第117章 Religion(8)

The 'Oxford movement,'started soon afterwards,implied a conviction that the old Protestant position was as untenable as the radical asserted.Its adherents attempted to find a living and visible body whose supernatural authority might maintain the old dogmatic system.Liberal thinkers endeavoured to spiritualise the creed and prove its essential truths by philosophy,independently of the particular historical evidence.The popular tendency was to admit in substance that the dogmas most assailed were in fact immoral :but to put them into the background,or,if necessary,to explain them away.The stress was to be laid not upon miracles,but upon the moral elevation of Christianity or the beauty of character of its founder.The 'unsectarian'religion,represented in the most characteristic writings of the next generation,in Tennyson and Browning,Thackeray and Dickens,reflects this view.Such men detested the coarse and brutalising dogmas which might be expounded as the true 'scheme of salvation'by ignorant preachers seeking to rouse sluggish natures to excitement;but they held to religious conceptions which,as they thought,really underlay these disturbing images,and which,indeed,could hardly be expressed in any more definite form than that of a hope or a general attitude of the whole character.The problem seemed to be whether we shall support a dogmatic system by recognising a living spiritual authority,or frankly accept reason as the sole authority,and,while explaining away the repulsive dogmas,try to retain the real essence of religious belief.

II.CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT

If I were writing a general history of opinion,it would be necessary to discuss the views of Mill's English contemporaries;to note their attitude in regard to the Utilitarian position,and point out how they prepared the way for the later developments of thought.The Utilitarians were opposed to a vague sentiment rather than to any definite system,they were a small and a very unpopular sect.They excited antipathy on all sides.As advocating republicanism,they were hardly more disliked by the Tories,who directly opposed them,than by the Whigs,who might be suspected of complicity.As enthusiastic political economists,they were equally detested by sentimental Radicals,Socialists,and by all who desired a strong government,whether for the suppression of social evils or the maintenance of social abuses.And now,as suspected of atheism,they were hated by theologians.But though the Utilitarians were on all sides condemned and denounced,they were met by no definite and coherent scheme of philosophy,the philosophy of Stewart and Brown had at least a strong drift in their direction.Though 'political economy'was denounced in general terms,all who spoke with authority accepted Adam Smith.Their political opponents generally did not so much oppose their theories as object to theory in general.The Utilitarian system might be both imperfect and dogmatic;but it had scarcely to contend with any clear and assignable rival.The dislike of Englishmen to any systematic philosophy,whether founded upon the national character or chiefly due to special conditions,was still conspicuous outside of the small Utilitarian camp.

To discover,therefore,the true position of contemporary opinion,we should have to look elsewhere.

Instead of seeking for the philosophers who did not exist,we should have to examine the men of letters who expressed the general tendencies.In Germany,philosophical theories may be held to represent the true drift of the national mind,and a historian of German thought would inquire into the various systems elaborated by professors of philosophy.He would at least be in no want of materials for definite logical statements.In England,there was no such intellectual movement.There we should have to consider poetry and literature;to read Wordsworth and Coleridge,Scott and Byron and Shelley ,if we would know what men were really thinking and feeling,the difficulty is,of course,that none of these men,unless Coleridge be an exception,had any conscious or systematic philosophy.We can only ask,therefore,what they would have said if they had been requested to justify their views by abstract reasoning;and that is a rather conjectural and indefinite enterprise,it lies,fortunately,outside of my field;and it will be enough if I try to suggest one or two sufficiently vague hints.

In the first place,the contrast between the Utilitarians and their opponents may almost be identified with the contrast between the prosaic and the poetical aspects of the world in general.Bentham frankly objected to poetry in general,it proved nothing,the true Utilitarian was the man who held on to fact,and to nothing but the barest,most naked and unadorned fact.