THE SKEPTICISM OF BELIEVERS. 



565 



in with his doctrines, and therefore throws a i 

 doubt upon the validity of experience. The 

 skepticism in this case is merely one mode of 

 stating the skeptical doctrine already illustrated 

 — namely, the disbelief in the natural goodness 

 of man. So far as the supernatural code or 

 sanction is asserted to be necessary, the insuffi- 

 ciency of the natural is more or less explicitly 

 maintained. 



Which creed, then, is most skeptical in the 

 sense already defined — least calculated, that is, 

 under existing circumstances, to produce cohe- 

 rent and consistent action ? The unbeliever 

 loses the use of certain phrases, or reduces them 

 to intelligible meaning. The moral law, says the 

 believer, is eternal, immutable, supreme, infalli- 

 ble, and founded on the nature of things. It is 

 just as eternal, says the unbeliever, as the laws 

 of Nature upon which it is founded. As all 

 reasoning assumes the continuity of past and 

 future, we can never look forward to a time when 

 the law will be essentially changed. It is im- 

 mutable in the sense that, while the conditions 

 remain, the law must remain ; but it is suscep- 

 tible of modification and adaptation to new cir- 

 cumstances. It is supreme as it expresses the 

 ultimate conditions of social welfare, and the 

 race can never fail to observe those conditions 

 without ruin to itself, and therefore to the com- 

 ponent individuals. It is certain, if not infal- 

 lible, for, though we renounce supernatural guar- 

 antees for our moral beliefs, and admit that they 

 cannot be deduced from a priori necessity, we 

 can place them on a level with other conclusions 

 of inductive science. It is founded in the nature 

 of things, if by things you mean, for example, 

 man and his surroundings ; but we know nothing 

 of the transcendental nature of things, which is 

 the home of the arbitrary, the absolute, and the 

 self-contradictory. We cannot be more than 

 certain, nor say what is " absolute morality," 

 any more than we can say what is that absolute 

 health which is independent of our physical con- 

 stitutions. The attempt to get beyond this is an 

 attempt to get off our own shadows; and only 

 leads to a show of absolute conclusions at the 

 price of finding them to be meaningless and ar- 

 bitrary. And, finally, to use a much-abused 

 term, the moral law is clearly " objective," if it 

 is meant by that phrase that it docs not vary 

 arbitrarily with the fancies of different men, but 

 expresses truths about human nature as sure and 

 final as the truths of astronomy ; though, if ob- 

 jective be used to imply an existence indepen- 

 dent altogether of the constitution of our minds, 



we can only reply that such words are meaning- 

 less. 



The unbeliever, then, cannot admit that he 

 has really lost- anything. If it be still asked what 

 he has gained, he may reply that he has escaped 

 from a skepticism of the most distressing kind. 

 That creed is least skeptical in the practical sense 

 which is most conducive to hope. When the 

 early Christians believed in a coming millennium, 

 or modern revolutionists in the perfectibility of 

 the species, each creed must have been stimulat- 

 ing. The vision of the early triumph of the right 

 was not the cause, but the effect, of a faith, 

 flushed with excessive confidence, and- capable of 

 transforming, if not of regenerating, society. The 

 difference is characteristic. In dropping the be- 

 lief in a millennium for a belief in progress, the 

 unbeliever holds that he is dropping the shadow 

 for the substance. The hopes of the believer 

 point to dream-land and therefore to a world of 

 catastrophes and surprises. They suggest con- 

 vulsions instead of development. Everything is 

 to be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of 

 an eye, at the sound of a supernatural trumpet. 

 The world has been, and therefore may be, the 

 scene of tremendous and spasmodic transforma- 

 tions, to be anticipated only in virtue of super- 

 natural knowledge. God came upon earth to 

 reveal the one truth, and to establish his divine 

 kingdom. Strange to say, the light has grown 

 dim as knowledge has advanced, and, when the 

 next catastrophe occurs, faith may have disap- 

 peared from the world. The new kingdom has 

 so little attracted the allegiance of mankind that 

 the moral standard has improved slowly, if at all, 

 and has often improved by absolute defiance of 

 the acknowledged representatives of the ruler. 

 The only hope is in another catastrophe which 

 may shatter to pieces the whole existing order, 

 and introduce a new system, in which good and 

 evil, hitherto so intimately blended, will be eter- 

 nally divided. So strongly does this conviction 

 color the believer's view, that the last defense of 

 orthodox theory rests on a scientific argument to 

 prove that the universe must have gone through 

 a complete catastrophe within some finite period, 

 and will probably have another before long — 

 which is very consoling, and proves the existence 

 of God. 



What better proof that belief is, in fact, 

 skepticism ? — that it obtains a show of certainty 

 by banishing all certainty from the world of ex- 

 perience to place it in an arbitrary world of ab- 

 stractions ? The assumption, which underlies all 

 scientific reasoning, of the necessity of judging 



