"A difficulty is solved, a mystery unriddled, when it can be shown to
resemble something else; to be an example of a fact already known.
Mystery is isolation, exception, or it may be apparent contradiction:
the resolution of the mystery is found in assimilation, identity,
fraternity. When all things are assimilated, so far as assimilation
can go, so far as likeness holds, there is an end to explanation; there
is an end to what the mind can do, or can intelligently desire.... The
path of science as exhibited in modern ages is toward generality, wider
and wider, until we reach the highest, the widest laws of every
department of things; there explanation is finished, mystery ends,
perfect vision is gained."
But, unfortunately, this first answer will not hold. Our mind is so
wedded to the process of seeing an _other_ beside every item of its
experience, that when the notion of an absolute datum is presented to
it, it goes through its usual procedure and remains pointing at the
void beyond, as if in that lay further matter for contemplation. In
short, it spins for itself the further positive consideration of a
nonentity {72} enveloping the being of its datum; and as that leads
nowhere, back recoils the thought toward its datum again. But there is
no natural bridge between nonentity and this particular datum, and the
thought stands oscillating to and fro, wondering "Why was there
anything but nonentity; why just this universal datum and not another?"
and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost. Indeed, Bain's words are so
untrue that in reflecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse the
manifold into a single totality has been most successful, when the
conception of the universe as a unique fact is nearest its perfection,
that the craving for further explanation, the ontological
wonder-sickness, arises in its extremest form. As Schopenhauer says,
"The uneasiness which keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in
motion, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is
just as possible as its existence."
The notion of nonentity may thus be called the parent of the
philosophic craving in its subtilest and profoundest sense. Absolute
existence is absolute mystery, for its relations with the nothing
remain unmediated to our understanding. One philosopher only has
pretended to throw a logical bridge over this chasm. Hegel, by trying
to show that nonentity and concrete being are linked together by a
series of identities of a synthetic kind, binds everything conceivable
into a unity, with no outlying notion to disturb the free rotary
circulation of the mind within its bounds. Since such unchecked
movement gives the feeling of rationality, he must be held, if he has
succeeded, to have eternally and absolutely quenched all rational
demands.
But for those who deem Hegel's heroic effort to {73} have failed,
nought remains but to confess that when all things have been unified to
the supreme degree, the notion of a possible other than the actual may
still haunt our imagination and prey upon our system. The bottom of
being is left logically opaque to us, as something which we simply come
upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and
wonder as little as possible. The philosopher's logical tranquillity
is thus in essence no other than the boor's. They differ only as to
the point at which each refuses to let further considerations upset the
absoluteness of the data he assumes. The boor does so immediately, and
is liable at any moment to the ravages of many kinds of doubt. The
philosopher does not do so till unity has been reached, and is
warranted against the inroads of those considerations, but only
practically, not essentially, secure from the blighting breath of the
ultimate Why? If he cannot exorcise this question, he must ignore or
blink it, and, assuming the data of his system as something given, and
the gift as ultimate, simply proceed to a life of contemplation or of
action based on it. There is no doubt that this acting on an opaque
necessity is accompanied by a certain pleasure. See the reverence of
Carlyle for brute fact: "There is an infinite significance in fact."
"Necessity," says Dühring, and he means not rational but given
necessity, "is the last and highest point that we can reach.... It is
not only the interest of ultimate and definitive knowledge, but also
that of the feelings, to find a last repose and an ideal equilibrium in
an uttermost datum which can simply not be other than it is."
Such is the attitude of ordinary men in their theism, God's fiat being
in physics and morals such an {74} uttermost datum. Such also is the
attitude of all hard-minded analysts and _Verstandesmenschen_. Lotze,
Renouvier, and Hodgson promptly say that of experience as a whole no
account can be given, but neither seek to soften the abruptness of the
confession nor to reconcile us with our impotence.
But mediating attempts may be made by more mystical minds. The peace
of rationality may be sought through ecstasy when logic fails. To
religious persons of every shade of doctrine moments come when the
world, as it is, seems so divinely orderly, and the acceptance of it by
the heart so rapturously complete, that intellectual questions vanish;
nay, the intellect itself is hushed to sleep,--as Wordsworth says,
"thought is not; in enjoyment it expires." Ontological emotion so
fills the soul that ontological speculation can no longer overlap it
and put her girdle of interrogation-marks round existence. Even the
least religious of men must have felt with Walt Whitman, when loafing
on the grass on some transparent summer morning, that "swiftly arose
and spread round him the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument
of the earth." At such moments of energetic living we feel as if there
were something diseased and contemptible, yea vile, in theoretic
grubbing and brooding. In the eye of healthy sense the philosopher is
at best a learned fool.
Since the heart can thus wall out the ultimate irrationality which the
head ascertains, the erection of its procedure into a systematized
method would be a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance.
But as used by mystics hitherto it has lacked universality, being
available for few persons and at few times, and {75} even in these
being apt to be followed by fits of reaction and dryness; and if men
should agree that the mystical method is a subterfuge without logical
pertinency, a plaster but no cure, and that the idea of non-entity can
never be exorcised, empiricism will be the ultimate philosophy.
Existence then will be a brute fact to which as a whole the emotion of
ontologic wonder shall rightfully cleave, but remain eternally
unsatisfied. Then wonderfulness or mysteriousness will be an essential
attribute of the nature of things, and the exhibition and emphasizing
of it will continue to be an ingredient in the philosophic industry of
the race. Every generation will produce its Job, its Hamlet, its
Faust, or its Sartor Resartus.
With this we seem to have considered the possibilities of purely
theoretic rationality. But we saw at the outset that rationality meant
only unimpeded mental function. Impediments that arise in the
theoretic sphere might perhaps be avoided if the stream of mental
action should leave that sphere betimes and pass into the practical.
Let us therefore inquire what constitutes the feeling of rationality in
its _practical_ aspect. If thought is not to stand forever pointing at
the universe in wonder, if its movement is to be diverted from the
issueless channel of purely theoretic contemplation, let us ask what
conception of the universe will awaken active impulses capable of
effecting this diversion. A definition of the world which will give
back to the mind the free motion which has been blocked in the purely
contemplative path may so far make the world seem rational again.
Well, of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the logical demand,
that one which awakens the active {76} impulses, or satisfies other
aesthetic demands better than the other, will be accounted the more
rational conception, and will deservedly prevail.
There is nothing improbable in the supposition that an analysis of the
world may yield a number of formulae, all consistent with the facts.
In physical science different formulae may explain the phenomena
equally well,--the one-fluid and the two-fluid theories of electricity,
for example. Why may it not be so with the world? Why may there not
be different points of view for surveying it, within each of which all
data harmonize, and which the observer may therefore either choose
between, or simply cumulate one upon another? A Beethoven
string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses'
tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms;
but the application of this description in no way precludes the
simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. Just
so a thorough-going interpretation of the world in terms of mechanical
sequence is compatible with its being interpreted teleologically, for
the mechanism itself may be designed.
If, then, there were several systems excogitated, equally satisfying to
our purely logical needs, they would still have to be passed in review,
and approved or rejected by our aesthetic and practical nature. Can we
define the tests of rationality which these parts of our nature would
use?
Philosophers long ago observed the remarkable fact that mere
familiarity with things is able to produce a feeling of their
rationality. The empiricist school has been so much struck by this
circumstance {77} as to have laid it down that the feeling of
rationality and the feeling of familiarity are one and the same thing,
and that no other kind of rationality than this exists. The daily
contemplation of phenomena juxtaposed in a certain order begets an
acceptance of their connection, as absolute as the repose engendered by
theoretic insight into their coherence. To explain a thing is to pass
easily back to its antecedents; to know it is easily to foresee its
consequents. Custom, which lets us do both, is thus the source of
whatever rationality the thing may gain in our thought.
In the broad sense in which rationality was defined at the outset of
this essay, it is perfectly apparent that custom must be one of its
factors. We said that any perfectly fluent and easy thought was devoid
of the sentiment of irrationality. Inasmuch then as custom acquaints
us with all the relations of a thing, it teaches us to pass fluently
from that thing to others, and _pro tanto_ tinges it with the rational
character.
Now, there is one particular relation of greater practical importance
than all the rest,--I mean the relation of a thing to its future
consequences. So long as an object is unusual, our expectations are
baffled; they are fully determined as soon as it becomes familiar. I
therefore propose this as the first practical requisite which a
philosophic conception must satisfy: _It must, in a general way at
least, banish uncertainty from the future_. The permanent presence of
the sense of futurity in the mind has been strangely ignored by most
writers, but the fact is that our consciousness at a given moment is
never free from the ingredient of expectancy. Every one knows how when
a painful thing has to be undergone in the {78} near future, the vague
feeling that it is impending penetrates all our thought with uneasiness
and subtly vitiates our mood even when it does not control our
attention; it keeps us from being at rest, at home in the given
present. The same is true when a great happiness awaits us. But when
the future is neutral and perfectly certain, 'we do not mind it,' as we
say, but give an undisturbed attention to the actual. Let now this
haunting sense of futurity be thrown off its bearings or left without
an object, and immediately uneasiness takes possession of the mind.
But in every novel or unclassified experience this is just what occurs;
we do not know what will come next; and novelty _per se_ becomes a
mental irritant, while custom _per se_ is a mental sedative, merely
because the one baffles while the other settles our expectations.
Every reader must feel the truth of this. What is meant by coming 'to
feel at home' in a new place, or with new people? It is simply that,
at first, when we take up our quarters in a new room, we do not know
what draughts may blow in upon our back, what doors may open, what
forms may enter, what interesting objects may be found in cupboards and
corners. When after a few days we have learned the range of all these
possibilities, the feeling of strangeness disappears. And so it does
with people, when we have got past the point of expecting any
essentially new manifestations from their character.
The utility of this emotional effect of expectation is perfectly
obvious; 'natural selection,' in fact, was bound to bring it about
sooner or later. It is of the utmost practical importance to an animal
that he should have prevision of the qualities of the objects {79} that
surround him, and especially that he should not come to rest in
presence of circumstances that might be fraught either with peril or
advantage,--go to sleep, for example, on the brink of precipices, in
the dens of enemies, or view with indifference some new-appearing
object that might, if chased, prove an important addition to the
larder. Novelty _ought_ to irritate him. All curiosity has thus a
practical genesis. We need only look at the physiognomy of a dog or a
horse when a new object comes into his view, his mingled fascination
and fear, to see that the element of conscious insecurity or perplexed
expectation lies at the root of his emotion. A dog's curiosity about
the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as
the point of deciding what is going to happen next. That settled,
curiosity is quenched. The dog quoted by Darwin, whose behavior in
presence of a newspaper moved by the wind seemed to testify to a sense
'of the supernatural,' was merely exhibiting the irritation of an
uncertain future. A newspaper which could move spontaneously was in
itself so unexpected that the poor brute could not tell what new
wonders the next moment might bring forth.
To turn back now to philosophy. An ultimate datum, even though it be
logically unrationalized, will, if its quality is such as to define
expectancy, be peacefully accepted by the mind; while if it leave the
least opportunity for ambiguity in the future, it will to that extent
cause mental uneasiness if not distress. Now, in the ultimate
explanations of the universe which the craving for rationality has
elicited from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to be satisfied
have always played a fundamental part. {80} The term set up by
philosophers as primordial has been one which banishes the
incalculable. 'Substance,' for example, means, as Kant says, _das
Beharrliche_, which will be as it has been, because its being is
essential and eternal. And although we may not be able to prophesy in
detail the future phenomena to which the substance shall give rise, we
may set our minds at rest in a general way, when we have called the
substance God, Perfection, Love, or Reason, by the reflection that
whatever is in store for us can never at bottom be inconsistent with
the character of this term; so that our attitude even toward the
unexpected is in a general sense defined. Take again the notion of
immortality, which for common people seems to be the touchstone of
every philosophic or religious creed: what is this but a way of saying
that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of
rationality? The wrath of science against miracles, of certain
philosophers against the doctrine of free-will, has precisely the same
root,--dislike to admit any ultimate factor in things which may rout
our prevision or upset the stability of our outlook.
Anti-substantialist writers strangely overlook this function in the
doctrine of substance; "If there be such a _substratum_," says Mill,
"suppose it at this instant miraculously annihilated, and let the
sensations continue to occur in the same order, and how would the
_substratum_ be missed? By what signs should we be able to discover
that its existence had terminated? Should we not have as much reason
to believe that it still existed as we now have? And if we should not
then be warranted in believing it, how can we be so now?" Truly
enough, if we have {81} already securely bagged our facts in a certain
order, we can dispense with any further warrant for that order. But
with regard to the facts yet to come the case is far different. It
does not follow that if substance may be dropped from our conception of
the irrecoverably past, it need be an equally empty complication to our
notions of the future. Even if it were true that, for aught we know to
the contrary, the substance might develop at any moment a wholly new
set of attributes, the mere logical form of referring things to a
substance would still (whether rightly or wrongly) remain accompanied
by a feeling of rest and future confidence. In spite of the acutest
nihilistic criticism, men will therefore always have a liking for any
philosophy which explains things _per substantiam_.
A very natural reaction against the theosophizing conceit and
hide-bound confidence in the upshot of things, which vulgarly
optimistic minds display, has formed one factor of the scepticism of
empiricists, who never cease to remind us of the reservoir of
possibilities alien to our habitual experience which the cosmos may
contain, and which, for any warrant we have to the contrary, may turn
it inside out to-morrow. Agnostic substantialism like that of Mr.
Spencer, whose Unknowable is not merely the unfathomable but the
absolute-irrational, on which, if consistently represented in thought,
it is of course impossible to count, performs the same function of
rebuking a certain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the
ordinary philistine feels his security. But considered as anything
else than as reactions against an opposite excess, these philosophies
of uncertainty cannot be acceptable; the general mind will fail to {82}
come to rest in their presence, and will seek for solutions of a more
reassuring kind.
We may then, I think, with perfect confidence lay down as a first point
gained in our inquiry, that a prime factor in the philosophic craving
is the desire to have expectancy defined; and that no philosophy will
definitively triumph which in an emphatic manner denies the possibility
of gratifying this need.
We pass with this to the next great division of our topic. It is not
sufficient for our satisfaction merely to know the future as
determined, for it may be determined in either of many ways, agreeable
or disagreeable. For a philosophy to succeed on a universal scale it
must define the future _congruously with our spontaneous powers_. A
philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either of two
defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ultimate
principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our
dearest desires and most cherished powers. A pessimistic principle
like Schopenhauer's incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hartmann's
wicked jack-of-all-trades the Unconscious, will perpetually call forth
essays at other philosophies. Incompatibility of the future with their
desires and active tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more
fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to
overcome the 'problem of evil,' the 'mystery of pain.' There is no
'problem of good.'
But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of
contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object
whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so
incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all {83}
relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one
blow, will be even more unpopular than pessimism. Better face the
enemy than the eternal Void! This is why materialism will always fail
of universal adoption, however well it may fuse things into an
atomistic unity, however clearly it may prophesy the future eternity.
For materialism denies reality to the objects of almost all the
impulses which we most cherish. The real _meaning_ of the impulses, it
says, is something which has no emotional interest for us whatever.
Now, what is called 'extradition' is quite as characteristic of our
emotions as of our senses: both point to an object as the cause of the
present feeling. What an intensely objective reference lies in fear!
In like manner an enraptured man and a dreary-feeling man are not
simply aware of their subjective states; if they were, the force of
their feelings would all evaporate. Both believe there is outward
cause why they should feel as they do: either, "It is a glad world! how
good life is!" or, "What a loathsome tedium is existence!" Any
philosophy which annihilates the validity of the reference by
explaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no
emotional pertinency, leaves the mind with little to care or act for.
This is the opposite condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely
brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In
nightmare we have motives to act, but no power; here we have powers,
but no motives. A nameless _unheimlichkeit_ comes over us at the
thought of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the
objects of those loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies.
The monstrously lopsided equation of the universe and its {84} knower,
which we postulate as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled
by the no less lopsided equation of the universe and the _doer_. We
demand in it a character for which our emotions and active propensities
shall be a match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the
cosmos impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that his
reaction at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast
whole,--that he balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do
what it expects of him. But as his abilities to do lie wholly in the
line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reacting with such
emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the
like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or
doubt,--a philosophy which should only legitimate emotions of the
latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and
craving.
It is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built up
of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do
very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of
reflex action. Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a
cross-section at a certain point, of what in its totality is a motor
phenomenon. In the lower forms of life no one will pretend that
cognition is anything more than a guide to appropriate action. The
germinal question concerning things brought for the first time before
consciousness is not the theoretic 'What is that?' but the practical
'Who goes there?' or rather, as Horwicz has admirably put it, 'What is
to be done?'--'Was fang' ich an?' In all our discussions about the
intelligence of lower animals, the only test we use is that of their
_acting_ as if for a purpose. {85} Cognition, in short, is incomplete
until discharged in act; and although it is true that the later mental
development, which attains its maximum through the hypertrophied
cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of theoretic activity
over and above that which is immediately ministerial to practice, yet
the earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the active nature
asserts its rights to the end.
When the cosmos in its totality is the object offered to consciousness,
the relation is in no whit altered. React on it we must in some
congenial way. It was a deep instinct in Schopenhauer which led him to
reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running volley of
invective against the practical man and his requirements. No hope for
pessimism unless he is slain!
Helmholtz's immortal works on the eye and ear are to a great extent
little more than a commentary on the law that practical utility wholly
determines which parts of our sensations we shall be aware of, and
which parts we shall ignore. We notice or discriminate an ingredient
of sense only so far as we depend upon it to modify our actions. We
_comprehend_ a thing when we synthetize it by identity with another
thing. But the other great department of our understanding,
_acquaintance_ (the two departments being recognized in all languages
by the antithesis of such words as _wissen_ and _kennen_; _scire_ and
_noscere_, etc.), what is that also but a synthesis,--a synthesis of a
passive perception with a certain tendency to reaction? We are
acquainted with a thing as soon as we have learned how to behave
towards it, or how to meet the behavior which we expect from it. Up to
that point it is still 'strange' to us.
{86}
If there be anything at all in this view, it follows that however
vaguely a philosopher may define the ultimate universal datum, he
cannot be said to leave it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest
degree pretends that our emotional or active attitude toward it should
be of one sort rather than another. He who says "life is real, life is
earnest," however much he may speak of the fundamental mysteriousness
of things, gives a distinct definition to that mysteriousness by
ascribing to it the right to claim from us the particular mood called
seriousness,--which means the willingness to live with energy, though
energy bring pain. The same is true of him who says that all is
vanity. For indefinable as the predicate 'vanity' may be _in se_, it
is clearly something that permits anaesthesia, mere escape from
suffering, to be our rule of life. There can be no greater incongruity
than for a disciple of Spencer to proclaim with one breath that the
substance of things is unknowable, and with the next that the thought
of it should inspire us with awe, reverence, and a willingness to add
our co-operative push in the direction toward which its manifestations
seem to be drifting. The unknowable may be unfathomed, but if it make
such distinct demands upon our activity we surely are not ignorant of
its essential quality.
If we survey the field of history and ask what feature all great
periods of revival, of expansion of the human mind, display in common,
we shall find, I think, simply this: that each and all of them have
said to the human being, "The inmost nature of the reality is congenial
to _powers_ which you possess." In what did the emancipating message
of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that {87} God
recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely
overlooked? Take repentance: the man who can do nothing rightly can at
least repent of his failures. But for paganism this faculty of
repentance was a pure supernumerary, a straggler too late for the fair.
Christianity took it, and made it the one power within us which
appealed straight to the heart of God. And after the night of the
middle ages had so long branded with obloquy even the generous impulses
of the flesh, and defined the reality to be such that only slavish
natures could commune with it, in what did the _sursum corda_ of the
platonizing renaissance lie but in the proclamation that the archetype
of verity in things laid claim on the widest activity of our whole
aesthetic being? What were Luther's mission and Wesley's but appeals
to powers which even the meanest of men might carry with them,--faith
and self-despair,--but which were personal, requiring no priestly
intermediation, and which brought their owner face to face with God?
What caused the wildfire influence of Rousseau but the assurance he
gave that man's nature was in harmony with the nature of things, if
only the paralyzing corruptions of custom would stand from between?
How did Kant and Fichte, Goethe and Schiller, inspire their time with
cheer, except by saying, "Use all your powers; that is the only
obedience the universe exacts"? And Carlyle with his gospel of work,
of fact, of veracity, how does he move us except by saying that the
universe imposes no tasks upon us but such as the most humble can
perform? Emerson's creed that everything that ever was or will be is
here in the enveloping now; that man has but to obey himself,--"He who
will rest in what he _is_, {88} is a part of destiny,"--is in like
manner nothing but an exorcism of all scepticism as to the pertinency
of one's natural faculties.
In a word, "Son of Man, _stand upon thy feet_ and I will speak unto
thee!" is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs have
helped the disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the greater
part of his rational need. _In se_ and _per se_ the universal essence
has hardly been more defined by any of these formulas than by the
agnostic _x_; but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they are,
are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent; that it speaks to them and
will in some way recognize their reply; that I can be a match for it if
I will, and not a footless waif,--suffices to make it rational to my
feeling in the sense given above. Nothing could be more absurd than to
hope for the definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse
to legitimate, and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the more
powerful of our emotional and practical tendencies. Fatalism, whose
solving word in all crises of behavior is "all striving is vain," will
never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is
indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse
will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and
shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will,
and will invent one if one be not given him.
But now observe a most important consequence. Men's active impulses
are so differently mixed that a philosophy fit in this respect for
Bismarck will almost certainly be unfit for a valetudinarian poet. In
other words, although one can lay down in advance the {89} rule that a
philosophy which utterly denies all fundamental ground for seriousness,
for effort, for hope, which says the nature of things is radically
alien to human nature, can never succeed,--one cannot in advance say
what particular dose of hope, or of gnosticism of the nature of things,
the definitely successful philosophy shall contain. In short, it is
almost certain that personal temperament will here make itself felt,
and that although all men will insist on being spoken to by the
universe in some way, few will insist on being spoken to in just the
same way. We have here, in short, the sphere of what Matthew Arnold
likes to call _Aberglaube_, legitimate, inexpugnable, yet doomed to
eternal variations and disputes.
Take idealism and materialism as examples of what I mean, and suppose
for a moment that both give a conception of equal theoretic clearness
and consistency, and that both determine our expectations equally well.
Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution,
materialism by another. At this very day all sentimental natures, fond
of conciliation and intimacy, tend to an idealistic faith. Why?
Because idealism gives to the nature of things such kinship with our
personal selves. Our own thoughts are what we are most at home with,
what we are least afraid of. To say then that the universe essentially
is thought, is to say that I myself, potentially at least, am all.
There is no radically alien corner, but an all-pervading _intimacy_.
Now, in certain sensitively egotistic minds this conception of reality
is sure to put on a narrow, close, sick-room air. Everything
sentimental and priggish will be consecrated by it. That element in
reality which every strong man of common-sense willingly feels there
because it calls forth {90} powers that he owns--the rough, harsh,
sea-wave, north-wind element, the denier of persons, the
democratizer--is banished because it jars too much on the desire for
communion. Now, it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws
many men upon the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic
reaction against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life wholly
constituted of intimacy. There is an overpowering desire at moments to
escape personality, to revel in the action of forces that have no
respect for our ego, to let the tides flow, even though they flow over
us. The strife of these two kinds of mental temper will, I think,
always be seen in philosophy. Some men will keep insisting on the
reason, the atonement, that lies in the heart of things, and that we
can act _with_; others, on the opacity of brute fact that we must react
_against_.
Now, there is one element of our active nature which the Christian
religion has emphatically recognized, but which philosophers as a rule
have with great insincerity tried to huddle out of sight in their
pretension to found systems of absolute certainty. I mean the element
of faith. Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is
still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is willingness
to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the
prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance. It is in
fact the same moral quality which we call courage in practical affairs;
and there will be a very widespread tendency in men of vigorous nature
to enjoy a certain amount of uncertainty in their philosophic creed,
just as risk lends a zest to worldly activity. Absolutely certified
philosophies {91} seeking the _inconcussum_ are fruits of mental
natures in which the passion for identity (which we saw to be but one
factor of the rational appetite) plays an abnormally exclusive part.
In the average man, on the contrary, the power to trust, to risk a
little beyond the literal evidence, is an essential function. Any mode
of conceiving the universe which makes an appeal to this generous
power, and makes the man seem as if he were individually helping to
create the actuality of the truth whose metaphysical reality he is
willing to assume, will be sure to be responded to by large numbers.
The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is
strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day;
but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only
legitimate when used in the interests of one particular
proposition,--the proposition, namely, that the course of nature is
uniform. That nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she
follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth which no man can _know_; but
in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or
assume it. As Helmholtz says: "Hier gilt nur der eine Rath: vertraue
und handle!" And Professor Bain urges: "Our only error is in proposing
to give any reason or justification of the postulate, or to treat it as
otherwise than begged at the very outset."
With regard to all other possible truths, however, a number of our most
influential contemporaries think that an attitude of faith is not only
illogical but shameful. Faith in a religious dogma for which there is
no outward proof, but which we are tempted to postulate for our
emotional interests, just as we {92} postulate the uniformity of nature
for our intellectual interests, is branded by Professor Huxley as "the
lowest depth of immorality." Citations of this kind from leaders of
the modern _Aufklärung_ might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Take
Professor Clifford's article on the 'Ethics of Belief.' He calls it
'guilt' and 'sin' to believe even the truth without 'scientific
evidence.' But what is the use of being a genius, unless _with the
same scientific evidence_ as other men, one can reach more truth than
they? Why does Clifford fearlessly proclaim his belief in the
conscious-automaton theory, although the 'proofs' before him are the
same which make Mr. Lewes reject it? Why does he believe in primordial
units of 'mind-stuff' on evidence which would seem quite worthless to
Professor Bain? Simply because, like every human being of the
slightest mental originality, he is peculiarly sensitive to evidence
that bears in some one direction. It is utterly hopeless to try to
exorcise such sensitiveness by calling it the disturbing subjective
factor, and branding it as the root of all evil. 'Subjective' be it
called! and 'disturbing' to those whom it foils! But if it helps those
who, as Cicero says, "vim naturae magis sentiunt," it is good and not
evil. Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we
form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion
co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the
passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over
the philosopher across the way. The absurd abstraction of an intellect
verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the
probability thereof by a vulgar fraction by the size of whose
denominator and numerator alone it is swayed, is {93} ideally as inept
as it is actually impossible. It is almost incredible that men who are
themselves working philosophers should pretend that any philosophy can
be, or ever has been, constructed without the help of personal
preference, belief, or divination. How have they succeeded in so
stultifying their sense for the living facts of human nature as not to
perceive that every philosopher, or man of science either, whose
initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought, has taken
his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one
direction rather than another, and a sort of preliminary assurance that
his notion can be made to work; and has borne his best fruit in trying
to make it work? These mental instincts in different men are the
spontaneous variations upon which the intellectual struggle for
existence is based. The fittest conceptions survive, and with them the
names of their champions shining to all futurity.
The coil is about us, struggle as we may. The only escape from faith
is mental nullity. What we enjoy most in a Huxley or a Clifford is not
the professor with his learning, but the human personality ready to go
in for what it feels to be right, in spite of all appearances. The
concrete man has but one interest,--to be right. That for him is the
art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it. Naked he
is flung into the world, and between him and nature there are no rules
of civilized warfare. The rules of the scientific game, burdens of
proof, presumptions, _experimenta crucis_, complete inductions, and the
like, are only binding on those who enter that game. As a matter of
fact we all more or less do enter it, because it helps us to our end.
But if the means presume to frustrate the end and call us cheats for
being right in {94} advance of their slow aid, by guesswork or by hook
or crook, what shall we say of them? Were all of Clifford's works,
except the Ethics of Belief, forgotten, he might well figure in future
treatises on psychology in place of the somewhat threadbare instance of
the miser who has been led by the association of ideas to prefer his
gold to all the goods he might buy therewith.
In short, if I am born with such a superior general reaction to
evidence that I can guess right and act accordingly, and gain all that
comes of right action, while my less gifted neighbor (paralyzed by his
scruples and waiting for more evidence which he dares not anticipate,
much as he longs to) still stands shivering on the brink, by what law
shall I be forbidden to reap the advantages of my superior native
sensitiveness? Of course I yield to my belief in such a case as this
or distrust it, alike at my peril, just as I do in any of the great
practical decisions of life. If my inborn faculties are good, I am a
prophet; if poor, I am a failure: nature spews me out of her mouth, and
there is an end of me. In the total game of life we stake our persons
all the while; and if in its theoretic part our persons will help us to
a conclusion, surely we should also stake them there, however
inarticulate they may be.[2]
{95}
But in being myself so very articulate in proving what to all readers
with a sense for reality will seem a platitude, am I not wasting words?
We cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith. Faith is
synonymous with working hypothesis. The only difference is that while
some hypotheses can be refuted in five minutes, others may defy ages.
A chemist who conjectures that a certain wall-paper contains arsenic,
and has faith enough to lead him to take the trouble to put some of it
into a hydrogen bottle, finds out by the results of his action whether
he was right or wrong. But theories like that of Darwin, or that of
the kinetic constitution of matter, may exhaust the labors of
generations in their corroboration, each tester of their truth
proceeding in this simple way,--that he acts as if it were true, and
expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The
longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his
theory.
Now, in such questions as God, immortality, absolute morality, and
free-will, no non-papal believer at the present day pretends his faith
to be of an essentially different complexion; he can always doubt his
creed. But his intimate persuasion is that the odds in its favor are
strong enough to warrant him in acting all along on the assumption of
its truth. His corroboration or repudiation by the nature of things
may be deferred until the day of judgment. The {96} uttermost he now
means is something like this: "I _expect_ then to triumph with tenfold
glory; but if it should turn out, as indeed it may, that I have spent
my days in a fool's paradise, why, better have been the dupe of _such_
a dreamland than the cunning reader of a world like that which then
beyond all doubt unmasks itself to view." In short, we _go in_ against
materialism very much as we should _go in_, had we a chance, against
the second French empire or the Church of Rome, or any other system of
things toward which our repugnance is vast enough to determine
energetic action, but too vague to issue in distinct argumentation.
Our reasons are ludicrously incommensurate with the volume of our
feeling, yet on the latter we unhesitatingly act.
Now, I wish to show what to my knowledge has never been clearly pointed
out, that belief (as measured by action) not only does and must
continually outstrip scientific evidence, but that there is a certain
class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as well as a
confessor; and that as regards this class of truths faith is not only
licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable. The truths
cannot become true till our faith has made them so.
Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the Alps, and have had the
ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is
by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no
evidence of my ability to perform it successfully; but hope and
confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my
feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps
have been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, {97} the
emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate; or suppose that, having
just read the Ethics of Belief, I feel it would be sinful to act upon
an assumption unverified by previous experience,--why, then I shall
hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching
myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the
abyss. In this case (and it is one of an immense class) the part of
wisdom clearly is to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of
the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its
object. _There are then cases where faith creates its own
verification_. Believe, and you shall be right, for you shall save
yourself; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall perish.
The only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage.
The future movements of the stars or the facts of past history are
determined now once for all, whether I like them or not. They are
given irrespective of my wishes, and in all that concerns truths like
these subjective preference should have no part; it can only obscure
the judgment. But in every fact into which there enters an element of
personal contribution on my part, as soon as this personal contribution
demands a certain degree of subjective energy which, in its turn, calls
for a certain amount of faith in the result,--so that, after all, the
future fact is conditioned by my present faith in it,--how trebly
asinine would it be for me to deny myself the use of the subjective
method, the method of belief based on desire!
In every proposition whose bearing is universal (and such are all the
propositions of philosophy), the acts of the subject and their
consequences throughout eternity should be included in the formula. If
_M_ {98} represent the entire world _minus_ the reaction of the thinker
upon it, and if _M_ + _x_ represent the absolutely total matter of
philosophic propositions (_x_ standing for the thinker's reaction and
its results),--what would be a universal truth if the term x were of
one complexion, might become egregious error if _x_ altered its
character. Let it not be said that _x_ is too infinitesimal a
component to change the character of the immense whole in which it lies
imbedded. Everything depends on the point of view of the philosophic
proposition in question. If we have to define the universe from the
point of view of sensibility, the critical material for our judgment
lies in the animal kingdom, insignificant as that is, quantitatively
considered. The moral definition of the world may depend on phenomena
more restricted still in range. In short, many a long phrase may have
its sense reversed by the addition of three letters, _n-o-t_; many a
monstrous mass have its unstable equilibrium discharged one way or the
other by a feather weight that falls.
Let us make this clear by a few examples. The philosophy of evolution
offers us to-day a new criterion to serve as an ethical test between
right and wrong. Previous criteria, it says, being subjective, have
left us still floundering in variations of opinion and the _status
belli_. Here is a criterion which is objective and fixed: _That is to
be called good which is destined to prevail or survive_. But we
immediately see that this standard can only remain objective by leaving
myself and my conduct out. If what prevails and survives does so by my
help, and cannot do so without that help; if something else will
prevail in case I alter my conduct,--how can I possibly now, conscious
of alternative courses of action open before me, either of which {99} I
may suppose capable of altering the path of events, decide which course
to take by asking what path events will follow? If they follow my
direction, evidently my direction cannot wait on them. The only
possible manner in which an evolutionist can use his standard is the
obsequious method of forecasting the course society would take _but for
him_, and then putting an extinguisher on all personal idiosyncrasies
of desire and interest, and with bated breath and tiptoe tread
following as straight as may be at the tail, and bringing up the rear
of everything. Some pious creatures may find a pleasure in this; but
not only does it violate our general wish to lead and not to follow (a
wish which is surely not immoral if we but lead aright), but if it be
treated as every ethical principle must be treated,--namely, as a rule
good for all men alike,--its general observance would lead to its
practical refutation by bringing about a general deadlock. Each good
man hanging back and waiting for orders from the rest, absolute
stagnation would ensue. Happy, then, if a few unrighteous ones
contribute an initiative which sets things moving again!
All this is no caricature. That the course of destiny may be altered
by individuals no wise evolutionist ought to doubt. Everything for him
has small beginnings, has a bud which may be 'nipped,' and nipped by a
feeble force. Human races and tendencies follow the law, and have also
small beginnings. The best, according to evolution, is that which has
the biggest endings. Now, if a present race of men, enlightened in the
evolutionary philosophy, and able to forecast the future, were able to
discern in a tribe arising near them the potentiality of future
supremacy; were able to see that their own {100} race would eventually
be wiped out of existence by the new-comers if the expansion of these
were left unmolested,--these present sages would have two courses open
to them, either perfectly in harmony with the evolutionary test:
Strangle the new race now, and ours survives; help the new race, and it
survives. In both cases the action is right as measured by the
evolutionary standard,--it is action for the winning side.
Thus the evolutionist foundation of ethics is purely objective only to
the herd of nullities whose votes count for zero in the march of
events. But for others, leaders of opinion or potentates, and in
general those to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching
import, and to the rest of us, each in his measure,--whenever we
espouse a cause we contribute to the determination of the evolutionary
standard of right. The truly wise disciple of this school will then
admit faith as an ultimate ethical factor. Any philosophy which makes
such questions as, What is the ideal type of humanity? What shall be
reckoned virtues? What conduct is good? depend on the question, What
is going to succeed?--must needs fall back on personal belief as one of
the ultimate conditions of the truth. For again and again success
depends on energy of act; energy again depends on faith that we shall
not fail; and that faith in turn on the faith that we are right,--which
faith thus verifies itself.
Take as an example the question of optimism or pessimism, which makes
so much noise just now in Germany. Every human being must sometime
decide for himself whether life is worth living. Suppose that in
looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery, of old age,
of wickedness and {101} pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he
yields to the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread,
ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus adds to the mass
_M_ of mundane phenomena, independent of his subjectivity, the
subjective complement _x_, which makes of the whole an utterly black
picture illumined by no gleam of good. Pessimism completed, verified
by his moral reaction and the deed in which this ends, is true beyond a
doubt. _M_ + _x_ expresses a state of things totally bad. The man's
belief supplied all that was lacking to make it so, and now that it is
made so the belief was right.
But now suppose that with the same evil facts _M_, the man's reaction
_x_ is exactly reversed; suppose that instead of giving way to the evil
he braves it, and finds a sterner, more wonderful joy than any passive
pleasure can yield in triumphing over pain and defying fear; suppose he
does this successfully, and however thickly evils crowd upon him proves
his dauntless subjectivity to be more than their match,--will not every
one confess that the bad character of the _M_ is here the _conditio
sine qua non_ of the good character of the _x_? Will not every one
instantly declare a world fitted only for fair-weather human beings
susceptible of every passive enjoyment, but without independence,
courage, or fortitude, to be from a moral point of view incommensurably
inferior to a world framed to elicit from the man every form of
triumphant endurance and conquering moral energy? As James Hinton
says,--
"Little inconveniences, exertions, pains.--these are the only things in
which we rightly feel our life at all. If these be not there,
existence becomes worthless, or worse; {102} success in putting them
all away is fatal. So it is men engage in athletic sports, spend their
holidays in climbing up mountains, find nothing so enjoyable as that
which taxes their endurance and their energy. This is the way we are
made, I say. It may or may not be a mystery or a paradox; it is a
fact. Now, this enjoyment in endurance is just according to the
intensity of life: the more physical vigor and balance, the more
endurance can be made an element of satisfaction. A sick man cannot
stand it. The line of enjoyable suffering is not a fixed one; it
fluctuates with the perfectness of the life. That our pains are, as
they are, unendurable, awful, overwhelming, crushing, not to be borne
save in misery and dumb impatience, which utter exhaustion alone makes
patient,--that our pains are thus unendurable, means not that they are
too great, but that _we are sick_. We have not got our proper life.
So you perceive pain is no more necessarily an evil, but an essential
element of the highest good."[3]
But the highest good can be achieved only by our getting our proper
life; and that can come about only by help of a moral energy born of
the faith that in some way or other we shall succeed in getting it if
we try pertinaciously enough. This world _is_ good, we must say, since
it is what we make it,--and we shall make it good. How can we exclude
from the cognition of a truth a faith which is involved in the creation
of the truth? _M_ has its character indeterminate, susceptible of
forming part of a thorough-going pessimism on the one hand, or of a
meliorism, a moral (as distinguished from a sensual) optimism on the
other. All depends on the character of the {103} personal contribution
_x_. Wherever the facts to be formulated contain such a contribution,
we may logically, legitimately, and inexpugnably believe what we
desire. The belief creates its verification. The thought becomes
literally father to the fact, as the wish was father to the thought.[4]
Let us now turn to the radical question of life,--the question whether
this be at bottom a moral or an unmoral universe,--and see whether the
method of faith may legitimately have a place there. It is really the
question of materialism. Is the world a simple brute actuality, an
existence _de facto_ about which the deepest thing that can be said is
that it happens so to be; or is the judgment of _better_ or worse, of
_ought_, as intimately pertinent to phenomena as the simple judgment
_is_ or _is not_? The materialistic theorists say that judgments of
worth are themselves mere matters of fact; that the words 'good' and
'bad' have no sense apart from subjective passions and interests which
we may, if we please, play fast and loose with at will, so far as any
duty of ours to the non-human universe is concerned. Thus, when a
materialist says it is better for him to suffer great inconvenience
than to break a promise, he only means that his social interests have
become so knit up with {104} keeping faith that, those interests once
being granted, it is better for him to keep the promise in spite of
everything. But the interests themselves are neither right nor wrong,
except possibly with reference to some ulterior order of interests
which themselves again are mere subjective data without character,
either good or bad.
For the absolute moralists, on the contrary, the interests are not
there merely to be felt,--they are to be believed in and obeyed. Not
only is it best for my social interests to keep my promise, but best
for me to have those interests, and best for the cosmos to have this
me. Like the old woman in the story who described the world as resting
on a rock, and then explained that rock to be supported by another
rock, and finally when pushed with questions said it was rocks all the
way down,--he who believes this to be a radically moral universe must
hold the moral order to rest either on an absolute and ultimate
_should_, or on a series of _shoulds_ all the way down.[5]
The practical difference between this objective sort of moralist and
the other one is enormous. The subjectivist in morals, when his moral
feelings are at war with the facts about him, is always free to seek
harmony by toning down the sensitiveness of the feelings. Being mere
data, neither good nor evil in themselves, he may pervert them or lull
them to sleep by any means at his command. Truckling, compromise,
time-serving, capitulations of conscience, are conventionally
opprobrious names for what, if successfully carried out, {105} would be
on his principles by far the easiest and most praiseworthy mode of
bringing about that harmony between inner and outer relations which is
all that he means by good. The absolute moralist, on the other hand,
when his interests clash with the world, is not free to gain harmony by
sacrificing the ideal interests. According to him, these latter should
be as they are and not otherwise. Resistance then, poverty, martyrdom
if need be, tragedy in a word,--such are the solemn feasts of his
inward faith. Not that the contradiction between the two men occurs
every day; in commonplace matters all moral schools agree. It is only
in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then
routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods. It cannot then be
said that the question, Is this a moral world? is a meaningless and
unverifiable question because it deals with something non-phenomenal.
Any question is full of meaning to which, as here, contrary answers
lead to contrary behavior. And it seems as if in answering such a
question as this we might proceed exactly as does the physical
philosopher in testing an hypothesis. He deduces from the hypothesis
an experimental action, _x_; this he adds to the facts _M_ already
existing. It fits them if the hypothesis be true; if not, there is
discord. The results of the action corroborate or refute the idea from
which it flowed. So here: the verification of the theory which you may
hold as to the objectively moral character of the world can consist
only in this,--that if you proceed to act upon your theory it will be
reversed by nothing that later turns up as your action's fruit; it will
harmonize so well with the entire drift of experience that the latter
will, as it were, adopt it, or at most give it an ampler {106}
interpretation, without obliging you in any way to change the essence
of its formulation. If this be an objectively moral universe, all acts
that I make on that assumption, all expectations that I ground on it,
will tend more and more completely to interdigitate with the phenomena
already existing. _M_ + _x_ will be in accord; and the more I live,
and the more the fruits of my activity come to light, the more
satisfactory the consensus will grow. While if it be not such a moral
universe, and I mistakenly assume that it is, the course of experience
will throw ever new impediments in the way of my belief, and become
more and more difficult to express in its language. Epicycle upon
epicycle of subsidiary hypothesis will have to be invoked to give to
the discrepant terms a temporary appearance of squaring with each
other; but at last even this resource will fail.
If, on the other hand, I rightly assume the universe to be not moral,
in what does my verification consist? It is that by letting moral
interests sit lightly, by disbelieving that there is any duty about
_them_ (since duty obtains only as _between_ them and other phenomena),
and so throwing them over if I find it hard to get them satisfied,--it
is that by refusing to take up a tragic attitude, I deal in the
long-run most satisfactorily with the facts of life. "All is vanity"
is here the last word of wisdom. Even though in certain limited series
there may be a great appearance of seriousness, he who in the main
treats things with a degree of good-natured scepticism and radical
levity will find that the practical fruits of his epicurean hypothesis
verify it more and more, and not only save him from pain but do honor
to his sagacity. While, on the other hand, he who contrary {107} to
reality stiffens himself in the notion that certain things absolutely
should be, and rejects the truth that at bottom it makes no difference
what is, will find himself evermore thwarted and perplexed and
bemuddled by the facts of the world, and his tragic disappointment
will, as experience accumulates, seem to drift farther and farther away
from that final atonement or reconciliation which certain partial
tragedies often get.
_Anaesthesia_ is the watchword of the moral sceptic brought to bay and
put to his trumps. _Energy_ is that of the moralist. Act on my creed,
cries the latter, and the results of your action will prove the creed
true, and that the nature of things is earnest infinitely. Act on
mine, says the epicurean, and the results will prove that seriousness
is but a superficial glaze upon a world of fundamentally trivial
import. You and your acts and the nature of things will be alike
enveloped in a single formula, a universal _vanitas vanitatum_.
For the sake of simplicity I have written as if the verification might
occur in the life of a single philosopher,--which is manifestly untrue,
since the theories still face each other, and the facts of the world
give countenance to both. Rather should we expect, that, in a question
of this scope, the experience of the entire human race must make the
verification, and that all the evidence will not be 'in' till the final
integration of things, when the last man has had his say and
contributed his share to the still unfinished _x_. Then the proof will
be complete; then it will appear without doubt whether the moralistic x
has filled up the gap which alone kept the _M_ of the world from
forming an even and harmonious unity, or whether the {108}
non-moralistic _x_ has given the finishing touches which were alone
needed to make the _M_ appear outwardly as vain as it inwardly was.
But if this be so, is it not clear that the facts _M_, taken _per se_,
are inadequate to justify a conclusion either way in advance of my
action? My action is the complement which, by proving congruous or
not, reveals the latent nature of the mass to which it is applied. The
world may in fact be likened unto a lock, whose inward nature, moral or
unmoral, will never reveal itself to our simply expectant gaze. The
positivists, forbidding us to make any assumptions regarding it,
condemn us to eternal ignorance, for the 'evidence' which they wait for
can never come so long as we are passive. But nature has put into our
hands two keys, by which we may test the lock. If we try the moral key
_and it fits_, it is a moral lock. If we try the unmoral key and _it_
fits, it is an unmoral lock. I cannot possibly conceive of any other
sort of 'evidence' or 'proof' than this. It is quite true that the
co-operation of generations is needed to educe it. But in these
matters the solidarity (so called) of the human race is a patent fact.
The essential thing to notice is that our active preference is a
legitimate part of the game,--that it is our plain business as men to
try one of the keys, and the one in which we most confide. If then the
proof exist not till I have acted, and I must needs in acting run the
risk of being wrong, how can the popular science professors be right in
objurgating in me as infamous a 'credulity' which the strict logic of
the situation requires? If this really be a moral universe; if by my
acts I be a factor of its destinies; if to believe where I may doubt be
itself a moral act {109} analogous to voting for a side not yet sure to
win,--by what right shall they close in upon me and steadily negate the
deepest conceivable function of my being by their preposterous command
that I shall stir neither hand nor foot, but remain balancing myself in
eternal and insoluble doubt? Why, doubt itself is a decision of the
widest practical reach, if only because we may miss by doubting what
goods we might be gaining by espousing the winning side. But more than
that! it is often practically impossible to distinguish doubt from
dogmatic negation. If I refuse to stop a murder because I am in doubt
whether it be not justifiable homicide, I am virtually abetting the
crime. If I refuse to bale out a boat because I am in doubt whether my
efforts will keep her afloat, I am really helping to sink her. If in
the mountain precipice I doubt my right to risk a leap, I actively
connive at my destruction. He who commands himself not to be credulous
of God, of duty, of freedom, of immortality, may again and again be
indistinguishable from him who dogmatically denies them. Scepticism in
moral matters is an active ally of immorality. Who is not for is
against. The universe will have no neutrals in these questions. In
theory as in practice, dodge or hedge, or talk as we like about a wise
scepticism, we are really doing volunteer military service for one side
or the other.
Yet obvious as this necessity practically is, thousands of innocent
magazine readers lie paralyzed and terrified in the network of shallow
negations which the leaders of opinion have thrown over their souls.
All they need to be free and hearty again in the exercise of their
birthright is that these fastidious vetoes should be swept away. All
that the human {110} heart wants is its chance. It will willingly
forego certainty in universal matters if only it can be allowed to feel
that in them it has that same inalienable right to run risks, which no
one dreams of refusing to it in the pettiest practical affairs. And if
I, in these last pages, like the mouse in the fable, have gnawed a few
of the strings of the sophistical net that has been binding down its
lion-strength, I shall be more than rewarded for my pains.
To sum up: No philosophy will permanently be deemed rational by all men
which (in addition to meeting logical demands) does not to some degree
pretend to determine expectancy, and in a still greater degree make a
direct appeal to all those powers of our nature which we hold in
highest esteem. Faith, being one of these powers, will always remain a
factor not to be banished from philosophic constructions, the more so
since in many ways it brings forth its own verification. In these
points, then, it is hopeless to look for literal agreement among
mankind.
The ultimate philosophy, we may therefore conclude, must not be too
strait-laced in form, must not in all its parts divide heresy from
orthodoxy by too sharp a line. There must be left over and above the
propositions to be subscribed, _ubique, semper, et ab omnibus_, another
realm into which the stifled soul may escape from pedantic scruples and
indulge its own faith at its own risks; and all that can here be done
will be to mark out distinctly the questions which fall within faith's
sphere.
[1] This essay as far as page 75 consists of extracts from an article
printed in Mind for July, 1879. Thereafter it is a reprint of an
address to the Harvard Philosophical Club, delivered in 1880, and
published in the Princeton Review, July, 1882.
[2] At most, the command laid upon us by science to believe nothing not
yet verified by the senses is a prudential rule intended to maximize
our right thinking and minimize our errors _in the long run_. In the
particular instance we must frequently lose truth by obeying it; but on
the whole we are safer if we follow it consistently, for we are sure to
cover our losses with our gains. It is like those gambling and
insurance rules based on probability, in which we secure ourselves
against losses in detail by hedging on the total run. But this hedging
philosophy requires that long run should be there; and this makes it
inapplicable to the question of religious faith as the latter comes
home to the individual man. He plays the game of life not to escape
losses, for he brings nothing with him to lose; he plays it for gains;
and it is now or never with him, for the long run which exists indeed
for humanity, is not there for him. Let him doubt, believe, or deny,
he runs his risk, and has the natural right to choose which one it
shall be.
[3] Life of James Hinton, pp. 172, 173. See also the excellent chapter
on Faith and Sight in the Mystery of Matter, by J. Allanson Picton.
Hinton's Mystery of Pain will undoubtedly always remain the classical
utterance on this subject.
[4] Observe that in all this not a word has been said of free-will. It
all applies as well to a predetermined as to an indeterminate universe.
If _M_ + _x_ is fixed in advance, the belief which leads to _x_ and the
desire which prompts the belief are also fixed. But fixed or not,
these subjective states form a phenomenal condition necessarily
preceding the facts; necessarily constitutive, therefore, of the truth
_M_ + _x_ which we seek. If, however, free acts be possible, a faith
in their possibility, by augmenting the moral energy which gives them
birth, will increase their frequency in a given individual.
[5] In either case, as a later essay explains (see p. 193), the
_should_ which the moralist regards as binding upon him must be rooted
in the feeling of some other thinker, or collection of thinkers, to
whose demands he individually bows.
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