God the Known and God the Unknown(已知的上帝和未知的上帝)

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God the Known and God the Unknown

God the Known and God

the Unknown

BY SAMUEL BUTLER

God the Known and God the Unknown

Prefatory Note

"GOD the Known and God the Unknown" first appeared in the form

ofa series of articles which were published in "The Examiner" inMay, June,

and July, 1879.Samuel Butler subsequently revisedthe text of his work,

presumably with the intention ofrepublishing it, though he never carried

the intention intoeffect.In the present edition I have followed his

revisedversion almost without deviation.I have, however, retained afew

passages which Butler proposed to omit, partly because theyappear to me

to render the course of his argument clearer, andpartly because they

contain characteristic thoughts andexpressions of which none of his

admirers would wish to bedeprived.In the list of Butler's works "God the

Known and Godthe Unknown" follows "Life and Habit," which appeared

in 1877,and "Evolution, Old and New," which was published in May, 1879.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three works areclosely akin in

subject and treatment, and that "God the Knownand God the Unknown"

will gain in interest by being considered inrelation to its predecessors.

R.A.STREATFEILD

God the Known and God the Unknown

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

MANKIND has ever been ready to discuss matters in the inverseratio

of their importance, so that the more closely a question isfelt to touch the

hearts of all of us, the more incumbent it isconsidered upon prudent people

to profess that it does not exist,to frown it down, to tell it to hold its

tongue, to maintain thatit has long been finally settled, so that there is now

noquestion concerning it.

So far, indeed, has this been carried through all time past thatthe

actions which are most important to us, such as our passagethrough the

embryonic stages, the circulation of our blood, ourrespiration, etc.etc.,

have long been formulated beyond allpower of reopening question

concerning them - the mere fact ormanner of their being done at all being

ranked among the greatdiscoveries of recent ages.Yet the analogy of past

settlementswould lead us to suppose that so much unanimity was not

arrivedat all at once, but rather that it must have been preceded bymuch

smouldering [sic] discontent, which again was followed byopen warfare;

and that even after a settlement had beenostensibly arrived at, there was

still much secret want ofconviction on the part of many for several

generations.

There are many who see nothing in this tendency of our nature

butoccasion for sarcasm; those, on the other hand, who hold that theworld

is by this time old enough to be the best judge concerningthe management

of its own affairs will scrutinise [sic] thismanagement with some closeness

before they venture to satirise[sic] it; nor will they do so for long without

findingjustification for its apparent recklessness; for we must all

fearresponsibility upon matters about which we feel we know butlittle; on

the other hand we must all continually act, and forthe most part

promptly.We do so, therefore, with greatersecurity when we can persuade

both ourselves and others that amatter is already pigeon-holed than if we

feel that we must useour own judgment for the collection, interpretation,

andarrangement of the papers which deal with it.Moreover, ouraction is

God the Known and God the Unknown

thus made to appear as if it received collectivesanction; and by so

appearing it receives it.Almost anysettlement, again, is felt to be better

than none, and the morenearly a matter comes home to everyone, the more

important is itthat it should be treated as a sleeping dog, and be let to

lie,for if one person begins to open his mouth, fatal developmentsmay

arise in the Babel that will follow.

It is not difficult, indeed, to show that, instead of havingreason to

complain of the desire for the postponement ofimportant questions, as

though the world were composed mainly ofknaves or fools, such fixity as

animal and vegetable formspossess is due to this very instinct.For if there

had been noreluctance, if there were no friction and vis inertae tobe

encountered even after atheoretical equilibrium had beenupset, weshould

have had no fixed organs nor settled proclivities, but should have been

daily andhourly undergoingProtean transformations,and have still been

throwing outpseudopodia like the amoeba.True, we might have come to

likethis fashion of living as well as our more steady-going system ifwe had

taken to it many millions of ages ago when we were yetyoung; but we

have contracted other habits which have become soconfirmed that we

cannot break with them.We therefore now hatethat which we should

perhaps have loved if we had practised [sic]it.This, however, does not

affect the argument, for our concernis with our likes and dislikes, not with

the manner in whichthose likes and dislikes have come about.The

discovery thatorganism is capable of modification at all has occasioned so

muchastonishment that it has taken the most enlightened part of theworld

more than a hundred years to leave off expressing itscontempt for such a

crude, shallow, and preposterous conception. Perhaps in another hundred

years we shall learn to admire thegood sense, endurance, and thorough

Englishness of organism inhaving been so averse to change, even more

than its versatilityin having been willing to change so much.

Nevertheless, however conservative we may be, and however

muchalive to the folly and wickedness of tampering with

settledconvictions-no matter what they are-without sufficient cause,there

is yet such a constant though gradual change in oursurroundings as

necessitates corresponding modification in ourideas, desires, and

God the Known and God the Unknown

actions.We may think that we should like tofind ourselves always in the

same surroundings as our ancestors,so that we might be guided at every

touch and turn by theexperience of our race, and be saved from all self-

communing orinterpretation of oracular responses uttered by the facts

aroundus.Yet the facts will change their utterances in spite of us;and we,

too, change with age and ages in spite of ourselves, soas to see the facts

around us as perhaps even more changed thanthey actually are.It has been

said, "Tempora mutantur nos etmutamur in illis." The passage would have

been no less trueif it had stood, "Nos mutamur et tempora mutantur

innobis." Whether the organism or the surroundings beganchanging first is

a matter of such small moment that the two maybe left to fight it out

between themselves; but, whichever viewis taken, the fact will remain that

whenever the relationsbetween the organism and its surroundings have

been changed, theorganism must either succeed in putting the

surroundings intoharmony with itself, or itself into harmony with

thesurroundings; or must be made so uncomfortable as to be unable

toremember itself as subjected to any such difficulties, and there fore to

die through inability to recognise [sic] its own identityfurther.

Under these circumstances, organism must act in one or other ofthese

two ways: it must either change slowly and continuouslywith the

surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting thesmallest change with

a corresponding modification so far as isfound convenient; or it must put

off change as long as possible,and then make larger and more sweeping

changes.

Both these courses are the same in principle, the differencebeing only

one of scale, and the one being a miniature of theother, as a ripple is an

Atlantic wave in little; both have theiradvantages and disadvantages, so

that most organisms will takethe one course for one set of things and the

other for another. They will deal promptly with things which they can get

at easily,and which lie more upon the surface; those, however, which

aremore troublesome to reach, and lie deeper, will be handled uponmore

cataclysmic principles, being allowed longer periods ofrepose followed by

short periods of greater activity.

Animals breathe and circulate their blood by a little action manytimes

God the Known and God the Unknown

a minute; but they feed, some of them, only two or threetimes a day, and

breed for the most part not more than once ayear, their breeding season

being much their busiest time.It ison the first principle that the

modification of animal forms hasproceeded mainly; but it may be

questioned whether what is calleda sport is not the organic expression of

discontent which hasbeen long felt, but which has not been attended to,

nor been metstep by step by as much small remedial modification as was

foundpracticable: so that when a change does come it comes by way

ofrevolution.Or, again (only that it comes to much the samething), a sport

may be compared to one of those happy thoughtswhich sometimes come

to us unbidden after we have been thinkingfor a long time what to do, or

how to arrange our ideas, and haveyet been unable to arrive at any

conclusion.

So with politics, the smaller the matter the prompter, as ageneral rule,

the settlement; on the other hand, the moresweeping the change that is felt

to be necessary, the longer itwill be deferred.

The advantages of dealing with the larger questions by

morecataclysmic methods are obvious.For, in the first place, allcomposite

things must have a system, or arrangement of parts, sothat some parts shall

depend upon and be grouped round others, asin the articulation of a

skeleton and the arrangement of muscles,nerves, tendons, etc., which are

attached to it.To meddle withthe skeleton is like taking up the street, or the

flooring ofone's house; it so upsets our arrangements that we put it offtill

whatever else is found wanted, or whatever else seems likelyto be wanted

for a long time hence, can be done at the same time. Another advantage is

in the rest which is given to the attentionduring the long hollows, so to

speak, of the waves between theperiods of resettlement.Passion and

prejudice have time to calmdown, and when attention is next directed to

the same question,it is a refreshed and invigorated attention-an

attention,moreover, which may be given with the help of new lights

derivedfrom other quarters that were not luminous when the question

waslast considered.Thirdly, it is more easy and safer to make

suchalterations asexperience has proved to be necessary than toforecast

what is going to be wanted.Reformers are likepaymasters, of whom there

God the Known and God the Unknown

are only two bad kinds, those who paytoo soon, and those who do not pay

at all.

God the Known and God the Unknown

CHAPTER II

COMMON GROUND

I HAVE now, perhaps, sufficiently proved my sympathy with

thereluctance felt by many to tolerate discussion upon such asubject as the

existence and nature of God.I trust that I mayhave made the reader feel

that he need fear no sarcasm or levityin my treatment of the subject which

I have chosen.I will,therefore, proceed to sketch out a plan of what I hope

toestablish, and this in no doubtful or unnatural sense, but byattaching the

same meanings to words as those which we usuallyattach to them, and

with the same certainty, precision, andclearness as anything else is

established which is commonlycalled known.

As to what God is, beyond the fact that he is the Spirit and theLife

which creates, governs, and upholds all living things, I cansay nothing.I

cannot pretend that I can show more than othershave done in what Spirit

and the Life consists, which governsliving things and animates them.I

cannot show the connectionbetween consciousness and the will, and the

organ, much less canI tear away the veil from the face of God, so as to

show whereinwill and consciousness consist.No philosopher, whether

Christianor Rationalist, has attempted this without discomfiture; but Ican,

I hope, do two things: Firstly, I can demonstrate, perhapsmore clearly than

modern science is prepared to admit, that theredoes exist a single Being or

Animator of all living things - asingle Spirit, whom we cannot think of

under any meaner name thanGod; and, secondly, I can show something

more of thepersona or bodily expression, mask, and mouthpiece of thisvast

Living Spirit than I know of as having been familiarlyexpressed elsewhere,

or as being accessible to myself or others,though doubtless many works

exist in which what I am going to sayhas been already said.

Aware that much of this is widely accepted under the name

ofPantheism, I venture to think it differs from Pantheism with allthe

difference that exists between a coherent, intelligibleconception and an

incoherent unintelligible one.I shalltherefore proceed to examine the

doctrine called Pantheism, andto show how incomprehensible and

God the Known and God the Unknown

valueless it is.

I will then indicate the Living and Personal God about whoseexistence

and about many of whose attributes there is no room forquestion; I will

show that man has been so far made in thelikeness of this Person or God,

that He possesses all itsessential characteristics, and that it is this God who

has calledman and all other living forms, whether animals or plants,

intoexistence, so that our bodies are the temples of His spirit; thatit is this

which sustains them in their life and growth, who isone with them, living,

moving, and having His being in them; inwhom, also, they live and move,

they in Him and He in them; Hebeing not a Trinity in Unity only, but an

Infinity in Unity, anda Unity in an Infinity; eternal in time past, for so

much time atleast that our minds can come no nearer to eternity than

this;eternal for the future as long as the universe shall exist; everchanging,

yet the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.And Iwill show this with

so little ambiguity that it shall beperceived not as a phantom or

hallucination following upon apainful straining of the mind and a vain

endeavour [sic] to givecoherency to incoherent and inconsistent ideas, but

with the sameease, comfort, and palpable flesh-and-blood clearness with

whichwe see those near to us ; whom, though we see them at the best

asthrough a glass darkly, we still see face to face, even as we areourselves

seen.

I will also show in what way this Being exercises a moralgovernment

over the world, and rewards and punishes us accordingto His own laws.

Having done this I shall proceed to compare this conception ofGod

with those that are currently accepted, and will endeavour[sic] to show

that the ideas now current are in truth efforts tograsp the one on which I

shall here insist.Finally, I shallpersuade the reader that the differences

between the so-calledatheist and the so-called theist are differences rather

aboutwords than things, inasmuch as not even the most prosaic ofmodern

scientists will be inclined to deny the existence of thisGod, while few

theists will feel that this, the naturalconception of God, is a less worthy

one than that to which theyhave been accustomed.

God the Known and God the Unknown

CHAPTER III

PANTHEISM. I

THE Rev. J. H. Blunt, in his "Dictionary of Sects, Heresies,etc.,"

defines Pantheists as "those who hold that God iseverything, and

everything is God."

If it is granted that the value of words lies in the definitenessand

coherency of the ideas that present themselves to us when thewords are

heard or spoken-then such a sentence as "God iseverything and everything

is God" is worthless.

For we have so long associated the word "God" with the idea of

aLiving Person, who can see, hear, will, feel pleasure,displeasure, etc., that

we cannot think of God, and also ofsomething which we have not been

accustomed to think of as aLiving Person, at one and the same time, so as

to connect the twoideas and fuse them into a coherent thought.While we

arethinking of the one, our minds involuntarily exclude the other,and vice

versa; so that it is as impossible for us tothink of anything as God, or as

forming part of God, which wecannot also think of as a Person, or as a

part of a Person, as itis to produce a hybrid between two widely distinct

animals.If Iam not mistaken, the barrenness of inconsistent ideas, and

thesterility of widely distant species or genera of plants andanimals, are

one in principle-sterility of hybrids being due tobarrenness of ideas, and

barrenness of ideas arising frominability to fuse unfamiliar thoughts into a

coherent conception. I have insisted on this at some length in "Life and

Habit," butcan do so no further here.(Footnote: Butler returned to

thissubject in "Luck, or cunning?" which was originally published in1887.

In like manner we have so long associated the word "Person" withthe

idea of a substantial visible body, limited in extent, andanimated by an

invisible something which we call Spirit, that wecan think of nothing as a

person which does not also bring theseideas before us.Any attempt to

make us imagine God as a Personwho does not fulfil [sic] the conditions

which our ideas attachto the word "person," is ipso facto atheistic,

asrendering the word God without meaning, and therefore withoutreality,

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GodtheKnownandGodtheUnknown1GodtheKnownandGodtheUnknownBYSAMUELBUTLERGodtheKnownandGodtheUnknown2PrefatoryNote"GODtheKnownandGodtheUnknown"firstappearedintheformofaseriesofarticleswhichwerepublishedin"TheExaminer"inMay,June,andJuly,1879.SamuelButlersubsequentlyrevisedthetextofhiswork,presumablywitht...

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God the Known and God the Unknown(已知的上帝和未知的上帝)

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