Innumerable writers at the end of the
nineteenth century have reviewed the changes
which in the last fifty years have come over the
civilised world. The record indeed is admitted on
all hands to be marvellous. Steam, electricity,
machinery, and all the practical inventions of applied
science have added enormously to the material
wealth, comfort, and luxury of mankind. Intellectually,
the bounds of pure science have been vastly
enlarged; and the blessings of education have been
extended to the poorest members of the community.
Philanthropic and religious activity manifests itself
in a thousand different organisations. We are never
tired of repeating, that changes which in the first
half of the century would have been pronounced
impossible and incredible, at the end of the century
are accomplished facts.
But amongst all these changes one is almost
universally overlooked, and that the most characteristic,
the most remarkable, and the most important:
the face of civilisation has come to be illumined by
hope. Great as is the progress of the last fifty years,
we count it as nothing compared with that which is
in store for us. To the discoveries of science it is
felt that no bounds can be set; what a day may
bring forth in the way of the extension of man's
control over the forces of Nature, what secrets of
Nature the chemist in his laboratory may light
upon at any moment, no man can surmise, but
everyone is confident that things will be discovered
as marvellous to us now as the telegraph and
telephone to our predecessors of the pre-scientific
age. In the treatment of political and social
questions the same deep-seated conviction prevails
that progress can and will be made: the conditions
and causes of poverty can be ascertained by patient
study, and when ascertained can be dealt with.
The laws of physical health and cleanliness have
not refused to reveal themselves, nor are moral
health and cleanliness without their laws. In fine,
if the best energy of the age is everywhere devoted
to the increase of knowledge, the advancement of
morality, and the diffusion of comfort, it is because
everywhere there is hope. In the social as in the
individual organism hope raises the tide of life,
increases vitality, and stimulates the system. Hence
this general discharge throughout the nervous system
of society, manifesting itself in the vigour and
energy with which all schemes for improvement
are taken up and carried out. That discoveries
will be made and progress effected is as certain as
that gold is to be found in a goldfield; the only
practical question is, By whom? Who is to be the
lucky man?
To us who have witnessed the advance which
has given rise to this universal hope, the hope itself
seems so reasonable and so justifiable that we are
apt to overlook the fact that it is without parallel
in the history of mankind. Never, of course, has
any generation of men imagined its own lot perfect;
all have had their ideals, and all have believed
their ideals to be true. But whereas we place the
realisation of our ideals in the future, all previous
generations have placed it in the past: the Golden
Age till now has always been regarded as the
starting-point of man's history, not its goal. All
races have looked back with pride upon a heroic
past; all mythologies tell of the better and brighter
lot that was in the beginning man's; all poets sing
of the brave days of old; all fairy tales begin with
"once upon a time." The historians of Greece and
Rome discovered no progress in the history of their
countries, but only degeneration from the patriotism
and simplicity of earlier times, or at best a series
of changes making its round like the circle of the
year's seasons. The philosophers of Greece are
mainly occupied, when they deal with sociological
questions, with the causes of corruption and decay
of constitutions; and, if they frame ideal constitutions,
they intend them to be final; they do not
imagine them to have any possibility of growth.
In modern times the same tendency has been equally
manifest. Political revolutions have always aimed,
not at introducing a new, but at restoring an old
state of things: the actors in the French Revolution
even dressed and posed as ancient Greeks and
Romans. In philosophy, civilisation, as being artificial,
has been regarded as a degeneration from a
"natural" state of man which was at once primitive
and perfect.
In the individual, optimism may be dismissed as
a mere mood, or as a tendency to cheerfulness not
based on any rational estimate either of the future
or of the past. But when a whole generation of
men, when, indeed, the whole civilised world, looks
to the future, not with careless levity, but with the
calm assurance of confidence in the progress that
is and is to be, we cannot dismiss its optimism offhand.
Astonishing as it is, that the world as it grows
older should grow more hopeful, there are good
reasons for the fact.
The child's estimates of distance, magnitude, and
importance differ from those of the adult. The
estimates, however, persist in memory, and we have
all discovered, on revisiting familiar scenes of childhood,
how exaggerated our childish estimates were
when compared with the actual facts. It is this
exaggeration of memory, this illusion of the mind's
eye, that psychologically is the foundation of the
tendency to idealise the past. To us as children
the exploits of our elders were marvellous in our
eyes; and they remain as marvels in the memory,
as marvels, however, which, as all marvels do, belong
to the past. The past becomes the wonderland in
which were performed the great deeds, not only
of our fathers' time, but of the old times before
them. The past becomes the poet's treasury, from
which he produces things new and old—the abiding-place
of all things good and great and beautiful which
are not, but ought to be, and therefore once were.
To measure progress, as indeed to measure any
movement and determine its rate and direction, some
fixed points are necessary. As long, therefore, as
there is no contemporaneous record of events, fixed
in writing, there is no possibility of checking the
laudator temporis acti and of reducing the unconscious
exaggerations of his memory to their due proportions.
But even if there were, in the lowest stages
of culture the rate of progress is too slow to be
perceptible at the time. In the beginning man is
at the mercy of his environment: it is only when
he has learnt to modify it to his needs that progress
begins to move. And by the time that man has
passed from savagery to barbarism, and has emerged
from barbarism to civilisation, the conviction that the
present and the actual are things of naught as compared
with the ideal past, is too intimately inwrought
with his religion, his mythology, his philosophy, and
the accepted history of his race and its heroic origin
to allow him to see facts as they are, or to divine
the true trend of human affairs. Further, there is
a very practical reason for his looking with suspicion
and not with confidence on social changes. It is
only as the result of a long course of slow evolution
that society has attained to a condition of fairly stable
equilibrium. In the beginning society may be compared
to a man hanging on for bare life, with a
precarious foothold, to the face of a sheer cliff:
when the least movement may prove fatal, all movement
is dreaded. Thus the characteristic of all
early societies is that they are impeded by "the cake
of custom" and rigid with the immobility of conservatism.
To those who hold that experience mechanically
impresses itself upon the mind and so automatically
expresses itself as truth, it must appear somewhat
strange that mankind should have advanced for
thousands of years without knowing that they had
progressed; and still more strange that it was not
as an induction from experience, but on a priori
grounds that they arrived at the conclusion. Yet
so it was. The mere contemplation of the rise and
fall of empires no more suggested the presence and
persistence of a constant tendency to progress than
the mountainous wave which threatens to engulf
the ship suggests that the sea-level is a scientific
truth. But when Darwin established his theory that
man was descended from the brute, all was clear:
it became certain a priori that the long history and
"pre-history" of man must have been one of progress
and advance. When the descent of man was established,
his ascent came to be studied, and human
evolution was seen to be synonymous with progress.
Savages were seen to be the nearest existing representatives
of primitive man, and there was an end to
the idea that the primitive state was perfection. The
comparative method, once applied to the study of
mankind, was able to set side by side examples of
savagery, barbarism, and civilisation, which illustrated
every step in the process of the evolution
of society, and showed that, though the forms of
society may fluctuate as do the waves of the sea,
society itself is steady in its advance and progressive
in its evolution. This conclusion, which at first was
a deduction drawn from the animal descent of man,
has now the independent support of an enormous
amount of evidence. The existence of a Stone Age,
palæolithic and neolithic, of a Bronze Age and an
Iron Age, and the succession of those ages in the
order named, are established facts of science. That
the culture of nomad peoples is lower than that
of pastoral tribes; that pastoral tribes advance in
culture when they become agricultural; that agriculture,
implying settled habits and fixed homes,
leads to the foundation of cities and the formation
of civic life; that the city-states of the ancient world
give way to the nation-states of modern times: are
all accepted facts, bridging the apparent chasm
between civilisation and savagery, and demonstrating
the action of the law of continuity in the evolution
of society.
But, it will be observed, all these facts and arguments
taken together only prove what has been—not
what will be. They show that from a level little
higher than the brute man has attained to what he
is; but is this enough to guarantee his continuous
rise? In other words, have we reached the real
source of that universal hope which, as we have said,
is characteristic of this stage of man's evolution?
The bark of man's destiny hitherto has been wafted
by a favouring and a steady gale, and it is natural
enough for the unreflecting to take it for granted
that the wind will always set from the same happy
quarter. But the question will obtrude itself whether
we are justified in the presumption.
If man shaped his own course, we might at least
say that there was no reason why he should not
continue to steer in the same direction as hitherto.
But the most remarkable lesson that sociology has
to teach us is that the course which he has followed
so continuously has not been of his own steering.
As we have already seen, man until this present
generation has uniformly kept his eyes fixed on the
quarter from which, not to which, he has imagined
himself to be travelling, and, like a reluctant
emigrant, has lamented the increasing distance between
him and the happy shore from which he
sailed. Or, to change the metaphor, society is an
organism. Like all organisms, it starts as a relatively
structureless mass; then, in accordance with
the principle of the division of labour, different
functions come to be performed by different parts;
thus special organs are developed for the performance
of special functions; division of labour further
implies co-operation of the various organs and the
development of the necessary means of communication
and connection. All this is necessary for that
evolution of society which we call progress; and
of all these changes in the structure of society but
few were ever intentionally planned by man. Mr.
Herbert Spencer has familiarised this generation
with the idea that the foreseen consequences of any
intended change are insignificant as compared with
the consequences unforeseen and unintended. Hence
the general rule that the structural developments on
which the evolution of society depends are but rarely
the result of the coercive and conscious changes
effected by government: in practically all cases they
are the unintended consequences of the spontaneous
actions of individuals aiming at something else and
unconsciously promoting the evolution of society.
So, too, the animal organism is made up of living
units, each of which unconsciously performs the part
necessary to be played by it, if the organism is to
live; and each unit, unconsciously again, even modifies
the part it plays, in order to promote the changes
which constitute the evolution and the progress of
the organism.
We must therefore dismiss the idea that the
progress of mankind and the evolution of society
have been planned by man or are due to his design;
and we must recognise the presence in human affairs
of some unseen, impelling power which is continually
guiding them to good issues and shaping them to
ends not even rough-hewn by men. This power,
it is evident, must be one not limited in its action
to the social organism, but manifesting itself in
animal organisms also, since there also it produces
similar results. That power, we need hardly say,
is to be sought in "the struggle for existence":
wherever organisms are in excess of the means for
supporting them, competition for food, for life, must
ensue; and in this case the battle is to the strong,
the race to the fleet. But of course strength is
a relative term: what in some circumstances is a
source of strength, in others may be a cause of
weakness; and, generally, the very qualities which
in some cases are of the highest value may in others
be useless to their possessor. It is therefore the
creature which possesses the particular kind of
superiority required by the circumstances in which
it finds itself, which is the creature that is likely to
fare best, and is most likely to survive in the struggle
for existence. But, further, the circumstances tend
to produce the very superiority which they require:
they ruthlessly reject and condemn to destruction
every organism which fails to satisfy their requirements,
thus leaving the field in possession of those
organisms which have the required superiority. The
next generation, therefore, is bred not from chance
parents, but from parents which have been selected,
by natural causes and the force of circumstances,
as carefully as by the breeder who wishes to produce
a prize animal. Every successive generation thus
must be superior to that which preceded it.
Advance is the very breath of every organism's
being, the condition without which existence is impossible.
To the talents which it has, every being
must add other talents, or be cast out into the
darkness of non-existence; whereas to the good and
faithful servant who exercises all the powers entrusted
to him even wider rule is given. Neither
this world nor the next is for the idle or for the
stupid. The intelligence must be alert to detect
the slightest element of possible superiority, and the
will resolute to work it to the utmost of its worth.
Man must be wise in his generation; and the wise
man makes friends even with the mammon of unrighteousness,
and that quickly.
If, then, it is by the perpetual and strenuous
exercise of all its powers that an organism achieves
the degree of superiority which is its contribution
to the universal work of progress, it follows that
"the performance of every function is, in a sense,
a moral obligation," and that "the moral man is one
whose functions are all discharged in degrees duly
adjusted to the conditions of existence." Here, as
elsewhere, the individual, to exist, must comply with
the conditions of existence; and progress consists
in more perfect compliance with the conditions.
There is, however, a difference between the highly
evolved organism, man, and the less complex
organisms; between animal and human evolution;
between biological and moral progress. In the case
of the lower and simpler organisms, the creature
is prompted simply and safely by its emotions to
the performance of those functions on which its
existence and the evolution of its species depend.
But the evolution of man has been so rapid in its
later stages, the social environment which he has
himself created is so different from the circumstances
in which he originally found himself, that his adjustment
to his environment has become, so to speak,
much looser, and consequently it is now no longer
the case that actions in themselves pleasant are also
necessarily beneficial in their consequences to the
individual and to society. Moral progress, therefore,
will manifest itself in the readjustment of man to
his altered conditions. The consequence of that
adjustment, when complete, will be that actions
which are right—that is, are beneficial to the individual
and to society—will always be pleasurable, not
only in their consequences, but also immediately and
in themselves. To this ideal, when all men will
delight always in the thing that is right, and when
all have attained to a height of morality now
reached only by the few, man is being slowly but
surely urged by the force which is the motive power
of all evolution, the struggle for existence, regulated
by the law which directs all progress, that of the
survival of the fittest.
Here, then, we have the reason of the hope that is
characteristic of our generation; here the foundation
of the calm confidence with which we count on the
continuance of progress as a thing assured us. It is
not merely that progress has been made in the past,
that the gale hitherto has steadily blown us on a
favourable course. We have learnt that it must of
necessity always blow from the same quarter. Man's
course is not dependent on man's fitful will: the
wind and waves obey not him, but the Power which
directs all evolution, and "our strength in ages past"
is shown by science to be "our hope in years to
come."
It seems, then, according to the optimistic view
set forth in the previous chapter, that Evolution
is necessarily Progress, and progress is movement in
the line of our moral aspirations produced ad infinitum.
The changes that are and always have
been taking place are and always have been changes
for the better; the forms of existence which incessantly
succeed one another necessarily develop
from lower to higher, from good to better. And
this conclusion is not a matter of religious faith,
but of scientific necessity. The only forces and
causes that it presupposes are those which we see
and feel at work every day around us. For the
reconstruction of the past history of the earth's
surface, geology only requires to assume the operation
during infinite past time of those agencies which
at this moment may be seen to be slowly changing
the face of the earth. The cooling of the earth's
surface follows the same laws, and can be calculated
with the same certainty as the cooling of a red-hot
poker. The law of gravitation, which determines
the movements of the heavenly bodies, is equally
exemplified in the fall of an apple to the ground.
In fine, the universe consists of bodies of matter in
motion; the movements which occur within the
range of human observation are sufficient to enable
us from them to calculate the paths which they
follow when they pass beyond our ken, and the
correctness of our calculations is demonstrated when
they reappear at the time and place predicted. The
chemist recovers on one side of his equation every
atom which the other side requires him to account
for. The stars in their courses confirm the calculations
of the astronomer. Matter is in perpetual
course of redistribution, and the same everlasting
laws which determine the forms into which it is
incessantly being redistributed necessarily determine
that those forms shall perpetually improve.
This optimistic view of evolution has met with
general welcome, but on very different grounds in
different cases. Believers in Divine Providence have
eagerly greeted it as a startling and irresistible
demonstration that their belief in a Providence over-ruling
all things for good was true. No suspicion
here was possible that the argument had been
sophisticated by those with whom the wish was
father to the thought. By science the testimony of
science could hardly be impeached; and here was
science on independent reasonings of its own, starting
from purely materialistic ground, compelled by
the force of its own arguments to bear witness to
the truth which religion had so long proclaimed on
the strength of faith alone. To this generation a
sign had indeed been given.
On the other hand, the optimistic interpretation
of evolution was welcomed with equal ardour by
those for whom it removed the last difficulty they
had in believing that there was no God. Hitherto
the deeply rooted desire to believe that, in spite of
all appearances to the contrary, good must triumph
ultimately, and right-doing never be confounded, had
seemed to necessitate belief in a righteous God.
But now the necessity for any such assumption was
done away with: the perpetual triumph of the
good was a necessary aspect or expression of the
mechanical action of particles of matter upon one
another, as much as the law of gravitation itself, and
based on exactly the same kind of evidence. From
this it followed that religious belief was but a passing
phase in the process of evolution, useful enough
as long as the real evidence for our faith in the good
was unknown, but destined to dwindle to a mere
rudiment and survival as fast as men become capable
of seeing the truth of the matter, and of realising
that religion is superfluous because it can offer
nothing that is not independently assured by science.
At the same time and in the same way the hope of
future blessedness is brought down from the unsubstantial
clouds of an imaginary heaven to the solid
ground of a materialistic science, which never travels
beyond the evidence of the senses.
Since, then, minds, which differ otherwise so much,
are agreed that the optimistic interpretation of
evolution is the true one, it seems not unreasonable
to ask each how far they are prepared to push their
optimism. We will ask the one side whether the
reason why they believe in the goodness of God really
is that, as a matter of fact, they see that good is incessantly
triumphant around them, and triumphant
as a matter of absolute necessity. Surely whether
we consider what we daily see of life, or whether
we consider the struggle with evil in our own souls,
it is a mockery to say that good invariably triumphs
here and now; and there must be illusion in the
argument that would prove that it does. Could an
argument that is based on the assumption that
matter and motion are the only realities issue in
anything but illusion when extended to spiritual
experience?
To the other side we may put the question somewhat
differently. It is agreed that all the many
changes which are incessantly taking place in the
universe, and which, added together, constitute what
is called the cosmic process, are incessantly and
inevitably working for good, and themselves are
always rising from good to better. But what of the
Force, or Power, or Cause, or Reality which underlies
them and of which they are the manifestation?
May we infer that because they are good, it is good?
That if the fruits are good, the tree must be good
also? To this the reply will be that it is the
manifestations which we know; they alone are
known to us; they alone can be known to us. That
which underlies them is not manifest; and that
which is not manifested to us obviously cannot be
known to us: it is the Unknowable. Obviously,
therefore, it is impossible for us to say whether it is
good or not. To affirm and to deny that it is good
would both equally be to profess knowledge of the
unknowable. Religion may profess—and, indeed,
all religions have professed—to possess this inconceivable
and impossible knowledge. But religion
is not science.
On this view, then, there are limits to the optimism
of evolution: to apply the term "good" to that which
manifests itself as the cosmic process in evolution
is mere illusion. But this raises a further question:
If it is unmeaning to call the Unknowable Reality
good, what precisely is the meaning and value of
the term "good" when applied to those forms in
which the Unknowable manifests itself to us?
To begin with, it is clear that if everything has
been evolved, then our moral aspirations also are
the products of evolution. It is they, indeed, that
distinguish man from the brute; but even of them
the law of continuity holds good: we can see not
only how in man the virtues have been developed
by civilisation, but we can trace the germs of conscience
in that civilised animal the dog, as we can
certainly see maternal affection, devotion, and self-sacrifice
in the fiercest of undomesticated animals.
In other words, the struggle for existence is waged
better in co-operation than by individual effort; co-operation
implies the subordination of individual
impulse to the interests of the species or society;
and such subordination, taking different forms in
different stages of social development, is what we
call virtue.
In the next place, the theory of evolution is built
upon the ancient truth that nothing abideth long
in one stay. Matter and motion are in perpetual
course of redistribution, entering into countless combinations,
and assuming innumerable forms, which
succeed each other like the waves of the sea, and
like them are no sooner formed than they are gone.
It follows, then, on this showing, that our moral
aspirations are as transitory as other products of
evolution. Indeed, as we look back over the pages
of history we can see them always changing before
our eyes—what is approved by savages is disapproved
later; the virtues of the military stage
of social development give way to those fostered,
by the industrial organisation of society. In a word,
our moral aspirations, being the outcome of evolution,
have neither the permanence of matter and
motion which are everlasting and indestructible, nor
the reality which is the attribute of the Unknowable
alone.
If any confirmation of this conclusion were required,
it would be found in the fact that only a
living, conscious being can entertain moral aspirations,
or desire the good, or hunger and thirst after
righteousness. And life and consciousness are but
transitory phases of evolution. The earth's crust,
the geologic record, testifies to the former existence
of fauna now extinct. The science of heat makes
it certain that the earth must cease to be habitable
for any form of life; and with the extinction of
consciousness, good and the desire for good, right
and the striving after right, will be no more: matter
and motion, brute matter and blind forces, knowing
nothing of good or evil, will resume their ancient,
desolate domain.
If, pursuing the same train of thought, we ask
what meaning the optimistic evolutionist puts upon
the word "good," we shall see that, according to him,
the distinction between good and bad is one that
applies, and can only apply, to certain moments in
the process of evolution, but not to the process as
a whole, just as we have already seen that according
to the optimistic evolutionist the distinction does
not apply to the Unknowable Reality of which the
process of evolution is a manifestation. The law
of life is laid down to be the struggle for existence,
with the consequent survival of the fittest. In the
struggle, that is good which is struggled for, viz.
existence; and that conduct, in man or brute, is
good which conduces to success in the struggle and
enables the organism to maintain its existence.
This can only be done by the adaptation of the
organism to its environment, of the constitution to
the conditions. It follows, therefore, that "good"
is a purely relative term: it is only applicable with
reference to organisms, and even in their case only
to success and whatever contributes to success in
the struggle for existence. But to the cosmos before
the struggle for life begins, and after life and its
struggles have relapsed into the insentience of
unconscious matter, the term cannot be applied.
Matter and motion, which exist before and after
life's appearance, are everlasting and indestructible.
Their existence is assured, and implies no struggle.
They are eternal, organic life compared with them
is momentary. The portion, then, of the cosmic
process which can be spoken of as good is infinitesimal
compared with the whole. Save for the
brief moment during which organic life exists, it
is as illusory to speak of the cosmic process as good
as it is to apply the term to the Unknowable.
But if so much of our optimistic interpretation
of evolution has proved to be an illusion which
consists in the simple fallacy of using the word
"good" in connections in which it has no meaning,
can we hope to rescue the very small fragment that
remains? Perhaps we may argue, that since that
is good which conduces to human existence, the
whole of the cosmic process up to now, having
paved the way and prepared the earth for man,
must be good. Thus at one stroke we seem to
regain half at least of the territory we have lost.
But it is only seeming, once more illusion, for the
cosmic process which has prepared the earth for
man's existence has also prepared it for his destruction:
his good, his existence, and his destruction
are equally indifferent to it. This conclusion is
confirmed by the reflection that to regard the
cosmic process as giving any consideration to man
would be to ascribe purpose, consciousness, a knowledge
of good and evil, and a preference for good,
to the Unknowable of which the cosmic process is
the continuous manifestation.
It is therefore mere illusion to imagine that
evolution necessarily tends to good: it is absolutely
indifferent to it. And as we must judge of the
parts by the whole, we must conclude that human
evolution follows the same laws as evolution in
general. The steps in human evolution, like those
in evolution at large, are not progress, are not
changes working to a good end, but merely changes.
Evolution is not progress, but mere change, as far
as good and evil are concerned, a mere marking of
time, or at most a series of movements in which
advance and retreat cancel each other in the long-run.
At the same time, the evolution theory enables
us to see plainly a cause at work which would
inevitably produce in human minds the illusion that
existence is good. Just as any species of animals
which found a pleasure in actions ultimately entailing
the destruction of the species would be condemned
to extinction, so too only those varieties of
the genus homo could survive in whom the conviction
of the goodness and desirability of existence was
strong enough to call forth the activities on which
existence was dependent.
The optimistic interpretation of evolution is based
on the "struggle for life" theory that "existence"
sums up the good for which man struggles; and
we have sought to show that the optimism which
is based on this assumption must result in the
conclusion that progress is an illusion. Some readers,
however, may hold that mere existence is not the
only good that man is capable of struggling for.
"The prospect of attaining untroubled happiness,
or of a state which can, even remotely, deserve
the title of perfection, appears to me to be as
misleading an illusion as ever was dangled before
the eyes of poor humanity. And there have been
many of them."[1]
The theory which sees in evolution nothing but
the redistribution of matter and motion leads to
an optimistic view of things which on examination
proves to be a misleading illusion. From illusion
to pessimism is but a step.
The facts on which the theory of organic evolution
is based are two. The first is that no two individuals
of any species are born exactly alike; and that of
two different individuals one must be superior to
the other, i.e. better fitted to survive under the
conditions then and there prevailing. The next
is that parents transmit their qualities to offspring;
and the superiority of superior parents is thus
transmitted and accumulated from generation to
generation. Organic evolution, therefore, consists
in more and more perfect adaptation of the organism
to the environment. And this adaptation is effected
by the physical destruction of those creatures which
are weakly and not adapted to cope with the environment.
According to the theory that evolution is progress,
the progress or evolution of humanity obeys the
same laws, is impelled by the same forces, and
follows the same line as the evolution of organisms
in general; and consists accordingly in increasing
adaptation to the environment. Imperfect adaptation
manifests itself whenever a man's impulses or desires
move him to perform acts which are immediately or
eventually prejudicial to his own or to society's
existence. Adaptation will be perfect when all acts
which are necessary for the existence of the
individual and of the society are pleasant in themselves—when
not only going to the dentist's will
be a duty, but the extraction will be a pleasure
desired for its own sake.
Though Mr. Huxley maintained that it was a
misleading illusion to lead people to expect any
such state of untroubled happiness, he was far from
denying that progress has been made in the past
by man, or from despairing of further progress in
the future. But progress does not, according to
him, consist in adaptation to environment; it is
not effected by means of the struggle for existence;
it neither obeys the same laws, nor is impelled by
the same forces, nor follows the same lines as organic
evolution in general. Nor does it consist in the
substitution of personal pleasure for a sense of
duty as the motive of action: on the contrary, it
consists in a fuller and fuller recognition of the
claims of others.
The idea that evolution means progress, and by
its very nature necessarily results in perfection,
owes much of its popularity to the fallacious interpretation
given to the phrase "survival of the fittest."
In any scientific use of the phrase, "fittest" simply
means "fittest to survive." But in popular usage
it is supposed to mean "ideally or ethically best."
But the fittest to survive are not necessarily the
ideally best: they are, scientifically speaking, simply
those best adapted to the circumstances and conditions
under which they live. And the circumstances
and conditions, the environment, may or
may not be favourable to the survival of the
ethically or æsthetically best: they may be favourable
to the growth of weeds and to the destruction
of beautiful flowers, in which case the cosmic process
will wipe out the beautiful flowers, and the
movement of evolution will be æsthetically retrogressive,
not progressive.
Adaptation to environment, therefore, is no indication
or test of progress, or of what is good or
right or true or beautiful. Everything that exists
is shown, by the mere fact of its existence, to be
adapted to its environment. If, therefore, such
adaptation is evidence that the thing is ideally
satisfactory, it will follow that whatever is, is right.
At the same time, our conception of right and
good will be emptied of all meaning: a "right"
or "good" thing will simply mean a thing which
exists. The epithets will simply predicate existence,
not a quality; and consequently we shall have
to call the successful villain and the prosperous
traitor good, and their methods right. They have
adapted themselves to their conditions, and have
flourished in consequence.
Adaptation to environment could only mean
progress provided that the environment was uniformly
such as to favour the survival of those alone
who were ideally fit to survive. But it is not: instances
are not uncommon in which organisms,
having attained to a certain degree of complexity
and heterogeneity of structure, subsequently, as a
consequence of adapting themselves to their environment,
lose it and revert to an earlier stage of development,
relatively simple, homogeneous, and structureless.
Such reversion or regressive metamorphosis
is as much a part of the organism's evolution as
its previous progressive metamorphosis; and progress
and regress both are equally the result of adaptation
to environment. Further, though reversion and regress
may now be only occasional, it is certain that as the
earth cools down they must become universal: the
altered conditions of temperature, etc., will allow
only the lower forms of life to survive, and will
eventually extinguish even them.
As regards organic evolution in general, then, the
struggle for existence and the action of the environment
do not necessarily tend to result in progress.
As regards the evolution of man in particular, Mr.
Huxley went further and maintained that they were
absolutely inimical to human progress, which has
been effected, not because, but in spite of them, and
is the result not of obeying the cosmic process, but
of defying it.
The qualities which brought success in the struggle
for existence to man as an animal were rapacity,
greed, selfishness, and an absolute and cruel indifference
to the wants and sufferings of others. On the
gratification, at all cost to others, of his animal desires,
his animal existence depended: it was the "ape and
tiger" within him that made him victor in the
struggle for existence; it was the environment that
imposed this as the condition of success.
The qualities which make man a human being
are tenderness, pity, mercy, compassion, self-sacrifice,
and love. It is in their growth—the "ethical process"—that
human progress consists, and not in the
ruthlessness by which the cosmic process effects the
evolution of other organisms. These qualities—human
and humane—do not make for success in
the struggle for existence. They are not adapted
to the environment provided by Nature. Their
owners were not the fittest to survive, and consequently
paid the penalty—physical destruction—as
far as the cosmic process could exact it. If the
struggle for existence and the action of the environment
have not succeeded in keeping man down to
the level of the brute, it is because man has deliberately
set himself to oppose the cosmic process and
the blind forces, knowing nothing of right and wrong,
pity or love, by which it effects the evolution of the
brute. The struggle for existence is fatal to the
development of the qualities which are peculiarly
characteristic of humanity, and man accordingly
has suspended the struggle for existence. In place
of warring with his fellow-man, he has begun to
co-operate with him. He has learnt to some extent
to postpone the gratification of his own wants to
the satisfaction of those of others. He no longer
destroys the weakly, the sick, the helpless, the useless,
or even the criminal; and, if the environment threaten
their destruction, he sets to work to alter the environment.
Man no longer seeks to conquer Nature by
obeying her: he studies her forces in order to command
them to his will. Adaptation to environment
is the implement by which she shapes human evolution
to ends that are not his ends; he wrests the
weapon from her hands, and by adaptation of the
environment undoes her work, fosters the growth
of those qualities which tend towards his ideal, and
does away with the conditions which harbour ignorance
and error, selfishness and sin.
Human progress, then, consists in perpetual approximation
to the ideals of charity, love, and self-sacrifice.
Life is exhibited as a struggle against evil,
against the ape and tiger within us which we inherit
from our ancestor—the brute. The evil is real, the
struggle is hard but worthy, and not the less worthy
because it is not directed to our personal happiness
and gratification. "The practice of self-restraint and
renunciation is not happiness, though it may be
something much better."[2]
Thus far this criticism of life, though stern, is not
pessimistic. On the contrary, in it man seems to
have recovered the freedom of action and the power
of independent judgment which, as the mere product
of the cosmic process, he could not enjoy according
to the optimistic theory. If life is a struggle, at any
rate man can fight the good fight, if he will; and
he can judge for himself which is the higher, the
adaptation to environment which puts man on a
level with the ape and tiger, or the adaptation of
environment which, for the sake of his ideals, sets
him in conflict with the cosmic process.
It is when we proceed to conjecture the issue of
the struggle, as thus stated, that pessimism begins
to invade us. However valiantly man may fight,
whatever temporary victories he may gain here or
there, his defeat in the end is inevitable: the same
cosmic forces which, working through him, have
won him his trifling victories have preordained his
ultimate destruction. As far as it is possible for
science to forecast the future, it is certain that in
the end man will fall a victim to his environment,
and join the other extinct fauna of the earth. With
him the ethical process ceases; with him perish the
hopes, the aspirations, and the ideals for which he
strove as being of greater worth than aught that
evolution, the redistribution of matter and motion,
could offer or produce.
If this were all, the picture would be sufficiently
gloomy: man alone in the universe, surrounded by
forces which act without regard to good or evil,
without sympathy or heed for right or wrong, indeed,
with the effect of impartially extinguishing both in
the end. But it is not all. As the conditions grow
more and more unfavourable to man's existence upon
earth, as the margin of the means of subsistence
contracts, and the presence of universal want increases,
the ape and tiger in man will begin to
assert themselves once more. In the face of starvation,
the instinct of self-preservation will become
imperious. Once more, as in the earliest days, man
will live by rapacity, cruelty, and selfishness alone.
Before man yields possession of the earth to the
brutes, he will himself revert to brutishness. The
puny barriers behind which man has for a moment
sheltered himself from the action of the cosmic
process, and nursed the feeble flame of those aspirations
after higher things which distinguish him from
the brute, must inevitably be swept away by the
restless and relentless tide of insentient matter,
perpetually redistributed by aimless motion, which
constitutes the cosmic process.
The pity of it is that the process of evolution
should require not merely man's physical destruction,
but his moral destruction also; that the ruin
of his body should be preceded by the ruin of his
soul; that in his regressive metamorphosis he should
be compelled, by the struggle for existence and the
instinct of self-preservation, to play the traitor to one
after another of his ideals of tenderness, of pity, and
of love. The fittest to survive will be those who are
most completely adapted to the altered environment,
who are resolved to succeed in a struggle for existence
in which success can be obtained by brutishness
alone. The least fitted to the new conditions, and
the first to perish therefore, will be those with whom
self does not come first. With their destruction the
competition between their less scrupulous survivors
will become fiercer and still more cruel. And this
process will be repeated again and again, each generation
transmitting cunning and cruelty intensified
to the next. Our great cities already breed men
degraded below the level of the lowest savages
known to us, but even they can give us but little
idea of what the struggle for existence will yet
produce from the ruins of civilisation in the course
of the Evolution of Inhumanity.
While proclaiming that "the ethical process is in
opposition to the principle of the cosmic process,
and tends to the suppression of the qualities best
fitted for success in that struggle," and that at the
best the ethical process can maintain itself only for
a relatively short time, "until the evolution of our
globe shall have entered so far upon its downward
course that the cosmic process resumes its sway;
and, once more, the State of Nature prevails over
the surface of our planet," Mr. Huxley held that
our duty lay "not in imitating the cosmic process,
still less in running away from it, but in combating
it."[3] "Cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the
headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature," and
though we know that the enemy's triumph must be
complete, that the defeat of the good cause is preordained,
that we and ours must be annihilated, we
must remain at our posts, fighting to the end without
hope.
It seems, then, that man possesses two kinds of
knowledge: he knows to some extent what is, and
to some extent he knows what ought to be. And
both kinds of knowledge are equally valid. He
judges that a thing is, and he judges also that a
thing ought to be. Both judgments are equally true,
but apparently both are not equally final, for if man
judges that what is, ought not to be, he is impelled
to alter what is, so that in the end the thing that
ought to be is also the thing that is. The judgment
of what ought to be, the ideal, is thus proved, or
rather made, to be the finally correct one. On the
other hand, if man is defeated in his attempts to
adjust the things that are to his judgment of what
they ought to be, he does not acquiesce in his defeat;
he refuses to accept the result as final; the end of
the matter is not there; things are not what he
strove to make them, but they ought to be. What
is has nothing to do with what ought to be. But
what ought to be may make a good deal of difference
to what is.
The ethical process, in its conflict with the cosmic
process, may not in the end prove victorious; but
that makes no difference to the fact that it ought
to be victorious. It is this deep-seated conviction
which made Mr. Huxley say that we must declare
war to the last against cosmic nature, the headquarters
of the enemy of ethical nature. The victory
of the enemy may be certain, but it will none the less
be wrong; it may be permanent, but as long as it
lasts it will be wrong. If matter and motion are
eternal and indestructible, morality is equally everlasting
and immutable. Unless this is so, unless the
triumph of the cosmic process is wrong, once and
always, why are we called upon to endure sorrow and
pain and suffering rather than submit to it? Our
judgment that it is wrong is as independent of time
as is our judgment that particles of matter gravitate
towards one another. We have no reason for believing
that the latter will continue to be true for a
longer time than the former. Indeed, if matter and
motion, having achieved their victory over the ethical
process, were then and there to be annihilated, their
victory would continue to be wrong, though they had
ceased to be. Right may triumph or wrong may
triumph, but right is right and wrong is wrong for
evermore. It is vain to tell us in the same breath
that we must stake our all upon our moral judgments
and that our moral judgments are not to be relied
on. Every impeachment of their validity is an invitation
to us to give up the struggle against the
enemy of ethical nature. And if we are really
resolved to fight the good fight and quit ourselves
like men, we thereby affirm that our moral judgments
are at least as valid as our judgments on matters of
fact, and that, if our knowledge of what is is true
objectively, our knowledge of what ought to be has
in it at least an equal element of objective truth.
If, then, the cosmic process is real and objective,
in so far as it is a perpetual manifestation of the
Unknown Reality which underlies all things, then
the ethical process, having the same reality and
objectivity, is also a manifestation of the Unknowable.
The perpetual redistribution of matter and
motion is not the only way in which the Unknowable
manifests itself to men: it also gives a shape to itself
in the form of the highest and purest aspirations of
which man is conscious within himself. It might
seem, therefore, at first sight as though a mere dispassionate
consideration of the actual facts of life,
quite apart from any religious presuppositions or
presumptions, forced us at last into the presence
of a God, the source and author of all goodness.
But, in the first place, those who hold to the dogma
of Agnosticism, that what underlies things as they
are known to us is the Unknowable, cannot admit
that we know or can find out whether the Unknowable
is good or bad. Induction, the logical method
to which science owes so many of its discoveries, and
by which we proceed from the known to the unknown,
does not avail us here. No logical method
could discover what is not merely unknown, but
absolutely unknowable.
In the next place it is reasonable enough that
those who begin by believing in a Divine Providence
should also believe that right will triumph in the
end, if not in the world as it is manifested to us
now and here, in space and time, then in that real
world, that kingdom of heaven, of which this world
is but an imperfect manifestation, or to which it is
but a distant and slowly moving approximation.
For those, however, who refuse to assume the
reality of a Divine Providence the case is different.
They base themselves on facts of experience: they
observe that to some small extent what ought to
be tends to substitute itself for what is, thanks
to the action of man exclusively, and not to any
inherent tendency to good in cosmic nature, but
rather in spite of the resistance to good caused by
the necessary action of the mechanical laws of nature.
From their observation of the conditions under which
man has succeeded in modifying what is into what
ought to be, they forecast the extent to which that
process may be carried in the future; and their
conclusion is that the process is doomed to eventual
failure, is doomed not merely to cease, but to give
way to a process in the opposite direction, by which
what ought to be will be displaced by what ought
not, by which ethical nature will succumb to cosmic
nature.
Now, if there be no God, or if being Unknowable
He must be eliminated from our words, thoughts,
and deeds as a negligible and useless quantity for
rational purposes, it is a natural enough conclusion
that right must eventually succumb to wrong. It
is but a reassertion of the familiar thesis that without
religion morality cannot permanently be maintained.
On this occasion, however, the thesis is advanced not
as a piece of religious prejudice or theological insolence,
but as the teaching of science and the inevitable
outcome of evolution.
The bitterness of Pessimism, or rather of the
pessimistic interpretation of evolution sketched
in our last chapter, lies in the discovery that what
we value most, what we, in our best moments, prize
most highly, what we hold dearest to us, is a matter
of indifference to the cosmos. That there should be
any power greater than that of Right, that all goodness
should in the end for ever be confounded, is
incredible in the same way that the greatest losses
in life are incredible in the first moment of shock
in spite of the undeniable facts that show them to
be real. But whereas those losses are but personal,
and possibly our regrets selfish, this loss is more
than personal, and the regret not merely selfish. It
is not merely that we personally have held a mistaken
opinion, or that any self-sacrifice—miserably
small and unworthy in the retrospect—that we have
made has been made for a losing cause. It is that
apart from our personal share in the matter, which
rated at its true value is as naught, the thing is
wrong; it ought not to be. Of that we are just
as certain as that our past life has not been what
it ought to have been, what it might have been.
The past is past beyond recall, but for the future
hitherto there has been hope and faith, faith that
what ought to be may be, even for us, hope that
it will be so. But now, in place of hope and faith,
we have the scientific certainty that the future of
humanity is devoted to the triumph of the thing
that ought not to be. The only consolation left to
us is the inextinguishable, the unconquerable conviction
that right is right even though it should
not prevail. To this conviction we must hold,
though the heavens should fall. To it we must
hold, though it bring, as bring it must, according to
Mr. Huxley, sorrow and pain and the renunciation of
our own happiness.
These are hard sayings. But there is a yet harder
to be added to them. Even though it should involve
the renunciation of our intellectual superiority to
other people, we must hold to our conviction. If
we are in earnest about our moral convictions, we
shall reject any suggestion that they are not after
all really true, even if that suggestion seems to
afford the only way of escaping from the conclusion
that faith in religion has the same basis in reason as
faith in science.
In proclaiming our conviction that right is right,
we affirm and intend to affirm that it is so not as a
matter of opinion, but as a matter of fact. In the
same way, an established scientific truth is not one
of those matters about which reasonable persons,
who are competent to judge, may reasonably hold
different opinions: it is not a matter of opinion,
but a matter of fact. Indeed, both kinds of truth,
moral truths and scientific truths, are quite independent
of individual and personal opinion. There
are people in whose opinion the earth is flat; but
the earth is not flat, nor can their opinion alter the
fact. There was a time when all the laws of nature
were unknown to man or misconceived by him; but
they operated as usual, quite unaffected by his ideas.
So there are people who consider successful roguery
ideal, and who would make a fortune by promoting
fraudulent companies, if they could; but honesty
remains a duty, in spite of their ideas. Right is
right, even though there be brutes in human form;
and right was right, even when the ape and tiger
ruled in man, and even though they were fine fellows,
in their own opinion. Cruelty and selfishness never
were right at any time, and never will be. The
laws of morality, like the laws of science, are
objectively true: they do not vary with the opinions
men entertain about them; the earth, for instance,
did not move or cease to move round the sun
according as men imagined Galileo to be right or
wrong, nor has right ceased to be right even when
the world has been most depraved.
A moral judgment, then, like a scientific judgment,
is objective, not subjective; it is not the expression
of a mere opinion, but the statement of a fact which
has an existence independent of man. If now we
ask what sort of an existence it has, it is clear that
what is and what ought to be have not in all cases
the same kind of existence: the thing which is
may sometimes also be the thing that ought to be,
but often it is not. Now, when the latter is the case,
when a thing is felt to be a crying evil, a foul injustice
that calls for remedy, in what sense does
the justice exist on which we call to drive out the
injustice? The thing which ought not to be exists,
and is in possession. The thing which ought to be
delays its coming. Shall we say, then, that, while
that is so, it exists indeed, but exists as an ideal,
as something which we know ought to be and are
resolved shall be? That it must present itself to
some mind or other as an object of desire, and as
a possibility capable of fulfilment, is certain. That
it does so present itself to man is what we mean
when we attribute to him the power of moral judgment
and moral action. But when we speak of
man's moral judgments as being objectively true,
we imply that they exist not merely in his mind,
but also elsewhere. But ideals can only exist in
a mind; judgments can be pronounced only by a
judge. When, therefore, we affirm that in objectivity
and validity our moral judgments are on a par with
our scientific judgments, and that our knowledge
of what ought to be is as real and true as our knowledge
of what is, that the existence of ethical nature,
with its demands upon our reason, is a fact as indisputable
as the existence of cosmic nature, we are
implicitly affirming also the existence of a mind,
other than human, from whose moral judgments the
laws of morality derive their validity; and as those
laws are eternal and immutable, as right is right
always and from eternity to eternity, so must be the
mind in which they are and from which they proceed.
To say that the ideal is real sounds paradoxical. It
seems like saying that to have the idea of a shilling
is the same thing as possessing a shilling. That is a
patent absurdity, but no one will maintain that it is
an absurdity to say that we ought to try to be better
than we are. On the contrary, everyone will admit
that it is a truth, and a truth of the highest importance,
of greater value and greater significance
for our highest interests than, say, the law of gravitation,
or any statement as to the ways in which
matter and motion are redistributed. When the
desire to amend our life is strong upon us, when
we are most conscious of the heavy difference
between actual amendment and amendment in idea
alone, then we are most certain of the reality of
the moral ideal as a fact, both of immediate consciousness
at the moment and of permanent significance
for us and for all men. To say that our moral
convictions correspond to no real facts is simply to
deny to them any validity at all. To say that the
facts to which they correspond are real, but are
purely subjective, being but moods, and often passing
moods, of the individual, is merely to say that our
moral convictions are illusions and right-doing only
fancy. Nor do we mend matters if we add that all
men are more or less subject to these moods, that
right and wrong are purely human institutions; for
if their value in the individual is naught, their
existence in the multitude does but add to ciphers
ciphers. On the other hand, if the moral ideal is no
figment of man's imagination, if its existence does not
come and go with his fitful moral struggles, then its
permanent abode, the centre from which it manifests
itself, must be in some permanent intelligence at the
centre of things.
The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution suggests
another way of reaching the same conclusion.
That form of Pessimism represents cosmic nature as
indifferent, if not hostile, to ethical nature; the
former by its law of the struggle for existence
favours the survival of the strongest and the most
selfish; the latter with its moral laws strives to
suspend the struggle for existence, and to defeat
the selfishness which the former seeks to perpetuate
and extend. Human evolution is in its essence the
struggle of man as a moral being against nature
as non-moral or anti-moral; and the curve traced
by human evolution is the resultant of the opposition
of the two forces—the microcosm, man, and the
macrocosm, nature. During the first part of its
course the line of human evolution rises, but during
the latter part it is doomed to fall; and the curve
will be completed when man, having traversed every
stage of moral degradation, is merged once more
in the brute matter to which originally he owed his
being. Against this victory of cosmic nature man,
as a moral being, protests and fights. He protests
that it is wrong—wrong, not because it brings him
more pain than pleasure, for right-doing also may
have that result, but wrong without regard to his
feelings, so that any impartial spectator who witnessed
the struggle would condemn and regret the issue.
If this is not so, if the condemnation is the expression
merely of human prejudice, then there is
nothing in the defeat of ethical nature or in the
victory of its enemy, cosmic nature, really to regret;
the difference between right and wrong is not an
absolute or real distinction, corresponding to real
facts, and the victory of cosmic nature, even if it
runs counter to man's prejudices, is not thereby
shown to be really wrong, though man naturally is
under the illusion that it is.
The coarse and immoral piece of vulgarity which
condones an act of wrong-doing on the ground that
"it will be all the same a hundred years hence," is,
with an extension of time, as applicable to the race
generally as to the individual in particular. In a
million, or a billion, years hence it will, according to
the pessimistic interpretation of evolution, be all the
same: matter and motion will alone exist, completely
indifferent to right and wrong. What does it matter,
then, whether we do right or wrong? Ultimately,
it will make no difference: the distinction between
right and wrong is not one of permanent value, or
based on any lasting difference in things. Nor is
it strange that a cause which is based on an illusion
should be doomed to defeat. What is strange is
that anyone should invite us to renounce happiness
for such an unmeaning struggle.
The only reply to such loose talk is that it does
matter, here and now, always and to all time, that
right should triumph over wrong. It will not do to
say that it matters now, but will not matter hereafter,
for, if it is of no importance then, neither is it of
any importance now. But if right-doing is the most
important thing in the world, more important than
happiness, more important to all time even than the
perpetual redistribution of matter and motion, to
whom is it important? Not exclusively, nor even
primarily, to ourselves; for the essence of right-doing
is the attempt to put self away and forget it, the
yearning to be lifted above personal considerations
and thought of self, the conviction that whilst it
matters all the world to me, to do the right, the
matter does not end with me. The matter is not
of merely personal importance to me, nor important
simply because I choose to think it so. Its value
and significance are apprehended—alas! too rarely—by
me, they are not created by me. Its significance
and importance are real, not fictitious; that reality
is not created by man, it is not a human prejudice,
but exists independent of man and what he thinks.
To matter and motion, those perpetual manifestations
of the Power or Reality which underlies them,
nothing can have any meaning or importance: it
is only to a mind that things can be significant or
important. If, then, the importance of right-doing
is real, it is because it really matters to the Power,
which underlies all things, that we should do right;
and that Power must be of the nature of an intelligence,
for it is only a mind which can either
apprehend values or assign them. If the microcosm,
man, can pass a valid sentence of condemnation
upon the macrocosm, nature, it is only because
and so far as his moral nature places him in direct
communication with the heart of things and gives
him knowledge of the will of that Power on which
microcosm and macrocosm alike depend for their
existence. If the distinction between right and
wrong is one by which man can correctly judge
between himself and the cosmos, the distinction
and the judgment must proceed from a source
superior to both. If it is not, then the Pessimistic
interpretation of evolution falls to the ground, because
it is based on the assumption that its condemnation
of cosmic nature is a correct judgment.
Not only does Pessimism fall, but the element of
truth and reality which Pessimism contains must
also be abandoned; if the distinction between right
and wrong is not sufficient for the task put upon it
by Pessimism, neither is it sufficient for us to build
our lives on. In fine, either the ultimate defeat of
the ethical process matters, or it does not. If it
does not, why suffer sorrow and pain in the vain
endeavour to stave it off? If it does, then to
whom? No longer to man, for he will have joined
the extinct fauna. Therefore to some moral intelligence
to whom the triumph of right is a matter
of importance.
From this dilemma the only escape seems to be
frankly to admit that a billion years hence it will
be "all the same," but to deny that, because it will
be all the same then, it is a matter of indifference
now. This argument, then, maintains that it will be
all the same ultimately, and that it is an illusion to
imagine that when man is extinct it can possibly
matter. Here and now, however, and indeed as long
as mankind continues to exist, right-doing is of the
highest conceivable importance to man, more important
even than happiness. But it is only as long as
mankind continues to exist that it can continue to
be important: its importance only exists in man's
mind, and perishes with it. To say, therefore, that
the ultimate defeat of the ethical process will, when
established, be regrettable, is only to say that if we,
or any other moral judge, were there to see it, we
should feel regret about it; but we cannot possibly
maintain that, because a moral judge would regret
it, if he were there, therefore there will be one there
to regret it. Of course, it is possible that the Unknowable
may be a moral intelligence of this kind,
because everything is possible with regard to the
Unknowable. But we can neither affirm nor deny
that or anything else about the Unknowable, for
then the Unknowable would cease so far to be
unknowable.
The contention of this argument, then, is that for
us men, and (as far as we have any positive knowledge)
for us men alone, the laws of morality are
real, intensely real; but their reality begins with
man and ends with man. To this contention the
reply is that as regards their reality the laws of
morality are on exactly the same footing as the
laws of science. Take the theory of evolution for
instance: from scientific observations of what is
going on now it infers what has been and what will
be, it reconstructs the past and forecasts the future;
it frames pictures of the globe as it was before man
was evolved; it forms conceptions of the earth as
it will be long after man is extinct. These conceptions
and pictures, however, exist only in the mind
of man, for the future does not yet exist and the
past has ceased to be. That is to say, evolution is
an inference, or rather a mass of inferences, which
like all inferences exist in the mind, could not have
existed before the mind, and cannot exist when the
mind has ceased to be. Science, being the work of
the mind (for we cannot say that it requires no
intelligence), is just man's notion of what has been,
is, and will be, in the same way that morality is
man's conception of what ought to be. If we say
that what ought to be will cease and become
meaningless when man is extinct, then we must
say the same of what has been, is, and will be. If
the good, the noble, the right, are merely human
ideas of what ought to be, matter and motion are
merely human conceptions of what is. If the reality
of the former is only to be found in the human
mind, so is the reality of the latter. If the reality
of the one is to cease with human existence, so must
the reality of the other. On the other hand, if
either is to exist when mankind is no more, it is
only in some mind that it can exist. It is only
for a person that anything can be right or good.
It is only a person that can see the past summed up
or the future contained in the present. If it is
legitimate and logical to infer that what is will
continue to be after man's disappearance from the
earth, so it is to draw the same inference with regard
to what ought to be. If science is true really, and
does not merely appear so to man, it must be true
for some mind other than human: by an intelligence
alone can truth be apprehended, or the right approved.
But if truth is limited to the human mind,
and ceases with it, then evolution must cease to be
true when men cease to exist. Nay, in that case it
cannot claim to be true at all, or rather does not
claim to be true, but only seeming. On the other
hand, if the law of gravity, for instance, was true
before man's appearance, its truth must have dwelt
in some mind. If it was not true then, we have no
better reason for believing it to be true now. In
fine, truth and right, what is and what ought to be,
must either be dismissed as mere human imaginings,
or be accepted as everlasting facts of an Eternal
Moral Consciousness.
Shall we, then, say that the description which
science gives of the constitution and working of the
universe is indeed consistent and coherent enough
with itself, and is a logical deduction from its
premises, but to assert that it expresses or even
corresponds to any reality beyond itself is a statement
which we have no right to make? To take up
this position is simply to maintain that science is
consistent and logical, but that we have no reason
or right to believe that it is true. If our accounts
are based on imaginary figures, they may be kept
as strictly as you please, but they will never show us
our true position. Indeed, if our premises are incorrect
to start with, the more logical our inferences
are, the more certain our conclusions are to be
wrong.
Shall we, then, say that the account which science
gives of the cosmic process is not only consistent
and logical, but expresses or corresponds to a
reality? Then in that case the cosmic process, so
far as it is truly expressed by science, is a logical
process. But it is only a mind which can be logical
or can go through a logical process. Once more,
therefore, the facts of science as much as the facts
of morality imply that the real is an Intelligence.
In fine, the truth of science and the truth of morality
are bound up together and have the same basis. If
the one is valid for facts beyond the range of human
observation, so is the other. If the one implies a
consciousness other than human, equally so does the
other.
It may be said that to regard the ruling principle
of the cosmos as a moral agent is to commit the
anthropomorphic fallacy. What, then, shall we say
of science, which is engaged in demonstrating that
the cosmic process is always logical? That science
simply describes the facts as they are, and that if
they are logical, it is not her fault? Then the
presence of an intelligence other than human is
revealed to science in the facts; and it is false to say
that science merely imports her own intelligence into
them. In the same way, the presence of a moral
personality other than our own is revealed to us
in the facts of conscience, and not imported into
them by us. The presence of the Comforter is one
of the facts apprehended by the religious consciousness;
it is not merely the religious man's way of
interpreting some other fact. From this conclusion
the only way of escape is to say that anthropomorphism
is a fallacy, and that it is a fallacy to which
the human mind, by its very constitution, is always
and inevitably subject. This argument gets rid at
one blow of all indications of any intelligence or
morality other than human. But how? Simply by
begging the question, by tacitly taking it for granted
that there is no other personality than human
personality. In that case it is obvious, indeed, that
man's perpetual discovery of personal power in the
forces of nature, of more than human wisdom in
nature's laws, and of more than human goodness
in the human heart, is and must be fallacious. But
only on the assumption that there is no wisdom in
the world but man's, no love in all the universe but
his, can we say that man reads into the facts a
wisdom and a love which are not there. Are we,
then, prepared to say that, in giving us a logical
account of the cosmic process, science has—naturally
and necessarily indeed, but none the less
completely—been mistaken? If the scientific
account corresponds to the facts, then the facts
behave logically. If it is the anthropomorphic
fallacy to imagine that things can behave logically,
then science's description of the facts must be
fallacious.
Perhaps it will be sought to save science by saying
that science is anthropomorphic, but not fallacious.
This, however, gives away the whole case: it is an
admission that, in interpreting the cosmic process
as a logical process, science is simply recognising,
and rightly recognising, the logical character of the
facts—the anthropomorphic interpretation happens
to be right. But we must note that it is not right
because it is anthropomorphic, but anthropomorphic
because it faithfully describes the facts. Science
aims at describing and formulating facts as they are:
if the laws of science are rational, it is because she
found reason already in the facts, and not because
she put it there. She does not make the laws of
nature, neither does she dictate the behaviour of
facts, nor is their behaviour merely her way of
interpreting facts. Man discovers in nature wisdom,
which is an attribute of personality, not because
he cannot help being anthropomorphic in his views,
but because nature is a manifestation of the power
and wisdom of a personality other and greater than
man's. So far, then, is this discovery from creating
a presumption that man makes nature after his own
image, that it constitutes a proof that man is made
in the image of that personal will and wisdom which
is expressed in nature as well as manifested in
man. In discovering personality we discover what is
fundamentally real in nature, and for us what is
fundamentally real is also our highest ideal.
We have already remarked that paradoxical
though it sounds to say that the ideal is real, the
seeming paradox does express a fact—the fact at
once of our consciousness of the difference between
what is and what ought to be, and of our conviction
that what ought to be is no mere illusion. Truth
and goodness, wisdom and love, are all at the same
time ideal and real. The truth to which it is the
ideal of science to approximate is no mere chimera.
So far as it is truth, it is not merely man's way of
looking at the facts or an interpretation which he
puts upon them: it is a statement of the facts, as
accurate and precise as science can make it. The
ideal, being an ideal, will never be fully attained;
but that the truth is there to be found out is proved
every time science reaches a new truth, that is to say,
a truth which before its discovery was indeed not
apprehended by man, but certainly was not therefore
either untrue or non-existent. The truth was in the
facts; for what man knows of nature he has learnt
from nature, and what he finds there is not the
projection of human wisdom but the revelation of
a more than human wisdom. Man's knowledge is
real in proportion as it approaches the ideal. The
ideal is not man's surmise, or vague conception, or
anticipation of what he may hereafter come to know,
for such surmises are always proved to be more
or less erroneous. Neither is it man's conviction
that the truth exists, if only he could find it out.
It is actual truth and knowledge which now exist,
and, being truth and knowledge, must exist in some
mind, and certainly do not exist in man's mind.
Science, so far as it has approached the ideal, has
done so not by being anthropomorphic, but by
ceasing to be anthropomorphic—that is to say, by
casting aside presumptions of what according to
man's notions ought to be or a priori must be, and
substituting for such preconceptions a patient,
reverent study of the facts as they are.
To regard the knowledge thus gained as being at
once purely human and the only reality is to say
that the evolution of the universe exists only in the
speculation of human thinkers, and consequently
that the world as it was before man existed was
created by the speculation of minds which were not
in existence then and which were only subsequently
evolved. How can man have been evolved out of
his own speculations? How can his speculations have
existed before he did? Man owes his origin to the
same Power whose wisdom is revealed in nature to
science, and manifested to all in all around us.
Of the existence of a Power, not ourselves, we have
evidence in everything that affects us. It is a fact
of consciousness, but it is a fact which from its very
nature does not exist solely in our consciousness.
Therein it resembles ideal wisdom or goodness,
which exists in us, so far as our wisdom or goodness
is real, but is far from being exhausted by its partial
presence in us.
The ideal in morality, again, is not the mere desire
to do good or to be good, just as the ideal in knowledge
is not the mere desire to know the truth. And
if goodness is the object of moral desire, as truth
is the object of intellectual desire, in neither case
is the object of desire purely imaginary, a mere idea
or conception of something which might be, but as
a matter of fact is not. We do not desire imaginary
pleasures or imaginary goodness, we want the reality;
and to tell us that that reality exists only in idea,
only in our own imagination, is a misleading half-truth.
True, we must have some idea of it, or else
we could not desire it. But neither could we desire
it if it were presented to us as purely imaginary.
In other words, the object of moral desire is apprehended,
at the moment of apprehension, as both
actual and possible, as existing simultaneously for
us and beyond us. The case is the same with ideal
truth: we could not desire it, unless we had some
conception of it, unless it were to some degree or
in some way present to our consciousness; yet, at
the same time, the knowledge which we desire to
have but do not yet possess is certainly, so far as
we do not possess it, beyond our consciousness. It
is because we have not got it that we want it. And
the object of desire, what we want, is not imaginary
truth, but real truth; just as in our better moments
we want to do not what we imagine to be right,
but what is really right. The Real, therefore—real
truth, real goodness—is apprehended, at the moment
of apprehension, and desired, at the moment of desire,
as existing both for us and beyond us.
The proviso, "at the moment of apprehension,
at the moment of desire," is important, because it
strikes at the root of all forms of subjective
idealism. They all assume that the only thing
directly apprehended is what exists for us; that
consequently the supposed existence of any real
thing or person beyond us is a mere inference, and
an inference the truth of which we have no means
of checking, because it is a statement about things
of which we have no direct apprehension or knowledge.
On this assumption, therefore, the only
things man directly apprehends are his own states
of consciousness, his own sensations, etc. Are we
to call them real or not? If they are not real, his
whole life is a dream, his speculations fancies,
and his desires illusions. If they are the only
reality of which he can be certain, then the only
truth is that which man knows, the only good is that
which man does, the only world is that which man
thinks, the only God is that which man makes, the
magnified, non-natural shadow of man projected on
to the mists of the Unknowable.
It is important, therefore, to insist that the Real—the
reality of existence, of knowledge, of goodness—is
not an inference, but a matter of direct apprehension.
It is certain that goodness or knowledge
to be an object of desire must be presented to us
in idea; but it is equally certain that the mere idea
is not what we desire. The object of desire is directly
apprehended as in our consciousness and beyond it.
The natural world around us is also directly apprehended
as at once in our consciousness and beyond
it: it is presented to our minds, but it is presented
as real.
It is important also to note that the real does not
forfeit its reality to our apprehension when and
because it takes up its abode in us: goodness does
not cease to be good because we do it, nor truth
cease to be truth because we know it. It does not
follow that because the ideal cannot be fully realised,
it cannot be realised at all. On the contrary, the
conviction that it cannot be completely attained is
itself the guarantee that it can be attained partially.
Yet it has been assumed that if a thing is apprehended
by us it cannot be real, that real knowledge
begins just where our knowledge ends, that the
further we push our knowledge forward the further
real knowledge recedes from our view. On this
assumption is built the theory of the Unknowable,
the theory that whatever is known to man is a state
of man's consciousness; that states of consciousness
are subjective, are merely the appearances of things,
not the things themselves; that the real things, the
things themselves, are unknowable; their appearances
alone can be known to man; therefore the real is
for ever unknowable. "The reality existing behind
all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown."[4]
Consequently, inferences about the Real are valueless
and futile. By way of compensation, however,
our knowledge of the unreal is, on this theory,
varied and extensive: it includes, for instance, the
theory of evolution and the whole of science.
But the assumption which leads to this strange
conclusion is opposed to the facts. The fact, as we
have contended, is that the real in consciousness
is continuous with the real beyond consciousness,
and is apprehended, at the moment of apprehension,
as being thus continuous, and is not reached by any
process of inference. The real is not a matter of
inference, but of apprehension. Its existence cannot
be deduced from anything else; it is that from which
all conclusions must be deduced. I cannot prove
that a thing is real any more than I can prove that
I have toothache. There is no need.
We began, at the beginning of this book, by
accepting Evolution as a fact, as all ordinarily
educated persons in the present state of scientific
knowledge are practically bound to do. Accepting it
as a fact, we proceeded to inquire what, if anything,
it had to tell us about the moral government of the
world; and we found that very different interpretations
were put upon the theory of Evolution by
different authorities. According to one interpretation
the process of Evolution was a continual
progress from good to better: good could only give
way to higher good. According to another interpretation
goodness was a transient, evanescent phase
in the process of evolution, of no permanent value:
the ethical process was doomed to be defeated by
its enemy, the cosmic process. According to a third
interpretation the notion of good was a pure illusion,
necessary indeed, inasmuch as without it there would
be no survival for man in the struggle for existence,
but none the less an illusion.
Much as these interpretations differ from one
another as to the moral significance of the process
of evolution, or indeed as to whether evolution has
any moral significance at all, they are agreed upon
one point. They are agreed that it is impossible
to draw any inference from the facts of evolution as
to the moral government of the universe. To affirm
its moral government would be to claim knowledge
of the Unknowable, which is an obvious absurdity.
It would be to attribute power, consciousness,
wisdom, and goodness to the Real; and the Real
is and must ever be unknown.
This identification of the Real with the Unknowable
leads us into the following ridiculous impasse:
the vast majority of men look, and must always
look, for guidance and information to science and
theology; and theology is knowledge of the unknowable;
science, knowledge of the unreal. Those
who are content with this blind alley may remain
in it. We propose to try to find our way out
of it.
If we analyse our perception of any material
object, that is to say, of any object which we perceive
by means of the senses, we shall find that our
perception of the object consists of the sensations
which we have of it. To perceive an orange is to
see that it is yellow, to feel that it is round, to smell
it, taste it, and so on. These various sensations
together constitute our perception of the orange.
Now, the subjective idealist says that the perception
is the orange, and that the orange is the perception.
To the beginner in philosophy that sounds absurd:
he knows that his perception is not the orange, and
that the orange is something more than his perception
of it. But when he is asked, "What more? If the
orange is not the perception, what is it?" he does
not generally produce any satisfactory reply; and
then he is told that his notion, that there is anything
in the orange except his own perception or sensations,
is obviously not a fact of sensation or a thing
directly observed, but merely a belief or inference
of his. On the other hand, he generally puts a very
natural question to his instructor: "If the orange is
merely my perception, what becomes of the orange
when I do not perceive it? Granted that it exists
whenever I look at it, what becomes of it in the
intervals when I am not looking at it? Does it
exist then, or does it not?"
To this Bishop Berkeley replies that it does; that
it exists then in exactly the same way as it does
now, that is to say, it exists in idea (i.e. perception
or sensation); but as it does not exist in my perception,
when I am not looking at it, it must exist
in the perception of some other mind, to which all
things at all times are present.
With the fact which forms Berkeley's conclusion
I have no quarrel. What I should like to show is
that it does not follow from these premises.
Berkeley's argument is: All men believe, and
rightly believe, that the things they see are permanent.
The things they see are ideas (perceptions,
sensations) of a mind. Therefore the permanent
world is the idea of a permanent mind.[5]
But "the things they see" is an ambiguous expression.
If by "the things that I see" is meant "my
sensations of sight," then they are not permanent,
for they only last as long as I look at the object,
and consequently any argument based on their
supposed permanence falls to the ground. On the
other hand, if "the things that I see" are permanent,
then they are not merely my sensations of sight—in
which case subjective idealism is wrong, and my
perception of a thing is not the whole account of
the thing and does not exhaust its reality. The
things which I perceive are not my sensations:
they are things of which I have sensations. In
fine, they are apprehended, at the moment of apprehension,
as being both within and without consciousness.
To the question whether a thing exists when I am
not looking at it, John Stuart Mill replies, in effect,
that as often as I look at it I shall see it; that if I
were looking I should see it. This is true enough;
but it is no answer to the question. When further
pressed, Mill further replies that, if things do not
exist when we do not look, we should nevertheless
necessarily be deluded by the association of ideas
into imagining that they do exist when not looked
at. Here, again, it is perfectly true that, if things
are not real, it is a delusion to imagine they are.
But that is no answer to the question. It is, in fact,
a question which the subjective idealist cannot
answer. To say "No! Things out of consciousness
are non-existent," is to say that effects of which
the causes are unobserved are effects produced by
non-existent causes. To say "Yes" is to admit
that things can exist out of consciousness as well
as in, which is what subjective idealism is there
to deny.
We submit, then, that the analysis of experience
which subjective idealism makes is not an exhaustive
analysis; and that, when the man of common sense
says that in looking at anything he is aware both
of his sensations of sight and of something more,
he is stating the actual facts as they are given in
experience to all of us.
We apprehend a thing as being both our sensations
and something more. When the idealist says that
the latter half of this apprehension is a misapprehension,
he rejects an observed fact of experience,
not because he does not find it in his experience,
but because it seems to him impossible that it should
be there. He argues that to say we can be conscious
of what is not in our consciousness is to say that we
can be conscious of something of which we are unconscious—a
patent nonsense. He might admit, for
the sake of argument, that possibly a thing could
exist both in consciousness and out, and even that
we might know that it so existed. But he cannot
admit that a man is conscious of what he is not
conscious of.
He is not required to admit it. He is required to
admit that our perceptions are not the only things of
which we are conscious; or, to put it in other words,
that our states of consciousness are not the only things
of which we are conscious. And he is required to
admit it simply and solely on the ground that it is
a fact of common observation and everyday experience.
Thus, for instance, we perform actions,
and (usually) we are conscious of performing them.
But the action is something more and other than our
consciousness of it. Or is someone going to maintain
that doing and knowing are the same thing?
Is anyone prepared to push the illusion-argument
so far as to say that the idea that we do things is
a mere delusion? If it is not a delusion, if it is, on
the contrary, a fact, then our actions are not states
of consciousness, but things of which we are conscious.
We apprehend them, in the very act of
apprehension, as realities distinct from the consciousness
which we have of them. And we have the
very same guarantee for their reality as we have for
the reality of our perception or sensations of them,
viz. the fact that we are conscious of them.
In the same way, when we push a solid object or
feel the impact of a moving body, we are as conscious
of that body as of our muscular sensations:
our sensations make up our perception of the object,
but are not the object. They constitute the state
of consciousness, but that state is not the only thing
we are conscious of. The object is apprehended as
being in consciousness and not as merely being our
consciousness of it.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, at least, is quite clear that
our states of consciousness are not the only things
of which we are conscious; he holds even that we
are vaguely conscious of that which transcends our
consciousness. Thus, our personality is not a state
of consciousness, yet we are conscious of it, and
"its existence is to each a fact above all others the
most certain."[6] And, as for the real, "our firm
belief in objective reality, a belief which metaphysical
criticism cannot shake," is not merely "a
positive though vague consciousness of that which
transcends consciousness," but "has the highest
validity of any"[7] of our beliefs.
But though Mr. Spencer admits, or rather insists,
that we know that the Real is, he denies that we
know what it is. In other words, he accepts the
validity of one half of every act of experience and
denies the validity of the other half. Our analysis
of experience has shown us that we apprehend the
real, in the very act of apprehension, as being both
a state of our consciousness and something more
than that state. To say that one half of the apprehension
is a misapprehension is to say that both
are invalid. If what is present in consciousness is
merely appearance and not the real thing, then our
states are the only things of which we are conscious,
and the existence of anything more is not a fact of
experience and observation—still less can it have
the highest validity of any of our beliefs.
We may be asked, "Granted that the Real is more
than a state of our consciousness, what more is it?"
and, if no answer is forthcoming, we may be told
that after all then, it seems, we know that the Real
is, but not what it is. The reply is: So far as the
Real is out of consciousness we may not know
what it is; as far as it is in, we do. By "being
conscious of a thing" we mean knowing what the
thing is—not necessarily complete knowledge, but
some.
If it be said that, on our own showing, a thing
and the knowledge of it are different, and that consequently
however great our knowledge may become
there always remains, and must always remain,
something which we cannot know, because it is ex
hypothesi, not knowledge, we must reply that this
objection is but a restatement of the inveterate
fallacy of idealism—the fallacy that states of consciousness
are the only things we can be conscious
of; that if we know a thing the thing ceases to be
anything but our knowledge of it; that to be conscious
of performing an action is proof that no
action is really performed, and that the only doing
is knowing.
We act, and we know that we act. Reality must
be accorded to both or denied to both; it cannot
be accorded to one and denied to the other. Indeed,
knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But
it is also something more, just as an action of which
we are conscious is something more than our consciousness
of it.
But we are conscious not only of our own actions,
but of the reactions of things on us, and of the
interactions of things on one another. We apprehend
all three—action, reaction, and interaction—as
real; we know not only that they are, as
being realities, but also what they are as states
of consciousness. As states of consciousness they
are successive sensations or perceptions; as more
than states of consciousness they are power or
force.
The study which science makes of the interactions
of things on one another reveals those interactions as
conformable to law and happening in such a way
that their occurrence can be logically deduced, and
even foretold, from their laws. In a word, they
happen in a way that can be reasoned out, and
they constitute together a logical process. The
reality, the power, the activity which is exhibited
in this process is exhibited therefore as a rational
activity, as reason active; and both the reason and
the action are apprehended by us as real, and not
as mere states of our consciousness.
If the scientific account of the universe and the
theory of evolution, so far as they are true, are not
mere exercises of the imagination, but represent
events and changes which actually have taken place
and are taking place beyond the range of actual
observation, it must be because they are logical
inferences from real events and real changes which
are matters of direct observation. If the observed
events have no reality, we have no ground for believing
the unobserved or inferred facts to have any.
Unless the real events follow a logical sequence,
our inferences must be fallacious in proportion as
they are logical. We believe the inferred facts to
be real because we believe the observed facts to be
real; and the observed facts are presented to us
and apprehended by us to be not merely our sensations
but also realities. On no other ground can
we or do we trust science to guide us in life.
Nor do we trust morality on any other ground.
So far as we trust the impulse to do right, or base
any calculations upon it or draw any inferences from
it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of
apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness
and something more. As in the impact of a moving
body we apprehend not merely our sensations, but
also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse
to good we apprehend not only our consciousness
thereof, but the presence of a real power, with regard
to which we know not only that it is, but to some
extent what it is—a power which would have us
do good and be good.
If material things are but ideas of ours, so the
Right and Good may be. If the latter are mere
aspirations and nothing more, the former are mere
sensations and nothing more. But if in things we are
conscious of a power not ourselves, so are we in our
consciousness of the Right and Good: our aspirations
are inspirations. We apprehend their reality
in exactly the same way as we apprehend the reality
of material things—by direct observation. And we
have exactly the same evidence—the evidence of
immediate consciousness.
"Let no man spoil you with philosophy." The
statements that "knowledge is the only reality,"
"the only Real is the Unknowable," are contradictory
not only of each other, but of those facts
in the common experience of mankind which
afford the only safe foundation for philosophy as
well as for science. Both statements logically imply
that our only knowledge is of the unreal; and from
knowledge of the unreal to the unreality of knowledge
is a necessary step. But existence is not
merely knowledge: existence is also action. A
thing is that which it does, and not merely that
which it is known to do. Or rather a thing never
does anything: only a person can act. The "action"
or "behaviour" of a thing is only a metaphor.
Assuming the process of evolution to be a
fact, we have inquired what is the value of
that fact, what significance it has for man as a
moral being, anxious to direct his life in accordance
with the best lights he can obtain. In our attempts
to draw any inference from the facts of evolution
as to the moral government of the universe, we have
always found ourselves ultimately confronted by the
notice—The Real is Unknowable. Obviously, if
"the ultimate of ultimates," the Real Power or Force,
of which all things and beings are manifestations,
is unknowable, we cannot know whether it cares
or does not care for what is true or good. But if
the Real is Unknowable, then the knowledge which
we do possess is not knowledge of the real, and
consequently all our science is unreal knowledge;
the theory of evolution is a system of delusive
inferences from unreal facts. That, however, is
a thing which we could not believe. Doubtless our
knowledge is small compared with our ignorance.
Doubtless there is much which the human mind
could not understand without becoming more than
human. Doubtless, also, every addition to our knowledge
involves a readjustment and correction of our
previous inferences; and a considerable addition,
such as the theory of evolution was, causes a considerable
change in our conception of the universe
and its laws. But all these admissions cannot compel
us to admit that science is wholly unreal knowledge,
or that evolution is an entirely unreal process. We
sought, accordingly, to show that we have some, if
only partial, knowledge of the real, that that knowledge
is not wholly inferential, but that so far as
it is inferred it is inferred from real facts, the reality
of which is directly apprehended in the common
experience of mankind.
As a matter of fact, those writers who proclaim
the unknowability of the Real, when they are writing
as philosophers, abandon it when they are engaged
in science. When they are working out the theory
of evolution, they take it for granted that the process
of evolution is a reality, that the common experience
of mankind is trustworthy to some extent, and that to
that extent the Real is knowable and known. They
assure us that, though the knowledge we have is not
knowledge of the Real, it is just the same for us as
if it were—if the Real could enter into our consciousness,
we really should not know the difference.
"Thus then we may resume, with entire confidence,
those realistic conceptions which philosophy at first
sight seems to dissipate."[8]
On examination, however, it turns out that the
entire confidence which is thus restored to the reality
of material things is not extended to the reality
of those ideals of the good, the beautiful, and the
holy which play their part in the lives of men and
in the evolution of mankind—or not to all of those
ideals.
Now, it is scarcely to be hoped that a theory which
begins by ignoring certain facts in the common
experience of mankind, or by denying their reality,
can end in a satisfactory explanation of them.
Either it will be consistent and proclaim them to
be illusions, or it will be inconsistent and quietly
include them from time to time as it goes on—in
which case the explanation it gives of them will be
no explanation. Thus, for instance, as we have
already argued, the Optimistic interpretation of
evolution, professing to exhibit the Ideal of morality
as one of the ultimate consequences of the redistribution
of matter and motion, ends by denying any
difference between what is and what ought to be,
and thus reduces the moral ideal to a mere illusion.
The Pessimist, on the other hand, insisting on the
reality, and to some extent the supremacy of the
moral ideal, confesses his inability to explain its
validity as being due to evolution: the fact that
it has been evolved does not account for its validity,
because the tendency to evil has been also evolved,
but is not, therefore, to be yielded to.
The object of this chapter is to examine the
hypothesis that the process of evolution is nothing
but a perpetual redistribution of matter and motion,
and to show that the hypothesis cannot explain, and
as a matter of fact does not explain, all the facts
which it is framed to account for.
The theory of evolution is an attempt—one of
many attempts that men have made—to explain
the process by which the totality of things has come
to be what it is. It differs from most other attempts
in that it endeavours to give a scientific explanation
of the process, and that consequently it does not
profess to go back to the beginning or to discover
the origin of the process.
The nature of scientific "explanation" is well
understood by men of science (in England, at least),
and has been made familiar to the non-scientific
world by John Stuart Mill. An event is scientifically
"explained" when it is shown to be a case of a
general law; a law is "explained" when it is shown
to come under some more general law. In other
words, the business of science is to show that the
thing under examination always happens (or tends
to happen) under certain circumstances which science
can formulate with more or less exactness. But how
or why the thing should happen thus, science does
not undertake to explain: "what is called explaining
one law of nature by another, is but substituting
one mystery for another; and does nothing to
render the general course of nature other than
mysterious: we can no more assign a why for the
more extensive laws than for the partial ones."[9]
It is only "minds not habituated to accurate
thinking" which imagine that the laws are the causes
of the events which happen in accordance with them,
"that the law of general gravitation, for example,
causes the fall of bodies to the earth."[10] It may be
a law of science, a perfectly true statement, that the
phenomenon B always follows the phenomenon A;
but that statement, true as it is, is not the cause of
B. That A is always followed by B is demonstrated
by science. Why it should be followed by B is as
mysterious as magic—as mysterious as that the
waving of the magician's wand should be immediately
followed by the rising of a palace from the ground.
How the one thing can follow the other, is no part
of science's business to explain.
Science, therefore, is essentially descriptive: with
ever-increasing accuracy it describes things and the
order in which they happen. Evolution, then, as
a scientific theory, is also purely descriptive: it
describes the way in which things have come to
be what we see them to be, the process by which
the totality of things has come to be what it is.
But when the purely scientific and descriptive part
of the work is done, when science has formulated
the order of the events which have led up to the
existing state of the universe, when the process of
evolution has been described, there still remain the
questions which science refused even to try to
answer, and there also remain other questions more
vital to science. There arises the question, In what
sense is evolution a real process? do the laws of
science exist only in the minds of men of science?
is the process of evolution merely the description
which is given of it (as according to some thinkers
a thing is only the sensations which we have of it),
or is it something more?
Obviously the question whether evolution is a real
process, whether there is any reality in science, is
one which cannot be answered, either in the affirmative
or in the negative, without some idea of what
"reality" means, of what the "real" is. "What is
the meaning of the word real? This is the question
which underlies every metaphysical inquiry; and the
neglect of it is the remaining cause of the chronic
antagonisms of metaphysicians."[11] Before we are
logically entitled to say that evolution is a real
process, we must answer the question, "What is the
essence, the ultimate reality of things? who or what
is the Being that is manifested in 'all thinking things,
all objects of all thought'?"[12]
Now, to these questions, as to the Being and
Becoming of the universe, science has nothing to
say. Science does not even afford the materials
for an answer to them, any more than to those other
questions as to how or why things should happen in
the way which science describes. Science describes
things, but does not undertake to prove that things
exist. Science is organised common sense, and
common sense takes it for granted that things exist.
Having made this assumption, science proceeds to
investigate with scientific exactness the order in
which events succeed one another and co-exist with
one another, within the range of direct observation;
and infers that, even when they are beyond the
range of direct observation, they continue to occur
in the same order of sequence and co-existence.
But here again science refuses to have anything to
do with any metaphysical questions as to how
or why things should thus occur. All sorts of conjectures
may be made, and have been made, to
explain why B should follow A, or co-exist with
it. But science is not pledged to any of them.
The only thing she undertakes to show is the fact
of the sequence or co-existence; and this she can
do without assuming the truth of any of these conjectures.
Indeed, the progress which science has
made is largely due to the fact that she has steadily
declined to have anything to do with such conjectures—having
found out by experience that they
simply distract her from her proper business of
observing with the utmost exactness what actually
does take place. It may be that A in some
mysterious and wholly inexplicable way "produces"
B, that is to say in technical phraseology, is "the
efficient cause" or "mechanical cause" of B. It
may be that the sequence of B upon A is a volition
of the Being which is manifested in all thinking
things, in all objects of all thought. Science cannot
prove, and will not even discuss, either suggestion:
she confines herself to the assertion that, as a matter
of careful and exact observation, B does follow A.
Whether we call A an efficient cause or not, matters
not to science: call it so or refuse to call it so, the
fact once established by science, that B follows A,
remains. The theory of efficient or mechanical
causes is doubtless of importance, but not to science.
If it is proved to be false, not a single fact of science
is shaken.
The mechanical theory may be true or may be
false, but in either case it is a metaphysical theory.
If science is descriptive—descriptive of the uniform
succession and co-existence of facts—then science
no more proves the mechanical theory to be true
than it proves the volitional theory to be true.
Both are theories as to why facts should succeed
one another in the order described by science; and
science does not undertake to prove the truth of
such theories, nor does she wait for them to be
proved or disproved.
Many men of science, however, are also philosophers,
and hold, as they are fully entitled to hold,
that the mechanical theory is the true interpretation
of nature. Now, "mechanics is the science of
motion; we can assign as its object: to describe
completely and in the simplest manner the movements
which occur in nature."[13] On the mechanical
theory, therefore, "the object of all science is to
reduce the phenomena of nature to forms of motion,
and to describe these completely and in the simplest
manner ... the only complete description is that
afforded by a mathematical formula, in which the
constants are supplied by observation. This permits
us to calculate those features or phases of phenomena
which are hidden from our observation in space or
in time."[14] This, we need hardly add, is in agreement
with Mr. Herbert Spencer's view of the theory
of evolution as a description of the process of the
redistribution of matter and motion.
It seems, then, that according to this particular
metaphysical theory, which maintains the mechanical
explanation of nature to be the true one, the object
of all science is to describe (with mathematical
accuracy, where possible) the movements of things
in space. But science is universal; evolution extends
to the whole cosmic process. Therefore, the
only things with which science has to do, or which
are factors in the cosmic process, are things moving
in space.
As a metaphysical argument this theory seems to
us unsatisfactory. It converts, simply and illegitimately,
the proposition sanctioned by common sense,
that material things are real, into the proposition
opposed to common sense, that all real things are
material. It assumes, apparently unconsciously and
certainly without proof, that the only things capable
of scientific description are movements in space, the
only laws in the universe mechanical laws.
Historically, material things were the first to be
studied and described with scientific exactness. It
is only natural, therefore, that the methods and
assumptions which have been employed with conspicuous
success by the physical sciences should
be extended, tentatively at least, elsewhere. It is
equally natural that protests should be raised, and
the extension proclaimed by philosophers to be
illegitimate—"impoverishing faith without enriching
knowledge."[15] "To regard the course of the world
as the development of some blind force which works
on according to universal laws, devoid of insight and
freedom, devoid of interest in good and evil, are
we to consider this unjustifiable generalisation of
a concept, valid in its own sphere, as the higher
truth?"[16]
It is not, however, likely that science will drop
a generalisation, however "unjustifiable" in metaphysics,
if it works in practice. The question is
whether it does work; and that is plainly a question
of fact, not a question of metaphysics. We want
to know therefore, first, whether things moving in
space are the only things with which we are acquainted
in common experience; and, next, whether
all the changes which take place within the range of
scientific observation are or can be explained by the
laws of mechanics.
It is clear that, if the mechanical theory of science
and of evolution is to be successfully maintained,
both these questions must be answered in the affirmative.
It is equally clear that, if we confine ourselves
to the actual facts, both questions must be answered
in the negative.
Thoughts, ideas, conceptions, sensations, feelings,
emotions are things of which we have experience
at every moment of our waking lives; and none
of them are things which occupy space or move
in space. A thought is not a thing which can be
measured by a foot-rule, as things in space can
be; the greatness of an idea is not one which
measures so many yards by so many; a conception
has no cubic contents; a toothache cannot be put
in a pair of scales, nor can any process of chemical
analysis be applied to hope or fear. We find ourselves,
therefore, in this dilemma: if the mechanical
theory is true, and science can deal only with things
moving in space, then psychology and sociology are
not sciences, and their subject-matter never can be
made amenable to scientific treatment. On the other
hand, if psychology is a science, then science deals
with things which do not move in space.
We submit that psychology is a science, that our
sensations, emotions, ideas, etc., can be observed, and
can be described scientifically, that is to say, that
their uniform sequences and co-existences can be
stated with accuracy and formulated as laws. We
submit further that our definition of science should
be based on facts, and not framed to suit a metaphysical
theory. A satisfactory definition of science
must include all the sciences. The definition put
forward in the interests of the mechanical theory
excludes arbitrarily the mental and moral sciences,
and implies that their subject-matter is beyond the
power of science to deal with. The exclusion and
the implication are consequent upon the suggested
limitation of science to things moving in space, and
are of the essence of the mechanical theory. Both
the exclusion and the implication are unnecessary
if we adhere to the older conception of science,
as it occurs in Mill, which claims for science all
phenomena of which the sequences and co-existences
can be observed, described, and formulated as laws.
What we have said with regard to science applies
also of necessity to Evolution. If Evolution is simply
the continual redistribution of matter and motion, if
matter and motion are the only things subject to
evolution, then consciousness and conscience are
not subject to evolution. On the other hand, if
they too have had and are having their evolution,
then the redistribution of matter and motion does
not sum up the process of evolution, and is not
a correct statement of the process. If it were an
induction drawn from a consideration of all the
facts of evolution, it would cover them all. But
it does not: it excludes a large class of important
facts, because their exclusion is demanded in the
interests of a particular metaphysical theory—the
mechanical theory. It implies that the operation
of evolution is confined to a limited set of facts.
If the implication is false, then evolution is a
bigger thing than the mere redistribution of matter
and motion.
The way in which it is usually attempted to force
the mechanical theory to square with the facts, or
rather to cut the facts to fit the theory, is to point
to the connection between the mind and the brain,
and to proclaim the consequent dependence of mind
on matter. Now, that there is a connection between
mind and brain is certain. What the connection is
exactly is as yet uncertain. But the fact that two
things co-exist, are connected with one another and
vary together, does not prove that the one thing
is the other. On the contrary, it postulates that
the two things, though related, are different. The
mechanical theory either commits the fallacy of
mistaking connected things for identical things, or
it fails to prove the very thing necessary for its
justification, viz. that thoughts, emotions, etc., are
things occupying space and moving in space. The
chemical and physiological changes which take place
in the brain are movements in space. But it does
not follow that the corresponding pains or ideas float
about in the air or move from one point in space to
another.
Further, as a metaphysical theory, this identification
of matter with mind is a double-edged weapon:
it cuts both ways: if mind is matter, matter is mind;
if mind is thinking matter, then matter is latent
thought; and thought is consequently exhibited not
as being the last product of evolution, but as a factor
in it from the beginning. But this identity of mind
and matter is a purely metaphysical speculation: it
is a conjecture to explain how it is that two phenomena
can co-exist in the way in which they are
observed to do. Such conjectures science does not
require: she does not undertake to explain why
things are, but to describe—if possible with mathematical
exactness—the order of their sequence or
co-existence. This function science can discharge
equally well whether the changes of consciousness
are or are not supposed to be movements in space.
Metaphysicians may argue the point; in the meantime
science is describing and formulating the laws
of mind and endeavouring to correlate the changes
of consciousness with the physical changes of the
brain and the nervous system. The mechanical
theory neither helps nor hinders science in her
work.
But science does throw some difficulties in the way
of the mechanical theory; or, rather, the facts of
science refuse to fit into the theory. If the stream
of consciousness is nothing but a series of physiological
and chemical changes, the laws of the one
ought to be identical with the laws of the other, and
both with the laws of mechanics, on the mechanical
theory. But they are not. Those concise descriptions
of mental phenomena which constitute the
laws of psychology ought to coincide with those
other concise descriptions of fact which constitute
the laws of chemistry, if the facts described by the
two sciences are the same. But the two sets of laws
have, to say the least, more differences than resemblances.
This brings us to our second point. Our first
point was that if the concise description of evolution,
which sums it up as the process by which matter
is continually redistributed in space, is to be proved
to be true, it must be shown that movements in space
are the only events which we know to take place.
Our second point is that, unless it can be shown that
mechanical laws are the only laws at work in the
universe, this description of evolution does not find
room for the whole working of the process of
evolution.
Whether the only laws in the universe are
mechanical laws is primarily a question of fact;
and on the facts, as known to us at present, the
answer to the question is a decided negative. The
laws of psychology and of ethics are neither identical
with nor have they been deduced from any physical
laws. As a hypothesis designed to explain the way
in which the world works, the redistribution of
matter and motion neither includes nor accounts for
those laws which are of most importance to man.
This appeal to the facts which are actually known
is, however, often conceived to be in reality an appeal
to our ignorance: mental laws have not as yet been
shown to be deducible from physical laws, but they
may be. So, too, the fact that no attempt to extend
the gravitation formula from astronomy to any other
department of science has yet succeeded, is no proof
that it never will be so extended. Neither, we may
remark, does it constitute any presumption that it
will. Are there, then, any other grounds for presuming
that mental law may yet be shown to be
merely a case of some physical law? To some
minds there seem to be grounds for presuming that
it not only may, but must. However great our ignorance
of the details of the process of evolution, there
are certain broad facts which are beyond dispute. It
is indisputable that there was a period in the history
of the earth when there was no life upon it; that
the elements which constitute living matter are
themselves lifeless; that consciousness is correlated
somehow with those organic compounds, the elements
of which are inorganic. These facts together
constitute an irresistible presumption that ultimately
mind and matter must obey the same laws.
But this is not the desired conclusion. The conclusion
desired is that mind must obey matter's laws.
The fact that mind and matter obey the same ultimate
laws is a different thing, and rather indicates
that even the redistribution of matter and motion
requires ultimately some other explanation than
merely mechanical laws afford. To the religious
mind it is quite intelligible that mind and matter
should obey the same laws—God's laws.
It may be said, however, that we have not done
full justice to the presumption raised by the broad
facts of evolution. When there was no life upon
the earth, the only laws in operation must have been
physical laws, and consequently the laws of life and
consciousness must have been produced by the laws
of matter.
Now, this argument in effect amounts to a denial
of any difference between the mechanical composition
and the chemical combination of bodies.
Bodies when mechanically compounded continue
to follow the same laws as they obey when uncompounded,
and their conjoint action can be deduced
and foretold from the laws to which they are
subject in their separate state: "Whatever would have
happened in consequence of each cause taken by itself
happens when they are together, and we have
only to cast up the results."[17] With chemical combination
the case is quite different: the chemical compound
exhibits properties and behaves in ways which
are quite different from the properties and behaviour
of its elements, and could not be foretold from any
observation of them. Water, which is a combination
of oxygen and hydrogen, exhibits no trace
of the properties of either. "If this be true of
chemical combinations, it is still more true of
those far more complex combinations of elements
which constitute organised bodies, and in which
those extraordinary new uniformities arise, which
are called the laws of life. All organised bodies are
composed of parts similar to those composing inorganic
nature, and which have even themselves
existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena
of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those
parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any
of the effects which would be produced by the action
of the component substance considered as mere
physical agents.... The tongue, for instance, is,
like all other parts of the animal frame, composed
of gelatine, fibrin, and other products of the
chemistry of digestion, but from no knowledge of
the properties of those substances could we ever
predict that it could taste, unless gelatine or fibrin
could themselves taste; for no elementary fact can be
in the conclusion which was not in the premises."[18]
What is thus true of physiology and of those
chemical combinations on which it is based, is true
also of sociology and the psychological facts on
which it is based. "When physiological elements
are combined, the combination reveals properties
which were not appreciable in the separate elements.
The increasingly complex combination or association
of organic elements may produce an entirely
special set of phenomena.... Their combination
exhibits something more than the mere sum of
their separate properties. Thus, no knowledge of
man as an individual would enable us to forecast
all the institutions which result from the association
of men and which can only manifest themselves in
social life."[19]
It is clear, then, that the mechanical theory of
evolution can only maintain itself by obliterating
the distinction between mechanical juxtaposition
and chemical combination. The obstacles which
stand in the way of this obliteration, at the outset,
are two. First, the behaviour of a chemical compound
bears no resemblance to the behaviour of
its constituents when separate. Next, the laws of
the compound cannot be deduced or exhibited as
consequences of the laws of the separate elements.
To these two objections it may be replied, first,
that though the compound bears no resemblance
to its separate constituents, the character of every
aggregate must be determined by that of its component
parts; and, next, that with more knowledge
we shall come to see the way in which the laws of
the separate components generate the law of the
whole. Perhaps, by way of illustration, we may
employ an analogy. A number of bricks can be
placed on one another to form a cube; a number
of cannon balls will form a pyramidical pile. The
aggregate of bricks resembles in shape the separate
bricks; the aggregate of balls does not resemble a
ball in shape. Yet the pyramidical shape of the
pile of cannon balls is as certainly determined by
the shape of the separate balls, as the cubical shape
of the heap of bricks is determined by that of the
separate bricks. Now, we do not know the geometrical
structure of chemical atoms; but, on this
analogy, it is reasonable to suppose that, if we did,
we should see at once that the structure of a chemical
compound is dependent on, though different from,
that of its elements. So too in sociology, the
aggregate, society, is not a human being, but the
character of any given society is determined by
the character of its individual members.
This last illustration, however, brings us to a fresh
difficulty in the way of the mechanical theory. As
is observed in the remarks quoted previously from
Monsieur Bernard, the peculiar characteristic of
those more intimate combinations which form the
subject-matter of chemistry, physiology, and sociology
is that in them the combining elements reveal
properties which were not perceptible in them
previous to their combination. It may be true that
the character of these more intimate combinations
is determined by the properties of their constituents,
but it is by the properties which they reveal when
in combination, not by those which are manifest in
them when uncombined. Therein lies the difference
between mechanical compounds and chemical combinations;
and it is that difference which the
mechanical theory does not account for. The more
intimate, chemical, physiological, and sociological
combinations take place in virtue of properties
which require the combination to reveal them. In
sociology it is not the juxtaposition of individual
men, but their co-operation, which makes a society.
In chemistry, the formation of chemical compounds
implies the affinity of the elements.
It seems, then, that the mechanical theory contains
half the truth, but not the whole truth. The half-truth
which it insists on is that in both mechanical
and chemical combinations there is juxtaposition
of the constituent elements. The half of the truth
which it overlooks is that when the elements are
juxtaposed in one way they develop or manifest
new qualities, when juxtaposed in the other way
they do not. The mechanical theory asserts that
the only factors in evolution are matter and the
force which moves matter about: it takes into
account the external factors, but leaves out the
internal force or spontaneity in virtue of which
things in a suitable environment develop new
qualities. Doubtless the juxtaposition of the elements
is a condition without which they would not
manifest their new properties: the redistribution
of matter and motion is a condition of evolution,
but it does not constitute evolution. Rather, it is
the continual revelation of these new qualities which
constitutes evolution, chemical affinity and all its
consequences in chemistry, spontaneous variation and
all its consequences in the evolution of organic life.
From this point of view it becomes clear why the
laws of a chemical compound neither are nor can
be exhibited as consequences of or deductions from
the laws of its separate constituents. The properties
which the law of the compound describes are not
the properties which the separate elements exhibit.
The living matter of biology, the active atoms of
chemistry, are not products of the lifeless, inert
matter of mechanics; but are different and higher
revelations of the same power which is manifested
in different degrees in all. It is this progressive
manifestation, and not the mere drifting about of
bits of matter, which constitutes evolution. The
redistribution of matter and motion may be a concomitant
of evolution, but it is not evolution. "The
continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations," which Mr. Herbert Spencer[20] offers
as a definition of life, may be a condition of the
maintenance of an organism; but life is and means
to each one of us, and to the humblest thing that
breathes, much more than that. Mr. Spencer's
definition of life leaves, for instance, consciousness
out, as of no account in life, and would be
equally applicable to many automatic, self-adjusting
machines. The definition constitutes an admission
that life and consciousness cannot be exhibited as
a consequence of the redistribution of matter and
motion. They appear at a certain (or uncertain)
point in the process of redistribution, and they
have as concomitants certain further redistributions;
but they are neither the consequence of
nor are they identical with that redistribution;
nor can their laws be reduced to mere cases of the
laws of matter and motion.
The doctrine that evolution consists in nothing
but movements in space, amounts to the assertion
that we know nothing about things and men except
that they move. In point of fact, we know a good
deal more. We know that men think, and that the
movement of thought is not a movement in space.
We know that the vibrations of the ether are movements
in space and that they are also something
more: they are known to us also as sights, sounds,
etc. No explanation or concise statement of the
process of evolution can be satisfactory, or even
scientific, which begins by denying the relevance
and even the reality of the most important part
of our knowledge. If the "first principles" of
evolution are to be scientific, they must be inductions
drawn from observation and based on some
similarity in the phenomena observed, in which
case, and in which case alone, they will apply to
both classes of phenomena, mental and material.
If any "principle" is true of one class alone, it is
shown thereby not to be a "first principle": it is
not universally applicable.
This raises the question whether there can be any
first principles in this sense, whether mind and
matter are, to some extent, subject to the same
laws; or whether the resemblances which are sometimes
drawn are not merely metaphors more or
less expanded. Thus we speak of "weighty" objections;
but will anyone maintain that ideas are
subject to, or exemplify, the law of gravitation?
We speak of ideas as "coherent" or "incoherent";
does anyone suppose that they stick together in
the same way and from the same causes as material
objects cohere?
Mr. Herbert Spencer has written a chapter[21] under
the title "Society is an Organism," in which he
points out many resemblances between society and
an organism. But Mr. Spencer himself "distinctly
asserts"[22] that the resemblances imply nothing more
than that in both society and organisms there is
"a mutual dependence of parts." That is to say,
sociology does not herein "exemplify" some of the
laws of biology, but sociology and biology both
exemplify certain laws which hold good wherever
there is a mutual dependence of parts.
Again, Mr. Spencer says[23] that "evolution is
definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity
to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation
of motion and integration of matter"; and,
having shown how and why the homogeneous and the
incoherent in the domain of physics tend to become
coherent and heterogeneous, he proceeds to show that
there is a similar process in the evolution of knowledge,
and to say "these mental changes exemplify
a law of physical transformations that are wrought
by physical forces."[24] Now it doubtless is a fact that
with intellectual development there goes a more
accurate discrimination of differences at first unnoticed,
a readier perception of resemblances at
first undetected, a consequent segregation and classification
of ideas, and a recognition of heterogeneity
where homogeneity was at the first glance supposed
to prevail. Doubtless, too, as a result of this process,
there is greater coherency in our ideas. But is all
this anything more than expanded metaphor? If it
is something more, how can these mental changes
"exemplify" a law of physics when ideas neither
stick physically to each other nor gravitate to one
another like the particles of the original, homogeneous,
nebular mass? If mental and material
phenomena can to some extent obey the same laws,
and these laws are scientific inductions, there must
be some resemblance between the phenomena.
That resemblance cannot be physical or spatial,
because mental phenomena do not occupy space,
or possess weight, or exist in three dimensions. As
far as one can see, it consists in two points: both
classes of phenomena (1) are objects of thought and
(2) are displays of force or power. This implies
that movements in space are displays of the same
force as is manifested in the non-spatial movements
of thought. The force which is displayed in consciousness
as Will appears in space as motion. Both
classes of phenomena, however, are not only displays
of force, but also objects of thought. The reality
of a phenomenon of either class consists in its being
the manifestation of Will to or in consciousness.
The reality of the two classes is co-extensive with
their similarity, and is the sole foundation for any
true inferences or justifiable generalisations about
them.
If the law of "the instability of the homogeneous"
is a first principle, and is a scientific induction based
upon a real similarity between the mental and
material phenomena of which it is offered as an
explanation, it becomes interesting to inquire how
far the similarity extends. In the case of mental
evolution the essential feature of the process is
that the mind gradually comes to perceive resemblances
and to discriminate differences which, though
they were present all the time, were not at first
appreciable. In other words, the apparently homogeneous
was, from the beginning, really heterogeneous.
Now this fact, which is true in the sphere
of mental evolution, finds its exact parallel in the
evolution of the material universe, if the account
given above of mechanical compounds and chemical
combinations be true. What appears first in the
process of evolution, and is exemplified by mechanics,
is matter apparently inert. But when the particles
of this apparently inert matter enter into chemical
combinations with one another they reveal a fresh
set of properties, quite different from those exhibited
by them previous to their combination; and, when
they enter into physiological relations, they display
yet further additional properties. This progressive
manifestation it is, and not the accompanying
"dissipation of motion and integration of matter,"
which constitutes evolution in the material world,
and finds its exact parallel in mental evolution. In
both cases we have Will manifested as object of
thought; and in both cases we judge most truly
of that which is manifested when we judge it by its
most complete manifestation. In both cases the
apparent homogeneity is not the ultimate fact underlying
everything, but is only the first-fruits of that
which is yet to come.
We have seen that if material things can alone
be treated of by science, if things which
can be seen and handled are alone amenable to the
methods of science, then there can be no science
of mind, and no scientific laws to regulate mental
phenomena. In the same way, if the field of evolution
is completely filled by the redistribution of
matter and motion, then there is no room left in
the theory of evolution in which to accommodate
the history of ideas or of morals, there is no evolution
of thought or morality, no continuity between
higher and lower in the intellectual development
of man and the brute.
We may admit that the methods of mental and
moral science, of sociology and political economy,
are not identical with those employed by physics
or chemistry or astronomy. But we cannot admit
that the facts which, if not the proper study of
mankind, are at any rate of the greatest interest
to man, are not subject to or part of the process
of evolution, and cannot be reduced to scientific
law and order. The methods of the philosophical
sciences may not be the same as those of the exact
sciences; but neither are the methods of chemistry
those of astronomy—just as the instruments of the
astronomer are not those of the chemist. The
exactness which is attained by those sciences that
can apply the methods of mathematics to their
subject-matter cannot be rivalled by philology or
psychology. But it is not to all the material sciences
that the mathematical methods can be applied:
meteorology deals with matter in motion, but not
yet with exactitude. The intangible and invisible,
but none the less real, facts of our mental and moral
experience can be measured to some extent by the
statistics and averages and curves employed by the
sociologist, the demographer, and political economist:
the intensity of a desire may be estimated roughly
and relatively by the "effective demand" for its
object, the will to live by the number of suicides.
Again, we may admit that the laws of the exact
or material sciences do not extend to mental science,
without thereby forfeiting the right to subject mental
phenomena to scientific investigation and analysis.
Chemistry does not cease to be a science because
chemical affinity cannot be exhibited as a case of
the gravitation formula. Need psychology renounce
the claim to be a science because the laws of the
association of ideas cannot be deduced, say, from the
laws of motion?
Of course, if science has no other object than
to describe with mathematical accuracy the exact
way in which material things move, if no method
is scientific which does not result in such a formula,
and if no generalisation, however true, is scientific
which does not formulate motion in space, then,
indeed, it is unscientific to talk of the evolution of
mind and thought, of man and of society.
On the other hand, the movements of material
things in space are facts of which we are aware,
phenomena of which we are aware through our
senses; in a word, they are sense-phenomena. We
are aware of them as existing simultaneously and
in combination, or as succeeding one upon another;
and no truth, even of the most mathematical and
exact of the sciences, does, or can do, more than
express with mathematical exactness the precise
conditions under which these sense-phenomena co-exist
or follow one another, or the precise conditions
without which such co-existence or sequence cannot
take place. A mathematical science dealing with
material things states only and always that certain
sense-phenomena occur invariably and uniformly
under certain conditions. The exact sciences move
within the limits of the Uniformity of Nature and
the law of Universal Causation; and their subject-matter
consists of sense-phenomena, i.e. of things
which, as known to science, are objects of perception
to some mind.
But sense-phenomena are not the only mental
phenomena of which we are aware: there are ideas
which we do not see or handle, or smell or taste,
but of which we are nevertheless distinctly conscious.
Thought has its movement, ideas have their co-existence
and sequences, the association of ideas has its
laws. There is a uniformity of human nature as
well as of external nature; there are conditions
under which certain actions are always performed,
and without which they would never be done.
Whether the body of propositions in which these
conditions are formulated be accorded or denied the
name of science, matters little. But it is difficult
to see what are the so great differences between these
phenomena and sense-phenomena that make the
latter amenable and the former insusceptible to
scientific treatment. Is it that ideas are invisible?
So is weight, yet the gravitation formula is scientific.
Is it that thought is impalpable? So is colour, so
is sound—yet there are optics and acoustics.
Be this as it may, what makes things material
susceptible to scientific treatment is a quality which
is not peculiar to them, but which is shared by
them in common with things immaterial: it is that
they are objects of which the mind is immediately
aware, phenomena present to some consciousness,
and that they are phenomena which appear in consciousness
as co-existent and successive in certain
definite uniform modes which can be detected by
thought and formulated in general propositions, or
laws.
If the theory of evolution comprehends all things,
mind and morals as well as matter and motion; if
the law of continuity connects all things together,
immaterial as well as material, in a process which
moves without break or interruption; it is because
all things agree in the fact that they are presented
(whether in sense or in idea) to the mind, and
because they are presented in the continuity of
consciousness.
But the object of the scientific mind is not to
observe and record all the phenomena presented to
it in the continuity of consciousness. On the contrary,
it neglects and rejects many; but always with
a purpose, viz. that of ascertaining and describing, as
precisely as possible, the conditions under which a
given co-existence or sequence occurs (and therefore
may be expected to recur) and without which it fails
to occur. In other words, science assumes that
everything has a cause, and that in accordance with
the uniformity of nature what has happened once
will happen again in the same circumstances; that
a cause will, in the absence of counteracting causes,
produce its effect. Without these assumptions
science cannot treat of any subject: no department
of knowledge can be dealt with scientifically
if these assumptions are not admitted with regard
to that department. On the other hand, if by the
aid of these assumptions we are enabled to reduce
any set of phenomena to law and order, our success
is of itself sufficient ground for regarding the assumptions
as warrantable and justifiable. For science, at
any rate, the only question is whether as a matter
of fact they do enable us to determine under what
conditions given co-existences or sequences will ensue,
or what conditions such a co-existence or sequence
necessarily implies.
With regard to human activity, mental and
physical, it is plain matter of fact that such
uniformities of sequence and co-existence not only
can be but are demonstrated to prevail; and the
extension of the scientific principle of cause and
effect to the domain of human will and action is
scientifically justified. The comparative sciences
which deal with man and his works and words—archæology,
anthropology, philology—are perpetually
engaged in demonstrating, with fresh proofs every
day, the uniformity of human nature: in similar
circumstances men have always behaved in similar
ways. To satisfy the same needs, they have manufactured
similar instruments at similar stages of
development: flint arrow-heads from Mexico or
Japan resemble those taken from British barrows;
the pottery of early Greece is hard to distinguish
from that of Peru; the purpose of many stone
implements of unknown antiquity has been discovered
by a comparison of the use to which
similar tools are put by savages still existing.
That man's words, as well as his works, exhibit
law, order, and uniformity in their growth, as well
as in their phonetic decay, is shown by the science
of comparative philology. That in the face of the
same problems similar analogies have been used to
produce similar solutions, is revealed by comparative
mythology: the imagination, which might have
seemed most free to throw off the trammels of law
and of monotonous uniformity, falls in similar circumstances
into very similar grooves.
If the will of man is not revealed in the things
which he makes, in the words which he speaks, and
the thoughts which he thinks, it is difficult to know
where to look for its manifestation. If, on the other
hand, it is manifested in these ways, then, whether
it be free or not, it is clearly uniform in its action;
and the extension to it of the law of causation seems
fully justified by the results.
The recognition of the universality of the law of
causation must not, however, be supposed to carry
with it any implication that there are no differences
between, say, the organic and inorganic, or that the
laws of the one are identical with or deducible from
those of the other; the association of ideas may be
a scientific and established fact, and yet not obey
the same laws as the adhesiveness of material substances.
What unites all things into a continuous,
coherent, and systematic cosmos, into a scientific
whole, is first the fact that, whether phenomena in
sense or phenomena in idea, they are all objects of
thought; and next the fact that they all exhibit the
universality of causation and the uniformity of
nature.
Whether this uniformity which binds man and
nature into one consistent whole is a uniformity of
will or a uniformity of necessity, is quite another
question. It is a metaphysical and not a scientific
inquiry; and the metaphysical answer, whatever it
may be, is one for which science does not and need not
pause. So long as nature is granted to be uniform,
it matters not to science whether the uniformity is
of necessity or is freely willed. In either case the
sequences or co-existences described by science
will continue, under the circumstances described, to
happen as described.
It is, however, commonly assumed that actions
which are uniform are, by their very uniformity,
proved to be necessitated; and that unless what
happens was bound to happen, there can be no
uniformity and no science. Hence on the one
hand the recognition of the freedom of the will
has been denounced as fatal to all scientific conceptions
of human nature; while on the other hand
the uniformity of human nature and action has been
denied as being inconsistent with the freedom of the
will. The one side has pointed to one set of facts,
which prove irresistibly that men do will the same
thing under the same circumstances. The other side
has pointed to the equally undeniable fact of our
consciousness of freedom.
The essential feature in our consciousness of freedom
is our conviction that in the present we can
do or abstain from doing a contemplated action,
and in the past, though we did the thing, we might
have abstained from it or have done something
else. Now, whether this possibility that what took
place might not have taken place is a real one or
only a delusion, matters not to science. If real and
true, it is indeed fatal to one particular metaphysical
theory, viz. that every event which ever occurred
was bound to occur and could not have happened
otherwise; but it leaves every truth of science, every
one of those concise descriptions of what takes place
under given circumstances, absolutely intact. The
freedom of the will is anathematised in the name
but not in the interests of science.
That becomes clear when we reflect that the laws
of science are, and do not pretend to be more than,
hypothetical statements. The gravitation formula
does not state that bodies do as a matter of fact
actually fall at the rate of sixteen feet in the first
second, and so on. The statement, if made, would
be untrue: a feather floats much more slowly to
the ground. Still less does the formula affirm that
all bodies move towards each other—and for a very
good reason: many bodies are at rest. The formula
makes no definite statement as to what actually does
occur: it merely states what would or will happen
under certain circumstances; and it is doubly or
trebly hypothetical. First, it asserts conditionally
that if, and only if, bodies are free to move, they
will tend to move towards each other at the rate of
sixteen feet in the first second, and so on. Next,
even if this condition be fulfilled in a particular case,
and a given body is free to move, say, towards the
earth, the law of gravitation does not assert that
the body will absolutely, or unconditionally, or of
necessity fall sixteen feet in the first second: it
only affirms that the body tends to move at that
rate, and the word "tends" conveys in its meaning
a second hypothesis. What is meant by saying that
a body tends to fall, or tends to move in a straight
line, is simply that the body will fall or move in
the direction or at the rate mentioned, provided that
nothing happens to prevent it. The law of gravitation
then, like every other law of science, from the very
terms in which it is stated, contains two hypotheses:
if bodies are free to move, then they tend to move
at a certain rate. Further, like every other law of
science, it is based on a third hypothesis, which, as
it is assumed by all scientific laws, is not expressly
referred to by any. That third hypothesis is that
nature is uniform: if a body is free to move it will,
in the future as in the past, tend to move at a
certain rate, provided that nature is uniform.
Now, throughout all this, it is obvious that science
knows nothing about "necessity." Indeed, it is
obvious that science, by the trebly hypothetical form
of all its laws, has taken particular pains to avoid
prejudging the question whether what happens was
bound to happen. As we have already said, science
takes care to frame its statements in such a way
that they are quite independent of metaphysical
theory, and will remain as true within their limits
if the theory of necessity prove erroneous as they
will if it turns out to be correct.
Nor can it be said, thus far, that the laws of
science lead us to the theory of necessity as their
logical conclusion. It may be true that if I walk
over a precipice I shall fall to the bottom, in accordance
with the law of gravitation. But it does
not logically follow that therefore I must walk over.
It may be true that a suspension bridge will fall in
the same way, if the supports be removed; but it
does not follow that they are therefore bound to
give way. It may be true that if nature is uniform
certain sequences will happen; but it does not therefore
follow that nature must be uniform. In other
words, the theory of necessity, if true, cannot be
based on science, but must rely on some metaphysical
considerations. Science does not undertake to prove
even that nature is uniform, much less that it is
uniform of necessity. The opposite theory, that the
uniformity of nature or of human nature is due to
the action of a will freely manifesting itself as
uniform, may be considered superfluous from the
scientific point of view. But the theory of necessity
from the same point of view is equally superfluous.
As long as events do happen uniformly, science has
all she wants—whether their uniformity is of will or
of necessity is for her quite a superfluous question.
And if science were all that man wanted, these
rival metaphysical theories would be of no interest
to him either. But the persistency of the attempt
to extract some support for the metaphysical theory
of necessity out of the facts of science shows that
men of science, being men, must have their metaphysics.
Are there, then, other facts of science, or assumptions
essential to science, which require the metaphysical
theory of necessity as their presupposition
or entail it as their natural consequence? Probably
the reply will be that there is one such principle:
that of the Universality of the Law of Causation.
The assumption that everything must have a cause
may be on the part of science a pure assumption,
and one which, like the Uniformity of Nature, cannot
be proved by science; but it does, it may be said,
assume the existence of a necessity in things.
It does, it may be replied, but whether the necessity
which science assumes is the same as that
maintained by the metaphysical theory in question,
may be doubted. The metaphysical theory is that
everything which happens happens of necessity, and
could not have happened otherwise than it did.
The assumptions which science makes with regard
to causation are that nothing can happen unless the
conditions requisite to its production are fulfilled,
and that when those conditions are present the
result necessarily follows. The question is whether
this scientific necessity is the same as that metaphysical
necessity; or, if they are not the same,
whether either is a logical consequence from the
other.
They are not the same: the scientific assumption
is hypothetical, the metaphysical absolute. The
former says that things will happen in one way, if
certain conditions are fulfilled, in another if they
are not; the latter that they absolutely must happen
in this way, and not in that; and that it is an illusion
to imagine that they can happen either this way or
that. Science allows us the alternative; the metaphysical
theory declares that the alternative is an
impossibility or an illusion. The metaphysical
theory may be right, but it is not the same thing
as the scientific assumption. Neither can it be
exhibited as a logical presupposition of or consequence
from the scientific assumption. From a
hypothetical "if" you cannot logically get an absolute
"must." It may be a scientific truth that, if
an electric spark is passed through two atoms of
hydrogen and one of oxygen, a drop of water will
be formed. But it does not follow that therefore
an electric spark must be passed through them.
It is obvious that the difference between science
and metaphysics in the matter of necessity is that,
whereas science cautiously says, "If certain conditions
are fulfilled, certain results will ensue,"
metaphysics boldly says, "The conditions on which
the whole future depends are already absolutely
fixed." Once more, this metaphysical theory may
be true; but, if so, it is not from science that it
derives its truth. The transition from the "if" of
science to the "must" of metaphysics is illogical,
though not unnatural, and is facilitated by a certain
amount of obscurity, which can be thrown over it
by drawing illustrations from the past. Thus, if
an event has already taken place, we may infer
with certainty from the fact of its occurrence that
the conditions necessary to produce it were realised.
And as each of those conditions must have had a
cause, we can infer again that the conditions requisite
to produce them were fulfilled. And so we
may travel back ad infinitum along a never-ending
chain of cause and effect, always moving from
one fixed and necessitated event to another event
equally necessitated and fixed. Thus the whole
past history of the universe may be exhibited as
a necessary sequence of events; and the inference
may be drawn, and for the purposes of the theory
of metaphysical necessity must be drawn, that
because the occurrence of an event proves that the
conditions required for its production were realised,
therefore they and they alone were bound to be
realised. Yet this is simply our old familiar non
sequitur thrown into the past tense. It is true
that if I walk over a precipice I shall fall, according
to the law of gravitation. But I am not therefore
bound to walk over. It is true that the man who
fell over the cliff obeyed the law of gravity. But
we cannot infer either from the law of gravitation
or from the fact of his falling that he was bound
to fall. We can infer that the conditions requisite
to produce the fall were present, but we cannot
infer from the fall that they were bound to be
present. It may be quite true that they were
bound to be present, but the effect which followed
on them cannot be alleged either as the cause or
the proof of such necessity. We must look for the
reason of the necessity—if there be any necessity
in the case—elsewhere. Shall we, then, say that
the conditions of the fall were themselves effects
of prior causes, without which they would not have
happened? That again is true, but the fact that
Z would not have happened had not Y preceded,
is not in itself any proof that Y was bound to
happen. And so we may travel back ad infinitum
along the never-ending chain of cause and effect
without ever finding ourselves in a position to infer
from the law that everything must have a cause,
that this cause was bound to operate rather than
that. The occurrence of Z is no proof that Y was
bound to happen, nor is the fact that Y really
happened any proof that its cause X was bound to
occur—and so we may work back to the beginning
of the alphabet. The fact that B took place shows
that A actually occurred, but not that A, rather
than A1 or A2, was bound to occur. And if A is
the beginning, what was the nature of the necessity
(prior to the beginning of things) which determined
in favour of A rather than A1 or A2?
We may indeed say, if we like—since no one
can prevent us from saying things without proof
or probability—that the mere fact that A happened
shows that it was bound to happen. But then we
might just as well have said it of Z, and saved ourselves
the trouble of going through so much alphabet
to get so little result. We might just as well say
that as the explosion or the accident did happen
as a matter of fact, it could not possibly have
been prevented: Z was bound to happen under
the circumstances, therefore the circumstances could
not have been altered; only one result was possible
under the conditions, therefore no other conditions
were possible.
Or—to go back to the beginning of the alphabet
once more—we may say with science that we are
content with the fact that A did happen, or, since
science does not profess to take us back to an
absolute beginning (force and matter being eternal
and without beginning), let us say we may, like
science, be content with the fact that K can be
shown to have happened; but whether K, rather
than K1 or K2, was bound to occur there is nothing
in science to show. If we take up this, the scientific,
attitude, two consequences follow. First, there is
nothing in science to require or countenance the
metaphysical theory of necessity. Next, what is
true of K is equally true of L or M or Z. The
fact that L or M or Z occurred proves that the
conditions did combine in the way necessary to produce
L or M or Z, not that they were bound to
combine in that way and could not have combined
so as to produce L1 or L2, or Z1 or Z2 or Z3.
Perhaps it may be said that the following is the
proper way of stating the case: We have reason for
believing that, as a matter of scientific necessity, if
L is at work it can only produce M, and not M1 or
M2 (the application of a light to a barrel of gunpowder
can have only one result). But L was at
work, therefore M alone could result. Quite true,
but that does not show that the light was bound to
be applied, or that the powder might not have been
damp. In fine, the moment the conditions requisite
for the explosion are combined, the explosion is
necessary, M is the only possible result; but until
then the explosion is not necessary, and the result
may be M1, or M2, or M3. A cause (i.e. the conditions combined)
can only have one effect; but until
it has that effect it is not the cause, and may never
be. Pre-existent causes, which must inevitably produce
predetermined effects, are figments of the
metaphysical imagination. Conditions which may,
and, subject to the trebly hypothetical laws of
science, will combine in certain ways are scientific
facts.
In fine, the Uniformity of Nature, in the sense
in which Nature is assumed, both by science and
by common sense, to be uniform, simply amounts
to the assumption that under the same conditions
the same consequences will ensue. But this uniformity
neither requires nor entails necessity. The
very form chosen by science for the expression of
scientific laws proclaims the fact: "If bodies are
free to move," "if counteracting causes be absent,"
"a body tends to move in the same straight line."
Whatever necessity is introduced into the truths of
science thus expressed is obviously imported from
without, and is no part of science. We may, if we
choose, read necessity into science, but there is no
warrant in science for doing so. Science is absolutely
without prejudice on this point. If everything that
happens happens of necessity, the gravitation formula
will receive no accession to its truth. If there be no
necessity in the case, each and every truth of science
remains valid as long as the same consequences do
ensue in the same circumstances.
Since, then, science observes an armed neutrality
in this dispute, and is concerned only to guard that
assumption of the uniformity of nature which is vital
to her existence, we must turn elsewhere for a decision
of the question.
We began this chapter with an expression of our
full adhesion to the view which insists upon the
uniformity, not merely of nature, but also of human
nature. We rejected the idea that there is no science
of man, and has been no evolution of mind, as a
patent absurdity, and a violent contradiction of
admitted facts. Any theory of evolution and any
definition of science which fails to comprehend
human nature is thereby condemned as inadequate
and inaccurate. For those, then, who with us accept
the continuity and uniformity between nature and
man there will be no difficulty in arguing from the
one to the other: which of the two we shall start
from will depend mainly upon circumstances, upon
which is the more accessible in any particular inquiry,
and which is likely to afford the best "take-off."
In the present case the action of inanimate
objects upon one another can be accounted for on
either hypothesis, i.e. that such action is willed by
some superior power or that it is necessitated by
some previous action, which is necessitated by some
other previous action, and so on for ever, without
ever reaching any original or originating necessity.
Both hypotheses will fit all the facts of all the physical
sciences; both are hypotheses; and science can do
and does do without either one or the other. Nor
does our observation of the observed facts of nature
enable us to say, with regard to any actual fact of
this kind, either that it could or that it could not
have happened otherwise than it did. In fine, as
long as we confine ourselves to the subject-matter
of the physical sciences, as long as we start in this
case from nature, we cannot find anything to disturb
the equal balance of the two hypotheses, which are
two hypotheses and nothing more. But when we
turn from nature to human nature, when we consult
our own experience of our own actions, the case is
notoriously different. Our experience in that case
is that of two or more suggested and possible actions
we are free to choose whichever we will; and our
memory of past acts of choice testifies that though
we actually chose one particular course, we might
have abstained from it in favour of some other
alternative. Here, too, as in the case of purely
physical causation, the fact that a thing happened is
proof conclusive that, in accordance with the law of
universal causation, the conditions necessary to its
occurrence were fulfilled; but it constitutes no
proof or probability that the conditions were bound
to be fulfilled. The fact that we chose to act in
a certain way does not in the least convince us
that we were bound to choose that action and that
action alone. On the contrary, our memory is clear
and our conviction is certain that our choice was
free. In the physical and the spiritual spheres alike
it is true that, when all the conditions requisite for
a given effect are combined, the result must ensue.
And in both spheres it is equally true that until
the conditions are effectively combined no such
necessity exists. In the case of our own actions we
are directly and immediately conscious of the fact
that it is our own will which effects this combination.
For us, therefore, who hold, with Professor
Huxley, that the uniformity and continuity of nature
with human nature is essential to any rational and
scientific view of the universe and to every comprehensive
theory of evolution, it is natural to
interpret physical by spiritual causation. We know
from direct and personal experience of certain cases
of causation that, though a particular effect necessarily
ensued from a certain combination of conditions,
the conditions might have been combined
differently and with a different result. There is,
therefore, nothing unreasonable in the inference that
with regard to the events in nature the conditions
which produced them might have combined differently
and with different results; and that the
determining factor was a will (not our own) conscious
of its own freedom.
Thus far, then, the case stands thus, that in the
observed facts of nature there is nothing to incline
the balance in favour either of Necessity or Free-will;
and that if those facts constituted the whole
of our experience we should have no reason to
believe the one rather than the other. But when
we turn to the consideration of events of which
we are the cause, we know that our contribution to
the sum of conditions on which the event depends
is a free-will offering which we make or decline to
make as we like. That consideration would not in
itself be sufficient to warrant us in inferring a similar
absence of necessity in the combination of the conditions
which produce natural events. If, for
instance, we had reason to believe or evidence to
show an absolute chasm between nature and human
nature, an impossibility of their being subject to
any common laws or conceptions; or if, like
primitive man or the savage, we had not the
accumulated observations of science to demonstrate
the truth of evolution and the law of continuity—then
we should have no reason or little reason,
as the case might be, for interpreting nature's action
and human action by one another.
The savage, as is well known, does, without any
scientific authority whatever, assume straight off an
entire uniformity of nature with human nature. He
jumps at conclusions: he takes it for granted that
everything which moves has a will of its own, like
himself. But though the savage shares with the
savant the impulse to believe in an essential continuity
binding together man and nature, that impulse
is about all they have in common. In the
savage it expresses itself in an absolute identification,
entirely ignoring all differences, between the two:
the tree or the river has to be a conscious, rational
creature, though its behaviour bears more difference
from than resemblance to that of a human being.
In the savant, the same impulse is trained to fertility
by being constantly subjected to the guidance of
observed facts: man as an animal organism is subject
to the same physiological laws as other similar
organisms; as an organic compound, to the same
chemical changes; as a body possessing inertia, to
the same physical laws. The savant's belief, however,
in the continuity of nature and human nature
is consistent with or rather implies points of
difference between the two; e.g. man possesses a
consciousness which the river does not, man is,
the river is not, a conscious cause. Great though
these differences be, still they are not in the eyes
of science and from the point of view of evolution
great enough to constitute a breach of continuity,
for human actions are with the growth of science
increasingly seen to be part of the uniformity of
nature: the human cause only produces its effect
provided that all the requisite conditions are forthcoming.
Indeed, there is a danger, in some
tendencies of modern thought, of ignoring the
differences and of confounding continuity with
identity. The distinction between the animate and
the inanimate, which was hardly reached by the
savage, is in danger of being overlooked by the
modern materialist—an error which would be
paralleled in religion by a relapse from monotheism
into nature-worship. And as in the pathology of
religion there is a constant tendency to substitute
for religious faith a trust in the automatic efficacy
of rites and ceremonies, which is a falling away into
mere magic, so in metaphysic there is a tendency,
in the name of science falsely invoked, to substitute
for the actions of agents consciously free the operation
of an automatic and magical necessity. Freedom
of the will is constantly taken, or rather
mistaken, both by its supporters and opponents, to
mean the power of acting without a motive, and
to imply that from identically the same combination
of conditions one result can ensue at one time and
quite a different one at another; and freedom of
the will in this sense, and with this implication, is
rightly rejected as inconsistent with the uniformity
of nature. Freedom, however, means not the
absence of motive, but the presence of more motives
than one, for where there is no alternative there is
no freedom, and where there is an alternative there
is a choice between two things. The fact that
conscious action is always action with a motive has
nothing in it repugnant to the uniformity of nature,
unless uniformity of nature is arbitrarily assumed
to be identical with necessity. Nor has the
uniformity of nature, i.e. the fact that the same action
issues from the same combination of conditions, anything
in it inconsistent with the freedom of the will,
unless the occurrence of an event proves that it
was bound to occur. The laws of science—whether
physical science or mental and moral science—are
hypothetical statements: if the love of gain predominates
in men, then all the consequences predicted
by the science of Political Economy will
ensue. But this proves neither that the love of
gain must nor even that it does prevail. The
uniformity which marks the actions of men as
often as this motive prevails is sufficient for the
purposes of science, and is consistent with the freedom
of the will; it does not imply that men act
without a motive, nor that the same conditions produce
now one effect and now another. Until the
conditions which are necessary for the production of
a physical event are effectively combined, physical
science knows no necessity to make them combine
in that particular way; if they combine in some
other way, and with some other result, that combination
will equally illustrate the truth of science (which
says, if A then B, if A1 then B1), and the result will
equally accord with the uniformity of nature. The
same considerations apply to human nature, and
if applied will be found consistent with the freedom
of the will. Until the mind is made up, i.e. so
long as there are alternative courses open to it,
the man is free, just in the same way as in physical
science, until the combination of conditions is
effected, the result may or may not follow. If one
alternative is adopted one set of consequences will
ensue, if another, another; but whichever is adopted
the results will be in accordance with the uniformity
of nature, the law of cause and effect will not have
been violated, the mind will not have acted without
a motive, or under the influence of necessity. In
fine, the universality of the law of causation lies
in the fact that, however the conditions combine,
each combination can only produce its peculiar
effect; and whatever effect occurs can be the result
only of its appropriate conditions. To say with the
necessitarian that, unless at the beginning of things
the course of events was unalterably fixed once and
for ever, there can be no science, is to deny the
universality of the laws of science, to maintain that
they are true only of one particular succession of
events, and would not be true of any other. In
point of fact, however, the laws of science, by their
hypothetical form, are adapted to cope with what
is at least as striking as the uniformity of nature,
that is, the diversity of nature: they apply not
merely to one, but to all possible combinations of
circumstances. In what way a body will move
depends upon the conditions at work; but Science
is not such a maimed and crippled thing that she
refuses to consider its motion until she has been
assured that, of the various conceivable conditions
that might be brought to bear on the body, only
one can, as a matter of fact, be brought to bear.
On the contrary, the universality of her laws lies
in the fact that they apply to all possible combinations,
not merely to combination A producing B, but
to A1 producing B1, A2 producing B2, and so on.
The origin of all terrestrial life may be traced back,
let us say, to the fortuitous combination of chemicals
which constituted the first speck of protoplasm;
and sundry important consequences can be shown
by science to have flowed from that fortuitous
concurrence. The origin of any particular species
may be traced back to the accidental appearance
of a sport or variety which happened to be better
adapted to the environment than the parent forms
were.
But, if these accidental and fortuitous occurrences
had not taken place, the subsequent course of things
upon earth, though there might have been no life,
would still have been just as much in accordance
with the uniformity (and the diversity) of nature,
and equally amenable to scientific explanation. The
theory that the first speck of protoplasm or the
ancestral variety of a species was bound by a metaphysical
necessity to occur just when and where it
did, is of no use to science: if A had not happened,
A1 or A2 or A3 would have done, and the resulting
B or B1 or B2 or B3 would have been equally in
accordance with the uniformity of nature and equally
explicable by science.
If, then, in the physical world neither science nor
the uniformity of nature requires us to believe in
necessity, there is no antecedent presumption that
necessity must be the law of the spiritual world:
we may examine the facts of our own inner experience
without prejudice. What the freedom of
the will implies is that the mind has present to
it more alternatives or motives than one, and that
they are real alternatives and real motives, i.e.
motives which may really in this particular case
influence action, alternatives any one of which
may be adopted in this case. The circumstances
or conditions in which a man makes up his mind
are, until he has made up his mind, so to speak,
held in solution, and may be precipitated this way
or that at his choice, or not precipitated at all,
unless he chooses. The fact that in the same circumstances
the same result ensues is no argument
against the freedom of the will, if it be remembered
that the will is itself one of the circumstances which
contribute to the result, just as the mass of a body,
as well as the force applied to it, helps to determine
its velocity. The statement of the case then becomes
this: if all the circumstances of the case be the
same, and the will be the same, the consequences
(i.e. the determination of the will) also will be the
same. But the necessitarian position requires the
statement that if all the circumstances be the same,
then without any further proviso the will is determined
by the circumstances; or, to put it another
way, that the will does not in any way contribute
to the result, which is just as though we were to
say that the mass of a body had nothing to do with
its velocity. But if the will does contribute to the
result, i.e. to the determination of itself, it is in part
self-determining.
That there must be some circumstances present,
if there is to be any self-determination on the part
of the will, we have already admitted; the freedom
of the will implies the presence of more alternatives
or motives than one—and we always have the alternative
of acting or abstaining from action. But
this admission only limits the powers of the will;
it does not lessen its liberty. The mind can only
choose between the alternatives offered to it; but
as long as it has real alternatives it is free. That
there must be definite circumstances if there is to
be any definite determination of the will is in
accordance with the fact that a cause is not some
one individual thing, but a sum of conditions, every
one of which is necessary to the effect, and the
absence of any one of which is enough to prevent
the occurrence of the result. It is a vulgar error
to single out some one of the conditions (e.g. the
force acting on a body) and dub it the cause, to
the neglect of all the other conditions (e.g. the
body's mass) which are equally necessary to the
effect. It is the error committed by the necessitarian
who calls the circumstances the cause, in the case of
a determination of the will, and neglects the part
played by the will itself.
This point of view illustrates the untenability of
another objection to the freedom of the will, viz.
that it implies that under the same conditions
different results can ensue, or, to put it in other
words, that without any change in the conditions
either this or that consequence may issue. Freedom
of the will is thus alleged to be inconsistent with
the uniformity of nature, with the law that a cause
must produce its effect. The fallacy here obviously
lies in assuming that, in a modification of the will,
the circumstances by themselves constitute the cause,
whereas in point of fact the cause consists of the
sum of the conditions, i.e., in this case, of the circumstances
and the will taken in combination.
Alter any one of the conditions, and the effect
will be changed—whether the condition which is
changed be one of the circumstances or be the
will, matters not. Conversely, if under the same
circumstances a man acts one way one time and
another another, the inference is not that the
uniformity of nature has been violated, and that
the same conditions produce different effects, but
that one of the conditions was different; and as
ex hypothesi the circumstances (i.e. all the conditions
except the will) were in this case the same,
it remains that the condition which was different in
this case was the will.
Really, it is the theory of necessity which violates
the uniformity of nature, for it requires us to believe
that provided certain of the conditions (viz. all the
circumstances except the will) are the same, then
the result must be the same, no matter how much
the remaining condition (the will) changes. We may,
indeed, evade this conclusion by simply denying that
the will is one of the conditions of its own modifications,
and we may say that the wax contributes
nothing to the form which it takes on when impressed
by the seal. The truth is that if the will
or the wax appears in the result, it must have
been present and active as one of the conditions:
it contributes to its own determination, and is in
part self-determining.
If it be in accordance with the uniformity of
nature and with our experience of what actually
happens, that the circumstances should be the same
and the will different on two different occasions, then
the theory of necessity breaks down: if we can will
and act differently under the same circumstances, we
have all the freedom we want. But if—all the circumstances,
save the will, being the same—the
resulting modification or determination of the will
is different, then the difference of result must be
due to some difference in the conditions; all the
conditions save one were ex hypothesi the same;
the remaining condition, therefore, viz. the will,
must have changed. What caused the change?
Not the circumstances: one attempt to explode a
barrel of gunpowder may resemble another in all
the circumstances save one (the dampness of the
powder), but the circumstances which remain the
same (application of the spark, etc.) are not the cause
of the difference in the remaining condition.
If, then, we do as a matter of fact at times under
the same circumstances will different things, and
if the circumstances are not the cause of the
change of will, then the will changes itself, i.e. is
self-determining, self-modifying. And, as we all
know from experience, it determines itself at the
moment of choice, not before. Until all the conditions
requisite for the effect are combined, neither
physical nor mental science requires us to assume
that they must combine in this particular way—that
the light must be applied to the powder because
an explosion will take place if it is applied, that
the motive of gain must be adopted because it will
be gratified if it is obeyed.
Whether the conditions combine so as to produce
A, or so as to produce B, the uniformity of nature
is equally obeyed in either case, the law that a cause
must produce its effect is equally fulfilled, and either
sequence is as amenable to scientific explanation as
the other. But though science and the uniformity
of nature both require us to believe that when the
conditions are combined the result will follow, neither
requires us to assume that the combination is fixed
before it is effected. And this is true equally of
purely physical events and of human actions. This
truth, in the case of the latter class of actions, is
expressed by the statement that alternative courses
of action are open to the agent, and that they are
real alternatives, alternatives such that any one of
them may in this particular instance be followed.
From the point of view of science and of the
uniformity of nature, we do not conceive that there
is any difference in this respect between human
actions and physical events: if science is to include
both kinds of sequence and to render a rational
account of them, we must assume that the principles
on which conditions combine or fail to combine are
the same in both cases. If physical events and
human actions are both constituents in the process
of evolution, there must be a continuity between
them. It follows, therefore, that, in the case of
physical events as well as of human actions, until
the conditions are combined in such a way as to
involve one determinate result to the exclusion of
all others, they might combine in other ways with
other results—in fine, that before the combination
is effected there are always other alternatives.
At this point it becomes necessary to take into
account the diversity as well as the uniformity of
nature—in this case a diversity which will lead us
to a higher uniformity. To the human agent
alternative courses of action are open in the sense
that he is conscious of their possibility and that
after deliberation he adopts one or other of them.
With purely physical phenomena and material things
the case is different: they may be combined in this
way or in that; the alternative is indeed open, so
long as the combination is not effected, but it is not
open to them nor is it adopted, when adopted, by
them. It is adopted for them. In some cases by
man. In all cases by that by which alone alternative
courses of action can be contemplated and adopted—a
conscious will. The course and form which man
imparts to material things—to his implements or his
works of art—make them so far the expression of
his will; for the rest they are equally an expression
of will, though of a will not his.
For those at the present day who unfeignedly
accept the general principles of evolution and
philosophise from them, a dualistic philosophy is
impossible. They cannot hold that matter is subject
to evolution and that mind is not; and the continuity
of the process of evolution forbids us to suppose that
there is any real discontinuity between that which
appears at one stage as matter and at another as
mind. There is no discontinuity if material things
(i.e. the things of which we have sense-perception,
but which differ from our sensations in being permanent)
are on the one side the permanent expressions
of Will and on the other are the transient impressions
made on us in the shape of sense-phenomena.
What is true thus of the content of evolution,
of that which is in process of evolution, is true
also of the law of the process. We cannot suppose
that it extends only to matter—that the behaviour
of matter is susceptible of a rational explanation
and the behaviour of mind is not. The continuity
of the process excludes the possibility of a dual
control: either the power which manifests itself in
all things is intelligent throughout or it is not. If
there is no reason in the behaviour of things, but
only necessity, then those human actions and conceptions
which man considers to be the result of
his reason are really the result of unintelligent
necessity.
It is the latter hypothesis which is expressed by
the necessitarian theory. The ordinary belief of
mankind—a belief which it is impossible to resist
at the moment when you are making up your mind
whether you will do this or not—is that you can do
the thing or not, that the alternatives are real and
the motives such that either of them may be acted
on. The necessitarian hypothesis is that the alternatives
are not real, that even before you have made
up your mind there is only one alternative which
you can follow—the other courses are only apparent
alternatives, because you cannot choose or act on
any of them; the other motives are not real motives,
because by a necessity dating from the beginning
of things they cannot possibly influence you on this
occasion. Your action is as automatic as that of
a piano which responds to the touch. The difference
is that you think about the stimulus received and
the piano does not. Consequently the piano makes
no mistakes; you make two. You think of various
possible consequences of the stimulus—which are
all impossible—and you imagine that the one which
you choose is the consequence of your intelligent
choice, whereas it is the automatic outcome of that
iron law of necessity which binds together the whole
process of evolution.
It will be readily understood that a hypothesis of
this kind, which is apparently in violent conflict with
the plainest facts of our daily personal experience,
and gives the lie to that consciousness of freedom
which we all possess, would not be held in theory—it
cannot be acted on in practice—unless it appeared
to be the consequence of some well-established
facts. It is, of course, held by its supporters to be
a logical consequence from the uniformity of nature
and the law of universal causation, and to be a
necessary pre-supposition if we are to give any
scientific account of human nature and its evolution.
If, as we have argued at length in this chapter, that
is not the case, if the law of universal causation only
requires that a thing cannot take place unless the
requisite conditions combine—and not that conditions,
which did or may combine, were or are bound
to combine—the question still remains, what if any
value the hypothesis has on its own intrinsic merits.
In the first place it is a hypothesis which can never
either be proved or disproved. The hypothesis is
that our supposed consciousness of freedom is an
illusion, that if we imagine we are free to choose
what we will do, or that we could in the past have
chosen otherwise than we did, we are deceived. The
hypothesis is not based on any facts of consciousness:
it is a suggestion that consciousness may be
deceptive. It may: there is no means of proving or
disproving the suggestion, for any reply must proceed
from one consciousness to another, both of which are
suspected by the maker of the suggestion to be not
wholly trustworthy. We cannot ask him to concede
to us, in order that we may convince him by argument,
the very point which is in dispute.
In the next place, the hypothesis of necessity does
formally account for all the facts which it is designed
to explain: it accounts for the whole process of
evolution. If everything that happens does so
because it must, then the mere occurrence of any
step in the process carries its own explanation with
it: the mere fact that it occurred shows that it was
bound to occur. If we ask, "Why was it bound to
occur?" the answer is, "Because it was." Various intermediate
reasons may be interpolated—because everything
must have a cause, and every cause must have
its effect—but if we ask, "Why must everything have
a cause? why must every cause produce its effect?"
the ultimate answer is always, "It must because it
must." If we ask, "What proof is there that it must?"
there is none. As we have already said, the hypothesis
is one which does not admit either of proof or
disproof.
The case is much the same with the opposite
theory of freedom. Formally, the hypothesis that
the whole process of evolution is throughout the
expression of self-determining will is adequate to
account for all the facts. But it is a hypothesis
which can be neither proved nor disproved if the
testimony of consciousness to our freedom may not
be accepted. We cannot prove that the testimony
of consciousness is true or to be trusted in this or
any other matter. We take it on faith. The questions
arise, therefore, Is it reasonable to take anything
on faith? and if so, what? and why?
The theory of Design is singularly tenacious of
existence, as many errors and all truths are.
Science still speaks of "organs," that is of "tools"
(ὄργανα), and of organs as performing "functions";
for the fact remains that organs are the instruments
by means of which the organism acts, and
that they have each their appropriate work to do,
their function to perform, though science may decline
to draw the inference that the instruments
were designed to perform the work they do.
The Argument from Design was a comparatively
simple affair as long as the organism and the environment
were assumed to have been separately
created: you had only to show how marvellously
and perfectly they fitted one another when brought
together, and it followed that they must have been
designed to fit—to say they only chanced to fit
was obviously absurd. But when science discovered
that organism and environment were not thus independent
of one another, the marvel vanished:
if the environment shaped the organism, or the
organism modified the environment to suit itself,
no wonder that they fitted one another. It ceases
to be remarkable that rivers should always flow by
great cities, when we reflect that men selected sites
near rivers. And chance seemed to have been established
by Evolution where Design once reigned;
for, if the only forms of life which can flourish in
a given spot are those which are suited to the place,
all we can say is that, if one form is fit to survive,
it will; and if it is not, some other will. Whatever
form survives will do so, not because it was designed
to do so, but because it happened to be suited to
its surroundings. In fine, organisms and their organs
are what they are because circumstances and their
past history have made them so: they have been
evolved, not designed.
A little reflection, however, is enough to show that
the Argument from Design is not completely excluded
by evolution: things in general are what
circumstances and their past history have made
them; but were not those very circumstances
designed to evolve what they did? Nay, are we
not compelled to assume that they were so designed,
if we believe in a Designer?
If, however, we ask Natural Science to discuss
these questions with us, she declines the invitation
on the ground that it is not her business to do so:
her business is to find out in what way, not with
what purpose, animal life has come to assume the
various forms in which we know it; and she can
do this, her business, quite well—indeed better—without
discussing such questions. If it were
proved that the history of animal life upon this
earth had been intended from the beginning to
follow the lines on which it has actually developed,
not one of the problems which Natural Science has
yet to solve would be brought a whit nearer solution;
nor would she be any the better off, if it were proved
that there was no design. She therefore very properly
declines to discuss the question: there may
be a Design and a Designer, or there may not; she
does not know; if it is the business of science to
answer the question, it must be of some other science,
not of Natural Science.
So too Physical Science, when asked whether
the laws of motion and matter were not designed
to produce the effects which they actually do cause,
replies that they may or may not, but that the law
of gravitation, for instance, is equally true for her
purposes, whether bodies were or were not designed
to fall to the earth at the rate of sixteen feet in the
first second, and so on. It may be the business of
some other science to answer such questions: it is
not the business of Physical Science.
And so the inquirer may go the round of the
whole family of Sciences. It is an extraordinarily
industrious family. It has an enormous amount
of work to do: it has to feed, clothe, and generally
provide for all mankind. And it can only carry
on at all by a very careful division of labour: each
science has her allotted task, and can only get the
day's work done in the day by strictly confining
herself to that task. Each science has her own
questions to answer, and can only succeed in doing
so by refusing to listen to any others.
The inquirer may think it strange that, in all this
vast and active organisation for answering questions,
no provision should be made for answering what
seem to him to be some of the most important
questions of all; and if he has been brought up
really to believe in science, he will think it too
strange to be true; he will persist with his questions,
and will be eventually rewarded for his faith by
discovering that there is a science which undertakes
to answer them—Theology. But he will also discover
that Theology is not very cordially esteemed
by her sister sciences—not that they are jealous of
her because she has the presumption to profess to
answer questions which they acknowledge to be too
high for them, but because there are grave suspicions
as to her legitimacy: it is doubted whether she is
a Science at all. She is, they are afraid it must
be admitted, untruthful, immoral, and certainly
altogether unscientific: she says what she cannot
prove, and says she believes it. But they know she
only pretends to believe it: they, of course, do not
believe anything on insufficient evidence; what
hypocrisy, then, to pretend that anyone can really
believe anything except what is proved by scientific
methods! They are thankful to say that they have
no "faith." However, she may improve; she is certainly
very backward; still, she may grow up into
a common-sense science like her sisters; and then
she will give up the foolish idea that she can answer
questions which they cannot.
And now what truth is there in the picture thus
drawn?
If there be a God, there is no other fact in the
world of such awful or such blessed import to man.
Religion is based on faith that there is a God. To
tell the religious mind that there is no scientific
proof of the existence of God is to tell it nothing
new. Those were not the terms on which we took
up our faith—that we should have scientific proof
of everything before we did anything. On the contrary,
religion begins when, and only when, a man
begins "to walk humbly with his God," to know that
he knows nothing except that his soul cleaves to
God and humbly trusts in Him. We do not bargain
so much belief, and no more, for so much proof: we
give "ourselves, our souls and bodies." The gift
is free. The soul shrinks from saying even that it
has proof of God's existence; it only knows it hopes
and longs for Him. "Faith is the assurance of things
hoped for," and the strength of our assurance is as
the strength of our hope. But scientific proof is
not the thing hoped for: it is not what is desired
when the soul is conscious of but one thing, that
it thirsteth, like the hart after the water-brooks,
for the living God. The humble confession of our
illimitable ignorance is the foundation of our faith
and will ever be its sure refuge, its inexpugnable
stronghold. It is only when, being ignorant, we are
tempted to deny our ignorance, that trouble begins.
We drop the substance for the shadow when we
believe not in God, but in some proof of God.
To the man of science all this talk about faith
appears mere folly, sheer unreason, a morbid wallowing
in ignorance from pure love of ignorance; and there
are others who, whilst admitting that proof is not
what is wanted by some minds, yet are aware, from
their own sad experience, that other minds yearn
for it, and can know no peace without it. And if
we ask what kind of proof it is that they require,
the answer is plain: it is the same kind as science
insists on. Then let us go to the man of science
and wait at his door: he at any rate is not ignorant,
and we, if ignorant, at least are willing to learn.
That he should rather look down upon us is only
what might be expected in a man who by sheer
force of reason has discovered the sole source of
truth and built up the whole fabric of science.
Certainly, when he has taken us over his palace
and shown us its marvels—the balances he uses to
weigh the sun, the plates with which he photographs
invisible stars, the cinematographic pictures of the
earth's past history, his forecasts of the future of the
solar system—we are not merely willing but eager
to learn how it is all done. And when we come to
know him, we find that in spite of the marvels,
all of his own making, by which he is surrounded,
he is not puffed up, as he might have been: indeed
he is, he assures us, only an ordinary man. "Scientific
investigation is not, as many people seem to suppose,
some kind of modern black art."[25] It is simply plain,
ordinary common sense, consistently applied; and,
above all, persistently declining to accept anything
without sufficient evidence. In ordinary life, says
the man of science, we do not swallow any statement
that anybody chooses to make—we ask for some
evidence; and if science waxes every day, and religion
wanes, it is merely because science has made it the
rule of her being never to believe anything without
sufficient evidence, and religion has not.
Naturally, then, we wish to know what is "sufficient
evidence" in the eyes of science, since
everything, we are told, depends on that. The
reply is brief: whatever is based on the Uniformity
of Nature has sufficient evidence. If we are inclined
to be puzzled by the "Uniformity of Nature," we
are soon reassured; it is literally the most ordinary
thing in the world, there is no difficulty about it.
Man is born into a world in which changes are
unceasingly taking place. Some things change even
as the clouds shift—every second, and in a way
patent to all beholders. Others change imperceptibly
and with great slowness, as e.g. the level of the dry
land or the shape of the coast-line. But all things
change, πάντα ῥεῖ. Nothing abideth long in one
stay. It is these changes which bring all things good
to man, and also all things ill. If, then, man is to
survive, he must learn to evade the latter changes,
which threaten to crush him, and he must be there
in time to profit by the former. Such was the
problem presented to primitive man, and such it
still is for every one of us to-day: the successful
man is the one who is beforehand with the world, and,
if he is beforehand it is because he has learned to
read the signs of the times and the seasons. In a
word, he has learned to recognise that changes are
not always mere chances, that some changes are
uniformly preceded by certain others, and may
consequently be foreseen. In the beginning the
changes that man can forecast are few indeed: his
prevision is no greater than the brute's. The child
does not foresee that fire will burn; he learns by
experience. And whatever man can forecast, he has
learned it all by experience. It is a slow way of
learning, it has taken man thousands upon thousands
of years to learn what he knows now; still he has
learned to know the causes of countless things, to
control the causes and to anticipate the effects of
many. But more important, more valuable than all
his experience and all his knowledge of what
produces what, of what uniformly precedes or
follows what, is the final and comprehensive truth
which at last he reaches, that nothing happens
arbitrarily, that everything in nature is uniform.
That, the Uniformity of Nature, is the great truth
in which all others are summed up: to its establishment
have gone the labours of all past generations
of mankind, to its support the whole experience of
the race contributes. It is the truth of truths, the
test of truth: whatsoever is established on it shall
not be shaken, whatever contravenes it shall not
endure.
The Uniformity of Nature is the base not only of
all science, but of every act of reason in the most
commonplace affairs of ordinary life; and, though
you may not know it, you assume it every moment.
Why are you sure that the sun will rise to-morrow?
Because Nature is uniform. Why do you know that
fire will burn? Because Nature is uniform. Why
that all men are mortal? Why that a cause will
always produce its effect? Because of the Uniformity
of Nature. For each and all of these beliefs the
evidence is sufficient; it is the Uniformity of Nature.
How different, says the man of science, is the procedure
of science, that is of common sense, from the
unscientific methods of theology! Why do we believe
that the earth will bring forth her kindly fruits in due
season? Because it is God's will? That is a hypothesis;
it may be true or it may not; it cannot be
proved or disproved; there is no evidence against
it, but there is no evidence for it. Very different
is the answer of science and common sense: it is
that the earth will produce crops in accordance with
certain natural causes, mechanical and chemical.
That also is a hypothesis which may or may not
be true. Yes, but it is one for which there is some
evidence—the Uniformity of Nature. In the same
way, if anyone were to say that the result of the next
general election depended not on the electors but on
the planets, we should decline to believe him, because
there is no evidence to show that the planets have
anything to do with it, and there is good evidence for
believing that the votes of the electors have. In fine,
the teaching of science is: demand sufficient evidence
for everything, and always remember that by sufficient
evidence is meant the Uniformity of Nature.
This sounds so simple and so convincing that we
are tempted to try it. But first let us make sure that
we have learned our lesson properly. In the course
of long ages mankind has slowly accumulated enough
experience to warrant the confident belief that
Nature is uniform. Now, primitive man was of
course a savage, and knew nothing of the Uniformity
of Nature; he therefore could not have had sufficient
evidence for believing anything in his experience.
But it is on the accumulation of such experiences—every
one of which we must reject because they were
not based on the Uniformity of Nature—that our
belief in the Uniformity of Nature is supposed to
rest. In other words, it is based on them and they
were based on nothing. This result of acting strictly
up to the principle of not suffering anything to pass
without sufficient evidence seems somewhat discouraging,
until the man of science comes to our rescue
and reminds us that just as we, without knowing it,
have acted all our lives on the tacit assumption that
Nature is uniform, so did primitive man; and that
consequently there really was sufficient evidence and
scientific proof for the savage's experiences, though
of course he could not have framed it in words; and
so, the bases of the Uniformity of Nature are really
quite sound. But even now we are not altogether
out of our difficulties, for granted that the savage,
like ourselves, tacitly assumed Nature to be uniform,
was there sufficient evidence for the assumption? and
if so, what was the evidence? It could not be the
Uniformity of Nature, because that is just the
question; and, if it was anything else, it was not
sufficient evidence.
It really seems rather difficult to get sufficient
evidence for the axiom, viz. the Uniformity of
Nature, on which the whole of science is built. And
yet we must have sufficient evidence for it, or else we
shall have to conclude that Science has no more
logical foundation than Religion.
But once more the man of science comes to our
assistance and explains that in the beginning, before
the Uniformity of Nature is proved, it is only
probable that what has once happened will happen
again in similar circumstances, and at first perhaps
not very probable; but when wider and wider experience
still shows that what has once happened
does actually happen again under the same circumstances,
the Uniformity of Nature becomes more
and more probable, until at last, if not actually
proved, it is still the most probable hypothesis that
we possess or can possess: "our highest and surest
generalisations remain on the level of justifiable expectations;
that is, very high probabilities."[26]
Now, with all respect to logicians like John Stuart
Mill, and men of science like Huxley, we must
point out that this begs the whole question. If we
assume that Nature is uniform, then it is probable
that what has often happened will happen again.
But if we do not assume that Nature is uniform,
then the repeated occurrence of a thing does not
make it in the least probable that it will occur again.
To assume without proof that Nature is uniform
is to ask us to accept a statement without evidence,
which, if we have learnt the lesson of science, we
can hardly do. On the other hand, if we begin with
the admission that Nature may or may not be uniform,
but that, to begin with, we no more know
whether it will actually prove to be uniform than
we know whether a penny, when we are about to
toss it, will fall head or tail; then, according to the
mathematical theory of probability, it matters not
how many times you toss the penny, the chances
next throw are exactly the same as they were at the
first throw—it matters not how many times Nature
has proved uniform in the past, she is no more likely
to prove uniform to-morrow than she was on the first
of days. If it is really an open question at the
beginning whether Nature is or is not uniform, it
remains an open question to the end. The man of
science need not admit that it is an open question, if
he does not want to do so; but if he does admit it,
then let him stick to it throughout; and let him
reflect that if he begins by admitting it and ends
by denying it, he has but gradually retracted his
own free admission, and unconsciously been betrayed
into denying what he began by admitting to be
true.
The fact of the matter is that the axioms of
science—the Uniformity of Nature and the Law
of Universal Causation—not only are not proved
by what experience we have had of them, but
"cannot be proved by any amount of experience."[27]
Not only can they not be proved by any amount
of experience, they are incapable of being demonstrated
at all: "they are neither self-evident nor are
they, strictly speaking, demonstrable."[28] If, then,
they are not and cannot be proved either by experience
or in any other way, on what does the man
of science ground his belief in them? On Faith.
"The ground of every one of our actions, and the
validity of all our reasonings, rest upon the great
act of faith, which leads us to take the experience
of the past as a safe guide in our dealings with the
present and the future."[29]
In the last chapter, impressed by the doctrine that
there is no "source of truth save that which is
reached by the patient application of scientific
methods,"[30] we patiently applied those methods to
the foundation of science itself; and we were rewarded
by the discovery that scientific, like religious,
truth has its source in Faith. But the end of our
difficulties is not yet.
A man may put his faith in science, if he will,
"but let him not delude himself with the notion that
his faith is evidence of the objective reality of that
in which he trusts."[31] About that we feel no difficulty:
faith begins not merely with ignorance, but
with the frank confession that we know we are
ignorant, but we wish to believe, in spite of the
absence of evidence. There is no evidence to show
that Nature is uniform or science true, but we do not
mind that: we are quite determined to believe,
evidence or no evidence. That is easy enough for
us, who are not scientific; but "scientific men get
an awkward habit—no, I won't call it that, for it is
a valuable habit—of believing nothing unless there
is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking
upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not
only as illogical, but as immoral."[32] This is, if not
awkward, at least puzzling, since science is based
on a belief in the Uniformity of Nature, for which
there is no evidence.
"It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the
devil that he was a liar from the beginning. If we
set out in life with pretending to know that which
we do not know; with professing to accept for proof
evidence which we are well aware is inadequate;
with wilfully shutting our eyes and our ears to facts
which militate against this or that comfortable
hypothesis; we are assuredly doing our best to
deserve the same character."[33] That also is puzzling.
Science sets out in life with assuming, by a "great
act of faith," that Nature is uniform. She is well
aware that the evidence for this assumption is inadequate,
that no amount of experience could prove
it; but, if she is to start at all, she must make the
assumption, so she proceeds to act as though it were
proved, as though she knew what she does not
know. These are facts; and we take it for granted
that no one will wilfully shut his eyes and his ears
to them, even if he has some comfortable hypothesis
against which they seem to militate.
Again, belief in science is based not on any
ground of reason, but upon "the great act of faith"
which leads the man of science to assent to it. It
is therefore again puzzling to learn that "assent
without rational ground for belief is to the man
of science merely an immoral pretence," and that
"scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the
one unpardonable sin."[34]
But the reader has probably already correctly
divined the solution of these puzzles: the passages
quoted above are not intended to apply to science.
The blind faith which is illogical, immoral, a pretence
and a lie, is, of course, not faith in science, but
some other kind, which may therefore be dismissed;
and we may start once again with the happy feeling
that there is one kind of faith at least which is
logical, moral, and real and true.
It is, then, quite honest and logical to have faith
sometimes; and, without evidence, to believe some
things, e.g. the Uniformity of Nature. Here, however,
some readers may interpose with the objection
that the man of science has not proved that his
faith is logical and moral, and real and true—he has
simply assumed it. Quite true; but that is his
faith and we must respect it, as we respect any man
who holds fast to what he honestly believes to be
the real truth. We do not imagine he could believe
it if he thought it a pretence or a lie. And we
do not call upon him to prove it before we believe
him—still less to prove it before he believes it
himself.
It is, therefore, we repeat, quite reasonable to
believe in the Uniformity of Nature without evidence.
The reluctance that is genuinely felt by many minds
to take up this position is probably due to a feeling
that if we may believe in one thing without evidence,
then anyone may believe in anything he likes. And
it would not be quite fair to make the rejoinder,
What does that matter to you, as long as you are
free to believe what you think right? The tendency
to dogmatise, and to be intolerant of opinions not
our own, is, indeed, strong enough in all of us to
make us stand somewhat in dismay of a line of
argument which seems to indicate not merely that
other people have a right to differ from our opinions,
but may quite conceivably be right in so differing.
Still, this tendency does not wholly account for our
reluctance. That reluctance has, in part at least,
a nobler origin than narrow-mindedness and the
ignorance which knows not that it is ignorance.
It does matter to us what our fellow-men believe.
Still more does it matter how and why they choose
their beliefs.
The reluctance to admit that it is permissible to
believe without evidence even in a truth so undisputed
as the Uniformity of Nature, is also in part
due to yet another cause. It is felt that to admit
belief without regard to evidence is to invite intellectual
anarchy, and to leave mankind the helpless
prey of ignorance, error, and superstition. Hence,
in many candid souls, a lamentable feeling of distraction
and hopelessness: to abandon their old
faith, even if it has no evidence, is almost more than
they can bear; to retain it, knowing that it has
no evidence, is to open the floodgates of a saturnalia
of unreason by which the foundations of
civilisation would be swept away. Hence, too, the
zeal with which other minds call for the destruction
of every belief, but especially religious belief, not
based on evidence, and with which they denounce
faith as the one unpardonable sin.
But the error into which both classes of mind
fall is a simple one. It consists in imagining that
if we take one thing on faith, because there is no
evidence, therefore we may believe anything, even
if the evidence is conclusive against it—that if we
once accept faith, we must for ever abjure reason.
The error has been clearly exposed by Professor
Huxley, who, after pointing out that reason—ratiocination—is
based on faith, says, "But it is surely
plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to dispense
with ratiocination because ratiocination cannot dispense
with faith as a starting-point; and that
because we are often obliged, by the pressure of
events, to act on very bad evidence, it does not
follow that it is proper to act on such evidence when
the pressure is absent."[35]
It seems, then, a piece of alarmist exaggeration
to say that if we admit one thing, e.g. the Uniformity
of Nature, without evidence, we forfeit the right
ever again to ask for evidence for any other statement:
on the contrary, whenever evidence can be
got, we must get it and abide by it. But this only
shows that no disastrous consequences will necessarily
ensue, if we frankly admit what in any case
is the fact, viz. that there is no evidence for the
postulate on which all science is built. You will
not have committed high treason against the best
interests of mankind by acting, in this case, on the
principle that a man may sometimes believe a thing
on evidence which, he is well aware, is insufficient,
or on no evidence at all. On the other hand, in
another case, to act on the principle might be, if not
high treason, at least mischievous.
It seems, then, first, that there are some things
which a man may believe without evidence, and
some which he may not; and, next, that he may
not believe things the consequences of which would
be disastrous or mischievous. But now what of the
things not mischievous or disastrous? On what
principle are we to choose amongst them? Let us
once more follow our guide, the man of science, and
ask him on what principle he elected to believe that
Nature was uniform, rather than that she was not.
I imagine it was once more on the ground of the
consequences: grant that Nature is uniform, and
then all the marvellous discoveries, the revelations
of the past and prophecies of the future, which science
has made, become things that we can reasonably
believe in. Refuse to believe, withhold your faith,
and then you have no reason to believe anything
whatever, thought and action alike are paralysed.
It is between these consequences that we have to
choose. Our choice is an act of will; and it is on
our will that our beliefs and our actions depend.
In science, then, we are offered the alternatives:
either believe without evidence that Nature is uniform,
or renounce all that science has to give. We want
to be scientific, so we choose the former. We believe
(in science) because we want to believe, not because
we have any evidence. To say that we may yield
to the impulse to have faith, without being unscientific,
is to understate the case: we cannot be
scientific without faith.
In logic, whether inductive or deductive, the case
is the same. We must either believe without evidence
in the axioms on which reason is based, or
forego reason altogether. We want to be reasonable,
so we choose to accept the axioms. But our choice
is not the least evidence or proof that they are true.
We believe they are true, because we wish to believe
that they are true. There is no reason except there
first be faith.
With morality the case is not otherwise. We
believe in the principles of morality, not because
we can prove them, or bring evidence to show that
a man ought to do what is right, but because we
wish to believe, and because we have faith in the
right. There is no morality except first there be
faith.
We are nothing, know nothing, can do nothing
without faith. And it is not in the dead past, which
is what we mean by "evidence," but in the living
future that faith has its well-springs. It is because
we wish to do right henceforth that we put our faith
in right-doing. It is not the ghosts of our misdeeds,
rising from the charnel-house of the past in evidence
against us, that give us good hope of the future—it
is faith, not built on evidence, on a past that cannot
be altered, but on hope, on the future, on what shall
be as we will it.
The future is uncertain. But that is no reason
why you should be. There is no evidence that we
shall succeed, that logic can be trusted, or that
science is true. But fortunately it is possible to be
certain without evidence. In commenting on the
text "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the
proving of things unseen," Professor Huxley says, "I
fancy we shall not be far from the mark if we take
the writer to have had in his mind the profound
psychological truth, that men constantly feel certain
about things for which they strongly hope, but have
no evidence, in the legal or logical sense of the word;
and he calls this feeling 'faith.'"[36] It is a profound
psychological truth, and by the aid of the theory of
evolution we may understand why it is so deep-seated
in the mental and moral constitution of man. Primitive
man can have had no extensive "evidence" of
any kind to go upon in regulating the conduct of his
daily life; and in all probability exercised but little
power of criticism in judging the value of what
evidence he had. At the same time, if he was to
survive at all in the struggle for existence, he had
to act and to act promptly. Fortunately for him it
was possible to feel certain about things for which
there was no evidence, i.e. to have faith. And he
survived in consequence—in virtue of the law of
the survival of the faithful, a law whose operation
is possibly not confined to this world.
On the theory of evolution, again, man's wants
must have aided him in the struggle for existence;
and no evolutionist will doubt that the desire to be
rational and to do that which is right has assisted
man in his upward struggle. The victory has
remained with those who have been contented
to feel certain about things for which they had
no evidence, and to act on faith. It is those who
hesitate to do right until sacrifice of self is proved
to be reasonable, who lose their chance, and consequently
have been and are being, though slowly,
weeded out. Those who have yielded to their inner
impulse to believe, without evidence, have evidently
been the better fitted to their environment, and the
more in harmony with the ruling principle of the
cosmos and its evolution.
Thus far in this chapter there has been no explicit
mention of religious faith. We began with the fact
that faith is indispensable to science as its starting-point.
We do not wish to end with the suggestion
that scientific faith can or ought to be stretched so
as to make religious faith its logical or necessary
consequence. On the contrary, the man who by a
great act of faith accepts the Uniformity of Nature
without evidence, and then resolves never to accept
another statement without evidence, is quite safe:
no one can make him believe in religion as long
as he holds to his resolve—or in morality either.
There is no evidence—and therefore he cannot
believe—that a man ought to do what is right.
If he does ever depart from his resolve as regards
morality, it will be because in his heart—with its
reasons which his reason knows not of—he wants
to do right, not because there is any evidence.
In most men the impulse to believe expends but
does not exhaust itself in reason and morality.
There is also the religious belief that all that
happens to us is due to a Will not our own, in
which we can trust and to which we can give our
lives. For this belief there is no more evidence
than there is for science: if a man will receive it,
he must believe in it as he believes in science, that
is, without evidence. If a man will receive it, he
may, on the same condition as he believes in
morality or science, viz. that he wants it. Any other
condition is of his own making and is an act of his
own will: if he says that he fain would believe,
but cannot without evidence, that is a condition of
his own making, imposed upon him by his own
will—what science and morality both require
cannot be immoral or unscientific, and they each
require belief without evidence in order that they
may exist at all. What logic postulates can hardly
be illogical. It can be no necessary law of reason
to check the impulse which gives to reason its initial
impetus. We believe that science is true for no
other reason than that we wish it to be true; and
for every man, with regard to religion, the question
is, does he wish it to be true? if it lay with him to
decide, would he have it true? if he would, then it
does lie with him to decide: let him be assured it
is true. If he would not, let him ask his own heart,
Why? Why does he wish there were no God?
We began, at the beginning of this book, by
accepting evolution as a fact, and by asking
the question: Granted that it is a fact, what follows?
What does it mean for me? What light does it
throw on the meaning of life?
The answers that we may give to these questions
together constitute a philosophy of evolution, which
is carefully to be distinguished from evolution as a
scientific theory. As a scientific theory evolution is
an account, as exact as science can make it, of what
actually did happen in the past, of the precise process
by which things have come to be what they are.
When this knowledge has been gained, we may ask
the question, What value has this knowledge for the
practical purposes of life? And the answer will be
a contribution to philosophy, but it will not be one of
the things described by science as having happened
in the past, will not be part of the knowledge from
which it is itself inferred, nor, if it is a false inference,
will it have any right to masquerade as science and
say that we must accept it as true or else deny the
truth of science. Indeed, we found that two answers
to the question, two philosophies of evolution, the
Optimistic and the Pessimistic, have been formulated,
which being contradictory cannot both be true,
though both may be false.
The Optimistic theory, that evolution is progress,
only established its conclusion, that the process of
evolution is necessarily from good to better, by
means of arguments which denied the distinction
between good and bad, and implied that our moral
convictions were illusions.
The Pessimistic theory, on the other hand, assumed
the reality of our moral ideals, but was forced by its
adoption of the theory of Necessity to conclude that
it is an illusion to imagine those ideals can be finally
realised.
Both philosophies in theory profess to make no
assumptions, to take nothing on faith, and to base
themselves on nothing but what we actually know
to be facts. In practice each of them does unconsciously
base itself on faith and does tacitly make
certain assumptions. But as the assumptions made
are not precisely the same in both cases, they reach
two very different conclusions—Optimism and Pessimism.
Again, if each philosophy treats as illusions
certain facts—the freedom of the will and the reality
of moral distinctions—which the common sense and
common consciousness of mankind hold to be real, it
is because each philosophy arbitrarily rejects certain
of the assumptions which common sense makes,
certain articles of the common faith of mankind.
Consequently, when we find that each philosophy is
inconsistent with itself, and ends by implying that
what it assumed to be real is in fact an illusion, we
are led to suspect that its assumptions may not
have been adequate or well-considered, its faith not
great enough to remove mountains or explain the
world.
The conception of a "positive" philosophy—that
is, a philosophy which confines itself to positive facts,
and which is "agnostic" in the sense that it does
not profess to know what it knows it does not know—is
borrowed from science. It is an attempt to carry
the methods of science into the domain of philosophy,
to substitute science for philosophy. The attempt
is made under the impression that science does not
profess to know what it knows it does not know,
i.e. makes no assumptions and takes nothing on
faith. That impression, however, is, as we have
argued in the last chapter but one, a false impression:
the Uniformity of Nature is a pure—and
rational—assumption. If, therefore, a philosophy
confined itself strictly within the bounds of science,
it would not be strictly positive or agnostic: it
would still make some assumptions, even if only
those made by science, and would still, even if it
confined itself to the positive facts of science, be
taking something on faith. A sound philosophy
is one, not that makes no assumptions, but which
seeks to find out what assumptions are made by
any department of knowledge or practice—science,
art, evolution, morality, religion—and how far those
assumptions will carry us. The bane of philosophy
is not making assumptions—all thought does—but
is thinking you have made none.
Common sense assumes that the testimony of
consciousness, so far as it can be verified by consciousness,
can be trusted as evidence of the reality
of that which is presented to it. Positive or
agnostic philosophies, whether of the optimistic
or the pessimistic type, on the principle of making
no assumptions, reject this one, either on the ground
that the Real is Unknowable (which is itself an
assumption as incapable of proof or disproof as the
assumption that the Real is Knowable) or on the
ground that we only know our states of consciousness,
and cannot know whether there is or is not
any reality beyond them (which again is simply
an assumption that consciousness as evidence of a
reality beyond itself is not to be trusted).
Now, granted that common sense makes an
assumption here, as it assuredly does, it is one
such as can only be rejected by making a counter-assumption:
to refuse to trust consciousness as
evidence of a reality beyond itself is to make the
assumption that it is not trustworthy—which may
or may not be true, but is just as much an
assumption as the supposition of its trustworthiness
is. The positive and agnostic philosophies, therefore,
do not succeed in avoiding assumptions in
this matter: they only tacitly add another to that
which they have already unconsciously made by
assuming that Nature is uniform.
If, now, they adhered to these assumptions, we
might proceed to ask what conclusions they deduced
from them. We should not, indeed, expect their
conclusions to be the same as those reached by
persons starting from the opposite hypothesis, viz.
that consciousness is trustworthy. And we should
not agree that they were superior to those reached
by the common sense and drawn from the common
faith of mankind. We should only admit that
they were different, because drawn from different
premises. The argument that the teaching of a
philosophy which makes no assumptions must be
superior to one that does, is an argument which,
whatever its value, we should have to set aside
in this case, on the ground that the agnostic
philosophies are not so ignorant as they modestly
profess to be: they do know something—they know
that Nature is uniform, and that consciousness as
evidence of reality is not to be trusted—or they
assume they know.
But the positive philosophies do not adhere to
their assumptions. Few philosophers do. The
optimistic evolutionist takes back his remark about
the untrustworthiness of consciousness, so far as
material things are concerned: matter and motion
at any rate are real, and consciousness is good
evidence, as good as can be got, of their reality.
The pessimistic evolutionist also repents him, as
far as our moral convictions are concerned: they
are fundamentally real; our consciousness of the
moral ideal is our best evidence for it.
On the other hand, both the optimistic and the
pessimistic evolutionist adhere with perfect consistency
to their rejection of the evidence given
by consciousness to the freedom of the will. But
here, too, the assumption of common sense cannot
be rejected without a counter-assumption: if it is
a pure assumption to say that things could have
happened otherwise than they did, it is equally
mere assumption to say they could not.
Finally, there is one other assumption made by
the common faith of mankind and rejected by
positive philosophies. It is that the world, i.e.
everything of which man's consciousness is aware
and to the reality of which his consciousness is
evidence, is the expression of self-determining will,
human and superhuman, manifesting itself directly
to his consciousness. This assumption, too, has
its counter-assumption—that there is no self-determining
will, human or superhuman—and to
reject the one assumption is to accept the other.
To say that you do not know whether a man's
word may be trusted or not is literally agnosticism,
and may be the only rational attitude to assume,
e.g. if the man is an absolute stranger, as most
witnesses in court are to the judge who tries the
case. But on the ground of your ignorance to
refuse to pay any attention to his evidence when
given is to abandon your agnosticism—if a judge
directs the jury to disregard the evidence of the
witness, the presumption is that he assumes it to
be false. So, too, if we disregard the evidence
of consciousness on this or any other point, we
do not thereby succeed in avoiding assumptions,
we only assume that consciousness is not trustworthy.[37]
The idea that in philosophy it is possible permanently
to maintain an agnostic attitude with regard
to the trustworthiness of consciousness is the outcome
of a conscientious attempt to apply scientific
methods to the solution of philosophic problems.
Science does not find it necessary to assume either
that there is or that there is not a God: on either
assumption it is certain that bodies tend towards
each other at the rates specified in the gravitation-formula.
Philosophy must be made scientific. Therefore
philosophy must carefully avoid making either
assumption. Why, the very reason why science has
progressed and philosophy never moves is that
science builds only on demonstrated fact, philosophy
only on undemonstrable assumptions. Proof, and
therefore truth, is impossible if you start from assumptions
which never can be proved to be either
true or untrue.
The truth is that it is possible to maintain the
agnostic attitude, and to avoid making assumptions,
just so long as we do not need to form an opinion
or take action on the matter which the assumption
affects.
If my interests, practical or speculative, are not
affected by a certain trial now proceeding in the
law courts, I can avoid making any assumption as
to the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of a
witness's evidence. I do not know whether he is
trustworthy or not, and I can refuse to make any
assumption whatever on the subject—there is no
reason why I should. But the moment circumstances
call on me to form an opinion, I find myself beginning
to make one assumption or the other, or perhaps
at first one and then the other, though I am just as
ignorant whether he really is trustworthy or not as
I was when I refused to make any assumptions; I
know no more about his previous career or his
antecedent credibility than I did before he entered
the box.
So, too, the truth is not that science makes no
assumptions, but that she makes no assumptions
except those which are necessary for her purposes.
The man of science assumes—and it is pure assumption—that
he can trust the evidence of his
consciousness as to the reality of the chemicals he
experiments on, the plants he classifies, or the stars
he observes. He assumes that they are real. He
also assumes without proof that what has produced
a certain effect once will produce it again in the
same circumstances, that if a thing has occurred the
conditions essential to its occurrence must also have
occurred—in fine, that Nature is uniform. But so long
as he is engaged exclusively in scientific work, in
finding out what actually does happen or has happened
in Nature, he need make no assumptions as
to whether a certain witness is trustworthy or not,
or whether there is a God or not: he can maintain
a perfectly agnostic attitude on both questions. He
can say, if he chooses, "God or no God, two and two
make four"; or, to put it more precisely, whether
the evidence which consciousness gives in spiritual
experience to the reality of a God can or cannot be
trusted, I do trust the evidence which consciousness
gives in sense-experience to the reality of material
things; whether the assumption that every event is
the expression of self-determining will is true or
not, at any rate I believe in the assumption that
Nature is uniform.
And if man had nothing to do but investigate
the actual course of Nature, and had nothing else
to form an opinion about except whether this phenomenon
is followed by that, it would be possible
permanently to avoid making any assumptions save
those required by science. But man has (let us
suppose) to know, not only what does happen, but
what ought to happen, and to decide what shall
happen. The ordinary man, in making those forecasts
of the future which he must make for the
ordinary business of daily life, assumes, quite unconsciously,
that Nature is uniform and that material
things are real. In deciding what he ought to do
and what he will do, he assumes, without knowing
that he is making any assumptions at all, that his
moral ideals are real, that his will is free to choose
this course or that, and that the God with whom he
communes in his heart is real.
Let us now take the question raised by agnosticism
as to these assumptions, which constitute a
large part of the common faith of mankind. The
question is not whether these assumptions are right:
the agnostic declines to discuss that question; he
does not know whether they are right or wrong, he
has no means of deciding, they are too high for
him. The question is whether the agnostic himself
succeeds in making, as well as endeavouring
to make, no assumptions on these points. We
have already argued he fails: he succeeds, not
in making no assumptions, but only in making the
counter-assumptions to those assumed by common
sense.
This, let us hasten to add, does not at all amount
to saying that his counter-assumptions are wrong:
it only amounts to saying that he cannot form a
resolution to steal or not to steal, to lie or not to
lie, without (consciously or unconsciously) making
some assumption as to the reality of the moral
ideal.
But there is little need of argument to show that
agnostic philosophy fails to avoid making assumptions,
i.e. fails in practice to be agnostic. Professor
Huxley admitted that the Uniformity of Nature was
an assumption; he assumed that our moral ideals
were real; he took it for granted that the will was
not free. We need only point out that the attempt
to carry on philosophy and explain the universe on
purely scientific principles breaks down: science
makes no assumption about the reality of our moral
and æsthetic ideals; philosophy, even an agnostic
philosophy, finds it necessary to assume the reality
of both. Even if philosophy could be made scientific,
it would not get rid of unprovable assumptions: it
would still be based upon those made by science.
And the excellence of philosophy, or of any explanation
of the universe, consists, not in agnosticism,
not in making no assumptions, but in making the
right ones.
Science, as we have said, makes no assumptions
save those which are necessary for her purpose, which
is to ascertain and describe what actually takes place
in Nature. Conversely, it is vain to imagine that
from those assumptions anything can be deduced
except conclusions of the kind which they are framed
to cover, viz. conclusions as to what actually does
take place. To say, therefore, that all knowledge—philosophy
and religion—must become scientific
before it can be regarded as trustworthy is simply
to say that nothing can be regarded as true, except
what is deduced from the assumptions of science:
conclusions drawn from any other assumptions have
no scientific truth. The assumptions of science are
constructed only to lead to conclusions as to what
is: we can therefore have no scientific, i.e. no real,
knowledge of what ought to be. With the assumptions
she makes, Science can only describe the way
in which things happen; why they should so
happen it is therefore impossible to know. The
idea that all things are the expression of self-determining
will is not one of the assumptions of science;
no conclusions from it, therefore, can be considered
valid.
Without staying to consider why the unproved
and unprovable assumptions of science are so
superior to all others as to be set up as the sole
source of truth, the only fount of genuine knowledge,
let us consider what sort of a picture of the
universe they give us. Perhaps a simile will best
help us.
Let us imagine a game of chess in course of being
played by invisible players in presence of a scientific
philosopher who knows nothing about the game—or
who assumes that he knows nothing—except what
his senses tell him.
What he sees will be simply material chess-men
moving in space. He may either consider them to
be merely sense-phenomena, merely affections or
modifications of his sense of sight and touch, or
he may consider them to be real, material things.
In either case he makes an assumption. The latter
assumption leaves it quite an open question whether
the reality is something insentient or is the expression
of conscious will. The former precludes the
question, i.e. assumes that there is neither conscious
will nor insentient matter behind them.
But in neither assumption is there anything to
prevent the philosopher in question from studying the
movements of the chess-men and the way in which
at every move or moment they are redistributed.
At first their movements would probably be rather
bewildering; but in course of time he would note,
we may assume, that Black never moved unless
White had previously moved, and that any movement
of White was followed by one on the part
of Black. He might therefore be tempted to lay
it down as a rule that Black never moved unless
White moved first—that an effect never occurred
without a cause; and that a movement of White
was always followed by a move on the part of Black—that
a cause was always followed by its effect.
But if he yielded to this temptation he would be
making an assumption, for—inasmuch as he professes
to know nothing to begin with—he does not
know that the pieces always will move in this way;
he only knows (assuming that memory is not a mere
delusion, as it may be, for anything he knows) that
they have moved thus, not that they always will
move thus. He may, however, assume that they
will continue to move in that way. But with every
fresh assumption he becomes less and less of an
agnostic. He may, indeed, if he likes, further
assume, not only that the pieces will move in this
way, but that they must. This assumption does not,
indeed, seem necessary; for if we know (or assume
that we know) that they will follow this course, it
seems superfluous to say that they must.
It seems well, therefore, to try to see on what
principle we are to make our assumptions. It is an
ancient rule, and one followed by science, to make
as few as possible—that is to say, the fewest that will
suffice for the purpose in hand. If, therefore, the
purpose of our study of the chess-board is merely
to find out how and according to what rules the
pieces actually do move, have moved, and will move,
it seems sufficient to assume that they will move as
they have done, not that they must. If, on the other
hand, we want to know why they move in the way
that we assume them to move, then the assumption
that they do so because they must is certainly in form
legitimate, though it may or may not be the right
one in fact.
Some people refuse to discuss such questions as
"Why this universe?" "What is the reason of this
unintelligible world?" on the ground that they
cannot be answered except by making assumptions
which cannot be proved.
But is that really a good reason for refusing?
If it is, then none of the questions which science
exists to answer can be discussed, for they also
can only be answered by assuming, without proof
or possibility of proof, that Nature is uniform, that
the chess-men will continue to move as they have
done.
Be this as it may, our philosopher, if he assumes
that the course of Nature is not only uniform, but
necessary, is making an assumption which is not
required for the purposes of science, though it may
be for his philosophy. It is, as we have said, quite
legitimate for him to make the assumption for philosophical
purposes, and to adhere to its logical
consequences. But in the interests of clearness
of thought it should be recognised that those consequences
flow from it, and not from any of the
assumptions necessary for the purposes of science.
He will be able to show on this assumption that
there is nothing in the history of the universe, or
in the facts of science, to countenance the idea that
the universe is the expression of self-determining
will. We only wish to point out that this conclusion,
even if true, is not an inference from the facts
of science, but from the initial assumption that
nothing which takes place in Nature is the result
of free will.
To say, "Science does not find it necessary to
assume the existence of self-determining will, neither
therefore will I assume it," is true, but is only half
the truth. Science does not find it necessary to
assume the non-existence of self-determining will.
But the philosopher who explains the facts of Nature
on the hypothesis that they happen of necessity, does
assume that self-determining will is non-existent.
It is therefore quite natural that the history of the
universe and the facts of science, interpreted in this
way, should lend no countenance to the opposite
theory.
The history of the universe may also be interpreted
as a manifestation of the Divine will, the
process of evolution as a progressive revelation;
and if any be tempted to say with a sigh, "Ah! but
it all requires us to believe that there is a God, to
begin with," let them reflect that the other interpretation
cannot even begin without the assumption
that there is no God.
But to return to our chess-men. A closer study
of the game would reveal—in addition to the invariable
sequence of Black, White, Black—the fact
that the various pieces had various properties and
moved in various ways, some only one square at
a time, some the whole length of the board; some
diagonally, some parallel to the sides of the board.
Further, our philosopher would observe that each
piece when it moved tended to move according to
its own laws: in the absence of counteracting causes,
e.g. unless some other piece blocked the way, a bishop
tended to move diagonally the whole length of the
board. As a man of science, he would state these
observed uniformities in the hypothetical form rightly
adopted by science: if a castle moves it tends to
move in such and such a way. Thus eventually he
would be able to foretell, whenever any piece began
to move, what direction it tended, in the absence
of counteracting causes, to take. He might not,
indeed, be able to say beforehand which of White's
pieces would move in reply to Black, but his knowledge
of the game would eventually become so
scientific that he would be prepared for most contingencies,
i.e. be able to say approximately where
any piece would move if it did move. That knowledge
could be attained without making any assumption
as to whether free-will or necessity was the
motive force expressed in the game; and it would
be equally valid whichever of the two assumptions
he chose to make. His science would have nothing
to hope or fear from either assumption.
With regard to matter and motion, he would note
that a piece might be removed and deposited by the
side of the board, but was never destroyed, and he
would infer that matter is indestructible and could
never have been created. As for motion, the condition,
the only invariable and necessary condition,
of movement is previous movement, Black must
move before White can: the only condition of
change in the distribution of the pieces on the
board would be some previous change. If the
suggestion were made to him that possibly the real
condition of all movement and every change was
the purpose of an unseen agent, and that real knowledge
was impossible without some idea of that
purpose, he might as a man of science decline to
accept the suggestion. The object of science is not
to conjecture why things happen, or with what
purpose, but to describe positively the way in
which they actually do happen, or perhaps merely
to describe the motions of material things in space.
It does not matter with what purpose a shot or
a mine is fired, or even whether with any or none:
the results are just the same, if it is fired in just
the same way. Science neither assumes nor denies
the existence of purpose, because neither the assumption
nor its rejection would in the least help
her to discover the things that she wants to know.
But are the things she wants to know the only
things worth knowing? Every man is entitled to
answer that question for himself. Are they the
only things that can be known? They are the
only things that can be known—on her assumptions.
Just as the world can only be explained
scientifically on the assumptions of science, so it
can only be interpreted morally or religiously on
the assumptions made by religion and morality.
The only end that could be subserved by assuming
a Divine purpose would be at most to enable us
in some slight degree to argue what the purpose of
some things might be—and that is of no interest
or value to science. She declines to look for a
final cause: her business is with efficient and
mechanical causes.
The suggestion, then, that the chess-men may be
moved with a purpose is not rejected, but is set aside
as useless for a scientific comprehension of the game.
Invisible agents—and we are all invisible, though
our bodies are not—moving the chess-men with a
purpose, or cross-purposes, are hypotheses valueless
for science, which aims only at positive facts, the
laws according to which the pieces actually do move.
By the aid of these laws our philosopher might
succeed in reconstructing the past history of the
game which he was watching. From the positions
occupied by the pieces now he might infer the
positions from which they came (or think he could),
and so back, step by step, until he reached the order
in which the pieces are arranged at the beginning
of a game. When he reviewed the knowledge thus
obtained he would see in the process of the game
a certain evolution from the relatively simple movements
of the pawns which began the game to the
highly complex movements of the queen. Then,
whatever the order in which the pieces happened
to be brought out and their qualities developed in the
particular game he was watching, he might argue
on the theory of necessity that that was the only
order in which those properties could have been
evolved. On the principle that efficient and
mechanical causes were sufficient to provide a
scientific explanation of the game it would follow
that the higher powers manifested by castles and
queens, the latest pieces to come out into the game,
were caused by the previous action and movements
of the less highly developed pawns—that life and
consciousness are due to material causes. The idea
that the movements of queens and pawns alike were
due to the will of an unseen agent acting with
purpose is, as we have said, a suggestion quite
valueless to science, because any conclusions it might
lead to would not be scientific knowledge. If we
assumed the existence of purpose, and even could
conjecture dimly its nature, we still should have
made no addition to those positive facts which are
the only things that science is concerned to establish:
it would be neither more nor less true than before
that bishops move diagonally, pawns one square
at a time, gravitating bodies at the rate of sixteen
feet in the first second, and so on. It would be
neither more nor less true than before that pawns
actually were the first pieces to move in the
game, that lifeless matter preceded the evolution of
organisms. Above all, it would be neither more nor
less true than before that the conclusions of science
are the only conclusions that a rational man will
accept.
It is an article of the common faith of mankind
that consciousness is good and trustworthy
evidence of the reality of that of which we are
conscious. It is also characteristic of that common
faith to believe in the trustworthiness of the Power
which manifests itself in that of which we are conscious.
The man of science shares in the common
faith of mankind up to a certain point: he accepts
the testimony of consciousness to the reality of
material things, and he believes that the Power
which manifests itself in them can be trusted to
behave when it is (in time or space) beyond the
range of his observation in exactly the same way
as it does within. But to walk in the common faith
further than this point is unscientific. It is rational
to trust the evidence of consciousness when it
testifies to the reality of material things, but not
when it testifies to the reality of our moral ideals,
or the freedom of the will or the reality of God. It
is scientific to trust the Power which manifests itself
in consciousness to behave with the same uniformity
in the future as it has done in the past, and rational
to formulate our science and stake our material
interests on that uniformity. But it is not rational
or scientific to trust that Power to will freely the
good of all things, or to trust our lives to that will.
The reason of this sharp division between science
and faith is the mistaken idea that science involves
no faith and is a body of knowledge built up without
any assumption. But even if we got the man of
science to admit that science would be impossible
if things were not real and Nature not uniform, it
would still be open to him to say that he considered
any other assumptions unnecessary; and there is
a way in which he could prove them to be unnecessary.
He might show that they were no
assumptions at all, but logical consequences from
established scientific facts. That was in effect the
object aimed at, as far as our moral ideals are
concerned, by the optimistic philosophy of evolution.
For the optimistic philosopher, then, who refuses
to begin by taking the difference between right
and wrong on faith, the problem is, granted the
reality of material things and the uniformity of
Nature, to show that the moral law is simply one
particular case of the uniformity of Nature.
The means by which this demonstration is supposed
to be effected is the law of the survival of the
fittest. It is shown that the law of organic life is
the survival of the fittest, and that survival is the
consequence of adaptation to environment. These
two laws are of course uniformities of Nature. It
follows, then, that there must be a constant tendency
on the part of the environment to secure better and
better results in the way of organic life, for it only
permits the survival of the fittest and the increasingly
fittest. Man is an organism, and man's good therefore
consists in his adapting himself to his environment.
Thus the laws of morality are shown to be
but one special case of a certain uniformity of Nature,
viz. the law of adaptation to environment, which
applies to all organisms and not merely to man's.
The argument, however, is in the first place circular:
"fittest to survive" simply means "best
adapted to the environment." Doubtless the best
adapted to the environment are best adapted to the
environment, but it does not in the least follow that
they are therefore morally or æsthetically best.
There is, therefore, no such constant tendency on
the part of the environment to secure moral progress
as is required by the Optimistic Evolutionist.
In the next place, on its own showing, the argument
ends by proving that morality—what ought
to be—is nothing more or less than what is. And
though that is exactly what the optimist undertook
to show—and exactly what is undertaken by every
one who engages to show that faith is unnecessary
in morality because the laws of morality can be
deduced from the facts of science—still it may be
doubted whether the conclusion "whatever is, is
right" is exactly either a law of morality or a
uniformity of Nature.
The question at issue between science and faith
is, as we have said, not whether it is possible to gain
trustworthy knowledge of the world without faith,
without making assumptions, for science itself is
built on faith in the reality of things and the uniformity
of Nature, but whether the assumptions of
science are the only assumptions that we need make.
One way of proving that they need not be assumed
would be to show that they can be proved by
science. But that way failure lies, as is shown by
the optimist's ill-success. But there is yet another
way of cutting down the common faith of mankind
to the narrower creed of science, and that is to show
that the remaining articles of faith, the assumptions
not necessary to science, are inconsistent with science.
That is the method adopted by the Pessimistic
Evolutionist. He does, indeed, go further with the
common faith than the optimist did. Impressed by
the failure of the optimist to exhibit the laws of
morality as the mere outcome of the laws of Nature,
and the reality of our moral ideals as derived from
the reality of material things, he accepts the common
faith of mankind in the law of morality as being
just as rational as his and their faith in the uniformity
of Nature. But having taken this one step,
having adopted this additional article of faith on
faith, he refuses to go any further. He accepts without
evidence the assumption that there are certain
things which we ought to do, just as he accepts
without evidence the assumption that Nature is uniform.
But he refuses to accept the assumption that
will is free, because that is opposed to the evidence.
He admits that we ought to choose certain things,
but denies that we can choose them; and his forecast
of the future is in accordance with the premises
from which it is inferred. It is a pessimistic picture
of man being steadily driven to do the things that
he ought not, ending with the triumph of what must
be over what ought to be, of physical necessity over
the morally right.
The object of science is to discover what we ought
to believe, to substitute reasoned knowledge for
ignorant conjecture; and the fundamental faith of
science is that we ought not to believe anything
that is contrary to the uniformity of Nature. Nothing
ought to shake our faith in that article of our
creed: no amount of evidence will convince a really
scientific man, a true believer in the faith, that any
alleged violation of the uniformity of Nature can be
real. No amount of evidence would be sufficient,
for instance, to warrant the belief in miracles.
Either the alleged violation is only apparent, and
will, with further knowledge, turn out to be a fresh
instance of the truth that Nature is uniform; or else
the evidence will prove on examination to be untrustworthy.
To admit that any evidence could
suffice for such a purpose would be to admit that
the uniformity of Nature is not the fundamental
reality in the world of science, or the ultimate base
of our knowledge of what does actually take place
in Nature.
A little reflection is enough to show that this is
an entirely self-consistent line to take up. No
amount of evidence can shake what is itself built
on no evidence. If the belief in the uniformity of
Nature depended on evidence in its favour, then
evidence against it might overthrow it. But, as it
rests on faith, it is superior to evidence.
Now, what is true and self-consistent in the case
of science in its own sphere is equally so in the case
of morality. It is the common belief of mankind
that we can, and are able to, choose what is right;
and just as no amount of evidence will convince
a really scientific mind that a violation of the uniformity
of Nature is possible, so there is no evidence
which will convince a really moral man that he
could not have done right when he did do what was
wrong. "We ought, therefore we can," does not
exactly express the facts. Rather, it is the other
way: we can love, be merciful, tender, compassionate,
therefore we ought. Liberty itself is a law to the
free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of Him
"whose service is perfect freedom."
The pessimist, then, who thinks, by producing
evidence, to show that what ought to be cannot
be, is adopting in morality a form of argument
which in science, when it is a question of miracles,
he condemns as inherently vicious and illogical.
Further, the evidence which he does produce is not
altogether above suspicion. It takes the form of
the statement that the uniformity of Nature is a
uniformity of necessity and not of a will freely
purposing a good end by means of a voluntary
uniformity.
If that statement could be proved to be a logical
consequence from the facts of science, then it would
indeed be proved that one article in the common
creed of mankind was inconsistent with the rest. But,
as we have argued already, it is not implied either
in the admitted uniformity of Nature or in any of
the facts deducible from it. To revert to the simile
of the chess-board, it is as though one should say
that because Black could not have moved his knight
unless White had moved his pawn, therefore White
was bound to move the pawn.
We cannot, therefore, consider that the pessimist
has succeeded in showing that the articles of the
common faith which he accepts require in their
logical consequences the rejection of the rest. In
saying that man ought to choose the right, but has
no choice between right and wrong, he is not formulating
a consequence of the facts of science, he is
simply assuming without evidence the existence of
a universal necessity of which the changes in Nature
and the actions of man are but the varying though
inevitable expression—an assumption which invalidates
morality without adding to the truth of
science.
There are those whose belief in demonology
furnishes them with a reason and an excuse for the
misdeeds of man. The belief in necessity exhibits
demonology as a doctrine of science: man would
fain do right, but the uniformity, which is the
necessity, of Nature allows him no choice. It is
Nature, the environment, which is the abode and
headquarters of necessity, the enemy of the ethical
process, the arch-demon of scientific demonology.
And the proof that he exists is that he must. What
must be, must be, because it must.
The attempt to render morality scientific ends in
a result fatal to morality; and the reason seems
clear. It is that science is not morality, nor are
the principles of science those of morality. Science
is knowledge, morality is action. Knowledge, to be
knowledge, has to presuppose that Nature is uniform
and that the things it deals with are real. So, too,
action, to be moral, requires the belief that our moral
ideals are real and that we are free to choose
between good and evil. The optimist who would
have us believe that science includes all the remaining
articles of the common faith, and the pessimist
who argues that it excludes them, alike fall into
the error of imagining that science, the knowledge
of what is, is the whole of knowledge, and that
the assumptions which are required in order to
describe what is will enable us to do and to
know what ought to be. Science, which is a true
description of part of our experience, becomes a
misleading half-truth when it is offered as an exhaustive
account of the whole. If, knowing the
rules of chess and having a record of the moves in
a solitary (and unfinished) game, we refused to
inquire why the pieces moved, on the ground that
if we succeeded in the inquiry we should have made
no addition to our knowledge of the way in which
the pieces do move, we should never understand
the game. But we should be nearer the truth than
if we assumed that a piece caused its own movements
or those of the other pieces; and that will
or purpose was quite incompatible with the uniformity
of their movements.
The fact is that we have to play the game—we
are not merely spectators—and as a matter of fact,
also, men do assume that they can freely choose
what moves they will make and that there are
certain moves which they ought to make. The
assumptions which they make, not exactly for the
sake of playing the game, but in the act of playing
it, are neither included in the assumptions of science
nor excluded by them. To play the game at all,
it is necessary to have some knowledge (or to act
as though we had some knowledge) of how the
pieces move, to know that bishops move diagonally,
that bodies tend to gravitate at a certain rate. Man
cannot indeed act or make the slightest movement
without deflecting or starting some of the processes
of Nature and of his own psychological mechanism:
it is through them that he operates, and by means
of them that he plays the game. In the beginning
he has but little knowledge of what the consequences
will be if he touches this or that spring of the
mechanism. Yet the knowledge is necessary for
him, if he is to play the game as he ought, i.e. to
attain the moral ideals of which he is more or less
(less at first) conscious. In acquiring this knowledge
he uses his faculty of abstraction, that is his power of
concentrating his attention on one aspect of a thing
or problem, to the exclusion of the rest, in order to
gain a clearer knowledge of it by giving it his undivided
and undistracted attention. Thus, in order
to understand how the mechanism of Nature or
human nature actually does act, he concentrates
his attention on the working of that mechanism in
the abstract, i.e. wholly apart from the fact that it
is at times started, at times interrupted, or redirected
for the sake of realising (or thwarting) his
ideals. The knowledge thus gained is science, and
is, according to the agnostic, the optimist, and the
pessimist, the only knowledge that man can have.
But it is clear that man can and does reflect, not
only on the way in which the mechanism acts, but
also on the use to which he puts it and the relation
of that use to his ideals. These reflections may
add nothing to his science, to his knowledge that
rooks when moved must be moved parallel to the
sides of the board, but they do add to his knowledge
of the game. In fine, man gains a more important
part of that knowledge by or in playing the game
than he does by studying the rules. The rules
acquaint him with the resources which are at his
disposal, the capacities of the various pieces and
the powers of the various forces of Nature or human
nature. But it would be absurd to pass this off as
a complete knowledge of the game. We may, by
playing the game, add only to our knowledge of
how the game ought to be played, of how the
mechanism of Nature and human nature ought to
be used, and not add to our knowledge of the fact
that if and when the mechanism is set agoing it
acts in the way described by science. But the one
kind of knowledge, though not science, is just as
true as the other, on the same terms, viz. if you
accept the assumptions presupposed by it.
Science, then, is from the very terms of its constitution
abstract, i.e. essentially incomplete. The
very terms on which alone science is possible are
that it shall study one aspect only of Nature, the
mechanical, and shall ascertain what conclusions
follow if we confine our attention to the mechanical
factors and neglect certain other factors—the freedom
of the will, final causes, and the moral and
æsthetic ideals—which, though voluntarily neglected
for the moment, are yet known to be important
factors in the game of life as it is played by us.
As often as we act, however, we set those factors,
temporarily neglected by science, in action; and
there is no reason why, when we have acted, we
should not reflect upon our action, disengage the
assumptions which are presupposed by our actions,
and then reconsider the world and life in the light
of the assumptions on which our actions and the
actions of all men are based, viz. the freedom of
the will and the reality of our ideals. Thus viewed,
the world becomes the scene and life the opportunity
of using the forces of Nature and our own psychological
mechanism for the purpose of achieving the
ideal.
But free-will and the moral ideal are not the only
factors in the world as it is presented to the common
consciousness, or in life as it is carried on by
humanity, which are neglected by science, and which
have to be restored by subsequent reflection, if we
wish to see life true and see it whole. Science declines
to entertain the question why things happen,
or whether there is any purpose in events; and
moral faith only guarantees that there is that which
man ought to do, and that he is free to do it. But
science, in neglecting the action of final causes, omits
a factor which not only must be replaced before we
can have any adequate understanding of the part
which man plays in the world, but which, by the
testimony of the common consciousness of mankind,
manifests itself in the phenomena of Nature.
The description which science gives of the sequences
and co-existences of material and physical
phenomena is consistent with itself, and is all that
is required by the assumptions of science. It is
only when we reflect upon the further assumptions
which we make, or rather act upon as moral agents,
that we find science inadequate or—if it professes
to be the whole account of the world and man—misleading.
And it is only by restoring those
factors for which our moral consciousness is the
evidence that we can remedy the defect or correct
the error. The attempt made by the optimist to
dispense with the testimony of consciousness to the
reality of the moral law, and the attempt of the
pessimist to dispense with the freedom of the will,
were both failures.
In the same way, both the scientific and the moral
interpretation of the world are judged by the religious
consciousness to be abstract, and are seen,
when viewed in the light of its presuppositions, to be
inadequate, if not misleading. The inadequacy of
the moral assumptions which are made by the
common consciousness of mankind is manifest,
when we reflect that while those assumptions serve
to decide the question—left open by science—as to
the "Why?" of human actions, they do not decide
the same question as to the events of Nature, but
leave it open as it was left by science, whether final
or mechanical causation is the ultimate explanation
of Nature.
The problem what we are to do and to think in
life and of life is one which for its solution requires
that the whole of our experience should be taken
into account: if it is to account for the sum total
of the facts of which we are conscious, it must take
for its basis the totality of those facts and nothing
less extensive. It is true that the very vastness of
the field to be surveyed—the whole of the common
consciousness of mankind—makes a division of
labour necessary, and compels us to concentrate ourselves
at different times on different aspects of it,
and to treat each of the phases of our experience—religious,
moral, and scientific experience—for the
moment as though it alone existed. But it is equally
true that this isolation of first one phase and then
the other is merely a temporary device, designed and
adopted for a purpose; and that that purpose is to
enable us ultimately to bring the whole of our
experience to bear on the problem of what to do
and to think.
Legitimate as it is, when we are working at the
details of the problem, to distinguish the moral
consciousness from the scientific, and the religious
consciousness from the moral, it is necessary to bear
in mind that these distinctions are merely abstractions.
In thought we may and do so distinguish, but in fact
and experience consciousness is a unity. The same
man who is conscious of sense-phenomena is also
conscious of moral obligation: the "I" which is
conscious of moral experience is the same "I"
that is conscious of spiritual experience.
Further, the evidence which we have for the three
kinds of experience—scientific, moral, and spiritual—is
the same: it is the evidence of consciousness—the
only evidence that we can have of anything.
That witness, if discredited at all, is discredited for
all in all. If discredited, it must be by its own
testimony, for we have no other witness which can
give evidence against it. But we hope that it is
true: the man of science is so certain of its truth,
in the department in which he is most familiar with
it and has the best right to speak of it, that he lays
it down as a rule that there simply can be no
evidence of an exception to the uniformity of Nature.
The moralist is equally certain that no exception
to the law of moral obligation is possible; the religious
mind that there can be none to the universality
of the Divine love. To the unity of consciousness
corresponds the unity of our faith in its trustworthiness.
Scientific and moral faith are not different
from religious faith; they are but phases of the
same. The common faith of mankind is not a
synthesis formed artificially by adding the three
together; on the contrary, the three are artificially
distinguished by thought—they do not correspond
to fact, but are abstractions from the facts, and are
formed by the suppression of facts.
The religious consciousness is itself abstract; and
as an abstraction, i.e. if taken to be the whole of
what we know and feel and do, is capable of leading
to false conclusions: no religious belief can stand
permanently which runs counter to the facts of
science or the moral faith of mankind. No amount
of spiritual experience will add to our knowledge of
chemistry or physics, or be valid evidence against
any truth of science. It may serve to prevent the
premature acceptance of something too hastily put
forward as a scientific fact, in the same way that
science may overthrow a belief erroneously supposed
to be religious.
But though the religious consciousness is an
abstraction, in the same sense that the scientific and
moral consciousness are abstractions, each is valid
in its own sphere; and the whole evidence of consciousness
in all its three phases must be taken
together, if we are to elicit any universal principles
of thought and action, any unity in our experience,
any purpose in evolution. From this point of view
we shall expect to find a unity of experience corresponding
to the unity of consciousness, and to
discover that there is a fundamental identity underlying
the apparent diversity in that reality of which
in consciousness we are aware. What gives this
unity to experience is the permanence which we
attribute to the real, in whatever way the real is
apprehended: the real, whether apprehended in
sense-experience or in moral conviction or in spiritual
experience, is characterised by permanence, as distinguished
from the passing feelings with which we
view it and from the transient experience we have
of it. The reality of the things of which we are
aware through our senses is conceived as something
permanent, and is implied to be so conceived by all
theories of evolution which wish to be taken seriously.
The permanence of moral obligation is not conceived
by those who are genuinely convinced of its reality
to vary or to come and go with the flickering gleams
of our moral resolutions. Nor when spiritual light
is withdrawn from our hearts is it supposed, by those
who believe it to be the light of God's countenance,
to be quenched for the time.
The fundamental identity of the real throughout
its diversity is what is postulated by science when
it explains the process of evolution by means of the
law of continuity. It is equally postulated by the
moral philosopher who claims objective validity for
the moral law on the ground that it is the same for
all rational minds. It is the faith of the religious
mind which not only feels the Divine love in its own
heart, and finds it every time it obeys the conscience,
but also divines it in the uniformity of Nature and
throughout the process of evolution.
The identity of the real does not lie in the mere
fact that we are conscious of it. The real things
of which we are conscious have, indeed, as one
feature common to them all, the fact that we are
conscious of them. But the identity of the real is
not created by nor a mere expression of the unity
of our consciousness. It is not the understanding
which makes Nature—save in the purely psychological
way in which apperception does; on the
contrary, the things of which we are conscious in
sense-perception are given as independent of us,
though sense-phenomena are obviously not. In the
same way, the reality of the moral law is conceived,
in the very act by which we recognise it as binding
on us, to be something independent of us; nor is
God's love towards us dependent on our merits, or
existent only when we recognise it.
If, then, we are to gather up the permanence, the
identity, and the independence of the real into the
unity of a single principle, if we are to interpret the
law of continuity in the light of the whole of our
experience, we must look to the Divine will. In it
we shall find the reality which is progressively revealed
in the law of continuity; in it we shall find
the permanence and the independence without which
reality has no meaning; in it the changeless and
eternal identity of Him whose property it is ever
to have mercy and always to be the same. Then,
perhaps, we may extend the principle of scientific
method so as to include the whole of our experience
and to make the whole of our knowledge truly
scientific; for to the uniformity of Nature and of
human nature we shall add the uniformity of the
Divine nature, or, rather, we shall see in the former
the expression of the latter. But it is not the
agnostic who will thus enlarge the bounds of
science, or open a page of knowledge rich with the
spoils of faith.
The artificial nature of the abstraction which
distinguishes the scientific from the moral and
the religious consciousness, as well as the impossibility
of simultaneously exercising faith and repressing
it, is plainly exhibited in the optimistic
interpretation of evolution. The premises from
which it starts are faith in the uniformity of Nature
and belief in the reality of material things. The
conclusions which it reaches constitute a non sequitur
if they are supposed to follow from the avowed
premises, and only command assent when we tacitly
assume certain moral and religious presuppositions
which, if not avowed in the optimist's argument, are
instinctively supplied by the moral and religious
consciousness of the optimist's disciples. That the
process of evolution on the whole has been and will
be a process of progress follows logically enough
from the optimist's avowed premises, if by progress
we mean the survival of those best fitted to survive—that
is, if we empty the notion of progress of all
moral meaning. But as the conclusion that evolution
is progress is the conclusion which is necessary
for the justification of the common faith of mankind,
the illogical nature of the optimist's process of
inference is apt to be overlooked in consideration
of the satisfactory termination of his argument.
It is, however, necessary, in the interests of clearness
of thought as well as of the moral and religious
consciousness, that the conception of progress thus
thoughtlessly emptied of meaning by the optimist
should have its context restored. This service—a
service essential as a preliminary to every theory
of evolution—was rendered by one in whom the
moral consciousness spoke with force—Professor
Huxley. To him is due the demonstration that
adaptation to environment, so far from being the
cause of progress, counteracts it; so far from being
man's ideal, it is that which resists the realisation
of his ideals. Progress is effected, according to
Professor Huxley, not by adaptation to but adaptation
of the environment, and consists in approximating
to the ideals of art and morality—which ideals
are not accounted for, as ideals, by the fact that they
are the outcome of evolution, because evil has been
evolved as well as good. Why approximation to
the ideal of religion—love of God as well as of
one's neighbour—should not contribute to progress
does not appear. If, however, we add it, and also
add the ideal of science, viz. truth, then progress
will be the continuous approximation to the ideals
of truth, beauty, goodness, and holiness; and human
evolution, so far as evolution is progress, will be
the progressive revelation of the ideal in and to
man.
Two things are implied in this conception of
evolution: the first is that evolution may or may
not in any given case be progress; the next that we
have a means of judging, a canon whereby to determine,
whether evolution is progress. Both points are
illustrated by the argument of Professor Huxley,
who uses the moral ideals as a test whereby to judge
the process of evolution, and decides that evolution
has been progressive in the past and will be regressive
in the future. Strange to say, the reason
why Professor Huxley maintains that evolution will
be regressive is exactly the same reason that leads
Mr. Herbert Spencer to maintain that it will be
progressive. It is that the law of evolution is
Necessity, that evolution is the outcome of mechanical
causes. But in effect both arguments lead
logically to the same conclusion, for the progress
which is the outcome of Mr. Spencer's argument
is not progress in the moral or any other sense
of the word. In fine, progress is eventually impossible
if evolution is due to mechanical causes;
progress is conceivable only if we interpret the
process of evolution teleologically and as expressing
the operation of a final cause. Science, as such,
declines to inquire whether there is any purpose
in evolution, and leaves it an open question. The
moral consciousness affirms only that the process
of evolution ought to make for good. The religious
consciousness alone is in a position to say that its
spiritual experience requires us to affirm that evolution,
in accordance with the uniformity of the
Divine nature, will be, in years to come as in ages
past, a continuous movement towards the realisation
of all that in its best moments the human heart
holds most dear.
The argument that evolution must be progress
commits logical suicide, for in the very act of
proving its conclusion it proves that progress is
not progress. We are therefore left to face the fact
that progress is only a possibility; and that amounts
to saying that regress also is possible. What is
implied therein will become clear if we return to the
question of the nature of progress.
Progress is not the survival of the fittest to survive,
but of the æsthetically or ethically fittest; not adaptation
to the environment, but approximation to the
ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Those ideals
are manifested in man, but not equally in all men;
and the words and works of those men on whom
they are most clearly impressed and by whom they
are most faithfully expressed become the canon
whereby we judge whether any tendency in art or
morality is progressive or retrogressive. We cannot
all make beautiful things or do heroic deeds, but we
can all appreciate them when made or done. To
appreciate them, however, is to judge that they do
come nearer to the ideal than anything else of the
kind which we have yet known. Thus the ultimate
court of appeal for each one of us is not the ideal as
manifested by man, but the ideal as revealed to each
of us. True it is that, until we saw that particular
work of art or that particular instance of love, we
had no idea what beauty or love could be. But that
makes no difference to the fact that we feel for
ourselves how much nearer it comes to the ideal
than anything we had any idea of before. It may
henceforth be the standard by which we shall
measure other things, but in adopting it we measure
it ourselves, and measure it not by itself, but in
relation to the ideal. And what shall we say of
the artist himself? By what does he measure the
work of his predecessors and judge that it is not
the best that can yet be done, if he does not measure
it by the ideal which is revealed more perfectly to
him than to them?
But the perfect work of art or love, when done,
becomes not merely the canon by which to test
progress; it becomes itself the cause of progress,
both because of its more perfect revelation of the
ideal and because of the emulation which it arouses
in others to go and do likewise. They likewise
strive after the ideal and labour for its sake: it is
the final cause of their endeavours, the purpose of
their attempts; and were there no such final cause
there would be no progress. The ideal is a principle
both of thought and action, the test of knowledge
and the source of progress. Truth is the ideal of
science: approximation to truth is that for which the
man of science labours and that in which he conceives
that scientific progress lies. The gravitation
formula not only expresses a wide-reaching truth,
but has acted as an incentive to many attempts to
extend it to the domain of chemistry, and serves as
an ideal yet to be rivalled in other branches of
science. But science and progress in science are
alike impossible, if consciousness and experience
be discredited, or if the ideal of science be not real,
i.e. if the laws of science have not the permanence,
the independence, and the self-identity which are the
attributes of the real, but are as transient as the
minds that discovered them, exist only when thought
of by man, and are not really the same at different
times. But if these ideals, whether of truth, beauty,
or goodness, are thus real, then they are "our"
ideals only in the sense that we are aware of them
and adopt them, not in the sense that we make
them; they are ours because they are present in the
common consciousness of mankind, but not in the
sense that they are created by that consciousness.
They are revealed to man before they are manifested
by man.
Professor Huxley's definition of progress cuts at the
root of two misconceptions as to its nature, which,
though mutually inconsistent, are both widely spread.
One is that the latest products of time, simply because
they are the latest, are superior to all that has
preceded. The other is that to know the origins of
a thing will best enable us to assign its value. The
tendency of the one is to result in the idea that
because a thing has been evolved it must be superior;
of the other to lead to the conclusion that because
a thing has been evolved out of certain elements it
cannot be superior to them. The truth is that the
mere fact that a thing has been evolved—be it an institution,
a mode of life, or a disease—does not in itself
prove either that the thing is or is not an advance
on that out of which it was evolved. Regressive
metamorphosis, degeneration, pathological developments—physiological,
mental, moral, and religious—are
all processes of evolution, but are not progress.
A society in its decay, or an art in its decline, is
evolved out of a previous healthier state or more
flourishing period, but is not because later therefore
better. Nor, on the other hand, does it follow, because
the earliest manifestations of a tendency are
the lowest, and can be shown by the theory of evolution
to be so, that no progress has been made in
the process of evolution. The artistic impulse in its
earliest manifestations, in children and in savages, is
rude enough; but it would be absurd to say, therefore,
that art in its perfection has no more value than in
its origins, that the Hermes of Praxiteles is on a
level with a misshapen idol from the South Sea
islands.
If the continuity of evolution does not warrant us
in assigning the same value, æsthetic or moral, to all
the links, highest and lowest, in the chain, still less
does it authorise or require us to deny all value to
the lowest. On the contrary, we should rather see
in the lowest what it has of the highest, than look in
the highest for the lowest we can find. We should
beware lest in reducing everything to its lowest
terms we prove to have been seeking simply to bring
it to our own level, when at the cost of a little more
generosity we might have raised ourselves somewhat
nearer to the ideal prefigured even in the lowest
stage of the evolution of love, of beauty, of piety
or of goodness. Indeed, as a mere matter of logic,
it is impossible to state the nature of a cause
accurately, quite apart from any question of estimating
its value, until or unless we know the effect
which it produces. It is not only that we may
underrate or entirely overlook the importance of a
thing, so long as we are ignorant that it is a factor
largely influencing some result in which we are
interested; but, until we know what effects it is
capable of producing, we do not know what the
thing is. We could not be said to have knowledge
of a drug if we did not know what its effects were.
Nor is that knowledge to be acquired by analysing
the causes which produce the drug. It is not from
the mechanical causes which give rise to a thing that
we can learn what a thing is: no amount of knowledge
of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen
would enable us to predict a priori the nature of
the compound which is formed when electricity is
passed through two molecules of the former and one
of the latter; nor is the least light thrown upon the
properties of water by our knowledge of its constituent
elements: on the other hand, our knowledge
of them is materially and serviceably increased when
we learn what they are capable of producing in
combination. We learn most truly what a thing
is from observing what it becomes, what use it
subserves, what end it answers, what purpose it
fulfils—in a word, when we know not its mechanical
but its final cause. In biology, knowledge of an
organ means knowledge of its function—that is, of
its purpose; and evolutional biology also teaches
that function is the cause of the organ.
It is by observing what a thing becomes that we
learn the part it may hereafter play in the general
scheme of things, and come to know its real nature,
and estimate it at its real value. Thus our estimate
of the value of such an institution as "taboo" goes
up, and our knowledge of it is increased, when we
recognise in it one of the early manifestations of
the sense of moral obligation on its negative side.
Again, in tracing the evolution of religion it is
impossible to know which of the various rites and
ceremonies, practised by a savage tribe in its dealings
with the supernatural, are religious and which non-religious,
without taking into consideration the
question, What do such customs tend to develop
into? Until we know that, and until we can say
whether what is evolved out of them is religious
or non-religious—a question which we cannot answer
unless we know what religion is—we cannot be said
to understand the nature of the savage rites that
we are studying. But it is not from the origins of
art, religion, or morality that we shall gain the
answer to the question what art, morality, or
religion is; for the question must be answered
before we can recognise the origins when we see
them, and can only be answered by reference to
the ideal, which is the test and final cause not only
of progress, but of the real.
The ideal is a principle both of thought and of
action. As a principle of thought it is the test by
which we determine whether any given movement
is progressive or regressive, and whether any given
thing is what it appears or is alleged to be. As a
principle of action it is that for which we strive,
the purpose with which we act, the cause of any
progress that we make. If we are not prepared to
maintain that everything which takes place is an
advance upon what preceded, we require some test
whereby to distinguish what is progress from what
is not, and we admit that progress is a possibility
which may or may not be realised, and it becomes of
interest to inquire on what conditions its realisation
depends.
If, as Professor Huxley maintains, the test of
progress is approximation to the ideal, then one
condition of progress is that man shall be conscious,
to whatever extent is necessary for the
purpose, of the ideal, shall feel that the ideal of
love, tenderness, compassion, justice, truth, beauty,
etc., is a thing for him to strive for, an end for
him to attain. To the chosen few—the great artists,
the moral or religious reformer—a sense of the
ideal is dealt in a larger measure than to the rest
of men. By the chosen few it is manifested to
the many. But it does not become the cause of
progress, unless it leavens the mass, unless they
too are inspired by it to do better and be better.
In a word, when, or if, ever the ideal has been
manifested in its fulness, it is not a fresh revelation
which is necessary for progress, but fresh conviction
in us and renewed determination. Indeed, so long
as we do not act up to the light that we have, even
an imperfect revelation of the ideal may serve for
imperfect beings.
So far, then, as the genius in art or science, or
the reformer in religion or morals, is the cause of
the progress that is made by his school, his disciples,
and them that follow after, it is clear that he is the
cause and not the product of evolution. It is his
works or words which inspire his followers with a
fresh sense of the reality of the ideal and a fresh
resolve to devote their lives to the pursuit of art
or the service of science. But it is only because
his perfect work is felt by them, judging for themselves,
to realise the ideal that it has this effect
on them; and they could not judge it to approach
the ideal more closely than anything known to them
before, unless they had some surmise, however vague,
of the ideal, with which to compare this work, perfect
as it seems to them. It is not necessary to suppose
that this vague surmise existed, or if it existed that
it was attended to, previously: it may have been
first called into existence or into notice by the
contemplation of the master's work, but its presence,
however evoked, is attested by the judgment that
his work does come nearest to the ideal. The manifestation
of the masterpiece may be the occasion
of this fresh revelation of the ideal, but the revelation
must be made if the work is to be judged highest and
is to inspire the disciple.
It is, however, one thing to have an ideal, and
another to live up to it. "To scorn delights and
live laborious days" in the search for truth or in
single-minded devotion to the cause of art requires
some will. Granted that the ideal has been revealed,
either to the disciple on the occasion of another's
teaching or directly as to the master, for progress
there is further required will. It requires an act
of will to prefer the ideal, with its laborious days,
and to scorn delights; and it requires many acts
of will to make any progress. Yet the will to
believe and the will to act are the same will. We
may, if we choose, define belief as the readiness
to act, and take action as the test of belief: if a
man in a hurry makes a short cut, i.e. goes straight
from one point to another rather than round a
corner, his action is proof that he believes that
a straight line is the shortest distance between two
points. From this point of view we may regard
the many acts of will which are necessary to progress,
i.e. movement in the direction of the ideal,
as so many reaffirmations of the original act of will
by which we affirmed our belief that the ideal was
the goal of progress; and if our object is to show
that the behaviour of man, so far as he pursues
the ideal, can be exhibited as a logical and rational
behaviour, we are justified in thus demonstrating that
our renewed resolutions to realise the ideal are but
the logical consequences of our original will to
believe in the ideal as the proper goal of action.
Our belief in the ideal is thus shown to be the
principle from which our subsequent acts of will
can be logically deduced, just as Nature's uniformity
can be shown to be the principle from
which the conclusions of science logically flow.
But it may be doubted whether this logical order
of ideas is the chronological order of events. As a
matter of fact, we go through a number of struggles
and temptations long before we reflect, if ever we
do reflect, upon them in such a way as to see what
is the general principle logically implied by our
repeated if intermittent resistance to temptation,
just as a child acts in a way that for its logical
justification would require a formal recognition of
the uniformity of Nature, though the infant of two
years, or less, does not formulate that principle as
a condition precedent of crying for its food or its
nurse. Chronologically, then, the will to act seems
to precede the will to believe in the uniformity of
Nature, and in the case of most human beings is
never followed by any fully conscious formulation
of the principle on which we act as an abstract
principle in which to believe. That fact, however,
does not in the least detract from the value which
the formulation of the abstract principle has: when
formulated it becomes in the hands of science as
Ithuriel's spear for the detection of lingering superstitions
and confusions of thought—
"for no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper, but returns
Of force to its own likeness."
At touch of the question, "Does it contradict the
uniformity of Nature?" error is seen for what it
is, and is exploded sooner thus than in any other
way.
The ideal of truth, then, with its "celestial temper,"
is logically implicit in the earliest acts of will, but
chronologically is developed in consciousness later,
if indeed and when it reaches that later stage of its
evolution from the potential to the actual. The
ideals of morality and religion, again, though equally
implicit in the acts of will which form their earliest
manifestation, are, as a rule, both in the individual
and the race, more slowly evolved from the particulars
in which they are immersed. The period of their
gestation is longer, and results in the birth of a
higher organism.
Thus, when we reach the age of reflection, whenever
it may come, we wake up to find that we have
been acting as though we had beliefs, when, as in our
infancy, we could have had no beliefs, and as though
we willed our actions, at a time when we can scarcely
be said to have had any will in the matter. For
years we have been acting as we should have done
supposing that we had believed certain things and
had willed our action accordingly. When we wake
up to this state of things the question is, Are we
bound to go on in this way? are we bound now to
believe as well as to act as though we believed in God,
morality, and Nature's uniformity? Does the fact
that our physiological and psychological mechanism
has been started—perhaps by Nature's cosmic forces,
perhaps by the social environment, certainly not by
us—to run in certain grooves, prove either that we
ought or that we must continue to run the particular
organism we are in charge of on the same lines?
The agnostic and the atheist exercise their freedom
of will to say No. They claim the right and exercise
the power of free choice. The agnostic, further, is
fully aware that in choosing to believe the uniformity
of Nature his choice is not determined by evidence—it
is "a great act of faith," no amount of evidence
could justify it, the only evidence anyone can bring
to justify his belief in the general abstract principle
is the fact that he does believe it in every concrete,
particular instance. In a word, he believes it because
he chooses to believe it—and that is exactly what is
meant by the dictum, which he finds it so hard to
understand, that his will is self-determining.
When it comes to the question of morality and
religion, the agnostic again exercises his freedom of
choice: he wills to believe in the former and not in
the latter—the evidence for and against either being
equally nil. It is not, therefore, the evidence which
determines his choice; and he shows that it is not
his previous history, not the momentum which his
psychological mechanism gained during the period
when he had no conscious or no self-conscious control
over it, which determines his choice, for in the first
place he denies that it ought or must influence him,
and next he shows that it does not, by willing
differently in the case of the two principles. In
both cases his will is equally self-determining,
though his will is to believe in the moral principle
or ideal and not to believe in the religious.
If we wish either to define progress or to make
it, we must choose, arbitrarily or otherwise, some
particular goal and say, definitely and decidedly,
any movement which being continued in the same
straight line leads to that goal is progress, every
other movement is regress, being necessarily away
from the goal. If we choose, by a great act of faith
or otherwise, to say the ideal is the goal, then we
have therein a principle both of belief and action:
we have a standard by which to test everything
offered for judgment, a general principle to apply
to every particular case; and we have an object to
aim at, a principle to carry out in every act of our
lives, an ideal to strive for. But whether we choose
the ideal as the goal or something else, our choice
is the free act of a self-determining will. Progress,
on the human side, is—as indeed is regress—the
expression of the free will of human beings, whose
choice, though free, is limited to the alternatives
offered to them. Those alternatives reduce themselves
ultimately to aiming at the ideal or at
something else.
What, then, of the environment, of the cosmos,
in which man finds himself, in which he has to act
and may act so as to advance or not to advance towards
the ideal? To begin with, we may distinguish
between those forces in the cosmos which man can
to some extent control, and those over which he
has no control. The former, from this point of view,
the point of view of action, are means whereby man
secures his ends: his regulation of them effects that
adaptation of the environment which, according to
Professor Huxley, is essential to ethical progress.
Now, as a matter of observed fact, no one doubts
that the advance which civilised man has made in
controlling the forces of Nature is due to science
and to civilised man's devotion to the scientific
ideal of truth. Even the savage made what little
progress he did make in this direction by acting
fitfully and unconsciously, or at the most semi-consciously,
on the principle of the uniformity of
Nature: the savage was faithful in little things to
the scientific ideal—which was revealed to him but
dimly—the savant is fully conscious of the principle
on which he acts, walks in its light, and strives by
example and precept to save his fellow-men from
relapsing into the darkness of error and superstition.
It is not merely because of the material advantages,
the comforts and luxuries, which science indirectly
secures to mankind, that the man of science devotes
himself to the scientific ideal and seeks to make it
universal: it is for the sacred cause of truth. In a
word, what at first sight presents itself merely as
a principle of the scientific reason, proves, in the
conception of those who have spent their lives in
endeavouring to seek the scientific ideal and to
ensue it, to be a manifestation of the moral reason,
to be not merely in harmony with the moral ideal,
but to have been its harbinger, making the way
straight for it. Belief which implies a violation of
the uniformity of Nature is denounced not because
it violates a scientific principle, but because it is
immoral, a pretence, and a lie. The final cause of
science is thus made out to be to subserve the moral
ideal, to secure that adaptation of the environment
without which ethical progress is impossible. The
labour of adapting his environment would have for
man as a rational being no sufficient reason if it
did not tend to realise his moral ideal. Man may
use his science and the power of adapting his
environment for other than moral ends; but such
use is not, according to this view, progress. In
other words, it is not science or the scientific ideal
alone which enables us to lay down the line of
progress, but science and morality together: one
point cannot give us our direction, but the line
which connects two points may.
Thus far, then, by taking the environment into
consideration, we seem to have introduced no new
factor into our conception of progress. It seems
that when I wake up from childhood's slumber I
find myself surrounded by men who believe that
they can do certain things—make rain, send telegraphic
messages, etc.; and I am told that if certain
assumptions—that there is a God, that Nature is uniform,
etc.—be true, then it will be well for me to
behave in a certain way. But what if the assumptions
be not true? My elders tell me that experience—in
the individual, in the race, enlarged by science
and the theory of evolution—shows it is quite
safe to assume that they are true, at any rate as
a provisional hypothesis. Of course, if the future
is going to resemble the past, then experience of the
past is a good guide to the future: but that is just
the question, is the future going to resemble the
past? In other words, what attitude am I to assume
towards my environment, the cosmos? Am I to
assume that it will work, and for countless ages has
worked, in such a way as to make it possible for me,
with some co-operation on my part, to do things
which my elders tell me are desirable and which
I feel for myself I should rather like to do?
If I assume that the cosmic power does work thus,
in such a way that I can know the truth and do the
right, and love the Power that gives me the chance
and makes it possible, even for me, so to do, I am
only exercising the will to believe in that principle
which is logically implied by every act of the
scientific or moral life.
It is the common faith of mankind that experience
may be trusted; and it is the common experience
of mankind that progress is approximation to the
ideals of truth, of goodness, and of love. It is not
the common experience of mankind that all men
or all peoples approximate equally to those ideals.
The measure of progress is to be found in the
clearness and consistency with which men have
carried out in science the principle of the uniformity
of Nature, in their dealings with their fellow-men the
principles of morality, in their dealings with the
supernatural the principle of love.
Science, and especially the theory of evolution,
has enormously extended our inferential experience,
but it has done so only by accepting the common
faith that experience may be trusted, that is to say,
that the environment, the cosmos, is trustworthy
within our experience of it. When, then, the
optimist alleges that the process of evolution has
been, on the whole, a course of progress, he is but
showing that the common faith in the trustworthiness
of the reality in which we move and have our being
justifies itself. But he does not show us, nor does
science show us, why the real, the cosmos, is trustworthy:
he ends by showing that it is trustworthy
because he began, like all of us, by trusting it. He
is quite right: it is the only way in which to demonstrate
that either science, or morality, or religion is
trustworthy—by giving our faith, to start with.
Only when we are satisfied as to the fact can we
profitably inquire the reason; and the reason is to
be found only in the nature of the real, as revealed
to us in the sum total of our experience, scientific,
moral, and religious. But the will to believe that
experience and to trust the real which it reveals, is
free: if a man will not accept it as trustworthy, there
is for him no reason why.
The case is different with the man who does accept
the testimony of consciousness as evidence of the
reality to which it testifies. For him the one reality
is Will, and the ideals of science, morality, and
religion are the expressions of that Will. In accepting
them as the principles of thought and action
he does not learn what is the purpose of evolution,
the final cause of the cosmos: he chooses to believe
that, by so accepting them and by striving to realise
the ideal, he is fulfilling the Divine Will and contributing
his share to the realisation of the rational
purpose to which, he assumes, the process of evolution
is tending.
But in so doing he does not renounce his freedom:
his resolution to believe is an exercise of his
free will, an act, "a great act," of faith. If carried
into effect in his daily life, his resolution, daily
renewed and ever free, may in the end become a
daily act of love, and then he will understand the
reason why the cosmos, or the cosmic power, is
trustworthy. Only love of man could have given
man, as his ideals, to know the truth and do the
right. Only if man's ideals are so given is the
cosmos trustworthy—if it is trustworthy. If it is
not, then there is no truth to know, no right to do,
no inference can be drawn from the past to the
future, for the past, even of a minute ago, may be
a delusion.
But though the will to believe that the cosmos is
untrustworthy cannot in practice be carried out in
all its logical (or illogical) conclusions, it can be
and is acted on intermittently, and such action is
regress. So far as it is carried out, it is the negation
of progress; if it could be carried out completely
and by all men, there would be an end of progress;
science, morality, and religion would be extinguished;
evil would triumph over good. The history of evolution
shows that, as a matter of fact, such unfaith
in the reality of our ideals has been only intermittent;
for the course of evolution has been, on the whole,
progress. Individual experience shows that there
comes a point, soon or late, at which the will, acting
freely, refuses to go further with its rejection of
morality: there are some things which even a bad
man will not do—however oddly they may seem
chosen. In theory, in philosophy, there is a point
at which the will refuses to go further with its
rejection of the common reason, in which all men
share: there are some things which even the sceptic
refuses to disbelieve, e.g. those which are necessary
to his conviction that nothing can be believed.
These considerations may serve to confirm us in
the belief that progress has been the law of evolution
in the past and will increasingly be in the future.
They should so confirm us, for they do but carry
out, as far as history, individual experience, and
imagination can take us, our fundamental faith in
the reality of those ideals that are revealed in consciousness
to all of us. Belief in the possibility
of progress at all carries with it, as its logical
postulate, faith in the wisdom and goodness of God.
But if wisdom and goodness are the source of all
reality, and if the final purpose of evolution is the
realisation of the ideal—viz. love of truth, of our
fellow-beings, and of God—what are we to say of evil?
Is it not real? It is real, in the same sense that our
pleasures and pains are real, but not in the same
sense that the ideal is real. The real things which
our sense-experience reveals to us are real in the
sense that they are permanent, independent of us,
and self-identical. The same characteristics attach
to the realities revealed to us in our moral and
spiritual experience. The laws of morality and the
goodness of God do not come and go with our
fleeting recognitions of them; they are permanent,
independent of us, and are ever the same: God's
goodness faileth never. The uniformity of Nature is
but one expression of the uniformity of the Divine
love for man: it is that which makes it possible for
man to know the truth and survive in the struggle
for existence. But evil is not independent of us
men: it exists only so far as we will it to exist.
It is not permanent: it comes and goes with our
passing acts of will. It is not self-identical, but
tends to self-destruction. It is the will to believe
nothing, and therefore, as action involves belief, the
will to do nothing—that is, to revert to the condition
of mere inert matter, as matter is conceived by the
materialist to exist.
But though evil be illusive, though it is the fool
who says in his own heart, "There is no God," or
"Tush! He will not see it," the illusion is voluntary.
It is we who deceive or sophisticate ourselves, when
we will to believe that this act is not really wrong,
or that our peculiar circumstances constitute a
special, a highly special exception, on this occasion
only, to the rules for ordinary occasions and
ordinary men. And though the illusion is subjective,
i.e. is not generally shared by the onlookers,
and is consciously subjective (for we avoid onlookers,
because they would spoil the illusion), nevertheless,
subjective though it be, it is a fact in your particular
subjective history, and a damning fact. If
the evil that you will is confined in its range to
your will, and if its existence can only be recreated
by a fresh act of will in you or another, that is an
argument to show that there is mercy in the scheme
of things, but it does not prove that you incur no
responsibility in offering yourself or another the
example and the opportunity of doing wrong. We
are not, and, if the will be free, we cannot be responsible
for what others do; but we are responsible
for what we do—for evil, if it be evil; for good, if
we——but there is no pressing need to consider that
contingency.
The question underlying the previous paragraph
is that of our social environment and its effects.
We are apt to forget that we are the social environment.
If we bear the fact in mind, we shall
perhaps be less inclined to seek the origin of all
our misdeeds outside ourselves: we cannot shift
the burden of our own wrong-doing on to the
shoulders of society by any process which does
not bring back at least an equivalent burden. The
fact is that neither can we cause others, nor can
others cause us to do evil. What we can do is to
supply them with an opportunity, which, but for
our action, would not indeed have existed, but
which also, so far from necessitating evil action on
their part, may by their free will be made the
occasion for a victory over wrong. The fact, however,
that they alone are responsible for their evil-doing
prevents us from taking any credit for their
good deeds. It is for our own acts of will that
we are responsible, and it is by willing evil that
we become evil. We create evil, consciously, by
every wrong act of will that we perform, and then
we talk of the origin of evil as a mystery, so
thoroughly do we sophisticate ourselves! Why should
there be evil? Why, indeed? There is no reason,
no rational answer can be given, because evil is
irrational—it is the will to reject the common reason
or common sense or faith of mankind, in this detail
or that. It is the arbitrary element, self-will, and
if it could be eliminated we should have a uniformity
of human nature and of human love corresponding
to the uniformity of the Divine. Progress is the
process of its elimination.
If we turn from the human to the pre-human
period of evolution, the first immediate fact which
strikes us is that there has been throughout the
animal kingdom an evolution of mind, which has
resulted in providing man with the psychological
apparatus necessary for conceiving, and, to some
extent, realising the ideal. When we reached the
age of reflection, we woke up to find that our
psychological mechanism had been running for some
years in certain grooves. We now find that its
direction can be traced back by evolution to the
beginnings of animal consciousness. If, however,
we believe that the evolution of mind, animal and
human, has been a process of progress, we do so
not on the ground that mind has been evolved,
but that its evolution has been in the direction of
those ideals, approximation to which is believed by
us to be progress. Similarly, if the pre-animal
period of the earth's evolution is shown by science
to have resulted in fitting the earth to be the home
of animal life, we judge that evolution to have
been progress, not because it prepared the world
eventually for man, but because it is seen to have
been part of the process by which the ideal is in
course of realisation, by which the Divine purpose
is in the course of being fulfilled.
The only value that we can assign to the pre-human
period of evolution is that which attaches
to it as a means to an end; but though we believe
that by striving after the ideals revealed to us we
are labouring towards that end, and though everything
that makes for the ideal contributes to the
end, yet we do not know the Divine purpose, and
we cannot say in what manifold other ways the
pre-human period may have subserved that purpose.
It is sufficient if we can trace the steps by which
this one portion, the only portion known to us, of
the whole design has been carried forward. This
reflection is one which it is necessary to bear in
mind when considering the alleged wastefulness of
the process of evolution and the price at which
progress has been purchased.
The theory of evolution, as a purely scientific
theory, i.e. as an objective statement of what
actually has taken place on the earth in the past,
shows that the various species of animals which
have survived were—so long as they did survive—the
only species which could survive under the
conditions which then prevailed; given the conditions,
their survival was necessary and inevitable.
There the scientific explanation of the matter ends:
having shown the causes which produced the effect
in question, science has explained everything that
it undertook to explain. Had the conditions been
different, the present state of the world, doubtless,
would have been different; but being what they
were they produced that which is, and there is an
end of the matter—as far as it is a matter for
scientific investigation.
What we are to think of the survivors—whether
we are to admire them; whether we are to consider
their survival an advance and an improvement;
whether anything has been gained by their survival,
and, if so, from what point of view the gain
is a gain—are questions which science excludes,
because, however answered, they do not affect the
scientific fact that these species did survive, and,
under the conditions, alone could survive.
But we all take it for granted and as self-evident
that man is not only better adapted, under existing
conditions, to survive and flourish at the cost and
to the extinction of other species, but that he is
better than the brute, that his survival is an advance,
that his is a higher type, and that his existence
realises a higher ideal than that of the brutes. We
believe this not merely because we are men, and
as such rate our own comforts, our own interests,
our own skins as the most important things known
to us, for there are things for which men sacrifice
their own interests and for which they have laid
down their lives. It is precisely because there are
things more important than our own material and
animal existence, and because they are or may be
realised by man and not by the animals, by the
ideal man and not by the brute man, that we consider
him to be worth more than many sparrows—though
they too have their value in His eyes—and
man's existence to be of a higher type than theirs.
Thus, then, when science—which, if it is truly
scientific, makes no distinction of value, moral or
spiritual, between man and the sparrow—has explained
that a given species which did survive was
the only species that could have survived under
the conditions, there still remains the problem, for
those to whom it is a problem, Why should the
species which was bound to survive also happen
to be a species of a higher type? Why have
the survivors always happened to be both better
adapted to survive and better adapted to further
the ideal which the course of evolution reveals with
increasing clearness?
In fine, science explains only a part, not the whole
of the effect of evolution. It concentrates its attention
on one part or aspect of the effect, on the
survival of the fittest, and explains very simply
and satisfactorily that the environment kills off the
creatures which are not fit to cope with it, while
the fittest to contend with it survive. The fact that
the survivors not only are best adapted to the
environment, but are also best adapted to bring
the whole creation one step nearer to those distant
ideals in expectation of which it groaneth and
travaileth, is that part of the effect which science,
for scientific purposes, rightly ignores. Science
does not undertake to estimate the value of the
effect produced, or even to consider whether when
produced it has any value.
But when the question is raised as to the cost at
which the process of evolution is carried on, it
becomes necessary to bring into the account the
value of the result attained or to be attained.
Possibly, creation that groaned in her travail may
rejoice that a man-child has been born. But so
much depends on what her child grows into. And
he has free will. We have the power now and here
to dash her expectations to the ground.
The value of a thing to me is exactly what I am
prepared to give or do for it. I have no other way
of estimating the value of the ideals for which
creation has laboured in the past, than by asking
myself how far I am prepared to go for the love
of truth, of fellow-beings, and of God. If I am
prepared to give everything, and then count myself
the gainer, then indeed I may know that the cost
of evolution has not been greater than the value of
the ideal: I know the highest price, and I know the
feelings of those who pay it. And they are the only
persons who can judge the value of the article, for
they are the only people who get it. The fact,
however, that they do get it, that they get it in full,
and every man according to the measure with which
he metes it, contains the answer to our question.
What is true now was true of earlier generations and
earlier men: the value of the ideal to every man was
exactly what he gave for it. It is the realisation of
the ideal by me that is my reward, though my object
may be its realisation by others. But it is absurd
to say that their gain is my loss, or that their progress
has been made at my expense.
These considerations apply only of course to those
men who have sacrificed themselves for the sake of
progress and the love of their fellow-man. Most
men, however, do not sacrifice themselves much; and
therefore they can hardly be brought out as martyrs
to the cause of progress, as the millions who have
perished by the wayside in the march of evolution.
It is not until we introduce the element of material
progress that it becomes possible to maintain with
any plausibility that there is a divergency of interests
between the contributors to it, or that they who
sowed have been sacrificed to us who reap. It is
when we compare the shivering savage with our
sheltered civilisation, primitive man's struggle for
existence with civilised man's enjoyment of existence,
that we begin to be anxious about the cost of evolution—that
is to say, that our little faith in the value
of the ideal begins to torment us. In our unreadiness
to sacrifice ourselves we forget that it is possible
for civilised man also to make sacrifices—perhaps the
greater because he has the more to forego—and that
the savage has his tribal traditions, embodying his
ideal of a good man, to live up to; his tribal customs,
which he may violate with self-reproach, or fulfil
with satisfaction; his conceptions of the truth about
man's relations to the past, the world, and the supernatural.
The savage also has his ideal, which he
sets above his pleasure, and for which he faces pain
in many a cruel rite. Shall we say that its realisation
is no reward to him? or that in realising
it he does not as faithfully contribute his mite to
the fulfilment of the Divine purpose as we? We
make too much of our superiority. We make, also,
too little of the savage's enjoyment of existence.
Take the lowest savages known to us, the native
tribes of Central Australia, and turn to the most
recent and the best accounts of their manner of life;
and it is certain that their existence is enjoyed by
them. Is ours without exception enjoyed by us?
If it is easy to be led by sentimentalism into
mistakes about what our fellow-man thinks of the
question whether life is worth living, it is still easier
to be misled with regard to our fellow-creatures
lower in the scale. Here all is conjecture, and it
is on this uncertain ground that rests the charge
brought against Nature of waste and cruelty. There
is the cruelty with which, in order to secure the
survival of the few and fittest, the environment kills
off the many who are unfit—an argument of great
force, if the survivors were immortal. There is the
waste of bringing into life thousands of creatures
unfit, and therefore doomed to a speedy extinction.
But death is the common lot; and as for waste and
failure, if the short-lived creatures fulfil their purpose,
they are not failures; and if their purpose is by
competition to force the development of the potentially
fit, then they fulfil their purpose. A man may
be entered for a race for no other purpose than to
force the pace. As for happiness, wild animals, to
judge by their usual fit condition and by the evidence
of sportsmen, do enjoy existence. But they, at any
rate, have no ideals—whatever the savage may have.
Yet it is conceivable that the bird that builds its
nest finds some satisfaction in doing so, and that
the animal that lays down her life to save her young
ones has some sense of love. What is revealed as
the ideal in man may be inchoately manifested as
instinct in the undeveloped consciousness of the
animal. If so, then the animal's life has independent
value and is not merely valuable as a means to a
distant future end.
To sum up: science declines to take the teleological
view of Nature, or to admit final causes or
ends. To speak, therefore, of survival in the struggle
for existence as an end, may be excellent sense, but
it is unscientific: it implies an assumption of a kind
about which science is agnostic. If we do, however,
make this one deviation from agnosticism, we have
then no difficulty in showing that evolution is a
failure, for its end is survival, and we all die; and
there is no compensation, or, if there is, posterity
gets it, not we—an aggravation of the original
injustice.
If survival in the struggle for existence is the only
end that we personally recognise in the conduct of
our own lives, we are quite consistent in judging it to
be the only end of other lives, and in condemning
the Universe, for then there is neither goodness nor
any wisdom in it.
On the other hand, our faith in that wisdom and
goodness is not genuine so long as we are prepared to
stake only our arguments on it, and not our lives.
Evolution, as a scientific theory, is a description
of the process by which the totality of
things has come to be what it is. The method
employed is that of science, and proceeds upon the
assumption of the uniformity of Nature and the
universality of the law of causation. The existence
of a thing is proof that the conditions necessary to
produce it preceded it. Thus from what is we infer
with certainty what has been: the occurrence of Z
is proof that Y preceded, and so from Y we can infer
X, and so on, to the beginning of the alphabet.
Eventually, that is, we are carried back, in theory
at least, to an initial arrangement of things which not
only gave birth to the actual order of evolution, but
was such that no other order of events could have
followed from it. Were it possible, in fact, to get
back to this original collocation of causes and to
formulate it, the formula would explain the universe
as it is and has been, the totality of things.
Unfortunately the formula, though it would explain
everything else, would not explain itself, and
would therefore, so far, fail to explain anything. Or,
to put it in other words, though certain causes, collocated
in the proper way, would, on this view of
evolution, explain everything which ensued from that
collocation, we should still want to know why the
causes were collocated in that particular way rather
than in any other. To say that that collocation was
not the outcome of a previous collocation is really
to say that there was originally no antecedent
necessity why this or any other order of evolution
should take place at all; that Z hangs on Y, Y on
X ... and A on nothing at all; that the formula
which is to render all things intelligible is itself
unmeaning. Or, if we say that things had no
beginning—matter and force being indestructible—then
there is no initial collocation, that is to say,
no formula, even in theory, to explain all things:
we cannot even imagine the process of evolution to
be intelligible.
The latter seems to be preferred by science as the
final result of scientific knowledge: the object of
science is to demonstrate, not why, but that things
happen in a certain way; and it is admitted, or
rather insisted upon, e.g. by J. S. Mill, that if
scientific knowledge were carried to its utmost conceivable
or inconceivable perfection, the question
why anything should happen or does happen would
remain as great a mystery as ever, and must remain
so, for the simple reason that it is a question which
science does not even put, much less attempt to
answer. Nevertheless, it is said, science does prove
what she undertakes to show, viz. that things do
happen in certain ways, which ways when formulated
appear as laws of science. That, however, is not
strictly the case if science, in order to prove her
conclusions, has to postulate that each and every
state of things is the outcome of some antecedent
necessity. Ultimately the postulate proves untrue;
for there can have been no necessity antecedent
to the initial arrangement of things. And if the
postulate be untrue, the conclusions based on it
cannot be accepted as certain. If we cannot tell
whether it be true or not, neither can we tell
whether science be true or not. If it is unintelligible,
no wonder that things, as explained by
it, are mysterious.
But let us waive these theoretical objections. Does
Science, as a matter of fact, prove that things do
happen in the ways she describes? In justice to
her, let us remember that she does not undertake
to do even that. Her laws only state the way in
which things tend to happen, not the way in which
they actually do happen; only what would happen
if there were no counteracting causes and if certain
conditions, which do not prevail, did prevail—not
what does really happen in the world as we know
it. Herein the scientific reason behaves in exactly
the same way as the moral or religious reason.
Science no more alleges that all bodies in motion
do move for ever in the same straight line, at the
same rate, than the moral reason alleges that all men
always do what is right or that they always do God's
will. The allegation is that the tendency exists and
can be discerned by those qualified to form an
opinion on the matter. That there is friction
retarding the movement, and that there are obstacles
diverting it, is admitted; and, though the admission
does not affect the truth (in one way) of the laws
of science, it does allow that they convey no exact
or faithful picture of what actually happens in the
world as it is.
But if the laws of science do not explain what
happens—even in the limited sense of scientific
explanation—they are the indispensable preliminary
to that explanation. If they do not represent the
world as it is, they supply the means by which we
may hereafter produce the picture. They are ideals
not in the sense that science hopes to show
eventually that feathers only appear to float leisurely
to the ground, and are really all the time falling
sixteen feet in a second, but in the sense that
starting from the gravitation formula we could show
that every feather's fall is as rationally comprehensible
as the gravitation formula itself. They are not
the ultimate truth, the final reality, or Science's
supreme ideal. They are shadows cast by the
scientific ideal before its coming; they are the
principles by which science must proceed, if she
is to make the world of things intelligible. So,
too, the reality of the moral ideal does not imply
that, in refusing to make sacrifices for others, I only
appear to be selfish, and shall be found in the end
really to have been actuated all the time by some
high moral principle. What is implied is that only
by the acceptance of the moral ideal can the world
of men be moralised. From the same point of view
it seems hopeless to try to make out that atheism,
though not in appearance, will be found in reality
to have been a manifestation of religion. It is by
accepting, not by denying the religious ideal or
doubting its existence, that the ideal of religion is
achieved.
Now, in the theory of evolution we have the
attempt made to effect this transition from the
abstractions of science to the concrete facts, to show
that the world as presented to sense is as intelligible
and rationally comprehensible as the laws of science
themselves, and that the hypothetical statements
of science were but preliminary, though necessary
preliminaries, to a categorical statement of actual
facts. In evolution, as indeed in all the historical
sciences, we abandon the elasticity and the uncertainty
of conditional conceptions for the rigidity
and certainty of accomplished fact. We no longer
deal with what may happen if given conditions are
realised, but with what has been, and therefore is
subject to no "ifs." We start from the certainty
of what is, and thus we argue back positively to
what must have been.
There is, however, one precaution which must be
observed, and without which the whole of the system
just described is as uncertain and conditional as the
rest of science. Before we can argue from what is
to what has been, we must first know for certain
what is. Before we can conclude that a patient
has been healed by faith or cured miraculously of
an incurable complaint, we must first have medical
evidence to show that he had the disease. Or, to
take a better and closer illustration from medicine,
it is premature to assign a cause for a patient's
condition before his condition has been diagnosed;
and physicians who differ in their diagnosis will
naturally differ as to the causes in the patient's
past history which are responsible for his state.
If, then, the evolutionist is to attain accuracy in
his description of the process by which the totality
of things has come to be what it is, he must first
know what it is. Before we can trace the evolution
of morality, for instance, we must make up our
minds as to what it is. If we regard it as an
illusion, we shall hold that it is subject to the same
laws as other illusions, and we shall have no difficulty
in showing that its evolution was a necessary
consequence of those laws. Or, again, if we hold
that religion is mere foolery or hysteria, we shall
naturally infer a very different process for its
evolution than if we feel it to be a permanent
manifestation of the common consciousness in the
same sense that morality is. A distinguished German
mythologist, starting from the former diagnosis, has
no difficulty in evolving primitive religion out of
primitive drunkenness.
In fine, if we regard "what is" as giving the data
by which we are to determine what has been, it is
clear that to understand what has been we must
properly appreciate what is. This is in accordance
with the conclusion which we have reached previously
that it is only by studying its effects that we can
properly understand a cause. To judge a thing
properly we must know the effects it is capable of
producing: to know what a thing is we must
observe what it becomes or what it is capable of
becoming at its best. We cannot judge the value
of the moral character or the moral ideal fairly
if we take a low specimen to go by; nor if we
knew nothing more of morality than what we could
observe of its rudiments in the higher animals,
should we know much about it. It is by its
highest manifestations that we most correctly judge
either morality or art, and it is only through them
that we can be properly said even to understand
what either art or morality is. So, too, taking the
religious ideal as love of God and man, we must
judge religion not by its imperfect manifestations
in imperfect beings, but by its perfect revelation
and realisation in Christ.
The case is not otherwise with science or evolution
itself. From primitive times man has always
used his knowledge (however imperfect) of what is
as the basis of speculations as to what has been.
It would, however, be absurd to take the puerile
and barbarous cosmogonies of the savage as adequate
expressions of the scientific ideal, or to
imagine that it is from them that we can judge
what science is. It is no less unreasonable to
judge the theory of evolution by its present, passing
phase. In the first place, there are facts in its
history which show that it naturally started with
a partial and one-sided view of the facts. In the
next place, we must judge it not by what it may
be at its worst, but by what it is capable of becoming
at its best; and it is by the latter that we
must decide what evolution truly is, not by the
former.
At its worst the theory of evolution may require
us to believe that the whole process of evolution
is essentially irrational—being the outcome of unintelligent
forces operating on reasonless matter—and
that the theory of evolution, accordingly, if
faithful to the facts, is as irrational as they; or,
if rational, is a misleading account of the real
universe in which we live and move and have our
being.
On the other hand, the theory at its best may
require us to believe that it reveals a universe run
on rational principles, a real world perfectly intelligible
to perfect reason, and partially intelligible
even to beings who share but partially in the
Divine reason that animates the whole.
Both theories, however, base themselves upon
what is, and profess that their conclusions follow
logically from it. If, then, they differ in their
conclusions it is because they differ in their diagnosis
of what is. Both admit the existence of
faith; but one regards faith as a fact in the
pathology of human reason, the other regards it
as the normal mode of our common reason's
operation. The latter, therefore, requires to postulate
causes which will account for the correctness
of the common faith of mankind; the latter, causes
which have resulted in the common illusion of
mankind.
It seems, then, that even in evolution we do
not escape after all from the indeterminate and
conditional knowledge, which science offers, to the
absolute certainty of accomplished fact. Every
theory of the past history of the world is just as
conditional, just as much dependent on an "if,"
as the hypothetical laws of science, for any such
theory is dependent on the view it takes of what
is, and is correct only if that view is correct.
The theories of evolution which we have called the
Optimistic and the Pessimistic interpretations of
evolution are avowedly based on the assumption
that a large part of the common faith of mankind
is a mental or moral disease. According to Mr.
Herbert Spencer the faith that we can know what is
real is an illusion: the Real is the Unknowable.
According to Professor Huxley the common faith
in the freedom of the will is an illusion: necessity
is the law of the uniformity both of Nature and of
human nature. In thus declining to accept the
testimony of the moral and religious consciousness
as evidence of what is, both philosophers were influenced
by the belief that it is science alone which
is capable of ascertaining and demonstrating what
is and what actually does happen. This belief,
however, we have ventured to suggest, overlooks two
facts. One is that the abstract sciences do not even
profess to state what actually does happen: they
simply affirm that, if the conditions stated in their
various laws are the only conditions operative, the
only result will be that stated by the particular law
in question. Thus science does not concern itself
with what is or does happen, but solely with what
would be or would happen under certain (usually impossible)
conditions. The other point overlooked is
that the historical or comparative sciences are also
only hypothetically true. All that their laws undertake
to demonstrate is that, if certain consequences
constitute the whole of an observed effect, then the
only conditions antecedently operative were those
stated in the law. Here too, then, science does not
even claim to prove what is or demonstrate what
does happen, but assumes that we know it or find
it out, in some way with which science does not
concern itself. If we do know and can know what
is, science can tell us what were the conditions
that produced it.
The question, then, that we have to put to any
theory of evolution—that is, to any theory which
professes to state the process by which the totality
of things has come to be what it is—is, "Does it account
for that totality? do the causes which it assumes
to have been at work account for all that is?" Now,
a priori it was not to be expected that evolution
would in its infancy, and it is still young, succeed in
accounting for all things; and there were special
reasons in the circumstances under which it first took
its modern scientific shape which necessarily limited
its earliest attempts to grasp the totality of things.
It would, however, be absurd to judge the principle
by the first attempt to apply it, and to condemn it
because it has not done in a moment what with time
it assuredly will succeed in effecting. At the same
time, it can only effect that wider success by refusing
to stereotype its first errors and by declining to bind
itself to the dogma that what it has succeeded in
explaining is all that there is to explain, or that that
alone is or happens which its present assumptions
or laws are capable of accounting for. There lies
the danger which threatens to check the further
development of the theory of evolution—in the
dogmatism which pretends to set aside common
sense and the common reason, and arrogates to itself
the sole right of saying what is; and succeeds in
doing so by the simple but circular argument that
that alone is or happens which can be accounted for
by the laws that regulate the movements of things
in space or that follow from the struggle for animal
existence.
Historically, the theory of evolution in its first
manifestation was an extension to the historical
sciences generally of a purely biological conception,
that of the origin of species as a consequence of
the struggle for existence. It was found that much
else in the manifold of what is, many other differences
between related things, besides the differences
which mark off one species of animals from another,
might be accounted for, historically, by the theory
that those differences were but the sum and the
accumulation of an infinite number of small modifications
which had given the thing an advantage over
its rivals in the struggle for existence. Strictly
speaking, all that this remarkable and wide-reaching
discovery implied as a matter of logic was that
between animals and things not animal there existed
an analogy or resemblance, in virtue of which it
was logical to argue from things animal to things
not animal just so far as the resemblance between
them went, but not further. Very naturally, however,
it happened that with this originally biological
conception all its biological implications were taken
over, and it was (and is) argued not merely that
there are great and fruitful resemblances between,
say, society and an animal organism, but that
societies are animal organisms. In fine, sociology
was treated as a department of biology. The fallacy
that science demonstrates what is, and that what
science does not account for has no real existence,
thus made its appearance simultaneously with the
birth of the evolution theory. The resemblances
between the evolution of the social organism and
of animal organisms could be accounted for by the
biological theory of the struggle for existence; the
differences, therefore, must be denied or laboriously
explained away. With the growth of sociology,
however, it is becoming apparent that the evolution
of society has laws, some of which do indeed coincide
with those of animal evolution, but others of which
are peculiar to sociology in the same sense as the
laws of chemistry are distinct from those of physics.
Sociology is accordingly revolting from its bondage
to biology: the plain fact that society is not
an animal is beginning to make itself felt. The
resemblances between the organisation of society
and that of an animal are freely admitted, but the
differences are beginning to claim consideration also;
and the sound doctrine is beginning to assert itself
that by experience alone, experience of what is, and
not by any a priori dogmatism as to what in the
name of science must be, can we tell how far the
resemblances extend as a matter of fact and where
the differences begin. That the evolution theory
must be the gainer by thus admitting the facts
instead of denying their existence is clear; if
sociology is not a branch of biology, and yet the
two sciences have certain laws in common, a great
step is at once taken towards demonstrating the
existence of certain general principles of evolution
which are higher than the laws of either, or perhaps
than of any, particular science.
The tendency of the scientific theories prevailing
for the moment to deny the existence of what they
cannot, for the moment, account for, is exemplified
in another way by the theory of the survival of the
fittest. It was shown by Darwin that, granted the
tendency to variation in animals, the struggle for
existence was enough in its results—as he had the
genius to discern them—to account for the origin
of species. The struggle for existence is a fact, and
thus animal evolution was based on what is, on
positive fact. To apply the same process of argument
to human and social evolution was perfectly
scientific and legitimate. What is neither scientific
nor legitimate is to maintain, explicitly or implicitly,
that the totality of human activity is engaged and
exhausted in the struggle for existence. Self-preservation
is undoubtedly a powerful instinct, but
it is not the only instinct even of animals, and is not
always the most powerful in man—or in the brute.
That there are resemblances between man and his
fellow-creatures, the brutes, and that so far as those
resemblances extend, man and the animals have
been, and are, subject to the same laws of evolutions,
are facts which may be heartily admitted, but which
neither authorise us to deny the existence of specifically
human peculiarities, nor warrant us in trying
to deduce the differences from a law which applies
only to the resemblances. If the evolution theory
is to state the process by which the totality of things
has come to be what it is, it must begin by facing
the whole of the facts—in this case by admitting that
not only have the fittest to survive survived, as is
natural in a struggle for existence, but that progress,
æsthetic, ethical, and religious, has been made.
The denial of this fact may either be open and
avowed, as, for instance, when the reality of the
religious ideal is formally denounced; or it may be
tacit and implied, as, for instance, when moral progress
is defined as adaptation to environment, i.e.
as not progress at all, or when the freedom of the
will is denied, i.e. when approximation to the ethical
ideal is maintained to be a thing not under our
control. Tacit or avowed, this denial proceeds upon
the fallacy that the laws of science, as understood
and formulated at any particular moment, are the
sole test and constitute our only knowledge of what
is. But the interests both of the common sense of
mankind and that specially organised form of
common sense which we know as science require
a protest against that fallacy: it is opposed to the
principle on which scientific knowledge rests, and
it would be fatal, if acted upon, to all further development
of that knowledge.
The principle upon which science rests is that
its laws are capable of verification, and that they
are verified when and if they are confirmed by
experience. The final appeal of science is to the
evidence of consciousness, the only evidence of what
is that we possess: the only evidence of the truth
and accuracy with which an eclipse has been calculated
is the evidence of our senses that the eclipse
does take place and is visible in the place and at
the time predicted. If a hypothesis predicts results
which as a matter of observation do not take place,
the hypothesis is judged so far inaccurate or inadequate:
what is over-rides our preconceived
opinions, even if they be the hypotheses of science,
as to what ought to be or will be. It is the ever-open
appeal to the final court of fact, of what is, that
condemns false assumptions, guarantees the truth
of science, and safeguards the freedom of scientific
inquiry. To allow any group of men, however
eminent, or any body of science, however sound,
to deprive us of this right of appeal and bid us
disbelieve in the evidence of our own senses, if it
contradicts their theories, would be to submit to the
tyranny of dogmatism, and to be faithless to the
cause of truth.
Fortunately, though the unconscious and therefore
ill-considered metaphysics of some men of
science have tended in the direction of scientific
dogmatism, the practice of science has been in the
opposite direction. In practice science has owed
much of her progress to the study of "residual
phenomena." Phenomena which the laws of science
for the moment could not account for have not been
denounced as illusions, or ruled out of court as non-existent
or beneath the notice of science: they have
been accepted as facts, as part of the totality of
things which it is the ambition of science to account
for; and, accepted as such, they have led, it may be,
to the discovery of a new planet or a new element,
but always to the discovery of fresh truths, which
never would have enriched the page of science had
science refused to take cognisance of facts the laws
of which it had not at the time discovered.
In demanding, then, that any theory which professes
to account for the totality of things should
recognise the fact of ethical and æsthetic progress,
and that all progress is willed and purposed, we are
seeking not to cramp science but to enlarge its
bounds, not to introduce a new scientific method,
but to extend the application of existing methods,
and to carry out the principle on which the truth
of science and the freedom of scientific inquiry are
based. The laws which enable the physicist to
explain the mechanical action and reaction of things
do not suffice to explain the reactions studied by
the chemist. The laws of chemistry are inadequate
for the purposes of the biologist. It is but an
extension of the same principle when the student
of the anthropological sciences finds it necessary
to assume, or rather discovers, that the laws of
animal existence do not wholly account for everything
that man does; and it is to these sciences that
we must look for the next important and fruitful
modification of the general theory of evolution. It
is to them, dealing as they do with the highest
product of evolution, that we must look for the
truest interpretation of evolution. On the principle
that to understand what a thing is we must not
reduce it to its lowest terms, but look at it in its
highest manifestation, we must judge the evolution
process by its highest phase, by all that it is capable
of, and not by the least we can, by scientific abstraction,
leave in it. And the sciences which, merely
to maintain their scientific existence, have a vital
interest in insisting on the reality of will and purpose
as causes which have influenced the direction of the
evolution process are the sciences which deal with
man.
Those who find it easy to believe that a society
is an animal, like those who proclaim that the real
is unknowable, but that our knowledge of it is just
as good as if it were not unknowable, will have little
difficulty in believing that men's actions are not influenced
by their purposes; and both will probably
subscribe to the doctrine that, first, approximation
to the ideal is an unintended result of the brute
struggle for mere animal existence; and, next, the
purpose which appears to mark the evolution process
and to be the cause of progress is semblance only,
a mere illusion. Against the first article of this
doctrine the final and decisive appeal is and always
must be to experience. It makes a general statement
with regard to particular facts of experience:
like every other statement made in the form of a
scientific law, it affirms that a certain proposition will
be found, when tested by experience, to be true of
every one of a certain class of facts in our experience.
It is therefore competent for every man,
who chooses to consult his experience, to decide
for himself whether the statement is true. In the
present case, it is for every man, who has struggled
with temptation and has achieved any progress, to
say whether he gained the victory without an effort
of will, without any desire for better things, without
any purpose or resolution to try once more, without
any intention not to yield the next time. Are
"secret commissions" in trade refused, when refused,
unintentionally? or is their refusal due solely to the
blind instinct of self-preservation in the struggle for
commercial existence? If reform is effected, will it
be effected by those who declare that the severity
of the struggle for existence makes reform impossible?
or by those in whom the ideal of honesty has
some operative force and who purpose approximation
to that ideal? When the conviction is expressed that
public opinion alone will be able to check this form
of dishonesty, what is that but an appeal to the
common sense and common faith that there are
other things which man can will and purpose besides
success in the struggle for existence?
The doctrine that the universe presents the mere
semblance of purpose, that Nature mimics purpose,
having none, is shared by materialistic systems in
common with all those which consider that the only
explanation that can be rendered of any given state
of things is the assumption that it is the issue of
some antecedent necessity which produced it. As
we have already argued, the assumption of necessity
as the ultimate explanation of things breaks down
when we come to consider the beginning of the
universe. If we assume an absolute beginning, then
there can have been no necessity antecedent to
that, and the beginning of things is left without
explanation. On the other hand, to say that there
never was any beginning is to admit that there
never was any original necessity why things should
follow the course of evolution which they have
pursued—the initial collocation of causes was due
to chance, was a purely fortuitous concurrence of
atoms. When it is remarked that this is a strange
assumption, that really, if the whole evolution process
had been designed to reach the stage in which we
know it and to attain the ideal which we surmise
it to be capable of, the primeval atoms could not
have been arranged better for the purpose, the reply
is that the appearance of purpose is a delusion:
true, as a matter of chance, the chances are millions
to one against a fortuitous concurrence of atoms
producing the evolution process that has taken place,
but then the chances were just as great, neither
more nor less, against any other of the millions of
evolution processes that might have been evolved.
We know the one that has taken place, and it is
marvellous in our eyes that precisely this and no
other should have occurred; but the wonder vanishes
when we reflect that, had any other occurred, we
should have been equally convinced, and equally
erroneously convinced, that it could not have been
produced by chance. The initial arrangement of
things was, as it happened, such as to produce our
evolution process: things might have chanced differently
at the beginning; if they had, a different
evolution process would have taken place, that is all.
But it would still have looked like purpose, and
would still have been due to chance.
But would it? The whole question is whether
the initial collocation was due to chance or to
purpose. To say that there might have been many
other collocations proves nothing: an Almighty
Power could collocate things in any of an infinite
number of ways. To argue that every possible
collocation, and therefore the one that produced our
evolution process, must be due to chance, is simply
to beg the question: the very thing we want to
know is whether this or any other process could
be due to chance. The argument that any and
every other process would equally testify to purpose
and equally imply design, seems rather to indicate
that no conceivable evolution process could conceivably
be due to chance.
Next, the necessitarian argument lays it down that
the marvel of evolution vanishes when we reflect that
if things had been different at the beginning, the
results would have been different. But they were
not. And the fact that they were not is just the
marvel which the necessitarian does not even explain
away: in order to diminish the probability of purpose,
he postulates countless possible alternatives to
the original arrangement of atoms, and then he is embarrassed
with the difficulty of getting rid of them.
Why was this particular collocation determined on
rather than one of the countless alternatives? To
say it was chance may be true; but we want to
know what reason there is for believing it to be
true. If there is none, then neither is there any
reason for believing the purpose that makes the
evolution process to be an illusion.
But let us grant it was chance: chance, as everyone
knows, is merely a name for our ignorance as to
the real cause; so that to say it was due to chance
is to say that, for anything we know to the contrary,
the original concurrence of atoms may have been
due to purpose. In a word, there is, on the theory
of chance, no reason to believe that purpose either is
or is not an illusion.
It may, however, be said that not only do we not
know, but that we cannot know, whether it is an
illusion or not. In reply we may either admit that
all our knowledge—scientific, moral, and religious—is
based not on knowledge, but on faith; or we may
ask on what grounds this alleged impossibility is
based. If we put that question, we shall find that
the grounds are not altogether cogent. It is alleged
to be equally impossible for the human mind to
conceive either the existence or the non-existence
of a necessity antecedent to the absolute beginning
of things: therefore, in face of this inherent incapacity
of the human mind, the truth about the
beginning of things is unknowable and inconceivable.
But, we venture to suggest, this alleged
incapacity of the human mind rests on a false
antithesis: it rests on the assumption that whatever
phase of the evolution process we regard as the
initial arrangement must either have been determined
by some prior phase (in which case it was
not initial) or not determined at all. But as a mere
matter of logic, there remains the possibility that
it may have been self-determined; and, as regards
the evidence of experience, we are familiar with a
cause which operates every day and which is self-determined,
viz. the free will. There is, therefore,
no such inherent incapacity in the human mind as
is alleged; and the only inconceivability is that
which is inherent in the theory of antecedent
necessity, and not in the facts themselves. It is
simply incorrect to say that if things cannot be
explained by the theory of antecedent necessity,
they are not capable of being explained at all. If
the evolution process had been designed to follow
the course it has followed, the initial arrangement
of things could not have been better adapted to
produce the result; and, as adaptation of means to
end is the mark of intelligence, it is neither inconceivable
nor irrational to suppose that purpose was
immanent in things from the beginning.
But as it is scientific to argue from the known to
the unknown, or from the better known to the less
known; and as to know fully what a thing is we
must know what it is capable of becoming or producing,
let us pass from the pre-animal to the animal
stage of evolution. It is the more necessary to do
this because it was Darwin's theory of the origin
of species which impressed upon the modern mind
the idea that Nature mimics purpose, having none.
Man, with the purpose of breeding a certain type of
animal, selects those animals to breed from which
possess, in the most marked degree, the characteristics
which he wishes to develop in the offspring.
But, as Darwin demonstrated, Nature, or the environment,
by killing off those creatures which did not
possess (or least possessed) the qualities necessary
to ensure survival, "selects" animals of a certain
type to breed from. Thus "natural selection" produces
its results in the same way as human selection
does; and presents every appearance of purpose,
though the environment which produced the results
could have had no intentions or purpose at all. But
just as man does not create the animals which he
first selects to breed from, so the environment does
not create those sports or varieties which it selects
to breed from: if they did not exist, neither man nor
Nature could breed from them—no results, purposed
or unpurposed, could be got from them.
If now we inquire about these sports, we are told
science is content with the fact that they undeniably
occur: wherever there are animals there are varieties
in their offspring. That those which are adapted
to survive will survive, and those which are not will
not, is a self-evident, indeed an identical, proposition.
It is; and it gives away the whole case against purpose,
for it admits that some varieties are originally
adapted to survive, that without them neither man
nor the environment would have anything to begin
on or work on, and that though man and Nature may
develop, they do not create the original adaptation.
They do but promote, by conscious or unconscious
action, the purpose immanent in the sport. Of all
the numerous, successive, imperceptible increments
by which what was originally a sport is raised to a
distinct species, not one is created by man or by
the environment: all are the "gratuitous offerings"
of the organism, manifestations of the organism's
spontaneity, revelations of its latent capacities, fulfilments
of the purpose immanent in it from the
beginning.
If it be said that the survival of any or every
given species was a matter of chance, because other
sports would have developed into other species, if the
environment had been different, the reply again is,
But it was not; and, on the theory of necessity, could
not be. The fact that both conditions—the organism's
spontaneity and the environment's selective
agency—were requisite to the production of the
new species, and that both conditions were forthcoming,
tells rather in favour of purpose than against
it. The fact that this particular combination of
conditions was effected, rather than any other, is
on exactly the same footing as the initial concurrence
of atoms: if the latter cannot be ascribed
to any necessity antecedent to it, neither can the
former; the reason of the combination is to be
sought in the self-determining cause immanent in
the conditions. The fact, if it be a fact, that countless
other combinations were possible, and this alone
was chosen, shows that the will immanent in the
evolution process is free will.
In fine, Darwin has shown that the action of the
environment is exactly what it would have been had
it been designed for the purpose of selecting certain
sports for development. All that is further necessary
in order to show that this apparent purpose is an
illusion, is to prove that the environment was not
designed to act as it does. Pending the production
of that proof, the argument remains incomplete.
The larger part of the process of evolution is
known to us only from the outside: we observe
its effects in the animal world and in inorganic
nature, but its inner workings we have to reach by
inference. One part of the evolution process, however,
we know from the inside—that part which is
carried on through us. We are some of the innumerable
channels through which the motive force
of the process is transmitted; and the knowledge
which its transmission through us gives us is more
intimate and direct than that which we get from
observing the external effects it produces elsewhere.
The evolution of society, for instance, is a part of
the general process of evolution, and is a process
which is carried on through us and expresses the
resultant of the totality of our sentiments and actions
towards one another. What light, then, if any, is
thrown by sociology on the general question of
purpose?
Mr. Herbert Spencer has familiarised us with the
lesson that in politics and social experiments it is
the unforeseen and unintended results of legislation
which are far the most important, and that the
industrial organisation of the country, or we may
now say of the world, is not the fulfilment of any
design preconceived by any governmental agency,
but the unintended result of innumerable actions on
the part of men who never dreamed that their action
would have any such outcome. The reason of this
is to be sought in the fact that society is an organism
and that its growth follows the same laws as those
which regulate the structural development of an
am[oe]ba or a rhizopod. Thus, both society and the
animal organism must be fed. To be fed, both must
appropriate nutriment from the environment. That
nutriment must be taken up and must be distributed
to all parts of the organism, social or animal, if all
parts are to be fed—and all must be fed, because
all are mutually dependent, and to neglect one would
disorganise the whole. Channels of communication
must be established between all parts, in order that
food may be conveyed from the organ which took
it from the environment to the organs which require
it for support. What marks the process of evolution
in both cases is the increasing division of labour and
the increasing interdependence of the parts on one
another. The animal organism, like the social
organism, is made up of a multitude of living units,
each one of which is continually adjusting itself
to the requirements of all the rest. The increasing
complexity in the structure of an animal organism
is possible only because the living units of one part
take upon themselves new functions, or devote themselves
exclusively to one function, in order to benefit
the units of a distant part. If they purposed or
were purposed to produce that result, they could not
behave differently or better. But this appearance
of purpose is mere semblance: the minute cells of
an animal organism have no intention of producing
even a rhizopod or an am[oe]ba. The explanation
of this mimicry of purpose lies in the fact of the
mutual interdependence of the parts: no change can
take place in one organ of society or of the animal
without being transmitted through the whole, just as
you cannot remove one of the undermost of a cartload
of bricks without more or less disturbing all the
rest. But what is true of the bricks or of the units
of the animal organism is true of the units of the
social organism: what we discover in their action
and reaction on one another is the operation, not
of voluntary purpose, but of invariable laws of cause
and effect.
According to this argument, then, the living units
of the animal organism resemble in their action
those of the social organism sufficiently to warrant
us in arguing from the one to the other, and in
concluding that there is purpose in the action of
neither. But it is obvious that, if the resemblance
is great enough to justify us in arguing from the
animal to the social organism, it also opens the way
for the argument to travel the return journey, from
the social organism to the animal, and to reach
the conclusion that there is purpose in both. Let
us therefore consider what each of these two opposite
conclusions requires us to believe.
On the one hand, before accepting the argument
that there is no purpose in the action of the social
organism because there is none in that of the animal,
we must prove that there is none in that of the
animal. But that, as we have already urged, is
exactly what has not been proved: the utmost that
science claims to prove is that the units of the animal
organism do behave in a certain way. That way is
exactly the way in which they would behave if they
were designed to do so; and science leaves it, so far,
a perfectly open question whether they were or were
not so designed. The argument, therefore, that there
is no purpose in the action of the social organism,
because none in the animal, breaks down at the
threshold. Yet it is on the unproved and unprovable
assertion that the appearance of purpose in the
animal organism cannot possibly be due to design,
and must therefore be a delusion, that we are expected
to deny the evidence of our own experience
and consciousness and to believe that we, the units
of the social organism, have no purpose in the daily
acts by which we extend trade or discharge our social
functions.
Thus the surmise that Nature mimics purpose,
having none, is a conjecture which, so far as it is
applied to the pre-human stages of the evolution
process, simply plays upon our ignorance; and which,
when applied to that part of the evolution process
which is carried on through us, we know to be absurd.
On the other hand, if there is such similarity between
the laws of the one part of the process and the laws
of the other part, it must be as allowable to argue
from the part and the laws which we do know to
the part and the laws that we do not know, as it
is to explain the known by what is confessedly
unknown. In other words, if the evolution of the
social organism is known to be due to purpose, then
it is a reasonable inference that animal evolution,
which, we are told, follows the same line and laws,
is due also to purpose—and if not to any purpose
entertained by the cells of the animal organism,
then to that of a Will of which their action is the
expression.
It is, however, maintained that the continuous
social changes which constitute the evolution of
society, so far from being the result of the purpose
of any individual or of any government, are frequently
the very opposite of what was intended by
the authors of the changes, and always are notoriously
beyond our power to forecast. But the fact that
my plans are modified or diverted by my successors
or by my coadjutors does not prove that there was
no purpose in my plans, or that there was none in
the modifications introduced by my successors. And
the total result of our united action and purposes
may be something different from what any of us
individually intended and yet express a common
purpose, which is shown by the result to have been
more or less present to all of us. A cathedral begun
in the Norman style may have taken generations
to build and may end in Gothic; and it will express
the ideas common to the several builders, in much
the same way that a composite photograph reproduces
most distinctly the features in which all the persons
photographed coincide, and other features more or
less distinctly according to the extent to which they
are shared in common by the different subjects. Or,
to express the effect of the successive actions of
succeeding generations, we may borrow an illustration
from the game of chess. It is possible for five
players to play, taking it in turns to move, so that
every player makes one move out of five, and plays
alternately for White and Black. The result, with
good players, is a brilliant and well-developed game,
which is not the game as purposed or intended by
any one of the five players, but as continually
modified and improved by each every time that he
took it up. When, then, we reflect how many players
in the game of life there are even in a small society,
we can well understand that, though each has his
own way of serving the common purpose, none can
forecast the result.
Perhaps it will be said that the chess-players have
a common purpose, and the players in life's game
have none. The reply is that science assumes they
have; science assumes that they play to win in the
struggle for existence; and only on the assumption
that men have common purposes is it possible to
frame any scientific account of their actions. The
science of Political Economy assumes that it is a
common purpose of men to acquire wealth, and that
their actions are determined by that purpose. It
then goes on to show that if that is their purpose,
then the conditions under which it can be and is
effected are of a certain kind, e.g. men must buy
in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. It
is not necessary to assume, nor does Political
Economy assume, that man can only purpose to
acquire wealth, or that he must under all circumstances
do so. In the same way it is wholly
unscientific in sociology to assume that success in
the struggle for existence is either a thing that man
must aim at, or the only thing that he can aim
at: the soldier dies for his country, the martyr
for his faith. The institutions of a nation—legal,
political, social, and religious—express the predominant
purposes for which successive generations
of the community have laboured; and the evolution
of mankind is the history of the various degrees of
success with which men have realised the ideals
which they have purposed to attain. The successive
reforms by which progress has been effected have
all been purposed, and have all been purposed by
men who believed, rightly or wrongly, that in so
doing they were serving God and their fellow-men,
and that the ideals of truth, justice, equality, fraternity,
love, compassion, and mercy express God's will
and the Divine purpose.
If, then, the outcome of the pre-human period of
evolution has been, as a matter of fact, and amongst
other things, such as to prepare the earth for man's
habitation and to provide him with a mechanism,
physiological and psychological, such that he can
use it, if he will, to promote what he considers to
be progress and advance, it is not unreasonable for
him to regard past phases of evolution as so many
steps leading to the realisation of the ideals which
he cherishes, in his best moments, as his highest
purposes. The continuity of evolution and the
unity of its process authorise or even compel him
to use that part of the process which is carried on
through him as a means to interpret the rest. As,
in the game of chess played by five players, each
player inherits from his predecessor the game as
it stands, and carries on, with improvements or
modifications, the scheme which he inherits, so in
life each player in turn becomes conscious of the
ideals which he too may, or may not, as he wills,
carry one step nearer to their goal. It is in the
continuity with which these ideals are transmitted
through one consciousness after another that the
continuity of human evolution consists. We are, or
may be if we choose, particles in the medium by
which a purpose not our own (save inasmuch as
we choose to make it so) is carried onwards to
its destination. The medium through which progress
has travelled in the past is Nature; the medium
through which it is now travelling is human nature.
By us the ideal, as it is transmitted through our
consciousness, is recognised as implying the presence
in us of a purpose higher than our own. Whether
in the medium of Nature there is any dim consciousness
of the progress towards which the changes
in Nature conspire, we know not. But the uniformity
of Nature and human nature requires us to see in
those natural changes the operation of the same
power travelling in the same direction as it does
through us. In its passage through us it is made
known to us as the object of our highest aspirations;
the ideal of purity, of holiness, and love; the God for
whom the human heart, mistakenly or not, has always
sought, and never sought in vain.
The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution has
taught us the lesson that, if we start without
belief in the Divine government of the world,
study of the process of evolution will not lead us to
discern any Divine purpose in the process. Belief in
religion cannot begin without faith in God to start
with, just as belief in science or in morality is
based not on evidence, but on faith. The question
remains whether with faith we can believe that the
process of evolution is a revelation of Divine love,
and whether man's environment has been evolved
in such a way as to promote in him that love of his
fellow-man and God which is the religious ideal.
If we look at the structure of society, we see it is
based on the fact that man has certain needs—of
food, shelter, and clothing, etc.—which can be satisfied
more effectually by co-operation and division
of labour than by isolated, individual action. The
man who earns his own living does so by rendering
services for which he is paid: he cannot benefit himself
without benefiting others to some extent. That
is the law under which he lives, a law not of his own
making, nor always to his own liking, but a law
inherent in the nature of things, and part of the
purpose, if purpose there be, in the scheme of things.
As a free agent, man may co-operate with his
fellows and take his share of the divided labour,
or not, as he wills; but those peoples which have
carried the principles of co-operation and organisation
furthest have fared best. They have availed
themselves of the opportunity offered them, and
have survived. The failure of the rest to do likewise
has not impeded the fulfilment of the Divine
purpose that men should help one another. On the
contrary, those who decline to help one another
voluntarily place themselves at a disadvantage in
the struggle for existence, and are slowly, but surely,
crowded out by those who fulfil the Divine purpose
less unsatisfactorily, and in consequence tend to
inherit the earth.
We have already seen that when a man reaches
years of discretion he finds that the physiological
and psychological mechanism of which he is now
in possession, and for the management of which he
is henceforth responsible, has a tendency to run in
certain grooves: he has, as a child, been taught and
has inherited an aptitude to think and act in certain
ways. The same remark applies to the social
organism. Before or when the individual awakes
to the fact that he is a member of a society, he has
already been or is the child of parents to whom he
renders obedience, and between whom and himself
there exist relations of affection. The evolution of
man as a purely animal organism has been such
that he begins life with a prolonged period of helpless
infancy. Unlike the lower animals, which very
soon after birth are capable of providing for themselves,
he is for years dependent on others. His
prolonged infancy is a prolonged period of plasticity,
during which he is moulded into a member, first of
a family and then and thereby into a member of
society. All the higher animals give their offspring
some education, an education as good as they received
themselves: in the human race alone do
parents give their children a better education than
they got themselves. It is, however, not the rising
generation alone who benefit by the long period of
dependence and plasticity which characterises childhood.
It is, of course, true that labour expended
on the perfecting of tools and machinery is peculiarly
productive, inasmuch as the increased efficiency of
the instrument more than repays the greater outlay.
But as the workman who produces the tool becomes
in consequence of his labour a more skilled mechanic,
so the education given by the parent to the child
is an education not only of the child, but of the
parent, and makes both better fitted to be members
of society. It not only secures that subordination of
the younger men to the elder, which is necessary for
the stability of society and the permanence of the
tribe, but it also tempers power with responsibility,
responsibility not to some external authority, but to
the higher principle within the man.
Thus even in the earliest stage of society the anti-social
forces of selfishness and the passions do not
operate in vacuo and with nothing to impede them.
Society at the very beginning is no tabula rasa: the
field is already largely occupied, and the direction
of social evolution already largely determined, by
that affection between parents and children without
which neither society as a whole nor the individual
as a unit could come into being or continue to exist.
It is an unwarrantable libel, even on savage society,
to say that in it the ape and tiger predominate in
man: the lowest forms of society survive only so far
as there exists more humanity than brutality in the
dealings of their members with one another. It is a
false philosophy of evolution, not a true acquaintance
with the facts of anthropology, which rashly assumes
that the morally lowest must have been the only
primitive elements in the evolution of humanity.
The evil and the good in man have existed side by
side from the beginning; unselfish affection, as well
as selfish desires, has always been part of the equipment
of human nature, though the evolution of the
former may be a longer and more difficult process,
both in the individual and the race, than the evolution
of the latter.
In the race moral progress may be expected with
much more confidence than it can in the case of the
individual. The mere existence of a society, however
simple in structure, is of itself proof that the anti-social
forces of selfishness and passion are in it less
strong than the instincts of neighbourliness and
mutual help. Of competing societies those eventually
triumph which are least weakened by internal dissension—that
is to say, those societies tend to thrive
and extend most of which the members are most
ready to subordinate their private ends to the public
good. Ultimately it is only by the development
of this type of individual character that a society
can achieve success; and it is this type of character
that the competition between nations develops.
But essential as it is to the survival of a society,
it is by no means so essential to the survival of the
individual in his struggle for existence against other
individuals. If, then, society were simply a collection
of warring atoms, or if the individual's whole activity
were expended in struggling with his neighbour and
trying to elbow him out, the type of character
essential to the survival of society could never be
developed, and society itself could neither come
into being nor continue to be. The fact is that
men not only compete, but co-operate: society is,
and from the beginning has been, an organisation
requiring from each of its parts some subordination
to the interests of the whole.
As the organisation of society grows more complex,
the individual becomes less and less capable
of existing independently of society, society becomes
more and more independent of the services of any
individual member, and both these facts tend to
foster the social and weaken the anti-social forces
in man. Increasing division and subdivision of
labour specialises the function of each member of the
community more and more, and so deprives him
of the general aptitude for doing all kinds of work
which is essential to every man who is, as for
instance in a new colony, thrown largely on his own
resources. Thus the solitary existence which might
be just possible for the outcast from a savage tribe
becomes a practical impossibility for the average
member of any community that has risen above that
stage of social evolution. At the same time the
point is reached when no one man is indispensable
to the community. Society is made up of units so
similar to one another that any one can be replaced
by some other, and, as a matter of fact, the place
of everyone is at death filled by some successor.
The theory of a social contract, as a historical or
prehistorical event in the development of any community,
has long been rightly discredited: at no time
did a number of men, living solitary lives, have a
public meeting and formally contract to live together
on certain conditions and for certain ends. Man has
been a gregarious, if not social, animal from the
beginning. Nevertheless, man has certain needs,
desires, and ends which can only be satisfied by
means of social organisation, and which are quite
as potent in holding society together as if, instead
of being tacitly at work, they had been proclaimed
aloud in a formal social contract. If through any
disease the social organism obstructs, or fails to
assist in realising, those ends, the dissatisfaction
of the individual and the danger to the state are
just as great as if a formal contract had been
violated: the disappointment of the normal and
reasonable expectations of the members of the community
is substantially injustice, and is not altogether
erroneously stated to be a violation of the common
and tacit understanding on which society is in fact
if not formally established. Co-operation in labour
does imply some sort of engagement, expressed or
understood, that the joint product shall be divided
more or less fairly between the joint producers.
Unfairness in the distribution of social benefits may
be of slow growth, but must eventually result in
undisguised resentment—appeal is made openly and
consciously to justice, which henceforth becomes the
ideal of a section at least of the community, and
is recognised as a condition without which a healthy
social existence is impossible.
It is thus a monstrous perversion of the plain
facts to represent the struggle for existence as
having been the sole or the main factor in social
evolution: every member of a community is born
into an atmosphere of co-operation and maintains
his existence by the co-operation of others. If he
must labour to live, he cannot labour for himself
without at the same time rendering service to others;
the very same conditions which make him desire
justice for himself constrain him to maintain justice
for the community at large. The social environment
is, and has always been, such as to lead man
in the paths of justice and to train him for the
service of his fellow-man. The units which constitute
the social environment are men, beings whose
physical, mental, and moral structure is the result
of a long process of evolution stretching back to
beyond the beginnings of life upon this earth, a
process which, assuming it to have had purpose,
was designed to include in its effects a creature
capable of justice and of love.
The full development of the sentiment of justice
has been the work of many centuries. At first,
when the community is small and nomad, the idea
that a stranger has a right to justice is incomprehensible.
Even when with the growth of civilisation
provision is made for according foreign merchants
and others some protection from the law, the idea
that the stranger has the same right to justice as
the citizen is neither admitted by law nor entertained
as a speculation. Indeed, the law, modest though
it be, may be in advance of public opinion and of
the practice of officials—witness the extortions practised
by Roman governors on the Roman provinces.
Eventually, however, public opinion outstrips the
law and pronounces that even the colour of a man's
skin cannot bar his claims to justice, and that the
inhabitants of a country, though they be aborigines,
have some rights in it. Finally comes philosophy
and pronounces justice, absolute and stern, the one
thing needful, the one and only duty which it is
within the sphere and function of government to
maintain.
Unfortunately for the philosophy which maintains
this view, it happens that, just when the authority
of justice is admitted by the conscience of civilisation
to be paramount, justice as an ideal is recognised
to be neither capable of realisation nor
absolutely desirable. It is obvious that in the best-regulated
even of free communities the amount of
justice which can be secured by the action of the
law and the intervention of the State falls very
far short of the ideal; and the multiplication of
laws and State inquisitors, which would be necessary
if every form of injustice and wrong-doing
were to be punished by the State, would be a
remedy, if indeed it were a remedy, worse than
the disease. It is impossible to pretend to believe
that wealth is distributed according to merit in
any existing community, or that any governmental
system, even if designed solely with that end in
view, could ever determine what a man's merits
were, or what his reward should be. Nor is the
ill distribution of wealth the only factor of injustice,
though it is the only factor with which the State
could make pretence to deal: sickness and sorrow,
grief and pain—nay, the very capacity for suffering
and for joy—are dealt to different men in very
different measure. It is plain matter of fact that
earthly goods and pleasures are not distributed
according to merit; and it is just when man's
conquest of Nature has become most complete,
when society is no longer struggling for a bare
subsistence, when the demand for justice is most
fully and unreservedly admitted, that the impossibility
of meeting the demand and the danger of
failing to meet it become most manifest. The
poverty which accompanies progress may in one
generation be less than it was in the previous generation,
but the extremes of poverty and wealth
grow daily wider apart, and the number of those
who are poor increases in a growing population
much more rapidly than the number of the rich.
The danger which this rent in the social fabric
threatens to the whole structure of society may
be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. The mere
justice of individualism which has hitherto sufficed
to hold society together, suffices now no longer.
The justice which limits itself to the fulfilment of
those actions to the non-performance of which a
legal penalty is attached, is not the one and only
thing needful, nor does its force remedy the
numerous cases of undeserved misfortune and
suffering which the working of our social and industrial
system entails. What heals the suffering
and saves it from becoming a festering sore that
might prove fatal to society, is that love of man
for his fellow-man, which is manifested to the poor
by the rich to some extent, but chiefly by the poor.
The State can only prescribe and enforce external
acts of justice; and the external acts which it
prescribes are not the bond which holds or can
hold society together. The State, in its attempts
to modify society through the individual, is as
clumsy as the breeder or the gardener in dealing
with animals and plants, and must fain be content
if it can modify some of the more prominent
external characteristics. Nature is much more
searching, and, if slower, much more thorough:
the real nature of her work, the true character of
the force on which she has made the cohesion of
society to depend, becomes obvious at the time
when the insufficiency of mere justice for the
purpose becomes apparent. Imperfect though man's
obedience has been to the commandment, "Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," it is to his
obedience that society owes its maintenance.
As a matter of fact, then, strict justice is not and
cannot be realised in this world. Even the forces
of the social environment which are, to a large extent,
under man's own control are not and cannot be so
directed by him as to secure rewards and punishments
in exact proportion to merit and demerit;
while the action of those natural forces which distribute
fortune and misfortune, pain and the susceptibility
to pain, pleasure and the capacity of
enjoyment, is still less under his control and, as
far as we can see, is still less proportionate to desert.
The fields of the unjust benefit as much as those
of the just by the rain from heaven; the labourers
who enter the vineyard of civilisation at a late hour
receive as great a reward as their predecessors who
bore the heat and burden of the day, or even greater;
when a tower in our social fabric falls, it is not the
guilty who are alone or even specially involved in
its ruin. From the time of Theognis, at least, men
have inquired with despair how the gods could
expect worship when they suffered these things to
be; and as long as we look upon life as though we
were detached spectators, with no care for it save
a disinterested desire to see justice done, it is easy
for us to declaim upon the absolute indifference of
the cosmic process to man and his deserts. But this
detached attitude is purely artificial, and we could
not make even the semblance of long maintaining
it, did we not unconsciously glide into the more
natural, but less warrantable, position of tacitly
assuming that our own personal lot would be improved
if strict justice were done. But is not our
resentment against the injustice of the world partly
premature and somewhat shallow and short-sighted?
Are we sure we want strict justice? Are we so
anxious to have our merits weighed? are they so
imposing? Can we pray that we may be rewarded
after our iniquities? If society could by some
supernatural power deal strict justice to all its
members, who would, who could live in it? As a
matter of fact—to say it once more—it is not by
law alone that society lives, but by love, by the
long-patient love of father or mother, of wife or
husband, of friend or neighbour, which every one
of us has accepted and none has fully requited.
Our very hospitals are open to all who need them,
to those whose suffering is due to their own negligence,
or even crime, and not merely to those whose
pain is undeserved. A palpable injustice, worthy
of the cosmic process itself! And what excuse, if
justice, absolute and relentless, be our highest and
worthiest aspiration, can there be for appropriating
the reward of honest toil to the often fruitless task
of offering to those, who have by their own vice sunk
into the depths, one last chance of life and of redemption?
The mercy which falleth, like the gentle
rain from heaven, alike upon the unjust and the just,
must be judged by the same standard that we apply
to the cosmic process. We may, like the elder brother
of the prodigal son, refuse to see anything in man
or Nature but a world given up to gross injustice—persons
so superior as to stand in no need of forgiveness
and no fear of judgment are able doubtless
to judge the world and their fellow-man. But the
prodigal himself may, perchance, better understand
some of the workings of his father's heart, and trust
he sees in the apparent injustice of Nature more
instances of that mercy which would not have showed
itself to him had justice measured love.
It seems, then, that the "ethical process" and the
"cosmic process" are not so absolutely opposed
to one another as Professor Huxley endeavoured
to make out. Both at times act with a calm disregard
of justice. In the one case we know that
it is a higher principle which takes the place of
justice; and it is a reasonable conjecture that the
ethical process, which is one outcome or manifestation
of the cosmic process, does but reproduce, in this
case as in others, the action of the cosmic force
which operates through the heart of man as well as
through the rest of the universe. It is at any rate
inconsistent to condemn the cosmos for exhibiting
that quality of mercy which we rank highest amongst
the attributes of man: if we take credit to our fellow-men
for that quality, in fairness let us give the cosmos
the same credit when it displays the same quality.
If, as we assume in this chapter, there is purpose in
evolution, let us admit that there is some presumption
that it is a purpose of love and of mercy.
As it is by faith in science that men of science
succeed in solving problems which, for a time, seem
beyond the powers of science to deal with, so it is
on faith in religion that the religious explanation
of the universe depends for its slow but sure extension.
With that faith we may succeed in seeing,
to some slight extent, that the unequal distribution
of pain, as well as of earthly prosperity, is not incompatible
with a Divine purpose in evolution.
For that faith we must believe that the suffering
and sorrow from which none of us is exempt are not
evil, unless we choose to make them so, but opportunities
for good. Indeed, without that faith we
seem forced upon the same conclusion: the man
who devotes himself, his soul, his life to the relief
of the needy and the suffering cannot make earthly
prosperity his chief good, though, as Professor
Huxley has said, he may attain something much
better. But if we hold that there is something better
than earthly prosperity, can we consistently declaim
against sickness and sorrow as the worst of evils,
or indict a universe because they are not unknown
in it? The Stoicism which lent Professor Huxley
the strength to teach that man must to the end
declare defiance and resistance to the cosmos—resistance
unavailing and defiance doomed to certain
failure in the end—might also have taught him that
the evil which he calls on us to war against is not
in the cosmos; that the enemy of the ethical process
has his headquarters not in Nature, but in the heart
of man. Pain and sorrow are evil to the sufferer
who allows them to make him selfish, and to the
spectator who chooses to be callous to his suffering.
If our volitions do count for something in the course
of things, if we are so far free that we can, in response
to Professor Huxley's call, doggedly and repeatedly
resist the cosmic process, then it is of our own free
will, also, that we do evil when the opportunity of
good is offered us. Yet we charge the evil upon the
cosmos.
ὦ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς Βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται
ἕξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ' ἔμμεναι· οἱ δὴ καὶ αὐτοὶ
σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπέρμορον ἄλγε' ἔχουσιν.