MEMORANDA FOR WOULD-BE MATERIALISTS
The objection which it has been found necessary to express concerning
Materialism as a complete system is based not on its assertions, but on
its negations. In so far as it makes positive assertions, embodying the
results of scientific discovery and even of scientific speculation
based thereupon, there is no fault to find with it; but when, on the
strength of that, it sets up to be a philosophy of the universe—all
inclusive, therefore, and shutting out a number of truths otherwise
perceived, or which appeal to other faculties, or which are equally
true and are not really contradictory of legitimately materialistic
statements—then it is that its insufficiency and narrowness have to be
displayed.
It will be probably instructive, and it may be sufficient, if I show
that two great leaders in scientific thought (one the greatest of all
men of science who have yet lived), though well aware of much that
could be said positively on the materialistic side, and very willing to
admit or even to extend the province of science or exact knowledge to
the uttermost, yet were very far from being philosophic Materialists or
from imagining that other modes of regarding the universe were thereby
excluded.
Great leaders of thought, in fact, are not accustomed to take a narrow
view of existence, or to suppose that one mode of regarding it, or one
set of formulæ expressing it, can possibly be sufficient and complete.
Even a sheet of paper has two sides: a terrestrial globe presents
different aspects from different points of view; a crystal has a
variety of facets; and the totality of existence is not likely to be
more simple than any of these—is not likely to be readily expressible
in any form of words, or to be thoroughly conceivable by any human
mind.
It may be well to remember that Sir Isaac Newton was a Theist of the
most pronounced and thorough conviction, although he had a great deal
to do with the reduction of the major Cosmos to mechanics, _i.e._ with
its explanation by the elaborated machinery of simple forces; and he
conceived it possible that, in the progress of science, this process of
reduction to mechanics would continue till it embraced nearly all
phenomena. (See extract below.) That, indeed, has been the effort of
science ever since, and therein lies the legitimate basis for
materialistic statements, though not for a materialistic philosophy.
The following sound remarks concerning Newton are taken from Huxley's
_Hume_, p. 246:—
"Newton demonstrated all the host of heaven to be but the elements
of a vast mechanism, regulated by the same laws as those which
express the falling of a stone to the ground. There is a passage in
the preface to the first edition of the _Principia_, which shows
that Newton was penetrated, as completely as Descartes, with the
belief that all the phenomena of nature are expressible in terms of
matter and motion:—
"'WOULD THAT THE REST OF THE PHENOMENA OF NATURE COULD BE DEDUCED
BY A LIKE KIND OF REASONING FROM MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES. FOR MANY
CIRCUMSTANCES LEAD ME TO SUSPECT THAT ALL THESE PHENOMENA MAY
DEPEND UPON CERTAIN FORCES, IN VIRTUE OF WHICH THE PARTICLES OF
BODIES, BY CAUSES NOT YET KNOWN, ARE EITHER MUTUALLY IMPELLED
AGAINST ONE ANOTHER, AND COHERE INTO REGULAR FIGURES, OR REPEL AND
RECEDE FROM ONE ANOTHER; WHICH FORCES BEING UNKNOWN, PHILOSOPHERS
HAVE AS YET EXPLORED NATURE IN VAIN. BUT I HOPE THAT, EITHER BY
THIS METHOD OF PHILOSOPHISING, OR BY SOME OTHER AND BETTER, THE
PRINCIPLES HERE LAID DOWN MAY THROW SOME LIGHT UPON THE MATTER.'"
Here is a full-blown anticipation of an intelligible exposition of the
Universe in terms of matter and force: the substantial basis of what
smaller men call materialism and develop into what they consider to be
a materialistic philosophy. But there is no necessity for anything of
the kind; a systematic expression of facts in terms of one of their
aspects does not exclude expression in terms of other and totally
different aspects also. Denial of all sides but one, is a poor kind of
unification. Denial of this sort is the weakness and delusion of the
people who call themselves 'Christian Scientists': they have hold of
one side of truth—and that should be granted them,—but they hold it
in so narrow and insecure a fashion that, in self-defence, they think
it safest strenuously to deny the existence of all other sides. In this
futile enterprise they are imitating the attitude of the philosophic
Materialists, on the other side of the controversy.
And then, again, Professor Huxley himself, who is commonly spoken of by
half-informed people as if he were a philosophic materialist, was
really nothing of the kind; for although, like Newton, fully imbued
with the mechanical doctrine, and, of course, far better informed
concerning the biological departments of Nature and the discoveries
which have in the last century been made, and though he rightly
regarded it as his mission to make the scientific point of view clear
to his benighted contemporaries, and was full of enthusiasm for the
facts on which materialists take their stand, he saw clearly that these
alone were insufficient for a philosophy. The following extracts from
the 'Hume' volume will show, first, that he entirely repudiated
materialism as a satisfactory or complete scheme of things; and,
secondly, that he profoundly disagreed with the position which now
appears to be occupied by Professor Haeckel. Especially is he severe on
gratuitous denials applied to provinces beyond our scope, saying:—
"that while it is the summit of human wisdom to learn the limit of
our faculties, it may be wise to recollect that we have no more
right to make denials, than to put forth affirmatives, about what
lies beyond that limit. Whether either mind or matter has a
'substance' or not is a problem which we are incompetent to
discuss; and it is just as likely that the common notions upon the
subject should be correct as any others.... 'The same principles
which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain
point, bring men back to common sense'" (p. 282).
And on p. 286 he speaks concerning "substance"—that substance which
constitutes the foundation of Haeckel's philosophy—almost as if he
were purposely confuting that rather fly-blown production:—
"Thus, if any man think he has reason to believe that the
'_substance_' of matter, to the existence of which no limit can be
set either in time or space, is the infinite and eternal substratum
of all actual and possible existences, which is the doctrine of
philosophical materialism, as I understand it, I have no objection
to his holding that doctrine; and I fail to comprehend how it can
have the slightest influence upon any ethical or religious views he
may please to hold....
"Moreover, the ultimate forms of existence which we distinguish in
our little speck of the universe are, possibly, only two out of
infinite varieties of existence, not only analogous to matter and
analogous to mind, but of kinds which we are not competent so much
as to conceive—in the midst of which, indeed, we might be set
down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a
flower-pot, on a London balcony, has of the life of the great city.
"That which I do very strongly object to is the habit, which a
great many non-philosophical materialists unfortunately fall into,
of forgetting all these very obvious considerations. They talk as
if the proof that the 'substance of matter' was the 'substance' of
all things cleared up all the mysteries of existence. In point of
fact, it leaves them exactly where they were.... Your religious and
ethical difficulties are just as great as mine. The speculative
game is drawn—let us get to practical work" (p. 286).
And again on pp. 251 and 279:—
"It is worth any amount of trouble to ... know by one's own
knowledge the great truth ... that the honest and rigorous
following up of the argument which leads us to 'materialism'
inevitably carries us beyond it" (p. 251).
"To sum up. If the materialist affirms that the universe and all
its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, Berkeley
replies, True; but what you call matter and motion are known to us
only as forms of consciousness; their being is to be conceived or
known; and the existence of a state of consciousness, apart from a
thinking mind, is a contradiction in terms.
"I conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. And, therefore, if
I were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute
idealism, I should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative"
(p. 279).
Let the jubilant but uninstructed and comparatively ignorant amateur
materialist therefore beware, and bethink himself twice or even thrice
before he conceives that he understands the universe and is competent
to pour scorn upon the intuitions and perceptions of great men in what
may be to him alien regions of thought and experience.
Let him explain, if he can, what he means by his own identity, or the
identity of any thinking or living being, which at different times
consists of a totally different set of material particles. Something
there clearly is which confers personal identity and constitutes an
individual: it is a property characteristic of every form of life,
even the humblest; but it is not yet explained or understood, and it
is no answer to assert gratuitously that there is some fundamental
"substance" or material basis on which that identity depends, any more
than it is an explanation to say that it depends upon a "soul." These
are all forms of words. As Hume says, quoted by Huxley with approval in
the work already cited, p. 194:—
"It is impossible to attach any definite meaning to the word
'substance,' when employed for the hypothetical substratum of soul
and matter.... If it be said that our personal identity requires
the assumption of a substance which remains the same while the
accidents of perception shift and change, the question arises what
is meant by personal identity?... A plant or an animal, in the
course of its existence, from the condition of an egg or seed to
the end of life, remains the same neither in form, nor in
structure, nor in the matter of which it is composed: every
attribute it possesses is constantly changing, and yet we say that
it is always one and the same individual" (p. 194).
And in his own preface to the 'Hume' volume Huxley expresses himself
forcibly thus,—equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible
friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what he considered
the straight path:—
"That which it may be well for us not to forget is, that the
first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker [Socrates]
was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but
was brought about by eloquent demagogues.... Clear knowledge of
what one does not know just as important as knowing what one does
know....
"The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range,
from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the
working out, in this province, of the resolution to 'take nothing
for truth without clear knowledge that it is such'; to consider all
beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as
neither greater nor less, than as much as it can prove itself to be
worth. The modern spirit is not the spirit 'which always denies,'
delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds
castles in the air rather than not construct; it is that spirit
which works and will work 'without haste and without rest,'
gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its barns, and
devouring error with unquenchable fire" (p. viii.).
The harvesting of truth is a safe enough enterprise, but the devouring
of error is a more dangerous pastime, since flames are liable to spread
beyond our control; and though, in a world overgrown with weeds and
refuse, the cleansing influence of fire is a necessity, it would be
cruel to apply the same agency again at a later stage, when a fresh
young crop is springing up in the cleared ground.