Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

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In March 1715 he entered at Oriel College, Oxford, but for some time found
it uncongenial and thought of migrating to Cambridge. But he made a close
friend in one of the resident fellows, Edward Talbot, son of William
Talbot, then bishop of Oxford, and afterwards of Salisbury and Durham. In
1718 he took his degree, was ordained deacon and priest, and on the
recommendation of Talbot and Clarke was nominated preacher at the chapel of
the Rolls, where he continued till 1726. It was here that he preached his
famous _Fifteen Sermons_ (1726), including the well-known discourses on
human nature. In 1721 he had been given a prebend at Salisbury by Bishop
Talbot, who on his translation to Durham gave Butler the living of
Houghton-le-Skerne in that county, and in 1725 presented him to the wealthy
rectory of Stanhope. In 1726 he resigned his preachership at the Rolls.

For ten years Butler remained in perfect seclusion at Stanhope. He was only
remembered in the neighbourhood as a man much loved and respected, who used
to ride a black pony very fast, and whose known benevolence was much
practised upon by beggars. Archbishop Blackburne, when asked by Queen
Caroline whether he was still alive, answered, "He is not dead, madam, but
buried." In 1733 he was made chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot, elder
brother of his dead friend Edward, and in 1736 prebendary of Rochester. In
the same year he was appointed clerk of the closet to the queen, and had to
take part in the metaphysical conversation parties which she loved to
gather round her. He met Berkeley frequently, but in his writings does not
refer to him. In 1736 also appeared his great work, _The Analogy of
Religion_.

In 1737 Queen Caroline died; on her deathbed she recommended Butler to the
favour of her husband. George seemed to think his obligation sufficiently
discharged by appointing Butler in 1738 to the bishopric of Bristol, the
poorest see in the kingdom. The severe but dignified letter to Walpole, in
which Butler accepted the preferment, showed that the slight was felt and
resented. Two years later, however, the bishop was presented to the rich
deanery of St Paul's, and in 1746 was made clerk of the closet to the king.
In 1747 the primacy was offered to Butler, who, it is said, declined it, on
the ground that "it was too late for him to try to support a falling
church." The story has not the best authority, and though the desponding
tone of some of Butler's writings may give it colour, it is not in harmony
with the rest of his life, for in 1750 he accepted the see of Durham,
vacant by the death of Edward Chandler. His charge to the clergy of the
diocese, the only charge of his known to us, is a weighty and valuable
address on the importance of external forms in religion. This, together
with the fact that over the altar of his private chapel at Bristol he had a
cross of white marble, gave rise to an absurd rumour that the bishop had
too great a leaning towards Romanism. At Durham he was very charitable, and
expended large sums in building and decorating his church and residence.
His private expenses were exceedingly small. Shortly after his translation
his constitution began to break up, and he died on the 16th of June 1752,
at Bath, whither he had removed for his health. He was buried in the
cathedral of Bristol, and over his grave a monument was erected in 1834,
with an epitaph by Southey. According to his express orders, all his MSS.
were burned after his death. Bishop Butler was never married. His personal
appearance has been sketched in a few lines by Hutchinson:--"He was of a
most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine
placidness which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent
mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure
was patriarchal."

Butler was an earnest and deep-thinking Christian, melancholy by
temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious
condition of his age. In his view not only the religious life of the
nation, but (what he regarded as synonymous) the church itself, was in an
almost hopeless state of decay, as we see from his first and only charge to
the diocese of Durham and [v.04 p.0883] from many passages in the
_Analogy_. And though there was a complete remedy just coming into notice,
in the Evangelical revival, it was not of a kind that commended itself to
Butler, whose type of mind was opposed to everything that savoured of
enthusiasm. He even asked John Wesley, in 1739, to desist from preaching in
his diocese of Bristol, and in a memorable interview with the great
preacher remarked that any claim to the extraordinary gifts of the Holy
Spirit was "a horrid thing, a very horrid thing, sir." Yet Butler was
keenly interested in those very miners of Kingswood among whom Wesley
preached, and left L500 towards building a church for them. It is a great
mistake to suppose that because he took no great part in politics he had no
interest in the practical questions of his time, or that he was so immersed
in metaphysics as to live in the clouds. His intellect was profound and
comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of
metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the
practical and moral. Man's conduct in life, not his theory of the universe,
was what interested him. The _Analogy_ was written to counteract the
practical mischief which he considered wrought by deists and other
freethinkers, and the _Sermons_ lay a good deal of stress on everyday
Christian duties. His style has frequently been blamed for its obscurity
and difficulty, but this is due to two causes: his habit of compressing his
arguments into narrow compass, and of always writing with the opposite side
of the case in view, so that it has been said of the _Analogy_ that it
raises more doubts than it solves. One is also often tempted away from the
main course of the argument by the care and precision with which Butler
formulates small points of detail.

His great work, _The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the
Course and Constitution of Nature_, cannot be adequately appreciated unless
taken in connexion with the circumstances of the period at which it
appeared. It was intended as a defence against the great tide of deistical
speculation (see DEISM), which in the apprehension of many good men seemed
likely to sweep away the restraints of religion and make way for a general
reign of licence. Butler did not enter the lists in the ordinary way. Most
of the literature evoked by the controversy on either side was devoted to
rebutting the attack of some individual opponent. Thus it was Bentley
versus Collins, Sherlock versus Woolston, Law versus Tindal. The _Analogy_,
on the contrary, did not directly refer to the deists at all, and yet it
worked more havoc with their position than all the other books put
together, and remains practically the one surviving landmark of the whole
dispute. Its central motive is to prove that all the objections raised
against revealed or supernatural religion apply with equal force to the
whole constitution of nature, and that the general analogy between the
principles of divine government, as set forth by the biblical revelation,
and those observable in the course of nature, leads us to the warrantable
conclusion that there is one Author of both. Without altogether eschewing
Samuel Clarke's _a priori_ system, Butler relies mainly on the inductive
method, not professing to give an absolute demonstration so much as a
probable proof. And everything is brought into closest relation with "that
which is the foundation of all our hopes and of all our fears; all our
hopes and fears which are of any consideration; I mean a Future Life."

Butler is a typical instance of the English philosophical mind. He will
admit no speculative theory of things. To him the universe is no
realization of intelligence, which is to be deciphered by human thought; it
is a constitution or system, made up of individual facts, through which we
thread our way slowly and inductively. Complete knowledge is impossible;
nay, what we call knowledge of any part of the system is inherently
imperfect. "We cannot have a thorough knowledge of any part without knowing
the whole." So far as experience goes, "to us probability is the very guide
of life." Reason is certainly to be accepted; it is pur natural light, and
the only faculty whereby we can judge of things. But it gives no completed
system of knowledge and in matters of fact affords only probable
conclusions. In this emphatic declaration, that knowledge of the course of
nature is merely probable, Butler is at one with Hume, who was a most
diligent student of the bishop's works. What can come nearer Hume's
celebrated maxim--"Anything may be the cause of anything else," than
Butler's conclusion, "so that any one thing whatever may, for aught we know
to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other"?

It is this strong grasp or the imperfect character of our knowledge of
nature and of the grounds for its limitation that makes Butler so
formidable an opponent to his deistical contemporaries. He will permit no
anticipations of nature, no _a priori_ construction of experience. "The
constitution of nature is as it is," and no system of abstract principles
can be allowed to take its place. He is willing with Hume to take the
course of experience as the basis of his reasoning, seeing that it is
common ground for himself and his antagonists. In one essential respect,
however, he goes beyond Hume. The course of nature is for him an unmeaning
expression unless it be referred to some author; and he therefore makes
extensive use of the teleological method. This position is assumed
throughout the treatise, and as against the deists with justice, for their
whole argument rested upon the presupposition of the existence of God, the
perfect Ruler of the world.

The premises, then, with which Butler starts are the existence of God, the
known course of nature, and the necessary limitation of our knowledge. What
does he wish to prove? It is not his intention _to prove God's perfect
moral government over the world or the truth of religion_. His work is in
no sense a philosophy of religion. His purpose is entirely defensive; he
wishes to answer objections that have been brought against religion, and to
examine certain difficulties that have been alleged as insuperable. And
this is to be effected in the first place by showing that from the
obscurities and inexplicabilities we meet with in nature we may reasonably
expect to find similar difficulties in the scheme of religion. If
difficulties be found in the course and constitution of nature, whose
author is admitted to be God, surely the existence of similar difficulties
in the plan of religion can be no valid objection against its truth and
divine origin. That this is at least in great part Butler's object is plain
from the slightest inspection of his work. It has seemed to many to be an
unsatisfactory mode of arguing and but a poor defence of religion; and so
much the author is willing to allow. But in the general course of his
argument a somewhat wider issue appears. He seeks to show not only that the
difficulties in the systems of natural and revealed religion have
counterparts in nature, but also that the facts of nature, far from being
adverse to the principles of religion, are a distinct ground for inferring
their probable truth. He endeavours to show that the balance of probability
is entirely in favour of the scheme of religion, that this probability is
the natural conclusion from an inspection of nature, and that, as religion
is a matter of practice, we are bound to adopt the course of action which
is even probably the right one. If, we may imagine him saying, the precepts
of religion are entirely analogous in their partial obscurity and apparent
difficulty to the ordinary course of nature disclosed to us by experience,
then it is credible that these precepts are true; not only can no
objections be drawn against them from experience, but the balance of
probability is in their favour. This mode of reasoning from what is known
of nature to the probable truth of what is contained in religion is the
celebrated method of analogy.

Although Butler's work is peculiarly one of those which ought not to be
exhibited in outline, for its strength lies in the organic completeness
with which the details are wrought into the whole argument, yet a summary
of his results will throw more light on the method than any description
can.

Keeping clearly in view his premises--the existence of God and the limited
nature of knowledge--Butler begins by inquiring into the fundamental
pre-requisite of all natural religion--the immortality of the soul.
Evidently the stress of the whole question is here. Were man not immortal,
religion would be of little value. Now, Butler does not attempt to prove
the truth of the doctrine; that proof comes from another quarter. The only
questions he asks are--Does experience forbid us to admit immortality as a
possibility? Does experience furnish any probable reason for inferring that
immortality is a fact? To the first of these a negative, to the second an
affirmative answer is returned. All the analogies of our life here lead us
to conclude that we shall continue to live after death; and neither from
experience nor from the reason of the thing can any argument against the
possibility of this be drawn. Immortality, then, is not unreasonable; it is
probable. If, he continues, we are to live after death, it is of importance
for us to consider on what our future state may depend; for we may be
either happy or miserable. Now, whatever speculation may say as to God's
purpose being necessarily universal benevolence, experience plainly shows
us that our present happiness and misery depend upon our conduct, and are
not distributed indiscriminately. Therefore no argument can be brought from
experience against the possibility of our future happiness and misery
likewise depending upon conduct. The whole analogy of nature is in favour
of such a dispensation; it is therefore reasonable or probable. Further, we
are not only under a government in which actions considered simply as such
are rewarded and punished, but it is known from experience that virtue and
vice are followed by their natural consequents--happiness and misery. And
though the distribution of these rewards is not perfect, all hindrances are
plainly temporary or accidental. It may therefore be concluded that the
balance of probability is in favour of God's government in general being a
moral scheme, where virtue and vice are respectively rewarded and punished.
It need not be objected to the justice of [v.04 p.0884] this arrangement
that men are sorely tempted, and may very easily be brought to neglect that
on which their future welfare depends, for the very same holds good in
nature. Experience shows man to be in a state of trial so far as regards
the present; it cannot, therefore, be unreasonable to suppose that we are
in a similar state as regards the future. Finally, it can surely never be
advanced as an argument against the truth of religion that there are many
things in it which we do not comprehend, when experience exhibits to us
such a copious stock of incomprehensibilities in the ordinary course and
constitution of nature.

It cannot have escaped observation, that in the foregoing course of
argument the conclusion is invariably from experience of the present order
of things to the reasonableness or probability of some other system--of a
future state. The inference in all cases passes beyond the field of
experience; that it does so may be and has been advanced as a conclusive
objection against it. See for example a passage in Hume, _Works_ (ed.
1854), iv. 161-162, cf. p. 160, which says, in short, that no argument from
experience can ever carry us beyond experience itself. However well
grounded this reasoning may be, it altogether misses the point at which
Butler aimed, and is indeed a misconception of the nature of analogical
argument. Butler never attempts to _prove_ that a future life regulated
according to the requirements of ethical law is a reality; he only desires
to show that the conception of such a life is not irreconcilable with what
we know of the course of nature, and that consequently it is _not
unreasonable_ to suppose that there is such a life. Hume readily grants
this much, though he hints at a formidable difficulty which the plan of the
_Analogy_ prevented Butler from facing, the proof of the existence of God.
Butler seems willing to rest satisfied with his opponents' admission that
the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how,
upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof
could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's
argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the
universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is,
however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the
deists rests on a view of reason which would for ever preclude a
demonstrative proof of God's existence.

If, however, his premises be granted, and the narrow issue kept in view,
the argument may be admitted as perfectly satisfactory. From what we know
of the present order of things, it is not unreasonable to suppose that
there will be a future state of rewards and punishments, distributed
according to ethical law. When the argument from analogy seems to go beyond
this, a peculiar difficulty starts up. Let it be granted that our happiness
and misery in this life depend upon our conduct--are, in fact, the rewards
and punishments attached by God to certain modes of action, the natural
conclusion from analogy would seem to be that our future happiness or the
reverse will probably depend upon our actions in the future state. Butler,
on the other hand, seeks to show that analogy leads us to believe that our
future state will depend upon our present conduct. His argument, that the
punishment of an imprudent act often follows after a long interval may be
admitted, but does not advance a single step towards the conclusion that
imprudent acts will be punished hereafter. So, too, with the attempt to
show that from the analogy of the present life we may not unreasonably
infer that virtue and vice will receive their respective rewards and
punishments hereafter; it may be admitted that virtuous and vicious acts
are naturally looked upon as objects of reward or punishment, and treated
accordingly, but we may refuse to allow the argument to go further, and to
infer a perfect distribution of justice dependent upon our conduct here.
Butler could strengthen his argument only by bringing forward prominently
the absolute requirements of the ethical consciousness, in which case he
would have approximated to Kant's position with regard to this very
problem. That he did not do so is, perhaps, due to his strong desire to use
only such premises as his adversaries the deists were willing to allow.

As against the deists, however, he may be allowed to have made out his
point, that the substantial doctrines of natural religion are not opposed
to reason and experience, and may be looked upon as credible. The positive
proof of them is to be found in revealed religion, which has disclosed to
us not only these truths, but also a further scheme not discoverable by the
natural light. Here, again, Butler joins issue with his opponents. Revealed
religion had been declared to be nothing but a republication of the truths
of natural religion (Matthew Tindal, _Christianity as Old as the
Creation_), and all revelation had been objected to as impossible. To show
that such objections are invalid, and that a revelation is at least not
impossible, Butler makes use mainly of his doctrine of human ignorance.
Revelation had been rejected because it lay altogether beyond the sphere of
reason and could not therefore be grasped by human intelligence. But the
same is true of nature; there are in the ordinary course of things
inexplicabilities; indeed we may be said with truth to know nothing, for
there is no medium between perfect and completed comprehension of the whole
system of things, which we manifestly have not, and mere faith grounded on
probability. Is it unreasonable to suppose that in a revealed system there
should be the same superiority to our intelligence? If we cannot explain or
foretell by reason what the exact course of events in nature will be, is it
to be expected that we can do so with regard to the wider scheme of God's
revealed providence? Is it not probable that there will be many things not
explicable by us? From our experience of the course of nature it would
appear that no argument can be brought against the possibility of a
revelation. Further, though it is the province of reason to test this
revealed system, and though it be granted that, should it contain anything
immoral, it must be rejected, yet a careful examination of the particulars
will show that there is no incomprehensibility or difficulty in them which
has not a counterpart in nature. The whole scheme of revealed principles
is, therefore, not unreasonable, and the analogy of nature and natural
religion would lead us to infer its truth. If, finally, it be asked, how a
system professing to be revealed can substantiate its claim, the answer is,
by means of the historical evidences, such as miracles and fulfilment of
prophecy.

It would be unfair to Butler's argument to demand from it answers to
problems which had not in his time arisen, and to which, even if they had
then existed, the plan of his work would not have extended. Yet it is at
least important to ask how far, and in what sense, the _Analogy_ can be
regarded as a positive and valuable contribution to theology. What that
work has done is to prove to the consistent deist that no objections can be
drawn from reason or experience against natural or revealed religion, and,
consequently, that the things objected to are not incredible and may be
proved by external evidence. But the deism of the 17th century is a phase
of thought that has no living reality now, and the whole aspect of the
religious problem has been completely changed. To a generation that has
been moulded by the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, by the historical
criticism of modern theology, and by all that has been done in the field of
comparative religion, the argument of the _Analogy_ cannot but appear to
lie quite outside the field of controversy. To Butler the Christian
religion, and by that he meant the orthodox Church of England system, was a
moral scheme revealed by a special act of the divine providence, the truth
of which was to be judged by the ordinary canons of evidence. The whole
stood or fell on historical grounds. A speculative construction of religion
was abhorrent to him, a thing of which he seems to have thought the human
mind naturally incapable. The religious consciousness does not receive from
him the slightest consideration. The _Analogy_, in fact, has and can have
but little influence on the present state of theology; it was not a book
for all time, but was limited to the problems of the period at which it
appeared.

Throughout the whole of the _Analogy_ it is manifest that the interest
which lay closest to Butler's heart was the ethical. His whole cast of
thinking was practical. The moral nature of man, his conduct in life, is
that on account of which alone an inquiry into religion is of importance.
The systematic account of this moral nature is to be found in the famous
_Sermons preached at the Chapel of the Rolls_, especially in the first
three. In these sermons Butler has made substantial contributions to
ethical science, and it may be said with confidence, that in their own
department nothing superior in value appeared during the long interval
between Aristotle and Kant. To both of these great thinkers he has certain
analogies. He resembles the first in his method of investigating the end
which human nature is intended to realize; he reminds of the other by the
consistency with which he upholds the absolute supremacy of moral law.

In his ethics, as in his theology, Butler had constantly in view a certain
class of adversaries, consisting partly of the philosophic few, partly of
the fashionably educated many, who all participated in one common mode of
thinking. The keynote of this tendency had been struck by Hobbes, in whose
philosophy man was regarded as a mere selfish sensitive machine, moved
solely by pleasures and pains. Cudworth and Clarke had tried to place
ethics on a nobler footing, but their speculations were too abstract for
Butler and not sufficiently "applicable to the several particular relations
and circumstances of life."

His inquiry is based on teleological principles. "Every work, both of
nature and art, is a system; and as every particular thing both natural and
artificial is for some use or purpose out of or beyond itself, one may add
to what has been already brought into the idea of a system its
conduciveness to this one or more ends." Ultimately this view of nature, as
the sphere of the realization of final causes, rests on a theological
basis; but Butler does not introduce prominently into his ethics the
specifically theological groundwork, and may be thought willing to ground
his principle on experience. The ethical question then is, as with
Aristotle, what is the [Greek: telos] of man? The answer to this question
is to be obtained by an analysis of the facts of human nature, whence,
Butler thinks, "it will as fully appear that this our nature, _i.e._
constitution, is adapted to virtue, as from the idea of a watch it appears
that its nature, _i.e._ constitution or system, is adapted to measure
time." Such analysis had been already attempted by Hobbes, and the result
he came to was that man naturally is adapted only for a life of
selfishness,--his end is the procuring of pleasure and the avoidance of
pain. A closer examination, however, shows that this at least is false. The
truth of the counter propositions, that man is [Greek: phusei politikos],
that the full development of his being is impossible apart from society,
becomes manifest on examination of the facts. For while self-love plays a
most important part in the human economy, there is no less evidently a
natural principle of benevolence. Moreover, among the particular [v.04
p.0885] passions, appetites and desires there are some whose tendency is as
clearly towards the general good as that of others is towards the
satisfaction of the self. Finally, that principle in man which reflects
upon actions and the springs of actions, unmistakably sets the stamp of its
approbation upon conduct that tends towards the general good. It is clear,
therefore, that from this point of view the sum of practical morals might
be given in Butler's own words--"that mankind is a community, that we all
stand in a relation to each other, that there is a public end and interest
of society, which each particular is obliged to promote." But deeper
questions remain.

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