scientific theory of evolution, the moral sense has been developed in
ourselves[28].
The truth is that in this matter natural theologians begin by assuming
that the First Cause, if intelligent, _must_ be moral; and then they are
blinded to the strictly logical weakness of the argument whereby they
endeavour to sustain their assumption. For aught that we can tell to the
contrary, it may be quite as 'anthropomorphic' a notion to attribute
morality to God as it would be to attribute those capacities for
sensuous enjoyment with which the Greeks endowed their divinities. The
Deity may be as high above the one as the other--or rather perhaps we
may say as much external to the one as to the other. Without being
supra-moral, and still less immoral, He may be un-moral: our ideas of
morality may have no meaning as applied to Him.
But if we go thus far in one direction, I think, _per contra_, it must
in consistency be allowed that the argument from the constitution of the
human mind acquires more weight when it is shifted from the moral sense
to the religious instincts. For, on the one hand, these instincts are
not of such obvious use to the species as are those of morality; and,
on the other hand, while they are unquestionably very general, very
persistent, and very powerful, they do not appear to serve any 'end' or
'purpose' in the scheme of things, unless we accept the theory which is
given of them by those in whom they are most strongly developed. Here I
think we have an argument of legitimate force, although it does not
appear that such was the opinion entertained of it by Mill. I think the
argument is of legitimate force, because if the religious instincts of
the human race point to no reality as their object, they are out of
analogy with all other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal
kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing
aimlessly, and therefore the fact of man being, as it is said, 'a
religious animal'--i.e. presenting a class of feelings of a peculiar
nature directed to particular ends, and most akin to, if not identical
with, true instinct--is so far, in my opinion, a legitimate argument in
favour of the reality of some object towards which the religious side of
this animal's nature is directed. And I do not think that this argument
is invalidated by such facts as that widely different intellectual
conceptions touching the character of this object are entertained by
different races of mankind; that the force of the religious instincts
differs greatly in different individuals even of the same race; that
these instincts admit of being greatly modified by education; that they
would probably fail to be developed in any individual without at least
so much education as is required to furnish the needful intellectual
conceptions on which they are founded; or that we may not improbably
trace their origin, as Mr. Spencer traces it, to a primitive mode of
interpreting dreams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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