Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

by Sir Henry Jones

But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the higher categories, or, in other words, it is learning to take a more and more idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it is a long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and it is only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect, that we find the need of a change of categories. But, as already hinted, there is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware of the conditions, under which alone its results may be held as valid. At first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and offered to explain both it and man in physical and mathematical terms. But, in our day, the man of science has become too cautious to make such rash extensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limit himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further, and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected, and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all but universally acknowledged.

The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to which we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science itself will not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to another court. Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its attitude is one of doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or other, can give any valid decision on the matter. Confining themselves to the region of material phenomena, scientific men generally leave to common ignorance, or to moral and theological tradition, all the interests and activities of man, other than those which are physical or physiological. And some of them are even aware, that if they could find the physical equation of man, or, through their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man the sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of man and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The explanation would still begin with mind and end there. The principles of the materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived from intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and completed science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The charge of anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would prove too much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it. And, as directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it has inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the world, and is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent of the other.

On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now assail philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the world, so much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The best men of science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind of dualism of matter and spirit, and to leave morality and religion, art and philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed. Mr. Huxley, for instance, and some others, offer two philosophical solutions, one proceeding from the material world and the other from the sensations and other "facts of consciousness." They say that we may either explain man as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a mental one.

But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these explanations is true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they are different. And neither of them can be adopted without very serious consequences. It would require considerable hardihood to suggest that natural science should be swept away in favour of psychology, which would be done if the one view held by Mr. Huxley were true. And, in my opinion, it requires quite as much hardihood to suggest the adoption of a theory that makes morality and religion illusory, which would be done were the other view valid.

As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be held by any one who is interested both in the success of natural science and in the spiritual development of mankind. We are constrained rather to say that, if these rival lines of thought lead us to deny either the outer world of things, or the world of thought and morality, then they must both be wrong. They are not "explanations" but false theories, if they lead to such conclusions as these. And, instead of holding them up to the world as the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them into the dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point of view.

And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only by idealists, but by scientific men themselves,—did they only comprehend their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards unity, which is the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one direction by a hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another. Subjective idealism, that is, the theory that things are nothing but phenomena of the individual's consciousness, that the world is really all inside the philosopher, is now known by most people to end in self-contradiction; and materialism is also known to begin with it. And there are not many people sanguine enough to believe with Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we add two self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately, we shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that is not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between things and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is brought about may not be known; but, that there is the connection between real things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an ill-starred perversity which leads men to deny such a connection, merely because they have not found out how it is established.

A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of our time—a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of development is breaking down the division between mind and matter, as it is breaking down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy, and physics at one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at the other, combine in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity which is always evolving its content, and bringing its secret potencies to the light. It is true that these sciences have not linked hands as yet. We cannot get from chemistry to biology without a leap, or from physiology to psychology without another. But no one will postulate a rift right through being. The whole tendency of modern science implies the opposite of such a conception. History is striving to trace continuity between the civilized man and the savage. Psychology is making towards a junction with physiology and general biology, biology with chemistry, and chemistry with physics. That there is an unbroken continuity in existence is becoming a postulate of modern science, almost as truly as the "universality of law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the postulate held less firmly because the evidence for the continuity of nature is not yet complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into physics; biology at present shows no sign of giving up its characteristic conception of life, and the former science is as yet quite unable to deal with that peculiar phenomenon. The facts of consciousness have not been resolved into nervous action, and, so far, mind has not been shown to be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all these sciences are beating against the limits which separate them, and new suggestions of connection between natural life and its inorganic environment are continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards each other, and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems reasonable to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way upwards may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of existence to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.

Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical and religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the chasm between spirit and nature is viewed with no little apprehension. It is supposed that if evolution were established as a universal law, and the unity of being were proved, the mental and moral life of man would be degraded into a complex manifestation of mere physical force. And we even find religious men rejoicing at the failure of science to bridge the gap between the inorganic and the organic, and between natural and self-conscious life; as if the validity of religion depended upon the maintenance of their separating boundaries. But no religion that is free from superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how breaks in the continuity of being can be established, when every living plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and matter," when every human being is relating himself to the outer world in all his thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last form of thought which could profit from such a proof of absolute distinctions, were it possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion, in so far as it demands a perfect and absolute being as the object of worship, is vitally concerned in maintaining the unity of the world. It must assume that matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle which, in a higher form, manifests itself in spirit.

But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity asserted by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of existence into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of development to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would be shown to be nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life nothing but a physiological process, and religion, morality, and art, nothing but products of the highly complex motion of highly complex aggregates of physical atoms.

It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as tending towards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which many scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and some of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have, with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution in this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science is generally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, than it is in rendering an account of them. In fact, it is not its business to examine its categories: that task properly belongs to philosophy, and it is not a superfluous one. But, so long as the employment of the categories in the special province of a particular science yields valid results, scientific explorers and those who attach, and rightly attach, so much value to their discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that these categories are not valid universally. The warning voice of philosophy is not heeded, when it charges natural science with applying its conceptions to materials to which they are inadequate; and its examination of the categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but also a useless, activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from the analysis of our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and found them, when it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume, no one had shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he offered is now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is rejected by philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in exposing the fallacies of the theory of association as held by Hume, science has gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing a theory of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of causality by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.