MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM
FROM SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY.--The record of certain important scientific
discoveries has occupied us in two recent chapters, and it is now time
to examine the philosophic results that were drawn from them. It is true
that the generalisations drawn from the results of scientific research
were sometimes hasty, and not always sanctioned by the gifted minds to
whom these results were due; yet they were assured a popular reception,
and exercised an immense influence. It is not always the most accurate
thinkers whose ideas gain the widest currency.
DISCREDIT OF ROMANTICISM.--The Idealistic movement in philosophy which
we have seen flourishing in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, had begun, after the lapse of a generation, to decline.[39] The
causes of decline, as often happens, were in part, at least, other than
intellectual. Hegelianism had become associated with political reaction,
and "a philosophy has lost its charm when it enters the service of
absolutism." And a rising spirit of enterprise in commerce and industry
also contributed to a change of attitude, for as material interests
develop, men have less leisure for speculation, and often lose their
taste for ideals. Probably there should also be taken into account the
sentimentality that had attached itself to Romanticism and with which
men were sated. This revolt has its most pointed expression in the prose
writings of the poet Heine, who attacks with satiric bitterness "the new
troubadours, so morbid and somnambulistic, so high-flown and
aristocratic, and altogether so unnatural."
METAPHYSICS REJECTED.--The reaction against the philosophy of
Romanticism took the form of a complete revolt against speculative
philosophy. But instead of going back to Kant, and taking up a
vigorously critical attitude, it took refuge in the prejudices of
"common sense." The new movement must be associated in the first place
with a French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who made the attempt
to substitute scientific and _positive_ knowledge for the vague
speculations which had hitherto passed for philosophy. He was, in fact,
the founder of that system of ideas known as Positivism, which (as we
shall see) gained great vogue later, especially in England. Comte's
doctrine was that, all spheres of Nature now being brought under the
sway of positive science, the time had arrived for men, when
constructing their conceptions of life and the world, to reject all but
such ideas as positive science can accept. The age of theology and
speculation was past; the new age of positive science, where both
imagination and argumentation should be subordinate to observation, was
at hand. Comte, as is well known, became the founder of what he hoped
might develop into a new Catholicism--the "Religion of Humanity," and an
atmosphere of moral idealism permeates his thought.
GERMAN EXTREMISTS.--In Germany, the home of Romanticism, the revolt took
a radical shape in the hands of writers like Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72)
and Buechner. "I unconditionally repudiate absolute, self-sufficing
speculation--speculation which draws its material from within," says the
former, in the Introduction to his _Essence of Christianity_[40] (1841)
and asserts that he "places philosophy in the negation of philosophy."
Buechner, a far less acute thinker than Feuerbach, adopts a similar
attitude, protests against pedantry, and appeals (the appeal is always
dangerous) to common sense:
"Expositions which are not intelligible to an educated man are scarcely
worth the ink they are printed with. Whatever is clearly conceived can
be clearly expressed."
It is not surprising that the book _Force and Matter_ (1855)--in the
preface to which these sentiments are expressed--went through sixteen
editions in thirty years and was translated into most European
languages. It is an extreme expression of the most thorough-going
materialism, and the circumstance that its conclusions were acceptable
neither to cautious scientists nor to critical philosophers, did not
compromise its authority with the general public. As was only natural,
for materialism is a creed for which the evidence is all on the surface,
and to which the objections, being less obvious, escape notice. And
Buechner's pleas for intelligibility and clearness, though in some sense
justified by the inconceivable pedantry of much German metaphysics, was,
in point of fact, only a form of cant; for "there are difficulties
lying in the subject-matter itself which cannot be banished from the
sphere of philosophy." Appeals to popular prejudices are not a more
legitimate form of philosophic, than of scientific controversy; serious
thinkers do not thus stoop to the expedients of the politician.
EFFECTS OF DARWIN'S THEORY.--It would be a serious mistake, then, to
imagine that materialistic naturalism had to wait for the publication of
the _Origin of Species_ (1859) before it could become a formidable
theory. And yet the appearance of Darwin's book had important effects,
and among these is to be reckoned a certain weakening of the old
"Argument from Design," according to which the complexity and delicacy
evident everywhere in the world of nature, could not be attributed to
chance, but pointed to the existence and activity of a divine Designer.
Paley, during the eighteenth century, had elaborated the argument with a
wealth of detailed instances of "contrivance":
"The pivot upon which the head turns, the ligament within the socket of
the hip-joint, the pulley or trochlear muscles of the eye; the
epiglottis, the bandages which tie down the tendons of the wrist and
instep," and so on.
And it was not so much the doubt cast by it upon the separate creation
of particular species that was the disturbing element in Darwin's
hypothesis (few men now regarded the book of _Genesis_ as a manual of
natural science, or faith in it, as such, as a matter of religious
obligation); it was rather that the new doctrine of "natural selection"
seemed to invalidate the "argument from design." Design or chance had
been the alternatives offered by Paley, and chance only had to be
mentioned to be rejected; but Darwin made it possible to escape from the
dilemma. He showed how, if certain conditions were granted, the whole
process of the manufacture of species would naturally and inevitably
follow. Neither design nor chance was the explanation: there was another
alternative, _the influence of environment_. Thus Paley's instances of
elaborate "contrivance" were explained by Darwin as instances of
adaptation. The environment under which these organs had developed had
made them what they were; they could not, under the given circumstances,
have been different. As a very lucid writer puts it:
"Before Darwin's great discovery, those who denied the existence of a
Contriver were hard put to it to explain the appearance of contrivance.
Darwin, within certain limits and on certain suppositions, provided an
explanation. He showed how the most complicated and purposeful organs,
if only they were useful to the species, might gradually arise out of
random variations, continuously weeded by an unthinking process of
elimination."[41]
DARWINISM EXPLOITED.--In fact, it became evident that popular
materialism had been strongly reinforced by the new biology; and though
Darwin himself was cautious in adding philosophic or religious
corollaries to his own propositions, some of his more eager disciples
did not hesitate to fill in his blanks, and to draw conclusions which
the master was too conservative, too blind, or perhaps too scientific to
sanction.
The distinguished zoologist Haeckel (1834-1919) may be reckoned the most
notable amongst these. He was one of the first German scientists to give
his adherence to Darwin, who seems to have considered him too zealous a
disciple. "Your boldness sometimes makes me tremble," he wrote (November
19, 1868). It is not every scientist who can perceive the limits of an
hypothesis, or who insists so conscientiously as Darwin did, upon the
necessity for its verification.
HERBERT SPENCER.--Though there were not wanting in England writers to
exploit Darwinian theories in the interests of a narrow secularism,
their work was not of first-rate importance, and need not detain us. A
new evolutionary philosophy was, however, worked out by a conscientious
thinker of a different calibre--Mr. Herbert Spencer. He indeed may be
described as the Aristotle of a new world-view. He attempted to
co-ordinate and unify all human knowledge, and to present the world with
a final philosophy based upon the _data_ supplied by natural science. To
this ambitious task he devoted a lifetime of patient work, broken by
intervals of ill-health. In 1850 the _System of Synthetic Philosophy_
was projected; its _First Principles_ were published in 1862, but it was
not until 1896 that the gigantic enterprise was complete.
Spencer was inspired neither by hostility to religion in general, nor to
Christianity in particular. The motive of his work was a more honourable
one. He felt, with many of his contemporaries, that the foundations of
the old religion were no longer secure, and that the old sanctions of
morality were already gravely compromised; and he wished to supply a new
creed and a new discipline in the place of these. His principal objects
were social and ethical. And in this important respect he may be
associated with Comte. Both were sociologists and moralists before they
were philosophers, which accounts for their overlooking and
underestimating various important philosophic difficulties.
A few remarks about Spencer's system are here not out of place. He
attempted to reduce experience to a unity by seeking evidence for the
existence of a single and universal _law_. This unifying principle he
found in a general law of evolution. He formulated this law in language
which is perhaps less obscure than it seems, and which practically
amounts to this, that there is a perpetual process going on which
reduces disorder to order, undifferentiated sameness to specialised
variety.[42]
The _First Principles_ was published before the _Origin of Species_, and
the confirmation which Darwin's work supplied to Spencer's theory must
have recommended the latter to the minds of scientifically trained
thinkers. Moreover, Spencer sanctioned a hopeful outlook; evolutionary
optimism was an attractive and an idealistic, as well as a reasonable
philosophy. It demanded the subordination of the individual to society,
it urged the necessity of self-discipline and of industry, and pointed
(if these conditions were fulfilled) to a brighter future, and to a new
humanity. The generous idealism of the following passage is
characteristic of Spencer's outlook, and of those who thought--and
hoped--with him; it occurs at the end of his _Principles of Ethics_:
"The highest ambition of the beneficent will be to have a share--even
though an utterly inappreciable and unknown share--in 'the making of
Man.'... As time goes on, there will be more and more of those whose
unselfish end will be the further evolution of Humanity. While
contemplating from the heights of thought that far-off life of the race
never to be enjoyed by them, but only by a remote posterity, they will
feel a calm pleasure in the consciousness of having aided the advance
towards it."
Spencer, then, evidently deserves the important place that he occupies
in the history of thought. For though he was forced, for lack of those
final scientific results which he vainly hoped might soon be
forthcoming, to leave some vital gaps in his scheme,[43] he had made an
imposing attempt to systematise and unify all human experience. And his
attempt to base an idealistic morality upon sure grounds of natural
science was valuable and important.
SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.--At the same time, Spencer could not
remain satisfied with a mere _description_ of natural phenomena, however
complete and comprehensive such description might seem; he desired to
offer, besides this, an _explanation_ of these phenomena--how did they
come to be, and how do they continue to exist? To provide this
explanation, Spencer postulated the existence of an Unknown Power which
is at once the origin and the sustaining ground of everything. This
power he regarded as lying quite out of range not only of the human
senses, but of the human intellect. It was not only unknown but
_unknowable_. This celebrated doctrine of the Unknowable is not the
least interesting or important part of Spencer's system, and it is
perhaps more germane than any other speculation of his to our present
subject, as this _terra incognita_ was allotted by him to religion as
its peculiar province. He hoped that the undisputed possession and
occupation by religion of this territory might put an end to its
perpetual conflict with science, and substitute for this a reasonable,
if not cordial, understanding. Science might contentedly appropriate the
sphere of the knowable, and leave to religion the undefined and perhaps
infinite area of the unknowable; and he hoped this division of labour
would be both fruitful and permanent.
THE VICTORIAN AGNOSTICS.--Through this doctrine of the Unknowable,
Herbert Spencer was the father of that form of belief or disbelief which
was pertinently named Agnosticism by the most celebrated of its
exponents--Huxley. This combination of Positivism in science with
Agnosticism in religion and philosophy, became highly popular in a wide
circle in England during the last third of the nineteenth century,
especially among the scientifically educated. Leslie Stephen, with the
pride of a disciple and the pardonable zeal of a propagandist, claimed
for it the distinction of being "the religion of all sensible men."
This austere faith owed much to the qualities of those who preached it.
Their wide culture, their power of literary expression,[44] their
intellectual vigour, and above all their moral earnestness and social
enthusiasm recommended what had otherwise seemed a barren and
unpromising creed. The generous humanitarian sympathies of Comte
supplied the idealistic elements without which no faith can become
popular, and the apparent stability of its scientific basis seemed to
those impatient of speculative doubt, a great rock in a desert of
shifting sand. This new scientific Humanism had an immense vogue, and
its effects upon national life were, on the whole, of a quite healthy
character. Occasional lapses into intolerance, no doubt, occurred; but
much may be excused in the self-confidence of a new faith, not yet
tested by the experiences and the criticisms of years.
THEOLOGICAL POLEMICS.--The attacks of orthodox apologists upon this new
orientation, though carried through with the best intentions, were too
often conducted on mistaken lines and certainly on too narrow a front. A
particular theory of scriptural inspiration (now widely abandoned), and
of the miraculous, seemed to obsess the controversialists. Nor were the
Agnostics (it must be confessed) any more alive to the real issues.
Hence, to the modern student, an oppressive atmosphere of deadness and
sterility seems to brood over these vigorous but superannuated polemics;
and hence the complete oblivion into which this literature has fallen.
The saying is profoundly true that "nothing so quickly waxes old as
apologetics." Even the contributions to the subject by so accomplished a
journalist as Huxley--his _Essays on Science and Christian
Tradition_--can only be read by those whom an almost Teutonic industry
characterises. Once so eagerly perused and earnestly pondered, the
controversial literature of this interesting epoch (which now seems so
remote) reposes on the higher shelves of libraries, accumulating the
peaceful dust of oblivion. These projectiles have, in fact, done their
work, and if they have proved less fatal than was hoped by those who
launched them, they were dispatched with good intentions, and their
explosion cleared the air.
The most effective method of attack would have been to suggest that what
was good in the new system was as old as Christianity, and that the rest
was disputable science and still more disputable philosophy. The latter
half of this task was, as we shall subsequently find, creditably
performed by an important school of critical thinkers. But its former
half, i.e. the task of proving that what was valuable in the new
Humanism, was Christian--might, one would suppose, have been more
successfully performed by the official champions of orthodoxy. These
might have left science to the scientists, to have left off advertising
their own incompetence in that sphere by passages of arms such as took
place between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley at the Oxford meeting of the
British Association in 1860, which are never very desirable, and always
discreditable to the discomfited party.[45]
ILLOGICALITY OF NATURALISTIC IDEALISM.--In point of fact, "the religion
of all sensible men" (in spite of its philosophic weakness) was
equivalent to Christian stoicism; its social enthusiasm, its
humanitarianism, its conscientious truthfulness, were the fruit of a
stock grown on Christian soil. Its ethical presuppositions were entirely
Christian, nor were they sanctioned (in spite of Herbert Spencer's
elaborate apologetic) by the new biology. Nietzsche was a far more
legitimate child of Darwinism than was Huxley. Indeed, towards the close
of his life, some doubts invaded the mind of the latter, and he was
constrained by an intellectual sincerity which does him and his school
the highest credit, to utter a word of warning. We refer to his famous
_Romanes Lecture_ of 1894.
The thesis of this important utterance was that the field of human
interests is a narrow heritage carved out from a hostile environment
into which it is destined one day to relapse. It is a cultivated garden
with the wilderness all around; created only at the cost of infinite
sacrifice and perpetual toil, and preserved only with difficulty. The
implacable jungle seeks everywhere to encroach on the borders of the
clearing, whose ultimate engulfment can only be postponed, not
prevented. Two quotations may suffice:
"Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society
depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away
from it, but in combating it."
"The theory of evolution encourages no millennial expectations. If, for
millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, sometime,
the summit will be reached, and the downward route will be commenced.
The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the suggestion that
the power and intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the
great year."[46]
PESSIMISM.--Coming, as it did, at the end of a generation of dogmatic
optimism, this pronouncement is symptomatic of a certain disillusionment
which had already begun to mar the fair picture of Positivist prophecy.
The human race seemed destined to an ambiguous future; the parabola of
progress would one day reach its summit, and the fall begin. At last
upon our planet the episode of Life would pass, and be neither forgotten
nor remembered; the world would sink into the eternal silence, from
which for one transitory and insignificant moment, it had awakened.[47]
NIETZSCHE.--As might have been expected, it was in Germany that the
logical conclusions of a naturalistic outlook were drawn. Here,
philosophic pessimism had already been introduced by Schopenhauer
(1788-1860), and his disciple Nietzsche was not afraid to formulate a
scheme of ethics based on the conception of "the survival of the
fittest," and equivalent to an apotheosis of barbarism. The virtues of
self-assertion, ruthlessness, and pride were to eradicate the vices of
abnegation, pity, and humility. Christian morality was a disease;
Christianity itself was the appropriate product of the degenerate epoch,
and of the loathsome environment that gave it birth. This radical
thinker, free from English "compromise," could be satisfied with no
morality which was parasitic upon Christianity. He had clearness of
vision to see whither the naturalistic road would carry its pious
wayfarers. To him the moral idealism of Spencer was moonshine or
stupidity--"the milk of pious sentiment."
SIGNIFICANCE OF NIETZSCHE.--Nietzsche has come in for a fair share of
abuse, but it is only just to say that philosophy stands heavily
endebted to this thinker. He was not afraid to draw logical
conclusions, and to put questions which more conventional philosophers
had preferred should remain in the background.
It is well for a moralist to arise, once in a generation, who will clear
his own mind of cant and, without undue respect for the conventions,
approach the really fundamental questions in a spirit of sincerity. The
extravagant impieties of Nietzsche may have shocked his hearers, but
they have cleared the air. He exposed, perhaps with too little
_finesse_, the nakedness of Naturalism, and tore off that mantle of
idealism under which it had been masquerading. And he may be said, by so
doing, to have written _finis_ at the foot of a chapter in the history
of philosophy.