The will to doubt

by Alfred H. Lloyd

Yet in the world of our journeying there must be causation—on some plan—of some sort. Parallelism, though sometimes supposed to be more sweeping, is really and consistently a denial only of isolated, independent causes. It denies, not causation, but causation as ever localized or with an exclusive residence. In very much the same way certain political ideas, growing to explicit expression contemporaneously, have denied, not sovereignty or power, but an exclusively localized sovereignty or power, as in the case of absolute monarchy or of an absolute institution, whether church or state. Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of the world must always be only one among other active things, each also with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, if not actually through their differences working together and harmoniously for what is real. In short, they must be "parallel." And, lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting.

To give a single illustration, though this may be quite superfluous, parallelism would view the life of a skilled labourer at work in his shop as a process in two parts. On the one hand, the environment, comprising not merely all the tools and materials, but also the body of the workman, moves as a mechanism, each part flying to its appointed task consistently with the particular thing to be done; and then, on the other hand, the mind and the will of the mechanic, not by any independent ab extra causation, but nevertheless at every thought or sensation coincidently and pertinently accompanies the environment's mechanical movement. Each process is consistent within itself, not following nor yet preceding, but accompanying the other in perfect step. What makes the environment so tractable or the mind so practical? The credit here has usually been given to a tertium quid, to God, who is so made more a mediator than a creator. God is the Great Paralleler. But the third condition that was to be met—how about that? Are the workman's mind and his environment each at once acting and acted upon? Are their two processes virtually one instead of two? and is the mediation accordingly, just in the fact of such unity instead of in some being acting as if from without? So far as the formal theory goes, as was said, this third condition is not fulfilled, but the theory cannot be understood as opposed to such unity; rather it is a first step and a long step towards an appreciation of it. The formal theory, alike in its assertion of the parallelism and in its view of God as mediator rather than positive creator, is an effective attack, consistent, as we have seen, with the demands of an honest, thorough-going scepticism, upon the fixed, independent, arbitrarily creative cause in any form. It does not openly assert causation in any other sense. Seeming quite oblivious, for example, of causation as action with an accompanying reaction, or of what I should style an organic or differential causation. But, besides making and needing to make no denial of this, it all but opens the door to recognition of such a view.

In such manner, then, as simply and as briefly as I find myself able to put the case, runs the theory of parallelism; with its equal reality and its non-interference of two distinct but thoroughly correspondent agencies or substances, certainly a theory of a formal, rather than genuine and vital, sympathy. Metaphysically it is dualism still persistent. But one needs only a little insight, and perhaps also a slight leaning towards the gruesome, to see that it is dualism—at least the dualism of the medieval type—already in a shroud. Even dualism demands, and should always be allowed, its funeral service and a decent burial. With the passing of dualism, however, the sympathy becomes more than merely formal. Two things always equally real cannot be really two, and a perfect parallelism, though satisfying to certain cherished traditions in philosophy or theology, is so saturated with unity as to be almost, if not quite, at the point of precipitation. Without attempting, therefore, any further appraisal of parallelism metaphysically, we may turn to what will seem more practical.

Looking or thinking through this metaphysical theory we can see that it is equivalent to a declaration that the physical and the spiritual in human life, or in life at large, are meant for each other. Perhaps in a somewhat stilted fashion, but nevertheless beyond any chance of question, it is a philosophy that makes man and nature always accordant and adaptable, and coming as it did in the history of thought near the beginning of the modern period, it can lay claim to this meaning on historical as well as on logical grounds. Its value to philanthropy, too, perhaps only another sign of its modernism, is easily detected, since it supplies just such tangible means as the material conditions of life for the accomplishment of philanthropic ends, and its service to scientific psychology, plainly an indispensable service, lies in its making the physical nature a medium, not merely for the expression, but also for the study of what is psychical. As for its relation to the argument of this book, it is simply dualism meeting; or trying to meet, the demand, in the first place, that reality itself should be indeterminate—always a tertium quid—and, in the second place, that the things that are definite, be they material or spiritual, should work together for reality. Under the same demand, be it said, atomism could stand only if supplemented by some doctrine of assumed unity or co-operation among all the elements—as, for example, by Leibnitz's doctrine of pre-established harmony.

But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical world, that they were. The two things, just by their complete correspondence, are changed in a most important way. That they must be changed is quite evident, but how to state exactly what the change is is not easy. That the change, too, must be in the direction of their more vital union is evident to us, but again the precise description of it is difficult. Still, I submit that the effect of correspondence, whether this be natural or imposed, is to make the things concerned, in the present instance the spiritual and the material, at once dynamic and teleologic in character and function. Moreover, they are dynamic with the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. Wherefore, if this be in truth the effect of correspondence, in our doubter's world mind appears as a thinking, not a mere knowing, and matter as a moving, not a mere being; and the thinking and the motion are instrumental, or mediative, to the same end, to the same reality. All of which, moreover, being translated, means, on the one hand, that in our doubter's world man is free to think to some practical purpose, and, on the other hand, that the material world will serve both his thinking and his purpose.

As to the first of these, the freedom of thought, mind by being relieved from all danger of any arbitrary interference from the physical world, has at once the conscious right of independent procedure and the positive assurance of its thinking, thus free and independent, being quite practical or applicable; for plainly the freedom is in, not from, the material world. Nothing possible to thought, no consistent chain of reflections upon experience, however abstract, can possibly fail to be exemplified in the natural world, or—as Hegel said, giving more direct expression to the same idea—the real is rational and the rational is real. The applicability of thought to life, therefore, the real utility of looking well before leaping, the ultimate service even of the most technically scientific theory is what we see from our present observation-tower, and the splendour of the view hardly calls for remark. Man is free to think, to think in his world and about it; and his thought is always incarnate; it is an unfailing mediator between him and the life of the material world about him. "Well begun is half done" is an old saw, and for human conduct a great truth, but "Well thought is well done" is even greater, if not older. Think clearly, and the fulfilling act, the overt expression of your thought, is already ensured. A thoroughly developed plan finds its execution, as it were, already provided for; such is the perfect sympathy between the mental and the physical world.[1]

Now, however, that we have observed the complete freedom of the thinker in the doubter's world, now that we see the thinker free, not only to develop his thought abstractly, but also to expect that the conclusions which he reaches will be exemplified in his world and so to be able to apply them there, we are in great danger of serious misunderstanding. Thought is indeed free, but the truly free thinker is no single individual developing some particular point of view, although even such a one must always have some part in the freedom of thought. Free thought is deeper than any of its formal expressions and broader than the positive experience of any of its exponents; it belongs to the life of mind as present throughout the whole sphere of all conscious life; and the single individual has part in it only when his actual, articulate thinking is supplemented by his conscious doubting of his own peculiar standpoint, his treatment of this as only tentative and mediative, and his consequent appeal to thought as always deeper and broader than just what he sees, or—amounting really to the same thing—only when his thought is mingled in social conflict and mutual accommodation with that of others. In the doubter's world the thought that is at once free and fully applicable is social—just as we know doubt to be social; that perfect applicability, so essential to truly free thought, simply cannot belong to all thinking, or to all thoughts, distributively and indiscriminately, to all specific thoughts and ideas, though all must be capable of some application, more or less enduring, but only in the first place to the thinking that, like pure mathematics, is exact and general simply because strictly formal and abstract,[2] and in the second place to the thinking that when material and concrete, when dealing, with actual affairs and definite practical relations, makes up for its consequent relativity and subjectivity by inner paradox or contradiction, in so far as individual or personal, and by open opposition and controversy, in so far as it is social, and assumes accordingly only the value of a means to an end.

Much has been said in earlier chapters[3] of the paradoxical nature of human experience. There was seen to be among men no knowledge without a contradiction, and the ever-present paradoxes of experience were recognized as causes of thorough-going doubt. But, although at first sight seeming to blast man's ordinary experience, and his science also, these paradoxes were eventually found also to give to experience movement and poise, reality and practicality, and to involve the individual in a life that was as social as it was real, and thereupon they became as certainly reasons for faith as causes of doubt; they were witnesses to a principle of integrity and validity, a spirit of veracity moving through all experience. Accordingly, once more, our truly free thinker, the thinker whose thought is thoroughly applicable to life, is such a one as lives for and with this principle of validity or spirit of veracity, having his every thought informed with it. He is not the single individual, holding tenaciously to some specific standpoint, but the doubter ever using what he sees and knows, and in using appealing beyond what he sees and knows, or he is even the social life that only more directly and explicitly embraces and uses the views of all individuals, these views always working together for what is true and real; or, lastly, he is the truth-spirit itself which is ever superior to anything that is either merely individual or merely social. The free thinker is just the honest doubter; a believer in what he knows or thinks, but only as a working view to something else; and, consciously, a social being, through controversy sharing with others the practical experience of what is real.

With regard to the peculiar case of mathematics, which is widely applicable because formal and as exact as formal, it seems enough to say that while mathematics has very properly become the ideal of all knowledge, not excluding such sciences as psychology and sociology, the final value, the peculiar applicability of mathematics, lies in its character as a general attitude or method. It is not strictly a science, but the ideal method of science. Doctrinally, that is, as to any specific intellectual content, there can hardly be said to be any pure mathematics, any final body of formula absolutely exact and fully applicable. Has not doctrinal mathematics had a history? Has it now no promise of future changes? But whatever has a history—can this be quite "pure"? Have even those axioms, which once upon a time you and I learned to respect for their self-evidence, been free from the criticism and revision of the mathematical experts? Then, too, taking any particular formula from so-called applied mathematics, such as that simple but altogether typical one of the lever, what do we find? An equation is said to exist between the product of the weight by its distance from the fulcrum, and that of the power by its distance from the same point, but in application this formula can never be fully exemplified. The fulcrum never is a point. The perfectly homogeneous lever, so necessary to the equation, is unattainable, if not also unthinkable. There can never be complete absence of friction, nor perfectly ideal suspension of the weight or application of the power. And the necessary atmospheric disturbances, even in a "vacuum," to say nothing of the difficulties of absolute measurements, are not less fatal. Only as method, therefore, which really means as procedure according to standards of strictest accuracy and of highest logical consistency, or as closest, most constant loyalty to a spirit of truth, not as doctrine, can mathematics be said to be freely applicable. Mathematics seems to me to be at the very heart of the working hypothesis. Its tests of accuracy are such as forever save science from anything like doctrinal dogmatism. Historically there is much significance in the fact that our doubter, Descartes, was almost the inventor of the Analytic Geometry, and that this and the Calculus, which came afterwards, and which we owe chiefly to Leibnitz and Newton, comprise rather a methodological than a doctrinal mathematics. With their invention and development the application of mathematics to material facts, or it would be better to say to the investigation of material facts, took tremendous strides. So Descartes, who doubted mathematics only because it was not satisfying doctrinally, regained in this case, as in that of his God or his material world, not exactly what he had lost. Alike in mathematics and theology he lost doctrine and creed; he won method and life. And, to return, with reference to the relation of mathematics to the free thinker, nothing can be clearer than that this science, at least sometimes so called, as a method or attitude exacting clearest possible procedure and highest logical consistency, is the very principle of veracity, upon loyalty to which the freedom of thought must always depend. Like this principle, too, mathematics—so much more truly than any other discipline—is superior to anything that is either merely individual or abstractly social.

So, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we see how thought is Bet free. Man is free, as was said, to think always to some practical purpose. Secondly, then, with regard to the material world, said to serve his thinking and his purpose, this in its turn is liberated also; it is liberated for a life of its own law and order. Nature, the material world in general, is no longer the victim of arbitrary changes. Such changes as spring from the occultly creative acts of the spiritual world, or more exactly the spirit-world, represented by God in the character of an extraneous being, by a personal devil or by those minor spirits or powers of light or darkness, often if not usually described as objects of superstition, no longer interfere with nature's orderly course. She is left, unmolested, to be just her natural self, consistent and persistent in the way prescribed by her own inner being. And then, while subject to no arbitrary interference, she is herself never given to interference, but is, on the contrary, in her own right, essentially at one with that other world, the world of the thinker. Poets have ever fondly sung of nature's sympathy with man, and her sympathy deep and abiding is exactly what we now observe, nor can any poem too loftily give expression to it.