ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER III.
A.—ACCOUNT OF SOME THEORIES RESPECTING OUR PERSONAL IDENTITY.
In a sentence worthy of the pen of Glanvill or of Sir T. Browne, Locke remarked "The Ideas, as well as Children of our Youth, often die before us: And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where, though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by Time, and the Imagery moulders away. The Pictures drawn in our Minds, are laid in fading Colours, and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear." On Retention, B. II., chap. x. 5.
This truly human feeling did not hinder Locke from writing (chap, xxvii.) on the subject of Self-ness in a manner which appeared to imply that Consciousness, or Consciousness plus Memory "made" Personal Identity;—or to use Reid's words "whatever hath the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same person to whom they belong."
Bishop Butler's strictures on the topic are known to most students: but, as Sir William Hamilton observes (Foot-note on Reid, pp. 350, 351), "Long before Butler, to whom the merit is usually ascribed, Locke's doctrine of Personal Identity had been attacked and refuted. This was done even by his earliest critic, John Sergeant, whose words, as he is an author wholly unknown to all historians of philosophy, and his works of the rarest, I shall quote. He thus argues:—'The former distinction forelaid, he (Locke) proceeds to make personal identity in man to consist in the consciousness that we are the same thinking thing in different times and places. He proves it, because consciousness is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to him, essential to it.... But, to speak to the point: Consciousness of any action or other accident we have now, or have had, is nothing but our knowledge that it belonged to us; and, since we both agree that we have no innate knowledges, it follows, that all, both actual and habitual knowledges, which we have, are acquired or accidental to the subject or knower. Wherefore, the man, or that thing which is to be the knower, must have had individuality or personality, from other principles, antecedently to this knowledge, called consciousness: and, consequently, he will retain his identity, or continue the same man, or (which is equivalent) the same person, as long as he has those individuating principles.... It being then most evident, that a man must be the same, ere he can know or be conscious that he is the same, all his laborious descants and extravagant consequences which are built upon this supposition, that consciousness individuates the person, can need no farther refutation.'
"The same objection was also made by Leibnitz in his strictures on Locke's Essay....
"For the best criticism of Locke's doctrine of Personal Identity, I may, however, refer the reader to M. Cousin's 'Cours de Philosophie.'"
One of Locke's arguments is worthy of attention from its oddity. He says (chap. xxvii. 20), "But if it be possible for the same Man to have distinct incommunicable Consciousnesses at different Times, it is past doubt the same Man would at different Times make different Persons; which, we see, is the Sense of Mankind in the solemnest Declaration of their Opinions, Human Laws not punishing the Mad Man for the Sober Man's Actions, nor the Sober Man for what the Mad Man did, thereby making them two Persons; which is somewhat explained by our Way of speaking in English, when we say, such a one is not himself, or is besides himself; in which Phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least, first used them, thought that Self was changed, the self same Person was no longer in that Man."
It appears strange that so acute a writer should not have perceived the true consequences to be deduced from his observation. We never really treat a man who goes mad as becoming another personage. But if he has lost his self-control from causes by himself uncontrollable, we do not punish his criminalities, and we do divest him of his social powers; he can neither vote for Parliament, bequeath property, nor do many other acts, during the period of his affliction. But we use all means for his cure, and rejoice at his return to health and society. If a man "beside himself" were "a different person," then "tipsy he" would certainly not be "ipse he."—Yet the father of ethical science decided that the criminal drunkard deserves double meed of punishment.
To Locke's theory of Personal Identity Hamilton dedicates one more note. He gives (Reid, p. 353), an extract from Lord Kames (Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion), who pronounces his own opinion and appends some unpublished remarks of Dr. Reid. "Mr. Locke, writing on personal identity, has fallen short of his usual accuracy. He inadvertently jumbles together the identity that is nature's work, with our knowledge of it. Nay, he expresses himself sometimes as if identity had no other foundation than that knowledge. I am favoured by Dr. Reid with the following thoughts on personal identity:—
"'All men agree that personality is indivisible; a part of a person is an absurdity. A man who loses his estate, his health, an arm, or a leg, continues still to be the same person. My personal identity, therefore, is the continued existence of that indivisible thing which I call myself. I am not thought; I am not action; I am not feeling; but I think, and act, and feel. Thoughts, actions, feelings, change every moment; but self, to which they belong, is permanent. If it be asked how I know that it is permanent, the answer is, that I know it from memory. Everything I remember to have seen, or heard, or done, or suffered, convinces me that I existed at the time remembered. But, though it is from memory that I have the knowledge of my personal identity, yet personal identity must exist in nature, independent of memory; otherwise, I should only be the same person as far as my memory serves me; and what would become of my existence during the intervals wherein my memory has failed me? My remembrance of any of my actions does not make me to be the person who did the action, but only makes me know that I was the person who did it. And yet it was Mr. Locke's opinion, that my remembrance of an action is what makes me to be the person who did it; a pregnant instance that even men of the greatest genius may sometimes fall into an absurdity. Is it not an obvious corollary, from Mr. Locke's opinion, that he never was born? He could not remember his birth; and, therefore, was not the person born at such a place and at such a time.'"
When we come to Hume, the case is considerably altered. He opens the question after his own manner by asking how the fact commonly stated can be; and using the difficulty of explaining this "how" as a sufficient objection against the fact asserted. "There are some philosophers," he writes (Treatise, B. I., Part iv., Sect. 6), "who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity....
"Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explained. For from what impression could this idea he derived?... If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot therefore be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derived; and consequently there is no such idea.... For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.... The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed."
It is curious that Hume wishing to represent Mind as a melting mist of successive perceptions, should be driven into the use of a word which implied a something continuing and permanent as affording the stage on which all passing scenes called "impressions" are enacted.
Hume next discusses the laws of association; and then proceeds (same Section sub fin.) "As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, 'tis to be considered, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never should have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects, which constitute our self or person. But having once acquired this notion of causation from the memory, we can extend the same chain of causes, and consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past actions are there, of which we have any memory? Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on the first of January, 1715, the eleventh of March, 1719, and the third of August, 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents of these days, that the present self is not the same person with the self of that time; and by that means overturn all the most established notions of personal identity? In this view therefore memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by shewing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions. 'Twill be incumbent on those who affirm that memory produces entirely our personal identity, to give a reason why we can thus extend our identity beyond our memory.
"The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz., that all the nice and subtile questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the relations, and the easiness of the transition may diminish by insensible degrees, we have no just standard by which we can decide any dispute concerning the time, when they acquire or lose a title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already observed."
If any one feels dissatisfied with these conclusions our author is ready with his apology—"The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
"Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther." (Part iv., Section 7.)
Is not this good-humoured? Is it not a piece of pleasant bantering, to be equalled only by certain French philosophers? The real conclusion, however, winds up his First Book and runs as follows:—"A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.
"Nor is it only proper we should in general indulge our inclination in the most elaborate philosophical researches, notwithstanding our sceptical principles, but also that we should yield (sic) to that propensity, which inclines us to be positive and certain in particular points, according to the light, in which we survey them in any particular instant. 'Tis easier to forbear all examination and inquiry, than to check ourselves in so natural a propensity, and guard against that assurance, which always arises from an exact and full survey of an object. On such an occasion we are apt not only to forget our scepticism, but even our modesty too; and make use of such terms as these, 'tis evident, 'tis certain, 'tis undeniable; which a due deference to the public ought, perhaps, to prevent. I may have fallen into this fault after the example of others; but I here enter a caveat against any objections, which may be offered on that head; and declare that such expressions were extorted from me by the present view of the object, and imply no dogmatical spirit, nor conceited idea of my own judgment, which are sentiments that I am sensible can become nobody, and a sceptic still less than any other.[121]
It is obvious to remark that no amount of easiness would maintain most minds in this balanced position of the pleasant know-nothing man. The general tendency would be to acknowledge the negative side alone. And it would be well if an absence of serious convictions, seriously asserted, and acted on, did not gradually weaken the sense of Responsibility by making Truth appear indifferent because unattainable.
We, however, are just now more concerned with two other equally obvious comments. One, that Hume appears to take for granted the point at issue. Suppose it for argument's sake to be true that impressions and ideas (as described by him) make up our whole ordinary consciousness; does this shew that no latent power or entity exists by which we become conscious of those passing trains? When impressed by colours, are we conscious of an optic nerve, retina, crystalline lens and other instrumental powers of vision? Can we, if we try, perceive by sense the nerve-currents brainwards, or the sensory which receives and compares them? In both cases (eye and inward eye) pathology affords an evidence of consciousness which happy health refuses us. The brainsick sense sees colours and phantoms which are not—the disordered mind dwells on impressions and ideas absolutely unreal, and acts on them as stern realities. And thus our own purely subjective states reveal to us our own subjectivity. 'Tis so in fevers, in lunacies, in vices—'tis so to the drowning or the desperate man. These mournful changes which pass over ourselves issue from an interior activity of self-ness and form one of its commonest verifications.
This first comment admits of extension. If we endeavour to introduce experiment (as well as experience) into Mental Science, must we not ask a previous question:—Shall this or that experiment be tried? In other words, by what inner law shall we shape our inquiries so as to gain useful facts for our intended induction?—Nay, we may further ask: What inner Being is to settle the questions, criticize them, and judge the final issue? And if we seem to see our way on these topics, we may feel pretty sure that whenever our psychology comes to practical trial, we proceed as being sure of a Self, more or less self-conscious of Self, and are quite confident that its self-ness will continue during the whole time of our investigations.
Our second comment may be simply summed, but the consideration given to it ought to be minute and careful. Suppose instead of successive perceptions, impressions, or ideas, we substitute a succession of phenomena, and then apply to them Hume's line of thought, we have an acute statement of the modern teachings which relegate the noblest part of our Nature, our reasonings and our beliefs to the territory of the Unknowable. In a word, all knowledge thus seems to be gained by "looking on," none by "looking in." Truth within ourselves especially if it manifests a Truth above ourselves is made to appear hopeless. And so far does the process of Elimination extend, that principles involved even in our "looking on" must not be drawn out of their latency, for fear they should become accepted parts of knowledge. Let any thinker repeat with this substitution the Personal Identity argument in his own mind, and he will soon see what a shadow is cast over an infinitely wider world of thought.[122]
The same process of repetition ought in fairness to produce another effect. Are not these philosophic argutiæ, these Pyrrhonic subtilties closely akin to the difficulties raised against all first principles; and more particularly all Theistic principles? But does anybody on their account doubt his own Self-ness or Identity? Or does any one refuse to act on the supposition of other-ness, and outer-ness, or ignore his world of fellow-men and hard objectivities which press upon him from every side? Why then should anybody ignore on their account the great First-Cause?
In the text of Chapter III. the elements of our reasonable belief in our own Personal self-ness and sameness have been shortly mentioned;—of such work-day belief, that is to say, as suffices for actual life, and gains from it, and throughout it, a perpetual verification. If any one wishes to go deeper than this, he must inquire upon what evidence first principles are accepted by reasoning men; what difficulties attach to such principles; and under what conditions these difficulties are held to be nugatory. This inquiry is troublesome but promises real satisfaction. We have not, therefore, declined it, as may be seen in the ensuing Chapter. One fact is manifest beforehand—that whatever evidence is presupposed valid by those first principles of every-day knowledge, may be safely presupposed, accepted, and reasoned upon, in the ground-work of Natural Theology.
It was Hume's object to push his scepticism to its most extreme verge. Thus pushed, it "so wrought upon" him that he was "ready to reject all belief and reasoning" till a return to every-day life made his speculations appear in his own eyes "cold and strained and ridiculous." What then was the inference Hume himself intended? Which was really groundless—every-day belief or scepticism? Will his useful dilemma induce the reader to receive Kant's excuse for the celebrated doubter, when he bids us let the man alone because he is but trying the strength of human reason? At all events, Hume's way of stating his case seems to justify the old remark, that, while Superstition is refuted by Reason, Nature itself refutes the Sceptic.
B.—EXTRACTS FROM POPULAR LECTURES, BY PROFESSOR HELMHOLTZ, ON THE RECENT PROGRESS OF THE THEORY OF VISION.
"If now we compare the eye with other optical instruments, we observe the advantage it has over them in its very large field of vision. This for each eye separately is 160° (nearly two right angles) laterally, and 120° vertically, and for both together somewhat more than two right angles from right to left. The field of view of instruments made by art is usually very small, and becomes smaller with the increased size of the image.
"But we must also admit, that we are accustomed to expect in these instruments complete precision of the image in its entire extent, while it is only necessary for the image on the retina to be exact over a very small surface, namely, that of the yellow spot. The diameter of the central pit corresponds in the field of vision to an angular magnitude which can be covered by the nail of one's forefinger when the hand is stretched out as far as possible. In this small part of the field our power of vision is so accurate that it can distinguish the distance between two points, of only one minute angular magnitude, i.e. a distance equal to the sixtieth part of the diameter of the finger-nail. This distance corresponds to the width of one of the cones of the retina. All the other parts of the retinal image are seen imperfectly, and the more so the nearer to the limit of the retina they fall. So that the image which we receive by the eye is like a picture, minutely and elaborately finished in the centre, but only roughly sketched in at the borders. But although at each instant we only see a very small part of the field of vision accurately, we see this in combination with what surrounds it, and enough of this outer and larger part of the field, to notice any striking object, and particularly any change that takes place in it. All of this is unattainable in a telescope.
"But if the objects are too small, we cannot discern them at all with the greater part of the retina.
'When, lost in boundless blue on high,
The lark pours forth his thrilling song,'
the 'ethereal minstrel' is lost until we can bring her image to a focus upon the central pit of our retina. Then only are we able to see her.
"To look at anything means to place the eye in such a position that the image of the object falls on the small region of perfectly clear vision. This we may call direct vision, applying the term indirect to that exercised with the lateral parts of the retina—indeed with all except the yellow spot.
"The defects which result from the inexactness of vision and the smaller number of cones in the greater part of the retina are compensated by the rapidity with which we can turn the eye to one point after another of the field of vision, and it is this rapidity of movement which really constitutes the chief advantage of the eye over other optical instruments....
"A great part of the importance of the eye as an organ of expression depends on the same fact; for the movements of the eyeball—its glances—are among the most direct signs of the movement of the attention, of the movements of the mind, of the person who is looking at us." Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, pp. 212-214.
The great German next proceeds to catalogue some principal defects of the Eye. 1. Chromatic aberration connected with 2. spherical aberration and defective centering of the cornea and lens, together producing the imperfection known as astigmatism, and 3. irregular radiation round the images of illuminated points. "Now," adds Helmholtz, "it is not too much to say that if an optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument. Of course, I shall not do this with my eyes, and shall be only too glad to keep them as long as I can—defects and all. Still, the fact that, however bad they may be, I can get no others, does not at all diminish their defects, so long as I maintain the narrow but indisputable position of a critic on purely optical grounds." (p. 219.)
He then goes on to other faults. 4. Defective transparency. 5. Floating corpuscules (Muscæ Volitantes). 6. The "blind spot" with other gaps in the field of vision. "So much," he concludes, "for the physical properties of the Eye. If I am asked why I have spent so much time in explaining its imperfection to my readers, I answer, as I said at first, that I have not done so in order to depreciate the performances of this wonderful organ, or to diminish our admiration of its construction. It was my object to make the reader understand, at the first step of our inquiry, that it is not any mechanical perfection of the organs of our senses which secures for us such wonderfully true and exact impressions of the outer world. The next section of this inquiry will introduce much bolder and more paradoxical conclusions than any I have yet stated. We have now seen that the eye in itself is not by any means so complete an optical instrument as it first appears: its extraordinary value depends upon the way in which we use it: its perfection is practical, not absolute.... Wherever we scrutinise the construction of physiological organs, we find the same character of practical adaptation to the wants of the organism; although, perhaps, there is no instance which we can follow out so minutely as that of the eye.
"For the eye has every possible defect that can be found in an optical instrument, and even some which are peculiar to itself; but they are all so counteracted, that the inexactness of the image which results from their presence very little exceeds, under ordinary conditions of illumination, the limits which are set to the delicacy of sensation by the dimensions of the retinal cones....
"The adaptation of the eye to its function is, therefore, most complete, and is seen in the very limits which are set to its defects. Here the result which may be reached by innumerable generations working under the Darwinian law of inheritance, coincides with what the wisest Wisdom may have devised beforehand. A sensible man will not cut firewood with a razor, and so we may assume that each step in the elaboration of the eye must have made the organ more vulnerable and more slow in its development. We must also bear in mind that soft, watery animal textures must always be unfavourable and difficult material for an instrument of the mind....
"But, apparently, we are not yet come much nearer to understanding sight. We have only made one step: we have learnt how the optical arrangement of the eye renders it possible to separate the rays of light which come in from all parts of the field of vision, and to bring together again all those that have proceeded from a single point, so that they may produce their effect upon a single fibre of the optic nerve.
"Let us see, therefore, how much we know of the sensations of the eye, and how far this will bring us towards the solution of the problem." P. 226, seq.
From the Professor's mention of "much bolder and more paradoxical conclusions," the final result of his next inquiry may be anticipated. Sensation is so far from making evident the truth of our visual knowledge that it increases our perplexities tenfold. "The inaccuracies," he tells us, "and imperfections of the eye as an optical instrument, and those which belong to the image on the retina, now appear insignificant in comparison with the incongruities which we have met with in the field of sensation. One might almost believe that Nature had here contradicted herself on purpose, in order to destroy any dream of a pre-existing harmony between the outer and the inner world.
"And what progress have we made in our task of explaining Sight? It might seem that we are farther off than ever; the riddle only more complicated, and less hope than ever of finding out the answer. The reader may perhaps feel inclined to reproach Science with only knowing how to break up with fruitless criticism the fair world presented to us by our senses, in order to annihilate the fragments." (p. 269.)
How triumphant does Idealism now appear! How little trustworthy that boasted sense of which mankind have constantly said, "seeing is believing," although an apostle and philosophers innumerable have put the two in opposition!
Perhaps, however, instead of leading to a "triumph of Idealism," the paradoxes and incongruities—in a word, the vast accumulation of the Unknowable—belonging to eyesight considered as a Sensation, must be allowed to land us on the shore of a far-stretching Scepticism illimitable to the mind's eye. And this seems to be the eminent writer's own final opinion.[123] So, too, it will always appear when the case is fairly argued out; and that for the reasons adduced in our text. The course of argument there pursued was adopted before the Professor's book came to hand; but we have now added some extracts from his pages in the shape of footnotes, and have given references to other interesting topics touched upon by him.
For our purpose, however, it is necessary in some degree to disregard the variety of those topics, and fix our attention upon the conclusive issue. It is plain, that respecting our senses, as well as our other primary sources of information, the limits of what we can completely explain are very narrow. Yet each for himself and all of us for our race must needs every day accept and act upon this limited and imperfect kind of knowledge about what most essentially concerns our actions as well as our speculations.
Several strong examples of such incompleteness are given by Helmholtz in his scientific inquiry into the rationale of the visual sense-impressions. We observe, for instance, in his chapter on Sensation (p. 236 seq.) that all light-waves are the same in kind of movement, but differ in size as widely as the ripples on a sea-beach (round which happy children play) differ from the vast Atlantic ship-engulfing billows sixty or a hundred feet apart. All these undulations are similar in respect of reflection, refraction, interference, diffraction, and polarisation, as well as in their production of heat.[124] Now, it is the interpretation of such movements into its own language by which our eye gives us the sensation of colour. Yet this power of interpretation is curiously limited—it does not appreciate the gentler ripples of the light-waves—it does not reach to their mightier undulations. Consequently, there may be tender colour-delicacies adorning the Universe, completely incognisable by us, and there may be also glows and intensities of light-beams magnificently resplendent, and unspeakably grand in tone, of which we can through our visual apparatus form no possible conception. Thus, our eye translates some waves into a language which we call colour, but its scholarship is limited. A certain number of signs it catches and interprets, the rest lie altogether outside its ken. The Sun's softer light-harmonies, and his most awful emanations of beauty remain equally unknown.
And another limitation has been imposed upon our optical apparatus. For a perception of heating powers belonging to colour-waves the eye refers us to the skin;—and as to their chemical powers we are only just now discovering the instruments fitted for their true appreciation.
Skilful, too, and yet at the same time very skill-less, is the divination into sunlight given us by our human eyes;—sunlight, that is to say, as a general resultant in its whiteness. For, if our eyes, keen and susceptible to us perfect clearness, attempt to analyze white light into its factors and elements, their resolving faculty manifests still more blank inabilities. And they fail also in examining certain colours:—
"The most striking difference," writes Helmholtz, "between the mixture of pigments and that of coloured light is, that while painters make green by mixing blue and yellow pigments, the union of blue and yellow rays of light, produces white.... In general, then, light, which consists of undulations of different wave-lengths, produces different impressions upon our eye, namely, those of different colours. But the number of hues which we can recognise is much smaller than that of the various possible combinations of rays with different wave-lengths which external objects can convey to our eyes. The retina cannot distinguish between the white which is produced by the union of scarlet and bluish-green light, and that which is composed of yellowish-green and violet, or of yellow and ultramarine blue, or of red, green, and violet, or of all the colours of the spectrum united. All these combinations appear identically as white; and yet, from a physical point of view, they are very different. In fact, the only resemblance between the several combinations just mentioned is, that they are indistinguishable to the human eye. For instance, a surface illuminated with red and bluish-green light would come out black in a photograph; while another lighted with yellowish-green and violet would appear very bright, although both surfaces alike seem to the eye to be simply white. Again, if we successively illuminate coloured objects with white beams of light of various composition, they will appear differently coloured. And whenever we decompose two such beams by a prism, or look at them through a coloured glass, the difference between them at once becomes evident.
"Other colours, also, especially when they are not strongly pronounced, may, like pure white light, be composed of very different mixtures, and yet appear indistinguishable to the eye, while in every other property, physical or chemical, they are entirely distinct." (pp. 239-241.)
We may speak of visual Sensation, then, as a limited power of translating light. And what relation does visual Perception bear to this Power? Probably the simplest way of expressing it, is to say that it is neither more nor less than the translation of a translation. The mind thus construes to itself what the visual sense is every moment busied with expressing in its own special language—the interpretation of movement, into colour, light and shadow. And from these data—these colours, lights and shadows, the mind draws its own inferences.
Now these inferences thus drawn from preceding Sense inferences,—limited in range, as we have seen, and defective in analytic power;—these inferences, such as they are, constitute the boasted certainty of eyesight; and of all things apprehended by its means,—all
—quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus et quæ
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.
It needs but a statement of the mode in which our final mind-interpretations are constructed,—of these translated translations,—obscure in grammar and imperfect in vocabulary—to prove how very difficult is the position of the Realist. In view of this Empire of the Unknowable proclaimed by Science over the surest of our perceiving powers, the firmest foundations of our experimental knowledge, Helmholtz suggests that his reader "may feel determined to stick fast to the 'sound common sense' of mankind, and believe his own senses more than physiology." (p. 270.)
And such, no doubt, is the conclusion of the matter to the greater part of mankind. But we will in the first place prefer hearing the last word of the physiologist. From page 270 to page 313 of his work, he argues out the great question of how we perceive under the full impression of its vast importance to psychology, metaphysics, and the first principles upon which all science and all reasonings repose. "We have," he says (p. 281), "already learned enough to see that the questions which have here to be decided are of fundamental importance, not only for the physiology of sight, but for a correct understanding of the true nature and limits of human knowledge generally."
The Physiologist's last word is this—Sense impressions are signs, the meaning of which we learn inductively by a process of self education. "Illusions obviously depend upon mental processes which may be described as false inductions.... There appears to me to be in reality only a superficial difference between the 'conclusions' of logicians and those inductive conclusions of which we recognise the result in the conceptions we gain of the outer world through our sensations. The difference chiefly depends upon the former conclusions being capable of expression in words, while the latter are not; because, instead of words, they only deal with sensations and the memory of sensations. Indeed, it is just the impossibility of describing sensations, whether actual or remembered, in words, which makes it so difficult to discuss this department of psychology at all." (pp. 307, 8.) And again (p. 314), "There is a most striking analogy between the entire range of processes which we have been discussing, and another System of Signs, which is not given by nature but arbitrarily chosen, and which must undoubtedly be learned before it is understood. I mean the words of our mother tongue.
"Learning how to speak is obviously a much more difficult task than acquiring a foreign language in after-life. First, the child has to guess that the sounds it hears are intended to be signs at all; next, the meaning of each separate sound must be found out, by the same kind of induction as the meaning of the sensations of sight or touch; and yet we see children by the end of their first year already understanding certain words and phrases, even if they are not yet able to repeat them. We may sometimes observe the same in dogs.
"Now this connection between Names and Objects, which demonstrably must be learnt, becomes just as firm and indestructible as that between Sensations and the Objects which produce them. We cannot help thinking of the usual signification of a word, even when it is used exceptionally in some other sense; we cannot help feeling the mental emotions which a fictitious narrative calls forth, even when we know that it is not true; just in the same way as we cannot get rid of the normal signification of the sensations produced by any illusion of the senses, even when we know that they are not real.
"There is one other point of comparison which is worth notice. The elementary signs of language are only twenty-six letters, and yet what wonderfully varied meanings can we express and communicate by their combination! Consider, in comparison with this, the enormous number of elementary signs with which the machinery of sight is provided. We may take the number of fibres in the optic nerves as two hundred and fifty thousand. Each of these is capable of innumerable different degrees of sensation of one, two, or three primary colours. It follows that it is possible to construct an immeasurably greater number of combinations here than with the few letters which build up our words. Nor must we forget the extremely rapid changes of which the images of sight are capable. No wonder, then, if our senses speak to us in language which can express far more delicate distinctions and richer varieties than can be conveyed by words."
Finally (pp. 315, 16), "The correspondence, therefore, between the external world and the Perceptions of Sight rests, either in whole or in part, upon the same foundation as all our knowledge of the actual world,—on experience, and on constant verification of its accuracy by experiments which we perform with every movement of our body. It follows, of course, that we are only warranted in accepting the reality of this correspondence so far as these means of verification extend, which is really as far as for practical purposes we need.
"Beyond these limits, as, for example, in the region of Qualities, we are in some instances able to prove conclusively that there is no correspondence at all between sensations and their objects.
"Only the relations of time, of space, of equality, and those which are derived from them, of number, size, regularity of co-existence and of sequence—'mathematical relations' in short, are common to the outer and the inner world, and here we may indeed look for a complete correspondence between our conceptions and the objects which excite them.
"But it seems to me that we should not quarrel with the bounty of nature because the greatness, and also the emptiness, of these abstract relations have been concealed from us by the manifold brilliance of a system of signs; since thus they can be the more easily surveyed and used for practical ends, while yet traces enough remain visible to guide the philosophical spirit aright, in its search after the meaning of sensible Images and Signs."
Let therefore this account of visual Perception be accepted by us, as it will probably be by three-fourths of scientific men throughout Europe. And, next, let us ask, as every real thinker will proceed to ask, on what grounds of certitude rests our assurance as regards the daily and hourly information received through this avenue of perception, reasoned and acted upon with unswerving confidence by us all?
For an examination of the ground principle of Induction, the reader must be referred to our next chapter. But it is at once clear that no human experience can possess the attribute of universality, otherwise it would cease to be human. We have then in this present appeal to the veracity of Experience, no absolute knowledge to deal with, only knowledge as relative to mankind. Nay, we must go a little further still in our limitation, and say to the generality of mankind. For our eyes do not all see perfectly alike—a North-American Indian sees what a Cockney cannot discover; the trained eye discerns differently from the untrained. On the differences of power in eye and ear rest the differences in many kinds of theorising—amongst which art-perceptions yield an obvious and familiar set of examples. And if we try for a more precise estimate of the value of our limited human relativity, and proceed by way of comparison between our own diverse endowments, who shall venture to say that the eye of our body interpreted by our understanding, tells our inmost self more truly than the eye of our human soul, informing us directly of the facts of its intuitive vision? So far as our actual means of valuing these two modes of beholding can go, there is no knowledge so perfect as the product of pure intuition, the glorious fabric of Mathematical Science. And to pure Science it matters not whether the requisite Schematism is drawn upon a sheet of white paper or on the clear tablet of the imagining faculty of a philosopher. The purely inward view is in truth generally the farthest reaching, and the most unclouded. When, therefore, it is, and has been for centuries, apparent to the inmost eye of the generality of our race that there really exists a spiritual world within themselves—above them, and in the far distant future beyond us all, permanent while we change, and the evidence of our own ultimate permanency,—such knowledge may undeniably be human, the very flower and distinction of our human nature; and it may on that account be received by us as true.
If, again, our ordinary human soul is so far a Christian as to exclaim with Tertullian, "O good God," by what logical process shall we confute its utterance, while we maintain the utterance of our commonest sense-perceptions?
That we all see in frames, that we all think in frames, no rational thinker or perceiver will deny. If, however, any of us chooses to be an Idealist or Nihilist, let him at least be consistent;—if he will assert the necessity of Doubt, let him maintain its empire by doubting his own assertion. But let no man think that Doubt leads him any whither except to an abnegation of thought, a mistrust alike of Sense and Soul, and an abdication of every human prerogative:—
"Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries all."
So sang the witty rhymer, but we may add in prose that Doubt if thoroughly real, invariably commits suicide, and becomes first doubtful, after that, a non-entity at last.
C.—HELMHOLTZ ON SPECIALTIES OF SENSIBILITY.
The following passages from this interesting writer will be found in his Chapter "on the Sensations of Sight," between pp. 232 and 236. They will, it is hoped, be thoroughly intelligible if read in connection with the part of our last Chapter (pp. 158, 9) where a reference to this note was made.
"The nerve-fibres have been often compared with telegraphic wires traversing a country, and the comparison is well fitted to illustrate this striking and important peculiarity of their mode of action. In the network of telegraphs we find everywhere the same copper or iron wires carrying the same kind of movement, a stream of electricity, but producing the most different results in the various stations according to the auxiliary apparatus with which they are connected. At one station the effect is the ringing of a bell, at another a signal is moved, and at a third a recording instrument is set to work.... Nerve-fibres and telegraphic wires are equally striking examples to illustrate the doctrine that the same causes may, under different conditions, produce different results.... As motor nerves, when irritated, produce movement, because they are connected with muscles, and glandular nerves secretion, because they lead to glands, so do sensitive nerves, when they are irritated, produce sensation, because they are connected with sensitive organs.... Whether by the irritation of a nerve we produce a muscular movement, a secretion or a sensation depends upon whether we are handling a motor, a glandular, or a sensitive nerve, and not at all upon what means of irritation we may use. It may be an electrical shock, or tearing the nerve, or cutting it through, or moistening it with a solution of salt, or touching it with a hot wire. In the same way (and this great step in advance was due to Johannes Müller) the kind of sensation which will ensue when we irritate a sensitive nerve, whether an impression of light, or of sound, or of feeling, or of smell, or of taste, will be produced, depends entirely upon which sense the excited nerve subserves, and not at all upon the method of excitation we adopt.
"Let us now apply this to the optic nerve, which is the object of our present enquiry. In the first place, we know that no kind of action upon any part of the body except the eye and the nerve which belongs to it, can ever produce the sensation of light. The stories of somnambulists, which are the only arguments that can be adduced against this belief, we may be allowed to disbelieve. But, on the other hand, it is not light alone which can produce the sensation of light upon the eye, but also any other power which can excite the optic nerve. If the weakest electrical currents are passed through the eye they produce flashes of light. A blow, or even a slight pressure made upon the side of the eyeball with the finger, makes an impression of light in the darkest room, and, under favourable circumstances, this may become intense. In these cases it is important to remember that there is no objective light produced in the retina, as some of the older physiologists assumed, for the sensation of light may be so strong that a second observer could not fail to see through the pupil the illumination of the retina which would follow, if the sensation were really produced by an actual development of light within the eye. But nothing of the sort has ever been seen. Pressure or the electric current excites the optic nerve, and therefore, according to Müller's law, a sensation of light results, but under these circumstances, at least, there is not the smallest spark of actual light.
"In the same way, increased pressure of blood, its abnormal constitution in fevers, or its contamination with intoxicating or narcotic drugs, can produce sensations of light to which no actual light corresponds. Even in cases in which an eye is entirely lost by accident or by an operation, the irritation of the stump of the optic nerve while it is healing is capable of producing similar subjective effects. It follows from these facts that the peculiarity in kind which distinguishes the sensation of light from all others, does not depend upon any peculiar qualities of light itself. Every action which is capable of exciting the optic nerve is capable of producing the impression of light; and the purely subjective sensation thus produced is so precisely similar to that caused by external light, that persons unacquainted with these phenomena readily suppose that the rays they see are real objective beams.
"Thus we see that external light produces no other effects in the optic nerve than other agents of an entirely different nature. In one respect only does light differ from the other causes which are capable of exciting this nerve: namely, that the retina, being placed at the back of the firm globe of the eye, and further protected by the bony orbit, is almost entirely withdrawn from other exciting agents, and is thus only exceptionally affected by them, while it is continually receiving the rays of light which stream in upon it through the transparent media of the eye.
"On the other hand, the optic nerve, by reason of the peculiar structures in connection with the ends of its fibres, the rods and cones of the retina, is incomparably more sensitive to rays of light than any other nervous apparatus of the body, since the rest can only be affected by rays which are concentrated enough to produce noticeable elevation of temperature.
"This explains why the sensations of the optic nerve are for us the ordinary sensible sign of the presence of light in the field of vision, and why we always connect the sensation of light with light itself, even where they are really unconnected. But we must never forget that a survey of all the facts in their natural connection puts it beyond doubt that external light is only one of the exciting causes capable of bringing the optic nerve into functional activity, and therefore that there is no exclusive relation between the sensation of light and light itself."
Some of the quotations just made direct attention to illusions of Sight which (as we have seen in our last note) Helmholtz elsewhere calls "false inductions." Now one curious fact relative to these impressions is that in many instances the objective consequent is due to a subjective antecedent. Some readers may like to peruse a short account of five variously caused sight-illusions taken from an Oration on Positivism delivered by the present writer at St. George's Hall in May 1871. The particulars here given of the fifth illusion should be compared with the foot-note on page 158 ante.
"I will mention five instances in which people believe they see something, and do not see it; in other words, the objective antecedent is wanting, and the impression is produced partly by the sensory apparatus, partly by the mind itself. As I describe these instances one by one, let my hearers ask themselves, How does this illusion come about? Is it produced by our optic instrument or by our mental activity?
"First, then, Take a lighted stick, and whirl it rapidly round and round. You believe you see a circle of sparks—in reality it is no more than a simple train, and on a like illusion the Catherine-wheel is constructed. Again, put yourself in the hands of an optically inclined friend, and let him operate upon you thus. He shall place a cardboard down the middle axis of your face, quite close against your nose—one side of his board, say the right, coloured a brilliant red, the left a vivid green. After an instant or two let him suddenly substitute another board, white on both sides. Do my young friends guess what will follow? Your right eye will see green, your left red—the reverse of what they saw before; yet neither will see correctly, for both eyes are looking at uncoloured surfaces.
"Thirdly, Watch the full moon rising—how large and round she looks, resting as it were upon that eastern hill, and seen amidst the tops of its forest trees! How much larger and broader than when she hangs aloft in upper sky! Has every one here learned the true reason why? If not, look at her through a slit in a card, and her diameter will be the same.
"Fourthly, A schoolboy is crossing his bedroom in the deep dark night, anxiously hoping that his head may not come into collision with the bed-post. Though carefully and successfully avoiding it, he imagines of a sudden that the blow is imminent. Quick as thought he stops to save his head, and, behold, the room is as quickly filled with sparks or flames of fire. Another moment, and all becomes dark once more. I have heard many a schoolboy exclaim over this phenomenon, but never knew one who could explain it. Finally, did you ever, on opening your eyes in a morning, close them quickly again, and keep them shut, directing them as if to look straight forwards? Most persons of active nervous power, after a few trials—say a dozen, or a score—are surprised to see colours appear and flit before the sight. Some years ago, Germany's greatest poet tried, at the suggestion of her greatest physiologist, a series of experiments on these coloured images. He found that by an effort of will he could cause them to come and go, govern their movement, march, and succession. And this took place under no conditions of impaired sensation, nor any hallucination of a diseased mind. A thoroughly healthy will succeeded in impressing itself upon physical instruments, controlling their law, and creating at its own pleasure an unfailingly bright phantasmagoria.
"Some here may, others may not, have apprehended the distinctions between our five cases. The first two are due to the sensory apparatus, its optical laws of continued impression and complementary colour. In the latter three, mind intervenes. The enlarged size of the moon occurs through rapid comparison, the fiery lights in a dark room through instinctive apprehension, both influences of mind on the sensory system. The fifth and most interesting of all is no bad example of interference between moral and material law. The will truly causative (you may remark) overrules the natural process of physical impression, alters it, and creates a designed effect. I wish I could induce my young friends to devise a number of experiments on similar mixed cases, and, having tried them, to dissect out their real laws. These sharpenings of the critical faculty are exceedingly useful—they cultivate clearness; and most people know that two-thirds among our mistakes in life are caused by confusion of thought.
"Besides all other uses, such lessons teach at once the necessity, as we said before, of observing your own observations. And as, first, the real witness of every observation is our mind; every fact which comes through our bodily senses being to us a mental impression, it seems but common sense to hear above all things what mind has to say for and about itself. Then, secondly, where would be the benefit derived from our observations, if we could not reason upon them, or could place no confidence in our own reasonings? Yet the art of reasoning is so purely a mental process, that it can be represented by symbols as abstract and free from material meaning as if they were bare algebraic signs. Thirdly, in the most accurate of sciences mind extends our knowledge far beyond the circle of observation, and gives us axiomatic assurance of its own accuracy. Who ever saw, or ever can see, all straight lines in all conceivable positions, yet who doubts that throughout the whole universe no two straight lines ever did inclose or can inclose a space? And, fourthly, can it be a matter of indifference to any of us what evidence the mind offers concerning its own moral nature, and what is the value of that evidence, and the laws deducible therefrom? How true it thus appears that 'know thyself' lies at the root of all knowledge, and that the man who receives no witness from within can know nothing as he ought to know it!"
D.—POPULAR ACCOUNT OF PURE IDEALISM WITH CRITICAL REMARKS.
"A classification of systems of philosophy according to the cosmological conceptions governing them has actually been made. It is founded on a consideration of the differences among philosophers as to what that totality of existence is which is to be accepted as really vouched for by Mind. All agree, as we have said, that Mind is the sole voucher for anything; but philosophers are divisible into schools according to the various views they have taken of the constitution of that phenomenal Universe, that Cosmos, that total round of things, of which we have a recurring assurance in every act of perception, and which is orbed forth more or less fully for each man in his wider contemplations.
"The popular or habitual conception of mankind in general is that there are two distinct worlds mixed up in the phenomenal Cosmos—a world of Mind, consisting of multitudes of individual minds, and a world of Matter, consisting of all the extended immensity and variety of material objects. Neither of these worlds is thought of as begotten of the other, but each of them as existing independently in its own proper nature and within its own definite bounds, though they traffic with each other at present. Sweep away all existing minds, and the deserted Earth would continue to spin round all the same, still whirling its rocks, trees, clouds, and all the rest of its material pomp and garniture, alternately in the sunshine and in the depths of the starry stillness. Though no eye should behold, and no ear should hear, there would be evenings of silver moonlight on the ocean-marge, and the waves would roar as they broke and retired. On the other hand, suppose the entire fabric of the material Universe abolished and dissolved, and the dishoused population of spirits would still somehow survive in the imaginable vacancy. If this second notion is not so easy or common as the first, it still virtually belongs to the popular conception of the contents or constitution of the Cosmos. The conception is that of a Natural Dualism, or of the contact in every act of perception of two distinct spheres, one an internal perceiving mind, and the other an external world composed of the actual and identical objects which this mind perceives.
"On the first exercise of philosophic thought, however, this conception is blurred. An immense quantity of what we all instinctively think of as really existing out of ourselves turns out, on investigation, not to exist at all as we fancy it existing, but to consist only of affections of the perceiving mind. The redness of the rose is not a real external thing, immutably the same in itself; it is only a certain peculiar action on my physiology which the presence of an external cause or object seems to determine. Were my physiology different, the action would be different, though the cause or object remained the same. Indeed, there are persons in whom the presence of a rose occasions no sensation of redness such as is known to me, but a much vaguer sensation, not distinguishable from what I should at once distinguish as greenness. And, as colour is thus at once detected as no external independently-existing reality, but only a recurring physiological affection of myself and other sentient beings like myself, so with a thousand other things which, by habit or instinct, I suppose as externally and independently existing. When I imagine the depopulated Earth still wheeling its inanimate rotundity through the daily sunshine and the nocturnal shadow, or one of its bays still resonant in moonlit evenings with the roar of the breaking waves, it is because, in spite of myself, I intrude into the fancy the supposition of a listening ear, and a beholding eye analogous to my own. It is only by a strong effort that I can realize that a great deal at least of what I thus think of as the goings-on of things by themselves is not and cannot be their goings-on by themselves, but consists at the utmost of effects interbred between them and a particular sentiency in the midst of them. But the effort may be made; and, when it is made repeatedly, in a great many directions, and with reference to a great many of the so-called properties of matter, the inevitable result for the philosophic mind is that the popularly-imagined substance of a real external world finds itself eaten away or corroded, at least to a certain depth. So far philosophers are agreed. It is when they proceed to consider to what depth the popularly-imagined substance of the real external world is thus eaten away, or accounted for, that they begin to differ.
"Some philosophers, departing as little as may be from the popular judgment, suppose that, however much of the apparent external world may be resolved into affections of the subjective sentiency, there still remains an objective residue of such primary qualities as extension, figure, divisibility, mobility, etc., belonging to external matter itself, and by the direct and immediate cognizance of which the mind is brought face to face with external substance, and knows something of its real goings-on. Philosophers of this school are known generally as Realists. More numerous, however, are those who, not allowing an objective and independent reality even to the so-called primary qualities of matter, but believing them as well as colour, odour, or savour, to be only affections of the sentiency, deny that the mind is in any sense brought face to face with real external things such as they seem in the act of perception. To thinkers of this school there has been given the general name of Idealists. This broad distinction of Philosophers cosmologically into Realists and Idealists is so far convenient enough. Cosmologically, or in respect of this present Universe of ours, with its dualism of Mind and Matter, every man must declare himself either a Realist or an Idealist, if he understands the meanings attached to these terms. The distinction has reference solely to his notion of the so-called external or material world in its relations to the perceiving mind. If he abides, though only in part, by the popular conception, and regards the material world as a substantial reality independent of the perceiving mind, and which the mind, according to its powers, presses against and directly apprehends in every act of perception, then he is a Realist. If, on the other hand, he cannot see that there need be asserted any external material world with such characters as we attribute to it, but supposes that our unanimous agreement in the imagination of such an external world is merely a habit of our own sentiency, projecting its own ideas or affections outwards, and giving them a body, then he is an Idealist." Masson, "Recent British Philosophy," pp. 58-64. Again p. 69, seq., "There is the system of Constructive Idealism. It may be so called to distinguish it from the more developed and extreme Idealism presently to be spoken of. According to this system, we do not perceive the real external world immediately, but only mediately—that is, the objects which we take as the things actually perceived are not the real objects at all, but only vicarious assurances, representatives, or nuntii of real unknown objects. The hills, the rocks, the trees, the stars, all the choir of heaven and earth, are not, in any of their qualities, primary, secondary, or whatever we choose to call them, the actual existences out of us, but only the addresses of a 'something' to our physiology, or eductions by our physiology out of a 'something.' They are all Thoughts or Ideas, with only this peculiarity involved in them, that they will not rest in themselves, but compel a reference to objects out of self, with which, by some arrangement or other, they stand in relation. Difficult as this system may be to understand, and violently as it wrenches the popular common sense, it is yet the system into which the great majority of philosophers in all ages and countries hitherto are seen, more or less distinctly, to have been carried by their speculations. While the Natural Realists among philosophers have been very few, and even these have been Realists in a sense unintelligible to the popular mind, quite a host of philosophers have been Constructive Idealists. These might be farther subdivided according to particular variations in the form of their Idealism. Thus, there have been many Constructive Idealists who have regarded the objects rising to the mind in external perception, and taken to be representative of real unknown objects, as something more than modifications of the mind itself—as having their origin without. Among these have been reckoned Malebranche, Berkeley, Clarke, Sir Isaac Newton, Tucker, and possibly Locke. But there have been other Constructive Idealists, who have supposed the objects rising in the mind in external perception to be only modifications of the mind itself, but yet, by some arrangement, vicarious of real unknown objects, and intimating their existence. Among such have been reckoned Descartes, Leibnitz, Condillac, Kant, and most Platonists. The general name 'Idealists' it will be seen properly enough includes both the classes as distinct from the Natural Realists, inasmuch as both classes hold that what the mind is directly cognizant of in external perception is only ideas. But, inasmuch as these ideas are held by both classes, though under divers hypotheses, to refer to real existences beyond themselves, and distinct from the perceiving mind, the thinkers in question may also properly enough be called Realists or Dualists, though not 'Natural' Realists or Dualists. They occupy a midway place between the Natural Realists and the philosophers next to be mentioned.
"There is the system of Pure Idealism, which abolishes matter as a distinct or independent existence in any sense, and resolves it completely into mind. Though this system is named in the scheme, for the sake of symmetry, and as the exact antithesis to Materialism, it is difficult to cite representatives that could be certainly discriminated from the merely Constructive Idealists just mentioned on the one hand, and from the school of philosophers next following on the other. Fichte is, perhaps, the purest example." Ibid. pp. 69-72.
For perfect clearness we must put together two other passages from Professor Masson's interesting volume:—
"There is the system of Nihilism, or, as it may be better called, Non-Substantialism. According to this system, the Phænomenal Cosmos, whether regarded as consisting of two parallel successions of phænomena (Mind and Matter), or of only one (Mind or Matter), resolves itself, on analysis, into an absolute Nothingness,—mere appearances with no credible substratum of Reality; a play of phantasms in a void. If there have been no positive or dogmatic Nihilists, yet both Hume for one purpose, and Fichte for another, have propounded Nihilism as the ultimate issue of all reasoning that does not start with some à priori postulate." Masson, "Recent British Philosophy," p. 66.... If any one could assert "There is no Absolute," surely it might be the Nihilist, who has analysed away both Matter and Thought, and attenuated the Cosmos into vapour and non-significance. Yet, from the abyss of a speculatively reasoned Nihilism more void than Hume's, Fichte returned, by a convulsive act of soul,—which he termed faith—an intense, a burning, a blazing Ontologist. Ibid. p. 81."[125]
This is certainly an eloquent account of philosophic Idealism as it may in its various phases be represented to the world of general readers. It turns, as every such speculation must turn, on the great principle, that our Sensations are so many series of signs and symbols.[126] They may be preordained, and our apprehension of them innate;—they may be arbitrary, and their interpretation the work of man's intelligence. To decide this question, is to decide something as to the extent of their relativity; but will any one pronounce their information absolutely true?
At this point occurs a wide divergence between two great schools of Idealism—the Psychological, and the Theological thinkers. These schools inosculate in respect of some of their arguments, and of their objections against ordinary modes of thought. They disagree, however, in their aims—the ports at which they land themselves and their disciples.
Psychological Idealism is best known to most readers through Mr. J. S. Mill. The Theological view, so far as this country goes, seems to have made scant progress beyond Berkeley and a few of his clever followers. For ordinary Englishmen, a reference to continental writers on this question seems useless;—Theology being discussed by them in so ab extrâ a manner as to put them out of court with even the most metaphysical of our theologians.
Regarding the subject in a psychological light, Mr. O'Hanlon made the following common-sense remarks amongst others of a more abstract nature:[127]—
"To come now to Mr. Mill's Idealism. He, as all the world of thinkers knows, following the steps of Berkeley and Hume, claims, by means of his power of analysis, and by the aid of the formidable psychological instrument furnished him by the doctrine of the Association of Ideas, to have got rid of all other existences save and except states of consciousness, actual and possible.... I propose to try and answer his arguments" (i.e. within certain expressed limitations)—
"Let A = all my sensations.
" B = the group of sensations and of permanent possibilities of sensation I call my body.
" C = the group of permanent possibilities of sensation I call my friend Smith.
"Now I find B always related to A in a very peculiar manner. B has in perpetual conjunction with it a long series of manifold states of consciousness, A. C resembles B in very many particulars, but it is not so related to A. I hence conclude, if I follow Mr. Mill, that C is so related to some other A, that is, to some other consciousness. In drawing this conclusion, in extending to C, which so closely resembles B, my experience of B, I, according to Mr. Mill, do but extend the principles of inductive evidence, which experience shews hold good of my states of consciousness, to a sphere without my consciousness."
The italicized words sound simple enough to the ordinary reader, but argument upon them involves (as Mr. O'Hanlon observes) two serious postulates. "(a) That there is a sphere beyond my consciousness; the very thing to be proved, (b) That the laws, which obtain in my consciousness, also obtain in the sphere beyond it." But;—
"'Such an inference'" he goes on to quote from Mill "'would only be warrantable if we could know à priori that we must have been created capable of conceiving whatever is capable of existing: that the universe of thought and that of reality, the microcosm and the macrocosm (as they once were called) must have been framed in complete correspondence with one another. That this is really the case has been laid down expressly by some systems of philosophy, by implication in more, and is the foundation (among others) of the systems of Schelling and Hegel; but an assumption more destitute of evidence could scarcely be made, nor can one easily imagine any evidence that could prove it unless it were revealed from above.'" Mill on Hamilton, chap. VI. p. 65.
The reader will probably see at once where the abstract difficulty lies, and how it runs up into the higher metaphysics.
Now, as Mr. O'Hanlon puts the case, taking all this for granted;
"A boy cuts his finger and screams.... Yet if I was not by, the boy, the knife, the blood, the scream, would only exist potentially."
Or on the other hand if I sacrifice consistency and substitute 'actually' for 'potentially,' "I thereby reject the validity of the Psychological method" which asserts "that the belief in an external cause of our sensations" is not original but "generated 'so early as to have become inseparable from our consciousness before the time at which memory commences.' ... Nevertheless, it afterwards admits that the belief in the case of persons, has an external cause. Hereby the method commits suicide, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus."
Finally, he remarks, "the psychological method professes very little regard for our natural beliefs. Now I can, by a vigorous effort, regard matter as mere states or possible states of my consciousness (at least I can do so for the moment), but I can also look on other persons in the same light. Why should one natural belief be treated more tenderly than another?... In short, if I refuse to postulate a non ego, and if I hold that, supposing the states of consciousness I call the ego can be shewn capable of producing the notion of the non ego, then they did produce it, and if I hold that they can be shewn to be so capable, such a theory is equally applicable to external consciousnesses as to external matter. In both cases, I cannot get out of the sphere of my own feelings; there may be something beyond or there may not, but if there is, it is at all events incognisable by me, and to all intents and purposes I am alone in the universe."[128]
In drift and true meaning Bishop Berkeley's Idealism differed toto cælo from Mill's, as well as from Hume's idealistic Scepticism. His belief in a world outside us all was as firm as that of the firmest Realist, and by a world outside us he meant a world which neither we nor our conceptions can alter. His reasoning was also of the most common-sense description. Sensation is (as before said) a sign between us and things outside. But the sign tells us nothing of any substratum on which the things signified depend for their sign-giving powers. Matter (as commonly understood[129]) is a figment devised by certain philosophers;—the true subsistence of the outward world is in and for mind, and apart from thought it does not subsist at all. But my mind, nay the human mind, is limited. There is One whose thoughts are not as our thoughts;—in Him the world subsists, and in Him we also have our Being continually. The world is what it is to us, in and through Him, and it appeals not to our so-called material frames but to our minds.
Berkeley's argument was simply this. Take away gross matter—and the world is still perfectly Real. It is real because God is real. Real for us, real in Him; and by this we know His Reality.[130]
By comparing this phase of Idealism with the modern doctrine of what is called the "Conditioned," its Theological interest becomes still more obvious. Suppose we naturally know only what is conditioned (i.e. dependent on some Absolute reality to us unknown), what ought, asks Dr. Mansel, to be the inference? The right inference is that the Divine Absolute did not leave our world in ignorance, but did really reveal Himself to Man.
The fate of arguments framed in special interests, however noble those interests may be, is usually the same. Some clever antagonist allows their destructive force, but refuses their affirmative conclusions. Berkeley's denial of the unknown substratum called matter was approved by sceptics, who scoffed at his unknown God. His idealism was pronounced unanswerable, his divinity needed no answer. Therefore, the Reason remained without satisfaction of any kind, "Most of the writings" says Hume "of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes, however, in his title-page (and undoubtedly with great truth,) to have composed his book against the sceptics as well as against the atheists and freethinkers. But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction." (Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding. Section XII.) And be it remarked that this final clause forms a skilled definition of Scepticism—its essential notion—given by an expert. Dean Mansel himself who left at his death an unfinished article upon Berkeley, suffered under a charge of promoting what he desired to discourage. So dangerous is it to deal with wide questions by narrowing their sweep to a point; yet on the other hand how few students are prepared to read and think widely?
Shall we attribute to a growing width of Thought, the increased breadth of view under which Idealism has of late years been represented? The German Philosopher, with whom Schwegler closes his philosophic history writes "This ideality or non-substantiality of the finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every true philosophy is idealistic" (Idealismus).[131] In England Mr. Green of Balliol signalises Berkeley's "true proposition—there is nothing real apart from thought—" and carefully distinguishes it from the one so often substituted for it—the fatal flaw of the Berkeleian argument.[132] Another influential thinker, Mr. Herbert Spencer,—who, like Professor Huxley, uses materialistic symbols treating them as symbols only,—has been for some time labouring after a "reconciliation of Realism and Idealism," which again is considered by an able critic, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, "an impossible compromise."—Mr. Spencer's answer to Mr. Sidgwick, on this particular point, will be found in his recently published volume of "Essays" (III. 282 seq.). A very instructive sentence occurs on p. 290. "Should it be said that this regarding of everything constituting experience and thought as symbolic, has a very shadowy aspect; I reply that these which I speak of as symbols, are real relatively to our consciousness; and are symbolic only in their relation to the Ultimate Reality."
So much then for a question which in a variety of shapes has exercised the human intellect throughout countless generations, and in all countries from India to the United States. It has also pervaded all spheres of Thought from physical science, (on which compare further, Additional Note I., and our next chapter), to the great philosophico-theological domain as we have already seen in certain specimens of Western thought. It would be easy to illustrate its empire far more extensively from those wonderful Eastern systems brought home to English readers thirty-six years ago by the translation of Ritters' Ancient Philosophy, but very imperfectly comprehended even now, notwithstanding the agreeable reception which Professor Max Müller has provided for them. To his writings we will gladly refer the curious student.
E.—ON THE RELATIONS OF FACT AND THEORY.
"The distinction between Theory (that is, true Theory) and Fact is this: that in Theory the Ideas are considered as distinct from the Facts: in Facts, though Ideas may be involved, they are not, in our apprehension, separated from the sensations. In a Fact, the Ideas are applied so readily and familiarly, and incorporated with the sensations so entirely, that we do not see them, we see through them. A person who carefully notes the motion of a star all night, sees the circle which it describes as he sees the star, though the circle is, in fact a result of his own Ideas. A person who has in his mind the measures of different lines and countries on the earth's surface, and who can put them together into one conception, finds that they can make no figure but a globular one: to him, the earth's globular form is a Fact, as much as the square form of his chamber. A person to whom the grounds of believing the earth to travel round the sun are as familiar as the grounds for believing the movements of the mail coaches in this country, looks upon the former event as a Fact, just as he looks upon the latter events as Facts. And a person who, knowing the Fact of the earth's annual motion, refers it distinctly to its mechanical cause, conceives the sun's attraction as a Fact, just as he conceives as a Fact, the action of the wind which turns the sails of a mill. He cannot see the force in either case; he supplies it out of his own Ideas. And thus, a true Theory is a Fact; a Fact is a familiar Theory. That which is a Fact under one aspect, is a Theory under another. The most recondite Theories when firmly established are Facts; the simplest Facts involve something of the nature of Theory. Theory and Fact correspond, in a certain degree, with Ideas and Sensations, as to the nature of their opposition. But the Facts are Facts, so far as the Ideas have been combined with the Sensations and absorbed in them: the Theories are Theories, so far as the Ideas are kept distinct from the Sensations, and so far as it is considered still a question whether those can be made to agree with these.
"We may, as I have said, illustrate this matter by considering man as interpreting the phenomena which he sees. He often interprets without being aware that he does so. Thus when we see the needle move towards the magnet, we assert that the magnet exercises an attractive force on the needle. But it is only by an interpretative act of our own minds that we ascribe this motion to attraction. That, in this case, a force is exerted—something of the nature of the pull which we could apply by our own volition—is our interpretation of the phenomena; although we may be conscious of the act of interpretation, and may then regard the attraction as a Fact.
"Nor is it in such cases only that we interpret phenomena in our own way, without being conscious of what we do. We see a tree at a distance, and judge it to be a chestnut or a lime; yet this is only an inference from the colour or form of the mass according to preconceived classifications of our own. Our lives are full of such unconscious interpretations. The farmer recognizes a good or a bad soil; the artist a picture of a favourite master; the geologist a rock of a known locality, as we recognize the faces and voices of our friends; that is, by judgments formed on what we see and hear; but judgments in which we do not analyze the steps, or distinguish the inference from the appearance. And in these mixtures of observation and inference, we speak of the judgment thus formed, as a Fact directly observed.
"Even in the case in which our perceptions appear to be most direct, and least to involve any interpretations of our own,—in the simple process of seeing,—who does not know how much we, by an act of the mind, add to that which our senses receive? Does any one fancy that he sees a solid cube? It is easy to show that the solidity of the figure, the relative position of its faces and edges to each other, are inferences of the spectator; no more conveyed to his conviction by the eye alone, than they would be if he were looking at a painted representation of a cube. The scene of nature is a picture without depth of substance, no less than the scene of art; and in the one case as in the other, it is the mind which, by an act of its own, discovers that colour and shape denote distance and solidity. Most men are unconscious of this perpetual habit of reading the language of the external world, and translating as they read. The draughtsman, indeed, is compelled, for his purposes, to return back in thought from the solid bodies which he has inferred, to the shapes of surface which he really sees. He knows that there is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature, if it be theory to infer more than we see. But other men, unaware of this masquerade, hold it to be a fact that they see cubes and spheres, spacious apartments and winding avenues. And these things are facts to them, because they are unconscious of the mental operation by which they have penetrated nature's disguise.
"And thus, we still have an intelligible distinction of Fact and Theory, if we consider Theory as a conscious, and Fact as an unconscious inference, from the phenomena which are presented to our senses."—Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, B. I. Chap. ii. Sect. 10.
F.—ON THE "UNKNOWABLE."
If the word which heads this note could be accepted in the sense understood by Mr. Spencer's American critic, as a truthful and in all respects complete description of the First Ground of all things, there must of course be an end of all Theology, natural, and supernatural; Theism, Pantheism, and Atheism, would together become what Comte thought them,—equally unfounded, equally unmeaning, and therefore equally to be opposed, condemned, and ostracized. Between Humanity and all that is Superhuman the gulf would appear hopelessly impassable.
"To be consistent," says the Editor of the American Index, "Empiricism must utterly sink the soul in its material surroundings...." Mr. Spencer makes his election in Empiricism, but shrinks from the acceptance of its necessary implications, and thereby forfeits his title to rank among the great leaders of philosophy. Teaching that every faculty of the mind is the effect of impressions made by the Environment upon the Organism, he should also teach that the mind is nothing distinct from the organism, and that the mind's faculties will perish at the disintegration of the organism; that, as fire is a mere phenomenon of chemical combination, ceasing with it, so life is a mere phenomenon of organic "re-arrangement of parts," and will cease when the Dissolution which is the converse and sequel of Evolution has become complete; and that the "theory of a 'soul' is as completely exploded as the theory of 'phlogiston.'"
Such is the opinion of an unsympathising reviewer, who calls himself a Positivist of the latest development. He despises Comte, praises Hamilton, and preaches the truth of Dualism. "If," he writes, "physical science sneeringly objects that mental science proceeds on a sheer assumption of mind, the retort is crushing and cogent that physical science proceeds on the sheer assumption of matter. Who ever yet demonstrated the existence of either?... Only by admitting what can neither be demonstrated without a begging of the question, nor doubted without a reductio ad absurdam of all intelligence,—namely, the natural veracity of the intuitive and cognitive powers,—is a truly positive science possible." From this dualistic Positivism he predicts the rise of a new Theology. "We believe that Theism must be re-theologized on the basis of pure Positivism, as the absolute condition of its future growth." From the same point of view, Mr. Spencer's "reconciliation of Science and Religion" is "pretended"; and his "philosophy is chiefly valuable as indicating the rapid spread of the true spirit of Positivism," but, "like Comtism, it possesses little or no value as an exposition of Positivism in the highest departments of science."
This censure of Spencer was combated in a subsequent number of the Index, by a writer signing himself "Evolutionist." The Editor prints his letter, and replies to it briefly:—"1. The 'unknowable' must be an absolute blank to every intelligence. It surely cannot be held legitimate to make any predicate of it whatever, as Mr. Spencer himself admits. Yet he does make predicates of it which are 'derived from our own natures' and thus violates his own principle. 'Omnipresence' is simply presence throughout all space; and what do we know of 'presence' at all but by our own experience? Mr. Spencer does the very thing he forbids us to do, in making this predication.
"2. The difference between him and us is briefly this. He denies that we know anything of Force; we affirm that we know it just so far as it perceptibly acts. The Cause of Nature we maintain to be known in its effects. Hence Force is not to us the 'Unknowable,' but is rather the 'God of Science,' known just so far as Nature is known."
Here follow some stringent criticisms of the distinction between phenomena and noumena accepted by Mill as well as Spencer, which we pass over as being somewhat unintelligible without a longer discussion than can here be given to them.
On the subject of our first quotation—Empiricism—many readers may like to peruse the opinion of a writer far removed from Mr. Abbott in philosophy. The following is Hegel's dictum:—
"In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation.... Touching this principle it has been justly observed that, in what we call Experience, as distinct from the individual sensation of individual facts, there are two elements. First, there is the infinitely complex matter, which so far as itself is concerned is individualised: secondly, there is the form, as seen in the characteristics of universality and necessity. Empiricism no doubt can point to many, almost innumerable, similar perceptions: but, after all, no multitude, however great, can be the same thing as universality. Similarly, Empiricism reaches so far as the perception of changes in succession and of objects in juxtaposition or co-existence; but it presents no necessary connexion. If sensation, therefore, is to maintain its claim to be the sole basis of what men hold for truth, universality and necessity can have no right to exist: they become an accident of our minds, a mere custom, the content of which might be otherwise constituted than it is.
"It is an important corollary of this theory, that in the empirical mode of treatment the truths and rules of justice and morality, as well as the body of religion, are exhibited as the work of chance, and stripped of their objective character and inner truth."[133]
Considering how far Hegel confirms the American Positivist's opinion respecting the inevitable conclusions of consistent Empiricism, Mr. Spencer may with reason be congratulated on his very happy inconsistency.
The subject of quotation No. 2—Spencer's position in regard of the Unknowable—contains a censure which unites in alliance many widely differing authorities on this side the Atlantic. Some of these assail it from an extremely hostile point of view; but the criticism of others is conceived in a half-friendly, half-indifferent spirit. Mr. Spencer has very lately published a third volume of "Essays," and devotes Articles X. and XI. to his reviewers.[134] It need hardly be said that these pages will repay perusal. We shall here venture on giving a brief account of his defence as it presents itself to our own understanding.
The most salient difference between him and his critics generally, seems to lie in this circumstance;—they begin by taking the word "Unknowable" in its strict (i.e. its proper) signification. Hence they appear to assume that by "Absolute" he means—or ought to mean even when seeming to say the contrary—"absolutely abstract." Now of a mere, that is, a pure and complete abstraction, nothing can be predicated, because the idea is perfectly empty. It is in fact a Nothingness.
But suppose we say of this Absolute, (as Spencer does), it exists;—we have predicated something already;—something which destroys its complete emptiness. And again, if we are asked or, (what is better), ask ourselves how we know that an Absolute does exist, and proceed to reply, as Spencer himself replies, because it must exist; we shall have made respecting our Absolute this highest of all possible predications. It is not only Being, but necessary Being, or, in other words, it is a Self-Existent. Still more, since it is so in contradistinction from the universe of relativities, it is The Self-Existent, a totally different idea from that which the American editor dissects.
But now comes the question, who or what is answerable for the Reviewer's misconception,—Spencer or his critics? Is it the poverty of language, or the law of controversial sequency,—a law under which every thought arises as antagonistic to some other thought, and afterwards, when arisen and firmly established so as to become the subject of analysis, is found to yield more than was at first conceived. Then, of course, another antithesis arises respecting it, and we have to decide how much and what is truly meant, a question which often comes before us in this shape:—Is our thought merely the not so and so, or is it a real substantive idea? In the former case it is one-sided and negative; in the latter it is many-sided and affirmative.
At the first blush, it seems natural to blame Mr. Herbert Spencer. Every one must feel astonished to find how much he himself knows of the Unknowable. The following sentences, however, contain a good account of one amongst his principal explanations of this apparent incongruity. Speaking of Mr. Martineau's conception of the Creator,[135] he writes (Essays, Vol. III. p. 299):—
"Finding, as just shewn, that it leaves the essential mystery unsolved; I do not see that it has an advantage over the doctrine of the Unknowable in its unqualified shape. There cannot, I think, be more than temporary rest in a proximate solution which takes for its basis the ultimately insoluble. Just as thought cannot be prevented from passing beyond Appearance, and trying to conceive the Cause behind; so, following out the interpretation Mr. Martineau offers, thought cannot be prevented from asking what Cause it is which restricts the Cause he assigns. And if we must admit that the question under this eventual form cannot be answered, may we not as well confess that the question under its immediate form cannot be answered? Is it not better candidly to acknowledge the incompetence of our intelligence, rather than to persist in calling that an explanation which does but disguise the inexplicable? Whatever answer each may give to this question, he cannot rightly blame those who, finding in themselves an indestructible consciousness of an ultimate Cause, whence proceed alike what we call the Material Universe and what we call Mind, refrain from affirming anything respecting it; because they find it as inscrutable in nature, as it is inconceivable in extent and duration."
There will be to many people much force in this plea for leaving inscrutables amidst their primary obscurities. But it is open to a rejoinder suggested by Mr. Spencer himself,—you cannot prevent the Mind from inquiring; and, in point of fact, Spencer in person leads the way. He places before us the ultimate idea of a self-existent First Cause. Now surely he might reflect that such an Idea not only permits but invites analysis;—it is no empty abstraction, but a substantive thought and a full one. But he bars analysis to his own satisfaction, by saying that the Idea is in its own Nature inscrutable. Respecting this position two questions arise. First, if inscrutable as to its ultimate nature—its highest essence, and deepest thought,—is it so in its attributes? Next, if Spencer's special walk in philosophy ends with the bare positing of this Idea, must all Philosophy do the same? Suppose the Physicist says—"Here I learn to know the Fact of a self-existent universal First Cause," may not the investigator of our Practical human Reason try to discover whether an Ethical view ought or ought not to be taken of this Self-Existent? To answer "No," is either to make physical philosophy the sole philosophy; or it is to dismember and disjoint the universal Body of Truth into departmental carcase-fragments;—a process which never can begin till all Life has been effectually crushed out of the Whole.[136] For every one who takes wide views of Philosophy;—for every inquirer into First Principles;—above all, if Mr. Spencer will permit us to say so, for every Encyclopædic writer like himself, a question must arise the answer to which it is incumbent on all and each to ascertain, "Can we have any conscious idea whatever of a First Cause without including that very fact of Personality from which Spencer appears to shrink?" Nay we may rather put the point thus: "Is not our idea and definition of Causality derived from Personal existence, and apart from this source of derivation, does not the derived idea perish?"—If so, to speak of a non-personal First Cause both of the outside world and of mind itself is to use words to which no thinker can consciously attach any real meaning. There must, says Mr. Spencer, be Power behind Appearance;—in other words, Phenomena imply a Cause behind them,—but to add that this Power or Cause is conceivably impersonal, seems nothing better than to imagine (Hibernicè) at the beginning of the phenomenal chain, a prior phenomenon which in its own nature and ex vi verborum cannot account for a Beginning[137] at all;—cannot, to use Mr. Spencer's expression, be "ultimate"; and, in short, requires to be accounted for, itself.
The truth is, that such ideas as First, Ultimate, Power accounting for appearance, or Cause underlying phenomena, cannot be spoken of as altogether Unknowable; because they imply and contain within themselves certain knowable and strongly defined characteristics. Pressed by his critics, Mr. Spencer becomes painfully aware of this truth; and is fearful of being driven by logic and philosophical consistency to plead guilty of believing in a Personal Author of the Universe, and of making Theism the ultimate word of Science. We see on pp. 292 and 302 of Vol. III. how he manifests a preference for the phrase non-relative, vice Absolute; meaning thereby (if he means anything new) to replace an affirmative idea by a negational abstract, empty enough to land him at once in American Positivism. For, if the non-relative means more than to say that he is unable to predicate relativity of the whole Universe of things—if it means more than an avowal of Positivist ignorance—it really does mean a true Absolute after all; and very few students of Mr. Spencer will doubt that in the sense of an Absolute (not necessarily Hegelian), this ground idea of his must be accepted.
As courteous antagonists, we will endeavour to abstain from joining with Mr. Sidgwick in the severest censure which has yet befallen Mr. Spencer,—the imputation of a "mazy inconsistency," a "fundamental incoherence," and an "inability to harmonize different lines of thought." We rather wish to congratulate him on presenting such an appearance before the eye of a critic so accomplished, and so equitable; it is a sign that we have not as yet heard Mr. Spencer's final utterance. He is, we are quite sure, divided by a wide tract of thought from the American Positivists;—but we are not sure that he may not ultimately be found amid the ranks of Scientific Theists. This at the present moment appears the most natural development of the thoughts maintained in his recently published volume. That the nature of God, considered as the "ultimate cause of what we call the material universe and what we call mind," is to us at present inscrutable;—that clouds and darkness are round about Him;—that His ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, no meditative Theist will deny. But, though the Heavens are higher than the Earth, though beatified spirits worship in humble adoration of the Incomprehensible, yet the measureless distance does not hinder us from knowing Him as a Spirit, and therefore as a Person; nor yet from confidently affirming that Righteousness and Judgment are the habitation of His throne.
G.—MR. J. S. MILL AS AN INDEPENDENT MORALIST.
Few passages of Mr. Mill's writings are better worth reading than pages 123, 4, of his "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy." In these pages the eminent writer asserts his own strong moral sentiments, and throws to the winds that inconsistent Utilitarianism with which he had trained his mind to associate them. He will worship no Unknowable Being whose supreme moral nature does not affirm our human morality. "Why is this?" an opponent might fairly ask; "is it not useful so to do? is not such worship conducive to that noblest final end, the interest of mankind?" By saying "No" you affirm two things: one, the dissociation of Religion from Utility; a second, the indivisible association of Religion with absolute Morality.
Some antagonists may consider the first of these two propositions inadmissible, the second objectionable, or at all events, exceedingly doubtful. Every one who maintains that Natural Theology has, in addition to its other elements, a firm and moral ground, will accept with ready assent the second proposition, and will say that the truth or falsehood of the first depends on the meaning attached to an ambiguous word. We are equally sure that "Godliness is profitable for all things," and that "Honesty is the best policy." But then we are quite sure also, that the final cause of Godliness is not profit, nor its essential nature a love of gain; and that policy is not a true description of honesty, nor the being politic the true and proper aim of the honest man. And Mr. Mill, when his moral sentiments asserted themselves, felt these certainties as elements of his inner life. Rather than worship a Being whose unknown moral attributes fell beneath, not the dictates of Utility, but the purest instincts of his own inmost morality, Mr. Mill goes on to declare that he is willing to suffer the horrors of Eternal death.[138] Hell is better than a violation of his own moral nature. Can this be a declaration deduced from the supreme law of Interest,—is it not rather a foundation maxim of independent morality? Violate such foundation maxims, says the independent moralist, and you need not even speak of "Going to hell," hell will come to you. Sooner or later you will find its undying torments within you.
In an article on the death of Mr. Mill, the Pall Mall Gazette expresses its perception of his leading inconsistency as follows:—
"It is impossible to read Mr. Mill's works with any attention, and in particular to look with intelligence on the later part of his career, without seeing that by temperament he was essentially religious, but that as far as positive doctrine went his mind was an absolute blank. We believe that it was this sharp contrast between theory and feeling which drove him into the schemes for the improvement of the world which have been exposed to so many, and, in some respects, to such well-founded objections. Having to love something, and being, as it were, chained down by his own logic to this world and this life, past, present, and future, he struggled to make a sort of religion out of man as he might come to be after centuries or millenniums. Humanity, progress, a realization of all the ideals at which his theories pointed—these were his divinities, for he was a man who could not do without some divinity, and he could find no other. We do not think that his life or his thoughts were triumphant. If he had consistently followed out his own views, if he had carried out his Benthamism with perfect consistency, the result would have been too hard, too grim, too dismal for his eager and sensitive heart. Hence came the faltering, the inconsistency, the romance of his later days. It is a spectacle which may well humble every one who looks on it with intelligence and sympathy. From us, at least, it shall never draw one word of sarcasm, or one thought which is not full of deep respect, regret, and pity. He bore a burden common to many. If he bent under it, it was not because his strength was less, but because his sensibility was greater. When he died one of the tenderest and most passionate hearts that ever set to work an intellect of iron was laid to rest. May he rest in peace, and find, if it be possible, that his knowledge was less complete than he perhaps supposed, and that there was more to be known than was acknowledged in his philosophy." (Pall Mall Gazette, Saturday, May, 10, 1873.)
A little earlier in the same article we find another paragraph worthy of careful consideration:—"No succession of writers ever exercised greater power over the fortunes of this nation, we might say of any nation, than Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, and Mr. Mill. What may be described as the theory of modern life has been thought out by them, and translated into its practical equivalents with a persistency, a precision, a degree of method and calmness unequalled in the history of thought. We do not say that their results are complete, but we do say that their teaching has been successful to an unexampled degree; and that, however unpopular it may be with ardent and enthusiastic persons, it is impossible to believe that it could have done what it has done without possessing a very strong hold on human nature."
Viewing this extract by the light of the one before cited, we cannot help asking what side of human nature is it to which the Benthamite doctrines attach themselves? Shall we not regret that the hard, the grim, and the dismal, should characterize our 19th century philosophy? Philosophy that is falsely so called; for the true is "not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose."
The text of this Essay and its earlier notes were completed while Mr. Mill was in the ripeness of his powers, and when the present writer never expected to outlive him. Death softens our view of one who has passed away—the bygone life becomes like a moonlighted landscape—asperities hidden in shadow, and a soft radiance poured over each grander eminence. So may it be felt by the critic of every great departed! If, indeed, it prove otherwise with Mr. Mill, the preventing cause will probably be found in certain pages of his published "Autobiography."
H.—ARCHEBIOSIS, OR SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.
The origin of Life is a question that naturally excites much interest, and consequently has been much discussed. It is obviously a problem that presents difficulties of no ordinary kind, and therefore it is by no means astonishing that many theories have been started and statements made which have in turn been quickly contradicted.
It is now known that the whole cycle of phenomena—collectively denoted by the term "Life,"—is manifested by a substance possessing definite physical and chemical properties, and by no other. This substance constitutes the entire organism of the lower forms of life, whether animal or vegetable, and also of the higher in their earliest stage, while from it by various metamorphoses are developed the different histological elements composing the complex tissues of higher animals and plants. Its name Protoplasm is in consequence exceedingly apt, when properly understood.
As to the origin of Protoplasm (or apparent Life) it is clear from a little consideration that two questions may be asked: first, how did Protoplasm arise? and secondly, when once this substance had come into being are we to suppose that from that time to this all Protoplasm has been derived by unbroken descent from the first Protoplasm, or does fresh Protoplasm even now arise in the same way as did the first?—in other words, does the transition from the inorganic to the organic, from what has never lived to what is living, still take place as it must have taken place at some period or another?
To neither of these questions can Physical Science return a perfectly certain and definite answer. And it must be confessed that as far as our knowledge of Nature goes, those have the best of it who maintain first, that all existing Protoplasm implies pre-existing Protoplasm; secondly, that as to the method, the conditions of the real origin of Protoplasm nothing whatsoever is known; and thirdly, that, notwithstanding all assertions and experiments to the contrary, the origin of living things from dead and decaying organic matter (i.e., matter that has lived), or from inorganic matter under given conditions (spontaneous generation, generatio æquivoca, archebiosis) has never been proved and demonstrated in such a manner as to allow us no room for hesitation, no place for doubt.
The difficulties and dangers besetting this thorny and much-vexed subject will be better understood if we institute a short examination into the history and present condition of the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation.
It is certain from the results of astronomical and geological investigation, that at an exceedingly remote epoch, estimated by untold millions of years, the earth's surface was absolutely unfitted for the presence of life; nay, more, that even the laws of chemical combination were suspended, and in abeyance. After the glowing spheroid cooled down, and various chemical compounds were formed, life as a matter of fact made its appearance on the earth. Throughout the inorganic world the continuity is unbroken—the present is truly the child of the past. But in the organic world it is not so. Whether life arose in the natural course of universal law, or how it did arise, we cannot tell, scientifically, that is to say; no assertion, one way or the other, admits either of proof or disproof. There are absolutely no data to proceed upon. The very first organic remains discovered belong to a comparatively high type. It is as though in a garden every plant and bush burst at once into full flower, and never showed the flower in the bud.
These points are very well put in a passage of Littré:[139] "Jusqu'à ce moment, nous avons cheminé de phénomènes en phénomènes qui se passaient tous sous le régime des lois chimiques et physiques. Leur succession ne présentait aucune solution de continuité; les degrés tenaient l'un à l'autre; et c'est cette déduction qui satisfait l'esprit humain, et qu'il nomme explication. Une fois que l'on reconnait une dissémination première, dans l'espace, d'une matière douée de gravitation et de mouvement, tout en ignorant absolument d'où vient cette matière and d'où procèdent son mouvement et sa dissémination, le reste s'ensuit. Des amas qu'on appelle soleils se forment par condensation; cette condensation développe une immense chaleur; le refroidissement graduel sépare les amas primordiaux en amas secondaires et plus petits qui se meuvent comme lui, se refroidissent comme lui, et représentent nos planètes, nos satellites, et en particulier notre terre. On a l'univers, on passe au monde, et du monde au globe terrestre.
"Mais là, sur le monde terrestre, un hiatus se présente. Un phénomène nouveau, une force nouvelle apparaît, et la vie se développe en végétalité et animalité. Ce phénomène nouveau, cette force nouvelle, cette vie ne succèdent point par une action continue aux actions continues dont le soleil et la terre sont le théâtre; du moins, en l'état actuel de nos connaissances, la continuité nous échappe. On conçoit, grâce à des faits expérimentaux recueillis de toutes parts et transformés en lois, comment notre globe se refroidit, comment, en se refroidissant, il prend sa forme, comment l'atmosphère, les continents, la mer se constituent; mais on ne conçoit plus comment la vie y parait à un moment donné. Et ce fut bien à un moment donné: pendant des millions de siècles, la terre, vu son incandescence, fut impropre à toute vie. Quand la température y eut baissé au degré compatible avec les existences vivantes, ces existences se montrèrent; mais comment? par quel procédé?
"Il ne faut pourtant pas faire valoir outre mesure cette discontinuité. Une discontinuité, autre que celle qui appartient à l'apparition de la vie, est survenue dans le cours du développement de la terre. Quand les particules qui la composent, étaient animées d'une immense chaleur, une dissociation complète y régnait; elles n'obéissaient qu'aux lois du mouvement, de la gravitation, de la chaleur et de la lumière; les lois chimiques, c'est-à-dire de combinaison et de décombinaison, n'y étaient qu'à l'état virtuel. Elles passèrent à l'état effectif, dès que l'abaissement de la température le permit. Je sais bien qu'une différence considérable existe entre ces deux discontinuités: en effet, depuis lors, il a toujours été possible de reproduire à volonté les faits chimiques; et, toutes les fois que nous en avons besoin, nous répétons le phénomène d'origine qui se produisit dans les combinaisons et décombinaisons. Pour la vie, c'est autre chose; elle a été une fois émise, et, depuis le phénomène d'origine, elle ne se propage que par génération. Un être vivant est necessaire pour produire un être vivant; et, ni par les procédés de la nature, ni par ceux de la science, ce qui se fit au moment créateur ne se refait. Malgré cette considérable différence, il demeure que la terre a possédé des forces virtuelles qui sont entrées en action, quand les conditions générales, se modifiant graduellement, l'ont permis."
A little further on he continues:—"Au point de vue d'origine, on abandonnera la question comme toutes les questions qui impliquent une cause première. La philosophie positive s'exprime là-dessus comme elle s'exprime touchant toutes les choses hyperphysiques, c'est-à-dire placées au delà de l'expérience. Quand elle entend les matérialistes prononcer que la vie est le résultat des forces physiques et chimiques dont on connaît l'action, elle refuse d'accepter une solution qui dépasse les prémisses. Mais elle n'écarte pas la solution matérialiste au profit de la solution théologique; l'intervention d'un Dieu créateur est également invérifiable par l'expérience, et, partant, atteinte de la même fin de non-recevoir. Maintenant, si on demande à la philosophie positive quelle est, à elle, sa solution entre la génération matérialiste et la création surnaturelle, elle répond qu'elle n'a aucune solution à proposer, que rien ne peut la forcer à croire ce qui n'est pas démontré, et qu'elle accepte, avec autant de fermeté que d'humilité, une ignorance invincible sur tout ce qui est indemontrable."
In the first passage certain salient points are strikingly brought out, above all the vast difference between the worlds organic and inorganic; but, next, how much soever a Positivist may be pleased to believe only that which admits of phenomenal verification, it is not every one, especially if given to thought, who would willingly endorse the second paragraph. If we know only what we can verify, many beliefs must needs be abandoned, and amongst them some which have received the almost universal assent of mankind. Knowledge (in the sense of verifiable knowledge) and Belief may appear two widely different things; but it should never be forgotten that we often accept the one as surely as the other.
The ancients held that living things arose from the earth at any time, engendered by the warmth of the sun and moisture. Absurd as it may seem, the belief that blue-bottle flies, etc., were a natural result of the decay of meat and other organic matter obtained credence even in comparatively modern times. Redi, an eminent Italian, first demonstrated experimentally the falsehood of this doctrine, and for some time the hypothesis of spontaneous generation appeared to have received a death-blow. And by degrees the conviction that every living thing proceeded from a germ gained strength, and was confirmed by the rapidly extending use of the microscope. Yet in the eighteenth century certain experiments of Needham seemed to establish the fact that in boiled infusions where presumably all germs were destroyed, small Infusoria made their appearance even when means were taken to exclude the entrance of fresh germs. Buffon lent the authority of his great name. These experiments were repeated by the Abbé Spallanzani, who showed by more careful methods the fallacy of the conclusions drawn. A passage in Sir B. Brodie[140] which alludes to these facts may be worth quoting:—
"Crites. Then am I to understand that you would reject altogether the hypothesis of equivocal generation, which supposes that under certain circumstances, even at the present time, particles of inorganic matter are brought together, and so united as to become endowed with organization and life?
"Eubulus. The question is one of great interest, and I will refer you to Ergates for an answer, knowing at the same time pretty well what that answer will be.
"Ergates. Of course Crites refers to the production of those minute creatures, known by the name of Infusoria, in the experiments of Walter Needham, and some others.
"It is true that in these experiments certain vegetable and animal infusions, after no very long period of time, when examined by the microscope, are found to contain a multitude of minute creatures, of various forms, exhibiting signs of spontaneous motion, and multiplying their species in the usual manner. Some of these are even of a complicated structure, much beyond what might, à priori, be expected as the result of the first attempt of inorganic matter to enter into the realms of organic life. The subject has been so frequently discussed, that I need not trouble you with the details of the arguments which have led the most eminent naturalists to believe that these creatures are not really spontaneously engendered, but that they are derived from minute ova which are present in the air, and which, when placed under circumstances favourable to their development, burst into life: in the same way as the egg undergoes those changes which convert its contents into a bird, when placed under the influence of the animal heat of the parent. But even if this view of the matter be not correct, the case is not really altered; for, after all, the Infusoria are never detected except in vegetable and animal infusions, which necessarily presuppose the existence of organic life."
But it is one thing to demolish the theory and statements of an antagonist, and another to erect a structure in their place. However completely Spallanzani had demonstrated the faults and untrustworthiness of Needham's results, he had not established the opposite doctrine, and to many it seemed that the very conditions under which his experimentation was conducted, were sufficient to prevent the development of life. But the work begun by Schulze and Schwann and ended by Pasteur apparently has supplied what was wanting in Spallanzani's researches. The evidence is thus admirably summed by Professor Huxley:[141]—
"It is demonstrable, that a fluid eminently fit for the development of the lowest forms of life, but which contains neither germs, nor any protein compound, gives rise to living things in great abundance, if it is exposed to ordinary air; while no such development takes place, if the air with which it is in contact is mechanically freed from the solid particles, which ordinarily float in it and which maybe made visible by appropriate means.
"It is demonstrable, that the great majority of these particles are destructible by heat, and that some of them are germs, or living particles, capable of giving rise to the same forms of life as those which appear when the fluid is exposed to unpurified air.
"It is demonstrable, that inoculation of the experimental fluid with a drop of liquid known to contain living particles, gives rise to the same phenomena as exposure to unpurified air.
"And it is further certain that these living particles are so minute that the assumption of their suspension in ordinary air presents not the slightest difficulty. On the contrary, considering their lightness and the wide diffusion of the organisms which produce them, it is impossible to conceive that they should not be suspended in the atmosphere in myriads."
The experimental means by which these facts are proved may be briefly stated:—
I. The air contains solid particles. Professor Tyndall has shown, as all who have read "Dust and Disease" know to their own discomfort, that the purest common air, when submitted to a beam of electric light, renders the track of that beam visible. Ergo, it must contain solid particles capable of scattering light.
II. These particles are mostly destructible by heat, or may be mechanically strained off. He has shown this by the fact that common air which has passed through a red-hot tube, or through a filter of cotton-wool, will no longer render the track of the electric beam visible.
III. Many of these particles are germs. Schulze and Schwann proved that when air is passed through red-hot tubes, then through a fluid which is capable of affording a nidus to the germs, if present, no development of life takes place. Similarly Schrœder established the same fact by using a strainer of cotton-wool. Further, Pasteur gave an additional proof by microscopical examination, as well as by a direct experiment. He passed air through gun-cotton, dissolved this in ether; and in the collodion germs were clearly recognizable. Also he plunged a piece of cotton-wool through which air had been strained into an experimental fluid. This fluid soon swarmed with forms of life.
IV. The experimental fluid may be inoculated by simple exposure to air as well as by any fluids known to contain living forms; e.g., if the fluid be placed in an open vessel, living forms soon make their appearance. Yet supposing the aperture of the vessel, instead of pointing vertically upwards, be turned obliquely or downwards, the fluid will remain clear for an indefinite time. Similarly a drop of an infusion containing living forms added to the experimental fluid soon causes it to swarm with life. The forms that appear are the same in either case.
V. The experimental fluid cannot give rise itself to these forms. It is known as Pasteur's solution, and consists of water, ammonium, tartrate, sugar, and yeast ash. Hence there is no organic matter in it. If proper care be taken, it may be kept for an indefinite time.
VI. The germs are so minute that in many cases, even when known to be present, they are scarcely visible to the highest microscopic powers. They must be universally diffused, as any organic infusion left exposed soon swarms with the forms to which they give rise.
Such an array of facts, proved experimentally over and over again, must convince the most tenacious sceptic, and he may feel inclined to agree with the opinion expressed in the following passage from Sir B. Brodie:[142]—
"Crites. Then, if I understand you rightly, you have arrived at these conclusions. First, that there was a time when this earth was not in a fit state for the maintenance of either animal or vegetable life. Secondly, that in its present condition there is no evidence of any law being in operation which would account for any living beings being called into existence except as the offspring of other living beings which previously existed; and that from these premises we cannot fail to arrive at this further conclusion, that the first introduction of life on earth must have been by some special act of the creative power, of which we have no experience at present.
"Eubulus. I suspect that this, really and truly, is all we actually know on the subject."
Notwithstanding this apparently irresistible amount of evidence, the question of abiogenesis has recently been revived by Dr. C. Bastian in a well-known book, "The Beginnings of Life." Dr. Bastian believes that he has demonstrated the origin of living organisms from organic infusions as well as from solutions of salts containing no organic matter: nay, even more wonderful facts than these which it is unnecessary to specify. His experiments are so numerous, his assertions and figures so clear and definite, and his reputation for previous good scientific work once so high, that the book has caused no small stir and discussion. Could Dr. Bastian's facts be only established, they would inevitably revolutionize the whole science of Biology.
However, the same fate which has overtaken his predecessors has befallen Dr. Bastian himself. A nearly universal verdict of "Not proven" has been returned: and not only is the accuracy of his experimentation denied, but even worse accusations have been brought. To enter into details of his experiments would require too much space, but it may not be uninteresting to detail some of the peculiarities and difficulties which attend on the investigation of such a subject as Spontaneous Generation.
At the very threshold of the inquiry stands a grand difficulty. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that notwithstanding the many years, the immense labour bestowed by illustrious men on this subject, next to nothing is known of the relations existing between the lowest forms of life, animal or vegetable (especially the latter), as well as their germs, and varying physical and chemical conditions. Heat, light, cold and darkness, alkalies and acids with other chemical compounds, one would imagine to be not without their influence. Yet what this influence may be in a given case, none can tell. Enough is known in the way of a few detached facts to make it certain that these agents have very decided effects. It might be thought that any one who wished to attack the problem of Spontaneous Generation anew would first try to obtain some connected knowledge on this point. Indeed, until it has been cleared up somewhat, it is not very evident what good Experimentation on Heterogenesis can do. It is much as if a chemist were to throw a handful of stuff (what he knew not) into a crucible, and then expect a valuable result. It can scarcely be doubted that many of these lower organisms live and grow under conditions which à priori might seem incompatible with vitality.
It is clear also that the work of one experimenter ought to be such as may admit of repetition by another with the same result. Now no one who attempts the study of this subject of Spontaneous Generation, can fail to be struck with the immense mass of conflicting evidence. Some mischievous spirit appears to have purposely thrown confusion over the whole. Facts are alternately stated and denied. It is very hard to be sure of the right road, even for an experienced person.
Another point relates to the value of the evidence when obtained. It can scarcely be doubted that out of a given number of experiments undertaken to establish a case of Heterogenesis or Archebiosis, great value should be attached to the negative evidence afforded by those that disprove the supposed fact. A little consideration will show the reason. The precautions to be taken against the intrusion of germs are innumerable: a slight exposure to the air, accidental contact of an unheated rod or tube, or neglect of some other particulars may inoculate the experimental fluid. Hence even with care the chances are many in favour of some such accidental intrusion, and great caution should always be exercised before an affirmative result can be regarded as firmly established.
And further there is the experimentalist himself to be taken into account. The task requires an intimate knowledge of many minute organisms, and the different forms they assume; an acquaintance, wide and accurate, with various experimental methods; a clear view of the end and the various precautions required to attain that end; a mind ready to contrive, prone to doubt and to hesitate, rather than to be convinced. Men vary much in the amount of what is scientifically termed their personal equation, and one difficulty in accepting the results of a piece of work is the danger of misplaced confidence.
As was said before, Dr. Bastian's attempt to demonstrate the reality of Spontaneous Generation has been a failure. His experiments have been repeated, and failed to give the like results in the hands of competent men. Witness the following quotation from a careful review of his book in the Microscopical Journal.[143] It relates to the now celebrated cheese and turnip solution.
"Nevertheless in consequence of the interest which Dr. Bastian's work has excited, we have made the experiment (and that repeatedly) as directed by him. This is not the occasion on which to give the details of the experiments in question. It will, however, perhaps add some value to the remarks which it has been our duty to make when we state that, carefully following Dr. Bastian's directions, using at the same time great care as to cleanliness and due boiling, we have obtained results which in every single instance, out of more than forty tubes closed on four separate occasions, simply contradict Dr. Bastian. We believe, then, that Dr. Bastian's last dogma in archebiosis,—his belief in turnip solution with a fragment of cheese—must be placed in the same category as his colloidal urea, his spontaneously generated bog-moss, his fungi born in crystals, his unmistakable processes of heterogenesis, and his 'watching' and 'experimentation' in general."
The reviewer proceeds to question whether Dr. Bastian has even the knowledge requisite for so delicate an investigation. It would be supposed that he was intimately acquainted with various microscopical structures; but we read,[144] "Professor Huxley gives a contribution towards the determination of the personal value in Dr. Bastian's researches. 'He (Dr. Bastian) will recollect that he wrote to me asking permission to bring for my examination certain preparations of organic structures, which he declared he had clear and positive evidence to prove to have been developed in his closed and digested tubes. Dr. Bastian will remember that when the first of these wonderful specimens was put under my microscope I told him at once that it was nothing but a fragment of the leaf of the common bog-moss (Sphagnum), and he will recollect that I had to fetch Schacht's book "Die Pflanzenzelle" and show him a figure which fitted very well with what we had under the microscope before I could get him to listen to my suggestion, and that only actual comparison with Sphagnum, after he had left my house, forced him to admit the astounding blunder which he had made.'
"Of these three pieces of evidence, the last is the most important, for, whilst it places us on our guard with regard to Dr. Bastian's accuracy generally, it at the same time furnishes a key to the explanation of a number of his experiments in which, according to that precipitate discoverer, 'organisms' were found on opening tubes containing infusions which had been boiled and sealed hermetically."
How then are we to sum up the case? for or against Dr. Bastian? Can any thoughtful person admit the conclusions of one apparently so unfit for his task? The best answer is in the words of his Reviewer.[145]
"Briefly it is to be said that the chapters in this book on heterogenesis, contain a reckless attempt to revolutionize biological doctrine without a single demonstration of fact to justify it, even if it be admitted that the observations and drawings cited are accurate. Revolution in science as in politics can only be justified by success—a wanton attempt in either sphere must deserve the severest condemnation. Dr. Bastian by his exhibition of himself in dealing with heterogenesis writes himself down as incapable—as inadmissible in the character of a witness in a scientific investigation. The Sphagnum delusion is now explained, for it becomes evident that we have to deal with an individual with whom such delusions are no rare exceptions.
"We should indeed be sorry to believe that Dr. Bastian is himself aware of the injury which he is doing to the cause of science, by promulgating these rash assertions as to the beginnings and changes of living things; we altogether decline to entertain the notion that he is himself conscious of the baselessness and flimsy character of his startling discoveries, and is nevertheless willing at the expense of injury to the cause of intellectual progress, to obtain for himself a temporary notoriety. On the contrary, we believe that he is under the influence of a delusion, similar to those which from time to time obtain notoriety in the case of 'spiritualists,' 'circle-squarers,' and such victims of belief in the marvellous. The origin and mode of growth of such delusions form a very interesting psychological study, and it is only when we have obtained a proper conception of Dr. Bastian as an abnormal psychological phenomenon that we can hope rightly to appreciate the whole of the statements made in his book.
"Delusion and self-deception are much commoner than the world is generally accustomed to consider them. In a very well-known and often quoted remark we have a recognition of the wide-spread occurrence of delusions and an attempt to explain their origin; the saying to which we allude is, 'The wish was father to the thought.' There cannot be the least doubt that men are unconsciously hindered or misdirected in their estimate of fact by previously formed desires. Such a desire acts on the mind like the suggestion of the mesmerist to an individual who has allowed himself to be brought into the hypnotic condition. In this way many misconceptions and strange contradictions of testimony are to be explained."
The importance of the subject is sufficient apology for so long a quotation. But our quotations allow us to draw one conclusion; that so far as Spontaneous Generation is concerned human knowledge is exactly in statu quo. Up to this time there is no evidence, worth consideration, that establishes a single good case of heterogenesis; nay, rather all evidence points to the conclusion that Protoplasm is invariably derived from pre-existing Protoplasm, at least under existing conditions. Then too there is no fact known which enables us to say how Protoplasm arose in the first instance. On this point we are in the darkness of complete scientific ignorance. The whole discussion may be well closed by a striking passage from Professor Huxley's before quoted address.[146]
"But though I cannot express this conviction of mine too strongly, I must carefully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no such thing as abiogenesis ever has taken place in the past, or ever will take place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call 'vital' may not, some day, be artificially brought together. All I feel justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for believing that the feat has been performed yet.
"And, looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of the commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man can recal his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing Fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philosophical faith."
Obviously, as Professor Huxley points out, between philosophical faith and philosophical knowledge there is a chasm to be bridged over. But should the hypothesis ever be verified, it would make no difference to the reasonings of the Natural Theologian—since the concurrence of conditions necessary for the production of the phænomenon would manifestly ensue upon some definite though recondite law, at present beyond our ken.
I.—ON MATERIALISM.
The ambiguities attaching to this term were mentioned in a foot-note on our very first page. Since that note was written, the tendency of scientific men has been to increase the number of hypotheses respecting the nature and laws of the material world, and by consequence to multiply the shades of signification conveyed by the word Materialism.
So long as such distinctions are confined to the territory of pure science, whether that of the Physicist or of the Biologist, they do not in themselves affect the religious (or ethico-religious) position of any thinker; and need not, therefore, occasion any trouble to the Natural Theologian. But it is worth while to observe how rashly, on account of some such scientific discussion, a writer is said to be a Materialist or no Materialist, by persons who (understanding little or nothing of science themselves) drag the unhappy author outside the pale of his own domain, and affix to him some religious or irreligious epithet which he has neither desired nor deserved.
The philosophic idealist often escapes; he is pronounced "no Materialist," because he doubts the substantive existence of Matter, yet he may and often does hold that the ideal thing he calls his soul, has a life inextricably bound up with that other ideal thing he calls his body, and must perish with it, never to live again.
We may add the useful remark that so far as Ethico-religious Materialism is concerned it is much more easily tested by the Doctrine of Soul than the Doctrine of Body. For example, consistent Materializers will always maintain that the reasoning human soul differs from the animal soul of brutes, not in quality, but in quantity. Dr. L. Büchner (sometimes called a "crass Materialist") makes this assertion repeatedly, and explains it by adding—"Man has no absolute advantage above the animal; his mental superiority being merely relative. There is not one intellectual faculty which belongs to man exclusively; his superiority is merely the result of the greater intensity, and the proper combination, of his capacities. The enlarged human faculties are, as we have already seen, the natural and necessary result of the higher and more perfect development of his material organ of thought."[147]
Turning to a more refined species of Materialism, we find a similar value always placed on the dogma that whatever differences exist between man and brute, they amount to a distinction not of kind, but only of degree. The consequences hence deduced are of the very greatest importance, and they run much as follows. No one will venture to assert that the power of what has been hastily called Volition is, or can be, an endowment of mere animal nature. We do not lay upon the tiger (as we do popularly lay upon the tyrant) a moral responsibility on account of his savage appetites. Their indulgence does not flow from any reasoning faculty of Will. His cruelty is the movement of automatic instincts, governed by laws like those which rule over the inanimate world; more complicated probably, but no-ways different in their essence. The fall of a stone, and the spring of a tiger, are both consequences of determining laws inherent in their several modes of existence, and moving both as machinery is moved by a steam engine. Now, a difference in degree only, argues no difference in those essential laws which rule equally the greater and the less. The giant and the dwarf are alike subject to the same laws of body and mind; and man is (as we have seen) but a mentally taller brute. The tyrant, therefore, resembles the tiger; the human animal is moved as the other animals are moved, and, like them, is subject to the determining law, just as the lifeless world is so subjected. In plain words, then, this human machine is moved like other machines. What we call Reason, spontaneity, volition, are, when analysed, no exceptions to the law-governed mechanism of the world we live in. Our motives make us, not we our motives. The faculty we exercise under the name of Choice, is really neither more nor less than a determined, unalterable, impulsion; the result of a mechanical law. And this law has formed and now constitutes the Universe.[148]
Refined Materialism proceeds to ask in the next place, what more do we know of Matter than its rigid undeviating reign of Law?—The great Globe itself obeys the same Laws as the falling stone: they pervade and direct the mechanism of the starry heavens. Life does not exempt either vegetable or animal from the same rule of law. We have just seen that Mankind is not so made to differ, as to permit a plea of exemption from the same empire. Ascend from Protoplasm to the highest human intelligence,—one heritage devolves through brute to man. The same mechanical law accounts for the "Psychogeny" of both. Mechanical Law, in its ramifications, is (as has been said) all we really know of Matter. It now turns out that all Mind has been developed by this same ever-ramifying law; may be analyzed back into its elements; is most truly expressed by its symbols; and can never be exempted from its determinations. Mind, therefore, and Matter are resolvable into this sole unity—the Law of ultimate mechanical movement and impulsion.
We have called this system a refined Materialism; but another name for one of its most influential shapes has appeared and made considerable progress, particularly on the continent of Europe. This name is Monism; and is intended to declare that every other belief must be at best a Dualism.[149]
What then is the true human meaning of this Monistic creed? Our souls (if we have souls), possess the image, not of Absolute Being and Personality, but of abstract Fate, and rayless, eyeless Necessity. We live machines; those supposed moralities we commonly miscall our Volitions, spring out from beneath the moving wheels. We die, as machines go to pieces when the wheels get out of gear; and no other account need be asked of the broken clock-work. Here lies a man, close beside him moulders a dog. They are now what they always were,—copartners in the same inexorable destiny.
Inexorable:—yes; for, standing beside these two graves, we see where our higher Philosophy and our religious hopes alike lie buried. What is Mechanical Law to us? The antithesis of Providence; therefore, with the edict which proclaims its sway, all our prayers are ended. And what is Man, compared with the equal dog who bears him company? One event befals them both; yet we may ask whether before or after that one event, Man has or can have any preeminence above the beast? Let him be spoken of as statesman, warrior, orator, poet, painter, sculptor, musician; none of these epithets convey any truth. He may possibly be a speaking, striking, weaving, drawing, colouring, sound-producing machine. But the Designer of the Universe and the human artist have disappeared together. What we took for the author of immortal works, an original genius, an inspired hero of his kind, "a man and a leader of men," was a piece of wheel-work driven by unalterable law. There was the same "must be" to him as to his dog. There never was and never could have been, nor yet ever will be any essential difference; two spirits are gone downwards to the earth.
Man has not even the sad preeminence of Sin. Where can he find or make room for wrong-doing, when impelling Mechanism determines all? And where Sin is not, Repentance cannot come.
Hope is shut out along with Remorse and its unmeaning pains. Man has no ladder of ascent left him; and why should he wish to climb? If there were such a ladder as Jacob dreamed, its base must rest on lifeless Law, and at its summit there would only be this same Law, enthroned and Deified.
Thus, when the primæval Nebula arose in Space (how or why it arose is not told us), its vapoury Law contained all that is, and all that can be:—Plato and Shakespeare, Moses and St. John glimmered in its tremulous twilight. Worlds inanimate and animate scintillated from its fires. What we call Heaven and Earth are its dumb children, its law-determined Evolutions. Thou and I, O reader, have harboured strange fancies;—let them go;—we are but parts of the Whole; and the Whole is a mechanical Unity. Now that we find ourselves disabused and illuminated, our great difficulty may perhaps be to fall down, Strauss-like, and worship this Universum. Can such worship, or such an object of worship, bless and satisfy our high aspiring race? Eyes that have watched for Righteousness, hearts that have yearned after it, let the answer come from you! In this answer lives or dies the twofold belief of the Natural Theologian, the twofold hope resulting to Mankind. The belief, that is to say, in a personal Immortality, the belief in a personal God.
It may now seem plain that the readiest test of moral or religious Materialism is its doctrine, not of Body but of Soul. There is no charm in such a word as Matter to differentiate the character of a philosophy. Looking at the material world, any thinker may be a Natural Realist or a Pure Idealist; yet being either or neither, he may materialize, or the reverse, so far as Morals and Religion are concerned. The simple question ought rather to be; Is man mechanically governed by the Law which rules the world of Abiology (the lifeless inorganic world), or is he, can he become, a Law unto himself?[150]
It would be unfair to omit impressing upon the reader's mind that physical science per se is by no means answerable for ethico-religious Materialism. As a question of fact, it does not seem established that students of Nature, whether physicists or biologists, have, as such, been the chief offenders. On the contrary, for every single instance of the kind, it seems quite probable that at least two metaphysical writers might be found guilty. Obviously, some such large proportion may reasonably be expected, when we consider that Determinism, (the word Mill and others prefer to Necessity), is a theory involving a certain kind of metaphysics.
But the really largest crop of materializers arises from a Debateable Land. There is a hybrid class of "thinkers," concerning whom the best physical-science authorities allege that "such nebulous rascals are mere metaphysicians," while metaphysical speculators, pure and simple, feel quite sure that "though under a cloud, the gentlemen must be Physicists."[151]
So far as Biology[152] is concerned, let the reader compare Mr. Herbert Spencer's latest utterances already referred to, (in Essays, Vol. III. sub. fin., especially pp. 249-50), with the following passages from Mr. Huxley. "I suppose if there be an 'iron' law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know and can know about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones will fall to the ground, 'a law of nature.' But when, as commonly happens, we change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing? But if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas." ("On the Physical Basis of Life," Lay Sermons, pp. 157-8.)
And again (pp. 159-60):—
"We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events.
"Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind, that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols."
Symbols, are to the true philosopher like old-fashioned copper "tokens," privately impressed with letters and devices, but lacking the Royal image and superscription. They are, as Spencer and Huxley agree, "unknown quantities;"—relativities not entities. They are employable enough where they suit,[153] provided Mr. Huxley's caveat (p. 161) is steadily kept in mind. "The errors of systematic materialism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life."
The reader may be pleased to put the subject of Materialism before himself in a compendious shape as follows:—If the question asked be, "What is Matter?" the answer appears little likely to be of moment to morals or Natural Theology, except so far as human ignorance is made a plea for Scepticism. But, if it is inquired, "whether the Mechanical Laws of Matter are the laws of Universal Nature, including human nature? the issue becomes most momentous. The reply made, answers another question of the deepest interest:—"Are there any conditions under which a Science of Natural Theology is possible?" If Mechanism be the law of the Universe, Natural Theology is plainly impossible.
[CHAPTER IV.]
BELIEFS OF REASON.
"While we indulge to the Sensitive or Plantal Life, our delights are common to us with the creatures below us: and 'tis likely, they exceed us as much in them, as in the senses their subjects; and that's a poor happiness for Man to aim at, in which Beasts are his Superiours. But those Mercurial spirits which were only lent the Earth to shew Men their folly in admiring it; possess delights of a nobler make and nature, which as it were antedate Immortality; and, at an humble distance, resemble the joyes of the world of Light and Glory. The Sun and Stars, are not the world's Eyes, but These: the Celestial Argus cannot glory in such an universal view. These out-travel theirs, and their Monarch's beams: passing into Vortexes beyond their Light and Influence; and with an easie twinkle of an Intellectual Eye look into the Centre, which is obscur'd from the upper Luminaries. This is somewhat like the Image of Omnipresence. And what the Hermetical Philosophy saith of God, is in a sense verifiable of the thus ennobled soul, That its Centre is every where, but its circumference no where....
" ... And yet there's an higher degree, to which Philosophy sublimes us. For, as it teacheth a generous contempt of what the grovelling desires of creeping Mortals Idolize and dote on: so it raiseth us to love and admire an Object, that is as much above terrestrial, as Infinite can make it. If Plutarch may have credit, the observation of Nature's Harmony in the Celestial Motions was one of the first inducements to the belief of a God. And a greater then he affirms, that the visible things of the Creation declare him, that made them. What knowledge we have of them, we have in a sense of their Authour. His face cannot be beheld by Creature-Opticks, without the allay of a reflexion; and Nature is one of those mirrors, that represents him to us. And now, the more we know of him the more we love him, the more we are like him, the more we admire him. 'Tis here that knowledge wonders; and there's an Admiration, that's not the Daughter of Ignorance. This indeed stupidly gazeth at the unwonted effect. But the Philosophical passion truly admires and adores the supreme Efficient....
".... And from this last article, I think I may conclude the charge, which hot-brained folly layes in against Philosophy; that it leads to Irreligion, frivolous and vain. I dare say, next after the divine Word, it's one of the best friends to Piety. Neither is it any more justly accountable for the impious irregularities of some, that have paid an homage to its shrine; than Religion itself for the extravagancies both opinionative and practick of high pretenders to it. It is a vulgar conceit, that Philosophy holds a confederacy with Atheism itself, but most injurious: for nothing can better antidote us against it: and they may as well say, that Physitians are the only murtherers. A Philosophick Atheist, is as good sense as a Divine one."—Glanvill's Apology for Philosophy, at end of Scepsis Scientifica, Ed. I. p. 177, seq.
Ἔστι γὰρ ἀπαιδευσία τὸ μὴ γιγνώσκειν τίνων δεῖ ζητ͂ειν ἀπόδειξιν κὰι τίνων οὐ δεῖ Ὅλως μὲν γὰρ ἁπάντων ἀδύνατον ἀπόδειξιν εἶναι· εἰς ἄπειρον γὰρ ἀν βαδίζοι, ὥστε μηδ' οὕτως εἶναι ἀπόδειξιν. Arist. Metaph. IV. (Γ) cap. 4.
The following is the translation of MM. Pierron et Zévort: "C'est de l'ignorance de ne pas savoir distinguer ce qui a besoin de démonstration de ce qui n'en a pas besoin. Il est absolument impossible de tout démontrer: il faudrait pour cela aller à l'infini; de sorte qu'il n'y aurait même pas de démonstration." Métaphysique d'Aristote, Tome I. p. 116.
"Man's higher Instinct leads to lofty aspiration,
To generous sentiment, and boundless desire,
Till he seeks and finds the Author of his Soul.
In seeking for him he perfects his virtue,
By finding him he is made strong within,
And being strong he strengthens his brethren."
"Light is natural to the Eye, and the Eye improves under Light,
So Truth is natural to the Mind, and the Mind improves under Truth.
But the student of Goodness must himself become good,
So far at least as to choose Goodness for his best portion.
If base passion or worldliness is allowed to domineer,
No man can gaze steadily at Purity and at God.
And then perhaps he despairs of religious truth,
And moralizes on Man's feebleness and limited faculties,
So unfitted to fathom the Divine and to know the Eternal!"
F. Newman. Theism, pp. 2 and 12.
"The world offers just now the spectacle, humiliating to us in many ways, of millions of people clinging to their old idolatrous religions, and refusing to change them even for a higher form; whilst in Christian Europe thousands of the most cultivated class are beginning to consider atheism a permissible, or even a desirable thing. The very instincts of the savage rebuke us. But just when we seem in danger of losing all, may come the moment of awakening to the dangers of our loss. A world where thought is a secretion of the brain-gland, where free-will is the dream of a madman that thinks he is an emperor though naked and in chains, where God is not, or at least not knowable, such is not the world as we learnt it, on which great lives have been lived out, great self-sacrifices dared, great piety and devotion have been bent to soften the sin, the ignorance, and the misery. It is a world from which the sun is withdrawn, and with it all light and life. But this is not our world as it was, not the world of our fathers. To live is to think and to will. To think is to see the chain of facts in creation, and passing along its golden links, to find the hand of God at its beginning, as we saw His handiwork in its course. And to will is to be able to know good and evil; and to will aright is to submit the will entirely to a will higher than ours. So that with God alone can we find true knowledge and true rest, the vaunted fruits of philosophy."—Limits of Philosophical Inquiry. By the Archbishop of York, p. 24.
"The mind of man becomes
A thousand times more beautiful than the earth
On which he dwells, above this frame of things
In beauty exalted, as it is itself
Of quality and fabric more divine."
Wordsworth. The Prelude, sub. fin.
"Religion, Poetry is not dead; it will never die. Its dwelling and birth place is in the soul of man, and it is eternal as the being of man. In any point of space, in any section of Time, let there be a living Man; and there is an Infinitude above him and beneath him, and an Eternity encompasses him on this hand and on that; and tones of Sphere-music, and tidings from loftier worlds, will flit round him, if he can but listen, and visit him with holy influences, even in the thickest press of trivialities, or the din of busiest life. Happy the man, happy the nation, that can hear these tidings; that has them written in fit characters, legible to every eye, and the solemn import of them present at all moments to every heart! That there is, in these days, no nation so happy, is too clear; but that all nations, and ourselves in the van, are, with more or less discernment of its nature, struggling towards this happiness, is the hope and the glory of our time. To us, as to others, success, at a distant or a nearer day, cannot be uncertain. Meanwhile, the first condition of success is, that, in striving honestly ourselves, we honestly acknowledge the striving of our neighbour; that with a will unwearied in seeking Truth, we have a sense open for it wheresoever and howsoever it may arise."—Carlyle. Miscellanies, p. 99, Last Edition.
SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER IV.
With the last Chapter closes what may be termed the more critical part of this Essay. The remainder is occupied with a series of affirmative arguments.
The preparation for these arguments having been minutely made, explanatory additions become less necessary.
The main object of the present chapter is to establish a tenable Theory respecting those Human Beliefs among which is included our primary Belief in Theism. Their nature and validity not having as yet been sufficiently investigated (see footnote (b) p. 256 post), some extent of discussion attends the inquiry. To many readers the territory opened out will appear new. It ought however to be traversed by all careful students of Psychology.
Analysis:—Tendencies of the Human Mind resulting in certain concrete Beliefs. The Inductive Principle, or Law of Uniformity, investigated. Various explanations of its origin examined and rejected; particularly the hypothesis which resolves it into Laws of Association. Shewn to be a primary Belief; at first pre-rational, afterwards limited and established by Reason. The latter process separates by a strong line of demarcation the realm of Humanity from that of the lower creation.
Animal instincts, some improvable, some "survivals." Human instincts transformed by Reason. Certain primary Beliefs peculiar to Man. Hence his special culture.
Theism. Fallacies from confusion between Tests of Speculative and of Practical Truth. Lesson of Mathematics. Speculative truths tested by analytic process; Practical by synthetic; their work becomes their ever-growing verification. Application of this test to two practical beliefs; our natural belief in externalities, and our belief in the Supernatural. Speculative difficulties intruded into the practical sphere become apparently insuperable. Both spheres essentially Human. Natural Realism compared with Realistic Theism.
Formation and growth of Belief in the Supernatural as a Belief of Reason. Absurdities attaching to its rejection. Ennobling influences of its acceptance explained and exemplified. Ideal of Humanity, crowned by the Ideal of God, to Whom both the Natural and the Moral world bear witness.
CHAPTER IV.
BELIEFS OF REASON.
In the last section, we have examined a number of intellectual perplexities, running closely parallel to certain primâ-facie objections commonly alleged against Natural Theism. We have seen that they are, in reality, difficulties arising from the impotence of the Human Mind, whenever it is directed to the contemplation of first or supreme, Principles. In all reason therefore, they cease to be objections. We are, in fact, constantly finding ourselves obliged to accept as an undeniable truth, or a real existence, what when placed objectively before our mental vision, appears inexplicable, self-contradictory, or absolutely unthinkable.
The power which compels us to many an admission of this kind is the mind itself, asserting a strength of insight, in-born and inalienable, notwithstanding the symptoms of weakness, which (psychologically speaking) may have seemed threatening to overcloud and disable it.[ac]
Hence, we are led to suspect that some at least of those symptomatic weaknesses, are mistakes in diagnosis. This suspicion will be shared by most persons tolerably acquainted with the present state of psychology, and particularly with the manner in which foregone theories are supported by over-refined analysis. At all events, the reactionary strength of the mind is best shown in the concrete beliefs resulting from its own simplest activities.
Our simplest mental activities are naturally our earliest. Amongst them, none are more distinctly marked than our impulses to believe and act upon certain definite pre-suppositions. These differ from the vague and purposeless dreams of childhood, by gradually becoming clear, practical, and expansive. One of the most vigorous, permanent, and prevailing, amongst them all, is our human belief in the existence of supernatural power. Upon another presupposition (not originally the clearest), seems to rest, in the first degree, that principle which gives validity to all the inductive sciences. We will carefully examine this latter belief, with the object of drawing from the process certain aids for an examination of the former.[ad]
Induction is defined as the legitimate inference of the more general, from the less general;—the general from the particular;—and (with more startling distinctness) of the Unknown from the Known. It is at once evident that, whatever may be the logical form into which this mode of inferring is thrown, there must in the nature of things be some ulterior principle to give it legitimacy. This principle, when raised to the rank and dignity of a philosophic postulate, is commonly known as the Law of Natural Uniformity. A law claiming such extensive dominion that one cannot help asking in what code, human or Divine, of reason or of experience, it was originally found written.
Let us have recourse to the code of reason first. Euclid gives admirable instances of things true by necessity of reason. The moment we understand what right lines are, we see at once and for all time that two straight lines, infinitely prolonged, can never inclose a space. No one ever did see a mathematical line of any kind ("length without thickness"),—no one ever saw or conceived any real or ideal thing of infinite extent, neither can we think infinity at all. Yet the terms of the geometrical proposition carry their own evidence. We may sum the case, as Euler the mathematician put it. He finished a demonstration upon Arches by saying, "All experience is contrary to this, but that is no reason for doubting its truth."
Now, there appears nothing in the least resembling this case, in the conception of Natural Uniformity. No thinker can predicate substantial impossibility of the idea that Nature should ever be otherwise than Uniform.
Suppose, then, we consider the code of Experience. Where shall we find the experience required? Ours is far short of universal, either in an absolute or an approximate sense. We are the children of to-day—yet the law wanted must be to all intents universal. It has been answered to this obvious requirement, that we enjoy the results of an experience constant and uniform, "coextensive not with the life of the single individual who employs them, but with the entire history of the human race."[154] But in what history is any such experience written? History in its letter, is full of events which contradict Nature's uniformity, of interruptions, marvels, miracles. For cattle to speak, is quite a common occurrence in Livy. An ordinary Roman would have been perplexed by the absence of signs and wonders; he would have felt it something to be accounted for. History tells us on every written page to believe in what seems impossible; and some writers on historical evidence, claim for it a greater amount of credibility whenever it testifies to the greater number of improbable incidents. For, do not writers of fiction deal in probabilities?[155]
Another method of giving force to the principle of natural Uniformity, is based on our alleged sense of personal subjection to the chain of events;—the outer world is said to penetrate the inner by an impression of its unvarying sequence, its laws of unbroken continuity. But does the lesson of life really go this way? Most men, when meditating over their own lives, think rather of the causation they have themselves exercised, or might have exercised, than of any iron links of causality in nature. So strongly do they feel their causal power, that, whereas one man boasts of being the architect of his own fortunes, another blames himself because he has been foolish enough to let things take their chance. What people chiefly realize and act upon, is the relation between Man and Nature—or, else between Man and Man;—relations prolific in consequences which we shall have to consider by-and-bye.
A more summary mode of explaining our human impression of natural Uniformity, is by resolving it into certain laws of Association. We see antecedent and consequent every day, and get to consider them as indissolubly associated. If we see a present antecedent, we expect a coming consequent. The event and its futurity, are thus fused in a common solvent. Yet, one palpable objection lies against this theory, and it is fatal. Fatal against it, and against all theories which rest our belief upon experience, or upon any process of reasoning, inductive or demonstrated. The objection consists in the plain fact, that this belief resembles animal instinct[156] in one definite particular—it exists previously to all observation or exercise of intelligence on the subject.
We see it in all young creatures. The instinct of children is to act upon a supposition that the thing they have enjoyed or suffered shall recur regularly and without interruption. The darling brought down to dessert every day for a week, feels injured by a breach of the custom, just as the cat or dog fed from their masters' table expects the same hand to continue always kind. Child, kitten, and puppy, need no second scalding to look askance at the tea-kettle. Grown people's confidence in the stability of Empires often reposes on no much stronger foundation. Most men rest satisfied with an indefinite and unreasoning presumption all their lives long. They desire no further explanation—a happy circumstance, perhaps, considering the theories they might have to investigate.
Mr. James Mill in his "Analysis of the Human Mind" made great and continual use of the laws of Association. He applied them (amongst other ways) to our belief in the uniform futurities of Nature. "There can" he writes "be no idea of the Future; because strictly speaking the Future is a non-entity—of nothing there can be no idea.... Our whole lives are but a series of changes, that is, of antecedents and consequents. The conjunction, therefore, is incessant; and, of course, the union of the ideas perfectly inseparable." (Vol. I. pp. 362-3.) And again, (p. 367,) "But I am told, that we have not only the idea of to-morrow, but the belief of to-morrow; and I am asked what that belief is. I answer, that you have not only the idea of to-morrow, but have it inseparably. It will also appear, that wherever the name belief is applied, there is a case of the indissoluble association of ideas. It will further appear, that, in instances without number, the name belief is applied to a mere case of indissoluble association; and no instance can be adduced in which anything besides an indissoluble association can be shewn in belief. It would seem to follow from this, with abundant evidence, that the whole of my notion of to-morrow, belief included, is nothing but a case of the inevitable sequence of ideas."—This theory Mr. Bain (no hostile critic) annotates as follows. "The case that is most thoroughly opposed to the theory of indissoluble association is our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. Our overweening tendency to anticipate the future from the past is shown prior to all association; the first effect of experience is to abridge and modify a strong primitive urgency. There is, no doubt, a certain stage when association co-operates to justify the believing state. After our headlong instinct has, by a series of reverses, been humbled and toned down, and after we have discovered that the Uniformity, at first imposed by the mind upon everything, applies to some things and not to others, we are confirmed by our experience in the cases where the uniformity prevails; and the intellectual growth of association counts for a small part of the believing impetus. Still, the efficacy of experience is perhaps negative rather than positive; it saves, in certain cases, the primitive force of anticipation from the attacks made upon it in the other cases where it is contradicted by the facts. It does not make belief, it conserves a pre-existing belief." In Mr. Bain's comment it is worthy of particular remark that he considers experience less as a foundation, than a test always,—a limit sometimes,—of that law which gives life to all the experimental sciences. "The uniformity imposed by the mind," he observes, "applies to some things but not to others." His view, therefore, places the principle itself in the light of a generality given by the mind and apprehended as a leading maxim. Its field is sometimes reasserted,—sometimes contracted,—by experience; but in both cases the effect is a process of discrimination.
In support of this view, it may be fairly urged that a child calculates on the uniformity of human character and conduct, to an extent not justified in after life. Any child correctly expects a stone to fall when thrown into the air, without the least idea of that special reason for its fall, which can be mathematically extended to the stars. In like manner, our very earliest belief in the reality of men and objects outside us, confuses persons and things as resisting antagonists which ought to be punished and overcome. Experience, therefore, brings discrimination. Thus, too, the natural apprehension of a power above nature, occupies a more defined sphere in our own old age than the first radiant glimpses of our wondering upward-springing childhood. And the same may be said of the world's several eras of religious thinking. Yet, if some eminent writers are correct in contending that the belief in a Supreme "Heaven-Father," (so strong in the Aryan[157] family,) was of extreme antiquity, we must admit that our race's infancy cherished a more truly Theistic faith, than many intervening ages of moral degeneracy retained.[158] But, side by side with this admission, we ought to place two notable facts,—first that our sense of the supernatural has really educated the great heart of Man; teaching him from the love of God to love his neighbour likewise.—Next,—that the awful impression has, on the whole, grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength; acquiring fresh light and beauty with every fresh access to his noblest illumination. Exactly in proportion, as man increasingly learns to love and live for his neighbour, he has always increased the depth and earnestness with which he lives for and loves his God. In these two facts is bound up the secret of our Western civilization.
We must return, however, for a few paragraphs to the general consideration of what may be called our pre-rational beliefs.[ae] That they are pre-rational (account for them as we will), is evident since from them spring our first tendencies to reason in special directions, and our first ability to receive and assimilate such mental food as may be afforded us. "The primary facts of intelligence,"—says Sir W. Hamilton, "the facts which precede, as they afford the conditions of, all knowledge,—would not be original were they revealed to us under any other form than that of natural or necessary beliefs."[159] A central point this; and one most essential for the Psychologist! Indeed, every one who explains such beliefs into laws of association, commits the oversight of refining away the chief fact involved in those laws themselves. For, the very idea of association presupposes a guiding impulse. How can we classify without a standard of classification, arrange or connect without threads of connection or arrangement? Laws of association must cluster round an associating principle, just as translucent halos encircle the Sun. Laws of association do not make principles; but an operative principle evokes associations, and manifests itself in their law.
Oversights like this, and the one before noted by Mr. Bain, are examples of the paralogism incident to all attempts at explaining the inexplicable. In his eagerness, the metaphysical refiner subtilizes away the truth under analysis. Even so, in days of old, Alchemists used to sublimate the gold intended for transmuting inferior metals, till it flew off in elastic vapour, and all that had been precious, vanished from the eager speculative man. A frequent issue this, to searchers after our true philosopher's stone.
The catalogue of pre-rational beliefs or impulses to believe, is considerable, and might easily be enlarged. But there is much to hinder a full enumeration. In the first place, they emerge from a border-land between the brute and the man; and border territories are proverbially fertile in disputes. Next, they have to be sought out and examined in the birthplace of intelligence; and the beginnings of knowledge like the beginnings of history are overshadowed by a twilight haze. Then, too, amongst the painters of human nature, (who after all are but men,) there prevails a disinclination to confess how largely our human life is cradled under the rule of unreason and impulsiveness. Most of us hardly know why we act, yet, every one likes to believe himself reasoning and reasonable. Finally, some religious minds shrink back from realizing the idea of an instinctive belief in the moral antithesis of Right and Wrong, or in a Supreme First Cause and Judge of all men. They feel as if to admit it were almost degrading to Faith,—forgetful that the philosophic Apostle took this view and expressed it with the utmost boldness.[160] Forgetful, also, that from whatever source Man's reason sprang, from the same welled forth every bright stream of practical activity,—impelling him to work in spheres as yet unconquered by the force of his own understanding.
The hindrances now described are, after all, grounded on an inadequate conception of the true distinction between the Animal and the Man. Apart from the fact that ultimate objects of instinct differ as widely as the idea of a future life differs from the poorest enjoyments of the brute world,—quite apart from all consideration of aims and ends,—the impulses themselves are in their own activities very far indeed from occupying the same level. There are instincts of the utmost importance to all self support and self protection, and to the sustenance and care of others, which appear in their own nature simple and unalterable;—unerring within their direct line, but beyond it helpless and narrow in their field of operation. Other instincts again,—such, for example, as impel animals to construction, and human beings to art,—are evidently influenced and enlarged by intelligence. Beavers adapt their dams, birds their nests, and the bee her comb, to all kinds of circumstances, so far as they can command the means of adaptation. Their intelligence also delights itself in different kinds of adornment.[161] But the power of meeting exigencies, is manifestly limited throughout the lower creation. The bee has, for ages, worked upon marvellously accurate principles, unintelligible to mathematicians before the calculus was invented, and only fully explained of late years. She always erects one effectual and skilful kind of barricade[162] against hostile swarms, as well as that dreaded assailant, the Death's head moth. Furthermore, she evinces readiness in fitting all her material structures to place, occasion, and circumstance. Yet, observe the same bee exhausting herself by vain struggles against the sloping roof of a greenhouse, of which every window is thrown wide open. She perseveres, hour after hour, in unavailing endeavours to escape by her one accustomed upward track of flight, unable to conceive the possibility of transparent but impenetrable glass; and incapable of learning the fact by her repeated disappointments. In this way, hundreds of bees, butterflies, and other winged insects, perish miserably every summer. So, too, the highly educated and intelligent dog, will try to scratch holes in hard flag stones, and, after trials innumerable, still scratches on without seeming to discover that he never succeeds in making a single hole. Thus, also, birds in captivity keep up the perpetual motion of their heads—(useful to the poor prisoner no longer!) and generations after generations of captives maintain the instinctive practice. Numberless instances might easily be adduced to the same effect. But no similar observation holds good of man. The child soon discontinues its efforts to thrust an arm through a glass window; and every day learns some new lesson in the properties of material objects. The engineer builds dams as well as the beaver;—but, beside dams, what marvels innumerable does he achieve with his earthworks, his timbers, and his stones! Speaking generally, we perceive that man has an instinctive tendency to lay hold of a practical fact, idea, and law of action, as a concrete whole;[163]—seizing it, at first, as the animal does without being able to analyze, recompound, or extend it. But reason holds the candle to instinct.[af] The impulse deepens and widens,—becomes distinguished by boldness and comprehensive breadth;—and it is difficult, if not impossible, to fix boundaries to its ultimate expansion. An expansion coextensive with the completed destinies of mankind.
We say thus much of our lower instincts, transformed and made glorious by reason shining through them; just as the setting sun transforms and glorifies the clouds floating high overhead, or the half-translucent foliage of the grove in which we walk. But there belong exclusively to Man, instinctive beliefs, impulses, and ideas, which possess a glory of their own;—raise him, first above the brutes,—next above himself as he now exists,—and make him know that he may aspire to become the denizen of a brighter world than this. Among them, is the feeling that Nature herself is (like the tree or cloud illumined by the sun), everywhere penetrated by a beauty and a power streaming through her;—compared with the reality of which she is but a filmy veil,—or it may be an illusive image. The sun himself, the light and life of the lower world, symbolizes an existence more truly kindling and ensouling, which animates and makes brilliant the blue arch of sky. Such thoughts as these haunted the first utterances of our race,—and it needed but another step to make us feel that this living light shines within ourselves,—and that, go where we will, a strength and Majesty go with us, which are not of the earth, earthy. Thus, the consciousness grew upon Man that his inner being glows with a radiance more sparkling than the stars, to which he lifts his bodily eyes. By-and-bye, he learned to think of the heaven within him, as symbolic also;—and to cherish a trembling trust that, when he dies, its brightness will grow pale, and vanish away only by reason of a glory which excelleth.
The Apostle beloved of his Master, told us of a true Light that lighteth every man. Yet, we might have been slow to realize the purer splendours over-arching our human soul, if they had not autotyped themselves on the language we commonly speak. Perhaps, a more convincing proof still to some of us, is what every now and then becomes incidentally known;—the God-ward impulses of a happily developed childhood, under circumstances favourable to the growth of "natural piety." In the heart of a child, feelings like those we have described, dwell untutored, as in their native and and appropriate home. An awe and dread accompany them amongst the world of men, but to the child they are never overpowering or oppressive. His finely-strung imagination works painlessly. The voices he hears when no human voice speaks, cause him no fear;—they call to him from a region towards which his young soul springs up. They soothe him with sensations of hope and peace and love unutterable. This yearning affection for things unseen, makes the deepest joy of a happy childhood; it is a reason why Christ said, "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven."
A beautiful childhood is a very beautiful reality. Partly because of the exquisite simplicity which tones down and harmonizes all its impulses. But, very often, its beauty is only known in its loss;—and we mourn in after years over hope, love, and peace, broken down by life's attrition;—yet fair to look upon, even in their ruins.[ag]
No one is likely to doubt that the belief we have been describing, is peculiar to and characteristic of Man. A more subtle question would be this;—Suppose it could be taken away, how nearly would Man and brute approach each other?[164] A question deserving the attention of every one, who lives
"In self-adoring pride securely mailed."
Probably, the proudest of mankind little think how deeply their culture, art, and refinement, are indebted to a faith shared by the lowliest. One point, at least, seems clear,—if Morality did not perish in the wreck, a true and independent moral sense would bring us back to a belief in our own souls, their immortality, and their God.
Another question more essential to our purpose has been buried under heaps of fallacy and misconception. Theists are often told that the ideas of a Deity,—a future life,—and generally all that is conceived as supernatural, have no absolute trustworthiness;—they are not self-evident axioms, and they cannot be demonstrated. One answer to these alleged difficulties has been implicitly given in the last Chapter. If such objections are valid at all, they are valid against every practical first-truth therein considered. They are valid against all primary practical truths, looked at from the theoretical side, and tested by the rules proper to what is called pure Reason;—Reason, that is to say, not applied, but speculative. But, then, it is from this very employment of tests upon truth not in pari materia, that the first stage of fallacy begins. The second step in error follows naturally from the first. Compared with the clearness and definition of mathematics, all other axioms and proofs appear dim and dubious. The consequence is, that our minds fall into trains of false comparison on the all-important subject of certitude. Errors of that kind are always growing mischiefs; our tongues follow the lead of our thoughts, and hazy thinking becomes hazy speaking. Not only so, but words develope themselves into the leaders of thought; and hazy speaking engenders a hazier thinking still. People take mathematical certainty to be the sole type of all true and valuable certainties. Practical maxims are spoken of, as merely probable, Right and Wrong as the efflux of moral sentiments.[165] Few seem to be aware how the philosophical arrangements of first-truths ought to be applied. They should be applied to discriminate the processes, by which various kinds of truths are discoverable;—they stamp a character upon them, when discovered; but they do not determine the intrinsic worth and validity of the discoveries.
Why, let us ask, does Mathematical truth occupy so lofty a position? Because, first, the constitution of our nature obliges us to accept its axioms, and by consequence each successive step in its impregnable demonstrations. Next, because we can verify so many of its theorems objectively. We apply them to remote planetary and stellar spheres beyond our own reach; where our own minds can neither alter nor colour anything. What then ought to be the fair and legitimate inference from an issue magnificently tried throughout the celestial universe? Surely this, and no other. It confirms, in the very highest possible degree, the truth-telling power of our own human nature. Whatsoever our mental constitution clearly compels us to accept, that same we ought to hold true, and maintain unswervingly.
Henceforth, therefore, we ought to look upon our Reason as having been put upon its conclusive trial. Every year that passes renders the verdict if possible more triumphant. We ought, henceforth, to make our assent absolute and unhesitating in the case of those other truths, which, while things continue as they now are, can never be tried and confirmed by an appeal of the same description.
It is not difficult to see how opposite would have been the issue from an employment of improper tests;—the test, for instance, of the Unthinkable. The universe, we should then have said, must be thought of as finite or as infinite. Either way it is inconceivable;—therefore the Universe cannot exist objectively at all.
Vicious as such a process would be, it is not so faulty as that of confounding the proper methods and attestations of speculative and practical truth.[166] Our human consciousness must in both cases give our data. We have to ask and obtain its answers,—but, in the two different spheres of knowledge, we must frame our interrogatories differently, and expect assurances differing not in degree of certainty, but in kind;—in value to human action;—and in the mode of their deliverance. We inquire into Speculative truth by analysing it, until we arrive at undemonstrable axioms which assert their own validity. We assure ourselves that Practical principles are true by following them in their synthetic growth. Do they spring from a maxim we find ourselves urged by our own nature to accept,—and the opposite of which we cannot but broadly reject;—and do they really work in the world,—exert an ennobling influence within their own domain, and intertwine themselves with the other truths and activities of our human life? If so, we may be assured of their vitality and their certitude. We know them, in short, by their stringency,—and by a happy experience of their power. Consequently, our knowledge ought to grow and strengthen, as our human age and the world's age both roll on. Practical truth, thus tried and acknowledged, is indeed the silver thread which leads us always. Some shrink from trusting it when stretched across the grave; yet, without it, all beyond is lost in haze, and our present life becomes enigmatical and self-contradictory.
Let us then apply the tests (found valid in their own practical sphere) to the case of our belief in a Supernatural and supreme Power. But, that we may do so with more evident effect, it will be well to place in juxtaposition with it another powerful belief, and our progress will be rendered easier if we fix upon one which has already been, in part at least, under discussion. Nothing seems better fitted for this purpose, than what Professor Masson calls "the paramount fact," resulting alike to Hamilton and to Mill,—the universal persuasion in men of their own existence, as beings distinct from, but related to, an external world around them. It will be observed that, thus described, the fact is of a most concrete sort,—our inner reality in relation to an outer reality,—just as believing in a Supreme Being we believe in a Power that holds solemn relations to our individual selves and to our common Humanity.
We have therefore to observe the impression made upon our human endowment of practical Reason, when looking face to face at these two fact-beliefs, which for brevity's sake we shall call the Natural and the Supernatural.
Did the uninstructed and stammering childhood of our race, separate, in thought, the Supernatural from surrounding nature? Can we absolutely say either yes or no to this inquiry? The "Heaven-Father" of pre-historic[ah] day would seem if fully considered to make the separation clear. The type-idea, thus outlined, is drawn, not from symbolizing and personified Nature, but from an actual, living, fatherly, Man. And the tendency of primitive Man might rather be to raise natural objects into living beings, than to lower persons into things.
It is so, we are sure, with our children's apprehension of the Natural. They know a world of persons and things antagonistic to their own wills and efforts, but they begin by making the things into persons. A thwarted baby-boy beats the table, his kitten, and his nurse indifferently. So far as observation has been extended to the religious apprehensions of the very young, they would seem to spiritualize the material universe;—to behold unseen powers in the changing clouds, and hear them in the sighing of the wind. Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality" is a picture as full of childlike human truth, as it is of unearthly beauty.
But, as regards both principles, the human train of thought is nearly similar in its first rise, and grows in definiteness and expansion by a nearly similar process. A true Man sets each principle to work, and from its working gathers its real value and verification.
If the world outside him were a phantastic shadow, the practical conclusion fairly inferred would be quietism. Bolingbroke said to King Richard—
"The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed
The shadow of your face."
But, suppose both face and sorrow were themselves only shadows? What worth in Man's body then,—what worth in his soaring mind? The natural issue would be to drift down the shadowy[167] stream into a darker abyss of Nothingness.
Speculation[168] must lay down its arms, as powerless against such a supposition. The evidence of our senses[169] themselves is resolvable into shadows.
It was not by speculation that our strong Western will encountered the ideal enigmas of every day life. Act upon externalities, and they will react upon you. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to commence by admitting that the souls of others are as impenetrable to us, as the material things into which we cannot force our way. But, things and persons react upon us differently; and we act upon them in widely different ways. By an exertion of our will, we can change or stop a natural tide of inorganic antecedents and consequents and direct it to our own purposes. Beings like ourselves, we must allure, manage, inform, and persuade. Soon we find, by experience, that other human beings are very like ourselves; and the higher animals nearer to us than stocks and stones. We find this through the exercise of our own causal activities upon them.
The idea of the Supernatural marches along no very dissimilar route. The strong man subjects Nature, but the Supernatural is above both it, and him. He cannot even possess the thought of the Supreme. Whether he will or no, it possesses him. To his reason, Nature cannot subsist, as the true and independent ground of anything;—her laws are the servants of his volition;—and her chain of antecedent and consequent hangs between a First and a Last, without giving any sufficient account of either. If the Universe began in a shining Nebula, the question remains unsolved,—what first brought the thin cloud into being? The practical Reason, confirmed by experience, distinctly perceives that productive nature transforms all things,—but originates nothing;—that, contrariwise, when human nature wills to commit a wrong,—it really originates the crime. A disputant may assert that Man's will originates no act;—the criminal is never guilty,—and the judge and jury who try him are not answerable for their own decision. The same disputant may add that the Court in which, they sit is unreal, and their bodily persons only shadows. The one set of suppositions is as tenable as the other, and precisely as unpractical.
In the common course of Nature, then, Mankind has learned to maintain, as a truth of reason, that the Supernatural Power is a Will,—that is a Personality. In other words Man becomes a Theist.
As in Natural Realism, so in realistic Theism, we try how our principles will work. Realists in thought, we treat men and things as natural realities; diverse when compared together, but alike in outsideness as they stand related to ourselves. Action and reaction then go on as are to be expected. Life seems to us one long verification of the truth we began by accepting.—And so, too, it is with our belief in a Being Supernatural and Divine. If we succeed in figuring to ourselves a world of adaptation, order, law, progress, unity, we have but to open our eyes, and it appears spread out before us. If we think that the world's creation would blend all physical needs into pleasurable pursuits and satisfactions, we may look and see the union accomplished. If we frame a scheme of trial and moral discipline, to raise the feeble and confirm the strong, its realization is not wanting amongst us. From our own feelings, we can imagine how a Father's eye would look pityingly down upon fear and sorrow, and all the strains incidental to moving laws; the attrition of other wills, the tumults, failures, ill doings, and perversities of our sensitive and social existence. How a Father's hand would bind up all that is weak, wild, and wilful in his children, with threads of rainbow coloured hope and joyful anticipation; bidding them believe that ere long the uncertain dimness, which is as morning spread upon the mountains, shall brighten into steady splendour, shining on to a perfect and unclouded day.
We find as a matter of fact that this hope is no stranger to the human breast; that numbers live in it; numbers have died for it; and pre-eminently those of whom the world was not worthy.
The growth of thought from a bare idea of the Supernatural to a belief in a pure and sublime Theism,—and the sufficient account it renders of the world, ourselves, and our destinies, must be looked upon as matters of fact in the work-day history of mankind. Practical human reason has really travelled by this track, and, from day to day, perceives new truths to verify the old conclusion. Every attempt to adapt other theories to the working facts become, by their unfitness for the purpose, indirect evidence for Theism. How short a time has passed since Campbell lamented over—
"The hopeless dark Idolater of Chance;"
and since the authors of "Rejected Addresses" ridiculed a system which made the universe an accident.[170]—Now, chance sounds as strangely in scientific ears as Fate did to our strong-willed forefathers. Next, came that unintelligible contradictory phrase, a "blind intelligence;" a thing called a mind, that goes it knows not whither, and moves it knows not why. From this thing, immersed in the darkest ignorance, and unconscious even of its own existence, we were asked to believe that arrangement, harmony, excellence, beauty, were the productions. No wonder if men soon concluded that a moving force,—material and soulless,—would equally fulfil the same exalted functions. And, surely, one thing is an account of the Universe as reasonable and as sufficient as the other.
If we place a non-theistic theory in relation to our human inner nature, there ensues the same monstrous incongruity. The plenitude of loveliness, which overflows creation, as it were with multitudinous waves of light, we are asked to think of as the work of blind non-being. But, there is a greater plenitude of loveliness, in the good and noble acts, words, and thoughts of one bright soul of heaven-aspiring Man. Must we, then, believe that truth, sincerity, justice, rightness, goodness, purity, are all the offspring of a something infinitely lower than our weakest human will?[171]—Is that unknown something to be also the beacon of our hopes, the refuge of each forlorn and shipwrecked brother, the happiness giving itself to satisfy the unsatisfied aspirations of our long-enduring hearts?
Surely, the mockery of madness could go no further. What can the morally impotent or the morally imperfect do for us? Even to the careless eye of common sense, it is clear at a glance, that with the Impersonal our distinctive spiritual life can have no possible relations. If this be so, the very first idea of Supernatural Power is not advanced.—Contrariwise, it is distorted, frustrated, nullified. And with it is destroyed our trust in our own conscious nature. The instinct of immortality lives and moves within us only to betray.—Man,—whose being is the highest reason for the world's whole being,—is henceforth a palpable inconsistency. There cannot in the dreams of fiction be found a stranger tissue of more startling,—or one might venture to say,—more revolting moral absurdities. And a moral absurdity contradicts the constitution of Man's mind, quite as thoroughly as an absurdity purely intellectual. It is, in reality, the most self-condemned of all conceivable contradictions.
Let us place side by side with this issue, first, the commonly conceived relation between a Personal supreme Being and his creation;—secondly, the apprehension of Theistic truth within the soul, as it comes to us substantiated by religious men. We shall, at all events, gain the advantage of a strong contrast between Theism and non-Theism;—and strong contrast with shadows is often a strong enlightenment.
First, then, to consider the idea of Creation as the work not of a blind thing, but a supremely wise and powerful Being. It is plain that (to say the very least) this idea is encompassed with slighter and fewer difficulties. If a doubter is not convinced by the ordinary argument from Design, he cannot avoid admitting the fact of its possibility;—that it is applicable, and has been applied, argued, and reargued, without any overwhelming rejoinder or refutation. And there are two obvious reasons why it has never been successfully refuted. One—the evident truth that, whatever rival theories[172] might or might not be expected to do, this theory explains the world. Next—that no other attempted explanations have ever found a First ground for any existing thing. In the theory of Design it continues an open question how far we may conceive the Creator's first act as a grand finality,—the launch of a vast assemblage of worlds formed,—or, being formed;—so built upon law and guided by far-stretching wisdom, that the Universe sails gloriously through the Ocean of Space like a thing of Life; each breath of Force, each wave of Time wafting it securely on. But, let any idea of a true creation be admitted, and no belief in existing laws of any kind, will ever banish the great and good God from the world which He has created and made. His presence adds glory to its fabric, and, when we walk in its garden of delights, we feel that He walks and speaks there too.[173]
The argument from Creation to Creator forms the subject of the next Chapters. Therefore, we press it no farther here.
The point to be remembered now, is that this line of reasoning has alone offered a tenable explanation of the world's existence. And a like remark holds good of Natural Realism as opposed to Speculative Idealism. It is impossible (as we have seen), to prove or disprove either by bare argumentative abstractions. But, as a question of practical reason, the Natural Realist explains the outer world of individual existences, and his explanation tallies both with its phenomena and our own relations to them. Our material progress (that antithesis of oriental quietism), depends upon activities we should never have exerted had we not fully believed in a world of working energy within ourselves, and an outside world of reacting forces for us to work upon.
From mere material progress, let us turn our eyes to the nobler civilization of Mankind. A respect for human life because it is human,—honour paid to all men, inasmuch as manhood possesses an intrinsic title to honour,—the desire to do justice and love mercy,—sympathy with privation, suffering, and aberration, both moral and intellectual,—these are the true elements that soften and improve our race. And they are pre-eminently the dowry of nations believing in Theism. Theism is to these spiritual powers what Realism has been to material powers. Human beings are, by these two agencies, brought into contact with both the outer and the inner work of life. And as regards life's central work, the lesson of history is now what it always has been. To move man from a lower to a higher sphere, his soul must first be deeply stirred. And a spiritual stir and movement is the applied strength of a spiritual power.[ai]
We propose, then, to see by example, what Theism may be to mankind. Many examples will not be needed, provided those selected are typical. We shall therefore choose some two or three distinctive types.
The task of selection reminds us to protest, once for all, against the weak and cynical way of illustrating human nature which threatens to become prevalent. If we want to see what a true man is, we must not seek his fossil effigies, by delving into the scanty and disputable records of primæval savagery,[aj] and unearthing the crumbled seeds of better things, which died before coming to perfection. It is like estimating the Oak from a mouldy Acorn. It is worse!—Barbarism tends to distortion and degeneracy. We might as wisely pronounce a maimed dwarf with carefully flattened forehead, the beau ideal of human strength and beauty, as seek to know the mind of man amid its wrecks and perversities. We must rather look at our race in its strongest and noblest development. The healthy acorn grows into a spreading oak;—the truly human child becomes, not a crooked dwarf, but an upright intellectual giant. The investigation of maimed deformities may have its interest for comparative purposes, but no ancient Greek nor Hebrew, no modern European nor American, ought to be painted with lineaments which are revolting to his higher nature. Let us help the savage by every means we can, except by asking him to sit for a model of Humanity. When we do this, we have assuredly lost our very best reason for helping him at all.
The examples following, no one will doubt to be types of true and highly developed men. The first, is intended to shew how Theism stands out before the apprehension of a Man engaged in searching out abstract truth.
The Philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton has become familiar to most people, so far as his theory of "the Conditioned" is concerned. They are aware that his mind dwelt on the speculative difficulties surrounding a knowledge of the Absolute, the self-subsisting First Cause, and true Ground of all things. Yet, to the veracity of God he appeals for the veraciousness of our primary beliefs. Over against a whole school of Idealists, he places, as the one fatal objection, this same veracity—"Either maintaining the veracity of God, they must surrender their hypothesis;—or, maintaining their hypothesis, they must surrender the veracity of God."[174] And, if the existence of a Deity is known, there can be no doubt that His truth is amongst the highest and clearest to us, of all His essential attributes. We cannot (as Sir William says) "suppose that we are created capable of intelligence, in order to be made the victims of delusion; that God is a deceiver, and the root of our nature a lie."[175] Therefore, he drew a wide distinction between, on the one hand, knowing the Absolute and the Supreme so as to examine and explain His nature, and, on the other hand, believing that He truly is, so as to affirm the fact of His being, and the necessary consequences of His existence. "When I deny," he writes, "that the Infinite can by us be known, I am far from denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be, believed!"[176]—In this belief, Sir William saw a sufficient reason for accepting, as Mr. Mill advises all to accept, "the inexplicable fact." And indeed the problem of truth perpetually does come, (evade the conclusion as we will), in one shape or another, to this same necessity of final acceptance. Mr. Coleridge's Friend is one long investigation into this necessity, and he fairly closes his argument by saying that always,—start from whatever point we may,—"reason will find a chasm, which the moral being only, which the spirit and religion of man alone can fill up."[177]
3 For Sir W. Hamilton, Theism bridged the vast abyss! No one could more strongly estimate its vastness, and the poverty of our visual powers when we stand beside it;—the dim feeling which makes us shrink back from its awful verge. But Theism became to him the strength of a noble life;—a life of much self-sacrifice, and meagre earthly recompense.[ak]
The next typical thinker we shall quote is one pre-eminent for his careful study of the constitution of Man, the course, the aims, and aptitudes of his moral existence. It seems hardly necessary to add the name of Bishop Butler. The reader will find pleasure and instruction, if he peruses Butler's two sermons on the Love of God, from the second of which the following passages are cited:—
"Nothing is more certain, than that an infinite Being may himself be, if he pleases, the supply to all the capacities of our nature. All the common enjoyments of life are from the faculties he hath endued us with, and the objects he hath made suitable to them. He may himself be to us infinitely more than all these: he may be to us all that we want. As our understanding can contemplate itself, and our affections be exercised upon themselves by reflection, so may each be employed in the same manner upon any other mind; and since the supreme Mind, the Author and Cause of all things, is the highest possible object to himself, he may be an adequate supply to all the faculties of our souls; a subject to our understanding, and an object to our affections.
"Consider then: when we shall have put off this mortal body, when we shall be divested of sensual appetites, and those possessions which are now the means of gratification shall be of no avail; when this restless scene of business and vain pleasures, which now diverts us from ourselves, shall be all over; we, our proper self, shall still remain; we shall still continue the same creatures we are, with wants to be supplied, and capacities of happiness. We must have faculties of perception, though not sensitive ones; and pleasure or uneasiness from our perceptions, as now we have.
"There are certain ideas, which we express by the words, order, harmony, proportion, beauty, the furthest removed from anything sensual. Now, what is there in those intellectual images, forms, or ideas, which begets that approbation, love, delight, and even rapture, which is seen in some persons' faces upon having those objects present to their minds?—'Mere enthusiasm!'—Be it what it will: there are objects, works of nature and of art, which all mankind have delight from, quite distinct from their affording gratification to sensual appetites; and from quite another view of them, than as being for their interest and further advantage. The faculties from which we are capable of these pleasures, and the pleasures themselves, are as natural, and as much to be accounted for, as any sensual appetite whatever, and the pleasure from its gratification. Words to be sure are wanting upon this subject: to say, that everything of grace and beauty throughout the whole of nature, everything excellent and amiable shared in differently lower degrees by the whole creation, meet in the Author and Cause of all things; this is an inadequate and perhaps improper way of speaking of the divine nature; but it is manifest that absolute rectitude, the perfection of being, must be in all senses, and in every respect, the highest object to the mind....
".... Now, as our capacities of perception improve, we shall have, perhaps by some faculty entirely new, a perception of God's presence with us in a nearer and stricter way; since it is certain he is more intimately present with us than anything else can be. Proof of the existence and presence of any being is quite different from the immediate perception, the consciousness of it. What then will be the joy of heart, which his presence, and the light of his countenance, who is the life of the universe, will inspire good men with, when they shall have a sensation, that he is the sustainer of their being, that they exist in him; when they shall feel his influence to cheer and enliven and support their frame, in a manner of which we have now no conception? He will be in a literal sense their strength and their portion for ever."[178]
Of the last writer here adduced, it is needless to say more than that amongst living authors, he is rarely equalled in his subtle analysis of the tender and emotional side of humanity.
"The personal relation sought, is discerned and felt. The Soul understands and knows that God is her God; dwelling with her more closely than any creature can; yea, neither Stars, nor Sea, nor smiling Nature hold God so intimately as the bosom of the Soul. What is He to it? what, but the Soul of the soul? It no longer seems profane to say, 'God is my bosom friend: God is for me, and I am for Him.' So Joy bursts out into Praise, and all things look brilliant; and hardship seems easy, and duty becomes delight, and contempt is not felt, and every morsel of bread is sweet....
".... But Oh philosopher, is all this a contemptible dream? thou canst explain it all? or thou scornest it all? Whatever theory thou may'st form concerning it, it is not the less a fact of human nature: one of some age too: for David thirsted after God and exceedingly rejoiced in Him, and so did Paul; and the feelings which they describe are reproduced in the present day. To despise wide-spread enduring facts is not philosophic; and when they conduce to power of goodness and inward happiness, it might be wise to learn the phenomena by personal experience, before theorizing about them. It was not a proud thing of Paul to say, but a simple truth, that the spiritual cannot be judged by the unspiritual.
"The single thought, 'God is for my soul, and my soul is for Him,' suffices to fill a universe of feeling, and gives rise to a hundred metaphors. Spiritual persons have exhausted human relationships in the vain attempt to express their full feeling of what God (or Christ) is to them. Father, Brother, Friend, King, Master, Shepherd, Guide, are common titles. In other figures, God is their Tower, their Glory, their Rock, their Shield, their Sun, their Star, their Joy, their Portion, their Hope, their Trust, their Life."[179]
Such is Theism, penetrating the head and heart of Man; appealing to his intellect, his conscience, and his affections. Such is Theism; sending upwards, out of Man's spirit, aspirations which "dumb driven cattle" cannot breathe—often the sole sweet incense from Earth to Heaven. It is possible that, to some readers, the passages extracted will sound like the accents of a foreign tongue. Of such it may properly be asked, whether any man has a right so to call in question another sane man's honest consciousness, as to deny its reality, worth, and excellence? There are ears on which the music of Shakespeare's words, or Mozart's notes, fall tuneless and unmeaning. Yet, who on that account would deny the true sense and delight of poetry, rhythm, and melody? We cannot, in reason, forget that even from ordinary men a small amount of affirmation, if conscientious, unselfish, and collected, outweighs and annihilates a host of perplexing doubts. But, every great Man's thought is at least a grand fact; every expression of it a benefaction to his fellow-men. And, as respects the mighty power with which Theism stirs and impels the soul, we may rest absolutely assured that, where one human being is found to give it utterance, thousands have felt the movement, and have silently governed their life's work by it. Happily, the brightest gifts of our existence are also the commonest;—the sunshine of the world, and the sunshine of the Soul.
Countless numbers have, indeed, professed to discern by an inward sense the reflected reality of a Supreme Being. They who feel it most deeply, do not attempt to explain the Substance of which an imperfect copy exists within themselves, acknowledged, yet inexplicable; at once the greatest enigma, and the noblest fact of their essential being. They are content to look upwards to the Supreme Mind they have found;—to treasure such knowledge as they have; and adore its object. Many of those who have thus believed and acted are amongst the most excellent and perfect of our race.
Has any theory of the Universe which ignores the original of an image discovered within ourselves, accounted for what we perceive through our senses, our consciousness, and our moral insight,—so well as that theory which acknowledges and reverences a God?
[CHAPTER V.]
PRODUCTION AND ITS LAW.
"Πολλὰ τὰ δεινά, κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει."
Sophocles, Antigone.
"These be the two parts of natural philosophy,—the inquisition of causes, and the production of effects; speculative, and operative; natural science, and natural prudence." Bacon's Advancement of Learning. Book II.
"The perception of real affinities between events (that is to say, of ideal affinities, for those only are real), enables the poet to make free with the most imposing forms and phenomena of the world, and to assert the predominance of the soul.
"Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth," Emerson. Idealism.
"The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. Whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world." Huxley. Man's Place in Nature, p. 57.
"Der Mensch ist das einzige Geschöpf, das erzogen werden muss. Unter der Erziehung nämlich verstehen wir die Wartung (Verpflegung, Unterhaltung), Disciplin (Zucht) und Unterweisung nebst der Bildung. Dem zufolge ist der Mensch Säugling,—Zögling—und Lehrling." Kant. Pädagogik, Einleitung.
"Man's Intellectual Progress consists in the Idealization of Facts, and man's Moral Progress consists in the Realization of Ideas." Whewell's Moral Philosophy, Additional Lectures, p. 129.
"Say! when the world was new and fresh from the hand of its Maker,
Ere the first modelled frame thrilled with the tremors of life,....
.... Forms of transcendent might—Beauty with Majesty joined,
None to behold, and none to enjoy, and none to interpret?
Say! was the Work wrought out! Say was the Glory complete?
What could reflect, though dimly and faint, the Ineffable Purpose
Which from chaotic powers, Order and Harmony drew?
What but the reasoning spirit, the thought and the faith and the feeling?
What, but the grateful sense, conscious of love and design?
Man sprang forth at the final behest. His intelligent worship
Filled up the void that was left. Nature at length had a Soul."
Sir J. Herschel. Essays, etc., p. 737.
"Wär ein verständiger Sinn auch mir doch beschieden gewesen!
Aber es täuschte mich trügrischer Pfad, hieher mich, dann dorthin
Lockend. Nun bin ich bejahrt und doch unbefriedigt von allem
Forschen. Denn wo ich den Geist hinwende, da löst sich mir alles
Auf in Eins und Dasselbe: da alles Seyende, allzeit
Allwärts angezogen, in ähnliche, eine Natur tritt."
Jacobi. Werke, Vorrede zu David Hume, p. 103.
"Throughout all future time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness—if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of experience." Herbert Spencer. First Principles, p. 17.
SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER V.
The argument of this chapter turns upon the analysis of concrete processes carried on throughout human life; together with their correlations or correspondent factors visible in rerum naturâ. All these being complex activities, resolve themselves into series of simpler activities, which, though separable in thought, follow each other inseparably as real working elements of human or natural productions,—or of both.
In each productive process of Mankind, we perceive:—
1. A purpose conceived,—(the end or final cause.)
2. A power or force which has to be (a.) discovered and (b.) fitted to this human purpose.
2. (a.) This implies that the object in quest exists, or is capable of being evoked into active existence, as a Force or operative Law capable of producing real effects. Otherwise, it would be no auxiliary to Man. Viewed per se, and apart from its being fitted to his special purpose, it must therefore be a natural power or law, and answers to what Bacon calls a Form or Formal cause.[180]
(It is plain that human production requires some particular utilization of a producing force, wider in itself than this or any other ancillary application of its energies. Compare Bacon's philosophic observation[181] that the operative Form "deduces the given nature from some source of being which is inherent in more natures.")
2. (b.) A number of such powers, forces, laws, forms, present themselves to the intellectual eye of an inventor or producer. Possible fitness, (adaptability)—must therefore next be determined. And here the power is no longer considered separately, but in relation to some Formation.
In 2, therefore, we have (a) a simple fact or general law of Force;—and (b) a correlated fact, or specialized law of Production.
3. Finally, for operative activity, there must be an efficient cause putting in movement the productive law, over and above its intelligent apprehension just presupposed. This efficient Cause, as seen always in human Production, is a Will.
Now each several step in this series comes before us as an act of Mind. But out of this number one only needs to be examined here;—because
Purpose (1) has been treated of in Chapter II.
Will (3) occupies the close of this Essay.
No. 2, therefore, (divisible into a and b,) makes the proper subject-matter of the present Chapter. It has been written to meet the difficulties felt by a certain number of reasoners respecting the argument from Design. They are very often indisposed to accept that argument, because its analogical nature makes it appear circuitous; and because they hesitate when attempting to appreciate its exact value: compare p. 53 ante. There is also a lurking dread of that spectral shadow called Anthropomorphism, haunting some minds with a pertinacity, which may be estimated from p. 54 seq. By such reasoners let the present Chapter,—which proceeds not by way of analogy, but through a direct analysis of acknowledged facts—be read as a substitute for Chapter II. Or, they may if they please, consider the present and two following Chapters as a Treatise entirely distinct from the rest of the volume; this present Chapter serving as a brief statement of the case for physico-theology; while the two arguments ensuing sketch out Ethico- or Moral Theology; on which complementary modes of thought see p. 107 ante, together with text and notes now about to follow. Finally, by all those who accept the reasoning from Design as already explained, let both it and our other various lines of argument be treated as separate evidences of Natural Theology, each resting on its own grounds, but all consilient at last.
Analysis.—Advance and Retrogression of Discovery and of Civilization. Progress dependent on realizing the relativity between Power and Function. This condition of success is examined at length.
Perception of existing Relations, and creation of new ones by human Reason and Will. Illustrations from histories of Invention, Art, Education, and Self-Education.
Production of Change within ourselves. Self conquest, Self formation, and Re-formation. Inability of animals arises from domination of motives unalterable by themselves and instinctively apprehended. Training relative to motor instincts of various sorts. Self-training requires freedom from the domination of any single unbalanced or unalterable impulse. It implies the power of using motives as counterpoises, and of introducing new elements into the sphere of our ideals.
Influence of human presence upon the education of animals; influence of the Divine Idea upon Man.
Transition from the sphere of Intellect to that of Will in relation to the World. The Spring of Production a movement of Will; the Idea of Production an insight into the Mind of Nature; discovered not logically, but as shewn in operation in Nature. Law and Idea, Intelligence and Matter. Manifold Forces imply a central Unity. Putting aside the analogical inference from apparent Purpose, the question of operative Law (Force, Form, Mind,) is examined in its many activities, their correlations and their underlying Oneness.
Natural Law in action: hypothesis of limited intelligence. Case of Unreason, Creation by Chance.
Breadth of Law seen in its general fitnesses, and grander unities. Exceptional effects in "Functioning."
Character of Mind in Nature. Law, type, idea. Adaptation even if purposed is not Arbitrary. A Supreme Will must be a sovereign Reason.
Perfection of Mind in Nature estimated from convergent fitnesses and correlations, as exemplified by Sight and Hearing. Also by their effects in producing Beauty, Happiness, and a sense of sympathy. Mind in Nature not bare intelligence, but possessing emotional attributes, not harsh nor unlovely, but tender and loveable.
Additional Note.
On the Doctrine of Chances applied to the structural Development of of the Eye, by Professor Pritchard.
CHAPTER V.
PRODUCTION AND ITS LAW.
"Life," said Dr. Johnson, "has not many things better than this:"—"we were," Boswell explains, "driving rapidly along in a post-chaise." But what if the two men, congratulating themselves upon their speed, could have read (with some approach to second-sight) Dr. Darwin's lines—
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquer'd steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the fields of air."
The slow barge now traverses the wide Atlantic as fast as even fast-living America can desire. The rapid car whirls across England in a few brief hours. With what half-envious astonishment, might Dr. Johnson have computed the arrowy flight of these iron creations over land or water;—with what sententious wisdom might he not have dilated on the uncontrolled dissemination, Sir, of books, knowledge, and civility;—to say nothing of vile whiggism or possible rebellion!
No wide-waving wings have as yet wafted us over rivers and mountains. But some inventors still cherish a hope of applying steam steerage, and perhaps steam propulsion, to very large balloons.
It is curious to think of the many centuries, during which men saw elastic vapour lifting their kettle lids, without catching the idea of steam power, or reflecting on the movement it produced. Curious, too, to remember how slowly the idea grew, after the Marquis of Worcester had explained the relation between the power and its movement-producing function. His "fire-water-work" (as he called it), "drove up water by fire," at a rate of 1250 lbs. through one foot, to the consumption of 1 lb. of coal. This is about 200 times the waste of a good modern engine. But the principle was there. Water flowed without intermission, at a height of forty feet, driven only by the elastic force of steam. The introduction of atmospheric pressure half obscured the original conception; steam-power seemed in danger of losing its proper functions. Passing by Papin and Savery,[182] the descent of Newcomen's piston depended on the production of a vacuum beneath it; at much cost of heat and labour, much waste of fuel and force. Strange, that for so many years nobody thought of introducing steam-power above the piston, as well as below it.
The retrograde path which science sometimes treads, is also clearly shewn in the long-delayed invention of the paddlewheel steam-boat. The first patent was taken out by Jonathan Hulls in 1736, and his rare pamphlet may be seen at the British Museum, or in Mr. Partington's reprint.[183] Strange, that so good a thing should have continued so long neglected;—up to the days of the first Napoleon, and, (fortunately perhaps for civilization,) under the Conqueror's imperial rule. The same fate, however, befel Trevithick's "walking engine" made in 1802. He applied high-pressure steam-power to a railway locomotive which really travelled (1805) at Merthyr Tydvil. Every one knows how slowly this invention has grown up into the useful goods-train or the luxurious roll of the express.
The relation between a power so well tested, and propulsion, was thus long in being fitted with perfect mechanism, and presented to the eyes of mankind as a familiar every day phenomenon. But the idea of propelling carriages by other means than animal sinews, had been working the reverse way; and a desirable end suggested a search for means. Men tried to fit other powers to the function; the problem gave rise to wind-driven chariots, and other curious contrivances for travelling by land, which are graphically described by Lovell Edgeworth and several of his contemporaries. Then, too, came the desire to sail against the wind, and independently of water currents. A vignette in the first Edition of Bewick's Birds (vol. 1, p. 257), published in 1797, shews us a ferry-boat crossing a river by means of a windmill which turns paddle wheels.[184] The engraver has marked by a ripple at the vessel's bows the strength and swiftness with which she stems the stream.
The history of these machines carries with it a very useful moral. It furnishes an apt similitude to the delays and retrogressions which are found in the onward march of mankind, in the gains and triumphs of civilization. These sometimes occur to nations through error, violence, and wrong. Compulsory celibacy, forced upon the most cultured men, was, according to Mr. Darwin, one cause why Spain, notwithstanding her great generals, navigators, and inventors,[185] has been distanced by freer nations. Then, too, as he adds, "the holy Inquisition selected with extreme care the freest and boldest men in order to burn or imprison them.—In Spain alone, some of the best men ... were eliminated during three centuries at the rate of a thousand a year.[186] The streams of both invention and human improvement resemble, in this respect, the current of a mighty river. We always encounter—and always ought to expect—whirlpools, back-waters, and other sinuosities, as we descend the flowing tide.
Very frequently, civilization is retarded by another kind of difficulty, also besetting the inventive arts. Like them, Progress depends upon its capacity for happily realizing the relativity[al] between Power and Function. The philanthropist sometimes,—the craftsman often,—has only to think of the function required, and to grasp a relation pre-existing in the laws of the natural world,—fit it to its own purposes, and usefully employ the adaptation. This was the case when elastic vapours of many kinds were examined relatively to their power of producing movement. Each deeper investigation brings a clearer insight into a more deeply-hidden law. The apprehension of "Heat as a mode of Motion,"[am] is an instance in point.
Sometimes—in human affairs oftenest—the mind originates a new relation between Power and Function, and launches it, like an unimagined locomotive, whirling and dashing onwards throughout the world of men. The will of a powerful king or conqueror, statesman or missionary, evokes a new power; gives it life and motive energy, and sends it out to perform its intended function amongst millions of mankind, and for many generations. Hence, Kant said there were two things which filled him with awe: one, the starry heavens, that mightiest example of mighty powers orderly performing their appropriate functions; the other, Man's Will, a power less mighty in one sense, but belonging to a sphere where mass and measurement are not, and performing functions signalized too frequently by wrongful determination. Functions which, whether rightly or wrongly performed, involve a mightier Something than all the inorganic worlds ever displayed, a Something we define by that deepest of ideas and most awful of truths,—Responsibility.
The whole subject admits of extensive illustration. The relativities of Power and Function are infinitely varied in Nature, Art, and Thought; in the unity of the whole world, and in the disunited world of Humanity. But, however varied in their sphere of operation, all relations between Power and Function coincide in one characteristic. They appeal to mind alone, and by mind alone can be apprehended so as to become operative. Those that belong to the human sphere of activity are in part the perceptions of Mind; in part they are evidenced to our consciousness as its own creations.
If we look at the inorganic world, Man apprehends such a relativity as that between steam-power and propulsion, and applies it. In the realm of pure mathematics, there are powers of another sort, which (when applied) require allowances to be made in "functioning" them. Provided metal, timber, friction, and cross-circumstances have their proper margin given, those abstract entities,[187] absolute in truth, become realized in practice. When we come to organization, particularly higher organisms, the functions of the biological kingdom are more complex. Yet the trainer of animals knows how to combine and modify old powers so as to produce new ones. The pointer, the greyhound, the racehorse, and the hunter are all examples. Then, too, men manipulate men. See how the face of all Europe is covered with training establishments of every description.[an] Youths are fitted for army, navy, bar, parliament, politics. The powers of attention, memory, habit, are all pressed into service, just as the inventor of locomotives calculates the strength and tenacity of iron, brass, copper, and other materials, fits each pipe, crank, and wheel, to its intended function, and ends by speeding his fellows past the doors of their fellow-men. Now, the manipulation of these materials is a calculable process, and succeeds at last. But there is one disappointment often awaiting the manipulator of mankind. His failure arises from the fact that the moral purpose, which he must take for granted, is very commonly wanting among those he undertakes to educate.
Another inventor of the highest sort, an artist, conceives a majestic thought. It becomes to him the work of his life, the function he ardently desires to realize. To the true Art-man, his conception is a noble ideal, and some instinct, or proclivity of his own nature, teaches him how to adapt it to the ears and eyes, the intellect and feelings of his race. There are sounds which die in their newborn sensations of delight, yet haunt the memory while consciousness remains. There are colours appealing to one single organ of perception, and, through it, penetrating the soul with images that rise again and again in nightly and daily dreams. And there are words, the forms and creations of our distinctive human mind, through which it exercises its sublimest powers, and which are (in themselves) among the most sublime. They have their proper functions. Age after age, from country to country, from nation to nation,[188] they have moved the souls of readers to emotion, reasoning, will, activity. Noble words, expressing ideas unknown to all intelligences below man, and called into existence by him, prolong their own lives by extending his intellectual and affective life. They burn like incense within the temple of his spirit, but, unlike incense, survive undyingly in the immortal flame which kindles them.
There is a still loftier and more solemn function we all exercise—or ought to exercise—in or upon the sphere of our own souls. To us is committed the task, our human task,—morally imperative on no sentient beings inferior to ourselves,—of transforming and reforming, that is (to all intents and purposes) truly forming our own inward nature. We have not, at present, to consider how near heaven may and does draw to earth, in this highest of works known to us who dwell beneath the sky. But the absolutely human part of it belongs to this place.
Every one has learned how hard it is to break through even one bad habit. The evil has in most cases enchained body as well as mind. A drunkard's hand is naturally reached out to lift the cups it has been used to lift. His thirst, too, recurs at the accustomed hour;—and the readers of "Elia" know something of what happens when it is left unslaked. A tingling and straining of the palate is associated with the sight of the eye; the drunkard's throat burns when he sees the draught before him; his frustrated desire is followed by the most frightful sufferings throughout his disorganized nervous system. The same is true of other like habituations; as may be read in De Quincey's Opium Eater, and in the last book of Charles Dickens, left behind him an unfinished fragment. It is true, also, of countless smaller customs which prevent many a man from achieving what Hooker calls "great masteries." Every muscle, fibre, and organ of our frame, performs easily the functions it has been used to perform, but undergoes a strain if put out of its usual course.
The mind (as well as the body), has its laws of habit and association. We perceive this fact most readily in the less perfect intelligence of the animal kingdom, of untutored man, and of people who are more inured to action than to reflection. The more rudimentary the mind, the more real is its state of subservience to association and habit, which may then be properly termed its governing laws. But it would be improper to apply this word "governing" to the same laws in connection with higher natures. In a man whose reason and will have attained their manly majority, such laws have ceased to be governors;—their province is simply administrative. Deposed from their rule over his existence, they become his ministers, servants, instruments. There is, thus, a compensatory constitution of human nature, whereby the light within us, which lighteth every man, may be said to make us free.[189] It exempts us, that is, from the sway of customary laws which guide and reduce to subjection the merely animal intelligence.
A habit broken is a customary law broken. And any one who breaks through a customary law already inwoven with the fibres of his own life, is a man par excellence. And the deeper that inweaving,—the greater the laceration of living fibres,—if he rends them in obedience to duty, and because to do otherwise would be to do wrong, the more truly and emphatically he is a Man. Again, if we proceed to ask by what means he breaks the bonds of custom, the Manhood of his act appears still more distinctly. His purpose may be, and often is, accomplished by setting a higher law of his being over against a lower;—putting a more really human power in movement to tame and quell some animal propensity. But then, what is that secret strength which apprehends and evokes the higher law? What is the central spring that moves the strictly human power, and converts it from a sleeping capacity for good, into an acting and living energy? Clearly, it is the Man's truest humanity;—the endowment which makes him Man.
There are lives of men plainly told, and undoubted, where re-formation,—that is self-formation,—appears like a flash of electric fire. The Will in such men has energized, just as intellect flashes out in its noblest condition of genius; and can best be described by the poet or the seer who knows what it is to create, and new create. These lives more than realize Cæsar's boast;—the truly human soul came to itself,—saw itself,—and overcame. The conqueror did a deed which, (truly done,) was done for ever, and yielded him the presage of perpetual peace.
Histories of self-conquest do, however, remarkably differ in respect of the time employed upon the work. Some victories are, as we have said, rapid and brilliant as the march of Alexander,—others slow and embarrassed, like the weary path of a pilgrim through deserts of rolling sand. But no pilgrim who is in earnest need despair. Putting aside all consideration of supernatural aid, he may take courage from the essential greatness of his own human being, when contrasted with the being of all creatures below mankind.
The comparison sets out from this question:—What can merely animal nature do to raise itself? Man, we know, can train certain brutes—he can entrap all;—but no brute can in any wise deliver himself from the snare of a single appetite. The weakness, as well as the strength, of animal intelligence lies in the vividness of its instincts. Animals appear conscious of the working of powers within themselves; and they apprehend those functions, with the performances of which their powers are correlated. Hence, in part at least, the pleasure of a bird in nest-building; a bee in storing her comb, or a predacious creature in its successful pursuit of prey. But the relation between animal power and function appears so nearly fixed, as to be hedged round by narrow limits; and only in a very small degree susceptible of modification. So far as we can discover, the brute is deficient in the means of self-education, for three distinct reasons. One, because he cannot escape fulfilling the normal functions of his unreasoning impulse. In the second place, because he is unable to overcome the urgency of one innate power, by opposing to it the claims and vigour of another. Thirdly, he can never introduce anything new into the relativity between power and function. He can command no spring of high aim or creative thought, which might give new purpose to his better powers, or open out some further sphere of activity before unknown.—Were this possible, he might lift the functions of his common life above their old destinies, and above themselves.—And this would be a work of self-education.
To pursue our comparison,—we must remember that the ability for self-education and the capacity for being educated, are correlatives; and we may measure the one by the other. The animal world has never shewn strength enough to raise itself very high;—it has never ceased to be distinctly animal. But, has it ever possessed latent powers for which opportunity was always wanting? Mankind, for their own purposes, have (we know) continually been testing[ao] the endowments of inferior creatures. How high, then, can man by his endeavours raise the animal race?—He can generally train them to a greater quickness in the exercise and nicety of their own instinctive powers, and a more enduring performance of their instinctively presented functions. By reward and punishment, he can inure them to some degree of self-restraint; and he takes advantage of a thousand pretty impulses and fondnesses of animal nature, to call into being attachment,—nay, often passionate devotion,—towards himself. In this sense, Man has been styled the God of his domestic brute—his horse, his dog, his elephant. It would be a curious subject of reflection, to inquire what effect might possibly be produced upon the human mind by the visible presence, and incessant influence, of beings, as much higher than men, as men are higher than brutes? The moment we start this idea in our minds, it is difficult to evade an impression that Man must be a desolate creature, if he can never in some way see the Invisible.[ap]
To leave this curious point. Nothing appears more really conclusive against all supposed capacity for great development, than the history of what are called "learned animals";—of the mechanical means necessarily employed for teaching them, and the mechanical results obtained. There is indeed no better word to describe the true state of the case; than the term "mechanical," as opposed to everything that is ideal, or truly creative.[aq] If a brute could idealize the laws of outward nature,—or the laws connecting his own powers with their proper functions, he might see them as a Man does, and give them a fresh existence within his own intelligence. He would then be able to invent an alphabet, conceive a picture, and view the properties of outward objects as universals inwardly apprehended. In this way, he would acquire exemption from the reign of mechanism, and live a really creative life. Possible conceptions—ideal functions—would require new powers to realize them;—and these powers would be searched for and found. Or, vice versâ, an idealized power,—a power seen, (not as it is, but as it may be)—would lead to the discovery of fresh functions,—new fields of enterprise,—new realms of imagination.
It is manifest at a glance, how far in fact these conquests are from the world of creatures, by us, therefore, called unreasoning. Art, letters, and abstract thought, are no visitants of the animal sphere. Words cannot come where thoughts are not; and therefore language, in the human meaning of language, is unknown to brutes.[190] And no effort made by Man has ever been successful in sharing with his humble companions any one—(much less all) of these attainments. His artistic sense of Beauty, and power of giving it varied expression, find no Echo beneath himself; he can in no wise teach by historical record, poetry, abstract calculation, or abstract thought. Neither can he impart the true secret of social sympathy,—and forbid the stricken deer to weep and die alone. Intelligence without imagination, cannot conceive a sorrow so lonely or unseen. Therefore, it knows little of deep sorrow,—for even the mortally-wounded bird will strive to hide its wound.[191]
Now, in each and all of these respects, every human being devoted to self-education starts from the plain fact, that Man is educable:—
"Parents first season us,—then schoolmasters."
The master of many a middle-school has frequent occasion to say with Horace;
——"At ingenium ingens
Inculto latet hoc sub corpore."—
And the schoolmaster, also, knows that a little spark will often light into fire some vast store of emotional as well as intellectual elements lying asleep within.[192]
We therefore speak (if we speak correctly), of educating an animal in a totally different sense from educating a boy. For, facts are as we have stated them, whatever theories may be.
There is one more point of contrast to stimulate and encourage the self-educating portion of Mankind; and this point is the most characteristic endowment essential to Humanity. A man is not creative by virtue of his ideals alone, however bright and beautiful those visions of his intellect may be. He calls into existence that, which as yet is not, by virtue of his Will. We know this, although inexplicable, to be true;—partly from the evidence of our own Consciousness,—which asserts that it is so, and partly from the evidence of Morality,—which says that it must necessarily be so. Were it otherwise, no amount of Criminality could make a Criminal responsible. And this truth of responsibility is one which may occasion serious reflection to us all; to some of us sad remembrances.
Man, considered as causal or creative mind, cannot but act upon the world without, as well as the world within himself. And perhaps the nearest idea we are able to form of the process of production, is the inter-action of power and function, evoked by a Will, (that is a Cause); and continuing operative by aid of ordinary laws and relativities of nature.[ar] One man resolves to construct a steam engine, and on steam-power he concentrates his thought. He conceives the relation between watery vapour and propulsion;—and by using arbitrary signs, formulates and measures it. Then, he considers the laws and properties of metals, fits each contrivance into place and produces his machine. Another determines to commit a murder. He wavers—debates—wills the deed, and says,—
"I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat."
Every reader of Macbeth sees displayed before his eyes the airy dagger; the human muscle strained to clutch the shadow first,—afterwards, the reality;—the time, place, circumstances, all combined, followed up—worked out, till the murderous man has chained all conditions of success to his behest;—fulfilled his slowly-matured purpose,—and become, as in Will, so in act, a murderer. A third human being endeavours to invent a method for teaching the deaf and dumb;—spends a life in labouring among his silent tomb-like pupils, and succeeds to his joy and their inestimable benefit at last. He awakens powers lost in the shadow of death, and incites them to the performance of those true and appropriate functions, from which they had been incapacitated by a dwarfed and thwarted development. Before he aroused them, all such powers were only possibilities, visible to his hopeful eye. Now, they are utilized and happy activities; and, like impulses down a long electric chain, perpetuate themselves for generations after the benevolent inventor is taken from the race he had loved and educated.
There are two features in which all these productive men resemble each other. One, the creative influence of a purely human will, which not only sees what is not as though it is,—but also determines that it shall be. The other, a way of looking at, or rather, through Nature, as something more than an assemblage of facts or phenomena;—of penetrating to the mind of Nature,—her ideal laws legible by the intellectual eye of Man;—and finally, of putting each required law into motion,—that is to say, converting an idea into a force, by the movement of the producer's Will.
And the same is true of every useful producer, from the man who grows corn and wine, to the politician by whose foresight is arranged a treaty which gives Europe the blessing of half a century's peace. There is, probably, no example of production more definite than the work of a real statesman. A gifted human mind determines to pursue the thing that is just and right and good; sees where the means to be utilized may be found and enforced; touches the right spring of activity and power, and leads his fellow-men into a path of precedent or constitution for which ages may consecrate his memory.—But, let us suppose that he or any other true producer falls short of realizing his idea. Then, the act of Will would be in its essence as noble a reality as the deed itself. Yet the work intended,—the production must needs be lost. Creative will, as an efficient cause, would have moved within the moral sphere; but beyond, and into the outside world of men and things, its activity must have failed to penetrate.
When the case comes before us in this manner and is fairly weighed, we see that the man who wills a good choice, reflects to his fellows the image we are accustomed to call Divine. And that the man who produces a good act reflects to his fellows the further likeness and idea of a Creator. The will of man reflects a supreme will, when it refuses the evil and chooses the good;—the creative energy of man reflects a supreme energy, when it produces actual good; working and remaining effectual in the world. These human reflections may be feeble shadows, and far away from the Supreme;—as distant as earth and stars asunder, but they are typical images nevertheless. Man, in whom the Theist finds the impress of God, is by his power of Causality, as far raised beyond the laws of material existence, as animal life and movement are superior to the clods of soil on which the living creature walks, with a consciousness of being exalted above what he treads upon.
If these far away reflections, so striking to a Theist, are, by an unbeliever, pronounced insufficient proofs of Theism,—they remain still of very great value to the argument—Who shall, in the teeth of them, assert a reign of law in opposition to a reign of Causation, when we perceive that Causality is the grand endowment underlying the highest intelligence in this world, and distinguishing man from every inferior creature? A large class of objections dies in the fact that there is known to us a power which can truly originate actions;—a clear spring of volitional creativeness. And, as we have already seen, it is this human power which endows us with the faculty of self-education, and, at the same time, lays upon us the burden of responsibility. It exempts Man from what would otherwise be an iron chain of antecedents and consequents, linked together by mere mechanical laws. Man, we are sure, may interpolate in this chain; he may commence a new series within and over-riding it. The non-Theist would (if consistent), describe such an act of will as a miracle. Nevertheless, it is true to every-day life, and each guilty person, justly condemned, is a living example of this truth.
Any reader who has been deterred from admitting the arguments for Theism by the strength of objections apparently unanswerable, may feel, if he will thoughtfully reperuse this chapter, that many very formidable difficulties have melted away. He may also be inclined to admit that, if facts are to be considered the best grounds for reasoning with probability from the known to the unknown, the facts of nature, (including human nature,) make not against, but for, the conclusions of Natural Theology. And they do so all the more stringently, because they coincide with the higher and more spiritual tendencies of Man's being,—with the beliefs and aspirations of the most nobly endowed among his race.
Many readers will go further than this. They will perceive in the constitution of our distinctive nature, and more particularly in the movement of Volition, a really probable though far away similitude with the producing Cause of all things. At all events they will say that no other similitude or illustration has ever been conceived with so much probability. To such minds the argument would appear sufficiently convincing if shaped as a very wide application of the analogous reasoning stated in our Chapter on Design. The limitations there laid down should in this case be carefully observed; above all as regards the pivot on which such an argument must turn.
A larger class of readers may prefer to leave the field of this inviting analogy untouched; and remain content with having noted its resources in passing. They will thus prefer to pursue the more direct line of thought already adopted, especially since it has the merit of avoiding even the most shadowy apparent assumption of the principle invidiously termed Anthropomorphism. We therefore continue to place Man's causative nature side by side with external Force, and to set the powers he exercises as an inventor, artist, and producer, over against those natural powers we see elicited and brought to light by his activities. This is the aspect of the world to which the Relativity between Power and Function most obviously conducts us. Surveyed from this aspect it becomes plain that Nature is not entirely a soulless mechanism;—but that the Mind of Man finds something which corresponds to his human Thought, and which answers the touch of his idealizing impulse by implicitly obeying it. He is able, in this manner, to distinguish Nature's Mind from Nature's raw material.
Most of us are so accustomed to look at the world ab extrâ, and place ourselves in antithetical opposition to it, that we experience a kind of embarrassment in changing our point of view, and considering how much Nature and human nature correspond and harmonize together. There is something strange to many persons, in the thought that law is an idea put into operation;[as] that, when we speak of the dynamic agencies and living forces of nature, the dynamism is derived from intelligence; the life springs from mind. This is one of the puzzles and perplexities which hang a veil between God, who is pure Reason, and this outside world. No doubt there is much that appears dark and enigmatic in every attempted explanation of the subject. Yet it is clear that, whatever our conception of matter and mind may be, one of these two must be resolvably consequent upon the other; and the efforts of physicists have been strained for many years to diminish the distance between them. With these efforts, however, we have nothing to do beyond very distinctly adducing them[at] in order to shew where this particular difficulty really lies, and that it is by no means a special question of Natural Theology. The point for us, is rather to see how much we can discern respecting the action of Mind in and upon Nature. To see, that is, how many facts the realities of Production teach us. And throughout the whole realm of Productiveness (commencing from the steam-engine and ending with human self-formation), there is a certain sameness of procedure and of principle transparently discernible. And this truth, fairly examined, yields more than one kind of argument for Theism.
At the first blush of the subject, it is evident that the
scientific producer when he begins to move, starts from the Causal power of mind. He moves through ideas or impulses of which he is internally conscious, and which present to him a chosen aim to be realized, a goal to be attained. It is equally evident that, when his aim is to make or effect something external to himself, he next proceeds to discover or accept one or more principles, existing for Mind alone,[193] but operative in Nature. Such principles yield to his reason the requisite proportionate relation of Power employed, to Function designed. Upon this intelligent perception of intelligible laws, he acts;—it works well, and succeeds;—and from this experience of working and success, he finds for his productive intelligence a daily and hourly verification.
It is well to place this subject in various lights before reasoning upon it. We may illustrate the relativities or laws, through which Intelligence acts, by saying that they are to the fabric of the world, what the motory nervous system is to a highly-developed living organism. And, putting aside for a moment the intellectual agency of man, and applying our similitude to illustrate natural production alone, we may say that, just as the mandatory nerves imply some volitional centre, so these intelligent laws presuppose a mind in Nature. And we may not only make this clearer, but also evidence it more certainly, by pointing to the fact that amidst Nature's almost infinite manifoldness, we see everywhere harmony, symmetry, order. Forces, like lines of light, traverse the world, illuminating, (so to speak), the moving scenes of its magnificent transparency. And the one electric lamp that sends forth those illuminating rays, typifies the Unity from which emanate all cosmical Forces, and which shines visibly through them all.[au]
There is nothing imaginative or metaphysical involved in this statement. It amounts to no more than what many very eminent physicists lay down, as implicitly contained in their sciences. On this very ground, Professor Baden Powell holds the validity of the argument from Design, as was mentioned in a former chapter. He puts the case into a few words thus:—"In the present state of knowledge, law and order, physical causation and uniformity of action, are the elevated manifestations of Divinity, creation and providence."[194] A few passages further on, he repudiates with scorn the vulgar supposition that physical science can be confined to the circle of outward experience alone;[195] it includes within itself the principle of directing intelligence. According to Comte himself, "un fait s'explique par un fait d'un ordre supérieur, dont la perfection est sa raison, dont l'action qu'elle renferme est sa cause."[196]
It does indeed seem as impossible to deny the existence and operation of Mind in Nature, as it is to deny the existence and consciousness of our own minds. No tenable reason can ever be assigned why, when we look forth into the world surrounding us, we should be able to ascertain the fact of corporeal existence by means of our bodily senses, and be, at the same time, unable to ascertain the fact of existing intelligence by means of our mental intuitions. Each kind of existence has its appropriate evidence, and both sorts of evidence claim our belief by appealing to the veracity of our human consciousness.
If, therefore, it were possible to say with certitude "There is no God," the certainty would not, because it could not, eliminate Mind from the Universe. The law of production exists in, and for the Mind,—and so far as we can know, Mind in some shape or other works through the intelligible law.[av] Suppose we frame a crucial case for investigation.
Without speculating upon the first origin of things natural—without taking into the inquiry any preconception of a Divine personality—let us inquire what the world of Nature as it now exists can teach any man respecting the kind, degree, or condition of Mind, which regulates and moulds it? We are obliged to say "moulds it";—for Nature is not presented to us as an inert mass. We see movement, change, and activity everywhere. And this fact makes a vast difference to the present question.
Let us, then, suppose the inquirer setting out from an attempt to conceive mind as immersed in matter; either being identical with it,[aw] or pervading it, like a subtle fluid, or imponderable force. Let some such conception be supposed his starting point. What sort of a Power must he finally determine this mind to be?
Could he possibly commence with a mundane intelligence inferior to the mind of Man?—The bee can build a cell, the beaver a dam—but the bee cannot construct a dam, nor the beaver a cell. The same is true universally. Animal intelligence acts in single right lines. We should, therefore, be obliged to conceive as many minds immanent in nature, or as many modifications of mind, as there are varieties of production. And if this were true, what would become of the order and harmony of the Universe? We call it by that name, because we know that, (notwithstanding its marvellous diversity and manifoldness,) it forms a grand united whole. It would become necessary, next, to admit a governing intelligence, able to control the countless species of intelligent power employed in producing all sorts of effects. And it really seems easier, at once to conceive a supreme Mind, framing its ideas into intelligible laws, and launching the forces of the Universe in moving might along them.
There are many obvious reasons why, after all, this would be the easiest,[197] and therefore the preferable, conception. One lies in the immeasurable width and extent of that relativity between power and function, which we have seen to underlie every known production,—and conceivable possibility of ruling or moulding Nature. Now, under power we class forces such as those which hold corpuscles in cohesion, balance the orbs of heaven, or control the growth of a crystal. Such as those, again, which make Life the counterbalance of dissolution and decay; and enable the animal frame to resist decomposing influences; to feed, to grow, to energize, and move freely on earth, in water, or in air. Such as those, finally, which yield us the pabulum of sensation, thought, emotion; and subserve our efforts to attain whatever is highest or noblest in our human world.
We know what sorts of intelligence are required to apprehend, and to do no more than apprehend, the rationale of many among these natural movements, forces, and processes. Some of them can be explained only by a very great mathematician, other some by an equally great chemist, biologist, or psychologist. And in some, Man of the 19th century is as much a tyro and disciple,—as ignorant and as tentative—as his forefathers were two thousand years ago. What a complexity of Minds, or what a majestic supremacy of one Mind becomes thus discernible by the eye of Reason! Of Reason we say, meaning thereby the reason of a human being who looks facts in the face, puts them together and draws the inevitable conclusion. Were this drawn, it would amount to something very like a re-affirmation of Theism. At present, however, we will not press these topics further; since our object is to put an opposite conception on its complete trial, so as to see what is eventually implied in it.
Suppose, for instance, a merely sensitive intelligence to represent the character of mind administering the Universe. Conceive, if you choose, the world to be like an animal as some old philosophies conceived it. The way in which a human being sees Power and Function is altogether different from the way in which they would be viewed by the supposed mundane intelligence. We do not see them as two entities separately existing, and the relation which is of such vital consequence to all inventors and producers, as something which ensues between them. To us, the causal essence of the Power lies in the relativity itself, and we often actually recognize the Power passing over into its Function, and becoming lost in it. An example in point, lies in the active combination of uncombined atoms and molecules;—the relativity (or, as in such a case it is termed, the attraction) is the immediate cause of the production. "Thus" says Dr. Tyndall[198] "we can get power out of oxygen and hydrogen by the act of their union, but once they are combined, and once the motion consequent on their combination has been expended, no further power can be got out of the mutual attraction of oxygen and hydrogen. As dynamic agents they are dead." We can, in this manner, produce from the combustion of coal, light, heat, and propulsive force; but coal and oxygen are consumed in the producing process. Yet in this process, what and how much would have come within the grasp of a merely sensitive intelligence? Simply the object coal,—the brilliant light,—the pleasant heat,—and the actual movement of an incomprehensible machine. Let Mundane Mind be thus conceived and Nature would necessarily be administered by an intelligence which never got below the surface. The result, as we may certainly perceive, must have always lain between either an unchanging sameness, or the instability of chance misdirection. A state of things which compared with our actual world would seem most unsatisfactory; but which never has in fact been realized, for a reason at once apparent to the reader's sagacity.
Take another instance of change. The chemical elements of a Galvanic battery disappear in performing their function of causing a current, and the current may in turn disappear in the decomposition of water. But what merely sensitive intelligence could discern the invisible agency,—or measure the conversion of force, where nothing is visible except loss? Besides, in this latter example do we not see how truly correlative these two terms Power and Function are? We may intelligently think and speak of the chemical constituents of the battery, as conjoint Power;—and of their accomplishing their Function in the Current. But we may also speak of the current as a Power, accomplishing its Function by evolving from water two elementary gases. In other words, the ideas of Power and Function, definite enough to the eye of reason, are in all other respects, fluent. They are neither things, nor phenomenal attributes of things. They are power and function by virtue of a relation existing between them, and this relation is a fact not of the bare impressible sense, but of our purely reasoning intellect.
The same consequence appears, (in a shape which to some minds may be easier,) from viewing in another light the very same example of a galvanic battery, applied to decompose water. At each end of the chain there are palpable materials, visible to corporeal sense. But, between them runs the true force;—and this is absolutely impalpable. We theorize upon this force, but, whatever our theories may be, we accept its reality as a fact clear to our human mind. And we also clearly see that no lower mind could possibly apprehend it.
And here arises a curious question well worth a brief consideration. It is this:—To any kind of mind, the faculties of which are bound up in sense, what would appear to be the realities, and what the unrealities of the Universe? Galvanic wires or chains are perceptible to our bodily senses, but the traversing force is imperceptible. Hence, in our common speech, we are easily led to talk of the polar elements or objects (whatever they are) as realities par excellence;—but without in the least meaning to imply that the nexus or relativity between them is any less real; or less a fact. What we do mean, is, that this reality is a fact to another, and a finer, faculty. But what would it be if the finer faculty were wanting?—Reality would in that case become phenomenal;—and phenomena (according to Dr. Whewell and other inductive philosophers), would at the same time cease to be facts.
So far, therefore, as we know,—and we still limit this discussion to what we really do know,—were Reason wanting, all the nobler part of the Universe—its highest realities,—as understood by us, could not be held real. They would fade like an insubstantial pageant—or the baseless fabric of a dream. For, be it repeated,—we do not see as a merely sensitive mind must see. Principles and laws, sustaining and administering the universal mechanism, are the visible realities of intellect; and are visible to intellect alone. Thus, no one ever saw the principle of the arch except by an act of intellectual sight, and yet in the strength of it all arches stand firm. So, too, an architect knows that the stability and beauty of his structure depend on much that is hidden from the uninstructed human eye. What meaner eye, then, could ever succeed in piercing the secret architecture of the Universe? To the mundane mind, if less than human, the most real would become unreal,—and the shadow appear to be the substance. No supposition can possibly seem more absurd! Yet, when people speak of a "blind intelligence" in Nature, they must mean something less than Reason by that strange contradictory appellation.
The case for Unreason can never be improved by saying that 'The world, as it exists, is a system of accordant forces; tending to fulfil their functions through a kind of self-evolving movement, excited and controlled by correlation and correspondence, action and interaction. The products prevail, where they do prevail, through the completeness of their harmony with their surroundings. By virtue of this acquired excellence which becomes intrinsic, each finally develops itself into a permanent and integrated unit.' Here, obviously, the question of Intelligence recurs. If Mind were a necessary postulate before, how much more stringent the necessity now! From hosts of uncounted relativities we infer an Absolute;—surveying their rhythmical stir and onward strivings what shall we predicate respecting it? The world might have been a discord;—Whence came its first symphonious movement?—its after-waves of sphere-music majestically sweet to understanding ears;—its deeper and still deeper accordances;—
"The Diapason ending full in Man,"
that is to say, thus ending so far as the solemn march has been played out! What shall be hereafter, we know not now. But most marvellous of all as yet, is that first chord which struck the key-note of the whole harmonious performance.[199]
It is evident that the answers to these inquiries, must have the effect of infinitely elevating our own idea of the intelligence discoverable in natural productions;—because they will add to our perception of its wonderful insight, a still more wonderful impression of foresight,—a foresight extending over illimitable periods of time; and causing effects, for the calculation of which no power of intellect actually known to us, would have any adequate sufficiency.
The only apparent evasion of this consequence, is to deny arrangement altogether. But, then, how great are the resulting difficulties! In the first place, it would seem at once to restore covertly, if not openly, that very ancient Divine principle, Chance; whose banishment has long been agreed upon by reflective men. In the next place, it is not clear how, looking at the scientific doctrine of Chances,[ax] they would, when calculated, yield any probability whatever of production;—or even (what appears a less thing), of development from a rudimentary or less perfect structure already existing. The consequence is, that one or more principles besides Chance must soon be postulated, and "blind laws" are held insufficient because not unlikely to become guilty of incidental misdirection. This need of auxiliary postulates has determined some very staunch advocates of Evolution to maintain that the circle of evolving laws or forces must certainly be ruled by some Intelligence, either inherent and immanent (mind and movement identical),—or else separate, transcendental, and probably personal, superintending and superior to them all.[ay]
Indeed the affirmation of Mind in Nature as a positively perceived Fact appears to be the sure direction of our human understanding, if allowed to observe and judge in a common-sense way. And the reason of the thing is obvious. Whenever we perceive anything by bodily vision and touch, or other material instruments, we unhesitatingly attribute to it a material existence. We derive our impression from a material antecedent, and say here is a corporeal substance,—in a word,—body. So, on the other hand, whenever material instruments are dispensed with, (because inadequate and unsuitable), and when Mind alone is used as our medium of perception, we are quite sure that what we perceive is not Body but Mind. In this manner, we know what to say of arrangement, counterbalance, superior excellence, (which means superior fitness), tendency to a function, (that is fitness in movement), or of a system of relation and correlation transcending the highest flight of human imagination. We say at once, here is Mind. We do not think it necessary to employ a periphrasis, and reason on the properties of intelligence, any more than we should, when receiving information from our senses, commence a syllogism on the properties of Matter. We simply say in the two several cases,—here is body,—here is mind. And, as regards both propositions, we are in all likelihood equally safe in saying so.
The real question, therefore, remains just as we before stated it. We then derived our statement from the process of production,—first by analyzing it, and next, by shewing that the analysis was verified in experience. We have since run some risk of repetition, in order to look at the whole subject of Mind in Nature from various points of view. The effect has been to confirm for us, the issue above raised as being the right and true question. We must not ask, "Is there Mind in the natural world?" but "What kind and degree of Intelligence do we, from our observation of facts, attribute to the Mind evidenced in the Universe?"
It is in answering this question that the fitnesses of organized structures yield so many important considerations. We are not however obliged to follow the chain of the Design argument, liken these structures to objects of human art, and say, here is Design implying a Designer. We may quite as easily look at them in the light of the great productive Law we have been investigating. Fitness consists in the nicety of the manner in which Function is correlated with Power. Throughout the realm of organisms, vegetable and animal, the most beautiful examples of such correlation meet us at every turn.[az] When therefore we put our query, what character may here be ascribed to the Mundane Intelligence, the reply cannot seem doubtful. Instances of pre-eminent Fitness (such as those adduced further on) need not be understood in any other sense than this, in order to accomplish the purpose for which they are described. Neither need such words as adaptation or design, used for brevity's sake, be taken as references to the analogical argument discussed in our second Chapter. Mr. Darwin himself has frequently employed the expressions "contrivance," "purpose," etc., without intending any such reference,—nay, rather with the full intention of arguing for a different account of the "contrivances" he specifies.
From such wonderful examples of Fitness, many minds will choose at once to read the broad lesson of Teleology. Be it observed then that if this is done, the larger the generality under which the principle of Design is conceived, the better for its force in reasoning. As an argument, the idea has suffered from the imagination of readers dwelling upon the specialities recounted in many valuable books to the exclusion of wider and more universal conceptions. There is a vast difference,[ba] between the assertion of a grand Unity, (in subservience to which all other things have their several determinate purposes,) and the being able to say in each smaller instance, here is the design or intended relation between this individual structure or condition, and this sole and definite finality. A good specimen of the difficulty thus occasioned, is an objection of Littré's against the idea of Divinely beneficent adaptation. Why, he asks, should the bite of a mad dog have been allowed to produce hydrophobia? Why, that is, should the dog's saliva have been so contrived, as to convey so virulent a blood poison? The true answer, of course, must be that this effect is but one operation of a much more extensive physiological law;—a law producing results, often of the most beneficial character. We must also, (as the same writer allows), draw a strong distinction between every law, and what is technically termed its "functioning."[200] Littré views Nature as a moving panorama of antecedents and consequents;—but he is obliged to confess that the nexus is not invariable. There are, indeed, variations, for which he employs this same "functioning," as a kind of apology. The necessity of such an apology is in itself a remarkable fact; since it shews how little rigorous is the common argument used by many physicists against the probability of Miracles. The necessity of natural sequence is, after all, no adamantine fatality; and therefore Testimony to an event contrary to our experience and expectation, may have a most decisive value.[201]
We have already shewn that to see a law in Nature, is to see an actual instance of wide intelligence. Now, so seen, it is known as existing in rerum naturâ—active—energizing—productive. But, suppose we for a moment conceive the intelligible law, as existing only in the intelligence itself,—a thought prior to its realization. The law is then what writers on natural history often call a type;—or, as it is termed in the older philosophical language, an idea. The readers of S. T. Coleridge will not easily forget his chapter reconciling the Platonic and Baconian[bb] methods of Philosophy. It turns, in great part, upon the essential identity of idea with law. (Friend, Vol. III. Essay ix.)
If, therefore, we perceive in anything creative, or any system whatsoever, a harmony of power with function, we call it fitness, or even adaptation when describing the actual matter of our own observations. But, if we speak of the same harmony as an act of mind, we call it intelligent adaptation. And, this at least, is what careful writers on Natural Theology mean by the word Design. Yet, certain careless objectors have misconceived the plain meaning, so far as to assert that if we would speak of any production as designed, it must first be proved not only intentional but arbitrary. This misconception—(the very opposite of our meaning)—seems to turn upon the mixture of two distinct notions,—the design of reason and the determination of caprice. If Natural Theologians wished to prove that the Designer of the Universe was always doing wrong,—and was always right because he did wrong,—it would be necessary to argue that design and caprice are one and the same thing. But Natural Theology endeavours to shew the exact contradictory. Its idea is, above all things, the Idea of a Sovereign Reason manifest in universal Law.
The rejoinder has been made that at all events a Will is implied in Design;—and that he who wills acts arbitrarily. Of course, there is a certain sense in which this may be true. A Sovereign will could at pleasure refuse the Right and choose the Wrong, but then it would cease to be a Sovereign Reason. That is, it would cease to be Sovereign at all, in any true Theology. And we may, likewise, add that the ordinary instances and illustrations of Design never aim at proving Will directly;—their immediate object is to shew Intelligence, foreseeing ends or functions, and purposing their attainment. It is clear that Will must indirectly be implied in such an argument. But, then, it is so implied, partly because all Reason is per se identical with Will, and partly because (as we shall endeavour to shew), Causation necessarily emanates from Will. The reader must, however, assign each conclusion to its proper argument, and keep each argument to its proper conclusion;—a rule which those who dispute for victory, and not for truth, frequently fail to observe.
The use we are now making of fitness and adaptation is less to prove the existence of Mind in the Universe, than its grandeur, grasp, and comprehensiveness. For this purpose our clearest evidence arises from the coincidence of several diverse conditions, tending to one sovereign finality of function. And indeed, this argument from coincidence, is generally the most convincing;—the greater the convergence of separate conditions,—the stronger is our assurance that Mind determined the result.[bc] Our sense of sight has always been a favourite subject in Natural Theology. It is familiar, and, so far as a broad outline of the function is concerned, may be easily studied by any common-sense person. It is, also, evidently one Function; yet, even cursory observation shews a great diversity of powers contributing to produce it. How diverse they are, may be perceived by supposing first one and then another element of eyesight to be absent, and considering what the effect of each deficiency must be.
Suppose, there were no light. The eye then, however beautiful and perfect in structure, would not be a means serving any purpose of perception. It is clear thus that the eye is an optical instrument.
Suppose, again, light and optical arrangement both in existence, but, also, that the eye had no power of adjusting itself to the direction of objects and other circumstances; evidently its function of vision would be very much restricted.
In relation to this end, the eye is a mechanical[202] instrument.
We might, further, suppose the optical apparatus to work well, its adjustment also to be perfect,—and the picture on the retina no less so. But, with this perfect picture, suppose all ended. The function of eyesight would be as irretrievably gone as in our first case.
This shews us that the eye does not really see. It is the servant of an impressible Power,—and this impressible power uses it, and sees through it.
Suppose, finally, that the picture on the retina set vibratory nerves in movement—each microscopic stroke producing its effect of vibration. Let something be seen by the impressible Power, but not apprehended as an object of common perception. Let there be no comparison with other sensations; no transcript into sense-language, of what is at once seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted. Consider, how barren and unproductive the result! Eyesight is reduced to a play of coloured images. There can be no malleable material for Intelligence to work up. Nothing to be cast into any universal mould;—no possibility of a greedy Mind feeding eagerly through the quick perceiving eye.
In the absence of information given, or thought stimulated, we must pronounce such sight unintelligent;—and the Eye an unintelligible phenomenon. But why? The anatomical structure remains perfect. It is the adaptation that has been lost along with the finality, and this loss is fatal. Hence the paramount importance of finality.
Any student may pursue this ruling idea of "adaptation to a functional end," through a vast range of the Animal kingdom. There are eyes fitted to long distances—almost telescopic;—eyes so contrived as to be absolutely microscopical. Then, as the refraction of water differs from that of air, the optical lenses of fishes become rounded almost like little balls. And, the observer who passes into the tribes of Invertebrata, will acquaint himself with eyes mounted upon footstalks,[203] and eyes multiplied and placed in different situations. Few natural objects are more wonderful than the contrivance of a compound eye. The many hexagonal tubes, which may be reckoned by the thousand, are cemented together on one expanded and swollen nervous disk, reminding us of the thalamus in the great plant order of Compositæ, (Syngenesia),—in the Elecampagne for instance, the Bur Marigold, Thistle, and Centaurea. A compound eye has a range of vision extending over about 180 degrees, (half a circle), and must from its structure be endowed with specializing distinctness. Mind in the Universe, is thus presented to us, as in the New Testament,—wide as the whole arch of heaven, but cognizant of a sparrow or a lily.
A creature with diminished vision—such as the Mole—or the Amblyopsis, is a curiously interesting study in itself;—still more so as an example of adaptation.
In old times, the Mole was accounted blind. Aristotle[204] observed that a structural eye exists, but that a skin is drawn over it, and this skin deprives the animal of sight. His observation has made work for commentators, from Simplicius downwards. Trendelenburg (on the De Anima) confines himself to criticism. Torstrik makes a kind of apology for not excising "quæ loco ἀτοπωτάτῳ de talpâ dicuntur." Cardinal Tolet accepts the observation, and thinks the Mole's eyes thus admirably protected from the bad effects of a sudden access of light, when he rushes violently into appearance overground. Naturalists during many centuries, made the whole history of the mole a piece of guesswork, and no creature except the Sloth or the Earwig has ever been more generally misrepresented. Perhaps our familiar old English "Moldwarp" (West of England "Want"), might have remained a puzzle to this day had not a French courtier[205] fled from the Paris Revolution, and devoted his attention to Moles. The fact that the eye of our Western Mole is not completely closed, may be proved by throwing a living specimen into a pond. But, in the South and East of Europe the "blind mole" does really exist,[206] as has been shown by Erhard and the Prince of Musignano. In more than one species, the skin passes over the eyeball without any loss of hair.
This diminution of eyesight is a case of what has been called "retrogression." Now the Mole is a highly developed Mammal, and his position in the animal kingdom entitles him to the best of eyes. But, they would not suit his habits. The same is true of the Blind-fish of Kentucky (Amblyopsis Spelæus). For such a creature, not the distinct vision of objects,—but a sensation of light,—was the desirable possession,—and the creature has it.[207]
It does not in the least matter, as a question of Fitness, whether this retrograde condition of the eye was brought about by natural laws slowly acting upon the animal frame, or produced in some more rapid way. The fitness is the same; and, as we are at present engaged, not on proving the existence of Mind, but in illustrating the greatness of a confessedly existing mind, these instances of far reaching adaptation are very strongly in point.
Of the cavernous life and habits of the Amblyopsis there is not much to be said; though the idea of a happy existence amidst depths of sepulchral gloom, naturally excites our imagination. But "the little gentleman in black" whose health used to be enthusiastically drunk a century and a half ago, is a perfect study[208] in himself. We are interested by his fairy-like gift of hearing (noted by Shakespeare); his gluttony; his fleetness of foot; his combativeness; and his castle-building! As a civil and military engineer, he far surpasses the beaver, though dwelling in dark places, and with only a dubious pair of eyes in his scheming quick-conceiving head.
Probably, the sense we should all least wish to lose is our eyesight. Its perpetual delight, and its capacity for improvement by training are powerful motives for treasuring its possession. The savage and the microscopist, the artist and the astronomer, all train their faculty of vision; and how differently do these four classes of eyes see!—The difference is, we know, in exact proportion to the intelligence which employs and educates them. And, conversely, how the nobly-governed eye informs and educates the Mind! What a world of hope, then, as well as beauty, seems to die when we conceive the blind man in his dim solitude! Yet the contentment of its sightless inmates, is one of the most salient comforts of every blind asylum. Most likely, their cheerfulness depends on the great use of finger-dexterity, and the exquisite susceptibility of the ear. And these delicate endowments, which make our several senses inlets of happiness, are amongst the most fascinating illustrations of the Universal Mind with which we have to do.
The structure of the ear is far less commonly dwelt upon by most writers, than the structure of the eye. Indeed, its organization seems to less certainty explained, the problem being, of course, to trace the transmission of sound to the auditory nerve. But, as in ancient Egypt, so in modern England, the treatment of disease in special organs has been divided amongst special therapeutists; and the ear does not fail to benefit by being better understood. There is, even now, room for hypothesis in some parts of the process of sonorous transmission,—and beyond that process, science does not pretend to go. Modern views, however, as Dr. Tyndall truly says, "present the phenomena in a connected and intelligible form, and should they be doomed to displacement by a more correct or comprehensive theory, it will assuredly be found that the wonder is not diminished by the substitution of the truth." No one has put the wonder into a more intelligible shape than this well known writer, at the close of his book upon Sound.[209]
Employing instances of Design for the purpose, to us most relevant, and gleaning a few among hosts of shining illustrations, there is nothing more alluring than the spectacle of the organic world, considered as a source, not of life only, nor of information only, but of emotional pleasure and never failing enjoyment. No kind of existence can be more depressing to our highly-strung human nervous-system, than the shut up occupations which overgrown cities necessitate. Yet, with what unrepressed vigour of delight does the artizan, the physician, the schoolmaster, or the curate of a town parish, look upon the open world beyond! And, never has there existed any human being more truly impressible by Nature's loveliness, or more skilled in conveying the impression to the minds of others, than a genuine British Naturalist. For the holiday-maker to walk with such a lover of Nature through field and forest, over moor and mountain, by rivulet, lake or sea, is to gain a new sense of wonder and admiration;—new perceptions of excellence, symmetry, and unity; while freshened emotions of religious awe and trust keep springing upwards from them all. It is with outward nature, as it is with individual natures; the regard of a loving eye is the true revealer of hidden secrets. For in reality we see, not only with our bodily sense and our contemplative reason, but also with the strength and insight of affection. And thus many a weary Man perpetually finds the aspect of the visible universe indescribably soothing amidst his own confusions and disappointments. He may feel, at times, that his human heart can penetrate beyond what eye and head have taught him; and, while thoughtfully observing the footprints of creative mind, he can feel within his bosom a sense of superhuman tenderness, like the warm breath of his living Creator.
The very fact that highly-endowed and deeply thoughtful men[210] have so felt and spoken, ought not to be without its influence. There is much conveyed—very much indeed—by the truth that the world is beautiful. If, when we examine natural production, intelligent operation is seen to imply an operative intelligence, is it not also true that realized beauty implies an ideal beauty, intelligently preconceived in a Mind itself beautiful? Had there been nothing in earth or sky to soothe, elevate, and make happy, with what different feelings, should we have attempted to picture productive Mind at work through an unlovely Universe!