 or the dream of a perfection which 
 has not and may never have any 
 actual realisation. 
 
 Modern " culture " and the old 
 faith cannot then thus be set at 
 peace together ; and it is vain to 
 invite one who has ever risen to 
 conscious spiritual communion with 
 the Father to be content with the 
 mere language of theology imported 
 into anti-theological belief. Dr. 
 Martineau still finds the essence of 
 Eeligion in "the belief and wor- 
 ship of Supreme Mind and Will 
 
WHAT is " RELIGION"? 19 
 
 directing the universe and holding 
 moral relations with human life " ; 
 while the corollaries of that primary 
 belief will also find a place under 
 the category of Eeligion. 
 
III. 
 
 FROM ETHICS TO EELIGION. 
 
 THUS far we have been engaged 
 upon that section of the Intro- 
 duction which asks the question, 
 " What is Eeligion ? " The next 
 section, which is replete with 
 fine thought and noble phrases- 
 phrases which could have issued 
 from no other mint meets the 
 query, put by so many when the 
 earlier Treatise was announced, 
 " Why Ethics before Eeligion?" 
 
 The answer is direct and simple. 
 Moral rules are not dependent, in 
 the author's view, on religious 
 conviction, while the sense of duty 
 is itself a leading source of belief 
 in God. 
 
FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 21 
 
 The mind of man feels and 
 thinlcs and wills. We suffer, we 
 know, we choose. The first ele- 
 ment in this threefold spiritual 
 faculty could not by itself originate 
 religion. The first two elements, 
 without the third, might do so, if 
 we are to admit to the rank of 
 Religion the recognition of a 
 (f thinking Necessity " an Intel- 
 lectual Power controlling Man and 
 Nature, but neither exercising any 
 choice itself among diverse possible 
 courses of action nor conceding 
 faculty for such choice to us. But 
 our own sense of ability to choose 
 between higher and lower lines of 
 conduct, which inward sense is the 
 subject-matter of the science of 
 Ethics, reveals to us a like pre- 
 rogative in the Supreme Power 
 which is over all, and an un- 
 swerving preference on the part 
 of that Almighty Will for the 
 
22 FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 higher rather than the lower. 
 And it is this perception that 
 kindles Religion to its brighter 
 glow, and raises its significance to 
 august proportions. Therefore we 
 do well, in philosophical investi- 
 gation, to take the ascending path 
 from Ethics to Religion rather 
 than travelling in the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 The belief in God, with the 
 consciousness that to this line of 
 conduct he attaches pleasure, and 
 to that line pain, could not of 
 itself create the sense of Duty, 
 but only define for us the path of 
 Prudence, for the sense of Duty is 
 a sense of obligation independently 
 of any profit and loss account to 
 ourselves ; and that only comes 
 when we are aware of an inward 
 commandment to do right uttering 
 itself within the sanctuary of our 
 own spirits. But while a Religion, 
 
FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 23 
 
 stripped of its ethical element, 
 could thus never create that ele- 
 ment, we well know that strong 
 ethical feeling often exists where 
 there is no definite religious belief, 
 and that that which we call char- 
 acter is produced by it in men 
 who have no assurance that there 
 is any God to sympathise with the 
 moral preferences which guide 
 them. 
 
 Are we to conclude, then, that 
 Ethics and Eeligion have nothing 
 to do with each other ? The reply 
 to this question has already been 
 indicated. Dr. Martineau proceeds 
 to elaborate it in a series of para- 
 graphs of brilliant eloquence and 
 wonderful power. 
 
 1. The ethical sense gives birth 
 in our minds to the conception of 
 an " ought to be " beyond anything 
 that is. This ought is a very 
 curious fact. It reveals to us an 
 
24 FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 ocean of possible lying round and 
 encompassing the island of the 
 actual. It is not information, but 
 commandment, and introduces us 
 to another Mind before which we 
 bow in instinctive homage a 
 Mind stored with the same moral 
 order as our own, and the evident 
 Source of that order in ourselves. 
 Duty at once takes on another 
 aspect. "The tremulous purpose 
 has an infinite Ally. The self- 
 strain is exchanged for self-sur- 
 render." Heart and conscience 
 are assured of " boundless affinities 
 and a communion unseen." 
 
 2. If, when we have once tasted 
 this assurance, reflection leads us 
 to the conviction that it is after 
 all an illusion, a vain dream of a 
 Friend who has no real existence, 
 then, indeed, we are thrust back 
 into an estate worse than the first. 
 Having once looked outside our- 
 
FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 25 
 
 selves for corroboration of the 
 deliverances of our moral nature, 
 and turning now in unbelief from 
 God, we are necessarily driven to 
 seek something else as that which 
 constitutes a spring of action 
 right ; and we shall inevitably find, 
 or think we find, that something 
 in the resulting happiness or 
 pleasure, and we are doomed to 
 Hedonism the theory that plea- 
 sure is the highest good of some 
 sort, vulgar or refined. 
 
 3. But if, when we have once 
 apprehended an "infinite Ally," 
 that apprehension brightens in us 
 to an assured conviction, Con- 
 science is for ever kindled into 
 Love, and a force of incalculable 
 power is added to the inward 
 element propelling us to pure and 
 noble life. 
 
 4. Nor is it only that Con- 
 science finds a Living Friend upon 
 
26 FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 its side. The recognition of the 
 law of righteousness as divine at 
 once assures us that, as gravitation 
 is true of all the matter in the 
 furthest heavens, and the spectrum 
 reveals throughout unimaginable 
 distance the like elements to those 
 which make up Earth, so this law 
 of righteousness carries its sublime 
 prerogative through all the spirit- 
 ual worlds within the realm of 
 God. 
 
 The rule of right, the symmetries of 
 character, tlie requirements of perfec- 
 tion, are no provincialisms of this 
 planet ; they are known among the 
 stars ; they reign beyond Orion and 
 the Southern Cross; they are wherever 
 the universal Spirit is ; and no subject 
 mind, though it fly on one track for 
 ever, can escape beyond their bounds. 
 Just as the arrival of light from deeps 
 that extinguish parallax bears witness to 
 the same ether there that vibrates here, 
 and its spectrum reports that one 
 chemistry spans the interval, so does 
 
FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 27 
 
 the law of righteousness spring from 
 its earthly base and embrace the empire 
 of the heavens the moment it becomes 
 a communion between the heart of man 
 and the life of God. 
 
 This increase of scale in the 
 moral realm is no small gain. It is 
 no mean augmentation of the at- 
 traction of holiness to the human 
 heart. And not only throughout 
 space, but throughout time is the 
 law now felt to prevail. Not only 
 infinity,, but eternity as well is felt 
 to fall within its dominion. How 
 can the spirit fail, under so sublime 
 an inspiration, to rise to a loftier 
 reverence and a more intense 
 ambition, to realise a holier mode 
 of being ? 
 
 Is there any enthusiasm of goodness 
 that can be excessive or unnatural in 
 those who realise what it is to be, in very 
 truth, " Children of God " ? If, as a 
 native of Tarsus, the Apostle could not 
 
28 FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 help saying with a glow of pride that 
 he was a "citizen of no mean city," 
 how is it possible, without a flush of 
 higher joy, for anyone to know himself 
 a denizen of the city and common- 
 wealth of God a community whose 
 service is simple righteousness, and 
 whose patriotism inextinguishable love 
 of perfection? 
 
 5. Moreover, the transference of 
 Ethics to this transcendent scale 
 awakens in us a demand to find all 
 natural law controlled by the moral 
 idea. We crave to see in God's 
 distribution of pain and pleasure 
 among his creatures a machinery 
 subserving moral ends. And in 
 realms of joy or suffering vast and 
 many the facts of the physical 
 world answer to the expectation 
 thus quickened in us. And if in 
 other realms we fail to discern such, 
 correspondence, we must not think 
 that this invalidates the moral 
 sense in its own proper sphere. Yet 
 
FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 29 
 
 the instinctive demand for ethical 
 justice throughout the apportion- 
 ments of providence adds, in Dr. 
 Martineau's opinion, enormous 
 force to that inference from the 
 eternity of the moral law which 
 has already led the individual who 
 finds that law within him to deem 
 himself immortal. It is the de- 
 mand for a future which shall 
 adjust the ill-balance of men's 
 receipts to their deserts which, 
 according to Dr. Martineau, sup- 
 plies the chief religious element to 
 the doctrine of a future life. We 
 confess that we do not find it easy 
 to drape this " demand for com- 
 pensation " in a religious robe. 
 The sore puzzle of the unmerited 
 suffering of good men, and of the 
 unmoral, yet sentient creatures of 
 God, cannot, we think, thus be 
 solved. We prefer to feel after 
 some deeper interpretation of the 
 
30 FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 dark and grievous problem, and 
 to believe that more brightly illum- 
 inated minds would discover a 
 reconciliation of the sorrows of 
 the world with the loving-kindness 
 of the All-wise without drawing 
 on the unlimited credit of the 
 unseen Heaven. 
 
 We have thus seen how intimate 
 and manifold Dr. Martineau be- 
 lieves the mutual influence of 
 ethical feeling and religious con- 
 viction to be. If we are persuaded 
 that there is an Infinite and 
 Eternal God who, loving us, 
 commands us to do rightly, we 
 shall draw from that persuasion an 
 inspiration and a strength which 
 nothing else could give us. But 
 do we know that there is a God ? 
 Can we know it ? May it not all 
 be a dream, an illusion, the phantas- 
 magoria of a fevered fancy ? There 
 are great philosophers who deny 
 
PROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 31 
 
 the possibility that we should 
 know this thing, or, for the mat- 
 ter of that, really know that there 
 is any external world about us. 
 Unless we can break the spell 
 which these reasoners lay on reason, 
 all talk of Beligion, in the sense 
 of knowing God, is vain. To the 
 discussion of the Philosophy of 
 Nescience, accordingly, so prolific 
 of modern Agnosticism, Dr. Mar- 
 tineau devotes his next series of 
 chapters. The discussion is one 
 of extreme subtlety, and, difficult 
 enough to follow even in its ex- 
 tended form, would be impossible 
 adequately to epitomise. We 
 shall, however, endeavour so far to 
 summarise the important Book on 
 "The Limits of Human Intelli- 
 gence," that without treading its 
 intricate by-ways, whence he would 
 indeed be likely to emerge with 
 " bleeding feet/ 3 the reader may 
 
32 FROM ETHICS TO RELIGION. 
 
 be possessed of those general re- 
 sults without which the next Book 
 that on " Theism " would be 
 bereft of its proper introduction 
 and support. 
 
IV. 
 
 CAN WE EEALLY KNOW? 
 
 IN the Book which follows the 
 noble Introduction Dr. Marti- 
 neau boldly confronts that pro- 
 f oundest of all forms of scepticism, 
 the doubt of the veracity of our 
 own faculties. " Seeing is believ- 
 ing/' says the unphilosophical 
 Philistine. " Seeing is no ground 
 whatever for believing/' says the 
 Kantian philosopher. And the 
 philosophers with w^om Dr. 
 Martineau here undertakes to 
 deal ask what possible ground we 
 can have for really believing any- 
 thing whatever that we do believe. 
 We are conscious, indeed, of cer- 
 tain feelings which we assume to 
 
 3 
 
84 CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 
 
 be impressions from an outward 
 world, or from the memory of our 
 own past, or from the action of God 
 upon us. But if it once occurs to 
 us that perhaps there is in reality 
 nothing whatever beyond our own 
 feelings, how can we argue our- 
 selves back into believing again, 
 without misgiving, what those 
 feelings seem to report ? Ordinary 
 men will be somewhat startled to 
 find that a great preacher thinks it 
 necessary to discuss such questions 
 as these before he can justify his 
 faith in God. But this preacher 
 is a philosopher, too ; and he has 
 set himself to build an edifice of 
 which no man shall be able to 
 shake the metaphysical founda- 
 tions. And he finds a much wider 
 incredulity of the possibility of 
 genuine religious than of genuine 
 physical knowledge. And "this 
 despair of religious knowledge 
 
CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 35 
 
 must be encountered at the out- 
 set, for if it be well founded,, every 
 step of advance can only take us 
 farther astray; and if it be un- 
 founded, it leaves us, like a victim 
 of the black art, imprisoned with- 
 in a magic circle, which, though 
 needing but a breath to blow it 
 away, we cannot pass." So we 
 must decide this matter once for 
 all. " We cannot afford either to 
 enter a paradise of fools or to miss 
 any Heaven of the wise, and must 
 pause and guard our steps where 
 the ways divide." 
 
 Then follows a discussion with 
 which also it will perhaps seem to 
 the unwary that our teacher might 
 have dispensed. The problem is 
 whether it is really possible to 
 know God or the external world, 
 or any propositions relative to 
 them. So Dr. Martineau begins 
 by asking " What is ' knowing ' " ? 
 
36 CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 
 
 And with careful steps he leads us 
 to the conclusion that it is "a 
 kind of judging," and a kind in 
 which the real relations of things 
 are reproduced in thought. To 
 "know " then that we do "know/' 
 we must first have some real 
 access to a reality outside ourselves. 
 Have we any such access ? 
 
 In considering this Dr. Mar- 
 tineau travels for a little way side 
 by side with Kant. There are 
 certainly some propositions which 
 we can know to be true. For 
 instance, we certainly know that 
 all the radii of a given circle are 
 of equal length. But then that 
 is no real knowledge of any fact 
 outside ourselves ; for that is just 
 what we mean by a circle ; and we 
 are only expressing with special 
 distinctness some part of our own 
 inward idea of a circle. Such 
 judgments as this Kant calls 
 
CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 37 
 
 "analytical/ 3 because they are 
 merely the analysis of something 
 already in our own minds, giving 
 us no new information. But if I 
 say " lead is heavy," I say some- 
 thing more of lead than is con- 
 tained in its definition. Can I 
 know that ? If so, it would seem 
 to be real knowledge of the out- 
 ward world. But when we come 
 to look a little more closely, the 
 philosophers will have it that we 
 shall be baulked ; for all, say they, 
 that you really know is that you 
 have certain muscular sensations ; 
 and that cannot possibly be know- 
 ledge about the lead. Nor is the 
 case improved if fifty other people 
 have the like sensations. That 
 only amounts to universality of 
 belief in the minds of men. It 
 gives no knowledge whatever about 
 things. And so, though such 
 judgments, unlike the analytic, 
 
38 CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 
 
 add an idea, and are therefore 
 called by Kant synthetic, they are 
 not contributions to knowledge. 
 Nothing 1 has happened to guarantee 
 that you have access to outward 
 reality. This muscular experience, 
 " though it professes to send me 
 abroad, never really lets me loose 
 from home " the home of myself 
 and my own feelings. 
 
 Dr. Martineau then proceeds to 
 discuss Kant's views concerning 
 mathematical judgments, and the 
 reason why we are all sensible that 
 in mathematical propositions we 
 get a certainty, a fulness of trust 
 in the truth of the statements 
 "proved," transcending what we 
 reach in other fields of so-called 
 human knowledge. And this leads 
 to a review of Kant's famous theory 
 about the origin of our ideas of 
 Time and Space. How come we 
 by these two unique conceptions 
 
CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 39 
 
 conceptions woven into all our 
 thinking and imagining ? Kant's 
 doctrine is that they are " forms " 
 native to the structure of our 
 minds, that in the very act of 
 apprehending an object we are by 
 the very law of our thought com- 
 pelled to think of it as occupying 
 a place in Space, and that in the 
 very act of apprehending an event 
 we are by the very law of our 
 thought compelled to think of it 
 as occupying a period in Time. If 
 we never perceived an object, the 
 conception of Space would never 
 wake up in us. If we never noted 
 an occurrence, the conception of 
 Time would never wake up in us. 
 But the first touch of experience 
 quickens into realisation these 
 latent " forms " of our thought. 
 
 Dr. Martineau, with some modi- 
 fication, accepts Kant's doctrine. 
 He gives it the preference to the 
 
40 CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 
 
 theory of Mill, according to whom 
 Space is on a par with the various 
 attributes of matter, and is gradu- 
 ally learnt by us from our experience 
 of outward objects. But Dr. Mar- 
 tineau places along with Space and 
 Time, as a third idea springing 
 into life in our thought full-armed 
 the moment we move among out- 
 ward objects, the idea of Cause. 
 The very first resistance our move- 
 ment meets flashes upon us this 
 pregnant conception. And Dr. 
 Martineau further differs from the 
 illustrious German inasmuch as he 
 protests that to trace the origin of 
 these ideas to the very make of our 
 minds, so far from giving just 
 reason to suppose them illusory, 
 affords the strongest presumption 
 that they reflect the reality of 
 things. Kant, on the other hand, 
 having traced up our ideas of Space 
 and Time, the "forms " in which the 
 
CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 41 
 
 outward world and its history are 
 inevitably conceived, to their spring 
 in our own mental constitution, 
 claims thus to have shown that 
 "Mind makes Nature/' i.e., that 
 Nature is purely an ideal fiction of 
 our thought, in vivid antithesis to 
 another school of philosophy, ac- 
 cording to which Nature makes 
 Mind, i.e., our minds are the mere 
 camera on which the world of 
 reality throws its various and vivid 
 images. 
 
 When from the external world 
 we pass to those objects of our 
 thought which no man even sup- 
 poses he has ever seen the Soul, 
 God the scepticism of Kant and 
 his followers deepens and darkens. 
 All such ideas are simply in our- 
 selves, and can, say these thinkers, 
 by no possibility tell us anything 
 but that we have such ideas ; they 
 can guarantee no corresponding 
 
42 CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 
 
 fact, but leave us the victims of 
 our fancy floating in a shoreless 
 ocean of ignorance about all that 
 is. The general result of the 
 criticism put forward by the Kant- 
 ian school, says Dr. Martineau, is 
 f ' that the human being is a casket 
 of faculties and susceptibilities? 
 which coherently treat and inter- 
 pret their own phenomena, without 
 access to anything beyond." 
 
 In the next chapter Dr. Mar- 
 tineau freely admits that Kant's 
 doctrine, if true, would account 
 for the fact that we do believe in 
 a world of Space and Time, and / he 
 confesses that if Kant does not 
 convince him that the world we 
 believe in is merely ideal, devoid 
 of any real existence, it is not 
 because he knows any phenomena 
 which would not fit into that 
 theory. It is partly because Kant 
 himself does not carry it out tho- 
 
CAN WE KEALLY KNOW? 43 
 
 roughly, but chiefly because we 
 can find in Kant's argument no 
 reason why we should doubt the 
 veracity of our own faculties. 
 
 We need not follow Dr. Mar- 
 tineau's exposition of the various 
 shades of scepticism characterising 
 Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and 
 Schopenhauer, Helmholtz and Mill. 
 That exposition is followed by a 
 chapter on the Relativity of Know- 
 ledge. Philosophers have been 
 found, in ancient schools and 
 modern, to maintain that, however 
 real the outward world and God 
 may be, we can have no guarantee 
 that they in any way are such as 
 we suppose. For all our suppos- 
 ing is dependent on the mental 
 faculties with which we happen to 
 be endowed; and there can be 
 nothing to show us that these 
 faculties are adjusted to the 
 realities with which they fain 
 
44 CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 
 
 would deal. Here, again, it is in 
 the nature of things impossible to 
 offer any proof that our faculties 
 are adjusted to reality. We can- 
 not get outside ourselves, or test 
 the faculties we have by some 
 other faculties which we have not ; 
 and in the end Dr. Martineau is 
 constrained to fall back upon the 
 declaration that he will "trust" 
 his faculties, and "listen to no 
 proposals to think otherwise " than 
 according to the ways of thinking 
 given to him. 
 
 We believe our great philosopher 
 to be absolutely justified in this 
 refusal. Only by such refusal 
 have sanity and common-sense a 
 chance. Yet we cannot conceal 
 from ourselves that such refusal 
 is no logical answer to the sceptic. 
 We believe that the true weapon 
 for the believer in all such conflicts 
 as those dealt with in this Book is 
 
CAN WE REALLY KNOW? 45 
 
 an argumentum ad hominem. "No; 
 we cannot prove these things 
 which all men believe. But you 
 believe them as much as we do. 
 You, Immanuel Kant, believed in 
 a warm bed and a daily tramp 
 round the suburbs of your town, 
 and so kept your feeble body alive 
 eighty years ; you, Arthur Schopen- 
 hauer, believed in a very comfort- 
 able dinner, and liked it hot ; you, 
 all of you, act on the belief in an 
 outward world, without doubt or 
 question ; you believe in it, and 
 cannot escape believing in it. And 
 then, as for certain beliefs of a sub- 
 limer scope, they, too, rest on facul- 
 ties from which we cannot escape, 
 inherent necessities of our nature." 
 But of that, more by-and-by. 
 
 Then follows a splendid section 
 on Spencer's doctrine of the Un- 
 knowable, which, however, we must 
 pass by in order to hasten on. 
 
V. 
 
 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 HAVING vindicated the faculties 
 of the human mind from the 
 charge of incompetence laid against 
 them by that absolute scepticism 
 which, consistently and persistently 
 carried out, would corrode all 
 science and dissolve all orderly 
 life, Dr. Martineau, strong in the 
 resolution to " trust " these facul- 
 ties, proceeds to the main part of 
 his great undertaking. That 
 undertaking is nothing less than 
 to show that our consciousness of 
 our own will constrains us to 
 ascribe the universe to a Will 
 akin to our own as its Source, and 
 that the action of our own con- 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 47 
 
 science reveals to us a Supremely 
 Eighteous as its Inspirer; and 
 further, that lie whose Will is the 
 Source of the universe, and he 
 whose Holiness is the Inspiration 
 of our conscience, is one and the 
 self-same God. 
 
 Two-thirds of the prior of Dr. 
 Martineau's two volumes is occu- 
 pied with the first of these great 
 arguments ; and this mass of 
 reasoning is embraced in a single 
 chapter, entitled " God as Cause." 
 
 Will the reader be surprised to 
 learn that the chapter opens with 
 a protracted discussion of the 
 question what we mean by 
 Cause"? A little reflection 
 suffices to show in how loose a 
 way we are apt to use the word. 
 Sometimes we speak of a thing as 
 a cause, as, for example, when we 
 say that the sun is the cause of 
 the summer heat. At other times, 
 
48 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 we speak of some occurrence, some 
 ff happening," some phenomenon as 
 a cause, as when we declare that the 
 clearing away of the clouds is the 
 cause of the dazzling light. Again, 
 we speak of a force as a cause, 
 as when we pronounce gravitation 
 to be the cause of the fall of the 
 rain or the flow of the tide. But 
 in all these cases we use inexact 
 language, for our real meaning in- 
 volves more than any of these 
 modes of expression would imply. 
 A thing only seems to be a cause, 
 because of some power of which it 
 is the vehicle or conductor. It is 
 the thrill of undulatory light re- 
 flected from the moon that leads 
 us to call her the cause of our 
 seeing ; she " causes," not by 
 merely being, but by shining. Nor 
 was any one ever really satisfied 
 with a phenomenon as the alleged 
 cause of any event. The drifting 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 49 
 
 away of the clouds from before 
 the moon's face would not cause 
 us to see her if there were no 
 light in her, or if we had no eyes. 
 Moreover, we want to know the 
 cause of the alleged cause itself : 
 what made the clouds drift away. 
 And even a force alone is not a 
 cause. What is the cause of my 
 black eye? Do you say a stone 
 hitting my face ? But stones do 
 not hit men's faces indiscrimin- 
 ately. What determined the stone's 
 course in that direction rather than 
 any other ? Mill and others have 
 tried hard to get rid either of the 
 idea of cause altogether, or of the 
 idea of power as essential to the 
 idea of cause. Mill insisted that 
 all that men mean by causality is 
 the " invariable sequence " of one 
 phenomenon on another. But we 
 want to know what makes that 
 sequence invariable. We cannot 
 
 4 
 
50 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 get out of believing that there is 
 power passing out of the one phe- 
 nomenon into the other. Finally, 
 Dr. Martineau concludes that 
 to the full idea of cause it is 
 essential that there be permanent 
 power passing through phenomena. 
 Thus much is involved in the 
 very conception of cause. But 
 from an unexpected source a flood 
 of light is poured out upon this 
 idea. There is one kind of cause, 
 at any rate, of which we have 
 immediate knowledge. This is 
 nothing else than our own con- 
 scious will. My very earliest 
 activity reveals to me that the Self 
 which I am can put forth force, 
 and that that force is met and 
 antagonised by force put forth 
 from some other. If my force were 
 not met and antagonised, I should 
 not know that I was putting forth 
 force. It is only when my force is 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 51 
 
 resisted that it becomes conscious,, 
 and involuntary spontaneity gives 
 way to voluntary effort. And so, 
 by one flash of revelation, I become 
 aware of my will as a cause a 
 conscious putter-forth of force 
 and of somewhat other putting forth 
 force to compete with mine; and 
 I know that that other putter- 
 forth is also Will. The individual 
 infant and the infant race alike 
 show this intuition in its pure and 
 unadulterated clearness. The baby 
 striking his fist against the table, 
 and the savage battling against 
 the storm, alike realise that they 
 are met and antagonised by that 
 which is living. Adult and in- 
 structed man may "put away 
 childish things." But he goes 
 wrong and lands in endless con- 
 fusion if he tries to get rid of the 
 aliveness of the innumerable forces 
 that beat and blow through the 
 
52 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 universe of worlds. This supreme 
 fact of Will as the determinant 
 of all forces "is in truth the 
 ground of that fellow feeling with 
 Nature which philosophy, deluded 
 by its own abstractions, rashly 
 surrendered to the poet, but will 
 have to beg back again, whenever 
 it returns into living relations 
 with reality." 
 
 To Dr. Martineau, then, those 
 vast and sublime generalisations 
 of phenomena which we call Laws 
 of Nature are so many distinct 
 permanent volitions, settled desires 
 acting themselves out in the 
 history of the universe, origin- 
 ating in the Will which is the 
 supreme First and Enduring 
 Cause. And if science is gradually 
 demonstrating the interchange- 
 ability of the " Forces " which 
 play through Nature, it is because 
 these Forces are in fact the activ-r 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 53 
 
 ities of the one Will -Power, 
 displaying itself in different guises 
 according to the diverse kinds of 
 molecular motions which it im- 
 parts to the substance of the 
 worlds. All the great discoveries 
 of modern physics and chemistry 
 fall into this conception with 
 perfect adaptation and beautiful 
 exactitude. 
 
 But although the strict scrutiny 
 of our own laws of thought com- 
 pels us to ascribe all that happens 
 to some cause, and to identify 
 cause with Will, and so presents 
 to us a mighty World-Maker and 
 World-Sustainer as the Basis of 
 all being, it is as well to check 
 this argument from first principles 
 by an argument from the actual 
 facts of the world, and to see 
 whether these two arguments 
 tally. If they agree, that will be 
 the proving of the sum. 
 
54 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 So Dr. Martineau sets to work 
 to find out whether the constitu- 
 tion of the world and its inhabit- 
 ants looks as if they were the 
 production of Will. And to test 
 that he asks, What are the cha- 
 racteristics of the working of 
 Will? What are the signs of a 
 deliberate and conscious intention, 
 the marks of a procedure that has 
 a purpose ? They are chiefly three 
 Selection, Combination, Gradation. 
 Any one who is seeking to bring 
 about some end selects his means 
 with discriminate care; combines 
 together simultaneously means 
 that will help one another; and 
 takes up in succession means that 
 are steps (Gradation) towards the 
 end in view. In the working out 
 of the world do we find Selection, 
 Combination, and Gradation ? 
 
 We must go to the students of 
 Nature for our facts; and it is 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 55 
 
 chiefly in biology that we shall 
 find the facts which will either 
 prove our sum or lead us to 
 question the answer to the world- 
 problem given above. "For only 
 living beings can be objects of 
 purpose, good and evil, the better 
 and the worse having no other 
 seat." Do we then in organic 
 nature find those three marks of 
 intention which will confirm our 
 a priori theory that Will is the 
 source of the world and all that 
 therein is ? 
 
 1. Are there indications of 
 Selection ? Why, with the prefix 
 " Natural/' that is the very term 
 which modern biologists have hit 
 on to describe the process govern- 
 ing the production of the tribes of 
 living creatures. Only, Darwin and 
 his followers, under the term 
 " Natural Selection," put forward 
 a theory in which what is relatively 
 
56 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 accidental plays a dominant part. 
 The doctrine of Natural Selection 
 lays it down that the parent 
 generates a progeny, among which 
 one or more may chance to have 
 some accidental variation which is 
 favourable to their survival and to 
 their becoming parents in their 
 turn ; that among the progeny of 
 these again one or more may 
 chance to intensify this favourable 
 variation; and that so, in the course 
 of a long chain of generations, a 
 species is produced which by this 
 favourable variation spreads and 
 flourishes, while all who have 
 missed this lucky inheritance 
 gradually die off and disappear. 
 So that the Selection is an auto- 
 matic, self-acting selection, quite 
 independent of any antecedent 
 purpose to produce the species 
 which ultimately results. Dr. Mar- 
 tineau argues from the doctrine of 
 
THE WORLD-MAZER. 57 
 
 chances with the innumerable 
 varieties which, if left to itself, it 
 would bring about, from the ab- 
 solute disappearance of all trace 
 of the unsuccessful competitors, 
 from the insufficient security (on 
 the chance hypothesis) for the con- 
 servation of the new species when 
 once reached, and from the want 
 of geologic time sufficient for the 
 theory, that this cannot be a com- 
 plete account of the radiation of 
 the primeval ascidian into the 
 countless forms of actual life now 
 crowded upon the earth ; and then 
 marshals a brilliant array of in- 
 stances of selection towards which, 
 if he be right, Nature must have 
 been pressed by some more deter- 
 minate power than the lottery. 
 
 2. Having accepted from Darwin 
 the principle of Selection, only 
 transferring it from the accidental 
 to the intentional, Dr. Martineau 
 
58 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 betakes himself to the search for 
 instances of the Combination of 
 means in the organisation of the 
 world of living things. These he 
 easily finds in Cuvier's law of the 
 "correlation of organs/' a law 
 resting on a mass of facts so over- 
 whelming that from a single bone 
 of a fossil animal naturalists will 
 construct the whole organism 
 without mistake. Nature combines 
 means towards the end in view so 
 systematically that the teeth, the 
 vertebrae, the limbs, the hide, and 
 all the other parts of a given beast 
 seem to be chosen with a view to 
 the special mode of life which it 
 is to lead ; and you never have an 
 animal's teeth adapted to tear its 
 prey while its legs are adapted to 
 run away, or its eyes adapted to 
 discern its food at a distance while 
 its limbs are only fit to bring it up 
 to a meal that is lying close at 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 59 
 
 hand. And if this Combination 
 characterises the putting together 
 of the parts of an individual 
 animal, it also characterises the 
 mutual adaptation of the structure 
 of the flower and the insect, which 
 is to be the instrument of its 
 fertilisation, as well as many other 
 complicated relations linking in 
 one purpose organisms whose lives 
 are otherwise wholly independent 
 of each other. 
 
 3. Gradation, too, is abundant 
 in the organic world. Different 
 and otherwise disconnected organ- 
 isms subserve the successive stages 
 in the carrying out of many of the 
 plans of Nature. The given end 
 is attained through a train of in- 
 dependent means. Indeed, Nature 
 seems always working on towards 
 climax after climax, each in its 
 turn the goal in some long road, 
 yet each again the path towards 
 
60 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 other goals beyond. All inorganic 
 Nature is a pathway of forces 
 working towards the consumma- 
 tion of that which we call Life. 
 The rocks, the seas, the circum- 
 ambient atmosphere are the prior 
 requisites which make possible the 
 seaweed, the green herbage of the 
 earth, the great forest, the fra- 
 grant flower, the delicious fruit. 
 These in themselves are ends ; yet 
 also means. For without them 
 air could be filled with no buzzing 
 and twittering life ; the surface of 
 our globe could give no support to 
 beasts and creeping things ; the 
 sea would be empty of the vast 
 shoals which keep all its depths 
 alive. The plants furnish the 
 great laboratory which prepares the 
 food for these ; " only that, un- 
 like our chemists' apparatus and 
 processes, their experiments are 
 all silent, their alembics all sweet, 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 61 
 
 their products the grace and beauty 
 of the world, and their very refuse 
 a glow of autumn glory." And all 
 this conscious life, itself an end, 
 is in turn, in a thousand ways, the 
 means towards human life. And 
 finally within the scope of this last 
 product of the great plan, the appe- 
 tites, the affections, the sentiments, 
 in ascending scale, step after step, 
 lead up to the final realisation of 
 the ideal of the conscience. So 
 that from the lowest motions of 
 mineral and gas in the framework 
 of the globe, the controlling Power 
 builds on and up, stone upon stone, 
 to the godlike being of the prophet 
 and the saint. 
 
 Thus our teacher " proves his 
 sum"; and by the a posteriori path 
 leads us up and back to the con- 
 firmation of the deliverance of our 
 a priori theory that Intelligent 
 Will is the basis of all the worlds, 
 
62 THE WORLD-MAKER. 
 
 and of their boundless play of 
 interlaced phenomena. We cannot 
 pause on the rebutting argument 
 marshalled against those who would 
 invalidate this powerful contention 
 by adducing blunders in the 
 making of the worlds and their 
 inhabitants; nor can we touch upon 
 the easy charge of " anthropo- 
 morphism/' making a " man- 
 shaped " God, which objectors 
 bring against such as find Design 
 in the trend of things. The whole 
 of the last hundred and fifty pages 
 of the first volume is within the 
 comprehension of many who would 
 find it difficult to follow the meta- 
 physical discussions in the earlier 
 sections ; and the facts of natural 
 history have never been marshalled 
 with a greater charm ; nor has Dr. 
 Martineau ever sustained an argu- 
 ment with a more brilliant elo- 
 quence. 
 
THE WORLD-MAKER. 63 
 
 The volume closes with an enu- 
 meration of the attributes of God 
 which we may deduce from the 
 knowledge thus far gained of Him 
 as the Source of the universe and 
 its contents. " There is One uni- 
 versal Cause, the infinite and 
 eternal seat of all power, an 
 omniscient Mind, ordering all 
 things for ends selected with per- 
 fect wisdom." To discover the yet 
 dearer and nobler attributes of 
 God, we must enter the temple of 
 our moral nature and hear the 
 solemn testimony of the voice of 
 Conscience. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OP HOLINESS. 
 
 EVEN those whose judgment may 
 not be captured by the reasoning 
 in Dr. Martineau's great chapter 
 on "God as Perfection," will 
 surely find their imagination 
 captivated by the extreme spiritual 
 beauty of the argument. This 
 chapter and that devoted to 
 establishing the identity of the 
 God discovered as Cause with the 
 God revealed as Perfection com- 
 plete the main argument of the 
 work, and bring Book II. to a 
 close, landing us at the end of the 
 first third of the second volume. 
 
 As our own Will gives us the 
 clue to God as the universal Cause, 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OP HOLINESS. 65 
 
 so our own Conscience reveals to 
 us God as the supreme Holiness : 
 such is the contention to which we 
 are now led on. 
 
 In his treatise on " Types of 
 Ethical Theory," Dr. Martineau 
 elaborated the doctrine that each 
 of us has within him by natural 
 constitution an assemblage of 
 possible motives, a great concourse 
 of "springs of action/' and that 
 when any two of these wake up in 
 him. at the same moment, one 
 urging him to do this, the other 
 urging him to do that, he immedi- 
 ately becomes conscious that the 
 one is worthier than the other, and 
 has a right, or intrinsic claim, to 
 be preferred. And it is possible 
 to classify all the springs of action 
 in a man's nature appetites, 
 passions, affections, and so forth, 
 each one of these great divisions 
 again branching out into several 
 
 5 
 
66 THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 
 
 members and to arrange them in 
 a scale of felt worth, from Cen- 
 soriousness, Vindictiveness, and 
 Suspiciousness at the very bottom^ 
 up to Compassion, the highest 
 but one, and Eeverence at the 
 very top. And this doctrine, 
 that we do find in our conscious- 
 ness such a scale of worth, may be 
 accepted even by those, if any, 
 who question the precise arrange- 
 ment of the scale submitted by Dr. 
 Martineau. Further, even when 
 a lower spring is more vivid and 
 intense in its appeal to us than a 
 higher, we can, if we will, never- 
 theless obey the higher. In this 
 power of resisting the stronger, 
 and throwing our own personal 
 causality into the balance on the 
 side of the weaker, consists our 
 greatest distinction from the 
 brutes and our capacity for mak- 
 ing character. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OP HOLINESS. 67 
 
 Assuming thus much,, in the 
 present work, after very brief 
 rehearsal, Dr. Martineau enters on 
 the problem^ whence comes this 
 Moral Law ? By what authority is 
 it laid upon us ? 
 
 A plausible account of this 
 authority is given by those who 
 refer it to the pressure of " public 
 opinion " consolidated throughout 
 society and accumulated in the 
 course of all the generations. That 
 machine-like logician, James Mill, 
 the father of the more mobile 
 John, worked this theory out with 
 the neatest exactitude. Accord- 
 ing to him there is really after all 
 but one spring of action in any of 
 us, and that is self-love, the desire 
 of personal gratification. But the 
 self-love of all other people unani- 
 mously sets up a demand that I 
 shall not indulge my own self- 
 love in such a way as will 
 
68 THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 
 
 hurt them, and they accordingly 
 make things pleasant for me by 
 praise, or disagreeable for me by 
 blame, according to my observance 
 or otherwise of this demand. And 
 in the end I, who like praise and 
 hate blame, insensibly adopt this 
 demand into my own conscious- 
 ness, and then take it for a " Moral 
 Law " having some mysterious 
 authority of its own. 
 
 Such an explanation Dr. Mar- 
 tineau peremptorily rejects. Even 
 in brutes, much more in man, he 
 finds springs of action which do not 
 set any pleasure before them 
 witness all that class of motives 
 which we designate " affections." 
 And if self-interest were our only 
 possible motive, we should find our 
 interest less in creating a pressure 
 on every one to be kind all round 
 than in encouraging our neigh- 
 bours to make their own game, so 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 69 
 
 that we might be free to make 
 ours also. Moreover, our sense of 
 moral obligation is a wholly differ- 
 ent feeling from our love of praise 
 and our hate of blame. These 
 may, indeed, often work in alliance 
 with Conscience, but they are 
 not the same as Conscience, and 
 they sometimes pull exactly the 
 other way. 
 
 Repudiating, then, the theory 
 that our sense of Right is the 
 creature of a " Social Vote/' our 
 teacher asks whether it is not 
 rather the Divine working through 
 the Human; and maintains that, 
 just as all Perception is the recog- 
 nition of something other than 
 ourselves which gives us what we 
 feel, so Conscience is the recogni- 
 tion of something Higher than 
 ourselves which gives us what we 
 feel. The sense of Duty is the 
 consciousness that we owe some- 
 
70 THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 
 
 thing; and that not to ourselves, 
 but to another. It, therefore, 
 implies the existence of a Right- 
 eousness (and so of a Righteous 
 One) outside and above ourselves 
 whose Right to command us we 
 instinctively acknowledge. 
 
 We would gladly linger over the 
 brilliant exposition of the play of 
 a higher Righteousness upon our 
 conscience. This is exhibited first 
 in the spontaneous energy of 
 spiritual life which flows from the 
 companionship of a good man over 
 characters of lesser altitude an 
 influence which is much more than 
 mere example. It is no mechanical 
 imitation by the inferior, but an 
 infusion of higher life through all 
 the elements of his being from the 
 quickening touch of one whom he 
 reveres. And of such quickening 
 touch is all human goodness born. 
 But if ordinary men thus depend 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 71 
 
 on the hero and the saint for 
 the kindling of nobler character, 
 whence can the redeemers and 
 saviours of mankind themselves 
 draw their inspiration ? Only from 
 some Righteous One to whom 
 they in turn lift upward looks. 
 And there must be some glorious 
 sphere of spiritual light in which 
 the loftiest summits of our human 
 kind are bathed^ and whence these 
 prophet-peaks gather the glow 
 and radiance with which they 
 shine upon the world. Yet what 
 is this but to say that over the life 
 of man there breathes a Holy 
 Spirit? Dr. Martineau proceeds 
 to draw out the attributes of that 
 Spirit which are implicitly in- 
 volved in what has gone before ; 
 and these he enumerates as chiefly 
 benevolence to all sentient beings,, 
 justice to all moral beings,, and 
 amity, or, as we would rather term 
 
72 THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 
 
 it, friendship, towards all minds 
 that are in moral kinship with his 
 own. 
 
 It remains to show that the 
 Supreme Will recognised as Cause 
 of the World and all that therein 
 is, and the Holy Spirit recognised 
 as the Inspirer of the human Con- 
 science, are not diverse Beings, but 
 one and the self-same God. Three 
 considerations at the outset impel 
 us to this conclusion. In the first 
 place we ourselves are, in our own 
 persons, subjects both of the causal 
 Will and. of the moral Law. And 
 the elements in our being which 
 are involved in these two relations 
 are so interfused that it is impos- 
 sible to refer them to different 
 sources. The human body, above 
 all other material products, bears 
 marks of its origin in the counsels 
 of the creative Intelligence, and 
 is interlinked on every side with 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 73 
 
 the physical structure of the world. 
 But we are also moral beings ; and 
 it is this body itself, proceeding 
 from the World-making God, which 
 gives all the scope and play for the 
 working of the moral faculty in- 
 fused by the Holy God. "Our 
 probation as moral consists in 
 managing ourselves as animal ; 
 and he that has devised the trial 
 must have created the test." 
 
 Then, again, it is the outer 
 world, made by the Causal God, 
 which awakens to life all those 
 springs of action which Conscience 
 ranges in moral order. The pro- 
 blems of Conscience "are set by 
 the conditions of the world." The 
 moral order and the physical " are 
 organically blended in their real 
 existence," and we should strive 
 in vain to trace the moral order to 
 one Cause and the physical to 
 another. 
 
74 THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 
 
 And, thirdly, the physical world 
 to a large extent administers the 
 retribution and enforces the disci- 
 pline required by the moral law. 
 They fit into one plan. The ruined 
 health of the intemperate reveals 
 that one and the same Will gives 
 the command against excess and 
 works the physiological law. " The 
 Divine Causality places itself at 
 the disposal of the Divine Per- 
 fection." 
 
 But if, indeed, the Holy Spirit, 
 All-just, All-good, All-loving, be 
 that same Power whence flows the 
 universe, and by whose potency 
 the mighty tides of physical force 
 sweep through the worlds, whence 
 the Suffering and whence the Sin 
 that darken the face of heaven? 
 Do these look as if a Goodness at 
 one with Power lay at the source 
 of all things ? This great inquiry, 
 the problem that has tortured so 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 75 
 
 many noble minds^ confronts us 
 now and must be faced. 
 
 Dr. Martineau sweeps away at 
 the outset the evasion by which it 
 is contended that pain is really not 
 an evil. He sweeps away also the 
 theory unjustly charged upon 
 Descartes^ though really held by 
 Malebranche, that the animals are 
 autoinata_, non-sentient machines, 
 a device which would get rid of 
 the difficulty involved in the 
 apparent woes of the infrahuman 
 tribes. He proceeds to divide the 
 pains of sentient creatures into 
 those which are involved in their 
 organisms and those inflicted by 
 their relation to their environment, 
 and in either case shows that these 
 are necessarily involved in the fact 
 of sentiency in any universe which 
 ingenuity can conceive. He 
 frankly avows that their severity 
 and extent may well appal ; but he 
 
76 THE FOUNTAIN OP HOLINESS. 
 
 holds that; broadly speaking, they 
 conduce to the life and happiness 
 of the sentient creation ; that we 
 are apt to exaggerate the sorrows 
 of the animal world, partly by con- 
 centrating our thought upon them, 
 and partly by investing them with 
 the enhancements of human 
 memory, anticipation, imagination, 
 and reflection, which, in fact, but 
 dimly exist in bird and beast and 
 creeping thing ; that the joys of 
 these myriads of sentient creatures 
 immeasurably outweigh their 
 pains ; and that that in itself 
 suffices to justify their call into 
 existence by the Divine power, in 
 spite of the drawbacks to their 
 happiness involved in the constitu- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 But human Sin^ yet more than 
 sentient Suffering, is apt to over- 
 whelm the pious heart with deep 
 shadows of foreboding lest, after 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OP HOLINESS. 77 
 
 all, there be no God in Heaven. 
 Can a .Righteous God, indeed, 
 preside over a world where passion 
 wreaks its will and infamy rears 
 its head ? 
 
 Dr. Martineau recalls us to the 
 fundamental facts that Character 
 appears to be the supreme good in 
 the eye of the Creator, and that 
 Character is that which is born of 
 right choice, and that right choice 
 cannot have play without ad- 
 mitting the alternative of wrong 
 choice, and that all Sin and all 
 the Suffering which springs from 
 Sin are the issue of this possi- 
 bility of fatal choosing. Nor 
 could we call God Righteous 
 if He valued aught else more 
 highly than Righteousness that 
 is, than Character in men. 
 All, then, that we can demand is 
 that the world be so constructed 
 that humanity shall tend to Right- 
 
78 THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 
 
 eousness that moral evil shall 
 tend to decay, and moral good 
 shall tend to gather strength. 
 And that such is the structure of 
 this human world, that the forces 
 playing on it and within it are 
 such that good must win in the end, 
 that in the strife between good 
 and evil (essential to the produc- 
 tion of Eighteousness) there is 
 such a poise and balance of forces 
 that the movement is always to- 
 wards the victory of the good, he 
 shows with consummate and con- 
 vincing skill. All moral badness, 
 in individuals and in races, tends 
 to weakness. All moral goodness 
 tends to strength. The trend of 
 things is right. Though the good 
 man and the good cause be de- 
 feated, it is only for the time. 
 The bad man and the evil cause 
 alone are beaten and crushed for 
 ever. The set of predominant 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF HOLINESS. 79 
 
 power is towards the Kingdom of 
 God; and the reign of the All 
 Holy is vindicated throughout the 
 field of his causal energy. 
 
VI. 
 
 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THE Theism which Dr. Martineau's 
 argument has now established has 
 been reached by two parallel roads 
 the one traced from the prin- 
 ciple of Causality, the other cut 
 along the higher level of the 
 experiences of our Moral Nature. 
 He is not concerned to deny that 
 there are other paths to the citadel 
 of faith. But some of these he 
 would seem to regard as offering 
 but a rugged and uncertain track, 
 while others are but side-walks of 
 the two great main lines already 
 travelled. * Instead of surveying 
 
 * See, however, the Preface to these 
 Articles. 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 81 
 
 these, therefore, he proceeds to 
 warn us against the danger of two 
 diverging routes, which, turning 
 the one out of the road of Causal- 
 ity, the other out of the road of 
 Conscience, may easily tempt us to 
 deviate from our proper course 
 and lead us very far astray 
 ending, indeed, in pitfalls which 
 destroy, in the one case, all per- 
 sonal, in the other, all moral rela- 
 tion between man and God. 
 
 Accordingly, to the criticism of 
 Pantheism on the one side and 
 Determinism on the other, either 
 of which doctrines sucks the life 
 out of Theism, he devotes Book 
 III a Book covering nearly half 
 of the second Volume of his work. 
 
 The glow and heat of inchoate 
 Pantheism, of Pantheism not yet 
 cooled down in the refrigerator 
 of scientific thought, but molten 
 in pure and lofty passions of the 
 
 6 
 
82 PITFALLS OP PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 spirit, charm us in the poetry of 
 Shelley, in periods of " Professor 
 Teufelsdroeckh," and,, according 
 to Dr. Martineau, in the preaching 
 and the praying of Theodore Par- 
 ker no less. But it is Pantheism in 
 the form of crystallised systems 
 that the philosopher must deal 
 with ; and to such we have now to 
 turn. 
 
 By way of contrast Dr. Mar- 
 tineau turns first to such Deism as 
 that of the less spiritual among 
 "the English Deists of the 
 Eighteenth Century " so well 
 described in Mr. Tayler's " Eetro- 
 spect of the Eeligious Life of 
 England."* In that school God 
 was conceived as having at a 
 
 * " A Retrospect of the Religious Life of 
 England ; or the Church, Puritanism, and 
 Free Inquiry/' by John James Tayler, 
 B.A., is a perfect model of impartial his- 
 torical inquiry and statement, originally 
 published in 1845. 
 
PITFALLS OP PHILOSOPHY. 83 
 
 definite time created. the universe 
 and so ceased to be solitary, and 
 as having so established it that, 
 like a clock wound up, it would 
 thenceforth " go " of itself with- 
 out further help from Him ; and 
 the universe was conceived as 
 strictly bounded, so that the in- 
 finite Being of God stretched far 
 beyond it, and as imperfect, 
 though issuing from a perfect 
 God. But this conception of the 
 relation between the Creator and 
 Creation presents grave difficul- 
 ties. Why and when did God begin 
 to create? Was there something 
 wanting which He set Himself to 
 repair ? If so, He was not always 
 perfect. And how could the world 
 be " set going " ? Is not the Divine 
 energy wanted to sustain it and 
 act upon it throughout its career 
 as much as at the start ? And 
 can we really say that the universe 
 
84 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is finite while God is infinite ? Are 
 there wastes of Space or rather 
 wastes that are not even Space 
 out beyond Creation? And why 
 must we think of the total of 
 Creation as in any sense " imper- 
 fect " ? Were it not more con- 
 sonant with highest thought and 
 feeling to deem it the all-perfect 
 Thought of God? 
 
 Along these tracks of reflection 
 mark after mark which differen- 
 tiated the world from God slips 
 away from our minds ; and we 
 verge towards the doctrine that 
 the infinitude of Creation in time 
 and space and perfection coincides 
 all round with that of the Creator. 
 The Universe is the All ; the All 
 is God. The Pan " is " Theos." 
 We are Pantheists. 
 
 The start down this hill for it 
 is a pit that we have reached, and 
 not a summit comes of a false 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 85 
 
 antithesis an antithesis of which 
 we certainly cannot acquit Theo- 
 dore Parker, clear as his Theism is 
 in other passages of his noble 
 writings. The antithesis springs 
 up when we perceive that it will 
 not do to look on the world as a 
 clock set going ; but that God must 
 work in and through it all the 
 while. This perception became 
 distinct with the change of the 
 stress in scientific study from the 
 mechanical physics of the last 
 century to the chemistry and 
 biology with their interpenetra- 
 ting forces of this. For the 
 transcendent God our thought has 
 gradually substituted the immanent 
 God; and it has hastily been 
 assumed that in finding God in all 
 his works, we dispense with or 
 get rid of Him outside his works. 
 But Dr. Martineau insists that the 
 antithesis is false, that immanence 
 
86 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 does not exclude transcendency, 
 that we may gladly agree with the 
 Pantheist that there is no atom of 
 the universe which does not quiver 
 always with the Divine force, and 
 in God " live and move and have 
 its being " ; while still the reserves 
 of Divine force may infinitely out- 
 measure the universe in time and 
 space and power. 
 
 In a section which displays all 
 the resources of his logic in their 
 most characteristic form, Dr. Mar- 
 tineau exposes the futility of that 
 Pantheistic mode of thought which 
 in the adaptation of created things 
 especially of animals endowed 
 with instincts acknowledges an 
 "end," an "aim," an "idea" as 
 governing the processes of develop- 
 ment, yet refuses to ascribe that 
 idea or aim to any Mind as its 
 subject. All men will acknowledge 
 that when the butterfly deposits 
 
PITFALLS OP PHILOSOPHY. 87 
 
 her eggs on the very leaf of 
 all the forest which will best 
 nurture the grubs that are to 
 be, and perishes after bequeath- 
 ing the world that legacy, the 
 act irresistibly suggests an end 
 or aim in view, an idea that is 
 by these means to be realised 
 by-and-by ; and they will acknow- 
 ledge further that it is not to be 
 supposed that the aim is a con- 
 scious one on the part of the insect 
 herself, or that the idea is an idea 
 of hers. But, says the Pantheist, 
 you must nevertheless not assume 
 that the aim or the idea is anyone 
 else's. With unrelenting vigour 
 Dr. Martineau insists that the aim 
 and idea is some one else's ; that a 
 future can only cause a present in 
 the sense that the conception of 
 that future as something to be 
 aimed at is present already in a 
 controlling mind; and that the 
 
88 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 seat of the idea in question is the 
 Mind of God. 
 
 There is deep interest in the 
 excursions on which our philoso- 
 pher takes us among the Pan- 
 theists of various mood, some 
 analysing energy after energy in 
 Nature till they reach the one 
 Universal Power, others, by the 
 inverse path, bringing the Uni- 
 versal Power down till they send 
 it coursing through all the 
 channels of Nature ; and the 
 interest becomes profound when it 
 is boldly alleged that, so far from 
 the Personality of God impairing 
 his Infinity (as so many anti-theists 
 allege), it is only by insisting on 
 his Personality that his Infinity 
 can possibly be saved. For a 
 Person is one who can choose 
 between alternatives ; and if God 
 had no choice but to make just 
 this world and no other, then He is 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 89 
 
 shut between definite bounds, and 
 his Infinity fades out of our 
 thought. 
 
 In bidding the Pantheist fare- 
 well, there is but one bargain that 
 we are bound to make 'with him. 
 We may sit gratefully at his feet 
 while with fervent eloquence he 
 discourses on the Divine energies 
 which fill all the courses of the 
 world, bearing the stars along 
 their orbits, flashing in the fires 
 of the sun, darting down the ether 
 wave and plashing on the tinted 
 earth, thrilling five hundred billion 
 times a second in each atom of the 
 solid iron, and massing the single 
 molecule itself as an organ com- 
 plex as any musical instrument. 
 We may surrender to him the 
 whole region which eye can sweep 
 with telescope or descry with 
 microscope, and worlds unimagin- 
 able in vastness and in smallness 
 
90 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 beyond these. But we may not 
 surrender to him our souls. Here, 
 we claim, are free Causes, from 
 which God has deliberately barred 
 out his causality, islands of indi- 
 vidual will in the midst of the 
 ocean of universal Will. These 
 must not be immersed in the 
 great flood. Leave us Man con- 
 fronting God; and in all other 
 creatures that we know, immobile 
 or sentient, we rejoice to recog- 
 nise the sweep of the Divine will 
 determining them to their places 
 and their destinies. 
 
 But we must briefly refer to the 
 other great foe of Theistic faith, 
 the doctrine that all human action 
 is determined by inevitable forces 
 outside the human will ; that the 
 belief that I can and the belief 
 that I ought are alike illusions read 
 by me into rny interpretation of 
 life without any real warrant in 
 
PITFALLS OP PHILOSOPHY. 91 
 
 my relations to the world and 
 God. The final appeal against 
 that doctrine, so persistent in the 
 schools of philosophy, must always 
 lie to the irresistible consciousness 
 within us that, whatever men may 
 say and whatever they may argue, 
 we can choose this course or that, 
 ought to choose the one rather 
 than the other, and are not in- 
 evitably determined by forces be- 
 yond the control of our will. 
 
 But Dr. Martineau faces the 
 objections raised by one group of 
 thinkers after another, with in- 
 domitable patience. We will con- 
 fine our attention to the remark- 
 able section in which he discusses 
 the difficulty involved in the alleged 
 " Fore - knowledge of Voluntary 
 Actions." 
 
 Mr. Buckle and others point out 
 that such human actions as get- 
 ting married, and even committing 
 
92 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 suicide, can be predicted with 
 extraordinary accuracy not, in- 
 deed, that John and Sarah will be 
 married, or that a particular King 
 of Bavaria will drown himself, but 
 that in 1901, for instance, if the 
 price of corn be so much, about so 
 many couples in England will seek 
 the hymeneal altar, and, unhappily, 
 about so many poor fellows will 
 give up the stern battle of life 
 " voluntarily," and face the riddle 
 that lies behind the bars of death. 
 But if these voluntary acts can be 
 fore-known, they must, it is said, 
 be fore-ordained. It cannot be 
 left to the lovers themselves to 
 determine that which is deter- 
 mined already; and their deter- 
 mination is, after all, only another 
 lover's illusion. 
 
 It is somewhat surprising that 
 the law of averages should thus 
 have imposed on many minds of 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 93 
 
 far subtler calibre than Buckle's ; 
 and Dr. Martineau has no great 
 difficulty in showing that a particu- 
 lar event may really be contingent 
 (that is, not yet decided), although 
 it may be one of a bundle of 
 events in which you are pretty 
 sure that about so many will turn 
 out this way and so many that. The 
 certainty does not apply to any 
 one of them taken alone ; and as 
 applied to the group, the certainty 
 is only approximate a mere judg- 
 ment of probability. But we cer- 
 tainly should not think of saying 
 that our coachman cannot choose 
 whether he will turn to the right 
 or the left when he gets to 
 Regent Circus, merely because we 
 think it most likely that he will 
 turn to the left. 
 
 But much more grave is the 
 difficulty involved in God's fore- 
 knowledge. Dr. Martineau freely 
 
94 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 confesses that if God knows before- 
 hand that a man will do a certain 
 thing, it is vain to say that it is 
 within the man's own choice when 
 the time comes whether he will do 
 it or not. If God knows that Lord 
 Salisbury will bring in proposals 
 for Conscription after Whitsun- 
 tide, then, however much Lord 
 Salisbury deliberates and consults, 
 he certainly will not le able to help 
 doing it. But Dr. Martineau 
 fearlessly declares that God does 
 not know these things. 
 
 God's fore-knowledge through- 
 out the sphere of his own unsur- 
 rendered causality is absolute. 
 But in relinquishing to us control 
 over our own conduct, Dr. Mar- 
 tineau believes that the Creator 
 relinquished also fore-knowledge 
 of that conduct. The belief in 
 the Divine knowledge of our own 
 future acts rests chiefly on text- 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 95 
 
 ual authority, and was consonant 
 with the narrow, however noble, 
 Hebrew conception of the relation 
 of man to God. But it has, it is 
 suggested, no basis either in phi- 
 losophy or in piety. The absten- 
 tion from such fore-knowledge is 
 a self -limitation on the part of 
 God, sustained, like the partial 
 surrender of his causality, that 
 there might be scope for the gift 
 of moral freedom to mankind. 
 
 Startled at the first suggestion 
 of so bold a mode of cutting the 
 Gordian knot, we have to confess 
 that reflection lends to this doc- 
 trine a wonderful attraction and 
 impressiveiiess in our eyes. 
 
 It lends it an attraction because 
 it so vastly enlarges the marvel of 
 the providence of God. Instead 
 of conceiving God as retaining in 
 his own hands the whole guidance 
 of creation and " knowing the end 
 
96 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from the beginning" because he 
 knows every step upon the way ; 
 we have to conceive Him as know- 
 ing the end from the beginning in 
 spite of being blind as regards 
 innumerable intermediate steps. 
 Thus He must so shape all the 
 forces that are, that, in spite of the 
 countless variety of contingencies 
 that may turn up through human 
 agency, the whole shall be pre- 
 pared for any event, and shall so 
 work round again that in the end 
 it shall be well, and the purpose of 
 God shall not be baulked, what- 
 ever the deeds of man. Nature, as 
 organised by God, must comprise a 
 vis medicatrix by which the disturb- 
 ing effects of any human act will 
 work themselves out, and the set 
 of things go right in spite of all. 
 Out of evil good must incessantly 
 work by an inherent quality of the 
 universe ; trains of effects initiated 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 97 
 
 by human effort, though, if right, 
 efficient factors in the universe, 
 must, if wrong, exhaust themselves 
 in a little while, or work back into 
 the pattern purposed and ordained. 
 To us this seems a sublime expan- 
 sion of the whole scope and sweep 
 of providence. 
 
 And the conception is to us 
 prof oundedly impressive otherwise. 
 " Thou, God, seeestme altogether/' 
 we truly say. But we are no 
 longer to deem that even God sees 
 the moment in our moral life that 
 is coming next. Even He does not 
 know whether I shall yield to that 
 secret temptation at mid-day. 
 Even He is ignorant whether I 
 shall do the thing I know I ought 
 to do to-morrow. He watches 
 with Divine affection and unex- 
 hausted interest. To Him, too, 
 it is not a story told, but a drama 
 in the acting^ of which He knows 
 
 7 
 
98 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not the consummation. Behold 
 on what a theatre, before what a 
 Spectator I play my part! If 
 God is watching earnestly to know, 
 how can I do the sin ? * 
 
 * When these articles first appeared the 
 above passage brought me the gravest 
 remonstrances from thinkers whose views 
 were entitled to high respect. After the 
 lapse of twelve years, however, I am 
 unable to share their disapprobation of Dr. 
 Martineau's position. If God voluntarily 
 limits his own causality by conceding 
 to us a free causality of our own, that is, 
 Free Will, I see no reason to shrink from 
 the suggestion that He may in like manner 
 and for the like purpose suffer limits to 
 his own fore-knowledge. In Professor 
 William James's fascinating book, "The 
 Will to Believe" (Longmans, 1897), pp. 
 180,1, he puts the case in a very striking 
 way. "The belief in free-will," says he, 
 '* is not in the least incompatible with 
 the belief in Providence, provided you do 
 not restrict the Providence to fulminating 
 nothing but fatal decrees. If you allow 
 Him to provide possibilities as well as 
 actualities to the universe, and to carry on 
 his own thinking in those two categories 
 just as we do ours, chances may be there 
 uncontrolled even by Him, and the course 
 of the universe be really ambiguous ; and 
 
PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 99 
 
 yet the end of all things may be just what 
 He intended it to be from all eternity. 
 
 " An analogy will make the meaning of 
 this clear.' Suppose two men before a 
 chessboard the one a novice, the other an 
 expert player of the ame. The expert 
 intends to beat. But he cannot foresee 
 exactly what any one actual move of his 
 adversary may be. He knows, however, all 
 the possible moves of the latter ; and he 
 knows in advance how to meet each of 
 them by a move of his own which leads in 
 the direction of victory. And the victory 
 infallibly arrives, after no matter how 
 devious a course, in the one predestined 
 form of checkmate to the novice's king." 
 
 Professor James then supposes the novice 
 to stand for us finite free agents, and the 
 expert for the Infinite Mind planning out 
 his universe and guiding its total of 
 phenomena. The rest of the analogy will 
 easily suggest itself, and it seems to me 
 very perfect and very beautiful. You can 
 only restore fore- knowledge of our acts to 
 God by cutting off the freedom of our wills 
 and shutting us up in a world of deter- 
 minism. 
 
 There is, indeed, one desperate expedient 
 left. You may deny the reality of time 
 treat it as a mere illusion of the human 
 mind. The whole problem then vanishes. 
 " Fore-knowledge " is a term without mean- 
 ing. " Free-will " is so no less, for free- 
 will means choice, and choice is a motion 
 of the mind prior in time to action. In 
 fact, time being eliminated from the wor\d 
 
100 PITFALLS OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 all reasoning about phenomena necessarily 
 ceases ; for it will be found impossible to 
 frame a conception or an argument with 
 regard to them which does not imply time 
 as their condition. 
 
 That time is a necessary form of human 
 thought does not, indeed, prove its reality. 
 But it does carry with it the implication 
 that to try to reason outside time condi- 
 tions is to attempt a feat to us intrinsically 
 impossible and inevitably delusive. Be 
 time an ultimate reality or not, we are so 
 made that we shall think nearer the 
 ultimate truth of things if we consent to 
 reason within the limits of our intellectual 
 constitution than if we set forth to jump 
 outside our own minds before we begin. 
 Dr. Martineau was a most firm believer in 
 the reality both of time and of space. In 
 a letter to me, dated 1888, he writes : " I 
 am obliged to confess outright that to me 
 Space is the condition of all existence ; not 
 of body only, which shares its dimensions, 
 but of Soul also, which, in being a cognitive 
 subject, must have its objects, and in its 
 consciousness of a Self must live in anti- 
 thesis to another than self. I cannot 
 affect to rise above the ' common conscious- 
 ness ' in this matter/' Such a view must 
 seem to many extreme. For my own part, 
 I can as little think of Soul as conditioned 
 by Space as of Body not so conditioned. 
 
VIII. 
 
 SHALL THE SOUL DIE ? 
 
 THE Fourth and last Book of the 
 great work upon which we are 
 engaged bears the superscription^ 
 "The Life to Come." Dr. Mar- 
 tineau admits that it is " by a some- 
 what abrupt transition" that he 
 passes from the exposition of the 
 grounds of Theism to the inquiry 
 "whether man has any life in 
 prospect beyond his present term 
 of years." But he finds his 
 apology an apology which few 
 readers will think required- in 
 the pressure of this momentous 
 question on our feeling and in the 
 habitual inclusion of the faith in 
 
102 'SHALL -THE S'OUL DIE? 
 
 the life beyond within the contents 
 of Religion. 
 
 He believes that the reason why 
 we consider the belief in Immor- 
 tality an element of religion, 
 while we do not usually so reckon 
 even the brightest of terrestrial 
 hopes for the individual or for the 
 race, lies in the fact that that 
 ulterior life is apprehended neither 
 in the immediate consciousness by 
 which we know ourselves, nor yet 
 by the sensuous perception by 
 which we know the world, but lies 
 beyond experience and is with- 
 drawn from vision, and is yet 
 more real than either, because 
 secured in the eternal ground of 
 both. 
 
 However powerful are many of 
 the subsidiary trains of reasoning 
 in this Book, the main argument, 
 we fear, will hardly be felt to be 
 so broadly and securely built as 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 103 
 
 that which, constitutes the body of 
 the work. The philosophical 
 demonstration of human Immor- 
 tality can, perhaps, never Ibe so 
 completely wrought out as that of 
 God. God is ; the life to come, so 
 far as each one of us is concerned, 
 is only to be. A fact extending 
 through the present and the past 
 has innumerable points of contact 
 with experience ; a fact lying 
 wholly in the future can have 
 none. The appeal, therefore, 
 which the reasoner can wield is 
 less direct ; it is less easy for us to 
 plant our feet on the solid ground 
 of that which we cannot doubt. 
 We are persuaded that the dimness 
 of our apprehension of the life to 
 come, as compared with the bright- 
 ness of apprehension of the 
 presence of God which is open to 
 us, is not without its spiritual 
 uses. Hope may be a more divine 
 
104 SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 
 
 training for character than sight. 
 In proportion to the vividness of 
 our Sight of God that Beatific 
 Vision the outline of our Hope 
 eternal is apt to grow in clearness 
 and in fulness. 
 
 But if Dr. Martineau's philo- 
 sophy cannot^ after all, avail to 
 turn Hope into Sight, or Filial 
 Trust into Scientific Knowledge, 
 it does, at any rate, suffice to dis- 
 pose effectually of alleged difficul- 
 ties in the way of our faith in 
 Immortality advanced by the Phy- 
 siologist and the Metaphysician. 
 In the first Chapter of the 
 Book the physiological objections 
 are met and overturned; in the 
 second, those issuing from the 
 metaphysical schools receive like 
 treatment; in the third, the 
 positive claim of the doctrine of 
 our personal Immortality on our 
 acceptance is based on the vati- 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 105 
 
 cinations of the Intellect and 
 Conscience. 
 
 " The question/' says Dr. Mar- 
 tineau, " of a Life to come centres 
 in the interpretation of Death, as 
 affecting 1 the individual." What 
 has the Physiologist to say ? 
 
 His fundamental conception lies 
 in the relation of function to organ. 
 The function of an organ is that 
 which the organ has to do; and 
 when the organ is dissolved, it is 
 vain to look for the function to 
 continue. The lungs are an organ 
 whose function is the oxygenisa- 
 tion of the blood. If, then, the 
 lungs are gone, there will be no 
 oxygenising of the blood. And 
 when all the organs of the body 
 are bereft of organic power, all 
 the processes of the body cease, 
 and it is dead. And so, if thought, 
 affection, and character are func- 
 tions of any physical organs, if 
 
106 SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 
 
 these organs do the thinking and 
 the loving and the willing as 
 the heart does the pumping, the 
 discussion is at an end ; the dis- 
 solution of the organs is the cessa- 
 tion of the conscious life. 
 
 But is, for instance, thinking a 
 function of the brain ? On the 
 contrary, the function of the brain 
 is found in certain molecular 
 motions and electrical discharges ; 
 and could these be measured and 
 reduced to f ' foot-pounds," it will 
 be agreed that they would be 
 exactly equivalent to, and exactly 
 account for, the physical energies 
 from which they proceed. It is 
 true that these molecular motions 
 and electrical discharges accom- 
 pany and are accompanied by the 
 phenomena of consciousness and 
 will. But Professor Tyndall him- 
 self is our authority for declaring 
 (what, indeed, none can dispute), 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 107 
 
 that the physical phenomena and 
 the mental are dissevered by "a 
 chasm intellectually impassable." 
 
 Physiology is incapable of ex- 
 hibiting thought as a function of 
 any physical organ. It lies not, 
 then, in the mouth of the physio- 
 logist to say that thought must 
 cease with the perishing of any 
 physical organ. This is beyond 
 the scope of his valuable science ; 
 and, as physiologist, he is destitute 
 of data for an opinion on one side 
 or the other. 
 
 We cannot follow Tyndall's 
 great antagonist through the exact 
 and powerful process of reasoning 
 by which he liberates conscious 
 life from the liability to a partner's 
 share in the collapse of the phy- 
 sical organs. At every point he 
 seems to us to get the better of an 
 opponent as slipshod in philosophic 
 method as he is brilliant in scien- 
 
108 SHALL THE SOUL DIE ? 
 
 tific rhetoric. And then, taking 
 up the physiologist's own canon, 
 the law that organ implies func- 
 tion, he presses the contention that 
 the mental and spiritual organism 
 of man carries with it functions 
 which the service of the physical 
 life are inadequate to exhaust. 
 
 But now the Metaphysician, 
 stepping on to the stage from 
 which the Physiologist has with- 
 drawn, asks what it is that sur- 
 vives the perishing organism. 
 If you say that it is the 
 Soul, Mr. Tylor and Mr. Spencer 
 assure you that the very idea 
 of such a thing only comes from 
 dreaming of the dead ; but they 
 forget to explain why we do not 
 ascribe souls to trees and houses, 
 to pictures and to statues, when 
 we have dreamed of them. The 
 Soul, says Dr. Martineau, is the 
 Self, the permanent centre whence 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 109 
 
 our acts come and whose they are 
 the subject also of the feelings 
 which form the scenery of life, the 
 substance of which our activities 
 and our receptivities alike are the 
 phenomena; and of this Self or Soul 
 we have first-hand knowledge, and 
 we are to conceive it as an Ego set 
 up by the universal Mind "in 
 whose embrace it lives, and which 
 it reflects in its miniature powers." 
 
 Can then this Self, this Soul, 
 this Ego, abide as otherthan God 
 for ever? 
 
 " No," says one metaphysician ; 
 " it has begun, therefore it must 
 cease." " No," says another ; " it 
 is finite, and cannot hold its ground 
 amid the infinite." Dr. Martineau 
 holds, however, that the first 
 objection is illegitimately assum- 
 ing that a rule which holds good 
 in organic life, " whose history 
 consists of a cycle of chemical 
 
110 SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 
 
 changes/' holds good in all other 
 spheres as well. Nor does he allow 
 that there is any reason why the 
 spiritual nature which God has set 
 up oufc of the resources of his own 
 being may not endure as long as 
 God. 
 
 The second objector sustains his 
 dictum by appealing to the spiritual 
 beauty which we all recognise in 
 se/*-surrenderj seZ/'-sacrifice, self- 
 abnegation,, and the like. But the 
 inference is only drawn by a trick 
 of thought. The self thus aban- 
 doned and slain is itself given up 
 by another self, which in that very 
 sacrifice lives and loves the more ; 
 and the consummation is not an 
 absorption into God, but the har- 
 mony of another with God. The 
 chapter closes with a vigorous 
 protest against the tendency to 
 depreciate personality. Of all exist- 
 ences known to us in the universe 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? Ill 
 
 personality is the highest and the 
 holiest. 
 
 When Dr. Martineau turns to 
 the positive side of his argument, 
 he does indeed, as we have said, 
 in our opinion, fail to forge so 
 adamantine a chain of reasoning 
 that it is hopeless anywhere to 
 try to break it. Yet he must 
 wield a strong hammer who would 
 do so. Few nobler contributions 
 have ever been made to a spiritual 
 philosophy than the section in 
 which the mighty promise of 
 human intellect is sketched and 
 time claimed in which the promise 
 shall have opportunity of fulfil- 
 ment. The mental endowments 
 of the animals find a sufficient 
 field in the exigencies of the 
 organism which they subserve ? 
 the mental endowments of man 
 expand to proportions which fit 
 him for life far transcending his 
 
112 SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 
 
 threescore years and ten on a 
 patch, of Earth. Still more cogent 
 is the argument when transferred 
 from the intellect to the affections 
 which adorn humanity. Are there 
 such boundless capacities of love 
 without a world in which it shall 
 meet the full scope of its glorious 
 satisfaction? Is the love which 
 seeks death from its very devotion 
 to have no apotheosis in which it 
 can live and bless in proportion to 
 its sublime capacity ? 
 
 Finally, Dr. Martineau renews 
 the plea, which we met on his 
 opening pages, that the Moral 
 Law shall have the seal set on it 
 in some further stage of life than 
 that which closes here. The 
 peace of the saints is indeed, he 
 admits, its own reward ; but the 
 facts of human life indicate, in 
 the view of Dr. Martineau, that 
 Conscience does not dispense any 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 113 
 
 sentence, but is limited to the 
 warnings and the promises which 
 foreshadow the jurisdiction of a 
 higher Court hereafter. The in- 
 ward and outward moral adjust- 
 ments of human life are alike im- 
 perfect; and the great lines of 
 human experience indicate with 
 equal clearness that we are in " a 
 morally constituted world moving 
 towards righteous ends/' and that 
 the fulfilment of this idea is not 
 here, " but only the incipient and 
 often baffled tentatives for realising 
 it by partial approximation." 
 " This is what we should expect to 
 see from the first station of an un- 
 finished system ; and it irresistibly 
 suggests a justifying and perfect 
 sequel. The vaticinations of our 
 moral nature are thus in harmony 
 with those of the intellectual and 
 spiritual, distinctly reporting to 
 us that we stand in Divine rela- 
 
114 SHALL THE SOUL DIE ? 
 
 tions which indefinitely transcend 
 the limits of our earthly years." 
 
 We believe that in this splendid 
 work Dr. Martineau has failed, as 
 the human intellect must ever fail, 
 to set up a logical barrier around 
 the primal faculties of our minds, 
 which he who refuses credit to 
 those faculties cannot break 
 through. We believe, neverthe- 
 less, that he is profoundly right, 
 whether as philosopher or prophet, 
 in claiming for those faculties our 
 implicit credence. And we believe 
 that, on the basis of those faculties, 
 no nobler plea than his has ever 
 been constructed for all that makes 
 the universe a temple, and fills the 
 world with hope. Now that the 
 slim and noble figure and the 
 beautiful countenance lit with the 
 very light of heaven have passed 
 for ever from our vision, we can 
 only register our fervent thankful- 
 
SHALL THE SOUL DIE? 115 
 
 ness that this great teacher was 
 permitted by Him in whose hands 
 are the lives of men to put forth 
 this mighty argument for all that 
 makes the world a temple and the 
 soul a shrine while still, in spite 
 of the load of years, the eye of his 
 spiritual vision was undimmed and 
 his intellect had lost naught of its 
 subtlety or grasp. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 W. SPEAIGHT AND SONS, PRINTERS, 
 FETTER LANE. 
 

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