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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 35

Section I.—Disjoining Belief from Experience

Section I.—Disjoining Belief from Experience.

It has been remarked in the early part of this volume, that the primary and unsolicited provision of nature consists for the most part of pains and wants—that the means of soothing the one and satisfying the other, were the gradual and toilsome discovery of man, even now far from being perfected—that consequently all pleasure, and exemption from suffering, was the fruit of knowledge. If a man does not know the way to avoid or to remedy an impending pain, he will be compelled to suffer it: if he does not know the way to procure any particular pleasure, the pleasure will not seek him of its own accord, and he will, therefore, be obliged to forego it.

But all our knowledge with regard to pleasure and pain is derived from experience. To know the way of procuring the former and escaping the latter, some one must have made trial. Knowledge can only be instrumental for these purposes, when it is the statement and summary of the trials which have thus been made.

Now knowledge consists in the belief of certain facts: all useful knowledge, therefore (that is, all which can be instrumental in multiplying the enjoyments and diminishing the sufferings of this life), consists in believing facts conformable to experience—in believing the modes of producing pleasure and avoiding pain to be, in each particular case, such as actual trial indicates. It is on the conformity of belief with experience, therefore, that the attainment of pleasure and the prevention of misery, in every case without exception, is founded.

Such is the inestimable value, indeed, the essential and overwhelming necessity, of belief conformable to experience. Belief unconformable to experience is not applicable, in any degree, to the removal of unhappiness, or the production of enjoyment; and consequently is altogether useless. The whole utility of belief, therefore, consists in this conformity.

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To maintain and extend the alliance between belief and experience will thus appear to be incalculably the most important object of human endeavour. Whatever promotes such an attempt, must be considered as a most valuable instrument for the augmentation of happiness; since this is the only means by which it can be augmented. And conversely, whatever tends to disjoin belief from experience, must be regarded as crippling, to a greater or less extent, the sole engine by which our preservation even from incessant suffering is ensured, and tending to disqualify our mental faculties for purposes of temporal happiness.

Such is the injurious effect (with reference to the present life) of disjoining the two—or of making us believe anything uncertified by experience. Whoever acts upon such an uncertified persuasion, or induces any one else to act upon it, can never attain any benefit by it, and may occasion very serious evil. Indeed all human errors are only so many manifestations of this unsanctioned belief.

As all real facts, or instances of belief thus certified, mutually hang together and tend to support each other, so that he who acquires any one is thereby assisted and placed in a better condition for the acquisition of more—in the same manner all errors, or uncertificated persuasions, though heterogeneous and discordant one with another, yet conspire all to one common end, that of deranging the conformity of belief to experience. Each separate instance of this want of conformity engenders others, and renders the mind less likely to keep close to a conformable belief upon other occasions. Every particular instance, therefore, besides the miscalculations to which it may directly and of itself give birth, is injurious by the general habit of derangement which it creates in the mental system—by preparing the intellect to be at other periods the recipient of useless or uncertified belief. You cannot impress upon the mind one such persuasion, without rendering it liable to the incursions of others to any extent.

He, for example, who reposes faith in the accounts of Lilliput and Brobdignag, must have a mind so constituted, as to believe on many other occasions without the warrant of experience. We should mark our sense of this by attaching less credit to his opinions, and describing him under appro- page 86 priate epithets of inferiority. We should readily admit that such a peculiarity of mind comparatively incapacitated him from directing either his own conduct or ours to any salutary purpose. If this disposition to uncertified belief spreads still farther in his mind, and manifests itself in a considerable number of cases, we then term it insanity. His belief then becomes not only useless for our guidance, but imminently dangerous and threatening to our security. Accordingly we do not permit it to direct even his own actions, but immediately subject his body to a foreign superintendence.

Such are the unhappy consequences produced by a deviation of belief from experience. This disjunction, when frequent and embracing subjects of importance, constitutes insanity, and renders an individual utterly incapable of providing for his own happiness, as well as a destructive foe to that of his fellow-creatures: When rare and confined to trifling subjects, it causes a proportionably slighter depravation of his mental faculties, but never fails to impair in a greater or less degree, his competency of judging for the welfare of himself and of others. It is most important to keep in mind, that madness with all its dreadful consequences is only a total divorce of belief from experience—that all intellectual weakness is the fruit of this divorce to a lesser extent—and that every separate instance in which such a disjunction is effected, by whatever cause it may be, lays the mind open to the attacks of other disjoining causes; thus creating a disease which is sure to spread.

Having thus exposed the enormous evils which result from the disjunction of belief from experience, I proceed to show the modes in which natural religion inevitably causes such a disjunction.

1. The fundamental tenet of natural religion is, the persuasion that there exists a Being, unseen, unheard, untouched, untasted, and unsmelt—his place of residence unknown—his shape and dimensions unknown—his original beginning undiscovered. This is what the negative terms invisible, omnipresent, infinite, and eternal, imply.

Now the very description of this Being obviously shows, that no one can ever have had any experience of his existence. To have experience of anything external to ourselves, page 87 supposes certain concomitant circumstances—the exercise of one of our senses—a definite time and place of existence—a particular size and figure. Without these concomitants, experience cannot take place, and the sublime conception of infinite attributes at once negatives them all. You cannot state that God is in a particular place, because that would imply that he was not in any other place—since the only intent of particularization is to exclude everything except that which is specified. Our persuasion, therefore, of God cannot be founded upon experience.

The very basis, therefore, of natural religion, is an article of extra-experimental belief, or of belief altogether unconformable to experience. It has a tendency, thus in the very outset, to introduce that mental depravation which we have demonstrated to be the inevitable result of this species of belief. I do not here intend to assert that the doctrine in question is untrue, but merely to point out the peculiarity of the evidence on which it rests—that it is a persuasion uncertified by experience, and, therefore, vitiating the intellect so far as regards mere temporal interests. Whether true or untrue, in either case, the very nature of the belief occasions it to produce the same disqualifying effect upon the mental faculties.

2. Our belief with regard to the original creative power of God, and the design with which it was exerted, is alike uncertified by experience. No man has ever had experience of the commencement of things: and, therefore, whatever account we admit as to their origin, our belief must be extra-experimental. If the interests of the present life require that our persuasion should never deviate from experience, they also require that we should not attempt to account for the original commencement of things—because it is obvious that experience must be entirely silent upon that subject.

The belief in design, as dictating the exertion of this creative power, is alike extra-experimental. Experience exhibits to us design only in man and animals; and in them its effects are confined to the displacement of matter, and the admotion or amotion of its particles to and from each other. This is all which experience shows us to be produced by design; and we cannot believe that it produces page 88 any other effects, without falling into the disease of extra-experimental persuasion.

Besides, to say that the human body, or the universe, was brought into the order which we now see, by design—this supposes a previous state in which the parts of the human body were lying about in a heap—fibres in one place, brain in another, membranes and muscles in a third—without the least tendency to combine together and form a whole. Design presupposes the existence of substances endued with certain properties, and can only be pretended to account for their transition, from one relative situation called confusion, to another called order. But has anyone ever had experience of this preliminary chaos?

Again, an omnipotent will is something which is by its very nature placed beyond the reach of experience. Were we permitted indeed to introduce the supposition of omnipotence, this would materially facilitate the explanation of all other difficult points, as well as that of the original of things. Anything will solve the difficulty, provided you are allowed to render it omnipotent. Instead of supposing a will which can perform everything, you may suppose fire or water which can perform everything, and all results are equally well explained. Why was Epicurus forced into such absurdities in attempting to explain all phenomena by the doctrine of atoms, or Thales by that of water? From the difficulty of reconciling these phenomena with atoms or water of limited power and properties. Had they dared to discard openly these limitations, the difficulty of the task would have vanished. When the fairy with her all-powerful wand has once been introduced, it is as easy to explain the sudden rise of a palace as of a cottage.

These considerations, we think, clearly demonstrate that all belief in design, as having been originally instrumental in forming the world, is completely extra-experimental.

3. Nor less so is the belief that the Deity will in a posthumous existence distribute to us certain pleasures and pains. It is plain that whatever be the evidence on which this persuasion is built, experience teaches us nothing about it.

4. Another case of extra-experimental conviction implanted by religion is, the belief of God's agency in the page 89 present life. As it is in this case that the mischiefs flowing from such uncertified belief assume the most determinate and palpable shape, we shall examine it at greater length than the rest.

You believe that the Deity interferes occasionally to modify the train of events in the present life. Your belief is avowedly unconformable to experience, for the very essence of the divine interposition is to be extrinsic and irreconcileable to the course of nature. But mark the farther consequences: You dethrone and cancel the authority of experience in every instance whatever; and you thus place yourself out of condition to prove any one fact, or to disprove any other.

What steps do you take to prove that a man has committed murder? You produce a witness who saw him level his pistol at the head of the deceased, heard the report, and beheld the man drop. But this testimony drives all its persuasive force from the warrant and countersign of experience. Without this it is perfectly useless. Unless I know by previous experience that eye-witnesses most commonly speak the truth—that a pistol ball takes the direction in which it is levelled and not the opposite—I should never be convinced, by the attestation of these particular facts, of that ulterior circumstance which you wish me to infer. To complete the proof, two things are requisite; the previous lessons of experience, and the applicability of these lessons to the present case. But no such application can take place unless the course of nature remains the same as it was before. A gratuitous assumption must therefore be made, that the course of nature continues inviolate and uniform. But to assume this in every particular case, is to assume the universal inviolability of the laws of nature.

Whoever therefore believes these laws to be violable at the will of an incomprehensible Being, completely debars himself from the application of all previous experience to the existing fact. If they are violable at all, why may they not have been violated in the case before us? No imaginable reason can be assigned for this—because in order to constitute a reason—in order to make a complete proof—you must presuppose that uniformity of the course of nature which your reason is intended to vindicate. page 90 Whether you assume her laws to be violable or inviolable, you must adhere to the same assumption throughout. If you say that they are inviolable, you cannot maintain them to be infringed in any particular case—if you hold that they are violable, you cannot assume them to be permanent and uniform in any one case.

If therefore you believe the agency of an incomprehensible Being in the affairs of this life, your belief is such as would, were it pursued consistently, exclude you from all application of past experience to the future—and therefore incapacitate you from contriving any defence against coming pains, or any modes of procuring pleasures.

Again, this belief also precludes you from applying the process of refutation, and thus from detecting any falsehood whatever. For no assertion can ever be refuted except by offering proof of some other assertion, and then appealing to experience for a certificate of the incompatibility of the two. A man clears himself from an alleged crime by proving an alibi. The whole virtue of this defence rests upon the presumption, that experience attests the impossibility of performing a certain act at more than a certain distance. If it is suggested that the laws of nature are violable—if it is questioned whether the previous lessons of experience are applicable to this particular case—then, inasmuch as no evidence of their applicability can be adduced, the process of disproof is at once nullified. The inviolability of the course of nature must be gratuitously assumed as the root from which all incompatibility between any two assertions, and therefore all proof of the falsehood of either, is derived.

Hence the belief of an unseen agent, infringing at pleasure the laws of nature, appears to be pregnant with the most destructive consequences. It discredits and renders inadmissible the lessons of experience: It vitiates irrecoverably the processes both of proof and refutation, thereby making truth incapable of being established, and falsehood incapable of being detected: It withdraws from us the power of distinguishing the true methods of procuring enjoyment or avoiding pain, from the false ones; and plunges us into the naked, inexperience and helpless condition of a new-born child—thereby qualifying us indeed for page 91 the kingdom of heaven, but leaving us wholly defenceless against the wants and sufferings of earth.

I do not indeed affirm that this extra-experimental belief has actually produced—what if adhered to with consistency, it ought to produce—an entire mistrust of all experience. The necessity for a general reliance on the stability of nature has been too powerful to be resisted—and therefore mankind have shuffled off the dangerous consequences by their usual resort of inconsistency—sometimes assuming the lessons of experience as supreme and incontestable, sometimes disregarding them as arbitrary and variable at the will of an incomprehensible Being. But though this extra-experimental belief has been thus only partially entertained and confined to a corner of the mind, its pernicious effects have still been very great—and I shall proceed to specify an instance of the manner in which it tends to disable the intellect, and to expunge all the criteria of truth and falsehood.

It is not many years since witchcraft was recognized and prohibited as an actual offence, and persons tried and condemned for committing it. To attempt a defence against such an accusation was obviously impracticable. The essence of the crime consisted in an alliance with demons, who could at pleasure interrupt the course of nature; and therefore it availed nothing though the defendant could prove an unexceptionable alibi. He might, by the assistance of his hyperphysical ally, have ridden a hundred miles through the air in as many seconds. Nor was it possible to determine what facts were or were not inconsistent with commission of the crime; or consequently, to adduce anything like exculpatory testimony. The defendant was thus laid completely at the mercy of the favour or aversion of judges unguided by any rational inference, as may be seen by consulting any of the old trials for this imaginary offence.

All the unhappy victims who have been condemned for witchcraft may be considered as one instance of the wretched effects of extra-experimental belief; as sacrifices occasioned by that thorough depravation of the intellect, and erasure of the distinction between truth and falsehood, which it is the nature of this belief to effect whenever it reigns within the mind. The number of men thus condemned publicly page 92 has been far from inconsiderable—not to mention those who have undergone private persecution and suspicion from their neighbourhood; a body probably more numerous, though less exposed to notice.

As this persuasion utterly disqualifies mankind for the task of filtering truth from falsehood, so the multitude of fictitious tales for which it has obtained credence and currency in the world, exceeds all computation. To him who believes in the intervention of incomprehensible and unlimited Beings, no story can appear incredible. The most astonishing narratives are exempted from cross-examination, and readily digested under the title of miracles or prodigies. Of these miracles, every nation on the face of the earth has on record, and believes thousands. And as each nation disbelieves all except its own, each, though it believes a great many, yet disbelieves more. The most enthusiastic believer in miracles, therefore, cannot deny that an enormous excess of false ones have obtained credence amongst the larger portion of mankind. The root of all these fictions, by which the human intellect has thus been cheated and overrun, is the extra-experimental belief of the earthly interference of God; and the immense evil arising from such a deception is another of its pernicious results.

Nor should we omit, in reckoning up these results, the universal prevalence of the expectations arising out of this belief in particular interpositions of the Deity. Entertaining this conviction, a man is of course led to frame some conjecture on what occasions the unseen Being will be likely to interpose. He naturally selects those, on which his anticipations are most at fault, and when he is most ignorant what real event is to be expected. In this state the experimental belief ceases to suggest any predictions, and the extra-experimental of course steps into the vacant chair and assumes the rod of prophecy. Hence, instead of adopting the most skilful expedients which a comparison of the known phenomena would suggest, his behaviour will be determined either by some accidental and incomprehensible peculiarity of circumstance, or by certain deceitful and irrelevant conceptions of the divine attributes.

It would be both useless and impracticable to enumerate all those trifling casualties which have, in one place or page 93 another, been regarded as manifestations of God's interference. The flight of birds—the neighing of a horse—the drawing of lots—and a thousand other such inconsequential incidents have been consulted as instructors and guides to human short-sightedness, and as interpreters of the divine decrees. To disregard one of them was considered as an act of impiety, and contempt of a special warning. The phenomena thus selected have been infinitely various—the doctrine and principle exactly similar throughout.

To illustrate the depravation of judgment produced by these expectations of divine interference, it is important to remark their effect when recognized and acted upon in the system of judicature—a province wherein, as it demands the most complete preparation and use of the faculties, all mistaken principles are the most prominently displayed.

The trial by ordeal has been most universally approved and established, in the infancy at least of all societies, from Hindostan to America. Unable to discover satisfactory criteria of guilt and innocence, by a just comparison of conflicting testimony, mankind have endeavoured to extricate themselves from the uneasy feelings of doubt, by a blind reliance on the extra-experimental belief. In confidence that the point would be decided for them, they have abandoned the task of determining it for themselves, and have been contented with executing what they regarded as the divine verdict. Now certainly if the Deity is ever in any case believed to interpose, this is the occasion of all others when his interposition would be most naturally and most rationally anticipated, supposing him truly benevolent. Were a chief—justice animated by genuine benevolence, his feelings would not permit him to remain inactive, when his efforts might extricate the innocent from impending punishment, or expose the shifts of the guilty.

But though this is by far the most defensible case in which divine interpositions have ever been looked for, we hear it unanimously treated, by writers of the present day, as a symptom of the most pitiable imbecility—as utterly incompetent to elicit the truth—and as the most cruel distortion of penal judicature. The miserable effects which a belief in the temporal agency of God has produced, in this case alone without mentioning others, are incalculable. page 94 Reflect on the number of persons whom the issue of the ordeal has consigned to unmerited torture, or protected from an appropriate penalty—on the bar thus opposed to all improvement in the judicial process—on the extension of this method of lottery to all other matters of doubt, which its reception in the sacred field of judicature would countenance: Consider too that these evils still infest perhaps the larger portion of the globe, and all the uninstructed nations who inhabit it. This immense mass of misfortune flows from one particular application—and that too the most rationally deduced from the current hypothesis—of the belief in the temporal interference of the Deity.

The example which has been just cited is of great value, because we there behold the belief in superhuman agency applied to a distinct and particular case, and thence producing consequences which it is impossible to shuffle over or evade. These consequences are universally admitted to be most pernicious, in the instance of ordeal—and similar effects cannot fail to result, whenever the same belief is elsewhere entertained and applied to action. He who feels confidence that the Deity will decide for him a particular point, or realize any other object of his wishes, will of course take no pains to form his own opinion, or to attain the object by his own efforts. Reliance on foreign aid, if perfect and full, supersedes the necessity of self-exertion altogether—and if the person thus relying puts himself to any trouble whatever, it is only because his confidence is not perfect. A man sits still while his servant is bringing up breakfast, because he feels quite confident that his desires will be attained without any trouble of his own. The belief therefore in super-human interference cannot fail, when firmly and thoroughly entertained, to produce an entire abandonment of the means suggested by experience for human enjoyment. If the Almighty declares against us, our efforts are fruitless-if in our favour, they are unnecessary: In neither case therefore have we any motive to make efforts.

Expectation of effects on the ground of the divine attributes must thus, so far as it is really genuine and operative, extinguish all forecast, and cut all the sinews of human exertion. It must produce this effect whenever it produces page 95 any at all; and if such a result is not actually brought about, it is only because the nullity of the expectation has been in part exposed, and its influence proportionally weakened.

Any doctrine may be stated as having a tendency to introduce those consequences which are consistently and legitimately deducible from it—and while the doctrine is maintained in any one instance, there is always a chance that it will be extended to every other. He who looks for superhuman aid in one instance, is at least liable to do so in another. On this ground it is important to notice the mischievous tendency of these expectations, in a case where it would not be easy to trace home to them any palpable and specific evil consequences, such as those of the ordeal.

Expectations from the divine attribute of pliability have been and still continue universal. At least this is the foundation of the frequent prayers which are put up to Heaven for different species of relief—built, not upon the benevolence of God, for then his assistance would be extended alike to all the needy, whether silent or clamorous; but upon his yielding and accessible temper, which though indifferent if not addressed, becomes the warm and compliant partizan of every petitioner.

Now these expectations, supposing them well-founded and firmly entertained, cannot fail to introduce complete inactivity among the human race. Why should a man employ the slow and toilsome methods to which experience chains him down, when the pleasure which he seeks may be purchased by a simple act of prayer? Why should he plough, and sow, and walk his annual round of anxiety, when by the mere expression of a request, an omnipotent ally may be induced to place the mature produce instantly within his grasp? No, it is replied—God will not assist him unless he employs all his own exertions: He will not favour the lazy. In this defence however it is implied, either that the individual is not to rely upon God at all, in which case there is no motive to offer up the prayer—or that he is to feel a reliance, and yet act as if he felt none whatever. It is implied, therefore, that the conduct of the individual is to be exactly the same as if he did not anticipate any superhuman interference. By this page 96 defence, you do indeed exculpate the belief in supernatural agency from the charge of producing pernicious effects—because you reduce it to a mere non-entity, and make it produce no effects at all.

If therefore the request is offered up with any hope of being realized, it infallibly proves pernicious, by relaxing the efforts of the petitioner to provide for himself. Should he believe that God will, when he himself has done his utmost, make up the deficiency and crown his views with success; the effect will be to make him undertake any enterprises whatever, without regarding the inadequacy of his means. Provided he employs actively all the resources in his power, he becomes entitled to have the balance made up from the divine treasury. "God never sends a child" (says the proverb) "but He sends food for it to eat." What is the natural inference from this doctrine, except that a man may securely marry without any earthly means of providing for his family, inasmuch as God will be sure to send him some?

What preserves the evil effects of this right of petitioning, which man is asserted to possess over the Deity, from the notoriety and exposure to which the consequences of the ordeal have been subjected—is, the very obscure and indistinct class of human wishes to which its exercise has gradually been restricted. Earthly discoveries and preparations are more commonly preferred for the satisfaction of our usual wants; nor are men so well contented with the provision which their heavenly Father has made for them, as to resign entirely all thought for the morrow. Some persons pray for their daily bread, it is true, and some do not; but every one without exception either works for it himself, or secures the services of some of his fellow-men. He who would wish to acquire a fortune or to learn a language, and contented himself with praying that God would transfer stock to him, or pour down the gift of tongues, would be derided as insane. If you ask a man whether he would rely upon petitions to Heaven for the accomplishment of any definite earthly wish, the incongruity of the means to the end appears then so glaring, that he thinks you are ridiculing him, although the language employed may be the gravest and most decorous. He will page 97 pray either for objects which he is sure to obtain with or without prayer, such as his daily bread—or for objects which he cannot tell whether he obtains or not, such as that the kingdom of God may come, that His will may be done in earth as it is in heaven, &c., or for vague and indeterminate gifts, the fulfilment of which is not to be referred to any distinct time, such as health, longevity, good desires, &c. It is only by its results being thus kept in the dark, that the inefficiency of prayer is protected from exposure.

I have thus analyzed the several species of extra-experimental belief which religion begets in the mind, consisting in the persuasion of the existence, creative function, and agency both here and in a future life, of a supernatural Being. I have endeavoured to demonstrate from the very nature of this belief, that it cannot fail to disqualify the intellect for the pursuit of temporal happiness, more or less in proportion to the extent in which it is entertained. For as all our pleasure and all our exemption from want and pain, is the result of human provision—as these provisions are only so many applications of acquired knowledge, that is, of belief conformable to experience—it follows, that the whole fabric of human happiness depends upon the intimate and inviolable union between belief and experience. Whatever has the effect of disjoining the two, is decidedly of a nature to undermine and explode all the apparatus essential to human enjoyment—and if this result is not actually produced, it is only because the train laid is not sufficiently extensive, and is confined to the outworks instead of reaching the heart of the fortress. So far as any result at all brought about, it is an advance towards the accomplishment of this work of destruction. And as every separate case, in which extra-experimental belief finds reception in the mind, paves the way for others, any one disjunction of belief from experience has a tendency to produce their entire and universal discordance.