New-York tribune., 1903-07-11

The conclusions reached by Mr. Mallock in a
former notable book rs Life Worth Living2"
he elaborates in the present volume into a re-
markable argument. Previously he relegated
every adjudication Of the religious problem to
the final authority Of the Church. In this case
he has reduced the religious foundations to GER
tain necessitated acts Of faith which the Church
alone can be supposed to arbitrate. These acts
OF faith result the principle that we must
naturally prefer the frying pan TO the fire. Hav-
ing removed every trace Of a rational gnosis Of
religion, Mr.. Mallock. by a process Of meta
physical gymnastics that leaves one nearly
breathless in attempt to follow it, reaffirms.
under category Of paradoxes all the religious
postulates against which he has first found the
entire reason OF arrayed, and the entire
structure and course Of the universe. He pro-
poses to receive and retain, by a synthesis of
contradIctories that are utterly impossible to
reason, those affirmative faiths that reason can
not deliver and that the nature Of things every
where repudiates
An approach was made to this kind Of de-
structive metaphysics when Dean Mansel more
than generation ago developed from Sir Will
lam Hamitons philosophy his great work, ''The
Limits of Religious Thought" Mansel at
tempted to take away the metaphysical argu-
ment Of theology for the being Of God. He de-
veloped philosophy of the conditioned" that
put into the hands Of Herbert Spencer the
greater part Of the force that belongs to his
famous doctrine OF the ''unknowable." To the
earlier category of an unknowable God Mr. NAL
lock now adds two other postulates-the free
VIII of man and the Immortality Of the soul.
These three together comprise his prime ele-
Enents of religious doctrine. The question which
he asks and attempts to answer is this: Can we
affirm the being of God. the free will of man and
the Immortality of the soul. notwithstanding the
Of lkT1oEV
In view OF the universe modern science has
revealed it2
Proceeding TO consider this question Mr. Nal
lock essays 10 show that the theistic arguments
by which these verities have usually been sup
ported are utterly worthless. One by one he
sets them up Ike tenpins III alley. as if to
show how easily he bowl them down again.
At the end Of this process there is not shred
or patch Of theology left standing behind these
cornerstones Of religious doctrine. They are all
neatly and summarily disposed of. Nor does the
author for a moment allow that any others that
are better can ever be set up to take their
places Science and reason do not support these
vast afirmations of the soul Mostly they de-
stroy and nulify them.
Shall we therefore relapse into atheism as to
God into fatalism as to the viii, and into nihil-
ism as TO the future life Of the soul? On the
contrary. we are to be reassured. We may go
in the immortal life We have only to take
an act Of faith, which to Mr. Nanock seems very
simple, and which he shows to be practically
necessary. Mr.. MaIlock assists this act Of faith
by a utilitarfan consideration. What would be-
come of all, he asks, If we did not keep on be-
lieving and being religious? True the universe
has not a shadow OF evidence that there is any
God, but imagine what sort of folk we should
become If we should begin to act as If there
lusion. The argument for it fails at every point;
but consider how absurd it would be for US to
act and 20 deal with our fellow if we
had no free responsibility to moral law! HUI
man Immortality is out OF the order Of evolu-
tion. and OF nature, and Of reason, but what
would the world be if we stopped hoping for a
life 70 come?
Mr.. Mallock's second foundation OF faith is
reached by comparison between religious faith
and scientific hypothesis. Using the method of
Buffers Analogy" he points out that this curl
Gus synthess of ccntradictories is more
truly necessary in religion than In the funda-
mental postulates of materialistic science. If we
attempt to construct the universe from ether,
for example, deal with an element that by
the hypothesis is continuous throughout all
space But IN order to have developed the
cosmos from ether we should have to assume
that ether contracts and expands, undergoes
motion and change. Even Spencer's lump with
start in it, would not suffice. There could
not be a lump at all But solids could not be
formed unless ether can contract Ether cannot
contract unless there are spaces between its
parts. By the hypothesis it is continuous, and
there can, therefore, be no spaces. Ergo, no
universe could arise from ether. But Mr.. NAL
lock asserts that we must go on believing, on
the authority Of all science, that the universe
did originally arise from a continuous ether.
Mr.. Maliock thinks he sees that not
otherwise placed TO believing in the being Of
God, the free viii Of man and the Immortality
of the soul We merely must receive by proc
ess of faith these realities which reason not
only does not deliver to us but everywhere con-
tradicts.
The simplicity Of this sort of acute gymnastics
consists In the supposition OF the author that he
has really reviewed and satisfactorily disposed
OF the theological gnosis OF Christendom. Were
Dr. Calderwood, of Edinburgh. still living he
would find it only too provokingly easy TO take
down this house Of cards as he once answered
the much stronger argument Of Mansel. In his
PHILOSOPHY OF the Infinite a book much bet
ter known twenty years ago than now, Calder
wood punctured the heart and scattered the
dust Of this sort Of nescience by the simple
process OF clearly explaining the real nature
and exact validity of knowledge of any
thing The material and the methods are here
a little different. but the reply would be partly
the same The appeal to reasonable men to
stultify and contradict their reason and the
final voice Of valid science by affirming re-
ngious faith that which these authorities have
destroyed or made impossible could not pos
sIbly ground itself permanently in human
thought. The answer viii be not "credo." nor
IT,