Forty years ago the position of scientific studies was not so firmly
established as it is to-day, and a conflict was necessary to secure
their general recognition. The forces of obscurantism and of free and
easy dogmatism were arrayed against them; and, just as in former
centuries astronomy, and in more recent times geology, so in our own
lifetime biology, has had to offer a harsh and fighting front, lest its
progress be impeded by the hostility born of preconceived opinions, and
by the bigotry of self-appointed guardians of conservative views.
The man who probably did as much as any to fight the battle of science
in the nineteenth century, and secure the victory for free enquiry and
progressive knowledge, is Thomas Henry Huxley; and it is an interesting
fact that already the lapse of time is making it possible to bring his
writings in cheap form to the notice of a multitude of interested
readers. The pugnacious attitude, however, which, forty years ago, was
appropriate, has become a little antique now; the conflict is not indeed
over, but it has either totally shifted its ground, or is continued on
the old battlefield chiefly by survivors, and by a few of a younger
generation who have been brought up in the old spirit.
The truths of materialism now run but little risk of being denied or
ignored, they run perhaps some danger of being exaggerated. Brilliantly
true and successful in their own territory, they are occasionally pushed
by enthusiastic disciples over the frontier line into regions where they
can do nothing but break down. As if enthusiastic worshippers of
motor-cars, proud of their performance on the good roads of France,
should take them over into the Sahara or essay them on a Polar
expedition.
That represents the mistake which, in modern times, by careless
thinkers, is being made. They tend to press the materialistic statements
and scientific doctrines of a great man like Huxley, as if they were
co-extensive with all existence. This is not really a widening of the
materialistic aspect of things, it is a cramping of everything else; it
is an attempt to limit the universe to one of its aspects.
But the mistake is not made solely, nor even chiefly, by those eager
disciples who are pursuing the delusive gleam of a materialistic
philosophy--for these there is hope,--to attempt is a healthy exercise,
and they will find out their mistake in time; but the mistake is also
made by those who are specially impressed with the spiritual side of
things, who so delight to see guidance and management everywhere, that
they wish to blind their eyes to the very mechanism whereby it is
accomplished. They think that those who point out and earnestly study
the mechanism are undermining the foundations of faith. Nothing of the
kind. A traveller in the deck-cabin of an Atlantic liner may prefer to
ignore the engines and the firemen, and all the machinery and toil which
is urging him luxuriously forward over the waves in the sunshine; he may
try to imagine that he is on a sailing vessel propelled by the free air
of heaven alone; but there is just as much utilization of natural forces
to a desired end in one case of navigation as in the other, and every
detail of the steamship, down to the last drop of sweat from a fireman's
grimy body, is an undeniable reality.
There are people who still resent the conclusions of biology as to man's
place in nature, and try to counteract them; but, as the late Professor
Ritchie said ("Philosophical Studies," page 24)--
"It is a mistake, which has constantly been made in the
past by those who are anxious for the spiritual interests
of man, to interfere with the changes which are going on
in scientific conceptions. Such interference has always
ended in the defeat of the supporters of the
quasi-scientific doctrines which the growing science of
the time has discarded. Theology interfered with Galileo,
and gained nothing in the end by its interference.
Astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, historical
criticism, have at different periods raised alarm in the
minds of those who dread a materialistic view of man's
nature; and with the very best intentions they have tried
to fight the supposed enemy on his own ground, eagerly
welcoming, for instance, every sign of disagreement
between Darwinians and Lamarckians, or every dispute
between different schools of historical critics, as if
the spiritual well-being of mankind were bound up with
the scientific beliefs of the seventeenth, or even
earlier, century, as if _e.g._ it made all the difference
in man's spiritual nature whether he was made directly
out of inorganic dust or slowly ascended from lower
organic forms. These are questions that must be settled
by specialists. On the other hand, philosophic criticism
is in place when the scientific specialist begins to
dogmatize about the universe as a whole, when he speaks
for example as if an accurate narrative of the various
steps by which the lower forms of life have passed into
the higher was a sufficient explanation to us of the
mystery of existence."
Let it be understood, therefore, that science is one thing, and
philosophy another: that science most properly concerns itself with
matter and motion, and reduces phenomena, as far as it can, to
mechanism. The more successfully it does that, the more it fulfils its
end and aim; but when, on the strength of that achievement, it seeks to
blossom into a philosophy, when it endeavours to conclude that its scope
is complete and all-inclusive, that nothing exists in the universe but
mechanism, and that the aspect of things from a scientific point of view
is their only aspect,--then it is becoming narrow and bigoted and
deserving of rebuke. Such rebuke it received from Huxley, such rebuke it
will always receive from scientific men who realize properly the
magnitude of existence and the vast potentialities of the universe.
Our opportunities of exploration are good as far as they go, but they
are not extensive; we live as it were in the mortar of one of the stones
of St. Paul's Cathedral; and yet so assiduously have we cultivated our
faculties that we can trace something of the outline of the whole design
and have begun to realize the plan of the building--a surprising feat
for insects of limited faculty. And--continuing the parable--two schools
of thought have arisen: one saying that it was conceived in the mind of
an architect and designed and built wholly by him, the other saying that
it was put together stone by stone in accordance with the laws of
mechanics and physics. Both statements are true, and those that
emphasize the latter are not thereby denying the existence of
Christopher Wren, though to the unwise enthusiasts on the side of design
they may appear to be doing so. Each side is stating a truth, and
neither side is stating the whole truth. Nor should we find it easy with
all our efforts to state the whole truth exhaustively, even about such a
thing as that. Those who deny any side of truth are to that extent
unbelievers, and Huxley was righteously indignant with those
shortsighted bigots who blasphemed against that aspect of divine truth
which had been specially revealed to him. This is what he lived to
preach, and to this he was faithful to the uttermost.
Let him be thought of as a devotee of truth, and a student of the more
materialistic side of things, but never let him be thought of as a
philosophical materialist or as one who abounded in cheap negations.
The objection which it is 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 result 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. As Professor
Ritchie said:--"The 'legitimate materialism of the sciences' simply
means temporary and convenient abstraction from the cognitive conditions
under which there are 'facts' or 'objects' for us at all; it is
'dogmatic materialism' which is metaphysics of the bad sort."
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 the
phenomena of nature. (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 philosophizing, 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 any such scheme;
and 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 that
he entirely repudiated materialism as a satisfactory or complete
philosophical system, and that he was especially severe on gratuitous
denials applied to provinces beyond our scope:--
"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).
"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" (p. 286).