Facts and fancies in modern science / Studies of the relations of science to prevalent speculations and religious belief

by Sir John William Dawson

Again, science has in the course of its growth become divided into a great number of small specialties, each pursued ardently by its own votaries. This is beneficial in one respect; for much more can be gained by men digging downward, each on his own vein of valuable ore, than by all merely scraping the surface. But the specialist, as he descends fathom after fathom into his mine, however rich and rare the gems and metals he may discover, becomes more and more removed from the ordinary ways of men, and more and more regardless of the products of other veins as valuable as his own. The specialist, however profound he may become in the knowledge of his own limited subject, is on that very account less fitted to guide his fellow-men in the pursuit of general truth. When he ventures to the boundaries between his own and other domains of truth, or when he conceives the idea that his own little mine is the sole deposit of all that requires to be known, he sometimes makes grave mistakes; and these pass current for a time as the dicta of high scientific authority.

Lastly, the lowest influence of all is that which sometimes regulates what may be termed the commercial side of science. Here the demand is very apt to control the supply. New facts and legitimate conclusions cannot be produced with sufficient rapidity to satisfy the popular craving, or they are not sufficiently exciting to compete with other attractions. Science has then to enter the domain of imagination, and the last new generalization—showy and specious, but perhaps baseless as the plot of the last new novel—brings grist to the mill of the "scientist" and his publisher.

Only one permanent and final remedy is possible for these evils, and that is a higher moral tone and more thorough scientific education on the part of the general public. Until this can be secured, true science is sure to be surrounded with a mental haze of vague hypotheses clothed in ill-defined language, and which is mistaken by the multitude for science itself. Yet true science should not be held responsible for this, except in so far as its material is used to constitute the substance of the pseudo-gnosis which surrounds it. Science is in this relation the honest householder whose goods may be taken by thieves and applied to bad uses, or the careful amasser of wealth which may be dissipated by spendthrifts.

It may be said that if these statements are true, the ordinary reader is helpless. How can he separate the true from the false? Must he resign himself to the condition of one who either believes on mere authority or refuses to believe anything? or must he adopt the attitude of the Pyrrhonist who thinks that anything may be either true or false? But it is true, nevertheless, that common sense may suffice to deliver us from much of the pseudo-science of our time, and to enable us to understand how little reason there is for the conflicts promoted by mere speculation between science and other departments of legitimate thought and inquiry.

In illustrating this, we may in the present lecture consider that form of sceptical philosophy which in our time is the most prevalent, and which has the most specious air of dependence on science. This is the system of Agnosticism combined with evolution of which Mr. Herbert Spencer is the most conspicuous advocate in the English-speaking world. This philosophy deals with two subjects—the cause or origin of the universe and of things therein, and the method of the progress of all from the beginning until now. Spencer sees nothing in the first of these but mere force or energy, nothing in the second but a spontaneous evolution. All beyond these is not only unknown, but unknowable. The theological and philosophical shortcomings of this doctrine have been laid bare by a multitude of critics, and I do not propose to consider it in these relations so much as in relation to science, which has much to say with respect to both force and evolution.

An agnostic is literally one who does not know; and, were the word used in its true and literal sense, Agnosticism would of necessity be opposed to science, since science is knowledge and quite incompatible with the want of it. But the modern agnostic does not pretend to be ignorant of the facts and principles of science. What he professes not to know is the existence of any power above and beyond material nature. He goes a little farther, however, than mere absence of knowledge. He holds that of God nothing can be known; or he may put it a little more strongly, in the phrase of his peculiar philosophy, by saying that the existence of a God or of creation by divine power is "unthinkable." It is in this that he differs from the old-fashioned and now extinct atheist, who bluntly denied the existence of a God. The modern agnostic assumes an attitude of greater humility and disclaims the actual denial of God. Yet he practically goes farther, in asserting the impossibility of knowing the existence of a Divine Being; and in taking this farther step Agnosticism does more to degrade the human reason and to cut it off from all communion with anything beyond mere matter and force, than does any other form of philosophy, ancient or modern.

Yet in this Agnosticism there is in one point an approximation to truth. If there is a God, he cannot be known directly and fully, and his plans and procedure must always be more or less incomprehensible. The writer of the book of Job puts this as plainly as any modern agnostic in the passage beginning "Canst thou by searching find out God?"—literally, "Canst thou sound the depths of God?"—and a still higher authority informs us that "no man hath seen God"—that is, known him as we know material things. In short, absolutely and essentially God is incomprehensible; but this is no new discovery, and the mistake of the agnostic lies in failing to perceive that the same difficulty stands in the way of our perfectly knowing anything whatever. We say that we know things when we mean that we know them in their properties, relations, or effects. In this sense the knowledge of God is perfectly possible. It is impossible only in that other sense of the word "know"—if it can have such a sense—in which we are required to know things in their absolute essence and thoroughly. Thus the term "agnostic" contains an initial fallacy in itself; and this philosophy, like many others, rests, in the first instance, on a mere jugglery of words. The real question is, "Is there a God who manifests himself to us mediately and practically?" and this is a question which we cannot afford to set aside by a mere play on the meanings of the verb "to know."

If, however, any man takes this position and professes to be incapable of knowing whether or not there is any power above and behind material things, it will be necessary to begin with the very elements of knowledge, and to inquire if there is anything whatever that he really knows and believes.

Let us ask him if he can subscribe to the simple creed expressed in the words "I am, I feel, I think." Should he deny these propositions, then there is no basis left on which to argue. Should he admit this much of belief, he has abandoned somewhat of his agnostic position; for it would be easy to show that in even uttering the pronoun "I" he has committed himself to the belief in the unknowable. What is the ego which he admits? Is it the material organism or any one of its organs or parts? or is it something distinct, of which the organism is merely the garment, or outward manifestation? or is the organism itself anything more than a bundle of appearances partially known and scarcely understood by that which calls itself "I"? Who knows? And if our own personality is thus inscrutable, if we can conceive of it neither as identical with the whole or any part of the organism nor as existing independently of the organism, we should begin our Agnosticism here, and decline to utter the pronoun "I" as implying what we cannot know. Still, as a matter of faith, we must hold fast to the proposition "I exist" as the only standpoint for science, philosophy, or common life. If we are asked for evidence of this faith, we can appeal only to our consciousness of effects which imply the existence of the ego, which we thus have to admit or suppose before we can begin to prove even its existence.

This fact of the mystery of our own existence is full of material for thought. It is in itself startling—even appalling. We feel that it is a solemn, a dreadful, thing to exist, and to exist in that limitless space and that eternal time which we can no more understand than we can our own constitution, though our belief in their existence is inevitable. Nor can we divest ourselves of anxious thoughts as to the source, tendencies, and end of our own being. Here, in short, we already reach the threshold of that dread unknown future and its possibilities, the realization of which by hope, fear, and imagination constitutes, perhaps, our first introduction to the unseen world as distinguished from the present world of sense. The agnostic may smile if he pleases at religion as a puerile fancy, but he knows, like other men, that the mere consciousness of existence necessarily links itself with a future—nay, unending—existence, and that any being with this consciousness of futurity must have at least a religion of hope and fear. In this we find an intelligible reason for the universality of religious ideas in relation to a future life. Even where this leads to beliefs that may be called superstitious, it is more reasonable than Agnosticism; for it is surely natural that a being inscrutable by himself should be led to believe in the existence of other things equally inscrutable, but apparently related to himself.