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THEISM AND HUMANISM
BEING
THE GIFFORD LECTURES
DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, 1914
BY THE
RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
M.A., F.R.S., LL.D., D.C.L.
(HON. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE)
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXV
_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.
London and Aylesbury._
TO THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW,
WHO GAVE SO KIND A RECEPTION
TO THESE LECTURES ON THEIR DELIVERY
IN THE BUTE HALL, I
DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.
PREFACE
This volume contains the substance of the Gifford Lectures delivered
at the University of Glasgow in January and February 1914. I say the
_substance_ of the lectures, lest any of those who formed part of my
most kindly audience should expect a verbal reproduction of what they
then heard. No such reproduction would have been either expedient or
possible. The lectures were not read: they were spoken (with the aid
of brief notes) in such terms as suggested themselves at the moment;
and their duration was rigidly fixed, to suit my academic audience,
so as just to occupy the customary hour. Although, therefore, they
were largely (though not wholly) based upon written drafts, none of
the language, and not all the ideas and illustrations contained in the
original could be reproduced in the spoken lectures, nor did everything
in the spoken lectures represent passages in the written originals.
It is not, in these circumstances, surprising that the work has had,
in large measure, to be rewritten, though the argument itself, and
the order in which its various parts are presented for consideration,
remains substantially unchanged.
I should not have troubled the reader with this very unimportant
narrative except for the purpose of explaining the long interval that
has elapsed between the delivery of the lectures and their publication.
Literary composition I have always found laborious and slow, even in
favourable conditions. But the conditions have not been favourable. My
anxiety to make the argument easy to read for persons who take little
interest in, and have small knowledge of, philosophical controversies
did not make it easy to write; while external circumstances were
singularly unfavourable to rapid composition. No one who took any part
in public affairs between March 1914 and the outbreak of the war, or
between the outbreak of the war and the present moment, is likely to
regard these months as providing convenient occasion for quiet thought
and careful writing. I say this, however, not as an excuse for poor
workmanship, but only as an explanation of long delay.
It may be desirable to warn the intending reader before he embarks on
these lectures, that though the basis of the argument is wide, its
conclusion is narrow: and though that conclusion is religious, the
discussions leading up to it are secular. I make no dialectical use of
the religious sentiment; nor do I attempt any analysis of its essential
character. Still less do I deal with any doctrines outside what is
called “natural” religion; for to “natural” religion the Gifford
Lecturer is expressly confined. But even themes which might well be
deemed to fall within these limits are scarcely referred to. For
example, God, freedom, and immortality have been treated by at least
one eminent writer as the great realities beyond the world of sense. I
believe in them all. But I only discuss the first—and that only from a
limited point of view.
One other caution I must give, though it is hardly necessary. No
one, I suppose, is likely to consult this small volume in the hope
of finding an historic survey, properly “documented,” of the great
theistic controversy. But, if so misguided an individual exists, he is
doomed to the severest disappointment. There have been, and will be,
Gifford Lecturers well equipped for so great an undertaking; but most
assuredly I am not among them.
My warm thanks are due to my brother, Mr. Gerald Balfour; my sister,
Mrs. Sidgwick, and my brother-in-law, Lord Rayleigh, for the trouble
they have taken in reading the proofs, and for the aid they have given
me in correcting them.
In connection with a passage in the ninth lecture, Sir Oliver Lodge
has been good enough to give me an interesting note on “energy,” which
appears in its proper place.
4 CARLTON GARDENS
_May 24, 1915_.
CONTENTS
PART I
_INTRODUCTORY_
LECTURE I
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY: METAPHYSICS AND THE “PLAIN MAN” 3
II. “INEVITABLE” BELIEFS AND COMMON SENSE 13
III. THE MATERIAL OF THE PRESENT ARGUMENT FOR THEISM:
THE CHARACTER OF THE THEISM TO BE ESTABLISHED 17
IV. WHAT THE ARGUMENT IS NOT. SOME OF ITS LIMITATIONS 23
LECTURE II
I. DESIGN AND SELECTION 28
II. ARGUMENT FROM VALUES. THE COGNITIVE AND THE CAUSAL SERIES 44
PART II
_ÆSTHETIC AND ETHICAL VALUES_
LECTURE III
ÆSTHETIC AND THEISM
I. ÆSTHETIC DESCRIBED 55
II. WHENCE COMES IT? 58
III. VALUES AND THE HIGHER EMOTIONS 63
IV. NATURAL BEAUTY 77
V. ÆSTHETIC OF HISTORY 81
LECTURE IV
ETHICS AND THEISM
I. ETHICS DESCRIBED 95
II. EGOISM, ALTRUISM, AND SELECTION 98
III. SELECTION AND THE HIGHER MORALITY 107
IV. SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED 119
V. THEISM AND THE COLLISION OF ENDS 122
PART III
_INTELLECTUAL VALUES_
LECTURE V
INTRODUCTION TO PART III
I. RETROSPECT 133
II. REASON AND CAUSATION 134
III. LESLIE STEPHEN, AND LOCKE’S APHORISM 136
IV. REASON AND EMPIRICAL AGNOSTICISM 145
LECTURE VI
PERCEPTION, COMMON SENSE, AND SCIENCE
I. COMMON SENSE AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD 149
II. SCIENCE AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD 153
III. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES 156
IV. PERCEPTION AS A CAUSAL SERIES 160
V. PERCEPTION AS A COGNITIVE ACT 165
VI. AN IRRESISTIBLE ASSUMPTION 170
LECTURE VII
PROBABILITY, CALCULABLE AND INTUITIVE
I. MATHEMATICIANS AND PROBABILITY 175
II. CALCULABLE PROBABILITY 178
III. INTUITIVE PROBABILITY 189
LECTURE VIII
UNIFORMITY AND CAUSATION
I. HABIT, EXPECTATION, INDUCTION 192
II. REGULARITY, CAUSATION 195
III. THE PRINCIPLE OF NEGLIGIBILITY 199
IV. CAUSATION AND FOREKNOWLEDGE 207
LECTURE IX
TENDENCIES OF SCIENTIFIC BELIEF
I. FROM BELIEFS THAT WE MUST HOLD TO BELIEFS THAT WE
ARE INCLINED TO HOLD 217
II. ATOMISM. BELIEFS OF CONSERVATION 220
III. EPILOGUE 238
PART IV
_SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION_
LECTURE X
I. HUMANISM AND THEISM 247
II. THE DOCTRINE OF CONGRUITY 249
III. IS THIS SYSTEMATIC PHILOSOPHY? 261
IV. CONCLUSION 268
[_The paragraph headings in this Table of Contents are not designed to
give more than a very imperfect suggestion of the subjects discussed.
I have put them in for the convenience of those who, having read the
book, wish to refer back to some particular passage. The headings do
not appear in the text._]
PART I
_INTRODUCTORY_
LECTURE I
I
Those responsible for the selection of Gifford Lecturers have made it
clear that, in their interpretation of Lord Gifford’s Trust, studies
in a very wide range of subjects are relevant to the theme of Natural
Religion. Gifford lectures have been devoted to such diverse themes
as Comparative Religion, Primitive Mythologies, Vitalism, Psychology
of Religious Experiences, the History of Religious Development at
particular Epochs. And, in addition to these, we have had expounded
to us systems of Metaphysics of more than one type, and drawing their
inspiration from more than one school.
When I was honoured by an invitation to take a share in the perennial
debate which centres round what Lord Gifford described as Natural
Religion, I had to consider what kind of contribution I was least
unfitted to make. Perhaps if this consideration had preceded my reply
to the invitation, instead of following it, I might have declined the
perilous honour. Neither in my own opinion nor in that of anybody else,
am I qualified to contribute a special study of any of the scientific,
psychological, anthropological, or historical problems which may throw
light upon the central issue. This must of necessity be the work of
specialists. No metaphysical system, again, am I in a position to
provide;—for reasons which will appear in the sequel. A merely critical
commentary upon the systems of other people might hardly meet either
the expectations of my audience, or the wishes of those who appointed
me to the post. Indeed, the enormous range of modern philosophic
literature, and the divergent tendencies of modern philosophic thought
would make the task, in any case, one of extreme difficulty. Few,
indeed, are those who, by the width of their reading and the quickness
of their intellectual sympathy, are qualified to survey the whole field
of contemporary speculation; and, assuredly, I am not among them.
The vast amplitude of relevant material daily growing with the growth
of knowledge, cannot but hamper the sincerest efforts of those who
desire to take a comprehensive view of the great problems which Lord
Gifford desired to solve. Most men are amateurs in all departments
of activity but the one, be it scientific or practical, or artistic,
to which they have devoted their lives. Bacon, indeed, with the
magnificent audacity of youth, took all knowledge for his province.
But he did so in the sixteenth century, not in the twentieth; and even
Bacon did not escape the charge of being an amateur. No one, while
human faculty remains unchanged, is likely to imitate his ambitions.
More and more does the division and subdivision of labour become
necessary for knowledge, as for industry. More and more have men to
choose whether they shall be dabblers in many subjects or specialists
in one. More and more does it become clear that, while each class
has its characteristic defects, both are required in the republic of
knowledge.
So far as specialists are concerned, this last proposition is
self-evident. Specialists are a necessity. And it may well be that
those who have successfully pressed forward the conquering forces of
discovery along some narrow front, careless how the struggle towards
enlightenment fared elsewhere, may be deemed by the historian to have
been not only the happiest, but the most useful thinkers of their
generation. Their achievements are definite. Their contributions to
knowledge can be named and catalogued. The memory of them will remain
when contemporary efforts to reach some general point of view will
seem to posterity strangely ill-directed, worthless to all but the
antiquarian explorers of half-forgotten speculation.
Yet such efforts can never be abandoned, nor can they be confined to
philosophers. There are for all men moments when the need for some
general point of view becomes insistent; when neither labour, nor care,
nor pleasure, nor idleness, nor habit will stop a man from asking how
he is to regard the universe of reality, how he is to think of it as a
whole, how he is to think of his own relation to it.
Now I have no wish to overpraise these moments of reflection. They are
not among the greatest. They do not of necessity involve strenuous
action, or deep emotion, or concentrated thought. Often they are
periods of relaxation rather than of tension, moods that pass and
leave no trace. Yet it is not always so; and when the pressure of
these ancient problems becomes oppressive, then those who, from taste
or necessity, have lived only from hour to hour, seek aid from those
who have had leisure and inclination to give them a more prolonged
consideration.
Of these there is no lack; some speaking in the name of science, some
in the name of religion, some in the name of philosophy. The founder of
these lectures regarded philosophy, and (if I mistake not) philosophy
in its most metaphysical aspect, as the surest guide to the truths of
which he was in search. And certainly I am the last to criticise such
a view. It is clearly the business of metaphysicians, if they have any
business at all, to provide us with a universal system. They cannot
lose themselves in concrete details, as may happen to men of science.
They are neither aided, nor trammelled, as all working organisations,
whether in Church or State, are necessarily aided and trammelled, by
institutional traditions and practical necessities. They exist to
supply answers to the very questions of which I have been speaking.
Yet metaphysics does not appeal, and has never appealed, to the world
at large. For one man who climbs to his chosen point of view by a
metaphysical pathway, a thousand use some other road; and if we ask
ourselves how many persons there are at this moment in existence whose
views of the universe have been consciously modified by the great
metaphysical systems (except in so far as these have been turned to
account by theologians), we must admit that the number is insignificant.
Now, I do not think this is due to the fact, so often commented upon,
both by the friends of metaphysics and its foes, that in this branch
of inquiry there is little agreement among experts; that the labours
of centuries have produced no accepted body of knowledge; that, while
the separate sciences progress, metaphysics, which should justify them
all, seems alone to change without advancing. Mankind is not so easily
discouraged. New remedies are not less eagerly adopted because old
remedies have so often failed. Few persons are prevented from thinking
themselves right by the reflection that, if they be right, the rest
of the world is wrong. And were metaphysical systems what men wanted,
the disagreements among metaphysicians would no more destroy interest
in metaphysics than the disagreements among theologians destroys
interest in theology. The evil, if evil it be, lies deeper. It is not
so much that mankind reject metaphysical systems, as that they omit
the preliminary stage of considering them. Philosophy is now, perhaps
has always been, an academic discipline which touches not our ordinary
life. A general knowledge of the historic schools of thought may indeed
be acquired by the young as part of their education; but it is commonly
forgotten by the middle-aged; and, whether forgotten or remembered, is
rarely treated as in any vital relation to the beliefs and disbeliefs
which represent their working theories of life and death.
If you desire confirmation of this statement, consider how few men of
science have shown the smallest interest in metaphysical speculation.
Philosophers, with one or two notorious exceptions, have commonly had a
fair amateur acquaintance with the science of their day. Kant, though I
believe that his mechanics were not always beyond reproach, anticipated
Laplace in one famous hypothesis. Descartes and Leibnitz would be
immortalised as mathematicians if they had never touched philosophy,
and as philosophers if they had never touched mathematics. In our own
day Huxley not only contributed to biology, but wrote on philosophy.
Yet, speaking generally, metaphysics has in modern times been treated
by men of science with an indifference which is sometimes respectful,
more commonly contemptuous, almost always complete.
Nor can we attribute this attitude of mind, whether on the part
of scientific specialists or the general public, to absorption in
merely material interests. There are some observers who would have
us believe that the energies of Western civilisation are now[1]
entirely occupied in the double task of creating wealth and disputing
over its distribution. I cannot think so; I doubt whether there has
been for generations a deeper interest than at this moment in things
spiritual—however different be its manifestations from those with which
we are familiar in history. We must look elsewhere for an explanation
of our problem. There must be other reasons why, to the world at large,
those who study metaphysics seem to sit (as it were) far apart from
their fellow-men, seeking wisdom by methods hard of comprehension, and
gently quarrelling with each other in an unknown tongue.
Among these reasons must no doubt be reckoned the very technical
character of much metaphysical exposition. Some of this could be
avoided, much of it could not; and, in any case, philosophers might
well ask why people should expect metaphysics—to say nothing of logic
and psychology—to be easier of comprehension than the differential
calculus or the electro-magnetic theory of light. Plainly, there is no
reason: and, in so far as the thoughts to be expressed are difficult,
and the language required to express them is unfamiliar, the evil
admits of no remedy.
But there is something more to be said. It must, I think, be admitted
that most men approach the difficulties of a scientific exposition far
more hopefully than the difficulties of a metaphysical argument. They
will take more trouble because they expect more result. But why? In
part, I think, because so much metaphysical debate is not, or does not
appear to be, addressed to the problems of which they feel the pinch.
On the contrary, it confuses what to them seems plain; it raises doubts
about what to them seems obvious; and, of the doubts which they _do_
entertain, it provides no simple or convincing solution.
The fact is, of course, that the metaphysician wants to re-think the
universe; the plain man does not. The metaphysician seeks for an
inclusive system where all reality can be rationally housed. The plain
man is less ambitious. He is content with the kind of knowledge he
possesses about men and things—so far as it goes. Science has already
told him much; each day it tells him more. And, within the clearing
thus made for him in the tangled wilderness of the unknown, he feels at
home. Here he can manage his own affairs; here he needs no philosophy
to help him. If philosophy can speak to him about questions on which
science has little to say, he will listen; provided always that the
problems dealt with are interesting, and the treatment of them easily
understood. He would like, for example, to hear about God, if there
be a God, and his Soul, if he has a Soul. But he turns silently away
from discussions on the One and the Many, on Subject and Object, on
degrees of Reality, on the possibility of Error, on Space and Time,
on Reason and Intuition, on the nature of Experience, on the logical
characteristics of the Absolute. These may be very proper topics for
metaphysicians, but clearly they are no topics for him.
Now I am far from saying that in these opinions the plain man is right.
His speculative ambitions are small, and his tacit assumptions are
many. What is familiar seems to him easy; what is unfamiliar seems
to him useless. And he is provokingly unaware of the difficulties
with which his common-sense doctrines are beset. Yet in spite of all
this, he has my sympathy; and I propose, with due qualifications and
explanations, to approach the great subject, described by the Trust as
Natural Religion, from his—the plain man’s—point of view.
II
But what _is_ the plain man’s point of view? What _is_ the creed of
common sense?
It has never been summed up in articles, nor fenced round with
definitions. But in our ordinary moments we all hold it; and there
should be no insuperable difficulty in coming to an agreement about
certain of its characteristics which are relevant to the purposes of my
immediate argument. One such characteristic is that its most important
formulas represent beliefs which, whether true or false, whether proved
or unproved, are at least _inevitable_. All men accept them in fact.
Even those who criticise them in theory live by them in practice.
Now this category of “inevitableness” is not often met with in
metaphysics; indeed, so far as I know, it is not met with at all. We
hear of innate beliefs, _a priori_ judgments, axioms, laws of thought,
truths of reason, truths the opposite of which is “inconceivable”—and
so forth. These various descriptions are all devised in the interests
of epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge. They are intended
to mark off classes of judgments or beliefs which possess peculiar
validity. But none of these classes are identical with the class
“inevitable.” There are inevitable beliefs which nobody would think
of describing either as _a priori_ or axiomatic. There are others of
which the contradictory is perfectly conceivable; though no one who had
other things to do would take the trouble to conceive it. An inevitable
belief need not be self-evident, nor even, in the last analysis,
self-consistent. It is enough that those who deem it in need of proof
yet cannot prove it, and those who think it lacks coherence yet cannot
harmonise it, believe it all the same.
But, are there such inevitable beliefs? There certainly are. We cannot,
in obedience to any dialectical pressure, suppose the world to be
emptied of persons who think, who feel, who will; or of things which
are material, independent, extended, and enduring. We cannot doubt that
such entities exist, nor that they act on one another, nor that they
are in space or time. Neither can we doubt that, in the world thus
pictured, there reigns an amount of stability and repetition, which
suggests anticipations and retrospects—and sometimes justifies them.
These beliefs are beliefs about what are sometimes called “facts”
and sometimes “phenomena”—neither term being either very convenient
or very accurate. They are assumed in all sciences of nature, in all
histories of the past, in all forecasts of the future, in all practice,
in all theory, outside philosophy itself. But there are two other
kinds of beliefs which must, I think, be also regarded as inevitable,
of which I shall have to speak in the course of these lectures. They
have unfortunately no generic names, and I must defer any description
of them till future lectures. It is sufficient for the moment to say
that one of them relates to the ends of action, and includes morals;
while the other relates to objects of contemplative interest, among
which is beauty. In some shape or other—perhaps in shapes which seem
to us utterly immoral or disgusting—beliefs of both kinds are, so far
as I can judge, entertained by all men. And though they have not the
coercive force possessed by such beliefs as those in the independent
existence of things and persons, they may be counted, for my purposes,
among the inevitable.
Here, then, are three classes of belief which in some shape or other
common sense holds, has always held, and cannot help holding. But
evidently the shapes in which they may be held are many. They vary
from age to age and from person to person. They are modified by
education, by temperament, by the general condition of learning, by
individual opportunities, and by social pressure. The common sense of
the twentieth century A.D. is very different from the common sense of
the twentieth century B.C. Yet, different though it be, it possesses
unalterable similarities, and up to a certain point submits to the same
classification.
If you desire an illustration, consider the case of matter, or of
material things. All men believe in what is commonly called the
“external world”—they believe in it with evidence, or without evidence,
sometimes (like David Hume) in the teeth of evidence, in any case
independently of evidence. But as to what this “external world” really
is they differ profoundly. The expert of to-day differs from the expert
of yesterday, both differ from the average man, the average man of the
twentieth century differs from his predecessors, and they differ from
each other according to the stage of general and scientific culture at
which they have severally arrived.
III
But, though all this be granted, to what, you may be disposed to ask,
does it lead? What has it got to do with Theism? It is not alleged
that in any shape these inevitable beliefs are necessarily true; it is
admitted that in most of the shapes in which men have held them they
are actually false; it is not even suggested that a belief in God is to
be counted among them. How, then, is Natural Theology advanced?
To answer this question would be to anticipate the nine lectures which
are still to come. In the meanwhile, it may be enough to say that these
beliefs of common sense supply the material on which I propose to
work; that I shall treat them as a developing and improving system,
of which the present phase is the most developed and the best. It is
with this phase that I am chiefly concerned. If, for example, I make
use of beliefs about the “external world” they will be (mainly) the
beliefs of contemporary or recent science so far as I know them. If I
make use of ethics or æsthetics, it will be the ethics and æsthetics
of Western civilisation, not of Melanesia. I shall not add to them nor
subtract from them. I shall not criticise nor question them. I shall
accept them at their face values. But I shall ask what this acceptance
implies. I shall ask how these values are to be maintained. And in
particular I shall inquire whether the course of development, whose
last known stages these beliefs represent, can be regarded as a merely
naturalistic process without doing fatal damage to their credit.
The answer I shall give to this last question will be in the negative.
And, if the only alternative to Naturalism be Theism, as from the
common-sense standpoint it certainly is, then the effect of my
argument, for those who accept it, will be to link up a belief in God
with all that is, or seems, most assured in knowledge, all that is, or
seems, most beautiful in art or nature, and all that is, or seems,
most noble in morality.
At this point you will inevitably ask me to explain what sort of Deity
He is whose existence I wish to establish. Men have thought of God in
many ways. In what way is He thought of in these lectures?
The question is legitimate, though I am in some doubt how far you
will regard my answer as satisfactory. I, of course, admit that the
conception of God has taken many shapes in the long-drawn course of
human development, some of them degraded, all of them inadequate.
But this, or something like this, was inevitable on any theory of
development; and the subject-matter of theology does not seem to have
fared differently in this respect from the subject-matter (say) of
physics or psychology. It is in all cases the later stages of the
process which mainly concern us.
There is, however, something more to be said. The highest conceptions
of God seem to approximate to one of two types, which, without
prejudice, and merely for convenience, I may respectively call the
religious and the metaphysical. The metaphysical conception emphasises
His all-inclusive unity. The religious type emphasises His ethical
personality. The metaphysical type tends to regard Him as the logical
glue which holds multiplicity together and makes it intelligible. The
religious type willingly turns away from such speculations about the
Absolute, to love and worship a Spirit among spirits. Which of these
types is contemplated in the argument that follows?
To this question I would reply by another. Are the two conceptions
incompatible? Must we abandon the second if we accept the first? If so,
it is the second of which I propose to speak. It is the God according
to religion, and not the God according to metaphysics, whose being I
wish to prove. But there are theologians and philosophers of repute who
think the two conceptions can be harmonised. They hold that belief in
a personal and transcendent God is consistent with the acceptance even
of those forms of Absolute Idealism which their friends call logical
and their critics call intellectual—in both cases, perhaps, without
sufficient justification.
For myself, I must admit that I have never succeeded to my own
satisfaction in fusing the two conceptions. Yet I do not profess to
be content with their separation. The attribution of personality to
God, though much truer, I think, than the denial of it, is manifestly
inadequate to the full reality we are struggling to express. Some of
the greatest religious teachers, Christian and non-Christian, that
the world has seen have more or less explicitly held both, or at
least have leaned towards neither exclusively. This is surely true,
for example, of Plato the Greek philosopher, of Philo the platonising
Jew, of St. Paul the Christian Apostle, of St. Augustine the patristic
theologian. Nor (so far as I know), has religious mysticism ever felt
the least difficulty in bridging the chasm by which, in the eyes of
discursive reason, the two conceptions seem to be divided. This may
well represent the highest wisdom. But, the argument of these lectures
has a narrower scope: and when, in the course of them, I speak of God,
I mean something other than an Identity wherein all differences vanish,
or a Unity which includes but does not transcend the differences which
it somehow holds in solution. I mean a God whom men can love, a God to
whom men can pray, who takes sides, who has purposes and preferences,
whose attributes, howsoever conceived, leave unimpaired the possibility
of a personal relation between Himself and those whom He has created.
But is not this (it may be objected) the degradation of religion? What
is a deity so conceived but the old tribal god, with his character
improved and his local limitations swept away? If God be not the
Absolute, can he be more than a magnified man? Can you hope to cleanse
these religious conceptions from the mud in which they once so rankly
flourished?
Now there are plenty of unsolved, and perhaps insoluble, difficulties
involved in the religious, or indeed in any other, conception of God.
But I hardly count among them the lowly origin and crime-stained
history of religious development. On this point you will be able to
form a better opinion as these lectures proceed. But, in the meanwhile,
it may be observed that though no tragic accompaniments attach to the
growth of a purely Absolutist philosophy, this by no means implies that
metaphysics is better than religion. It is true that, for the sake of
a purely logical Absolute, no man has been moved to do what a later
and higher morality condemns—to placate it, for example, with bloody
rites or obscene revels. But this is because, for the sake of such
an Absolute, no man has ever yet been moved to do anything at all. A
belief in it may be the conclusion of our intellectual labours; but
hardly (as it seems to me) their motive or their reward.
IV
Let me now bring this introductory lecture to a close by adding to
what, so far, must seem a bare and obscure suggestion of what my
argument _is_, a warning hint as to what, at first sight, it might seem
to be, but is _not_.
It is not an argument from common sense, as that phrase ought properly
to be interpreted. It does not say to the opponents of Theism: “You
accept current beliefs in science, in morality, in ethics. In some
shape or other common sense has always accepted them, in some shape or
other you cannot help accepting them. You do, in fact, probably accept
them in the shape which finds favour with the ‘best thought of the
age’ or what you conceive to be such. This is common sense. Why not
do in the sphere of religion what you are admittedly doing in these
other spheres of theory and practice? Would not this be common sense
also? True, there is one important difference between the two cases.
Theological beliefs are not inevitable—at least not at our present
stage of culture. It is possible to be an atheist; and easy to be an
agnostic. But inevitableness, in itself, is no ground of philosophic
certitude. So this point may be ignored; and in all other respects the
parallel seems to be complete. Some form of Theism has been prevalent
from an immemorial past. It has strongly appealed to the needs and
feelings of mankind. You do not pause before accepting beliefs about
things and persons till philosophy has solved all the speculative
doubts about them which philosophy itself has raised. Why, then, should
you apply a standard of rationality to religion which, with general
approval, you reject in the case of science?”
Now I do not suggest that this is bad advice. Quite the contrary.
Neither is it necessarily bad argument. But it is not the argument of
these lectures. Whatever be its intrinsic merits, it has, from my point
of view, the defect of implying a theory of knowledge—a very modest
and unassuming theory indeed; but still a theory. And it therefore
comes into competition with all other theories of knowledge—Absolutist,
Empirical, Pragmatic, Neo-Kantian, Neo-Hegelian, Realist, New Realist,
to say nothing of Professor Mach’s philosophy of science, or M.
Bergson’s world-famous speculations.
Now I preach no theory of knowledge; partly because I have none to
preach, partly because, in these lectures, I desire to dogmatise as
little as I can about fundamentals, and to be constructive rather
than critical. If you ask me how it is possible to be constructive
without first settling fundamentals, and how it is possible to settle
fundamentals without first being critical, I reply that it is only
possible if you start from premises which are practically accepted by
both parties to the controversy, however little agreement there may be
as to their speculative proof; and this is what I am trying to do.
Nor ought this procedure to be deemed unworthy of the attention of
serious thinkers. It is provisional, no doubt; but I do not think it
shallow. It can never give us a metaphysic of the universe; but the
creators of such a metaphysic, when they come, will not find it stand
in their way. Moreover, it takes account of facts as they are. A creed
of some kind, religious or irreligious, is a vital necessity for all,
not a speculative luxury for the few: and the practical creed of the
few who speculate has a singular, and even suspicious, resemblance to
that of the many who do not. While those rare individuals who have
thought deeply about the theory of knowledge are profoundly divided as
to _why_ we should believe, they largely agree as to _what_ we should
believe with that vast multitude who, on the theory of knowledge,
have never thought at all. Is not this a circumstance in itself most
worthy of closer consideration? May it not guide us to some approximate
solution of our present perplexities? The present lectures are an
attempt to answer this question.
Is my argument, then, nothing better than an appeal from the competent
to the incompetent, from the few to the many? By no means. Progress,
though of small account unless it touch the many, gets its vital
impetus always from the few. It is to the patient labours of those
rare intelligences who possess originality, courage, subtlety, and
sympathy that we must look for the gradual working out of a theory of
the universe which shall as fully satisfy our reason and our conscience
as the limitations of our faculties permit. But that consummation is
not yet. And since, whether we be philosophers or not, we all act on
a working body of root-beliefs about men and things: since we are
also in general agreement as to the form in which those beliefs can
best express the present state of knowledge, is it not legitimate to
ask whether, on the basis thus provided, a still larger measure of
practical harmony cannot in the meantime be reasonably established? It
is true that Theism could never by such methods acquire a certitude
either greater than, or independent of, the beliefs of science and
common sense. But, could it acquire as much, theologians might well be
content, though philosophers most rightly strove for more.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Written before the war.
LECTURE II
I
The argument, then, which I propose to lay before you, though its
material is provided by our common-sense beliefs, is not an argument
from common sense. It does not extend to theology those uncritical
methods which we accept (most of us without protest) in the sphere
of our every-day activities. Is it, then, you may be tempted to ask,
some form of the yet more familiar argument from design? Is it more
than Paley and the Bridgwater treatises brought up to date? And, if
so, has not the vanity of all such endeavours been demonstrated in
advance: from the side of sceptical philosophy by Hume; from the side
of idealist philosophy by Kant and his successors; from the side of
empirical philosophy by the nineteenth-century agnostics; from the
side of science by the theory of Natural Selection? Do not the very
catch-words of the argument—“contrivance,” “design,” “adaptation,”
exercised by the “Architect of the Universe” fill us with a certain
weariness? Do they not represent the very dregs of stale apologetics;
the outworn residue of half-forgotten controversies?
For my own part, I do not think the argument from contrivance bad, but
I do think it very limited: limited in respect of its premises; limited
also in respect of its conclusions. It may, perhaps, be worth dwelling
on some of these limitations, if only to make my own position clearer
by contrast.
In the first place, it must be noted that, from a consideration of
inanimate nature alone it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to infer
design. The mere existence of natural laws is not, as it seems to me,
a sufficient basis for the argument; we require also that these laws
should combine to subserve an end. Were the universe, for example, like
a huge impervious reservoir of some simple gas, where nothing rested
but nothing changed, where amid all the hurry and bustle of colliding
atoms no new thing was ever born, nor any old thing ever perished, we
might find in it admirable illustrations of natural law, but no hints,
so far as I can see, of purpose or design. Nor is the case really
mended if, instead of thus artificially simplifying inanimate nature,
we consider it in all its concrete complexity. Even cosmic evolution of
the Spencerian type will scarcely help us. Herbert Spencer, as we know,
regarded the world-story as a continuous progress from the simple to
the complex, in which the emergence of the living out of the not-living
is treated as a harmonious episode in one vast evolutionary drama. The
plot opens in the first chapter with diffused nebulæ; it culminates
in the last with the social organisation of man. Unfortunately its
central episode, the transition from the not-living to the living, was
never explained by the author of the “Synthetic Philosophy”; and the
lamentable gap must be filled in by each disciple according to his
personal predilections. For the moment, however, we are concerned only
with one part of the story, that which deals with the evolution of
inanimate nature. Can this be regarded as displaying design? I hardly
think so. Granting, for the sake of argument, the validity of the
Spencerian physics, granting that the material Universe exhibits this
general trend from the simple to the complex, from a loose diffusion
of nebulous matter to the balanced movements of suns and satellites,
does this of itself give any hint of purpose? Only, I believe, if we
confound evolution with elaboration and elaboration with improvement,
and read into it some suggestion of progress borrowed from biology or
ethics, sociology or religion.
But we have not the slightest right to do this. Apart from life and
thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution
as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more
interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if
there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in
what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely
grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the
process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as
other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless
uniformity? Why should this type of “evolution” have about it any
suggestion of progress? And, if it has not, how can it indicate design?
Spencer himself was, of course, no advocate of “design” after the
manner of Paley; and I only mention his cosmic speculations because
their unavowed optimism—the optimism that is always apt to lurk in the
word “evolution”—makes of them material peculiarly suitable for those
who seek for marks of design in lifeless nature. But let us add two
touches to Spencer’s picture, and see how the argument then stands.
I have already commented on the great omission which mars the
continuity of his world-story—the omission, I mean, of any account of
the transition from the not-living to the living. I shall have again
to refer to it. But there are, besides this, two other omissions, one
at the beginning of his narrative, and the other at the end, whose
significance in relation to “design” should receive a passing comment.
As I understand the matter, an intelligence sufficiently endowed—let
us call him Laplace’s calculator—might infer the past state of
the material universe from the present by a process of rigorous
deduction, on accepted physical principles. But, if he carried back his
investigations into a period sufficiently remote, he would find a point
at which certain fundamental processes reach a theoretical limit; and,
though we must believe that this condition of things had antecedents,
yet infinite powers of calculation, based upon infinite knowledge of
the present, could not, it seems, tell us what they were.
So much for the past. Now for the future. Here our calculator would
be more successful. His prophecy, unlike his history, would not break
helplessly against any impassable barrier. He could range at will over
the illimitable future. But the prospect, though unbounded, would
not be exhilarating. No faintest tinge of optimism would colour his
anticipations. Everything that happened, good or bad, would subtract
something from the lessening store of useful energy, till a time
arrived when nothing could happen any more, and the universe, frozen
into eternal repose, would for ever be as if it were not.
Do our ideas of material evolution, thus corrected and supplemented,
lend themselves easily to the argument from design? I hardly think so.
It is true that in retrospect we can ideally reach a limit which no
calculations, based upon physical laws, will permit us to overpass,
and that where (what in old-fashioned language were called) “secondary
causes” fail us, a First Cause may plausibly be invoked; but, if we
gaze forward instead of backward, the physical course of nature does
not merely fail to indicate design, it seems loudly to proclaim its
absence. A world where all energy suffers inevitable degradation,
considered by itself, appears atheistic on the face of it: nor can even
life consciousness or thought redeem it, if they, too, are doomed to
perish when further transformations of energy become impossible.
It is not, therefore, on any general survey of material nature that,
in the present state of our knowledge, we can base the argument
from “design.” Nor is this the foundation on which those who use
the argument have chiefly built. They have always sought for proofs
of contrivance rather among the living than among the dead. In the
intricate adjustment of different parts of an organism to the interests
of the whole; in the adaptation of that whole to its environment, they
found the evidence they required. Arrangements which so irresistibly
suggested purpose could not (they thought) be reasonably attributed to
chance.
This argument possessed immense force in what was, comparatively
speaking, the infancy of biology. Has that force been lessened by the
growth of knowledge? Yes and No. If we consider organic adaptations
and adjustments in themselves, scientific discovery has increased a
thousand-fold our sense of their exquisite nicety and their amazing
complexity. I take it as certain that, had no such theory as Natural
Selection been devised, nothing would have persuaded mankind that
the organic world came into being unguided by intelligence. Chance,
whatever chance may mean, would never have been accepted as a solution.
Agnosticism would have been scouted as stupidity.
All this has been changed, as every one knows, by Darwin. But what
exactly was it that, in this connection, Darwin did? He is justly
regarded as the greatest among the founders of the doctrine of organic
evolution; but there is nothing in the mere idea of organic evolution
which is incongruous with design. On the contrary, it almost suggests
guidance, it has all the appearance of a plan. Why, then, has Natural
Selection been supposed to shake teleology to its foundation?
The reason, of course, is that though the fact of Selection does not
make it harder to believe in design, it makes it easier to believe in
accident; and, as design and accident are the two mutually exclusive
alternatives between which the argument from design requires us to
choose, this comes to the same thing. 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. Assume the existence
of living organisms, however simple, let them multiply enough and vary
enough, let their variations be heritable, then, if sufficient time
be granted, all the rest will follow. In these conditions, and out of
this material, blind causation will adapt means to ends with a wealth
of ingenuity which we not only cannot equal, but which we are barely
beginning to comprehend.[2]
The theory of selection thus destroys much of the foundation on which,
a hundred years ago, the argument from design was based. What does it
leave untouched?
It leaves untouched all that can be inferred from the existence of
the conditions which make organic evolution possible: matter which
lives, multiplies, and varies; an environment which possesses the
marvellously complex constitution required to make these processes
possible. Selection may modify these conditions, but it cannot start
them. It may modify the manner in which multiplication is secured; it
may modify the lines which variations follow; it may enable organic
species to adapt their powers to their environment, and (within narrow
limits) their environment to their powers. But it cannot produce either
the original environment or the original living matter. These must be
due either to luck or to contrivance; and, if they be due to luck, the
luck (we must own) is great. How great we cannot say. We cannot measure
the improbability of a fortuitous arrangement of molecules producing
not merely living matter, but living matter of the right kind, living
matter on which selection can act. Here, indeed, Laplace’s calculator
might conceivably help us. But suppose him to have done so, suppose
him to have measured the odds against the accidental emergence of the
desired brand of protoplasm, how are we to compare _this_ probability
with its assumed alternative—intelligent design? Here, I think, even
Laplace’s calculator would fail us; for he is only at home in a
material world governed by mechanical and physical laws. He has no
principles which would enable him to make exhaustive inferences about a
world in which other elements are included: and such a world is ours.
For a Greek philosopher to assert that the world is material was
legitimate enough. He was in search of a universal principle; and if
he found it in matter we need neither wonder nor criticise. After all,
matter lies round us on every side; we are immersed in it; we are
largely dependent on it. It may well seem but a small step further, and
a very natural one, to treat it as the essence of all that is.
But, as it seems to me, we now know too much about matter to be
materialists. The philosophical difficulties in the way of accepting
a materialistic world-system are notorious—at least to philosophers.
But I am not speaking of them. I am thinking of the scientific
difficulties, those that cannot but suggest themselves when we consider
the breach of continuity involved in the appearance of life, and still
more obviously of feeling, at particular points in the long procession
of material causes and effects. The very essence of the physical order
of things is that it creates nothing new. Change is never more than a
redistribution of that which never changes. But sensibility belongs to
the world of consciousness, not to the world of matter. It is a new
creation, of which physical equations can give no account; nay, rather,
which falsifies such equations; which requires us to say that, before
a certain date in the history of the universe, energy in one shape was
converted into precisely the same amount of energy in another shape,
and into nothing more; that matter in one position was transferred to
another position without increase or diminution: but that, after this
date, the transformations of energy and the movements of matter were
sometimes accompanied by psychical “epiphenomena” which differ from
them in kind, which are incommensurable with them in amount, and which
no equations can represent.
Babbage, in order to show how occasional “miracles” might “naturally”
break the continuity of the longest sequences, devised a machine which
produced numbers according to a particular law for an indefinite
period, then broke this uniformity by a single exception, and,
thereafter, reverted for ever to its original principle of action.
But Babbage’s results, however startling, depended wholly on known
mathematical and mechanical laws. Their irregularity was only
apparent. To Laplace’s calculator, they would have seemed not merely
inevitable but obvious. It is quite otherwise with the appearance
and disappearance of feeling, thought, will, consciousness in
general, within the strictly determinal series of mechanical causes
and effects. Here the anomaly is real: the breach of continuity
inexplicable by any physical laws and indeed incompatible with them.
I am not at this moment concerned either to deny or to assert that
at the critical frontier where mind and matter meet, the even course
of nature suffers violence. I am not suggesting, for example, that,
if a given physiological state were exactly repeated, the psychical
state formerly associated with it would not be repeated also. My point
is different. It is that in a strictly determined physical system,
depending on the laws of matter and energy alone, no room _has_ been
found, and no room _can_ be found, for psychical states at all. They
are novelties, whose intrusion into the material world cannot be
denied, but whose presence and behaviour cannot be explained by the
laws which that world obeys.
The difficulty is a very familiar one; and I cannot see that the
progress either of science or philosophy has brought us nearer to its
solution. But what (you may be disposed to ask) has it to do with the
argument from design? At least this much:
Those who refuse to accept design do so because they think the
world-story at least as intelligible without it as with it. This
opinion is very commonly associated with a conception of the universe
according to which the laws of matter and energy are sufficient to
explain, not only all that is, but all that has been or that will be.
If we thus know the sort of explanation which is sufficient to cover
the facts, why (it is asked) should we travel further afield into the
misty realms of theology or metaphysics?
But the explanation does not cover the facts, even when all has
been conceded to the opponents of design that I, at least, am ready
to concede. Grant that the inorganic world, considered in and for
itself, does not suggest contrivance; grant that the contrivance
which the organic world does undoubtedly suggest may in great part
be counterfeit—there still remains a vast residue of fact quite
recalcitrant to merely physical explanation. I will not argue whether
in this residue we should or should not include life. It is enough
that we must undoubtedly include feeling and all other phases of
consciousness. We must include them, even if they be no more than the
passive accompaniments of material change; still more must we include
them if we speculatively accept (what I deem to be) the inevitable
belief that they can, within limits, themselves initiate movement and
guide energy. The choice, therefore, is not between two accounts of the
universe, each of which may conceivably be sufficient. The mechanical
account is not sufficient. It doubly fails to provide a satisfactory
substitute for design. In the first place, it requires us to believe
that the extraordinary combination of material conditions required for
organic life is due to hazard. In the second place, it has to admit
that these material conditions are insufficient, and have somehow to be
supplemented. We must assume, that is to say, an infinitely improbable
accident, and, when we have assumed it, we are still unprovided with an
explanation. Nay, the case is even worse—for the laws by whose blind
operation this infinitely improbable accident has been brought about
are, by hypothesis, mechanical; and, though mechanical laws can account
for rearrangements, they cannot account for creation; since, therefore,
consciousness is more than rearrangement, its causes must be more than
mechanical.
To me, then, it seems that the common-sense “argument from design” is
still of value. But, if it carries us beyond mechanical materialism, it
must be owned that it does not carry us very far towards a religious
theology. It is inconsistent with Naturalism: it is inconsistent with
Agnosticism. But its demands would be satisfied by the barest creed
which acknowledged that the universe, or part of it, showed marks
of intelligent purpose. And, though most persons willing to accept
this impoverished form of Theism will certainly ask for more, this is
not because they are swept forward by the inevitable logic of the
argument, but because the argument has done something to clear a path
which they were already anxious to pursue.
II
As the conclusions which I desire to establish are richer in contents
than any which can be derived merely from marks of contrivance, so
the method of arriving at them is essentially different. In the
first place, it is based not upon considerations drawn from external
nature, but from the mind and soul of man. Stress is laid, not upon
contrivances, adjustments, and the happy adaptation of means to ends,
but on the character of certain results attained. It is not an argument
from design, but an argument from value. To emphasise the contrast, it
might be called an argument _to_ design. Value (we assert) is lost if
design be absent. Value (you will ask) of what? Of our most valuable
beliefs, (I answer) and of their associated emotions.
We are, no doubt, accustomed to connect the notion of value rather
with things believed in, than with the beliefs of which they are the
subjects. A fine symphony, an heroic deed, a good dinner, an assured
livelihood, have admitted values. But what values can we attribute
to beliefs and judgments, except is so far as they are aids and
instruments for obtaining valuable objects?
This question, however, is based, as I think, upon an insufficient
survey of the subject. We are in search of a world outlook. Creeds,
therefore, are our concern. The inquiry with which these lectures are
concerned is whether, among the beliefs which together constitute
our general view of the universe, we should, or should not, include
a belief in God. And to this question it is certainly relevant to
inquire whether the elimination of such a belief might not involve a
loss of value in other elements of our creed—a loss in which we are not
prepared to acquiesce.
But how, you will ask, is this loss of value brought about? What is
the connection between a belief in God and a belief concerning (say)
beauty, or goodness, or natural law? Evidently the connection is not,
in the ordinary sense, a logical one. Neither æsthetic, nor ethic, nor
scientific judgments can be ‘deduced’ from Theism; nor can Theism be
‘deduced’ from them. We are not dealing with premises and conclusions
bound together by a formal chain of inference. How, then, is our
procedure to be described?
In order to make this clear, I must call your attention to a double
aspect possessed by all beliefs alike, whatever be the subject-matter
with which they deal. All beliefs have a position, actually or
potentially, in a cognitive series; all beliefs, again, have a
position, known or unknown, in a causal series. All beliefs, in so far
as they belong to the first kind of series, are elements in one or
more collections of interdependent propositions. They are conclusions,
or premises, or both. All beliefs, in so far as they belong to the
second kind of series, are elements in the temporal succession of
interdependent events. They are causes, or effects, or both.
It has, further, to be noted that whereas reasons may, and usually do,
figure among the proximate causes of belief, and thus play a part in
both kinds of series, it is always possible to trace back the causal
series to a point where every trace of rationality vanishes; where we
are left face to face with conditions of beliefs—social, physiological,
and physical—which, considered in themselves, are quite a-logical in
their character.
It is on this last point that I particularly desire to insist. We are
all very familiar with the equivocal origin of most human creeds. To
be sure, we observe it chiefly in the case of other people. In our own
case, we dwell by preference on those causes of our beliefs which are
also reasons. But in our detached studies of the opinions we do not
share, we easily perceive how insufficient are the arguments officially
urged on their behalf, and how often even these insufficient arguments
have only a nominal connection with the convictions of which they claim
the legal paternity. We must, however, go yet one step further. We
must realise that, on any merely naturalistic hypothesis, the rational
elements in the causal series lie always on the surface. Penetrate
but a short way down, and they are found no more. You might as easily
detect life in the minerals wherein plants are rooted, as reason in
the physiological and physical changes to which the source of our most
carefully reasoned beliefs must, in the last resort, be traced.
Consider, for example, an extreme case—say a proposition of Euclid.
Here we have a belief logically inferred from well-assured premises—so,
at least, we were accustomed to suppose before mathematicians became
so very fastidious in the matter of proof. Can we not say that in
this case the elements of the two series are in a sense identical,
that all the causes for our belief are also reasons for it? Certainly
we are not moved by prejudice, or affection, or authority. It is
neither self-interest nor party passion that induces us to believe,
for example, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two
right angles. Has our thought, then, in this case freed itself
from the dominion of a-logical conditions? Is our belief the child
of uncontaminated reason? I answer—No. Though the argument, _qua_
argument, is doubtless independent of time, the argumentative process
by which we are in fact convinced occurs in time, and, like all
psychological processes, is somehow associated with physiological
changes in the brain, These, again, are part of the general stream of
physical happenings, which in themselves have nothing rational about
them. Follow up this stream but a little further and every trace,
not only of mind but of life, is completely lost; and we are left
face to face with unthinking matter and its purposeless movements.
Logical inference is thus no more than the reasoned termination of an
unreasoning process. Scratch an argument, and you find a cause.
If this be admitted, the question at once arises whether we can treat
the two kinds of series thus intimately connected as separable when
we are estimating the values of the beliefs with which they are both
associated. Is it permissible, is it even possible, to ignore the
genesis of knowledge when we are considering its validity? Do not
origins qualify values?
In many cases they notoriously do. A distinguished agnostic once
observed that in these days Christianity was not refuted, it was
explained. Doubtless the difference between the two operations was, in
his view, a matter rather of form than of substance. That which was
once explained needed, he thought, no further refutation. And certainly
we are all made happy when a belief, which seems to us obviously
absurd, is shown nevertheless to be natural in those who hold it.
But we must be careful. True beliefs are effects no less than false.
In this respect magic and mathematics are on a level. Both demand
scientific explanation; both are susceptible of it. Manifestly,
then, we cannot admit that explanation may be treated as a kind
of refutation. For, if so, the more successfully science carried
out its explanatory task, the more completely would it shatter its
own principles. This way lies universal scepticism. Thus would all
intellectual values be utterly destroyed.
But we have not to do with intellectual values alone. There are beliefs
(as I have already said) round which crystallise complex emotions,
æsthetic and ethic, which play no small part in our highest life.
Without the beliefs the emotions would dwindle; without the emotions
the beliefs would lose their worth. Though they do not imply each other
in the world of logic, they are mutually necessary in the world of
values. Here, of course, there is no question of a contrast between the
logical and the causal series. Emotions are always effects; they are
never inferences. In their case, therefore, the relation of value to
origin is not obscured by considerations like those which must occupy
us in the case of mere beliefs; and we have to face in a simpler and
more direct form the central problem of these lectures: the problem of
the relation which origin bears to value. It is with this branch of
my subject as it is raised by æsthetic and by ethic emotions that I
shall be mainly occupied in the next two lectures. And as in the later
part of my course I shall contend that it is destructive of rational
values to root them in unreason, so I shall now contend that the
emotional values associated with, and required by, our beliefs about
beauty and virtue must have some more congruous source than the blind
transformation of physical energy. If I am successful in my endeavour
I shall have done something to show that “design” is demanded by all
that we deem most valuable in life, by beauty, by morals, by scientific
truth: and that it is design far deeper in purpose, far richer in
significance, than any which could be inferred from the most ingenious
and elaborate adjustments displayed by organic life.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] As I shall often have to mention “selection” in the course of these
lectures, I must observe that it is no part of my business to weigh the
comparative merits of competing evolutionary theories. It may be that
the hypothesis of small random variations accumulated or eliminated
according as they help or hinder survival, is, in the light of recent
research, insufficient and unsatisfactory. From my point of view this
is immaterial. I use the word “selection” as a convenient name for
any non-rational process, acting through heredity, which successfully
imitates contrivance. Darwin’s theory, be it true or false, still
provides, I suppose, the only suggestion as to how this feat may
be accomplished, and his terminology may be used without danger of
misunderstanding.