Bryce
The Second Semester
Chapter 21 - Samuel Johnson
The first examination in Bryce’ English class, Samuel Johnson and His World, was scheduled for Friday, February 12. Dr. Etheridge, the instructor in the course, insisted that he was unaware that this would conflict with St. Valentine’s Day celebrations across campus when he developed his syllabus, but some of the students, especially those of the female persuasion, were skeptical about his explanations. In any case, the session of the study group which met on Thursday evening was especially intense. They were able, in a session which lasted about three hours, to touch on just about every important topic covered in class, and to address the problems various members of the group had. However, there was not time to discuss the term paper topics of the various members of the group, as had been originally planned. As in some other classes Bryce was involved in, Dr. Etheridge told them they might submit a draft version of their papers at this time for his perusal and guidance, but that was voluntary. All those in the study group, who were among the more serious students, planned to do so. They consoled themselves with the thought that, if there were any really serious issues raised by Dr. Etheridge, they could be discussed at a subsequent meeting of the study group. After all, they were only a third of the way through the semester, with plenty of time before the final version was due.
Bryce had chosen as the topic for his paper the approach of Samuel Johnson to what was called the problem of evil. This is a matter which evidently fascinated many of the writers of the eighteenth century. Essentially, the question was, if there is a God, and he is all good and all powerful, why is there suffering and evil in the world? Many writers, some well known, some less so, treated of this matter during the period in question, and so Bryce felt he not only had to find out what Johnson had to say on the topic, but also what some previous writers said, especially those who might have influenced Johnson, either positively or negatively. The three most significant seemed to be Leibnitz, Pope, and Jenyns.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646-1716), the famed German polymath, was the son of a Saxon Lutheran minister. After an early career which included a stint with the Elector of Mainz in western Germany and influential trips to Paris and London, Leibnitz spent most of his life as librarian to the Elector of Hanover. As Bryce knew from his history class, Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, so there was some overlap with this class as far as background material was concerned. Leibnitz was co-discoverer with Sir Isaac Newton of the system of mathematics called calculus. Evidently, they came up with similar discoveries independently at almost the same time in the 1660s and 1670s. As a result, there were two different systems of notation and quarrels between the supporters of the respective systems for over a century, muddying the scientific waters. But, in addition, Leibnitz was the only philosopher to respond to the pantheistic metaphysics of Baruch de Spinoza on his own level. It was in this respect that he put forward ideas which were relevant to the issue of the problem of evil.
Not all of Leibnitz’ writings were available to his contemporaries or near contemporaries like Johnson. For example, his Systema theologicum, an effort to find common ground leading to a reunion of Catholics and Protestants, was not published until 1819. However, many of his works were published during his lifetime or shortly thereafter. The Essais de theodicée saw the light of day in 1710; the Principes de la nature et de la grâce came out in 1718, and La monadologie, completed in 1714, was published in 1721. Bryce noted that Leibnitz mainly wrote in French, the international language of his day, much like English is today. Had he written in German, no one outside Germany would have read his work. In addition to these writings and many articles in learned journals, the basic principles of Leibnitz were made widely available through the work of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), who interpreted and popularized Leibnitz’ thought. It was this simplified and popularized version which was satirized to the point of caricature in Voltaire’s Candide of 1759, and which Bryce had read in his French class last semester.
Leibnitz posited a universe created by a good and all powerful God. He deduced that such a God, when he set out to create, would necessarily have chosen to create the best world that could exist combining the greatest amount of variety with the greatest amount of order. In that sense, the world which existed was the best of all possible worlds. Leibnitz attempted to build into his system some role for human free will, but he identified acting freely with acting for the best, which essentially robbed free will of much meaning.
Another author with whom Samuel Johnson had to deal was the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744). The son of a London merchant who was forced to flee the city because of prejudice against his Catholicism, he was further ostracized from society because of illnesses which left him stunted in growth and hunchbacked. Pope was a poet living in a prose era, who attempted to make poetry acceptable by using it to express philosophical ideas. Along these lines, in 1734 he published his Essay on Man. In it we find the lines:
Then say not Man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault;
Say rather, Man’s as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measured to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day is as completely so,
As who began a thousand years ago.
...
All Nature is but Art unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good;
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
This is, in one sense, a form of optimism, but it is an optimism which leaves very little room for change or progress, or for human choice and freedom. It is what the modern commentator Basil Willey calls “cosmic toryism.”
Soame Jenyns (1704-1787) was not an author known to Bryce before he began his researches into the background of his Johnson paper. He was the son of well-to-do landowners and was himself a successful politician and government bureaucrat. He was quite important for understanding Johnson’s thought, as one of the most important places where that thought was expressed was in the lengthy review of Jenyns’ book, A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, published in 1757. Johnson reviewed it in three successive issues of The Literary Magazine of that year. Jenyns, like a number of other writers on the topic, attempted to harmonize belief in God with the reality of evil in two ways. Their god was an impersonal and distant figure, more in the tradition of the Deists than of Christianity, and they tended to dismiss much of evil as merely imagined evil, or of minor significance in the attainment of some greater good. Jenyns seems to say that the social order was as much divinely ordained as the natural order, something which would appeal to his well-born readers. He dismissed much of the suffering of the lower classes as insignificant because they did not know any better. He called ignorance the “opiate” of the poor, leading Bryce to muse that Karl Marx’s designation of religion as the “opiate of the masses” was not all that original. Jenyns wrote that ignorance was “a cordial, administered by the gracious hand of Providence,” to prevent the lower orders from suffering by knowing just how badly off they were. In a statement which to Bryce held ominous omens of the Marquis de Sade, Jenyns also wrote, “there is something in the abstract nature of pain conducive to pleasure,” and, “the sufferings of individuals are absolutely necessary for universal happiness.”
Bryce knew that Dr. Samuel Johnson was an orthodox Christian, in the tradition of John Milton from the previous century as far as his treatment of the problem of evil was concerned. This matter had been treated by theologians for centuries, with a variety of interpretations and a variety of emphases, but essentially attributing evil to human sinfulness. St. Augustine of Hippo, for example, around the year 400, described evil as choosing a lesser good over God. It was Bryce’s task in his paper to dig out Johnson’s particular take on this issue. In addition to the review of Jenyns’ book, Johnson’s opinions were expressed in a number of other places, including articles in the periodical entitled The Rambler, published 1750-52 and almost entirely written by Johnson, in his Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland from late in his life (1775), and in his Prayers and Meditations, published after his death, among the most significant.
To begin with, Johnson dismissed the efforts of writers like Jenyns to belittle the reality of evil. He wrote that “this author and Pope perhaps never saw the miseries which they imagine thus easily to be borne.” But he concurred with them that some perceived evils were imaginary or insignificant. Jenyns seemed to think that such matters as a social snub or a minor inconvenience encountered in travel constituted evil for the upper classes. Johnson concurred in dismissing such evils as of no significance in discussing the basic problem of evil. Bryce found himself in agreement, understanding this aspect of the argument completely from his own experience. There were those who considered not having the latest fashion in designer jeans an evil of world-shaking proportions; or those who spent hours bemoaning not having the latest version of a video game player. He even recalled a girl who was absolutely devastated when she tore a fingernail prior to a date, and considered that on a par with Ethiopian famine.
Before getting to the core of human responsibility for evil, Johnson also discussed the role of the devil, or Satan, in the process. As an orthodox Christian, Johnson believed in the reality of the devil, but did not wish to attribute to him too great a role for the presence of evil in the world. He rejected the non-Christian ideas of the Manichees, who essentially made Satan equal to God, and the author of all evil. In one of his sermons, he wrote:
The subtleties of the devil are undoubtedly many: he has probably the power of
presenting opportunities of sin, and at the same time of inflaming the passions,
of suggesting evil desires, and interrupting holy meditations; but his power is so
limited by the Governour of the universe, that he cannot hurt us without our own
consent; his power is but like that of a wicked companion, who may solicit us to
crimes or follies, but with whom we feel no necessity of complying: he, therefore,
that yields to temptation, has the greater part in his own destruction; he has been
warned of his danger, he has been taught his duty; and if these warnings and
instructions have had no effect, he may be said voluntarily to desert the right way,
and not so much to be deceived by another, as to deceive himself.
In other words, Johnson believed we are responsible for our own actions, and cannot escape blame by saying with the comedian Flip Wilson “the devil made me do it.”
It intrigued Bryce to consider that the above statement was a single sentence. He pondered the construction, and longed to try something similar in his paper, but desisted because he was certain it would be struck down by his instructor.
The reality and power of the devil having been thus settled, Bryce then considered Johnson’s take on human responsibility for evil. Johnson essentially says that in most instances, it is not reasonable to blame God for evils which humans perpetrate on each other or on themselves. He noted that “many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good ... which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.” Here, too, Bryce drew on his own experience to confirm the accuracy of Johnson’s observations. How often had someone of his acquaintance made himself miserable by envying what someone else had. Such evils are imaginary, in the sense that they exist only in our minds. Without our own sins of envy, they would not exist.
There are other evils which have an objective existence, but which are nonetheless the creations of the sufferer. Johnson wrote that “we must consider how many diseases proceed from our own laziness, intemperance, or negligence,” and thus “beware of imputing to God the consequences of luxury, riot, and debauchery.” If someone drinks to excess on Saturday night, he cannot blame God for his hangover on Sunday morning. Someone who suffers from syphilis as a result of promiscuous sexual activity cannot blame God for his misfortunes, Bryce agreed. He considered that, in this context, Johnson was using the word “diseases” in its etymological meaning of “dis eases,” or pains and sufferings, rather than in its medical meaning.
In short, like most Christian writers before him, Samuel Johnson ascribes most of the evils in the world to human failings rather than to any deficiency in the design of the universe or the power or goodness of God. On a personal level, Bryce noted Johnson’s fondness for cats and his strong opposition to slavery as traits worth remarking.
As he was researching and writing his paper, Bryce often discussed its content with Damon, who sometimes had some insightful observations. Without those observations, Bryce could easily have fallen into the trap of assuming his reader was following his argument, when in fact he had skipped over an essential step or explanation. He was forced to hone his ideas and his writing to greater clarity as a result. On one occasion, Damon objected that he did not feel he was responsible for most of the evils he had suffered growing up in his dysfunctional family in the projects of Chicago.
“No,” Bryce replied, “nor do I. But some human person was responsible. It was humans who attempted to beat you up. It was humans who neglected you as a child. It was humans who constructed those projects and then allowed them to deteriorate, deteriorate in large part through human greed and neglect.”
“That’s true,” Damon conceded, “but why didn’t your all powerful God step in and clean up the mess somewhere along the line?”
“The answer to that is because God gave us humans free will,” Bryce responded. “We can decide whether to do the right thing or not.”
“What’s so great about free will?” Damon asked.
“As I see it, God wanted some part of his creation to be able to love him freely, which meant we humans, as that part of creation, were given the ability to choose. Loving God freely implies the power to refuse to love God, i.e., to sin. It is from sin that the evils flow. It is this power of free will, the ability to choose good or evil, which distinguishes the human species from all other forms of creation. Without it, we are no longer human. On it, all our other freedoms depend. Without free will, we are no different than ants in a colony, perhaps doing something which some intelligence would regard as good, but essentially meaningless as far as we are concerned, because we have no choice but to do it,” Bryce explained.
On another occasion, after he had considered Bryce’s explanation, Damon stated, “I think maybe we could have all those benefits you ascribe to free will from the advance of science.”
“On the contrary,” Bryce insisted. “If there were no free will, there would be no science.”
“Explain that. I thought science was pretty objective, not dependent on our decisions,” Damon skeptically responded.
“On the contrary, science is a human construction. It’s true, it is an effort to understand how the objective physical world works, but the effort is a human undertaking. All the major breakthroughs of science have come about because of human choices, efforts to find solutions to human problems. If God intervened to remove all evils whenever they occurred, there would be no incentive to even attempt to understand how the physical world works. Take for example, the discovery of fire. Humans experimented with controlling fire in order to overcome the pain, the ‘dis ease’ in Johnson’s sense, of being uncomfortably cold. If God so arranged things that we never suffered the discomfort of being cold, there would be no incentive to try to utilize fire to keep warm. Instead, fire would simply be an interesting and perhaps pretty aspect of natural phenomena, like the aurora borealis. Likewise, a lot of early mathematics and physics was developed in response to the desire to find out how to mitigate the pain of lifting heavy objects and transporting them from one place to another. In the words often heard in the gym, no pain, no gain,” Bryce insisted.
Another discussion of this topic led Bryce to say that there could in fact be no science if God regularly intervened to prevent evil. Damon challenged him to defend that statement, so he drew on some of his knowledge of the history of philosophy. “Look, science essentially depends on there being some predictability, some regularity in physical events, and on some rationally understandable connection between one event and another. These understandings are what we call the laws of nature, like in physics, where we learn that ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction,’ or in chemistry, where we have Boyle’s law relating heat and motion. Now, a miracle is a violation of these laws of nature. What you are asking for when you ask for God to prevent evils from happening is for an unending series of miracles. If, for example, every time one human aimed a gun at another, God intervened to prevent a bullet from hitting the victim, that would be a miracle. If you apply the same approach to every possible evil that could befall us humans, there would be absolutely no predictability or regularity in the working of nature, hence no laws of nature, hence no science. It is only because God designed a regular nature, but allowed humans free will within the bounds of natural law, that we can develop science.”
“Wouldn’t the world continue to operate more or less the way it does even if we humans had no free will?” Damon asked.
“I suppose so. Sure, the physical universe could go on, operating according to the basic laws of nature instilled at the time of creation. But we would never know about it, and science is, as I’ve said before, the human effort to understand the workings of nature. It is our effort to use nature for our own benefit, essentially, and that depends on the reality of choice,” Bryce insisted.
“Okay, but I still don’t see the connection between your God and the realities discovered by science,” Damon persisted.
“Science is a product of the Christian West,” Bryce stated.
“Oh, come on. There always seems to be a conflict between science and religion,” Damon asserted.
“‘Seems to be’ are the operative words here, I think,” Bryce replied. “I don’t think any such conflict is necessary, if both science and religion stick to their appropriate spheres of understanding. But I was speaking historically. A denial of regularity and predictability in nature is the death knell of science, and only the Christian West preserved that philosophical tradition inherited from the Greeks. The Greeks themselves abandoned it, and became obsessed with mysticism and mystery cults and such movements as Neoplatonism. The Moslem world began to develop science, based on the Greek achievements, but abandoned it during the Middle Ages. It was only the West which pursued the line of thought which led to the emergence of modern science.”
“Now wait. I always was told that the Moslem world was way ahead of the West during the Middle Ages,” Damon objected.
“That was true for several centuries,” Bryce admitted. “By around 1100 A.D., the Moslem world was way ahead in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, and perhaps some other areas. But they did not continue in that tradition. About that time, there was an influential Moslem thinker and religious leader named Al-Ghazali of Khurasan who, along with other less influential religions leaders called imams, became concerned that the pursuit of philosophy was undermining belief in the Moslem revelation contained in the Koran. They represent that current in religion we discussed before called Moslem fundamentalism, i.e., a literal and unquestioning acceptance of the Koran. There were conflicts between the tradition of Greek science, essentially Aristotle, and the literal accounts in the Koran on such matters as creation, just as there are with those fundamentalist Christians who insist on a literal acceptance of the account in Genesis, for example.
“Now, in his Posterior Analytics Aristotle discussed the matter of cause and effect, that is, the predictable nature of observed happenings. He wrote, “if a beast dies when its throat is cut, then its death is essentially connected with the cutting, because the cutting is the cause of the death.” Cause and effect. Predictable laws of nature based on observation and logic. But Al-Ghazali disagreed. He insisted that this approach to reality diminished the glory and power of God. According to him, the only connection between the cutting of the throat and the death of the beast was that God willed both. It was the influence of men like Al-Ghazali which eventually prevailed in the Moslem world, so that within a century there were no new developments in Moslem science or philosophy. The Moslem world preserved what had been developed up to about 1100 A.D., but froze at that point, allowing the West to pass it. The West built on the joint achievements of the Greeks and the Moslems, found a way to harmonize reason and religion with such scholars as St. Thomas Aquinas, and moved on to develop modern science. So, I stand by my statement that science as we know it is a product of the Christian West.”
Damon admitted he was unaware of this bit of medieval history. “So,” he tried to summarize, “you essentially identify with this Johnson dude.”
“Not entirely,” Bryce replied. “I think Johnson is essentially correct when it comes to what we might call moral evils. It is human sinfulness which is the cause of most suffering, the result of greed, pride, anger, envy, laziness, lust, or gluttony, the so-called Seven Deadly Sins. We do it to ourselves. But I think Johnson went too far in attributing all evils, even some beyond normal ideas of human responsibility, to human action. For example, after his trip to the Hebrides, he concluded that the poverty of the inhabitants was due to their failure to develop manufacturing and commerce with outside entitles. I can’t go that far. I think Leibnitz, the idea of combining the greatest variety with the greatest order, is a better explanation of what I think of as physical evils, such as earthquakes, floods, and the consequences of climate and geography, and I think climate and geography had as much to do with the poverty of the Hebrides as human choice, except, I suppose, the choice to live there. And that’s a consequence of chance, being born into adverse circumstances.”
“Nice to know you don’t blame me for being born in the projects,” Damon teased his partner. “But I still insisted that I would have been a lot better off if God had stepped in to alleviate some of the evils I suffered growing up in the projects.”
“I’m not even certain that’s true,” Bryce stated. “What was it which led to you developing a toughness and self-reliance which made you go your own way instead of going along with the dominant outlook of the projects? What was it which drove you to master learning beyond the expectations of your surroundings? We talked about this when you were playing Guinea pig for my Psychology project. You recall, I said your example supported the Humanistic school of thought, which posits the reality of choice. I don’t know, of course, but if you were not neglected as a child, and if you were not constantly threatened by Tyson, and if you were not motivated to excel in studies by your desire to get out of the projects, would you have developed the love of learning you have? Would you have mastered studies far beyond what your contemporaries in the projects were doing? Would you have really been motivated to the point where you could have won that academic scholarship which brought you from the projects of Chicago to the University of Clifton? And would you have become the strong, self-reliant, and attractive person I love?”
“When you put it that way, I’m ready to quit arguing,” Damon conceded, even though he suspected that putting things on this kind of personal level was finessing the issues.