05.01 - Appendix 1

APPENDIX BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES

IT may be useful to add to the preceding argument on the foundations of belief some observations on the formal side of their historical development, which will not only serve, I hope, to make clearer the general scheme here advocated, but may help to solve certain difficulties which have sometimes been felt in the interpretation of theological and ecclesiastical history.

Assuming, as we do, that Knowledge exists, we can hardly do otherwise than make the further assumption that it has grown and must yet further grow. In what manner, then, has that growth been accomplished? What are the external signs of its successive stages, the marks of its gradual evolution? One, at least, must strike all who have surveyed, even with a careless eye, the course of human speculation I mean the recurring process by which the explanations or explanatory formulas in terms of which mankind endeavour to comprehend the universe are formed, are shattered, and then in some new shape are formed again. It is not, as we sometimes represent it, by the steady addition of tier to tier that the fabric of knowledge uprises from its foundation. It is not by mere accumulation of material, nor even by a plant-like development, that our beliefs grow less inadequate to the truths which they strive to represent. Rather are we like one who is perpetually engaged in altering some ancient dwelling in order to satisfy new-born needs.. The ground-plan of it is being perpetually modified. We build here; we pull down there. One part is kept in repair, another part is suffered to decay. And even those portions of the structure which may in themselves appear quite unchanged, stand in such new relations to the rest, and are put to such different uses, that they would scarce be recognised by their original designer.

Yet even this metaphor is inadequate, and perhaps misleading. We shall more accurately conceive the true history of knowledge if we represent it under the similitude of a plastic body whose shape and size are in constant process of alteration through the operation both of external and of internal forces. The internal forces are those of reason. The external forces correspond to those non-rational causes on whose importance I have already dwelt. Each of these agencies may be supposed to act both by way of destruction and of addition. By their joint operation new material is deposited at one point, old material is eroded at another; and the whole mass, whose balance has been thus disturbed, is constantly changing its configuration and settling towards a new position of equilibrium, which it may approach, but can never quite attain.

We must not, however, regard this body of beliefs as being equally mobile in all its parts. Certain elements in it have the power of conferring on the whole something in the nature of a definite structure. These are known as ’ theories,’ ’ hypotheses,’ ’ generalisations,’ and ’ explanatory formulas ’ in general. They represent beliefs by which other beliefs are co-ordinated. They supply the framework in which the rest of knowledge is arranged. Their right construction is the noblest work of reason; and without their aid reason, if it could be exercised at all, would itself be driven from particular to particular in helpless bewilderment.

Now the action and reaction between these formulas and their contents is the most salient, and in some respects the most interesting, fact in the history of thought. Called into being, for the most part, to justify, or at least to organise, pre-existing beliefs, they can seldom perform their office without modifying part, at least, of their material. While they give precision to what would otherwise be indeterminate, and a relative permanence to what would otherwise be in a state of flux, they do so at the cost of some occasional violence to the beliefs with which they deal. Some of these are distorted to make them fit into their predestined niches. Others, more refractory, are destroyed or ignored. Even in science, where the beliefs that have to be accounted for have often a native vigour born of the imperious needs of sense-perception, we are sometimes disposed to see, not so much what is visible, as what theory informs us ought to be seen. While in the region of aesthetic (to take another example), where belief is of feebler growth, the inclination to admire what squares with some current theory of the beautiful, rather than with what appeals to any real feeling for beauty, is so common that it has ceased even to amuse. But this reaction of formulas on the beliefs which they co-ordinate or explain is but the first stage in the process we are describing. The next is the change, perhaps even the destruction, of the formula itself by the victorious forces that it has previously held in check. The plastic body of belief, or some portion of it, under the growing stress of external and internal influences, breaks through, it may be with destructive violence, the barriers by which it was at one time controlled. A new theory has to be formed, a new arrangement of knowledge has to be accepted, and under changed conditions the same cycle of not unfruitful changes begins again.

I do not know that any illustration of this familiar process is required, for in truth such examples are abundant in every department of Knowledge. As chalk consists of little else but the remains of dead animalculae, so the history of thought consists of little else but an accumulation of abandoned explanations. In that vast cemetery every thrust of the shovel turns up some bone that once formed part of a living theory; and the biography of most of these theories would, I think, confirm the general account which I have given of their birth, maturity, and decay.

II

Now we may well suppose that under existing circumstances death is as necessary in the intellectual world as it is in the organic. It may not always result in progress, but without it, doubtless, progress would be impossible; and if, therefore, the constant substitution of one explanation for another could be effected smoothly, and as it were in silence, without disturbing anything beyond the explanations themselves, it need cause in general neither anxiety nor regret. But, unfortunately, in the case of Theology, this is not always the way things happen. There, as elsewhere, theories arise, have their day, and fall; but there, far more than elsewhere, do these theories in their fall endanger other interests than their own. More than one reason may be given for this difference. To begin with, in Science the beliefs of sense-perception, which, as I have implied, are commonly vigorous enough to resist the warping effect of theory, even when the latter is in its full strength, are not imperilled by its decay. They provide a solid nucleus of unalterable conviction, which survives uninjured through all the mutations of intellectual fashion. We do not require the assistance of hypotheses to sustain our faith in what we see and hear. Speaking broadly, that faith is unalterable and self-sufficient.

Theology is less happily situated. There it often happens that when a theory decays, the beliefs to which it refers are infected by a contagious weakness. The explanation and the thing explained are mutually dependent. They are animated as it were with a common life, and there is always a danger lest they should be overtaken by a common destruction.

Consider this difference between Science and Theology in the light of the following illustration. The whole instructed world were quite recently agreed that heat was a form of matter. With equal unanimity they now hold that it is a mode of motion. These opinions are not only absolutely inconsistent, but the change from one to the other is revolutionary, and involves the profoundest modification of our general views of the material world. Yet no one’s confidence in the existence of some quality in things by which his sensations of warmth are produced is thereby disturbed; and we may hold either of these theories, or both of them in turn, or no theory at all, without endangering the stability of our scientific faith.

Compare with this example drawn from physics one of a very different kind drawn from theology. If there be a spiritual experience to which the history of religion bears witness, it is that of Reconciliation with God. If there be an ’ objective ’ cause to which the feeling is confidently referred, it is to be found in the central facts of the Christian story. Now, incommensurable as the subject is with that touched on in the last paragraph, they resemble each other at least in this that both have been the theme of much speculation, and that the accounts of them which have satisfied one generation, to another have seemed profitless and empty. But there the likeness ends. In the physical case, the feeling of heat and the inward assurance that it is really connected with some quality in the external body from which we suppose ourselves to derive it, survive every changing speculation as to the nature of that quality and the mode of its operation. In the spiritual case, the sense of Reconciliation connected by the Christian conscience with the life and death of Christ seems in many cases to be bound up with the explanations of the mystery which from time to time have been hazarded by theological theorists. And as these explanations have fallen out of favour, the truth to be explained has too often been abandoned also. This is not the place to press the subject further; and I have neither the right in these Notes to assume the truth of particular theological doctrines, nor is it my business to attempt to prove them. But this much more I may perhaps be allowed to say by way of parenthesis. If the point of view which this Essay is intended to recommend be accepted, the precedent set, in the first of the above examples, by science is the one which ought to be followed by theology. No doubt, when a belief is only accepted as the conclusion of some definite inferential process, with that process it must stand or fall. If, for instance, we believe that there is hydrogen in the sun, solely because that conclusion is forced upon us by certain arguments based upon spectroscopic observations, then, if these arguments should ever be discredited, the belief in solar hydrogen would, as a necessary consequence, be shaken or destroyed. But in cases where the belief is rather the occasion of an hypothesis than a conclusion from it, the destruction of the hypothesis may be a reason for devising a new one, but is certainly no reason for abandoning the belief. Nor in science do we ever take any other view. We do not, for example, step over a precipice because we are dissatisfied with all the attempts to account for gravitation. In theology, however, experience does sometimes lean too tim_ idly on theory, and when in the course of time theory decays, it drags down experience in its fall. How many persons are there who, because they dislike the theories of Atonement propounded, say, by Anselm, or by Grotius, or the versions of these which have imbedded themselves in the devotional literature of Western Europe, feel bound ’ in reason ’ to give up the doctrine itself? Because they cannot compress within the rigid limits of some semi-legal formula a mystery which, unless it were too vast for our full intellectual comprehension, would surely be too narrow for our spiritual needs, the mystery itself is to be rejected! Because they cannot contrive to their satisfaction a system of theological jurisprudence which shall include Redemption as a leading case, Redemption is no longer to be counted among the consolations of mankind!

There is, however, another reason beyond the natural strength of the judgments due to sense-perception which tends to make the change or abandonment of explanatory formulas a smoother operation in science than it is in theology; and this reason is to be found in the fact that Religion works, and, to produce its full results, must needs work, through the agency of organised societies. It has, therefore, a social side, and from this its speculative side cannot, I believe, be kept wholly distinct. For although feeling is the effectual bond of all societies, these feelings themselves, it would seem, cannot be properly developed without the aid of something which is, or which does duty as, a reason. They require some alien material on which, so to speak, they may be precipitated; round which they may crystallise and coalesce. In the case of political societies this reason is founded on identity of race, of language, of country, or even of mere material interest. But when the religious society and the political are not, as in primitive times, based on a common ground, the desired reason can scarcely be looked for elsewhere, and, in fact, never is looked for elsewhere, than in the acceptance of common religious formulas. Whence it comes about that these formulas have to fulfil two functions which are not merely distinct but incomparable. They are both a statement of theological conclusions and the symbols of a corporate unity. They represent at once the endeavour to systematise religious truth and to organise religious associations; and they are therefore subject to two kinds of influence, and involve two kinds of obligation, which, though seldom distinguished, are never identical, and may sometimes even be opposed. The distinction is a simple one; but the refusal to recognise it has been prolific in embarrassments, both for those who have assumed the duty of contriving symbols, and for those on whom has fallen the burden of interpreting them. The rage for defining l which seized so large a portion of Christen, dom, both Roman and non-Roman, during the Reformation troubles, and the fixed determination to 1 Cf. Note on page 369. turn the definitions, when made, into impassable barriers between hostile ecclesiastical divisions, are among the most obvious, but not, I think, among the most satisfactory, facts in modern religious history. To the definitions taken simply as well-intentioned efforts to make clear that which was obscure, and systematic that which was confused, I raise no objections. Of the practical necessity for some formal basis of Christian co-operation I am, as I have said, most firmly convinced. But not every formula which represents even the best theological opinion of its age is therefore fitted to unite men for all time in the furtherance of common religious objects, or in the support of common religious institutions; and the error committed in this connection by the divines of the Reformation, and the counter-Reformation, largely consisted in the mistaken supposition that symbols and decrees, in whose very elaboration could be read the sure prophecy of decay, were capable of providing a convenient framework for a perpetual organisation.

It is, however, beyond the scope of these Notes to discuss the dangers which the inevitable use of theological formulas as the groundwork of ecclesiastical co-operation may have upon Christian unity, important and interesting as the subject is. I am properly concerned solely with the other side of the same shield, namely, the dangers with which this inevitable combination of theory and practice may threaten the smooth development of religious beliefs dangers which do not follow in the parallel case of science, where no such combination is to be found. The doctrines of science have not got to be discussed amid the confusion and clamour of the market-place; they stir neither hate nor love; the fortunes of no living polity are bound up with them; nor is there any danger lest they become petrified into party watchwords. Theology is differently situated. There the explanatory formula may be so historically intertwined with the sentiments and traditions of the ecclesiastical organisation; the heat and pressure of ancient conflicts may have so welded them together, that to modify one and leave the other untouched seems well-nigh impossible. Yet even in such cases it is interesting to note how unexpectedly the most difficult adjustments are sometimes effected; how, partly by the conscious, and still more by the unconscious, wisdom of mankind; by a little kindly forgetfulness; by a few happy inconsistencies; by methods which might not always bear the scrutiny of the logician, though they may well be condoned by the philosopher, the changes required by the general movement of belief are made with less friction and at a smaller cost even to the enlightened than might, perhaps, antecedently have been imagined.

IV The road which theological thought is thus compelled to travel would, however, be rougher even than it is were it not for the fact that large changes and adaptations of belief are possible within the limits of the same unchanging formulas. This is a fact to which it has not been necessary hitherto to call the reader’s attention. It has been more convenient, and so far not, I think, misleading, to follow familiar usage, and to assume that identity of statement involves identity of belief; that when persons make the same assertions intelligently and in good faith they mean the same thing. But this on closer examination is seen not to be the case. In all branches of knowledge abundant examples are to be discovered of statements which do not fall into the cycle of change described in the last section, which no lapse of time nor growth of learning would apparently require us to revise. But in every case it will, I think, be found that, with the doubtful exception of purely abstract propositions, these statements, themselves unmoved, represent a moving body of belief, varying from one period of life to another, from individual to individual, and from generation to generation.

Take an instance at random. I suppose that the world, so long as it thinks it worth while to have an opinion at all upon the subject, will continue to accept without amendment the assertion that Julius Caesar was murdered at Rome in the first century B.C. But are we, therefore, to suppose that this proposition must mean the same thing in the mouths of all who use it? Surely not. Even if we refuse to take account of the associated sentiments which give a different colour in each man’s eyes to the same intellectual judgment, we cannot ignore the varying positions which the judgment itself may hold in different systems of belief. It is manifestly absurd to say that a statement about the mode and time of Caesar’s death has the same significance for the schoolboy who learns it as a line in a memoria technica, and the historian (if such there be) to whom it represents a turning-point in the history of the world. Nor is it possible to deny that any alteration in our views on the nature of Death, or on the nature of Man, must necessarily alter the import of a proposition which asserts of a particular man that he suffered a particular kind of death. This may perhaps seem to be an unprofitable subtlety; and so, to be sure, in this particular case, it is. But a similar reflection is of obvious importance when we come to consider, for example, such propositions as ’ there is a God,’ or ’ there is a world of material things.’ Both these statements might be, and are, accepted by the rudest savage and by the most advanced philosopher. They may, so far as we can tell, continue to be accepted by men in all stages of culture till the last inhabitant of a perishing world is frozen into unconsciousness. Yet plainly the savage and the philosopher use these words in very different meanings. From the tribal deity of early times to the Christian God, or, if you prefer it, the Hegelian Absolute; from Matter as conceived by primitive man to Matter as it is conceived by the modern physicist, how vast the interval! The formulas are the same, the beliefs are plainly not the same. Nay, so wide are they apart, that while to those who hold the earlier view the later would be quite meaningless, it may require the highest effort of sympathetic imagination for those whose minds are steeped in the later view to reconstruct, even imperfectly, the substance of the earlier. The civilised man cannot fully understand the savage, nor the grown man the child.

Now a question of some interest is suggested by this reflection. Can we, in the face of the wide divergence of meaning frequently conveyed by the same formula at different times, assert that what endures in such cases is anything more than a mere husk or shell? Is it more than the mould into which any metal, base or precious, may be poured at will? Does identity of expression imply anything which deserves to be described as community of belief? Are we here dealing with things, or only with words? In order to answer this question we must have some idea, in the first place, of the relation of Language to Belief, and, in the second place, of the relation of Belief to Reality. That the relation between the first of these pairs is of no very precise or definite kind I have already indicated. And the fact is so obvious that it would hardly be worth while to insist on it were it not that Formal Logic and conventional usage both proceed on exactly the opposite supposition. They assume a constant relation between the symbol and the thing symbolised; and they consider that so long as a word is used (as the phrase is) ’ in the same sense,’ it corresponds, or ought to correspond, to the same thought. But this is an artificial simplification of the facts; an hypothesis, most useful for certain purposes, but one which seldom or never corresponds with concrete reality. If in the sweat of our brow we can secure that inevitable differences of meaning do not vitiate the particular argument in hand, we have done all that logic requires, and all that lies in us to accomplish. Not only would more be impossible, but more would most certainly be undesirable. Incessant variation in the uses to which we put the same expression is absolutely necessary if the complexity of the Universe is, even in the most imperfect fashion, to find a response in thought. If terms were counters, each purporting always to represent the whole of one unalterable aspect of reality, language would become, not the servant of thought, nor even its ally, but its tyrant. The wealth of our ideas would be limited by the poverty of our vocabulary. Science could not flourish, nor Literature exist. All play of mind, all variety, all development would perish; and mankind would spend its energies, not in using words, but in endeavouring to define them.

It was this logical nightmare which oppressed the intellect of the Middle Ages. The schoolmen have been attacked for not occupying themselves with experimental observation, which, after all, was no particular business of theirs; for indulging in excessive subtleties surely no great crime in a metaphysician; and for endeavouring to combine the philosophy and the theology of their day into a coherent whole an attempt which seems to me to be entirely praiseworthy. A better reason for their not having accomplished the full promise of their genius is to be found in the assumption which lies at the root of their interminable deductions, namely, that language is, or can be made, what logic by a convenient convention supposes it to be, and that if it were so made, it would be an instrument better fitted on that account to deal with the infinite variety of the actual world.

VI

If language, from the very nature of the case, hangs thus loosely to the belief which it endeavours to express, how closely does the belief fit to the reality with which it is intended to correspond? To hear some persons talk one would really suppose that the enlightened portion of mankind, i.e. those who happen to agree with them, were blessed with a precise knowledge respecting large tracts of the Universe. They are ready on small provocation to embody their beliefs, whether scientific or theological, in a series of dogmatic statements which, as they will tell you, accurately express their own accurate opinions, and between which and any differing statements on the same subject is fixed that great gulf which divides for ever the realms of Truth from those of Error. Now I would venture to warn the reader against paying any undue meed of reverence to the axiom on which this view essentially depends, the axiom, I mean, that ’ every belief must be either true or not true.’ It is, of course, indisputable. But it is also unimportant; and it is unimportant for this reason, that if we insist on assigning every belief to one or other of these two mutually exclusive classes, it will be found that most, if not all, the positive beliefs which deal with concrete reality the very beliefs, in short, about which a reasonable man may be expected principally to interest himself would in strictness have to be classed among the ’ not true.’ I do not say, be it observed, that all propositions about the concrete world must needs be erroneous; for, as we have seen, every proposition provides the fitting verbal expression for many different beliefs, and of these it may be that one expresses the full truth. My contention merely is, that inasmuch as any fragmentary presentation of a concrete whole must, because it is fragmentary, be therefore erroneous, the full complexity of any true belief about reality will necessarily transcend the comprehension of any finite intelligence. We know only in part, and we therefore know wrongly. But it may perhaps be said that observations like these involve a confusion between the ’ not true ’ and the ’ incomplete.’ A belief, as the phrase is, may be ’ true so far as it goes/ even though it does not go far enough. It may contain the truth and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. Why should it under such circumstances receive so severe a condemnation? Why is it to be branded, not only as inadequate, but as erroneous? To this I reply that the division of beliefs into the True, the Incomplete, and the Wholly False may be, and for many purposes is, a very convenient one. But in the first place it is not philosophically accurate, since that which is incomplete is touched throughout with some element of falsity. And in the second place it does not happen to be the division on which we are engaged. We are dealing with the logical contradictories ’ True ’ and ’ Not True.’ And what makes it worth while dealing with them is, that the particular classification of beliefs which they suggest lies at the root of much needless controversy in all branches of knowledge, and not least in theology; and that everywhere it has produced some confusion of thought and, it may be, some defect of charity. It is not in human nature that those who start from the assumption that all opinions are either true or not true, should do otherwise than take for granted that their own particular opinions belong to the former category; and that therefore all inconsistent opinions held by other people must belong to the latter. Now this, in the current affairs of life, and in the ordinary commerce between man and man, is not merely a pardonable but a necessary way of looking at things. But it is foolish and even dangerous when we are engaged on the deeper problems of science, metaphysics, or theology; when we are endeavouring in solitude to take stock of our position in the presence of the Infinite. However profound may be our ignorance of our ignorance, at least we should realise that to describe (when using language strictly) any scheme of belief as wholly false which has even imperfectly met the needs of mankind, is the height of arrogance; and that to claim for any beliefs which we happen to approve that they are wholly true, is the height of absurdity. Somewhat more, be it observed, is thus required of us than a bare confession of ignorance. The least modest of men would admit without difficulty that there are a great many things which he does not understand; but the most modest may perhaps be willing to suppose that there are some things which he does. Yet outside the relations of abstract propositions (about which I say nothing) this cannot be admitted. Nowhere else neither in our knowledge of ourselves, nor in our knowledge of each other, nor in our knowledge of the material world, nor in our knowledge of God, is there any belief which is more than an approximation, any method which is free from flaw, any result not tainted with error. The simplest intuitions and the remotest speculations fall under the same condemnation. And though the fact is apt to be hidden from us by the unyielding definitions with which alike in science and theology it is our practice to register attained results, it would, as we have seen, be a serious mistake to suppose that any complete correspondence between Belief and Reality was secured by the linguistic precision and the logical impeccability of the propositions by which beliefs themselves are communicated and recorded. To some persons this train of reflection suggests nothing but sceptical misgiving and intellectual despair. To me it seems, on the other hand, to save us from both. What kind of a Universe would that be which we could understand? If it were intelligible (by us), would it be credible? If our reason could comprehend it, would it not be too narrow for our needs? ’ I believe because it is impossible ’ may be a pious paradox. ’ I disbelieve because it is simple ’ commends itself to me as an axiom. An axiom doubtless to be used with discretion: an axiom which may easily be perverted in the interests of idleness and superstition; an axiom, nevertheless, which contains a valuable truth not always remembered by those who make especial profession of worldly wisdom.

VII

However this may be, the opinions here advocated may help us to solve certain difficulties occasionally suggested by current methods of dealing with the relation between Formulas and Beliefs. It has not always, for instance, been found easy to reconcile the immutability claimed for theological doctrines with the movement observed in theological ideas. Neither of them can readily be abandoned. The conviction that there are Christian verities which, once secured for the human race, cannot by any lapse of time be rendered obsolete is one which no Church would willingly abandon. Yet the fact that theological thought follows the laws which govern the evolution of all other thought, that it changes from age to age, largely as regards the relative emphasis given to its various elements, not inconsiderably as regards the substance of those elements themselves, is a fact written legibly across the pages of ecclesiastical history. How is this apparent contradiction to be accommodated?

Consider another difficulty one quite of a different kind. The common sense of mankind has been shocked at the value occasionally attributed to uniformity of theological profession, when it is perhaps obvious from many of the circumstances of the case that this carries with it no security for uniformity of inward conviction. There is an unreality, or at least an externality about such professions which, to those who think (rightly enough) that religion, if it is to be of any value, must come from the heart, is apt not unnaturally to be repulsive. Yet, on the other hand, it is but a shallow form of historical criticism which shall attribute this desire for conformity either to mere impatience of expressed differences of opinion (no doubt a powerful and widely distributed motive), or to the perversities of Priestcraft. What, then, is the view which we ought to take of it? Is it good or bad? and, if good, what purpose does it serve?

Now these questions may be answered, I think, at least in part, if we keep in mind two distinctions on which in this and the preceding chapter I have ventured to insist the distinctions, I mean, in the first place, between the function of formulas as the systematic expression of religious doctrine, and their function as the basis of religious cooperation; and the distinction, in the second place, between the accuracy of any formula and the real truth of the various beliefs which it is capable of expressing.

Uniformity of profession, for example, to take the last difficulty first, can be regarded as unimportant only by those who forget that, while there is no necessary connection whatever between the causes which conduce to successful co-operation and those which conduce to the attainment of speculative truth, of these two objects the first may, under certain circumstances, be much more important than the second. A Church is something more than a body of more or less qualified persons engaged more or less successfully in the study of theology. It requires a very different equipment from that which is sufficient for a learned society. Something more is asked of it than independent research. It is an organisation charged with a great practical work. For the successful promotion of this work unity, discipline, and self-devotion are the principal requisites; and, as in the case of every other such organisation, the most powerful source of these qualities is to be found in the feelings aroused by common memories, common hopes, common loyalties; by professions in which all agree; by a ceremonial which all share; by customs and commands which all obey. He, therefore, who would wish to expel such influences either from Church or State, on the ground that they may alter (as alter they most certainly will) the opinions which, in their absence, the members of the community, left to follow at will their own speculative devices, would otherwise form, may know something of science or philosophy, but assuredly knows little of human nature. But it will perhaps be said that co-operation, if it is only to be had on these terms, may easily be bought too dear. So, indeed, it may. The history of the Church is unhappily there to prove the fact. But as this is true of religious organisations, so also is it true of every other organisation national, political, military, what you will by which the work of the world is rendered possible. There are circumstances which may make schism justifiable, as there are circumstances which make treason justifiable, or mutiny justifiable. But without going into the ethics of revolt, without endeavouring to determine the exact ’degree of error, oppression, or crime on the part of those who stay within the organisation which may render innocent or necessary the secession of those who leave it, we may rest assured that something very different is, or ought to be, involved in the acceptance or rejection of common formulas than an announcement to the world of a purely speculative agreement respecting the niceties of doctrinal statement. This view may perhaps be more readily accepted when it is realised that, as I have pointed out, no agree’ment about theological or any other doctrine insures, or, indeed, is capable of producing, sameness of belief. We are no more able to believe what other people believe than to feel what other people feel. Two friends read together the same descrip. tion of a landscape. Does anyone suppose that it stirs within them precisely the same quality of sen* timent, or evokes precisely the same subtle associations? And yet, if this be impossible, as it surely is, even in the case of friends attuned, so far as may be, to the same emotional key, how hopeless must it be in the case of an artist and a rustic, an Ancient and a Modern, an Andaman islander and a European! But if no representation of the splendours of Nature can produce in us any perfect identity of admiration, why expect the definitions of theology or science to produce in us any perfect identity of belief? It may not be. This uniformity of conviction which so many have striven to attain for themselves, and to impose upon their fellows, is an unsubstantial phantasm, born of a confusion between language and the thought which language so imperfectly expresses. In this world, at least, we are doomed to differ even in the cases where we most agree.

There is, however, consolation to be drawn from the converse statement, which is, I hope, not less true. If there are differences where we most agree, surely also there are agreements where we most differ. I like to think of the human race, from whatever stock its members may have sprung, in whatever age they may be born, whatever creed they may profess, together in the presence of the One Reality, engaged, not wholly in vain, in spelling out some fragments of its message. All share its being; to none are its oracles wholly dumb. And if both in the natural world and in the spiritual the advancement we have made on our forefathers be so great that our interpretation seems indefinitely removed from that which primitive man could alone comprehend, and wherewith he had to be content, it may be, indeed I think it is, the case that our approximate guesses are still closer to his than they are to their common Object, and that far as we seem to have travelled, yet, measured on the celestial scale, our intellectual progress is scarcely to be discerned, so minute is the parallax of Infinite Truth.

These observations, however, seem only to render more distant any satisfactory solution of the first of the difficulties propounded above. If knowledge must, at the best, be so imperfect; if agreement, real inner agreement, about the object of knowledge can thus never be complete; and if, in addition to this, the history of religious thought is, like all other history, one of change and development, where and what are those immutable doctrines which, in the opinion of most theologians, ought to be handed on, a sacred trust, from generation to generation? The answer to this question is, I think, suggested by the parallel cases of science and ethics. For all these things may be said of them as well as of theology, and they also are the trustees of statements which ought to be preserved unchanged through all revolutions in scientific and ethical theory. Of these statements I do not pretend to give either a list or a definition. But without saying what they are, it is at least permissible, after the discussion in the last chapter, to say what, as a rule, they are not. They are not Explanatory. Rare indeed is it to find explanations of the concrete which, if they endure at all, do not require perpetual patching to keep them in repair. Not among these, but among the statements of things explained, of things that want explanation, yes, and of things that are inexplicable, we must search for the propositions about the real world capable of ministering unchanged for indefinite periods to the uses of Mankind. Such propositions may record a particular ’fact,’ as that ’Caesar is dead.’ They may embody an "ethical imperative, as that ’ Stealing is wrong.’ They may convey some great principle, as that the order of Nature is uniform, or that ’ God exists/ All these statements, even if accurate (as I assume, for the sake of argument, that they are), will, no doubt, as I have said, have a different import for different persons and for different ages. But this is not only consistent with their value as vehicles for the transmission of truth it is essential to it. If their meaning could be exhausted by one generation, they would be false for the next. It is because they can be charged with a richer and richer content as our knowledge slowly grows to a fuller harmony with the Infinite Reality, that they may be counted among the most precious of our inalienable possessions.

NOTE The permanent value which the results of the great ecclesiastical controversies of the first four centuries have had for Christendom, as compared with that possessed by the more transitory speculations of later ages, illustrates, I think, the suggestion contained in the text. For whatever opinion the reader may entertain of the decisions at which the Church arrived on the doctrine of the Trinity, it is at least clear that they were not in the nature of explanations. They were, in fact, precisely the reverse. They were the negation of explanations. The various heresies which it combated were, broadly speaking, all endeavours to bring the mystery as far as possible into harmony with contemporary speculations, Gnostic, Neoplatonic, or Rationalising, to relieve it from this or that difficulty: in short, to do something towards ’ explaining ’ it. The Church held that all such explanations or partial explanations inflicted irremediable impoverishment on the idea of the Godhead which was essentially involved in the Christian revelation. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its inexplicable fulness; and so it has come about that while such simplifications as those of the Arians, for example, are so alien and impossible to modern modes of thought that if they had been incorporated with Christianity they must have destroyed it, the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity still gives reality and life to the worship of millions of pious souls, who are wholly ignorant both of the controversy to which they owe its preservation, and of the technicalities which its discussion has involved. 1

1 [On this unoffending note Principal Fairbairn, writing as an expert theologian, has passed some severe comments (see ’ Catholicism, Roman and Anglican,’ p. 356 et seq.). He seems to think the terms used in the definitions of Nicea and Chalcedon must, because they are technical, be therefore ’ of the nature of explanations.’ I cannot agree. I think they were used, not to explain the mystery they were designed to express, but to show with unmistakable precision wherein the rival formula, which was so much more in harmony with the ordinary philosophic thought of the day, fell short of what was required by the Christian consciousness.]