A more defensible argument has been used by Mrs Besant and others against Materialism: the argument, namely, that it is impossible to think of a transition from physical action to the phenomenon of thought. A number of physicists—among them Tyndall—can be quoted as declaring that there is a "great gulf fixed" between molecular motion and the state of consciousness. Tyndall once laid it down that the demand for "logical continuity between molecular forces and the phenomena of consciousness" is "a rock on which Materialism must inevitably split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind." But this loud-sounding affirmation on analysis resolves itself into the popular rhetoric to which Tyndall was too much given. What is meant by a "complete philosophy of the human mind"? If Materialism asserts that certain constant correlations remain nevertheless "mysterious," it does not thereby cease to be a complete philosophy of the human mind. The statement that our whole knowledge of causation is just a knowledge of correlation is part of the complete philosophy of the human mind—that is, of the systematic and exact statement of our tested knowledge. To say that human faculty is strictly limited is not an avowal of incompleteness in the philosophy which says it. And as a matter of fact, the statement as to the "discontinuity" between "molecular forces" and the "phenomena of consciousness" is a statement which, so far as it has any meaning, stands to be made of all other correlations of phenomena. When I strike a match on the box, I evoke the phenomena of light and heat. In scientific terms, I set up by friction a chemical action quite "discontinuous" with motion in mass, and this in turn sets up a wave-motion in the hypothetical ether (of which I can form no conception) representing light. Materialism no more "splits" on the one "rock" than on the other.[94] The one special difficulty as to consciousness is a difficulty that affects all philosophies alike: the difficulty that it is consciousness that must analyse consciousness. Neither by predicating "mind-stuff" nor by alleging "soul" is that difficulty evaded. There still remains the admitted correlation between brain-and-nerve action and thought; and that correlation is on all-fours with those of physics so-called. As the case is put by Dr John Drysdale (after reasonings to an apparently different effect), "It may be held proved in physiology that for every feeling, every thought, every volition, a correlative change takes place in the nerve matter;" and it is scientific to say with him that the phenomena of mind as a function "require no further explanation" than the conditions of those changes. When Dr Ferrier writes that "no purely physiological explanation can explain the phenomena of consciousness," unless he simply means that there a psychological or logical element (not Spiritism) must enter into the explanation, he is merely stumbling in the old way over the word "explain." What is "explanation"? As Professor Pearson laboriously shows, and as Hume showed long ago, all that takes place in our explanations of physical phenomena is recognition of a routine of sense experience. The theological habit has given men a pseudo-conception of "explanation;" and though they have learned to dispense with that process in physics, they still confusedly demand it in biology and psychology. But the very men who at one time talk of "mystery" and "gulf" between matter and mind, at other times recognise that the mystery is no more and no less in one correlation than in another. Thus Tyndall, who elsewhere verbalises against "Materialism," after describing the development of the human organism from the egg, writes: "Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which all that is accomplished." Well, that is "modern Materialism" or nothing; the Materialism of Büchner and of Bradlaugh. The mere doctrinal or pragmatic expressions of single physicists count for nothing. As Bradlaugh put it in his debate with the Rev. Mr Westerby, it is the cases of Ferrier that count, not his opinions. The best observer is not the best formulator or thinker; and the art or science of logical speech is not gratuitously thrown in with either mathematical or artistic faculty. To turn the data of science into philosophy is a specialist's work.
Any one who desires to obtain in a short time by dint of close attention a notion of the difficulty and complexity of the argument as between monism and dualism cannot do better than read the report of the debate between Bradlaugh and the Rev. Mr Westerby on the notion of Soul. Mr Westerby, though he wrote some of his papers in advance instead of meeting his opponent's case, was decidedly the ablest of the clerics with whom Bradlaugh debated; and in his hands the orthodox cause suffered as little as might be. The reader may or may not in the end decide to stand with Bradlaugh, but he will certainly have learned to see the folly of the cheap journalistic dismissal of an undefined "Materialism" as "exploded," and the error of the notion that Bradlaugh was unqualified to handle philosophic and scientific issues, or that he was a mere public speaker, unskilled in dialectic.
Finally, as to the meaningless expression that "things happen by chance," he of course never used it. Of any person who puts this phrase in the mouths of Atheists, it may be said at once that he is unfit to discuss a philosophical question. He either does not understand what he discusses, or is wilfully untruthful. The phrase "happens by chance"—as was long ago recognised by Hume, after he had himself fallen into the ordinary meaningless use of the term—only means either "happens without our intending it," or "happens without our being able to trace the cause." It is significant only for everyday purposes, and in philosophy can only serve to set up a chimera. All events must be conceived as having a "cause," in the ordinary sense of the term. The Atheist certainly avows that he can only trace causation a small way in the universe; but he does not for a moment suppose that he would be giving an explanation of any event if he referred it to "Chance." His doctrine is that the universe and its total energy must be conceived as infinite and eternal; that in physics the question "Why?" resolves itself into the question "How?" and that the business of science is just to give the answer as fully as may be.
§4.
While Bradlaugh was thus an exact thinker and reasoner, he distinguished himself above all the rationalists of his time by the energy and persistence with which he sought to bring his philosophy home to the popular mind. He was fundamentally a reformer, and he could not consent, as so many do, to keep silence on errors of creed, so called, and resist merely errors of action. For him, creed was action, and action creed. He was so thoroughly a man of action that he must needs act on his conviction in matters of opinion, so called, as in anything else.
It was no doubt the record and the result of the French Revolution that moved the majority of political reformers for two generations to keep their own counsel on religious matters. Paine has been expressly charged with hindering the cause of democratic politics by identifying himself also with the cause of Freethinking. To a man like Bradlaugh such an objection counted for nothing. It was not merely that he saw how profoundly religion reacts on life, how creed shapes conduct, and how the current religion must always tend to support old political doctrine as against new. He took his course instinctively as well as reasoningly. That a doctrine is false was to him a reason for exposing it as such; and though as a utilitarian he held that truth is the best policy, he did not wait for the demonstration before choosing his course. He had in fact that love of truth for its own sake which is the inspiration of all scientific progress; but he had it without restriction, or at least with as little restriction as can well be. No man can be equally interested in all inquiries; and none can help thinking some unprofitable; but Bradlaugh was limited only by his tastes, never by the common opinion that the spread of truth is inexpedient. He would give facilities for all conscientious truth-seeking whatever, barring only random disclosures of sensational facts with no better motive than sensation, or with no likelihood of edification to balance the likelihood of the reverse. As to the great themes of belief and discussion in all ages, he simply could not think that human welfare is promoted by maintaining beliefs known to be false. He was a democrat in religion as in politics. If truth was good for him, it must be equally good for the multitude, so far as it was possible to enlighten them. They must needs be enlightened by language within reach of their capacity; but while he would make matters plain for them, he would in no wise consent to garble and conceal what he held to be the truth. With the many people who either care nothing whether current beliefs are false or true, or think it desirable that they should be false, he had no sympathy. It seemed to him that if anything was worth investigating, the most serious beliefs of the mass of the human race must be; and the idea that the mass could be helped or raised by keeping them deluded was to him morally repugnant and sociologically false. "My object," he writes in his pamphlet on Heresy, "is to show that the civilisation of the mass is in proportion to the spread of heresy amongst them; that its effect is seen in an exhibition of manly dignity and self-reliant effort which is utterly unattainable amongst a superstitious people." And all acts of prayer and religious propitiation were to him survivals of superstition.
"My plea is," he went on, "that modern heresy, from Spinoza to Mill, has given brain-strength and dignity to every one it has permeated—that the popular propagandists of this heresy, from Bruno to Carlile, have been the true redeemers and saviours, the true educators of the people. The redemption is yet only at its commencement, the education only lately begun, but the change is traceable already; as witness the power to speak and write, and the ability to listen and read, which have grown amongst the masses during the last hundred years."
Against the popular thesis that "Christianity" has achieved these things, he brought to bear in debate and journalism not only his knowledge of Christian and Church history in general, but his constant experience of the influence of orthodoxy in checking betterment in England. The State Church has been an invaluable object-lesson for Freethinkers. As regards the claim for Christian Nonconformity, the answer might run: If a mainly ecclesiastical or sectarian Dissent has had so much good political result, what political, social, and intellectual results might not come of a thoroughgoing rationalist Dissent? It would take too long to set forth even the gist of Bradlaugh's polemic against the Christian claim that the Christian creed has been a force for progress; but those who care to know his method and his case may find it tersely set forth in the latter sections of his "Notes on Christian Evidences" in criticism of "The Oxford House Papers," his pamphlet on "Humanity's Gain from Unbelief," and his debate with the Rev. Marsden Gibson on that thesis. These are late statements of the case he put forward during the whole of his public life; and it was on the strength of such arguments, and of his theoretic Atheism, that he was able to create in England an energetic and intelligent party, the active adherents of which were and are mostly working-men.