Development of Theology.

criticism should not make itself heard.

9

Ad

vancing experience, as it disclosed that the world is no plaything of arbitrary wills but an order of fixed law, gradually limited the free play of imagination, and removed the gods to a greater and greater distance. When, therefore, phenomena were seen to group themselves in large genera, with permanent attributes and relations, Polytheism rose out of Fetichism; and when the idea of the unity of the world, and of the general persistency of its laws, began to prevail, theology was inevitably reduced to the conception of one overruling will which, directly or by its ministers, controls the whole movement of things. Up to this point the theological form of thought persisted in one point of view it might even be said that, up to this point, it was strengthening its hold upon men. For, every successive concentration of the divine power made the idea of it a firmer and more comprehensive bond of social order, until at length the levelling and organizing genius of Rome laid the foundation of the universal empire, and Christian Monotheism broke down the walls of division between races and nations.

Y

The

decay of

But this apparent advance of the theological

theology. spirit was illusive, for it was really due to an

must, in the long

The concentration

intellectual movement, which
run, prove fatal to that spirit.
of Fetichism into Polytheism, and of Polytheism
into Monotheism, was really the gradual with-
drawal of theology from the explanation of the
universe, till, finally, it was driven to its last
stronghold, its most general and abstract form.
Hence the hour of its greatest social triumph
was that which preceded its decisive fall. The
same growing perception of the order of the
world under general laws, which had forced the
theologian first to substitute a limited for an
indefinite number of divine wills, and then to
substitute one will for this limited number,
necessarily and inevitably awakened a doubt
whether there is in nature any indication of
will at all. Monotheism had represented the
world as a general order of fixed laws, only
interrupted by exceptional miracles; but in-
creasing knowledge made miracles more and more
incredible, till at last the theologians were re-
duced to the assertion that their God had once
performed them, but that he performed them

no longer.

Victory of Metaphysic.

11

When this point was reached, it was not difficult to see that the whole anthropomorphic explanation of things was on the eve of disappearing. A God, who was nearer man in the past than he is in the present, could not be the God of the future.

social order connected

But even before this period, the growing weak- And of the ness of the theoretical basis of belief had begun with it. to affect the practical life of men. The social order was built upon theology, and therefore the advance of the critical spirit was continually loosening its foundations. Hence the fierce hostility of the representatives of that order to the freedom of the intelligence. That hostility, however, is to be attributed not so much to their indignation at unbelief in itself, as to their alarm at the dissolution of social order which was its practical result. Nor was it altogether inexcusable, so long as the assailants of the old faith were unable to propound any theoretical principles which could be made the basis of reconstruction. Now the metaphysical principles to which these assailants appealed were really negations pretending to be affirmations, the purely negative character of which must reveal itself

The

metaphysical system

Men in

as soon as their victory was achieved.
whom the practical and organizing impulse was
strong, who felt the necessity for a moral order,
could not but see that such ropes of sand were
no real substitute for the old framework of social
and political life, and they were therefore tempted
to shut their eyes to the intellectual claims of a
truth which could be fertile only in destruction.
Thus arose that fatal division between the heart
and the intellect which has lasted down to the
present day, and which must last till the intellect
shows itself capable of producing a system which
can more securely sustain the social order,
and more completely satisfy the affections and
spiritual aspirations of men, than the fictions of
theology.

The truth of this view will be more clearly

of thought. seen if we examine the nature of that intermediate system of critical thought which was the great weapon of attack upon theology. This system was, in fact, only the last abstraction of the theological anthropomorphism itself. As in one department of human thought after another the knowledge of the uniform and unchangeable order of things prevailed over the conception of accident

Weakness of Metaphysic.

13

and arbitrary change, the idea of will became attenuated, until it ultimately disappeared altogether from the explanation of nature. But it left behind a kind of spectre of abstraction. Instead of being dominated by gods, phenomena were supposed to be dominated by essences and powers, which, however, were merely abstract repetitions of those phenomena. How abstractions came to be thus substantiated as real entities, separate from the phenomena in which they were manifested, might be difficult to understand, if we did not remember that they were but the residua of what had once been individualized pictures of imagination. The essences of the Schoolmen were but the dry bones of the living creatures of poetry which the understanding had slain. "The human mind," as Mill puts it, "did not set out from the notion of a name, but from that of a divinity. The realization of abstractions was not the embodiment of a word, but the disembodiment of a Fetich." Really, therefore, these. essences and powers were nothing more than the pure abstractions, and therefore only the negations, of the gods whose places they took. no positive content of their own.

They had

As mere