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Notes on Autobiography

p. 43. I think the sentence that the clearest evidence would be necessary to make any sane man believe in the Xtian [Christian] miracles implies an idea he would never have thought of maintaining if questioned about it. It implies that no sincere believer in Xtinanity [Christianity] can be sane. Now we know he wouldn't for a moment have said that such men as Spottiswoode, Maxwell, Faraday etc. were either incompetent to judge of evidence or insane.

[in margin:] Faraday believed Xtianity, he was sane therefore Faraday believed the evidence for Xtianity to be clear. This is logic.

No, it implies that he does not think the evidence clear. Faraday must have thought the evidence clear or he wd not deserve to be called sane.

[in margin:] Yes most clearly GHD

[in margin:] yes WED

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Notes on Autobiography

p. 43 He says that the men of the time of the birth of Christ & I suppose he means of the degree of culture of the apostles (for their roman conquerors were cultivated & sceptical) "were ignorant & credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us." This is a rash statement which I do not think he surely wouldn't have stood by. He would not really have thought them any more credulous than he thought the spiritualists of today e.g. the story of M^rs Guppy's flight from Islington to Bloomsbury are any more ignorant than say the half savage irish on the W. coast, or the inland Russian peasantry. There is not the slightest evidence of extraordinary degradation or ignorance in the Gospels. On the contrary, I shd think

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there would be a great balance of evidence to show that they were in a much higher state than the repose of our new complicated civilization.

[insertion by FD?] If it is a rash statement, why then one of his reasons is not very good. Why shd this fact be concealed?

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p. 43 The expression "spread like wildfire" except in a quite hastily written letter is unworthy of him or the subject.

p. 43 I feel unable to guess what he can have meant by the saying the beauty of the N.T. [New Testament] morality depends in part on the interpretation put on its metaphors & allegories.

If he thought whatever he meant is express of course he has a right to say it, but this in no way implies a duty on our part to publish it. This sentence add to the haziness & crudity of the effect of the whole discussion & seems to me no more worth publishing than say Maurice's views on Evolution would be.

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p. 44. "The rate was so slow that I felt no distress & have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."

This sentence seems to me one of the hardest & narrowest of all. Supposing a paper was found giving his views as to some historical question which has never been decided & where numerically the immense mass of his country men disagree in his conclusion. E.g. whether Homer was the author of Iliad or not, & father took the view that the Iliad was not the work of one man at all, w^d it not give anyone a shock to find this sentence "I have never since doubted for a moment that my conclusion was correct" - If he had said, as I firmly

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believe he meant, "I have never wavered in my conviction even for a single second", the annoyance wd be gone. If it was about Homer there could be no great harm in publishing the sentence as it stands but to make father seem arrogant about the one subject which moves peoples deepest emotions & which the greatest & wisest men speak about with diffidence is doing him a cruel wrong. The whole attitude of his mind was anything but arrogant & specially not as regarded religion

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p. 44 "Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws." This is merely assuming the whole point in question. He gives no idea as to why he assumes this, & those who do not agree will be no step advanced.

p. 44. "But passing over the endless beautiful adaptations". I cannot at all tell what he means by this. Snow [Julia Wedgwood] cuts the knot by suppressing it. I presume he means that a believer in Providence might argue, giving up any inference from design, how do you account for the beneficent arrangement of the world except through a benificent providence - but it is very dark.

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p. 44-45. The discussion on the existence of suffering as telling against the existence of an Intelligent First Cause impresses me as very inadequate. There is only one little word to show that the idea of this crossed his mind & yet this & suffering are so bound up one can hardly understand it. It is as if the habit of looking at man as an animal had become so present to him, that even when discussing spiritual life, the higher life kept shifting away.

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p. 47 par 5 lines from top

This sentence seems to me meaningless. How can the consideration of the view now held by physicists that this planet will grow too cold for life, show how strong & instinctive is the belief in immortality? There is no nexus, no train of thought perceptible. He goes on to say that to an evolutionist the destruction of the world is an intolerable thought - & to a believer in immortality, not so terrible & gives the reasons - but in no way gives a hint as to how such a view or any consideration it might lead to, shows the strength & instinctiveness of this belief.

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p. 47. "A man who as no assured & ever present belief in the existence of a personal God . . . can have for his rule of life . . . only to follow those impulses & instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones." In Descent of Man vol. 1 p. 91 he says [blank]

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p. 91 p. 47

at of Desc. of Man Vol. 1 he says:

"At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; & tho' this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will far more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men." [Descent 1: 91.]

And he goes on to explain that after the gratification of such desires, retribution will come owing to the persistency of the social instinct wh. has been outraged. It comes out as the result of the discussion that he considers that conscience is guided by & formed from the social insticts, habit, possibly inheritance, the pressure of public opinion & the religious sanction. In

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the opening of the chapter he quotes from Mackintosh that the moral sense is summed up in the short but imperious word "ought" and again, a fine passage from Kant where he exlaims "Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul." [See Descent 1: 71.]

The whole discussion fills up 30 pages & gives admirably his grounds for the above conclusions. Now the paragraph above quoted from the auth. directly contradicts these conclusions. It does not even allude to the persistency of the social instinct which is the key to his theory. Can anyone believe he really thought

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a mans rule of life should be to follow those impulses & instincts which are strongest?

he does not say should but can

if a man has no moral sense & has no feeling of best, he can only follow the strongest impulses & instincts. WED.

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p. 48. par beginning "As for myself"

This goes against my taste. It is far too private to be published in the lifetime of his wife & children. It shocks my sense of all the decencies of life that he shd say he "feels no remorse at having committed any great sin" to the outer world. It is essentially such a private saying—