Social Rights And Duties

Chapter 6

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Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent Doctor and saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door as in I went.

What, indeed, are eight or twenty centuries in the life even of this planet? There are moments at which we all have suddenly felt by flashes the sensation of being suspended in vast abysses of s.p.a.ce and time: when we see, for example, a chart of the heavens which has been recently revealed to us by astronomers, and find that s.p.a.ces between the stars shown to us by ordinary eyesight are filled in every direction with world beyond world, vast systems of worlds, worlds in every stage of evolution, growing out of nebulous vapour or sinking into eternal coldness: while the imagination is staggered and bewildered by the inconceivable vastness of the s.p.a.ces indicated, and its own infinitesimal pettiness. If we stroll into a museum and look at the petrified bones of some grotesque monster, and after rejoicing, perhaps, that there is an end of him, we are struck by the thought of the vast lapse of ages during which he was being slowly hammered out of some mere primitive form, and then slowly decayed, and was gradually elbowed out of existence by monsters a degree less preposterous than himself, and gain a new measure of the portentous lapse of time. The greatest of poets has summed up the impression in the phrase which Carlyle was fond of quoting: "we are such stuff as dreams are made of": and our little speck of existence a vanishing quant.i.ty in comparison of the infinite above and below and around us, which we dimly infer though we cannot distinctly realise it. If in such a mood, common at times to all who can think or feel, we take up some philosophical work, and find the writer complacently setting forth a cosmogony or a theory of the Universe; explaining how things came into being; what is the reason why they are not better or worse; what is the end of the whole drama: are we not justified in exclaiming with Carlyle:--

The builder of this Universe was wise, He planned all souls, all systems, planets, particles: The plan he shaped all worlds and aeons by Was--Heavens!--was thy small nine-and-thirty articles!

Carlyle has been, to some of us, the most stimulating of writers, just because he succeeded in expressing, with unsurpa.s.sed power, the emotion which I must be content with indicating--the emotion which is roused by sudden revelations of the infinitudes, the silences and eternities that surround us. We cannot keep it permanently before us; the present absorbs us, and its little interests seem to be all that is important.

It is only at moments when, for example, we reflect that our action of a minute ago is already a part of the mysterious past, sinking downwards, and rapidly becoming invisible in the depths of the infinite ocean, that we are startled by a momentary pang, and feel as though to live with a constant sense of our insignificance would be to risk the paralysis of all our powers of thought and action. That way, we are inclined to say, lies madness. We shall lose our heads if we gaze too long into such tremendous depths. Possibly we may restore our equilibrium by meditating upon the infinitesimal, though possibly too we may rather feel that such meditations only reveal another infinite. I intended to make a few reflections suggested by such thoughts, when I found a guide, and, to a great extent, an ally, in a writer who has lately taken up the ancient parable. Mr. Balfour, in a book rather quaintly ent.i.tled _Foundations of Belief_ has dwelt upon the vanity of all known philosophy, and has shown, or appears to some of his readers to have endeavoured to show, that it is hopeless to lay any sound foundations on the little film of knowledge beneath which lie the great unknown abysses. He tries to indicate some other basis, though, so far as I can understand him, the foundations of his edifice are ingeniously supported by the superstructure; and that is a kind of architecture which, to my mind, lacks stability. Through a large part of his argument, however, I find myself in the pleasanter position of an ally. He a.s.serts, and I doubt whether any competent thinker would materially differ from him, that there does not, as a matter of fact, exist any established system of philosophic truth--any system upon which we can rely, as we do, in fact, rightly or wrongly rely, upon certain scientific doctrines. We no more doubt the truth of the Newtonian system of astronomy than we doubt that fire burns or that bread nourishes. But the briefest glance at the old systems of philosophy shows us, as Mr. Balfour says, nothing but imperishable ruins--imperishable aesthetically--but, logically, mere crumbling fragments. We can still read Plato with delight; but the delight is due to the beauty of style and exposition, not, certainly, to the conviction produced by his reasoning. Aristotle"s philosophy is a marvel--for his time: but his theory of the Universe is no more tenable than his Natural Science. The luxuriant growths of later Greek philosophy are interesting only to the curious investigators of the pathology of the human intellect. The vast development of scholastic philosophy in the middle ages showed only how far unlimited ingenuity and subtlety may lead in the wrong direction, if it starts with mistaken principles. It ended by upsetting the doctrines which it attempted to prove, and had finally to commit suicide, or fall before the insurrection of living thought. The great men who revolted against its tyranny in its later stages constructed new systems, which, to them, seemed demonstrable, but which, to us, are already untenable. We cannot accept Descartes, or Spinoza, or Leibnitz, or Bacon, or Hobbes, or Locke, as giving satisfactory or even coherent systems, or as having done more than lead to the thorough scepticism of Hume. If Kant presented one solution of the difficulties in which philosophy was landed, we have still to ask what precisely Kant meant; whether his criticism was simply all-destructive, or really left anything standing, and, if so, what it left standing; and who represents the proper line of development. Shall we, with Schopenhauer, p.r.o.nounce Hegel to be a thorough impostor? and, if so, can we seriously accept Schopenhauer"s own system? If, here and there, some people accept his theories for literary purposes, n.o.body will maintain that they rest upon any permanently settled foundation. If, again, we believe in Hegel, we have to make out what we mean by believing in Hegel, and to which school of his followers we are to attach ourselves. I need not consider the polemic which Mr. Balfour has directed against the writers who have given a version of Hegelian principles in England. Personally, I agree with his criticisms in a general way; but I fancy that even the adherents of those principles would defend themselves mainly by declaring that they do not make such pretensions as he ascribes to them.

They try, at most, to indicate a way of approaching, not of solving the problems. But, at least, they would claim to have done one thing: namely, to have proved the inadequacy of the rival system of empirical philosophy, accepted by the English followers of Locke, and now mainly represented for us by Mr. Herbert Spencer. I only add to this, that it is not a question of the convictions of any individual thinker, however eminent. Philosophies of every different variety have been not merely accepted by those who first devised them, but have been taken up in good faith by whole schools of disciples; they have been tested, on a large scale, by systematic application to all relevant questions, and one after the other has become bankrupt; has lost its hold on the world, and confessed that it leaves the riddle as dark as it was before. All that can be claimed for the greatest philosophers is, that they have, at least, proved that certain paths which seemed to lead through the labyrinth, end in a deadlock; that they have exposed certain fallacies by the process of provisionally believing in them; and that they have buoyed certain shoals, and demonstrated that no channel leads in what seemed to be a promising direction. Is there any channel open?

Once more, I might follow--I might even, if I had time, expand Mr.

Balfour"s argument in another direction. He has pointed out--not for the first time certainly--how men"s beliefs are due not to reasoning, but to countless causes which prevent them from reasoning. The argument is too familiar, indeed, to require much emphasis. Some one, arguing in the days of the old orthodoxy upon the necessity of the true faith to salvation, put the case of a couple of infants deserted by their parents. One of them is carried off by a Mohammedan and the other by a Christian. Each will, of course, adopt the faith of the party into whose hands it has fallen; and the problem was, whether the infant seized by the Mohammedan would be eternally d.a.m.ned, and the one taken by the Christian go straight to heaven; and whether, on the whole, that would satisfy our sense of justice. The argument implies the inevitableness of error. Men not only do, but ought to hold, contradictory opinions. Take a Scottish Davie Deans, brought up in the shadow of John Knox"s pulpit; a Tyrolese peasant, educated in the Catholic Church; and a Mohammedan, living at Mecca; and, of course, it is plain, not only that each will accept the creed which pervades what is for him the whole world known to him, but that as a reasoning being each is probably in the right. That is to say, the accessible evidence is in each case overwhelmingly in favour of the doctrine, inasmuch as the supposed reasoner is entirely unaware of the evidence which might be produced on the other side. But what is true of the peasant is true of the philosopher. Measured on a sufficient scale, the difference vanishes. This intellectual horizon is just as much limited, though not so narrowly limited. No one but a bigot would deny that a mediaeval philosopher might accept on perfectly reasonable grounds the dogmas of the Catholic Church. The historical difficulties had not even been presented to his mind. He had no reason for doubting innumerable a.s.sumptions as to fact which have since turned out to be erroneous; and if the method of his reasoning was itself fundamentally vicious, the fact only came to light gradually in the process of working out the results. We--including in the "we" the philosophers--have to approach truth by the help of a.s.sumptions, and by trying how in point of fact they will work; it is so hard to remember that they are only a.s.sumptions that we generally call them self-evident truths. Considering how many a.s.sumptions are involved even in the very structure of language itself; how we are led into all kinds of difficulties by the essential instrument of thought, which has been fashioned by the unconscious logic of our ancestors; it is not strange that the best that can be said of philosophies is, that they represent convenient working hypotheses. That, at least, seems to be a liberal view of their logical value. In another sense they are really to be considered as poetry, rather than as logic. They are modes of presenting certain conceptions of the world by apparently logical formulae, instead of by concrete imagery; but, substantially, they represent the emotions with which men regard their dwelling place, and are radically imperfect if we insist upon considering them as providing us with correct plans and drawings of its various arrangements.

Let us look for a moment at another set of reflections upon which Mr.

Balfour touches. What has been the influence of these systems upon men"s lives? Have these provisional constructions, these fluctuating, conflicting, unstable combinations of pretentious formulae, really decided or directed the course of human history? It would seem so, if you read certain histories of philosophy. They seem to suggest that the hinge upon which all the course of human affairs ultimately turns is the growth of certain metaphysical conceptions. There is a preliminary difficulty in seeing how such pretensions can be established. The philosopher in his study or his lecture room discusses problems in which the enormously preponderating majority of the race has so little interest, that it is not even aware that there are any such problems to be discussed. He lays down dogmas so vague and unsatisfactory that half his hearers give up the attempt to understand, or understand them in a sense which the more intelligent half would utterly repudiate; and that intelligent half is itself divided into different schools, interpreting the dogmas in radically contradictory ways. Is it not hard to believe that speculation leads to vast results, when for ninety-nine men out of a hundred it is practically non-existent, and with the small minority it amounts to providing new weapons for endless controversy? We must, of course, admit that men"s conduct is in some sense determined by their thoughts. Change the radical beliefs, and you will certainly change the whole const.i.tution of society. And, again, it is obvious that in one sphere of thought the progress of inquiry is of vast importance. n.o.body can deny that scientific and mechanical discoveries have, for good or evil, materially affected our lives. The great inventions of modern times, from gunpowder and printing to the steam-engine and electricity, have changed things as much as if they had altered the physical const.i.tution of the world. They have indeed altered it for us, for they have given us the means of applying forces previously dormant, and therefore for practical purposes non-existent. Such beliefs have an immediate bearing upon the practices of ordinary human beings. But if we are to set down all philosophies as at once untenable and as absolutely unknown to the enormous majority of mankind, it becomes difficult to understand by what process they come to influence, or apparently to influence, the position of the race. A philosopher frames his scheme of the universe to his own satisfaction; but you and I hear nothing about it, and do not trouble ourselves to understand it, and go on working with our good old common-sense conceptions of things, leaving it to the philosopher to construct or destroy the fanciful system which he somehow supposes to lie beneath them. One answer is of course obvious. Religious and ethical systems, it is said, presuppose a philosophy: no one denies that men are profoundly affected by the G.o.ds whom they worship and the rules of conduct which they adopt; and therefore the sceptic who is burrowing at the base may be ruining the whole superstructure, although his operations are no more obvious upon the surface than those of some minute parasite. Accordingly, we are often told that revolutions are ultimately produced by speculation; and that old systems fall with a crash because some shrewd witness has been boring into the foundations upon which they really repose. The French Revolution, according to one familiar statement, was due to the freethinkers who had set about prying into the ultimate grounds of the old faith, and had succeeded in shaking the convictions necessary to social welfare.

That this argument expresses a truth is what I am so far from denying that I should be most anxious to give it emphasis. But what is precisely the truth expressed? Destroy the belief in a church as a social system, and the organisation will crumble. But what is the real cause of the loss of belief? Is it the logical argument that is effective? Does the philosophical revolution underlie the political or religious revolution, or is that to invert cause and effect? Let me take an example to ill.u.s.trate my meaning. The doctrine of the "rights of man," proclaimed by the whole revolutionary school, was, it is said, the cause of the revolution. The destruction of the old order was caused by the sudden conviction which spread through Europe of the truth of this theory, and the consequent decay of the old authority. Now we may proceed, if we please, to trace the origin of this doctrine back through certain speculations to the days of the Roman jurists, themselves influenced by the Stoical philosophy. The view suggested is that the doctrine was a kind of germ, a something which preserved its vitality through centuries, like the bacteria of modern physiologists, and which, somehow, developed a baleful or a beneficial activity about a century ago, and changed all the conditions of social equilibrium. But, if this be true, we naturally remark that the potency of the doctrine must have been due, not to the doctrine itself, which lay dormant so long, but to the conditions which suddenly made it effective. The doctrine, indeed, is so obvious, in a sense, that it is not to be doubted that anybody who once began to philosophise about laws and political const.i.tutions, after they had reached a certain stage, would hit upon it in one shape or another. It is not comparable to those scientific discoveries which require patient thought and a dexterous combination of arguments: but one of the primary axioms which present themselves on the very threshold of inquiry. The mediaeval peasant who put the question:--

When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

was, probably, no great philosopher; but he was giving the essential pith of the doctrine of liberty, fraternity, and equality. It may be regarded as an obvious logical canon, converted by an illegitimate process into a statement of fact. If I make any general statement whatever about men or beasts or stones, I, of course, a.s.sume that there is a corresponding cla.s.s of things in respect of each of which the proposition is equally true. As soon as I say anything, therefore, about morality or politics, which is intended to be true of men in general, I a.s.sume, in this sense, that men are so far equal that something may be predicated, indifferently, of every member of the cla.s.s man. It is very natural and easy to convert this into the proposition that the concrete men of whom I am speaking are, in some sense, actually equal. In doing so, however, I am either making a false statement, or begging the question. As a matter of fact, men are, in many respects, as far as possible from being equal. The real question, therefore, is whether the inequalities which undoubtedly exist are or are not relevant to the political inequalities which I have to consider. As a matter of fact, the inequalities which were challenged by the revolutionary writers were, as I think, and as most of us think, entirely unjustifiable. At any rate, they had, as a matter of fact, produced widespread discontent and bitter antipathies between cla.s.ses. It was the existence of these antipathies to which the outbreak was due. The peasant, for example, felt that he was forced to give up the fruit of his labour to the n.o.ble, and that the n.o.ble was discharging no duty to justify his demands. The peasant, probably, could not read; he was unaware that Rousseau or Voltaire was laying down principles which would cover his case; he had never even heard of philosopher or philosophy; only, when the time was ripe, when the upper orders had become useless, and the lower cla.s.ses had acc.u.mulated a sufficient quant.i.ty of pa.s.sion, of indignant or vindictive feeling, an outraged sense of justice, the crash came, and any formula which would cover the particular case was acceptable. The doctrine then made its fortune; not because it was true, or because it was demonstrable, but because it gave the shortest and simplest expression to the prevailing sentiment. The philosophical dogma, which had been lying idle for generations, doing no particular harm or good, was, suddenly, converted into a war-cry, the more effective because the real vagueness and uncertainty of its application enabled those who used it to save themselves the trouble of thinking or arguing. Instead of subst.i.tuting particular grievances, and showing that this or that inequality in general was useless and objectionable, they could, in half a dozen words, denounce all inequality, and be perfectly satisfied with a formula which was imposing for its generality, though true only in its particular application.

I take this familiar case, not only as familiar, but because it seems to me to be typical. Similar general remarks might, I fancy, be made about any of the great religious movements which have, undoubtedly, most profoundly affected human society. They are not due to the philosophers; to the abstract meditations of refined thinkers upon ultimate principles; but to great underlying social changes. Our Christian apologists of the last century held the quaint belief that a new creed was caused by the occurrence of certain miraculous facts, susceptible of legal proof. It is sufficiently obvious to us that this is to invert the process. Given the faith, and there is never any difficulty in supplying the miracles. No quant.i.ty of a.s.sertions as to miraculous events would have the slightest effect, unless there were a predisposition to accept them. The same answer applies to the theory that a new religion owes its success to the discovery of new moral truths. In the first place, there are, properly speaking, no sudden discoveries in morality; and in the next place, the mere statement of a moral doctrine, and even the presentation of a lofty moral type, can have little importance unless the soil is already prepared, and the doctrine is but the overt utterance of the sentiments which are seeking for expression. The only explanation that we can give of such events is the social explanation.

There are periods, that is in history, when the old order is out of joint; when society has outgrown the inst.i.tutions which were adequate at a previous stage, and when, therefore, the beliefs a.s.sociated with them become oppressive, and can no longer pa.s.s without challenge; when different races and nations have been brought into collision or combination, and crushed together into new forms by conquest and commerce; when, therefore, the several creeds are no longer supported by the patriotism which has ceased to have a meaning; when a vast amalgam of different faiths and modes of life has been formed out of many heterogeneous elements; and thus a need is created for some wider and more comprehensive system of belief corresponding to the general needs of society. In that case the influence of the philosopher may be of some importance, because he can do something towards suggesting the most workable compromise, and of exposing superst.i.tions which have lost their old support, and the instinctive loyalty of their adherents. Even then his voice will not be predominant. The creed will survive which is most suited to the state of the average intellect; it will include a large element of the ancient modes of thought, which still insist upon finding some satisfaction, and which, indeed, have a strange vitality beneath the surface, even when explicitly disavowed by the official interpreters of the faith.

Now, if this be accepted as a rough sketch of the actual course of the development of belief, what is the conclusion as to the philosopher"s function? Does it go to suggest that philosophy is but a vanity and vexation of spirit, and does it reduce the philosopher to a humbler position than is sometimes claimed for him? My answer would be, in the first place, that the case against philosophy would have to be frankly admitted if the criterion sometimes tacitly suggested be the true one.

Nothing could be more hopeless than the claim of any philosophy whatever to have laid down a definitively satisfactory plan of things in general.

When Mr. Balfour observes that an Aristotle or Aquinas or Descartes has not laid down a tenable theory of the universe, I can only add that the very phrase--theory of the universe--conveys a sufficient refutation. It is idle, or worse than idle, to imagine that we can lay down, or even hope to lay down, anything of the kind. It needs only one of those glances into the surrounding infinities which I have suggested, or the briefest survey of the history of philosophy, to reveal the sheer impossibility of the attempt. No one, perhaps, ever quite imagined that his speculation could really lay bare the ultimate ground plan of things in general. But, certainly, philosophers have, at times, thought, or spoken as if they thought, that they could construct a body of first principles which should be to knowledge in general what a science is to some particular application,--the general theory of physics, for example, to astronomy. Philosophy would then be a system of such ultimate principles. The day for such systems has, I think, pa.s.sed. We have learnt that it is for ever impossible to spin real knowledge out of pure logic. What the universe, or the little bit of it that we know, actually is, can only be learnt by experience; and if experience presupposes categories or forms of intuition, still, without experience, they remain empty; as incapable of producing truth as a mill of grinding flour without corn. Philosophers must admit that on such terms we get only "brain cobwebs"; ingenious feats of intellectual legerdemain, where the operator shows his skill by dexterously hiding away his a.s.sumptions, and bringing them out at the end as triumphantly demonstrated conclusions. The more modest ideal, which is now presented to us, is what is called the unification of knowledge. That means, no doubt, that we have to bring our theories into harmony and consistency; to get rid of the hypothetical and conjectural elements which have intruded themselves from earlier and cruder speculation; and so to a.n.a.lyse the primary factors of thought and the most general conceptions, that we may not have to a.s.sume in one relation what we dispute in another. Even this process is, no doubt, exceedingly difficult; it is difficult partly because the human mind has, generally speaking, to begin at the wrong end; to proceed upon postulates which break down here and there and leave inconvenient fragments remaining elsewhere; partly because some philosophers are still open to the charge that they raise a dust and then complain that they cannot see; and, briefly, because, in one way or other, what with the dulness of the ordinary mind and what with the over-subtlety of the acute, our thoughts and beliefs have got into intricate tangles, which will require enormous patience and judgment to wind off and weave into a satisfactory tissue. Genuine philosophers, doubtless, will learn in time how to set about the work. It will probably strike them that instead of evolving pretentious systems of theology, and ethics, and politics, and art, each purporting to give an exhaustive theory of the subject, and each destined to melt away, leaving some infinitesimal residuum of real suggestion, they will have to follow a slower method of gradual and tentative investigation. If so, we must undoubtedly a.s.sign to philosophy a more modest position than has sometimes been claimed for it. It must resign its claim to a vision of transcendental realities, to a knowledge of things in themselves, and of the ultimate groundwork of the universe. It has not, I hold, a subject-matter peculiar to itself; it reveals no principles belonging to a separate sphere of thought; it corresponds simply to the attempt to correct and harmonise the cruder thoughts of the average human being, and to state explicitly in their purity the principles which have been all along implicitly involved in his ordinary observations. It is, therefore, not a substantive, but an adjective; philosophy is not a distinct department of thought, and cannot be defined by itself. All we can say is, that we think philosophically in so far as we think rightly.

When our mode of conceiving the world includes no heterogeneous or conflicting element, we shall be philosophers; but we shall not, in that capacity, have a separate dominion of our own.

Now, it will probably do no harm to philosophers more than to other men, to be impressed with a sense of modesty and a right appreciation of the necessary limitations of their enterprise. You have been trying to soar beyond the atmosphere, and you will make the better use of your wings when you learn that they won"t support you in a vacuum. Your failure is not due to the want of aquiline powers of flight, but to the melancholy truth that even an eagle can"t do much in an air-pump. Is not that a rather consoling reflection? But here the philosopher begins to be recalcitrant. You are not lowering my pretensions, he says, but attacking the power of man to attain truth upon any terms. All that is given to us in experience is the effect of underlying causes; if the causes vary the effects would vary; and, unless, therefore, you can get back to the cause, your knowledge must remain empirical and radically uncertain. Destroy all transcendental truths, and the phenomenal world itself becomes a mere shifting phantasmagoria, on which we can trace only coincidences and sequences, but are entirely unable to say that they will ever recur again. The argument, of course, raises the recollection of library upon library of controversy. I can only touch one point. Practically, we do not trouble ourselves about this difficulty. We are quite convinced that we know a great many things: we are sure that the sun will rise and set to-morrow; we have no doubt as to the properties of the ordinary objects, of trees and stones and steam-engines; every action of our lives implies a certain confidence in what is called the uniformity of nature; and it is plain enough that even if our knowledge be, in some sense, only a knowledge of probabilities, yet, from its effect upon conduct, it may be exactly the same as a knowledge of certainties. There may be an indefinite distance between the "necessary truth" that two and two make four and the empirical truth that a stone will fall; but if all the evidence attainable goes to prove that the stone will fall, I should be as foolish not to act upon that hypothesis as not to a.s.sume the truth of the arithmetical formula. Now, it is, of course, the growth within recent generations of vast systems of such truths which has alarmed the philosopher. He contrasts his own fluctuating and conflicting dogmas with the steady growth and a.s.sured results and mutual confirmation of the established physical sciences. He fears that they will obtain a prestige which will enable them to crush him and sweep his pretended knowledge into the limbo of alchemy and astrology and scholastic logomachy. Here comes in the argument which is really the keystone of Mr. Balfour"s whole theory; and, as I cannot accept it, I must dwell upon its true nature. It looks, at first sight, like a retort upon the men of science. Your knowledge, he seems to say, is as vain as your antagonist"s. Your physics, and astronomy, and chemistry, and physiology are mere empty shows, like the metaphysical theories that have gone to their long home in histories of philosophy. But to say this would be to accept complete scepticism, and a kind of scepticism which Mr. Balfour would, I am sure, disavow. He believes, of course, just as strongly as any one of us believes, in the astronomical theories of Newton and Laplace; or in the mathematical theories of the great physical sciences.

That in which he disbelieves is a kind of b.a.s.t.a.r.d science called "naturalism," which, as he tells us, leads to contradictory or incoherent results. The naturalist, it appears, proposes to confine himself to the evidence of the senses, and ends by accepting a view of the world entirely inconsistent with the sensible perceptions. I see a green field: an object which has visual and other properties recognised by my organs of sense. No, says this misguided naturalist, you do not see what you suppose; what really happens is, that there is a vast whirlpool of atoms impinging upon each other and setting up vibrations, the last set of which is communicated to another set of atoms, called my optic nerve. These atoms, by their very nature imperceptible to the senses, are the only realities. We thus start from the senses and we get a world beyond the senses, a world which is a mere dance of infinite mult.i.tudes of bits of matter performing all manner of extraordinary gyrations and evolutions. The sensible impressions of colour, sound, and so forth, are mere illusions, somehow arising in a figment called the mind. This mind is a mere phantom--an unreal spectator of things and events, among which it has no place, and upon which it exercises no influence.

Now, let me say first that I agree with Mr. Balfour that the doctrine thus imputed to the "naturalist" is absurd. I do not believe, for I cannot believe, that I am only a dance of atoms. I "cannot" believe, I say, for the words are to me meaningless. My sensations and emotions are to me the typical realities. I cannot doubt the real existence of pain and pleasure, grief and joy, whatever else I may doubt. I believe, for example, that my toothache is a reality; and n.o.body will ever persuade me that it is merely a set of molecular changes in my tooth. That it, in some way, is dependent upon such changes I fully believe; but that is quite a different statement. And, secondly, I agree with Mr. Balfour (or with what I take to be Mr. Balfour"s belief) that the scientific doctrines which are reached by help of these atoms are established truths. I believe those doctrines, not because I am convinced by the arguments, which I may not have examined or be capable of examining; nor simply because I trust, though I do trust, in the ability and the candour of the scientific reasoners; but because the doctrines can be and have been independently verified. I believe, that is, in modern astronomy because it has enabled modern astronomers to predict eclipses, and enabled Adams and Leverrier to discover Neptune. That is the conclusive proof; for it is impossible to suppose that the power of prediction should be a result of erroneous belief, and such proofs are verifiable by anybody who can observe the phenomena.

Here, then, we have the difficulty, the difficulty upon which the whole of Mr. Balfour"s argument depends. Solve it, and the whole sceptical argument crumbles. The naturalistic theory, we both say, is incredible.

The scientific doctrines based upon it are, as we both admit, una.s.sailable. How is this? I reply, first, because the atoms represent nothing more than a logical scaffolding which enables us to infer one set of sensible phenomena from another. We start from phenomena and we end with phenomena. When we have discovered the so-called "law"--the connecting formula--we can remove the hypothesis as the engineer can remove the provisional supports when he has once got the keystone into his arch. That this is so appears, I think, from the whole scientific procedure. How is the atomic theory obtained? Not by any direct observation of atoms themselves. They are, as Mr. Balfour says, not only not objects of observation, but incapable by their nature of ever being directly observed. The man of science begins by saying, _if_ the phenomena of light correspond in some way to a vibration of atoms, the atoms must vibrate in such and such ways. He finds, again, that the laws so discovered will give the law of other phenomena of light; and he argues quite correctly that his hypothesis is for his purpose verified.

That is, it has enabled him to discover a verifiable and verified formula. In order to do this he has a.s.sumed from the very first the theory which of course appears in his conclusions. All physical science consists ultimately in giving definite formulae in terms of s.p.a.ce and time. It is therefore a.s.sumed that the atoms are to have no qualities except those which are definable in terms of s.p.a.ce. We exclude any other quality because our whole purpose is to obtain purely geometrical measurements. We have asked how those atoms, infinitesimal bits, so to speak, of solid s.p.a.ce, arranged in certain positions, must move in order to correspond to the law given by observation, and we have therefore, of course, predetermined that our answer must come out in terms of atoms.

But, now, what is the error of the "naturalist"? Simply that he has converted the scientific doctrine into an ontological doctrine. He really knows nothing, and cannot possibly know anything, about his atoms, except just this, that they give the law of the phenomena. He has nothing whatever to say to them in any other relation. If he proceeds, as Mr. Balfour says that he proceeds, to declare that nothing exists except atoms, that they are the ultimate realities, that they are "things in themselves," or objects independent of any subject, he is going beyond his tether, pa.s.sing from science to transcendental metaphysics, and getting into hopeless confusion. In fact, after he has done his worst we may still follow Berkeley and deny the existence of matter, or declare with Clifford that atoms are only bits of mindstuff, or adopt any other metaphysical theory we please. The atoms at most are things which we judge from the a.n.a.logy of the senses; and it is a pure illusion to suppose that they can ever take us into an extra-sensible world. They represent not only a convenient but an indispensable contrivance for enabling us to formulate scientific laws, such as those of light and heat; but they take us no further.

In a remarkable pa.s.sage, Mr. Balfour sketches an a.n.a.logy, which gives the application of this to philosophical or theological questions; and I will venture to give my own interpretation of the argument because it seems to lead to the real point. We believe, he says, in a scientific theory of heat, although our view of the "realities" has changed. People once thought that heat was a substance. They now hold it to be a mode of motion. Yet our "scientific faith" (our faith, I suppose, that things are hot, and that their heat varies according to certain a.s.signed laws) remains unaffected. On the other hand, he says, if we cease to believe in the Christian doctrine of the atonement, we cease also to have that "sense of reconciliation" between G.o.d and man which the doctrine was intended to explain. This he seems to regard as a kind of melancholy paradox. Why is the scepticism harmless in science and fatal in theology? First, what are the admitted facts? A man of science propounds a theory of heat. If his theory does not give us the observed laws, we reject it and adopt a more successful theory. In any case, we, of course, continue to believe in heat. We may know facts without knowing their causes; as, for example, the fact of gravitation, which is not the less certain because it is at present an ultimate fact. Otherwise our knowledge would be limited indeed; for even if the cause (in the scientific sense) were given, we should still have to ask, what is the cause of that cause? If heat is due to certain systems of atoms, we might still inquire how the atoms came to occupy their places, and possess the properties which they actually have. An effect "depends upon" a cause, as we naturally say; but it does not follow that the knowledge of the effect depends upon the knowledge of the cause. Now, what are the facts which correspond to the facts of heat in the theory of the atonement? If we believe in a certain being, an anthropomorphic deity, who will punish us or reward us, it is, of course, obvious that if we cease to believe in him we shall cease to desire to be reconciled to him. So if I believed that the warmth of my house depended upon a fire next door, and then discovered that no such fire existed, I should of course cease to care about lighting it. In this there is nothing which wants explanation. I suppose, therefore, that what Mr. Balfour means is, that if men have certain emotions,--remorse, for example, or what is called a conviction of sin,--and then learn to reject the theory by which these emotions were explained, they cease also to feel the emotions. In fact, he emphatically accepts the view that, if we cease to accept theology, we shall cease to be moral. The perversity of a few wretched "naturalists" in continuing to be moral is explained as a case of survival; the moral naturalist is the parasite who draws his sustenance from the organism which he infests. Let us consider the scientific a.n.a.logy. I believe in heat, and I accept a scientific theory just as far as it gives me verified laws of heat. I believe, too, in the existence of conscience; that is, I believe that people have real emotions, such as remorse and shame, which correspond to the name. I hold that to be a fact of experience. It would have to be explained, again, so far as explanation is possible, by psychology in the first instance, as heat must be explained by scientific theories. Remorse is a fact, as heat is a fact; and an explanation would consist in giving accurately its place in the moral organism and the laws of its operation. The explanation furnished by any given psychology, by "a.s.sociation," for example, must be accepted or rejected in so far as it explains or fails to explain the facts. If some theory about spiritual "monads" enabled us to show what the conscience is, and how it is, in fact, stimulated or suppressed, we should accept it in the same way as we accept the physical theory of heat. As yet, I need hardly say, no such result has been achieved; and psychology is still far too vague to offer any definite laws of the emotional nature. But in any case, how can a theory about facts make the facts themselves vanish? Would not grief be real just as pain would be real if we could clearly explain how and why it occurred? Why should the "sense of reconciliation" vanish because we show the conditions of its existence? The reason of Mr.

Balfour"s difficulty, I think, appears from what I have said. In the physical theory we can draw the line clearly between the scientific and the philosophical spheres. Mr. Balfour can accept the scientific truth, though he does not accept the doctrine which results from translating it into ontology. But the boundary between psychology and philosophy is far less distinct. We constantly confound questions about the const.i.tution of man, as known to us by experience, with questions about supposed intuitions of ultimate truth. The fact that sin causes remorse is interpreted as meaning that remorse actually is a knowledge of an avenging deity; and when the emotion is thus identified with the belief, it becomes easy to suppose that to destroy the belief is also to destroy the emotion. I think, indeed, that fallacies of that kind are among the commonest in philosophical writings. Now, of course, psychology has something to say in this matter. It may help, and I think that it has helped us to explain how men come to believe in anthropomorphic deities, and to invest them with the attributes of human rulers. But in that way it tends to show not that the conscience is caused by the belief, but to show how, under certain conditions, it has given rise to a belief by other than logical grounds. It suggests no probability that the conscience will disappear with the fallacy, but only that it will act differently when enlightened by a different logic. Conscience disappears no more than heat disappears, when both are explained; though the conduct which the emotions or the sensations determine will, of course, be affected.

And now, I can say what I take to be the difficulty, and the escape. Mr.

Balfour draws a kind of parallel between the scientific creed, which is, as he would put it, "based upon" a metaphysical doctrine, and the theological creed, which has a similar foundation. If the metaphysical foundation is so uncertain in both cases, must not the scientific be as uncertain as the theological? If we know nothing about atoms, or, on the other hand, about souls, we must be either sceptical in both cases, or credulous in both. There are the same underlying difficulties, and if we manage to overlook them in the case of science, why not overlook them in the case of theology? Conversely, if we elect to be sceptics in theology, how can we escape from scepticism in science? And, as a thorough-going scepticism is, doubtless, an impossible state of mind in practice, the conclusion of many people will be to accept belief in spite of certain gaps in our logical foundations. This, no doubt, is eminently convenient for the "constructive" process adumbrated by Mr.

Balfour, which I certainly regard as extra-logical. But is any such dilemma really offered to us? The obvious answer is, that scientific truth, as Mr. Balfour admits, is not "based upon" metaphysical theory.

The astronomical doctrine of a Newton remains equally valid, whatever is the ultimate nature of s.p.a.ce or laws or atoms; whether we are materialists or empiricists or idealists. The philosophical "basis" is not really a set of truths which we must know before we can know the astronomical theory; but simply a set of hypotheses which have to conform to the truths given by experience. The una.s.sailable truths are just the facts which we observe, and which science enables us to describe accurately and state systematically. If a metaphysical doctrine has any bearing upon these facts, which seems to be doubtful, it must conform to the facts, and not the facts to it. So long as no such theory is proved, we can afford to remain metaphysically sceptical without losing our hold upon the scientific truth. Now, I should say, what is true of the physical sciences is true of all our knowledge. We may study the moral sciences as we can study the physical sciences. We can observe and colligate the facts of emotion and volition, as we can observe the position of the stars and the laws of heat. Therefore, in so far as theology is an attempt to give a theory of the universe in general, we must accept or deny the doctrines just in so far as they serve to explain or fail to explain the facts. But, in any case, the facts will remain unaltered, and will not vanish because we may be unable to understand them. But theology corresponds, also, not to the scientific method, but to the ontological inquiries which are represented by Mr.

Balfour"s "naturalism". Both doctrines, as I should say, lead to incoherence, to contradictions covered by ambiguous language, and to hopeless difficulties, which, in theology, are described as inscrutable mysteries. I am, therefore, quite ready, with Mr. Balfour, to reject naturalism, but, on the same grounds, I also reject the transcendental theology. Attainable truth is equally independent of all such theories; and were it otherwise, we should be doomed to hopeless scepticism. Mr.

Balfour"s a.n.a.logy, therefore, apparently upsets his conclusion. I believe in heat, and I believe in the conscience. I reject the atoms, and I reject the doctrine of atonement. I reject it, if it be meant for science, because, so far from explaining the facts, the facts explain how the false doctrine was generated. I reject it, if it is meant for philosophy, because, like other transcendental theories, it leads to hopeless controversies, and appears to me to be incredible as soon as any such theology as is tenable by a philosopher is subst.i.tuted for the crude theology of a savage.

We are driven to scepticism, then, if we first declare that scientific knowledge depends upon metaphysical theory; and then that all metaphysical theory is moonshine. I do not accept the first principle; and I hold that the danger to morals from metaphysical difficulties is pretty much the same as the danger that the stars will leave their courses if we adopt a wrong theory of an astronomy. We fancy that when we are explaining facts, we are, somehow, creating them; as the meteorologist in _Ra.s.selas_ observed the clouds till he came to think that he caused the rain. The facts upon which morality depends are the facts that men have certain emotions; that mothers love their children; that there are such things as pity, and sympathy, and public spirit; and that there are social instincts upon the growth of which depends the vitality of the race. We may, of course, ask how more precisely these emotions act, and what functions they discharge. We may make historical and psychological and metaphysical inquiries; and we may end, if ever we reach such a consummation, by establishing what we may call a science of ethics. But the facts do not depend upon the explanation. The illusion of their dependence is easily produced. You make your theory of morality, and then you define morality as a belief in the object required by your theory. It follows, of course, that morality will disappear with the belief--or else that your theory is wrong. Morality, said some people, is a belief in future rewards and punishments. If that belief disappears, morality--that is, their morality--must disappear too. But that morality--taken as the actual sentiment which they have erroneously defined--should disappear also, no more follows than it follows that heat will disappear when we discover that there is no such thing as the old imaginary substance of heat. The doctrine is now more generally urged in a different form. Theology, it is said, is essential to morality. Such bold a.s.sertions may be best met by a dogmatic a.s.sertion of the inverse case. Theology, as I hold, is not the source of the moral instincts, but, under certain conditions, derives its real power from them. Theology, in the first place, is a word including not only heterogeneous but contradictory meanings,--Baal and Jehovah, the Mumbo-jumbo of the negro and Spinoza"s "ens absolute infinitum". To the enormous majority of the human race, the more metaphysical conception is hopelessly unintelligible. When a savage expresses his crude sense of duties to the tribe under the form of belief in an ancestral ghost, is the morality made by the belief, or the belief generated by the incipient moral emotion? Does he believe in G.o.d or really in a man like himself, and respected precisely because he is like himself? Is not the truth tacitly acknowledged by the more philosophical religions? Their adherents admit that the G.o.d of philosophy is too abstract a Being to excite any emotion; he fades into Nature or the Unknowable, and it is impossible to love one whom, by his very definition, you can neither benefit nor injure and whose omnipotence makes even justice a mockery.

Therefore, they make a G.o.d out of a man, and by boldly combining in words two contradictory sets of attributes, make what in theology is called a mystery, and in common sense called by a different name. Does not that amount to confessing that the true source of morality is in the human affections of like for like, and not in that sentiment towards a transcendental object of which you have chosen to make your definition?

And, finally, if we ask what is the relation of theology to morality, from a historical point of view, we see the same result. Undoubtedly, theology has been a bulwark of morality in one way. It has expressed the veneration of mankind for the most deeply-seated customs of the race. It has been the form through which, though not the cause owing to which, men have expressed the importance of adhering to certain established inst.i.tutions of the highest importance to mankind. Briefly, therefore, it represents the conservative instincts. But, for that reason, it has naturally lagged behind an advancing morality. The newer religions have been precisely protests against the objectionable conduct of the old-fashioned deities who retained the manners and customs of a more barbarous period; and have, therefore, been regarded by the older faith, sometimes with justice, as atheistic. Without referring to the familiar cases, I am content to appeal to the present day. What are the relative positions of the theologian and his opponent during the modern phase of evolution? The theologian has, in the main, maintained the sanct.i.ty of old inst.i.tutions and customs; and I do not doubt that he has rendered a useful service. But the demand for justice, for the abolition of slavery, of the hardships of the poor and oppressed, the desire to construct society upon a wholesomer ideal, has been generated, not by theological speculation, but by the new relations into which men have been brought and the new sentiments developed. It has been accepted most fully by men hostile to all theology, by the free-thinker, the atheist, and the materialist, whom the orthodox denounces as criminal. Doubtless the denouncer has excuses: the reformer may err in the direction of excessive demolition; but the very survival of the older creeds depends, as we all see, upon their capacity for a.s.similating and finding utterance for the moral convictions which have arisen outside of their limits, and, generally, in defiance of their authority. To say, therefore, that the morality depends upon the survival of the metaphysical theory, seems to me to be inverting the true relation.

I end by suggesting what is to my mind the true moral of these speculations. The vanity of philosophising means the vanity of certain philosophical pretensions; of the chimerical belief that the philosopher lays down the first principles of belief in ethics or in other departments of life, in such a sense that the destinies of the race or of knowledge depend upon accepting and applying his principles. His function is a humbler one, though one of vast importance. The great philosophical systems have vanished, though they have cleared the air.

They were primitive attempts at construction; results of the fact that we have to act before we can think; and to a.s.sume postulates which can only be verified or falsified by the slow experience of ages. But the process by which truth is advanced is not confined to the philosopher; or perhaps we should rather say that some sort of crude philosophy is embedded even in the feeblest and earliest speculations of mankind. Our thoughts are guided by an implicit logic long before we have even a conception of logic in the abstract, or have the least thought of codifying and tabulating its formulae. So every savage who begins to make a tool is exemplifying some mechanical principle which will not be put into accurate and abstract language till countless generations have pa.s.sed. Every one at the present day who is using his wits is philosophising after a fashion, and is contributing towards the advancement of philosophy. He is increasing the ma.s.s of still more or less chaotic knowledge, the whole of which is to that philosopher what the particular set of facts is to the student of physical science. The philosopher has not to evolve first principles out of himself, so much as to discover what are the principles which have been unconsciously applied; to eliminate the obsolete elements; to bring the new into harmony; to verify them, or describe how they may be verified; and so to work towards the unification and systematisation of knowledge in general. Probably he will make a great many blunders in his task; but it may be some comfort to reflect that even blunders are often useful, and that he is not in the terribly responsible position of really framing laws for the universe or for man, but only of clearing up or codifying the laws which are already in operation.

FORGOTTEN BENEFACTORS.

I was reading not long ago some remarks[A] which impressed me at the time, and upon which, as it came to pa.s.s, I have had reason to reflect more seriously. The writer dwelt upon the vast services which have been rendered to the race by men of whom all memory has long since faded away. Compare, he said, the England of Alfred with the England of Victoria; think of the enormous differences which have been brought about in thirty generations; and then try to estimate how large a share of all that has been done in the interval should be put to the credit of thousands who have long sunk into oblivion, and whose achievements, by the very necessity of the case, can never be properly estimated. A few great names mark every period; the great statesmen, the great churchmen and warriors, are commemorated in our official histories; they are placed upon exalted pedestals; and to them is attributed everything that was done in their time, though, but for the co-operation of innumerable nameless fellow-labourers, they would not have been provided even with the foundations upon which their work was necessarily based.

This remark recalls the familiar discussion about the importance of the individual. Is the hero whom we are invited to worship everything, or is he next to nothing? Is it true, as some writers put it, that had Cleopatra broken her nose, or had a cannon ball gone a hair"s breadth further to the right or left when Napoleon was directing the siege of Toulon, "the whole course of history would have been changed"? Or is it rather true that, as some philosophers would say, no man is indispensable, nor even any man very important: that, if any even of the greatest of men had died of the measles in his infancy, we should have carved a different set of letters upon the pedestals of our statues, but the course of affairs would have run in much the same channel? I will not seek to discuss that old theme, to which it is evident that no very precise answer can be given. It is clearly a question of degree. n.o.body can deny that a great man has an influence in the spheres of action and of thought; but to attempt to say how great an influence he has, how far he depends upon others or could be replaced by others, involves considerations lying in the unprofitable region of vague conjecture.

This only I wish to note. It seems often to be suggested that there is something degrading or ungenerous in taking a side against the importance of the hero. It raises a suspicion that you are a valet, capable of supposing that men are distinguished by the quant.i.ty of lace on their coats, and not by the intensity of the fire in their souls.

And, moreover, the view is fatalistic: it supposes that the destinies of the race are determined by what are denounced as blind "laws," and not by the pa.s.sions and aspirations which guide their energies. To me it seems that it would be easy enough to retort these imputations. I cannot feel that a man of generous sympathies should be therefore inclined to a doctrine which would tend to make the future of the race a matter of chance. The more you believe in the importance of the great men, the more you have to admit that our progress depends upon the innumerable accidents which may stifle the greatest as easily as the smallest career. If some great social change was so absolutely dependent upon the leader who first put into words the demand upon which it is based, or who led the first forlorn hope which made victory possible, that his loss would have been the loss of his cause, it follows that the cause might have been lost if a crust of bread had gone the wrong way. It ought surely to be pleasanter if we are ent.i.tled to hold that we have a stronger ground of confidence; that the great victories of thought and action prove the diffusion of enthusiasm and courage through a wide circle; and that the fall of the chief is sure to make room for a worthy successor. The wider and deeper the causes of progress, the more confidently we can derive hope from the past, and accept with comparative equanimity even the most painful catastrophes.

Nor can I agree that such a view implies any want of susceptibility to the claims of the hero. I do not think that we can pay homage too cheerfully to the great men who form landmarks in history. I admit, most gladly, that the admiration which we feel for such men; the thrill which stirs us in reading of the great patriots and martyrs of the past; the reverence which we are now and then able to pay to a contemporary--to a Lincoln, proving that political action may represent real faiths, not party formulae; to a Gordon, impersonating the sense of duty; or a Father Damien, sacrificing his life for the lepers--is one of the invaluable elements of moral cultivation. But I do not see the connection between this and the desire to exalt the glory of the great man by ignoring the unknown who followed in his steps, and often made them possible. I have not so far attained to the cosmopolitan point of view that my blood is not stirred by the very name of Nelson. Nay, however cosmopolitan I might become, I hope that my sympathies would never blind me to the greatness of the qualities implied in his patriotic devotion. My cosmopolitanism would rather, I hope, lead me to appreciate more generously the similar qualities in his antagonists, and, also, the similar qualities in the "band of brothers" whom he was proud to lead. I should be sorry so to admire Nelson as to forget the st.u.r.dy old race of sea dogs who did their duty, and helped him to do his in a memorable way, some ninety years ago. I would rather believe than not that, had Nelson been killed at the Nile, there were many among his followers who, had the chance come to them, would have led the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, and have made England impregnable. "I trust we have within this realm five hundred good as he" is surely the more heroic tone. But, to drop the old-fashioned appeal to patriotic spirit, is it not true that, in every department of life, it is more congenial to our generous feelings to remember the existence and the importance of those who have never won a general reputation? This has come to be a commonplace in the sphere of scientific discovery. We find, over and over again, that the great discoverer has been all but antic.i.p.ated by his rivals; that his fame, if not his real greatness, depends upon the circ.u.mstance that he has just antic.i.p.ated by a year, or, perhaps, in extreme cases, by a generation, results to which a comparatively second-rate thinker would have been competent a few years later. The winner of the race is apt to monopolise the glory, though he wins only by a hair"s breadth. The familiar instance of Darwin and Mr. Wallace is remarkable, not because the relation of the two thinkers was unique, but because, unfortunately, the generosity with which each acknowledged the merit of the other was exceptional. A great discovery is made when the fertile thought is already going through the process of incubation in a whole circle of intelligent minds; and that in which it first comes to the birth, claims, or, at least, receives, the whole merit, by a right of intellectual primogeniture not much more justifiable than the legal right. Admitting, again, in the fullest sense, the value and the difficulty of that last step which has to be made in order to reach the crowning triumph, it would surely be ungenerous to forget the long series of previous explorations by which alone it was made possible.

There must have been countless forgotten Newtons and Descartes", who, in their day, had to exert equal powers in order to discover what are now the most familiar truths; to invent the simplest systems of arithmetical notation, or solve the earliest geometrical problems, without which neither a Newton nor a Descartes would have been possible. And what is true in science is, surely, equally true of activities which touch most of us more nearly. Of all undeniable claims to greatness I suppose the most undeniable to be the claim of the founders of religions. Their disciples are so much impressed by their greatness that they regard them as supernatural beings, or, in other words, as beings who are the sole and indispensable causes of all the consequences attributed to the prevalence of their doctrines. We are told, constantly, and often as though it were too obvious to need proof, that every moral improvement which has taken place in the world since the origin of Christianity, is due to Christianity, and that Christianity itself is entirely due to its founder. Human nature was utterly corrupt until the Deity became incarnate in the form of a Jewish peasant; and every social or moral step which has since been made in advance--and not one of the unfortunate backslidings by which the advance has since been trammelled--is a direct consequence of that stupendous event. This is the theory of the importance of the individual, raised, so to speak, to its very highest potence. We not only attribute the most important and far-reaching of all changes to a single agent, but declare that that agent cannot have been human, and indeed cannot have been less than the first cause of all changes. I shall not, of course, discuss the plausibility of a doctrine which, if accepted, breaks the whole chain of cause and effect, and makes the later history of the world not an evolution of previously operative process, but the result of an abrupt, mysterious interferenc

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