



Produced by Linda Hamilton, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Les
Galloway and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)






    John Fiske's Writings.


 =MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS=: Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by
 Comparative Mythology. 12mo, $2.00.

 =OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY.= Based on the Doctrines of Evolution,
 with Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy. In two volumes, 8vo, $6.00.

 =THE UNSEEN WORLD=, and other Essays. 12mo, $2.00.

 =EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST.= 12mo, $2.00.

 =DARWINISM=, and other Essays. 12mo, $2.00.

 =THE DESTINY OF MAN=, viewed in the Light of His Origin. 16mo, $1.00.

 =THE IDEA OF GOD=, as affected by Modern Knowledge. A Sequel to "The
 Destiny of Man." 16mo, $1.00.


[asterism] _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on
receipt of price, by the Publishers_,

    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON.

 =AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS=, viewed from the Stand-point of Universal
 History. 12mo, $1.00. HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.


    THE IDEA OF GOD AS AFFECTED
    BY MODERN KNOWLEDGE

    [Illustration; Decorative symbol]

    BY JOHN FISKE

    [Illustration; Decorative panel]

    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
    The Riverside Press, Cambridge
    1886


    Copyright, 1885,
    BY JOHN FISKE.

    _All rights reserved._


    _The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
    Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.


    To

    MY WIFE,

    IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE SWEET SUNDAY MORNING
    UNDER THE APPLE-TREE ON THE HILLSIDE,
    WHEN WE TWO SAT LOOKING DOWN INTO FAIRY WOODLAND PATHS,
    AND TALKED OF THE THINGS
    SINCE WRITTEN IN THIS LITTLE BOOK,
    I now dedicate it.

           *       *       *       *       *

    +Arghyrion kai chrysion ouch hyparchei
    moi; ho de echo, touto soi didomi.+




  PREFACE


When asked to give a second address before the Concord School of
Philosophy, I gladly accepted the invitation, as affording a proper
occasion for saying certain things which I had for some time wished to
say about theism. My address was designed to introduce the discussion
of the question whether pantheism is the legitimate outcome of modern
science. It seemed to me that the object might best be attained by
passing in review the various modifications which the idea of God
has undergone in the past, and pointing out the shape in which it is
likely to survive the rapid growth of modern knowledge, and especially
the establishment of that great doctrine of evolution which is fast
obliging us to revise our opinions upon all subjects whatsoever.
Having thus in the text outlined the idea of God most likely to be
conceived by minds trained in the doctrine of evolution, I left it for
further discussion to decide whether the term "pantheism" can properly
be applied to such a conception. While much enlightenment may be got
from carefully describing the substance of a philosophic doctrine,
very little can be gained by merely affixing to it a label; and I
could not but feel that my argument would be simply encumbered by the
introduction of any question of nomenclature involving such a vague and
uninstructive epithet as "pantheism." Such epithets are often regarded
with favour and freely used, as seeming to obviate the necessity for
that kind of labour to which most people are most averse,--the labour
of sustained and accurate thinking. People are too apt to make such
general terms do duty in place of a careful examination of facts, and
are thus sometimes led to strange conclusions. When, for example, they
have heard somebody called an "agnostic," they at once think they know
all about him; whereas they have very likely learned nothing that is
of the slightest value in characterizing his opinions or his mental
attitude. A term that can be applied at once to a Comte, a Mansel, and
a Huxley is obviously of little use in the matter of definition. But,
it may be asked, in spite of their world-wide differences, do not these
three thinkers agree in holding that nothing can be known about the
nature of God? Perhaps so,--one cannot answer even this plain question
with an unqualified yes; but, granting that they fully agree in this
assertion of ignorance, nevertheless, in their philosophic attitudes
with regard to this ignorance, in the use they severally make of the
assertion, in the way it determines their inferences about all manner
of other things, the differences are so vast that nothing but mental
confusion can come from a terminology which would content itself
by applying to all three the common epithet "agnostic." The case is
similar with such a word as "pantheism," which has been familiarly
applied to so many utterly diverse systems of thought that it is
very hard to tell just what it means. It has been equally applied to
the doctrine of "the Hindu philosophers of the orthodox Brahmanical
schools," who "hold that all finite existence is an illusion, and life
mere vexation and mistake, a blunder or sorry jest of the Absolute;"
and to the doctrine of the Stoics, who "went to the other extreme,
and held that the universe was the product of perfect reason and in
an absolute sense good." (Pollock's "Spinoza," p. 356.) In recent
times it has been commonly used as a vituperative epithet, and hurled
indiscriminately at such unpopular opinions as do not seem to call
for so heavy a missile as the more cruel term "atheism." The writer
who sets forth in plain scientific language a physical theory of the
universe is liable to be scowled at and called an atheist; but, when
the very same ideas are presented in the form of oracular apophthegm or
poetic rhapsody, the author is more gently described as "tinctured with
pantheism."

But out of the chaos of vagueness in which this unhappy word has been
immersed it is perhaps still possible to extract something like a
definite meaning. In the broadest sense there are three possible ways
in which we may contemplate the universe.

_First_, we may regard the world of phenomena as sufficient unto
itself, and deny that it needs to be referred to any underlying and
all-comprehensive unity. Nothing has an ultimate origin or destiny;
there is no dramatic tendency in the succession of events, nor any
ultimate law to which everything must be referred; there is no
reasonableness in the universe save that with which human fancy
unwarrantably endows it; the events of the world have no orderly
progression like the scenes of a well-constructed plot, but in the
manner of their coming and going they constitute simply what Chauncey
Wright so aptly called "cosmical weather;" they drift and eddy about in
an utterly blind and irrational manner, though now and then evolving,
as if by accident, temporary combinations which have to us a rational
appearance. This is Atheism, pure and unqualified. It recognizes no
Omnipresent Energy.

_Secondly_, we may hold that the world of phenomena is utterly
unintelligible unless referred to an underlying and all-comprehensive
unity. All things are manifestations of an Omnipresent Energy which
cannot be in any imaginable sense personal or anthropomorphic; out
from this eternal source of phenomena all individualities proceed, and
into it they must all ultimately return and be absorbed; the events
of the world have an orderly progression, but not toward any goal
recognizable by us; in the process of evolution there is nothing that
from any point of view can be called teleological; the beginning and
end of things--that which is Alpha and Omega--is merely an inscrutable
essence, a formless void. Such a view as this may properly be called
Pantheism. It recognizes an Omnipresent Energy, but virtually
identifies it with the totality of things.

_Thirdly_, we may hold that the world of phenomena is intelligible
only when regarded as the multiform manifestation of an Omnipresent
Energy that is in some way--albeit in a way quite above our finite
comprehension--anthropomorphic or quasi-personal. There is a
true objective reasonableness in the universe; its events have
an orderly progression, and, so far as those events are brought
sufficiently within our ken for us to generalize them exhaustively,
their progression is toward a goal that is recognizable by human
intelligence; "the process of evolution is itself the working out of
a mighty Teleology of which our finite understandings can fathom but
the scantiest rudiments" ("Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 406); it is
indeed but imperfectly that we can describe the dramatic tendency in
the succession of events, but we can see enough to assure us of the
fundamental fact that there is such a tendency; and this tendency is
the objective aspect of that which, when regarded on its subjective
side, we call Purpose. Such a theory of things is Theism. It recognizes
an Omnipresent Energy, which is none other than the living God.

It is this theistic doctrine which I hold myself, and which in the
present essay I have sought to exhibit as the legitimate outcome
of modern scientific thought. I was glad to have such an excellent
occasion for returning to the subject as the invitation from Concord
gave me, because in a former attempt to expound the same doctrine I
do not seem to have succeeded in making myself understood. In my
"Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," published in 1874, I endeavoured to
set forth a theory of theism identical with that which is set forth
in the present essay. But an acute and learned friend, writing under
the pseudonym of "Physicus," in his "Candid Examination of Theism"
(London, 1878), thus criticizes my theory: In it, he says, "while I am
able to discern the elements which I think may properly be regarded as
common to Theism and to Atheism, I am not able to discern any single
element that is specifically distinctive of Theism" (p. 145). The
reason for the inability of "Physicus" to discern any such specifically
distinctive element is that he misunderstands me as proposing to
divest the theistic idea of every shred of anthropomorphism, while
still calling it a theistic idea. This, he thinks, would be an utterly
illegitimate proceeding, and I quite agree with him. In similar wise my
friend Mr. Frederick Pollock, in his admirable work on Spinoza (London,
1880), observes that "Mr. Fiske's doctrine excludes the belief in a
so-called Personal God, and the particular forms of religious emotion
dependent on it" (p. 356). If the first part of this sentence stood
alone, I might pause to inquire how much latitude of meaning may be
conveyed in the expression "so-called;" is it meant that I exclude the
belief in a Personal God as it was held by Augustine and Paley, or as
it was held by Clement and Schleiermacher, or both? But the second
clause of the sentence seems to furnish the answer; it seems to imply
that I would practically do away with Theism altogether.

Such a serious misstatement of my position, made in perfect good faith
by two thinkers so conspicuous for ability and candour, shows that,
in spite of all the elaborate care with which the case was stated in
"Cosmic Philosophy," some further explanation is needed. It is true
that there are expressions in that work which, taken singly and by
themselves, might seem to imply a total rejection of theism. Such
expressions occur chiefly in the chapter entitled "Anthropomorphic
Theism," where great pains are taken to show the inadequacy of
the Paley argument from design, and to point out the insuperable
difficulties in which we are entangled by the conception of a Personal
God as it is held by the great majority of modern theologians
who have derived it from Plato and Augustine. In the succeeding
chapters, however, it is expressly argued that the total elimination
of anthropomorphism from the idea of God is impossible. There are
some who, recognizing that the ideas of Personality and Infinity are
unthinkable in combination, seek to escape the difficulty by speaking
of God as the "Infinite Power;" that is, instead of a symbol derived
from our notion of human consciousness, they employ a symbol derived
from our notion of force in general. For many philosophic purposes the
device is eminently useful; but it should not be forgotten that, while
the form of our experience of Personality does not allow us to conceive
it as infinite, it is equally true that the form of our experience
of Force does not allow us to conceive it as infinite, since we know
force only as antagonized by other force. Since, moreover, our notion
of force is purely a generalization from our subjective sensations of
effort overcoming resistance, there is scarcely less anthropomorphism
lurking in the phrase "Infinite Power" than in the phrase "Infinite
Person." Now in "Cosmic Philosophy" I argue that the presence of God
is the one all-pervading fact of life, from which there is no escape;
that while in the deepest sense the nature of Deity is unknowable by
finite Man, nevertheless the exigencies of our thinking oblige us to
symbolize that nature in some form that has a real meaning for us; and
that we cannot symbolize that nature as in any wise physical, but are
bound to symbolize it as in some way psychical. I do not here repeat
the arguments, but simply state the conclusions. The final conclusion
(vol. ii. p. 449) is that we must not say that "God is Force," since
such a phrase inevitably calls up those pantheistic notions of blind
