第113章 Religion(4)

Whatever might be the suspicions of their antagonists,they could only be accused of a tendency.The book amounts to an admission that the suspicions were well founded.Utilitarianism,the Utilitarians clearly recognised,logically implied the rejection of all theology.Religion --on their understanding of the word --must,like everything else,be tested by its utility,and it was shown to be either useless or absolutely pernicious.The aim of the Utilitarians was,in brief,to be thoroughly scientific.The man of science must be opposed to the belief in an inscrutable agent of boundless power,interfering at every point with the laws of nature,and a product of the fancy instead of the reason.Such a conception,so far as accepted,makes all theory of human conduct impossible,suggests rules conflicting with the supreme rule of utility,and gives authority to every kind of delusion,imposture,and 'sinister interest.'

It would,I think,be difficult to mention a more vigorous discussion of the problem stated.As anonymous,it could be ignored instead of answered;and probably such orthodox persons as read it assumed it to be a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the Utilitarian creed.It might follow,they could admit,logically from the Utilitarian analysis of human nature,but it could only prove that the analysis was fundamentally wrong.Yet its real significance is precisely its thorough applicability to the contemporary state of opinion.Beauchamp's definition coincides with Paley's.The coincidence was inevitable.Utilitarians both in ethical and philosophical questions start from the same assumptions as Paley,and the Paley doctrine gave the pith of the dominant theology.

I have observed that the Scottish philosophers had abandoned the a priori argument,and laid the whole stress of their theological doctrine upon Paley's argument from final causes.The change of base was an inevitable consequence of their whole system.They appealed to experience,to 'Baconian'methods,and to 'inductive psychology.'The theory of 'intuitions,'effective where it fell in with admitted beliefs,was idle against an atheist,who denied that he had the intuition.The 'final causes'argument,however,rested upon common ground,and supplied a possible line of defence.The existence of the Deity could perhaps be proved empirically,like the existence of the 'watchmaker.'Accordingly,this was the argument upon which reliance was really placed by the average theologian of the time.Metaphysical or ontological reasoning had been discarded for plain common-sense.The famous Bridgewater Treatises are the characteristic product of the period.It had occurred to the earl of Bridgewater,who died in 1829,that £8000from his estate might be judiciously spent in proving the existence of a benevolent creator,the council of the Royal Society employed eight eminent men of science to carry out this design.19They wrote some interesting manuals of popular science,interspersed with proper theological applications.

The arguments were sincere enough,though they now seem to overlook with singular blindness the answer which would be suggested by the 'evolutionist.'

The logical result is,in any case,a purely empirical theology.The religion which emerges is not a philosophy or theory of the world in general,but corresponds to a belief in certain matters of fact (or fiction),the existence of the Deity is to be proved,like the existence of Caesar,by special evidence.

The main results are obvious.

The logical base of the whole creed is ,natural theology,'and 'natural theology'is simply a branch of science,amenable to the ordinary scientific tests.It is intended to prove the existence of an agent essential to the working of the machinery,as from the movements of a planet we infer the existence of a disturbing planet,the argument from design,in this acceptation,is briefly mentioned by 'Philip Beauchamp.'It is,he argues,'completely extra-experimental';for experience only reveals design in living beings:

it supposes a pre-existing chaos which can never be shown to have existed,and the 'omnipotent will'introduced to explain the facts is really no explanation at all,but a collection of meaningless words.20The argument is briefly dismissed as concerning the truth,not the utility,of religion,but one point is sufficiently indicated.The argument from 'design'is always plausible,because it applies reasoning undeniably valid when it is applied within its proper sphere.The inference from a watch to a watchmaker is clearly conclusive.We know sufficiently what is meant by the watchmaker and by 'making.'We therefore reason to a vera causa --an agent already known.When the inference is to the action of an inconceivable Being performing an inconceivable operation upon inconceivable materials,it really becomes illusory,or amounts to the simple assertion that the phenomenon is inexplicable.Therefore,again,it is essentially opposed to science though claiming to be scientific.The action of the creator is supposed to begin where the possibility of knowledge ends.It is just the inexplicable element which suggests the creative agency.Conversely,the satisfactory explanation of any phenomenon takes it out of the theological sphere.As soon as the process becomes 'natural'it ceases to demand the supernatural artificer.'Making,'therefore,is contradistinguished from 'growing.'If we see how the eye has come into existence,we have no longer any reason to assume that it was put together mechanically.In other words,'teleology'of this variety is dispelled by theories of evolution.The hypothesis of interference becomes needless when we see how things came to be by working out perfectly natural processes.As science,therefore,expands,theology recedes.This was to become more evident at a later period.