pith of the doctrine of liberty, fraternity, and equality. It may be
regarded as an obvious logical canon, converted by an illegitimate
process into a statement of fact. If I make any general statement
whatever about men or beasts or stones, I, of course, assume that there
is a corresponding class of things in respect of each of which the
proposition is equally true. As soon as I say anything, therefore, about
morality or politics, which is intended to be true of men in general, I
assume, in this sense, that men are so far equal that something may be
predicated, indifferently, of every member of the class man. It is very
natural and easy to convert this into the proposition that the concrete
men of whom I am speaking are, in some sense, actually equal. In doing
so, however, I am either making a false statement, or begging the
question. As a matter of fact, men are, in many respects, as far as
possible from being equal. The real question, therefore, is whether the
inequalities which undoubtedly exist are or are not relevant to the
political inequalities which I have to consider. As a matter of fact,
the inequalities which were challenged by the revolutionary writers
were, as I think, and as most of us think, entirely unjustifiable. At
any rate, they had, as a matter of fact, produced widespread discontent
and bitter antipathies between classes. It was the existence of these
antipathies to which the outbreak was due. The peasant, for example,
felt that he was forced to give up the fruit of his labour to the noble,
and that the noble was discharging no duty to justify his demands. The
peasant, probably, could not read; he was unaware that Rousseau or
Voltaire was laying down principles which would cover his case; he had
never even heard of philosopher or philosophy; only, when the time was
ripe, when the upper orders had become useless, and the lower classes
had accumulated a sufficient quantity of passion, of indignant or
vindictive feeling, an outraged sense of justice, the crash came, and
any formula which would cover the particular case was acceptable. The
doctrine then made its fortune; not because it was true, or because it
was demonstrable, but because it gave the shortest and simplest
expression to the prevailing sentiment. The philosophical dogma, which
had been lying idle for generations, doing no particular harm or good,
was, suddenly, converted into a war-cry, the more effective because the
real vagueness and uncertainty of its application enabled those who used
it to save themselves the trouble of thinking or arguing. Instead of
substituting particular grievances, and showing that this or that
inequality in general was useless and objectionable, they could, in half
a dozen words, denounce all inequality, and be perfectly satisfied with
a formula which was imposing for its generality, though true only in its
particular application.
I take this familiar case, not only as familiar, but because it seems to
me to be typical. Similar general remarks might, I fancy, be made about
any of the great religious movements which have, undoubtedly, most
profoundly affected human society. They are not due to the philosophers;
to the abstract meditations of refined thinkers upon ultimate
principles; but to great underlying social changes. Our Christian
apologists of the last century held the quaint belief that a new creed
was caused by the occurrence of certain miraculous facts, susceptible of
legal proof. It is sufficiently obvious to us that this is to invert the
process. Given the faith, and there is never any difficulty in supplying
the miracles. No quantity of assertions as to miraculous events would
have the slightest effect, unless there were a predisposition to accept
them. The same answer applies to the theory that a new religion owes its
success to the discovery of new moral truths. In the first place, there
are, properly speaking, no sudden discoveries in morality; and in the
next place, the mere statement of a moral doctrine, and even the
presentation of a lofty moral type, can have little importance unless
the soil is already prepared, and the doctrine is but the overt
utterance of the sentiments which are seeking for expression. The only
explanation that we can give of such events is the social explanation.
There are periods, that is in history, when the old order is out of
joint; when society has outgrown the institutions which were adequate at
a previous stage, and when, therefore, the beliefs associated with them
become oppressive, and can no longer pass without challenge; when
different races and nations have been brought into collision or
combination, and crushed together into new forms by conquest and
commerce; when, therefore, the several creeds are no longer supported by
the patriotism which has ceased to have a meaning; when a vast amalgam
of different faiths and modes of life has been formed out of many
heterogeneous elements; and thus a need is created for some wider and
more comprehensive system of belief corresponding to the general needs
of society. In that case the influence of the philosopher may be of some
importance, because he can do something towards suggesting the most
workable compromise, and of exposing superstitions which have lost their
old support, and the instinctive loyalty of their adherents. Even then
his voice will not be predominant. The creed will survive which is most
suited to the state of the average intellect; it will include a large
element of the ancient modes of thought, which still insist upon
finding some satisfaction, and which, indeed, have a strange vitality
beneath the surface, even when explicitly disavowed by the official
interpreters of the faith.
Now, if this be accepted as a rough sketch of the actual course of the
development of belief, what is the conclusion as to the philosopher's
function? Does it go to suggest that philosophy is but a vanity and
vexation of spirit, and does it reduce the philosopher to a humbler
position than is sometimes claimed for him? My answer would be, in the
first place, that the case against philosophy would have to be frankly
admitted if the criterion sometimes tacitly suggested be the true one.
Nothing could be more hopeless than the claim of any philosophy whatever
to have laid down a definitively satisfactory plan of things in general.
When Mr. Balfour observes that an Aristotle or Aquinas or Descartes has
not laid down a tenable theory of the universe, I can only add that the
very phrase--theory of the universe--conveys a sufficient refutation. It
is idle, or worse than idle, to imagine that we can lay down, or even
hope to lay down, anything of the kind. It needs only one of those
glances into the surrounding infinities which I have suggested, or the
briefest survey of the history of philosophy, to reveal the sheer
impossibility of the attempt. No one, perhaps, ever quite imagined that
his speculation could really lay bare the ultimate ground plan of things
in general. But, certainly, philosophers have, at times, thought, or
spoken as if they thought, that they could construct a body of first
principles which should be to knowledge in general what a science is to
some particular application,--the general theory of physics, for
example, to astronomy. Philosophy would then be a system of such
ultimate principles. The day for such systems has, I think, passed. We
have learnt that it is for ever impossible to spin real knowledge out of
pure logic. What the universe, or the little bit of it that we know,
actually is, can only be learnt by experience; and if experience
presupposes categories or forms of intuition, still, without experience,
they remain empty; as incapable of producing truth as a mill of grinding
flour without corn. Philosophers must admit that on such terms we get
only "brain cobwebs"; ingenious feats of intellectual legerdemain, where
the operator shows his skill by dexterously hiding away his assumptions,
and bringing them out at the end as triumphantly demonstrated
conclusions. The more modest ideal, which is now presented to us, is
what is called the unification of knowledge. That means, no doubt, that
we have to bring our theories into harmony and consistency; to get rid
of the hypothetical and conjectural elements which have intruded
themselves from earlier and cruder speculation; and so to analyse the
primary factors of thought and the most general conceptions, that we may
not have to assume in one relation what we dispute in another. Even this
process is, no doubt, exceedingly difficult; it is difficult partly
because the human mind has, generally speaking, to begin at the wrong
end; to proceed upon postulates which break down here and there and
leave inconvenient fragments remaining elsewhere; partly because some
philosophers are still open to the charge that they raise a dust and
then complain that they cannot see; and, briefly, because, in one way or
other, what with the dulness of the ordinary mind and what with the
over-subtlety of the acute, our thoughts and beliefs have got into
intricate tangles, which will require enormous patience and judgment to
wind off and weave into a satisfactory tissue. Genuine philosophers,
doubtless, will learn in time how to set about the work. It will
probably strike them that instead of evolving pretentious systems of
theology, and ethics, and politics, and art, each purporting to give an
exhaustive theory of the subject, and each destined to melt away,
leaving some infinitesimal residuum of real suggestion, they will have
to follow a slower method of gradual and tentative investigation. If
so, we must undoubtedly assign to philosophy a more modest position than
has sometimes been claimed for it. It must resign its claim to a vision
of transcendental realities, to a knowledge of things in themselves, and
of the ultimate groundwork of the universe. It has not, I hold, a
subject-matter peculiar to itself; it reveals no principles belonging to
a separate sphere of thought; it corresponds simply to the attempt to
correct and harmonise the cruder thoughts of the average human being,
and to state explicitly in their purity the principles which have been
all along implicitly involved in his ordinary observations. It is,
therefore, not a substantive, but an adjective; philosophy is not a
distinct department of thought, and cannot be defined by itself. All we
can say is, that we think philosophically in so far as we think rightly.
When our mode of conceiving the world includes no heterogeneous or
conflicting element, we shall be philosophers; but we shall not, in that
capacity, have a separate dominion of our own.
Now, it will probably do no harm to philosophers more than to other men,
to be impressed with a sense of modesty and a right appreciation of the
necessary limitations of their enterprise. You have been trying to soar
beyond the atmosphere, and you will make the better use of your wings
when you learn that they won't support you in a vacuum. Your failure is
not due to the want of aquiline powers of flight, but to the melancholy
truth that even an eagle can't do much in an air-pump. Is not that a
rather consoling reflection? But here the philosopher begins to be
recalcitrant. You are not lowering my pretensions, he says, but
attacking the power of man to attain truth upon any terms. All that is
given to us in experience is the effect of underlying causes; if the
causes vary the effects would vary; and, unless, therefore, you can get
back to the cause, your knowledge must remain empirical and radically
uncertain. Destroy all transcendental truths, and the phenomenal world
itself becomes a mere shifting phantasmagoria, on which we can trace
only coincidences and sequences, but are entirely unable to say that
they will ever recur again. The argument, of course, raises the
recollection of library upon library of controversy. I can only touch
one point. Practically, we do not trouble ourselves about this
difficulty. We are quite convinced that we know a great many things: we
are sure that the sun will rise and set to-morrow; we have no doubt as
to the properties of the ordinary objects, of trees and stones and
steam-engines; every action of our lives implies a certain confidence in
what is called the uniformity of nature; and it is plain enough that
even if our knowledge be, in some sense, only a knowledge of
probabilities, yet, from its effect upon conduct, it may be exactly the
same as a knowledge of certainties. There may be an indefinite distance
between the "necessary truth" that two and two make four and the
empirical truth that a stone will fall; but if all the evidence
attainable goes to prove that the stone will fall, I should be as
foolish not to act upon that hypothesis as not to assume the truth of
the arithmetical formula. Now, it is, of course, the growth within
recent generations of vast systems of such truths which has alarmed the
philosopher. He contrasts his own fluctuating and conflicting dogmas
with the steady growth and assured results and mutual confirmation of
the established physical sciences. He fears that they will obtain a
prestige which will enable them to crush him and sweep his pretended
knowledge into the limbo of alchemy and astrology and scholastic
logomachy. Here comes in the argument which is really the keystone of
Mr. Balfour's whole theory; and, as I cannot accept it, I must dwell
upon its true nature. It looks, at first sight, like a retort upon the
men of science. Your knowledge, he seems to say, is as vain as your
antagonist's. Your physics, and astronomy, and chemistry, and physiology
are mere empty shows, like the metaphysical theories that have gone to
their long home in histories of philosophy. But to say this would be to
accept complete scepticism, and a kind of scepticism which Mr. Balfour
would, I am sure, disavow. He believes, of course, just as strongly as
any one of us believes, in the astronomical theories of Newton and
Laplace; or in the mathematical theories of the great physical sciences.
That in which he disbelieves is a kind of bastard science called
"naturalism," which, as he tells us, leads to contradictory or
incoherent results. The naturalist, it appears, proposes to confine
himself to the evidence of the senses, and ends by accepting a view of
the world entirely inconsistent with the sensible perceptions. I see a
green field: an object which has visual and other properties recognised
by my organs of sense. No, says this misguided naturalist, you do not
see what you suppose; what really happens is, that there is a vast
whirlpool of atoms impinging upon each other and setting up vibrations,
the last set of which is communicated to another set of atoms, called my
optic nerve. These atoms, by their very nature imperceptible to the
senses, are the only realities. We thus start from the senses and we get
a world beyond the senses, a world which is a mere dance of infinite
multitudes of bits of matter performing all manner of extraordinary
gyrations and evolutions. The sensible impressions of colour, sound, and
so forth, are mere illusions, somehow arising in a figment called the
mind. This mind is a mere phantom--an unreal spectator of things and
events, among which it has no place, and upon which it exercises no
influence.
Now, let me say first that I agree with Mr. Balfour that the doctrine
thus imputed to the "naturalist" is absurd. I do not believe, for I
cannot believe, that I am only a dance of atoms. I "cannot" believe, I
say, for the words are to me meaningless. My sensations and emotions are
to me the typical realities. I cannot doubt the real existence of pain
and pleasure, grief and joy, whatever else I may doubt. I believe, for
example, that my toothache is a reality; and nobody will ever persuade
me that it is merely a set of molecular changes in my tooth. That it, in
some way, is dependent upon such changes I fully believe; but that is
quite a different statement. And, secondly, I agree with Mr. Balfour (or
with what I take to be Mr. Balfour's belief) that the scientific
doctrines which are reached by help of these atoms are established
truths. I believe those doctrines, not because I am convinced by the
arguments, which I may not have examined or be capable of examining; nor
simply because I trust, though I do trust, in the ability and the
candour of the scientific reasoners; but because the doctrines can be
and have been independently verified. I believe, that is, in modern
astronomy because it has enabled modern astronomers to predict eclipses,
and enabled Adams and Leverrier to discover Neptune. That is the
conclusive proof; for it is impossible to suppose that the power of
prediction should be a result of erroneous belief, and such proofs are
verifiable by anybody who can observe the phenomena.
Here, then, we have the difficulty, the difficulty upon which the whole
of Mr. Balfour's argument depends. Solve it, and the whole sceptical
argument crumbles. The naturalistic theory, we both say, is incredible.
The scientific doctrines based upon it are, as we both admit,
unassailable. How is this? I reply, first, because the atoms represent
nothing more than a logical scaffolding which enables us to infer one
set of sensible phenomena from another. We start from phenomena and we
end with phenomena. When we have discovered the so-called "law"--the
connecting formula--we can remove the hypothesis as the engineer can
remove the provisional supports when he has once got the keystone into
his arch. That this is so appears, I think, from the whole scientific
procedure. How is the atomic theory obtained? Not by any direct
observation of atoms themselves. They are, as Mr. Balfour says, not only
not objects of observation, but incapable by their nature of ever being
directly observed. The man of science begins by saying, _if_ the
phenomena of light correspond in some way to a vibration of atoms, the
atoms must vibrate in such and such ways. He finds, again, that the laws
so discovered will give the law of other phenomena of light; and he
argues quite correctly that his hypothesis is for his purpose verified.
That is, it has enabled him to discover a verifiable and verified
formula. In order to do this he has assumed from the very first the
theory which of course appears in his conclusions. All physical science
consists ultimately in giving definite formulae in terms of space and
time. It is therefore assumed that the atoms are to have no qualities
except those which are definable in terms of space. We exclude any other
quality because our whole purpose is to obtain purely geometrical
measurements. We have asked how those atoms, infinitesimal bits, so to
speak, of solid space, arranged in certain positions, must move in order
to correspond to the law given by observation, and we have therefore, of
course, predetermined that our answer must come out in terms of atoms.
But, now, what is the error of the "naturalist"? Simply that he has
converted the scientific doctrine into an ontological doctrine. He
really knows nothing, and cannot possibly know anything, about his
atoms, except just this, that they give the law of the phenomena. He
has nothing whatever to say to them in any other relation. If he
proceeds, as Mr. Balfour says that he proceeds, to declare that nothing
exists except atoms, that they are the ultimate realities, that they are
"things in themselves," or objects independent of any subject, he is
going beyond his tether, passing from science to transcendental
metaphysics, and getting into hopeless confusion. In fact, after he has
done his worst we may still follow Berkeley and deny the existence of
matter, or declare with Clifford that atoms are only bits of mindstuff,
or adopt any other metaphysical theory we please. The atoms at most are
things which we judge from the analogy of the senses; and it is a pure
illusion to suppose that they can ever take us into an extra-sensible
world. They represent not only a convenient but an indispensable
contrivance for enabling us to formulate scientific laws, such as those
of light and heat; but they take us no further.
In a remarkable passage, Mr. Balfour sketches an analogy, which gives
the application of this to philosophical or theological questions; and I
will venture to give my own interpretation of the argument because it
seems to lead to the real point. We believe, he says, in a scientific
theory of heat, although our view of the "realities" has changed. People
once thought that heat was a substance. They now hold it to be a mode
of motion. Yet our "scientific faith" (our faith, I suppose, that things
are hot, and that their heat varies according to certain assigned laws)
remains unaffected. On the other hand, he says, if we cease to believe
in the Christian doctrine of the atonement, we cease also to have that
"sense of reconciliation" between God and man which the doctrine was
intended to explain. This he seems to regard as a kind of melancholy
paradox. Why is the scepticism harmless in science and fatal in
theology? First, what are the admitted facts? A man of science propounds
a theory of heat. If his theory does not give us the observed laws, we
reject it and adopt a more successful theory. In any case, we, of
course, continue to believe in heat. We may know facts without knowing
their causes; as, for example, the fact of gravitation, which is not the
less certain because it is at present an ultimate fact. Otherwise our
knowledge would be limited indeed; for even if the cause (in the
scientific sense) were given, we should still have to ask, what is the
cause of that cause? If heat is due to certain systems of atoms, we
might still inquire how the atoms came to occupy their places, and
possess the properties which they actually have. An effect "depends
upon" a cause, as we naturally say; but it does not follow that the
knowledge of the effect depends upon the knowledge of the cause. Now,
what are the facts which correspond to the facts of heat in the theory
of the atonement? If we believe in a certain being, an anthropomorphic
deity, who will punish us or reward us, it is, of course, obvious that
if we cease to believe in him we shall cease to desire to be reconciled
to him. So if I believed that the warmth of my house depended upon a
fire next door, and then discovered that no such fire existed, I should
of course cease to care about lighting it. In this there is nothing
which wants explanation. I suppose, therefore, that what Mr. Balfour
means is, that if men have certain emotions,--remorse, for example, or
what is called a conviction of sin,--and then learn to reject the theory
by which these emotions were explained, they cease also to feel the
emotions. In fact, he emphatically accepts the view that, if we cease to
accept theology, we shall cease to be moral. The perversity of a few
wretched "naturalists" in continuing to be moral is explained as a case
of survival; the moral naturalist is the parasite who draws his
sustenance from the organism which he infests. Let us consider the
scientific analogy. I believe in heat, and I accept a scientific theory
just as far as it gives me verified laws of heat. I believe, too, in the
existence of conscience; that is, I believe that people have real
emotions, such as remorse and shame, which correspond to the name. I
hold that to be a fact of experience. It would have to be explained,
again, so far as explanation is possible, by psychology in the first
instance, as heat must be explained by scientific theories. Remorse is a
fact, as heat is a fact; and an explanation would consist in giving
accurately its place in the moral organism and the laws of its
operation. The explanation furnished by any given psychology, by
"association," for example, must be accepted or rejected in so far as it
explains or fails to explain the facts. If some theory about spiritual
"monads" enabled us to show what the conscience is, and how it is, in
fact, stimulated or suppressed, we should accept it in the same way as
we accept the physical theory of heat. As yet, I need hardly say, no
such result has been achieved; and psychology is still far too vague to
offer any definite laws of the emotional nature. But in any case, how
can a theory about facts make the facts themselves vanish? Would not
grief be real just as pain would be real if we could clearly explain how
and why it occurred? Why should the "sense of reconciliation" vanish
because we show the conditions of its existence? The reason of Mr.
Balfour's difficulty, I think, appears from what I have said. In the
physical theory we can draw the line clearly between the scientific and
the philosophical spheres. Mr. Balfour can accept the scientific truth,
though he does not accept the doctrine which results from translating it
into ontology. But the boundary between psychology and philosophy is far
less distinct. We constantly confound questions about the constitution
of man, as known to us by experience, with questions about supposed
intuitions of ultimate truth. The fact that sin causes remorse is
interpreted as meaning that remorse actually is a knowledge of an
avenging deity; and when the emotion is thus identified with the belief,
it becomes easy to suppose that to destroy the belief is also to destroy
the emotion. I think, indeed, that fallacies of that kind are among the
commonest in philosophical writings. Now, of course, psychology has
something to say in this matter. It may help, and I think that it has
helped us to explain how men come to believe in anthropomorphic deities,
and to invest them with the attributes of human rulers. But in that way
it tends to show not that the conscience is caused by the belief, but to
show how, under certain conditions, it has given rise to a belief by
other than logical grounds. It suggests no probability that the
conscience will disappear with the fallacy, but only that it will act
differently when enlightened by a different logic. Conscience
disappears no more than heat disappears, when both are explained; though
the conduct which the emotions or the sensations determine will, of
course, be affected.