I can never cease to regret that Huxley should have passed away without
seeing my argument and giving me the benefit of his comments. The
subject is one of a kind which we loved to discuss on quiet Sunday
evenings at his fireside in London, many years ago. I have observed on
Huxley's part, not only in the Romanes lecture, but also in the charming
"Prolegomena," written in 1894, a tendency to use the phrase "cosmic
process" in a restricted sense as equivalent to "natural selection;" and
doubtless if due allowance were made for that circumstance, the
appearance of antagonism between us would be greatly diminished. In our
many talks, however, I always felt that, along with abundant general
sympathy, there was a discernible difference in mental attitude. Upon
the proposition that "the foundation of morality is to ... give up
pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence," we were
heartily agreed. But I often found myself more strongly inclined than my
dear friend to ask the Tennysonian question:--
"Who forged that other influence,
That heat of inward evidence,
By which he doubts against the sense?"
In the third part of the present little book, "The Everlasting Reality
of Religion," my aim is to show that "that other influence," that inward
conviction, the craving for a final cause, the theistic assumption, is
itself one of the master facts of the universe, and as much entitled to
respect as any fact in physical nature can possibly be. The argument
flashed upon me about ten years ago, while reading Herbert Spencer's
controversy with Frederic Harrison concerning the nature and reality of
religion. Because Spencer derived historically the greater part of the
modern belief in an Unseen World from the savage's primeval world of
dreams and ghosts, some of his critics maintained that logical
consistency required him to dismiss the modern belief as utterly false;
otherwise he would be guilty of seeking to evolve truth from false-hood.
By no means, replied Spencer: "Contrariwise, the ultimate form of the
religious consciousness is the final development of a consciousness
which at the outset contained a germ of truth obscured by multitudinous
errors." This suggestion has borne fruit in the third part of the
present volume, where I have introduced a wholly new line of argument to
show that the Doctrine of Evolution, properly understood, does not
leave the scales equally balanced between Materialism and Theism, but
irredeemably discredits the former, while it places the latter upon a
firmer foundation than it has ever before occupied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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