theory,--with all the emphasis which, in speaking or writing, tone or
italics or capitals can give. We see from what has been said, that when
this is urged, before we can estimate the truth, or the value of the
assertion, we must ask to whom is it a fact? what habits of thought,
what previous information, what ideas does it imply, to conceive the
fact as a fact? Does not the apprehension of the fact imply assumptions
which may with equal justice be called theory, and which are perhaps
false theory? in which case the fact is no fact. Did not the ancients
assert it as a fact, that the earth stood still, and the stars moved?
and can any fact have stronger apparent evidence to justify persons in
asserting it emphatically than this had?"--_Whewell's Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences_, 2nd ed., vol. i., p. 42, _seq._
That the solidity of figures is in truth given by mental judgment, has
been often proved experimentally; see for examples, Huxley's Elementary
Physiology, Lesson x., 13-16. The experiment with a coin, lens and pin,
p. 259, is easy as well as conclusive, but Wheatstone's Pseudoscope
more surprising to most observers. Compare on this curious subject
Brewster's Natural Magic, Letter v.
[169] It is important to bear in mind that, from an admitted
incompetency of our faculties to _know_ the absolute, we cannot infer
an impossibility of knowing its _existence_. To know that a thing _is_,
and to know _what_ it is, are two totally distinct degrees and sorts of
knowledge. The moment this distinction is stated, every one sees its
truth; but many persons omit stating it to themselves when they reason
upon these difficult subjects.
Ravaisson, after giving a brief account of Herbert Spencer's opinion,
goes on to say: "Comment il y a, au fond de toute connaissance, un
absolu, auquel correspond, comme son opposé, le relatif, c'est ce
qu'établissait, il y a plus de vingt siècles, contre une doctrine
déjà régnante alors de relativité et de mobilité universelles, la
dialectique platonicienne, qui fraya le chemin à la metaphysique.
Elle faisait plus: elle montrait que par cet absolu seul les relations
sont intelligibles, parce qu'il est la mesure par laquelle seule
nous les estimons. La métaphysique, entre les mains de son immortel
fondateur, fit davantage encore: elle montra que cet absolu, par lequel
l'intelligence mesure le relatif, est l'intelligence même. C'est ce
que redisait Leibniz, lorsque, à cette assertion, renouvelée de la
scolastique par Locke, qu'il n'était rien dans l'intelligence qui
d'abord n'eût été dans le sens, il répondait: "sauf l'intelligence,"
et que, avec Aristote, il montrait dans l'intelligence la mesure
supérieure du sens."--_Rapport_, p. 66.
Ravaisson then gives interesting extracts from Sophie St. Germain, and
proceeds to show how Comte, without admitting any self-contemplating
intelligence, and thus inferring the possibility of an Absolute,
did in fact pursue the idea of Unity, and extended this idea to the
universe,--a principle which, if fully grasped, must be fatal to
Positive views. "D'accord maintenant avec Platon, Aristote, Leibniz,
il déclarait que l'ensemble étant le resultat et l'expression
d'une certaine unité, à laquelle tout concourt et se co-ordonne
et qui est le but où tout marche, c'est dans cette unité, c'est
dans le but, c'est dans la fin ou cause finale qu'est le secret de
l'organisme."--_Rapport_, p. 76.
A special interest attaches to the work of Ravaisson as an
authoritative French rating of the philosophic exchange between England
and France. It is almost unnecessary to refer for a less abstract
account of these relations to the widely known writings of M. Taine.
[170] It should have been stated in the text, as it was in the
delivered lecture, that these questions were not forgotten by the
eminent Professor. The passages referred to will be found in his
eloquent address on the "Scientific use of the Imagination," p. 47,
_seq._, or in his volume of collected Essays, p. 163, _seq._ The reader
may observe that, both in Professor Tyndall's pages and two sentences
back in this lecture, Development is spoken of as a process or law in
operation. The various kinds of philosophy which may be engrafted on
such a law are severally determined by whatever reply is given to the
questions above suggested. It would seem inappropriate here to state
the possible relations between a law of development and such consequent
(or inconsequent) philosophies. Those who wish to consider them the
writer may refer to his little volume entitled "Right and Wrong," for a
brief discussion of this subject, and more particularly for the results
to natural theology.
The following German sketch of an evolution-philosophy may not be
without interest:--"Vermöge einer ewigen Kreisbewegung entstehen als
Verdichtungen der Luft unzählige Welten, himmlische Gottheiten, in
deren Mittelpunkt die cylinderförmige Erde ruht, unbewegt wegen des
gleichen Abstandes von allen Punkten der Himmelskugel. Die Erde hat
sich aus einem unsprünglich flüssigen Zustande gebildet. Aus dem
Feuchten sind unter dem Einfluss der Wärme in stufenweise Entwickelung
die lebenden Wesen hervorgegangen. Auch die Landthiere waren anfangs
fischartig und haben erst mit der Abtrocknung der Erdoberfläche ihre
jetzige Gestalt gewonnen. Die Seele soll Anaximander als luftartig
bezeichnet haben."
Anaximander of Miletus was born about B.C. 610. Consequently he ranks
early among European theorizers on development. The extract is from
Ueberweg's Grundriss, t. 1, p. 40. Cf. Plutarch de Placit. v. 19, and
Sympos viii. qu. 8, with Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 8.
[171] The sight of a dualism apparently insoluble never fails to
suggest some such questions as these: Was it always so? will it be so
always? and were I at the centre of the universe, should I see it so
now?
There are three possible ways of conceiving otherwise: 1, by reducing
mind to matter; 2, by reducing matter to mind; 3, by comprehending both
under a higher unity.
We need only write down these issues for common sense to perceive that
Nos. 1 and 2 arise from, and end in one-sided speculation. A man who
lives shut up amongst machinery is apt to think of his own mind as a
machine. Great chemists have ere now taken the human stomach for a
laboratory, and were slow in awakening to those physiological facts
which put the vital processes of assimilation in a nobler and truer
light. Comte began by reducing all sciences to mathematical elements.
Afterwards he discovered that to explain a higher order of things by a
lower is the essence of materialism.
To a meditative spirit, the inner world is nearer than the outer;
and therefore the evidence of its reality is stronger by wanting the
weakness of a second link. But active life brings home to us the
existence of both; we suffer by defying or neglecting the laws of
either; and pain and sorrow are often the advanced guard of much stern
unyielding truth. In a world where we all endure the friction of things
external, it is hard not to believe in objective as well subjective
realities.
The truth is, that the primary question belongs to the practical
reason, and can be settled by no other criterion. There is a
philosophical maxim that we can never speak of the Divine univocally,
but only by analogy, figure, or similitude; the cause being that all
attributes belonging to the Infinite require words which, if taken
literally, must land us in self-contradiction. How vivid an idea do
we gain of Omniscience or Omnipotence by saying that it is "a circle
of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere." And
what signifies the obvious inconsistency? Deny the Infinite, try to
find a place for its centre or circumference, and the inconsistency
remains, together with a host of absurd consequences. When of two
hypotheses both cannot, but one must be true, and either position lands
us in logical inconsistency, it is easy to see that our theoretical
understanding will never clear up the inexplicable issue. A rule
by which we live and act becomes the surest touchstone of truth or
falsehood.
Let us see whether the two worlds in which we live can be practically
treated as one. Suppose a bivouac into which a shell descends, certain
in another moment, by physical law, to explode. Is the moral law--the
effort of this man or that man to escape--equally certain? Arguing
abstractedly, most people would hold it so, yet we know that the fact
lies otherwise. There is a fatalism among soldiers--"every bullet has
its billet"--as there is among nurses who believe that every epidemic
must kill its destined prey. One may have trained himself to wish for
death, another is indifferent, a third so undecided that he leaves the
event to a doctrine of chances, a fourth is simply capricious. Each by
a course of life and action has made or modified his present moment for
choice, and any one may or may not draw back from the coming peril. Had
the falling shell been a splash from a carriage wheel, every man would
have shrunk from it. The latter risk is too simple for human ponderings
or human self-direction, and in such cases people act by a proximate
straightforward instinct.
But on what principles must he who shrinks from either risk really
proceed? He is sure that his own movements are in his own power and
contingent. He is equally sure that the movements of shell or mud are
absolutely determined in calculable curves, and not at all contingent.
Acting on these two conjoint data, he succeeds in avoiding death or
dirt; and, whatever theorists may write, he would have perilled his
success by acting otherwise. Nay, what is much to our purpose, all
theoretical men would themselves act upon the like assumption in all
cases of practical consequence and emergency.
Suppose dualism banished from the world in fact as well as in theory,
the problems of education ought to be as demonstrable as those of
geometry or chemical experiment. The paths of men and of comets being
equally calculable, because equally subject to uniform law, how
comes it that biography and history abound in the records of grossly
falsified predictions? Let the courses of nations be tabulated, and
statesmanship is made easy. We must owe it to some egregious oversight
that criminal punishments are not invariably deterrent. Perhaps the law
of the strongest motive has been neglected; if so, re-enact the code of
Draco, and virtue will become universal. Till then the supposition must
continue only an unverified hypothesis.
If we go back to our starting-point, and ask, can the practical dualism
be reduced to a higher unity? our answer must confess a present
condition of ignorance. We are so far from knowing what constitutes
the thing we call matter, or what the entity we feel within us--our
soul or mind--really is, that we cannot tell how they act and react on
each other. We fail in tracing our own sensations from their outward
antecedents to their impression on our consciousness; and, _vice
versâ_, we cannot follow our energies from the springs of our volitions
outward. While thus baffled, the longed-for unity floats before our
inward eye like a dim vision of that intuitive faculty which pronounces
subject and object to be ultimately identical, or as a revelation of
that religious faith which accepts the incomprehensible, and reposes in
the bosom of God.
[172] Since Comte's time it has been shown that mental development is
no very difficult process, _provided_ we assume that several principles
which consciousness distinguishes and sometimes places in antagonism,
may be treated as equivalents, and be resolved into each other
interchangeably. For example, we have been apt to reverence those who
suffered the loss of all things rather than accept the Expedient as the
Right, and who died resolute in disallowing the rule of policy to be
pleaded _in foro conscientiæ_. We have also in common parlance asserted
a distinction between these two principles, while holding that the one
claims the other for its assured attendant. Honesty, we said, is the
best policy; and we never meant thereby that thorough policy is the
best policy. What we did mean was that a regard to expediency fails of
the success which a straightforward observance of right deserves, and
will at last obtain. But to make mental development easy, antitheses
must appear fluent, the noble be convertible with the useful, the
human with the merely animal. Thus, when Comte adored Clotilde, and
Dante immortalized Beatrice, they rehearsed for a millionth time the
loves of preadamite plants. Coleridge used to maintain that the test
of a philosophy was its ultimate coincidence with common sense. In
the theories under consideration, right is philosophically resolved
into the greater happiness of the greater number, and this equivalent
exactly coincides with the common sense of starving thinkers who are
possessed by a fixed idea that the happiness of the impoverished many
is promoted by an opportune pillage of the wealthy few.
It is less easy to verify mental development than to theorize upon
it, yet verification may not be impossible! If disbelief in a future
life, denial of responsibility, duty, and morality, as opposed to
expediency, make sufficient way in the world, and if practice harmonize
with speculation, progress may become more evidently regress, and Man
be proved a brute animal at last. The promising events in France are
patent to every one; a less known, but still more encouraging fact,
which we learn on scientific authority, is that certain Basuto tribes
have lately adopted the (to them) novel custom of cannibalism.
Pending the hoped-for verification, if an identity of human with
animal nature be accepted as provisionally true, it may be as well
to anticipate a few of its logical consequences. Eating the flesh of
our instinctive congeners ought positively to be discountenanced;
or, as men and women are simply animal, all carnivorous human beings
should on compulsion become cannibals. Despotism being the form of
government adopted by us with general applause, as regards the animal
kingdom, it cannot be too soon transferred to our own mismanaged
nationalities. In a word, our practices in reference to men, women,
beasts, fishes, birds, and reptiles, ought to be made uniform. Above
all, the new school-boards should be charged with the education of our
poor relations, and the linguistic professors of Oxford and Cambridge
be instructed to use every effort for the promotion of a universal
language. Charity may be thought by some to begin at home, therefore
a commencement may be made with the domesticated irrationals, finches
spaniels, cats, hackneys, sheep, mules, all asses, all pigs, and
all monkey favourites. It is just possible that volatile creatures
unaccustomed to habits of reflection (some tribes of light-minded
birds, for example) may find abstract ideas and declarative sentences
a little difficult. Yet, after all, it need not be such a long step in
the case of contemplative owls; and we may then apply the old proverb,
"Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte." At all events, the "Simious
process," so successful in our world of fashion, will be likely to
suffice with every well-disposed chimpanzee; the circle of knowledge
will continually widen until the world of animals becomes identified
with the world of man. Then, but not till then, the astonished
psychologist may cease his useless labours, and record the inauguration
of a new era by acknowledging
"Omnia jam fient fieri quæ posse negabam;"
or, still more conclusively,
"Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything, and everything is nought."
ON SCIENCE AND REVELATION.
[173] In an answer to this lecture by "Julian," it is replied that
"Belief is the easiest thing possible for weak and ignorant minds."
But Julian by belief means _acquiescence_; and every church-goer is
aware that the worthlessness of mere acquiescence is constantly being
urged upon them from the pulpit. It holds the same relation to faith
that respectability--_i.e._, acquiescence in the ordinary standard
of morality--holds to holiness. The subject is too difficult to be
discussed adequately in a note; but in my first Bampton Lecture I have
shown how belief, though gained by a struggle, is equally possible for
the unlearned and the learned, but in every case it has to be won by an
effort (Mal. xi. 12).
[174] "Julian" asserts that there ought not to be any difficulty.
"There ought not to be the least shadow of doubt whether a given book
is from God or not" (p. 5): "If the handwriting of Jehovah in the
Scriptures be doubtful, it cannot be divine." But, as Bishop Butler
has shown in his "Analogy," there are no difficulties, as regards
Revelation, different in kind from those which we daily encounter
in common life. "Julian's" easy assertions involve a tremendous
difficulty; for what he virtually affirms is that God ought to have
acted, in matters of religion, in an entirely different way from that
in which He has acted in the ordinary constitution of this world. The
whole question turns upon something quite as much out of "Julian's"
depth as it is out of mine; namely, what was God's purpose in creating
man. By the study of "the constitution and course of nature," and of
what is said in Holy Scripture, I arrive at the conclusion that God
has, for some wise purpose, been pleased to place man here in a state
of discipline. Such a state implies the existence of difficulties;
the greatness and degree of these difficulties we can know solely by
experience, being able only to guess at the reasons which have made
a state of probation necessary for us. But the difficulties must not
be insuperable; for if they were, then this present state would be a
discipline no longer.
[175] Mr. Darwin, in his "Descent of Man" (i. 201-206), enumerates the
several stages through which man is supposed to have passed, of which
the first stage is an imaginary "group of animals, resembling in many
respects the larvæ of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two
great branches--the one retrograding in development, and producing the
present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the Vertebrata." He
further describes these Ascidians as "hardly appearing like animals,
and consisting of a simple, tough, leathery sack, with two small
projecting orifices." I must own that in Mr. Darwin's book I can find
no proof either of the degradation of the present race of Ascidians
or of the development of their cousins, whom Mr. Darwin has summoned
into existence to serve his purpose, into apes. The work is full of
interesting facts and ingenious speculations, but the speculations can
scarcely be said to have consistency enough to merit the name even of a
theory.
[176] If this struggle existed, it seems unaccountable that we do
not find creatures in every stage of evolution. We must suppose that
these Ascidian larvæ existed by millions--at all events, many thousand
species of animals exist, all according to this theory, evolved from
them; and, as many have failed and become our present Ascidians, and
others were content to remain as they were, the number of possible
starters in this race must have been vast. Reasonably, then, we should
expect to find creatures in every stage of progress, and at the head
numbers pressing closely on man. Instead of this, we find an empty
space between each several order, and that between man and the animal
second in the race is enormous. "The difference between the mind of the
lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense" (Darwin, i. 104).
[177] A monkey must walk, and does so quite as frequently as man,
but he walks very ill. "The gorilla runs with a sidelong shambling
gait, but more commonly progresses by resting on its bent hands. The
long-armed apes occasionally use their arms like crutches: ... yet they
move awkwardly, and much less securely than man" (Darwin, i. 143). Now
the theory of revolution would require that, before men and monkeys
separated from some common ancestor, their configuration was the same.
How and when did the hands become feet, or, _vice versâ_, the feet
hands?
[178] I do not think that "Julian" can have observed this note. For he
retorts upon me that dogs, monkeys, and jackdaws have a conscience,
and that what I deduce from it as regards men, would justify a similar
conclusion as regards cats and dogs. But I had already pointed out that
whatever appearance of the higher moral qualities is to be observed
in animals is apparently the result of contact with man. It is part
of the present constitution of things that certain animals have been
domesticated, and over these the "dominion" given to man (Gen. i. 28)
is very large. I cannot see how any animal could be domesticated
if it were quite incapable of quasi-moral qualities. I see then no
difficulty in a domestic animal having a sort of conscience: without it
a dog could scarcely be faithful. And note, too, that this rudimentary
conscience in a dog implies responsibility in it quite as much as man's
more perfect conscience does in man. The dog's responsibility is to
his master; to whom is his master responsible? Still, as regards these
rudiments of conscience, I cannot see any real proof for more than a
very curious influence of man's qualities upon those of animals brought
into contact with him. With Mr. Darwin (i. 89) I hold that "man only
can with certainty be ranked as a moral being;" and that as regards
conscience "man differs profoundly from the lower animals" (_ib._) I do
not hold, however, as "Julian" imagines, that conscience is an unerring
guide. The exact contrary is implied in Matt. vi. 23. Conscience needs
more than itself to guide men aright.
[179] "Julian" considers that I must be "one of those who believe a
stop occurs in the middle of the second verse of Gen. i., which severs
the preadamite world from the world as it now is." I answer that I am
one of those who know a little Hebrew, and I am therefore aware that
the verb rendered _was_ in verse 2 is not a copula, but means continued
existence. As regards the geologic notions ascribed to me by "Julian,"
I can only express my regret that scientific men should persist in
ascribing to theologians mere nonsense. Nothing is easier than to slay
men of straw, but is it worth the trouble? I would recommend him to
read a discussion upon the Mosaic record in the last chapter of [Mr.
Capes'] "Reasons of Returning to the Church of England." He would then
see that the opinions of theologians are not so puerile as he supposes.
ON MIRACLES.
[180] The publishers have asked me whether I have any remarks to make
on "Julian's" Reply. A few lines will be sufficient for all I have to
say.
"Julian" quotes (page 16) a sentence within inverted commas, as mine,
which the reader will in vain search for in my Lecture.
He, on page 17, attributes to me, for the purpose of exciting ridicule,
a statement which I never dreamed of making. Yet he adds: "The words
are Dr. Stoughton's, and you may read them for sixpence."
He concedes the point maintained in the first twenty-six pages of my
Lecture, by remarking: "We do not say that miracles are improbable or
impossible."
Although I distinctly explain that my argument in the remainder of
the Lecture is confined to the miracles ascribed to Christ, "Julian"
simply indulges in an attack on the authenticity and genuineness of the
Pentateuch. He concludes by saying: "The New Testament stands on no
better foundation, although we need not enter on that question now."
Most people will think this was the very question on which "Julian"
ought to have entered, in answer to a Lecture on "The Miraculous
Evidences of Christianity."
* * * * *
Exception has been taken to what I have said respecting remarkable
coincidences between natural events and historical facts (p. 200). Some
of my remarks, as the foot-note indicates, were suggested by one of the
most thoughtful of modern Continental divines. I therefore subjoin the
following passage:--