But in implications about reality the doubter"s consciousness differs from the believer"s consciousness; not by any mere denial, for unqualified denial must be wholly alien to honest doubting, and the doubter is himself a believer, but by a peculiar a.s.sumption as to what the reality is. Simply doubter and believer, so far as they may be taken as independent characters, do not live in the same real world. Thus, for the distinct believer--that is to say, for the specifically dogmatic believer, for him who is, or who for the moment may be supposed to be, [p.195] tenaciously and immovably loyal to some specific body of doctrine and to some specific manner of life--reality is always tethered to some stake; while for the doubter it is too real and too free to suffer any such bondage, being infinite and all-inclusive. For our doubter, at once fully self-conscious and honest, no possible experience can ever be in itself real and final, nor, on the other hand, can any possible experience ever be altogether unreal and illusory. His reality, I say, must be at once free and all-inclusive. Indeed, it could not be either of these without being the other. For him nothing is _the_ reality, just because all things must belong to reality. For him, again, the world"s reality is nowhere, just because everywhere; in no defined thing fixedly and completely, just because in all things--in them not merely distributively, it is true, but as they work together; and invisible and intangible, indeed generally unknowable, just because any consciousness is necessarily limited to the definite and inadequate mediums, or forms, of positive knowledge.
So the doubter has a real world, but his own real world. Moreover, in the great freedom of its reality we see how all things taken individually or distributively, must be, as the word is used, only "relative"; and in the perfect inclusiveness, how nothing, however "relative," can ever be unreal. Relativism and scepticism have been perenially a.s.sociated, but relativism is not a nihilistic, but a deeply realistic philosophy; it is just the sceptic"s natural realism. All things are "relative," but only because reality is at once free from anything, and yet inclusive of all things. What is relative is [p.196]
thus not flatly unreal, as is often supposed, but significantly both real and unreal or neither real--not real to itself alone--nor unreal--not without its part and place in whatever is real. The sceptic, though always a relativist, is thus also a most profound realist, and the nature of his realism must help us greatly to our view of the doubter"s world.
Moreover, Descartes and his followers were also nativists or intuitionists, and, at least for the freer interpretation here permitted, their nativism was of a peculiar order, and it involved, accordingly, a world which was real in a peculiar way. Usually nativism has stood for the a.s.sertion of certain inborn and so necessarily valid and unchangeable ideas or characters or powers; as when men contend that particular ideas of G.o.d are una.s.sailable because immediately intuited as a part of man"s very being, or again when men declare a particular genius to be born, not made, or insist that a voice of conscience born, not bred, in them, tells them explicitly to do and even to make others do this or that specific thing, to live and make others live in this or that specific way, to accept and make others accept this or that specific programme of politics, morals, or religion. Furthermore, nativism of this prevalent type not only has claimed final validity for what is thus inborn--or given independently of the changing conditions of experience--but also has commonly punctuated this claim by viewing the inborn, or the intuited--for example, the dictates of conscience--as direct, immediate, unequivocal signs and mandates of G.o.d himself. Genius has been not human, but divine. The intuition at large has [p.197]
pa.s.sed for nothing more or less than a supernatural revelation. But such an understanding of the innate, though serviceable beyond measure to the "specifically dogmatic believer," and though implying too, as of course it should, the natural, appropriate world of such a believer, does not agree with the principles of Descartes.
Such an understanding of the innate can imply only a world not merely of definite, substantial reality, but also of definite, substantial unreality. How real to some people, how definite and substantial the "unreal" is; how brutally fixed and yet how alien to what they are given to finding real. They are nativists of the conventional type, and for them the negatives of all things are as fixed and as really or as substantially not this or that as the positives to which what is innate for them bears its special witness. Their world, in short, is a world of tethered error as well as tethered truth, of hopeless, unmixed evil as well as a wholly untainted, una.s.sailable--and why not say also hopeless?--virtue, of absolute and effective lawlessness as well as an unswerving law, of a free and omnipotent devil as well as a free and omnipotent G.o.d; for, in simplest language, the rule is a very poor one that does not work both ways. A world, however, which is so const.i.tuted, calls emphatically for revision of the view that imparts its character to it. Where the unreal is as real as the real, the evil as effective as the good, the false as conclusive as the true, there is certainly need of some second thinking. As some good Irish philosopher might put the case, if just this is wholly good or true or real, and just that is wholly [p.198] evil or false or unreal, then _the_ good or _the_ true or _the_ real cannot be exclusively just this, _the_ evil or _the_ false or _the_ unreal cannot be exclusively just that, and _the_ innate, responsible for a world so made, cannot be just in terms of certain fixed ideas or characters or powers. When, forsooth, has the manifest existence of evil in any form, of intellectual or moral error, of political anarchy, of religious heresy, or even of natural violence, not shaken man"s conceits about what is and what is right? The very conceits--and this the more as they are definite and a.s.sertive--help to make the manifest evil, very much as a definite law has its part in making a particular crime, and the evil so arising, as it is distinctly manifested, cannot fail to a.s.sail and unsettle the conceits.
According to the Cartesian nativism, on the other hand, particularly as it was developed by such men as Malebranche and Spinoza, the innate, which is always at once the final appeal of man"s conceits and the conclusive witness to what is absolutely real, was indeed one with the divine or supernatural, but it was perhaps just by reason of its truly divine or supernatural character and origin untethered. How could the universal doubter be born with a specific knowledge or a specific programme of anything, when the definite or fixed, the specific in any quarter whatsoever, must always be a possible object of doubt? Only the purest principle, or spirit, is impregnable against the attacks of the sceptic. To doubt such a principle is indeed only to enhance its importance. The sceptic, then, the universal doubter, is born only with, and what is more he cannot be born without, a real [p.199] interest and constant faith in truth, in true knowledge and right action, but no special experience can ever compa.s.s the length and the breadth, the depth and the height of this interest or this faith. He has a native love for truth and righteousness, a belief in them, as real and as inviolable, as universal and as necessary, as his doubt; but the very doubting in him forever saves both the truth and the righteousness from being destroyed by satisfaction or crucified by any final embodiment. He loves and he trusts with all his heart, and he lives in a world that forever serves the truth and the righteousness of his love and faith.
So, taken at least for what he promised, or for what he said between the lines, Descartes was a nativist without the nativist"s disastrous bondage to form and creed, to fixed character and specific programme. He was a nativist, but for him the innate lacked its self-destructive definiteness; it was just a spirit or principle, or what I have also called a life or power, ever present not in some, but in all experience, and so at once sanctioning all things, and, because able to find perfection in none alone, each single thing being relative, sanctioning also a constant conflict between things as good or true or real, and things as bad or false or unreal. Whatever is relative is necessarily, so to speak, both-sided or divided against itself. The relativity is such conflict. Before the judgment-seat of the innate, in short, all things, being relative, must be parties to conflict both individually and collectively, nor is their conflict anything but an old story to us.
All the paradoxes of experience have been evidences of it. The conflict apart for the present, however, the meaning [p.200] of Descartes"
nativism is just this: truth in all experience, reality in all things, and reality, or truth, a principle, not a programme. Just this, too, discloses to us the nature of the doubter"s real world.
In the last chapter we saw in particular the idea of G.o.d which the universal doubter would naturally and consistently entertain and cherish. We saw how in the proof of G.o.d Descartes, deposing the programme, set the principle in the place of authority, and how in consequence G.o.d became identified with all that was human, with all the seeking and striving, the hoping and despairing, the erring and the suffering, of man"s life. G.o.d"s nature just drew all things into itself; the very conflicts of life were his perfection; the incongruities of experience were his infinite wisdom. But the doubter has a metaphysics, or cosmology, as well as a theology; Descartes lost and regained a world as well as a G.o.d; and the doubter"s metaphysics, or cosmology, proceeds from this simple creed: _Reality in all things_. So runs the creed"s supreme article, and its two important clauses are these, equally familiar to us: _Reality without form or residence_--real as a spirit, not a programme, and: _Nothing finally and fixedly real in itself, yet all things working together for what is real_. With this creed clearly in mind, moreover, we may look out upon the world and see things that possibly we have never seen at all, or not seen so clearly before.
We see that just because reality is so profound, so spiritual, and so inclusive, just because nothing can be absolutely real in itself, all things must be "relative"--this we saw before, but have we ever quite understood [p.201] stood the meaning of relativity?--and must be relatively _at once real and unreal_. Perhaps I am still adding little, if anything, to what has been said already, but distinctly and emphatically the real world can comprise only things that individually are relative, relatively real or good or true, and that being thus relative secure their place and part in absolute reality only by being also relatively unreal or evil or false. The very conflict of the relative _ipso facto_ puts it in perfect unity with the absolute. And so, seeing this, we see not only a world of relativity and consequent conflict, but also a world whose universal relativity makes for a genuine absoluteness, and whose conflict can never be in vain, but instead is always realizing and effective. Thus, all things relative, that is to say all things at once real and unreal, good and bad, true and false, are in the constant service of the absolute; and then, only employing again the language of religion and, if not exactly interpreting, at least adapting some well-known lines:
All service ranks the same with G.o.d-- Whose puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last or first.
All things, serving reality, are whatever they are together; yet could not be that, were there not a constant conflict in and among all things.
All men serving G.o.d are whatever they are together; yet, in like manner, could not be that were human society not a sphere of conflict harsh and unceasing.
So we find ourselves well upon our way in the world of the doubter--and what a world it is! No [p.202] finality, because so much reality.
Conflict, forever necessary to its effective realization. Relativity, that is to say finiteness, of all things, of all things in it, just for the sake of its own true absoluteness, just to conserve its own actual infinity.
And, also, in such a world human life, individually and socially, gets new interest and vitality. There is given to human life so much fellowship, and yet, at the same time, so much hostility and compet.i.tion. Society and the individual, though neither loses its own peculiar importance, are so vitally intimate with each other. We cannot, however, enlarge now upon this point. Another consequence of the peculiar realism of the sceptic has a more pressing interest.
Is our universal doubter naturally and honestly an evolutionist or a creationalist? Of course, he may be neither, or he may be one or the other with a meaning different from that usually recognized. Terms like these are so very hard to control. Conceivably the doubter, a very versatile character always, might even be both evolutionist and creationalist. But, as the terms are commonly used, he must be said at least to have his face towards an evolutional and away from a creational view. The difference, again, is seen in that between principle and programme. An evolutional world is the working out of a principle; a created world, of a programme--the fixed design of some specified being.
True, one may speak with much significance of persistent, continuous creation, of a creation active at all times and in all things, and it is to the point that the Cartesians made much of a doctrine that was very near to such a notion; but a truly continuous creation [p.203] could be only an orthodox subst.i.tute, or disguise, for evolution. A truly continuous creation could be bound by no programme; by definition it could have neither date in time nor location in s.p.a.ce. And, what is of even greater moment, a continuous creator, ever present and ever active, could never be more or less than the persistent reality of the world itself. How could he be aloof or different? So have we come, once more, to the immanence of G.o.d as a necessary idea of the sceptic.
The doubter"s world, then, is the scene, as realistic as you will and perhaps we may say, too, without unwarranted enthusiasm, as bright beneath the morning sun, of the ever present, ever active life of G.o.d or--with the same meaning--of an evolution which we may call G.o.d or nature as we please. From this thought, too, if only we remember that nothing is unreal and no experience is without some contact with reality, there is but a step to the idea that G.o.d and man are actively parties to one and the same life. To repeat from above, the conflicts of human life are the perfection, the perfect living of G.o.d. G.o.d is, nay, G.o.d"s life is, not what some, but what all men do, and the doubter"s world is just the world, the world of things always relative, the world of constant conflict, in which alone this can be true.
II. THE PERFECT SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL.
But we pa.s.s to the second feature of this world in which we are journeying, namely, to the sympathy of the spiritual and the physical.
[p.204] As a matter of course the sceptic, by his peculiar att.i.tude of mind, must imply something with reference to the relation of the two worlds, or the worlds commonly supposed to be two, the spiritual and the material, and because for him the reality cannot be exclusively one definite thing or any number, small or large, of definite things, all of them independent and exclusive, he must imply in the world of things, be these two or as many as you please, that they always work together for whatever is real. Such an implication at first hearing may or may not appear to be a pregnant one, but at least it suggests that in some genuine way there must be sympathy between the two things, the two worlds--spirit and matter, mind and body. These two must work together for whatever is real.
But by this necessary sympathy between the spiritual and the material is not meant a mere parallelism so called. Thinkers, present and past, have tried to be satisfied with such a meaning. To be quite real, however, sympathy must be substantial even to the point of unity, not formal.
Some friends, and even some married people, are parallel, life matching life at each and every point, but not positively and vitally sympathetic. Still, in parallelism, the very name for which is fairly indicative of its import, there is a convenient approach to the meaning here intended. Moreover, our Cartesian philosophers were much given to a theory of parallelism in their views of the relation of the two spheres of mind and matter; their specific doctrine of continuous creation, already referred to, was parallelistic; and they found the human mind and [p.205] the human body, though distinctly two, still "parallel."
Then, too, in more recent times, parallelism has been in evidence, figuring conspicuously at least as a working standpoint in the psychological laboratory, and figuring also, I venture to add, as an important a.s.sumption in philanthropic work. Accordingly, although the term itself does convey a good deal of its meaning, I shall try, in words as simple as possible, to show exactly what the theory of parallelism is. This done, we shall be able to see, or think through parallelism to sympathy of a more genuine and a more vital sort.
As was said, the doctrine of continuous creation, holding as it does that the mental and spiritual life of G.o.d and the constant changes in the natural world, the world said to be of his creation, are always in accord, G.o.d in his relation to the world being, so to speak, always up to date and having his attention on every place and part, is distinctly a parallelistic doctrine; but, quite apart from any theological reference, parallelism a.s.serts that all states, or events, in the two spheres of body and mind, of spirit and matter, are (1) equally real and substantial, and (2) perfectly harmonious and consistent, in just the sense that always in connection with any condition or change in one realm there is an accompanying condition or change in the other, although (3) between the two there exists and can exist no causal connection whatever. Obviously to make either, whether by what is known as causation or in any other way, the producing and wholly determining condition of the other, or of anything in the other, would be at once to unsettle the equivalence or balance of their reality, and _equally real_ [p.206] _they must be_. Thus, in more detail, mind is denied any independent part in the production or determination of anything in the material realm, and matter is in no way the source of what transpires in mind. Each is, so far as the other is concerned, quite its own master.
Each is absolutely without any arbitrary influence, any influence not natural or sympathetic or co-operative, upon the other. So to speak, neither imposes on the other a "must" that is not at the same time already the other"s "would." In other words, any state in one is always the occasion, but, so far as an independent causation goes, the wholly pa.s.sive occasion of something quite pertinent occurring in the other. Is there an idea, a state of consciousness; then, corresponding, there is some real thing, some physical object adequate to the idea. Is there an act of will; then, corresponding to it, some movement in the material world. Were the relation different from this, were mind and matter ever independent causes, not merely coincidents or perhaps co-operative causes, of each other, then, as is worth adding, besides the disturbance of the equivalence of reality, already referred to, there would be implied a fixity of plan, or manner of action, and a definiteness of possessed power in the nature of the supposed causes, and these implications would also give offence.
Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation--on some plan--of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever localized or with an exclusive residence. [p.207] In very much the same way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute monarchy or of an absolute inst.i.tution, whether church or state.
Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of the world must always be only one among other active things, each also with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, if not actually through their differences working together and harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, lastly, as something not formally a.s.serted by parallelism but still far from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting.
To give a single ill.u.s.tration, though this may be quite superfluous, parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any independent _ab extra_ causation, but [p.208] nevertheless at every thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the environment"s mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so practical? The credit here has usually been given to a _tertium quid_, to G.o.d, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. G.o.d is the Great Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met--how about that?
Are the workman"s mind and his environment each at once acting and acted upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its a.s.sertion of the parallelism and in its view of G.o.d as mediator rather than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not openly a.s.sert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door to recognition of such a view.
In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as [p.209] I find myself able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism--at least the dualism of the medieval type--already in a shroud. Even dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a decent burial. With the pa.s.sing of dualism, however, the sympathy becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation.
Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical.
Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily [p.210]
detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself should be indeterminate--_always a tertium quid_--and, in the second place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of a.s.sumed unity or co-operation among all the elements--as, for example, by Leibnitz"s doctrine of pre-established harmony.
But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the doubter"s world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is difficult. Still, I submit that the [p.211] effect of correspondence, whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, and so to make one"s nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter"s world mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter"s world man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose.
As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved from all danger of any _arbitrary_ interference from the physical world, has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the positive a.s.surance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be exemplified in the [p.212] natural world, or--as Hegel said, giving more direct expression to the same idea--the real is rational and the rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental and the physical world.[1]
Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker in the doubter"s world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions which he reaches will be exemplified in his [p.213] world and so to be able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is no single individual developing some particular point of view, although even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought.
Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and broader than just what he sees, or--amounting really to the same thing--only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual accommodation with that of others. In the doubter"s world the thought that is at once free and fully applicable is social--just as we know doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, _though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring_, but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,[2] and in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, makes up for its consequent [p.214] relativity and subjectivity by inner paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and a.s.sumes accordingly only the value of a means to an end.
Much has been said in earlier chapters[3] of the paradoxical nature of human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first sight seeming to blast man"s ordinary experience, and his science also, these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all individuals, these views always working together for what is true and real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior to [p.215] anything that is either merely individual or merely social.
The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the practical experience of what is real.
With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its character as a general att.i.tude or method. It is not strictly a science, but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no promise of future changes? But whatever has a history--can this be quite "pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum never is a point. The perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous lever, so [p.216] necessary to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism.
Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, Descartes, was almost the inventor of the a.n.a.lytic Geometry, and that this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his G.o.d or his material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least sometimes so called, as [p.217] a method or att.i.tude exacting clearest possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics--so much more truly than any other discipline--is superior to anything that is either merely individual or abstractly social.
So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order.
Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, represented by G.o.d in the character of an extraneous being, by a personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, often if not usually described as objects of superst.i.tion, no longer interfere with nature"s orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature"s sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it.
[p.218] And what, in more detail, of this sympathetic nature--of this ideal world, or perfect home, of thinking man? With much interest we certainly might trace all the aspects of its character corresponding to the different phases of the thinker"s life, but discussion of them all would take too much of our s.p.a.ce and might seriously tax an already tried patience. So we shall confine ourselves to one thing alone. The truly free thinker was said to be one who believes in what he knows or thinks, but only as a working view to something else. No thought of his could ever compa.s.s the fulness of truth within him. What, then, of nature?
Corresponding to the thinker"s positive knowledge, to the specific law or order, which at one time or another he finds manifest in his world, there is the well-known, but often misunderstood, character of nature as a great mechanism, moving of course under the law. But corresponding to his only tentative acceptance, though always trustful use of what he knows, there is the much neglected character of nature as not an idle, unproductive mechanism, always doing exactly the same thing, but, if I may so speak, a moving, developing, ever-productive one, serving some end larger and deeper than the known law. Nature must indeed be a machine if the thinker"s knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the knowledge itself is never final.
The material, mechanical character of nature, as I have said, is often misunderstood. The real meaning of it is lost, and with serious results.
In the first [p.219] place, it is taken as if it involved a wholly external, physical nature, and in the second place it is taken as if it represented this nature only as moving through its changes _according to a certain law_ and as having in consequence nothing to do but keep up the dead, strictly "mechanical" existence of its law-fixed character and incidentally involve man in the tireless turning of its fatal wheels.
But nothing could be more superficial, or even more needlessly superst.i.tious, than this. Obvious facts are overlooked or, if seen, forgotten. The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known --of a nature not alien--ever have any but a relative value, a provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though what is known is always informed with the law of her moving; and this is to make her more than a mere machine. Again, no known law is ever _the_ law, and under _the_ law nature must be qualitatively different from what under the known law she appears to be. To neglect this difference, then, is seriously to misunderstand the mechanical character of nature.
Yet some one promptly objects that I am not at all fair to the common understanding of mechanicalism. I am told that no one ever thinks of nature as revolving strictly in accord with any known law. All men who give any thought to the matter concede that the really ultimate law must be not anything that is known, but only what is yet to be known, and is [p.220] merely like in kind to such laws as men have cognizance of. This interesting concession, however, quite fails of its purpose, since it does not meet the real difficulty here in question. It shows mechanicalism, not indeed bound to any particular knowledge, but nevertheless still conceiving the final lawfulness of nature _after the a.n.a.logy_ of a particular law, the merely known or unknown or unknowable character of which matters not at all. The a.n.a.logy is what misleads. The a.n.a.logy only serves to deaden what really lives.
When will men cease to think of the whole after the a.n.a.logy of the part?
Of _the_, as if it were _a_? When will G.o.d cease to be only another person? And the universe only another thing? And the lawfulness or unity of all nature only another formula? This or that formula may show nature a mechanism as smooth running and as blindly given to dead routine as could be imagined, but nature is ever more and other than known formulae of men, and as more and other, or say as answering to the free spirit of truth that moves in the thought of men, she is as free in her real lawfulness as she is infinite. By reason of her infinity there is no law that she may not break. _A_ law may make her a mechanism, dead and idle; _the_ law makes her an organism living and productive. How a positivistic science, making all knowledge wait on actual experience, and accepting all knowledge only tentatively, can ever be mechanicalistic or appeal to the ordinary understanding as an argument for the mechanicalistic view of things is hard to conceive. If one reasons from known forms to uniform activities, must one not also reason from the always provisional [p.221] and developing knowledge to productive activities? Must not the mechanism evolve into something more, adding something to man"s life, realizing something for all life, enlarging even the nature of G.o.d himself?
Once more, therefore, corresponding to the law that men may know and that they can know only as their working hypothesis, there is nature, a mechanism moving and herself at work, while corresponding to the great living fact of nature"s final lawfulness, or to the thinker"s sense of truth as a spirit or principle, not a form or creed or programme, there is the constantly, genuinely productive life of nature, the mechanism, as has now been said several times, ever evolving beyond its form and law. Her law is not a law, any more than the thinker"s pa.s.sion for truth can be finally satisfied by a formula or than G.o.d"s continuously creative life can ever culminate in a single finishing act. The doubter"s world, in short, or so much of it as is said to be material, is not law-bound, but law-free:[4] an organism, not a mechanism; and upon the value of this vision of nature, upon the theoretical or the practical value, whether to science or to philosophy, to morals or to religion, to politics or to industry, it seems hardly necessary to dwell. But, to add a word or two in very general appraisal of it, such a nature, served as it is by every law, by every mechanical action, yet bound to move, is active always from design; its life is essentially purposive. Not that it serves the purpose of anything, or any being, beyond itself, but in every part and movement it is itself always maintaining an end, the end of its [p.222] its own untethered reality.
In words used before, and applied alike to the spiritual and the material, it is at once dynamic and teleologic.
Such a nature, be it especially observed, is the basic condition, if not also the very inspiration of our modern industrialism. This industrial age, struggling against the old-time militarism, in its religion, in its art and in its literature, in its leisure and in its labour, in city and in country, is an age of machinery; of machinery in all the manifold forms demanded by all the various departments of human life, not of wheels and belts alone; an age of the conscious employment, for human purposes, of the resources of all sorts, the materials and the forces which the natural environment affords. Freedom, not slavery, is recognized as man"s ideal portion, and in order to ensure the freedom, not human nature, but physical nature is mechanicalized; or, with the same intent, all the formal means, or instruments, of life are taken as incidents of environment, not as essential to man. So is industrialism supplanting the old-time militarism that sought, in all the relations of life, to identify the human with the instrumental. Witness the values now put upon theories and creeds, upon rites and inst.i.tutions, upon personal habits and social laws. All of these, to begin with, are means, not ends; and, further, they are means whose devising--so man is insisting, as never before--must be, as near as possible, true to nature. The sovereign conviction of this age of industrialism appears to be that the only sure way to human freedom is the way of nature; employment of such instruments as she can supply; obedience to such law as she may disclose.
[p.223] But many have found this age of industrialism insufficient. It seems to them so materialistic. It would view things so much from the standpoint of cold naturalism. The att.i.tude of _laissez faire_ as meaning "Let nature do the work," has so widely possessed the minds of men. If only we could get back some of our former idealism and regard nature as once more subject to some supernatural will! Despair like this, however, is blind and as needless as blind. Dependence on a lawful, mechanical nature can bring to human life no loss of what is truly ideal and personally worthy. Instead, it brings constant gain, for the knowledge of law and the making of machinery do not rob men of personal opportunity, but rather make the opportunity for personal achievement only the more manifest. A mechanical nature is always for man, not man for a mechanical nature; and its movement is always productive for man. If, then, industrial life has tended, as it has been supposed to tend, towards materialism and fatalism, the reason can lie only in the blindness of such as refuse to see clearly this visible fact. Not merely something always doing, but something always that man is doing is the definite message of a nature that ever manifests herself under the form of law. To the thinker, in no uncertain syllables, she says: Go forth and do. And our age of industrialism, if hearing this bidding, will lose its unnatural materialism, and find itself quick with a moral and religious instead of a narrowly practical and commercial motive.
So in the doubter"s world are the spiritual and the material genuinely sympathetic.