I.
Philosophy or rather philosophical discussions are being renewed. On the one hand, materialism rages like a tempest over the regions of science; menacing our scientific, intellectual, and moral past and future with destruction. On the other side, we behold noble efforts, beautiful works, and eloquent protestations, on the part of reason and liberty, in favor of the dignity of human nature against the debasing tenets of positivism. We know what shall be the result of this struggle. Materialistic doctrines and hypotheses can never conquer the best aspirations and real glory of humanity. But if final triumph is certain, when will it take place? Immediately, or only after a passing victory of the great philosophical error of the day? This is a serious question; for a temporary victory by materialism would be a fatal sign of our time, and humiliate our race beyond anything that can be imagined. The philosophical discussions, therefore, which have been raised around us are not a mere useless noise; but they are the most important subject for our consideration, bearing with them great destinies—those of science, and perhaps of national life.
To appreciate the true character of the materialistic movement which is stirring every layer of society, and whose action the learned and the ignorant equally feel, we must examine all the remote and proximate, latent and manifest, causes which influence the currents, the ebb and flow of materialism. It would be well to determine how actual materialism has its exclusive origin and its new sources in the bowels of modern science; what new support it has met with in recent scientific discoveries, and what are the value and bearing of those discoveries.
In beholding the tumult which the partisans of the experimental method in philosophy create, the enthusiasm which they show, and the passionate defence of their theory, one would suppose they had made a new conquest of the human mind, and made some astounding discovery. Yet we know what the exact value of the experimental method is. Why, then, so much nervous excitement over it? Yet the excitement is probably only artificial; still it has an aim. The experimental method is clamorously extolled for the purpose of covering with its authority sophisms destructive of all philosophy and of all science. This method is a great flag under which all causes that are not science are sheltered. M. Caro, in his excellent book, Materialism and Science, has endeavored to dispel all confusion on this subject, and to re-establish facts and the truth. Positivism—which must not be confounded with positive science—tries to unite its destiny with that of the experimental method; calling itself the necessary fruit of the latter, the systematized result of a method which subjects all visible nature to man. Positivism concludes from the premises that it has the same certainty as the experimental method.
M. Caro, with a strong hand, upsets all such pretensions. He demonstrates that, if positivism has skilfully stolen the name and some of the processes of positive science, the experimental school, to which the positive sciences owe so much, owes nothing to positivism. Taking for guide, in the study of the experimental method, one of the savants who understands it best, and who, after practising it successfully, has exposed its precepts with incomparable authority, M. Caro proves that this method is not bound by the tyranny of positivism. "Nothing is less evident to my eyes," he writes, "than the agreement of M. Cl. Bernard's manner of thinking with certain essential principles of positivism. His independence is clearly manifested especially in regard to two points: Firstly, in opposition to the spirit of the positive doctrine, he gives place to the idea a priori in the constitution of science. Secondly, contrary to one of the most decided dogmas of the positivist school, he leaves a great many open questions, and thus allows his readers to revert to metaphysical conceptions for their solution."
In the thought of M. Cl. Bernard, the a priori element loses all absolute sense and becomes a purely relative and accidental fact. It has no longer any of those eternal forms of the understanding, of those necessary conceptions through the aid of which the human mind sees and judges the things of nature, contingent facts, and phenomena which happen before our eyes. It is not that power, obscure yet admirable reflection of the divine power, which enables us to apprehend the immutable relations of things, and establishes science by compelling us, by an irresistible attraction, to seek in their cause the reason of phenomena. No; M. Cl. Bernard does not rise directly to that alliance of the infinite and finite, of cause and effect, which takes place in the active depths of the human mind. To this great experimentalist the idea a priori is revealed only in face of experience; it is an instinct, a sudden illumination which strikes and seizes the mind, when the senses act and perceive, as impassible and mute witnesses. "Its apparition is entirely spontaneous and individual. It is a particular sentiment, a quid proprium, which constitutes the originality, the invention, and genius of every man. It happens that a fact—that an observation—remains for a long time before the eyes of a savant without inspiring him with anything, when suddenly a ray of light flashes on him. The new idea appears then with the rapidity of lightning, as a sort of sudden revelation." This flash, this ray of light, is well known to medical tradition, and often called tact, sense, and medical skill. These expressions will exist notwithstanding the denials of a narrow science, which thinks to ennoble itself by suppressing art. There are physicians who, in face of the obscure manifestations of a disease, perceive, with a rapid and sure intuition, the hidden relations of the malady, its nature buried in the living depths of the organization, its future tendencies and probable solutions. This intuition has nothing mysterious in it, and is not the play of a capricious fancy; it is the flash of light, the new idea, the sudden revelation, of which M. Cl. Bernard, the learned savant and most severe of experimentalists, writes. This, then, is what M. Cl. Bernard calls the idea a priori; certainly he does not pretend nor think that he is writing metaphysics. Nevertheless, when we attentively consider it, is not this idea a priori a species of prolongation or consequence of the necessary ideas, the true ideas a priori, of the human mind? Is not the idea a priori a perception of a cause through its effects; at one time the perception of a contingent and particular cause; and again the perception of a cause in itself—of the supreme, necessary, and infinite cause? Does not M. Cl. Bernard himself seem to admit metaphysical conceptions, when, after considering the spontaneity of the intellect under a general aspect, he writes as follows, "It may be said that we have in the mind the intuition or sentiment of the laws of nature, but we do not know their form"?
The experimental school has not, however, determined this point of doctrine; it has so confusedly felt and expressed it that the positivist school could not avoid refuting those rather vague aspirations, and admit, without denying its own principles, those soarings of the understanding in presence of facts. But the experimental school, of which M. Cl. Bernard is the interpreter, puts itself in opposition to positivism. He allows those high truths which cannot be demonstrated by sensible phenomena to have some place in science. He tells us that true science suppresses nothing, but always seeks and considers, without being troubled, those things which it does not understand. "Deny those things," says M. Cl. Bernard, "and you do not suppress them; you shut your eyes and imagine that there is no light." Positivism could not be more formally condemned by positive science.
Will it be pretended that, although the experimental school accepts the order of metaphysical truths, it rejects, them disdainfully when there is question of the natural sciences; and that thus rejected by science they cannot be counted among the serious knowledge of humanity? Nothing could be more unjust than such a condemnation; for nothing proves that there is not another knowledge besides that of experience. M. Cl. Bernard discovers, even in the order of biological truths, capital truths which are not at all experimental, susceptible of a real determinism, to use the expression of which he is so fond. When he tries to define life by using a word which expresses exactly the idea, he calls it creation. In every living germ he admits a creating idea, which is developed by organization, and is derived neither from chemistry nor physical nature. In fine, the experimental school, such as tradition presents it to us and its ablest expounders teach it, must not be confounded with positivism, which tries to steal its name and flag.
The experimental school, healthy and fruitful, gives to metaphysical truths their legitimate influence, their superior and imperishable sight, and does not suppress them by a violent and arbitrary decision. Especially, it does not resolve difficulties by denying all other causes and activity than what is purely material. The experimental school is not fatally materialism.