Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson

by J. C. Hardwick

The First Principles was published before the Origin of Species, and the confirmation which Darwin's work supplied to Spencer's theory must have recommended the latter to the minds of scientifically trained thinkers. Moreover, Spencer sanctioned a hopeful outlook; evolutionary optimism was an attractive and an idealistic, as well as a reasonable philosophy. It demanded the subordination of the individual to society, it urged the necessity of self-discipline and of industry, and pointed (if these conditions were fulfilled) to a brighter future, and to a new humanity. The generous idealism of the following passage is characteristic of Spencer's outlook, and of those who thought—and hoped—with him; it occurs at the end of his Principles of Ethics:

"The highest ambition of the beneficent will be to have a share—even though an utterly inappreciable and unknown share—in 'the making of Man.'... As time goes on, there will be more and more of those whose unselfish end will be the further evolution of Humanity. While contemplating from the heights of thought that far-off life of the race never to be enjoyed by them, but only by a remote posterity, they will feel a calm pleasure in the consciousness of having aided the advance towards it."

Spencer, then, evidently deserves the important place that he occupies in the history of thought. For though he was forced, for lack of those final scientific results which he vainly hoped might soon be forthcoming, to leave some vital gaps in his scheme,[43] he had made an imposing attempt to systematise and unify all human experience. And his attempt to base an idealistic morality upon sure grounds of natural science was valuable and important.

Spencer's Philosophy of Religion.—At the same time, Spencer could not remain satisfied with a mere description of natural phenomena, however complete and comprehensive such description might seem; he desired to offer, besides this, an explanation of these phenomena—how did they come to be, and how do they continue to exist? To provide this explanation, Spencer postulated the existence of an Unknown Power which is at once the origin and the sustaining ground of everything. This power he regarded as lying quite out of range not only of the human senses, but of the human intellect. It was not only unknown but unknowable. This celebrated doctrine of the Unknowable is not the least interesting or important part of Spencer's system, and it is perhaps more germane than any other speculation of his to our present subject, as this terra incognita was allotted by him to religion as its peculiar province. He hoped that the undisputed possession and occupation by religion of this territory might put an end to its perpetual conflict with science, and substitute for this a reasonable, if not cordial, understanding. Science might contentedly appropriate the sphere of the knowable, and leave to religion the undefined and perhaps infinite area of the unknowable; and he hoped this division of labour would be both fruitful and permanent.

The Victorian Agnostics.—Through this doctrine of the Unknowable, Herbert Spencer was the father of that form of belief or disbelief which was pertinently named Agnosticism by the most celebrated of its exponents—Huxley. This combination of Positivism in science with Agnosticism in religion and philosophy, became highly popular in a wide circle in England during the last third of the nineteenth century, especially among the scientifically educated. Leslie Stephen, with the pride of a disciple and the pardonable zeal of a propagandist, claimed for it the distinction of being "the religion of all sensible men."

This austere faith owed much to the qualities of those who preached it. Their wide culture, their power of literary expression,[44] their intellectual vigour, and above all their moral earnestness and social enthusiasm recommended what had otherwise seemed a barren and unpromising creed. The generous humanitarian sympathies of Comte supplied the idealistic elements without which no faith can become popular, and the apparent stability of its scientific basis seemed to those impatient of speculative doubt, a great rock in a desert of shifting sand. This new scientific Humanism had an immense vogue, and its effects upon national life were, on the whole, of a quite healthy character. Occasional lapses into intolerance, no doubt, occurred; but much may be excused in the self-confidence of a new faith, not yet tested by the experiences and the criticisms of years.

Theological Polemics.—The attacks of orthodox apologists upon this new orientation, though carried through with the best intentions, were too often conducted on mistaken lines and certainly on too narrow a front. A particular theory of scriptural inspiration (now widely abandoned), and of the miraculous, seemed to obsess the controversialists. Nor were the Agnostics (it must be confessed) any more alive to the real issues. Hence, to the modern student, an oppressive atmosphere of deadness and sterility seems to brood over these vigorous but superannuated polemics; and hence the complete oblivion into which this literature has fallen. The saying is profoundly true that "nothing so quickly waxes old as apologetics." Even the contributions to the subject by so accomplished a journalist as Huxley—his Essays on Science and Christian Tradition—can only be read by those whom an almost Teutonic industry characterises. Once so eagerly perused and earnestly pondered, the controversial literature of this interesting epoch (which now seems so remote) reposes on the higher shelves of libraries, accumulating the peaceful dust of oblivion. These projectiles have, in fact, done their work, and if they have proved less fatal than was hoped by those who launched them, they were dispatched with good intentions, and their explosion cleared the air.

The most effective method of attack would have been to suggest that what was good in the new system was as old as Christianity, and that the rest was disputable science and still more disputable philosophy. The latter half of this task was, as we shall subsequently find, creditably performed by an important school of critical thinkers. But its former half, i.e. the task of proving that what was valuable in the new Humanism, was Christian—might, one would suppose, have been more successfully performed by the official champions of orthodoxy. These might have left science to the scientists, to have left off advertising their own incompetence in that sphere by passages of arms such as took place between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860, which are never very desirable, and always discreditable to the discomfited party.[45]

Illogicality of Naturalistic Idealism.—In point of fact, "the religion of all sensible men" (in spite of its philosophic weakness) was equivalent to Christian stoicism; its social enthusiasm, its humanitarianism, its conscientious truthfulness, were the fruit of a stock grown on Christian soil. Its ethical presuppositions were entirely Christian, nor were they sanctioned (in spite of Herbert Spencer's elaborate apologetic) by the new biology. Nietzsche was a far more legitimate child of Darwinism than was Huxley. Indeed, towards the close of his life, some doubts invaded the mind of the latter, and he was constrained by an intellectual sincerity which does him and his school the highest credit, to utter a word of warning. We refer to his famous Romanes Lecture of 1894.

The thesis of this important utterance was that the field of human interests is a narrow heritage carved out from a hostile environment into which it is destined one day to relapse. It is a cultivated garden with the wilderness all around; created only at the cost of infinite sacrifice and perpetual toil, and preserved only with difficulty. The implacable jungle seeks everywhere to encroach on the borders of the clearing, whose ultimate engulfment can only be postponed, not prevented. Two quotations may suffice: