be called atheists, nevertheless reject all faith in God; of those
who, rejecting Christian theism, claim to be positively neither more
nor less than the men of science. Men of science though they be,
their philosophy is the philosophy of nescience and the philosophy
of despair. We need be under no apprehension that such a philosophy
will ever be generally accepted. It is too strong, too sorrowful, too
nauseous a composition to suit the common taste. It not only dissolves
morality and its foundations, but it precludes all hope of immortality.
The race indeed may be immortal and progressively great and glorious,
although how even so much can be known is more than I can see; but the
individual man by man, woman by woman, child by child, perishes each
one for ever. Men and women with yearning, loving hearts, with tender
and passionate affections, who have buried their dead out of their
sight, and who could not endure to live if they were doomed to sorrow
without hope, cannot but reject with loathing and horror such doctrines
as these. Men of various culture, of manifold intellectual resources,
who live in the midst of refined and accomplished society, and who are
not suffering from the pang of immedicable anguish and irreparable
bereavement, may possibly live so merely intellectual and speculative
a life, may be so wholly absorbed in mere science, may have so far
separated themselves from all that belongs to the heart's affections
and the trembling religious sensibilities of human nature, as to adopt
the philosophy of nihilism with hardy calmness, although I confess
that it passes my power to understand or conceive this; such men may
be content to follow their speculative conclusions into the "blackness
of darkness" for ever, and may thus, if not less, be more than the
common crowd of humanity. But such a philosophy will not content
those who share the ordinary wants and sensibilities of our race. The
working, sorrowing, loving, hoping men and women of this human race
will no more be able to satisfy themselves with any atheistic or, if
any should prefer so to call it, pantheistic philosophy, than they can
"feast upon the east wind." They will cleave to that Christian truth
and faith which has "brought life and immortality to light," and which,
in "showing" to the craving heart of needy, sorrowing, sinful man "the
Father" reconciled in Christ, has blessedly "sufficed" a longing world.
Indeed, it would seem that, when, it comes to the point, even
distinguished leaders in the ranks of those against whose views I have
been arguing, find it impossible to give up their faith, at least in
immortality. Rénan is unquestionably one of the most distinguished
leaders among those men of learning and culture who deny the existence
of a creative will and Personal God. Yet Rénan cannot make up his mind
that he has lost for ever his beloved sister; that she has passed
into the night of nothingness into which he must soon follow her. In
the dedication to her memory of his "Life of Jesus," he addresses an
invocation to "the pure soul of his sister Henriette, who died at
Byblos, Sept. 24th, 1861;" and appeals to her "to reveal to him, from
the bosom of God in which she rests, those truths which are mightier
than death, and take away the fear of death."
Rénan, then, after all, cannot give up his sister, nor, if it were
only for her sake, his belief in immortality. And yet how utterly
unscientific is such a belief, if science is to be defined and limited
in accordance with the principles of the anti-theistic philosophy.
Where can our men of mere sense-science find any physical basis of
immortality? There is no hope, no instinct or faith, at once so
indissolubly bound up with our nature, so necessary to the development
of all that is best in man, and so utterly destitute of evidence and
basis in merely natural science, as our assurance of immortality. If
we are to retain our belief in immortality, we must maintain our faith
in realities above and apart from sense, in realities which cannot
be tested or investigated by any appliances of natural science. If
immortality be true, Pantheism cannot be true.
What, then, have we found respecting the seductive and too fashionable
illusion which has led astray so many minds, especially of speculative,
restless, and daring intelligence, in the present age? We have found
that Pantheism is essentially only atheism in disguise, and occupies
a position in which it combines against itself the arguments which
theists have to allege against atheism, and atheists against theism;
that, while it dethrones the true God, it sets up in His place
Development and Natural Selection as its divinities, clothing them
with the attributes which it denies to deity; that its development
hypothesis will not bear the test of science, of the natural science
to which it professes to appeal; that the origin of protoplasm, the
attributes of man, and the growth and transformation of germ-cells,
alike refuse to accord with the hypothesis; that the very nature of
science itself, as recognizing law and organization, is incompatible
with any philosophy which denies theism; that the moral difficulties
which rise up as a barrier against a denial of the Christian theism
are no less insurmountable than the metaphysical and scientific
difficulties; that morality, conscience, natural affection, immortal
hope, every deepest, most tender and sacred, most blessed and
humanising, instinct of our nature is violated by the denial of a
personal and holy God and Judge; in a word, that our whole humanity
revolts against it.
May I venture to hope that the views which I have now endeavoured to
set forth may have some weight with young and inquiring spirits? No
more terrible suffering can there be, than for an honest, loving, and
virtuous nature to become involved in the meshes of pantheistic doubt
and unbelief. We must make up our minds to bear with many profound and
painful mysteries which are not to be solved by man; but may the good
Spirit of God save us each and all from losing our childlike faith in
His almighty, omnipresent, and absolutely good and holy government and
providence!
POSITIVISM.
BY THE
REV. W. JACKSON, M.A., F.S.A.,
LATE FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD.
POSITIVISM.
Everybody in this room has, I suppose, heard of the "positive"
sciences, or "Positivism" in some shape or other.
What does "Positivism" mean?
A system based on _positive_ facts. But what are facts? They are (says
the Positivist) observed phenomena. As for metaphysical conceptions of
all sorts, these are _negatives_ with nothing real, nothing positively
true in them. Truth must be sought amongst observed phenomena.
It is worth our while to examine this last proposition. Take a
"_phenomenon_." You have all observed colour,--what is it?
A physicist, if you ask him, will tell you of a modification in a
ray of light variously produced--by refraction, for example--as when
sunlight breaks a dark cloud into many-tinted beauty. But how if all
the world of men and animals were blind?
The physiologist will step in and speak to you of the structure of the
eye--the susceptibility of its retina for special impressions; there he
says you may find colour.
Put both accounts together, and they appear as part-causes, each
a factor helping to make up a result; which result physicist and
physiologist would agree to call colour.
Yet again: Suppose the human and animal world were deprived of all
consciousness, all which in the widest meaning we call mind--their eyes
remaining like mirrors, telescopes, microscopes; perfect instruments,
only every kind of intelligence, instinctive or rational, gone. Where
would colour then be? The sun might play upon cloud or rain, the light
of a rainbow be reflected in the eye. Were there but perceiving mind,
the impression would exist. But we are supposing the impressible to
be wanting; there is no sensation, no percipient; colour must remain
unknown, for there is nothing capable of observing it.
Now this shows you, first, how important it is to emphasize the word
_observed_ added to phenomenon. It shows you, secondly, _where_
the ultimate seat of every observation really lies; each observed
phenomenon, each positive fact, is at last neither more nor less than
a mental state. The evidence for each fact is the condition of your
own mind, your consciousness as it is called. You may sift the thing
witnessed, verify, examine, and cross-examine; but after all, your own
consciousness is the first real evidence you have got.
It would seem, then, that the most positive of all sciences would be
the science of mind; and the next most positive the sciences which
enable us to draw conclusions from our positively existing mental
states; the statements, we may call them, which our minds make to
us. Yet, strange to say, the very first thing Positivism does is to
dispense with a science of mind, as mind, altogether. Mr. Mill makes
it a severe reproach against Comte, that he ignores both psychology
and logic; recognizes no power in the mind, even of self-observation;
accepts no theory even of the inductive process. Mr. Mill characterises
Comte's want of mental science as "a grave aberration."[12] It is
indeed so. This appears plainly enough in the example just adduced
from our commonest sensation, the every-day phenomenon of colour.
It was made up, you saw, of three factors, a physical antecedent, a
condition of the sensitive apparatus, and a mind which received into
its consciousness the impression instrumentally conveyed to it. This
last, you will remember, was the _first_ fact to us. It is _the_ fact:
the revelation of an outward world, its changes and its continuing
presence, its rest and its constant motion. Without this fact of inward
consciousness, nature would have possessed no more significance than
pictures seen in the eyes of the newly dead.
Such being the case, it needs no argument to show the importance
of making quite sure that our interpretation of nature is correct.
If there be any unobserved illusion in our sensory instruments, or
what must evidently be much worse, in our percipient mind, truth is
at an end, and falsehood received in its stead. Hence the necessity
of observing our own observations, subjecting our consciousness to
scrutiny, and being acquainted with the criteria, not only of our
perceptions, but of our judgments. It is this process of analysis and
criticism which forms a large part of the method of verification,--a
method the value of which did not escape the great Greek philosophers,
though some recent writers seem to fancy it a modern discovery.
Inexperienced observers are often so little aware of the pre-eminent
importance of this critical process, that I will detain you with an
illustration of it for the benefit of my younger auditors. My example
shall be taken from perception _par excellence_--our eyesight, _the_
sense pronounced surest both in poetry and prose. You will remember
your Horace
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.
And almost everybody else has said the same, as witness the old
proverb, "Seeing is believing." Now I will mention five instances in
which people believe they see something, and do not see it; in other
words, the objective antecedent is wanting, and the impression is
produced partly by the sensory apparatus, partly by the mind itself. As
I describe these instances one by one, let my hearers ask themselves,
How does this illusion come about? Is it produced by our optic
instrument or by our mental activity?
First, then, Take a lighted stick, and whirl it rapidly round and
round. You believe you see a circle of sparks--in reality it is no more
than a simple train, and on a like illusion the Catherine-wheel is
constructed. Again, put yourself in the hands of an optically inclined
friend, and let him operate upon you thus. He shall place a cardboard
down the middle axis of your face, quite close against your nose--one
side of his board, say the right, coloured a brilliant red, the left
a vivid green. After an instant or two let him suddenly substitute
another board, white on both sides. Do my young friends guess what will
follow? Your right eye will see green, your left red--the reverse of
what they saw before; yet neither will see correctly, for both eyes are
looking at uncoloured surfaces.
Thirdly, Watch the full moon rising--how large and round she looks,
resting as it were upon that eastern hill, and seen amidst the tops
of its forest trees! How much larger and broader than when she hangs
aloft in upper sky! Has every one here learned the true reason why?
If not, look at her through a slit in a card, and her diameter will be
the same. Fourthly, A schoolboy is crossing his bedroom in the deep
dark night, anxiously hoping that his head may not come into collision
with the bed-post. Though carefully and successfully avoiding it, he
imagines of a sudden that the blow is imminent. Quick as thought he
stops to save his head, and, behold, the room is as quickly filled
with sparks or flames of fire. Another moment, and all becomes dark
once more. I have heard many a schoolboy exclaim over this phenomenon,
but never knew one who could explain it. Finally, did you ever, on
opening your eyes in a morning, close them quickly again, and keep them
shut, directing them as if to look straight forwards? Most persons of
active nervous power, after a few trials--say a dozen, or a score--are
surprised to see colours appear and flit before the sight. Some years
ago, Germany's greatest poet tried, at the suggestion of her greatest
physiologist, a series of experiments on these coloured images. He
found that by an effort of will he could cause them to come and go,
govern their movement, march, and succession. And this took place
under no conditions of impaired sensation, nor any hallucination of a
diseased mind. A thoroughly healthy will succeeded in impressing itself
upon physical instruments, controlling their law, and creating at its
own pleasure an unfailingly bright phantasmagoria.
Some here may, others may not, have apprehended the distinctions
between our five cases. The first two are due to the sensory apparatus,
its optical laws of continued impression and complementary colour.
In the latter three, mind intervenes. The enlarged size of the moon
occurs through rapid comparison, the fiery lights in a dark room
through instinctive apprehension, both influences of mind on the
sensory system. The fifth and most interesting of all is no bad
example of interference between moral and material law. The will truly
causative (you may remark) overrules the natural process of physical
impression, alters it, and creates a designed effect. I wish I could
induce my young friends to devise a number of experiments on similar
mixed cases, and, having tried them, to dissect out their real laws.
These sharpenings of the critical faculty are exceedingly useful--they
cultivate clearness; and most people know that two-thirds among our
mistakes in life are caused by confusion of thought.
Besides all other uses, such lessons teach at once the necessity, as
we said before, of observing your own observations. And as, first, the
real witness of every observation is our mind; every fact[168] which
comes through our bodily senses being to us a mental impression, it
seems but common sense to hear above all things what mind has to say
for and about itself. Then, secondly, where would be the benefit
derived from our observations, if we could not reason upon them,
or could place no confidence in our own reasonings? Yet the art of
reasoning is so purely a mental process, that it can be represented by
symbols as abstract and free from material meaning as if they were bare
algebraic signs. Thirdly, in the most accurate of sciences mind extends
our knowledge far beyond the circle of observation, and gives us
axiomatic assurance of its own accuracy. Who ever saw, or ever can see,
all straight lines in all conceivable positions, yet who doubts that
throughout the whole universe no two straight lines ever did inclose or
can inclose a space? And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference
to any of us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral
nature, and what is the value of that evidence, and the laws deducible
therefrom? How true it thus appears that "know thyself" lies at the
root of all knowledge, and that the man who receives no witness from
within can know nothing as he ought to know it!
Comte swept away all these and the like considerations by a neat little
fiction of his own. We cannot observe ourselves observing, he said, we
cannot observe ourselves reasoning. So, then, logic becomes a chimera,
and psychology a word of contempt. Respecting this fallacy, Mr. Mill
thinks the only wonder is that it should impose on any one. Clearly
it imposed on Comte himself. But, "what organon," asks Mill, "for
the study of our moral and intellectual functions does M. Comte offer
in lieu of the direct mental observation which he repudiates? We are
almost ashamed to say it is phrenology!" Mill regards this statement
as a _reductio ad absurdum_, but the actual organon substituted is
more absurd still. Comte's phrenology was not the phrenology of Gall
or Spurzheim, but a funny small bantling of his own, a sort of "infant
phenomenon," called into existence not without a Positive purpose. In
plain words, mind was no longer to give evidence respecting itself. We
must study its laws in brain. How any true correspondence of brain and
mind could be known unless both were studied, does not appear. Comte
overlooked the question in his anxiety to substitute for psychology and
its laws a bodily function and _its_ laws. Yet his motive appears to
have been excellent! He regarded this dwarfed superficial phrenology,
Mr. Mill tells us, "as extricating the mental study of man from the
metaphysical stage, and elevating it to the positive." The chief gist
of which sentence, bewildering to the uninitiated, opens up the very
core and centre of the Positive system--a subject for dissection of
some considerable human interest.
Each science is brought into the positive stage when it is co-ordinated
according to positive laws--"systematized," Comte would say. He has
a perfect mania for systematization; system is with him almost an
equivalent for truth. Of course, the real value of every system turns
entirely on its co-ordinating method, or principle of formation; and
Comte's, we see, was one of positive laws. The nature of these laws is,
therefore, the essence and turning-point of the whole matter. I cannot
impress upon you too strongly the paramount importance of keeping this
truth steadily in view.
But if any one inquires exactly what these laws are, he asks, I fear,
a puzzling question. Puzzling, for this reason that, say what one
will--employ any words, however carefully selected--one may become
liable to the charge of raising a false impression. Positivist _savans_
themselves do not use any uniform phraseology, and many phrases they
do use are necessarily derived from philosophies most disedifying to
Positive ears.
Examples showing what sort of law is really meant are therefore always
welcome; and few could be more instructive than this way of making
mind Positive. Comte did not falter in his purpose. Later on he
explained the necessity (for his system, you understand) of bringing
our intellectual and moral phenomena under the same law with other
phenomena of animal life; and reduced them, not to brain action pure
and simple, but to cerebral functions, controlled by the viscera and
vegetative movements of our bodily existence.
Let us look at the meaning of all this. Soul used to be conceived of
as different in _kind_ from body. The brain, the nervous system, the
body, were its organs, allies, machines. Sometimes they, especially the
instruments through which the soul more immediately works, exercised
reaction on their sovereign employer; they impeded or suspended her
functions, and troubled her serenity. But though they might cloud the
manifestation, they could not destroy the essence of a living soul.
What they did was temporal and transitory; but they shall pass away and
be dissolved, while soul will endure for ever.
The word mind has been much used to signify soul, as acting in and
through body. There is, however, some vagueness in its employment. Yet
we constantly speak of the laws of mind, because soul is in this life
the partner of body; and therefore known to us as mind, and _as_ mind
is studied through its laws. One psychological task has always been to
separate the pure activity of soul from the mixed workings of mind, by
examination and cross-examination of our internal consciousness.
You will now easily understand how vast the change Comte intended by
his physiological organon for the study of our moral and intellectual
functions. You will see what is meant by elevating mental science
to the Positive stage, and systematizing it under laws which people
may variously describe as phenomenal, mechanical, or material;
adjectives all roughly used to express the same general idea. What we
took for a spiritual essence is only a developed animal nature, the
difference between men and beasts of the field is not one of _kind_,
but of degree. ManKIND is a misnomer. Humanity is (as Comte thought)
a higher degree of animality. We have no right to suppose a personal
immortality. Man may be said to live after death in the memory of his
fellow-men, but the truly Positive philosopher believes in no other
deathless existence. What we really can see and investigate is a vast
moving mechanism, _our_ universe. Beyond this all knowledge is a blank.
We know of nothing which set this mechanism in motion; it may have
moved from all eternity; it may go on moving everlastingly; or it may
wear itself out. Philosophy can teach us no more than distinctions
and degrees in the phenomenal law which pervades and rules a universe
without a God.
Yet Comte said that he was no Atheist. He even denounced Atheism, and
declared it as bad as theology. He did not wish to deny, only to ignore
God. Neither did he desire to appear ungrateful; (pardon words which
sound in your ears profanity;) God was a really useful hypothesis once;
in the days when men had recently issued from their primæval forests.
Thanking the Deity for His provisional services, Comte courteously
dismissed Him from His throne.
All this will have seemed to you a most monstrous tissue of negations.
But Comte held it to be a code of Positive faith; a faith firmly
grounded on the self-sufficingness of human nature, read according to
his version of course--void of belief in a personality which survives
the grave, without knowledge of, trust in, or prayer to God. The
blessings of this advanced faith he desired to extend far and wide.
At the present moment his desire is realizing itself; for the like
attitude of thought has become a favourite position among the _savans_
of our Western world. When it penetrates the more active classes, we
shall discern it easily by its _fruits_! what those fruits will be, is
a question for statesmen and for us all.
The chief hindrance opposing its spread amongst unsophisticated minds
has been a point much dwelt upon of old by Plato, and by Cicero after
him. It is the protest which that irrepressible entity called soul
perseveres in alleging. We are all apt to shrink from the picture of
bodily dissolution:
"To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod!"
But what if the "delighted spirit" has been developed by brain, and
with brain must be dissolved? Our whole distinctive human life,
our mind, moral, intellectual, spiritual, rebels against a doom
of subjection to that crass material law! Yet can we establish a
difference? Can we show that the law of our true being differs from the
law of things outside us?