Heresy: Its Utility And Morality

owedly heretics, or charged by the orthodox with heresy, or whose labours can be shown to have tended to the growth of heresy, may probably be recorded than can be found during the whole of the pr

the few remains of his works give little ground for sharing the opinion of his persecutors. Yet many writers agree in writing as if his Atheism were of indisputable notoriety. He was a poor Neapolitan priest, he p

kle, "this was the last gasp of expiring bigotry; and since that memorable day, the soil of E

century list, for he died in 1603, but his only known work, "La Sagesse," belo

ad no control; and he urges that as each sect claims to be the only true one, we ought to rise superior to all sects, and without being terrified by the fear of future punishment, or allured by the hope of future happiness, "be content

at the two questions of the existence of God and the nature of the soul, were the chief of those which ought to be demonstrated rather by philosophy than by theology, for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to believe in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it does not seem possible ever to persuade the infidels to any religion unless we first prove to them these two things by natural reason." To prove this existence of God and the immortality of the soul, Descartes needed a firm starting point, one which no doubt could touch, one which no argument could shake. He found this point in the fact of his own existence. He could doubt everything else, but he could not doubt that he, the thinking doubter, existed. His own existence was the primal fact, the indubitable certainty,

o; to admit nothing but what so clearly and distinctly prese

e parts as possible, that each part being more ea

bjects the most simple, and therefore the easiest to be known, an

such circumspections as to be confident

are clearly and distinctly conscious must be true: everything which you

een treacherous. Descartes argued for three classes of ideas-acquired, compounded, and innate. It is in his assumption of innate ideas that you have one of the radical weaknesses of his system. Sir William Hamilton points ou

eal fully and truly with Descartes in the few lines which can be spared here, is impossible; all that is sought is to as it were catalogue his name in the seventeenth century list. Whether originator or imitator, whether founder or disciple, it is certain that Descartes gave a sharp spur to European thought, and mightily hastened the progress of heresy. It is not the object or duty of the present writer to examine or refute any of the extraordinary views entertained by Descartes as to vortices. Descartes himself is reported to have said "my theory of vortices is a philosophical romance." Science in the last three centuries has travelled even more rapidly than philosophy; and most of the physical speculations of Descartes are relegated to the region of grandly curious blunderings. There is one point of error held by Descartes sufficiently entertained even to-day-although most often without a distinct appreciation of the position-to justify a few words upon it. Descartes denied mental faculties to all the animal kingdom except mankind. All the brute kingdom he regarded as machines without intelligence. In this he was logical, even in error, for he accorded a soul to man which he denied to the brute. Soul and mind with him are identified, and thought is the fundamental attribute of mind. To admit that a dog, horse, or elephant can think, that it can remember what happened yesterday, that it can reason ever so incompletely, would be to admit that that dog, horse, or elephant, has some kind of soul; to avoid this he reduces all animals outside the human family to the position of machines. To-day science admits in animals, more or less according to their organisation, perception, memory, judgment, and even some sort of reason. Yet orthodoxy still claims a soul for man even if he be a madman from his birth, and denies it to the sagacious elephant, the intelligent horse, the faithful dog, and the cunning monkey. His proof of the existence of Deity is thus stated by Lewes:-"Interrogating his consciousness, he found that he had the idea of God, understanding by God, a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent. This, to him, was as certain a truth as the truth of his own existence. I exist: not only do I exist, but exist as a miserably imperfect finite being, subject to change, greatly ignorant, and incapable of creating anything. In this, my consciousness, I find by my finitude that I am not the All; by my imperfection, that I am not perfect. Yet an infinite and perfect being must exist, because infinity and perfection are implied as correlatives in my ideas of imperfection and finitude. God therefore exists: his existence is clearly proclaimed in my consciousness, and can no more be a matter of doubt, when fairly considered, than my own existence. The conception of an infinite being proves his real existence; for if there is not really such a being, I must have made the conception;

e orthodox dogma of mind as spiritual. "Whatever we imagine," he says, "is finite. Therefore, there is no idea, no conception of anything we call infinite." In a brief pamphlet on his own views, published in 1680, in reply to attacks upon him, he writes, "Besides the creation of the world there is no argument to prove a Deity," and "that it cannot be decided by any argument that the world had a beginning;" but he professes to admit the authori

will only sum them up in these three heads-power nutritive, power generative, and power motive, Of the powers of the mind there be two sorts-cognitive, imaginative, or conceptive, and motive. For the understanding of what I mean by the power cognitive, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain images or conceptions of the things without us. This imagery and representation of the qualities of the things without, is that which we call our conception, imagination, ideas, notice, or knowledge of them; and the faculty, or power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call cognitive power, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving." All the qualities called sensible are, in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth on our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. Because the image in vision, consisting of colour and shape, is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the objects of that sense; it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion that the same colour and sha

ritten a book "De Veritate," in favour of natural-and against any necessity for revealed-religion; and ye

the Latin tongue, and written avowedly with the intent of avoiding any conflict with the church, they gave but little immediate impetus to the great heretical movement. Arnauld charges Gassendi with overturning the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, in his discussion with Descartes, and Leibnitz charges Gassendi with corrupting and injuring the whole system of natural religion by the wavering nature of his opinions. Buckle says, "The rapid increase of heresy in the middle of the seven

ith the stake, he, to escape the fiery refutation, made a full recantation of his views, and restored to the world its dearly prized stain of natural deprav

berately shaping them, and who gave them at last to the world in a form more severe than with such subjects had ever been so much as attempted before? With him, as with all great men, there was no effort after sublime emotions. He was a plain, practical person; his object in philosophy, was only to find a rule by which to govern his own actions and his own judgment; and his treatises contain no more than the conclusions at which he arrived in this purely personal search, with the grounds on which he rested them." Spinoza, who was wise enough to know that it was utterly useless to expect an unfettered examination of philosophical problems by men who are bound to accept as an infallible arbiter any particular book, and who knew that reasonings must be of a very limited character which took the alleged Hebrew Revelation as the centre and starting point for all inquiry, and also as the circling, limitation line for all investigation-devoted himself to the task of examining how far the ordinary orthodox doctrines as to the infallibility of the Old Testament were fairly maintainable. It was for this reason he penned his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," wherein he says-"We see that they who are most under the influence of superstitious feelings, and who covet uncertainties without stint or measure, more especially when they fall into difficulty or danger, cannot help themselves, are the persons, who, with vows and prayers and womanly tears, implore the Divine assistance; who call reason, blind, and human wisdom vain; and all, forsooth, because they cannot find an assured way to the vanities they desire." "The mainspring of superstition is fear; by fear too is superstition sustained and nourished." "Men are chiefly assailed by superstition When suffering from fear, and all they then do in the name of a vain religion is, in fact, but the vaporous product of a sorrowful spirit, the delirium of a mind overpowered by terror." He proceeds, "I have often wondered that men who boast of the great advantage they enjoy under the Christian dispensation-the peace, the joy they experience, the brotherly love they feel towards all in its exercise-should nevertheless contend with so much acrimony, and show such intolerance and unappeasable hatred towards one another. If faith had to be inferred from action rather than profession, it would indeed be impossible to say to what sect or creed the majority of mankind belong." He laid down that "No one is bound by natural law to live according to the pleasure of another, but that every one is by natural title the rightful asserter of his own independence," and that "he or they govern best who concede to every one the privilege of thinking as he pleases, and of saying what he thinks." Criticising the Hebrew prophets, he points out that

, church traditions were ignored wherever inconsistent with reason, and the law it

pinions of his antagonists, that he was actually charged with heresy himself, and the epithets of Arian, Socinian, Deist, and even Atheist were freely levelled against him. "He has raised," says Dryden, "such strong objections against the being of a God and Providen

shut out from preferment in the church chiefly, if not entirely, on account of his many heterodox views. He did not accept the orthodox notions on the Mosaic account of the cre

ath of allegiance to William III., while secretly supporting James as King, Burnet says, "the prevaricati

s principles "lead to Atheism." In politics Locke laid down, that unjust and unlawful force on the part of the government might and ought to be resisted by force on the part of the citizens. He urged that on questions of theology there ought to be no penalties consequent upon the reception or rejection of any particular religious opinion. How far those were right who regarded Locke's metaphysical reasoning as; dangerous to orthodoxy may be, judged by the following extract on the origin of ideas:-: "Follow a child from its birth and observe the alterations that time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished

ave conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation; which is such an impression or emotion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the underst

ming also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses, by outward objects, or by its own operations, when it reflects on them. This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of anything, and the groundwork whereon to build

our minds will not let us be without, at least, some obscure notions of them. No man can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These simple ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter, when they are imprinted, nor blot them out and make new ones its

uctions were more widely read than those of Hobbes; but Locke really teaches the same doctrine as that laid down by Robert Owen in his views on the formation of character; and his views on sensation, as the primary source of ideas, are fatal to all notions of innate ideas and of freewill. Voltaire, speaking of Locke, says:-"'We shall, perhaps, never be capable of knowing whether a being purely material thinks or not.' This judicious and guarded observation was considered by more than one div

ted sick and unlikely to live, it is credibly stated that Newton went so far as to say that it would be well if the author of the essay on the Understanding were already dead. In 1689, one Cassimer Leszynski, a Polish knight, was burn

Atheist, than to have a false or unworthy idea of God; that a man can be at the same time an Atheist and an honest man, and that a people without a religion is capable of good order. Bayle's writings grew more heretical towards the latter part of his career, and he suffered considerable persecution at the hands o

nd commencing by attacking priests, he continued his attack against the revelation they preached. He was a frequent writer, but his "Christianity as old as the Creation" is his chief work, and the one which has provoked the greatest amount of discussion. It was published nearly at the close of his life, and after he had seen others of hi

odox notions, he yet, either in order to escape the law, or from the effect of his religious education, professed a respect for what he was pleased to call true Christianity, but which we should be inclined to consider, at the least, somewhat advanced Unitarianism. At last, however, his works were ordered to be burned by the common hangman, and to escape arrest and prosecution he had to flee to the Continent. Dr. J. Pye Smith describes Toland as a Panthe

therto almost stagnant pool of popular thought with some daring utterance or extravagant statement. Fanatics some, mystics some, alchemists some, materialists some, but all crude and imperfec

their country, or there were published editions of their works in that tongue. A century earlier, and but few escaped from the narrow bonds of learned Latin: two centuries before, and none got outside the Latin folios; but in this

articulars which have been related concerning these Scriptural philosophers, that their labours, however well intended, have been of little benefit to philosophy? Their fundamental error has consisted in supposing that the sacred Scriptures were intended, not only to instruct men in all things necessary to their salvation, but to teach the true principles of physical and metaphysic

Lord Keeper, and since his day no ecclesiastic has held the great seal of England, and to-day who even in the Church itself would dream of trying to make a bishop Lord Chancel