58 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



matter. But if not, a declining belief in it may, 

 with our present experience, be thought, at least 

 by those who believe in it, to be attacking the 

 roots of morality, if not in our own generation, 

 at least in those which come after. 



It is matter of history that in what we now 

 generally accept as true morality there are two 

 factors : 1. On the one hand, human experience, 

 human reasonableness, human good-feeling, hu- 

 man self-restraint; and, 2. On the other, the be- 

 lief, the laws, the ideas, the power, of Christianity. 

 It is difficult to conceive what reason there is to 

 expect that if one factor is taken away the result 

 will continue the same ; that the removal or weak- 

 ening of such an important one as Christianity 

 would not seriously affect such departments of 

 morals as purity, the relations of the strong to 

 the weak, respect for human life, slavery. 



The DUKE OF ARGYLL.— Considering that 

 these papers are contributed by men belonging 

 to very different schools of thought, and that they 

 deal with a question very abstract and very ill- 

 defined, it is surely very remarkable that so much 

 agreement should emerge on certain fundamen- 

 tal points. 



Most remarkable of all, in this respect, is the 

 paper emanating from one of those who " follow 

 the teaching of Comte." 



In that paper I find the following proposi- 

 tions : 



I. That morality is independent of theology ; 

 but— 



II. That it is not independent of religion, in- 

 asmuch as morality without religion cannot " suf- 

 fice for life." 



III. That religion means a scheme which 

 (among other things) "brings man face to face 

 with a Power to which he must bow, with a Prov- 

 idence which he must love and serve, with a 

 Being which he must adore — that which, in fine, 

 gives man a doctrine to believe, a discipline to 

 live by, and an object to worship." 



IV. That this scheme or conception of reli- 

 gion is " new," and differs from mere theology in 

 the following distinctive points : 



1. That it avoids certain words or phrases, 

 such as " infinite," " absolute," " immaterial." 



2. That it avoids also all "vague negatives." 



3. That it resolutely confines us to the sphere 

 of what can be shown by experience — " of what 

 is relative and not absolute," and " of what is 

 wholly and frankly human." 



I will examine these propositions in their order. 



Proposition I. clearly depends entirely on 



what is meant by theology, and on the distinc- 



tion which is drawn in the propositions which 

 follow between theology and religion. Two 

 things, however, may be said of this proposition : 

 First, that, as a matter of historical fact, men's 

 conceptions of moral obligation have been deeply 

 influenced by their conceptions and beliefs about 

 theology, or about the " whence and whither." 

 Secondly, that, as all branches of truth are and 

 must be closely related to each other, it cannot 

 possibly be true that morality is independent of 

 theology, except upon the assumption that there 

 is no truth in any theology. But this is an as- 

 sumption which cannot be taken for granted, be- 

 ing very different indeed from the assumption 

 (which may be reasonable) that no existing the- 

 ology is unmixed with error. The absolute inde- 

 pendence of morality as regards theology, assumes 

 much more than this ; it assumes that there is no 

 theology containing even any important element 

 of truth. 



Proposition II. is, I think, perfectly true. 



Proposition III. contains a definition of reli- 

 gion which might probably be accepted by any 

 theological professor in any of our schools of 

 divinity as good and true, if not in all respects 

 adequate or complete. 



Proposition IV. defines the elements in all 

 theologies which constitute their fundamental er- 

 rors, and which distinguish them from religion as 

 defined in Proposition III. In short, Proposition 

 III. defines affirmatively what religion is ; and 

 Proposition IV. defines negatively what it is not. 

 It adds also a few more affirmative touches to 

 complete the picture of what it is. 



Looking now at the erroneous theological ele- 

 ments which are to be thrown away, we find three 

 words fixed upon as specimens of what is vicious. 

 One of them is " the Absolute." Most heartily 

 do I wish it were abolished. More nonsense has 

 been talked and written under cover of it than 

 under cover of any other of the voluminous vo- 

 cabulary of unintelligible metaphysics. It is ad- 

 mitted that the Absolute is " unthinkable," and 

 things which are unthinkable had better be con- 

 sidered as also unspeakable, or at least be left 

 unspoken. 



Next, "immaterial" is another word. to be 

 cast away. The worst of this demand is, that 

 the words material and immaterial express a dis- 

 tinction of which we cannot get rid in thought. 

 I do know that the pen with which I now write 

 is made of that which to me is known as matter ; 

 but I do not know that the ideas which are ex- 

 pressed in this writing are made of any like sub- 

 stance, nor even of any substance like the brain. 



