IV. The Tamworth Reading Room

 ( Addressed to the Editor of the TIMES. By Catholicus .)

1. Secular Knowledge in contrast with Religion

 SIR, Sir Robert Peel's position in the country, and his high character, render it impossible that his words and deeds should be other than public property. This alone would furnish an apology for my calling the attention of your readers to the startling language, which many of them doubtless have already observed, in the Address which this most excellent and distinguished man has lately delivered upon the establishment of a Library and Reading-room at Tamworth; but he has superseded the need of apology altogether, by proceeding to present it to the public in the form of a pamphlet. His speech, then, becomes important, both from the name and the express act of its author. At the same time, I must allow that he has not published it in the fulness in which it was spoken. Still it seems to me right and fair, or rather imperative, to animadvert upon it as it has appeared in your columns, since in that shape it will have the widest circulation. A public man must not claim to harangue the whole world in newspapers, and then to offer his second thoughts to such as choose to buy them at a bookseller's.

 I shall surprise no one who has carefully read Sir Robert's Address, and perhaps all who have not, by stating my conviction, that, did a person take it up without looking at the heading, he would to a certainty set it down as a production of the years 1827 and 1828, the scene Gower Street, the speaker Mr. Brougham or Dr. Lushington, and the occasion, the laying the first stone, or the inauguration, of the then-called London University. I profess myself quite unable to draw any satisfactory line of difference between the Gower Street and the Tamworth Exhibition, except, of course, that Sir Robert's personal religious feeling breaks out in his Address across his assumed philosophy. I say assumed, I might say affected; for I think too well of him to believe it genuine.

 On the occasion in question, Sir Robert gave expression to a theory of morals and religion, which of course, in a popular speech, was not put out in a very dogmatic form, but which, when analyzed and fitted together, reads somewhat as follows:   Human nature, he seems to say, if left to itself, becomes sensual and degraded. Uneducated men live in the indulgence of their passions; or, if they are merely taught to read, they dissipate and debase their minds by trifling or vicious publications. Education is the cultivation of the intellect and heart, and Useful Knowledge is the great instrument of education. It is the parent of virtue, the nurse of religion; it exalts man to his highest perfection, and is the sufficient scope of his most earnest exertions.

 Physical and moral science rouses, transports, exalts, enlarges, tranquillizes, and satisfies the mind. Its attractiveness obtains a hold over us; the excitement attending it supersedes grosser excitements; it makes us know our duty, and thereby enables us to do it; by taking the mind off itself, it destroys anxiety; and by providing objects of admiration, it soothes and subdues us.

 And, in addition, it is a kind of neutral ground, on which men of every shade of politics and religion may meet together, disabuse each other of their prejudices, form intimacies, and secure cooperation.

 This, it is almost needless to say, is the very theory, expressed temperately, on which Mr. Brougham once expatiated in the Glasgow and London Universities. Sir R. Peel, indeed, has spoken with somewhat of his characteristic moderation; but for his closeness in sentiment to the Brougham of other days, a few parallels from their respective Discourses will be a sufficient voucher.

 For instance, Mr. Brougham, in his Discourses upon Science, and in his Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties [n.], wrote about the "pure delight" of physical knowledge, of its "pure gratification," of its "tendency to purify and elevate man's nature," of its "elevating and refining it," of its "giving a dignity and importance to the enjoyment of life." Sir Robert, pursuing the idea, shows us its importance even in death, observing, that physical knowledge supplied the thoughts from which "a great experimentalist professed in his last illness to derive some pleasure and some consolation, when most other sources of consolation and pleasure were closed to him."

 Mr. Brougham talked much and eloquently of "the sweetness of knowledge," and "the charms of philosophy," of students "smitten with the love of knowledge," of " wooing truth with the unwearied ardour of a lover," of "keen and overpowering emotion, of ecstasy," of "the absorbing passion of knowledge," of "the strength of the passion, and the exquisite pleasure of its gratification ." And Sir Robert, in less glowing language, but even in a more tender strain than Mr. Brougham, exclaims, "If I can only persuade you to enter upon that delightful path, I am sanguine enough to believe that there will be opened to you gradual charms and temptations which will induce you to persevere."

 Mr. Brougham naturally went on to enlarge upon "bold and successful adventures in the pursuit;" such, perhaps, as in the story of Paris and Helen, or Hero and Leander; of daring ambition in its course to greatness,"[sic] of "enterprising spirits," and their "brilliant feats," of "adventurers of the world of intellect," and of "the illustrious vanquishers of fortune." And Sir Robert, not to be outdone, echoes back "aspirations for knowledge and distinction," "simple determination of overcoming difficulties," "premiums on skill and intelligence," "mental activity," "steamboats and railroads," "producer and consumer," "spirit of inquiry afloat;" and at length he breaks out into almost conventical eloquence, crying, "Every newspaper teems with notices of publications written upon popular principles, detailing all the recent discoveries of science, and their connexion with improvements in arts and manufactures. Let me earnestly entreat you not to neglect the opportunity which we are now willing to afford you! It will not be our fault if the ample page of knowledge, rich with the spoils of time, is not unrolled to you! We tell you," etc., etc.

 Mr. Brougham pronounces that a man by "learning truths wholly new to him," and by "satisfying himself of the grounds on which known truths rest," "will enjoy a proud consciousness of having, by his own exertions, become a wiser, and therefore a more exalted creature." Sir Robert runs abreast of this great sentiment. He tells us, in words which he adopts as his own, that a man "in becoming wiser will become better :" he will "rise at once in the scale of intellectual and moral existence, and by being accustomed to such contemplations, he will feel the moral dignity of his nature exalted ."

 Mr. Brougham, on his inauguration at Glasgow, spoke to the ingenuous youth assembled on the occasion, of "the benefactors of mankind, when they rest from their pious labours, looking down upon the blessings with which their toils and sufferings have clothed the scene of their former existence;" and in his Discourse upon Science declared it to be "no mean reward of our labour to become acquainted with the prodigious genius of those who have almost exalted the nature of man above his destined sphere;" and who "hold a station apart, rising over all the great teachers of mankind, and spoken of reverently, as if Newton and La Place were not the names of mortal men." Sir Robert cannot, of course, equal this sublime flight; but he succeeds in calling Newton and others "those mighty spirits which have made the greatest (though imperfect) advances towards the understanding of 'the Divine Nature and Power.'"

 Mr. Brougham talked at Glasgow about putting to flight the "evil spirits of tyranny and persecution which haunted the long night now gone down the sky," and about men "no longer suffering themselves to be led blindfold in ignorance ;" and in his Pursuit of Knowledge he speaks of Pascal having, "under the influence of certain religious views, during a period of  depression, conceived scientific pursuits "to be little better than abuse of his time and faculties." Sir Robert, fainter in tone, but true to the key, warns his hearers, "Do not be deceived by the sneers that you hear against knowledge, which are uttered by men who want to depress you, and keep you depressed to the level of their own contented ignorance ."

 Mr. Brougham laid down at Glasgow the infidel principle, or, as he styles it, "the great truth," which "has gone forth to all the ends of the earth, that man shall no more render account to man for his belief, over which he has himself no control." And Dr. Lushington applied it in Gower Street to the College then and there rising, by asking, "Will any one argue for establishing a monopoly to be enjoyed by the few who are of one denomination of the Christian Church only?" And he went on to speak of the association and union of all without exclusion or restriction, of "friendships cementing the bond of charity, and softening the asperities which ignorance and separation have fostered." Long may it be before Sir Robert Peel professes the great principle itself! even though, as the following passages show, he is inconsistent enough to think highly of its application in the culture of the mind. He speaks, for instance, of "this preliminary and fundamental rule, that no works of controversial divinity shall enter into the library (applause)," of "the institution being open to all persons of all descriptions, without reference to political opinions, or religious creed," and of "an edifice in which men of all political opinions and all religious feelings may unite in the furtherance of knowledge, without the asperities of party feeling." Now, that British society should consist of persons of different religions, is this a positive standing evil, to be endured at best as unavoidable, or a topic of exultation? Of exultation, answers Sir Robert; the greater differences the better, the more the merrier. So we must interpret his tone.

 It is reserved for few to witness the triumph of their own opinions; much less to witness it in the instance of their own direct and personal opponents. Whether the Lord Brougham of this day feels all that satisfaction and inward peace which he attributes to success of whatever kind in intellectual efforts, it is not for me to decide; but that he has achieved, to speak in his own style, a mighty victory, and is leading in chains behind his chariot-wheels, a great captive, is a fact beyond question.

 Such is the reward in 1841 for unpopularity in 1827.

 What, however, is a boast to Lord Brougham, is in the same proportion a slur upon the fair fame of Sir Robert Peel, at least in the judgment of those who have hitherto thought well of him. Were there no other reason against the doctrine propounded in the Address which has been the subject of these remarks, (but I hope to be allowed an opportunity of assigning others,) its parentage would be a grave primâ facie difficulty in receiving it. It is, indeed, most melancholy to see so sober and experienced a man practising the antics of one of the wildest performers of this wild age; and taking off the tone, manner, and gestures of the versatile ex-Chancellor, with a versatility almost equal to his own.

 Yet let him be assured that the task of rivalling such a man is hopeless, as well as unprofitable. No one can equal the great sophist. Lord Brougham is inimitable in his own line.

 Note

 [This latter work is wrongly ascribed to Lord Brougham in this passage. It is, however, of the Brougham school.]  

 2. Secular Knowledge not the Principle of Moral Improvement

 A DISTINGUISHED Conservative statesman tells us from the town-hall of Tamworth that "in becoming wiser a man will become better;" meaning by wiser more conversant with the facts and theories of physical science; and that such a man will "rise at once in the scale of intellectual and moral existence." "That," he adds, "is my belief." He avows, also, that the fortunate individual whom he is describing, by being "accustomed to such contemplations, will feel the moral dignity of his nature exalted ." He speaks also of physical knowledge as "being the means of useful occupation and rational recreation;" of "the pleasures of knowledge" superseding "the indulgence of sensual appetite," and of its "contributing to the intellectual and moral improvement of the community." Accordingly, he very consistently wishes it to be set before "the female as well as the male portion of the population;" otherwise, as he truly observes, "great injustice would be done to the well-educated and virtuous women" of the place. They are to "have equal power and equal influence with others." It will be difficult to exhaust the reflections which rise in the mind on reading avowals of this nature.

 The first question which obviously suggests itself is how these wonderful moral effects are to be wrought under the instrumentality of the physical sciences. Can the process be analyzed and drawn out, or does it act like a dose or a charm which comes into general use empirically? Does Sir Robert Peel mean to say, that whatever be the occult reasons for the result, so it is; you have but to drench the popular mind with physics, and moral and religious advancement follows on the whole, in spite of individual failures? Yet where has the experiment been tried on so large a scale as to justify such anticipations? Or rather, does he mean, that, from the nature of the case, he who is imbued with science and literature, unless adverse influences interfere, cannot but be a better man? It is natural and becoming to seek for some clear idea of the meaning of so dark an oracle. To know is one thing, to do is another; the two things are altogether distinct. A man knows he should get up in the morning, he lies a-bed; he knows he should not lose his temper, yet he cannot keep it. A labouring man knows he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows she should not filch when she goes out charing; but, nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a duty is not all one with the performance of it. There are, then, large families of instances, to say the least, in which men may become wiser, without becoming better; what, then, is the meaning of this great maxim in the mouth of its promulgators?

 Mr. Bentham would answer, that the knowledge which carries virtue along with it, is the knowledge how to take care of number one a clear appreciation of what is pleasurable, what painful, and what promotes the one and prevents the other. An uneducated man is ever mistaking his own interest, and standing in the way of his own true enjoyments. Useful Knowledge is that which tends to make us more useful to ourselves; a most definite and intelligible account of the matter, and needing no explanation. But it would be a great injustice, both to Lord Brougham and to Sir Robert, to suppose, when they talk of Knowledge being Virtue, that they are Benthamizing. Bentham had not a spark of poetry in him; on the contrary, there is much of high aspiration, generous sentiment, and impassioned feeling in the tone of Lord Brougham and Sir Robert. They speak of knowledge as something "pulchrum," fair and glorious, exalted above the range of ordinary humanity, and so little connected with the personal interest of its votaries, that, though Sir Robert does obiter talk of improved modes of draining, and the chemical properties of manure, yet he must not be supposed to come short of the lofty enthusiasm of Lord Brougham, who expressly panegyrizes certain ancient philosophers who gave up riches, retired into solitude, or embraced a life of travel, smit with a sacred curiosity about physical or mathematical truth.

 Here Mr. Bentham, did it fall to him to offer a criticism, doubtless would take leave to inquire whether such language was anything better than a fine set of words "signifying nothing," flowers of rhetoric, which bloom, smell sweet, and die. But it is impossible to suspect so grave and practical a man as Sir Robert Peel of using words literally without any meaning at all; and though I think at best they have not a very profound meaning, yet, such as it is, we ought to attempt to draw it out.

 Now, without using exact theological language, we may surely take it for granted, from the experience of facts, that the human mind is at best in a very unformed or disordered state; passions and conscience, likings and reason, conflicting, might rising against right, with the prospect of things getting worse. Under these circumstances, what is it that the School of philosophy in which Sir Robert has enrolled himself proposes to accomplish? Not a victory of the mind over itself not the supremacy of the law not the reduction of the rebels not the unity of our complex nature not an harmonizing of the chaos but the mere lulling of the passions to rest by turning the course of thought; not a change of character, but a mere removal of temptation. This should be carefully observed. When a husband is gloomy, or an old woman peevish and fretful, those who are about them do all they can to keep dangerous topics and causes of offence out of the way, and think themselves lucky, if, by such skilful management, they get through the day without an outbreak. When a child cries, the nurserymaid dances it about, or points to the pretty black horses out of window, or shows how ashamed poll-parrot or poor puss must be of its tantarums. Such is the sort of prescription which Sir Robert Peel offers to the good people of Tamworth. He makes no pretence of subduing the giant nature, in which we were born, of smiting the loins of the domestic enemies of our peace, of overthrowing passion and fortifying reason; he does but offer to bribe the foe for the nonce with gifts which will avail for that purpose just so long as they will avail, and no longer.

 This was mainly the philosophy of the great Tully, except when it pleased him to speak as a disciple of the Porch. Cicero handed the recipe to Brougham, and Brougham has passed it on to Peel. If we examine the old Roman's meaning in " O philosophia, vitæ dux," it was neither more nor less than this; that, while we were thinking of philosophy, we were not thinking of anything else; we did not feel grief, or anxiety, or passion, or ambition, or hatred all that time, and the only point was to keep thinking of it. How to keep thinking of it was  extra artem . If a man was in grief, he was to be amused; if disappointed, to be excited; if in a rage, to be soothed; if in love, to be roused to the pursuit of glory. No inward change was contemplated, but a change of external objects; as if we were all White Ladies or Undines, our moral life being one of impulse and emotion, not subjected to laws, not consisting in habits, not capable of growth. When Cicero was outwitted by Cæsar, he solaced himself with Plato; when he lost his daughter, he wrote a treatise on Consolation. Such, too, was the philosophy of that Lydian city, mentioned by the historian, who in a famine played at dice to stay their stomachs.

 And such is the rule of life advocated by Lord Brougham; and though, of course, he protests that knowledge "must invigorate the mind as well as entertain it, and refine and elevate the character, while it gives listlessness and weariness their most agreeable excitement and relaxation," yet his notions of vigour and elevation, when analyzed, will be found to resolve themselves into a mere preternatural excitement under the influence of some stimulating object, or the peace which is attained by there being nothing to quarrel with. He speaks of philosophers leaving the care of their estates, or declining public honours, from the greater desirableness of Knowledge; envies the shelter enjoyed in the University of Glasgow from the noise and bustle of the world; and, apropos of Pascal and Cowper, "so mighty," says he, "is the power of intellectual occupation, to make the heart forget, for the time, its most prevailing griefs, and to change its deepest gloom to sunshine."

 Whether Sir Robert Peel meant all this, which others before him have meant, it is impossible to say; but I will be bound, if he did not mean this, he meant nothing else, and his words will certainly insinuate this meaning, wherever a reader is not content to go without any meaning at all. They will countenance, with his high authority, what in one form or other is a chief error of the day, in very distinct schools of opinion, that our true excellence comes not from within, but from without; not wrought out through personal struggles and sufferings, but following upon a passive exposure to influences over which we have no control. They will countenance the theory that diversion is the instrument of improvement, and excitement the condition of right action; and whereas diversions cease to be diversions if they are constant, and excitements by their very nature have a crisis and run through a course, they will tend to make novelty ever in request, and will set the great teachers of morals upon the incessant search after stimulants and sedatives, by which unruly nature may, pro re natâ, be kept in order.

 Hence, be it observed, Lord Brougham, in the last quoted sentence, tells us, with much accuracy of statement, that "intellectual occupation made the heart" of Pascal or Cowper " for the time forget its griefs." He frankly offers us a philosophy of expedients: he shows us how to live by medicine. Digestive pills half an hour before dinner, and a posset at bedtime at the best; and at the worst, dram-drinking and opium, the very remedy against broken hearts, or remorse of conscience, which is in request among the many, in gin-palaces not intellectual.

 And if these remedies be but of temporary effect at the utmost, more commonly they will have no effect at all. Strong liquors, indeed, do for a time succeed in their object; but who was ever consoled in real trouble by the small beer of literature or science? "Sir," said Rasselas, to the philosopher who had lost his daughter, "mortality is an event by which a wise man can never be surprised." "Young man," answered the mourner, "you speak like one that hath never felt the pangs of separation. What comfort can truth or reason afford me? of what effect are they now but to tell me that my daughter will not be restored?" Or who was ever made more humble or more benevolent by being told, as the same practical moralist words it, "to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity, and cooperate with the general dispensation and tendency of the present system of things"? Or who was made to do any secret act of self-denial, or was steeled against pain, or peril, by all the lore of the infidel La Place, or those other "mighty spirits" which Lord Brougham and Sir Robert eulogize? Or when was a choleric temperament ever brought under by a scientific King Canute planting his professor's chair before the rising waves? And as to the "keen" and "ecstatic" pleasures which Lord Brougham, not to say Sir Robert, ascribes to intellectual pursuit and conquest, I cannot help thinking that in that line they will find themselves outbid in the market by gratifications much closer at hand, and on a level with the meanest capacity. Sir Robert makes it a boast that women are to be members of his institution; it is hardly necessary to remind so accomplished a classic, that Aspasia and other learned ladies in Greece are no very encouraging precedents in favour of the purifying effects of science. But the strangest and most painful topic which he urges, is one which Lord Brougham has had the good taste altogether to avoid, the power, not of religion, but of scientific knowledge, on a deathbed; a subject which Sir Robert treats in language which it is far better to believe is mere oratory than is said in earnest.

 Such is this new art of living, offered to the labouring classes, we will say, for instance, in a severe winter, snow on the ground, glass falling, bread rising, coal at 20d. the cwt., and no work.

 It does not require many words, then, to determine that, taking human nature as it is actually found, and assuming that there is an Art of life, to say that it consists, or in any essential manner is placed, in the cultivation of Knowledge, that the mind is changed by a discovery, or saved by a diversion, and can thus be amused into immortality, that grief, anger, cowardice, self-conceit, pride, or passion, can be subdued by an examination of shells or grasses, or inhaling of gases, or chipping of rocks, or calculating the longitude, is the veriest of pretences which sophist or mountebank ever professed to a gaping auditory. If virtue be a mastery over the mind, if its end be action, if its perfection be inward order, harmony, and peace, we must seek it in graver and holier places than in Libraries and Reading-rooms.

 3. Secular Knowledge not a direct Means of Moral Improvement

 THERE are two Schools of philosophy, in high esteem, at this day, as at other times, neither of them accepting Christian principles as the guide of life, yet both of them unhappily patronized by many whom it would be the worst and most cruel uncharitableness to suspect of unbelief. Mr. Bentham is the master of the one; and Sir Robert Peel is a disciple of the other.

 Mr. Bentham's system has nothing ideal about it; he is a stern realist, and he limits his realism to things which he can see, hear, taste, touch, and handle. He does not acknowledge the existence of anything which he cannot ascertain for himself. Exist it may nevertheless, but till it makes itself felt, to him it exists not; till it comes down right before him, and he is very short-sighted, it is not recognized by him as having a co-existence with himself, any more than the Emperor of China is received into the European family of Kings. With him a being out of sight is a being simply out of mind; nay, he does not allow the traces or glimpses of facts to have any claim on his regard, but with him to have a little and not much, is to have nothing at all. With him to speak truth is to be ready with a definition, and to imagine, to guess, to doubt, or to falter, is much the same as to lie. What opinion will such an iron thinker entertain of Cicero's "glory," or Lord Brougham's "truth," or Sir Robert's "scientific consolations," and all those other airy nothings which are my proper subject of remark, and which I have in view when, by way of contrast, I make mention of the philosophy of Bentham? And yet the doctrine of the three eminent orators, whom I have ventured to criticise, has in it much that is far nobler than Benthamism; their misfortune being, not that they look for an excellence above the beaten path of life, but that whereas Christianity has told us what that excellence is, Cicero lived before it was given to the world, and Lord Brougham and Sir Robert Peel prefer his involuntary error to their own inherited truth. Surely, there is something unearthly and superhuman in spite of Bentham; but it is not glory, or knowledge, or any abstract idea of virtue, but great and good tidings which need not here be particularly mentioned, and the pity is, that these Christian statesmen cannot be content with what is divine without as a supplement hankering after what was heathen.

 Now, independent of all other considerations, the great difference, in a practical light, between the object of Christianity and of heathen belief, is this that glory, science, knowledge, and whatever other fine names we use, never healed a wounded heart, nor changed a sinful one; but the Divine Word is with power. The ideas which Christianity brings before us are in themselves full of influence, and they are attended with a supernatural gift over and above themselves, in order to meet the special exigencies of our nature. Knowledge is not "power," nor is glory "the first and only fair;" but "Grace," or the "Word," by whichever name we call it, has been from the first a quickening, renovating, organizing principle. It has new created the individual, and transferred and knit him into a social body, composed of members each similarly created. It has cleansed man of his moral diseases, raised him to hope and energy, given him to propagate a brotherhood among his fellows, and to found a family or rather a kingdom of saints all over the earth; it introduced a new force into the world, and the impulse which it gave continues in its original vigour down to this day. Each one of us has lit his lamp from his neighbour, or received it from his fathers, and the lights thus transmitted are at this time as strong and as clear as if 1800 years had not passed since the kindling of the sacred flame. What has glory or knowledge been able to do like this? Can it raise the dead? can it create a polity? can it do more than testify man's need and typify God's remedy?

 And yet, in spite of this, when we have an instrument given us, capable of changing the whole man, great orators and statesmen are busy, forsooth, with their heathen charms and nostrums, their sedatives, correctives, or restoratives; as preposterously as if we were to build our men-of-war, or conduct our iron-works, on the principles approved in Cicero's day. The utmost that Lord Brougham seems to propose to himself in the education of the mind, is to keep out bad thoughts by means of good a great object, doubtless, but not so great in philosophical conception, as is the destruction of the bad in Christian fact. "If it can be a pleasure," he says, in his Discourse upon the Objects and Advantages of Science, "if it can be a pleasure to gratify curiosity, to know what we were ignorant of, to have our feelings of wonder called forth, how pure a delight of this very kind does natural science hold out to its students! How wonderful are the laws that regulate the motions of fluids! Is there anything in all the idle books of tales and horrors, more truly astonishing than the fact, that a few pounds of water may, by mere pressure, without any machinery, by merely being placed in one particular way, produce very irresistible force? What can be more strange, than that an ounce weight should balance hundreds of pounds by the intervention of a few bars of thin iron? Can anything surprise us more than to find that the colour white is a mixture of all others? that water should be chiefly composed of an inflammable substance? Akin to this pleasure of contemplating new and extraordinary truths is the gratification of a more learned curiosity, by tracing resemblances and relations between things which to common apprehension seem widely different," etc., etc. And in the same way Sir Robert tells us even of a devout curiosity. In all cases curiosity is the means, diversion of mind the highest end; and though of course I will not assert that Lord Brougham, and certainly not that Sir Robert Peel, denies any higher kind of morality, yet when the former rises above Benthamism, in which he often indulges, into what may be called Broughamism proper, he commonly grasps at nothing more real and substantial than these Ciceronian ethics.

 In morals, as in physics, the stream cannot rise higher than its source. Christianity raises men from earth, for it comes from heaven; but human morality creeps, struts, or frets upon the earth's level, without wings to rise. The Knowledge School does not contemplate raising man above himself; it merely aims at disposing of his existing powers and tastes, as is most convenient, or is practicable under circumstances. It finds him, like the victims of the French Tyrant, doubled up in a cage in which he can neither lie, stand, sit, nor kneel, and its highest desire is to find an attitude in which his unrest may be least. Or it finds him like some musical instrument, of great power and compass, but imperfect; from its very structure some keys must ever be out of tune, and its object, when ambition is highest, is to throw the fault of its nature where least it will be observed. It leaves man where it found him man, and not an Angel a sinner, not a Saint; but it tries to make him look as much like what he is not as ever it can. The poor indulge in low pleasures; they use bad language, swear loudly and recklessly, laugh at coarse jests, and are rude and boorish. Sir Robert would open on them a wider range of thought and more intellectual objects, by teaching them science; but what warrant will he give us that, if his object could be achieved, what they would gain in decency they would not lose in natural humility and faith? If so, he has exchanged a gross fault for a more subtle one. "Temperance topics" stop drinking; let us suppose it; but will much be gained, if those who give up spirits take to opium? Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret, is at least a heathen truth, and universities and libraries which recur to heathenism may reclaim it from the heathen for their motto.

 Nay, everywhere, so far as human nature remains hardly or partially Christianized, the heathen law remains in force; as is felt in a measure even in the most religious places and societies. Even there, where Christianity has power, the venom of the old Adam is not subdued. Those who have to do with our Colleges give us their experience, that in the case of the young committed to their care, external discipline may change the fashionable excess, but cannot allay the principle of sinning. Stop cigars, they will take to drinking parties; stop drinking, they gamble; stop gambling, and a worse license follows. You do not get rid of vice by human expedients; you can but use them according to circumstances, and in their place, as making the best of a bad matter. You must go to a higher source for renovation of the heart and of the will. You do but play a sort of "hunt the slipper" with the fault of our nature, till you go to Christianity.

 I say, you must use human methods in their place, and there they are useful; but they are worse than useless out of their place. I have no fanatical wish to deny to any whatever subject of thought or method of reason a place altogether, if it chooses to claim it, in the cultivation of the mind. Mr. Bentham may despise verse-making, or Mr. Dugald Stewart logic, but the great and true maxim is to sacrifice none to combine, and therefore to adjust, all. All cannot be first, and therefore each has its place, and the problem is to find it. It is at least not a lighter mistake to make what is secondary first, than to leave it out altogether. Here then it is that the Knowledge Society, Gower Street College, Tamworth Reading-room, Lord Brougham and Sir Robert Peel, are all so deplorably mistaken. Christianity, and nothing short of it, must be made the element and principle of all education. Where it has been laid as the first stone, and acknowledged as the governing spirit, it will take up into itself, assimilate, and give a character to literature and science. Where Revealed Truth has given the aim and direction to Knowledge, Knowledge of all kinds will minister to Revealed Truth. The evidences of Religion, natural theology, metaphysics, or, again, poetry, history, and the classics, or physics and mathematics, may all be grafted into the mind of a Christian, and give and take by the grafting. But if in education we begin with nature before grace, with evidences before faith, with science before conscience, with poetry before practice, we shall be doing much the same as if we were to indulge the appetites and passions, and turn a deaf ear to the reason. In each case we misplace what in its place is a divine gift. If we attempt to effect a moral improvement by means of poetry, we shall but mature into a mawkish, frivolous, and fastidious sentimentalism; if by means of argument, into a dry, unamiable long-headedness; if by good society, into a polished outside, with hollowness within, in which vice has lost its grossness, and perhaps increased its malignity; if by experimental science, into an uppish, supercilious temper, much inclined to scepticism. But reverse the order of things: put Faith first and Knowledge second; let the University minister to the Church, and then classical poetry becomes the type of Gospel truth, and physical science a comment on Genesis or Job, and Aristotle changes into Butler, and Arcesilas into Berkeley [n.].

 Far from recognizing this principle, the teachers of the Knowledge School would educate from Natural Theology up to Christianity, and would amend the heart through literature and philosophy. Lord Brougham, as if faith came from science, gives out that "henceforth nothing shall prevail over us to praise or to blame any one for" his belief, "which he can no more change than he can the hue of his skin, or the height of his stature." And Sir Robert, whose profession and life give the lie to his philosophy, founds a library into which "no works of controversial divinity shall enter," that is, no Christian doctrine at all; and he tells us that "an increased sagacity will make men not merely believe in the cold doctrines of Natural Religion, but that it will so prepare  and temper the spirit and understanding that they will be better qualified to comprehend the great scheme of human redemption ." And again, Lord Brougham considers that "the pleasures of science tend not only to make our lives more agreeable, but better;" and Sir Robert responds, that "he entertains the hope that there will be the means afforded of useful occupation and rational recreation; that men will prefer the pleasures of knowledge above the indulgence of sensual appetite, and that there is a prospect of contributing to the intellectual and moral improvement of the neighbourhood."

 Can the nineteenth century produce no more robust and creative philosophy than this?

 Note

 [On the supremacy of each science in its own field of thought, and the encroachments upon it of other sciences, vide the author's "University Teaching," Disc. 3, and "University Subjects," No. 7 and 10.]  

 4. Secular Knowledge not the Antecedent of Moral Improvement

 HUMAN nature wants recasting, but Lord Brougham is all for tinkering it. He does not despair of making something of it yet. He is not, indeed, of those who think that reason, passion, and whatever else is in us, are made right and tight by the principle of self-interest. He understands that something more is necessary for man's happiness than self-love; he feels that man has affections and aspirations which Bentham does not take account of, and he looks about for their legitimate objects. Christianity has provided these; but, unhappily, he passes them by. He libels them with the name of dogmatism, and conjures up instead the phantoms of Glory and Knowledge; idola theatri, as his famous predecessor calls them. "There are idols," says Lord Bacon, "which have got into the human mind, from the different tenets of philosophers, and the perverted laws of demonstration. And these we denominate idols of the theatre; because all the philosophies that have been hitherto invented or received, are but so many stage plays, written or acted, as having shown nothing but fictitious and theatrical worlds. Idols of the theatre, or theories, are many, and will probably grow much more numerous; for if men had not, through many ages, been prepossessed with religion and theology, and if civil governments, but particularly monarchies," (and, I suppose, their ministers, counsellors, functionaries, inclusive,) " had not been averse to innovations of this kind, though but intended, so as to make it dangerous and prejudicial to the private fortunes of such as take the bent of innovating, not only by depriving them of advantages, but also of exposing them to contempt and hatred, there would doubtless have been numerous other sects of philosophies and theories, introduced, of kin to those that in great variety formerly flourished among the Greeks. And these theatrical fables have this in common with dramatic pieces, that the fictitious narrative is neater, more elegant and pleasing, than the true history."

 I suppose we may readily grant that the science of the day is attended by more lively interest, and issues in more entertaining knowledge, than the study of the New Testament. Accordingly, Lord Brougham fixes upon such science as the great desideratum of human nature, and puts aside faith under the nickname of opinion. I wish Sir Robert Peel had not fallen into the snare, insulting doctrine by giving it the name of "controversial divinity."

 However, it will be said that Sir Robert, in spite of such forms of speech, differs essentially from Lord Brougham: for he goes on, in the latter part of the Address which has occasioned these remarks, to speak of Science as leading to Christianity. "I can never think it possible," he says, "that a mind can be so constituted, that after being familiarized with the great truth of observing in every object of contemplation that nature presents the manifest proofs of a Divine Intelligence, if you range even from the organization of the meanest weed you trample upon, or of the insect that lives but for an hour, up to the magnificent structure of the heavens, and the still more wonderful phenomena of the soul, reason, and conscience of man; I cannot believe that any man, accustomed to such contemplations, can return from them with any other feelings than those of enlarged conceptions of the Divine Power, and greater reverence for the name of the Almighty Creator of the universe." A long and complicated sentence, and no unfitting emblem of the demonstration it promises. It sets before us a process and deduction. Depend on it, it is not so safe a road and so expeditious a journey from premiss and conclusion as Sir Robert anticipates. The way is long, and there are not a few half-way houses and traveller's rests along it; and who is to warrant that the members of the Reading-room and Library will go steadily on to the goal he would set before them? And when at length they come to "Christianity," pray how do the roads lay between it and "controversial divinity"? Or, grant the Tamworth readers to begin with "Christianity" as well as science, the same question suggests itself, What is Christianity? Universal benevolence? Exalted morality? Supremacy of law? Conservatism? An age of light? An age of reason? Which of them all?

 Most cheerfully do I render to so religious a man as Sir Robert Peel the justice of disclaiming any insinuation on my part, that he has any intention at all to put aside Religion; yet his words either mean nothing, or they do, both on their surface, and when carried into effect, mean something very irreligious.

 And now for one plain proof of this.

 It is certain, then, that the multitude of men have neither time nor capacity for attending to many subjects. If they attend to one, they will not attend to the other; if they give their leisure and curiosity to this world, they will have none left for the next. We cannot be everything; as the poet says, " non omnia possumus omnes ." We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything. And we must make our choice between risking Science, and risking Religion. Sir Robert indeed says, "Do not believe that you have not time for rational recreation. It is the idle man who wants time for everything." However, this seems to me rhetoric; and what I have said to be the matter of fact, for the truth of which I appeal, not to argument, but to the proper judges of facts, common sense and practical experience; and if they pronounce it to be a fact, then Sir Robert Peel, little as he means it, does unite with Lord Brougham in taking from Christianity what he gives to Science.

 I will make this fair offer to both of them. Every member of the Church Established shall be eligible to the Tamworth Library on one condition that he brings from the "public minister of religion," to use Sir Robert's phrase, a ticket in witness of his proficiency in Christian knowledge. We will have no "controversial divinity" in the Library, but a little out of it. If the gentlemen of the Knowledge School will but agree to teach town and country Religion first, they shall have a carte blanche from me to teach anything or everything else second. Not a word has been uttered or intended in these Letters against Science; I would treat it, as they do not treat "controversial divinity," with respect and gratitude. They caricature doctrine under the name of controversy. I do not nickname science infidelity. I call it by their own name, "useful and entertaining knowledge;" and I call doctrine "Christian knowledge:" and, as thinking Christianity something more than useful and entertaining, I want faith to come first, and utility and amusement to follow.

 That persons indeed are found in all classes, high and low, busy and idle, capable of proceeding from sacred to profane knowledge, is undeniable; and it is desirable they should do so. It is desirable that talent for particular departments in literature and science should be fostered and turned to account, wherever it is found. But what has this to do with this general canvass of " all persons of all descriptions without reference to religious creed, who shall have attained the age of fourteen "? Why solicit "the working classes, without distinction of party, political opinion, or religious profession;" that is, whether they have heard of a God or no? Whence these cries rising on our ears, of "Let me entreat you!" "Neglect not the opportunity!" "It will not be our fault!" "Here is an access for you!" very like the tones of a street preacher, or the cad of an omnibus, little worthy of a great statesman and a religious philosopher?

 However, the Tamworth Reading-room admits of one restriction, which is not a little curious, and has no very liberal sound. It seems that all " virtuous women" may be members of the Library; that "great injustice would be done to the well-educated and virtuous women of the town and neighbourhood" had they been excluded. A very emphatic silence is maintained about women not virtuous. What does this mean? Does it mean to exclude them, while bad men are admitted? Is this accident, or design, sinister and insidious, against a portion of the community? What has virtue to do with a Reading-room? It is to make its members virtuous; it is to "exalt the moral dignity of their nature;" it is to provide "charms and temptations" to allure them from sensuality and riot. To whom but to the vicious ought Sir Robert to discourse about "opportunities," and "access," and "moral improvement;" and who else would prove a fitter experiment, and a more glorious triumph, of scientific influences? And yet he shuts out all but the well-educated and virtuous.

 Alas, that bigotry should have left the mark of its hoof on the great "fundamental principle of the Tamworth Institution"! Sir Robert Peel is bound in consistency to attempt its obliteration. But if that is impossible, as many will anticipate, why, O why, while he is about it, why will he not give us just a little more of it? Cannot we prevail on him to modify his principle, and to admit into his library none but "well-educated and virtuous" men ?

 5. Secular Knowledge not a Principle of Social Unity

 SIR ROBERT PEEL proposes to establish a Library which "shall be open to all persons of all descriptions, without reference to political opinions or to religious creed." He invites those who are concerned in manufactories, or who have many workmen, "without distinction of party, political opinions, or religious profession." He promises that "in the selection of subjects for public lectures everything calculated to excite religious or political animosity shall be excluded." Nor is any "discussion on matters connected with religion, politics, or local party differences" to be permitted in the reading-room. And he congratulates himself that he has [sic]"laid the foundation of an edifice in which men of all political opinions and of all religious feelings may unite in furtherance of Knowledge, without the asperities of "party feeling." In these statements religious difference are made synonymous with "party feeling;" and, whereas the tree is "known by its fruit," their characteristic symptoms are felicitously described as "asperities," and "animosities." And, in order to teach us more precisely what these differences are worth, they are compared to differences between Whig and Tory nay, even to " local party differences;" such, I suppose, as about a municipal election, or a hole-and-corner meeting, or a parish job, or a bill in Parliament for a railway.

 But, to give him the advantage of the more honourable parallel of the two, are religious principles to be put upon a level even with political? Is it as bad to be a republican as an unbeliever? Is it as magnanimous to humour a scoffer as to spare an opponent in the House? Is a difference about the Reform Bill all one with a difference about the Creed? Is it as polluting to hear arguments for Lord Melbourne as to hear a scoff against the Apostles? To a statesman, indeed, like Sir Robert, to abandon one's party is a far greater sacrifice than to unparliamentary men; and it would be uncandid to doubt that he is rather magnifying politics than degrading Religion in throwing them together; but still, when he advocates concessions in theology and politics, he must be plainly told to make presents of things that belong to him, nor seek to be generous with other people's substance. There are entails in more matters than parks and old places. He made his politics for himself, but Another made theology.

 Christianity is faith, faith implies a doctrine; a doctrine propositions; propositions yes or no, yes or no differences. Differences, then, are the natural attendants on Christianity, and you cannot have Christianity, and not have differences. When, then, Sir Robert Peel calls such differences points of "party feeling," what is this but to insult Christianity? Yet so cautious, so correct a man, cannot have made such a sacrifice for nothing; nor does he long leave us in doubt what is his inducement. He tells us that his great aim is the peace and good order of the community, and the easy working of the national machine. With this in view, any price is cheap, everything is marketable; all impediments are a nuisance. He does not undo for undoing's sake; he gains more than an equivalent. It is a mistake, too, to say that he considers all differences of opinion as equal in importance; no, they are only equally in the way. He only compares them together where they are comparable, in their common inconvenience to a minister of State. They may be as little homogeneous as chalk is to cheese, or Macedon to Monmouth, but they agree in interfering with social harmony; and, since that harmony is the first of goods and the end of life, what is left us but to discard all that disunites us, and to cultivate all that may amalgamate?

 Could Sir Robert have set a more remarkable example of self-sacrifice than in thus becoming the disciple of his political foe, accepting from Lord Brougham his new principle of combination, rejecting Faith for the fulcrum of Society, and proceeding to rest it upon Knowledge?

 "I cannot help thinking," he exclaims at Tamworth, "that by bringing together in an institution of this kind intelligent men of all classes and conditions of life, by uniting together, in the committee of this institution, the gentleman of ancient family and great landed possessions with the skilful mechanic and artificer of good character, I cannot help believing that we are harmonizing the gradations of society, and binding men together by a new bond, which will have more than ordinary strength on account of the object which unites us." The old bond, he seems to say, was Religion; Lord Brougham's is Knowledge. Faith, once the soul of social union, is now but the spirit of division. Not a single doctrine but is "controversial divinity;" not an abstraction can be imagined (could abstractions constrain), not a comprehension projected (could comprehensions connect), but will leave out one or other portion or element of the social fabric. We must abandon Religion, if we aspire to be statesmen. Once, indeed, it was a living power, kindling hearts, leavening them with one idea, moulding them on one model, developing them into one polity. Ere now it has been the life of morality: it has given birth to heroes; it has wielded empire. But another age has come in, and Faith is effete; let us submit to what we cannot change; let us not hang over our dead, but bury it out of sight. Seek we out some young and vigorous principle, rich in sap, and fierce in life, to give form to elements which are fast resolving into their inorganic chaos; and where shall we find such a principle but in Knowledge?

 Accordingly, though Sir Robert somewhat chivalrously battles for the appointment upon the Book Committee of what he calls two "public ministers of religion, holding prominent and responsible offices, endowed by the State," and that ex officio, yet he is untrue to his new principle only in appearance: for he couples his concession with explanations, restrictions, and safeguards quite sufficient to prevent old Faith becoming insurgent against young Knowledge. First he takes his Vicar and Curate as "conversant with literary subjects and with literary works," and then as having duties "immediately connected with the moral condition and improvement" of the place. Further he admits "it is perfectly right to be jealous of all power held by such a tenure:" and he insists on the "fundamental" condition that these sacred functionaries shall permit no doctrinal works to be introduced or lectures to be delivered. Lastly, he reserves in the general body the power of withdrawing this indulgence "if the existing checks be not sufficient, and the power be abused," abused, that is, by the vicar and curate; also he desires to secure Knowledge from being perverted to " evil or immoral purposes" such perversion of course, if attempted, being the natural antithesis, or pendant, to the vicar's contraband introduction of the doctrines of Faith.

 Lord Brougham will make all this clearer to us. A work of high interest and varied information, to which I have already referred, is attributed to him, and at least is of his school, in which the ingenious author, whoever he is, shows how Knowledge can do for Society what has hitherto been supposed the prerogative of Faith. As to Faith and its preachers, he had already complimented them at Glasgow, as "the evil spirits of tyranny and persecution," and had bid them good morning as the scared and dazzled creatures of the "long night now gone down the sky."

 "The great truth," he proclaimed in language borrowed from the records of faith (for after parsons no men quote Scripture more familiarly than Liberals and Whigs), has finally gone forth to all the ends of the earth, that man shall no more render account to man for his belief, over which he has himself no control. Henceforth nothing shall prevail on us to praise or to blame any one for that which he can no more change than he can the hue of his skin or the height of his stature." And then he or his scholar proceeds to his new Vitæ Sanctorum, or, as he calls it, "Illustrations of the Pursuit of Knowledge;" and, whereas the badge of Christian saintliness is conflict, he writes of the "Pursuit of Knowledge under difficulties ;" and, whereas this Knowledge is to stand in the place of Religion, he assumes a hortatory tone, a species of eloquence in which decidedly he has no rival but Sir Robert. "Knowledge," he says, "is happiness, as well as power and virtue;" and he demands "the dedication of our faculties" to it. "The struggle," he gravely observes, which its disciple "has to wage may be a protracted, but it ought not to be a cheerless one: for, if he do not relax his exertions, every movement he makes is necessarily a step forward, if not towards that distinction which intellectual attainments sometimes confer, at least to that inward satisfaction and enjoyment which is always their reward. No one stands in the way of another, or can deprive him of any part of his chance, we should rather say of his certainty, of success; on the contrary, they are all fellow-workers, and may materially help each other forward." And he enumerates in various places the virtues which adorn the children of Knowledge ardour united to humility, childlike alacrity, teachableness, truthfulness, patience, concentration of attention, husbandry of time, self-denial, self-command, and heroism.

 Faith, viewed in its history through past ages, presents us with the fulfilment of one great idea in particular that, namely, of an aristocracy of exalted spirits, drawn together out of all countries, ranks, and ages, raised above the condition of humanity, specimens of the capabilities of our race, incentives to rivalry and patterns for imitation. This Christian idea Lord Brougham has borrowed for his new Pantheon, which is equally various in all attributes and appendages of mind, with this one characteristic in all its specimens, the pursuit of Knowledge. Some of his worthies are low born, others of high degree; some are in Europe, others in the Antipodes; some in the dark ages, others in the ages of light; some exercise a voluntary, others an involuntary toil; some give up riches, and others gain them; some are fixtures, and others adventure much; some are profligate, and others ascetic; and some are believers, and others are infidels.

 Alfred, severely good and Christian, takes his place in this new hagiology beside the gay and graceful Lorenzo de Medicis; for did not the one "import civilization into England," and was not the other "the wealthy and munificent patron of all the liberal arts"? Edward VI. and Haroun mystical Raschid, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin, Newton and Protagoras, Pascal and Julian the Apostate, Joseph Milner and Lord Byron, Cromwell and Ovid, Bayle and Boyle, Adrian pope and Adrian emperor, Lady Jane Grey and Madame Roland, human beings who agreed in nothing but in their humanity and in their love of Knowledge, are all admitted by this writer to one beatification, in proof of the Catholic character of his substitute for Faith.

 The persecuting Marcus is a "good and enlightened emperor," and a "delightful" spectacle, when "mixing in the religious processions and ceremonies" of Athens, "re-building and re-endowing the schools," whence St. Paul was driven in derision. The royal Alphery, on the contrary, "preferred his humble parsonage" to the throne of the Czars. West was "nurtured among the quiet and gentle affections of a Quaker family." Kirke White's "feelings became ardently devotional, and he determined to give up his life to the preaching of Christianity." Roger Bacon was "a brother of the Franciscan Order, at that time the great support and ornament of both Universities." Belzoni seized "the opportunity" of Bonaparte's arrival in Italy to "throw off his monastic habit," "its idleness and obscurity," and to engage himself as a performer at Astley's. Duval, "a very able antiquarian of the last century," began his studies as a peasant boy, and finished them in a Jesuits' College. Mr. Davy, "having written a system of divinity," effected the printing of it in thirteen years "with a press of his own construction," and the assistance of his female servant, working off page by page for twenty-six volumes 8vo, of nearly 500 pages each. Raleigh, in spite of "immoderate ambition," was "one of the very chief glories of an age crowded with towering spirits."

 Nothing comes amiss to this author; saints and sinners, the precious and the vile, are torn from their proper homes and recklessly thrown together under the category of Knowledge. 'Tis a pity he did not extend his view, as Christianity has done, to beings out of sight of man. Milton could have helped him to some angelic personages, as patrons and guardians of his intellectual temple, who of old time, before faith had birth,

  "Apart sat on a hill retired  In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high  Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,  Passion and apathy, and glory, and shame,  Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy."

 And, indeed, he does make some guesses that way, speaking most catholically of being "admitted to a fellowship with those loftier minds" who "by universal consent held a station apart," and are "spoken of reverently," as if their names were not those "of mortal men;" and he speaks of these "benefactors of mankind, when they rest from their pious labours, looking down" upon the blessings with which their " toils and sufferings have clothed the scene of their former existence."

 Such is the oratory which has fascinated Sir Robert; yet we must recollect that in the year 1832, even the venerable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge herself, catching its sound, and hearing something about sublimity, and universality, and brotherhood, and effort, and felicity, was beguiled into an admission of this singularly irreligious work into the list of publications which she had delegated to a Committee to select in usum laicorum .

 That a Venerable Society should be caught by the vision of a Church Catholic is not wonderful; but what could possess philosophers and statesmen to dazzle her with it, but man's need of some such support, and the divine excellence and sovereign virtue of that which Faith once created?

 6. Secular Knowledge not a Principle of Action

 PEOPLE say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity should regain the organic power in human society which once it possessed. I cannot help that; I never said it could. I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, and resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, if men have no aspirations; but do not tell them to be romantic, and then solace them with glory; do not attempt by philosophy what once was done by religion. The ascendancy of Faith may be impracticable, but the reign of Knowledge is incomprehensible. The problem for statesmen of this age is how to educate the masses, and literature and science cannot give the solution.

 Not so deems Sir Robert Peel; his firm belief and hope is, "that an increased sagacity will administer to an exalted faith; that it will make men not merely believe in the cold doctrines of Natural Religion, but that it will so prepare and temper the spirit and understanding, that they will be better qualified to comprehend the great scheme of human redemption." He certainly thinks that scientific pursuits have some considerable power of impressing religion upon the mind of the multitude. I think not, and will now say why.

 Science gives us the grounds or premisses from which religious truths are to be inferred; but it does not set about inferring them, much less does it reach the inference; that is not its province. It brings before us phenomena, and it leaves us, if we will, to call them works of design, wisdom, or benevolence; and further still, if we will, to proceed to confess an Intelligent Creator. We have to take its facts, and to give them a meaning, and to draw our own conclusions from them. First comes Knowledge, then a view, then reasoning, and then belief. This is why Science has so little of a religious tendency; deductions have no power of persuasion. The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion. A conclusion is but an opinion; it is not a thing which is, but which we are " certain about ;" and it has often been observed, that we never say we are certain without implying that we doubt. To say that a thing must be, is to admit that it may not be. No one, I say, will die for his own calculations; he dies for realities. This is why a literary religion is so little to be depended upon; it looks well in fair weather, but its doctrines are opinions, and, when called to suffer for them, it slips them between its folios, or burns them at its hearth. And this again is the secret of the distrust and raillery with which moralists have been so commonly visited. They say and do not. Why? Because they are contemplating the fitness of things, and they live by the square, when they should be realizing their high maxims in the concrete. Now Sir Robert thinks better of natural history, chemistry, and astronomy, than of such ethics; but they too, what are they more than divinity in posse ? He protests against "controversial divinity:" is inferential much better?

 I have no confidence, then, in philosophers who cannot help being religious, and are Christians by implication. They sit at home, and reach forward to distances which astonish us; but they hit without grasping, and are sometimes as confident about shadows as about realities. They have worked out by a calculation the lie of a country which they never saw, and mapped it by means of a gazetteer; and like blind men, though they can put a stranger on his way, they cannot walk straight themselves, and do not feel it quite their business to walk at all.

 Logic makes but a sorry rhetoric with the multitude; first shoot round corners, and you may not despair of converting by a syllogism. Tell men to gain notions of a Creator from His works, and, if they were to set about it (which nobody does), they would be jaded and wearied by the labyrinth they were tracing. Their minds would be gorged and surfeited by the logical operation. Logicians are more set upon concluding rightly, than on right conclusions. They cannot see the end for the process. Few men have that power of mind which may hold fast and firmly a variety of thoughts. We ridicule "men of one idea;" but a great many of us are born to be such, and we should be happier if we knew it. To most men argument makes the point in hand only more doubtful, and considerably less impressive. After all, man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal. He is influenced by what is direct and precise. It is very well to freshen our impressions and convictions from physics, but to create them we must go elsewhere. Sir Robert Peel "never can think it possible that a mind can be so constituted, that, after being familiarized with the wonderful discoveries which have been made in every part of experimental science, it can retire from such contemplations without more enlarged conceptions of God's providence, and a higher reverence for His name." If he speaks of religious minds, he perpetrates a truism; if of irreligious, he insinuates a paradox.

 Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; we shall never have done beginning, if we determine to begin with proof. We shall ever be laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and divines into textuaries. We shall never get at our first principles. Resolve to believe nothing, and you must prove your proofs and analyze your elements, sinking further and further, and finding "in the lowest depth a lower deep," till you come to the broad bosom of scepticism. I would rather be bound to defend the reasonableness of assuming that Christianity is true, than to demonstrate a moral governance from the physical world. Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith.

 Let no one suppose that in saying this I am maintaining that all proofs are equally difficult, and all propositions equally debatable. Some assumptions are greater than others, and some doctrines involve postulates larger than others, and more numerous. I only say that impressions lead to action, and that reasonings lead from it. Knowledge of premisses, and inferences upon them, this is not to live . It is very well as a matter of liberal curiosity and of philosophy to analyze our modes of thought; but let this come second, and when there is leisure for it, and then our examinations will in many ways even be subservient to action. But if we commence with scientific knowledge and argumentative proof, or lay any great stress upon it as the basis of personal Christianity, or attempt to make man moral and religious by Libraries and Museums, let us in consistency take chemists for our cooks, and mineralogists for our masons.

 Now I wish to state all this as matter of fact, to be judged by the candid testimony of any persons whatever. Why we are so constituted that Faith, not Knowledge or Argument, is our principle of action, is a question with which I have nothing to do; but I think it is a fact, and if it be such, we must resign ourselves to it as best we may, unless we take refuge in the intolerable paradox, that the mass of men are created for nothing, and are meant to leave life as they entered it. So well has this practically been understood in all ages of the world, that no Religion has yet been a Religion of physics or of philosophy. It has ever been synonymous with Revelation. It never has been a deduction from what we know: it has ever been an assertion of what we are to believe. It has never lived in a conclusion; it has ever been a message, or a history, or a vision. No legislator or priest ever dreamed of educating our moral nature by science or by argument. There is no difference here between true Religions and pretended. Moses was instructed, not to reason from the creation, but to work miracles. Christianity is a history supernatural, and almost scenic: it tells us what its Author is, by telling us what He has done. I have no wish at all to speak otherwise than respectfully of conscientious Dissenters, but I have heard it said by those who were not their enemies, and who had known much of their preaching, that they had often heard narrow-minded and bigoted clergymen, and often Dissenting ministers of a far more intellectual cast; but that Dissenting teaching came to nothing, that it was dissipated in thoughts which had no point, and inquiries which converged to no centre, that it ended as it began, and sent away its hearers as it found them; whereas the instruction in the Church, with all its defects and mistakes, comes to some end, for it started from some beginning. Such is the difference between the dogmatism of faith and the speculations of logic.

 Lord Brougham himself, as we have already seen, has recognized the force of this principle. He has not left his philosophical religion to argument; he has committed it to the keeping of the imagination. Why should he depict a great republic of letters, and an intellectual Pantheon, but that he feels that instances and patterns, not logical reasonings, are the living conclusions which alone have a hold over the affections, or can form the character?

 7. Secular Knowledge without Personal Religion tends to Unbelief

 WHEN Sir Robert Peel assures us from the Town-hall at Tamworth that physical science must lead to religion, it is no bad compliment to him to say that he is unreal. He speaks of what he knows nothing about. To a religious man like him, Science has ever suggested religious thoughts; he colours the phenomena of physics with the hues of his own mind, and mistakes an interpretation for a deduction. "I am sanguine enough to believe," he says, "that that superior sagacity which is most conversant with the course and constitution of Nature will be first to turn a deaf ear to objections and presumptions against Revealed Religion, and to acknowledge the complete harmony of the Christian Dispensation with all that Reason, assisted by Revelation, tells us of the course and constitution of Nature." Now, considering that we are all of us educated as Christians from infancy, it is not easy to decide at this day whether Science creates Faith, or only confirms it; but we have this remarkable fact in the history of heathen Greece against the former supposition, that her most eminent empirical philosophers were atheists, and that it was their atheism which was the cause of their eminence. "The natural philosophies of Democritus and others," says Lord Bacon, " who allow no God or mind in the frame of things, but attribute the structure of the universe to infinite essays and trials of nature, or what they call fate or fortune, and assigned the causes of particular things to the necessity of matter, without any intermixture of final causes, seem, as far as we can judge from the remains of their philosophy, much more solid, and to have gone deeper into nature, with regard to physical causes, than the philosophies of Aristotle or Plato: and this only because they never meddled with final causes, which the others were perpetually inculcating."

 Lord Bacon gives us both the fact and the reason for it. Physical philosophers are ever inquiring whence things are, not why ; referring them to nature, not to mind; and thus they tend to make a system a substitute for a God. Each pursuit or calling has its own dangers, and each numbers among its professors men who rise superior to them. As the soldier is tempted to dissipation, and the merchant to acquisitiveness, and the lawyer to the sophistical, and the statesman to the expedient, and the country clergyman to ease and comfort, yet there are good clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, and soldiers, notwithstanding; so there are religious experimentalists, though physics, taken by themselves, tend to infidelity; but to have recourse to physics to make men religious is like recommending a canonry as a cure for the gout, or giving a youngster a commission as a penance for irregularities.

 The whole framework of Nature is confessedly a tissue of antecedents and consequents; we may refer all things forwards to design, or backwards on a physical cause. La Place is said to have considered he had a formula which solved all the motions of the solar system; shall we say that those motions came from this formula or from a Divine Fiat? Shall we have recourse for our theory to physics or to theology? Shall we assume Matter and its necessary properties to be eternal, or Mind with its divine attributes? Does the sun shine to warm the earth, or is the earth warmed because the sun shines? The one hypothesis will solve the phenomena as well as the other. Say not it is but a puzzle in argument, and that no one ever felt it in fact. So far from it, I believe that the study of Nature, when religious feeling is away, leads the mind, rightly or wrongly, to acquiesce in the atheistic theory, as the simplest and easiest. It is but parallel to that tendency in anatomical studies, which no one will deny, to solve all the phenomena of the human frame into material elements and powers, and to dispense with the soul. To those who are conscious of matter, but not conscious of mind, it seems more rational to refer all things to one origin, such as they know, than to assume the existence of a second origin such as they know not. It is Religion, then, which suggests to Science its true conclusions; the facts come from Knowledge, but the principles come of Faith [n. 1].

 There are two ways, then, of reading Nature as a machine and as a work. If we come to it with the assumption that it is a creation, we shall study it with awe; if assuming it to be a system, with mere curiosity. Sir Robert does not make this distinction. He subscribes to the belief that the man "accustomed to such contemplations, struck with awe by the manifold proofs of infinite power and infinite wisdom, will yield more ready and hearty assent yes, the assent of the heart, and not only of the understanding, to the pious exclamation, 'O Lord, how glorious are Thy works!'" He considers that greater insight into Nature will lead a man to say, "How great and wise is the Creator, who has done this!" True: but it is possible that his thoughts may take the form of "How clever is the creature who has discovered it!" and self-conceit may stand proxy for adoration. This is no idle apprehension. Sir Robert himself, religious as he is, gives cause for it; for the first reflection that rises in his mind, as expressed in the above passage, before his notice of Divine Power and Wisdom, is, that "the man accustomed to such contemplations will feel the moral dignity of his nature exalted ." But Lord Brougham speaks out. "The delight," he says, "is inexpressible of being able to follow, as it were, with our eyes, the marvellous works of the Great Architect of Nature." And more clearly still: "One of the most gratifying treats which science affords us is the knowledge of the extraordinary powers with which the human mind is endowed. No man, until he has studied philosophy, can have a just idea of the great things for which Providence has fitted his understanding, the extraordinary disproportion which there is between his natural strength and the powers of his mind, and the force which he derives from these powers. When we survey the marvellous truths of astronomy, we are first of all lost in the feeling of immense space, and of the comparative insignificance of this globe and its inhabitants. But there soon arises a sense of gratification and of new wonder at perceiving how so insignificant a creature has been able to reach such a knowledge of the unbounded system of the universe." So, this is the religion we are to gain from the study of Nature; how miserable! The god we attain is our own mind; our veneration is even professedly the worship of self.

 The truth is that the system of Nature is just as much connected with Religion, where minds are not religious, as a watch or a steam-carriage. The material world, indeed, is infinitely more wonderful than any human contrivance; but wonder is not religion, or we should be worshipping our railroads. What the physical creation presents to us in itself is a piece of machinery, and when men speak of a Divine Intelligence as its Author, this god of theirs is not the Living and True, unless the spring is the god of a watch, or steam the creator of the engine. Their idol, taken at advantage (though it is not an idol, for they do not worship it), is the animating principle of a vast and complicated system; it is subjected to laws, and it is connatural and co-extensive with matter. Well does Lord Brougham call it "the great architect of nature;" it is an instinct, or a soul of the world, or a vital power; it is not the Almighty God [n. 2].

 It is observable that Lord Brougham does not allude to any relation as existing between his god and ourselves. He is filled with awe, it seems, at the powers of the human mind, as displayed in their analysis of the vast creation. Is not this a fitting time to say a word about gratitude towards Him who gave them? Not a syllable. What we gain from his contemplation of Nature is "a gratifying treat," the knowledge of the "great things for which Providence has fitted man's understanding;" our admiration terminates in man; it passes on to no prototype [n. 3]. I am not quarrelling with his result as illogical or unfair; it is but consistent with the principles with which he started. Take the system of Nature by itself, detached from the axioms of Religion, and I am willing to confess nay, I have been expressly urging that it does not force us to take it for more than a system; but why, then, persist in calling the study of it religious, when it can be treated, and is treated, thus atheistically? Say that Religion hallows the study, and not that the study creates Religion. The essence of Religion is the idea of a Moral Governor and a particular Providence; now let me ask, is the doctrine of moral governance and a particular providence conveyed to us through the physical sciences at all? Would they be physical sciences if they treated of morals? Can physics teach moral matters without ceasing to be physics? But are not virtue and vice, and responsibility, and reward and punishment, anything else than moral matters, and are they not of the essence of Religion? In what department, then, of physics are they to be found? Can the problems and principles they involve be expressed in the differential calculus? Is the galvanic battery a whit more akin to conscience and will, than the mechanical powers? What we seek is what concerns us, the traces of a Moral Governor; even religious minds cannot discern these in the physical sciences; astronomy witnesses divine power, and physics divine skill; and all of them divine beneficence; but which teaches of divine holiness, truth, justice, or mercy? Is that much of a Religion which is silent about duty, sin, and its remedies? Was there ever a Religion which was without the idea of an expiation?

 Sir Robert Peel tells us, that physical science imparts "pleasure and consolation " on a death-bed. Lord Brougham confines himself to the "gratifying treat;" but Sir Robert ventures to speak of "consolation." Now, if we are on trial in this life, and if death be the time when our account is gathered in, is it at all serious or real to be talking of "consoling" ourselves at such a time with scientific subjects? Are these topics to suggest to us the thought of the Creator or not? If not, are they better than story books, to beguile the mind from what lies before it? But, if they are to speak of Him, can a dying man find rest in the mere notion of his Creator, when he knows Him also so awfully as His Moral Governor and his Judge? Meditate indeed on the wonders of Nature on a death-bed! Rather stay your hunger with corn grown in Jupiter, and warm yourself by the Moon.

 But enough on this most painful portion of Sir Robert's Address. As I am coming to an end, I suppose I ought to sum up in a few words what I have been saying. I consider, then, that intrinsically excellent and noble as are scientific pursuits, and worthy of a place in a liberal education, and fruitful in temporal benefits to the community, still they are not, and cannot be, the instrument of an ethical training; that physics do not supply a basis, but only materials for religious sentiment; that knowledge does but occupy, does not form the mind; that apprehension of the unseen is the only known principle capable of subduing moral evil, educating the multitude, and organizing society; and that, whereas man is born for action, action flows not from inferences, but from impressions, not from reasonings, but from Faith.

 That Sir Robert would deny these propositions I am far from contending; I do not even contend that he has asserted the contrary at Tamworth. It matters little to me whether he spoke boldly and intelligibly, as the newspapers represent, or guarded his strong sayings with the contradictory matter with which they are intercalated in his own report. In either case the drift and the effect of his Address are the same. He has given his respected name to a sophistical School, and condescended to mimic the gestures and tones of Lord Brougham. How melancholy is it that a man of such exemplary life, such cultivated tastes, such political distinction, such Parliamentary tact, and such varied experience, should have so little confidence in himself, so little faith in his own principles, so little hope of sympathy in others, so little heart for a great venture, so little of romantic aspiration, and of firm resolve, and stern dutifulness to the Unseen! How sad that he who might have had the affections of many, should have thought, in a day like this, that a Statesman's praise lay in preserving the mean, not in aiming at the high; that to be safe was his first merit, and to kindle enthusiasm his most disgraceful blunder! How pitiable that such a man should not have understood that a body without a soul has no life, and a political party without an idea, no unity!

 February, 1841.

 Notes

 1. [This is too absolute, if it is to be taken to mean that the legitimate, and what may be called the objective, conclusion from the fact of Nature viewed in the concrete is not in favour of the being and providence of God.  Vide "Essay on Assent," pp. 336, 345, 369, and "Univ. Serm." p. 194.]  

 2. [ Vide "University Teaching," Disc. 2.]  

 3. [ Vide "Essays," vol. i. p. 37, etc.]