On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical

by William Whewell

For the physical sciences—the sciences of observation and speculation—the progress of our exact and scientific knowledge, as I have repeatedly said, consists in reducing the objects and events of the universe to a conformity with Ideas which we have in our own minds:—the Ideas, for instance, of Space, Force, Substance, and the like. In this sense, the intellectual progress of men consists in the Idealization of Facts.

2. In moral subjects, on the other hand, where man has not merely to observe and speculate, but also to act;—where he does not passively leave the facts and events of the world such as they are, but tries actively to alter them and to improve the existing state of things, his progress consists in doing this. He makes a moral advance when he succeeds in doing what he thus attempts:—when he really improves the state of things with which he has to do by removing evil and producing good:—when he makes the state of things, namely, the relations between him and other persons, his acts and their acts, conform more and more to Ideas which he has in his own mind:—namely, to the Ideas of Justice, Benevolence, and the like. His moral progress thus consists in the realization of Ideas.

And thus we are led to the Aphorism, as we may call it, that Man's Intellectual Progress consists in the Idealization of Facts, and his Moral Progress consists in the Realization of Ideas.

3. But further, though that progress of science which consists in the idealization of facts may be carried through several stages, and indeed, in the history of science, has been carried through many stages, yet it is, and always must be, a progress exceedingly imperfect and incomplete, when compared with the completeness to which its nature points. Only a few sciences have made much progress; none are complete; most have advanced only a step or two. In none have we reduced all the Facts to Ideas. In all or almost all the unreduced Facts are far more numerous and extensive than those which have been reduced. The general mass of the facts of the universe are mere facts, unsubdued to the rule of science. The Facts are not Idealized. The intellectual progress is miserably scanty and imperfect, and would be so, even if it were carried much further than it is carried. How can we hope that it will ever approach to completeness?

4. And in like manner, the moral progress of man is still more miserably scanty and incomplete. In how small a degree has he in this sense realized his Ideas! In how small a degree has he carried into real effect, and embodied in the relations of society, in his own acts and in those of others with whom he is concerned, the Ideas of Justice and Benevolence and the like! How far from a complete realization of such moral Ideas are the acts of the best men, and the relations of the best forms of society! How far from perfection in these respects is man! and how certain it is that he will always be very far from perfection! Far below even such perfection as he can conceive, he will always be in his acts and feelings. The moral progress of man, of each man, and of each society, is, as I have said, miserably scanty and incomplete; and when regarded as the realization of his moral Ideas, its scantiness and incompleteness become still more manifest than before.

Hence we are led to another Aphorism:—that man's progress in the realization of Moral Ideas, and his progress in the Scientific idealization of Facts, are, and always will be, exceedingly scanty and incomplete.

5. But there is another aspect of Ideas, both physical and moral, in which this scantiness and incompleteness vanish. In the Divine Mind, all the physical Ideas are entertained with complete fulness and luminousness; and it is because they are so entertained in the Divine Mind, and it is because the universe is constituted and framed upon them, that we find them verified in every part of the universe, whenever we make our observation of facts and deduce their laws.

In like manner the Moral Ideas exist in the Divine Mind in complete fulness and luminousness; and we are naturally led to believe and expect that they must be exemplified in the moral universe, as completely and universally as the physical laws are exemplified in the physical universe. Is this so? or under what conditions can we conceive this to be?

6. In answering this question, we must consider how far the moral, still more even than the physical Ideas of the Divine Mind, are elevated above our human Ideas; but yet not so far as to have no resemblance to our corresponding human Ideas; for if this were so, we could not reason about them at all.

In speaking of man's moral Ideas, Benevolence, Justice, and the like, we speak of them as belonging to man's Soul, rather than to his Mind, which we have commonly spoken of as the seat of his physical Ideas. A distinction is thus often made between the intellectual and the moral faculties of man; but on this distinction we here lay no stress. We may speak of man's Mind and Soul, meaning that part of his being in which are all his Ideas, intellectual and moral.