The contrast between Determinism and Indeterminism is old, yet Mr.
Peirce has worked out quite a new aspect of Indeterminism and places it
upon a basis that appears to be a more solid foundation than it ever
before possessed. At the same time he succeeds in making some of its
consequences so plausible, that in this new garb it will appeal more
strongly than before to scientifically trained minds. With all deference
to the logical acuteness of Mr. Peirce and with all admiration for the
originality and depth of his thought, we cannot, however, accede to the
new philosophy which he proposes.
Mr. Peirce’s propositions go to the core of all problems, they upset
everything that has heretofore been considered as firm ground, they
question the most fundamental concepts of the world-conception upon
which all scientific reasoning and the methods of the positive philosophy
rest. Thus they set us a-thinking and will help us to attain greater
clearness on points which are to all of us of greater concern than may
at first sight appear. For the fundamental problems of philosophy have
a deep practical importance. Their importance is less noticeable, less
obvious, but at the same time more sweeping the more fundamental they are.
Let us here in concluding this article consider only one, but the most
striking one, of the consequences to which both views lead.
Indeterminism leads to a conception of God which although we may call
it “mind” and place it at the beginning of the world, is pure chance or
the indeterminateness of an arbitrary sporting. Determinism on the other
hand leads to a recognition of God as that something in nature that is
as it is, that has been and will be. Science, whose method of cognising
the truth is and can only be to know in parts, attempts to describe the
partial qualities of this something in natural laws.
It is of great consequence in practical life whether God is what the
name Jahveh intends to convey, eternal and unalterable being, immutable
sameness in the perpetual flux, irrefragable law in the changes of
evolution, or whether it is the Τυχή of the pagans, i. e. indeterminable
and absolute chance, unaccountable, irregular, capricious, and uncertain.
The God-idea is the basis of ethics. It matters little whether we use or
avoid the name God, for the atheist has also a God-idea in his conception
of that existence in which he lives and moves and has his being. This
God-idea is always the ground from which we derive our rules of conduct;
and whenever we change, not our terminology but our idea of God, we shall
as a matter of consistency have to change our views of ethics also.