Sayfadaki görseller
PDF
ePub

the point. You see what I would be at. Upon these principles I defy superstition.

Euphr. You believe then as far as you can see?

6

[ocr errors]

Alciph. That is my rule of faith.

[ocr errors]

Euphr. How will you not believe the existence of things which you hear, unless you also see them?

[ocr errors]

Alciph. I will not say so, neither.

When I insisted on seeing, I

would be understood to mean perceiving in general: outward objects make very different impressions upon the animal spirits, all which are comprised under the common name of sense.

can perceive by any sense, we may be sure of.

[ocr errors]

And whatever we

Euphr. What, do you believe then there are such things as animal spirits?

"Alciph. Doubtless.

'Euphr. By what sense do you perceive them ?

Alciph. I do not perceive them immediately, by any of my senses. I am, nevertheless, persuaded of their existence, because I can collect it from their effects and operations. They are the messengers which, running to and fro in the nerves, preserve a communication between the soul and outward objects.

Euphr. You admit, then, the being of a soul.

Alciph. Provided I do not admit an immaterial substance, I see no inconvenience in admitting there may be such a thing as a soul. And this may be no more than a thin fine texture of subtle parts or spirits residing in the brain.

Euphr. I do not ask about its nature. I merely ask, whether you admit that there is a principle of thought and action, and that it is perceivable by sense?

'Alciph. I grant that there is such a principle, and that it is not the object of sense itself, but inferred from appearances which are perceived by sense.

Euphr. If I understand you rightly, from animal functions and motions, you infer the existence of animal spirits, and from reasonable acts you infer the existence of a reasonable soul. Is it not so?

Alciph. It is.

'Euphr. It should seem, therefore, that the being of things imperceptible to sense may be collected from effects and signs, or sensible tokens?

Alciph. It may.

Euphr. Tell me, Alciphron, is not the soul that which makes the principal distinction between a real person and a shadow, between a living man and a carcass ?

Alciph. It is.

Euphr. I cannot, therefore, know that you, for instance, are a distinct, thinking individual, or a living real man, by surer or other signs, than those from which it can be inferred that you have a soul.

'Alciph. You cannot.

Peculiar Proofs of the Being of God.

109

Euphr. Pray tell me are not all acts, immediately and properly perceived by sense, reducible to motion?

[ocr errors]

Alciph. They are.

Euphr. From motions, therefore, you infer a mover or cause, and from reasonable motions (or such as appear calculated for a reasonable end) a rational cause, soul, or spirit.

[ocr errors]

Alciph. Even so.

Euphr. The soul of man actuates but a small body, an insignificant particle, in respect of the great masses of nature, the elements and heavenly bodies, and system of the world. And the wisdom that appears in these motions, which are the effect of human reason, is incomparably less than that which discovers itself in the structure and use of organized natural bodies, animal or vegetable. A man with his hand can make no machine so admirable as the hand itself, nor can any of these motions, from which we trace out human reason, approach the skill and contrivance of these wonderful motions of the heart and brain, and other vital parts which do not depend upon the will of man.

'Alciph. All this is true.

Euphr. Doth it not follow, then, that from natural motions, independent of man's will, may be inferred both power and wisdom incomparably greater than that of the human soul?

[ocr errors]

Alciph. It should seem so.

Euphr. Further, is there not in natural productions and effects a visible unity of counsel and design? Are not the rules fixed and immovable? Do not the same laws of motion obtain throughout? The same in China and here; the same two thousand years ago, and at this day.

Alciph. All this I do not deny.

Euphr. Is there not also a connection or relation between animals and vegetables, between both and the elements, between the elements and the heavenly bodies: so that from their natural respects, influences, subordinations, and uses, they may be collected to be parts of one whole, conspiring to one and the same end, and fulfilling the same design?

Alciph. Supposing this to be true.

'Euphr. Will it not then follow that this vastly great and infinite power and wisdom must be supposed in one and the same agent, spirit, or mind; and that we have, at heart, as clear, full, and immediate certainty of the being of this infinitely wise and powerful spirit, as of any one human soul whatsoever, beside our own?

6

Alciph. Let me consider; I suspect we proceed too hastily. What ! do you pretend you can have the same assurance of the being of a God, that you can have of mine, whom you actually see stand before you, and talk to you?

6

Euphr. The very same, if not greater.

Alciph. How do you make this appear?

'Euphr. By the person, Alciphron, is meant an individual thinking

thing, and not the hair, skin, or visible surface, or any part of the outward form, colour, or shape of Alciphron.

[ocr errors]

Alciph. This I grant.

Euphr. And in granting this, you grant, in a strict sense, I do not see Alciphron, that is, that individual thinking thing, but only such visible signs and tokens as suggest and infer the being of that invisible thinking principle or soul. Even so, in the self-same manner it appears to me that, though I cannot with the eyes of flesh behold the invisible God, yet I do, in the strictest sense, behold and perceive by all my senses such signs and tokens, such effects and operations, as suggest, indicate, and demonstrate an invisible God, as certainly, and with the same evidence, at least, as any other signs perceived by sense, do suggest to me the existence of your soul, spirit, or thinking principle; which I am convinced of only by a few signs or effects, and the motions of one small organized body: whereas I do, at all times, and in all places, perceive sensible signs which evince the Being of God.'

In the fifth dialogue Alciphron applies to Christianity the test by which Euphranor had tried his sensual Ethics, and seeks to prove its natural tendency to injure civil society. He is full of the Lucretian Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. But his arguments, as indeed might have been expected, are merely statements of evils coincident with Christianity, not consequent upon it. He declaims about the arrogance, tyranny, and acerbity of priesthoods. He charges upon the creed all the crimes and atrocities committed by its professors, whether under the pretext of it or not. He identifies the spiritual essence with all the corruptions of the body in which it has its dwelling. It is needless to notice the refutation of fallacies which would prove heat injurious because a moth flits into a candle; law a curse because some lawyers have been cheats; punishment by the civil magistrate a crime because the innocent sometimes suffer; and good itself, evil, because accidentally associated with it. In truth, however, it is hopeless to contend that a faith which inculcates love to God and to our neighbour, self-denial, and upright conduct; and which removes all doubts concerning the necessary connexion between virtue and happiness, by opening to us the prospect of a future life in which all apparent exceptions to this law shall be removed, can, in its own nature, do evil to a State. The logic that would accomplish this must reverse all notions about the natural course of things.

Though Alciphron cannot deny that Christianity may be useful to society, since it gives a sanction to law, and enjoins honesty, moderation, and piety, he will not therefore admit the truth of its scheme and doctrines. Accordingly, in the sixth dialogue he proceeds to criticise Revelation. His objections, which are

The Fifth and Sixth Dialogues.

111

scarcely of the kind now in currency, are against the Bible itself, as an organ of Revelation, and against its contents generally. Who would believe that a book came from God, the authenticity of which depends upon remote tradition; the limits of which, as the divine canon, are yet in controversy, and which is full of forgeries and obscurity? This is readily answered by showing that there may be, and often are, the same objections to believing the authorship of any other book of remote antiquity, and yet that, somehow, they are felt to be surmountable. But, as to its contents, who would believe such incredibilities as miracles, inspirations, or prophecies, or that God would command the perpetration of crimes like the destruction of the Canaanites? And again, how does it happen that the chronology of the Bible is inconsistent with that of other nations, and that many of its events are not recorded by contemporaneous historians? The reply to these attacks is, that, historically, there are traces of belief in similar incredibilities,' in every nation in the world, and therefore that there is nothing unnatural in it: that these incredibilities, however unaccountable they may appear, cannot be rejected merely for their own sake, until they shall be shown to be impossibilities, to do which requires a perfect knowledge of the power of God; that they have been attested by many witnesses without any proof of concert, and whose evident interest was not to do so; that a faith in them has spread far and wide, and that, if we seek to exorcise them from our minds, we are certain to fall into credulities which present many more points of objection. As to the argument from the command to slay the Canaanites, the answer is, that this was a special injunction for a special purpose; that the general precept, thou shalt not kill,' is a part of the divine as well as of the moral law; and that to reject Revelation, as inconsistent with God's attributes for this reason, would be as absurd as to deny that a Government can be just which appoints ministers to execute its penalties. The other arguments, drawn from external evidence, in some chronological errors in the Bible, and in the silence of history as to some of its details, are met by a denial of the truth of the charges, an answer which modern criticism will hardly admit as sufficient; but, as these cavils are quite consistent with the supposition that the Bible comes from God, is a Revelation of His dealings with man, and gives us a rule of life marked out by the divine will, we may pass them by. Very beautifully Berkeley thus gives a general answer to all such objections:-Things, to our wisdom unaccountable, may, nevertheless, proceed from an abyss of wisdom which our line cannot fathom: prospects 'viewed but in part, and by the broken, tinged light of our

́intellects, though they may seem disproportionate and ' monstrous, may, nevertheless, appear quite otherwise to another ' eye, and in a different situation: in a word, as human wisdom ' is but childish folly in respect to the divine, so the wisdom of 'God may sometimes seem foolishness to man.'

Foiled in his criticism, Alciphron, in the seventh and last dialogue, betakes himself to the metaphysical laboratory of Locke, and issues from it completely equipped against Christianity. This philosophy, doubtless unintentionally, has always supplied weapons against religion. Thus, from its applying the common term ideas to our sensations and to the active operations of the mind itself, it was warped by Condillac into a Lucretian psychology. But Berkeley, in the disguise of Alciphron, seeks to show the sceptical tendency of its theory of abstraction, and of its tenet, that ideas must underlie every term in language. This is the pith of Alciphron's argument. Since, in perceptible objects, many ideas are found combined, the mind has the faculty of distinguishing them from each other, and separating them into their several forms. Thus as the object man comprises the ideas of extension, figure, colour, rational, living, and the like, we have the faculty of resolving these ideas into their separate types or figures. But further, as in perception some ideas, or apprehended forms, are found to be common to many individual objects, the mind can abstract these common ideas; that is, can draw them off, so to speak, from the objects they refer to in common, and condense them into new forms, which body forth to the understanding, in distinct shapes, the common qualities of these objects. Thus, inasmuch as all individual men present in common the ideas of reason, life, and extension, we can cut off from individuals these common ideas, and so get at a new abstract idea of reason, life, and extension, which shall stand indifferently for these qualities in all men. But also, when all these common qualities of any class of objects, capable of real being, have been abstracted into new ideas, separated from those qualities which are not in common, these ideas can be fused into another abstract idea, which represents the entire class of objects, not in particular individuals, but each and all alike. example, if the sum of the common qualities of man be reason, life, and extension, the mind, when it has formed abstract ideas of these qualities, puts them together into the abstract idea of man, which does not image forth any particular man, since it does not represent his peculiar difference, but gives to the mind a copy of man in general. But further; as general terms are confessedly not the marks of the ideas of individual objects, they must be the signs of these abstract ideas. Thus the general

For

« ÖncekiDevam »