The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1917. FOUNDATIONS OF RATIONALISM

New Zealand Tablet, 13 December 1917, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1917. FOUNDATIONS OF RATIONALISM

and then we read the confession of an OSM T honest man who is not abashed to tell the world ; that his denial of the existence of the supernatural order ' springs from his knowledge that the existence of a Judge Who should one day call him, to an account • of his stewardship is a thing that he wants to forget. i Not all men : are honest enough to . make such a confession ; and .not all men owe. their loss of faith to loss of moral self-respect.

There is a fair proportion of rationalism to be attributed to the fact that people who have not the education nor the opportunities to make their own researches are too ready to accept as irrefragable argument the words of men who by some way or other have obtained popular recognition as authorities on science or, philosophy. Paul Bourget describes in Le Disciple how far-reaching in their evil effects may become the theories of an old dreamer who has himself not the remotest notion of ever reducing to practice the doctrines he so dogmatically advances. Bourget’s philosopher had at any rate the merit of being honest, if short-sighted; but there are also a number of . philosophers who lead people astray knowing all the while that they are not even honest. In a lecture before the Catholic students of University College, Cork, Professor Alfred Rahilly lately showed how men quoted by less educated Rationalists in support of their unbelief frequently misled their audiences in a manner that was nothing short of the prostitution of science. * There is no getting away from the fact that it is disturbing to find that great men with highly cultivated minds have lost faith in God, especially when they attribute their unbelief to their scientific researches. And it comes as a shock when we learn that such men, whose words are accepted as oracles by young people whose faith is not robust enough to stand much strain, have in many instances wilfully misled thenaudiences and been guilty of such a crime against scientific truth as to publish as facts what they knew in their hearts were only their own fancies. Professor Rahilly examines several concrete instances of unbelief, and contrasts what the unbelievers have told their dupes with what they believed. 'He selects for his enquiry, not, as he tells us, “men of straw, not atheists of the stamp of Tom Paine, Charles Bradlaugh, or Robert Blatchford, but men of scientific and philosophical pre-eminence, whose want of faith is apt to puzzle a Catholic student.” After showing that Gibbon did not lose his faith as a result of his investigations- into the origin of Christianity, as he would have us believe, and that researches into Semitic religion and philology had nothing to do with the atheism of Renan man who could speak of the “vanity of this virtue (chastity) as of all others,” — and proving that their attacks followed not from studious examinations but from a bias due to early youthful influences ; he goes on to examine the case of Huxley, the most “redoubtable protagonist of scientific agnosticism.” The exposure of Huxley’s is almost as shameful as that of his brother unbeliever Haeckel, who, like the English scientist, is the chief authority of such dabblers in science as Joseph McCabe. Huxley’s own account of early influences is a revelation —“Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training or with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course was arrested' in timebefore I had earned absolute destruction and for long years I have been slowly and painfully climbing, with many a fall, towards better things. And when I look back what do I find have been the agents of my redemption The hope of immortality or of future reward? I can honestly say that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not entered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at work. Sartor Desartus led me to know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with an entire absence of theology. Secondly, ■ science and her methods gave, me a resting-place independent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature and impressed me with a deep sense of responsibility.” . Here we have a candid admission that even in his boyhood Huxley had no. faith, 'arid the argument that he was an unbeliever because he could riot reconcile faith and science at once collapses. ' Arid let it be remembered that it is precisely in that way the authority and ‘ the name of men Huxley : are used by so many Rationalists whose - science is only ! second-hand. -■ ■ ;

There is still more to be said regarding the folly of those who are so easily misled, and also regarding the absolute dishonesty of their guides. It were an honorable course for such men as Huxley to come forward and state that their unbelief was antecedent to their investigations, and it is not creditable to say the least that they allow their followers to believe the contrary. But what is to be said of them , if they actually misrepresent facts and betray their trust as scientists in order to deceive their dupes ? Would they not, if they were guilty of such a crime, deserve to be scourged from the Temple of Science and branded publicly as contemptible charlatans? Now, this is exactly what Huxley did, and what—to mention one otherHaeckel did. In his biological lectures Huxley, as we are told in his life, “did not in the least mean to say that one species turned into another to develop thereafter into a third”; he simply meant “that the characters of the second are intermediate between the two others.” In other words, he did not teach the genetic theory at all. Being questioned on this striking fact by Father Hahn, S.J., who attended his lectures, Huxley answered that in his lectures to students he had time to put the facts before a trained audience, but that in his public lectures he passed over facts rapidly and put forward his personal convictions. And he added, “it is for this people come to hear me.” He candidly admitted that his popular science was based not on facts, but on his personal convictions, and he did not even have the honesty to tell his audiences that his lectures were not scientific but mere fairy tales. He makes no attempt to conceal the fraud he perpetrated. . “My workmen stick to me wonderfully, the house being fuller than ever last night. By next Friday evening they will all be convinced that they are monkeys.” Again, “I told them that I entertained no doubt of the origin of man from the same stock as the apes. And to my great delight, in saintly Edinburgh itself, the announcement met with nothing but applause.” Here we have an astounding revelation of . methods that are not only dishonest but criminal. Huxley, Haeckel, and many minor lights by the prostitution of science rob of their faith half ignorant workmen and immature students, putting before them as facts, with all the authority of, their reputations, what are only unverified and frequently unsound hypotheses.