Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

points.. First, the very idea of an analogy between the separate works of God leads to the conclusion that the system which is of less importance is economically or sacramentally connected with the more momentous system.

Secondly, Butler's doctrine that Probability is the guide of life led me . . . to the logical cogency of Faith, on which I have written so much."1

so pro

Matthew Arnold writes of him as follows: "Butler deserves that one should regard him very attentively, both on his own account, and also because of the immense and confident laudation bestowed upon his writings. Whether he completely satisfies or no, a man foundly convinced that virtue-the law of virtue written on our hearts-is the law we are born under'; a man so staunch in his respectful allegiance to reason, a man who says: I express myself with caution, lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason, which is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself' ; a man, finally, so deeply and evidently in earnest, filled with so awful a sense of the

[blocks in formation]

:

6

reality of things and of the madness of selfdeception Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why then should we desire to be deceived?'-such a man, even if he was somewhat despotically imposed upon our youth, may yet well challenge the most grave consideration from our mature manhood. And even did we fail to give it willingly, the strong consenting eulogy upon his achievements would extort it from us. It is asserted that his three sermons on Human Nature are, in the department of moral philosophy, perhaps the three most valuable essays that ever were published.' They are this, because they contain his famous doctrine of conscience-a doctrine which, being in those sermons explained according to the strict truth of our mental constitution, is irresistible.' Butler is therefore said, in the words of another of his admirers, by pursuing precisely the same mode of reasoning in the science of morals as his great predecessor Newton had done in the system of nature, to have formed and concluded a happy alliance between faith and philosophy.' And again: 'Metaphysic, which till then had nothing to support it but mere abstraction or shadowy

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

speculation, Butler placed on the firm basis of observation and experiment.' And Sir James Mackintosh says of the Sermons in general: In these sermons Butler has taught truths more capable of being exactly distinguished from the doctrines of his predecessors, more satisfactorily established by him, more comprehensively applied to particulars, more rationally connected with each other, and therefore more worthy of the name of discovery than any with which we are acquainted, if we ought not, with some hesitation, to except the first steps of the Grecian philosophers towards a theory of morals.' The Analogy Mackintosh calls the most original and profound work extant in any language on the philosophy of religion.' Such are Butler's claims on our attention."1

[ocr errors]

Leslie Stephen, while criticising from an adverse point of view some of Butler's intellectual positions and methods, gives him a high place amongst moral and religious thinkers: "Joseph Butler belonged to the exceedingly small class of men who find in abstract speculation not merely the main employment, but almost the sole enjoyment of their lives. He

1 "Bishop Butler and the Zeit-geist," in Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 64.

stands out in strange contrast to the pushing patronage-hunters of his generation. Amongst the clergy, Berkeley alone was his equal, as, in some respects, Berkeley was greatly his superior in speculative power. But Berkeley was impelled by his ardent benevolence into active occupations, whilst Butler passed his days. . . in profound meditation. . . . Butler stood apart from the world. . . . As against Deism, the force of Butler's argument is undeniable. Nature has its dark side. It is not the amiable power which fluent metaphysicians constructed out of a priori guesses.

No

religion can be powerful which does not give forcible expression to men's conviction of the prevalence of natural and moral evil, and of their intimate connection. The shallow optimism of the Deists blinked the obvious facts. Butler recognised them manfully, in spite of the additional horrors of the nightmares which haunted his imagination. There is such a thing as evil in the world, he seems to say, and the worst of evils is vice. The philosophy might be improved; but the very want of a philosophy makes his vigorous grasp of such truths the more impressive. . . . Butler has been compared to Pascal. Infinitely inferior in beauty of style,

and greatly inferior in logical clearness and width of view as Butler is to Pascal, there is a certain resemblance. Butler and Pascal are both sensible, as the noblest minds are alone sensible, of the sad discords of the universe. To both of them it seemed to be a scene of blind misery and confusion. Pascal, in despair, pronounces man's intellect to be helpless, and does his best to prostrate himself before an earthly idol. Butler, trained in a manlier school, refused to commit intellectual suicide. Reason, he says, is feeble; he disdains to conceal how feeble; and yet he resolves painfully and hesitatingly to grope out a path by this feeble guidance."1

And Professor Adamson's estimate in the Encyclopædia Britannica should be quoted: 66 He was an earnest and deep-thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral.

1

1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I., "Butler's Analogy."

« PreviousContinue »