I am afraid your notions about “proof” are still rather hazy; for you
quote against me a stern and self-denying dictum which passes current
among some of your young friends, that “it is immoral to believe what
cannot be proved.”
Have you seriously asked yourself what you mean by “proved” in
enunciating this proposition? Do you mean “made sufficiently probable to
induce a man to act upon the probability”? Or do you mean “absolutely
demonstrated”?
If you mean the former, not so many as you suppose are guilty of this
“immorality.” Give me an instance, if you can, of a man who “believes
what cannot be made sufficiently probable to induce him to act upon the
probability.” Of course some men _say_ they believe what they, in
reality, do not believe; but you speak, not about “saying” but about
“believing;” and I do not see how any man can “believe” what he does not
regard as probable. I am inclined to think therefore that, in this sense
of the word “prove,” your proposition is meaningless.
But perhaps by “prove,” you mean “absolutely demonstrate;” and your
thesis is that “it is immoral to believe what cannot be absolutely
demonstrated;” in that case I am obliged to ask you how you can repeat
such cant, such a mere parrot cry, with a grave face.
Do you not see that, as soon as you conceded (as I understand you to
have done) that our belief in the Laws of Nature is based upon the
Imagination, you virtually conceded the validity of a kind of proof in
which faith and hope play a large part, and in which demonstration is
impossible. “Demonstration” applies to mathematics and to syllogisms
where the premises are granted, though it is also sometimes loosely used
of proof conveyed by personal observation; “proof” applies to the other
affairs of life. Demonstration appeals very largely (not entirely, as I
have shown above, but very largely) to Reason; proof is largely based on
Faith. Having defined “angles,” “triangles,” “base,” and “isosceles,”
and having been granted certain axioms and postulates, I can demonstrate
that the angles at the basis of an isosceles triangle are equal to one
another; but I cannot “demonstrate” that, if I throw a stone in the air,
it will come down again, though I am perfectly convinced that it will
come down, and though I commonly assert that I can “prove” that it will
come down.
Why, your whole life is full of beliefs—as certain as any beliefs can
be—which it is impossible to demonstrate! When you got up this morning
did you not believe that your razor would shave and your looking-glass
reflect; that your boiling water would scald if you spilt it, and your
egg break if you dropped it; and a score or two of other similar
perfectly certain beliefs—all entertained and acted on in less than an
hour, but all incapable of demonstration? But you maintain perhaps that
“these beliefs are not beliefs, but knowledge based on the uniformity of
the laws of nature; you know that the laws of nature are uniform, and
therefore you knew that your razor would shave.” But how, I ask, do you
know that the laws of nature are uniform? “By the experience of mankind
during many thousands of years.” But how do you know that what has been
in the past will be in the future—will be in the next instant? “Well, if
a law of nature were broken—say, for example, the law of gravitation—the
whole Universe would fall to pieces.” In other words, you and I would
feel extremely uncomfortable, if we existed long enough to feel
anything; but what does that demonstrate? Absolutely nothing. It would
no doubt be extremely inconvenient for both of us if any law of nature
observed in the past did not continue to be observed in the future; but
inconvenience proves nothing logically. It is no doubt extremely
inconvenient not to be able to believe that your razor will shave; but
what of that? Where is the demonstration? And remember your own
_dictum_, “It is immoral to believe what cannot be demonstrated.”
Perhaps you may try to writhe out of this application of your own
principle by the use of grand terms; “The Laws of Nature have been
proved to be true by experiment as well as by observation; they have
been made the basis for abstruse calculations and inferences as to what
will happen; then the philosopher has predicted ‘this will happen,’ and
it has happened. Surely no one will deny that this is a proof!” A proof
of what? Of the future invariableness of the sequences of Nature? I
shall not only deny, but enjoy denying, that it is a proof; if you mean
by proof such a demonstrative proof as you obtain in a syllogism, where
the premises are assumed, or in mathematics, where you are reasoning
about things that have no real existence but are merely convenient ideas
of the imagination. Believe me, this distinction of terms is by no means
superfluous. You and your young scientific friends are continually
confusing “proof” with “demonstration;” and you have one use of the word
“proof” for religion and another for science. When you speak of
religion, you say “it is immoral to believe in it for it cannot be
_proved_” (meaning “demonstrated”); when you speak of science, you say,
“This can be _proved_” (not meaning “demonstrated,” but simply “made
probable,” or “proved for practical purposes”).
You may discourse for hours upon the Laws of Nature, but you will never
succeed in convincing any one, not even yourself, that they will remain
valid in the moment that is to come, by the mere force of logic. You are
certain—so am I practically quite certain—that the stone which I throw
at this moment up in the air, will, in the next moment, fall to the
ground. But this certainty does not arise from logic. We have absolutely
no reason for this leap into the darkness of the future except
faith,—faith of course resting upon a basis of facts, but still faith.
The very names and notions of “cause” and “effect” are due not to
observation, nor to demonstration, but to faith. The name, and the
notion, of a Law of Nature are nothing but convenient ideas of the
scientific imagination, based upon faith. Take an instance. We say, and
genuinely believe, that fire and gunpowder “cause” explosion; that
explosion is the “effect” of gunpowder and fire; and that the effect
follows the causes in accordance with the “laws of nature;” but you have
not observed all this and you cannot demonstrate it. You have merely
observed in the past an invariable sequence of explosion following (in
all cases that you have seen or heard about) the combination of
gunpowder and fire; you have also perhaps predicted in the past that
explosion would follow, and demonstrated that it did follow this
combination, as often as you pleased; you have found, or have heard that
others have found, that this sequence agrees with other chemical
sequences, which you are in the habit of calling causes and effects; but
all this is evidence as to the past, not as to the future. Your
certainty as to the future arises not from any demonstration about the
future, but from your faith or trust in the fixed order of Nature, and
from nothing else. Now the greater part of the action of life deals with
the future. It follows therefore that, in the greater part of life, we
act, not from demonstration, but from a proof in which faith is a
constituent element.
Whence arises this trust in the uniformity of the phenomena of the
Universe? We can hardly give any other answer except that we could not
get on without it. Having been found to “work” by ourselves, and by many
generations of our forefathers, this faith is possibly by this time an
inherited instinct as well as the inbred result of our own earliest
experiences. But when we analyse it we are forced to confess that we can
give no logical account of it. Logically regarded, it savours of the
most audacious optimism, arguing, or rather sentimentalizing, after this
fashion: “It would be so immensely inconvenient if Nature were every
moment changing her rules without notice! All forethought, all
civilization would be at an end; nay, we could not so much as take a
single step or move a limb with confidence, if we could not depend upon
Nature!” Does not this personification of Nature, and trust or faith in
Nature, somewhat resemble our trust or faith in God? I think it does;
and it is very interesting to note that the very foundations of science
are laid in a quasi-religious sentiment of which no logical
justification can be given.
I might easily go further and shew that, even as regards the past, we
act in our daily lives very often on the grounds of faith and very
seldom on the grounds of demonstration. On this I have touched in a
previous letter; but your dictum about the “immorality of believing what
cannot be proved” makes it clear that you are hardly as yet aware of the
nature of the ordinary “proofs” on which we act. How few there are who
have any grounds but faith for believing in the existence of a Julius
Cæsar or an Alexander! Yet they believe implicitly. Many have heard
these two great men loosely spoken of, or alluded to; but they have
never weighed, nor have they the least power to weigh, the evidence that
proves that Cæsar and Alexander actually existed. Now as the unlearned
are quite certain of the existence of a Julius Cæsar, so are you too
quite certain of many facts upon very slight grounds. You ask one man
his name; another, how many children he has; a third, the name of the
street in which he lives, and so on; how certain you often feel, on the
slight evidence of their answers (unless there be special grounds for
suspecting them) that your information is correct! The reason is that
all social intercourse depends on faith; if you began to suspect and
disbelieve every man who gave you answers to such simple questions as
these, social life would be at an end for you, and you might as well at
once retire to a hermitage; scepticism in matters of this kind has not
worked, and faith has worked; and this has gone on with you from
childhood and with your forefathers from their childhood for many
generations. Thus faith has become a second instinct with you, and you
act upon it so often and so naturally that you are not aware of the
degree to which it influences and permeates your actions. The cases in
which you act thus instinctively upon very slight evidence, and upon a
large and general faith in the people who give the evidence, are far
more numerous than those cases in which you formally weigh evidence and
attempt to arrive at something like demonstrative proof. In other words,
not only as regards the future but also as regards the past, faith is
for the most part the underlying basis of action. You believe, to a
large extent and in a great many cases, simply because “it would be so
immensely inconvenient not to believe.”
I claim that I have fulfilled my promise of shewing that people act much
more upon faith than upon demonstration in every department of life; and
I now repeat and emphasize what I said before, that if all our existence
is thus dominated by faith, it is absurd to attempt to exclude faith
from any religion. But if our special religion consists in a recognition
of God the Maker as God the Father, then it is more natural than ever to
suppose that our religion will require a large element of faith or
trust. Just as family life would break down if the sons were always
analysing the father’s character, and declining to believe anything to
his credit beyond what could be demonstrated to be true, so religious
life will break down, if we treat the Father in heaven as a mere topic
for logical discussion and declare that it is “immoral to believe” in
His fatherhood if it cannot be proved.
Of course I do not deny that you must have evidence of the existence of
the Father before you can trust in Him. You could not trust your parents
if you had not seen, touched, heard them—known something of them in fact
through the senses: so neither can you trust God if you have not known
something of Him through the senses. Well, I maintain that is what you
are continually doing. God is continually revealing Himself to us in the
power, the beauty, the glory, the harmony, the beneficence, the mystery,
of the Universe, and pre-eminently in human goodness and greatness.
Contemplate, touch, hear; concentrate your mind on these things, and
especially on the perfection of human goodness, power, and wisdom: thus
you will be enabled to realize the presence of the Father and then to
trust in Him. Contemplate also the Evolution of the present from the
past: the ascent from a protoplasm to the first man, from the first man
to a Homer, a Dante, a Shakespeare and a Newton; do not entirely ignore
Socrates, St. Paul, St. Francis. You cannot indeed shut your eyes to the
growth of evil simultaneously with the growth of good: but do not fix
your eyes too long upon the evil: prefer to contemplate the defeat of
evil by goodness, especially in the struggle on the Cross; and with your
contemplation let there be some admixture of action against the evil and
for the good. Do this, and I think you will have no reason to complain
of the want of “evidence” of the existence of One who has made us to
trust in Him.
I have told you what to do: let me add one word also of warning as to
what you are not to do. You are not to regard the world from the point
of view of a neutral and amused spectator. You are not to detach
yourself from the great struggle of good against evil, and to look on,
and call it “interesting.” That attitude is fatal to all religion.
Reject, as from the devil, the precept _nil admirari_; better be a fool
than a dispassionate critic of Christ. Again, you are not to regard the
world from the mere student point of view, looking at the Universe as a
great Examination Paper in which you may hope to solve more problems and
score more marks than anybody else. High intellectual pursuits and
habits of enthusiastic research are sometimes terribly demoralizing when
they tempt a man to think that he can live above, and without, social
ties and affections, and that mere sentiment is to be despised in
comparison with knowledge. This danger impends over literary as well as
other students, over critical theologians as well as over scientific
experimenters; we all sometimes forget—we students—that, if we do not
exercise the habit of trusting and loving men, we cannot trust and love
God. To harden oneself against the mute but trustful appeal of even a
beast is not without some spiritual peril of incapacitating oneself for
worship.
IX
SATAN AND EVOLUTION