Religion, as the foregoing analysis has shown, puts forward as its cardinal truth the conception of a power which is neither perceptible by the senses nor definable by the intellect. For sensible perception requires a material object and a material organ; and intellectual definition requires an object which can be compared with other objects that are like it, discriminated from others that are unlike it, and classified according to that likeness and that unlikeness. In either case therefore the object must be a phenomenon having its place among phenomena, whether those of the sensible or those of the intelligible sphere. But if the power accepted by religion be neither perceptible nor definable, are we obliged to believe in the existence of so abstract an entity at all, or may we reject it as a figment of the human brain?
Perhaps we shall best be able to discover whether such a belief is necessary or not by endeavoring to do without it, and to frame a consistent conception of the universe from which it is entirely excluded.
There are various ways in which such a conception might be attempted. We may regard the world from the platform of Realism or from that of Idealism, and the nature of our Realism or of our Idealism may vary with the special school of thought to which we may belong. Realism in the first instance admits of two main subdivisions: into Common, or as Mr. Spencer calls it, Crude Realism, and into Metaphysical Realism; and these two forms of it require separate treatment.
Common Realism is the primitive opinion of uneducated and of unreflecting persons, and is in fact simply the absence of any genuine opinion at all. They, I imagine, regard the external objects by which they are surrounded as so many actual entities, not only having an independent existence of their own, but an existence like that which they possess in our consciousness. Thus, an egg they would take to be in reality a white, brittle, hard thing on the outside, having a certain shape, size, and weight, and containing inside the shell a quantity of soft whitish and yellowish substance with a given taste. These qualities, not excepting the taste, taken along with any other qualities that may be disclosed by more careful inquiry, they would conceive to constitute the whole of the egg. It is the same with other objects. What we perceive by our senses is thought by them to be a copy of the real things as they exist in nature, much as the retina of the eye, regarded from without, is seen to contain a copy in miniature of the surrounding scene. Common Realism, however, while it tacitly takes for granted an infinite number of separate entities, cannot account either for the origin of those entities or for their nature. Nor has it any account to give of the origin of life, for material things are in this system utterly destitute of life, and indeed opposed to it. They are precisely what our senses inform us of, and nothing more. Hence they furnish no answers to the questions: How did this world come into being, and how did it reach its present shape? How do men come to exist in it; for matter contains no vitality and no power of infusing vitality into itself? Therefore it is that the adherents of Common Realism are invariably driven back upon a superior being, whom they term a Creator, and who supplies the motive impulse which is wanting in their world.
Metaphysical Realism professes to be the improvement of scholars upon the unsifted notions of the vulgar. It is the system to which, in its earlier and cruder form, Berkeley a century ago gave what once appeared to be its death-blow, but what may perhaps turn out to have been a wound sufficiently severe to cause prolonged insensibility, but not absolute extinction. It is not, however, with the purpose of completing the work of destruction, but of examining whether it affords a possible escape from the necessity of the religious postulate, that I refer to it here. Metaphysical Realists perceived clearly enough that the apparent qualities of sensible objects could not be the objects themselves. Even if they did not recognize this with regard to all the apparent qualities, they did so with regard to those termed "secondary," such as taste, smell, and color. Later representatives of the school, such as Kant, extended the process by which this conclusion was reached to all apparent qualities, whatsoever. Below the apparent qualities, however, these thinkers assumed a substance, "substantia," in which they inhered, and by which they were bound together, so as to constitute the object. And this substance—something unperceived underlying the qualities perceived—was their notion of matter. Observe now the position we have arrived at. No sooner does Realism abandon the untenable hypothesis that the qualities of the object are the object itself, than it is driven upon the assumption of an utterly unknowable and inconceivable entity; a matter which is not perceptible by any of our senses, which is below, or in addition to, phenomena concerning which we can predicate nothing, and whose relation to the qualities it is supposed to support we cannot understand. But the necessity of some such assumption is the very assertion implied in all forms of religious faith. Realism, then, does not escape the pressure of this necessity, even though the entity it assumes is not precisely of the same character.
But is the difference in its character one that tells in favor of this variety of Realism, or in favor of religion? Assuredly substance, or matter, imagined as the bond between apparent qualities, is not an easier, simpler, or more intelligible conception than that of a universal power as the origin, source, or objective side of all physical phenomena. Granting even that the latter conception cannot be represented to the mind, a representation of the former is equally impossible. But does it explain the facts better? Let us see. In the first place, we must demand an accurate definition of what this supposed matter is. Is it passive, inanimate, incapable of independent action, and unable to develop out of itself the living creatures which in some way have come to exist? If so, we plainly require another entity in addition to matter, both to account for the active forces of our universe, and to originate the phenomenon of life. For if the qualities of body need a substratum, so also do those of mind. If it be held that the power from which mind emanates be the same as that which is evinced in so-called physical forces, then we have two distinct, if not independent, substances, beings, or whatever we may prefer to call them: matter, pervading material objects in their statical condition, and force or life, pervading both consciousness and material objects in their dynamical condition. Or if the first be regarded as sufficient to account for motion as well as matter, then we have still two powers, one subsisting throughout the physical, the other throughout the mental world. How are these two substances related to one another? Is the substance of mind supreme, governing its material colleague? or is that of matter at the head of affairs, and that of mind subordinate? or are they equal and coördinate authorities, as in the Gnostic philosophy? Suppose we endeavor to elude these difficulties by the assertion that there is nothing else but the unperceivable substratum supporting material objects, and that in this all modes of existence take their rise, we are met by further and still more troublesome questions. For if, under the manifestations of this substance we include consciousness, then the distinction between matter and mind has vanished, and in calling this substance matter we are simply giving it an unmeaning name. In fact, it is a substance supporting not only the qualities of bodies, but also the chemical, electric, molar, molecular, and other forces throughout the universe, as well as sensation, thought, and emotion. Matter in short does everything which deity can be required to do; it originates motion; it produces living creatures; it feels; it thinks; it lives. Thus we have but stumbled upon God in an unexpected quarter. Suppose, however, that we take what is in this system the easier and more natural hypothesis of a substance of matter, a substance of mind, and a still more hidden power superior to both, and from which both are derived, then we have but abandoned the perplexing questions raised by metaphysical Realism to take refuge in the religious position from which it seemed to offer a plausible deliverance.
Does Idealism help us? Idealism is of several forms. That represented by Berkeley need not occupy us here, for Berkeley not only admitted, but expressly asserted, the existence of an all-comprehending Power, and without this his philosophy would have appeared to himself unmeaning and incomprehensible. Nor need we stop to examine that more recent species of Idealism, as I hold it to be, which its illustrious author, Mr. Herbert Spencer, has christened Transfigured Realism. Whatever differences may exist between Spencer and Berkeley—and I believe them to be more apparent than real—they are at one in the cardinal doctrine that sensible phenomena are but the varied manifestations of this ultimate Power. All such Idealism as this is in harmony with religion. But there are two forms which seem to be at variance with it, one of which I will term Moderate, and the other Extreme Idealism.
Moderate Idealism agrees with Berkeley in dismissing to the limbo of extinct metaphysical creatures the substance supposed to lurk beneath the apparent qualities of bodies. It holds that there is no such substance, and that these qualities, and therefore bodies themselves, exist only in consciousness. But it differs from Berkeley in omitting to provide any source whatever, external to ourselves, from which these bodies can be derived. Not only are they in their phenomenal aspect mere states of our own consciousness, but they have no other aspect than the phenomenal one, and are in themselves nothing but phenomena. Rather inconsistently, this school of Idealism does not push its reasoning to its natural results, but concedes to other human beings something more than a merely phenomenal existence. Nothing exists but states of consciousness; but those peculiar states of my consciousness which I term men and women may be shown, by careful reasoning, to possess (in all probability) an existence of their own, even apart from my seeing, hearing, or feeling them. The process by which we reach this conclusion "is exactly parallel to that by which Newton proved that the force which keeps the planets in their orbits is identical with that by which an apple falls to the ground."[98]
Those peculiar modifications of color, and that special mode of filling up empty space which I term "my friend," do indeed seem, if we push matters to an extreme, to come into existence only when he enters my room, and to cease to exist the moment he quits it. If he has any further vitality, it is only in the shape of that state of consciousness which is known as recollection. But Moderate Idealism escapes from this consequence, on the ground that modifications of body and outward actions, since they are connected with feelings in ourselves, must be connected with feelings also in the case of those other phenomena which we term human beings, and perhaps in the case of those we term animals.[99] But if this be so, how did so extraordinary a fact as that of consciousness arise? Ex hypothesi, there was nothing before it. Did it then suddenly spring into being, full-grown like Minerva, but, unlike Minerva, with no head of Jupiter to spring from? Or was it a gradual growth, and if so, from what origin? Go back as far as you will, you can find nothing but consciousness, and that the consciousness of limited beings (either men or animals); and it is no less difficult to conceive the beginning, from nothing at all, of the least atom of conscious life, than to conceive that of the profoundest philosopher. Observe, there is no world of any kind, and in this no-world (the contradiction is unavoidable) there suddenly arises, from no antecedent, a consciousness of external objects which are no-objects. Geology upon this theory is a myth; so is that branch of astronomy which treats of the formation of our planetary system from nebular matter. Stars, suns, planets, and crust of the earth only arose when they were perceived, and will cease to be when there is no living creature to perceive them any longer. Since, however, conclusions like these are in reality unthinkable, whatever efforts metaphysicians may make to think them, Moderate Idealism must of necessity complete its fabric by the admission of a Power from which both consciousness and the objects of consciousness have taken their rise. Should it persist in denying anything but a mental reality to the objects of consciousness, it must still suppose an unknown source from which consciousness itself has been derived; otherwise it will entangle itself in two unthinkable propositions. First, that before men (or animals) existed there was absolute nothingness, an idea which we cannot frame; secondly, that where there was nothing at one moment there was the next moment something, a process which we cannot realize without supposing a time antecedent to that something, and which we may not, without the contradiction of introducing time in the midst of nothingness, realize by supposing a time antecedent to that something.