SOME SLASHING CRITICISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 2424, 30 August 1900, Page 63

SOME SLASHING CRITICISM.

STUDIES IN RELIGIOUS FALLACY. (Bx John M. Robertson.) lidndon: Watts and Co. (3s 6d). (Reviewed by Dixornis.) It has "been remarked, and truly, that ■when a Scotsman gifted with intelligence and individuality breaks away from the mind-fettering creeds of his race, he usually turns upon the exponents of those creeds and pitches into them with exceeding great fury. The inference is th?jt Calvinism — an extreme variety of religion — when rejected, is followed by a corres-pondingly extreme reaction. There is, i think, truth in this view, which' is exemplified in many instances. Mr Robertson is such a Scot, who, having presumably settled accounts with his oAvn iolk, now finds leisure for a wider fling at men and things, and it must ba admitted he has at them with xmdeniable -vim, vigour, and ability. .First oi eleven papers contained in the present volume is one entitled "Dogma in Masquerade,'' a destructively-trenchant criticism ot " Natural Law in the Spiritual World,"" by the late Professor Henry Dntmmond. Drummond was a past master in the art of fine writing, but that fact did not qualify him to perform, the impossible. His works are pseudo-scientific at b^st, a.nd it is significant that many of those who profess to value them are of those at* ho are .hostile to scientific methods and results as a whole. He was no real worker in I science — rjb best, in that regard, only a distributer of scientific j)ap to Free Kirk ' students, and no one who is at all conversant with the trend of present-day thought could read his very popular books and lail to perceive some at least of ihe numerous fallacies they entertain. Few readeia are, however, capable of exposing those fallacies with logical precision e.^uai to that of Mr Robertson. Let me Begin a new paragraph with a few words upon the late charming professor's attitude in regard to agnosticism. The growth of recent science and the rise an I spread of agnosticism have been coincident, and reasonable onlookers are justified in holding that the one fact is intimately associated with the other. According to Drummond the agnostic is "blind and deaf; dumb, torpid, and dead to the spiritual world." If a m:.n be dead it is hardly necessary to tell us that he is also blind, .deaf, dumb, and torpid. Taking the statement in the Sgrirative sense in which it is meant, it is. still very remarkable, seeing liqw very like the average agnostic is to vthe' average orthodox individual. In truth it is one of those things we iave been told so often that it is quite impossible to b.elieve it. But if there really is such an astounding difference mentally between orthodox and heterodox how conies it that from the " blind and deaf " we get so much splendid work, while from those superior beings who spiritually hear and see we all too frequently get so woefull trivial a legacy? In my humble opinion the adoption of agnostic principles and rapid progress in knowledge of universal processes ha>ve gone hand in hand, and are clcsely and fundamentally associated. During the last half-century, at any rate, even those great workers in science and philoscphy who have professed old-time orthodoxy, have worked along lines marked out by unorthodox leaders of pre-eminent influence. The agnostic, Charles Da.rwin, tavght every student of Nature how to work at the study of " living nature. " Herbert Spencer (" gentlest of rabbis," a.s Stevenson called him) by his unexampled labours has familiarised the thoughtfulminded of all lands with a philosophical conception of the universe -which is, at leas-t, ' vastly superior to anything of the kind previously attempted. The evolutionary structure may be as yet far from complete and perfect, but is being made more complete every day, and along with this we see the outworn and too often pernicious doctrines that preceded it fading a-way into nothingness — mere wrack upon the seashores of Tinie. I myself have been acquainted with a few of the smaller fry of science who combined alleged orthodoxy in theological matters with useful practical Heterodoxy in their scientific work. This is common, and is flatly contradictory of Drummond's monstious contention regarding the spiritual deafness, blindness, and torpidity of the agnostic, for it shows the man who is supposed to hear and see making surrender to the man who is — according to Professor Drummond — blind, deaf, and dead ! Such, however, is the charm of Drummond's style, that I, for one, am sorry to see his essays merit the flagellation they get from the Robertsonian whip; yet they do merit it all the same. Another leading victim is Mr Andrew Lang, and certainly he does not show up well, under the brisk handling to which his critic subjects him. He is the author of various new notions and new books, one of the latter being "The Making of Religion." This is the treatise that Mr Robertson reduces to mincemeat and scatters to the four ■winds. In truth, the versatile Andrew's notion — it is not entitled to be called a theory — -that the " earliest man," whoever lie was, was capable of perceiving the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul, hardly satisfies the reason. It does ■ not at all chime in with the facts of modem scholarship and science, which tell us clearly that the earliest races were no more than infantile in intelligence, amd it certainly does not hai-monise with the accepted belief that knowledge of God, his intents and purposes, was revealed to man fov God himself. That revelation, presumably, war- givcu to men of culture equal to that, or greater than that. of M~ A. L«ng, or the ruck of us to-day, not to a lot of' savages such as were our undoubted ancestors. MiLang's early s<n a,ge had a finer sense of the '" supernormal " than the average Christian of our time owns. He (our remotest ancestor, atcord'ng to science, not theology) te&i " faith ia Qod and in, the Immortality

of the Soul," while we of £b-day, in regard to these subjects are largely at the meicy of every controversial wind that blowe — As if religion were intended » For nothing else but to be mended. Even our ablest theologians continually pliift ground — what, for example, is commrner nowadays than the evolution-preach-ing parson who " accepts " Darwinism and ils "lowly beginnings" for the r.ica. and all the rest of it — with a little bit of reservation, of course? This individual is of those who will be confouaded by Mt Lang, and his clever, but thoddy- textured, argumei tation, which fits neither the old nor tb.3 new view of liuman origins. Mr Lang has brought much adverse criticism upon his head lately, but nothing so thorough in the way of ci tear-up of the Langian logic has come under my notice as is contained in the "Study of Fallacy." Mr Arthur J. Balfour's " Foundations of Belief comes in for a lively "bombardment, and its author is finally dismissed with a kick — '" Save in the matter of gold and ciaiorio. he can hardly be sad to have a single positive, independent, active impulse; his typical state of mind is that of spontaneous objection to other people's impulses." Some of the late Win. Ewart Gladstone's inflated and verbose utterances emerge in rather woe-begone guise from examination, a page and a half of " personal history" of the late eminent " rule-of-thumb statesman " being a very telling expose of the astounding changes of face he made during his long public career. There papers were originally published in Mr Gladstone's lifetime. Several other papers embody aible and iijdsive criticisms of the writings of Count Tcltstoi, Professor Freeman, George Eliot, en-i Mrs Humphry Ward. The lastnamed, he says — " writing as a kind of Kantian or Rousseaiute Thei&t, comes forward as the mediator between belief and uutelief ; and her way is to make out that any pha&e of popular superstition, however crude and vulgar, calls for the tender consideration of the enlightened ; while at her own hands the popular rationalism that meets vulgar superstition on a pfone certs inly not lower than its own is not mereiy not treated with a grain of sympathy for its straightforwDrdness and sincerity, but is angrily aspersed, libelled, belied." Even the Nonconformist Literary World asks to "bo allowed to commend Mr Robertson's critical ability and love of truth," and this volume will still further strengthen the claim made for him as being the deftest and acutest critic now in the literary arena of Britain. With regard to a very few passages it may ba urged that the critical tieatment is more solid and serious than in the nature of the case seems necessary.

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