BOOKS.

MR. PERCY GREG ON FAITH AND DOUBT.*

MR. PERCY GREG'S speculative books are always worth study, and this certainly not the least of them. They would be im- proved, perhaps, by a little more sympathy with the points of view that are not the writer's own, for a discussion thrown into the form of dialogue needs something of real dramatic force to give it its fullest life. This dramatic force is given, we think, to the cynic, Lestrange, though it is made obvious enough that his cynicism is rather superficial, and that he cares much more to demolish those who half agree with him than those who wholly differ from him. Still, Lestrange and Cleveland are both real men. Not so Sterne and Merton, whose feeble Naturalism and Positivism are ninepins, only set up to be continually knocked down. And the same, to some extent, is true of Vere, the Christian. It is obvious enough, indeed, that the author has far more sympathy with Vere than he has with Sterne and Merton, but his own point of view is too strongly in sympathy with doubt, —we do not mean denial,—to admit of his throwing any strength of intellect into the part assigned to Vere in these discussions. We are told that " Vere was silent " (p. 49), when any man of force in Vere's place would certainly have desired to say something of considerable weight, and might have said something of what seems to us decisive weight. Again, after one of Lestrange's most vehement outbursts (p. 178), Vere, when at last he feebly interposes, has hardly anything of signifi- cance to say. It is, on the whole, the same throughout. Vere does not make himself really felt except against the Secularist and the Positivist. Against Lestrange and Cleveland,he is a shadow. Still, with all the shortcomings, as they appear to us, due to the central doubt—or suspense of judgment—which inspires the whole book, it is a powerful and instructive book for the doubter to read, and one which may further shake his doubt, though it can hardly sow in him anything like true conviction.

To criticise it with any success within the limits which we must observe, it is of course essential to select one or two single points, and not to attempt a discursive, much less a complete estimate. We prefer to select what seems to us the central idea of the book, the impossibility of certainty, the demonstrability of uncertainty, in matters of religious and apparently also moral faith. Here is part of a discussion on what is called " whole- some falsehood :"—

" Cleveland.—There will always be numbers of thoughtful people who cannot practically believe that what is beneficial is false, that what is palpably noxious can be true.

Sterne.—That is turning the matter wrong side out, inverting the relation between truth and profit. Cleveland.—Possibly ; but, if a rare argument, it is a common creed.

Is it a rare argument ?' I asked. 'One finds Christian preachers constantly resting the real force, laying the practical stress of their case on the service Christianity has rendered to mankind, on the impossibility of doing without it.'

Cleveland.—Tree. But if you put the matter to them clearly, make them see the meaning of their own reasonings, they will repu- diate them. Nobody, or hardly anybody, will say 'this must be true, because the belief in it is wholesome ;' but multitudes even of think. jag men practically think or feel so. Those who can let go a belief they feel to be essential to their own happiness and virtue, are few. Those who would like to see the general decay of a creed they think necessary to keep the multitude in order are perhaps fewer still.

Sterne.—Then are they right ? Do you believe that truth can ever do harm ?

Cleveland.—Do you deny that falsehood has done infinite good ?

Sterne.—Absolutely. I know what you mean ; but what good Christianity has accomplished has been due to its comparative truth, not to its absolute falsehood. And it has done enormous harm. Clifford hardly exaggerated its power for evil, strongly as he has stated it.

Cleveland.—Look what decaying Paganism was. Compare the latter state of Pagan Rome with Mediaeval Christianity, or again with primitive Protestantism, and you can hardly doubt that, frightful as have been the crimes committed in the name of religion, the balance to its credit is stupendous.

Sterne.—I don't know. Marcus Antoninus was equal to any Christian saint.

Cleveland.—Perhaps ; but the Stoics persuaded a few thoughtful men to believe their creed, of whom a very small minority practised it. Christianity persuaded millions to believe and thousands to practise, not perhaps what Christ would have recognised as his teaching, but something far better than the world had known before.

Sterne.—Bat that was in virtue, as I said, of its comparative truth, not of its absolute falsehood.

Cleveland.—No. The best thing the author of the 'Enigmas of Life' has ever said is that the one falsehood common to all creeds is • Without God: Negative Science and Natural Ethics. By Percy Greg. London : Hurst sad Blackett. 1883. the very principle of their life, the very basis of their power. They all assume certainty, all affect a Divine origin, and on this point they all lie. But it is precisely this affectation of certainty that gives them their hold on men. Probability may be the guide of life, but it guides because it is not recognised as probability, but taken for oer• tainty. Seriously persuade men that there is one chance in fifty that the sun will not rise to-morrow, and you will—disturb their sleep. Convince them that summer may possibly fail to return, and though you may prove to them that the chances in favour of its advent are a hundred to one, you will produce a visible effect upon the harvest.

Sterne.—Only with fools.

Cleveland.—Perhaps ; but on this point most men are fools by instinct. It is just because a vast probability is to us an apparent certainty that we do act on it'so confidently. If Christian preachers could make us feel that life is practically, immediately uncertain, et- certain for each of us each hour—if most of us believed, as one or two women I know do seem to believe, that it was doubtful whether going to sleep in health we should live to wake again—the idea would make us seriously uncomfortable, if it did not materially improve our conduct. We run risks, we do not incur certain and heavy sacrifices, on a chance, unless in the spirit of the gambler. No man was ever a martyr for a creed that he thought probably tree.

Sterne.—I suppose not.

Cleveland.—And no such creed would ever make converts or con- trol conduct. No man would forego an immediate deeply-desired pleasure, resist a strong present temptation, curb a passion he could certainly and instantly gratify because the chances were three to one that he had a soul, and six to one that his soul would be damned for yielding.

Sterne.—And that is just the weakness of all your theologies. Punishment and reward are alike probabilities to aA but the most devout, and therefore they are so ineffective.

Cleveland.—Well, but observe, you say falsehood must be injurious that religion has benefited mankind in virtue of its truth, not of the attendant fiction. Now, mark; the one thing common to all re- ligions, without which none of them could have gained a hearing; much less held its ground, controlled and governed multitudes, in- spired champions and martyrs, is the one thing certainly false. A God is at any rate prima fade probable; Heaven and Hell are almost necessary consequences of immortality, and immortality at least seems to human instinct and human thought very possible. Buddha's teaching of perpetual reincarnations till purification accomplished by trial is rewarded by absorption into the primary Life, strangely as it conflicts with other more popular doctrines, is consistent enough, and certainly no one can say that it may not be true. But Buddha, Moses, Christ, Mehemet, all tell us that they know these things; that they received their information supernaturally, and directly or in- directly from the Deity Himself. As they contradict each other, and every one contradicts every other on some important point, it is plain that in this statement three of the four must have been, and none of us now doubts that all were, mistaken. Bat, as the Enigmas of Life reminds us, it was this essential untruth, this false allegation, that gave strength to every one of these teachers. It was the falsehood that won a bearing for the truth. Even the peculiar personal char- acter of Christ, his attractive influence, magnetising all who came into contact with Him—exercising over all a power, attractive or re- pulsive, the strongest ever wielded by man—would not have sufficed to make Him more than a Jewish Rabbi of unusual reasonableness and popularity, whose teaching probably would have been sooner for- gotten than that of any other in proportion to its simplicity and excellence."

Now, if this proves what our author evidently supposes it to prove, it surely proves a great deal more,—either that there is no God at all, or that God, being what he is, cannot inspire certainty in the human mind at all, and that all certainty in such matters as concern his existence and his will is a ' note of error, not of inspiration. But this is surely not the author's belief. Cleveland, who states the argument thus strongly, inclines, with something almost approaching convic- tion, to a belief both in God and in the actual communication of his divine will and character on many points to man. Is it even conceivable that God should exist, and should impress his will and character on us, and yet should be intrinsically unable to let us know that it is he who speaks, and that what he speaks is certainty itself? Admit as much as you please the fallibility and weakness and the manifold errors of man, still, if there be in the Universe a source of infallible wisdom at all, it is at least as certain as it is that he is infallible, that he can communicate to us as much of his mind as our minds and apprehensions will admit, and, therefore, as regards any thought that is within our cognisance at all, that he can assure us of its corresponding as closely as our limited capacity will admit, with, the absolute truth of things.

What Cleveland, and Cleveland's alter ego, Mr. Percy Greg, seems to us wholly to ignore is this,—that religions certainty depends not on us, but on the controlling power which gives us grace to recognise it and the strength it confers. Speculative- writers are always trying to find some guarantee of certainty as' regards things above us in the constitution of our minds. No such guarantee is possible. The only way in which we can reach certainty is by subjecting our minds to that influence which a higher Power impresses on us, and im- presses us as more than human. This is what Christ means by requiring that his disciples should assume the attitude of a child to its parents, when they come to him to learn. The paradox, if paradox it be, of fallible certainty, has never been half so plainly and powerfully stated by any sceptic as it was by our Lord himself, when he said:—" Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." Is there any certainty greater than a child's of what—if it be within the compass of its apprehension—its father's will on this, or that, or the other sub- ject really is ? And yet, is there any impossibility greater than that such a child should be able to analyse and explain the source of that certainty ? General discussions, like Fichte's Kritik alter Offenbarung, on the a priori possibility of reve- lation, are more or less vitiated by this radical defect,— that they assume on our part the possibility of criticising the impression which a Power higher than ours is capable of making on our minds. Now, we can criticise what is beneath, but not what is above us. We can say with cer-

tainty, ' this is less than human,' but so soon as we are in the grasp of a power on every side higher than our own, our wisdom is to yield ourselves to it, and not to throw away all the help it gives us, on the very unreasonable ground that we cannot explain it to ourselves. The present writer knows exceedingly little of Buddhism, but his impression was that Sakya Muni, so far from affecting to reveal a higher power, taught only the doctrine of the vanity and thraldom of human desire,—in short, the blessedness of withdrawing ourselves from earthly attrac- tions. Mahommed's teaching is, on all the points on which it differs from the Christian, definitely below it in every way, and, indeed, below a good deal of the Jewish and even Pagan teach- ing too. Moses and the Prophets never pretended to give more than an initiatory teaching in the Divine Will, and their teach- ing looked forward to higher teaching beyond. It is prac- tically only in the case of Christ that a modern European 'could suppose that by submitting his mind to an influence in- finitely higher than any other which the centuries have disclosed to us, he might find the true source of conviction and of certainty. Take another passage

" Cleveland.—In politics, in economic science, I know what I believe ; so I think do you. But when it comes to those deepest, most fundamental problems on which turn the highest interests nut of nations but of mankind, our views not of a temporary expediency but of universal truth, I am not fool enough to be a partisan nor passionate enough to be positive. If on these subjects a man is clearly, firmly, Barely convinced, it is almost always—I will not say that he has decided without study but—that his mind was practically made up before he had mastered more than half the elements of the question.

Lestrange. —Then you accuse all clergymen at least of judging without hearing; for they, I suppose, are bound to be sure.

Cleveland.—They have to make up their minds at four-and- twenty ; and who at that age can have studied half the case ? If they have mastered the evidences in favour of Christianity, they are content ; if they have really investigated the great issues of Biblical criticism, they have been exceptionally careful and conscientious. But they have not taken in one half, hardly perhaps a tithe, of the vast ground their propositions really cover. A Christian believes in the Resurrection ; and believing in that he looks no further, he is dispensed from studying anything that conflicts with the doctrines on which that puts the seal of miraculous attestation.

Lestrange.—You don't believe that ?

Cleveland.—Nor disbelieve. I cannot think that it happened ; I cannot explain, can hardly conceive, how if it did not happen the Apostles come to believe it as they assuredly did—to live and die for that belief.

Vere.—And can you be content to remain in doubt on that funda- mental question of all ?

Cleveland.—Fundamental for yon, who are satisfied of it. Bat your phrase 'content to doubt' conveys the fundamental fallacy of all orthodox reasoning; the idea that belief is matter of will. On that, as on most other questions of paramount importance, I am forced to doubt, because the evidence is always conflicting and often incommensurable.

Lestrange.—Men, like me, you believe nothing ?

Cleveland.—By no means. I believe—bat I hardly know why I believe; I can very seldom say bow much I believe it. I believe —but I can quite believe that I may be mistaken. I believe—yet I can see strong reasons for disbelieving. I believe—and yet I doubt. Can that be called belief at all ?

Vere.—I suppose that few—save those who have resigned their intellect to some despotic authority outside themselves—fail to see, I will not say strong grounds for disbelief, but strong arguments against their firmest beliefs. Cleveland.—Aye; but your doubts are temporary, or do not amount to doubt. Where you believe with full conviction, on the fundamental points of your creed, you never think it possible that you should be wrong. Vere.—I don't know. What right have I to hold that the Church of eighteen centuries is wrong, and I right when we differ ? Cleveland.-1 don't know what right you have to differ from the Church Universal; bat you do. You may have no adequate ground for your belief, but—you believe. Now, on nearly every point of vital moment, I see both aides so clearly that, if I can feel which is the weightier, I cannot feel certain of either."

Now, surely the drift of that is that the strength of the belief always is, and ought to be, exactly commensurate with the balance of the arguments pro over the arguments con. But is

it ever really so with a reasonable man P Cleveland himself says (p. 74) that few men know exactly why they believe any- thing, and denies the inference which the author of the book wishes to draw, that in that case "our belief is worth nothing."

On the contrary, he maintains, and maintains very justly, that "a man's judgment is worth more, counts for more, than his

arguments." But that admission is virtually taken back again, when Cleveland takes credit to himself for being in a suspense of mind exactly corresponding to the balance of arguments pro and con. We hold rather, with Cardinal Newman, " Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of religion. I am

as sensitive as any one ; but I have never been able to see a connection between apprehending these difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject ; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate." What, for instance, can be a greater difficulty than to reconcile the doctrine of causation with the belief in any, however limited, free- will of your own ? And yet, how many there are who would say with us,—and, we think, rightly say,—that they have no more doubt of the existence of a power in themselves to deter- mine what they shall do, than they have of their own existence or sensations ? What can there be more difficulty about than thought-reading ? And yet, who, that knows the mass of evidence in favour of it, doubts the fact of thought-reading ? What is more difficult to understand than the vast—the infinite,—in- coherence of the world of dreams, in which we spend well-nigh a third of our existence, or than the rare and exceptional, bat marvellous lucidity which sometimes enables the dreamer to see far more than the wakes would see ; but who doubts the fact of incoherent dreaming, and who that knows the full evidence doubts the fact of occasional lucid dreaming? The

truth is, that no man of real wisdom keeps his intellect balanced in proportion to the arguments pro and con, but, like Cleveland, often trusts his judgment implicitly, though there be a great many arguments which,—if they were the only evidence on the

subject,—would make the belief held seem simply absurd.

Mr. Percy Greg has given us in this book many discussions of

great subtlety and depth, but he has not succeeded in proving that it is in any degree unreasonable to hold with. certainty many

truths against which it is, nevertheless, possible to advance the most striking arguments.