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John Henry: Palaeontology and Theodicy: Religion, Politics and the Asterolepis
of Stromness
Palaeontology and Theodicy: Religion, Politics
and the Asterolepis of Stromness
by John Henry
Previously published as: "Palaeontology and Theodicy: Religion,
Politics and the Asterolepis of Stromness", in Hugh Miller
and the Controversies of Victorian Science, edited by Michael
Shortland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 151-70. Copyright © Oxford
University Press. By permission of Oxford University Press
In his study of "The Argument for Organic Evolution before the Origin of
Species, 1830-1858", the distinguished intellectual historian, Arthur O.
Lovejoy (1959) expressed what looks very much like bafflement accompanied with
distaste at the beliefs of Victorian men of science in the decades immediately
preceding the appearance in print of Darwin's theory of evolution. The prevailing "special
creation hypothesis" had "a singularly odd appearance", Lovejoy wrote (p. 411),
because
It implied that the Creator had produced the different types of organism
by fits and starts, strewing them at irregular intervals along the
vast reaches of geological time. Precisely what happened on one of
these interesting occasions, the hypothesis left in a baffling obscurity...
On these matters the theory remained judiciously non-committal. But
it maintained, at all events, that the majority of species, however
created, were destined to be in turn destroyed - and destroyed by the
operation of natural forces. The Great Artificer could fashion, but
he was either unable or unwilling to protect, the creatures his imagination
had devised. When ordinary physical processes were too much for them,
sweeping them off by groups, or even, according to one variant of the
theory, obliterating them altogether, he was obliged to start afresh...(pp.
411-12)
As if this was not bad enough, Lovejoy went on, when God did intervene
he was evidently held to do so "after the manner of a lazy and incompetent
Architect". Instead of studying each problem afresh and taking account
of special uses and situations, the Creator was content to make a few
minor alterations in a conventionalized plan. The result was that succeeding
forms "did not always differ markedly for the better from their unfortunate
precursors", on the contrary, many unsuccessful models were repeated.
Casting about for an explanation, Lovejoy suggested that perhaps the
special creationists saw this behaviour as "an agreeable mannerism
of the Creator's personal style". But if so, Lovejoy immediately pointed
out:
it was the kind of mannerism which, in a human designer, is commonly
ascribed to indolence or limited intelligence. Indeed, the parallel
of the lazy architect was inadequate to represent the whole singularity
of the Creator's mode of construction. He not only used as few general
models as possible, but he also - when, with a cleared field, he created
a fresh group of organisms - reproduced in them organs and members
which had been functional and useful in their predecessors, but were
in the new species useless, meaningless, and even disadvantageous -
like the proverbial Chinese tailor, who laboriously imitated all the
rents and stains in the discarded European garment given him as a model.
Furthermore, Lovejoy added, with a reference to the belief that developing
embryos of advanced creatures supposedly recapitulated the previous
history of development of animal forms, the Creator was alleged also
to have implanted in all organisms "the senseless habit of mimicking,
in the early stages of the individual's development, the forms of other
and extinct organisms to which that individual bore no relation of
kinship" (p. 413).
What Lovejoy found most baffling about the special creationist hypothesis, "tenaciously
held by most men of science", was the fact that although it was primarily
inspired by theological demands, it could not fail to strike the modern
reader by "its extraordinarily irreligious character":
Science might conceivably, after some fashion, have made shift with
a hypothesis of this kind; but it is hard to see how any one could
suppose it in any degree advantageous to religion. It had not even
the poor merit of being anthropomorphic. For no man outside of a madhouse
ever behaved in such a manner as that in which, by this hypothesis,
the Creator of the universe was supposed to have behaved. Ascribing
to him both the ability and the disposition to intervene with absolute
freedom in natural - or at least in organic - phenomena, the theory
also represented him as incapable of intervening intelligently or effectually
(p. 413).
Lovejoy's final response to this was to declare, as if with a shrug
of his shoulders, that "the capacity of theological prepossessions
and religious feeling to retard and confuse intellectual processes
is an old story".
Lovejoy's summary of the details of special creationist beliefs is,
in spite of his evident distaste for those beliefs, substantially correct.
His interpretation of the theology and the nature of Providence underlying
special creationist theories is, by contrast, entirely unreliable (or
so it seems to me) because he has made no attempt to understand the
context within which these beliefs were formed, and the interests which
they served. What I want to do in this paper is to take rather more
seriously the theology underlying the special creationist approach
to explaining the evidence of palaeontology. After all, it was not
the only possible approach for the religionist, as Lovejoy was at pains
to point out in his article. Robert Chambers, the anonymous author
of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), was careful
to provide a theological dimension for his evolutionary theory which,
while differing markedly from that of the special creationists, a group
which included Hugh Miller, was by no means without a clear pedigree
in traditional theological thought. Being fully aware of this alternative
theological tradition, Lovejoy seems to have been unable to understand
why religiously devout men of science in Victorian Britain did not
subscribe to it. Our task in this paper, then, is to try to understand
why special creationists refused to adopt this available theological
tradition and preferred to believe in the seemingly incompetent and
unintelligent God which so appalled Lovejoy. Rather than try to cover
the whole field of Victorian geologists and naturalists, however, we
will concentrate on one leading example among the special creationists,
the Cromarty stonemason, Hugh Miller.
The God of special creationism was the God of what is called voluntarist
theology and, as such, was categorically opposed to the God of the
alternative tradition, that of intellectualist, or sometimes "necessitarian",
theology. In order to understand the full importance to voluntarist
theologians of their God, and in order to understand some of Miller's
comments in rejecting the alternative, it is necessary to understand
something of the history of this alternative theology. It is perhaps
worth remarking before going any further that the role of intellectualist
theology in the history of thought has been most impressively documented
by Lovejoy himself in his Great Chain of Being, first published
in 1936. It is ironic that his detailed studies of this tradition in
philosophical theology should have blinded him to the equally vigorous
tradition of voluntarist theology, but this seems to have been the
case.
Lovejoy has traced the intellectualist tradition back to the philosophy
of Plato but it entered into the mainstream of Christian theology in
the eleventh century as the result of controversies about the omnipotence
of God (Oakley 1984). Perhaps the most reknowned way of characterizing
intellectualist theology derives principally from the philosophy of
Leibniz in the seventeenth century (Lovejoy 1960, pp. 144-82). Leibniz
believed that God had created the best of all possible worlds, and
indeed that God had to create the best of all possible worlds.
The argument, drastically simplified, goes something like this: God
is supremely and perfectly good. It is inconceivable, therefore, that
he should create a universe which is not also supremely good. If he
were to do so, he would be guilty of causing unnecessary suffering
for his creatures. We know that God has created the universe in accordance
with rational principles. The triumphs of Newtonian science, for example,
reveal this to be true.[1] There can
be no contradiction, therefore, between God's decision to create the
world in accordance with rational principles, and his desire to create
the best possible world. If there were any contradiction between these
two approaches, God would know it in advance, since he is omniscient,
and would, because of his supreme goodness, choose not to create a
world in accordance with rational principles, but stick to creating
one that was simply supremely good. Since he has created the world
in accordance with rational principles, it is safe to conclude that
this is the best of all possible worlds, since God's reason is capable
of weighing up all the alternatives, and his goodness will dictate
that he must choose the best one.
There can be little doubt that this kind of theologizing received
a fillip in the eighteenth century from the natural philosophy of Isaac
Newton, although Newton himself was a voluntarist through and through.[2] The success of Newton's system in explaining the system of
the world was seen as a demonstration that man's reason was entirely
capable of discovering God's laws. The up-shot, therefore, was a belief
in the God of reason of intellectualist theology, and an increased
optimism that man would be able to understand all the laws of creation.
But the story is not just one of abstract philosophical theologizing.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, no less than in the eleventh,
there were issues of a more earthly kind at stake, including liturgical
and ecclesiastical issues as well as more general issues of moral philosophy.
In particular, intellectualist theology was developed in opposition
to the voluntaristic position so vigorously embraced by Calvinism,
and this in turn had political ramifications; most famously, for example,
with regard to the tradition of the Divine Right of Kings (generally
an intellectualist position) versus social contract theories of monarchy
(generally the voluntarist position) (Oakley 1984).
Another important issue in the debates hinged upon the nature of
moral principles. The clear implication of intellectualist theology
was that in creating the best of all worlds, God already had eternal
and immutable principles of good and evil, right and wrong, to guide
his creative hand and mind. Again, this was used as a way of attacking
the opposite, Calvinist view. Ralph Cudworth, for example, an influential
seventeenth century theologian, whose Treatise concerning Eternal
and Immutable Morality was published posthumously in 1731, insisted
that according to the Calvinists "nothing can be imagined so grossly
wicked, or so foully unjust or dishonest, but if it were supposed to
be commanded by this omnipotent Deity, must needs upon that hypothesis
forthwith become holy, just and righteous" (Raphael 1969, p. 105).
The difference between intellectualist and voluntarist theologians
on this issue is best summed up with an old chestnut: the intellectualist
believes that God wills something because it is good; the voluntarist
believes that something is good because God wills it.
The intellectualist theology and its concomitant morality of absolutes
was undoubtedly dominant in Eighteenth-century English thought, giving
rise to an entire cosmology. Perhaps the major English statement of
this new worldview, which has been very aptly called "Cosmic Toryism" (Willey
1940, pp. 47-59), was Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733-4).
We can see quite clearly in Cosmic Toryism the belief that God's goodness
required him to create the best of all possible worlds: "Of systems
possible...", Pope wrote, "... Wisdom infinite must form the best" (Pope
1950, I, 43-4). This in turn gave rise to a characteristic theodicy
to explain the origin of evil in the world. What looks like evil is
in fact all part of God's original plan, and indeed God himself could
not have done away with this evil without introducing a worse evil
and thus deviating from the moral injunction upon him to create the
best of all possible worlds. "Our proper bliss", Pope wrote, "depends
on what we blame" (1950, I, 282):
All nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT (I, 289-94).
Pope has a reputation as a Deist thinker, although this is debateable,
but it is anyway generally acknowledged that the major influence on
the First Epistle of the Essay on Man was William King's De
origine mali of 1702 (Pope 1950, pp. xxvii-xxxi; Nuttall 1984,
pp. 202-8). King was the Archbishop of Dublin and his theodicy generated
sufficient interest to be translated and copiously annotated in 1731
by Edmund Law, a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, later to become
the Bishop of Carlisle.
As is well-known this way of thinking was mercilessly ridiculed by
Voltaire in his comic novel, Candide, or Optimism (1759). Candide's
tutor, Pangloss, who we are told gave instruction in "metaphysico-theologico-cosmoloonigology" (Voltaire
1966, p. 1), insisted that
things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is
made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end. Observe,
noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs,
as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have
breeches... and since pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year
round. Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering
mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best (Voltaire
1966, p. 2).
Like all the best satire, Voltaire's Candide gains from the
fact that it's seeming absurdities and exaggerations are very close
to reality. It is possible to find in eighteenth-century English writers,
for example, the following seriously-made claims: horse dung smells
sweet because God knew that men would often be in its vicinity; apes
and parrots were created for men's mirth and singing birds to entertain
and delight; cattle and sheep were given life in order to keep their
meat fresh "till we shall have need to eat them"; lobsters provided
not only food but also exercise; horseflies were created "so that men
should exercise their wits and industry against them", and the louse
was created to promote cleanliness (Thomas 1983, pp. 19-20).
But these ways of thinking are by no means confined to the sphere
of natural history. They also form an essential part of the background
to eighteenth-century attempts to develop the human sciences. In the
various efforts, initially inspired largely by John Locke, to extend
the Newtonian method to provide a science of man, it became a common
assumption that even the seemingly more reprobate aspects of human
nature were deliberately created by God to ensure the smooth-running
of society. Although individuals are likely to act in their own self-interest,
reason will tell them that their own self-interest will be best served
by appealing to the self-interest of others with whom they have any
transactions. In this way, God has ensured that public benefits arise
out of the private vice of self-interest. These notions were most famously
developed in Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1714),
but Pope put forward similar ideas in his Essay on Man:
Forc'd into virtue thus by Self-defence,
Ev'n Kings learn'd justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursu'd,
And found the private in the public good.
...
So two consistent motions act the Soul;
And one regards itself, and one the Whole.
Thus God and Nature link'd the gen'ral frame,
And Bade Self-love and Social be the same (Pope 1950, III, 279-84,
315-8).
It was largely through this kind of argumentation that the theodicy
of intellectualist theology came to underwrite laissez-faire political
theories. Society could be expected to run most smoothly and harmoniously
when it was left to take its natural course, that is to say
when allowed to run without interference from man or government. God
had created human nature in such a way that society would run smoothly
not in spite of men's vices but because of them. Accordingly, it became
a commonplace of political theory that any attempt to interfere with
the God-given system was liable only to make things worse, to foul
things up. Here then was clear naturalistic support for the politics
of defending the status quo; as Pope said, "Whatever is, is right" (1950,
I, 294).
One of the most famous statements of these ideas was Soame Jenyns's Free
Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1757). Here we see
a seamless blend of intellectualist theology and its theodicy with
an insistence that political interference is, on these grounds, entirely
undesirable. "No system can possibly be formed, even in imagination",
Jenyns insisted, "without a subordination of parts" (Jenyns 1790,
p. 43). He went on:
Every animal body must have different members, subservient to each
other; every picture must be composed of various colours, and of light
and shade; all harmony must be formed of trebles, tenors, and basses;
every beautiful and useful Edifice must consist of higher and lower,
more and less magnificent apartments. This is the very essence of all
created things, and therefore cannot be prevented by any means whatever,
unless by not creating them at all: For which reason, in the formation
of the Universe, God was obliged, in order to carry on that just subordination
so necessary to the very existence of the whole, to create Beings of
different ranks... (pp. 43-4)
"The Universe is a system whose very essence consists in subordination",
Jenyns concluded, "a scale of Beings descending by insensible degrees
from infinite perfection to absolute nothing" (p. 45). Here we see
what Lovejoy calls the "principle of plenitude" being invoked to establish
the Chain of Being and its full continuity (Lovejoy 1960, pp. 208-26).
As Pope put it: "From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,/Tenth
or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike" (1950, I, 245-6).
Having established that God had no choice but to create beings of
different ranks: "it is utterly impractical", Jenyns reiterated, "even
for infinite power, to exclude from Creation this necessary inferiority
of some Beings in comparison with others" (Jenyns 1790, p. 47), he
proceeded to show how this was compatible with God's goodness: "for,
amongst all the wide distinctions which he was obliged to make in the
dignity and perfections of his Creatures, he has made much less in
their happiness than is usually imagined, or indeed can be believed
from outward appearances" (p. 47) Those who endure poverty are compensated,
Jenyns assures us, "by having more hopes and fewer fears, by a greater
share of health, and a more exquisite relish of the smallest enjoyments" (p.
48). The sufferings of the sick are repaid by the "inconceivable transports
occasioned by the return of health and vigour". Ignorance, we are told,
the appointed lot of all born to poverty, and the drudgeries of life,
is the only opiate capable of infusing that insensibility which can
enable them to endure the miseries of the one, and the fatigues of
the other. It is a cordial administered by the gracious hand of Providence;
of which they ought never to be deprived by an ill-judged and improper
Education (pp. 49-50).
Cosmic Toryism, then, was a prevalent philosophy throughout the eighteenth
century in England, being embraced by Anglican Churchmen and Deists
alike. Furthermore, these ideas were carried into the nineteenth century
with perhaps renewed urgency by a minister of the Anglican Church,
Parson Robert Malthus. Opposing the utopian optimism of political theorists
like William Godwin, and the proposed Poor Law amendments of William
Pitt, Malthus, in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798),
insisted that the laws of God, the laws of Nature, could not be flouted.
Malthus's belief that "the constant tendency in all animated life to
increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it" (Malthus 1989, p.
10; cf. 1986, p. 9), was represented as an all pervading law of nature
restraining all life on earth. "The race of plants and the race of
animals shrink", he wrote, "under this great restrictive law; and the
race of man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it" (Malthus
1989, p. 10; cf. 1986, p. 9). Governmental or any other philanthropic
intervention is futile: "a strong check on population, from the difficulty
of acquiring food, must be constantly in operation. This difficulty
must fall somewhere, and must necessarily be severely felt in some
or other of the various forms of misery, or the fear of misery, by
a large portion of mankind" (Malthus 1989, p. 11; cf. 1986, p. 9).
Like Jenyns, Malthus seems to have seen this law of nature as a necessity,
one which not even God could have circumvented, except by not creating
animated life at all.
As is well-known, Malthus was a major influence on the influential
theologian, William Paley. Although perhaps it is worth mentioning
also that Paley, archdeacon of the diocese of Carlisle, was a close
friend of Bishop Edmund Law, who had translated Archbishop King's De
origine mali into English.[3] Paley summarized Malthus's principle of population
in Chapter 26 of his Natural Theology (1803), which was concerned
with "The Goodness of the Deity". He concluded his summary by saying
that "It seems impossible to people a country with inhabitants who
shall be all easy in circumstances."[4] The
clear implication of this is, as Soame Jenyns might have said, that
it is impossible even for God to do this. The difficulty of finding
food together with its attendant circumstances will always occur, "and
these circumstances", Paley wrote, "constitute what we call poverty,
which necessarily, imposes labour, servitude, restraint" (Paley 1837,
p. 544).
The political dimension of Paley's theodicy can be seen in a short
work of his called Reasons for Contentment, addressed to the Labouring
Part of the British Public (1793). Here again the flavour is reminiscent
of Soame Jenyns views, albeit more gently expressed. The very same
laws which are designed to protect the poor man and his property also,
accidently, enable others to amass exorbitant fortunes. "It is much
better that it should be so," Paley insists, "than that the rules themselves
should be broken up" (Paley 1837, p. 568). Once again, we find ourselves
being told that this, in spite of obvious imperfections, is the best
of all possible worlds. The compensations of the labouring man are
to be found, Paley tells us, in the fact that, for example, they have
regular employment with which to fill their days. A lack of anything
to do to pass the time is, Paley assures us, a terrible oppression
to the wealthy, and it is in order to have something to do that "they
are driven upon those strange and unaccountable ways of passing their
time, in which we sometimes see them, to our surprise, engaged" (p.
568). Similarly, the labouring man is able to provide more easily for
his children who do not have expensive habits and expectations. All
that is required for the labouring man's child are the qualities of "industry
and innocence" with which he can be sent forth to become a useful,
virtuous and happy man (p. 569). The poor are told not to envy the
rich man's ease because, in fact, the rich envy the refreshment and
pleasure which the labouring man gets simply from resting, an enjoyment
which those who do not have to work can never experience (p. 570).
The origin of evil, according to Paley, "arises from the consideration
of general rules" (p. 541). The point is this, to guarantee the order
and harmony of the universe, nature proceeds by general laws, but these
general laws, "however well set and constituted" - and we need to remember
they are set and constituted by God - "often thwart and cross one another".
It is "from these thwartings and crossings" that "particular inconveniences" arise
(pp. 541-2). Once again, Pope had a line for it: "... the first Almighty
Cause/Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws" (Pope 1950, I, 146).
So, when Robert Chambers wished to introduce a theistic element into
his evolutionary theory, it is hardly surprising that he turned to
this theological tradition. Towards the end of the Vestiges when
he declared that "We have now to enquire how this view of the constitution
and origin of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth,
and his relation to supra-mundane things" (Chambers 1844, p. 361),
he presented his readers with a familiar theodicy:
It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many
miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included, occasionally
enduring. How, the sage has asked in every age, should a Being so transcendently
kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of evil in the condition
of his creatures? Do we not at length find an answer... in the view
which has now been given of the constitution of nature? We there see
the Deity operating in the most august of his works by fixed laws,
an arrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and primary
results being good, but disregards exceptions (Chambers 1844, pp. 362-3).
Like Paley, then, Chambers suggests that the general laws may thwart
and cross one another. He gives an example:
Thus it may happen that two persons ascending a piece of scaffolding,
the one a virtuous, the other a viscious man, the former being the
less cautious of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and
is killed, while the other, choosing a better footing is uninjured.
It is not in what we can conceive of the nature of things that there
should be a special exemption from the ordinary laws of matter, to
save this virtuous man... The Great Ruler of Nature does not act on
such principles. He has established laws for the operation of inanimate
matter, which are quite unswerving... He has likewise established moral
laws in our nature, which are equally unswerving, and from obedience
to which unfailing good is to be derived (pp. 375-76).
Everywhere we see the arrangements for the species perfect; the individual
is left, as it were to take his chance against the melée of
the various laws affecting him. If he be found inferiorly endowed,
or ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality against him. The
system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has the like
chance of drawing the prize (p. 377).
Chambers is careful to spell out the implications of this for our
view of the attributes of the Deity:
It will occur to every one that the system here unfolded does not
imply the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the
Deity towards his creatures. Constituted as we are, feeling how vain
our efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and knowing
that much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault of ours, we
are apt to feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine economy...
But it may be that... there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the
screen of nature... For the existence of such a system, the actual
constitution of nature is itself an argument. The reasoning may proceed
thus: The system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading
principle in the divine mind. But that system is at the same time deficient
in a means of making this benevolence of invariable operation. To reconcile
this to the recognised character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose
that the present system is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great
Progress, and that the Redress is in reserve (pp. 383-5).
In spite of appearances, therefore, this is the best of all
possible worlds.
Robert Young has already alerted us to what he has called the "common
context" of social theory, natural theology and evolutionary theory
in nineteenth-century Britain. I hope that the foregoing can be seen
as an extension and broadening of Young's thesis. He took the ideas
of Malthus as his starting point, and concentrated primarily on showing "just
how available his theory was for interpretation in very different senses" (Young,
1985, p. 24). I've tried to indicate a wider social, political and
theological context of which Malthus, and the other writers mentioned,
were a part. Broadly speaking, I hope I have shown that there is a
discernible tradition in the history of British thought in which intellectualist
theology goes hand in hand with a particular theodicy, accepting evil
and suffering as an inevitable feature of what is the best of all possible
worlds, and laissez-faire political theory in which there is no remedy
for the lot of the poor and any attempt even merely to alleviate their
suffering will be considered, as Soame Jenyns might have said, "ill-judged
and improper" (Jenyns 1790, p. 49-50).
It is important to say, before going any further that Robert Chambers
ought not to be in this company. He was a liberal thinker with many
reformist concerns towards the lower classes of society. But this cannot
be taken as a counter-example to the association of intellectualist
theology and its theodicy with the more extreme forms of laissez-faire
politics, which I am pointing to here. James A. Secord has recently
shown that Chambers simply tacked on the theological aspects of the Vestiges in
order to placate contemporary religious sentiments. Religion played
such a small role in Chambers's own concerns, Secord argues, that he
could hardly have been serious about the theodicy which he appropriated
from Paley, Malthus and other like-minded writers (Secord 1989, p.
171). It is surely significant that when casting about for a theological
scheme with which to dress up his evolutionary ideas, Chambers lit
upon the theology of Malthus and Paley, both of which were major influences
on Darwin's evolutionary ideas.[5] It
is hardly surprising, however, in view of the insincerity with which
he appropriated these ideas to his immediate purpose of placating the
reading public, that the theodicy did not particularly match up to
his own socio-political views.
Hugh Miller, however, had no idea that the Vestiges was written
by the liberal, reform-minded, Robert Chambers. For him it was a book
which was fully in the tradition of Pope and Soame Jenyns. In the final
chapter of Footprints of the Creator (1849), Miller's protracted
response to Vestiges, he also attacks Soame Jenyns and Pope:
Species and genera seem to be greatly more numerous in the present
age of the world than in any of the geologic ages. Is it not possible
that the extension of the chain of being which has thus taken place...
may have borne reference to some predetermined scheme of well-proportioned
gradation, or, according to the poet,
"Of general ORDER since the whole began?"
...Such, certainly, would be the reading of the enigma which a Soame
Jenyns or a Bolingbroke would suggest; but the geologist has learned
from his science, that the completion of a chain of at least contemporary
being, perfect in its gradations, cannot possibly have formed the design
of Providence. Almost ever since God united vitality to matter, the
links in the chain of animated nature... have been dropping one after
one from his hand, and sinking, fractured and broken, into the rocks
below. It is urged by Pope, that were "we to press on superior powers," and
rise from our own assigned place to the place immediately above it,
we would, in consequence of the transposition,
In the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed.
From Nature's chain whatever link we strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.[6]
Miller goes on to say that geological science has proved that many
links in the supposed chain had been "already broken and laid by" and
that, therefore, man might "press on superior powers" to attain a new,
more angelic, nature with perfect impunity (Miller 1870, pp. 286-87).
Here, then, we see Miller invoking the supposedly incompetent God
which Lovejoy (1959) thought he had discerned; the God who has allowed
species and genera to be broken out of the chain of being and laid
by. It should already be clear, however, from the context of Miller's
discussion that Miller is primarily concerned to deny the Providence
which underwrites the notion of the great chain of being, which is
to say the God of intellectualist theology. Miller does not, of course,
see his own God as incompetent, but he does see the God who is supposed
to have created the great chain of being in accordance with the principle
of plenitude as a God who is hidebound by the laws of logic, whose
omnipotence is compromised by the need to obey the same ineluctable
laws as mankind, whether laws of logic, of nature, or of morals.
The predominant attribute of the God of the voluntarist tradition
is not his power of reasoning but his omnipotence. Of all God's attributes
this is held to be primus inter pares. It is God's will which
is emphasized, not his intellect or his reason. Where the will of the
intellectualists' God is subservient to his reasonings, the will of
the voluntarists' God is, as far as mankind is concerned, entirely
arbitrary. The will of the intellectualist God is constrained by what
is eternally, and undeniably good. Because he is so constrained, he
can only create one world (assuming he chooses to create at all): the
best of all possible worlds. That is why Miller refers to the chain
of being as a "predetermined scheme of well-proportioned gradation" (Miller
1870, p. 286); it was predetermined that God had to make it so. It
is this world which is full and all interconnected through the great
chain of being. A gap in the chain suggests a lack, a failure to make
the best possible creation; a lack of interconnection between the links
suggests a failure of reason. The order of the system should be discoverable
by man's reason - the attribute by which man can be said to be made
in God's image - thinking God's thoughts after him, and so all must
be interconnected. As Pope said: "all must full or not coherent be" (Pope
1950, I, 45).
This is anathema to the voluntarist. God knows no constraints, much
less man-made ones such as those set down in the laws of logic. God
can make 2+2 equal to 5, or change the law of excluded middle. He can
change the laws of nature and make and re-make the world (Funkenstein
1986). Considerations like these make it possible to see why a devout
Christian like Hugh Miller felt that he must not only reject the notion
of the great chain of being, but also show, by means of his geological
science, that it is not a legitimate reading of the physical world. "The
apostles of this school", as Miller called them, set aside "the belief
in a special Providence... without whose permission there falleth not
even a 'sparrow to the ground'", and substitute "a belief in the indiscriminating
operation of natural laws" so that "even man can work out his [God's]
will merely by knowing and directing these laws" (Miller 1870, p. 253).
But what of the problem of evil? How does Miller explain what seem
to be obvious imperfections in the constitution of our world? Philosophically
speaking this is one of the strengths of intellectualist theology.
What is the voluntarist approach? The answer is hardly satisfying from
the philosophical point of view. Indeed voluntarist theodicy is, as
we might expect, a religious rather than a philosophical response to
the problem. It is summed up, perhaps, in the famous words of Hugh
Miller's favourite poet, William Cowper:
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform... (Cowper 1980, p. 174)
The voluntarist does not presume to know or to be able to explain
why God has made the world the way he has. Man's mind cannot possibly
fathom the workings of an infinite mind, or realistically hope to understand
what lay behind God's will.[7]
This is how Miller deals with the issue in his response to the Vestiges:
I am aware that I stand on the confines of a mystery which man, since
the first introduction of sin into the world till now, has "vainly
aspired to comprehend". But I have no new reading of the enigma to
offer. I know not why it is that moral evil exists in the universe
of the All-Wise and the All-Powerfull; nor through what occult law
of Deity it is that "perfection should come through suffering". The
question, like that satellite, ever attendant upon our planet, which
represents both its sides to the sun, but invariably the same side
to the earth, hides one of its faces from man, and turns it to but
the Eye from which all light emanates. And it is in that God-ward phase
of the question that the mystery dwells (Miller 1870, p. 291).
The approach is fully in keeping with the voluntarist tradition.
It is worth remarking that this kind of stratagem for dealing with
the problem of evil is not open to the intellectualist theologian,
even if he wanted to take it. The intellectualist theologian takes
it for granted that God proceeds in a rational way. The God-given gift
of reason enables men, therefore, to think God's thoughts after him
and reconstruct his thinking in creating the world. It makes no sense
in this tradition to claim that God moves in mysterious ways.
There is an interesting illustration of Miller's voluntaristic way
of dealing with religious questions in his First Impressions of
England and Its People (1847). Miller describes how he witnessed
a theological discussion in the public room of a guest house in which
he was staying. The debate was about the need for atonement. Eventually
one of the participants said: "Can it really be held that the all-powerful
God - the Being who has no limits to his power - could not forgive
sin without an atonement? That would be limiting his illimitable power
with a vengeance!" Seeing the English Calvinist, to whom this remark
was addressed, had no reply, Miller decided to step in with "the metaphysics
of our Scotch Calvinism". He began by pointing out that God's nature
is "underived, unalterable, eternal", that he did not give to himself
his own nature, He is the way he is. "It is the underived moral nature
of the Godhead", Miller wrote, "which forms the absolute law of his
conduct in all his dealings with his moral agents." Here then, Miller
is insisting that God's morals do not derive from pre-existing principles
of right and wrong which he feels obliged to obey. Miller goes on to
say that the will and power of God are not unregulated but spring from
his underived moral nature. "Of God's moral nature, or the conduct
which springs out of it", we are told, "we can but know what God has
been pleased to tell us: the fact of atonement can be determined but
by revelation." Miller concludes by saying: "Your appeal in the question
lay to the omnipotence of God: it is something to know that
in that direction there can lie no appeal." (Miller 1983, pp.
17-18). It is important to understand what Miller meant here. He was
not, of course, saying that God was not omnipotent. His point was that
his interlocutor had effectively tried to define God's omnipotence
in terms of the current rational debate. This is the omnipotence of
intellectualist theology, which is circumscribed by the demands of
logic. In saying there can lie no appeal by invoking God's omnipotence,
Miller wished to imply that God's omnipotence takes him far beyond
what is merely logically possible.
Time and again Miller repeats the lesson that we cannot fathom God's
mind. In the Testimony of the Rocks (1857), for example, when
expounding upon "Geology in its bearings upon the Two Theologies",
Miller mentions the Calvinistic Catechism which he learned at his mother's
knee: "The decrees of God are his eternal purposes, according to the
counsel of his will...". As if it was necessary, Miller adds that what
he was told early, he still believes. Shortly after, Miller recollects
God's challenge to Job: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations
of the Earth? Declare if thou hast understanding"; returning to the
story of Job later, Miller repeats God's question: "Knowest thou the
ordinances of Heaven?" (Miller 1866, pp. 223, 237). The implication,
of course, is that man cannot know the ordinances of heaven and cannot
have a full understanding of God's creation. "That master problem of
moral science, the origin of evil", Miller wrote, "seems, as I have
said, not to be given to man fully to comprehend" (Miller 1866, p.
226).
It is clear from all this that Miller was opposed to intellectualist
approaches to theology and the nature of Providence, and that he refused
to accept the intellectualist theodicy which went with it, preferring
instead to profess ignorance of the reasons and reasoning of God. It
is my contention that Miller was also aware of and opposed to the social
and political attitudes which went hand in hand with intellectualist
theology. I have shown how Soame Jenyns - an author obviously known
to Miller since he explicitly attacks his views in The Old Red Sandstone (Miller
1911, pp. 85-87), Footsteps of the Creator (1870, pp. 287-88)
and Testimony of the Rocks (1866, pp. 187-89, 197-98) - took
an extreme laissez-faire attitude to social problems, even cautioning
against providing education for the poor. Similarly, Malthus urged
against improvement of Poor Law provision for the indigent, justifying
his laissez-faire political economy in terms of "that imperious, all
pervading law of nature", necessity (Malthus 1989, p. 10). But perhaps
these are extreme positions even within the general philosophy of laissez-faire.
Most adherents to the prevailing theory of political economy allowed
some measure of assistance to the poor. Even Malthus himself, in his
re-working of his Essay (1803), introduced the notion of self-restraint
in matters of procreation as a solution to the problems of the poverty-stricken,
and advocated a programme of education to inculcate this simple idea.[8]
Nevertheless, it is generally true to say that there was a rigid
belief in the inevitability of a lower class of labouring poor. Improvement
of the condition of the poor was held to be largely in their own hands.
But this did not mean, of course, that Victorian social theorists believed
that the poor should rise up against their social superiors. Social
improvement was a matter for individuals. Hard work, moral propriety,
and a large measure of self-education were all that was required to
enable the most lowly of men to rise to the position of a Carlyle,
a Chambers, or even a Miller. This was certainly the view of Robert
Chambers, many of whose publishing ventures, with his brother William,
were intended to provide self-help educational materials for the lower
orders of Victorian society (Secord 1989).
Hugh Miller by no means dissented from this view of social improvement.
Even more than the Chambers brothers, Miller had managed to elevate
himself from humble beginnings. Indeed, the very title of Miller's
autobiography, My Schools and Schoolmasters (1854), was intended
to convey to his readers a sense of the importance of self education
for social improvement. As Miller wrote in the closing words of the
story of his education:
A right use of the opportunities of instruction afforded me in early
youth would have made me a scholar ere my twenty-fifth year, and have
saved to me at least ten of the best years of life - years which were
spent in obscure and humble occupations.
His story also served to show, however, "that much may be done by
after diligence to retrieve an early error of this kind" and
- that life itself is a school, and Nature always a fresh study -
and that the man who keeps his eyes and his mind open will always find
fitting, though, it may be, hard schoolmasters, to speed him on his
lifelong education (Miller 1875a, pp. 561-2).
Nevertheless, I believe it is possible to discern a clear distinction
between Miller's social and political views and those more determinedly
laissez-faire attitudes of so many of his contemporaries. A common
implication of the self-improvement model is that those who remain
indigent or continue all their lives in lowly labour with no improvement,
ending up perhaps in a work-house, have only themselves to blame. Even
Robert Chambers, for example, in an account of the "Public and Social
Duties of Life" which appeared as issue number forty of Chambers's
Information for the People (Chambers 1842, pp. 625-40), seems to
have taken this line:
Great care should be taken when an evil befalls us, to ascertain
whether it be moral or natural - in other words, whether it be the
consequence of our own error, or of circumstances at present beyond
our control... The most of the accidents that occur, though they appear
at first sight to be natural evils, would be found, on close inspection,
to be moral. The most of the diseases that befalls us could be traced
to a failure in our duty to ourselves, and are therefore moral evils:
the rest, such as cancers, wens, organic malformations, &c., which
appear natural and unavoidable, are, we have no doubt, moral evils
also. If we knew better, we might probably avoid them, as easily
as we can avoid colds (p. 634).[9]
I have not found social attitudes like this in Miller's political
essays. On the contrary, what we see time and again is a real awareness
of just how difficult the position of the poor is, and how impossible
it is for them to help themselves. Consider Miller's account, in My
Schools and Schoolmasters, of the fishermen crofters of Gairloch
in the Western Highlands:
I saw among these poor men much of that indolence of which the country
has heard not a little; and could not doubt, from the peculiar aspects
in which it presented itself, that it was, as I have said, a long-derived
hereditary indolence, in which their fathers and grandfathers had indulged
for centuries. But there was certainly little in their circumstances
to lead to the formation of new habits of industry. Even a previously
industrious people, were they to be located within the great north-western
curve of thirty-five inch rain, to raise corn and potatoes for the
autumnal storms to blast, and to fish in the laird's behalf herrings
that year after year refused to come to be caught, would, I suspect,
in a short time get nearly as indolent as themselves (Miller 1875a,
p. 288).
After further consideration of the matter Miller concluded that the
indolence of the inhabitants "could scarce be described as inherently
Celtic" (p. 289).
Similarly, in his essay on "Our Working Classes", originally published
in the Witness in June 1854, Miller spoke not of the moral failings
of the lower orders but of the faults of society. "Here society has
failed", he wrote, when describing the housing conditions of the poor. "It
is idle to speak of sanitary reform, and almost idle to speak of moral
reform, when we contemplate the dwellings of a large portion of the
population" (Miller 1875b, p. 146). "We can conceive no object on which
society may more profitably fix its attention than on the systematic
improvement of the dwellings of the industrial classes", Miller declared,
before proceeding to tell his readers, by way of example, that the
Duke of Buccleuch and other "extensive landed proprietors" were now
improving the dwellings in their country districts. By improving their
housing Miller believed that the working classes would be provided
with a "positive stimulus" which could induce them to strive "as if
they had an object to attain". Without that stimulus, however, they
could hardly be blamed for their present condition (p. 149).
Miller had discussed "the Cottages of Our Hinds" in similar terms
in the Witness in January 1842. In an ironic echo of Chambers's
suggestion that disease might be the result of moral failing, Miller
spoke of a Highland tenant "who had been found guilty of declining
health and vigour... and had been discharged as a consequence" (Miller
1875b, p. 194). Miller left his readers in no doubt that the plight
of this man was not brought about by his own fault but was the result
of "stern necessities". They were, it should be added, necessities
laid upon the Highlander, not by God in his efforts to make the best
of all possible worlds, but by "my Lord Duke", "his Grace the Duke
of Buccleuch" (p. 195). These are matters, Miller concludes, in which
the aristocracy should abandon their "niggard economy": "It will not
do", he wrote, "to speak of forty-pound impossibilities and twenty-pound
inconveniences, when the morality of the country is thus at stake" (p.
199). Similarly in his account of the Bothy system in use on Highland
farms (Witness, September 1841), Miller made it clear that,
notwithstanding the efforts of the Chambers publishing house, it is
impossible for the inmate of a bothy to cultivate his mind. "The bothy
is a place in which the cogitative faculties fall asleep; the higher
sentiments of our nature fare no better" (Miller 1875b, pp. 206-7).
Needless to say, Miller was a man of his time and, taken as a whole,
his political views fall far short of our standards of late twentieth-century
liberalism. He was opposed to an extension of the franchise (Miller
1875b, pp. 157-65), and opposed to Chartist calls for an extension
of Poor Law relief (pp. 217-30) in terms which might well gladden the
heart of any late-twentieth century Thatcherite. But we need not try
to reach a definitive assessment as to precisely where Miller stands
in his politics. My concern here is merely to indicate that his refusal
to accept suggestions that the poor were poor, or remained so, primarily
as a result of their own moral failings, is in keeping with his voluntaristic
refusal to accept that God has created the best of all possible worlds
in which poverty is part of the immutable system. Those who do think
this way believe that the poor are poor essentially because they are
morally and intellectually inferior to those in the higher classes
and have been created that way by a God who, according to Soame Jenyns,
was obliged "to create Beings of different ranks: and to bestow [upon
them]... various degrees of understanding, strength, beauty, and perfection" (Jenyns
1757, p.).
Attitudes to the poor and the labouring classes were, for Miller, "associated
with certain other great facts in the moral government of the universe,
by those threads of analogical connection which run through the entire
tissue of Creation and Providence" (Miller 1870, p. 288), and Miller
was not going to accept a political stance that seemed to him to be
affiliated to beliefs in the intellectualists' God and the callous
excuse for social injustice and suffering which was its theodicy.
I said at the beginning that Arthur O. Lovejoy expressed something
approaching astonishment at what he took to be the "extraordinarily
irreligious character" of the special creationist theory of the origin
of species, because the Creator had the ability to intervene in the
system with absolute freedom, but lacked the intelligence to intervene
effectually (Lovejoy 1959, p. 413). I hope that by now we can all see
that Lovejoy could not do justice to the special creationist hypothesis
precisely because he failed to understand the theology which lay behind
it. Miller's God was not a bungling watchmaker, incapable of creating
a universe which would run smoothly without the need for him to intervene
further. Miller's God marched to the beating of a different theological
drum. The mind of Miller's God could not be understood, much less circumscribed,
by human reason. It could only be understood by a thorough acquaintance
with the two theologies, natural and revealed.
Needless to say, these twin theologies had to be compatible with
one another. What looked like incompetence in the Godhead to Lovejoy
was in fact a means of ensuring that the Deistic natural theology of
the Vestiges could not win the day. When Miller looked at the
palaeontological record, as summed up especially in the fossil Asterolepis
which he himself found at Stromness, he saw what he took to be clear
and incontrovertible empirical evidence that the developmental or evolutionary
hypothesis was unacceptable. "The argument is a very simple one", he
insisted:
if fish could have risen into reptiles, and reptiles into mammalia,
we would necessarily expect to find lower orders of fish passing into
higher, and taking precedence of the higher in their appearance in
point of time... If such be not the case, - if fish made their first
appearance, not in their least perfect, but in their most perfect state,
- not in their nearest approximation to the worm, but in their nearest
approximation to the reptile, - there is no room for progression, and
the argument falls. Now it is a geological fact, that it is the fish
of the higher orders that appear first on the stage... There is no
progression... There is no getting rid of miracle in the case, - there
is no alternative between creation and metamorphosis. The infidel substitutes
progression for Deity; - Geology robs him of his God (Miller 1911,
pp. 65-6).[10]
"Such seems to be the true reading of the wondrous inscription chiselled
deep in the rocks", Miller insisted and immediately went on to reveal
just why this reading was so important to him:
It furnishes us with no clue by which to unravel the unapproachable
mysteries of creation; - these mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator,
and to Him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them
to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous rebellion
(Miller 1870, pp. 277-8).
Miller's reading of the rocks was a testimony not just to the existence
of God but to the nature of his Providence. It was a proof of the truth
of voluntaristic theology, which for Miller was bound up with a particular
approach to the problem of evil, and that in turn to the correct way
of dealing with the social problems of Victorian Britain.
Bibliography
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Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Chambers's information for the people. New and Improved Edition,
2 vols. (ed. W. and R. Chambers). William and Robert Chambers, Edinburgh.
Chambers, Robert (1844). Vestiges of the natural history of creation.
John Churchill, London.
Cowper, William (1980). The poems of William Cowper, vol.
I: 1748-1782, (ed. J. D. Baird and C. Ryskamp). Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Darwin, Charles (1958). The autobiography of Charles Darwin and
selected letters (ed. Francis Darwin). Dover Publications Inc.,
New York.
Funkenstein, Amos (1986). Theology and the scientific imagination
from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton University
Press, Princeton.
Henry, John (1986), Occult qualities and the experimental philosophy:
active principles in pre-Newtonian matter theory. History of Science,
24, 335-81.
Henry, John (1993). Henry More and Newton's gravity. History of
Science, 31 , 83-97.
James, Patricia (1979). Population Malthus: his life and times.
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Jenyns, Soame (1790). A free inquiry into the nature and origin
of evil. In The works... in four volumes, vol. 3. T. Cadell,
London.
Lovejoy, A. O. (1959). The Argument for organic evolution before
the Origin of Species, 1830-1858. In Forerunners of Darwin, 1745-1859 (ed.
Bentley Glass, Owsei Temkin, W. J. Strauss), pp. 356-414. Johns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore and London.
Lovejoy, A. O. (1960). The great chain of being: A study of the
history of an idea. Harper & Row, New York.
Malthus, Thomas Robert (1986). An essay on the principle of population.
The first edition (1798). In The works, (ed. E. A. Wrigley and D. Souden),
vol. 1. William Pickering, London.
Malthus, Thomas Robert (1989). An essay on the principle of population;
or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with
an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation
of the evils which it occasions. The version published in 1803, with
the variora of 1806, 1807, 1817 and 1826 (ed. Patricia James),
vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Miller Hugh (1866). The testimony of the rocks. Adam & Charles
Black, Edinburgh.
Miller, Hugh (1870). Footsteps of the Creator, or the asterolepis
of Stromness (12th edn). William P. Nimmo, Edinburgh.
Miller, Hugh (1875a). My schools and schoolmasters (25th edn).
Edinburgh, William P. Nimmo.
Miller, Hugh (1875b). Essays historical and biographical political
and social, literary and scientific (7th edn). William P. Nimmo,
Edinburgh.
Miller, Hugh (1911). The old red sandstone. Everyman Edition.
J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London.
Miller, Hugh (1983). First impressions of England and its people.
Byway Books, Hawick.
Moore, James R. (1979). The post-Darwinian controversies: A study
of the protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great
Britain and America, 1870-1900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Nuttall, A. D. (1984), Pope's 'Essay on Man'. George Allen & Unwin,
London.
Oakley, Francis (1984). Omnipotence, covenant & order: An
excursion in the history of ideas from Abelard to Leibniz. Cornell
University Press, Ithaca and London.
Paley, William (1837). The works. Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh.
Pope, Alexander (1950), An Essay on Man, (Twickenham edn.,
vol. III, ed. Maynard Mack). Methuen & Co. Ltd., London.
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Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Secord, James A. (1989). Behind the veil: Robert Chambers and Vestiges.
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politics in the Leibniz-Clarke disputes. Isis, 72, 187-215.
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in England 1500-1800. Allen Lane, London.
Voltaire (1966). Candide, or optimism (trans. and ed. Robert
M. Adams). W. W. Norton & Company, New York and London.
Willey, Basil (1940). The eighteenth-century background: Studies
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Notes for "Palaeontology and Theodicy"
[1] Although, it should be noted,
Leibniz himself would almost certainly not have chosen Newton's triumphs
as an example. But that's another story. See, for example, Shapin 1981.
For a fuller, richer, and more philosophically sophisticated account
of the intellectualist theological position see Lovejoy 1960.
[2] On Newton's voluntarism see Shapin
1981, Henry 1993.
[3] Malthus's influence on Paley is
well known, being so freely acknowledged by Paley himself that Malthus
was able to express his pride in having converted him to his views.
See James 1979, p. 53. Paley dedicated his Principles of moral and
political philosophy to Edmund Law in 1795 and speaks of him, in
the Dedicatory Epistle, as one who, by rendering religion more rational,
made it more credible (Paley 1837, p. xxvii).
[4] Paley's inspiration can be clearly
seen in Malthus's: "it appears, therefore, to be decisive against the
possible existence of a society, all the members of which, should live
in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure..." (Malthus 1986, pp.
10).
[5] Darwin makes his indebtedness
to Malthus and Paley perfectly clear in his autobiography. See Darwin
1958, p. 42 (on Malthus), and p. 19 (on Paley). The account given here
of the role of intellectualist theology in nineteenth century thought
could easily be extended into the post-Darwinian period. The popular
view that Darwinism was vigorously opposed by all religious believers
in Victorian Britain, is now known to be vastly over simplified. The
Anglican Church came round to accepting it very quickly. It was absorbed
into their intellectualist natural theology as, simply, a grander view
of the Creator. See Moore 1979 and Brooke 1991, especially pp. 310-320.
[6] The "poet" quoted near the beginning
of this extract is, of course, Pope. See Pope 1950, I, 171. The subsequent
longer quotation from the Essay on Man can be found in Epistle
I, lines 243-6. Miller has slightly misquoted Pope, who wrote "whatever
link you strike".
[7] It may seem to the reader that
there is a contradiction between what is said here and John Brooke's
claim, in his essay in this collection, that Miller believed there
to be an "identity of mind" between God and man. In fact, there is
no contradiction here. An important element of voluntarist theology
was its emphasis on empiricism as the only means of understanding God's
creation and, thereby, the workings of his mind at the Creation. According
to the voluntarist, intellectualist theologians claimed to be able
to "think God's thoughts after him" in the manner of the armchair philosopher,
without recourse to anything other than their own powers of reason.
It was this which was so arrogant, so implausible and so blasphemous
in intellectualist theology. In so far as it was in any way possible
to think God's thoughts after him, the voluntarist believed this could
only be done by looking to see what God had actually done and using
that empirical knowledge to make inferences about the mind of the Creator. "We
infer from them [instances of design in nature], more directly than
from the complex mechanisms", Miller wrote, "that He who wrought of
old after the manner of a man must have in his intellectual character,
if I may so express myself, certain man-like qualities and traits." It
is significant, however, that he immediately adds: "It is in the lower
skirts of the Divine nature that we most readily trace the resemblance
to the nature of man, - an effect, mayhap, of the narrow reach of our
faculties in their present infantile state" (Miller 1866, pp. 214-5).
The emphasis on inference or induction from empirical evidence was,
of course, a major element not only in Miller's rejection of Vestiges (as
we shall see), but also in the voluntarist tradition of natural theology
in general. For general indications of the importance of empiricism
in voluntarist natural theology see Oakley 1984; Funkenstein 1986,
especially pp. 117-201; and Henry 1986, especially pp. 358-66.
[8] The difference between the 1798 Essay and
the 1803 Essay are so great that it is somewhat misleading to
refer to them as first and second editions. For a full account see
James 1979; or, for a much briefer consideration of differences in
attitude to the poor, see Young 1985.
[9] Not all of the extensive and wide-ranging Information
for the people was written by the Chambers brothers. But we are
told at the end of "Public and Social Duties of Life" that although
much of it was abstracted from "the Moral Class Book of Mr William
Sullivan, a work published at Boston", various sections were added
by "one of the Editors". The additional sections included the one
from which this quotation is taken: "Misfortunes - Evils" (Chambers
1842, p.640). The Editor in question was almost certainly Robert.
[10] The significance of the Asterolepis
of Stromness was that it showed, according to Miller, that the fish
of the higher orders did appear first and that what ensued in succeeding
ages was a gradual degeneration to provide more primitive forms of
fish. For a fuller account see the paper by David Oldroyd in this collection
[i.e. M. Shortland (ed.) (1996), Hugh Miller and the Controversies
of Victorian Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 76-121].
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Email: carole.tansley@ed.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 4256
Fax: +44 (0)131 650 6886
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Fax:
+44 (0)131 650 6886