To philosophical Theism the coarser Materialism can bring no lasting danger. It ignores too much, and assumes too much; and treats with a too manifest disdain the fundamental basis of our reasoning faculties.
It has many brilliant exponents; but foremost amongst them is Haeckel of Jena, a man of large scientific attainments, a biologist of the highest repute, and possessed of the keenest acumen. But these are not the only, nor the essential factors, of a philosophic mind.
He has no hesitancy, no scruple. A Creator for him is a conception for scorn, and he pours unceasing contempt upon the thought that he or any of us are more than material organisms, alive for our little day and then dead for ever. There is a future only for the race. The universe is declared to be without purpose; it is moving matter, which, by self-operation through immeasurable duration, has issued in laws that exist without reason, and devoid of an originator, act, with the deafness of the rock and the unconsciousness of the sea; producing in the realm of life the weaker and the stronger, but only for that unceasing war in which the stronger win.
That for man there is nothing nobler, nothing higher, than to study the grinding laws which compel him; which laws are the summaries of natural methods which began in nothing, and have been for ever vacant of thought or purpose.
We need have no anxiety concerning the influence of such a scheme; from its own incoherence it enfolds its intellectual death-warrant in its very form.
But the philosophy of Spencer is of another order. It is a philosophy that scorns the idealism of Berkeley, and that with the fervour of conviction, indignantly repudiates ‘Materialism.’ He contends for the equal and independent reality of self and not-self, of subject and object, of mind and matter. He affirms that the ‘co-existence of subject and object is a deliverance of consciousness.... and is a truth transcending all others in certainty.’[4] Yet, in the progress of the philosophy, we discover that from matter in motion, and nothing else, the whole universe is supposed to arise; life emerges; and mind, in its most transcendent forms comes forth. And it is this fallacy pervading the philosophy that is the essence of its power. Repudiating ‘Materialism’ as philosophically untenable, it yet exists as a philosophy to endeavour to show that mind is an outcome of matter.
Look at the problem it sets for solution. ‘Philosophy,’ says Spencer, ‘is completely unified knowledge;’ and adds, ‘... a philosophy stands self-convicted of inadequacy, if it does not formulate the whole series of changes passed through by every existence.... If it begins its explanations with existences that already have concrete forms ... then manifestly they had preceding histories ... of which no account is given. And as such preceding ... histories are subjects of possible knowledge, a philosophy which says nothing about them falls short of the required unification.’[5]
Then, on the very terms of the philosophy, we are to contemplate ‘the beginning’ with absolutely nothing anterior or unaccounted for. There must be no ‘concrete forms,’ no ‘preceding histories,’ to be encountered.
Now observe, it is clearly recognised in this philosophy that the ultimate nature of all that constitutes the universe is infinitely beyond the reach of the human mind; that in their final nature time, space, matter, motion, rest, the transfer of motion, the exercise of force, the nature and operation of consciousness and thought, are all equally, that is, infinitely, inscrutable. Knowledge is inexorably limited to, and co-extensive with, phenomena; yet from these phenomena alone we are to obtain exhaustive accounts of their own origin and existence, in spite of the admitted inscrutable mysteries of which they are the manifestations.
If we can obtain so complete a knowledge of matter and motion, by a scientific study of them, as will enable us, with that knowledge alone, to explain their origin and account for the sequences they involve, then there is no more mystery. There are no ‘ultimates’ to explain. Our knowledge covers all that is, in space and time. The ‘Absolute’ itself is a meaningless superfluity, and the mysterious ‘power’ that is philosophically invoked can have no true place, for all is explicable without it.