Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/422

408 science and religion, and is really a contest over the vital question whether there is, or is to be in future, any recognition of any such thing as truth in the religious sphere of human experience. In the issue as thus made up, Herbert Spencer is on the religious side. He affirms that man is a religious being, that the religious sentiments have their proper object, that science can carry away only errors of theological belief, and that the basis of religious feeling must be as permanent in the future as it has been in the past. This Mr. Harrison denies, and maintains the absolute groundlessness of all religious conceptions or sentiments which have been embodied, however obscurely, in the past beliefs and aspirations of mankind.

Mr. Harrison says that he warned Mr. Spencer ten years ago that "his religious doctrine of the Unknowable was certain to lead him into strange company." The apprehended danger was, that the ground taken by Spencer on religion might at length find acceptance with religious people, and now he intimates that this disaster, against which he raised his voice of warning, has actually occurred; that is, religious people are coming into agreement with Mr. Spencer. We indulged in a similar prophecy more than twenty years ago, though in no spirit of dread or warning. We said that as science went on with its inexorable work of criticism, undermining and overthrowing theological errors, the stern question would certainly arise whether anything whatever was to be left; and that there would then be a far higher appreciation of the position taken by Spencer, that the essentials of religion are indestructible in human nature. For maintaining this doctrine in the form which he gave it, Mr. Spencer was denounced as a materialist, an atheist, and the destroyer of religion. But, now that his views are better understood, it begins to be acknowledged on the one hand that he has rendered a great service to the religious side, while the undisguised enemies of all religion are making war upon him because there is a tendency among the most enlightened religious people to favor his ideas. Yet the whole burden of Harrison's argument is to show that the doctrine of the Unknowable is inadequate as a religious basis, because the people will never be able to appreciate it. But time may rapidly change the possibilities of appreciation as implied by his own warning of ten years ago, which he now declares is being fulfilled. It is to be remembered that Mr. Harrison does not deny, but virtually concedes, the validity of the doctrine of the Unknowable as a logical formula or philosophical proposition, which, of course, is to admit that there is truth in it. But he says it belongs to philosophy, and denies that it has or can have any religious significance. Yet Mr. Spencer has proved that it is the fundamental and neutral truth of all the religions that have existed and had power over mankind. Mr. Harrison can not deny the essential religious character of this view without vacating the fundamental conception of religion and uprooting it from human nature. This he aims to do in his discussion, and then coolly proceeds to put something else in its place.

There therefore can be no hesitation about classing Mr. Harrison as an inveterate antagonist of religion. Taking the meaning that the world has hitherto given to the word, he scouts it as pure illusion. Yet he will not admit that he is the enemy of religion. As we have said, he believes in and is laboring to found and extend a new religion. We only complain that in doing this he wrests the word from its old and established meaning and gives it a novel and perverted application. In place of the religions which have made the Divine Power an object of worship, he would substitute the worship of