THE PASSING OF THE LAST IDOL

New Zealand Tablet, 22 May 1919, Page 11

THE PASSING OF THE LAST IDOL

(By J. B. J CuLEMANS, in America.) j

The last few "years have witnessed the collapse of many of the idols which Francis Bacon set out'to demolish with such reckless vehemence. The "Idold Tribus,'' the common preoccupations of mankind, as the lure of ease and pleasure, the lust for rank and gold, have gone by the board at the call of stern duty. The "Idola Speeds;" the selfish tendencies of the individual, have been merged into an ardent striving after the common good. The "Idola Fori," whose votaries, by making wordy professions of patriotism and other high ideals, endeavored to give substance to a shadowy reality, were all thrown pell-mell into the discard, as attention became focused on the need and the reality of suffering and sacrifice which, unvoiced, become step-ping-stones to higher and better things. %:-. ■ ,; One last sanctuary stood inviolate, .that of, the "Idola Theatri," shielding the dogmas foisted upon many minds by the presumed authority of modern scientists and philosophers whose eminence and repute none dared question. Non-Catholic scholars and uhi-

versity teachers never weary of pointing to the wonderful achievements of science, continued to advocate unlimited freedom of research and investigation into all departments of knowledge ; they decried loudly the enslavement of reason to authority and exhibited undisguised pity for the Catholic would-be investigator, shackled and hemmed in by a thousand restraints. They abolished God and His revelation as incompatible with the empirically ascertained laws of the universe, while they bowed humbly and reverently before the dictates of Haeckel and Huxley, and Darwin and Tyndall and Bergson. That last refuge of superstition is being rudely shaken, and is crumbling to dust under our very eves. ..

For the cult of science was a superstition, with its priests and high priests, its devotees and dupes, its temples and its idols. There is little need to recall at length August Comte, the first pontiff of positive science raised to the dignity of a religion, although he had set out to disprove the need of any religion whatever. Those whom he had dazzled at first, forsook him then, and none among his successors have dared to assume his mantle in so brazen a fashion. But selfappointed university luminaries have continued to proclaim themselves the true reformers and saviours of mankind, holding up science as the light of the world and the lodestar of the race. The apotheosis of science was celebrated in dithyrambic language, and to the multitude of its blessings there was no end. Secondrate lecturers and popularisers were anxious to be the lesser lights basking in the sunshine of the great men and with the fervor of zealots they helped in spreading the new evangel from platform, and college chair, through book and pamphlet and magazine. The protagonists of the new learning in the days of the Renaissance were elipsed by the fiery enthusiasts who have been abroad for the last half-century announcing the good tidings of the wonderful discoveries that are leads ing to the final emancipation of the human mind. s The temples of the living God could henceforth be dispensed with. They had merely a sentimental interest as lingering historic monuments of a dead past and of an outworn creed. For all nature is a temple whose rites are performed in the laboratory, where also are evolved the ultimate doctrines without which the

human mind is never at rest. Profess your firm adhesion to the laws of the chemist-philosopher, the physic cist-theologian, the psychologist and the sociologist—they are from all eternity. No God can derogate from them by any miracle. Behold they are your dogmas for dogmas we must have. Faithful followers flocked to them in great numbers. Bewildred, enthralled) ignorant of any revelation, they succumbed to the magic . spell and became willing worshippers;, at the shrine of science. ; They , endowed . it- with j preternatural powers', occult potentialities; looked upon it as the ruler of thd present world " and - the interpreter of the world to comes ■U-ij

as • is the wont of all, superstitious devotees and dupes. | ,Dupes.: indeed. ' Clear and , bold the-,' fact stands out to-day, so that he who 'runsl'may^^^ read and 3 understand., Science was held up as the panacea Ifor. all the evils afflicting the world : it has increased a hundredfold our facilities for killing off the race, rendered war more deadly than ever and brought no happiness. It has shown the way and provided the means to alleviate suffering and death ; but their horrors are largely caused by its own deadly progress. The chemist and the physicist have unravelled the secrets of nature and used them to soothe the body in its agony. Yet, they have given us nothing to take the place of prayer and Christian fortitude as comforts to the soul when the final parting is at hand : nothing to bear up the bereaved "relatives in the sorrow and agony, of. their loss - ; ,... I The psychologist had proved conlusively that God is ah idea, evolved by the inner consciousness of the race to represent the highest ideal towards which man is tending. This supreme ideal he found concretely represented in the Christ, the most perfect of men but a man withal. His miracles, of healing were, of course, clearly shown now to be delusions,, largely magnified by His followers to impress the .uneducated minds of an unscientific age. He was a great moral character, but mistaken as to His mission and its outcome. His triumph over death is an impossibility and an absurdity : the laws of nature do not admit of any exceptions. Do men still believe in that phantom God? Death is no longer regarded as the common fate that befalls us all in due time. Amidst the whistling of bullets and the shrieking of shells and the suffocating gas, it. took on a new meaning ; life beyond the grave must be a reality if this life is to have a meaning. Men were never willing to die for a fine-spun human theory devoid of certitude and sanction nor are they now. Today they want to be assured that their sacrifice and their death lead to something more enduring than the nirvana of scientific agnosticism. And from the very depths of their being goes up the cry to the true and living God, sweeping away in an instant that shadowy structure built up by wordy psychologists ignorant of the beauty and value of human life and destiny. The. sociologist had codified the laws that, govern the mass-actions of the race and proved their uniformity by dint of elaborately compiled statistics. In his simple scheme of things man was a cog in the great wheel of society. He is dominated by his environment from which he takes his fluctuating moral standards and which sets its sanction upon his actions. Free-will is but a convenient term to designate uncorrelated activities that will sooner or later come under the mechanical laws that govern humanity and the inorganic world alike. The mechanistic conception of the universe, held by the chemist and the physicist, was applied to man. By rule of thumb sociology would reconstruct society on this new pattern. Scientific morality would take the place of the Divine Commandments that had contributed their share towards the evolution of the race, but are now hopelessly out of date. Human society is an end in itself. Happiness in a future life cannot possibly be part of a scientific conception of the world. The greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number right here and now is the aim of existence. Sin is not an evil, but poverty is, and sickness, and " tenements, and above all, monogamous marriage when the partners are not soul-mates. All these-sources of social ills will be done away with, and primarily that most prolific source of them all:' Christian marriage. The outcome was to be a regenerated race, gaining in broad culture, health and physical strength what it might lose in numbers. §j The apostle of science saw the old theocratic order tottering to its ruin. It is his own airy castles that are tumbling in the dust around his college chair. The old morality, the old ideals of sacrifice and devotion,* assert themselves . more. strongly than ever . in , times of . crisis: What do men care now for mere material happiness and i/ioauuio vwiJiiXLrx ub wucu mgiicr tjnus are at, Sli»Ke .?; .XIIGV.

are no doubt < very, unscientific in warring for what they believe to be eternal principles of right and wrong, but they are true to their better selves. They refuse to admit that they-’ are the toys of an ineluctable fate; that the good things of earth are the only possessions worth' while, and,they have set out, through pain and afflictions, to build themselves a better world in disregard of the sociologist’s most cherished tenets. sj

A scientific religion and morality may quite satisfy an * aristocracy # of intellectuals, sybarites of the laboratory : they do not work in the world of men where the fiery ordeal of suffering only stamps a theory as fit for human; souls do live by. When face to face with ultimate realities, instinct and reason alike drive men to cast aside all the crude substitutes for the one true] God, whose word has- brought hope and solace to untold generations,, in 'clays of stress. Science' in its proper sphere will continue to ennoble the mind and to reveal the greatness of the Creator.! As a claimant to spurious honors it has gone the way of all idols. Humanity is the better for their passing.