English
Not but that, with such a change in our mode of viewing that of which the world consists, I confess, a strong argument for the revival of our personal being in an immortality after this life, would appear to me lost ; but again, many pious persons, of whom our firiend Vidy4ch&rya may partly serve as an illustrious instance, think quite differently upon that point ; and whatever became of a personal immortality, I conceive that at least the necessity of worshipping and loving God in this life would remain. We should not be a bit more able to do without religion, though it would be more diflScult to say in what manner we ought to be religious. Again, in the same way, I remark, that if the attributes of wisdom, righteousness, and goodness, have been assigned by me to the Deity with more confidence than they ought, yet at the very least you acknow- ledge that we are surrounded by tokens of superhuman power. What that power may be, in at least its relations to ourselves, and how we ought to feel mentally towards its intelligent wielder, if such be its origin, or how mould to our purpose whatever may be permitted of its lesser agencies, and triumph over any dread attached to them, are still questions of awful interest, and may well invite our most devout attention. Only I cannot look at such questions without including among the elements of the problem to be solved the moral experiences of mankind. From those experiences it appears that prayer is an instrument of obtaining peace, and of what to its possessors appears knowledge, whether, as we should say generally, because the prayer is answered by some higher power, or, as your theo- ries would imply, because it is itself a mental effort of the most intent and aspiring kind. We must then take in prayer together with our inquiries as to either the being of God or our eternal destiny. Then it seems to me already self-evident that no kind of natural piety will allow us to deprive the Deity of whatever M. P. 10 146 INFERENCE OF ULTIMATE BEING. attributes we should think holy, or pure, or lovely, in the higher forms of being ; nor can I shake off a presentiment, which goes upon suflScient ground to deserve the name of a conviction, that we shall find at last the mass of mankind have anticipated with their feelings, what the keenest searchers may for a time make difficulties about, but must at last admit is a necessity of their imderstanding. So that it may be with spirit as with matter. We have already heard how difficult it may be made to prove that any solid substratum underlies the objects which our senses deal with ; yet at last the thinker says by inference that some- thing must be there, whether he make that something material or mental ; a body or a form ; an underlying solid or a combining principle of law ; and, by saying this, he returns, in effect, to what simple people never doubted. In fact, even our positive knowledge of geometry, and perhaps all our cognition of the material world, may be said primarily to rest upon faith, or ultimately to revert to faith ; although the most sceptical rea- soners admit it would be absurd in this case not to have such faith. For any reasoning or knowledge which made this prac- tically doubtful would make everything doubtful, so that it must be itself doubted. By being so universally destructive it would destroy trust in its own process. Even sceptics thus come round in mathematical science to agree with those who accept in a kind of faith the preliminary axioms and postulates. Just so, I conceive, will be the case with what we call Mind, which, at least so far as our common consciousness is a guide to any truth, we recognise as distinct from bodily objects; for it seems properly active, while they are comparatively passive. Perhaps we call by its name some appearances which may not be mind ; but, beyond all or within, I know not how many subtle sheaths, as our friends would call them, either mind rea- soning or soul feeling must dwell. Either of these seems a name for what is immortal in us ; and so long as men believe that the highest lord of all is infinite in all which they feel highest in themselves, so long they have what we call a religion, whether ATTRIBUTES OF HIGHEBT BEING. 147 it be recorded in histories, or expressed in prayers, or in any other way embodied and directed to some one infinitely better than onrselves. Upon this condition only does a religion seem to satisfy all those portions and capacities of Man of which we haye spoken, or exercise a ruling and wholesome influence. For whatever wonderftil things may be said of Pracriti, no one is raised, or awed, or comforted by dwelling on an infinite fluid, or infinite electricity, or, in short, by the application of the idea of infinity to anything else than Mind in the highest and largest sense of whatever may be Mind. If instead of mind you would prefer me to say thinker, with the understanding at present that it is not settled how far a subtle modification of matter can think, I have no objection. Only, on your part again, there must be no hesitation in ascribing to this unknown author the most abso- lute infinity as regards all the higher powers of man, or, what would be the same thing here, as regards a power capable of creating those. You must not, therefore, exclude government, or providence, or dread majesty, or anything else which is noblest in man, except you do so by putting something nobler still and transcendent, because creative, in any one of their places ; for it will be absurd to seek the Deity in anything less than ourselves. Moreover you will hence understand why, just as we exclude earth and water and electricity, so also I reject the mere range of human afiections as adequate expounders of the sentiments which here we ought to entertain; and as they themselves cannot cling kindly, unless they are justified, or as it were up- held, by strengthening intellect, much less can that highest and illimitable object, which is to satisfy our whole affectionate and intellectual being, be less than infinite itself in all wisdom and majesty as well as goodness. Nor is any kind of worshipping belief worthy of being properly called a religion, as embracing what men in general mean by that sacred word, unless it have a positive and intellectual element referring to God, not merely as life, or as order, nor perhaps even as law, though indeed he is all these, but also as a providential governor. 10—2 148 THE POSITIVE AND THE MYSTICAL. Of the truth of what I am now saying many coimtries afford sad experience. Probably it is not unknown in India how men who have once believed intellectually in the historical traces of mankind being governed by an imseen governor, have fallen into strange crimes or delusions when that belief was lost or dreamt away. At least, in other countries, men have been brought up to fear the God by whom their religion has been ordained and history governed ; yet, either from waywardness, or from finding that accidents of human error had clung round the essential belief, they have fallen away from their religion, until they knew not what belief to hold, beyond a vague confession of signs of power and life encompassing us. But then it is also found, that when men thus exchange the definite belief of intellectual beings in One who is mighty, good, and wise, and by whose laws they must shape their lives, for vague surmises about the sources of beauty and marvel, they appear generally also to exchange a calm and equable trust in one who is the upholder of their steps in life, for a feverish over-bubbling of the emotions, which may be called an animal enthusiasm. Thus, as their belief becomes imagination, and their religion mysticism, so their prayers be- come patterings, and flow from the affections of joy and grief; or, as they themselves would phrase it, from the spirit, but not from the understanding. Then, if they even continue in such a state, their reason is no longer hallowed, nor their entire manhood a sacrifice, but they have fallen back into such worship as is com- mon to animals and vegetables; for these things also exult in the beauty of creation, and the beneficence of its author, as they look up towards his all-embracing light.