H itetat^

AND R A T IO N A L IST R EV IEW .

[ESTABLISHED 1885.]

I

No. 22. (New Series.)

A P R I L i , 1898.

Monthly ; T wopence.

Contents.

The Dignity of Doubt. By Amos Waters The Typical Philosopher. By Charles E . Hooper A School for Rationalists’ Children. By F. J

Gould ...... Mr . Havelock E llis’s “ Affirmations” Zola’s “ Paris”..... Wundt’s “ Ethics" .... Dogma in Religious Belief Darwin and After Darwin . Signs and Warnings (Gleaned from the Reli­

gious Press) .......................................................... random Jottin gs.............................................. Chats. XL—With Professor Patrick Geddes New T estament Stories for the Young . Rationalism in the Magazines Monthly Magazines .... Short No t i c e s ..............................................

P A G E

49 5°

51 52 53 54 54 55 55 56 57 59 59 60 60

Z b c 2>t0nit£ of ©oubt.

Doubt is the contest of conscience against mistake. The expression of doubt is protest against misbelief. Webster defines doubt as “ to hesitate.” The sceptic, like the conscientious juryman, hesitates lest he convict truth or liberate error without logical evidence. Doubt is the charter of free thought, and keeps the intelligent conscience alive Doubt is the tribute o f honesty to truth ; convince with evidence, and you obtain a reasoned progress to the noblest faith.

Philosophical doubt is equally the cause and effect of intellectual dignity. The older theologians crudely perceived this truth, and, after the manner of theologians, caricatured it. They held that doubt was begotten of pride, and pride was o f the Devil. Intellectual pride is no sin if it mean the pride o f rectitude in mental as well as monetary speculation. Wherefore we claim for doubt a dignity of manners and discipline. The pride o f free and honest thought is not as the pride o f the belated zealots who overflow with gratulation that themselves are heirs o f salvation and partakers o f grace. The doubter judicially suspects these exuberant assumptions. Temperance in assent is as salutary as temperance in appetite. Habitual scrupulosity of judgment is productive o f charity, and the benefit of the doubt is the generosity o f the just judge.

Scepticism is essentially helpful as well as honourably necessary in human affairs. In physics, as Buckle said, it was the precursor of science, in politics of liberty, and’ in theology o f toleration. Scepticism is also protective. No wise man accepts service without critical inquiry into antecedent references. Religion is dishonoured if it be accepted with uncertain evidence. What is right for servants is righteous for the gods. I f the gods have spoken in revelation, they have proffered credentials to the human understanding, and human confidence should only be conceded after frank and free investigation.

T h e religious sentiment has one truth and a thousand orthodoxies. Truth is heterodox to all orthodoxies, and all orthodoxies advertise the only saving truth ; and each doxy denounces nine hundred and ninety-nine others as sinful heresies. The sects are belligerent with imputation invective, and insinuations of post-mortem discomfort for alien sectarians. “ God ” is at once the greatest word in our language and the most quarrelsome. The theological diviner attempts to locate the supreme geographically. The infinite is divided by church walls, and its especial favours are witnessed to by rival rubrics. To adopt Matthew Arnold’s figure, the popular religion is as offensively familiar with God as one individual to some other man in the next street. In this connection the dignified reticence of scepticism contrasts as profoundest reverence. Amid the strife of sects the sceptic maintains his equanimity and self-respecting discernment. In culturing his own dignity he promotes the dignity of God, who should be too just and generous to punish impartiality. The officers and gentlemen of the Salvation Army may riotously believe that Professor Huxley is being eternally tormented for having assailed burlesque miracles; the sceptic is persuaded that divine disapproval would rather be apportioned to the projectors of immoral legends. The thought of God is an emotion sublimely elevated above the drowning of bedevilled swine.

Orthodoxy erects a gallows for the central idea of its history, and declaims that the Supreme Being was publicly executed thereon, as Dr. Channing said. Symbolic Innocence was sacrificed to appease offended Omnipotence, and to cleanse with blood the guilty soul of humanity. The drama is uniquely indelicate, not to say repulsive. “ Jesus died for me ” is the brawling faith of rescued sinners. “ Lord Jesus, receive his soul 1” is the prison-chaplain’s advice to Paradise of the entrance of a repentant criminal therein.

“ O Love Divine, what hast Thou done ?

The Immortal God hath died for me !”

is distractingly sung by worshippers greatly concerned after selfish salvation, but often heedless of social progress. Inexpensive redemption undesirably breeds the vanity of that vain worldliness, which is other-worldliness. The piety of doubt is a quickened instinct of helpfulness— a religion of unselfishness. Touched with this spirit, we are not attracted by the prospect of eternal communion with the saints, whose earthly lives were speculated only against the “ wrath to come,” whose vulgar anxiety for heaven degraded the hope of immortality. I f heaven is the radiant home of fine humanities, it will be joyful to be there. But if street-corner fervours be approximately realistic, heaven will be an orgiastic and phantasmal menagerie of grotesque souls saved alive. The seventeenth-century poet, Thomas Dekker, exalted Jesus as “ the first true gentleman that ever breathed”; and we want to think of heaven as a place where other gentlemen can go and take their families.

The inconsequent tongue of a servile mind may query : “ Where will be the dignity of doubt when you are dying ?” The soul that heroically trusted truth will trust God with equal resignation at the call of the evening bell. Ignoble fears are the scorpions of ignoble mentalities What Emerson called the “ dead scurf of Hebrew antiquity ” is falling away from our religious life, and the cultured Rationalist will not falter back to dim superstitions when the beauty of life shall blend with the mystery of death. A great and holy soul once said : “ Let us die calmly, in the communion of humanity— the religion of the future.” And when the summons came, the teacher was loyal to his thought; he passed with patient serenity. “ Be calm and resigned,” tenderly said Renan to his mourning wife. “ We undergo the laws of that nature of which we are manifestations. We perish, we disappear, but heaven and earth remain, and the march of time goes on for ever.”

“ So shalt thou rest— and what if thou withdraw

Unheeded by the living, and no friend