FIRST
PRINCIPLES.
BY
HERBERT SPENCER,
AUTHOR OF “SOCIAL STATICS,” “THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY,” “ESSAYS:
SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL, AND SPECULATIVE,” “EDUCATION,” ETC.
SECOND THOUSAND.
LONDON:
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1863.
_The Right of Translation is reserved._
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
This volume is the first of a series described in a prospectus
originally distributed in March, 1860. Of that prospectus, the annexed
is a reprint.
A SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY.
Mr. Herbert Spencer proposes to issue in periodical parts a connected
series of works which he has for several years been preparing. Some
conception of the general aim and scope of this series may be gathered
from the following Programme.
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
PART I. THE UNKNOWABLE.—Carrying a step further the doctrine put
into shape by Hamilton and Mansel; pointing out the various
directions in which Science leads to the same conclusions; and
showing that in this united belief in an Absolute that transcends
not only human knowledge but human conception, lies the only
possible reconciliation of Science and Religion.
PART II. LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE.—A statement of the ultimate
principles discernible throughout all manifestations of the
Absolute—those highest generalizations now being disclosed by
Science which are severally true not of one class of phenomena but
of _all_ classes of phenomena; and which are thus the keys to all
classes of phenomena.[1]
[_In logical order should here come the application of these First
Principles to Inorganic Nature. But this great division it is
proposed to pass over: partly because, even without it, the scheme
is too extensive; and partly because the interpretation of Organic
Nature after the proposed method, is of more immediate importance.
The second work of the series will therefore be_—]
THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY.
VOL. I.
PART I. THE DATA OF BIOLOGY.—Including those general truths of
Physics and Chemistry with which rational Biology must set out.
II. THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY.—A statement of the leading
generalizations which Naturalists, Physiologists, and Comparative
Anatomists, have established.
III. THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.—Concerning the speculation commonly
known as “The Development Hypothesis”—its _à priori_ and _à
posteriori_ evidences.
VOL. II.
IV. MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.—Pointing out the relations that are
everywhere traceable between organic forms and the average of the
various forces to which they are subject; and seeking in the
cumulative effects of such forces a theory of the forms.
V. PHYSIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.—The progressive differentiation of
functions similarly traced; and similarly interpreted as
consequent upon the exposure of different parts of organisms to
different sets of conditions.
VI. THE LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION.—Generalizations respecting the
rates of reproduction of the various classes of plants and
animals; followed by an attempt to show the dependence of these
variations upon certain necessary causes.[2]
THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY.
VOL. I.
PART I. THE DATA OF PSYCHOLOGY.—Treating of the general connexions
of Mind and Life and their relations to other modes of the
Unknowable.
II. THE INDUCTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY.—A digest of such generalizations
respecting mental phenomena as have already been empirically
established.
III. GENERAL SYNTHESIS.—A republication, with additional chapters,
of the same part in the already-published _The Principles of
Psychology_.
IV. SPECIAL SYNTHESIS.—A republication, with extensive revisions
and additions, of the same part, &c. &c.
V. PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS.—An attempt to show the manner in which the
succession of states of consciousness conforms to a certain
fundamental law of nervous action that follows from the First
Principles laid down at the outset.
VOL. II.
VI. SPECIAL ANALYSIS.—As at present published, but further
elaborated by some additional chapters.
VII. GENERAL ANALYSIS.—As at present published, with several
explanations and additions.
VIII. COROLLARIES.—Consisting in part of a number of derivative
principles which form a necessary introduction to Sociology.[3]
THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY.
VOL. I.
PART I. THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.—A statement of the several sets of
factors entering into social phenomena—human ideas and feelings
considered in their necessary order of evolution; surrounding
natural conditions; and those ever complicating conditions to
which Society itself gives origin.
II. THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.—General facts, structural and
functional, as gathered from a survey of Societies and their
changes: in other words, the empirical generalizations that are
arrived at by comparing different societies, and successive phases
of the same society.
III. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.—The evolution of governments, general
and local, as determined by natural causes; their several types
and metamorphoses; their increasing complexity and specialization;
and the progressive limitation of their functions.
VOL. II.
IV. ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION.—Tracing the differentiation of
religious government from secular; its successive complications
and the multiplication of sects; the growth and continued
modification of religious ideas, as caused by advancing knowledge
and changing moral character; and the gradual reconciliation of
these ideas with the truths of abstract science.
V. CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION.—The natural history of that third kind
of government which, having a common root with the others, and
slowly becoming separate from and supplementary to them, serves to
regulate the minor actions of life.
VI. INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION.—The development of productive and
distributive agencies, considered, like the foregoing, in its
necessary causes: comprehending not only the progressive division
of labour, and the increasing complexity of each industrial
agency, but also the successive forms of industrial government as
passing through like phases with political government.
VOL. III.
VII. LINGUAL PROGRESS.—The evolution of Languages regarded as a
psychological process determined by social conditions.
VIII. INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS.—Treated from the same point of view:
including the growth of classifications; the evolution of science
out of common knowledge; the advance from qualitative to
quantitative prevision, from the indefinite to the definite, and
from the concrete to the abstract.
IX. ÆSTHETIC PROGRESS.—The Fine Arts similarly dealt with: tracing
their gradual differentiation from primitive institutions and from
each other; their increasing varieties of development; and their
advance in reality of expression and superiority of aim.
X. MORAL PROGRESS.—Exhibiting the genesis of the slow emotional
modifications which human nature undergoes in its adaptation to
the social state.
XI. THE CONSENSUS.—Treating of the necessary interdependence of
structures and of functions in each type of society, and in the
successive phases of social development.[4]
THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY.
VOL. I.
PART I. THE DATA OF MORALITY.—Generalizations furnished by
Biology, Psychology and Sociology, which underlie a true theory of
right living: in other words, the elements of that equilibrium
between constitution and conditions of existence, which is at once
the moral ideal and the limit towards which we are progressing.
II. THE INDUCTIONS OF MORALITY.—Those empirically-established
rules of human action which are registered as essential laws by
all civilized nations: that is to say—the generalizations of
expediency.
III. PERSONAL MORALS.—The principles of private conduct—physical,
intellectual, moral and religious—that follow from the conditions
to complete individual life: or, what is the same thing—those
modes of private action which must result from the eventual
equilibration of internal desires and external needs.
VOL. II.
IV. JUSTICE.—The mutual limitations of men’s actions necessitated
by their co-existence as units of a society—limitations, the
perfect observance of which constitutes that state of equilibrium
forming the goal of political progress.
V. NEGATIVE BENEFICENCE.—Those secondary limitations, similarly
necessitated, which, though less important and not cognizable by
law, are yet requisite to prevent mutual destruction of happiness
in various indirect ways: in other words—those minor
self-restraints dictated by what may be called passive sympathy.
VI. POSITIVE BENEFICENCE.—Comprehending all modes of conduct,
dictated by active sympathy, which imply pleasure in giving
pleasure—modes of conduct that social adaptation has induced and
must render ever more general; and which, in becoming universal,
must fill to the full the possible measure of human happiness.[5]
In anticipation of the obvious criticism that the scheme here
sketched out is too extensive, it may be remarked that an
exhaustive treatment of each topic is not intended; but simply the
establishment of _principles_, with such illustrations as are
needed to make their bearings fully understood. It may also be
pointed out that, besides minor fragments, one large division
(_The Principles of Psychology_) is already, in great part,
executed. And a further reply is, that impossible though it may
prove to execute the whole, yet nothing can be said against an
attempt to set forth the First Principles and to carry their
applications as far as circumstances permit.
The price per Number to be half-a-crown; that is to say, the four
Numbers yearly issued to be severally delivered, post free, to all
annual subscribers of Ten Shillings.
* * * * *
This Programme I have thought well to reprint for two reasons:—the one
being that readers may, from time to time, be able to ascertain what
topics are next to be dealt with; the other being that an outline of the
scheme may remain, in case it should never be completed.
The successive instalments of which this volume consists, were issued to
the subscribers at the following dates:—Part I. (pp. 1–80) in October,
1860; Part II. (pp. 81–176) in January, 1861; Part III. (pp. 177–256) in
April, 1861; Part IV. (pp. 257–334) in October, 1861; Part V. (pp.
335–416) in March, 1862; and Part VI. (pp. 417–504) in June, 1862.
_London, June 5th, 1862_
-----
Footnote 1:
One of these generalizations is that currently known as “the
Conservation of Force;” a second may be gathered from a published
essay on “Progress: its Law and Cause;” a third is indicated in a
paper on “Transcendental Physiology;” and there are several others.
Footnote 2:
The ideas to be developed in the second volume of the _Principles of
Biology_ the writer has already briefly expressed in sundry
Review-Articles. Part IV. will work out a doctrine suggested in a
paper on “The Laws of Organic Form,” published in the
_Medico-Chirurgical Review_ for January, 1859. The germ of Part V. is
contained in the essay on “Transcendental Physiology:” See _Essays_,
pp. 280–90. And in Part VI. will be unfolded certain views crudely
expressed in a “Theory of Population,” published in the _Westminster
Review_ for April, 1852.
Footnote 3:
Respecting the several additions to be made to the _Principles of
Psychology_, it seems needful only to say that Part V. is the
unwritten division named in the preface to that work—a division of
which the germ is contained in a note on page 544, and of which the
scope has since been more definitely stated in a paper in the
_Medico-Chirurgical Review_ for Jan. 1859.
Footnote 4:
Of this treatise on Sociology a few small fragments may be found in
already-published essays. Some of the ideas to be developed in Part
II. are indicated in an article on “The Social Organism,” contained in
the last number of the _Westminster Review_; those which Part V. will
work out, may be gathered from the first half of a paper written some
years since on “Manners and Fashion;” of Part VIII. the germs are
contained in an article on the “Genesis of Science;” two papers on
“The Origin and Function of Music” and “The Philosophy of Style,”
contain some ideas to be embodied in Part IX.; and from a criticism of
Mr. Bain’s work on “The Emotions and the Will,” in the last number of
the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_, the central idea to be developed in
Part X. may be inferred.
Footnote 5:
Part IV. of the _Principles of Morality_ will be co-extensive (though
not identical) with the first half of the writer’s _Social Statics_.
CONTENTS.
PART I.—THE UNKNOWABLE.
CHAP. PAGE
I.— RELIGION AND SCIENCE 3
II.— ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS 25
III.— ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS 47
IV.— THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE 68
V.— THE RECONCILIATION 98
PART II.—LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE.
I.— LAWS IN GENERAL 127
II.— THE LAW OF EVOLUTION 146
III.— THE LAW OF EVOLUTION (CONTINUED) 175
IV.— THE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION 219
V.— SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE 224
VI.— THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER 238
VII.— THE CONTINUITY OF MOTION 246
VIII.— THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE 251
IX.— THE CORRELATION AND EQUIVALENCE OF FORCES 259
X.— THE DIRECTION OF MOTION 286
XI.— THE RHYTHM OF MOTION 313
XII.— THE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO EVOLUTION 335
XIII.— THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS 358
XIV.— THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS 388
XV.— DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION 416
VI.— EQUILIBRATION 440
XVII.— SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 487
PART I.
THE UNKNOWABLE.
CHAPTER I.
RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
§ 1. We too often forget that not only is there “a soul of goodness in
things evil,” but very generally also, a soul of truth in things
erroneous. While many admit the abstract probability that a falsity has
usually a nucleus of reality, few bear this abstract probability in
mind, when passing judgment on the opinions of others. A belief that is
finally proved to be grossly at variance with fact, is cast aside with
indignation or contempt; and in the heat of antagonism scarcely any one
inquires what there was in this belief which commended it to men’s
minds. Yet there must have been something. And there is reason to
suspect that this something was its correspondence with certain of their
experiences: an extremely limited or vague correspondence perhaps; but
still, a correspondence. Even the absurdest report may in nearly every
instance be traced to an actual occurrence; and had there been no such
actual occurrence, this preposterous misrepresentation of it would never
have existed. Though the distorted or magnified image transmitted to us
through the refracting medium of rumour, is utterly unlike the reality;
yet in the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or
magnified image. And thus it is with human beliefs in general. Entirely
wrong as they may appear, the implication is that they germinated out of
actual experiences—originally contained, and perhaps still contain, some
small amount of verity.
More especially may we safely assume this, in the case of beliefs that
have long existed and are widely diffused; and most of all so, in the
case of beliefs that are perennial and nearly or quite universal. The
presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in
strength according to the number of its adherents. Admitting, as we
must, that life is impossible unless through a certain agreement between
internal convictions and external circumstances; admitting therefore
that the probabilities are always in favour of the truth, or at least
the partial truth, of a conviction; we must admit that the convictions
entertained by many minds in common are the most likely to have some
foundation. The elimination of individual errors of thought, must give
to the resulting judgment a certain additional value. It may indeed be
urged that many widely-spread beliefs are received on authority; that
those entertaining them make no attempts at verification; and hence it
may be inferred that the multitude of adherents adds but little to the
probability of a belief. But this is not true. For a belief which gains
extensive reception without critical examination, is thereby proved to
have a general congruity with the various other beliefs of those who
receive it; and in so far as these various other beliefs are based upon
personal observation and judgment, they give an indirect warrant to one
with which they harmonize. It may be that this warrant is of small
value; but still it is of some value.
Could we reach definite views on this matter, they would be extremely
useful to us. It is important that we should, if possible, form
something like a general theory of current opinions; so that we may
neither over-estimate nor under-estimate their worth. Arriving at
correct judgments on disputed questions, much depends on the attitude of
mind we preserve while listening to, or taking part in, the controversy;
and for the preservation of a right attitude, it is needful that we
should learn how true, and yet how untrue, are average human beliefs. On
the one hand, we must keep free from that bias in favour of received
ideas which expresses itself in such dogmas as “What every one says must
be true,” or “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” On the other
hand, the fact disclosed by a survey of the past, that majorities have
usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact, that
majorities have usually not been _entirely_ wrong. And the avoidance of
these extremes being a prerequisite to catholic thinking, we shall do
well to provide ourselves with a safe-guard against them, by making a
valuation of opinions in the abstract. To this end we must contemplate
the kind of relation that ordinarily subsists between opinions and
facts. Let us do so with one of those beliefs which under various forms
has prevailed among all nations in all times.
* * * * *
§ 2. The earliest traditions represent rulers as gods or demigods. By
their subjects, primitive kings were regarded as superhuman in origin,
and superhuman in power. They possessed divine titles; received
obeisances like those made before the altars of deities; and were in
some cases actually worshipped. If there needs proof that the divine and
half-divine characters originally ascribed to monarchs were ascribed
literally, we have it in the fact that there are still existing savage
races, among whom it is held that the chiefs and their kindred are of
celestial origin, or, as elsewhere, that only the chiefs have souls. And
of course along with beliefs of this kind, there existed a belief in the
unlimited power of the ruler over his subjects—an absolute possession of
them, extending even to the taking of their lives at will: as even still
in Fiji, where a victim stands unbound to be killed at the word of his
chief; himself declaring, “whatever the king says must be done.”
In times and among races somewhat less barbarous, we find these beliefs
a little modified. The monarch, instead of being literally thought god
or demigod, is conceived to be a man having divine authority, with
perhaps more or less of divine nature. He retains however, as in the
East to the present day, titles expressing his heavenly descent or
relationships; and is still saluted in forms and words as humble as
those addressed to the Deity. While the lives and properties of his
people, if not practically so completely at his mercy, are still in
theory supposed to be his.
Later in the progress of civilization, as during the middle ages in
Europe, the current opinions respecting the relationship of rulers and
ruled are further changed. For the theory of divine origin, there is
substituted that of divine right. No longer god or demigod, or even
god-descended, the king is now regarded as simply God’s vice-gerent. The
obeisances made to him are not so extreme in their humility; and his
sacred titles lose much of their meaning. Moreover his authority ceases
to be unlimited. Subjects deny his right to dispose at will of their
lives and properties; and yield allegiance only in the shape of
obedience to his commands.
With advancing political opinion has come still greater restriction of
imperial power. Belief in the supernatural character of the ruler, long
ago repudiated by ourselves for example, has left behind it nothing more
than the popular tendency to ascribe unusual goodness, wisdom, and
beauty to the monarch. Loyalty, which originally meant implicit
submission to the king’s will, now means a merely nominal profession of
subordination, and the fulfilment of certain forms of respect. Our
political practice, and our political theory, alike utterly reject those
regal prerogatives which once passed unquestioned. By deposing some, and
putting others in their places, we have not only denied the divine
rights of certain men to rule; but we have denied that they have any
rights beyond those originating in the assent of the nation. Though our
forms of speech and our state-documents still assert the subjection of
the citizens to the ruler, our actual beliefs and our daily proceedings
implicitly assert the contrary. We obey no laws save those of our own
making. We have entirely divested the monarch of legislative power; and
should immediately rebel against his or her exercise of such power, even
in matters of the smallest concern. In brief, the aboriginal doctrine is
all but extinct among us.
Nor has the rejection of primitive political beliefs, resulted only in
transferring the authority of an autocrat to a representative body. The
views entertained respecting governments in general, of whatever form,
are now widely different from those once entertained. Whether popular or
despotic, governments were in ancient times supposed to have unlimited
authority over their subjects. Individuals existed for the benefit of
the State; not the State for the benefit of individuals. In our days,
however, not only has the national will been in many cases substituted
for the will of the king; but the exercise of this national will has
been restricted to a much smaller sphere. In England, for instance,
though there has been established no definite theory setting bounds to
governmental authority; yet, in practice, sundry bounds have been set to
it which are tacitly recognized by all. There is no organic law formally
declaring that the legislature may not freely dispose of the citizens’
lives, as early kings did when they sacrificed hecatombs of victims; but
were it possible for our legislature to attempt such a thing, its own
destruction would be the consequence, rather than the destruction of
citizens. How entirely we have established the personal liberties of the
subject against the invasions of State-power, would be quickly
demonstrated, were it proposed by Act of Parliament forcibly to take
possession of the nation, or of any class, and turn its services to
public ends; as the services of the people were turned by primitive
rulers. And should any statesman suggest a re-distribution of property
such as was sometimes made in ancient democratic communities, he would
be met by a thousand-tongued denial of imperial power over individual
possessions. Not only in our day have these fundamental claims of the
citizen been thus made good against the State, but sundry minor claims
likewise. Ages ago, laws regulating dress and mode of living fell into
disuse; and any attempt to revive them would prove the current opinion
to be, that such matters lie beyond the sphere of legal control. For
some centuries we have been asserting in practice, and have now
established in theory, the right of every man to choose his own
religious beliefs, instead of receiving such beliefs on State-authority.
Within the last few generations we have inaugurated complete liberty of
speech, in spite of all legislative attempts to suppress or limit it.
And still more recently we have claimed and finally obtained under a few
exceptional restrictions, freedom to trade with whomsoever we please.
Thus our political beliefs are widely different from ancient ones, not
only as to the proper depositary of power to be exercised over a nation,
but also as to the extent of that power.
Not even here has the change ended. Besides the average opinions which
we have just described as current among ourselves, there exists a less
widely-diffused opinion going still further in the same direction. There
are to be found men who contend that the sphere of government should be
narrowed even more than it is in England. The modern doctrine that the
State exists for the benefit of citizens, which has now in a great
measure supplanted the ancient doctrine that the citizens exist for the
benefit of the State, they would push to its logical results. They hold
that the freedom of the individual, limited only by the like freedom of
other individuals, is sacred; and that the legislature cannot equitably
put further restrictions upon it, either by forbidding any actions which
the law of equal freedom permits, or taking away any property save that
required to pay the cost of enforcing this law itself. They assert that
the sole function of the State is the protection of persons against each
other, and against a foreign foe. They urge that as, throughout
civilization, the manifest tendency has been continually to extend the
liberties of the subject, and restrict the functions of the State, there
is reason to believe that the ultimate political condition must be one
in which personal freedom is the greatest possible and governmental
power the least possible: that, namely, in which the freedom of each has
no limit but the like freedom of all; while the sole governmental duty
is the maintenance of this limit.
Here then in different times and places we find concerning the origin,
authority, and functions of government, a great variety of
opinions—opinions of which the leading genera above indicated subdivide
into countless species. What now must be said about the truth or falsity
of these opinions? Save among a few barbarous tribes the notion that a
monarch is a god or demigod is regarded throughout the world as an
absurdity almost passing the bounds of human credulity. In but few
places does there survive a vague notion that the ruler possesses any
supernatural attributes. Most civilized communities, which still admit
the divine right of governments, have long since repudiated the divine
right of kings. Elsewhere the belief that there is anything sacred in
legislative regulations is dying out: laws are coming to be considered
as conventional only. While the extreme school holds that governments
have neither intrinsic authority, nor can have authority given to them
by convention; but can possess authority only as the administrators of
those moral principles deducible from the conditions essential to social
life. Of these various beliefs, with their innumerable modifications,
must we then say that some one alone is wholly right and all the rest
wholly wrong; or must we say that each of them contains truth more or
less completely disguised by errors? The latter alternative is the one
which analysis will force upon us. Ridiculous as they may severally
appear to those not educated under them, every one of these doctrines
has for its vital element the recognition of an unquestionable fact.
Directly or by implication, each of them insists on a certain
subordination of individual actions to social requirements. There are
wide differences as to the power to which this subordination is due;
there are wide differences as to the motive for this subordination;
there are wide differences as to its extent; but that there must be
_some_ subordination all are agreed. From the oldest and rudest idea of
allegiance, down to the most advanced political theory of our own day,
there is on this point complete unanimity. Though, between the savage
who conceives his life and property to be at the absolute disposal of
his chief, and the anarchist who denies the right of any government,
autocratic or democratic, to trench upon his individual freedom, there
seems at first sight an entire and irreconcilable antagonism; yet
ultimate analysis discloses in them this fundamental community of
opinion; that there are limits which individual actions may not
transgress—limits which the one regards as originating in the king’s
will, and which the other regards as deducible from the equal claims of
fellow-citizens.
It may perhaps at first sight seem that we here reach a very unimportant
conclusion; namely, that a certain tacit assumption is equally implied
in all these conflicting political creeds—an assumption which is indeed
of self-evident validity. The question, however, is not the value or
novelty of the particular truth in this case arrived at. My aim has been
to exhibit the more general truth, which we are apt to overlook, that
between the most opposite beliefs there is usually something in
common,—something taken for granted by each; and that this something, if
not to be set down as an unquestionable verity, may yet be considered to
have the highest degree of probability. A postulate which, like the one
above instanced, is not consciously asserted but unconsciously involved;
and which is unconsciously involved not by one man or body of men, but
by numerous bodies of men who diverge in countless ways and degrees in
the rest of their beliefs; has a warrant far transcending any that can
be usually shown. And when, as in this case, the postulate is
abstract—is not based on some one concrete experience common to all
mankind, but implies an induction from a great variety of experiences,
we may say that it ranks next in certainty to the postulates of exact
science.
Do we not thus arrive at a generalization which may habitually guide us
when seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous? While the
foregoing illustration brings clearly home the fact, that in opinions
seeming to be absolutely and supremely wrong something right is yet to
be found; it also indicates the method we should pursue in seeking the
something right. This method is to compare all opinions of the same
genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those
various special and concrete elements in which such opinions disagree;
to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been
eliminated; and to find for this remaining constituent that abstract
expression which holds true throughout its divergent modifications.
* * * * *
§3. A candid acceptance of this general principle and an adoption of the
course it indicates, will greatly aid us in dealing with those chronic
antagonisms by which men are divided. Applying it not only to current
ideas with which we are personally unconcerned, but also to our own
ideas and those of our opponents, we shall be led to form far more
correct judgments. We shall be ever ready to suspect that the
convictions we entertain are not wholly right, and that the adverse
convictions are not wholly wrong. On the one hand we shall not, in
common with the great mass of the unthinking, let our beliefs be
determined by the mere accident of birth in a particular age on a
particular part of the Earth’s surface; and, on the other hand, we shall
be saved from that error of entire and contemptuous negation, which is
fallen into by most who take up an attitude of independent criticism.
Of all antagonisms of belief, the oldest, the widest, the most profound
and the most important, is that between Religion and Science. It
commenced when the recognition of the simplest uniformities in
surrounding things, set a limit to the previously universal fetishism.
It shows itself everywhere throughout the domain of human knowledge:
affecting men’s interpretations alike of the simplest mechanical
accidents and of the most complicated events in the histories of
nations. It has its roots deep down in the diverse habits of thought of
different orders of minds. And the conflicting conceptions of nature and
life which these diverse habits of thought severally generate, influence
for good or ill the tone of feeling and the daily conduct.
An unceasing battle of opinion like this which has been carried on
throughout all ages under the banners of Religion and Science, has of
course generated an animosity fatal to a just estimate of either party
by the other. On a larger scale, and more intensely than any other
controversy, has it illustrated that perennially significant fable
concerning the knights who fought about the colour of a shield of which
neither looked at more than one face. Each combatant seeing clearly his
own aspect of the question, has charged his opponent with stupidity or
dishonesty in not seeing the same aspect of it; while each has wanted
the candour to go over to his opponent’s side and find out how it was
that he saw everything so differently.
Happily the times display an increasing catholicity of feeling, which we
shall do well in carrying as far as our natures permit. In proportion as
we love truth more and victory less, we shall become anxious to know
what it is which leads our opponents to think as they do. We shall begin
to suspect that the pertinacity of belief exhibited by them must result
from a perception of something we have not perceived. And we shall aim
to supplement the portion of truth we have found with the portion found
by them. Making a more rational estimate of human authority, we shall
avoid alike the extremes of undue submission and undue rebellion—shall
not regard some men’s judgments as wholly good and others as wholly bad;
but shall rather lean to the more defensible position that none are
completely right and none are completely wrong.
Preserving, as far as may be, this impartial attitude, let us then
contemplate the two sides of this great controversy. Keeping guard
against the bias of education and shutting out the whisperings of
sectarian feeling, let us consider what are the _à priori_ probabilities
in favour of each party.
* * * * *
§4. When duly realized, the general principle above illustrated must
lead us to anticipate that the diverse forms of religious belief which
have existed and which still exist, have all a basis in some ultimate
fact. Judging by analogy the implication is, not that any one of them is
altogether right; but that in each there is something right more or less
disguised by other things wrong. It may be that the soul of truth
contained in erroneous creeds is very unlike most, if not all, of its
several embodiments; and indeed, if, as we have good reason to expect,
it is much more abstract than any of them, its unlikeness necessarily
follows. But however different from its concrete expressions, some
essential verity must be looked for. To suppose that these multiform
conceptions should be one and all _absolutely_ groundless, discredits
too profoundly that average human intelligence from which all our
individual intelligences are inherited.
This most general reason we shall find enforced by other more special
ones. To the presumption that a number of diverse beliefs of the same
class have some common foundation in fact, must in this case be added a
further presumption derived from the omnipresence of the beliefs.
Religious ideas of one kind or other are almost if not quite universal.
Even should it be true, as alleged, that there exist tribes of men who
have nothing approaching to a theory of creation—even should it be true
that only when a certain phase of intelligence is reached do the most
rudimentary of such theories make their appearance; the implication is
practically the same. Grant that among all races who have passed a
certain stage of intellectual development there are found vague notions
concerning the origin and hidden nature of surrounding things; and there
arises the inference that such notions are necessary products of
progressing intelligence. Their endless variety serves but to strengthen
this conclusion: showing as it does a more or less independent
genesis—showing how, in different places and times, like conditions have
led to similar trains of thought, ending in analogous results. That
these countless different, and yet allied, phenomena presented by all
religions are accidental or factitious, is an untenable supposition. A
candid examination of the evidence quite negatives the doctrine
maintained by some, that creeds are priestly inventions. Even as a mere
question of probabilities it cannot rationally be concluded that in
every society, past and present, savage and civilized, certain members
of the community have combined to delude the rest, in ways so analogous.
To any who may allege that some primitive fiction was devised by some
primitive priesthood, before yet mankind had diverged from a common
centre, a reply is furnished by philology; for philology proves the
dispersion of mankind to have commenced before there existed a language
sufficiently organized to express religious ideas. Moreover, were it
otherwise tenable, the hypothesis of artificial origin fails to account
for the facts. It does not explain why, under all changes of form,
certain elements of religious belief remain constant. It does not show
us how it happens that while adverse criticism has from age to age gone
on destroying particular theological dogmas, it has not destroyed the
fundamental conception underlying these dogmas. It leaves us without any
solution of the striking circumstance that when, from the absurdities
and corruptions accumulated around them, national creeds have fallen
into general discredit, ending in indifferentism or positive denial,
there has always by and by arisen a re-assertion of them: if not the
same in form, still the same in essence. Thus the universality of
religious ideas, their independent evolution among different primitive
races, and their great vitality, unite in showing that their source must
be deep-seated instead of superficial. In other words, we are obliged to
admit that if not supernaturally derived as the majority contend, they
must be derived out of human experiences, slowly accumulated and
organized.
Should it be asserted that religious ideas are products of the religious
sentiment, which, to satisfy itself, prompts imaginations that it
afterwards projects into the external world, and by and by mistakes for
realities; the problem is not solved, but only removed further back.
Whether the wish is father to the thought, or whether sentiment and idea
have a common genesis, there equally arises the question—Whence comes
the sentiment? That it is a constituent in man’s nature is implied by
the hypothesis; and cannot indeed be denied by those who prefer other
hypotheses. And if the religious sentiment, displayed habitually by the
majority of mankind, and occasionally aroused even in those seemingly
devoid of it, must be classed among human emotions, we cannot rationally
ignore it. We are bound to ask its origin and its function. Here is an
attribute which, to say the least, has had an enormous influence—which
has played a conspicuous part throughout the entire past as far back as
history records, and is at present the life of numerous institutions,
the stimulus to perpetual controversies, and the prompter of countless
daily actions. Any Theory of Things which takes no account of this
attribute, must, then, be extremely defective. If with no other view,
still as a question in philosophy, we are called on to say what this
attribute means; and we cannot decline the task without confessing our
philosophy to be incompetent.
Two suppositions only are open to us: the one that the feeling which
responds to religious ideas resulted, along with all other human
faculties, from an act of special creation; the other that it, in common
with the rest, arose by a process of evolution. If we adopt the first of
these alternatives, universally accepted by our ancestors and by the
immense majority of our contemporaries, the matter is at once settled:
man is directly endowed with the religious feeling by a creator; and to
that creator it designedly responds. If we adopt the second alternative,
then we are met by the questions—What are the circumstances to which the
genesis of the religious feeling is due? and—What is its office? We are
bound to entertain these questions; and we are bound to find answers to
them. Considering all faculties, as we must on this supposition, to
result from accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the
organism with its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist
in the environment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined
the growth of the feeling in question; and so are obliged to admit that
it is as normal as any other faculty. Add to which that as, on the
hypothesis of a development of lower forms into higher, the end towards
which the progressive changes directly or indirectly tend, must be
adaptation to the requirements of existence; we are also forced to infer
that this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare. Thus both
alternatives contain the same ultimate implication. We must conclude
that the religious sentiment is either directly created, or is created
by the slow action of natural causes; and whichever of these conclusions
we adopt, requires us to treat the religious sentiment with respect.
One other consideration should not be overlooked—a consideration which
students of Science more especially need to have pointed out. Occupied
as such are with established truths, and accustomed to regard things not
already known as things to be hereafter discovered, they are liable to
forget that information, however extensive it may become, can never
satisfy inquiry. Positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the
whole region of possible thought. At the uttermost reach of discovery
there arises, and must ever arise, the question—What lies beyond? As it
is impossible to think of a limit to space so as to exclude the idea of
space lying outside that limit; so we cannot conceive of any explanation
profound enough to exclude the question—What is the explanation of that
explanation? Regarding Science as a gradually increasing sphere, we may
say that every addition to its surface does but bring it into wider
contact with surrounding nescience. There must ever remain therefore two
antithetical modes of mental action. Throughout all future time, as now,
the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena
and their relations, but also with that unascertained something which
phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot
monopolize consciousness—if it must always continue possible for the
mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can never
cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since
Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in
this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of
experience.
Thus, however untenable may be any or all the existing religious creeds,
however gross the absurdities associated with them, however irrational
the arguments set forth in their defence, we must not ignore the verity
which in all likelihood lies hidden within them. The general probability
that widely-spread beliefs are not absolutely baseless, is in this case
enforced by a further probability due to the omnipresence of the
beliefs. In the existence of a religious sentiment, whatever be its
origin, we have a second evidence of great significance. And as in that
nescience which must ever remain the antithesis to science, there is a
sphere for the exercise of this sentiment, we find a third general fact
of like implication. We may be sure therefore that religions, though
even none of them be actually true, are yet all adumbrations of a truth.
* * * * *
§ 5. As, to the religious, it will seem absurd to set forth any
justification for Religion; so, to the scientific, will it seem absurd
to defend Science. Yet to do the last is certainly as needful as to do
the first. If there exists a class who, in contempt of its follies and
disgust at its corruptions, have contracted towards Religion a
repugnance which makes them overlook the fundamental verity contained in
it; so, too, is there a class offended to such a degree by the
destructive criticisms men of science make on the religious tenets they
regard as essential, that they have acquired a strong prejudice against
Science in general. They are not prepared with any avowed reasons for
their dislike. They have simply a remembrance of the rude shakes which
Science has given to many of their cherished convictions, and a
suspicion that it may perhaps eventually uproot all they regard as
sacred; and hence it produces in them a certain inarticulate dread.
What is Science? To see the absurdity of the prejudice against it, we
need only remark that Science is simply a higher development of common
knowledge; and that if Science is repudiated, all knowledge must be
repudiated along with it. The extremest bigot will not suspect any harm
in the observation that the sun rises earlier and sets later in the
summer than in the winter; but will rather consider such an observation
as a useful aid in fulfilling the duties of life. Well, Astronomy is an
organized body of similar observations, made with greater nicety,
extended to a larger number of objects, and so analyzed as to disclose
the real arrangements of the heavens, and to dispel our false
conceptions of them. That iron will rust in water, that wood will burn,
that long kept viands become putrid, the most timid sectarian will teach
without alarm, as things useful to be known. But these are chemical
truths: Chemistry is a systematized collection of such facts,
ascertained with precision, and so classified and generalized as to
enable us to say with certainty, concerning each simple or compound
substance, what change will occur in it under given conditions. And thus
is it with all the sciences. They severally germinate out of the
experiences of daily life; insensibly as they grow they draw in remoter,
more numerous, and more complex experiences; and among these, they
ascertain laws of dependence like those which make up our knowledge of
the most familiar objects. Nowhere is it possible to draw a line and
say—here Science begins. And as it is the function of common observation
to serve for the guidance of conduct; so, too, is the guidance of
conduct the office of the most recondite and abstract inquiries of
Science. Through the countless industrial processes and the various
modes of locomotion which it has given to us, Physics regulates more
completely our social life than does his acquaintance with the
properties of surrounding bodies regulate the life of the savage.
Anatomy and Physiology, through their effects on the practice of
medicine and hygiene, modify our actions almost as much as does our
acquaintance with the evils and benefits which common environing
agencies may produce on our bodies. All Science is prevision; and all
prevision ultimately aids us in greater or less degree to achieve the
good and avoid the bad. As certainly as the perception of an object
lying in our path warns us against stumbling over it; so certainly do
those more complicated and subtle perceptions which constitute Science,
warn us against stumbling over intervening obstacles in the pursuit of
our distant ends. Thus being one in origin and function, the simplest
forms of cognition and the most complex must be dealt with alike. We are
bound in consistency to receive the widest knowledge which our faculties
can reach, or to reject along with it that narrow knowledge possessed by
all. There is no logical alternative between accepting our intelligence
in its entirety, or repudiating even that lowest intelligence which we
possess in common with brutes.
To ask the question which more immediately concerns our argument—whether
Science is substantially true?—is much like asking whether the sun gives
light. And it is because they are conscious how undeniably valid are
most of its propositions, that the theological party regard Science with
so much secret alarm. They know that during the two thousand years of
its growth, some of its larger divisions—mathematics, physics,
astronomy—have been subject to the rigorous criticism of successive
generations; and have notwithstanding become ever more firmly
established. They know that, unlike many of their own doctrines, which
were once universally received but have age by age been more frequently
called in question, the doctrines of Science, at first confined to a few
scattered inquirers, have been slowly growing into general acceptance,
and are now in great part admitted as beyond dispute. They know that men
of science throughout the world subject each other’s results to the most
searching examination; and that error is mercilessly exposed and
rejected as soon as discovered. And, finally, they know that still more
conclusive testimony is to be found in the daily verification of
scientific predictions, and in the never-ceasing triumphs of those arts
which Science guides.
To regard with alienation that which has such high credentials is a
folly. Though in the tone which many of the scientific adopt towards
them, the defenders of Religion may find some excuse for this
alienation; yet the excuse is a very insufficient one. On the side of
Science, as on their own side, they must admit that short-comings in the
advocates do not tell essentially against that which is advocated.
Science must be judged by itself: and so judged, only the most perverted
intellect can fail to see that it is worthy of all reverence. Be there
or be there not any other revelation, we have a veritable revelation in
Science—a continuous disclosure, through the intelligence with which we
are endowed, of the established order of the Universe. This disclosure
it is the duty of every one to verify as far as in him lies; and having
verified, to receive with all humility.
* * * * *
§6. On both sides of this great controversy, then, truth must exist. An
unbiassed consideration of its general aspects forces us to conclude
that Religion, everywhere present as a weft running through the warp of
human history, expresses some eternal fact; while it is almost a truism
to say of Science that it is an organised mass of facts, ever growing,
and ever being more completely purified from errors. And if both have
bases in the reality of things, then between them there must be a
fundamental harmony. It is an incredible hypothesis that there are two
orders of truth, in absolute and everlasting opposition. Only on some
Manichean theory, which among ourselves no one dares openly avow however
much his beliefs may be tainted by it, is such a supposition even
conceivable. That Religion is divine and Science diabolical, is a
proposition which, though implied in many a clerical declamation, not
the most vehement fanatic can bring himself distinctly to assert. And
whoever does not assert this, must admit that under their seeming
antagonism lies hidden an entire agreement.
Each side, therefore, has to recognize the claims of the other as
standing for truths that are not to be ignored. He who contemplates the
Universe from the religious point of view, must learn to see that this
which we call Science is one constituent of the great whole; and as such
ought to be regarded with a sentiment like that which the remainder
excites. While he who contemplates the universe from the scientific
point of view, must learn to see that this which we call Religion is
similarly a constituent of the great whole; and being such, must be
treated as a subject of science with no more prejudice than any other
reality. It behoves each party to strive to understand the other, with
the conviction that the other has something worthy to be understood; and
with the conviction that when mutually recognized this something will be
the basis of a complete reconciliation.
How to find this something—how to reconcile them, thus becomes the
problem which we should perseveringly try to solve. Not to reconcile
them in any makeshift way—not to find one of those compromises we hear
from time to time proposed, which their proposers must secretly feel are
artificial and temporary; but to arrive at the terms of a real and
permanent peace between them. The thing we have to seek out, is that
ultimate truth which both will avow with absolute sincerity—with not the
remotest mental reservation. There shall be no concession—no yielding on
either side of something that will by and by be reasserted; but the
common ground on which they meet shall be one which each will maintain
for itself. We have to discover some fundamental verity which Religion
will assert, with all possible emphasis, in the absence of Science; and
which Science, with all possible emphasis, will assert in the absence of
Religion—some fundamental verity in the defence of which each will find
the other its ally.
Or, changing the point of view, our aim must be to co-ordinate the
seemingly opposed convictions which Religion and Science embody. From
the coalescence of antagonist ideas, each containing its portion of
truth, there always arises a higher development. As in Geology when the
igneous and aqueous hypotheses were united, a rapid advance took place;
as in Biology we are beginning to progress through the fusion of the
doctrine of types with the doctrine of adaptations; as in Psychology the
arrested growth recommences now that the disciples of Kant and those of
Locke have both their views recognized in the theory that organized
experiences produce forms of thought; as in Sociology, now that it is
beginning to assume a positive character, we find a recognition of both
the party of progress and the party of order, as each holding a truth
which forms a needful complement to that held by the other; so must it
be on a grander scale with Religion and Science. Here too we must look
for a conception which combines the conclusions of both; and here too we
may expect important results from their combination. To understand how
Science and Religion express opposite sides of the same fact—the one its
near or visible side, and the other its remote or invisible side—this it
is which we must attempt; and to achieve this must profoundly modify our
general Theory of Things.
Already in the foregoing pages the method of seeking such a
reconciliation has been vaguely foreshadowed. Before proceeding further,
however, it will be well to treat the question of method more
definitely. To find that truth in which Religion and Science coalesce,
we must know in what direction to look for it, and what kind of truth it
is likely to be.
* * * * *
§ 7. We have found _à priori_ reason for believing that in all
religions, even the rudest, there lies hidden a fundamental verity. We
have inferred that this fundamental verity is that element common to all
religions, which remains after their discordant peculiarities have been
mutually cancelled. And we have further inferred that this element is
almost certain to be more abstract than any current religious doctrine.
Now it is manifest that only in some highly abstract proposition, can
Religion and Science find a common ground. Neither such dogmas as those
of the trinitarian and unitarian, nor any such idea as that of
propitiation, common though it may be to all religions, can serve as the
desired basis of agreement; for Science cannot recognize beliefs like
these: they lie beyond its sphere. Hence we see not only that, judging
by analogy, the essential truth contained in Religion is that most
abstract element pervading all its forms; but also that this most
abstract element is the only one in which Religion is likely to agree
with Science.
Similarly if we begin at the other end, and inquire what scientific
truth can unite Science and Religion. It is at once manifest that
Religion can take no cognizance of special scientific doctrines; any
more than Science can take cognizance of special religious doctrines.
The truth which Science asserts and Religion indorses cannot be one
furnished by mathematics; nor can it be a physical truth; nor can it be
a truth in chemistry: it cannot be a truth belonging to any particular
science. No generalization of the phenomena of space, of time, of
matter, or of force, can become a Religious conception. Such a
conception, if it anywhere exists in Science, must be more general than
any of these—must be one underlying all of them. If there be a fact
which Science recognizes in common with Religion, it must be that fact
from which the several branches of Science diverge, as from their common
root.
Assuming then, that since these two great realities are constituents of
the same mind, and respond to different aspects of the same Universe,
there must be a fundamental harmony between them; we see good reason to
conclude that the most abstract truth contained in Religion and the most
abstract truth contained in Science must be the one in which the two
coalesce. The largest fact to be found within our mental range must be
the one of which we are in search. Uniting these positive and negative
poles of human thought, it must be the ultimate fact in our
intelligence.
* * * * *
§ 8. Before proceeding in the search for this common datum let me
bespeak a little patience. The next three chapters, setting out from
different points and converging to the same conclusion, will be
comparatively unattractive. Students of philosophy will find in them
much that is more or less familiar; and to most of those who are
unacquainted with the literature of modern metaphysics, they may prove
somewhat difficult to follow.
Our argument however cannot dispense with these chapters; and the
greatness of the question at issue justifies even a heavier tax on the
reader’s attention. The matter is one which concerns each and all of us
more than any other matter whatever. Though it affects us little in a
direct way, the view we arrive at must indirectly affect us in all our
relations—must determine our conception of the Universe, of Life, of
Human Nature—must influence our ideas of right and wrong, and so modify
our conduct. To reach that point of view from which the seeming
discordance of Religion and Science disappears, and the two merge into
one, must cause a revolution of thought fruitful in beneficial
consequences, and must surely be worth an effort.
Here ending preliminaries, let us now address ourselves to this
all-important inquiry.
CHAPTER II.
ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
§ 9. When, on the sea-shore, we note how the hulls of distant vessels
are hidden below the horizon, and how, of still remoter vessels, only
the uppermost sails are visible, we realize with tolerable clearness the
slight curvature of that portion of the sea’s surface which lies before
us. But when we seek in imagination to follow out this curved surface as
it actually exists, slowly bending round until all its meridians meet in
a point eight thousand miles below our feet, we find ourselves utterly
baffled. We cannot conceive in its real form and magnitude even that
small segment of our globe which extends a hundred miles on every side
of us; much less the globe as a whole. The piece of rock on which we
stand can be mentally represented with something like completeness: we
find ourselves able to think of its top, its sides, and its under
surface at the same time; or so nearly at the same time that they seem
all present in consciousness together; and so we can form what we call a
conception of the rock. But to do the like with the Earth we find
impossible. If even to imagine the antipodes as at that distant place in
space which it actually occupies, is beyond our power; much more beyond
our power must it be at the same time to imagine all other remote points
on the Earth’s surface as in their actual places. Yet we habitually
speak as though we had an idea of the Earth—as though we could think of
it in the same way that we think of minor objects.
What conception, then, do we form of it? the reader may ask. That its
name calls up in us some state of consciousness is unquestionable; and
if this state of consciousness is not a conception, properly so called,
what is it? The answer seems to be this:—We have learnt by indirect
methods that the Earth is a sphere; we have formed models approximately
representing its shape and the distribution of its parts; generally when
the Earth is referred to, we either think of an indefinitely extended
mass beneath our feet, or else, leaving out the actual Earth, we think
of a body like a terrestrial globe; but when we seek to imagine the
Earth as it really is, we join these two ideas as well as we can—such
perception as our eyes give us of the Earth’s surface we couple with the
conception of a sphere. And thus we form of the Earth, not a conception
properly so called, but only a symbolic conception.[6]
A large proportion of our conceptions, including all those of much
generality, are of this order. Great magnitudes, great durations, great
numbers, are none of them actually conceived, but are all of them
conceived more or less symbolically; and so, too, are all those classes
of objects of which we predicate some common fact. When mention is made
of any individual man, a tolerably complete idea of him is formed. If
the family he belongs to be spoken of, probably but a part of it will be
represented in thought: under the necessity of attending to that which
is said about the family, we realize in imagination only its most
important or familiar members, and pass over the rest with a nascent
consciousness which we know could, if requisite, be made complete.
Should something be remarked of the class, say farmers, to which this
family belongs, we neither enumerate in thought all the individuals
contained in the class, nor believe that we could do so if required; but
we are content with taking some few samples of it, and remembering that
these could be indefinitely multiplied. Supposing the subject of which
something is predicated be Englishmen, the answering state of
consciousness is a still more inadequate representative of the reality.
Yet more remote is the likeness of the thought to the thing, if
reference be made to Europeans or to human beings. And when we come to
propositions concerning the mammalia, or concerning the whole of the
vertebrata, or concerning animals in general, or concerning all organic
beings, the unlikeness of our conceptions to the objects named reaches
its extreme. Throughout which series of instances we see, that as the
number of objects grouped together in thought increases, the concept,
formed of a few typical samples joined with the notion of multiplicity,
becomes more and more a mere symbol; not only because it gradually
ceases to represent the size of the group, but also because as the group
grows more heterogeneous, the typical samples thought of are less like
the average objects which the group contains.
This formation of symbolic conceptions, which inevitably arises as we
pass from small and concrete objects to large and to discrete ones, is
mostly a very useful, and indeed necessary, process. When, instead of
things whose attributes can be tolerably well united in a single state
of consciousness, we have to deal with things whose attributes are too
vast or numerous to be so united, we must either drop in thought part of
their attributes, or else not think of them at all—either form a more or
less symbolic conception, or no conception. We must predicate nothing of
objects too great or too multitudinous to be mentally represented; or we
must make our predications by the help of extremely inadequate
representations of such objects—mere symbols of them.
But while by this process alone we are enabled to form general
propositions, and so to reach general conclusions, we are by this
process perpetually led into danger, and very often into error. We
habitually mistake our symbolic conceptions for real ones; and so are
betrayed into countless false inferences. Not only is it that in
proportion as the concept we form of any thing or class of things,
misrepresents the reality, we are apt to be wrong in any assertion we
make respecting the reality; but it is that we are led to suppose we
have truly conceived a great variety of things which we have conceived
only in this fictitious way; and further to confound with these certain
things which cannot be conceived in any way. How almost unavoidably we
fall into this error it will be needful here to observe.
From objects readily representable in their totality, to those of which
we cannot form even an approximate representation, there is an
insensible transition. Between a pebble and the entire Earth a series of
magnitudes might be introduced, each of which differed from the adjacent
ones so slightly that it would be impossible to say at what point in the
series our conceptions of them became inadequate. Similarly, there is a
gradual progression from those groups of a few individuals which we can
think of as groups with tolerable completeness, to those larger and
larger groups of which we can form nothing like true ideas. Whence it is
manifest that we pass from actual conceptions to symbolic ones by
infinitesimal steps. Note next that we are led to deal with our symbolic
conceptions as though they were actual ones, not only because we cannot
clearly separate the two, but also because, in the great majority of
cases, the first serve our purposes nearly or quite as well as the
last—are simply the abbreviated signs we substitute for those more
elaborate signs which are our equivalents for real objects. Those very
imperfect representations of ordinary things which we habitually make in
thinking, we know can be developed into adequate ones if needful. Those
concepts of larger magnitudes and more extensive classes which we cannot
make adequate, we still find can be verified by some indirect process of
measurement or enumeration. And even in the case of such an utterly
inconceivable object as the Solar System, we yet, through the fulfilment
of predictions founded on our symbolic conception of it, gain the
conviction that this symbolic conception stands for an actual existence,
and, in a sense, truly expresses certain of its constituent relations.
Thus our symbolic conceptions being in the majority of cases capable of
development into complete ones, and in most other cases serving as steps
to conclusions which are proved valid by their correspondence with
observation, we acquire a confirmed habit of dealing with them as true
conceptions—as real representations of actualities. Learning by long
experience that they can, if needful, be verified, we are led habitually
to accept them without verification. And thus we open the door to some
which profess to stand for known things, but which really stand for
things that cannot be known in any way.
To sum up, we must say of conceptions in general, that they are complete
only when the attributes of the object conceived are of such number and
kind that they can be represented in consciousness so nearly at the same
time as to seem all present together; that as the objects conceived
become larger and more complex, some of the attributes first thought of
fade from consciousness before the rest have been represented, and the
conception thus becomes imperfect; that when the size, complexity, or
discreteness of the object conceived becomes very great, only a small
portion of its attributes can be thought of at once, and the conception
formed of it thus becomes so inadequate as to be a mere symbol; that
nevertheless such symbolic conceptions, which are indispensable in
general thinking, are legitimate, provided that by some cumulative or
indirect process of thought, or by the fulfilment of predictions based
on them, we can assure ourselves that they stand for actualities; but
that when our symbolic conceptions are such that no cumulative or
indirect processes of thought can enable us to ascertain that there are
corresponding actualities, nor any predictions be made whose fulfilment
can prove this, then they are altogether vicious and illusive, and in no
way distinguishable from pure fictions.
* * * * *
§ 10. And now to consider the bearings of this general truth on our
immediate topic—Ultimate Religious Ideas.
To the aboriginal man and to every civilized child the problem of the
Universe suggests itself. What is it? and whence comes it? are questions
that press for solution, when, from time to time, the imagination rises
above daily trivialities. To fill the vacuum of thought, any theory that
is proposed seems better than none. And in the absence of others, any
theory that is proposed easily gains a footing and afterwards maintains
its ground: partly from the readiness of mankind to accept proximate
explanations; partly from the authority which soon accumulates round
such explanations when given.
A critical examination, however, will prove not only that no current
hypothesis is tenable, but also that no tenable hypothesis can be
framed.
* * * * *
§ 11. Respecting the origin of the Universe three verbally intelligible
suppositions may be made. We may assert that it is self-existent; or
that it is self-created; or that it is created by an external agency.
Which of these suppositions is most credible it is not needful here to
inquire. The deeper question, into which this finally merges, is,
whether any one of them is even conceivable in the true sense of the
word. Let us successively test them.
When we speak of a man as self-supporting, of an apparatus as
self-acting, or of a tree as self-developed, our expressions, however
inexact, stand for things that can be realized in thought with tolerable
completeness. Our conception of the self-development of a tree is
doubtless symbolic. But though we cannot really represent in
consciousness the entire series of complex changes through which the
tree passes, yet we can thus represent the leading features of the
series; and general experience teaches us that by long continued
observation we could gain the power to realize in thought a series of
changes more fully representing the actual series: that is, we know that
our symbolic conception of self-development can be expanded into
something like a real conception; and that it expresses, however
inaccurately, an actual process in nature. But when we speak of
self-existence, and, helped by the above analogies, form some vague
symbolic conception of it, we delude ourselves in supposing that this
symbolic conception is of the same order as the others. On joining the
word _self_ to the word _existence_, the force of association makes us
believe we have a thought like that suggested by the compound word
self-acting. An endeavour to expand this symbolic conception, however,
will undeceive us. In the first place, it is clear that by
self-existence we especially mean, an existence independent of any
other—not produced by any other: the assertion of self-existence is
simply an indirect denial of creation. In thus excluding the idea of any
antecedent cause, we necessarily exclude the idea of a beginning; for to
admit the idea of a beginning—to admit that there was a time when the
existence had not commenced—is to admit that its commencement was
determined by something, or was caused; which is a contradiction.
Self-existence, therefore, necessarily means existence without a
beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a
conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can
we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies
the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility.
To this let us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it
would not in any sense be an explanation of the Universe. No one will
say that the existence of an object at the present moment is made easier
to understand by the discovery that it existed an hour ago, or a day
ago, or a year ago; and if its existence now is not made in the least
degree more comprehensible by its existence during some previous finite
period of time, then no accumulation of such finite periods, even could
we extend them to an infinite period, would make it more comprehensible.
Thus the Atheistic theory is not only absolutely unthinkable, but, even
if it were thinkable, would not be a solution. The assertion that the
Universe is self-existent does not really carry us a step beyond the
cognition of its present existence; and so leaves us with a mere
re-statement of the mystery.
The hypothesis of self-creation, which practically amounts to what is
called Pantheism, is similarly incapable of being represented in
thought. Certain phenomena, such as the precipitation of invisible
vapour into cloud, aid us in forming a symbolic conception of a
self-evolved Universe; and there are not wanting indications in the
heavens, and on the earth, which help us to render this conception
tolerably definite. But while the succession of phases through which the
Universe has passed in reaching its present form, may perhaps be
comprehended as in a sense self-determined; yet the impossibility of
expanding our symbolic conception of self-creation into a real
conception, remains as complete as ever. Really to conceive
self-creation, is to conceive potential existence passing into actual
existence by some inherent necessity; which we cannot do. We
cannot form any idea of a potential existence of the universe, as
distinguished from its actual existence. If represented in thought at
all, potential existence must be represented as _something_, that is as
an actual existence; to suppose that it can be represented as nothing,
involves two absurdities—that nothing is more than a negation, and can
be positively represented in thought; and that one nothing is
distinguished from all other nothings by its power to develope into
something. Nor is this all. We have no state of consciousness answering
to the words—an inherent necessity by which potential existence became
actual existence. To render them into thought, existence, having for an
indefinite period remained in one form, must be conceived as passing
without any external or additional impulse, into another form; and this
involves the idea of a change without a cause—a thing of which no idea
is possible. Thus the terms of this hypothesis do not stand for real
thoughts; but merely suggest the vaguest symbols incapable of any
interpretation. Moreover, even were it true that potential
existence is conceivable as a different thing from actual existence; and
that the transition from the one to the other can be mentally realized
as a self-determined change; we should still be no forwarder: the
problem would simply be removed a step back. For whence the potential
existence? This would just as much require accounting for as actual
existence; and just the same difficulties would meet us. Respecting the
origin of such a latent power, no other suppositions could be made than
those above named—self-existence, self-creation, creation by external
agency. The self-existence of a potential universe is no more
conceivable than we have found the self-existence of the actual universe
to be. The self-creation of such a potential universe would involve over
again the difficulties here stated—would imply behind this potential
universe a more remote potentiality; and so on in an infinite series,
leaving us at last no forwarder than at first. While to assign as the
source of this potential universe an external agency, would be to
introduce the notion of a potential universe for no purpose whatever.
There remains to be examined the commonly-received or theistic
hypothesis—creation by external agency. Alike in the rudest creeds and
in the cosmogony long current among ourselves, it is assumed that the
genesis of the Heavens and the Earth is effected somewhat after the
manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture. And this
assumption is made not by theologians only, but by the immense
majority of philosophers, past and present. Equally in the writings of
Plato, and in those of not a few living men of science, we find it
taken for granted that there is an analogy between the process of
creation and the process of manufacture. Now in the first place,
not only is this conception one that cannot by any cumulative process
of thought, or the fulfilment of predictions based on it, be shown to
answer to anything actual; and not only is it that in the absence of
all evidence respecting the process of creation, we have no proof of
correspondence even between this limited conception and some limited
portion of the fact; but it is that the conception is not even
consistent with itself—cannot be realized in thought, when all its
assumptions are granted. Though it is true that the proceedings of a
human artificer may vaguely symbolize to us a method after which the
Universe might be shaped, yet they do not help us to comprehend the
real mystery; namely, the origin of the material of which the Universe
consists. The artizan does not make the iron, wood, or stone, he uses;
but merely fashions and combines them. If we suppose suns, and
planets, and satellites, and all they contain to have been similarly
formed by a “Great Artificer,” we suppose merely that certain
pre-existing elements were thus put into their present arrangement.
But whence the pre-existing elements? The comparison helps us not in
the least to understand that; and unless it helps us to understand
that, it is worthless. The production of matter out of nothing is the
real mystery, which neither this simile nor any other enables us to
conceive; and a simile which does not enable us to conceive this, may
just as well be dispensed with. Still more manifest does the
insufficiency of this theory of creation become, when we turn from
material objects to that which contains them—when instead of matter we
contemplate space. Did there exist nothing but an immeasurable void,
explanation would be needed as much as now. There would still arise
the question—how came it so? If the theory of creation by external
agency were an adequate one, it would supply an answer; and its answer
would be—space was made in the same manner that matter was made. But
the impossibility of conceiving this is so manifest, that no one dares
to assert it. For if space was created, it must have been previously
non-existent. The non-existence of space cannot, however, by any
mental effort be imagined. It is one of the most familiar truths that
the idea of space as surrounding us on all sides, is not for a moment
to be got rid of—not only are we compelled to think of space as now
everywhere present, but we are unable to conceive its absence either
in the past or the future. And if the non-existence of space is
absolutely inconceivable, then, necessarily, its creation is
absolutely inconceivable. Lastly, even supposing that the
genesis of the Universe could really be represented in thought as the
result of an external agency, the mystery would be as great as ever;
for there would still arise the question—how came there to be an
external agency? To account for this only the same three hypotheses
are possible—self-existence, self-creation, and creation by external
agency. Of these the last is useless: it commits us to an infinite
series of such agencies, and even then leaves us where we were. By the
second we are practically involved in the same predicament; since, as
already shown, self-creation implies an infinite series of potential
existences. We are obliged therefore to fall back upon the first,
which is the one commonly accepted and commonly supposed to be
satisfactory. Those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe; and
who therefore assume a creator as the source of the universe; take for
granted that they can conceive a self-existent creator. The mystery
which they recognize in this great fact surrounding them on every
side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact; and then
suppose that they have solved the mystery. But they delude themselves.
As was proved at the outset of the argument, self-existence is
rigorously inconceivable; and this holds true whatever be the nature
of the object of which it is predicated. Whoever agrees that the
atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible
idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic
hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea.
Thus these three different suppositions respecting the origin of things,
verbally intelligible though they are, and severally seeming to their
respective adherents quite rational, turn out, when critically examined,
to be literally unthinkable. It is not a question of probability, or
credibility, but of conceivability. Experiment proves that the elements
of these hypotheses cannot even be put together in consciousness; and we
can entertain them only as we entertain such pseud-ideas as a square
fluid and a moral substance—only by abstaining from the endeavour to
render them into actual thoughts. Or, reverting to our original mode of
statement, we may say that they severally involve symbolic conceptions
of the illegitimate and illusive kind. Differing so widely as they seem
to do, the atheistic, the pantheistic, and the theistic hypotheses
contain the same ultimate element. It is impossible to avoid making the
assumption of self-existence somewhere; and whether that assumption be
made nakedly, or under complicated disguises, it is equally vicious,
equally unthinkable. Be it a fragment of matter, or some fancied
potential form of matter, or some more remote and still less imaginable
cause, our conception of its self-existence can be formed only by
joining with it the notion of unlimited duration through past time. And
as unlimited duration is inconceivable, all those formal ideas into
which it enters are inconceivable; and indeed, if such an expression is
allowable, are the more inconceivable in proportion as the other
elements of the ideas are indefinite. So that in fact, impossible as it
is to think of the actual universe as self-existing, we do but multiply
impossibilities of thought by every attempt we make to explain its
existence.
* * * * *
§ 12. If from the origin of the Universe we turn to its nature, the like
insurmountable difficulties rise up before us on all sides—or rather,
the same difficulties under new aspects. We find ourselves on the one
hand obliged to make certain assumptions; and yet on the other hand we
find these assumptions cannot be represented in thought.
When we inquire what is the meaning of the various effects produced upon
our senses—when we ask how there come to be in our consciousness
impressions of sounds, of colours, of tastes, and of those various
attributes which we ascribe to bodies; we are compelled to regard them
as the effects of some cause. We may stop short in the belief that this
cause is what we call matter. Or we may conclude, as some do, that
matter is only a certain mode of manifestation of spirit; which is
therefore the true cause. Or, regarding matter and spirit as proximate
agencies, we may attribute all the changes wrought in our consciousness
to immediate divine power. But be the cause we assign what it may, we
are obliged to suppose _some_ cause. And we are not only obliged to
suppose some cause, but also a first cause. The matter, or spirit, or
whatever we assume to be the agent producing on us these various
impressions, must either be the first cause of them or not. If it is the
first cause, the conclusion is reached. If it is not the first cause,
then by implication there must be a cause behind it; which thus becomes
the real cause of the effect. Manifestly, however complicated the
assumptions, the same conclusion must inevitably be reached. We cannot
think at all about the impressions which the external world produces on
us, without thinking of them as caused; and we cannot carry out an
inquiry concerning their causation, without inevitably committing
ourselves to the hypothesis of a First Cause.
But now if we go a step further, and ask what is the nature of this
First Cause, we are driven by an inexorable logic to certain further
conclusions. Is the First Cause finite or infinite? If we say finite we
involve ourselves in a dilemma. To think of the First Cause as finite,
is to think of it as limited. To think of it as limited, necessarily
implies a conception of something beyond its limits: it is absolutely
impossible to conceive a thing as bounded without conceiving a region
surrounding its boundaries. What now must we say of this region? If the
First Cause is limited, and there consequently lies something outside of
it, this something must have no First Cause—must be uncaused. But if we
admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume
a cause for anything. If beyond that finite region over which the First
Cause extends, there lies a region, which we are compelled to regard as
infinite, over which it does not extend—if we admit that there is an
infinite uncaused surrounding the finite caused; we tacitly abandon the
hypothesis of causation altogether. Thus it is impossible to consider
the First Cause as finite. And if it cannot be finite it must be
infinite.
Another inference concerning the First Cause is equally unavoidable. It
must be independent. If it is dependent it cannot be the First Cause;
for that must be the First Cause on which it depends. It is not enough
to say that it is partially independent; since this implies some
necessity which determines its partial dependence, and this necessity,
be it what it may, must be a higher cause, or the true First Cause,
which is a contradiction. But to think of the First Cause as totally
independent, is to think of it as that which exists in the absence of
all other existence; seeing that if the presence of any other existence
is necessary, it must be partially dependent on that other existence,
and so cannot be the First Cause. Not only however must the First Cause
be a form of being which has no necessary relation to any other form of
being, but it can have no necessary relation within itself. There can be
nothing in it which determines change, and yet nothing which prevents
change. For if it contains something which imposes such necessities or
restraints, this something must be a cause higher than the First Cause,
which is absurd. Thus the First Cause must be in every sense perfect,
complete, total: including within itself all power, and transcending all
law. Or to use the established word, it must be absolute.
Here then respecting the nature of the Universe, we seem committed to
certain unavoidable conclusions. The objects and actions surrounding us,
not less than the phenomena of our own consciousness, compel us to ask a
cause; in our search for a cause, we discover no resting place until we
arrive at the hypothesis of a First Cause; and we have no alternative
but to regard this First Cause as Infinite and Absolute. These are
inferences forced upon us by arguments from which there appears no
escape. It is hardly needful however to show those who have followed
thus far, how illusive are these reasonings and their results. But that
it would tax the reader’s patience to no purpose, it might easily be
proved that the materials of which the argument is built, equally with
the conclusions based on them, are merely symbolic conceptions of the
illegitimate order. Instead, however, of repeating the disproof used
above, it will be desirable to pursue another method; showing the
fallacy of these conclusions by disclosing their mutual contradictions.
Here I cannot do better than avail myself of the demonstration which Mr
Mansel, carrying out in detail the doctrine of Sir William Hamilton, has
given in his “Limits of Religious Thought.” And I gladly do this, not
only because his mode of presentation cannot be improved, but also
because, writing as he does in defence of the current Theology, his
reasonings will be the more acceptable to the majority of readers.
* * * * *
§ 13. Having given preliminary definitions of the First Cause, of the
Infinite, and of the Absolute, Mr Mansel says:—
“But these three conceptions, the Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite, all
equally indispensable, do they not imply contradiction to each other,
when viewed in conjunction, as attributes of one and the same Being? A
Cause cannot, as such, be absolute: the Absolute cannot, as such, be a
cause. The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect: the
cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect of the cause. On
the other hand, the conception of the Absolute implies a possible
existence out of all relation. We attempt to escape from this apparent
contradiction, by introducing the idea of succession in time. The
Absolute exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a Cause. But
here we are checked by the third conception, that of the Infinite. How
can the Infinite become that which it was not from the first? If
Causation is a possible mode of existence, that which exists without
causing is not infinite; that which becomes a cause has passed beyond
its former limits.” * * *
“Supposing the Absolute to become a cause, it will follow that it
operates by means of freewill and consciousness. For a necessary cause
cannot be conceived as absolute and infinite. If necessitated by
something beyond itself, it is thereby limited by a superior power; and
if necessitated by itself, it has in its own nature a necessary relation
to its effect. The act of causation must therefore be voluntary; and
volition is only possible in a conscious being. But consciousness again
is only conceivable as a relation. There must be a conscious subject,
and an object of which he is conscious. The subject is a subject to the
object; the object is an object to the subject; and neither can exist by
itself as the absolute. This difficulty, again, may be for the moment
evaded, by distinguishing between the absolute as related to another and
the absolute as related to itself. The Absolute, it may be said, may
possibly be conscious, provided it is only conscious of itself. But this
alternative is, in ultimate analysis, no less self-destructive than the
other. For the object of consciousness, whether a mode of the subject’s
existence or not, is either created in and by the act of consciousness,
or has an existence independent of it. In the former case, the object
depends upon the subject, and the subject alone is the true absolute. In
the latter case, the subject depends upon the object, and the object
alone is the true absolute. Or if we attempt a third hypothesis, and
maintain that each exists independently of the other, we have no
absolute at all, but only a pair of relatives; for coexistence, whether
in consciousness or not, is itself a relation.”
“The corollary from this reasoning is obvious. Not only is the Absolute,
as conceived, incapable of a necessary relation to anything else; but it
is also incapable of containing, by the constitution of its own nature,
an essential relation within itself; as a whole, for instance, composed
of parts, or as a substance consisting of attributes, or as a conscious
subject in antithesis to an object. For if there is in the absolute any
principle of unity, distinct from the mere accumulation of parts or
attributes, this principle alone is the true absolute. If, on the other
hand, there is no such principle, then there is no absolute at all, but
only a plurality of relatives. The almost unanimous voice of philosophy,
in pronouncing that the absolute is both one and simple, must be
accepted as the voice of reason also, so far as reason has any voice in
the matter. But this absolute unity, as indifferent and containing no
attributes, can neither be distinguished from the multiplicity of finite
beings by any characteristic feature, nor be identified with them in
their multiplicity. Thus we are landed in an inextricable dilemma. The
Absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived
as unconscious: it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be
conceived as simple: it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can
it be conceived by the absence of difference: it cannot be identified
with the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it. The One and
the Many, regarded as the beginning of existence, are thus alike
incomprehensible.”
“The fundamental conceptions of Rational Theology being thus
self-destructive, we may naturally expect to find the same antagonism
manifested in their special applications. * * * How, for example, can
Infinite Power be able to do all things, and yet Infinite Goodness be
unable to do evil? How can Infinite Justice exact the utmost penalty for
every sin, and yet Infinite Mercy pardon the sinner? How can Infinite
Wisdom know all that is to come, and yet Infinite Freedom be at liberty
to do or to forbear? How is the existence of Evil compatible with that
of an infinitely perfect Being; for if he wills it, he is not infinitely
good; and if he wills it not, his will is thwarted and his sphere of
action limited?” * * *
“Let us, however, suppose for an instant that these difficulties are
surmounted, and the existence of the Absolute securely established on
the testimony of reason. Still we have not succeeded in reconciling this
idea with that of a Cause: we have done nothing towards explaining how
the absolute can give rise to the relative, the infinite to the finite.
If the condition of casual activity is a higher state than that of
quiescence, the Absolute, whether acting voluntarily or involuntarily,
has passed from a condition of comparative imperfection to one of
comparative perfection; and therefore was not originally perfect. If the
state of activity is an inferior state to that of quiescence, the
Absolute, in becoming a cause, has lost its original perfection. There
remains only the supposition that the two states are equal, and the act
of creation one of complete indifference. But this supposition
annihilates the unity of the absolute, or it annihilates itself. If the
act of creation is real, and yet indifferent, we must admit the
possibility of two conceptions of the absolute, the one as productive,
the other as non-productive. If the act is not real, the supposition
itself vanishes.” * * *
“Again, how can the relative be conceived as coming into being? If it is
a distinct reality from the absolute, it must be conceived as passing
from non-existence into existence. But to conceive an object as
non-existent, is again a self-contradiction; for that which is conceived
exists, as an object of thought, in and by that conception. We may
abstain from thinking of an object at all; but, if we think of it, we
cannot but think of it as existing. It is possible at one time not to
think of an object at all, and at another to think of it as already in
being; but to think of it in the act of becoming, in the progress from
not being into being, is to think that which, in the very thought,
annihilates itself.” * * *
“To sum up briefly this portion of my argument. The conception of the
Absolute and Infinite, from whatever side we view it, appears
encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing
such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others;
and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a
contradiction in conceiving it as one; and there is a contradiction in
conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as
personal; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal.
It cannot, without contradiction, be represented as active; nor, without
equal contradiction, be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived
as the sum of all existence; nor yet can it be conceived as a part only
of that sum.”
* * * * *
§ 14. And now what is the bearing of these results on the question
before us? Our examination of Ultimate Religious Ideas has been carried
on with the view of making manifest some fundamental verity contained in
them. Thus far however we have arrived at negative conclusions only.
Criticising the essential conceptions involved in the different orders
of beliefs, we find no one of them to be logically defensible. Passing
over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that
of conceivability, we see that Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism, when
rigorously analysed, severally prove to be absolutely unthinkable.
Instead of disclosing a fundamental verity existing in each, our
investigation seems rather to have shown that there is no fundamental
verity contained in any. To carry away this conclusion, however, would
be a fatal error; as we shall shortly see.
Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is in all cases a
supplementary growth, every Religion may be defined as an _à priori_
theory of the Universe. The surrounding facts being given, some form of
agency is alleged which, in the opinion of those alleging it, accounts
for these facts. Be it in the rudest Fetishism, which assumes a separate
personality behind every phenomenon; be it in Polytheism, in which these
personalities are partially generalized; be it in Monotheism, in which
they are wholly generalized; or be it in Pantheism, in which the
generalized personality becomes one with the phenomena; we equally find
an hypothesis which is supposed to render the Universe comprehensible.
Nay, even that which is commonly regarded as the negation of all
Religion—even positive Atheism, comes within the definition; for it,
too, in asserting the self-existence of Space, Matter, and Motion, which
it regards as adequate causes of every appearance, propounds an _à
priori_ theory from which it holds the facts to be deducible. Now every
theory tacitly asserts two things: firstly, that there is something to
be explained; secondly, that such and such is the explanation. Hence,
however widely different speculators may disagree in the solutions they
give of the same problem; yet by implication they agree that there is a
problem to be solved. Here then is an element which all creeds have in
common. Religions diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas, are yet
perfectly at one in the tacit conviction that the existence of the world
with all it contains and all which surrounds it, is a mystery ever
pressing for interpretation. On this point, if on no other, there is
entire unanimity.
Thus we come within sight of that which we seek. In the last chapter,
reasons were given for inferring that human beliefs in general, and
especially the perennial ones, contain, under whatever disguises of
error, some soul of truth; and here we have arrived at a truth
underlying even the grossest superstitions. We saw further that this
soul of truth was most likely to be some constituent common to
conflicting opinions of the same order; and here we have a constituent
which may be claimed alike by all religions. It was pointed out that
this soul of truth would almost certainly be more abstract than any of
the beliefs involving it; and the truth we have arrived at is one
exceeding in abstractness the most abstract religious doctrines. In
every respect, therefore, our conclusion answers to the requirements. It
has all the characteristics which we inferred must belong to that
fundamental verity expressed by religions in general.
That this is the vital element in all religions is further proved by the
fact, that it is the element which not only survives every change, but
grows more distinct the more highly the religion is developed.
Aboriginal creeds, though pervaded by the idea of personal agencies
which are usually unseen, yet conceive these agencies under perfectly
concrete and ordinary forms—class them with the visible agencies of men
and animals; and so hide a vague perception of mystery in disguises as
unmysterious as possible. The Polytheistic conceptions in their advanced
phases, represent the presiding personalities in greatly idealized
shapes, existing in a remote region, working in subtle ways, and
communicating with men by omens or through inspired persons; that is,
the ultimate causes of things are regarded as less familiar and
comprehensible. The growth of a Monotheistic faith, accompanied as it is
by a denial of those beliefs in which the divine nature is assimilated
to the human in all its lower propensities, shows us a further step in
the same direction; and however imperfectly this higher faith is at
first realized, we yet see in altars “to the unknown and unknowable
God,” and in the worship of a God that cannot by any searching be found
out, that there is a clearer recognition of the inscrutableness of
creation. Further developments of theology, ending in such assertions as
that “a God understood would be no God at all,” and “to think that God
is, as we can think him to be, is blasphemy,” exhibit this recognition
still more distinctly; and it pervades all the cultivated theology of
the present day. Thus while other constituents of religious creeds one
by one drop away, this remains and grows even more manifest; and so is
shown to be the essential constituent.
Nor does the evidence end here. Not only is the omnipresence of
something which passes comprehension, that most abstract belief which is
common to all religions, which becomes the more distinct in proportion
as they develope, and which remains after their discordant elements have
been mutually cancelled; but it is that belief which the most unsparing
criticism of each leaves unquestionable—or rather makes ever clearer. It
has nothing to fear from the most inexorable logic; but on the contrary
is a belief which the most inexorable logic shows to be more profoundly
true than any religion supposes. For every religion, setting out though
it does with the tacit assertion of a mystery, forthwith proceeds to
give some solution of this mystery; and so asserts that it is not a
mystery passing human comprehension. But an examination of the solutions
they severally propound, shows them to be uniformly invalid. The
analysis of every possible hypothesis proves, not simply that no
hypothesis is sufficient, but that no hypothesis is even thinkable. And
thus the mystery which all religions recognize, turns out to be a far
more transcendent mystery than any of them suspect—not a relative, but
an absolute mystery.
Here, then, is an ultimate religious truth of the highest possible
certainty—a truth in which religions in general are at one with each
other, and with a philosophy antagonistic to their special dogmas. And
this truth, respecting which there is a latent agreement among all
mankind from the fetish-worshipper to the most stoical critic of human
creeds, must be the one we seek. If Religion and Science are to be
reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest,
and most certain of all facts—that the Power which the Universe
manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.
-----
Footnote 6:
Those who may have before met with this term, will perceive that it is
here used in quite a different sense.
CHAPTER III.
ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS.
§ 15. What are Space and Time? Two hypotheses are current respecting
them: the one that they are objective, and the other that they are
subjective—the one that they are external to, and independent of,
ourselves, the other that they are internal, and appertain to our own
consciousness. Let us see what becomes of these hypotheses under
analysis.
To say that Space and Time exist objectively, is to say that they are
entities. The assertion that they are non-entities is self-destructive:
non-entities are non-existences; and to allege that non-existences exist
objectively, is a contradiction in terms. Moreover, to deny that Space
and Time are things, and so by implication to call them nothings,
involves the absurdity that there are two kinds of nothing. Neither can
they be regarded as attributes of some entity; seeing, not only that it
is impossible really to conceive any entity of which they are
attributes, but seeing further that we cannot think of them as
disappearing, even if everything else disappeared; whereas attributes
necessarily disappear along with the entities they belong to. Thus as
Space and Time cannot be either non-entities, nor the attributes of
entities, we have no choice but consider them as entities. But
while, on the hypothesis of their objectivity, Space and Time must be
classed as things, we find, on experiment, that to represent them in
thought as things is impossible. To be conceived at all, a thing must be
conceived as having attributes. We can distinguish something from
nothing, only by the power which the something has to act on our
consciousness; the several affections it produces on our consciousness
(or else the hypothetical causes of them), we attribute to it, and call
its attributes; and the absence of these attributes is the absence of
the terms in which the something is conceived, and involves the absence
of a conception. What now are the attributes of Space? The only one
which it is possible for a moment to think of as belonging to it, is
that of extension; and to credit it with this implies a confusion of
thought. For extension and Space are convertible terms: by extension, as
we ascribe it to surrounding objects, we mean occupancy of Space; and
thus to say that Space is extended, is to say that Space occupies Space.
How we are similarly unable to assign any attribute to Time, scarcely
needs pointing out. Nor are Time and Space unthinkable as entities
only from the absence of attributes; there is another peculiarity,
familiar to readers of metaphysics, which equally excludes them from the
category. All entities which we actually know as such, are limited; and
even if we suppose ourselves either to know or to be able to conceive
some unlimited entity, we of necessity in so classing it positively
separate it from the class of limited entities. But of Space and Time we
cannot assert either limitation or the absence of limitation. We find
ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded Space;
and yet totally unable to imagine bounds beyond which there is no Space.
Similarly at the other extreme: it is impossible to think of a limit to
the divisibility of Space; yet equally impossible to think of its
infinite divisibility. And, without stating them, it will be seen that
we labour under like impotencies in respect to Time. Thus we
cannot conceive Space and Time as entities, and are equally disabled
from conceiving them as either the attributes of entities or as
non-entities. We are compelled to think of them as existing; and yet
cannot bring them within those conditions under which existences are
represented in thought.
Shall we then take refuge in the Kantian doctrine? shall we say that
Space and Time are forms of the intellect,—“_à priori_ laws or
conditions of the conscious mind”? To do this is to escape from great
difficulties by rushing into greater. The proposition with which Kant’s
philosophy sets out, verbally intelligible though it is, cannot by any
effort be rendered into thought—cannot be interpreted into an idea
properly so called, but stands merely for a pseud-idea. In the
first place, to assert that Space and Time, as we are conscious of them,
are subjective conditions, is by implication to assert that they are not
objective realities: if the Space and Time present to our minds belong
to the _ego_, then of necessity they do not belong to the _non-ego_. Now
it is absolutely impossible to think this. The very fact on which Kant
bases his hypothesis—namely that our consciousness of Space and Time
cannot be suppressed—testifies as much; for that consciousness of Space
and Time which we cannot rid ourselves of, is the consciousness of them
as existing objectively. It is useless to reply that such an inability
must inevitably result if they are subjective forms. The question here
is—What does consciousness directly testify? And the direct testimony of
consciousness is, that Time and Space are not within but without the
mind; and so absolutely independent of it that they cannot be conceived
to become non-existent even were the mind to become non-existent.
Besides being positively unthinkable in what it tacitly denies,
the theory of Kant is equally unthinkable in what it openly affirms. It
is not simply that we cannot combine the thought of Space with the
thought of our own personality, and contemplate the one as a property of
the other—though our inability to do this would prove the
inconceivableness of the hypothesis—but it is that the hypothesis
carries in itself the proof of its own inconceivableness. For if Space
and Time are forms of thought, they can never be thought of; since it is
impossible for anything to be at once the _form_ of thought and the
_matter_ of thought. That Space and Time are objects of consciousness,
Kant emphatically asserts by saying that it is impossible to suppress
the consciousness of them. How then, if they are _objects_ of
consciousness, can they at the same time be _conditions_ of
consciousness? If Space and Time are the conditions under which we
think, then when we think of Space and Time themselves, our thoughts
must be unconditioned; and if there can thus be unconditioned thoughts,
what becomes of the theory?
It results therefore that Space and Time are wholly incomprehensible.
The immediate knowledge which we seem to have of them, proves, when
examined, to be total ignorance. While our belief in their objective
reality is insurmountable, we are unable to give any rational account of
it. And to posit the alternative belief (possible to state but
impossible to realize) is merely to multiply irrationalities.
* * * * *
§ 16. Were it not for the necessities of the argument, it would be
inexcusable to occupy the reader’s attention with the threadbare, and
yet unended, controversy respecting the divisibility of matter. Matter
is either infinitely divisible or it is not: no third possibility can be
named. Which of the alternatives shall we accept? If we say that Matter
is infinitely divisible, we commit ourselves to a supposition not
realizable in thought. We can bisect and re-bisect a body, and
continually repeating the act until we reduce its parts to a size no
longer physically divisible, may then mentally continue the process
without limit. To do this, however, is not really to conceive the
infinite divisibility of matter, but to form a symbolic conception
incapable of expansion into a real one, and not admitting of other
verification. Really to conceive the infinite divisibility of matter, is
mentally to follow out the divisions to infinity; and to do this would
require infinite time. On the other hand, to assert that matter is not
infinitely divisible, is to assert that it is reducible to parts which
no conceivable power can divide; and this verbal supposition can no more
be represented in thought than the other. For each of such ultimate
parts, did they exist, must have an under and an upper surface, a right
and a left side, like any larger fragment. Now it is impossible to
imagine its sides so near that no plane of section can be conceived
between them; and however great be the assumed force of cohesion, it is
impossible to shut out the idea of a greater force capable of overcoming
it. So that to human intelligence the one hypothesis is no more
acceptable than the other; and yet the conclusion that one or other must
agree with the fact, seems to human intelligence unavoidable.
Again, leaving this insoluble question, let us ask whether substance
has, in reality, anything like that extended solidity which it presents
to our consciousness. The portion of space occupied by a piece of metal,
seems to eyes and fingers perfectly filled: we perceive a homogeneous,
resisting mass, without any breach of continuity. Shall we then say that
Matter is as actually solid as it appears? Shall we say that whether it
consists of an infinitely divisible element or of ultimate units
incapable of further division, its parts are everywhere in actual
contact? To assert as much entangles us in insuperable difficulties.
Were Matter thus absolutely solid, it would be, what it is
not—absolutely incompressible; since compressibility, implying the
nearer approach of constituent parts, is not thinkable unless there is
unoccupied space between the parts. Nor is this all. It is an
established mechanical truth, that if a body, moving at a given
velocity, strikes an equal body at rest in such wise that the two move
on together, their joint velocity will be but half that of the striking
body. Now it is a law of which the negation is inconceivable, that in
passing from any one degree of magnitude to any other, all intermediate
degrees must be passed through. Or, in the case before us, a body moving
at velocity 4, cannot, by collision, be reduced to velocity 2, without
passing through all velocities between 4 and 2. But were Matter truly
solid—were its units absolutely incompressible and in absolute
contact—this “law of continuity,” as it is called, would be broken in
every case of collision. For when, of two such units, one moving at
velocity 4 strikes another at rest, the striking unit must have its
velocity 4 instantaneously reduced to velocity 2; must pass from
velocity 4 to velocity 2 without any lapse of time, and without passing
through intermediate velocities; must be moving with velocities 4 and 2
at the same instant, which is impossible.
The supposition that Matter is absolutely solid being untenable, there
presents itself the Newtonian supposition, that it consists of solid
atoms not in contact but acting on each other by attractive and
repulsive forces, varying with the distances. To assume this, however,
merely shifts the difficulty: the problem is simply transferred from the
aggregated masses of matter to these hypothetical atoms. For granting
that Matter, as we perceive it, is made up of such dense extended units
surrounded by atmospheres of force, the question still arises—What is
the constitution of these units? We have no alternative but to regard
each of them as a small piece of matter. Looked at through a mental
microscope, each becomes a mass of substance such as we have just been
contemplating. Exactly the same inquiries may be made respecting the
parts of which each atom consists; while exactly the same difficulties
stand in the way of every answer. And manifestly, even were the
hypothetical atom assumed to consist of still minuter ones, the
difficulty would re-appear at the next step; nor could it be got rid of
even by an infinite series of such assumptions.
Boscovich’s conception yet remains to us. Seeing that Matter could not,
as Leibnitz suggested, be composed of unextended monads (since the
juxtaposition of an infinity of points having no extension, could not
produce that extension which matter possesses); and perceiving
objections to the view entertained by Newton; Boscovich proposed an
intermediate theory, uniting, as he considered, the advantages of both
and avoiding their difficulties. His theory is, that the constituents of
Matter are centres of force—points without dimensions, which attract and
repel each other in suchwise as to be kept at specific distances apart.
And he argues, mathematically, that the forces possessed by such centres
might so vary with the distances, that under given conditions the
centres would remain in stable equilibrium with definite interspaces;
and yet, under other conditions, would maintain larger or smaller
interspaces. This speculation however, ingeniously as it is elaborated,
and eluding though it does various difficulties, posits a proposition
which cannot by any effort be represented in thought: it escapes all the
inconceivabilities above indicated, by merging them in the one
inconceivability with which it sets out. A centre of force absolutely
without extension is unthinkable: answering to these words we can form
nothing more than a symbolic conception of the illegitimate order. The
idea of resistance cannot be separated in thought from the idea of an
extended body which offers resistance. To suppose that central forces
can reside in points not infinitesimally small but occupying no space
whatever—points having position only, with nothing to mark their
position—points in no respect distinguishable from the surrounding
points that are not centres of force;—to suppose this, is utterly beyond
human power.
Here it may possibly be said, that though all hypotheses respecting the
constitution of Matter commit us to inconceivable conclusions when
logically developed, yet we have reason to think that one of them
corresponds with the fact. Though the conception of Matter as consisting
of dense indivisible units, is symbolic and incapable of being
completely thought out, it may yet be supposed to find indirect
verification in the truths of chemistry. These, it is argued,
necessitate the belief that Matter consists of particles of specific
weights, and therefore of specific sizes. The general law of definite
proportions seems impossible on any other condition than the existence
of ultimate atoms; and though the combining weights of the respective
elements are termed by chemists their “equivalents,” for the purpose of
avoiding a questionable assumption, we are unable to think of the
combination of such definite weights, without supposing it to take place
between definite numbers of definite particles. And thus it would appear
that the Newtonian view is at any rate preferable to that of Boscovich.
A disciple of Boscovich, however, may reply that his master’s
theory is involved in that of Newton; and cannot indeed be escaped.
“What,” he may ask, “is it that holds together the parts of these
ultimate atoms?”. “A cohesive force,” his opponent must answer. “And
what,” he may continue, “is it that holds together the parts of any
fragments into which, by sufficient force, an ultimate atom might be
broken?” Again the answer must be—a cohesive force. “And what,” he may
still ask, “if the ultimate atom were, as we can imagine it to be,
reduced to parts as small in proportion to it, as it is in proportion to
a tangible mass of matter—what must give each part the ability to
sustain itself, and to occupy space?” Still there is no answer but—a
cohesive force. Carry the process in thought as far as we may, until the
extension of the parts is less than can be imagined, we still cannot
escape the admission of forces by which the extension is upheld; and we
can find no limit until we arrive at the conception of centres of force
without any extension.
Matter then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible
as Space and Time. Frame what suppositions we may, we find on tracing
out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between
opposite absurdities.
* * * * *
§ 17. A body impelled by the hand is clearly perceived to move, and to
move in a definite direction: there seems at first sight no possibility
of doubting that its motion is real, or that it is towards a given
point. Yet it is easy to show that we not only may be, but usually are,
quite wrong in both these judgments. Here, for instance, is a ship
which, for simplicity’s sake, we will suppose to be anchored at the
equator with her head to the West. When the captain walks from stem to
stern, in what direction does he move? East is the obvious answer—an
answer which for the moment may pass without criticism. But now the
anchor is heaved, and the vessel sails to the West with a velocity equal
to that at which the captain walks. In what direction does he now move
when he goes from stem to stern? You cannot say East, for the vessel is
carrying him as fast towards the West as he walks to the East; and you
cannot say West for the converse reason. In respect to surrounding space
he is stationary; though to all on board the ship he seems to be moving.
But now are we quite sure of this conclusion?—Is he really stationary?
When we take into account the Earth’s motion round its axis, we find
that instead of being stationary he is travelling at the rate of 1000
miles per hour to the East; so that neither the perception of one who
looks at him, nor the inference of one who allows for the ship’s motion,
is anything like the truth. Nor indeed, on further consideration, shall
we find this revised conclusion to be much better. For we have forgotten
to allow for the Earth’s motion in its orbit. This being some 68,000
miles per hour, it follows that, assuming the time to be midday, he is
moving, not at the rate of 1000 miles per hour to the East, but at the
rate of 67,000 miles per hour to the West. Nay, not even now have we
discovered the true rate and the true direction of his movement. With
the Earth’s progress in its orbit, we have to join that of the whole
Solar system towards the constellation Hercules; and when we do this, we
perceive that he is moving neither East nor West, but in a line inclined
to the plane of the Ecliptic, and at a velocity greater or less
(according to the time of the year) than that above named. To which let
us add, that were the dynamic arrangements of our sidereal system fully
known to us, we should probably discover the direction and rate of his
actual movement to differ considerably even from these. How
illusive are our ideas of Motion, is thus made sufficiently manifest.
That which seems moving proves to be stationary; that which seems
stationary proves to be moving; while that which we conclude to be going
rapidly in one direction, turns out to be going much more rapidly in the
opposite direction. And so we are taught that what we are conscious of
is not the real motion of any object, either in its rate or direction;
but merely its motion as measured from an assigned position—either the
position we ourselves occupy or some other. Yet in this very process of
concluding that the motions we perceive are not the real motions, we
tacitly assume that there are real motions. In revising our successive
judgments concerning a body’s course or velocity, we take for granted
that there is an actual course and an actual velocity—we take for
granted that there are fixed points in space with respect to which all
motions are absolute; and we find it impossible to rid ourselves of this
idea. Nevertheless, absolute motion cannot even be imagined, much less
known. Motion as taking place apart from those limitations of space
which we habitually associate with it, is totally unthinkable. For
motion is change of place; but in unlimited space, change of place is
inconceivable, because place itself is inconceivable. Place can be
conceived only by reference to other places; and in the absence of
objects dispersed through space, a place could be conceived only in
relation to the limits of space; whence it follows that in unlimited
space, place cannot be conceived—all places must be equidistant from
boundaries that do not exist. Thus while we are obliged to think that
there is an absolute motion, we find absolute motion incomprehensible.
Another insuperable difficulty presents itself when we contemplate the
transfer of Motion. Habit blinds us to the marvelousness of this
phenomenon. Familiar with the fact from childhood, we see nothing
remarkable in the ability of a moving thing to generate movement in a
thing that is stationary. It is, however, impossible to understand it.
In what respect does a body after impact differ from itself before
impact? What is this added to it which does not sensibly affect any of
its properties and yet enables it to traverse space? Here is an object
at rest and here is the same object moving. In the one state it has no
tendency to change its place; but in the other it is obliged at each
instant to assume a new position. What is it which will for ever go on
producing this effect without being exhausted? and how does it dwell in
the object? The motion you say has been communicated. But how?—What has
been communicated? The striking body has not transferred a _thing_ to
the body struck; and it is equally out of the question to say that it
has transferred an _attribute_. What then has it transferred?
Once more there is the old puzzle concerning the connexion between
Motion and Rest. We daily witness the gradual retardation and final
stoppage of things projected from the hand or otherwise impelled; and we
equally often witness the change from Rest to Motion produced by the
application of force. But truly to represent these transitions in
thought, we find impossible. For a breach of the law of continuity seems
necessarily involved; and yet no breach of it is conceivable. A body
travelling at a given velocity cannot be brought to a state of rest, or
no velocity, without passing through all intermediate velocities. At
first sight nothing seems easier than to imagine it doing this. It is
quite possible to think of its motion as diminishing insensibly until it
becomes infinitesimal; and many will think equally possible to pass in
thought from infinitesimal motion to no motion. But this is an error.
Mentally follow out the decreasing velocity as long as you please, and
there still remains _some_ velocity. Halve and again halve the rate of
movement for ever, yet movement still exists; and the smallest movement
is separated by an impassable gap from no movement. As something,
however minute, is infinitely great in comparison with nothing; so is
even the least conceivable motion, infinite as compared with rest.
The converse perplexities attendant on the transition from Rest to
Motion, need not be specified. These, equally with the foregoing, show
us that though we are obliged to think of such changes as actually
occurring, their occurrence cannot be realized.
Thus neither when considered in connexion with Space, nor when
considered in connexion with Matter, nor when considered in connexion
with Rest, do we find that Motion is truly cognizable. All efforts to
understand its essential nature do but bring us to alternative
impossibilities of thought.
* * * * *
§ 18. On lifting a chair, the force exerted we regard as equal to that
antagonistic force called the weight of the chair; and we cannot think
of these as equal without thinking of them as like in kind; since
equality is conceivable only between things that are connatural. The
axiom that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions,
commonly exemplified by this very instance of muscular effort _versus_
weight, cannot be mentally realized on any other condition. Yet,
contrariwise, it is incredible that the force as existing in the chair
really resembles the force as present to our minds. It scarcely needs to
point out that the weight of the chair produces in us various feelings
according as we support it by a single finger, or the whole hand, or the
leg; and hence to argue that as it cannot be like all these sensations
there is no reason to believe it like any. It suffices to remark that
since the force as known to us is an affection of consciousness, we
cannot conceive the force existing in the chair under the same form
without endowing the chair with consciousness. So that it is absurd to
think of Force as in itself like our sensation of it, and yet necessary
so to think of it if we realize it in consciousness at all.
How, again, can we understand the connexion between Force and Matter?
Matter is known to us only through its manifestations of Force: our
ultimate test of Matter is the ability to resist: abstract its
resistance and there remains nothing but empty extension. Yet, on the
other hand, resistance is equally unthinkable apart from Matter—apart
from something extended. Not only, as pointed out some pages back, are
centres of force devoid of extension unimaginable; but, as an inevitable
corollary, we cannot imagine either extended or unextended centres of
force to attract and repel other such centres at a distance, without the
intermediation of some kind of matter. We have here to remark, what
could not without anticipation be remarked when treating of Matter, that
the hypothesis of Newton, equally with that of Boscovich, is open to the
charge that it supposes one thing to act upon another through a space
which is absolutely empty—a supposition which cannot be represented in
thought. This charge is indeed met by the introduction of a hypothetical
fluid existing between the atoms or centres. But the problem is not thus
solved: it is simply shifted, and re-appears when the constitution of
this fluid is inquired into. How impossible it is to elude the
difficulty presented by the transfer of Force through space, is best
seen in the case of astronomical forces. The Sim acts upon us in such
way as to produce the sensations of light and heat; and we have
ascertained that between the cause as existing in the Sun, and the
effect as experienced on the Earth, a lapse of about eight minutes
occurs: whence unavoidably result in us, the conceptions of both a force
and a motion. So that for the assumption of a luminiferous ether, there
is the defence, not only that the exercise of force through 95,000,000
of miles of absolute vacuum is inconceivable, but also that it is
impossible to conceive motion in the absence of something moved.
Similarly in the case of gravitation. Newton described himself as unable
to think that the attraction of one body for another at a distance,
could be exerted in the absence of an intervening medium. But now let us
ask how much the forwarder we are if an intervening medium be assumed.
This ether whose undulations according to the received hypothesis
constitute heat and light, and which is the vehicle of gravitation—how
is it constituted? We must regard it, in the way that physicists do
regard it, as composed of atoms which attract and repel each
other—infinitesimal it may be in comparison with those of ordinary
matter, but still atoms. And remembering that this ether is
imponderable, we are obliged to conclude that the ratio between the
interspaces of these atoms and the atoms themselves, is incommensurably
greater than the like ratio in ponderable matter; else the densities
could not be incommensurable. Instead then of a direct action by the Sun
upon the Earth without anything intervening, we have to conceive the
Sun’s action propagated through a medium whose molecules are probably as
small relatively to their interspaces as are the Sun and Earth compared
with the space between them: we have to conceive these infinitesimal
molecules acting on each other through absolutely vacant spaces which
are immense in comparison with their own dimensions. How is this
conception easier than the other? We still have mentally to represent a
body as acting where it is not, and in the absence of anything by which
its action may be transferred; and what matters it whether this takes
place on a large or a small scale? We see therefore that the
exercise of Force is altogether unintelligible. We cannot imagine it
except through the instrumentality of something having extension; and
yet when we have assumed this something, we find the perplexity is not
got rid of but only postponed. We are obliged to conclude that matter,
whether ponderable or imponderable, and whether aggregated or in its
hypothetical units, acts upon matter through absolutely vacant space;
and yet this conclusion is positively unthinkable.
Again, Light, Heat, Gravitation and all central forces, vary inversely
as the squares of the distances; and physicists in their investigations
assume that the units of matter act upon each other according to the
same law—an assumption which indeed they are obliged to make; since this
law is not simply an empirical one, but one deducible mathematically
from the relations of space—one of which the negation is inconceivable.
But now, in any mass of matter which is in internal equilibrium, what
must follow? The attractions and repulsions of the constituent atoms are
balanced. Being balanced, the atoms remain at their present distances;
and the mass of matter neither expands nor contracts. But if the forces
with which two adjacent atoms attract and repel each other both vary
inversely as the squares of the distances, as they must; and if they are
in equilibrium at their present distances, as they are; then,
necessarily, they will be in equilibrium at all other distances. Let the
atoms be twice as far apart, and their attractions and repulsions will
both be reduced to one fourth of their present amounts. Let them be
brought within half the distance, and their attractions and repulsions
will both be quadrupled. Whence it follows that this matter will as
readily as not assume any other density; and can offer no resistance to
any external agents. Thus we are obliged to say that these antagonist
molecular forces do not both vary inversely as the squares of the
distances, which is unthinkable; or else that matter does not possess
that attribute of resistance by which alone we distinguish it from empty
space, which is absurd.
While then it is impossible to form any idea of Force in itself, it is
equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law
of variation.
* * * * *
§ 19. Turning now from the outer to the inner world, let us contemplate,
not the agencies to which we ascribe our subjective modifications, but
the subjective modifications themselves. These constitute a series.
Difficult as we find it distinctly to separate and individualize them,
it is nevertheless beyond question that our states of consciousness
occur in succession.
Is this chain of states of consciousness infinite or finite? We cannot
say infinite; not only because we have indirectly reached the conclusion
that there was a period when it commenced, but also because all infinity
is inconceivable—an infinite series included. We cannot say finite; for
we have no knowledge of either of its ends. Go back in memory as far as
we may, we are wholly unable to identify our first states of
consciousness: the perspective of our thoughts vanishes in a dim
obscurity where we can make out nothing. Similarly at the other extreme.
We have no immediate knowledge of a termination to the series at a
future time; and we cannot really lay hold of that temporary termination
of the series reached at the present moment. For the state of
consciousness recognized by us as our last, is not truly our last. That
any mental affection may be contemplated as one of the series, it must
be remembered—_represented_ in thought, not _presented_. The truly last
state of consciousness is that which is passing in the very act of
contemplating a state just past—that in which we are thinking of the one
before as the last. So that the proximate end of the chain eludes us, as
well as the remote end.
“But,” it may be said, “though we cannot directly _know_ consciousness
to be finite in duration, because neither of its limits can be actually
reached; yet we can very well _conceive_ it to be so.” No: not even this
is true. In the first place, we cannot _con_ceive the terminations of
that consciousness which alone we really know—our own—any more than we
can _per_ceive its terminations. For in truth the two acts are here one.
In either case such terminations must be, as above said, not presented
in thought, but represented; and they must be represented as in the act
of occurring. Now to represent the termination of consciousness as
occurring in ourselves, is to think of ourselves as contemplating the
cessation of the last state of consciousness; and this implies a
supposed continuance of consciousness after its last state, which is
absurd. In the second place, if we regard the matter objectively—if we
study the phenomena as occurring in others, or in the abstract, we are
equally foiled. Consciousness implies perpetual change and the perpetual
establishment of relations between its successive phases. To be known at
all, any mental affection must be known as such or such—as like these
foregoing ones or unlike those: if it is not thought of in connexion
with others—not distinguished or identified by comparison with others,
it is not recognized—is not a state of consciousness at all. A last
state of consciousness, then, like any other, can exist only through a
perception of its relations to previous states. But such perception of
its relations must constitute a state later than the last, which is a
contradiction. Or to put the difficulty in another form:—If ceaseless
change of state is the condition on which alone consciousness exists,
then when the supposed last state has been reached by the completion of
the preceding change, change has ceased; therefore consciousness has
ceased; therefore the supposed last state is not a state of
consciousness at all; therefore there can be no last state of
consciousness. In short, the perplexity is like that presented by the
relations of Motion and Rest. As we found it was impossible really to
conceive Rest becoming Motion or Motion becoming Rest; so here we find
it is impossible really to conceive either the beginning or the ending
of those changes which constitute consciousness.
Hence, while we are unable either to believe or to conceive that the
duration of consciousness is infinite, we are equally unable either to
know it as finite, or to conceive it as finite.
* * * * *
§ 20. Nor do we meet with any greater success when, instead of the
extent of consciousness, we consider its substance. The question—What is
this that thinks? admits of no better solution than the question to
which we have just found none but inconceivable answers.
The existence of each individual as known to himself, has been always
held by mankind at large, the most incontrovertible of truths. To say—“I
am as sure of it as I am sure that I exist,” is, in common speech, the
most emphatic expression of certainty. And this fact of personal
existence, testified to by the universal consciousness of men, has been
made the basis of sundry philosophies; whence may be drawn the
inference, that it is held by thinkers, as well as by the vulgar, to be
beyond all facts unquestionable.
Belief in the reality of self, is, indeed, a belief which no hypothesis
enables us to escape. What shall we say of these successive impressions
and ideas which constitute consciousness? Shall we say that they are the
affections of something called mind, which, as being the subject of
them, is the real _ego_? If we say this, we manifestly imply that the
_ego_ is an entity. Shall we assert that these impressions and ideas are
not the mere superficial changes wrought on some thinking substance, but
are themselves the very body of this substance—are severally the
modified forms which it from moment to moment assumes? This hypothesis,
equally with the foregoing, implies that the individual exists as a
permanent and distinct being; since modifications necessarily involve
something modified. Shall we then betake ourselves to the sceptic’s
position, and argue that we know nothing more than our impressions and
ideas themselves—that these are to us the only existences; and that the
personality said to underlie them is a mere fiction? We do not even thus
escape; since this proposition, verbally intelligible but really
unthinkable, itself makes the assumption which it professes to
repudiate. For how can consciousness be wholly resolved into impressions
and ideas, when an impression of necessity implies something impressed?
Or again, how can the sceptic who has decomposed his consciousness into
impressions and ideas, explain the fact that he considers them as _his_
impressions and ideas? Or once more, if, as he must, he admits that he
has an impression of his personal existence, what warrant can he show
for rejecting this impression as unreal while he accepts all his other
impressions as real? Unless he can give satisfactory answers to these
queries, which he cannot, he must abandon his conclusions; and must
admit the reality of the individual mind.
But now, unavoidable as is this belief—established though it is, not
only by the assent of mankind at large, endorsed by divers philosophers,
but by the suicide of the sceptical argument—it is yet a belief
admitting of no justification by reason: nay, indeed, it is a belief
which reason, when pressed for a distinct answer, rejects. One of the
most recent writers who has touched upon this question—Mr Mansel—does
indeed contend that in the consciousness of self, we have a piece of
real knowledge. The validity of immediate intuition he holds in this
case unquestionable: remarking that “let system-makers say what they
will, the unsophisticated sense of mankind refuses to acknowledge that
mind is but a bundle of states of consciousness, as matter is (possibly)
a bundle of sensible qualities.” On which position the obvious comment
is, that it does not seem altogether a consistent one for a Kantist, who
pays but small respect to “the unsophisticated sense of mankind” when it
testifies to the objectivity of space. Passing over this, however, it
may readily be shown that a cognition of self, properly so called, is
absolutely negatived by the laws of thought. The fundamental condition
to all consciousness, emphatically insisted upon by Mr Mansel in common
with Sir William Hamilton and others, is the antithesis of subject and
object. And on this “primitive dualism of consciousness,” “from which
the explanations of philosophy must take their start,” Mr Mansel founds
his refutation of the German absolutists. But now, what is the corollary
from this doctrine, as bearing on the consciousness of self? The mental
act in which self is known, implies, like every other mental act, a
perceiving subject and a perceived object. If, then, the object
perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives? or if it is the
true self which thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of?
Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing
and the known are one—in which subject and object are identified; and
this Mr Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.
So that the personality of which each is conscious, and of which the
existence is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain, is yet a
thing which cannot truly be known at all: knowledge of it is forbidden
by the very nature of thought.
* * * * *
§ 21. Ultimate Scientific Ideas, then, are all representative of
realities that cannot be comprehended. After no matter how great a
progress in the colligation of facts and the establishment of
generalizations ever wider and wider—after the merging of limited and
derivative truths in truths that are larger and deeper has been carried
no matter how far; the fundamental truth remains as much beyond reach as
ever. The explanation of that which is explicable, does but bring out
into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains
behind. Alike in the external and the internal worlds, the man of
science sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes of which he can
discover neither the beginning nor the end. If, tracing back the
evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain the hypothesis that
the Universe once existed in a diffused form, he finds it utterly
impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and equally, if he
speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the grand succession
of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. In like manner if he
looks inward, he perceives that both ends of the thread of consciousness
are beyond his grasp; nay, even beyond his power to think of as having
existed or as existing in time to come. When, again, he turns from the
succession of phenomena, external or internal, to their intrinsic
nature, he is just as much at fault. Supposing him in every case able to
resolve the appearances, properties, and movements of things, into
manifestations of Force in Space and Time; he still finds that Force,
Space, and Time pass all understanding. Similarly, though the analysis
of mental actions may finally bring him down to sensations, as the
original materials out of which all thought is woven, yet he is little
forwarder; for he can give no account either of sensations themselves or
of that something which is conscious of sensations. Objective and
subjective things he thus ascertains to be alike inscrutable in their
substance and genesis. In all directions his investigations eventually
bring him face to face with an insoluble enigma; and he ever more
clearly perceives it to be an insoluble enigma. He learns at once the
greatness and the littleness of the human intellect—its power in dealing
with all that comes within the range of experience; its impotence in
dealing with all that transcends experience. He realizes with a special
vividness the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact,
considered in itself. He, more than any other, truly _knows_ that in its
ultimate essence nothing can be known.
CHAPTER IV.
THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE.
§ 22. The same conclusion is thus arrived at, from whichever point we
set out. If, respecting the origin and nature of things, we make some
assumption, we find that through an inexorable logic it inevitably
commits us to alternative impossibilities of thought; and this holds
true of every assumption that can be imagined. If, contrariwise, we make
no assumption, but set out from the sensible properties of surrounding
objects, and, ascertaining their special laws of dependence, go on to
merge these in laws more and more general, until we bring them all under
some most general laws; we still find ourselves as far as ever from
knowing what it is which manifests these properties to us: clearly as we
seem to know it, our apparent knowledge proves on examination to be
utterly irreconcilable with itself. Ultimate religious ideas and
ultimate scientific ideas, alike turn out to be merely symbols of the
actual, not cognitions of it.
The conviction, so reached, that human intelligence is incapable of
absolute knowledge, is one that has been slowly gaining ground as
civilization has advanced. Each new ontological theory, from time to
time propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been
followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible
conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the
entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without
positive result: the only result arrived at being the negative one above
stated—that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must
ever be, unknown. To this conclusion almost every thinker of note has
subscribed. “With the exception,” says Sir William Hamilton, “of a few
late Absolutist theorisers in Germany, this is, perhaps, the truth of
all others most harmoniously re-echoed by every philosopher of every
school.” And among these he names—Protagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustin,
Boethius, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Gerson, Leo Hebræus, Melancthon,
Scaliger, Francis Piccolomini, Giordano Bruno, Campanella, Bacon,
Spinoza, Newton, Kant.
It yet remains to point out how this belief may be established
rationally, as well as empirically. Not only is it that, as in the
earlier thinkers above named, a vague perception of the inscrutableness
of things in themselves results from discovering the illusiveness of
sense-impressions; and not only is it that, as shown in the foregoing
chapters, definite experiments evolve alternative impossibilities of
thought out of every ultimate conception we can frame; but it is that
the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrable analytically. The
induction drawn from general and special experiences, may be confirmed
by a deduction from the nature of our intelligence. Two ways of reaching
such a deduction exist. Proof that our cognitions are not, and never can
be, absolute, is obtainable by analyzing either the _product_ of
thought, or the _process_ of thought. Let us analyze each.
* * * * *
§ 23. If, when walking through the fields some day in September, you
hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and on observing the ditch-side
where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn
towards the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As
you approach there flutters into the ditch, a partridge; on seeing which
your curiosity is satisfied—you have what you call an _explanation_ of
the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this; that whereas
throughout life you have had countless experiences of disturbance among
small stationary bodies, accompanying the movement of other bodies among
them, and have generalized the relation between such disturbances and
such movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained, on
finding it to present, an instance of the like relation. Suppose
you catch the partridge; and, wishing to ascertain why it did not
escape, examine it, and find at one spot, a slight trace of blood upon
its feathers. You now _understand_, as you say, what has disabled the
partridge. It has been wounded by a sportsman—adds another case to the
many cases already seen by you, of birds being killed or injured by the
shot discharged at them from fowling-pieces. And in assimilating this
case to other such cases, consists your understanding of it. But
now, on consideration, a difficulty suggests itself. Only a single shot
has struck the partridge, and that not in a vital place: the wings are
uninjured, as are also those muscles which move them; and the creature
proves by its struggles that it has abundant strength. Why then, you
inquire of yourself, does it not fly? Occasion favouring, you put the
question to an anatomist, who furnishes you with _a solution_. He points
out that this solitary shot has passed close to the place at which the
nerve supplying the wing-muscles of one side, diverges from the spine;
and that a slight injury to this nerve, extending even to the rupture of
a few fibres, may, by preventing a perfect co-ordination in the actions
of the two wings, destroy the power of flight. You are no longer
puzzled. But what has happened?—what has changed your state from one of
perplexity to one of _comprehension_? Simply the disclosure of a class
of previously known cases, along with which you can include this case.
The connexion between lesions of the nervous system and paralysis of
limbs has been already many times brought under your notice; and you
here find a relation of cause and effect that is essentially similar.
Let us suppose you are led on to make further inquiries concerning
organic actions, which, conspicuous and remarkable as they are, you had
not before cared to understand. How is respiration effected? you ask—why
does air periodically rush into the lungs? The answer is that in the
higher vertebrata, as in ourselves, influx of air is caused by an
enlargement of the thoracic cavity, due, partly to depression of the
diaphragm, partly to elevation of the ribs. But how does elevation of
the ribs enlarge the cavity? In reply the anatomist shows you that the
plane of each pair of ribs makes an acute angle with the spine; that
this angle widens when the moveable ends of the ribs are raised; and he
makes you realize the consequent dilatation of the cavity, by pointing
out how the area of a parallelogram increases as its angles approach to
right angles—you understand this special fact when you see it to be an
instance of a general geometrical fact. There still arises, however, the
question—why does the air rush into this enlarged cavity? To which comes
the answer that, when the thoracic cavity is enlarged, the contained
air, partially relieved from pressure, expands, and so loses some of its
resisting power; that hence it opposes to the pressure of the external
air a less pressure; and that as air, like every other fluid, presses
equally in all directions, motion must result along any line in which
the resistance is less than elsewhere; whence follows an inward current.
And this _interpretation_ you recognize as one, when a few facts of like
kind, exhibited more plainly in a visible fluid such as water, are cited
in illustration. Again, when it was pointed out that the limbs are
compound levers acting in essentially the same way as levers of iron or
wood, you might consider yourself as having obtained a partial
_rationale_ of animal movements. The contraction of a muscle, seeming
before utterly unaccountable, would seem less unaccountable were you
shown how, by a galvanic current, a series of soft iron magnets could be
made to shorten itself, through the attraction of each magnet for its
neighbours:—an alleged analogy which especially answers the purpose of
our argument; since, whether real or fancied, it equally illustrates the
mental illumination that results on finding a class of cases within
which a particular case may possibly be included. And it may be further
noted how, in the instance here named, an additional feeling of
comprehension arises on remembering that the influence conveyed through
the nerves to the muscles, is, though not positively electric, yet a
form of force nearly allied to the electric. Similarly when you
learn that animal heat arises from chemical combination, and so is
evolved as heat is evolved in other chemical combinations—when you learn
that the absorption of nutrient fluids through the coats of the
intestines, is an instance of osmotic action—when you learn that the
changes undergone by food during digestion, are like changes
artificially producible in the laboratory; you regard yourself as
_knowing_ something about the natures of these phenomena.
Observe now what we have been doing. Turning to the general question,
let us note where these successive interpretations have carried us. We
began with quite special and concrete facts. In explaining each, and
afterwards explaining the more general facts of which they are
instances, we have got down to certain highly general facts:—to a
geometrical principle or property of space, to a simple law of
mechanical action, to a law of fluid equilibrium—to truths in physics,
in chemistry, in thermology, in electricity. The particular phenomena
with which we set out, have been merged in larger and larger groups of
phenomena; and as they have been so merged, we have arrived at solutions
that we consider profound in proportion as this process has been carried
far. Still deeper explanations are simply further steps in the same
direction. When, for instance, it is asked why the law of action of the
lever is what it is, or why fluid equilibrium and fluid motion exhibit
the relations which they do, the answer furnished by mathematicians
consists in the disclosure of the principle of virtual velocities—a
principle holding true alike in fluids and solids—a principle under
which the others are comprehended. And similarly, the insight obtained
into the phenomena of chemical combination, heat, electricity, &c.,
implies that a rationale of them, when found, will be the exposition of
some highly general fact respecting the constitution of matter, of which
chemical, electrical, and thermal facts, are merely different
manifestations.
Is this process limited or unlimited? Can we go on for ever explaining
classes of facts by including them in larger classes; or must we
eventually come to a largest class? The supposition that the process is
unlimited, were any one absurd enough to espouse it, would still imply
that an ultimate explanation could not be reached; since infinite time
would be required to reach it. While the unavoidable conclusion that it
is limited (proved not only by the finite sphere of observation open to
us, but also by the diminution in the number of generalizations that
necessarily accompanies increase of their breadth) equally implies that
the ultimate fact cannot be understood. For if the successively deeper
interpretations of nature which constitute advancing knowledge, are
merely successive inclusions of special truths in general truths, and of
general truths in truths still more general; it obviously follows that
the most general truth, not admitting of inclusion in any other, does
not admit of interpretation. Manifestly, as the _most_ general cognition
at which we arrive cannot be reduced to a _more_ general one, it cannot
be understood. Of necessity, therefore, explanation must eventually
bring us down to the inexplicable. The deepest truth which we can get
at, must be unaccountable. Comprehension must become something other
than comprehension, before the ultimate fact can be comprehended.
* * * * *
§ 24. The inference which we thus find forced upon us when we analyze
the product of thought, as exhibited objectively in scientific
generalizations, is equally forced upon us by an analysis of the process
of thought, as exhibited subjectively in consciousness. The
demonstration of the necessarily relative character of our knowledge, as
deduced from the nature of intelligence, has been brought to its most
definite shape by Sir William Hamilton. I cannot here do better than
extract from his essay on the “Philosophy of the Unconditioned,” the
passage containing the substance of his doctrine.
“The mind can conceive,” he argues, “and consequently can know,” only
the _limited, and the conditionally limited_. The unconditionally
unlimited, or the _Infinite_, the unconditionally limited, or the
_Absolute_, cannot positively be construed to the mind; they can be
conceived, only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those very
conditions under which thought itself is realized; consequently, the
notion of the Unconditioned is only negative,—negative of the
conceivable itself. For example, on the one hand we can positively
conceive, neither an absolute whole, that is, a whole so great, that we
cannot also conceive it as a relative part of a still greater whole; nor
an absolute part, that is, a part so small, that we cannot also conceive
it as a relative whole, divisible into smaller parts. On the other hand,
we cannot positively represent, or realize, or construe to the mind (as
here understanding and imagination coincide), an infinite whole, for
this could only be done by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite
wholes, which would itself require an infinite time for its
accomplishment; nor, for the same reason, can we follow out in thought
an infinite divisibility of parts. The result is the same, whether we
apply the process to limitation in _space_, in _time_, or in _degree_.
The unconditional negation, and the unconditional affirmation of
limitation; in other words, the _infinite_ and _absolute, properly so
called_, are thus equally inconceivable to us.
As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the
_conditioned_) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of
positive thought—thought necessarily supposes conditions. To _think_ is
to _condition_; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the
possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his
shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) the eagle outsoar the
atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he may be supported;
so the mind cannot transcend that sphere of limitation, within and
through which exclusively the possibility of thought is realized.
Thought is only of the conditioned; because, as we have said, to think
is simply to condition. The _absolute_ is conceived merely by a negation
of conceivability; and all that we know, is only known as
——‘won from the void and formless _infinite_.’
How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought is only of the
conditioned, may well be deemed a matter of the profoundest
admiration. Thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is
only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought,
known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while,
independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object,
either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the
particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the
phenomenal. We admit that the consequence of this doctrine is,—that
philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is
impossible. Departing from the particular, we admit, that we can
never, in our highest generalizations, rise above the finite; that our
knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a
knowledge of the relative manifestations of an existence, which in
itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of
philosophy,—in the language of St Austin,—‘_cognoscendo ignorari, et
ignorando cognosci_.’
“The conditioned is the mean between two extremes,—two inconditionates,
exclusive of each other, neither of which _can be conceived as
possible_, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded
middle, one _must be admitted as necessary_. On this opinion, therefore,
reason is shown to be weak, but not deceitful. The mind is not
represented as conceiving two propositions subversive of each other, as
equally possible; but only, as unable to understand as possible, either
of two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual
repugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true. We are thus taught the
salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted
into the measure of existence; and are warned from recognizing the
domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of
our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very
consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and
finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something
unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality.”
Clear and conclusive as this statement of the case appears when
carefully studied, it is expressed in so abstract a manner as to be not
very intelligible to the general reader. A more popular presentation of
it, with illustrative applications, as given by Mr Mansel in his “Limits
of Religious Thought,” will make it more fully understood. The following
extracts, which I take the liberty of making from his pages, will
suffice.
“The very conception of consciousness, in whatever mode it may be
manifested, necessarily implies _distinction between one object and
another_. To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that
something can only be known, as that which it is, by being distinguished
from that which it is not. But distinction is necessarily limitation;
for, if one object is to be distinguished from another, it must possess
some form of existence which the other has not, or it must not possess
some form which the other has. But it is obvious the Infinite cannot be
distinguished, as such, from the Finite, by the absence of any quality
which the Finite possesses; for such absence would be a limitation. Nor
yet can it be distinguished by the presence of an attribute which the
Finite has not; for, as no finite part can be a constituent of an
infinite whole, this differential characteristic must itself be
infinite; and must at the same time have nothing in common with the
finite. We are thus thrown back upon our former impossibility; for this
second infinite will be distinguished from the finite by the absence of
qualities which the latter possesses. A consciousness of the Infinite as
such thus necessarily involves a self-contradiction; for it implies the
recognition, by limitation and difference, of that which can only be
given as unlimited and indifferent. * * *
“This contradiction, which is utterly inexplicable on the supposition
that the infinite is a positive object of human thought, is at once
accounted for, when it is regarded as the mere negation of thought. If
all thought is limitation;—if whatever we conceive is, by the very act
of conception, regarded as finite,—_the infinite_, from a human point of
view, is merely a name for the absence of those conditions under which
thought is possible. To speak of a _Conception of the Infinite_ is,
therefore, at once to affirm those conditions and to deny them. The
contradiction, which we discover in such a conception, is only that
which we have ourselves placed there, by tacitly assuming the
conceivability of the inconceivable. The condition of consciousness is
distinction; and condition of distinction is limitation. We can have no
consciousness of Being in general which is not some Being in particular:
a _thing_, in consciousness, is one thing out of many. In assuming the
possibility of an infinite object of consciousness, I assume, therefore,
that it is at the same time limited and unlimited;—actually something,
without which it could not be an object of consciousness, and actually
nothing, without which it could not be infinite. * * *
“A second characteristic of Consciousness is, that it is only possible
in the form of a _relation_. There must be a Subject, or person
conscious, and an Object, or thing of which he is conscious. There can
be no consciousness without the union of these two factors; and, in that
union, each exists only as it is related to the other. The subject is a
subject, only in so far as it is conscious of an object: the object is
an object, only in so far as it is apprehended by a subject: and the
destruction of either is the destruction of consciousness itself. It is
thus manifest that a consciousness of the Absolute is equally
self-contradictory with that of the Infinite. To be conscious of the
Absolute as such, we must know that an object, which is given in
relation to our consciousness, is identical with one which exists in its
own nature, out of all relation to consciousness. But to know this
identity, we must be able to compare the two together; and such a
comparison is itself a contradiction. We are in fact required to compare
that of which we are conscious with that of which we are not conscious;
the comparison itself being an act of consciousness, and only possible
through the consciousness of both its objects. It is thus manifest that,
even if we could be conscious of the absolute, we could not possibly
know that it is the absolute: and, as we can be conscious of an object
as such, only by knowing it to be what it is, this is equivalent to an
admission that we cannot be conscious of the absolute at all. As an
object of consciousness, every thing is necessarily relative; and what a
thing may be out of consciousness, no mode of consciousness can tell us.
“This contradiction, again, admits of the same explanation as the
former. Our whole notion of existence is necessarily relative; for it is
existence as conceived by us. But _Existence_, as we conceive it, is but
a name for the several ways in which objects are presented to our
consciousness,—a general term, embracing a variety of relations. _The
Absolute_, on the other hand, is a term expressing no object of thought,
but only a denial of the relation by which thought is constituted. To
assume absolute existence as an object of thought, is thus to suppose a
relation existing when the related terms exist no longer. An object of
thought exists, as such, in and through its relation to a thinker; while
the Absolute, as such, is independent of all relation. The _Conception
of the Absolute_ thus implies at the same time the presence and absence
of the relation by which thought is constituted; and our various
endeavours to represent it are only so many modified forms of the
contradiction involved in our original assumption. Here, too, the
contradiction is one which we ourselves have made. It does not imply
that the Absolute cannot exist; but it implies, most certainly, that we
cannot conceive it as existing.”
Here let me point out how the same general inference may be evolved from
another fundamental condition of thought, omitted by Sir W. Hamilton,
and not supplied by Mr Mansel;—a condition which, under its obverse
aspect, we have already contemplated in the last section. Every complete
act of consciousness, besides distinction and relation, also implies
likeness. Before it can become an idea, or constitute a piece of
knowledge, a mental state must not only be known as separate in kind
from certain foregoing states to which it is known as related by
succession; but it must further be known as of the same kind with
certain other foregoing states. That organization of changes which
constitutes thinking, involves continuous integration as well as
continuous differentiation. Were each new affection of the mind
perceived simply as an affection in some way contrasted with the
preceding ones—were there but a chain of impressions, each of which as
it arose was merely distinguished from its predecessors; consciousness
would be an utter chaos. To produce that orderly consciousness which we
call intelligence, there requires the assimilation of each impression to
others, that occurred earlier in the series. Both the successive mental
states, and the successive relations which they bear to each other, must
be classified; and classification involves not only a parting of the
unlike, but also a binding together of the like. In brief, a true
cognition is possible only through an accompanying recognition.
Should it be objected that if so, there cannot be a first
cognition, and hence there can be no cognition; the reply is, that
cognition proper arises gradually—that during the first stage of
incipient intelligence, before the feelings produced by intercourse with
the outer world have been put into order, there _are_ no cognitions,
strictly so called; and that, as every infant shows us, these slowly
emerge out of the confusion of unfolding consciousness as fast as the
experiences are arranged into groups—as fast as the most frequently
repeated sensations, and their relations to each other, become familiar
enough to admit of their recognition as such or such, whenever they
recur. Should it be further objected that if cognition pre-supposes
recognition, there can be, no cognition, even by an adult, of an object
never before seen; there is still the sufficient answer that in so far
as it is not assimilated to previously-seen objects, it is _not_ known,
and that it _is_ known in so far as it is assimilated to them. Of this
paradox the interpretation is, that an object is classifiable in various
ways, with various degrees of completeness. An animal hitherto _unknown_
(mark the word), though not referable to any established species or
genus, is yet _recognized_ as belonging to one of the larger
divisions—mammals, birds, reptiles, or fishes; or should it be so
anomalous that its alliance with any of these is not determinable, it
may yet be classed as vertebrate or invertebrate; or if it be one of
those organisms of which it is doubtful whether the animal or vegetal
characteristics predominate, it is still known as a living body; even
should it be questioned whether it is organic, it remains beyond
question that it is a material object, and it is cognized by being
recognized as such. Whence it is manifest that a thing is perfectly
known only when it is in all respects like certain things previously
observed; that in proportion to the number of respects in which it is
unlike them, is the extent to which it is unknown; and that hence when
it has absolutely no attribute in common with anything else, it must be
absolutely beyond the bounds of knowledge.
Observe the corollary which here concerns us. A cognition of the Real,
as distinguished from the Phenomenal, must, if it exists, conform to
this law of cognition in general. The First Cause, the Infinite, the
Absolute, to be known at all, must be classed. To be positively thought
of, it must be thought of as such or such—as of this or that kind. Can
it be like in kind to anything of which we have sensible experience?
Obviously not. Between the creating and the created, there must be a
distinction transcending any of the distinctions existing between
different divisions of the created. That which is uncaused cannot be
assimilated to that which is caused: the two being, in the very naming,
antithetically opposed. The Infinite cannot be grouped along with
something that is finite; since, in being so grouped, it must be
regarded as not-infinite. It is impossible to put the Absolute in the
same category with anything relative, so long as the Absolute is defined
as that of which no necessary relation can be predicated. Is it then
that the Actual, though unthinkable by classification with the Apparent,
is thinkable by classification with itself? This supposition is equally
absurd with the other. It implies the plurality of the First Cause, the
Infinite, the Absolute; and this implication is self-contradictory.
There cannot be more than one First Cause; seeing that the existence of
more than one would involve the existence of something necessitating
more than one, which something would be the true First Cause. How
self-destructive is the assumption of two or more Infinites, is manifest
on remembering that such Infinites, by limiting each other, would become
finite. And similarly, an Absolute which existed not alone but along
with other Absolutes, would no longer be an absolute but a relative. The
Unconditioned therefore, as class-able neither with any form of the
conditioned nor with any other Unconditioned, cannot be classed at all.
And to admit that it cannot be known as of such or such kind, is to
admit that it is unknowable.
Thus, from the very nature of thought, the relativity of our knowledge
is inferable in three several ways. As we find by analyzing it, and as
we see it objectively displayed in every proposition, a thought involves
_relation_, _difference_, _likeness_. Whatever does not present each of
these does not admit of cognition. And hence we may say that the
Unconditioned, as presenting none of them, is trebly unthinkable.
* * * * *
§ 25. From yet another point of view we may discern the same great
truth. If, instead of examining our intellectual powers directly as
exhibited in the act of thought, or indirectly as exhibited in thought
when expressed by words, we look at the connexion between the mind and
the world, a like conclusion is forced upon us. In the very definition
of Life, when reduced to its most abstract shape, this ultimate
implication becomes visible.
All vital actions, considered not separately but in their ensemble, have
for their final purpose the balancing of certain outer processes by
certain inner processes. There are unceasing external forces tending to
bring the matter of which organic bodies consist, into that state of
stable equilibrium displayed by inorganic bodies; there are internal
forces by which this tendency is constantly antagonized; and the
perpetual changes which constitute Life, may be regarded as incidental
to the maintenance of the antagonism. To preserve the erect posture, for
instance, we see that certain weights have to be neutralized by certain
strains: each limb or other organ, gravitating to the Earth and pulling
down the parts to which it is attached, has to be preserved in position
by the tension of sundry muscles; or in other words, the group of forces
which would if allowed bring the body to the ground, has to be
counterbalanced by another group of forces. Again, to keep up the
temperature at a particular point, the external process of radiation and
absorption of heat by the surrounding medium, must be met by a
corresponding internal process of chemical combination, whereby more
heat may be evolved; to which add, that if from atmospheric changes the
loss becomes greater or less, the production must become greater or
less. And similarly throughout the organic actions in general.
When we contemplate the lower kinds of life, we see that the
correspondences thus maintained are direct and simple; as in a plant,
the vitality of which mainly consists in osmotic and chemical actions
responding to the co-existence of light, heat, water, and carbonic acid
around it. But in animals, and especially in the higher orders of them,
the correspondences become extremely complex. Materials for growth and
repair not being, like those which plants require, everywhere present,
but being widely dispersed and under special forms, have to be found, to
be secured, and to be reduced to a fit state for assimilation. Hence the
need for locomotion; hence the need for the senses; hence the need for
prehensile and destructive appliances; hence the need for an elaborate
digestive apparatus. Observe, however, that these successive
complications are essentially nothing but aids to the maintenance of the
organic balance in its integrity, in opposition to those physical,
chemical, and other agencies which tend to overturn it. And observe,
moreover, that while these successive complications subserve this
fundamental adaptation of inner to outer actions, they are themselves
nothing else but further adaptations of inner to outer actions. For what
are those movements by which a predatory creature pursues its prey, or
by which its prey seeks to escape, but certain changes in the organism
fitted to meet certain changes in its environment? What is that compound
operation which constitutes the perception of a piece of food, but a
particular correlation of nervous modifications, answering to a
particular correlation of physical properties? What is that process by
which food when swallowed is reduced to a fit form for assimilation, but
a set of mechanical and chemical actions responding to the mechanical
and chemical actions which distinguish the food? Whence it becomes
manifest, that while Life in its simplest form is the correspondence of
certain inner physico-chemical actions with certain outer
physico-chemical actions, each advance to a higher form of Life consists
in a better preservation of this primary correspondence by the
establishment of other correspondences.
Divesting this conception of all superfluities and reducing it to its
most abstract shape, we see that Life is definable as the continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external relations. And when we so
define it, we discover that the physical and the psychial life are
equally comprehended by the definition. We perceive that this which we
call Intelligence, shows itself when the external relations to which the
internal ones are adjusted, begin to be numerous, complex, and remote in
time or space; that every advance in Intelligence essentially consists
in the establishment of more varied, more complete, and more involved
adjustments; and that even the highest achievements of science are
resolvable into mental relations of co-existence and sequence, so
co-ordinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of co-existence
and sequence that occur externally. A caterpillar, wandering at random
and at length finding its way on to a plant having a certain odour,
begins to eat—has inside of it an organic relation between a particular
impression and a particular set of actions, answering to the relation
outside of it, between scent and nutriment. The sparrow, guided by the
more complex correlation of impressions which the colour, form, and
movements of the caterpillar gave it; and guided also by other
correlations which measure the position and distance of the caterpillar;
adjusts certain correlated muscular movements in such way as to seize
the caterpillar. Through a much greater distance in space is the hawk,
hovering above, affected by the relations of shape and motion which the
sparrow presents; and the much more complicated and prolonged series of
related nervous and muscular changes, gone through in correspondence
with the sparrow’s changing relations of position, finally succeed when
they are precisely adjusted to these changing relations. In the fowler,
experience has established a relation between the appearance and flight
of a hawk and the destruction of other birds, including game; there is
also in him an established relation between those visual impressions
answering to a certain distance in space, and the range of his gun; and
he has learned, too, by frequent observation, what relations of position
the sights must bear to a point somewhat in advance of the flying bird,
before he can fire with success. Similarly if we go back to the
manufacture of the gun. By relations of co-existence between colour,
density, and place in the earth, a particular mineral is known as one
which yields iron; and the obtainment of iron from it, results when
certain correlated acts of ours, are adjusted to certain correlated
affinities displayed by ironstone, coal, and lime, at a high
temperature. If we descend yet a step further, and ask a chemist to
explain the explosion of gunpowder, or apply to a mathematician for a
theory of projectiles, we still find that special or general relations
of co-existence and sequence between properties, motions, spaces &c.,
are all they can teach us. And lastly, let it be noted that what we call
_truth_, guiding us to successful action and the consequent maintenance
of life, is simply the accurate correspondence of subjective to
objective relations; while _error_, leading to failure and therefore
towards death, is the absence of such accurate correspondence.
If, then, Life in all its manifestations, inclusive of Intelligence in
its highest forms, consists in the continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations, the necessarily relative character of
our knowledge becomes obvious. The simplest cognition being the
establishment of some connexion between subjective states, answering to
some connexion between objective agencies; and each successively more
complex cognition being the establishment of some more involved
connexion of such states, answering to some more involved connexion of
such agencies; it is clear that the process, no matter how far it be
carried, can never bring within the reach of Intelligence, either the
states themselves or the agencies themselves. Ascertaining which things
occur along with which, and what things follow what, supposing it to be
pursued exhaustively, must still leave us with co-existences and
sequences only. If every act of knowing is the formation of a relation
in consciousness parallel to a relation in the environment, then the
relativity of knowledge is self-evident—becomes indeed a truism.
Thinking being relationing, no thought can ever express more than
relations.
And here let us not omit to mark how that to which our intelligence is
confined, is that with which alone our intelligence is concerned. The
knowledge within our reach, is the only knowledge that can be of service
to us. This maintenance of a correspondence between internal actions and
external actions, which both constitutes our life at each moment and is
the means whereby life is continued through subsequent moments, merely
requires that the agencies acting upon us shall be known in their
co-existences and sequences, and not that they shall be known in
themselves. If _x_ and _y_ are two uniformly connected properties in
some outer object, while _a_ and _b_ are the effects they produce in our
consciousness; and if while the property _x_ produces in us the
indifferent mental state _a_, the property _y_ produces in us the
painful mental state _b_ (answering to a physical injury); then, all
that is requisite for our guidance, is, that _x_ being the uniform
accompaniment of _y_ externally, _a_ shall be the uniform accompaniment
of _b_ internally; so that when, by the presence of _x_, _a_ is produced
in consciousness, _b_, or rather the idea of _b_, shall follow it, and
excite the motions by which the effect of _y_ may be escaped. The sole
need is that _a_ and _b_ and the relation between them, shall always
answer to _x_ and _y_ and the relation between them. It matters nothing
to us if _a_ and _b_ are like _x_ and _y_ or not. Could they be exactly
identical with them, we should not be one whit the better off; and their
total dissimilarity is no disadvantage to us.
Deep down then in the very nature of Life, the relativity of our
knowledge is discernible. The analysis of vital actions in general,
leads not only to the conclusion that things in themselves cannot be
known to us; but also to the conclusion that knowledge of them, were it
possible, would be useless.
* * * * *
§ 26. There still remains the final question—What must we say concerning
that which transcends knowledge? Are we to rest wholly in the
consciousness of phenomena?—is the result of inquiry to exclude utterly
from our minds everything but the relative? or must we also believe in
something beyond the relative?
The answer of pure logic is held to be, that by the limits of our
intelligence we are rigorously confined within the relative; and that
anything transcending the relative can be thought of only as a pure
negation, or as a non-existence. “The _absolute_ is conceived merely by
a negation of conceivability,” writes Sir William Hamilton. “The
_Absolute_ and the _Infinite_” says Mr Mansel, “are thus, like the
_Inconceivable_ and the _Imperceptible_, names indicating, not an object
of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere absence of the
conditions under which consciousness is possible.” From each of which
extracts may be deduced the conclusion, that since reason cannot warrant
us in affirming the positive existence of what is cognizable only as a
negation, we cannot rationally affirm the positive existence of anything
beyond phenomena.
Unavoidable as this conclusion seems, it involves, I think, a grave
error. If the premiss be granted, the inference must doubtless be
admitted; but the premiss, in the form presented by Sir William
Hamilton and Mr Mansel, is not strictly true. Though, in the foregoing
pages, the arguments used by these writers to show that the Absolute
is unknowable, have been approvingly quoted; and though these
arguments have been enforced by others equally thoroughgoing; yet
there remains to be stated a qualification, which saves us from that
scepticism otherwise necessitated. It is not to be denied that so long
as we confine ourselves to the purely logical aspect of the question,
the propositions quoted above must be accepted in their entirety; but
when we contemplate its more general, or psychological, aspect, we
find that these propositions are imperfect statements of the truth:
omitting, or rather excluding, as they do, an all-important fact. To
speak specifically:—Besides that _definite_ consciousness of which
Logic formulates the laws, there is also an _indefinite_ consciousness
which cannot be formulated. Besides complete thoughts, and besides the
thoughts which though incomplete admit of completion, there are
thoughts which it is impossible to complete; and yet which are still
real, in the sense that they are normal affections of the intellect.
Observe in the first place, that every one of the arguments by which the
relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated, distinctly postulates the
positive existence of something beyond the relative. To say that we
cannot know the Absolute, is, by implication, to affirm that there _is_
an Absolute. In the very denial of our power to learn _what_ the
Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption _that_ it is; and the
making of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been present to
the mind, not as a nothing, but as a something. Similarly with every
step in the reasoning by which this doctrine is upheld. The Noumenon,
everywhere named as the antithesis of the Phenomenon, is throughout
necessarily thought of as an actuality. It is rigorously impossible to
conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of Appearances only, without
at the same time conceiving a Reality of which they are appearances; for
appearance without reality is unthinkable. Strike out from the argument
the terms Unconditioned, Infinite, Absolute, with their equivalents, and
in place of them write, “negation of conceivability,” or “absence of the
conditions under which consciousness is possible,” and you find that the
argument becomes nonsense. Truly to realize in thought any one of the
propositions of which the argument consists, the Unconditioned must be
represented as positive and not negative. How then can it be a
legitimate conclusion from the argument, that our consciousness of it is
negative? An argument, the very construction of which assigns to a
certain term a certain meaning, but which ends in showing that this term
has no such meaning, is simply an elaborate suicide. Clearly, then, the
very demonstration that a _definite_ consciousness of the Absolute is
impossible to us, unavoidably presupposes an _indefinite_ consciousness
of it.
Perhaps the best way of showing that by the necessary conditions of
thought, we are obliged to form a positive though vague consciousness of
this which transcends distinct consciousness, is to analyze our
conception of the antithesis between Relative and Absolute. It is a
doctrine called in question by none, that such antinomies of thought as
Whole and Part, Equal and Unequal, Singular and Plural, are necessarily
conceived as correlatives: the conception of a part is impossible
without the conception of a whole; there can be no idea of equality
without one of inequality. And it is admitted that in the same manner,
the Relative is itself conceivable as such, only by opposition to the
Irrelative or Absolute. Sir William Hamilton however, in his
trenchant (and in most parts unanswerable) criticism on Cousin,
contends, in conformity with his position above stated, that one of
these correlatives is nothing whatever beyond the negation of the other.
“Correlatives” he says “certainly suggest each other, but correlatives
may, or may not, be equally real and positive. In thought
contradictories necessarily imply each other, for the knowledge of
contradictories is one. But the reality of one contradictory, so far
from guaranteeing the reality of the other, is nothing else than its
negation. Thus every positive notion (the concept of a thing by what it
is) suggests a negative notion (the concept of a thing by what it is
not); and the highest positive notion, the notion of the conceivable, is
not without its corresponding negative in the notion of the
inconceivable. But though these mutually suggest each other, the
positive alone is real; the negative is only an abstraction of the
other, and in the highest generality, even an abstraction of thought
itself.” Now the assertion that of such contradictories “the
negative is _only_ an abstraction of the other”—“is _nothing_ else than
its negation,”—is not true. In such correlatives as Equal and Unequal,
it is obvious enough that the negative concept contains something
besides the negation of the positive one; for the things of which
equality is denied are not abolished from consciousness by the denial.
And the fact overlooked by Sir William Hamilton, is, that the like holds
even with those correlatives of which the negative is inconceivable, in
the strict sense of the word. Take for example the Limited and the
Unlimited. Our notion of the Limited is composed, firstly of a
consciousness of some kind of being, and secondly of a consciousness of
the limits under which it is known. In the antithetical notion of the
Unlimited, the consciousness of limits is abolished; but not the
consciousness of some kind of being. It is quite true that in the
absence of conceived limits, this consciousness ceases to be a concept
properly so called; but it is none the less true that it remains as a
mode of consciousness. If, in such cases, the negative contradictory
were, as alleged, “_nothing else_” than the negation of the other, and
therefore a mere nonentity, then it would clearly follow that negative
contradictories could be used interchangeably: the Unlimited might be
thought of as antithetical to the Divisible; and the Indivisible as
antithetical to the Limited. While the fact that they cannot be so used,
proves that in consciousness the Unlimited and the Indivisible are
qualitatively distinct, and therefore positive or real; since
distinction cannot exist between nothings. The error, (very naturally
fallen into by philosophers intent on demonstrating the limits and
conditions of consciousness,) consists in assuming that consciousness
contains _nothing but_ limits and conditions; to the entire neglect of
that which is limited and conditioned. It is forgotten that there is
something which alike forms the raw material of definite thought and
remains after the definiteness which thinking gave to it has been
destroyed. Now all this applies by change of terms to the last and
highest of these antinomies—that between the Relative and the
Non-relative. We are conscious of the Relative as existence under
conditions and limits; it is impossible that these conditions and limits
can be thought of apart from something to which they give the form; the
abstraction of these conditions and limits, is, by the hypothesis, the
abstraction of them _only_; consequently there must be a residuary
consciousness of something which filled up their outlines; and this
indefinite something constitutes our consciousness of the Non-relative
or Absolute. Impossible though it is to give to this consciousness any
qualitative or quantitative expression whatever, it is not the less
certain that it remains with us as a positive and indestructible element
of thought.
Still more manifest will this truth become when it is observed that our
conception of the Relative itself disappears, if our conception of the
Absolute is a pure negation. It is admitted, or rather it is contended,
by the writers I have quoted above, that contradictories can be known
only in relation to each other—that Equality, for instance, is
unthinkable apart from its correlative Inequality; and that thus the
Relative can itself be conceived only by opposition to the Non-relative.
It is also admitted, or rather contended, that the consciousness of a
relation implies a consciousness of both the related members. If we are
required to conceive the relation between the Relative and Non-relative
without being conscious of both, “we are in fact” (to quote the words of
Mr Mansel differently applied) “required to compare that of which we are
conscious with that of which we are not conscious; the comparison itself
being an act of consciousness, and only possible through the
consciousness of both its objects.” What then becomes of the assertion
that “the Absolute is conceived merely by a negation of conceivability,”
or as “the mere absence of the conditions under which consciousness is
possible?” If the Non-relative or Absolute, is present in thought only
as a mere negation, then the relation between it and the Relative
becomes unthinkable, because one of the terms of the relation is absent
from consciousness. And if this relation is unthinkable, then is the
Relative itself unthinkable, for want of its antithesis: whence results
the disappearance of all thought whatever.
Let me here point out that both Sir Wm Hamilton and Mr Mansel, do, in
other places, distinctly imply that our consciousness of the Absolute,
indefinite though it is, is positive and not negative. The very passage
already quoted from Sir Wm Hamilton, in which he asserts that “the
_absolute_ is conceived merely by a negation of conceivability,” itself
ends with the remark that, “by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in
the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the
relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of
something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible
reality.” The last of these assertions practically admits that which the
other denies. By the laws of thought as Sir Wm Hamilton has interpreted
them, he finds himself forced to the conclusion that our consciousness
of the Absolute is a pure negation. He nevertheless finds that there
does exist in consciousness an irresistible conviction of the real
“existence of something unconditioned.” And he gets over the
inconsistency by speaking of this conviction as “a wonderful
revelation”—“a belief” with which we are “inspired:” thus apparently
hinting that it is supernaturally at variance with the laws of thought.
Mr Mansel is betrayed into a like inconsistency. When he says that “we
are compelled, by the constitution of our minds, to believe in the
existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being,—a belief which appears
forced upon us, as the complement of our consciousness of the relative
and the finite;” he clearly says by implication that this consciousness
is positive, and not negative. He tacitly admits that we are obliged to
regard the Absolute as something more than a negation—that our
consciousness of it is _not_ “the mere absence of the conditions under
which consciousness is possible.”
The supreme importance of this question must be my apology for taxing
the reader’s attention a little further, in the hope of clearing up the
remaining difficulties. The necessarily positive character of our
consciousness of the Unconditioned, which, as we have seen, follows from
an ultimate law of thought, will be better understood on contemplating
the process of thought.
One of the arguments used to prove the relativity of our knowledge, is,
that we cannot conceive Space or Time as either limited or unlimited. It
is pointed out that when we imagine a limit, there simultaneously arises
the consciousness of a space or time existing beyond the limit. This
remoter space or time, though not contemplated as definite, is yet
contemplated as real. Though we do not form of it a conception proper,
since we do not bring it within bounds, there is yet in our minds the
unshaped material of a conception. Similarly with our consciousness of
Cause. We are no more able to form a circumscribed idea of Cause, than
of Space or Time; and we are consequently obliged to think of the Cause
which transcends the limits of our thought as positive though
indefinite. Just in the same manner that on conceiving any bounded
space, there arises a nascent consciousness of space outside the bounds;
so, when we think of any definite cause, there arises a nascent
consciousness of a cause behind it: and in the one case as in the other,
this nascent consciousness is in substance like that which suggests it,
though without form. The momentum of thought inevitably carries us
beyond conditioned existence to unconditioned existence; and this ever
persists in us as the body of a thought to which we can give no shape.
Hence our firm belief in objective reality—a belief which metaphysical
criticisms cannot for a moment shake. When we are taught that a piece of
matter, regarded by us as existing externally, cannot be really known,
but that we can know only certain impressions produced on us, we are
yet, by the relativity of our thought, compelled to think of these in
relation to a positive cause—the notion of a real existence which
generated these impressions becomes nascent. If it be proved to us that
every notion of a real existence which we can frame, is utterly
inconsistent with itself—that matter, however conceived by us, cannot be
matter as it actually is, our conception, though transfigured, is not
destroyed: there remains the sense of reality, dissociated as far as
possible from those special forms under which it was before represented
in thought. Though Philosophy condemns successively each attempted
conception of the Absolute—though it proves to us that the Absolute is
not this, nor that, nor that—though in obedience to it we negative, one
after another, each idea as it arises; yet, as we cannot expel the
entire contents of consciousness, there ever remains behind an element
which passes into new shapes. The continual negation of each particular
form and limit, simply results in the more or less complete abstraction
of all forms and limits; and so ends in an indefinite consciousness of
the unformed and unlimited.
And here we come face to face with the ultimate difficulty—How can there
possibly be constituted a consciousness of the unformed and unlimited,
when, by its very nature, consciousness is possible only under forms and
limits? If every consciousness of existence is a consciousness of
existence as conditioned, then how, after the negation of conditions,
can there be any residuum?. Though not directly withdrawn by the
withdrawal of its conditions, must not the raw material of consciousness
be withdrawn by implication? Must it not vanish when the conditions of
its existence vanish? That there must be a solution of this
difficulty is manifest; since even those who would put it, do, as
already shown, admit that we have some such consciousness; and the
solution appears to be that above shadowed forth. Such consciousness is
not, and cannot be, constituted by any single mental act; but is the
product of many mental acts. In each concept there is an element which
persists. It is alike impossible for this element to be absent from
consciousness, and for it to be present in consciousness alone: either
alternative involves unconsciousness—the one from the want of the
substance; the other from the want of the form. But the persistence of
this element under successive conditions, _necessitates_ a sense of it
as distinguished from the conditions, and independent of them. The sense
of a something that is conditioned in every thought, cannot be got rid
of, because the something cannot be got rid of. How then must the sense
of this something be constituted? Evidently by combining successive
concepts deprived of their limits and conditions. We form this
indefinite thought, as we form many of our definite thoughts, by the
coalescence of a series of thoughts. Let me illustrate this. A
large complex object, having attributes too numerous to be represented
at once, is yet tolerably well conceived by the union of several
representations, each standing for part of its attributes. On thinking
of a piano, there first rises in imagination its visual appearance, to
which are instantly added (though by separate mental acts) the ideas of
its remote side and of its solid substance. A complete conception,
however, involves the strings, the hammers, the dampers, the pedals; and
while successively adding these to the conception, the attributes first
thought of lapse more or less completely out of consciousness.
Nevertheless, the whole group constitutes a representation of the piano.
Now as in this case we form a definite concept of a special existence,
by imposing limits and conditions in successive acts; so, in the
converse case, by taking away the limits and conditions in successive
acts, we form an indefinite notion of general existence. By fusing a
series of states of consciousness, in each of which, as it arises, the
limitations and conditions are abolished, there is produced a
consciousness of something unconditioned. To speak more
rigorously:—this consciousness is not the abstract of any one group of
thoughts, ideas, or conceptions; but it is the abstract of _all_
thoughts, ideas, or conceptions. That which is common to them all, and
cannot be got rid of, is what we predicate by the word existence.
Dissociated as this becomes from each of its modes by the perpetual
change of those modes, it remains as an indefinite consciousness of
something constant under all modes—of being apart from its appearances.
The distinction we feel between special and general existence, is the
distinction between that which is changeable in us, and that which is
unchangeable. The contrast between the Absolute and the Relative in our
minds, is really the contrast between that mental element which exists
absolutely, and those which exist relatively.
By its very nature, therefore, this ultimate mental element is at once
necessarily indefinite and necessarily indestructible. Our consciousness
of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or
raw material of thought to which in thinking we give definite forms, it
follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis
of our intelligence. As we can in successive mental acts get rid of all
particular conditions and replace them by others, but cannot get rid of
that undifferentiated substance of consciousness which is conditioned
anew in every thought; there ever remains with us a sense of that which
exists persistently and independently of conditions. At the same time
that by the laws of thought we are rigorously prevented from forming a
conception of absolute existence; we are by the laws of thought equally
prevented from ridding ourselves of the consciousness of absolute
existence: this consciousness being, as we here see, the obverse of our
self-consciousness. And since the only possible measure of relative
validity among our beliefs, is the degree of their persistence in
opposition to the efforts made to change them, it follows that this
which persists at all times, under all circumstances, and cannot cease
until consciousness ceases, has the highest validity of any.
To sum up this somewhat too elaborate argument:—We have seen how in the
very assertion that all our knowledge, properly so called, is Relative,
there is involved the assertion that there exists a Non-relative. We
have seen how, in each step of the argument by which this doctrine is
established, the same assumption is made. We have seen how, from the
very necessity of thinking in relations, it follows that the Relative is
itself inconceivable, except as related to a real Non-relative. We have
seen that unless a real Non-relative or Absolute be postulated, the
Relative itself becomes absolute; and so brings the argument to a
contradiction. And on contemplating the process of thought, we have
equally seen how impossible it is to get rid of the consciousness of an
actuality lying behind appearances; and how, from this impossibility,
results our indestructible belief in that actuality.
CHAPTER V.
THE RECONCILIATION.
§ 27. Thus do all lines of argument converge to the same conclusion. The
inference reached _à priori_. in the last chapter, confirms the
inferences which, in the two preceding chapters, were reached _à
posteriori_. Those imbecilities of the understanding that disclose
themselves when we try to answer the highest questions of objective
science, subjective science proves to be necessitated by the laws of
that understanding. We not only learn by the frustration of all our
efforts, that the reality underlying appearances is totally and for ever
inconceivable by us; but we also learn why, from the very nature of our
intelligence, it must be so. Finally we discover that this conclusion,
which, in its unqualified form, seems opposed to the instinctive
convictions of mankind, falls into harmony with them when the missing
qualification is supplied. Though the Absolute cannot in any manner or
degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its
positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness; that so long
as consciousness continues, we cannot for an instant rid it of this
datum; and that thus the belief which this datum constitutes, has a
higher warrant than any other whatever.
Here then is that basis of agreement we set out to seek. This conclusion
which objective science illustrates, and subjective science shows to be
unavoidable,—this conclusion which, while it in the main expresses the
doctrine of the English school of philosophy, recognizes also a soul of
truth in the doctrine of the antagonist German school—this conclusion
which brings the results of speculation into harmony with those of
common sense; is also the conclusion which reconciles Religion with
Science. Common Sense asserts the existence of a reality; Objective
Science proves that this reality cannot be what we think it; Subjective
Science shows why we cannot think of it as it is, and yet are compelled
to think of it as existing; and in this assertion of a Reality utterly
inscrutable in nature, Religion finds an assertion essentially
coinciding with her own. We are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a
manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon; phenomena being,
so far as we can ascertain, unlimited in their diffusion, we are obliged
to regard this Power as omnipresent; and criticism teaches us that this
Power is wholly incomprehensible. In this consciousness of an
Incomprehensible Omnipresent Power, we have just that consciousness on
which Religion dwells. And so we arrive at the point where Religion and
Science coalesce.
To understand fully how real is the reconciliation thus reached, it will
be needful to look at the respective attitudes that Religion and Science
have all along maintained towards this conclusion. We must observe how,
all along, the imperfections of each have been undergoing correction by
the other; and how the final out-come of their mutual criticisms, can be
nothing else than an entire agreement on this deepest and widest of all
truths.
* * * * *
§ 28. In Religion let us recognize the high merit that from the
beginning it has dimly discerned the ultimate verity, and has never
ceased to insist upon it. In its earliest and crudest forms it
manifested, however vaguely and inconsistently, an intuition forming the
germ of this highest belief in which all philosophies finally unite. The
consciousness of a mystery is traceable in the rudest fetishism. Each
higher religious creed, rejecting those definite and simple
interpretations of Nature previously given, has become more religious by
doing this. As the quite concrete and conceivable agencies alleged as
the causes of things, have been replaced by agencies less concrete and
conceivable, the element of mystery has of necessity become more
predominant. Through all its successive phases the disappearance of
those positive dogmas by which the mystery was made unmysterious, has
formed the essential change delineated in religious history. And so
Religion has ever been approximating towards that complete recognition
of this mystery which is its goal.
For its essentially valid belief, Religion has constantly done battle.
Gross as were the disguises under which it first espoused this belief,
and cherishing this belief, though it still does, under disfiguring
vestments, it has never ceased to maintain and defend it. It has
everywhere established and propagated one or other modification of the
doctrine that all things are manifestations of a Power that transcends
our knowledge. Though from age to age, Science has continually defeated
it wherever they have come in collision, and has obliged it to
relinquish one or more of its positions; it has still held the remaining
ones with undiminished tenacity. No exposure of the logical
inconsistency of its conclusions—no proof that each of its particular
dogmas was absurd, has been able to weaken its allegiance to that
ultimate verity for which it stands. After criticism has abolished all
its arguments and reduced it to silence, there has still remained with
it the indestructible consciousness of a truth which, however faulty the
mode in which it had been expressed, was yet a truth beyond cavil. To
this conviction its adherence has been substantially sincere. And for
the guardianship and diffusion of it, Humanity has ever been, and must
ever be, its debtor.
But while from the beginning, Religion has had the all-essential office
of preventing men from being wholly absorbed in the relative or
immediate, and of awakening them to a consciousness of something beyond
it, this office has been but very imperfectly discharged. Religion has
ever been more or less irreligious; and it continues to be partially
irreligious even now. In the first place, as implied above, it has
all along professed to have some knowledge of that which transcends
knowledge; and has so contradicted its own teachings. While with one
breath it has asserted that the Cause of all things passes
understanding, it has, with the next breath, asserted that the Cause of
all things possesses such or such attributes—can be in so far
understood. In the second place, while in great part sincere in
its fealty to the great truth it had had to uphold, it has often been
insincere, and consequently irreligious, in maintaining the untenable
doctrines by which it has obscured this great truth. Each assertion
respecting the nature, acts, or motives of that Power which the Universe
manifests to us, has been repeatedly called in question, and proved to
be inconsistent with itself, or with accompanying assertions. Yet each
of them has been age after age insisted on, in spite of a secret
consciousness that it would not bear examination. Just as though unaware
that its central position was impregnable, Religion has obstinately held
every outpost long after it was obviously indefensible. And this
naturally introduces us to the third and most serious form of irreligion
which Religion has displayed; namely, an imperfect belief in that which
it especially professes to believe. How truly its central position _is_
impregnable, Religion has never adequately realized. In the devoutest
faith as we habitually see it, there lies hidden an innermost core of
scepticism; and it is this scepticism which causes that dread of inquiry
displayed by Religion when face to face with Science. Obliged to abandon
one by one the superstitions it once tenaciously held, and daily finding
its cherished beliefs more and more shaken, Religion shows a secret fear
that all things may some day be explained; and thus itself betrays a
lurking doubt whether that Incomprehensible Cause of which it is
conscious, is really incomprehensible.
Of Religion then, we must always remember, that amid its many errors and
corruptions it has asserted and diffused a supreme verity. From the
first, the recognition of this supreme verity, in however imperfect a
manner, has been its vital element; and its various defects, once
extreme but gradually diminishing, have been so many failures to
recognize in full that which it recognized in part. The truly religious
element of Religion has always been good; that which has proved
untenable in doctrine and vicious in practice, has been its irreligious
element; and from this it has been ever undergoing purification.
* * * * *
§ 29. And now observe that all along, the agent which has effected the
purification has been Science. We habitually overlook the fact that this
has been one of its functions. Religion ignores its immense debt to
Science; and Science is scarcely at all conscious how much Religion owes
it. Yet it is demonstrable that every step by which Religion has
progressed from its first low conception to the comparatively high one
it has now reached, Science has helped it, or rather forced it, to take;
and that even now, Science is urging further steps in the same
direction.
Using the word Science in its true sense, as comprehending all positive
and definite knowledge of the order existing among surrounding
phenomena, it becomes manifest that from the outset, the discovery of an
established order has modified that conception of disorder, or
undetermined order, which underlies every superstition. As fast as
experience proves that certain familiar changes always happen in the
same sequence, there begins to fade from the mind the conception of a
special personality to whose variable will they were before ascribed.
And when, step by step, accumulating observations do the like with the
less familiar changes, a similar modification of belief takes place with
respect to them.
While this process seems to those who effect, and those who undergo it,
an anti-religious one, it is really the reverse. Instead of the specific
comprehensible agency before assigned, there is substituted a less
specific and less comprehensible agency; and though this, standing in
opposition to the previous one, cannot at first call forth the same
feeling, yet, as being less comprehensible, it must eventually call
forth this feeling more fully. Take an instance. Of old the Sun
was regarded as the chariot of a god, drawn by horses. How far the idea
thus grossly expressed, was idealized, we need not inquire. It suffices
to remark that this accounting for the apparent motion of the Sun by an
agency like certain visible terrestrial agencies, reduced a daily wonder
to the level of the commonest intellect. When, many centuries after,
Kepler discovered that the planets moved round the Sun in ellipses and
described equal areas in equal times, he concluded that in each planet
there must exist a spirit to guide its movements. Here we see that with
the progress of Science, there had disappeared the idea of a gross
mechanical traction, such as was first assigned in the case of the Sun;
but that while for this there was substituted an indefinite and
less-easily conceivable force, it was still thought needful to assume a
special personal agent as a cause of the regular irregularity of motion.
When, finally, it was proved that these planetary revolutions with all
their variations and disturbances, conformed to one universal law—when
the presiding spirits which Kepler conceived were set aside, and the
force of gravitation put in their place; the change was really the
abolition of an imaginable agency, and the substitution of an
unimaginable one. For though the _law_ of gravitation is within our
mental grasp, it is impossible to realize in thought the _force_ of
gravitation. Newton himself confessed the force of gravitation to be
incomprehensible without the intermediation of an ether; and, as we have
already seen, (§ 18,) the assumption of an ether does not in the least
help us. Thus it is with Science in general. Its progress in
grouping particular relations of phenomena under laws, and these special
laws under laws more and more general, is of necessity a progress to
causes that are more and more abstract. And causes more and more
abstract, are of necessity causes less and less conceivable; since the
formation of an abstract conception involves the dropping of certain
concrete elements of thought. Hence the most abstract conception, to
which Science is ever slowly approaching, is one that merges into the
inconceivable or unthinkable, by the dropping of all concrete elements
of thought. And so is justified the assertion, that the beliefs which
Science has forced upon Religion, have been intrinsically more religious
than those which they supplanted.
Science however, like Religion, has but very incompletely fulfilled its
office. As Religion has fallen short of its function in so far as it has
been irreligious; so has Science fallen short of its function in so far
as it has been unscientific. Let us note the several parallelisms.
In its earlier stages, Science, while it began to teach the
constant relations of phenomena, and so discredited the belief in
separate personalities as the causes of them, itself substituted the
belief in causal agencies which, if not personal, were yet concrete.
When certain facts were said to show “Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum,”
when the properties of gold were explained as due to some entity called
“aureity,” and when the phenomena of life were attributed to “a vital
principle;” there was set up a mode of interpreting the facts, which,
while antagonistic to the religious mode, because assigning other
agencies, was also unscientific, because it professed to know that about
which nothing was known. Having abandoned these metaphysical
agencies—having seen that they were not independent existences, but
merely special combinations of general causes, Science has more recently
ascribed extensive groups of phenomena to electricity, chemical
affinity, and other like general powers. But in speaking of these as
ultimate and independent entities, Science has preserved substantially
the same attitude as before. Accounting thus for all phenomena, those of
Life and Thought included, it has not only maintained its seeming
antagonism to Religion, by alleging agencies of a radically unlike kind;
but, in so far as it has tacitly assumed a knowledge of these agencies,
it has continued unscientific. At the present time, however, the most
advanced men of science are abandoning these later conceptions, as their
predecessors abandoned the earlier ones. Magnetism, heat, light &c,
which were awhile since spoken of as so many distinct imponderables,
physicists are now beginning to regard as different modes of
manifestation of some one universal force; and in so doing are ceasing
to think of this force as comprehensible. In each phase of its
progress, Science has thus stopped short with superficial solutions—has
unscientifically neglected to ask what was the nature of the agents it
so familiarly invoked. Though in each succeeding phase it has gone a
little deeper, and merged its supposed agents in more general and
abstract ones, it has still, as before, rested content with these as if
they were ascertained realities. And this, which has all along been the
unscientific characteristic of Science, has all along been a part cause
of its conflict with Religion.
* * * * *
§ 30. We see then that from the first, the faults of both Religion and
Science have been the faults of imperfect development. Originally a mere
rudiment, each has been growing into a more complete form; the vice of
each has in all times been its incompleteness; the disagreements between
them have throughout been nothing more than the consequences of their
incompleteness; and as they reach their final forms, they come into
entire harmony.
The progress of intelligence has throughout been dual. Though it has not
seemed so to those who made it, every step in advance has been a step
towards both the natural and the supernatural. The better interpretation
of each phenomenon has been, on the one hand, the rejection of a cause
that was relatively conceivable in its nature but unknown in the order
of its actions, and, on the other hand, the adoption of a cause that was
known in the order of its actions but relatively inconceivable in its
nature. The first advance out of universal fetishism, manifestly
involved the conception of agencies less assimilable to the familiar
agencies of men and animals, and therefore less understood; while, at
the same time, such newly-conceived agencies in so far as they were
distinguished by their uniform effects, were better understood than
those they replaced. All subsequent advances display the same double
result. Every deeper and more general power arrived at as a cause of
phenomena, has been at once less comprehensible than the special ones it
superseded, in the sense of being less definitely representable in
thought; while it has been more comprehensible in the sense that its
actions have been more completely predicable. The progress has thus been
as much towards the establishment of a positively unknown as towards the
establishment of a positively known. Though as knowledge approaches its
culmination, every unaccountable and seemingly supernatural fact, is
brought into the category of facts that are accountable or natural; yet,
at the same time, all accountable or natural facts are proved to be in
their ultimate genesis unaccountable and supernatural. And so there
arise two antithetical states of mind, answering to the opposite sides
of that existence about which we think. While our consciousness of
Nature under the one aspect constitutes Science, our consciousness of it
under the other aspect constitutes Religion.
Otherwise contemplating the facts, we may say that Religion and Science
have been undergoing a slow differentiation; and that their ceaseless
conflicts have been due to the imperfect separation of their spheres and
functions. Religion has, from the first, struggled to unite more or less
science with its nescience; Science has, from the first, kept hold of
more or less nescience as though it were a part of science. Each has
been obliged gradually to relinquish that territory which it wrongly
claimed, while it has gained from the other that to which it had a
right; and the antagonism between them has been an inevitable
accompaniment of this process. A more specific statement will make this
clear. Religion, though at the outset it asserted a mystery, also
made numerous definite assertions respecting this mystery—professed to
know its nature in the minutest detail; and in so far as it claimed
positive knowledge, it trespassed upon the province of Science. From the
times of early mythologies, when such intimate acquaintance with the
mystery was alleged, down to our own days, when but a few abstract and
vague propositions are maintained, Religion has been compelled by
Science to give up one after another of its dogmas—of those assumed
cognitions which it could not substantiate. In the mean time, Science
substituted for the personalities to which Religion ascribed phenomena,
certain metaphysical entities; and in doing this it trespassed on the
province of Religion; since it classed among the things which it
comprehended, certain forms of the incomprehensible. Partly by the
criticisms of Religion, which has occasionally called in question its
assumptions, and partly as a consequence of spontaneous growth, Science
has been obliged to abandon these attempts to include within the
boundaries of knowledge that which cannot be known; and has so yielded
up to Religion that which of right belonged to it. So long as this
process of differentiation is incomplete, more or less of antagonism
must continue. Gradually as the limits of possible cognition are
established, the causes of conflict will diminish. And a permanent peace
will be reached when Science becomes fully convinced that its
explanations are proximate and relative; while Religion becomes fully
convinced that the mystery it contemplates is ultimate and absolute.
Religion and Science are therefore necessary correlatives. As already
hinted, they stand respectively for those two antithetical modes of
consciousness which cannot exist asunder. A known cannot be thought of
apart from an unknown; nor can an unknown be thought of apart from a
known. And by consequence neither can become more distinct without
giving greater distinctness to the other. To carry further a metaphor
before used,—they are the positive and negative poles of thought; of
which neither can gain in intensity without increasing the intensity of
the other.
* * * * *
§ 31. Thus the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us
through all phenomena, has been growing ever clearer; and must
eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the
one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its nature
transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards
which intelligence has from the first been progressing. To this
conclusion Science inevitably arrives as it reaches its confines; while
to this conclusion Religion is irresistibly driven by criticism. And
satisfying as it does the demands of the most rigorous logic at the same
time that it gives the religious sentiment the widest possible sphere of
action, it is the conclusion we are bound to accept without reserve or
qualification.
Some do indeed allege that though the Ultimate Cause of things cannot
really be thought of by us as having specified attributes, it is yet
incumbent upon us to assert these attributes. Though the forms of our
consciousness are such that the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree
be brought within them, we are nevertheless told that we must represent
the Absolute to ourselves under these forms. As writes Mr Mansel, in the
work from which I have already quoted largely—“It is our duty, then, to
think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is
infinite.”
That this is not the conclusion here adopted, needs hardly be said. If
there be any meaning in the foregoing arguments, duty requires us
neither to affirm nor deny personality. Our duty is to submit ourselves
with all humility to the established limits of our intelligence; and not
perversely to rebel against them. Let those who can, believe that there
is eternal war set between our intellectual faculties and our moral
obligations. I for one, admit no such radical vice in the constitution
of things.
This which to most will seem an essentially irreligious position, is an
essentially religious one—nay is _the_ religious one, to which, as
already shown, all others are but approximations. In the estimate it
implies of the Ultimate Cause, it does not fall short of the alternative
position, but exceeds it. Those who espouse this alternative position,
make the erroneous assumption that the choice is between personality and
something lower than personality; whereas the choice is rather between
personality and something higher. Is it not just possible that there is
a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will, as these
transcend mechanical motion? It is true that we are totally unable to
conceive any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for
questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse. Have we not seen
how utterly incompetent our minds are to form even an approach to a
conception of that which underlies all phenomena? Is it not proved that
this incompetency is the incompetency of the Conditioned to grasp the
Unconditioned? Does it not follow that the Ultimate Cause cannot in any
respect be conceived by us because it is in every respect greater than
can be conceived? And may we not therefore rightly refrain from
assigning to it any attributes whatever, on the ground that such
attributes, derived as they must be from our own natures, are not
elevations but degradations? Indeed it seems somewhat strange that men
should suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the object of
their worship to themselves. Not in asserting a transcendant difference,
but in asserting a certain likeness, consists the element of their creed
which they think essential. It is true that from the time when the
rudest savages imagined the causes of all things to be creatures of
flesh and blood like themselves, down to our own time, the degree of
assumed likeness has been diminishing. But though a bodily form and
substance similar to that of man, has long since ceased, among
cultivated races, to be a literally-conceived attribute of the Ultimate
Cause—though the grosser human desires have been also rejected as unfit
elements of the conception—though there is some hesitation in ascribing
even the higher human feelings, save in greatly idealized shapes; yet it
is still thought not only proper, but imperative, to ascribe the most
abstract qualities of our nature. To think of the Creative Power as in
all respects anthropomorphous, is now considered impious by men who yet
hold themselves bound to think of the Creative Power as in some respects
anthropomorphous; and who do not see that the one proceeding is but an
evanescent form of the other. And then, most marvellous of all, this
course is persisted in even by those who contend that we are wholly
unable to frame any conception whatever of the Creative Power. After it
has been shown that every supposition respecting the genesis of the
Universe commits us to alternative impossibilities of thought—after it
has been shown that each attempt to conceive real existence ends in an
intellectual suicide—after it has been shown why, by the very
constitution of our minds, we are eternally debarred from thinking of
the Absolute; it is still asserted that we ought to think of the
Absolute thus and thus. In all imaginable ways we find thrust upon us
the truth, that we are not permitted to know—nay are not even permitted
to conceive—that Reality which is behind the veil of Appearance; and yet
it is said to be our duty to believe (and in so far to conceive) that
this Reality exists in a certain defined manner. Shall we call this
reverence? or shall we call it the reverse?
Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious. Through the
printed and spoken thoughts of religious teachers, may almost everywhere
be traced a professed familiarity with the ultimate mystery of things,
which, to say the least of it, seems anything but congruous with the
accompanying expressions of humility. And surprisingly enough, those
tenets which most clearly display this familiarity, are those insisted
upon as forming the vital elements of religious belief. The attitude
thus assumed, can be fitly represented only by further developing a
simile long current in theological controversies—the simile of the
watch. If for a moment we made the grotesque supposition that the
tickings and other movements of a watch constituted a kind of
consciousness; and that a watch possessed of such a consciousness,
insisted on regarding the watchmaker’s actions as determined like its
own by springs and escapements; we should simply complete a parallel of
which religious teachers think much. And were we to suppose that a watch
not only formulated the cause of its existence in these mechanical
terms, but held that watches were bound out of reverence so to formulate
this cause, and even vituperated, as atheistic watches, any that did not
venture so to formulate it; we should merely illustrate the presumption
of theologians by carrying their own argument a step further. A
few extracts will bring home to the reader the justice of this
comparison. We are told, for example, by one of high repute among
religious thinkers, that the Universe is “the manifestation and abode of
a Free Mind, like our own; embodying His personal thought in its
adjustments, realizing His own ideal in its phenomena, just as we
express own inner faculty and character through the natural language of
an external life. In this view, we interpret Nature by Humanity; we find
the key to her aspects in such purposes and affections as our own
consciousness enables us to conceive; we look everywhere for physical
signals of an ever-living Will; and decipher the universe as the
autobiography of an Infinite Spirit, repeating itself in miniature
within our Finite Spirit.” The same writer goes still further. He not
only thus parallels the assimilation of the watchmaker to the watch,—he
not only thinks the created can “decipher” “the autobiography” of the
Creating; but he asserts that the necessary limits of the one are
necessary limits of the other. The primary qualities of bodies, he says,
“belong eternally to the material datum objective to God” and control
his acts; while the secondary ones are “products of pure Inventive
Reason and Determining Will”—constitute “the realm of Divine
originality.” * * * “While on this Secondary field His Mind and ours are
thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again upon the Primary: for
the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one track possible to
all intelligences; no _merum arbitrium_ can interchange the false and
true, or make more than one geometry, one scheme of pure Physics, for
all worlds; and the Omnipotent Architect Himself, in realizing the
Kosmical conception, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and
determining seasons out of eternity, could but follow the laws of
curvature, measure and proportion.” That is to say, the Ultimate Cause
is like a human mechanic, not only as “shaping” the “material datum
objective to” Him, but also as being obliged to conform to the necessary
properties of that “datum.” Nor is this all. There follows some account
of “the Divine psychology,” to the extent of saying that “we learn” “the
character of God—the order of affections in Him” from “the distribution
of authority in the hierarchy of our impulses.” In other words, it is
alleged that the Ultimate Cause has desires that are to be classed as
higher and lower like our own.[7] Every one has heard of the king
who wished he had been present at the creation of the world, that he
might have given good advice. He was humble however compared with those
who profess to understand not only the relation of the Creating to the
created, but also how the Creating is constituted. And yet this
transcendant audacity, which claims to penetrate the secrets of the
Power manifested to us through all existence—nay even to stand behind
that Power and note the conditions to its action—this it is which passes
current as piety! May we not without hesitation affirm that a sincere
recognition of the truth that our own and all other existence is a
mystery absolutely and for ever beyond our comprehension, contains more
of true religion than all the dogmatic theology ever written?
Meanwhile let us recognize whatever of permanent good there is in these
persistent attempts to frame conceptions of that which cannot be
conceived. From the beginning it has been only through the successive
failures of such conceptions to satisfy the mind, that higher and higher
ones have been gradually reached; and doubtless, the conceptions now
current are indispensable as transitional modes of thought. Even more
than this may be willingly conceded. It is possible, nay probable, that
under their most abstract forms, ideas of this order will always
continue to occupy the background of our consciousness. Very likely
there will ever remain a need to give shape to that indefinite sense of
an Ultimate Existence, which forms the basis of our intelligence. We
shall always be under the necessity of contemplating it as _some_ mode
of being; that is—of representing it to ourselves in _some_ form of
thought, however vague. And we shall not err in doing this so long as we
treat every notion we thus frame as merely a symbol, utterly without
resemblance to that for which it stands. Perhaps the constant formation
of such symbols and constant rejection of them as inadequate, may be
hereafter, as it has hitherto been, a means of discipline. Perpetually
to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our faculties, and
perpetually to find that such ideas must be abandoned as futile
imaginations, may realize to us more fully than any other course, the
greatness of that which we vainly strive to grasp. Such efforts and
failures may serve to maintain in our minds a due sense of the
incommensurable difference between the Conditioned and the
Unconditioned. By continually seeking to know and being continually
thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing,
we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom
and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as
The Unknowable.
* * * * *
§ 32. An immense majority will refuse with more or less of indignation,
a belief seeming to them so shadowy and indefinite. Having always
embodied the Ultimate Cause so far as was needful to its mental
realization, they must necessarily resent the substitution of an
Ultimate Cause which cannot be mentally realized at all. “You offer us,”
they say, “an unthinkable abstraction in place of a Being towards whom
we may entertain definite feelings. Though we are told that the Absolute
is real, yet since we are not allowed to conceive it, it might as well
be a pure negation. Instead of a Power which we can regard as having
some sympathy with us, you would have us contemplate a Power to which no
emotion whatever can be ascribed. And so we are to be deprived of the
very substance of our faith.”
This kind of protest of necessity accompanies every change from a lower
creed to a higher. The belief in a community of nature between himself
and the object of his worship, has always been to man a satisfactory
one; and he has always accepted with reluctance those successively less
concrete conceptions which have been forced upon him. Doubtless, in all
times and places, it has consoled the barbarian to think of his deities
as so exactly like himself in nature, that they could be bribed by
offerings of food; and the assurance that deities could not be so
propitiated, must have been repugnant, because it deprived him of an
easy method of gaining supernatural protection. To the Greeks it was
manifestly a source of comfort that on occasions of difficulty they
could obtain, through oracles, the advice of their gods,—nay, might even
get the personal aid of their gods in battle; and it was probably a very
genuine anger which they visited upon philosophers who called in
question these gross ideas of their mythology. A religion which teaches
the Hindoo that it is impossible to purchase eternal happiness by
placing himself under the wheel of Juggernaut, can scarcely fail to seem
a cruel one to him; since it deprives him of the pleasurable
consciousness that he can at will exchange miseries for joys. Nor is it
less clear that to our Catholic ancestors, the beliefs that crimes could
be compounded for by the building of churches, that their own
punishments and those of their relatives could be abridged by the saying
of masses, and that divine aid or forgiveness might be gained through
the intercession of saints, were highly solacing ones; and that
Protestantism, in substituting the conception of a God so comparatively
unlike ourselves as not to be influenced by such methods, must have
appeared to them hard and cold. Naturally, therefore, we must expect a
further step in the same direction to meet with a similar resistance
from outraged sentiments. No mental revolution can be accomplished
without more or less of laceration. Be it a change of habit or a change
of conviction, it must, if the habit or conviction be strong, do
violence to some of the feelings; and these must of course oppose it.
For long-experienced, and therefore definite, sources of satisfaction,
have to be substituted sources of satisfaction that have not been
experienced, and are therefore indefinite. That which is relatively well
known and real, has to be given up for that which is relatively unknown
and ideal. And of course such an exchange cannot be made without a
conflict involving pain. Especially then must there arise a strong
antagonism to any alteration in so deep and vital a conception as that
with which we are here dealing. Underlying, as this conception does, all
others, a modification of it threatens to reduce the superstructure to
ruins. Or to change the metaphor—being the root with which are connected
our ideas of goodness, rectitude, or duty, it appears impossible that it
should be transformed without causing these to wither away and die. The
whole higher part of the nature almost of necessity takes up arms
against a change which, by destroying the established associations of
thought, seems to eradicate morality.
This is by no means all that has to be said for such protests. There is
a much deeper meaning in them. They do not simply express the natural
repugnance to a revolution of belief, here made specially intense by the
vital importance of the belief to be revolutionized; but they also
express an instinctive adhesion to a belief that is in one sense the
best—the best for those who thus cling to it, though not abstractedly
the best. For here let me remark that what were above spoken of as
the imperfections of Religion, at first great but gradually diminishing,
have been imperfections only as measured by an absolute standard; and
not as measured by a relative one. Speaking generally, the religion
current in each age and among each people, has been as near an
approximation to the truth as it was then and there possible for men to
receive: the more or less concrete forms in which it has embodied the
truth, have simply been the means of making thinkable what would
otherwise have been unthinkable; and so have for the time being served
to increase its impressiveness. If we consider the conditions of
the case, we shall find this to be an unavoidable conclusion. During
each stage of evolution, men must think in such terms of thought as they
possess. While all the conspicuous changes of which they can observe the
origins, have men and animals as antecedents, they are unable to think
of antecedents in general under any other shapes; and hence creative
agencies are of necessity conceived by them in these shapes. If during
this phase, these concrete conceptions were taken from them, and the
attempt made to give them comparatively abstract conceptions, the result
would be to leave their minds with none at all; since the substituted
ones could not be mentally represented. Similarly with every successive
stage of religious belief, down to the last. Though, as accumulating
experiences slowly modify the earliest ideas of causal personalities,
there grow up more general and vague ideas of them; yet these cannot be
at once replaced by others still more general and vague. Further
experiences must supply the needful further abstractions, before the
mental void left by the destruction of such inferior ideas can be filled
by ideas of a superior order. And at the present time, the refusal to
abandon a relatively concrete notion for a relatively abstract one,
implies the inability to frame the relatively abstract one; and so
proves that the change would be premature and injurious. Still
more clearly shall we see the injuriousness of any such premature
change, on observing that the effects of a belief upon conduct must be
diminished in proportion as the vividness with which it is realized
becomes less. Evils and benefits akin to those which the savage has
personally felt, or learned from those who have felt them, are the only
evils and benefits he can understand; and these must be looked for as
coming in ways, like those of which he has had experience. His deities
must be imagined to have like motives and passions and methods with the
beings around him; for motives and passions and methods of a higher
character, being unknown to him, and in great measure unthinkable by
him, cannot be so realized in thought as to influence his deeds. During
every phase of civilization, the actions of the Unseen Reality, as well
as the resulting rewards and punishments, being conceivable only in such
forms as experience furnishes, to supplant them by higher ones before
wider experiences have made higher ones conceivable, is to set up vague
and uninfluential motives for definite and influential ones. Even now,
for the great mass of men, unable through lack of culture to trace out
with due clearness those good and bad consequences which conduct brings
round through the established order of the Unknowable, it is needful
that there should be vividly depicted future torments and future
joys—pains and pleasures of a definite kind, produced in a manner direct
and simple enough to be clearly imagined. Nay still more must be
conceded. Few if any are as yet fitted wholly to dispense with such
conceptions as are current. The highest abstractions take so great a
mental power to realize with any vividness, and are so inoperative upon
conduct unless they are vividly realized, that their regulative effects
must for a long period to come be appreciable on but a small minority.
To see clearly how a right or wrong act generates consequences, internal
and external, that go on branching out more widely as years progress,
requires a rare power of analysis. To mentally represent even a single
series of these consequences, as it stretches out into the remote
future, requires an equally rare power of imagination. And to estimate
these consequences in their totality, ever multiplying in number while
diminishing in intensity, requires a grasp of thought possessed by none.
Yet it is only by such analysis, such imagination, and such grasp, that
conduct can be rightly guided in the absence of all other control: only
so can ultimate rewards and penalties be made to outweigh proximate
pains and pleasures. Indeed, were it not that throughout the progress of
the race, men’s experiences of the effects of conduct have been slowly
generalized into principles—were it not that these principles have been
from generation to generation insisted on by parents, upheld by public
opinion, sanctified by religion, and enforced by threats of eternal
damnation for disobedience—were it not that under these potent
influences, habits have been modified, and the feelings proper to them
made innate—were it not, in short, that we have been rendered in a
considerable degree organically moral; it is certain that disastrous
results would ensue from the removal of those strong and distinct
motives which the current belief supplies. Even as it is, those who
relinquish the faith in which they have been brought up, for this most
abstract faith in which Science and Religion unite, may not uncommonly
fail to act up to their convictions. Left to their organic morality,
enforced only by general reasonings imperfectly wrought out and
difficult to keep before the mind, their defects of nature will often
come out more strongly than they would have done under their previous
creed. The substituted creed can become adequately operative only when
it becomes, like the present one, an element in early education, and has
the support of a strong social sanction. Nor will men be quite ready for
it until, through the continuance of a discipline which has already
partially moulded them to the conditions of social existence, they are
completely moulded to those conditions.
We must therefore recognize the resistance to a change of theological
opinion, as in great measure salutary. It is not simply that strong and
deep-rooted feelings are necessarily excited to antagonism—it is not
simply that the highest moral sentiments join in the condemnation of a
change which seems to undermine their authority; but it is that a real
adaptation exists between an established belief and the natures of those
who defend it; and that the tenacity of the defence measures the
completeness of the adaptation. Forms of religion, like forms of
government, must be fit for those who live under them; and in the one
case as in the other, that form which is fittest is that for which there
is an instinctive preference. As certainly as a barbarous race needs a
harsh terrestrial rule, and habitually shows attachment to a despotism
capable of the necessary rigour; so certainly does such a race need a
belief in a celestial rule that is similarly harsh, and habitually shows
attachment to such a belief. And just in the same way that the sudden
substitution of free institutions for tyrannical ones, is sure to be
followed by a reaction; so, if a creed full of dreadful ideal penalties
is all at once replaced by one presenting ideal penalties that are
comparatively gentle, there will inevitably be a return to some
modification of the old belief. The parallelism holds yet further.
During those early stages in which there is an extreme incongruity
between the relatively best and the absolutely best, both political and
religious changes, when at rare intervals they occur, are necessarily
violent; and necessarily entail violent retrogressions. But as the
incongruity between that which is and that which should be, diminishes,
the changes become more moderate, and are succeeded by more moderate
retrogressions; until, as these movements and counter-movements decrease
in amount and increase in frequency, they merge into an almost
continuous growth. That adhesion to old institutions and beliefs, which,
in primitive societies, opposes an iron barrier to any advance, and
which, after the barrier has been at length burst through, brings back
the institutions and beliefs from that too-forward position to which the
momentum of change had carried them, and so helps to re-adapt social
conditions to the popular character—this adhesion to old institution and
beliefs, eventually becomes the constant check by which the constant
advance is prevented from being too rapid. This holds true of religious
creeds and forms, as of civil ones. And so we learn that theological
conservatism, like political conservatism, has an all-important
function.
* * * * *
§ 33. That spirit of toleration which is so marked a characteristic of
modern times, and is daily growing more conspicuous, has thus a far
deeper meaning than is supposed. What we commonly regard simply as a due
respect for the right of private judgment, is really a necessary
condition to the balancing of the progressive and conservative
tendencies—is a means of maintaining the adaptation between men’s
beliefs and their natures. It is therefore a spirit to be fostered; and
it is a spirit which the catholic thinker, who perceives the functions
of these various conflicting creeds, should above all other men display.
Doubtless whoever feels the greatness of the error to which his
fellows cling and the greatness of the truth which they reject, will
find it hard to show a due patience. It is hard for him to listen calmly
to the futile arguments used in support of irrational doctrines, and to
the misrepresentation of antagonist doctrines. It is hard for him to
bear the manifestation of that pride of ignorance which so far exceeds
the pride of science. Naturally enough such a one will be indignant when
charged with irreligion because he declines to accept the
carpenter-theory of creation as the most worthy one. He may think it
needless as it is difficult, to conceal his repugnance to a creed which
tacitly ascribes to The Unknowable a love of adulation such as would be
despised in a human being. Convinced as he is that all punishment, as we
see it wrought out in the order of nature, is but a disguised
beneficence, there will perhaps escape from him an angry condemnation of
the belief that punishment is a divine vengeance, and that divine
vengeance is eternal. He may be tempted to show his contempt when he is
told that actions instigated by an unselfish sympathy or by a pure love
of rectitude, are intrinsically sinful; and that conduct is truly good
only when it is due to a faith whose openly-professed motive is
other-worldliness. But he must restrain such feelings. Though he may be
unable to do this during the excitement of controversy, or when
otherwise brought face to face with current superstitions, he must yet
qualify his antagonism in calmer moments; so that his mature judgment
and resulting conduct may be without bias.
To this end let him ever bear in mind three cardinal facts—two of them
already dwelt upon, and one still to be pointed out. The first is
that with which we set out; namely the existence of a fundamental verity
under all forms of religion, however degraded. In each of them there is
a soul of truth. Through the gross body of dogmas traditions and rites
which contain it, it is always visible—dimly or clearly as the case may
be. This it is which gives vitality even to the rudest creed; this it is
which survives every modification; and this it is which we must not
forget when condemning the forms under which it is presented. The
second of these cardinal facts, set forth at length in the foregoing
section, is, that while those concrete elements in which each creed
embodies this soul of truth, are bad as measured by an absolute
standard, they are good as measured by a relative standard. Though from
higher perceptions they hide the abstract verity within them; yet to
lower perceptions they render this verity more appreciable than it would
otherwise be. They serve to make real and influential over men, that
which would else be unreal and uninfluential. Or we may call them the
protective envelopes, without which the contained truth would die.
The remaining cardinal fact is, that these various beliefs are
parts of the constituted order of things; and not accidental but
necessary parts. Seeing how one or other of them is everywhere present;
is of perennial growth; and when cut down, redevelops in a form but
slightly modified; we cannot avoid the inference that they are needful
accompaniments of human life, severally fitted to the societies in which
they are indigenous. From the highest point of view, we must recognize
them as elements in that great evolution of which the beginning and end
are beyond our knowledge or conception—as modes of manifestation of The
Unknowable; and as having this for their warrant.
Our toleration therefore should be the widest possible. Or rather, we
should aim at something beyond toleration, as commonly understood. In
dealing with alien beliefs, our endeavour must be, not simply to refrain
from injustice of word or deed; but also to do justice by an open
recognition of positive worth. We must qualify our disagreement with as
much as may be of sympathy.
* * * * *
§ 34. These admissions will perhaps be held to imply, that the current
theology should be passively accepted; or, at any rate, should not be
actively opposed. “Why,” it may be asked, “if all creeds have an average
fitness to their times and places, should we not rest content with that
to which we are born? If the established belief contains an essential
truth—if the forms under which it presents this truth, though
intrinsically bad, are extrinsically good—if the abolition of these
forms would be at present detrimental to the great majority—nay, if
there are scarcely any to whom the ultimate and most abstract belief can
furnish an adequate rule of life; surely it is wrong, for the present at
least, to propagate this ultimate and most abstract belief.”
The reply is, that though existing religious ideas and institutions have
an average adaptation to the characters of the people who live under
them; yet, as these characters are ever changing, the adaptation is ever
becoming imperfect; and the ideas and institutions need remodelling with
a frequency proportionate to the rapidity of the change. Hence, while it
is requisite that free play should be given to conservative thought and
action, progressive thought and action must also have free play. Without
the agency of both, there cannot be those continual re-adaptations which
orderly progress demands.
Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest
it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by
looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly
realize the fact that opinion is the agency through which character
adapts external arrangements to itself—that his opinion rightly forms
part of this agency—is a unit of force, constituting, with other such
units, the general power which works out social changes; and he will
perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost
conviction: leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for
nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and
repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and
beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember
that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future;
and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not
carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider
himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown
Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he
is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief. For, to render
in their highest sense the words of the poet—
——Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.
Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith which
is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing
that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the
world—knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at—well: if
not—well also; though not _so_ well.
-----
Footnote 7:
These extracts are from an article entitled “Nature and God,”
published in the _National Review_ for October, 1860.
PART II.
LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE.
CHAPTER I.
LAWS IN GENERAL.
§ 35. We have seen that intellectual advance has been dual—has been
towards the establishment of both a positively unknown and a positively
known. In making ever more certain the inaccessibility of one kind of
truth, experience has made ever more certain the accessibility of
another kind. The differentiation of the knowable from the unknowable,
is shown as much in the reduction of the one to perfect clearness, as in
the reduction of the other to impenetrable mystery. Progressing
enlightenment discloses a definite limit to human intelligence; and
while all which lies on the other side of the limit, is, with increasing
distinctness, seen to transcend our finite faculties, it grows more and
more obvious that all which lies on this side of the limit may become an
indisputable possession.
To speak specifically—it has been shown that though we can never learn
the _nature_ of that which is manifested to us, we are daily learning
more completely the _order_ of its manifestations. We are conscious of
effects produced in us by something separate from ourselves. The effects
of which we are conscious—the changes of consciousness which make up our
mental life, we ascribe to the forces of an external world. The
intrinsic character of these forces—of this external world—of that which
underlies all appearances, we find inscrutable; as is also the internal
something whose changes constitute consciousness, but at the same time
we find that among the changes of consciousness thus produced, there
exist various constant relations; and we have no choice but to ascribe
constancy to the relations which subsist among the inscrutable causes of
these changes. Observation early discloses certain invariable connexions
of coexistence and sequence among phenomena. Accumulating experiences
tend continually to augment the number of invariable connexions
recognized. When, as in the later stages of civilization, there arises
not only a diligent gathering together of experiences but a critical
comparison of them, more remote and complex connexions are added to the
list. And gradually there grows up the habit of regarding these
uniformities of relation as characterizing all manifestations of the
Unknowable. Under the endless variety and seeming irregularity, there is
ever more clearly discerned that “constant course of procedure” which we
call Law.
The growing belief in the universality of Law, is so conspicuous to all
cultivated minds as scarcely to need illustration. None who read these
pages will ask for proof that this has been the central element of
intellectual progress. But though the fact is sufficiently familiar, the
philosophy of the fact is not so; and it will be desirable now to
consider it. Partly because the development of our conception of Law
will so be rendered more comprehensible; but chiefly because our
subsequent course will thus be facilitated; I propose here to enumerate
the several conditions that determine the order in which the various
relations among phenomena are discovered. Seeing, as we shall, the
consequent necessity of this order; and enabled, as we shall also be, to
estimate the future by inference from the past; we shall perceive how
inevitable is our advance towards the ultimatum that has been indicated.
* * * * *
§ 36. The recognition of Law, being the recognition of uniformity of
relations among phenomena, it follows that the order in which different
groups of phenomena are reduced to law, must depend on the frequency and
distinctness with which the uniform relations they severally present,
are experienced. At any given stage of progress, those uniformities will
be most recognized with which men’s minds have been oftenest and most
strongly impressed. In proportion partly to the number of times a
relation has been presented to consciousness (not merely to the senses);
and in proportion partly to the vividness with which the terms of the
relation have been cognized; will be the degree in which the constancy
of connexion is perceived.
The frequency and impressiveness with which different classes of
relations are repeated in conscious experience, thus primarily
determining the succession in which they are generalized, there result
certain derivative principles to which this succession must more
immediately and obviously conform. First in importance comes _the
directness with which personal welfare is affected_. While, among
surrounding things, many do not appreciably influence the body in any
way, some act detrimentally and some beneficially, in various degrees;
and manifestly, those things whose actions on the organism are most
influential, will, cæteris paribus, be those whose laws of action are
earliest observed. Second in order, is _the conspicuousness of one
or both the phenomena between which a relation is to be perceived_. On
every side are countless phenomena so concealed as to be detected only
by close observation; others not obtrusive enough to attract notice;
others which moderately solicit the attention; others so imposing or
vivid as to force themselves upon consciousness; and supposing
incidental conditions to be the same, these last will of course be among
the first to have their relations generalized. In the third place,
we have _the absolute frequency with which the relations occur_. There
are coexistences and sequences of all degrees of commonness, from those
which are ever present to those which are extremely rare; and it is
clear that the rare coexistences and sequences, as well as the sequences
which are very long in taking place, will not be reduced to law so soon
as those which are familiar and rapid. Fourthly has to be added
_the relative frequency of occurrence_. Many events and appearances are
more or less limited to times and places; and as a relation which does
not exist within the environment of an observer, cannot be cognized by
him, however common it may be elsewhere or in another age, we have to
take account of the surrounding physical circumstances, as well as the
state of society, of the arts, and of the sciences—all of which affect
the frequency with which certain groups of facts are exposed to
observation. The fifth corollary to be noticed, is, that the
succession in which different classes of phenomena are reduced to law,
depends in part on their _simplicity_. Phenomena presenting great
composition of causes or conditions, have their essential relations so
masked, that it requires accumulated experiences to impress upon
consciousness the true connexion of antecedents and consequents they
involve. Hence, other things equal, the progress of generalization will
be from the simple to the complex; and this it is which M. Comte has
wrongly asserted to be the sole regulative principle of the progress.
Sixth, and last, comes _the degree of abstractness_. Concrete
relations are the earliest acquisitions. The colligation of any group of
these into a general relation, which is the first step in abstraction,
necessarily comes later than the discovery of the relations colligated.
The union of a number of these lowest generalizations into a higher and
more abstract generalization, is necessarily subsequent to the formation
of such lowest generalizations. And so on continually, until the highest
and most abstract generalizations have been reached.
These then are the several derivative principles. The frequency and
vividness with which uniform relations are repeated in conscious
experience, determining the recognition of their uniformity; and this
frequency and vividness depending on the above conditions; it follows
that the order in which different classes of facts are generalized, must
depend on the extent to which the above conditions are fulfilled in each
class. Let us mark how the facts harmonize with this conclusion: taking
first a few that elucidate the general truth, and afterwards some that
are illustrative of the several special truths which we here see follow
from it.
* * * * *
§ 37. The relations earliest known as uniformities, are those subsisting
between the common physical properties of matter—tangibility,
visibility, cohesion, weight &c. We have no trace of an era in human
history when the resistance offered by every visible object, was
regarded as caused by the will of the object; or when the pressure of a
body on the hand supporting it, was ascribed to the direct agency of a
living being. And accordingly, we see that these are the relations
oftenest repeated in consciousness; being as they are, objectively
frequent, conspicuous, simple, concrete, and of immediate personal
concern.
Similarly with respect to the ordinary phenomena of motion. The fall of
a mass on the withdrawal of its support, is a sequence which directly
affects bodily welfare, is conspicuous, simple, concrete, and very often
repeated. Hence it is one of the uniformities recognized before the dawn
of tradition. We know of no time when movements due to terrestrial
gravitation were attributed to volition. Only when the relation is
obscured—only, as in the case of an aerolite, where the antecedent of
the descent is unperceived, do we find the fetishistic conception
persistent. On the other hand, motions of intrinsically the same
order as that of a falling stone—those of the heavenly bodies—long
remain ungeneralized; and until their uniformity is seen, are construed
as results of will. This difference is clearly not dependent on
comparative complexity or abstractness; since the motion of a planet in
an ellipse, is as simple and concrete a phenomenon as the motion of a
projected arrow in a parabola. But the antecedents are not conspicuous;
the sequences are of long duration; and they are infrequently repeated.
Hence in a given period, there cannot be the same multiplied experiences
of them. And that this is the chief cause of their slow reduction to
law, we see in the fact that they are severally generalized in the order
of their frequency and conspicuousness—the moon’s monthly cycle, the
sun’s annual change, the periods of the inferior planets, the periods of
the superior planets.
While astronomical sequences were still ascribed to volition, certain
terrestrial sequences of a different kind, but some of them equally
without complication, were interpreted in like manner. The
solidification of water at a low temperature, is a phenomenon that is
simple, concrete, and of much personal concern. But it is neither so
frequent as those which we saw are earliest generalized, nor is the
presence of the antecedent so uniformly conspicuous. Though in all but
tropical climates, mid-winter displays the relation between cold and
freezing with tolerable constancy; yet, during the spring and autumn,
the occasional appearance of ice in the mornings has no very manifest
connexion with coldness of the weather. Sensation being so inaccurate a
measure, it is not possible for the savage to experience the definite
relation between a temperature of 32° and the congealing of water; and
hence the long-continued conception of personal agency. Similarly, but
still more clearly, with the winds. The absence of regularity and the
inconspicuousness of the antecedents, allowed the mythological
explanation to survive for a great period.
During the era in which the uniformity of many quite simple inorganic
relations was still unrecognized, certain classes of organic relations,
intrinsically very complex and special, were generalized. The constant
coexistence of feathers and a beak, of four legs with a bony internal
framework, of a particular leaf with poisonous berries, are facts which
were, and are, familiar to every savage. Did a savage find a bird with
teeth, or a mammal clothed with feathers, he would be as much surprised
as an instructed naturalist; and would probably make a fetish of the
anomalous form: so showing that while the exceptional relation suggested
the notion of a personal cause, the habitual relation did not. Now these
uniformities of organic structure which are so early perceived, are of
exactly the same class as those more numerous ones later established by
biology. The constant coexistence of mammary glands with two occipital
condyles in the skull, of vertebræ with teeth lodged in sockets, of
frontal horns with the habit of rumination, are generalizations as
purely empirical as those known to the aboriginal hunter. The vegetal
physiologist cannot in the least understand the complex relation between
the kind of leaf and the kind of fruit borne by a particular plant: he
knows these and like connexions simply in the same manner that the
barbarian knows them. But the fact that sundry of the uniform relations
which chiefly make up the organic sciences, were very early recognized,
is due to the high degree of vividness and frequency with which they
were presented to consciousness. Though the connexion between the form
of a given creature and the sound it makes, or the quality of its fur,
or the nature of its flesh, is extremely involved; yet the two terms of
the relation are conspicuous; are usually observed in close
juxtaposition in time and space; are so observed perhaps daily, or many
times a day; and above all a knowledge of their connexion has a direct
and obvious bearing on personal welfare. Meanwhile, we see that
innumerable other relations of exactly the same order, which are
displayed with even greater frequency by surrounding plants and animals,
remain for thousands of years unrecognized, if they are unobtrusive or
of no apparent moment.
When, passing from this primitive stage to a more advanced stage, we
trace the discovery of those less familiar uniformities which constitute
what is technically distinguished as Science, we find the order of
discovery to be still determined in the same manner. We shall most
clearly see this in contemplating separately the influence of each
derivative condition; as was proposed in the last section.
* * * * *
§ 38. How relations that have an immediate bearing on the maintenance of
life, are, other things equal, necessarily fixed in the mind before
those which have no such immediate bearing, is abundantly illustrated in
the history of Science. The habits of existing uncivilized races, who
fix times by moons and barter so many of one article for so many of
another, show us that numeration, which is the germ of mathematical
science, commenced under the immediate pressure of personal wants; and
it can scarcely be doubted that those laws of numerical relations which
are embodied in the rules of arithmetic, were first brought to light
through the practice of mercantile exchange. Similarly with Geometry.
The derivation shows us that it originally included only certain methods
of partitioning ground and laying out buildings. The properties of the
scales and the lever, involving the first principle in mechanics, were
early generalized under the stimulus of commercial and architectural
needs. To fix the times of religious festivals and agricultural
operations, were the motives which led to the establishment of the
simpler astronomic periods. Such small knowledge of chemical relations
as was involved in ancient metallurgy, was manifestly obtained in
seeking how to improve tools and weapons. In the alchemy of later times,
we see how greatly an intense hope of private benefit contributed to the
disclosure of a certain class of uniformities. Nor is our own age barren
of illustrations. “Here,” says Humboldt when in Guiana, “as in many
parts of Europe, the sciences are thought worthy to occupy the mind,
only so far as they confer some immediate and practical benefit on
society.” “How is it possible to believe,” said a missionary to him,
“that you have left your country to come and be devoured by mosquitoes
on this river, and to measure lands that are not your own.” Our coasts
furnish like instances. Every sea-side naturalist knows how great is the
contempt with which fishermen regard the collection of objects for the
microscope or aquarium: their incredulity as to the possible value of
such things, being so great, that they can scarcely be induced even by
bribes to preserve the refuse of their nets. Nay, we need not go for
evidence beyond daily table-talk. The demand for “practical science”—for
a knowledge that can be brought to bear on the business of life; joined
to the ridicule commonly vented on pursuits that have no obvious use;
suffice to show that the order in which different coexistences and
sequences are discovered, greatly depends on the directness with which
they affect our welfare.
That, when all other conditions are the same, obtrusive relations will
be generalized before unobtrusive ones, is so nearly a truism that
examples appear almost superfluous. If it be admitted that by the
aboriginal man, as by the child, the co-existent properties of large
surrounding objects are noticed before those of minute objects; and that
the external relations which bodies present are generalized before their
internal ones; it must be admitted that in all subsequent stages of
progress, the comparative conspicuousness of relations has greatly
affected the order in which they were recognized as uniform. Hence it
happened that after the establishment of those very manifest sequences
constituting a lunation, and those less manifest ones marking a year,
and those still less manifest ones marking the planetary periods,
Astronomy occupied itself with such inconspicuous sequences as those
displayed in the repeating cycle of lunar eclipses, and those which
suggested the theory of epicycles and eccentrics; while modern Astronomy
deals with still more inconspicuous sequences: some of which, as the
planetary rotations, are nevertheless the simplest which the heavens
present. In Physics, the early use of canoes implied an empirical
knowledge of certain hydrostatic relations that are intrinsically more
complex than sundry static relations then unknown; but these hydrostatic
relations were thrust upon observation. Or if we compare the solution of
the problem of specific gravity by Archimedes, with the discovery of
atmospheric pressure by Torricelli, (the two involving mechanical
relations of exactly the same kind,) we perceive that the much earlier
occurrence of the first than the last, was determined neither by a
difference in their bearings on personal welfare, nor by a difference in
the frequency with which illustrations of them come under observation,
nor by relative simplicity; but solely by the greater obtrusiveness of
the connexion between antecedent and consequent in the one case than in
the other. Similarly with Chemistry. The burning of wood, the rusting of
iron, the putrefaction of dead bodies, were early known as consequents
uniformly related to certain antecedents; but not until long after was
there reached a like empirical knowledge of the effect produced by air
in the decomposition of soil: a phenomenon of equal simplicity, equal or
greater importance, and greater frequency; but one that is extremely
unobtrusive. Among miscellaneous illustrations, it may be pointed out
that the connexions between lightning and thunder and between rain and
clouds, were established long before others of the same order; simply
because they thrust themselves on the attention. Or the long-delayed
discovery of the microscopic forms of life, with all the phenomena they
present, may be named as very clearly showing how certain groups of
relations that are not ordinarily perceptible, though in all other
respects like long-familiar relations, have to wait until changed
conditions render them perceptible. But, without further details, it
needs only to consider the inquiries which now occupy the electrician,
the chemist, the physiologist, to see that Science has advanced and is
advancing from the more conspicuous phenomena to the less conspicuous
ones.
How the degree of absolute frequency of a relation affects the
recognition of its uniformity, we see in contrasting certain biological
facts. Death and disease are near akin in most of their relations to us;
while in respect of complexity, conspicuousness, and the directness with
which they personally concern us, diseases in general may be put pretty
nearly on a level with each other. But there are great differences in
the times at which the natural sequences they severally exhibit are
recognized as such. The connexion between death and bodily injury,
constantly displayed not only in men but in all inferior creatures, was
known as an established uniformity while yet diseases were thought
supernatural. Among diseases themselves, it is observable that
comparatively unusual ones were regarded as of demoniacal origin during
ages when the more frequent were ascribed to ordinary causes: a truth
paralleled indeed among our own peasantry, who by the use of charms show
a lingering superstition with respect to rare disorders, which they do
not show with respect to common ones, such as colds. Passing to physical
illustrations, we may note that within the historic period, whirlpools
were accounted for by the agency of water-spirits; but we do not find
that within the same period the disappearance of water on exposure
either to the sun or to artificial heat was interpreted in an analogous
way: though a much more marvellous occurrence, and a much more complex
one, its great frequency led to the early establishment of it as a
natural uniformity. Rainbows and comets do not differ greatly in
conspicuousness, and a rainbow is intrinsically the more involved
phenomenon; but chiefly because of their far greater commonness,
rainbows were perceived to have a direct dependence on sun and rain
while yet comets were regarded as supernatural appearances.
That races living inland must long have remained ignorant of the daily
and monthly sequences of the tides, and that intertropical races could
not early have comprehended the phenomena of northern winters, are
extreme illustrations of the influence which relative frequency has on
the recognition of uniformities. Animals which, where they are
indigenous, call forth no surprise by their structure or habits, because
these are so familiar, when taken to a part of the earth where they have
never been seen, are looked at with an astonishment approaching to
awe—are even thought supernatural: a fact which will suggest numerous
others that show how the localization of phenomena, in part controls the
order in which they are reduced to law. Not only however does their
localization in space affect the progression, but also their
localization in time. Facts which are rarely if ever manifested during
one era, are rendered very frequent in another, simply through the
changes wrought by civilization. The lever, of which the properties are
illustrated in the use of sticks and weapons, is vaguely understood by
every savage—on applying it in a certain way he rightly anticipates
certain effects; but the action of the equally simple wedge, which is
not commonly displayed till tool-making has made some progress, is less
early generalized; while the wheel and axle, pulley, and screw, cannot
have their powers either empirically or rationally known till the
advance of the arts has more or less familiarized them. Through those
various means of exploration which we have inherited and are ever
increasing, we have become acquainted with a vast range of chemical
relations that were relatively non-existent to the primitive man: to
highly developed industries we owe both the substances and the apparatus
that have disclosed to us countless uniformities which our ancestors had
no opportunity of seeing, and therefore could not recognize. These and
sundry like instances that will occur to the reader, show that the
accumulated materials, and processes, and appliances, and products,
which characterize the environments of complex societies, greatly
increase the accessibility of various classes of relations; and by so
multiplying the experiences of them, or making them relatively frequent,
facilitate their generalization. To which add, that various classes of
phenomena presented by society itself, as for instance those which
political economy formulates, become relatively frequent and therefore
recognizable in advanced social states; while in less advanced ones they
are too rarely displayed to have their relations perceived, or, as in
the least advanced ones, are not displayed at all.
That, where no other circumstances interfere, the order in which
different uniformities are established varies as their complexity, is
manifest. The geometry of straight lines was understood before the
geometry of curved lines; the properties of the circle before the
properties of the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola; and the equations of
curves of single curvature were ascertained before those of curves of
double curvature. Plane trigonometry comes in order of time and
simplicity before spherical trigonometry; and the mensuration of plane
surfaces and solids before the mensuration of curved surfaces and
solids. Similarly with mechanics: the laws of simple motion were
generalized before those of compound motion; and those of rectilinear
motion before those of curvilinear motion. The properties of equal-armed
levers, or scales, were understood before those of the lever with
unequal arms; and the law of the inclined plane was formulated earlier
than that of the screw, which involves it. In chemistry, the progress
has been from the simple inorganic compounds, to the more involved
organic ones. And where, as in most of the other sciences, the
conditions of the exploration are more complicated, we still may clearly
trace relative complexity as one of the determining circumstances.
The progression from concrete relations to abstract ones, and from the
less abstract to the more abstract, is equally obvious. Numeration,
which in its primary form concerned itself only with groups of actual
objects, came earlier than simple arithmetic: the rules of which deal
with numbers apart from objects. Arithmetic, limited in its sphere to
concrete numerical relations, is alike earlier and less abstract than
Algebra, which deals with the relations of these relations. And in like
manner, the Infinitesimal Calculus comes after Algebra, both in order of
evolution and in order of abstractness. In Astronomy, the progress has
been from special generalizations, each expressing the motions of a
particular planet, to the generalizations of Kepler, expressing the
motions of the planets at large; and then to Newton’s generalization,
expressing the motions of all heavenly bodies whatever. Similarly with
Physics, Chemistry and Biology, there has ever been an advance from the
relations of particular facts and particular classes of facts, to the
relations presented by still wider classes—to truths of a high
generality or greater abstractness.
Brief and rude as is this sketch of a mental development that has been
long and complicated, it fulfils its end if it displays the several
conditions that have regulated the course of the development. I venture
to think it shows inductively, what was deductively inferred, that the
order in which separate groups of uniformities are recognized, depends
not on one circumstance but on several circumstances. A survey of the
facts makes it manifest that the various classes of relations are
generalized in a certain succession, not solely because of one
particular kind of difference in their natures; but also because they
are variously placed with respect to time, space, other relations, and
our own constitutions: our perception of them being influenced by all
these conditions in endless combinations. The comparative degrees of
importance, of obtrusiveness, of absolute frequency, of relative
frequency, of simplicity, of concreteness, are every one of them
factors; and from their union in proportions that are more or less
different in every case, there results a highly complex process of
mental evolution. But while it thus becomes manifest that the proximate
causes of the succession in which relations are reduced to law, are
numerous and involved; it also becomes manifest that there is one
ultimate cause to which these proximate ones are subordinate. As the
several circumstances that determine the early or late recognition of
uniformities, are circumstances that determine the number and strength
of the impressions which these uniformities make on the mind; it follows
that the progression conforms to a certain fundamental principle of
psychology. We see _à posteriori_, what we concluded _à priori_, that
the order in which relations are generalized, depends on the frequency
and impressiveness with which they are repeated in conscious experience.
* * * * *
§ 39. And now to observe the bearings of these truths on our general
argument. Having roughly analyzed the progress of the past, let us take
advantage of the light thus thrown on the present, and consider what is
implied respecting the future.
Note first that the likelihood of the universality of Law, has been ever
growing greater. Out of the countless coexistences and sequences with
which mankind are environed, they have been continually transferring
some from the group whose order was supposed to be arbitrary, to the
group whose order is known to be uniform. Age by age, the number of
recognized connexions of phenomena has been increasing; and that of
unrecognized connexions decreasing. And manifestly, as fast as the class
of ungeneralized relations becomes smaller, the probability that among
them there may be some that do not conform to law, becomes less. To put
the argument numerically—It is clear that when out of surrounding
phenomena a hundred of several kinds have been found to occur in
constant connexions, there arises a slight presumption that all
phenomena occur in constant connexions. When uniformity has been
established in a thousand cases, more varied in their kinds, the
presumption gains strength. And when the established cases of uniformity
mount to myriads, including many of each variety, it becomes an ordinary
induction that uniformity exists everywhere. Just as from the numerous
observed cases in which heavenly bodies have been found to move in
harmony with the law of gravitation, it is inferred that all heavenly
bodies move in harmony with the law of gravitation; so, from the
innumerable observed cases in which phenomena are found to stand in
invariable connexions, it is inferred that in all cases phenomena stand
in invariable connexions.
Silently and insensibly their experiences have been pressing men on
towards the conclusion thus drawn. Not out of a conscious regard for
these abstract reasons, but from a habit of thought which these abstract
reasons formulate and justify, all minds have been advancing towards a
belief in the constancy of surrounding coexistences and sequences.
Familiarity with special uniformities, has generated the abstract
conception of uniformity—the idea of _Law_; and this idea has been in
successive generations slowly gaining fixity and clearness. Especially
has it been thus among those whose knowledge of natural phenomena is the
most extensive—men of science. The Mathematician, the Physicist, the
Astronomer, the Chemist, severally acquainted with the vast
accumulations of uniformities established by their predecessors, and
themselves daily adding new ones as well as verifying the old, acquire a
far stronger faith in Law than is ordinarily possessed. With them this
faith, ceasing to be merely passive, becomes an active stimulus to
inquiry. Wherever there exist phenomena of which the dependence is not
yet ascertained, these most cultivated intellects, impelled by the
conviction that here too there is some invariable connexion, proceed to
observe, compare, and experiment; and when they discover the law to
which the phenomena conform, as they eventually do, their general belief
in the universality of law is further strengthened. So overwhelming is
the evidence, and such the effect of this discipline, that to the
advanced student of nature, the proposition that there are lawless
phenomena, has become not only incredible but almost inconceivable.
Hence we may see how inevitably there must spread among mankind at
large, this habitual recognition of law which already distinguishes
modern thought from ancient thought. Not only is it that each conquest
of generalization over a region of fact hitherto ungeneralized, and each
merging of lower generalizations in a higher one, adds to the
distinctness of this recognition among those immediately concerned—not
only is it that the fulfilment of the predictions made possible by every
new step, and the further command so gained of nature’s forces, prove to
the uninitiated the validity of these generalizations and the doctrine
they illustrate; but it is that widening education is daily diffusing
among the mass of men, that knowledge of generalizations which has been
hitherto confined to the few. And as fast as this diffusion goes on,
must the belief of the scientific become the belief of the world at
large. The simple accumulation of instances, must inevitably establish
in the general mind, a conviction of the universality of law; even were
the influence of this accumulation to be aided by no other.
* * * * *
§ 40. But it will be aided by another. From the evidence above set
forth, it may be inferred that a secondary influence will by and by
enforce this primary one. That law is universal, will become an
irresistible conclusion when it is perceived that _the progress in the
discovery of laws itself conforms to law_; and when it is hence
understood why certain groups of phenomena have been reduced to law,
while other groups are still unreduced. When it is seen that the order
in which uniformities are recognized, must depend upon the frequency and
vividness with which they are repeated in conscious experience; when it
is seen that, as a matter of fact, the most common, important,
conspicuous, concrete and simple uniformities were the earliest
recognized, because they were experienced oftenest and most distinctly;
when it is further seen that from the beginning the advance has been to
the recognition of uniformities which, from one or other circumstance,
were less often experienced; it will by implication be seen that long
after the great mass of phenomena have been generalized, there must
remain phenomena which, from their rareness, or unobtrusiveness, or
seeming unimportance, or complexity, or abstractness, are still
ungeneralized. Thus will be furnished a solution to a difficulty
sometimes raised. When it is asked why the universality of law is not
already fully established, there will be the answer that the directions
in which it is not yet established are those in which its establishment
must necessarily be latest. That state of things which is inferable
beforehand, is just the state which we find to exist. If such
coexistences and sequences as those of Biology and Sociology are not yet
reduced to law, the presumption is not that they are irreducible to law,
but that their laws elude our present means of analysis. Having long ago
proved uniformity throughout all the lower classes of relations; and
having been step by step proving uniformity throughout classes of
relations successively higher and higher; if we have not at present
succeeded with the highest classes, it may be fairly concluded that our
powers are at fault, rather than that the uniformity does not exist. And
unless we make the absurd assumption that the process of generalization,
now going on with unexampled rapidity, has reached its limit, and will
suddenly cease, we must infer that ultimately mankind will discover a
constant order of manifestation even in the most involved, obscure, and
abstract phenomena.
* * * * *
§ 41. Not even yet, however, have we exhausted the evidence. The
foregoing arguments have to be merged in another, still more cogent,
which fuses all fragmentary proofs into one general proof.
Thus far we have spoken of laws that are more or less special; and from
the still-continuing disclosure of special laws, each formulating some
new class of phenomena, have inferred that eventually all classes of
phenomena will be formulated. If, now, we find that there are laws of
far higher generality, to which those constituting the body of Science
are subordinate; the fact must greatly strengthen the proof that Law is
universal. If, underneath different groups of concrete phenomena,
Mechanical, Chemical, Thermal, Electric, &c., we discern certain
uniformities of action common to them all; we have a new and weighty
reason for believing that uniformity of action pervades the whole of
nature. And if we also see that these most general laws hold not only of
the inorganic but of the organic worlds—if we see that the phenomena of
Life, of Mind, of Society, whose special laws are yet unestablished,
nevertheless conform to these most general laws; the proof of the
universality of Law amounts to demonstration.
That there are laws of this transcendant generality, has now to be
shown. To specify and illustrate them, will be the purpose of the
succeeding chapters. And while, in contemplating them, we shall perceive
how irresistible is the conclusion that the workings of the Unknowable
are distinguished from those of finite agents by their absolute
uniformity; we shall at the same time familiarize ourselves with those
primary facts through which all other facts are to be interpreted.