Now let us try to consider accurately what Dr. Tyndall's statement means. Knowledge of Nature, he says, associates him with Nature. It withdraws him from 'the hampering details of earth,' and enables the individual human being to have communion with a something that is beyond humanity. But what is communion? It is a word with no meaning at all save as referring to conscious beings. There could be no communion between two corpses; nor, again, between a corpse and a living man. Dr. Tyndall, for instance, could have no communion with a dead canary. Communion implies the existence on both sides of a common something. Now what is there in common between Dr. Tyndall and the starry heavens, or that 'power' of which the starry heavens are the embodiment? Dr. Tyndall expressly says that he not only does not know what there is in common, but that he 'dare' not even say that, as conscious beings, they two have anything in common at all.[26] The only things he can know about the power in question are that it is vast, and that it is uniform; but a contemplation of these qualities by themselves, must tend rather to produce in him a sense of separation from it than of union with it. United with it, in one sense, he of course is; he is a fraction of the sum of things, and everything, in a certain way, is dependent upon everything else. But in this union there is nothing special. Its existence is an obvious fact, common to all men, whether they dwell upon it or no: and though by a knowledge of Nature we may grow to realise it more keenly, it is impossible to make the union in the least degree closer, or to turn it into anything that can be in any way called a communion. Indeed, for the positivists to talk about communion or association with Nature is about as rational as to talk about communion or association with a steam-engine. The starry skies at night are doubtless an imposing spectacle; but man, on positive principles, can be no more raised by watching them than a commercial traveller can by watching a duke—probably far less: for if the duke were well behaved, the commercial traveller might perhaps learn some manners from him; but there is nothing in the panorama of the universe that can in any way be any model for the positivist. There are but two respects in which he can compare himself to the rest of nature—firstly, as a revealed force; and, secondly, as a force that works by law. But the forces that are revealed by the stars, for instance, are vast, and the force revealed in himself is small; and he, as he considers, is a self-determining agent, and the stars are not. There are but two points of comparison between the two; and in these two points they are contrasts, and not likenesses. It is true, indeed, as I said just now, that a sense of awe and of hushed solemnity is, as a fact, born in us at the spectacle of the starry heavens—world upon luminous world shining and quivering silently; it is true, too, that a spontaneous feeling connects such a sense somehow with our deepest moral being. But this, on positive principles, must be feeling only. It means absolutely nothing: it can have no objective fact that corresponds to it. It is an illusion, a pathetic fallacy. And to say that the heavens with their stars declare to us anything high or holy, is no more rational than to say that Brighton does, which itself, seen at night from the sea, is a long braid of stars descended upon the wide horizon. All that the study of nature, all that the love of truth, can do for the positivist is not to guide him to any communion with a vaster power, but to show him that no such communion is possible. His devotion to truth, if it mean anything—and the language he often uses about it betrays this—let us know the worst, not let us find out the best:—a wish which is neither more nor less noble than the wish to sit down at once in a slop upon the floor rather than sustain oneself any longer above it on a chair that is discovered to be rickety.
Here then again, in this last resource of positivism we have religion embodied as a yet more important element than in any of the others; and when this element is driven out of it, it collapses yet more hopelessly than they do. By the whole positive system we are bound to human life. There is no mystical machinery by which we can rise above it. It is by its own isolated worth that this life must stand or fall.
And what, let us again ask, will this worth, be? The question is of course, as I have said, too vague to admit of more than a general answer, but a general answer, as I have said also, may be given confidently enough. Man when fully imbued with the positive view of himself, will inevitably be an animal of far fewer capacities than he at present is. He will not be able to suffer so much; but also he will not be able to enjoy so much. Surround him, in imagination, with the most favourable circumstances; let social progress have been carried to the utmost perfection; and let him have access to every happiness of which we can conceive him capable. It is impossible even thus to conceive of life as a very valuable possession to him. It would at any rate be far less valuable than it is to many men now, under outer circumstances that are far less favourable. The goal to which a purely human progress is capable of conducting us, is thus no vague condition of glory and felicity, in which men shall develop new and ampler powers. It is a condition in which, the keenest life attainable has continually been far surpassed already, without anything having been arrived at that in itself seemed of surpassing value.
[23] 'Hippolyta.—This is the silliest stuff I ever heard. Theseus.—The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst no worse, if imagination amend them. Hippolyta.—It must be your imagination then, not theirs.'—Midsummer's Night's Dream, Act V.
'Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.'—Prologue to Henry V.
[24] Seneca says of virtue, 'Non quia delectat placet, sed quia placet delectat.' Of vice in the same way we may say, 'Non quia delectat pudet, sed quia pudet delectat.'
[25] It will be of course recollected that in this abstraction of the moral sense, we have to abstract it from the characters as well as ourselves.
[26] 'When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the universe an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, use the pronoun "He" regarding it. I dare not call it a "Mind." I refuse even to call it a "Cause." Its mystery overshadows me; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which my neighbours try to make it fit, simply distort and desecrate it.'—Dr. Tyndall, 'Materialism and its Opponents.'