1 was felt as unsatisfactory by Tucker the moralist and the religious thinker. A large part of his discursive performance is devoted to various attempts to reconcile the abstract doctrine with a doctrine more adapted for practical use; or, in other words, to show that the God thus revealed to us by a reason is still the God whom we worship in church and obey in ordinary life. He applies his ingenuity in the spheres both of natural and revealed religion. Thus a chapter in the later part of his book is devoted to the distinction between ' esoterics and exoterics.' A man, he says, 'has one cast of mind for the closet, another to serve him when he enters into the busy world.' The philosopher is the wholesale trader, who 'deals only in tons and hogsheads;' there is need also of the retailer who may pick or sort and parcel out his wares, and mingle them in such compositions as you shall scarce know the ingredients, yet shall find them fit for your immediate consumption.' 2 The first is the function of the reason, and the second of the imagination, which is the practical guide in ordinary affairs. 'Philosophy' as he forcibly remarks, may be styled the art of marshalling the ideas in the understanding, and religion that of disciplining the imagination.' And thus it is possible, or rather necessary, to make assumptions in our daily life, which, though not inaccurate, cut short the long trains of reasoning which are required in speculation. Thus, for example, everything is providential to the philosopher, for everything comes by a longer or shorter chain of cause and effects from the action of the great first cause. But it would be considering too curiously-as Tucker cannot refrain from illustrating by some singular instances 3--if we insisted on seeing in every trifling or disgusting object the immediate working of the Divine hand. It is wise therefore to stop short, as a rule, at second causes. We should call only those things providential which bear evident marks of wisdom and goodness. When things are propounded as providential, let a man examine impartially and courageously whether he feels them operate as such upon his imagination; if he does not, they are not providential to him.' Or, to take a rather different instance, we may rightly pray for external 2 Ib. sec. 7, ii. 22. Tucker, 'Esoterics and Exoterics,' sec. 5, ii. 20. 4 ♦ Ib. 'Things Providential,' sec. 3, ii. 73; and see ib. sec. 9, ii. 8o. things; for, though prayer has no influence in obtaining them, it obtains that 'ease and pleasure' which are the reasons for which we desire them. Yet, as a rule, it is best to keep the thought of Divine interference at a distance. In Tucker's own language, he recommends every man 'to remove the finger of God from him, as far as he can without letting it go beyond the reach of his comprehension; if he believes the grace in his heart owing to a supernatural interposition of the spirit, still he may place a line of second causes between the act of God and the effect he feels.' Every movement of the watch is ultimately attributable to the watchmaker; but, as a rule, we had better limit our investigation to the works. 124. The system is illustrated still more curiously in his pure theology. God, he tells us, may be considered in two characters, as Creator and as Governor of the universe. As Creator, he dwells in inaccessible light, where the eye of man is dazzled into blindness. As Governor, he is more discernible, and is clothed with milder rays of glory, the subject of our hope and confidence as well as our admiration.' It is here that we can trace his power, wisdom, omnipotence, and goodness. In order to give additional distinctness, he revives, after his own fashion, the ancient hypothesis of the mundane soul. The atoms of which the material world is composed are bathed, as it were, in a vast ocean of spiritual substance. The infinite multitude of spirits in the vehicular state' compose this ocean, lying in close contiguity to each other, and every perception of one is immediately propagated through all the intermediate spirits to every other. Had the modern discoveries in electricity been then familiar, Tucker would doubtless have pressed them into his service for a more vivid illustration of his theories. These spirits form collectively a universal soul, which is unspeakably happy, and feels no more at the trivial evils which may happen to any of the comparatively small number of embodied spirits than a man who had just had a great piece of good fortune would feel at the breaking of a China saucer. When God gave the order, this mundane soul formed the world in accordance with the Divine plan. The six days' formation being ended, though God rested from commanding, his agent did not rest from acting; for his reason could now direct him how to proceed in sustaining the work he had been taught to make. He still continued to turn the grand wheel of repulsion, that first mover in the wondrous machine of visible nature, all whose movements follow one another uninterruptedly for ages according to stated laws and in regular courses, without failure or disorder in any single wheel.' When the fullness of time is come, God will give the signal for the reduction of everything to chaos-to be followed by the promulgation of a new plan and the employment of the mundane soul in its execution. 125. The purpose of this curious hypothesis-Tucker is superfluously careful to tell us that it is only a hypothesis-is to relieve the difficulty of our imaginations, and to present us with a secondary God not so mysterious as the Almighty himself. Tucker revels so much in discussing the complexities of his theory, and arguing for its possibility, that he seems half to lose sight of its hypothetical character, and still more completely of its utility. For, after all, it is plain enough that we are no nearer to any solution of the difficulty than we were before. God the Creator is still the true God, and the mundane soul is merely a wheel the more in the vast machinery of the universe. For Tucker realises fully, though he sometimes loses sight of the truth in his voluminous torrent of words, that neither chance, nor free-will, nor nature, are in reality original springs of events.' The Creator is really also the Disposer of events. The watchmaker has predetermined every movement of the watch. The mundane soul is merely a viceroy, to whom we may refer in imagination, but who is really the agent for carrying out the designs of the supreme sovereign. 2 126. His ethical theory, in fact, is constructed exclusively on the watchmaking plan. God, according to Tucker's conception, has framed the machine, and then allowed it to act by itself. From the beauty of the various contrivances we may infer his wisdom and power; from their tendency to promote our happiness we may infer his benevolence and justice. But he does not remain with us as a guide, nor leave 1 Tucker, Mundane Soul,' sec. 20, i. 414. 2 Ib. 'Things Providential,' sec. 2, ii. 71. any supernatural monitor within our breasts to warn us of what is pleasing to him. Our own natural instincts are sufficient to lead us, as the force of gravity is sufficient to keep the stars in their courses without further interference. And thus morality, like everything else, is merely the product of natural forces. Following his master Locke, Tucker has banished all innate ideas and everything that savours of the mysterious in human nature. The one simple force which drives the machinery is our desire for happiness. That is the ultimate end of all men. No one can assert more emphatically that the measure of morality is the tendency of actions to promote happiness, and that the aim of every particular individual is to secure his own happiness. In his chapter on 'Doing all for the Glory of God' he says that a man's first step must be by a thorough conviction of his judgment that acting for the divine Glory is acting most for his own benefit.' 'I have observed all along,' he adds, 'that self lies at the bottom of everything we do; in all our actions we constantly pursue the satisfaction grounded on something apprehended beneficial in our judgment or soothing in our fancy; the purest affections grow from one or other of these roots, and the sublimest of our virtues must be engrafted upon the former; therefore the love of God, to be sincere and vigorous, must spring from the settled opinion of his goodness and beneficence, and that every act of conformity to his will is beneficial to the performer.' The farsighted selfishness which teaches us to imitate God supplies also the motives for obeying his commands. Tucker gives us in one place a philosophical version of the Ten Commandments. He imagines an angel sent from heaven to deliver a divine message in these words: 'Know that if thou shalt worship chance or necessity, an uncreated nature, or any God beside me; if thou shalt,' in short, break any other of the commandments, 'know that in so doing thou actest foolishly, for by all these things thou wilt lose far greater enjoyment than thou canst gain for the present, and bring down intolerable mischiefs upon thy head.'" God has spoken from this utilitarian Sinai, and declares to all his creatures that vice is a bad speculation. 127. The harshness of this selfish doctrine is partly 1 Tucker, Doing all for the Glory of God,' sec. 4, ii. 508. Ib. Divine Justice,' sec. 4, i. 626. softened by the theory which Tucker had learnt from Hartley. The principle of association, or, as Tucker chooses to call it, translation, is that which transmutes the base metal of selfishness into the gold of benevolence. Though flowers,' he says, 'grow out of the dirt,' they retain nothing of the foulness of their original source; and so 'charity, though shooting most vigorously from rational self-love, yet, when perfectly formed, has no tincture remaining of the parent root." Thus we forget the ultimate end in the means, and from doing good because it is our interest, learn to do it without conscious reference to any ulterior purpose. The benevolent impulses, however, though thus transformed, retain far more of their original character than in the scheme of Hartley. The ultimate end is not taken into account in every action, but it always remains in the background to be referred to, if necessary, in justification of our conduct. We resemble travellers carrying a general map of the country, which exhibits the right path as leading, though often by a circuitous route, to our ultimate destination. For practical purposes, we are often content with more limited plans, which represent the path as apparently deviating from the true direction; but we are content because we know that the larger map will show that the deviation is only in appearance. 128. Thus Tucker discusses at intervals the critical case of Regulus, which was a kind of standing puzzle for the moralists of the time. If Regulus did right, he says, it must have been because he acted more for his own happiness in the sequel than he could have done by any breach of faith." He admits it to be possible, theoretically, that the satisfaction which Regulus felt in acting rightly might have 'overbalanced the pain of the tenters.'3 And yet it seems, on further consideration, that a man ought to know when to make exceptions to general rules, and should have known in such a case that the suffering could not be compensated by the pleasure. Upon the whole,' he says, 'we are forced to acknowledge that hitherto we have found no reason to imagine a wise man would ever die for his country or suffer martyrdom in the cause of virtue, how strong propensity soever he might feel Ib. Virtue,' sec. 10, i. 222. Tucker, Charity,' sec. 3, ii. 281. 2 Ib. Rectitude,' sec. 7, i. 214. · |