God the Known and God the Unknown
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God the Known and
God the Unknown
BY SAMUEL BUTLER
Prefatory Note
"GOD the Known and God the Unknown" first appeared in the form of
a series of articles which were published in "The Examiner" in
May, June, and July, 1879. Samuel Butler subsequently revised
the text of his work, presumably with the intention of
republishing it, though he never carried the intention into
effect. In the present edition I have followed his revised
version almost without deviation. I have, however, retained a
few passages which Butler proposed to omit, partly because they
appear to me to render the course of his argument clearer, and
partly because they contain characteristic thoughts and
expressions of which none of his admirers would wish to be
deprived. In the list of Butler's works "God the Known and God
the Unknown" follows "Life and Habit," which appeared in 1877,
and "Evolution, Old and New," which was published in May, 1879.
It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three works are
closely akin in subject and treatment, and that "God the Known
and God the Unknown" will gain in interest by being considered in
relation to its predecessors.
R. A. STREATFEILD
------------------------------------------------
God the Known and
God the Unknown
BY SAMUEL BUTLER
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverse
ratio of their importance, so that the more closely a question is
felt to touch the hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it is
considered upon prudent people to profess that it does not exist,
to frown it down, to tell it to hold its tongue, to maintain that
it has long been finally settled, so that there is now no
question concerning it.
So far, indeed, has this been carried through all time past that
the actions which are most important to us, such as our passage
through the embryonic stages, the circulation of our blood, our
respiration, etc. etc., have long been formulated beyond all
power of reopening question concerning them - the mere fact or
manner of their being done at all being ranked among the great
discoveries of recent ages. Yet the analogy of past settlements
would lead us to suppose that so much unanimity was not arrived
at all at once, but rather that it must have been preceded by
much smouldering [sic] discontent, which again was followed by
open warfare; and that even after a settlement had been
ostensibly arrived at, there was still much secret want of
conviction on the part of many for several generations.
There are many who see nothing in this tendency of our nature but
occasion for sarcasm; those, on the other hand, who hold that the
world is by this time old enough to be the best judge concerning
the management of its own affairs will scrutinise [sic] this
management with some closeness before they venture to satirise
[sic] it; nor will they do so for long without finding
justification for its apparent recklessness; for we must all fear
responsibility upon matters about which we feel we know but
little; on the other hand we must all continually act, and for
the most part promptly. We do so, therefore, with greater
security when we can persuade both ourselves and others that a
matter is already pigeon-holed than if we feel that we must use
our own judgment for the collection, interpretation, and
arrangement of the papers which deal with it. Moreover, our
action is thus made to appear as if it received collective
sanction; and by so appearing it receives it. Almost any
settlement, again, is felt to be better than none, and the more
nearly a matter comes home to everyone, the more important is it
that it should be treated as a sleeping dog, and be let to lie,
for if one person begins to open his mouth, fatal developments
may arise in the Babel that will follow.
It is not difficult, indeed, to show that, instead of having
reason to complain of the desire for the postponement of
important questions, as though the world were composed mainly of
knaves or fools, such fixity as animal and vegetable forms
possess is due to this very instinct. For if there had been no
reluctance, if there were no friction and vis inertae to
be encountered even after a theoretical equilibrium had been
upset, we should have had no fixed organs nor settled
proclivities, but should have been daily and hourly undergoing
Protean transformations, and have still been throwing out
pseudopodia like the amoeba. True, we might have come to like
this fashion of living as well as our more steady-going system if
we had taken to it many millions of ages ago when we were yet
young; but we have contracted other habits which have become so
confirmed that we cannot break with them. We therefore now hate
that which we should perhaps have loved if we had practised [sic]
it. This, however, does not affect the argument, for our concern
is with our likes and dislikes, not with the manner in which
those likes and dislikes have come about. The discovery that
organism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so much
astonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of the
world more than a hundred years to leave off expressing its
contempt for such a crude, shallow, and preposterous conception.
Perhaps in another hundred years we shall learn to admire the
good sense, endurance, and thorough Englishness of organism in
having been so averse to change, even more than its versatility
in having been willing to change so much.
Nevertheless, however conservative we may be, and however much
alive to the folly and wickedness of tampering with settled
convictions-no matter what they are-without sufficient cause,
there is yet such a constant though gradual change in our
surroundings as necessitates corresponding modification in our
ideas, desires, and actions. We may think that we should like to
find ourselves always in the same surroundings as our ancestors,
so that we might be guided at every touch and turn by the
experience of our race, and be saved from all self-communing or
interpretation of oracular responses uttered by the facts around
us. Yet the facts will change their utterances in spite of us;
and we, too, change with age and ages in spite of ourselves, so
as to see the facts around us as perhaps even more changed than
they actually are. It has been said, "Tempora mutantur nos et
mutamur in illis." The passage would have been no less true
if it had stood, "Nos mutamur et tempora mutantur in
nobis." Whether the organism or the surroundings began
changing first is a matter of such small moment that the two may
be left to fight it out between themselves; but, whichever view
is taken, the fact will remain that whenever the relations
between the organism and its surroundings have been changed, the
organism must either succeed in putting the surroundings into
harmony with itself, or itself into harmony with the
surroundings; or must be made so uncomfortable as to be unable to
remember itself as subjected to any such difficulties, and there
fore to die through inability to recognise [sic] its own identity
further.
Under these circumstances, organism must act in one or other of
these two ways: it must either change slowly and continuously
with the surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the
smallest change with a corresponding modification so far as is
found convenient; or it must put off change as long as possible,
and then make larger and more sweeping changes.
Both these courses are the same in principle, the difference
being only one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the
other, as a ripple is an Atlantic wave in little; both have their
advantages and disadvantages, so that most organisms will take
the one course for one set of things and the other for another.
They will deal promptly with things which they can get at easily,
and which lie more upon the surface; those, however, which are
more troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be handled upon
more cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer periods of
repose followed by short periods of greater activity.
Animals breathe and circulate their blood by a little action many
times a minute; but they feed, some of them, only two or three
times a day, and breed for the most part not more than once a
year, their breeding season being much their busiest time. It is
on the first principle that the modification of animal forms has
proceeded mainly; but it may be questioned whether what is called
a sport is not the organic expression of discontent which has
been long felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been met
step by step by as much small remedial modification as was found
practicable: so that when a change does come it comes by way of
revolution. Or, again (only that it comes to much the same
thing), a sport may be compared to one of those happy thoughts
which sometimes come to us unbidden after we have been thinking
for a long time what to do, or how to arrange our ideas, and have
yet been unable to arrive at any conclusion.
So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as a
general rule, the settlement; on the other hand, the more
sweeping the change that is felt to be necessary, the longer it
will be deferred.
The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by more
cataclysmic methods are obvious. For, in the first place, all
composite things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, so
that some parts shall depend upon and be grouped round others, as
in the articulation of a skeleton and the arrangement of muscles,
nerves, tendons, etc., which are attached to it. To meddle with
the skeleton is like taking up the street, or the flooring of
one's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it off
till whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems likely
to be wanted for a long time hence, can be done at the same time.
Another advantage is in the rest which is given to the attention
during the long hollows, so to speak, of the waves between the
periods of resettlement. Passion and prejudice have time to calm
down, and when attention is next directed to the same question,
it is a refreshed and invigorated attention-an attention,
moreover, which may be given with the help of new lights derived
from other quarters that were not luminous when the question was
last considered. Thirdly, it is more easy and safer to make such
alterations as experience has proved to be necessary than to
forecast what is going to be wanted. Reformers are like
paymasters, of whom there are only two bad kinds, those who pay
too soon, and those who do not pay at all.
CHAPTER II
COMMON GROUND
I HAVE now, perhaps, sufficiently proved my sympathy with the
reluctance felt by many to tolerate discussion upon such a
subject as the existence and nature of God. I trust that I may
have made the reader feel that he need fear no sarcasm or levity
in my treatment of the subject which I have chosen. I will,
therefore, proceed to sketch out a plan of what I hope to
establish, and this in no doubtful or unnatural sense, but by
attaching the same meanings to words as those which we usually
attach to them, and with the same certainty, precision, and
clearness as anything else is established which is commonly
called known.
As to what God is, beyond the fact that he is the Spirit and the
Life which creates, governs, and upholds all living things, I can
say nothing. I cannot pretend that I can show more than others
have done in what Spirit and the Life consists, which governs
living things and animates them. I cannot show the connection
between consciousness and the will, and the organ, much less can
I tear away the veil from the face of God, so as to show wherein
will and consciousness consist. No philosopher, whether Christian
or Rationalist, has attempted this without discomfiture; but I
can, I hope, do two things: Firstly, I can demonstrate, perhaps
more clearly than modern science is prepared to admit, that there
does exist a single Being or Animator of all living things - a
single Spirit, whom we cannot think of under any meaner name than
God; and, secondly, I can show something more of the
persona or bodily expression, mask, and mouthpiece of this
vast Living Spirit than I know of as having been familiarly
expressed elsewhere, or as being accessible to myself or others,
though doubtless many works exist in which what I am going to say
has been already said.
Aware that much of this is widely accepted under the name of
Pantheism, I venture to think it differs from Pantheism with all
the difference that exists between a coherent, intelligible
conception and an incoherent unintelligible one. I shall
therefore proceed to examine the doctrine called Pantheism, and
to show how incomprehensible and valueless it is.
I will then indicate the Living and Personal God about whose
existence and about many of whose attributes there is no room for
question; I will show that man has been so far made in the
likeness of this Person or God, that He possesses all its
essential characteristics, and that it is this God who has called
man and all other living forms, whether animals or plants, into
existence, so that our bodies are the temples of His spirit; that
it is this which sustains them in their life and growth, who is
one with them, living, moving, and having His being in them; in
whom, also, they live and move, they in Him and He in them; He
being not a Trinity in Unity only, but an Infinity in Unity, and
a Unity in an Infinity; eternal in time past, for so much time at
least that our minds can come no nearer to eternity than this;
eternal for the future as long as the universe shall exist; ever
changing, yet the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. And I
will show this with so little ambiguity that it shall be
perceived not as a phantom or hallucination following upon a
painful straining of the mind and a vain endeavour [sic] to give
coherency to incoherent and inconsistent ideas, but with the same
ease, comfort, and palpable flesh-and-blood clearness with which
we see those near to us ; whom, though we see them at the best as
through a glass darkly, we still see face to face, even as we are
ourselves seen.
I will also show in what way this Being exercises a moral
government over the world, and rewards and punishes us according
to His own laws.
Having done this I shall proceed to compare this conception of
God with those that are currently accepted, and will endeavour
[sic] to show that the ideas now current are in truth efforts to
grasp the one on which I shall here insist. Finally, I shall
persuade the reader that the differences between the so-called
atheist and the so-called theist are differences rather about
words than things, inasmuch as not even the most prosaic of
modern scientists will be inclined to deny the existence of this
God, while few theists will feel that this, the natural
conception of God, is a less worthy one than that to which they
have been accustomed.
CHAPTER III
PANTHEISM. I
THE Rev. J. H. Blunt, in his "Dictionary of Sects, Heresies,
etc.," defines Pantheists as "those who hold that God is
everything, and everything is God."
If it is granted that the value of words lies in the definiteness
and coherency of the ideas that present themselves to us when the
words are heard or spoken-then such a sentence as "God is
everything and everything is God" is worthless.
For we have so long associated the word "God" with the idea of a
Living Person, who can see, hear, will, feel pleasure,
displeasure, etc., that we cannot think of God, and also of
something which we have not been accustomed to think of as a
Living Person, at one and the same time, so as to connect the two
ideas and fuse them into a coherent thought. While we are
thinking of the one, our minds involuntarily exclude the other,
and vice versa; so that it is as impossible for us to
think of anything as God, or as forming part of God, which we
cannot also think of as a Person, or as a part of a Person, as it
is to produce a hybrid between two widely distinct animals. If I
am not mistaken, the barrenness of inconsistent ideas, and the
sterility of widely distant species or genera of plants and
animals, are one in principle-sterility of hybrids being due to
barrenness of ideas, and barrenness of ideas arising from
inability to fuse unfamiliar thoughts into a coherent conception.
I have insisted on this at some length in "Life and Habit," but
can do so no further here. (Footnote: Butler returned to this
subject in "Luck, or cunning?" which was originally published in
1887.
In like manner we have so long associated the word "Person" with
the idea of a substantial visible body, limited in extent, and
animated by an invisible something which we call Spirit, that we
can think of nothing as a person which does not also bring these
ideas before us. Any attempt to make us imagine God as a Person
who does not fulfil [sic] the conditions which our ideas attach
to the word "person," is ipso facto atheistic, as
rendering the word God without meaning, and therefore without
reality, and therefore non-existent to us. Our ideas are like
our organism, they will stand a vast amount of modification if it
is effected slowly and without shock, but the life departs out of
them, leaving the form of an idea without the power thereof, if
they are jarred too rudely.
Any being, then, whom we can imagine as God, must have all the
qualities, capabilities, and also all the limitations which are
implied when the word "person" is used.
But, again, we cannot conceive of "everything" as a person.
"Everything" must comprehend all that is to be found on earth, or
outside of it, and we know of no such persons as this. When we
say "persons" we intend living people with flesh and blood;
sometimes we extend our conceptions to animals and plants, but we
have not hitherto done so as generally as I hope we shall some
day come to do. Below animals and plants we have never in any
seriousness gone. All that we have been able to regard as
personal has had what we can call a living body, even though that
body is vegetable only; and this body has been tangible, and has
been comprised within certain definite limits, or within limits
which have at any rate struck the eye as definite. And every part
within these limits has been animated by an unseen something
which we call soul or spirit. A person must be a persona-
that is to say, the living mask and mouthpiece of an energy
saturating it, and speaking through it. It must be animate in all
its parts.
But "everything" is not animate. Animals and plants alone produce
in us those ideas which can make reasonable people call them
"persons" with consistency of intention. We can conceive of each
animal and of each plant as a person; we can conceive again of a
compound person like the coral polypes [sic], or like a tree
which is composed of a congeries of subordinate persons,
inasmuch as each bud is a separate and individual plant. We can
go farther than this, and, as I shall hope to show, we ought to
do so; that is to say, we shall find it easier and more agreeable
with our other ideas to go farther than not; for we should see
all animal and vegetable life as united by a subtle and till
lately invisible ramification, so that all living things are one
tree-like growth, forming a single person. But we cannot conceive
of oceans, continents, and air as forming parts of a person at
all; much less can we think of them as forming one person with
the living forms that inhabit them.
To ask this of us is like asking us to see the bowl and the water
in which three gold-fish are swimming as part of the gold-fish.
We cannot do it any more than we can do something physically
impossible. We can see the gold-fish as forming one family, and
therefore as in a way united to the personality of the parents
from which they sprang, and therefore as members one of another,
and therefore as forming a single growth of gold-fish, as boughs
and buds unite to form a tree; but we cannot by any effort of the
imagination introduce the bowl and the water into the
personality, for we have never been accustomed to think of such
things as living and personal. Those, therefore, who tell us that
"God is everything, and everything is God," require us to see
"everything" as a person, which we cannot; or God as not a
person, which again we cannot.
Continuing the article of Mr. Blunt from which I have already
quoted, I read :-
"Linus, in a passage which has been preserved by Stobaeus,
exactly expresses the notion afterwards adopted by Spinoza: 'One
sole energy governs all things; all things are unity, and each
portion is All; for of one integer all things were born; in the
end of time all things shall again become unity; the unity of
multiplicity.' Orpheus, his disciple, taught no other doctrine."
According to Pythagoras, "an adept in the Orphic philosophy,"
"the soul of the world is the Divine energy which interpenetrates
every portion of the mass, and the soul of man is an efflux of
that energy. The world, too, is an exact impress of the Eternal
Idea, which is the mind of God." John Scotus Erigena taught that
"all is God and God is all." William of Champeaux, again, two
hundred years later, maintained that "all individuality is one in
substance, and varies only in its non-essential accidents and
transient properties." Amalric of Bena and David of Dinant
followed the theory out "into a thoroughgoing Pantheism."
Amalric held that "All is God and God is all. The Creator and the
creature are one Being. Ideas are at once creative and created,
subjective and objective. God is the end of all, and all return
to Him. As every variety of humanity forms one manhood, so the
world contains individual forms of one eternal essence." David
of Dinant only varied upon this by "imagining a corporeal unity.
Although body, soul, and eternal substance are three, these three
are one and the same being."
Giordano Bruno maintained the world of sense to be "a vast animal
having the Deity for its living. soul." The inanimate part of the
world is thus excluded from participation in the Deity, and a
conception that our minds can embrace is offered us instead of
one which they cannot entertain, except as in a dream,
incoherently. But without such a view of evolution as was
prevalent at the beginning of this century, it was impossible to
see "the world of sense" intelligently, as forming "a vast
animal." Unless, therefore, Giordano Bruno held the opinions of
Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with more definiteness
than I am yet aware of his having done, his contention must be
considered as a splendid prophecy, but as little more than a
prophecy. He continues, "Birth is expansion from the one centre
of Life; life is its continuance, and death is the necessary
return of the ray to the centre of light." This begins finely,
but ends mystically. I have not, however, compared the English
translation with the original, and must reserve a fuller
examination of Giordano Bruno's teaching for another opportunity.
Spinoza disbelieved in the world rather than in God. He was an
Acosmist, to use Jacobi's expression, rather than an Atheist.
According to him, "the Deity and the Universe are but one
substance, at the same time both spirit and matter, thought and
extension, which are the only known attributes of the Deity."
My readers will, I think, agree with me that there is very little
of the above which conveys ideas with the fluency and comfort
which accompany good words. Words are like servants: it is not
enough that we should have them-we must have the most able and
willing that we can find, and at the smallest wages that will
content them. Having got them we must make the best and not the
worst of them. Surely, in the greater part of what has been
quoted above, the words are barren letters only: they do not
quicken within us and enable us to conceive a thought, such as we
can in our turn impress upon dead matter, and mould [sic] that
matter into another shape than its own, through the thought which
has become alive within us. No offspring of ideas has followed
upon them, or, if any at all, yet in such unwonted shape, and
with such want of alacrity, that we loathe them as malformations
and miscarriages of our minds. Granted that if we examine them
closely we shall at length find them to embody a little germ of
truth-that is to say, of coherency with our other ideas; but
there is too little truth in proportion to the trouble necessary
to get at it. We can get more truth, that is to say, more
coherency-for truth and coherency are one-for less trouble in
other ways.