§ 2 Philosophy, Cosmic and Moral
It lies on the face of our sketch of the movement of physical science that it is subversive of Christian orthodoxy, though not of extra-Christian theism. But since Giordano Bruno all cosmic philosophy that keeps the tincture of religion has pointed to pantheism; and all moral philosophy since Descartes has been more or less fatally subversive of Christian dogma. In the great work of Spinoza (1671), who partly proceeded on Descartes and partly transcended him, we have a philosophy and an ethic that are reluctantly pronounced by respectful theists to be virtually atheistic; and no great philosophy since has reversed that impetus. The God of Kant and the God of Hegel are as non-Christian as the Absolute of Bradley.
Moral philosophy had begun to be non-theological in Montaigne’s day (1580); and his disciple, Charron, constructed in his Wisdom what is pronounced to be the first modern treatise on that footing. Less than a century later the English Cumberland, although a bishop of the Church, took a similarly rationalistic course in morals in his reply to Hobbes (1672), making no appeal to revelation, though of course making no attack on it; and the almost undisguised naturalism of Hobbes was thus tacitly countenanced in fundamentals from the clerical side, in the very act of repudiation. Shaftesbury, who became the most influential moralist of the first half of the eighteenth century, did but develop the naturalistic principle on avowedly theistic and non-Christian lines. Bishop Berkeley, who assailed both Spinoza and Shaftesbury, could justify his Christian beliefs only by arguing that skeptics themselves, in the study of mathematics, accepted many arbitrary propositions, and might as well accept the mystery of Jesus Christ. Even Locke, though he stood for a “reasonable” and non-dogmatic Christianity, was in effect an influence for deism in respect of his philosophy.
All later moral philosophy of any standing has been either plainly non-evangelical or essentially irreconcilable with the Christian faith. Even the argumentation of Bishop Butler (1736) has no more validity for it than for any other, and is finally as favourable to atheism as to theism. Hume, who developed from deism into a final agnosticism, was at all stages anti-Christian in his ethic as well as in his metaphysic and his historical criticism of religion; and Adam Smith was strictly deistic. The later and deeper German philosophies of Kant and Fichte are no more truly helpful to Christianity, though elaborate attempts have been made to adapt Kantism to its service; and though Hegel finally proposed to rehabilitate its dogmas, his German disciples for the most part became anti-Christian; one of them, Feuerbach, becoming one of the most formidable critics of the faith. The professionally Christian moral philosophies, such as that of Paley in England (1785), have been abandoned by the sincerely religious no less than by the students of philosophy. Coleridge, seeking to give a philosophic aspect to the faith of his latter years, had to fall back on the “modal” Trinity, and could make no judicial defence of the doctrines of salvation and damnation.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, finally, the balance of philosophic thought has been overwhelmingly hostile to Christian beliefs. Everywhere, whether it be professedly utilitarian or “transcendental,” it is essentially monistic and evolutionist; and while the expressly naturalistic doctrine, typified in the teaching of Spencer, positively rejects all pretence of revelation, the spiritistic schools do nothing for historic religion beyond claiming to have reinstated a theism which is not “providential,” and so amounts in practice to pantheism. The so-called materialism of Germany, represented by the writings of Moleschott and Büchner, though constantly assailed on metaphysical grounds, is the common-sense conviction of millions of educated men; and the metaphysical attack makes scarcely a pretence of claiming belief for conventional religion. Christianity thus subsists without anything that can properly be described as philosophic support, save as regards some Catholic systems which rationalists or men of science rarely take the trouble to examine, and the sentimental mode of reasoning latterly labelled Pragmatism. This is really an unwarrantable application of a term which its framer, Mr. C. S. Pierce, applied to a practice of testing beliefs by ascertaining how far they are acted on in life. The so-called “Pragmatism” of Professor William James and Mr. Schiller is the vitally different process of certificating beliefs as true by the amount of comfort and stimulus derived from them. This procedure Mr. Pierce repudiates; but the bulk of current “Pragmatism” flies that flag, and not his.
That method logically concludes nothing for or against any belief, but may be made to seem to support almost any. It posits, in effect, that true beliefs are those by which men can successfully live, but offers no test of the reality of any alleged grounding of life upon a belief. Empirically, the negative of any opinion may thus be as easily substantiated as the affirmative, since the naturalist and the supernaturalist may alike claim individual success and satisfaction; and the adherents of the different faiths may do as much. For the “Pragmatist” of this order, accordingly, two contraries may be equally “true.” Any resort to objective tests, the method of science, puts that of Pragmatism (of this order) out of action. It has thus no philosophic significance save as a quasi-philosophical reaffirmation of the pietist claim of “experience,” and leaves religion as it found it.
Other quasi-philosophical defences of Christianity are even less durable. A considerable amount of temporary favour has been won by what may be termed the Irrationalist defence, typified by the works of Mr. Benjamin Kidd and Mr. A. J. Balfour. As put by the former, it is a suicidal process of reasoning against reliance on reason, the necessary effect being to discredit the verdict claimed, as being attainable only through the very act of reason that is condemned. As more subtly handled by Mr. Balfour, the Irrationalist case takes the form of a denial that scientific beliefs, so-called, are any more capable of “ultimate proof” than the beliefs which constitute religion. We have here a very modern reversion to the orthodox forensic method anciently pursued by Cicero, and in later times employed by Huet, Pascal, and Berkeley. Its complete practical failure in all ages might serve to indicate its necessary nugatoriness to those who most affect it. Were the central thesis true, there is obviously no more warrant on that basis for any one creed than for any other; and a “solipsism” which warrants any and every claim alike is of no use to the Christian Church, which seeks to warrant a given revelation. Whatever be their abstract right to certainty, most men in search of it inevitably test the less certain proposition in the light of the more certain: and this bias, bound up with all sincere mental life, is as fatal to anti-critical defences as it is vital to all scientific advance. An inquiring age is not to be made credulous by the argument from nescience.