God the Known and God the Unknown
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Samuel Butler >> God the Known and God the Unknown
But it may be urged that the beginnings of all tasks are
difficult and unremunerative, and that later developments of
Pantheism may be more intelligible than the earlier ones.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. On continuing Mr. Blunt's
article, I find the later Pantheists a hundredfold more
perplexing than the earlier ones. With Kant, Schelling, Fichte,
and Hegel, we feel that we are with men who have been decoyed
into a hopeless quagmire; we understand nothing of their
language-we doubt whether they understand themselves, and feel
that we can do nothing with them but look at them and pass them
by.
In my next chapter I propose to show the end which the early
Pantheists were striving after, and the reason and naturalness of
their error.
CHAPTER IV
PANTHEISM. II
The earlier Pantheists were misled by the endeavour [sic] to lay
hold of two distinct ideas, the one of which was a reality that
has since been grasped and is of inestimable value, the other a
phantom which has misled all who have followed it. The reality is
the unity of Life, the oneness of the guiding and animating
spirit which quickens animals and plants, so that they are all
the outcome and expression of a common mind, and are in truth one
animal; the phantom is the endeavour [sic] to find the origin of
things, to reach the fountain-head of all energy, and thus to lay
the foundations on which a philosophy may be constructed which
none can accuse of being baseless, or of arguing in a circle.
In following as through a thick wood after the phantom our
forefathers from time to time caught glimpses of the reality,
which seemed so wonderful as it eluded them, and flitted back
again into the thickets, that they declared it must be the
phantom they were in search of, which was thus evidenced as
actually existing. Whereon, instead of mastering such of the
facts they met with as could be captured easily-which facts would
have betrayed the hiding-places of others, and these again of
others, and so ad infinitum-they overlooked what was
within their reach, and followed hotly through brier and brake
after an imaginary greater prize.
Great thoughts are not to be caught in this way. They must
present themselves for capture of their own free will, or be
taken after a little coyness only. They are like wealth and
power, which, if a man is not born to them, are the more likely
to take him, the more he has restrained himself from an attempt
to snatch them. They hanker after those only who have tamed their
nearer thoughts. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to feel that
the early Pantheists were true prophets and seers, though the
things were unknown to them without which a complete view was
unattainable. What does Linus mean, we ask ourselves, when he
says :- "One sole energy governs all things" ? How can one sole
energy govern, we will say, the reader and the chair on which he
sits? What is meant by an energy governing a chair? If by an
effort we have made ourselves believe we understand something
which can be better expressed by these words than by any others,
no sooner do we turn our backs than the ideas so painfully
collected fly apart again. No matter how often we go in search of
them, and force them into juxtaposition, they prove to have none
of that innate coherent power with which ideas combine that we
can hold as true and profitable.
Yet if Linus had confined his statement to living things, and had
said that one sole energy governed all plants and animals, he
would have come near both to being intelligible and true. For if,
as we now believe, all animals and plants are descended from a
single cell, they must be considered as cousins to one another,
and as forming a single tree-like animal, every individual plant
or animal of which is as truly one and the same person with the
primordial cell as the oak a thousand years old is one and the
same plant with the acorn out of which it has grown. This is
easily understood, but will, I trust, be made to appear simpler
presently.
When Linus says, "All things are unity, and each portion is All;
for of one integer all things were born," it is impossible for
plain people-who do not wish to use words unless they mean the
same things by them as both they and others have been in the
habit of meaning-to understand what is intended. How can each
portion be all? How can one Londoner be all London? I know that
this, too, can in a way be shown, but the resulting idea is too
far to fetch, and when fetched does not fit in well enough with
our other ideas to give it practical and commercial value. How,
again, can all things be said to be born of one integer, unless
the statement is confined to living things, which can alone be
born at all, and unless a theory of evolution is intended, such
as Linus would hardly have accepted?
Yet limit the "all things" to "all living things," grant the
theory of evolution, and explain "each portion is All" to mean
that all life is akin, and possesses the same essential
fundamental characteristics, and it is surprising how nearly
Linus approaches both to truth and intelligibility.
It may be said that the animate and the inanimate have the same
fundamental substance, so that a chair might rot and be absorbed
by grass, which grass might be eaten by a cow, which cow might be
eaten by a man; and by similar processes the man might become a
chair; but these facts are not presented to the mind by saying
that "one energy governs all things"-a chair, we will say, and a
man; we could only say that one energy governed a man and a
chair, if the chair were a reasonable living person, who was
actively and consciously engaged in helping the man to attain a
certain end, unless, that is to say, we are to depart from all
usual interpretation of words, in which case we invalidate the
advantages of language and all the sanctions of morality.
"All things shall again become unity" is intelligible as meaning
that all things probably have come from a single elementary
substance, say hydrogen or what not, and that they will return to
it; but the explanation of unity as being the "unity of
multiplicity" puzzles; if there is any meaning it is too
recondite to be of service to us.
What, again, is meant by saying that "the soul of the world is
the Divine energy which interpenetrates every portion of the
mass" ? The soul of the world is an expression which, to myself,
and, I should imagine, to most people, is without propriety. We
cannot think of the world except as earth, air, and water, in
this or that state, on and in which there grow plants and
animals. What is meant by saying that earth has a soul, and
lives? Does it move from place to place erratically? Does it
feed? Does it reproduce itself? Does it make such noises, or
commit such vagaries as shall make us say that it feels? Can it
achieve its ends, and fail of achieving them through mistake? If
it cannot, how has it a soul more than a dead man has a soul, out
of whom we say that the soul has departed, and whose body we
conceive of as returning to dead earth, inasmuch as it is now
soulless? Is there any unnatural violence which can be done to
our thoughts by which we can bring the ideas of a soul and of
water, or of a stone into combination, and keep them there for
long together? The ancients, indeed, said they believed their
rivers to be gods, and carved likenesses of them under the forms
of men ; but even supposing this to have been their real mind,
can it by any conceivable means become our own? Granted that a
stone is kept from falling to dust by an energy which compels its
particles to cohere, which energy can be taken out of it and
converted into some other form of energy; granted (which may or
may not be true) also, that the life of a living body is only the
energy which keeps the particles which compose it in a certain
disposition; and granted that the energy of the stone may be
convertible into the energy of a living form, and that thus,
after a long journey a tired idea may lag after the sound of such
words as "the soul of the world." Granted all the above,
nevertheless to speak of the world as having a soul is not
sufficiently in harmony with our common notions, nor does it go
sufficiently with the grain of our thoughts to render the
expression a meaning one, or one that can be now used with any
propriety or fitness, except by those who do not know their own
meaninglessness. Vigorous minds will harbour [sic] vigorous
thoughts only, or such as bid fair to become so; and vigorous
thoughts are always simple, definite, and in harmony with
everyday ideas.
We can imagine a soul as living in the lowest slime that moves,
feeds, reproduces itself, remembers, and dies. The amoeba wants
things, knows it wants them, alters itself so as to try and alter
them, thus preparing for an intended modification of outside
matter by a preliminary modification of itself. It thrives if
the modification from within is followed by the desired
modification in the external object; it knows that it is well,
and breeds more freely in consequence. If it cannot get hold of
outside matter, or cannot proselytise [sic] that matter and
persuade it to see things through its own (the amoeba's)
spectacles-if it cannot convert that matter, if the matter
persists in disagreeing with it-its spirits droop, its
soul is disquieted within it, it becomes listless like a
withering flower-it languishes and dies. We cannot imagine a
thing to live at all and yet be soulless except in sleep for a
short time, and even so not quite soulless. The idea of a soul,
or of that unknown something for which the word "soul" is our
hieroglyphic, and the idea of living organism, unite so
spontaneously, and stick together so inseparably, that no matter
how often we sunder them they will elude our vigilance and come
together, like true lovers, in spite of us. Let us not attempt to
divorce ideas that have so long been wedded together.
I submit, then, that Pantheism, even as explained by those who
had entered on the outskirts only of its great morass,
nevertheless holds out so little hope of leading to any
comfortable conclusion that it will be more reasonable to occupy
our minds with other matter than to follow Pantheism further. The
Pantheists speak of a person without meaning a person; they speak
of a" him" and a "he" without having in their minds the idea of a
living person with all its inevitable limitations. Pantheism is,
therefore, as is said by Mr. Blunt in another article,
"practically nothing else than Atheism; it has no belief in a
personal deity overruling the affairs of the world, as Divine
Providence, and is, therefore, Atheistic," and again, "Theism
believes in a spirit superior to matter, and so does Pantheism;
but the spirit of Theism is self-conscious, and therefore
personal and of individual existence-a nature per se, and
upholding all things by an active control; while Pantheism
believes in spirit that is of a higher nature than brute matter,
but is a mere unconscious principle of life, impersonal,
irrational as the brute matter that it quickens."
If this verdict concerning Pantheism is true-and from all I can
gather it is as nearly true as anything can be said to be which
is predicated of an incoherent idea-the Pantheistic God is an
attempt to lay hold of a truth which has nevertheless eluded its
pursuers.
In my next chapter I will consider the commonly received,
orthodox conception of God, and compare it with the Pantheistic.
I will show that it, too, is Atheistic, inasmuch as, in spite of
its professing to give us a conception of God, it raises no ideas
in our minds of a person or Living Being-and a God who is not
this is non-existent.
CHAPTER V
ORTHODOX THEISM
We have seen that Pantheism fails to satisfy, inasmuch as it
requires us to mean something different by the word "God" from
what we have been in the habit of meaning. I have already said-I
fear, too often-that no conception of God can have any value or
meaning for us which does not involve his existence as an
independent Living Person of ineffable wisdom and power,
vastness, and duration both in the past and for the future. If
such a Being as this can be found existing and made evident,
directly or indirectly, to human senses, there is a God. If
otherwise, there is no God, or none, at any rate, so far as we
can know, none with whom we need concern ourselves. No conscious
personality, no God. An impersonal God is as much a contradiction
in terms as an impersonal person.
Unfortunately, when we question orthodox theology closely, we
find that it supposes God to be a person who has no material body
such as could come within the range of any human sense, and make
an impression upon it. He is supposed to be of a spiritual nature
only, except in so far as one part of his triune personality is,
according to the Athanasian Creed, "perfect man, of a reasonable
soul and human flesh subsisting."
Here, then, we find ourselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, we
are involved in the same difficulty as in the case of Pantheism,
inasmuch as a person without flesh and blood, or something
analogous, is not a person; we are required, therefore, to
believe in a personal God, who has no true person; to believe,
that is to say, in an impersonal person.
This, as we have seen already, is Atheism under another name,
being, as it is, destructive of all idea of God whatever; for
these words do not convey an idea of something which human
intelligence can understand up to a certain point, and which it
can watch going out of sight into regions beyond our view, but in
the same direction-as we may infer other stars in space beyond
the farthest that we know of; they convey utterly self-
destructive ideas, which can have no real meaning, and can only
be thought to have a meaning by ignorant and uncultivated people.
Otherwise such foundation as human reason rests upon-that is to
say, the current opinion of those whom the world appraises as
reasonable and agreeable, or capable of being agreed with for any
time-is sapped; the whole thing tumbles down, and we may have
square circles and round triangles, which may be declared to be
no longer absurdities and contradictions in terms, but mysteries
that go beyond our reason, without being contrary to it. Few will
maintain this, and those few may be neglected; an impersonal
person must therefore be admitted to be nonsense, and an
immaterial God to be Atheism in another shape.
On the other hand, if God is "of a reasonable soul and human
flesh subsisting," and if he thus has the body without which he
is-as far as we are concerned-non-existent, this body must yet be
reasonably like other bodies, and must exist in some place and at
some time. Furthermore, it must do sufficiently nearly what all
other "human flesh" belonging to "perfect man" must do, or cease
to be human flesh. Our ideas are like our organisms; they have
some little elasticity and circumstance-suiting power, some
little margin on which, as I have elsewhere said, side-notes may
be written, and glosses on the original text; but this power is
very limited. As offspring will only, as a general rule, vary
very little from its immediate parents, and as it will fail
either immediately or in the second generation if the parents
differ too widely from one another, so we cannot get our idea of-
we will say a horse-to conjure up to our minds the idea of any
animal more unlike a horse than a pony is; nor can we get a well-
defined idea of a combination between a horse and any animal more
remote from it than an ass, zebra, or giraffe. We may, indeed,
make a statue of a flying horse, but the idea is one which cannot
be made plausible to any but ignorant people. So "human flesh"
may vary a little from "human flesh" without undue violence being
done to our reason and to the right use of language, but it
cannot differ from it so much as not to eat, drink, nor waste and
repair itself. "Human flesh," which is without these necessary
adjuncts, is human flesh only to those who can believe in flying
horses with feathered wings and bills like birds-that is to say,
to vulgar and superstitious persons.
Lastly, not only must the "perfect man," who is the second person
of the Godhead according to the orthodox faith, and who subsists
of "human flesh" as well as of a "reasonable soul," not only must
this person exist, but he must exist in some place either on this
earth or outside it. If he exists on earth, he must be in Europe,
Asia, Africa, America, or on some island, and if he were met with
he must be capable of being seen and handled in the same way as
all other things that can be called perfect man are seen;
otherwise he is a perfect man who is not only not a perfect man,
but who does not in any considerable degree resemble one. It is
not, however, pretended by anyone that God, the "perfect man," is
to be looked for in any place upon the surface of the globe.
If, on the other hand, the person of God exists in some sphere
outside the earth, his human flesh again proves to be of an
entirely different kind from all other human flesh, for we know
that such flesh cannot exist except on earth; if in space
unsupported, it must fall to the ground, or into some other
planet, or into a sun, or go on revolving round the earth or some
other heavenly body-or not be personal. None of those
whose opinions will carry weight will assign a position either in
some country on this earth, or yet again in space, to Jesus
Christ, but this involves the rendering meaningless of all
expressions which involve his personality.
The Christian conception, therefore, of the Deity proves when
examined with any desire to understand our own meaning (and what
lawlessness so great as the attempt to impose words upon our
understandings which have no lawful settlement within them?) to
be no less a contradiction in terms than the Pantheistic
conception. It is Atheistic, as offering us a God which is not a
God, inasmuch as we can conceive of no such being, nor of
anything in the least like it. It is, like Pantheism, an
illusion, which can be believed only by those who repeat a
formula which they have learnt by heart in a foreign language of
which they understand nothing, and yet aver that they believe it.
There are doubtless many who will say that this is possible, but
the majority of my readers will hold that no proposition can be
believed or disbelieved until its nature is understood.
It may perhaps be said that there is another conception of God
possible, and that we may see him as personal, without at the
same time believing that he has any actual tangible existence.
Thus we personify hope, truth, and justice, without intending to
convey to anyone the impression that these qualities are women,
with flesh and blood. Again, we do not think of Nature as an
actual woman, though we call her one; why may we not conceive of
God, then, as an expression whereby we personify, by a figure of
speech only; the thing that is intended being no person, but our
own highest ideal of power, wisdom, and duration.
There would be no reason to complain of this if this manner of
using the word "God" were well understood. Many words have two
meanings, or even three, without any mischievous confusion of
thought following. There can not only be no objection to the use
of the word God as a manner of expressing the highest ideal of
which our minds can conceive, but on the contrary no better
expression can be found, and it is a pity the word is not thus
more generally used.
Few, however, would be content with any such limitation of God as
that he should be an idea only, an expression for certain
qualities of human thought and action. Whence, it may be fairly
asked, did our deeply rooted belief in God as a Living Person
originate? The idea of him as of an inconceivably vast, ancient,
powerful, loving, and yet formidable Person is one which survives
all changes of detail in men's opinion. I believe there are a
few very savage tribes who are as absolutely without religious
sense as the beasts of the field, but the vast majority for a
long time past have been possessed with an idea that there is
somewhere a Living God who is the Spirit and the Life of all that
is, and who is a true Person with an individuality and self-
consciousness of his own. It is only natural that we should be
asked how such an idea has remained in the minds of so many - who
differ upon almost every other part of their philosophy-for so
long a time if it was without foundation, and a piece of dreamy
mysticism only.
True, it has generally been declared that this God is an infinite
God, and an infinite God is a God without any bounds or
limitations; and a God without bounds or limitations is an
impersonal God; and an impersonal God is Atheism. But may not
this be the incoherency of prophecy which precedes the successful
mastering of an idea? May we not think of this illusory
expression as having arisen from inability to see the whereabouts
of a certain vast but tangible Person as to whose existence men
were nevertheless clear? If they felt that it existed, and yet
could not say where, nor wherein it was to be laid hands on, they
would be very likely to get out of the difficulty by saying that
it existed as an infinite Spirit, partly from a desire to magnify
what they felt must be so vast and powerful, and partly because
they had as yet only a vague conception of what they were aiming
at, and must, therefore, best express it vaguely.
We must not be surprised that when an idea is still inchoate its
expression should be inconsistent and imperfect-ideas will almost
always during the earlier history of a thought be put together
experimentally so as to see whether or no they will cohere.
Partly out of indolence, partly out of the desire of those who
brought the ideas together to be declared right, and partly out
of joy that the truth should be supposed found, incoherent ideas
will be kept together longer than they should be; nevertheless
they will in the end detach themselves and go, if others present
themselves which fit into their place better. There is no
consistency which has not once been inconsistent, nor coherency
that has not been incoherent. The incoherency of our ideas
concerning God is due to the fact that we have not yet truly
found him, but it does not argue that he does not exist and
cannot be found anywhere after more diligent search; on the
contrary, the persistence of the main idea, in spite of the
incoherency of its details, points strongly in the direction of
believing that it rests upon a foundation in fact.
But it must be remembered there can be no God who is not personal
and material: and if personal, then, though inconceivably vast in
comparison with man, still limited in space and time, and capable
of making mistakes concerning his own interests, though as a
general rule right in his estimates concerning them. Where, then,
is this Being? He must be on earth, or what folly can be greater
than speaking of him as a person? What are persons on any other
earth to us, or we to them? He must have existed and be going to
exist through all time, and he must have a tangible body. Where,
then, is the body of this God? And what is the mystery of his
Incarnation?
It will be my business to show this in the following chapter.
CHAPTER VI
THE TREE OF LIFE
Atheism denies knowledge of a God of any kind. Pantheism and
Theism alike profess to give us a God, but they alike fail to
perform what they have promised. We can know nothing of the God
they offer us, for not even do they themselves profess that any
of our senses can be cognisant [sic] of him. They tell us that he
is a personal God, but that he has no material person. This is
disguised Atheism. What we want is a Personal God, the glory of
whose Presence can be made in part evident to our senses, though
what we can realise [sic] is less than nothing in comparison with
what we must leave for ever unimagined.
And truly such a God is not far from every one of us; for if we
survey the broader and deeper currents of men's thoughts during
the last three thousand years, we may observe two great and
steady sets as having carried away with them the more eligible
races of mankind. The one is a tendency from Polytheism to
Monotheism; the other from Polytypism to Monotypism of the
earliest forms of life-all animal and vegetable forms having at
length come to be regarded as differentiations of a single
substance-to wit, protoplasm.