ESSAY V. On Providence.
‘Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.’
SHAKESPEARE.
PERHAPS the greatest charge made against pantheism is that
the presence of moral evil in people, and therefore in the universe, renders
God Himself evil. This is an understandable and quite logical fallacy, for the
greatest fallacies are usually the most logical, but one might as well say that
the presence of ink renders the octopus a kind of pen. One simply cannot impose
the temporal upon the transcendent without error, quite as one simply cannot
impose the transcendent on the temporal without true improvement. It is not
that somehow the existence of evil upon the earth serves God’s purpose better
than otherwise, that our agony is his pleasure. It may well be indeed that the
all-seeing God is very much pained and aggrieved to see the evils of earth
developed as they are, and feels a great urge to intervention, were it not
true, as it is undoubtedly true, that we seem to be incapable of the remotest
kind of self-improvement without digesting the stimuli of suffering. Only we
cannot speculate. It seems wise to suggest that our sufferings are not
objective evil but only subjective evil, so rendered by the lenses of mortal
self-interest, but it is truly impossible for creatures such as we to see
subjective evils in anything but the light of objective evils; we after all
make ourselves both subjects and objects of experience. It is enough to say
‘God moves in a mysterious way’ to be wise, and humble, and true.
Frankly one should
prefer rather to be a worm than to be God. Such immense responsibilities can
only be borne by equivalent powers. The question never was, nor should be,
‘what use have we for God?’ but is, and must be, ‘what use has God for us?’ The
answer to which, though beyond humanity, is presumably such a use as is first
enabled by the acknowledgement of the Master Himself. Why otherwise are we
enabled to think of Him? Yet in the question of evil, or suffering, Spinoza for
one makes a very definite pronouncement. He declared that all things which
occur must occur, are necessary and beyond question, because all effects have
their causes. This of course is a statement of God’s omnipotence, and though
cause is a notion hampered by the concept of time in the human imagination,
which loses its truthfulness when it is merged with effect in eternity, it is
at times a useful assistant in construing necessity. This necessity does not alter
the complexities of life simply because it shows all actions have their supposed
causes. Some think that the notion of necessity must imply the same things
happening over and over again, but that is surely the notion of uniformity
rather than necessity. It would make no difference in the debate on necessity
if the universe were simply a rubber ball bouncing up and down forevermore. The
question is not of diversity but of action. It is not strange that this point
is mistaken in the minds of many however, because it is difficult to correlate
variety with mechanism, and so I shall make my attempt to describe how the two
are reconcilable.
The freedom of
necessity and the necessity of freedom might be illustrated thus. Suppose a
pair of ordinary scales represented, by its two ends, all the forces and
circumstances of a moment. Take any example of mutable probability, whether you
will scratch an itch for instance, and upon the one end of the scales allot all
that might tend to discourage such an event and on the other all that might
tend to encourage it. Focusing one’s attention on the subject itself will
immediately add weight to the end of encouragement, but such thoughts as:
scratching is uncouth, a sign of nervousness, or irritating to the skin, might
add weight to the end of discouragement. More examples upon the end of discouragement
might be: the possibility of immediate distraction, the disappearance of the
itch, or the presence of more weighty desires such as hunger and thirst, and so
on and so forth. The probability of the event of scratching would increase with
the intensity of the itch, as well as the preoccupation with it, and the
influence of frustration at the thought that the mind will not refresh itself
until the deed is done. All these forces, added upon those forces taken for
granted in human life: the ability to move limbs, to ponder, to feel
sensations, etc., and those forces taken for granted on earth: gravity, oxygen,
water, and such, should be imagined as so many proportional weights added to
the scales of necessity. When once one side is heavier than the other it is
necessary that it should bear upon the scales and move them, that is the
necessity of occurrence, it must happen in the circumstances, but in the time
before that there is a freedom of possibility, a calculation of probability,
which might be equated with the scales' state of balance or equilibrium. It is
not certainly known in the mind which weights will fall on each side, but it is
understood that whichever side is heaviest will cause the event's motion.
Therefore the freedom of necessity lies in this uncertainty of
knowledge, ignorance and comprehension are the reactants of the product of
freedom, and of that estimation of probability which occurs naturally in the
mind. The necessity of this freedom is that, whatever the accuracy of
the mindful guess, whichever half of the scales is heaviest will move. There
are only three possible results to any one possible dilemma: irresolution,
resolution to one side, and resolution to the other. It is necessary that one
of these three will hold true in a moment, we are free to guess which it will be. Yet of course this freedom of
imagination is not really free, not in the sense that it has absolute
sovereignty to do anything imaginable, but it is of such a complexity that in
the multiplicity of its potential guesses a sensation of freedom occurs with
the consciousness of altering forces. This shows the free will debate to be in
fact a debate on perception rather than reality. Reality is as it must be, that
concerns God and His Providence, a thing above the concept of necessity, but
our freedom is the name we give to the variety of thought and action evinced in
human life. It illustrates the perceptual colours which are lit in the lamp of
the mind. These colours might be termed by their nature illusory, but that is
not to say unimportant. On the contrary, in the lives of human beings they are
vital.
To reconcile within
such a system of understanding the concepts of God's benevolence and providence
it is essential to revise the standard opinions of each. What is benevolence?
Is it benevolence to give each individual everything he desires at one moment?
To give to the murderer at one time the will and opportunity to murder as well
as to give to the victim the means of resistance would be to circumvent the
possibility of such a scheme. One or other must be frustrated. We are only too
glad if it is the former, but this disproves that particular definition of
benevolence. Nor do many think that of all people it is the individual himself
who has the best judgement of what is good for him. Most people give very good
advice to others and do not follow it themselves, this is because they cannot
see the difficulties of others as they see their own. Therefore this godly
benevolence of according at each moment to each person what they desire is
self-contradictory. Indeed it is self-contradictory twofold, firstly because
many people would tend to prevent one another’s wishes, and so thwart the
ideal, and secondly because, even if they did not, the things they would desire
would change continually as their minds longed for variation and realised the
disgust of gluttony.
What then could a
universal benevolence possibly mean? Conveniently, providence can reconcile
benevolence and benevolence reconcile providence. Why must a person die of
cancer? Because in providence it is not rendered impossible, nor is murder so
rendered. It is not that it is wished or intended by God that such things should
occur, it is that it is granted by him that they can occur and will occur when
the circumstances align for them. But why will He not stop some few individual
examples of intense and undeserved suffering? But a few would make the
difference and inspire reverence! We are willing to die at eighty, but we would
wish Him to prevent malice’s prosperity, the success of hideous diseases, and
the reign of prosaic injustice!
How can anyone tastefully answer such
soul-stirred utterances? It feels unmannerly to attempt it. Yet attempt should
be made, it is the role of philosophy to make it on paper, though no one should
ever demean sufferers by doing so in person. My own view, within the system of
the theories I admit, is that matters are more complicated than we can realise.
It seems so simple to say omnipotent God can and should intercede against the
wicked and for the innocent. But can He and should He? It has been shown that
universal benevolence of the kind afore described is impossible, because
different people would counteract each other. Moreover a truly universal
benevolence would be the kind of carte blanche that must lose all the
character of benevolence. It is power to the murderer as well as power to the
nurse. And would such a system allow for any human virtue whatsoever? If all
ill to human beings could be eradicated where could human virtue shine, and how
would human progress occur? Perhaps these things might occur in a world so
perfectly adapted to humanity that humanity need not adapt to it at all, but I
confess that I cannot imagine how.
Light.
‘Tell me, O Dark, whence arises thy might?’
Dark. 'It were an error to tell thee, O Light.'
Certainly some
credit should be accorded to the notion that as human beings our selfish
prejudice clouds all possible understanding of a universal justice, but that is
far from satisfying most people. Yet the concept of providence surely provides
a light shining out of darkness. Where is God's benevolence on the battlefield,
in the hospital, at the site of a murder? It is there. Do not the good caring
people of this world go beyond themselves, exceed themselves, and suffer many
inner frustrations for the love of virtue itself? In the tender love of a nurse
and mother, the melancholy of the soldiers' grave diggers, and the justice of
policemen? If God is not benevolent whence these forces?
The cynicism of man always accuses God
in strife but seldom thanks him in ease and health. Yet none indeed should be
distracted from the severity of the problem. The suffering of horrible
mischance is real and appalling. Yet even so the philosopher has things to say.
Of cancer, especially in the young and good, it can be said, though it is
difficult to say, that it is within the nature of circumstance that the
healthiness of cells can change, that sometimes, though but rarely, through no
vice or fault of the individual, a body can begin dying. A damaged cell
multiplies and the whole collapses with its parts. These cells are called malignant,
but there is no malice in them, their process of reproduction is the instinct
which ensures our existence. They do not know they are killing their
host, they think they are ensuring his survival, as they usually do by
reproduction. If cancer were not to occur in this world it seems it would be
necessary either for cells to not reproduce or for the circumstances which can
damage them to never exist. The former would render impossible the existence of
life, the latter would render impossible the existence of earth. It is not that
God makes mistakes, it is that to all intents and purposes nature cannot be
constructed otherwise than it is if we are to exist in it at all.
Therefore God’s benevolence occurs in
God’s providence, which allows for the general success of the human body’s
processes, in the moving virtues which react to human mischance, and in the
ability to lessen its occurrence and palliate its effects. This providence is
manifestly evident in the actual existence of all things, the great miracle of
existence itself (even of the capacity to suffer), in the existence of true
human benevolence, only rendered possible by human ill, and in His unflagging
will to continue in spite of the many plausible reasons to desist. Many think
suffering discredits life, but suffering is the very joy of life longing to be
what it was. It is not suffering that discredits life, suffering worships life,
it is cynicism that discredits life, in thought and in utterance; but though
cynicism may discredit life it is not even to the millionth extent that life
discredits cynicism.
Certainly it is very
important that pains, especially small and numerous pains, should be resisted in
the business of life. Pains are often continuous from the moment of waking to
that of sleeping, and sometimes they intrude themselves into dreams too. There
is little necessity to draw distinctions of pains, of psychological, corporeal,
or emotive, pain; all are concerned. They must be endured, not resisted, for
commonly in the resistance of pain errors of judgement are committed. Very
often indeed it lies in the nature of such resistances that the germs of many
pains burgeon, consider he who will not stop rubbing his itching eyes or she
who cannot cease to dye her hair until there is but little left to dye. When
pain is waged war with it is never defeated, for there is no state of mind
known to man, no condition of living, nor effect of philosophy, which is
entirely absented from pain. Pain is evidently a part of our condition of
living and it is altogether better that it should be accepted, and as far as
possible endured, than that it should not be.
For wherein do drug
addicts, thieves, and murderers, err alike? In the
mistaken notion that somehow through their irrational deeds they can escape from
pain. But wise people know this is false, and Aldous Huxley was clearly
mistaken when he prophesied a narcotic which should bestow all the effects of
happiness without any toll upon the health. So idle a notion contradicts every
second of feeling. When is any man ever without some creeping annoyance, a
faint pain which only bides its time, growing in inaction and lurking in excess
confidence?
Nor should we always seek to interfere with
troubles, they often compound for interference. Except in the fulfilment of the
True honour, the True duty, the True charity, for all of these have false
counterparts, let those troubles of daily life, which have their parts in
providence, expend their wrath on themselves. Scabs and boils are discomforts
which nonetheless heal in time; to pick or burst them is to heap poison on
injury.[1] God’s
providence flows inexorably through mortal days as a coursing river; a river
indeed comprised of violent twists and turns, as peaceful stretches, of wide meanders,
and terrible rapids, yet a river which no man might oppose, whose ever
broadening estuary terminates in the tranquillity of an infinite and eternal
sea.
Providence’s candles glow
Very quick and very slow,
Melting wax around the wick
Very slow and very quick.
Sufferance is providence; it is nature’s
punishment for error. Sensation is God’s own chastisement; He needs no bordered
kingdom of the damned to make His will felt. While as for making His will felt, that
point indeed is most relevant if one is to consider the effect of the most important
period in the history of man, which one certainly should in an essay on
providence, namely the life of Christ.
‘Peradventure, there be some one whom the
divinity within him may have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has
attained knowledge of truth—but no other man.’
PLATO’S
REPUBLIC.
I will not narrate His
glorious story, but suggest those who are unfamiliar with it begin with Mark,
proceed to Matthew, and finish with Luke and John. For the gospels are the most
inexpressibly poignant, moving, tragic, poetic, and inspiring, texts in
existence; and why? It is sufficient only to say that all who read them,
whether two-thousand or eight-thousand years after their production, will realise
unconsciously that they chronicle not solely the fate of Jesus, not simply the
faith of mankind, but the destiny of the world and the tenor of the universe. I
earnestly recommend them. For my part I will venture only to make a few remarks
upon the legacy of the beautiful life which they chronicle, that is, once it
had been so unnaturally taken.
The tragedy of Jesus Christ was that He came
to us with wisdom and kindness, forgiveness and guidance, and we met Him with
jealousy, wrath, and scorn; we saw, we knew, but we did not admit, His glory;
we made the unfavourable comparison with ourselves and in our indignation we
chose to torture and slay Him. Who, however, was victor and who vanquished? Our
violence terminated in itself, His glory lives forever. When His body was first
raised on the cross upon which He was to die, at the location of Calvary, that
awful place which yet exists but none will ever again discover, the first
chronicle of history ended. That chronicle began in mists and caves and ended
in blood and betrayal, and records as vaguely as infant memory the first long
ages of mankind. The consequences which followed in the first chapters of the
second chronicle of history were dreadful; the fall of Rome, the rise of
barbarism, the events of the ages of darkness, when man was reduced in many
respects to an animal existence. From these ashes there arose a church, a
supreme and sublime light in a catastrophic night, against which the gates of
hell could not prevail, which hailed as it had summoned the returning dawn of
civilisation.
‘The foundations of its wall are
garnished with all manner of precious
stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a
chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius;
the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a
chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve
gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street
of the city was pure gold, as it were a transparent glass. And I saw no temple
therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the
city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory
of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of
them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth
do bring their glory and honour into it.’ REVELATIONS. xxi.
19-24.
This church strengthened
greatly and was indeed paid tribute by all the kings of Europe, its scholarship
was profound and its grandeur extensive. It was for the latter reason that it
became corrupted, turned jealous, and largely secular. In time it proved to be
little more than an empire, very greatly disassociated from its religion, and
though it preserved civilisation in the dark ages, it grew to preserve
barbarity in lighter ages. It is obvious therefore why the Roman Catholic
Church did not like the scriptures to be understood by the laity, to be read in
their own languages, to be appreciated for their real sterling worth. It was
not because the people were incapable of their own interpretations, or too
barbarous to be trusted with a metaphorical text. It was because the church
knew, particularly in the case of Christ’s own sayings, that the scriptures
often contradicted the papal dogmas. For the Roman Catholics still do certainly
believe that only a Roman Catholic will find salvation, yet this is utterly
confuted by Christ, who when the Pharisees asked Him why He eat in the company
of publicans and sinners answered, ‘They that be whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice: for I am not
come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ What can this mean
except that there are some, however few, who are righteous without religion?
Not that religion cannot help these people, a light is good in the darkness
even in a known way, but let not the world be vexed with this thrusting notion
that it must believe something or
other in order to be redeemed. It is only when people are not forced into
things that they feel well inclined to them.
Roman Catholicism has
often failed in its dogmas to honour the wisdom of Christ, though many of its members
have been the finest of Christians. But why should a church decree upon such
subjects as contraception, abortion, the application of physic, the systems of
astronomy, or the natural laws? Why was Galileo imprisoned? Why have books been
burnt and good men tortured? ‘And one of
the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ,
save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou
fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for
we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.
And he said unto Jesus, Lord,
remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.’ The Roman Catholics have in
the past, like the first malefactor, demanded tricks and shows of people; they strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel.
Much of that church
is of course suitable to the genius of Italy and an honour to the memory of
Christ, but it is not, nor ever should have claimed to be, the sole path of
devotion. Nazareth is not in Lombardy nor is Rome in Israel. ‘It is very
observable, that there is not one command in all the Gospel for public worship;
and perhaps it is a duty that is least insisted upon in Scripture of any other.
The frequent attendance at it is never so much as mentioned in all the New
Testament.’ WILLIAM LAW. God is only in the
pulpit if He is in the soul of the man at the pulpit.
Since the
Reformation however, when as many mistakes were made on the other side, though
in a good cause, Christianity has been taken, reinterpreted, brushed,
varnished, given new formulae, made into new clubs, and bedecked in new
churches, all in a public manner. But what Law writes of in his Serious Call to the Unconverted surely
remains true, that it is not in ceremonial performance that a Christian is
known to dwell among us but in the words and deeds expressed in his life, which
might very well include regular church attendance, but more than anything else
ought to show that he has considered and applied Christ’s ethics in his own
life. Far more have done this than have been baptised into Christianity, and
this is due simply to the fact that, in the course of God’s providence, Jesus
Himself has affected people a thousand times more than His churches.
[1] I had a dispute after writing this which proved the strength of my understanding and the weakness of my character.
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