History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3

Still, though much of this has vanished, enough remains to show what the theological spirit is, and to justify a belief, that nothing but the pressure of public opinion prevents it from breaking out into its former extravagance. Many of the clergy persist in attacking the pleasures of the world, forgetting that, not only the world, but all which the world contains, is the work of the Almighty, and that the instincts and desires, which they stigmatise as unholy, are part of his gifts to man. They have yet to learn, that our appetites, being as much a portion of ourselves as any other quality we possess, ought to be indulged, otherwise the whole individual is not developed. If a man suppresses part of himself, he becomes maimed and shorn. The proper limit to self-indulgence is, that he shall neither hurt himself nor hurt others. Short of this, everything is lawful. It is more than lawful; it is necessary. He who abstains from safe and moderate gratification of the senses, lets some of his essential faculties fall into abeyance, and must, on that account, be deemed imperfect and unfinished. Such an one is incomplete; he is crippled; he has never reached his full stature. He may be a monk; he may be a saint; but a man he is not. And now, more than ever, do we want true and genuine men. No previous age has had so much work to do, and, to accomplish that work, we need robust and vigorous natures, whose every function has been freely exercised without let or hindrance. Never before, was the practice of life so arduous; never were the problems presented to the human mind so numerous, or so complicated. Every addition to our knowledge, every fresh idea, opens up new difficulties, and gives birth to new combinations. Under this accumulated pressure, we shall assuredly sink, if we imitate the credulity of our forefathers, who allowed their energies to be cramped and weakened by those pernicious notions, which the clergy, partly from ignorance, and partly from interest, have, in every age, palmed on the people, and have, thereby, diminished the national happiness, and retarded the march of national prosperity.

In the same way, we constantly hear of the evils of wealth, and of the sinfulness of loving money; although it is certain that, after the love of knowledge, there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of money. It is to the love of money that we owe all trade and commerce; in other words, the possession of every comfort and luxury which our own country is unable to supply. Trade and commerce have made us familiar with the productions of many lands, have awakened curiosity, have widened our ideas by bringing us in contact with nations of various manners, speech, and thought, have supplied an outlet for energies which would otherwise have been pent up and wasted, have accustomed men to habits of enterprise, forethought, and calculation, have, moreover, communicated to us many arts of great utility, and have put us in possession of some of the most valuable remedies with which we are acquainted, either to save life or to lessen pain. These things we owe to the love of money. If theologians could succeed in their desire to destroy that love, all these things would cease, and we should relapse into comparative barbarism. The love of money, like all our appetites, is liable to abuse; but to declaim against it as evil in itself, and, above all, to represent it as a feeling, the indulgence of which provokes the wrath of God, is to betray an ignorance, natural, perhaps, in former ages, but shameful in our time, particularly when it proceeds from men who give themselves out as public teachers, and profess that it is their mission to enlighten the world.

Injurious, however, as all this is to the best interests of society, it is nothing in comparison with the doctrines formerly advocated by the Scotch divines. What their ideas were, I have shown from their own sermons, the reading of which has been the most painful literary task I ever undertook, since, in addition to the narrowness and the dogmatism which even the best of such compositions contain, there is, in these productions, a hardness of heart, an austerity of temper, a want of sympathy with human happiness, and a hatred of human nature, such as have rarely been exhibited in any age, and, I rejoice to think, have never been exhibited in any other Protestant country. These things, I have resuscitated from the oblivion in which they had long been buried, partly because it was necessary to do so in order to understand the history of the Scotch mind, and partly because I desired to show what the tendency of theologians is, when that tendency is uncontrolled. Protestants, generally, are too apt to suppose that there is something in their creed which protects them against those hurtful extravagances which have been, and, to a certain extent, still are, practised in the Catholic Church. Never was a greater mistake. There is but one protection against the tyranny of any class; and that is, to give that class very little power. Whatever the pretensions of any body of men may be, however smooth their language, and however plausible their claims, they are sure to abuse power, if much of it is conferred on them. The entire history of the world affords no instance to the contrary. In Catholic countries, France alone excepted, the clergy have more authority than in Protestant countries. Therefore, in Catholic countries, they do more harm than in Protestant countries, and their peculiar views are developed with greater freedom. The difference depends, not on the nature of the creed, but on the power of the class. This is very apparent in Scotland, where the clergy, being supreme, did, Protestants though they were, imitate the ascetic, the unsocial, and the cruel doctrines, which, in the Catholic Church, gave rise to convents, fastings, scourgings, and all the other appliances of an uncouth and ungenial superstition.

Indeed, the Scotch divines, in some of their theories, went beyond any section of the Catholic Church, except the Spanish. They sought to destroy, not only human pleasures, but also human affections. They held that our affections are necessarily connected with our lusts, and that we must, therefore, wean ourselves from them as earthly vanities.606 A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people, that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish.607 They might go; none but their wives and children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with breaking the Sabbath. So, too, did the clergy teach, that on no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man, unless his opinions were orthodox.608 What need for him to live? Indeed, they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions at all, and that the proper course was, to visit him with sharp and immediate punishment.609 Going yet further, they broke the domestic ties, and set parents against their offspring. They taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay his own boy sooner than allow him to propagate error.610 As if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which our nature is capable, the love of a mother for her son. Into that sanctuary, they dared to intrude; into that, they thrust their gaunt and ungentle forms. If a mother held opinions of which they disapproved, they did not scruple to invade her household, take away her children, and forbid her to hold communication with them.611 Or if, perchance, her son had incurred their displeasure, they were not satisfied with forcible separation, but they laboured to corrupt her heart, and harden it against her child, so that she might be privy to the act. In one of these cases, mentioned in the records of the church of Glasgow, the Kirk-Session of that town summoned before them a woman, merely because she had received into her house her own son, after the clergy had excommunicated him. So effectually did they work upon her mind, that they induced her to promise, not only that she would shut her door against her child, but that she would aid in bringing him to punishment. She had sinned in loving him; she had sinned, even, in giving him shelter; but, says the record, ‘she promised not to do it again, and to tell the magistrates when he comes next to her.’612

She promised not to do it again. She promised to forget him, whom she had born of her womb and suckled at her breast. She promised to forget her boy, who had ofttimes crept to her knees, who had slept in her bosom, and whose tender frame she had watched over and nursed. All the dearest associations of the past, all that the most exquisite form of human affection can give or receive, all that delights the memory, all that brightens the prospect of life, all vanished, all passed away from the mind of this poor woman, at the bidding of her spiritual masters. At one fell swoop, all were gone. So potent were the arts of these men, that they persuaded the mother to conspire against her son, that she might deliver him up to them. They defiled her nature, by purging it of its love. From that day her soul was polluted. She was lost to herself, as well as lost to her son. To hear of such things is enough to make one's blood surge again, and raise a tempest in our inmost nature. But to have seen them, to have lived in the midst of them, and yet not to have rebelled against them, is to us utterly inconceivable, and proves in how complete a thraldom the Scotch were held, and how thoroughly their minds, as well as their bodies, were enslaved.

What more need I say? What further evidence need I bring to elucidate the real character of one of the most detestable tyrannies ever seen on the earth? When the Scotch Kirk was at the height of its power, we may search history in vain for any institution which can compete with it, except the Spanish Inquisition. Between these two, there is a close and intimate analogy. Both were intolerant, both were cruel, both made war upon the finest parts of human nature, and both destroyed every vestige of religions freedom. One difference, however, there was, of vast importance. In political matters, the Church, which was servile in Spain, was rebellious in Scotland. Hence the Scotch always had one direction in which they could speak and act with unrestrained liberty. In politics, they found their vent. There, the mind was free. And this was their salvation. This saved them from the fate of Spain, by securing to them the exercise of those faculties which otherwise would have lain dormant, if, indeed, they had not been entirely destroyed by that long and enfeebling servitude in which their clergy retained them, and from which, but for this favourable circumstance, no escape would have been open.

CHAPTER V

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SCOTCH INTELLECT DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

To complete the history and analysis of the Scotch mind, I have now to examine the peculiar intellectual movement which appeared in the eighteenth century, and which, for several reasons, deserves careful attention. It was essentially a reaction against that theological spirit which predominated during the seventeenth century. Such a reaction would hardly have been possible, except for the fact which I have already noticed, namely, that the political activity which produced the rebellion against the Stuarts, saved the Scotch mind from stagnating, and prevented that deep slumber into which the progress of superstition would naturally have thrown it. The long and stubborn conflict with a despotic government, kept alive a certain alertness and vigour of understanding, which survived the struggle that gave it birth. When the contest was ended, and peace was restored, the faculties which, for three generations, had been exercised in resisting the executive authority, sought other employment, and found another field in which they could disport themselves. Hence it was, that the boldness which, in the seventeenth century, was practical, became, in the eighteenth century, speculative, and produced a literature, which attempted to unsettle former opinions, and to disturb the ancient landmarks of the human mind. The movement was revolutionary, and bore the same relation to ecclesiastical tyranny, which the previous movement had borne to political tyranny. But this new rebellion had one striking characteristic. In nearly every other country, when the intellect has fairly arrayed itself against the exclusive pretensions of the Church, it has happened that the secular philosophy, which has been engendered, has been an inductive philosophy, taking for its basis individual and specific experience, and seeking, by that means, to overthrow the general and traditional notions, on which all church power is founded. The plan has been, to refuse to accept principles which could not be substantiated by facts; while the opposite and theological plan is, to force the facts to yield to the principles. In the former case, experience precedes theory; in the latter case, theory precedes experience, and controls it. In theology, certain principles are taken for granted; and, it being deemed impious to question them, all that remains for us is to reason from them downwards. This is the deductive method. On the other hand, the inductive method will concede nothing, but insists upon reasoning upwards, and demands that we shall have the liberty of ascertaining the principles for ourselves. In a complete scheme of our knowledge, and when all our resources are fully developed and marshalled into order, as they must eventually be, the two methods will be, not hostile, but supplementary, and will be combined into a single system. At present, however, we are very far from such a result; and not only is every mind more prone to one method than to another, but we find, historically, that different ages and different countries have been characterised by the extent to which one of these two schemes has predominated; and we also find, that a study of this antagonism is the surest way of understanding the intellectual condition of any period.

That the inductive philosophy is even more marked by its secular tendencies than by its scientific ones, will be evident to whoever observes the epochs in which it has been most active, and has possessed most adherents. Of this, the history of the French mind, in the eighteenth century, affords a good instance, where, after the death of Louis XIV., we may clearly trace the connexion between the growth of the inductive method, and the subsequent overthrow of the Gallican Church. In England, too, the rise of the Baconian philosophy, with its determination to subordinate ancient principles to modern experience, was the heaviest blow which has ever been inflicted on the theologians, whose method is to begin, not with experience, but with principles, which are said to be inscrutable, and which we are bound to believe without further difficulty. And I need hardly remind the reader, that scarcely was that philosophy established among us, when it produced those bold inquiries which quickly ended in the downfall of the English Church under Charles I. From that terrible defeat, our clergy did, for a time, partly rally; but as their apparent success, in the reign of Charles II., was owing to political changes, and not to social ones, they were unable to recover their hold over society, and, unless the nation should retrograde, there is no possibility that they ever should recover it. Over the inferior order of minds, they still wield great influence; but the Baconian philosophy, by bringing their favourite method into disrepute, has sapped the very base of their system. From the moment that their mode of investigation was discredited, the secret of their power was gone. From the moment that men began to insist on inquiring into the validity of first principles, instead of accepting them without inquiry, and humbly submitting to them as matters of faith and of necessary belief; from that moment, the theologians, driven from one post to another, and constantly receding before the pressure of advancing knowledge, have been forced to abandon entrenchment after entrenchment, until what they have retained of their former territory is hardly worth the struggle. As a last resource, they, at the close of the eighteenth century, determined to use the weapons of their opponents; and Paley and his successors, enlarging the scheme which Ray and Derham had feebly sketched, endeavoured, by a skilful employment of the inductive method, to compensate their party for the failure of the deductive one. But their project, though ably conceived, has come to naught. It is now generally admitted, that nothing can be made of it, and that it is impossible to establish the old theological premises by a chain of inductive reasoning. Respecting this, the most eminent philosophers agree with the most eminent theologians; and, since the time of Kant in Germany, and of Coleridge in England, none of our ablest men, even among divines themselves, have recurred to a plan which Paley, indeed, pursued with vigour, but of which our Bridgewater Treatises, our Prize-Essays, and such schoolboy productions, are poor and barren imitations.613 No great thinkers now follow this course in matters of religion. On the contrary, they prefer the safer, as well as the more philosophic, method, of dealing with these subjects on transcendental grounds, frankly confessing that they elude the grasp of that inductive philosophy which, in the department of science, has achieved such signal triumphs.

The opposition of these two methods, and the inapplicability of the inductive method to theological pursuits being thus apparent, it is not strange that the Scotch should have adopted one of the methods with great zeal, and to the almost complete exclusion of the other. Scotland, being essentially theological, followed the theological plan. The intellectual history of that country, in the seventeenth century, is almost entirely the history of theology. With the single exception of Napier, who was born in the middle of the sixteenth century, all the most vigorous thinkers were divines. In physical science, scarcely anything was done.614 There was no poetry, no drama, no original philosophy, no fine compositions, no secular literature, now worth reading.615 The only men of real influence were the clergy. They governed the nation and the pulpit was the chief engine of their power. From the pulpit, they moved all classes and all sorts intellects; the highest as well as the lowest. There, they instructed them, and threatened them; saying whatever they liked, and knowing that what they said would be believed.616 But all their sermons, and all their controversial writings, are eminently deductive; not of them attempts an inductive argument. The idea of such a thing never entered their heads. They assumed the truth of their own religion and moral notions, most of which they had borrowed from antiquity; they made those notions the major premises of their syllogisms, and from them they reasoned downwards till they obtained their conclusions. They never suspected that premises, taken from ancient times might be the result of the inductions of those times and that, as knowledge advanced, the inductions might need revising. They assumed, that God has given us first principles, and that He, having revealed them it would ill become us to scrutinize them. That He had revealed them, they took for granted, and deemed it unnecessary to prove.617 Their method being entirely deductive, all they were concerned with was to beware that no error crept in between the premises and the conclusions. And this part of their task they accomplished with great ability. They were acute dialecticians, and rarely blundered in what is termed the formal part of logic. In dealing with their premises after they obtained them, they were extremely skilful; how they obtained them, they were very heedless. That was a point they never examined with anything approaching to impartiality. According to their method, all that was requisite was, to draw inferences from what had been supernaturally communicated. On the other hand, the inductive method would have taught them that the first question was, whether or not they had been supernaturally communicated? They, as deductive reasoners, assumed the very preliminaries which inductive reasoners would have disputed. They proceeded from generals to particulars, instead of from particulars to generals. And they would not allow either themselves or others to sift the general propositions, which were to cover and control the particular facts. It was enough for them that the wider propositions were already established, and were to be treated according to the rules of the old and syllogistic logic. Indeed, they were so convinced of the impropriety of the inductive method, that they did not hesitate to assert, that it was by means of the syllogism that the Deity communicated His wishes to man.618

It was naturally to be expected, that the clergy, holding these views respecting the best means of arriving at truth, should do all in their power to bring over the nation to their side, and should labour to make their own method of investigation entirely supersede the opposite method. Nor was this a very difficult task. The prevailing credulity was one great point in their favour, inasmuch as it made men more willing to accept propositions than to scrutinise them. When the propositions were accepted, nothing was left but to reason from them; and the most active intellects in Scotland, being constantly engaged in this process, acquired complete mastery over it, and the dexterity they displayed increased its repute. Besides this, the clergy, who were its zealous champions, had monopolized all the sources of education, both public and private. In no other Protestant country, have they exercised such control over the universities; not only the doctrines taught, but also the mode of teaching them, being, in Scotland, placed under the supervision of the Church.619 This power they, of course, used to propagate their own plan of obtaining truth; and, as long as their power remained undiminished, it was hardly possible that the opposite, or inductive, plan should gain a hearing. Over grammar-schools, the clergy possessed an authority fully equal to that which they had in the universities.620 They also appointed and removed, at their own pleasure, teachers of every grade, from village schoolmasters to tutors in private families.621 In this way, each generation, as it arose, was brought under their influence, and made subject to their notions. Taking the mind of Scotland while it was young and flexible, they bent it to their own method. Hence, that method became supreme; it reigned every where; not a voice was lifted up against it; and no one had an idea that there was more than one path by which truth could be reached, or that the human understanding was of any use, except to deal deductively with premisses, which were not to be inductively examined.

The inductive or analytic spirit being thus unknown, and the deductive or synthetic spirit being alone favoured, it happened that, when, early in the eighteenth century, the circumstances already mentioned gave rise to a great intellectual movement, that movement, though new in its results, was not new in the method by which the results were obtained. A secular philosophy was, indeed, established, and the ablest men, instead of being theological, became scientific. But so completely had the theological plan occupied Scotland, that even philosophers were unable to escape from its method, and, as I am about to show, the inductive method exercised no influence over them. This most curious fact is the key to the history of Scotland in the eighteenth century, and explains many events which would otherwise appear incompatible with each other. It also suggests an analogy with Germany, where the deductive method has, for a long period, been equally prevalent, owing to precisely the same causes. In both countries, the secular movement of the eighteenth century was unable to become inductive; and this intellectual affinity between two such otherwise different nations, is, I have no doubt, the principal reason why the Scotch and German philosophies have so remarkably acted and reacted upon each other; Kant and Hamilton being the most finished specimens of their intercourse. To this, England forms a complete contrast. For more than a hundred and fifty years after the death of Bacon, the greatest English thinkers, Newton and Harvey excepted, were eminently inductive; nor was it until the nineteenth century that signs were clearly exhibited of a counter-movement, and an attempt was made to return in some degree to the deductive method.622 This we are, in many respects, justified in doing, because, in the progress of our knowledge, we have, by a long course of induction, arrived at several conclusions which we may safely treat deductively; that is to say, we may make them the major premisses of new arguments. The same process has been seen in France, where the exclusively inductive philosophy of the eighteenth century preceded a partial resuscitation of deductive philosophy in the nineteenth century. In Scotland, however, there have been no such vicissitudes. In that country, men have always been deductive; even the most original thinkers being unable to liberate themselves from the universal tendency, and being forced to accept a method which time had consecrated, and which was interwoven with all the associations of the national mind.