NATURAL CAUSES AND SUPERNATURAL SEEMINGS. STATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT. How is it that mankind, in different ages and places from their beginning until now, have had so many different notions concerning the supernatural, if there be a supernatural with which they can come into relations of knowledge and feeling? How is it that they have had any notions at all concerning it, if there be no such accessible supernatural? Those who believe confidently that there is not, or that in any case we cannot know anything about it, ought to show how it has come to pass that people everywhere, savage, barbarous, and cultured, have been impelled to construct it in the forms in which they have constructed it; a plain scientific obligation lies on them B to explain the natural origin of human beliefs respecting that which is beyond the reach of human thought. Those who imagine that there is a supernatural, and that men are capable of knowing something about it, ought, on their part, to formularize clearly the different methods of its revelation, to examine critically their respective claims to authority, and finally to make plain which revelation has the best authority, if there be more than one true, or which is the true one, if one only be true. While that is waiting to be done, it will not be amiss to inquire and examine how far the causes of beliefs in the supernatural, and of the sundry and diverse notions that have been entertained concerning it in different times and places, can be identified with causes which, habitually working in human thought now, were largely operative in its more primitive stages of development. These causes may be classed as follows: I. Causes incident to the natural operations of the sound mind; of which two principal divisions may properly be made, namely— 1. The natural defects and errors of human observation and reasoning. 2. The prolific activity of the imagination, always eager and pleased to exercise itself. For it ought to be well considered in this relation that, while the exercise of observation and reasoning is slow, toilsome, and difficult, the exercise of imagination is quick, easy, and pleasant; and how largely, therefore, the scanty supplies of the former are immediately supplemented by the lavish profusions of the latter. II. Causes inherent in the operations of the unsound mind, which fall naturally under the two principal headings of— 1. Hallucinations and Illusions. 2. Mania and Delusions. III. Causes inherent in the use of ecstatic illumination or intuition as a special channel of supernatural knowledge. Theopneusticism this method may fitly be called, and those who practise it Theopneustics.* If the domain of the supernatural has shrunk immensely in modern times, as it undeniably has, and if the age of miracles be now past, as on all hands is repeated continually, the question to be resolved is how much of this result is due to the progressive discovery of the natural origin and working *Coining the needful words from the Greek conveúστia, divine inspiration. of causes which formerly, being entirely hidden, lent all their support to theories of the supernatural. Is it because they have ceased to operate as once they operated in human thought that the supernatural has waned? or is it that it has come by degrees, as human means improved, actually to take less and less part in human doings? Is the change subjective only? or is it an actual objective change? If the former, then the supernatural relics in modern belief will be owing to the fact that causes, once so widely operative, continue to work in the old ways in many minds. |