STUDIES

SUBSIDIARY TO THE WORKS OF BISHOP BUTLER

HENRY FROWDE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.G.

STUDIES

SUBSIDIARY TO THE WORKS OF BISHOP BUTLER

BY

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1896

CONTENTS

PART I: BUTLER

CHAPTER I

BUTLER'S METHOD

CHAPTER II

ITS APPLICATION TO THE SCRIPTURES .

CHAPTER III

His CENSORS

I. Mr. Bagehot . II. Miss Hennell

III. Mr. Leslie Stephen .

IV. Mr. Matthew Arnold . V. Minor Strictures

CHAPTER IV COMPARISON WITH THE ANCIENTS

CHAPTER V

MENTAL QUALITIES

I. Measure .... II. Strength of Tissue .

III. Courage ....

IV. Questionable Theses V. Imagination.

VI. Originality ....

CHAPTER VI

POINTS OF HIS POSITIVE TEACHING . — ^^ !• On Human Nature . II. Doctrine of Habits III. On our Ignorance .

PAGE 1

16

22 23 30 46 56 72

78

86

86 87 88 91 93 94

100 100 103 105

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII His THEOLOGY 108

CHAPTER VIII POINTS OF METAPHYSICS RAISED BY THE TEXT . . .116

CHAPTER IX THK BUTLER-CLARKE CORRESPONDENCE . . . .123

CHAPTER X CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE 129

CHAPTER XI CONCLUSION .139

PART II: SUBSIDIARY

CHAPTER I A FUTURE LIFE 141

CHAPTER II OUR CONDITION THEREIN: HISTORY OF OPINION . . 173

CHAPTER III THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 199

CHAPTER IV CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 229

CHAPTER V SI-MMARY OF THESES 260

CHAPTER VI

NECESSITY, (>K 1>1 TKRMINISM 268

CONTENTS CHAPTER VH

TELEOLOGY

MIRACLE

CHAPTER VIII

Vll

293

311

CHAPTER IX THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST 307

CHAPTER X PROBABILITY AS THE GUIDE OF LIFE .... 334

SUBSIDIARY STUDIES

PART I CHAPTER I

THE METHOD OF BUTLER1

IT is important, in any attempt at a thorough examina- tion of Butler, to dwell upon the method of the author, as well as upon the arguments of his principal works : upon those characteristics of his work and working, which lie outside the express indications of the text. I have here particularly in view the relation of his form of argument to subjects lying beyond his declared, perhaps even his con- scious, purpose.

In offering to the world essays which are meant to be supplementary to the works of Butler, I assign the fore- most place to the consideration of his method, for the fol- lowing reason. While maintaining the direct value of the argument of his largest work, the Analogy, to be unabated, I hold that the value of his method is greater still. If so, it constitutes the weightiest among the reasons which may be adduced to show that this is no obsolete or antiquated treatise ; and it therefore provides a principal part of the warrant for endeavouring, in a new edition of his works, to supply an increase of facilities for their study.

The first feature of Butler's method which we have to note is, that it was an inductive method. Butler was a collector of facts, and a reasoner upon them. Herein he departed from the more common practice of his age, which had been given to argumentation in the abstract, and to

1 Some chapters of Part I, and principal parts of others, have already been printed in Good Words, and are now reprinted, with corrections.

2 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pr. I.

speculative castle-building. He notices, in the Analogy, his having forgone the advantages which he might have drawn from a procedure resembling that of Clarke in his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God.

The main thing, however, to be here considered, is not the mere question between induction and deduction, but that Butler chose for his whole argument the sure and immovable basis of human experience, from his earliest tracings of natural government, up to his final development of the scheme of revealed religion. It is probable that this great feature of Butler's method supplies the explanation of the singular fact that a work, rarely presenting to us the graces of style, not produced in connexion with any aca- demic institution or learned class, singularly difficult to master from the nature of the subject, and running directly counter to the fashionable currents of opinion, should at once have taken hold upon the educated mind of the coun- try, and should, as will appear from the language of Hume, very rapidly have acquired for its author a high position in the literary and philosophic world.

I shall submit, in the most succinct manner, a variety of features which appear to me to characterize the method of Butler, and to recommend his works, in conjunction with what has been already stated, for permanent and classical study by the more thoughtful minds.

It would be dim cult to name a writer who in the prose- cution of his work has aimed at, and effected, a more abso- lute self-suppression. His use of the first person singular is rare, and whenever it occurs, we at once perceive that it is a grammatical vehicle, and not the entrance of a capari- soned figure on the, stage for presentation to an audience. We attain indeed a solid and rather comprehensive know- ledge of the man through his works ; but this is owing, if I may so speak, to their moral transparency, which is con- spicuous amidst all the difficulties of gaining and keeping a continuous grasp of his meaning.

From beginning to end the Analogy, and the Sermons to some extent, are avowedly controversial : and the prosecu- tion of such work powerfully tends to cast the mind into a controversial mould. But in Butler this tendency is

CH. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 3

effectually neutralized by his native ingenuousness, by the sense that his pen moves under the very eye of God, and by the knowledge that the sacred interests of truth must be eventually compromised by over-statement. In any case the result is that his concessions to the presumed opponent are not niggardly, but such as may sometimes excite the surprise of the friendly reader ; the discounts from the full breadth of his propositions are so large, that it seems as if they were always tendered in ready and cheerful deference to the supreme calls of justice and of candour. This brave adherence to the principles, which can alone establish mental honesty in its highest sense, has exhibited itself in the fearlessness which has led this habitually circumspect writer into collateral observations of a boldness such as is shown in his strong statements of the ruin of the world through sin, of the rarity of real care for the public inter- est, of the wide range of waste in creation at large, and of the capacities of progress which may possibly be latent in the animals inferior to man.

But there is one broader and deeper result of the method of Butler, which must be stated at somewhat greater length. He exhibits in himself, and he powerfully tends to create in his reader, a certain habit of mind which is usually far from common, and which at the present day, and amidst the present tendencies, both of the average and even of the more active mind, may justly be termed rare. The politi- cian, the lawyer, the scientist, the theologian, are all of them, apart from any strong controlling action, due to in- dividual character, marked by a certain habit of mind inci- dental to the profession or pursuit. Butler's pursuit, and the labours of those who study him, are incessantly conver- sant with the relation between the lower and the higher world, between all the shapes of human character and expe- rience on the one side, and a great governing agency on the other. Such a pursuit will not fail to build up its own habit of mind ; and it does not coincide with the habit of mind belonging to any of the professions, as such, that have been mentioned. He does not write like a person addicted to any profession or pursuit ; his mind is essentially free. He is the votary of truth, and is bound to no other alle- giance.

4 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [PT. I.

In these matters we see through a glass darkly ; and the propositions appropriate to them will rarely take a sharp edge. To pass from the work of the mathematician to the proper work of those who graze in Butler's pastures, has some resemblance to the transition from the primitive forms of painting without atmosphere or perspective, to the mod- ern chiaroscuro, the subtle art of light and shade. Butler himself supplies us with some guidance on this subject. When he speaks of 'morals, considered as a science, con- cerning which speculative difficulties are daily raised,' he comes strictly upon his own ground, that aspect, namely, of morals which they present to us in their relations with the unseen world. And he proceeds, ' For here ideas never are in themselves determinate, but become so by the train of reasoning and the place they stand in V His readers know that these ideas, after they have been thus handled and their relative positions ascertained, become determinate only in a qualified sense, and that at every step we feel how truly he has told us both that probable evidence is the guide of life z, and that probability has this for its essential note, that it is matter of degree 8. In truth, the general rule for inquiry in this department cannot be better put than as it has been stated by Aristotle, who takes it for the distinctive note of a cultivated mind to estimate with accu- racy, in each kind of mental exercise, the degree in which its propositions can be made determinate.

yap ecrnv CTTI TOCTOVTOV raKpiyScs (.Tn^r^iv /ca$' o&ov f) rov Trpay/xaro? </>7xri5 CTrtSe^erai 4. The philosopher takes for his example of determinate science that of mathematics ; for the indeterminate, the business of the rhetorician. The vast extension of the sphere of politics since his time has greatly enhanced its aptitude to be treated as an example in this region. But Aristotle's view of morals was barred, so to speak, on the spiritual and immaterial side. His powerful insight enabled him to connect them with the constitution of our natures 6 ; but the light in the beginning, and now again

1 Preface to the Sermons, § 3. 4 Eth. Nic. I. iii. 3.

2 Analogy, Introd. § 4. 5 Eth. I. ii. 4, where noXirucTj is said

Ibid. § 1. to be KiipiwraTTj /ecu /uaAiora apxire/CToyiKT/.

CH. I.]

ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER

adequately thrown on the dependence of both upon the Crea- tor and Moral Governor of the world had become darkness for him, as it had also become darkness for the otherwise marvellously illuminated intellect of Greece in general. We visit actions with praise and blame, but we ought to do it under the conviction that such a judgement is only partial, superficial, and provisional. Greece did not know of the sovereign rule by which every action must principally be judged ; and we, who do know and can in a measure apply it, yet ought to be aware that the roots of action are mani- fold, and lie too deep down in our nature for human eyes to follow them. To give their merits or demerits — nay, those of any one among them — with an absolute exactitude, as they will be fixed in the scales of the Almighty Judge, is a process transcending the powers of any or of all human intellects. And it would be, not indeed a definition but a true indication of the science of morals, as it lies opened out before us in the Butlerian field, if we were to call it the science of the indeterminate. I have already spoken of his chief works as an intellectual exercise ; but let us also con- sider them as a guide to belief and to conduct. The mental habit which he forms in us is that mental habit which, in all questions lying within the scope of Butler's arguments, suits and adapts itself with gradually increasing precision to the degree of evidence adapted to the subject-matter; where that is much, thankfully rejoices in the abundance ; where it is scanty, recognizes the absolute duty of accepting the limitation ; backed by the consciousness that, in each and every case, it is sufficient. For in each and every case it is an award of supreme wisdom, adjusted to that case by a sure if a hidden process ; and we are enjoined to enter- tain and follow it upon rules which, if they are magisteri- ally those of religion, are also those of reason, and of the common sense which we rightly accept as our guide in all the interests and incidents of life.

The student of Butler will, unless it be his own fault, learn candour in all its breadth, and not to tamper with the truth ; will neither grudge admissions nor fret under even cumbrous reserves. But to know what kinds and degrees of evidence to expect or to ask in matters of belief

6 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pr. I-

and conduct, and to be in possession of an habitual presence of mind built upon that knowledge, is, in my view, the master gift which the works of Butler are calculated to impart. It can, however, only be imparted to those who approach the study of them as in itself an undertaking ; who know that it requires them to pursue it with a whole heart and mind, if they would pursue it profitably ; that it demands of them collectedness, concentration, and the cheer- ful resolve not to be abashed or deterred by difficulty.

To conclude ; if it be true that this mental habit is pro- duced in that field of thought which above all others is occupied by the science of the indeterminate, the study receives an important though secondary recommendation from the applicability of that habit to those other pursuits, in which also the indeterminate largely prevails. When Lord Bacon said that of all sciences that of politics was the most deeply immersed in matter, this was, I conceive, his meaning, that it was the branch of knowledge in which it was hardest to sever the true idea from environments not properly belonging to it, and necessary therefore to be detached in order that, relieved thus in mere dimension, but refined and consolidated in its essence, it might be brought as near to the truth as our weakness, our passions, and the urgency of circumstances will allow. Undoubtedly, if my counsel were asked, I should advise the intending politician, if of masculine and serious mind, to give to But- ler's works, and especially to the Analogy, a high place among the apparatus of his mental training.

But the scope of these remarks on the method of Butler requires to be yet further widened. When Bacon said that politics were the most deeply immersed in matter, he meant that they were the most closely kneaded up with human action. Let us set out from this point to consider where is the real breadth of subject-matter involved in Butler's argu- ment, and therefore contributory to the habit of mind which the study of his works is calculated to foster. 1 proceed by reference to his own text. When he has made his profuse admissions as to the insufficient character of his own argu- ment, he turns from the sphere of speculation to that of life ; and says with pathetic correctness :

CH. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 7

' Indeed the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, with which we are obliged to take up, in the daily course of life, is scarce to be expressed V

He institutes this reference as a bulwark of his argu- ment : it proves, as has been elsewhere observed, that what is given us as the guide to belief, is already, and has ever been, the guide of practice. As though he said to us, this argument of mine, which I am offering to you on behalf of belief, ought not to startle you as a novelty ; for it is the staff on which, whether you have observed the fact or not, you are leaning morn, noon, and night, in the course of your daily life. Let us now consider whether this undenia- ble statement has not another aspect and one relevant to the present contention. If Butler's argument on his own sub- ject of belief fosters a particular habit of mind, most precious in its nature ; and if the evidence which he gathers is evi- dence of the same nature with the evidence on which we act, and that not occasionally, but habitually, nay inces- santly, in the daily course of life, a most important infer- ence must be drawn, and to the following effect : Since the evidences, or experience, of life, and the evidences of belief, are the same in character, He, who forms in us a habit of mind engendered by the study of the first, is, ex vi termino- rum, also forming in us a habit of mind equally appropriate to the evidences, that is to say the experience of life : a habit well broken into all forms of difficulty; not easily inflated, not easily abashed ; able to encounter every contin- gency, to extract from it the solution of which it may be capable ; or if it yields none, then to accept the inevitable, and to live and act accordingly. The supreme excellence of this habit does not lie in its intellectual triumphs, but in its radical hostility to exaggeration, in its generating a pro- found and invincible aoxfrpocrvvr). For, as probability is the guide, so exaggeration is the mental bane of conduct. When we err in thought, word, or act, it is not usually that there is nothing to be said for the alternative to which we incline, but it is that we so exaggerate as to transform it, and by transforming it we bewilder and befool ourselves. To my eye, the several stages of this reasoning are continuous and

1 Analogy, II. viii. 17.

8 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Px. I.

inseparable. If it be sound, it at once disposes of every cavil, of every misgiving which may have beset some with the idea that Butler's philosophy was great in his day and for his purpose, but is now antiquated and obsolete. For in this view he is no longer, in a particular form, the philoso- pher of belief; he is also, and that apart from all form, the philosopher of life. For probability is its guide, and here we have the archididaskalos of probability. While he professes, and while at first sight he seems, to be dealing with the sceptic, he is really dealing with us all. The man of weak faith, or of strong ; the man of the most question- ing, or of the most docile temperament ; the man of the most determinate, or the most indeterminate, pursuit; all are alike his scholars, and in modes far beyond the immediate purpose of the Analogy, great as that purpose is, should turn his lessons to account.

The reader, therefore, will not be surprised at the large proportionate weight and moment which I have assigned to the method of Butler.

In the upshot, I think it may be fairly said that Butler achieves more than he promises. For his engagement is only to show that the truth of the Christian religion is so well worthy of inquiry as to impose a moral obligation to inquire. But he does more than he professes to do. For only let a man be a genuine student of Butler, and, like every genuine student in every case, he will try to contract a sympathy with his author, which means in the case of Butler a sympathy with candour, courage, faith, a defer- ence to the Eternal, a sense of the largeness of the unseen, and a reverential sentiment always healthful for the soul towards the majestic shadows with which it is encompassed. In these there is no small gain.

Although this is not a controversial work, yet I feel it incumbent upon me, bearing, in my advanced old age, my latest testimonies to the world upon matter that touches the deepest interests, to add a few words for the purpose of bringing home what I have thus written respecting the method of Bishop Butler.

The argument of the Analogy is an argument perhaps even greater than Butler himself was aware. In its first

CH. I.] OiV THE METHOD OF BUTLER 9

aspect it was an argument for religion at large, drawn from the course of natural government at large. But in opening up this argument, which in my judgement stands among the masterpieces of the human mind, Butler has unfolded to us the entire method of God's dealings with His creatures ; and in this way the argument which he offers is as wide as those dealings themselves.

Our Almighty Father is continually, aye every day and hour, calling upon us, almost compelling us, to act. Now acting is not the mere discharge of an outward function. It is a continuing process, in which we are responsible throughout. What is meant by being responsible ? It is meant that we expose ourselves to consequences flowing from our actions. These are (say) of two kinds. First, there is alteration of environment : which implies that in the future actings, which cannot be escaped, we shall have to cast our account anew with circumstances. The second cuts deeper still. It is that our action modifies, that is to say progressively but silently alters, from time to time, and eventually shapes, our own mind and char- acter.

These being the weighty, and from one point of view the terrible, consequences of action, they impart a piercing force to the question, how has the Almighty Father equipped us that we may encounter it ? And this question really in- volves the entire issue of His Government ; His Fatherhood ; His essential Character, as we cannot help judging it when He condescends (and He does condescend) to plead with us. The first step towards answering it is taken when we note, as we cannot help noting, that He equips us for action by supplying us with evidence to throw light upon the issues which it raises ; which, be it borne in mind, it raises con- tinually, every day and every hour of our lives. Next comes a more searching inquiry. What is the law or rule which the Almighty has prescribed to Himself for meting out this evidence to us, and thereby, in the last resort, determining our destinies ?

The answer is supplied by Butler — ' Probability is the guide of life.' And life is divisible into two great depart- ments, those of thought and of action. Butler has had

io ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pr. I.

occasion to show that the provision of evidence for each is one and the same. When he has made his confession that the evidence supplied by his argument for belief is far from satisfactory, he turns in vindication of it to the region of life, and is not afraid to impress upon us that the evi- dence on which we have to act in the course of life is very far indeed from giving us satisfaction *, and when he comes to practical applications he points out, that in this gradua- tion and this imperfection of the evidence may lie a part, and even a large part, first of our trial, and then of our reward, when ' this tyranny is overpast.'

Now these propositions, be they demonstrative or not, are certainly comprehensive. They are comprehensive in the same sense as the rules of arithmetic are comprehensive. When we say twice one makes two, we propound ,a law which governs and (as far as it goes) disposes of every quantitative relation, whether it be of miles, or pounds, or acres, or worlds.

And so the conclusions of Butler, if they be sound, over- ride and rule the entire range of human life in the twin spheres of thought and action. If conduct is in twilight, can we suppose that belief is in the blaze of midday ? Be- lief indeed is important ; but is it more important than con- duct ? Nay, does it not derive its importance, some would even say its whole importance, from its influence on con- duct?

Now what is the law, by which the Almighty rules Him- self, in furnishing us with evidence to govern conduct ? It is the law of graduation : of variety, not capricious but doubtless adjusted by the all-seeing Eye to every variation and every need of circumstance. It is, above all, the law not of perfection, but of sufficiency. How different are these from one another ! Perfection is self-attested : suffi- ciency is ascertained upon examination. Perfection dis- penses with labour : sufficiency requires, nay depends upon it. In labour there is effort, growth, development, advance : in the absence of labour there is remission, poverty, stagna- tion. The first is the making of that great and noble product, which we term manhood : with the second it

1 Annlogy, II. viii. 17.

CH. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER n

languishes, dwindles, dies ; or remains only in outward form, like those functional organs, which are smitten by atrophy when they have no office to discharge.

I say then that this relation, which Butler has once for all unfolded, between natural and Providential government, is an universal relation. We have to trace it backwards, if we enter upon the great controversy, which Butler was allowed by the conditions of his times to waive, respecting the being of a God ; as to which, however, it is interesting to remember that he has put upon record the admission that he had not succeeded in finding a demonstrative proof of the affirmative proposition. If on the other hand we travel downwards, and find ourselves, on the field of religious con- troversy, called to determine, for our own guidance, between the claims of conflicting religious professions, are we not subjected to this comprehensive law of sufficiency in the evidence, of probability in the conclusion ?

I know that this idea of guidance by probability is revolt- ing to human pride ; is truly a stumbling-stone and a rock of offence. But is it the law of life ? Only the most super- ficial minds can dream that probability means only fluctua- tion and wavering, together with the weakness which results from them. For lo ! the courage, the indefatigable and even too absorbing energy, with which in common matters of business, with only temporal advantages in view, men labour for their end. Is it then, I say again, the law of life, of life including both action and belief ? Or is it our duty to partition off one selected part of life from the rest, and to hold that within this consecrated precinct all is knowledge, light, and certitude, in their most absolute forms, while outside the paling all is the reverse ? So that upon this theory our life is cut in two, and the two parts (both alike due to God and responsible to God) are governed by laws radically different. For the being of God, the basis of all religion, no demonstrative proof has been supplied ; but the convert from (say) the Anglican Church to the Roman Church, as modelled by Pope Pius IX and his coadjutors, is taught to believe that he possesses one.

In the remarkable and profoundly interesting Life of Cardinal Manning, by Mr. Purcell, I find the following

12 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Px. I.

passage J, extracted from a sermon preached by Manning while he was moving down the slope :

1 Is it possible to believe that this scheme of probabilities (that is, of uncertainty) in doctrine, and imperfection (that is, of doubt) in evidence, is a part of the probation of the regenerate within the revelation of the faith ? '

Now it seems quite plain that this passage never could have been written by a follower of Butler, or by any one into whom his teaching had entered more than skin deep. I say nothing of the passage or passages 2 in which Butler glances, it might almost be said rails, at ' Popery ' ; or of any form of Latin belief except that which the modern Ro- man Church seems to have adopted in its despair of finding a modus vivendi between the Syllabus and the thought of mankind. These are meant to be words of help and duty. If the spirit of insolence, of wrath, of insubordination, have crept into them, I lament the error, and would gladly see it exorcised.

In sum : all duty, then, is to be regarded from a religious point of view, and all human life is charged with duty. Every movement which takes place in this unmeasured uni- verse, from the least to the greatest, from the falling of the sparrow to the eclipses of the sun and the precipitation into space of the fragments of some shattered world, have the Euler of this universe behind them. It is Butler who, more than any other writer, opens to us the one pervading scheme, upon which He deals with His creatures. Of their exist- ence this method is a governing, daily, and indeed never- ceasing law. In all its occasions, both great and small, life is ever presenting to us problems of duty. In his Sermons Butler has exhibited to us that equipment of faculty with which we have been endowed in order that we may face these problems. In the Analogy he presents to us the gen- eral character of the problems themselves. It is, then, no exaggeration to say that if there be the power of truth in its lessons, they provide us with the key of life.

And now one word as to the alleged superannuation of Butler in respect to the direct argument of the Analogy.

1 PurcelPs Manning, \. 702.

2 See Sermons, V. 8. In some other cases the reference, if it exist, is infer- ential only, and open to question.

CH. I.]

ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER

The contention of the present essay is that the highest importance of Bishop Butler's works, and of the Analogy in particular, is to be found, not in his argument, but in his method ; which is so comprehensive as to embrace every question belonging to the relations between the Deity and man, including therefore every question of conduct.

Those, who make such an admission as against the argu- ment, are not thereby driven to the conclusion that the reasoning of this great writer has become useless for the needs of the present day and of the coming time. It has great value through the robust exercise derivable by the human intellect from thorough acquaintance with the most powerfully constructed among the models which that intel- lect has from time to time produced, since this is a mode of acquiring power that is not to be had in other ways, and since the works I have referred to are entitled as models to the praise of extraordinary cohesiveness in their tissue, be it from powerfulness in the mason's hand, or be it from tenacity, like that of the old Neronian brick, in the mortar he employs.

But is there no claim in advance of this which the follow- ers of Butler are entitled to urge on behalf of his argument ? Yes : for first they may plainly press this point, that there is and can be no superannuation in the Sermons, which deal with human nature as it is, and the most important parts of which might evidently have been written, to a large extent, independently of that belief in God which Butler every- where presupposes. From this point of view it may be doubted whether the atheistical reasoner has ever done as much for himself, as Butler has done for him, not in abet- ting his denials, but in constructing on his behalf something in the nature of a religion founded upon the constitution of man.

The principal step in advance, for the present stage of our inquiry, has, however, still to be made. The conten- tion of those, who maintain that Butler is antiquated, seems to be of this kind. They allow that in his day there were two champions in the lists, of whom he was one, and that he overthrew and disabled his adversary, who appeared there no more. But, if the adversary is virtually extinct

I4 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Px. I.

like the dodo, what is Butler's title still to parade the arena ? Since the issues of the present day go to the root of the matter, and bring directly into question that belief in an intelligent Author of nature, which Butler's antagonists are found to have compromised themselves by admitting, the cause, it may be said, is disposed of, and the next step simply is to remove it, with the winner's as well as the loser's pleadings, from the list.

The reply seems to be this. The cause is not disposed of : only the issue has been widened. Not only the right- eous character of our Governor, not only His special com- munication with His creatures by Divine Revelation, but His existence is in question ; and, unless and until it can be placed beyond question, it is waste of time to discuss other issues, which can only be legitimately raised after it has been affirmed.

So far so good. But what if the arguments of Butler for a moral and righteous, and for a self-revealing Governor, are also, in their essence, arguments which, so far as they are good, go to prove that such a Governor exists ? Now this is exactly what we may and ought to hold concerning the reasonings by which the Analogy is built up. Of course there is here involved the assumption that they are good and sound for their immediate aim ; and the contention, now advanced as an outgrowth from that assumption, is that, being good and sound for their immediate aim, they are good and sound for an ulterior (but logically antecedent) aim in addition. That is to say, he has not simply dealt with the case of the Deist, but has, in dealing with that case, furnished materials available in the controversies now in hand against the several opposing systems which seek to abolish the idea of a personal and righteous Governor of the universe.

As the subject now placed before the reader is important I shall endeavour to make it clear by pointing, more defi- nitely than Butler required to do, to the difference between the arguments of the Deist, or Theist, and those of the Analogy.

The Theist may, we will suppose, claim a locus standi for such pleas as the following : the physical order established

CH. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 15

among the heavenly bodies ; the tendency, and indeed ability, of reason to acquire superiority over brute force ; the cli- matic arrangements in the world, which suggest that ex- change of material commodities, between countries, which so manifestly aims at social no less than physical advan- tages ; even the wonderful monetary system of civilized countries, which exhibits the balance of forces in a manner more curious and striking than any merely physical ponder- ation can do it ; and again, in connexion with these, the whole intelligent quality of man, as distinguished from those qualities which are moral. These, and other such pleas, may be set down among the Tri'd-reis, or arguments of belief, for an intelligent Author of nature.

Now we come to the argument of the Analogy that the intelligent Author of nature is also moral, for He takes sides in that conflict between virtue and vice, which incessantly prevails in the world \ But a Being who, besides establish- ing wonderful counterpoises, both physical and social, for the advantage of His creatures, thus takes sides in such a conflict, not only as against the Deist gives evidence on behalf of the probability that He is a moral Governor : He also applies a fresh and additional supply of argument to show that He is an intelligent Governor, or a Governor at large.

So again, if Butler has adduced good evidence towards proving that the Intelligent Governor has acted wisely and justly in meeting a manifest need of His creatures by Divine Revelation, then in the very act of doing this he has fur- nished a new element of evidence in support of the purely theistic argument.

In other words, speaking of the Analogy as a whole, he has superadded to all the purely rational, but not moral, argu- ments for the existence of God, a mass of truly moral argu- ments, available for that purpose exactly in the same measure as that in which they were available for Butler's avowed and immediate aim. Without doubt they are no more than probable reasonings ; but then we must remem- ber that, from Butler's 'point of view, the whole theistic argument lies within, and not beyond, the precinct of proba- bility.

1 Analoyy, I. i

CHAPTER II

HOLY BIBLE

THE supreme value of Butler will probably be found in the future, as it has been in the past, to lie in this ; that the works of the Bishop are singularly adapted to produce that mental attitude required for treating the questions which concern the dealings of God with man. But, as it seems to me, there is much that we here inclusively assert with regard to a variety of questions which have sprung into great prominence and activity since his time. I pro- pose now to touch upon one of them. It is the manner of God's dealing with man through the Holy Scriptures.

On the one hand, it is probable that a greater number of copies of the Sacred Volume have been circulated among the different nations during the nineteenth century than in all the preceding centuries put together. On the other hand, is it not also probably true that 'the assaults upon the inspiration, authority, and historical trustworthiness of that volume have within the same period exceeded in number, in breadth of scope, in currency, and in some sort of accept- ance or tolerance among Christians, those of all previous ages combined ?

The old, and what may be called the stereotyped, method of treating this subject, within the orthodox precinct, was to assume what is called the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The prevalence of this theory shows how unsafe it is to place implicit reliance upon any authority, which has ac- quired its title simply through its having been allowed to remain undisturbed through long periods of time. Of what avail is the verbal inspiration, if such there were, of the original books of Scripture available . for us, unless, by a perpetual miracle, provision has been made against the

CH. II.] HOLY SCRIPTURE 17

errors of copyists, printers, commentators, whose notes may find their way into the text, and of translators into hun- dreds of languages ? But the existence of such a miracu- lous provision is, I suppose, asserted by none.

The chief mischief resulting from these usurpations of right, and this facile adoption of controversial positions which in the day of conflict prove untenable, is great and manifold. Reaction one day comes ; and such reactions are commonly vindictive. The discovery of error is formidable not only in proportion as the error is grave, but also in pro- portion as the interests involved in the subject are weighty. And the discredit of any one favourite argument, however small its intrinsic importance, infects all the other argu- ments legitimately available to support the same contention. For argument is propelled by impetus as well as weight.

Again, it seems undeniable that the indolence of human nature would be greatly flattered by a scheme such as that of the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture. In this view it might be a great convenience that there should be put into the hands of each of us, as we grow up in succession, a vol- ume which should operate as an Act of Parliament operates, to the last and farthest extremity of its letter. It is essen- tial to such an idea of the Bible that it should be alike applicable to every portion of the volume. If any develop- ment of Divine Revelation be acknowledged, if any distinc- tion of authority between different portions of the text be allowed, then, in order to deal with subjects so vast and dif- ficult, we are at once compelled to assume so large a liberty as will enable us to meet all the consequences which follow from abandoning the theory of a purely verbal inspiration.

But the issue raised is not one of convenience or incon- venience ; it is strictly one of fact. Has the Almighty given us, or has He not, a volume verbally inspired ? And that question is sufficiently answered by two brief observations : first, there is no absolute security for identity with the origi- nal record ; and, secondly, there is no verbal inspiration of translators.

Now the teaching of Butler has the most direct bearing upon everything that is fundamental in the great inquiry, What is the character of the Holy Scriptures as a Divine

18 ON ITS APPL1CA rFlON TO [Px. j.

record ? Let us try a little to develop the argument lie quotes from Origen. If nature and Scripture have the same source, then we may expect to find in Scripture somewhat of the same difficulties that we find in the constitution of na- ture. It seems obvious this rule applies not only to this and that detail in the system of natural government, but to any characteristics which we may find attaching to the scheme of nature as a whole. Xow there is one such characteristic which overrides and is antecedent to every other : it is that of the general method in which the evidence supplied by it is conveyed to us. And here we find it is not conveyed by precise and easy rules ; we cannot lay hold of it in rough and ready forms. It requires observation and watchfulness at every step, to pick out from the mass of material which life places before us, what is available for our purpose, and care- fully to put aside the rest. We know, indeed, that the whole of life is. providentially ordered on our behalf ; and yet we also know how readily we may be misled when we attempt to read the will of God in the particular facts of life. His hand is in them all ; but it does not follow that that hand and its working is at every point to be made visible to us. On the contrary, while we can clearly discern the general rules of divine government in nature, as Butler gives them, we find that these rules are neither absolute, nor to our eyes uniform ; that they are attended all along with qualification and exception, and that liberal interpretations are rarely given. Most of the judgements we can safely form upon them are after the fact, and are not therefore available in definite form for the determination off -hand of the issues of conduct.

The statutes of the realm may admit any amount of con- test on the meaning of their text, but the text itself is of absolute authority throughout. If this were the case with Scripture, it would in the first place be not a little difficult to account for its fragmentary, unsystematic form, and for the informal and incomplete manner in which it most com- monly deals with its subjects. A further and most formida- ble difficulty arises from the fact that it gives no definition of itself, and that the canon has been formed by agency not inspired, and by judgements which were unrecorded. But,

CH. II.]

HOLY SCRIPTURE

when we turn to Butler, we find that as to the whole of these characteristics the work of God in Scripture corre- sponds with the work of God in nature. The moral law, and its application to justice, veracity, fortitude, benevolence, and the like, do not rest upon determinate and formal judge- ments that can be quoted in a court or controversy, and all the instruction which we receive on these great subjects is fragmentary, occasional, and incomplete in its particulars. The instruction it conveys is also mixed : it requires secre- tion and severance of material, that we may not be misled by premature or unwarrantable inference, and may by the removal of what is inappropriate turn all that is available to account. If therefore we had in Scripture, as we have in the statutes of the realm, an uniform code, absolute and in- flexible down to its last letter, should we not be obliged to say that the Author of Scripture had in the delivery of His revealed word followed a method somewhat broadly severed from that which he had pursued as the Author also of nature, in the method of communicating His will ?

Let us not, however, allow ourselves to be driven too far by logic. We seem to verge towards certain propositions that God's methods of conveying His will are not absolute but variously conditioned, and that this rule of supply for us, in faculty, in knowledge, in the adjustment of life, and in all beside, is not perfection, but sufficiency. But in mat- ters of moral action, if we have not mathematical assurance, we may have, and we very commonly have, such conviction as dispenses with all need of doubt. In the government of life, occasions of doubt, and even of doubt that refuses to bend, will arise from time to time ; but the everyday life of right-minded people is not troubled with them as regards con- duct. If they speculate on the constitution of nature, they find themselves in a region of labyrinthine difficulties ; but the mass of mankind may well be content with their men- tal food from day to day, and this, by the merciful ordinance of God, is ready to hand. Nature indeed offers us with pro- fusion at every point of her surface a combination of know- ledge, delight, and mental training, which we do not suffi- ciently appreciate. All these are to be had by a kind and degree of mental application which are open to multitudes

20 ON ITS A P PLICA TJON TO [Px. I.

of men ; and they will encounter little or no provocation to entangle themselves in the many and unsolved problems, which are opened by a philosophical contemplation of this comprehensive subject. And so with regard to the Holy Scriptures, which are appointed to be the daily food of the people of God. Those who with simplicity of mind accept them in that character, will surely find in them an increas- ing instruction as well as comfort, but need fear little per- plexity, however grave the scientific questions concerning the Bible (so to call them) which, in another order of thought and experience, have to be dealt with only by a few.

There is in this great matter, as in the whole adjustment of the supply divinely ordained for our mental aliment, a pervading application of the rule which adapts the back to the burden, the ordinary human soul to its environment. The teaching supplied by the words and actions of the great Exemplar, as it comes to the common eye, is in the highest degree simple, effective, and majestic, and finds its way with penetrating force to the mind and heart of man. Each dis- pensation of the Almighty works in alliance with His other dispensations ; and we must look at them, as Butler teaches, not in isolation, but as a whole. If we are told that the apparatus for setting forth the Divine Word in Scripture, and for conveying it to our minds, is not one of mathemati- cal precision, we have to bear in mind that it does not stand alone. The art, history, institutions, and life of Christendom are all based upon that, the record and the propagation of which were solemnly entrusted by our Lord at the close of His earthly career to human hands. In the period when there was no written Word beyond that of the older cove- nant, and when Christians as a scattered few scarcely dotted the surface of a hostile world, the abundance of miracle and of extraordinary gifts came in aid of the weakness inherent in the individual mind. As the canon was gradually con- structed, and the world so far at least reclaimed as to bear historic witness to Christ with ever-increasing force, mira- cles and extraordinary gifts ceased by degrees to form part of the stated sustenance of the Church, and the central veri- ties enshrined in the creeds became axioms, from infancy

C H . 1 1 .] HOL Y SCRIP TUKE 2 1

onwards, for us all. It is in his method of gathering and combining evidence that Butler supplies us with an instru- mentality most valuable for the safe handling of this and of many other questions ; and, being dead, yet speaks upon matters of which there was not a whisper in his day, but which are now echoing so loudly through the world.

CHAPTER III

THE CENSORS OF BISHOP BUTLER 1

I. MR. BAGEHOT.

II. Miss HENNELL.

III. MR. LESLIE STEPHEN.

IV. MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD.

V. MINOR STRICTURES : MR. MAURICE, MR. PATTISON, MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.

UNTIL the present century, and indeed until more than half of it had passed away, Butler, as represented in his most conspicuous production, had no censors ; that is to say, none of any note, none who were themselves entitled to be noticed. His works, both before and after they had been published collectively in Oxford and in London, were re- ceived, as they issued in successive editions from the press, with an almost unbroken concert of applause. During the second portion of the century, while it does not appear that their circulation has declined, and we cannot affirm that their hold on the confidence of the Christian world has diminished, various writers of ability and even eminence have pointed out what they considered to be flaws in these remarkable productions ; while some among them, without denying the great powers and high moral as well as philoso- phic rank of the author, have taken objection — mostly, but not exclusively, in the case of the Analogy — to some of his main positions, or even to the general scope of his argument.

I propose to undertake a close examination of the criti- cisms of four writers who form or belong to the last-named class, and to take them in their chronological order. These are Mr. Bagehot (1854), Miss S. S. Hennell2 (1859), Mr.

1 This chapter (now slightly 2 A member of a family of distin-

chaiiged) was printed in the Nine- guished talents, which is known to

teenth Century, for November and have exercised a powerful influence

December, 1895. on the mind and career of George

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 23

Leslie Stephen (1876), and Mr. Matthew Arnold (1877). Of these, one — namely Miss Hennell — incorporates an important criticism by Dr. Martineau, which was first pub- lished about 1840, and which may in no vulgar sense be said to have been in the van of the attack.

There have been other comments in the nature of censure, sometimes accompanied by preponderating praise. Among these are Mr. Maurice, Mr. Mark Pattison, and Mr. Goldwin Smith. But these comments are 011 specific points, and have not been carried into detail.

Among the censures passed upon Butler, we may include the comments of a class of writers who, adopting uniformly a kindly tone, have expressed their regret that the works of Bishop Butler should, as in their judgement they do, fall, in sentiment or phraseology, beneath the true evangelical standard. I have offered, in discussing the theology of Butler, a vindication which appears to me to be sufficient.

I. MR. BAGEHOT

In his essay l on Butler, which I do not regard as one of the best specimens of his literary handiwork, Mr. Bagehot refers, in terms which appear to be far too disparaging, to the subject of style. 'In some places the mode of state- ment is even stupid'; and 'it is curious that so great a thinker should be so poor a writer.' Again, in graver mat- ter, he thinks that Plato saw the truth ; but Butler only groped for it. It was not difficult for Plato to see a truth, which in the main he moulded at his pleasure ; but if Butler did but grope, his case was not wholly different from that of St. Paul, who only saw through a glass darkly. Plato's assiette was of and on the earth ; Butler had all along to bind together earth and heaven. Mr. Bagehot's criticism 2 strikes also at Aristotle, who, like Butler, worked in rigid subserviency to facts, and not as master over them. The style of Butler, too, has been made largely responsible for

Eliot. See Mr. R. H. Hutton on 1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii.

'George Eliot's Life and Writings' pp. 74, 75.

in his Modern Guides of English 2 Ibid. p. 76.

Thought in Matters of Faith, p. 270.

24 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

the difficulties of his subject l ; but those who might rewrite one of his pages would find it more difficult than they may suppose to improve the style without impairing the sub- stance. In his illustrations Butler is particularly happy ; and, upon the whole, in his case, and also in that of Aris- totle, it may be that the style and the substance cannot be parted.

Taking it at large, I think the following passage, extracted from the very able preface of the late Bishop Steere to his edition of the Analogy, presents no unjust view of the ques- tion of Bishop Butler's style :

In truth, the greatest beauty of an author's style consists in its appropriateness to express his meaning. There is a rough like- ness between the style of the Analogy and that of a legal docu- ment; and it goes deeper than might have been expected. For what makes a deed obscure to the uninitiated ? Chiefly the attempt on the part of the framer to exclude all ambiguity. It looks like irony, but it is true, that no written thing, when ex- amined, is clearer than a legal document ; and the object, the attained object, of all those obscure phrases is to avoid the possi- bility of being misunderstood. Therefore it is that, the more one examines into possible meanings of what seemed clearer (sic) expressions, the more we shall realise and admire the sound judge- ment which has preferred what we, at first sight, thought ill-chosen and obscure. Thus it is that careful students of Butler's works generally come, in the end, to have a sort of relish for his peculiar style2.

Granted fully that Butler's style is difficult. But it does not in any degree follow that it is, properly speaking, obscure.

It is needless to dwell on the judgement of Mr. Bagehot concerning the great argument of Conscience in the Ser- mons ; for it is in a strain of nearly unbroken approval. But, when we come to the Analogy, Mr. Bagehot propounds grave objections to its reasoning.

l One, however, of Butler's editors Bushby, D. D., Fellow and Tutor of

has had the courage to undertake the St. John's College, Cambridge. Lon-

reformation of his style. See Bishop don, 1842.

Butler's Treatise on the Analogy of 2 Butler's Analogy, with analytical

Religion to the Constitution and Course preface and index, by the late Right

of Nature ; with a Summary of the Rev. Edward Steere, LL.D., Bishop

Argument, and the Style in some parts in Central Africa. London, Bell,

simplified. By the Rev. Edward 1886, page v.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 25

Firstly, he denies it to have been ' probable ' that Revela- tion would contain difficulties of a like kind with nature, and subjoins, 'we should have expected that it would explain those difficulties V The rational likelihood was that the Eevelation ' would be one affecting our - daily life and welfare ; would communicate truths either on the one hand conducing to our temporal happiness in the present world, or removing the many doubts and difficulties, which surround the general plan of Providence, the entire universe, and our particular destiny.'

There is no doubt that this objection strikes at the very heart of the Analogy. If the objection stands, the Treatise must fall. On the other hand, every reviewer of Mr. Bagehot's criticisms must feel how cautiously he ought to deal with the views and arguments of a writer who is not less modest than he is able and acute, and who himself deals so tenderly with all that appertains to the religious belief of his fellow-Christians, and regards it with so deep and genuine an interest.

I must nevertheless express a conviction that Mr. Bagehot mistakes the seat of that evil, which he does not fail to see. No doubt we are entitled, and indeed bound, to anticipate that a Divine Revelation will be aimed at the heart of a great mischief, and will be designed and adapted to remove it. But the case of human nature is not a case of mere dif- ficulty ; it is a case of disease ; and the mischief lies not in the darkness of the understanding, but in the perversion of the Will. Darkened without doubt the understanding is, but darkened by those fumes of passion, which rise so densely from the furnace of our desires. These cloud the atmosphere within us, and thicken what ought to be a translucent medium to convey in their purity the authorita- tive sentences of conscience. Had want of knowledge been the capital difficulty of our state, fishermen would not have been the chief ministers of the Gospel, nor would babes and sucklings have perfected its praise. Not from an upper chamber in Jerusalem, not from the stable, offering to the Redeemer of the world the shelter denied Him by the inn, but rather from Pnyx and Theatre, from Portico and Aca-

1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. pp. 86, 87.

26 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

deme of Athens, would the notes of salvation have been sounded forth.

If we proceed upon the narrative of Genesis, it was not for want of knowledge that mankind fell from a peaceful into a troubled existence, but from the unauthorized and premature pursuit of it. If Butler is right in referring for the origin of what he terms natural religion to a primitive revelation, yet the historic traces of that revelation became with the lapse of years faint and imperceptible. There were indeed times, such for instance as the Achaian period de- scribed by Homer, when belief in a Divine government of the world was still sustained, and the foundations of right and duty still remained visible, in virtue of the law written in the heart. Generations passed away, and knowledge in- creased in the world ; and, together with this increase of knowledge, the conditions of social order came to be better understood ; but in other respects virtue diminished, and the idea of sin, except among the Jews, was virtually lost.

Mr. Bagehot rightly observes that the argument of Butler is one dealing with our religious difficulties : and ' this is the exact class of difficulty which it is most likely a revela- tion if given would explain V But the view of Butler is so different that his critic will be found here to challenge one of his main and deliberately assumed positions. As his teaching runs, there is no absurdity in supposing that the speculative difficulties, in which the evidence of religion is involved, may constitute even the principal and most fruit- ful part of the trial of some among us. The generality have to contend with more vulgar temptations ; but ' there are persons of a higher stamp, without this shallowness of temper, persons endowed with a deeper sense of what is invisible and future.7 Had such persons no doubts to con- tend with, the practice of religion would be to them, as Butler thinks, unavoidable ; and at least it seems clear that they would stand in no such need of effort as to brace the mind and train the character in the manner of what we term a discipline ; which discipline nevertheless may be very needful for their perfection2. Objections to the truths of Christianity, apart from its evidence, Butler holds to be

1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 87. 2 Analogy, II. vi. 18.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 27

mostly frivolous: and it may be presumed that, had he thought them worthy of more consideration, he would have treated them as he has treated objections to the evidence.

With his habitual sincerity, Mr. Bagehot falls back upon first principles ; and holds that ' the supposition and idea of a miraculous revelation rest on the ignorance of man ? : and that God, if He should speak, ' would shed abundant light on all doubts, would take the weight from our minds, would remove the gnawing anguish from our hearts. l ' He antici- pates, however, a form of reply to his argument. It is that there may be facts impossible for us at present to appreci- ate, but most important for us to know. His answer is that there is no advantage in the revelation of an inexplicable fact : that such a revelation is extremely improbable : that the revelation we might properly expect is one throwing light on the world in which we live ; and in which ' poverty and sin, pain and sorrow, fear and anger, press on us with a heavy weight V But this, as Butler truly teaches, is ask- ing to be acquainted with the whole counsel of Providence : a task which he renounces, finding that he undertakes enough in endeavouring, not to explain the conduct of the Almighty, but to point out to man his duty 8.

Mr. Bagehot thinks also that a revelation of rites and ordinances, as compared with duties, is antecedently most improbable. But, in this large and sweeping proposition, does he not forget the exigencies of our complex and compound nature ? It would be strange, without doubt, if external prescriptions were to form the substance or main bulk of a revelation. But it may seem that a revelation may naturally comprehend what provides for the discipline of the body ; what corresponds with the large office of the senses in the business of human life ; and even what satis- fies the imagination. The lofty doctrine of the Gospel, which consecrates the body as an inseparable portion of our nature, and at the same time propounds our reunion with the Divine Nature in the person of the Kedeemer, as the one thing needful, shows that there is here an unfilled gap in the teaching of Mr. Bagehot which deals with us as pure

1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 88. 2 Ibid. pp. 88, 89.

3 Analogy, II. viii. 10.

2g ON HIS CENSORS [Pr. I.

intelligences ; and may well justify Bishop Butler when he teaches that the exterior part of Christianity belongs to its essence 1.

Mr. Bagehot contends 2 that the argument of the Analogy 1 may be used in the defence of any revelation, the Maho- metan as well as the Christian 7 ; and it has appeared to some that herein lies an objection to the Treatise. But let us suppose, though the supposition may be an extreme one, the case of a Mahometan philosopher arguing, as Butler has argued in his first Part, and substituting in a second Part the Koran for the Gospel, each of them as illustrated by the course of history ; suppose that he could establish the claim of his religion to a serious examination : such a claim, on such a basis, constitutes no objection to the argument of Butler. The Koran then presents itself, according to But- ler's method, at the bar of reason for scrutiny : inasmuch as reason is the judge both of the proofs of the religion, and even of its character. When the proofs of the Gospel are opened, we find that it alleges, taken roughly : (1) Prophecy, (2) Miracle, (3) History, (4) Moral adaptation. And of these the first two appear especially to have been vital to its first acceptance. But when we turn to Maho- metanism, these two great subjects are presented to us as an absolute blank. If we come to the third, we find anterior history in the narrative of the Old Testament leading up to Christianity, but having no point of contact whatever with Mahometanism. If we pass to posterior records, we find that the history of Christianity, down to the time when it had conclusively established its hold on the greatest races and ruling intellects of the world, was a history of suasion. But the history of Mahometanism, as a religion systemat- ically propagated by violence and bloodshed, seems to re- nounce the appeal to reasoning altogether, and to make the whole inquiry ridiculous. It is hardly necessary, after this, to enter on the question of moral adaptation, or an effica- cious remedy for the disease of human nature. Perhaps from this brief review we may sufficiently judge what is the practical upshot of Butler's argument, when applied to religions other than the Gospel. And this without our

1 Analogy, II. i. 19. 2 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 90.

CH. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

29

being bound to deny that the Mahometan and other reli- gions may, in virtue of such elements of truth as they contain, have acted for special purposes, and may still oper- ate upon humble and simple souls, in conjunction with purely natural affections, for purposes of real good. It is but too easy to show, on the one hand, how the results of Christianity are intercepted and marred by our corruption of nature : and we should not really mend our own case by grudging to those, who live under other systems, every acknowledgement that truth demands. If it be the* fact, then, that Butler's argument is available for religions other than our own, it can only be made available for them in so far as they are true ; just as, in the case of Christianity, it does nothing to accredit those corruptions which he admits and deplores. In so far as it tends to support such ele- ments of truth as may not have been stifled in other reli- gions, this surely is not a defect, but a recommendation of the reasoning he has employed.

Mr. Bagehot sums up the first chapter of his argument by declaring it to be monstrous that there should be a Divine revelation which enumerates the difficulties of natural gov- ernment and yet casts no light upon them ; and so, instead of relieving doubt or anxiety, should ' proclaim every fact which can give a base to them both V As regards the first of these, it is simply a misconception to suppose that y^wo-is and not 7rpa£is was the purpose for which our necessities demanded a provision. As regards the second, it will be more conveniently considered in connexion with the objec- tion as it has been taken by another of the censors of Bishop Butler.

Thus far Mr. Bagehot has been clear and explicit in urg- ing his exceptions against the Treatise of Butler. But now he announces 2 that he has a second objection to the argu- ment of the Analogy on which he is inclined to lay nearly equal stress. I must own that I have failed, in this portion of his Essay, to gather his meaning. He nowhere cites a passage from the work; he nowhere even describes one. Instead of this, he cites passages from Professor Kogers 8,

1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 90. 8 Ibid. p. 98.

Ibid. p. 90.

3o ON HIS CENSORS [PT. I.

and perhaps makes good certain points against them ; but for Professor Kogers, Butler certainly cannot be held re- sponsible. At one moment 1 he seems to admit Butler's argument within certain limits, and allows that the ' style of Providence ' would probably be the same in revelation as in nature ; but neither here nor elsewhere does he collect evidence from the text. And he somewhat strangely winds up his article by tracing to deficiencies in Butler's mental constitution faults in the Treatise, as to which he does not supply a particle of evidence to exhibit or make good their existence. Those who would either condemn Butler or defend him with effect must be prepared to deal with their subject at much closer quarters.

II. Miss HENNELL.

In 1859, Miss S. S. Hennell widened the ground of the attack by publishing her essay ' On the Sceptical Tendency of Butler's Analogy.7 Without doubt she begs a very large question in her title ; but no critic can surpass her either in reverence or in candour ; and she records this judgement upon Butler's position as it has been generally estimated : 1 By the main body of Christian believers he is still consid- ered unanswered and unanswerable, strong as a giant against all the puny attacks of infidelity V

She considers, indeed, that the Treatise ( engenders a deep spirit of scepticism/ and supplies no principle capable of effectually combating it. But of this anon.

Following many others, but quite innocently, she quotes a reported remark of Mr. Pitt on Butler's Analogy, to the effect that it suggested to him more doubts than it solved. From the eminence of the names concerned, this remark may have circulated widely; but I have never had the means of verifying the statement until within a few days ago, when I found Wilberforce's Diary quoted as the source.

The Life of Wilberforce was published nearly sixty years ago, and was allowed to run to the inordinate length of five volumes. The public has avenged itself by suffering the book to pass into literary oblivion. I have, however, an

1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. pp. 95, 96. 2 Essay, p. 2.

CH. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

original copy, and I will give from it first the statements, and then the authority on which they rest.

In November, 1785, Mr. Wilberforce was much agitated by deep religious convictions, leading to a great elevation in his tone of life. He was in a correspondence with Mr. Pitt, to whom he had not, at the date I have first cited, opened his whole mind. Still it must have contained references to his serious course of thought, for he records under the date of November 24, the following : —

'Pitt called, and commended Butler's Analogy : resolved to write to him, and discover to him what I am occupied about.'

And accordingly on Sunday, the 27th, he read Butler for three-quarters of an hour1. He fulfilled his resolution to write to Pitt in very explicit terms. Pitt promptly an- nounced to him his intention to call on the following day 2. He came accordingly and pressed on the discussion. As Wilberforce says : —

' He tried to reason me out of my convictions. . . . The fact is that he was so absorbed in politics, that he had never given himself time for due reflection on religion. But amongst other things he declared to me, that Bishop Butler's work raised in his mind more doubts than it had answered 8. '

Considering Butler's extreme candour, nay scrupulosity, in stating the objections to his own case, there is nothing wonderful in this passage, taken by itself : for, if Pitt's mind was not fully prepared, he might be struck with the difficul- ties of the case more vividly than by the solutions of those difficulties. But we have these curious facts before us. On the 3rd of December (which appears to have been the date), in a conversation controversial though friendly, he con- demns the tendency of the very book which he had sponta- neously, and not in disputation, recommended to Wilberforce nine days before. This really amounts to a contradiction. But Pitt was a man not likely to contradict himself. How are we to reconcile the two passages ? and are they of equal authority ?

The answer is that they are not of equal, but indeed of

Life of Wilberforce (Murray, 1838), i. pp. 89, 90.

2 Ibid. p. 94.

3 Ibid. p. 95.

32 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

most unequal authority. In their Preface, the editors of the Life carefully explain the different sources of the material which they have woven into one continuous narrative ; and they have for the most part, in the body of the work, noticed them at the foot of the page.

The first of these sources was from manuscript books, or detached sheets, in which Mr. Wilberforce was accustomed himself to note down daily occurrences. These will be found referred to under the head of ' Dairy.7

The commendation of Butler is quoted from a series of extracts reaching continuously from the 24th of November, day by day, to the 30th ; and these are apparently among the first fruits of his private ' Diary,' which he began now, ' whilst this struggle was at its height,' with a view to spir- itual uses. So the commendation of Butler by Mr. Pitt comes to us (1) at first hand, (2) in a contemporary record.

But the sources of materials are five 1 , and the fifth is neither contemporary, nor first hand. It represented partly conversations of this venerable man ; some of them taken down when uttered, but at times never specified, by members of his family. At the dates we have been dealing with, Mr. Wilberforce was twenty-five and a bachelor ; so that all the materials of this class, if written at all, were written (say) at periods later by from twenty to forty-eight years (he died in 1833), when he had sons full-grown. Another portion was supplied by the editors from their own vivid recollections, apparently after his death, when they came to execute their task as biographers. And a third portion was furnished by certain friends. It is to this last class of mate- rial that the condemnation of Butler Helongs ; or, as we are informed by a footnote, to l conversational memoranda 2 .

It appears, then, that the condemnation, on which a good deal of stress has been laid, stands in a category of informa- tion which is at best only doubtful ; but in this case it comes at once into conflict with another account of a directly oppo- site tenor, and recorded under circumstances which give it the highest degree of authenticity. In other words, it is not, as it stands, entitled to credit.

The reader will, I am sure, excuse the minuteness of this

1 Preface, pp. v, ix. 2 juj. p< x.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 33

detail. [I must now add to it my own conjectural, but I think not irrational interpretation. Once only, as it appears upon the evidence, was Wilberforce tempted, even by the recommendation of Pitt, to spend less than one hour in read- ing the Analogy. He also had it read to him for two hours ! a proof I think that he never girded up his loins to it at all, or gave it more than a perfunctory attention. Any one, who thus trifles with the work, is likely enough to be struck with the objections raised rather than with the answers to them. Upon the whole, seeing that the remark assigned to Pitt cannot well be true, it seems possible, if not probable, that Wilberforce (if the reporting friends have made no mistake), a generation after the facts, put into the mouth of Pitt a dis- tant and shadowy recollection of an impression of his own *.]

It would be unwarrantable to resort to any such plea with a view to excluding Miss Hennell from this arena. Her thoughts on Butler are palpably serious and earnest; and side by side with her ingenuous statement as to the ruling Christian opinion on the subject, we must register the ad- mission that, in one, and possibly in more than one, intelli- gent and upright critic, Butler leaves a ' permanent feeling of unsatisfactoriness rankling in the mind/ and transfers from himself to his reader ' a sympathetic gloom,' which the great ' intellectual and moral power ' of the work heightens into ' a kind of paralyzing awe V Into the recesses of emo- tion we cannot penetrate ; but it is permitted to deal with arguments ; and it is a task of something better than a com- bative interest to inquire into their reality and weight in the case of Miss Hennell.

Butler, in every instance without exception, reduces his demands upon the antagonist whom he always sees before him to their minimum. There is not in the Analogy, from beginning to end, a word of rhetoric, of declamation, of either wilful or neglectful over-statement. It is a purely dry light which he seeks to cast upon his theme. He opens a path before us, and the whole purpose of his book is summed up in the word ' ought ' ; while to this ' ought ' there is no other sequel than the words l to inquire.' For all those

1 Added to the text, March 17, 1896. 2 Essay, p. 5.

34 ON HIS CENSORS [Pr. I.

whose temperament is warm, whose imagination is lively, this seems but a jejune result ; they have spent much labour and much patience in toiling up the steep road of the Trea- tise itself, and then they find themselves simply introduced into a new field of arduous investigation. They are tired, and demand refreshment ; he offers them only a recom- mencement of work. After a hot and hard day, it seems a scanty wage. It is no wonder if some are disappointed ; it is well that so many are not. To my mind, there is no prepa- ration for a satisfactory study of Butler so good as to have been widely conversant with the disappointing character of human affairs. With touching simplicity he says :

' Indeed the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, with which we are obliged to take up, in the. daily course of life, is scarce to be expressed1.'

Yet such evidence suffices for those whose one habitual endeavour it is to discern and follow the way of duty. So it comes to this ; that the method of guidance given us for practice is one with the method of guidance given us for belief. And of these two, the first is perhaps the very best TrpoTrcuSevcrts for what is to follow it in the palaestra to which Butler introduces us. So viewing the matter, are we entitled at once to complain of a ' sceptical tendency ? in the Ana- logy ?

I proceed to consider Miss HennelPs arguments.

Some twenty years before the Essay of Miss Hennell, Dr. Martineau had published a Sermon, in which he was, I believe, the first to object broadly2 to Butler's mode of using the argument from analogy. Miss Hennell adopts and presses the criticism of Dr. Martineau. I sum up the passage as follows. Vicarious suffering is admitted to be found in nature. But it is the exception, not the rule. If we make it the rule, if it be a key to unlock the whole problem of Divine Government, then we place creation under a tyrant's sway. Again : < We pass through the great infirmary of God's creation ' ; and Butler is said to say that 'it is all the same in the other world, and wherever the same rule extends.' And so the question arises whether this victory is won in favour of Kevelation, or against Natural Religion.

l Analogy, II. viii. 17. 2 Essay, p. 11.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 35

The argument is alike intelligible and forcible. If we represent disease and wrong as the characteristic features of creation, we clearly administer a terrible persuasive to Atheism. But is this a true representation of the language of Butler ? I know of no other case in which a great author has been so largely misapprehended, and consequently mis- stated, and that by critics who cordially respected him. Butler has nowhere drawn for us such a picture. He has, indeed, said that the difficulties which are alleged against religion are found in nature, and yet do not displace belief in an Author of nature. But he is so far from representing this as a normal state of* things, that he takes his stand throughout upon the proposition that this world, in which our lot is cast, is in a state of apostasy and ruin. For this condition, religion professes to supply remedial provisions. The question is then raised upon the credibility of the scheme it offers. And Butler supports it, as to credibility, by showing that it presents to view no difficulties, unless such as have their counterpart in nature, and as, when urged against believing in a supreme Author of nature, have been found not to warrant that negation. They can- not, therefore, be more effective when urged against religion. He first marks our entire condition here as exceptional by showing us to be in a state of apostasy and ruin. He then points out that, even in this disordered and impaired posi- tion of things, virtue or good makes a partial but intelligi- ble assertion of its prerogatives, and visibly promises one more unequivocal and complete. He urges that even here the bad man has small satisfaction in what he enjoys, and the good man large compensations for what he suffers ; that in indirect forms — for example, in those of civil govern- ment — a law of right is to some extent proclaimed : that God even here and now takes part in the controversy, and proclaims Himself to be on the side of virtue. In anticipa- tion of criticism, Butler has girt himself about with precau- tions which ought to have shielded him against these serious and strange mistakes of the reasoning he actually uses. But I proceed.

Miss Hennell next supposes the case of an inquirer into the truth of Christianity who finds himself1 brought face to

1 Essay, p. 6.

36 ON HIS CENSORS [PT. I.

face in Scripture with, representations of the actions of Deity that shock his moral sense. Repairing to Butler for aid, lie is instructed that like infractions of right occur in nature, and that as we nevertheless believe in a supreme Author of nature, so we may still believe in the authenticity of Revelation. But as Revelation, she thinks, gives a sanc- tion to such infractions, her inquirer is in a painful dilemma. Now I am not considering objections to religion founded on any moral anomaly which may seem to be presented by the Old Testament histories, but am dealing simply with objections to the argument of Butler. Butler has nowhere so much as touched in detail an/ of these moral difficulties. They did not lie in the main line of his argument. To con- sider how far a Revelation, because Divine, is tied to con- ditions of absolute perfection in the manner of its communi- cation, is a subject at once large, and distinct from that of Butler. It is true that this may be held to be included in the parent-suggestion of Origen, which presents to us the Scriptures as the groundwork of the proposed comparison with nature. But, probably for the purpose of avoiding an extension of his field which would have made his subject unmanageable, Butler in his title alters the description, and takes not the Scriptures, but religion, as the subject which he is to compare with nature. He was surely entitled to hold that the subjects of discussion which he thus escaped are not directly presented to us by the religion which he teaches, and which relies on the Scriptures of the Old Tes- tament in proof of the Advent, but does not directly or essentially associate itself with every particular of govern- ment over men ; any more than the arguments of our Lord and of Saint Paul from providential action in the world* bind them to account for all the difficulties which may offer to our view. How true this is we may the better perceive if we bear in mind that, in the centuries immediately succeed- ing the age of our Lord, the general contents of the Old Testament were far from being either formally or largely presented to the acceptance or to the eyes of converts to Christianity.

It is true, however, that while Butler avoids the discus- sion in detail on the difficulties of Old Testament history,

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 37

he lays down principles applicable to them ; and this, too, in one of the most assailable passages of the Analogy, which, if it allows of defence, may fairly be said to invite and tempt attack. Miss Hennell here finds him guilty of soph- istry, and of open defiance of natural principles. She con- ceives that the best apology which can be made for him lies in the ' noble straightforward candour with which, casting aside all disguises, he lays bare to every reader the nature of his contentions/

What he contends for is as follows : He lays it down in the first place x that reason is a judge, not indeed of things contained in Scripture and at variance with our expecta- tions of what a Eevelation would convey to us, but yet (first) of the evidence, and (secondly) of the morality of what is offered for our acceptance. It is to judge whether the matter propounded to us is ' plainly contradictory to wisdom, justice or goodness ; to what the light of nature teaches us of God,' or, again, it cannot accept what is con- trary to t immutable morality 2 ' ; or ' the principles and spirit of treachery, ingratitude, cruelty.'

But, as he contends, the case is different with external action ; ' for instance, taking away the property or life of any ? ; the title to hold these proceeding from the Divine Will, and being revocable by those who gave them. In these cases, actions, which without command would be immoral, cease to bear that character when commanded. They are indeed ' offences ' — that is to say, they are liable to be perverted 'to serve the most horrid purposes,' and possibly they may mislead the weak8. They belong also to a course of things liable to create an immoral habit : but this will not follow if the occasions of them be only few and detached.

Upon this passage at least three questions appear to arise. (1) Is it consistent with itself? (2) Can it be defended in all its parts ? (3) What was the probable intention of the author, and what is the equitable interpre- tation to be placed upon it as a whole ?

First, if reason is to judge whether matter propounded to us in the name of religion is, or is not, plainly contradictory

1 Analogy, II. iii. 26. 2 Ibid. 27. 3 Ibid. 28.

38 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

to wisdom, justice, and goodness — is, or is not, tainted with 1 treachery, ingratitude, cruelty ' - — it seems impossible to ex- clude from the province of judgement by reason ' the whole of external action ' : such as the cruel murder of Abel by Cain, or the treachery of Eachel and Jacob against Esau. Yet such exclusion seems to be conveyed in the words which here describe external action ; and therefore the language of the passage does not appear to be consistent throughout.

Nor is it possible, secondly, to defend a statement which, taken in its letter, asserts by implication that no breach of wisdom, justice, or goodness can be involved in an external act. Nor can I undertake to support the assertion that in cases where i a course ' of acts would create an immoral habit, a few detached instances have no ' natural tendency ' in the same direction.

So far Butler seems to lie open to the animadversions of the severer critics : and, without doubt, every shortcoming in point of accuracy in a Treatise dealing with subjects of the first moment is to be lamented.

But the third question is the most weighty. Suppose, for argument's sake, it were the intention of Butler, not to lay down an universal proposition denying that an essential morality or the reverse may attach to external action, but only to assert this, that there are large provinces of external action, within which the character of the things done essen- tially depends on the authority under which they are done, not upon the nature of the action as it stands apart from such authority : this, I think, we may defend both as clearly true and also as important.

It seems to me probable that Butler, whose age was not an age of minute Scripture criticism, had before his mind nothing more than the general severity of punishments re- corded in the Old Testament, such as the large, though by no means universal, extirpation of the Canaanitish nations, or the summary judgement executed upon the partakers in the schism of Korah, where, however, no human agency was employed.

And again with reference to the formation of habits in the individual mind. The Bible presents to us the case of Samuel, who conveys to us the idea of a character alike wise

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 39

and gentle; but who was the appointed instrument for destroying with his own hand King Agag, in requital for his cruelties *. To be the mere minister of lawful but bloody sentences is an occupation tending to form some kinds of immoral habit. But surely all must so far agree with Butler as to say that there is a wide difference between the habitual performance of such acts, and such a performance on a single and separate occasion. It is such a difference as we may recognize between the effect on the character of a soldier who has, once or upon rare occasions, wounded or slain in battle the enemies of his country, and the case of a public executioner, addicted, before the recent mitigation of manners, to the constant launching of his fellow-creatures into eternity ; one marked in the tradition of the Christian nations as having been placed, by the public instinct of the community, under a kind of moral proscription, which lays the office under a sort of traditional discredit. Confining ourselves to the assertion of a difference, and that a wide one, we stand on ground that is unassailable. It must indeed be acknowledged that the single act, such as that of Samuel, is the first step towards the formation of a habit ; but is it not like the first step of the foot over a series of stepping-stones, which may be drawn back ? Even so the deed, remaining without sequel of any kind, is as if it were retracted ; for in the course of nature the habitual tone and bias of the character resume their sway.

The question is, are we, with Miss Hennell, utterly to condemn the whole doctrine conveyed by Butler in this passage, or are we, while admitting that his language at one or two points falls short of his usual accuracy, and requires qualification, to accord to him the benefit of such qualification, and admit that he in no degree intentionally tampered with the moral law ? It seems to me that the latter is not only the more equitable, but the more rational, process ; and for the reason which, plain as it appears to be, Miss Hennell has entirely overlooked. It is this. Butler has laid down emphatically in this very passage that there is an immutable morality, which no positive command can change ; and has made a strict adherence to wisdom, justice, 1 1 Sam. xv. 33.

4o ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

goodness, and the inflexible rejection of treachery, ingrati- tude, and cruelty, the governing idea of the entire passage. With this he combines the unquestionable truth, that a multitude of acts, such (say) as the levying of' taxes, the invasion of liberty by incarceration, and executing the for- feiture of life for crime, which would be immoral if the agent be unauthorized, are habitually made moral, and even obligatory, by public authority. Even more, then, in an age and under a dispensation of more direct and palpable rela- tions between the Almighty and His creatures, might devo- lution, similar in principle, but of yet higher authority, lead to acts, such as the terrible penalty upon Canaan, which may not in their whole grounds be comprehensible by us, but which it would be the extreme of audacity on our part to condemn.

In no case can Miss Hennell be warranted, as it seems to me, in drawing inferences from the passages to support the general doctrine that the Analogy favours scepticism ; because any corrections or limitations which the writer's phraseology in this instance may require can in no way interfere with the general course of his argument, or impair its force. If the system under which the world is actually governed inspires the conviction that it has a righteous aim, while presenting incidents for which that righteous- ness of aim does not always give account to us, the very same rule must serve us in our dealings with moral anoma- lies in the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

But Miss Hennell is occasionally so carried off her balance by emotion that she too deviates into inaccurate representation of Butler. She says Butler charges us ' not to be disturbed by exceptional interruption of the law of morality V It is no wonder that she has no citation in proof of this grave statement ; for none can be found. Butler treats morality as immutable, and emphatically holds that it is not based upon the mere consequences of acts 2, that moral fitness resides in them of themselves, and that the will of God is thereby determined 8. There can be no inter- ruption, then, of the moral law in the Divine government. Instances there may be which we cannot demonstrate to be

l Essay, p. 18. 2 Analogy, I. vii. 21. 3 Ibid. vi. 16 n.

I

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 41

in conformity with, it ; but on these we are to suspend our judgement for the very sufficient reason that our ignorance prevents us from giving a full and perfect account of any one thing whatever \ and especially of such things as give no explanation of themselves. With this misconception of Butler, Miss Hennell's declamation against orthodoxy of itself falls to the ground.

Miss Hennell states with moderation 2, that the work of Butler, faithfully adjusted as it was to the needs of his own day, is inadequate to the needs of ours. This is indeed indisputable. His argument does not of itself confute the Agnostic, the Positivist, the Materialist ; and it is also true that, the argument against miracles not having been fully developed when he wrote, his observations upon the point, as they stand, are incomplete. But these facts in no way sustain the purpose or the title of Miss Hennell's tract. Butler cannot minister to scepticism merely because he does not conclusively dispose of questions that were not before him. To supply the missing link between them, Miss Hennell resorts to assumption. She assumes that he had examined what she called the positive question, meaning apparently the argument on the being and attributes of God handled by Clarke, and had found it wanting. This assump- tion is in the first place altogether gratuitous ; in the sec- ond highly improbable. The works of Butler are limited in bulk, but the immense amount of substance they contain furnishes a very adequate outcome in the philosophical region for a life like his, not over long, and for a mind so circumspect and profound that, upon subjects of such diffi- culty, its operations may of necessity have been slow. But also upon moral grounds the supposition is one dishonouring to Butler. He had, as we know, solemnly devoted his life to the search for truth. Yet Miss Hennell can suppose that in theology he accepted and argued from the important con- cessions of Deists, without being within himself persuaded of their truth. This too although she has herself warmly eulogized his high mental integrity. But in truth he has on his own behalf settled and de jure if not de facto closed this question. For he tells us in the correspondence with Clarke

1 Analogy, I. vji. 6, 2 Essay, pp. 20, 21,

42 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

that lie had long hoped and looked for a demonstrative proof of the being and attributes of God, but had felt him- self obliged to recede from this extreme demand and to rest content with ' very probable arguments/ which, as we know, in his mind carried with them the full weight of practical assent, and also imposed all the stringency of high moral obligation.

Why Miss Hennell should term Butler's method negative, while it consists simply in the search for facts and in posi- tive deduction from them ; or why she should describe it as of that l metaphysical kind ' which is ' very fruitful in delu- sion V while it is purely experimental throughout, it may be hardly worth while to inquire. But she now proceeds to a ground of argument both broad and relevant. Butler alleges that there is a scheme of Providence. But we know only 1 a most insignificant portion of the whole order of things.' How, then, can he be justified in attempting to make it into a system, and put it forward for acceptance ? The answer is plain from Butler's point of view. It is just because the known facts, though their amount be insignificant in com- parison with the facts unknown, yet afford sufficient proof that there is a scheme, and that it is righteous, though the evidence of it, like almost all the evidence on which we have to found our conduct, is far from giving ' satisfaction ' : that is, from being what we could desire 2. Confute him on his facts if you can : but his reasoning is perfectly consecutive ; and, being based on human experience at large, is as durable now as in his own day.

Miss Hennell proposes to make Butler responsible for set- ting up a conflict between reason and faith. Reason is pur- posely checked by obstacles arbitrarily interposed, in order that faith may have space for cultivation 8.

There is no other ground for saying reason is checked, than the fact that our knowledge is limited. Our bounded powers have a bounded field for their exercise and develop- ment. This is not to check but to train them. Reason is only checked, in any proper sense of the word, when it is forbidden to judge, according to the nature and degree of the evidence supplied, upon matters presented for its acceptance.

1 Essay, p. 22. 2 Analogy, II. viii. 18. 3 Essay, p. 25.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 43

But this prerogative of reason is one which Butler has been beyond most other writers solicitous to enforce. And as for the doctrine that our struggles with obstacles may be good and fruitful provided we do not believe that God designed them \ it neither admits of support, nor deserves confuta- tion. Again, in making war on the idea that Duty is ' con' f ormity to the will of a Divine Moral Governor/ our critic is not showing the sceptical tendency of Butler's Analogy, but simply putting in question both the method and the basis of instruction under the Gospel.

Miss Hennell proceeds to ascribe to Butler all the follow- ing propositions 2 ; which she holds to be false :

1. That exceptions to a supposed moral rule are better not regarded. There is not a word in Butler's Analogy to this effect.

2. That it is desirable for man to content himself with probabilities. What Butler says is, that the provision with which we are furnished in order to the guidance of life is a provision of probabilities. But the spirit alike of his life and of his works is a spirit which must, on the one hand, stimulate every sympathizing student to obtain in every case the best evidence he can before forming his judgement, and, on the other hand, warn him against mistaking the char- acter or overstating the value of that evidence.

3. That the effect of this reliance upon probabilities should be little different from that of acting upon ascer- tained truth. Now, Butler places the obligation to act, imposed by probable evidence, very near that which ascer- tained truth would impose. But he nowhere states or implies that the action is to be the same. The possibilities of error, which remain in the one case and not in the other, may have to be carefully watched for, and therefore entail an important difference in the mode of action.

4. That nature suggests a Governor who commands strict obedience; <a Father best pleased with uninquiring filial love.7 There is not a word to this effect in the works of Butler. They do not contain a single highly-coloured pas- sage in favour of authority, and their spirit throughout is surely favourable to intelligent and unflinching scrutiny.

1 Essay, p. 36, 2 Ibid. p. 31.

44 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

5. That perplexities have been contrived for us by the Creator in order to prevent our reason from mastering our faith. Not a word is, or can be, cited to support this < averment/ The purpose suggested by Butler for these per- plexities is the training and hardening of faith as a moral principle, without the smallest inkling of an aggression upon reason, which Butler never places in conflict with faith.

Criticism of this kind can only be met by a challenge for proof ; and, till proof is forthcoming, it is null and void. Miss Hennell herself happens to agree with Butler in his main contention that there is proof of a natural and moral government with a 'preponderating tendency towards good l ' ; and it is difficult to understand why she should labour to set up a factitious opposition between the Bishop and herself, by imputing to him, without a shadow of evi- dence, and really in contradiction to the whole groundwork of his Treatise, that he encourages a ' forced attempt to be- lieve that all is good ! ' Again, it is not a little singular that here 2 he should be censured for efforts to produce a forced content with his case, while we shall find Mr. Arnold making it his capital boast against the Analogy that Butler himself has so loudly expressed his own discontent with it 8.

I have now gone through all the material allegations which Miss Hennell sets forth in fulfilment of the great promise conveyed in her title-page, and have endeavoured to exhibit them in their fullest breadth. In the large portion of it, from p. 35 to the close, she abandons the attempt to prove her thesis from his text, or from vague descriptions of it, or even through the strange expedient of quotations from Professor Rogers 4 and of holding Butler responsible for his language.

She now launches into pure speculation on his interior state, and into theories, evidently dictated by prepossession, on the tendencies of his works, which she conceives to be, without doubt, on paper, towards unbelief, and in religious practice towards the Church of Rome ; while she retains for him a reverent and even affectionate admiration. She calls him ' our great ecclesiastical thinker ' ; she plainly intends to crown him with honour when she places him in company

l Essay, p. 32. 2 jbid, p. 34< 3 gee inf. p. 70. 4 As in pp. 27, 28.

CH. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

45

with. Locke, and declares the two to be the ' legitimate precursors of the positive philosophers of the present day/ But I pass onward from some amiable inconsistencies, to observe that it still remains to notice one more topic directly connected with the announcement of the title-page, and in- deed the most important of them all, which has not been developed in the tract, but which is glanced at by Dr. Mar- tineau, when he asks whether consummation of Butler's argument is indeed a triumph for Revelation, or against Natural Religion.

It is alleged witli truth that, when Butler defends Reli- gion, Natural and Revealed, by the contention that they only reproduce difficulties with which we are already familiar in ' the constitution and course of nature,' he casts a weight upon the back of nature itself, and raises the question whether nature is adequate to sustain it. At the date of the Analogy, and in dealing with the Deists, it might have sufficed as a defence for controversial purposes, though it hardly would have satisfied a mind like that of Butler, to reply ' that is a closed question ; it is already disposed of by your own admissions.7 But their admissions bound only themselves : and it would indeed be a heavy blow to the general argument for belief, if Butler had left us in doubt on the vital question whether the argument suggested by these difficulties against the constitution and course of nature themselves had any validity.

But upon this subject Butler is perfectly explicit. Pursu- ing his usual method, he himself puts * the objection to his argument as strongly as it could be put by the most adverse critic. He knows the gravity of the demand which he makes upon the system of nature, and he asserts plainly that in his judgement it can adequately meet that demand. In his concluding chapter he declares that the general objections against the moral system of nature have been obviated 2. So, upon the threshold of the work, he had declared that the objections against religion were those similarly alleged against nature, 'where they are found in fact to be in- conclusive V Again : that a more distinct observation of certain things ' containe'd in God's scheme of natural gov-

1 Analogy, II. viii. 2. 2 Ibid. II. ix. 7. 3 Ibid. Introduction.

46 ON HIS CENSORS [Pr. I.

rrmuent' 'will further show how little weight is to be laid upon these 'Objections V And further still, in a very bold passage, Butler declares it has been proved (meaning, proved by himself), as to the things which have been objected to in nature, that it is not only possible but credible that they may be consistent with wisdom, justice, and goodness ; that they may be instances of them ; and that the constitution and government of nature may be perfect in the highest pos- sible degree 2. He does not,, therefore, refer us to the con- stitution and course .of nature as our fulcrum, without hav- ing first ascertained, in his own conviction at least, that the ground is, and will remain firm under our feet.

III. MR. LESLIE STEPHEN.

Mr. Stephen introduces Butler to our notice as ' the most patient, original, and candid of philosophical theologians V His special claim lies in moral earnestness. I must not pass by in silence his ascription to Butler of a ' strangely cautious understanding V Like the other censors, he does not withhold his admiration. The bulk of his remarks, however, are adverse. Not unfrequently the censures are those of a skirmisher rather than a combatant at close quarters. In some cases, vague and general statements occur, which slide unawares into unfairness. For example, ' That is the last effort to represent doubt as a ground for action V Butler nowhere represents doubt as a ground for action. Only it may not be a sufficient reason against it ; there may be good ground for action, doubt notwithstand- ing. These remarks are offered to the reader by way of caveat. With all Mr. Stephen's main contentions I shall attempt to deal ; passing by what is remote or secondary, or what has been answered already 6. What I may call the licence of misapprehension is once7, if not more than once, carried to heights hardly credible in serious literature. Yet Mr. Stephen also abounds in generous admissions; and

1 Analogy, I. vii. 3. 6 7^. v> 25>

"., y*°J{' iv- L 6 For example, the objections taken

» EngKik Thought in the Eighteenth in his ch. v. 24.

!} Ch' ih 1L 7 English Thought fc., at the close

.a ofch.v.26.

Cir. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 47

seems to feel, as an opponent, not without discomfort, that, even for him, there are two sides to the critical case. I proceed to particulars.

Mr. Stephen states in an ingenious form an objection, which he applies first to the chapter on a Future Life \ and then to the whole method. Butler, he says, avails himself of the absence of contradiction, and passes by the absence of confirmation ; and so converts absolute ignorance into the likeness of some degree of positive knowledge. As a foun- dation for this censure, he states that Butler, in his first Chapter, leaves it to be inferred that, because parts of the human organism are not essential to life, therefore the whole organism is superfluous. Had Butler done what Mr. Stephen imputes to him, he would in truth have circum- vented and trepanned his reader : would have obtained from him an assent, or some portion of an assent, without his knowledge. There is no charge to which he is less open. He seems continually to be warning us to keep our eyes open, to be always on our guard. And, in the case before us, he is not advancing an argument, but rebutting an objection 2. His positions are these : (1) Our gross organ- ized bodies are no part of ourselves ; (2) for large portions of them may be lost, while (the ego), the self, remains exactly the same ; (3) as they are not part of ourselves, you cannot from their dissolution infer ours. But the question of dispensing with the whole organism is in no way raised or touched ; and the stratagem ascribed to Butler, which if proved would shake our confidence, forms no part of his tactics. Of two processes essentially distinct, he is follow- ing the one. He is rebutting, not proving ; and he really leaves no shadow of excuse for those who confound the one with the other, and charge on him a confusion which is their own exclusive property.

Mr. Stephen3 truly describes Butler as teaching that, according to his view, virtue is ' a plant intended to flourish more vigorously in another world.7 He allows that if we could prove that the discipline of this life tended to de- velop qualities fitted for another life, Butler's ( argument

1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 3.

2 Analogy, I. i. 12. 3 English Thought cfc., v. 15.

48 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

would be forcible.' What does Mr. Stephen mean by prov- ing ? Butler professes no more than to show that his con- tentions are credible or probable ; and we must not ask him for a kind of proof which he does not profess to give. But, in his fifth chapter, he shows from observation that our condition here is intended to be progressive ; one intended for our improvement in virtue and piety ; and it is from the progressive character, which our experience exhibits to us in the various stages of the present life, and the capacity of virtue for further development \ that he draws a proba- ble proof of a further existence beyond the grave. Our life is a process ; and it is also an incomplete process. The qualities fitted for this life will, it is probable, be fitted for the same creatures in another life, and it is likely that the environment which corresponds here will correspond there also. What is the flaw in this argument ? Mr. Stephen sets up his own contention on the matter at issue.

'If he could point to some quality, encouraged by the existing conditions, and yet not useful under present condi- tions, his case would have a certain support.5

But as it is, continues Mr. Stephen, he is in a hopeless dilemma. Now, what colour of justice is there in the de- mand, which alone places him in this dilemma ? He is said to fail in one of Mr. Stephen's conditions : he does not show that the qualities, which are being formed in us, are useless in the present life. Nor is there any reason why he should. What his argument requires is to show a state of progress through discipline. This he shows from experience as to this life, and from likelihood as to the life to come. It is not that we are busied with things useless here and useful there ; but we are busied with things useful here and more useful there ; more useful, because they will have grown by training, and because the environment may be more favour- able to their expansion. If there be a flaw in this reason- ing, Mr. Stephen does not succeed in showing it.

Mr. Stephen next proceeds 2 to give what he says is But- ler's account of the scheme of redemption. In a single portion of one of his chapters, Butler, who usually speaks

1 Analogy, I. v. 1, 2.

2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 23.

CH. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

49

of mediation as causing the suffering of one man for another, uses the phrase t vicarious punishment1/ and observes that it is a providential appointment of every day's experience. This appears to me to be one of the very rare instances, in which Butler's language comes short of exact adaptation to his thought; for his 'vicarious punishment' seems really to mean no more than vicarious suffering. He, who suffers for another, may himself receive in that suffering the very best means of progress, so that it may be a sign not of God's wrath but of his favour. Punishment, on the other hand, involves the element of some judicial condemnation. Mr. Stephen adroitly avails himself of this slip, and builds his statement upon it. But what right have we to regard it as a slip ? First, because it does not harmonize with But- ler's usual phraseology ; for vicarious suffering is his ordi- dary phrase. But secondly and principally because he nowhere employs it when treating of its central subject, namely, the mediation of our Lord. Mr. Stephen, however, in order to bring his argument to bear in full force against Divine government, puts into Butler's mouth, as if part of the mediatory scheme, the words ' Divine punishments sometimes strike the virtuous person on account of his vir- tue ; they often miss (striking ?) the vicious person on account of his vice.' But it seems that here Butler could only be saddled with an assailable argument by making him use words which are in direct contradiction to his actual teaching. Listen to his own language 2.

' Good actions are never punished, considered as beneficial to society, nor ill actions rewarded under the view of their being hurtful to it. ...

( In the natural course of things, virtue as such is actually rewarded, and vice as such punished.'

So the critic readily and safely contends that punishment inflicted in his manner is no punishment at all. But, in- flicted in Butler's manner, it is punishment, and is both perceptible and righteous, though not perfect nor uniform. To sum up, then, on this particular objection ; in a particu- lar case, where Butler's usual language is careful and accu- rate, but he has in a particular passage twice used a lax

1 Analogy, II. v. 22, 2 ibid. I. iii. 12, 13.

50 ON HIS CENSORS [Pi\ I.

expression, that lax expression is treated as if it had been the normal exposition of his doctrine ; and then the doc- trine itself is set out in terms not only varying from but contradictory of what Butler has emphatically stated to be the law of punishment and reward, as it now subsists in living experience.

Mr. Stephen does not omit to reproduce the charge that the real tendency of Butler's work is to unbelief ; and this in a form apparently more crude and more shallow, than that which it elsewhere assumes.

' No evasion can blind us to the true bearing of Butler's statements : God made men liable to sin. He placed them where they were certain to sin. He damns them everlast- ingly for sinning. This is the road by which the Analogy leads to Atheism V

This charge acquires a momentary colour of plausibility, when we allow ourselves to dwell in a manner exceeding due measure on the many and complex difficulties, which press upon us as we contemplate the natural government of the world. By gazing on them they multiply, like the stars to the eye of one contemplating them by night ; and we may thus come so to enlarge their number and exaggerate their intricacy as to blind ourselves to the preponderating evidences of righteous government, and to forget that of the huge mass of evil in the world an overwhelming propor- tion is due to our abuse of that free agency with which we have been entrusted. But it is not from this point of view that Mr. Stephen is censuring the Analogy. The recitals which introduce the passage cited above simply exhibit Butler as a teacher of free will and of probation. In construing Mr. Stephen's passage, for ' Butler' we may reasonably read < Belief.' The charge of opening a road to Atheism is not shown to lie against anything in the Analog//, but (if at all) presumably to lie against the dispensation and the world of which the Analogy undertakes to treat. If the Almighty be chargeable with the offences here laid at His door, it is not upon evidence drawn from any matter peculiar to the works of Butler. Not a word has any specific application to him. The application is to the

1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 22.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 5r

whole body of Christian theology, and to the Holy Scrip- tures from their first page to their last. Nor may we stop here. It strikes at the whole body of theistic belief. Both the charge and the answer are recorded with childlike sim- plicity in the Odyssey. < Mortals/ says Zeus in the Olym- pian Assembly1, 'hold us responsible for the prevailing evils : but it is themselves, apart from destiny, who by their sins afflict themselves ' :

ot 8e /c

Mr. Stephen appropriates a section to Butler's ' Chapter on Necessity 2 ' ; which he thinks ' probably the weakest part of his argument/ and gives proof that in pure meta- physics he is but a child when compared with Hume, Hobbes, or Jonathan Edwards. For Butler, he says, con- founds two theories, which are ' really contradictory.' One of these is a fate, f which determines certain points in the chain of events, and does not determine the intermediate points ' ; whereas Necessity, a doctrine of which Mr. Stephen speaks with much appearance of sympathy, determines all things alike. This confusion of the two things is the sole ground on which Butler is condemned as no adept in pure metaphysics; which it appears to me that he may have mistrusted as a somewhat barren study. But the ground of Mr. Stephen's verdict is no better than a quicksand, and the supposed confusion is a pure misapprehension, unaccount- ably engendered in the mind of Mr. Stephen. For the first paragraph of Butler's sixth Chapter says a fatalist must, as such, assert 'that the opinion of universal Necessity' is reconcileable with the facts of human experience 8. So that the fatalist as defined by Butler is one who as such believes that necessity is universal, and the eclectic necessitarian, who holds only an intermittent necessity, is nowhere to be found in Butler's treatise. It is hard to comprehend how an acute critic and conscientious reporter of his author, such as Mr. Stephen, can have fallen into so palpable an

1 Odyssey, i. 33, 34.

2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 18. 8 Analogy, I. vi. 1.

52 ON HIS CENSORS [PT. I.

error. As to Butler, liis real offence seems to lie in the curt severity with which he, without confuting it, casts aside as 'absurd1' the opinion apparently rather favoured by Mr. Stephen. The whole of his argument in the Chapter, which is clear and consecutive, would be marred by the introduction of a dualism in the theory he is exposing.

But Mr. Stephen deals with the subject of Necessity more at large, and draws from it the reasons of his fundamental objection to the argument of the Analogy. Butler's Neces- sity he says 2 is an external entity, coercing God and man alike. He does not impeach the conclusiveness of Butler's argument as it stands ; but he alleges that there is a ' more profound theology,' which teaches that Necessity dwells within the will of God. He justly lays on Butler the responsibility of teaching moral desert, and punishment for sin 8. This holds with Butler's representation of a Deity ' who leaves us a certain sphere of independent action.' But then there is a God * proved by ontological reasoning,' evidently identical with the God of the l more profound theology ' to whom we have already been introduced. This Being is Himself the fountain-head of Necessity ; and, as it appears that this Will, which is also Necessity, governs all our acts, the doctrine of the penal character of suffering (naturally enough) becomes ' monstrous.' We can all the more readily tolerate objections to Butler's argument, when we thoroughly comprehend the standing-point of the ob- jector. In this instance, his TTOT) O-TW appears to be supplied by the philosophical system which effaces from the universe free agency, responsibility, and moral desert, and simply introduces us to an internecine war upon first principles, with which the Analogy had here nothing to do. Butler ceases to be the true object of the critic's activity. He really aims his darts at the doctrine of free-will, < the device by which most theologians justify God's wrath with the work of His own hands.'

In his account of Hume's Essay on Providence and a future state 4, Mr. Stephen treats the Essay as destroying Butler's argument for a moral government in the world.

l Ibid. I. vi. 1, 8. 2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 19.

8 Ibid. v. 20-22. * ibM. vi. 29>

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 53

Hume asks if there are marks of distributive justice in the world. If you reply that there are, then, he contends, you have nothing more to expect. If there are not, you have no groundwork of Divine justice to argue from. But further, 'If you say that the justice of the gods, at present, exerts itself in part but not in its full intent, I answer that you have no reason to give it any particular extent, but only so far as you see it at present exert itself.' This argument, apparently quoted by Mr. Stephen as conclusive, seems rather to deserve the epithet awarded by Beattie, who calls the Essay flimsy. We shall see directly that from the meshes of so poor a dilemma the weakest fly might escape. What Hume tells us is, that the distributive justice, which we are supposed to see in the world, begins and ends with itself, and is unalterable. A strange exaggeration indeed of the doctrine of continuance, which Butler has perhaps over-stated, but which Hume, the Hume of Mr. Stephen, absolutely caricatures. Our case is this. We have a life, not uniform and homogeneous throughout, but progressive. The several parts of this life exhibit to us a development ; and this development represents to us a plan and a purpose. But, whilst it is governed by a scheme, imperfectly devel- oped it is true but still a scheme, of distributive justice combined with intelligence, the plan is seen to be incom- plete. Now, given an intelligent Author of nature, who will say, with these data before him, that there is no pre- sumption in favour of the idea that this incomplete scheme is on its way to completion ? Let us suppose a case of commonplace occurrence. A maker of engines is engaged in constructing a complicated machine. While he is at work,, the dinner hour has struck, and he departs for his meal. During his absence a visitor arrives, sees the work in its unfinished state, and recognizes its plan and purpose. Will not this visitor presume, will not nature and reason oblige him to presume, that the workman means to return, and to finish the task he has in hand ? Childhood and boy- hood raise a presumption of youth and manhood to complete them. And as the earlier stages of life raise a presumption of the later stages to complete them, so life as a whole, by virtue of the constructive features it presents, raises a pre-

54

ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

sumption of its continuance hereafter in order that the work, which has been visibly begun, may be proceeded with, and may reach its integration.

In his ninth chapter, Mr. Stephen proceeds to deal with the Sermons of Butler. He rightly connects them with the Analogy by observing that, as there he comes at the exist- ence of God through the facts of the universe, so here he reaches the same great doctrine through the facts of human nature. In that nature he finds the law of virtue written, with conscience at hand, as God's vicegerent, to enforce it. But in setting out the facts of the case, Butler also finds that ' duty and interest are perfectly coincident ; for the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future V Hereupon Mr. Stephen observes, 'Butler is bowing the knee in the house of Rimmon. ; and ... is consenting to make virtue a question of profit and loss 27 ; and thus ' is endangering the very core of his teach- ing.7 Now Butler nowhere makes the authority of virtue dependent on its utility. He goes so far as to teach that our obligation to follow virtue remains, even if we are not convinced of its utility. Is not, then, this criticism point- less ? Nay, might it not be called captious ? But the critic proceeds to a 'more vital ' objection. For, as Butler has taught that, in disobeying conscience, we act wrongly, this, says Mr. Stephen, means that those who disobey conscience, ' disobey conscience.7 This is not a correct representation of the Sermons. l Conscience must in some way derive its credentials from some other authority than itself V True : but this is the very demand which Butler satisfies. Our nature comes from God ; and it is God, who has given to conscience its place of supremacy in our nature. These are propositions sometimes asserted, always implied, through- out the Sermons. And Mr. Stephen himself closes by limit- ing his charge to this, that Butler referred the promptings of conscience to a supernatural source. A charge not hard for him to bear.

The remaining exceptions taken to the Sermons are meta-

1 Sermons, iii. 13.

2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ix. 51.

3 Jbid. ix. 51.

Cn. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

55

physical, and need not therefore be noticed in this place. Mr. Stephen winds up his review with a disinterested and truly noble acknowledgement of Butler's moral grandeur.

' With all his faults, Butler remains in a practical sense the greatest moralist of this century. . . . Theology, in him, seems to utter an expiring protest against the meanness and the flimsiness of the rival theories, by which men attempted to replace it V

The passage, from which these few words are extracted, may serve to strengthen the hope that, over and above the conviction which they carry to a large class of minds, the works of Butler will always render valuable service in the mitigation of controversy ; both by good example, and in assisting men of upright minds, though of differing opinions, to regard each other with mutual sympathy and respect. And thus much is unquestionable. As Johnson said of Goldsmith in his admirable epitaph, Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit, so it may be safely averred of Butler, Nemo impug- navit qui non laudavit.

[In the Number of the Nineteenth Century for January, 1896, Mr. Leslie Stephen referred to the remarks relating to him in this chapter. His paper, entitled ' Bishop Butler's Apologist,' refers but slightly to me. It reasons upon the argument of the Analogy at large in a manner which, as it appears to me, would have been possible had Butler's posi- tion been what it supposes. Butler, however, nowhere pro- poses to offer a complete affirmative justification of the sub- sisting scheme for the moral government of the world. He admits the difficulties presented by it, and only contends that we should examine it as a scheme ; and that, when so examined, it warrants his conclusions and demands.

He cites James Mill as having been led, ' according to his son,' ' to Atheism by reading the Analogy' But Mr. Ste- phen's memory has here strangely misled him. The testi- mony of the son, in a most interesting passage 2, is this. His father, bred as a Presbyterian, was on the point of giving up all belief in religion, Natural and Eevealed, when the Anal- ogy came into his hands, and arrested for a time the down-

1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ix. 54t

2 Autobiography ofj. 8. Mill, p. 38-

56 ON HIS CENSORS [PT. I.

w;inl progress of his mind, by the proof it gave that the diffi- culties alleged against religion were also met with in nature. He eventually, however, concluded, ' doubtless after many struggles/ that ' concerning the origin of things nothing whatever could be known.' All that can be alleged against Butler is that, though the Analogy did much in sustaining Mr. Mill's belief, it did not do all.

As it is one of the capital claims of Butler to draw his reasonings from experience, I must notice Mr. Stephen's allegation 1 that Butler ' stipulates beforehand that experi- ence in general is to be regarded as exceptional.' Now, ex- cept in recording the admission of the Deists with respect to a Supreme Being, Butler has no such thing as a ' stipula- tion beforehand.' He takes the facts of experience in a body and unconditionally, and draws from them all his inferences.

With regard to Mr. Stephen's argument on the Atone- ment 2, I am content to refer to my own reasoning in the Nineteenth Century for September, 1894, as furnishing a reply.

And with regard to the closing part of his paper on ' the fallacy of Free-will 8,' I need do no more than present as my answer the chapter in this volume in which I have treated of Determinism, with a brief addition which I have now made.]

IV. MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD.

If, among the more full reviews of Bishop Butler's works, Miss Hennell's was from its tone the most attractive, the review by Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his Last Essays on Church and Religion, is the most thoroughgoing. It consists of two parts : the one attacking the Sermons, the other the Analogy j and it would be difficult to say which of the two is the more condemnatory. He admits, indeed, that there are ' many precious things ' contained in the works of this great man 4, and he sets forth at times with truth and force some of his doctrines 5. Further, he introduces his hostile

1 Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1896, p. * Last Essays on Church and Rdi- 113. gi0n, pp. 121, 147.

2 Ibid. pp. 119, 120. 6 E. g. ibid. p. 144- 8 Ibid. p. 117,

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 57

review with an admiring and sympathizing account of But- ler, which is of the highest interest. There is nothing petty in the matter or spirit of his charges. His friends need not fear that his character as a man will suffer from the publi- cation of his (I think) unfortunate essay on ( Bishop Butler and the Zeitgeist ' ; a Zeitgeist of which we read from page to page in the title, but hear very little in the text. This perhaps may be accounted for by the supposition that, in the critic's own view, the term is but a synonym for ( Mat- thew Arnold/ for whom it is perhaps well that the fame of his performances in other fields cannot be justly disparaged on account of his failure — if, indeed, he has failed — in this portion of his indubitably high-minded searches after truth.

Mr. Arnold was placed by his own peculiar opinions in a position far from auspicious with respect to this particular undertaking. He combined a fervent zeal for the Christian religion with a not less boldly avowed determination to transform it beyond the possibility of recognition by friend or foe. He was thus placed under a sort of necessity to con- demn the handiwork of Bishop Butler, who in a certain sense gives it a new charter. For he not only accepts that religion tails qualis, but secures for it, in the opinion of his eulogists, a high and secure, as well as to some extent a new, place in the region of philosophy. The critic does not re- cognize this radical difference as in any degree the cause of his hostility to Butler ; but, whatever view we may take of the merits, there can be no doubt that the system of Butler, and the system of Matthew Arnold, cannot stand together.

So that we have little occasion for surprise when we are introduced to an attack along the whole line, alike minute in its details and broad in its general scope. After reciting no less than five out of the multitude of the glowing pane- gyrics on Butler, which have been pronounced by various writers, who think he has ' firmly and impregnably estab- lished his doctrine,' Mr. Arnold proposes to ascertain ' how far the claim is solid V

While I am very desirous that this examination of Mr. Arnold's objections should in no degree exhibit a spirit of retaliation, I must frankly own that some of them seem

1 Last Essays on Church and Reliyion, pp. 67, 68.

58 ON HIS CENSORS [Pr. I.

to me to be such as could only have been suggested by what I must term the spirit of objection. Nor is extremism the only fault which it seems necessary at once to allege against Mr. Arnold's censures. There are others, which cannot be overlooked. One of these is that he thinks it quite enough, on various occasions, to bestow hard condemnatory epithets upon some of Butler's best considered and most careful statements, and then to treat them as sufficiently disposed of. He censures in these cases de haut en bas. His ipse dixit, his ava.7r68cLKTai <£cwms, are to be accepted by his reader as self-attested. He ascends the magisterial chair, and de- livers the doom which we have only to register. Another fault, more elementary, and still less pardonable, is the not unfrequent occurrence of palpable inaccuracy in represent- ing the doctrine which he is about to arraign.

It may be convenient at once to present some illustra- tions of the magisterial method, which I have imputed to Mr. Arnold.

Butler teaches that reason alone is not for man in his present condition a sufficient motive to virtue; and that affections, of a. mixed character, indeed, but which work upon the whole for good, have been joined to it, in order to supply what was lacking. And, again, Butler teaches that we have a more lively sympathy with distress than with prosperity, and finds the reason herein, that distress calls for our intervention, while prosperity does not. The first of these positions is pelted by Mr. Arnold with hard words ; it is ' fanciful,' is an ' immense hypothesis/ is not ' based upon observation/ cannot < satisfy the mind1.' The second is simply dismissed as ' fantastic V To take a third instance, Butler regards anger in its twofold form, as sudden and as deliberate. The first of these, he thinks, is given to avert pain or loss ; the second, to further justice, by preventing or reducing injury. And as pity is often too weak for its purpose if single-handed, we are furnished with indignation against wrong to reinforce it. But the Bishop's teaching on anger is set forth with extreme care and fulness 8. Mr. Arnold disposes of it by saying that it will be found to be

1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, pp. 100-2.

2 Ibid. p. 103. 8 Sermons, viii. 4-11.

I

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 59

arbitrary, fantastic, and unavailing, at times when facts are felt to be necessary, though it may pass for being New- tonian in times when everything is conventional and no man looks closely into himself l. To hard epithets are here joined some bald generalities ; but to grapple with Butler's full and closely reasoned statement there is in these cases no attempt whatever.

We are next arrested by another of our critic's character- istic faults, his want of accuracy. He complains of Butler for teaching that compassion is given us ' in order to lead us to public spirit/ and, again, to 'a settled, reasonable principle of benevolence to mankind2.' But, so far as I find, Butler has taught neither the one nor the other. He connects public spirit 3 with the love of our neighbour, and thus with charity, benevolence, and good will. It is not compassion, but a form of what is now called Altruism. Nor is compassion the basis of benevolence : that is an original, distinct, particular affection 4.

Mr. Arnold may not stand alone in complaining of the manner in which Butler separates self-love from the par- ticular affections. Among these he places benevolence ; and self-love appears to be towards ourselves what benevo- lence is towards others. On the other hand, there is a practical consideration, which may have led Butler to this mode of classification. Benevolence, it may be said, is oc- casional, but self-love has in each of us a continuous occu- pation; and so largely and variously does it employ the particular affections in the prosecution of its aim, that there is some convenience in ordinarily viewing it as apart from them. There is no equivalent reason for removing benevo- lence from the list of particular affections.

Butler has observed that, were it not for the calls of hunger, thirst, and weariness, we should often neglect the proper means of cherishing our life, although self-love steadily recommends them. Mr. Arnold replies that this supposition is unsatisfactory, and absurd 6. But he should

1 Last Essays on Church and Reli- 4 Ibid. v. 2.

gion, pp. 104, 105. 5 Last Essays on Church and Reli-

2 Ibid. pp. 106, 107. gion, pp. 106, 107.

3 Sermons, vii. 1, 2.

60 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

surely condescend a little to the weakness of such readers as see in Butler's observation nothing but very plain good sense, and inform them of the ground on which he launches this anathema.

Butler is next arraigned for having taught that it is as unnatural to suppress compassion by turning away from the wretched as it would be to attempt suppressing hunger ' by keeping from the sight of food V ' Can there be any- thing more strange/ says Mr. Arnold, 'than to pronounce compassion to be a call, a demand of nature to relieve the unhappy ; precisely in the same manner as hunger is a natural call for food, and to say that to neglect one call is just as much a violation of nature as the other 2 ? ' But the Bishop has not said that it is a violation of nature ' pre- cisely in the same mariner.' On the contrary, he has said expressly that, though the violation of nature is equally present in both cases, yet the incidents are different ; we can do one with greater success than we can do the other 3. The manner, then, is far from being ' precisely the same.' But, after all, the Bishop's sin in this matter is that he compares the two as being, both of them, violations of nature. In the case of hunger, the idea of its being such is near and familiar. In the case of compassion, the idea is remote and probably never may have occurred to us. But- ler, acting according to a method of sound philosophy, employs the familiar to illustrate the unknown. But he does more. The unknown is here closely associated with a practical and urgent duty ; a duty which involves more or less of self-sacrifice. He is now in the pulpit ; where it is his right and obligation to appeal to feeling. By his com- parison between hunger and compassion he at once conveys knowledge and arouses right emotion. In so doing he uses the hortatory method ; yet, strange to say, he is taken to task by Mr. Arnold for generally avoiding it. Yes ; it was Mr. Arnold who, at the outset of his article *, found the gravest fault with Butler because his method was totally unlike that adopted by true Christianity ; and because,

1 Sermons, vi. 6. 3 Sermons, vi. 6.

2 Last Essays on Church and Reli- 4 Last Essays on Church and Rdi- yion, p. 108. yion, pp. 67, 68.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 61

instead of aiming directly at the heart and will, he trusted everything to 'fair logic and fair reason.' But here, as heretofore, Butler's contention stands on solid ground ; the demand of compassion is as natural, in the highest sense, as the demand of hunger, though compassion may riot be armed with equally coercive means for its enforcement.

The next charge against him is more plausible. It is his teaching that man's proper aim is to escape from misery rather than to pursue positive happiness. Against this rather saddening doctrine, our censor quotes a French moralist, who writes thus : 'The aim for man is, to aug- ment the feeling of joy.' But, further, Butler is here found guilty by Mr. Arnold of contravening ' the clear voice of our religion \ "Rejoice and give thanks" exhorts the Old Testament, rejoice evermore, exhorts the New.'

A more careful writer than Mr. Arnold would deserve to be smartly handled for extracting words from a Psalm com- posed for a joyful occasion, and representing them as a standing maxim or precept of the Old Testament in general. But he is only acting in his too usual manner. The subject he raises gives him, perhaps, a better standing-ground than is supplied by most of his ill-conceived and infelicitous attempts. There may be in Butler's words somewhat of a melancholic strain, drawn from within himself. But they are not to be met aright by simply turning them topsy- turvy, as seems to be proposed. Mr. Arnold can hardly have imagined that in the two words he cites from Saint Paul the Apostle intended to do more than supply a much- needed solace, a reactive and bracing incitement, in effect a moral tonic, to enable those whom he was addressing to bear up against their trials and their burdens. Butler might perhaps have said, I am not speaking of the temper in which we are to live. I am speaking of the objects we are to pur- sue. And then his position may be stated thus ; that labour in avoidance is on the whole more fruitfully bestowed than labour in appetence.

The charge of contravening religion ought not to have been brought. The picture of the actual face of the world presented in the New Testament is not a joyous one. It is

1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 110.

62 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

rest, and not felicity, which our Saviour promises to the weary and heavy-laden. The world is represented as under the dominion of the Evil One. Saint Paul points to conso- lation elsewhere when he describes life as 'this light af- fliction, which is but for a moment.' True, the ' present distress ' lay harder and heavier upon him than upon us. But the great, the enduring, the fundamental sorrow of life is the conflict of the soul with sin, which endures, and must endure now, even as it did then. The Greek more than any other perhaps enjoyed his joy, and was of all men the least pessimistic : yet we find in Homer that no creature creeps upon the earth more lamentable than man ; and of the two caskets, which lie before the throne of Zeus, and are charged with the destinies of the race, the better can only boast of mixed contents, while the other is filled with unmitigated woe \ It is probable, indeed, that from the reconstructed Christianity and Scripture of Mr. Arnold there had disap- peared, together with (or as involved in) the ' anthropo- morphic and miraculous/ everything that belongs to what may be called the evangelical sadness of the Gospel. In his light-hearted citation from his French moralist, and his misapprehended Scripture, Mr. Arnold followed too sum- mary a method : and he probably omitted to take into account that a scheme of religion such as his had no room for the idea of sin in its full force and virulence, and that such a scheme really disabled him from passing an impar- tial judgement on the difficult questions raised by Butler's observations 2.

It is not surprising that Butler's account of self-love should have become an object of criticism : and it is per- haps to be wished that he could have found occasion to gather together into one conspectus all the important and leading propositions on the subject of it, which are scat- tered about his Works. But, though some difficulty arises from this sporadic method of treatment, and from the want of facile reference and comparison between one part of the Works and another, it is not easy to excuse Mr.

1 II. xvii. 446, xxiv. 527. ton, in his Modern Guides of English

2 From a different point of view, Thought, pp. 119-21, demolishes the but one entirely just, Mr. R. II. Hut- criticism of Mr. Arnold relating to joy.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 63

Arnold for the account J he has given of Butler's doctrine of self-love. He speaks of Butler's <• arbitrary definition > of self-love. He says Butler describes it < occasionally ' (should he not have said habitually ?) as ' a general desire of one's own happiness.' But his ' constant notion of the pursuit of our interest is, that it is the pursuit of our temporal good, as he calls it ; the cool consideration of our own temporal advantage/ Now, there are various passages, in which Butler deals somewhat at large with the subject of self- love. One of these is in the fifth chapter of the first part of the Analogy 2. Another is in the eleventh of the Fifteen sermons 8. In neither of these does he connect self-love in any way with the present world. Nowhere does he associ- ate it with our < temporal ' good, which Mr. Arnold seems to put forward as the favourite appellation. The passages which name self-love may be reckoned in the Analogy by the score ; but in one only of these, or possibly two 4 (so far as I know), does the phrase appear in any expressed rela- tion to our worldly interest. And here Mr. Arnold may be to a certain extent upheld, but only if we content ourselves with a miserably garbled quotation. For Butler names ' that reasonable self-love, the end of which is our worldly interest5/ But the sentence, taken as a whole, entirely overthrows him. Butler is speaking of the way in which ' habits and passions ' lead us into vice, apart from external temptations. And yet, he says, this error is doubly forbid- den : for ' particular passions are no more coincident with prudence, or that reasonable self-love, the end of which is our worldly interest, than they are with the principle of virtue and religion.'

Now Butler is not here treating of our nature at large, or of self-love as such. He is simply treating of a matter of worldly conduct, and of the motives which ought in reason to guide it. One of these is drawn from ' virtue and reli- gion ' ; the other is from interest, or < that reasonable self- love the end of which is our worldly interest.' Indicat-

1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, pp. Ill, 114.

2 Analogy, I. v. 24 n. 3 Sermons, xi. 4, 5. 4 Analogy, I. iv. 4.

5 There is also a passage in the Sermons where self-love is placed in associ- ation with present interest.

64 ON HIS CENSORS [FT. I.

ing in one branch of the sentence the loftier motive for doing right, he points out, in the other, the lower one. He is not defining self-love. He is speaking of self-love not at large, but in relation to worldly interest, when it ought undoubtedly to act as an adminiculum to virtue and re- ligion. Is it not rather too bad on the part of a censor, and one, as he has touchingly noted, 'past fifty years of age,' first to take this particular and limited reference to self-love where it is placed in a particular light, and to exalt it into a definition ; and then, in still more reckless disregard of his author's text, to describe this isolated use of the phrase amidst a number of utterly adverse instances, as Butler's ' constant notion ' of self-love ?

Then, shifting the ground of his assault, Mr. Arnold com- plains that Butler ' sophisticated things ' by saying 1 that love of our neighbour is no more distant from (Butlerian) self-love than hatred of our neighbour ; a mode of reason- ing which, he holds, will never convince or carry a serious student. It is most unfortunate that, in many of his charges, Mr. Arnold, probably feeling, as we have all felt, the difficulties of reference to particular passages, so often fails to cite what he censures. The language of Butler is this — that :

' Benevolence is not in any respect more at variance with self-love than any other particular affection whatever ; but it is, in every respect, at least as friendly to it V

And again 8, more at large, the Bishop says that there is ' no peculiar inconsistence and contrariety 7 between benevo- lence and self-love. The whole idea of self-love being affec- tion to ourselves, it cannot exclude affection to others, oth- erwise than by not including it. Thus we are carefully led up to the broader proposition that love of our neighbour is ' no more distant from self-love than hatred of our neigh- bour.' For Butler holds all things which are distinct to be •equally distinct.' What Mr. Arnold deems sophistication appears to be an accurate and studiously careful statement.

And why should we set up a factitious opposition between benevolence and self-love ? The duty of doing good to

1 Last Essays on Churcli and Rdi- 2 Preface to the Sermons, 32. gion, p. 112. 3 Sermons, xi. 2, 8, 9.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 65

others, and the duty of doing good to ourselves, rest on the same authority, and form in harmony portions of the work which the Almighty has appointed for us to do during our sojourn upon earth. True, there is a perverted and over- grown self-love, which is at odds with benevolence ; but it is just as much at odds with sound and reasonable self-love. And to shift the terms of Butler's equation by substituting another self-love for his, and then making him responsible for the conflict between this self-love and benevolence, would not be philosophy, but quackery.

But again, perhaps from feeling uneasy on the ground he has chosen, our critic alters it ; and makes it his capital charge that Butler gives no account, or a fantastic account, of the genesis of conscience, benevolence, compassion, and the rest. * Into this vast, dimly-lighted, primordial region l ' Butler never enters. Now, his so-called fantastic account is this : By observation he finds these powers set in human nature as essential parts of it, planted there by its Author. So he treats them as ultimate facts, and uses them as points of departure. And it may be that the student will prefer this eminently rational mode of handling to a cruise with Mr. Arnold in his ' dimly-lighted and primordial regions/

Into those regions Mr. Arnold now proceeds to introduce us, by setting up a counter-philosophy 2. Its references to Bishop Butler are here for the most part inaccurate. His picture is, indeed, so different in tone and colour from that of his Author, as in a great degree to account for the sever- ity of his judgements. As compared with the system and method of Butler, it is indeed a philosophy upon stilts. And it provokes the repetition of the old dictum that what is true in it is not new, and what is new is not true. He begins by substituting for Butler's ' self-love ' the desire of happiness, or effort to live. For the planting of conscience and affections in us by the Author of nature, he substitutes a growth of them, and of the practical reason, as arising out of the effort to live. (This is simply putting a non-theistic in the place of a theistic theory.) Such an effort, or instinct, becomes the strongest, and in virtue of strength gains the right to rule. But learning from experience that men are

i Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 113. '2 Ibid. pp. 113-21.

66 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

1 solidary/ it also learns, by a process not explained, that private ought to give way to public good. Man likewise finds in himself a higher and a lower life, and Mr. Arnold unduly charges Butler with saying that they are alike the voice of God. Experience gradually established the higher life, and conscience is the recognition of that experience. If we abstract the unhappily numerous points in which, from want of care, he misstates Butler, there does not ap- pear to be any point in which the critic makes good his hos- tile position. The doctrine of conscience, enthroned amidst the various impelling powers of our nature, and calling them to account with authority, remains unshaken; and Mr. Arnold's contention that the earnest inquirer will give no heed to a rational account of human nature, until lie has been supplied with a theory as to the genesis of all our faculties, appears as reasonable as if it were contended that a traveller, terribly in earnest from a sharpened appetite, arriving at his home, and finding an excellent dinner pre- pared for him, would not dream of sitting down to partake of it until he had been informed of all the processes which the cook had employed to make it ready.

We have now reached the close of the criticism on the Sermons.

Butler published the Analogy at forty-four, and was still, as Mr. Arnold thinks, too young. To read it is, however, ' a very valuable mental exercise V But it is of no value to us, unless we hold the positions of the Deists, with whom it dealt ; l and we do not/ Surely a strange doctrine. Few readers of the present day hold either the opinions of Mr. Burke, as given in his Reflections on the French Revolution, or the opinions of the revolutionists. Does it, therefore, follow that we have nothing to learn from the book, and need not care ( two straws ' about it ? Nor should any man (it seems) read the Provincial Letters, unless he holds the same opinions which Pascal exposed.

The argument of the Analogy, says Mr. Arnold, is an argument to prove, from the reality of the laws of moral government in this world, a like reality of moral govern- ment in the world to come 2. But the grave inaccuracy of

1 Last Euays on Church and Religion, p. 122. 2 fbid. p. 125.

CH. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

this statement is shown by the very title-page of Butler's work, which is inscribed The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealedj to the constitution and course of Nature. Ac- cording to Mr. Arnold, it ought to have been ' Moral Gov- ernment in the next world inferred by Analogy from Moral Government in this/ A great subject without doubt, but not the subject chosen by Butler. For moral government in this world is one of the matters which Butler does not assume, but sets himself to prove. Such want of care, as is here shown, in laying the very foundation stones of an argument is hardly conceivable ; and, after such a specimen, we can hardly expect to establish either the perpendicular or the square in the structure which the censor is about to raise. It is ' the constitution and course of nature ' on which Butler builds, and not the reality of moral govern- ment in this world, which he has got to prove, and spends the first part of the Analogy in proving.

Butler is next found guilty of failure to satisfy the de- mands, not of his own argument, but of Mr. Arnold's ; who naturally observes that before moral government in the hereafter can be proved from moral government here, it must be shown that there is an hereafter. Of this, he pro- ceeds to observe, Butler has supplied no probability what- ever *. Let us see how he supports his contention.

The differences, says Butler, between different states of life, all known to us by experience, are almost as great as can be mentally conceived. Therefore an existence here- after, differing from the present, but only within the meas- ure of those known differences, would not be beyond the analogy of nature 2. Since our terrestrial existence is so elastic as to allow of difference x, and since we have no proof that our existence hereafter would involve a differ- ence from the present exceeding x, the supposition of future existence, so conditioned, is within the analogy of nature. No, replies Mr. Arnold, for you have not proved that there will be such an existence. He does not perceive that his arrow passes by the mark, and lands in a vacuum. Butler does not here pretend that his argument proves a future

1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 127.

2 Analogy, I. i. 3.

68 ON HIS CENSORS [FT. I.

existence. He has only rebutted an objection to it, by showing that it need not transcend the present and known analogies of nature.

Again, Butler has observed l thus : (dreamless) sleep, and swoons, prove that our living powers may exist when there is no capacity for exercising them. As we know not on what their existence depends, it m.ay depend on something quite out of the reach of death. Therefore there is no sign of any connexion between death and the destruction of living agents.

My last paragraph is an abbreviation from Butler, and gives his argument. In lieu of it Mr. Arnold prints, and prints in the form of a quotation, a passage which entirely omits the middle portion, while he gives the first and last. That is to say, he gives Butler's conclusion, but omits the reason for it, and presents this to his reader as if it were a citation from the Analogy : with a want of care even more gross than that which has marked some previous errors. The presumption raised by Butler's argument, thus over- leapt, of course remains untouched. And to say, as Mr. Arnold here says, that experience alone constitutes the reason of the thing is to strike at the very heart of all argu- ments founded on analogy. For it amounts to saying that there never can be any argument for the existence of any- thing, except experience of its actually existing.

He next contends that the presumption of extinction at death 'goes upon the unbroken experience that living powers then cease2.' There cannot be a more complete misconception. Our experience is not of their ceasing to exist, but of their ceasing to afford us sensible and constant evidence of their continued existence.

Mr. Arnold appears habitually or incurably to overlook the distinction between the rebuttal of an objection, and advancing an affirmative argument. Thus when he finds that Butler alleges our remaining the same living agents after the loss of limbs, he observes 8 that our so remaining after the loss of some limbs gives no proof that we can dis-

1 Analogy, I. i. G.

- J^ist Eseiyt on Church and Religion, p. 128.

8 Ibid.

CH. III.]

ON HIS CENSORS

69

pense with all, and thinks that he has made a reply. But the Bishop has never used so futile an argument. On referring to his text 1, we find that he is arguing only to show that our ' gross organized bodies ' are no part of our- selves because we can lose parts of them without losing any part of ourselves. The body has become different : while the self remains the same. Here as elsewhere Mr. Arnold wastes his sword-stroke upon a ghost.

Mr. Arnold then proceeds 2 to admit the existence of a system under which we have experience of reward and pun- ishment. But he says we have no experience to show that they are administered by a ' quasi-human agent ' called the Author of nature. True ; Bishop Butler fails to substitute for God ' a stream of tendency, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness/ This valuable discovery of a substitu- tion for Deity was almost made by Aristophanes 8 :

Au/os /3a<riA.eva, rov At' e^eA^AaKws.

But the critic does not perceive that the Bishop might reply as follows. Your admission is all I want. Call the agent an agency, or call him what you please. Let us part with he and have recourse to it. It may, if you like, be nothing nobler than a treadmill, which awakens by a blow those who neglect to keep the proper pace. But it rewards and punishes, and this according to righteousness. There- fore my argument holds, and men are bound, by the rules which in common life are held binding, to govern them- selves accordingly. And this is not ' abstraction or specu- lation4,' but is in the strictest sense an argument from experience. ' Eeligion must be built on ideas, about which there is no puzzle V The idea of a personal God, we are told, is a puzzle. A ' stream cf tendency' then, is none !

The long catalogue of detailed objections draws near its close : but the end is not quite reached. Dealing with the sad question of the apparent waste of human existences, Butler refers to the profuse waste exhibited in other orders of nature ; which he says does not destroy the argument of

1 Anahf/y, I. i. 12.

2 Last -Essays on Church and Reli- gion, pp. 128-31.

3 Aristoph. Ne<£. 828.

4 Last Essays $c., p. 131.

5 Ibid. p. 132.

7o ON HIS CENSORS [PT. I.

design as to those seeds and bodies which come to their perfection \ Mr. Arnold's comment is that the difficulties in argument, arising from the existence of waste, are due to our assuming that nature means i an Infinite Almighty moral being ' ; and his very simple proposal is to get rid of the difficulty by getting rid of reference to such a being. Yet it is really most difficult to imagine that Mr. Arnold could think we disposed of the difficulties of the case (such as they are) by holding that nobody but Au/os is account- able a. I call in Ati/os as a fair equivalent for Mr. Arnold's favourite ' stream of tendency.'

I pass over Mr. Arnold's remarks on Butler's treatment of miracles, as the question is rather too large for succinct treatment ; and I will not follow him into the field of Bible history, for I have already overtaxed my reader's patience. But I must say a few words on his summing up.

The most wonderful thing about the Analogy is, he thinkSj the poverty of its result, as estimated by Butler himself 8. He then rends from their context various brief sayings from different parts of the text, some of them hard to identify, in which Butler has stated, with perhaps even more than his accustomed modesty and fearless candour, his admissions as to the defects of the evidence he presents. These phrases our critic represents as truly embodying the upshot of the Analogy. He gives us the weights that are in one scale, but he forgets to take account of those in the other. It mounts accordingly, and leaves him exultingly to conceive that he has proved his case. He has overlooked the fact that they are balanced by other statements ; and that a joint consideration of what is said on the two sides is especially necessary in the case of a writer like Butler in order to get at any true appreciation of his real judgement. Perhaps the strongest of the passages in which he disparages his own performance is the sentence in which he says ' the foregoing treatise is by no means satisfactory ; very far indeed from it.' But he presently explains : ' Those who object against it (the evidence of religion) as not satisfactory, i. e. as not being

[nalogy, I. v. 35.

Essays on Church and Religion, p. 134. p. 138.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 71

what they wish it, plainly forget the very condition of our being ; for satisfaction, in this sense, does not belong to such a creature as man1.' He further observes that he has argued upon the principles of others, not his own ; and that he has waived all reference to arguments which he deems of the highest importance, the two principles of liberty, and of moral fitness 2. A fairer summing up of his judgement than Mr. Arnold's seems to be given in the following words concerning his treatise :

' Those who believe, will here find the scheme of Chris- tianity cleared of objections, and the evidence of it in a peculiar manner strengthened : those who do not believe, will at least be shown the absurdity of all attempts to prove Christianity false, the plain undoubted credibility of it; and, I hope, a good deal more V

But Mr. Arnold does not conclude without a parting kick. Butler has laid it down that, in such a matter we ought ' to act upon evidence much lower than what is commonly called probable.' He may mean, in the language of chances, when the adverse chance is say two or three to one. No, says Mr. Arnold ; I take fearlessly a given road, though a menagerie is travelling it, and a tiger may break out of his van and destroy me. In other words, a chance of two or three to one, and a chance of two or three thousand to one, the chance of an accident in rope dancing and of one in railway travelling, are for the purposes of his argument one and the same. The Analogy is ' for all real intents and purposes now a failure V And we return from it to the ' boundless certi- tude and exhilaration of the Bible ' ; a certitude and exhila- ration which do not restrain Mr. Arnold from cutting out of the Scripture, as anthropomorphic and legendary, what nearly all its readers believe to be the heart and centre of its vital force.

Various objections have been taken from various quar- ters to this point and that in the argument of Butler; but Mr. Arnold's criticisms, as a whole, remain wholly iso- lated and unsupported. It is impossible to acquit him of the charge of a carelessness implying levity, and of an un- governable bias towards finding fault. The homely fare, on

1 Analogy, II. viii. 17, 18. 2 fbid. 23, 24. 8 Ibid. 27,

4 Last Essays on Church and Religion, pp. 140, 141.

72 ON HIS CENSORS [PT. I.

which Butler feeds us, cannot be so gratifying to the palate as turtle, venison, and champagne. But it has been found wholesome by experience : it leads to no doctors' bills ; and a perusal of this ' failure ' is admitted to be ' a most valuable exercise for the mind.' Mr. Arnold himself will probably suffer more from his own censures than the great Christian philosopher who is the object of them. And it is well for him that all they can do is to effect some deduction from the fame which has been earned by him in other fields, as a true man, a searching and sagacious literary critic, and a poet of genuine creative genius.

Upon the whole, I conceive that these four censures \ the only censures in detail upon Butler which are known to me, inspire respect for their authors, as well as other sentiments directly due to their conspicuous talents. I trust that this sentiment of respect has not disappeared from my own examination of their criticisms. On the other hand, speak- ing for myself, after careful endeavours to weigh each and all of the objections which they have taken, I confess to a sense of satisfaction upon finding that after a century and a half, the latter portion of the time distinguished by an unusual activity of the questioning spirit, no more formida- ble grounds of exception should have been discovered. The catapult has beaten on the walls of the fortress ; it has stood the shock. The tempest has roared around the stately tree; and scarcely a leaf or twig has fallen to the ground. My confidence is strengthened not only in the permanence of Butler's fame, but much more in the permanence and abundance of the services he has yet to render to his country, to its kindred, and perhaps to Christendom, as 'a classic of thought in the greatest of all its domains, the domain of religious philosophy.

V. MINOE STEICTUKES.

I proceed to the criticisms on particular points which have been passed by some distinguished writers not to be reckoned as objectors to the general argument either of the

1 I have not thought it necessary to have been sufficiently dealt with by

defend Hullcr against the exceptions Bishop Fitzgerald in his Life of But -

taken by Tholuck, which are little ler, prefixed to his edition of 1749,

knowa in this country, and which p. xlvii.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 73

Analoyy or the Sermons of Butler. Bat I first offer a pre- liminary observation. While, on the one hand, no writer within my knowledge who has been so largely called to ac- count has obtained, from all objectors and questioners alike, so sustained a strain of eulogy and admiration, alike on in- tellectual and on moral grounds, none I think has bejen so unfortunate in the amount and gravity of misapprehension with which his contentions have been stated when put upon their trial. This circumstance I cannot but ascribe to the difficulty incidental to the extraction of particulars from so continuous and so wonderfully close a tissue of argument as he presents ; and yet more to the want of proper means of discharging the duty of reference and cross-reference (as it has been called) to his works \

In his Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy 2, Mr. Maurice not only assigns to Butler an honoured place in Christian literature, but shows that he had studied the philosopher deeply, and had so drunk in his fundamental conceptions that it might almost appear that he had drawn the very blood of Butler into his own veins. And yet Mr. Maurice falls into most serious inaccuracies in the account he gives of Butler's religious opinions. The idea of human nature presented in the Sermons on Human Nature is according to him the exa«t opposite of that presented by Mr. Wesley. It raises the ques- tion, what provision does human nature supply as a remedy for the disorder admitted to have invaded it ? Still more does the Analogy create a necessity for an answer to this question. Mr. Maurice then imagines a challenge from John Wesley to Butler, on the ground that he, Wesley, held a su- pernatural operation to be necessary for the regeneration of man 8. Mr. Maurice evidently believes that on this great sub- ject the theologies of Wesley and of Butler were at issue. As regards Wesley, the fact, doubtless unknown to Maurice, is that he uses the most commendatory epithets concerning

1 The Delegates of the Clarendon have availed myself of these sectional

Press have recently published a new divisions in the notes to the present

edition of Butler's Works, prepared volume.

by me, in which both the Analogy 2 London, 1862, 2 vols.; republished

and the other principal compositions with a preface, 1873.

are broken up into short sections for 3 Moral and Metaphysical Plriloso-

greater convenience of reference. I phy, vol. ii. pp. 466-468 (ed. 187'3).

74 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I.

the Analogy, and gives no hint of dissatisfaction on any point. But what says Butler himself ? No recognized the- ologian has presented more strongly than Butler the corrup- tion and degradation of man through sin. In the Introduc- tion, he tells us that this world is in a state of ' apostasy, wickedness, and ruin1.' And as respects the remedy he is not less unequivocal. The doctrine of the new birth is that which most absolutely involves a supernatural operation. The corruption of our moral character, and the necessity of the assistance of the Holy Spirit for the renewal of our na- ture, are implied, says the Analogy, ' in the express though figurative declaration, Except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God V It is difficult to understand how so single-hearted a student as Mr. Maurice could have overlooked so conspicuous a declaration. I am driven to suppose that it must have been owing to the extreme difficulties in the way of reference to particular passages of his author, which I have already noticed. This alone can explain the palpable mistakes of critics, whose good faith is as unquestionable as their ability 8.

Mr. Goldwin Smith, in a criticism on ManseFs Bampton Lectures 4, has occasion to refer to Butler as follows :

'One word more on the authority of Butler. ... In dry intellect he was mighty. . . . But he was wanting in feel-

1 Analogy, Introd. § 16. tiveness of over-fastidious intellects;

2 Ibid. II. i. 24. and (2) that Butler has in a single pas- 8 In his Essay on Regeneration sage confounded probabilities with

(Theological Essays, 1853, p. 236) chances (Analogy, II. ii. 11, 12). But,

Maurice laments the language used as regards the first, it constitutes no

by Butler as seeming to confound sufficient reason for eschewing a line

probabilities with chances, and other- of reasoning, which can never be dis-

wise to deal in an unsatisfactory man- pensed with when we are challenged

ner with the process to be followed to undertake the defence of our own

in the acceptance of religious truth, cause. As regards the second, Butler

Mr. Maurice does not quote words stumbled into his error, if any, not

or refer us to passages, and in the by lowering probabilities to chances,

expression of these regrets it would but rather by exalting chances to the

be well always to include, when we rank of probabilities, when, by this

arc drilling witli a great teacher, and undue promotion, they were to do

especially if we are teachers ourselves, duty in the service of the religious

th«- m.-ans of verification. It may be argument. His mistake has long ago

Admitted that (1) the argument from been pointed out by Bishop Fitzgerald

probabilities lends itself to the gibes in loc. See his Analogy, 1849, p. 184.

of the scoffer, and provokes the sensi- * Rational Religion, 1861.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 75

ing, the power of sympathy ; and his religious philosophy is grievously marked with this defect.'

The tributes of admiration which Mr. Goldwin Smith pays to Butler in this passage show plainly that the ani- madversion was extorted from him by a sense of duty to truth, such as he conceived it to be. But is it just ?

With regard to dry light, it may be, not conceded, but avowed and proclaimed, that the atmosphere of the Analogy is one of dry light, and only dry light, throughout. Nor does it seem doubtful that Butler acted with intention ; or that he judged wisely in excluding from this philosophic treatise anything which would have deviated from the line of strict reasoning by an appeal to emotion. Even feeling, and the power of sympathy, these glories of our nature, are only good in their place ; and this was not their place ; because, if Butler had allowed such elements to be mixed with his argument, every word of the matter so intruded would have served to harden and to arm the cold indiffer- ence, and the hotter prejudices, of his adversaries against the appeal which he made to their reasoning faculties, and to their judicial integrity.

But surely, when Mr. Goldwin Smith penned these words, he had forgotten the proof in our possession that the phi- losophy of Butler reserves for the affections their proper place. We find his estimate of them on every appropriate occasion with which the subjects of his Sermons supply him. It is known that he was given to religious retirement and to reading the biographies of holy persons : a circumstance which, perhaps, might suitably have arrested the pen of the critic. But we have also the direct evidence afforded by the Sermons on the Love of God. He notes with care the ascending stages of this love. It should pass beyond all servile fear, and should attain to ' resignation,' a phrase by which Butler means not the merely passive sentiment, but an entire concurrence with the Divine Will. All earthly objects, he observes, leave a void in us, which only God Himself can adequately supply *. He believes that heaven will provide a happiness coming directly from God Himself, and not merely as now from the intermediate objects which 1 Sermons, xiv. 10, 11.

76 ON HIS CENSORS [Pr. I.

He presents to our view. Butler's religion undoubtedly was marked with that reserve which is a marked characteristic of English piety, which may sometimes be carried into excess, but which is so far from implying a deficiency in fervour, that it rather indicates a dread lest the emotions of holy devotion should come to be mixed with inferior elements, and should be chilled by exposure to the rude climate of the world. He therefore takes refuge, at the close of these Sermons, in those expressions of the Psalms which are con- secrated by the use of so many generations, and raised to so high a level that no irreverence can touch them. I feel persuaded that a perusal of the closing portion of the two Sermons would lead Mr. Smith to withdraw or modify the judgement he has given.

The writings of Mark Pattison, which touch at various points upon those of Butler, bear what may be termed an unbroken testimony to their power. His Essay on ' Reli- gious Thought in England' includes a series of excellent reflections respecting the Analogy \ on which he appears to have bestowed much hard study. In his Memoirs 2 he bears witness to i the solid structure of logical argument, in which it surpasses any other book that I know in the English language.' He follows up this weighty judgement with a passage for which it by no means prepares us.

'But it is not a book adapted for an educational in- strument, as it diverts the mind from the great outlines of scientific and philosophical thought, and fastens it upon petty considerations, being in this respect the converse of Bacon's Novurti Organon'

In a later portion of the same work he records with evi- dent satisfaction that, as one of a board of liberal exam- iners, he shared (from his great ability it may be that he largely shared, or even led the way) in striking Butler off the list of books which might be taken up in the Oxford schools8. Mr. Pattison's condemnatory proceeding would have carried great weight, had he not, with so singular a frankness, informed us of the reason by which it was gov- erned. He has just before given us one reason which went

i Pattison's Essays, edited by Net- 2 Pattison's Memoirs, p. 134. tleship, vol. ii. p. 74 sqq. 3 ibid. p. 324.

CH. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 77

to show that the Analogy was admirably suited for an edu- cational instrument, for it was the most solid structure of logical argument known to him in the English language. It is indeed unlucky, to say the least, for scientific and philosophical thought, if its outlines are so tightly drawn, that they cannot include i the most solid structure of logical argument ' in the English language known to this learned, able, and accomplished man. But then this great perform- ance fastened the mind upon petty considerations. The issue is plainly stated, and it remains only to ascertain what are the petty considerations in question. They are those which form the subject of the Analogy. Now the subject of the Analogy may be succinctly described. It is the dealings of God with man in the kingdoms of Nature. Providence, and Grace, which it handles in a structure of logical argument more solid than is to be readily found in any English work of ' scientific and philosophical thought.' Of these three kingdoms, Bacon's Novum Organon intro- duces us only to that commonly regarded as the lowest ; but if we are to interpret Mr. Pattison strictly, the one alone capable of supplying us with philosophical and scien- tific thought. We seem here to be in the face of a strange dilemma. A treatise consummate in logical structure is proscribed as an instrument of education, by reason of the unworthiness of its subject. For those who think it worthy, Mr. Pattison has supplied a perfect demonstration that the Analogy is admirably fitted to be an instrument of the most masculine training. If, on the other hand, Mr. Pattison's dictum be sound, Butler's Analogy may justly disappear from among the instruments of education. But the thor- ough and impartial application of his principle will require that much else should disappear along with it : perhaps not least, that the Scriptures themselves should abdicate their position as the final rule and the staple food of Christendom, and should remain among us to be only an object of exhi- bition as the greatest and the strangest among the archaeo- logical curiosities of the world.

CHAPTER IV

ON ITEMS WHICH OUGHT TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT WHEN COMPARING BUTLER WITH THE ANCIENTS

TURNING now to the drawbacks which may seem to encumber, and to discourage the study of Butler, it seems to be felt that, besides the difficulties of expression which they present to us, we cannot but be deeply, perhaps pain- fully, impressed with the higher difficulties that presented themselves to him, and with the deep marks which they have impressed upon the whole course of his writings. As if his tread were less firm than that of many philoso- phers, both ancient and modern, he not only does not claim the authority, which even the ordinary teacher as such habitually inclines to assume, but he seems to remove that claim to the greatest possible distance from the path he traverses. Here, then, was probably a happy adaptation of his nature to the purpose of his work. The absence of such a claim tended to disarm suspicion, and to procure an easier access for his arguments. Yet it will be felt that this is not saying enough. It may be right to deal more at" large with the remark of one among his kindly critics, who says that Plato sees the truth, while Butler gropes for it. The nature and conditions of the work which they respec- tively had to do were broadly different. The truth, which presented itself to the mind of Plato four centuries before the Advent, was not the same truth which lay before the mind of Butler, seventeen centuries after it.

It is a well-known characteristic of Butler, particularly in the Analogy, that after pursuing his aim through prelim- inary argument and observation of close texture and pos- sibly not of facile comprehension, he lands his readers in conclusions which are limited and reserved, and which may sometimes appear clouded and indefinite. It is plain that

CH. IV.] BUTLER COMPARED WITH THE ANCIENTS 79

Butler abounds in reserves, such as we rarely meet with in the ancient schools of philosophy. Indeed all he offers as the reward of close attention and no inconsiderable mental effort, is that the matter he has adduced appears to go part of the way towards a solution ; or has so much at least of weight that it cannot without levity be put aside before careful examination ; or that it will command attention from considerate men. These guarded and (as against him- self) niggardly conclusions are offered us ; and they are exactly the reverse of what is required to satisfy the indo- lence and carelessness, or the intemperance and coarse per- ceptions, of the ordinary reader. His desire is to please the taste, not to be nourished ; to be excited, not to be educated ; to have what is called loudness in colouring presented to his eye, with a stimulating diet provided for his palate, which shall leave the health to take care of itself. To give delight to the average unsophisticated man was what Homer could venture to prescribe to himself as the proper office of the bard. Butler is not a bard, but a philosopher. He does not conform to this condition ; and man at large has in these last three thousand years travelled far from the early simplicity of his nature.

Nor is it only that nature has become less simple. It has also become more profound. Christianity has penetrated more deeply into the essence of man than any agency pre- viously offered to his mind ; has opened up in him new depths ; has added to him a new intensity. Those, who believe in a Divine Incarnation, will readily believe that a nature which has once had such an inhabitant as the Saviour, and has even been subjected to all the resulting influences, cannot in its facts, and still more in its capabil- ities, remain just what it was before. It must, as the char- acter of man unfolds under continued, varied, and ever- enlarging experience, undergo searching modifications, the aggregate of which it is impossible to measure, but of which some characteristics may be observed. The whole world, both of duty and of love, has been opened out to a far wider horizon. The action of man is brought into more close and constant relation with the Divine dispensations. God is ever nearer us in the still small voice. The thought

So ON THE COMPARISON OF BUTLER [Pr. I.

of man too has become habituated to the clearer and nearer contemplation of Deity, and a new relation, mental as well as spiritual, and highly fertile in results, has been estab- lished between the Creator and the creature.

And if we compare the developments of character in practice, as known in the ancient pre-Christian world, and that which Christianity has so insufficiently but yet marvel- lously permeated, we shall be astonished at the difference. Every vice and every virtue has altered in its character, is a larger and a deeper thing. The ancients lived more on the surface ; we have dug deep into the subsoil. The cruelty of Christians is more cruel. Of this fact, at first sight so startling, we have recently had a very striking illustration in the singular elaboration of those horrible instruments of torture, of which there was a remarkable exhibition in London a few years ago. To the ancients, the arts of tor- ture were little known ; and the legend of Regulus holds a solitary place in their popular literature. The lust of Christians is more lustful, and carries with it, as to acts which may be the same, the consciousness of a much deeper sinfulness ; for, as Butler is careful to instruct us, moral acts can only be estimated aright when taken in conjunction with the nature and capacity of the agent. Antiquity has displayed for us in its records all the worst that it had to say of itself, in this painful chapter of the experience of the race, and has done it with a certain naivete. It has been of a surety entirely outstripped in the performances of the Satanic schools, under the earlier and the later conditions j-espectively. The animal greed of Christians is tenfold more greedy ; and the pre-Christian times afford us no pan- orama of Mammon worship to compare for a moment with our own. The systematic, or, if the expression may be used, the scientific use of the apparatus of life to build up a godless existence, an atheism of act, which by the mere extinction of all thought avoids the name, has so developed as to seem different, not in degree only, but in kind. The luxury and the worldliness of old were but child's play in relation to those of modern times.

There is another subject, the further mention of which is odious, but it cannot be avoided. The lust of Christians

CH. IV.] WITH THE ANCIENTS 81

is more intense, and on that as well as other grounds far more wicked than was the lust of the heathen. It is indeed the fact that they practised largely the worship of obscene symbols ; and it is certain that this worship cannot pos»bly revive in conjunction with that social standard of idea and common judgement which has been established (but/be it observed, as a social rule only) by the Christian tradition. It is also clear from the plays of Aristophanes, the Eoman spectacles indicated by Martial, and such ideas as those proclaimed by Heliogabalus, that the sense of shame as a public sense, which had been at the epoch of Homer at once delicate and strong, had wellnigh ceased to exist. All this is of the past ; and a real, and even perhaps a rigorous, standard of public decency has been established. And the private sense of shame given us, as Butler truly says, to prevent shameful actions, is doubtless of a far greater aver- age power, than in those heathen days. But when the question is as to what is done, and contrived to be done, far from the public eye, arid when that barrier of personal shame has once been overleapt, I fear the verdict upon any such comparison as may conjecturally be made must be that, while the acts may continue in great part the same, their intensity and the pestilent devices and contrivances associated with them, have been enhanced and multiplied ; and that we have here a new and crying confirmation of the profound observation of an ancient philosopher, that if the worst is sought for, it is to be found in the corruption of the best l.

And why is all this ? The explanation lies in few words. If they had not had the law, they had not had sin. For the heathen, the mental and practical process of obliterat- ing the law, without thought or effort carried on through so many generations, came wellnigh up to its perfection. The idea of sin, except in Judea, was obliterated. The practice of sensual sin (if we properly understand the word) became matter of course, and prevailed largely among the best. Growing to be matter of course, it was, naturally enough, more nearly universal; but in the individual it

l Plato, Rep. vi. (p. 491, Stephens), are ill educated, become pre-eminently 'The most giftad minds, when they bad.' Jowett's Translation.

82 ON THE COMPARISON OF BUTLER [Px. I.

required and hastened less of obliquity, of obtusity, of har- dihood, of true and obstinate demoralization.

And so with regard to the virtues, and to the energies of our nature capable of moral or of immoral use, and apper- taining to its manhood. With the multiplied forms of torture there has been developed a more tenacious and un- yielding product ; the faculty of endurance. A nobler cause has here been at work. The heavens became open to the spiritual eye through the operation of faith, which was not only the substance of things hoped for, but also the evi- dence of things unseen. The greatness and loftiness of the interests, and of the entire destinies thus opened to man- kind, developed new powers both of action and of suffering in respect to them. The resolution of Kegulus was indeed sublime ; but the records of antiquity afford no historic proofs of resolution equal, as a whole, to that of the mar- tyrs, even if allowance be made for possible exaggerations. There has in this, as in many cases, been an action not only upon this or that individual, but upon the race, and new developments of its character. The daring of our naviga- tors some centuries ago, and their hardihood in encountering the extremities of difficulty and danger, form a feature of Christian times which compares in marked advantage with the energy and bravery of the Phoenicians, who mainly crept along the coasts, and this greatly in congenial lati- tudes. Let any one peruse in detail the wonderful account given by General Greely of the sufferings entailed by his Polar expedition, and of the heroic courage with which they were borne by an assemblage of men not perhaps greatly differing in physical or in moral force from the average of their countrymen. Such occurrences were beyond the pale of possibility even in the great days of Greece and of Borne.

There is, however, another case, collective not individual, which appears to exhibit in a still more vivid light that intensity of heroic endurance, up to which human character may be trained under the influence of the Christian tradi- tion. Of this fortitude abundant instances may be gathered from the narratives of religious persecutions. But there is no parallel known to me, in records either ancient or mod- ern, to the history of the people of Montenegro. In the end

CH. IV.]

WITH THE ANCIENTS

of the fifteenth, century, when the awful curse of Turkish invasion had spread like a deluge of flame over Eastern Europe, this small people, numbering a very few tens of thousands, abandoned their lands and homes to save their faith and their freedom, and made for themselves a Noah's ark of the Black Mountain. And here they maintained, with diversity of fortune, but without ever succumbing, a war of four hundred years against that Ottoman power which overwhelmed everything else in the Levant. All the brightest examples of courage, animated in olden times by the enthusiasm of freedom, grow pale by the side of this unequalled experience. To the enthusiasm of freedom there had been added the twin enthusiasm of religion.

As it is of the force engendered in our human nature, without direct application to the spiritual element, that I now speak, I will at once turn to the case of the man whose sufferings probably exceeded any that are known ever to have been inflicted by human hands. I mean the appalling case of Damiens, who attempted the life of Louis XV of France. Goldsmith has commemorated

Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel.

But the bed of steel conveys only a stinted idea of the tortures to which Damiens was subjected for having endea- voured to rid the world of a much worse man than himself. All the science of Paris was taxed by royal command to determine by what processes vital power could be so hus- banded under torture as to secure that Damiens should pass out of this world with the greatest amount and intensity of suffering that could possibly be devised. It may seem strange to cite this fiendish contrivance of Louis XV or his advisers in connexion with the operation of Christianity upon human nature. Yet it could never, as I conceive, have entered into the mind of antiquity to conceive the idea, or to construct the machinery, of this terrible occa- sion, the characteristics of which appear in truth to belong to hell more properly than to earth.

It may also seem strange to some that I should introduce the case of Damiens in this connexion, as if his rules of action had been those of an intelligent Christian. In that

84 ON THE COMPARISON OF BUTLER [Pr. I.

respect, let us leave him to his Judge : my reference is to his powers of energetic endurance, as being powers not to be found among mankind in the ages anterior to the Chris- tian dispensation. His environment was Christian ; he lived in the atmosphere of Christian tradition. In his case, as in that of others, the effects of tradition and environment may have been developed in character, apart altogether from personal convictions 1.

I do not enter into consideration of the cases of self- torture among the devotees of the East, which belong to another chapter of human nature, and are hardly relevant to the present remarks.

Nor do I enter upon the question how far the comparison between Christian and pre-Christian periods, here partially set forth, can be extended to the department of intellectual or imaginative power. The province of the present discus- sion is that of character, not of intellect. To this I do not extend my affirmations as they stand.

Indeed, what I ask is to bring the whole of these consid- erations to bear upon our appreciation of the work of Butler, and upon, such comparisons as we may be tempted to make between his work, with his method of performing it, and the work and method of the ancient philosophers.

My position is that he had a different human nature to deal with, and a different relation between that human nature and the Almighty Maker ; that they speculated freely and at will, while he moved with a nobleness of object indeed that was unknown to them, but with a bur- den of responsibility upon him at every step, which almost bore him down to the ground. Even of common duty, what seems to some men light, to others is a sense almost oppres- sive : how much greater was the pressure on a quickened conscience labouring under the belief of being charged with that argument, on which the whole ultimate welfare of the world depends !

After familiarizing ourselves with the secure and steady steps of Aristotle, and the rarity of his resorts to doubt and re»ervation, or even with the questionings of Socrates in the

1 The particulars of this proceeding have recently been published in a pain- fully interesting volume entitled Le Prooes de Damiens.

CH. IV.] WITH THE ANCIENTS 85

Platonic Dialogue, which almost habitually lead us up to a prepared conclusion, we may be tempted to feel some impa- tience in the first stages of our acquaintance with a philo- sophic writer who so carefully clips his own propositions, who loads us, as his sentences make way, with qualifica- tions, and then so often ends with what may seem lean and stunted affirmations. But no ancient philosopher had to face the difficulties which beset the path of Butler. Two such representatives of Christian and pre-Christian thought as Butler and Aristotle are not unlike two soldiers march- ing along the same road, the one heavily laden with his kit and military equipment, the other rid of encumbran§es and prepared for action. But the first carries material which, though it may augment his burden, means also enlarged resources and a graver destiny.

None of the ancients could endeavor to exhibit in syste- matic detail the methods of God's dealing with the indi- vidual Greek or Koman. None of them took the world as a school, and life as a discipline, in the close and searching sense, which has been brought within arm's length of every competent inquirer by the Christian Eevelation. Only in limited portions of the Old Testament are we introduced to a fully constituted personal relationship between the human soul and its Almighty Maker, Governor, and Judge. And as on the one side it was permitted to Butler to treat of a heaven unveiled, so on the other side he had perforce to contemplate the human being in that more extended and diversified moral development, which he has undergone through the long and slow experience of Christianity, and which has so largely enhanced his perils, his privileges, and his hopes.

CHAPTER V BUTLER'S MENTAL QUALITIES

i. His Quality of Measure.

ALTHOUGH no one would charge Butler with egotism, yet he is evidently, like Dante, a self-revealing writer. As a man governed by one dominant influence, he wears his heart upon his sleeve. The master passion with him is the love of truth: and it is never leavened, never traversed by any other feeling. He is, without doubt, a singularly circumspect writer. He has even been described by Mr. Stephen as having 'a strangely cautious understanding.' Few indeed are the instances in which he can on this score be called in question. But, while the caution of many is largely based on fear of detection, it seems to have been in Butler simply a steady as well as an intense desire to be in exact correspondence with the truth. Following in the train of this love of truth, as an outgrowth or a satellite, there is an unceasing desire to keep faith with his readers, a fear of committing a grave offence against the student (who may be considered as in some degree giving over him- self to his author, as we obey a guide) by carrying his mind one inch beyond what the facts of the case will warrant. If there are over-statements in Butler, they are commonly against himself. They are, in truth, under-statements of the case on his own side, as when he says that the evidence he presents is not indeed satisfactory — very far from it1. It thus appears that, if the insect can take colour from what it feeds upon, our minds can derive no colour but what is genuine from assimilation with Butler. He sees the pro- portion of things, and not only the things themselves ; and does not thrust forward the small as if it were great, nor

1 Analogy, II. viii. 17.

CH. V.] ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 87

shuffle away the great as if it were small. The one word which best describes his carefulness, and its result as to breadth of statement, is measure.

ii. His Strength of Tissue.

It seems quite safe to assert that Butler is among the least commonplace of writers. He is always dealing with the heart, never with the surface of his question. There is, if it may be permitted so to speak, no outside, no mere skin, to his writings. It would be difficult to name any other writer on kindred subjects who altogether resembles him in the closeness of the contact between the author and the argument. Had he, like the ancient philosophers, been unfurnished with a strong view of providential government in the world as a law of universal application, I cannot but think he would have had a style like that of Aristotle, who, like Butler, is solitary in his class as to the mode of conveying his thoughts.

In the march of a battalion, every forward step is itself a separate exercise, with a relation to what precedes and what follows it. The rambling thought of many authors may seem to have no more continuity than a rope of sand : or it thins itself away like a river lost in the desert. One of the greatest properties of a human composition is to pre- sent to us continuity of tissue ; and the greatness rises in proportion as the tissue, besides being continuous, is close and strong. The subject of the composition will not always admit it ; but the mind of the writer is more commonly in defect. This continuity is eminently observable in the highest works of art : in a truly great statue, for example, every part is in close kindred with every other part, and the union between them is not merely mechanical but vital.

Pattison's account of the Analogy l is a just acknowledge- ment of its character as a compacted logical structure from end to end. Butler may in a measure be said to stand by the side of Aristotle, and is perhaps excelled by no writer, unless it be Euclid. But in Euclid, while the certainty of the connexion between point and point is greater, the effort required for grasping firmly the connexion between them is

l Memoirs, p. 134.

88 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Px. I.

less. When Pitt had recommended the perusal of Butler to Wilberf orce, he in his turn records in his diary x that he had the Analogy read aloud to him for two hours : it is not, I think, too much to say that we might run through many thousands of educated minds before lighting upon one which could take real benefit from such an exercise ; and the strength of Wilberforce, not small in its own line, was mainly dependent upon susceptibility and pious emotion, warm but without extravagance. Butler assuredly was not made for butterflies to flutter about. He demands the sur- render, not to him but to his subject, of the entire man. It has been well said of him that he is as much in earnest, as if he were a gamester. Still better, perhaps, Fitzgerald supplies us with the remark of ' an ingenious person ' who said that each single sentence is, with Butler, * like a well- considered move in chess 2 ' ; a most felicitous illustration of its proper subject, which may well dispense with all others, but need not exclude that able writer's description of many a compressed clause or single word of his author,

as (T<j>vpr]X.aTO<s vovs ev oAtyw oy/cw.

iii. His Courage.

With the circumspection which is one of his most marked characteristics, Butler appears to unite a great boldness upon occasion ; sometimes he even makes the occasion. As exam- ples of this boldness, I would refer to the following heads :

1. The possible development of the brute creation and its elevation to a higher stage of existence 8.

From the frequency and gravity of his references to the lower animals, it plainly appears that Butler had thought much, and with adequate care, about them. Even in our own day there are many who resent any attempt to draw closer the ties of relationship to our humble kindred 4. But in those times, when a lady of rank reproached Lady Huntingdon for applying the same doctrines concerning sin to the case of

1 Life of Wilberforce, i. pp. 89, reported to have said that there were

two theories of our descent. Some

2 Fitzgerald, preface, p. xci. would have it that we were descended » Analogy, I. i. 21. from the apes; others derived us from

I seem to recollect a speech of the angels. For his part lie preferred Lord Beaconsfield, in which he was the descent from the angels.

CH. V.]

ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES

89

her own equals as were applicable to the common people in the street, it is probable that such ideas concerning the brutes would be yet more repulsive than, outside the scientific do- main, they may still be. But he was not a man to be bound by mere prepossessions, nor did he estimate opinion accord- ing to the breadth of its prevalence. And besides the cour- age which in this instance he exhibited, I cannot but admire the insight of anticipation which, without a manuduction (if the term may be allowed) by natural science, enabled him to forecast what is now, though not a scientific truth, yet at least an agreeable and widely accepted opinion. At least it cannot be denied that the flint and bone discoveries, and the remains of the geologic man, have been narrowing the interval between the orders of creation ; for it must be borne in mind that the effect of these discoveries may be to exhibit our race, not at its present and known standard of faculty, but in the possession of inferior powers, and only on the way upwards to the more elevated plane.

2. Not less boldness did Butler exhibit when he pro- pounded that the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet under- stood ; and that (apart from miracle) if progress was to be made in understanding it, such progress must be effected in the same way as natural knowledge is come at. It may contain many truths as yet undiscovered \ This is surely a very remarkable declaration, especially as coming from Butler. For his early training could hardly have been alto- gether discharged from the narrow ideas of Scripture inter- pretation which must have been most unfavourable to such progress ; and, again, he had a most vivid sense of the cor- ruptions which, under the mask of development, and through enlarged interpretations, had made their way into the Chris- tian Church. Yet he was not to be deterred, when he saw his way, from enunciating ideas on this topic which seem to be of considerable breadth.

3. Still more striking, perhaps, are the original concep- tions which Butler applied to the great subject of escha- tology. He nowhere dogmatizes beyond the language of the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds. He has unfolded no theory which disposes of the final condition of all souls

i Analogy, II. iii. 21.

90 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Px. I.

hereafter ; and his subject did not require it. But his sub- ject did suggest to him the glorification of virtue; and, with this end in view, he considered not only what virtue does, but what under favouring circumstances it might do. He found the prevailing tradition, due to the biassing cir- cumstances of the Reformation, too narrow ; and he con- ceives that the power of virtue, rising upwards in distant scenes with less of hindrance, may then newly amend those who are capable of amendment. I reserve for another place a fuller statement on this subject \

4. Butler has also achieved an important work with re- gard to the respective departments of reason and faith, a favourite subject for the sneers of some sceptical writers. No one charges Butler with having robbed faith of its due prerogatives. Yet surely none could on the other hand desire a greater boldness in defining the office of reason. ' I express myself with caution, lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason; which is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning any thing, even revelation itself : or be misunderstood to assert, that a supposed reve- lation cannot be proved false, from internal characters V And Butler may embolden many to maintain, as he does, that there is not only no contradiction, but no opposition, between faith and reason ; the intellectual element in faith being reason employed upon a special subject-matter.

All these are instances in which Butler's prescient courage had a tendency to place him at issue with friends of his own cause, less sagacious than himself. There are other cases worthy of notice, in which no such likelihood was before him.

5. Such is the treatment of the word ' natural ' in ch. i, a treatment which may involve the solution of many difficul- ties. There is no absurdity, he tells us, in supposing that there may be beings in the universe so enlarged in capacity and experience, as that the whole Christian dispensation may to them appear natural, i. e. conformable to God's deal- ings with other parts of His creation; as natural, as the visible known course of things appears to us 8.

i Analogy, II. iji. 3. Inf. Part II. Chap. iii. 2 Analogy, IT. iii. 3.

8 Ibid., I. i. 91.

CH. V.] ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 91

6. Again, when confronting the objector who dwelt on difficulties apparent in the scheme of providential govern- ment, he is not content with defence, but betakes himself also to retaliation in argument. The things to which objec- tion is commonly taken in the scheme of providential government may be things good in themselves, and even indispensable l ; and the entire scheme may prove to have been the best that it could be.

7. And again, outside the contentious portion of his teaching, he goes far beyond the ordinary stream of Chris- tian instruction in his suggestions respecting future bliss, which, as he thinks, may include the opening up of kinds of vision altogether strange to the human soul. For what we now see of the goodness of God is by seeing Him in His works ; but we may come to see Him, and His glorious attributes, as they are in themselves 2.

iv. His Questionable Theses.

It may seem as if eulogy of this kind stood in ill-assorted companionship with the admission that in very rare in- stances his critics appear to catch him tripping ; as when Miss Hennell arraigns him for saying that one or two actions of a particular character have no aptitude, if few and detached, to create a bad mental habit. But the fact seems to be this. Circumspection is easy or difficult ac- cording to the subject-matter. It is easy in copying a letter ; it is most difficult in a philosophical treatise such as But- ler's. And from the effort required to maintain continu- ously such a circumspection as this it is inseparable from humanity that the mind should occasionally and for mo- ments recoil. Take the case of two horses ; one travelling on a road absolutely smooth, the other happening to tread a mountain path, its surface almost made of broken stones. The last may stumble once in a day's work, where the first does not ; and yet may be by far the more