Review of Martineau’s Essays. “Essays, Philosophical and Theological. By James Martineau.” Boston: Wm. V. Spencer, 1866. ²⁵, [From The Nation 2.60 (26 June 1866): 804-805.] ²⁶

MARTINEAU’S ESSAYS.

Professor Martineau’s essays are remarkable not so much for presenting any new phases of philosophical or theological doctrine, or even of new arguments for the positions of his school, as for the tact and sound practical judgment with which he has measured modern movements of thought and the tendencies of modern discussions, and signalized the principles on which that phase of Protestant Christianity which he represents must make its stand.

To speak with authority—to testify at the same time against ecclesiastical assumption in matters of religious belief, and to meet, on the other hand, the doubts and objections of the current scientific philosophy, it is clear that the theological teacher must, to a great extent, be his own prophet. A reforming religion, which is still a religion, must appeal from one authority to another. As the older Protestantism appealed from the Church to the Fathers and the canonical Scriptures, so the modern extreme of Protestantism appeals from the literal Scriptures to the reason and conscience of instructed and disciplined Christian men and women, as depositories of sacred truth not less authoritative than the historical documents themselves.

But a reason and a conscience that can be thus authoritative, even to the criticism of the sacred Scriptures, must be more than merely receptive or instructed representatives of revealed truth. They must be capable of reproducing it; not, indeed, at once and in the perfection which the truth has attained in the growth of centuries, but still by the instincts which the truth has only quickened and by a power which the truth does not create. Hence an essential philosophical position of that liberal Christianity which would still speak with authority, is that the native and original powers of the mind hold potentially the key to all divine knowledge; that every doctrine which can rightly claim the believer’s assent must find its voucher in the believer’s own instincts; that faith is the most certain kind of knowledge to those who have found their religious instincts answered in their creed. The credo ut intelligam of all religious philosophies means in this philosophy the yielding of the proud and wilful thought to the willing heart—not the trying on of creeds. This philosophy represents the reason as a native power of absolute knowledge, which cannot, however, possess itself of its inheritance save by repeated struggles and by the aid of outward and historical appliances.

Such being the ultimate ground of the religions authority which extreme Protestantism can exercise, it behooves our author, as he clearly sees, to vindicate against all opponents the philosophical doctrine of rationalism. His essays are accordingly directed chiefly against the experiential philosophy, as set forth in its several aspects by Comte, Mill, Bain, and Spencer. In Hamilton’s “Philosophy of the Conditioned,” as applied by Mr. Mansel to religious ideas, he meets his opponents on the theological side, who have come, as it were, by a flank movement over from the phenomenal philosophy into the camp of the ecclesiastics. With this power on its own grounds he does not feel called upon to deal very vigorously; but he battles most manfully against the tenets of positivism, with no loss of faith or courage from being apparently on the losing Bide.

Saving the merit we have mentioned, the excellences of these essays are mainly personal. With a style of most persuasive eloquence and with the sincerity of a clear and open-eyed faith, Mr. Martineau overwhelms by irresistible assault all spiritual opposition, and fails to win the battle only because the doubt he lays siege to is not the doubt of dull or faltering spirits, nor one which can be dissipated, like a mist, with the warmth of zeal and trust. Dealing, as he really does, with philosophers not less clear and earnest in their opinions than himself, his rhetoric is often misplaced. In the midst of keen discussion his meaning vanishes into a cloud, which is none the less obscuring for its brilliant and alluring colors.

The leading essay on “Comte’s Life and Philosophy” has until lately been one of the chief sources of the general English reader’s ideas of the religious character of positivism. Exhibiting great fairness of spirit and as much fairness of understanding as could be expected from a deeply interested opposition, this review yet fails to discriminate the really earnest beliefs of this school from the dogmatic atheism of the theologian's traditional and imaginary opponent.

It appears to be beyond the author’s power of conception and credulity to believe that real excellences of character can be hoped for, and earnestly sought for, without a belief in their actual and present realization in an object of religious veneration. He takes offence at the pretension that the positivist can believe in any object worth his life’s devotion, or that he can aim at the happiness of unselfish pursuits unless he renounces his scepticism and adopts the positions or “constants” of a religious philosophy. On the positivist’s “type of real perfection, below which we must still remain, though it invites our persevering efforts to continual approximation,” he observes: “May we not ask, Where, then, do you find this ‘ type of real perfection above us?’ Is it indeed real to you? Or is it ideal, and that in the poor sense of being merely imaginary?” To this the positivist might answer, “Why is it necessary that we should ‘ find ’ this perfection realized in order practically to believe in its possibility, and to strive for it? Are the savant in his search for a more and more perfect knowledge, and the artist in his efforts to reach a more perfect ideal of expression and beauty—are they necessarily platonists, believers in the supersensible reality of ideals? Religions alone, or rather religious philosophies, postulate as essential to progress an actual contemplation of its end; but to every one who believes in a better than has been attained, the evidence of its possibility lies within the limits of his common human experience. Every man’s sagacity outstrips his understanding, his purposes, and his performance; but does it on that account deserve apotheosis—to be called the reason, and be made participant of the absolutely true and beautiful and good? Or is it on that account evident that the sagacity is not informed like the understanding by experience?”

To the poetical representation of the phenomenon of progress as a growth or an effort to grow in a formative plastic power within us, there can be no exception taken on grounds of poetical truth; but to stake the moral culture and aspirations of the human race on the dogmatic truth of platonism, as our author does, is to limit the highest human interests by the conditions of a personal peculiarity.

Mr. Martineau is platonic in his temperament, like his master the poet-philosopher Coleridge, but his gifts have a more practical turn, and he exerts himself in defence of the à priori philosophy not merely from a poetical instinct, but as the sagacious leader in a school of theology. He grants his opponents large latitude at the outset. All the world of physical science, all phenomena and their laws, are allowed to the experience philosophy. Inductive methods must deal with all these; but then inductive methods cannot take a step without starting from the unprogressive “ideas of causality, of soul, of God, of substance.” If, on account of the unprogressive character of these ideas, the name of knowledge be denied them, the author does not object, “provided it be understood that they are, if not knowledge, the conditions of knowledge; if not the object seen, the light by which we see them.” From these “constants” of religious philosophy he allows no abatement. They are essential articles of faith, and faith is knowledge. At least faith has all the certainty of knowledge, and only differs from it in not being acquired. It is almost a moral offence with our author to regard the principles of causality and substance as empirical generalizations of our experience of the connections of phenomena, or as hypotheses to account for these connections; and it is a sad moral delinquency not to see that these principles are recognitions by the reason à priori of the necessity of such connections. Power as well as phenomena—power as opposed to phenomena—belongs to the province of intuitive knowledge. And there are two distinct sources of knowledge, and both are concerned with all that we know. Physical as well as moral science has its postulate of pure reason. In short, Mr. Martineau lays down the à priori theory in all its purity, and holds to it on practical as well as theoretical grounds as essential not only to a religious philosophy, but also to a religious life; essential, that is, to every nobility of character and to every form of devotion. By those who have not studied metaphysics, these articles of faith are, of course, implicitly assented to, though the disciple may not be aware of possessing two independent sources of knowledge, or be on his guard against the wiles of the experiential philosophy.

It is, of course, important for the author to make out that the apostles of this philosophy are not very admirable men. With Comte the case was not very difficult; but when he comes to the great English champion of this school he speaks with some obscurity and hesitation. He experiences in the tone of Mill’s writings “a singular impression of melancholy and unrest.” But “a certain air of suppression” is the “greatest fault” he finds in him, “and the shade which it passes across his face is sometimes so strong” to our author’s vision “as almost to darken the philosopher into the mystagogue,” as if he regarded the world as unprepared for his lessons. No greater misinterpretation of a most natural and courteous reserve could be imagined; but it is a very instructive illustration of a deficiency of sympathy or insight, which is not uncommon with thinkers of Mr. Martineau’s type of mind. Capable of infinite degrees of the love or the sympathy which looks upwards or downwards in reverent devotion or in tender pity, this temper admits of little real sympathy with what is around it but is not of its own household. Liberal to an extreme towards the opinions of students in science and in Biblical criticism, our author withholds his toleration from whatever interests him “from the moral side,” if it be beyond the pale of the à priori philosophy.