Evolution
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Title: Evolution
Author: F. B. Jevons
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THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY J. H. BURN, B.D.
EVOLUTION
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| THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY |
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| EDITED BY |
| JOHN HENRY BURN, B.D. |
| _Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Aberdeen._ |
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| THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY. By W. E. COLLINS, |
| M.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, King's |
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| THE CHURCHMAN'S PRIMER. By G. HARFORD-BATTERSBY, M.A. |
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| THE CHURCHMAN'S DAY BOOK. By J. H. BURN, B.D. |
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| THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN THE COLONIES AND MISSION FIELD. By |
| ALLAN B. WEBB, D.D., Assistant Bishop to the Bishop of |
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| AN INTRODUCTION TO TEXTUAL CRITICISM. By A. M. KNIGHT, |
| M.A., Fellow and Dean of Gonville and Caius College, |
| Camb. |
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| SOME OLD TESTAMENT PROBLEMS. By JOHN P. PETERS, D.D., |
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| D.D., Bishop of Truro. |
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| Professor of Pastoral and Liturgical Theology, King's |
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| of Lincoln's Inn. |
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| Fredericton. |
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| INSPIRATION. By Canon BENHAM, D.D. |
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| Church, Oxford. |
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| PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. By V. H. STANTON, D.D., Ely |
| Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. |
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| EVOLUTION. By FRANK B. JEVONS, M.A., D.Litt., Principal of |
| Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham. Crown 8vo, _3s. 6d._ |
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| THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HERE AND HEREAFTER. By Canon |
| WINTERBOTHAM, M.A., B.Sc., LL.B. Cr. 8vo, _3s. 6d._ |
| [_Ready._ |
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| THE GREAT WORLD RELIGIONS FROM A CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT. By |
| H. E. J. BEVAN, M.A., Gresham Professor of Divinity. |
| |
| COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By J. A. MACCULLOCK. |
| |
| ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. By W. DIGBY THURNAM. |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
EVOLUTION
BY
FRANK B. JEVONS, M.A., D.LITT.
PRINCIPAL OF BISHOP HATFIELD'S HALL, DURHAM
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1900
PREFACE
The object of this volume is to raise the question: if we accept the
Theory of Evolution as true in science, how should it modify the thought
and action of a man who wishes to do his best in this world? The
question is necessary because we find that different and inconsistent
conclusions on the point have been reached by men speaking in the name
of science and speaking with authority. These differences are due not to
anything in science, but to certain extra-scientific assumptions. To
test the worth of such assumptions is the work of philosophy; and this
volume is accordingly an essay in philosophy. Science is but organised
common sense. Science and Religion both claim to deal with realities.
The realism of common sense, therefore, the form of philosophy to which
both seem to point, is that which is set forth here.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. OPTIMISM 1
II. ILLUSION 14
III. PESSIMISM 24
IV. IDEALISM 38
V. THE REAL 60
VI. EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION 72
VII. NECESSITY 100
VIII. INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE 138
IX. CONSEQUENCES 152
X. THE CHESS-BOARD 163
XI. THE COMMON FAITH OF MANKIND 184
XII. PROGRESS 203
XIII. EVOLUTION AS PURPOSE 238
XIV. CONCLUSION 273
APPENDIX. ON BISHOP BERKELEY'S IDEALISM 289
INDEX 297
EVOLUTION
I.
OPTIMISM
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."
II.
ILLUSION
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.
III.
PESSIMISM
"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.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 44.
[2] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 44.
[3] _Evolution and Ethics_, pp. 31, 45, 83.
IV.
IDEALISM
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] HERBERT SPENCER, _First Principles_, ch. iv. § 22, p. 69.
V.
THE REAL
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Appendix on Bishop Berkeley's Idealism.
[6] _First Principles_, ch. iii. § 20.
[7] _Ibid._, § 26.
VI.
EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] _First Principles_, § 46.
[9] MILL, _Inductive Logic_, bk. iii. ch. xii. p. 549.
[10] _Ibid._
[11] _First Principles_, ch. iii. § 46.
[12] SETH, _Chambers's Encyclopædia_, _s.v._ "Philosophy."
[13] KIRCHOFF, _Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik_, i. p. 1.
[14] MERTZ, _History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century_,
i. pp. 382, 3, note.
[15] LOTZE, _Microcosmus_, E. T., ii. p. 718.
[16] LOTZE, _Microcosmus_, E. T., ii. p. 718.
[17] MILL, _Inductive Logic_, bk. iii. ch. vi.
[18] MILL, _Inductive Logic_, bk. iii. ch. vi.
[19] CLAUDE BERNARD, quoted in _L'Année Sociologique, première
année_.
[20] _Principles of Biology_, v. § 30.
[21] _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. part ii.
[22] _Ibid._, § 260.
[23] _First Principles_, § 127.
[24] _Ibid._, § 153.
VII.
NECESSITY
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?" ther
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