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Lecture IV.

Arguments from Intelligence and Conscience.

Both Theology and Philosophy concern themselves with the question, What is the ultimate reality? To answer that question satisfactorily, it is manifest that due weight must be given to all the facts or data of experience. Nor can it be doubted that, among these data, we human beings, with our instincts, feelings, thoughts, needs, and aspirations, occupy a moat prominent and important place. Absorption in physical studies has unquestionably led to religious doubt, because it has led a certain class of thinkers not only to lay an altogether excessive stress on the methods of reasoning and investigation adopted with such good results in the physical sciences, but also practically to ignore large areas of fact. Man, to use the currentt language of scientific speech, being the last and highest product of the evolutionary process, must also be reckoned fullest and altogether the best revelation of the nature of the first cause or ultimate reality. Meantime, we exclude supernatural revelation from our view. It is an axiom of reason that no effect can, in any sense, exceed its producing cause. If there is intelligence in the effect, there must also be intelligence in the cause. Naturally, therefore, we look to that which is highest in the effect when we wish to discover the nature and potency of the cause. The best thought discovers in the physical universe a degree and kind of order which can only be regarded as the product of designing intelligence. But creatures capable of forming and executing purposes rank much higher in the scale of effects than the order and adaptation page 46 of the inorganic world. To healthy common senses that sense which sees all the more clearly because it loves [unclear: do] wrangling, it seems all but self-evident that man, being at once an effect, and essentially a purposive intelligence must owe his existence to a Being possessed of purposive intelligence. Surely, the rational cannot proceed from the non-rational. To suppose that such a thing could happen is assuredly to put reason itself to "permanent confusion." But great is the credulity of anti-religious bias. It cannot believe that "mind created the world, but it professes to believe that the world created mind."

To the sagacious mind of John Locke, it appeared that we men being intelligent, it is certain beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt that God, the ultimate reality and first cause, must possess intelligence in an unspeakably higher degree than we men do. Locke puts the matter thus " If it be said there was a time when no being had any knowledge, when that eternal being was void of all understanding. I reply, that then it was impossible that then should ever have been any knowledge; it being as impossible that things wholly void of knowledge and operating blindly and without perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones." The case for Theism, as put by John Locke, is so strong, that thought of religious sceptics like John Stuart Mill, have put forth their utmost strength in the attempt to meet it. The quite desperate shifts to which religious Agnosticism is drive cannot, I think, be better exhibited than in Mill's [unclear: fu] attempts to meet Locke's argument. Lest it should be supposed that I am caricaturing John Stuart Mill by way of imputing to him arguments crude and weak in the last degree, I shall give you his main objections to [unclear: Lock] argument in his own words. " If (says Mill) the [unclear: me] existence of mind is supposed to require, as a necessary antecedent, another mind greater and more powerful, the difficulty is not removed by going one step back; the creating mind stands as much in need of another mind to be the source of its existence, as the [unclear: cre] mind." It would be difficult to discover in uni- page 47 versal literature a more concentrated bit of manifest irrationality. And yet we need not much wonder at the irrationality, for luminous truth always reduces those who gainsay it to the dire necessity of uttering unmitigated nonsense. Neither Locke nor any other reputable Theist ever has said anything so exquisitely absurd as that the mere existence of mind presupposes another mind as its originating cause, and so on ad infinitum. It is not mind as such, but mind that has originated in time, which demands a superior mind as its originating cause. In the sentence which follows the one I have quoted, Mill speaks with perfect assurance of eternal, that is, underived and uncaused, matter and force. Is not this gross self-contradiction? There is absolutely nothing in the nature of mind as such which compels the belief that It is not eternal. In point of fact, nothing but spirit or mind answers to the idea of underived and eternal being, for nothing but self-determining spirit can conceivably be a cause which is not at the same time an effect. It is only because we human beings have originated in time—that is, are derived intelligences—that we feel constrained to assign our origination to an intelligent cause.

Another of the insuperable difficulties which Atheists encounter in reckoning with the truth presented in Locke's argument may be put thus; Is it in the least degree credible that non-rational matter and force can, by their own inherent powers, evolve rational beings? Materialists cannot evade this question, and quite wonderful are the devices which they have been driven to adopt to disguise from themselves and other the irrationality of ascribing the origination of mind to the interactions of non-rational atoms. Hæckel, for example credits atoms with " desire and aversion," "sansation and will." Tyndall sympathetically quotes from Lange's History of Materialism" a passage, the aim of which is to prove that sensibility exists in a diffused from in flour, because mice grow and multiply in a meal [unclear: rub]. Of course, the sensibility exists also in the wheat, That about the kindness of grinding grain? Speaking generally, Materialists try to get over the difficulty partly by a process of levelling up, and partly by a process of page 48 levelling down. Matter is clothed with new attributes such as feeling and will; and man is denuded of such attributes as freedom, moral responsibility, and so forth. But to return to Mill and his attempt to turn the edge of the difficulty presented by the fact that it seems irrational to say that a rational being can be produced by non-rational matter and force. To avoid the suspicion of attempted caricature, 1 will present Mill's contention in his own words : " Apart from experience, and arguing on what is called reason, that is on supposed self-evidonce, the notion seems to be that [unclear: no] causes can give rise to products of a more precious [unclear: or] elevated kind than themselves. But this is at variance with the known analogies of nature. How vastly noble and more precious, for instance, are the vegetables and animals than the soil and manure out of which and by the properties of which they are raised up," This is [unclear: Milli] disproof of the maxim universally accepted in all scientific investigation, and a disproof more exquisitely curious it would be difficult to produce. The labour of verifying the truth of Mill's contention, say by causing a manure [unclear: heap] to produce or evolve a vegetable, would involve an amount of toil and patience not to be measured. The extraordinary weakness of these objections is surely a most impressive witness to the fact that mere intellect, having regard to the fact that man is a derived, or caused intelligence, is driven to the conclusion that the ultimate reality or first cause must be intelligent in a measure quite beyond anything that we can picture in thought. [unclear: It] matters not by what mechanism of second causes [unclear: man's] complete nature is brought into being, the conclusion stands firm that the efficient cause of his intelligence must be intelligent. Of course, it is always verbally possible for the sceptic to say that conscious intelligence in the [unclear: effect] does not necessarily imply conscious intelligence in the cause; but this, I conceive, only proves to what a [unclear: startling] extent human thought can be influenced by a [unclear: capricious] will.

Up to this point we have restricted ourselves to the consideration of the kind of inference which [unclear: discover] page 49 reason, or the logical understanding, may legitimately draw from the order of nature, and the existence of human intelligence, as to the nature of God or the ultimate reality. But the bind of facts which the physical sciences essay to interpret, and the kind of reasoning or argumentation which is the recognised instrument of investigation in the natural sciences, do not any means exhaust-either our powers of cognition, or the material on which our cognitive powers may legitimately operate. A certain class of physicists have been led to embrace defective, and in many cases perniciously false views as to the nature of the ultimate reality, because they have ignored these other and higher powers of knowledge. History proves beyond dispute that whenever and in whomsoever conscience and the religious instinct cease to be potent factors in determining belief or convictiont and the logical understanding is elevated into the supreme organ and criterion of truth, religious scepticism a more or less extreme form makes its appearance. Deep thinkers have always recognised this historic fact, and more or less understood its meaning. Hence the strenouus attempts made by such a thinker as Lotze to prove that the power of reasoning which plays such a conspicuous part in mathematics, astronomy, and physics is very far from being the only, or even the most important, organ of sure knowledge, In point of fact, Its function is an essentially limited one, including such ends as the unification of our knowledge, and the unfolding of the logical consequences of the facts given in intuition.

We give the name of rationalism to that mode of thought which lays undue, or exclusive, stress on that kind of evidence, and that species of reasoning, which appeal to our logical understanding, as distinguished from our powers of moral and spiritual intuition. Rationalism may of course be more or less thorough-going, but one of its most distinctive marks is over-valuation of those methods of proof which do not depend for their data or felt cogency on our powers of spiritual and moral intuition. This raises the question : Is it reasonable to hold every belief to be doubtful or illegitimate which does not rest on an evidential basis identical in kind with that which accredits the page 50 doctrines of natural science ? This, at least, is most certain. Reasoning, and by this I mean deductive reasoning, has an ever-lessening range of application in the sciences which deal with the higher and more complicated phenomena of experience. Physical astronomy admits of mathematical treatment to an extent which makes it the exclusive domain of the mathematical expert. On the other hand, biology, which deals with the complicated phenomena of organic life, has not reached, and probably never will reach, the deductive stage. The same is true, even in a more marked degree, of such a science as psychology. You will search in vain, in treatises, say, [unclear: or] sociology and ethics, for elaborate demonstrations [unclear: on] deductions such as the physicist delights in. Were all of us allowed to play our part in the social sphere in which we happen to move only on condition that we were prepared to give what is called a scientific proof of the wisdom of our proposals, I presume that life, social and political, would become wondrously quiescent.

How or by what principle are we and our fellowmen [unclear: best] guided in determining what is just and unjust in our social relations. We may answer broadly that it is not so much the powerful intellect as the good conscience which judges wisely and well. Intellect of the highest order may be, and sometimes is, the utterly unscrupulous tool and advocate of the basest selfishness. Nothing but the pure heart can either see the highest forms of truth, or adequately feel their importance. Nor will any honest Lover of truth dispute the truth that the end of all development is moral and spiritual perfection. Even Evolutionists allow that the ideal climax of the evolutionary process is the evolution of the ethical. Pure intellect is not the crown of perfection, either in the individual or the race. It ought ever to stand to conscience in the subordinate relation of means to end. The final cause of our existence as rational beings is not that we should become perfect, logical machines, but that we may get to know and love and [unclear: live] the morally good. It is quite true that capacity for reaching sure conclusions in the sciences of nature is more widely and perfectly developed than our powers [unclear: of] page 51 moral and spiritual insight; but this by no means proves that our higher powers are of doubtful value as organs of trustworthy knowledge. The very fact that conscience, as an organ of truth, is more apt to be impaired or perverted, Say than our logical reason, only proves that it is a higher power. The faculties which we share in common with the animal world are precisely those which are most certain in their operation, and least subject to perversion. Animals entirely governed by their ready-made instincts are not troubled with the dubieties which vex us men in the higher ranges of thought. The precision and coerciveness of the impulses which actuate mere animals, doubtless deliver them from the uncertainty which so often besets us men, but they at the same time prove that instinct-governed animals exist below the plane where moral education and probation are possible. It does not therefore follow that the verdicts, implications, and postulates of conscience are of doubtful worth or validity because conscience, as a power of intuition, is not so widely, or, for the most part, so fully developed as that side of our intelligence which is concerned with the knowledge and interpretation of the phenomena of the physical world. The reverse is the case. Conscience, which, in an eminent sense, is the religious faculty, may, without exaggeration be called the eye of the soul. If we scrutinise the roots of our intellectual life, we will discover that our entire intellectual life rests on an assumption of an essentially moral nature. Even the sceptic must assume that knowledge is possible. But how, it may be asked, can we feel assured that our thought, in any real sense, represents reality ? May not our so-called powers of knowledge be illusion-gendering powers? To these questions we can only answer somewhat in this wise. We feel assured that the Power to whom we owe our being—the Power which in conscience reveals to us the unconditional worth of the good is Himself good, and therefore cannot mock us with illusions. All our knowledge rests on intuitions, first principles or fundamental beliefs, which cannot be proved. Trust, or an act of faith therefore lies at the basis of our intellectual life, and trust page 52 implies goodness or trustworthiness in its object—that [unclear: is] Him to whom we owe our being. We need, therefore have no hesitation in affirming that conscience [unclear: ought] have the same potent influence in determining our [unclear: be] as to the nature of the ultimate reality which it [unclear: ought] have in shaping our conduct and moulding our [unclear: charact] In point of fact, the practical primacy of [unclear: conscience] necessarily implies its cognitive primacy. The [unclear: conten] of the sceptic who points to the fact that our fundamental ethical convictions are unproved—that is, are [unclear: tak] to be self-evident truths—neither has, nor [unclear: ought] have, any effect in shaking the belief of him who has experience in his own soul of that indescribable and [unclear: inco] municable assurance called forth by the emphatic [unclear: ver] of a good conscience. This peculiar [unclear: sentiment]. I think, somewhat felicitously described by [unclear: Lo] as a judgment or feeling of worth. Of [unclear: cour] where the ethical side of our nature is [unclear: undeveloped] or, it may be, is perverted, the grounds on [unclear: which] conscience bases its sublime certainties can [unclear: neither] known nor felt, and therefore it is quite [unclear: impossible] to make the morally blind and insensate understand [unclear: and] feel the force of the Theistic inferences which [unclear: consci] suggests and justifies. To those, however, who have [unclear: a] adequate sense of the sacredness and absoluteness of [unclear: a] obligation, it is self-evident that conscience furnishes [unclear: th] key which unlocks for us the secret of the created [unclear: univer] It need hardly be said that conscience includes that [unclear: feeling] of oughtness or absolute obligation which is evoked by [unclear: the] clear perception of moral goodness. The mere [unclear: sentiment] of utility, supposed to be created by manifold [unclear: personel] race experiences of utility, is in no sense equivalent to [unclear: the] absolute imperative of conscience—that is, to our [unclear: feeling] of absolute moral obligation, I cannot pause to [unclear: por] this, but assume its truth. I trust that the supreme [unclear: rip] of conscience, as our highest and most far-reaching [unclear: cop] of vision, to determine our convictions as to the [unclear: nature] God or the ultimate reality, has been sufficiently [unclear: vin] cated. The manifold ways in which conscience leads [unclear: up] belief in a God infinitely good and powerful, have [unclear: be] page 53 [unclear: very]variously set forth. That you may estimate for yourselves the kind and degree of certainty as to the existence and nature of God, to which we may attain through the testimony of conscience, I shall first of all put the case as [unclear: it] presents itself to my own mind. Conscience when taken seriously justifies the assertion that the one thing which [unclear: has] an unconditional right to exist, and which ought to [unclear: exist] is absolute goodness, This for conscience is equivalent to the conviction that this absolute goodnesss is not [unclear: to] were ought to be, but an eternal reality. To Suppose that absolute goodness is only an unrealised possibility, [unclear: is] to allow that evil is the dominant power in the [unclear: universe]. But pessimism, or belief in the dominance of evil is both on rational and moral grounds, an impossible creed. We conclude, therefore, that absolute goodness—that is, an absolutely good being—exists, for goodness as an objective reality can only exist in a personal being or good will. Conscience draws the further [unclear: inference] that God or the absolutely good being, must be [unclear: possessed] of infinite power as well as infinite wisdom, otherwise we would he forced into the intolerable conclusion infinitely good being, that is, God, lacks the power requisite to give effect to His infinitely holy will. To all this the morally suspicious sceptic is likely enough to reply in terms like these: Your inferences are in no [unclear: sense] logically necessary. In point of fact, they are [unclear: aring] assumptions. Of course, the inferences in question are not logically necessary, Conscience follows a path of its own when it postulates the existence of an infinitely [unclear: good] God, and this path it knows to be reasonable in a much higher sense than the most exact logical deduction [unclear: can] claim to be. This miserable, carping, moral scepticism would trouble us less than it does did we give [unclear: due] weight to the undoubted fact that the major part of our working beliefs are practically assumptions. It cannot be proved in the strictest or narrowest sense of the word, that our cognitive nature is veracious, or that the course of Nature is uniform, or that testimony of any kind can be depended on. These things we assume, and underlying these, and such like assumptions, there lies the deeper page 54 assumption, that truth and goodness are the [unclear: red] principles in all that is, Religious scepticism, consciously or unconsciously, takes a pessimistic view of existence, andt when clear-sighted and fearlessly consistent, confesses that there is nothing trustworthy. Does there seem to be anything particularly unreasonable or superstitious in daring to interpret the Universe in the light of our highest cognitive power : to wit, [unclear: conscience]. Is not the unreasonableness and superstition on the [unclear: side] of those who deny the sovereignty of goodness, in [unclear: denyin] the existence of God ? Such scepticism is suicidal, for [unclear: a] annihilates all reasonable grounds of trust and certainty.

There is yet another way in which conscience implicates the existence of God. Moral obligation [unclear: in] absolute, but absolute obligation, if reasonable, [unclear: demand] for its ground an authority that is absolute in the sense [unclear: of] being infinitely good. It is absurd to say that [unclear: the] coerciveness, or authoritativeness, of which we are conscience in the judgments of conscience is absolute, if it rests only on experiences of utility, or is created by social sanction. Hence, thinkers like Spencer and Bain deny the [unclear: absolutes] of moral obligation. According to this school, [unclear: more] disobedience means nothing more than reckless [unclear: conte] for social opinion, and the kind of utilities which most [unclear: more] pursue. It does not need to be proved that the [unclear: coercivence] which is felt in the sense of moral obligation points to [unclear: as] authority outside the individual, for no one now [unclear: dispute] the fact. Is not, then, the conclusion inevitable [unclear: that], moral obligation is absolute, the authority which [unclear: imposes] must be absolutely good and wise ? It is, I think [unclear: se] evident that the absolute obligatoriness revealed [unclear: it] conscience is irrational unless it be conceived as [unclear: the] expression of the will of an infinitely good being. [unclear: Neither] State law, nor the informal legislation of society, [unclear: cs] create an absolute moral obligation. Earth's noblest [unclear: cos] have not unfrequently been constrained to resist State [unclear: la] and the unwritten law of the great social world; and [unclear: when] they did so, it was under a sense of obligation to a [unclear: Powe] unspeakably greater and more holy than the State, [unclear: and] Society as a whole, God is therefore the [unclear: nesessary] page 55 pre-supposition, or rational basis of absolute moral obligation. The only obvious way of escape from this inference is denial of the absoluteness of moral obligation. This door of escape is closed against those who have known and felt the awful sacredness and inviolability of moral law. For all such the basis of religious certainty as regards the existence and perfections of God, is as firm and nobly rational as can well be desired. In passing, I may remark that the Theistic implications of conscience are strongly confirmed by the fact that sincere belief in the absoluteness of moral obligation is, as far as I know, never associated with religious agnosticism.

We need only glance at the somewhat peculiar manner in which Kant connects belief in the existence of God with his moral creed. I take the liberty of presenting his views in my own words: Man's chief good as a moral being is a something which ought to be realised, and is therefore realisable. This chief good consists of two elements—viz., personal perfection, and an environment corresponding to this morally perfect state. In other words, the chief good is perfect holiness plus heaven. But whatever may be thought of our ability to attain to a perfectly virtuous character, it is self-evident that is utterly beyond human power to create a heaven which shall make perfect happiness the sure possession of the perfectly holy. Only an omnipotent and good God can create such a heaven, that is bring about the union the perfect holiness and happiness. Therefore we must assume or postulate His existence. To the idolator of the methods of proof, which rightly enough obtain in the physical sciences, Kant's moral argument is simply worthless; but to those who believe that the moral is essentially higher than the physical sphere, and take conscience to be the supreme, or at least one of the supreme principles whose guidance we ought to accept in intepreting the facts of experience, Kant's argument will be accepted as a convincing explication of some of the manifold Theistic implications of the moral. Other most important beliefs of a religious kind are also certified by page 56 our faith in the moral. One of these is our belief in personal immortality. Those to whom [unclear: these] is no science but the physical sciences regard the doctrine of personal immortality as the most baseless of superstitions, and [unclear: in] point of fact their philosophy shuts them up to this view. H æckel simply gives vent to his levity when he assures us, in his " Monism," that he believes in immortality because, in his opinion, matter and force are eternal. Apart from supernatural revelation the doctrine of personal immorality has, as far as I can judge, no evidential basis worth speaking of save in the revelations of our moral nature. To those who have in any adequate sense felt the sacredness and unspeakable worth of moral goodness, the idea that a morally good being can perish is utterly revolting. The annihilation of a morally good being would make belief in God morally impossible. To a good conscience the conservation of the righteous is unspeakably more certain than the eternal conservation of matter and force. The two doctrines, to wit, belief in God and belief in personal immortality, stand or fall together, I take it that religious is a matter of no practical concern for creatures who exist only for a few years.

To those who feel and recognise the supreme importance of conscience, both in its practical and cognitive aspects, it will doubtless seem that its testimony to the existence of God is unequivocal and decisive, and yet I should leave on your minds a false impression did I deny, or rather seem to deny, that faith in God has no trials. It is neither honest nor wise to ignore the fact that our knowledge of God, however assured, is so partial and imperfect that we cannot shape our entire creed into a logically coherent whole. The intellectual arrogance which declines to accept some belief, no matter how accredited, because it cannot be logically harmonised with some other truth, is on the high road to scepticism. As a matter of fact there exist in the most meagre creed many truths whose focal point of unity lies beyond the limits of the known. We might compare our knowledge to scattered sunlit islets, whose united base is hid in the ocean depeths. Even conscience presents us with problems which we can- page 57 not solve. One of these is the existence of moral and physical evil. Sensitive natures have, especially in recent times, been sorely perplexed by the existence of so much physical suffering. Life has presented itself to them as a ruthless struggle, always ending in death. Animal preys on animal. It was this aspect of life which led John Stuart Mill to suppose that belief in a God at once good and omnipotent is irreconcilable with the honest acceptance of fact. I feel assured that the difficulty in question was unreasonably aggravated for Mill by his ethical philosophy, which in effect makes pleasure, as distinguished from perfection, or moral worth, the chief good. To those who have felt the purifying influence of trial, and more especially to those who, in the school of Christ, have learned the meaning of cross-bearing the enigma of the world's groaning has ceased to be an insuperable difficulty in the way of faith, and has become, rather, an awe-inspiring mystery, which waits for its solution in the future. Difficulties, such as the one under notice, are only insuperable to those who arrogantly assume that, with the data at their disposal, they are competent to fathom the Divine purpose. Reasonable belief, more especially in the higher reaches of knowledge, demands a humble, practical acknowledgement of limitations, and perfect willingness to accept the kind of light which is available. Let me add that, for those who do not believe in God and a future life, a rational solution of the enigmas of sin and suffering is out of the question. What good or desirable end can be subserved by everlasting cycles of evolution and dissolution ?