Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson

[5] In spite of this, however, Descartes' works, in 1663, appeared in the Index of forbidden books: and his doctrines were banned by Royal decree from the French universities. Jesuit influences, which were not at all favourable to native religion in France (or elsewhere!), may have been responsible for this obscurantist policy.

[6] Merz, History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. I, p. 384.

[7] Quoted by Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, p. 4.

[8] Höffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 315.

It may set the scruples of some at rest to be reminded that Aquinas himself applied the term Natura Naturans to God as the cause of all existence. Eckhart and Bruno had made a similar application of it (cf. Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 226).

[9] Here we may note, by way of an anticipation, a truth that Kant afterwards was the first to grasp clearly: that it is only when the mechanism of phenomena is proved, that religion can be purged of materialism.

[10] Cf. letter to Arnauld, quoted by Höffding, I, p. 347: "The substantial unity presupposes a complete, indivisible being. Nothing of this kind is to be found in figure or motion ... but only in a soul or a substantial form similar to that which we call an 'I.'"

[11] The Monadology (quoted by Pattison, Idea of God, p. 180).

[12] Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 19.

[13] Cf. "With space the universe encloses me and engulfs me like an atom, but with thought I enclose the universe." A great saying.

[14] Novalis called him "the God-intoxicated": a bold phrase.

[15] We refer, of course, to the promulgation of the Bull Unigenitus, procured from Pope Clement XI by the Jesuits; when their opponents, the Jansenists "of all professions and classes, were subjected to imprisonment, confiscation, and every species of oppression" (Jervis, Student's History of France, p. 415).

The manœuvre is characterised by another historian as a "struggle of narrow-minded fanaticism, allied to absolutely unscrupulous political ambition, against all the learning and virtue which the French clergy still possessed" (Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 379).

[16] Even before the age of the Revolution, Paris possessed many great schools. The Collège de France was founded in 1530; there was the College et École de Chirurgie, the Jardin des Plantes, the École royale des Mines, etc. (cf. Merz, History of European Thought, Vol. I, p. 107).

[17] Merz says of Newton: "In his own country that fruitful co-operation which can only be secured by an academic organisation and by endowment of research was wanting" (I, p. 99). As late as 1740 the whole revenue of the Royal Society was only £232 per annum.

[18] Morley, Voltaire, p. 41.

[19] He published his Élémens de la Philosophie de Newton in 1738.

[20] Höffding, Vol. I, p. 481.

[21] See note in Merz, Vol. I, p. 145.

[22] Merz, Vol. I, p. 143.

[23] The receipt and perusal of Rousseau's Emile, are said to have interrupted the walk on one occasion, to the great astonishment of the Königsbergers.

[24] Pringle Pattison, Idea of God, p. 26.

[25] "Atheism is aristocratic," was the reply of Robespierre to one who mocked at his Être Suprême.

[26] Confessions, Book XII.

[27] Höffding, Vol. II, p. 9.

[28] Fichte's word is Anschauung, for which the English language possesses no exact equivalent. It "implies something akin, though perhaps superior to, seeing or perceiving by means of the senses," and it approaches less closely to "inspiration" than does the English word "intuition." The term acquired a meaning somewhat akin to the amor intellectualis Dei of Spinoza, which we have met before. (See note in Merz, III, p. 445.)

[29] William James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 92.

[30] Here again a certain ambiguity surrounds the German word. Geist is inadequately translated by either "mind" or "spirit": it comprises the meaning of both words (cf. Merz, III, p. 466).

[31] This does not mean that what is not good enough for philosophy is good enough for religion. The idea behind Schleiermacher is that what philosophy cannot sanction, religious experience can sanction. And it has to be remembered that, as a follower of Kant, he assigned very definite limits to the powers of philosophy. He was not an Hegelian—Hegel's and Schleiermacher's views of the religious problem are quite incompatible—the one believed, the other did not believe, that reason could solve that problem.

[32] Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Vol. I, p. 442 (quoted by Merz, Vol. I, p. 191).

[33] Merz, Vol. I, p. 218.

[34] According to one authority (Judd, in his Coming of Evolution) the number of known species of plants and animals must be placed at 600,000 (p. 10).

[35] Vestiges of Creation, published anonymously in 1844, passed through nine large editions by 1853. The author was Robert Chambers (1802-71), a geologist.

[36] Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 168 (vide Judd, Coming of Evolution, p. 89).

[37] As a matter of fact, biologists soon demanded more than even Lyell's geology could give them. Recent discoveries about the nature of matter have, however, further extended the possible age of our planet.

[38] Darwin, Life, Vol. I, p. 93.

[39] "If we wish to fix a definite point to describe as the end of the idealistic period in Germany, no such distinctive event offers itself as the French Revolution of July, 1830" (Lange, History of Materialism, E.T., Vol. II, p. 245).

[40] A famous book which, though negative in its conclusions, places its author alongside Schleiermacher as one of the founders of the modern science of Religious Psychology.

[41] Balfour, Theism and Humanism, p. 36.

[42] "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."

[43] Spencer confessed that of the Synthetic Philosophy "two volumes are missing," the two important volumes on Inorganic Evolution, leading to the evolution of the living and of the non-living (cf. criticisms by Professor James Ward in his Naturalism and Agnosticism, Lecture IX).

[44] For an instance of the masterly work turned out by this school and of the attractiveness of their propaganda, read Huxley's lecture, "On a Piece of Chalk," delivered to the working men of Norwich during the meeting of the British Association in 1868.

[45] For this famous encounter, see Life of Huxley, Vol. I, pp. 179-89, and Life of J. R. Green, pp. 44, 45.

[46] As we shall subsequently find, this cosmic pessimism is less well grounded than Huxley believed. Still, Spencer's own scientific presuppositions were the same as Huxley's, so that the passage remains a pertinent criticism of the Evolutionary Philosophy as elaborated by him.

[47] It is instructive to observe that a similar note of latent pessimism is struck by the last notable survivor of the School we have endeavoured to describe. Viscount Morley at the end of his Recollections (1917), questioned as to the outcome of those generous hopes entertained with such confidence by his contemporaries, is compelled to ejaculate with philosophic brevity, circumspice, as he contemplates a spectacle of unparalleled horror.

[48] Storr, Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 329. See which book for a valuable chapter upon Coleridge.

[49] Foundations of Belief, p. 98.

[50] Foundations of Belief, p. 309.

[51] For this summary of Lotze's doctrine, see Merz, Vol. III, p. 615 and ff.

[52] Quoted by Ward in Pluralism and Theism, p. 103. For a brief yet adequate treatment of Mach's criticisms see Höffding's Modern Philosophers, pp. 115-21.

[53] R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 351.

[54] It is impossible to go deeper into James' "theory of knowledge" without using technical language. A few of his own phrases, however, may help to elucidate things. "Abstract concepts ... are salient aspects of our concrete experiences which we find it useful to single out" (Meaning of Truth, p. 246).

Elsewhere he speaks of them as things we have learned to "cut out" from experience, as "flowers gathered," and as "moments dipped out from the stream of time" (A Pluralistic Universe, p. 235).

I owe these quotations to Perry, op. cit.

[55] Creative Evolution, p. 325.

[56] A Pluralistic Universe, p. 237.

[57] Creative Evolution, p. 174.

[58] i.e. Intellect is not (as it is generally represented to be) a developed form of instinct, nor instinct an embryonic form of intellect.

[59] The extraordinary and miraculous phenomena of instinct—especially as celebrated by the distinguished French scientist Fabre—cannot be rightly understood by trying to interpret them in terms of intellect. This is to misread them completely.

[60] Bergson's characterisation of Spencerian Evolutionism (Creative Evolution, p. 391).

[61] Creative Evolution, p. 286.

[62] Other notable pluralists in England are F. C. S. Schiller and Dr. MacTaggart.

[63] The logical conclusion, we say, though this may not be the ultimate truth about the matter. The most attractive theories are often the most superficial.

[64] Professor Cunningham in Pearson's Grammar of Science, Part I, p. 356.

[65] Quoted by W. C. D. Whetham in his Recent Development of Physical Science, p. 280. No reference is given by him.

[66] One theory attributes the existence of matter to occasional misfits among these grains.

[67] Quoted by Bishop Mercer. Problem of Creation, Appendix B.

[68] In Theism and Humanism.

[69] Mercer, op. cit., p. 106.

[70] Mechanism, Life, and Personality (1913), p. 81.

[71] Op. cit. pp. 64, 66.

[72] Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in an article entitled, "Is there one Science of Nature?" (Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1911).

[73] The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, Vol. II, p. 338.

[74] Op. cit. p. 101.

[75] Other names of distinguished scientists holding this view are: Sir W. Crookes the Physicist and Sir W. F. Barrett, F.R.S., in England, Dr. Hodgson and Prof. James Hyslop in America, Lombroso in Italy, Richet in France.

[76] From his Duplik. Quoted by Höffding, History of Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 21.

[77] F. H. Bradley on "Phenomenalism" (Appearance and Reality, p. 126).

[78] Höffding, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 129.

[79] Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, p. 21.

[80] We now learn that conceptions of space of a highly unorthodox character are entertained by physicists and mathematicians, as the result of recent researches in the sphere of the gravitation of light.