FOOTNOTES:
[30] Huxley, Science and Hebrew Tradition, p. 233.
[31] Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, p. 245.
[32] Huxley, Science and Hebrew Tradition, p. 65.
[33] Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, p. 54.
[34] Huxley, Method and Results, p. 40.
[35] Science and Christian Tradition, p. 243.
[36] Science and Christian Tradition, p. 244.
X.
THE CHESS-BOARD
We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting evolution as a fact, and by asking the question: Granted that it is a fact, what follows? What does it mean for me? What light does it throw on the meaning of life?
The answers that we may give to these questions together constitute a philosophy of evolution, which is carefully to be distinguished from evolution as a scientific theory. As a scientific theory evolution is an account, as exact as science can make it, of what actually did happen in the past, of the precise process by which things have come to be what they are. When this knowledge has been gained, we may ask the question, What value has this knowledge for the practical purposes of life? And the answer will be a contribution to philosophy, but it will not be one of the things described by science as having happened in the past, will not be part of the knowledge from which it is itself inferred, nor, if it is a false inference, will it have any right to masquerade as science and say that we must accept it as true or else deny the truth of science. Indeed, we found that two answers to the question, two philosophies of evolution, the Optimistic and the Pessimistic, have been formulated, which being contradictory cannot both be true, though both may be false.
The Optimistic theory, that evolution is progress, only established its conclusion, that the process of evolution is necessarily from good to better, by means of arguments which denied the distinction between good and bad, and implied that our moral convictions were illusions.
The Pessimistic theory, on the other hand, assumed the reality of our moral ideals, but was forced by its adoption of the theory of Necessity to conclude that it is an illusion to imagine those ideals can be finally realised.
Both philosophies in theory profess to make no assumptions, to take nothing on faith, and to base themselves on nothing but what we actually know to be facts. In practice each of them does unconsciously base itself on faith and does tacitly make certain assumptions. But as the assumptions made are not precisely the same in both cases, they reach two very different conclusions—Optimism and Pessimism. Again, if each philosophy treats as illusions certain facts—the freedom of the will and the reality of moral distinctions—which the common sense and common consciousness of mankind hold to be real, it is because each philosophy arbitrarily rejects certain of the assumptions which common sense makes, certain articles of the common faith of mankind. Consequently, when we find that each philosophy is inconsistent with itself, and ends by implying that what it assumed to be real is in fact an illusion, we are led to suspect that its assumptions may not have been adequate or well-considered, its faith not great enough to remove mountains or explain the world.
The conception of a "positive" philosophy—that is, a philosophy which confines itself to positive facts, and which is "agnostic" in the sense that it does not profess to know what it knows it does not know—is borrowed from science. It is an attempt to carry the methods of science into the domain of philosophy, to substitute science for philosophy. The attempt is made under the impression that science does not profess to know what it knows it does not know, i.e. makes no assumptions and takes nothing on faith. That impression, however, is, as we have argued in the last chapter but one, a false impression: the Uniformity of Nature is a pure—and rational—assumption. If, therefore, a philosophy confined itself strictly within the bounds of science, it would not be strictly positive or agnostic: it would still make some assumptions, even if only those made by science, and would still, even if it confined itself to the positive facts of science, be taking something on faith. A sound philosophy is one, not that makes no assumptions, but which seeks to find out what assumptions are made by any department of knowledge or practice—science, art, evolution, morality, religion—and how far those assumptions will carry us. The bane of philosophy is not making assumptions—all thought does—but is thinking you have made none.
Common sense assumes that the testimony of consciousness, so far as it can be verified by consciousness, can be trusted as evidence of the reality of that which is presented to it. Positive or agnostic philosophies, whether of the optimistic or the pessimistic type, on the principle of making no assumptions, reject this one, either on the ground that the Real is Unknowable (which is itself an assumption as incapable of proof or disproof as the assumption that the Real is Knowable) or on the ground that we only know our states of consciousness, and cannot know whether there is or is not any reality beyond them (which again is simply an assumption that consciousness as evidence of a reality beyond itself is not to be trusted).
Now, granted that common sense makes an assumption here, as it assuredly does, it is one such as can only be rejected by making a counter-assumption: to refuse to trust consciousness as evidence of a reality beyond itself is to make the assumption that it is not trustworthy—which may or may not be true, but is just as much an assumption as the supposition of its trustworthiness is. The positive and agnostic philosophies, therefore, do not succeed in avoiding assumptions in this matter: they only tacitly add another to that which they have already unconsciously made by assuming that Nature is uniform.
If, now, they adhered to these assumptions, we might proceed to ask what conclusions they deduced from them. We should not, indeed, expect their conclusions to be the same as those reached by persons starting from the opposite hypothesis, viz. that consciousness is trustworthy. And we should not agree that they were superior to those reached by the common sense and drawn from the common faith of mankind. We should only admit that they were different, because drawn from different premises. The argument that the teaching of a philosophy which makes no assumptions must be superior to one that does, is an argument which, whatever its value, we should have to set aside in this case, on the ground that the agnostic philosophies are not so ignorant as they modestly profess to be: they do know something—they know that Nature is uniform, and that consciousness as evidence of reality is not to be trusted—or they assume they know.
But the positive philosophies do not adhere to their assumptions. Few philosophers do. The optimistic evolutionist takes back his remark about the untrustworthiness of consciousness, so far as material things are concerned: matter and motion at any rate are real, and consciousness is good evidence, as good as can be got, of their reality. The pessimistic evolutionist also repents him, as far as our moral convictions are concerned: they are fundamentally real; our consciousness of the moral ideal is our best evidence for it.
On the other hand, both the optimistic and the pessimistic evolutionist adhere with perfect consistency to their rejection of the evidence given by consciousness to the freedom of the will. But here, too, the assumption of common sense cannot be rejected without a counter-assumption: if it is a pure assumption to say that things could have happened otherwise than they did, it is equally mere assumption to say they could not.
Finally, there is one other assumption made by the common faith of mankind and rejected by positive philosophies. It is that the world, i.e. everything of which man's consciousness is aware and to the reality of which his consciousness is evidence, is the expression of self-determining will, human and superhuman, manifesting itself directly to his consciousness. This assumption, too, has its counter-assumption—that there is no self-determining will, human or superhuman—and to reject the one assumption is to accept the other. To say that you do not know whether a man's word may be trusted or not is literally agnosticism, and may be the only rational attitude to assume, e.g. if the man is an absolute stranger, as most witnesses in court are to the judge who tries the case. But on the ground of your ignorance to refuse to pay any attention to his evidence when given is to abandon your agnosticism—if a judge directs the jury to disregard the evidence of the witness, the presumption is that he assumes it to be false. So, too, if we disregard the evidence of consciousness on this or any other point, we do not thereby succeed in avoiding assumptions, we only assume that consciousness is not trustworthy.[37]
The idea that in philosophy it is possible permanently to maintain an agnostic attitude with regard to the trustworthiness of consciousness is the outcome of a conscientious attempt to apply scientific methods to the solution of philosophic problems. Science does not find it necessary to assume either that there is or that there is not a God: on either assumption it is certain that bodies tend towards each other at the rates specified in the gravitation-formula. Philosophy must be made scientific. Therefore philosophy must carefully avoid making either assumption. Why, the very reason why science has progressed and philosophy never moves is that science builds only on demonstrated fact, philosophy only on undemonstrable assumptions. Proof, and therefore truth, is impossible if you start from assumptions which never can be proved to be either true or untrue.
The truth is that it is possible to maintain the agnostic attitude, and to avoid making assumptions, just so long as we do not need to form an opinion or take action on the matter which the assumption affects.
If my interests, practical or speculative, are not affected by a certain trial now proceeding in the law courts, I can avoid making any assumption as to the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of a witness's evidence. I do not know whether he is trustworthy or not, and I can refuse to make any assumption whatever on the subject—there is no reason why I should. But the moment circumstances call on me to form an opinion, I find myself beginning to make one assumption or the other, or perhaps at first one and then the other, though I am just as ignorant whether he really is trustworthy or not as I was when I refused to make any assumptions; I know no more about his previous career or his antecedent credibility than I did before he entered the box.
So, too, the truth is not that science makes no assumptions, but that she makes no assumptions except those which are necessary for her purposes. The man of science assumes—and it is pure assumption—that he can trust the evidence of his consciousness as to the reality of the chemicals he experiments on, the plants he classifies, or the stars he observes. He assumes that they are real. He also assumes without proof that what has produced a certain effect once will produce it again in the same circumstances, that if a thing has occurred the conditions essential to its occurrence must also have occurred—in fine, that Nature is uniform. But so long as he is engaged exclusively in scientific work, in finding out what actually does happen or has happened in Nature, he need make no assumptions as to whether a certain witness is trustworthy or not, or whether there is a God or not: he can maintain a perfectly agnostic attitude on both questions. He can say, if he chooses, "God or no God, two and two make four"; or, to put it more precisely, whether the evidence which consciousness gives in spiritual experience to the reality of a God can or cannot be trusted, I do trust the evidence which consciousness gives in sense-experience to the reality of material things; whether the assumption that every event is the expression of self-determining will is true or not, at any rate I believe in the assumption that Nature is uniform.
And if man had nothing to do but investigate the actual course of Nature, and had nothing else to form an opinion about except whether this phenomenon is followed by that, it would be possible permanently to avoid making any assumptions save those required by science. But man has (let us suppose) to know, not only what does happen, but what ought to happen, and to decide what shall happen. The ordinary man, in making those forecasts of the future which he must make for the ordinary business of daily life, assumes, quite unconsciously, that Nature is uniform and that material things are real. In deciding what he ought to do and what he will do, he assumes, without knowing that he is making any assumptions at all, that his moral ideals are real, that his will is free to choose this course or that, and that the God with whom he communes in his heart is real.
Let us now take the question raised by agnosticism as to these assumptions, which constitute a large part of the common faith of mankind. The question is not whether these assumptions are right: the agnostic declines to discuss that question; he does not know whether they are right or wrong, he has no means of deciding, they are too high for him. The question is whether the agnostic himself succeeds in making, as well as endeavouring to make, no assumptions on these points. We have already argued he fails: he succeeds, not in making no assumptions, but only in making the counter-assumptions to those assumed by common sense.
This, let us hasten to add, does not at all amount to saying that his counter-assumptions are wrong: it only amounts to saying that he cannot form a resolution to steal or not to steal, to lie or not to lie, without (consciously or unconsciously) making some assumption as to the reality of the moral ideal.
But there is little need of argument to show that agnostic philosophy fails to avoid making assumptions, i.e. fails in practice to be agnostic. Professor Huxley admitted that the Uniformity of Nature was an assumption; he assumed that our moral ideals were real; he took it for granted that the will was not free. We need only point out that the attempt to carry on philosophy and explain the universe on purely scientific principles breaks down: science makes no assumption about the reality of our moral and æsthetic ideals; philosophy, even an agnostic philosophy, finds it necessary to assume the reality of both. Even if philosophy could be made scientific, it would not get rid of unprovable assumptions: it would still be based upon those made by science. And the excellence of philosophy, or of any explanation of the universe, consists, not in agnosticism, not in making no assumptions, but in making the right ones.
Science, as we have said, makes no assumptions save those which are necessary for her purpose, which is to ascertain and describe what actually takes place in Nature. Conversely, it is vain to imagine that from those assumptions anything can be deduced except conclusions of the kind which they are framed to cover, viz. conclusions as to what actually does take place. To say, therefore, that all knowledge—philosophy and religion—must become scientific before it can be regarded as trustworthy is simply to say that nothing can be regarded as true, except what is deduced from the assumptions of science: conclusions drawn from any other assumptions have no scientific truth. The assumptions of science are constructed only to lead to conclusions as to what is: we can therefore have no scientific, i.e. no real, knowledge of what ought to be. With the assumptions she makes, Science can only describe the way in which things happen; why they should so happen it is therefore impossible to know. The idea that all things are the expression of self-determining will is not one of the assumptions of science; no conclusions from it, therefore, can be considered valid.
Without staying to consider why the unproved and unprovable assumptions of science are so superior to all others as to be set up as the sole source of truth, the only fount of genuine knowledge, let us consider what sort of a picture of the universe they give us. Perhaps a simile will best help us.
Let us imagine a game of chess in course of being played by invisible players in presence of a scientific philosopher who knows nothing about the game—or who assumes that he knows nothing—except what his senses tell him.
What he sees will be simply material chess-men moving in space. He may either consider them to be merely sense-phenomena, merely affections or modifications of his sense of sight and touch, or he may consider them to be real, material things. In either case he makes an assumption. The latter assumption leaves it quite an open question whether the reality is something insentient or is the expression of conscious will. The former precludes the question, i.e. assumes that there is neither conscious will nor insentient matter behind them.
But in neither assumption is there anything to prevent the philosopher in question from studying the movements of the chess-men and the way in which at every move or moment they are redistributed. At first their movements would probably be rather bewildering; but in course of time he would note, we may assume, that Black never moved unless White had previously moved, and that any movement of White was followed by one on the part of Black. He might therefore be tempted to lay it down as a rule that Black never moved unless White moved first—that an effect never occurred without a cause; and that a movement of White was always followed by a move on the part of Black—that a cause was always followed by its effect. But if he yielded to this temptation he would be making an assumption, for—inasmuch as he professes to know nothing to begin with—he does not know that the pieces always will move in this way; he only knows (assuming that memory is not a mere delusion, as it may be, for anything he knows) that they have moved thus, not that they always will move thus. He may, however, assume that they will continue to move in that way. But with every fresh assumption he becomes less and less of an agnostic. He may, indeed, if he likes, further assume, not only that the pieces will move in this way, but that they must. This assumption does not, indeed, seem necessary; for if we know (or assume that we know) that they will follow this course, it seems superfluous to say that they must.
It seems well, therefore, to try to see on what principle we are to make our assumptions. It is an ancient rule, and one followed by science, to make as few as possible—that is to say, the fewest that will suffice for the purpose in hand. If, therefore, the purpose of our study of the chess-board is merely to find out how and according to what rules the pieces actually do move, have moved, and will move, it seems sufficient to assume that they will move as they have done, not that they must. If, on the other hand, we want to know why they move in the way that we assume them to move, then the assumption that they do so because they must is certainly in form legitimate, though it may or may not be the right one in fact.
Some people refuse to discuss such questions as "Why this universe?" "What is the reason of this unintelligible world?" on the ground that they cannot be answered except by making assumptions which cannot be proved.
But is that really a good reason for refusing? If it is, then none of the questions which science exists to answer can be discussed, for they also can only be answered by assuming, without proof or possibility of proof, that Nature is uniform, that the chess-men will continue to move as they have done.
Be this as it may, our philosopher, if he assumes that the course of Nature is not only uniform, but necessary, is making an assumption which is not required for the purposes of science, though it may be for his philosophy. It is, as we have said, quite legitimate for him to make the assumption for philosophical purposes, and to adhere to its logical consequences. But in the interests of clearness of thought it should be recognised that those consequences flow from it, and not from any of the assumptions necessary for the purposes of science. He will be able to show on this assumption that there is nothing in the history of the universe, or in the facts of science, to countenance the idea that the universe is the expression of self-determining will. We only wish to point out that this conclusion, even if true, is not an inference from the facts of science, but from the initial assumption that nothing which takes place in Nature is the result of free will.
To say, "Science does not find it necessary to assume the existence of self-determining will, neither therefore will I assume it," is true, but is only half the truth. Science does not find it necessary to assume the non-existence of self-determining will. But the philosopher who explains the facts of Nature on the hypothesis that they happen of necessity, does assume that self-determining will is non-existent. It is therefore quite natural that the history of the universe and the facts of science, interpreted in this way, should lend no countenance to the opposite theory.
The history of the universe may also be interpreted as a manifestation of the Divine will, the process of evolution as a progressive revelation; and if any be tempted to say with a sigh, "Ah! but it all requires us to believe that there is a God, to begin with," let them reflect that the other interpretation cannot even begin without the assumption that there is no God.
But to return to our chess-men. A closer study of the game would reveal—in addition to the invariable sequence of Black, White, Black—the fact that the various pieces had various properties and moved in various ways, some only one square at a time, some the whole length of the board; some diagonally, some parallel to the sides of the board. Further, our philosopher would observe that each piece when it moved tended to move according to its own laws: in the absence of counteracting causes, e.g. unless some other piece blocked the way, a bishop tended to move diagonally the whole length of the board. As a man of science, he would state these observed uniformities in the hypothetical form rightly adopted by science: if a castle moves it tends to move in such and such a way. Thus eventually he would be able to foretell, whenever any piece began to move, what direction it tended, in the absence of counteracting causes, to take. He might not, indeed, be able to say beforehand which of White's pieces would move in reply to Black, but his knowledge of the game would eventually become so scientific that he would be prepared for most contingencies, i.e. be able to say approximately where any piece would move if it did move. That knowledge could be attained without making any assumption as to whether free-will or necessity was the motive force expressed in the game; and it would be equally valid whichever of the two assumptions he chose to make. His science would have nothing to hope or fear from either assumption.
With regard to matter and motion, he would note that a piece might be removed and deposited by the side of the board, but was never destroyed, and he would infer that matter is indestructible and could never have been created. As for motion, the condition, the only invariable and necessary condition, of movement is previous movement, Black must move before White can: the only condition of change in the distribution of the pieces on the board would be some previous change. If the suggestion were made to him that possibly the real condition of all movement and every change was the purpose of an unseen agent, and that real knowledge was impossible without some idea of that purpose, he might as a man of science decline to accept the suggestion. The object of science is not to conjecture why things happen, or with what purpose, but to describe positively the way in which they actually do happen, or perhaps merely to describe the motions of material things in space. It does not matter with what purpose a shot or a mine is fired, or even whether with any or none: the results are just the same, if it is fired in just the same way. Science neither assumes nor denies the existence of purpose, because neither the assumption nor its rejection would in the least help her to discover the things that she wants to know. But are the things she wants to know the only things worth knowing? Every man is entitled to answer that question for himself. Are they the only things that can be known? They are the only things that can be known—on her assumptions. Just as the world can only be explained scientifically on the assumptions of science, so it can only be interpreted morally or religiously on the assumptions made by religion and morality. The only end that could be subserved by assuming a Divine purpose would be at most to enable us in some slight degree to argue what the purpose of some things might be—and that is of no interest or value to science. She declines to look for a final cause: her business is with efficient and mechanical causes.
The suggestion, then, that the chess-men may be moved with a purpose is not rejected, but is set aside as useless for a scientific comprehension of the game. Invisible agents—and we are all invisible, though our bodies are not—moving the chess-men with a purpose, or cross-purposes, are hypotheses valueless for science, which aims only at positive facts, the laws according to which the pieces actually do move. By the aid of these laws our philosopher might succeed in reconstructing the past history of the game which he was watching. From the positions occupied by the pieces now he might infer the positions from which they came (or think he could), and so back, step by step, until he reached the order in which the pieces are arranged at the beginning of a game. When he reviewed the knowledge thus obtained he would see in the process of the game a certain evolution from the relatively simple movements of the pawns which began the game to the highly complex movements of the queen. Then, whatever the order in which the pieces happened to be brought out and their qualities developed in the particular game he was watching, he might argue on the theory of necessity that that was the only order in which those properties could have been evolved. On the principle that efficient and mechanical causes were sufficient to provide a scientific explanation of the game it would follow that the higher powers manifested by castles and queens, the latest pieces to come out into the game, were caused by the previous action and movements of the less highly developed pawns—that life and consciousness are due to material causes. The idea that the movements of queens and pawns alike were due to the will of an unseen agent acting with purpose is, as we have said, a suggestion quite valueless to science, because any conclusions it might lead to would not be scientific knowledge. If we assumed the existence of purpose, and even could conjecture dimly its nature, we still should have made no addition to those positive facts which are the only things that science is concerned to establish: it would be neither more nor less true than before that bishops move diagonally, pawns one square at a time, gravitating bodies at the rate of sixteen feet in the first second, and so on. It would be neither more nor less true than before that pawns actually were the first pieces to move in the game, that lifeless matter preceded the evolution of organisms. Above all, it would be neither more nor less true than before that the conclusions of science are the only conclusions that a rational man will accept.