by Paul Hazard
Admittedly, he underwent some startling metamorphoses. Empirical, “sensationist” as he was, it was he who inspired Berkeley’s idealism; nor was that by any means the most illogical of his adventures, since, if we ignore his starting-point and take up our abode inside his system, we find that we are living in a world not of realities but of relativities. Nothing could have been more repugnant to his desire, affirming as he did the existence of an Eternal Being, fountain of all intelligence, of infinite wisdom, than to be taken for a member of the materialistic school. His profession of faith, lengthy and detailed, struck an emphatic, even a solemn note; he proved with admirable cogency that matter could not be co-eternal with an eternal spirit.[2] But in passing, and as though carried away by his own conception of God’s infinite power, he declared that, after all, God may well have “given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think”;[3] a rash statement which was promptly denounced by the theologians, and which, exploited and popularised by Voltaire, resulted in Locke’s whole work being for a long time misunderstood: Locke became a materialist despite himself. He wanted to be a Christian, and one of his preoccupations was clearly to define the limits of reason and faith. Reason serves to establish the certainty, or the probability, of those propositions or truths which the mind arrives at by deductions from the ideas it has acquired by making use of its natural faculties, viz., sensation or reflection. “Faith is the assent to any proposition not thus made out by the deductions of reason, but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God in some extraordinary way of communication. This way of discovering truths to men we call Revelation.” So, then, he believed in Revelation, in the divine mission of Jesus Christ, in the authority of the Gospel, in miracles. He held that the most exacting of thinkers, thinkers most prone to scepticism, could furnish no valid reason for doubting the Gospel Revelation: such was his own statement of the case. On the other hand, he reduced his credenda to a minimum: faith in Christ, and in the doctrine of repentance. As he asserted that there was no condition of salvation other than belief in the mission of Jesus, and living a good life; as he refused to believe that all Adam’s posterity were doomed to infinite and everlasting torment because of the sin of the first man, of whom millions of mankind had never heard, he was, because of all this, classed among the Deists. He was looked on as a friend of Toland, and his Reasonable Christianity was ranged alongside Christianity not Mysterious. This was profoundly painful to him, particularly as it was his special aim to bring back to the religious fold all who had been alienated from it by a soulless formalism, by dogmatic hair-splitting, and by the multiplicity of warring sects; and further, because he wanted to show that Natural Religion was intrinsically insufficient; and, finally, because the Deists were the very people he longed above all things to confute; Deists who, in the name of Reason, rejected Revelation.
Such were the consequences, and such the drawbacks, of a line of thought which was not invariably self-consistent, and which freely exposed itself to attack by its opponents. However, in spite of misinterpretations, and deviations, and cross-currents, his system continued to gain ground, and in a direction that was plainly discernible. Locke was pre-eminently the man who invited every sensible man to cultivate his garden and not go outside it. Cultivating a garden; what better calculated than that to conjure up for a man a picture of the Earthly Paradise? Or at least to bring him comfort and renew his zest for life? Finally, and in particular, Locke it was who aroused a lively interest in that very important and highly fascinating diversion—psychology. Attentively to study and investigate the capacity and workings of the human mind, without any idea of criticizing or finding fault, but solely to observe and understand—this was at once a toil and a pleasure which, refined upon by Condillac, and later on, by Taine, has come down to our own day, losing nothing of its interest and attraction.
[1]Foreword to Pierre Coste’s translation.
[2]Essay, IV, 10.
[3]Ibid., IV, 3.
II
DEISM AND NATURAL RELIGION
HERE we have yet another of the numerous and powerful links that connect the Renaissance with the period we have selected for our present study. Deism originated in Italy. Early in the XVIth century it migrated to France and settled there, so to say, for it was in France that it acquired its formal titles, in France that repeated attempts were made to fix and define its vague and shifting boundaries. In the earlier half of the XVIIth century, it often showed its head; thereafter, it lived on mainly in penumbra. However, an English offshoot had early detached itself from the parent tree. It was in the year 1624, in Paris, that Edward Herbert of Cherbury composed a Deist’s profession of faith, which, far from being a string of negations and impieties, was reverent, religious, indeed, almost mystical in its tone. At the outset, he warns the reader that he proposes to deal, not with religion, but with the understanding. Well, that may be so, but still there are verities of religion which the understanding accepts, and of such were the doctrinal precepts of Lord Herbert of Cherbury: there is a Supreme Power; it is our duty to worship that Power; the practice of virtue is part of the worship which men render to God; impiety and crime are expiated by penitence; reward and punishment await us in the life to come. . . .
And in England; transplanted into this new milieu, Deism multiplied and prospered. It had found the climate and the soil that suited it; it felt at home. Openly, in the public forum, so to speak, its apologists and its adversaries joined issue in debate. Toland supported it with bitter and fanatical ferocity; Bentley, Berkeley, Clarke, Butler, Warburton confronted him as champions of revealed religion. In short, “there was no other country where Natural Religion was more clearly set forth than it was in England”.[1]
Later on, in the ceaseless ebb and flow of ideas, France was again to open her arms to Deism, but this time it was a Deism habited in foreign guise, at least so it appeared to her. Voltaire took his religious philosophy from it, and Rousseau, when he wanted to portray the ideal Deist, that is to say, a materialist and a righteous man, presented him in the person of an Englishman, whom he called Milord Edouard Bomston. But its high blossoming time was yet to come; for the moment it was still endeavouring to take firm root.
The negative elements in its composition are easily discernible. “There must be no sort of constraint, nothing could be more out of keeping with the times”.[2] Catholic, Protestant, Jew— there was constraint in all of them. There must be no more of it. No more priests, no more pastors, no more rabbis, all alike claiming to wield authority. No more sacraments, no more rites and ceremonies, no more fasting and mortifying the flesh, no more feeling that you are obliged, willy-nilly, to go to church, chapel, synagogue, or whatever it may be. The Bible is a book just like any other book; there is nothing supernatural about it; no more Tables of the Law; no more Ten Commandments. Deism is a sort of creditor demanding payment of a deferred liability. God is cast in a new mould. The present age will have no more of divine wrath, divine vengeance; nor, for the matter of that, will it tolerate any divine interference with human affairs. Vague, indefinite, remote, God did not look like causing very much embarrassment. The consciousness of sin, the need for grace, the uncertainty of salvation, which for so many centuries had been a weight upon so many hearts, would trouble the sons of men no more.
So much for the negative aspect of Deism. Its positive characteristics, what were they?
If Deism rejected the God of Israel, Abraham and Jacob, it at least believed that there was a God. If it denied Revealed Religion, at least it would not admit that the Heavens were empty. Nor did it regard man, and man alone, as the measure of the universe. So it happened that among the many denunciatory utterances pronounced by Catholic, Huguenot or Anglican, there crept in from time to time a softer, almost an approving note, as might happen when men share, even with those they are arguing against, the fundamentals, the alpha and the omega, of religion, that is to say a belief in God. Michel Le Vassor, a priest of the Oratory, filled
with sorrow and affliction at Richard Simon’s attitude, took it upon himself to vindicate the Order, and in 1688 brought out, to this end, a voluminous treatise which he entitled De la Véritable Religion, “Concerning True Religion”. “More reasonable and more judicious than the Platonists and the Epicureans, some Deists there are today who avow in good faith that certain principles of natural religion and morality do exist, and that man is in duty bound to conform to them. But, they continue, those principles suffice, and we do not need any Revelation, or written law, to remind us of what we owe to God and our neighbour. Reason is guide enough, and God will always approve, so long as we obey the moral and religious instincts which He has implanted in our hearts.”[3] And so, for this Catholic apologist, some Deists (some, but not all, for the genus included a diversity of species) stood, not so much for unqualified negation in matters of religion, as for a regrettable deviation from the path.
Now let us see what the Protestants thought about it all. That very learned man, Robert Boyle, taking a dismal view of the encroachments of infidelity, set aside the rent of a house he owned in London to finance a series of annual lectures which bore his name. They were lectures on religion, which were not to concern themselves with sectarian differences, but rather to set forth the general principles on which religious belief could be firmly established, to bring out clearly the proofs of the Christian faith, and to defend them against the assaults of unbelievers, of notorious infidels such as Atheists, Deists, Pagans, Jews and Mohammedans, while disregarding the controversies which the various Christian bodies carried on one with another. The Boyle lectures, which adhered to the lines laid down by their founder, proved a conspicuous success. The most learned theologians in the land, the most eloquent preachers, were invited to lecture, among them Samuel Clarke, at that time Chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich. On two occasions he had the honour of speaking, once, in 1704, and again in the year following. Let us hear what he had to say about the Deists. They are of four kinds; those who pretend to believe in the existence of an eternal, infinite, independent and intelligent Being, but who disbelieve in Providence; those who accept God and Providence, but maintain that God does not concern himself as to whether actions are morally good or bad; actions being judged good or bad in the light of arbitrary, man-made laws; those who accept God, Providence and Moral Duty, but decline to believe in the Immortality of the soul, or in a future life.
“The last sort of Deists are those, who if they did indeed believe what they pretend, have just and right notions of God, and of all the divine attributes in every respect; who declare they believe that there is One, Eternal, Infinite, Intelligent, All-powerful and Wise Being, the Creator, Preserver, and Governour of all Things.”
The note struck by Samuel Clarke was similar in tone to that of Michel Le Vassor: the most tractable of the Deists retain the elements of a positive religious system; the misfortune is that they deny Revelation.
If we now interrogate a layman—in the person of the sensitive and gifted Dryden—shall we err if we seem to discover in his verse a condemnation indeed, but a condemnation mitigated and almost compassionate, of the Deists, because he is aware of the vague religious sympathies which many of them still retain?
Dryden encounters them on the road when he is dealing with the philosophers who had stated their views about the Summum Bonum, and this is how he portrays them:
The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground,
Cries Eurêka, the mighty secret’s found:
God is that spring of good, supreme and best,
We made to serve, and in that service blest;
If so, some rules of worship must be given,
Distributed to all alike by Heaven;
Else God were partial and to some denied,
The means His justice should for all provide.
This general worship is to Praise and Pray:
One part to borrow blessings, one to pay:
And when frail nature slides into offence,
The sacrifice for crime is penitence.
Yet since the effects of Providence, we find,
Are variously dispensed to human kind;
That vice triumphs and virtue suffers here
(A brand that sovereign justice cannot bear):
Our Reason prompts us to a future state,
The last appeal from Fortune and from Fate,
Where God’s all-righteous ways will be declared,
The bad meet punishment, the good reward.
Thus Man by his own strength to Heaven would soar,
And would not be obliged to God for more.[4]
The Deists whom Dryden thus depicts are Rationalists, but they are Rationalists with a heart-hunger for Religion. The Deism which we meet with in the writings of the period attenuates the idea of God, but does not annihilate it. It makes God the object of a belief vaguely defined, perhaps, yet positive none the less, and intentionally so. It sufficed at all events to endow its adherents with a sense of superiority over their godless brethren; it enabled them to pray and to worship; it prevented them from feeling that they were alone in the world, lost and fatherless; so that the Vicaires Savoyards of the morrow, when they saw the sun gilding their mountain-tops, would be able to pour forth their pent-up emotions and, weeping, return to the ways of faith. It is no easy matter to be an Atheist and brutally to crush out belief in the divine; it is incomparably easier to be a Deist. Those sweeping rebellions, those absolute negations, call for a character not a little out of the ordinary. “The difference”, says Bayle, “between an Atheist and a Deist is almost negligible, when you come to look into the matter.” But in that almost countless nuances come home to roost. “A Deist,” Bonald will one day be telling us, “is simply a man who hasn’t had time to become an Atheist.” “A man who doesn’t want to be an Atheist”, would be much nearer the mark.
It was not for nothing that Deism got its finishing touches among a people who are used to halting their ideas just where they think they will; where a doctrine gets its wings clipped when it goes too far and threatens the moral stability of the country. That is so, if we may believe the words of a contemporary: “This was always look’d upon as a good natur’d nation, well dispos’d to religion and receptive of vertuous impressions, and tho’ one cannot without astonishment see the wonderful progress that profaneness and immorality have made among us, yet I flatter myself that it is but an acute and temporary distemper, being so much against the native constitution of the people, that I hope is still strong enough to throw off by degrees this malignant ferment, which if it be unable to do so, the event must be deplorable”.[5]
The popular mind sees no cause for astonishment or alarm in a deliberate limitation, or even in a contradiction. Such an attitude of mind will do quite well for a religion without mystery. Therefore it discards mystery, but it sticks to religion. However, as an Englishman looks on religion, ideas are not merely a matter of logic; the will, too, has a part to play.
Secondly, what the Deists did next was to preserve the idea of obedience to a law; and that law was the law of Nature. That there is such a law is freely acknowledged by Catholics: Est in hominibus lex quaedam naturalis, participatio videlicet legis aeternae, secundum quam bonum et malum discernunt.[6] There is among men a certain natural law, that is to say a part of the law eternal, in the light of which they distinguish good from evil. . . . Protestants, who recognize it the more readily in that they are themselves closer to Rationalism and more disposed to travel some of the way with the philosophers, hold it partly from conviction and partly because they have to harmonize their apologetics with the tone of the times. The reinforcement they thus obtained from the Deists, was by no means to be despised. It would mean a certain amount of territory won from the Atheists, in whose camp would reign consternation and confusion.
The only trouble was that when this concept, Nature, came to be more closely scrutinized, certain divergencies were brought to light, divergencies which could not be glossed over. There
were at least three of them. In the first place, what neither Catholics nor Protestants could agree to was that this enterprising Nature, not content with figuring as a seven day creation, not content to ascribe all its beauty to Him who called it out of chaos, should little by little be usurping the place of its Creator, that it should pose as His intermediary and even as His substitute, that it should be regarded as the Order, the supreme Order, to which God Himself was obliged to conform; that it was, in fact, the ultimate Essence. We have already seen the repugnance with which Spinoza’s ideas were received.
Secondly, what religious folk could not admit was that Nature should be regarded as a kind of moral instinct, capable of becoming a complete religion in itself, a religion which would have been merely a matter of man’s adjusting himself to the laws of Nature; that, and nothing more than that.
Thirdly, if we hold that Nature is “a kindly mother”, as Lahontan says; or, as Shaftesbury puts it, that “Nature has no malice”; and that, in order to live a good life it is enough to obey the laws of Nature, what becomes of original sin and the corruption that flowed therefrom? What of the need for redemption? Life on earth then is no longer to be regarded as a state of trial during which we are to fight against the seeds of evil that are in us, so that, overcoming them, we may win to Heaven at last.