"In attempting to reconcile scientific truth with the oldest traditions of humanity, there is but one serious danger, the loss of intellectual integrity."
"But if science said one thing and authoritative tradition said another, no perfectly ingenuous person could rest contented until he had either reconciled the two or decidedly rejected one of them."Familiar science-vs.-religion cliches of our day, both. Who wrote them?
A. Richard Dawkins, 2007.
B. Sam Harris, 2005.
C. Carl Sagan, 1991.
D. Daniel Dennet, 2009.
E. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, 1885.
E? Philip Gilbert Hamerton, 1885? Yes! How did you guess?
Amazing, isn't it, that a popular collection of essays from 126 years ago (and still in print, oddly enough) would contains staples of modern, best-selling atheism and secularism? Or maybe it only goes to show that some pop myths are old as the hills, especially the ones we label new and daring.
The book is
Intellectual Life, and my thrifted copy is the 1885 edition, as noted above. It's hilarious reading, partly because of the pompous and occasionally incomprehensible prose, but mostly because its take on religion is
identical to the modern "case" against faith. For instance, just as
Daniel Dennett feels that religion "has the power to overwhelm our best judgment and cloud our critical faculties," Hamerton, 100-plus years ago, warned that "If once we admit disingenuousness into the mind, the intellectual life is no longer serene and pure." The modern superstition of reason polluted and ruined by "authority," superstition, fantasy, etc. isn't modern, after all.
This 19th century text borders on self-help/self-improvement, which is why I bought it--mainly, I was hoping to find older examples of positive-thinking and use-every-portion-of-your-brain folklore. Instead, I ended up with a kinder and gentler blueprint for the anti-faith movement of our day, wherein religion is reduced to the belief in things that defy science; factual/demonstrable truth is treated as the only kind; religious dogma is portrayed as the enemy of progress; and so on. In our era, such mass-declared sentiments are viewed as controversial, but how can they be if they're all over a best-selling 1887 volume? Is it rational to treat ideas as novel and controversial which predate our great grandparents?
Oh, and author Hamerton also treats morality as something consistent with intellect--as in, smarter=more moral. Apparently, The Skeptical Inquirer didn't invent that idea.
Lee
