The Ethical Record Vol 100 No 10 £1.00 November 1995

ISSN 0014-1690 The Ethical Record Vol 100 No 10 £1.00 November 1995

Guest Editorial - SEARCHING FOR SCHRODINGER'S KITTENS THINKING ON A FEELING LEVEL John Gribbk; 3 The Naive Rationalist might assume "This House believes religion is incompatible MRS GASKELL, WILLIAM FOX with intelligence" when the debate is AND HIS ARTIST DAUGHTER organised by Mensa (the club for high MRS ELZA BRIDELL FOX IQs). Is that not apparent a priori? The Brenda Co/loins 7 more so when the venue is Simpsons in the Strand, famed for red-blooded dinners - VIEWPOINT the meaty arguments will lead surely to a Donald Langdown 11 successful resolution? DAVID HUME AND THE DEMISE When first she aspired to eat at the OF NATURAL THEOLOGY Empyrean Table, your reporter was wont Daniel OHara 12 to fall prey to such naive rationalism. She knew better by last month when the HG. WELLS' WORLD BRAIN debate was held, in spite of the cogency of Peter Lansdale 22 the arguments in favour.

Clive Sinclair, of CS fame, narrowed PIONEERING IN EDUCATION religion to belief in a sentient god and IN BECHUANALAND rebutted three justifications for this belief Patrick van Rensburg and - evidence from history, logical deduction Donald Baker 23 and divine revelation. A Lib-Dem councillor ridiculed the tendency to leap FUTURE EVENTS 24 to a magical conclusion; two examples are when a dying priest recovered after a saint's relic was placed on his forehead and the recent disappearance of milk into Hindu statues. I liked the third speaker's coining of religiophiliac and religiophobic.

The main points against the motion were that religion was derived from binding people together and was therefore both a good thing and nothing to do with intelligence, as similarly nor was music; a prison chaplain used the argument from design and a Carthusian monk used the argument from the intelligence of the likes of J. Polkinghorne, eminent Christian physicist.

The higher rationality of the arguments adduced for the motion were, however, of no avail in the voting and it was defeated,

To Humanists, rationalisation is usually only about reason. However, as defined by Ernest Jones, the biographer of Sigmund Freud, it can also mean a psychological defence mechanism; so that underlying the apparently rational is an essentially emotional rationale. I would argue that this analysis illuminates the steep path from naive to (more) sophisticated rationalism.

Jennifer R. Jeynes SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Telephone: 0171 831 7723

Holding Trustees 1995/1996 Louise Booker*, Miriam Elton, Marion Granville, Peter fleales, Don Liversedge*, Barbara Smoker, Dr Harry Stopes-Roe, Prof Gerald Vinten. Appointed Lecturers The SPES AGM on 110.95appointed those Lecturers standing for re-election: Harold Blackham, T.F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe. Officers The General Committee elected the following at its meeting on 1110.95: Hon. Representative. Nicolas Walter. General Committee Chairman: Barbara Srnoker*. Vice-Chahman: Terry Mullins*. Hon Measurer Don Liversedge. Hon. Ednor, The Ethibal Record. Norman Bacrac. Hon. Librarian: Jennifer Jeynes. Hon. Registrar Marion Granville Convenors of Sub-Committees 1995-1996 The GC. elected the following Convenors at its meeting on 11.10.95: Executive: Secretary, Finance: Don Liversedge, Hall: Hall Manager, Legal: Barbara Smoker, Library Working Party Jennifer Jeynes, Moral Education: Don Liversedge, Programme & Edhorial: Jennifer Jeynes, Rules & Standing Orders Secretary, South Place Sunday Concerts Chamber Music Library Clements Memorial: Lionel Elton General Committee Apart from the Officers and Convenors, the General Committee comprises Richard Benjamin*, Ian Buxton, Yvonne Bracken*, Margaret Chisman*, Govind Deodhekar, Naomi Lewis, Graham Lyons, Victor Monger, David Morris, Tom Rubens, Barbara Ward*. (*Elected at the SPES AGM on 1.10.95.) SPFSStaff Secretary to the SOCiely: Nina Khare. Tel: 0171831 7723 (The Secretary's office is now on the 2nd Floor, Bradlaugh House, 47 Theobald's Road) Manager Stephen Norley.Tel 0171242 8032 for Hall bookings. Head Caretaker David Wright New Members John Hynes, Dr. Bapu Kulkarni, Amanda Todd.

REMINDER SPES SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING, 12.45pm, Sunday 12 Nov. See Oct ER for the Motion (re: Rule change).

2 Ethical Record, November, 1995 SEARCHING FOR SCHRODINGER'S KITTENS John Gribbin * Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex

Lecture to the Ethical Society, 8 October1995

A doubly significant quantum anniversary provides an opportunity to re-assess the quantum mysteries and offer a new solution to these puzzles.

Two Thought Experiments It is exactly sixty years since the publication of two "thought experiments" designed to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum mechanics, and to make physicists come up with a better view of reality than the standard "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum physics. The two publica- tions could hardly have failed to attract attention. One carried the name of Albert Einstein, the other that of Erwin Sehrodinger - two of the key players in the development of the theory they now urged their colleagues to reject. But in spite of some discomfort caused by having the weirdness of the quantum world highlighted by Einstein, SchrOdinger and a handful of others since, physicists continue to stick by the Copenhagen interpretation. But now, maybe its time is up. Einstein Tries to Show the Absurdity of Quantum Mechanics (QM) It was in May 1935 that Einstein, together with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (then all working at Princeton) published the description of what has ever since been known as the "EPR paradox", although it is not really a paradox at all (Physical Review, vol.47 p.777). They wanted to highlight two features of the Copenhagen interpretation that they regarded as absurd - the so-called "collapse of the wave function", and the notion that every part of a quantum system responds instantaneously to a stimulus affecting any part of the system.

You can see what they were worried about in a slightly modified version of the original thought experiment. Imagine an atom which emits two photons simultaneously in opposite directions. The quantum rules say that the two photons must have opposite polarisations, but that it doesn't matter which one has which polarisation. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, until somebody measures the polarisation, each photon exists in a superposition of states, a wave function that is a 50:50 mixture of the two possibilities, sometimes called a probability wave. But as soon as the photon is measured, the wave function collapses into one of the two possible states. Even worse, by measuring one of the photons and forcing it to choose a definite polarisation state, the other photon is instantaneously forced into the other polarisation state, even though by that time the two photons may, in principle, be fight years apart.

Einstein and his colleagues never dreamed that the experiment would be carried out. They were happy that it demonstrated the logical absurdity of the situation. Yet as a result of theoretical work by David Bohm, in London, in the 1950s and John Bell, at CERN in the1960s, it became clear that a modified version of the EPR experiment really could be carriedout. And in the 1980s Alain Aspect and his colleagues, working in Paris, actually did the trick. The real experiment is slightly more complicated than I have described, and involves measuring three correlated polarisation states of the two photons. In essence, measuring property A of photon number 1 and property B of photon number 2 gives you information about property C for each photon. But the bottom line is clear and unambiguous - the behaviour of real photons in real experiments agrees with the Copenhagen interpretation and the ridiculous predictions of the EPR paper.

What Einstein was most concerned about in all this was the implication, now proved by experiment, that some communication between the two photons propagates faster than light, seemingly in violation of the requirements of his own theory of relativity. He called this * Author of Schrodinger's Kittens, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (1995) Ethical Record, November, 1995 3 "spooky action at a distance", and abhorred it. The Aspect experiment shows that the spooky action at a distance is real.

Schrodinger Shows QM Requires a Cat to be both Dead and Alive Schrodinger, on the other hand, was more worried about the collapse of the wave function. He invented the most famous quantum thought experiment of them all to demonstrate just how absurd that is.

Imagine a cat locked in a box with a system like the one I described for the simplified EPR experiment. The atom emits its two photons, which, for the sake of this argument, we can imagine bouncing about between a pair of perfectly reflecting mirrors. The box contains an automated device that will kill the cat if the polarisation of one of the photons, chosen at random, is measured to be in one of the two possible states. If it is found to be in the other state, the cat lives. According to the Copenhagen interpretation, as Schrodinger spelled out in a paper published in three parts in Naturwissenshaften late in 1935 (vol. 23), pages 807, 823 and 844), everything in the box, including the cat itself, remains in a superposition of states until the measurement is observed. Only then does the system collapse into one of the two possibilities, containing either a dead cat or a live cat.

How can a cat be in a superposition of states? Does this mean that it is somehow both dead and alive (or neither dead nor alive) until the photon polarisation is observed? If it does, does this imply that an intelligent observer has to make the measurement, or will the wave function collapse as soon as a sophisticated computer measures the polarisation? The cat in the box experiment (which, perhaps I should stress, has never been attempted with a real cat!) has spawned a cottage industry of variations on the basic theme, without ever resolving the issue. Here is my contribution, taking on board the EPR experiment as well.

Gribbin's Two Kittens Thought Experiment For this trick, we need two kittens, distant descendants of Schrodinger's venerable cat, placed in a box which contains, in duplicate, all the necessities for life, plus the diabolical cat-killing device, and which can be divided automatically down the middle to make two boxes. The now familiar atom is placed in the middle of the box, and allowed to fire its photons off in opposite directions. The photons are trapped in each of the two halves of the box, each of which contains one kitten, and the box is separated into its two halves. Each half-box, containing one kitten and a photon in a superposition of states is carried off to a different distant planet, a journey that may take several years. At some point along the way, an automatic device measures the polarisation of the photon, and triggers (or not, as the case may be) the lethal device. But nobody knows whether or not the device has been triggered until the boxes arrive at their destinations. Then, and only then, an intelligent observer opens one of the boxes and looks inside. According to the strict Copenhagen interpretation (which, in case you are wondering, is the standard version of quantum theory taught in universities and used, among other things, to design computer chips and lasers, and which underpins our understanding of DNA and genetic engineering) then, and only then, the state of the kitten in that particular box collapses into being either alive or dead. And simultaneously, in a galaxy far, far away, the state of the other kitten, still sealed inside its box, collapses into the opposite condition, either dead or alive.

A Tiny Adjustment Needed - Accept Time Travel! You might think that just about any interpretation of quantum theory would make more sense than that, and I wouldn't be inclined to argue. There are at least six interpretations which stand up as well as the Copenhagen interpretation, and several more dodgy ones. But there is one that I particularly like, which explains all the quantum mysteries, and which requires only one tiny adjustment in your image of the Universe - accepting the reality of signals that travel backwards in time.

4 EthMal Record, November, 1995 This is a highly respectable version of quantum theory, developed by John Cramer, of the University of Washington, Seattle. He has pointed out that for seventy years physicists have been ignoring half of the set of equations that they use to describe the quantum world - the wave equation developed by Schrtldinger himself, and which bears his name.

Schrodinger's equation describes the behaviour of something like a photon, or an electron (or, in principle, a cat) making its way across the Universe. It's a fairly simple equation describing the propagation of a wave - a time-dependent wave equation. The probabilities that are so important in quantum physics, and which tell us the likelihood of finding an electron in a particular place, or a photon in a particular polarisation state (or, in principle, whether a cat is dead or alive), are obtained by squaring the wave function. But there's one subtlety involved. The Schrodinger equation is complex, in the mathematical sense, and has an imaginary part, which i (the square root of minus one) associated with its time-varying component. The way to square a complex variable is not to multiply it by itself, but to multiply it by its complex conjugate, which is obtained by changing the sign in front of the imaginary part of the variable.a

In the case of the SchrOdinger equation, that means changing the sign associated with the direction of time for the wave it describes. The SchrOdinger equation describes a wave propagating forwards in time, while its complex conjugate describes-a wave propagating backwards in time. Everybody who has ever used the Schrodinger equation to calculate a quantum probability has implicitly taken account of waves that travel backwards in time.

A Particle "Shakes Hands" with a Distant Particle The way Cramer describes a typical quantum "transaction" is in terms of a particle "shaking hands" with another particle somewhere else in space and time. One of the difficulties with any such description in ordinary language is how to treat interactions that are going both ways in time simultaneously, and are therefore occurring instantaneously as far as clocks in the every- day world are concerned. Cramer does this by effectively standing outside of time, and using the semantic device of a description in terms of some kind of pseudotime. This is no more than a semantic device - but it certainly helps to get the picture straight.

It works like this. When, for example, an electron vibrates, on this picture it attempts to radiate by produ- cing a field which is a time-symmetric mixture of a so- "offee owe called retarded wave propagating into the future and a so- called advanced wave propagating into the past. As a first step in getting a picture of what happens, ignore the advanced wave and follow the story of the retarded wave. e \\\ 0 A .cmernatair This heads off into the future until it encounters an elec- sore) tron which can absorb the energy being carried by the field. The process of absorption involves making the electron that is doing the absorbing vibrate, and this vibration produces a new retarded field which exactly cancels out Transaction the first retarded field. So in the future of the absorber, the net effect is that there is no retarded field. Space But the absorber also produces a negative energy advaneed wave travelling backwards in time to the emitter, down the track of the original retarded wave. At the emitter, this advanced wave is absorbed, making the original electron recoil in such a way that it radiates a second advanced wave back into the past. This "new" advanced wave exactly cancels out the "original" advanced wave, so that there is no effective radiation going back in the past before the moment when the original emission occurred. All that is left is a double wave linking the emitter and the absorber, made up half of a retarded wave carrying positive energy into the future and half of an advanced

zz. = (x + it) (x - it) = x2 + [Ed.]

Ethkal Record, November, 1995 5 wave carrying negative energy into the past (in the direction of negative time). Because two negatives make a positive, this advanced wave adds to the original retarded wave as if it too were a retarded wave travelling from the emitter to the absorber.

In Cramer's words (Revkws &Modern Physks, vol.58 p 647): The emitter can be considered to produce an "offer" wave which travels to the absorber. The absorber then returns a "confirmation" wave to the emitter, and the transaction is completed with a "handshake" across spacetime.

It Happens All At Once But this is only the sequence of events from the point of view of pseudotime. In reality, the process is atemporal; it happens all at once. This is because, as Einstein explained with his theory of relativity, signals that travel at the speed of light take no time at all to complete any journey - in effect, for light signals every point in the Universe is next door to every other point in the Universe. Whether the signals are travelling backwards or forwards in time doesn't matter, since they take zero time (in their own frame of reference), and +0 is the same as -O. So what does this tell us about the fate of Schrbdinger's kittens? Instead of anything being in a superposition of states, at the moment the two photons are emitted by the atom they each send an offer wave off into the future. One of these Waves makes a handshake with the later observation of the state of the photon, and that automatically makes certain that the photon sets off from the atom in that state, and never does exist in a superposition of states, while its counterpart happily sets off on its journey in the other possible state. As soon as the photons' polarisations are measured, one cat is killed and the other lives. Neither cat was ever in a superposition of states, either.

Cramer's transactional interpretation is so simple that I can happily leave it up to you to work out how it resolves the EPR paradox and such puzzles as the electron that seems to go both ways at once through a double-slit experiment (hint: the offer wave goes both ways, but the confirmation comes back only through one slit). And the special beauty of it is that all this involves no new mathematical tricks at all - it is exactly the same as the way physicists have been using the equations for 70 years, but it provides a new insight into the significance of what they are doing. Time, surely, for teachers and text book writers, at least, to take note. D

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in all relevant fields. We invite to membership all those who reject supernatural creeds and find themselves in sympathy with our views. At Conway Hall there are opportunities for participation in many kinds of cultural activities, including discussions, lectures, concerts and socials. The Sunday Evening Chamber Music Concerts founded in 1887 have achieved international renown. A reference and lending library is available, and all members receive the Society's journal, The Ethical Record, eleven times a year. Funerals and Memorial Meetings are available to members. Please apply to the Secretary for membership forms, £10 p.a.

6 Ethkal Record, November, 1995 MRS. GASKELL, WILLIAM FOX, AND HIS ARTIST DAUGHTER, MRS. ELIZA BRIDELL FOX (TOTTIE)

Brenda Colloms

Lecture to the Ethical Society, 15 October 1995

The writing team of William and Mary Howitt is the first link between Mrs. Gaskell and the two Foxes, leading to the deep relationship between them after 1849, when Mrs. Gaskell's first novel, 'Mary Barton', caused such a flutter in the reading world.

The Howitts became aware of Mrs. Gaskell in the 1830s, when she sent them some sketches of country life. William Howitt owned and edited 'Howitt's Journal' and took a strong interest in education for the working class, as did both William and Elizabeth Gas- kell. When Mrs. Gaskell began her novel, 'Mary Barton', a project suggested by her husband after the sudden death in 1845 of their baby son, she had publication in mind, and by 1848 she had a completed manuscript to send to William Howitt for advice.

Howitt asked his friend, John Forster, critic and publisher's reader, to look at it, and Forster persuaded the publishers, Chapman and Hall, to take it. From the very beginning, the Howitts were enthusiastic about 'Mary Barton' and Mary Howitt told Eliza Fox (Tottie), it would be a sensation. The Monthly Repository Made Controversial The friendship between the Howitts and the Foxes also dated from the 1830s, when the Howitts, although Quakers, were following Fox's career as the famous Unitarian preacher/- teacher at South Place Chapel, London. They supported him when he transformed the Unitarian journal, 'The Monthly Repository', into a controversial and progressive magazine. His ward, Eliza Flower, a gifted musician, helped him with the 'Repository', as indeed did her sister, Sarah Flower, a writer and poet. Both girls had become his wards in 1829, after the death of their father, the journalist and editor, Benjamin Flower. By 1834 Mrs. Fox had quarrelled with her husband over his friendship with Eliza Flo- wer, and was living separately with their youngest child, Franklyn. Fox rented a cottage at Craven Hill, near Paddington. His elder son, Florence, a deaf mute, lived with him, as did Tottie, an affectionate stubborn child of eleven, who refused to leave her father. Sarah Flower married William Bridges Adams, an inventive engineer with progressive views, and move away. In 1835 Eliza Flower joined Fox to manage his household.

That was an unconventional step, which astonished the Unitarian movement. The Cra- ven Hill cottage soon became a salon for Nonconformist writers, poets, artists and actors, presided over by Eliza Flower. As Mary Howitt, writing long afterwards to the artist, Margaret Gillies recalled - "there was a poetry, a grace, a beauty and a life about it, that remained its own to the last." I

All that had changed by 1849, when the Foxes met Mrs. Gaskell in London. Fox was a national figure since his articles and public speeches for the Anti-Corn Law League. He made his living chiefly by journalism, still preaching at South Place, although no longer calling himself "Reverend". •The delightful and talented Flower sisters had died of the consumption which had claimed their mother - Eliza in 1846, and Sarah in 1848. In 1847 Fox was elected M.P. for Oldham, backed by the local Radicals. Florance became an established civil servant, who would retire with a pension in 1866:Franklyn was a merchant seaman. Tottie Fox finished her professional art course at Sass's School of Art in Bloomsbury, and was creating a small sensation in art circles by holding a weekly art class for female artists to draw from 'the undraped model'. Fox obligingly allowed his library to serve as a make-do

Ethical Record, November, 1995 7 studio.

Soon af ter becoming an M.P., Fox was granted financial security through an annuity given him by Samuel Courtauld, the philanthropic textile manufacturer. That allowed him to spend more time on his Parliamentary work. The Foxes lived in Charlotte Street, off Bedford Square, and Tottie acted as his housekeeper and hostess. Her friends were mainly fellow artists and early feminists, like Barbara Leigh Smith and Anna Mary Howitt.

Elizabeth Gaskell visits Tottie William Fox and his daughter met Elizabeth Gaskell in London, through the Howitts. Then in early May 1849 Mrs. Gaskell unexpectedly visited Tottie at her studio, where the young woman (she was just 25), happened to be reading a copy of 'Mary Barton'. They became instant friends - Tottie needing an older female figure to love and confide in; Mrs. Gaskell needing a female confidante who could understand the problems of a woman who deeply wished to pursue a writing career, but was conscience-stricken in case it would interfere with her duties as wife and mother.

Tottie Fox had a similar problem, but to a lesser degree - her ageing father relied upon her, but she was desperate to go abroad for further art study, English facilities for female art students being very poor. In the autumn of 1849 she spent several weeks in Manchester with the Gaskells, all of whom liked her at once, making her one of the family. She told them about the Flower sisters, the life at Craven Hill, and her admiration for her father. From London she sent a parcel of books, including the South Place Hymnbook, which owed so much to Eliza Flower; Sarah Flower Adams' poetry, Eliza Flower's musical compositions, and two drawings by Tottie, one of her father, and one of Eliza Flower. This evidence seems to have convinced the Gaskells that what Fox and Tottie always said was true - the relationship between Fox and Miss Flower was one of loving friendship, similar in fact to that between Mrs. Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill before their marriage.

Tottie also assisted Mrs. Gaskell in her efforts to arrange emigration for 'Pasley', a Manchester girl driven into prostitution. Mrs. Gaskell's second novel, 'Ruth', was about a motherless girl who is seduced and has a baby. That was daring subject matter, but Mrs. Gaskell felt it a moral duty to make middle class readers aware of social problems in the great cities. More than ever she worried over the conflict between the creative fulfilment of 'writing, and the needs of a family. What was her moral and religious duty? Her letters to Tottie Fox on this dilemma allowed her to unburden herself, and it was a relief to know that Tottie understood and sympathised. So far as Tottie was concerned, her friendship with Mrs. Gaskell helped fill the void left by the deaths of the Flower sisters.

Mrs. Gaskell Meets Charlotte Bronte In August 1850 Mrs. Gaskell met Charlotte, and the two writers established a rapport. The sociable Mrs. Gaskell could hardly imagine living Charlotte Bronte's lonely life at Haworth., but she admired her tremendously. She told her friend, Catherine Winkworth, that Charlotte Bronte was 'more like Miss Fox in character and ways than anyone, if you could fancy Miss Fox to have gone through suffering enough to have taken out every spark of merriment. 2

Tottie Fox was helpful in a number of ways, for example, in finding a school for Mar- ianne Gaskell, the eldest daughter. This was in Hampstead, not far from Sussex Place, Regent's Park, Fox's latest, and last address. It was an excellent choice, strengthening the ties between the Foxes and the Gaskells. It became Tottie's turn to write for advice. Anna Mary Howitt was in Munich, with her friend, Jane Benham, both of them studying art there. Tottie longed to do the same, but what would her father do without her?

Mrs. Gaskell was still writing the sad saga of 'Ruth', but she cheered herself up with some light-hearted sketches for Charles Dickens - life long ago in Knutsford where she grew up. She renamed it 'Cranford', and those sketches ultimately became a book, her best-loved

8 Ethkal Record, November, 1995 and most f inancially successful, and the only one she could re-read with pleasure. Returning to Tottie's problem, Mrs. Gaskell sympathised with all her heart, but added that Mrs. Fox - who was about to see if a return to Fox's home would suit her - was sure to settle herself in the end. Tottie should certainly go abroad, and so in the summer of 1852 she did go, at the same time as her friend, Margaret Gillies. They spent time in the studio of Ary Scheffer, a well known artist, and also in the studio of his brother, Henri. Having taken the plunge, Miss Fox formed a habit of studying abroad. William Fox had his Commons work, plus a column in the 'Weekly Despatch'. He supported extension of the franchise, public education and women's causes. On his re-election in 1853 his unenfranchised women supporters gave him a signet ring inscribed, "Education the birthright of all". Fox replied that women were 'the conscience of politics, its moral sense.' Mrs. Gaskell approved of all those causes.

'Ruth', which made a 'fallen woman' into a heroine, was called immoral in some quar- ters, but Mrs. Gaskell survived and her letters to Tottie grew more relaxed. She began writing 'North and South', which she hoped would not raise any hackles. But she hated the Crimean War, especially the news about the British defeat at Balaclava, and the casualties of the Light Brigade. "What is Mr. Fox about to allow it?" she demanded. When her novel was finished, she took her daughter, Meta, to Paris and had a wonderful time with friends. Then they returned to England where Mrs. Gaskell was stunned to hear that Charlotte Bronth, so recently married to the Rev. Arthur Nicholls, was dead.

Mrs. Gaskell Defends Charlotte Bronte Press articles about Charlotte Bronte and her novels revived the old criticisms of 'coarseness', to Mrs. Gaskell's fierce indignation. She released her feelings to Tottie Fox in May 15, 1855, and resolved to write a memoir which would defend her friend's character. At that time Tottie and her feminist friends were collecting signatures for a petition to allow married women to retain their property and money. This had been drawn up by Barbara Leigh Smith (later Madame Bodichon). Mrs. Gaskell duly signed, returning it on New Year's Day 1856, although dubious of its efficacy. But, she added, "that our sex is badly enough used and legislated against, there's no doubt of that." She spent the rest of 1856 frantically researching the Bronte story, which in her hands became as compelling as a novel. The moment it was finished, she went abroad again, with her daughters, Marianne and Meta, and friends, to stay in Rome with William and Emelyn Whetmore Story. They arrived in late February, 1857, the start of the colourful spring festival.

This Roman adventure unexpectedly proved a turning point in her life, both a glimpse into another world, and the beginning of her important friendship with the young American scholar, Charles Eliot Norton. He would remain her warm friend, and friend to the whole family, until his death some f if ty years later. Her regular correspondence with him became even more important to her than the letters to Tottie. Her memories of Rome and Italy, the friends, the art, the sun, never faded. But she returned home to bleak reality, to lawyers' threats of libel, and to the need to rewrite certain passages for a revised second edition of the Bronth biography.

In London Eliza Fox was equally busy, but more happily. She joined the new Society of Female Artists, which organised exhibitions for women artists, and since Mrs. Fox had in fact settled herself in Sussex Place, her daughter had more freedom. Several times she was accompanied by her young cousin,George Fox, known to and liked by the Gaskells. He was a trained architect and decorative artist. She also worked with the Langham Place feminists, helping with the periodical, the 'English Woman's Journal', and she took part in the project to persuade the Royal Academicians to open the Royal Academy art schools to female students, instead of restricting them to male students.

Eliza Fox Marries In the Autumn of 1858 Eliza Fox went on a painting tour of Germany, with George Fox and another friend. They continued into Italy, and in Rome she met a brilliant young English

Ethkal Record, November, 1995 9 artist, Frederick Lee Bride11.Within weeks they were married, in February 1859 to be pre- cise. Fox could not attend the wedding, but Robert Browning - the Brownings were wintering in Rome - gave her away instead. The celebration meal was held in the Brownings' spacious apartment. Fox put a small notice in the London 'Times'.

42 Plymouth Grove March 10

My dear Mr. Fox, Our times of to-day - well of yesterday - well, tomorrow it will be of some day in dreamland, for I am past power of counting -

Our Times of today has taken away my breath - Who, What, Where, Wherefore, Why - oh! do be a woman, and give me all possible details - Never mind the House of Commons: it can keep - but my, our, curiosity CAN'T -

Oh! please telegraph back anything about him - how long known what is he - what has he (I live in Manchester city sacred to Mammon), when did she first see him - Where are they going to live - Whole love story, & & &

Write for 26 hours consecutively, and you can't write enough.

WELL TO BE SURE I THINK I AM VERY GLAD Yours most truly, E.C. Gaskell

Letter sent 1859post-haste by Elizabeth Gaskell to William Fox, after seeMg the notice he had sent to the 'Times'announcing his daughter, Eliza's, wedding in Rome to Frederick Lee

Immediately he was assailed by a heart cry from Mrs. Gaskell. "Our Times of to-day has taken away my breath - Who, What, Where, Wherefore, Why - oh! do be a woman, and give me all possible details -" Mrs. Bridell's letter, with every detail, arrived immediately, and Mrs. Gaskell replied affectionately, assuring her that she and the whole family were delighted with the news of the wedding, and that Bridell sounded a charming young man. It was indeed a happy marriage, and Eliza Bridell's paintings, influenced by her husband, quickly showed a new maturity. In 1860 Mrs. Gaskell visited the couple in their home in Kensington, and gave a glowing report to her family.

She started on her historical romance, `Sylvia's Lovers', whilst continuing to write short stories and sketches. In 1862, frail and feeling his age, Fox resigned from Parliament. He worried on his daughter's account. It was plain to all that Bridell was in an advanced stage of consumption; Fox himself was now 76. Soon Tottie would suffer two bereavements. Ile was a true prophet. Bridell died in 1863, the year Fox resigned from the 'Weekly De- spatch', and in June 1864Fox, too, died, peacefully, and at home.

But in November 1865came the third terrible blow for Eliza Bridell - the sudden death of Elizabeth Gaskell. Her novella, `Cousin Phyllis', was published 1863/1864.`Wives and Daughters' was not quite finished. She had overworked herself for years, and the heart finally gave out.

10 Ethical Record, November, 1995 18 Nov. 1865 ...... She died at the little village of Holybourne near Alton in Hampshire on Sunday afternoon last, the 12th inst & her death was terribly sudden & quite unexpected. She was sitting in the drawing room after an early tea about a quarter to six in the afternoon with all her daughters but Minnie round her and was telling them and Charley Crompton of a conversation she had not long before with Mr. Justice Crompton who died 12 days ago when suddenly she fell forward and died at once in a moment without any pain or struggle: until a medical man came the poor girls had thought that she was merely in a fainting fit, so the shock was not quite so great to them as it might have been, but of course it was a most terrible shock."

Letter written by Thurstan Holland to Charles Eliot Norton, describing Mrs. Gaskells unexpected death at Ilolybourne, in the house which she had brought for her husband's retirement in the future.

Thurstan Ilolland was one of Mrs. Gaskell's relations He was engaged to Marianne, the Gaskell's eldest daughter, and they got married in 1866.

Madame Bodichon persuaded Eliza Bridell, near to collapse herself, to go to Algiers where the Bodichons had a house. The brilliance of the light and scenery inspired Eliza's new paintings. Later she returned to London, and in 1871 married George Fox. They lived in Kensington, and both exhibited until the 1880s.

I Mary Howitt. 'An Autobiography' 1889 Vol. 2, pp.31I-312. JAN. Chapple, assisted by J.C. Sharp. 'Elizabeth Gaskell. A Portrait in Letters' 1980 p.138. Georgiana Hill 'Women in English Life' 1896 Vol 2. pp.326-327.

VIEWPOINTS

I would like to add to the discussion following the recent article entitled 'Capitalism is compatible with a Humane Society' and the letters in the September issue. It is certainly up to those of us like myself who call ourselves Humanists and also sup- port a capitalist society to justify ourselves - but we have no wish to defend the indefensible. Obviously the type of unfettered capitalism referred to by Mr. Cope as 'one group of human beings exploiting another' is not Humanistic, but it is also not the necessary outcome of a capitalist system. Capitalism can be controlled by a government able and willing to set limits to, and targets for, economic activity, and by taxation ensure some fairer distribution of created wealth. From what we know, capitalism can deliver the goods, the purchaser is king. Also from what we know, socialism is idealistic and sets up a system that relies on people being 'good' and where those who are not 'good' soon take advantage. This leads to the concept of economic crime and the added bureaucracy to try to control all aspects of economic activity. I suppose I believe that capitalism, like democracy, has many faults, but is the best system yet devised that can be made to work and is compatible with individual freedom. However, acceptance of this system is not to ignore the significance of some of the fundamental long-term faults that must eventually bring changes. By coincidence, David Boyle's article "What is New Economics?" (ER, July/August) touches on many of those faults. One last point. Martin Green talks of the 'moral progress of mankind'. This now seems a very Victorian view. I thought we were now reconciled to trying to establish systems that work with mankind (humankind?) as it is rather than wait (thousands of years?) for man to 'improve' morally. Donald Langdown - Orpington

Ethical Record, November, 1995 11 DAVID HUME AND THE DEMISE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY

Daniel O'Hara Lecture to the Ethical Society, 22 October 1995

The Place of Hume Few people would now dispute that David Hume (1711-1776) was not only the central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, but also the most important philosopher these islands have ever produced.

It has been claimed on his behalf that The Tieatise of Human Nature, though con- ceived in his early/mid twenties and published well before he was thirty, is the most important and seminal work of philosophy ever written in the English language, even though it has serious flaws and was finally rejected by its author.

Hume has further been credited with the virtual invention of sociology, psychology, the philosophy of religion and modern historiography, as 'well as being the founder of the conservative intellectual tradition. That there is substance in all these claims, I do not wish either to argue or dispute.

My present task is the rather more modest, but still substantial, one of giving an account of Hume's occasionally perplexing writings on religion. It may help to approach this task by way of a brief account of his life and literary output.

Hume's Life and Works David Hume was born in Edinburgh on 26 April 1711 of a good family on both sides. His father was related to the Earl of Home and his mother a daughter of Sir David Falconer, President of the College of Justice, and a sister of the future Lord Halkerton,(9) Hume's upbringing was on the family estate at Ninewells in Berwickshire. The third and youngest child of his parents, with an elder brother and sister, David Hume lost his father when he was but two years old. He was devoted to his mother, whom he described as "a woman of singular merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and education of her children" (9:271).

A studious and brilliant child, David entered the University of Edinburgh shortly before his twelfth birthday, and left some two or three years later without taking his degree. He continued to study privately, and it must be a cause of some regret that, in mid life, he destroyed the journal he had kept in his mid and late teens in which he recorded his changing views on a variety of topics, not least religion. It was during this period that he under- went a psychological crisis, and suffered from various psychosomatic disorders which lasted for several years.

Though he had a conventionally religious upbringing in the dour Calvinism of the Scottish Kirk, well before he was twenty, and possibly by the time he was eighteen, he had completely rejected Christianity, and came to regard as vulgar enthusiasm or baseless superstition all forms of institutional and dogmatic religion. These were opinions which he maintained throughout his life, as James Boswell discovered when he interviewed Hume just weeks before his death and found him "not jocular when he said 'that when he heard a man was religious he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious" (5:97f1.).

Hoping to effect an eleventh-hour conversion, the pious Boswell urged Hume to consider "if it was not possible that there might be a future state" to which Hume responded that " 'It was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn% and he added

12 Ethkal Record, November 1995 'that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever"'. Though the interview was conducted in a "style of levity and good humour", it left Boswell feeling a "degree of horrour" and "with impressions which disturbed [him] for some time" (ibid.).

If Hume did retain a respect for what he was to call "true religion", this appears to have been little more-than an attenuated deism (3:166ff.) whose only content was a respect for decency, humanity and morality. Though he remained a member of the Kirk, this was from considerations of civic duty and public morality, rather than from any belief in its official doctrinal formularies, to which his attitude ranged between wry amusement and moral contempt.

Flume's family, though well connected, was not wealthy; so it was felt necessary for young David to earn a living, and the Law seemed to offer a suitable profession. But Hume neg- lected his legal studies, and immersed himself in classical authors, one of whom was Cicero, whose de Natura Deorum was later to provide a model for Hume's Dthlogues Concerning Natural Religion.

The Treatise of Human Nature A brief spell in a Bristol Counting House was enough to convince Hume that he was not cut out for trade, so he moved to France at the age of 23, and there remained for three years, mainly at La Fleche in Anjou, where Descartes had studied at the Jesuit college a century earlier. Here he composed his Treathe of Human Nature which, as the subtitle indicates, was "an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects": in other words, an attempt to apply the highly successful methods of Newton in the study of human nature. Despite the flaws to be expected in such an ambitious project, it was extremely fruitful and remains a towering intellectual achievement. Hume returned to London in 1737 to arrange for its publication, and the Treatise appeared anonymously in three volumes in 1739 and 1740, by which time Hume was back in Scotland. In the brief autobiography My Own Life (7:61Iff., 9:271ff.) composed just four months before his death in 1776, Hume described the Treatise as falling "dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmer among the zealots." He means that religionists did not attack it, as they were to do many of his later writings. Though the Treatise did not sell at this stage in any quantity, it did, in time, receive a few, but hardly adulatory, reviews. Hume nevertheless pressed on with fresh literary activity, bringing out, again anonymously, the first of two volumes of Essays Moral and Political in 1741, and a second, this time under his own name, in the following year.

Hume: The Author, Tutor and Diplomat Brief spells, first as tutor to a young, though mad, nobleman, and then in the diplomatic service in France, Italy and Austria, brought him sufficient economic security and leisure to revise and recast parts of the Treadse, with which he was now quite dissatisfied. The first part - with substantial changes, some additions and considerable excisions, appeared as Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding in 1748, which was reissued in 1758 as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, often known as the `First Enquiry' or simply `The Enquiry'. The third part of the Treatise was reworked into An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, often known as the 'Second Enquiry' which was published in 1751, and which Flume considered Incomparably the best' of all his works. Material from the second part of the Treatise, in a greatly reduced form, appeared in 1757 as the Dissertation on the PasmOns.

In 1751, Hume moved from Ninewells to Edinburgh, and it was here, in 1751, that he published his important Political Discourses, as he later remarked, the only one of his books to enjoy an immediate success. Having failed to gain a philosophical chair at Edinburgh in 1745 and another at Glasgow in 1751, Flume was in 1752 appointed Librarian to the Faculty of

Ethical Record, November, 1995 13 Advocates in Edinburgh, a position which brought him little or no income, but which did put at his disposal a vast library. It was then he formed the plan of writing a History of England, which eventually ran to eight volumes and covered the period from the Roman invasion of 55 BC to the `Glorious Revolution of 1688,

Though slow at first to win recognition, it eventually became, and remained for almost a century, the standard work on the subject, until it was superseded by Macaulay. Voltaire praised it highly, as a work of sound and independent judgement, whereas Thomas Jefferson banned it from the Library of Virginia, seeing it as a "book which has undermined the principles of the English government...and...spread universal Toryism over the land" (2:10).

Those who have read George Eliot's biography will recall how envious and disappointed she was that her father's prized and coveted set of Hume's History, which she had devoured as a precocious teenager, was left to her brother, rather than to her, though she considered, probably rightly, that she would have made far better use of it than he did.

Hume's History of England appeared between 1754 and 1762. While it was in progress, he found time to bring out, in 1757, the Four Dissertationswhich included The Natural Hittory of Religion. This was after an earlier volume, which included this work and two controversial pieces On Suicide and On the Immortality of the Soul had been withdrawn prior to publication following threats of a public prosecution. These two offending essays had to wait until after Hume's death for their official publication.

After leaving the Faculty of Advocates in 1757, Hume spent further brief spells in the diplomatic and civil service, including three years at the Embassy in Paris, where he was lionised by the philosophes who gathered round the Baron d'Holbach, and two years as an undersecre- tary in London. In 1769 he finally retired to Edinburgh, where he encouraged such younger friends as Adam Smith and new talents like Edward Gibbon.

Hume's health began to fail in 1775 - he probably had cancer of the bowel, from which he died on August 25, 1776. After his death, Adam Smith described him memorably as "approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit" (7:605).

The most substantial of his works not to be published in his lifetime, indeed many consider it his masterpiece, is the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.This was written around 1750-1, the same time as the Natural History of Religion. Hume had circulated it among his friends in manuscript, but they all counselled against publication, considering it too inflamma- tory. Hume revised the work around 1761, and then appears to have left it untouched until the last year of his life when, in full consciousness of his impending demise, he made final revisions and substantial additions, and arranged for it to be published af ter his death. This was preoccu- pying him to the last, and is the subject of his final letter, written only two days before the end came. The Dialogues appeared in 1779, under the auspices of his nephew, also named David Hume, to whom the author had decreed the MS should revert if Strahan, his publisher and literary executor, had not brought it out within two and an half years of his death (5:110ff.).

Hume's View of Religion Having briefly surveyed Hume's life and literary productions, it is time to move on to a consid- eration of the works which most fully deal with his views on religion, and give his critique of both natural religion (that, which it was traditionally claimed, could be known of God from his works in nature) and revealed religion (namely, that which was allegedly communicated in special acts of revelation, such as miracles).

These writings are conveniently collected together in a volume edited and introduced by Richard Wollheim, entitled Hume on Religion (9). Besides the Natural History of Religion and the Dialogues, these are Sections X and XI of the Enquiry, entitled Of MMacles and Of

14 Ethical Record, November, 1995 Partkular Providence and of a Future State, which derive from sections excised from the Theatise in 1737, and the two brief essays On Suicide and On the Immortality of the Soul together with the 1741 essay Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, and the brief autobiography of 1776. Numerous recent philosophers have written on Hume's view of religion, and those I have found most helpful include Antony Flew (1,2) and J.C.A. Gaskin (3). From an earlier generation of flume scholars, the works of Norman Kemp Smith (5,6) and E.C. Mossner (7) are still indis- pensable, and we should not lose sight of two great figures from the nineteenth-century who, after a century of comparative neglect, helped to revive Hume's reputation as a philosopher. I refer to Sir Leslie Stephen (8) and T.H. Huxley (4). Hume's writings on religion have to be seen in context as products of the eighteenth- century, a time when free and frank discussion of such matters was still at least risky, and, on occasions, truly dangerous. In 1733, just eighteen years before flume wrote the Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and just six years before he prudenti- ally excised from the Treathe the offending passages which were later included in the Enquiry, Thomas Woolston had died in prison on a charge of criminal blasphemy for calling in question the miracles of Jesus (3:106ff.). For most of his life as an author, Hume had to contend with attacks from orthodox critics, such as William Warburton, sometime Bishop of Gloucester, who execrated his Natural History of Religion as a work designed 'to establish naturalism, a species of atheism, instead of religion.' And although Hume numbered among his friends such liberal clerics as the Revd. Hugh Blair, it was the outcry from the generality of Scottish clergy which effectively prevented Hume from obtaining either of the two academic posts for which he applied, at Edinburgh and Glasgow, in 1745 and 1751 respectively.

Difficulties for the Reader of Hume One problem which the modern reader finds in attempting to come to terms with Hume is that there is often a disparity between the conclusions he would like to draw and the premises from which he starts. There are also epistemological principles pervading his philosophy, most obviously in the Treatke but also in his later works, particularly Section XII of the first Enquiry, which seem highly questionable. We owe it to Antony Flew for spelling out so clearly that Hume, like his predecessors Locke and Berkeley, was labouring under a set of mistaken assumptions deriving ultimately from Descartes (2:12ff. and passim).

These interlocking Cartesian assumptions, as Flew calls them, can be briefly stated as follows:

I. Knowledge is possible only where it is inconceivable that there might be error, and no knowledge claim can be adequately vindicated by offering any evidencing reason for belief which does not actually entail the truth of the proposition asserted as known.

We are never immediately and non-inferentially aware of anything outside and independent of ourselves. We are instead immediately and non-inferentially aware only of succes- sive moments of our logically private consciousness.

Persons are essentially incorporeal subjects of the logically limited experience allowed for by the foregoing.

Flew stresses that neither Descartes nor Hume ever clearly and distinctly formulated these assumptions as fundamental guiding principles; nevertheless they are there and can serve to weaken the formal basis of Hume's philosophical work, as well as providing his religious and other unsympathetic critics with an eagerly seized-upon stick with which to beat him.

Ethical Record, November, 1995 15 It is from these assumptions that Flume's doctrine that causality is simply an idea which we entertain in our minds, and not something inherent in nature, ultimately derives. Likewise, his inability to acknowledge the legitimacy of such concepts as natural necessity and natural impossibility. For most practical purposes, however, Hume happily ignores the consequences of these shocking ideas, and Professor Flew is able to show that, in many instances, Hume's philosophy can be improved and extended beyond what he was able to say if these Cartesian assumptions are acknowledged and disposed of. I cannot dwell at length on these issues, but those who are interested in following them up are referred to Flew's 1986 book: David Hume; Philosopher of Moral Science (2., see also 1).

Another problem for the modern reader is how to judge where Hume is being ironic or disingenuous, where prudent or whimsical. There is undoubtedly a great deal more irony in Hume than many have recognised, and there are occasions where a prudently pious remark seems out of place with what has gone before. But it also seems likely that he was less disingenuous than many have supposed - for example, when he disavows atheism, and tells the material- ist Baron d'Holbach that he had never met an atheist and did not believe that any really existed.

Was flume an Atheist? By his own lights, Flume was not an atheist: but his own positive beliefs, as I have already suggested, amount to little more than we, as well as his contemporaries, recognise as virtual atheism. He did not, for example, believe in private or public worship, in petitionary prayer, in a life beyond death, in miracles or revelation as a genuine communication from a transcendent realm. For him, true religion meant humanity, kindness and decency. More than this he considered presumptuous. And yet he is able to say, towards the end of the Section Of Mfracles in the first Enquiry: "Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure" (9:225). There is, of course, a great deal of irony in this remark, and he is not recommending the sort of solafi- dianism which the 20th-century theologian, Karl Barth was to advocate; though Barth was as aware as Hume that reason is destructive of faith.

Hume is writing at a time when it had long been taken for granted, by both theists and deists alike, that the being and nature of God could be established by examining his presumed works in nature. The classic formulation of this view was Bishop Joseph Butler's The Analogy of Religion (1736), which was also a defence of revealed religion against the deists. It is perhaps worth noting that Butler was the only contemporary theologian for whom Hume had any respect.

I propose to deal with Hume's writings on religion in the following order: first The Na- tural History of Religion, next the tenth and eleventh sections of the first Enquiry, and then the Dialogues concerning Natural Rel@on, for which Section XI of the Enquiry was a trial run. I shall also refer briefly to the three short essays previously mentioned,

The Natural History of Religion The Natural HI:story of Religionhas been described as an early essay in the sociology of religion. In it Hume is not concerned with any arguments about the truth or falsehood of religion, but with its psychological and sociological roots in human nature. What scandalised its first readers was that it dealt with a subject of presumed sanctity in an utterly dispassionate, matter- of-fact and at times almost ribald manner.

Flume opens by making a proper and necessary distinction between questions concerning the foundation of religion in reason and its origin in human nature. He quickly disposes of the first of these with the surely ironic and partly disingenuous assurance that "the whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent Author: and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine theism and Religion" (9:31). Flume then moves on to the second, pausing only to make the once-shocking observation that "some nations have been discovered who entertained no sentiments of religion", and that,

16 Ethical Record, November, 1995 among the rest, there is no agreement over these sentiments (931).

Polytheism and idolatry, Hume argues (9:33), were the first and most ancient religions of mankind, as is shown both from ancient authorities and from contemporary primitive peoples (9:37). This polytheistic religion did not originate in any rational contemplation of the order of the universe, but arose from fear of the unknown causes of the apparently capricious events which govern human life (9:41ff.). Fertility rites, spells, curses, divination and magic were the social expressions of this fear of, and desire to contain, the unknown.

The Roots of Primitive Religion The only common factor in all these primitive religions was a belief in invisible, intelligent powers controlling human destiny (9:43). Monotheism (which Flume often simply calls 'theism') originally arose, not because it was intellectually more compelling, but because one god in the local pantheon became promoted above the rest (like Zeus in the Olympian religion), and because it was supposed either that in the distribution of power and territory among the gods, one was the protector of a particular people or place, or on "the model of things below, they may represent one god as the prince or supreme magistrate of the rest" (9:57).

Fear of, or a desire to placate, this dominant deity in iurn led to his praises being "ever extended and magnified till at last they arrive at infinity itself" (9:57). Monotheism is thus reached, not by reason, "but by the adulation and fears of the most vulgar superstition" (9:58). Hume notes that such deities were usually not regarded as creators of the world (9:44f), so god- belief could, and often did, go hand-in-hand with ignorance and indifference to questions about the origin of the world. He illustrates this theme with copious references to authors of classical antiquity (9:45ff.).

There is, Flume notes, a tendency, when religion becomes more rarified and monotheistic, for the supreme god to become so remote from human concerns that intermediaries - spirits, angels, saints - become necessary to preserve the human face of God and his involvement in the affairs of men. Thus there is ever a tension between the psychological needs of mankind for a supreme, all-powerful deity, and for local, familiar spirits. This tension constantly pulls people between monotheism and polytheism, but is held together in the Catholic religion, for example, which has both its supreme, absolute Divinity, and its array of saints and angels, to satisfy the needs of believers for their personal and familiar spiritual guardians (9:58).

Though Hume urges that "the doctrine of one supreme deity, the author of nature" is "undoubtedly founded" on "invincible reasons", even today the vulgar give as reasons for their belief not "the beauty of final causes" which appeal to the philosophical theist, but "the sudden and unexpected death of...one, the fall and bruise of another, the excessive drought of the season, the cold and rains of another: these he ascribes to the immediate operation of providence." Hume adds, with a touch of irony, "and such events, as with good reasoners are the chief difficulties in admitting a supreme intelligence, are with him the sole arguments for it" (9:55f).

Polytheism and Monotheism Compared Hume goes on to compare polytheism with monotheism under several heads: with regard to persecution or toleration, with regard to courage or abasement, with regard or absurdity and with regard to doubt and conviction. Understandably, the polytheists emerge as the more tolerant: "idolatry is attended with this evident advantage, that, by limiting the powers and functions of its deities, it naturally admits the gods of other sects and nations to a share of divinity, and renders all the various deities, as well as rites, ceremonies or traditions, compatible with each other" (9:64).

Ethical Record, November, 1995 17 Monotheism, on the other hand, "seems naturally to require the unity of faith and ceremonies, and furnishes designing men with a pretence for representing their adversaries as profane, and the objects of divine as well as human vengeance...fewcorruptions of idolatry and polytheismare more pernicious to society than this corruption of theism" (9:67).

It is quite clear that, in their social consequences,Flume greatly prefers idolatry to fanati- cal theism, the fatal vengeance of whose inquisitors is chiefly directed against such admirable human qualities as "virtue, knowledge, love of liberty" and who, when they have done their worst, "leave the society in the most shameful ignorance, corruption and bondage" (9:67).

In relation to courage and abasement, the Greek heroes are notable for their courage and manly virtues, whereas Christianity inculcates "the monkish virtues" of suffering, passivity and self-abasement, the very qualities which subdue the spirit of mankind and leave him "fitted for slaveryand subjection" (9:69). When it comes to reason and absurdity, religions which rely on "a sacred book such as the Alcoran, or determination by any visible authority like that of the Roman Pontiff", are not one whit less absurd than any form of paganism. For though the moral principles of monotheism may be lofty, they are "at every turn perverted to serve the plirposes of superstition. For besides the unavoidable incoherencies, which must be reconciled and adjusted, one may safely affirm that all popular theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction" (9:71).Hume continues in a vein which is eloquently scathing about the absurdi- ties and monstrosities of religion.

The Psychological Consequences of Religion The longest section of the work is that concerned with doubts and convictions, and in it Hume provides a penetrating psychologicaland historical analysis of the effects of religious doubts on the believer, perhaps the best before William James' Varietiesof Religious Experience (1902). The section also includes some knock-about anecdotes,told to a serious purpose. Of the doctrine of transubstantiation, Hume declares that "in a future age, it will probably become difficult to persuade some nations, that any human, two-leggedcreature could ever embrace such principles." But he goes on to add that "it is a thousand to one, but these nations themselves shall have something full as absurd in their own creed, to which they will give the most implicit and most religious assent" (9:74). You will see that here Hume rejects any suggestion that mankind will outgrow nonsense: his realistic assessment is that humankind is so incurably gullible that we shall more likely just exchange one variety of nonsensefor another.

In all comparisons throughout these sections of the Natural History of Religion, paganism emerges as preferable to monotheism. "Upon the whole, the most observable differences between a traditional, mythological religion, and a systematie, scholastic one are two: The former is often more reasonable, as consisting only of a multitude of stories, which, however groundless, imply no express absurdity and demonstrative contradiction; and sits also so easy and so light on men's minds, that, though it may be as universally received, it happily makes no deep impression on the affections and understanding"(9:85).

In a passage prefiguring Feuerbach, Hume writes:"every virtue, every excellence must be ascribed to the divinity, and no exaggeration will be deemed sufficient to reach those perfec- tions, with which he is endowed" (9:851). In another passage, prefiguring Joachim Kahl, Flume writes of theists: "All must be applause, ravishment,extasy. And while their gloomy apprehen- sions make them ascribe to him (i.e. God) measures of .conduct, which, in human creatures, wouldbe highly blamed, they must still affect to praise and admire that conduct in the object of their devotional addresses...the additional misery of this inward struggle aggravates all other terrors, by which these unhappy victims to superstition are for ever haunted" (9.87f.).

Hume's final criticism of 'popular religions' is that they have such a bad influence on morality. Such religions encourage their votaries to "seek the divine favour, not by virtue and

18 Ethical Record, November, 1995 good morals, which alone can be acceptable to a perfect being, but.either by frivolous obser- vances, by intemperate zeal, by rapturous extasies or by the belief of mysterious and absurd opinions" (9:91). Religion, Hume suggests, introduces factitious and dishonourable motives for doing good, and thus saps the truly moral basis for virtue. It is little wonder that this work attracted howls of disapprobation from the pious and orthodox.

Miracles and the Practical Consequences of Natural Theology Now I shall move on to the sections of the Enquhy entitled Of Miracles and Of a particular Prowdence and of a Future State, pausing only to notice that the original, and more accurate, title of this last was Of the practical consequences of Natural Theology. As Sir Leslie Stephen was the first to recognise (8:010), these two sections form "a complete and connected argument" (cf 5:64n.). It is, however, the section Of Miracles which has always received by far the greater attention: indeed, it is the most notorious and controversial of all his writings.

Hume takes his cue from a remark of the deistically inclined Archbishop Tillotson, who took it as agreed "that the authority, either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely in the testimony of the apostles who were [so it was generally assumed] the eyewitnesses to those miracles of our Saviour by which he proved his divine mission." It follows that since we rely merely on testimony, rather than on the evidence of our senses, and because "a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger", we should not assent to something which is so contradictory to sense and experience. This is, therefore, an argument about evidence rather than fact.

Such an argument, thought Hume, should "silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations." He considered this an "everlasting check to all kin& of superstitious delusions" which would be "useful as long as the world endures." Hume acknowledges that our experience is not an infallible guide. For example, while we may expect our weather to be better in any week in June than in any week in December, we shall, if we live long enough, discover that this is not invariably the case. (Indeed it is rarely the case in the Southern hemisphere, but that's another story). Since there is a range of variability in different types of events, "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

What is a Miracle? Hume, like his contemporaries, construed the concept of 'miracle' in a strong sense. That is to say, as a "transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent" (9:211n3). Now unless it be granted that nature's laws are sufficiently well known to be properly deemed invariable, it would be impossible to tell whether any unusual event were truly a transgression of those laws, and quite another matter to conclude that it was due to divine intervention. Even if it were, we should have no means of knowing it. Hume is not just concerned about showing that any testimony of an alleged miracle should be subject to strenuous doubts because it is 'contrary to custom and experience% he also wishes to show that a miracle could never be established "so as to be the foundation of a system of religion." And this is because rival religions all have their complements of alleged miracles, and those of one faith cancel out those of another as evidence of the truth of each religion. So to constitute proof that an alleged miracle was a vindication of a particular religious doctrine, one would not only have to show that the event actually occurred, one would also have to show that all alleged miracles of all other religions, and indeed of rival sects within one religion, were false.

During Hume's first sojourn in France, while he was writing the Treathe and the first draf t of this essay, there was a celebrated dispute between rival factions within the Catholic Church, the Jansenists and the Jesuits, about miraculous cures alleged to have occurred on the tomb of the Jansenist Abbe de Paris. Many of these cures were extremely well attested, though they were dismissed by the Jesuits. As Flew notes (2:84), psychosomatic medicine was

Ethical Record, November, 1995 19 not well understood in Hume's day, and it is quite possible that some at least of the alleged cures did take place. But, and this is something that Hume's basic philosophy did not allow, we need to make a distinction between the extremely unusual and the authentically miraculous. The closer we get to demonstrating that an unusual alleged event actually occurred, we thereby also, and simultaneously, establish that it was not truly miraculous. Indeed, the arguments against miracles are even stronger than Hume himself was able to make them, because, on his philosophical premises, there is no such thing as natural necessity or natural impossibility, only logical necessity and logical impossibility. On this basis, laws of nature are only descriptive of what our experience of events has been, and can therefore have only a greater of lesser degree of probability. They do not tell us anything about what must be and what cannot be the case in the real world. As Antony Flew observes: "Laws of nature...as...understood - or rather misunderstood - by Hume could provide no purchase for [or, we might add, against] any overriding manifestations of the definitionally Supernatural Deity" (Flew's edition of Hume's Of Miracles, La Salle, Open Court,1985, p.11). So while Hume might have been on even stronger ground than he himself realised in dismissing the alleged regeneration of the leg of the doorkeeper of Saragossa cathedral by the rubbing of holy oil into the stump, he was on weaker ground in dismissing the reports in Tacitus and Suetonius of apparently miraculous cures wrought by the Emperor Vespasian. Like those which were associated with the tomb of the Abbe de Paris, they may well have happened, but were not miraculous; at least, not on any strong and religiously adequate understanding of 'miracle'. There is scathing irony in Hume's affected shock that the posthumous miracles of the Jansenist Abbe should be compared by his supporters to those of 'our Saviour': "As if" Hume says "the testimony of men could ever be put in the balance with God himself, who conducted the pen of the inspired writers." He goes on to enjoy himself greatly, by suggesting that were the Gospels to be considered merely as human testimony, "the Jansenist miracles much surpass [them] in evidence and authority" (9:227).

Though he prudently does not seek to challenge the Gospels, his point is clear when he asks his readers to consider a parallel case of his own imagining. Suppose, he says. that all historians should agree that Queen Elizabeth died on January 1st 1600, that she was buried, her successor was proclaimed and a month later she reappeared and governed England for a further three years. Hume is unequivocal that he would not believe it, but rather that her death had been merely pretended. If, on the other hand, all authors in all languages agreed that on 1st January 1600 total darkness fell over the whole earth and lasted for eight days, we should accept it as certain, and look for the causes. The supposed resurrection of Queen Elizabeth, (and the unspoken subtext here is surely the alleged resurrection of Jesus) would, on the contrary, lead Hume, not to look for causes, but to reply "that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature" (9:224).

Here we see that, notwithstanding his philosophical premises, Hume's common sense is triumphant. The section Of Miracles concludes with what Antony Flew rightly calls (1.210) two most mordant and derisive sentences: "...upon the whole, we may conclude, that the ChriStthn Religion was not only at the first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience" (9:226).

The Three Short Essays A few brief remarks only will be made on the three short essays. In On Suicide, Hume argues that if and when our life becomes intolerable, we should have a perfect right to end it.

20 Ethteal Record, November, 1995 Furthermore, there are circumstances in which it is the only way we can be useful to society (9:261). Fle shows that religious arguments to the contrary are specious (9:256ff.).

As to the Immortality of the Soul, Flume opens with the scathing admission that this would be difficult to prove by the light of reason, and we should have no grounds for believ- ing it had it not been brought to light by the Gospel (9:263). "Everything is common betwixt the body and the soul: the organs of the one are all of them the organs of the other; the existence, therefore of the one must be dependent on the other" (9:268). You will notice that Hume does not waste time trying to ridicule the notion of a soul: he simply sees it as an aspect of the person which grows and decays with the individual, and perishes with him.

As to Superstition and Enthusiasm (9:246ff.), Hume is differentiating two types of popular religion; the first characterised by Catholicism, the latter by the Quakers. He might have mentioned the Methodists had he been writing just a little later: this essay was published only two years after John Wesley first preached out of doors in Bristol. Wesley's 'enthusiasm' was condemned by Bishop Butler as 'a very horrid thing'. Hume regards both manifestations as 'corruptions of true religion' (9:246), though he sees superstition as the more conducive to priestly power. He observes, like a true sociologist of religion, that enthusiastic varieties of religion start in a fury and produce "the most cruel disorders of human society" but over time tend to become more gentle and moderate, like the Quakers. His final observation is that "superstition is an enemy to civil liberty, and enthusiasm a friend to it". Though short, this essay is among the more significant pre-Max Weber contri- butions to the subject.

Section XI of the Enquiry, which deals with the limits of inference, will be considered along with the Dialogues in the second part of this lecture to be given on another occasion. REFERENCES

I. Flew, A.G.N., Hume's Philosophy of Belief, London, RKP, 1961. Flew, A.G.N., David Hume, Philosopher of Moral Science, Oxford, Blackwell, 1986. Gask in, J.A.C., Hume's Philosophy of Religion, London, Macmillan, 1978. Huxley, T.H., Flume, with helps to the Study of Berkeley, London, Macmillan, 1894. Kemp Smith, N., Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Oxford, Clarendon, 1935. Kemp Smith, N., The Philosophy of David Hume, London, Macmillan,1941. Mossner, E.C., The Life of David Hume, Edinburgh, Nelson,1954. Stephen, L., History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, London, Murray, 1876. Wollheim, R., Hume on Religion, London, Fon tana,1963.

Correction. In the October 1995 Ethical Record article on Reinhold Niebuhr, p16, the last sentence of the quotation from B. Russell should have read: The intellectual optimism of a bygone age is no longer possible to the modern student of human nature.

The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society

Ethical Record, November, 1995 21 WORLD BRAIN H.G. Wells on the future of world education Adamantine Press Ltd., London, 1994. £25, paperback 185pp. ISBN 0-7449-0114-6

Review by Peter Lonsdale

This reprint of Wells' 1938 book is a valuable addition to the Adamantine series of Classics for the 21st Century. It consists of seven items by Wells covering the period 1936-1937 and presents a picture of Wells at his best in exhorting all of us to educate ourselves into a world of responsibility and peace. The idea of a World Brain, World Encyclopedia and the Open Conspiracy had been in his mind for at least thirty years and in these seven items he tells us what is wrong with current education, our general approach to politics and economics, and how we could improve ourselves and society. It is not his fault that in this tragic year of 1995 we still have a long way to go. He had tried hard enough in all his writings and lectures over many years. He was a popular writer, his books were read world-wide but somehow we have been unable to absorb his general message. Perhaps this superb reprint might go some way towards bridging the gap. Both the publishers and Alan Mayne* deserve our gratitude for this re-issue which is the first since 1938. This publication is clearly a work of prime importance in today's great explosion of computer and communication technology.

The Introduction by Alan Mayne is a masterpiece in itself. Covering 70 pages it gives us a vast deal of information on the research done by many people since 1938 on the subject of a World Brain. Prominent among these is Prof. Goodman of Canada, and his work is supported by many other eminent people as passionately concerned with the world problem as was Wells himself. In Wells' own Preface he says, 'A mechanical unification of the world has been demanding (and still demands) profound moral and ideological readjustments.' And further on we read 'We want a reconditioned and more powerful Public Opinion.' In his Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1937 he said The devastation of the world's forests, the replacement of pasture by sand deserts through haphazard cultivation, the waste and exhaustion of natural resources, coal, petrol, water, that is now going on, the massacre of important animals, whales, penguins, seals, food fish, should be matters of universal knowledge and concern.'

In his Introduction Mr. Mayne quotes Joseph N. Pelton (1990) '...the major share of global education funds should be devoted to continual teacher retraining...' This was the topic which brought a shower of wrath on the head of Wells from the educational establishment when he dared to suggest in his British Association talk on Education that 'Two-thirds of the teaching profession now is in urgent need of being either reconditioned or superannuated.' This resulted in a piece in the Sunday Chronicle, September 12th 1937, Ruffled Teachers; in which Wells apologises for his tactless phrasing, but maintains that he was right in his criticism, and partly blames reporters for omitting the meat and only giving 'the salt and mustard:

Much of what Wells said in 1938 is very relevant today. Our planet badly needs the shot in the arm which he so colourfully recommended, and with the state of technology as it is at present this re-issue has come at a most timely moment. His message should be read far and wide.

*SPES Member

THE VOLTAIRE LECTURE will be given this year by Sir John Maddox on THE PREVAILING DISTRUST OF SCIENCE Saturday 18 November 1995, 7.00 pm, Conway Hall.

22 Ethical Record, November, 1995 PIONEERING IN EDUCATION IN BECHUANALAND Patrick van Rensburg and Donald Baker

On 8 October 1995, PATRICK VAN RENSBURG gave a talk to the Ethical Society on his pioneering educational ideas. The meeting was chaired by DON BAKER, who supplied the following report: Humanists should know about Swaneng Hill School which opened in February 1963 as it was money donated by Humanists through the Ethical Union which helped the school to get started. I learnt about the school through Harold Blackham and went there as a teacher in August 1963 with my wife Joan, and our 3-year old daughter. Patrick had been employed by the South African Government and was working as a diplomat in the Congo. However, he became very anti-apartheid. He resigned his job and joined the South African Liberal Party. He wrote the book 'Guilty Land; which some of you may have read. He worked in a school in the Bechuanaland Protectorate with Harold Blackham's niece, Liz, whom he married. They started Swaneng in February 1963. It is a fact that many students see their studying as a way of avoiding real work, but this was not the idea at Swaneng. Some of the students played a part in building their own school. The school became a great success with Patrick as the Principal. In 1963 the people of Bechuanaland were very poor, depending on subsistence farming and their cattle. The territory, now the independent Republic of Botswana, is about the size of France with a relatively small population of under 2 million. A good deal of Botswana is Kalahari desert which is a semi-desert - where the Bushmen manage to live quite success- fully. Botswana has Namibia to the west, the Republic of South Africa to the south, Zimbabwe to.the north-east and a small frontier with Zambia to the north. It is a very in- teresting country. Patrick is no longer the Principal of Swaneng Hill School but he is the main force of a very important organisation - THE FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION WITH PRODUCTION.

THE FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION WITH PRODUCTION The Foundation for Education with Production is a non-governmental organisation primarily concerned with developing a range of educational alternatives which will challenge systems of education that are designed to produce a highly-trained elite at the expense of the majority of the people. Its approach questions the validity of a universal primary education which fails to equip people with appropriate skills for useful employment or self-sufficiency, and it also seeks to eliminate the artificial distinction between mental and manual labour.

As a catalyst, the Foundation assists development projects through the agency of workshops, seminars and national committees; it develops resource materials and provides a forum for the exchange of ideas in its journal, Education with Production, which is published twice yearly. Subscription: £12 for 4 issues. P.O. Box 20906, Gaborone, Botswana Tel: 3132

Ethical Record, November, 1995 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1 Tel: 0171 831 7723 NOVEMBER Sunday 12 Imoam UNREASONABLE MEN: MASCULINITY AND SOCIAL THEORY. Victor Seidler discusses his recent book. 12.45 pm SPES SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING to confirm change in Rule 25. 3.00 pm THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, 1917: AIMS AND RESULTS. Al Richardson. Sunday 19 11.00 am POETRY AND EARTHLY POWERS. Dinah Livingstone asks how poetry, theology and politics are connected, given that gods are created by the human imagination. 3.00 pm BRITAIN'S REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS ILLUSTRATED. David Wright. Sunday 26 ROO am BEYOND EQUALITY: EQUAL RIGHTS OR QUEER EMANCIPATION? Peter Tatchell argues that law reform and equality are not enough. There needs to be a transformation of sexual values, laws and institutions to ensure sexual lib- eration for everyone. 3.00 pm FREE TRADE AND GLOBAL APARTHEID. Titus Alexander asks what are the effects of greater free trade, and how can we stop western protectionism from entrenching global apartheid. Wednesday 29 7.00-8.00pm WHO'S RESPONSIBLE? FREE WILL, ETHICS AND THE INTELLIGENT UNCONSCIOUS. Prof. Guy Claxton. DECEMBER Sunday 3 11_00 am QUALITY ASSURANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. ProL Gerald Vinten 3.00 pm THE HISTORY OF ATHEISM AND ANTI-ATHEISM IN AMERICA. Gordon Stein, author, Editor ofEncyclope:dia of Unbelief, Free Enquiry, Ameri- can Rationalist and Director of the Center for Enquiry Libraries, contrasts Ameri- can and British atheism throughout history. Sunday 10 1L00 am CAN COMPULSORY EDUCATION SURVIVE AND SHOULD IT/ Christopher Price. Sunday 17 11_00 am YULETIDE LECTURE followed by a Social. Details in Dec ER Sunday 7 January 1996 - Lectures resume. SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS - 6.30 pm at Conway Hall - Tickets £350 November 12 Musicians Benevolent Fund Concert VANBRUGH STRING QUARTET. Beethoven Op. 132; Op59 No.1 November 19 MUSICIANS OF THE ROYAL EXCHANGE. Beethoven; Elgar; Schumann. November 26 BRINDISI STRING QUARTET. Purcell; Mozart; Bartok. December 3 ROGER CHASE (Viola); JULIAN JACOBS (Piano). Bach/Kodaly; Schubert; Benjamin Dale; longen; Paganini. December 12 VANBRUGH STRING QUARTET. Beethoven Op. 18 No.6; Op. 59 No.3; Op. 18 No.1 70th CONWAY MEMORIAL LECTURE EQUALITY OR DIVERSITY? : the 'Natural' Foundations of a Democratic Morality Dr. DAVID STARKEY 7.00pm, Thursday, 11 lanuary,1996 at Conway Hall. All Welcome

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