Note on Free Will and Foreknowledge.
In the above chapter I must not be understood as pretending to settle the thorny question of a reconciliation between freedom of choice and pre-determination or prevision. All I there contend for is that no mechanical or scientific determinism, subject to special conditions in a limited region, can be used to contradict freedom of the will, under generalised conditions, in the Universe as a whole.
Nevertheless there are things which may perhaps be usefully said, even on the larger and much-worn topic of the present note. If we still endeavour to learn as much as possible from human analogies, examples are easy:—
An architect can draw in detail a building that is to be; the dwellers in a valley can be warned to evacuate their homesteads because a city has determined that a lake shall exist where none existed before. Doubtless the city is free to change its mind, but it is not expected to; and all predictions are understood to be made subject to the absence of disturbing, i.e. unforeseen, causes. Even the prediction of an eclipse is not free from a remote uncertainty, and in the case of the return of meteoric showers and comets the element of contingency is not even remote.
But it will be said that to higher and superhuman knowledge all possible contingencies would be known and recognised as part of the data. That is quite possibly, though not quite certainly, true: and there comes the real difficulty of reconciling absolute prediction of events with real freedom of the actors in the drama. I anticipate that a complete solution of the problem must involve a treatment of the subject of time, and a recognition that "time," as it appears to us, is really part of our human limitations. We all realise that "the past" is in some sense not non-existent but only past; we may readily surmise that "the future" is similarly in some sense existent, only that we have not yet arrived at it; and our links with the future are less understood. That a seer in a moment of clairvoyance may catch a glimpse of futurity—some partial picture of what perhaps exists even now in the forethought of some higher mind—is not inconceivable. It may be after all only an unconscious and inspired inference from the present, on an enlarged and exceptional scale; and it is a matter for straightforward investigation whether such prevision ever occurs.
The following article, on the general subject of "Free Will and Determinism," reprinted from the Contemporary Review for March 1904, may conveniently be here reproduced:—
The conflict between Free Will and Determinism depends on a question of boundaries. We occasionally ignore the fact that there must be a subjective partition in the Universe separating the region of which we have some inkling of knowledge from the region of which we have absolutely none; we are apt to regard the portion on our side as if it were the whole, and to debate whether it must or must not be regarded as self-determined. As a matter of fact any partitioned-off region is in general not completely self-determined, since it is liable to be acted upon by influences from the other side of the partition. If the far side of the boundary is ignored, then an observer on the near side will conclude that things really initiate their own motion and act without stimulation or motive, in some cases, whereas the fact is that no act is performed without stimulus or motive; even irrational acts are caused by something, and so also are rational acts. Madness and delirium are natural phenomena amenable to law.
But in actual life we are living on one side of a boundary, and are aware of things on one side only; the things on this side appear to us to constitute the whole universe, since they are all of which we have any knowledge, either through our senses or in other ways. Hence we are subject to certain illusions, and feel certain difficulties,—the illusion of unstimulated and unmotived freedom of action, and the difficulty of reconciling this with the felt necessity for general determinism and causation.
If we speak in terms of the part of the universe that we know and have to do with, we find free agencies rampant among organic life; so that "freedom of action" is a definite and real experience, and for practical convenience is so expressed. But if we could seize the entirety of things and perceive what was occurring beyond the range of our limited conceptions we should realise that the whole was welded together, and that influences were coming through which produced the effects that we observe.
Those philosophers, if there are any, who assert that we are wholly chained bound and controlled by the circumstances of that part of the Universe of which we are directly aware—that we are the slaves of our environment and must act as we are compelled by forces emanating from things on our side of the boundary alone,—those philosophers err.
This kind of determinism is false; and the reaction against it has led other philosophers to assert that we are lawlessly free, and able to initiate any action without motive or cause,—that each individual is a capricious and chaotic entity, not part of a Cosmos at all!
It may be doubted whether anyone has clearly and actually maintained either of these theses in all its crudity; but there are many who vigorously and cheaply deny one or other of them, and in so denying the one conceive that they are maintaining the other. Both the above theses are false; yet Free Will and Determinism are both true, and in a completely known universe would cease to be contradictories.
The reconciliation between opposing views lies in realising that the Universe of which we have a kind of knowledge is but a portion or an aspect of the whole.
We are free, and we are controlled. We are free, in so far as our sensible surroundings and immediate environment are concerned; that is, we are free for all practical purposes, and can choose between alternatives as they present themselves. We are controlled, as being intrinsic parts of an entire cosmos suffused with law and order.
No scheme of science based on knowledge of our environment can confidently predict our actions, nor the actions of any sufficiently intelligent live creature. For "mind" and "will" have their roots on the other side of the partition, and that which we perceive of them is but a fraction of the whole. Nevertheless, the more developed and consistent and harmonious our character becomes, the less liable is it to random outbreaks, and the more certainly can we be depended on. We thus, even now, can exhibit some approximation to the highest state—that conscious unison with the entire scheme of existence which is identical with perfect freedom.
If we could grasp the totality of things we should realise that everything was ordered and definite, linked up with everything else in a chain of causation, and that nothing was capricious and uncertain and uncontrolled. The totality of things is, however, and must remain, beyond our grasp; hence the actual working of the process, the nature of the links, the causes which create our determinations, are frequently unknown. And since it is necessary for practical purposes to treat what is utterly beyond our ken as if it were non-existent, it becomes easily possible to fall into the erroneous habit of conceiving the transcendental region to be completely inoperative.
CHAPTER X
FURTHER SPECULATION AS TO THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE[6]
Preliminary Remarks on Recent Views in Chemistry.
It is a fact extremely familiar to chemists that the groupings possible to atoms of carbon are exceptionally numerous and complicated, each carbon atom having the power of linking itself with others to an extraordinary extent, so that it is no exceptional thing to find a substance which contains twenty or thirty atoms of carbon as well as other elements linked together in its molecule in a perfectly definite way, the molecule being still classifiable as that of a definite chemical compound. But there are also some non-elementary bodies which, although they are chemically complete and satisfied, retain a considerable vestige of power to link their molecules together so as to make a complex and massive compound molecule; and these are able not only to link similar molecules into a more or less indefinite chain, but to unite and include the saturated molecules of many other substances also into the unwieldy aggregate.
Of the non-elementary bodies possessing this property, water appears to be one of the chief; for there is evidence to show that the ordinary H2O molecule of water, although it may be properly spoken of as a saturated or satisfied compound, seldom exists in the simple isolated shape depicted by this formula, but rather that a great number of such simple molecules attach themselves to each other by what is called their residual or outstanding affinity, and build themselves up into a complex aggregate.
The doctrine of residual affinity has been long advocated by Armstrong; and the present writer has recently shown that it is a necessary consequence of the electrical theory of chemical affinity,[7] and that the structure of the resulting groupings, or compound aggregates, may be partially studied by means of floating magnets, somewhat after the manner of Alfred Mayer.[8 ]
It may be well here to explain to students that one of the lines of argument which lead to the conclusion that the water molecule, as it ordinarily exists, is really complex and massive, is based upon measurements of the Faraday dielectric constant for water; for this constant, or "specific inductive capacity," is found to be very large, something like 50 times that of air or free ether; whereas for glass it is only 5 or 6 times that of free space. The dielectric constant of a substance generally increases with the density or massiveness of its molecule,—indeed, the value of this constant is one of the methods whereby matter displays its interaction with and loading of the free ether of space,—and any such density as the conventional nine times that of hydrogen for the molecule of water would be wholly unable to explain its immense dielectric constant.
The influence of the massiveness of a water molecule is also displayed in its power of tearing asunder or dissociating any salts or other simple chemical substance introduced into it; common salt, for instance, is found always to have a certain percentage of its molecules knocked or torn asunder directly it is dissolved in water, so that, in addition to a number of salt molecules in solution, there are a few positively charged sodium atoms and a few negatively charged chlorine atoms, existing in a state of loose attraction to the water aggregate, and amenable to the smallest electric force; which, when applied, urges the chlorine one way and the sodium the other way, so that they can be removed at an electrode and their place supplied by freshly dissociated molecules of salt, thus bringing about its permanent electro-chemical decomposition, and enabling the water to behave as an electrolytic conductor directly a little salt or acid is dissolved in it.
The power of the water molecule to associate itself with molecules of other substances is illustrated by the well-known fact that water is an almost universal solvent. It is its residual affinity which enables it to enter into weak chemical combination with a large number of other substances, and thus to dissolve those substances. The dissolving power usually increases when the temperature is raised, possibly because the self-contained or self-sufficient groupings of the water molecules are then to some extent broken up and the fragments enabled to cling on to the foreign or introduced matter instead of only to each other. The foreign substance is apt to be extruded again when the liquid cools, and when the affinity of the water-aggregates for each other resumes its sway. Very hot water can dissolve not only the substances familiarly known to be soluble in water, but it can dissolve things like glass also; so that glass vessels are unable to retain water kept under high pressure at a very high temperature, approaching a red heat.
Another material which also seems to have the power of combining with a number of other bodies, under the influence of the loose mode of chemical combination spoken of as residual affinity, is carbon; so that a block of charcoal can absorb hundreds of times its own bulk of certain gases.
Indeed, Sir James Dewar has recently employed this absorbing power of very cold carbon to produce a perfect kind of vacuum, which may, perhaps, be the nearest approach to absolute vacuum that has yet been attained: probably higher than can be attained by any kind of mechanical or mercury pump.
Unexpected Influence of Size.
Suppose now a substance contains a great number of carbon molecules and a great number of water molecules, each of which has this residual affinity or power of clinging together well developed, what may be expected to be the result? Surely, the formation of a molecule consisting of thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms, constituting substances more complex even than those already known to or analysable by organic chemistry; and if these complex molecules likewise possess the adhesive faculty, a grouping of millions or even billions of atoms may ultimately be formed. (A billion, that is a million millions, of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger still.) Such a grouping is likely to have properties differing not only in degree but in kind from the properties of simple substances.
For it must not be thought that aggregation only produces quantitative change and leaves quality unaltered. Fresh qualities altogether are liable to be introduced or to make their appearance at certain stages—certain critical stages—in the building up of a complex mass (cf. p. 71).
The habitability of a house, for instance, depends on its possessing a cavity of a certain size; there is a critical size of brick-aggregate which enables it to serve as a dwelling. Nothing much smaller than this would do at all. The aggregate retains this property, thus conferred upon it by size, however big it may be made after that; until it becomes a palace or a cathedral, when it may perhaps reach an upper limit of size at which it would be crushed by its own weight, or at which the span of roof is too great to be supported. But the difference, as regards habitability, between a palace and a hovel is far less than that between a hovel and one of the air-holes in a brick or loaf, or any other cavity too small to act as a human habitation. The difference as regards habitability is then an infinite difference.
To take a less trivial instance; a planet which is large enough to retain an atmosphere by its gravitative attraction differs utterly, in potentiality and importance, from the numerous lumps of matter scattered throughout space, which, though they may be as large as a haystack or a mountain or as the British Isles, or even Europe, are yet too small to hold any trace of air to their surface, and therefore cannot in any intelligible sense of the word be regarded as habitable. One of the lumps of matter in space can become a habitable planet only when it has attained a certain size, which conceivably it might do by falling together with others into a complex aggregate under the influence of gravitative attraction. The asteroids have not succeeded in doing this, but the planets have; and, accordingly, one of them, at any rate, has become a habitable world.
But observe that the great size and the consequent retention of an atmosphere did not generate the inhabitants; it satisfied one of the conditions necessary for their existence. How they arose is another matter. All that we have seen so far is that an aggregate of bodies may possess properties and powers which the separate bodies themselves possess in no kind or sort of way. It is not a question of degree, but of kind.
So also, further, if the aggregate is large enough, very much larger than any planet, as large as a million earths aggregated together, it acquires the property of conspicuous radio-activity, it becomes a self-heating and self-luminous body, able to keep the ether violently agitated in all space round it, and thus to supply the radiation necessary for protecting the habitable worlds from the cold of space to which they are exposed, for maintaining them at a temperature appropriate to organic existence, and likewise for supplying and generating the energy for their myriad activities. It has become in fact a central sun, and source of heat, solely because of its enormous size combined with the fact of the mutual gravitative attraction of its own constituent particles. No body of moderate size could perform this function, nor act as a perennial furnace to the rest.
Application to Protoplasm.
Very well then, return now to our complex molecular aggregate, and ask what new property, beyond the province of ordinary chemistry and physics, is to be expected of a compound which contains millions or billions of atoms attached to each other in no rigid, stable, frigid manner, but by loose unstable links, enabling them constantly to re-arrange themselves and to be the theatre of perpetual change, aggregating and reaggregating in various ways and manifesting ceaseless activities. Such unstable aggregates of matter may, like the water of a pond or a heap of organic refuse, serve as the vehicle for influences wholly novel and unexpected.
Too much agitation—that is, too high a temperature—will split them up and destroy the new-found potentiality of such aggregates; too little agitation—that is, too low a temperature—will permit them to begin to cohere and settle down into frozen rigid masses insusceptible of manifold activities. But take them just at the right temperature, when sufficiently complex and sufficiently mobile; take care of them, so to speak, for the structure may easily be killed; and what shall we find? We could not infer or guess what would be the result, but we can observe the result as it is.
The result is that the complexes group themselves into minute masses visible in the microscope, each mass being called by us a "cell"; that these cells possess the power of uniting with or assimilating other cells, or fragments of cells, as they drift by and come into contact with them; and that they absorb into their own substance such portions as may be suitable, while the insufficiently elaborated portions—the grains of inorganic or over-simple material—are presently extruded. They thus begin the act of "feeding."
Another remarkable property also can be observed; for a cell which thus grows by feeding need not remain as one individual, but may split into two, or into more than two, which may cohere for a time, but will ultimately separate and continue existence on their own account. Thus begins the act of "reproduction."
But a still more remarkable property can be observed in some of the cells, though not in all; they can not only assimilate a fragment of matter which comes into contact with them, but they can sense it, apparently, while not yet in contact, and can protrude portions of their substance or move their whole bodies towards the fragment, thus beginning the act of "hunting"; and the incipient locomotory power can be extended till light and air and moisture and many other things can be sought and moved towards, until locomotion becomes so free that it sometimes seems apparently objectless—mere restlessness, change for the sake of change, like that of human beings.
The power of locomotion is liable, however, to introduce the cell to new dangers, and to conditions hostile to its continued aggregate existence. So, in addition to the sense of food and other desirable things ahead, it seems to acquire, at any rate when still further aggregated and more developed, a sense of shrinking from and avoidance of the hostile and the dangerous,—a sense as it were of "pain."
And so it enters on its long career of progress, always liable to disintegration or "death"; it begins to differentiate portions of itself for the feeding process, other portions for the reproductive process, other portions again for sensory processes, but retaining the protective sense of pain almost everywhere; until the spots sensitive to ethereal and aerial vibrations—which, arriving as they do from a distance, carry with them so much valuable information, and when duly appreciated render possible perception and prediction as to what is ahead—until these sensitive spots have become developed into the special organs which we now know as the "eye" and the "ear." Then, presently, the power of communication is slowly elaborated, speech and education begin, and the knowledge of the individual is no longer limited to his own experience, but expands till it embraces the past history and the condensed acquisition of the race. And thus gradually arises a developed self-consciousness, a discrimination between the self and the external world, and a realisation of the power of choice and freedom,—a stage beyond which we have not travelled as yet, but a stage at which almost all things seem possible.
The first two properties, assimilation and reproduction, overshadowed by the possibility of death, are properties of life of every kind, plant life as of all other. The power of locomotion and special senses, overshadowed by the sense of pain, are the sign of a still further development into what we call "animal life." The further development, of mind, consciousness, and sense of freedom, overshadowed by the possibility of wilful error or sin, is the conspicuous attribute of life which is distinctively human.
Thus, our complex molecular aggregate has shown itself capable of extraordinary and most interesting processes, has proved capable of constituting the material vehicle of life, the natural basis of living organisms, and even of mind; very much as a planet of certain size proved capable of possessing an atmosphere.
But is it to be supposed that the complex aggregate generated the life and mind, as the planet generated its atmosphere? That is the so-called materialistic view, but to the writer it seems an erroneous one, and it is certainly one that is not proven. It is not even certain that every planet generated all the gases of its own atmosphere: some of them it may have swept up in its excursion through space. What is certain is that it possesses the power of retaining an atmosphere; it is by no means so certain how all the constituents of that atmosphere arrived.
Questions concerning the Origin and Nature of Life.
All that we have actually experienced and verified is that a complex molecular aggregate is capable of being the vehicle or material basis of life; but to the question what life is we have as yet no answer. Many have been the attempts to generate life de novo, by packing together suitable materials and keeping them pleasantly warm for a long time; but, if all germs of pre-existing life are rigorously excluded, the attempt hitherto has been a failure: so far, no life has made its appearance under observation, except from antecedent life.
But, to exclude all trace of antecedent life, it is necessary not only to shut out floating germs, but to kill all germs previously existing in the material we are dealing with. This killing of previous life is usually accomplished by heat; but it has been argued that strong heat will destroy not only the life but the potentiality for life, will break up the complex aggregate on which life depends, will deprive the incubating solution not only of life but of livelihood. There is some force in the objection, and it is an illustration of the difficulty surrounding the subject. But Tyndall showed that antecedent life could be destroyed, without any very high temperature, by gentle heat periodically applied: heat insufficient to kill the germs, but sufficient to kill the hatched or developed organisms. Periodic heating enables the germs of successive ages to hatch, so to speak, and the product to be slain; and, although some each time may have reproduced germs before slaughter—eggs capable of standing the warmth—yet a succession of such warmings would ultimately be fatal to all, and that without necessarily breaking up the protoplasmic complex aggregates on the existence of which the whole vital potentiality depends.
So far, however, all effort at spontaneous generation has been a failure; possibly because some essential ingredient or condition was omitted, possibly because great lapse of time was necessary. But suppose it was successful; what then? We should then be reproducing in the laboratory a process that must at some past age have occurred on the earth; for at one time the earth was certainly hot and molten and inorganic, whereas now it swarms with life.
Does that show that the earth generated the life? By no means; no more than it need necessarily have generated all the gases of its atmosphere, or the meteoric dust which lies upon its snows.
Life may be something not only ultra-terrestrial, but even immaterial, something outside our present categories of matter and energy; as real as they are, but different, and utilising them for its own purpose. What is certain is that life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the animated material body moves about and strives after many objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain individuality, a certain character. It may realise itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the material fabric—half displayed, half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit. Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns upon the nascent soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth, goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent value, as a work of art or of literature; it may enter regions of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine.
Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas? There are some who try to think that it is. There are others who recognise in this extraordinary development a contact between this material frame of things and a universe higher and other than anything known to our senses;a universe not dominated by Physics and Chemistry, but utilising the interactions of matter for its own purposes; a universe where the human spirit is more at home than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a universe capable of infinite development, of noble contemplation, and of lofty joy, long after this planet—nay, the whole solar system—shall have fulfilled its present spire of destiny, and retired cold and lifeless upon its endless way.
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