UC-NRLF OF THE UNIVERSITY A STUDY OF ORIGINS; OR, THE PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE, OF BEING, AND OF DUTY. BY E. DE/PRESSENS6, D.D. AUTHOR OF 'JESUS CHRIST: HIS TIMES, LIFE, AND WORK," "THE EARLY YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY," ETC. SECOND EDITION. Jforh : JAMES POTT & CO., 12 ASTOR PLACE. 1884. PREFACE. IT is due to my readers that I should explain how I was led to enter on the discussion of the philosophical and scientific questions of the day. At the time when I was preparing the revision of my History of the first three Centuries of the Church, I was struck, more than I had ever been before, with the increasing vehemence of the attacks made, not only on Christian theism, but on the very foundations of spiritual religion. If we are to believe the men who come forward as the recognised organs of the scientific world, we must conclude that all that has been affirmed by the disciples of the Gospel and the philosophers who believe in a God, in the soul, in a future life, in the morality of duty, is but an empty dream. Our aspirations after a higher world are, to use the figure of one of this school, but as dead leaves whirled aloft into the air, which fall back upon the hand that flung them. Everything is to be reduced to energy, ever transmuted yet ever the same. That which we take to be thought and consciousness is nothing more than a combination of associated sensations. Al- though these oracular assertions did not for one moment b vi PREFACE. shake my own conviction of the reality of the moral and divine absolute, because that conviction is based, not only upon my own experience, but upon a supreme and indisputable necessity of thought, I yet felt desirous to gauge the true position of things and of minds in relation to things. It became evident to me that the victory so loudly vaunted in the camps of materialism was really more disputed than ever, and that we were in the thick of the fight. Those who assert that science has pronounced a final verdict on the world of mind and of conscience, interpret facts by their own wishes. They expect from science that which, with all its brilliant discoveries, it cannot give ; for its domain is strictly limited by the conditions of existence, and it is not com- petent to affirm anything on questions of origin and of first principle. Its proper task is a sufficiently glorious one. To assert, as Haeckel does, that the first cause is now understood, that the system which he calls monism because it recognises only one principle of things pure force is now established on evidence which places it beyond dispute, and that the time is come to teach it to children in the form of a catechism, is to dogmatise instead of demonstrating. However eminent the services rendered to science by this great physiologist, this mode of promulgating his theories would be only the sub- stitution of an authoritative irreligion for the religion of authority, and the promotion of a materialistic fanati- cism at least as extravagant as any fanaticism of the theists. Nightly in our great cities, we may hear the Boan- PREFACE. vii ergcs of atheism thundering this credo into the ears of a listening crowd as ignorant as their supposed teachers. It behoves us then to call attention to the fact that independent science protests no less distinctly than spiritualistic and Christian philosophy, not merely against these vulgar saturnalia, but against the pre- mature triumph which materialism claims for itself in its popular manuals of science written with much fluency and skill, and in high-sounding newspaper articles. It is admitted by all serious thinkers that matter is that which is least understood, because we can never reach it directly, but only through our sensations, which modify it. It follows that those who assert that in confining themselves to the material they are on safe and solid ground, really have their feet upon a cloud. It must be understood that independent science, even that which stands apart from all philosophical and religious schools, repudiates the claim of materialistic transform- ism 'to assign the origin of life and of mind to pure force ; and that in reference to this question of origins it adopts Dubois-Reymond's famous motto Ignoremus. A few months ago, at the Anthropological Congress held in Frankfort, the illustrious Virchow, while admit- ting the eminent services rendered by Darwin to the study of biology, contrasted the severe methods of ex- perimental science with the superficial and even foolish manner (we quote his own words) in which first prin- ciples are treated to-day by the advocates of material- istic transformism, who " find it easier to write pages of a manifesto teeming with hypotheses, than to study viii PREFACE. a cranium." While independent science has thus spoken out both in Germany and France, philosophy has not stood aside from the combat. It has done its part bravely in France ; not a single attack has been made upon the bases of theism which has not been ably met. Books like M. Janet's "Causes Finales" and M. Caro's brilliant essays upon the same themes, show how deeply our philosophers have gone into the great scientific problems of the day. It is this conflict between the thinkers of our age which I have tried to bring before my readers in the present work. I have been encouraged in my attempt by seeing the same thing done from an opposite stand-point by authors having no greater professional competence than my own. My sole aim is to give a faithful account of this battle of the advanced guard in which the highest interests of humanity are involved. I have endeavoured to be at once impartial and clear in stating the views held by those from whom I differ. I have been careful to avoid personalities in discussing opinions. I have always borne in mind that a man is often much better than his theories. There are atheists who would make one believe in God by the nobleness of their character and their life. Unhappily there are also professed believers who would make one doubt of Him by their intolerant and unfruitful lives. For the materials of my argument I have only had to draw from the able and extensive writings of the most eminent representa- tives of independent science and contemporary philos- ophy I have endeavoured to show how decisive and PREFACE. ix complete their reply is on all the great questions under discussion in our time, whether in reference to the problem of knowledge, of being, of man, or of the origin of morality and religion. This spiritualistic reply is not of modern origin any more than are the negations of atheism. On some es- sential points it is the same as in the days of Aristotle, who was perhaps the greatest metaphysician the world has ever seen, and whose vindication of the final and formal cause has never been surpassed. His theory of potential being carrying us back to the eternally actual and living Spirit, is as fresh to-day as are the immortal pages of Plato on moral certainty. The de- monstration of the principle of causation by Descartes, so largely expanded by the French critical school of pur day, survives intact all the polemics of the new psychology, English and German. There was a ne- cessity, nevertheless, as I hold, that the too exclusively intellectual element in Cartesianism should be corrected by giving larger scope to what Kant calls the practical reason, which is identified with the moral consciousness. I freely avow myself a disciple of that great critical school which has renovated our mode of thought. I am persuaded that, in spite of the charge of scepticism brought against it, it supplies the best element of cer- tainty, an element no less solid than duty itself, enforced at once as a matter of evidence and of obligation. The school of Kant has moreover been supplemented by the comprehensive psychology of Maine de Biran, trans- mitted to us by Ernest Naville, after Cousin. This is x PREFACE. exerting a growing influence upon the French school, to which it has given a wholesome impulse. M. Charles Secretan, to whom I have inscribed this work because I owe to him my initiation into the study of the higher philosophy, is a brilliant and independent representa- tive of the same school. It was my privilege to attend the lectures at Lausanne, in which he first expounded that philosophy of liberty which he has since expanded into his great book. This work will show how much I am indebted to him, as to so many of our great French philosophers, whether of the broad Cartesian school which has so long prevailed in France, or to the some- what mystical school of M. Ravaisson, or to the bold critical school of M. -Renouvier. I have tried faithfully to acknowledge in the text my obligations to all these writers. I do not single out any here, lest I should make invidious distinctions. If I were to make one exception, it would be in the case of Claude Bernard, the grandest representative of truly independent science, who has formulated in a masterly way that experimental method, the conscientious employment of which suffices to refute dogmatic assertions that are unsustained by facts. I have appealed only to the authentic exponents of science for a solution of the problem of origins. I admit and would fully vindicate the complete independence of science. I maintain that it cannot recognise any authority whatever which would fetter it in its course of free inquiry. Neither the Bible nor the Councils have any prescriptive right to control science ; but on the other PREFACE. xi hand it is equally bound not to receive the arbitrary com- mands of any of the exponents of vaunted free-thought. To think freely, is to lay aside all prejudice and tc accept simply the results of experience. I am increas- ingly convinced that experimental science is in no way hostile to the principles of theism. It is not the pro- vince of science to demonstrate those principles ; all that can be fairly asked of it, is to recognise their possibility. When once this possibility of a divine and moral world is granted, other processes of experiment, adapted to the nature of the subject, supply its demonstration ; the way is open. This is the conclusion to which I would bring my readers. Once thoroughly established, this con- clusion suffices to secure to humanity its most precious possession that higher life, apart from which man misses all that distinguishes him from the brute, and is without any light beyond the grave, without any compass on his voyage through life, without morality, without law, with- out liberty, given up to the chances of brute force, a hopeless and degraded thing. I refuse to accept such a horoscope for humanity. If indeed the first and final term of the world's history were force, I should be a pessimist of the sombrest dye, both as regards society and the individual. An atheistic and materialistic democracy seems to me a very hell upon earth. I should regard public liberty as a mere mockery, if I believed that man is inwardly a slave, hopelessly entangled in the universal mechanism. Liberty built up on such a foundation would be but a delusion and would quickly end in the most abject despotism whether democratic xii PREFACE. or aristocratic, would be of little moment. I am well assured that bad principles produce bad actions and bad institutions ; because I have too high an idea even of misguided man not to believe that he is really as he thinks. A nation cannot be taught with impunity that the moral law is a mere fiction, that duty is but interest disguised, and that, apart from sensation, there is no- thing. I am altogether lacking in the breadth of mind which regards these theories as indifferent or simply curious ; to me they are deadly and degrading. If they were true, we must needs "acquiesce in them; but life would then be nothing better than a miserable farce. Happily they are not true ; they are gratuitous hypo- theses which bewilder us only by their noisy repetition. They are contradicted by the most indisputable results of science and philosophy, not to speak of the rock of conscience on which they must ever split. This is what I have tried to show, taking as my authorities the greatest minds of our age. I am one of those who believe in liberty as the surest safeguard of the truth. To attempt to defend religion and con- science by any other means than free discussion, is to belie them. The insidious doctrine of "liberty for the good alone " seems to me essentially evil ; for the good must be in doubt of itself when it wishes to gag the lips even of error. Through my whole public career I have steadily advocated the complete enfranchisement of con- science, and for this I shall ever plead. I desire to see this freedom carried to its furthest issues. It is my one aim to dedicate all the remaining energies of my life PREFACE. xiii to the vindication of the highest truths of morality, apart from which I foresee nothing but ruin and dis- honour for my country and irremediable loss to that soul of man which is to live on when all public insti- tutions shall have passed away like a tent set up for a day. I shall be truly happy if this book, written in all good faith, may, in spite of its imperfections, do something to dispel the fatal misconception that science and conscience, liberty and religion, are incom- patible. Such an error may well be fatal to the life of a country and of a people. E. DE PRESSENSE. October, 1882. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. THE Translator wishes to express her great obligations to Donald MacAlister, Esq., M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, for his kindness in revising the proof sheets of the English Edition. CAMBRIDGE. December, 1882. TABLE OF CONTENTS. BOOK FIRST. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. CHAPTER I. KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM pp. 3-30 CHAPTER II. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY IN ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. I. English Psychology. I. Stuart Mill. 2. Herbert Spencer. II. French Psychology. M. Taine's Theory of Intelligence. III. The New German Psychology. Materialistic and Sceptical Theories of Knowledge . pp. 31-75 CHAPTER III. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE CRITICAL SCHOOL IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. HARMONY OF CARTESIANISM AND KANTISM SUGGESTED BY MAINE DE BIRAN. I. Descartes and Kant. II. Maine de Biran. III. French Criticism pp. 76-102 CHAPTER IV. THE TRUE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. I. Genesis and Development of Knowledge. II. Share of the Will in Knowledge. The Conditions of Certainty pp. 103-128 xviii TABLE OF CONTENTS. BOOK SECOND. THE PROBLEM OF BEING. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. Principle of Causation in the World. I. The Reign of Law in Nature. II. The Formative Power in the various Kingdoms of Nature pp. 131-159 CHAPTER II. OLDER OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF CAUSATION. I. Atomism. II. Organicism . , . . . . .. pp. 160-170 CHAPTER III. LATER OBJECTIONS FOUNDED ON THE CONSERVATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY .... pp. 171-179 CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM, ETC. I. The Doctrine of Evolution. II. The Monistic Theory of Transformation. III. Hegel's Theory of Immanence. IV. Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Renan and Jules Soury pp. 180-238 BOOK THIRD. THE PROBLEM OF BEING (continued}. MAN. CHAPTER I. MAN IN His TWOFOLD NATURE. I. Man, Physiologically Considered. II. Man, Intellectually and Morally Considered . . pp. 241-255 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xix CHAPTER II. THE RELATIONS OF THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL. I. The Brain and Thought. II. Objections Drawn from the Idea of Motion . . pp. 256-281 CHAPTER III. MAN AND THE BRUTES. I. Position of the Question. II. Instinct and Intelligence . pp. 282-306 CHAPTER IV. LANGUAGE : ITS ORIGIN AND INFLUENCE ON KNOWLEDGE, pp. 307-322 CHAPTER V. HUMAN SOCIETY AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES. I. Specific Character of Human Society. Social Contract. II. Refutation of the Sociology of Positivism and of the Recent German and English Psychology. Auguste Comte, Littre, Buckle, Bagehot, Jiiger, Herbert Spencer. III. Animal Colonies and Societies. Perrier and Espinas . pp. 323-361 BOOK FOURTH. THE PROBLEM OF DUTY. CHAPTER I. PRINCIPLE AND ORIGIN OF MORALITY. I. The Morality of Pleasure and of Self-interest. II. Refutation of the Morality of Self-interest. III. Determinism and Free- Will. IV. Independent Morality. V. Moral Sanctions pp. 365-419 CHAPTER II. THE IDEAL. ART. The Sense of the Ideal. II. The Sense of the Beautiful. Art, its Threefold Purpose pp. 420-436 xx TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. RELIGION, ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN. I. The Nature of Religion. II. Various Explanations of the Origin of Religion pp. 437-4665 CHAPTER IV. THE SAVAGE AND PRIMEVAL MAN. I. Savage Nations. II. The Man of the Caves and Lake-Dwellings . . pp. 467-51 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. BOOK FIRST. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. CHAPTER I. KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. The Positivist School repudiates all inquiry into origins. Task assigned by it to science the verification of facts ascertained by experience and their relations, setting aside all explanation of them. The positive state of the human mind has superseded the two previous states the religious and the metaphysical. The study of the ego entirely subordinate to that of the external world. Psychology subsidiary to physiology. Reply. 1st. Inquiry into causes a universal tendency ; a. constant human fact, therefore a positive fact. 2nd. The permanent coexistence of the three religious states the re- ligious, the metaphysical, and the positive demonstrated by history. 3rd. These three states are three aspects of things, all equally necessary fcn embracing things in their totality. Religion an effort of the soul to come to God. Metaphysics occupied primarily with the investigation ot causes. Natural science deals with positive facts. It is supreme in its own domain. The progress of true science consists, not in suppressing any one of these elements, but in making all concur to one common end by a harmonious division of labour. 4th. Positive science cannot dispense with the co-operation of the sub- jective ; for, apart from reason, it could not formulate a single law, or draw the smallest deduction. Sensation can give nothing beyond itself, and is limited to the actual. The large part taken by hypothesis in science the proof of this co-operation of mind. 5th. Positivism has failed, as a matter of fact, to adhere to the rigour of its principle, which precludes "any explanation of things, the materialistic no less than the spiritualistic. On the one hand, in Auguste Comte and J. Stuart Mill it has risen above its proper sphere, allowing scope to the xxii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. humanitarian or religious sentiment. On the other hand, in M. Littre it has exhibited a steadily growing tendency to endorse the materialistic solution of the question of origins ....... pp. 3-30. CHAPTER II. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY IN ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. After the school which proscribes any inquiry into causes, comes that which seeks to explain away the principle of causation into the association or combination of sensations, since it recognises no a priori in the human mirid. I. The new English Psychology. Its fundamental paradox that having affirmed that there is a domain of the Unknowable, it proceeds to give an exhaustive explanation of all things. i. Stuart Mill. Stuart Mill anticipated by David Hume, who accounts for the principle of causation by the constant succession of phenomena veri- fied by experience. Laws of associationism formulated by Stuart Mill. 1st. Similar phe- nomena tend to be thought of together. 2nd. Phenomena which have either been experienced or conceived in contiguity tend to be thought of together. The contiguity is of two kinds. : simultaneity and immediate suc- cession. 3rd. Associations produced by contiguity become more certain and rapid by repetition. From this so-called inseparable association arises the idea of causation ; the one appears to us to produce the other. Pos- sible sensations form a sort of permanent reservoir for the mind, outside of ourselves ; and this gives us the idea of the external world and of sub- stance. The idea of the ego results from the contrast between present sen- sation and the sum of possible sensations outside of ourselves. Reply. ist. It is an impossibility for sensation, which is transient and evanescent, to formulate laws and to construct a theory of knowledge. 2nd. Sensation by itself never gives us the possible, which is beyond its grasp, but only the actual. 3rd. The fact of succession does not give the idea of cause, which is something altogether different, since it is possible for two phenomena to follow each other invariably, and yet for the one not to be produced by the other. 4th. The association of sensations never produces by itself co-ordinated ideas, as is shown by the incoherency of dreams. 5th. The ego cannot be the mere result of association ; the co-operation of mind is indispensable to produce an association of ideas ; a sum does not add itself up. The fact of consciousness is implied in the distinction between the subject and the object. Stuart Mill himself recognises in the fact of memory a persistence of the ego which distinguishes it from mere sensations. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxiii 2. Herbert Spencer. Herbert Spencer supplements Stuart Mill, by his theory of evolution, or of the persistence of force which can neither be aug- mented nor diminished, but only transformed, and which is ever tending to differentiate itself. The intellectual life at first confounded with the phy- sical, but steadily progressing from the reflex action of the infant to the intricate reasoning of the adult. The accumulation of experiences and hereditary transmission contribute to the evolution of intelligence, modify- ing at once the brain and the intellect inseparable from it. Thus that which we take to be the a priori of human reason, is really the result of experience. Reply. 1st. Impossibility of explaining mental activity by a mere external influence. The mind shows its activity in the power it has to combine and associate. 2nd. The idea of time and space does not result from our experience of the duration or coexistence of phenomena, for these two great ideas could not be evolved unless they were already latent in the mind. 3rd. Evolution gives no explanation of progress, it only brings out that which was contained in the original phenomenon. One of two things : either the phenomenon originally included mind, and then it was not mere force ; or mind has been superadded, and in that case again force is not the sole explanation of all things. II. Psychology of M. Taine. M. Taine's psychology the same in sub- stance as the English theory of association. Genesis of Ideas. 1st. Sensation. 2nd. The image which is the pro- longation of sensation. It has a substitutive value, recalling the whole group to which it belongs. 3rd. Proper names are signs representative of images. The idea thus formed by generalisation after generalisation, is a pure abstraction, whether it deals with matter, which is to us only the pos- sibility of receiving new and identical sensations under analogous condi- tions, or with the ego which is only the last term of the abstraction a pure phantom. The physiological basis of this idealism is, that mind and body are but two aspects, the obverse and the reverse, the outer and inner side of one and the same abstraction. Reply. 1st. The physiological basis which is to sustain the entire edifice of knowledge, being, in M. Taine's psychology, only a chimera, a hallucina- tion, the influence of the physical upon the moral is nil. 2nd. Impossi- bility of reducing the ego to a mere negation if we are to concede to it the power of generalising, combining, abstracting. 3rd. The gulf impassable to the intellect, which exists between motion and the consciousness of motion, recognised by M. Taine. Their identification therefore impossible. III. The New German Psychology. Materialistic and Sceptical Theories of Knowledge. Herbart the precursor of the New German psychology. His attempt to measure the phenomena of consciousness by mathematical laws, so that our representations may be considered as forces, sometimes balancing, sometimes outweighing each other in intensity. Beneke and Lotze recognise the existence of the soul, of the active ego, while attaching great importance xxiv ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. to the local signs which visual and tactile impressions leave behind them on the points where they are produced. Complete correlation established by Fechner between sensations and their stimuli. Uncertainty of his cal- culations, because the measure used is too coarse to appraise so delicate a phenomenon as sensation. Mechanical logic of Wundt. "Unity of conscious- ness," he says, "results from the purely mechanical unification of sensa- tions, from which in the end ideas are deduced." Arbitrariness of his attempt to measure physiological time. Wundt, like Fechner, recognises in the mental life a mysterious and wholly irreducible power. Theory of Knowledge founded upon Pure Materialism. Matter is never apprehended directly, but only through sensation that is already trans- formed and modified. Conclusion of Lange's History of Materialism thus formulates it. Matter is essentially the Unknowable. Scepticism cannot affirm without denying itself. It renders science impossible. Spiritualistic affirmation of Stuart Mill and Lange . . pp. 31-75. CHAPTER III. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE CRITICAL SCHOOL IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. HARMONY OF CARTESIANISM AND KANTISM SUGGESTED BY MAINE DE BIRAN. After the school which proscribes all inquiry into causes and that which explains away the principle of causation, comes the Critical School, which distinguishes reason from the world of phenomena, and does not admit that reason can ever arrive at the reality underlying the phenomenal. This was a reaction against the exaggerations of Cartesianism. Possibility of har- monising the two schools. I. Descartes and Kant. The criterion of evidence given by Descartes correct, for at the basis of all knowledge is the intuition of the thing in itself. Descartes has given the true formula of the principle of causation, in establishing that the greater cannot come from the less. The idea of perfection which exists in the imperfect ego implies a principle of perfection. The error of Descartes, exaggerated by his school, was in making perfection to consist primarily in the intellect, as in his famous motto, Cogito, ergo sum. Imperfection of the simply intellectual idea of the absolute. It does not grant to the absolute the power of self-limitation, and hence it involves the negation of liberty. Pantheism of Spinoza. Kant's philosophy a reaction against this metaphysical intellectualism. Kant holds that we cast all things by an inward necessity into pre-existing moulds, and thus impart to them a wholly subjective character, so that we cannot apprehend the thing in itself. The " Ding an sich, " or noumenon, always eludes us because of this subjective element blending with all our supposed knowledge, whether of God or of ourselves. Faultiness of all the ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxv old proofs of the existence of God, certainty arrived at by the practical reason in the categorical imperative. This restores to us, as a postulate, faith in an immortal soul and a just God. The inconsistencies of Kant. He has not always adhered to his meta- physical subjectivity. His theory of the beautiful implies a real purposive cause in nature. Evil being, in his system, the abnormal predominance of the sensible world, this must have some reality. The law of duty demands a real world for its realisation, or it becomes itself chimerical. Practical reason raises us up to the holy God. Hence His veracity, which saves us from universal illusion. II. Maine de Biran. Maine de Biran takes us beyond the subjectivity of Kant, by showing that the great intuitions of the reason, such as the ideas of substance, of causation, and of time, are confirmed by the per- sistence of the ego, which feels its own identity through all its variations, and is conscious of activity and of successive acts. The originality of his theory is the idea of effort, by which the ego distinguishes itself from the non- ego, and overcomes the resistance of the body. The will called into play by this effort ; in its higher forms this action of the will becomes first attention then reflexion. The will becomes the chief motor of the intellectual as of the moral life. Maine de Biran needs to be supplemented by Kant. He assigns too large a part to the experience of the ego, and not enough to the a priori of the reason, which experience confirms but does not create. III. French Criticism. This goes even farther than Kant, and denies the very existence of the noumenon. The French school of criticism a legitimate reaction against metaphysical fatalism. Possibility of our arriv- ing at liberty as an absolute principle . . pp. 76-102. CHAPTER IV. THE TRUE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. REVIEW OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. I. Genesis and Development of Knowledge. Sensation only furnishes ideas by being prolonged in the memory, and by means of the great operations of the mind, .vhich enable it to compare, to abstract, and to generalise. The co-operation of the reason is necessary to formulate laws and perceive their connexion. The external world, then, is only perceived by the under- standing. It is only known to us through the modifying medium of our sensations. We get only a translation of it, but a faithful translation. The ego, becoming conscious of itself by the act of the will induced by the effort which leads it to distinguish itself from the non-ego, recognises in itself both reason and conscience with their axioms. The principle of causation, which is the fundamental axiom of the reason, carries it beyond itself to the primary and perfect Cause, of which it has the idea within itself in the xxvi ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. midst of its imperfection. " I am an imperfect thing, and I have the idea of perfection." The great Cartesian proof of the existence of God, elaborated by Fenelon, Bossuet, and Malebranche, retains all its force when, under the influence of Kant's criticism, it has once become permeated with the moral idea, and when the first principle is apprehended not as simply the unlimited absolute, but as absolute liberty. II. Share of the Will in Knowledge. The Conditions of Certainty. 1st. Attention implies an act of the will. 2nd. Every judgment which applies an attribute to a substance, implies comparison and choice. 3rd. Positive error always arises out of negligence, from the indolence of the mind which stops too soon in its inquiries. 4th. Moral truth is an obligation apart from its evidence. Intuition, which is the starting-point of knowledge in every domain, cannot be forced as if it were the consequence of a syllogism. 5th. Religious truth, which presents as its primary object a living person, demands love. The share taken by the will and by feeling in relation to truths of this order is based upon the fundamental law of experimental science, which, according to Claude Bernard, varies and adapts its modes of acquiring knowledge to the diversity of the objects to be known. The same law of certainty formulated by Clement of Alexandria, thus : Likt discerns like. 6th. Universality of this law in its applications, pp. 103-1 23. BOOK SECOND. THE PROBLEM OF BEING. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. The Principle of Causation in the World. The materialistic school ignores one of the most positive results of independent science, namely, that matter is that which we know least directly, and which is therefore least susceptible of definition. I. The Reign of Law in Nature. The actual state of our planet points us back to a long cosmical evolution, which has been carried on in harmony with the recognised laws of physics and chemistry, alike in the infinitely great and the infinitely little. Everything in the universe mathe- matically regulated ; every result governed by weight and measure. The general laws of nature show a great purposive cause at work. Before evolution begins, there must be an impetus given. The same ordered thought observable in the inorganic world, still more clearly manifested ic ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxvii the organic. The former arranged with a view to the latter, and both in view of the higher order of mind. The evidence of design manifest not only in the general but in the particular. The convergence of various phenomena towards one ulterior end implies design. Design manifested in generation and in the development of life. The organisation of the living being is a masterpiece of contrivance, revealing a governing idea. The governing idea identified by Claude Bernard with Aristotle's final Cause, existing primordially in a virtual or potential state and advancing onwards to form. The possible or virtual points us to a first principle for ever actual and living. II. Tke Formative Power in the various Kingdoms of Nature. Impos- sibility of passing by mere transition from one kingdom to another. The hypothesis of spontaneous generation demonstrated by science to be false. Mind cannot be evolved from mere physical life, nor this from in- organic existence. Beauty an end in nature . . . pp. 131-159. CHAPTER II. OLDER OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF CAUSATION. I. Atomism. Democritus revived by Buchner. Reply. 1st. To attempt any explanation of things, is, on the theory of atomism, a paralogism ; for any explanation implies an idea in things. 2nd. The idea of order, of harmony, is incompatible with fortuitously whirling atoms. 3rd. Absurdity of arguing from properties inherent in atoms (/.. t from that which reveals law) the absence of an intelligent Cause. 4th. Atomism has never demonstrated that force is inherent in matter, nor that force is capable of so regulating itself as to produce a cosmos. II. Organicism. Organicism excludes design, on the ground that the living creature has properties necessary to the fulfilment of its functions, and that all is explained by these properties, which produce the organs and set them to work. Reply. ist. The cells of which the living organism is composed are not the simple product of inorganic life. The organ, therefore, is not its own adequate explanation. 2nd. The properties of the organs reveal a pur- posive cause in their adaptation to their end. 3rd. The properties of an organ do not alone suffice to explain the disposition of the organs. The contractility of the heart would never have made it the complex organ it is. 4th. The co-ordination of the organs points us to a co-ordinating power as its cause. 5th. The life of the embryo, in which at the outset all the rudimental organs resemble each other, implies a presiding idea by which the development of the various types of animal life is governed. Conclusion. The final cause makes use of the efficient cause, but cannot be identified with it pp. 160-170. xxviii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER III OBJECTIONS FOUNDED ON THE CONSERVATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY. The axiom that energy is always identical with itself under all its trans- formations, opposed to design. Reply. 1st. The formula, "Nothing is created ', nothing lost," is not an axiom. The first clause is open to question, the second cannot be taken in an absolute sense. We see existence sinking into atrophy. 2nd. Distinction drawn by Aristotle between quantity, which must be always identical, and quality, which introduces the element of diversity and consequently of free- dom of choice into abstract and uniform existence. Quality is capable of all imaginable variety. Hence freedom of choice among the various possi- bilities, and an element of contingency in the laws of nature, first, in pro- ducing the actual from the possible, and then in choosing between the various possible evolutions. 3rd. Difference between mechanical and spontaneous motion in the living organs. Distinction between quantity and quality in the motion of the living organism. Diversity of effects produced by the same sum of motions . , , pp. 171-179. CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. Distinction between evolution, as conceived by Darwin in his earlier writings and the mechanical transformism of Herbert Spencer and Haeckel. Evolutionism treats of the conditions of existence ; transformism solves the question of origin in a materialistic sense. There is no necessary conflict between Darwin and theism. Incompatibility of materialistic transformism with Deism. Deism lies beyond the sphere of experimental science. I. The Doctrine of Evolution. The five laws which, according to Darwin, govern the transformation of species. 1st. Natural selection. 2nd. The struggle for existence, giving predominance to the strongest. 3rd. The law of heredity. 4th. Adaptation to environment. 5th. Co-ordination of organs. Design essentially implied in these laws, which could not of themselves so operate as to produce biological progression by means of evolution. This opinion expressed by A. R. Wallace, the precursor of Darwin. Objections to Darwinism. 1st. Darwin's notion of a species very vague. 2nd. His system not borne out by actual experience. 3rd. Palaeontology everywhere shows the distinction of species. 4th. The testimony of facts adverse to the universality of the law of adaptation to environment and to that of sexual selection. 5th. Artificial selection does not produce new types. 6th. Sterility of hybrids almost uniform. Darwinism partially true as regards secondary transformations. Naudin's ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxix hypothesis of an antecedent age in which the plasticity of the organism was greater than at present. II. The Monistic Theory of Transformation. Herbert Spencer resolves all evolution into the principle of the conservation of energy through all its transformations. The great laws of motion explained in his "First Principles." 1st. Motion follows the line of least resistance. 2nd, Reac- tion follows action, so that a period of aggregation will be followed by one of disaggregation. 3rd. The uniform passes into the multiform the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. 4th. Separation the application of the law of natural selection to living organisms. 5^ n - Co-ordination. 6th. Adaptation to environment. Reply. 1st. The conservation of energy presented as an axiom, contra- dicts the first premisses of the system. 2nd. The transition from the homogeneous into the heterogeneous remains unexplained. 3rd. The pro- duction of life and of thought is not accounted for. Evolution can add nothing to the antecedent facts. It only brings out that which they con- tain. Either mind was already present in the primitive homogeneous, or it has been added subsequently. 4th. Herbert Spencer considers only quan- tity, and forgets quality. 5th. His law of co-ordination implies design. Haeckel Importance attached to embryology. The human embryo passes through all the stages of the general evolution of animal forms. This is an argument for one general plan running through nature. Haeckel's "Evolution of Man" ends in a pure assumption. He is com- pelled to adopt the hypothesis of the spontaneous generation of the Monera. Protest of Virchow against this new a priori. III. HegeVs l^hcory of Immanence. The sch9ol of unconscious and consequently impersonal adaptation. Principle of adaptation inherent in things themselves. Mind produced by the dialectic movement of the ever- lasting Becoming. The greater explained by the less. IV. Schopenhauer and Hartmann. Renan and Jules Soury. Earliest form of pessimism. The essence of being an unconscious will, never obtaining all that it desires. Hartmann's philosophy of the Unconscious. Exposition of his system. The "Unconscious constitutes the great All." Infallibility of instinct in the animal. Man owes all that is best in him to unconscious impulses. The immorality of history, which shows us the world without any moral government. Everything originates in the great Unconscious, who is at once the Idea and the Will. The Will blindly evolves the totality of beings from the Idea, without at all exhausting its potentiality. Hence a dull unrest. This unrest becomes conscious after the involuntary production of organised matter, and specially of the brain. For the first time the sorrow of the world is consciously felt. Consciousness struggles to free itself from it by concentrating itself in the human individual, who is to end by suicide, without any assurance that the whole mournful process may not even then be re-enacted. xxx ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Reply. 1st. The assumed infallibility of the Unconscious is fallacious, since, in producing the world at all, it has made a colossal mistake. 2nd. The production of consciousness is in no sense a deliverance, since it height- ens the sense of suffering. 3rd. To attribute the manifestations of design in the world to the " Unconscious," where man recognises in himself conscious mind, is to explain the greater by the less. 4th. Exaggeration of pes>imism, which is also the final outcome of M. Kenan's "Dialogues Philosophic/lies," and M. Jules Soury's " hylozoism" If pessimism is a natural reaction from the optimism which ignores evil as a violation of natural order, it is nevertheless wrong in its principle and in its conclusion, for moral order is no illusion pp. 180-238. BOOK THIRD. THE PROBLEM OF BEING (continued). MAN. CHAPTER I. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. I. Man, Physiologically Considered. Man's dependence in the inferior part of his being on chemico-physical laws. Their modifications in living organisms. Formation of a sort of invariable internal atmosphere, which renders them more and more independent of their external environment. Great physiological discoveries of Claude Bernard, confirming the idea of design. Life something distinct from any chemical composition. Perfec- tion of the human organism. Importance of morphology. Beauty in the human form the result of design. II. Man Intellectually and Morally Considered. Man's three distinctive faculties to know, to love, to will. Man begins with purely instinctive life. He rises into conscious life by an effort of the will. Effort, in its higher forms of attention and reflexion, reveals to him the laws of reason and of conscience, and then the principle of his being God . pp. 241-255. CHAPTER II. THE RELATION OF THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL. Identification of the physical with the moral by the materialistic schools. There is co-relation, not identity, between body and soul. I. The Brain and Thought. Materialistic theory developed in the writings of Luys, Maudsley, etc. Reply. ist. No experiment possible upon the operation of the human brain. 2nd. The theory of the localisation of the intellectual faculties is not conclusively demonstrated, and if it were, it would not imply the identifica- ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxxi tion of the function with the organ. 3rd. Impossibility of confounding cerebral motion with the consciousness of motion, by the admission of the greatest physiologists. 4th. The brain, which is essentially a multiple and divisible organ, cannot produce the unity of the ego. 5th. The measure- ment and weight of human brains establishes a certain correlation between the function and the organ ; but at the same time shows a great distinction between them. Physiological analogy between the brain of man and of a monkey, notwithstanding the vast superiority of intellect in man. II. Objections drawn jrom the Idea of Motion. The materialistic schools identify all motion with reflex motion, in order to maintain the universal supremacy of mechanical laws. Reply. ist. Motion is not merely reflex and mechanical, but often de- liberate and voluntary. 2nd. Reflex motion in the living organism is not simply mechanical; it obeys the instinct of self-preservation. 3rd. Motion in the living organism often remains latent and potential. It is not, then, subject to a mere mechanical impulse. 4th. Forces may remain identical in quantity and yet may differ in the use made of them. 5th. Unquestion- able share of the will and thought in disposing variously of the same amount of energy. The possibility of the future life a consequence of the distinction established between the moral and physical life of man. The conditions of the existence of the moral being may change, and yet it may survive. Dubois-Reymond's seven enigmas of Nature . . . pp. 256-281. CHAPTER III. MAN AND THE BRUTES. I. Position of the Question. The materialistic schools deny any specific difference between man and the animal. A. R. Wallace, though himself an evolutionist, maintains their essential distinctness. Opinions of Quatrefages and Milne Edwards. II. Instinct and Intelligence. Reality of instinct disputed by the material- istic schools, which trace everything to sensation in the living organism. Possible modification of instinct. These are brought about in the animal through the influence of sensation or in consequence of modifications either of the organism or of the environment. Man alone attains to conscious and voluntary life ; to reason, which grasps the universal ; to conscience, with its categorical imperative. His highest attribute is the free exercise of the will. Proofs of this distinction between man and the brutes drawn from the analysis of animal instincts pp. 282-306. CHAPTER IV. LANGUAGE : ITS ORIGIN AND INFLUENCE ON KNOWLEDGE. The brute has a language to express his sensations, but he never rises to speech. The language of the brute purely instinctive. Speech a voluntary xxxii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. act of the conscious life. Various forms of speech ; the play of the features, gesticulation, articulate language the most perfect instrument. Essential differences between the speech of man and the language of the brute. 1st. The use of words implies abstraction and generalisation, which are two operations of the reason, by which a thing is grasped by some one special characteristic. 2nd. Words do not merely express sensation, but designate the object to be known. Words are instruments of knowledge. The in- ternal word makes the mind conscious of itself. The external word is the great social bond and the chief instrument of human progress. The word rises progressively from the cry to conscious and rational speech. Impos- sible to account for it as a product of mere sensation or of sexual selection. Man did not receive language ready formed. He was made capable of speech. Words originate in the symbolism of Nature, which was more vivid at first than now. Three stages in the evolution of language the monosyllabic period ; the period of agglutination ; and lastly of inflexion. Origin of writing .....,. pp. 307-322. CHAPTER V. HUMAN SOCIETY AND ANIMAL SOCIETIES. I. Specific Character of Human Society. Social Contract. Man essen- tially a social being. Human society raised above instinctive sociability to spontaneous sociability based upon mutual agreement and upon justice. Rousseau's "Contrat Social" a chimera. True evolution of society con- sists in a growing recognition of the rights of man, and in their voluntary acceptance and sanction by law. Incompatibility of the idea of a social convention, presented by Fouillee in his " Science Sociale Contemporaine," with his determinist conclusions, which make liberty a mere idea without any corresponding reality. II. Refutation of the Sociology of Positivism and of the Recent German and English Psychology. Positivism connects sociology closely with the physical sciences. Auguste Comte's refutation of himself. His latest sociological theories go far beyond his biology in their humanitarian mysticism. Ex- clusivism of Buckle and Bagehot. Elimination of the higher elements of human society. Sociology of Herbert Spencer. Application pure and simple of the principle of the transformation of force to society. Absolute assimilation of the body politic to the human body. Objections. ist. Im- passable distance between the physical and the moral. 2nd. Impossibility of confounding simply instinctive life with life conscious and reflective. III. Animal Colonies and Societies. Perrier and Espinas. Spiritualistic basis of Perrier' s system. Every living organism constitutes a colony, a society of cells. Exception made in the case of the human ego, which is not the simple resultant of the separate consciousnesses of the members of the colony. This exception not admitted by Espinas. He holds, on the one ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxxiii hand, that every living organism constitutes a society of cells, each cell having its own individuality. On the other hand, he regards human society as a vast collective individuality with a unity of consciousness. This theory incompatible with the true idea either of society, which implies the concur- rence of distinct individualities, and with the idea of individuality which demands the real unity of the consciousness. The three stages of social life those of nutrition, reproduction, and relation, common, according to Espinas, to animal and human societies. Wonderful transformation of these three stages of the social life under the influence of the free and conscious life of humanity ... pp. 3 2 3~3^ 1 - BOOK FOURTH. THE PROBLEM OF DUTY. CHAPTER I. PRINCIPLE AND ORIGIN OF MORALITY. I. The Morality of Pleasure and of Self-interest. Epicurus, the phi- losopher of pleasure. Utilitarianism of Bentham. New developments of utilitarianism by Stuart Mill and evolutionism of Herbert Spencer. II. Refutation of the Morality of Self -Interest. 1st. Refutation of utili- tarian theories by one another. 2nd. Utilitarianism does not explain but ignores the fact of moral obligation. Reality of the obligation proved by universal human feeling ; by remorse, indignation, admiration of hero- ism, by great social facts, such as law and penal justice ; lastly, by all great poetry. 3rd. The various elements which constitute the fact of obligation are irreconcilable with utilitarianism. Obligation implies : 1st. A law, an ideal ; 2nd. A law bearing upon the motive of our acts ; 3rd. A law enforced by a direct sanction in our own consciousness ; 4th. A law which is really intuitive and antecedent to experience. Failure of utilitarianism to satisfy any of these conditions of a true morality. The law of adaptation to environment, as stated by Herbert Spencer, destroys the principle of obligation. This principle commands us repeatedly to run counter to our environment. III. Determinism and Free-will. The primary duty of man is to believe in duty ; this obligation is decisive in all conflicts between the con- science and speculative reason. No essential contradiction between the one and the other. The distinction of quantity and quality sets us free from the fatalism of the laws of motion. Motion must have a prime motor which is dis- tinct from it and controls it. The determinism of nature is not the first xxxiv ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. beginning of things, any more than is the dialectic determinism of the reason. At the starting-point of all science is an intuition which grasps the first principle, or there remains an ever-receding mystery. This is true emphatically with regard to morals. It is erroneously objected that the will is determined by the desires, for these are not irresistible. Man's freedom limited but not destroyed by the fact of solidarity. The result of solidarity traceable to free acts in the past. Arbitrariness of statistics in reference to particular cases. Heredity carries us back to the free acts of our fathers, and does not produce any absolute constraint. Freedom of action reduced to a mere idea by M. Fouillee. Even in this limited view it is not explained. The idea of freedom of action cannot be produced by universal mechanism. IV. Independent Morality. Morality is never independent, as a matter of fact, of the general conception of things. Moral obligation alone carries us beyond ourselves, making us feel ourselves part of a great whole, and therefore bound to fulfil our duties to the whole and to its principle, which is God. Our morality is modified by our conception of this whole, and of its author. Essential difference between altruism, transformism, and unselfish love. Incompatibility of the law of natural selection with the principle of charity. Too formal character of Kant's morality. Moral obligation reduced in French criticism to mere justice. How love ought to influence morality. Duty to God one with duty to man. V. Moral Sanctions. The sanction of the moral law is a postulate of conscience. This sanction is not the same thing as utilitarianism for the following reasons : 1st. Essential difference in the motives of our acts. 2nd. The sanction of the moral law is not pleasure but happiness, which is inseparable from the fulfilment of our higher destiny as members of the great human race. The sanction is only completed in the future life. Punishment is never a mere penalty, but always tends to the amendment of the guilty. Absolute opposition between the morality of pessimism and' that to which the moral sanction is attached. Incompatibility of morality with the principle of an unconscious will. Duty, as defined by the pessimists, is an illusion. On Schopenhauer's theory pity is only a false semblance, for all distinction between the subject and the object is obliterated. Hartmann's moralily the most pitiless possible. Utilitarianism and pessimism make common cause in the end . . pp. 365-419. CHAPTER II. THE IDEAL. ART. I. The Sense of the Ideal. Power of the sense of the ideal deep and universal. Aspiration after the ideal traceable in every sphere of human life. Its centre is God. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxxv II. The Sense of the Beautiful, Art, its Threefold Purpose. The beau- tiful inseparable in itself from the true and the good. Its proper charac- ter. Beauty the expansion of vital energy with harmonious co-ordination. Beauty in things results from the striking manifestation of their harmony. This harmony the full expression of the formal cause which has co-ordi- nated them as a whole. This formal cause points us back to God as the final Cause. Man must have the sense of the beautiful before he can discern it. The formal and final Cause of the world finding its highest manifestation in man, man projects it on to the things around him. Hence anthropo- morphism in art. Threefold mission of art. 1st. To realise the sense of the beautiful in nature by an exercise of choice, passing by some part of the reality in order the better to bring out the inner principle of beauty, the parent idea of form. 2nd. Creation of an ideal beauty from the type of the beautiful existing in the reason. Art is distinguished from morality, inas- much as it produces only a representation. It is not the fulfilment of an obligation. It is absolutely disinterested, and thus distinguished from the useful. In this sense alone is art a pastime. 3rd. Third mission of art, to express regret at never being able to attain the ideal. Art goes beyond nature, and is not satisfied therefore with merely expressing natural beauty. Inadequacy in this respect of Hegel and Goethe's aestheticism. The sense of the sublime points to something beyond the merely natural. pp. 420-436. CHAPTER III. RELIGION, ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN. I. The Nature of Religion. Religion is not identical in its essence with any of our faculties. It is the effort of the whole nature to unite itself to God. It implies a divine influence at work in man. This ideal of religion sustained by the evidence of history. Intuition an essential element of religion. The religious and the moral sentiment closely con- joined. Essential elements of religion. ist. Intuition of the infinite by all our faculties. 2nd. Sense of obligation. 3rd. Belief in a future life. 4th. Sense of guilt and longing after reparation, implying the idea of the supernatural. Inadequacy of evolutionist theories, even the idealistic, in all these respects (Hegel, Pflenderer, Reville). Hartmann's sarcasm on the shallow optimist view of religion. II. Various Explanations of the Origin of Religion. Inadequacy of the naturalistic explanation. 1st. In relation to the moral aspect of religion. 2nd. In relation to the idea of the infinite, which Max Miiller confounds with the indefinite. 3rd. In relation to faith in a future life. Naturalism gives only the natural, never the divine. Insufficiency of such explanations as fear of the unknown, and fetishism. Impossibility of admitting that xxxvi ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. fetishism is the origin of the idea of the divine, either from an historical or philosophical point of view. Explanations given by Herbert Spencer. The dream of the savage suggesting the idea of his other self. Exaggera- tion of the imbecility of the savage. He knows that he dreams. He does not really believe in his double, as is shown by his ideas of the future life, which is always more or less connected by him with his earthly life and conduct pp. 437-466. CHAPTER IV. THE SAVAGE AND PRIMEVAL MAN. Objection drawn from the condition of the savage, which is said to be a vestige of the primitive bestiality of man. The savage truly human. I. Savage Nations. Savage life, as we see it, often proved to be a deca- dence from a higher state. Historical and psychological evidence of this. Tylor's theory of the development of the religious element in the savage (animism, fetishism, anthropomorphism, mythology, monotheism). Faith in the future life. Tylor's refutation of his own theory. Universality of Religion. The fact of worship implies a distinction between the merely natural and the divine. High spiritualistic idea con- tained in animism. Rapid development of monotheism, showing that it underlies all primitive religious ideas. Proofs from facts in all religions of savages. Universality of the Idea of the Future Life.- -Development of the idea of retribution and of the moral idea generally. Prayer and sacrifice, the two great elements of religious rites, becoming purer and higher. Proofs sup- plied by Christian missions that the savage is capable, not only of religion, but of the highest degree of religious development. II. The Man of the Caves and Lake Dwellings. Brief sketch of discoveries of traces of prehistoric man. Man living certainly in the quaternary period. The three periods of the prehistoric era the age of rough stone, the age of hewn stone, and the bronze age. The iron age is historic. The three races of the palaeolithic age. Geological crises through which the troglodyte passed with only his flint weapons. Progress traceable in these products of primitive industry : The use of fire tilling of the soil the family religion primitive art burials. Social and religious state of the primitive Aryans shown by comparative philology. Religion of the ancient Mexicans. Conclusion, pp. 467-515. BOOK FIRST. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. CHAPTER I. KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. BEFORE estimating the value of the various explanations of things, one preliminary question presents itself : Is it possible to explain them? This possibility is disputed in our day by the Positivist School, who recognise only the verification of facts and their relations, setting aside all explanation of them. They confine us to the question of the hoiv, treating as chime- rical that of the why. We cannot take one step in the path of inquiry, till we have removed this fundamental objection which bars the way. Let us first define the theory of knowledge held by the Positivist School, as we find it in the works of its master, Auguste Comte, and in the commentaries of his illustrious disciple, M. Laird The theory is very simple, and professedly based on the exact method of science. The province of science is to verify all that comes under direct observation, all the facts of experience; and to classify "them without any regard to their origin and purpose, since these do not come within the scope of experiment and observation. The telescope sweeps the farthest fields of the visible; it brings before us what we might call the infinitely great. The microscope opens to observation the infinitely little ; but the first and final causes lie yet beyond. Science has no concern with them. They belong to the domain of the inscrutable. Positivism neither 4 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. denies nor affirms anything with regard to them, for negation would itself be a theory of the origin of things. Materialism is a philosophy, and as such is beyond the scope of positive science ; and this, we are told, is the boundary beyond which the mind of man cannot go. Thought did not at first observe these stern limitations within the facts of direct observation. It passed through two preliminary phases, so broadly and clearly marked that they may be regarded as historical laws. Auguste Comte says : " From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organisation and in our historical experience. The law is this that each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different theo- retical conditions : the theological or fictitious, the meta- physical or abstract, and the scientific or positive. . . In the theological state the human mind, seeking to fathom the essential nature of being, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects in short, absolute knowledge supposes all phenomena to be. produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings. In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena. . . . In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws ; that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation duly combined are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts, is simply the establishment of a connection between KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 5 single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science. 1 The first formula of Positivism, its true starting point, has remained unchanged. The theory of the three states is borne out alike in individual and in general history ; for the majority of thinking men have been theologians in their childhood, metaphysicians in their youth, and natural philosophers in their manhood. Philosophy, thus understood, is nothing more than a classification of observed facts, " so arranged as that the study of each category may be grounded on the principal laws of the preceding, and serve as the basis of the next ensuing. We must begin then with the study of the most general or simple phenomena, going on successively to the more par- ticular or complex. . . . Thus we have before us five fundamental sciences in successive dependence astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and social physics. The first considers the most general, simple, abstract, and remote phenomena known to us, and those which affect all others without being affected by them. The last considers the most particular, complex, concrete phenomena, and those which are the most interesting to man. Between these two the degrees of speciality, of complexity, and individuality are in regular proportion to the place of the respective sciences in the scale exhibited." 2 The science which treats of humanity and its relations is called social physics. It is the resultant of all the preceding sciences. Positivism, by excluding the study of this subject, leaves the soul and the conscience altogether out of its domain. M. Littre says : " Those who define philosophy as I do, to be a conception of the world, dispense with psychology. The Positive conception of the world is only to be arrived at by purely objective methods." 3 1 ' The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte." Translated by H, Martineau. Second edition, vol. i. pp I, 2. 2 Ibid., pp. 21-23. 3 Littre. ' Fragments de Philosophic Positive," p. 268. 6 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Auguste Comte is no less explicit in this negation of psy- chology. " It is out of the question/' he says, " to make an intellectual observation of intellectual processes; for the observed and observing organ being here the same, its action cannot be pure and natural. In order to observe, your intel- lect must pause from activity ; yet it is this very activity that you want to observe. If you cannot effect the pause, you can- not observe ; if you do effect it, there is nothing to observe. The results of such a method are in proportion to its absurdity. After two thousand years of psychological pursuit, no one proposition is established to the satisfaction of its followers." 1 M. Littre adds : " Man, like the little globe he inhabits, is thus brought to take his true place in the universe. As soon as he ceases to pose as the centre of the world, he is lost like a point in boundless space. When the natural philosopher is once convinced that the essential nature of things, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, are insoluble problems, positive science begins. Accepting only the results of experiment and observation, the mind gives over the vain search after absolute notions beyond the reach of either. While positive science, thus freed from impediments, steadily advances carrying conviction to man's intellect, that same intellect turns away from metaphysical speculation, ever agitating questions to which there is no reply. Everything is judged by facts and results." 2 Theology is naturally involved in the same downfall with psychology ; it had indeed, we are told, already given place to metaphysics before this in its turn was swept away by the advance of positive science. The essence of Positivism is contained in these assertions, for its scientific construction is really only a method of arrang- ing facts on a vast encyclopaedic plan, without drawing from them any conclusion. Nothing is more contrary to its funda- 1 " The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte," vol. i., p. 10. 2 Littre. " Preface d'un Disciple au Cours de Philosophic Positive," p. 25. KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. ^ mental principle than to seek in the fact anything beyond itself. Its influence has been great, just on account of this simplicity in- its formulas, deceptive as it really is. It has profited by the natural but loo exclusive admiration which the magnificent advance of science has aroused in our generation. Its achievements are indeed mainly due to that experimental method, the lawfulness of which we ourselves are the readiest to acknowledge in its application to natural phenomena. The error of Positivism is, that it extends the operation of this method beyond its proper domain, and asserts for it a monopoly to which it has no claim. It has not been true to the engage- ment made by M. Littre', who promised that he would not become intoxicated with his own wine. Passionately devoted himself to experimental science, he is unwilling to recognise anything beyond it, even when the facts that present them- selves for solution are enacted in the sphere of our own consciousness, and are, to say the least, quite as real and positive as those of the external world. The first charge that we make against Positivism is, that it has not been true to its own principles, in suppressing arbi- trarily an entire class of facts which demand to be verified, and which are true conditions of being. To eliminate or mutilate facts, is as unscientific as to accept them on insufficient grounds. Why should such a limitation be made, except on the ground that the phase of existence thus volun- tarily excluded from view, cannot be brought within the accepted formula, and threatens to shatter the preconceived mould within which it has been determined to restrict all knowledge ? Yet this psychological fact has a real existence; and the soul cannot be quenched or petrified at will. Not only does the mind claim to be itself studied, but it is ever questioning. Not content with learning the conditions of existence, it reaches after the principle, the cause of being. It is an inde- fatigable interrogator, on whom no theory can impose silence. This eternal why of the mind is therefore a fact. Let it be 8 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. observed that this is no passing and intermittent phase of the human mind ; it is an instinctive, invincible tendency, inher- ent in its very constitution, and manifesting itself under all cir- cumstances. The lapse of centuries and the progress of science make no change in it. Its thirst after knowledge is as eager now as it was in the confused and dreamy days of man's infancy. VVe do not make it a reproach against Positivism that it does not explain this fixed, universal, essential instinct of the mind, since it does not pretend to explain anything; but we do com- plain that a plain psychological fact is ignored, and left out of a programme which professes to verify all facts. It is surely much, if we can prove as a permanent and incontrovertible reality, this craving of the mind of man to know something of the origin and purpose of all effects. We are thus brought very near to a recognition of the existence of the principle of causation. If it is admitted that this principle is universally present, we have no right to ignore it. If to search after causes is an instinct of the human mind under all conditions, then that search must be pursued. The fetters which positive science, or rather the Positivist system, would lay upon it, must needs be broken. Nothing can prevent its stretching out its wings into the forbidden region. The general history of humanity, alike in the present and the past, is conclusive against Positivism, and directly con- tradicts the famous theory of the three states. It is certain, first of all, that, so far from excluding each other, as a matter of fact they everywhere co-exist in the human breast. Posi- tivism must at least admit that it is not supported by chro. nology. However far back we go in the history of civilised humanity, we find, everywhere and always, religion, philosophy, and positive science existing together, and striving to disen- tangle themselves from their first confusion without ever separating entirely. If we look at our own times only, it is beyond question that positive science has not banished either religion or metaphysics. Religion is more active than it ever KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 9 was ; it underlies all our controversies ; and if the tendency of our day is to separate it more and more from politics, this does not prevent its being still the most powerful lever to move the mind of man, whether it be for it or against it. The very vehemence with which it is opposed proves that it is no mere shadow, no intangible phantom, against which men are fighting. We are not speaking of religion now as a sentiment only, but as a science. The great theological movement inaugurated by Schleiermacher, and carried on by such thinkers as Nitsch and Rothe, must be ignored by those who affirm that theology is a thing of the past. It has numbered more adepts in our day than Positive philosophy, and it has displayed as much vigour and intellectual depth as those who declare it to be defunct. With regard to metaphyics, it is enough to mention the names of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and more recently of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, in order to show that specu- lative thought, so far from being in its decadence, has had in our day a time of rare exaltation and enthusiasm. When we look yet more closely, we see that Positivism itself, so far from repudiating metaphysics, casts its roots deep into it ; for it was Hegelianism which, by placing the Absolute in the " Becoming," that is, in things nascent or contingent, prepared the minds of men to reject it altogether. Not only do religion, metaphysics, and positive science co-exist in the same period; but they are united in the same man. Jean-Jacques Ampere, for example, was at once a decided Christian, a profound metaphysician, and one of the most illustrious masters of positive science, which he enriched by important discoveries. How can the theory of the three states be defended against this refutation of it by well-established facts ? It may be said, no doubt, that in every age there are laggards, and that it is the leaders only who must be taken as representative men. But if Positivists are, as this explanation would imply, the leaders of the intellectual movement of the day, they must at io THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. any rate be followed by the great body of the army ; and this is certainly not the case. Rather, we find these leaders themselves carried away by those who follow them, since the Positivist school is more and more abandoning the famous theory of the Unknowable, in favour of a materialistic expla nation of the universe. Thus unconsciously it is becoming metaphysical, and proving untrue to the fundamental principle of its philosophy. These considerations lead us to look more closely into the theory of the three states, and to inquire if it is not based upon some misconception. In the first place, the Positivist school takes an unfair advantage by giving a definition of theology and metaphysics which applies only to their lowest manifestations. In Comte's view the theological state consists essentially in a vulgar fetishism, personifying and deifying all the forces of nature, while metaphysics simply substitutes entities, that is personified abstractions, for the fetishes. This is true, not of primitive, but of degenerate religion ; for it is proved, more and more clearly, as we shall show presently, that religion is in its essence monotheistic, as it was in its primeval form. Again, only the Realistic school can be accused of this sort of idolatry of entities. Theology and metaphysics have both progressed, and this progress has not consisted simply in giving place to Positive science; it has been carried on in their own domain. They too have had their evolution. Theology has been confronted with the gravest problems of the human mind, and has dealt with them by purely scientific methods. Metaphysics has long ceased to satisfy itself with vague mythological ideals, and has taken its stand on the facts of psychology. Here it has been led to recognise the principle of causation, which is no yon of a fantastic Gnosticism, but is at once a plain fact and a principle. Thus intellectually regarded, theology has never been divorced from metaphysics. Both have had to take up the same problems, and have often given the same explain KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. n tions; they have thus dwelt together in the same great minds. Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Maine de Biran, Schelling in his later manner, were all at the same time theologians and metaphysicians. The question of authority cannot be said to mark the distinction between theology and metaphysics, be- cause neither the one nor the other has settled it in any uniform manner. We see then that there is too much of metaphysics in theology and too much of theology in metaphysics, for us to regard them as distinct steps in the ladder of intellectual development. If we pass on to positive science, we shall be led again to the conclusion that it is not incompatible with theology and metaphysics. It is indeed a fatal mistake, to make science dependent upon the other two; but without pursuing further here a line of thought which we shall take up presently, it may be affirmed that positive science itself points, so to speak, to something higher than itself; that it implies of necessity a higher order of things which it does not explain, and which calls into play intuitive faculties of the human mind, whose unquestionable existence justifies the researches of theology and metaphysics. Positive science, just because it is true science, rises from the particular to the general, and after proving the connection between single phenomena evolves from it laws which bear upon the future. Starting from the relation of antecedent and resultant, it affirms that the same conditions of existence will always produce the same effects in the future. This is the very postulate of positive science. But this transition from the particular to the general, from the present to the future fact, cannot be determined by the mere observation of the object. Such observation does not include either prevision or generalisation ; it only brings us into contact with a succession of phenomena. To make one such phenomenon the condition of the other ; to conclude that a repetition of the same antecedents will produce the same results ; to make this a law of nature, something more is 12 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. required than observation. There must be a predisposition of the mind, an a priori element All is not comprised then in the object perceived; the perceiving subject is active also. We are thus raised by positive science itself above mere sensation. We are brought to the threshold of a higher region. Why then should positive science preclude meta- physics from entering that domain ? It is never intended to be a substitute for metaphysics. It is its duty to guard its own sphere from anything that would falsify observation, but it can go no farther. Hence positive science may have the fullest scope, while side by side with it metaphysics and theology carry on, as they have ever done in fact, a work no less im- portant and grand. E pur si mnove. This is a truth that holds not merely of the earth sweeping onwards in its orbit, and sweeping with it the theologian who denies its motion, but also in the sphere of thought, that thought which ceaselessly pursues the causes of things and hurries with it in its search even those who fain would trammel it. In this connection we have certain utter- ances as important as they are significant from the founder of the Positive school. " As to the living organism," he says, "the prime character, nay, almost the whole matter, is expressed in this : Unity and coherence in space, progressive change in time. The efficient cause of this unity and progress is life itself. In the science of organic beings, everything depends on the mode of grouping or coherence, and this is the resultant and expression of a certain unity to maintain which everything concurs. Synthesis in biology is to supplant analysis. Each order of existence is to the order above it as a plastic matter, to which the higher order gives form and shape. The higher gives the key for the explanation of the lower. It is in humanity that we must look for the explanation of nature generally. Animal life, taken as a totality, would be unintellig- ible apart from the higher factors and attributes which form the subject-matter of sociology. The highest type of all con- KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 13 stitntes in itself the complete determining principle of the universe biological." M. Ravaisson very justly brings out the inconsistency of such declarations with the essential principles of Positivism. He says : " Comte likewise repudiates any metaphysical ex- planation, any cause beyond the mutual action and reaction of organism and physical environment. But if the phenomenon alone is real, how are we to find in it any causation, any explana- tion of other phenomena ? The explanation of the lower by the higher implies a final cause." 1 Thus has positive science itself defined the sphere of the two great disciplinary methods of the human mind, which Positivism would proscribe. The co-existence of theology and metaphysics with positive science, which in our view is vindicated alike by theory and practice, by no means implies that they should be confounded together. They co-exist just because their objects are not identical, but correspond to different and mutually complementary requirements of our nature. Professor Flint has justly observed : " There are three ways of looking at things a religious, a metaphysical, and a scien- tific. But three aspects are not three successive states. From the fact that it is natural for the mind to look at things in all these three ways, it in no wise follows that it is necessary, or even natural, to look at them one after another. Nay, just because it is so natural to look at things in all these three ways, it is not natural to suppose that the one mode will be exhausted, gone through, before the other is entered on, but that they will be simultaneous in origin and parallel in develop- ment." 2 In order to form a clear idea of these three ways of looking at things, it will be necessary to define more distinctly the 1 Ravaisson. " Rapport sur la Philosophic Frar^aise," 1867, p. 88. 2 " The Philosophy of History in Europe." By Robert Flint, Vol. i, p. 269. 14 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. difference between what the Positivist school calls the first t\vc states of the human mind, which it defines as the theological and the metaphysical. We are at a loss to show any well- marked difference between them indicated by the distinction. We have already alluded to the point of resemblance between theology and metaphysics. It seems to us better, therefore, to designate the first state or aspect of things by the name religion. Theology is doubtless closely allied to religion, but it differs from it in this respect, that religion is not primarily an affair of the intellect a speculation but is essentially practical in its character an impulse of the soul, or rather of the whole being. We confine ourselves for the moment to one general characteristic which we shall vindicate when studying presently the origin of religion. Awed, often overwhelmed, by the mysterious intuition of the great unknown which holds him at once trembling and spell-bound, man has an instinctive desire to apprehend its meaning with his intellect, his heart, and his will. It may not be said that he becomes religious through terror of this great unknown. For, if this were so, the desire after a religious life would cease as soon as the terror was dispelled. But it is not so. The man in whom fear has been cast out, so far from trying to forget God, is ever pressing nearer to Him. longing to know Him better, or rather to be made one with Him. Religion, to be truly understood, should not be regarded in its lowest manifestations, in that gross fetishism in which Positivism wrongly supposes it to originate. Positivism has no right to apply to it another criterion than that which it applies to science. It does not measure science by the confused and dim utterances of its early period, but rather by its highest achievements in modern times. Let the same rule be in simple justice applied to religion. It has produced types which have grandly embodied its true ideal a living union between man and God. Aspiration after the Divine is its great characteristic. It is this which wings its thought, fires its heart, prompts its will thus bending its three KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 15 essential faculties in one and the same direction. We have not now to inquire whether this religious life is or is not based upon its aspirations. It is enough for us to recognise it as an unquestionable reality, and to determine its character as evidenced by the history of the human race. This suffices to establish that religion is essentially distinguished from pure metaphysics, whether theological or philosophical. There are, undoubtedly, real affinities between the two, for the tending of the moral nature Godward quickens the desire to know Him better in Himself as well as in His manifestations ; thus religion has ever given the most powerful impetus to meta- physics. But whenever, under the impulse thus given, the mind abandons itself to mere speculation, religion becomes only secondary. The theologian needs none the less to be under the influence of religion, for man is only in equilibrium when all his nature is acting harmoniously ; and even the speculative faculty works least advantageously in a vacuum from which all moral facts are excluded ; nevertheless, the fact remains, that in metaphysical research the keynote, so to speak, is purely intellectual. There is not then absolute separation between religion and metaphysics, but there is sufficient distinction to justify us in saying that we have here, not two states of the human mind, incompatible and therefore neces- sarily successive, but two aspects of things which may perfectly well co-exist and even supplement each other without any sort of contradiction. Religion, like metaphysics, enters the region of causes ; but the one soars aloft on an impulse of the soul, the other climbs by speculation. Yet both may blend in the same mind, and a man may be at once the boldest of thinkers and the most fervent of Christians. Positive science is more sharply distinguished from religion and metaphysics. The task assigned to it by Positivism is peculiarly its own. It is its mission to inquire into the con- ditions of all existence, to establish the connexion of facts, and their invariable relations of succession and resemblance ; 1 6 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. all of which belongs to the field of observation and experiment. How can religion and metaphysics come into collision with science thus understood, if only each keeps within its proper domain, being careful not to confound the how with the why, the question of the conditions of existence with that of its causes ? This confusion arises in two ways. Either religion and metaphysics mix up the how and the why, introducing into processes of observation and experiment, arbitrary and capricious pseudo-causes ; as, for instance, when mythology represents the thunder to be the voice of the Divine wrath, leaving it to science to ascertain the physical conditions of the phenomenon. It is only in its lower form that religion is guilty of such confusion as this ; it does not depend neces- sarily upon the religious point of view. Or, on the other hand, positive science, not content with ascertaining the conditions of life, confounds them with the first causes, and introduces the why into the how. In both cases there is incompatibility between religion or metaphysics and positive science, for the simple reason that each has invaded the domain of the other, and has attempted to occupy the whole field of human activity. Thenceforth their claims become incompatible, their co-exist- ence impossible, and the theory of the three states is vindicated. But the contradiction ceases so soon as each returns within its legitimate boundary, and positive science restricts itself to the contemplation of the conditions of existence and the corre- lation of natural phenomena. In this sphere the fullest liberty may be accorded to it. No one will attempt to control it by text or dogma, when once it is understood that religion has no right over its domain, that there is no higher authority to be invoked against it ; that it is sovereign in its own sphere ; that the experimenter in his laboratory, the naturalist entering the vast field of nature, is bound to believe nothing but his own observation ; and that the interposition of any power whatsoever between him and the facts of nature is a usurpation. KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 17 From this point of view it is clear that writers who, like Draper, pretend to record the defeats of religion in the triumphs of positive science, are boasting a cheap victory. 1 That which has been happily vanquished is the encyclopaedic religion of the Middle Ages, which made the sun move at the word of the prophet on the strength of a scripture text, and was thus forced to condemn Galileo the religion which could not admit that the earth, instead of being the centre of the world, was but a point in infinite space. Such a religion, whether upheld by the Catholic hierarchy or by a Protestant orthodoxy enslaved to the letter of the Bible, is usurping authority to which it has no claim. True religion has to do simply with the relation of the soul to God ; it only accepts as matter of revelation that which man has no power to discover for himself. Thus it leaves full scope for free inquiry, and it will never tremble before the advance of positive science, as though each stroke of the scalpel laying bare the secrets of nature, dealt it a mortal wound. We hold then the supremacy absolute and unquestionable of positive science in its own domain, while at the same time we hold that religion and metaphysics have lost none of the independence which belongs to them in their proper sphere ; and thus all causes of conflict are averted. 2 The famous third state, to which both the previous states are to give place, is but a third aspect of things, compatible on equal terms with the religious and the meta- physical state. Yet further, these three great functions of the human mind have not only the right to co-exist, they also all contribute, each by its proper methods and in its own sphere of distinct aciim, to the sum of human knowledge. We have shown thji* religion and metaphysics cannot dispense with each other, 1 " Conflict between Religion and Science." Draper. 2 See M. Charles Secretan's admirable article on the three states (" Revue Fhilosophique," March, 1881), and M. Vacherot's on the same subject (" Revue des Deux Mondes," August, 1880). C i8 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. and are only really fruitful in union. Positive science, over which they have no control, so far from awaking their fears and scruples, is intended to reinforce them. The science of causes is closely linked to that of effects, and is obliged, under penalty of losing itself in mere abstractions, to keep itself well informed of the results obtained by positive science. To explain without knowing, is not to explain at all. If meta- physics keeps a parallel line with positive science so that the two never meet, it becomes a mere abstraction the science of quintessences, and the ridicule of true scientists. On the other hand it gains vastly by that verification and classification of natural phenomena, from which the great laws of nature are logically evolved. When through the researches of positive science, the perfection of the Cosmos is brought, as it were, before our very eyes, the soul is uplifted to a higher perfect- ness, the reflection of which it has caught in the earthly things. The links of secondary causes which the observation of the scientist discovers, form surely but one end of that chain of first and final causes on which the metaphysician speculates, and in which the Christian believes and worships. We have seen that positive science is carried above itself by the idea of law reduced to its simplest expression and regarded as suggesting the invariable sequence of cause and effect. The part taken by hypothesis in discovery leads to the. same conclusion, as has been ably shown by M. Claude Bernard in his theory of experimental science. Hypothesis is that illumination of thought which anticipates a law of nature. It flashes upon the mind as the result of some preliminary and inconclusive experiment. Hypothesis would be impossible if there were not between the phenomena of nature and the mind of man a pre-established harmony. M. Claude Bernard does not hesitate to call this a preconceived idea, and this implies an a priori element. In his " Introduction a la Medecine Experimentale " we read : " It may be said that man has in his mind the intuition and presentiment of the laws of nature with- KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 19 out knowing their form." l This intuition would not indeed suffice to establish the fact apart from severe scientific inquiry ; but the mind would not be capable of such an anticipation of facts if they were not something more than mere experimen- tal phenomena, and if there were not in him something antece- dent and superior to mere sensation. Hypothesis is only a pre- liminary application of the principle of causation. From particular facts already verified, the mind argues general laws of life, a higher order which explains the lower, as says Comte. Thus positive science itself attests that it is not sufficient, that there are other aspects of things and that these are not un- important We conclude then, in opposition to the theory of the three states, that there is ample scope for division of labour and a fundamental harmony between religion, meta- physics, and positive science. 2 The only concession we are prepared to make to Comte's theory is, that these three great aspects of truth have been gradually emerging from the confusion in which they were at first involved and by which all suffered. It is very clear that, in the infancy of intellectual development, religion, meta- physics, and positive science, if indeed there was anything worthy of the name of science, were indistinguishably blended. Mythology pretended to give a complete explanation of the universe by "supposing all natural phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings." The sighing of the wind, the roar of ocean, the sunshine scattering night, were all 1 Claude Bernard. ' ' Introduction a la Medecine Experimentale," pp. 266- 269. M. Ernest Naville, in his book entitled " La Logique de 1'IIypothese" (Germer Bailliere, 1880), treats fully this subject, on which we can onlv touch. Not only is the importance and philosophical significance of hypo- thesis in aiding scientific discovery fully brought out, but the indispensable conditions of its legitimate use, perseverance, courage, loyalty to truth, are cleaily indicated. See also M. Caro's book " Le Materialisme et la Science" (Hachette, 1867) for a masterly treatment of Claude Bernard's assertions about hypothesis. 2 See on this subject M. Liard's book, "La Science et la Metaphysique," vol. ii., chap. I. 20 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. so many divine acts, which it was therefore idle to try to explain by natural laws and secondary causes. This was the age "Oil le del sur la terre Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux." Hesiod deifies the great cosmic laws as he conceived them; and the very palpable darkness of their origin suggests to him a goddess impenetrably veiled, whom he calls Eternal Night. Ancient philosophy sought to disentangle this confusion of primary and secondary causes. In the attempt it sometimes went so far as the entire suppression of primary causes, as in the Ionic school of philosophy, and particularly in the Atomism of Democritus ; and thus the way was first opened for positive science to assert itself. Hence Lange, in his history of these schools, affirms that materialism was a con- dition of progress, in spite of its exclusiveness which led it ultimately into the grossest errors. He acknowledges never- theless, that the great impulse to scientific research came from those very metaphysicians of whom he complains that they led positive science away from its lawful domain. Speaking of what he calls "this exaltation on the wings of imaginative specula- tion," he says : " We shall attach to it a high importance when we see how the free play of spirit which is involved in the search after the One and the Eternal in the change of earthly things, reacts with a vitalising and freshening influence upon whole generations, and often indirectly affords a new impulse even to scientific research. . . . The religious and moral principle from which Plato and Socrates started, guided the great speculative movement to a determined goal, and made i t capable of affording a deep content and a noble character of completeness to the moral efforts and struggles of thousands of years. . . . And even to-day the Ideal theory, which we are obliged to banish from the field of science, may by its ethical and aesthetic content, become a source of plentiful blessings." 1 1 "History of Materialism," F. A. Lange, vol. i., pp. 79, 80. KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 21 In the Middle Ages the early confusion reappeared in many forms in Christian scholasticism. Bacon initiated a reaction similar to that of the lonians and the Naturalists of the school of Epicurus. This reaction was exaggerated, like all move- ments of the kind, but it paved the way for the distinction between religion, metaphysics, and positive science. The division of the labour of inquiry enabled scholars to work each in his separate department, without any attempt to monopolise the whole field. This distinction and division of labour is an essential element of progress. The Positivism which ignores it and is unwilling to recognise any domain but its own (while forced to admit its incompleteness), is a retrogressive movement. It tends to clip the wings of inquiry ; but this mutilation is so contrary to nature, that the school which pledged itself to accept no- thing but positive facts ends by founding a religion. There is indeed, as we know, a schism on this point among the disciples of Comte. But it is none the less remarkable that the master himself should have developed the strange, mysticism which characterises his later writings, and should have instituted a worship which has never lacked devotees. His paper " Sur 1'En- semble du Positivisme," published in 1848, does not indicate any failure of power in the author of the Positive philosophy. 1 His great mind seems perfectly calm and self-possessed. He had no doubt received a shock, or, to speak more correctly, an impulse, from the great events which had shown the frailty of monarchical institutions and opened a broad highway for trium- phant democracy. It is this triumph which is absorbing his thoughts. He sees that this democracy will want a guiding principle to take the place of the dethroned authorities and powers. He recognises that this principle must be something more than a mere scientific method, that it will only be 1 "Discours sur TEnsemble du Positivisme, ou Exposition Sommaire de la Doctrine Philosophique propre a la graude Republique Occidental. " Paris, 1848. 22 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. effectual if it appeals to the heart as well as the intellect, and so enlists the emotional nature. How is such moral suasion to be educed from the mere contemplation and classification of natural phenomena? It is not enough to strike the barren rock to make the living waters flow. Thus Comte is con- strained to leave behind his own premisses. In spite of his efforts not to go beyond his system, he draws largely on that early state of the human mind which he had contemptuously relegated to the ignorant infancy of the race. He imagined indeed that he had completely escaped so humiliating an ad- mission by making humanity, and not the transcendental deities of the past, the object of worship. Humanity is everywhere represented as the only truly Great Being, of which we are the necessary members. To this great Humanity all the aspects of our individual and collective life are henceforth to have regard; our intellect is to contemplate it; our affections to cling around it ; our actions to serve it. This is a stage far removed indeed from the positive, and closely akin to that theological state, the great feature of which was the arbitrary personification of causes. We had been told that the fetish- worshipper, like the worshipper of Jehovah, went beyond positive facts, infusing into them a soul, a principle, a mys- terious power, which was their first and final cause. Religion, we were told, tends always to bring down the Divine into the earthly; it is not content with a transcendent, it seeks an indwelling deity; its great fallacy consists in this, that it couples with the positive facts which belong to experience, a mysterious force eluding observation. In what, we ask, does the Great Being of Comte himself differ from these entities, whether religious or metaphysical, which he has sought to banish from the field of science ? Our own observation enables us to verify the existence of individuals and aggregates of individuals who have entered into certain relations or social organisations ; but where has positive science found a Great Being called Humanity a Being vast and eternal, KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 23 to use Comte's own description, composed even more of the dead than of the living, and who lives again in each one of us ? So large a generalisation, attaining such a degree of reality that it becomes an object of worship, cannot be simply the sum total resulting from the addition of particular phenomena. It is more empirical even than those graceful divinities of Greek polytheism, which were but the simple idealisation of known realities. Let it not be forgotten that Comte asserts that we are necessary members of this Great Being. It must then have preceded and in some way produced us. It stands to us in the relation of a first cause, while it is at the same time an end, since we are bidden not only to contemplate but to love and even to serve it. It is not enough to say that it lives again in every man, for thus it appears only in a partial and disinte- grated form ; and it is the great whole, the complete integration, which is to be the object of our adoration. We can attain to it only by the power of thought. We must go beyond the relative and the particular and take our flight to the loftiest generalisation : and this somehow bears a strange resemblance to the Absolute. The cause, the end, the Absolute, here surely we have all the characters of a religion. I am aware that Comte asserts that in this adoration of the great whole, there is nothing more than the application of the element of sociability. That element, he tells us, proceeds logically from the sub- ordination of the subject to the object ; the mind, finding its own laws in nature, will simply submit to that immutable necessity which forbids us to isolate ourselves, and compels us to submit to the conditions of universal existence around us. But sociability is something quite apart from this subordination, for we have no such sentiment towards the outer world on which we are in so many ways dependent. The sociability which our kind inspires in us, arises out of our moral affinity with them. It does not proceed from the simple law of subor- dination, but from the sympathy and affection they inspire in us, in an altogether special way, such as we do not experience 24 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. towards any other beings. This Comte himself fully recognises, hence the importance which he attaches to the emotional side of our nature, the heart, the source of all noble impulses and fruitful affections. Hence the important part which he assigns, in his social reorganisation, to woman, whom he almost deifies, and after her to the common people, as more susceptible than other classes to the intuitions of affection. All is to run smoothly in the new society when, this pre-eminence of woman and of the common people being duly recognised, it has once inaugurated a purely industrial and productive regime, under the leadership of the ten thousand savans whom it is to love and cherish as its mandarins and spiritual chiefs. We do not dwell upon these Utopian visions, because no one in our day concerns himself about the worship of the Great Being, with its brilliant fetes and motley calendar crowned by the apotheosis of woman. We can only smile at this counterfeit of Middle-Age Catholicism, which, by the way, Comte regards as the least senseless of the follies of the past. We only advert to his conception of the Great Being and the mystical fervour it enkindled in him, as proof furnished by himself that his system failed to satisfy him. We are not among those who jeer at these strange inconsistencies. We look at them rather as the Nemesis of those indestructible elements of human nature which Comte sought arbitrarily to eliminate, and which thus assert themselves as the immortal part of man. We are bound to say that M. Littre, who so justly com- mands our respect by his elevation of character and nobility of life, has unhesitatingly repudiated the mysticism of his master, Comte. He has even gone so far in his reaction against this tendency, so repugnant to his logical mind, as to deny the very existence of that region of the Un- knowable, which Positivism is obliged by its very funda- mental principle at once to maintain and to ignore. Since, in this system, the attempt to explain anything is strictly interdicted, the existence of a First Cause can neither be KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 25 affirmed nor denied by it. Negation would be explanation; materialistic atomism is metaphysics. In ordei to appreciate this inconsistency of the illustrious writer, we have only to refer to his argument with Stuart Mill on this very question of the Unknowable. " If the universe had a beginning," says Mr. Mill, " its beginning, by the very conditions of the case, was supernatural ; the laws of nature cannot account for their own origin. The Positivist philosopher is free to form his opinion on the subject, according to the weight he attaches to the analogies which are called marks of design, and to the general traditions of the human race." l M. Littre energetically combats the idea that Positivism should make any concession to the idea of finality conveyed in the expression marks of design, used by Stuart Mill. " Positivist philosophy," he says, " does not leave us free to think what we please about first causes. It allows us absolutely no liberty in this respect. A man cannot serve two masters at once, the relative and the absolute. To conceive of knowledge in a region which philosophical principles assign to the unknown, is not to harmonise differences, but to bring together incompatibilities." 2 To interdict Positive philosophy from even admitting the possibility of a First Cause in the region of the unknown, as M. Littre does, is to abandon the position of complete neutrality which he had claimed. If Positive philosophy is really bounded by the phenomenal in nature, then it can have no interdict to lay upon hypotheses affecting anything beyond those limits. Suppositions and presumptions are free, pro- vided they are not treated as certainties, which the fundamen- tal principle of the school forbids. To object to the very ad- mission of the possibility of an intelligent First Cause, amounts to denying its existence ; and if the denial can be justified, the question has passed out of the region of the unknown. To speak of ignorance in such a case, is an abuse of language, 1 Stuart Mill. " Auguste Comte and Positivism," pp. 14, 15. ' Littre. "Fragments de Philosophic Positive," p. 284. 26 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. for he who is entirely ignorant cannot have a presumption for or against any one of the possible suppositions. So far M. Littre is right, in opposition to Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer. Neutrality on such a subject demands an equilibrium which is impossible. Thus Positivism has sometimes risen above itself, as we have seen in the case of Comte the founder of the humanitarian religion and sometimes has drifted into pure materialism. It is to this side that M. Littre's logic inclines. To say, as he says, that the view of the material shuts out the view of the spi- ritual, amounts to denying the spiritual. And yet he does not succeed altogether, for we can trace in his writings more than one of those happy inconsistencies which attest the imperish- able aspiration of the soul. In the " Paroles d'un Disciple," that beautiful introduction to the course of Positive philosophy, he speaks in almost devotional tones of the infinity which lies beyond us : " That which goes beyond positive knowledge, whether in the material world the boundless realms of space, or in the intellectual the endless concatenation of causes is inaccessible to the mind of man. But inaccessible does not mean null and void. Infinity, both material and intellectual, is closely linked to our knowledge, and becomes by this alliance a positive idea and of the same order ; I mean, that, as we approach it and touch it, this infinity appears to us -under its two-fold aspect the real and the unfathomable. It is an ocean which comes breaking on our shore, for which we have neither bark nor sail, but the clear vision of which is as salutary as it is terrible to us. The feeling of an infinite expanse in which all things float, has been gradually taking possession of men's minds, since astronomy gave a real form to the vasty deep, and changed the sky into a boundless space peopled with countless worlds. It is this feeling which has ever since given the tone to the human mind, inspiring the imagination, and finding utterance in the grandest raptures of modern poetry. It is a new spiritual phase for man to see himself surrounded by KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 27 the vastness of space, of time, of multiform life, without any other master, any other safeguard, any other strength than the mere laws which govern the universe. Nothing is so elevating to the soul as this contemplation. All that has been done, and that is being done, of great and good in our modern era, has its root in the growing love of humanity, and in the conception that man forms of his place in the universe." l This is a stage far removed indeed from that simple observation of phenomena which stirs none of these sublime emotions ; for the sublime is born of the intuition of the infinite, and not of a mere widening of the horizon of visible and sensible things. I know that M. Littre' asserts that all that is grandest in the emotion thus excited, is derived from the fact that man is in the presence of an infinite devoid of God the boundless realm of nature; but who can fail to feel that there is religion in the deep sentiment which expresses itself in such strong poetry, that it is but an echo of Pascal's words : "Limmensite des espaces infinis m'etonne et me confond" Strange, that man is so essentially a religious being that he makes a sort of religion out of irreligion itself, and imparts to it an element of -the infinite derived from the indestructible instinct of his own nature. To use M. Littre"'s figure, the ocean of immensity would break in vain upon the shore of humanity, if man were but as a grain of sand ; it would have no power to touch him if the voice of the infinite had not already spoken in the depth of his soul. Man is like the tiny shell which seems to hold imprisoned within it the roar of the mighty ocean. We only need to bend our ear to listen, and we catch distinctly the echo of infinity. It will be no departure from the severe conditions of a grave discussion, to show by an indisputable example, that Positivism finds it impossible to restrict itself within its own prescribed limits. There has lived in our day a young scholar, too early snatched away from a promising career of science, 1 " Auguste Comte et la Philosophic Positive." M. Littre. 28 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. who had accepted the principle of the Positivist school in all its severity. He believed that positive science was the one aspect of the universe. A sincere and earnest student, devoted to the search after truth, he soon discovered not only that this science did not respond to all the legitimate aspirations of his being, but also that it did not suffice for itself. M. Leveque, in his beautiful introduction to M. Papillon's posthumous work, "L'Histoire de la Philosophic Moderne dans son Rapport avec le Developpement des Sciences de la Nature," gives the intellectual and spiritual history of this young scholar. He had felt the full fascination of the splendid advance of con- temporary science, and he started with the most absolute exclusivism, and the elimination of everything which was not positive science. His road to Damascus was this very pursuit of free scientific inquiry. He felt as he went on, that man has other faculties than pure reason, which demand to be fed. He came to recognise that even knowledge itself catches as it ascends a glory from heights above those of scientific observation. " Let the empirics and the utilitarians say what they will," he writes shortly before his death, "there are certain- ties outside the experimental method, and paths of progress that outlie its most brilliant and beneficent applications. The human mind can employ its energies, work in accord with reason, and discover real truth in a sphere as much higher than that of laboratories and workshops, as this is higher than the region of the commonest acts of life. In short, there is a temple of light, the doors of which are not opened to the soul either by mathematical or natural science, and into which nevertheless, the soul which has not lost the consciousness of its ancient prerogatives, may safely and rightly look." 1 M. Papillon is an illustration of the incompetence of Positivism to keep the mind enthralled within the narrow 1 "Histoire de la Philosophic Moderne dans son Rapport avec les Sciences de la Nature.'' Ouvrage posthumede Ferdinand Papillon. Intro- duction, p. 20 (Paris : Hachette, 1876). KNOWLEDGE AND POSITIVISM. 29 circle of mere observation of facts. How can we wonder at this, when we have seen that the founders of the system them- selves, the very men who have laboured to construct this iron cage for the intellect of their age, have been the very first to break through its bars ? To conclude, we hold that Positivism is not justified either by history or by the facts of present experience. Starting with a disavowal of the principle of causation, which is the very foundation of all reasoning, and which ought at least to be recognised in the category of established facts, it has seen its theory of the three states belied in the past, by the permanent coexistence of theology, metaphysics, and science ; and in the present (which ought to be the exclusive age of Positivism), by the new and eager impulse given to philosophic and religious thought. It has mistaken for three successive and incompatible states of the human mind, three aspects of things, which may be usefully distinguished but not separated from each other, since they are mutually complementary. Neither religion nor metaphysics can dispense with positive science, while on the other hand positive science is not self- sufficing, since, in formulating the simplest laws which extend beyond single phenomena, something more is implied than the results of mere sensation and positive observation. Hypothesis which suggests experiment, is a light coming from within, not from without. The progress of knowledge consists in dis- entangling it from its original confusion, and dividing the work to be done between religion, metaphysics, and positive science, while preserving their independence and necessary relations. Positivism has not been able rigidly to adhere to its principles; it has encountered a twofold difficulty. Sometimes it has been raised above itself under the imperious influence of the higher needs inherent in humanity, as we have seen in the case of Auguste Comte himself, who ended by founding a humanitarian religion altogether out of harmony with his own premisses ; sometimes it has inclined to pure materialism, and has denied 30 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. altogether the existence of the Unknowable, which, in fidelity to its own principles, it is bound to admit Other systems, based on the same doctrine, have diverged also in both these directions, so that positive science presents a line deflected now to the right, now to the left. This re- ductio ad absurdum is simply the refutation by history of the changing theories by which the mind of man has sought to solve the problem of the universe. So strong is the instinct of the true within him, that no error can stand before it; every doctrine, as it develops itself, discloses whatever is false and incomplete in it. It is sure to arrive sooner or later at some crucial result which brings to light its defectiveness. The school which arises in its stead, makes it its special object to bring into prominence this latent inconsistency of its prede- cessor, and to push it to its furthest issues, till, in its zealous refutation, it also falls into error, and is in its turn refuted and superseded. Thus, every error becomes the starting-point for a new victory. We may then have full confidence in the human mind, and in its spontaneous logic; it is ever eager to overturn its own idols and bring to light their feet of clay. The history of thought has its Nemesis, like the history of the passions, and this Nemesis is reason itself, obeying its own laws. 1 1 See two articles by M. Caro, " La Philosophic Positive, ses Transfor- mations, son Avenir," "Revue des Deux Mondes," April I5th, May 1st, 1882. CHAPTER II. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE NEW PSY- CHOLOGY IN ENGLAND, FKANCE, AND GERMANY. POSITIVISM professes to limit its researches to the verification of facts and their immediate order of succession. When science has accepted and classified them, it has done its work. First and final causes lie so completely beyond its range that it is not entitled even to deny them, since the negation of these higher causes would be virtually an affirmation that the causes of being are inherent in the phenomenal world itself, and would thus be a reply to the question which science is forbidden to ask. We have seen Positivism carrying its principles so far as to eliminate psychology from the domain of science, on the ground that the subject ought always to be subordinated to the object, the mind to the Cosmos, in order that we may keep within the pale of certainties. We have come to the conclusion, therefore, that Positivism is shown, alike by history and by reason, to be untenable and doomed to fall, as divided against itself. Another school arising out of it has endeavoured to rectify or to supplement it, by explaining the origin of what we call the a priori the indestructible basis of the intellect in man, the laws, categories, and principles of thought, commencing with the most universal and powerful of all the principle of causation. This school, in carrying out its programme, has been constrained to deal with psychology, since it proposes to prove by a subtle analysis, that the mind of man does not possess inherently the element which seems intuitive, but 81 32 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. derives it purely from sensation. It is not content therefore with prohibiting the inquiry into causes ; it pretends to prove that there are no causes, that the principle of causation is only a generalisation of sensation derived from its frequency and regularity. We shall follow the developments of this school first in England, in its two cognate branches, I mean in the theory of association, which Stuart Mill has developed with such a wealth of observation, and in that of transforma- tion, which Herbert Spencer has carried to its fullest issues. Germany exhibits an analogous tendency in the new philo- sophy which asserts (strange to say, not in irony) that it has founded a psychology without assuming the soul. Lastly, M. Taine advances the same theory in his own brilliant and piquant style. To him psychology seems nothing more than a show of Chinese shadows; though we fail to discover any trace of a substantial screen on which to project them. I. ENGLISH PSYCHOLOGY. THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE ACCORDING TO STUART MlLL AND HERBERT SPENCER. i. STUART MILL. It is in his work on Sir William Hamilton's philosophy that Stuart Mill first formulates his theory of the association of ideas, which he holds to be the key to the psychological problem. By means of it he professes to make the mind of man a complete void, tracing back to combinations of sen- sation all that appears to us fundamental or axiomatic. Before presenting his views on this capital point, we wish to call attention to a flagrant contradiction in his system which we find also in that of Herbert Spencer. Stuart Mill has affirmed, even more emphatically than the Positivist school, the existence of that great region of the Unknowable which eludes research. We have seen that M. Littre was ready to accuse him of mysticism for having expressly reserved to THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 33 religion, or at least to the mysterious instinct which it reveals, that terra incognita in which we are free to suppose anything, even the existence of God, provided we recognise that it has nothing whatever to do with science : " The positive mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the supernatural, it merely throws back that question to the origin of all things. . . . Positive philosophy maintains that within the existing order of the universe, or rather of the part known to us, the direct determining cause of every phenomenon is not super- natural, but natural. It is compatible with this to believe that the universe was created, and even that it is continuously governed, by an Intelligence, provided we admit that the intelligent Governor adheres to fixed laws." l Here then we have the possibility of the Divine and the supernatural stated in the most categorical manner ; and yet we are told that all our ideas come from, sensations in various stages of com- bination and association ! How are we to harmonise the possibility of the Divine with a theory of knowledge which has no other source than the senses ? These can never give even the vaguest intuition of the Divine of what Stuart Mill justly calls the supernatural. Matter can only give the material element, the transitory and inferior. We have before us these two alternatives : either the Divine and supernatural should be denied, even as bare possibilities ; or the theory that all knowledge is derived from sensation is inadequate and fails to set aside the a priori 'in man. No dialectic artifice can avail to cover this contradiction, which is even more pal- pable in the later works of this great thinker. In Herbert Spencer we find the same inconsistency, though he assigns a larger part to the purely mechanical explanation of things, and comprehends the theory of the association of ideas in that of evolution. " Life," he says, " is definable as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. And when we so define it, we discover that the physical and 1 " Auguste Comte and Positivism," Stuart Mill, pp. 14, 15.* D 34 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. the psychical life are equally comprehended by the definition. . . . If then life in all its manifestations, inclusive of intelli- gence, consists in the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations, the necessarily relative character of our knowledge becomes obvious." 1 The unknowable is confounded with the absolute. " We are conscious of the relative as existence under conditions and limits ; it is impossible that these conditions and limits can be thought of apart from something to which they give the form. Consequently there must be a residuary conscious- ness of something which filled up their outlines ; and this indefinite something constitutes our consciousness of the non- relative or absolute. Impossible though it is to give to this consciousness any qualitative or quantitative expression what- ever, it is not the less certain that it remains with us as a positive and indestructible element of thought. . . . The momentum of thought inevitably carries us beyond conditioned existence to unconditioned existence ; and this ever persists in us as the body of a thought to which we can give no shape." 2 We know that Herbert Spencer reduces the unknowable and the absolute to a thin abstraction which " transcends not only human knowledge but human conception," while he leaves us free to admit a mode of existence as much above the will and the reason as these are above mere mechanical movement. But this higher mode of existence, beyond the relative and the experimental, is after all but a vain show, if the theory of mechanical evolution, as expounded by Herbert Spencer, is true ; for we find that it explains every- thing within and around man, leaving no place anywhere for anything but mechanical force no nook or cranny in the mind for any other element ; so that neither in the object nor the subject is there room for the unknowable or the 1 " First Principles," Herbert Spencer, pp. 84, 85. 2 Jbid. t pp. 91-93. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 35 absolute ; everything is known and explained, everything is material and relative. In fact, the subject has no real exist- ence; he is only the object modified according to the invariable law of the persistence of force. There are but two alterna- tives then : either to renounce the unknowable, the absolute, or to shatter the narrow mould of universal mechanism. It follows that evolution and the association of ideas alike fail to explain the mind of man We are sure then, before examining them in detail, that these two theories are inadequate, since they conflict with one of the most positive facts verified by themselves, namely the presence in the mind of that element of the unknowable, the absolute, which the very conception of the relative carries with it by an association of ideas amount- ing in this instance to a law. If we now look at these two theories in themselves, setting aside the notion of the unknowable and the absolute, which they have nevertheless failed to shake off, we shall find them equally inadequate to explain mere intellectual phenomena. Stuart Mill had been anticipated in his theory of the associa- tion of ideas by a philosopher of the eighteenth century, whom he has only supplemented David Hume. Hume also en- deavoured, by analysing the complex and combination of sensations, to arrive at the "original furniture of the mind." He devoted himself especially to the principle of causation, "that bulwark of the intuitive school," as Stuart Mill has well called it. According to Hume, we have come to seek the causes of all phenomena, through an inveterate habit of mind resulting from the frequent succession of our impres- sions. 1 It is from the simple fact of succession that we have risen gradually to the idea of causation. By repeatedly verifying the post hoc, we have come little by little to the propter hoc. Succession has become to us a cause, owing to the intensity and repetition of the accompanying sensations. Imagination has perpetuated the effect of these sensations and 1 " Treatise on Human Nature." David Hume. 36 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. given them a certain duration. Hence we have drawn the law of induction which transfers to the future the order of succes- sion verified in the past. This is a mere intellectual habit, founded upon experiences which have assumed the character of necessity. These sensations, retained in the mind in their accidental succession (which yet from its frequency appears to us constant), have given us the idea of an organised world without us. We have thus given a fictitious identity to their common or persistent elements, and so have arrived at the illusion of matter. By a like process, we have elaborated theidea of self, which is the resultant of the elements common to all our perceptions. This personal identity is only a sort of summation of experiences bearing a close resemblance to each other. Hume made faith in God the crowning point of his otherwise absolute scepti- cism, as though to keep right with the reigning beliefs and perhaps with his own aspirations also. We shall not stay to refute Hume, because it will be more satisfactory to deal with his system in its perfected form. We will merely object here, that he has not anywhere explained the primary fact of the impression which is the pivot of his system ; for in order that a sensation may be produced, it is necessary that the object exciting it should impress itself upon the sub- ject receiving it. Hume leaves this primary fact suspended as it were in vacuo, without telling us to what it relates, since he has no account to give of the organism or of the mind, both of these vanishing away into chimeras of the imagination. He has, moreover, never shown that sense-impressions are the only source of our ideas, for, according to his own theory, the idea sometimes precedes the impression. By making in- duction a purely fortuitous and empirical process, he takes away from it all certainty. 1 The other objections that may be urged against Hume, on the ground of his utter failure to explain this self, which he declares to be " nothing but a bundle or collec- 1 See Robert, "Dc la Certitude," chap. xii. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 37 tion of different perceptions," and yet which is accredited with intellectual power sufficient to connect impressions and give them coherence, will come before us in the discussion of the theory of the association of ideas in our own day. We have already said that Stuart Mill endeavours to explain by sensation alone those categories or forms of thought which from their permanence or universality appear to him intuitive, and which seem to arise within our own minds and not from without. Such is the principle of causation, which makes us always connect together consequences and antecedents. The idea of a substance which underlies all attributes, is not less innate and has all the marks of intuition. Again, we cannot help associating with everything a certain place in time or space. Lastly, we are conscious of the ego and the non-ego. This is what may be called the intellectual d priori. We shall speak presently of the moral d priori. It is this intuitive element which Stuart Mill, following Hume, seeks to disprove. 1 Not satisfied with assigning its legitimate share in our know- ledge to the sensation which supplies its outward material and its stimulus, he makes sensation the one source of all know- ledge. According to him, there is not an idea or a principle which is not explained by his famous theory of the association of ideas which are themselves the simple products of sensation. Ideas associate themselves according to certain fixed laws, which Stuart Mill endeavours to define. These laws are three. First: "Similar phenomena tend to be thought of together." Second : " Phenomena which have either been experienced or conceived in close contiguity to one another, tend to be thought of together. The contiguity is of two kinds : simultaneity and immediate succession." Third : " Associations produced by contiguity become more certain and rapid by repetition. When two phenomena have been very often experienced in conjunction, and have not in any single instance occurred separately, either in experience or in thought, there is produced between them 1 " Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy." Stuart Mill. 33 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. what has been called inseparable association." ] The disposition of our mind to associate all phenomena with causes, is a mere habit which grows out of this constant association of concomitant ideas. Mr. Mill recognises no necessity to derive the principle of causation from the depths of his own nature ; what he calls by that name is only the result of accumulated experience. He has made an important advance in his own evolution, when, after experiencing certain sensations, he has prolonged them by the force of memory and has represented to himself their continuation by the imagination. From this point he has no longer been content with present and fugitive sensations ; he has formed the idea of possible sensations. These possible sensations at once assume for him a character far less ephemeral than present sensation, which is but momentary. They present themselves to him in the correlation of antecedents and con- sequents, and he regards all his actual sensations as subject to the same law. These possible sensations have thus formed for the mind a sort of fixed organism, which it soon comes to regard as the inexhaustible and constant antecedent of its present sensations. By referring the latter to the former, he comes to form the idea of a resistant substance underlying the fluctuations of present sensations. Thus the notion of substance, like that of cause, has been evolved out of sense- experience by its own natural operation, without any pre- vious intuition. The fact that the same possible experiences present themselves to all men, has invested the external world with a character of reality and objectivity which has given rise in the mind to the idea of corporeality and of matter. The idea of space and time has arisen out of the constantly repeated experience, that we can always suppose a point beyond that at which we have arrived, a moment after the actual moment. We always imagine to ourselves other points beyond those we have seen. The law of association of ideas thus 1 ''Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," Stuart Mill, pp. 225, 226. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 39 gives us the notions of the infinite and of space. We arrive at the consciousness of the ego, by the very distinction which we spontaneously make between the possible sensations, which our imagination has formed into an organisation external to ourselves, and our faculty of experiencing the sensations of the moment. These constitute the ego. The association of ideas constantly recalls this opposition between present and possible sensations, out of which grows the consciousness of our own personality. Such is in outline this scheme for explaining fully the sub- ject by the object, the human mind by sensation. It will not bear investigation. We raise first, without dwelling on it, the preliminary objection which we made to Positivism, calling in question its right to use the inductive method. In order to elaborate this theory of knowledge, or, let us rather say, to found a science of any kind, we must argue from actual to future phenomena in every case in which the circumstances are identical. If this is not admitted, all that is possible is the verification of the fugitive sensation of the moment. We have the impression of the animal, not the knowledge of the man. But again, what right have we to conclude from a phenomenon perceived by sensation alone, that it would be certainly re- peated under analogous conditions ? Sensation affirms nothing of the sort; for it is essentially transitory and momentary, and in order to generalise, anticipate, argue, we need some- thing more ; we need an act of the mind. Stuart Mill indeed recognises this objection in some degree, for he admits that the laws formulated by him are only valid under our present conditions. We have then no guarantee of their permanence. He has not, like the early Positivists, contented himself with the simple induction which predicts the return of phenomena under conditions already known. We have seen how much importance he attaches to the notion of possible sensations, from which alone he derives the idea of substance and cor- poreality. But this conception of possible sensations har- 40 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. monised into a great system, cannot be said to be in any sense, the spontaneous product of present sensation. The possible which is simply the virtual, eludes it altogether ; sensation has to do only with the real. It can doubtless prolong the real in imaginacion ; but between this and the conception of a world, a system of ordered and graduated possibilities, there is a gulf which sensation alone can never bridge over. The ideas of substance and of corporeality are not then a mere evolution of present sensation even when this is prolonged in imagination. The idea of the infinite in time and space is something alto- gether different from the supposition of a possible fresh point always following on the one just readied. Prolongation is not infinity; the infinite implies something more than the mere juxtaposition of points. All the known points plus one, do not give the notion of space or of time. To assign to these points their place in boundless time and space, it is necessary for the mind to know intuitively what time and space are. The idea of cause cannot be reduced to that of mere succession ; a million of antecedents followed by consequents would only give ante- cedents and consequents, not cause and effect. Of this we have conclusive proof in the incontestable fact, that there are invariable successions which will not come under the category of cause and effect. Day invariably succeeds night, and yet it is not the night which produces the day. If then there is an essential distinction between succession and causation, we must seek the notion of a cause elsewhere than in succession, that is to say, outside of material things ; we must seek it in the subject itself, in the mind. Again, as has been observed by M. Janet, the association of ideas, when it arises out of sensation only and is left to itself, never leads to a logical sequence of thought We are familiar with such associations in sleep ; in dreams we are the sport of our sensations. The result is a wild medley of ideas, though we can often, with a little attention, trace the broken and tangled threads which have been linked together in our memory, and the first impressions which pro- THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 41 duced this inextricable confusion. In order that our ideas should be connected in a normal manner, we have to control and watch them, and to keep them within reasonable bounds ; in a word, we have to exercise the active faculties of our mind. The purely external and fortuitous connection of ideas differs altogether from the logical association, which is an act of thought. 1 Stuart Mill does not see that his whole theory of the association of ideas is one gigantic petitio principii. What is he aiming at by this means, but to explain the presence of the idea of cause in the human mind? And what do.es this mean but that he is endeavouring to find out its origin ? Thus in the very effort which he makes to get rid of the principle of causation, he pays homage to it and sanctions it; for after all, the association of ideas is the cause of the idea of cause ; it professes to give at once the how and the why, and in working it out, Mr. Mill has been constrained to appeal constantly to the principle of causation. The inadequacy of his theory is most striking when we look at his explanation of the con- sciousness of the ego. How is it possible to reduce the ego to a mere residuum, an aggregate of converging sensations, even if we ascribe to it no higher functions than Mr. Stuart Mill does ? In order to associate two ideas, it is needful that the ego should at least be conscious of longer duration than either of them, in order that he may master and connect them. It is not possible that the ego should be simply the sum total of these two ideas or sensations, since it is able to bring them together and to associate them. If it were so, it must be de- fined as an addition sum adding up itself, which would be non- sense. Beside the element of duration which distinguishes the ego from its sensations, it possesses also an element of activity, an energy peculiar to itself, and without which it would not associate its sensations, Yor to say that they associate themselves as they pass through the mind, is to say nothing. Either they simply pass through the ego and leave no trace, or they mark 1 Janet. " Psychologic," chap, v., pp. 51, 92. 42 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. their passage by encountering a reaction from it. This reaction implies an active element, something which is not simply wave succeeding wave, but a force distinct from them. In order that the chain of association may be perceived, that is, may have the slightest reality, it is indispensable that at least one of the links should be separate and raised above it, and should have consciousness of this. The fact of consciousness implies the distinction between the object and the subject, or it is nil; without this there is neither thought nor knowledge, simply a movement of things which, leaving no trace, is as though it had never been. Stuart Mill was conscious himself of the insufficiency of his explanation of the ego. Thus he frequently uses terms which do not coincide with his theory, as when he speaks " of that reality which by the grouping of phenomena establishes the law of beings, and connects the immediate and- actual with the mediate and possible." In order to accomplish such an opera- tion, mind must be more than a bundle of sensations, or an aggregate of impressions. With his loyalty to truth, the great thinker has himself acknowledged that we cannot content our- selves with Hume's explanations of this capital point. He says : " The inexplicable tie or law, the organic union (as Professor Masson calls it), which connects the present con- sciousness with the past one which it recalls, is as near as I think we can get to a positive conception of self. That there is something real in this tie, real as the sensations themselves, and not a mere product of the laws of thought without any fact corresponding to it, I hold to be indubitable. . . . This original element, to which we cannot give any name but its own peculiar one without implying some false or ungrounded theory, is the ego or self. As such I ascribe a reality to the ego to my own mind different from that real existence as a permanent possibility, which is the only reality I acknowledge in matter." 1 1 " Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," Stuart Mill, p. 262. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 43 This is the fixed point we have been seeking, the reality of the ego ; and incomplete and mutilated as this reality may still be, it is something we can take hold of. Without this fixed point thought is lost in the void, for the most we can arrive at from the analysis of our ideas is only a sensation, that is to say a representation. By what or by whom has it been produced ? What is there behind it ? We are allowed to suppose nothing beyond, and thus we are kept in a vicious circle of representations which represent nothing, and which have no medium on which to fall. No ray, no reflector ; this is the negation to which we are brought if the ego has no reality. Unhappily Stuart Mill has been content to make memory the sole and very inadequate factor of the ego. His theory of morals never rises above utilitarianism, so that it ignores the most indestructible basis of the ego, the moral absolute. 2. HERBERT SPENCER. Herbert Spencer has supplemented Stuart Mill's explanation, by his theory of evolution. He has given full scope to the association of ideas by including the broad field of heredity, which takes us far beyond the narrow limits of the individual life, for heredity implies the succession of generations through countless ages. Each generation may have added its contin- gent to the intellectual treasure which constitutes the human mind as we know it to-day, and which is the slow accumulation of centuries of human experience. Herbert Spencer closely associates his psychology with his cosmology, which we shall only look at now as it comes under the problem of knowledge, reserving to a subsequent chapter the discussion of its prin- ciples. He bases his whole system upon one axiom the persistence of force, which can neither be augmented nor diminished, but merely transformed. This force, ever the same, is the primordial homogeneous unity, which by an inward necessity is ever tending to the heterogeneous, or to the 44 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. differentiation which produces an ever-progressing defmiteness m the organism. The organism tends constantly to adapt itself to the element in which it lives. Hence its growth, its evolution from the lower stages of indefiniteness to the fullest, most com- prehensive and definite life, such as we find in man. In his theory of knowledge, which alone is before us for the moment, Herbert Spencer contents himself with deducing the consequences of his cosmology. Knowledge also has passed through number- less phases from the lower degree to the higher, in conformity with the twofold law of the necessary transition from the homo- geneous to the heterogeneous, and of the adaptation of life to its environment. Intellectual life is not at first distinguished from physical life. It grows up little by little by successive additions. There is a continual progression from the reflex action by which the infant seeks the breast, to the intricate reasoning of the adult. This progression is illustrated by the differentiation and specialisation of climates, which at first were all involved in featureless homogeneity. Intelligence, which at the outset is reflex action, becomes instinct, then memory, then reason, as little by little it adapts itself to its conditions. The accumula- tion of experiences and hereditary transmission play a large part in this evolution of intelligence. Thus, that which was at first only an experience, an association of ideas, becomes a notion so identified with thought, that it has all the appear- ance of intuition. The hereditary perfectly resembles the innate. The individual man does not need to-day to act, like his first ancestors, on experiences and associations of ideas or of sensations, in order to acquire fundamental notions of his own reason ; it suffices that these have been acquired by earlier generations ; they have been directly transmitted to him, and he makes use of them as if they originally formed part of his mind. It is of little consequence that these founda- tions of his intellectual life have been formed, as certain rocks are lormed, by slow accumulation of grain after grain of sand. The lapse of ages has cemented them in such a way that they THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 45 fulfil the functions of the intuitive and axiomatic ideas of the old psychology; for these notions were not always axioms, they have only become so. They are not necessary, in the sense that they are not eternal and absolute, not based upon the very constitution of the mind ; but they are so now, for they can never be destroyed. This is all the more impossible because the physical organ of mind has itself been modified under the influence of these acquisitions of experience, and it has increased in bulk. Heredity has modified this as it does the other organs, and the brain of the European is appreciably larger than that of the Papuan. Applying these general theories to the principal ideas which have been regarded as original or intuitive, Herbert Spencer, following Stuart Mill, endeavours to show that the notion of space and time proceeds from an experience of the senses. Time is the generalisation of all the experiences by which we perceive things in succession, as space is the abstract of all those in which we perceive co-existence. These experiences have their origin in the exercise of our muscles, which give us the sensation of force. Light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, the motion of matter, vegetable, anjmal, intellectual life, all this is persistent force, or energy. The vital forces are the forces from which our thoughts and feelings spring, and which expend themselves in producing them. Hence Herbert Spencer argues that thought is only a transformation of mole- cular motion. The theory of evolution does not seem to us to render em- piricism more plausible than before. First, it has to encounter the same objections as the theory of the association of ideas, on all the points on which it is in harmony with it. It claims to facilitate it by the introduction of heredity, which gives it an in- definite length of time to produce its combinations and weave its complicated web. But we reply, Time is no element in the question. Sensations do not acquire any fresh virtue by multi- plication and combination through myriad ages ; they remain 46 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. passive, successive, transitory, and we are entitled to ask : whence did they derive this strange power of combining, generalising, and finally arriving at abstract conclusions? This implies positive mental activity ; how can it be evolved from the purely passive ? We fail further to understand how heredity can constitute this ego conscious of itself and of its modifications. It is not distinct from its sensations, for it is nothing more than a " parcel of impressions," and yet it connects and concentrates them, and forms ideas from them ; nay, more, it feels itself to be stationary and resistant in the midst of incessant modifications of its environment. This is a mode of existence sui generis. How has it been produced in the child, if it was not in the parent? We must frankly acknowledge with Stuart Mill, that the identity of the ego can- not be explained by mere association of ideas. Ideas might be passively associated through endless ages, but they would never give birth to consciousness, which is shown to be some- thing apart from them by the very fact that it apprehends their connection. If we pass on to the intuitive ideas, which are said to be the result of accumulated experiences, we at once perceive that Herbert Spencer is not more successful than Stuart Mill in explaining them. He refers' the idea of time to that of a per- ceived sequence, and the idea of space to that of co-existence ; but these words, sequence and co-existence, are properly only equivalents of the ideas of time and space, which amounts to saying that, in order to obtain the experience of time and space, we must already have the pre-conceived idea of them. The fact that two movements follow one another, does not imply the idea of succession indefinitely prolonged, any more than their coincidence implies their continuous co-existence. It may be objected again, that the idea of succession and of co-existence comes with our dimmest and lowest percep- tions. Hence it follows that time and space force them- selves upon the elementary perception without requiring any THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 47 lengthened experience. If we were confined to our sensa- tions, we should have a vague sense of simultaneotisness, but none of a continuous co-existence. The ideas of time and space then precede the experience of succession and simultaneous- ness, above which our senses alone would never raise us. M. Janet well says : " Even if all the laws of mind were reduced to the association of sensations, hereditary or otherwise, there is at least one law which could not be included the law of association itself; for all association implies the presence of two differing sensations in the same consciousness. Thus the unity of consciousness, the thinking /, is at the bottom of all. Mere succession or simultaneousness is only an external relation between two sensations ; there is still needed a connecting link, a principle of synthesis." 1 The idea of time could not in any case be explained by the mere association of sensations, for it must precede all associations. In order to associate sensations, there must be the notion of a certain succession and a certain simultaneousness, which implies the relations of time. Herbert Spencer has not been faithful to his own system. How could he fail to see that he had introduced the wolf into the sheep-fold, when he brought in the & priori by his famous axiom of the persistence of force ? He affirms this without proving it. It is with him a true postulate, and by virtue of this postulate he refuses us the right to accept any others. The contradiction is flagrant. The use which he makes of his axiom is moreover quite unwarrantable. From the persistence of force he concludes that there is but one manifestation of force, the mechanical; and from this he professes to derive by evolution all the manifestations of life, thought included, without ever explaining how motion is transformed into thought. Matter seeking to understand itself, is no longer mutter ; motion which is conscious of itself, is no longer mere motion. 3 Evolution cannot give more than it 1 "Traite de Philosophic," Janet, chap, ix., p. 214. 8 Charles Secretan, " Discours Laiques," IV. " Phenomenisrae. " 48 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. possesses. The total of an addition ^ cannot be more than the sum of the figures composing it. Before we can derive thought (not to speak of the moral life) from mechanical force, new quantities must have been surreptitiously brought into the operation. This then is, in short, the decisive objection to the theory of evolution it is necessarily unfaithful to its own principle. It introduces at every step of development between the ante- cedent and the consequent, an element which was not in the antecedent. "However small the interval may be, it cannot be crossed. The second state is the test plus something. Every specific difference is irreducible by thought to the preceding quantities.'"' 1 The development of mechanical force does not explain that which is added to it in the different stages of development; it accounts for the series of mechanical phenomena, but not for the successive forms of which they are, so to speak, the substance. There are but two alternatives. Either that which pertains to the final outcome of development was implicitly in- cluded in its principle, and then the principle was not simply mechanical; or else, something new has been introduced to pro- duce the development, and this new element raises us above the merely mechanical. We have not to do with the simple trans- formation of one form into another ; in either case, evolution fails to explain the phenomenon. This reasoning is perfectly applicable to the psychology of Herbert Spencer, which recog- nises only a simple evolution of mechanical force, from reflex movement up to reason, taking instinct by the way. "It is impossible not to perceive that from the reflex movement to instinct, and from instinct to reason, there is an accumulation the elements of which were not contained in the previous states. Where were those elements? Were they contained in the object of knowledge, in that which we call the world? Then the laws of thought would be the very laws of the world, its 1 Liard. "La Science et la Metaphysique," Livre V., chap. x. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 49 primordial laws ; the world would have been created in har- mony with them, and would find its own mirror in the mind of man. What then becomes of the evolution of mere me- chanical force, if this does not include the entire object, if the object eludes it in part, by virtue of these principles of higher development? The laws of mind, being the laws of the world, cease to be subjective ; they become objective, and phenome- nalism is at an end. It is indeed quite another thing if they are fixed laws inherent in the subject himself. Then the theory of evolution at once collapses. But if the laws are neither in the object nor in the subject, then evolution commences in pure negation ; and since it can only produce what it contains, psychology must stop at reflex movement, and strike off all its higher developments, since they are incapable of explanation. There is no escape from this dilemma. Either these universal notions are germinally present when evolution begins, and if so evolution does not create them, it only develops them, and the forms of thought have an absolute beginning; or else they appear at some stage of evolution, and then their beginning is equally absolute." 1 II. FRENCH PSYCHOLOGY. M. TAINE'S THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE. M. Taine's book "On Intelligence" belongs entirely to the new psychology. It is characterised by all his peculiar originality and vivacity of style, but the thought is essentially the same. With the exception of a few points, therefore, we need not repeat the arguments we have already advanced against the theory of association of ideas. M. Tnine has made French fireworks with English powder. The figure is a per- fectly fair one, applied to his system, for to him the world is nothing more than a great show of fireworks, only that there is no maker of them, and the rockets go off of their own accord Liard, " La Science et la Metaphysique." 50 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. and describe their wonderful arcs spontaneously, while no one can tell how the strange play began. This system of M. Taine is characterised, in fact, by a strange mixture of absolute materialism and the wildest idealism. He reduces sensation to mere molecular motion, transmitted to the nerves; and yet matter, after all, is nothing, and bodies are as much "metaphysical phantoms" as is consciousness. Let us give his own summary of this singular system in his own figurative language. " All science/' he says, " leads to generalisations, venture- some perhaps, but still not to be rejected, for they are the top- stone of the whole edifice, and it is in order to climb to this high look-out point, that generation after generation has gone on building. Psychology also has its look-out, all the more eleva- ted, in that it goes back to the origin of our knowledge, and at once leaves behind the ordinary point of view, which is simply the useful and practical. As we rise from this standpoint, we at once perceive that there is nothing real in the ego, save the thread of its events, that these events, various in aspect, are the same in nature, and all traceable to sensation ; that sen- sation itself, regarded from without and by that indirect medium which is called external perception, is reduced to a group of molecular motions. A continuous flux, an aggregate of sensa- tions and impulses, which, looked at in another aspect, are but a flux or aggregate of nervous vibrations this is the mind. This pyrotechnic show, prodigiously multiform and complex, is built and for ever being re-built of a million of sky-rockets : yet we never see anything but its topmost flights. The greater part of ourselves remains beyond our own field of observation. The visible ego is immeasurably smaller than the obscure, in- visible ego. This ego is but a leader of the rank and file, a higher centre beneath which are ranged, in the segments of the spinal cord and in the nervous ganglions, a crowd of other subordinate centres, so that man, as a whole, presents a sort of hierarchy of centres of sensation and of motion, each con- THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 51 trolled by a more perfect centre, which sends its general orders to them" all. If now, after mind, we look at nature, at the very first step, we leave ordinary observation behind. Just as spiritual substance is a phantom created by the consciousness, so material substance is a phantom created by the senses. Bodies being nothing but moveable motors, there is nothing real in them except their motions, to which all physical events are to be traced. But this motion is traceable to a succession of sensations infinitely simplified and refined; thus physical events are only a rudimentary form of moral events, and we come to conceive of body on the model of mind. The one and the other are a current of homogeneous events which consciousness calls sensations, which the senses call movements, and which from their nature are always in the act of perishing or being born. Beside the bundle of fireworks in ourselves, there are others analogous, which com- pose the corporeal world ; they are different in aspect but the same in nature, and their graduated jets of light fill, with ours, the immensity of space and time. An infinity of rockets, all of the same sort, but of varying complexity and flight, are inces- santly and eternally shooting up and falling again into the black void ; such are the things we call physical and moral existences. Each one of them is only a line of events, of which nothing is durable but the form ; and we may repre- sent nature to ourselves as a great Aurora Borealis." 1 The theory which is here enwrapped in a gay mantle of metaphors, may be expressed in sufficiently simple terms, especially if we bear in mind the ample extension given to it by its author. Though it is substantially the same as the English theory of association, it is worth our while to linger a little over this French development of the new psychology. We find in it the fundamental principle of the school that all knowledge must be referred to sensation. This is ideuti- 1 Taine. "On Intelligence," Introduction. 52 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. fied with molecular motion, at least in its obscure beginnings, in that dim background which exists before consciousness. After emerging from this nebulous condition, sensation has to undergo a complicated process before it is organised into that well-compacted fabric called the ego, which is nothing more than the continuous web of its successive events. Evidently it would have been quite incapable of this com- bination, which implies a certain persistence, if it had remained in its original state, for sensation, simply as such, is essentially fugitive. In order to start this further process, two factors are necessary, memory and the faculty of abstraction, of generali- sation. Generalisation is essentially a mechanical process. In order that a sensation may become fixed, it must take the form of an image; this is its substitute, but not its equivalent; inasmuch as it is no longer actual sensation, which alone is the real. These images would be too cumbersome, if they also had not their substitute. This they find in the sign, which is an isolated image recalling the series to which it belongs ; or at least the couple of which it is one of the terms, without its being necessary that the two terms should be represented at once. Thus, when we see from the top of a monument a number of black spots, we know that these black spots are living bodies, human beings. Proper names are signs repre- sentative of images. The faculty of abstraction and generalis- ation renders a sign ever increasingly comprehensive, and by enlarging the memory, permits the growth of the fabric of sensations, which, by the association of images, constitute the ego. " It seems then that nature has undertaken to provide in us representatives of her events, and has effected her purpose in the most economical way. She has provided first, the sensation which interprets the fact with more or less precision and delicacy ; then the surviving sensation, capable of indefinite revival, that is to say, the image which repeats the sensation, and consequently translates the fact itself; then the name, a sensation or image of a particular kind, which, THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 53 by virtue of its acquired properties, represents the general character of many similar facts." 1 By generalisation after generalisation we arrive at the notion of those " possible sensations " which play so large a part in Stuart Mill's system. This idea of possible sensations obtain- ed by a sort of spontaneous induction, becomes a permanent faculty and completes the ego, the evolution of which began with the association of images. The ego is thus the possibility of receiving new and identical sensations under analogous con- ditions. If this possibility, regarded subjectively, completes the notion of the ego, so, objectively considered, it constitutes body, for matter is nothing more than a cluster of pro- perties tending to excite particular sensations. As to the so-called intuitive ideas or axioms, they in no way proceed from the essential constitution of the human mind ; they only result empirically from the affective associations which have been formed between ideas and sensations. The idea of cause is only the generalisation of the simple association between antecedents and consequents. It follows that just as the ego is a compound abstract, so all so-called intuitive ideas are only generalised associations. The large part assigned to abstraction and generalisation explains how it is that everything beyond molecular motion, whether in the subject or the object, is chimerical to M. Taine ; for it is of the essence of abstraction and general- isation to get ever further and further from reality, that is, from actual sensation, though reality derives from sensation its first transformation. This ego, which is only a compound abstrac- tion, is then a mere phantom. Body, the material element, which is nothing more than a possibility of sensation, is equally phantasmal. Our perceptions are but hallucinations, their mutual concordance is all that we know of truth. Thus the rockets rise und fall in the black void. 1 " On Intelligence," Henri Taine, Part I., p. 150. English Translation, by T. D. Haye. 54 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. This is the most reckless idealism ever conceived. And yet, by a strange inconsistency, M. Taine insists upon the close cor- relation that ought to subsist between the formation of general ideas and the physiological organ of sensation which has its seat in the brain. He says : " By the side of sensations strictly so-called, which are by their nature temporary, dependent on the vibration of the nerves, almost always incapable of reviving spontaneously, and situated in the centres of sensa- tion, there is within us another series of absolutely analogous events, which are by their nature durable, which survive the vibration of the nerves, are capable of reviving spontaneously, and are seated in the cerebral lobes, or hemispheres. These are what we term images. Here are a second group of sen- sations so similar to the first that we may call them, reviving sensations." 1 These groups, more or less complex, constitute, according to the kind and degree of their affinity or an- tagonism, perceptions of external events, recollections, pre- visions, or acts of consciousness properly so called. Lastly from the signs which are the substitutes for these images, general ideas and general judgments are formed. This physiological point of view is still more clearly marked in the following passage : " We know that all ideas, all cogni- tions, all the operations of the mind, are composed of associated images, that all these associations depend on the property of images to revive, and that images themselves are sensations reviving spontaneously. All this agrees with the teaching of psychology. An action is produced in the sensitive centres ; it there excites a primary or crude sensation. An exactly similar action is consequently developed in a cortical element of the cerebral lobes, and there excites a secondary sensation or image. The first action is incapable, and the second is capable, of reviving spontaneously. Consequently the crude sensation is incapable, and the image is capable, of reviving 1 Taine. "On Intelligence." English Translation, by T. D. Haye, p. 226. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 55 spontaneously. . . . The more extensive the cortical matter of the brain, the more elements has it capable of setting one another in action ; the more elements it has capable of setting one another in action, the more delicate an instrument of repe- tition it is. The brain, then, is the repeater of the sensitive centres, and it will the better fulfil this office the more numer- ous the repeating elements of which it is itself composed." J Here we are plunged in undiluted physiology ; everything is explained by the constitution of the brain. This would be very well if the brain did not itself form part of that body which is nothing but an abstraction, a possibility of sen- sation, and which has no right therefore to play an excep- tional part as if it were something altogether different. The contradiction is flagrant, and extends to all the historical theories of the eminent writer, who has uniformly maintained the all-powerful influence of the material medium on the development of humanity. This material medium itself is but a chimera of the generalising faculty, and cannot claim a footing in the domain of the real. How then can it exercise this influence ? Mind and body are but two aspects, the obverse and the reverse, the outer and the inner side of one and the same abstraction. It is not simply upon this point that the system of M. Taine presents insoluble contradictions. I need only allude again to those which have been already pointed out in the theories of his predecessors, namely, the impossibility of basing any induction upon sensations which are in their nature fugitive, and incom- petent therefore to form the basis of any anticipations of the future ; the inadequacy of the theory of association to explain the memory, which is inseparable from the consciousness of personal identity, or to rise to the conception of the possible, which altogether eludes the grasp of the senses ; and lastly, the irrationality of the idea of an ego which would be altogether 1 "On Intelligence," Henri Taine. English Translation, by T. D. Haye, p. 176. 56 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. incapable of connecting ideas unless it possessed a power of combination apart from the elements to be combined. This last objection is made all the more forcible by the importance attached by M. Taine to the singular faculty which he supposes man to possess, of " apprehending fixed analogies and re- cognising the relations between separate objects." I ask, how can sensation perform such a task ? If it is simply a move- ment of molecules, how is it capable of perceiving analogies, and determining relations? Whence this unifying power in that which is essentially fluctuating and non-coherent ? Whence this wondrous faculty of generalising which is to generate the ego, if the ego has no previous existence ? It must needs exist before such a power can be exercised at all, for to gen- eralise is to gather into harmony and order elements before scattered and confused. We cannot escape from this vicious circle. M. Taine compares the intellectual life to a comedy in which the actors come on in succession to repeat their part ; but he does not tell us who wrote the piece and distributed the parts. I know indeed that the last word of the charade is man ; but how can he be the last, if he is not also the first ? Can the power which has so arranged and disposed every- thing as to bring so many scattered elements to a focus, be anything less than the ego itself? Elsewhere M. Taine com- pares the intellectual life to a wonderful system of telegraphy transmitling the despatches which it has collected; but where is the telegraphist ? We will not dwell further on these objections, which we have already urged against the English systems. Let us now look at M. Taine's idea of sensation, which is equally paradoxical. He hazards a gratuitous hypothesis which does not even approximately solve the problem. Not only does he admit with perfect candour that the properties of the cell entirely elude the most delicate instruments of physiological experi- ment; but he also allows that the transition from molecular motion to sensation, even when reduced to its simplest THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 57 elements, is one which science fails to trace. " In fact, what- ever may be the structure of the nerves and nervous centres whose action excites a sensation, however various this struc- ture may be supposed, that which is transmitted from one end of the nerve to the other up to the ultimate nervous centre, is never more than a molecular displacement, more or less rapid, extensive, and complex. A particle has a certain situation with respect to others ; this situation changes, that is all. At the bottom of all the sciences relating to bodies we find mechanics. So that the different nervous actions, which excite different sensations, can only be conceived as systems of movements. Thus all these actions, though differing in quantity, are the same in quality. ... At the foundation of all bodily events we find an infinitesimal event, imperceptible to the senses, a motion whose degrees and complications constitute the real basis of all phenomena, physical, chemical, or physiological. At the foundation of all moral events, we guess the presence of an infinitesimal event, imperceptible to consciousness, whose degrees and complications make up all sensations, images, and ideas." l In order then to establish the theory of consciousness, sensation ought to be capable of being reduced to motion. Now M. Taine appears to give in his adherence to this decisive utterance of Tyndall : "The gulf which exists between these two classes of phenomena is always impassable to the intel- lect." He admits, with the famous English physicist, that "No motion whatsoever, whether rotatory, undulatory, or otherwise, bears any resemblance to the sensation of bitterness, cold, or pain." How can we understand it when, after this, M. Taine goes on to identify motion with sensation, and declares that we have in both only one and the same psychical event, simply apprehended by us in two different ways? He says : "While sensation is immediate in its character, the molecular motion 1 " On Intelligence," Henri Taine. English Translation, by T. D. Ilaye, pp. 148, 149. 58 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. is only mediately perceived through the several intermediaries of our senses. Sensation is felt within us, the motion, on the contrary, comes from without." Hence he boldly con- cludes that the cerebral and the mental event are essentially one and the same under two aspects, the one mental, the other physical, the one perceived by the consciousness, the other by the senses. But the argument faik ; for as soon as there is consciousness, motion is distinguished from sensa- tion. Their identity can only be maintained by plunging into the obscure depths of unconsciousness, of which we can know nothing. As soon as knowledge comes in, the difference is recognised. This is a difficulty which can only be got over by having recourse to the singular method of explaining the clear by the obscure, the familiar by the unfamiliar, the greater by the less. It is obvious how uncertain must be a system of knowledge which rests upon a foundation sunk to such unknown depths that it eludes all our calculations. This system comes to us from the depths of an impenetrable mystery. It may not attempt to dispel the mystery, for sensations must of necessity be identified with molecular motion, or we have a thinking, conscious subject, a human mind rising above the vortex of sensations, or rather, of mole- cules. We have purposely passed by all that relates to the moral absolute, which vanishes into thin air in the psychology of M. Taine, as in all empirical theories. Yet, as we shall see presently, this is the most solid basis of the a priori and of the reality of mind. We think we have shown, however, without diverging from the premisses of the French philosopher, that it is not possible for him to be consistent with himself in his strange medley of materialism and idealism, and that he fails to support- even his own theory of knowledge, or to save it from insoluble contradictions. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 59 III. THE NEW GERMAN PSYCHOLOGY. MATERIALISTIC AND SCEPTICAL THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE. We shall not dwell at any length upon the attempt made also by the new German psychology to suppress the ego, the d priori ; for so far it has exerted far less influence upon the thought of the day. 1 It aims principally at identifying, as M. Taine has done, physical and moral events, so that they appear as the same fact under two aspects. This school does not assign so large a place as the English school to the association of ideas. It dwells more upon the fact of the sense-perception, which it endeavours to trace back to its physical concomitant. It would not be exact to say that it had its precursors in such psychologists as Herbart, Beneke, or even Lotze, although the school has largely profited by the writings of Herbart on the statics of mind. He at- tempted to reduce the phenomena of consciousness to simple mathematical laws, basing his argument on the principle that our representations may be considered as forces, sometimes balancing, sometimes outweighing each other in intensity. In the former case, they neutralise each other and remain in the state of mere tendencies. In the latter case they give rise to a state of consciousness just in proportion as they pass the point of neutralisation. Herbart endeavoured, taking these principles as a starting point, to formulate a sort of mental statics, and to measure the reciprocal relations of the represen- tations, the sum of which constitutes consciousness. He still recognised nevertheless the reality of the soul, and refused to identify psychical and physical phenomena. Beneke also main- tained the same distinction. According to him, the phenomena of consciousness tend constantly to pass into unconsciousness, an obscure region where they accumulate in the state of traces^ 1 See M. Ribot's remarkable rhumt of contemporary German psychol- ogy, " De la Psychologic Allemande Contemporaine. Ecole Experimen- tale." 1879. 60 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. free to resume consciousness under any new exciting cruise. Lotze attaches great importance to what he calls the local signs, which tactile and visible impressions leave after them on the points where they are produced. As these are apart from one another we obtain from them the empirical idea of space. He admits, nevertheless, the intuition of space, without which we should never arrive at the knowledge of it. He recognises a metaphysical element, and maintains that the soul is a sub- stance. 1 Fechner belongs entirely to the empirical school. Establish- ing a complete correlation between sensations and their stimuli, he professes to give the chronological measure of the former, taking account of the fact that the stimuli increase more rapid- ly than the sensations in appreciable proportion. It is evident that such calculations will be always uncertain, for an external yard-measure must always be too coarse to appraise so delicate a phenomenon as sensation. Fechner himself, recognising that there is always a discrepancy between sensations and their stimuli (for these, by wearying our organs, deaden them more or less, and prevent the exact correspondence which he had predicated) has recourse in the end to what he calls a physico- psychologic activity, which amounts after all only to a vague something inexplicable by physiology, which we call the ego. 3 Wundt vainly strives to give us a physiological psychology. He also runs up against the sphynx and encounters the x, the unknown quantity indeterminable by any of the purely mechan- ical theories. According to Wundt, we possess a principle of unification of phenomena which seeks for unity under com- plexity. It is this which gives unity to consciousness, for it is essentially complex and multiple under its apparent unity. The principle which brings it into unity, is outside itself, in the obscure laboratory of unconsciousness, that is to say, in the physiological life. This unifying principle, by a sort of logical mechanism, draws conclusions spontaneously from 1 Ribot. "Nouvelle Psychologic Allemande," p. 201. s Ibid., p. 210. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 61 the premisses given. Sensation is the first and last of these conclusions. The sensations form new premisses, whence the unifying principle deduces ideas, which are never more than the combined results of sensation. xGeneral notions are derived from ideas by the same processes. The ego does not exist by itself; it is the conclusion of a train of reasoning. The acts which give it birth are the psychical processes of sensa- tion and perception, and the physiological facts of innervation. Wundt's conclusion is, that mechanism and logic are identical. The complex acts of psychology are at once facts of the con- sciousness and states determined by the nervous system. In their physical aspect, they are only movements ; as states of consciousness, they are reduced to simple conclusions of the logic of unconsciousness, that is to say, they are still purely mechanical. Wundt has attempted to apply the experimental method to psychology. He professes to measure psychological time by determining first the duration of the sensitive trans- mission, then that of the perception and reaction ; but this determination must always be very arbitrary, for the duration of the fact of consciousness varies according to the external or internal conditions of the subject. The fact of conscious- ness is more or less rapid according to the degree of atten- tion. Wundt admits, therefore, that he has not yet been able to formulate a law. He thinks he has established by observation that the physiological time varies from -^ to ^ of a second, and that the simplest intellectual act requires T Q of a second; its reproduction by memory requires a longer time. These calculations do not at all imply the unification of the physical with the psychical event, and they furnish no explanation of the transformation of motion into sensation or into thought. Wundt has also omitted to show how the physical is endowed with logic, and how a principle of unification can be formed spontaneously in the obscure depths of unconsciousness; that is to say, of the purely material life. To explain consciousness by unconscious- 62 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. ness is to violate the primary scientific law of empiricism, namely, the law of induction, which requires, us always to rise from the better known to the less. To relegate to the unconscious state the principle of unification which is mani- fested in the conscious state, is to invert the pyramid and make it stand on its apex. There is no ground for glorying in such a grand discovery. M. Ribot, notwithstanding his admiration for this new German psychology, which he has so well elucidated, avows frankly that, if the psychical life con- sists in a series of states of consciousness connected with physical states, two things nevertheless remain perfectly in- explicable, after all the efforts of the promoters of psychology without soul namely, the transition, first from the inorganic to the living, and then from life to consciousness. 1 Thus neither the theory of association nor the German psychology avails to get rid of the a priori element which lies at the basis of the ego. Shall we be more successful if we revert to pure materialism, which does not deem it necessary to explain the ego by any of the subtle combinations which we have passed in review? It will not detain us long, for its refutation results from the considerations already advanced. In fact, we have seen the theory of association of ideas fluctuating more and more between idealism and the gross solutions of materialism. The objections which we have ad- vanced against it in both these aspects, bear directly upon materialism itself and greatly facilitate our task. When we come presently to discuss the anthropological question, we shall show by the comparative study of our moral and intellectual faculties, and of the physiological part of our being, how absolutely distinct they are even in their 1 Introduction, p. xiii. Von Hartmann's theory on the formation of the conscious in the unconscious, ought logically to find its place here ; but as it is impossible to understand it at all, except in connexion with his system, we reserve it for our subsequent discussion of the bases of the Philosophy of the Unconscious. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 63 correlation. We shall then investigate the problems of the relation of brain and mind, and of reflex movement. We shall content ourselves for the moment with setting against the materialistic theories the conclusions of the new English psychology. We see that it tends to a notion of bodies as mere possibilities of sensation, matter being nothing more than a freak of mind, an intellectual combination. We have seen that M. Taine ends by plunging the world, which he regards as simply a vortex of phantoms, into a black abyss of emptiness ; and there he must needs join hands with phenomenalism. Without admitting this extravagant idealism the ultimatum of the schools which, in our day, are endeavouring to trace everything to mere sensation we must admit that that which is least certain of anything to us is matter, since we can never arrive at it directly. We only come in contact with it through the medium of our cognitive faculties, which do not merely reproduce but also modify things. Sensation is not simply the impress of external phenomena ; it exercises a power of transformation. We all know that neither colours nor sounds come to us directly from without. Red and white have no existence independent of the concentrating focus of our organism. And this is true of all material phenomena. " The affirmation of an extended body which has no existence inde- pendently of me, is only an hypothesis to which I am led by the necessity of explaining to myself my sensations, that is to say, the modifications of my own consciousness." 1 We can but admire the imperturbable assurance with which our ma- terialists pretend to have found an unassailable ground of certainty, an irreducible objectivity, while they are still in the bonds of pure subjectivity. Matter being the least direct of all our cognitions, our sensations present it to us only through the medium of coloured glasses. It follows that mater- ialism itself drives us in on ourselves; it does not come in direct contact with things. The explanation of things 1 Charles Secretan. " Discours Laiques," p. 126. 64 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. which it gives us is an hypothesis to which the mind is led bj that principle of causation which the philosophers of sensa- tion ought to renounce, since it involves them in an inextric- able difficulty. To endeavour to explain sensation, even by the most exclusive materialism, is to abandon its own funda- mental principle ; for any explanation implies the idea of a cause, which idea can only come from mind. A vigorous thinker has traced out in a remarkable book the evolution of materialism which leads it to lose itself in sub- jectivism. Lange has written its history 1 with as much clear- ness of style as correctness of information. He has not merely been satisfied with explaining philosophical systems. He has also given us a great picture of the movement of contemporary science, and of the immense progress achieved in the study of nature. Lange seems at first sight to be an ardent apologist of the materialistic philosophy. . He does not hesitate to extol it as having been the only system to favour the movement of science ; though, while condemning the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, he acknowledges, as we have seen, that these grand dreamers gave a mighty impulse to the mind of man in its pursuit of truth. If these illustrious teachers sent the bark of thought into a wrong channel, as Lange believes, they yet did what no mere method could have done, they filled its sails with a favouring wind. Lange maintains, neverthe- less, that it was materialism which was the basis of the true science of nature in the ancient world. It has owed its largest advance since the Renaissance to Giordano Bruno, Bacon, Gassendi, and in our days to their lawful heirs. But it must be understood that it is not materialism as a philosophical ex- planation of things which he extols ; in this aspect it appears to him exclusive and false, like all the great philosophical systems. That which he lauds and admires in it, is the fact that it concent! ated itself upon the study of reality; that it sought to find their laws in the facts themselves, and re 1 "History of Materialism," Lange. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 65 pudiated all the philosophic entities which would break the close tissue of natural facts, and introduce into it hypotheses wholly unscientific. Materialism has then, according to M. Lange, done eminent service, not only by its attempt to form a general theory or cosmology, but by the elimination of metaphysical entities, which, going beyond nature, divert our attention from it, and introduce the chimerical into the study of facts. But matter itself is in its essence emphatically the inexplicable. Material- ism has never arrived at the reality itself, but only at that relative reality which we reach through our media of knowledge, which always bear the impress of subjectivity. Lange entirely sanctions this declaration of Du Bois-Reymond. "As the most powerful and complicated muscular effort of a man or animal is not essentially more obscure than the simple contrac- tion of a single muscular fibre, as a single secreting cell involves the whole problem of secretion, so too the activity ot the soul, most exalted above material conditions, is not in the main point more incomprehensible than consciousness in its first stage of sensation. With the first emotion of pleasure or pain that the simplest creature experienced in the beginning of animal life upon the earth, this impassable gulf is established, and the world has become henceforth doubly incomprehensible. . . . The anatomical knowledge of the brain, the highest knowledge we can attain, reveals to us nothing but matter in motion. But if we suppose that from this knowledge certain intellectual processes or dispositions, as memory, the associa- tion of ideas, and so on, might become intelligible, that too is delusion ; we only learn certain conditions of intellectual life, but do not learn how the intellectual itself is developed from these conditions. What conceivable connection exists between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and on the other the, to me, original and not further definable but undeniable facts : * I feel pain, feel pleasure, I taste something sweet, smell roses, hear organ tones, see F 66 TflE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. something red,' and the just as immediately resulting certainty, 'therefore I am'? It is impossible to see how from the co- operation of the atoms consciousness can result. Even if I were to attribute consciousness to the atoms, that would neither explain consciousness in general, nor would that in any way help us to understand the unitary consciousness of the individual." l In the conclusion of his chapter on " Force and Matter," after reviewing the atomic theory, Lange says : " In the present state of the natural sciences, matter is everywhere the unknown, force the known, element. If instead of force we rather talk of a ' property of matter,' we must beware of a ' logical circle.' A ' thing ' is known to us by its properties ; a subject is determined by its predicates. But the ' thing ' is, in fact, only the resting-place demanded by our thought. We know nothing but properties and their concurrence in an un- known something, the assumption of which is a figment of our mind, though, as it seems, an assumption made necessary and imperative by our organisation." 3 It is idle to imagine that anything is gained to the cause of materialism by appealing to the reflex movements in which we find the body accomplishing, without the aid of thought, operations hitherto attributed to the conscious action of the mind ; this would be to forget that the body itself is only one of our representations. In short, as a medium of knowledge, ma- terialism occupies decidedly the lowest rank. No system would lead more rapidly to what is called in England pure agnosti- cism, which is nothing else than absolute scepticism. The human mind has never been able to adhere to it ; it is of the very essence of scepticism not to be able to state its position without impugning it, for it has not the right to recognise even doubt. To affirm a doubt, is to affirm. On the other hand, total negation is impossible ; for in order to deny, we must suppose a foregoing affirmation. Absolute negation once 1 "History of Materialism," Lange, vol. ii., pp. 310, 311. 8 Ibid, pp. 389, 390. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 67 reached, mind expires and science is extinct. To attempt to prove scepticism, is moreover to take reason for granted, or to consent to prove nothing. Again, all argument has a purpose in view, it aims to convince ; it carries with it, practically at least, the idea of an end. To take away this, is to abandon the attempt to establish anything whatever. In order to prove that there is no such thing as finality, we imply its existence. 1 Lastly, if materialism is right, what is the use of demonstrating and arguing ? Our system is the result of a fatality ; it depends on the state of our brain : stat mole- sua. Thus materialism, which has so often crowned itself king of science, renders science impossible. So far from being its last utterance, it can scarcely lisp its first syllable. Scepticism is the natural consequence and the just mead of the materialism which recognises no life but that of sensation, necessarily fluctuating and evanescent in its character, and which is not only incapable of discerning between the true and the false, but even of admitting the distinction. This scepti- cism has found no more decisive refutation than that offered to it by the two great philosophers of Greece. The reasoning of Plato in the "Theaetetus** is conclusive. We know that Protagoras, who also believed only in sensible observation, concluded that man is the measure of all things, and that as he is carried along in the perpetual flux of sensation, this measure has no more fixity than he himself. The theories of Protagoras have been taken up again in our day, and have found an able apologist in the illustrious historian Grote. We turn to the immortal pages of the great Greek philosopher, in which, with keen dialectics, he gives to the thesis of sceptical sensationism the reductio ad absurdum. Plato shows that in this conflict of affirmations and negations, all equally plausible, man cannot even affirm whether he is cold or hot, that sensation itself is impossible, for it can never find the second of time; 1 Charles Secretan. "Discours Laiques," p. 9. 68 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. necessary to fix the object, which ever eludes his grasp in the vortex that hurries him on. Knowledge of the past is impos- sible, for to sensation the past is nothing. Science has no advantage over ignorance, discussion is an idle game, for it can never lead to anything. In opposition to all sceptical doctrines, more or less material- istic, Aristotle formulates with inimitable force the fundamental axiom of dialectics, the principle of contrariety, which is abso- lutely opposed to the idea that a thing can be and can not be at the same time, and that contraries may be equally true. " Since it is impossible that contradiction should be true of the same subject at the same time, it is evident that neither can contraries possibly subsist at the same time in the same subject. For indeed of contraries one or other is not the less privation. But privation of substance is negation from some definite genus. If, therefore, it is impossible at the same time to affirm and deny with truth, it is impossible that also contra- ries should be inherent in the same subject at the same time; but either both must be inherent partially, or the one partially and the other simply or absolutely." l This discussion leads us then, in conclusion, to some very important and, as we hold, incontestable results. We are justified in affirming that knowledge, even in its lowest form, cannot dispense with an element of a priori^ under pain of losing itself in the void and in nothingness. The inductive method of Positivism constrains us, as we have seen, to rise above mere sensation, which does not allow us to predicate and to formulate for the future the permanent relation of ante- cedents and consequents, since this implies subjective activity. The school which holds the theory of association can never succeed in dissolving away the idea of causation into the simple relation of antecedent and consequent, for this would deprive 1 " The Metaphysics of Aristotle," Bohn's Edition, Book III., chap. vi. p. 1 06. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 6$ the idea of its essential fruitfulness. Again, it has not been able to reduce the ego to a mere link in the series of pheno- mena, for it is a link which distinguishes itself from the rest, and is conscious of itself. The very power of associating ideas and forming syntheses, pre-supposes an internal activity, which cannot be itself a mere association ; for in order to pro- duce it an associative faculty is needed, and we should only have put the difficulty a step further back. In the same way neither time nor space can be deduced from experience, for before we can find them we must put them there, since mere succession or co-existence do not exhaust the idea of time and space. We have shown then that neither the idea of causation nor the ideas of time, of space, and of substance, flow from even our combined sensations ; for these ingenious combina- tions imply an anterior activity. The merely materialistic explanation has been baffled by the impossibility of reduc- ing thought to mere molecular motion. It has found its reductio ad absurdum in the scepticism to which it neces- sarily brings us by destroying even the most general condi- tions of science. We conclude then that without leaving the lines laid down by the empirical school, we find ourselves carried above and beyond it. We are constrained to admit an element of d priori in knowledge, an element that we cannot find except in the subject who knows. It remains for us now to determine this element with exactness, and to see in what mode and measure it leads us to the object, to natural phenomena. 1 1 See M. Francisque Bouillier's work, " Sur la Vraie Conscience" (Paris, Hachette, 1882), for an able treatment of all that relates to the conscious ego. The author displays great acuteness of psychological analysis. After showing that thought cannot be reduced to cerebral motion, he shows in the consciousness a faculty at once innate and sovereign, which has no separate domain, but is inseparable from all the intellectual or moral mani- festations of the life of the ego. Thought, feeling, will, deprived of con- sciousness, have no true existence. Reflection on the fact of consciousness is progressive ; but the fact of consciousness itself is inherent in the psychi- 70 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Before passing on to this important study, we may be per mitted to take advantage of the undeniable fact that the empirical school itself, in its most eminent representatives, has contrived to make an opening in this thick wall of materialistic phenomenalism, behind which it would keep us aloof from what it calls metaphysical divagations. We have already refer- red to its famous but untenable theory of the unknowable, for- mulated with so much precision, and as completely forgotten in a system which logically admits nothing beyond our sensations and their combinations. With Stuart Mill, towards the close of his life, it is quite different. There is an ever-growing aspiration after that region of the Divine from which he had been so long exiled during the whole course of that arid edu- cation, the desiccating effects of which his autobiography describes so forcibly. 1 A deep passionate affection for a woman with a head as large as her heart, satisfied to a degree the craving for an infinite love which had tortured him. He carried into this affection the exalted fervour of religious feel- ing. But he did not rest here, as we see from the last of his " Essays on Religion," written shortly before his death. No one will accuse Stuart Mill of having written one of those retractations in extremis which abruptly break off the whole thread of previous thought. We find the man himself in this remarkable paper, with all his keen subtle logic, so quick in disintegrating ideas, in weighing arguments, in showing the inanity of those which are based upon prejudice alone, even though it were the most respectable. Stuart Mill is as severe as Kant upon the ordinary proofs of the existence of God. He even commits the error of rejecting that which is based cal life from its commencement. Consciousness is indivisible, and must rule all the manifestations of our feelings, our thoughts, our will ; or mind ceases to be. Consciousness cannot be explained by succession, which it alone explains. M. Bouillier concludes by showing how chimerical is the attempt to form a psychology without assuming the soul. 1 "Autobiography." Stuart Mill. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 71 upon moral obligation. He entirely repudiates all that approaches the supernatural ; and, although he allows the theoretic possibility of miracles, he takes up Hume's bitter polemics against the external evidence. His conclusions are strange. He regards it as probable that the First Cause has but a limited power, and that it had to contend in the beginning, like the demiurge of the Gnostics, against matter eternal and resistant. It is clear we have to do here with a genuine freethinker who bows to no authority. It is all the more remarkable to find him accepting for the first time, with the principle of finality, a sort of creative power, limited by rival powers, the * influence of which would alone explain the great anomalies of nature. Stuart Mill does not admit the ordinary proofs of the immortality of the soul; he believes nevertheless in its pos- sibility. Let us quote his own words : " All things in nature perish ; the most beautiful and perfect being, as philosophers and poets alike complain, the most perishable. . . . Why should it be otherwise with man? Why, indeed? But why also should it not be otherwise ? Feeling and thought are not merely different from what we call inanimate matter, but are at the opposite pole of existence, and analogical inference has ittle or no validity from the one to the other. . . . All matter, apart from the feelings of sentient beings, has but a hypothetical and unsubstantial existence ; it is a mere assump- tion to account for our sensations. . . . Mind, or what- ever name we give to what is implied in consciousness of a continued series of feelings, is, in a philosophical point of view, the only reality of which we have any evidence, and no analogy can be recognised or comparison made between it and other realities, because there are no other known realities to compare it with." 1 1 "Three Essays on Religion." J. Stuart Mill. "Immortality," pp. 202, 203. 72 THF. PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. This does not indeed suffice to prove the immortality of the soul ; but the hope is at least permitted ; and the future life, if it becomes our heritage, will preserve to us the most precious privilege of the present life, that of perfecting ourselves by our own efforts. As to religion itself, without being able to esta- blish it by irrefutable proofs, it also may become the object of our hopes. It is far from being without value. It makes life and human nature objects of higher worth for the heart; it lends more force, as well as greater solemnity, to all the feel- ings which are awakened in us by our fellows ; it softens the impression produced by that irony of nature which becomes so painful when we see a whole life of effort and sacrifice building and shaping a wise and noble soul which is straightway doomed to vanish away. " It cannot be questioned," says Stuart Mill, "that the undoubting belief of the real existence of a Being who realises our own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that Being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to these feelings beyond what they can receive from reference to a mere ideal conception. . . . The most valuable part of the effect of Christianity on the character, has been produced by holding up in a Divine Person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation. . . ". And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left, a unique figure not more unlike all His precursors than all His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of His personal teaching. . . . Nor would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the con- crete, than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve his life. . . . Impressions such as these seem to me ex- cellently fitted to aid and fortify that real though purely human religion which sometimes calls itself the religion of humanity and sometimes that of duty. . . . In the battle which is constantly going on between the powers of good and those of evil, the humblest human creature is not incapable of THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 73 taking some part ; and even the smallest help to the right side has its value in promoting the very slow and often almost in- sensible progress by which good is gradually gaining ground from evil, yet gaining it so visibly at considerable intervals, as to promise the very distant though not uncertain final victory of good." 1 We do not disguise from ourselves the insufficiency of a religion thus reduced to the state of pure hypothesis, of which there is no scientific indication, and which is finally left out of the system. But such an inconsistency on the part of so great a dialectician shows the power of the grandest of human facts, which only frivolity or prejudice can set aside in the explanation of things. The author of the " History of Materialism " assigns to it a yet larger place in the con- clusion of a book which purports to eliminate all meta- physical entities. After extolling the benefits conferred by Materialism, in a scientific point of view, by its exclusive de- votion to facts, that is to say, to the sum of the phenomena perceived by the senses, without falling into the illusion of a reality independent of ourselves, Lange pronounces the severest judgment upon its morality. He denounces utterly the cold egoism which lowers and debases the soul. " Materialism, useful as a counterpoise to the metaphysical fetishes which would intrude into the essence of the real, remains an utter stranger to the highest functions of the human spirit." " For the universe, as mere natural science enables us to comprehend it," says Lange. "we can as little feel enthusiasm as for an Iliad spelt out letter by letter. But if we embrace the whole as a unity, then in the act of synthesis we bring our own na- ture into the object; just as we shape the landscape that we gaze at into harmony, however much disharmony in particular may be concealed by it. All comprehension follows aesthetic principles, and every step towards the universal is a step toward the ideal." 3 This ideal, perceived by poetry, is the 1 "Three Essays on Religion," J. Stuart Mill, pp. 255, 256. 2 " History of Materialism," vol. iii., p. 341. 74 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. real good conferred by religion which has enwrapped it in its mythology. Rationalism loses itself in the sands of platitude without getting rid of its untenable dogmas. Poetry, through the myths of religion, lifts us to the ideal ; it carries us beyond the real. Religion, thus considered, deserves the love of the most scientific minds. " The victory over disintegrating egoism and deadly chillness of the heart, will only be won by a great ideal, which shall appear amidst the wondering peoples as a * stranger from another world,' and by demanding the impos- sible shall burst the prison-doors of reality. . . Whether the battle remains a bloodless conflict of minds, or whether, like an earthquake, it throws down the ruins of a past epoch with thunder into the dust, and buries millions beneath the wreck, certain it is that the new epoch will not conquer unless it be under the banner of a great idea which sweeps away egoism and sets human perfection in human fellowship, as a new aim in the place of the restless toil which looks only to personal gain." 1 The vague character of this purely aesthetic idealism is obvious at once, but it is none the less of the highest interest. After all, this ardent aspiration after the good, after love, is a fact inherent in man. As it cannot be reduced to a merely mechanical state, as it is neither a fluid nor a movement, it is something sui generis which does not belong to simply phe- nomenal representations, the result of the impressions of the senses. Here is an element apart. We find in the depths of the human soul the place that belongs of right to this sublime stranger whom Lange invokes to win the victory for the ideal. We are thus entitled to say, that whenever he appears again among us, he is coming unto his own. Whether he has yet appeared or no, there is in humanity an aspiration that yearns for him and is not produced by outward things. We are brought face to face with the a priori, not in the realm of 1 " History of Materialism," vol. iii., pp. 355, 361. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. 75 the intellect alone, but of religion also. Only its basis, as given by Lange, is far too shifting. We must have something more substantial than this splendid nimbus of imagination and sentiment. We must have the rock that cannot be shaken, the categorical imperative, if we are to attain certainty. CHAPTER III. THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE CRITICAL SCHOOL IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. HARMONY OF CARTESIANISM AND KANTISM SUGGESTED BY MAINE DE BIRAN. WE have arrived at the conclusion that an adequate knowledge, even of sensible phenomena, cannot be derived from sensation alone ; since this allows no scope for induction, that is for evolv- ing the law of the future from the confused and transitory elements of the present ; neither can it supply the necessary link of causation between the antecedent and the consequent, nor establish the identity of the ego, from which the idea of substance is derived. In short, sensation would simply carry man along in its rapid current, without retrospect and without prevision, if he were not able to control it by his own proper energy. The notion of time and space implies a boundlessness of duration and extension, which must ever elude the grasp of the senses. There exists then outside the object something which is called the subject or the ego, which is distinct from the sensations, and perceives and combines them by its proper activity. This subject, which is not a mere product of the sen- sations and their combination, has in itself an element of d priori^ by means of which knowledge is rendered possible to it. This is an element, however, which, as we shall see, requires for its development, to be brought into contact with internal and external phenomena, but which has nevertheless a virtual existence prior to them. Its constituent elements are those very ideas of substance, of extension and of time, which sensation 76 THE CRITICAL SCHOOL. ft can neither explain nor produce. We want now to know how this element of a priori is brought into contact with the object of knowledge, by which we mean all that is not simply the subject or ego, both that which is inferior to it and that which is above it, both the external world and the mysterious do- main of the Divine, supposing that both exist, and that they are not the illusion of the ego, seeing its own double in some sort, as is asserted by extreme Idealism, which maintains that the mind can no more go out of itself than a body can leave its shadow. We here, at the outset, come in contact with the great critical school inaugurated by Kant, and carried to its extreme issues in the system elaborated with so much power by M. Renou- vier. This school has given most emphatic recognition to the element of d priori, which it has boldly placed above and beyond the world of phenomena. This phenomenal world it has more and more sacrificed to the d priori, for, as it is never apprehended directly, but is constantly transformed by receiving the impress of our mind, we cannot arrive at the reality under- lying it. Kant himself admitted that this substantive reality did exist, though it was constantly eluding our reason or being modified by it as by a prism. M. Renouvier refuses altoge- ther to allow its existence. Tn his system there remains nothing but a collection of laws which we call mind, laws which have nothing to govern, unless it be our conceptions, which are always relative. We know indeed that the critical school admits another order of realities moral realities with which it primarily occupies itself, and that it surrenders itself to the highest inspirations ; but it seems to us nevertheless to have been carried away by the force of a reactionary movement. It was fully justified in protesting against the exclusiveness of Descartes, who undoubtedly made the intellectual predominate over the moral point of view with his disciples ; but its con- clusions nevertheless appear to us extravagant. It is possible, in our opinion, to lose nothing of that important aspect of 78 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. truth brought into prominence by the critical school, and yet not to sacrifice that which is external, both beneath and above us. The critical school itself furnishes the materials for the bridge which is to connect the subject and the object the ego and the world. Our aim must be to bring into harmony the two greatest philosophical geniuses of modern times Descartes and Kant. I. DESCARTES AND KANT. Let us take a rapid glance at the movement of thought in our own day which has led from the one to the other, and which should now supplement the one by the other. We shall not forget that our present purpose is not to write a chapter of the history of philosophy. We refer for the full treatment of the subject to the great historians who have traced its evolu- tion and especially to the originals themselves. We shall only touch on it so far as is necessary for the elucidation of the problem of knowledge, as it has presented itself to us. The more we read the " Discourse on Method," and the " Meditations," the more are we convinced that Descartes dis- cerned from the outset the true solution. He too admits as a consequence of contemporary speculation, that the knowledge of bodies does not of itself bring with it any certainty, and that this knowledge is in fact the most difficult of all to attain, since we cannot get at them directly. He says : "It does certainly seem strange that things which I have recognised to be doubtful, un- known, foreign to myself, should be more distinctly compre- hended by myself, than that which is true, which is known, which is my very self indeed. . . . And now, since I know that even things corporeal are not, properly speaking, perceived by the senses, nor by the faculty of imagination, but by the intelli- gence alone, nor are perceived in that they are touched or seen, but only in thai th^y are mentally apprehended, I un doubtedly know that nothing can be more easily or more DESCARTES AND KANT. 79 evidently perceived by me than my own mind." 1 We are thus referred back to the mind as the first source of knowledge. Setting aside all preconceived ideas, in order to admit only what is in strict conformity with truth, Descartes makes his very doubt the starting-point to arrive at the first truth, and by this means he obtains the criterion which will thenceforth serve to guide him. To doubt is to think, for doubt is an exercise of thought. But to think is to be. I think, and therefore I am. This first result is beyond discussion, it has all the characters of evidence ; it forces itself upon us as an indisput- able reality. It is a simple, immediate perception, bearing upon the thing itself, prior to any explanation or abstraction. This perception is distinguished from the notion, which implies re- flection upon the nature of a thing. " Here," as says M. Olle' Laprune, " the knowledge of the thing perceived is wrought as it were by the thing itself/' 2 This is just what is implied in Descartes' evidence, " I think, therefore I am." In thinking I feel myself to be. It follows that at the basis of knowledge is the intuition of being. The famous deduction by which Descartes establishes that the soul is essentially thougJit, in opposition to matter, is well known. Thinking, he would say, is an attribute that pertains to me : it is the only thing that cannot be detached from the ego. " I am, I exist, is certain ; for how long though ? Cer- tainly for so long as I think. ... I am then, strictly speaking, only a thing 3 that thinks." Evidence is always, with Descartes, the criterion of the true. It precedes reason- ing, which without it moves in a vacuum. Concentrating his observation on the thinking ego, Descartes discovers in it, experimentally, the general laws of knowledge, to which all phenomena are subject : " Of those matters which, in the ideas of corporeal things, are clear and distinct, there are 1 "Meditations," Descartes, pp. 147, 151. 8 Olle Laprune, " De la Certitude Morale," p. 24. 3 "Meditations," Descartes, p. 144. 8o THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. some which seemingly I might have borrowed from the idea of myself: namely, substance, duration, number, and any others of that kind ; for when I think that a stone is a sub- stance or fitted to exist by itself, and also that I am a substance, . . . although there is the greatest difference between the two conceptions, yet in respect of substance they appear to coincide ; and in like manner since I perceive myself to exist now, and also remember that I existed some time ago, and since I have various thoughts, the number of which I understand, I thus acquire the ideas of duration and number, which I can afterwards apply to any other things." l It is also from the ego that Descartes derives experimentally the principle of causation^ of which he makes such grand use in his theodicy, for he traces its operation in that free activity to which he assigns so large a place. " The will alone, or liberty of choosing, I find to be so great in myself that I can form no idea of a greater; so that it is pre-eminently on account of this that I apprehend myself to present, as it were, the image and likeness of God." 2 Thus Descartes has dis- covered experimentally in the ego, the great laws of know- ledge. Taking his stand upon this very psychological ex- perience, he is led to seek, out of and above himself, the object of knowledge. He says : " In truth it is manifest by the light of nature that there ought to be at least as much in the total and efficient cause as in the effect of that cause ; for whence, pray, can we assume the reality of the effect, unless from the cause, and how could the cause give reality unless it had it? Hence it follows that nothing can be produced by nothing, nor yet that which is more perfect, i.e. which contains in itself more of reality, from that which is less perfect. And this is evidently true, not only of those effects, the reality of which is actual or formal, but also of ideas, in which regard is had only to the objective reality. . . . And although 1 " Meditations," Descartes, p. 161. a /&v/., p. 173- DESCARTES. 81 perhaps one idea can be born of another, yet here there is not given an infinite progress ; but there must be an arrival at some first idea, the cause of which is like an archetype wherein is formally contained all the reality which is in the idea only subjectively; so that by the light of nature it is manifest to me that the ideas in me are as it were images, which may well fall short of the perfection of the things from which they are taken, but cannot contain anything greater or mere per- fect. All this, the longer and more carefully I examine it, so much the more clearly and distinctly do I recognise to be true ; but what at last do I conclude from this ? Why, that if the objective reality of any one of my ideas is so great that I am certain that neither in form nor in degree is it in me, and accordingly that I cannot myself be the cause of this idea, it hence necessarily follows that I am not alone in the world, but there exists likewise some other thing which is the cause of this idea." 1 The very doubts and aspirations in the mind of man are the evidence that he has the idea of infinite perfection. Descartes says : " I clearly understand that there is more of reality in infinite substance than in finite, and consequently that in some way the perception of the infinite was in me earlier than that of the finite, that is, of God, than of myself; for on what principle shall I understand that I doubt, that I desire, that is, that something is wanting to me, and that I am not altogether perfect, if there were in me no idea of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I recognise my own defects?" 2 It only requires, then, that we apply the principle of causation to the ego, and we find ourselves at once lifted above it to its principle, for the ego has the idea of perfection without being itself perfect. This idea is not then of its own production ; its cause must be higher than the ego, and can be nothing but God Himself, a real God, since reality is the crown of 1 "Meditations," Descartes, pp. 157-159. 2 Ibid., p. 162. G 82 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE perfection, which would not be all conceivable perfection if it had not a real existence. Descartes has summed up his whole thought in this sublime utterance, which has been enlarged upon with incomparable eloquence by Bossuet and Fenelon : " While I am turning the fixed view of my mind upon myself, I not only discern that I am a thing incomplete and dependent on another, and a thing that aspires to the greater and greater or the indefinitely better, but I also discern Him on whom I depend, to have in Himself all those greater things, not indefinitely and potentially alone, but actually and infinitely, and so to be God." 1 Descartes takes his stand upon the Divine veracity to establish the reality of corporeal existence, which in itself appears to him the most uncertain of all things. Nothing can shake this argument when once it has been proved that the ego is not the simple product of sensation, and that its grand intuitions are not the artificial result of the asso- ciation of ideas or rather of images. How is it, then, that Cartesianism has not sufficed for the mind of man, and that it has seemed, for a time, to be left behind by new evolutions of philosophic thought ? This is evidently due to its deficiencies. It was not the gravest of its mistakes that it established a positive and untenable dualism between thought and matter, which it reduced to a mere attribute of extension. The development of materalism in the succeeding century was the reaction against this exclusive notion ; but it failed to correct it because it went itself exactly to the opposite ex- treme. The critical school did more to shake it, because, without doing injustice to its elements of truth, it directed its attack against its most vulnerable point. This vulnerable point is perhaps best described as its intellectualism. It must be admitted that in the Cartesian system the moral aspect of things was made merely secondary. Nothing could be more unjust than to accuse Descartes himself of having l "Meditations," Descartes, p. 168. DESCARTES. 83 ignored it ; we have already seen how he exalted the liberty of the will as the distinctive feature in which man bears the likeness of God ; but it is one thing to acknowledge a truth, and another to give it its proper place. Now, it is undeniable that Descartes placed intelligence above freedom of will, as is shown by his very fundamental axiom, / think, therefore 1 am. God is presented in his system far more as the infinite absolute Being, than as the God of the moral law, of liberty, and of supreme holiness. He is to be apprehended rather by the intellect than by the conscience. The limited is with Descartes emphatically the imperfect; the illimitable is per- fection. We can well understand how Spinoza, the inflexible logician, confining himself to the arena of pure dialectics, should have likened perfection to that infinite substance which knows no bounds, to which any determination would be a limit and consequently an imperfection. In this way pantheism has grown out of Cartesianism, by straining its principle. It cannot be denied that Malebranche, Christian as he is in tendency, leaned to this side, sacrificing human liberty to the Divine absolute, which, according to his conception, could admit of no limitation and consequently of no created will. Leibnitz seems indeed to recognise individuality in his monad; but he does not really restore the conditions of the moral world, for man's liberty of choice is swallowed up in the optimism which makes evil the necessary shadow of good and a part of the harmonious whole. This optimism is still further exaggerated by his followers. If the Absolute allows of no limit to itself, we can no longer speak of the liberty of the created being. Now, no limitation of the Absolute is conceivable, so long as we adhere to the notion that abstract perfection consists primarily in a sort of extensive and not intensive infinity. This is why the con- science necessarily rebels against the Cartesian intellectualism. As early as the middle of the seventeenth century, it raised a passionate protest against it through the voice of Pascal, who, 84 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. forgetting Jansenist predestination, vindicated with his in* cisive eloquence the inalienable rights of the moral intuition. Rousseau pleaded the same cause with all his oratorical fervour. It must be allowed that he greatly contributed to the reaction of the critical school. Kant felt the warmth which Rousseau had breathed into the atmosphere of his age. We find indeed little trace of it in his cold philosophy ; but its influence is there nevertheless. The lava from the volcano has con- gealed into the solid blocks of one of the most powerful con- structions of the human mind. Kant was no less king of his age than Descartes of his. What we want for our own age is to reconcile and to balance the claims of these two royal minds. We may give a brief outline of the fundamental principles of Kant's system which will suffice for our purpose. The em- pirical school, as we have seen, derives the laws of the human mind entirely from the objective, from the world of sensation. Kant, on the contrary, makes the object wholly subordinate to the subject; according to him, we only see things through the medium of our mind, and consequently we project ourselves into the things seen. It is not the things themselves that we perceive, but the things transformed and modified by our mind ; which is equivalent to saying that we never arrive at the reality itself. Kant does not go so far as to deny the existence of things ; for the irresistible instinct of our reason implies their existence. There is the thing in itself, the "JDing an sich? which Kant calls the noiimenon. It is as certain that the nou- menon exists as it is that we do not come in contact with it ; because between us and it, is our mind. This always compels us to place things in time and space. Now time and space are mere notions, which we derive from ourselves and which are antecedent to all sensations. They are the pre-existing moulds, into which we cast things by an inward necessity, but this suffices to impart to them a wholly subjective character, and to prevent our apprehending the thing itself. The thing KANT. 85 in itself is not subject to the laws of time and space, since these are laws of our own mind in its regards to sensation ; they are the laws of our sensibility. If from sensation we rise to the understanding, we recognise, here also, d priori laws not supplied by experience, for they control our experiences and consequently modify them by transforming them into ideas and sensible representations. The smallest judgment which we pronounce, supposes a subject to which we add an attribute, and so implies the idea of substance. We cannot think with- out the idea of cause, an idea which the series of phenomena alone is incapable of producing. We must observe that Kant never asserts that these great categories of substance and cause are, like time and space, purely subjective. He recognises, as M. Charles Secre'tan has said, "the essential relation between intelligence and truth ; only in the domain of pure knowledge, this truth, this reality, is not apprehended in itself, because the senses and the imagination always mingle with our thought. We cannot think of being and of cause but as events in time, and constant succession becomes to us the symbol and equivalent of causation. The element of time mingles with all our thoughts : it clouds their transparency and prevents our arriving at an understanding of the truth." x It is this which leads Kant, with all the daring of a pure logician, to set aside, in the domain of pure knowledge, all the Cartesian proofs of the spirituality and immortality of the soul, and of the existence of God, whether cosmological or ontologicaL 3 The subjective element of sensibility prevents us as effectually from apprehending the true ego as from apprehending the exter- nal world. For we only perceive the ego subject to the laws of time and space; it is therefore already an ego transformed. The world does not enable us to arrive at any conclusion about its Author, because, in order to do this, we must know things as they 1 " La Philosophic de Victor Cousin." Charles Secretan. * SeeM. Philippe Bridel's excellent treatise, "La Philosophic Religieuse de Kant." 86 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. are ; but the world of phenomena is the product of our own faculties. In short, all that rational psychology professes to demonstrate with reference to the soul, its substantiality, its unity, its immortality, is a tissue of paralogisms. We confound the mere empty form of thought with our personality as thinking beings. Rational theology falls into the same error, for it transfers to the thing in itself the subjectivity inherent in the thing as it appears, that is as we have made it. It is our ever-recurring error to identify the noumenon with the pheno- menon, the thing in itself with the thing as it appears. Kant himself reveals the motive and inspiration of this truly Titanic effort to reduce the world to a simple phenomenon, when he shows that it is vain to attempt to evolve the freedom of the will from the succession of phenomena ; for in a world subject to the laws of succession, the chain of cause and effect is never broken, and if we hold to this, we must allow Spinoza to be right. Yet without free-will the moral life is but a trea- cherous illusion. Now we can give up everything except the moral life. For that life is certain with a certainty not merely direct but obligatory. There is within us a categorical impera- tive which admits of no doubt ; the first duty is to believe in duty. Duty is not open to discussion, because it is duty ; it is itself the supreme law. Upon this the practical reason insists. It takes little account of the negations of the pure reason; or rather it makes much of them, for they have set it free from that law of fatality which presses upon the phenomenal world, subject as it is to the inevitable laws of succession. We must be on our guard against introducing into this domain of practical reason, processes of knowledge which have been found futile in the domain of pure reason. If we were to take the same stand- point here, and attempt to prove duty and conscience, the proof would be as illusory in this new application of it, as in the attempt to demonstrate the soul and God by psychological and ontological reasoning. The moral being would vanish, like the thinking being, before the distinction ever subsisting between KANT. 87 the thing in itself and the thing as it appears to us through the subjective medium of our knowledge. Let us not attempt then to prove the categorical imperative or the consciousness of which it is the substance. We are here in a region above knowledge, in presence of a postulate which forces itself upon us, not by any evidence whatsoever, but because it is obliga- tory, because it is duty ; and if we were to throw doubt upon it, the moral life would perish. This postulate restores to us that faith in an immortal soul and in a just God, which alone gives the necessary sanction to the moral law. Without it there is no basis for either the soul or God. The categorical im- perative is their only guarantee, but it is unassailable since it is above all knowledge. We could not give a better summary of the dominant thought in Kant's system, than is given in the admirable commentary upon it by M. Charles Secre"tan. He says : " The moral order shines by its own light, and cannot be called in question; it is the highest interest of thought to keep it unimpaired. We find here the explanation of those scepti- cal objections, the motive of those subtle, apparently arbitrary, distinctions, which have made us hesitate. The science of nature must proceed upon the supposition of the universality of natural laws ; that is to say, of universal necessity. The very conception of moral order is based upon liberty. The two principles are irreconcilable ; collision is imminent. How is it to be prevented ? By placing the two contrary principles on two different levels, and assigning to each its own world. The science of nature is thought turned to the things of time and space. Let us reduce time and space to the rank of appearances ; the theory of these appearances will be precisely the same as if they were realities, and will render us the same service ; and liberty will remain the law of the world of mind, that is, of the true world. There is behind our apparent nature something which is not of time, an eternal energy that is free, and makes us what we are. It is true we know 88 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. nothing of this energy ; nevertheless we affirm it, because we are obliged to admit it, in order to maintain the authority of the law of duty ; otherwise we should be irresistibly led to explain away the moral consciousness in vain phenomenology, and to regard it as an illusion of the mind. Duty is then at once the guarantee of the intelligible world and its revealer. Duty is the bond, the pivot ; the very certainty of moral obligation assures to us all the rest. If duty is more certain than all the rest, it is not by any means in virtue of any psychological necessity. Nothing in the world can prevent our suspecting that the often importunate voice of conscience is a voice which is misleading us. No, that in which consists the original and highest certainty of duty, and the true foundation of all certainty, is simply that it is duty. We may call it in question, but we ought not to do so ; that is the whole secret. The ponderous framework of the world is not planted upon a rock, it is poised in the ether; and if I believe in liberty, my belief is free." l We see how unjust are the attacks made by those who call themselves spiritualists upon this noble and lofty philosophy. The Cartesians who condemn it forget the Spinozist followers of their master, who brought out the determinist elements of the system maintained by Leibnitz himself. A powerful re- action was absolutely necessary. On the other hand, we would remind the followers of Kant of the various schools of pantheistic idealism which have all claimed to be the successors of the great philosopher of sub- jectivity. Fichte refused to see anything but the ego in the world ; Schelling, in his first system, made the ego the hidden focus from which everything emanates ; finally, Hegel showed the Absolute apprehending itself in the reason, after finding its evolution in nature, so that logic becomes only a development of things ; and we must not forget that all these various forms of the pantheism of to-day have proceeded more or less from Kant. I 1 " La Philosophic de Victor Cousin." Charles Secretan. KANT. 89 know indeed that Hegel rejected from the outset the postulate of the practical reason, and that he thus falsified entirely the doctrine of Kant by depriving it of its essential element, its final cause, so to speak. But it is none the less certain that these great pantheistic idealists of Germany would not have pro- ceeded from its schools if the subjectivism of pure reason had not had in it something false. When once an impassable gulf had been made between the subject and the object, there re- mained thenceforward only two ways open, either the negation of objective knowledge altogether, or an exaggeration in the opposite direction the identification of the object with the subject, which is the real root of all forms of pantheism. Kant himself did not remain faithful to his own principles of criticism, so difficult are they to maintain. After having placed in a sort of opposition, the practical reason which gives moral certainty and the pure reason which shuts us up in the sub- jective as in an inaccessible citadel, his criticism of the judg- ment, comprising his theory of aesthetics, seems to admit a certain harmony between the world without and that within. The sentiment of the beautiful awakened by the spectacle of things lias a general or universal character. How would this universality be possible if there were not in the external world a principle analogous to thought as the basis of natural objects? Kant thus recognises that the study of nature leads us to the conception of finality, for it brings out the idea of an end or aim. Unless we suppose this feeling after an end to go on inde- finitely, which would be tantamount to denying it altogether, it must arrive at a being who is his own end. Now this being is man, considered as a moral agent ; he is himself the end, the aim of nature. We must bear in mind however that the funda- mental axiom of Kantism is always the subjectivity of pure reason. Kant himself acknowledges this in these significant words : " The foregoing considerations are natural to our mind ; but we should deceive ourselves if we attributed to them any scientific value, since the certainty that man is his 90 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. own end is not derived from science, but belongs to the moral order, and forms properly an article of faith." 1 We are convinced that, from the postulate of the practical reason, conclusions may be drawn which point to the ob- jectivity, the reality of the external world. The categorical imperative calls us to action ; in order that this action may be possible it is necessary that the environment in which it is to take place, the very theatre of our activity, should not be a pure chimera, else the action commanded by the categorical im- perative itself would be nugatory and the moral absolute would vanish away. This humanity, which I ought always to have in view in order to give to my acts the character of a general law, free from all egoistic individualism, is itself a world outside of me. The barrier between the subject and the object is thus removed. We may further urge that no moralist has taken a more serious view than Kant of the tragical reality of moral evil. He sees in it primarily that which he calls the predominance of the sensible interest over the moral law. But this sensible interest represents the action of the world of the senses. To refuse to accord any reality to this, is to make evil nothing more than an illusion, and to write falsehood on a fundamental dictum of conscience. Remorse itself attests at once the reality of evil and of the sensible world, without which evil would not be possible. 2 We may arrive at the same result in another way. We have seen belief in God arise out of the categorical imperative. The God to whom duty raises us is a holy God. Must we not be- lieve with Descartes in His veracity, without which He would not be the supreme good? Have we not thus a guarantee that there is a fundamental correspondence between the laws of our mind and the reality of things ? Moreover there is nothing to constrain us to confine our- selves to the doctrine of Kant. It has been remarkably ex. 1 " Philosophic de la Liberte," Charles Secretan, vol. i., chap, x, 2 Ibid. MAINE DE BIRAN. 91 panded by a French philosopher of the beginning of this century, one of the most original thinkers of his day, who was in reality too far in advance of his contemporaries to be truly appreciated at the time. 1 II. MAINE DE BIRAN. Maine de Biran is known to us principally through his post- humous works, which were published in the first instance by M. Cousin ; but the most important parts of them were sub- sequently republished with a valuable commentary by M. Ernest Naville. Maine de Biran seems to us to supply the link between Kant and Descartes, and to indicate the true synthesis of their doctrines. Kant, as we have seen, makes the notion of time and space a necessary and preliminary form of our sensibility, one which, by impressing itself upon our perceptions, gives to them all a subjective character and puts on them the impress of our mind. The same character of subjectivity is to be traced, according to Kant, in our notions of substance and cause, which partake of the intuitive, d- prioristic element of the human mind. The great merit of Maine de Biran, in his profound psychological studies, is that of having shown that there is in these intuitive notions some- thing more than the formal laws of mind ; that they have an experimental, and consequently an objective basis, in the ego itself. Inasmuch as they are matter of experience in the ego, in the exercise of its spontaneous activity, they are not reducible to a mere form. Here we set foot at once on solid ground ; knowledge is no longer a simple matter of faith. It was a true flash of genius which suggested to Maine de Biran his theory of effort, by which he has introduced liberty into the initial act of knowledge. He has thus broken down the wall of separa- tion between pure reason and practical reason. To think is to 1 "GEuvres Philosophiques " de Maine de Biran. Paris, 1841 "CEuvres Completes " de Maine de Biran. Paris, 1851. 92 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. will ; therefore the being whose existence is revealed by thought is not simply a reasoning being, as he is represented in the famous Cartesian motto, " Cogito, ergo sum" but is primarily a free, acting being, carrying within him the principle of the moral life. There is a first period in human existence which belongs altogether to instinct, to blind sensation. The man is not as yet, he has no true existence. The mind begins to work from the moment when it distinguishes the ego from the non- ego, that is from the external object which up to that time has enveloped it, and, as it were, submerged it in the flood of confused sensations. This distinction is effected by an effort, which is the act of the will seeking to overcome the resistance of the body, for the body, however linked to the spirit, is yet external to it. " Effort made by the will and directly perceived, constitutes the individuality, the ego, the primary fact of the inner sense. I shall characterise this inner sense more ex- plicitly as the sense of effort ; the cause or producing force of which becomes the ego, by the very fact of the distinction which is established between the subject of this voluntary effort and the term which directly resists by its own inertia." 1 It is not the mere action of the organic functions, which makes the ego conscious of itself. " Darkness cannot bring forth light ; the activity and prevision of mind cannot be pro- duced by the necessary operation of a mere organism without will. The circumstances and organic conditions of animal sen- sitivity and motility, under which the soul remains unconscious of itself, are certainly not the same as those which serve for the first manifestations of the soul as an active force, the first developments of the human ego." 2 In its higher form, effort is called attention. It then directs the action of the organs to any object which it desires to know. Attention implies the exercise of the will. By raising man 1 " CEuvres Completes." Maine de Biran. Edition Navillc, vol. i., p. 201. 2 Ibid., p. 218. MAINE DE SIR AN'. 93 . above the sphere of mere sensations, it gives to the ideas upon which it fixes itself, a vividness proportioned to its intensity. By opposing to mere inclinations the ideas thus intensified by it, it initiates the moral life. In its highest degree, when it bears upon the mind itself, it is called reflexion. The re- flexion which makes our own ego the object of our attention, discovers to us, in its very operation, the origin of the great ideas which Aristotle and Kant had made the categories or the ^ priori element of the human will. The act of will, which by its own effort has constituted the ego, gives it the notion of causation, since the ego, willing and acting by effort, feels itself to be the cause of its result ; and the essence of this cause is its freedom. On this point Mansel arrives at the same result as Maine de Biran, by substituting for muscular effort in the production of the idea of cause, the effort of the will producing its proper act, namely resolution. The idea of force is the corollary to that of effort. The subsis- tence of the ego through all its variations, gives us the idea of substance, which is derived also from the perceived resistance of the non-ego. The succession of acts of the will implies the idea of time. Lastly, the primary basis of the conception of space is found in the close and direct feeling of the body and of its parts, which arises out of the effort made to overcome its resistance. 1 We must admit with M. Ernest Naville, that Maine de Biran has exaggerated the part taken by our subjective experience in the formation of these great fundamental ideas of the reason. They could not have been evolved from this experiment of the ego upon itself, unless they had been implicitly contained in it ; for the mere succession of phenomena does not give the notion of time in the subject any more than in the object In order to derive the idea of time from the successive willings of the ego, it is necessary that it should be inherent in the mind itself. "Sight, touch, movement, sensation, would never give 1 " CEuvres Completes." Maine de Biran. Introduction, p. 57. 94 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. us the notion of extension, nor our conception of bodies, unless it were inherent in us." l This is true of space as of substance and cause. Maine de Biran has too much forgotten this d priori element, so powerfully established by Aristotle and Kant Reason alone enables the ego, which has become conscious of itself in the act of willing, to generalise from the conceptions derived from this first experience, and to con- clude that they are universal and necessary because they were present in it as primary principles. We find, in fact, in the reason itself the principles of unity, substantiality, causation, and finality. It is nevertheless a valuable supplement and corrective to Kant's criticism, to have it shown that these principles are confirmed by experience, and are vitalised in the activity of the ego. They thus cease to be mere moulds and forms of thought ; they become also realities. Yet more ; the initial act of the will effort has revealed to us the existence of the body, without which it would not be conceivable, for it is the body which offers to the will the first resistance it has to overcome. The ego arrives thus at the knowledge of itself, by distinguishing itself from the non-ego, and it makes this distinction by the mere force of its own free will. Liberty is thus the basis of the intellectual as of the moral life ; the dual- ism is overcome. It would be difficult to overstate the services which Maine de Biran has rendered to philosophy by his theory of effort, which he himself sums up in these words : " I will, I act, therefore I am. ... I am not vaguely a thinking thing, but definitely a willing thing, which passes from will to action by its own energy, as it resolves within itself or acts beyond itself." 2 Here again Maine de Biran requires to be sup- plemented by Kant, for he has too much neglected the properly moral aspect of free action, that which belongs to the categorical imperative. It is not enough to say, " I will, 1 " Precis de Philosophic," Charles Secretan, p. 122. s Maine de Biran, vol. iii., p. 413. RENOUVIER. 95 therefore 7 am; " it should be, 7 will, I ought, therefore I am. Only in this way is the Cartesian formula sufficiently widened. It is not my being only which is thus affirmed, but the Being also on whom I depend ; the Being who commands me and constrains me to say, " 1 ought" This Being, to whom my conscience and my reason alike point, is not only an infinite substance, but infinite liberty, since He is the Absolute Good, the eternal type of the moral law. III. FRENCH CRITICISM. The brief refutation which we have given of Kant's criticism, is applicable also, we hold, to the French philosopher of our day, who has represented the Kantian school with remarkable dialectic power and a most salutary moral elevation. M. Renou- vier has not contented himself with the conclusions of the " Critique of Pure Reason," he has carried them out to their furthest issues, for he does not admit even the existence of the thing in itself that noumcmm which is perpetually eluding us. The boldness of his negation is only equalled by the force of his moral affirmation, which has become increasingly religious in one in the last few years. But the antinomy between science and conscience is made as positive as possible. We should feel ourselves failing in respect to this great teacher, whose aim is so high and thought so vigorous, if we did not frankly own that we cannot do justice to his system in the brief discussion which is all we are able to give to it here. In his very first Essay on General and Formal Logic, he displays an admirable power of exact criticism. As things are to us only represen- tations, and as in every representation there must be a corres- pondence of the subject to the object, we cannot get beyond the relative ; the thing in itself is absolutely unapproachable by us, it has no essential existence; phenomena are all. Nevertheless these representations are subject to fixed laws, which, not being the result of sensible observation, constitute 96 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. an d priori element. In this we find the categories. There is not a thing in relation to which we do not ask the questions, how, how much, where, when, whence, why, which represent the relations of size, quantity, position, figure, extension, quality, change, cause and end. All these categories depend on the first category, which is that of relation, for within us and without us everything is determined by relation \ that is to say we never arrive at the thing in itself the absolute which is the opposite of the relative. The absolute is the being in itself and by itself the all. How can we possibly arrive at it in the world, which is but a collection of relations and repre- sentations ? and how can we arrive at it outside the world, where it is nothing more than an abstraction ? The totality cannot be apprehended in its parts, since it is always divided ; nor can it be conceived apart from its parts, for then it would be no more a totality. Should we have arrived at the absolute, we should not be able to come down again to the world, for there is no passage from the single to the manifold. We can only conceive contingent causes, for these contingent causes would cease to be causes, if they depended on a primordial cause, since they would then only be effects ; and the first cause, being outside the world, would be as though it were n t. That which is true of the category of cause is true of all the other categories. As M. Liard, a firm adherent of the French school of criticism, has said : " Categories are nothing else than the more general and more constant relations according to which we combine our sensations. Isolated from the phenomena, they express only abstract possibilities. If we attempt by their means to penetrate into the absolute, we lose ourselves in a vacuum. 1 In short, to use M. Renouvier's words, the critical philosophy leads us to scientific atheism, by the distinctness with which it eliminates all idea of the Absolute. " There is no knowledge of anything in itself, but everything presents itself as complex and relative to other things in the representation 1 Liard, " La Science Positive et la Metaphysique," p. 351. FRENCH CRITICISM. 97 to which it belongs. Every phenomenon is defined by opposition to other phenomena. The word * being ' expresses only a relation. It expresses each group of phenomena, some particular relations of which are given and defined." l There remains however a grave difficulty. The very word "representation" supposes a mind, a consciousness, a subject who represents to himself that which we take for the object. On this point, M. Renouvier does not sufficiently explain himself. Consciousness, with him, is "a collection of pheno- mena comprised in the category of the personality. Every living being is a consciousness which perceives things as represen- tations. We are constrained to admit a plurality of conscious- nesses, for one unique primary consciousness including the totality of phenomena would cease to be a consciousness at all, since it would no longer be able to distinguish anything outside of itself, and the very idea of consciousness implies this distinction of the ego from the non-ego." 2 As to the sup- position of a first consciousness, to which all the phenomena that have appeared, or are to appear, should be subordinated, we do not understand how a subdivision of the Absolute into fractional consciousnesses could take place, or how it can have been the All and have ceased to be so. Either the first con- sciousness finds no limit in the world, and then the world has no real existence ; or it finds a limit and then itself ceases to be. It is not permissible then to base the foundation of ali things upon this "thing in itself" undefinable and mysterious, from which all things have emerged, in which all are again merged, which is both immutable and the starting-point of all the changes that take place. " In the sphere of knowledge as of human society, we must substitute law for personal govern- ment; and adhere to pure phenomenalism regulated by the categories of reason." 3 1 Renouvier, "Premiers Essais," vol. ii., p. 271. 8 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 287. * Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 251, 253. 98 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. But M. Renouvier does not stop here. He does not admit that this speculative atheism leads to the materialistic and practical atheism which he abhors. He says: "If atheism meant excluding the fiction of any substratum whatsoever, mind, matter, or substance, and proposing to science, not the infinite, impossible, contradictory All, nor the universe drawn from nothing by the power and for the satisfaction of a primal, sole, universal, undefinable, unintelligible Being, but the series of laws illustrated by the visible democracy of existences in nature and in the heavens ; if it meant that act of thought by which a free man overturns at once the materialistic or pan- theistic idol, and dethrones the Absolute, the King of heaven (the last prop of the kings of the earth), atheism would be the true method, the only one founded on reason, the only positive method." In substance, atheism, thus formulated, amounts to the argument of Kant against the cosmological proof of the existence of God ; for French criticism, following the German philosopher, recognises faith in the higher realities as admissi- ble within the moral sphere ; but as it has gone further in its metaphysical negation, it is likewise reduced to formulating a mere belief. True to its highest aspirations, it repels with in dignation what it calls " that religion of nothingness which is opposed alike to our most steadfast desires and our most sacred hopes." We can but ask how these hopes are compatible with the utter negation of the Absolute. To find some ground to rest upon, criticism takes refuge in the last relics of the notion of being which it has allowed to remain. We have seen that it maintains the individual consciousness, without .which representation would be im- possible. It does not matter that this individual consciousness is nothing more than a grouping of phenomena, embraced within the law of personality ; it postulates nevertheless the moral idea ; it claims the right to believe in its own originating principle and in its own issues, which may reach even to im- mortality, and to faith in God, or rather in the Divine. This FRENCH CRITICISM. 99 school at its outset inclined to a polytheistic conception ; but this it has gradually abandoned. "True atheism," says M. Renouvier, "does not exclude true theism, either in the moral or in the anthropomorphic sense of the latter word. All the absolute is eliminated, but thought seeks a fixed point beyond particular phenomena. The ideal, dismissed from the world of being, reappears in the ideal of moral perfection. Belief in one God is equivalent to the affirmation of good. A field opens to free belief, beyond the sphere of science, but not hostile to it. The persistence of being and all such ultimate facts may result from the laws of phenomena ; the existence of one or of many gods is in no way contrary to reason. We can thus fix our attention on the little world of man and of consciousness, where we shall be all the more likely to find the conditions of certainty, the more we turn away from the great world." 1 After all then it devolves upon the free will to lay the found- ation of certainty; it is a moral affirmation that we need. Reason is nothing else than the man, and the man is always the practical man. We start from ourselves, from our moral law, and we determine what ought to correspond with it in the heart of the universe, in order that there may be harmony. "There is no certainty, there are only men who are certain." 2 M. Pilon has given a very fair summary of the whole system in the introduction to his translation of Hume's " Treatise on Human Nature." " The criticism of the day," he says, " recon- ciles Hume and Kant. Something is wanting in Hume, the idea of law ; there is something too much in Kant, the idea of substance, expressed as the noumcnon. The phenomenalism of Hume needs to be joined to the & priori-ism of Kant. This M. Renouvier has done. It had to be made clear that the true substance, the true noumenon, is law; that no other is intelligible, and further that it suffices to unite the d // iori 1 " Premiers Essais," Renouvier, pp. 283-289. * llnd. t vol. ii., p. 15. ioo THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. with the phenomenal, in order to render the latter compatible with the beliefs postulated by morals." 1 Thus we have on the one hand pure phenomena and representations which are always relative ; and on the other categories or laws of repre- sentation ; and lastly groups of phenomena forming the person- ality, and revindicating as pure beliefs, as postulates, the great simple moral verities. This is the whole system. Never was dualism more decided between metaphysics and morals, and never was the supremacy of the categorical imperative affirmed more emphatically in the acknowledged failure of all meta- physical demonstration. We are not prepared to admit that this sort of coup d'etat of consciousness is all that is left to us. In the first place, French criticism has itself introduced, through one of its most distinguished exponents, a very important modification into its theory of the purely relative character of knowledge. M. Liard, in his remarkable book, " La Science Positive et la Metaphysique," following Herbert Spencer, but avoiding his inconsistencies, has established that the very conception of the relative implies that of the absolute ; that whenever we speak of the relative, we implicitly contrast it with the absolute, which is thus recognised by the reason at least as an idea. M. Liard goes even further, for he admits that there is a lower instinct which is perpetually urging on the intellect to seek the reason of things, thus attesting at once the limits of our knowledge and the existence of an inscrutable absolute. " The sciences of the relative are perpetually reaching after the infinite. The incessant pursuit of the absolute by the, human mind proves that the relative fails to satisfy it." 2 This intuitive vision of the absolute, coming from above into the mind of man, suffices to prove its existence. We know indeed that M. Renouvier altogether denies that the mind of man can by possibility arrive at the absolute ; but we cannot forget that he recognises 1 Pilon, "Introduction," p. 6l. 8 " La Science et la Metaphysique," Liard. FRENCH CRITICISM. 101 it as a duty for man, as a moral being, to believe in the good by an act of free will. Have we not here the solution of the supposed contradiction between metaphysics and morals ? This free act, by its spontaneous manifestation, makes us apprehend liberty as a reality. By what right can reason be forbidden to recognise liberty as a reality outside of and above us also ? None of the objections urged by M. Renouvier against the principle of causation appear to us conclusive. " I am free, I feel it, I own it; why should I alone be free? Why should not the principle of my being be free also?" If it is so, the great objection urged by French criticism against the pos- sibility of a first cause is removed. It argues, as we have seen, that there cannot be a first cause, because one of two things must follow, either the first cause is absolute and hence must efface all the causes which we recognise in the world, or they are real and it is limited by them, in which case it ceases to be absolute. Liberty shows us a way out of this dilemma; for absolute liberty can certainly put limits on itself, can even assert itself by accepting voluntarily the limitations imposed by the created liberty of which it is itself the source. Reason and conscience are thus alike satisfied. Again, this individual conscience, which M. Renouvier derives we know not whence, possessing an a priori element which is the law of knowledge, cannot be regarded as passive in the very fact of representation. It must group the phenomena under those great laws which govern it; it has a. power of reaction: it is not a passive instrument. Thus we find ourselves brought back to the part taken by liberty in the very fact of knowledge, as defined by Maine de Biran. The problem of our person- ality is solved by that very liberty which is one of the primary facts of moral certainty. We do not belong to the purely relative, for, as M. Liard says, we are not simply carried away by our sensations. We thus escape that singular explanation of our personality as a mere group of phenomena included in the category of the ego, with great d priori laws hanging vaguely 102 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. over us. That would indeed be a strange grouping of phe- nomena which should be capable, from a moral point of view, of displaying actively the greatest energy in willing the good and believing in its eternal conditions. Allow that this grouping has been itself a free act, and you have at once the ego with its faculty of unification, which cannot possibly be classed with the phenomenal. Without this element of unity, we fail to conceive how there can be any such thing as a personality at all, how we can arrive at anything but the in- definite multiplication of parts. It is more difficult to explain how the phenomenal representations are linked to the a priori laws, than to understand how the subordinate unities are evolved from the primal unity. We can simply refer to the objections we have already made to the subjectivism of Kant, which apply no less directly to the French criticism. Faith in duty implies a real stage for the conduct which it is to regulate. If the world is only a representation, duty is another, for it is nothing more than a metaphysical phantom in a chimerical world. Duty demands the standing ground of reality. While making these reservations with regard to M. Renou- vier's system, we nevertheless recognise its high value. No one has done more than he to give prominence to the moral aspect of knowledge. His work on ethics deserves the most careful study. CHAPTER IV. THE TRUE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. IN our review of the contemporary theories of the problem of knowledge, we have obtained important results preparing us for its solution. First. It is not possible to limit science to the simple con- ditions of existence, setting aside altogether the inquiry into its causes. Positivism has wholly failed in its attempt to derive all knowledge from the object itself, apart from the activity of the thinking subject. This subjective activity is implied in the simplest induction of a general law from the succession of phenomena. Second. The principle of causation cannot be deduced, any more than the other d prioristic ideas, from the mere association of ideas, which are nothing more than sensations transformed, as the new English psychology maintains ; for this psychology altogether fails to explain the mental power which combines the ideas, which is conscious of their combination and of itself as something apart from them. The persistence of the ego, attested by memory, renders this explanation wholly inadequate, as the psychologists of this school are constrained to admit. The theory of evolution and of heredity brings in the element of indefinite time, but it cannot evolve from sensations that which they do not contain, and which they have no cumula- tive power to produce. Moreover, the ego predicates itself in denying its own existence. Third. The inductive d prioristic element of the human 103 104 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. mind, recognised by Kant and by the school of M. Renouvier, does not confine us, as is asserted by French or German criti- cism, to pure subjectivism, by which no way would be left open to us for arriving at the reality of things, except moral intuition. We have seen first, that while the fundamental ideas of reason are inherent and prior to all experience, they are nevertheless confirmed by the consciousness which the ego acquires of itself in the very act of self-determination. As the will comes into play in the act of thinking, all contradiction between pure reason and practical reason disappears, for both the one and the other is contingent on the exercise of that liberty which we find to be the very essence, as it were, of the human being. Lastly, the postulate of practical reason, the categorical im- perative of the moral consciousness, which commands the ful- filment of duty, implies the reality of the world in which it is to perform its functions. It follows that neither the humanity to which it binds us in bonds of duty, nor the higher and divine world in which the categorical imperative finds its necessary sanctions, can be pure illusions. The problem of knowledge, thus freed from the theories which misrepresent it or render it chimerical, is brought near its true solution. It is important for us to formulate it with precision, for before we proceed to inquire further into the problem of the world and its origins, we must know what our intellectual instrument is capable of, and whether we may really trust to it. I. GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE. Let us attempt to describe the genesis, the development, and the conditions of our faculty of knowing. The human mind would remain inert if it were not aroused from without; all its thinking energies would lie dormant. It is needful then that sensation should begin to act, that it should thrill the nerves which correspond to each of its modes, and should reperceive itself in the nervous centre. We reserve for the an- thropological section of this work the complete refutation of the SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 105 naturalistic theories which affirm that sensation is transformed into thought by mere cerebral action. Even the sensation which remains mere sensation, is not adequately explained by molecular motion. It implies, alike in the child and in the animal, an obscure and confused psychical activity. We confine ourselves for the moment to the statements, already quoted, of one of our most eminent physiologists, as to the impossibility of identifying the mo- lecular motion of the brain with thought. In order that sen- sation may become perception, all our faculties must be brought into play. Sensations which were not prolonged as images, would leave no trace and would furnish no materials for ideas. Imagination must give them the necessary fixity. In order to derive ideas from them, the mind must compare phenomena, seize their points of resemblance and difference, and thus rise to generalisation, without which it would be, so to speak, lost in a confused multiplicity of sensations and images and would fail to grasp anything distinct. To think is to unify. " Without general ideas," we read in M. Janet's excellent summary of his philosophy, " it would be impossible for men to think, for to think is to generalise. So long as I am absorbed by an individual object, without even observing that it is individual (for this would imply the idea of the general) it cannot be said that I think, but only that I feel. It is when I have remarked that such and such an object resembles some other, and have placed both in the same class, as for example in the class of flowers, it is only then that what we call thought takes place." 1 Thus we only rise from sensation to perception by a positive act of thought; and in order to perform this act, we need the will and the attention, which implies resolution. Doubtless these opera- tions are accomplished with great rapidity; habit and heredity render them spontaneous ; but at the starting-point there is always positive mental activity. 1 " Traite lementaire de Philosophic. " Paul Janet. io6 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. We have only so far reached the starting-point of the in- tellectual operation by which we come to know the outer world. Physical effort has made us cognisant of an element foreign to the ego in our own body, by the resistance it has offered to us. This foreign element being admitted, we have discovered further that it is subdivided, that it is multiform. This we learn from mere contact with our fellow-creatures, having bodies like our own. We find this element outside of us indefinitely extended. We have thus arrived at the idea of matter. If we apply to it the notion of substance it is because this is an idea innate in our minds ; if we attribute force to it, it is because the principle of causation has con- strained us to refer to some cause the resistance we have encountered. These bodies we have placed in space, and have recognised that they are subject to the law of succession. Thus only have we acquired a true knowledge of the world without us. We see, that to obtain this knowledge in the most elementary degree, requires the direct intervention of our reason. M. Charles Secretan says : " The integrity of the organ, the presence of a fit agent, and a certain degree of attention, are indispensable before a sensation is produced. But even these conditions do not suffice to give us a perception, or that knowledge of outward objects which we refer to the senses when we say, for example : * I see a man,' * I hear a carriage.' We must have the idea of foreign bodies in gene- ral, 1 the knowledge inseparable from that of our own body, which we obtain by sight and touch. We must have memory and intelligence, that is to say, general ideas, judgment, and reasoning. Sensible knowledge always demands the concur- rence of the intelligence to interpret the sensation. And the sensation itself is not produced without a certain degree of attention, that is to say, of spontaneous activity of the mind. Sensation by itself teaches us nothing." 2 1 " De la Certitude," Robert, Part II., chap. 4. f " Precis de Philosophic," Charles Secretan, p. 46. SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 107 Knowledge then consists, not merely in the perception of phenomena, but in their succession, combination, and the prevision of their repetition under the same conditions of exist- ence. We thus arrive at the idea of a law, which we can derive only from induction. To state a law, to determine the conditions under which phenomena will be reproduced, is to infer, to judge of the future by the present. The science of nature is only possible on this condition. " To use induction," says M. Lachelier, " we must admit implicitly that nature constitutes a fixed organism, the phenomena of which are connected and produce each other in a certain order ; for if they were not connected and fitted into each other, so to speak, we should have no reason for supposing they would be reproduced in the future under the same circumstances. Thus induction pre-supposes the idea of this fixed order." 1 These phenomena are not only conditioned by one another, they are also combined, co-ordinated in nature ; they form systems, har- monies, ever more and more complete. Nature is something more than the movement produced by the simple succession of phenomena ; it is not to be explained by pure mechanics. It has a form, a leading idea, perfectly recognisable in the living organism. In order to know what this idea is, there must be an exercise of thought, a distinct effort to rise from the parts of the whole to the whole itself, else the knowledge gained will be only of the parts separately, or of the whole as a mere abstraction. It follows that the knowledge of nature itself implies not only the intuition of unity but that of per- fection, that is to say, the highest conception of the mind of man." We are thus raised by mere physical knowledge, above the phenomenal world of sensation up to reason itself. It will be asked no doubt whether this knowledge, governed by reason, of the sensible phenomenal world, corresponds really to its object ; whether we do not in this way get the object so modified that it is impossible to tell what it is in itself, and 1 " De 1'Induction," Lachelier, p. 95. io8 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. we are thus driven back on the Kantian distinction between the noumenon and the phenomenon. We do not deny that the knowledge of the sensible world does in some measure trans- form it. That which presents itself to us as colour is in reality only undulation and vibration. But there is nothing to prevent our admitting this transformation of the phenomenon, without going so far as to reduce it to a mere illusion. Sensation is indeed a translation of the external world, but it is a faithful translation of an existing text. The veracity of God is not an argument to be slighted, when once the idea of God has been legitimately sanctioned. It is needless to insist at any length upon the important part which reason has to play in that knowledge of a higher order which refers to the subject himself, and which is called the consciousness of the ego. Here, as we have shown, the fundamental principles of the reason, which spring into life, so to speak, in the manifestations of the conscious ego, appear in full play. In the free act, which the first simple muscular effort implies, and which in a higher degree becomes attention and reflexion, the ego is conscious of itself as an energy and a cause. Its persistence, attested by memory through all the fluctuations of sensation, gives the realisation of the idea of substance, as the succession of those sensations gives that of time. The very fact of thought, which implies the distinc- tion between the thinking subject and the object thought of, leads to the recognition of another existence outside the ego. The resistance which demands effort, and of which the ego is conscious in its own body, makes itself felt by the touch; this sense, combined with that of sight, gives a certain experi- mental knowledge of extension, so to speak. We notice once again, that even in this higher application to the conscious ego, mere empiricism would not suffice to determine the es- sential principles of knowledge, those categories which at once govern it and render it possible. Neither the activity of the ego nor its persistence, nor the data given us by effort and SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 109 attention, would raise us to the principles of causation and substance, or to the ideas of time and space, if these categories were not virtually present in the reason, which alone confers on them the character of universality and necessity ; else, as we have already shown, we should never be able to derive them from the most carefully conducted psychological experi- ments. It is because these great conceptions are virtually present in the reason that they are elicited from the observa- tions which the ego makes of itself and of the spectacle of the phenomenal world. It is a very significant fact undoubtedly, that these same laws of the human mind are to be observed by us in full operation in the activity of the ego, for we are thus certified that they arc not mere empty moulds of thought, formulas signifying nothing. They are thus shown to be consonant with fact ; there is a harmony, a correspondence between the real world, the world without and the laws laid down by the reason. But reason does not create this harmony, nor does experience supply it, which would be equivalent to saying that it produced it. Let us look at this master faculty of the understanding, reason, in itself. Let us be careful not to relegate it to an inaccessible height, like the Neo-Platonist God, for whom there is no way of passing from his transcendent, ineffable unity to the world of life and change. We admit the just distinction drawn by Aristotle between reason passive and active. The former, directed to the phenomenal world, transmits sensations and feelings, the latter works them out, after having been in some way set in motion. The d priori conceptions were up to this time present in it only virtually ; it possesses the faculty of producing them, and of formulating as judgments its in- herent ideas of the absolute. These judgments become the axioms on which experience is founded, and which govern it, since they embrace all possibilities. The first of these axioms is the principle of identity, accord- no THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. ing to which a thing cannot be and not be at the same time. Without this, reason is not reason ; we cannot trust to it, rest upon it ; if it does not exclude contradiction, all knowledge will be impossible. Reason begins with this implicit act of faith. Failing this it has no standing ground; it is carried along without pause and without rest ; nothing is true, nothing false. There must be an absolute beginning, a basis which rests upon itself, else thought revolves for ever in a circle, or rather whirls in a vortex. The first condition of science is faith in the true; if it be required to prove the principle, the proof would again need to be proved, and the regression would be endless. After the principle of identity reason gives us what Kant calls the laws of sensation, the ideas of time and space, then the idea of substance, and lastly that principle of causation which is like the keystone of the arch, or rather which is the impulse, the spur to its activity, the parent of all science. It is from the reason alone that this principle receives the character of universality and necessity which does not belong to the domain of the empirical. If the reason is vitalised by contact with the phenomenal world, it restores a hundredfold that which it has received, for it alone gives the key to open its mysteries. The axioms of the reason explain the relations of the phenomenal world, without which nothing would be intelligible. Reason does more ; it raises us higher than itself, to its own source and principle. It recognises that it must find the ex- planation of itself in something beyond it. It is by its essence inclined to the perfect and the absolute. There is not one of its axioms which is not based on this : there is a reason for every- thing. Every change has its cause, every quality its substance, every being its end. These are the principles of reason. Its most general function is to conceive the conditions of order, of homogeneity, of harmony between the effect and the cause. It must then find a reason adequate to itself and to the totality of things, a cause proportioned to the effect. This cause SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE, in should be perfection itself, for thought cannot stop at anything lower, and perfection can only be the absolute. Any limited degree of being and of perfection placed at the origin of things is illogical. The absolute being is at the same time perfect, for any imperfection would be a limit. 1 Thus the principle of causation, taken by itself, implies perfect and absolute being, and reason thus lifts our eyes to God. Here comes in again in its place the great Cartesian proof derived from the contrast between our imperfection and the idea of perfectness within us. " I am an imperfect thing, and I have the idea of perfection." It cannot, then, be I who have originated it, for it goes infinitely beyond me. It comes from above, but it is none the less in me. I am the living proof of its reality quite as much by the poverty of my being as by the greatness of my conception. Only I have learnt, from the great philosophy inaugurated by Kant, not to content myself with pure reason and the intellectual ism which the school of Descartes would not have exaggerated if it had more closely followed the first thought of its master, especially if it had fixed its attention upon the clear testimony, borne alike by practical reason and the moral conscience, to a Being not only infinite and absolute, but perfect and holy, the God of liberty, the absolute moral perfection. I thus escape the false notion of the Infinite taught by Spinoza an Infinite which is wholly extensive, and which, being therefore incapable of limi- tation, cannot recognise any created liberty, since this would be a limitation of itself. I learn further from the greatest of French psychologists, that the liberty which is the axis of the moral life is also the great motor of the intellectual life, that the two reasons are not separable, and that both alike lead us up to the God of freedom, that is to say, to the moral Absolute. The Cartesian proof from perfection perceived by imperfec- tion, is as valuable in the sphere of practical as of pure reason, 1 "De la Certitude," Robert, p. 347. 112 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. for it is from the depths of my misery and weakness I see the clear slvning of the absolute good, which attracts while it over- whelms me. We say with M. Charles Secre'tan, who is the philosopher of liberty par excellence : "The proof that the ego is not alone, and is not its own cause, is to be found in the contemplation of the ego itself. We shall discover that we are always endeavouring in vain to find in ourselves the reason of our own being. Behind and beneath the ego we find some- thing greater than the ego. We feel ourselves to be finite, while reason demands the infinite, the absolute ; we feel our- selves to be at once free and fettered or constrained free in the application of our limited powers, fettered in our per- ception which comes through the senses, constrained by duty." 1 If the ego finds itself at once free and subject to a law, there is of necessity a higher will to which it is under obligation. Thus the fact of moral obligation, like all the a-prioristic laws of the reason, compels us to seek a higher unity. So thought the great Christian Cartesians of the lyth cen- tury; and all we need in interpreting their thought, is to give due weight to the moral element. We welcome its exposition from one whose words will never grow old, "Oh, how great is the mind of man ! " exclaims Fenelon ; " he bears within him that which amazes and infinitely excels himself ! . . . Here is a being weak, uncertain, finite, full of errors ! Who has instilled into a mind so limited, so imperfect, the idea of the infinite, that is of the perfect ? " 2 Bossuet says : "We have only to reflect on our own opera- tions in order to understand that we come from a higher principle ; for inasmuch as our soul is capable of affirming and denying, and as moreover it feels itself to be ignorant of many things, and knows that it is often mistaken, it perceives in the truth inherent in itself a good principle, but it perceives 1 "Precis de Philosophic," Charles Secretan, pp. 122-124. 2 "CEuvres de Fenelon," vol. ii., " De 1'Existence deDieu," pp. 86, 87. SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 113 also that it is imperfect, and that there is a higher wisdom to which it owes its being. In fact, the perfect must exist before the imperfect, as the less presupposes the greater, of which it is the lesser part. Thus it is natural that the imperfect should imply the perfect, from which it is, so to speak, fallen ; and if an imperfect wisdom like ours, with its doubts, ignorances, and errors, does not cease to be, with how much stronger reason must we believe that the perfect wisdom is and subsists, and that ours is but a spark from it. We know then by ourselves and by our own imperfection that there is an infinite wisdom which never errs or is in doubt, and which is ignorant of nothing be- cause it has a full comprehension of the truth, or rather is itself the truth A Being eternal, immeasurable, infinite, exempt from all evil, free from all limitation, all imperfection. What miracle is this ? We who are but finite, who look only on things bounded like ourselves, how have we come to con- ceive this eternity? Whence came to us the thought of this infinity? 1 " Since the finite thing cannot contain the infinite," says Malebranche, " the simple fact that we conceive the infinite argues that it is. All this is founded upon the simple and evi- dent principle that nothingness cannot be directly conceived. To conceive nothing, is the same thing as not to conceive at all." 2 II. SHARE OF THE WILL IN KNOWLEDGE. THE CON- DITIONS OF CERTAINTY. This powerful Cartesian logic appears very conclusive, and yet we have to admit that mere reasoning does not suffice, and that in order to arrive at certainty, either moral or in- tellectual, there must be the co-operation of the will. We do 1 "CEuvresde Bossuet" See "La Connaissance deDieu," and "Sermon sur la Mort." 2 "CEuvres de Malebranche," vol. ii. p. 366. u 4 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. not refer simply to that free act which takes place whenever there is conscious effort on our part : we mean rather that there must be a positive determination of the will before there can be any real acquisition of knowledge, even of purely intellectual objects, not to speak of great moral truth properly so called. For first of all, we only arrive at knowledge worthy of the name, by the degree of attention which is called reflexion, and which implies at once the concentration of our faculties of perception, the isolation, by an effort of thought, of the object of our study so as to bring it under our direct ob- servation, and the resolute resistance to all distracting influ- ences from without We never reflect but by a determination of the will. In the second place, every judgment which applies an attribute to a substance, implies an act of will, for it involves a comparison of different attributes. A truth of any order whatsoever demands our assent before we can be said to have made it our own; and this assent or consent is something more than a mere passive acquiescence. l Error always arises out of negligence, an indolence of the mind which has made it stop too soon in its inquiries. We must not confound error with the mere limitation of our knowledge. Error begins from the moment when, by a hasty affirmation, we have drawn unwarrantable conclusions from insufficient observation. Descartes makes very wise reflex- ions on this point, showing r how much scope he allowed to the free action of the mind : " Coming more closely to myself," he says, " and examining of what kind my errors are (which alone argue imperfection in me) I notice that they depend on two concurrent causes, namely, on the faculty of knowing which is in me and the faculty of choosing, or freedom of the will ; that is, on intelligence and will together. . . . If, when I do not with sufficient clearness and distinctness perceive what is true, I abstain from forming a judgment, it 1 " La Certitude Morale," Olle Laprune, chap. ii. SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 115 is clear that I act rightly and am not deceived, but if I either affirm or deny, then I make an improper use of my liberty to choose, and if I turn to that side which is false, I evidently am deceived. ... In this improper use of free choice, I am influenced by some prejudice, and this determines the form of the error." 1 Malebranche is no less explicit than Descartes as to the moral defects which underlie intellectual errors. "We are as free," he says, "in our false judgments as in our lawless affections. The human mind is not subject to error because : t is finite, and therefore has a smaller range than the ob- ects it contemplates, but also because it is inconsistent. In .>rder to apprehend the cause of this inconsistency, we must understand that it is the will which governs the operation of the mind ; that it is the will which directs it by preference to certain objects, and that it is the will itself which is in a state of constant vacillation and restlessness." 2 No one has spoken more truly and thoughtfully upon this subject tha*n the great theologian Schleiermacher, in his posthumous Lectures on the Life of Christ. " Truth," he says, " is the natural estate of man ; his faculties in their normal condition would lead him to it. The state of ignorance and uncertainty is not error ; error begins from the moment when the mind arrives at a false conclusion. This arises from his stopping too soon in his investigation of truth, thus showing that he has not loved it as it deserves to be loved, or that he had some secret inclination to accept some incomplete result. It is not possible, then, absolutely to distinguish error from evil, at least in relation to that order of truths which appeal to the conscience and the soul." It is indeed in relation to this order of truths that the part of the will is so important ; for we cannot ignore the fact, 1 "Meditations," Descartes, pp. 172-176. * "CEuvres," Malebranche, vol. i., p. 30. 8 "Lebenjesu," Schleierraacher, p. 118. Ii6 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. that, even when reduced to their most general form, to the simple " categorical imperative " of Kant, they come into con- flict with all the lower tendencies of our nature. These truths are obligatory apart from their evidences. They command obedience but do not force themselves upon the reason by a sort of dialectic necessity, as the result of inexorable logic. Their very nature implies that this is not the basis on which they rest The first duty is to believe in duty ; but duty is of such a nature that it can be evaded, and the eyes can be closed against it. Moral truth appeals to the intuition, and as this is not capable of demonstration, there is nothing to hinder our ignoring it. In the domain of morals especially, reasoning sometimes destroys reason. Practical reason, like pure reason, presupposes an element of d priori, of the intuitive, which we can trace no further. Nothing can be easier than to put oneself out of condition to grasp this, by allowing the delicate sense of moral truth within us to get deadened. Nothing can be more easy than to stifle this direct intuition altogether, and to substitute for it mere dialectic subtleties. Logic imprisons liberty in a network of contradictions from which it only escapes when, by a sudden stroke of the wing, it rises into the higher region of intuition, where conscience commands without arguing, and the supreme authority is duty. Determinism begins directly we leave this higher region ; for the principles beyond which we cannot go, and which represent to us the beginning of all things, are the only things which its system cannot comprehend. Below them everything fits in," in regular sequence ; they alone cannot be included in the fatalistic succession, because they are principles, and they would cease to be so were they shown to be mere links in a chain. They are only recognised therefore by intuition. If they are withdrawn from this sphere they have no longer any existence for us. With regard to moral truth, intuition is only rendered possible by purity of heart, or at SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 117 least by integrity of will. The pure in heart alone see God. If we associate moral truth with God, it is because, as we have seen, it cannot be severed from God without losing its reality and its sanction. In order to show how moral truth implies the existence of a God, we have only to note how far it surpasses and sometimes almost overwhelms us. We who are not only finite beings, but frail and faulty, are capable of conceiving the highest good, the ideal of perfection. It must then be something above us, and not the product of our own conceptions ; for if we were shut up within ourselves, we should be incapable of conceiving anything better than our- selves. This living character of moral truth, which forbids our limiting it to a mere formula, and gives it in some way the grandeur of the highest personality, is a further reason for assigning a large part to the will and to the heart, in our appreciation of it. " Thought alone can only apprehend a formula ; a personality is beyond its grasp ; it can only dis- cern its outlines and limits ; it never gets to the heart of it A personality must be loved in order to be known, and with- out moral harmony it is incomprehensible. How then can thought alone apprehend the highest personality who is the Absolute Good? Living truth presents, to anyone who stu- dies it, an infinity of aspects, and is too vast to be comprised in a few formulas. These formulas are rather symbols of the living truth." 1 God is only known, as Pascal truly says, when He is felt in the heart. " Moral truth ignored, or even neglected, is not borne in upon the mind by the all-.powerful virtue of a syllogism. Neither the excellence of truth nor the dignity of the soul allows this. No ; the relation must be one both closer and broader. Is it not a sublime intimacy which is established between truth and the human soul, when the former seeks and obtains the assent of the latter ? This is a real exchange, a bond of friendship, for in the moral order abstractions have 1 " La Certitude Morale," Olle Laprune, p. 351. u8 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. only a provisional value ; behind ideas, there are beings, and these beings are persons. In truth, all is comprised in this ; the call of God, the response of man. This is the whole of the moral life." 1 " Listen," says Bossuet, " listen in the depths of your nature, where truth makes itself heard, where pure and simple ideas present themselves." Moral certainty then implies the exercise of the moral faculties, the firm resolve of the will to bow to the categorical imperative, and to place the sacred intuition of duty above logical necessity. It is impossible not to see moral loss in the denial of the truths revealed by conscience. Only we must make allowance here for all the inconsistencies by which man sometimes rises above his doctrine and sometimes falls below it. Just as there are atheists who by their virtues and noble lives would make men believe in God, and who are atheists only because all that they have known under the name of God has been a monstrous idol of human fabrication ; so are there also professed worshippers of the Divine, who are its worst desecrators. When we speak of the true moral certainty, we mean that which is at once theory and practice, which is, so to speak, a vision of the Divine and its manifestation in the life. This we hold to be possible to any one who is will- ing to make the legitimate use of all his moral faculties. On the other hand, in spite of all our respect for liberty of opinion, we are constrained to regard the denial of moral truth as a deviation of the will. Scepticism, which, under forms sometimes the most brilliant, calls in question this moral order, and admits nothing higher than mental curiosity; the refined epicureanism which desires always to enjoy and never to obey, is a disease of the soul. Its doubt proves nothing, for it is wilful doubt. It is not enough to say : " What is truth ? " with a view to getting our doubts confirmed. If it is said ironically, as Pilate said it, 1 "La Certitude Morale," Olle Laprune, p. 351. SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 119 we shall have no reply ; or rather, we shall have the reply we wish for, which is a mere negation. Scepticism is no more a disproof of moral certainty, than sickness disproves the possi- bility of health, or than eyes voluntarily closed disprove the sunshine. It is a familiar fact, that we may have eyes that see not, and ears that will not hear. "The action of the will is not concentrated on a single moment of the moral life. Every man is more or less pre- pared, under given circumstances, to receive the new light brought to him^ according to the use he has made of the earlier lights which have shone within his soul. Past faith- fulness is the best measure of present aptitude to recognise the true. To think is a natural exercise ; to think rightly depends to a certain extent upon our own will." l M. Liard has put this moral aspect of knowledge very forcibly in the following passage of his book, " La M eta- physique et la Science." "The metaphysical question," he says, " is one of high interest, specially from a moral point of view. In believing in duty, we feel the necessity of believing in something beyond the mere order of logic and science. We feel within ourselves two distinct authorities, the law of thought and the law of morals. The authority of conscience takes precedence of that of science. On the very threshold of metaphysics we must inscribe a moral truth, and ask of the conscience an explanation of the world in harmony with it. The moral metaphysic, which can only meet the deepest specula- tive requirements of the mind with. the answers of conscience, does not necessarily carry conviction with it. In order to receive it, there must be the acquiescence of the will, the belief that moral truth is the summum bonum. An example of virtue, however obscure, is a better auxiliary to metaphysics than the most brilliant scientific discovery." 2 " The personal act which is required of us," as M. Olle" 1 "La Certitude Morale," Olle Laprune, pp. 368-376. 8 " La Metaphysique et la Science Physique," Liard, p. 4& 120 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Laprune well says, " has the result, not of submitting the truth to the person, but the person to the truth/' l Let it be observed that we make no concession to anti- scientific mysticism, in assigning a large part to the will in the attainment of moral certainty. We adhere faithfully to the general and universal laws of certainty. These laws, which govern all experience, have been admirably set forth by Claude Bernard in his introduction to the experimental method. He there recognises most distinctly that the experimenter is not to read the lesson to nature, but is entirely to subordinate his preconceived ideas to the facts observed. He says : " So soon as nature speaks, the experimenter must be silent. He must never reply for her, nor listen hurriedly to her replies. In nature, that which our theories declare to be absurd is not always impossible." 2 Claude Bernard lays it down as a rule that our experimental processes ought to vary with the objects of our investigation. "The processes of experiment," he says, " ought to be infinitely varied, according to the different sciences and the varying cases, more or less difficult and com- plex, to which they are applied." That which is true of the purely natural, is equally true of the domain of conscience, the higher sphere of moral truth. It ought to have its own pro- cesses and proper method of observation. Simple logical deduction is here as much out of place as the scalpel and the telescope. Primary truths are perceived by intuition ; moral truths require in addition the exercise of the will. This intuition, accompanied with a right will, may well be called moral faith. This faith will not be an act of implicit belief ignoring experiment, but a higher mode of experiment applied to first principles the only one applicable in this domain, which does not admit of proof and reasoning because it lays down axioms and fundamental truths ; while, if they in their 1 " La Certitude Morale," Olle Laprune, p. 364. 8 " Introduction a la Medecine Experimentale." Claude Bernard, PP- 4, 7, 3 6 4. SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 121 turn bad to be sustained by evidence, they would cease to be the foundations of the moral and intellectual order. That which demands proof, is not the true beginning. " It is this light which determines faith to cross the threshold of the obscure region where it is not to be absorbed in stolid pos- session of an unintelligible object, but is to strive after and achieve new and clearer light." l The intuitive faith of which we speak, is in truth a form of experiment, and the only one adapted to this order of truths. This intuition, by its very nature, cannot be a simple deduc- tion, drawing one after another the consequences of certain premisses, for it rises to the principle itself. This it does by the boldest of inductions, breaking through the finite as through the walls of a prison, and lifting itself to the divine infinite. In order to arrive at this it must doubtless be attracted and vivified by it. As Pere Gratry has well said : " There are movements which the mind left to itself does not make ; it may deduce, but it does not take an unaided flight." 2 We cannot, however, admit the sharp dualism which he maintains, between the first operation of the mind, acquiring moral truth by intuition, and the second operation, by which it becomes united to the Divine ; as though reason were divorced from faith. It is not so. From its very beginning, moral certainty is an act at once human and divine. As soon as man comes into contact with the living truth, there is a correlation between him and God. The light no doubt grows, but it reaches its noontide fulness in the same way as its dawn. The first act of faith or of intuition, by which man apprehends the categorical imperative, and with it the Legislator Himself, is of the same nature as the act which subsequently unites him closely to the Divine. The first is no less mysterious than the second ; for the mystery consists in that immeasurable fulness of the in- 1 "La Certitude Morale," Olle Laprune, p. 365. 3 *' De la Connaissance de Dieu," Gratry, vol. ii., p. 287. 122 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. finite which our formulas and our finite minds are alike in- capable of containing. Fenelon has said with profound truth : " I only count upon grace to guide my reason within the limits of reason." There is great danger in establishing, as Pere Gratry and Malebranche before him have done, an absolute distinction between the initial act of reason and of conscience, and that which they call the act of faith. Faith, in the sense we have accepted, is active and present in both these phases of know ledge. The difference between them is quantitative, not qualitative. Unless we admit this, we are in danger of coming back by a roundabout way to the scepticism of Bayle, whose great art is to let loose the reins of free thought in the natural or rational domain, and to pull them up short before the enclosed domain of faith, of which he virtually says : " It is sacred, for none may touch it. Reason has destroyed, or is reducing to nothing, all religious doctrines ; but be reassured, they all remain intact up there in the clouds, in the empyrean of unquestioning faith." We do not admit this antinomy. Faith, we say, is active in the first operations of reason ; and reason accompanies faith in the development of religious know- ledge. The relations of the two were well put by Clement of Alexandria, early in the third century. He regards faith as a legitimate process of knowledge, which, so far from suppressing the experimental, alone renders it possible, since it deals with the first principles which are apprehended solely by intuition. We cannot admit any axiom without an act of faith, which is nothing else than that which Epicurus himself called an antici- pation of the mind. This intuition of faith is in reality the very key to science, its first condition. 1 If this intuition is necessary even for the first principles of all science, how much more must it be so when we have to do with the first of all principles, the living Absolute, which is God ? " The mind," says Clement of Alexandria, "rising above all worlds, above 1 'H ptv alffOrjais a TTJS eTrwn^s, " Stromata," II. iv. 1 6. SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 123 all the spheres of the created, soars to the lofty region where dwells the King of worlds ; it reaches the immutable by a way which is itself immutable." Clement assigns its legitimate share to the will in this act of faith and intuition, by which man rises to the Divine. The first necessity is, that the soul should aspire to the higher verity. " The beginning of wisdom is to aim at that which is useful. A firm decision is of great weight in the acquisition of truth. The will takes the first step. We need to rekindle in the depths of our soul the living spark which we have received, and to be on our guard against the idle curiosity which would keep the mind walking up and down in the truth, as we walk up and down in a city to admire its buildings. Further, we must purify our souls, for it is with the temple of truth as with that of Epicurus, on the forefront of which were inscribed these words : * He must be pure who enters the precincts of the sanctuary.' " l Clement of Alexandria only describes the grand method, which ought to govern all our researches after truth, when he bases his apology upon the principle that like discerns like. Is not this, in truth, the very principle of the experimental method, which consists in adapting the processes of observation to the nature of the object to be observed ? To go out with one's whole soul towards the being, and that which is most evident in the being, this is good, says Plato. Clement, who believes in the living and personal God, recognises His action upon the mind, to enlighten and vivify it ; but he holds that this action begins with the earliest illumination of reason, or with the first intuitions. It goes on increasing and developing, but does not change its nature. Faith in the highest revelations of God, faith in Christ, obeys the same laws as the faith in the first intuitions of consciousness and reason, by which we rise to God. He thus escapes all the dangers of dualism. 1 "Stromata," III. vi. 17. 124 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Nor does he, under pretext of fortifying human weakness, set up a purely external power, which shall impose upon us deci- sions which we have no right to question. This implicit trust, which opens an unlimited credit with a high court of doctrine, has no analogy with faith as we have understood it. Nothing is more dangerous than to make capital of the unquestion- able fact that both the reason and conscience are ready to accept, at the dictum of a higher power, that which is contrary to their nature, and consequently incapable of all experiment and all knowledge. Moral certainty is gravely compromised by being thus identified with the abandonment of reason and the assertion of a presumed infallibility. 1 The conscience 1 M. Olle Laprune's book is nevertheless, as a whole, very remarkable for the way in which he establishes the part taken by the will and the reason in the certainty of moral faith'. M. Janet has discussed the funda- mental thesis of this book in the "Revue des Deux Mondes " ("La Philosophic de la Croyance,"Oct. 15, 1881). While recognising the share of the will in intellectual exercises, such as attention, reflection, assent, without which no judgment could be formed, he refuses to it any legiti- mate share in the acquisition of higher truths from a moral point of view. Let us be well understood. We think with M. Janet that M. Olle Laprune is wrong in holding that the will supplies in any degree whatever the experimental knowledge of truth. There are not in fact two methods of acquiring knowledge and certainty. There is but one method, namely, experience. But experience varies its processes, that they may be adapted to the various aspects of fact. M. Janet holds, as we do, that intuition plays a necessary part in the appropriation of the truth as contained in the fundamental axiomatic principle which precedes all dialectics. Practical reason has, like metaphysical reason, its intuitive process, by which it ap- prehends thj moral axiom which is the categorical imperative. We cannot reject this intuition because we may dread it, and find our interest in not believing in duty. Hence our will is involved in the moral question, and must decide it. It does not create or demonstrate the moral axiom, but it places us in the normal condition to recognise it. As this axiom is a categorical imperative, a command, an obligation, it is our distinct duty to accept it without discussion, at least generally, as the principle of all morals ; for we would sedulously guard against including as axioms all its conclusions and practical applications, which may be falsified by errors of judgment. We maintain therefore, that the first duty is to believe thoroughly in duty, which is the very basis of conscience. We do not SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 125 never abdicates its rights, else we should be deprived of the only organ by which we can know moral truth. We do not shut our eyes in order to see further. We have so far confined ourselves strictly to the problem of knowledge. We have first rescued its noblest domain from the positivism which would forbid all inquiry into causes. We have next shown how the principle of causation points to something above ourselves, and cannot be explained away into the mere association of ideas, themselves composed only of images and sensations. After having traced it in the reason as the essential a priori element, which it derives only from itself, we have found that it carries us upward to the cause of causes, of which we have the idea, and to which we aspire from the lowness of our imperfect state, thus proving that it is not in ourselves. We have found that the great Cartesian proof is as strong as ever, that it has indeed gained in the end by the reaction of German and French criticism ; for this has shaken off the intellectualism which weakened it, and subordinated intellectual to moral certainty. We have not been able to admit the radical contradiction main- tained by the critical school between metaphysical and practical reason. We maintain first, that both have need of the will to give them effect, and second, that while the cate- gories of pure reason are the object of experience in the activity of the ego, practical reason implies the reality of the world in which the mandates of the imperative are to be obeyed. The principle of causation derived from pure as well as from practical reason, or, to speak more exactly, from the mind of man considered as a whole, leads us by the most irresistible induction to the God, who is at once the Infinite Being and the Absolute Good ; and as it introduces us into derogate from the laws of moral certainty, as it appears to us M. Olle Laprune does, by concessions to human testimony which lead him by a circuit to accept the authority of the infallible tribunal of the Church. 126 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. the moral domain par excellence, we only enter it by bringing ourselves into harmony with it. Hence the share of the will in moral certainty. It may be said that, without going further than the problem of knowledge, the cause of spiritualistic philosophy is already gained ; but we have no right so to restrict ourselves. We are bound to look beyond ourselves, to turn to the world, to the world of nature and to that of history, in order to ascertain whether they contradict the results arrived at. Only we know ho\v to interrogate them by virtue of that great principle of causation which we have tried to place, at least as far as we ourselves are concerned, above doubt or question. We have concluded, with Descartes, that " there ought to be at least as much reality in the efficient cause, as in the effect of that cause ; " that the effect can only derive its reality from its cause " that nothing can be produced by nothing, nor yet that which is more perfect, i.e., which contains in itself more of reality, from that which is less per- fect ; " ! in a word, that the greater cannot be derived from the less. 2 1 Descartes. " Meditations," p. 157. 2 M. 1'Abbe de Broglie, Professor of Christian Apologetics in the Catholic Institute of Paris, has published an important book on the problem of knowledge, entitled : " Le Positivisme et la Science -Experimentale. " It reviews not only the Positivist school, but all collateral or derived theories, such as the transformist monism of Herbert Spencer and of Hseckel. The extensive scientific acquirements of the writer give great precision to his discussion. We shall have occasion more than once to quote him in the course of this work. For the present we shall simply try to indicate his general standpoint. M. 1'Abbe de Broglie endeavours to establish, against the Positivist school, that the mind of man can arrive at substances and causes, and that it is not confined to the purely subjective. He takes his stand on what he calls common sense, that implicit certainty of the reality of the object of knowledge, which is admitted to be universal by something stronger than mere universal consent. It presents itself indeed in a confused sort of way, which philosophy is to clear up, but only with a view to better establishing its fundamental certainty. The author goes into a most minute and learned analysis of our sensations, in SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. 127 order to prove t 1 .at, if it must be acjmitted that they are only a translation of outward realities, they are nevertheless a faithful translation. The reader will feel a special interest in the part of his book which distinguishes between the sense of touch, which brings us into direct contact with bodies, and the senses of sight and hearing, which evidently only give us the object transformed, since, apart from our sensations, there are no colours or sounds, but only vibrations of the air. He endeavours to show that common sense is not mistaken in believing in the noumenon; that is to say, in the reality of the object ; for science is based upon belief in this reality, and the sense of touch brings it close to us, as in bodies. As to the principle of causation, which is equally plain to common sense, it is not only inherent in our reason, but is manifest also in the best ascertained facts of natural science, for in its ultimate generalisations, this science always demands a cause. It is idle to speak of light, electricity, heat, as mere motion ; science nevertheless goes on to seek in the vibrations of the ether the cause of these changes. With regard to spiritual substance and free causation, M. de Broglie appeals to the deeper moral sense which is the highest form of common sense. This expression, which plays so large a part in his discus- sion, does not seem to us happily chosen. It savours too much of the empirical, especially as M. de Broglie owns that this common sense has constantly to be corrected. Processes of analysis and successive approxi- mations are, in his view, constantly going on. \Ve prefer to appeal to the great primordial intuitions of the human mind, to that & priori which is its essence and which is formulated in the categories. I know indeed that this does not enable us directly to apprehend reality, since we only perceive reality according to the laws of our understanding. But the author who is bound to admit that sensation gives us only a translation of the reality, comes no nearer to it by his system. As M. Janet well observes, in his review of M. de Broglie's book, touch itself does not give us the direct reality, for cutaneous and muscular sensations are purely subjective ("Revue des Deux Mondes," June I, 1882). The author too much ignores relative truth, and therefore the merit of the great critical school. Kantism he regards as pure scepticism. He forgets the great act of faith in the moral world which crowns the system and which, as we have tried to show, ought to lead further than subjectivism in the conception of nature, and to issue in a real world, always with this reservation that we know it only in a translation. "Why," as M. Janet says again, "should we reduce the laws of the mind to pure subjectivity ? Why should not the mind be the legislator of nature, though it is not its Creator?" That the translation is faithful, is implied by the very faith in God and in moral order. The Cartesian argument of the Divine veracity is thus strengthened. " The idealist hypothesis owes its value to an equivocation by which objectivity is con- founded with materiality " (Janet). After all, M. de Broglie appeals, like 128 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Kant, to intuition for the whole order of higher truths. St. Thomas Aquinas will no longer suffice ; it is not possible to ignore the great critical school, especially when so many concessions have in fact to be made to it. While making these reservations, we commend to the reader M. de Broglie's book, as containing very keen, original and conclusive arguments against some of the essential points of Positivism and monism. BOOK SECOND. THE PROBLEM OF BEING. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. ONE of the strongest living advocates of materialism, after enumerating the simple bodies discovered by chemistry, con- cludes with these words : " Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc., are the elements at present recognised as constituting the earth, its products, its inhabitants, and its atmosphere. From the facts thus acquired, we draw a conclusion broad enough to comprehend all the partial modifications with which experience may make us acquainted. The things which in their totality are expressed by the word universe, are formed of a certain number of known substances, beyond which there is nothing. Simple bodies, combined in various proportions, have received and will retain the generic name of matter." l The calmness of this affirmation amazes us ; we could fancy ourselves again in the school of Democritus. This is surely a childish argument, which mistakes the appearance for the reality. Yet we have seen in our previous chapters, that this matter, so indubitable, which is to explain everything, and our mind first of all, is never directly approached by us ; that we only know it through the sensation which modifies it, or rather that we are only directly certain of the sensation, that is, of the facts of our own consciousness. The point of fixedness and cer- tainty eludes the lever of Archimedes, as soon as we begin to seek it outside of ourselves. To make matter the starting-point from which we are to proceed to the explanation of things and "La Philosophic," A. Lefevre, p. 46. 131 132 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. of mind, is to explain the better by the less known. Again, the advances of science have more and more refined away and idealised the notion of matter. Descartes made it to consist in extension ; but no perception of the senses directly gives us extension. We feel a certain resistance, we see certain colours, but there is nothing in this to give us the notion of extension. These sensations, moreover, like all others, are facts of the con- sciousness which modify, in a proportion we have no means of determining, the phenomena perceived. What, again, are we to understand by this extension, which constitutes matter ? Is it pure empty space? Nothing could be more remote from what we mean, for how can a vacuum resemble bodies ? Is it the plurality of atoms which are the parts of the whole which we call matter? But these atoms have not disclosed their secret. We have only put the difficulty a step further back ; we fail to find anywhere the ultimate elements, the true com- ponent parts of extension. Hence it follows that extension is a conception of our mind, and consequently is directly opposed to materialism. 1 Let us then discard extension as an obsolete definition of matter, and try the atomic theory. Lange has shown how the atom itself eludes entirely the grasp of the sensations. The indivisible atom, which should be the ultimate constituent of matter, has no existence. " It is itself composed of sub-atoms; and these sub-atoms? They either resolve themselves into mere force-centres, or if in them again elastic impact has to play any part, they must in turn consist of sub-atoms, and we should again have* that process running on into infinity. . . . Accordingly there is already contained in Atomism itself, while it seems to establish Ma- terialism, the principles which break up all matter, and thus cut away the ground from Materialism also." 2 " If now, with Ampere, we resolve the atom too into a joint without exten- 1 "Le Materialisme," Rabier, Encyclopedic. 2 " History of Materialism," Lange. Lichtenberger, vol. ii., p. 376. ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. 133 sion, and the forces which group themselves about it ; the point, 'the nothing' must be matter." 1 According to Du Bois Reymond, if we attempt, like Biichner, to connect matter closely with force, conceived as the cause of motion, the at- tempt is nothing else " than a more recondite product of the irresistible tendency to personification which is impressed upon us. ... What do we gain by saying it is reciprocal attraction, whereby two particles of matter approach each other ? Not the shadow of an insight into the nature of the fact. But, strangely enough, our inherent quest of causes is in a manner satisfied by the involuntary image tracing itself before our inner eye, of a hand which gently draws the inert matter to it, or of invisible tentacles with which the particles of matter clasp each other, try to draw each other close, and at last twine together into a knot." 2 The constant tendency of science is to resolve matter into force. We call matter that which we find ourselves unable to resolve into force. In short, in the present state of the phy- sical and natural sciences, matter is everywhere the unknown, force is the known. " The misunderstood or unintelligible remainder from our analysis is always the matter, however far we choose to carry it. ... The matter is invariably what we cannot or will not further resolve into forces. Our ten- dency to personification, or, if we use Kant's phrase, what comes to the same thing, the category of substance, compels us always to conceive one of these ideas as subject, the other as predicate. As we analyse the things step by step, the as yet unanalysed remainder always remains as matter, the true repre- sentative of the thing." 3 These conclusions of the learned author of the " History of Materialism," disturb the pure faith of the apostles of this doctrine. M. Lefevre, in his latest work, 4 makes it a severe 1 " History of Materialism," Lange, vol. ii., p. 379. 1 Ibid., p. 378. 3 Ibid., p. 379. 4 " Renaissance du Materialisme," A. Lefevre, p. 31 134 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. reproach against Lange, that he also seeks that which lies beyon d, the wherefore of things, yielding to the impulse of a wild idealism. He says: "If Lange had been content to group together the results obtained from experience, and to derive from them the conclusions to which they point, by means of the ordinary faculties and operations of the human organism (sensation, memory, abstraction, generalisation), he would not have shaken the solid ground of positive science, and he would have acknowledged that in the world which man knows under the recognised conditions of knowledge, there is nothing more than chemical elements and their combinations." M. Lefevre forgets that Lange, in this part of his book, is not inquiring into that which lies beyond, but into the very essence of -things ; that he is not spreading the wing of fancy or speculation, but using in good earnest the scalpel of the analyst. It is in interrogating the conception of matter that he reduces it to a simple idea; it is by means of those very processes of knowledge to which his opponent appeals, sensation and generalisation, that he establishes that the thing which we know least is that v'ery material world which M. Lefevre and his friends present to us with such happy but ill-founded confidence, as the one incontestable reality. According to them, there is nothing in the universe but chemical elements in combination ; and yet we find that this explanation of things is an illusion as unphilosophic as the most chimerical legends of the infancy of the race. We should like, before entering on this discussion, to recommend the exercise of a little more modesty to the advocates of materialism, and to remind this great phantom-slayer, that it is itself supremely fanciful, and that no system rests upon a more frail and imaginative basis than its own. It believes only in sensation, and sensation prevents its seeing anything directly ; it can never escape from this vicious circle. It might be thought that our opposition to the materialistic ORIGIN- OF THE COSMOS. 135 school need not go beyond this preliminary question. But such is not our view. We have already shown that the spiritualists have the only solid foundation for certainty, not only in relation to the higher truths, but also with regard to those of the external world. We have explained the reasons which give us confidence in the instrument of knowledge and in the veracity of God. We shall not go over this ground again. We shall assuredly not ignore the share of the sub- jective in our knowledge of things, since we arrive at them only through sensation ; but, without pretending to approach things directly and exactly as they are, we are convinced that there is a general and fundamental correspondence between, the object known and the subject knowing. Thus, although we might refuse to accept the conclusion of materialism because it cannot be based on anything but sensation, and while we still retain all that is decisive against it in this argument, we will concede to it the existence of this world, though it has not the same ground for affirming it that we have. Setting aside now the arguments in support of theism which we have already found in our theory of knowledge, we will interrogate the universe and inquire whether, supposing materialism is entitled to affirm the existence of things, it gives an adequate explanation of them when it maintains that, apart from chemical elements and their combinations, there is nothing. This inquiry, to be conclusive, implies that we accept the results of science duly authenticated, and that we acknowledge, without limitation, their authority in this department. It is clear that what we want is a succinct explanation of its leading points and distinctive features. I. THE REIGN OF LAW IN NATURE. The further we descend in the intellectual scale, the more the world appears devoid of thought, self-contained, without explanation, plan, design. The animal, reduced to sensation, 136 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. incapable of reflexion or generalisation, sees only in the world that which it seeks, its plentiful storehouse, its abun- dant pasture. The savage has a vague presentiment of some mysterious cause, because the reason which slumbers within him darts some illuminating rays through his dull uncultured brain ; but he does not look beyond things as they are. He imagines that the world before his eyes has always been ; that the same sun has lightened it, the same showers watered it ; that the forest has always been peopled with the game which he seeks in the chase and the wild beasts which he tries to destroy. Sensation knows no before or after. It is content with that which appears ; and to all appearance nature is immutable, constantly reproducing the same series of phe- nomena in endless succession. Nothing could be more akin to materialism than the conception of the savage, or rather of the child; for the savage does not escape the tendency to go back to ca.uses and principles, with this difference that materialism attempts to justify its thesis by science, and that this very attempt to justify itself suffices to break through its self-imposed limitations; for it proves thought by thinking, just as we prove motion by walking. All thought is an un- definable something, not to be derived from the combination of chemical elements. Even the materialistic explanation of the world, moreover, certainly implies that the creature of mere sensation feels the need of explaining something or other; which is a contradiction. This explanation however, by the very fact that it has recourse to science, is obliged to take cognisance of more than the mere appearance, at least as regards the origin of the world. It is constrained to recognise that that which is before our eyes has not always been, that it is the product, the effect of a vast evolution. This earth upon which we tread has been formed stratum upon stratum, as the result of geologic con- vulsions which have successively fused, flooded, wrested, and fashioned it to what it is. In each of these strata lie embedded ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. 137 petrified fauna and flora, which bear the date of revolutions accomplished in remote ages, and the relics of which are like archaeological medals. The sea which bathes our coasts without overwhelming them, the air which we breathe, have only arrived at this state of relative equilibrium after periods of wild commotion when the world was but chaos. The world may take up the words which a French poet puts into the mouth of Time, " Vous ne m'avez connu que vieux" Science has shown us also that the starry vault, which seems the very image of stability, has its history, and that its for- mation, though we put it back myriads of years, was the work of successive periods. In the Introduction to his treatise, " Les 6poques de la Nature," an exceedingly ingenious work in which, with the intuition of genius, he anticipates some of the methods of modern geology, Buffon says : " As in civil history, we consult archives, examine medals, and decipher ancient inscriptions, in order to determine the epochs of human revolutions and to verify the dates of great historical events ; so in natural history, we must search the archives of the world, excavate the monuments of past ages of the earth, put together the fragments, and gather into one body of evidence all the indications of physical changes which can fix for us the different epochs of nature. Thus only can we fix certain points in the immensity of space, and place a few milestones of time along the eternal highway." 1 The world in which we live points us back to an earlier state. It is after all only an effect. Its present constitution is the result of a process of development as stupendous in the forces it has called into play, as in the length of time required for its accomplishment. This development is no longer a mystery to us, for the forces which produced it are still in operation before our eyes, though they have lost much of their 1 "CEuvres," Buffon, vol. v., p. I 133 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. intensity, and the changes which they bring about rarely amount to cataclysms like those of the great geologic eras. The soil of our planet is partially modified by influences which we recognise as of daily occurrence. Earthquakes repeatedly break up the crust of the earth. Volcanic eruptions pour upon its surface, under the form of lava, the substances which are amalgamated in a state of incandescence in the earth's centre. Sediments or deposits from water form the alluvial lands. The sea frets its shores and changes their outlines. Madrepores and polypi, by their slow cumulative labour, rear the coral islands of the ocean. Finally, the atmosphere has a most powerful chemical action. Allow to all these agents of geologic transformations an indefinite length of time to produce their effects ', suppose them at their maximum of power, and the great evolutions of our planet are explained. It matters little whether their operation takes the form of sudden and violent crises or of progressive development, or whether the one alternates with the other ; the cause is in any case adequate to the effect. Humboldt says in his " Cosmos," " Movements in the crust of the earth, sometimes sudden and in shocks, some- times continuous and almost imperceptible, alter, in the course of centuries, the relative elevation of the land and sea and the configuration of the land beneath the ocean ; while at the same time, communications are formed between the interior of the earth and the atmosphere, either through temporary clefts or more permanent openings. Molten masses, issuing from unknown depths, flow in narrow streams down the declivities of mountains, sometimes with an impetuous and sometimes with a slow and gentle motion, until the fiery subterranean fount is dry, and the lava solidifies under a crust which it has itself formed. We thus see new rocks produced under our eyes, whilst those of earlier formation are altered by the influence of heat, rarely in immediate contact, more often in proximity. . . . These processes of formation and stratifi- cation going on before our eyes, in modes so different, and ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. 139 the disruption, flexure, and elevation of rocks and strata by mutual pressure and by the agency of volcanic forces, lead the thoughtful observer, by simple analogies, to compare the present with the past, to combine actual phenomena, to generalise, and to amplify in thought the extent and intensity of the forces now in operation." l In this history of our planet (which it is not our present purpose to retrace, for our work does not pretend to the fulness and exactness of a strictly scientific exposition) we wish only to note one point, namely, the degree to which this geologic drama of storm and cataclysm, destruction and reconstruction, in which the cosmical forces seem to come into fortuitous collision, is really governed by inflexible laws. We have first of all only a globe of fire ; how is its solid crust to be formed ? By the application of a well-known law. Its heat disperses itself in the planetary space ; the effect of this is to produce a solidification of its surface as fine as the bloom on a peach. This is primitive granite. To complete its formation it needs water and air. The cooling caused by the evaporation pro- duces in the atmosphere the degree of temperature needed for the combination of oxygen and hydrogen, for above two thou- sand degrees centigrade they would not have the requisite af- finity. We now have in air and water, the great cosmic agents which will come into operation and together give to our planet its ultimate form. The atmospheric vapour which has con- densed into water, will again become vapour under the influ- ence of a temperature still very high, but only to return imme- diately to the liquid state. Thus will be formed a dome of thick clouds charged with electricity, receiving no light but that of the lightning which is about to rend it. The waters being to put in motion the deposits of the fine coating of gra- nite ; they crumble and wear them away and the first strati- fications or deposits of earth are formed in layers. From the burning entrails of the volcanic rocks the igneous floods pour 1 "Cosmos," Humboldt, vol. i., pp. 146, 147. 140 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. forth ; and thus the limestone is formed. Limestone is else- where deposited in deep sea beds. The sea covers the whole planet. Thus the fauna is entirely rudimentary and aquatic, destitute of the organ of sight, which would be useless to it The islands emerge ; the fauna becomes richer, fishes appear. At the close of the primary period, the mountains appear. The primitive flora imbedded in the soil, there stores up heat under the form of carbon. In the secondary period, we have a great development of the animal kingdom ; the saurians and marsupials appear. The tertiary period produces the large animals. The quarternary gives to the planet its present conditions of existence. How closely the whole of this evolution harmonises, even in detail, with the laws of physics and of chemistry, is brought out very clearly in M. Daubree's learned book on experimental geology. 1 We find here more than the grouping of facts and the deduction of their consequences. The author gives us the brilliant experiments by which he repeated, under his own eyes, the operations of the cosmic forces which by their combined action have formed the strata of our earth. He reproduced on a small scale a number of geological phenomena, some chemical and physical, others mechanical; thus he has thrown new light on the history of metallic deposits, on the formation of crystalline, metamorphic, and eruptive rocks ; on clefts and chasms in the earth, and on the origin of the slaty cleavage of rocks. By this mode of investigation he has obtained demonstrative proof of the chemical, physical, and mineralogical transformations comprised under the name of metamorphism which play so important a part in the history of the earth. We can only refer the reader to his work for the detailed account of these experiments, which show with admir- able clearness how completely even the most inexplicable and apparently fortuitous phenomena are governed by the general laws of nature. One of the most interesting parts of his 1 " Etudes Synthetiques de Geologic Experimentale." A. Daubree, 1879. ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. 141 book is that devoted to aerolites and meteors, which are, as is well-known, agglomerated fragments of sidereal matter. Chemi- cal analysis has shown that none of the simple bodies com- posing these aerolites are foreign to our globe. In this, then, we have a new proof of the link which binds our planet to the solar and sidereal system. The composition of these meteoric masses, further, teaches us that the heavenly bodies have passed or are passing through chemical evolutions analogous to those of the lower strata of our planet, and that they have been subject to the action of heat equally intense. 1 We have thus in our soil, not merely the chronological marks of the various phases of its formation, but also the palpable proof of its cosmic origin, and, as it were, fragments of the chain which binds it to the general system of the universe. We are carried beyond itself and far beyond its earliest geological crises, to the time when it was still a part of the sidereal mass from which it has since been detached. Thus we find confirmation of the great hypothesis of Laplace (of which Kant also had a presentiment), as to the origin of our planet and of the sidereal system of which it forms a part. This hypothesis, which there is everything to support, gives a new lustre to the rational order which presided over the genesis of the world itself, before setting its seal, as it subsequently did, on all its manifold developments of life and being. It is enough for our purpose to give a rapid glance at this general hypothesis, which is rapidly becoming a certainty. According to Laplace, the earth originally formed, with the whole solar system, part of a nebula, either in a fluid or gase- ous state. As the result of the first condensation, it became detached and received an impulse of gravitation round the sun and rotation on its o\vn axis. The sidereal system of which it formed part, would also turn around a luminous centre, in har- mony with the same laws. This luminous centre probably 1 " La Geologic Experimentale." A. Daubree. 142 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. depends on another and still vaster centre. All the sidereal masses obey the same laws, the laws formulated by Kepler and Newton. Thus harmony reigns in the immense spaces where the sidereal matter revolves in vast masses. Mechanics teaches us that every liquid body, subject to the laws of gravi- tation, takes a spheroidal form, and that if it is subject to the laws of rotation, it becomes by the action of the centrifugal force, flattened at the poles and protuberant at the equator. This law has been confirmed by experiment on the smallest scale, thus establishing its universality. M. Plateau, a physicist, succeeded in isolating a little bubble of oil and making it rotate on itself. The same flattening of the poles and protuberance at the equator took place, and a few tiny particles of the oil being detached, they formed a satellite corresponding to our moon. " The celestial bodies, suns or planets, comets or satellites," says M. Quatrefages, in his able book on the human species, "appear to be nothing more than the molecules of a great whole filling immensity. All, whether gaseous or solid, dark or luminous, incandescent or condensed, move in courses of the same kind, and obey the laws discovered by Kepler." l The law of gravitation, which governs the world, is found at work in the tiniest grain of sand, as are also the other laws which regu- late physico-chemical phenomena. These were for a long time ascribed to distinct forces, known as electricity, heat, magnetism. We are now learning more and more to recognise their original unity, as science tends to trace them all to undulations of the ether, the nature of which is still entirely unknown. The attempt to identify these physico-chemical forces with gravita- tion, is still far from conclusive. " However this may be, the physico-chemical phenomena, like those caused by gravitation, are subject to invariable laws, and always produce the same results under the same conditions. All the combinations of chemistry are mathematically regulated. The difference of *De 1'Espece Humaine," Quatrefages, p. 3. ORIGIN OF THE COSMOS. 143 weight in the combined elements modifies in the same propor- tion the combinations themselves." l We find then absolute regularity governing matter, and subjecting it to fixed laws, whether it exist in a nebulous form, diffusing itself through vast spaces ; or in the form of those stars whose splendour dazzles us and whose movements are more exactly regulated than those of the most perfect clock ; or in the tiny bubble of oil performing its motion of gravi- tation and rotation. The stone thrown by the hand of a child, obeys these laws no less than the myriads of molecules which combine under the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry. Every result is according to weight and measure, so that science can follow and determine the march of the heavens, can predict the appearance of the most distant planet, and foretell the return of the comet which seems so suddenly to sweep the heavens with its train of fire. We can well understand how, as he contemplated this majestic regu- larity of the sidereal world, the old Eastern sage was filled witli adoring wonder, and that he took these stars to be a celestial choir glorifying the mysterious and powerful Being whose wisdom they displayed This living geometry, these mathe- matics of the empyrean, seemed divine to Pythagoras.. Numbers, dry and abstract to us, were to him the most suggestive symbol, because they made manifest the principle of order in the universe Thus the movement of the spheres brought to him the echo of a celestial symphony, a triumphal hymn to the glory of the Divine Wisdom which had wrought all the diversity of elemental things into one great unbroken harmony. We have traced the same harmony in the atom as in the star ; its molecules group themselves, obeying laws as certain and invariable as those which trace the orbits of the planets. There is not a particle of matter, however great, however small, which escapes these laws. We may well feel ourselves, 1 "De I'Esp&ce Humaine," Quatrefages, p. 3. 144 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. like Pascal, overwhelmed alike before the infinitely great in the boundless immensity of space, and the infinitely little in the tiny animalcule; but thought raises its head as it recognises, from the lowest to the highest, law that is order, harmony, that mind one spark of which makes man feel himself greater than the whole material universe. In his work on " Theism," Professor Flint says : " The physical universe has, perhaps, no more general characteristic than this, its laws are mathemati- cal relations. . . . If we are to give any credit to science, there can be no doubt about the weights and measures and numbers. This question, then, is alone left. Could anything else than intelligence thus weigh, measure, and number? Could mere matter know the abstrusest properties of space and time and number, so as to obey them in the wondrous way it does? Could what has taken so much mathematical knowledge and research to apprehend, have originated with what was wholly ignorant of all quantitative relations? . . . The belief in a Divine Creator is alone capable of rendering rational the fact that mathematical truths are realised in the material world." 1 We shall see presently what weight is to be attached to the objections to this primary conclusion, which is derived from the simple fact of the universality of the laws which govern the sidereal world and physico-chemical phenomena. 2 1 "Theism," Robert Flint, pp. 136, 137. 2 Wurtz's learned book upon the Atomic Theory sufficiently shows how far the ultimate particles of matter are governed in all their combina- tions by invariable laws. The theory or hypothesis of chemical atoms, of which Dalton was the originator, and which Wurtz has developed and confirmed by his extensive and conclusive researches, represents compound bodies as formed by the grouping of atoms in fixed number, and possessing weights relatively various, but fixed in each case (p. 21). The atomic weights fixed by Dalton, were true proportional numbers ; they represented the proportions according to which bodies combine, and which are expressed by the relative weights of their smaller particles. We thus obtain a true atomic notation. Atomicity is distinguished from affinity, in that it ex- presses the saturating capacity of atoms as a property inherent in their FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. - 145 II. THE FORMATIVE POWER IN THE VARIOUS KINGDOMS OF NATURE, Thought, mind, is not all that we recognise in the regularity and universality of the laws of Nature ; we also trace power. We have to account for the first setting in motion, if we may so speak, of this great development of the universe which has emerged from its primitive nebulous state. We can go no further back to obtain an explanation of the world, or at least nature, while "affinity is the force of combination, the chemical energy determining the intensity and the direction of chemical reactions." The deductions as to the nature of matter itself which M. Wurtz draws from the atomic theory, are of great interest ; "Atoms," he says " are not material points; they possess a sensible dimension, and doubtless a fixed form ; they differ in their relative weights and in the motions with which they are animated. They are indestructible and indivisible by physical and chemical forces, for which they act, in some manner, as points of application. The diversity of matter results from primordial differences, perpetually ex- isting in the very essence of these atoms, and in the qualities which are the manifestation of them. Atoms attract each other, and thus atomic attraction is affinity. It is doubtless a form of universal attraction, but it differs from it in that, if it is obedient to the influence of mass, it depends also on the quality of the atoms. Affinity is elective, as has been said for a hundred years. It gives rise to aggregations of atoms, to molecules and chemical combinations. In the latter, the atoms are no longer free in their motions ; they execute their motions in a kind of co-ordinated manner, and constitute a system in which everything is solid and in which they are under control" (pp. 308, 309). Wurtz refers to Helmholtz's experiments and Thomson's speculations as to "the vortex motions which would exist in a perfect fluid free from all friction. ... A fluid fills all space, and what we call matterare portions of this fluid which are animated with vortex motion. There are innumerable legions of very small fractions or portions, but each of these portions is perfectly limited, distinct from the entire mass, and distinct from all others, not only in its own substance, but in its mass and its mode of motion qualities which it will preserve for ever. These portions are atoms. In the perfect medium which contains them all, none of them can change or disappear, none of them can be formed spontaneously. Every- where atoms of the same kind are constituted after the same fashion and are endowed with the same properties" (pp. 328, 329). L 146 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. of the movement of things which has produced our planetary system. It rtmains for us to discover how this movement originated ; how the nebulous mass came to undergo its first process of condensation, and thus inaugurated the series of motions to which we have referred. It does not follow, be- cause the law of motion is in accordance with the theories of Kepler and Newton, that its action is spontaneous. The primitive nebula appears first in a uniform gaseous state. It cannot receive any impetus from without, for to it there is no within or without. The fluid fills infinite space. The law of gravitation cannot come into play while matter is equally diffused through all space. Chemical combinations are im- possible, for the gas is in the nebulous state of extreme dif- fusion. We cannot speak of a lowering of the temperature, for then we should need to know whither the heat escaped. The naturalistic explanation can go no further; the nebulous stage is its extreme point. In order that the processus of the universe may begin, we must have a force which comes from above itself, or which is, in any case, outside of itself. We find ourselves thus brought back to Aristotle's prime motor. l 1 On this question we would refer the reader to M. Hirn de Colmar's interesting works, "La Vie Future et la Science Moderne," "Refutation Scientifique de Materialisme. " Starting with an analysis of the phenomenon of attraction, the learned author shows that it cannot be explained by the mere motion of molecules of matter interposed between two bodies which attract them, and that we are compelled to admit an invisible force which cannot be resolved into atoms. With regard to the origin of things M. Hirn, taking his stand upon the principle that nothing is lost in the universe, which is like a closed vessel in which every force subsists in its integrity through all changes of phase, concludes that our world, or the system of the world, could not return to its primitive nebulosity without an inadmissible loss of force ; and consequently it is of necessity that this nebulosity, or state of matter in extreme diffusion, must have had a be- ginning, for if it had been preceded by evolutions similar to those which produced our world, there would have been a loss of the forces brought into play by such an evolution. The nebula itself, then, must be traced to a creative act which produced it with the principles of its future development FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 147 We have so far restricted ourselves to the domain of purely mechanical existence. But it is not enough for us to consider our planet simply in its astronomical aspect ; we must also study the abundant and manifold life which it exhibits, and draw such conclusions as it may logically supply. We shall pass rapidly over the mineral kingdom because it is subject to the same laws as the sidereal. Here also we find regularity, fixity, law. The atoms which, by combining in certain modes, produce the crystal" with its regular invariable forms, are not moved by capricious chance ; they reproduce a pattern, they are cast into an ideal mould. We find in their combination, the living geometry which we have seen at work in the planetary system. Intelligence, then, which is not a property of matter and cannot be identified with motion, governs also these combinations of the lower world. The crystal is no more the product of chance than the universe In its way it is a microcosm. While the inorganic world exhibits a plan, it is not, however, its own end ; it stands in relation to a higher world, to which it furnishes the basis of existence, and for whose existence it prepares the materials. This is the organic world, which is in its turn subordinate to a sphere higher than itself, and yet is not independent of it the world of mind, of thought, the intellectual and moral world. We shall determine presently the specific characters of these higher worlds, so distinct and yet so closely allied. That which for the moment we wish to show, is the fact of their intimate relation and inter- dependence. And first, it is incontestable that these three worlds, or three spheres of being on our planet, cannot be virtually latent in it. "The substances by means of which the worlds have been formed, were created by an Almighty Being, who was before all that existed." To such a Being, existing by His proper nature, time cannot be as it is to us a period ; it can only be a mode. We do not know why the learned author has complicated the discussion by a dissertation on miracles which takes us on to quite other ground. 148 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. confounded. Inorganic can never be placed on a par with organic life. " Inorganic bodies, under favourable conditions, last an indefinite length of time without receiving anything from or imparting anything to the world* around them. Or- ganised beings, in whatever condition they are placed, last only a certain period ; and during this time of existence they are constantly undergoing a loss of substance which they repair from materials outside themselves. As M. Naudin has well said, a crystal is like one of those regular piles of shot which we see in our arsenals. It increases only from without, as the pile grows when the artilleryman adds a new layer of shot. It is precisely the opposite with organised beings/' 1 Above the organised world is the higher sphere of thought and will. This distinction of the three worlds does not ignore their correlation. The organic world cannot do without the in- orgaeic. " Living beings have weight, and are thus amenable to gravitation ; they are the subjects of numerous and various physico-chemical phenomena, without which they could not exist. Life is not in antagonism with the brute forces; it controls and governs their operation by its laws." 2 We divide the organic world into vegetable and animal, and it is certain that the latter cannot perform its principal functions without the aid of the former. Lastly, no one in our day will dis- pute that thought cannot go on without the brain, that is to say, without the organism which supplies it with a delicate instrument. It follows from these general considera- tions of the modes and degrees of existence upon our planet, that the lower serves the higher, that each is an end to that which precedes it, and a means to that which follows ; con- sequently that there is a general design in the disposition of the world, a linking together of all forms of life in such a way as to direct and impel all in a common direction. 1 "L'Espece Humaine," Quatrefages, p. 2. * Ibid., p 8. FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 149 The purpose which is thus manifest in the whole, is sus- tained in detail by such evidence as cannot be rejected without disregarding all the analogies which appeal most directly and strongly to the mind. We know that when we have brought together the materials for building a house wood, stone, brick, mortar we have an end in view ; and that this end has been present in our minds as the determining cause of all our efforts, the true final cause, the only motive which can explain this assemblage of a heap of materials which have no natural tendency to unite or combine. Every determination of the present by the future ha.s this character of purpose or design. We understand indeed that there may be no design or end in the production of a phenomenon which is the natural and simple result of antecedent causes. The production of the storm by the disengagement of electricity is fully explained by the previous state of the atmosphere. But it is otherwise when phenomena of different orders are combined with a view to producing an ulterior effect which they never would have produced by themselves, any more than the wood, stone, and mortar would have built a house if they had not been made use of in a certain way for that express purpose. Matter is all in the present ; it has nothing to do with prevision of the future, with that which is not yet, that which exists only as an ideal plan the opposite, that is to say, of that which is. As soon as plan, design, prevision of the future appear, we enter the region of purpose. 1 This look into the future, this plan which combines phenomena in themselves divergent in order to obtain a future result, the realisation of which is pursued by appropriate means, we certainly find in nature. M. Janet says, "When a combination of phenomena can be explained simply by a reference to antecedent conditions, there is nothing more in it than the relation of cause and effect. But when the combination, in order to become intelligible, must be referred 1 See M. Janet's full, luminous, and conclusive arguments on purpose and design, in his book, " Les Causes Finales," p 42. 150 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. not only to its antecedent conditions but to its future results, the simple relation of cause and effect no longer suffices : it is transformed into the relation of means to an end." l We shall content ourselves with giving in conclusion a few examples taken from organic life, in which, as Kant says, every- thing is reciprocally an end and a means. Organised existence constitutes, as Cuvier has well said, in relation to his famous law of organic correlation, a great whole, a system all the parts of which correspond and combine by reciprocal reaction in one definitive result. This is what Claude Bernard calls the ruling principle of organic life, that which alone explains its for- mation and constitution on a definite plan, in which all the elements are arranged in due order and combined so as to realise a preconceived type. "That which characterises the living machine," says the great physiologist, " is not the nature of its physico-chemical properties, however complicated, but the creation of the machine itself which goes on before our eyes under conditions proper to it, and according to a definite idea which expresses the nature of the living being and the very essence of life. That which is peculiar to the domain of life, which does not belong to physics or chemistry, or any other branch of natural science, is this ruling principle of vital evolution. In every living germ there is a creative idea which develops and manifests itself in the organisation. Through all its existence, the living being remains under the influence of this same vital creative force. Here, as everywhere, this is the originating and governing principle of the whole." 2 This purposive adaptation, which is the reason and condi- tion of the existence of the living organism, is as manifest in its generation as in its development and ultimate constitution. Nothing shows more clearly the combination of phenomena with a view to a future result (which is the strongest evidence of 1 " Les Causes Finales," Janet, p. 42. 3 " Introduction a 1'Etude de la Medecine Experimentale," Claude Bernard, p. 163, FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 151 design), than the difference of the sexes. This difference can- not be absolutely explained by any necessity of organisation for the male or female, considered separately. It has no meaning except in view of the future act which is to unite them for a brief moment, and so provide for the preservation of the species. Now this union is only possible if there is a perfect conformity of form and structure, a previous adaptation. The physical constitution, whether of the male or the female, in that which is peculiar to it, is of no consequence to their present state. Their organic adaptation is arranged with a view to the future. The prevision of this future then determined it ; the object and the design are evident. The same conclusion presses itself upon us if we contemplate the development of embryonic life; the organs of the senses, which are only to come into use in the future, are prepared in the mother's womb, and are adapted by anticipation to the sphere of their exercise. The same prevision is traceable in the phenomena of lactation in the mammalia. The female, before she is a mother, possesses organs peculiarly adapted for the process of suckling, so that the milk can be conveyed to the breasts as soon as required. The nutritive organs existed before the birth of the young, and were so arranged as only to come into operation after their birth, and to respond to the instinct which finds in their organisation the means of satisfying itself. We must refer the reader to the works of specialists for a description of the wonderful adaptation of the organs of the various senses to the purposes for which they are required. It is absurd to speak of chance, of happy coincidences, in reference, for example, to such an organ as the eye, which is the most perfect and delicate optical apparatus, adapting itself to every diversity of environment, in a way which cannot possibly be explained by the influence of the environment itself. Thus, in the insects and crustaceans, the optic mechanism, by virtue of its multiple facets and refracting cones, gives multiple images ; it isolates the visual rays. This effect is produced by a marvel- I $2 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. Ions arrangement of all the parts, which could never be the result of the fortuitous concurrence of a thousand blind causes. In the higher animals the mechanism is integrating ; the visual rays converge to form a single image. The globe of the eye, with its lens, is in fact a camera obscura. We find the same adaptation in the other organs of the senses, with the same modifications for varying environment The organ of hearing differs in the case of animals which live in the open air and those that inhabit the sea depths. This is a rule to which there are no exceptions. No purely physical or mechanical cause will account for so perfect an adaptation of the structure of the ear to its various uses. The respiratory organs differ, in like manner, according as the animal is intended to live in air or water. In the one case we find the apparatus of the gills, in the other, organs of pul- monary respiration. The structure of the heart, which is a mechanism at once so simple in principle and so complex in the arrangement of its different parts, so wonderfully contrived and admirably adapted for its great functions, is inconceivable except on the theory of an intelligent design. Apart from this, we should need to suppose that a physical cause, acting according to given laws, hit upon, without seeking it, the system best of all adapted for the circulation of the blood, while other causes, equally blind, determined the production of the blood and made it flow, by virtue of other laws, in the most appropriate channels. 1 The admirable harmony of this whole system, and the correlation of its parts, completes the irrefragable demonstration of design and adaptation in the living organism. We might draw the same conclusions from that spontane- ous industry which we call instinct ; but we reserve all that re- lates to this subject for the part of our book in which we shall treat of man, and show the distinction between instinct and intelligence. 1 " Les Causes Finales," Janet, p. 74. FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 153 In short, the living organism appears to us the very embodi- ment of the great idea of design ; its cause is in its end, for everything about it tends to that end, and is disposed with a view to its realisation. It follows that its raison d'etre is this ruling idea. The idea is first formed, and everything in the living being is prepared and adapted for its realisation. That is to say, the living being had a virtual and potential before its real existence, just as the building constructed by the architect exists first in his plan, in view of which he gathers together the various materials that will be required and combines them in such a way that they assume a certain form which they would never have taken if left to themselves. That which is true of the house is true of every organised being. It is a building upon a plan, according to a predetermined idea. This is true of the oak, which existed virtually and potentially in the acorn- This is true of the animal, which existed virtually and potenti- ally in its antenatal cell This is true of the vast edifice of the world, which on this account is called a cosmos, a harmonious whole, combining, in accordance with one great plan, myriads of different elements and substances. Everywhere the virtual precedes the actual and determines it ; this is its only expla- nation. It follows that the principle, the raison d'etre, of the reality cannot be grasped by sensation, which can only apprehend the actual, never the possible. " There are, says M. Charles Secre'tan, in nature and in life, real things which cannot be seen. Nay more, these invisible realities are the most essential of all. We do not see the end which a man proposes to himself in his conduct, and yet all his conduct is determined by some end. We do not see the man in the child, nor the tree in the seed, but we know that they are there, and but for this faculty of divination, we should know nothing either of the seed or the child. The notions of ideas, of an end, of power, are not objectively present to the senses, and yet they are absolutely indispensable to guide us in the chaos of our sensations and to give us any experimental acquaintance 154 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. with things. So is it with the idea of cause which runs through all nature." l Aristotle has set the seal of his genius on this theory of potentiality, and draws from it, with rigorous logic, the reason- able conclusion that this ruling and formative principle of the living being, this potentiality, which develops itself in his organism, implies mind, thought, as its origin and antecedent; and this thought cannot be itself also a mere potentiality (or the difficulty of the first cause would still remain), but " has a priority of subsistence . . . energy, activity." " Everything that is being produced, advances towards a first principle and an end ; for the final cause is a first principle, and the generation or production is on account of the end. But energy is an end, and on account of this is potentiality assumed, for not in order that they may have the power of vision do animals see; but they have the power of vision that they may see. . . . Moreover matter subsists in potentiality because it may advance onwards to form ; but when, at least it subsists in energy, then doth it subsist in form. In like manner also is it the case with other things and those of which the end is motion. . . . Wherefore it is evident that substance and form are each of them a certain energy. And therefore, according to this reasoning, it is evident that in substance, energy is prior to potentiality. And, as we have stated, one energy invariably is antecedent to another in time, up to that which is primarily and eternally the moving cause. But assuredly also in a more strict and important sense is energy prior to capacity, for the things that are eternal are in sub- stance prior to the things that are perishable, yet nothing sub- sisting in potentiality is everlasting. . . . That therefore energy is a thing prior to potentiality and every alternative first principle, is evident/' 2 We are thus brought back to a first principle, always 1 "Discours Laiques," Charles Secrctan, pp. 37, 38. 2 " Metaphysics," Aristotle, Book VIII., ch. 8. Bobn's translation. FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 155 operating, always actual and living, from which proceed the potentialities or germs of particular beings. This passage from the virtual to the actual, is the law of all particular beings, who thus only realise the end in view of which they exist. This end is at once their formal and final cause, that which forms and completes them. This end was con- tained in the initial thought from which all proceeded, but that thought itself was not subject to this law which makes the particular being pass from the virtual to the actual, else all would begin and end in potentiality. There would be no basis, no eternal principle of being ; universal existence would rest on a mere possibility, which would not find in itself the force, the energy to arrive at being, either in the whole or in the parts. Hence Aristotle says that the germs point us back to a higher and already complete being. The primary substance is not the germ ; it is the complete being which produces the germ. The embryo, which potentially contains the entire man, pre- supposes the adult man who has produced it ; but this man himself is only a secondary cause. We must go back to the first cause, perfect and eternal, which has imparted to every germ, to every potential existence, its own thought, and the vital energy capable of developing it according to its proper plan. In order to conceive and realise this plan, it was neces- sary that this first cause should be living and actual. We find a design, a thought m a preparatory state, in every being. But this design requires as its formal and final cause, a perfect, complete, living, thought, in a word God. This is the sub- stance of Aristotle's theory, and in the lapse of so many cen- turies it has not grown antiquated. The God of Aristotle is a pure intelligence, contemplating Himself, moving the world by the attraction of His own excel- lence. This idealism, sublime in so many aspects, which fills the twelfth book of the " Metaphysics," had as its counterpart the eternity of matter. It does not give us an exhaustive idea of the great First Cause, whose wisdom appears in the 156 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. marks of design everywhere discernible in the individual forms of life and in the harmony of a world governed throughout by the principle of finality. This First Cause is not only intelli- gent, it is powerful. It has not only conceived its plan, it has realised it ; and its creative intervention is as evident to us as its wisdom. In fact, the different degrees of existence which we recognise in the world are not only perfectly distinct while forming harmonious parts of one system, but they are so distinct that there is no transition from one to another. Life has never been known to rise from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom ; no combination of chemical and physical forces has produced any such result. Skilful chemists have been able to build up certain substances which enter into the composition of living things, but the actual composition of life, that which gives it its peculiar character, has never been elaborated in any of their retorts. Nor has it been produced in the vast alembics of nature. Science is further than ever from confirming the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, even though that hypo- thesis is demanded by the whole of the Transformist School. Nothing has been able to controvert M. Pasteur's conclusive experiments, which resulted in the discovery of a germ even in the cases which seemed most favourable to the supposition of spontaneous generation. We have on this point testimony which cannot be called in question. "Generation, which is the order of creation of organic beings," says M. Claude Bernard, "is justly regarded as the most mysterious function of physiology. It has been observed in all ages that there is a filiation between living beings, and for the most part they are clearly produced by pairing. There are cases, however, in which this filiation is not apparent, and these were supposed to be cases of spontaneous generation, that is to say without parentage. This very old question has been taken up again recently and made the subject of fresh inquiry. In France spontaneous generation has been rejected by various special- ists, but particularly by M. Pasteur. It has, on the other hand, FORMATIVE POWER IN NATURE. 157 been accepted by some naturalists, and specially by M. Pouchet, who maintains the hypothesis of spontaneous ovulation. M. Pouchet has tried to show that there is no spontaneous genera- tion of the adult being, but generation of its egg or of its germ. This view appears to me wholly inadmissible, even as hypo- thesis. I consider that the egg represents a sort of organic form which contains in itself the conditions necessary to the evolution of an organic being, from the very fact that it pro- ceeds from one. The egg is not an egg because it possesses a virtual power communicated to it by one or more previous evolutions of which it retains some sort of memory. It is this initial direction which is properly speaking only the manifesta- tion of a more or less marked atavism which can never in my opinion be the result of spontaneous forces acting ab initio. It implies of necessity an hereditary influence. I fail to con- ceive that a cell formed spontaneously and without parents could have any evolution, since it has had no anterior state. Whatever may be the hypothesis, the experiments which were regarded as proving spontaneous generation, were for the most part defective. M. Pasteur has had the merit of throwing light on the problem of spontaneous generation, by showing how inadequate these experiments were, and by introducing greater precision into the subject. He has shown that the air is the vehicle of a multitude of germs of living beings." 1 If the appearance of life is an entirely new and irreducible fact, which there is no natural antecedent to explain, the appearance of consciousness, of thought, of the moral life, the fuller study of which we reserve to a later part of this work, is no less inexplicable, and implies a fresh intervention of the highest cause. We gather then from this rapid glance at the visible world, that everything in it implies a cause at once intelligent and powerful. In a word, it is true, as Bossuet has said, "that everything which shows order, pro- portions well adapted, and means fitted to produce certain 1 " Rapport de M. Claude Bernard a 1' Academic de Medecine." 1 58 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. effects, shows also an express end, and consequently a design formed, a governing intelligence and perfect art." l The uni- verse bears emphatic witness to this "governing intelligence, this perfect art," alike in the infinitely great and the infinitely little, in the atom and in the planet. All obey the same mathematical, physical, or chemical laws ; the science of numbers, the very opposite of chance, rules and regulates their movements and their affinities. When the living organ- ism appears, it reveals to us a yet higher art, marvellously skilful in combining the most various phenomena, in view of a foreseen result This plan, this design, which is apparent if we carefully examine a cell or the smallest organic body, is expressed with equal clearness and sublimity in the final harmonies of all the parts of this great whole which we call the world, by which we mean order realised. This harmony not only satisfies our reason, it fills us with admiration, which is one of our purest joys because the most disinterested. Beauty manifests itself to us as a higher end. The sense of beauty arises from a mysterious correspondence between that ideal type of the beautiful which we have within us, and the spectacle of things in which we find our ideas of harmony or grandeur, grace or majesty, realised. There is something more in beauty than the simple grouping of atoms; their aesthetic disposition is not a mere movement, it is a thought. The impression of beauty produced upon us by this world, so full of variety, so rich in contrasts, implies as much art as a symphony of Beet- hoven, which resolves the discord of sounds into a magnificent harmony conveying to the receptive soul the sublime thought of the master. Thus, when the inspired singer of Israel ex- claims that the heavens declare the glory of God, or when the great apostle Paul declares that the glory of the invisible God is clearly seen in the things which are made ; we feel that they are right. They only express in the language of poetic rapture that fundamental principle of oui reason the principle of 1 "De la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-meme," Bossuer, Book I. FORMA TIVE PO WER IN NA TURE. 1 59 causation, which will not allow that the greater can come from the less, but which demands an exact proportion between the cause and its effects. If they are wrong, reason itself is wrong. We cannot better conclude these considerations than by quoting the words in which Aristotle closes his review of the ancient philosophies : " But after these philosophers, and after the assertion of' principles of this sort, as if on the grounds of their in- sufficiency to generate the nature of entities again constrained by actual truth, as we have said, they investigated the principle next following, in the way of a consequence. For of the excellent and beautiful order of some things, and of the pro- duction of others of the entities, it is not natural to assign, perhaps, either earth or anything of this kind as a cause ; nor is it natural that they should think that it is; nor was it seemly, on the other hand, to attribute so important a part to chance and fortune. " Now, whosoever affirmed mind, as in animals so also in nature, to be the cause of the system of the world, and of the entire harmony of it ; the same appeared, as it were, of sober temperament, in comparison with the vain theorists of the earlier ages. Indeed, then, we know that Anaxagoras openly adopted these principles. Hermotimus of Clazomenae, however, has the credit assigned him of having put forward a similar theory of causation at an earlier period. "Those indeed, therefore, who have entertained these opinions, have laid down as a first principle of entities at the same time, the cause of their orderly arrangement, with such a one as that of the origin of motion in things." 1 1 "Metaphysics," Aristotle, Book I., c. iii. Bohn's translation. CHAPTER II. OLDER OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF CAUSATION. IN speaking of the principles of casuation, we have so far con- tented ourselves with formulating the conclusion as to the origin of the world to which our minds were led by the spectacle and the history of the world ; and this conclusion is theism. We know well how strongly this is attacked in our day by the arguments of modern science. It is constantly declared to be opposed to the most positive results of scientific inquiry. It is evident that if this is really so, theism must be abandoned ; for any explanation which is contrary to proved facts, is of necessity false. It remains for us to show that this contradiction between theism and science has no real existence, if only science keeps within its own domain, and is content to affirm that which it is competent to demonstrate by experiment. We set aside then from the discussion all that is theory and hypothesis alone. I. ATOMISM. The simplest and most widespread form of materialism is still the atomism of Democritus and Epicurus. This is the subject of Biichner's book on Force and Matter, and he dwells largely on the philosophy of Lefevre. From the admirable exposition given by Lange, of the system of Democritus, 1 it is clear to how great an extent the philosopher of Abdera is the initiator of materialism in its most popular form. Everything 1 " History of Materialism." Lange. 160 OLDER OBJECTIONS. 161 is traced back to atoms and vacuous space ; the atoms combine indefinitely according to properties inherent in them, which Biichner calls forces. These combinations, governed by me- chanical and physico-chemical laws, produce all the variety of worlds and beings, without any directing thought revealing a design and pursuing an end. Because there are laws, it is concluded that there is no lawgiver, and that all effects are to be traced to the energy inherent in matter. The harmony of things is the natural and necessary result of this energy, and is produced without any intervention, merely by the motion of atoms obeying the laws of their nature. To this theory we have one objection to make at the outset. What is the origin of that notion of the harmony of things which is recognised at least as their result ? It comes from that particular grouping of atoms in the brain which produces the human mind. Here, there is not simply the vortex of molecules obeying its internal laws ; there is the conception of those laws, the recognition of order in the universe. This is an entirely new phenomenon, without any analogy with that which precedes it. In this case, the atoms are not content with merely moving in accordance with their proper laws; by a new combination, they are conscious of their motion and of the laws which govern it. The mere fact of attempting an explanation of the world, even on the most absolutely material- istic basis, makes the being who attempts it pass the limits of the atomism, which he has declared to be absolute and universal. Democritus refutes his own theory by the very fact that he accounts for the existence of the world. Atomism recognised and explained, ceases to be atomism. Further, to speak of harmony and order, is to apply to matter an idea not derived from sensation, for it implies the recognition of a certain relation between facts succeeding each other. Sensation perceives these facts one after the other; but something more than sensation is needed to connect them, and to form a conception of the whole, the parts of which M 1 62 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. only are apprehended by the senses. This category of neces- sary order appertains to the reason. Lastly, it is idle to deny that there is design in the production and disposition of the things composing the universe. By whatever ingenious explan- ations we try to get rid of design, we are obliged to recognise it as a fact in the animal creation, which does not obey mere mechanical forces, and still more clearly in man who always adapts means to an end. It is from his own experience that he has derived this idea of design, of an end in view ; and he attributes this characteristic, by a most natural and reasonable analogy, to the First Cause which he sees at work in the universe. If we now return to the idea of law itself, the physical law inherent in atoms, we must admit that it is at least strange to use this as an argument against an intelligent First Cause. Biichner altogether confounds the idea of force with that of law. Matter he regards as inseparable from force ; which amounts to saying that it has set itself in motion without a prime motor. This proposition appears to us the very reverse of obvious, for reasons already advanced. We have seen that it is impossible to explain how motion could have been at first spontaneously produced in the primitive nebula, which from its state of extreme diffusion escapes the action of gravitation. This primary force being wanting, all the others are wanting also. But supposing we admit that force may be inherent in matter, that is, in the atom, what right have we to take it for granted that it is a regulated or self-regulating force ? By what right do we attribute to it the regularity and simplicity of a law ? Each atom is to contain in itself the whole marvellous mechanical and physico-chemical legislation which governs the material world. The idea of matter implies nothing of this sort; it is either inert or diffused. Every- thing in the laws which govern it, bears the impress of in- telligence ; even their admirable simplicity, which is itself a law, and the law of economy, by which nature always contents OLDER OBJECTIONS. 163 itself with that which is strictly necessary for producing its results. Nor have we to deal with mere abstractions. A natural law is not a mysterious entity, a sort of anonymous divinity. Law is in itself nothing else than the formula of the conditions of existence which we verify experimentally in nature. If these conditions are found to be permanent, they would imply a foregoing action by which they have been de- termined in such a way as to secure their continuance. Has it ever been found that an atom had this power of determining, not itself alone, but also all the other atoms with which it is related ? For this determination of the conditions of existence, which we call law, can never be an isolated fact ; it implies reciprocity, and consequently combination, prevision that is to say, intelligence. Professor Flint says, " The existence of a law connecting and governing a class of phenomena, implies an intelligence by which the law is made. Laws, then, are not the cause of order, but its expression. They are the result of delicate adjustments. Chemical laws only exist because there are chemical elements endued with various affinities and forces, which balance each other and harmonise so as to produce the world. Laws produce nothing of themselves ; it is the agents, acting according to the laws, which produce the effects. If these were not well balanced, disorder would be the result. The harmony of the world would never be produced by the law of gravitation alone. We have not merely to do with atoms endowed with pro- perties in virtue of which they act and react on each other ; we have to account for a cosmos ordered and disposed. The atoms might act and interact for ever under the control of laws gravitational and physico-chemical ; but if left to themselves they could never succeed in building up an ordered and or- ganised universe. This conclusion is forced on us when we consider the vast variety of combinations and complexities which a universe involves. Even the famous apologue of the Iliad resulting from the fortuitous collocation of the letters 1 64 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. of the alphabet, does not represent to the full the absurdity of imagining a universe produced by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. We require a multitude of chances infinitely less probable even than this. It avails us nothing to fall back on the primordial nebula. Its evolution is equally unthinkable if no directing mind presided over its formation, over the analysis and synthesis of its elements, over its final equilibrium and order. The solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state if the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and constitution ; if it was neither too rare nor too dense, neither too fluid nor too tenacious, if its atoms were all disposed in due relation to each other, that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a system of order as the worlds which have been developed from it. 1 " The world subsists," says Janet, " by virtue of a mathe- matical law ; but a mathematical law is absolutely indifferent to any result whatever. What does it matter to universal attrac- tion, whether the world exists or not ? Now it happens that this force, by which the solar system is produced, has in itself the elements of its overthrow. It happens that particles of matter, which can have no preference for one order or another, and which obey a law deaf and dumb as themselves, have found their equilibrium, and have assumed a form of stability which seems, as Arago says, the effect of a miracle. To suppose that such stability, such order, is the result of an accident which, at a given moment, has evolved order out of chaos and found the point of equilibrium between so many and such divergent forces, is neither more nor less than the doctrine of pure chance." 2 Looking at the laws of motion alone, there is no reason why the minute (or elementary) bodies should continue to group themselves in the same order, rather than in new combinations, or even why they should continue to group themselves at all. 1 See "Theism," Robert Flint, pp. 187-192. * " Causes Finales," Janet, p. 238. OLDER OBJECTIONS. 165 II. ORGANICISM. The opponents of final causes, after having essayed to ex- clude them from the inorganic world, make the same attempt with regard to the organic world, in which they refuse indeed to recognise any specific character. They adopt the same line of argument in reference to both. They hold that there is no design in the inorganic world because it is subject to inflexible laws, as if law itself were not the expression of a directing mind. From the fact that the living creature has properties necessary to the fulfilment of its functions, they conclude that all is explained by these properties, which pro- duce the organs and their functions, and that we have no right to look higher and to seek for a plan, a design, behind this determination of the natural life. The simple elements of which living creatures are composed do indeed possess certain properties or fixed modes of action. These elements, with their inherent properties, are developed from the cell by slow and progressive evolution. Thus are formed the organs whose functions are the simple manifestation of these pro- perties. For example, the action of the heart, which is a muscle, arises from the contractile property common to all muscles. The circulation of the blood is caused by the nutri- tive and reparative qualities of the blood itself. The eye is not disposed with a view to seeing, but it sees because sight is the result of the particular disposition of its parts with the qualities proper to them. To this theory, known as organicism, the following objec- tions may be raised. First : The simple elements of which the living organism is composed are cells. Now we have already shown that the appearance of the cell, radically dif- ferent as it is from inorganic matter, which is incapable either of growth or decay, cannot be explained on the theory of mere development None of the chemical syntheses even of 1 66 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. M. Berthelot suffice to account for it. 1 We admit that he has succeeded in creating in his laboratory most of the proximate principles which matter contains, but these proximate princi- ples are pure chemical products, and possess none of the characters of life. They are the results of analysis, oxidation, decomposition, recomposition to organic matter, but not or- ganised matter itself. A proximate principle is not an organ, nor the rudiment of an organ, nor a being, nor an element of a being ; it possesses no living form. " No chemist," says M. Berthelot, " can pretend to form in his laboratory a leaf, fruit, muscle, or organ." Organicism cannot then cross the impass- able barrier of life. This is conclusive against its principle, for if it cannot explain the production of the living creature, it will be equally incapable of explaining its organisation. Second. The fact that the simple elements of organised bodies have certain properties, argues nothing against an in- telligent cause. We utterly fail to comprehend why the demonstration of a law in things, should involve the negation of an originating and directing mind. Third. We deny that these properties alone suffice to explain the disposition of the organs. It is very convenient, for the sake of the argument, to reduce the admirable me- chanism of the heart to the mere contractility of a muscle; but it is perfectly well known that there is no machine invented by science so ingenious and complicated. " Muscular con- tractility explains the contraction of the heart ; but this general property, common to all the muscles, does not suffice to explain how and why the heart contracts in one particular way rather than in any other, or why it has assumed a certain configura- tion. The heart, as Claude Bernard has said, is essentially a living, moving machine, a force-pump designed to supply all the organs with a fluid which nourishes them. It is this com- plexity and this art in the configuration of the organ which is not explained by the modes of action or by the properties 1 "LaSynthese Chimique." Berthelot. OLDER OBJECTIONS. 167 of the simple elements, in the case of the heart, or of the digestive organs, or of the eye. To combine is to foresee, to reason, to think. l Fourth. In the living organism we have not only to con- sider each organ by itself, though this would suffice to prove the presence of combinations more wonderful than the most skilful mechanical contrivances of man's invention ; but these various organs are all connected with each other and all tend to a common end to which each is subordinate, as the parts of a well-compacted whole. The higher we rise in the scale of life, the more manifest does it become that there is one great purpose which all the inferior parts of the organism help to subserve. " Thus," as M. Chauffard has said, " the ulti- mate purpose of being, that which is connected with the faculties of sensibility and of motion, reacts upon vegetable life, and orders and sustains that life in ways which assure the final result." 2 We ask whether the properties of the simple elements of the living organism are capable of producing such a harmony and hierarchy of functions ? or whether, in order to such a manifestation, there must not be the mysterious, latent, but real, operation of that directing thought which is essentially the quid proprium of life, and by virtue of which we are raised far above the purely mechanical ? Fifth. The life of the embryo alone suffices to prove that this adaptation to an end is not the mere result, the simple bringing into play of the properties of organised matter, for the presiding idea governs all the transformations of the germ. At the outset, all germs resemble each other, and yet each as- sumes a different development, which is carded on with perfect regularity. Neither physics nor chemistry explains their dif- ferences of development; we must refer them to the determining idea which is of the essence of the germ, and which is nothing 1 " De la Finalite," Janet, pp. 168, 169. 2 " La Vie, Etudes des Problemes de Physiologic Generate," Chauffard, pp. 236 et sqq. 168 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. dse than the being in posse. " When a chicken," says Claude Bernard, " is developed in an egg, it is not so much the forma- tion of the animal body, as the grouping of chemical elements which essentially characterises the vital function. This grouping takes place only in accordance with the laws which determine the physico-chemical properties of matter. But that which is essentially of the domain of life, and which does not belong either to chemistry or physics, is the determining idea of this evolution. In every living germ there is a determining idea, which develops itself and becomes manifest in the organisation. The specific and final idea precedes and moulds the living organism. If from the organism we pass to its various func- tions, it may be said that the functional idea precedes the organ, and that the function forms the organ. All the functions which are to co-operate in the life of the being, are, so to speak, presaged and indicated before the function actually comes into play. The future circulation is indicated before the organs by which it is to be carried on are developed, by the appearance of the blood corpuscles. In the same way the nervous system is first to be traced in scattered rudiments. Why the lungs in the foetus, when it cannot breathe? why the eyes, the ears, when there is no sight or hearing? The answer is, that all is being prepared and organised for these functions, which are to come into play at a given moment. The predetermined idea creates little by little the instrument which will enable it to perform its work." l It is not possible then to maintain that the organ creates the function, since the function is indicated before the organ is formed. We do not indeed deny that the function requires outwardly favourable conditions to bring it into play. If these conditions are disturbed or are defective, the function itself is disturbed, and we witness monstrous deviations from the normal plan. But these in no way disprove the determining idea ; they only 1 " La Vie, Etudes des Problemes de Physiologic Generate," Chauffard, pp. 327, 328. OLDER OBJECTIONS. 169 show that the organ has not been able to overcome the influence of abnormal conditions. It is a great mistake to suppose that the final cause is in contradiction with the efficient cause, and that its triumph is made only the more marked by the absence of the means or elements adapted to its realisation. It would then be a perpetual miracle." l The true idea of the final cause is that which makes use of the means best adapted to the realisation of the end. The properties of the elements of which the organism is composed, are called into play by the final cause; the more readily these elements lend themselves to its combinations, the more is the ordered harmony of things made manifest. The architect shows his skill, not only in preparing the plans for the building, but also in making use of materials fitted for his purpose. We cannot conceive how the existence of these suitable materials can be in any way incom- patible with the idea of plans prepared for their employment and combination. It is still more absurd to imagine such incompatibility in reference to the world, since in this case the Architect not only uses fitting materials, but materials which he has himself prepared, and which he has endowed with the properties necessary to the execution of his design ; while at the same time they are no more able of themselves to enter into his plan in its fulness and complexity, than the hewn stones are of forming themselves into walls and arches. To urge as an argument against design, that is, against intelligent direction, the predisposition of things to adapt themselves to their ends, by virtue of the laws which govern them and the properties with which they are endowed, is to say that the rational dis- position of things is contrary to reason. The final cause makes use of the efficient cause ; it makes all the laws of nature, all the properties of the organism subserve its purpose. We fail to understand why this adaptation of means to an end, which in all human industries is regarded as a striking proof of intelligence, should in this case be made an argument 1 " Des Causes Finales," Janet, Book I., chap. iv. 170 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. against it Does not skill in human labour consist in making the best possible use of the materials and Jbrces at com- mand, and not in dispensing with them ? These materials and forces produce no work of art without the intelligence which uses and combines them. That intelligence would be itself unproductive if it .had not materials and forces at its disposal. The final and the efficient cause must not be separated ; the one requires the other ; but the efficient cause only produces harmony, a world ordered in all its parts and in its totality, if it is preceded and directed by a first and final cause at once intelligent and powerful CHAPTER III. OBJECTIONS FOUNDED ON THE CONSERVATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF ENERGY. ALL progress in science, every new theory in physics or biology, whatever may be its degree of certainty, is in our day urged as an argument against design. Much has been made therefore of the generally admitted fact that heat, light, elec- tricity, magnetism, are only so many phases of energy. In a steam engine, the heat disengaged by the burning coal, trans- forms itself into the work done by the shaft of the engine. If a paddle is made to revolve in a body of water, the water becomes heated. Light and sound are only undulations of the ether and the air. Electricity and magnetism are of the same nature. We have here then only one energy which persists in equal amount through its manifold transformations. Such as it was in its original form, it remains after every successive change, always identical with itself, like water, the mass of which is undiminished by all the phenomena of evaporation. When the sun's rays draw up the water from the streams, clouds are formed ; these clouds become charged with elec- tricity, lightning flashes from them, and the watery vapour falls again in rain. We have thus a succession of changes, and we find at the close of the series the very same bulk of water as in the initial stage. That which we call energy is only motion transformed. Heat, electricity, magnetism, are only so many 171 172 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. differing modes of motion ; all are to be traced to motions of the ether; we find these affecting even the cohesion of bodies, and causing their greater or less density. 1 It would follow that nothing is lost, nothing created. This proposition is constantly advanced as an axiom. Hence it is concluded that there is nothing in the universe but motion under various forms, obeying the inflexible laws of mechanics. The world is a piece of pure mechanism, governed by necessity alone. We must cease therefore to speak of prevision, choice, combination, adaptation to any end whatsoever. All is neces- sary, and is produced of necessity in this empire of all-absorb- ing energy. Let us see if design can vindicate itself against this iron law. And first we say that we cannot accept as an axiom the proposition upon which this whole argument is based : Nothing is created, nothing lost. It is not at all certain that nothing is created, that no new element of energy or of life can be produced. We have no right to appeal in support of this thesis to the succession of natural phenomena going on before our eyes ; for the creative act, if it took place, must have pre- ceded this linked series, and must therefore be independent of it It is just because this fact of succession does not suffice to produce the initial life, that it fails to explain it. If we confine ourselves to motion, have we not already seen that it must at some time have received its first impulse ? We are obliged then to admit at least one act which it has not produced. Again, how can we set aside all creative action in nature, if it is impossible by any mechanical or physico-chemical laws to evolve the higher from the lower grades of existence, if nature has never succeeded in producing a vegetable from a mineral? Before we formulate as an axiom the negation of any creative act, we must get rid of this grave objection. We allow that the second part of the axiom : Nothing is lost, is less 1 See " La Physique Moderne," " Essai sur 1' Unite des Phcnomcncs Naturels." Saigey. LATER OBJECTIONS. 173 opert to question, although so thoughtful a philosopher as M. Renouvier holds that it is not conclusively proved. 1 After all, we can only speak of the universe with which we are acquainted, and it is not open to us to extend the conclu- sions drawn from the experimental method beyond the sphere of our experience. Do we not see indeed in our own planet, germs of life never developed, existences which fail of their full fruition? And is not this, in a sense, a loss? 2 But if we accept hypothetically the theory that nothing is lost, and that the fact of the transformation of energy, of which science is ever accumulating proof, involves this as a conse- quence ; are we therefore to conclude that all freedom of action, all design, is excluded by pure determinism. Must we recognise in the laws of nature which govern this transforma- tion of energy, and which are the laws of motion, a character of fatality which would exclude anything like free and intelli- gent causation, capable of willing a certain end and seeking to realise it by appropriate means. A very simple distinction, brought out with much force of reasoning by a young contem- porary philosopher, M. Boutroux, frees us from this necessity. It is the distinction already made by Aristotle between matter and form, quantity and quality. This world of self-identical energy is the world of pure matter, of uniform quantity, without life, without progress. It is the sphere of an existence so abstract that it is as dead. Here indeed force rules with un- divided sway ; quantity without the quality which differentiates and determines it, is only the substratum of life ; it is not life itself. It is brute matter, like the stone which the scu'ptor has had hewn from the mountain side. According to Aristotle, this matter contains all possibilities without realising any ; it remains a vague, confused, undifferentiated mass. Here there can be no change because there is no real life, because this form- less existence is reduced to the state of nonentity. In this low 1 "Critique Philosophique," Aug. 2Oth, 1875. 8 " De la Continence des Lois de la Nature," p. 204. Boutroux. 174 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. sphere, everything is mechanical, and knows no other lawthan those of mass and motion. All is changed when to this dead abstract quantity, quality is added, that is to say, the form which differentiates, harmonises, moulds it to an end, an ideal. Then we have no longer simply the unformed stone obeying the laws of gravitation ; we have the stone pointed and polished, becoming an instrument of service ; or animated by the sculp- tor's .chisel with a sublime thought, as he charms out of the shapeless block forms of heroism, grandeur, beauty. The stone when it was only a quantity, knew no law but that of motion ; as soon as form appears it owns a higher power, that of intelli- gence. Let it be observed that this intelligence works freely and not of necessity. The block of marble had but one mode of existence, it could not escape the laws of motion. But the sculptor can modify it in a hundred ways, he can shape it into a ram or a lion, an Achilles or a Briseis, a hearth or an altar. Form has open to it all possibilities, consequently it has free- dom of choice and with it freedom as to the end to be attained. This formless stone is matter ; it is the world still in the state of pure quantity, subject to the inflexible laws of motion. The same stone fashioned into countless statues representing various forms of human strength and beauty, is the world of quality, of form, the world of life reflecting at once thought and volition. With form we get a thinking and determining cause which has made its choice among the multitude of possibilities, and realises its idea by making use of pre-existing materials. It is this which sets the impress of design on all the co-efficient causes which it alone has united in the execution of one great plan. We trace this freedom of choice, without which there is no purposive cause, as clearly in the origin of things as in their determination in harmony with pre-conceived ends. 1 Matter, the world of quantity into the principles of which we are now 1 " De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature," Boutroux, c. ii. LATER OBJECTIONS. 175 inquiring, is the world of abstract life which includes all possi- bilities. It is the possibility of being rather than its reality. There is no positive necessity that this possibility should become a reality. Either we must assume that the possible is already the real, which is a paradox, or if we distinguish the two, it must be admitted that the possible does not of itself pass into the real; that it may remain in its undetermined state, and consequently that there must come from without, and if possible from above, the interposition of a will which shall choose between the maintenance of the possible in its potential state, and its passage to the full and complete exis- tence of reality. This reality of life is capable of assuming all imaginable forms and qualities. In order to impress upon it the particular form and quality which it has assumed, there must have been another choice, another thought, another free act. All progress in the life of the world, every new development, implies this intervention of a free choice, for no new development can have the character of necessity unless it was absolutely contained in the antecedents and needed no addition. If this were so we should never get anything beyond these antecedents, we should never obtain a real development To produce a true develop- ment a fresh element is required ; and as this fresh element is not to be found in the immediate antecedent, it must be sought higher. Since it is not necessary it must have been the object of a choice, of an act of will and of power. It is possible that it may have been latent from the beginning in the being in whom it shows itself at the right time; but if we have to admit anything which cannot be explained by simple and direct ante- cedents, we are carried back to an intelligent and competent cause. It matters little whether the germ of the higher life was originally deposited in the embryo, or was added subsequently; it is enough that its manifestation cannot be explained by the immediate antecedents of the organic life ; we are then con- strained to seek a higher cause. " It is impossible to derive 176 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. the higher forms of life from the lower by means of analysis, because they contain elements which cannot be reduced tc those of a lower grade." 1 They find in the grades beneath them their matter but not their form, and it is the form which fashions the matter. There is not only continuity in organic life, there is succession, gradation, subordination of the lower to the higher, and consequently the formation of the lower with a view to the higher. Hence, organic nature, having emerged from the limbo of pure quantity, escapes the laws of an inevit- able development. If the laws which govern it have an element of contingency, they issue nevertheless in co-ordination and regular succession. A powerful hand working freely has forged all the early links of the chain of life, which interlocking form the organised world. In each new development, in each ex- pansion of the form and of the informing idea, there has been a fresh manifestation of a free and intelligent cause. Remove this and you have only the dead and silent world of abstract quantity ; you have, so to speak, shut up in a glacial bed the full-flowing river of life, whose course has been so admirably traced. The free and intelligent cause does not merely manifest itself in living and progressive nature, it knows also how to use for its own ends the blind mechanical forces, the energy which remains the same under all its various phases. It employs this as its instrument, it makes it work in such a way as to maintain the equilibrium of the cosmos, and, without ever violating its laws, it compels it to fulfil its purposes by placing it under certain chosen conditions. The stone does not cease to be subject to the law of gravitation when it is thrown up into the air by a man's hand, and yet its obedience is rendered under special conditions which would never have arisen spon- taneously. We have in this illustration a very inadequate example of the contingent and unforeseen effects which the highest cause may produce by means of laws apparently the 1 " De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature," Boutroux, c. ii. LATER OBJECTIONS. 177 most completely subject to physical necessity. There is an element of contingency in their use. Design is manifested not only as active in the informing idea of things, but also in the organisms of the higher grades of existence. The more we rise in the scale the more free and intelligent do we discover its working to be, and the more does the living organism escape from the region of the mechanical, or at least learn how to control and make use of it in subor- dination to an end. Even in the lower manifestations of life we find above mere mechanical motion (which is always trans- mitted in invariable quantity, rendering neither more nor less than it has received) another kind of motion, spontaneous motion, which escapes the mechanical laws just in proportion to its elevation in the scale of life. Even before it becomes free will, capable of resisting the impulse from without, and thus showing that it is not the mere translation and effect of that impulse, spontaneous motion asserts itself in all living or- ganisms. This action may be excited by external causes, but it is perfectly distinct from them in the very slightest movements whether of the sensation or the will. " To live," as has been well said by M. Chauffard, " is to feel, to be nourished, to en- gender, to move, to will. Life makes use indeed of matter and of motion, but it is not produced by either. It is in the livihg organism alone that we find sensation and function, and these are quite distinct in their essence from any motion transmitted from without. So long as the motion communicated remains simply a physical motion, so long as it is not accompanied by a corresponding sensation, it is motion without life. As soon as the motion which affects the organic nature excites the sensibility of the living organism, as soon as it is conscious by virtue of its own spontaneity of the co-operation of the living organism it becomes feeling, thought, voluntary motion, will." 1 1 "La Vie, Etudes des Problemes de Physiologic Generate, " p. 225. Chauflard. We reserve to the anthropological section of our work the question of reflex movements. N 178 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. Thus spontaneity is distinguished from motion ; spontaneity is life, the form, the thought, the will appearing in matter, and raising it above itself. The design which reveals itself so plainly in the universe is traceable in the lowest forms of or- ganised life. Before it reaches its glorious consummation in the moral being, the head and crown of the material world, we find it in free and spontaneous operation in the lower world, thus reflecting everywhere the attributes of the great First Cause. Nothing is lost, we are told. This may be possible as far as motion is concerned ; but suppose that all which goes beyond the merely mechanical, all the moral and intellectual life, the clustering blossoms of thought, of art, of civilisation, suppose all these are swept away, could we say nothing was lost ? Rather would anything remain worth speaking of, though mechanical force were left to carry on its work of transformation, and motion went on developing heat, light, electricity, magnetism ? What a yawning sepulchre such a world would be, and yet it would remain faithful to the famous axiom ! This perfectly rational hypothesis suffices to show, that while nothing was lost from the point of view of mere motion, everything might be lost from the point of view of life, which is not simply quantity but quality, form, thought, purpose. We find emphatic confirmation of these conclusions in M. Claude Bernard's lectures on the phenomena of life common to animals and vegetables, published after his death by M. Paul Bert. " Matter," he says in his second lecture, " the mould of the protoplasm, has no form. It would only give the absolutely indeterminate. It is morphology (the science of form) which distinguishes and individualises living beings. Form charac- terises definite life alone. Morphology shows us an ideal plan which is carried out step by step. The point of departure is apparently identical, the ultimate issues are infinitely diver- sified." 1 1 " Les Phenomenes de la Vie comrimne aux Animaux et aux Vegetaux." Claude Bernard, p. 330. LATER OBJECTIONS. 179 We know that M. Claude Bernard holds that teleology belongs to the sphere of metaphysics, that it is a speculative question on which natural science has no right to pronounce. Nevertheless he admits that the living organism would remain eternally in the indeterminate state without that morphology which implies a directing and formative idea, in a word, design. CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. THE most important reaction of our day against the theistic explanation of the universe, which recognises in it the marks of design and of an intelligent purpose, was inaugurated by the scientific movement known as Darwinism. The problems raised by Darwin and his disciples are of the highest import- ance, and have already called forth a considerable literature. The subject of incessant discussion in books and periodicals, Darwinism is certainly one of the best-known systems of the day. Our reference to it need be only brief, and confined to the objections which it is supposed to raise against the doc- trine of design. For a fuller acquaintance with it we refer the reader to the special works themselves. We would make, at the outset, a distinction which appears to us of the first importance, between Darwinism, which is a simple theory of natural history, and transformism as a mate- rialistic explanation of the origin of things. The former raises only the question of the how ; the latter enters upon the why. Darwinism, which is confined within the limits of biology, deals solely with the conditions of the existence of life ; mate- rialistic transformism professes to solve the problem of its cause and origin. Darwinian biology explains the develop- ment of existence in the universe by an evolution subject to certain laws ; but it does not assume the right of excluding a purposive cause, either in the principle of things or in their progressive evolution. Materialistic transformism, on the con- trary, distinctly repudiates it, and professes to explain the 180 THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. 181 development of existence by evolution and its laws, without allowing any scope for the intervention of an intelligent cause. It follows that theism stands altogether apart from the purely scientific question, as it is bound to do, for, as we have re- peatedly said, so long as science confines itself to the verification and classification. of facts, and to the deduction of their conse- quences by its own proper methods, it is supreme. Whether the Darwinian theory of evolution be demonstrated or not, theism has nothing to lose by it. Let the conditions of existence be determined as they may, the question of its cause and origin remains untouched. Thus Darwinism has been accepted by the most avowed spiritualists, as is evidenced by Mr. Wallace's able book on Natural Selection. Mr. Wallace had arrived by his own researches at the very same conclusions as Darwin, before the latter had given any formal or systematic exposition of his views. Yet Mr. Wallace has shown in the most cate- gorical manner that natural selection implies design at least, as strongly as the theory of successive creations. This will be made abundantly clear by the extracts we shall give from his book in our review of the Darwinian theories. 1 It is not possible to reconcile materalistic transformism with theism, since it assumes to answer at once the question of the conditions of existence, and that of its origin. It cannot co- exist with theism, for both cannot be true. This distinction indicates the order we shall follow in our discussion of the sub- ject. We shall first show that, so far from being opposed to a purposive cause, Darwinian biology implies it, with the reserva- tion that it still lacks scientific demonstration. In the second place we shall show that the materialistic transformism which repudiates any intelligent cause, ignores the true limits and principles of science, and instead of starting with the observa- tion and verification of facts, is based upon pure hypothesis. It builds in the clouds. the ponderous edifice of a world without mind. 1 " Natural Selection." Essays by A. R. Wallace. 182 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. I. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. Naturalists had recognised the principle of evolution long before Darwin's day. If by evolution we mean the graduated scale of being rising by regular stages, life becoming fuller and more defined with each upward step, then evolution is but another name for the order of the universe. It corresponds to the principle which we have already found running through all creation, that the lower exists in view of the higher, and serves to uphold it. This kind of evolution does not at all imply that one species can be transformed into another; they may succeed each other and yet not spring out of one another. Each species continues to consist of individuals more or less resembling each other, and all tracing back their ancestry through an uninterrupted and natural succession of generations to one primitive pair. With Darwin evolution has quite another significance. In his view it consists in the transformation of species from one to another, so that they do not form each a fixed step in the ladder of existence, but simply a halting-place which may be left behind under certain conditions. 1 The English naturalist was not without precursors. La- marck, Goethe, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, had held similar views, not to mention Diderot, who is the true initiator of philosophic transformism. To Darwin, however, belongs the honour of having revived this hypothesis and rendered it plausible, by his patient observation of the result of cross breeding in domestic animals. He obtained by this means astonishing variations. The same experiments have been made on certain plants. The first results were due to the very careful choice of the parent animals, so that their good points should be reproduced still 1 "Origin of Species," Darwin. "The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection," 1877. "L'Unite de 1'Espece," Quatrefages. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 7 RANSFORMISM. 183 more strongly in their offspring. Here was an application of the artificial selection always employed in farms and gardens by breeders and horticulturists. Darwin does not hesitate to attribute to Nature herself a similar principle of selection by which new combinations are produced. Natural selection is distinguished from artificial, in that it cannot choose deli- berately and with cognisance of the end in view, the males and females endowed with particular advantages, which advantages, being handed down cumulatively to their posterity, might raise them to a higher grade of existence. We must then find the principle of this selection somewhere else than in deliberate choice. Here comes in a second law, the law of the struggle for existence, that unconscious and barbarous Malthusianism of Nature which compels the creatures to engage in perpetual warfare if they are to exist. In every species, the feeble succumb ; for inferiority is in all cases the sentence of death. The strong and gifted alone survive. In surviving, they hand down their advantages to their descendants. This trans- mission is accomplished by virtue of the third law formulated by Darwinism, the law of heredity, which perpetuates and strengthens the qualities transmitted. A fourth law, that of the co-ordination of the organs, according to which every par- tial modification leads gradually to a modification in the other corresponding organs. The new and modifying elements, transmitted by generation, and preserved by heredity, bring about those permanent and harmonious transformations with- out which Nature would only produce accidental changes which could never result in new species. One further law, that of the adaptation of the living organism to its environ- ment, by which, under the pressure of necessity, it adapts its organs to the new conditions of existence, completes the ex- planation of universal evolution. Such, in its main features, is the Darwinian theory. Before inquiring whether it really offers an adequate expla- nation of all the transformations of living creatures, or whethei 184 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. it has only a restricted application, we affirm that, so far from being opposed to a purposive cause, it implies it. Passing by, for the present, the difficulty, insurmountable as it appears to us, which the production of life presents to Darwinism as to every other naturalistic system, let us look at the evolution of living beings according to the laws indicated. The general idea of evolution, as formulated by Darwin, is not intelligible apart from design. Evolution is, in his view, inseparable from the idea of progress ; it is the realisation of progress from one stage of being to another ; it advances from the less to the greater ; it is always tending to higher development. What can this sig- nify, except the carrying out of a plan ? for there is no possi- bility of distinguishing the lower from the higher, or of knowing which is best, if intelligence in nature is denied. Take this away and you have no longer any criterion by which to esti- mate the value of things ; all are confounded in a common equality. If nature tends to higher developments, it is because it is guided by intelligence. Now this upward tendency, this progress, can only be pro- duced by an intelligent and powerful cause. A thing can only be said to be better, when it is not identical with the thing going before. One of two alternatives then must be admitted. Either a new element of perfectness has been added, or it was virtually present in the existence in its primitive state, waiting only the fitting time for its actual development. In either case, an intelligent and powerful cause is implied, one which cannot be confounded with pure matter, for matter alone is incapable either of raising itself above itself or of implanting the germ of future developments. The intelligent cause would not ap- pear to us any less admirable because it had placed in Nature a principle of development, containing in itself all future pro- gress, than if we could trace it in repeated fresh creative inter- ventions, giving added fulness to life. As Leibnitz has well said : " Why should it be contrary to reason that the word fiat having left something after it, namely the thing itself, the no 7 HE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. 185 less wonderful word of benediction, * Be fruitful and multiply/ should have left after it in the beings themselves, a certain fecundity or organising virtue ? " The idea of evolution is then inseparable from that of design. This is shown with much force by Mr. Wallace in his reply to the arguments by which the Duke of Argyll, in his "Reign of Law," endeavoured to establish that creation, in every com- bination which we can trace, and in all that is beautiful, implies the constant activity of the Creator. Mr. Wallace says : " The view of the universe as regulating itself is a far loftier one than that which supposes constant intervention on the part of the Creator. The world is so constituted that the action of general laws produces the greatest possible variety of configuration and climate. Laws equally general call forth the most varied organisms adapted to the various conditions of the earth. The forces of inorganic nature regulate and control themselves. So is it also in the organic world, where the laws are more complicated and the instruments more delicate. Can any one assume that harmony so complete implies a machinery too complicated to have been devised by the Creator ? The theory of continual intervention puts limits to the power of the Creator. It implies that he could not act in the organic world by simple laws, that he was not able to foresee the results of the combined laws of matter and of mind. It must be an unworthy conception of the Creator which would impute to him such incapacity." l Every one of the laws by which Darwin essays to explain the mode of universal evolution implies design. Natural selection, which is the basis of his whole system of biology, was sug- gested by the analogy of the artificial selection made by man, with the best exercise of his reason, and only rendered success- ful by careful calculation and well-considered choice. In this fact itself there is a strong presumption in favour of an intelli- gent governing principle in nature. It would never arrive by 1 "Natural Selection." A. R. Wallace. 1 86 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. purely mechanical operations at the necessary coincidences for perpetuating the highest qualities of any race of beings. The mere struggle for existence would never bring about in num- berless cases the combination of favourable circumstances demanded before a new link can be formed in the chain of organic evolution. " The rock on which Mr. Darwin's theory splits," says M. Janet, "is the transition from artificial to natural selection. In artificial selection man chooses the elements of his combina- tions in order to attain a desired end ; he chooses two factors each endowed with the qualifications he seeks. If there were any difference between the two, the result would be doubtful or nil. In order that the same results might be obtained by natural selection it would be needful that the male endowed with certain qualifications should be united to a female precisely answering to him ; and these conditions must be fulfilled from generation to generation. The first modification having arisen accidentally and in an individual case, would naturally be rare, and consequently it would be very unlikely to revive in the next generation. Yet it must be indefinitely repeated under precisely similar conditions before the advance desiderated could be secured to the race. Such a necessity demands a power of thought and of choice." 1 The struggle for existence is wholly inadequate to account for these countless coincidences. It is not enough in fact that the strong should have triumphed over the weak ; for mere strength would have simply the result of transmitting, through the act of generation, the previous type more strongly accen- tuated, and would therefore only tend to preserve not to trans- form the species. In order to the formation of a new type there must be, not only superior strength in the male and female who have been victorious in the struggle for existence, but also a modification of the organism which may be handed down and accentuated. Now this modification needs to be 1 " De la Finalite," Janet, p. 390. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. 187 produced at the same time in both sexes. How can this be explained by the action of mere mechanical forces ? We are obliged then to seek some other explanation of the modification of the organs in the favoured male and female. Mr. Darwin has had recourse to what he calls sexual selection, which proceeds from the instinct of beauty excited by sexual union. The male, to please the female, puts forth all his efforts and displays all his advantages ; in this way these advantages become in some way enhanced and transmitted to the progeny. If this explana- tion were the true one, the male should always have the monopoly, or at least the superiority of beauty, since he only develops it at the bidding of the instinct which impels him to captivate the female. Now it is an acknowledged fact that very often the aesthetic advantages are equal in both sexes. Again, how is sexual selection to be applied to fishes, which do not couple ? It is a fact easily verified, that beauty does not for the most part exercise any seductive power over our domestic animals. Nor can it ever be explained how the desire to please should have given to the butterfly its brilliant colours. Shall we be told that the favourable modification of animals is a happy accident ? We reply, that an accident is generally transitory. The law of the influence of environment has no application here. If the environment has not changed, it cannot have exerted any modifying influence ; and so far from being favourable to the development of some transformation produced simultaneously by accident in a male and female, it would hinder it ; for it would be less adapted to their existence than before, and the newly-acquired advantage would prove a real disadvantage in the struggle for life. If it is asserted that the organic transformation has been effected by the change of environment, two alternatives present themselves : the trans- formation must have been either conscious or mechanical. If the latter, we must admit with Lamarck that a new motion has taken place in the media of the animal, resulting in an organic modification. What has caused this motion ? What has given i88 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. it the necessary direction ? Why does it produce the adapta- tion of the animal to the new environment? The phenomenon is incomprehensible apart from a purposive cause. If we choose the other alternative a conscious transformation must we suppose that the animal, stimulated by necessity, has effected the modification required in its organs, and has made an effort to move its members in the direction necessary for its safety, as, for instance, to fly in order to escape pursuit ? Supposing that the thing was possible, it would at least follow that the animal has a purpose, an end in view, and that design is present in a spontaneous form in its operations. This realisa- tion of a need, this choice and employment of means to satisfy it, is not the mere motion of a medium. It is moreover alto- gether chimerical to attribute to a mere felt want, an operation by which the organs are modified ; nothing of the kind has ever been known. Habitual exercise strengthens the organs and renders them supple, but it does not create. "The mountebank," as M. Janet well says, "has muscles more flexible than other men, but has he more ? " Darwinism fails then to explain the modification of the organs. It has not been content to admit some partial modi- fications, but maintains the theory of a general modifiction by virtue of the law of co-ordination of the organs, a law borrowed from Cuvier. To speak of co-ordination is to speak of design, for the directing mind is never more evident and admirable than in the delicate adjustment of the various organs to their mutual relations, especially when this results from their peculiar constitution. Matter alone could never have endowed them with what we may call a faculty of blending in unbroken har- mony. We do not deny that the medium in which living creatures move does exert in a general way a very real influence upon their development ; but in order that life should ascend in a steady scale of progress it would be necessary that the environ- ment should be uniformly disposed for this end. If the earth THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. 189 had always beep covered by the water, the highest grade of life would have been attained by aquatic creatures. This level has been left behind only because the conditions of the terres- trial environment have undergone a change, and this change could only take place in view of an end. The earth might have been disposed in such a way that the inferior organisms would have been victorious in the struggle for life. Natural selection could not determine the conditions of its own action. There was needed a co-ordination between the creatures and their environment, which implies prevision and design. Thus the theory of the influence of environment proves, like every other naturalistic explanation, inadequate to the case. 1 The same may be said of heredity, the rule of which is, that like produces like. The reasoning is incomplete. Chance may as easily produce difference as resemblance. Animals in the embryonic stage begin by differing totally from their parents. They end by resembling them, but with elements of difference, which differences are however restricted within certain limits for the maintenance of order in nature. Generation is a divine mystery, for nothing in the simply co-efficient causes adequately explains effects at once so great and so limited. 2 1 "Theism." Flint. 2 The Law of Heredity is the subject of M. Th. Ribot's book, entitled : "L'Heredite Psychologique." In it the distinguished author sums up all the results of experimental psychology, whether in relation to individuals or to nations. The fact of hereditary physiological and psychological transmission, is brought out with great clearness, as regards the general specific characters which are the distinctive features of the species in the broad sense, of the race, the nation, and even the family. M. Ribot raises this to the dignity of a law, with this reservation : that it must not be for- gotten that heredity is twofold, since it implies the conjoined influence of- two, and is complicated by this very combination of their respective qualities, which is not the same thing as the mere addition of these qualities. Setting aside for the moment all that relates to the conclusions that might be drawn from this law of heredity, which, by the author's own admission, is liable to numerous exceptions, especially in its application to individuals, we find in his book a fresh proof that the law of heredity cannot of itself operate so as to produce progressive evolution, without admitting the IQO THE PROBLEM OF BEING. It is to heredity also that Darwinism attributes the conserva- tion and education of the new instincts. The development of the organs would in itself be of little avail in achieving progress in the biological scale, without the instincts which teach the animal the modus vivendi adapted to its condition after each fresh evolution. But it may be fairly asked, What is meant by a really new instinct ? since instinct is nothing but a series of given acts. If it is accidental it is not permanent, it is not instinct in the true sense of the word, for instinct ought to work mechanically by the force of habit or by natural predis- position. But what is a habit which has no past and is not connected with previous acts ? There are moreover instincts which, so far from being due to heredity, alone render it possible, and which are not connected with any previous ex- perience. Instinct must have been perfect ab initio, or the animal could not have subsisted. Hence it implies a cause superior to its experience and to itself. l We are bound to recognise, in fact, that the whole of this biological processus, even in the proportions to which it is expanded by Darwin, points, in the actual state of tilings, to a perfectly graduated scale, the steps of which are clearly marked and never confounded. It is of no avail in the first place to deny the fixity of species ; this is a fact to which our eyes bear witness. The stream of generation in our day flows between well-defined banks which it never overflows. Nothing could be more methodically determined and graduated than the life on our planet We have a right to ask, taking the standpoint principle of design. In fact, heredity may as readily render disadvantages permanent as advantages, and become an active cause of degeneration. It is necessary, then, that its operation be carried on under favourable circum- stances. "The blind fatality of its laws might make decadence the rule as easily as progress." If, then, on the whole, universal life develops itself in the direction of progress, heredity is not abandoned to a blind fatality. There is a presiding directing power which makes all tend in the direction of progress. What is this but teleology ? 1 " Les Causes Finales." Janet. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. 191 of Darwinism, how it accounts for this palpable pr.use in the process of universal transformation. Is it that these trans- formations tended to a certain end, to the realisation of fixed designs, of which the now existing species, in their graduated life, exhibit the plan ? It avails nothing to say that the species is capable of transforming itself. We see no such transforma- tion. Species has assumed a character of fixity which indicates a stopping-place, a term of repose reached, a goal attained. This is the view taken by the eminent naturalist M. Naudin, in his modification of the evolution theory. According to him, the object of evolution is to produce definitive species, and these were not defined all at once. There was a period when living creatures had a far more variable and plastic habit than at present. At that time the species were capable of modifica- tion, not only as the result of the various causes enumerated by Darwin, acting slowly and little by little, but by violent and rapid crises, which gave an impetus to the floods of life accu- mulated during the ages of repose ; for there is, M. Naudin tells us, a rhythmic motion in every force, which produces a reaction of expansion after contraction. This, then, is the history of the formation of our existing species, which are not destined to disappear. " When nature, having a comparatively small number of primordial types," says M. Naudin, "would form species suited to its require- ments, it called into being successively at various epochs, all the vegetable and animal species which are found on the globe." 1 This conception of evolution, far from excluding design, assumes it. M. Naudin says again : " When the species vary, they do so by virtue of ah intrinsic property which is a relic of their original plastic character. This plastic character is only another form of the principle of design, a mysterious power, regarded as fatality by some, as the will of Providence by others, whose incessant action upon living creatures deter- mines at all periods of the world's existence the value and 1 "Revue Scientifique," March, 1876. 192 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. duration of each, according to its destined place in the or- dered sequence of things. It is this power which brings all the members into one harmonious whole, apportioning to each its proper function in the general organism ; and this function is its raison d'etre " l M. Gaudry confirms M. Naudin's view on this point, in his learned book on evolution from a palaeontological stand- point. He says : " The discovery of vestiges buried in the crust of the earth, teaches us that all the transformations of the organic world form part of one great harmony." 2 The doctrine of evolution, thus understood, appears to us altogether worthy to be accepted. It is for science to confirm it. We may venture to say that it is still very far from having placed Darwinism beyond a doubt, at least in its most absolute form, the fundamental principle of which is the constant variability of species under purely external influences. Let us briefly review the leading objections to which it is open from a scientific point of view. First. The notion of a species is always vague with Darwin. He uses the term in an arbitrary way, often making it the synonym for race. He treats the species (to use his own expression) as an artificial grouping necessary for convenience of language. If we adhere to it as the description of a class, if we regard the species as a collection of individuals more or less resembling each other, which may be considered to be descendants of one primitive pair by an uninterrupted succes- sion of generations, the supposed variability of the species thus understood would be open to very grave objections. Second. Actual experience is not favourable to Darwinism, for we do not discover on any spot of the globe a transforma- tion of species now going on. The struggle for existence 1 "Revue Horticole," 1851, p. 101. * " Enchainement du Monde Animal dans les Temps Geologiques," Gaudry, p. 28. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORM1SM. 193 leaves ample room for all the species, the vanquished as well as the victors. M. Blanchard, in his "Etude sur rOrigine des Etres," says : " The most careful investigation compels us to recognise a remarkable resemblance among the individuals scattered over vast spaces of the globe. We find in them out- ward variations of form and colour, but the specific type, in all its important features, remains the same ; even the change from a wild to a domestic life produces only superficial mo- difications. Again, in the struggle for existence, chance may favour the weak as well as the strong ; cunning takes the place of strength, and the procreative faculty bears a remarkable proportion to the chances of destruction. 1 Third. However far back we go in palaeontology, we find the same distinction of species in the animal and vegetable world. There have been discovered intermediate species which give more continuity to the chain of organisms, but no clear evidence has ever been found of a transformation of these species into one another. M. Albert Gaudry concludes his interesting work on the links traceable in the animal world in geologic times, with these significant words : " Have we found more than links of relationship ? Do we know the actual genealogy, and can we say that some one species is the direct ancestor of another ? In the majority of cases we have not arrived at this. In putting together the materials of this work, I have been strongly impressed with the numberless gaps that we discover, when we attempt to establish by close sequence, the filiation of living organisms." 2 As far as the geological age is concerned, we can trace back to its remotest periods the same classifications as we observe to-day. " The animals, plants, grains, buried in the subsoil of Egypt, are the same animals and plants which are living to-day on the banks of the Nile." 3 1 " Origine des Etres," Blanchard, " Revue des DeuxMondes," 1874. 2 " Enchainement du Monde Animal dans les Temps Geologiques," Gaudry, Preface. 3 Ibid. O 194 THE PROBLEM OF ^BEING. Fourth. The theory of the constant adaptation of living organisms to their environment is contradicted, M. Blanchard tells us, by the fact that creatures enjoying advantages fitted to secure them against surrounding dangers, do not lose these advantages in any degree when they are placed beyond the reach of those dangers ; while, on the other hand, we find that species transported into an unfavourable environment, to which they cannot acclimatise themselves, perish. We find moreover, as a matter of fact, that the environment of living organisms has not so great a modifying power as has been supposed. M. Gaudry says : " Organised bodies are superior to inorganic, and it is not natural to suppose that the latter should determine the destiny of the former. The proof that physical phenomena are not the principal cause of the changes in the organic world, is, that in our day many hot countries ought to have remained in a physical state similar to that of the close of the Miocene Era, and yet all the species found in them show marks of change." l Fifth. The same naturalist tells us that the law of sexual selection is constantly belied by the frequent unions between privileged individuals and those of a very inferior type. Sixth. Artificial selection does not produce any permanent new type. As soon as its operation ceases, there is a return to the primitive type, not only in the animal, but also in the vegetable kingdom, which may be taken to be more amenable to radical modifications. M. Faivre has shown, that after all the changes produced by artificial selection, the original species remains, and reverts spontaneously from the modified types, when circumstances or artificial selection by man cease to exert a modifying influence. 2 Seventh. The strongest objection against the transformation 1 " Enchainement du Monde Animal dans les Temps Geologiques," Gaudry, p. 13. 3 "Considerations sur la Variabilite de 1'Espece et sur ses Limites." Faivre. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANS FORMISAT. 195 of species, is the almost uniform sterility of hybrids, which have never been brought to reproduce themselves naturally without artificial crosses. On this point, we refer the reader to the demonstration supplied by MM. Blanchard and Quatrefages. M. Blanchard says : " Science can no longer entertain any doubt, except about the filiation of some very closely allied species. Wherever one of the productive ele- ments predominates, the other is lost. Thus we are brought to recognise the independent character of the specific types and the impossibility of originating a new and independent form." 1 This sterility of hybrids is regarded by MM. Blanchard and Quatrefages as constituting a fundamental law of nature, which alone maintains the order and fixity necessary in the domain of life ; for without this law, we should have only a chaos of non-coherent and changing forms. 2 Species, thus understood, is one of the most striking marks of design in nature. It reveals a plan profoundly conceived and strictly carried out. Let us hear what one of the greatest naturalists of the day, the famous Agassiz, says about it : " In my view, nothing shows more directly and absolutely the operation of a reflecting mind, than all these categories upon which the different species, genera, families, orders, classes, are based in nature ; nothing more clearly indicates a deliberate consideration of the subject, than the real and material mani- festation of all these characteristics by a succession of in- dividuals whose life is limited to a duration comparatively very short. The great marvel of all these relations consists in the fugitive character of all the parts of this great harmony. While the species is persistent during long periods, the in- dividuals which represent it change constantly and die, one 1 M. Broca, in his " Memoires Anthropologiques," maintains the opposite thesis ; but the facts he adduces are not numerous enough to be decisive. 2 See " Unite de 1'Espece," Quatrefages ; and M. Blanchard's articles in the " Revue des Deux Mondes.'' 196 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. after the other, in rapid succession. Nothing in the inorganic kingdom is calculated to impress us so strongly as the unity of plan which is apparent in the structure of the most various types. From pole to pole, under all meridians, the mammalia birds, reptiles, fishes, exhibit one and the same structural plan. This plan denotes abstract conceptions of the most elevated order ; it far surpasses the broadest generalisations of the mind of man, and it required the most laborious research to enable man to arrive at any adequate idea at all of it. Other plans not less marvellous, disclose themselves in the articulata, the molluscs, the radiata, and the various types of plants. And yet this logical relation, this admirable harmony, this infinite variety in unity, represent, we are told, the result of forces devoid of the least particle of intelligence, of the faculty of thought, the power of combination, or the conception of time and space. If anything in nature can place man above the other animals, it is just the possession of these noble powers. Without these gifts, carried to a high degree of excellence and perfection, none of the general marks of relationship which connect the great types of the vegetable and animal kingdom could be perceived or understood. How then could these relations have been conceived, but by the aid of analogous faculties ? If all these relations are beyond man's intellectual power to grasp, if man himself is but a part or fragment of the whole system, how could this system have been called into being if there were not a supreme intelligence, the Author of all things?" 1 We conclude, then, that Darwinism is far from being proved as an explanation of the development of living organisms ; the theory of the transformation of species has still to contend with grave difficulties drawn from actual facts. Without at- tempting to pronounce sentence in so difficult a cause, we maintain, that, even if Darwinism were triumphant, its victory Quotation from an address delivered by Agassiz to the University of Massachusetts. " Revue des Cours Scientifiques," May 2, 1868. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. TRANSFORMISM. 197 would in no way affect the question of design, so long as it remained true to the conclusions of science and did not intrude on the metaphysical domain, and confound the question of the how with the why. We have shown that there is no law applied by Darwin to the development of life which can be explained simply by the action of mechanical forces, not one which can come into operation without the intervention of an intelligent cause. If we incline to think that Darwinism ex- aggerates the influence of these laws, in supposing that they offer an adequate explanation of the complete development of life on our globe, in all its various stages, we do not for a moment deny that these laws have a very real influence on the modi- fications to which all organised life is subject. Darwin has rendered great service to science in making us better ac- quainted with their, operation. It is doubtless a fact, that there is a struggle for existence, which prevents the boundless multiplication of the feeblest forms of life. It is doubtless true that heredity and the influence of environment, the stimulus of necessity, and the exercise of the organs, all operate in a modifying direction upon organised existences ; but their surest effect is to help to bring out more fully the normal type, the ideal which is their raison d'etre. These causes, even in their limited action, imply an appeal to design, or, to speak more correctly, they point to the supreme intelli- gence which alone renders them effectual, and which by their co-ordination has produced this well-ordered and harmonised world, in which everything indicates law, intelligence, volition, in a word God. II. THE MONISTIC THEORY OF TRANSFORMATION. We come now to the second form of the evolutionist theory, which is called Monism, in order to indicate clearly that it admits only one single principle in universal existence and in all its developments. This principle is force ; and hence it is 198 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. incompatible with theism. The most pronounced theory of transformation need not, even while repudiating any creative intervention in the development of life, become materialism, if it admitted that life and mind were primordially contained in a virtual state in the first principle of evolution ; for we should thus be carried back to an intelligent and powerful cause as alone capable of producing these germs or poten- tialities which are distinct from force. The scientific proof would still be wanting, but the principle of design and the idea of God would be left intact. The monism of which we are now speaking is a strictly materialistic theory of transfor- mation. It must be admitted that it has found adherents among the most powerful thinkers of our day. We shall only refer to its two leaders, Herbert Spencer and Hseckel. Herbert Spencer, the author of the " First Principles," has made the most powerful effort known to us, to construct by the mere play of mechanical forces a world utterly without mind. He has not only attempted to built up an abstract system upon purely speculative bases ; he has also applied his first principle to all the spheres of existence with an unparalleled fulness of exact detail. He has tried to include in it all living creatures, man, society, morality, religion. His system is unfolded with masterly clearness, he has illuminated science by his wonderful insight, without, however, succeeding, as it appears to us, in explaining the starting-point and the harmonious progression of natural evolution. The first principle of Herbert Spencer's system is the law of the persistence of force (i.e., the conservation of energy) through all its transformations ; he makes this an axiom, for he says it is not capable of proof. Matter is identical with force ; universal existence is explained by the laws of transformed motion. 1 Evolution is the development of the universe in ac- 1 On the laws of motion, see Herbert Spencer's, "First Principles," Part II. HERBERT SPENCER. 199 cordance with these laws. The first of these laws is, that mo- tion follows the line of least resistance ; all resistance being an obstacle to motion, motion continues identical with itself so long as it encounters no obstacle. " Motion under resistance is continually suffering deductions, and these unceasing deduc- tions finally result in the cessation of the motion." The second law of motion, verified by universal experience, viz., that reac- tion follows action, is the law of rhythm or alternation. This also is deduced from the persistence of force. Since force can- not be lost, it must, after having been apparently absorbed in bodies, disengage itself and reappear by a kind of rebound ; thus action produces reaction. Rhythm is the necessary property of all motion. " Rhythm is found to be exhibited universally, from the slow gyrations of double stars, down to the inconceivably rapid oscillation of molecules ; from such terres- trial changes as those of recurrent glacial epochs and gradually alternating elevations and subsidences, down to those of the winds and tides and waves ; and is no less conspicuous in the functions of living organisms, from the pulsations of the heart to the paroxysms of the 'emotions." 1 This law of rhythm implies not merely reaction after action, but dissolution after evolution. All evolution consists in the concentration or integration of a portion of diffused matter, and consequently in the dissipation of a portion of motion. If motion had always retained the same influence over mole- cules, these would have remained in a state of diffusion ; before they could have emerged from this state, they must have been partially demobilised, that is to say, they must have lost some of their relative motion. By virtue of evolu- tion an aggregate has been formed, and it is formed only because the matter which composes it has passed from a more diffused to a more concentrated state ; in a word, it has be- come contracted, demobilised, which implies a loss of motion. Herbert Spencer says : " Evolution, under its primary * " First Principles," Herbert Spencer, p. 73. 200 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. aspect, is a change from a less coherent to a more coherent form, consequent on the dissipation of motion and integration of matter. This is the universal process through which sensi- ble existences, individually and as a whole, pass during the ascending period of their histories. This proves to be a character displayed equally in those earliest changes which the universe at large is supposed to have undergone, and in those latest changes which we trace in society and the products of social life. And throughout the unification pro- ceeds in several ways simultaneously. Alike during the evolution of the solar system, of a planet, of an organism, of a nation, there is progressive aggregation of the entire mass. . . . We see this in that formation of planets and satellites which has gone on along with the concentration of the nebula out of which the solar system originated ; we see it in the growth of separate organs that advance pari passu with the growth of each organism ; we see it in that rise of special industrial centres and special masses of population, which is as'sociated with the rise of each society." l In all these integra- tions and concentrations of aggregates, there is loss of motion, or there would not be concentration. But we must not forget that this loss is only apparent, that this lost motion is to reappear under another form. It follows that the aggregate formed by means of this seeming loss of force, will come under the action of the modified motion, and, repassing from the concentrated to the diffused state, will be dissolved. All aggregates, the largest no less than the smallest, are subject to this law. Thus the conclusion of the evolution of the cosmos, is universal dissolution, by virtue of that great rhythmical law which is the corollary of the persistence of force. This disso- lution is indeed to be followed by fresh evolutions ; but the fact remains, nevertheless, that our world, with all which it contains, is to be re-absorbed into the sidereal nebula, and that it is ever tending to the dissolution of its present organisation. 1 "First Principles," Herbert Spencer, p. 327. HERBERT SPENCER. 201 "The processes everywhere in antagonism and everywhere gaining now a temporary and now a more or less permanent triumph, the one over the other, we call evolution and disso- lution. Evolution, under its simplest and most general aspect, is the integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ; while dissolution is the absorption of motion and concomitant disintegration of matter. . . . Everywhere, and to the last, the change at any moment going on, forms a part of one or other of the two processes. During the earlier part of the cycle of changes, the integration predominates there goes on what we call growth. The middle part of the cycle is usually characterised, not by equilibrium between the integrating and disintegrating processes, but by alternate ex- cesses of them. And the cycle closes with a period in which disintegration, beginning to predominate, eventually puts a stop to integration, and undoes what integration had originally done." l While predicating this melancholy conclusion of cosmical evolution, Herbert Spencer nevertheless seeks to trace back its development to less general laws than the simple integration and concentration of matter. The question arises, How does matter pass from its primordial diffusion to a state of integra- tion, the progress of which is measured by the intensity of the concentration ? In the case of the living organism, progression means differentiation, self-determination. Everything begins in complete indefiniteness, confusion, the absolutely homo- geneous. How, starting from this homogeneous, do we arrive by the simple laws of motion (accepting as a principle the persistence of force) at definite multiple existences ? Here we must distinguish between the inorganic and the organic world. Both are subject to the same laws, but in the case of the latter they are fuller, more complete. Herbert Spencer lays down two great laws to explain the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, or of the one into the 1 " First Principles," Herbert Spencer, p. 285. 202 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. multiple. The first of these laws is the instability of the homo- geneous. " This instability is obviously consequent on the fact that the several parts of any homogeneous aggregation are necessarily exposed to different forces forces that differ either in kind or in amount, and being exposed to different forces, they are of necessity differently modified. The relations of outside and inside, and of comparative nearness to neighbour- ing sources of influence, imply the reception of influences that are unlike in quantity or quality, or both; and it follows that unlike changes will be produced in the parts thus dissimilarly acted upon." 1 Thus the uniform passes into the multiform, and differentiation and diversity are produced. The second law does not relate simply to the action of forces upon the homogeneous, but to the action of the homo- geneous upon forces. " When a uniform aggregate is subject to a uniform force, we have seen that its constituents, being differently conditioned, are differently modified. But action and reaction being equal and opposite, it follows that in dif- ferentiating the parts on which it falls in unlike ways, the incident force itself must be correspondingly differentiated. Instead of being, as before, a mixed force, it must thereafter be a multiform force, a group of dissimilar forces." 2 This law is called the law of " the multiplication of effects." "A single torce is divided by conflict with matter into forces that widely diverge." A very simple illustration will make this truth manifest. " Take the lighting of a candle. Primarily, this is a chemical change consequent on a rise of temperature. The process of combination having once been set going by extraneous heat, there is a continued formation of carbonic acid, water, etc. in itself a result more complex than the extraneous heat which first caused it. But along with this process of combination there is a production of heat ; there is a production of light ; there is an ascending column of 1 " First Principles," Herbert Spencer, p. 404. 2 Ibid., p. 431. HERBERT SPENCER. 203 hot gases generated ; there are currents established in the surrounding air. Nor does the decomposition of one force into many forces end here. Each of the several changes worked becomes the parent of further changes. . . . The heat given out melts the adjacent tallow, and expands whatever it warms. The light, falling on various substances, calls forth from them reactions by which it is modified, and so divers colours are produced. Similarly even with these secondary actions, which may be traced into ever-multiplying ramifica- tions until they become too minute to be appreciated." 1 We have seen, then, how the homogeneous lapses into the heterogeneous; but this heterogeneous is still vague and chaotic. How are we to advance from the indefinite to the definite ? Here comes in the third law, that of segregation, by which the various groups of units of which the aggregate consists are separated from each other, as the wind in autumn picks out the dying leaves from among their still living companions, and sweeps them together in heaps. When iron ore is subjected to the action of fire, the iron falls to the bottom, separating itself from the useless particles. " Chemical affinity, acting differently on the components of a given body, enables us to take away some components and leave the rest behind." 2 Such a process of separation and selection is constantly going on in nature. These three laws explain to us the varieties of races and species, and account for that principle of differentiation in nature which is the very principle of progress. The organic world is no less subject to these laws than the inorganic, only they are modified so as to conform to the conditions of existence ; or rather, they constitute those conditions. The law of segrega- tion becomes the law of natural selection, as formulated by Darwin. It is this which differentiates the various kingdoms, classes, and species, always giving the preponderance to the 1 " First Principles," Herbert Spencer, p. 433. 1 Ibid., pp. 460, 461. 204 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. fittest. Natural selection is the segregation of living organisms effected by themselves in the struggle for existence. Two other laws explain their preservation and progress : First The law of co-ordination or integration, which establishes harmony between the differentiated elements of which the living organism is composed, and forms them into a well-compacted whole. Second. The law of adaptation to environment, with- out which the law of natural filiation could not produce any lasting structural modification. By the operation of these laws the living organism arrives at the moving equilibrium, which is quite distinct from the motionless equilibrium of the inorganic world. This equilibrium is twofold ; for the organised existence needs to be brought into equilibrium, first with itself, and then with its changing environment The former equilibrium is effected by the law of co-ordination : the latter by that of adaptation to environment But whether direct or indirect, equilibrium is not the final term of motion, since the law of rhythm, which demands that dissolution should follow evolu- tion, sentences all living things, with the world in which they exist, to be dissolved, to give place to a new progression, which in its turn must be absorbed into the chaos of dissolution. In tracing the operation of these two laws of co-ordination and adaptation, Herbert Spencer makes large use of the Dar- winian theories, which he is careful to connect with the first principle which underlies the whole of his explanation. He- redity plays an important part in his system ; it is the means of transmitting the progress achieved in the struggle for exist- ence, and modifies not only the instincts but also the physical organism. In order to give more clearness to this exposition, made so graphic by Herbert Spencer, let us take one of the animal species with which we are familiar. We leave to the anthro- pologist all that relates to man himself. Let us only attempt rapidly to trace the evolutions by which we derive from the primordial homogeneous the mammalia the highest form of HERBERT SPENCER. 205 animal organisation. Like all other organised existences, this formed part of the primary homogeneous, in which all was indeterminate, because there was no such thing as concentra- tion; and motion, like a strong wind, agitating the molecules, made it impossible for them to come together. When once the heterogeneous had been evolved from the homogeneous, according to the laws indicated, there were formed masses, groups of matter, which became concentrated and co-ordinated. These were subject to forces which became separated and refracted as they fell on to the unlike units of this still formless whole, and hence arose new modifications which then go on in- creasing indefinitely. The law of segregration gathers into groups the units which resemble each other. The first living organism that appears is very slightly, imperfectly defined, as we see in the zoophytes, which are at the bottom of the scale of animal life. Differentiation goes on under the action of the law of segregation, which becomes the law of the survival of the fittest. Living organisms become more and more fully developed ; and their progress is transmitted by the law of heredity. Every new step in the scale is won t?y the victory of the strong over the weak. The law of adaptation provides for the safety of the animal economy under the new and improved con- ditions ; there is a constant co-ordination going on among the organs. Changes of environment in their turn aid in the work of differentiation, that is, of progress ; the law of adaptation or of adjustment prevents their exercising a destructive in- fluence. We are thus brought up to existing mammalia; social life among them is still in a rudimentary state : it will advance under the influence of the law of specification, which implies a division of labour both between the various parts of the same organism and the members of the same social aggregate, whether animal or human. The last stage of evolution lies still beyond us ; when it shall have been reached, the era of dissolution will begin. All things will relapse into the prime- val chaos ; the predominance of the repulsive forces will 206 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. scatter to the winds all that concentrated wealth of various life, which is but an ephemeral gleam of light in the ever- recurring cycles of evolution and dissolution. 1 Such is this system, the conception of so masterly a mind. We must not, however, allow ourselves to be blinded by its per- vading unity to its real inadequacy. We need not dwell upon its primary inconsistency, because we have already spoken of this in treating of the problem of knowledge. The axiom of the persistence of force, which, as an axiom, does not admit of proof, is out of place in a philosophy which excludes the & priori altogether. And yet, through the ingenious deductions of Herbert Spencer, it becomes the universal key, the complete explanation of the origin and development of things. We ask once again, how any place whatever can be allowed to that great unknowable which Herbert Spencer admits, that final x which is but the name of the absolute. If everything is to be explained on mechanical principles, it must be absurd still to speak of the unknowable- and the absolute ; and yet, according to Spencer, we cannot think of the relative without, by that- very fact, recognising the idea of the absolute. To pass on. There is another objection to which Herbert Spencer will find it difficult to reply. He has no account to give of the first transition from the homogeneous to the hetero- geneous. At the starting-point of evolution, the homogeneous alone exists ; it has neither within nor without, nor any differen- tiated parts, else it would not be the primordial homogeneous ; we should then have to go still further back, and the diffi- culty would only be removed another stage. It follows, that all that we are told, whether of the various ways in which the parts of the whole are affected by the force which comes into contact with them, or of the reaction of the various parts upon this force in accordance with the law of the multiplied? 1 The foregoing pages are a brief resume of Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." HERBERT SPENCER. 207 tion of effects, has no meaning so far as the period of universal indetermination is concerned, since in it there are no parts and no whole, but simply the pure homogeneous. How can we make a distinction between this confused mass and the forces operating upon it ? Herbert Spencer has then no plausible explanation of the beginning of evolution. 1 If we pass on to the principle of universal evolution itself, which is purely and simply the transformation of force ac- cording to mechanical laws, we object to Herbert Spencer that the living organism, such as he represents it, in order to reduce it to a piece of pure mechanism, does not correspond to the fulness and variety of life, and that in this state of abstraction and generality, the entity is indistinguishable from the non- entity. The author of "First Principles" obviously confines himself to the category of quantity, without giving any place to that of quality, that is, to the formal or formative cause of Aristotle, which alone differentiates, specialises, and realises living existence. The mechanism which suffices for quantity gives no adequate reason for the quality, without which there is no element of differentiation among living organisms, and consequently no evolution. We can only refer to the remarks already made on this subject. In any case, there is one thing which Herbert Spencer cannot explain, namely, the transition from the inorganic to the organic world, the production first of life, and then of thought and of consciousness, which he treats as merely transformations of motion. Like all the evolutionists, he is caught on the horn of this dilemma, which we cannot allow him to escape. Either the development of the living organism, when it passes to a new stage, comes from some cause higher than itself, or this capacity of development was latent in it virtually and po- tentially ; and, if so, we must recognise in it something more than force transformed. We are bound, in that case, to admit a higher principle, which develops itself under favourable 1 "Les Causes Finales," Tanet, Appendix, p. 70. 208 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. conditions, though these conditions were not capable of pro- ducing it, for it cannot resolve itself into these conditions as a whole into its parts ; it is something more and other than they. If we now consider the laws which govern the development of the living organism, without reverting to the objections already made to Darwinism, none of these laws is to be explained apart from design. Natural selection, we are told, is to carry on its selective work in the organic world, assuring the survival of the fittest ; but then it is not this selection which produces the fittest, since it implies that these favoured organisms already exist. Whence come these selected organisms, without which evolution could not begin ? They do not owe their fitness to a natural selection, which cannot perform its office without them. Their superiority must have been constitutional. The law of co-ordination cannot be identified with the law of segregation ; the latter only groups together things that are alike, while organic co-ordination makes dissimilar elements concur in the production of one and the same organ and function. " The problem to be solved," says M. Janet, " is the formation of a unity out of a multitude of divergent parts, as in the phe- nomenon of vision. The eye is the unity of a multitude of quite distinct component parts. Here is something more than mere mechanical construction; here is intelligent co-ordina- tion in view of an end." 1 The theory of adaptation to environment does not solve the difficulty. A change of environment does not produce at once a change in the organs. We have already shown that if the environment alone is changed, the animal, which has not been changed at the same time, is placed under disadvantageous conditions. "It is needful that the harmony between the organism and the element in which it is to live be prepared, as it is in the case of viviparous animals. Their embryo begins to be nourished by direct communication with the mother; when 1 " Les Causes Finales," Janet, Appendix, p. 76. HERBERT SPENCER. 209 the communication ceases at a given moment, the separation between the two begins. In order that the newly-born infant may live, it is necessary that, even in the embryonic stage, it shall have been so modified as to be able to derive nourishment from the mother's breast. It would die if it was not endowed beforehand with an organ capable of suction. It is evident that in this case the modification of the organ preceded the change of environment, and can only be explained by prevision, by design. Thus, we maintain that evolution is not self-sufficing, either in its initial stage or in its developments. Mechanical laws cannot explain either the first impulse of motion, or the production and co-ordination of life." l The transformation of force fails also to render an account of those transformations which have no analogy with the varieties of motion, namely, life and thought. We can very well understand, then, that in spite of its admirable arrange- ment, Herbert Spencer's system ends in its own destruction ; for the last term of evolution, according to him, is a return to the primordial diffusion. Evolution which is but the trans- formation of motion, has no other end than dissolution; the mechanical system which admits no element of design, must explain all by the rhythmic laws of repulsion and attraction, action and reaction. A world brought into being without a purpose, has no other destiny than to be destroyed. We can but ask why, in view of such a fatal necessity, should the world have been so nicely adjusted, regulated, and har- monised ? In spite of all his efforts to avoid it, Mr. Spencer has been forced to recognise design in the universe. It meets him on his way ; but since he would not admit it at the beginning, he cannot avail himself of it 'at the conclusion. This is the penalty of starting with so strong a previous bias. Evolution is only admissible on the theory that there has been a creation, for, apart from the fact of creation, it has no pur- pose, and vanishes in the universal dissolution. Creation does 1 " Les Causes Finales," p. 308. 210 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. not imply a series of sudden events and violent revolutions. The organism which it calls into existence has in itself poten- . tialities to be developed under the influence of efficient causes, without necessarily excluding possible interventions of the intelligent Cause. This potential existence is capable of a gradual and rational development, the goal of which is not to be annihilation, but a fuller life. But, we repeat, nothing can be found in the final development which was not ger- minally present at the beginning; and just as the manifold evolution of life cannot take its rise in a mere possibility, so the potential existence points us back to the eternal actuality of Aristotle, even to God Himself. It seems as if the great English thinker partially accepts on this point the spiritualistic view. He says, when speaking of the reconciliation between religion and science, " Very likely there will ever remain a need to give shape to that indefinite sense of an ultimate existence, which forms the basis of our intelligence." l In the conclusion of his " First Principles," he admits, as at least a permissible hypothesis, the possible ex- istence of an intelligent and conscious causation, though it eludes scientific research beneath the impenetrable veil of efficient and purely mechanical causes. 2 We can but ask why in all his later writings the illustrious author seems to ignore this lofty intuition, and, in repudiating the idea of God, to reject the only adequate explanation of the evidences of design in nature. H^CKEL. We shall not enter at any length upon HaeckePs theories. The ground he takes is so purely scientific that only specialists are competent to dispute it with him. From a philosophical point of view, he does not argue; he speaks like an oracle. Darwin is his divinity ; and, as his prophet or apostle, Hseckel 1 "First Principles, 1 ' p. 113. * Ibid. See Summary and Conclusion. H&CKEL. 211 pronounces sentence of excommunication on all who do not swear in verba magistri. The standard by which he measures nations and individuals is their adherence to the theory of evolution. Hseckel has given it a new name \ he calls it monism, to indicate from the outset that he recognises only one principle of things, the materialistic or mechanical prin- ciple. He brings to bear on his subject a vast accumulation of knowledge and a singular clearness of exposition. The following passage may serve as an example of the boldness of his affirmations : " We shall see in the course of our inquiries how, through Darwin's reform of the doctrine of evolution, the most wonderful problems, hitherto deemed unapproach- able, of the organisation of man and animals, have admitted of a natural solution, of a mechanical explanation by non- purposive causes. It has enabled as to substitute everywhere unconscious causes acting from necessity for conscious pur- posive causes. If the recent progress in the doctrine of evolution had accomplished only this, every thoughtful person must have admitted that even in this an immense advance had been made in knowledge. In consequence of it, the tendency called unitary or monistic, in contradistinction to the dualistic or binary, which has hitherto prevailed in speculative philosophy, must ultimately prevail throughout philosophy." 1 The banner of the crusade is thus fully unfurled ; but, as in most crusades, the champion brings to his cause more of faith and enthusiasm than vigorous demonstration. He is certainly not deficient in science; he enumerates a multitude of well- observed, carefully classified and lucidly stated facts, but he often evades the rigorous laws of scientific reasoning, and on the most important points sometimes contents himself with hypotheses. He weaves hypothesis into the chain of his argument, and draws deductions from it as though it were certain and demonstrated fact. He, of course, accepts, with- 1 "The Evolution of Man," Ernest Haeckel. English Translation, vol. i., p. 17. 212 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. out verifying them for himselt, all the results of Darwinism with regard to natural selection, heredity, and the law of adaptation. We need not repeat the arguments we have already urged against these assumed laws of nature and their results. We are free to admit, however, that Hseckel has worked out with rare power and fulness of information what seems to us one of the strongest proofs of the theory of evo- lution, though utterly inconclusive as an argument for the monistic or mechanical theory of the universe. We refer to the evidence supplied by embryology. According to Haeckel, the embryo passes through all the stages of the general evo- lution of animal forms. He says : " The entire process of the evolution of the individual presents to the eye a con- nected series of diverse animal forms ; and these various animal forms exhibit very diverse conditions of external and internal structure." 1 "At a certain period the embryo has essentially the anatomical structure of a lancelet, later of a fish, and in subsequent stages, those of amphibian and mammalian forms ; and in the further evolutions of these mammalian forms those first appear which stand lowest in the series, namely, forms allied to the beaked animals ; then those allied to pouched animals, which are followed by forms most resembling apes." 2 Dumont observes that " this order is the same as that in which the succession of diverse animal forms is revealed to us by the palaeontological history of the earth. 3 We do not dispute the significance of this argument in support of the theory of evolution ; but it is certainly insufficient to decide the question of the transformation of species on Dar- winian principles. It rather tends to favour Naudin's theory of evolution," which admits, as we have seen, a variable period of plasticity within certain limits. In any case the fact that we can closely trace in the embryo, as in a living epitome, 1 "The Evolution of Man," Ernest Haeckel, vol. i, p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 3. 8 " Haeckel et la Theorie de 1'Evolution en Allemagne." Dumont. H&CKEL. 213 the regular progression of animal forms from the lowest to the highest, is no argument for the absence of design. This gradual development implies a principle, a germ, a poten- tiality including the whole series, and this brings us again to the potential existence which no mechanical theory has ever availed to explain. We may add, that the life of the embryo gives us no indication of the manifestation of the higher life, the life of the mind, nor even of that of sensation, and no bridge is thrown over the great gulf between the physical and the moral. Haeckel is not stumbled by such slight difficulties as these. He has not even attempted to show how this passageis effected. He has not touched any of the problems of psychology, which, in fact, he ignores altogether. He is satisfied with setting up the genealogical tree of organised life, starting from the first living cell, from that moneron discovered by him, "a body without definite form, a mere particle of primitive slime, a little mass of living albumen, performing all the essential functions of life, and everywhere met with as the material basis of life." l From this simple protoplasm existing in the depths of the sea, universal life is derived by a process far from complicated, for it consists at first in a simple separation of the moneron into two parts. " The first and oldest process of organic differen- tiation, which affected the homogeneous and structureless plas- son body of the monera, caused the separation of the latter into two different substances; an inner firmer substance, the kernel, or nucleus, and an outer softer substance, the cell-sub- stance, vt protoplasms. By this extremely important separative process, the organised cell originated from the structureless cytoid." 2 This process is continued by subdivision till a grouping of cells is the result. These cells form a sort of republic in which the various parts combine to form a well- ordered whole, a true organism. All this appears to the eager 1 "The Evolution of Man," Ernst Haeckel, vol. iv., pp. 30, 31. 1 Ibid., p. 50. 214 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. naturalist as clear as day. This republic of blind elements agreeing together to produce the most perfect harmony, pre- sents no difficulty to his mind ; as though combination and co-operation were possible in the absence of anything like an intelligent or governing principle. We have never found human society established on a well-organised basis, till some degree of culture has been attained. The primitive cells, happier though less privileged, since every gleam of reason is denied them, realise at once a perfect organisation, which needs only to be developed in order to give the higher life. But what power, we ask, gave the first impulse to evolution ? What led the cell to divide and subdivide, to combine in groups and to organise itself? None of 'the later laws of evolution, neither the struggle for existence nor the law of adaptation, can be applied in this single formless cell. And yet it is the basis of all. If we are told that it so divides because it has been increased by alimentation, then a simple accession of matter accounts for all, and we wonder why that which sufficed to give the first impulse should have been inadequate to produce any ulterior development Moreover, the augmentation of matter in no way implies division, still less orderly subdivision and grouping. If we consider development itself, the scale of evolution as given us by Haeckel, we must acknowledge that, by his own admission, more than one round of the ladder is wanting. We draw attention specially to his admission that the immediate ancestor of man has not been discovered. Haeckel predicts that he will be found, but this is mere sup- position. The chain is none the less broken in one of its most essential links. That which appears to us a still graver difficulty, is that this chain begins in nothingness, for Hseckel is obliged to content himself with a purely gratuitous hypothesis as to the origin of life. Spontaneous generation is a mystery enacted in the depths of ocean, by means of unknown chemical combinations. It asks of us, therefore, an implicit act of faith. The words H&CKEL. 215 of the author of the " Evolution of Man " bring this home to us very strongly. He says : " The one-celled condition in which each man begins his existence as a simple parent-cell or cytula justifies us in affirming that the oldest ancestors of the human race (as of the whole animal kingdom) were simple amoeboid cells." Here arises another question : " Whence, in the beginning of the organic history of the earth, came the earliest amoebae ? " To this there is but one reply. " Like all one-celled organisms, the amoebae have originally developed only from the simplest organisms known to us the monera. These monera, which we have already described, are also the simplest conceivable organisms. Their body has no definite form, and is but a particle of primitive slime (plasson), a little mass of living albumen, performing all the essential functions of life, and everywhere met with as the material basis of life. This brings us to the last, or perhaps the first, question in the history of evolution the question as to the origin of the mon- era; and this is the momentous question as to the prime origin of life the question of spontaneous generation, genera- tio spontanea or aquivoca. ... In the definite, limited sense in which I maintain spontaneous generation, and assume it as a necessary hypothesis in explanation of the first beginning of life upon the earth, it merely implies the origin of monera from inorganic carbon compounds. When animated bodies first appeared on our planet, previously without life, there must, in the first place, have been formed, by a process purely che- mical, from purely inorganic carbon combinations, that very complex nitrogenised carbon compound which we call plasson, or 'primitive slime/ and which is the oldest material sub- stance in which all vital activities are embodied. In the lowest depths of the sea such homogeneous amorphous protoplasm probably still lives in its simplest character, under the name of bathybius. Each individual living particle of this structureless mass is called a moneron. The oldest monera originated in the sea by spontaneous generation, just as crystals form in the 2i6 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. mother-liquor. This assumption is required by the demand of the human understanding for causation. For when, on the one hand, we reflect that the whole inorganic history of the earth proceeds in accordance with mechanical laws and without any intervention by creative power, and when, on the other hand, we consider that the entire organic history of the world is also determined by similar mechanical laws; when we see that no supernatural interference by a creative power is needed for the production of the various organisms, then it is certainly quite inconsistent to assume such supernatural creative inter- ference for the first production of life upon our globe. At all events we, as investigators of nature, are bound at least to attempt a natural explanation. . . . The doctrine of spon- taneous generation cannot be experimentally refuted. For each experiment with a negative result merely proves that under the conditions (always very artificial) supplied by us, no organism has been produced from inorganic combinations. Neither can the theory of spontaneous generation be experi- mentally proved, unless great difficulties are overcome. . . . He, however, who does not assume a spontaneous generation of monera, in the sense here indicated, to explain the first origin of life upon our earth, has no other resource but to believe in a supernatural miracle." l We are thus required to accept a postulate based purely upon a strong prejudice. It would be hard to find a more decisive argument against a system which is constrained to accept a gratuitous hypothesis, because of its author's precon- ceived ideas. Rigorous science, which is always averse to preconceptions, has pronounced with just severity against this convenient mode of argument, by the mouth of one of its most illustrious and freest thinkers, whom no one will accuse of being a partisan of Christian spiritualism. In the congress of German Naturalists, held in Munich in 1876, M. Virchow objected to the demand made by Hseckel that the theory of transforma- 1 "Evolution of Man," Ernst Haeckel, vol. ii., pp. 30-32. H&CKEL. 217 tion should be introduced into the teaching of primary schools. He said : " With Darwinism, the theory of spontaneous genera- tion has again been brought to the front. I fully admit that the temptation is strong to add this crowning stone to the theory of man's descent. There is something satisfactory in being able to admit that a certain favoured group of atoms. Carbon and Co., were at a given moment, and under certain circumstances, separated from ordinary coal and gave birth to the primitive plasson, and that the same process is being repeated to-day. It is true no one can adduce a single positive fact in evidence thafsuch spontaneous generation ever took place, and that an inorganic mass, even of this firm of Carbon and Co., was ever transformed into an organic mass. Never- theless, I admit that if we propose to imagine to ourselves how the first organic being could have originated, there is no alter- native but spontaneous generation, unless we recur to creation. Tertium non datur. But spontaneous generation is not demon- strated, and we shall be wise to wait for its demonstration. We remember how lamentably all attempts have failed to find a place for it in tracing the passage of the most elementary forms from the inorganic to the organic kingdom. Haeckel will never be able to explain to us how, from the midst of this inorganic world, in which nothing changes, life can come forth. The lapse of countless ages makes no change in mechanical laws. And if we go back to the periods of incandescence in the history of our planet, we may fairly be reminded that intense heat is far more destructive than productive of life." 1 Let us recognise with Virchow, that there is nothing like life but life itself; that nature is twofold, and that, though formed of atoms of the same sort, organic matter presents a con- tinuous series of phenomena essentially differing in character from those of the inorganic world. Hseckel has not made his materialistic theory of trans- formation any more plausible by heralding it with a blast of i " Revue Scientifique," December 8th, 1877. 218 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. trumpets. He has found his way stopped by the impassable barriers of life and mind ; and if he has circumvented them with singular adroitness, he has not removed the obstacle stand- ing directly in the way. It has still to be encountered by all true scientists who are not prepared to accept with a blind credulity worthy of the veriest devotee, a gratuitous hypothesis as the basis of their system. 1 1 The question of the origin of organised life has been carried still further by M. Perrier in his learned work, " Les Colonies Animales et la Formation des Organismes " (Ed mond Perrier, Professor to the Natural History Museum, Paris). He justly observes that the infinitesimally minute creatures, which are said by the transformation theory to be pro- duced by spontaneous generation, exhibit life already in a state of develop- ment. In order to arrive at its first manifestation we must go as far back as the protoplasm which is their physical basis. Now, according to M. Perrier, it is impossible to separate this protoplasm from inorganic matter. He says : "All attempts fail to connect this protoplasm with any of the categories into which physical science divides bodies, it is neither a solid nor a liquid." The protoplasm resembles the albuminoids, its mean chemical composition is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, with a small quantity of sulphur and other mineral substances. It has been found as im- possible to reproduce it as to reproduce albumen, from which, however, it differs totally. Not only does the protoplasm differ from all chemical com- pounds by uninterrupted changes of composition, but also by the fact that none of the material atoms present in it at the moment when it can be taken and analysed (atoms which constitute the very essence of the chemical com- pound) are destined to remain in it. The chemical compound is charac- terised by its component substances, protoplasm by motion. Life is added and superposed to affinity and to the physical agents,so as to produce, in ad- dition to the physico-chemical phenomena, others proper to itself which are essentially phenomena of motion. It is idle to assume, as Haeckel does, that the history of life is only one particular chapter of the history of carbon. If all the chemical substances believed to enter into the composition of a given protoplasm were brought together and combined, so as to form a product chemically identical with it, it would yet be necessary to impart to the molecules thus compounded those complicated motions which characterise life, and which lead to a perpetual assimilation and consequent dissimilation, unknown to chemistry (" Colonies Animales," pp. 34-39). M. Perrier does not stop at this primary difference between protoplasm and a chemical compound. He defines with great distinctness the characteristics peculiar to the latter. "Nutrition," he says, " distinguishes HEGEL. 219 III. HEGEL'S THEORY OF IMMANENCE. After the school which denies design altogether, we come to that which admits it but in a very imperfect form, as deprived of consciousness. This is the school of unconscious and consequently impersonal adaptation. This school teaches that nature is not to be explained by mechanical laws ; it obeys a principle of adaptation by which it is disposed with a view to certain special and general ends, but this adaptation is not to be traced back to an intelligent and powerful Cause, which conceived the plan so marvellously carried out before our eyes. This plan is realised by virtue of an immanent internal principle of adaptation. Here the school divides into two great the living substance from the mineral. The crystal only attracts to itself molecules possessing its own chemical composition, the protoplasm absorbs substances of variable composition, decomposes them, assimilates some of their parts and rejects others. Protoplasm is subject to an internal motion which never stops." M. Perrier recognises, like Claude Bernard, a direct- ing idea which impresses diverse forms upon the products of protoplasm. " It possesses also," he says, " the power to evolve various forms. There are then in it hidden springs, for neither the separate atoms nor their com- binations are capable of evolution" (Ibid., pp. 40, 41). Lastly, while the crystal is capable of indefinite accretion, protoplasm exists only in an individual state, and is of limited size. Protoplasm reproduces itself by dividing, it constitutes therefore a class of substance altogether apart. The corpse supplies us with the final illustration of the distinction between the inorganic and the living body, for it possesses all the chemical elements of composition which are in the living being, and yet it has not life. M. Perrier attempts, indeed, to give us an explanation of the origin of life. He makes it spring forth from the vortices of that mysterious element called ether, the last term of substance as it passes into motion, but he himself admits that this is only a hypothesis, and he regards it as in no way exclusive of an intelligent First Cause. "The physicist in his laboratory," he says, "can only conceive of the Deity as presiding from all eternity over the existence of matter and of motion, of which He is Himself the first cause, and as directing the operation of those laws which govern the succession of phenomena." We have already seen that this eminent naturalist admits design by his theory of hidden springs in protoplasm. 220 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. branches, of which one tends to optimism, the other to pes- simism. Hegelian metaphysics belongs to the former branch. The immanent principle of adaptation leads, according to its teaching, to glorious results. Its final term is the Absolute Spirit ; towards him it has been ever tending, it is his thoughts in logical sequence which it has been unfolding in the endless succession of things ; it is these which it externalised in some sort in nature and brought into ideal and conscious life in the mind of man, the bright mirror in which, after his diffusion, the Absolute Spirit beholds himself. God becomes, God fashions, differentiates, apprehends himself, reveals himself to himself step by step till he manifests himself as the Spirit, as the last term of that vast and ceaseless development which is ever recommencing. So far from its being he who in the beginning of things conceived the plan of the universe with its admirable co-ordination, everything is derived from an elementary entity so abstracted and denuded that it is called the Not-being. The principle of adaptation which directs the universal develop- ment, and which is so completely subject to the laws of logic that it can be deduced from reason as a series of closely con- nected theorems, is immanent in things. It has no cognisance of itself until its last term, the climax of its development, in the Spirit which disengages itself from the externalisation to which it has been subjected in nature. Nature is its realised thought but without consciousness or will, for immanence thus under- stood, excluding all that is transcendent, does not place the world, with reference to God, in the relation of effect to cause, but makes God the effect of the world, the resultant of all the antecedent progression. The world has obeyed a blind impulse, which yet had reason in it, since it has made every- thing work together towards a supreme end. After exerting a great influence on the thought of the age at the commencement of the century, Hegelianism is become in our day all but completely obsolete. Although, in our opinion, it is infinitely superior in the boldness of its metaphysical HEGEL. 221 system to the gross materialism of the day, it has so little in- fluence now on thought that it is not necessary to enter into a prolonged discussion of it. The only point on which it might be worth while to dwell, because it is one which has been taken up by some schools exerting a great influence in our own time, is that of adaptation as immanent in nature, as opposed to a transcendent purposive cause. Things, we are told, would fulfil their proper purpose without any intelligent cause above or prior to them, to foresee, to combine, to adapt means to ends- Let us observe, first of all, that we must be on our guard against establishing an absolute opposition between transcendent and immanent adaptation. It is by no means necessary that the intelligent and poweful Cause by which the world was conceived and organised, should be always acting upon it from without by miraculous interventions. It may well have given it so perfect an organisation that it is able to develop itself, according to its proper design, by virtue of the laws given and the intrinsic virtue imparted to it. We can conceive of the world as a watch that can go without constant re-winding. It may be endowed with springs capable of indefinite motion, and disposed at first with such perfect exactness that there is no more need for any fresh intervention unless some disturbance takes place. We are then quite prepared to admit this kind of immanent purpose;- but that which needs to be demonstrated is, that such a purpose could be realised spontaneously, that this admirable co-ordination of means and ends could have been brought about by some blind instinct, incapable of any pre- vision, when the co-ordination of various forces to a future end necessarily implies prevision, that is to say, the opposite of blind instinct. That the watch goes of itself to-day, proves only one thing, namely, the perfection of the original act by which it was disposed, that is to say, the wisdom of the artificer and the skill of his hand. The more clearly you prove the immanent, the more do you of necessity imply the transcendent as indispensable at the beginning ; for adaptation 222 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. in the world is only possible by virtue of an intelligent thought which could not have lain buried and slumbering in the primitive diffusion of things. The plan of the edifice assuredly did not form itself little by little as the structure rose in such harmonious proportions. This is emphatically true with relation to the living machines called organisms, and of that vast accumulation of these machines .which constitutes the world, the organic whole. In short, the world, according to Hegel, develops a vast and noble conception, all the parts of which are rationally connec- ted, and yet, according to his system, this conception had no originator, for it does not precede the things themselves but results from them. This is wholly inexplicable. If an in- telligent and powerful Cause did not create and dispose the world, the world must have originated in a pure potentiality, containing all forms of the possible. We fail to conceive, first, how this potential passed into the actual, and then how a rational choice was made between the various possibilities. When adaptation is once admitted in any degree, it implies a predetermination, a predisposition, which is nothing else than the idea of the effect to be produced. " What can an idea be, if it is not an intellectual act, made present to mind by con- sciousness ? " l IV. SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN. RENAN AND JULES SOURY. We have seen how the theory of immanence, as formulated by Hegel, leads to optimism, since by virtue of the indwelling logic which governs the world, all is well, and even evil itself contributes to this dialectic, which makes every fresh stage in the progress of existence to consist in the reconciliation of two contradictory terms. 1 " Les Causes Finales," Janet, Book II., chap, ii., 2. See a very conclusive refutation of Hegelian pantheism in Jules Simon's " Natural Religion." SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN. 223 We find the theory of immanence also in Schopenhauer and Hartmann, and adaptation in connection with it. In their philosophy it is called the Unconscious, and its tendency is in an opposite direction, namely to pessimism. 1 This school is very popular just now, its doleful auguries are specially affected by those virtuosi of the thinking world, who, aiming mainly at effect, harp ad nauseam on the theme in vogue, like street musicians on a popular air. It is the strain of despair which seems in our day, if not the most beautiful, at any rate the most piquant, and we are wearied with its repetition. Even Hart- mann, in spite of his extensive learning and his powers as a metaphysician, has often enhanced his tragic theme by para- doxes so strange that they might be most fitly paralleled by the physical contortions of a clown. 3 It must be admitted, how- ever, that he, like his master, represents one of the great schools of thought, that v\hich argues, from the aspect of things, the triumph of evil over good, and thus raises against conscious design a grave objection, which it would be frivolous to ignore. Pessimism has been the inspiration of systems of religion and civilisation which have held millions of men under, their in- fluence for centuries. It is the true basis of Asiatic pantheism, of which Buddhism is the outcome. To the mind of the subtle Oriental races, imbued with these conceptions, individual life appears in itself a curse, as something outside the true exis- tence the Infinite. There is only one happy moment in the life of the perishable creature that which puts an end to his own proper existence and plunges him into the dark abyss of absolute Being. Our western Buddhism finds a still deeper source for the- misery of existence ; it regards it as accursed because it is bound up with the will. Now it is of the essence of will to desire that which it cannot obtain, and hence to pursue an end which is ever eluding it, and to consume itself in impotent desire. Schopenhauer sees nothing in the will 1 See " Schopenhauer's Philosophy." Ribot. 3 Philosophic des Unhewussten." Hartmann. 224 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. but effort and suffering. The representation or the idea is with him altogether secondary. Everything in the material as in the spiritual world, resolves itself into the will, that is to say, into throes of pain. In its latest form, pessimism is even more fully developed. We shall give a brief summary of this "Philosophy of the Unconscious" as presented in Hart- mann's famous work, which has been the great philosophical success of recent years. We shall only attempt to trace its main outlines. Hartmann avows himself a decided believer in teleology. No one has more strongly combated the purely mechanical ex- planation of the universe. The slightest muscular movement implies, in addition to the purely nervous act, a motive idea, a mental representation of the muscular point to be moved. Nature has a restorative and reparative virtue which cannot be traced to mere motions. Evolution is not simply the develop- ment of a self-identical force. Every progression in nature is the expansion of a new germ, which had been present in a latent form in the antecedents. * Progression is not then due solely to external circumstances, such as the struggle for existence or the change of environment. These circumstances have indeed an influence on the development of existence, but that develop- ment is due to the virtue of the new germ implanted by a higher power, and not of their own originating. This higher power, which orders, combines, and disposes all things in regular sequence, is not a supernatural cause, an intelligent and free being, it is nothing else than the " Unconscious," or the great All. Hartmann gives the key-note of his system in these words : " To bring together all the phenomena of thought which exhibit unconscious ideas and unconscious volitions; and by means of this collection of facts to demonstrate the existence of the common principle which explains them all, is the object of the first two sections of this work." 2 1 See " Philosophic des Unbewussten." Hartmann. 3 Ibid.) " Einleitendes," p. 2. HARTMANN. 22$ The object of this demonstration is to show that the Uncon- scious is nothing else than the One-All, in which the entire universe is contained. The proof results from the collation of two series of facts ; the first series is taken from nature and animal life ; that is to say, from the sphere of life in which con- sciousness is absent or incomplete. The author accumulates facts in evidence that this obscure world regulates itself with admirable wisdom, which can only be the manifestation of the Unconscious. Everything in this domain is at once intelligent and instinctive. Intelligence then can exist without conscious- ness. The second series of facts is taken from the world of man, in which it has always been assumed that intelli- gence reigns supreme. It is shown on the contrary, that its highest manifestations are spontaneous and instinctive rather than rational, and that they belong therefore to the sphere of the Unconscious. Thus it is the Unconscious, and not con- scious thought, which governs the world. We shall not follow Hartmann's elaboration of this ingenious argument. Our own minds can suggest many of the curious and interesting facts to be adduced in evidence of design at work in the organism of living creatures, in their growth, formation, functions, and in proof of the unfailing certainty of that instinct in animals which enables them to find their sustenance, and to secure the safety of their progeny (even when they are never to know them), to construct their habitations, and to conform to the great law of division of labour. The author has no difficulty in showing that instinct is compatible with a spontaneous skill not to be equalled in certainty and in fertility of combination by the most scientifically devised human industry. In the second part of his argument he brings out with equal clearness the share taken by spontaneity in human activity. We find at the outset instinct in this higher sphere just as in the animal world. Is it not instinct which is paramount in the endearments of love, in that sudden electric thrill which binds together two human souls ? The moral life is nourished in mysterious, Q 226 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. obscure depths, from whence springs all that is great and powerful. The will gives its decision in critical moments with lightning rapidity. Character, which constitutes the true ego, is, as it were, the subterranean source of our activity ; it is not formed by the reason. The influence of education and instruction is as nothing compared with this hidden, sovereign, inexplicable force. When man is raised above himself by the generous impulse of heroism, or when he attains the summit of genius, he is no longer his own ; calculation is absent from all that is great, it is the triumph of spontaneity. The more powerful the inspiration is, the more it carries us out of our- selves ; it is a sublime delirium, in which the mind loses sight of all its wonted and measured conceptions. The noblest possessions of thought have come by intuition, that is, spon- taneously, not by ordered search. Lastly, mysticism, which is the basis of that universal manifestation of the human soul called religion, is nothing else than unconsciousness, the loss of the conscious ego in the abyss of the Divine. In the history of humanity, the Unconscious reveals itself first in the mar- vellous invention of language, which would never have come from a slow process of thought ; and then in those great move- ments of the masses which suddenly regenerate the world, in that collective genius which inaugurates new eras by revolutions which defy all prevision and calculation. The immorality exemplified in history, which allows injustice to triumph proudly, while it suffers the best of men to fall one by one under the mysterious scythe, upon the ground watered by their tears and their sweat, without one pitying hand held out to succour them, is an overwhelming proof that the sovereign power does not belong to a wise and just Being capable of loving and succouring, of governing the world in accordance with what seems to us good ; but to an irresponsi- ble power without goodness, without compassion, indifferent as Nature itself to our woes in one the great unconscious All. He is neither good nor bad, neither just nor unjust, HARTMANN. 227 for he comes under none of the categories of conscious life, He has the certainty of instinct, of intuition. What is he then, in short ? He is at once the idea and the will ; the uncon- scious idea, the unconscious will. The idea contains in itself virtually the summation of possible existences. The will tends to realise them, and this it does blindly, without consciousness, with a sort of productive mania. To use Hartmann's image, the idea is the feminine element ; the will does violence to it to evolve from it the real existence. There is present in this first production of existences a principle of suffering, but the will never exhausts all the potentiality of the idea ; the possible always goes beyond the real. Hence the dim sense of some- thing lacking in a world always incomplete and haunted with unsatisfied desire. But the idea and the will only feel this pain in a very slight degree; it is uneasiness rather than suffer- ing, for consciousness has not yet begun. The theory of con- sciousness is the most obscure part of Hartmann's system ; it is not possible to make it really clear. As far as we understand it, it is this : Matter has been produced by the Unconscious ; it reduces itself to an almost ideal atomism, to a compound of forces subject to the laws of attraction. These atoms, in group- ing themselves, form various organisms ; the most perfect is the brain, which is the necessary condition of definite thought. From the moment when the unconscious idea comes in contact with the brain, it is localised or limited ; an obstacle is pre- sented to its indeterminateness. It comes into collision with something which the Unconscious has not willed, and which is a barrier to it Thus thrown back upon itself, reflexion begins, and with reflexion the consciousness which distinguishes be- tween the ego and the non-ego represented by the material organism. "Suddenly, in the midst of that peace which the Unconscious enjoys with itself, arises organised matter, the action of which excites the reaction of sensibility and presents to it an idea which seems to have fallen from heaven, for it feels in itself no will to produce it For the first time the 228 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. object of its intuition comes to it from without. The great revolution is begun, the first step is taken towards the enfran- chisement of the world. The idea is emancipated from the will; in future it will be capable of opposing it. The astonish- ment of the will at this revolt, the sensation that the appearance of the idea produces in the Unconscious, this is consciousness. 1 As soon as consciousness appears, the pain of the world, which was before dull, becomes acute. The tragedy begins, but at the same time the means of deliverance is found. Of this formation of consciousness by the brain we may say, '''Felix culpa" for this suffering of the world ceases just because it becomes intolerable. The conscious ego has subdivided itself into a multitude of individuals who are only the co-ordi- nation of atoms or atomic forces grouped in time and space. Each particular being, each individual, is the resultant of the reciprocal action of the diversified wills of the One- All. They are not beings, but acts of the Being. The conscious and individual being aspires to repudiate this accursed life concen- trated in him ; he aims to return to unity from multiplicity, in order that, by concentrating more and more the conscious life, he may destroy it at one blow, and with it this world of despair. Hartmann paints in vivid colours the universal agony. He shows that suffering increases with the development of life, that happiness can be only negative, that all joy has its counterpart in ever-growing pain. Optimism is only a ridiculous illusion, whether it places happiness in the present life, the balance- sheet of which always shows a loss, or discounts on the future a bill without any security, or takes refuge in the theory of progress, which is the silliest of all deceptions. Our demo- cratic institutions efface all the fine distinctions of art and of thought. The happiness of the greatest number means the lowering of the general level ; thus it runs counter to all the conditions of excellence, which requires the preponderance of the select few over the vulgar many. The light becomes grey 1 See " Philosophic des Unbewussten," Hartmann. HARTMANN. 229 and cold by diffusion. The object of our aspiration must be the time when the last man shall see the light upon a frozen earth, when consciousness shall have done its work, which is to lead all men to the voluntary extinction of life. Then the Unconscious will regain its idea-less tranquillity, unless it evolves a new world of suffering. Happily, it will never be- come conscious. In short, in the beginning, in the period of pure unconscious- ness, there was no conflict between the idea and the will, and therefore no opposition to the production of the world. When the idea became conscious, the will was enlightened, it under- stood that its works were accursed, and it turned against them. After having created all, it seeks to destroy all. This colossal suicide is the result of conscious life. For this very reason it is a boon, for good results from the excess of evil, and the one possible good is annihilation. Meanwhile, it is lawful for each individual to seek his own interest ; selfishness is the only reasonable thing, it is not for us to be more generous than the Unconscious. Moreover, it is only egoism which has produced individuality. Morals belong only to the world ot appearances. If we aim at success, it is because this is our great interest. Justice, which has no eternal basis, since it has no existence in the Unconscious, is troublesome, since it helps to maintain the equilibrium of things as they are. Charity does more harm than good, by postponing their necessary destruction. All things considered, the will of Nature produces more pain than pleasure. In order to escape from this calamity of the will, the unconscious idea, which has not been able to prevent the misfortune, has recourse to consciousness, which is to emancipate the idea by subdividing the will in the process of individualisation, and by drawing it in opposite directions which neutralise each other. By the development of consciousness the will is to be reduced to nothingness ! The objections are manifold to this ingenious system, which, in spite of the brilliancy of its exposition, seems (except on one 230 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. point, to which we shall refer again) more like a prodigious jeu d'esprit, a gauntlet thrown down in sport, than a serious meta- physical essay. At the very outset it is marred by a funda- mental contradiction. The Unconscious is proclaimed to b.e infallible ; we are told that it is never mistaken in the way in which it instinctively guides the world, where it reigns alone ; and yet this world in itself, even before the great folly and agony of consciousness begins, is a colossal mistake. However vague its suffering is, it is real, and arises out of the impassable distance between the will and the idea, the will never being able to realise all the possible contained in the idea. However indefinite, the conflict exists ; the Unconscious has then per- petrated a folly. What does it avail to accredit it with in- fallibility in details, if the whole thing is a grand mistake? What can we understand by this instinct which is infallible where it has to provide for the nourishment of larvae, but which has commenced its work with a prodigious blunder? How can we admit a well-ordered design in the parts, when the whole is an absurdity ? The system is no less contradictory in its assertions as to the genesis of consciousness. In the first place, how is it possible to understand how consciousness should take its rise despite the Unconscious ? Is it not the Unconscious which has produced the material organism from its lowest rudiments to that delicate, finely adjusted instrument the brain ? Yet it is the brain which, stemming mere instinct, raises it to reflexion and consciousness, that is to say, converts it into something not intended by the Unconscious, and thus the first conflict begins between the idea and the will. On what ground can it be assumed that the Unconscious did not will this contact of instinct with the brain, if it is true that it did not prevent the formation of that inopportune organ? He willed the means by which conscience was produced ; is not this the same thing as willing its production ? It is impossible to escape this difficulty. Let us look, in the next place, at the part assigned to consciousness. We are told that its mission HARTMANN. 231 is one of enfranchisement, because by urging on to its utmost limit the suffering of the world, it leads the conscious creature, in whom all this suffering is concentrated, to seek to destroy its cause, to put an end to life and being. But surely it was this same supposed deliverer which really produced the suffer- ing. Before its appearance suffering was so indistinct, so vague, that it could hardly be said to exist. Suffering which is not felt is not suffering, and how could suffering be felt without consciousness ? In short, it is consciousness which gives birth to our sufferings, it is this which binds the hungry vulture to Prometheus' side. What it destroys is its own handiwork consequently its supposed work of deliverance is a farce. We might well crave to be saved from this deliverance, since it is also the cause of the anguish to which it is supposed to put an end. It is the world's executioner an executioner who does not do his work at a blow, but who protracts and intensities his torture during endless ages. It is evident that when he shall have struck his last blow, there will be no more cries and tears, because there will be no one left to sigh or suffer. But it would have been simpler to leave out the executioner alto- gether. The benefit of the last blow of his axe is altogether outweighed by the previous tortures of which he has been the author. In a word, if the world is a folly, the Unconscious by which it was produced is fatuous. All is pure irrationality, why should we try to philosophise ? Let us cease this comedy, which casts no cheering ray upon the dark delirium of exis- tence. If, turning for a moment from these strange aspects of the system, we consider the ingenious and often striking observa- tions by which the author tries to establish the universality and superiority of unconsciousness by pointing out in the animal world the certainty of instinct, and in human life the glorious aspect of the spontaneous, whirh he holds to be purely in- stinctive, we should make the same objection to that which is 232 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. absolute in his system which we have already raised against the theory of immanence. He calls us to admire marks of design in nature, combinations perfect in their adaptation to the end in view, that is to say, to a coming event which cannot be apprehended by sensation. This design in nature implies prevision, and consequently intelligence, which is something apart from the fluctuations of mere sensation. We have within, in our mental consciousness, the perfect type of this .thought which foresees and combines. We ourselves have recognised how far superior is its operation to that of instinct. It alone can disperse the illusions of passion, and can overcome indeci- sion, by making us weigh our motives and adapt means to the end in view. It teaches us our true interest ; and to it civilisation owes its progress. It would seem that we have here a sufficient explanation of design, for, having discovered it in ourselves, there is nothing to prevent our admitting its exis- tence prior to and above ourselves. Everything points to this conclusion, for the effect cannot be greater than the cause. The mind within us can only have been produced by mind. In admitting that mind, not feeble and limited, as it is in us, but absolute and all-powerful, is the principle of things, the adaptation which we trace in them ceases to be obscure. It is an adaptation derived from the supreme Intelligence, which alone is capable of prevision and combination. To prefer to substi- tute for this the Unconscious, incapable of any prevision, of any volition with a view to an end, is at best to have re- course to the less to explain the greater, to the obscure to explain that which is clear. In view of the smallest work of man, we exclaim, Here is the evidence of mind. Yet, looking on this vast organisation of the world, the presence of mind is denied, and its explanation is sought in the unintelligent, the Unconscious. We do not deny instinct and its marvels ; what we do deny is, that it is self-sufficing, and that the most per- fectly adjusted results are to be assigned to a cause incapable of foreseeing. RENAN. 233 We observe also that Hartmann has made the domain of instinct singularly broad, and that in identifying the raptures of love, the miracles of genius, and the sublime deeds of heroism with the instinct of the insect, he has forgotten that in man spontaneity is never dissociated from consciousness, that intelligence is always an element in acts of the most spon- taneous generosity, and that in its lightning rapidity, the play of conscious thought combined with the effort of the will, is something infinitely higher than mere animal instinct. All that has just been adduced in opposition to the theory of unconscious design, applies point by point to the strange cos- mogony laid down by M. Renan with his peculiar skill as a writer, in his " Dialogues Philosophiques." He also recognises design, the carrying out of a plan in the world, while at the same time he maintains that there is nothing in it to reveal another will than that of man, as though this design, this plan, did not imply an intelligent cause, capable of prevision and combination; as though the mere existence of the thinking and willing creature called man did not point to a cause at least equal in intelligence and power. M. Renan would have us believe that the mysterious power hidden in the heart of nature misleads us with an artfulness unparalleled by any Machiavellianism of history, whether to beguile us by the wiles of love into the perpetuation of the species, or, above all, to persuade us to do that which is right, as though right had some special sanction attached to it ; as if, of all vain things in the world, the vainest were not virtue. We are left to divine how all this artifice is compatible with unconsciousness. In- deed, from the very first these " Dialogues Philosophiques," with their seeming ease and their startling paradoxes, have been accused of putting in the place of the Christian faith mysteries infinitely harder to be understood. What can be said of the fantastic visions with which this strange book closes? What can we think of that great divine polypary of the future, in which all individual consciousness is to be confounded ; of 234 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. those future masters of the world, those terrible savants whose glance will be more deadly than the lightning, and who must be put an end to with all speed, as the worst of monsters ? The hylozoism which M. Soury proclaims in a Latin thesis, with the express reservation of a secret doubt, he vainly at- tempts to accredit with a lofty genealogy, in which he erroneously inserts the great name of Leibnitz. 1 He falls into as palpable contradictions as the system of the Unconscious. According to this theory, intelligence, consciousness, memory, all belong, like motion, to the ultimate parts of matter. Between the stone and the mind there are only differences of degree. Clearly there is in this motley system the implicit avowal of the impossibility of adhering to unconscious design. M. Soury recognises that design is inconceivable without consciousness, and he assigns consciousness to the atom. Motion is only the external aspect of feeling and consciousness. The prejudice against the idea of the Divine must indeed be strong, when mind is assigned by preference to the material atom, rather than admit a spiritual power as alone capable of communicating the higher life to the creature, and of disposing the world in harmony with predetermined laws. M. Renan and M. Soury agree in the conclusion that all that we call good or virtue is a mere delusion and vanity, and that the end of existence is a great blank. If the former is more guarded in his expressions than the latter, the reserve is only observed in the part of his dialogues which he calls " Les Reves," in which all is imagination ; but the final utter- ance of both is a note of despair. Like Hartmann and Schopenhauer, their theories end in pessimism. 1 The monad is not the intelligent and conscious atom of hylozoism. It is an energy representative of the world in which perception is sometimes vague, when it constitutes the corporeal element, sometimes distinct, when it constitutes the soul. This suffices to maintain the distinction between matter and mind which hylozoism effaces. Moreover, the affirmation of the Supreme Cause, so distinctly made by Leibnitz, forbids any assimila- tion of the two systems. PESSIMISM, 235 This pessimism brings again before us the weightiest objection that can be urged against intelligent design, namely, the pre- sence of sorrow and evil, and consequently of disorder in the world. This presents at the outset an invincible argument against the ordering of the world by supreme wisdom. Doubt- less this objection is unreasonably exaggerated by Hartmann. It is not true that existence is simply suffering; the happiness which even the humblest creatures enjoy is not purely negative. When the bird flings abroad on the cloudless morning air his flood of song, he expresses a joy in living which is no illusion. Short and precarious as this joy is, it is none the less real ; the bird's whole being expands with delight ; his rapture is no deception. When the spectacle of natural beauty thrills the heart of man with an ecstasy of admiration, which sometimes bursts forth in noble song ; when he stands awed and en- tranced beneath the star-lit expanse of heaven ; when his passion for the beautiful is kindled by some master-piece of art, his happiness, transitory, probably even alloyed as it is, is no less a reality. Love is not a false and flattering tale when it means something more that the surprise of the senses, when it binds two hearts together in a living sympathy. It has an incomparable charm when it first unfolds in the soul like a flower bathed in the purest dew of morning. To say that it withers in possession, is to recognise only its lowest satisfaction. It possesses an immortal element, and the human heart owes to it some of its noblest joys. The toil which fertilises with honest sweat the furrows of the various fields of human activity, brings with it a sober satisfaction. A good deed done gives as much joy as the violation of the moral law entails of deserved sorrow. The voluntary martyrs of heroism have tasted, in the brief instant which ended in death, a sort of inward rapture of reward which years of common-place living could not have brought. No sacrifice is ever made for the cause we have at heart, for country, for an idea, which does not bring in the very act a 236 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. happiness for which all the enjoyments of selfish ease would be a poor exchange. Pessimism is unfair, then, when it pro- nounces its anathema upon all life. Yet it is more nearly right than the superficial optimism which denies that there is any disorder, which regards evil as only the shadow necessary to the picture, or as merely the consequence of the limitation of created life. Optimism only aggravates the sorrow it professes to relieve. It arbitrarily ignores the problem ; it does not solve it. No ; we fully admit that life has bitter sorrows in its depths, that all joy falls before the mower's scythe while the early dew is scarcely dry upon it. Love is constantly wounded by death, or worse still, by life which ever comes short of its aspirations. We can form no idea to ourselves of the iniquities committed in the brief hours of a single day, of the wrongs that are covered by the darkness of one night. The purest among men have suffered most from their fellows. Saints and heroes have been crowned with thorns, scourged, slandered, sacrificed. There goes up from our earth a groaning which cannot be uttered the confused burden of sorrows, nameless, numberless. What we want to know is, whether these facts really throw doubt on the First Cause, whether they are incompatible with design. Evidently, if pessimism is the end of all, if this is indeed the world's epitaph, we must conclude that the world was formed by a malevolent being, or that there is no order in it at all, that universal existence is only a game of chance or hazard. If Hartmann and Renan are right in affirming that good is all a delusion ; if the philosophy of the Unconscious is justified in saying that the distinction between just and unjust belongs only to the transitory world of the individual, in which we appear for a few moments like the rainbow, which vanishes away with the clouds which it spanned with its seven-fold arch ; then we can understand the subtle irony over the virtue by which we are deluded, indulged in by those whose finer perceptions see through the veil. If Hartmann was right in declaring that nature is immoral and that its blind author PESSIMISM. 237 makes no difference between good and bad actions, then M. Renan is justified in asking if the libertine is not really more reasonable than the man of austere life, and in concluding in a word that both are necessary to the tout ensemble^ which is so amusing to contemplate. But if, on the contrary, Socrates and Kant were right in affirming the categorical imperative, if con- science has its law and to that law a sanction is attached, then all is changed. Then that which is behind the veil may be at once sublime and awful, then life has a meaning, a purpose. The world is not the result of a mistake, the outcome of that gloomy Unconscious, depicted to us as at once so wise in the lower sphere of life and so foolish in the higher, which it never willed to be, and which puts it to torture by forcing it to think. It is absolute good, infinite love, which rules. This is to be seen even now by its triumphs over evil. The Ruler of this world is not a Moloch without bowels of compassion, the impassible destroyer of life, only showing a preference when a head more noble than any other is to be laid low, when the best are to be made the victims of the worst ; for if it is true that we track the footsteps of heroes and of the great pioneers of the world by their blood spilt upon the ground, there is not one drop of blood so shed which is not fruitful of good. Suffer- ing would be incompatible with design only if it were useless. But to suffering we owe all that is most sublime in art, all that is grandest in human progress. If it be asserted that the very existence of suffering is an impeachment of Providence, we reply that this must at any rate depend on the source whence the suffering proceeds, whether from the caprice of the First Cause or from the act of the moral creature. Everything depends on our knowing whether such a creature exists, whether there is here on earth a free being, having a law, an ideal to strive after, and a will to conform himself to that ideal freely and without restraint, at his own peril and risk. When once the moral liberty of the moral creature is recognised, not only does the first Author of things appear justified in the fact 238 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. of suffering, but also He Himself appears to us as sovereign, infinite liberty, and we shall see at work in this world all the resources of the free love which has created and can restore it. Pessimism is condemned while we are saved on the other hand from the illusions of optimism. In the study of man himself we shall find the answer to these grave questions. 1 1 The question of pessimism is brilliantly and ingeniously treated in Mr. Mallock's book "Is Life worth Living?" The writer establishes very cleverly and poetically that the notion of good, whether expressed in positivism or in the new English psychology (two schools which he too much confounds), is equally vague and impotent, destitute as it is of the moral and religious idea. He concludes his book with an apology for the system of absolute authority, on the Ultramontane pattern, which has nothing to do with his main thesis. Compare an eloquent article by M. Caro " Sur le prix de la vie humaine." (Revue des deux Mondes t August, 1882). BOOK THIRD. THE PROBLEM OF BEING (continued. MAN. CHAPTER I. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. So far we have been looking at the world as a whole ; and by applying to it the principle of causation, the legitimacy of which we have established, we have discovered in it constant traces of the action of a free and intelligent cause, which is at once supreme power and supreme wisdom. To this cause alone can we attribute the production of this wonderful cosmos, this organic whole, all the parts of which correspond to each other, which at every stage embodies a particular plan, a special design, the higher being always the end of the lower, till all these partial designs blend in the general harmony. This world which we know, finds its consummation in a strange, complex being, the weakest of all at the beginning of his life, the greatest when his full development is attained ; sometimes the most vicious, often the image of the highest good ; sometimes heroic, sometimes miserably debased. He alone interrogates the world that he may know its laws. He governs it, brings it into subjection, perfects it, in some measure by perfecting himself; for while other beings never get beyond the orbit to which they are bound by their physical conditions, he widens this orbit and opens to himself a career of unlimited progress, alike in the domain of intellect and nature. Nor does he pause even when he has reached the limits of this visible world, which seem to yield at his advance. This being is man. In order to ascertain his origin, we shall interrogate his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, considering him first as an 241 R 242 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. individual and then as a social being. To him we shall now apply that principle of causation which forbids us to derive the greater from the less. We have already anticipated something of this great subject in treating the problem of knowledge, which brought man before us as an intellectual and moral being. We shall not repeat what has been already said on this preliminary question. We shall now look at man as his nature in its totality presents itself to us, as an object of knowledge. We shall not, indeed, be able to leave out of consideration his cognitive faculties, the very use of which is in itself a proof of his superiority ; but we shall not have to deal again with the problem of certainty. What has been already said will greatly facilitate what remains to be said of the intellectual faculties of man. I. MAN, PHYSIOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. The mechanical explanation of the world as applied to man, presents special difficulties, which have not, however, deterred its advocates. Hseckel says : " The prevailing doctrine of design, or teleology, assumes that the phenomena of organic life, and in particular those of evolution, are explicable only by purposive causes, and that, on the other hand, they in no way admit of a mechanical explanation, that is, one based entirely on natural science. The most difficult problems in this respect which have been before us, and which seemed capable of solution only by means of teleology, are, however, precisely those which have been mechanically solved in the Theory of Descent." l " The organic proceeds from the inorganic," says M. Lefevre, the devoted disciple of Haeckel on anthropological questions. " Motion is the general state of the primary elements, the great factor of molecular combinations, which in their turn give to motion its modes and its infinite variety. To every 1 " Evolution of Man," Hseckel, vol. i., p. 16. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 243 motion there is a corresponding form or state, fluid, crystalline, or cellular, vegetable or animal organism, sensation, thought. The organic contains nothing more than the inorganic." l We propose to show, in opposition to these monistic assertions, that they conflict with the best-established facts of anthropology. We shall not go beyond the domain of physiology. Our whole argument, drawn from general cosmo- logy, acquires irresistible force as applied to the being who is unquestionably the crown of the world. We shall show first, that while man rules the world from the height of his moral and intellectual life, he is, like all living creatures, subject to mechanical laws, that his privileged position as a free and responsible agent in no way exempts him from their operation, that he is as completely governed by them as the rock or the crystal. The physiology of the day has shown to what an extent life, in all its stages, depends on the physico-chemical laws, which are universally necessary to the exercise of its functions. Without the agents which depend on these laws, without water, heat, oxygen, the functions of life cease. We find life slumbering or awaking in the exact measure in which these physico-chemical conditions themselves exist, and this is the case with man no less than with the lowest animal or with the plant beneath his feet. The pre- sence of an anaesthetic arrests the vegetation of a grain as it deadens the sensibility of a patient under an operation. It is this universal action of physico-chemical conditions upon all life, which has led M. Claude Bernard to formulate what he calls physiological determinism, no less invariable in its sphere than mechanical determinism. 2 Gravitation does not more certainly determine the motion of atoms than physico- chemical laws determine the conditions of physical life in its cessation and its development. This, however, can give no 1 "Philosophic," Lefevre, pp. 451-471. 2 " Lemons sur les Phenomenes de la Vie," par Claude Bernard. Paris : 1878. 244 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. warrant for extending such determinism to existence which is not simply physical. Determinism, as Claude Bernard de- fines and applies it to physiology, is nothing else than a fresh affirmation of the supremacy of natural laws, that is to say, of that calculating and combining faculty which manifests itself in the apparent non-coherence and discreteness of matter. The more universal the law is shown to be, which determines in all existence, from the lowest to the highest, the phenomena' which spring from it, the more able, wise, and far-sighted seems the thought by which the law was conceived. Matter, which is incapable of comprehending the calculations on which its combinations are based, must be at least as incapable of devising them. Let us advance one step further. These mechanical, physico- chemical laws, which have so much influence over the develop- ment of physiological life, do not explain its production. This is true in relation to man as to the other creatures. However low his origin may be placed, even though it were in the lowliest protoplasm, still it is not the result of any mechanical motion or chemical combination. We have already shown this in a general way, in treating of the origin of life in the world. In the same book in which Claude Bernard dwells with so much emphasis upon the importance of physico-chemical con- ditions, making the human organism as completely dependent upon them as the most elementary organisms, he set aside, in the most peremptory manner, all that would imply the evolu- tion of life as the result of a chemical synthesis. " It is no more possible," he says, " for the chemist to manufacture the simplest ferment than to produce an entire living organism." l If life, even as it exists in the formless protoplasm which precedes the cell, cannot be referred to physico-chemical con- ditions, then HaeckeFs mechanical explanation of the origin of man falls to the ground ; the highest of organised existences i Le9ons sur les Phenomenes de la Vie," Claude Bernard, p. 228. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 245 will be no exception in this respect. The theory is still more untenable when applied, not simply to the production, but to the formation and specialisation of organic life. Physico- chemical conditions may indeed exert an influence on its mani- festations, but they can never give it its cohesion and unity. This demands a directing thought, which shall determine the development of the living being by harmonising its various elements, with a view to the whole. " Matter that is living, independent, amorphous or monomorphous, is protoplasm. In it reside inherently the essential properties, viz., irritability, and the faculty of synthesis, which assimilates external matter, and creates organic products. It is not, however, yet, a living organism. It lacks the form which characterises a living and definite being. It is the matter of which the living ideal crea- ture is formed, it is the basis of life ; it presents life to us in the state of nudity, in that which is universal and persistent through all the variety of forms. The form which characterises the organism is not a consequence of the nature of the proto- plasm. It is in complex organisms like man, that this formative action, obeying the governing idea, shows itself in all its energy. The complete organism is an aggregate of cells, in which the conditions of the life of each element are fulfilled, each element remaining subordinate to the whole. The living organism is an association of cells, or of elements more or less modified and grouped in tissues, organs, or systems. It is a vast me- chanism resulting from the combination of secondary mechan- isms. It is the subordination of the parts to the whole which makes of the complex organism a connected system, a whole, an individual. Thus unity is established in the living crea- ture." T It follows that, in connexion with certain fixed physico- chemical conditions, we have in the living creature organic conditions, or preliminary laws, which enable it alternately to make use of these physico-chemical conditions in a manner 1 'Le9ons sur les Ph&iom&nes de la Vie," pp. 352, 358-363. 246 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. adapted to its predetermined nature, and to react upon them. The higher the organism rises in the scale of life, the less is it controlled by its external environment. While vegetables and certain animals are so dependent on these conditions that their life may be suspended or become latent by the effect of atmos- pheric changes ; while in others, higher in the scale, life is ever varying in consequence of this dependence, which still remains, though in a less degree ; organisms of more perfect development have in themselves the physico-chemical conditions necessary to their life. They form a sort of invariable internal atmosphere for themselves in the midst of ever-changing cosmic conditions. " The perpetual changes in the cosmic elements do not affect them ; they are not dependent on them ; they are free and independent." l This internal equilibrium implies such a per- fection of organism that external variations are immediately compensated and equalised. So far from the organism being indifferent to the outer world, it is, on the contrary, in most close and wisely adjusted relations with it, so that its equilibrium results from the continual and delicate compensation kept up by the most sensitive of balances. "In living organisms of this order, the nervous system regulates the harmony between the conditions necessary to its life, which do not differ from the conditions indispensable to all life." 2 Thus in man, regarded simply from a physiological point of view, we find not only all the parts of the organism interlinked with a view to the whole, and the law of division of labour applied, as among the various classes of workmen in a factory or citizens in a community, but we also observe an admirable correspondence established between this organism and the great physico-chemical laws which govern the life of the cosmos ; so that, without being an exception to these laws, the living creature is in some measure freed from them by its internal economy. As Claude Bernard says, 3 the human organ- 1 " Le9ons sur les Phenomenes de la Vie," Claude Bernard, p. ill. * Ibid., p. 113. 8 Ibid. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 247 ism, by virtue of its marvellous construction, maintains the equi- librium necessary to its independence. The nervous system forms the compensating fly-wheel of the machinery, balancing losses and gains. Thus, to cite only one example, water being an indispensable element in the constitution of the envi- ronment, in which the living organs are evolved and perform their functions, there ought to be found among animals such a general structural disposition as will provide for the regular maintenance of the necessary quantity of water in the system, whatever losses and gains occur. " The apparatus which pro- vides for the loss and restoration of the quantity of water in the system is very complicated, and involves a number of different processes of secretion, exhalation, circulation. The mechanism varies, but the result produced is uniform, viz., the presence of water in a certain definite proportion in the inter- nal organism, as the condition of the vital functions." l We find organic devices equally complicated and wonderful subserving the function of heat-production, which consists in regulating the quantity of oxygen necessary to the manifestation of life, and others again for the purpose of alimentation and assimilation, by which the internal equilibrium is maintained. Here is surely something very different from pure mechanism blind and purposeless. It matters little that the learned author of the " Legons sur les Phe'nomenes de la Vie " relegates the question of final causes to the domain of metaphysics. A final cause is abundantly evident in these harmonies between the living organism and its cosmical environment. It can scarcely be needful to remark that all these results of absolutely im- partial science apply, primarily, to man as the most perfect manifestation of organic life. We can only refer to the numberless special treatises which draw our attention to the marvellous adaptation of the human organs to the two great functions of nutrition and of relation, and to the perfectness of that great controller of the physical life 1 "Lemons sur les Phenomenes de la Vie," Claude Bernard, p. 115. 248 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. the nervous system. The tribute paid by Bossuet and Fe*nelcn to the human organism will never be surpassed, and the pro- gress of physiological science since the iyth century only en- hances its force. " Of all the works of nature," says Bossuet, "that in which design is most apparent, is man. Every- thing in the human body is disposed with marvellous skill. The delicacy of the parts, which are adjusted with inconceiv- able nicety, is yet compatible with solidity. The play of all the organs is as steady as it is easy. We -.an say with confidence then, that of all the proportions observed in organised bodies, those of the human frame are the most perfect and harmonious. Parts so well arranged, and all so adapted to the uses for which they are made, point to an economy and, if it is per- missible to use the word, to a mechanism so admirable, that we cannot behold it without amazement, nor sufficiently admire the wisdom which has determined its laws. All the organs are so simple, the play of them is so easy, the struc- ture so delicate, that every other machine seems coarse in comparison. No chisel, no lathe, no brush, can approach the softness with which nature fashions and finishes its workman- ship." l We refer the reader to Fene'lon's brilliant treatise on the existence of God, in which his admiration of the human body, which he calls the masterpiece of nature, rises to poetic rapture. 2 We recognise in the human frame not only the evidence of a final cause which establishes the harmony of the parts and subordinates each part to the whole, keeping an exact proportion between the organs and their functions, but also the principle of a higher order which is called beauty, and to which pure mechanism must always be perfectly indifferent. There is nothing more perfect than the human form in its higher types. The figure tall and erect, with that symmetry without stiffness which is peculiar to life, with that supple 1 " De la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-mme." Bossuet. 3 " De 1'Existence de Dieu." Fenelon. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 249 grace which is the surest sign of force confident of itself; the arch of the mouth soft and flexible, as if quivering with the quick-coming words; the oval of the face harmoniously out- lined ; the brow broad and high the temple of thought. Os sublime dedit. The eye, blue as the heaven on which it looks, or dark with the shadowy tones of deep lakes or lofty summits, is the living mirror reflecting the inner life, now tender with love, now kindling with anger, again catching a deeper, purer radiance from the mysterious world towards which it is strangely drawn. Smiling, such a face is like the breaking of the dawn ; in sorrow it is grander still. And even where the features are less finely moulded, the stamp of intelligence gives a unique attraction to this animated clay. There are various phases of human beauty. There is the beauty of childhood the blossom of humanity with its charming in- definiteness of outline, its purity and freshness ; there is the ideal type of feminine beauty as represented by Phidias, who caught the inspiration of his miracle in stone from the fair daughters of Greece; then there is the heroic, manly type of beauty, bearing the diadem of man's kingship upon its head. It is, indeed, rarely that these types of human beauty are seen in unalloyed perfection in our race, but they are none the less the realisation of the true ideal of humanity. Mechanism alone could never produce this delicate harmony, the proportions of which were never determined by geo- metrical laws. This Divine art exhibits the sovereign free- dom which triumphs over inert and ponderous matter, subject to mechanical laws, by which alone such variety and beauty could never be evolved. The beauty of the human form is irradiated by the soul, as the alabaster vase shows through its transparent medium the light within. Thus the physical nature of man points us to his intellectual and moral being, for its chief beauty is derived from the expression of the moral life which it enshrines. Take away the glance, the smile, and we have in man himself only the beauty of the 250 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. plastic clay which we find everywhere in nature. It is so true that in human beauty the reflexion of the soul is the essential, that ugliness itself becomes beautiful when illu- mined by the flash of genius. "Who is that ugly man who becomes beautiful when he speaks ? " was asked in refer- ence to one of our most illustrious contemporaries. Every- thing moreover in plastic beauty itself, in the mould of the face and the forehead, is adapted to the intellectual life. Obviously it was intended in the modelling, that the head of man should be the principal organ. II. MAN, INTELLECTUALLY AND MORALLY CONSIDERED. The organic life of man develops itself so as to become at once the instrument and the expression of the intellectual and moral life. This life is connected with the organism, and cannot dispense with it. But organic life, while it is thus the necessary condition of the intellectual and moral, is not its first principle or its end, any more than the physico-chemi- cal conditions indispensable to organic life can be taken as its cause. Every fresh story in this great edifice of universal existence is superposed, in some sort, upon the story below, but it is built of materials not contained in that which pre- ceded it. It comes out clearly, as it seems to us, from the study of psychological facts, in their relation with the physio- logical (a relation always very close under the conditions of the present life) that progress is measured by the growing predominance of the higher element, which yet is never dis- connected from the lower. The soul, to use a familiar image, is not stationed in the body, like the pilot on the deck of the ship ; it stands in a permanent relation to the body, while at the saro- time it is ever gaining greater power over it. We have to show presently that this relation does not MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 251 imply that the two are at all confounded ; but before entering on this question, we must give a description of the psycho- logical life as it manifests itself to us directly. All the activities of the soul are summed up in these three faculties to know, to love, to will. Each of these has its history, its development ; none is at first what it is to be afterwards. Man begins with purely instinctive life, without any clear consciousness of itself. In this phase, the indi- viduality, the ego, the person, exists only in germ, and is not separable from indistinct impressions of which it is vaguely the subject. This instinctive life makes man in the first stage of his existence closely akin to the animal, though there are already indications of the essential difference which will ulti- mately appear between them. The newborn child is inferior in many respects to the young of lower animals, because it is by-and-by to possess intelligence. Indeed, at a very early age, reason begins to cast a faint gleam over the instinctive life. In the eye of an infant there is something very different from the keen bright orb of the deer or the colt. However this may be, it is certain that both in the infant and in the animal the instinctive life has a character of its own, which distin- guishes it absolutely from simply organic life. To feel, to love, to will, even in the lowest degree, is something quite different from digestion, respiration, motion. The plant lives. It constitutes a complete organism, but it never has any real sensation, any movement of affection, any impulse of the will. Mechanics does not account for the organism; the organism does not account for instinct, nor does instinct explain the true intellectual and moral life. In that period of man's physical life which Maine de Biran calls the affective, the soul does not properly distinguish between itself and its sensations. The ego only exists in a virtual state. It is governed by the sensations, affected and modified by them, and apparently submerged, like the swimmer who cannot lift his head above the rapid stream that is carrying 252 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. him along. He does not truly know, because he does not clearly distinguish himself from the object affecting him. Instinctive knowledge is then only sensation more or less confused. The will, at this stage, is nothing but an impulse urging on to a blind movement, under the influence of the instinctive feeling which makes man seek the pleasant and avoid the painful. Doubtless, before sensation, feeling, or will, is possible, there must be an act of concentration by which sensation is conveyed to the nervous centre, to produce reflex motion in the corresponding members, without which the living organism would remain inert. Doubtless, also, this concentrating action could not be produced by mere mechanical force; but during the period in which instinct predominates, we do not yet find the clear distinction between the subject and the object with- out which there is no conscious life, although instinct helps to foster it in the being in whom the higher life is latent. Instinct does not produce isolated motions only ; it co-ordin- ates and directs them towards an end, a purpose of which instinct itself has no perception. Man does not remain in this low stage of physical life, although instinct never ceases to play a part in his existence. The step by which man enters the higher ranks of existence is the act of willing, by which he distinguishes himself from" things, the resistance of which he overcomes by force of volition. The first obstacle with which he has to contend is his own body, and he finds it needs an effort to make this bend to his will. That which resists is obviously not identical with the energy put forth to overcome it ; the duality between the ego and the non-ego makes itself clear at once. The first, the most elementary act of willing, awakes the consciousness of the human person as distinct from outward things. Sensation pure and simple is left behind; perception begins. We are on the threshold of knowledge, which implies that the subject is distinct from the object, and that the ego is not carried along MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 253 by the tide of sensation. The swimmer gets his head above the stream. We need not say more on this subject, which has already been fully treated in the earlier chapters of the present work. We have shown how, as soon as the ego has become dis- tinguished from the non-ego by an effort, it carries this power of volition, by which it has overcome the resistance of the body, into the sphere of knowledge. Effort now rises into attention, which is an intellectual effort, then into reflexion, becoming ever more clearly conscious of its proper self, by virtue of these repeated acts of the will in which it asserts itself. Not content with learning to recognise the outer world by differentiating himself from it, man takes knowledge of himself. He becomes conscious of his proper energy ; he finds in him- self all the a prioristic laws which constitute the essence of reason. His understanding becomes active ; he compares, abstracts, generalises, and thus comes to apprehend unity in diversity, the universal in the manifold. Lastly, under the influence of the great principle of causation, which is the axis and fulcrum of the human mind, he rises to the cause of causes the absolute. We must not forget that all this grand development of intelligence began in the initial act of the will, manifested in the first effort, which, instead of remaining simply muscular, as in the animal kingdom, became intellectual. This does not imply that the intelligence, any more than the human personality, was produced by this act of the will. If it had not already existed virtually, with its laws and fundamental principles, all ready to be formulated as axioms, it could never have appeared. But in order to arouse it from its latent state, to make it pass from the virtual to the actual, there was still required that first manifestation of the will, which, by repe- tition and confirmation, rendered the subject the conscious master of himself. It is this contact of the subject, all en- 254 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. swathed as yet in the bands of instinct, with the resistant object, that strikes the first spark of the great light of reason ; its first ray reveals the individual to himself. 1 To rise from the passive to the active is the essential con- dition of psychological evolution. The will is then the cen- tral, the controlling faculty, that which constitutes the man, by enabling him to appropriate the treasures which lay buried in his mind in the period of unconsciousness. It is the will which rouses him to listen ; for it is not enough simply to hear what we may call the moral d priori, the revelation of conscience, the immortal categorical imperative, which is to be the law, the rule, the inspiration of man's life. We know that the desire to listen to this law is the beginning of obedience ; and when once this first and peremptory deter- mination has been taken by the will, all that is contained implicitly in moral obligation becomes clear to it ; and as the understanding has found God in its deepest thoughts, so the conscience recognises Him when it has got to the roots of its own life. Henceforth the will has a model before it; liberty is no longer an empty name ; by the acceptance of the Divine law, it becomes a great reality. The third sphere of the psychological life, or the life of feeling, comes under the same law. The life of the affections is also raised above instinct and the blind impulses of a state of passivity. It conceives of a higher life than one of alternate attraction and repulsion, governed by mere impulses of pleasure and pain. The life of the affections becomes that of voluntary, conscious love, the sublime assertion of individu- ality and of liberty, the life that is most its own when it gives itself away. In this sphere again, true liberty comes through the accept- ance of the Divine law of love; for God, the highest truth of the reason, the sacred rule of conscience, is also the 1 See " CEuvres Philosophiques," Maine de Biran, vol. iii-> P. 167, ** Psychologic." Janet. MAN IN HIS TWOFOLD NATURE. 255 supreme object of affection, which finds in Him that which is worthiest to be loved. The individuality of man is so much the more assured, as he is not only raised above mere instinct, but also freed from the fetters of selfish egoism. The ego finds its completion in God ; and in giving himself to God, man truly possesses his soul. At every stage of this evolution, when it is normally realized, the will is the great agent of progress. By means of it, man partially forms himself. To will is for him to be in the true sense of the word, for it is the only means of separating him from that which is not his true self, from that which keeps him in bondage, from that which Plato called the other ; in a word, from the passive life which enshrouds the ego in a lower life foreign to its essential nature. Such appears to us the psychological evolution of the human ego. We have now to vindicate these assertions in view of the objections urged against them by other schools of thought. CHAPTER II. THE RELATIONS OF THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL. MATERIALISM has in all ages pretended to explain the intellec- tual superiority of man by his higher physical organism. It attempts to establish an exact correlation between the two. His upright posture and the delicate articulations of his hand would at once have assured his pre-eminence in the animal kingdom ; but that which most of all places him at an advan- tage, is the admirable organisation of his brain. If he thinks, he is indebted for the power of thought to this wonderful organ. Let us inquire if duly ascertained facts bear out these assertions. Here again we must draw attention to the dis- tinction so often ignored, between the conditions of existence and its essential principle. We admit most categorically that the psychical, intellectual, and moral life of man is connected with his physical life ; that the former cannot exist without the latter, at least under present conditions ; in a word, that there is mutual interaction between the two. But we must not, as is too often done, suppose that there is only one kind of interaction that of the physical upon the moral nature for- getting that the moral exerts an equally powerful influence upon the physical. A thought, a feeling, not originating in any out- ward stimulus, gives a sudden impulse to the circulation, or seems to stop the beating of the heart as certainly as a change in the brain tissue helps or hinders intellectual work. It is contrary to the best authenticated facts to recognise only the influence of the physical on the moral, without admitting the 256 RELATIONS OF THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL. 257 converse. We endorse all Mr. Bain's acute and just observa- tions on this subject in his interesting book. 1 With perfect justice, and taking as his data very carefully made experiments, he shows that sensation, like thought, is governed by certain constant laws ; that both require the stimulus of a change to make them conscious of things within their competence, and that both the one and the other acquire increased intensity in proportion to the more extended sphere in which they are exercised, giving scope for more numerous comparisons. Only Mr. Bain carries too far this parallelism between the physical and the moral. The will he regards as nothing more than the instinct which urges man to seek pleasure and to flee pain. He thus ignores the true character of this important quality, which raises instinctive to reflective and conscious life. His analysis of the reason is altogether inadequate. He ignores its highest operations, those which rise from the particular to the general and universal. Memory is only an accumulation of nervous vibrations. Every intellectual acquisition is connected with an independent nerve fibre. Here we have no longer the union of the mind with the body; but the absorption of the mind in the body. It is impossible to understand how, after such conclusions, the author can maintain that the proper characteristic of the mind is want of extension, while matter always has extension. This proposition is hard to reconcile with the following declara- tion : " The one substance, with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the mental, a double-faced unity, would appear to comply with all the exigencies of the case." 2 This is certainly an easy way of settling the difficulty, for Bain has not really reconciled the two terms of the problem, but has rather sacrificed the psychical life entirely to the physical. He has even gone so far as to say that the mind is completely at the mercy of the body. Yet he seems to feel 1 " Mind and Body." Alexander Bain. * Ibid., p. 196. 258 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. the insufficiency of his theory, as the following passage indicates . " We have something beyond the usual endow- ments of natural things, in the possibility of stoiing up in three pounds' weight of a fatty and albuminous tissue done into fine threads and corpuscles, all these complicated groupings that make our natural and acquired aptitudes and all our knowledge. If there were sermons in stones, we should be less astonished when they proceed from brains." l I. THE BRAIN AND THOUGHT. Pure materialists see no difficulty in finding sermons in stones, or in finding the whole intellectual life contained in " three pounds' weight of a fatty and albuminous tissue." This is brought out very clearly in the learned writings of Luys, Maudsley, and Bastian. 3 Let us briefly give the outlines of this important question of the relations of the brain and thought. " The brain, or upper expansion of the spinal cord, and chief organ of the central nervous life, is ovoid in form, the larger end being anterior and cleft into two symmetrical hemispheres united by the corpus callosum. Each hemisphere is divided into four regions or lobes. Its surface is covered with complicated furrows and ridges, called the convolutions. The spinal cord, as it joins the base of the brain, expands into the medulla oblongata^ and this divides into two prolonga- tions, the crura cerebri, one passing into each hemisphere. At the base are seated two very important pairs of promi- nences, the corpora striata and the optic thalami. In cross-sec- tion the brain is seen to be made up of two distinct substances, the grey and the white. The grey matter surrounds the 1 " Mind and Body," Alexander Bain, p. 89. 2 "The Brain and its Functions," Luys ; " The Philosophy of Mind," Maudsley; "The Brain as an Organ of Mind," Bastian. Dr. Bastian works out the psychological and physiological theories of Herbert Spencer, applying to the brain and to thought the principle of progress by growing differentiation. THE BRAIN AND THOUGHT. 259 central canal of the cerebro-spinal axis, it forms the surface or cortical layer of the cerebrum and cerebellum. Its essential constituent is the nerve or ganglion cell. The white substance makes up the body of the lobes, and forms the peripheral parts of the spinal cord. Its essential constituent is the nerve fibre." * Liiys and Maudsley both hold that the whole intellectual and moral life of man is explained by the physical operations of the brain. It proceeds entirely from the properties of the nervous elements inherent in the brain \vithout the intervention at any stage of an agent of a higher order. These properties may be classed under three heads : First. Sensibility, by virtue of which the central cell comes into contact with its environ- ment. Second. Organic 'phosphorescence,' which gives it the property of storing up in itself and retaining the sensory vibrations, as in the inorganic world we see phosphorescent bodies retain for a longer or shorter time traces of the luminous vibrations which have passed through them. Third. Auto- matism, or the aptitude possessed by the nervous cell of reacting on its environment whenever it has received an im- pression from it. It is by the combination of these properties and the sum- mation of their energies that the brain feels, remembers, and reacts. " Sensibility is always the first step towards motility, and is the preliminary to all movement. After being con- ducted through the sensory-motor mechanism of the cortex, it is transformed insensibly into motive power, and is mani- fested at length as a jnotor act remote from the nervous centre." 2 It is clear that everything is traced back to sensation, that is to say to the action of the outer world. "The various processes of the action of the brain are all comprised in a 1 I take this description of the brain from Dr. Surbler's article in the "Correspondent," April loth, 1881. 2 " The Brain and its Functions," Luys, preface, pp. viii., ix. 260 THE PROBLEM OF BEING. cyclic motion of absorption and restitution of force. It is the outer world with all its various stimuli which finds an entrance, by means of the senses, under the form of sense-excitation; and it is this same outer world, modified and refracted by its close contact with the living tissues through which it has passed, which emerges from the organism and finds its external reflexion in the various manifestations of voluntary motion." l All spontaneity, all proper activity, all free-will, is thus set aside, the voluntary act being nothing more than the reaction of sensibility. It is sensibility which, being everywhere pre- sent and everywhere vibrating, inspires our words, our writings, our acts, following the instinctive appetites which determine its attractions and repulsions. 2 Personal interest is the sole mo- tive of human conduct, the all-powerful magnet which guides it; self-devotion is but a disguised form of egoism. It is easy to imagine what the personality becomes in such a system. The unity of the ego is nothing more than the accord into which all outward stimuli are automatically attuned, when, after traversing the series of connected cells forming the cortex, they reach the common locus which acts as a great receiver-general. This re- ceiving area, localised in the region of the corpora striata and optic thalami) may be called the sensorium commune. Past and present stimuli are blended in this living receptacle ; it is like an animated piano which harmonises all its tones into one accord. 3 Maudsley arrives at the very same conclusions. To him mind is only a generalisation, a metaphysical abstraction of the nervous and cerebral phenomena. Mental activity depends absolutely on the structure and nutrition of the brain. The history of intelligence is identical \\ith that <--f the nervous system ; it is in exact relation with the cerebral 1 "The Brain and its Functions," Luy% ,-, 258. 2 Ibid., p. 255. 3 Ibi