THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION.
_I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my mouth let no dog bark._
Before beginning to analyse the forces that are decomposing religious
belief, it will be well to remark briefly on the means by which these
forces are applied to the world at large. To a certain extent they are
applied directly; that is, many of the facts that are now becoming
obvious the common sense of all men assimilates spontaneously, and
derives, unbidden, its own doubts or denials from them. But the chief
power of positivism is derived otherwise. It is derived not directly
from the premisses that it puts before us, but from the intellectual
prestige of its exponents, who, to the destruction of private judgment,
are forcing on us their own personal conclusions from them. This
prestige, indeed, is by no means to be wondered at. If men ever believed
a teacher '_for his works' sake_,' the positive school is associated
with enough signs and wonders. All those astonishing powers that man has
acquired in this century are with much justice claimed by it as its
works and gifts. The whole sensuous surroundings of our lives are its
subjects, and are doing it daily homage; and there is not a conquest
over distance, disease, or darkness that does not seem to bear witness
to its intellectual supremacy. The opinion, therefore, that is now
abroad in the world is that the positive school are the monopolists of
unbiassed reason; that reason, therefore, is altogether fatal to
religion; and that those who deny this, only do so through ignorance or
through wilful blindness. As long as this opinion lasts, the revival of
faith is hopeless. What we are now about to examine is, how far this
opinion is well founded.
The arguments which operate against religion with the leaders of modern
thought, and through their intellectual example on the world at large,
divide themselves into three classes, and are derived from three
distinct branches of thought and study. They may be distinguished as
physical, moral, and historical. Few of these arguments, taken
separately, can be called altogether new. Their new power has been
caused by the simultaneous filling up and completion of all of them; by
their transmutation from filmy visions into massive and vast realities;
from unauthorised misgivings into the most rigid and compelling of
demonstrations: and still more, by the brilliant and sudden annihilation
of the most obvious difficulties, which till very lately had neutralised
and held their power in check.
Of these three sets of arguments, the two first bear upon all religion,
whilst the third bears upon it only as embodied in some exclusive form.
Thus the physicist argues, for example, that consciousness being a
function of the brain, unless the universe be a single brain itself,
there can be no conscious God.[33] The moral philosopher argues that sin
and misery being so prevalent, there can be no Almighty and all-merciful
God. And the historian argues that all alleged revelations can be shown
to have had analogous histories; and that therefore, even if God exists,
there is no one religion through which He has specially revealed
Himself. These are rough specimens solubly, _so far as observation can
carry us_, mind with matter. The great gulf between the two has at last
been spanned. The bridge across it, that was so long seen in dreams and
despaired of, has been thrown triumphantly--a solid compact fabric, on
which a hundred intellectual masons are still at work, adding stone on
ponderous stone to it. Science, to put the matter in other words, has
accomplished these three things. Firstly, to use the words of a
well-known writer, '_it has established a functional relation to exist
between every fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one side,
and some molecular change in the body on the other side_.' Secondly, it
has connected, through countless elusive stages, this organic human body
with the universal lifeless matter. And thirdly, it claims to have
placed the universal matter itself in a new position for us, and to
exhibit all forms of life as developed from it, through its own
spontaneous motion. Thus for the first time, beyond the reach of
question, the entire sensible universe is brought within the scope of
the physicist. Everything that is, is matter moving. Life itself is
nothing but motion of an infinitely complex kind. It is matter in its
finest ferment. The first traceable beginnings of it are to be found in
the phenomenon of crystallisation; we have there, we are told by the
highest scientific authority, '_the first gropings of the so-called
vital force_;' and we learn from the same quarter, that between these
and the brain of Christ there is a difference in degree only, not in
kind: they are each of them '_an assemblage of molecules, acting and
re-acting according to law_.' '_We believe_,' says Dr. Tyndall, '_that
every thought and every feeling has its definite mechanical
correlative--that it is accompanied by a certain breaking up and
re-marshalling of the atoms of the brain_.' And though he of course
admits that to trace out the processes in detail is infinitely beyond
our powers, yet '_the quality of the problem and of our powers_,' he
says, '_are, we believe, so related, that a mere expansion of the latter
would enable them to cope with the former_.' Nowhere is there any break
in Nature; and '_supposing_,' in Dr. Tyndall's words, '_a planet carved
from the sun, set spinning on an axis, and sent revolving round the sun
at a distance equal to that of our earth_,' science points to the
conclusion that as the mass cooled, it would flower out in places into
just such another race as ours--creatures of as large discourse, and,
like ourselves, looking before and after. The result is obvious. Every
existing thing that we can ever know, or hope to know, in the whole
inward as well as in the whole outward world--everything from a star to
a thought, or from a flower to an affection, is connected with certain
material figures, and with certain mechanical forces. All have a certain
bulk and a certain place in space, and could conceivably be made the
subjects of some physical experiment. Faith, sanctity, doubt, sorrow,
and love, could conceivably be all gauged and detected by some
scientific instrument--by a camera or by a spectroscope; and their
conditions and their intensity be represented by some sort of diagram.
These marvellous achievements, as I have said, have been often before
dreamed of. Now they are accomplished. As applied to natural religion,
the effect of them is as follows.
Firstly, with regard to God, they have taken away every external proof
of His existence, and, still more, every sign of His daily providence.
They destroy them completely at a sudden and single blow, and send them
falling about us like so many dead flies. God, as connected with the
external world, was conceived of in three ways--as a Mover, as a
Designer, and as a Superintendent. In the first two capacities He was
required by thought; in the last, He was supposed to be revealed by
experience. But now in none of these is He required or revealed longer.
So far as thought goes, He has become a superfluity; so far as
experience goes, He has become a fanciful suggestion.
Secondly, with regard to man, the life and soul are presented to us, not
as an entity distinct from the body, and therefore capable of surviving
it, but as a function of it, or the sum of its functions, which has
demonstrably grown with its growth, which is demonstrably dependent upon
even its minutest changes, and which, for any sign or hint to the
contrary, will be dissolved with its dissolution.
A God, therefore, that is the master of matter, and a human soul that is
independent of it--any second world, in fact, of alien and
trans-material forces, is reduced, on physical grounds, to an utterly
unsupported hypothesis. Were this all, however, it would logically have
on religion no effect at all. It would supply us with nothing but the
barren verbal proposition that the immaterial was not material, or that
we could find no trace of it by merely studying matter. Its whole force
rests on the following suppressed premiss, that nothing exists but what
the study of matter conceivably could reveal to us; or that, in other
words, the immaterial equals the nonexistent. The case stands thus. The
forces of thought and spirit were supposed formerly to be quite distinct
from matter, and to be capable of acting without the least connection
with it. Now, it is shown that every smallest revelation of these to us,
is accomplished by some local atomic movement, which, on a scientific
instrument fine enough, would leave a distinct impression; and thus it
is argued that no force is revealed through matter that is not
inseparable from the forms revealing it. Here we see the meaning of that
great modern axiom, that verification is the test of truth; or that we
can build on nothing as certain but what we can prove true. The meaning
of the word '_proof_' by itself may perhaps be somewhat hazy; but the
meaning that positive science attaches to it is plain enough. A fact is
only proved when the evidence it rests upon leaves us no room for
doubt--when it forces on every mind the same invincible conviction; that
is, in other words, when, directly or indirectly, its material
equivalent can be impressed upon our bodily senses.
This is the fulcrum of the modern intellectual lever. Ask anyone
oppressed and embittered by the want of religion the reason why he does
not again embrace it, and the answer will still be this--that there is
no proof that it is true. Granting, says Professor Huxley, that a
religious creed would be beneficial, '_my next step is to ask for a_
proof _of its dogmas_.' And with contemptuous passion another well-known
writer, Mr. Leslie Stephen, has classified all beliefs, according as we
can prove or not prove them, into realities and empty dreams. '_The
ignorant and childish_,' he says, '_are hopelessly unable to draw the
line between dreamland and reality; but the imagery which takes its rise
in the imagination as distinguished from the perceptions, bears
indelible traces of its origin in comparative unsubstantiality and
vagueness of outline_.' And '_now_,' he exclaims, turning to the
generation around him, '_at last your creed is decaying. People have
discovered that you know nothing about it; that heaven and hell belong
to dreamland; that the impertinent young curate who tells me that I
shall be burnt everlastingly for not sharing his superstition, is just
as ignorant as I myself, and that I know as much as my dog._'[34]
Such is that syllogism of the physical sciences which is now supposed to
be so invincible against all religion, and which has already gone so far
towards destroying the world's faith in it. Now as to the minor premiss,
that there is no proof of religion, we may concede, _at least
provisionally_, that it is completely true. What it is really important
to examine is the major premiss, that we can be certain of nothing that
we cannot support by proof. This it is plain does not stand on the same
footing as the former, for it is of its very nature not capable of being
proved itself. Its foundation is something far less definable--the
general character for wisdom of the leading thinkers who have adopted
it, and the general acceptance of its consequences by the common sense
of mankind.
Now if we examine its value by these tests, the result will be somewhat
startling. We find that not only are mankind at large as yet but very
partially aware of its consequences, but that its true scope and meaning
has not even dawned dimly on the leading thinkers themselves. Few
spectacles, indeed, in the whole history of thought are more ludicrous
than that of the modern positive school with their great doctrine of
verification. They apply it rigorously to one set of facts, and then
utterly fail to see that it is equally applicable to another. They apply
it to religion, and declare that the dogmas of religion are dreams; but
when they pass from the dogmas of religion to those of morality, they
not only do not use their test, but unconsciously they denounce it with
the utmost vehemence. Thus Mr. Leslie Stephen, in the very essay from
which I have just now quoted, not only has recourse, for giving weight
to his arguments, to such ethical epithets as _low_, _lofty_, and even
_sacred_, but he puts forward as his own motive for speaking, a belief
which on his own showing is a dream. That motive, he says, is devotion
to truth for its own sake--the only principle that is really worthy of
man. His argument is simply this. It is man's holiest and most important
duty to discover the truth at all costs, and the one test of truth is
physical verification. Here he tells us we find the only high morality,
and the men who cling to religious dream-dogmas which they cannot
physically verify, can only answer their opponents, says Mr. Stephen,
'_by a shriek or a sneer_.' '_The sentiment_,' he proceeds, '_which the
dreamer most thoroughly hates and misunderstands, is the love of truth
for its own sake. He cannot conceive why a man should attack a lie
simply because it is a lie._' Mr. Stephen is wrong. That is exactly what
the dreamer can do, and no one else but he; and Mr. Stephen is himself a
dreamer when he writes and feels like this. Why, let me ask him, should
the truth be loved? Do the '_perceptions_,' which are for him the only
valid guides, tell him so? The perceptions tell him, as he expressly
says, that the truths of nature, so far as man is concerned with them,
are '_harsh_' truths. Why should '_harsh_' things be loveable? Or
supposing Mr. Stephen does love them, why is that love '_lofty_'? and
why should he so brusquely command all other men to share it? _Low_ and
_lofty_--what has Mr. Stephen to do with words like these? They are part
of the language of dreamland, not of real life. Mr. Stephen has no right
to them. If he has, he must be able to draw a hard and fast line between
them; for if his conceptions of them be '_vague in outline_' and
'_unsubstantial_,' they belong by his own express definition to the land
of dreams. But this is what Mr. Stephen, with the solemn imbecility of
his school, is quite incapable of seeing. Professor Huxley is in exactly
the same case. He says, as we have seen already, that, come what may of
it, our highest morality is to follow truth; that the '_lowest depth of
immorality_' is to _pretend to believe what we see no reason for
believing_;' and that our only proper reasons for belief are some
physical, some _perceptible_ evidence. And yet at the same time he says
that to '_attempt to upset morality_' by the help of the physical
sciences is about as rational or as possible as to '_attempt to upset
Euclid by the help of the Rig Veda_.' Now on Professor Huxley's
principles, this last sentence, though it sounds very weighty, is, if so
ungracious a word may be allowed me, nothing short of nonsense. It would
be the lowest depth of immorality, he says, to believe in God, when we
see that there is no physical evidence to justify the belief. And
physical science in this way he admits--he indeed proclaims--has upset
religion. How then has physical science in the same way failed to upset
morality? The foundation of morality, he says, is the belief that truth
for its own sake is sacred. But what proof can he discover of this
sacredness? Does any positive method of experience or observation so
much as tend to suggest it? We have already seen that it does not. What
Professor Huxley's philosophy really proves to him is that it is true
that nothing is sacred; not that it is a sacred thing to discover the
truth.
We saw all this already when we were examining his comparison of the
perception of moral beauty to the perception of the heat of ginger. It
is the same thing with which we are again dealing now, only we are
approaching it from a slightly different point of view. What we saw
before, was that without an assent to the religious dogmas, the moral
dogmas can have no logical meaning. We have now seen that even were the
two logically independent, they yet belong both of them to the same
order of things; and that if our tests of truth prove the former to be
illusions, they will, with precisely the same force, prove the same
thing of the latter.
But the most crucial test of all we have still to come to, which will
put this conclusion in a yet clearer and a more unmistakable light. Thus
far what we have seen has amounted to only this--that if science can
take from man his religious faith, it leaves him a being without any
moral guidance. What we shall now see is that, by the same arguments,
it will prove him to be not a moral being at all; that it will prove not
only that he has no rule by which to direct his will, but also that he
has no will to direct.
To understand this we must return to physical science, and to the exact
results that have been accomplished by it. We have seen how completely,
from one point of view, it has connected mind with matter, and how
triumphantly it is supposed to have unified the apparent dualism of
things. It has revealed the brain to us as matter in a combination of
infinite complexity, which it has reached at last through its own
automatic workings; and it has revealed consciousness to us as a
function of this brain, and as altogether inseparable from it. But for
this, the old dualism now supposed to be obsolete would remain
undisturbed. Indeed, if this doctrine were denied, such a dualism would
be the only alternative. For every thought, then, that we think, and
every feeling or desire that we feel, there takes place in the brain
some definite material movement, on the force or figure of which the
thoughts and feelings are dependent. Now if physical observations are to
be the only things that guide us, one important fact will become at once
evident. Matter existed and fermented long before the evolution of mind;
mind is not an exhibition of new forces, but the outcome of a special
combination of old. Mental facts are therefore essentially dependent on
molecular facts; molecular facts are not dependent on mental. They may
seem to be so, but this is only seeming. They are as much the outcome of
molecular groupings and movements as the figures in a kaleidoscope are
of the groupings and movements of the colored bits of glass. They are
things entirely by the way; and they can as little be considered links
in any chain of causes as can the figure in a kaleidoscope be called the
cause of the figure that succeeds it.
The conclusion, however, is so distasteful to most men, that but few of
them can be brought even to face it, still less to accept it. There is
not a single physicist of eminence--none at least who has spoken
publicly on the moral aspects of life--who has honestly and fairly
considered it, and said plainly whether he accepts it, rejects it, or is
in doubt about it. On the contrary, instead of meeting this question,
they all do their best to avoid it, and to hide it from themselves and
others in a vague haze of mystery. And there is a peculiarity in the
nature of the subject that has made this task an easy one. But the dust
they have raised is not impenetrable, and can, with a little patience,
be laid altogether.
The phenomenon of consciousness is in one way unique. It is the only
phenomenon with which science comes in contact, of which the scientific
imagination cannot form a coherent picture. It has a side, it is true,
that we can picture well enough--'_the thrilling of the nerves_,' as Dr.
Tyndall says, '_the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent
changes of the organism_.' But of how these changes come to have another
side, we can form no picture. This, it is perfectly true, is a complete
mystery. And this mystery it is that our modern physicists seize on, and
try to hide and lose in the shadow of it a conclusion which they admit
that, in any other case, a rigorous logic would force on them.
The following is a typical example of the way in which they do this. It
is taken from Dr. Tyndall. '_The mechanical philosopher, as such_,' he
says, '_will never place a state of consciousness and a group of
molecules in the position of mover and moved. Observation proves them to
interact; but in passing from one to the other, we meet a blank which
the logic of deduction is unable to fill.... I lay bare unsparingly the
initial difficulty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts of
observation which he considers so simple are "almost as difficult to be
seized as the idea of a soul." I go further, and say in effect: "If you
abandon the interpretation of grosser minds, who image the soul as a
Psyche which could be thrown out of the window--an entity which is
usually occupied we know not how, among the molecules of the brain, but
which on due occasion, such as the intrusion of a bullet, or the blow
of a club, can fly away into other regions of space--if abandoning this
heathen notion you approach the subject in the only way in which
approach is possible--if you consent to make your soul a poetic
rendering of a phenomenon which--as I have taken more pains than anyone
else to show you--refuses the ordinary yoke of physical laws, then I,
for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality." I say it
strongly, but with good temper, that the theologian who hacks and
scourges me for putting the matter in this light is guilty of black
ingratitude._'
Now if we examine this very typical passage, we shall see that in it are
confused two questions which, as regards our own relation to them, are
on a totally different footing. One of these questions cannot be
answered at all. The other can be answered in distinct and opposite
ways. About the one we must rest in wonder; about the other we must make
a choice. And the feat which our modern physicists are trying to perform
is to hide the importunate nature of the second in the dark folds of the
first. This first question is, Why should consciousness be connected
with the brain at all? The second question is, What is it when
connected? Is it simply the product of the brain's movement; or is the
brain's movement in any degree produced by it? We only know it, so to
speak, as the noise made by the working of the brain's machinery--as the
crash, the roar, or the whisper of its restless colliding molecules. Is
this machinery self-moving, or is it, at least, modulated, if not moved,
by some force other than itself? The brain is the organ of
consciousness, just as the instrument called an organ is an organ of
music; and consciousness itself is as a tune emerging from the
organ-pipes. Expressed in terms of this metaphor our two questions are
as follows. The first is, Why, when the air goes through them, are the
organ-pipes resonant? The second is, What controls the mechanism by
which the air is regulated--a musician, or a revolving barrel? Now what
our modern physicists fail to see is, not only that these two questions
are distinct in detail, but that also they are distinct in kind; that a
want of power to answer them means, in the two cases, not a distinct
thing only, but also an opposite thing; and that our confessed impotence
to form any conjecture at all as to the first, does not in the least
exonerate us from choosing between conjectures as to the second.
As to the first question, our discovery of the fact it is concerned
with, and our utter inability to account for this fact, has really no
bearing at all upon the great dilemma--the dilemma as to the unity or
the dualism of existence, and the independence or automatism of the life
and will of man. All that science tells us on this first head the whole
world may agree with, with the utmost readiness; and if any theologian
'_hacks and scourges_' Dr. Tyndall for his views thus far, he must,
beyond all doubt, be a very foolish theologian indeed. The whole bearing
of this matter modern science seems to confuse and magnify, and it
fancies itself assaulted by opponents who in reality have no existence.
Let a man be never so theological, and never so pledged to a faith in
myths and mysteries, he would not have the least interest in denying
that the brain, though we know not how, is the only seat for us of
thought and mind and spirit. Let him have never so firm a faith in life
immortal, yet this immortal has, he knows, put on mortality, through an
inexplicable contact with matter; and his faith is not in the least
shaken by learning that this point of contact is the brain. He can admit
with the utmost readiness that the brain is the only instrument through
which supernatural life is made at the same time natural life. He can
admit that the moral state of a saint might be detected by some form of
spectroscope. At first sight, doubtless, this may appear somewhat
startling; but there is nothing really in it that is either strange or
formidable. Dr. Tyndall says that the view indicated can, '_he thinks_,'
be maintained '_against all attack_.' But why he should apprehend any
attack at all, and why he should only '_think_' it would be
unsuccessful, it is somewhat hard to conceive. To say that a
spectroscope as applied to the brain might conceivably detect such a
thing as sanctity, is little more than to say that our eyes as applied
to the face can actually detect such a thing as anger. There is nothing
in that doctrine to alarm the most mystical of believers. In the
completeness with which it is now brought before us it is doubtless new
and wonderful, and will doubtless tend presently to clarify human
thought. But no one need fear to accept it as a truth; and probably
before long we shall all accept it as a truism. It is not denying the
existence of a soul to say that it cannot move in matter without leaving
some impress in matter, any more than it is denying the existence of an
organist to say that he cannot play to us without striking the notes of
his organ. Dr. Tyndall then need hardly have used so much emphasis and
iteration in affirming that '_every thought and feeling has its definite
mechanical correlative, that it is accompanied by a certain breaking-up
and re-marshalling of the atoms of the brain_.' And he is no more likely
to be '_hacked and scourged_' for doing so than he would be for
affirming that every note we hear in a piece of music has its definite
correlative in the mechanics of the organ, and that it is accompanied by
a depression and a rising again of some particular key. In his views
thus far the whole world may agree with him; whilst when he adds so
emphatically that in these views there is still involved a mystery, we
shall not so much say that the world agrees with him as that he, like a
good sensible man, agrees with the world. The passage from mind to
matter is, Dr. Tyndall says, unthinkable. The common sense of mankind
has always said the same. We have here a something, not which we are
doubtful how to explain, but which we cannot explain at all. We have not
to choose or halt between alternative conjectures, for there are
absolutely no conjectures to halt between. We are now, as to this point,
in the same state of mind in which we have always been, only this state
of mind has been revealed to us more clearly. We are in theoretical
ignorance, but we are in no practical perplexity.
The perplexity comes in with the second question; and it is here that
the issue lies between the affirmation and the denial of a second and a
supernatural order. We will see, first, how this question is put and
treated by Dr. Tyndall, and we will then see what his treatment comes
to. Is it true, he asks, as many physicists hold it is, '_that the
physical processes are complete in themselves, and would go on just as
they do if consciousness were not at all implicated_,' as an engine
might go on working though it made no noise, or as a barrel-organ might
go on playing even though there were no ear to listen to it? Or do
'_states of consciousness enter as links into the chain of antecedence
and sequence which gives rise to bodily actions?_' Such is the question
in Dr. Tyndall's own phrases; and here, in his own phrases also, comes
his answer. '_I have no power_,' he says, '_of imagining such states
interposed between the molecules of the brain, and influencing the
transference of motion among the molecules. The thing_ eludes all mental
presentation. _But_,' he adds, '_the production of consciousness by
molecular motion is quite as unpresentable to the mental vision as the
production of molecular motion by consciousness. If I reject one result,
I reject both. I, however, reject neither, and thus stand in the
presence of two Incomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible._'
Now what does all this mean? There is one meaning of which the words are
capable, which would make them perfectly clear and coherent; but that
meaning, as we shall see presently, cannot possibly be Dr. Tyndall's.
They would be perfectly clear and coherent if he meant this by
them--that the brain was a natural instrument, in the hands of a
supernatural player; but that why the instrument should be able to be
played upon, and how the player should be able to play upon it, were
both matters on which he could throw no light. But elsewhere he has told
us expressly that he does not mean this. This he expressly says is '_the
interpretation of_ grosser _minds_,' and science will not for a moment
permit us to retain it. The brain contains no '_entity usually occupied
we know not how amongst its molecules_,' but at the same time separable
from them. According to him, this is a '_heathen_' notion, and, until we
abandon it, '_no approach_,' he says, '_to the subject is possible_.'
What does he mean, then, when he tells us he rejects neither result;
when he tells us that he believes that molecular motion produces
consciousness, and also that consciousness in its turn produces
molecular motion?--when he tells us distinctly of these two that
'_observation proves them to interact_'? If such language as this means
anything, it must have reference to two distinct forces, one material
and the other immaterial. Indeed, does he not himself say so? Does he
not tell us that one of the beliefs he does not reject is the belief in
'_states of consciousness_ interposed between _the molecules of the
brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules_'?
It is perfectly clear, then, that these states are not molecules; in
other words, they are not material. But if not material, what are they,
acting on matter, and yet distinct from matter? What can they belong to
but that '_heathen_' thing the soul--that '_entity which could be thrown
out of the window_,' and which, as Dr. Tyndall has said elsewhere,
science forbids us to believe in? Surely for an exact thinker this is
thought in strange confusion. '_Matter_,' he says, '_I define as that
mysterious something by which all this is accomplished_;' and yet here
we find him, in the face of this, invoking some second mystery as well.
And for what reason? This is the strangest thing of all. He believes in
his second Incomprehensible _because_ he believes in his first
Incomprehensible. '_If I reject one result_,' he says, '_I_ must _reject
both. I, however, reject neither_.' But why? Because one undoubted fact
is a mystery, is every mystery an undoubted fact? Such is Dr. Tyndall's
logic in this remarkable utterance: and if this logic be valid, we can
at once prove to him the existence of a personal God, and a variety of
other '_heathen_' doctrines also. But, applied in this way, it is
evident that the argument fails to move him; for a belief in a personal
God is one of the first things that his science rejects. What shall we
say of him, then, when he applies the argument in his own way? We can
say simply this--that his mind for the time being is in a state of such
confusion, that he is incapable really of clearly meaning anything. What
his position logically must be--what, on other occasions, he clearly
avows it to be--is plain enough. It is essentially that of a man
confronted by one Incomprehensible, not confronted by two. But, looked
at in certain ways, or rather looked _from_ in certain ways, this
position seems to stagger him. The problem of existence reels and grows
dim before him, and he fancies that he detects the presence of two
Incomprehensibles, when he has really, in his state of mental
insobriety, only seen one Incomprehensible double. If this be not the
case, it must be one that, intellectually, is even weaker than this. It
must be that, not of a man with a single coherent theory which his
intellect in its less vigorous moments sometimes relaxes its hold upon,
but it must be that of a man with two hostile theories which he vainly
imagines to be one, and which he inculcates alternately, each with an
equal emphasis.
If this bewilderment were peculiar to Dr. Tyndall, I should have no
motive or meaning in thus dwelling on it. But it is no peculiarity of
his. It is characteristic of the whole school he belongs to; it is
inherent in our whole modern positivism--the whole of our exact and
enlightened thought. I merely choose Dr. Tyndall as my example, not
because there is more confusion in his mind than there is in that of his
fellow-physicists, but because he is, as it were, the _enfant terrible_
of his family, who publicly lets out the secrets which the others are
more careful to conceal.
But I have not done with this matter yet. We are here dealing with the
central problem of things, and we must not leave it till we have made it
as plain as possible. I will therefore re-state it in terms of another
metaphor. Let us compare the universal matter, with its infinity of
molecules, to a number of balls on a billiard-table, set in motion by
the violent stroke of a cue. The balls at once begin to strike each
other and rebound from the cushions at all angles and in all directions,
and assume with regard to each other positions of every kind. At last
six of them collide or cannon in a particular corner of the table, and
thus group themselves so as to form a human brain; and their various
changes thereafter, so long as the brain remains a brain, represent the
various changes attendant on a man's conscious life. Now in this life
let us take some moral crisis. Let us suppose the low desire to cling to
some pleasing or comforting superstition is contending with the heroic
desire to face the naked truth at all costs. The man in question is at
first about to yield to the low desire. For a time there is a painful
struggle in him. At last there is a sharp decisive pang; the heroic
desire is the conqueror, the superstition is cast away, and '_though
truth slay me_,' says the man, '_yet will I trust in it_.' Such is the
aspect of the question when approached from one side. But what is it
when approached from the other? The six billiard balls have simply
changed their places. When they corresponded to low desire, they formed,
let us say, an oval; when they corresponded to the heroic desire, they
formed, let us say, a circle. Now what is the cause and what the
conditions of this change? Clearly a certain impetus imparted to the
balls, and certain fixed laws under which that impetus operates. The
question is what laws and what impetus are these? Are they the same or
not the same, now the balls correspond to consciousness, as they were
before, when the balls did not correspond to it? One of two things must
happen. Either the balls go on moving by exactly the same laws and
forces they have always moved by, and are in the grasp of the same
invincible necessity, or else there is some new and disturbing force in
the midst of them, with which we have to reckon. But if consciousness is
inseparable from matter, this cannot be. Do the billiard-balls when so
grouped as to represent consciousness generate some second motive power
distinct from, at variance with, and often stronger than, the original
impetus? Clearly no scientific thinker can admit this. To do so would be
to undermine the entire fabric of science, to contradict what is its
first axiom and its last conclusion. If then the motion of our six
billiard balls has anything, when it corresponds to consciousness,
distinct in kind from what it always had, it can only derive this from
one cause. That cause is a second cue, tampering with the balls and
interfering with them, or even more than this--a second hand taking them
up and arranging them arbitrarily in certain figures.
Science places the positive school on the horns of a dilemma. The mind
or spirit is either arranged entirely by the molecules it is connected
with, and these molecules move with the same automatic necessity that
the earth moves with; or else these molecules are, partially at least,
arranged by the mind or spirit. If we do not accept the former theory we
must accept the latter: there is no third course open to us. If man is
not an automaton, his consciousness is no mere function of any physical
organ. It is an alien and disturbing element. Its impress on physical
facts, its disturbance of physical laws, may be doubtless the only
things through which we can perceive its existence; but it is as
distinct from the things by which we can alone at present perceive it,
as a hand unseen in the dark, that should arrest or change the course of
a phosphorescent billiard-ball. Once let us deny even in the most
qualified way that the mind in the most absolute way is a material
machine, an automaton, and in that denial we are affirming a second and
immaterial universe, independent of the material, and obeying different
laws. But of this universe, if it exists, no natural proof can be given,
because _ex hypothesi_ it lies quite beyond the region of nature.
One theory then of man's life is that it is a union of two orders of
things; another, that it is single, and belongs to only one. And of
these theories--opposite, and mutually exclusive, Dr. Tyndall, and
modern positivism with him, says '_I reject neither_.'[35]
Now this statement of their position, if taken as they state it, is of
course nonsense. It is impossible to consider matter as '_that
mysterious something by which all that is is accomplished;_' and then to
solve the one chief riddle of things by a second mysterious something
that is not material. Nor can we '_reject_,' as the positivists say they
do, an '_outside builder_' of the world, and then claim the assistance
of an _outside_ orderer of the brain. The positivists would probably
tell us that they do not do so, or that they do not mean to do so. And
we may well believe them. Their fault is that they do not know what they
mean. I will try to show them.
First, they mean something, with which, as I have said already, we may
all agree. They mean that matter moving under certain laws (which may
possibly be part and parcel of its own essence) combines after many
changes into the human brain, every motion of which has its definite
connection with consciousness, and its definite correspondence to some
state of it. And this fact is a mystery, though it may be questioned if
it be more mysterious why matter should think of itself, than why it
should move of itself. At any rate, thus far we are all agreed; and
whatever mystery we may be dealing with, it is one that leaves us in
ignorance but not in doubt. The doubt comes in at the next step. We have
then not to wonder at one fact, but, the mystery being in either case
the same, to choose between two hypotheses. The first is that there is
in consciousness one order of forces only, the second is that there are
two. And when the positive school say that they reject neither of these,
what they really mean to say is that as to the second they neither dare
openly do one thing or the other--to deny it or accept it, but that they
remain like an awkward child when offered some more pudding, blushing
and looking down, and utterly unable to say either yes or no.
Now the question to ask the positive school is this. Why are they in
this state of suspense? '_There is an iron strength in the logic_,' as
Dr. Tyndall himself says, that rejects the second order altogether. The
hypothesis of its existence explains no fact of observation. The scheme
of nature, if it cannot be wholly explained without it, can, at any
rate, be explained better without it than with it. Indeed from the
standpoint of the thinker who holds that all that is is matter, it seems
a thing too superfluous, too unmeaning, to be even worth denial. And yet
the positive school announce solemnly that they will not deny it. Now
why is this? It is true that they cannot prove its non-existence; but
this is no reason for professing a solemn uncertainty as to its
existence. We cannot prove that each time a cab drives down Regent
Street a stick of barley-sugar is not created in Sirius. But we do not
proclaim, to the world our eternal ignorance as to whether or no this is
so. Why then should our positivists treat in this way the alleged
immaterial part of consciousness? Why this emphatic protestation on
their part that there may exist a something which, as far as the needs
of their science go, is superfluous, and as far as the logic of their
science goes is impossible? The answer is plain. Though their science
does not need it, the moral value of life does. As to that value they
have certain foregone conclusions, which they cannot resolve to abandon,
but which their science can make no room for. Two alternatives are
offered them--to admit that life has not the meaning they thought it
had, or that their system has not the completeness they thought it had;
and of these two alternatives they will accept neither. They could tell
us '_with an iron strength of logic_' that all human sorrow was as
involuntary and as unmeaning as sea-sickness; that love and faith were
but distillations of what exists diluted in mutton-chops and beer; and
that the voice of one crying in the wilderness was nothing but an
automatic metamorphosis of the locusts and wild honey. They could tell
us '_with an iron strength of logic_' that all the thoughts and moral
struggles of humanity were but as the clanging whirr of a machine, which
if a little better adjusted might for the future go on spinning in
silence. But they see that the discovery on man's part that his life was
nothing more than this would mean a complete change in its mechanism,
and that thenceforward its entire action would be different. They
therefore seek a refuge in saying it _may_ be more than this. But what
do they mean by _may be_? Do they mean that in spite of all that science
can teach them, in spite of that uniformity absolute and omnipresent
which alone it reveals to them, which day by day it is forcing with more
vividness on their imaginations, and which seems to have no room for
anything besides itself--do they mean that in spite of this there may
still be a second something, a power of a different order, acting on
man's brain and grappling with its automatic movements? Do they mean
that that '_heathen_' and '_gross_' conception of an immaterial soul is
probably after all the true one? Either they must mean this or else they
must mean the exact opposite. There is no third course open to them.[36]
Their opinion, as soon as they form one, must rest either on this
extreme or that. They will see, as exact and scientific thinkers, that
if it be not practically certain that there is some supernatural entity
in us, it is practically certain that there is not one. To say merely
that it _may_ exist is but to put an ounce in one scale whilst there is
a ton in the other. It is an admission that is utterly dead and
meaningless. They can only entertain the question of its existence
because its existence is essential to man as a moral being. The only
reason that can tempt us to say it _may_ be forces us in the same moment
to say that it _must_ be, and that it _is_.
Which answer eventually the positive school will choose, and which
answer men in general will accept, I make as I have said before, no
attempt to answer. My only purpose to show is, that if man has any moral
being at all, he has it in virtue of his _immaterial_ will--a force, a
something of which physical science can give no account whatever, and
which it has no shadow of authority either for affirming or for denying;
and further, that if we are not prevented by it from affirming his
immaterial will, we are not prevented from affirming his immortality,
and the existence of God likewise.
And now I come to that third point which I said I should deal with here,
but which I have not yet touched upon. Every logical reasoner who admits
the power of will must admit not only the possibility of miracles, but
also the actual fact of their daily and hourly occurrence. Every
exertion of the human will is a miracle in the strictest sense of the
word; only it takes place privately, within the closed walls of the
brain. The molecules of the brain are arranged and ordered by a
supernatural agency. Their natural automatic movements are suspended, or
directed and interfered with. It is true that in common usage the word
_miracle_ has a more restricted sense. It is applied generally not to
the action of man's will, but of God's. But the sense in both cases is
essentially the same. God's will is conceived of as disturbing the
automatic movements of matter without the skull, in just the same way as
man's will is conceived of as disturbing those of the brain within it.
Nor, though the alleged manifestations of the former do more violence to
the scientific imagination than do those of the latter, are they in the
eye of reason one whit more impossible. The erection of a pyramid at the
will of an Egyptian king would as much disturb the course of nature as
the removal of a mountain by the faith of a Galilean fisherman; whilst
the flooding of the Sahara at the will of a speculating company would
interfere with the weather of Europe far more than the most believing of
men ever thought that any answer to prayer would.
It will thus be seen that morality and religion are, so far as science
goes, on one and the same footing--of one and the same substance, and
that as assailed by science they either fall together or stand
together. It will be seen too that the power of science against them
resides not in itself, but in a certain intellectual fulcrum that we
ourselves supply it with. That its methods can discover no trace of
either of them, of itself proves nothing, unless we first lay down as a
dogma that its methods of discovery are the only methods. If we are
prepared to abide by this, there is little more to be said. The rest, it
is becoming daily plainer, is a very simple process; and what we have to
urge against religion will thenceforth amount to this. There is no
supernatural, because everything is natural; there is no spirit, because
everything is matter; or there is no air, because everything is earth;
there is no fire, because everything is water; a rose has no smell
because our eyes cannot detect any.
This, in its simplest form, is the so-called argument of modern
materialism. Argument, however, it is quite plain it is not. It is a
mere dogmatic statement, that can give no logical account of itself, and
must trust, for its acceptance, to the world's vague sense of its
fitness. The modern world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument,
and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the mistake is a simple one,
and can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of denial was formerly a
sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with itself, and vulnerable in a
thousand places. Nature, as then known, was, to all who could weigh the
wonder of it, a thing inexplicable without some supernatural agency.
Indeed, marks of such an agency seemed to meet men everywhere. But now
all this has changed. Step by step science has been unravelling the
tangle, and has loosened with its human fingers the knots that once
seemed _deo digni vindice_. It has enabled us to see in nature a
complete machine, needing no aid from without. It has made a conception
of things rational and coherent that was formerly absurd and arbitrary.
Science has done all this; but this is all that it has done. The
dogmatism of denial it has left as it found it, an unverified and
unverifiable assertion. It has simply made this dogmatism consistent
with itself. But in doing this, as men will soon come to see, it has
done a great deal more than its chief masters bargained for. Nature, as
explained by science, is nothing more than a vast automaton; and man
with all his ways and works is simply a part of Nature, and can, by no
device of thought, be detached from or set above it. He is as absolutely
automatic as a tree is, or as a flower is; and is an incapable as a tree
or flower of any spiritual responsibility or significance. Here we see
the real limits of science. It will explain the facts of life to us, it
is true, but it will not explain the value that hitherto we have
attached to them. Is that solemn value a fact or fancy? As far as proof
and reason go, we can answer either way. We have two simple and opposite
statements set against each other, between which argument will give us
no help in choosing, and between which the only arbiter is a judgment
formed upon utterly alien grounds. As for proof, the nature of the case
does not admit of it. The world of moral facts, if it existed a thousand
times, could give no more proof of its existence than it does now. If on
other grounds we believe that it does exist, then signs, if not proofs
of it, at once surround us everywhere. But let the belief in its reality
fail us, and instantly the whole cloud of witnesses vanishes. For
science to demand a proof that shall convince it on its own premisses is
to demand an impossibility, and to involve a contradiction in terms.
Science is only possible on the assumption that nature is uniform.
Morality is only possible on the assumption that this uniformity is
interfered with by the will. The world of morals is as distinct from the
world of science as a wine is from the cup that holds it; and to say
that it does not exist because science can find no trace of it, is to
say that a bird has not flown over a desert because it has left no
footprints in the sand. And as with morals, so it is with religion.
Science will allow us to deny or to affirm both. Reason will not allow
us to deny or affirm only one.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] The argument has been used in this exact form by Professor
Clifford.
[34] _Dreams and Realities_, by Leslie Stephen.
[35] The feebleness and vacillation of Dr. Tyndall's whole views of
things, as soon as they bear on matters that are of any universal
moment, is so typical of the entire positive thought of the day, that I
may with advantage give one or two further illustrations of it. Although
in one place he proclaims loudly that the emergence of consciousness
from matter must ever remain a mystery, he yet shows indication of a
hope that it may yet be solved. He quotes with approval, and with an
implication that he himself leans to the view expressed in them, the
following words of Ueberweg, whom he calls '_one of the subtlest heads
that Germany has produced_.' '_What happens in the brain_, says
Ueberweg, '_would in my opinion not be possible if the process which
here appears in its greatest concentration, did not obtain generally,
only in a vastly diminished degree. Take a pair of mice, and a cask of
flour. By copious nourishment the animals increase and multiply, and in
the same proportion sensations and feelings augment. The quantity of
these preserved by the first pair is not simply diffused among their
descendants, for in that case the last would feel more fully than the
first. The sensations and the feelings must necessarily be referred back
to the flour, where they exist, weak and pale, it is true, and not
concentrated, as in the brain._' '_We may not_,' Dr. Tyndall adds, by
way of a gloss to this, '_be able to taste or smell alcohol in a tub of
fermented cherries, but by distillation we obtain from them concentrated
Kirschwasser. Hence Ueberweg's comparison of the brain to a still, which
concentrates the sensation and feeling pre-existing, but diluted, in the
food._'
Let us now compare this with the following. '_It is no explanation_,'
says Dr. Tyndall, '_to say that objective and subjective are two sides
of one and the same phenomenon. Why should phenomena have two sides?
There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this
two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns
upon a window pane? If not, why should the molecular motions of the
brain be yoked to this mysterious companion consciousness?_'
Here we have two views, diametrically opposed to each other, the one
suggested with approval, and the other implied as his own, by the same
writer, and in the same short essay. The first view is that
consciousness is the general property of all matter, just as motion is.
The second view is that consciousness is not the general property of
matter, but the inexplicable property of the brain only.
Here again we have a similar inconsistency. Upon one page Dr. Tyndall
says that when we have '_exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, a
mighty Mystery stills looms beyond us. We have made no step towards its
solution. And thus it will ever loom._' And on the opposite page he says
thus: '_If asked whether science has solved, or is likely in our day to
solve, the problem of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt._'
Further, I will remind the reader of Dr. Tyndall's arguments, on one
occasion, against any outside builder or creator of the material
universe. He argued that such did not exist, because his supposed action
was not definitely presentable. '_I should enquire after its shape_,' he
says:--'_Has it legs or arms? If not, I would wish it to be made clear
to me how a thing without these appliances can act so perfectly the part
of a builder?_ He challenged the theist (the theist addressed at the
time was Dr. Martineau) to give him some account of his God's workings;
and '_When he does this_,' said Dr. Tyndall, '_I shall "demand of him an
immediate exercise" of the power "of definite mental presentation."_' If
he fails here, Dr. Tyndall argues, his case is at once disproved; for
nothing exists that is not thus presentable. Let us compare this with
his dealing with the fact of consciousness. Consciousness, he admits, is
not thus presentable; and yet consciousness, he admits, exists.
Instances might be multiplied of the same vacillation and confusion of
thought--the same feminine inability to be constant to one train of
reasoning. But those just given suffice. What weight can we attach to a
man's philosophy, who after telling us that consciousness may possibly
be an inherent property of matter, of which '_the receit of reason is a
limbec only_,' adds in the same breath almost, that matter generally is
certainly not conscious, and that consciousness comes to the brain we
know not whence nor wherefore? What shall we say of a man who in one
sentence tells us that it is impossible that science can ever solve the
riddle of things, and tells us in the next sentence that it is doubtful
if this impossibility will be accomplished within the next fifty
years?--who argues that God is a mystery, and therefore God is a
fiction; who admits that consciousness is a fact, and yet proclaims that
it is a mystery; and who says that the fact of matter producing
consciousness being a mystery, proves the mystery of consciousness
acting on matter to be a fact?
[36] It is true that one of the favourite teachings of the positive
school is, that as to this question the proper attitude is that of
Agnosticism; in other words, that a state of perpetual suspense on this
subject is the only rational one. They are asked, have we a soul, a
will, and consequently any moral responsibility? And the answer is that
they must shake their heads in doubt. It is true they tell us that it is
but _as men of science_ that they shake their heads. But Dr. Tyndall
tells us what this admission means. '_If the materialist is
confounded_,' he says, '_and science rendered dumb_, who else is
prepared with an answer? _Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our
ignorance, priest and philosopher--one and all._' In like manner,
referring to the feeling which others have supposed to be a sense of
God's presence and majesty: this, for the '_man of science_,' he says is
the sense of a '_power which gives fulness and force, to his existence,
but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend_.' Which means, that
because a physical specialist cannot analyse this sense, it is therefore
incapable of analysis. A bishop might with equal propriety use just the
same language about a glass of port wine, and argue with, equal cogency
that it was a primary and simple element. What is meant is, that the
facts of the materialist are the only facts we can be certain of; and
because these can give man no moral guidance, that therefore man can
have no moral guidance at all.
Let us illustrate the case by some example that is mentally presentable.
Some ruined girl, we will say, oppressed with a sense of degradation,
comes to Dr. Tyndall and lays her case before him. '_I have heard you
are a very wise man_,' she says to him, '_and that you have proved that
the priest is all wrong, who prepared me a year ago for my confirmation.
Now tell me, I beseech you tell me, is mine really the desperate state I
have been taught to think it is? May my body be likened to the temple of
the Holy Ghost defiled? or do I owe it no more reverence than I owe the
Alhambra Theatre? Am I guilty, and must I seek repentance? or am I not
guilty, and may I go on just as I please?' 'My dear girl_,' Dr. Tyndall
replies to her, '_I must shake my head in doubt. Come, let its lower our
heads, and acknowledge our ignorance as to whether you are a wretched
girl or no. Materialism is confounded, and science rendered dumb by
questions such as yours; they can, therefore, never be answered, and
must always remain open. I may add, however, that if you ask me
personally whether I consider you to be degraded, I lean to the
affirmative. But I can give you no reason in support of this judgment,
so you may attach to it what value you will._'
Such is the position of agnostics, when brought face to face with the
world. They are undecided only about one question, and this is the one
question which cannot be left undecided. Men cannot remain agnostics as
to belief that their actions must depend upon, any more than a man who
is compelled to go on walking can refrain from choosing one road or
other when there are two open to him. Nor does it matter that our
believing may in neither case amount to a complete certitude. It is
sufficient that the balance of probability be on one side or the other.
Two ounces will out-weigh one ounce, quite as surely as a ton will. But
what our philosophers profess to teach us (in so far as they profess to
be agnostics, and disclaim being dogmatists) is, that there is no
balance either way. The message they shout to us is, that they have no
message at all; and that because they are without one, the whole world
is in the same condition.