If the scientific account of the universe and the theory of evolution, so far as they are true, are not mere exercises of the imagination, but represent events and changes which actually have taken place and are taking place beyond the range of actual observation, it must be because they are logical inferences from real events and real changes which are matters of direct observation. If the observed events have no reality, we have no ground for believing the unobserved or inferred facts to have any. Unless the real events follow a logical sequence, our inferences must be fallacious in proportion as they are logical. We believe the inferred facts to be real because we believe the observed facts to be real; and the observed facts are presented to us and apprehended by us to be not merely our sensations but also realities. On no other ground can we or do we trust science to guide us in life.
Nor do we trust morality on any other ground. So far as we trust the impulse to do right, or base any calculations upon it or draw any inferences from it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness and something more. As in the impact of a moving body we apprehend not merely our sensations, but also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse to good we apprehend not only our consciousness thereof, but the presence of a real power, with regard to which we know not only that it is, but to some extent what it is—a power which would have us do good and be good.
If material things are but ideas of ours, so the Right and Good may be. If the latter are mere aspirations and nothing more, the former are mere sensations and nothing more. But if in things we are conscious of a power not ourselves, so are we in our consciousness of the Right and Good: our aspirations are inspirations. We apprehend their reality in exactly the same way as we apprehend the reality of material things—by direct observation. And we have exactly the same evidence—the evidence of immediate consciousness.
"Let no man spoil you with philosophy." The statements that "knowledge is the only reality," "the only Real is the Unknowable," are contradictory not only of each other, but of those facts in the common experience of mankind which afford the only safe foundation for philosophy as well as for science. Both statements logically imply that our only knowledge is of the unreal; and from knowledge of the unreal to the unreality of knowledge is a necessary step. But existence is not merely knowledge: existence is also action. A thing is that which it does, and not merely that which it is known to do. Or rather a thing never does anything: only a person can act. The "action" or "behaviour" of a thing is only a metaphor.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See [Appendix] on Bishop Berkeley's Idealism.
[6] First Principles, ch. iii. § 20.
[7] Ibid., § 26.