POSITIVISM.
TN another column will be found a temperate and able letter from
a Positivist, who is dissatisfied with our remarks on the Secular- ism of the working classes a fortnight ago. His letter affords us a good opportunity for saying a few words on one of the greatest and deepest subjects that man can discuss— and in regard to which forms of expression matter little indeed in comparison with the faith expressed. But we may just say in answer to our correspondent's complaint, that we spoke of complete suspense of faith as indicating in most men, at least, a deficiency, if not a disease of mind—that we should enter no similar protest against the expression of the converse conviction on the part of any earnest Positivist who, so long as he remains in that attitude of mind, would naturally speak of Chris- tians as either the victims of a weak tradition, succumbing to the authority of ages, or as morbid fanatics. But how we may account for the Positivist's errors, how he accounts for what he regards as our errors, is a matter of the slightest possible moment, compared with the much greater question where it is that our faiths begin to diverge, where the point lies to which we must go back if we would ever come to an understanding at all. We assume that the true Positivist has something that stands to him in lieu of what we hold to be a faith, because not only our correspondent's letter, but the whole tone of modern Positivists, proves that this is the fact. There are principles though not Persons which they regard as sacred, which they cling to as a real, if a poor, equivalent for the trust they have lost or not yet gained. And we regard the fact that this is so as the one good augury for a mutual understanding on these subjects. For, did we not know that there are some principles on which Positivists rest with ardent conviction, if not peace, we should feel as if there were a radical difference of nature between them and us, and as if, therefore, discussion were simply hopeless.
One such principle appears to be the Positivist's jealous desire to have a basis of/act for every belief. One of his reasons for rejecting any defined spiritual creed is, that it seems based on human wishes or metaphysical dreams and not on fact. So long as Force, he says, was discussed by the metaphysicians, the laws of Force remained a secret ; so soon as it was taken in hand by the impartial observation of natural philosophers, its true laws were disclosed. Why then, he asks, discuss the nature of the First Cause, instead of observing its effects, instead of taking note of the history of the universe and de- ducing laws from the phenomena it registers ? Now we say in reply, let Positivists cling to this eager respect for Fact as the root of all intellectual and moral veracity, and as a principle which seems to us certain to issue in an ultimate return to Christian faith, if only no narrow and arbitrary definition of "fact" be virtually assumed without anxious study. Let the actual methods and ex- ternal development of the first cause be studied in the mighty cha- racters that are engraved on the surface of the universe and the evolution of human history in the closest way; take every guarantee you please against ascribing to the sick dreams of morbid fancy a validity to which the sweep of civilizing ages refutes their claim; only in your anxiety for facts, in your eagerness to guard against subjective dreams, do not be superficial, do not take the mere surface of humanity instead of its deepest depths. Look fairly at all the facts ; look into the crater of the social volcano as well as at the temporary prosperity of a commercial age; look at the throes of a dissolving empire as well as at the sleep of a stationary generation;
realize the inner life of the world, not its mere surface-life ; estimate honestly the moral life of individual men through the centuries of poli- tical decadence, of arrested progress, of recovery, and then ask your- selves honestly—where has been the moral spring of the true upward force, in science or in faith? Do not, like Mr. Buckle, amuse yourselves with singling out all the terrible sins and dangers to which bigotry has given rise, any more than in singling out, like the genuine eccle- siastical historian, all the fancied coincidences between orthodoxy and civilization, but try the depths of the problem; ask whether the Church of the middle ages could have done what it did with- out faith—whether Luther and his friends could have done what they did withput faith—whether the Puritan power achieved its triumphs in virtue of its faith or of its narrow fanaticism—whether the eighteenth century was the better or the worse for its indifference to spiritual things—whether the French fury of liberty, equality, fraternity, and Atheism, teaches us no lesson as to the true governing power in the human soul—whether, in our own day, mere Science does not stand entirely outside the deepest. springs of human thought and hope, and the secret life of the human will. The vice of ordinary Positivist thought is not that it takes its stand upon Fact, but on such a thin outside crust of Fact. The Positivist school of history begins generalizing on the slenderest possible accumulation of facts ; it despises biography because biography is so special, forgetting that the interior of human life is never seen at all without such specializa- tion, and that to generalize on the exterior alone, as it does, is to condemn itself. This was the gross blunder of Comte, and his Eng- lish followers seem to be rushing into the same pitfal, if we may judge by the recent war in the Westminster Review. Our correspon- dent's analogy between the error of studying Force by psychological processes, and the error of studying the deeper life of the universe in the mere subjective life of Christians, contains some truth, but much error. It was a mistake to analyze the idea of Force in lieu of observing the outward fact; but how is the inner life of the world to be observed at all except by the inner sense? Force was an outward fact, and might be treated as such. Conscience, faith, remorse, hope, zeal, in short the inner life of the world is an inner fact, and cannot be observed at all without some appeal to the inner sense. Let that appeal be made in the widest possible way, by studying the deepest and truest life, not of one man in one age, but of different men in every age, and then judge by the result, whether the Supernatural is a real and true conservative and progressive force in human society or not,—whether that conservative and progressive force does not stream out of the Christian revelation as its true centre and fountain. We are content to abide by the issue of this inquiry.
Again, as to morality. Our correspondent has entirely misap- prehended us in supposing that we should deny that an absolute mo- rality may possess the minds of Secularists and Positivists. That is the common ground on which alone we could reason with them. We hold, indeed, that such a morality must implicitly rest on the righteous will of a perfect God, without which all human aspiration would be mere vague idealism groping onward in a world of shadows. But what the Positivist regards as the mechanical elevation and expan- sion of human character by an inherent elasticity of its own' we ascribe to the gradual power of Divine light, searching into its dark and narrow folds. We not only admit, but maintain, that Greece and Rome contributed very much to the true human ethics—much of breadth, and insight, and upright strength, which the Jewish nation had not to give. The Germans, too, brought yet higher human qualities to the common stock. All this is most true. But what is the truth to which it points ? We find nations of far higher intellectual and wider moral and military and civil qualities, all coming to the Jewish Saviour, and confessing that in Him they could find what elsewhere they could not find—the crown and the consecration of their own characteristic virtues. Nay, we find the highest minds, both of Greece and Rome, passing the characteristic limits of Greek and Roman thought, and anticipating the ethical spirit of Christianity before they had themselves seen or accepted it. Socrates pours out a personal fervour of piety that is anything but Greek ; Marcus Aurelius meditates in a strain of devotion that is anything but Roman ; in other words, the highest types of these great national characters are found to be groping their way in the direction of the Christian revela- tion before they had known or confessed its power. What more striking evidence can be forthcoming to prove that the great tides and under-currents of heathen life were setting already in the direction of the great revelation?
Nothing illustrates this tendency more clearly than the ethics of suicide. Our correspondent mistakes us when he supposes`that we asserted that suicide, any more than sin in general, was peculiar to Secularists. We simply said that it was one of those sins— instinctively felt as sinful—which is demonstrably sinful, in most cases, only on Theistic principles ; nor do we doubt that in hundreds and thousands of cases suffering men have drunk the cup of anguish to its dregs only because that "for that cause" came they "to that hour." Of course Secularist mo- rality may prove the cowardice of escaping front a world of trouble where there is any service or aid yet to be rendered. But there are too many cases where life is only a burden to others as well as to the sufferer, and where no faith short of the deepest personal piety can withhold as from forestalling the will of God. Socrates has ex- pressed this in languag.: which shows clearly enough how lie would have welcomed the "desire of all nations," had it been given to his eyes to behold Him in whom the "thoughts of many hearts" were revealed. He says in the Phaedo : "Perhaps, however, it seems to you strange if in this case alone we have a principle without exceptions, and it never happens to man as in other cases, that there is a time when, and there are people for whom, it is better to die than to live. But for those for whom it is better to die, it seems to you strange, if for them it is an unholy act to benefit themselves, and if it is their duty to wait for some other benefactor ? . . . And it would appear," said Socrates, "that for the truth to be so is contrary to reason ; not so, however, for perhaps there is some reason in it. What is said, then, in secret concerning it, that we men are stationed, in some sense, as sentinels on guard, and that it is not right to release oneself from this, nor to ran away, seems to me a great saying, and not easy to see through. Not, however, but what the following seems to me, Cebe,s, to be well said, that the gods are our guardians, and that we men are to the gods one among their possessions. . . . Would not you, then, be angry with one of your own possessions, if it were to put itself to death without your giving any sign that you wished it to die, and if you had any means of retribution would you not inflict it ? . . . Perhaps, then, in this way, it is not irrational to maintain that one ought not to put oneself to death before God lays on us a certain necessity like the preseut one ?"
When the Positivist tells us that the highest Greek morality was alien to the Christian type, does he ponder on the noble character of Socrates, yearning for the moment when the veil would be stripped from the spiritual world, yet running manfully the race set before him and patiently waiting till the Athenian people became his blind "benefactors" by doing hint the only service which he thought it impious to do himself? Is modern Positivism further removed even from Christianity itself than from the faith of the man who said, "It is neither possible to destroy evil, Theodorus (for it is a neces- sity that there should be some resisting medium to good), nor is it possible for evil to have any place among the gods, but it environs our mortal nature and this earthly scene by a kind of necessity. Wherefore it is right to strive to flee thence as quickly as possible. But fleeing thence consists in being as like as possible to God. But likeness to God consists in becoming just and holy with discretion." Surely Positivism has no claim to the highest types of heathen mo- rality?
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