Is the separate existence of mind necessarily evident?

'Order universally proves Mind;

'The works of Nature discover Order;
'The works of Nature prove Mind.

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"Mind," as he elsewhere expresses himself, "is everywhere the only valid explanation of order-its necessary correlate." Dr. Tulloch thinks that, in presenting the familiar Paley argument in this new form, he gets rid of exceptions which have been formerly taken in consequence of the use of ambiguous words. We greatly doubt whether this will be the case. "Order" and "Mind" are terms which may occasion as much dispute as any of the others which have been previously employed. Proceeding to consider the doctrine of causation, Dr. Tulloch concludes "a cause" to be, not simply an antecedent,' but "a power"-an efficient agent, and, therefore, a being possessed of a rational will. Building on this position, he traces the Order of Cause and Effect, and, consequently, the presence of an Intelligent Agent, throughout all Nature. The universe in all its arrangements -the heavens, earth, and man, with all the faculties of his intellectual and moral being-present innumerable evidences of the Order which is sought after, and force home upon the inquirer the conviction of the existence of an intelligent designer, with a power which to ordinary inquirers is irresistible. But this argument depends on the assumed existence of mind as a substance apart from matter. But this is not to be assumed. The sceptic denies it, and it must be proved. Dr. Tulloch quietly begs the reader to grant him the very point at issue. He says:"That it is so distinct has been assumed in the whole course of our preliminary reasoning, and quite warrantably so. For, to say the least, mind is as much entitled, apart from proof, to be held a distinct reality as matter. Nay, of the two, there cannot be any doubt to the genuine thinker which is the real, primary, and constitutive element of knowledge: and for the materialist, therefore, to demand a proof of the separate existence of mind, and for the philosopher or theologian to grant him the validity of this demand, is simply among the absurdities which have sprung out of the degradation both of philosophy and theology. The right of question, the burden of proof, lies plainly all the other way; matter per se, nature independently of mind, being, according to our whole reasoning, as well as according to all true philosophy, the simply inconceivable and inexplicable." Whether this assumption be right or wrong we do not mean to inquire; we only notice the circumstance that Dr. Tulloch has been paid for proving that which he has not proved.'*

Athenæum, No. 1448, July 28, 1855.

History of the Townley debate. Finesse of Mr. Townley.

CHAPTER XX.

HENRY TOWNLEY.

THE incidental discussion in 1852, with the Rev. Henry Townley, occasioned a publicity in London to Theistic views, unexpected and influential. The debate itself is chiefly noticeable in these pages from the light it throws on the platform trial of Theism, and the tactics of theistical defendants of the mildest school.

At the discussions with Mr. John Bowes, Mr. David King (not noticed in this work) and the Rev. Mr. Townley, those gentlemen came prepared with written speeches. The avocations of their op ponent did not permit that preparation, and as in no case was he ap prised that separate publication of the debate was intended, no such precaution was available to him, had he thought it worth while to take it.

At considerable inconvenience to himself he read over such MS. report as Mr. Bowes sent him of his own speeches, in which he supplied no omissions of the reporter's, but simply connected the disjointed parts. Mr. Bowes afterwards advertised this discussion as revised by both speakers,' which gave the public to understand more than was true because the publication was not of his opponent's devising, nor did he know whether what was being presented in the report as his, happened to be the parts related to the portions retained of Mr. Bowes's speeches.

Remembering that many were misled by Mr. Bowes's publication, caused the writer hereof to decline being a party to Mr. King's. Mr. King, however, went to the press, and nearly twelve months afterwards I found a copy of his published report in Manchester. That was the first time of becoming aware of its appearance.

Unwilling to disoblige Mr. Townley, who had been on the whole friendly in his manner, I consented to look over the report. He sent to the Reasoner office my part of it only, and even this part circumstances prevented me ever seeing.

At the discussion with Mr. Townley several reporters were observed, and on the second night I asked what journals they represented, supposing that they came on behalf of newspapers-but the person questioned did not satisfy me. My being asked to 'revise,' was the first information I had that the publication of my impromptu remarks was resolved upon. Had I been at first informed that that was the intention, I should not have held the debate at that time, nor on that subject. When Mr. Townley called upon me I told him my dislike to a merely negative topic; but he would take no other, and had he then betrayed to me his purpose of publishing the debate, and diffusing it among the religious press, as a discussion by which Atheistical prin

On the right of reporting and separately publishing debates.

ciples were to be judged, I should have refused altogether the question: Is there sufficient proof of the Existence of God?' the negative being a position which the public always have misunderstood.

Unconscious of Mr. Townley's intentions, the subject was accepted, and the whole debate regarded merely as an opportunity of indirectly explaining to new hearers ethical aspects of the question. Mr. Townley advertised the debate independently of the committee of arrangement. The number of religious persons present could not be accounted for. There was some foregone conclusion in the matter on Mr. Townley's part.

Newspapers and periodicals have the right of custom to publish a report of a public discussion, but no person has a moral right (nor possibly any legal one) to publish in a book, for separate sale, any discussion without authority. Mr. Townley may plead that as I ultimately consented to 'revise,' I did in fact consent to the step he has taken. True, I made no protest against this step. I acquiesced, but did not think the proceeding less irregular on that account. Had I demurred after the debate, it would have been said I was unwilling to trust my case before the public. It was, therefore, I acquiesced; but I submit I ought to have been consulted beforehand, not merely solicited afterwards, when the solicitation was too late to afford independent decision. Mr. Townley having published at his own risk, was free to dispose of the proceeds till his expenses were paid, and even his risks covered; but if any surplus above these demands arose, a moiety only was his.

He had the book prefaced by his friend Dr. Bennett, and added laborious notes to his own speeches-in fact, as the reviewer in the Bradford Observer remarks, Mr. Townley speaks twice to my once; and thus he turns what the public understand to be a joint and equal debate, into a party book. All the proceeds of such book, therefore, ought not to be devoted to the circulation of the book itself, which is to serve one party at the expense of another.

In the report itself there are errors that slight general knowledge on the reporter's part would have enabled him to correct or cancel. I quoted R. W. Mackay, author of the Progress of the Intellect.' The sentiment is put down to 'Guizot,' who could not possibly have been the author of it. Dryden's lines ascribed in the report to 'Carlile' are not at all likely to have been his, while the name of the writer in the Times ('Carolus'), whom I connected with the quotation, was very different in sound. These names must have been guessed; and, if one part of the report is suppository, why was not something intelligible supposed for me in other instances?

The longest speech in the report ascribed to me is utterly unintelligible. Were it not that my name is prefixed to it, I should hardly know it again. Now the commonest newspaper report of a speech always presents something readable, but this it is not possible to make out. Why I think it an imperfect report is, that the

The province of the reporter. What a report should be.

audience showed, during its delivery, that it was on the whole understood, whereas to readers of this report it is an enigma. The only critics who have assumed to understand the report in general are persons who were either present at the debate, or had other means of knowing my opinions. Passages which I read are not rendered without errors. It is plain, therefore, that, on the whole, I was something more intelligible in the debate than in the report.

The usual course when a report is sent to the press is for the reporter to take care that what is sent is readable, and, if he has parts unreadable, to omit them. A reporter who should send into a newspaper office a report in the state in which my part of the debate is printed, would be dismissed. If a speaker does not revise his own speeches he has no right to expect accuracy, but he has a right to expect that the negligences of the reporter shall not be placed to his account. In this report there are some negations gratuitously put down to me, flatly contradicting my meaning; but of these I do not complain. A reporter's discretion could not be expected to be exercised on the argument. But for the general sense he was responsible. There is no reason to think that intentional variations have been made; but very unprofessional carelessness has been committed. An ordinary report gives the reader as fair a notion of what was said as the hearer received. This report fails to do this.

This report is not said to be untrustworthy because it contains many inaccuracies or omissions, but because it contains more disjointed and utterly unintelligible passages than would be found in the commonest newspaper report of the same debate. It is also untrustworthy in other senses. 1. Because it is prejudiced by the preface. 2. Because the subject was a forced one, and one that misrepresents us. Touching the argument in the report of this discussion, several critics have pronounced Mr. Townley's case made out. None seem to notice that I did not profess to argue against Mr. Townley. He insisted on discussing a subject which I did not care about, and I pursued the course which, in like cases, I have pursued with others. As he would take a subject of no interest to me, I concluded he had not my improvement in view, but some end of his own to answer, and I left him to answer it as he pleased. Very distinctly he was told, on the first night, that to prove that something existed was, in my opinion, nothing to the purpose. That one aspect of the design argument made the fact of something existing distinct from nature' plausible, but a contrary fact was much more plausible. His argument did not lead to an Absolute and Supreme Being, and in no way touched the vital question of a Special Providence; and as his argument brought with it neither certainty nor relevance, it was beside the question which interested us. Still he went round and round his barren proposition. He even used the phrase 'a Being distinct from nature'-which every Christian understands to mean a Supreme Being in the sense of a mere entity; and seeing this, I occupied my time, as my first speech gave Mr. Townley fair warning that I should,

6

Mr. Townley missed the point of his own proposition.

in establishing our sympathy with more positive and practical questions.

The question for debate was, 'Is there sufficient proof of the existence of a God—that is, of a Being distinct from Nature?' This question Mr. Townley deserted at the outset, and betook himself to proving that something existed. But something' is not necessarily God. The argument of analogy, which he followed, only makes probable the existence of a Great Man, not Deity. If Mr. Townley's position is really recognised by the orthodox, then theology has turned round has given up its pretensions to certainty as to the existence of God, and accepts our theory of probability; and if that is all, we had better rest in our own probability than theirs, for Nature-infinite, eternal, self-existent, and material-is a more magnificent truth than that of something' abstract, barren, relative, and limited, beyond nature, and which degrades Nature from a Supreme Existence into a mere Instrument

One advantage taken of my concession in debating Mr. Townley's proposition is, that he placed on the cover of the book the words 'Atheistic Discussion,' and advertised it under this designation. It occasioned some surprise that Mr. Townley should seek to force upon us an opprobrious name which we disown unless accompanied by a definition clearing the term from moral guiltiness. Again, his advertisement of the debate in a religious Magazine has these two opinions of his own party appended :

'We have seldom seen such utter trash as the infidel disputant dignifies with the name of reasoning. It is not the being of a God he wishes to get rid of, but the responsibility of man.'-Edinburgh Witness.

'There is nothing like an argument at all in Mr. Holyoake's flimsy attempt, by glib talking, to mystify the public ear. We have looked with great care at every sentence uttered by him, and we cannot find anything bordering on a single logical showing in defence of his deity, which he calls Nature. The utter feebleness of Atheism is only equalled by its insolent pretence.'-Evangelical Magazine.

The question that here arises is-does Mr. Townley believe these criticisms? If so, what was the meaning of his apparent civility to the end of the discussion? If he does not believe these allegations, on what ground does he offer them to the public to believe?

The propriety of my objection, expressed to Mr. Townley, to discuss the question of the existence of Deity, in the then temper of the religious world, is further established in a very marked manner by the Rev. Dr. Bennett in his 'Preface' to the discussion.* That Preface' occupies but twenty-four lines, long primer; yet in it three times the rev. writer represents me as bringing 'arguments against God, though to argue against God' was never in my thoughts. I scarcely argued against Mr. Townley's inconclusive representations

*Published at 2s. Four editions have since appeared at two prices, at 1s. and at 6d., but omitting Dr. Bennett's preface and Mr. Townley's notes.