I HAVE TAKEN THE case of Disease because it is less open to the ambiguities and difficulties which beset a moral problem, but a similar discrepancy might be pointed out between the theological precepts and the moral practices. Here, as everywhere, it is patent that as knowledge advances, Theology loses its hold; and Morality, instead of remaining stationary like Theology, advances with an enlarging insight into the healthy conditions of human relations. Science is often taunted with its imperfections and its inability to explain the mysteries of life. Imperfect it is, and that is why we should all strive to make it less so. Mysteries will doubtless for ever encompass us. But Science may answer the taunt by challenging Theology to show that its explanation of the mysteries has any claim to our acceptance. The question is not whether an explanation can be given, but whether the given explanation has any verifiable evidence. Kant has truly said that now Criticism has take its place among the disintegratory agencies, no system can pretend to escape its jurisdiction. The Church has it texts, and has decided once for all what meaning these texts must bear. But the criticism of scientific method asks for the evidence which can prove these interpretations to be in agreement with fact. In both respects the answer is unequivocal. There is no evidence to prove the texts. The interpretations are discordant with experience. Thus the Catholic who accepts Galileo and Newton must give up the texts, or take the first step towards Protestantism, which asserts the right of interpreting the texts according to private judgment. And the Protestant who asserts this right of interpretation, and forsakes the literal meaning of the texts, has taken a step towards Rationalism, and implicitly disavowed the authority of the texts, since what he obeys is not their teaching, but the teaching of the culture of his day and sect. The Rationalist, in turn, has taken a step towards the scientific position; he regards the texts as symbols of an earlier stage of culture, which need the interpretation of our present culture; and when he learns—as easily he may learn—that all the facts of the moral world are to be investigated and systematised on the same principles as the facts of the physical world, setting aside in the one as in the other all supernatural and metempirical conceptions, because these cannot enter into the framework of Knowledge, he will learn that Science, in the true meaning of the term, embraces Nature and Human Nature, and moreover that it expresses what is known of both, whereas Theology is only “the false persuasion of knowledge.”

Many readers may vehemently deny the assertion just made. They will maintain the validity of theological explanations, all the more because, persisting in the old confusion of Theology with Religion, they refuse to acknowledge that a science of Nature and Human Nature, if truly expressing the facts, must be a better foundation for Religion than a Theology which untruly expresses those facts. The whole contest lies between the two modes of explanation and the results reached by such modes. I accept the appeal to History. This shows how in proportion as knowledge because exact and orderly in each department of inquiry, the supernatural and metempirical explanations were silently withdrawn in favour of natural and experiential explanations. Nowadays, among the cultivated minds of Europe, it is only in the less-explored regions of research, where argument is made to do duty for observation, that the supernatural and metempirical explanations hold their ground. When Science has fairly mastered the principles of moral relations as it has mastered the principles of physical relations, all Knowledge will be incorporated in a homogeneous doctrine rivalling that of the old theologies in its comprehensiveness, and surpassing it in the authority of its credentials. “Christian Ethics” will then no longer mean Ethics founded on the principles of Christian Theology, but on the principles expressing the social relations and duties of man in Christianised society. Then, and not till then, will the conflict between Theology and Science finally cease; then, and not till then, will the dread and dislike of Science disappear.

– No. CXXXVIII N.S. 1878. Minor edits. Manually transcribed exclusively for the New Series. To obtain the unedited text or for complete bibliographical information, please see the copyright page for instructions. Please note The Fortnightly Review [New Series] and fortnightlyreview.co.uk in citations based on this transcription.

Anthony Trollope’s obituary of G.H. Lewes, published in The Fortnightly Review on 1 January 1879 (and republished in an abridged version in The New York Times on 16 February 1879), is available online at Ellen Moody‘s website.