Part 13 (1/2)
Here he so isolates three a.s.sertions of mine from their context, as to suggest for each of them a false meaning, and make it difficult for the reader who has not my book at hand to discover the delusion.
The first is taken from a discussion of the arguments concerning the soul's immortality (”Soul,” p. 223, 2nd edition), on which I wrote thus, p. 219:--that to judge of the accuracy of a metaphysical argument concerning mind and matter, requires not a pure conscience and a loving soul, but a clear and calm head; that if the doctrine of immortality be of high religious importance, we cannot believe it to rest on such a basis, that those in whom the religious faculties are most developed may be more liable to err concerning it than those who have no religious faculty in action at all. On the contrary, concerning truths which are really spiritual it is an obvious axiom,[10] that ”he who is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.” After this I proceeded to allude to the history of the doctrine among the Hebrews, and quoted some texts of the Psalms, the _argument_ of which, I urged, is utterly inappreciable to the pure logician, ”because it is spiritually discerned.” I continued as follows:--
”This is as it should be. Can a mathematician understand physiology, or a physiologist questions of law? A true love of G.o.d in the soul itself, an insight into Him depending on that love, and a hope rising out of that insight, are prerequisite for contemplating this spiritual doctrine, which is a spontaneous impression of the gazing soul, powerful (perhaps) in proportion to its faith; whereas all the grounds of belief proposed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with faith at all.”
I am expounding the doctrine of the great Paul of Tarsus, who indeed applies it to this very topic,--the future bliss which G.o.d has prepared for them that love him. Does Mr. Rogers attack Paul as making a fanatical divorce between faith and intellect, and say that he is _compelled_ so to understand him, when he avows that ”the natural man understandeth not the things of G.o.d; for they are foolishness unto him.” ”When the world by wisdom knew not G.o.d, it pleased G.o.d by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” Here is a pretended champion of Evangelical truth seeking to explode as absurdities the sentiments and judgments which have ever been at the heart of Christianity, its pride and its glory!
But I justify my argument as free from fanaticism--and free from obscurity when the whole sentence is read--to a Jew or Mohammedan, quite as much as to a Christian.
My opponent innocently asks, _how much_ I desire him to quote of me?
But is innocence the right word, when he has quoted but two lines and a half, out of a sentence of seven and a half, and has not even given the clause complete? By omitting, in his usual way, the connecting particle _whereas_, he hides from the reader that he has given but half my thought; and this is done, after my complaint of this very proceeding. A reader who sees the whole sentence, discerns at once that I oppose ”the _mere_ understanding,” to the whole soul; in short, that by the man who has _mere_ understanding, I mean him whom Paul calls ”the natural man.” Such a man may have metaphysical talents and acquirements, he may be a physiologist or a great lawyer; nay, I will add, (to shock my opponent's tender nerves), _even if he be an Atheist_, he may be highly amiable and deserving of respect and love; but if he has no spiritual development, he cannot have insight into spiritual truth. Hence such arguments for immortality as _can_ be appreciated by him, and _cannot_ be appreciated by religious men as such, ”have nothing to do with faith at all”
The two other pa.s.sages are found thus, in p. 245 of the ”Soul,” 2nd edition. After naming local history, criticism of texts, history of philosophy, logic, physiology, demonology, and other important but very difficult studies, I ask:--
”Is it not extravagant to call inquiries of this sort _spiritual_ or to expect any spiritual[11] results from them? When the spiritual man (as such) cannot judge, the question is removed into a totally different court from that of the soul, the court of the critical understanding.... How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led? What means the anathematizing of those who remain unconvinced? And how can it be imagined that the Lord of the soul cares more about a historical than about a geological, metaphysical, or mathematical argument? The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul.”
From my defender in the ”Prospective Review” I learn that in the first edition of the ”Defence” the word _thought_ in the last sentence above was placed in italics. He not only protested against this and other italics as misleading, but clearly explained my sense, which, as I think, needs no other interpreter than the context. In the new edition the italics are removed, but the unjust isolation of the sentences remains. ”_The_ processes of thought,” of which I spoke, are not ”_all_ processes,” but the processes _involved in the abstruse inquiries to which I had referred_. To say that _no_ processes of thought quicken the conscience, or affect the soul, would be a gross absurdity. This, or nothing else, is what he imputes to me; and even after the protest made by the ”Prospective” reviewer, my a.s.sailant not only continues to hide that I speak of _certain_ processes of thought, not _all_ processes, but even has the hardihood to say that he takes the pa.s.sages as _everybody else_ does, and that he is _compelled_ so to do.
In my own original reply I appealed to places where I had fully expressed my estimate of intellectual progress, and its ultimate beneficial action. All that I gain by this, is new garblings and taunts for inconsistency. ”Mr. Newman,” says be, ”is the last man in the world to whom I would deny the benefit of having contradicted himself.” But I must confine myself to the garbling. ”Defence,” p.
95:--
”Mr. Newman affirms that my representations of his views on this subject are the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully written!” He still says, ”_what_ G.o.d reveals, he reveals within and not without,” and ”he _did_ say (though, it seems, he says no longer), that 'of G.o.d we know everything from within, nothing from without;' yet he says I have grossly misrepresented him.”
This pretended quotation is itself garbled. I wrote, (”Phases,” 1st edition, p. 152)--”Of _our moral and spiritual_ G.o.d we know nothing without, everything within.” By omitting the adjectives, the critic produces a statement opposed to my judgment and to my writings; and then goes on to say. ”Well, if Mr. Newman will engage to prove contradictions,... I think it is no wonder that his readers do not understand him.”
I believe it is a received judgment, which I will not positively a.s.sert to be true, but I do not think I have anywhere denied, that G.o.d is discerned by us in the universe as a designer, creator, and mechanical ruler, through a mere study of the world and its animals and all their adaptations, _even without_ an absolute necessity of meditating consciously on the intelligence of man and turning the eyes within. Thus a creative G.o.d may be said to be discerned ”from without.” But in my conviction, that G.o.d is not _so_ discerned to be _moral_ or _spiritual_ or to be _our_ G.o.d; but by moral intellect and moral experience acting ”inwardly.” If Mr. Rogers chooses to deny the justness of my view, let him deny it; but by omitting the emphatic adjectives he has falsified my sentence, and then has founded upon it a charge of inconsistency. In a previous pa.s.sage (p. 79) he gave this quotation in full, in order to reproach me for silently withdrawing it in my second edition of the ”Phases.” He says:--
”The two sentences in small capitals are not found in the new edition of the 'Phases.' _They are struck out_. It is no doubt the right of an author to erase in a new edition any expressions he pleases; but when he is about to charge another with having grossly garbled and stealthily misrepresented him, it is as well to let the world know _what_ he has erased and _why_. He says that my representation of his sentiments is the most direct and intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully written. It certainly is not the intense reverse of all that he has most elaborately and carefully _scratched out_.”
I exhibit here the writer's own italics.
By this attack on my good faith, and by pretending that my withdrawal of the pa.s.sage is of serious importance, he distracts the reader's attention from the argument there in hand (p. 79), which is, _not_ what are my sentiments and judgements, but whether he had a right to dissolve and distort my chain of reasoning (see I. above) while affecting to quote me, and pretending that I gave nothing but a.s.sertion. As regards my ”elaborately and carefully _scratching out_,”
this was done; 1. Because the pa.s.sage seemed to me superfluous; 2.
Because I had pressed the topic elsewhere; 3. Because I was going to enlarge on it in my reply to him, p. 199 of my second edition.[12]
When the real place comes where my critic is to deal with the substance of the pa.s.sage (p. 94 of ”Defence”), the reader has seen how he mutilates it.
The other pa.s.sage of mine which he has adduced, employs the word _reveals_, in a sense a.n.a.logous to that of _revelation_, in avowed relation to _things moral and spiritual_, which would have been seen, had not my critic reversed the order of my sentences; which he does again in p. 78 of the ”Defence,” after my protest against his doing so in the ”Eclipse.” I wrote: (Soul, p. 59) ”Christianity itself has thus practically confessed, what is theoretically clear, that an authoritative _external_ revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man. What G.o.d reveals to us, he reveals _within_, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses.”
The words, ”What G.o.d reveals,” seen in the light of the preceding sentence, means: ”That portion of _moral and spiritual truth_ which G.o.d reveals.” This cannot be discovered in the isolated quotation; and as, both in p. 78 and in p. 95, he chooses to quote my word _What_ in italics, his reader is led on to interpret me as saying ”_every thing whatsoever_ which we know of G.o.d, we learn from within;” a statement which is not mine.
Besides this, the misrepresentation of which I complained is not confined to the rather metaphysical words of _within_ and _without_, as to which the most candid friends may differ, and may misunderstand one another;--as to which also I may be truly open to correction;--but he a.s.sumes the right to tell his readers that my doctrine undervalues Truth, and Intellect, and Traditional teaching, and External suggestion, and Historical influences, and counts the Bible an impertinence. When he fancies he can elicit this and that, by his own logic, out of sentences and clauses torn from their context, he has no right to disguise what I have said to the contrary, and claim to justify his fraud by accusing me of self-contradiction. Against all my protests, and all that I said to the very opposite previous to any controversy, he coolly alludes to it (p. 40 of the ”Defence”) as though it were my avowed doctrine, that: ”_Each_ man, looking exclusively within, can _at once_ rise to the conception of G.o.d's infinite perfections.”
IV. When I agree with Paul or David (or think I do), I have a right to quote their words reverentially; but when I do so, Mr. Rogers deliberately justifies himself in ridiculing them, pretending that he only ridicules _me_. He thus answers my indignant denunciation in the early part of his ”Defence,” p. 5:--
”Mr. Newman warns me with much solemnity against thinking that 'questions pertaining to G.o.d are advanced by boisterous glee.' I do not think that the 'Eclipse' is characterised by boisterous glee; and certainly I was not at all aware, that the things which _alone_[13]
I have ridiculed--some of them advanced by him, and some by others--deserved to be treated with solemnity. For example, that an authoritative external revelation,[14] which most persons have thought possible enough, is _im_possible,--that man is most likely born for a dog's life, and 'there an end'--that there are great defects in the morality of the New Testament, and much imperfection in the character of its founder,--that the miracles of Christ might be real, because Christ was a _clairvoyant_ and mesmerist,--that G.o.d was not a Person, but a Personality;--I say, I was not aware that these things, and such as these, which alone I ridiculed, were questions 'pertaining to G.o.d,'
in any other sense than the wildest hypotheses in some sense pertain to science, and the grossest heresies to religion.”
Now first, is his statement true?
_Are_ these the _only_ things which he ridiculed?