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On the Dread and Dislike of Science.

THUS STATED, ONE MUST admit a sufficient logical consistency in the present condition of compromise, and need suppose no kind of insincerity, no conscious equivocation in the acceptance of both the natural and the supernatural modes of explaining phenomena. Nor, indeed, could the fundamental inconsistency of such a compromise have been even recognised, until the quite modern extension of scientific method to moral questions had come to complete the disintegrating effects of historical and philosophical criticism applied to the Sacred Books of which Theology relied. In the earlier stages of development, although the natural explanation was adopted in reference to the most familiar experiences, and framed the rough theories of Common Sense for the habitual guidance of conduct, both in relation to the physical world and to society, the supernatural was adopted in reference to whatever was unusual and unseen; and the wider range of this speculative method was due to the immensity of ignorance. The slow progress of positive knowledge has more and more enlarged the domain of natural explanation, more and more restricted the domain of the supernatural. Yet even now the majority of cultivated men regard the facts of human nature as only partly explicable without aid drawn from the supernatural; and resist, as impiety, the attempt to assign natural causes in explanation of moral relations. That is to say, there where the operation of natural causes escapes our penetration, supernatural causes are invoked. Just as to men ignorant of natural conditions thunder was the fury of the storm-demon, or an eclipse was God’s anger, so nowadays men ignorant of natural conditions interpret epidemics as “visitations,” and regard “intuitions” as of divine origin. The inconsistency, then, of the acceptance of theological side by side with scientific principles, is only a continuation of the primitive mental state, and must vanish when there is a general conviction that Science is orderly Knowledge, and is co-extensive with Experience. If we can have no knowledge transcending Experience in the widest sense, and if Faith is the vision of things unknown—dealing with what transcends knowledge—then the conflict between Science and Theology is the conflict between Knowledge and Ignorance.

Unless this be the character of Faith, I dispute the claim of Theology to the exclusive possession of Faith as a principle of guidance. Science also has its Faith, and by it must all men to a great extent be guided. But the Faith of Theology and the Faith of Science are very different in their credentials. The former is reliance of the truth of principles handed down by Tradition, of which no verification is possible, no examination permissible; the latter is reliance on the truth of principles which have been sought and found by competent inquirers, tested incessantly by successive generations, are always open to verification in all their details, and always modifiable according to fresh experiences. We believe in the law of gravitation, though we never opened the Principia, and could not, perhaps, understand it; but we rely on those who can understand it, and who have found its teachings in harmony with fact. We believe in the measurement of the velocity of light, though ignorant of the methods by which the velocity is measured. We trust those who have sought and found. If we distrust them, the search is open to us as to them. The mariner trusts to the indications of the compass without pretending to know how these indications were discovered, but assured by constant experience that they guide the ship safely. That also is Faith.

But if the mental attitude is one of the same obedience as the Theological Faith, its justification is different. Its credentials are conformity with experience. Those of Theology are the statements of the Sacred Books: the Vedas, Zendavesta, Bible, Koran. The statements therein made concerning the divine nature, its relations with the human, and the providential government of the world, are not open to the verification of Experience, for they were not sought and found in Experience. If we ask for their credentials, we are told that they are of divine origin. If we ask for evidence of this divine origin, we are referred to History or to our Moral Consciousness. Tradition has handed down these statements through successive generations; yet if we ask, as we ought to ask, how the tradition itself originated, we are brought face to face with this two-fold difficulty: we cannot recognise that those who first promulgated the statements had any better means of knowing the truth that we have; and we are struck with the fact that the statements thus handed down by tradition do not agree. That of the Hindoos is not that of the Jews; the Persians reject the traditions of both.

Modern historic criticism has made such havoc with the historical pretensions, that theologians are now throwing all the emphasis on Moral Consciousness. The doctrine of our Sacred Books is said to be unequivocally ratified by our intuitions: we feel their truth, and we see in their moral influence on mankind the verification of their divine origin. But here again the scientific method, which applied to the historical evidence has shattered its claim, applied to the evidence of Moral Consciousness is equally destructive. Psychology not only enlightens us as to the genesis of the intuitions, but in a comparison with other nations and the earlier stages of human development, shows how they vary. If the intuitions of the savage are not those of the civilised, if precepts which the Hindoo feels to be divine are opposed to the precepts which the Chinese, the Jew, and Mohammedan, and the Christian feel to be divine, we need a criterion beyond these varying standards.

There is a widespread superstition which regards whatever is innate, or otherwise unexplained, as of a higher authority and diviner sanction than what is acquired through individual experience or is explicable on known laws. Our religious instincts are appealed to, and if Instinct were the infallible guide in conduct; although a moment’s reflection will show that it is the great aim of civilisation to correct and repress many instincts. If the developed music of our day is of a higher order and more adapted to our sensibilities than the music of the Middle Ages; if our theories of natural phenomena are of a higher order and approximate more nearly to the truth than the corresponding theories of Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, why should our theories of moral phenomena be deemed inferior to those of Judaism or the Councils? Is the nursery a school of riper wisdom than the laboratory?

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