The Forces of Renascence
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
As with the cause of democracy, so with the cause of rationalism, the forward movement grew only the deeper and more powerful through the check; and the nineteenth century closed on a record of freethinking progress which may be said to outbulk that of all the previous centuries of the modern era together. So great was the activity of the century in point of mere quantity that it is impossible, within the scheme of a “Short History,” to treat it on even such a reduced scale of narrative as has been applied to the past. A detailed history on national lines from the French Revolution onwards would mean another book as large as the present. On however large a scale it might be written, further, it would involve a recognition of international influences such as had never before been evolved, save when on a much smaller scale the educated world all round read and wrote Latin. Since Goethe, the international aspect of culture upon which he laid stress has become ever more apparent; and scientific and philosophical thought, in particular, are world-wide in their scope and bearing. It must here suffice, therefore, to take a series of broad and general views of the past century’s work, leaving adequate critical and narrative treatment for separate undertakings.11 The most helpful method seems to be that of a conspectus (1) of the main movements and forces that during the century affected in varying degrees the thought of the civilized world, and (2) of the main advances made and the point reached in the culture of the nations, separately considered.
At the same time, the forces of rationalism may be discriminated into Particular and General. We may then roughly represent the lines of movement, in non-chronological order, as follows:—
I.—Forces of criticism and corrective thought bearing expressly on religious beliefs.
1. In Great Britain and America, the new movements of popular freethought begun by Paine, and lasting continuously to the present day.
2. In France and elsewhere, the reverberation of the attack of Voltaire, d’Holbach, Dupuis, and Volney, carried on most persistently in Catholic countries by the Freemasons, as against official orthodoxy after 1815.
3. German “rationalism,” proceeding from English deism, moving towards naturalist as against supernaturalist conceptions, dissolving the notion of the miraculous in both Old and New Testament history, analysing the literary structure of the sacred books, and all along affecting studious thought in other countries.
4. The literary compromise of Lessing, claiming for all religions a place in a scheme of “divine education.”
5. In England, the neo-Christianity of the school of Coleridge, a disintegrating force, promoting the “Broad Church” tendency, which in Dean Milman was so pronounced as to bring on him charges of rationalism.
6. The utilitarianism of the school of Bentham, carried into moral and social science.
7. Comtism, making little direct impression on the “constructive” lines laid by the founder, but affecting critical thought in many directions.
8. German philosophy, Kantian and post-Kantian, in particular the Hegelian, turned to anti-Christian and anti-supernaturalist account by Strauss, Vatke, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and Marx.
9. German atheism and scientific “materialism”—represented by Feuerbach and Büchner (who, however, rejected the term “materialism” as inappropriate).
10. Revived English deism, involving destructive criticism of Christianity, as in Hennell, F. W. Newman, R. W. Mackay, W. R. Greg, Theodore Parker, and Thomas Scott, partly in co-operation with Unitarianism.
11. American transcendentalism or pantheism—the school of Emerson.
12. Colenso’s preliminary attack on the narrative of the Pentateuch, a systematized return to Voltairean common-sense, rectifying the unscientific course of the earlier “higher criticism” on the historical issue.
13. The later or scientific “higher criticism” of the Old Testament—represented by Kuenen, Wellhausen, and their successors.
14. New historical criticism of Christian origins, in particular the work of Strauss and Baur in Germany, Renan and Havet in France, and their successors.
15. Exhibition of rationalism within the churches, as in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland generally; in England in the Essays and Reviews; later in multitudes of essays and books, and in the ethical criticism of the Old Testament; in America in popular theology.
16. Association of rationalistic doctrine with the Socialist movements, new and old, from Owen to Bebel.
17. Communication of doubt and moral questioning through poetry and belles-lettres—as in Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Clough, Tennyson, Carlyle, Arnold, Browning, Swinburne, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Victor Hugo, Leconte de Lisle, Leopardi, and certain French and English novelists.
II.—Modern Science, physical, mental, and moral, sapping the bases of all supernaturalist systems.
1. Astronomy, newly directed by Laplace.
2. Geology, gradually connected (as in Britain by Chambers) with
3. Biology, made definitely non-deistic by Darwin.
4. The comprehension of all science in the Evolution Theory, as by Spencer, advancing on Comte.
5. Psychology, as regards localization of brain functions.
6. Comparative mythology, as yet imperfectly applied to Christism.
7. Sociology, as outlined by Comte, Buckle, Spencer, Winwood Reade, Lester Ward, Giddings, Tarde, Durkheim, and others, on strictly naturalistic lines.
8. Comparative Hierology; the methodical application of principles insisted on by all the deists, and formulated in the interests of deism by Lessing, but latterly freed of his implications.
9. Above all, the later development of Anthropology (in the wide English sense of the term), which, beginning to take shape in the eighteenth century, came to new life in the latter part of the nineteenth; and is now one of the most widely cultivated of all the sciences—especially on the side of religious creed and psychology.
On the other hand, we may group somewhat as follows the general forces of retardation of freethought operating throughout the century:—
1. Penal laws, still operative in Britain and Germany against popular freethought propaganda, and till recently in Britain against any endowment of freethought.
2. Class interests, involving in the first half of the century a social conspiracy against rationalism in England.
3. Commercial pressure thus set up, and always involved in the influence of churches.
4. In England, identification of orthodox Dissent with political Liberalism—a sedative.
5. Concessions by the clergy, especially in England and the United States—to many, another sedative.
6. Above all, the production of new masses of popular ignorance in the industrial nations, and continued lack of education in the others.
7. On this basis, business-like and in large part secular-minded organization of the endowed churches, as against a freethought propaganda hampered by the previously named causes, and in England by laws which veto all direct endowment of anti-Christian heresy.
It remains to make, with forced brevity, the surveys thus outlined.