Read through the relevant chapters in Locke’s Essay, and observe his ineffectual struggles, self-imprisoned in the circle of his own sensations and ideas, to reach the external world in which he believed with a far “greater assurance” than was warranted by any proofs which he, at all events, was able to supply. Read Hume’s criticism of our grounds for believing in a real world without, or a real self within, and compare it with his admission that scepticism on these subjects is a practical impossibility.
But we need not go beyond the first chapter of “An Agnostic’s Apology” to find an illustration of my argument. Leslie Stephen there absolves himself from giving heed to the conclusions of philosophers, because there are none on which all philosophers are agreed, none on which there is even a clear preponderance of opinion. On the other hand, he is ready to agree with astronomers, because astronomers, “from Galileo to Adams and Leverrier,” substantially agree with each other. Agreement among experts is, in his opinion, a guarantee of truth, and disagreement a proof of error.
But then he forgets that these distressing differences among philosophers do not touch merely such entities as God and the soul, or the other subjects with which agnostics conceive man’s faculties are incapable of dealing. They are concerned (among other things) with the presuppositions on which our knowledge of “phenomena”—including, of course “astronomy from Galileo to Adams and Leverrier,” is entirely constructed. What, in these circumstances, is Locke’s “sincere lover of truth” to do? How is he to avoid “entertaining propositions with greater assurance than the proofs they are built on will warrant”? Where will he find a refuge from the “pure scepticism” which is, in Leslie Stephen’s opinion, the natural result of divided opinions? How is he to get on while he is making up his mind whether any theory of the world within his reach will satisfy unbiased reason?
The fact is that the adherents of this philosophic school apply, quite unconsciously, very different canons of intellectual probity to themselves and to their opponents. “Why,” asks Mr. Stephen, “should a lad who has just run the gauntlet of examination and escaped to a country parsonage be dogmatic?” If to be dogmatic is to hold opinions with a conviction in excess of any reason that can be assigned for them, there seems to be no escape for the poor fellow. The common lot of man is not going to be reversed for him. Though he abandon his parsonage and renounce his Church, though he scrupulously purify his creed from every taint of the “metempirical,” though he rigidly confine himself to themes which his critics declare to be within the range of his intellectual vision, fate will pursue him still. He may argue much or argue little; he may believe much or believe little; but, however much he argues and however little he believes, his beliefs will always transcend his arguments, and to faith, in his own despite, he must still appeal.
Those who accept Leslie Stephen’s philosophy suppose that for this young man, as for all others, a way of escape may be found by appealing to experience. But surely none are so sanguine as to suppose that, by appealing to experience, they are going to avoid what Mr. Stephen describes as “endless and hopeless controversies.” Alas, this is not so! The field of experience is no well-defined and protected region under whose clear skies useful knowledge flourishes unchallenged, while the mist-enshrouded territories of its metaphysical neighbours are devastated by unending disputations. On the contrary, it is the very battlefield of philosophy, the cockpit of metaphysics, strewn with abandoned arguments, where every strategic position has been taken and retaken, to which every school lays formal claim, which every contending system pretends to hold in effective occupation. Indeed, by a singular irony, the thinkers who, at this particular moment, talk most about experience are those metaphysicians of the Absolute in whose speculations Mr. Stephen saw no beginning of interest, except that of being (as he supposed) at once the refuge and the ruin of traditional religion. But these philosophers have no monopoly. All men nowadays speak well of experience. They begin to differ only when they attempt to say what experience is, to define its character, explain its credentials, and expound its message. But, unhappily, when this stage is reached their differences are endless.
IV
I am, of course, not concerned with Mr. Stephen except as a brilliant representative of a mode of thought to which I most vehemently object. I do not object to it merely because it is in my judgment insufficient and erroneous, still less because I dislike its conclusion. I object to it because it talks loudly of experience, yet never faces facts; and boasts its rationality, yet rarely reasons home. These are far graver crimes against the spirit of truth than any condemned in Locke’s pretentious aphorism, and they lead to far more serious consequences.
If you ask me what I have in mind when I say that agnostic empiricism never faces facts, I reply that it never really takes account of that natural history of knowledge, of that complex of causes, rational and non-rational, which have brought our accepted stock of beliefs into being. And if you ask me what I have in mind when I say that though it reasons, it rarely reasons home, I reply that, when it is resolved not to part with a conclusion, anything will serve it for an argument; only when it is incredulous does it know how to be critical.
This is not an error into which I propose to fall. But I hope that I shall not on that account be deemed indifferent to the claims of reason, or inclined to treat lightly our beliefs either about the material world or the immaterial. On the contrary, my object, and my only object, is to bring reason and belief into the closest harmony that at present seems practicable. And if you thereupon reply that such a statement is by itself enough to prove that I am no ardent lover of reason; if you tell me that it implies, if not permanent contentment, at least temporary acquiescence in a creed imperfectly rationalised, I altogether deny the charge. So far as I am concerned, there is no acquiescence. Let him that thinks otherwise show me a better way. Let him produce a body of beliefs which shall be at once living, logical, and sufficient;—not forgetting that it cannot be sufficient unless it includes within the circuit of its doctrines some account of itself regarded as a product of natural causes, nor logical unless it provides a rational explanation of the good fortune which has made causes which are not reasons, mixed, it may be, with causes which are not good reasons, issue in what is, by hypothesis, a perfectly rational system. He who is fortunate enough to achieve all this may trample as he likes upon less successful inquirers. But I doubt whether, when this discoverer appears, he will be found to have reached his goal by the beaten road of empirical agnosticism. This, though it be fashionably frequented, is but a blind alley after all.
In the meanwhile we must, I fear, suffer under a system of beliefs which is far short of rational perfection. But we need not acquiesce, and we should not be contented. Whether this state of affairs will ever be cured by the sudden flash of some great philosophic discovery is another matter. My present aim, at all events, is far more modest. But they, at least, should make no complaint who hold that common-sense beliefs, and science which is a development of common-sense beliefs, are, if not true, at least on the way to truth. For this conviction I share. I profess it; I desire to act upon it. And surely I cannot act upon it better than by endeavouring, so far as I can, to place it in the setting which shall most effectually preserve its intellectual value. This, at all events, is the object to which the four lectures that immediately follow are designed to contribute.