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I

Use and Abuse of Creeds.

HAVE shown you that there is no necessary

connection between creed and conduct, and sometimes no connection at all. I have explained to you that a man's conduct will be affected only by so much of his creed as he cares about, only by such parts of it as excite his interest and enthusiasm. In all but the very simplest and shortest creeds, there will therefore be much which can have no connection with conduct, because it has no connection with the emotions. It does not follow, however, that all the rest of the creed is worthless. Knowledge is valuable for its own sake. And a creed is just a short summary of knowledge, or of what is regarded as such. These summaries may be very useful, though they are also capable of being made very pernicious. Let us see.

Creeds are needed in every sphere of investigation. G. H. Lewes tells us, e.g., in his 'Seaside Studies,' that for years very little progress was made in zoology, because the workers in that department of science had no definite creed to guide them. There is no antagonism between philosophy and creeds; on the contrary, creeds are the handmaids of philosophy. A creed means, etymologically and really, that which is believed. It is a register of results in the search for truth. It is a landmark showing the point which has been reached in the march of human thoughta march which can never have an end. A creed consists of the opinions arrived at in a certain age, by certain men, on certain subjects, which they have transmitted, or ought to have transmitted, for the guidance, and not for the extinction, of future thought and investigation. It is a starting-point, not a goal. Just as an invading army makes good each position gained by planting a citadel, in order that they may be better able to set forth again to larger and more certain conquests; so it is necessary that creeds should be constructed, in order that men may be better

prepared for making further progress into the still outstanding, still unexplored realms of truth,

The

But there is always a danger that creed will crystallise into dogma, and then it becomes an unmitigated curse. The difference between the two things is this. A creed means that which is at present believed: a dogma means that which may never be disbelieved. There have been instances of this crystallisation of creed into dogma even in the history of philosophy. Look at Aristotelianism during the middle ages-when the logic and the physics and the metaphysics of Aristotle had been exalted into dogmas. gospel of that period was the anagram which had been made out of the name of the Stagirite -"Aristoteles, iste sol erat." Human ambition rose no higher than to shine with a light borrowed from this "sol." Hardly any one dreamed of thinking for himself. The circle of human knowledge was made to coincide with the discoveries of Aristotle. There is a story told of a certain monk who had detected some spots on the sun, and who rushed to his father superior to tell him of the phenomenon. The reply of his "superior"

must, I should fancy, have made a cynic of the monk for the rest of his life.

'My son," said the holy and silly father, "I have read through Aristotle many times, and I find no mention of any such thing; therefore rest assured either your glass or your vision is defective." Another of these reverend fathers refused to look through a telescope, for fear he should see something which had never been observed by Aristotle. A certain professor of philosophy in Padua came to Galileo, and requested that he would explain to him the meaning of the word parallax, which he said he wished to refute, having heard that it was opposed to Aristotle's doctrine touching the relative situation of the earth. As late as 1624 the Parliament of Paris issued a decree, banishing all who publicly maintained theses against Aristotle. In 1629 it was decreed that to contradict the principles of Aristotle was to contradict the Church-and we know what that meant in those days. When Ramus solicited the permission of Beza to teach in Geneva, he was told "the Genevese have decreed, once for all, that neither in logic nor in any other branch of knowledge

will they depart from the principles of Aristotle." In fact the Stagirite, poor man, through no fault of his own but through the folly of his disciples in converting him into a dogma, was very nearly becoming the father of a universal reign of ignorance.

Look again at Positivism, or rather Comtism. What brilliant originality and intellectual stimulus there was in Comte's earlier writings! But the later development of his system became a laughing-stock to his enemies and a mournful sorrow to his friends. Why? Just because the later development was dogmatic. It was to be decided by the priests of Positivism what theories the common people were to believe, and what subjects. the men of science were to investigate. The High Priest of Humanity proposed to saddle the world, to quote Professor Huxley's expression, with a sort of Roman Catholicism minus Christianity.

Curiously enough the crystallisation of creed into dogma has been most common in theology, where there was least excuse for it. Mr Garbett in his Bampton Lectures defines dogma as "that on which has been set the seal of divine infallibil