philosophy. I wish only to maintain that the motives and interests
which inspire it are so exclusively practical, and the problems with
which it deals are so special, that it can hardly be regarded as
touching any of the questions that, to my mind, constitute genuine
philosophy.
The predominant interest of evolutionism is in the question of human
destiny, or at least of the destiny of Life. It is more interested in
morality and happiness than in knowledge for its own sake. It must be
admitted that the same may be said of many other philosophies, and
that a desire for the kind of knowledge which philosophy can give is
very rare. But if philosophy is to attain truth, it is necessary first
and foremost that philosophers should acquire the disinterested
intellectual curiosity which characterises the genuine man of science.
Knowledge concerning the future--which is the kind of knowledge that
must be sought if we are to know about human destiny--is possible
within certain narrow limits. It is impossible to say how much the
limits may be enlarged with the progress of science. But what is
evident is that any proposition about the future belongs by its
subject-matter to some particular science, and is to be ascertained,
if at all, by the methods of that science. Philosophy is not a short
cut to the same kind of results as those of the other sciences: if it
is to be a genuine study, it must have a province of its own, and aim
at results which the other sciences can neither prove nor disprove.
Evolutionism, in basing itself upon the notion of _progress_, which is
change from the worse to the better, allows the notion of time, as it
seems to me, to become its tyrant rather than its servant, and thereby
loses that impartiality of contemplation which is the source of all
that is best in philosophic thought and feeling. Metaphysicians, as we
saw, have frequently denied altogether the reality of time. I do not
wish to do this; I wish only to preserve the mental outlook which
inspired the denial, the attitude which, in thought, regards the past
as having the same reality as the present and the same importance as
the future. "In so far," says Spinoza,[6] "as the mind conceives a
thing according to the dictate of reason, it will be equally affected
whether the idea is that of a future, past, or present thing." It is
this "conceiving according to the dictate of reason" that I find
lacking in the philosophy which is based on evolution.
IV. GOOD AND EVIL
Mysticism maintains that all evil is illusory, and sometimes maintains
the same view as regards good, but more often holds that all Reality
is good. Both views are to be found in Heraclitus: "Good and ill are
one," he says, but again, "To God all things are fair and good and
right, but men hold some things wrong and some right." A similar
twofold position is to be found in Spinoza, but he uses the word
"perfection" when he means to speak of the good that is not merely
human. "By reality and perfection I mean the same thing," he says;[7]
but elsewhere we find the definition: "By _good_ I shall mean that
which we certainly know to be useful to us."[8] Thus perfection
belongs to Reality in its own nature, but goodness is relative to
ourselves and our needs, and disappears in an impartial survey. Some
such distinction, I think, is necessary in order to understand the
ethical outlook of mysticism: there is a lower mundane kind of good
and evil, which divides the world of appearance into what seem to be
conflicting parts; but there is also a higher, mystical kind of good,
which belongs to Reality and is not opposed by any correlative kind of
evil.
It is difficult to give a logically tenable account of this position
without recognising that good and evil are subjective, that what is
good is merely that towards which we have one kind of feeling, and
what is evil is merely that towards which we have another kind of
feeling. In our active life, where we have to exercise choice, and to
prefer this to that of two possible acts, it is necessary to have a
distinction of good and evil, or at least of better and worse. But
this distinction, like everything pertaining to action, belongs to
what mysticism regards as the world of illusion, if only because it is
essentially concerned with time. In our contemplative life, where
action is not called for, it is possible to be impartial, and to
overcome the ethical dualism which action requires. So long as we
remain _merely_ impartial, we may be content to say that both the good
and the evil of action are illusions. But if, as we must do if we have
the mystic vision, we find the whole world worthy of love and worship,
if we see
"The earth, and every common sight....
Apparell'd in celestial light,"
we shall say that there is a higher good than that of action, and that
this higher good belongs to the whole world as it is in reality. In
this way the twofold attitude and the apparent vacillation of
mysticism are explained and justified.
The possibility of this universal love and joy in all that exists is
of supreme importance for the conduct and happiness of life, and gives
inestimable value to the mystic emotion, apart from any creeds which
may be built upon it. But if we are not to be led into false beliefs,
it is necessary to realise exactly _what_ the mystic emotion reveals.
It reveals a possibility of human nature--a possibility of a nobler,
happier, freer life than any that can be otherwise achieved. But it
does not reveal anything about the non-human, or about the nature of
the universe in general. Good and bad, and even the higher good that
mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on
other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in
themselves. And therefore an impartial contemplation, freed from all
pre-occupation with Self, will not judge things good or bad, although
it is very easily combined with that feeling of universal love which
leads the mystic to say that the whole world is good.
The philosophy of evolution, through the notion of progress, is bound
up with the ethical dualism of the worse and the better, and is thus
shut out, not only from the kind of survey which discards good and
evil altogether from its view, but also from the mystical belief in
the goodness of everything. In this way the distinction of good and
evil, like time, becomes a tyrant in this philosophy, and introduces
into thought the restless selectiveness of action. Good and evil, like
time, are, it would seem, not general or fundamental in the world of
thought, but late and highly specialised members of the intellectual
hierarchy.
Although, as we saw, mysticism can be interpreted so as to agree with
the view that good and evil are not intellectually fundamental, it
must be admitted that here we are no longer in verbal agreement with
most of the great philosophers and religious teachers of the past. I
believe, however, that the elimination of ethical considerations from
philosophy is both scientifically necessary and--though this may seem
a paradox--an ethical advance. Both these contentions must be briefly
defended.
The hope of satisfaction to our more human desires--the hope of
demonstrating that the world has this or that desirable ethical
characteristic--is not one which, so far as I can see, a scientific
philosophy can do anything whatever to satisfy. The difference between
a good world and a bad one is a difference in the particular
characteristics of the particular things that exist in these worlds:
it is not a sufficiently abstract difference to come within the
province of philosophy. Love and hate, for example, are ethical
opposites, but to philosophy they are closely analogous attitudes
towards objects. The general form and structure of those attitudes
towards objects which constitute mental phenomena is a problem for
philosophy, but the difference between love and hate is not a
difference of form or structure, and therefore belongs rather to the
special science of psychology than to philosophy. Thus the ethical
interests which have often inspired philosophers must remain in the
background: some kind of ethical interest may inspire the whole study,
but none must obtrude in the detail or be expected in the special
results which are sought.
If this view seems at first sight disappointing, we may remind
ourselves that a similar change has been found necessary in all the
other sciences. The physicist or chemist is not now required to prove
the ethical importance of his ions or atoms; the biologist is not
expected to prove the utility of the plants or animals which he
dissects. In pre-scientific ages this was not the case. Astronomy, for
example, was studied because men believed in astrology: it was thought
that the movements of the planets had the most direct and important
bearing upon the lives of human beings. Presumably, when this belief
decayed and the disinterested study of astronomy began, many who had
found astrology absorbingly interesting decided that astronomy had too
little human interest to be worthy of study. Physics, as it appears in
Plato's Timæus for example, is full of ethical notions: it is an
essential part of its purpose to show that the earth is worthy of
admiration. The modern physicist, on the contrary, though he has no
wish to deny that the earth is admirable, is not concerned, as
physicist, with its ethical attributes: he is merely concerned to find
out facts, not to consider whether they are good or bad. In
psychology, the scientific attitude is even more recent and more
difficult than in the physical sciences: it is natural to consider
that human nature is either good or bad, and to suppose that the
difference between good and bad, so all-important in practice, must be
important in theory also. It is only during the last century that an
ethically neutral psychology has grown up; and here too, ethical
neutrality has been essential to scientific success.
In philosophy, hitherto, ethical neutrality has been seldom sought and
hardly ever achieved. Men have remembered their wishes, and have
judged philosophies in relation to their wishes. Driven from the
particular sciences, the belief that the notions of good and evil must
afford a key to the understanding of the world has sought a refuge in
philosophy. But even from this last refuge, if philosophy is not to
remain a set of pleasing dreams, this belief must be driven forth. It
is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who
seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good.
In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil and seek only
to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view
the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
We are thus brought back to our seeming paradox, that a philosophy
which does not seek to impose upon the world its own conceptions of
good and evil is not only more likely to achieve truth, but is also
the outcome of a higher ethical standpoint than one which, like
evolutionism and most traditional systems, is perpetually appraising
the universe and seeking to find in it an embodiment of present
ideals. In religion, and in every deeply serious view of the world and
of human destiny, there is an element of submission, a realisation of
the limits of human power, which is somewhat lacking in the modern
world, with its quick material successes and its insolent belief in
the boundless possibilities of progress. "He that loveth his life
shall lose it"; and there is danger lest, through a too confident love
of life, life itself should lose much of what gives it its highest
worth. The submission which religion inculcates in action is
essentially the same in spirit as that which science teaches in
thought; and the ethical neutrality by which its victories have been
achieved is the outcome of that submission.
The good which it concerns us to remember is the good which it lies in
our power to create--the good in our own lives and in our attitude
towards the world. Insistence on belief in an external realisation of
the good is a form of self-assertion, which, while it cannot secure
the external good which it desires, can seriously impair the inward
good which lies within our power, and destroy that reverence towards
fact which constitutes both what is valuable in humility and what is
fruitful in the scientific temper.
Human beings cannot, of course, wholly transcend human nature;
something subjective, if only the interest that determines the
direction of our attention, must remain in all our thought. But
scientific philosophy comes nearer to objectivity than any other human
pursuit, and gives us, therefore, the closest constant and the most
intimate relation with the outer world that it is possible to achieve.
To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but
experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the
conceptions by which the world is to be understood. Scientific
philosophy thus represents, though as yet only in a nascent condition,
a higher form of thought than any pre-scientific belief or
imagination, and, like every approach to self-transcendence, it brings
with it a rich reward in increase of scope and breadth and
comprehension. Evolutionism, in spite of its appeals to particular
scientific facts, fails to be a truly scientific philosophy because of
its slavery to time, its ethical preoccupations, and its predominant
interest in our mundane concerns and destiny. A truly scientific
philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering
less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallacious hopes, but more
indifferent to fate, and more capable of accepting the world without
the tyrannous imposition of our human and temporary demands.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] All the above quotations are from Burnet's _Early Greek
Philosophy_, (2nd ed., 1908), pp. 146-156.
[2] _Republic_, 514, translated by Davies and Vaughan.
[3] This section, and also one or two pages in later sections, have
been printed in a course of Lowell lectures _On our knowledge of the
external world_, published by the Open Court Publishing Company. But I
have left them here, as this is the context for which they were
originally written.
[4] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, p. 1.
[5] Whinfield's translation of the _Masnavi_ (Trübner, 1887), p. 34.
[6] _Ethics_, Bk. IV, Prop. LXII.
[7] Ib., Pt. IV, Df. I.
[8] _Ethics_. Pt. II. Df. VI.
II
THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN A LIBERAL EDUCATION
I
Science, to the ordinary reader of newspapers, is represented by a
varying selection of sensational triumphs, such as wireless telegraphy
and aeroplanes, radio-activity and the marvels of modern alchemy. It is
not of this aspect of science that I wish to speak. Science, in this
aspect, consists of detached up-to-date fragments, interesting only
until they are replaced by something newer and more up-to-date,
displaying nothing of the systems of patiently constructed knowledge
out of which, almost as a casual incident, have come the practically
useful results which interest the man in the street. The increased
command over the forces of nature which is derived from science is
undoubtedly an amply sufficient reason for encouraging scientific
research, but this reason has been so often urged and is so easily
appreciated that other reasons, to my mind quite as important, are apt
to be overlooked. It is with these other reasons, especially with the
intrinsic value of a scientific habit of mind in forming our outlook
on the world, that I shall be concerned in what follows.
The instance of wireless telegraphy will serve to illustrate the
difference between the two points of view. Almost all the serious
intellectual labour required for the possibility of this invention is
due to three men--Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz. In alternating layers
of experiment and theory these three men built up the modern theory of
electromagnetism, and demonstrated the identity of light with
electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is one of
profound intellectual interest, bringing together and unifying an
endless variety of apparently detached phenomena, and displaying a
cumulative mental power which cannot but afford delight to every
generous spirit. The mechanical details which remained to be adjusted
in order to utilise their discoveries for a practical system of
telegraphy demanded, no doubt, very considerable ingenuity, but had
not that broad sweep and that universality which could give them
intrinsic interest as an object of disinterested contemplation.
From the point of view of training the mind, of giving that
well-informed, impersonal outlook which constitutes culture in the
good sense of this much-misused word, it seems to be generally held
indisputable that a literary education is superior to one based on
science. Even the warmest advocates of science are apt to rest their
claims on the contention that culture ought to be sacrificed to
utility. Those men of science who respect culture, when they associate
with men learned in the classics, are apt to admit, not merely
politely, but sincerely, a certain inferiority on their side,
compensated doubtless by the services which science renders to
humanity, but none the less real. And so long as this attitude exists
among men of science, it tends to verify itself: the intrinsically
valuable aspects of science tend to be sacrificed to the merely
useful, and little attempt is made to preserve that leisurely,
systematic survey by which the finer quality of mind is formed and
nourished.
But even if there be, in present fact, any such inferiority as is
supposed in the educational value of science, this is, I believe, not
the fault of science itself, but the fault of the spirit in which
science is taught. If its full possibilities were realised by those
who teach it, I believe that its capacity of producing those habits of
mind which constitute the highest mental excellence would be at least
as great as that of literature, and more particularly of Greek and
Latin literature. In saying this I have no wish whatever to disparage
a classical education. I have not myself enjoyed its benefits, and my
knowledge of Greek and Latin authors is derived almost wholly from
translations. But I am firmly persuaded that the Greeks fully deserve
all the admiration that is bestowed upon them, and that it is a very
great and serious loss to be unacquainted with their writings. It is
not by attacking them, but by drawing attention to neglected
excellences in science, that I wish to conduct my argument.
One defect, however, does seem inherent in a purely classical
education--namely, a too exclusive emphasis on the past. By the study
of what is absolutely ended and can never be renewed, a habit of
criticism towards the present and the future is engendered. The
qualities in which the present excels are qualities to which the study
of the past does not direct attention, and to which, therefore, the
student of Greek civilisation may easily become blind. In what is new
and growing there is apt to be something crude, insolent, even a
little vulgar, which is shocking to the man of sensitive taste;
quivering from the rough contact, he retires to the trim gardens of a
polished past, forgetting that they were reclaimed from the wilderness
by men as rough and earth-soiled as those from whom he shrinks in his
own day. The habit of being unable to recognise merit until it is
dead is too apt to be the result of a purely bookish life, and a
culture based wholly on the past will seldom be able to pierce through
everyday surroundings to the essential splendour of contemporary
things, or to the hope of still greater splendour in the future.
"My eyes saw not the men of old;
And now their age away has rolled.
I weep--to think I shall not see
The heroes of posterity."
So says the Chinese poet; but such impartiality is rare in the more
pugnacious atmosphere of the West, where the champions of past and
future fight a never-ending battle, instead of combining to seek out
the merits of both.
This consideration, which militates not only against the exclusive
study of the classics, but against every form of culture which has
become static, traditional, and academic, leads inevitably to the
fundamental question: What is the true end of education? But before
attempting to answer this question it will be well to define the sense
in which we are to use the word "education." For this purpose I shall
distinguish the sense in which I mean to use it from two others, both
perfectly legitimate, the one broader and the other narrower than the
sense in which I mean to use the word.
In the broader sense, education will include not only what we learn
through instruction, but all that we learn through personal
experience--the formation of character through the education of life.
Of this aspect of education, vitally important as it is, I will say
nothing, since its consideration would introduce topics quite foreign
to the question with which we are concerned.
In the narrower sense, education may be confined to instruction, the
imparting of definite information on various subjects, because such
information, in and for itself, is useful in daily life. Elementary
education--reading, writing, and arithmetic--is almost wholly of this
kind. But instruction, necessary as it is, does not _per se_
constitute education in the sense in which I wish to consider it.
Education, in the sense in which I mean it, may be defined as _the
formation, by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and a
certain outlook on life and the world_. It remains to ask ourselves,
what mental habits, and what sort of outlook, can be hoped for as the
result of instruction? When we have answered this question we can
attempt to decide what science has to contribute to the formation of
the habits and outlook which we desire.
Our whole life is built about a certain number--not a very small
number--of primary instincts and impulses. Only what is in some way
connected with these instincts and impulses appears to us desirable or
important; there is no faculty, whether "reason" or "virtue" or
whatever it may be called, that can take our active life and our hopes
and fears outside the region controlled by these first movers of all
desire. Each of them is like a queen-bee, aided by a hive of workers
gathering honey; but when the queen is gone the workers languish and
die, and the cells remain empty of their expected sweetness. So with
each primary impulse in civilised man: it is surrounded and protected
by a busy swarm of attendant derivative desires, which store up in its
service whatever honey the surrounding world affords. But if the
queen-impulse dies, the death-dealing influence, though retarded a
little by habit, spreads slowly through all the subsidiary impulses,
and a whole tract of life becomes inexplicably colourless. What was
formerly full of zest, and so obviously worth doing that it raised no
questions, has now grown dreary and purposeless: with a sense of
disillusion we inquire the meaning of life, and decide, perhaps, that
all is vanity. The search for an outside meaning that can _compel_ an
inner response must always be disappointed: all "meaning" must be at
bottom related to our primary desires, and when they are extinct no
miracle can restore to the world the value which they reflected upon
it.