THOUGICES IN AID OF FAITH. • To demolish a philosophical system
is easier than to construct one which shall permanently and satisfactorily replace it. Works of negative criticism abound ; and their influence may be esti- mated by the ever-growing area of intellectual scepticism, moral despair, and 'paralyzed activity, or by the contracting circle of human hopes, desires, fears, and duties, according to the varying constitution of our common nature. Emotional minds in gene have a tendency to dwell in the ideal world of the infinite, the eternal, the divine. Rationalism indeed, may succeed in des- troying the system of transcendental faith, in which they have been educated, but unable to discover new and independent bases of belief, and incapable of living without religious support, they still move about in "worlds unrealized," mistrusting their reali- zation even in eternity, yet never absolutely convinced that these imperial conceptions do not exist, in higher regions, as the su- preme facts of the universal life. 'Unemotional minds, on the other hand, under the guidance of a negative criticism, incline to seek a solution of the difficulty in the high Alexandrian method. They cut the Gordian knot of speculation ; they sever the real from the ideal ; they retain the former end of the philo- sophic cord ; and seemingly throw away the latter, affirming either that there is no such end, and that its abscission is onlya negation of a chimera, or else that its existence concerns them in no appreciable degree. Of clear, hardy, and self-commanding intellect, they master their rebellious affections, limit their de- sires, circumscribe the field of their hopes, their aspirations, and their duties, and practically renounce all faith in the eternal and infinite realities. Such is a rough description of two extreme types of minds that have been seriously affected by the conclusions of negative ratiocination.
There is yet a third type. It includes those who, admitting the validity of the critical logic, admit it only so far as regards the system in which transcendental ideas have hitherto been em- bodied ; not as regards the ideas themselves. For them the ideas are eternal ; they take new forms, more or less appropriate, and ever-varying with the varying social and intellectual development of mankind. Thus the spirit of a divine faith never leaves them, though they discard its changing manifestations. Of these, some cling to the old conceptions, induced by arguments grounded on psychological considerations ; some by reasonings based on the principles of natural theology ; and others by their adhesion to the metaphysical method, either because they conceive it to be valid under some new form, or because the final result of &method groundless in itself, can be shown to be accordant with the latest conclusion of exact science ; whether that conclusion be capable of verification or only hypothetical. To this last type of minds, we refer the authoress of the work before us, Miss Sara Hennell, a lady whose unusual talents i should ensure her some recognition, n her own right ; while to those who can value intellectual liberty, even when they
dissent from its occasional consequences, they are invested with an enhanced and transmitted brilliance, as the mental appanage of one associated by name, lineage and purpose, with the high- minded and self-sustained author of the Inquiry into the Ortyin of Christianity.
The remarkable work, here mentioned, is one which has exer- cised an important primary influence on the mind of Miss Hennell. From it, she derives, if we rightly understand her, a practical sense of the value of the historical element in what may be called the general evolution of human thought and sentiment To this primordial constituent, which helps to form her present creed are aggregated, the instinctive principle of Feuer-
bach, who regards the presumed objective ideal of the reason and the heart, as the spontaneous product of the infinite power of thought and feeling ; "so that if you take from God the predi- cate of humanity, you take from him the predicate of deity " ; the psychological principle of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who by show- ing "the true causal connexion between one and another of the immediate links of creation within our own reach of observation," has at least, virtually demonstrated, in Miss Kennel's opinion, the necessity of a first cause "in a way that makes it impossible for the human mind, even in its weakest moods of morbid scep- ticism to fancy that it doubts of it ; " the recognition of a self- evolving process of metaphysical thought, illustrated in the bio- graphical history of philosophy by Mr. G. H. Lewes ; and the statistical generalization of Mr. Buckle who in attempting a numerical evaluation of human action suggests to Miss Hennell a mathematical purpose 'which' tends directly towards the true knowledge of God.'
The fourfold series of philosophical conception which presents our authoress, with her bases of belief, may now be bnefly ta- bulated as :-1. The historical sense of development ; 2. The in- stinctive subjective evolution ; 3. The psycholo,gictial development of human nature in chronological formation : and 4. The exhi- bition of arithmetically expressible results in the arrangements of human society. • Thoughts in Aid of Faith, gathered chiefly _Irons the recent Works in Theology and Philosophy. By Sara S. hiennell. Published by George Manwanug. To show more precisely the real or supposed significance of this historical method of theological exploration, demands an il- lustrating power, that if we possessed, we could hardly now exert. Translating into common language what we conceive to be the re- sults of Miss Hennell's investigation, we should say that she eventually arrives at a theistic or quasi-theistic belief; that this belief is founded on a persuasion that the metaphysical impulsion which generated the notion of a divine ideal, or absolute being in the human mind, emanates directly from the supreme causal power itself; that this persuasion is due to the nub-persuasion that Mr. Herbert Spencer has demonstrated the existence of a transcendant causality, and we suppose, indirectly if not directly, of the dependence of the succession of phenomena on this ulti- mate cause which may be conceived as a Divine Essence or en- circling mind, so that no mental or physical construction can proceed from it, which has not its justification which was not intended and inspired, and which is not valid and eternally true, not in its forms but in its spirit. In our apprehension, Miss Hennell proposes to vindicate the metaphysical process, and to assert its reality and its rights, in opposition to its heretical impugners, M. Comte and Mr. Lewes, whose Positivism, with a lady's power of monopolization she, however, absorbs into her own system of thought. We believe, moreover, that she refuses to consider Metaphysic a failure, only because she is convinced on psychological grounds, that there is a First Cause to which all continuous evolutions must be re- ferred; but we infer, that if Mr. Spencer had not demonstrated its necessity, she would be ready to admit the futility of the onto- logical system. By certain abstracting, generalizing, and puri- fying processes, men have been led onward in a purely Idealistic line, to the sublime conception of philosophic Monotheism. The fact in itself, however, remarkable as it is, would not be its own voucher. It suggests a truth but it does not establish it. Hap- pily science moving in ah independent parallel, intervenes in the very moment when its intervention is most required. Positivism, hard and realistic, under its earlier professors' acquires, under Mr. Spencer's inspirations, a transcendant and divine character. The " vivida vis ' of this really original thinker, has, if Miss Hennell rightly inform us, overleaped the " flammantia mcenia mundi " ; he has proved that there is an unknown, an unknow able ; he has shown that all the consequents of time have their one antecedent in eternity ; that all forms, are more or less re- motely, manifestations of its power • that the homogeneous germ out of which man has been constructed by the gradual super- addition of accumulative accretions, was brought into being and has been gradually developed by it. Such at least is Miss Hen- nell's faith, if we do not misconstrue her exposition of it ; for she deals, in truth, with problems so remote and atherially subtle, that she is not easily intelligible. Her loftiness of aim ; her purity of purpose ; her ardent religiosity are undeniable. In her spiritual intrepidity she soars up, larklike, into the azure fields of air, and as she modulates her Orphio song, she may well say with the Italian poet whom our English Shelley has here translated :- "My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few, That fitly will conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost ihou entertain."
Any resetting, however, of an old argument is at all times wel- come. We cannot but admire the effort, if we do not subscribe to the opinion, which would pronounce it successful. Something of metaphysics we, too, have read. Almost we may say that we were born in the Ontological Arcadia. " Auch ich war in Areadien geboren." Yet we have little hope now that we shall ever recover the patriotic aspirations that glorified our earlier life. Essences, entities absolutes, live for us no longer in the faith of reason. If psychology is to reestablish their empire, it must convert them into facts, if not of observation, yet at least of inference. If it succeed in proving the objective existence of the one Divine Being, to whom all nature seems to tend, then honour to psycho- logy! Meanwhile, however splendid the ultimate conception of the metaphysical procedure may be, as a conception, it would still remain a mere abstraction, if we rightly apprehend our authoress, unless the more sacred of the exact sciences elevated it into reality. Neither of Miss Hennell's intellectual opponents denies the incalculable services which the metaphysical evolution has conferred on the race. They deny only that the method is in itself fruit-bearing and conclusive. We refrain from mere nega- tive criticism on Miss Hennell's statement. We doubt, however, if she has always rightly apprehended the great French thinker or his expositor; whose views, it may be said, in passing, differ widely in some essential respects from those of the founder of Positivism.
From an investigation, partly historical, partly philosophical, Miss Hennell advances to a consideration of the practical results of her method. Starting from the historical point of view, and recognizing in Jesus one "whom God saw fit to raise up," she adopts the idea of divineness or of a divine agency in the evolu- tion of humanity, instinctive, psychological, and progressive in time. In her view, the gradual exaltation and successive purifi- cation of thereligions idea from the gods to God, to the God-man of theologians, and the abstract humanity of philosophical specu- latists, was in the nature of a providential dispensation, educating the race, and gradually instituting its final religion. The general intention and character of Divine Providence are, our Essayist thinks, ascertainable by a scientific and. systematic estimate of the true bearing of its acts, not by a merely subjective apprehension. As a large acquaintance with the overt manifestations of human nature corrects the aberrations of our personal judgment, and is the condition of the formation of moral science ; so intellectual accuracy in the collection and classification of the overt manifes- tations of God in history, especially the history of man, "is re- quired in order to bring our religion also into the same elevated position with our morality. We have to use our knowledge of humanity ; that is, not in the least as a measure of the Divine nature, but only as a firm ground obtained from which to make our observations." Thus, "the essential difference," continues our authoress, "between the old metaphysics and, the new is this ; that our knowledge of deity, or of the guiding principle of nature, has to be gained, not by the mere transference of the image of the mind of man, as if a thing of limited kind could be sup- posed capable of giving us acquaintance with the mind of God.; but, by following of that ordinary method which precisely, by means of its commencing upon the outer surface, with the most material and simply sensational impression of its subject, renders the knowledge finally gained the reflection of the whole conscious- ness of universal nature."
Conceiving every natural science to have at the beginning its
corresponding theology, Miss Hennell pronounces that the mytho- logical worship of humanity is now, in its turn, subsiding into the one common ground of science. She would say, in fact, that as astrology was the forerunner of astronomy, and alchemy of chemistry, so the old factitious theology is destined to grow into a new natural theology. Accordingly, she affirms that the science of theology is the perception that it is the proper mode of attaining to all sorts of abstract conceptions and is the rightful result out of all theologies ; while itsphilosopliy is the perception that "the theological theory of religion has had its proper fruit when it has produced a science of religion." To make her mean- ing clear and explicit, Miss Mennen goes on to state that " this science consists in recognizing the theory in the new character of beggination and poetry, now seen to be intrinsically and scienti- fically the highest organ of the divine inspiration which is the life of the world."
Of the two proclaimed results of the old theology, divine poetry and human morality, Miss Kennel has passed over the former,
without favouring us with any separate exposition of her views. In her indications of a.science of morality, on the othefhand, she has entered fully into a consideration of the nature and objects of ethical knowledge. Her speculations, under this head, are ex- ceedingly interesting, and, we think, generally sound, at any rate in their results. The practical application of her principle, at the close of the volume, will be regarded as satisfactory only by that select audience which has attained that "victorious largeness of mind" which is the aim of her religion, since the new theology offers no satisfaction to the need for consolation ex- perienced by men when they mourn for those who are gone. Rather "in alternate hope and pang of separation does it appear that we are destined to fulfil the human course to the end : love and sorrow, as twin genii, attending upon us inseparably for ever." There are, however, both wisdom and beauty apparent in the reflections with which kiss Mennen endeavours to reconcile us with the limitations of our human lot ; reflections which al- ways evince a magnanimous natural piety.
We have said nothing of the arrangement of material or of the
literary expression adopted in this almost unique volume. The arrangement may be designated autobiographical, since the essay reflects the various modifications of faith or opinion, of the writer, in the order in which they were produced, by the works that have acknowledgedlv suggested. and assisted Miss Hennell's thoughtful and is thus apprepriately accordant with her presiding idea of historical evolution. The literary expression is often powerful, and eloquent ; sometimes terse and emphatic. We could, however, desiderate a more simple, direct and lucid style of composition. The construction of the sentences is often painfully Teutonic, and there are passages which require as it were retrans- lation from German-English into the plain old, unpretending, mother-tongue. That Miss Kennel has an cifiluent, if perplexed style, probably none will deny. If retaining its poetical richness she could simplify and clear it, we should consider it worthy of higher praise. . In noticing this selection of Thoughts in aid of Faith, we have pronounced no decisive opinion on the value of the method em- ployed. We think it right, so far as it is within our power, to re- port every note-worthy book, be its intellectual principles or re- ligious conclusions what they may. The conditions, however, under which we write, impose on us the duty, in cases resembling the present, of acting as impartial expositors, not as judges. We neither vindicate nor condemn, we only report and. comment. n will be seen that Miss Kennel's book is addressed not to those who are sustained by the religion of a historical Christianity but to those who have their religion to seek—who require Thoughts in Aid of Faith.
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