Celtic Christianity of Cornwall and Assure Him That They Were Not Altogether Nu Provoked

TH E CELTIC CH RISTIAN ITY O F CO RNWALL DIVERS SKETCH ES AND STUDIES BY TH O MAS TAY LO R, M A F . S . A . V I or ST JUST-IN-P N WITH CAR . E “ UTH or TH E LIFE or DR T Y L or ASH B URNE A OR . A OR L O N G M A N S G R E E N A D , N C O . 3 9 PAT E RNO S TE R R W O , LO NDO N FOU H V U 3OTH ST T NEW Y O K RT A EN E REE , R BOMB Y C LCUTT AND M D A , A A A RAS 1916 M JO SEPH LO TH . PROFESS EUR AU COLLEGE DE F RANCE IN G RATE FUL RECOG NITION O F A F RIENDS H IP FROM WHICH I HAVE REA PE D THE FRUITS O F DISCI PLESH IP S ed q uamq uam utilitates multae et mag nae consecutae sunt n on unt tamen ab earum s e , s p causae dili endi ro fec e g p ta . 3 5 7 8 0 4 PREFACE N one of the most b rilliant of modern books its author 1 calls attention to the common fallacy which assumes that “ if you can find a principle which gives an adequate explanation of three different facts it is more likely to correspond with the truth than three di fferent principles which give adequate ” explanations of the same facts severally . This fallacy underlies much that is being urged in favour of a common origin for religious doctrines and r methods of worship . A single source of eligious belief or of religious phenomena is preferred to several sources as being more tidy and more in keeping with what we have learnt to expect in other departments s ma recom of re earch . It y be illogical , but still it is mended as a safe guide to the truth . f l Indeed , it is di ficu t for a modern student to con ceive how any real advance can be made in scientific r pursuits unless the principle , which prefe s one ex r planation of phenomena to many, is favou ed . Before the days of Kepler and of Newton it may have been possible , it may be possible still , to imagine more than one explanation of the fall of a heavy body to the ground and of the action of one inert mass upon another . The law of gravity , as elaborated by Newton , represents what , so far as we know, has 1 me ose S ton es 89 R A Kn o S o o . x, L , p V II Celtic Christian ity of Corn wall invariably happened and what we believe will in in S variably happen pace between two or more bodies , t namely, tha they will , as heretofore , each attract all t he other bodies directly as their mass and inversely t he n ot as square of their distance . This law is merely preferred before all other laws it is the very foundat ion of t he W hole of what is called Physical . wit Astronomy It is a law to which there are , hin its own province , no known exceptions . We accept t his law not becaus e we prefer one ex t he planation to many, but because it meets not only requirements of cases which might conceivably be explained in other ways but also the requirement s of cases for which no other explanation has been sug n ot gested or conceived . Among laws , which are - r received as self evident , the law of g avity is unique . Thi s will be clear to anyone who contrasts the secure position which it occupies with the perilous position occupied by laws which have been formulated within r r ecent yea s . ’ Men do not prefer Newton s explanation to other explanations the evidence in it s favour is so over whelming that they feel compelled to accept it . It is far otherwise with other laws like evolution . t r These fascinate or repel from he very first . P efer ence undoubtedly enters into the complex intellectual process which leads us first to accept and then to o defend this or that explanation of an array f facts . r And this preference , admittedly illogical , may a ise from our limited knowledge of the facts or from regard for some particular protagonist of one of many con flictin t g heories ; but , other things being equal , it seizes hold of t hat explanation which claims to cover the most ground and to reconcile the largest number Preface ix of facts . It only becomes mischievous when it claims l infallibi ity . It is perhaps too readily assumed that in the domain of religious phenomena there is a law by which these t phenomena are bounded and condi ioned . Assuming t such a law to exist , the attemp s to formulate it will t be direc ed in a greater or less degree by preference . i For religious phenomena , by wh ch is here meant r the outwa d manifestations of religions , cannot be w r examined and classified , ithout a comp ehensive r knowledge of the eligions themselves . And if, as a r F ench writer has contended , the man who would write the history of a religion must believe it no ” longer but must have believed it once , it follows t few tha persons , even in this versatile age , can claim to be proficient in more than three or four religions . From which it also follows that lack of knowledge must be supplied by fertility of imagination or by t he exercise of preference on t he part of him who employs the comparative method in order to discover the law . t And yet , it is only by eliminating his personal element and by confining our attention to material which is neither inaccurate nor defective that we can hope to arrive at the truth . It must be confessed that the rough and ready generalisations with whi ch we are so familiar in this connection and the lack of care which is taken in gathering and sifting t he r are mate ials upon which they based , almost lead us t o r despair of useful esults . The attempt to evolve a law from insufficient data is like an attempt to measure volume in terms of two dimensio ns or like an attempt to classify animals without an intimate t u knowledge of hem . A salamander has fo r legs and t : a ail so has a sheep . A zoology based on these x Celtic Christianity of Corn wall us r far criteria alone would not carry ve y . The biologist might kindly step in with his law of evol u tion and say some soothing words respecting their r o ff common o igin , but we should leave where we began and know no more of those animals than t t we did at the star , namely, tha they each have 1 r t fou legs and a ail . In studying religions those points of resemblance which are most obvious are sometimes the most mis for leading . And this reason . The essence of a religion — — what may be called it s soul is not always revealed r in its methods of wo ship . This is said to be especially h true of Budd ism , at least by those writers who , like Feildin Mr . g, strive to commend it to the Western di world . Certainly it is no sparagement of a true r r eligion that it should have , in the depa tment of worship , many points in common with a false one . Every religion requires some machinery if it is to do its work . And it is more true to say of religions that they agree in machinery but differ in what they teach than to say that they agree in what they teach but ff r . r di er in machine y It would be most unt ue , never t el ess r h , to asse t that these common elements have always been acquired in the same way or have meant 1 A r en of m n e er orm e the sur r s n eat of e ol n an f i d i p f d p i i g f— v vi g n ire s stem— od re i on ors ers an d al l ou t of muc l ess e t y g , l gi , w hipp h t an our l e s an d a t a l . Hi s on m at er a cons ste of a word h f g i ly i l i d , - e t on an d mean in - alf s o ete of un certa n r a . Th e aw one h ob l , i d iv i g j b in the han ds of S ams on w as as n othin g compare d with the magic of t his word in the min d of the vakan t e xp os itor o f prehistori c ns le rea n the a e r in i c he roc a m e his religio . Whi di g p p wh h p l i d to a learn e so c et o n e coul n ot a l to n ote the r o dis covery d i y, d f i p foun d impress ion whi ch it m ade u pon the hearers or t o admi re the t a er t rans p aren t sin cerity of he re d .

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