30 OCTOBER 1886, Page 14

BOOKS.

DR. MAUDSLEY'S ATTACK ON SUPER- NATURALISM.* WE have read this book with great care and great interest, and have found in it the clearest evidence that one of the ablest and best-read of the materialists simply cannot adopt his own wise counsel," to see the thing as it is on all occasions, at what- ever cost to prejudice or feeling, and not to go a step in assent beyond the measure of the evidence." (p. 61.) It appears to us, on the contrary, that no writer on philosophical subjects with whom we have recently met, so often falls into the trap against which he solemnly warns his readers of allowing it to be the sufficient refutation of an alleged fact that it does not accord with his own mood, of feeling. (p. 334.) "Any system," says Dr. Maudsley, with great weight and justice, "whether philosophical or theological, which does not embrace the facts, be it the most lofty and spiritual in the world,"—and we suppose he would not object to our saying that the same holds good of the most ostentatiously unspiritual system in the world, —" but shrinks and shelters itself from unwelcome facts, is as ill-grounded and inadequate as the meanest theory which behaves in a similar fashion,—essentially a structure apart from the living body of true knowledge, not an organic part of it." It seems to us that no words describe better the main drift and temper of Dr. Maudsley's book than these ; and we say this by no means because he adopts a view of human nature which seems to us entirely mistaken, but because he shows so un- conquerable a dislike to facing the main evidence with which he ought to have dealt from his own point of view, and seems so completely unable to appreciate the true force even of the evidence which he does refer to.

Dr. Maudsley's book is written to demolish the evidence for what is called the supernatural, and for what, whether it be of a piece with the whole system of Nature in its largest sense,- i.e., including in the word" Nature" the highest life of man,—or not, is certainly supernatural if we understand by Nature only what Dr. liandsley understands by it,—namely, the whole outcome of physical causes. But be is so prepossessed against the evidence for anything like the preponderance of mind in Nature, that when he comes to deal with the class of pheno- mena which most need careful consideration,—such as the late Dr. Carpenter discussed so ably in his Mental Physiology,—be simply pooh-poohs the evidence before him, and, indeed, though without mentioning Dr. Carpenter, expressly describes the view taken by Dr. Carpenter of some of these phenomena,—namely, the stigmata found on ecstaticas,—as the view of "some quasi- scientific authors." (p. 261.) Again, he mocks at the Society for Psychical Research for attempting to investigate the evi- dence for a class of facts which it does not snit him to regard as facts at all, though no Society could possibly have been more zealous to expose the fallacies of credulity on which he himself dwells so eagerly. We venture to say that if Dr. Maudsley could persuade himself to look candidly into the evidence col- lected for the appearance (say) of "phantasms of the living" to persons at a distance, by that Society, and the sort of informa- tion conveyed by telepathic impressions, it would alter the whole drift of his philosophy, whether he accepted the evidence for apparitions of the dead or not. But Dr. Mandsley will have

• Natural Causes and Suyernaturat Seeming,. By Henry Maudsley, M.D., LL.D. London: Began Pan4 Trenels, and Co.

nothing to do with facts which do not suit him, and con- temptuously brands this decidedly sceptical Society, some of whose members have attempted to break down the belief in personality by arguments far more subtle than Dr. Maudsley himself has produced, as a mere Society of ghost-seers and ghost-seekers. Dr. Maudsley is, indeed, if we judge him rightly, one of the most utter victims of prepossession among those who have ever dealt with investigations in which prepossession is fatal to success.

Let us now try to summarise as honestly as we can the drift of Dr. Maudsley's argument, not suppressing, but enforcing, so far as the present writer has the capacity to do so, the stronger aspects of that argument. Dr. Maudsley first enumerates those various causes which have led men to believe in the supernatural, and which are nevertheless due not to human capacity, but rather to human incapacity ; and these he divides into the incapacities inherent in all men even of sound mind ; and the incapacities for correct apprehension which may rather be called capacities for delusion arising from unsoundness of mind ; finally, he dwells on the further capacities for delusion which lie in the adoption of what he calls a philosophy of intuition or ecstatic illumination, which he himself evidently regards as a subdivision of the second class of causes, though he is respectful enough to the great men who have accepted intuitions as trustworthy, not to lump them with the victims of mental disease.

Dr. Maudsley begins his story of the mistakes in which supernatural creeds have originated with the disposition of men to fancy that what they have experienced once, they will ex- perience again. Omens which were followed by good luck will be followed by good luck again, and so, again, of the evil omens which have been followed by misfortune. The ease with which the mind falls into the rut of one or two experiences misleads it. It is much easier to expect what has happened once or twice, than to expect anything else. Again, says Dr. Mandsley, it is easier to remember the instances which illustrate a current maxim, than the instances which tend to upset it. If you pray for a friend's recovery and he recovers, you are much more struck by the result, than you are if you pray for it and he dies. At least, so says Dr. Maudsley, though we do not in the least believe that he ix right. We think that he confounds the case where a predicted event is antecedently quite improbable,—as when a dream described and written down before it is fulfilled, anticipates in minute detail some highly improbable actual event,—with the very different case where the coincidence of agreement is just as likely as, or more likely perhaps than, the failure of such a coincidence ; in which case, the failure of the coincidence- affects us just as much as the coincidence itself, and with quite as much justice. Bat, according to Dr. Maudsley, a few- coincidences affect us much more than a great many failures of coincidence. And no doubt this may be true in one case,— namely, where the authority of a former generation of believers teaches the existing generation to expect these coincidences, se that the weight of a time-honoured tradition has to be set off against the force which the failure of the coincidence would otherwise exert. The habit of deferring to authority, as it necessarily moulds the life of the child, moulds in large measure also the lives of grown-up children. Therefore we agree with Dr. Maudsley that imperfect coincidences, when their sug- gestions have once been accepted by one generation, very easily crystallise into the authoritative creed of the next, though we cannot agree in his doctrine exactly as he states it. Now, since,. on all religious subjects, observation and reasoning, says Dr. Maudsley, are difficult or impossible, on all such subjects crude observations are especially likely to dominate us ; and so, no doubt, they are, if they are accepted and imposed on society by any respected authority. Add to this, that shrewd men will often avail themselves of the credulity of our race to impose upon them a belief in their own inspiration, and we need not be surprised that many crude religious notions are so easily accepted on the authority of credulous or insincere or half- sincere persons.

Again, observation is a slow and difficult process, which for perfect accuracy needs all sorts of instruments which are not easily obtained; and till it is matured, the human mind, im- patient of ignorance, is eager to accept any marvel which palms itself off as knowledge. Men love to think themselves above Nature and to command Nature, and hence they mis-see what they can only see aright by distrusting their own bias. Thus, from want of opportunity and means of observation, from want of the habit of observing accurately, and from want of sincerity in communicating the true character of the evidence, and in judging one's own bias, all sorts of false supernatural beliefs have sprang up. Add to these causes the fertility of the imagination, and the delight which men take in the exercise of the imagination, and there is sufficient explanation, according to Dr. Maudsley, of supernatural beliefs, without assuming any real object of those beliefs, even when we have to deal with normal or sound minds.

Next, Dr. Maudsley comes to persons of more or less unsound minds, persons often of the most brilliant imagina- tions, who are incapable of weighing evidence that does not snit them, and are yet capable of exerting a vast influence on others. Nor are such persons necessarily at all insincere, for, says Dr. Maudsley, in a rather striking sentence,—of the truth of which a man could hardly be esteemed a good judge, unless he had been himself out of his mind, and yet able to remember accurately the experience gained in that condition,—" the sincerest person to self, and at the same time, the insincerest to Nature all round, is the lunatic." (p.156.) That may or may not be so,—we should have thought, with great deference to Dr. Maudsley's very large experience of the insane, that one of the first notes of insanity was the inability to be sincere to self,—but we should not think of dis- puting with Dr. Maudsley that, whether sincere or insincere in the highest sense, there is a sort of genius (not the highest) which is closely akin to unsoundness of mind, and which never- theless is capable of exerting very great influence over the creed of others. Dr. Maudsley treats St. Theresa, Dfahomet, apparently even St. Paul, as having originated supernatural beliefs under the influence of some great illusion or delusion ; and he even refers to the charges brought against our Lord of being beside himself, in the same connection, though without expressly endorsing them. Finally, in the section on the attainment of supernatural knowledge by supposed illumination, Dr. Maudsley insists that Divine illumination of a finite being is an impossibility, since it implies that the finite can become infinite, or the infinite finite, and he insists that this is a con- tradiction in terms. He holds that all so-called intuitions of Goi are mere extravagant efforts of the mind to escape from its

own limits by an ecstasy which is a sort of self-violence. He describes all so-called illumination or intuition as a "method of obtaining revelations of the infinite, by being at one time infinite and at another time finite, and of communicating, as finite to finite beings, experiences as infinite." (p. 273.) And this Dr. Maudsley derides as unmeaning nonsense. He is very indignant with Cardinal Newman for saying that the sense of moral obligation impressed by conscience on the mind, involves belief in an invisible and Divine ruler whose mandate the conscience transmits. This shows only that Dr. Maudsley has no conception of what Cardinal Newman means by moral obligation. For to Cardinal Newman it is of the very essence of the experience referred to, that the curb is put upon the inward desires by an invisible and inward authority whose perfect holiness is thereby attested. Dr. Maudsley also mocks at Dr. Martineau's philosophy of religion as "a strained subjective experience transformed into objective being,—in other words, the objectivation of a psycholepsy." All religions philosophy that does not, like Pascal's, profess absolute despair of in any sense intellectually apprehending the Divine, he treats as the unwholesome freak of a morbid self- consciousness. Indeed, Dr. Maudsley is always making raids against self-consciousness and magnifying the unconscious self, though we need hardly say that, like other assailants of self-consciousness, he can only pierce it with shafts consciously manufactured, shafts therefore which would drive as deep into his own philosophy as they do into the philosophy of his opponents.

Such is, as far as we can make it so in a brief article, a fair summary of Dr. Mandsley's doctrine. We cannot say that he seems to us even to assail effectively the principles which he is so anxious to subvert. There is nothing new in showing that even sound minds are very apt to jump at quite unfounded beliefs, nor in showing that unsound minds are still more apt to do so, nor in showing that unsound minds, if carried away by a contagions enthusiasm, may exert great in- fluence over others. All that Dr. Mandaley contends for may be granted, except, indeed, the exploded doctrine (borrowed from Dean Mansel, we imagine) that the infinite is necessarily abso- lutely inapprehensible to the finite,—a doctrine which seems to us utterly empty of meaning. What we know of the universe is that it is in all its constituent elements measurable and finite, and even though space be infinite, and, for anything we know, force and matter also, the only meaning of " infinite " in this sense, is that in this infinite there is no limit to the number of the measurable finites. But it is most absurd to maintain that if there be a Creator of all this infinitude, he must be infinite in any sense which denies him the fullest access to the finite constituents of his own universe. If the creative mind has in any sense expressed itself in creation, that expression must be decipherable. If not, then creation is no expression of the Creator, and the term " Creator " is a misnomer. It is as absurd to infer that because we are finite we can hold no intercourse with the Infinite, as to argue that because a line extends infinitely in both directions, you cannot by examining a finite portion of it know in what directions it tends. What we do know of the universe is that it is controlled by forces stamped with the stamp of a common origin, and strewn with materials which, though immeasurable, and to our apprehension at least virtually infinite, yet bear the imprint of proceeding from the same storehouse. If, then, we can unriddle a good part of the riddle of force and matter,—infinite though they may be,—what is to hinder us from unriddling, if the Divine mind so wills it, a good part of the riddle of his spiritual purposes for us P A power that is infinitely beyond us, may reveal to us some of the spiritual and moral constituents of his nature as easily as he can reveal some of the physical constituents of matter and force. To use " The Infinite" as Dr. Maudsley does, is not to magnify, but to minify it, to declare it incompetent to have relations with its own work ; whereas true reverence would put no limit to the power of a Creator to reveal his nature to the creatures he had fashioned in his image. Indeed, nothing seems to us more ridiculous than to treat limitlessness as if it expressed a positive incapacity. The real question on the ansser to which the existence of religion hangs, is whether our limited knowledge, limited powers, limited sense of right and wrong, come from above or from beneath, from a mind above us, or from physical forces beneath us. If they come from a higher mind, it is ludicrous to warn that higher mind off the finite, on the ground that, by virtue of its very might, it is impotent to know, or be known by, its own creatures.

Now, this question,—whether there is or is not evidence of mental and spiritual qualities informing the infinite energies of the universe, and consciously educating man's finite mind, in- stead of blind and unconscious forces blindly giving birth to the human miud,—is just the one question which Dr. Maudsley

never touches at all. He is so in love with his own pessimism, with his theory that illusions govern us, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, though eventually for evil, that he never even states the question on which the whole controversy hinges. Is the belief of all the highest minds that they have been taught by a yet higher and invisible mind, especially on the side of moral duty, false or true ? Was Socrates childish for believing in his &EMU. Was Moses an impostor or a dreamer when be declared the "I am" to the Israelites as his guide and inspirer ? Was the central commandment to love God with all the heart and soul and strength a mere imaginative preliminary for the com- mand to love one's neighbour as oneself P Is it true or is it not true that every genuine prophet of all time has felt himself in communication with a higher and invisible mind, in whoie

nature he was participating whenever he attained to true prophecy ? Is it really credible that those who have changed the whole face of the world, like Moses, Isaiah, our Lord, and St. Paul, knew so little of their own minds, that they were under a gross delusion in thinking that the light which came to them came from a conscious Spirit infinitely higher than their own ? This certainly is what Dr. Maudsley thinks of great men,—to him they are either (1), dupes ; or (2), dupers ; or (3), duped dupers. We will give his own words :—

" The persons who take leading parts in the great drama of human life seem, on tbe whole, to fall naturally into three principal classes 1. Those who, believing seriously In its transcendent importance, take it in tragical earnest, and are ready to sacrifice strength and wealth and even life in its service : the mainly or wholly dupes. 2. Those who do not believe in it seriously at all, pretend only to take it in earnest, but are pleased and interested to play their parts in it as accomplished actors, and to make the most for themselves out of it in position, profit, and occupation : the mainly or wholly dupers. 3. The intermediate, mixed, and large class of persons, who, owing to the predominant note of self.love in their natures, are very much ia earnest, and at the same time very successful in identifying the right with their feelings and wishes ; whereby it does not fail often to happen that they sincerely persuade themselves that their motives

justify the use of all means that gratify their wishes and—which for them is equivalent—further the righteous cause: they are the duped dopers; and of course they vary in characters according to the rela- tive preponderance of the mixed elements in them, joining at their opposite poles classes 1 and 2."

Is that a sober or rational view of human life P Is it consistent with sound judgment of any kind to suppose that the prophets, our Lord, and St. Paul were "mainly or wholly dupes ?" Dr. llaudsley is a pessimist who has studied unsound mind so much, that he attributes insanity to all really deep natures, and sanity only to the superficial. To him, the very idea of "sin,"—as distin- guished from defect,—is an illusion. He rejects the distinction which Christianity laid such stress on between sins and faults ; and yet he admits that when "prayer and worship cease to have a meaning for mankind," "man may be wiser, but not perhaps happier, than he is now." (p. 143.) He thinks that "the complete accomplishment of disillusion" for which he himself labours so strenuously, may very likely be "the close of development and the beginning of degeneration." In short, he regards the knowledge of which he is so proud as not improbably fatal to the nature which it is to illuminate. His is a strange attitude of mind. But even this pessimistic view of the probable effect of what he regards as the acceptance of truth by mankind, is a sign of greater wisdom in Dr. Maudsley than is manifested by those who share his creed without accept- ing the melancholy inferences which he deduces from it. It is at least a sober and reasonable belief that the natural effect on man of a more complete knowledge of the cast-iron character of the universe as the materialists conceive it, will be to drive him headlong into the despair which best befits such desolation. And according to Dr. Maudsley, it is such a despair in which scientific illumination will ultimately end.