The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the
points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that
order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to
“Nature.” It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the
methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the
mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including
history and the æsthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show
that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles
of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the “materialistic conception of
history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind.”
The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental
sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the
question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence
of the spiritual as opposed to the “natural.” Occasionally it has been
thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and
naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has
been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus
leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic
included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and
the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly
in regard to the relatively unimportant question of “spontaneous
generation” that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these
isolated theories are only a part of the “reduction,” which is
characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and
understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only
after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But
the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as
naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind
is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and it
must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of God. And such signs
are to be found. What we shall have to say in regard to them may be summed
up in the following propositions:—
1. Even the world, which has been brought under the reign of scientific
laws, is a mystery; it has been _formulated_, but not _explained_.
2. The world governed by law is still dependent, conditioned, and
“contingent.”
3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is not excluded but rather
demanded by belief in God.
4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and depth of things, and the
world which we do comprehend is not the true Reality of things; it is only
its appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance points beyond
itself to the true nature of things.
6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence and the control of things,
can neither be established by the natural sciences nor disputed by them.
7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural science fits in with an
explanation according to purpose, and the latter presupposes the former.
How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks Conflict.
Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled
with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with
its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of
the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed
completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great
masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and
entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical
correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and
intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world
in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law
determining the development of the daintiest insect’s wing, and the
stirrings of the grey matter in the cortex of the brain which reveal
themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been
the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus
aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from
itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete
and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up
within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and
resting in himself.
We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion
resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing
element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends
on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are
closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though
it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and
relative values. The first of these interests seems to be “teleology,” the
search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control
in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere
inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how
everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the
fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals
intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in
details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the
true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But
it has been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even
the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its
highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two
others are associated with and precede it.
For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the
world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep,
humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our
existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation
to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not
only the question “Have the world and existence a meaning, and are
phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?” that brings religion and its
antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there
scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend
itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of
the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously
affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as
self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in
nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock
that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially
sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown
even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of
the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in
obedience to clear and inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from
everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without
any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of
itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough
for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy
and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into
the play of everyday life and events.
But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our
attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is
that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures, “I that am dust and
ashes,” that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in
the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully
express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still
deeper and is the keynote of the triad. “Let a man examine himself.” Is it
not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and
the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every
new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in
making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand
everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty
adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural
science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not
sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness
to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything
intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in
us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them.
And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real
characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards
what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than
humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.
It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism
with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in
earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its
materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and
light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper
penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope
and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners,
into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two
worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with
the notice “No Room” of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at
discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great
general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises
all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to
those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not
only crowds “heaven” out of the world, but strips away from things the
fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround
them.
Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.
There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three
corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic
interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily
antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find,
first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and
acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all
that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which
separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is
the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures
into the “feeling of absolute dependence,” and, as the belief in creation
does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not
of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a
teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal
interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of
the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a
plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it
should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with
naturalism.
But while religion must inquire of itself into the reality of things, with
special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may
serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance,
be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things,
even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from
nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely,
purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not
correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this
ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not
a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its
essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed
up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another
possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot
be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces
certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly
interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the
incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of
phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.
All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be
regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall
often meet them singly or together.
The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.
1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see
whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of
naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and
order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than
faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence
there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and
mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all
being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal
depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could
not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could
not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is
indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as
religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before
the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true
place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences,
riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as
well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as
though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the
veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be
torn away. From this point of view it would make no difference even though
the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of
inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in
the first of our main propositions (p. 35).
In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the
relation of “explanation” and “description” to one another, and on what is
meant by “establishing laws” and “understanding” in general. The aim of
all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously
means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to
know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of
things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how
they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The
first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must
rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world,
grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.
But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only
preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all
its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing
is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to
discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and
processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers
the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths,
the inviolable order and connection in things and occurrences, and he
formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which
he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can
now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty
as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view,
and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his
science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with
phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied
as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and
general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities,
but we should not have science. And to discover this network of
uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly
bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim
of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more
than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.
But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever
be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrences _a_ and _b_
are given, or what _a_ and _b_ must have been when _c_ occurs, would
explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would
understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed
often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they
have understood, when they have seen that “that is always so, and that it
always happens in this particular way.” But this is a naïve idea. The
region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has
become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things
themselves, but the more marvellous laws which “govern” them. But laws are
not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and
they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of
laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as
they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them
simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain
is to be able to answer the question “Why?”
Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous
descriptions “merely historical,” and it desires to supplement these with
ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn
will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the
nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws
of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the
meaning of the “reductions” of which we have already spoken. For instance,
in regard to crystal formation, “explanation” will have replaced
description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws
according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out
of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular
mixture and because of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other
more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms
and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If
this explanation were possible, the “law” would also be explained, and
would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can
learn at what point “explanation” begins to replace description, namely,
when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the
concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science
desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed
in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.
But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes “explanation”
when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not
merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler
process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question
as to the “why” is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the
process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of
course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the
reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one
unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply
pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual
pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at
last a point is reached where the riddle will solve itself, because
description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is
supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which
the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the
endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of
energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.
But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely
brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all
this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we
account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a
characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to
higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of
energy?
But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached
the ultimate point. For can “attraction,” influence at a distance, _vis a
fronte_, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not
rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to
explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still
deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler
terms, by referring all actual “forces” and reducing all movement, and
therewith all “action,” to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are
free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously
and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set
forth? Therefore still only description? Certainly only description, not
explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere
Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to
matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of
these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle,
which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others
within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion,
and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of
forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we
do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless
not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in
themselves intelligible, but form an absolute “world-riddle.” From the
very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had
apparently driven from the foreground.
But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and
never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to
simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is
not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be “reduced.” Or else there is
an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from
resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena.
Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken
as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it
cannot be denied that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts
which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable,
inexplicable, impenetrable, the “whence” and the “how” of their existence
quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and
peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation
cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a
distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that
repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become
possible; the “energies” of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the
“ether” and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical
affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus
the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious
directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of
movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of
will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They
can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to
why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth
really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither
what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true
sense “comprehended,” and we flatter ourselves that we understand her
secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break
the power of this accustomedness and to consider the actual relations of
things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions
and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the
abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension,
alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no
point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only
formulated riddles.
Evolution and New Beginnings.
All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in
this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt
with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the
marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties
and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the
preceding lower forms and stages of “energy,” contrasted with mere
attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new
interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon
which cannot be “explained” by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and
we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence
“evolution,” and we may use this term in connection with every new stage
higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and
quantitative sense, according to which the “more highly evolved” is
nothing more than an addition and combination of what was already there;
it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more
developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own
way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent
stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor
reducible to them.
It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are
already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its
essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the
subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It
is illusory to suppose that it is a “natural” assumption to “derive” the
living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic
are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the
inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction
in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first
occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of
crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same
marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any
ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same
marvel.
Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or
suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of
history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into
a region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or
reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism
to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of “evolution,” not
in our sense but in its own, that is “to explain” everything new and
individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be
done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved
that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are
applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must
admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new
beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.
All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations
upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an
increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of
individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as
supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery
that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most
inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of
energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to
everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the
occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius
arises.(1)
The Dependence of the Order of Nature.
(2 and 3). The “dependence” of all things is the second requirement of
religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words
“creation” and “being created,” because they involve anthropomorphic and
altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in
mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher’s expression already quoted, what all
religion means when it declares nature and the world to be _creatures_.
The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that
our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and
self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which
are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and
conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent,
and unconditioned. “I believe that God has created me together with all
creatures.” (Luther.)
This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men’s eyes were not yet
opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the
inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the
apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and
dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly
observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world
was “nothing” and perishable, that it had been called forth out of
nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces
of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this
dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and
unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every
phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in
the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to
inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.
We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world
of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from
everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying
no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything,
even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence
of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of
position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the
system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates
dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was
yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago.
It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur
to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not
been from all eternity just as it is now.
We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of
independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world
as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but
surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no
means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of
all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the
one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely
formulated.
Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are governed by a
marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest
harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon
the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a
world without order could be brought under the religious point of view
more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we
had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of
sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena,
unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would
be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be
more “dependent,” more “conditioned” than any other. Had I no other
reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on
something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly
furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive
of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own
sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as
a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more
easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of
promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God.
Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required
by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to
thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the
paradox, that only a Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives
us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as
actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop
short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos
and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of
the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own
proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God
could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have
been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world.
The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea
from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present
question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is,
can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be
answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller’s oft-quoted
lines:
The great Creator
We see not—He conceals himself within
His own eternal laws. The sceptic sees
Their operation, but beholds not Him,
“Wherefore a God!” he cries, “the world itself
Suffices for itself!” and Christian prayer
Ne’er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.
God’s world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be
orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.
But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall find that the assertion
of the world’s dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard
to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from
certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook
two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea
of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the
one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and
on the other the difficult fact of “entropy.” We have already compared the
world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what
can never be found in one of its parts, a _perpetuum mobile_. Let us
however leave aside the idea of a _perpetuum mobile_, and dwell rather on
the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a
machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a
machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by
wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ...
and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces
in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely
continuous “system.” How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient
unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds
itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition,
adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming
again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic
conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth all things out of
itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even
to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states
of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off
their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets
which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally,
their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their
suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the
whole play begins anew.
All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the
world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the
strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory
of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity
to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since
movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole
just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an
originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the
stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every
revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but
inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of
tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in
which there will be no different states but only the most uniform
distribution, in which also all life and all movement will cease and the
world-clock itself will come to a standstill.
How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency?
How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state
of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol “in the
beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy
of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago
come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is
postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite.
And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a
similar kind are continually presenting themselves.
The “Contingency” of the World.
But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other
difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However
these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that
whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto
itself or not, there _is_ a world full of the most diverse phenomena, and
there _are_ laws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of
course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they
should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further
ceremony to the saying “everything must have a cause, therefore the world
also.” It is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so
constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the
necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence
were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in
inquiring after a cause. In regard to a “necessary” thing, if there were
any such, we cannot ask, “Why, and from what cause does this exist?” If it
was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be
ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately
there are no “necessary” things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by
examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from
contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for
the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the
sentence, “Everything is equal to itself,” or, “The shortest distance
between two points is a straight line.” We cannot even conceive of the
contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be
deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite
meaningless. As examples of a “contingent” truth we may take “It rains
to-day,” or “The earth revolves round the sun.” For neither one nor the
other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under
other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be
conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of
possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to be and is capable of being
reasoned out. I can and must ask, “How does it happen that it rains
to-day? What are the reasons for it?” But as we must seek for sufficient
reasons for “contingent” truths, that is, for those of which the contrary
was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for
“contingent” phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not
existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find
causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element
of “contingency” must be done away with; they must be shown to result from
sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be
traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental
convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation
has its ultimate roots, that what is “contingent” is only apparently so,
and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore
reason seeks causes for everything.
The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And
this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite
obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is,
that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its
phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different
from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would be _the_
ultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated
phenomena and existences was firmly based. But this is far from being the
case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us
absolutely the greatest “contingency” of all, and in regard to it we can
and must continually ask, “Why does anything exist at all, and why should
it not rather be non-existent?” Indeed, all our quest for sufficient
causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial
systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist,
and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally “as
if shot from a pistol,” there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason,
certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one
has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an
incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the
world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that
all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way
prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so
calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world.
And that is precisely the problem: “Why do these characters exist and not
quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”
If any one should say: “Well, we must just content ourselves with
recognising the essentially ‘contingent’ nature of existence, for we shall
never be able to get beyond that,” he would be right in regard to the
second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal and in
itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of “contingency” is
indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the
assertion. For no one _will_ “content himself.” For that all chance is
only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a
deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs
all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands
ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent
existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the
“cosmological proofs of the existence of God” of former days. It was
certainly erroneous to suppose that “God” could be proved. For it is a
long way from that “idea of necessity” to religious experience of God. And
it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really “proved.”
What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But
the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that
stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact
that reason finds rest only in this idea.
The Real World.
(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and
has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For
if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find
above all one thing as its most characteristic sign, indeed as its very
essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish
or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing
is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the
oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the
desire to see into the depth and “other side” of things and of existence.
For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and
contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to
regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as
only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which
is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred
mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another,
the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself
cannot disappear.
In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often
concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of “immortality.”
Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final
chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the
question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a
part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly
essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being,
is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things,
beyond time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great
importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least
beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the
inward conviction that “all that is transitory is only a parable,” that
all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond
semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate
themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.
It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of
naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special
satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere
discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have
done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the
world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars
does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end,
but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world
of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses “everything is just the
same as with us.”
All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For
it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of
things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and
eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the
fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long
before philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views:
namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not
comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are
only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the
days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was
not confined to “heaven,” or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for
us was not for Him. Even in the terms “eternity” and “infinity” it shows
an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space.
These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it
and from independent sources.
But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these
ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to
inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of
faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face
of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not
rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself,
unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to
something beyond itself.
To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special
theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But
Kant’s great doctrine of the “Antinomy of Reason” has for all time broken
up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one
who has felt cramped by the narrow limits in which reality was confined by
a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of
the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick
curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at
any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to
take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land
in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true
world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in
being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist.
The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school
onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant’s disciple, Fries, has
carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant
still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise
pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,
The Antimony of Our Conception of Time.
A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the
antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the
insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of
transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode
of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to
think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook
will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things.
Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very
long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to
imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made
with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was
six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago.
We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years
before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the
infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought
of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our
thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have
thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive
of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason
for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems
difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of
only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very
fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not
beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world
had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.
But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in
reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have
never had a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now
find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole,
for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived
at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an
end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.
The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its
consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the
theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary
and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the
veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form
into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the
time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which
we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence
under the form of “eternity,” which, since we are tied down to temporal
concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.(2)
The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned.
The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along
similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its
causes and conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with
it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But
that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions
are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would
not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in
its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again
by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so
that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come
to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event
whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility
for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because
now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it
appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.
The Antimony of Our Conception of Space.
To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy
in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too,
it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with
us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to
the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can
never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say, “Here is
the end of space.” Whether we think of the diameter of the earth’s orbit
or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask,
“What lies behind?” and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter
of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars,
nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious
reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a
greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually
think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that
without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And
the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds
quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in
our “past infinity.” For although we are carried by our conceptions into
the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to
assume the same of reality.
It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and
its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the
familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that
we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because
for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in
the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a “perfect
synthesis,” and that to Him Being is never and in no point “always one
more.” God does not count.
Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always
itself and never implies any more; for if there were “always one more” it
would not be Being. It can only exist “as a perfect synthesis,” which does
not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an
end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all
number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to
weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its
inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.
But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the
complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours
forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it
is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent
depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and
farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our
thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.
Intuitions of Reality.
(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things,
towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For “in feeling and
intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.” So ran our fifth
proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of
in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing
ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion
which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition does not speak of dreams
but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle
than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which
cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly
out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and
history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an
“anamnesis,” a “reminiscence” in Plato’s sense, awakening within us moods
and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is
directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and
cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear
statements. Fries, in his book, “Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,” unhappily
too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region
of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and
regards these as “animated” by it. He has in mind especially the
impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our
knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do
adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience
directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power
of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning.
The utterances of Schleiermacher(3) in regard to religion follow the same
lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists that the
universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in
knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but
wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of “intuitive feeling” not only
the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much
more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather
from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its
experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly
emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind
and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of
nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and
ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.
The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and
impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature.
It may be gained from the contemplation of nature’s harmonies and
beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical
dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the
terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature’s operations, from all the
manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the
suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the
activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated
self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her
half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred
up in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an
indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the
religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar
nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious
reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except,
perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become
fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the
writings of Schleiermacher himself.
The Recognition of Purpose.
(6.) We must now turn to the question of “teleology.” Only now, not
because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but
because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our
argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains
must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed
by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance.
But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither
purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not
occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely
closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to
which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What
causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises
difficulties. And in all vindication or defence of religion it ought
rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we
have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition
concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of
naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are
certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have
arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two
doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to
these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation
and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in
the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to
combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their
history.
We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of
the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the
analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be
discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of
zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and
concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.
The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part
of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It
does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious
conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of one school of
science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The
latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply
an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially
of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be
purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies and _formæ
substaniales_. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught
that the idea of the finished thing, the “form,” was implicit in it from
the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This
“form,” the end aimed at in development, was “potentially,” “ideally,” or
“virtually” implicit in the thing from the beginning, was the _causa
finalis_, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern
natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but
merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it
tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a
particular result. The hypothetical _causa finalis_ it regards as a mere
_asylum ignorantiæ_, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For
instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth,
nothing is advanced by stating that the “form,” the primitive model of the
evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it
gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution,
until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of
science is, through geology, geognosy, mineralogy, geodesy, physical
geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical,
chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth’s evolution and their laws,
and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and
as a whole.
Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it
has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which
it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is
beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in
particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern
itself in the least about this opposition. “Purposes,” “ideas,” “guidance”
in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the
result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular
value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes
and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a
special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason
and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play
of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by
higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then.
Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far
as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value,
meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot
estimate these. It can or will only examine how everything has come about,
but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower,
or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of
its province.
Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man
and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all
the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have
produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had
actually been pure “ideas,” _formæ substantiales_ and the like, that would
in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a
divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different
source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human
existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality,
religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along
with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind
play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and
recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the
knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex
natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in
no way prevents our regarding him as a “purpose,” as the realisation of a
divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was
planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire
eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.
For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny
“purpose” in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a
different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion
as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward
experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the
spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar
mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes
on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral
life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that
leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.
Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.
(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological
interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly
causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but
indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by
persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our
world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an
age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever
higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed
sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest
fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must
simply be accepted as “given.” If these results of this causally
interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation
as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable
value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its
results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity
which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import.
They become a strictly united system of _means_. And purposefulness as a
potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and “beginning,”
to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself.
The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the
“endeavour after end and aim,” the carrying through and realisation of the
eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature
of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains
of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to
it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means
is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and
therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the
fundamental factors of the world’s existence, in the strict nexus of
causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by
both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose,
teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are,
that it is possible to judge the results according to their value, and
that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal
sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in
accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both
assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.
In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and
fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the
religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And
if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of
the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at
once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of
evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be
obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of
indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more
or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have
demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an
important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already
arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in
the concrete.