What, then, is Mr. Balfour’s case against men of ‘science,’ and those whom he calls ‘the Freethinkers’? It may be put under three heads.
1. They are lax, he thinks, in their conception of proof. As it happens, he argues against Mill’s criticism of the syllogism, which is that there can be no real inference from the premisses of a syllogism, because in the major premiss there is already asserted what is afterwards asserted in the conclusion. Mr. Balfour’s reply is, that ‘So long as in fact we do assert the major premiss without first believing the conclusion, so long will the latter be an inference from the former.’ Now, Mill’s express contention is that we never do assert the major premiss without first believing the conclusion; and the dispute resolves itself into one as to the proper meaning of ‘inference.’ Mill is at this point guarding against erroneous conceptions of proof; his thesis being that the ‘proof’ of the conclusion is not given in the major, but in the body of evidence on which that is founded, and which carries the conclusion at the same time. As the kind of syllogism in question is the old one about the mortality of Sokrates, Mill here takes as ‘proof’ the evidence which all men now reckon sufficient to establish the fact of universal human mortality, though, as aforesaid, it is not literally a complete ‘proof’ at all. Mr. Balfour is arguing, if anything relevant to his main thesis, that a so-called ‘inference’ which is merely a statement in one particular of what is believed of all such particulars, is a ‘real’ inference, and therefore somehow more valid than inferences not so drawn. Perhaps he does not mean this: if so, the argument has no bearing on his main case.
Concerning ‘inference,’ the proper development of Mill’s position would be that the processes of reasoning properly to be so called are either hypotheses still to be tested or beliefs held by the tenure of uncontradicted experience. And inferences of the latter kind are in fact of the most various degrees of certainty. We ‘infer’ that we shall all die, not from the generalisation that all men are mortal, but from the accepted fact that all men hitherto have been. The major premiss in the typical syllogism is itself the inference. But we also infer, from a much narrower experience, that inasmuch as pitchblende, say, has been found to yield radium in certain very small quantities, other pitchblende will do so in future. Here the certainty is distinctly less: few men would wager heavily on it. And we may at once grant to Mr. Balfour that in this and many other cases ‘scientific beliefs’ fall far short of ‘certainty,’ as that term is established for us by other beliefs. As Mill put it, inference from particulars never can be formally cogent. He might have added as aforesaid, that all real inference as to events is from particulars, and that formal cogency belongs only to mathematics. Mr. Balfour says he will not ‘go so far’ as Mill. So that, whatever be Mill’s inconsistencies—and they are many—Mill was at this point somewhat less confident of belief than Mr. Balfour.
2. Mr. Balfour impugns what he takes to be ‘the most ordinary view of scientific philosophy, ... that science, in so far as it consists of a statement of the laws of phenomena, is founded entirely on observation and experiment,’ which ‘furnish not only the occasions of scientific discovery, but also the sole evidence of scientific truth—evidence, however, which is considered by most men of science not only amply sufficient, but also as good as any which can be well imagined.’[9] In this statement there are obvious laxities, which may serve as openings for idle dispute. No man of science, surely, holds that all statements of the laws of phenomena are equally well ‘proved’ by observation and experiment. They do hold that such a proposition as that of ‘the uniformity of nature,’ considered as a ‘law of phenomena,’ is founded on observation and experiment, as fully as any proposition of natural mode can be. But there is obvious room for ambiguity, again, in the expression ‘laws of phenomena.’ Let us consider, for instance,
3. Mr. Balfour’s contention that the ‘law of universal causation’ is incapable of proof, and cannot properly be said to be founded on observation and experiment. Here the rationalist may safely grant him his whole case—at least the present writer does. He is right, I submit, in his criticism of Mill’s ostensible attempt to prove that the so-called ‘law of universal causation’ is deduced from observation and experiment. I will further waive the question whether he rebuts the proof offered by Kant for his proposition that ‘the judgment of sequence cannot be made without the presupposition of the judgment of causality,’ which, like many of Kant’s formulas, seems to me very awkwardly phrased. But I advance without hesitation the proposition that all reflection upon events involves the conception of universal causation, and that all reflection upon things involves the conception of them in eventu.[10] And this necessary assumption is not as such a product of observation and experiment, though we can never exactly say how far experience may condition[11] our manner of making the assumption. It is quite needless to trace the history of it in human experience, for it is clearly pre-human. If from a tree you fire at and wound a tiger who sees you, he will try to get at you, plainly regarding you as the cause of his wound, though he may never have been shot or seen a shot fired before. The accuracy of his inference is worth noting, though he might chance, of course, to have been wounded by a shot fired by an unseen companion of yours. It may ‘reasonably’ be ‘inferred’ (to use terms which Mr. Balfour would probably censure), that man has always obeyed the law of thought thus illustrated; and no number of wrong particular inferences can affect the inevitableness of his assumption that any event has a cause. The concept of cause roots in primary animal habit.
Is this assumption, then, a ‘law of phenomena’ in Mr. Balfour’s sense? is it to be ruled out, on his principles, as not being founded on observation and experiment? and are men of science thereby shown to be wrong in holding that every scientific statement of the laws of phenomena is so founded? I do not see how he can thus argue; for he has expressly contended (p. 135), that ‘A law of nature refers to a fixed relation, not between the totality of phenomena, but between extremely small portions of that totality.’ Is a law of phenomena, then, something other than a law of nature? This he cannot mean; and the conclusion is that the so-called ‘law of universal causation’ is not properly to be called a law of nature, or a law at all, unless we are so to call a necessary element of all reflection upon nature.
The dispute here, in short, resolves itself into a question of terminology; and it is quite likely that many men of science, and many freethinkers, have used lax terminology. But as regards the reasonableness of their beliefs, or their way of believing, in contrast with those of the supernaturalists whom Mr. Balfour champions, he has thus far made out no hostile case whatever. And when we come to what appear to be his conclusions, they are such as can wring no rationalist’s withers. Our ultimate premisses, he contends, are incapable of proof. Granted—if the assumption of universal causation is to be termed a premiss, as is that of the uniformity of nature. The practical issue for him appears to be contained in this passage (italics ours):—
‘That men ought not to give up on speculative grounds the belief in “the uniformity of nature, or any other great principle,” I hold, as the reader will see if his patience lasts to the end of the volume, with as much persistence as any man. But I must altogether take exception to the statement, which is the central point of the argument just stated, namely, that the fact that these principles work in practice is any ground for believing them to be even approximately true’ (p. 145).
Our patience may easily stand the suggested test, since Mr. Balfour’s book is for the most part extremely well written; and unless I have totally misunderstood him, his conclusions are (a) that he and we do well to accept the general body of accepted scientific doctrines, including those of the theory of evolution and the uniformity of nature, without any ground for believing them to be even approximately true; and (b) that he and his co-believers do equally well to hold what he vaguely indicates (p. 324) as ‘the Theological opinions to which I adhere,’ also without ‘any ground for believing them to be even approximately true.’ In a sentence (p. 320) of which the diction is noticeably lax, he says:—
‘...I and an indefinite number of other persons, if we contemplate Religion and Science as unproved systems of belief standing side by side, feel a practical need for both; and if this need is, in the case of those few and fragmentary scientific truths by which we regulate our animal actions, or an especially imperious and indestructible character—on the other hand, the need for religious truth, rooted as it is in the loftiest region of our moral nature, is one from which we would not, if we could, be freed.... We are in this matter,’ he adds, ‘unfortunately altogether outside the sphere of Reason.’