ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
"Art,--which I may style the love of loving, rage
Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings
The knower, seer, feeler, beside,--instinctive Art
Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part
However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire
To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire."[A]
[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliv.]
No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think,
fundamentally different from that of any other of our great writers. He
often seems to be roused into speech, rather by the intensity of his
spiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements of poetic
sensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became beauty for
him; not beauty, truth, as with Keats or Shelley. He is swayed by ideas,
rather than by sublime moods. Beneath the endless variety of his poems,
there are permanent principles, or "colligating conceptions," as science
calls them; and although these are expressed by the way of emotion, they
are held by him with all the resources of his reason.
His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God by
first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when
regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's
life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassioned
moods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism and doubt. His
faith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the plucking fiend." He
has given to us something more than intuitive glimpses into, the
mysteries of man's character. Throughout his life he held up the steady
light of an optimistic conception of the world, and by its means
injected new vigour into English ethical thought. In his case,
therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost forced upon
us, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and inspiring optimism
as valid truths, or to regard them merely as subjective opinions held by
a religious poet. Are they creations of a powerful imagination, and
nothing more? Do they give to the hopes and aspirations that rise so
irrepressibly in the heart of man anything better than an appearance of
validity, which will prove illusory the moment the cold light of
critical inquiry is turned upon them?
It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, the
impressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And this
unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of life
methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other English
poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, that
he has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned view of the
ethical nature of man, and of his relation to the world--has sought, in
fact, to establish a philosophy of life. In his case, not without
injustice, it is true, but with less injustice than in the case of any
other poet, we may disregard, _for our purposes_, the artistic method of
his thought, and lay stress on its content only. He has a right to a
place amongst philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There
is such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his
teaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The
Rational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning
held to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism;
and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in the
moral consciousness.
But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to apply
these critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him pay the
penalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is certain that
what he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly valued, till it
is regarded in the light of his guiding principles. We shall miss much
of what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for instance, we regard his
treatment of love merely as the expression of elevated passion, or his
optimism as based upon mere hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling
element in the world, present, like power, in everything.
"From the first, Power was--I knew.
Life has made clear to me
That, strive but for closer view,
Love were as plain to see."[A]
[Footnote: A _Reverie--Asolando_.]
Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental exposition of
the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in another way, it
was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply to facts and to
test by their means, almost in the same manner as that in which natural
science applies and tests its principles.
That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him something
different from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will, I
believe, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and held
it with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and as his
dialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his artistic
freedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a whole. But it
will not be admitted so readily that anything other than harm can issue
from an attempt to deal with him as if he were a philosopher. Even if it
be allowed that he held and expressed a definite theory, will it retain
any value if we take it out of the region of poetry and impassioned
religious faith, into the frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Could
any one maintain, apart from the intoxication of religious and poetic
sentiment, that the essence of existence is love? As long as we remain
within the realm of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in our
poet's great sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and an
impulse towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them as
theories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding,
will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we think,
has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable anodyne to
the cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which, by steeping
the critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to rise on the
wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell; and the world of
poetry, and religion--a world which to them is always beautiful and good
with God's presence--becomes a system of inexorable laws, dead,
mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as an equipoise of constantly
changing forms of energy.
There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had better
keep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical investigation, if
we set any store by them. Faith and reason are thought to be finally
divorced. It is an article of the common creed that every attempt which
the world has made to bring them together has resulted in denial, or at
the best in doubt, regarding all supersensuous facts. The one condition
of leading a full life, of maintaining a living relation between
ourselves and both the spiritual and material elements of our existence,
is to make our lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, to
distinguish with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and that
of faith.
Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the present,
to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet it before
entering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view of life. I
cannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of man's
spiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify the
assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not discoverable by
man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual death the condition
of spiritual life. If such a condition were imposed on man, it must
inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man cannot possibly continue to
live a divided life, and persist in believing that for which his reason
knows no defence. We must, in the long run, either rationalize our faith
in morality and religion, or abandon them as illusions. And we should at
least hesitate to deny that reason--in spite of its apparent failure in
the past to justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life--may
yet, as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells in
it, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We should
at least hesitate to condemn man to choose between irreflective
ignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and the highest
emotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a mortal struggle.
Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then prose, and have
something to tell the world that science, which is often ignorant of its
own limits, cannot teach.
The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete as is
believed by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument against its
success in the future. Such persons have never known that the world of
thought like that of action makes a stepping stone of its dead self. He
who presumes to decide what passes the power of man's thought, or to
prescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is rash, to say the least;
and he has neither caught the most important of the lessons of modern
science, nor been lifted to the level of its inspiration. For science
has done one thing greater than to unlock the secrets of nature. It has
revealed something of the might of reason, and given new grounds for the
faith, which in all ages has inspired the effort to know,--the faith
that the world is an intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated by
the thought of man. Can it be that nature is an "open secret," but that
man, and he alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bear
within himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not
_his_ thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The success of
science, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently unconnected
facts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the attempt to
gather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret the world in
the light of the highest principles. And this is precisely what poetry
and religion and philosophy do, each in its own way. They carry the work
of the sciences into wider regions, and that, as I shall try to show, by
methods which, in spite of many external differences, are fundamentally
at one with those which the sciences employ.
There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of poets
and philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy of life,
or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It is to show
that there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt. Till this is
done, the human mind will not give up problems of weighty import,
however hard it may be to solve them. The world refused to believe
Socrates when he pronounced a science of nature impossible, and
centuries of failure did not break man's courage. Science, it is true,
has given up some problems as insoluble; it will not now try to
construct a perpetually moving machine, or to square the circle. But it
has given them up, not because they are difficult, but because they are
unreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or irrational element in
them; and to solve them would be to bring reason into collision with
itself.
Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of life,
or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable task to
attempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, _prima facie_, that in
a world progressively proved to be intelligible to man, man himself
would be no exception. It is impossible that the "light in him should be
darkness," or that the thought which reveals the order of the world
should be itself chaotic.
The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need for
knowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are implied
in every rational explanation of things. The only choice we can have is
between a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one, between
hypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we know, and
hypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices do. It is
because of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the ignorant man so
certain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know their postulates,
nor are they aware that there is no interpretation of an object which
does not finally point to a theory of being. We understand no joint or
ligament, except in relation to the whole organism, and no fact, or
event, except by finding a place for it in the context of our
experience. The history of the pebble can be given, only in the light of
the story of the earth, as it is told by the whole of geology. We must
begin very far back, and bring our widest principles to bear upon the
particular thing, if we wish really to know what it is. It is a law that
explains, and laws are always universal. All our knowledge, even the
most broken and inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception,
in virtue of which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one
orderly kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the central
thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be broken
against particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the real
source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a synthesis
without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any guiding
principles.
Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they keep
alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles. They
always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their object _one_.
To them the world is always, and necessarily, a harmonious whole, as it
is also to the religious spirit. It is because of this that the universe
is a thing of beauty for the poet, a revelation of God's goodness to the
devout soul, and a manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher.
Art, religion, and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age of
prose and scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole
in the particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. And
there is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a
whole is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then
poetry will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.
Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these upper
regions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread downwards
to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot out the
valleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt to know,
however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in the unity
of the world. Each of the sciences works within its own region, and
colligates its details in the light of its own hypothesis; and all the
sciences taken together presuppose the presence in the world of a
principle that binds it into an orderly totality. Scientific explorers
know that they are all working towards the same centre. And, ever and
anon, as the isolated thinker presses home his own hypothesis, he finds
his thought beating on the limits of his science, and suggesting some
wider hypothesis. The walls that separate the sciences are wearing thin,
and at times light penetrates from one to the other. So that to their
votaries, at least, the faith is progressively justified, that there is
a meeting point for the sciences, a central truth in which the dispersed
rays will again be gathered together. In fact, all the sciences are
working together under the guidance of a principle common to them all,
although it may not be consciously known and no attempt is made to
define it. In science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is a
principle of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to all
explanation of particular matters of fact.
In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamental
difference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always light
up facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a perfect
enigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till the
majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal
gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos,
poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive
flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly whence--though
we do know that it comes neither from the dead facts nor from the vacant
region of _a priori_ thought, but somehow from the interaction of both
these elements of knowledge. After the intuitive flash comes the slow
labour of proof, the application of the principle to details. And that
application transforms both the principle and the details, so that the
former is enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible--a
veritable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this labour
of proof, science and philosophy alike take their share.
Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science, and to
partake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like poetry,
with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does not
completely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task of
articulating its principles in facts, though it begins the articulation
itself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the same time, a
witness for the unity of the categories of science. We may say, if we
wish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so are the ideas
which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so is every forecast
of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended; so is every
principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say that philosophy
is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that which can be
levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body of scientific
knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each case alike is, how
far, if at all, does the hypothesis enable us to understand particular
facts.
The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the limits
under which they work and of the hypothetical character of their
results. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of material
particles and elemental energy for granted," says the physicist; "deny
them, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish quantitative
relations between the different forms of this elemental energy, and make
it tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach depends upon my
hypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I wield. I do not
pretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make no declaration
regarding the actual nature of things; and all questions as to the
ultimate origin or final destination of the world are beyond the scope
of my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I regard phenomena _from my
point of view_; and my right to do so I substantiate by the practical
and theoretical results which follow." The language of geology,
chemistry, zoology, and even mathematics is the same. They all start
from a hypothesis; they are all based on an imaginative conception, and
in this sense their votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throb
in the particular fact.
Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume that no
one will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas. The sciences
do not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles tentatively and
blindly from fact to fact, unguided of any hypothesis. But if they do
not, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its own hypothesis,
and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together, then the question
arises, are there no wider colligating principles amongst these
hypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of each other, or
is their independence only surface appearance? This is the question
which philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by their progress
suggest a positive answer to it.
The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not a
chaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the outer
kosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the temple of
truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to connect wing with
wing, or to declare definitely the law of the whole. The logical order
of the hypotheses of the various sciences, the true connection of these
categories of constructive thought, may yet be uncertain. But, still,
there _is_ such an order and connection: the whole building has its
plan, which becomes more and more intelligible as it approaches to its
completion. Beneath all the differences, there are fundamental
principles which give to human thought a definite unity of movement and
direction. There are architectonic conceptions which are guiding, not
only the different sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age.
There are intellectual media, "working hypotheses," by means of which
successive centuries observe all that they see; and these far-reaching
constructive principles divide the history of mankind into distinct
stages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such as the idea
of development in our own day; and these successively ascend the throne
of mind, and hold a sway over human thought which is well-nigh absolute.
Now, if this is so, is it certain that all _knowledge_ of these ruling
conceptions is impossible? In other words, is the attempt to construct a
philosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny the possibility of
catching any glimpse of those regulative ideas, which determine the main
tendencies of human thought, is to place the supreme directorate of the
human intelligence in the hands of a necessity which, _for us_, is
blind. For, an order that is hidden is equivalent to chance, so far as
knowledge is concerned; and if we believe it to exist, we do so in the
face of the fact that all we see, and all we _can_ see, is the opposite
of order, namely lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would be
subjected to law in its details and compartments, but to disorder as a
whole. Thinking men would be organized into regiments; but the regiments
would not constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movement
in the attack on the realm of ignorance.
But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human history
leads, especially when we observe its movements on a large scale. On the
contrary, it is found that history falls into great epochs, each of
which has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages, as well as nations and
individuals, have features of their own, special and definite modes of
thinking and acting. The movement of thought in each age has its own
direction, which is determined by some characteristic and fundamental
idea, that fulfils for it the part of a working hypothesis in a
particular science. It is the prerogative of the greatest leaders of
thought in an age to catch a glimpse of this ruling idea when it first
makes its appearance; and it is their function, not only to discover it,
but also to reveal it to others. And, in this way, they are at once the
exponents of their time, and its prophets. They reveal that which is
already a latent but active power--"a tendency"; but they reveal it to a
generation which will see the truth for itself, only after the potency
which lies in it has manifested itself in national institutions and
habits of thought and action. _After_ the prophets have left us, we
believe what they have said; as long as they are with us, they are
voices crying in the wilderness.
Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind, first
strike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into the
consciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he is
divinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own calmer
comprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a manner in
Browning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and partial
consciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light before it, and
anticipating all systematic reflection. It is an insight which appears
to be independent of all method; but it is in nature, though not in
sweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap by which the scientific
explorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We can find no other law for
it, than that sensitiveness to the beauty and truth hidden in facts,
which much reflection on them generates for genius. For these great
minds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by thought, and they hear the
immortal music.
The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of the
philosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle.
The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day. The
great idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light of
such an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into endless
forms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is gradually evolved;
hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as principles, rule the
mind of an age, and give it its work and its character. In this way,
Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least defined, the boundaries within
which moved the thought of the eighteenth century; and no one acquainted
with the poetic and philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing to
Goethe and from Kant to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and
spring of the constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social,
political, and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the
aristocracy of the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the
poets and philosophers, so far from being filled with impracticable
dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts for
its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and invent no
telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that attitude towards
nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the general mind, from
which issue, not only the scientific, but also the social, political and
religious forces of the age.
It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme utterances
of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to connect them
into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in his supreme
confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite height of the
moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in the good, and his
profound conviction of the evanescence of evil, there lies a vital
energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined to feel. Until a spirit
kindred to his own arises, able to push the battle further into the same
region, much of the practical task of the age that is coming will
consist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has given
expression.
I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer view
of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poets
and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences alone
occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is a
universal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only do
they all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself,
but they contribute in a manner which is substantially the same. There
are many points of superficial distinction between the processes of
philosophy and science, and between both and the method of poetry; but
the inner movement, if one may so express it, is identical in all. It is
time to have done with the notion that philosophers occupy a
transcendent region beyond experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by _a
priori_ methods, and with the view that scientific men are mere
empirics, building their structures from below by an _a posteriori_ way
of thought, without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike
endeavour to interpret experience, but none of them get their principles
from it.
"But, friends,
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe."
There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
quantitative relations between material objects, which are investigated
by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, so
as to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of the
world. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets
the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises
for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular
preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not
consistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at their
primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the
scientific interpretation of facts are either consistent or
inconsistent: they are simply different. Their harmony or discord can
come only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fully
developed, and when the departmental ideas of the various sciences are
organized into a view of the world as a whole. And this is a task which
has not as yet been accomplished. The forces from above and below have
not met. When they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are
friends, and not foes. For philosophy can articulate its supreme
conception only by interaction with the sciences; and, on the other
hand, the progress of science, and the effectiveness of its division of
labour, are ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints,
given by poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of
which the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who
cannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see
the trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able
to turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of
invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been slow
to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more
comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that
none labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which _grows_!
and in growth there is always movement towards both unity and
difference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and greater detail,
is constrained by its growing consciousness of the unlimited wealth of
its material, to divide and isolate its interests more and more; and
thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and philosophers is
growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult of achievement,
and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved. Both science and
philosophy are working towards a more concrete view of the world as an
articulated whole. If we cannot quite say with Browning that "poets
never dream," we may yet admit with gratitude that their dreams are an
inspiration.
"Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."[A]
[Footnote A: _Abt Vogler_.]
And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in immediate
intuition, there is also the uniting activity of philosophy, which,
catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered knowledge of the
facts and laws of nature to the principle upon which they rest; and, on
the other hand, develops that principle so as to fill all the details of
knowledge with a significance which they cannot have in themselves, but
only as seen _sub specie aeternitatis_."[B]
[Footnote B: _The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time_, by
Professor Caird.]
So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy in the
interpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness to
the unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism of the
categories of science to render that unity explicit. Its function is, no
doubt, valid and important, for it is evident that man cannot rest
content with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it might be objected that
it is premature at present to endeavour to formulate that unity.
Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other sciences, while they
necessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge, and attempt in their own
way and in their own sphere to discover it, are making very satisfactory
headway without raising any of the desperate questions of metaphysics as
to its ultimate nature. For them it is not likely to matter for a long
time to come whether Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, or
none of them, be true. In any case the principles they establish are
valid. Physical relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' the
mouth, and there will be more cakes and ale." It is only when the
sciences break down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselves
inadequate, that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for more
comprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere in
the way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solve
ultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to be
beyond our power to answer?
Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural science is
concerned, they seem to indicate that there might be no great harm in
ignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider aspects of human
thought. There is no department of nature so limited, but that it may
more than satisfy the largest ambition of the individual for knowledge.
But this attitude of indifference to ultimate questions is liable at any
moment to be disturbed.
"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."[A]
[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram's Apology._]
Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some kind
of solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing need of
a "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as well as of
a theory which will explain the revolution of the planets, or the
structure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes everywhere. It is
only by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can forget the part it
plays even in the outer world of natural science. So active is it in the
constitution of things, so dependent is their nature on the nature of
our knowing faculties, that scientific men themselves admit that their
surest results are only hypothetical. Their truth depends on laws of
thought which natural science does not investigate.
But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which
is generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man, the worst
and the best alike, is constrained to take some _practical_ attitude
towards his fellows. Man is never alone with nature, and the connections
with his fellows which sustain his intelligent life, are liable to bring
him into trouble, if they are not to some degree understood.
"There's power in me," said Bishop Blougram, "and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else."
The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to act
and to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer to a
demand, springing from his practical need, that he realize himself
through action. He does not construct his edifice of knowledge, as the
bird is supposed to build its nest, without any consciousness of an end
to be attained thereby. Even if, like Lessing, he values the pursuit of
truth for its own sake, still what stings him into effort is the sense
that in truth only can he find the means of satisfying and realizing
himself. Beneath all man's activities, as their very spring and source,
there lies some dim conception of an end to be attained. This is his
moral consciousness, which no neglect will utterly suppress. All human
effort, the effort to know like every other, conceals within it a
reference to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete;
and this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of the
universe on which he must impress his image. Every man must have his
philosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many cases,
that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least, not a
definite object of reflection. The most elementary question directed at
his moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal element. We
cannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without awakening all the
echoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the earth's surface
whose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the earth's centre, so
the most elementary moral judgment, the simplest choice, the most
irrational vagaries of a will calling itself free and revelling in its
supposed lawlessness, are dominated by the conception of a universal
good. Everything that a man does is an attempt to articulate his view of
this good, with a particular content. Hence, man as a moral agent is
always the centre of his own horizon, and stands right beneath the
zenith. Little as he may be aware of it, his relation between himself
and his supreme good is direct. And he orders his whole world from his
point of view, just as he regards East and West as meeting at the spot
on which he stands. Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard the
universe of men and objects as the instrument of his purposes. He
extracts all its interest and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls
upon it all. If he is selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that
is in him as vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men
fall for him into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows
himself as spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime
necessity he recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then
the universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is
evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the world
of its alien character, and to translate it into terms of himself.
We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and his
metaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking that he
can get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner," without any such
creed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do justice
without constructing an ideal state? The truest answer, though it is an
answer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In the sphere of
morality, at least, action, depends on knowledge: Socrates was right in
saying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its end is accidental. Man's
action, so far as it is good or evil, is shot through and through with
his intelligence. And once we clearly distinguish between belief and
profession, between the motives which really impel our actions and the
psychological account of them with which we may deceive ourselves and
others, we shall be obliged to confess that we always act our creed. A
man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of
himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in
tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No
one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough,
half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or
evil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why character
cannot be really bettered by any peddling process. Moralists and
preachers are right in insisting on the need of a new life, that is, of
a new principle, as the basis of any real improvement; and such a
principle necessarily carries in it a new attitude towards men, and a
new interpretation of the moral agent himself and of his world.
Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once
referred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character, and
it beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with moral
life, we _must_ start from the centre. In our intellectual life, it is
not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no need of
endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which makes the
universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not possible. As a
moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not only may, but must
have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be all-inclusive.
As there are natural laws which connect man's physical movements with
the whole system of nature, so there are spiritual relations which
connect him with the whole spiritual universe; and spiritual relations
are always direct.
Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider man as a moral
agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things, the
need of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning ideal
interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish products
of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the limits of the
human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers and poets are
really striving with greater clearness of vision, and in a more
sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are obliged to
perform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural being only on
condition of comprehending, to some degree, the conditions of his
natural life, and the laws of his natural environment. From earliest
youth upwards, he is learning that fire will burn and water drown, and
that he can play with the elements with safety only within the sphere
lit up by his intelligence. Nature will not pardon the blunders of
ignorance, nor tamely submit to every hasty construction. And this truth
is still more obvious in relation to man's moral life. Here, too, and in
a pre-eminent degree, conduct waits on intelligence. Deep will only
answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on
the things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction
of life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action
nugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The
universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as
carrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No,"
because it is a wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, the
negative is not everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair,
through the "Centre of Indifference," till he finds a "Universal Yea"--a
true view of his relation to the universe.
There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at every
step in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot escape,
because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try to make the
world their home, find some kind of reconciling idea between themselves
and the forces amidst which they move, have some kind of working
hypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that they will find rest
till they discover a true hypothesis. If they do not seek it by
reflection--if, in their ardour to penetrate into the secrets of nature,
they forget themselves; if they allow the supreme facts of their moral
life to remain in the confusion of tradition, and seek to compromise the
demands of their spirit by sacrificing to the idols of their childhood's
faith; if they fortify themselves in the indifference of
agnosticism,--they must reap the harvest of their irreflection.
Ignorance is not harmless in matters of character any more than in the
concerns of our outer life. There are in national and in individual
history seasons of despair, and that despair, when it is deepest, is
ever found to be the shadow of moral failure--the result of going out
into action with a false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrong
conception of man's destiny. At such times, the people have not
understood themselves or their environment, and, in consequence, they
come into collision with their own welfare. There is no experiment so
dangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to the common
ignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral conduct; and
there is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads it to turn a
deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those philosophers who carry
the spirit of scientific inquiry into these higher regions, and
endeavour to establish for mankind, by the irrefragable processes of
reason, those principles on which rest all the great elements of man's
destiny. We cannot act without a theory of life; and to whom shall we
look for such a theory, except to those who, undaunted by the
difficulties of the task, ask once more, and strive to answer, those
problems which man cannot entirely escape, as long as he continues to
think and act?