Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh EditionRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2): With an Account of his Parliamentary Struggle, Politics and Teachings. Seventh Edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833-1891
[Footnote 94: Tyndall answered to this argument that the flash of light
from the union of oxygen and hydrogen "is an affair of consciousness,
the objective counterpart of which is a vibration. It is a flash only
by our interpretation." But that is no answer at all. Tyndall never
went into the psychological problem fully.]
Any one who desires to obtain in a short time by dint of close
attention a notion of the difficulty and complexity of the argument as
between monism and dualism cannot do better than read the report of
the debate between Bradlaugh and the Rev. Mr Westerby on the notion
of Soul. Mr Westerby, though he wrote some of his papers in advance
instead of meeting his opponent's case, was decidedly the ablest of
the clerics with whom Bradlaugh debated; and in his hands the orthodox
cause suffered as little as might be. The reader may or may not in the
end decide to stand with Bradlaugh, but he will certainly have learned
to see the folly of the cheap journalistic dismissal of an undefined
"Materialism" as "exploded," and the error of the notion that Bradlaugh
was unqualified to handle philosophic and scientific issues, or that he
was a mere public speaker, unskilled in dialectic.
Finally, as to the meaningless expression that "things happen by
chance," he of course never used it. Of any person who puts this phrase
in the mouths of Atheists, it may be said at once that he is unfit
to discuss a philosophical question. He either does not understand
what he discusses, or is wilfully untruthful. The phrase "happens by
chance"--as was long ago recognised by Hume, after he had himself
fallen into the ordinary meaningless use of the term--only means either
"happens without our intending it," or "happens without our being able
to trace the cause." It is significant only for everyday purposes, and
in philosophy can only serve to set up a chimera. All events must be
conceived as having a "cause," in the ordinary sense of the term. The
Atheist certainly avows that he can only trace causation a small way
in the universe; but he does not for a moment suppose that he would be
giving an explanation of any event if he referred it to "Chance." His
doctrine is that the universe and its total energy must be conceived
as infinite and eternal; that in physics the question "Why?" resolves
itself into the question "How?" and that the business of science is
just to give the answer as fully as may be.
§4.
While Bradlaugh was thus an exact thinker and reasoner, he
distinguished himself above all the rationalists of his time by the
energy and persistence with which he sought to bring his philosophy
home to the popular mind. He was fundamentally a reformer, and he
could not consent, as so many do, to keep silence on errors of creed,
so called, and resist merely errors of action. For him, creed was
action, and action creed. He was so thoroughly a man of action that he
must needs act on his conviction in matters of opinion, so called, as
in anything else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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