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CO >; 00 166505 J^ 5 ;o SYMBOLISM AND BELIEF Gifford Lectures by the same author HELLENISM AND CHRISTIANITY SIBYLS AND SEERS THOUGHTS ON INDIAN DISCONTENTS THE HOPE OF A WORLD TO COME (George Allen & Unwin) CHRISTIANITY (Thornton Butterworth) HISTORY OF EGYPT UNDER THE PTOLEMIC DYNASTY (Methuen &f Co.) JERUSALEM UNDER HIGH PRIESTS (E. Arnold & Co.) LATER GREEK RELIGION Dent (7. M . & Sons) WORLD OF GREECE AND ROME (T. Nelson & Sons) STOICS AND SCEPTICS THE POEMS OF LEONIDAS OF TARENTUIV (Clarendon Press, Oxford] SYMBOLISM AND BELIEF by EDWYN BEVAN London GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD Museum Street PUBLISHED IN 1938 All rights reserved PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY UNWIN BROTHERS LTD., WOKING TO MY FRIEND ALFRED EDWARD TAYLOR without whose prompting and encouragement these lectures would never have been written PREFACE JL HE lectures contained in this volume were given for the University of Edinburgh on Lord Gifford's foundation In the years 1933 and 1934. I have delayed their publication in the hope that with process of time I might, by further reading and thought, be able to expand and modify them, so as to make them more worthy of presentation to the public in the form of a book. This hope has been so meagrely realized that it now seems best to let them go forth, with all their imperfections on their head, hardly at all altered from the form in which they were delivered. Some changes in arrangement have been made in the order of lectures: the two on Time now follow immediately the two on the spatial symbol of Height. Four lectures have been omitted altogether from the present volume, those on image-worship and doctrines :ondemning the manufacture of images in antiquity and in the Christian Church. Since in the rest of the lectures ihe symbolism of material objects in worship was not the kind of symbolism under consideration, these four lectures seemed somewhat of a digression from the main ine of argument. I hope later on to issue them as a small book by themselves. As is generally known, Lord Gifford's Will prescribes :hat lecturers on his foundation are not to ask their iudience to believe any statement on the ground of any special revelation, whether contained in Scripture or the iogma of a Church, but to rest what they affirm solely upon grounds of reason. That is to say, their basis must be the facts of the world so far as they are accessible to the reason common to mankind. I hope that I have nowhere this restriction the transgressed imposed t by munificent benefactor to whom these lectures owe their existence. Of course beliefs entertained by the Christian Church, or by Theists, are, as psychological facts, among the indisputable facts of the world, and a Gifford lecturer to to as is, I take it, permitted point them, such, though he may not ask his hearers to accept them on the authority of Church or Scripture. Since my two lectures on Time were written, a note- worthy contribution to the subject, from a Christian standpoint, has been made by Mr. F. H. Brabant in his Bampton Lectures, Time and Eternity in Christian Thought (delivered in 1936, published in 1937). It was unfortunate for me that I had not Mr. Brabant's book before me, when I wrote my two lectures. Of one thing I am sure: that the questions I have raised regarding the element of symbolism in our religious conceptions take us to the very heart of the religious problem. How inadequate my attempts to answer them have been no one can be more conscious than I am. But if I have succeeded in putting the questions themselves in a somewhat clearer light, so that the thought of others may be directed upon them with richer result, that at any rate is something which I trust the University which honoured me by appointing me to this lectureship will accept as something worth doing. January 1938 Contents LECTURE PAGE Preface 7 I. Introductory 1 1 II. Height 28 III. Height (continued) 58 IV. Tiihe 82 V. Time (continued) 102 VI. Light 125 VII. Spirit 151 VIII. Spirit (continued) 177 IX. The Wrath of God 206 X. The Wrath of God (continued) 23 1 XI. Distinction of Literal and Symbolical 252 XII. Symbols Without Conceptual Meaning 275 XIII. Pragmatism and Analogy 297 XIV. Mansel and Pragmatism 318 XV. Rationalism and Mysticism 341 S* XVI. The Justification of Belief 364 Index 387 A* 9 LECTURE ONE INTRODUCTORY SYMBOLISM and Belief" is the subject chosen for these lectures. In his little book on Symbolism Professor Whitehead gives a definition of that term with which we may start. "The human mind," he says, "is functioning symbolically when some components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions, and usages, re- specting other components of its experience." That definition will perhaps have to be qualified for our purposes as we proceed. A symbol certainly, I think, means something presented to the senses or the imagination usually to the senses which stands for something else. Sym- bolism in that way runs through the whole of life. Every moment we are seeing objects or hearing sounds or smelling smells which bring to our minds a vast complex of things other than themselves words, for instance, as spoken or written signs. And if symbolism thus runs through life as a whole, it is a factor of the first importance in religion. But we have, for our purposes, to make a distinction at the outset between two different kinds of symbols. There are visible objects or sounds which stand for something of which we already have direct knowledge. Such symbols are not intended to give us any information about the nature of the thing or things symbolized, but to remind II us of them, or tell us something about their action at the particular moment, or prompt us to act in a certain way at the particular moment because of them. The Union Jack does not give a patriotic Briton any information about his country or the part it has playeS in the world, but it reminds him of a whole world of things which he knows otherwise. The sound of a trumpet announcing the arrival of a king to inspect his army, or the tolling of a bell to announce his death do not tell those who hear the sound anything about the appearance or character of the king: nor would it give them any idea of what coming to inspect an army meant, or what dying meant, if they had not already the idea of those things in their minds : the sound tells them merely that the man they otherwise know is going to perform the action, or has suffered the experience, which they otherwise knew, at that particular moment of time. Or, thirdly, the trumpet which orders the troops to get up in the morning or begin their march, does not tell them anything about getting up in the morning or marching which they do not know already; it tells them only that these actions, of which they have already definite ideas, acquired otherwise, have to be performed now. The other kind of symbols purport to give information about the things they symbolize, to convey knowledge of their nature, which those who see or hear the symbols have not had before or have not otherwise. There is the old story of someone born blind having explained to him what the colour scarlet was by his being told that it was like the sound of a trumpet. Whether that was a happy analogy or not, it is plain that the only pbssible way in which a person born blind could be given any information regarding colour is by the use of some things within his own experience, as symbols working by analogy. This difference between the purpose of the two 12 different kinds of symbol implies a difference in their essential character. The symbols of the first kind, which remind, or signal, or command need have no resemblance at all to the thing symbolized. A Union Jack is not like our country: the word "lion" is not like a lion. Their connexion with the thing symbolized is either a matter of deliberate human arrangement, of convention, von<p not in <f>vcri the Greek phrase, or has come about by a natural connexion in the actual events of our past experience which causes the presentation of certain objects to our senses now to call up a mass of other things which in the past we have experienced as accompanying or follow- ing the things we -now see or hear or imagine. The connexion in either case is not one of similarity. The smell of a flower may now call up for us the days of our childhood, may in that way stand for them or symbolize them to us, though the smell does not resemble the other experiences connected with it in childhood. But in the case of the second kind of symbols, those which purport to give information about the nature of something not otherwise known, resemblance is essential. The man born blind could not get any good from being told that scarlet was like the blowing of a trumpet unless there were a similitude of some kind between the two things it may be the resemblance in the emotional reaction which each provokes. No doubt in the case of the other kind of symbols, resemblance may come in as well to reinforce the action of certain symbols upon the mind many words, for instance, or phrases are onoma- topoeic.

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