BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.
"Master, explain this incongruity!
When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,
But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth
Lives Beauty.'"[A]
[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_.]
We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring all
the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of good
and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show that
all human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art,
philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in their
different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay,
we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, the
practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a
_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attempt
rests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of the
struggling powers within and without, some principle that manifests
itself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers to
the extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;
and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant a
way, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view,
the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles
of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least,
be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the
practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which
he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose
with which he enters upon it.
Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, _if it is true_--
"So might we safely mock at what unnerves
Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase
That haply evil's strife with good shall cease
Never on earth."[A]
[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and pessimists, as a
rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists to let evil have its
unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer, that "Life is an awkward
business," they "determine to spend life in reflecting on it," or at
least in moaning about it. The world's helpers have been men of another
mould; and the contrast between Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of
a general truth:--"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which works
for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of self-torture
and mortification, and rushing into the political and social fray,
proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the soldier,
calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living with
his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels of
self-realization--Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of asceticism,
preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will, disparaging
efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and holding that each
has enough to do in raising his own self from its dull engrossment in
lower things to an absorption in that pure, passionless being which lies
far beyond all, even the so-called highest, pursuits of practical
life."[A]
[Footnote A: _Schopenhauer_, by Prof. Wallace.]
A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other hand,
an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that
has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it
differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man
from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making
the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "_All_ is
vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. But
yet, if we reflect on the problem of evil, we shall find that there is
no neutral ground, and shall ultimately be driven to choose between
pessimism and its opposite. Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression
of the problem of evil possible, except at a great cost. It presents
itself anew in the mind of every thinking man; and some kind of solution
of it, or at least some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is
involved in the attitude which every man assumes towards life and its
tasks.
It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for Browning's
joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his predecessor's rage
and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there was; and he held his
view consistently to the end. We cannot, therefore, do justice to the
poet without dealing critically with the principle on which he has based
his faith, and observing how far it is applicable to the facts of human
life. As I have previously said, he strives hard to come into fair
contact with the misery of man in all its sadness; and, after doing so,
he claims, not as a matter of poetic sentiment, but as a matter of
strict truth, that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true
that he cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to
all the facts, any more than the scientific man can justify his
hypothesis in every detail; but he holds it as a faith which reason can
justify and experience establish, although not in every isolated
phenomenon. The good may, he holds, be seen actually at work in the
world, and its process will be more fully known, as human life advances
towards its goal.
"Though Master keep aloof,
Signs of His presence multiply from roof
To basement of the building."[A]
[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm footing for
his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that the "profound of
ignorance surges round his rockspit of self-knowledge."
"Enough that now,
Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,
Shows me what is, permits me to divine
What shall be."[B]
[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently thinks
we have the key to all the mystery of being.
Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is based upon
love and which professes to start from experience, or to be legitimately
and rationally derived from it?
If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty in
the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the stars
in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order and law,
may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; but
when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, we
are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or to
anything indecorous"--
"Only--I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale; they meant, you know--
'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"[A]
[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Canon Caponsacchi_, 14-20.]
We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But if
we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
suggest,--if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical energy,
and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all the infinite
misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and character from
which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take the side of the
doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates that the state of
the world, were it rightly understood, is completely satisfactory,
reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry and religion
involve such a postulate, they are taken to be ministering to the
emotions at the expense of the intellect.
Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy his
heart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is his view
without support--at least, as regards the substance of it. The presence
of an idealistic element in things is recognized even by ordinary
thought; and no man's world is so poor that it would not be poorer still
for him, if it were reduced by the abstract sciences of nature into a
mere manifestation of physical force. Such a world Richter compares to
an empty eye-socket.
The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach us to
recognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and that the
principles which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into the
constitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance with the
history even of psychology, especially in modern times, shows that facts
are more and more retracted into thought. This science, which began with
a sufficiently common-sense view, not only of the reality and solidity
of the things of the outer world, but of their opposition to, or
independence of thought, is now thinning that world down into a mere
shadow--a something which excites sensation. It shows that external
things as we know them, and we are not concerned in any others, are, to
a very great extent, the product of our thinking activities. No one will
now subscribe to the Lockian or Humean view, of images impressed by
objects on mind: the object which "impresses" has first to be made by
mind, out of the results of nervous excitation. In a word, modern
psychology as well as modern metaphysics, is demonstrating more and more
fully the dependence of the world, as it is known, on the nature and
activity of man's mind. Every explanation of the world is found to be,
in this sense, idealistic; and in this respect, there is no difference
whatsoever between the interpretation given by science and that of
poetry, or religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a
"substance," or has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert the
principle of the transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea of
evolution with the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time and
space with the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived from
self-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just as
truly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, the
constitutive element in things. If the practical man of the world
charges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can be
answered with a "_Tu quoque_." "How easy," said Emerson, "it is to show
the materialist that he also is a phantom walking and working amid
phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily
questions to find his solid universe proving dim and impalpable before
his sense."
"Sense," which seems to show directly that the world is a solid reality,
not dependent in any way on thought, is found not to be reliable. All
science is nothing but an appeal to thought from ordinary sensuous
opinion. It is an attempt to find the reality of things by thinking
about them; and this reality, when it is found, turns out to be a law.
But laws are ideas; though, if they are true ideas, they represent not
merely thoughts in the mind, but also real principles, which manifest
themselves in the objects of the outer world, as well as in the
thinker's mind.
It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully reasoned
proof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or to repeat
the argument of Kant. I must be content with merely referring to it, as
showing that the principles in virtue of which we think, are the
principles in virtue of which objects as we know them exist; and we
cannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws which scientific
investigation discovers are not only ideas that can be written in books,
but also principles which explain the nature of things. In other words,
the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or their categories, are points
of view in the light of which the external world can be regarded as
governed by uniform laws. And these constructive principles, which lift
the otherwise disconnected world into an intelligible system, are
revelations of the nature of intelligence, and only on that account
principles for explaining the world.
"To know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without."[A]
[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is anthropomorphic; and
in this respect there is no difference between the physics, which speaks
of energy as the essence of things, and the poetry, which speaks of love
as the ultimate principle of reality. Between such scientific and
idealistic explanations there is not even the difference that the one
begins without and the other within, or that the one is objective and
the other subjective. The true distinction is that the principles upon
which the latter proceed are less abstract than those of science.
"Reason" and "love" are higher principles for the explanation of the
nature of things than "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of the
unity of thought. And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with the
self, it is only because they are inadequate to express its full
character. On the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason,
seem to be merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explain
nature, because the relation of nature to intelligence is habitually
neglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems far
enough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the demand
for truth.
But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the higher
categories, or, in other words, it is learning to take a more and more
idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it is a
long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and it is
only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect, that we
find the need of a change of categories. But, as already hinted, there
is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware of the
conditions, under which alone its results may be held as valid. At
first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and offered to
explain both it and man in physical and mathematical terms. But, in our
day, the man of science has become too cautious to make such rash
extensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limit
himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as
to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from
materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further,
and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected,
and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all but
universally acknowledged.
The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to which
we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science itself will
not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to another court.
Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its attitude is one of
doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or other, can give any
valid decision on the matter. Confining themselves to the region of
material phenomena, scientific men generally leave to common ignorance,
or to moral and theological tradition, all the interests and activities
of man, other than those which are physical or physiological. And some
of them are even aware, that if they could find the physical equation of
man, or, through their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man
the sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent
life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of man
and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The explanation
would still begin with mind and end there. The principles of the
materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived from
intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and completed
science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The charge of
anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would prove too
much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it. And, as
directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it has
inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the world, and
is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent of the other.
On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now assail
philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the world, so
much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The best men of
science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind of dualism of
matter and spirit, and to leave morality and religion, art and
philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed. Mr. Huxley, for
instance, and some others, offer two philosophical solutions, one
proceeding from the material world and the other from the sensations and
other "facts of consciousness." They say that we may either explain man
as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a mental one.
But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these explanations is
true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they are different. And
neither of them can be adopted without very serious consequences. It
would require considerable hardihood to suggest that natural science
should be swept away in favour of psychology, which would be done if the
one view held by Mr. Huxley were true. And, in my opinion, it requires
quite as much hardihood to suggest the adoption of a theory that makes
morality and religion illusory, which would be done were the other view
valid.
As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be held by
any one who is interested _both_ in the success of natural science and
in the spiritual development of mankind. We are constrained rather to
say that, if these rival lines of thought lead us to deny either the
outer world of things, or the world of thought and morality, then they
must both be wrong. They are not "explanations" but false theories, if
they lead to such conclusions as these. And, instead of holding them up
to the world as the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them
into the dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point
of view.
And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only by
idealists, but by scientific men themselves,--did they only comprehend
their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards unity, which is
the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one direction by a
hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another. Subjective idealism, that
is, the theory that things are nothing but phenomena of the individual's
consciousness, that the world is really all inside the philosopher, is
now known by most people to end in self-contradiction; and materialism
is also known to begin with it. And there are not many people sanguine
enough to believe with Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we
add two self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately,
we shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does
not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity
denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that is
not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is
necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between things
and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is brought
about may not be known; but, that there is the connection between real
things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an ill-starred
perversity which leads men to deny such a connection, merely because
they have not found out how it is established.
A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of our
time--a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of development is
breaking down the division between mind and matter, as it is breaking
down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy, and physics at
one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at the other, combine
in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity which is always
evolving its content, and bringing its secret potencies to the light. It
is true that these sciences have not linked hands as yet. We cannot get
from chemistry to biology without a leap, or from physiology to
psychology without another. But no one will postulate a rift right
through being. The whole tendency of modern science implies the opposite
of such a conception. History is striving to trace continuity between
the civilized man and the savage. Psychology is making towards a
junction with physiology and general biology, biology with chemistry,
and chemistry with physics. That there is an unbroken continuity in
existence is becoming a postulate of modern science, almost as truly as
the "universality of law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the
postulate held less firmly because the evidence for the continuity of
nature is not yet complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into
physics; biology at present shows no sign of giving up its
characteristic conception of life, and the former science is as yet
quite unable to deal with that peculiar phenomenon. The facts of
consciousness have not been resolved into nervous action, and, so far,
mind has not been shown to be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all
these sciences are beating against the limits which separate them, and
new suggestions of connection between natural life and its inorganic
environment are continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards
each other, and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems
reasonable to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way
upwards may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of
existence to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.
Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical and
religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the chasm
between spirit and nature is viewed with no little apprehension. It is
supposed that if evolution were established as a universal law, and the
unity of being were proved, the mental and moral life of man would be
degraded into a complex manifestation of mere physical force. And we
even find religious men rejoicing at the failure of science to bridge
the gap between the inorganic and the organic, and between natural and
self-conscious life; as if the validity of religion depended upon the
maintenance of their separating boundaries. But no religion that is free
from superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of
knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how
breaks in the continuity of being can be established, when every living
plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and
inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the
former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and matter,"
when every human being is relating himself to the outer world in all his
thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last form of thought
which could profit from such a proof of absolute distinctions, were it
possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion, in so far as it demands a
perfect and absolute being as the object of worship, is vitally
concerned in maintaining the unity of the world. It must assume that
matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle which, in a higher
form, manifests itself in spirit.
But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such
apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which
evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The
apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity asserted
by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of existence
into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of development
to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would be shown to be
nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life nothing but a
physiological process, and religion, morality, and art, nothing but
products of the highly complex motion of highly complex aggregates of
physical atoms.
It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as tending
towards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which many
scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and some
of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have,
with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution in
this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science is
generally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, than
it is in rendering an account of them. In fact, it is not its business
to examine its categories: that task properly belongs to philosophy, and
it is not a superfluous one. But, so long as the employment of the
categories in the special province of a particular science yields valid
results, scientific explorers and those who attach, and rightly attach,
so much value to their discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that
these categories are not valid universally. The warning voice of
philosophy is not heeded, when it charges natural science with applying
its conceptions to materials to which they are inadequate; and its
examination of the categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but
also a useless, activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from
the analysis of our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and
found them, when it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume,
no one had shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he
offered is now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is
rejected by philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in
exposing the fallacies of the theory of association as held by Hume,
science has gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing
a theory of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of
causality by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.
There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For, even
if it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in the
past, it is also admitted that it was applied without being understood;
and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers were right in
rejecting it as the final explanation of the relation of objects to each
other, and in pointing to other and higher connecting ideas. And this
consideration should go some way towards convincing evolutionists that,
though they may be able successfully to apply the idea of development to
particular facts, this does not guarantee the soundness of their view of
it as an instrument of thought, or of the nature of the final results
which it is destined to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to the
new extension which science has received by the use of this new idea, it
may be maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission is
erroneous.
"The prevailing method of explaining the world," says Professor Caird,
"may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards.' The doctrine of
development, interpreted as that idea usually is interpreted, supports
this view, as making it necessary to trace back higher and more complex
to lower or simpler forms of being; for the most obvious way of
accomplishing this task is to show analytically that there is really
nothing more in the former than in the latter."[A] "Divorced from
matter," asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be found? Whatever
our _faith_ may say our _knowledge_ shows them to be indissolubly
joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the
mysterious _control of Mind by Matter_. Trace the line of life backwards
and see it approaching more and more to what we call the _purely
physical condition_."[B] And then, rising to the height of his subject,
or even above it, he proclaims, "By an intellectual necessity I cross
the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter
which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our
professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with
opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."[C] A
little further on, speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of his
scientific fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), he
adds--"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire domain of
cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon
the domain of science, must, _in so far as they do this,_ submit to its
control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it." But if science
is to control the knowable world, he generously leaves the remainder for
religion. He will not deprive it of a faith in "a Power absolutely
inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our days as in the
days of Job can a man by searching find this Power out." And, now that
he has left this empty sphere of the unknown to religion, he feels
justified in adding, "There is, you will observe, no very rank
materialism here."
[Footnote A: _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, Vol. I. p. 34]
[Footnote B: _Address to the British Association_, 1874, p. 54.]
[Footnote C: _Belfast Address_, 1874.]
"Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out
of the way,
With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
to sway."[A]
[Footnote A: Clerk Maxwell: "_Notes of the President's Address,_"
British Association, 1874.]
Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat
ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking
"illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life
traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a
little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he regards science as
destined.
"To tread the world
Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth
Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag."[B]
[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all _we know
as facts_ are mere forms of matter; although the stubborn refusal of
consciousness to be resolved into natural force, and its power of
constructing for itself a world of symbols, gives science no little
trouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete ignorance of the nature
of the power from which all comes.
"So roll things to the level which you love,
That you could stand at ease there and survey
The universal Nothing undisgraced
By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire
I' the distance! "[A]
[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of the
goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed
tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and
earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and
ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is, in
essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in like
manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has been
traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the vengeance of a
savage chief. A similar process in the same direction reduces the love
divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust; somewhat sublimated,
it is true, in its highest forms, but not fundamentally changed.
"Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;
So, stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother-savage, club in hand.
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."[B]
[Footnote B: _Bishop Blouhram's Apology_.]
And when the sacred things of life are treated in this manner--when
moral conduct is showed to be evolved by a continuous process from
"conduct in general," the conduct of an "infusorium or a cephalopod," or
even of wind-mills or water-wheels, it is not surprising if the
authority of the moral law seems to be undermined, and that "devout
souls" are apprehensive of the results of science. "Does law so analyzed
coerce you much?" asks Browning.
The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be fatal
to the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it is
necessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of evolution,
and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps, not only
between the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also between the
self-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual life of Christ,
or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism to evolution,
religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to distinguish
between their friends and their foes, which they previously manifested
in their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of "things in
themselves,"--a doctrine which placed God and the soul beyond the power
of speculative reason either to prove or disprove. It is, however,
already recognized that the attempt of Mansel and Hamilton to degrade
human reason for the behoof of faith was really a veiled agnosticism;
and a little reflection must show that the idea of evolution, truly
interpreted, in no wise threatens the degradation of man, or the
overthrow of his spiritual interests. On the contrary, this idea is, in
all the history of thought, the first constructive hypothesis which is
adequate to the uses of ethics and religion. By means of it, we may hope
to solve many of the problems arising from the nature of knowledge and
moral conduct, which the lower category of cause turned into pure
enigmas. It seems, indeed, to contain the promise of establishing the
science of man, as intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise a
superstructure, comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that of
the science of nature. And, even if the moral science must, like
philosophy, always return to the beginning--must, that is, from the
necessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure--it will
still begin again at a higher level now that the idea of evolution is in
the field.
It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves room for
religion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so far from
degrading man to the level of the brute condition, and running life down
into "purely physical conditions," it contains the promise of
establishing that idealistic view of the world, which is maintained by
art and religion.
In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution should
be used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any way come
under it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of thought,
whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at all as a
theory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question we are
dealing with is not the truth of the hypothesis of a particular science,
but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation of all objects in the
world, including man himself. We must not be deterred from this
universal application by the fact that we cannot, as yet, prove its
truth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis ever has exhausted its
details. I consider, therefore, that Mr. Tyndall had a complete right to
"cross the boundary of the experimental evidence by an intellectual
necessity"; for the necessity comes from the assumption of a possible
explanation by the aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such
a procedure to insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute
continuity of matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the
living. The hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it
is only not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not,
as yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time; and
his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr. Tyndall did
on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.
But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr. Huxley,
has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the developing
process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is applicable, to
natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even when both subject
and object are man himself, there lies "an impassable gulf."
Even to try "to comprehend the connection between thought and thing is
absurd, like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his own
waist-band." Our states of self-consciousness are symbols only--symbols
of an outside entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only
these states; we only _infer_ "that anything answering to our
impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or that
there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this theory,
ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly pointing out
that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is, you will observe,
no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets that he has
destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced evolution into a
law of "an outside entity," of which we can never know anything, and any
inference regarding which violates every law of thought.
It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory, which
Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else it is
useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature which is
the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science of Mr.
Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he would have
escaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained faithful to his
theory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to science, but to
thought, to cast away our categories when they seem to imply
inconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if they are
valid at all.
Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence in the
fact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by matter." Now, it
seems to me, that _if_ nature makes man, then nature makes man's
thoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas, notions, being those of
a naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of the potency of the primal
matter, just as truly as are the buds, flowers, and fruits of a tree. No
doubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend the connection" between nervous
action and sensation, any more than we can comprehend the connection
between inorganic and organic existence. But, if the absence of
"experimental evidence" does not disprove the hypothesis in the one
case, it can not disprove it in the other. There are two crucial points
in which the theory has not been established.
But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that the
connection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet, discover
what it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into organic
structure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he crosses over the
boundary between subject and object, and knows the world without him.
There is no "impassable gulf separating the subject and object"; if
there were we could not know anything of either. There are not two
worlds--the one of thoughts, the other of things--which are absolutely
exclusive of each other, but one universe in which thought and reality
meet. Mr. Tyndall thinks that it is an inference (and an inference over
an impassable gulf!) that anything answering to our impressions exists
outside ourselves. "The question of the external world is the great
battleground of metaphysics," he quotes approvingly from Mr. J.S. Mill.
But the question of the external world is not whether that world exists;
it is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. The
inference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to thoughts,
but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of that world.
Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of trying to
discover whether the world exists, or whether we know that it exists;
its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks what must the
nature of things be, seeing that they are known; and what is the nature
of thought, seeing that it knows facts?
There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or philosophy--no
hope even for science--in a theory which would apply evolution all the
way up from inorganic matter to life, but which would postulate an
absolute break at consciousness. The connection between thought and
things is there to begin with, whether we can account for it or not; if
it were not, then natural science would be impossible. It would be
palpably irrational even to try to find out the nature of things by
thinking. The only science would be psychology, and even that would be
the science of "symbols of an unknown entity." What symbols of an
unknown can signify, or how an unknown can produce symbols of itself
across an impassable gulf--Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall have
yet to inform us.
It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division between
thought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is often grasped
at by their opponents, as a means of warding off the results which they
draw from the theory of evolution. When science breaks its sword,
religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not at once evident that
if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge would be a chimera; for
there would be no outer world at all, not even a phenomenal one, to
supply an object for it. We _must_ postulate the ultimate unity of all
beings with each other and with the mind that knows them, just because
we are intellectual and moral beings; and to destroy this unity is to
"kill reason itself, as it were, in the eye," as Milton said.
Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken continuity of
all existence, but it also negates all differences, except those which
are expressions of that unity. It is not the mere assertion of a
substratum under qualities; but it implies that the substratum
penetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in them. That which
develops--be it plant, child, or biological kingdom--is, at every stage
from lowest to highest, a concrete unity of all its differences; and in
the whole history of its process its actual content is always the same.
The environment of the plant evokes that content, but it adds nothing to
it. No addition of anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, no
insertion of anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What it
is now, it was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now.
Granting the hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with the
view that the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulous
state, contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural and
spiritual life.
But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two very
different ways. It may lead us either to radically change our notions of
mind and its activities, or "to radically change our notions of matter."
We may take as the principle of explanation, either the beginning, or
the end of the process of development. We may say of the simple and
crass, "There is all that your rich universe really means"; or we may
say of the spiritual activities of man, "This is what your crude
beginning really was." We may explain the complex by the simple, or the
simple by the complex. We may analyze the highest back into the lowest,
or we may follow the lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to the
highest.
And one of the most important of all questions for morality and religion
is the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out of crass
matter is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does that prove life to
be nothing but matter; or does it not rather show that what we, in our
ignorance, took to be mere matter was really something much greater? If
"crass matter" contains all this promise and potency, by what right do
we still call it "crass"? It is manifestly impossible to treat the
potencies, assumed to lie in a thing that grows, as if they were of no
significance; first, to assert that such potencies exist, in saying that
the object develops; and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effect
as constituted merely of its simplest elements. Either these potencies
are not in the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at the
first, more than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, or
the lowest stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature.
If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in vain
to their primary state. We must watch the evolution and revelation of
the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the ascending cycles
of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution, when it is not
muddled, is synthetic--not analytic; it explains the simplest in the
light of the complex, the beginning in the light of the end, and not
_vice versa_. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps of
fact, instead of inventing a wilful backward path of its own. And nature
explains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to the
voice of illusory preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last
stage, "Here is the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it
really was; for the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into
light, through bud and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a
growing thing is its highest form of being. The last explains the first,
but not the first the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet
actual, but mere potency; and we could never know even the potency,
except in the light of its own actualization.
From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency into
actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation even of
the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on principles
which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level up and not
level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain spirit, but
we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully understood, except
as an element in a spiritual world."[A]
[Footnote A: Professor Caird, _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, p. 35.]
That the idea of evolution, even when applied in this consistent way,
has difficulties of its own, it is scarcely necessary to say. But there
is nothing in it which imperils the ethical and religious interests of
humanity, or tends to reduce man into a natural phenomenon. Instead of
degrading man, it lifts nature into a manifestation of spirit. If it
were established, if every link of the endless chain were discovered and
the continuity of existence were irrefragably proved, science would not
overthrow idealism, but it would rather vindicate it. It would justify
_in detail_ the attempt of poetry and religion and philosophy, to
interpret all being as the "transparent vesture" of reason, or love, or
whatever other power in the world is regarded as highest.
I have now arrived at the conclusion that was sought. I have tried to
show, not only that the attempt to interpret nature in terms of man is
not a superstitious anthropomorphism, but that such an interpretation is
implied in all rational thought. In other words, self-consciousness is
the key to all the problems of nature. Science, in its progress, is
gradually substituting one category for the other, and every one of
these categories is at once a law of thought and a law of things as
known. Each category, successively adopted, lifts nature more to the
level of man; and the last category of modern thought, namely,
development, constrains us so to modify our views of nature, as to
regard it as finally explicable only in the terms of spirit. Thus, the
movement of science is towards idealism. Instead of lowering man, it
elevates nature into a potency of that which is highest and best in man.
It represents the life of man, in the language of philosophy, as the
return of the highest to itself; or in the language of our poet, and of
religion, as a manifestation of infinite love. The explanation of nature
from the principle of love, if it errs, errs "because it is not
anthropomorphic enough," not because it is too anthropomorphic; it is
not too high and concrete a principle, but too low and abstract.
It now remains to show that the poet, in employing the idea of
evolution, was aware of its upward direction. I have already quoted a
few passages which indicate that he had detected the false use of it. I
shall now quote a few others in which he shows a consciousness of its
true meaning:
"'Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact
Made plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks.
'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump
Once on a time; he kept an after course
Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,
Till he attained to be an ape at last,
Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock
In aught the natural pride.'"[A]
[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
"Not at all," the poet interrupts the man of science: "Friend, banish
fear!"
"I like the thought He should have lodged me once
I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,
The mansion and the palace; made me learn
The feel o' the first, before I found myself
Loftier i' the last."[B]
[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
This way upward from the lowest stage through every other to the
highest, that is, the way of development, so far from lowering us to the
brute level, is the only way for us to attain to the true highest,
namely, the all-complete.
"But grant me time, give me the management
And manufacture of a model me,
Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw,--
Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest,
My embryo potentate should brink and scape.
King, all the better he was cobbler once,
He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes
Life to who sweeps the doorway."[A]
[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
But then, unfortunately, we have no time to make our kings in this way,
"You cut probation short,
And, being half-instructed, on the stage
You shuffle through your part as best you can."[B]
[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
God, however, "takes time." He makes man pass his apprenticeship in all
the forms of being. Nor does the poet
"Refuse to follow farther yet
I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,
Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place
Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."[C]
[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
It is, indeed, only on the supposition of having been thus evolved from
inanimate being that he is able to account
"For many a thrill
Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers
Called Nature: animate, inanimate,
In parts or in the whole, there's something there
Man-like that somehow meets the man in me."[D]
[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
These passages make it clear that the poet recognized that the idea of
development "levels up," and that he makes an intelligent, and not a
perverted and abstract use of this instrument of thought. He sees each
higher stage carrying within it the lower, the present storing up the
past; he recognizes that the process is a self-enriching one. He knows
it to be no degradation of the higher that it has been in the lower; for
he distinguishes between that life, which is continuous amidst the
fleeting forms, and the temporary tenements, which it makes use of
during the process of ascending.
"From first to last of lodging, I was I,
And not at all the place that harboured me."[A]
[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
When nature is thus looked upon from the point of view of its final
attainment, in the light of the self-consciousness into which it
ultimately breaks, a new dignity is added to every preceding phase. The
lowest ceases to be lowest, except in the sense that its promise is not
fulfilled and its potency not actualized; for, throughout the whole
process, the activity streams from the highest. It is that which is
about to be which guides the growing thing and gives it unity. The final
cause is the efficient cause; the distant purpose is the ever-present
energy; the last is always first.
Nor does the poet shrink from calling this highest, this last which is
also first, by its highest name,--God.
"He dwells in all,
From, life's minute beginnings, up at last
To man--the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life."[A]
[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole process of
nature in _Paracelsus_,
"And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God."[B]
[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
There is nowhere a break in the continuity. God is at the beginning, His
rapturous presence is seen in all the processes of nature, His power and
knowledge and love work in the mind of man, and all history is His
revelation of Himself.
The gap which yawns for ordinary thought between animate and inanimate,
between nature and spirit, between man and God, does not baffle the
poet. At the stage of human life, which is "the grand result" of
nature's blind process,
"A supplementary reflux of light,
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle."[C]
[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.
"Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things."[D]
[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
The self-consciousness of man is the point where "all the scattered rays
meet"; and "the dim fragments," the otherwise meaningless manifold, the
dispersed activities of nature, are lifted into a kosmos by the activity
of intelligence. In its light, the forces of nature are found to be, not
blind nor purposeless, but "hints and previsions"
"Strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last."[A]
[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
In this way, and in strict accordance with the principle of evolution,
the poet turns back at each higher stage to re-illumine in a broader
light what went before,--just as we know the seedling after it is grown;
just as, with every advance in life, we interpret the past anew, and
turn the mixed ore of action into pure metal by the reflection which
draws the false from the true.
"Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old."[B]
[Footnote B: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
As youth attains its meaning in age, so does the unconscious process of
nature come to its meaning in man And old age,
"Still within this life
Though lifted o'er its strife,"
is able to
"Discern, compare, pronounce at last,
This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain";[C]
[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
so man is able to penetrate beneath the apparently chaotic play of
phenomena, and find in them law, and beauty, and goodness. The laws
which he finds by thought are not his inventions, but his discoveries.
The harmonies are in the organ, if the artist only knows how to elicit
them. Nay, the connection is still more intimate. It is in the thought
of man that silent nature finds its voice; it blooms into "meaning,"
significance, thought, in him, as the plant shows its beauty in the
flower. Nature is making towards humanity, and in humanity it finds
_itself_.
"Striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form."[A]
[Footnote A: _Emerson_.]
The geologist, physicist, chemist, by discovering the laws of nature, do
not bind unconnected phenomena; but they refute the hasty conclusion of
sensuous thought, that the phenomena ever were unconnected. Men of
science do not introduce order into chance and chaos, but show that
there never was chance or chaos. The poet does not make the world
beautiful, but finds the beauty that is dwelling there. Without him,
indeed, the beauty would not be, any more than the life of the tree is
beautiful until it has evolved its potencies into the outward form.
Nevertheless, he is the expression of what was before, and the beauty
was there in potency, awaiting its expression. "Only let his thoughts be
of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture," said Emerson.
"The winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,
A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh,
Never a senseless gust now man is born.
The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts,
A secret they assemble to discuss
When the sun drops behind their trunks.
* * * * *
"The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops
With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour,
Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn
Beneath a warm moon like a happy face."[A]
[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
Such is the transmuting power of imagination, that there is "nothing but
doth suffer change into something rich and strange"; and yet the
imagination, when loyal to itself, only sees more deeply into the truth
of things, and gets a closer and fuller hold of facts.
But, although the human mind thus heals the breach between nature and
spirit, and discovers the latter in the former, still it is not in this
way that Browning finally establishes his idealism. For him, the
principle working in all things is not reason, but love. It is from love
that all being first flowed; into it all returns through man; and in all
"the wide compass which is fetched," through the infinite variety of
forms of being, love is the permanent element and the true essence.
Nature is on its way back to God, gathering treasure as it goes. The
static view is not true to facts; it is development that for the poet
explains the nature of things; and development is the evolution of love.
Love is for Browning the highest, richest conception man can form. It is
our idea of that which is perfect; we cannot even imagine anything
better. And the idea of evolution necessarily explains the world as the
return of the highest to itself. The universe is homeward bound.
Now, whether love is the highest principle or not, I shall not inquire
at present. My task in this chapter has been to try to show that the
idea of evolution drives us onward towards some highest conception, and
then uses that conception as a principle to explain all things. If man
is veritably higher as a physical organism than the bird or reptile,
then biology, if it proceeds according to the principles of evolution,
_must_ seek the meaning of the latter in the former, and make the whole
kingdom of life a process towards man. "Man is no upstart in the
creation. His limbs are only a more exquisite organization--say rather
the finish--of the rudimental forms that have already been sweeping the
sea and creeping in the mud." And the same way of thought applies to man
as a spiritual agent. If spirit be higher than matter, and if love be
spirit at its best, then the principle of evolution leaves no option to
the scientific thinker, but to regard all things as potentially spirit,
and all the phenomena of the world as manifestations of love. Evolution
necessarily combines all the objects to which it is applied into a
unity. It knits all the infinite forms of natural life into an organism
of organisms, so that it is a universal life which really lives in all
animate beings. "Each animal or vegetable form remembers the next
inferior and predicts the next higher. There is one animal, one plant,
one matter, and one force." In its still wider application by poetry and
philosophy, the idea of evolution gathers all being into one
self-centred totality, and makes all finite existence a movement within,
and a movement of, that final perfection which, although last in order
of time, is first in order of potency,--the _prius_ of all things, the
active energy _in_ all things, and the _reality_ of all things. It is
the doctrine of the immanence of God; and it reveals "the effort of God,
of the supreme intellect, in the extreme frontier of His universe."
In pronouncing, as Browning frequently does, that "after last comes
first" and "what God once blessed cannot prove accursed"; in the
boldness of the faith whereby he makes all the inferior grades of being
into embodiments of the supreme good; in resolving the evils of human
life, the sorrow, strife, and sin of man into means of man's promotion,
he is only applying, in a thorough manner, the principle on which all
modern speculation rests. His conclusions may shock common-sense; and
they may seem to stultify not only our observation of facts, but the
testimony of our moral consciousness. But I do not know of any principle
of speculation which, when elevated into a universal principle of
thought, will not do the same; and this is why the greatest poets and
philosophers seem to be touched with a divine madness. Still, if this be
madness, there is a method in it. We cannot escape from its logic,
except by denying the idea of evolution--the hypothesis by means of
which modern thought aims, and in the main successfully aims, at
reducing the variety of existence, and the chaos of ordinary experience,
into an order-ruled world and a kosmos of articulated knowledge.
The new idea of evolution differs from that of universal causation, to
which even the ignorance of our own day has learnt to submit, in this
mainly--it does not leave things on the level on which it finds them.
Both cause and evolution assert the unity of being, which, indeed, every
one must assume--even sceptics and pessimists; but development
represents that unity as self-enriching; so that its true nature is
revealed, only in the highest form of existence which man can conceive.
The attempt of poets and philosophers to establish a universal synthesis
by means of evolution, differs from the work which is done by men of
science, only in the extent of its range and the breadth of its results.
It is not "idealism," but the scepticism which, in our day, conceals its
real nature under the name of dualism or agnosticism, that is at war
with the inner spirit of science. "Not only," we may say of Browning as
it was said of Emerson by Professor Tyndall, "is his religious sense
entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science; but all such
discoveries he comprehends and assimilates. By him scientific
conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer
hues of an ideal world." And this he does without any distortion of the
truth. For natural science, to one who understands its main tendency,
does not militate against philosophy, art, and religion; nor threaten to
overturn a metaphysic whose principle is truth, or beauty, or goodness.
Rather, it is gradually eliminating the discord of fragmentary
existence, and making the harmony of the world more and more audible to
mankind. It is progressively proving that the unity, of which we are all
obscurely conscious from the first, actually holds in the whole region
of its survey. The idea of evolution is reconciling science with art and
religion, in an idealistic conception of the universe.