CHAPTER V.
RECENT PHASES OF SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM.
'Wonder is the basis of worship. That progress of science which is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdröckh, much as he otherwise venerates those two latter processes.'—Sartor Resartus.
I.
By the train of thought pursued in the last chapter, we were led to the conclusion, not, indeed, that matter has no existence, but that its nature or constitution is altogether different from what is commonly supposed. The difference thus discovered does not, however, imply any corresponding difference with respect to the properties—sensible properties, as they are commonly called—whereby matter affects the senses. Equally, whether matter be, in all and each of its various species, inanimate, inert, passive substance, or a combination of self-acting forces—equally whether it be the author or merely the subject of whatever activity it manifests, that activity is equally manifested in certain sequences which are as unvarying as if they were prescribed by inexorable and irresistible laws, and which, indeed, by a convenient, though exceedingly treacherous metaphor, are usually styled laws—laws of Nature when spoken of collectively, laws of attraction, repulsion, gravitation, motion, heat, light, and the like, when separately referred to. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, however closely we pry, into whatever depths of infinity we peer, we observe the most perfect harmony between structure and law, law moulding structure and structure utilising law. Afar off we descry systems upon systems, solar and sidereal, like sand upon the sea-shore for multitude, and every individual orb thereof rotating or revolving in strictest accordance with inflexible mathematical principles, and evidently owing to the previous influence of those same principles its characteristic configuration. Near at hand we discern organic forms innumerable, each with its own special arrangement of component parts admirably apt for the performance in ordinary circumstances of special functions, admirably, as circumstances change, accommodating itself by corresponding changes for continuing the same or undertaking other and equally appropriate functions, nor merely performing them all in despite of the restraints imposed by law, but availing itself of those very restraints as means and aids for their performance. Where so much aptness is, adaptation surely must have been: where arrangement is so plainly conducive to ends, the ends must surely have been foreseen, and the arrangement effected by design and according to preconceived plan. And there cannot have been design without a designer or designers: the plan cannot but have had its author or authors: nor could the plan have been executed without an artificer or artificers. Author or authors, too, artificer or artificers, be the same singular or plural, must have possessed, individually or collectively, not less of wisdom, power, and goodness than are displayed by the finished work. Now of each of these attributes, the amount to which the aspect of the universe bears witness, albeit not infinite, inasmuch as the universe is not without imperfections, is yet indefinite; as plainly without measure as the universe is without bounds. Wherefore, not only must the universe have had an author or authors, an artificer or artificers, but his or their wisdom, power, and goodness, must, whether infinite or not, have been at least illimitable.
Such is the argument from design, and such, to my thinking, the only absolute certainties legitimately deducible from it; and although these, in comparison with the numerous probabilities ordinarily associated with them, may appear somewhat meagre, yet are they intrinsically of exceeding moment. They constitute the only basis on which any rational religion, any that appeals to the intellect as well as to the feelings, can rest securely. Whoever accepts them, by whatever other name he prefer to call himself, is essentially a theist. He only who denies or ignores them can justly be stigmatised as an atheist. Yet, although an inquiry into their soundness is thus plainly second in interest to none, it is not that in which I propose to engage at present, unless indirectly. My immediate concern is not with the strength of theism, but with the weakness of atheism, and the hollowness of the latter's dialectical pretensions. What in every form of piety is most provocative of philosophic scorn, is its forwardness of faith, its eagerness of acquiescence; but to this sort of reproach I expect to be able to show that none are more obnoxious than those very philosophers by whom it is most freely cast. That nothing is more unphilosophical than uncompromising irreligion, nothing more credulous than its credulity, no other beliefs more monstrous than those by which it strives to fill up the void created by its own unbelief: this is my present thesis, and this I propound, not unaware what formidable antagonists I am thereby challenging, but not without something of the same confidence, and something withal of the same ground for it, as David had when, in equal strait, exclaiming, 'The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me?'
Let us at the outset consider what denial of plan in the structure of the universe implies, and note, among other things signified, the following. The exact conformity on matter's part to Nature's laws, everywhere observable, and even more striking perhaps in minute details than in grandiose generalities, is purely accidental. The laws were not enacted in order to be obeyed; matter's various shapes were not given to or assumed by it in order that its obedience might serve any particular purpose. All appearances of ingenious contrivance in the collocation of elementary particles, or in the co-operation of elementary forces, are mere appearances. It was not designed that under the influence of the laws of motion, chaos should resolve itself into systems, and time divide itself into years and seasons and days and nights. It is quite unintentionally that the countless varieties of mechanism appertaining to different vegetable and animal fabrics have been rendered fit for performing those special processes which, by reason in each case of some special arrangement of parts, they actually do perform with such marvellous precision. It is a total mistake to suppose that the eye was meant for seeing, or the ear for hearing, or the heart for initiating and regulating the circulation of the blood, or nervous ramifications for receiving and disseminating sensible impressions. These various organs have been discovered to be useful, and are used accordingly; but they were not intended to be so used, or contrived with any such view, or, indeed, contrived at all. The forces, whatever they be, and whether identical with or totally distinct from itself, whereby matter, on one supposition, acts, and, on the other, is acted upon, and by whose operation the universe and all its contents have been fashioned and are sustained, are in either case perfectly heedless and reckless forces, operating always without the slightest reference to result.
Language like this was much in vogue among the French encyclopædists of the last century. By opposing it, even Voltaire incurred the reputation of bigotry, and Hume probably had to listen to a good deal of it on that memorable occasion when, dining with Baron D'Holbach, and intimating to his host his disbelief in the existence of atheists, he was informed by way of reply that he was actually at table with seventeen members of the sect.[36] That in England, too, it was a good deal talked at about the same and a somewhat later period, may be inferred from the fact that against its teaching one of Paley's most celebrated treatises was expressly directed. Doctrine which was once so fashionable, and which even now cannot be said to be obsolete, was not, of course, without some show of reason to support it, and somewhat in this wise the chief arguments in its behalf were usually marshalled:—In order to account for actual result, there is no need to imagine previous purpose. All things that exist, all events that occur, must bear to each other some relations in situation and time, which relations are not less likely to be orderly than disorderly, or, rather, indeed, are more likely to be the former than the latter. For necessarily the rarer rises above the denser; the stronger compels the weaker; that which is pushed hardest runs fastest. And even though, among organic forms, orderly and disorderly had been, by the purely fortuitous concurrence of atoms, originally produced in equal numbers, the former would be sure in the course of ages to become the more numerous, and that in proportion to the orderliness of their composition, and to their consequent suitableness for the reception and maintenance of organic life, by which they in turn would be maintained and multiplied, while less aptly organised forms, succumbing in the struggle for existence, perished and vanished away. Thus everything arranges itself—everything, however, being here another name for Nature, which alone does or can exist, which is all and does all; yet, though doing all things in general, does whatever it does quite unintelligently, and without the least desire of doing any one thing in particular more than another.
Though speaking of this as a show of reasoning, I would by no means be understood to consider it as merely a show. On the contrary, I must admit that it contains a modicum of reality sufficient, in my opinion, to secure the position taken up from being utterly overthrown by any direct attack not followed up by reference to a certain palpable absurdity which we shall presently perceive to be inseparably connected with the position. To so much of real reasoning as we have before us, let then all due respect be shown. No doubt all existences must necessarily dispose themselves or be disposed somehow. No doubt all occurrences must succeed each other somehow. No doubt, either, that if the disposing or otherwise originating forces operated quite regardlessly of plan, no one disposition or succession would be a whit less possible than any other—the most symmetric or evenly graduated than the most disjointed or confused. Now although, since exertion is utterly inconceivable without volition, and since volition is equally inconceivable without consciousness, it must be impossible for any forces ever to exert themselves altogether unintentionally, it is yet perfectly possible for their exertion to have no ulterior intention beyond that of gratifying an unprospective will. This is all that one fidgetting about, as the phrase is, intends, when he has no special motive for fidgetting in any particular direction more than in any other, and similarly it may by possibility be the mere fidgettiness of Nature that gives rise to all natural phenomena. Nature, indeed, cannot, any more than any other force or combination of forces, be utterly destitute of intelligence, but its intelligence may not inconceivably be of no higher sort than that which the sensitive plant exhibits or mimics. Nature cannot exert itself quite unconsciously, nor consequently quite unintentionally, but its exertions, though not unintended, may possibly not be intended for any result. It must be admitted, then, that, so far, no reason has appeared why the force or forces by which the universe was originally moulded, may not, as contended, have been perfectly heedless and reckless; may not, without the least premeditation or the slightest view to any ulterior object, have produced certain phenomena in those particular sequences to which the name of natural laws has been given; and may not, with the same total absence of purpose, have adopted certain other courses of action which, very fortunately, though quite undesignedly, have resulted in the production of endless varieties of mechanism, most of them of marvellously intricate and complex structure, and all and each of them of structure marvellously suitable for performing, in co-operation with Nature's laws, functions of an utility as varied as their structure. And what any forces have been equal to do once, those same forces, if remaining unimpaired, must be equal to repeat times without number. Although, if you found your opponent at dice invariably throwing double-sixes, you might feel confident that his dice were loaded, your confidence, unless otherwise corroborated, would not amount to entire certainty. With unloaded dice there would be nothing strange in double-six being thrown once; but, if once, why not twice running? and if twice, why not three, four, or a million times running, provided that the thrower's strength held out so long? No one of the separate throws, from the first to the millionth, would be attended with more difficulty than any other. Whoever made the first might with no greater effort make any one, and therefore every one, of the rest. In the fact of his having commenced the series there would be proof of the possibility of his completing it. In like manner, if it be not inconceivable that Nature's forces may once, by a single unpremeditated exertion, have bestowed on the universe its actual constitution, it is not inconceivable that by continual repetition of similarly unpremeditated exertions, they may have ever since maintained that constitution. In this supposition there is nothing patently absurd. It is perfectly legitimate to suppose that any event or combination of events, not demonstrably impossible, may have occurred in the absence of complete certainty that they have not occurred. It may not be illegitimate, therefore, to suppose that all phenomena of the description termed physical, and all repeated sequences of such phenomena, may have occurred, not causally, but casually—that it may have been a fortuitous concourse of atoms which originally established the existing economy of the universe, and an uninterrupted succession of similar fortuitous concourses that has ever since maintained that economy. That supposition, I repeat, involves no absolute absurdity. What however is, if not absurd, at any rate egregiously unscientific and most unphilosophically credulous, is to treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality; for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between organic structure and natural law was not designedly established. In considering this point, it will be convenient to take law first.