Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876Flint, Robert
Religion
Theism; being the Baird Lecture of 1876
Flint, Robert
Theism
In Ritter's 'Geographical Studies,' Guyot's 'Earth and Man,' Kapp's
'Allgemeine Erdkunde,' Lotze's 'Mikrokosmus,' B. vi. c. 1, Duval's
'Des Rapports entre la Géographie et l'Economie Politique,' Cocker's
'Theistic Conception of the World,' ch. vii., &c., will be found a
rich store of teleological data as to the fitness of the earth to be
the dwelling-place and the schoolhouse of human beings. Of course,
those who attempt to prove this thesis require carefully to resist the
temptation to conceive of the relation of nature to man as not one of
cause and effect, of action and reaction, of mutual influence, but as
an immediate and inexplicable pre-established harmony like that which
Leibnitz supposed to exist between the body and the soul. This was
the theory which Cousin set forth in a celebrated lecture on the part
of geography in history. Regarding it I may quote the words which I
have used elsewhere: "This notion is not only purely conjectural, but
inconsistent with the innumerable facts which manifest that nature
does influence man, and that man does modify nature. It is impossible
to hold, either in regard to the body and soul, or in regard to nature
and man, _both_ the theory of mutual influence and of pre-established
harmony. All that, in either case, proves the former, disproves the
latter. The belief in a pre-established harmony between man and nature
is, indeed, considerably more absurd than in a pre-established harmony
between the body and soul; for when a body is born, a soul is in it,
which remains in it till death, and is never known to leave it in
order to take possession of some other body: but every country is not
created with a people in it, nor is every people permanently fixed
to a particular country. Imagination may be deceived for a moment
by an obvious process of association into this belief of certain
peoples being suited for certain lands, independently of the action
of natural causes--the Greeks, let us say, for Greece, the Indian for
the prairies and forests of America, the Malayan for the islands of
the Indian Archipelago; but a moment's thought on the fact that the
Turk has settled down where the Greeks used to be--that mighty nations
of English-speaking men are rising up where the Indian roamed, and
that Dutchmen are thriving in the lands of the Malayan, should suffice
to disabuse us. Besides, just as the dictum, 'Marriages are made in
heaven,' is seriously discredited by the great number that are badly
made, so the kindred opinion that every country gets the people which
suits it, and every people the country, as a direct and immediate
consequence of their pre-established harmony, is equally discredited by
the prevalence of ill-assorted unions, a great many worthless peoples
living in magnificent lands, while far better peoples have much worse
ones."--Philosophy of History in France and Germany, pp. 191, 192.
NOTE XVII., page 146.
THE ORGANIC KINGDOM AND DESIGN.
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