It may perhaps be well for the sake of greater clearness to summarize my
objections--those already mentioned and some others--to the system of Dr.
McTaggart, which I admit to be, for one who has accepted the idealistic
position that matter does not exist apart from Mind, the only
intelligible alternative to Theism. His theory is, it will be
remembered, that ultimate Reality consists of a system of selves or
spirits, uncreated and eternal, forming together a Unity, but not a
conscious Unity, so that consciousness exists only in the separate
selves, not in the whole:
(1) It is admitted that the material world exists only in and for Mind.
There is no reason to think that any human mind, or any of the other
minds of which Dr. McTaggart's Universe is composed, knows the whole of
this world. What kind of existence then have the parts of the Universe
which are not known to any mind? It seems to me that Dr. McTaggart would
be compelled to admit that they do not exist at all. The world
postulated by Science would thus be admitted to be a delusion. This
represents a subjective Idealism of an extreme and staggering kind which
cannot meet the objections commonly urged against all Idealism.
(2) Moreover, the world is not such an intellectually complete system as
Dr. McTaggart insists that it must be, apart from the relations of its
known parts to its unknown parts. If there are parts which are unknown
to any mind, and which therefore do not exist at all, it is not a system
at all.
(3) If it be said that all the spirits between them know the world--one
knowing one part, another another--this is a mere hypothesis, opposed to
all the probabilities suggested by experience, and after all would be a
very inadequate answer to our difficulties. Dr. McTaggart insists {124}
that the world of existing things exists as a system. Such existence to
an Idealist must mean existence for a mind; a system not known as a
system to any mind whatever could hardly be said to exist at all.
(4) If it be suggested (as Dr. McTaggart was at one time inclined to
suggest) that every mind considered as a timeless Noumenon is omniscient,
though in its phenomenal and temporal aspect its knowledge is
intermittent and always limited, I reply (_a_) the theory seems to me not
only gratuitous but unintelligible, and (_b_) it is open to all the
difficulties and objections of the theory that time and change are merely
subjective delusions. This is too large a question to discuss here: I
can only refer to the treatment of the subject by such writers as Lotze
(see above) and M. Bergson. I may also refer to Mr. Bradley's argument
(_Appearance and Reality_, p. 50 sq.) against the theory that the
individual Ego is out of time.
(5) The theory of pre-existent souls is opposed to all the probabilities
suggested by experience. Soul and organism are connected in such a way
that the pre-existence of one element in what presents itself and works
in our world as a unity is an extremely difficult supposition, and
involves assumptions which reduce to a minimum the amount of identity or
continuity that could be claimed for the Ego throughout its successive
lives. A soul which has forgotten all its previous experiences may have
some identity with its previous state, but not much. Moreover, we should
have to suppose that the correspondence of a certain type of body with a
certain kind of soul, as well as the resemblance between the individual
and his parents, implies no kind of causal connexion, but is due to mere
accident; or, if it is not to accident, to a very arbitrary kind of
pre-established harmony which there is nothing in experience to suggest,
and which (upon Dr. McTaggart's theory) there is no creative intelligence
to pre-establish. The theory cannot be absolutely refuted, but all Dr.
McTaggart's ingenuity has not--to my own mind, {125} and (I feel sure) to
most minds--made it seem otherwise than extremely difficult and
improbable. Its sole recommendation is that it makes possible an
Idealism without Theism: but, if Theism be an easier and more defensible
theory, that is no recommendation at all.
(6) Dr. McTaggart's whole theory seems to me to waver between two
inconsistent views of Reality. When he insists that the world consists
of a system or Unity, he tends towards a view of things which makes the
system of intellectual relations constituting knowledge or Science to be
the very reality of things: on such a view there is no impossibility of
an ultimate Reality not known to any one mind. But Dr. McTaggart has too
strong a hold on the conviction of the supremely real character of
conscious mind and the unreality of mere abstractions to be satisfied
with this view. If there is no mind which both knows and wills the
existence and the mutual relations of the spirits, the supreme reality
must be found in the individual spirits themselves; yet the system, if
known to none of them, seems to fall outside the reality. The natural
tendency of a system which finds the sole reality in eternally
self-existent souls is towards Pluralism--a theory of wholly independent
'Reals' or 'Monads.' Dr. McTaggnrt is too much of a Hegelian to
acquiesce in such a view. The gulf between the two tendencies seems to
me--with all respect--to be awkwardly bridged over by the assumption that
the separate selves form an intelligible system, which nevertheless no
one really existent spirit actually understands. If a system of
relations can be Reality, there is no ground for assuming the
pre-existence or eternity of individual souls: if on the other hand
Reality is 'experience,' an unexperienced 'system' cannot be real, and
the 'unity' disappears. This is a line of objection which it would
require a much more thorough discussion to develope.
(7) On the view which I myself hold as to the nature of Causality, the
only intelligible cause of events is a Will. The events of Dr.
McTaggart's world (putting aside the very {126} small proportion which
are due, in part at least, to the voluntary action of men or spirits) are
not caused at all. His theory is therefore open to all--and more than
all--the objections which I have urged in Lecture II. against the theory
which explains the Universe as the thought of a Mind but not as caused by
that Mind.
(8) It is just possible that some one might suggest that the first of my
objections might be met by the allegation that there is nothing in the
scheme which forbids us to suppose that the whole of Nature is known to
more than one of the spirits which make up Reality, though not to all, or
indeed any, of the human and non-human spirits known to us. I should
reply (_a_) that the considerations which lead to the hypothesis of one
omniscient Being do not require more than one such spirit, and _entia non
sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_; (_b_) such a scheme would still
be open to Objection 7. If it is a speculative possibility that all
Nature may exist in the knowledge of more than one spirit, it cannot well
be thought of as willed by more than one spirit. If the Universe,
admitted to form an ordered system, is caused by rational will at all, it
must surely be caused by one Will. But perhaps a serious discussion of a
polytheistic scheme such as this may be postponed till it is seriously
maintained. It has not been suggested, so far as I am aware, by Dr.
McTaggart himself.
(9) The real strength of Dr. McTaggart's system must be measured by the
validity of his objections to a Theism such as I have defended. I have
attempted to reply to those objections in the course of these Lectures,
and more at length in a review of his _Some Dogmas of Religion_ in _Mind_
(N.S.), vol. xv., 1906.
[1] Cf. Flint's _Theism_, Ed. v., p. 117 and App. xi.
[2] The most illuminating discussion of time and the most convincing
argument for its 'objectivity' which I know, is to be found in Lotze's
_Metaphysic_, Book II. chap. iii., but it cannot be recommended to the
beginner in Metaphysic. A brilliant exposition of the view of the
Universe which regards time and change as belonging to the very reality
of the Universe, has recently appeared in M. Bergson's L'Evolution
Creatrice, but he has hardly attempted to deal with the metaphysical
difficulties indicated above. The book, however, seems to me the most
important philosophical work that has appeared since Mr. Bradley's
_Appearance and Reality_, and though the writer has hardly formulated his
Natural Theology, it constitutes a very important contribution to the
theistic argument. Being based upon a profound study of biological
Evolution, it may be specially commended to scientific readers.
[3] Such a view is expounded in Dr. Schiller's early work _The Riddles of
the Sphinx_ and in Professor Howison's _The Limits of Evolution_. The
very distinguished French thinker Charles Renouvier (_La Nouvelle
Monadologie_, etc.), like Origen, believed that souls were pre-existent
but created.
[4] I use the word 'causally connected' in the popular or scientific
sense of the word, to indicate merely an actually observed
psycho-physical law.
[5] In part, perhaps, also to a mistaken theory of predication, which
assumes that, because every fact in the world can be represented as
logically a predicate of Reality at large, therefore there is but one
Substance or (metaphysically) Real Being in the world, of which all other
existences are really mere 'attributes.' But this theory cannot be
discussed here.
[6] In _The New Theology_.
[7] _E.g._ by Mr. Bradley in _Appearance and Reality_ and still more
uncompromisingly by Professor A. E. Taylor in _The Problem of Conduct_,
but I rejoice to find that the latter very able writer has recently given
up this theory of a 'super-moral' Absolute.
[8] I think it desirable to mention here that Professor Watson's account
of my views in his _Philosophical Basis of Religion_ completely
misrepresents my real position. I have replied to his criticisms in
_Mind_, N.S. No. 69 (Jan. 1909).
[9] This is sometimes denied by Philosophers, but I have never been able
to understand on what grounds. If I know _a priori_ the existence of
other men, I ought to be able to say _a priori_ how many they are and to
say something about them. And this is more than any one claims.
[10] In _Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion d'apres La Psychologie
et l'histoire_.
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