GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.
§ 48. Our analysis is now at an end, and a very few words will here suffice
to convey an epitomised recollection of the numerous facts and conclusions
which we have found it necessary to contemplate. We first disposed of the
conspicuously absurd supposition that the origin of things, or the mystery
of existence, admits of being explained by the theory of Theism in any
further degree than by the theory of Atheism. Next it was shown that the
argument "Our heart requires a God" is invalid, seeing that such a
subjective necessity, even if made out, could not be sufficient to
prove--or even to render probable--an objective existence. And with regard
to the further argument that the fact of our theistic aspirations point to
God as to their explanatory cause, it became necessary to observe that the
argument could only be admissible after the possibility of the operation of
natural causes had been excluded. Similarly the argument from the supposed
intuitive necessity of individual thought was found to be untenable, first,
because, even if the supposed necessity were a real one, it would only
possess an individual applicability; and second, that, as a matter of fact,
it is extremely improbable that the supposed necessity is a real necessity
even for the individual who asserts it, while it is absolutely certain that
it is not such to the vast majority of the race. The argument from the
general consent of mankind, being so obviously fallacious both as to facts
and principles, was passed over without comment; while the argument from a
first cause was found to involve a logical suicide. Lastly, the argument
that, as human volition is a cause in nature, therefore all causation is
probably volitional in character, was shown to consist in a stretch of
inference so outrageous that the argument had to be pronounced worthless.
Proceeding next to examine the less superficial arguments in favour of
Theism, it was first shown that the syllogism, All known minds are caused
by an unknown mind; our mind is a known mind; therefore our mind is caused
by an unknown mind,--is a syllogism that is inadmissible for two reasons.
In the first place, "it does not account for mind (in the abstract) to
refer it to a prior mind for its origin;" and therefore, although the
hypothesis, if admitted, would be _an_ explanation of _known_ mind, it is
useless as an argument for the existence of the unknown mind, the
assumption of which forms the basis of that explanation. Again, in the next
place, if it be said that mind is so far an entity _sui generis_ that it
must be either self-existing or caused by another mind, there is no
assignable warrant for the assertion. And this is the second objection to
the above syllogism; for anything within the whole range of the possible
may, for aught that we can tell, be competent to produce a self-conscious
intelligence. Thus an objector to the above syllogism need not hold any
theory of things at all; but even as opposed to the definite theory of
materialism, the above syllogism has not so valid an argumentative basis to
stand upon. We know that what we call matter and force are to all
appearance eternal, while we have no corresponding evidence of a "mind that
is even apparently eternal." Further, within experience mind is invariably
associated with highly differentiated collocations of matter and
distributions of force, and many facts go to prove, and none to negative,
the conclusion that the grade of intelligence invariably depends upon, or
at least is associated with, a corresponding grade of cerebral development.
There is thus both a qualitative and a quantitative relation between
intelligence and cerebral organisation. And if it is said that matter and
motion cannot produce consciousness because it is inconceivable that they
should, we have seen at some length that this is no conclusive
consideration as applied to a subject of a confessedly transcendental
nature, and that in the present case it is particularly inconclusive,
because, as it is speculatively certain that the substance of mind must be
unknowable, it seems _à priori_ probable that, whatever is the cause of the
unknowable reality, this cause should be more difficult to render into
thought in that relation than would some other hypothetical substance which
is imagined as more akin to mind. And if it is said that the _more_
conceivable cause is the _more_ probable cause, we have seen that it is in
this case impossible to estimate the validity of the remark. Lastly, the
statement that the cause must contain actually all that its effects can
contain, was seen to be inadmissible in logic and contradicted by everyday
experience; while the argument from the supposed freedom of the will and
the existence of the moral sense was negatived both deductively by the
theory of evolution, and inductively by the doctrine of utilitarianism. On
the whole, then, with regard to the argument from the existence of the
human mind, we were compelled to decide that it is destitute of any
assignable weight, there being nothing more to lead to the conclusion that
our mind has been caused by another mind, than to the conclusion that it
has been caused by anything else whatsoever.
With regard to the argument from Design, it was observed that Mill's
presentation of it is merely a resuscitation of the argument as presented
by Paley, Bell, and Chalmers. And indeed we saw that the first-named writer
treated this whole subject with a feebleness and inaccuracy very surprising
in him; for while he has failed to assign anything like due weight to the
inductive evidence of organic evolution, he did not hesitate to rush into a
supernatural explanation of biological phenomena. Moreover, he has failed
signally in his _analysis_ of the Design argument, seeing that, in common
with all previous writers, he failed to observe that it is utterly
impossible for us to know the relations in which the supposed Designer
stands to the Designed,--much less to argue from the fact that the Supreme
Mind, even supposing it to exist, caused the observable products by any
particular intellectual _process_. In other words, all advocates of the
Design argument have failed to perceive that, even if we grant nature to be
due to a creating Mind, still we have no shadow of a right to conclude that
this Mind can only have exerted its creative power by means of such and
such cogitative operations. How absurd, therefore, must it be to raise the
supposed evidence of such cogitative operations into evidences of the
existence of a creating Mind! If a theist retorts that it is, after all, of
very little importance whether or not we are able to divine the _methods_
of creation, so long as the _facts_ are there to attest that, _in some way
or other_, the observable phenomena of nature must be due to Intelligence
of some kind as their ultimate cause, then I am the first to endorse this
remark. It has always appeared to me one of the most unaccountable things
in the history of speculation that so many competent writers can have
insisted upon _Design_ as an argument for Theism, when they must all have
known perfectly well that they have no means of ascertaining the subjective
psychology of that Supreme Mind whose existence the argument is adduced to
demonstrate. The truth is, that the argument from teleology must, and can
only, rest upon the observable _facts_ of nature, without reference to the
intellectual _processes_ by which these facts may be supposed to have been
accomplished. But, looking to the "present state of our knowledge," this is
merely to change the teleological argument from its gross Paleyerian form,
into the argument from the ubiquitous operation of general laws. And we saw
that this transformation is now a rational necessity. How far the great
principle of natural selection may have been instrumental in the evolution
of organic forms, is not here, as Mill erroneously imagined, the question;
the question is simply as to whether we are to accept the theory of special
creation or the theory of organic evolution. And forasmuch as no competent
judge at the present time can hesitate for one moment in answering this
question, the argument from a proximate teleology must be regarded as no
longer having any rational existence.
How then does it fare with the last of the arguments--the argument from an
ultimate teleology? Doubtless at first sight this argument seems a very
powerful one, inasmuch as it is a generic argument, which embraces not only
biological phenomena, but all the phenomena of the universe. But
nevertheless we are constrained to acknowledge that its apparent power
dwindles to nothing in view of the indisputable fact that, if force and
matter have been eternal, all and every natural law must have resulted by
way of necessary consequence. It will be remembered that I dwelt at
considerable length and with much earnestness upon this truth, not only
because of its enormous importance in its bearing upon our subject, but
also because no one has hitherto considered it in that relation.
The next step, however, was to mitigate the severity of the conclusion that
was liable to be formed upon the utter and hopeless collapse of all the
possible arguments in favour of Theism. Having fully demonstrated that
there is no shadow of a positive argument in support of the theistic
theory, there arose the danger that some persons might erroneously conclude
that for this reason the theistic theory must be untrue. It therefore
became necessary to point out, that although, as far as we can see, nature
does not require an Intelligent Cause to account for any of her phenomena,
yet it is possible that, if we could see farther, we should see that nature
could not be what she is unless she had owed her existence to an
Intelligent Cause. Or, in other words, the probability there is that an
Intelligent Cause is unnecessary to explain any of the phenomena of nature,
is only equal to the probability there is that the doctrine of the
persistence of force is everywhere and eternally true.
As a final step in our analysis, therefore, we altogether quitted the
region of experience, and ignoring even the very foundations of science,
and so all the most certain of relative truths, we carried the discussion
into the transcendental region of purely formal considerations. And here we
laid down the canon, "that the value of any probability, in its last
analysis, is determined by the number, the importance, and the definiteness
of the relations known, as compared with those of the relations unknown;"
and, consequently, that in cases where the unknown relations are more
numerous, more important, or more indefinite than are the known relations,
the value of our inference varies inversely as the difference in these
respects between the relations compared. From which canon it followed, that
as the problem of Theism is the most ultimate of all problems, and so
contains in its unknown relations all that is to man unknown and
unknowable, these relations must be pronounced the most indefinite of all
relations that it is possible for man to contemplate; and, consequently,
that although we have here the entire range of experience from which to
argue, we are unable to estimate the real value of any argument whatsoever.
The unknown relations in our attempted induction being wholly indefinite,
both in respect of their number and importance, as compared with the known
relations, it is impossible for us to determine any definite probability
either for or against the being of a God. Therefore, although it is true
that, so far as human science can penetrate or human thought infer, we can
perceive no evidence of God, yet we have no right on this account to
conclude that there is no God. The probability, therefore, that nature is
devoid of Deity, while it is of the strongest kind if regarded
scientifically--amounting, in fact, to a scientific demonstration,--is
nevertheless wholly worthless if regarded logically. Notwithstanding it is
as true as is the fundamental basis of all science and of all experience
that, if there is a God, his existence, considered as a cause of the
universe, is superfluous, it may nevertheless be true that, if there had
never been a God, the universe could never have existed.
Hence these formal considerations proved conclusively that, no matter how
great the probability of Atheism might appear to be in a relative sense, we
have no means of estimating such probability in an absolute sense. From
which position there emerged the possibility of another argument in favour
of Theism--or rather let us say, of a reappearance of the teleological
argument in another form. For it may be said, seeing that these formal
considerations exclude legitimate reasoning either for or against Deity in
an absolute sense, while they do not exclude such reasoning in a relative
sense, if there yet remain any theistic deductions which may properly be
drawn from experience, these may now be adduced to balance the atheistic
deductions from the persistence of force. For although the latter
deductions have clearly shown the existence of Deity to be superfluous in a
scientific sense, the formal considerations in question have no less
clearly opened up beyond the sphere of science a possible _locus_ for the
existence of Deity; so that if there are any facts supplied by experience
for which the atheistic deductions appear insufficient to account, we are
still free to account for them in a relative sense by the hypothesis of
Theism. And, it may be urged, we do find such an unexplained residuum in
the correlation of general laws in the production of cosmic harmony. It
signifies nothing, the argument may run, that we are unable to conceive the
methods whereby the supposed Mind operates in producing cosmic harmony; nor
does it signify that its operation must now be relegated to a
super-scientific province. What does signify is that, taking a general view
of nature, we find it impossible to conceive of the extent and variety of
her harmonious processes as other than products of intelligent causation.
Now this sublimated form of the teleological argument, it will be
remembered, I denoted a metaphysical teleology, in order sharply to
distinguish it from all previous forms of that argument, which, in
contradistinction I denoted scientific teleologies. And the distinction, it
will be remembered, consisted in this--that while all previous forms of
teleology, by resting on a basis which was not beyond the possible reach of
science, laid themselves open to the possibility of scientific refutation,
the metaphysical system of teleology, by resting on a basis which is
clearly beyond the possible reach of science, can never be susceptible of
scientific refutation. And that this metaphysical system of teleology does
rest on such a basis is indisputable; for while it accepts the most
ultimate truths of which science can ever be cognisant--viz., the
persistence of force and the consequently necessary genesis of natural
law,--it nevertheless maintains that the necessity of regarding Mind as the
ultimate cause of things is not on this account removed; and, therefore,
that if science now requires the operation of a Supreme Mind to be posited
in a super-scientific sphere, then in a super-scientific sphere it ought to
be posited. No doubt this hypothesis at first sight seems gratuitous,
seeing that, so far as science can penetrate, there is no need of any such
hypothesis at all--cosmic harmony resulting as a physically necessary
consequence from the combined action of natural laws, which in turn result
as a physically necessary consequence of the persistence of force and the
primary qualities of matter. But although it is thus indisputably true that
metaphysical teleology is wholly gratuitous if considered scientifically,
it may not be true that it is wholly gratuitous if considered
psychologically. In other words, if it is more conceivable that Mind should
be the ultimate cause of cosmic harmony than that the persistence of force
should be so, then it is not irrational to accept the more conceivable
hypothesis in preference to the less conceivable one, provided that the
choice is made with the diffidence which is required by the considerations
adduced in Chapter V.
I conclude, therefore, that the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology,
although in a physical sense gratuitous, may be in a psychological sense
legitimate. But as against the fundamental position on which alone this
argument can rest--viz., the position that the fundamental postulate of
Atheism is more _inconceivable_ than is the fundamental postulate of
Theism--we have seen two important objections to lie.
For, in the first place, the sense in which the word "inconceivable" is
here used is that of the impossibility of framing _realisable_ relations in
the thought; not that of the impossibility of framing _abstract_ relations
in thought. In the same sense, though in a lower degree, it is true that
the complexity of the human organisation and its functions is
inconceivable; but in this sense the word "inconceivable" has much less
weight in an argument than it has in its true sense. And, without waiting
again to dispute (as we did in the case of the speculative standing of
Materialism) how far even the genuine test of inconceivability ought to be
allowed to make against an inference which there is a body of scientific
evidence to substantiate, we went on to the second objection against this
fundamental position of metaphysical teleology. This objection, it will be
remembered, was, that it is as impossible to conceive of cosmic harmony as
an effect of Mind, as it is to conceive of it as an effect of mindless
evolution. The argument from inconceivability, therefore, admits of being
turned with quite as terrible an effect on Theism, as it can possibly be
made to exert on Atheism.
Hence this more refined form of teleology which we are considering, and
which we saw to be the last of the possible arguments in favour of Theism,
is met on its own ground by a very crushing opposition: by its metaphysical
character it has escaped the opposition of physical science, only to
encounter a new opposition in the region of pure psychology to which it
fled. As a conclusion to our whole inquiry, therefore, it devolved on us to
determine the relative magnitudes of these opposing forces. And in doing
this we first observed that, if the supporters of metaphysical teleology
objected _à priori_ to the method whereby the genesis of natural law was
deduced from the datum of the persistence of force, in that this method
involved an unrestricted use of illegitimate symbolic conceptions; then it
is no less open to an atheist to object _à priori_ to the method whereby a
directing Mind was inferred from the datum of cosmic harmony, in that this
method involved the population of an unknowable cause,--and this of a
character which the whole history of human thought has proved the human
mind to exhibit an overweening tendency to postulate as the cause of
natural phenomena. On these grounds, therefore, I concluded that, so far as
their respective standing _à priori_ is concerned, both theories may be
regarded as about equally suspicious. And similar with regard to their
standing _à posteriori_; for as both theories require to embody at least
one infinite term, they must each alike be pronounced absolutely
inconceivable. But, finally, if the question were put to me which of the
two theories I regarded as the more rational, I observed that this is a
question which no one man can answer for another. For as the test of
absolute inconceivability is equally destructive of both theories, if a man
wishes to choose between them, his choice can only be determined by what I
have designated relative inconceivability--_i.e._, in accordance with the
verdict given by his individual sense of probability as determined by his
previous habits of thought. And forasmuch as the test of relative
inconceivability may be held in this matter legitimately to vary with the
character of the mind which applies it, the strictly rational probability
of the question to which it is applied varies in like manner. Or, otherwise
presented, the only alternative for any man in this matter is either to
discipline himself into an attitude of pure scepticism, and thus to refuse
in thought to entertain either a probability or an improbability concerning
the existence of a God; or else to incline in thought towards an
affirmation or a negation of God, according as his previous habits of
thought have rendered such an inclination more facile in the one direction
than in the other. And although, under such circumstances, I should
consider that man the more rational who carefully suspended his judgment, I
conclude that if this course is departed from, neither the metaphysical
teleologist nor the scientific atheist has any perceptible advantage over
the other in respect of rationality. For as the formal conditions of a
metaphysical teleology are undoubtedly present on the one hand, and the
formal conditions of a speculative atheism are as undoubtedly present on
the other, there is thus in both cases a logical vacuum supplied wherein
the pendulum of thought is free to swing in whichever direction it may be
made to swing by the momentum of preconceived ideas.
Such is the outcome of our investigation, and considering the abstract
nature of the subject, the immense divergence of opinion which at the
present time is manifested with regard to it, as well as the confusing
amount of good, bad, and indifferent literature on both sides of the
controversy which is extant;--considering these things, I do not think that
the result of our inquiry can be justly complained of on the score of its
lacking precision. At a time like the present, when traditional beliefs
respecting Theism are so generally accepted and so commonly concluded, as a
matter of course, to have a large and valid basis of induction whereon to
rest, I cannot but feel that a perusal of this short essay, by showing how
very concise the scientific _status_ of the subject really is, will do more
to settle the minds of most readers as to the exact standing at the present
time of all the probabilities of the question, than could a perusal of all
the rest of the literature upon this subject. And, looking to the present
condition of speculative philosophy, I regard it as of the utmost
importance to have clearly shown that the advance of science has now
entitled us to assert, without the least hesitation, that the hypothesis of
Mind in nature is as certainly superfluous to account for any of the
phenomena of nature, as the scientific doctrine of the persistence of force
and the indestructibility of matter is certainly true.
On the other hand, if any one is inclined to complain that the logical
aspect of the question has not proved itself so unequivocally definite as
has the scientific, I must ask him to consider that, in any matter which
does not admit of actual demonstration, some margin must of necessity be
left for variations of individual opinion. And, if he bears this
consideration in mind, I feel sure that he cannot properly complain of my
not having done my utmost in this case to define as sharply as possible the
character and the limits of this margin.
§ 49. And now, in conclusion, I feel it is desirable to state that any
antecedent bias with regard to Theism which I individually possess is
unquestionably on the side of traditional beliefs. It is therefore with the
utmost sorrow that I find myself compelled to accept the conclusions here
worked out; and nothing would have induced me to publish them, save the
strength of my conviction that it is the duty of every member of society to
give his fellows the benefit of his labours for whatever they may he worth.
Just as I am confident that truth must in the end be the most profitable
for the race, so I am persuaded that every individual endeavour to attain
it, provided only that such endeavour is unbiassed and sincere, ought
without hesitation to be made the common property of all men, no matter in
what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so
far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have
a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of
my work. So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this analysis
has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower
plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely
formal considerations, it equally becomes my obvious duty to stifle all
belief of the kind which I conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my
intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the purest
scepticism. And forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those
who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the "new faith" is a desirable
substitute for the waning splendour of "the old," I am not ashamed to
confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost
its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to "work
while it is day" will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the
terribly intensified meaning of the words that "the night cometh when no
man can work," yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the
appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was
mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it,--at such times
I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my
nature is susceptible. For whether it be due to my intelligence not being
sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be
due to the memory of those sacred associations which to me at least were
the sweetest that life has given, I cannot but feel that for me, and for
others who think as I do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of
Hamilton,--Philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death, but
of annihilation, the precept _know thyself_ has become transformed into the
terrific oracle to Oedipus--
"Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art."
* * * * *
APPENDIX
AND
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS.
* * * * *
APPENDIX.
* * * * *
A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF A FALLACY IN LOCKE'S USE OF THE ARGUMENT AGAINST
THE POSSIBILITY OF MATTER THINKING ON GROUNDS OF ITS BEING INCONCEIVABLE
THAT IT SHOULD.
Lest it should be thought that I am doing injustice to the views of this
illustrious theist, I here quote his own words:--"We have the ideas of
matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any
mere material being thinks or no, it being impossible for us, by the
contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether
omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power
to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a
thinking immaterial substance; it being, in respect of our notions, not
much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if He
pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that He should
superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know
not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substance the Almighty
has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being,
but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no
contradiction in it that the first eternal thinking being should, if he
pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together
as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought: though,
as I think, I have proved, lib. iv., ch. 10 and 14, &c., it is no less than
a contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its own nature
void of sense and thought) should be that eternal first-thinking being.
What certainty of knowledge can any one have that some perceptions, such
as, _e.g._, pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves,
after a certain manner modified and moved, as well as that they should be
in an immaterial substance upon the motion of the parts of body? Body, as
far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and affect body; and
motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being able to produce
nothing but motion: so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain,
or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our reason, go beyond
our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker. For
since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way
conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He
could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive
capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of
matter can any way operate upon? I say not this, that I would any way
lessen the belief of the soul's immateriality, &c.... It is a point which
seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge; and he who will
give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate
part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him
fixedly for or against the soul's materiality. Since on which side soever
he views it, either as an unextended substance or as a thinking extended
matter, the difficulty to conceive either will, whilst either alone is in
his thoughts, still drive him to the contrary side. An unfair way which
some men take with themselves, who, because of the inconceivableness of
something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary
hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed
understanding."
This passage, I do not hesitate to say, is one of the most remarkable in
the whole range of philosophical literature, in respect of showing how even
the strongest and most candid intellect may have its reasoning faculty
impaired by the force of a preformed conviction. Here we have a mind of
unsurpassed penetration and candour, which has left us side by side two
parallel trains of reasoning. In the one, the object is to show that the
author's preformed conviction as to the being of a God is justifiable on
grounds of reason; in the other, the object is to show that, granting the
existence of a God, and it is not impossible that he may have endowed
matter with the faculty of thinking. Now, in the former train of reasoning,
the whole proof rests entirely upon the fact that "it is impossible to
conceive that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking
intelligent being." Clearly, if this proposition is true, it must destroy
one or other of the trains of reasoning; for it is common to them both, and
in one of them it is made the sole ground for concluding that matter cannot
think, while in the other it is made compatible with the supposition that
matter may think. This extraordinary inconsistency no doubt arose from the
fact that the author was antecedently persuaded of the existence of an
_Omnipotent_ Mind, and having been long accustomed in his intellectual
symbols to regard it presumptuous in him to impose any limitations on this
almighty power, when he asked himself whether it would be possible for this
almighty power, if it so willed, to endow matter with the faculty of
thinking, he argued that it might be possible, notwithstanding his being
unable to conceive the possibility. But when he banished from his mind the
idea of this personal and almighty power, and with that idea banished all
its associations, he then felt that he had a right to argue more freely,
and forthwith made his conceptive faculty a test of abstract possibility.
Yet _the sum total of abstract possibility, in relation to him, must have
been the same in the two cases_; so that in whichever of the two trains of
reasoning his argument was sound, in the other it must certainly have been
null.
We may well feel amazed that so able a thinker can have fallen into so
obvious an error, and afterwards have persisted in it through pages and
pages of his work. It will be instructive, however, to those who rely upon
Locke's exposition of the argument from Inconceivability to see how
effectually he has himself destroyed it. For this purpose, therefore, I
shall make some further quotations from the same train of reasoning. The
statement of Locke's opinion that the Almighty could endow matter with the
faculty of thinking if He so willed, called down some remonstrances and
rebukes from the then Bishop of Worcester. Locke's reply was a very lengthy
one, and from it the following extracts are taken. I merely request the
reader throughout to substitute for the words God, Creator, Almighty,
Omipotency, &c., the words _Summum genus_ of Possibility.
"But it is further urged that we cannot conceive how matter can think. I
grant it, but to argue from thence that God therefore cannot give to matter
a faculty of thinking is to say God's omnipotency is limited to a narrow
compass because man's understanding is so, and brings down God's infinite
power to the size of our capacities....
"If God can give no power to any parts of matter but what men can account
for from the essence of matter in general; if all such qualities and
properties must destroy the essence, or change the essential properties of
matter, which are to our conceptions above it, and we cannot conceive to be
the natural consequence of that essence; it is plain that the essence of
matter is destroyed, and its essential properties changed, in most of the
sensible parts of this our system. For it is visible that all the planets
have revolutions about certain remote centres, which I would have any one
explain or make conceivable by the bare essence, or natural powers
depending on the essence of matter in general, without something added to
that essence which we cannot conceive; for the moving of matter in a
crooked line, or the attraction of matter by matter, is all that can be
said in the case; either of which it is above our reach to derive from the
essence of matter or body in general, though one of these two must
unavoidably be allowed to be superadded, in this instance, to the essence
of matter in general. The omnipotent Creator advised not with us in the
making of the world, and His ways are not the less excellent because they
are past finding out....
"In all such cases, the superinducement of greater perfections and nobler
qualities destroys nothing of the essence or perfections that were there
before, unless there can be showed a manifest repugnancy between them; but
all the proof offered for that is only that we cannot conceive how matter,
without such superadded perfections, can produce such effects; which is, in
truth, no more than to say matter in general, or every part of matter, as
matter, has them not, but is no reason to prove that God, if He pleases,
cannot superadd them to some parts of matter, unless it can be proved to be
a contradiction that God should give to some parts of matter qualities and
perfections which matter in general has not, though we cannot conceive how
matter is invested with them, or how it operates by virtue of those new
endowments; nor is it to be wondered that we cannot, whilst we limit all
its operations to those qualities it had before, and would explain them by
the known properties of matter in general, without any such induced
perfections. For if this be a right rule of reasoning, to deny a thing to
be because we cannot conceive the manner how it comes to be, I shall desire
them who use it to stick to this rule, and see what work it will make both
in divinity as well as philosophy, and whether they can advance anything
more in favour of scepticism.
"For to keep within the present subject of the power of thinking and
self-motion bestowed by omnipotent power in some parts of matter: the
objection to this is, I cannot conceive how matter should think. What is
the consequence? Ergo, God cannot give it a power to think. Let this stand
for a good reason, and then proceed in other cases by the same.
"You cannot conceive how matter can attract matter at any distance, much
less at the distance of 1,000,000 miles; ergo, God cannot give it such a
power: you cannot conceive how matter should feel or move itself, or affect
any material being, or be moved by it; ergo, God cannot give it such
powers: which is in effect to deny gravity, and the revolution of the
planets about the sun; to make brutes mere machines, without sense or
spontaneous motion; and to allow man neither sense nor voluntary motion.
"Let us apply this rule one degree farther. You cannot conceive how an
extended solid substance should think, therefore God cannot make it think:
can you conceive how your own soul or any substance thinks? You find,
indeed, that you do think, and so do I; but I want to be told how the
action of thinking is performed: this, I confess, is beyond my conception;
and I would be glad any one who conceives it would explain it to me.
"God, I find, has given me this faculty; and since I cannot but be
convinced of His power in this instance, which, though I every moment
experience in myself, yet I cannot conceive the manner of, what would it be
less than an insolent absurdity to deny His power in other like cases, only
for this reason, because I cannot conceive the manner how?...
"That Omnipotency cannot make a substance to be solid and not solid at the
same time, I think with due reverence [diffidence?[35]] we may say; but
that a solid substance may not have qualities, perfections, and powers,
which have no natural or visibly necessary connection with solidity and
extension, is too much for us (who are but of yesterday, and know nothing)
to be positive in.
"If God cannot join things together by connections inconceivable to us, we
must deny even the consistency and being of matter itself; since every
particle of it having some bulk, has its parts connected by ways
inconceivable to us. So that all the difficulties that are raised against
the thinking of matter, from our ignorance or narrow conceptions, stand not
at all in the way of the power of God, if He pleases to ordain it so; nor
prove anything against His having actually endowed some parcels of matter,
so disposed as He thinks fit, with a faculty of thinking, till it can he
shown that it contains a contradiction to suppose it.
"Though to me sensation be comprehended under thinking in general, in the
foregoing discourse I have spoke of sense in brutes as distinct from
thinking; because your lordship, as I remember, speaks of sense in brutes.
But here I take liberty to observe, that if your lordship allows brutes to
have sensation, it will follow, either that God can and doth give to some
parcels of matter a power of perception and thinking, or that all animals
have immaterial, and consequently, according to your lordship, immortal
souls, as well as men; and to say that fleas and mites, &c., have immortal
souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as going a great way to
serve an hypothesis....
"It is true, I say, 'That bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else,' and
so I thought when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their
operation. But I am since convinced, by the judicious Mr. Newton's
incomparable book, that it is too bold a presumption to limit God's power
in this point by my narrow conceptions. The gravitation of matter towards
matter, by way unconceivable to me, is not only a demonstration that God
can, if He pleases, put into bodies powers and ways of operation above what
can be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained by what we know
of matter, but also an unquestionable and everywhere visible instance that
He has done so. And therefore, in the next edition of my book, I will take
care to have that passage rectified....
"As to self-consciousness, your lordship asks, 'What is there like
self-consciousness in matter?' Nothing at all in matter as matter. But that
God cannot bestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with
it self-consciousness, will never be proved by asking how is it possible to
apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive? The
weakness of our apprehension I grant in the case: I confess as much as you
please, that we cannot conceive how an unsolid created substance thinks;
but this weakness of our apprehension reaches not the power of God, whose
weakness is stronger than anything in man."
Lastly, Locke turns upon his opponent the power of the _odium theologicum_.
"Let it be as hard a matter as it will to give an account what it is that
should keep the parts of a material soul together after it is separated
from the body, yet it will be always as easy to give an account of it as to
give an account what it is that shall keep together a material and
immaterial substance. And yet the difficulty that there is to give an
account of that, I hope, does not, with your lordship, weaken the
credibility of the inseparable union of soul and body to eternity; and I
persuade myself that the men of sense, to whom your lordship appeals in
this case, do not find their belief of this fundamental point much weakened
by that difficulty.... But you will say, you speak only of the soul; and
your words are, that it is no easy matter to give an account how the soul
should be capable of immortality unless it be a material substance. I grant
it, but crave leave to say, that there is not any one of these difficulties
that are or can be raised about the manner how a material soul can be
immortal, which do not as well reach the immortality of the body....
"But your lordship, as I guess from your following words, would argue that
a material substance cannot be a free agent; whereby I suppose you only
mean that you cannot see or conceive how a solid substance should begin,
stop, or change its own motion. To which give me leave to answer, that when
you can make it conceivable how any created, finite, dependent substance
can move itself, I suppose you will find it no harder for God to bestow
this power on a solid than an unsolid created substance.... But though you
cannot see how any created substance, solid or not solid, can be a free
agent (pardon me, my lord, if I put in both, till your lordship please to
explain it of either, and show the manner how either of them can of itself
move itself or anything else), yet I do not think you will so far deny men
to be free agents, from the difficulty there is to see how they are free
agents, as to doubt whether there be foundation enough for the day of
judgment."
Let us now, for the sake of contrast, turn to some passages which occur in
the other train of reasoning.
"If we suppose only matter and motion first or eternal, thought can never
begin to be. For it is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or
without motion, could have originally in and from itself sense, perception,
and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and
knowledge must be a property eternally inseparable from matter and every
particle of it." There is a double fallacy here. In the first place,
conceivability is made the unconditional test of possibility; and, in the
next place, it is asserted that unless every particle of matter can think,
no collocation of such particles can possibly do so. This latter fallacy is
further insisted upon thus:--"If they will not allow matter as matter, that
is, every particle of matter, to be as well cogitative as extended, they
will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative
being out of incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended
parts, if I may so speak.... Every particle of matter, as matter, is
capable of all the same figures and motions of any other, and I challenge
any one in his thoughts to add anything else to one above another." Now, as
we have seen, Locke himself has shown in his other trains of argument that
this challenge is thoroughly futile as a refutation of possibilities; but
the point to which I now wish to draw attention is this--It does not follow
because certain and highly complex collocations of material particles may
be supposed capable of thinking, that therefore every particle of matter
must be regarded as having this attribute. We have innumerable analogies in
nature of a certain collocation of matter and force producing certain
results which another somewhat similar collocation could not produce: in
such cases we do not assume that all the resulting attributes of the one
collocation must be presented also by the other--still less that these
resulting attributes must belong to the primary qualities of matter and
force. Hence, it is not fair to assume that thought must either be inherent
in every particle of matter, or else not producible by any possible
collocation of such particles, unless it has previously been shown that so
to produce it by any possible collocation is in the nature of things
impossible. But no one could refute this fallacy better than Locke himself
has done in some of the passages already quoted from his other train of
reasoning.
But to continue the quotation:--"If, therefore, it be evident that
something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evident that
that something must necessarily be a cogitative being; for it is as
impossible [_inconceivable_] that incogitative matter should produce a
cogitative being, as that nothing, or the negation of all being, should
produce a positive being or matter." Again,--"For unthinking particles of
matter, however put together, can have [_can be taught to have_] nothing
thereby added to them, but a new relation of position, which it is
impossible [_inconceivable_] should give thought and knowledge to them."
It is unnecessary to multiply these quotations, for, in effect, they would
all be merely repetitions of one another. It is enough to have seen that
this able author undertakes to demonstrate the existence of a God, and that
his whole demonstration resolves itself into the unwarrantable inference,
that as we are unable to conceive how thought can be a property of matter,
therefore a property of matter thought cannot be. That such an erroneous
inference should occur in any writings of so old a date as those of Locke
is not in itself surprising. What is surprising is the fact, that in the
same writings, and in the course of the same discussion, the fallacy of
this very inference is repeatedly pointed out and insisted upon in a great
variety of ways; and it has been chiefly for the sake of showing the
pernicious influence which preformed opinion may exert--viz., even to
blinding the eyes of one of the most clear-sighted and thoughtful men that
ever lived to a glaring contradiction repeated over and over again in the
course of a few pages,--it has been chiefly for this reason that I have
extended this Appendix to so great a length. I shall now conclude it by
quoting some sentences which occur on the very next page after that from
which the last quoted sentences were taken. Our author here again returns
to his defence of the omnipotency of God; and as he now again thus
personifies the sum total of possibility, his mind abruptly reverts to all
its other class of associations. In this case the transition is
particularly interesting, not only on account of its suddenness, but also
because the correlations contemplated happen to be exactly the same in the
two cases--viz., matter as the cause of mind, and mind as the cause of
matter. Remember that on the last page this great philosopher supposed he
had demonstrated the abstract impossibility of matter being the cause of
mind on the ground of a causal connection being inconceivable, let us now
observe what he says upon this page regarding the abstract possibility of
mind being the cause of matter. "Nay, possibly, if we would emancipate
ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts as far as they would
reach to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some
dim and seeming conception how matter might at first be made and begin to
exist by the power of that eternal first being.... But you will say, Is it
not impossible to admit of the making anything out of nothing, since we
cannot possibly conceive it? I answer--No; because it is not reasonable to
deny the power of an infinite being [this phrase, in the absence of
hypothesis, _i.e._, in Locke's other train of reasoning, is of course
equivalent to the sum-total of possibility] because we cannot comprehend
its operations. We do not deny other effects upon this ground, because we
cannot possibly conceive the manner of their production. We cannot conceive
how anything but impulse of body can move body; and yet that is not a
reason sufficient to make us deny it possible, against the constant
experience we have of it in ourselves, in all our voluntary motions, which
are produced in us only by the free action or thought of our minds, and are
not, nor can be, the effects of the impulse or determination of the blind
matter in or upon our own bodies; for then it could not be in our power or
choice to alter it. For example, my right hand writes, whilst my left hand
is still: what causes rest in one and motion in the other? Nothing but my
will, a thought in my mind; my thought only changing, the right hand rests,
and the left hands moves. This is matter of fact, which cannot be denied:
explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to
understand creation."[36]
* * * * *
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS.
* * * * *
I.
COSMIC THEISM.[37]
Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable is a doctrine of so much
speculative importance, that it behoves all students of philosophy to have
clear views respecting its character and implications. Mr. Spencer has
himself so fully explained the character of this doctrine, that no
attentive reader can fail to understand it; but concerning those of its
implications which may be termed theological--as distinguished from
religious--Mr. Spencer is silent. Within the last two or three years,
however, there has appeared a valuable work by an able exponent of the new
philosophy; and in this work the writer, adopting his master's teaching of
the Unknowable, proceeds to develop it into a definite system of what may
be termed scientific theology. And not only so, but he assures the world
that this system of scientific theology is the highest, the purest, and the
most ennobling form of religion that mankind has ever been privileged to
know in the past, or, from the nature of the case, can ever be destined to
know in the future. It is a system, we are told, wherein the most
fundamental truths of Theism are taught as necessary deductions from the
highest truths of Science; it is a system wherein no single doctrine
appeals for its acceptance to any principle of blind or credulous faith,
but wherein every doctrine can be fully justified by the searching light of
reason; it is a system wherein the noblest of our aspirations and the most
sublime of our emotions are able to find an object far more worthy and much
more glorious than has ever been supplied to them by any of the older forms
of Theism; and it is a system, therefore, in which, with a greatly enlarged
and intensified meaning, we may worship God, and all that is within us
bless His holy name. Assuredly a proclamation such as this, emanating from
the most authoritative expounders of modern thought, as the highest and the
greatest result to which a rigorous philosophic synthesis has led, is a
proclamation which cannot fail to arrest our most serious attention. Nay,
may it not do more than this? May it not appeal to hearts which long have
ceased to worship? May it not once more revive a hope--long banished,
perhaps, but still the dearest which our poor natures have
experienced--that somewhere, sometime, or in some way, it may yet be
possible to feel that God is not far from any one of us? For to those who
have known the anguish of a shattered faith, it will not seem so childish
that our hearts should beat the quicker when we once more hear a voice
announcing to a world of superstitious idolaters--"Whom ye ignorantly
worship, Him declare I unto you." But if, when we have listened to the glad
tidings of the new gospel, we find that the preacher, though apparently in
earnest, is not worthy to be heard again on this matter; and if, as we turn
away, our eyes grow dim with the memory of a vanished dream, surely we may
feel that the preacher is deserving of our blame for obtruding thus upon
the most sacred of our sorrows.
Mr. John Fiske is, as is well known, an author who unites in himself the
qualities of a well-read student of philosophy, a clear and accurate
thinker, a thorough master of the principles which in his recent work he
undertakes to explain and to extend, and a writer gifted in a remarkable
degree with the power of lucid exposition. Such being the intellectual
calibre of the man who elaborates this new system of scientific theology, I
confess that, on first seeing his work, I experienced a faint hope that, in
the higher departments of the Philosophy of Evolution as conceived by Mr.
Spencer and elaborated by his disciple, there might be found some rational
justification for an attenuated form of Theism. But on examination I find
that the bread which these fathers have offered us turns out to be a stone;
and thinking that it is desirable to warn other of the children--whether of
the family Philosophical or Theological--against swallowing on trust a
morsel so injurious, I shall endeavour to point out what I conceive to be
the true nature of "Cosmic Theism."
Starting from the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, Mr. Fiske,
following Mr. Spencer, proceeds to show how the doctrine implies that there
must be a mode of Being to which human knowledge is non-relative. Or, in
other words, he shows that the postulation of phenomena necessitates the
further postulation of noumena of which phenomena are the manifestations.
Now what may we affirm of noumena without departing from a scientific or
objective mode of philosophising? We may affirm at least this much of
noumena, that they constitute a mode of existence which need not
necessarily vanish were our consciousness to perish; and, therefore, that
they now stand out of necessary relation to our consciousness. Or, in other
words, so far as human consciousness is concerned, noumena must be regarded
as absolute. "But now, what do we mean by this affirmation of absolute
reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? Do we mean
to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that
beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult
substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is
an occult substratum Matter? Our conclusion cannot be stated in any such
form.... Our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of phenomena,
external or internal, can be framed without postulating an Absolute
Existence of which phenomena are the manifestations. And now let us
carefully note what follows. We cannot identify this Absolute Existence
with Mind, since what we know as Mind is a series of phenomenal
manifestations.... Nor can we identify this Absolute Existence with Matter,
since what we know as Matter is a series of phenomenal manifestations....
Absolute Existence, therefore,--the Reality which persists independently of
us, and of which Mind and Matter are the phenomenal manifestations,--cannot
be identified either with Mind or with Matter. Thus is Materialism included
in the same condemnation with Idealism.... See then how far we have
travelled from the scholastic theory of occult substrata underlying each
group of phenomena. These substrata were but the ghosts of the phenomena
themselves; behind the tree or the mountain a sort of phantom tree or
mountain, which persists after the body of perception has gone away with
the departure of the percipient mind. Clearly this is no scientific
interpretation of the facts, but is rather a specimen of naïve barbaric
thought surviving in metaphysics. The tree or mountain being groups of
phenomena, what we assert as persisting independently of the percipient
mind is a something which we are unable to condition either as tree or as
mountain.
"And now we come down to the very bottom of the problem. Since we do
postulate Absolute Existence, and do not postulate a particular occult
substance underlying each group of phenomena, are we to be understood as
implying that there is a single Being of which all phenomena, internal and
external to consciousness, are manifestations? Such must seem to be the
inevitable conclusion, since we are able to carry on thinking at all only
under the relations of Difference and No-difference.... It may seem that,
since we cannot attribute to the Absolute Reality any relations of
Difference, we must positively ascribe to it No-difference. Or, what is the
same thing, in refusing to predicate multiplicity of it, do we not
virtually predicate of it unity? We do, simply because we cannot think
without so doing."[38]
A single Absolute Reality being thus posited, our author proceeds, towards
the close of his work, to argue that as this Reality cannot be conceived as
limited either in space or time, it constitutes a Being which corresponds
with our essential conception of Deity. True it is devoid of certain
accessory attributes, such as personality, intelligence, and volition; but
for this very reason, it is insisted, the theistic ideal as thus presented
is a purer, and therefore a better, ideal than has ever been presented
before. Nay, it is the highest possible form of this ideal, as the
following considerations will show. In what has consisted that continuous
purification of Theism which the history of thought shows to have been
effected, from the grossest form of belief in supernatural agency as
exhibited in Fetichism, through its more refined form as exhibited in
Polytheism, to its still more refined form as exhibited in Monotheism? In
nothing but in a continuous process of what Mr. Fiske calls
"deanthropomorphisation." Consequently, must we not conclude that when we
carry this process yet one step further, and divest our conception of Deity
of all the yet lingering remnants of anthropomorphism which occur in the
current conceptions of Deity, we are but still further purifying that
conception? Assuredly, the attributes of personality, intelligence, and so
forth, are only known as attributes of Humanity, and therefore to ascribe
them to Deity is but to foster, in a more refined form, the anthropomorphic
teachings of previous religions. But if we carefully refuse to limit Deity
by the ascription of any human attributes whatever, and if the only
attributes which we do ascribe are such as on grounds of pure reason alone
we are compelled to ascribe, must we not conclude that the form of Theism
which results is the purest and the most refined form in which it is
possible for Theism to exist? "From the anthropomorphic point of view it
will quite naturally be urged in objection, that this apparently desirable
result is reached through the degradation of Deity from an 'intelligent
personality' to a 'blind force,' and is therefore in reality an undesirable
and perhaps quasi-atheistic result."[39] But the question which really
presents itself is, "theologically phrased, whether the creature is to be
taken as a measure of the Creator. Scientifically phrased, the question is
whether the highest form of Being as yet suggested to one petty race of
creatures by its ephemeral experience of what is going on in one tiny
corner of the universe, is necessarily to be taken as the equivalent of
that absolutely highest form of Being in which all the possibilities of
existence are alike comprehended."[40] Therefore, in conclusion, "whether
or not it is true that, within the bounds of the phenomenal universe the
highest type of existence is that which we know as humanity, the conclusion
is in every way forced upon us that, quite independently of limiting
conditions in space or time, there is a form of Being which can neither be
assimilated to humanity nor to any lower type of existence. We have no
alternative, therefore, but to regard it as higher than humanity, even 'as
the heavens are higher than the earth,' and except for the intellectual
arrogance which the arguments of theologians show lurking beneath their
expressions of humility, there is no reason why this admission should not
be made unreservedly, without the anthropomorphic qualifications by which
its effect is commonly nullified. The time is surely coming when the
slowness of men in accepting such a conclusion will be marvelled at, and
when the very inadequacy of human language to express Divinity will be
regarded as a reason for a deeper faith and more solemn adoration."[41]
I have now sufficiently detailed the leading principles of Cosmic Theism to
render a clear and just conception of those fundamental parts of the system
which I am about to criticise; but it is needless to say that, for all
minor details of this system, I must refer those who may not already have
perused them to Mr. Fiske's somewhat elaborate essays. In now beginning my
criticisms, it may be well to state at the outset, that they are to be
restricted to the philosophical aspect of the subject. With matters of
sentiment I do not intend to deal,--partly because to do so would be unduly
to extend this essay, and partly also because I believe that, so far as the
acceptance or the rejection of Cosmic Theism is to be determined by
sentiment, much, if not all, will depend on individual habits of thought.
For whether or not Cosmic Theism is to be regarded as a religion adapted to
the needs of any individual man, will depend on what these needs are felt
to be by that man himself: we cannot assert magisterially that this
religion must be adapted to his needs because we have found it to be
adapted to our own. And if it is retorted that, human nature being
everywhere the same, a form of religion that is adapted to one man must on
this account be adapted to another, I reply that it is not so. For if a man
who is what Mr. Fiske calls an "Anthropomorphic Theist" finds from
experience that his system of religion--say Christianity--creates and
sustains a class of emotions and general habits of thought which he feels
to be the highest and the best of which he is capable, it is useless for a
"Cosmic Theist" to offer such a man another system of religion, in which
the conditions essential to the existence of these particular emotions and
habits of thought are manifestly absent. For such a man cannot but feel
that the proffered substitution would be tantamount, if accepted, to an
utter destruction of all that he regards as essentially religious. He will
tell us that he finds it perfectly easy to understand and to appreciate
those feelings of vague awe and "worship of the silent kind" which the
Cosmic Theist declares to be fostered by Cosmic Theism; but he will also
tell us that those feelings, which he has experienced with equal vividness
under his own system of Anthropomorphic Theism, are to him but as
non-religious dross compared with the unspeakable felicity of holding
definite commune with the Almighty and Most Merciful, or of rendering
worship that is a glad hosanna--a fearless shout of joy. On the other hand,
I believe that it is possible for philosophic habits of thought so to
discipline the mind that the feelings of vague awe and silent worship in
the presence of an appalling Mystery become more deep and steady than a
theist proper can well believe. It is therefore impossible that either
party can fully appreciate those sentiments of the other which they have
never fully experienced themselves; for even in those cases where an
anthropomorphic theist has been compelled to abandon his creed, as the
change must take place in mature life, his tone of mind has been determined
before it does take place; and therefore in sentiment, though not in faith,
he is more or less of a theist for the rest of his life: the only effect of
the change is to create a troubled interference between his desires and his
beliefs.
However, I do not intend to develop this branch of the subject further than
thus to point out, in a general way, that religion-mongers as a class are
apt to show too little regard for the sentiments, as distinguished from the
beliefs, of those to whom they offer their wares. But although I do not
intend to constitute myself a champion of theology by pointing out the
defects of Cosmic Theism in the aspect which it presents to current modes
of thought, there is one such defect which I must here dwell upon, because
we shall afterwards have occasion to refer to it. A theologian may very
naturally make this objection to Cosmic Theism as presented by Mr.
Fiske--viz., that the argument on which this philosopher throughout relies
as a self-evident demonstration that the new system of Theism is a further
and a final improvement on all the previous systems of Theism, is a
fallacious argument. As we have already seen, this argument is, that as the
progress in the purification of Theism has throughout consisted in a
process of "deanthropomorphisation," therefore the terminal phase in this
process, which Cosmic Theism introduces, must be still in the direction of
that progress. But to this argument a theologian may not unreasonably
object, that this terminal phase differs from all the previous phases in
one all-important feature--viz., in effecting a _total abolition_ of the
anthropomorphic element. Before, therefore, it can be shown that this
terminal phase is a further development of _Theism_, it must he shown that
Theism still remains Theism after this hitherto characteristic element has
been removed. If it is true, as Mr. Fiske very properly insists, that all
the various forms of belief in God have thus far had this as a common
factor, that they ascribed to God the attributes of Man; it becomes a
question whether we may properly abstract this hitherto invariable factor
of a belief, and still call that belief by the same name. Or, to put the
matter in another light, as cosmists maintain that Theism, in all the
phases of its development, has been the product of a probably erroneous
theory of personal agency in nature, when this theory is expressly
discarded--as it is by the doctrine of the Unknowable--is it
philosophically legitimate for cosmists to render their theory of things in
terms which belong to the totally different theory which they discard? No
doubt it is true that the progressive refinement of Theism has throughout
consisted in a progressive discarding of anthropomorphic qualities; but
this fact does not touch the consideration that, when we proceed to strip
off the last remnants of these qualities, we are committing an act which
differs _toto coelo_ from all the previous acts which are cited as
precedents; for by this terminal act we are not, as heretofore, _refining_
the theory of Theism--we are completely _transforming_ it by removing an
element which, both genetically and historically, would seem to constitute
the very essence of Theism.
Or the case may be presented in yet another light. The only use of terms,
whether in daily talk or in philosophical disquisition, is that of
designating certain things or attributes to which by general custom we
agree to affix them; so that if anyone applies a term to some thing or
attribute which general custom does not warrant him in so applying, he is
merely laying himself open to the charge of abusing that term. Now apply
these elementary principles to the case before us. We have but to think of
the disgust with which the vast majority of living persons would regard the
sense in which Mr. Fiske uses the term "Theism," to perceive how intimate
is the association of that term with the idea of a Personal God. Such
persons will feel strongly that, by this final act of purification, Mr.
Fiske has simply purified the Deity altogether out of existence. And I
scarcely think it is here competent to reply that all previous acts of
purification were at first similarly regarded as destructive, because it is
evident that none of these previous acts affected, as this one does, the
central core of Theism. And, lastly, if it should be still further
objected, that by declaring the theory of Personal Agency the central core
of Theism, I am begging the question as to the appropriateness of Mr.
Fiske's use of the word "Theism,"--seeing he appears to regard the
essential meaning of this word to be that of a postulation of merely Causal
Agency,--I answer, More of this anon; but meanwhile let it be observed that
any charge of question-begging lies rather at the door of Mr. Fiske, in
that he assumes, without any expressed justification, that the essence of
Theism _does_ consist in such a postulation and in nothing more. And as he
unquestionably has against him the present world of theists no less than
the history of Theism in the past, I do not see how he is to meet this
charge except by confessing to an abuse of the term in question.
I will now proceed to examine the structure of Cosmic Theism. We are all, I
suppose, at one in allowing that there are only three "verbally
intelligible" theories of the universe,--viz., that it is self-existent, or
that it is self-created, or that it has been created by some other and
external Being. It is usual to call the first of these theories Atheism,
the second Pantheism, and the third Theism. Now as there are here three
distinct nameable theories, it is necessary, if the term "Cosmic Theism" is
to be justified as an appropriate term, that the particular theory which it
designates should be shown to be in its essence theistic--_i.e._, that the
theory should present those distinguishing features in virtue of which
Theism differs from Atheism on the one hand, and from Pantheism on the
other. Now what are these features? The postulate of an Eternal
Self-existing Something is common to Theism and to Atheism. Here Atheism
ends. Theism, however, is generally said to assume Personality,
Intelligence, and Creative Power as attributes of the single self-existing
substance. Lastly, Pantheism assumes the Something now existing to have
been self-created. To which, then, of these distinct theories is Cosmic
Theism most nearly allied? For the purpose of answering this question, I
shall render that theory in terms of a formula which Mr. Fiske presents as
a full and complete statement of the theory:--"_There exists a_ POWER, _to
which no limit in space or time is conceivable, of which all phenomena, as
presented in consciousness, are manifestations, but which we can only know
through these manifestations._" But although the word "Power" is here so
strongly emphasised, we are elsewhere told that it is not to be regarded as
having more than a strictly relative or symbolic meaning; so that, in point
of fact, some more neutral word, such as "Something," "Being," or
"Substance," ought in strictness to be here substituted for the word
"Power." Well, if this is done, we have the postulation of a Being which is
self-existing, infinite, and eternal--relatively, at all events, to our
powers of conception. Thus far, therefore, it would seem that we are still
on the common standing-ground of Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism; for as it
is not, so far as I can see, incumbent on Pantheism to affirm that "thought
is a measure of things," the _apparent_ or _relative_ eternity which the
Primal Something must be supposed to present may not be _actual_ or
_absolute_ eternity. Nevertheless, as Mr. Fiske, by predicating Divinity of
the Primal Something, implicitly attributes to it the quality of an
_eternal_ self-existence, I infer that Cosmic Theism may be concluded at
this point to part company with Pantheism. There remain, then, Theism and
Atheism.
Now undoubtedly, at first sight, Cosmic Theism appears to differ from
Atheism in one all-important particular. For we have seen that, by means of
a subtle though perfectly logical argument, Cosmic Philosophy has evolved
this conclusion--that all phenomena as presented in consciousness are
manifestations of a not improbable Single Self-existing Power, of whose
existence these manifestations alone can make us cognisant. From which it
apparently follows, that this hypothetical Power must be regarded as
existing out of necessary relation to the phenomenal universe; that it is,
therefore, beyond question "Absolute Being;" and that, as such, we are
entitled to call it Deity. But in the train of reasoning of which this is a
very condensed epitome, it is evident that the legitimacy of denominating
this Absolute Being Deity, must depend on the exact meaning which we attach
to the word "Absolute"--and this, be it observed, quite apart from the
question, before touched upon, as to whether Personality and Intelligence
are not to be considered as attributes essential to Deity. In what sense,
then, is the word "Absolute" used? It is used in this sense. As from the
relativity of knowledge we cannot know things in themselves, but only
symbolical representations of such things, therefore things in themselves
are absolute to consciousness: but analysis shows that we cannot
conceivably predicate Difference among things in themselves, so that we are
at liberty, with due diffidence, to predicate of them No-difference: hence
the noumena of the schoolmen admit of being collected into a _summum genus_
of noumenal existence; and since, before their colligation noumena were
severally absolute, after their colligation they become collectively
absolute: therefore it is legitimate to designate this sum-total of
noumenal existence, "Absolute Being." Now there is clearly no exception to
be taken to the formal accuracy of this reasoning; the only question is as
to whether the "Absolute Being" which it evolves is absolute in the sense
required by Theism. I confess that to me this Being appears to be absolute
in a widely different sense from that in which Deity must be regarded as
absolute. For this Being is thus seen to be absolute in no other sense than
as holding--to quote from Mr. Fiske--"existence independent of the
conditions of the process of knowing." In other words, it is absolute only
as standing out of necessary relation to _human consciousness_. But Theism
requires, as an essential feature, that Deity should be absolute as
standing out of necessary relation to _all else_. Before, therefore, the
Absolute Being of Cosmism can be shown, by the reasoning adopted, to
deserve, even in part, the appellation of Deity, it must be shown that
there is no other mode of Being in existence save our own subjective
consciousness and the Absolute Reality which becomes objective to it
through the world of phenomena. But any attempt to establish this position
would involve a disregard of the doctrine that knowledge is relative; and
to do this, it is needless to say, would be to destroy the basis of the
argument whereby the Absolute Being of Cosmism was posited.
Or, to state this part of the criticism in other words, as the first step
in justifying the predication of Deity, it must be shown that the Being of
which the predication is made is absolute, and this not merely as
independent of human consciousness, but as independent of the whole
noumenal universe--Deity itself alone excepted. That is, the Being of which
Deity is predicated must be Unconditioned. Hence it is incumbent on Cosmic
Theism to prove, either that the Causal Agent which it denominates Deity is
itself the whole noumenal universe, or that it created the rest of a
noumenal universe; else there is nothing to show that this Causal Agent was
not itself created--seeing that, even if we assume the existence of a God,
there is nothing to indicate that the Causal Agent of Cosmism is that God.
It would appear therefore from this, that whatever else the Cosmist's
theory of things may be, it certainly is not Theism; and I think that
closer inspection will tend to confirm this judgment. To this then let us
proceed.
Mr. Fiske is very hard on the atheists, and so will probably repudiate with
scorn any insinuations to the effect that his theory of things is
"quasi-atheistic." Nevertheless, it seems to me that he is very unjust to
the atheists, in that while he spares no pains to "purify" and "refine" the
theory of the theists, so as at last to leave nothing but what he regards
as the distilled essence of Theism behind; he habitually leaves the theory
of the atheists as he finds it, without making any attempt either to
"purify" it by removing its weak and unnecessary ingredients, or to
"refine" it by adding such sublimated ingredients as modern speculation has
supplied. Thus, while he despises the atheists of the eighteenth century
for their irrationality in believing in the self-existence of a
_phenomenal_ universe, and reviles them for their irreligion in denying
that "the religious sentiment needed satisfaction;" he does not wait to
inquire whether, in its essential substance, the theory of these men is not
the one that has proved itself best able to withstand the grinding action
of more recent thought. But let us in fairness ask, What was the essential
substance of that theory? Apparently it was the bare statement of the
unthinkable fact that Something Is. It therefore seems to me useless in Mr.
Fiske to lay so much stress on the fact that this Something was originally
identified by atheists with the phenomenal universe. It seems useless to do
this, because such identification is clearly no part of the _essence_ of
Atheism, which, as just stated, I take to consist in the single dogma of
self-existence as itself sufficient to constitute a theory of things. And,
if so, it is a matter of scarcely any moment, as regards that theory,
whether we are _immediately_ cognisant of that which is self-existent, or
only become so through the world of phenomena--the vital point of the
theory being, that Self-existence, _wherever posited_, is itself the only
admissible explanation of phenomena. Or, in other words, it does not seem
that there is anything in the atheistic theory, as such, which is
incompatible with the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge; so that
whatever cogency there may be in the train of reasoning whereby a single
Causal Agent is deduced from that doctrine, it would seem that an atheist
has as much right to the benefit of this reasoning as a theist; and there
is thus no more apparent reason why this single Causal Agent should be
appropriated as the God of Theism, than that it should be appropriated as
the Self-existing X of Atheism. Indeed, there seems to be less reason. For
an atheist of to-day may very properly argue:--'So far from beholding
anything divine in this Single Being absolute to human consciousness, it is
just precisely the form of Being which my theory postulates as the
Self-existing All. In order to constitute such a Being God, it must be
shown, as we have already seen, to be something more than a merely Causal
Agent which is absolute in the grotesquely restricted sense of being
independent of 'one petty race of creatures with an ephemeral experience of
what is going on in one tiny corner of the universe;' it must be shown to
be something more than absolute even in the wholly unrestricted sense of
being Unconditioned; it must be shown to possess such other attributes as
are distinctive of Deity. For I maintain that even Unconditioned Being,
_merely as such_, would only then have a right to the name of God when it
has been shown that the theory of Theism has a right to monopolise the
doctrine of Relativity.'
In thus endeavouring to "purify" the theory of Atheism, by divesting it of
all superfluous accessories, and laying bare what I conceive to be its
essential substance; it may be well to state that, even apart from their
irreligious character, I have no sympathy with the atheists of the past
century. I mean, that these men do not seem to me to deserve any credit for
advanced powers of speculation merely because they adopted a theory of
things which in its essential features now promises to be the most
enduring. For it is evident that the strength of this theory now lies in
its _simplicity_,--in its undertaking to explain, so far as explanation is
possible, the sum-total of phenomena by the single postulate of
self-existence. But it seems to me that in the last century there were no
sufficient data for rendering such a theory of things a rational theory;
for so long as the quality of self-existence was supposed to reside in
phenomena themselves, the very simplicity of the theory, as expressed in
words, must have seemed to render it inapplicable as a reasonable theory of
things. The astounding variety, complexity, and harmony which are
everywhere so conspicuous in the world of phenomena must have seemed to
necessitate as an explanation some one integrating cause; and it is
impossible that in the eighteenth century any such integrating cause can
have been conceivable other than Intelligence. Therefore I think, with Mr.
Fiske, that the atheists of the eighteenth century were irrational in
applying their single postulate of self-existence as alone a sufficient
explanation of things. But of course the aspect of the case is now
completely changed, when we regard it in all the flood of light which has
been shed on it by recent science, physical and speculative. For the
demonstration of the fact that energy is indestructible, coupled with the
corollary that every so-called natural law is a physically necessary
consequence of that fact, clearly supply us with a completely novel datum
as the ultimate source of experience--and a datum, moreover, which is as
different as can well be imagined from the ever-changing, ever-fleeting,
world of phenomena. We have, therefore, but to apply the postulate of
self-existence to this single ultimate datum, and we have a theory of
things as rational as the Atheism of the last century was irrational.
Nevertheless, that this theory is more akin to the Atheism of the last
century than to any other theory of that time, is, I think, unquestionable;
for while we retain the central doctrine of self-existence as alone a
scientifically admissible, or non-gratuitous, explanation of things, we
only change the original theory by transferring the application of this
doctrine from the world of manifestations to that which causes the
manifestations: we do not resort to any of the _additional_ doctrines
whereby the other theories of the universe were distinguished from the
theory of Atheism in its original form. However, as by our recognition of
the relativity of knowledge we are precluded from dogmatically denying any
theory of the universe that may be proposed, it would clearly be erroneous
to identify the doctrine of the Unknowable with the theory of Atheism: all
we can say is, that, so far as speculative thought can soar, the permanent
self-existence of an inconceivable Something, which manifests itself to
consciousness as force and matter, constitutes the only datum that can be
shown to be required for the purposes of a rational ontology.
To sum up. In the theory which Mr. Fiske calls Cosmic Theism, while I am
able to discern the elements which I think may properly be regarded as
common to Theism and to Atheism, I am not able to discern any single
element that is specifically distinctive of Theism. Still I am far from
concluding that the theory in question is the theory of Atheism. All I wish
to insist upon is this--that as the Absolute Being of Cosmism presents no
other qualities than such as are required by the renovated theory of
Atheism, its postulation supplies a basis, not for Theism, but for
Non-theism: a man with such a postulate ought in strictness to abstain from
either affirming or denying the existence of God. And this, I may observe,
appears to be the position which Mr. Spencer himself has adopted as the
only logical outcome of his doctrine of the Unknowable--a position which,
in my opinion, it is most undesirable to obscure by endeavouring to give it
a quasi-theistic interpretation. I may further observe, that we here seem
to have a philosophical justification of the theological sentiment
previously alluded to--the sentiment, namely, that by his attempt at a
final purification of Theism, Mr. Fiske has destroyed those essential
features of the theory in virtue of which alone it exists as Theism. For
seeing it is impossible, from the relativity of knowledge, that the
Absolute Being of Cosmism can ever be shown absolute in the sense required
by Theism, and, even if it could, that it would still be but the
Unconditioned Being of Atheism; it follows that if this Absolute Being is
to be shown even in part to deserve the appellation of Deity, it must be
shown to possess the only remaining attributes which are distinctive of
Deity--to wit, personality and intelligence. But forasmuch as the final act
of purifying the conception of Deity consists, according to Mr. Fiske, in
expressly removing these particular attributes from the object of that
conception, does it not follow that the conception which remains is, as I
have said, not theistic, but non-theistic?
Here my criticism might properly have ended, were it not that Mr. Fiske,
after having divested the Deity of all his psychical attributes, forthwith
proceeds to show how it may be dimly possible to reinvest him with
attributes that are "quasi-psychical." Mr. Fiske is, of course, far too
subtle a thinker not to see that his previous argument from relativity
precludes him from assigning much weight to the ontological speculations in
which he here indulges, seeing that in whatever degree the relativity of
knowledge renders legitimate the non-ascription to Deity of known psychical
attributes, in some such degree at least must it render illegitimate the
ascription to Deity of unknown psychical attributes. But in the part of his
work in which he treats of the quasi-psychical attributes, Mr. Fiske is
merely engaged in showing that the speculative standing of the
"materialists" is inferior to that of the "spiritualists;" so that, as this
is a subject distinct from Theism, he is not open to the charge of
inconsistency. Well, feeble as these speculations undoubtedly are in the
support which they render to Theism, it nevertheless seems desirable to
consider them before closing this review. The speculations in question are
quoted from Mr. Spencer, and are as follows:--
"Mind, as known to the possessor of it, is a circumscribed aggregate of
activities; and the cohesion of these activities, one with another,
throughout the aggregate, compels the postulation of a something of which
they are the activities. But the same experiences which make him aware of
this coherent aggregate of mental activities, simultaneously make him aware
of activities that are not included in it--outlying activities which become
known by their effects on this aggregate, but which are experimentally
proved to be not coherent with it, and to be coherent with one another
(_First Principles_, §§ 43, 44). As, by the definition of them, these
external activities cannot be brought within the aggregate of activities
distinguished as those of Mind, they must for ever remain to him nothing
more than the unknown correlatives of their effects on this aggregate; and
can be thought of only in terms furnished by this aggregate. Hence, if he
regards his conceptions of these activities lying beyond Mind as
constituting knowledge of them, he is deluding himself: he is but
representing these activities in terms of Mind, and can never do otherwise.
Eventually he is obliged to admit that his ideas of Matter and Motion,
merely symbolic of unknowable realities, are complex states of
consciousness built out of units of feeling. But if, after admitting this,
he persists in asking whether units of feeling are of the same nature as
the units of force distinguished as external, or whether the units of force
distinguished as external are of the same nature as units of feeling; then
the reply, still substantially the same, is that we may go further towards
conceiving units of external force to be identical with units of feeling,
than we can towards conceiving units of feeling to be identical with units
of external force. Clearly, if units of external force are regarded as
absolutely unknown and unknowable, then to translate units of feeling into
them is to translate the known into the unknown, which is absurd. And if
they are what they are supposed to be by those who identify them with their
symbols, then the difficulty of translating units of feeling into them is
insurmountable: if Force as it objectively exists is absolutely alien in
nature from that which exists subjectively as Feeling, then the
transformation of Force into Feeling is unthinkable. Either way, therefore,
it is impossible to interpret inner existence in terms of outer existence.
But if, on the other hand, units of Force as they exist objectively are
essentially the same in nature with those manifested subjectively as units
of Feeling, then a conceivable hypothesis remains open. Every element of
that aggregate of activities constituting a consciousness is known as
belonging to consciousness only by its cohesion with the rest. Beyond the
limits of this coherent aggregate of activities exist activities quite
independent of it, and which cannot be brought into it. We may imagine,
then, that by their exclusion from the circumscribed activities
constituting consciousness, these outer activities, though of the same
intrinsic nature, become antithetically opposed in aspect. Being
disconnected from consciousness, or cut off by its limits, they are thereby
rendered foreign to it. Not being incorporated with its activities, or
linked with these as they are with one another, consciousness cannot, as it
were, run through them; and so they come to be figured as unconscious--are
symbolised as having the nature called material, as opposed to that called
spiritual. While, however, it thus seems an imaginable possibility that
units of external Force may be identical in nature with units of the force
known as Feeling, yet we cannot by so representing them get any nearer to a
comprehension of external Force. For, as already shown, supposing all forms
of Mind to be composed of homogeneous units of feeling variously
aggregated, the resolution of them into such units leaves us as unable as
before to think of the substance of Mind as it exists in such units; and
thus, even could we really figure to ourselves all units of external Force
as being essentially like units of the force known as Feeling, and as so
constituting a universal sentiency, we should be as far as ever from
forming a conception of that which is universally sentient."[42]
Now while I agree with Mr. Fiske that we have here "the most subtle
conclusion now within the ken of the scientific speculator, reached without
any disregard of the canons prescribed by the doctrine of relativity," I
would like to point out to minds less clear-sighted than his, that this
same "doctrine of relativity" effectually debars us from using this
"conclusion" as an argument of any assignable value in favour of Theism.
For the value of conceivability as a test of truth, on which this
conclusion is founded, is here vitiated by the consideration that,
_whatever_ the nature of Force-units may be, we can clearly perceive it to
be a subjective necessity of the case that they should admit of being more
easily conceived by us to be of the nature of Feeling-units than to be of
any other nature. For as units of Feeling are the only entities of which we
are, or can be, conscious, they are the entities into which units of Force
must be, so to speak, subjectively translated before we can cognise their
existence at all. Therefore, _whatever_ the real nature of Force-units may
be, ultimate analysis must show that it is more conceivable to identify
them in thought with the only units of which we are cognisant, than it is
to think of them as units of which we are not cognisant, and concerning
which, therefore, conception is necessarily impossible. Or thus, the only
alternative with respect to the classifying of Force-units lies between
refusing to classify them at all, or classifying them with the only
ultimate units with which we are acquainted. But this restriction, for
aught that can ever be shown to the contrary, arises only from the
subjective conditions of our own consciousness; there is nothing to
indicate that, in objective reality, units of Force are in any wise akin to
units of Feeling. Conceivability, therefore, as a test of truth, is in this
particular case of no assignable degree of value; for as the entities to
which it is applied are respectively the highest known abstractions of
subjective and objective existence, the test of conceivability is
neutralised by directly encountering the inconceivable relation that
subsists between subject and object. I think, therefore, it is evident that
these ontological speculations present no sufficient warrant for an
inference, even of the slenderest kind, that the Absolute Being of Cosmism
possesses attributes of a nature quasi-psychical; and, if so, it follows
that these speculations are incompetent to form the basis of a theory
which, even by the greatest stretch of courtesy, can in any legitimate
sense be termed quasi-theistic.[43]
On the whole, then, I conclude that the term "Cosmic Theism" is not an
appropriate term whereby to denote the theory of things set forth in
"Cosmic Philosophy;" and that it would therefore be more judicious to leave
the doctrine of the Unknowable as Mr. Spencer has left it--that is, without
theological implications of any kind. But in now taking leave of this
subject, I should like it to be understood that the only reason why I have
ventured thus to take exception to a part of Mr. Fiske's work is because I
regret that a treatise which displays so much of literary excellence and
philosophic power should lend itself to promoting what I regard as mistaken
views concerning the ontological tendencies of recent thought, and this
with no other apparent motive than that of unworthily retaining in the new
philosophy a religious term the distinctive connotations of which are
considered by that philosophy to have become obsolete.
* * * * *
II.
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY IN REPLY TO A RECENT WORK ON THEISM.[44]
On perusing my main essay several years after its completion, it occurred
to me that another very effectual way of demonstrating the immense
difference between the nature of all previous attacks upon the teleological
argument and the nature of the present attack, would be briefly to review
the reasonable objections to which all the previous attacks were open. Very
opportunely a work on Theism has just been published which states these
objections with great lucidity, and answers them with much ability. The
work to which I allude is by the Rev. Professor Flint, and as it is
characterised by temperate candour in tone and logical care in exposition,
I felt on reading it that the work was particularly well suited for
displaying the enormous change in the speculative standing of Theism which
the foregoing considerations must be rationally deemed to have effected. I
therefore determined on throwing my supplementary essay, which I had
previously intended to write, into the form of a criticism on Professor
Flint's treatise, and I adopted this course the more willingly because
there are several other points dwelt upon in that treatise which it seems
desirable for me to consider in the present one, although, for the sake of
conciseness, I abstained from discussing them in my previous essay. With
these two objects in view, therefore, I undertook the following
criticism.[45]
In the first place, it is needful to protest against an argument which our
author adopts on the authority of Professor Clark Maxwell. The argument is
now a well-known one, and is thus stated by Professor Maxwell in his
presidential address before the British Association for the Advancement of
Science, 1870:--"None of the processes of nature, since the time when
nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of
any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of
the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any
of the causes which we call natural. On the other hand, the exact quality
of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John
Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article,
and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. Thus we have
been led along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which
science must stop. Not that science is debarred from studying the external
mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from
investigating an organism which she cannot put together. But in tracing
back the history of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself,
on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and, on the other, that
it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural."
Now it is obvious that we have here no real argument, since it is obvious
that science can never be in a position to assert that atoms, the very
existence of which is hypothetical, were never "made by any of the
processes we call natural." The mere fact that in the universe, as we now
know it, the evolution of material atoms is not observed to be taking place
"by any of the processes we call natural," cannot possibly be taken as
proof, or even as presumption, that there ever was a time when the material
atoms now in existence were created by a supernatural cause. The fact
cannot be taken to justify any such inference for the following reasons. In
the first place, assuming the atomic theory to be true, and there is
nothing in the argument to show that the now-existing atoms are not
self-existing atoms, endowed with their peculiar and severally distinctive
properties from all eternity. Doubtless the argument is, that as there
appear to be some sixty or more elementary atoms constituting the raw
material of the observable universe, it is incredible that they can all
have owed their correlated properties to any cause other than that of a
designing and manufacturing intelligence. But, in the next place--and here
comes the demolishing force of the criticism--science is not in a position
to assert that these sixty or more elementary atoms are in any real sense
of the term elementary. The mere fact that chemistry is as yet in too
undeveloped a condition to pronounce whether or not all the forms of matter
known to her are modifications of some smaller number of elements, or even
of a single element, cannot possibly be taken as a warrant for so huge an
inference as that there are really more than sixty elements all endowed
with absolutely distinctive properties by a supernatural cause. Now this
consideration, which arises immediately from the doctrine of the relativity
of knowledge, is alone amply sufficient to destroy the present argument.
But we must not on this account lose sight of the fact that, even to our
strictly relative science in its present embryonic condition, we are not
without decided indications, not only that the so-called elements are
probably for the most part compounds, but even that matter as a whole is
one substance, which is itself probably but some modification of energy.
Indeed, the whole tendency of recent scientific speculation is towards the
view that the universe consists of some one substance, which, whether
self-existing or created, is diverse only in its relation to ignorance. And
if this view is correct, how obvious is the inference which I have
elaborated in § 32, that all the diverse forms of matter, as we know them,
were probably evolved by natural causes. So obvious, indeed, is this
inference, that to resort to any supernatural hypothesis to explain the
diverse properties of the various chemical elements appears to me a most
glaring violation of the law of parcimony--as much more glaring, for
instance, than the violation of this law by Paley, as the number and
variety of organic species are greater than the number and variety of
chemical species. And if it was illegitimate in Paley to use a mere absence
of knowledge as to how the transmutation of apparently fixed species of
animals was effected as equivalent to the possession of knowledge that such
transmutation had not been effected, how much more illegitimate must it be
to commit a similar sin against logic in the case of the chemical elements,
where our classification is confessedly beset with numberless difficulties,
and when we begin to discern that in all probability it is a classification
essentially artificial. Lastly, the mere fact that the transmutation of
chemical species and the evolution of chemical "atoms" are processes which
we do not now observe as occurring in nature, is surely a consideration of
a far more feeble kind than it is even in the case of biological species
and biological evolution; seeing that nature's laboratory must be now so
inconceivably different from what it was during the condensation of the
nebula. What an atrocious piece of arrogance, therefore, it is to assert
that "none of the processes of nature, _since the time when nature began_,
have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule!"
No one can entertain a higher respect for Professor Clark Maxwell than I
do; but a single sentence of such a kind as this cannot leave two opinions
in any impartial mind concerning his competency to deal with such subjects.
I am therefore sorry to see this absurd argument approvingly incorporated
in Professor Flint's work. He says, "I believe that no reply to these words
of Professor Clark Maxwell is possible from any one who holds the ordinary
view of scientific men as to the ultimate constitution of matter. They must
suppose every atom, every molecule, to be of such a nature, to be so
related to others and to the universe generally, that things may be such as
we see them to be; but this their fitness to be built up into the structure
of the universe is a proof that they have been made fit, and since natural
forces could not have acted on them while not yet existent, a supernatural
power must have created them, and created them with a view to their
manifold uses." Here the inference so confidently drawn would have been a
weak one even were we not able to see that the doctrine of natural
evolution probably applies to inorganic nature no less than to organic. For
the inference is drawn from considerations of a character so transcendental
and so remote from science, that unless we wish to be deceived by a merely
verbal argument, we must feel that the possibilities of error in the
inference are so numerous and indefinite, that the inference itself is
well-nigh worthless as a basis of belief. But when we add that in Chapter
IV. of the foregoing essay it has been shown to be within the legitimate
scope of scientific reasoning to conclude that material atoms have been
progressively evolved _pari passu_ with the natural laws of chemical
combination, it is evident that any force which the present argument could
ever have had must now be pronounced as neutralised. Natural causes have
been shown, so far as scientific inference can extend, as not improbably
sufficient to produce the observed effects; and therefore we are no longer
free to invoke the hypothetical action of any supernatural cause.
The same observations apply to Professor Flint's theistic argument drawn
from recent scientific speculations as to the vortex-ring construction of
matter. If these speculations are sound, their only influence on Theism
would be that of supplying a scientific demonstration of the substantial
identity of Force and Matter, and so of supplying a still more valid basis
for the theory as to the natural genesis of matter from a single primordial
substance, in the manner sketched out in Chapter IV. For the argument
adduced by Professor Flint, that as the manner in which the vorticial
motion of a ring is originated has not as yet been suggested, therefore its
origination must have been due to a "Divine impulse," is an argument which
again uses the absence of knowledge as equivalent to its possession. We are
in the presence of a very novel and highly abstruse theory, or rather
hypothesis, in physics, which was originally suggested by, and has hitherto
been mainly indebted to, empirical experiments as distinguished from
mathematical calculations; and from the mere fact that, in the case of such
a hypothesis, mathematicians have not as yet been able to determine the
physical conditions required to originate vorticial motion, we are expected
to infer that no such conditions can ever have existed, and therefore that
every such vortex system, if it exists, is a miracle!
And substantially the same criticism applies to the argument which
Professor Flint adduces--the argument also on which Professors Balfour and
Tait lay so much stress in their work on the _Unseen Universe_--the
argument, namely, as to the non-eternal character of heat. The calculations
on which this argument depends would only be valid as sustaining this
argument if they were based upon a knowledge of the universe _as a whole_;
and therefore, as before, the absence of requisite knowledge must not be
used as equivalent to its possession.
These, however, are the weakest parts of Professor Flint's work. I
therefore gladly turn to those parts which are exceedingly cogent as
written from his standpoint, but which, in view of the strictures on the
teleological argument that I have adduced in Chapters IV. and VI., I submit
to be now wholly valueless.
"How could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent
and eternal? It is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or
constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a
Supreme Mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the English
alphabet produced the plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest
assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. These atoms
might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long
intervals, produce by a chance contact some curious collocation or
compound; but never could they produce order or organisation on an
extensive scale, or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and
adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate
explanation. To believe that these fortuitous and indirected movements
could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and
beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than
has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no
consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance
hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which
materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have
devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal,
must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our
present world--a special collocation among the countless millions of
collocations, past and future. Throw the letters of the Greek alphabet, it
has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the
'Iliad' and all the Greek books. The theory of probabilities, I need hardly
say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd.... But what is the 'Iliad'
to the hymn of creation and the drama of providence?" &c.