Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

The idea that in philosophy it is possible permanently to maintain an agnostic attitude with regard to the trustworthiness of consciousness is the outcome of a conscientious attempt to apply scientific methods to the solution of philosophic problems. Science does not find it necessary to assume either that there is or that there is not a God: on either assumption it is certain that bodies tend towards each other at the rates specified in the gravitation-formula. Philosophy must be made scientific. Therefore philosophy must carefully avoid making either assumption. Why, the very reason why science has progressed and philosophy never moves is that science builds only on demonstrated fact, philosophy only on undemonstrable assumptions. Proof, and therefore truth, is impossible if you start from assumptions which never can be proved to be either true or untrue.

The truth is that it is possible to maintain the agnostic attitude, and to avoid making assumptions, just so long as we do not need to form an opinion or take action on the matter which the assumption affects.

If my interests, practical or speculative, are not affected by a certain trial now proceeding in the law courts, I can avoid making any assumption as to the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of a witness's evidence. I do not know whether he is trustworthy or not, and I can refuse to make any assumption whatever on the subject—there is no reason why I should. But the moment circumstances call on me to form an opinion, I find myself beginning to make one assumption or the other, or perhaps at first one and then the other, though I am just as ignorant whether he really is trustworthy or not as I was when I refused to make any assumptions; I know no more about his previous career or his antecedent credibility than I did before he entered the box.

So, too, the truth is not that science makes no assumptions, but that she makes no assumptions except those which are necessary for her purposes. The man of science assumes—and it is pure assumption—that he can trust the evidence of his consciousness as to the reality of the chemicals he experiments on, the plants he classifies, or the stars he observes. He assumes that they are real. He also assumes without proof that what has produced a certain effect once will produce it again in the same circumstances, that if a thing has occurred the conditions essential to its occurrence must also have occurred—in fine, that Nature is uniform. But so long as he is engaged exclusively in scientific work, in finding out what actually does happen or has happened in Nature, he need make no assumptions as to whether a certain witness is trustworthy or not, or whether there is a God or not: he can maintain a perfectly agnostic attitude on both questions. He can say, if he chooses, "God or no God, two and two make four"; or, to put it more precisely, whether the evidence which consciousness gives in spiritual experience to the reality of a God can or cannot be trusted, I do trust the evidence which consciousness gives in sense-experience to the reality of material things; whether the assumption that every event is the expression of self-determining will is true or not, at any rate I believe in the assumption that Nature is uniform.

And if man had nothing to do but investigate the actual course of Nature, and had nothing else to form an opinion about except whether this phenomenon is followed by that, it would be possible permanently to avoid making any assumptions save those required by science. But man has (let us suppose) to know, not only what does happen, but what ought to happen, and to decide what shall happen. The ordinary man, in making those forecasts of the future which he must make for the ordinary business of daily life, assumes, quite unconsciously, that Nature is uniform and that material things are real. In deciding what he ought to do and what he will do, he assumes, without knowing that he is making any assumptions at all, that his moral ideals are real, that his will is free to choose this course or that, and that the God with whom he communes in his heart is real.

Let us now take the question raised by agnosticism as to these assumptions, which constitute a large part of the common faith of mankind. The question is not whether these assumptions are right: the agnostic declines to discuss that question; he does not know whether they are right or wrong, he has no means of deciding, they are too high for him. The question is whether the agnostic himself succeeds in making, as well as endeavouring to make, no assumptions on these points. We have already argued he fails: he succeeds, not in making no assumptions, but only in making the counter-assumptions to those assumed by common sense.

This, let us hasten to add, does not at all amount to saying that his counter-assumptions are wrong: it only amounts to saying that he cannot form a resolution to steal or not to steal, to lie or not to lie, without (consciously or unconsciously) making some assumption as to the reality of the moral ideal.

But there is little need of argument to show that agnostic philosophy fails to avoid making assumptions, i.e. fails in practice to be agnostic. Professor Huxley admitted that the Uniformity of Nature was an assumption; he assumed that our moral ideals were real; he took it for granted that the will was not free. We need only point out that the attempt to carry on philosophy and explain the universe on purely scientific principles breaks down: science makes no assumption about the reality of our moral and æsthetic ideals; philosophy, even an agnostic philosophy, finds it necessary to assume the reality of both. Even if philosophy could be made scientific, it would not get rid of unprovable assumptions: it would still be based upon those made by science. And the excellence of philosophy, or of any explanation of the universe, consists, not in agnosticism, not in making no assumptions, but in making the right ones.

Science, as we have said, makes no assumptions save those which are necessary for her purpose, which is to ascertain and describe what actually takes place in Nature. Conversely, it is vain to imagine that from those assumptions anything can be deduced except conclusions of the kind which they are framed to cover, viz. conclusions as to what actually does take place. To say, therefore, that all knowledge—philosophy and religion—must become scientific before it can be regarded as trustworthy is simply to say that nothing can be regarded as true, except what is deduced from the assumptions of science: conclusions drawn from any other assumptions have no scientific truth. The assumptions of science are constructed only to lead to conclusions as to what is: we can therefore have no scientific, i.e. no real, knowledge of what ought to be. With the assumptions she makes, Science can only describe the way in which things happen; why they should so happen it is therefore impossible to know. The idea that all things are the expression of self-determining will is not one of the assumptions of science; no conclusions from it, therefore, can be considered valid.

Without staying to consider why the unproved and unprovable assumptions of science are so superior to all others as to be set up as the sole source of truth, the only fount of genuine knowledge, let us consider what sort of a picture of the universe they give us. Perhaps a simile will best help us.