the Real is, he denies that we know _what_ it is. In other words, he
accepts the validity of one half of every act of experience and denies
the validity of the other half. Our analysis of experience has shown us
that we apprehend the real, in the very act of apprehension, as being
both a state of our consciousness and something more than that state. To
say that one half of the apprehension is a misapprehension is to say
that both are invalid. If what is present in consciousness is merely
appearance and not the real thing, then our states are the only things
of which we are conscious, and the existence of anything more is not a
fact of experience and observation--still less can it have the highest
validity of any of our beliefs.
We may be asked, "Granted that the Real is more than a state of our
consciousness, what more is it?" and, if no answer is forthcoming, we
may be told that after all then, it seems, we know _that_ the Real is,
but not _what_ it is. The reply is: So far as the Real is out of
consciousness we may not know what it is; as far as it is in, we do. By
"being conscious of a thing" we mean knowing what the thing is--not
necessarily complete knowledge, but some.
If it be said that, on our own showing, a thing and the knowledge of it
are different, and that consequently however great our knowledge may
become there always remains, and must always remain, something which we
cannot know, because it is _ex hypothesi_, not knowledge, we must reply
that this objection is but a restatement of the inveterate fallacy of
idealism--the fallacy that states of consciousness are the only things
we can be conscious of; that if we know a thing the thing ceases to be
anything but our knowledge of it; that to be conscious of performing an
action is proof that no action is really performed, and that the only
doing is knowing.
We act, and we know that we act. Reality must be accorded to both or
denied to both; it cannot be accorded to one and denied to the other.
Indeed, knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But it is also
something more, just as an action of which we are conscious is something
more than our consciousness of it.
But we are conscious not only of our own actions, but of the reactions
of things on us, and of the interactions of things on one another. We
apprehend all three--action, reaction, and interaction--as real; we know
not only _that_ they are, as being realities, but also _what_ they are
as states of consciousness. As states of consciousness they are
successive sensations or perceptions; as more than states of
consciousness they are power or force.
The study which science makes of the interactions of things on one
another reveals those interactions as conformable to law and happening
in such a way that their occurrence can be logically deduced, and even
foretold, from their laws. In a word, they happen in a way that can be
reasoned out, and they constitute together a logical process. The
reality, the power, the activity which is exhibited in this process is
exhibited therefore as a rational activity, as reason active; and both
the reason and the action are apprehended by us as real, and not as mere
states of our consciousness.
If the scientific account of the universe and the theory of evolution,
so far as they are true, are not mere exercises of the imagination, but
represent events and changes which actually have taken place and are
taking place beyond the range of actual observation, it must be because
they are logical inferences from real events and real changes which are
matters of direct observation. If the observed events have no reality,
we have no ground for believing the unobserved or inferred facts to have
any. Unless the real events follow a logical sequence, our inferences
must be fallacious in proportion as they are logical. We believe the
inferred facts to be real because we believe the observed facts to be
real; and the observed facts are presented to us and apprehended by us
to be not merely our sensations but also realities. On no other ground
can we or do we trust science to guide us in life.
Nor do we trust morality on any other ground. So far as we trust the
impulse to do right, or base any calculations upon it or draw any
inferences from it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of
apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness and something more.
As in the impact of a moving body we apprehend not merely our
sensations, but also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse to
good we apprehend not only our consciousness thereof, but the presence
of a real power, with regard to which we know not only that it is, but
to some extent what it is--a power which would have us do good and be
good.
If material things are but ideas of ours, so the Right and Good may be.
If the latter are mere aspirations and nothing more, the former are mere
sensations and nothing more. But if in things we are conscious of a
power not ourselves, so are we in our consciousness of the Right and
Good: our aspirations are inspirations. We apprehend their reality in
exactly the same way as we apprehend the reality of material things--by
direct observation. And we have exactly the same evidence--the evidence
of immediate consciousness.
"Let no man spoil you with philosophy." The statements that "knowledge
is the only reality," "the only Real is the Unknowable," are
contradictory not only of each other, but of those facts in the common
experience of mankind which afford the only safe foundation for
philosophy as well as for science. Both statements logically imply that
our only knowledge is of the unreal; and from knowledge of the unreal to
the unreality of knowledge is a necessary step. But existence is not
merely knowledge: existence is also action. A thing is that which it
does, and not merely that which it is known to do. Or rather a thing
never does anything: only a person can act. The "action" or "behaviour"
of a thing is only a metaphor.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Appendix on Bishop Berkeley's Idealism.
[6] _First Principles_, ch. iii. § 20.
[7] _Ibid._, § 26.
VI.
EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION
Assuming the process of evolution to be a fact, we have inquired what is
the value of that fact, what significance it has for man as a moral
being, anxious to direct his life in accordance with the best lights he
can obtain. In our attempts to draw any inference from the facts of
evolution as to the moral government of the universe, we have always
found ourselves ultimately confronted by the notice--The Real is
Unknowable. Obviously, if "the ultimate of ultimates," the Real Power or
Force, of which all things and beings are manifestations, is unknowable,
we cannot know whether it cares or does not care for what is true or
good. But if the Real is Unknowable, then the knowledge which we do
possess is not knowledge of the real, and consequently all our science
is unreal knowledge; the theory of evolution is a system of delusive
inferences from unreal facts. That, however, is a thing which we could
not believe. Doubtless our knowledge is small compared with our
ignorance. Doubtless there is much which the human mind could not
understand without becoming more than human. Doubtless, also, every
addition to our knowledge involves a readjustment and correction of our
previous inferences; and a considerable addition, such as the theory of
evolution was, causes a considerable change in our conception of the
universe and its laws. But all these admissions cannot compel us to
admit that science is wholly unreal knowledge, or that evolution is an
entirely unreal process. We sought, accordingly, to show that we have
some, if only partial, knowledge of the real, that that knowledge is not
wholly inferential, but that so far as it is inferred it is inferred
from real facts, the reality of which is directly apprehended in the
common experience of mankind.
As a matter of fact, those writers who proclaim the unknowability of the
Real, when they are writing as philosophers, abandon it when they are
engaged in science. When they are working out the theory of evolution,
they take it for granted that the process of evolution is a reality,
that the common experience of mankind is trustworthy to some extent, and
that to that extent the Real is knowable and known. They assure us that,
though the knowledge we have is not knowledge of the Real, it is just
the same for us as if it were--if the Real could enter into our
consciousness, we really should not know the difference. "Thus then we
may resume, with entire confidence, those realistic conceptions which
philosophy at first sight seems to dissipate."[8]
On examination, however, it turns out that the entire confidence which
is thus restored to the reality of material things is not extended to
the reality of those ideals of the good, the beautiful, and the holy
which play their part in the lives of men and in the evolution of
mankind--or not to all of those ideals.
Now, it is scarcely to be hoped that a theory which begins by ignoring
certain facts in the common experience of mankind, or by denying their
reality, can end in a satisfactory explanation of them. Either it will
be consistent and proclaim them to be illusions, or it will be
inconsistent and quietly include them from time to time as it goes
on--in which case the explanation it gives of them will be no
explanation. Thus, for instance, as we have already argued, the
Optimistic interpretation of evolution, professing to exhibit the Ideal
of morality as one of the ultimate consequences of the redistribution of
matter and motion, ends by denying any difference between what is and
what ought to be, and thus reduces the moral ideal to a mere illusion.
The Pessimist, on the other hand, insisting on the reality, and to some
extent the supremacy of the moral ideal, confesses his inability to
explain its validity as being due to evolution: the fact that it has
been evolved does not account for its validity, because the tendency to
evil has been also evolved, but is not, therefore, to be yielded to.
The object of this chapter is to examine the hypothesis that the process
of evolution is nothing but a perpetual redistribution of matter and
motion, and to show that the hypothesis cannot explain, and as a matter
of fact does not explain, all the facts which it is framed to account
for.
The theory of evolution is an attempt--one of many attempts that men
have made--to explain the process by which the totality of things has
come to be what it is. It differs from most other attempts in that it
endeavours to give a scientific explanation of the process, and that
consequently it does not profess to go back to the beginning or to
discover the origin of the process.
The nature of scientific "explanation" is well understood by men of
science (in England, at least), and has been made familiar to the
non-scientific world by John Stuart Mill. An event is scientifically
"explained" when it is shown to be a case of a general law; a law is
"explained" when it is shown to come under some more general law. In
other words, the business of science is to show that the thing under
examination always happens (or tends to happen) under certain
circumstances which science can formulate with more or less exactness.
But _how_ or _why_ the thing should happen thus, science does not
undertake to explain: "what is called explaining one law of nature by
another, is but substituting one mystery for another; and does nothing
to render the general course of nature other than mysterious: we can no
more assign a _why_ for the more extensive laws than for the partial
ones."[9] It is only "minds not habituated to accurate thinking" which
imagine that the laws are the _causes_ of the events which happen in
accordance with them, "that the law of general gravitation, for example,
causes the fall of bodies to the earth."[10] It may be a law of science,
a perfectly true statement, that the phenomenon B always follows the
phenomenon A; but that statement, true as it is, is not the cause of B.
_That_ A is always followed by B is demonstrated by science. _Why_ it
should be followed by B is as mysterious as magic--as mysterious as that
the waving of the magician's wand should be immediately followed by the
rising of a palace from the ground. How the one thing _can_ follow the
other, is no part of science's business to explain.
Science, therefore, is essentially descriptive: with ever-increasing
accuracy it describes things and the order in which they happen.
Evolution, then, as a scientific theory, is also purely descriptive: it
describes the way in which things have come to be what we see them to
be, the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it
is. But when the purely scientific and descriptive part of the work is
done, when science has formulated the order of the events which have led
up to the existing state of the universe, when the process of evolution
has been described, there still remain the questions which science
refused even to try to answer, and there also remain other questions
more vital to science. There arises the question, In what sense is
evolution a real process? do the laws of science exist only in the minds
of men of science? is the process of evolution merely the description
which is given of it (as according to some thinkers a thing is only the
sensations which we have of it), or is it something more?
Obviously the question whether evolution is a real process, whether
there is any reality in science, is one which cannot be answered, either
in the affirmative or in the negative, without some idea of what
"reality" means, of what the "real" is. "What is the meaning of the word
_real_? This is the question which underlies every metaphysical inquiry;
and the neglect of it is the remaining cause of the chronic antagonisms
of metaphysicians."[11] Before we are logically entitled to say that
evolution is a real process, we must answer the question, "What is the
essence, the ultimate reality of things? who or what is the Being that
is manifested in 'all thinking things, all objects of all thought'?"[12]
Now, to these questions, as to the Being and Becoming of the universe,
science has nothing to say. Science does not even afford the materials
for an answer to them, any more than to those other questions as to
_how_ or _why_ things should happen in the way which science describes.
Science describes things, but does not undertake to prove that things
exist. Science is organised common sense, and common sense takes it for
granted that things exist. Having made this assumption, science proceeds
to investigate with scientific exactness the order in which events
succeed one another and co-exist with one another, within the range of
direct observation; and infers that, even when they are beyond the range
of direct observation, they continue to occur in the same order of
sequence and co-existence. But here again science refuses to have
anything to do with any metaphysical questions as to _how_ or _why_
things should thus occur. All sorts of conjectures may be made, and have
been made, to explain why B should follow A, or co-exist with it. But
science is not pledged to any of them. The only thing she undertakes to
show is the fact of the sequence or co-existence; and this she can do
without assuming the truth of any of these conjectures. Indeed, the
progress which science has made is largely due to the fact that she has
steadily declined to have anything to do with such conjectures--having
found out by experience that they simply distract her from her proper
business of observing with the utmost exactness what actually does take
place. It may be that A in some mysterious and wholly inexplicable way
"produces" B, that is to say in technical phraseology, is "the efficient
cause" or "mechanical cause" of B. It may be that the sequence of B upon
A is a volition of the Being which is manifested in all thinking things,
in all objects of all thought. Science cannot prove, and will not even
discuss, either suggestion: she confines herself to the assertion that,
as a matter of careful and exact observation, B does follow A. Whether
we call A an efficient cause or not, matters not to science: call it so
or refuse to call it so, the fact once established by science, that B
follows A, remains. The theory of efficient or mechanical causes is
doubtless of importance, but not to science. If it is proved to be
false, not a single fact of science is shaken.
The mechanical theory may be true or may be false, but in either case it
is a metaphysical theory. If science is descriptive--descriptive of the
uniform succession and co-existence of facts--then science no more
proves the mechanical theory to be true than it proves the volitional
theory to be true. Both are theories as to _why_ facts should succeed
one another in the order described by science; and science does not
undertake to prove the truth of such theories, nor does she wait for
them to be proved or disproved.
Many men of science, however, are also philosophers, and hold, as they
are fully entitled to hold, that the mechanical theory is the true
interpretation of nature. Now, "mechanics is the science of motion; we
can assign as its object: to describe completely and in the simplest
manner the movements which occur in nature."[13] On the mechanical
theory, therefore, "the object of all science is to reduce the phenomena
of nature to forms of motion, and to describe these completely and in
the simplest manner ... the only complete description is that afforded
by a mathematical formula, in which the constants are supplied by
observation. This permits us to calculate those features or phases of
phenomena which are hidden from our observation in space or in
time."[14] This, we need hardly add, is in agreement with Mr. Herbert
Spencer's view of the theory of evolution as a description of the
process of the redistribution of matter and motion.
It seems, then, that according to this particular metaphysical theory,
which maintains the mechanical explanation of nature to be the true one,
the object of all science is to describe (with mathematical accuracy,
where possible) the movements of things in space. But science is
universal; evolution extends to the whole cosmic process. Therefore, the
only things with which science has to do, or which are factors in the
cosmic process, are things moving in space.
As a metaphysical argument this theory seems to us unsatisfactory. It
converts, simply and illegitimately, the proposition sanctioned by
common sense, that material things are real, into the proposition
opposed to common sense, that all real things are material. It assumes,
apparently unconsciously and certainly without proof, that the only
things capable of scientific description are movements in space, the
only laws in the universe mechanical laws.
Historically, material things were the first to be studied and
described with scientific exactness. It is only natural, therefore,
that the methods and assumptions which have been employed with
conspicuous success by the physical sciences should be extended,
tentatively at least, elsewhere. It is equally natural that protests
should be raised, and the extension proclaimed by philosophers to be
illegitimate--"impoverishing faith without enriching knowledge."[15]
"To regard the course of the world as the development of some blind
force which works on according to universal laws, devoid of insight
and freedom, devoid of interest in good and evil, are we to
consider this unjustifiable generalisation of a concept, valid in
its own sphere, as the higher truth?"[16]
It is not, however, likely that science will drop a generalisation,
however "unjustifiable" in metaphysics, if it works in practice. The
question is whether it does work; and that is plainly a question of
fact, not a question of metaphysics. We want to know therefore, first,
whether things moving in space are the only things with which we are
acquainted in common experience; and, next, whether all the changes
which take place within the range of scientific observation are or can
be explained by the laws of mechanics.
It is clear that, if the mechanical theory of science and of evolution
is to be successfully maintained, both these questions must be answered
in the affirmative. It is equally clear that, if we confine ourselves to
the actual facts, both questions must be answered in the negative.
Thoughts, ideas, conceptions, sensations, feelings, emotions are things
of which we have experience at every moment of our waking lives; and
none of them are things which occupy space or move in space. A thought
is not a thing which can be measured by a foot-rule, as things in space
can be; the greatness of an idea is not one which measures so many
yards by so many; a conception has no cubic contents; a toothache cannot
be put in a pair of scales, nor can any process of chemical analysis be
applied to hope or fear. We find ourselves, therefore, in this dilemma:
if the mechanical theory is true, and science can deal only with things
moving in space, then psychology and sociology are not sciences, and
their subject-matter never can be made amenable to scientific treatment.
On the other hand, if psychology is a science, then science deals with
things which do not move in space.
We submit that psychology _is_ a science, that our sensations, emotions,
ideas, etc., can be observed, and can be described scientifically, that
is to say, that their uniform sequences and co-existences can be stated
with accuracy and formulated as laws. We submit further that our
definition of science should be based on facts, and not framed to suit a
metaphysical theory. A satisfactory definition of science must include
all the sciences. The definition put forward in the interests of the
mechanical theory excludes arbitrarily the mental and moral sciences,
and implies that their subject-matter is beyond the power of science to
deal with. The exclusion and the implication are consequent upon the
suggested limitation of science to things moving in space, and are of
the essence of the mechanical theory. Both the exclusion and the
implication are unnecessary if we adhere to the older conception of
science, as it occurs in Mill, which claims for science all phenomena
of which the sequences and co-existences can be observed, described, and
formulated as laws.
What we have said with regard to science applies also of necessity to
Evolution. If Evolution is simply the continual redistribution of matter
and motion, if matter and motion are the only things subject to
evolution, then consciousness and conscience are not subject to
evolution. On the other hand, if they too have had and are having their
evolution, then the redistribution of matter and motion does not sum up
the process of evolution, and is not a correct statement of the process.
If it were an induction drawn from a consideration of all the facts of
evolution, it would cover them all. But it does not: it excludes a large
class of important facts, because their exclusion is demanded in the
interests of a particular metaphysical theory--the mechanical theory. It
implies that the operation of evolution is confined to a limited set of
facts. If the implication is false, then evolution is a bigger thing
than the mere redistribution of matter and motion.
The way in which it is usually attempted to force the mechanical theory
to square with the facts, or rather to cut the facts to fit the theory,
is to point to the connection between the mind and the brain, and to
proclaim the consequent dependence of mind on matter. Now, that there is
a connection between mind and brain is certain. What the connection is
exactly is as yet uncertain. But the fact that two things co-exist, are
connected with one another and vary together, does not prove that the
one thing is the other. On the contrary, it postulates that the two
things, though related, are different. The mechanical theory either
commits the fallacy of mistaking connected things for identical things,
or it fails to prove the very thing necessary for its justification,
viz. that thoughts, emotions, etc., are things occupying space and
moving in space. The chemical and physiological changes which take place
in the brain are movements in space. But it does not follow that the
corresponding pains or ideas float about in the air or move from one
point in space to another.