To the Same.

Cambridge, March 22, 1869.

I cannot believe that you designedly imposed on me as a punishment, the difficult task, which would require much reflection, of giving clear and satisfactory reasons for my refusal of Mr. Abbot’s proposition about the Essay on the Religious Aspects of Positivism; but I feel myself in the condition of the school-boy who can only answer the demand to explain his misconduct by the summary but inexplicit reason “because,” — an answer by which he enounces, at least, his faith in the universality of causation, or in the doctrine of “the sufficient reason” without which nothing happens.

It might possibly be easier to write the essay than to say why not do it. Both would be difficult expositions; and to attempt the essay would perhaps be the directest means of demonstrating my incompetency. There may appear but a shade of difference between a general essay on the religious bearings of positivism and a defence of this philosophy and its adherents, from the attacks and misrepresentations of theological opponents. But the difference is really material. I may be the swiftest racer on this course; yet to no purpose, since I lack rider and spur. If I were more of a Comtist than I am, — that is, had a proselyting interest in the direct practical bearings of positivism, — I should rush, I suppose, to a platform, or into print before the great and discriminating public. As it is, I have much greater confidence in the indirect influence of the causes which have made this philosophy prevail, for determining and exerting its religious effects, than I have in the discussion of themes, which, in the common estimation, are more specifically religious.

Our side cannot now help being heard on its substantial merits, and has no need of pulpits. The effect on the character and direction of men’s faiths, which the possession of a large and extensive body of unquestionable and united truths is fitted to produce, is one which follows naturally, in whatever direction this body of knowledge has disciplined the philosophical dispositions to act, within the legitimate limits of speculation. To take in enough of natural philosophy to make one feel sure that the weather is not ruled by any free moral agents, though it diminishes many other assurances, much supposed weather-wisdom, is a great step in advance. To take such steps in social science must have the effect to turn men’s attention to new social interests, no longer directly dependent on the social powers of the prayerful, the hopeful, the angry, the wilful, or the affectionate child, but on those of the foreseeing, contriving, intelligent man. Moral effort,

though, as before, arising in the burnings of the heart, will then gain through its light a far-reaching influence, which its warmth does not possess. On this aspect of the subject, I might write to the verge of sentimentality; but this, I suppose, is not what Mr. Abbot wanted from my pen.

What positivism has to say about the great religious doctrines of “supernatural causes” and the “future life,” is the question of the theologically trained mind; and, if positivism has nothing to say on these things, how can it justify its pretension to be a philosophy and a competent guide of life? In this question of authority, its not unskilful opponents strike at a vital point; but the blow can be parried, and in return positivism can more pertinently demand of the so-called religious philosophies their authority for saying any thing on these themes. To the reply that life would not be worth improving, that moral effort would be vain, without some such grounds of action as religion presents; that any questioning of these must be settled before life can have an intelligent interest for us, or human nature appear to be superior to the brutal, — to such replies, the kind of return which positivism is most naturally and charitably inclined to, is not polemical but hygienic. The formidable aspects of these themes, the associations of feelings which have grown up with them, are of the nature of diseases, infectious or transmitted, — but not unavoidable at the outset, as our ignorance and the limits of our possible development are. They are traditional distortions of development, which the natural man, even in attaining the most advanced moral growth, need not undergo. This view of the matter (the doctrine of distorted development) is the positive counterpart of the orthodox doctrine of “original depravity.”

The cure should not be “heroic,” since this method attacks the patient as well as the disease. Opening to his activity a mental and moral and even philosophical life, infinitely varied

in objects which invite attention and incite to effort, and wide enough for a rational spirit of speculation (the pursuits of positive science and their various directions), — complete preoccupation is the treatment. If this should be objected to as practically only a culture in “mere morality,” it would be, as Mr. Emerson says, “much as if one should say, ‘Poor God! with nobody to help him.’”

In my correspondence with Mr. Abbot about the direct bearings of positivism on the subject of religion, I was conscious of adopting, in a mild way, the heroic treatment, attacking under indirect forms not his opinions, but the still too superstitious spirit, in which he seemed to me to hold them, —in which he seemed to attribute still, in his understanding, the weight of valid evidence to the force of merely associated interests. To dissociate these interests, not to criticise his doctrines, was my only end in the debate; and I should not be willing to enter again into any such debate, except it be again with a person equally candid, unprejudiced, and intelligent,— certainly not with the public.

My regard for the social and political attitude of radicalism, as the extreme and yet the logically valid result of Protestantism, is very widely separated from my interest in the several philosophies, practical and speculative, which in the minds of the several radicals is so intimately (and to them so naturally) associated with this attitude. As a distinct body of religious thinkers, or as other than a few among liberals of many varieties, I have little sympathy with them, and not much respect for their intelligence. Perhaps you will think me a little prejudiced.

I have so little space left in which to tell the news, or even to make such a sharp turn and deep descent, that I am constrained to regard this as the essay in question (abortive and abbreviated though it be), instead of the letter I meant to write.