all the facts which it is designed to explain: it accounts for the whole
process of evolution. If everything that happens does so because it
must, then the mere occurrence of any step in the process carries its
own explanation with it: the mere fact that it occurred shows that it
was bound to occur. If we ask, "Why was it bound to occur?" the answer
is, "Because it was." Various intermediate reasons may be
interpolated--because everything must have a cause, and every cause
must have its effect--but if we ask, "Why must everything have a cause?
why must every cause produce its effect?" the ultimate answer is always,
"It must because it must." If we ask, "What proof is there that it
must?" there is none. As we have already said, the hypothesis is one
which does not admit either of proof or disproof.
The case is much the same with the opposite theory of freedom. Formally,
the hypothesis that the whole process of evolution is throughout the
expression of self-determining will is adequate to account for all the
facts. But it is a hypothesis which can be neither proved nor disproved
if the testimony of consciousness to our freedom may not be accepted. We
cannot prove that the testimony of consciousness is true or to be
trusted in this or any other matter. We take it on faith. The questions
arise, therefore, Is it reasonable to take anything on faith? and if so,
what? and why?
VIII.
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
The theory of Design is singularly tenacious of existence, as many
errors and all truths are. Science still speaks of "organs," that is of
"tools" (_ὄργανα_), and of organs as performing "functions"; for
the fact remains that organs are the instruments by means of which the
organism acts, and that they have each their appropriate work to do,
their function to perform, though science may decline to draw the
inference that the instruments were designed to perform the work they
do.
The Argument from Design was a comparatively simple affair as long as
the organism and the environment were assumed to have been separately
created: you had only to show how marvellously and perfectly they fitted
one another when brought together, and it followed that they must have
been designed to fit--to say they only chanced to fit was obviously
absurd. But when science discovered that organism and environment were
not thus independent of one another, the marvel vanished: if the
environment shaped the organism, or the organism modified the
environment to suit itself, no wonder that they fitted one another. It
ceases to be remarkable that rivers should always flow by great cities,
when we reflect that men selected sites near rivers. And chance seemed
to have been established by Evolution where Design once reigned; for, if
the only forms of life which can flourish in a given spot are those
which are suited to the place, all we can say is that, if one form is
fit to survive, it will; and if it is not, some other will. Whatever
form survives will do so, not because it was designed to do so, but
because it happened to be suited to its surroundings. In fine, organisms
and their organs are what they are because circumstances and their past
history have made them so: they have been evolved, not designed.
A little reflection, however, is enough to show that the Argument from
Design is not completely excluded by evolution: things in general are
what circumstances and their past history have made them; but were not
those very circumstances designed to evolve what they did? Nay, are we
not compelled to assume that they were so designed, if we believe in a
Designer?
If, however, we ask Natural Science to discuss these questions with us,
she declines the invitation on the ground that it is not her business to
do so: her business is to find out in what way, not with what purpose,
animal life has come to assume the various forms in which we know it;
and she can do this, her business, quite well--indeed better--without
discussing such questions. If it were proved that the history of animal
life upon this earth had been intended from the beginning to follow the
lines on which it has actually developed, not one of the problems which
Natural Science has yet to solve would be brought a whit nearer
solution; nor would she be any the better off, if it were proved that
there was no design. She therefore very properly declines to discuss the
question: there may be a Design and a Designer, or there may not; she
does not know; if it is the business of science to answer the question,
it must be of some other science, not of Natural Science.
So too Physical Science, when asked whether the laws of motion and
matter were not designed to produce the effects which they actually do
cause, replies that they may or may not, but that the law of
gravitation, for instance, is equally true for her purposes, whether
bodies were or were not designed to fall to the earth at the rate of
sixteen feet in the first second, and so on. It may be the business of
some other science to answer such questions: it is not the business of
Physical Science.
And so the inquirer may go the round of the whole family of Sciences. It
is an extraordinarily industrious family. It has an enormous amount of
work to do: it has to feed, clothe, and generally provide for all
mankind. And it can only carry on at all by a very careful division of
labour: each science has her allotted task, and can only get the day's
work done in the day by strictly confining herself to that task. Each
science has her own questions to answer, and can only succeed in doing
so by refusing to listen to any others.
The inquirer may think it strange that, in all this vast and active
organisation for answering questions, no provision should be made for
answering what seem to him to be some of the most important questions of
all; and if he has been brought up really to believe in science, he will
think it too strange to be true; he will persist with his questions, and
will be eventually rewarded for his faith by discovering that there is a
science which undertakes to answer them--Theology. But he will also
discover that Theology is not very cordially esteemed by her sister
sciences--not that they are jealous of her because she has the
presumption to profess to answer questions which they acknowledge to be
too high for them, but because there are grave suspicions as to her
legitimacy: it is doubted whether she is a Science at all. She is, they
are afraid it must be admitted, untruthful, immoral, and certainly
altogether unscientific: she says what she cannot prove, and says she
believes it. But they know she only pretends to believe it: they, of
course, do not believe anything on insufficient evidence; what
hypocrisy, then, to pretend that anyone can really believe anything
except what is proved by scientific methods! They are thankful to say
that they have no "faith." However, she may improve; she is certainly
very backward; still, she may grow up into a common-sense science like
her sisters; and then she will give up the foolish idea that she can
answer questions which they cannot.
And now what truth is there in the picture thus drawn?
If there be a God, there is no other fact in the world of such awful or
such blessed import to man. Religion is based on faith that there is a
God. To tell the religious mind that there is no scientific proof of the
existence of God is to tell it nothing new. Those were not the terms on
which we took up our faith--that we should have scientific proof of
everything before we did anything. On the contrary, religion begins
when, and only when, a man begins "to walk humbly with his God," to know
that he knows nothing except that his soul cleaves to God and humbly
trusts in Him. We do not bargain so much belief, and no more, for so
much proof: we give "ourselves, our souls and bodies." The gift is free.
The soul shrinks from saying even that it has proof of God's existence;
it only knows it hopes and longs for Him. "Faith is the assurance of
things hoped for," and the strength of our assurance is as the strength
of our hope. But scientific proof is not the thing hoped for: it is not
what is desired when the soul is conscious of but one thing, that it
thirsteth, like the hart after the water-brooks, for the living God. The
humble confession of our illimitable ignorance is the foundation of our
faith and will ever be its sure refuge, its inexpugnable stronghold. It
is only when, being ignorant, we are tempted to deny our ignorance, that
trouble begins. We drop the substance for the shadow when we believe not
in God, but in some proof of God.
To the man of science all this talk about faith appears mere folly,
sheer unreason, a morbid wallowing in ignorance from pure love of
ignorance; and there are others who, whilst admitting that proof is not
what is wanted by some minds, yet are aware, from their own sad
experience, that other minds yearn for it, and can know no peace without
it. And if we ask what kind of proof it is that they require, the answer
is plain: it is the same kind as science insists on. Then let us go to
the man of science and wait at his door: he at any rate is not ignorant,
and we, if ignorant, at least are willing to learn. That he should
rather look down upon us is only what might be expected in a man who by
sheer force of reason has discovered the sole source of truth and built
up the whole fabric of science. Certainly, when he has taken us over his
palace and shown us its marvels--the balances he uses to weigh the sun,
the plates with which he photographs invisible stars, the
cinematographic pictures of the earth's past history, his forecasts of
the future of the solar system--we are not merely willing but eager to
learn how it is all done. And when we come to know him, we find that in
spite of the marvels, all of his own making, by which he is surrounded,
he is not puffed up, as he might have been: indeed he is, he assures us,
only an ordinary man. "Scientific investigation is not, as many people
seem to suppose, some kind of modern black art."[25] It is simply plain,
ordinary common sense, consistently applied; and, above all,
persistently declining to accept anything without sufficient evidence.
In ordinary life, says the man of science, we do not swallow any
statement that anybody chooses to make--we ask for some evidence; and if
science waxes every day, and religion wanes, it is merely because
science has made it the rule of her being never to believe anything
without sufficient evidence, and religion has not.
Naturally, then, we wish to know what is "sufficient evidence" in the
eyes of science, since everything, we are told, depends on that. The
reply is brief: whatever is based on the Uniformity of Nature has
sufficient evidence. If we are inclined to be puzzled by the "Uniformity
of Nature," we are soon reassured; it is literally the most ordinary
thing in the world, there is no difficulty about it. Man is born into a
world in which changes are unceasingly taking place. Some things change
even as the clouds shift--every second, and in a way patent to all
beholders. Others change imperceptibly and with great slowness, as
_e.g._ the level of the dry land or the shape of the coast-line. But all
things change, _πάντα ῥεῖ_. Nothing abideth long in one stay. It
is these changes which bring all things good to man, and also all things
ill. If, then, man is to survive, he must learn to evade the latter
changes, which threaten to crush him, and he must be there in time to
profit by the former. Such was the problem presented to primitive man,
and such it still is for every one of us to-day: the successful man is
the one who is beforehand with the world, and, if he is beforehand it is
because he has learned to read the signs of the times and the seasons.
In a word, he has learned to recognise that changes are not always mere
chances, that some changes are uniformly preceded by certain others, and
may consequently be foreseen. In the beginning the changes that man can
forecast are few indeed: his prevision is no greater than the brute's.
The child does not foresee that fire will burn; he learns by experience.
And whatever man can forecast, he has learned it all by experience. It
is a slow way of learning, it has taken man thousands upon thousands of
years to learn what he knows now; still he has learned to know the
causes of countless things, to control the causes and to anticipate the
effects of many. But more important, more valuable than all his
experience and all his knowledge of what produces what, of what
uniformly precedes or follows what, is the final and comprehensive truth
which at last he reaches, that nothing happens arbitrarily, that
everything in nature is uniform. That, the Uniformity of Nature, is the
great truth in which all others are summed up: to its establishment have
gone the labours of all past generations of mankind, to its support the
whole experience of the race contributes. It is the truth of truths, the
test of truth: whatsoever is established on it shall not be shaken,
whatever contravenes it shall not endure.
The Uniformity of Nature is the base not only of all science, but of
every act of reason in the most commonplace affairs of ordinary life;
and, though you may not know it, you assume it every moment. Why are you
sure that the sun will rise to-morrow? Because Nature is uniform. Why do
you know that fire will burn? Because Nature is uniform. Why that all
men are mortal? Why that a cause will always produce its effect? Because
of the Uniformity of Nature. For each and all of these beliefs the
evidence is sufficient; it is the Uniformity of Nature. How different,
says the man of science, is the procedure of science, that is of common
sense, from the unscientific methods of theology! Why do we believe that
the earth will bring forth her kindly fruits in due season? Because it
is God's will? That is a hypothesis; it may be true or it may not; it
cannot be proved or disproved; there is no evidence against it, but
there is no evidence for it. Very different is the answer of science and
common sense: it is that the earth will produce crops in accordance with
certain natural causes, mechanical and chemical. That also is a
hypothesis which may or may not be true. Yes, but it is one for which
there is some evidence--the Uniformity of Nature. In the same way, if
anyone were to say that the result of the next general election depended
not on the electors but on the planets, we should decline to believe
him, because there is no evidence to show that the planets have anything
to do with it, and there is good evidence for believing that the votes
of the electors have. In fine, the teaching of science is: demand
sufficient evidence for everything, and always remember that by
sufficient evidence is meant the Uniformity of Nature.
This sounds so simple and so convincing that we are tempted to try it.
But first let us make sure that we have learned our lesson properly. In
the course of long ages mankind has slowly accumulated enough experience
to warrant the confident belief that Nature is uniform. Now, primitive
man was of course a savage, and knew nothing of the Uniformity of
Nature; he therefore could not have had sufficient evidence for
believing anything in his experience. But it is on the accumulation of
such experiences--every one of which we must reject because they were
not based on the Uniformity of Nature--that our belief in the Uniformity
of Nature is supposed to rest. In other words, it is based on them and
they were based on nothing. This result of acting strictly up to the
principle of not suffering anything to pass without sufficient evidence
seems somewhat discouraging, until the man of science comes to our
rescue and reminds us that just as we, without knowing it, have acted
all our lives on the tacit assumption that Nature is uniform, so did
primitive man; and that consequently there really was sufficient
evidence and scientific proof for the savage's experiences, though of
course he could not have framed it in words; and so, the bases of the
Uniformity of Nature are really quite sound. But even now we are not
altogether out of our difficulties, for granted that the savage, like
ourselves, tacitly assumed Nature to be uniform, was there sufficient
evidence for the assumption? and if so, what was the evidence? It could
not be the Uniformity of Nature, because that is just the question; and,
if it was anything else, it was not sufficient evidence.
It really seems rather difficult to get sufficient evidence for the
axiom, viz. the Uniformity of Nature, on which the whole of science is
built. And yet we must have sufficient evidence for it, or else we shall
have to conclude that Science has no more logical foundation than
Religion.
But once more the man of science comes to our assistance and explains
that in the beginning, before the Uniformity of Nature is proved, it is
only probable that what has once happened will happen again in similar
circumstances, and at first perhaps not very probable; but when wider
and wider experience still shows that what has once happened does
actually happen again under the same circumstances, the Uniformity of
Nature becomes more and more probable, until at last, if not actually
proved, it is still the most probable hypothesis that we possess or can
possess: "our highest and surest generalisations remain on the level of
justifiable expectations; that is, very high probabilities."[26]
Now, with all respect to logicians like John Stuart Mill, and men of
science like Huxley, we must point out that this begs the whole
question. If we assume that Nature is uniform, then it is probable that
what has often happened will happen again. But if we do not assume that
Nature is uniform, then the repeated occurrence of a thing does not make
it in the least probable that it will occur again. To assume without
proof that Nature is uniform is to ask us to accept a statement without
evidence, which, if we have learnt the lesson of science, we can hardly
do. On the other hand, if we begin with the admission that Nature may or
may not be uniform, but that, to begin with, we no more know whether it
will actually prove to be uniform than we know whether a penny, when we
are about to toss it, will fall head or tail; then, according to the
mathematical theory of probability, it matters not how many times you
toss the penny, the chances next throw are exactly the same as they were
at the first throw--it matters not how many times Nature has proved
uniform in the past, she is no more likely to prove uniform to-morrow
than she was on the first of days. If it is really an open question at
the beginning whether Nature is or is not uniform, it remains an open
question to the end. The man of science need not admit that it is an
open question, if he does not want to do so; but if he does admit it,
then let him stick to it throughout; and let him reflect that if he
begins by admitting it and ends by denying it, he has but gradually
retracted his own free admission, and unconsciously been betrayed into
denying what he began by admitting to be true.
The fact of the matter is that the axioms of science--the Uniformity
of Nature and the Law of Universal Causation--not only are not
proved by what experience we have had of them, but "cannot be proved
by any amount of experience."[27] Not only can they not be proved by
any amount of experience, they are incapable of being demonstrated
at all: "they are neither self-evident nor are they, strictly
speaking, demonstrable."[28] If, then, they are not and cannot be
proved either by experience or in any other way, on what does the
man of science ground his belief in them? On Faith. "The ground of
every one of our actions, and the validity of all our reasonings,
rest upon the great act of faith, which leads us to take the
experience of the past as a safe guide in our dealings with the
present and the future."[29]
FOOTNOTES:
[25] HUXLEY, _Darwiniana_, p. 361.
[26] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 205.
[27] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 121.
[28] HUXLEY, _Method and Results_, p. 61.
[29] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 243.
IX.
CONSEQUENCES
In the last chapter, impressed by the doctrine that there is no "source
of truth save that which is reached by the patient application of
scientific methods,"[30] we patiently applied those methods to the
foundation of science itself; and we were rewarded by the discovery that
scientific, like religious, truth has its source in Faith. But the end
of our difficulties is not yet.
A man may put his faith in science, if he will, "but let him not delude
himself with the notion that his faith is evidence of the objective
reality of that in which he trusts."[31] About that we feel no
difficulty: faith begins not merely with ignorance, but with the frank
confession that we know we are ignorant, but we wish to believe, in
spite of the absence of evidence. There is no evidence to show that
Nature is uniform or science true, but we do not mind that: we are quite
determined to believe, evidence or no evidence. That is easy enough for
us, who are not scientific; but "scientific men get an awkward
habit--no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit--of
believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way
of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as
illogical, but as immoral."[32] This is, if not awkward, at least
puzzling, since science is based on a belief in the Uniformity of
Nature, for which there is no evidence.
"It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the devil that he was a
liar from the beginning. If we set out in life with pretending to know
that which we do not know; with professing to accept for proof evidence
which we are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully shutting our eyes
and our ears to facts which militate against this or that comfortable
hypothesis; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve the same
character."[33] That also is puzzling. Science sets out in life with
assuming, by a "great act of faith," that Nature is uniform. She is well
aware that the evidence for this assumption is inadequate, that no
amount of experience could prove it; but, if she is to start at all, she
must make the assumption, so she proceeds to act as though it were
proved, as though she knew what she does not know. These are facts; and
we take it for granted that no one will wilfully shut his eyes and his
ears to them, even if he has some comfortable hypothesis against which
they seem to militate.
Again, belief in science is based not on any ground of reason, but upon
"the great act of faith" which leads the man of science to assent to it.
It is therefore again puzzling to learn that "assent without rational
ground for belief is to the man of science merely an immoral pretence,"
and that "scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one
unpardonable sin."[34]
But the reader has probably already correctly divined the solution of
these puzzles: the passages quoted above are not intended to apply to
science. The blind faith which is illogical, immoral, a pretence and a
lie, is, of course, not faith in science, but some other kind, which may
therefore be dismissed; and we may start once again with the happy
feeling that there is one kind of faith at least which is logical,
moral, and real and true.
It is, then, quite honest and logical to have faith sometimes; and,
without evidence, to believe some things, _e.g._ the Uniformity of
Nature. Here, however, some readers may interpose with the objection
that the man of science has not proved that _his_ faith is logical and
moral, and real and true--he has simply assumed it. Quite true; but that
_is_ his faith and we must respect it, as we respect any man who holds
fast to what he honestly believes to be the real truth. We do not
imagine he could believe it if he thought it a pretence or a lie. And we
do not call upon him to prove it before we believe him--still less to
prove it before he believes it himself.