The chief thing is that the causal law makes science possible, while to reject it means to reject science and knowledge generally, all anticipation, and even, as some few hold, reason itself. Clearly, if one has to choose between a slightly dubious admission on the one side and the prospect of chaos and insanity on the other, there will be no long hesitation. Apologetics, we see, has chosen the most powerful of arguments, ad hominem. But all such arguments partake of one common defect; they are not constant, and they are double-edged.
To-day they defend scientific knowledge; to-morrow they will attack it. Indeed, it so happens that the very belief in the causal law begets a great disquiet and turmoil in the soul, which finally produces all the horrors of chaos and madness. The certainty that the existing order is immutable is for certain minds synonymous with the certainty that life is nonsensical and absurd. Probably the disciples of Christ had that feeling when the last words of their crucified Master reached them from the cross: 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' And the modern theorists may explain triumphantly that when the law became the instrument of chaos and madness, it was ipso facto abolished. 'Christ has risen,' say the disciples of Christ.
I have said that the theorists may triumph; but I must confess that I have not found in any of them an open glorification of such an obvious proof of the truth of their teaching. Of the resurrection of Christ they say not a word—on the contrary, they make every effort to avoid it and pass it by in silence. And this circumstance compels us to pause and think. A dilemma arises: if you grant that the law of causation suffers no exception, then your soul will be eternally haunted by the last words of the crucified Christ; if you do not, then you will have no science. Some assert that it is impossible to live without science, without knowledge, that such a life is horror and madness; others cannot be reconciled to the thought that the most perfect of men died the death of a murderer. What shall we do? Without which thing is it impossible for man to live? Without scientific knowledge, or without the conviction that truth and spiritual perfection are in the last resort the victors of this world? And how will the theory of knowledge stand with regard to questions such as these?
Will it still continue its exercises in apologetics or will it at last understand that this is not its real problem, and that if it would preserve the right to be called philosophy, it will have not to justify and exalt the existing science, but to examine and direct some science of its own. It means above all to put the question: Is scientific knowledge really perfect, or is it perhaps imperfect, and should it therefore yield its present honourable place to another science? Evidently this is the most important question for the theory of knowledge, yet this question it never puts. It wants to exalt existing science. It has been, is now, and probably will long continue to be, apologetics.
Truth and Utility
Mill, seeking to prove that all our sciences, even the mathematical, have an empiric origin, brings forward the following consideration. If on every occasion that we had to take twice two things, some deity slipped one extra thing into our hands, we should be convinced that twice two is not four but five. And perhaps Mill is right: perhaps we should not divine what was the matter. We are much more concerned to discover what is practically necessary and directly useful to us than to search for truth. If a deity with each four things slipped a fifth into our hands, we should accept the additional thing and consider it natural, intelligible, necessary, impossible to be otherwise. The very uniformity in the sequence of phenomena observed by the empirical philosophers was also slipped into our hands. By whom? When? Who dares to ask? Once the law is established no one is interested in anything any more. Now we can foretell the future, now we can use the thing slipped into our hands, and the rest—cometh of the evil one.
Philosophers and Teachers
Every one knows that Schopenhauer was for many years not only not recognised, but not even read. His books were used for waste-paper. It was only towards the end of his life that he had readers and admirers—and, of course, critics. For every admirer is at bottom a most merciless and importunate critic. He must understand everything, make everything agree, and of course the master must supply the necessary explanations. Schopenhauer, who did not have the experience of being a master till his old age, at first behaved very benevolently to his disciples' questions and patiently gave the explanations required. But the further one goes into the forest, the thicker are the trees. The most loyal perplexities of his pupils became more and more importunate, until at last the old man lost patience. 'I didn't undertake to explain all the secrets of the universe to every one who wanted to know them,' he once exclaimed, when a certain pupil persisted in emphasising the contradictions he had noticed in Schopenhauer. And really—is a master obliged to explain everything? In Schopenhauer's words we are given an answer, not ambiguous. A philosopher not only cannot be a teacher, he does not want to be one. There are teachers in schools, in universities: they teach arithmetic, grammar, logic, metaphysics. The philosopher has quite a different task, one which does not in the least resemble teaching.
Truth as a Social Substance
There are many ways, real and imaginary, of objectively verifying philosophic opinions. But they all reduce, we know, to trial by the law of contradiction. True, every one is aware that no single philosophic doctrine is able to support such a trial, so that, pending a better future, people consider it possible to display a certain tenderness in the examination. They are usually satisfied if they come to the conclusion that the philosopher made a genuine attempt to avoid contradictions. For instance, they forgive Spinoza his inconsistency because of his amor intellectualis Dei; Kant, for his love of morality and his praise of disinterestedness; Plato, for the originality and purity of his idealistic impulses; and Aristotle, for the vastyness and universality of his knowledge. So that, strictly speaking, we must confess that we have no real objective method of verifying a philosophical truth, and when we criticise other people's systems, we judge arbitrarily after all. If a philosopher suits us for some reason, we do not trouble him with the law of contradiction; if he does not, we summon him before the court to be judged with the utmost rigour of the law, confident beforehand that he will be found guilty on every count. But sometimes there arises the desire to verify one's own philosophic convictions. To play the farce of objective verification with them, to look for contradictions in oneself—I do not suppose that even Germans are capable of that. And yet one desires to know whether he does indeed possess the truth or whether he has only a universal error in his hands. What is to be done? I think there is a way. He should think to himself that it is absolutely impossible for his truth to be binding upon anybody. If in spite of this he still refuses to renounce her, if the truth can suffer such an ordeal and yet remain the same to him as she was before, then it may be supposed that she is worth something. For often we appreciate conviction, not because it has an intrinsic value, but because it commands a high price in the market. Robinson Crusoe probably had a totally different way of thinking to that of a modern writer or professor, whose books are exposed to the appreciation of his numerous confrères, who can create for him the renown of a wise man and a scholar, or utterly ruin his reputation. Even with the Greeks, whom we are accustomed to regard as model thinkers, opinions had—to use the language of economics—not so much a demand, as an exchange value.