should not be inclined to dispute it; were it otherwise, opinions
on this subject would not be so much at variance. Yet it may not be
impossible to do. And that the satisfaction of the result has been
thought to be worth any effort it may cost to reach it, is evidenced
by the long struggle which the history of human reflection records, to
hold at the same time the vital ideals of science and the no less vital
ideals of morality. To consider a way in which I believe this may be
done, will occupy us throughout the remainder of the present discussion.
* * * * *
Let us begin by making clear just what _is_ the ideal which guides
the scientist in his expectations respecting the world he studies.
Perhaps no one accomplishment of science has been more inspiring than
the picture of certain large aspects of nature that Newton succeeded
in drawing,--such aspects, namely, as are presented in the behavior
of suns, and planets, and moons. All these huge masses are governed
by a single law, called the law of gravitation. Now to say that they
are governed by this law means no more than this, that if we knew
the mass, the position, and the velocity of each of these heavenly
bodies at a given moment, we should be able by means of the law
to predict their masses, positions, and velocities for all future
moments. This result is, to be sure, only an approximation, for we
know that gravitation is not the only force which bodies exert on each
other. We have never succeeded, _e.g._, in reducing the attractions
and repulsions of electrified bodies to gravitation, nor do we any
longer try to do this. But Newton’s degree of success provides us with
an ideal to which we seem ever more and more closely to approach.
Instead of considering such huge bodies as suns and planets and their
satellites, we divide these up into extremely minute parts, which we
may call for the moment _atoms_. We struggle then to conceive a law
as completely determining the behavior of these atoms, as the law of
gravitation determines that of planets. So that, if we knew a limited
number of characteristics of each of these atoms at a given moment,
our law would enable us to predict their future and to reconstruct
their past history. As we approach more and more closely to this ideal,
less and less in the behavior of these small parts of nature is left
to guess-work. In so far as we hope this ideal may be continuously
approached, we hope that in its atomic parts nature is entirely devoid
of freedom. And if we hope this, we must inevitably hope, too, that
what we have called an atom is neither a moral nor an immoral being.
This hope is usually called _the mechanical ideal_, and nature in the
light of it is viewed as a mechanism. It has guided science to victory
after victory, and I venture to think that no result of philosophical
experience is more firmly established than this, that whatever theory
we may in the end accept respecting human nature, its freedom, its
moral responsibilities, no assumption of that theory may stand in
contradiction with the mechanical ideal. To have recognized this truth
and to have had the courage to maintain it at all costs, was the
heroic service rendered by Spinoza at a moment in human history when
such service was badly needed. It is also the reason why Spinozism, in
spite of its apparently gloomy outlook upon the world, has made such a
forcible and lasting appeal to the imagination of thinking men. In what
follows it is against certain false implications that have been thought
to lie in this mechanical ideal, and not against the ideal itself, that
our criticism must be directed.
Now there is one implication that lies so near the surface I doubt not
most who have followed so far will already have drawn it. If, namely,
the atoms of which we have spoken are bound by strict mechanical law,
if it is these same atoms that make up the human body and that are
concerned in its every act, must not the conduct of that body be an
outcome of this same mechanical necessity? And if this be so, must
not the science whose ideal we have described set itself once for all
against the hope of finding in human conduct any vestige of freedom,
any trace of moral responsibility? You remember with what vigor Adrien
Sixte drew this very conclusion. “Every act,” he said, “is but an
addition. To say that it is free, is to say there is in a sum more
than there is in its elements added. This is as absurd in psychology as
in arithmetic.”
Yet natural as this inference may seem, we should, I think, see that
it is unjustified, that the instinct which has led mankind to read
moral aspects into nature was possessed of a deeper insight than was
our philosopher with his plausible mathematics. If, indeed, we could
construct the notion of a man out of that of atoms by a process of
addition, we could not escape the conclusion of Adrien Sixte. Then,
truly, moral aspects would be as completely lacking to the whole being
as they are to the atoms which enter into his composition. That we
cannot do this,--that we can, indeed, offer no mechanical definition of
life, is just the insight which permits us, nay, practically forces us,
to treat man as a free moral agent.
* * * * *
We can frame no mechanical definition of life! Nor is this the only
example offered by experience of a term applied exclusively to
mechanisms and yet meaning nothing mechanical. Let me give a homely
illustration. There is, I presume every one would admit, no time-piece
which is not a machine. And yet we can offer no mechanical definition
of a time piece, for the simple reason that the various machines to
which this term applies have no mechanical principle in common. A
class which may include such divers mechanisms as a sun dial, an hour
glass, a water clock, a pendulum clock, a spring watch, a chronograph,
has evidently not been given a single name to mark in the members
composing it a single mechanical nature. The only thing these members
have in common is a certain function or purpose,--that of producing a
movement keeping pace with the apparent motion of the sun. Just so with
the class of beings we call living. Each of them at each moment of its
existence is a complete illustration of mechanical law, yet all of them
offer such divers illustrations of this law that they cannot have been
put into a single class because of a common mechanical nature. That
which they have in common, by virtue of which they have been grouped
under one name, is once more a function or a purpose. For we observe
that living things, by whatever mechanical devices, accomplish for the
most part a common result, that of self-preservation.
In these two examples, the one taken from the inanimate, the other
comprising the animate world, we see how well it may come about that a
certain character belong to a whole, no vestige of which is to be found
in its constituent parts. A single atom cannot, if the mechanical ideal
is maintained, be regarded as acting purposefully, yet a sufficiently
complex group of atoms may well enough display purpose in its behavior
and to that purpose owe its right to the name we give it. In such
cases the real absurdity we are in danger of committing is not the one
that Adrien Sixte scoffs at, but the one he unsuspectingly falls into.
Axioms of addition are excellent guides for those whose problem is to
add. But not all composition of parts into a whole is so simple as the
business of forming a sum. And where we are not adding, the axioms of
addition may prove the worst of company.
Let us proceed to an immediate consequence of this last observation.
If no mechanical definition can be offered for a given term, it is
impossible that the things to which this term applies should be
governed by mechanical law. We may easily convince ourselves, however,
that although not subjected to mechanical law, they are frequently,
indeed generally, governed by another kind of law that is of the
greatest interest to us. Let me recur to our illustration of the
time-piece. There is a trite truth about time-pieces, which we may
say holds as a rule, to wit, that cheap time-pieces are poor ones.
Yet it would be meaningless to ask for a mechanical explanation of
this law, for the mechanical imperfection of the cheap sun dial bears
no resemblance whatever to the mechanical imperfection of the cheap
watch. The former may be a poor time-keeper because inexpensively
(and so grossly) graduated; the latter because the escapement is
inexpensively (and so crudely) constructed. So it is in the animal
world. Of its members we may lay down the rule, say, that each must eat
if it would live, but the physics and chemistry of nutrition in an oak
tree are so different from the physics and chemistry of nutrition in a
human being, that if anyone were to ask for a mechanical explanation of
this rule we could not offer it, or rather we should have to offer a
different one for each type of organism we considered. These examples
will be sufficient to illustrate the sense of the saying, “Beings whose
nature is not capable of mechanical definition cannot be subjected to
mechanical law.”
But we said further, that the laws to which such beings _were_ subject
were of a peculiar nature, and it is particularly important to point
out one respect in which these laws differ from the mechanical. Such
laws as we find controlling the behavior of organisms, for example,
are of the kind that may be called _laws of purpose_. We explain, that
is to say, the conduct of organisms in terms of the end or purpose for
the sake of which that conduct has taken place. This holds from the
lowest biological functioning to the highest form of deliberate human
behavior. If we consider the explanation which our author offers of
the conduct of his unhappy hero, we see that in the end he has been
exclusively interested in pointing out the motives to which the young
man reacted. To point out motives is simply to recognize the end for
the sake of which the act is accomplished. Now, although this type of
explanation is in daily use among all men of all times, it was not
erected into a scientific system before the reflections of Plato and
Aristotle had shown of what extension it was susceptible. Aristotle
in particular is responsible for having pushed to the very limit the
notion that the greater part of nature’s happenings can be explained
in terms of the end for the sake of which they occur. The whole drama
of nature was to him what that of organic life is to most of us, the
struggle of individual beings to accomplish their natural purposes.
But, interested as Aristotle was in pushing this concept of purpose
in nature to the limit, he could not blind himself to the fact that
no purpose could be found in nature which was always and invariably
accomplished or attained by the beings whose nature it was to struggle
for it. Consequently, he was in the habit of saying that “laws of
nature (by which he meant of laws of purpose) were descriptions of what
happens always, or for the most part.” That is to say, they pointed
out the behavior that was normal, but not free from exception. Nature
was full of the accidental, of the abortive; and although later science
did its best to exclude this notion of the accidental in nature’s
happenings, the effort was uniformly unsuccessful and, I think, wrongly
inspired. For it is exactly to the circumstance that laws of purpose
are statements of average and not of unexceptional fact, that they owe
their scientific value as labor-saving devices. And what is perhaps of
more interest in the present connection, it is to this very lack of
rigor in the laws governing animal and human behavior that we owe our
right to regard the individual to which they apply as free.
In this respect the contrast between laws of purpose with the situation
of the things to which they apply, and the laws of mechanics with the
predicament of the things they govern, is complete. For example, the
most inveterate statistician will hardly venture beyond the point of
asserting that the man of alcoholic heredity will for the most part be
unable to resist the attraction of drink. Yet sometimes he will be able
to, for sometimes he _does_ resist. Can one conceive of the student of
mechanics contenting himself with the result that bodies _generally_
fall to earth with an acceleration of thirty-two feet per second?
During all the while Mercury’s unorthodox behavior baffled Newtonian
physics, could any astronomer be found suggesting that perhaps this
was a case of exceptional gravitation? As with heredity, so with all
the other so-called forces our author brings to bear upon the conduct
of his hero, giving in the end the illusion of mechanically determined
action. Heredity, environment, education, serve their purpose well
enough as terms that point out an analogy between the ends that attract
beings of like history, but they yield only an _expectation_ of the
normal, not an _assurance_ of the inevitable. Nor could any increase
of statistical data of this kind do more than give us the materials
for a closer calculus of probabilities. It is for the reason that all
the laws which apply to human conduct are of this statistical nature,
that, being permanently unable to predict it, we must regard it as
free. And to be free to attain or not to attain a given end, is to be
responsible, is to possess the first condition of a moral nature. Nor,
in attaining to this insight have we sacrificed aught of our mechanical
ideal. Only, who cares that atoms may neither be saved nor damned, if
the beings they so fleetingly compose may be both? One might almost say
that moral beings pass over the surface of mechanism as waves upon the
face of the waters. But they constitute its beauty and its terror.
May we not then sum up our conclusions in some such form as
this?--Mechanical laws _do_ completely determine the conduct of
everything to which they may be applied, but they cannot be applied to
an animate being, since no mechanical definition of such a being is
possible. Laws of purpose _can_ be applied to such a being, but they do
not completely determine his conduct. It is because the only law which
can thus apply to a human being does not necessitate his behavior, that
we are obliged to regard that behavior as free and the being himself
as responsible. The most that we can do in terms of such laws is to
calculate the _chances_ for or against the individual’s success, for or
against his ultimate worth.
* * * * *
Here let us stop. Our discussion shows signs of falling into the
abstract and mathematical, and one may wonder whether anything
practical can come of it. One will recall the unhappy disciple of
Adrien Sixte, and will ask oneself: What answer, after all, are we
return to his cry, “De profundis!” Can we offer him any solace in his
wretchedness? I think we can, only it is not the kind of solace he asks
for, nor can it come from the direction in which he seeks it. I should
be inclined to say to him, to Fichte in his Spinozistic mood, to any
other over whom the mechanical ideal hangs heavily: This ideal is a
safe guide in all thinking for which it has a meaning; no atom in your
body nor out of it, but what is determined by mechanical necessity;
but the sum of these atoms is not you; there is a difference between
the whole we call a man, and the sum of the atoms that make up the
machine that is to him. These atoms may come and go, the man remains.
What constitutes his nature as a living being, an animal, a man, can
receive no definition in terms of the atoms now in his body, nor those
that may later take their place. You as living, as animal, as man,
can be defined only in terms of the ends common to the individuals of
these classes. In so far as thus natured, you fall under laws not of a
mechanical order. They are laws of average which determine not you, but
your chances of accomplishing the ends that define your being. In so
far as you accomplish such ends, you are good of your kind; in so far
as you fail, you are evil,--and if you fail egregiously enough, you are
a monster. The most your self-analysis could have made out by the way
of excuse is that the chances were against you. And this indeed you may
have made out, for who could maintain that all men have equal chances
in this world? But to have had the chances against you, is not to have
been determined as a falling rock is determined; there is no chance for
it.
In the most mechanical system, then, there is, so long as
classification of its parts in terms of purpose is possible, a
distinction between good and bad, with enough freedom to make this
distinction meaningful. But such a philosophy may still seem hard.
Even to have the chances against one, is not this a gloomy situation?
Is there, then, no supreme end to accomplish which all men’s chances
are equal, so that at each moment of life the road to perfection is
equally open to all, and equally wide for all? We know how many and
how beautiful the dreams of such a world-view, recorded in man’s long
history. To judge their rationality is for a deeper insight than mine.
But be they real or be they dreams, there is yet one voice from the
past whose sanity comes home to us. It is that of our old philosopher
of Koenigsberg, which keeps repeating at this moment the sentence,
“There is nothing good but a good will.” With this saying of Kant’s I
should even hope to breathe inspiration into the souls that cry, “De
profundis!” My last word to them would be: Trouble yourselves with
nothing but to make the best of the chances that are left to you. There
is nothing good but a good will.
* * * * *
I would willingly take it as evidence that the instinct of the artist
and the reflection of the philosopher are not unsympathetic, that when
Bourget’s Disciple is at last brought out of his ordeal, it is not to
be comforted with the longed-for assurance that all is necessitated
in the soul; but rather to find for himself the way to redemption by
making the best--the tragic best--of the chances that are left him.
IV
DAVID HUME
1711-1776
The characters that have occupied us on two previous occasions,
different as they are, have yet this in common; that their most
passionate interest was centred in God, and their theory of what man
is and ought to be depended upon the likeness in which God in the end
appeared to them.
I have felt that our illustrations of modern thought would be
incomplete, were I not to include in the series an example of an
attempt to work out the duty and destiny of man without waiting for
an insight into the mystery of God. It is the more advisable that we
examine one such character, that this way of thinking is neither newly
invented, nor yet grown out of fashion.
We recall that Lucretius, the enthusiastic disciple of Epicurus,
claimed for his master the glory of having lifted from the world the
terror of the gods, of having left man free to study his own nature
and to work out his own happiness. And I find on my shelves a recent
work that bears the title “Morals without the Sanctions of Religion,”
one of many that might be cited whose purpose is to study the good of
man without making it dependent on God. It is, then, as an expression
of a common enough idea, but as an uncommonly good expression of this
idea, that I have settled upon David Hume for our third illustration of
modern thought.
* * * * *
It has for some time been rather the fashion to find the grounds of a
man’s scientific beliefs in his personality and in the character of the
environment in which he lives. And doubtless thinking, like any other
activity, has its psychology, an insight into which is helpful enough,
though it is notoriously easy to find that characteristic _après coup_
which we should never have been able to predict beforehand.
When I say, then, that Hume had many human traits reminding us of the
Philosophers of the Garden whose science is so sympathetic with his
own, it must not be supposed that only such as are of like easy habit
of body and companionable temper of mind should take to his principles.
But it is interesting to note, after having followed the furious career
of Bruno, looked in on the sober reclusion of Spinoza, that a different
type of man may utter great thoughts; the type that could look back,
at fifty-eight years, on a life well filled with profitable industry,
and forward to one thus comfortably pictured in a letter to a friend:
“I have been settled here [in Edinburgh] for two months, and am here
body and soul, without casting the least thought of regret to London,
or even Paris. I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in my old
house in James’s Court which is very cheerful and even elegant, but
too small to display my great talent for cookery, the science to which
I intend to addict the remaining years of my life! I have just now,
lying on the table before me, a receipt for making _soupe à la reine_,
copied with my own hand; for beef and cabbage (a charming dish) and old
mutton and old claret nobody excels me. I make also sheep-head broth
in a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of it for eight days after; and the
Duc de Nivernois would bind himself apprentice to my lass to learn it.
I have already sent a challenge to David Moncreiff: you will see that
in a twelvemonth he will take to writing history, the field I have
deserted; for as to the giving of dinners, he can now have no further
pretensions. I should have made very bad use of my abode in Paris if I
could not get the better of a mere provincial like him. All my friends
encourage me in this ambition, as thinking it will redound very much to
my honor.”
These “friends” to whom Hume refers, were at that time, as they had
been throughout his life, the best of good company, that is, the
kind for whom a good dinner would have been nothing had not good
conversation been its sauce, but for whom the sauce was none the
worse for dressing out a good dinner. In such good company, it is not
a great matter that Hume should have been free of pleasant sallies
after the manner of the letter I have quoted. It throws a higher light
on his character when we find him preparing to receive his last, the
unbidden guest in the same cheerful humor. “I now reckon upon a speedy
dissolution,” he writes at the conclusion of his little sketch “My own
Life.” “I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is
more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person,
never suffered a moment’s abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I
to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over
again, I might be tempted to point to this latter period. I possess
the same ardor as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I
consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a
few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary
reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew that
I could have but a few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more
detached from life than I am at present.”
And there follows a characterization of himself that could indeed be
hardly more detached were it written by a stranger. “I am,” he says,
“or rather was (for that style I must now use in speaking of myself,
which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments); I was, I say,
a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open social
and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of
enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.... My company was
not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious
and literary: and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of
modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met
with from them.... My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one
circumstance of my character and conduct: not but that the zealots,
we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any
story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they
thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no
vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a
misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and
ascertained.”