MISS SIMCOX ON NATURAL LAW,*
Tim is in effect an attempt, ingenious and not unskilful, but very much the reverse of convincing, to prove that the world would go on pretty much as it done if society made up its mind that there is no God. In general, the argument is conducted with fairness and a reasonable amount of sympathy, though the advo- cacy of a particular view makes itself quite apparent under the professed and no doubt consciously cherished intention of in- vestigating man's religious position, without prejudgment of "the metaphysical question whether or no natural laws are of super- natural imposition ;" but on one or two occasions Miss Simcox passes the limits of perfect controversial courtesy. We do not object to a sharp expression of opinion, even if dashed with contempt for those who are supposed to disown it. Having, for example, given her own atheistic version of facts connected with religion, Miss Simcox does not offend us by commencing a new paragraph with the following sentence :—" It is for the many who find the theological hypothesis meaningless and incredible, that we offer the above account of the facts innocently distorted by the undisciplined imaginations of virtuous persons, whose egotism, banished from the heart, has taken refuge in the brain." Religious people of course say that this is a begging of the ques- tion, but as much may, perhaps, be alleged of a multitude of loose assertions on the other side, representing atheism as a mere effort to rationalise depravity. Miss Simcox descends, however, to the ad captandunt style of the partisan, when she describes that theistic agnosticism, in which Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Spencer have common ground, as "the philosophy which brandishes the conception of a mighty x as a sort of two-edged muzzle for science and religion." If Miss Simcox really wishes to gauge the strength of philosophical th,eism at the present moment, she will do well to attain an intelligent apprehension of the philosophy in question, of which she has no idea leas superficial than the small-talk of the sensationalist school. The unfortunate misapplication of the philosophy of Hamilton made by Maned in his Bampton Lectures furnishes some excuse for Miss Simcox, but we are not aware that any of the followers of Hamilton have assented to the use of his principles attempted by the lecturer. It seems evident enough, prima facie, and it will be found true after the most searching investigation, that a philo- sophy which rests on a demonstration of the Infinite must afford scope for inquiry in all possible directions, and, until the finite exhausts the infinite, can dispense with muzzles of every kind. The other instances in which Miss Simoox appears to us to deviate slightly from the tone appropriate to so grave a discussion are those in which she tries to enliven the debate by touches of con- ventional satire. "No mortal," she says once, "knows whether a resurrection to eternal life would answer his expectation or not, but many good people are at pains to explain that they could not take their own souls an se'rieux, unless they believed them to be immortal, and we have no wish to cavil at the means by which so necessary a result may be obtained ; only, looking at things dispassionately from without, the misgiving arises whether our own respect for the human soul would stand the strain of seeing our good neighbours pro- duced to infinity." Annihilation is hardly matter for a joke, and the writer must either be very young, or must have enjoyed a rare exemption from bereavement, and had singularly few oppor- tunities of observing in others the anguish it entails, in whom such jesting would not betray heartlessness. It is due to Miss Simcox to say that this kind of flippancy does not often occur. In general, she writes with adequate seriousness, as well as with vigour and care.
We are perhaps prejudiced, but the parts of Miss Simeox's volume in which her reasoning strikes us as most conclusive are those in which she deals with Pantheism and Positivism, both of which she pronounces unsatisfactory. Nothing could be more admirable than the remark that "in practice, Pantheism either stops short with a slight consecration of natural philosophy as a substitute for religion, or else its scientific character disappears, and the world as it is, is deified and endowed with soul ; or again, the rational element is sacrificed to the emotional, and a result un- distinguishable from mysticism is arrived at." Having thus sum-
" Natural Law: as Emay irt Mica. By Edith Sluloox. London: Trlibnor aud On
manly and justly dismissed pantheism, Miss Simcox somewhat surprises us by her enthusiasm for Spinoza, the reputed father of modern pantheism. She drops a hint, however, that she regards Spinoza as in reality an atheist, a conclusion to which we strongly demur. While praising Comte as "much too positive a. thinker to be seduced into pantheism, too rational to confound subject and object in mysticism," she specifies two reasons why " the religion of humanity" is not likely to take the place of the "other dogmatic religions with which it aims at competing." The first is that "positive thinkers" would not accept proselytes who were merely formal and unintelligent, like most of the adherents of the old faith ; the second, that ordinary men and women can- not be expected, "now, or for centuries to come," to rise to the positive conception of humanity. What is still more to the purpose, this conception, however well realised, would not answer to the idea of God. "The great being, humanity, however great our small powers will allow of our conceiving it to be, is still not supreme ;" it is but "a single product of evolution, instead of all its absolute, infinite, irresponsible conditions." The rationalist, the mystic, the orthodox theologian, all represent the religious sentiment or instinct as "feeling its way towards a goal of absolute submission," and requiring, we may add, in the object of worship, absolute perfection. The Posi- tivist sets out with an assertion of the non-existence of an Infinite Spirit, and claims worship for what, at best, is a finite conception. Nothing in the history of speculation or of practice is more astonishing than that clever and accomplished men should be found capable of persuading themselves that the so- called religion of Positivism isa religion at all. It lacks the differentiating element, the specific note, of religion. Instead of connecting man with the Infinite, it denies the Infinite. It attempts to move the world with a lever whose fulcrum avowedly rests on the world's surface.
We are not sure that Miss Simeox would explicitly accept these last statements, but they are, wo think, in substantial accord- ance with her brief but effective, nay, subversive criticism of the Positive religion. All the more are we surprised at her failure to perceive that a similar line of reasoning must lead into, and turn inside out, the heart of her own main position, namely, that religion is possible without a God. It is perfectly obvious that the religion of which she speaks is at least one degree further removed than the Positive religion from religion in the true sense of the word. The Positivists elaborately construct their substi- tute for a God, and though that substitute may not serve the purpose of a real Deity, it surely is better than no substitute at all. The only thing obscure and vague in Miss Simcox's volume is her notion of religion as continu- ing to subsist, after it has been conclusively established that there is no God. in a general way, she takes help from Mr. Matthew Arnold's ideas of religion as morality plus emotion, and of God as the not-ourselves that makes for rig'iteousness. But we can only smile at the illustration thus givee of /ucus a non lucendo. If Mr. Arnold's ideas illuminate Miss Simcox's temple, we should like some explanation as to what light those ideas, in their sickly flickering, really dispense. All the morality in the world is more or less emotional ; three-fourths of the lyric poetry in existence is concerned with the emotional aspects of morality ; but few people, we presume, would pronounce "John Anderson" a hymn. On the other hand, there is very little either of morality or of what ordinarily passes for emotion in the " Te Deum," which all men feel to be instinct with the purest religious inspira- tion. As for the not-ourselves making for righteousness, Mr. Arnold has never, so far as we know, given any intelligible indi- cation of the nature of the force, power, or existence, which makes for righteousness, and has never adduced a single example of the " making for" in question, which could not be accounted for on natural grounds. In point of fact, Miss Simcox has herself more thinking power, in the sense of decisively discriminating between fact and not fact, between substance and shadow, than Mr. Arnold, and must perceive, if she looks with her usual pene- tration, that his religious philosophy is mere coloured mist. Deriving no real assistance from Ids exquisitely worded but flimsy speculations, she is thrown back upon the difficulty of connecting anything like transcendent emotion—anything like the feeling which prostrates a worshipper before his God—with the material objects and second causes of that science which alone she owns. The difficulty alluded to could not be better presented than in her own words :^.4 It is not a moral duty to feel an affection for the solar and the stellar systems, to wax enthusiastic over the proper- ties of space, or to admire the circuitous processes in the evolution of life." There is really no answer to this. If no God exists, the congeries of mechanical forces constituting the universe is worthy of being carefully observed by us, nothing more ; and to work ourselves up into religious ecstacies about it is fudge.
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